Extracts from Krishnamurti’s Notebook
Published by KFT – 2003 – Full Text Edition

13 Mar 1962

You went with the sun, far away; you didn’t withdraw you just  went away, not knowing where; if you withdrew, you would come  back, now or later, and then you would repeat the whole weary cycle  again, endlessly. Your withdrawal bred callousness and the agony of despair. Don’t ever withdraw or isolate yourself; don’t retreat into corrupting family or into the dead ashes of ideas, beliefs and the cheap gods of your mind. There is no love there. But if you just went away, not knowing where, not planned, not cunningly plotted out, then you can walk in that filthy street, with dead men and you would know love. As you walked, pushed around by cars and people, you would meditate, with delight; then meditation became an ecstasy, a movement of infinite tenderness and you held the hand of a passing child. Then you would give the garland of fragrant jasmine that had just been given to you to that passing beggar and you would see his immense surprise and delight. Then you would know that the everlasting was always there, round every corner, under that dead leaf and the fallen flower. The man ahead of you was smoking a strong cigarette and the brown eagles had stopped circling in the sky.

7 March 1962

You should never be here too much; be so far away that they can’t find you, they can’t get at you to shape, to mould. Be so far away, like the mountains, like the unpolluted air; be so far away that you have no parents, no relations, no family, no country; be so far away that you don’t know even where you are. Don’t let them find you; don’t come into contact with them too closely. Keep far away where even you can’t find yourself; keep a distance which can never be crossed over; keep a passage open always through which no one can come. Don’t shut the door for there is no door, only an open, endless passage; if you shut any door, they will be very close to you, then you are lost. Keep far away where their breath can’t reach you and their breath travels very far and very deeply; don’t get contaminated by them, by their word, by their gesture, by their great knowledge; they have great knowledge but be far away from them where even you cannot find yourself. For they are waiting for you, at every corner, in every house to shape you, to mould you, to tear you to pieces and then put you together in their own image. Their gods, the little ones and the big ones, are the images of themselves, carved by their own mind or by their own hands. They are waiting for you, the churchman and the Communist, the believer and the non-believer, for they are both the same; they think they are different but they are not for they both brainwash you, till you are of them, till you repeat their words, till you worship their saints, the ancient and the recent; they have armies for their gods and for their countries and they are experts in killing. Keep far away but they are waiting for you, the educator and the businessman; one trains you for the others to conform to the demands of their society, which is a deadly thing;** they will make you into a scientist, into an engineer, into an expert of almost anything from cooking to architecture to philosophy. Keep far, far away; they are waiting for you, the politician and the reformer; the one drags you down into the gutter and then the other reforms you; they juggle with words and you will be lost in their wilderness. Keep far away; they are waiting for you, the experts in god and the bomb throwers: the one will convince you and the other [show you] how to kill; there are so many ways to find god and so many, many ways to kill. But besides all these, there are hoards of others to tell you what to do and what not to do; keep away from all of them,

 ** They have a thing called society and family: these two are their real gods, the net in which you will be entangled. [Krishnamurti’s insertion.]

11 Mar 1962

But everywhere there were the desperately poor, lean, hungry; and the polished cars went by and the people in there were sad too. Their day was over, never to return; they had money and nothing else. You never saw anything so utterly innocent; she was lying on her back; you could just see the whole delicate line of her and she was almost touching the water; it was a stroke of light of the very young, new moon, appearing for the first time in a cloudless sky. You never saw her before, though you had seen her a thousand times; it was so innocent that you in that crowded noisy street were made innocent. You were innocent, without striving, without thought; everything about you was new, you had never seen them before. Your eyes were washed clean and you had not a spot in your heart; you were so far away that nothing could touch you. You could never be polluted again for there was no again; there was no in the meantime; there was no past or future; there was only that vast empty space of now, of innocency whose immensity was blessedness. It was a benediction and you couldn’t carry another to it, even though you loved. There was no saviour, no teacher could bring you to it; you have to abandon them and get lost where your thought couldn’t find you. It was the innocency of complete aloneness, not a thing that you had carefully carved out of life, a corner of self-immolated isolation. You were not alone, for you were where experience could not reach you. You did not know it was aloneness; you were not aware of anything but there was that immense innocency in that nothingness. It was the innocence of all energy and life and if you ever came there casually, and it must always be casual never determined, then you would be in an ecstasy that had no reason and no death. The long line of cars honked behind you, and in front of you a political meeting was going on, on the beach, and the bellowing voice of the politician, through the loudspeaker, came to you. The new moon was below the sea.

March 19 1962 - The last journal entry.

We were flying at 32,000 feet; the endless clouds were far below us and the clear, spotless blue sky above; the sun was coming out of the clouds, dazzlingly white. There wasn’t a break in them and they stretched from continent to continent; they were over the desert, sea and islands and at that height the sky was of intense blue; from the earth, from the mountains, you never saw such blue; it was so solid that you could cut it and keep it in your pocket and the horizon was white where the blue met. From a deep valley or from a high mountain sometimes you saw the blue of the sky, but it was never like this. It filled your eyes and carried you very far, beyond the measure of time. The plane wasn’t crowded yet, probably, it would fill up at the next landing, so you had the next two seats to yourself. There was the roar of those jets and it wasn’t too noisy, you could hear the conversation of those ladies, seated across the aisle. But there was silence. Amidst all that chatter and roar, it was there as clear and spotless as the blue sky. You were aware of it not as an observer [of] something to be experienced and put away into endless memory; you could not think about it, there was no time; it was there with such intensity that there was no experiencing of it. Out of this silence, suddenly and unexpectedly, there was that immensity. Your whole being became utterly still, without a thought, without a feeling; there was that unapproachable strength that was not put together by man. It was the strength that nothing could penetrate and so utterly vulnerable. And there was that strange intensity which no will or passion could conjure up. They were not separate things, the immense, that impenetrable strength and intensity; they were inseparable, never to be broken up, like death and love and creation. Your brain could not grasp the vastness, the majesty of it; it had become still, many centuries ago, before you came aboard the plane when they were playing some light music; out of the humid heat of the night, you came in and instantly were lost, many, many centuries ago, only an hour ago or perhaps a little more. You sat there motionless and totally lost and you would never be back completely. Three hours passed and you thought you had just got in and they were telling you to fasten your belt. And the two seats next to you were taken by a man and woman. And again we were in the blue sky, innocent and spotless, and that immensity was there. No man or god could disturb it and your mind and heart were of it, past belief and past beyond all time. Such a thing should happen in such a place! The man was smoking and it was in your face; the baby  across the aisle was crying in breathless sobs, there was no milk and the mother couldn’t quieten it; the strain of it all was beginning to tell on the mother. The hostesses came and took the baby away, to clean it up, to quieten it and now the mother began to cry. The roar of the jets changed and we were coming down to land again. There was a river and green fields; the river was like a snake winding in and out through the fields and the fields were like men’s mind, all broken up, divided; the property of each owner. And beyond was the sea, blue, rough and incredibly alive. And there were the hills and the islands.