How does the observer come into being?

Good morning everyone,

Still dark outside as I seem to be on an early-morning roll this week and the days are getting shorter!

Here is today's quote:

So how does the observer come into being? When you look at this flower, at the moment you observe it closely, there is no observer, there is only a looking. Then you begin to name that flower. Then you say, “I wish I had it in my garden or in my house.” Then you have already begun to build an image about that flower. So the image-maker is the observer. Right? Are you following all this? Watch it in yourself, please. So the image and the image-maker are the observer, and the observer is the past. The “me” as the observer is the past, the “me” is the knowledge which I have accumulated: knowledge of pain, sorrow, suffering, agony, despair, loneliness, jealousy, and the tremendous anxiety that one goes through. That’s all the “me”, which is the accumulated knowledge of the observer, which is the past. Right? So when you observe, the observer looks at that flower with the eyes of the past. And you don’t know how to look without the observer and, therefore, you bring about conflict.

Mind in Meditation, pp 8-9.

Here is my reflection.

I think this gets nicely at the way that observing from the past creates conflict. The observer is the past, is everything that he or she has accumulated from experience. So now when he looks it is never her that he looks at but rather what his past experience shows him. This might be fear, anger, desire, ambition, hurt, remorse, sorrow, all his life's possibilities, but it is still not her that he sees. Only if he is deeply alert to all of this in himself can he truly love her.

Best wishes

Robert