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A few quotes by J.Krishnamurti (www.jkrishnamurti.org) -
These passages are copyrighted by one of the Krishnamurti foundations.
KFA and KFT were informed about this file and did not object to it.
================================================================================================================
The Old Brain, Our Animalistic Brain
I think it is important to understand the operation, the functioning,
the activity of the old brain. When the new brain operates, the old
brain cannot possibly understand the new brain. It is only when the old
brain, which is our conditioned brain, our animalistic brain, the brain
that has been cultivated through centuries of time, which is
everlastingly seeking its own security, its own comfort - it is only
when that old brain is quiet that you will see that there is a
different kind of movement altogether, and it is this movement that is
going to bring clarity. It is this movement that is clarity itself. To
understand, you must understand the old brain, be aware of it, know all
its movements, its activities, its demands, its pursuits, and that is
why meditation is very important. I do not mean the absurd,
systematized cultivation of a certain habit of thought, and the rest of
it; that's all too immature and childish. By meditation I mean to
understand the operations of the old brain, to watch it, to know how it
reacts, what its responses are, its tendencies, its demands, its
aggressive pursuits - to know the whole of that, the unconscious as
well as the conscious part of it. When you know it, when there is an
awareness of it, without controlling it, without directing it, without
saying, 'This is good; this is bad; I'll keep this; I won't keep that,'
- when you see the total movement of the old mind, when you see it
totally, then it becomes quiet.
The Book of Life - October 16
================================================================================================================
Where the self is there is no love; Where there is love there is no self
“So, until we understand and are utterly free from the whole
process of ambition, which is the search for power, for efficiency, for
domination, there cannot be creative action; and it is only the
creative man who can solve these problems, not the man who is merely
copying a pattern, however efficient, however worthy. The search
for a pattern is not the search for creation, the search for a pattern
is not the search for true revolution. As long as we do not
understand the process of effort, in which is implied power, imitation,
ambition, there cannot be creation. It is only the creative man
who is happy, and only the happy man is virtuous; and the happy,
virtuous man is a really creative social entity who will bring about
revolution.” – JK - 1950
… Actually, I do not think dependence is the problem; I think
there is some other deeper factor that makes us depend. And if we can
unravel that, then both dependence and the struggle for freedom will
have very little significance; then all the problems which arise though
dependence will wither away. So, what is the deeper issue? Is it that
the mind abhors, fears, the idea of being alone? And does the mind know
that state which it avoids? So long as that loneliness is not really
understood, felt, penetrated, dissolved—whatever word you may
like to use—so long as that sense of loneliness remains,
dependence is inevitable, and one can never be free; one can never find
out for oneself that which is true, that which is religion."
"Without self-knowledge, experience breeds illusion; with
self-knowledge, experience, which is the response to challenge, does
not leave a cumulative residue as memory. Self-knowledge is the
discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self, its intentions
and pursuit, its thoughts and appetites. There can never be "your
experience" and "my experience"; the very term "my experience"
indicates ignorance and the acceptance of illusion."
"Active Self-Knowledge" - The Book of Life (January 25)
“How we want to possess the coconut, the woman, and the heavens!
We want to monopolize, and things seem to acquire greater value through
possession. When we say, `It is mine' the picture seems to become
more beautiful, more worthwhile; it seems to acquire greater delicacy,
greater depth and fullness.There is a strange quality of violence in
possession. The moment one says, `It is mine', it becomes a thing
to be cared for, defended, and in this very act there is a resistance
which breeds violence. Violence is ever seeking success; violence
is self-fulfilment. To succeed is always to fail. Arrival
is death and travelling is eternal. To gain, to be victorious in
this world, is to lose life. How eagerly we pursue an end!
But the end is everlasting, and so is the conflict of its
pursuit. Conflict is constant overcoming, and what is conquered
has to be conquered again and again. The victor is ever in fear,
and possession is his darkness. The defeated, craving victory,
loses what is gained, and so he is as the victor. To have the
bowl empty is to have life that is deathless”. (JK: Commentaries
on Living)
Benedictus est qui venit in nomine domini (blessed is he who comes in the name of God).
J. Krishnamurti Last Talks at Saanen 1985 1st Public Question Dialogue Answer Meeting Tuesday, 23rd July, 1985
1 I have been told that there are so many people who are sad leaving,
ending, Saanen. If one is sad it is about time that we left! And as has
been announced, we are leaving. This is the last session at Saanen.
==========
<>from "Education and the Significance of Life"
" Nothing of fundamental value can be accomplished through mass
instruction, but only through the careful study and understanding of
the difficulties, tendencies and capacities of each child; and those
who are aware of this, and who earnestly desire to understand
themselves and help the young, should come together and start a school
that will have vital significance in the child's life by helping him to
be integrated and intelligent. To start such a school, they need not
wait until they have the necessary means. One can be a true teacher at
home, and opportunities will come to the earnest.
Those who love their own children and the
children about them, and who are therefore in earnest, will see to it
that a right school is started somewhere around the corner, or in their
own home. Then the money will come - it is the least important
consideration. To maintain a small school of the right kind is of
course financially difficult; it can flourish only on self-sacrifice,
not on a fat bank account. Money invariably corrupts unless there is
love and understanding. But if it is really a worthwhile school, the
necessary help will be found. When there is love of the child, all
things are possible"
=============
So a mind that has been educated wrongly, through civilizations, and
culture, cannot re-educate itself to a new culture, to a new state. All it
can do is to see the falseness of this culture. When you see that which is
false then there is the truth in that falseness. The perception of that
truth is intelligence.
================================================================================================================
We have separated intellect from feeling, and have developed intellect
at the expense of feeling. We are like a three-legged object with one
leg much longer than the others, and we have no balance. We are trained
to be intellectual; our education cultivates the intellect to be sharp,
cunning, acquisitive, and so it plays the most important role in our
life. Intelligence is much greater than intellect, for it is the
integration of reason and love; but there can be intelligence only when
there is self-knowledge, the deep understanding of the total process of
oneself. ."
—J. Krishnamurti
Education and the Significance of Life
Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on
anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very
quiet, really still? Then you hear everything, don't you? You hear the
far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very
close by, the immediate sounds—which means really that you are
listening to everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little
channel. If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without
strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you,
a change that comes without your volition, without your asking; and in
that change there is great beauty and depth of insight.
January 1
excerpt from The Book of Life
=======================
An excerpt from Krishnamurti’s early years :
You cannot learn spiritual truth through experience. Don’t you
see? Let us assume that you had a deep sorrow and you learned how to
fight against it. This experience will induce you to apply the same
method of overcoming grief during your next sorrow… It is wrong.
Instead of doing something vital, you try to adapt a dead method to
life. Your former experience has become a prescription, a medicine. But
life is too complicated, too subtle for that. It never repeats itself;
no two sorrows in your life are alike. Each new sorrow or joy must be
dealt within that particular fashion that the uniqueness of the
experience requires… By eliminating the memory of former
experiences; by destroying all recollection of our actions and
reactions.
You never ought to act according to old habits but in the way life
wants you to act – spontaneously, on the spur of the moment. You
must try to eliminate from your life all old habits and systems of
behaviour, because no two moments in life are exactly similar.
You don’t need to search for the positive; don’t force it.
It is always there, though hidden behind a huge heap of old
experiences. Eliminate all of them, and truth – or what you call
the positive – will be there. It comes up automatically, you
cannot help it.
Truth is for me the release of the mind from all burdens of memory.
Truth is awareness, constant awareness of life within and without
you... What matters is that we should live completely at every moment
of our lives. That is the only real liberation. Truth is nothing
abstract, it is neither philosophy, occultism nor mysticism. It is
everyday life, it is perceiving the meaning and wisdom of life around
us. The only life worth dealing with is our present life and every one
of its moments. But to understand it we must liberate our mind from all
memories, and allow it to appreciate spontaneously the present moment.
===================================================================
Either let us be so poor that we are deprived of everything or so rich
that we are beyond the world of many possessions and much wealth,
beyond its immense knowledge, its cleverness and its cynicism. [k
– 1929]
============================================
[2004 An old friend of Alan Hooker said that K told Alan that he should
have faith that life will show him the next thing he needs to do / know
about. ]
1946 Ojai: "Confidence comes into being, it cannot be manufactured by
the mind; confidence comes with experiment and discovery; not the
experiment with belief, theory or memory but experimentation with
self-knowledge. This confidence or faith is not self-imposed nor is it
identified with belief, formulation, hope. It is not the outcome of
self-expanding desire. In experimenting with awareness there is a
discovery which is freeing in its understanding. This self-knowledge
through passive awareness is from moment to moment, without
accumulation; it is endless, truly creative. Through awareness there
comes vulnerability to Truth."
1953 Poona: So it is possible to have that creative faith - if I can
use that word - without identifying it with a particular pattern of
thought? ... So, what we now need is the confidence or the faith in the
discovery of what is Truth.
============================================
to a mind that is learning the skies are open.
Some of these were extracted from www.kinfonet.org and www.kfa.org websites.
Dr. Satish Inamdar: K once referred to order as "a sequence in space."
But a mind that is completely empty, empty in the sense of observation,
silence and, therefore, love and the whole understanding of time; it
acts from that emptiness, it speaks from that emptiness. And,
therefore, it will always be true, it will never bring about a
deception within itself. And it is only such a religious mind that can
solve the problems of misery in this world. J. Krishnamurti 6 Feb
1965
"Art divorced from life has no great significance. When art is separate
from our daily living, when there is a gap between our instinctual life
and our efforts on canvas, in marble or in words, then art becomes
merely an expression of our superficial desire to escape from the
reality of what is. To bridge this gap is very arduous, especially for
those who are gifted and technically proficient; but it is only when
the gap is bridged that our life becomes integrated and art an integral
expression of ourselves." Jiddu Krishnamurti
The art of learning is the act of silence.
A school is a place where one learns the importance of knowledge and
its limitations. It is a place where one learns to observe the world
not from any particular point of view or conclusion. One learns to look
at the whole of man's endeavor, his search for beauty, his search for
truth and for a way of living without conflict. "The intent of Oak
Grove School"
================================================================================================================
The self hides in many ways, under every stone, the self can hide in
compassion, going to India and looking after poor people, because the
self is attached to some idea, faith, conclusion, belief, which makes
me compassionate because <snip>
The self has many masks, the mask of meditation, the mask of achieving
the highest, the mask that I am enlightened, that "I know of what I
speak." All this concern about humanity is another mask. So one has to
have an extraordinary, subtle, quick brain to see where it is hiding.
It requires great attention, watching, watching, watching.
On Mind and Thought, p 133
================================================================================================================
The Word Free ...
is not something that thought can evolve, put together, or can be cultivated. You can cultivate a
garden, you can cultivate anything-but love is not something that thought can cultivate. So it is
very, very important to understand the nature of thought, thinking. If we really could understand
that fundamentally then we shall be able to resolve most of our problems. Because we have dozens
of problems-relationship, economic problems, social problems, problems of every kind-human
beings are burdened with them.
So it is important, isn't it, to understand not only verbally, or through explanations the whole
movement of thought, because we live by thought, every action is based on thought; in every area,
in every sector, in every field of our life both outwardly and inwardly, thought is operating. We have
given thought tremendous importance and, until we unravel the whole structure and nature of the
movement of thought, merely trying to be free, which is to cultivate freedom, becomes impossible.
We are concerned together as two friends: What is freedom, and what is it to be totally free? Can
there be this sense of wholeness in which there is freedom ? <Snip>
Thought is based on knowledge, experience, and memory, and knowledge is always limited now and
in the future. So thought is always limited; it can imagine the immeasurable, it can invent aIl the
gods on the earth, all the rituals, all that business, which is extraordinarily unreal. So thought can
never be free, or thought can never bring about a sense of being totally free. Right? l wonder if you
understand this. Because thought itself is limited, and therefore whatever it does will still be limited.
-I. Krishnamurti Ojai 4th public Talk 27th May 1984
================================================================================================================
All the Marvellous Earth
Do you think a leaf that falls to the ground is afraid of death? Do you
think a bird lives in fear of dying? It meets death when death comes;
but it is not concerned about death, it is much too occupied with
living, with catching insects, building a nest, singing a song, flying
for the very joy of flying. Have you ever watched birds soaring high up
in the air without a beat of their wings, being carried along by the
wind? How endlessly they seem to enjoy themselves! They are not
concerned about death. If death comes, it is all right, they are
finished. There is no concern about what is going to happen; they are
living from moment to moment, are they not? It is we human beings who
are always concerned about death - because we are not living. That is
the trouble: we are dying, we are not living.
J. Krishnamurti Think on These Things Chapter 17
================================================================================================================
"It is advisable to go directly to the source, the teachings themselves, and not through any authority" J. Krishnamurti
So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then
you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of
what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it. Jiddu
Krishnamurti
The teachings themselves are the expression of that truth which serious people must find for themselves.
"can there be joy that is not the outcome of environment or of people or else?"
================================================================================================================
Is renaissance possible without inward revolution, inward freedom? 1952 Madras T4
Regeneration and renaissance can only take place, not through a
particular gift or capacity, but only through inward understanding and
revolution. 1952 Madras T4
It is living skilfully that truly makes an artist. Urgency of change
Deep culture of the mind can come about through freedom from the known. Ojai 1982 T6
Surely, beauty is, where the self is not. When I am not, beauty is.
================================================================================================================
- Our problems - social, environmental, political, religious - are so
complex that we can solve them only by being simple, not by becoming
extraordinarily erudite and clever. Because, a simple person sees much
more directly, has a more direct experience, than the complex person.
And, our minds are so crowded with an infinite knowledge of facts of
what others have said that we have become incapable of being simple and
having direct experience ourselves. These problems demand a new
approach, and they can be so approached only when we are simple,
inwardly really simple. That simplicity comes only through
self-knowledge, through understanding ourselves: the ways of our
thinking and feeling, the movements of our thoughts, our responses, how
we conform through fear to public opinion, to what others say .... all of which indicates
our nature to conform, to be safe, to be secure. And, when one is
seeking security, one is obviously in a state of fear, and therefore
there is no simplicity. - Talks in Ojai, California, 1949
===============================================
From: Commentaries On Living Series II
THE DAILY PATTERN of life was repeating itself around the only water
tap in the
village; the water was running slowly, and a group of women were
awaiting their turn.
Three of them were noisily and bitterly quarrelling; they were
completely absorbed in
their anger and paid not the slightest attention to anyone else,nor was
anyone paying
attention to them. It must have been a ritual. Like all rituals, it was
stimulating, and
these women were enjoying the stimulation. An old woman helped a young
one to lift
a big, brightly polished brass pot onto her head. She had a little pad
of cloth to bear
the weight of the pot, which she held lightly with one hand. Her walk
was superb, and she had great
dignity. A little girl came quietly, slipped her pot under the tap, and
carried it away without saying a word.
Other women came and went, but the quarrel went on, and it seemed as
though it would never end.
Suddenly the three stopped filled their vessels with water, and went
away as though nothing had
happened. By now the sun was getting strong, and smoke was rising above
the thatched roofs of the
village. The day's first meal was being cooked. How suddenly peaceful
it was! Except for the crows,
almost everything was quiet. Once the vociferous quarrel was over, one
could hear the roar of the sea
beyond the houses, the gardens and the palm groves.
We carry on like machines with our tiresome daily routine. How eagerly
the mind accepts a pattern of
existence, and how tenaciously it clings to it! As by a driven nail,
the mind is held together by idea, and
around the idea it lives and has its being. The mind is never free,
pliable, for it is always anchored; it
moves within the radius, narrow or wide, of its own centre. From its
centre it dare not wander; and when
it does, it is lost in fear. Fear is not of the unknown, but of the
loss of the known. The unknown does not
incite fear, but dependence on the known does. Fear is always with
desire, the desire for the more or for
the less. The mind, with its incessant weaving of patterns, is the
maker of time...
---------------------------------------------------
...not to posssess anything is an
extraordinary state, not even to
possess an idea, let alone a
person or thing.
J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti's Notebook
--------------------------------------
There is no self to understand; only thought that creates the self.
We Have Made Sex a Problem
Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem? ...Why has sex
become a problem? Why do we submit to living with problems; why do we
not put an end to them? Why do we not die to our problems instead of
carrying them day after day, year after year? Surely, sex is a relevant
question, which I shall answer presently, but there is the primary
question: why do we make life into a problem? Working, sex, earning
money, thinking, feeling, experiencing, you know, the whole business of
living—why is it a problem? Is it not essentially because we
always think from a particular point of view, from a fixed point of
view? We are always thinking from a center towards the periphery, but
the periphery is the center for most of us, and so anything we touch is
superficial. But life is not superficial; it demands living completely,
and because we are living only superficially, we know only superficial
reaction. Whatever we do on the periphery must inevitably create a
problem, and that is our life—we live in the superficial and we
are content to live there with all the problems of the superficial. So,
problems exist as long as we live in the superficial, on the
periphery—the periphery being the "me" and its sensations, which
can be externalized or made subjective, which can be identified with
the universe, with the country, or with some other thing made up by the
mind. So, as long as we live within the field of the mind there must be
complications, there must be problems; and that is all we know.
-------------
1 Jan 70 chapter 24 of the second book I read as a youngster: The Urgency of Change
En
passant it is interesting to note that the so-called individual doesn't
exist at all, for his mind draws on the common reservoir of
conditioning which he shares with everybody else, so the division
between the community and the individual is false: there is only
conditioning. This conditioning is action in all relationships -
to things, people and ideas.
Here are a couple of quotes on reservoir of goodness:
K:
I know what you are saying. That means - let's put it round the other
way: wars have created a great deal of misery. Right? And that misery
remains in the air. It must. Goodness has been also part of man - try
to be good. There is also that enormous reservoir of both. No?
28 jun 79
1 aug 65
But
behind his urge to find some comfort, there is this vast reservoir of
man's ignorance of himself, of the cause of his despairs and of his
everlasting demand to find something permanent.
-----------
Education and the Significance of Life
There is no essential difference between the old and the young, for
both are slaves to
their own desires and gratifications. Maturity is not a matter of age,
it comes with
understanding. The ardent spirit of inquiry is perhaps easier forthe
young, because
those who are older have been battered about by life, conflicts have
worn them out
and death in different forms awaits them. This does not mean that they
are incapable
of purposive inquiry, but only that it is more difficult for them.
Many adults are immature and rather childish, and this is a
contributing cause of the confusion and
misery in the world. It is the older people who are responsible for the
prevailing economic and moral
crisis; and one of our unfortunate weaknesses is that we want someone
else to act for us and change
the course of our lives. We wait for others to revolt and build anew,
and we remain inactive until we are
assured of the outcome.
It is security and success that most of us are after; and a mind that
is seeking security, that craves
success, is not intelligent, and is therefore incapable of integrated
action. There can be integrated action
only if one is aware of one's own conditioning, of one's racial,
national, political and religious prejudices;
that is, only if one realizes that the ways of the self are ever
separative.
Life is a well of deep waters. One can come to it with small buckets
and draw only a little water, or one
can come with large vessels, drawing plentiful waters that will nourish
and sustain. While one is young is
the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school
should help its young people to
discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram
their minds with facts and technical
knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear,
happily and integrally.
================================================================================================================
Are you anything in yourself?
Questioner: If I have no image of myself, then I am nothing.
Krishnamurti: But are you anything anyhow? [Laughter] Please
don’t laugh, this is much too serious. Are you anything in
yourself? Strip yourself of your name, title, money, position, your
little capacity to write a book and be flattered—and what are
you? So why not realize and be that? You see, we have an image of what
it is to be nothing, and we don’t like that image; but the actual
fact of being nothing, when you have no image, may be entirely
different. And it is entirely different. It is not a state that can be
realized in terms of being nothing or of being something. It is
entirely different when there is no image of yourself. And to have no
image of yourself demands tremendous attention, tremendous seriousness.
t is only the attentive, the serious, that live, not the people who
have images of themselves.
The Collected Works, Vol. XV - 196
================================================================================================================
"To know, to be aware of the limitation of thinking is the beginning of intelligence."
(First Question & Answer Meeting at Brockwood Park: September, 1980)
=============
« When man becomes aware of the movement of his
own thoughts he will see the division between the
thinker and the thought. the observer and the ;
observed. the experiencerand the experience. He will !
discover that this division is an illusion. Then only I
is there pure observation which is insight without
any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless
insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the
mind» KRISHNAMURTI
" ...In our relationship with children and young
people, we are not dealing with mechanical
devices that can be quickly repaired, but with
living beings who are impressionable, volatile,
sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with
them we have to have great understanding,
the strength of patience and love... "
To travel far you must start anear.
When you become aware of everything, you become sensitive and to be
sensitive is to have an awareness of beauty, to have the sense of
beauty. And without the sense of inward beauty you may do the most
marvelous things, but it won't contain the flame. (Beginnings of
Learning)
It is the function of the teacher to help you to find out what you are,
and he cannot help you do that if he is comparing you with someone
else. Comparison destroys you, so don't compare yourself with another.
You are as good as anybody. Understand what you are, and from there
begin to find out how to be more fully, more expansively what you are.
(On Education)
To live the four seasons in a moment is to be blessed with the ecstacy of renewal (Madras 1947)
When there is complete attention there is no observer. (1966)
Fear is one of the greatest problems in the world, probably the
greatest problem. So you have to face this thing, you have to
completely understand it and be out of it. (Beginnings of Learning)
Peace is a state of mind when there is love.
================================================================================================================
A mind that lives in the known is always in prison.
…If you have died to one of
your pleasures, the smallest or the greatest, naturally, without any enforcement
or argument, then you will know what it means to die. To die is to have a mind
that is completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longing, pleasure; and
agonies. …
================================================================================================================
[1948 MADRAS]: When the cup is empty, something new can be put into it;
but, if there is already some tea in a cup you can only fill it up with
tea and not with anything new. Therefore, the mind has to be cleansed
of the past to view a new problem anew.
================================================================================================================
It was strange how the mind was totally with that bird. It was not
observing it though it had taken in every detail. It was not the bird
itself, for there was no identification with it. It was with the bird,
with its eyes and its sharp beak, as the sea is with the fish; it was
with the bird, and yet it went through and beyond it.
========================================================
The whole structure of how you think
Thought is crooked because it can invent anything and see things that
are not there. It can perform the most extraordinary tricks, and
therefore it cannot be depended upon. But if you understand the whole
structure of how you think, why you think, the words you use, the way
you behave in your daily life, the way you talk to people, the way you
treat people, the way you walk, the way you eat – if you are
aware of all these things then your mind will not deceive you, then
there is nothing to be deceived. The mind then is not something that
demands, that subjugates; it becomes extraordinarily quiet, pliable,
sensitive, alone, and in that state there is no deception whatsoever.
Freedom from the Known - 102
========================================================
If you are seeking the highest, you will not find it; it must come to
you, if you are lucky – and lick is the open window of the heart,
not of thought. [from TOR]
…The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and
love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.
Freedom from the Known – 77
The demand to be safe in relationship
The demand to be safe in relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and
fear. This seeking for security is inviting insecurity. Have you ever
found security in any of your relationships? Have you? Most of us want
the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one
of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path? We are not
loved because we don’t know how to love.
Freedom from the Known - 78
================================================================================================================
The love of something for itself is freedom. There is freedom when you
paint because you love to paint, not because it gives you fame or gives
you a position. In the school, when you love to paint that very love is
freedom, and that means an astonishing understanding of all the ways of
the mind. Also, it is very simple to do something for itself and not
for what it brings you either as a punishment or as a reward. Just to
love the thing for itself is the beginning of freedom.
One can never understand the depth of oneself when one is dependent on something; one cannot be a light to oneself.
When the mind is free from all its projections, there is a state of
quietness in which problems cease, and then only the timeless, the
eternal comes into being.
Consciousness is its content.
Don't ask how one person's change can affect the world. Change and find out what happens (paraphrase).
Do not follow me. (I think this is perhaps Krishnamurti's most powerful
statement. I always understood this to mean, as he said, be a light to
yourself, etc., but also, that perhaps he had to go to extremes to
drive home certain points - so it is up to each person to find truth
for themselves, first hand, not according to K or X or Y or Z!)
Perhaps you may come upon that mystery which nobody can reveal to you and nothing can destroy.
The flowering of love is meditation.
To live without conflict is the most marvelous thing on earth.
When you look at the stars what do you feel? Do you feel small in this
vast universe or do you feel that it is part of you, the whole thing,
the stars, the moon, the trees and the river.
Wisdom lies in understanding 'what is'.
...to have first class brains, think clearly, etc.. Good to work with
the earth: an opportunity to care for something and get in touch with
the earth. Must have skill in action: yoga also means skill in
action...when you play the guitar, play it properly, not just strum. Do
everything skilfully, and one of the ways to learn about it is to do
things in the garden, play games and so on.
Colour was god, it was music, the love of the earth. J. Krishnamurti (describing nature)
What is sacred?.... That can only be understood, or happen, when there is complete freedom--from
fear, from sorrow--and when there is this sense of love, and compassion with its own intelligence.
Then, when the mind is utterly still, that which is sacred can take place - J.Krishnamurti
The key to freedom lies within ourselves but we refuse to use it. We
are always asking someone else to open the door and let the light in.
Greatness is anonymity…the great things of life must be anonymous.
If you stand alone you are related, if you are dependent, you are not related.
Sex is like a tender flower, an intense flame, delicate and rare. It
has to be nurtured and cherished. You have to be specially watchful
when it is not operating as nature intended. To let sex function freely
is to dissipate energy. To suppress it brutally is to destroy something
delicate and intensely beautiful. So watch it with warmth, nurture it,
let it discover itself and unfold - neither denying it nor succumbing
to it.
Don't travel unless it's absolutely necessary (paraphrasing).
================================================================================================================
BROCKWOOD 79
"Because one person cant do it himself he condemns the rest of the world - if I can't do it you can't do it..." K.
"Why do I posess? Is it because I am lonely? Desperately deeply lonely, separate?"
"The 'how' means 'time'".
"Don't say, ever, I've listened for so long and I haven't got it - you
can listen to that river endlessly but the waters is not what you
listen to".
"When you're really deeply basically not attached then from that deep
sense of no attachment comes a sense of responsibility.... To be free
from your own experience, from your own knowledge, from your own
accumulated perception - it is possible if you go at it - and it
doesn't take time: that's one of our excuses: that we must have time to
be free. When you see one of the major factors of the self is
attachment and you see what it does in the world and what it does in
your relationship with another: separation, all the rest, ultimately
quarells, divorce, all the ugliness of relationship, if you see the
truth of attachment then that very truth is so, it is actual. Then
you're free from it. Your own perception sets you free.
"When you are observing a fact completely with all your energy, the
fact changes - if you do it you will see it - because you have brought
your energy into the observation ... that energy is like light [that
makes the fact dissipate]"
"It is to meet another with the same intensity, at the same level, at the same time. That is love."
Please don't make this place into a resort - something you come to for
10 days and make a - you know, all the rest of it. Please don't do it.
There are other places where you can have much better time.
================================================================================================================
Thought has constructed this culture of aggression, competition and
war, and yet thought is groping after order and peace. But thought will
never find order and peace, do what it will. Thought must be silent for
love to be.
================================================================================================================
K speaking in a meeting in Gstaad on 30 July 1974:
Can you create a genius, which is the same thing - genius not in the stupid tradition, writing a
marvellous poem but drinking himself to death, I don't call that creativeness. I am not talking of
those people who are called "creative", and considered geniuses. I don't consider them to have
genius at all. They just have a certain gift and run that talent to death, while the rest is rotten.
Sorry!
================================================================================================================
Like most people, you have ideals, have you not? And the ideal is not
real, not factual; it is what should be, it is something in the future.
Now, what I say is this: forget the ideal, and be aware of what you
are. Do not pursue what should be, but understand what is. The
understanding of what you actually are is far more important than the
pursuit of what you should be. Why? Because, in understanding what you
are, there begins a spontaneous process of transformation; whereas, in
becoming what you think you should be, there is no change at all, but
only a continuation of the same old thing in a different form.
================================================================================================================
religion:
"the gathering of all energy to investigate...if there is anything sacred"
=============
Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. ...When you
love, you are very near Truth. For, love makes for sensitivity, for
vulnerability. That which is sensitive is capable of renewal. Then Truth will
come into being. It cannot come if your mind and heart are burdened, heavy
with ignorance and animosity. (J.Krishnamurti)
================================================================================================================
Question: a well-known author has written a great deal about the
use of certain drugs which enable man to arrive at some
visionary experience of union with the divine ground. Are those
experiences helpful in finding that state of which you speak?
Krishnamurti: you can learn tricks or take drugs or get drunk,
and you will have intense experiences of one kind or another,
depressing or exciting. Obviously the physiological condition
does affect the psychological state of the mind, but drugs and
practices of various kinds do not in any way bring about that
state of which we are talking. All such things lead only to a
variety, intensity, and diversity of experience -- which we all
want and hunger after because we are fed up with this world.
We have had two world wars, with appalling misery and
everlasting strife on every side, and our own minds are so petty,
personal, limited. We want to escape from all this, either through
psychology, philosophy, so-called religion, or through some
exercise or drug -- they are all on the same level. The mind is
seeking a sensation; you want to experience which you call
reality, or God, something immense, great, vital. You want to
have visions, and if you take some kind of drug or are sufficiently
conditioned in a certain religion, you will have visions. The man
who has everlastingly thinking about Christ or Buddha or what
not will sooner or later have experiences, visions; but that is not
truth, it has nothing what ever to do with reality. Those are all
self projections; they are the result of your demand for
experience. Your own conditioning is projecting what you want
to see. To find out what is real, the mind must cease to demand
any experience. So long as you are craving experience, you will
have it, but it will not be real -- real in a sense of the timeless,
immeasurable; it will not have the perfume of reality......
================================================================================================================
Collected Works, Volume 5
Is there anything sacred in life? Not invented by thought, because man,
from time
immeasurable, he has always asked this question: Is there something
beyond all this
confusion, misery, darkness, illusions; beyond the institutions and
reforms; is there
something really true, something beyond time, something so immense that
thought
cannot come to it? Man has enquired into this. And only apparently
very, very, very,
very few people have been free to enter into that world....
-----------
20th
The sea, far below, nearly forty thousand feet below, seemed to be
without a wave, so calm, so vast, so empty of any movement; the
desert, the burning red hills, treeless, beautiful and pitiless; more
sea and the distant lights of the town where all the passengers were
getting down; the clamour, the mountain of bags, inspection and the
long drive through ill-lit streets and the pavement crowded with ever
increasing population; the many penetrating odours, the shrill voices,
the decorated temples, cars festooned with flowers, for it was a day of
festival, the rich houses, the dark slums and down a steep incline, the
car stopped and the door was opened.There is a tree full of green
bright leaves, very quiet in its purity and dignity, surrounded by
houses that are ill proportioned with people that have never
looked at it or one single leaf of it. But they make money, go to
offices, drink, beget children and eat enormously. There was a moon
over it last night and all the splendid darkness was alive. And waking
towards dawn, meditation was the splendour of light for the otherness
was there, in an unfamiliar room. Again it was an imminent and urgent
peace, not the peace of politicians or of the priests nor of the
contented; it was too vast to be contained in space and time, to be
formulated by thought or feeling. It was the weight of the earth and
the things upon it; it was the heavens and beyond it. Man has to cease
for it to be.Time is always repeating its challenge and its problems;
the responses and answers are concerned with the immediate. We are
taken up with the immediate challenge and with the immediate reply
to it. This immediate answer to the immediate call is worldliness, with
all its indissoluble problems and agonies; the intellectual answers
with action born of ideas which have their roots in time, in the
immediate, and the thoughtless, amazed, follow him…[snip]
And every argument and gesture is the continuity of despair, sorrow and
confusion. There is no end to it. To turn your back on it all, calling
this activity by different names, is not to end it. It is there whether
you deny it or not; whether you have critically analysed it or whether
you say the whole thing is an illusion, maya. It is there and you are
always measuring it.It is these immediate answers to a series of
immediate calls that has to come to an end. Then you will answer from
the emptiness of no time to the immediate demand of time or you may not
answer at all which may be the true response. All reply of thought and
emotion will only prolong the despair and the agony of problems that
have no answers; the final answer is beyond the immediate.In the
immediate is all your hope, vanity and ambition, whether that immediacy
is projected into the future of many tomorrows or in the now. This is
the way of sorrow. The ending of sorrow is never in the immediate
response to the many challenges. The ending lies in seeing this fact.
"From Krishnamurti's notebook"
==================
What is meditation? Why should one meditate? To find that out, stop
meditating. To find out what is real meditation, not yours or mine,
your type
and my type, or X's type, but what is meditation, to find out you can't
hold on
to some kind of meditation that you have and then enquire. That is like
a
donkey tied to a post. So you have to be free to enquire. First one can
see
very clearly that it is only a very, very quiet mind that can observe
accurately.
A quiet mind can observe accurately only, not a disturbed mind. So a
quiet
mind is absolutely necessary just to observe. But if you say, `Ah, how
am I to have such a quiet mind?'
Then you are asking for a system, for a method, you are going to
somebody whom you think has a quiet
mind, and then asking him, `Please tell me what to do.' And then you
are caught in that trap because he
will tell you and you will practise - if you are silly enough. But you
see the importance of having an
absolutely quiet mind. A mind that has no problem.
========
From: Education and the Significance of Life
Surely, to discover truth, there must be freedom from strife, both
within ourselves and
with our neighbours. When we are not in conflict within ourselves, we
are not in
conflict outwardly. It is the inward strife which, projected outwardly,
becomes the
world conflict.
War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We
precipitate
war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves,
there are bound to
be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarrelling over
ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers,
the saluting of flags, and all the many brutalities that go to create
organized murder.
Education throughout the world has failed, it has produced mounting
destruction and misery.
Governments are training the young to be the efficient soldiers and
technicians they need; regimentation
and prejudice are being culivated and enforced. Taking these facts into
consideration, we have to inquire
into the meaning of existence and the significance and purpose of our
lives. We have to discover the
beneficent ways of creating a new environment; for environment can make
the child a brute, an unfeeling
specialist, or help him to become a sensitive, intelligent human being.
We have to create a world
government which is radically different, which is not based on
nationalism, on ideologies, on force.
All this implies the understanding of our responsibility to one another
in relationship; but to understand
our responsibility, there must be love in our hearts, not mere learning
or knowledge. The greater our love,
the deeper will be its influence on society. But we are all brains and
no heart; we cultivate the intellect
and despise humility. If we really loved our children, we would want to
save and protect them, we would
not let them be sacrificed in wars.
I think we really want arms; we like the show of military power, the
uniforms, the rituals, the drinks, the
noise, the violence. Our everyday life is a reflection in miniature of
this same brutal superficiality, and we
are destroying one another through envy and thoughtlessness.
We want to be rich; and the richer we get, the more ruthless we become,
even though we may contribute
large sums to charity and education. Having robbed the victim, we
return to him a little of the spoils, and
this we call philanthropy. I do not think we realize what catastrophes
we are preparing.
================================================================================================================
From Collected Works:
Death comes to all of us, the young, the old,the middle-aged, it is
inevitable, either through accident or through old age, with the
disease, the discomfort, pain, agony, and the doctors giving you
medicine to keep you alive endlessly - I don't know for what purpose.
There is death, death being, the brain with all its memories stored up,
experience, knowledge, that brain which has sought shelter, security in
the 'me', which is a series of symbols, ideas, words, or that brain
which has sought security in some neurotic action and feels safe in
that neurotic action, or sought security in a belief, I am a Christian,
I believe in God or I believe in the Saviour, or the Communist and so
on, finding security in a belief, in an ideology which brings about all
kinds of neurotic activity, that brain with all its consciousness dies,
comes to an end. And man has been frightened of that. And the
Christians have taken comfort in the idea of resurrection, and the
Hindus and the Buddhists in a future life. Future life of what? The
resurrected, the future, what is that? This consciousness with all its
content, which has died, and there is the hope, the desire, comfort in
a future life. Still within the field of consciousness - are you
following all this?
While I am living - I don't know why I put so much passion into all
this, it is my life - while I am living I know I am going to die, I
have rationalized it, I have looked at it, I have seen dead bodies
being carried away, I have seen them buried, burnt, incinerated or
cremated and the image has built round them. I have seen all that going
on around me. And I am frightened, and being frightened I must seek
comfort, security, some kind of hope and that is still within the field
of my consciousness, in the living consciousness. And when the brain
through disease, accident, old age, comes to an end, what takes place?
You are following all this? I am fully aware, the mind is fully aware
the content is its consciousness, there is no consciousness when there
is no content. And when the mind dies, the brain dies, the content
dies, obviously. The 'me', which has been put together by thought, the
'me' which is the image which thought has built through environment,
through fear, through pleasure, through accident, through various forms
of stimulations and demands, that 'me' is the content and that content
is my consciousness, and that consciousness, the whole movement of
memory, knowledge, experience comes to an end, when it dies. I may
rationalize it, take comfort in rationalization, or take comfort in
some ideologies, belief, in some dogma, in some superstition, but that
is not real, that is nothing to do with reality, whether all the
religions proclaim there is, or there isn't, that has nothing whatever
to do with reality because that is mere sayso of another, hearsay of
somebody else saying. The mind has to find out for itself.
So can the mind living every day in an everyday relationship, live
without the content, which has made up the consciousness, which is
essentially the 'me' and its activity. You are following all this? So
what takes place when the mind, the brain, the organism actually, not
theoretically, actually comes to an end? This has been a problem for
man, he has accumulated so much, he has acquired so much knowledge, so
much information about so many things and at the end of it all there is
that thing called death. And as he cannot solve it, at least he hasn't
been able to solve it, he has all the comforting images, speculations,
beliefs: I will live, or I will not live. And if you do live all the
things, the consciousness carries on with its own content which becomes
the stream in which man is caught - that is a different matter, which
we won't go into because that involves another enquiry.
So what takes place when living now, today, this morning, when the
brain actually ceases, ends its memories, its images, its conclusions?
- which is the content of consciousness - you follow? Can my brain, my
consciousness, which is the 'me', can that, with all its content, come
to an end, living, not at the end of another ten years through disease,
living now? Can that mind, can that consciousness empty its content,
therefore empty the 'me' - do you understand all this? Is that ever
possible? I get up and go to my room, after I have talked here; the
knowledge where that room is must exist otherwise it is not possible to
live at all - right? So knowledge, which is based on experience and
memory, from which all thought arises and therefore thought is never
free and never new, that knowledge must exist, which is part of
consciousness, isn't it? Are you meeting all this - right sir? Somebody
come with me. Riding a bicycle, driving a car, speaking a different
language, that knowledge must exist, that is also part of
consciousness. But that knowledge is used by the 'me' as a separative
movement, uses that knowledge for its own psychological comfort and
power, position, prestige and all the rest of it. Right? So I am asking
myself, whether that consciousness, with all its content as the
psychological movement as the 'me' can end now, so that the mind is
aware of what death means, and to see what happens.
J. Krishnamurti Brockwood Park 3rd Public Talk 8th September 1973
================================================================================================================
Collected Works
Q: Why is it so difficult to empty one's mind?
Krishnamurti : Now just listen to that question. Why is it so difficult
to empty the mind? Listen to this. The speaker stated: meditation is
the emptying of the mind of the activity of the self. You heard it. You
have drawn a conclusion from it, saying, "How am I to do it?" - and in
the very doing of it, it has become very difficult. So you ask the
question, "Why is it so difficult to empty the mind?" That is, you
haven't listened to the statement at all. You have drawn a conclusion
from that statement saying, "I'd like to do that, but by Jove, how
difficult it is" - you have understood? If you listen to it and not
draw an abstraction from it, that is, "I must empty the mind", then
"How am I to do it and how difficult it is", then you have an immense
problem, you can't empty the mind, do what you will you can't empty it,
because the desire to empty it is part of the activity of the self.
But if you listen to it, listen to the statement, knowing you can't do
a thing about it, just listen to it - look sirs, I listen to that
aeroplane, listen to it. Listen to it without any resistance; listen to
it saying, "I am trying to understand what he is talking about, how can
I listen to that aeroplane, I want to listen to him" - you follow?
Whereas if you just listen to that aeroplane without any resistance,
then what takes place? You are just listening. There is no difficulty.
But whereas if you listen to the statement that meditation is that,
then you go into all kinds of tantrums, see all the difficulties, say,
how can you do this living in this beastly world and so on and so on.
Whereas if you listened totally and completely then that very act of
listening has produced in the mind a movement which is not the activity
of the self. And that movement operates in daily life without any
difficulty.
J. Krishnamurti Saanen 7th Public Talk 29th July 1973
=======================================
From "Total Freedom"
It is only when the mind, which has taken shelter behind the walls of
self-protection, frees itself from its own creations that there can be
that exquisite reality. After all, these walls of self-protection are
the creations of the mind which, conscious of its insufficiency, builds
these walls of protection, and behind them takes shelter. One has built
up these barriers unconsciously or consciously, and one's mind is so
crippled, bound, held, that action brings greater conflict, further
disturbances.
So the mere search for the solution of your problems is not going to
free the mind from creating further problems. As long as this centre of
self-protectiveness, born of insufficiency, exists, there must be
disturbances, tremendous sorrow and pain; and you cannot free the mind
of sorrow by disciplining it not to be insufficient. That is, you
cannot discipline yourself, or be influenced by conditions and
environment, in order not to be shallow. You say to yourself, "I am
shallow; I recognize the fact, and how am I going to get rid of it?" I
say, do not seek to get rid of it, which is merely a process of
substitution, but become conscious, become aware of what is causing
this insufficiency. You cannot compel it; you cannot force it; it
cannot be influenced by an ideal, by a fear, by the pursuit of
enjoyment and powers. You can find out the cause of insufficiency only
through awareness. That is, by looking into environment and piercing
into its significance there will be revealed the cunning subtleties of
self-protection.
J. Krishnamurti Ojai 12th Public Talk 1st July, 1934
================================================================================================================
You will be able to see for yourself how you are conditioned only when
there is a conflict in the continuity of pleasure or the avoidance of
pain. If everything is perfectly happy around you, your wife loves you,
you love her, you have a nice house, nice children and plenty of money,
then you are not aware of your conditioning at all. But when there is a
disturbance - when your wife looks at someone else or you lose your
money or are threatened with war or any other pain or anxiety - then
you know you are conditioned. When you struggle against any kind of
disturbance or defend yourself against any outer or inner threat, then
you know you are conditioned. And as most of us are disturbed most of
the time, either superficially or deeply, that very disturbance
indicates that we are conditioned. So long as the animal is petted he
reacts nicely, but the moment he is antagonized the whole violence of
his nature comes out.
J. Krishnamurti Freedom from the Known Chapter 2
================================================================================================================
Sex is like a tender flower, an intense flame, delicate and rare. It
has to be nurtured and cherished. You have to be specially watchful
when it is not operating as nature intended. To let sex function freely
is to dissipate energy. To suppress it brutally is to destroy something
delicate and intensely beautiful. So watch it with warmth, nurture it,
let it discover itself and unfold - neither denying it nor succumbing
to it.
================================================================================================================
FROM: Saanen 21 Jul 1983 - 6th talk.
To observe anything beyond thought, thought must come to an end.
So one can not belong to any guru, to any system, to any method right?
Because they are all the product of thought. I wonder - right? You
agree. No. You are too committed and therefore you will never
understand that thing which is really a tremendous activity of a
reliogious brain.
The word meditation means to poner over, to think over, to be concerned
with. And also it means, the root meaning to measure, both in sanskrit,
Latin, Greek and so on, and in English, to measure. Not only to ponder
over, think over, to be concerned, to be dedicated - not to something,
but the spirit of dedication - you understand? …. Measure
is time…
================================================================================================================
where there is love there is revolution b/c love is xformation from moment to moment. K
freedom is now, not in the future. so freedom, order, goodness is now;
which expresses itself in behavior otherwise it has no meaning at
all... behavior in relationship - behavior with everybody
flowering in goodness is the very essence of culture. K
================================================================================================================
Don't spend your time trying to understand K - understand yourself [paraphrased via E. Blau]
================================================================================================================
What does it mean to live together intelligently? Obviously, the fIrst
thing is that there should be freedom between you and me and the
others. Freedom doesn't mean doing what you want to do, because if each
one of us did what he wanted there would be chaos here. Or a few of you
would form a group thinking this is what we want to do in freedom, as
opposed to another group. That is not freedom either.
..if we all did what we liked without considering the others, we
couldn't live together. So intelligence implies freedom to find out how
to live together. You don't impose on me and I don't impose on you. Do
see the responsibilities. And freedom implies that together we
understand what the implications of authority are.
From Beginnings of Learning J Krishnamurti page 46
================================================================================================================
I questioned him about the meaning of awareness, and he said: " If you
look into your minds, you will see it's like thousands of butterflies
whirling about! You can hardly trace a single idea in this complexity.
A way to bring clarity to the mind is to write down your immediate
thoughts and feelings in response to the events of the day, and then
ponder them. If you emphasize one particular problem in this writing,
it will gradually lead to all others." Krishnamurti felt that a large
part of our confusion is from repetitive thoughts, and they are
repetitive because not completed. By thinking these through to the end
they would no longer clamor in us, and the mind would be freer and mroe
spacious, more "aware." Krishnamurti worked enormously hard for many
years to clarify his own mind, and this work was part of the background
that enable him to be a teacher.
published in: Krishnamurti, 100 years, Evelyne Blau, A Joost Elffers Book, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 1995, p. 116
================================================================================================================
These quotes were extracted from:
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/K/index.html
The Demands of Society
SAANEN, SWITZERLAND, JULY 1984
Questioner: How can one reconcile the demands of society with a
life of total freedom?
KRISHNAMURTI: What are the demands of society? Tell me, please.
That you go to the office from nine to five, or the factory, that
you go to a nightclub for excitement after all the boredom of the
day's work, take a fortnight or three weeks' holiday in sunny
Spain or Italy? What are the demands of society? That you must
earn a livelihood, that you must live in that particular part of
the country all your life, practise as a lawyer, or a doctor, or
in the factory as a union leader, and so on. Right? Therefore one
must also ask the question: what is this society that demands so
much, and who created the wretched thing? Who is responsible for
this? The church, the temple, the mosque, and all the circus that
goes on inside them? Who is responsible for all this? Is the
society different from us, or have we created the society, each
one of us, through our ambition, through our greed, our envy, our
violence, through our corruption, through our fear, wanting our
security in the community, in the nation -- you follow? We have
created this society and then blame the society for what it
demands. Therefore you ask: can I live in absolute freedom, or
rather, can I reconcile with society and myself seek freedom? It
is such an absurd question. Sorry, I am not being rude to the
questioner. It is absurd because you are society. Do we really see
that, not as an idea, not as a concept, or something you must
accept? But we, each one of us on this earth for the last 40,000
years or more, have created the society in which we live: the
stupidity of <snip>, the stupidity of the nations arming
themselves. For God's sake, we have created it because we insist
on being American or French or Russian. We insist on calling
ourselves Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and this
gives us a sense of security. But it is these very divisions that
obstruct the search for security. It is so clear.
So there is no reconciliation between society and its demands and
your demands for freedom. The demands come from your own violence,
from your own ugly, limited selfishness. It is one of the most
complex things to find out for oneself where selfishness is, where
the ego very, very subtly hides itself. It can hide politically
`doing good for the country'. It can hide in the religious world
most beautifully: `I believe in God, I serve God', or in social
help -- not that I am against social help, don't jump to that
conclusion -- but it can hide there. It requires a very attentive,
not analytical, but an observing brain to see where the subtleties
of the self, of selfishness, are hidden. Then when there is no
self, society doesn't exist; you don't have to reconcile with it.
It is only the inattentive, the unaware who say, `How am I to
respond to society when I am working for freedom?' You understand?
If I may point out, we need to be re-educated, not through school,
college, university -- which also condition the brain -- nor
through work in the office or the factory. We need to re-educate
ourselves by being aware, seeing how we are caught in words. Can
we do this? If we cannot do it we are going to have perpetual
wars, perpetual weeping, always in conflict, misery and all that
is entailed. The speaker is not pessimistic or optimistic; these
are the facts. When you live with facts as they are, not with data
produced by the computer, but observing them, watching your own
activity, your own egotistic pursuits, then out of that grows
marvellous freedom with all its great beauty and strength.
-- From BULLETIN of the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, England,
No. 48, 1985
================================================================================================================
January 28th 2006
[archive]
"Without knowing yourself, do what you will, there cannot possibly be
the state of meditation. I mean by "self-knowing," knowing every
thought, every mood, every word, every feeling; knowing the activity of
your mind—not knowing the supreme self, the big self; there is no
such thing; the higher self, the Atman, is still within the field of
thought. Thought is the result of your conditioning, thought is the
response of your memory—ancestral or immediate. And merely to try
to meditate without first establishing deeply, irrevocably, that virtue
which comes about through self-knowing, is utterly deceptive and
absolutely useless.
Please, it is very important for those who are serious to understand
this. Because if you cannot do that, your meditation and actual living
are divorced, are apart—so wide apart that though you may
meditate, taking postures indefinitely, for the rest of your life, you
will not see beyond your nose; any posture you take, anything that you
do, will have no meaning whatsoever.
…It is important to understand what this self-knowing is, just
to be aware, without any choice, of the "me" which has its source in a
bundle of memories—just to be conscious of it without
interpretation, merely to observe the movement of the mind. But that
observation is prevented when you are merely accumulating through
observation—what to do, what not to do, what to achieve, what to
achieve; if you do that, you put an end to the living process of the
movement of the mind as the self. That is, I have to observe and see
the fact, the actual, the what is. If I approach it with an idea, with
an opinion—such as "I must not," or "I must," which are the
responses of memory—then the movement of what is is hindered, is
blocked; and therefore, there is no learning."
"Self-Knowing" - The Book of Life (January 28)
================================================================================================================
The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality
promised by another . . . It is a most extraordinary thing that
although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship,
we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our
minds and our way of life.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p. 10
In recent years
logicians and semanticists have carried out a very thorough analysis of
the symbols, in terms of which men do their thinking. Linguistics has
become a science, and one may even study a subject to which the late
Benjamin Whorf gave the name of meta-linguistics. All this is greatly
to the good; but it is not enough. Logic and semantics, linguistics and
meta-linguistics--these are purely intellectual disciplines. They
analyse the various ways, correct and incorrect, meaningful and
meaningless, in which words can be related to things, processes and
events. But they offer no guidance, in regard to the much more
fundamental problem of the relationship of man in his psychophysical
totality, on the one hand, and his two worlds, of data and of symbols,
on the other.
In every region
and at every period of history, the problem has been repeatedly solved
by individual men and women. Even when they spoke or wrote, these
individuals created no systems--for they knew that every system is a
standing temptation to take symbols too seriously, to pay more
attention to words than to the realities for which the words are
supposed to stand. Their aim was never to offer ready-made explanations
and panaceas; it was to induce people to diagnose and cure their own
ills, to get them to go to the place where man's problem and its
solution present themselves directly to experience.
-- Aldous Huxley from the Introduction to
The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti
. . . it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in
your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your
husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your
politicians, your gods--you have nothing but images.
The images
create the space between you and what you observe and in that space
there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is
whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only
outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in
all their relationships.
Now the very
attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem.
When you give your complete attention--I mean with everything in
you--there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention
which is total energy, and that total energy is the highest form of
intelligence. Naturally that state of mind must be completely silent
and that silence, that stillness, comes when there is total attention,
not disciplined stillness. That total silence in which there is neither
the observer nor the thing observed is the highest form of a religious
mind. But what takes place in that state cannot be put into words
because what is said in words is not the fact. To find out for yourself
you have to go through it.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp. 92-93
Understanding of the self only arises in relationship, in watching
yourself in relationship to people, ideas, and things; to trees, the
earth, and the world around you and within you. Relationship is the
mirror in which the self is revealed. Without self-knowledge there is
no basis for right thought and action.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, A Biography
by Pupul Jayakar, p. 142
Is the problem not one of refusing to accept a leader? This alone
brings equality in social and economic relationships. When thrown on
his own responsibility, man will inevitably question. And in
questioning there is no higher, no lower. Any system based on
acceptance of capacity differences to establish status must inevitably
lead to a hierarchical society, and so breed class war. . . . What is
it that gives dignity to man? Self-knowledge--the knowledge of what you
are? The follower is the greatest curse.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, A Biography
by Pupul Jayakar, pp. 146-7
It is tradition, the accumulation of experience, the ashes of memory,
that make the mind old. The mind that dies every day to the memories of
yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the past--such a mind is
fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence, whether you
are ten or sixty, you will not find God.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Think on These Things
We think that living is always in the present and that dying is
something that awaits us at a distant time. But we have never
questioned whether this battle of everyday life is living at all. We
want to know the truth about reincarnation, we want proof of the
survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyants and to
the conclusions of psychical research, but we never ask, never, how to
live--to live with delight, with enchantment, with beauty every day. We
have accepted life as it is with all its agony and despair and have got
used to it, and think of death as something to be carefully avoided.
But death is extraordinarily like life when we know how to live. You
cannot live without dying. You cannot live if you do not die
psychologically every minute. This is not an intellectual paradox. To
live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness,
there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live
mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what
freedom is.
-- Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known, p. 76-77
We are always comparing what we are with what we should be. The
should-be is a projection of what we think we ought to be.
Contradiction exists when there is comparison, not only with something
or somebody, but with what you were yesterday, and hence there is
conflict between what has been and what is. There is what is only when
there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be
peaceful. Then you can give your whole attention without any
distraction to what is within yourself--whether it be despair,
ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness--and live with it
completely; then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict.
-- Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known, p. 63
It is always
difficult to keep simple and clear. The world worships success, the
bigger the better; the greater the audience the greater the speaker;
the colossal super buildings, cars, aeroplanes and people. Simplicity
is lost. The successful people are not the ones who are building a new
world. To be a real revolutionary requires a complete change of heart
and mind, and how few want to free themselves. One cuts the surface
roots; but to cut the deep feeding roots of mediocrity, success, needs
something more than words, methods, compulsions. There seem to be few,
but they are the real builders--the rest labor in vain.
One is
everlastingly comparing oneself with another, with what one is, with
what one should be, with someone who is more fortunate. This comparison
really kills. Comparison is degrading, it perverts one's outlook. And
on comparison one is brought up. All our education is based on it and
so is our culture. So there is everlasting struggle to be something
other than what one is. The understanding of what one is uncovers
creativeness, but comparison breeds competitiveness, ruthlessness,
ambition, which we think brings about progress. Progress has only led
so far to more ruthless wars and misery than the world has ever known.
To bring up children without comparison is true education.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, A Biography,
by Pupul Jayakar, pp. 255-256
Our brains have become so small by the words we have used. When one
speaks to a group of scientists, specialists in various
disciplines--one sees that their lives have become so small. They are
measuring everything in terms of words, experiences. And it is not a
matter of word or experience. Words are limited; all experiences are
limited. They cover a very small area.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, A Biography,
by Pupul Jayakar, p. 488
To allow the
free flow of life, without any residue being left, is real awareness.
The human mind is like a sieve which holds some things and lets others
go. What it holds is the size of its own desires; and desires, however
profound, vast noble, are small, are petty, for desire is a thing of
the mind. Not to retain, but to have the freedom of life to flow
without restraint, without choice, is complete awareness. We are always
choosing or holding, choosing the things that have significance and
everlastingly holding on to them. This we call experience, and the
multiplication of experiences we call the richness of life. The
richness of life is the freedom from the accumulation of experience.
The experience that remains, that is held, prevents that state in which
the known is not. The known is not the treasure, but the mind clings to
it and thereby destroys or defiles the unknown.
Life is a strange business. Happy is the man who is nothing. . . .
Don't let
problems take root. Go through them rapidly, cut through them as
through butter. Don't let them leave a mark, finish with them as they
arise. You can't help having problems, but finish with them immediately.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, A Biography,
by Pupul Jayakar, pp. 263, 273
All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and
understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the
followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own
teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man
has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p. 21
As most of our
education is the acquisition of knowledge, it is making us more and
more mechanical: our minds are functioning along narrow grooves,
whether it be scientific, philosophic, religious, business or
technological knowledge that we are acquiring. Our ways of life, both
at home and outside it, and our specialising in a particular career,
are making our minds more and more narrow, limited and incomplete. All
this leads to a mechanistic way of life, a mental standardisation, and
so gradually the State, even a democratic State, dictates what we
should become. Most thoughtful people are naturally aware of this but
unfortunately they seem to accept it and live with it. So this has
become a danger to freedom.
Freedom is a
very complex issue and to understand the complexity of it the flowering
of the mind is necessary. Each one will naturally give a different
definition of the flowering of man depending on his culture, on his so
called education, experience, religious superstition - that is, on his
conditioning. Here we are not dealing with opinion or prejudice, but
rather with a non-verbal understanding of the implications and
consequences of the flowering of the mind. This flowering is the total
unfoldment and cultivation of our minds, our hearts and our physical
well-being. That is, to live in complete harmony in which there is no
opposition or contradiction between them. The flowering of the mind can
take place only when there is clear perception, objective,
non-personal, unburdened by any kind of imposition upon it. It is not
what to think but how to think clearly. We have been for centuries,
through propaganda and so on, encouraged in what to think. Most modern
education is that and not the investigation of the whole movement of
thought. The flowering implies freedom: like any plant it requires
freedom to grow.
J. Krishnamurti, Letters To The Schools, Volume 1 pp. 10-11
Why has humanity
given such extraordinary importance to thought? Is it because it is the
only thing we have, even though it is activated through senses? Is it
because thought has been able to dominate nature, dominate its
surroundings, has brought about some physical security? Is it because
it is the greatest instrument through which man operates, lives and
benefits? Is it because thought has made the gods, the saviours, the
super- consciousness, forgetting the anxiety, the fear, the sorrow, the
envy, the guilt? Is it because it holds people together as a nation, as
a group, as a sect? Is it because it offers hope to a dark life? Is it
because it gives an opening to escape from the daily boring ways of our
life? Is it because not knowing what the future is, it offers the
security of the past, its arrogance, its insistence on experience? Is
it because in knowledge there is stability, the avoidance of fear in
the certainty of the known? Is it because thought in itself has assumed
an invulnerable position, taken a stand against the unknown? Is it
because love is unaccountable, not measurable, while thought is
measured and resists the changeless movement of love?
We have never
questioned the very nature of thought. We have accepted thought as
inevitable, as our eyes and legs. We have never probed to the very
depth of thought: and because we have never questioned it, it has
assumed preeminence. It is the tyrant of our life and tyrants are
rarely challenged.
-- Krishnamurti, Letters To The Schools, Volume 1, 15th March, 1979
The tendency to endow with special interest
institutions in which men become mere machines
in the service of an idea, is fatal.
Anyone who accepts this state of affairs
loses his integrity as a result
and the love of man is destroyed.
-- J. Krishnamurti, 1932
"Creation is something that is holy; that's the most sacred thing in
life and. if you have made a mess of your life, change it today not
tomorrow. If you are uncertain, find out why and be certain. If your
thinking is not straight, think straight, logically. Unless all that is
prepared, all that is settled, you can't enter into the world of
creation." Jiddu Krishnamurti
He was a big
man, heavily built, with large hands. He must have been a very rich
man. He collected modern pictures and was rather proud of his
collection which the critics had said was very good. As he told you
this you could see the light of pride in his eyes. He had a dog, big,
active and full of play; it was more alive than its master. It wanted
to be out in the grass among the dunes, racing against the wind, but it
sat obediently where its master had told it to sit, and soon it went to
sleep from boredom.
Possessions
possess us more than we possess them. The castle, the house, the
pictures, the books, the knowledge, they become far more vital, far
more important, than the human being.
He said he had
read a great deal, and you could see from the books in the library that
he had all the latest authors. He spoke about spiritual mysticism and
the craze for drugs that was seeping over the land. He was a rich,
successful man, and behind him was emptiness and the shallowness that
can never be filled by books, by pictures, or by the knowledge of the
trade.
The sadness of
life is this--the emptiness that we try to fill with every conceivable
trick of the mind. But that emptiness remains. Its sadness is the vain
effort to possess. From this attempt comes domination and the assertion
of the me, with its empty words and rich memories of things that are
gone and never will come back. It is this emptiness and loneliness that
isolating thought breeds and keeps nourished by the knowledge it has
created.
It is this
sadness of vain effort that is destroying man. His thought is not so
good as the computer, and he has only the instrument of thought with
which to meet the problems of life, so he is destroyed by them. It is
this sadness of wasted life which probably he will be aware of only at
the moment of his death--and then it will be too late.
So the
possessions, the character, the achievements, the domesticated wife,
become terribly important, and this sadness drives away love. Either
you have one or the other; you cannot have both. One breeds cynicism
and bitterness which are the only fruit of man; the other lies beyond
all woods and hills.
-- J. Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution, 1970, p. 126-7
(from The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader)
to look at myself without any formula -- can one do that? Otherwise you
can't learn about yourself obviously. If I say, I am jealous, the very
verbalization of that fact, or of that feeling, has already conditioned
it. Right? Therefore I cannot see anything further in it. . . .
Now the question is: can the mind be free of this egocentric activity?
Right? That is really the question, not whether it is so or not. Which
means can the mind stand alone, uninfluenced? Alone, being alone does
not mean isolation. Sir, look: when one rejects completely all the
absurdities of nationality, the absurdities of propaganda, of religious
propaganda, rejects conclusions of any kind, actually, not
theoretically, completely put aside, has understood very deeply the
question of pleasure and fear, and division -- the `me' and the `not
me' -- is there any form of the self at all?
J. Krishnamurti, Observing Without The `Me',
Brockwood Park, First Public Talk, September 5, 1970
Tomorrow becomes necessary when we do not see very clearly today.
-- J Krishnamurti, Is Thinking a Slave to Time?, 1974
when the things outside us become of great meaning, we are inwardly poverty-ridden.
-- J. Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution, 1970, p. 146
(from The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader)
The speaker doesn't like to divide consciousness into the unconscious
and the conscious, it is all consciousness. You can play around with
those words but consciousness is whole, you cannot divide it. Either
for profit, for amusement, or for various other subjective reasons. But
consciousness is whole. It is really indivisible, but we like to
divide, break it up.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Brockwood Park, 1984
==================
If you are in harmony with nature, with all the things around you, then
you are in harmony with all human beings. If you have lost your
relationship with nature you will inevitably lose your relationship
with human beings.
- J. Krishnamurti
The First and Last Freedom
To be fully aware of the present is an extraordinarily difficult task
because the mind is incapable of facing a fact directly without
deception. Thought is the product of the past and therefore it can only
think in terms of the past or the future; it cannot be completely aware
of a fact in the present. So long as thought, which is the product of
the past, tries to eliminate contradiction and all the problems that it
creates, it is merely pursuing a result, trying to achieve an end, and
such thinking only creates more contradiction and hence conflict,
misery and confusion in us and, therefore, about us.
To be free of contradiction, one must be aware of the present without
choice. How can there be choice when you are confronted with a fact?
Surely the understanding of the fact is made impossible so long as
thought is trying to operate upon the fact in terms of becoming,
changing, altering. Therefore self-knowledge is the beginning of
understanding; without self-knowledge, contradiction and conflict will
continue. To know the whole process, the totality of oneself, does not
require any expert, any authority. The pursuit of authority only breeds
fear. No expert, no specialist, can show us how to understand the
process of the self. One has to study it for oneself. You and I can
help each other by talking about it, but none can unfold it for us, no
specialist, no teacher, can explore it for us. We can be aware of it
only in our relationship - in our relationship to things, to property,
to people and to ideas. In relationship we shall discover that
contradiction arises when action is approximating itself to an idea.
The idea is merely the crystallization of thought as a symbol, and the
effort to live up to the symbol brings about a contradiction.
J. Krishnamurti The First and Last Freedom Chapter 8 'CONTRADICTION'
====================
This recording inwardly is the divisive process. The divisive process
is the self, the me and the not me, which is creating havoc in the
world . . . Is the mechanism which has gone on for centuries the me and
the not me, can that mechanism stop so that there is no me inwardly?
The me being the self and all the rest of it, that's all. This has been
not only a question for the scientists, but for the religious people,
the serious ones, not the phoney ones. The real religious people have
said, can there be no self at all, and live in this world, not go off
into monasteries or run away to some kind of fanciful entertainment.
Actually live without the self. That's all. Which requires a further
statement, which is: is it possible not to record inwardly,
psychically, and all that? I say it is possible. You may say, "You are
a nut, you are crazy", but that is all right, we will discuss it."
-- Krishnamurti, Brockwood Park, England, June 8, 1984
Pleasure is
encouraged by thought, isn't it? Thought can give it a continuity, the
appearance of duration which we call happiness; as thought can also
give a duration to sorrow. Thought says: `This I like and that I don't
like. I would like to keep this and throw away that.' But thought has
made up both, and happiness now has become the way of thought. When you
say: `I want to remain in that state of happiness'--you are the
thought, you are the memory of the previous experience which you call
pleasure and happiness.
So the past, or
yesterday, or many yesterdays ago, which is thought, is saying: `I
would like to live in that state of happiness which I have had.' You
are making the dead past into an actuality in the present and you are
afraid of losing it tomorrow. Thus you have built a chain of
continuity. This continuity has its roots in the ashes of yesterday,
and therefore it is not a living thing at all. Nothing can blossom in
ashes--and thought is ashes. So you have made happiness a thing of
thought, and it is for you a thing of thought.
But is there
something other than pleasure, pain, happiness and sorrow? Is there a
bliss, an ecstasy, that is not touched by thought? For thought is very
trivial, and there is nothing original about it. In asking this
question, thought must abandon itself. When thought abandons itself
there is the discipline of the abandonment, which becomes the grace of
austerity. Then austerity is not harsh and brutal. Harsh austerity is
the product of thought as a revulsion against pleasure and indulgence.
From this deep
self-abandonment--which is thought abandoning itself, for it sees
clearly its own danger--the whole structure of the mind becomes quiet.
It is really a state of pure attention and out of this comes a bliss,
an ecstasy, that cannot be put into words. When it is put into words it
is not the real.
-- J. Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution, 1970, p. 50
(from The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader)
Having realised
that we can depend on no outside authority in bringing about a total
revolution within the structure of our own psyche, there is the
immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the
authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated
opinions, knowledge, ideas and ideals. You had an experience yesterday
which taught you something and what it taught you becomes a new
authority --and that authority of yesterday is as destructive as the
authority of a thousand years. To understand ourselves needs no
authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are
living things, always moving, flowing never resting. When we look at
ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday we will fail to
understand the living movement and the beauty and quality of that
movement.
To be free of
all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything
of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young,
innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one
learns and observes. And for this a great deal of awareness is
required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without
correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because
the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a
censor.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp. 19-20
The greater the
outward show, the greater the inward poverty; but freedom from this
poverty is not the loin-cloth. The cause of this inward emptiness is
the desire to become; and, do what you will, this emptiness can never
be filled. You may escape from it in a crude way, or with refinement;
but it is as near to you as your shadow. You may not want to look into
this emptiness, but nevertheless it is there. The adornments and the
renunciations that the self assumes can never cover this inward
poverty. By its activities, inner and outer, the self tries to find
enrichment, calling it experience or giving it a different name
according to its convenience and gratification. The self can never be
anonymous; it may take on a new robe, assume a different name, but
identity is its very substance. This identifying process prevents the
awareness of its own nature. The cumulative process of identification
builds up the self, positively or negatively; and its activity is
always self-enclosing, however wide the enclosure. Every effort of the
self to be or not to be is a movement away from what it is. Apart from
its name, attributes, idiosyncrasies, possessions, what is the self? Is
there the "I," the self, when its qualities are taken away? It is this
fear of being nothing that drives the self into activity; but it is
nothing, it is an emptiness.
If we are able
to face that emptiness, to be with that aching loneliness, then fear
altogether disappears and a fundamental transformation takes place. For
this to happen, there must be the experiencing of that
nothingness--which is prevented if there is an experiencer. If there is
a desire for the experiencing of that emptiness in order to overcome
it, to go above and beyond it, then there is no experiencing; for the
self, as an identity, continues. If the experiencer has an experience,
there is no longer the state of experiencing. It is the experiencing of
what is without naming it that brings about freedom from what is.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living, First Series, 1956, p. 54
Krishnamurti: No, no, you are missing my point. My brain
has lived for a million years. It has experienced everything. It has
been a Buddhist, it has been a Hindu, a Christian, it has been a
Muslim, it has been all kinds of things, but the core of it is the
same. Right? And you come along and say, look there is a ground which
is -- something. Are you going back to what I have already known? You
follow? Hindus, Buddhists. If you do I reject all that because I say I
have been through all that. They are like ashes to me at the end of it.
David Bohm: Well all of those things were attempts to
create an apparent ground by thought. It seemed that through knowledge
and thought, through Buddhism, and various other ways, people created
what they regarded was the ground. And it wasn't.
K: It wasn't. Because I have spent a million years at it.
B: So as long as knowledge enters the ground that will be false?
K: Of course. So can I -- I am just asking -- is there a
relationship between that and the human mind? In asking that question I
am also aware of the danger of such a question.
B: Yes. Well you may create a delusion of the same kind that we have already gone through.
K: Yes. I have played that before, that song.
Q: Are you suggesting that the relationship cannot be made by you, but it must come . . .
K: I am asking that. No, it may be I have to make a
relationship. My mind now is in such a state, I won't accept a thing.
Q: But the bridge, if there is such a thing.
K: No wait, listen to my mind: my mind says I have been
through all this before. I have suffered, I have searched, I have
looked, I have investigated, I have lived with people who are awfully
clever at this kind of thing, and so on and so on. So, I am asking this
question being fully aware of the danger of that question. Because that
is what the Hindus say, god is in you, Braham is in you, which is a
lovely idea. I have been through all that. So I am asking `X', if the
human mind has no relationship to it, and that there is only one-way
passage, from that to me . . .
B: Well that's like the grace of god then.
K: That's just, you see, I've captured,
B: That you have invented.
K: That--I won't accept that.
Q: And also aren't we then again back into the area of ideas?
K: No. They may be. So I am rejecting the explanation, grace of god.
B: Well you are not saying the relationship is one way, nor are you saying it's not one way.
K: Maybe, I don't know.
B: You're not saying anything.
K: I am not saying anything. All that I want is -- want in
quotes -- this centre to be blasted. You understand? For the centre not
to exist. Because I see that centre is the cause of all the mischief,
all the neurotic conclusions, all the illusions, all the endeavour, all
the effort, all the misery, everything is from that core. After a
million years, I haven't been able to get rid of it, it hasn't gone. So
is there a relationship at all? What is the relationship between
goodness and evil, or bad? Right? It comes to the same thing. There is
no relationsip.
B: It depends upon what you mean by relationship.
K: All right. Contact, touch, communication, being in the same room.
B: Having the same root.
K: Yes, same root.
Q: But Krishnaji, are we then saying that there is the good and that there is the evil?
K: No, no. Don't. Goodness -- use another word, whole, and
that which is not whole. It is not an idea. Now, is there relationship
between these two? Obviously not.
B: Yes, well, but if you're saying that in some sense the
centre is an illusion -- an illusion cannot be related to that which is
true because the content of the illusion has no relation to what is
true.
K: That's it, that's it. You see that is a great discovery.
I want to establish relationship with that -- want, I am using rapid
words to convey this same meaning which is -- this petty little thing
wants to have a relationship with that immensity. It cannot.
B: Yes, it is not just because of its immensity but because in fact this thing is not actual.
K: Yes.
Q: But I don't see that.
K: What do you mean?
Q: He says the centre is not actual. And that's part of my difficulty is I don't see that the centre is not actual.
B: Actual in the sense of being genuine and not an
illusion. I mean something is acting but it is not the content which we
know.
K: Do you see that?
Q: No. He says the centre must explode. It does not explode because I don't see the falseness in it.
K: No, no, no. You have missed my point. I have lived a
million years, I have lived, I have done all this. And at the end of it
I am still back at the beginning.
Q: Right, and you say the centre then must explode.
K: No, no, no. What, I have want to, the mind says this is too damn small.
Q: Right.
K: And it can't do anything about it. It has prayed, it has done everything. It's still there.
Q: Right.
K: And, he comes along and tells me there is this thing. I want to establish a relationship with that.
Q: He tells me there is this thing and he also tells me that the centre is an illusion.
B: Wait, that's too quick.
K: No. Wait. I know it is there. I'll call it what you like.
Q: Yes.
K: Illusion, a reality, a fixation -- whatever you like. It
is there. And, the mind says, it is not good enough, it wants to
capture that. Therefore it wants to have that relationship with it. And
that says, `Sorry, you can't have relationship with me.' That's all!
Q: Krishnaji, is that mind which wants to be in connection,
or which wants to have a relationship with that, is that the same mind
which is the `me'?
K: Yes, yes. No, don't split it up sir. You are missing
something. I have lived all this. Don't argue with me. I know, I can
argue with you, back and forth. I have a million years of experience
and it has given me a certain capacity. And I realize at the end of it
all there is no relationship between me and truth. Right? And that's a
tremendous shock to me. You follow? It is like you have knocked me out,
because all of my millions of years of experience says, go after that,
seek it, search it, pray for it, struggle for it, cry for it,
sacrifice. I have done all that. And suddenly `X' says, you cannot have
relationship with that. You see, you understand what i am...? You are
not feeling the same as I am. I have shed tears, left my family,
everything, for that. And that says, `Sorry'. So what has happened to
me? That's what I want to get at. You understand sir? Do you understand
what I am saying? What has happened to the mind that has lived this
way, done everything that man has done in search for that, and that
says, one morning, `You have no relationship with me'. Sir, this is the
greatest thing. Right? I don't know if you follow what I mean.
Q: This is a tremendous shock to the `me', if you say that.
K: Is it to you?
Q: I think is was and then things started . . .
K: Don't -- I am asking you: is it a shock to discover that
your brain, and your mind, your knowledge is valueless? All your
examinations, all your struggles, all the things that one has gathered
through years and years, centuries, absolutely worthless. Either I go
mad, because I say, `My god, I have done all this for nothing? My
virture, my abstinence, my control, everything and at the end of it you
say they are valueless.' Sir, you understand what it does to me? You
don't see it.
B: I mean if the whole thing goes then it's of no consequence.
K: Because what you have said, which is that absolutely you
have no relationship. What you have done, not done, what you have, is
absolutely of no value. You understand sir?
B: Not in any fundamental sense. It has relative value. It
has only relative value within a certain framework, in which itself has
no value.
K: Yes, thought has a relative value.
B: But the framework in general has no value.
K: That's right. Whatever you have done on earth -- in
quotes -- has no meaning, the ground says. Is that an idea? Or an
actuality? You understand, sir? The idea being that you have told me
but I still go on, struggling, wanting, groping; but it is an
actuality, in the sense that I suddenly realize the futility of all
that I have done. So I must be very careful -- when I use the word `I'
it doesn't mean -- I must be very careful to see that it is not a
concept, or rather that I don't translate into a concept, an idea, but
receive the full blow of it!
-- Krishnamurti, The Ground of Being and the Mind of Man,
5th Conversation with Dr. David Bohm, Ojai, California,
April 12, 1980.
Consciousness with its content is within the field of matter. The mind
cannot possibly go beyond that under any circumstances, do what it
will, unless it has complete order within itself and the conflict in
relationship has come totally to an end; which means a relationship in
which there is no 'me'. This is not just a verbal explanation. The
speaker is telling you what he lives, not what he talks about. If he
does not live it, it is hypocrisy, a dirty thing to do.
-- Krishnamurti, Saanen, 1974
Does life having meaning, a purpose? Is not living in itself its own
purpose? Why do we want more? . . . Our difficulty is that, since our
life is empty, we want to find a purpose to life and strive for it.
Such a purpose of life can only be mere intellection, without any
reality; when the purpose of life is pursued by a stupid, dull mind, by
an empty heart, that purpose will also be empty. This question about
the purpose of life is put by those who do not love.
-- Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom, 1954
You know, that is quite interesting, to sit together for an hour and
talk over our problems without any pretence, without any hypocrisy, and
without assuming some ridiculous facade. To have a whole hour together
is really extraordinary, because so rarely do we sit and discuss
serious matters with anybody for a whole hour. You may go to the office
for a whole day, but it has far greater meaning to spend sixty minutes
or more together in order to investigate, to seriously examine our
human problems hesitantly, tentatively and with great affection,
without trying to impose one opinion upon another, because we are not
dealing with opinions, ideas, or theories.
Saanen 71, in 'The Awakening of Intelligence' p. 279
Questioner: How can we be free of dependence as long as we are living in society?
Krishnamurti: Do you know what society is? Society is the
relationship between man and man, is it not? Don't complicate it, don't
quote a lot of books; think very simply about it and you will see that
society is the relationship between you and me and others. Human
relationship makes society; and our present society is built upon a
relationship of acquisitiveness, is it not? Most of us want money,
power, property, authority; at one level or another we want position,
prestige, and so we have built an acquisitive society. As long as we
are acquisitive, as long as we want position, prestige, power and all
the rest of it, we belong to this society and are therefore dependent
on it. But if one does not want any of these things and remains simply
what one is with great humility, then one is out of it; one revolts
against it and breaks with this society.
Unfortunately,
education at present is aimed at making you conform, fit into and
adjust yourself to this acquisitive society. That is all your parents,
your teachers and your books are concerned with. As long as you
conform, as long as you are ambitious, acquisitive, corrupting and
destroying others in the pursuit of position and power, you are
considered a respectable citizen. You are educated to fit into society;
but that is not education, it is merely a process which conditions you
to conform to a pattern. The real function of education is not to turn
you out to be a clerk, or a judge, or a prime minister, but to help you
understand the whole structure of this rotten society and allow you to
grow in freedom, so that you will break away and create a different
society, a new world. There must be those who are in revolt, not
partially but totally in revolt against the old, for it is only such
people who can create a new world--a world not based on
acquisitiveness, on power and prestige.
I can hear the
older people saying, "It can never be done. Human nature is what it is,
and you are talking nonsense". But we have never thought about
unconditioning the adult mind, and not conditioning the child. Surely
education is both curative and preventive. You older students are
already shaped, already conditioned, already ambitious; you want to be
successful like your father, like the governor, or somebody else. So
the real function of education is not only to help you uncondition
yourself, but also to understand this whole process of living from day
to day so that you can grow in freedom and create a new world--a world
that must be totally different from the present one. Unfortunately,
neither your parents, nor your teachers, nor the public in general are
interested in this. That is why education must be a process of
educating the educator as well as the student.
-- Krishnamurti, Think On These Things, pp. 21-23
Questioner: You say that we should revolt against society,
and at same time you say that we should not have ambition. Is not the
desire to improve society an ambition?
Krishnamurti: I have very carefully explained what I mean
by revolt, but I shall use two different words to make it much clearer.
To revolt within society in order to make it a little better, to bring
about certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their
life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all, it
is just mutiny. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is
like the mutiny of prisoners who want better food, better treatment
within the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual
breaking away from society, and that is creative revolution.
Now, if you as
an individual break away from society, is that action motivated by
ambition? If it is, then you have not broken away at all, you are still
within the prison, because the very basis of society is ambition,
acquisitiveness, greed. But if you understand all that and bring about
a revolution in your own heart and mind, then you are no longer
ambitious, you are no longer motivated by envy, greed, acquisitiveness,
and therefore you will be entirely outside of a society which is based
on those things. Then you are a creative individual and in your action
there will be the seed of a different culture.
So there is a
vast difference between the action of creative revolution, and the
action of revolt or mutiny within society. As long as you are concerned
with mere reform, with decorating the bars and walls of the prison, you
are not creative. Reformation always needs further reform, it only
brings more misery, more destruction. Whereas, the mind that
understands this whole structure of acquisitiveness, of greed, of
ambition and breaks away from it--such a mind is in constant
revolution. It is an expansive, a creative mind; therefore, like a
stone thrown into a pool of still water, its action produces waves, and
those waves will form a different civilization altogether."
-- Krishnamurti, Think On These Things, pp. 155-156
There were about
eight people around the table at lunch. One was a film director,
another a pianist, and there was also a young student from some
university. They were talking about politics and the riots in America,
and the war that seemed to be going on and on. There was an easy flow
of conversation about nothing. The director said, suddenly: `We of the
older generation have no place in the coming modern world. . . . I,
personally . . . see that I have no relation or contact with anyone of
the younger generation. I feel that we are hypocrites.'
This was said by
a man who had many well-known avant-garde films to his name. He was not
bitter about it. He was just stating a fact, with a smile and a shrug
of his shoulders. What was specially nice about him was his frankness,
with that touch of humility which often goes with it. . . .
The university
student had been silent all this time . . . but he was taking in the
conversation, as were the others. . . .
He said: `Though
I am only twenty I am already old compared with the fifteen-year-olds.
Their brains work faster, they are keener, they see things more
clearly, they get to the point before I do. They seem to know much
more, and I feel old compared with them. But I entirely agree with what
you said. You feel you are hypocrites, say one thing and do another.
This you can understand in the politicians and in the priests, but what
puzzles me is -- why should others join this world of hypocrisy? Your
morality stinks; you want wars.
`As for us, we
don't hate the Negro, or the brown man, or any other colour. We feel at
home with all of them. I know this because I have moved about with them.
`But you, the
older generation, have created this world of racial distinctions and
war -- and we don't want any of it. So we revolt. But again, this
revolt is made fashionable and exploited by the different politicians,
and so we lose our original revulsion against all of this. Perhaps we,
too, will become respectable, moral citizens. But now we hate your
morality and have no morality at all.'
There was a
minute or two of silence; and the eucalyptus was still, almost
listening to the words going on around the table. The blackbird had
gone, and so had the sparrows.
We said: Bravo,
you are perfectly right. To deny all morality is to be moral, for the
accepted morality is the morality of respectability, and I'm afraid we
all crave to be respected -- which is to be recognized as good citizens
in a rotten society. Respectability is very profitable and ensures you
a good job and a steady income. The accepted morality of greed, envy
and hate is the way of the establishment.
When you totally
deny all this, not with your lips but with your heart, then you are
really moral. For this morality springs out of love and not out of any
motive or profit, of achievement, of place in the hierarchy. There
cannot be this love if you belong to a society in which you want to
find fame, recognition, a position. Since there is no love in this, its
morality is immorality. When you deny all this from the very bottom of
your heart, then there is a virtue that is encompassed by love.
-- Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution, 1970, pp. 130-131
(from The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader)
Then we come
again to this extraordinary question of the nature of death. That must
be answered, neither with fear, nor by escaping from that absolute
fact, nor by belief, nor hope. There is an answer, the right answer,
but to find the right answer one has to put the right question. But you
cannot possibly put the right question if you are merely seeking a way
out of it, if the question is born of fear, of despair and of
loneliness. Then if you do put the right question with regard to
reality, with regard to man's relationship to man, and what that thing
called love is, and also this immense question of death, then out of
the right question will come the right answer. From that answer comes
right action. Right action is in the answer itself. And we are
responsible. Don't fool yourself by saying `What can I do? What can I,
an individual, living a shoddy little life, with all its confusion and
ignorance, what can I do?' Ignorance exists only when you don't know
yourself. Self-knowing is wisdom. You may be ignorant of all the books
in the world (and I hope you are), of all the latest theories, but that
is not ignorance. Not knowing oneself deeply, profoundly, is ignorance;
and you cannot know yourself if you cannot look at yourself, see
yourself actually as you are, without any distortion, without any wish
to change. Then what you see is transformed because the distance
between the observer and the observed is removed and hence there is no
conflict.
-- Krishnamurti, Talks in Europe 1968, p. 56, Paris, April 16, 1968
From This Matter of Culture (Think on these things) Chapter 11
The urge to find out what truth is, what god is, is the only real urge and
all other urges are subsidiary. When you throw a stone into a still water,
it makes expanding circles. The expanding circles are the subsidiary
movements, the social reactions, but the real movement is at the centre,
which is the movement to find happiness, god, truth; and you can not find it
as long as you're caught in fear, held by a threat...
The men who seek out what is truth, what is god - only such men can
create a new civilization, a new culture, not the people who conform, or who
merely revolt within a prison of the old conditioning.
Freedom is not a
reaction: freedom is not choice. It is man's pretence that because he
has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction,
without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive;
freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first
step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack
of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily
existence and activity.
-- Krishnamurti, from The Core of Krishnamurti's Teaching, 1980
Freedom is not a
reaction: freedom is not choice. It is man's pretence that because he
has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction,
without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive;
freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first
step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack
of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily
existence and activity.
from The Core of Krishnamurti's Teaching.
This statement was originally written by Krishnamurti himself on
October 21, 1980 for Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfillment by Mary
Lutyens, volume volume 2 of his biography, published by Farrar, Straus
& Giroux in 1983. © Mary Lutyens. On re-reading it
Krishnamurti added a few sentences.
When we condemn
or justify we cannot see clearly, nor can we when our minds are
endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is; we look only at
the projections we have made of ourselves. Each of us has an image of
what we think we are or what we should be, and that image, that
picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually are.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p. 24
Any achievement, whether of the individual or of the collective, becomes a means to power. Success in this world, and
the power that self-control and self-denial bring, are to be avoided; for both distort understanding. It is the desire
for success that prevents humility; and without humility how can there be understanding? The man of success is
hardened, self-enclosed; he is burdened with his own importance, with his responsibilities, achievements and memories.
There must be freedom from self-assumed responsibilities and from the burden of achievement; for that which is weighed down
cannot be swift, and to understand requires a swift and pliable mind. Mercy is denied to the successful, for they are
incapable of knowing the very beauty of life which is love.
Commentaries on Living Series I Chapter 33 'Power'
Self-interest
hides in many ways, hides under every stone and every act - hides in
prayer, in worship, in having a successful profession, great knowledge,
a special reputation, like the speaker. When there is a guru who says,
`I know all about it. I will tell you all about it' - is there not
self-interest there? This seed of self-interest has been with us for a
million years. Our brain is conditioned to self-interest. If one is
aware of that, just aware of it, not saying, `I am not self-interested'
or `How can one live without self-interest?' but just be aware, then
how far can one go, how far can one investigate into oneself to find
out for ourselves, each one of us, how in action, in daily activity, in
our behaviour, how deeply one can live without a sense of self-interest?
So, if we will,
we will examine all that. Self-interest divides, self- interest is the
greatest corruption (the word corruption means to break things apart)
and where there is self-interest there is fragmentation - your interest
as opposed to my interest, my desire opposed to your desire, my urgency
to climb the ladder of success opposed to yours. Just observe this; you
can't do anything about it -- you understand? - but just observe it,
stay with it and see what is taking place.
-- Krishnamurti, Last Talks At Saanen, 1985, pp. 84-85.
To understand
anything you must live with it, you must observe it, you must know all
its content, its nature, its structure, its movement. Have you ever
tried living with yourself? If so, you will begin to see that yourself
is not a static state, it is a fresh living thing. And to live with a
living thing you mind must also be alive. And it cannot be alive if it
is caught in opinions, judgements and values.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p. 23
If I am all the
time measuring myself against you, struggling to be like you, then I am
denying what I am myself. Therefore I am creating an illusion. When I
have understood that comparison in any form leads only to greater
illusion and greater misery, just as when I analyse myself, add to my
knowledge of myself bit by bit, or identify myself with something
outside myself, whether it be the State, a savior or an ideology--when
I understand that all such processes lead only to greater conformity
and therefore greater conflict--when I see all this I put it completely
away. Then my mind is no longer seeking. It is very important to
understand this. Then my mind is no longer groping, searching,
questioning. This does not mean that my mind is satisfied with things
as they are, but such a mind has no illusion. Such a mind can then move
in a totally different dimension. The dimension in which we usually
live, the life of every day which is pain, pleasure and fear, has
conditioned the mind, limited the nature of the mind, and when that
pain, pleasure and fear have gone (which does not mean that you no
longer have joy: joy is something entirely different from pleasure)
--then the mind functions in a different dimension in which there is no
conflict, no sense of `otherness'.
Verbally we can
go only so far: what lies beyond cannot be put into words because the
word is not the thing. Up to now we can describe, explain, but no words
or explanations can open the door. What will open the door is daily
awareness and attention--awareness of how we speak, what we say, how we
walk, what we think. . . . It depends on your state of mind. And that
state of mind can be understood only by yourself, by watching it and
never trying to shape it, never taking sides, never opposing, never
agreeing, never justifying, never condemning, never judging--which
means watching it without any choice. And out of this choiceless
awareness perhaps the door will open and you will know what that
dimension is in which there is no conflict and no time.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp. 32-33
Thought is never
new, for thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge.
Thought, because it is old, makes this thing which you have looked at
with delight and felt tremendously for the moment, old. From the old
you derive pleasure, never from the new. There is no time in the new.
So if you can
look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in-- at a face, a
bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering
in the sun, or anything that gives delight--if you can look at it
without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no
pain, no fear and therefore tremendous joy.
It is the
struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain.
Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure
brings about pain, because it is not the same as it was yesterday. You
struggle to achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense
but the same inward quality of the mind, and you are hurt and
disappointed because it is denied you. . . . You cannot think about
joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it
into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of
beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp. 36-37
The oberver is fear and when that is realised there is no longer any
dissipation of energy in the effort to get rid of fear, and the
time-space interval between the observer and the observed disappears.
When you see that you are part of fear, not separate from it--that you
are fear--then you cannot do anything about it; then fear comes totally
to an end.
-- J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p. 48
Krishnamurti: "[Can you see] The teaching as the mirror in which you
see 'what is' reflected? The teaching is perception within you of the
actual. The only teachings
were: 'Look at yourself. Enquire into yourself - go beyond'. There is
no understanding of the teaching, only understanding of yourself."
================================================================================================================
[I think this is earlier writings - or mid-career let's say - don't
know off hand. His definition of reality changed in the years. In his
mature teachings he considered reality as everything that happens in
your mind vs. truth... - this is only my understanding of it not an
interpretation].
Collected Works Volume 7
The past can never be put aside. There is a watching of the past as it
goes by, but not occupation with the past. So the mind is free to observe
and not to choose. Where there is choice in this movement of the river of
memory, there is occupation, and the moment the mind is occupied. it is
caught in the past: and when the mind is occupied with the past, it is
incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated.
A mind that is occupied with the past - the past is the whole consciousness that says,
`this is good; `that is right; `this is bad; `this is mine; `this is not mine' - can never know
the Real. But the mind unoccupied can receive that which is not known, which is the
unknown. This is not an extraordinary state of some yogi, some saint. Just observe your
own mind; how direct and simple it is. See how your mind is occupied. And the answer,
with what the mind is occupied, will give you the understanding of the past, and therefore
the freedom from the past. You cannot brush the past aside. It is there.
================================================================================================================
Collected Works, Volume 5
That is why it is important, as I said, to understand the process, the
ways of our own thinking. Self-knowledge cannot be gathered through
anybody, through any book, through any confession, psychology, or
psychoanalyst. It has to be found by yourself, because it is your life;
and without the widening and deepening of that knowledge of the self,
do what you will, alter any outward or inward circumstances, influences
- it will ever be a breeding ground of despair, pain, sorrow. To go
beyond the self-enclosing activities of the mind, you must understand
them; and to understand them is to be aware of action in relationship,
relationship to things, to people, and to ideas. In that relationship,
which is the mirror, we begin to see ourselves, without any
justification or condemnation; and from that wider and deeper knowledge
of the ways of our own mind, it is possible to proceed further; then it
is possible for the mind to be quiet, to receive that which is real.
J.Krishnamurti Ojai 4th Public Talk 24th July 1949
================================================================================================================
Freedom is now, not in the future. so freedom, order, goodness is now;
which expresses itself in behavior otherwise it has no meaning at
all... behavior in relationship - behavior with everybody
“Where the self is there is no love; where there is love there is no self” JK
"Friend, do not concern yourself with who I am; you will never know. I
do not want you to accept anything I say. I do not want anything from
any of you; I do not desire popularity; I do not want your flattery,
your following. Because I am in love with life, I do not want anything.
These questions are not of very great importance; what is of importance
is the fact that you obey and allow your judgement to be perverted by
authority. Your judgement, your mind, your affection, your life are
being perverted by things which have no value, and herein lies sorrow."
www.krishnamurtiaustralia.org
The Old Brain, Our Animalistic Brain
I think it is important to understand the operation, the functioning,
the activity of the old brain. When the new brain operates, the old
brain cannot possibly understand the new brain. It is only when the old
brain, which is our conditioned brain, our animalistic brain, the brain
that has been cultivated through centuries of time, which is
everlastingly seeking its own security, its own comfort - it is only
when that old brain is quiet that you will see that there is a
different kind of movement altogether, and it is this movement that is
going to bring clarity. It is this movement that is clarity itself. To
understand, you must understand the old brain, be aware of it, know all
its movements, its activities, its demands, its pursuits, and that is
why meditation is very important. I do not mean the absurd,
systematized cultivation of a certain habit of thought, and the rest of
it; that's all too immature and childish. By meditation I mean to
understand the operations of the old brain, to watch it, to know how it
reacts, what its responses are, its tendencies, its demands, its
aggressive pursuits - to know the whole of that, the unconscious as
well as the conscious part of it. When you know it, when there is an
awareness of it, without controlling it, without directing it, without
saying, 'This is good; this is bad; I'll keep this; I won't keep that,'
- when you see the total movement of the old mind, when you see it
totally, then it becomes quiet.
The Book of Life - October 16
================================================================================================================
You see, I may have a gift in painting, or in sculpture, or in writing
literature, and that gift may be impediment to my flowering. I can
flower outwardly in literature, in painting, but flowering inwardly is
a totally different affair. So what is it that is necessary
first? Ir is there no first? Or if there a seed, as you plant a seed in
the earth, and that becomes a flower, a tree? Is there a seed in me
which, given the opportunity, will flower?
<SNIP>
Whatever the circumstances be, whatever the soil be, is there this
demand, this urge, this tremendous drive to...? Not for external
recognition, external popularity, that is all silly, at least for me.
Is there in my heart, in my blood -- not just for a short period, but
night and day, endlessly -- this urge, this demand, this feeling that
moves? I may have made mistakes: right, finished, I made a mistake. I
have done all kinds of things, rightly or wrongly, but I am moving, I
don't say 'My God, I am guilty, or I am not guilty', and keep on about
it.
So has each one of us this potent demand? Not implanted from
outsidfe as a seed is planted in the earth, but this potent, this
vital, this tremendous energy nthat says, 'Move'.
So we come back to the point -- to use the cliche again -- that where
the honey is, where the nectar is, the bees come. If you are not
flowering at the Centre it becomes another organisation, another
repetition of what somebody said.
23 Jul 1982
Selection From The First and Last Freedom by Krishnamurti Obviously the
present crisis throughout the world is exceptional, without precedent.
There have been crises of varying types at different periods throughout
history, social, national, political. Crises come and go; economic
recessions, depressions, come, get modified, and continue in a
different form. We know that; we are familiar with that process. Surely
the present crisis is different, is it not? It is different first
because we are dealing not with money nor with tangible things but with
ideas. The crisis is exceptional because it is in the field of
ideation. We are Quarreling with ideas, we are justifying murder;
everywhere in the world we are justifying murder as a means to a
righteous end, which in itself is unprecedented. Before, evil was
recognized to be evil, murder was recognized to be murder, but now
murder is a means to achieve a noble result. Murder, whether of one
person or of a group of people, is justified, because the murderer, or
the group that the murderer represents, justifies it as a means of
achieving a result which will be beneficial to man. That is we
sacrifice the present for the future - and it does not matter what
means we employ as long as our declared purpose is to produce a result
which we say will be beneficial to man. Therefore, the implication is
that a wrong means will produce a right end and you justify the wrong
means through ideation. In the various crises that have taken place
before, the issue has been the exploitation of things or of man; it is
now the exploitation of ideas, which is much more pernicious, much more
dangerous, because the exploitation of ideas is so devastating, so
destructive. We have learned now the power of propaganda and that is
one of the greatest calamities that can happen: to use ideas as a means
to transform man. That is what is happening in the world today. Man is
not important - systems, ideas, have become important. Man no longer
has any significance. We can destroy millions of men as long as we
produce a result and the result is justified by ideas. We have a
magnificent structure of ideas to justify evil and surely that is
unprecedented. Evil is evil; it cannot bring about good. War is not a
means to peace. War may bring about secondary benefits, like more
efficient airplanes, but it will not bring peace to man. War is
intellectually justified as a means of bringing peace; when the
intellect has the upper hand in human life, it brings about an
unprecedented crisis. There are other causes also which indicate an
unprecedented crisis. One of them is the extraordinary importance man
is going to sensate values, to property, to name, to caste and country,
to the particular label you wear. Things made by the hand or by the
mind have become so important that we are killing, destroying,
butchering, liquidating each other because of them. We are nearing the
edge of a precipice; every action is leading us there, every political,
every economic action is bringing us inevitably to the precipice,
dragging us into this chaotic, confusing abyss. Therefore the crisis is
unprecedented and it demands unprecedented action. To leave, to step
out of that crisis, needs a timeless action, an action which is not
based on idea, on system, because any action which is based on a
system, on an idea, will inevitably lead to frustration. Such action
merely brings us back to the abyss by a different route. As the crisis
is unprecedented there must also be unprecedented action, which means
that the regeneration of the individual must be instantaneous, not a
process of time. It must take place now, not tomorrow; for tomorrow is
a process of disintegration. If I think of transforming myself tomorrow
I invite confusion, I am still within the field of destruction. Is it
possible to change now? Is it possible completely to transform oneself
in the immediate, in the now? I say it is. The point is that as the
crisis is of an exceptional character to meet it there must be
revolution in thinking; and this revolution cannot take place through
another, through any book, through any organization. It must come
through us, through each one of us. Only then can we create a new
society, a new structure away from this horror, away from these
extraordinarily destructive forces that are being accumulated, piled
up; and that transformation comes into being only when you as an
individual begin to be aware of yourself in every thought, action and
feeling.
===============================================================
The following is an extract from a group discussion on studying the Teachings:
Krishnamurti: If I went there to study what K is saying, I would want to investigate it, question it, doubt
it, not just read something and go away. I would be reading not just to memorize, I would be reading
to learn; to see what he is saying and my reactions to it, whether it corresponds or contradicts,
whether he is right or I am right, so there is a constant communication and interchange between what
I am reading and what I am feeling. I would want to establish a relationship between what I am
reading, seeing, hearing and myself with my reactions, conditioning, and so on; a dialogue with him
and me. Such a dialogue must inevitably bring about a fundamental change.
© Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Limited.
=========
From: "Educating the Educator: Abandoning Idealism in Teaching This
article first appeared in the Fall 2000 issue of Parabola magazine."
(Quotations selected by RG)
After all, all great civilizations have been founded on the teachers, not on engineers and technicians. The engineers and
technicians are absolutely necessary, but those who awaken moral and ethical intelligence are obviously of primary
importance.
society is always disintegrating, a teacher who is part of society can never be the perfect teacher. He must be out of it,
which means he cannot ask anything for himself; therefore, society must be so enlightened that it will supply his
needs. But we don’t want such an enlightened society, nor such teachers. If we had such teachers, then the present
society would be in danger.
Without self-knowledge, the airplane becomes the most destructive instrument in life, but with self-knowledge, it is a
means of human help. So the teacher must be one who is not within the clutches of society, who does not play power politics
or seek position or authority. He has discovered that which is eternal in himself and, therefore, he is capable of
imparting that knowledge which will help another to discover his own means to enlightenment.
And what is the quiet room for?
« ...I want something tremendous to happen there ... something to happen to blast my mediocrity ... if you
don’t ask for the tremendous thing, ... [it] won’t happen. ... I want the door to burst open to something
enormous ... immeasurable. That I must have. ... I can do all that, with your help. I’ve done it. And that’s
what the Centre is meant for.»
Krishnamurti, Ojai, 14 March 1977, Copyright KFT
«Wouldn’t I want to come here to meet people of the same kind of thinking ... enquiry ... outlook, who
have read ... thought about it, perhaps with whom I can discuss in a friendly, happy relationship?»
Krishnamurti, Ojai, 14 March 1977, Copyright KFT
===========================================================
Here is a part of a conversation between K. and David Bohm about this.
K.: Let see this more closely. The content of our consciousness is what constitute it.
DB: I beleive it necessite some clearings. The ordinary meaning of
"content" is totaly different. If onw says that a glass have water as
content, the glass is one thing and the water is another one. The glass
contained water, the word "content" would supposed therefor the
presence of a container.
K.: I agree. Consciousness is therefor make of all what it has
memorised, beleives, dogmas, rituals, nationalitys, fears, plaisures,
sufferings.
DB: Yes. But if all that would not exist, wouln't it be any consciousness?
K. Not under the form that we know.
==========
We need great intelligence to live, to live our daily life, because it
is only intelligence that can possibly bring about a total revolution
in our psyche, in the very core of our being.
Philosopher, J. Krishnamurti
If you can understand the workings of the mind and go beyond them,
there is the real mystery. But very few of us go beyond and reach that
mystery. 1954
Wisdom lies in the understanding of discontentment, and then you will
find that there is an experiencing which is not based upon previous
experience. That experiencing has no motive, no ending, therefore it is
timelessly creative. 1956
======================
The treasure is not in books, but buried in your own mind, and the mind
alone can discover this treasure. To have self-knowledge is to know the
ways of your mind, to be aware of its subtleties, with all their
implications; and for that you don't have to read a single book.
=========
The whole treasure of life lies withing yourself.
"What do you mean by self-knowledge?"
It is to perceive the ways of your own mind; it is to learn about your
crazings, your desires, your urges and pursuits, the hidden as well as
the open. There is no learning where there is the accumulation of
knowledge. WIth self-k the mind is free to be still. Only then is there
the coming into being of that which is beyond the measure of the mind.
===========
If you, whether you are old or young, begin to understand yourself, you
will discover great and imperishable treasures. But to discover demands
persistent awareness, adjustment and application; awareness f every
thought-feeling and out of thie the treasure of life is discovered.
==============
If you're really aware, if you give your whole attention to
understanding yourself, then you will find an undestructible treasure.
-----------------------------------------
"Relationship is the mirror in which we see ourselves as we are. All
life is a movement in relationship. There is no living thing on earth
which is not related to something or other. Even the hermit, a man who
goes off to lonely spot, is related to the past, is related to those
who are around him. There is no escape from relationship. In that
relationship which is the mirror in which we can see ourselves, we can
discover what we are, our reactions, our prejudices, our fears,
depression, axieties, loneliness, sorrow, pain, grief. We can also
discover whether we love or there is no such thing as love. So, we will
examine this question of relationship because that is the basis of
love. That is the only thing we have now with each other. If you cannot
find the right relationship, if you live your own particular narrow
life apart from wife, husband, and so on, that isolated existence
brings about its own destruction.
"Relationship is the most extraordinarily important thing in life. If
we don't understand that relationship, we cannot possibly create a new
society. We are going to enquire very closely into what is relationship
- why human beings throughout their long existence of life have never
had a relationship in which there is neither opression, possessiveness,
attachment, contradiction, and so on. Why is there always this division
- man, woman, we and they? We are going to examine together. This
examination can be intellectual or merely verbal, but such intellectual
comprehension has no value at all. It is just an idea, it is just a
concept, but if you can look at your relationship as a whole, then
perhaps you can see the depth and the beauty and the quality of
relationship. Right, sir? Can we go on? We are asking, what actually is
our present relationship with each other, not theoretical, not
romantic, not idealistic, which are all unreal, but the actual, daily
relationship of man, woman, with each other? Are we related at all?
There is the biological relationship; our relationship is sexual,
pleaurable. Our relationship is possessiveness, attachment, various
forms of intrusion upon each other."
"What is attachment? Why do we have such tremendous need for
attachment? What are the implications of attachment? Why is one
attached? When you are attached to anything, there is always fear in
it, fear of losing it. There is always a sense of insecurity. Please
observe it for yourself. There is always a sense of separation. I am
attached to my wife. I am attached to her because she gives me pleasure
sexually, gives me pleasure as a companion; you know all this, without
my telling you. So, I am attached to her, which means I am jealous,
frightened. Where there is jealousy, there is hatred. And is attachment
love? That is one point to note in our relationship.
"Then, in our relationship each one has, through the years, put
together an image about the other. Those images she and he have created
about each other is the actual relationship. They may sleep together,
but the fact is that he and she have an image about each other, and in
that relationship, and in that relationship of images, how can there be
any, actual, factual relationship with another? All of us from
childhood have built images about ourselves and about others. We are
asking a very, very serious question - can one live without a single
image in our relationship? Surely, you all have an image about the
speaker, haven't you? Obviously you have. Why? You don't know the
speaker, actually you don't know. He sits on a platform, talks, but you
have no relationship with him because you have an image about him. You
have created an image about him, and you have your own personal images
about yourself. You have got so many images about politicians, about
businessmen, about the guru, about this and that. Can one live
profoundly without a single image? Image may be conclusion about one's
wife, image may be a picture, sexual picture, image may be some form of
better relationship, and so on. Why do human beings have images at all?
Please ask this question of yourself. When you have an image about
another, that image gives you a sense of security.
"Love is not thought. Love is not desire, love is not pleasure, love is
not the movement of images, and as long as you have images about
another, there is no love. And we ask, is it possible to live life
without a single image? Then you have a relationship with each other."
-"Mind without Measure"
K: On Values [reprinted from The Link]
It is one of the peculiarities of human beings to cultivate values.
From childhood we are encouraged to set for ourselves certain
deep-rooted values. Each person has his own long-lasting purposes
and intents. Naturally the values of one differ from those of another.
These are cultivated either by desire or by the intellect. They are
either illusory, comfortable, consoling or factual. These values
obviously encourage the division between man and man. Values are
ignoble or noble according to one’s prejudices and intentions.
Without listing various types of values, why is it that human beings
have values and what are their consequences? The root meaning of
the word value is strength. It comes from the word valour. Strength
is not value. It becomes a value when it is the opposite of weakness.
Strength – not of character, which is the result of the pressure of
society – is the essence of clarity. Clear thinking is without prejudices,
without bias; it is observation without distortion. Strength or
valour is not a thing to be cultivated as you would cultivate a plant
or a new breed. It is not a result. A result has a cause and when
there is a cause it indicates a weakness; the consequences of weakness
are resistance or yielding. Clarity has no cause. Clarity is not
an effect or result; it is the pure observation of thought and its total
activity. This clarity is strength.
_
As an educator, can you explain this to a student: to have no values
whatsoever but to live with clarity which is not a value? This can be
brought about when the educator himself has felt deeply the truth
of this. If he has not, then it becomes merely a verbal explanation
without any deep significance. This has to be conveyed not only to
the older students but also to the very young. The older students
are already heavily conditioned through the pressure of society and
of parents with their values; or they themselves have projected
their own goals which become their prison. With the very young
what is most important is to help them to free themselves from
psychological pressures and problems. Now the very young are
being taught complicated intellectual problems; their studies are
becoming more and more technical; they are given more and
more abstract information; various forms of knowledge are being
imposed on their brains, thus conditioning them right from childhood.
Whereas what we are concerned with is to help the very
young to have no psychological problems, to be free of fear, anxiety,
cruelty, to have care, generosity and affection. This is far more
important than the imposition of knowledge on their young minds.
This does not mean that the child should not learn to read, write
and so on, but the emphasis is on psychological freedom instead of
the acquisition of knowledge, though that is necessary. This freedom
does not mean the child doing what he wants to do but helping
him to understand the nature of his reactions, his desires.
from Letters to the Schools, Vol. 1, pp. 102–104
© 1981 by Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd.
K: The Impotence of Truth
Questioner: Why should truth be so impotent?
Krishnamurti: Because truth has no action. Truth is weak. Truth is not utilitarian,
truth cannot be organized. It is like the wind, you cannot catch it, you cannot
take hold of it in your fist and say, “I have caught it.” Therefore it is tremendously
vulnerable, impotent like the blade of grass on the roadside – you can kill it, you
can destroy it. But we want it as a thing to be used for a better structure of society.
And I am afraid you cannot use it, you cannot – it is like love, love is never potent.
It is there for you, take it or leave it.
from Can Humanity Change?, pp. 194-195
Questioner: "Still the question remains: Why in spite of your talking
about this for forty years, not a single human being has become
different? "
Krishnamurti: The gentleman asks why is it that though I have talked
for forty years more or less of the same thing in different words and
expressing it differently, there has not been one human being who is
different? Why? Will you answer it, sir? Either what is being said is
false and therefore has no position in the world; it is false and has
no validity, and therefore you do not pay attention; your own reason,
your own intelligence, your own affection, your own good sense says,
"What rubbish you are talking about!" Or, you hear what is being said,
but it means nothing to you, because the other is much more important.
Questioner: "Why should truth be so impotent?"
Krishnamurti: Because truth has no action. Truth is weak. Truth is not
utilitarian, truth cannot be organized. It is like the wind, you cannot
catch it, you cannot take hold of it in your fist and say, "I have
caught it". Therefore it is tremendously vulnerable, impotent like the
blade of grass on the roadside - you can kill it, you can destroy it.
But we want it as a thing to be used for a better structure of society.
And I am afraid you cannot use it, you cannot - it is like love, love
is never potent. It is there for you, take it or leave it.
So, sirs, the problem is not that we have spoken for forty years. But
the problem is: How is a human being, who has listened for forty years
with a dry heart, without a tear in his eyes, who sees all this and
does not do a thing, whose heart is broken up, whose heart is empty,
whose mind is full of words and theories, and full of himself - how is
he to make his heart love again? That is the real question.
================================================================================================================
From J. Krishnamurti Madras 1st Public Talk 27th December 1980
3 And if we are to investigate together the
salvage of this country, knowing that the speaker is not a nationalist,
nor adheres to any particular belief, ideal, faith, organized religion,
bearing that in mind, what is one to do? As most of the people
here in this audience are Indians, what is one to do? What are
you going to do? What's your responsibility, knowing that there
is corruption, and apparently this corruption has become the way of
life. The country apparently is falling apart, each one
struggling for himself, each one more or less both outwardly and
inwardly corrupt, how is one, if you are facing the problem, as one
should, how are we human beings going to save this particular part of
the country, salvage it? Are there a group of people who are
absolutely incorruptible, absolutely have integrity, incorruptibility
and integrity, not say one thing and do another, believe in some kind
of ideal, some kind of belief, worship an image, and then be utterly
selfish in other directions? To bring about a salvage of this
country there must be some people who have this sense of deep
integrity, and absolutely incorruptible. Is that possible?
This is not only in this part of the world, but also in every country
this is going on, each one for himself. This has been going on
throughout history, since man probably began, that we are operating
from the centre of the self, the 'me' first, and so each one is
fighting the other, convincing the other of his own particular point of
view, and so on. And religiously also; going to the temple, or
the mosque, or the church, has lost all its meaning. Fear has
made us go to the temples, not love. One wonders whether in this
part of the world love exists at all. Or are we all ruled by the
intellect? - the intellect being the capacity to think, to discern, to
choose, to distinguish. And when intellect becomes far more
important than love, as is happening throughout the world, there must
be inevitably not only physical destruction like war, but also there
must be deterioration of morality, ethics, and a way of living that is
essentially worthwhile, significant.
4 Now, having stated that, what is our responsibility?
………..So please you are not merely listening to the
talk, to the speaker, you are, both of us are exercising our brains
because we are all responsible for the present state; not the
governments, not the economists, not the gurus, but we as human beings
living wherever we are. Why is it that we are becoming more and
more self-centred, more and more dishonest, more and more
superstitious, so frightened of this world. This is a beautiful
earth, it is our earth, we are meant to live on it happily with a sense
of affection, care, love, and apparently all that doesn't exist.
10 So how do you, as a human being, living in this
country, with all the things that are happening here, how do you find
out the cause of all this? How do you, or how does one examine a
problem? A problem being, for the moment, why love doesn't exist
in your heart. Love being care, concern, responsibility, and that
sense of great beauty that goes with love. Why is it that it
doesn't exist? That's perhaps the major problem. And how do
you approach it? Do you love anybody? Do you love your
wife? Do you love the earth? The wandering beggar?
Love is different from devotion. When you are devoted to some
god, to some temples, to some ideals, to some country, behind that
there is a motive, which is an exchange, I give you this and you return
me that. That's why you go to the temples. Or you go to your
gurus. It is an exchange. Love has no motive. It
doesn't ask anything. When we are asking, that may be the major
problem that we are facing in this world. And why is it that
human beings have not that perfume, that quality, that blessedness?
11 Now if that is the major cause, then how will you
approach the problem? The problem being why you, as a human being
living in this marvellous world, on this beautiful earth, why this
quality, this sense of love, compassion, care, deep affection, why is
it that human beings have not that? ………
13 So what is your responsibility? How can we
salvage this country? Can there be a group of people who are absolutely
incorruptible? Corruption is not merely at the superficial level,
passing money under the table. That's a very small affair.
But corruption is much deeper, corruption is in the mind, corruption is
the exercise of thought for his own benefit. Corruption is when
there is contradiction in the very psyche, when there is conflict and
that conflict is continued for any length of time it breeds
corruption……..
Problems exist only when you are trying to find an answer. You
understand this? But when you examine the problem itself with all
its complexity, in that problem is the answer, not away from it.
And mind is totally different from the brain. Mind is the whole
movement, which is not involved in time………..
As long as we do not understand the nature of time, the mind then becomes part of time………
================================================================================================================
If you bring order to that [your life], then you will have freedom,
complete, total freedom. And it is only such a mind that sees what it
is.
cooperation means humility…and you cannot have humility if you have.. … an image about yourself
========================================================
Observe How Habits Are Formed
Without freedom from the past there is no freedom at all, because the
mind is never new, fresh, innocent. It is only the fresh, innocent mind
that is free. Freedom has nothing to do with age, it has nothing to do
with experience; and it seems to me that the very essence of freedom
lies in understanding the whole mechanism of habit, both conscious and
unconscious. It is not a question of ending habit, but of seeing
totally the structure of habit. You have to observe how habits are
formed and how, by denying or resisting one habit, another habit is
created. What matters is to be totally conscious of habit; for then, as
you will see for yourself there is no longer the formation of habit. To
resist habit, to fight it, to deny it, only gives continuity to habit.
When you fight a particular habit you give life to that habit, and then
the very fighting of it becomes a further habit. But if you are simply
aware of the whole structure of habit without resistance, then you will
find there is freedom from habit, and in that freedom a new thing takes
place.
It is only the dull, sleepy mind that creates and clings to habit. A
mind that is attentive from moment to moment—attentive to what it is
saying, attentive to the movement of its hands, of its thoughts, of its
feelings—will discover that the formation of further habits has come to
an end. This is very important to understand, because as long as the
mind is breaking down one habit, and in that very process creating
another, it can obviously never be free; and it is only the free mind
that can perceive something beyond itself.
The Book of Life - May 31
========================================================
"Walking and talking, meditation was going on below the words and the
beauty of the night. It was going on at a great depth, flowing
outwardly and inwardly; it was exploding and expanding. One was aware
of it; it was happening; one wasn't experiencing it, experiencing is
limiting; it was taking place. There was no participation in it;
thought could not share it for thought is such a futile and mechanical
thing anyhow, nor could emotion get entangled with it; it was too
disturbingly active for either. It was happening at such an unknown
depth for which there was no measurement. But there was great
stillness. It was quite surprising and not at all ordinary." (From
"Krishnamurti's Notebook", (c) KFA (www.kfa.org)).
Energy without motive
As long as there is a time interval between the observer and the
observed it creates friction and therefore there is a waste of energy.
That energy is gathered to its highest point when the observer is the
observed, in which there is no time interval at all. Then there will be
energy without motive and it will find its own channel of action
because then the ‘I’ does not exist.
Freedom from the Known - 120
_____________________________
When there is no friction there are no frontiers to energy
…Energy is action and movement. All action is movement and all action
is energy. All desire is energy. All feeling is energy. All thought is
energy. All living is energy. All life is energy. If that energy is
allowed to flow without any contradiction, without any friction,
without any conflict, then that energy is boundless, endless. When
there is no friction there are no frontiers to energy. It is friction
which gives energy limitations. So, having once seen this, why is it
that the human being always brings friction into energy? Why does he
create friction in this movement which we call life? Is pure energy,
energy without limitation, just an idea to him? Does it have no reality?
Freedom from the Known - 120
======================================================================
Question: Observation and the seeing of ourselves is one of the major
problems - to see. I think we have to go into that question: what is
it, to see?
Krishnamurti: When you look at a tree - I do not know if you ever do in
New York - when you look at a tree, do you actually look at it, or do
you have an image of the tree and the image is looking? It is not you,
yourself, looking at the tree directly. You know, when you look at a
cloud, at the stars of an evening or the lovely light of the setting
sun, you have already judged it, you have said 'How beautiful it is' -
the very statement 'How beautiful it is' prevents you from looking. You
want to communicate it to another, but that very communication at the
moment of looking prevents you from being actually in contact with the
things at which you look. Is this somewhat clear? If you have an image
about the speaker, an image put together by propaganda and so on, you
look at him through the image which you have and therefore you are
actually not looking or listening; you are looking and listening
through a screen of words and images which prevent the actual
perception of 'what is'. And that is one of the major issues in all our
talks - how to observe. Is it possible to observe without the
accumulated knowledge and experience: which is the past? Observation is
always in the present; if you look at the present with the past
memories - all memories are obviously the past, as knowledge is - then
you are looking at the new thing with eyes that have been spotted with
all the experience of the old and therefore with eyes that have become
dull.
So that is the first thing, if I may suggest, that we have to learn: to
be able to look at your wife, or husband, without the image that you
have built through many years about her, or about him: and that is
extraordinarily difficult. Our life is a series of experiences; we have
had a thousand experiences and all those experiences have become
knowledge, they have left their mark on the mind, the very brain cells
themselves are loaded with these memories and when we look at our wife,
or at a friend or the clouds, or the light of the rising sun, we look
with the memories of experiences, therefore the looking is of the past
- with the eyes of the past we look and therefore there is no
understanding of life as it is in the present.
To look demands a great deal of attention; I want to look at myself not
according to any pattern, but I find I am conditioned heavily, I am a
slave already to the specialist, my education has been directed,
controlled by the specialist. If I want to learn about myself and to
look at myself, to see myself as I am actually, I cannot do so without
freedom, freedom from judgments, explanations, justifications. And this
is not possible because my mind is heavily conditioned by the analyst,
by the society and the culture in which I live and so on. I look at
myself with past knowledge and therefore I am not looking at myself at
all. Now is it possible to put aside all that knowledge - technological
knowledge, the practical knowledge, is necessary - is it possible to
put aside the accumulation of experience, judgments and evaluations
through which we look and for which reason there is never a change?
There is always a division between the observer and the observed.
Relationship is direct contact, mentally, physically and so on; direct,
not through a series of images or conclusions or ideologies. So is it
possible to be completely free, free from your conditioning as
Christian, Communist, Catholic, whatever it is? Otherwise you cannot
possibly look, whatever you look at will be translated in terms of what
you already know; change then becomes a struggle of conforming to the
past conditioning. After all, conflict, inwardly and outwardly, is
between two things, conceptual thinking and what actually is.
So, inwardly, the whole art of seeing and learning, and the joy and
energy which are the outcome of that seeing, involves a tremendous
challenge. That is, can the mind, so heavily conditioned by magazines,
the radio, so many influences, can it break through? - not eventually
but immediately. Now this involves attention; to give your mind and
heart to understanding yourself, because that is of primary importance,
that demands not concentration but attention.
<>Talks With American Students
Chapter 9: 1st Talk at New School for Social Research, New York
1st October, 1968
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To be truly critical is not to be in opposition. Most of us have
been trained to oppose and not to criticize. When a man merely
opposes, it generally indicates that he has some vested interest which
he desires to protect, and that is not deep penetration through
critical examination. True criticism lies in trying to understand
the full significance of values without the hindrance of defensive
reactions.
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================================================================================================================
Without sensitivity there can be no affection; personal reaction does
not indicate sensitivity; you may be sensitive about your family, about
your achievement, about your status and capacity. This kind of
sensitivity is a reaction, limited, narrow, and is deteriorating.
Sensitivity is not good taste for good taste is personal and the
freedom from personal reaction is the awareness of beauty.
Without the appreciation of beauty and without the sensitive awareness
of it, there is no love. This sensitive awareness of nature, of
the river, of the sky, of the people, of the filthy road, is
affection. The essence of affection is sensitivity. But
most people are afraid of being sensitive; to them to be sensitive is
to get hurt and so they harden themselves and so preserve their sorrow.
Or they escape into every form of entertainment, the church, the
temple, gossip and cinema and social reform. But being sensitive
is not personal and when it is, it leads to misery. To break
through this personal reaction is to love, and love is for the one and
the many; it is not restricted to the one or to the many. To be
sensitive, all the senses must be fully alive, active, and fear of
being a slave to the senses is merely the avoidance of a natural fact.
The awareness of the fact does not lead to slavery; it is the fear of
the fact that leads to bondage. Thought is of the senses and
thought makes for limitation but yet you are not afraid of thought. On
the contrary, it is ennobled with respectability and enshrined with
conceit. To be sensitively aware of thought, of feeling, of the
world about you, of your office and of nature, is to explode from
moment to moment in affection. Without affection, every action
becomes burdensome and mechanical and leads to decay.
It was a rainy morning and the sky was heavy with clouds, dark and
tumultuous; it began raining very early and you could hear it among the
leaves. And there were so many birds on the little lawn, big and
little ones, light grey, brown with yellow eyes, large black crows and
little ones, smaller than sparrows; they were scratching, pulling,
chattering, restless, complaining and pleased. It was drizzling and
they didn't seem to mind but when it began to rain harder, they all
flew off, complaining loudly. But the bushes and the large, old
trees were rejoicing; their leaves were washed clean of the dust of
many days. Drops of water were clinging to the ends of leaves;
one drop would fall to the ground and another would form to fall; each
drop was the rain, the river and the sea. And every drop was
bright, sparkling; it was richer than all the diamonds and more lovely;
it gathered to a drop, remained in its beauty and disappeared into the
ground, leaving no mark. It was an endless procession and
disappeared into the ground. It was an endless procession beyond
time. It was raining now and the earth was filling itself for the
hot days of many months. The sun was behind many clouds and the
earth was taking rest from the heat. The road was very bad, full
of deep potholes, filled with brown water; sometimes the little car
went through them, sometimes dodged them but went on. There were pink
flowers which crept up trees, along the barbed wire fences, growing
wildly over bushes and the rain was among them, making their colours
softer and more gentle; they were everywhere and would not be
denied. The road went past a filthy village, with filthy shops
and filthy restaurants and as it turned, there was a rice field,
enclosed among the palm trees. They surrounded it, almost holding
it to themselves, lest men should spoil it. The rice field
followed the curving lines of the palms and beyond it were banana
groves whose large, shining leaves were visible through the
palms. That rice field was enchanted; it was so amazingly green,
so rich and wondrous; it was incredible, it took your mind and heart
away. You looked and you disappeared, never to be again the same.
That colour was god, was music, was the love of the earth; the heavens
came to the palms and covered the earth. But that rice field was
the bliss of eternity. And the road went on to the sea; that sea
was pale green, with enormous rolling waves crashing on a sandy beach;
they were murderous waves and angry with the pent-up fury of many
storms; the sea looked furiously calm and the waves showed its danger.
There were no boats on the sea, those flimsy catamarans, so crudely put
together by a piece of rope; all the fishermen were in those dark,
palm-thatched huts on the sands, so close to the water. And the clouds
came rolling along carried by winds that you couldn't feel. And
it would rain again, with the pleasant laughter.
To the so-called religious to be sensitive is to sin, an evil reserved
for the worldly; to the religious the beautiful is temptation, to be
resisted; it's an evil distraction to be denied. Good works are not a
substitute for love, and without love all activity leads to sorrow,
noble or ignoble. The essence of affection is sensitivity and
without it all worship is an escape from reality. To the monk, to the
sannyasi, the senses are the way of pain, save thought which must be
dedicated to the god of their conditioning. But thought is of the
senses. It is thought that puts together time and it is thought
that makes sensitivity sinful. To go beyond thought is virtue and that
virtue is heightened sensitivity which is love. Love and there is
no sin; love and do what you will and then there is no sorrow.
================================================================================================================
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28 Question: Please explain to us what you mean by Time, and what
-- Page 100 --
you mean by the Timeless. Can there ever be freedom from Time?
Krishnamurti: Explanations are comparatively easy. Words put
together are explanations, and most of us are satisfied with
explanations, with conclusions. But to really experience requires
an extraordinarily arduous mind, not a mind that says, `Words are
enough for me'.
29 Surely the mind is the process of time; thought
which is the verbalization of a reaction is the result of time; words
are of time, as explanation is of time. A mind which is content
with words, explanations, with time, tries to go beyond time through
explanation, through words, through symbols, through the symbol of
eternity. Though the mind tries to use the symbol to go beyond,
obviously, it is still within the field of time, time being memory what
I remember of yesterday and the projection of yesterday to today and to
tomorrow. The yesterday, today and tomorrow is the process of
time, is the process of thought.
30 Then there is time that is implied from childhood,
to manhood, to death - time as progress. I will be something
tomorrow or in the next life; now, I am a clerk; in three years time I
am going to be the boss. There is time as implied in the cultivation of
virtue: I am afraid, I am violent; I will cultivate non-violence -
which is sweet deception. The mind that is violent can never be
non-violent, however much it may practise non-violence. The very
practice of non-violence is violence. Sirs, listen. Do not
smile.
31 The very practice of virtue strengthens the
violence which is the `me'. That is time. The mind, caught
in this time, says, `Please explain to me what is the Timeless; please
help me to experience something which is not of myself'. The mind
is, in its very essence, the past; the past is time, the past is the
future, the past is what is present. Such a mind is enquiring,
trying to find out what is the timeless. It can only find what it
projects; it cannot find the timeless, because the instrument itself is
of time.
32 The mind can speculate, it can argue, it can
project what should be the timeless and so on; but it can never
experience the timeless; and if it experiences the state of
timelessness for a few seconds, then it expresses it and puts it away
into memory. For instance, `I have experienced the beauty of the
sunset yesterday; now I must have it again today.' So everything the
mind does is the process of capturing that extraordinary movement of
life and putting it into the past.
33 Please listen. The problem now is not to
find out what is the timeless, not how I can find the timeless, not how
the mind can find the timeless but to find out the state in which the
mind can experience the timeless, which is a state of experiencing, not
experience. The moment I am conscious that I have experienced, it
is already in the past, the particular experience is of the past.
34 Please listen; you will find out what I am talking
about; it is not mysterious. You do not have to go into the deep
intoxication of renunciations and pujas and controls; what you have to
do is to understand the structure of the mind, the anatomy of
thought. When you understand it, when the mind sees how it is
caught in time, then the mind becomes fully focussed; it is all full
attention, the attention that is not exclusive. In that
attention, there is the coming and going of the conscious; there is the
reacting to that noise of the train; and the reaction is memory.
At the same time, the mind is not concentrated but is fully focussed -
focussed not through any volition, not through any action of will; but
the mind is fully called to pay attention to itself; on the periphery,
on the outskirts, there are always the impression and responses going
on.
35 But when the mind sees what the function of thought is, the whole pro-
-- Page 101 --
cess of time, then it is completely focussed, completely attentive, not
to something but listening, when the mind is completely still, then
there is the Timeless. But a man who makes the mind still is
caught in the net of time. So it requires enormous vigilance and
that state is experiencing, there is no experiencer experiencing, there
is only experiencing. At that moment, there is no experiencer,
there is only experiencing; a moment later it becomes the experiencer
and so we are caught in time.
36 Can the mind be in a state of experiencing, not in
a state of experience which is what we know, which is the accumulative
past, which is of time? Please put the question and listen to the
question; you will find the answer for yourself. I am not
hypnotizing you by words.
37 Can the mind be in a state of experiencing?
That is the state of experiencing what is timeless; and in that
experiencing, there is no accumulation, no knowledge, no entity that
says, `I am experiencing'. The moment there is the experiencer, he is
introducing time.
38 So, can the mind be in a state of experiencing
God? That is meditation - the meditation which is not of pursuit,
not of a particular idea, the meditation which is not the mere
concentration which is exclusion. In that meditation, there is
experiencing without the experiencer. And I assure you it is very
arduous. It is not just sitting down and closing the eyes and
getting some kind of fancy visions and ecstasy.
39 If I know how to listen rightly, if I know how to
listen to thought, then thought will inevitably bring about this state,
the state in which there is no experiencer, therefore no accumulator,
the person that gathers, holds. Therefore, experiencing is a
state of constant unknowingness; therefore, it is timeless, it is not a
thing of the mind.
40 Question: Modern scientists have placed vast
powers of destruction in the hands of political rulers of America and
Russia. There seems to be no place for simple kindliness between man
and man. What is the meaning of human existence in this age of cruelty?
Krishnamurti: The questioner says: There is no human kindliness, the
simple kindliness between man and man. Have you and I that simple
kindliness? Because we have not got it, we have created America and
Russia. Please don't separate yourself from America and
Russia. We have the potential capacities of being Americans and
Russians. We are Russians and Americans at heart. We pose
in the name of liberty, and given that liberty we become tyrants.
Are you not tyrants in your homes, over your children, in your offices,
over your wives and the wives over you? (Laughter). Yes
Sirs, how easily we laugh at these things!
41 Though we may live thousands of miles away from
Russia and America, we have created this world, you and I; our problem
is the world problem, because the `you' is the world. You,
Mr. Smith, and you, Mr. Rao, you are the world living in
Russia and America; their misery is our misery. Though we might
like to separate ourselves, though we may like to condemn them and say
that they are politically this and they are politically that, that they
are trying to use this and that - you know the things that newspapers
cultivate as propaganda - you and I are the Russians and the
Americans. We all want power, position, prestige. We are
all cruel, we all feel proud, we are all full of pride. Then how
can we be kind, unsuspecting, innocent? We cannot. And it
is no good condemning Russia and America; and to fight them is to
become like them.
42 So, there must be a revolution in the ways of our
thinking. When there is no identification with India, with any
political or religious system;
-- Page 102 --
when we are common humanity, not labelled as Hindus, Russians, Germans,
English, Americans, Christians and so on; then only there is a
possibility for peace to be; till then, there is no possibility. Stalin
will come and go and others will come. There will be war till
there is a real revolution in our heart.
43 That revolution is not possible through any
economic revolution, through any superficial change, because such a
change is merely a modified continuity whereas a revolution is
not. The revolution that is necessary cannot come about by any
compulsion. It must come spontaneously out of ourselves.
Because we do not want it, we resort to war, we resort to various forms
of reforms which need further reforms; and so, we are everlastingly
caught.
44 Question: What is God? What is Love?
What is Death? Krishnamurti: It is not possible to experiment to find
out what is God, what is Love and what is Death? As we are
sitting here, can we not find out? Do not just listen to my
explanation. I am not going to explain, because explanations do
not satisfy the hungry man; the description of food will not satisfy me
if I am hungry.
45 Since I am hungry to find out what is God, what is
Love and what is Death, can I find it out? I can only find out if
the mind can completely free itself from the known. If the mind
can put aside everything it has learnt, the Bhagavad Gita, all its
experiences, everything that the Upanishads have said, if all its
conditions can completely be wiped out, then only is it possible to
know, to experience that state of living.
46 Can one know what death is? Death is the
Unknown. But a mind that clings to the known which is the
continuity of what I am from day to day, cannot know the Unknown.
The Unknown is Death, is it not? Death has no `knowing'.
Though I may have read many descriptions of it, I have to leave all
symbols. All words must be put aside, must they not? And
can I put them aside - not with any effort, but just as I am listening?
47 Can I completely enter into the state of
`Unknowing'? Then though I am living, there is the `Unknowing'
which is death. That means, there must be no fear, no fear of
dying - the dying being the ending of continuity. That which
continues deteriorates; it is only the ending that is creative.
48 So, can I know death while I live? `Death'
is not the word, not the corpse not the thing that you see being
carried down the road to be burnt, but the thing which is not the word,
which is a state of `Unknowing'. Surely I can feel it out.
49 And is God a thing to be found by the mind?
God is not of time. I may imagine, I may think this is God, that is not
God; but I do not know what God is. The word is not God.
So, as I do not know, can the mind be in a state in which there is no
ending; when the mind is completely empty, completely still, without
any formulations, without any hope to find, innocent, in which there is
no demand, no asking? The moment you ask, you are given; and what you
are given is given with a curse. The mind can never ask, because
it can only hear the answer according to the words, according to the
past. So can the mind, listening, be still, without asking,
without expecting?
50 And is not Love also something which is not
brought into being by the mind? The moment the mind is conscious
that it loves, surely it is no longer love, is it? And can I not
feel even for a second, in the stillness of the mind, this thing that
we call God - the word - and to go beyond
-- Page 103 --
the word, and to see and to experience that state in which there is no
knowing, which is Death? And that word Love which is not of the
mind, which is not of Time, can the mind in its complete stillness feel
it, but not be able to recognise, because the moment you recognise it
is of time? So, there must be the state of non-recognition, an
experience in which there is no experiencer; it is only then in that
real stillness of the mind the Unknowable comes into being.
51 March 8, 1953
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14 Question: You have been in retreat for the past
sixteen months and that, for the first time in your life. May we
know if there is any significance in this? Krishnamurti: Don't you also
want to go away sometimes to quiet and take stock of things and not
merely become a repetitive machine, a talker, explainer and
expounder? Don't you want to do that some time, don't you want to
be quiet, don't you want to know more of yourself? Some of you
wish to do it, but economically you cannot. Some of you might want to
do; but family responsibility and so on crowd in your way. All
the same, it is good to retreat to quiet and to take stock of every
thing that you have done. When you do that, you acquire
experiences that are not recognized, not translated. Therefore, my
retreat has no significance to you. I am sorry. But your
retreat, if you follow it rightly, will have significance to you.
And I think it is essential sometimes to go to retreat, to stop
everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and
experiences completely, and look at them anew, not keep on repeating
like machines whether you believe or do not believe. You would
then let in fresh air into your minds. Wouldn't you? That
means you must be in secure, must you not? If you can do so, you would
be open to the mysteries of nature and to things that are whispering
about us, which you would not otherwise reach; you would reach the God
that is waiting to come, the truth that cannot be invited but comes
itself. But we are not open to love, and other finer processes that are
taking place within us, because we are all too enclosed by our own
ambitions, by our own achievements, by our own desires. Surely it
is good to retreat from all that, is it not? ….
In a retreat, do not plunge into something else, do not take some book
and be absorbed in new knowledge and new acquisition. Have a
complete break with the past and see what happens. Sirs, do it,
and you will see delight. You will see vast expanses of love,
understanding and freedom. When your heart is open, then reality
can come. Then the whisperings of your own prejudices, your own
noises, are not heard. That is why it is good to take a retreat,
to go away and to stop the routine - not only the routine of out ward
existence but the routine which the mind establishes for its own safety
and convenience.
15 Try it sirs, those who have the opportunity.
Then perhaps you will know what is beyond recognition, what truth is
which is not measured. Then you will find that God is not a thing
to be experienced, to be recognized; but that God is something which
comes to you without your invitation. But, that is only when your
mind and your heart are absolutely still, not seeking, not probing, and
when you have no ambitions to acquire. God can be found only when
the mind is no longer seeking advancement. If we take a retreat
from all that, then perhaps the whisperings of desire will cease to be
heard, and the thing that is waiting will come directly and surely.
16 January 5, 1952
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Dear small circle of friends:
The following wonderful article appeared on the cover of
“Foundation Focus”, the newsletter of the Krishnamurti
Foundation of America and Oak Grove School. Copyright Reserved.
The mother of three young children in a typical American family, she
seemed alert and intelligent. "But lately," she said, "I've become
interested in spiritual life and I've attended some of your talks. I
want to go more deeply into these ideas and I've been trying to, though
it's difficult, to meditate regularly. What I find, in my
meditation, is that certain thoughts repeat themselves
constantly. I thought I'd examined them, as you
suggested, but in spite of that, they return with a peculiar
persistence. They're so trivial and yet I can't shake myself free of
them."
Self-awareness flows into deep, extensive pools of meditation; every
thought-feeling, however trivial, has significance and, until you
discover it, it will continue to repeat itself. The trivial
thought might come out of interest, habit, or laziness. If
out of interest, then it must be traced out and re-evaluated, and
thereby lose its grip on the mind; if out of habit, you must examine
the cause of habit, which is thoughtlessness in all its multiple
expressions, and thus awaken thought; if out of laziness, then you must
become aware of laziness. Laziness of which there is
no awareness is indeed laziness, but to be aware of laziness is the
beginning of activity.
"You suggested these possibilities in the talks," she said, "and I
earnestly examined my trivial thoughts to see if they belonged to any
of these categories. But though I have spent some time with them, they
invariably return and are very distracting."
There may be another reason for repetitive thoughts. Have you noticed
that a completed thought or action is not retained in memory-it is
forgotten, put aside-but an uncompleted thought or action digs itself
into memory? A finished letter is soon forgotten but an unfinished one
becomes an irritant, a constant reminder; a piece of work left over
teases the mind, and thought is spent on it until it is completed.
Relationships, thoughts, and actions unfulfilled will continue to act
as an irritant-reminder until they are fulfilled. An enclosed mind is
full of these unfulfilled thoughts, and they continue to haunt one
until they are realized, until the enclosure it broken down.
"Yes," she replied, "I have noticed it and I'll try to complete these
unfinished thoughts and actions. But, how can one complete relationship
or an action which lies in the past, spoilt, misunderstood, confused?"
Remorse and resentment, which are so similar and which nourish and give
strength to the self, thereby encouraging the bondage of time, must
first be set aside for they prevent clarification. Then, intention is
of the highest importance. Though your relationship or your action is
in the past, what matters is your present attitude towards it. The
present will wipe out the past, and what you make of the present is in
your hands. The past is to be understood through the present.
"Ending the Past" from the soon to be published new KPA book THE HUMAN PROBLEM by J. Krishnamurti
www.kfa.org
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ABOUT TECHNIQUE
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ED & SIG OF LIFE
Teaching should not become a specialist's profession. When it
does, as is so often the case, love fades away; and love is essential
to the process of integration. To be integrated there must be
freedom from fear. Fearlessness brings independence without
ruthlessness, without contempt for another, and this is the most
essential factor in life. Without love we cannot work out our
many conflicting increases confusion and leads to self-destruction.
The integrated human being will come to technique through experiencing,
for the creative impulse makes its own technique - and that is the
greatest art. When a child has the creative impulse to paint, he
paints, he does not bother about technique. Likewise people who
are experiencing, and therefore teaching, are the only real teachers,
and they too will create their own technique.
This sounds very simple, but it is really a deep revolution. If
we think about it we can see the extraordinary effect it will have on
society. At present most of us are washed out at the age of
forty-five or fifty by slavery to routine; through compliance, through
fear and acceptance, we are finished, though we struggle on in a
society that has very little meaning except for those who dominate it
and are secure. If the teacher sees this and is himself really
experiencing, then whatever his temperament and capacities may be, his
teaching will not be a matter of routine but will become an instrument
of help.
To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his
different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes
and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. If we
are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and
dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our
relationship with him and in his relationships with the world.
Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is
gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying
degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and
domination.
============================================================
1934 OJAI
Question: The artist is sometimes mentioned as one who has this
understanding of which you speak, at least while working creatively.
But if someone disturbs or crosses him, he may react violently,
excusing his reaction as a manifestation of temperament.
Obviously he is not living completely at the moment. Does he
really understand if he so easily slips back into self-consciousness?
Krishnamurti: Who is the person that you call an artist? A man
who is momentarily creative? To me he is not an artist. The
man who merely at rare moments has this creative impulse and expresses
that creativeness through perfection of technique, surely you would not
call him an artist. To me, the true artist is one who lives
completely, harmoniously, who does not divide his art from living,
whose very life is that expression, whether it be a picture, music, or
his behaviour; who has not divorced his expression on a canvas or in
music or in stone from his daily conduct, daily living. That
demands the highest intelligence, highest harmony. To me the true
artist is the man who has that harmony. He may express it on
canvas, or he may talk, or he may paint; or he may not express it at
all, he may feel it. But all this demands that exquisite poise,
that intensity of awareness, and therefore his expression is not
divorced from the daily continuity of living.
============================================================
1948 POONA
20 Question: Every art has a technique of its own,
and it takes effort to master the technique. How can one
reconcile creativeness with technical achievement? Krishnamurti: You
cannot reconcile creativeness with technical achievement. You may
be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the
piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to
handle colour, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a
creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone,
because you have learned the technique, and not be a master
creator. Creation comes first, not technique, and that is why we
are miserable all our lives. We have technique, how to put up a
house, how to build a bridge, how to assemble a motor, how to educate
our children through a system; we have learned all these techniques,
but our hearts and minds are empty. We are first class machines,
we know how to operate most beautifully, but we do not love a living
thing. You may be a good engineer, you may be a pianist, you may
write in a good style in English or Marathi or whatever your language
is; but creativeness is not found through technique. If you have
something to say, you create your own style; but when you have nothing
to say, even if you have a beautiful style, what you write is only the
traditional routine, a repetition in new words of the same old
thing. So, if you watch yourself very critically, you will see
that technique does not lead to creativeness, but when you have
creativeness, you can have technique within a week. To express
something there must be something to express, you must have a song in
your heart to sing. You must have sensitivity to receive in order
to express, and the expression is of very little importance. The
expression is important only when you want to convey it to another, but
it has very little importance when you write for your own amusement.
21 So, having lost the song, we pursue the
singer. We learn from the singer the technique of song, but there
is no song; and I say the song is essential, the joy of singing is
essential. When the joy is there, the technique can be built up
from nothing; you will invent your own technique, you won't have to
study elocution or style. When you have, you see, and the very
seeing of beauty is an art. The expression of that seeing becomes
beautiful, technically perfect, when you have something to say.
To have a song in your heart, that is the important thing, not the
technique - though technique is essential. What is important is
to be creative. It is really an important problem, because you
are not creative; you may produce children galore, but that is
-- Page 79 --
merely accidental, that is not creative. You may be able to write
about creative thinkers, but that is not being creative. You may
watch, you may be spectators at a play, but you are not the
actors. Since the mere learning of a technique is more and more
emphasized, you have to find what it is to be creative.
22 How is one to be creative? Creativeness is
not imitation. Our whole life is imitative, not only on the
verbal level, but inwardly and psychologically also; it is nothing but
imitation, conformity and regimentation. Do you think there can
be creativeness when you are thinking according to a pattern, a
technique? There is creativeness only when there is freedom from
imitation, from regimentation, which means, freedom from authority, not
only external authority, but the inward authority of experience which
has become memory. Again, there cannot be creativeness if there
is fear; for fear produces imitation, fear creates copy, fear engenders
the desire to be secure, to be certain, which in turn creates
authority; and there cannot be creativeness as long as the mind moves
from the known to the known. As long as the mind is held by technique,
as long as the mind is engaged in knowledge, there cannot be
creativeness. Knowledge is of the past, of the known; and as long
as the mind moves from the known to the known, there cannot be
creativeness. As long as the mind is moving in a series of
changes, there cannot be creativeness, because change is merely
modified continuity. There can be creativeness only in ending,
not in continuity. Most of us do not want to end, we all want to
continue, and our continuance is merely the continuance of
memory. Memory can be placed at the level of the Atman, or at a
lower level, but still it is memory. As long as all these things
exist, there cannot be creativeness. It is not difficult to be
free of these things, but one needs attention, observation, intention
to understand; then, I assure you, creativeness comes into being.
23 When a man wishes to create, he must ask himself
and see what it is he wants to create. Is it motor cars, war
machines, gadgets? The mere pursuit of things distracts the mind
and interferes with generosity, with the instinctive response to
beauty. That is what we are all doing with our minds. As
long as the mind is active, formulating, fabricating, criticizing,
there cannot be creativeness; and, I assure you, that creativeness
comes silently, with extraordinary swiftness, without any enforcement,
when you understand the truth that the mind must be empty for
creativeness to take place. When you see the truth of that, then
instantaneously there is creativeness. You do not have to paint a
picture, you do not have to sit on the platform, you do not have to
invent new mathematical theorems; for creativeness does not necessarily
demand expression. The very expression of it begins to destroy
it. That does not mean that you must not express it; but if the
expression becomes more important than creativeness, then creativeness
recedes, For you, expression is so important - to paint a picture and
put your name at the bottom! Then you want to see who is
criticizing it, who is going to buy it, how many critics have written
about it and what they say; and when you are knighted, you think you
have achieved some, thing! That is not creativeness, that is decay,
disintegration. Creativeness comes into being only when the mind, with
its prompting's and corruption, ceases; and for the mind to come to an
end is not a difficult task, nor is it the ultimate task that you
should undertake. On the contrary it is the immediate task.
Our lives are in the present, with its miseries, with its confusion,
its extraordinarily mounting sorrow and strife. So, the only
thing is for the mind, which is thought, to come to an end, and then, I
assure you, you will know creativeness. There is creativeness
only when
-- Page 80 --
the mind, understanding its own insufficiency, its own poverty, its own
loneliness, comes to an end. Being aware of itself, it puts an
end to itself; then that which is creative, that which is immeasurable,
comes subtly and swiftly. To put an end to the process of thought
is to be passively aware of one's own insufficiency, one's own poverty
one's own void, emptiness, without struggling against it; only then
there comes that thing which is not the product of the mind; and that
which is not the product of the mind is creativeness.
============================================================
34 So, the new approach is not the mere cultivation
of a technique, which does not mean you deny technique, but it is the
helping to create an integrated human being, who will come by the
technique through experiencing. Surely, Sir, that is very simple,
I mean it is simple in words. But you can see the extraordinary
effect it will have in society. We shall not be washed out at the
age of 50 or 45 by a technique. Now, when I am 45 or 50, I am
finished, having given my life to a rotten society or to a government
that has no meaning at all except for the few who boss it; I have
slaved my life away and I am exhausted. Whereas, life should
become richer and richer, but that can happen only when technique is
not used in the place of experiencing. Sir, if one really thinks
of it, it is a complete revolution. As long as there is the
cultivation of technique without experiencing the integrated action of
life, there must be destruction, there must be competition, there must
be confusion, ruthless antagonism. You are becoming entities with
perfect capacities, and the more you emphasize technique the more
destruction there will be. If there were people who are
experiencing and there fore teaching, they would be real teachers and
they would create their own technique.
============================================================
35 Therefore, experiencing comes first, life comes
first, and not technique. Sir, when you have the creative impulse
to paint, you take a brush and paint, you don't bother about the
technique; you may learn the technique, but that impulse creates its
own technique and that's the greatest art.
BANARAS 1949
============================================================
29 Surely, that is real revolution, to experience
integrally, as a whole human being, and as he experiences he will
create, obviously; that is, if he experiences art, beauty, he will
inevitably create the techniqueof painting, writing. He will want
to express it; but now, you stop him by telling him how to write
essays, and teaching him styles and all the rest of it. But, if
he is capable of experiencing a feeling, then the feeling will find its
expression, then he will find his own style; when he writes a love poem
it will be a love poem, not a carefully calculated rhyme.
BANARAS 1949
============================================================
15 Question: I am an artist, and very much concerned
with the technique of painting. Is it possible that this very
concern hinders the true creative expression? Krishnamurti: I wonder
why most of us, including the artist, are so concerned with
technique? We are all asking "How?" - how am I to be more happy,
how am I to find God, how am I to be a better artist, how am I to do
this or that? We are all concerned with the `how'. I am
violent, I want to know how to be non-violent. Being so concerned
with technique, and as the world offers nothing but that, we are caught
in it. We pursue the technique because we want results. I
want to be a great artist, engineer, musician, I want to achieve fame,
notoriety. My ambition drives me to seek the method.
16 Can an artist, or any human being, if he is
pursuing a technique, really be an artist? Whereas, if one loves
the very thing one is doing, then is one not an artist? But we do
not understand what that word means. Can I love a thing for
itself, for its own sake, if I am ambitious, if I want to be
known? If I want to be the best painter, the best poet, the
greatest saint, if I am seeking a result, can I then really love a
thing for itself? If I am envious, if I am imitative, if there is
any fear; any competition, can I love that which I am doing?
17 If I love a thing, then I can learn the technique,
- how to mix colour; or what you will. But now, we do not have
this sense of real love of a thing. We are full of ambition,
envy; we want to be a success. And so, we are learning techniques, and
losing the real thing, - not losing it, because we have never had
it. At present our whole mind is given to acquiring a technique
which we get us somewhere. If I lovewhat I am doing, surely then
there is no problem, there is no competition, is there? I am
doing what I want to do, - not because it gives me any publicity, to me
that is not important. What is important is to totally love what
one is doing, and that very love is then the guide.
18 If the parent wants his son to follow in his
footsteps, to be something, if the parents try to fulfil themselves in
their children, then there is no love; it is merely
self-projection. The very love of the child will bring its own
culture, will it not? But unfortunately we do not think in these
ways. And so there is this whole problem, this astonishing
development of technique.
<>1955 LONDON <>
1933 : “A great poet has the desire, the flame for creative
writing, and he writes. If you have the desire, you learn the
technique”.
================================================================================================================
2 Now, where there is effort to achieve
something, obviously there cannot be understanding. Understanding
comes only when there is the cessation of the whole process, the whole
mechanism of striving to be or not to be, to advance or not to
advance. It is really only the imitator who makes an effort to
become something and the man who has disciplined his mind according to
a certain pattern is obviously an imitator, a copyist. He must
make an effort to conform to the pattern, and conformity to the pattern
he calls living. However subtle, however hidden and widely
extended, any effort in which there is imitation, copy, is obviously
not creation. Because most of us are caught in imitation, we have
lost the feeling for creation, and having lost it, we get entangled in
technique, in making effort more and more perfect, more and more
efficient, that is, we develop more and more technical capacity without
having the flame; and the search for efficiency in action without the
flame is the curse of the present age. Most of us who are
concerned with action which we hope will bring about a revolution are
caught in action based on an idea, which is merely copy, and therefore
it is invalid. Surely, our problem - sociological, religious,
individual, collective, or what you will - can be solved only when we
understand the whole process, the mechanism of effort; and the
understanding of effort is meditation.
1950
============================================================
29 Question: You say that nobody can help any one
else. Why then are you going around the world addressing people?
Krishnamurti: Need that be answered? It implies a great deal if
you understand it. You know, most of us want to acquire wisdom or
truth through another, through some outside agency. No one else
can make you into an artist; only you yourself can do that. That
is what I want to say: I can give you paint, brushes, and canvas, but
you yourself have to become the artist, the painter. I cannot
make you into one. Now in your attempts to become spiritual, most
of you seek teachers, saviours, but I say that no one in the world can
free you from the conflict of sorrow. Some one can give you the
materials, the tools, but no one can give you that flame of creative
living.
30 You know, we think in terms of technique, but
technique does not come first. You must first have the flame of
desire, and then technique follows. "But, " you say, "let me
learn. If I am taught the technique of painting, then I shall be
able to paint." There are many books that describe the technique of
painting, but merely learning technique will never make you a creative
artist. Only when you stand entirely alone, without technique,
without masters, only then can you find truth.
31 Let us understand this first of all. Now you
are basing your ideas on conformity. You think that there is a
standard, a way, by which you can find truth; but if you examine, you
will discover that there is no path that leads to truth. In order
to be led to truth, you must know what truth is, and your leader must
know what it is. Isn't that so? I say that a man who teaches
truth may have it, but if he offers to lead you to truth and you are
led, then both are in illusion. How can you know truth if you are
still held by illusion? If truth is there, it expresses
itself. A great poet has the desire, the flame for creative
writing, and he writes. If you have the desire, you learn the technique.
32 I feel that no one can lead another to truth,
because truth is infinite; it is a pathless land, and no one can tell
you how to find it. No one can teach you to be an artist; another
can only give you the brushes and canvas and show you the colours to
use. Nobody taught me, I assure you, nor have I learnt what I am
saying from books. But I have watched, I have struggled, and I
have tried to find out. It is only when you are absolutely naked,
free from all techniques, free from all teachers, that you find out.
1933
============================================================
8 Question: What is the relationship between
technique and life, and why do most of us mistake the one for the
other? Krishnamurti: Life, truth, is to be lived; but expression
demands a technique. Now in order to paint, you need to learn a
technique; but a great artist, if he felt the flame of creative
impulse, would not be a slave to technique. If you are rich
within yourself, your life is simple. But you want to arrive at
that complete richness through such external means as the simplicity of
dress, the simplicity of dwelling, through asceticism and
self-discipline. In other words, the simplicity that results from
inner richness you want to obtain by means of technique. There is
no technique that will guide you to simplicity; there is no path that
will lead you to the land of truth. When you understand that with
your whole being, then technique will take its proper place in your
life.
-- Page 44 --
1933
============================================================
13 So when you ask what is my method, or technique of
revolution, I say let us look first at what you mean by that word
technique. Is it not more important, more essential, that you be
revolutionary, and not merely try to find a technique of
revolution? Now, why aren't you revolutionary? Why isn't
there the new process of life in you? A new way of looking at life, a
flame, a tremendous discontent? Why? Because, a person that is
completely discontented, not merely discontented with certain things,
but inherently discontented, need have no technique to be
revolutionary. He is a revolution, and he is a danger to society,
and such a man you call revolutionary. Now, why aren't you such a
person? And for me, what is important is not the technique, but
to make you be revolutionary, to help you to awaken to the importance
of complete transformation. And when you are transformed, then
you will be able to act, then there is the constant flow of newness,
which is, after all, revolution.
14 Therefore, to me, the importance of inward
revolution, of psychological transformation, is far greater than the
outward revolution. The outward revolution is merely change,
which is modified continuity; but inward revolution has no resting
place, there is no stopping, it is constantly renewing itself.
And that is what we need at the present time: a people who are
completely discontented, and therefore ready to perceive the truth of
things. A man who is complacent, a man who is satisfied with
money, with position, with an idea, can never see truth. It is
only the man who is discontented, who is investigating, who is asking,
questioning, looking, that discovers truth, and such a person is a
revolution in himself and therefore in his relationships.
Therefore that which is his world - which is his relationship with
people - he begins to transform. Then he affects the world within
his own relationship. So, merely to look for a technique, or to inquire
what is my technique for the new revolution, seems to me beside the
point - or rather, that you miss the importance of being revolutionary
in yourself; and to be a revolution in yourself, you must awaken to the
environment, to that in which you live.
1949
============================================================
8 Is there beauty where there is self-conscious
endeavour? Or is there beauty only when the self is not - when
the me, the observer, is not? So is it possible without being
absorbed, taken over, surrendering, to be in that state without the
self, without the ego, without the me always thinking about
itself. Is that at all possible, living in this modern world with
all its
============================================================
Is there beauty where there is self conscious endeavour? Or
there is beauty only when the self is not? When the me, the
observer, is not? So is it possible without being absorbed, taken
over, surrendering, to be in that state, without the self, without the
ego, the me always thinking about itself? You understand my
question? Is that possible at all living in this modern world
with all its specializations, with its vulgarity, its immense noise
that is going on - not the noise of running waters, of the song of a
bird. But is it possible to live in this world without the self, the
me, the ego, the persona, the assertion of the individual? In
that state when there is really freedom from all this, only then there
is beauty. You may say, "Well, that is too difficult, that is not
possible. I prefer looking at a painting, or being in a lovely
spot where there is a great sense of silence and quietude." And is it
possible to have no self interest at all? Right? We are
going to go into that.
============================================================
34 So beauty is when the self is not. And that
is requires great meditation, great inquiry, a tremendous sense of
discipline. The word 'discipline' means the one disciple who is
learning from the master. Learning, not disciplining, conforming,
imitating; adjusting, learning. Learning brings its own
tremendous discipline. And that inward sense of austerity, discipline
is necessary. So we must inquire together into what is
fear. What is the time, sir? May we go on? You aren't
tired?
============================================================
[psychological] time is actually a postponement, a form of laziness.
==========================
So beauty is when the self is not. And that requires great
meditation, great enquiry, a tremendous sense of discipline. The
word 'discipline' means the disciple who is learning from the master.
Learning not disciplining as in conforming, imitating,adjusting, but
learning. Learning brings its own tremendous discipline, and for
an inward sense of austerity discipline is necessary. So we must
enquire together into what is fear.
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