Tamils - a Trans State Nation..

"To us all towns are one, all men our kin.
Life's good comes not from others' gift, nor ill
Man's pains and pains' relief are from within.
Thus have we seen in visions of the wise !."
-
Tamil Poem in Purananuru, circa 500 B.C

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CONTENTS
OF THIS SECTION

Foreword by Aldous Huxley to The First and Last Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurthy
A Brief Introduction to the Work of Krishnamurti - Professor David Bohm
Beyond the Mind - A Website Exploring the Talks of Krishnamurthy - �The speaker is not very valuable. What is valuable, what has significance, is what he is saying.�
Jiddu Krishnamurthy

Jiddu Krishnamurthy
at You Tube - audio video presentations ...

About Jiddu Krishnamurthy...

About Life & Death

What is Creation?

Living without Conflict

How Deep is Knowledge

Be a Light to Yourself

The Real Revolution
Part 1 - Part 2

It does not matter if you die for it Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Jiddu Krishnamurthy in Conversation with Dr.Anderson - Part1a - Part 1b - Part1c - Part1d - Part1e - Part1f - Part2a - Part2b

Jiddu Krisnamurthy in his youth
The Young Krishnamurthy
in his Twenties
Writings

Text of Talk by Jiddu Krishnamurthy announcing the dissolution of the Order of the Star, 1929

Text of Talk by Jiddu Krishnamurthy, Bangalore 1971 -
"There is no path to truth, because truth is a living thing, it is not a fixed, static, dead thing.."

Jiddu Krishnamurthy - Selected Quotes

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Books on Line

An Introduction to Krishnamurti's Teachings - David Bohm

Truth is a Pathless Land
aumX.JPG (2974 bytes)Sathyam Art Gallery
Beyond Words - Jayalakshmi Satyendra
"The mind thinks in sequence in time. The present is a fleeting moment and is then gone forever. Thoughts are so much grist to its mill. Words and concepts are the instruments of its trade..." Nadesan Satyendra On the Bhavad Gita, 1981
Somasunderam Nadesan Q.C. "To action you have a right, but not to the fruits thereof"

Sri Aurobindo on Truth "What is Truth? said Pilate confronted with a mighty messenger of the truth, not jesting surely, not in a spirit of shallow lightness, but turning away from the Christ with the impatience of the disillusioned soul for those who still use high words that have lost their meaning and believe in great ideals which the test of the event has proved to be fallacious.... I am speaking of the fundamental truth, the truth of things and not merely the fact about particulars or of particulars only as their knowledge forms a basis or a help to the discovery of fundamental truth... Our ancestors perceived this truth of the fundamental unity of knowledge and sought to know Sat first, confident that Sat being known, the different tattvas, laws, aspects and particulars of Sat would more readily yield up their secret.

The moderns follow another thought which, also has a truth of its own. They think that since being is one, the knowledge of the particulars must lead to the knowledge of the fundamental unity and they begin therefore at the bottom and climb upwards - a slow but, one might imagine, a safe method of procession.

"Little flower in the crannies", cries Tennyson addressing a pretty blossom in the wall in lines which make good thought but execrable poetry, 'if I could but know what you are I should know what God and man is.'

Undoubtedly the question is whether, without knowing God, we can really know the flower - know it; and not merely its name and form or all the details of its name and form. Rupa we can know and analyse by the aid of science, Nama by the aid of philosophy; but Swarupa?...."

Mahatma Gandhi - "Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained."

Related Offsite Links

The Teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurthy - International Website
Krishnamurti Foundation of India
Krishnamurthi Foundation of America
Krishnamurti Foundation of Latinoamerica.
Krishnamurti Foundation Trust
Krishnamurti Directory
Krishnamurti Study Centre Sahyadri
The Sage who would not be a Guru "Had he not abdicated, the throne of the biggest spiritual guru of modern times would have been his. While other gurus struggle to build their organizations, a worldwide platform, The Order of the Star of the East, was offered to Jiddu Krishnamurti on a platter by Theosophical Society chieftains Annie Besant and H.W. Leadbeater. They had groomed him since childhood to be a ready vehicle for Lord Maitreya to incarnate. The twist in their script came when Krishnamurti had a profound spiritual awakening. What he later taught stemmed from his personal realization: that truth cannot be reached by any path, religion or sect... Ironically, though he had refused messiah hood, he went on to become a world-renowned teacher, giving talks occasioned by profound insights into the deepest questions of humanity. A sage-like figure, Krishnamurti died in 1986 in Ojai, USA, at the age of 91.."
Krishnamurti Information Network
Krishnamurthy on 'Why do We Gossip'
Krishnamurti and David Bohm
Krishnamurthy Quotes & Stories
Pragmatism & Truth - Emile Durkheim

Visit the
Unfolding Consciousness
Section of the
Tamil Nation Library
Library

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Books

The Book of Life, Daily Meditations
The Awakening of Intelligence
The Complete Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti (Volumes 1-17)
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti 1948-1949 : Choiceless Awareness
The Collected Works of J Krishnamurti 1949-1952 : The Origin of Conflict
Collected Works of J Krishnamurti 1956-1957 : A Light to Yourself
Collected Works of J Krishnamurti 1958-1960 : Crisis in Consciousness
The Collected Works of J.Krishnamurti 1962-1963 : A Psychological Revolution
The Ending of Time
Other Books By Jiddu Krishnamurthy at Amazon.Com
Krishnamurti Bookstore

Truth is a Pathless Land

Meeting Jiddu Krishnamurti
Nadesan Satyendra, 10 May 1998

"...I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised... The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth... You are depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else.... No man from outside can make you free..... No one holds the Key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity..." Jiddu Krishnamurthy speaking on 3 August 1929 announcing the dissolution of the Order of the Star, Ommen Camp

Jiddu Krishnamurthy
Jiddu Krishnamurti 1895 - 1986
from an original painting in oils by Jayalakshmi Satyendra


It was a cool December evening in Chennai. The year was 1974. My wife and I were visiting a friend in Egmore. Around 5 p.m., my friend said that he had to leave us to listen to a talk by Jiddu Krishnamurthy at Adyar. He asked, 'Why don't both of you come with me?'. I was reluctant. I had attempted to read some of Krishnamurthy's writings some ten years previously and had found him complex and difficult. I told my friend, 'You go ahead, we will meet you again tomorrow'. My friend's response was unexpected. He replied, 'Next to my father, Krishnamurthy is the man whom I love most. Why don't you come'. My friend was what one may call a 'good man' - kind, sincere and helpful and it was more because of the regard that we had for our friend than for Krishnamurthy, that my wife and I went to Adyar that evening.

The Theosophical Society at Adyar is set in spacious surroundings.

The talk was scheduled to commence at 5 p.m. in the open air under a large spreading tree. There were about 300-400 persons gathered to hear Krishnamurthy. Many were seated on the ground in front of the small raised dais reserved for the speaker. Behind those who were seated were a few rows of chairs. We sat on the chairs and awaited Krishnamurthy's arrival. Sharp at 5 p.m., a small fair man with chiseled features, dressed in white, walked briskly to the raised platform, seated himself and began talking. There were no introductions.

To this day, I have not forgotten Krishnamurthy's first few words, 'If you already know what I am going to say, you need not have come.' I was lounging in my chair. After all I had come because of my friend. But, at these words, I straightened myself and sat up. Krishnamurthy's talk that evening was on the conditioned mind. He spoke about meditation and the control of thought. Who is the controller and who is the controlled, he asked. There was much that I saw for the first time that evening - it was like coming back to the beginning and knowing it for the first time.

After that occasion, I heard Krishnamurthy again, this time, in Colombo in 1980.

He spoke of time. Thought is time he said. Time was something that had always intrigued me. As a child, at the Galle Face Green in Colombo, I would watch with concern as ships disappeared in the curved horizon of the Indian Ocean. I wondered whether the ships had fallen off the edge. As I grew older, I learnt that the earth was not flat, that it was a globe, that there was no 'edge' and that the ships were safe.

But then, as I traveled back home from Galle Face Green at night, seated in the rear seat of my father's small car, with my parents in front, I would look up at the sky, at the distant stars and wonder what was there beyond the stars - and beyond that - and beyond that... I thought that though I did not know then, I would when I 'grew up'.

When I 'grew up' the answer continued to elude me. Later, I did learn something about Einstein's concept of curved space and the space time continuum. I recognised that Einstein's mathematical equations explained certain physical phenomena, but I still could not 'see' curved space - this seemed to contradict everything that I had taken for granted in the three dimensional world - a three dimensional world with time somehow 'flowing' through it.

Ofcourse, if space was 'curved', then it would have no beginning or end - and there would no 'edge' to fall off. Again, given a space time continuum, there would be no beginning and end to time as well. These I could conceptualise in my mind. Cause and effect would presumably merge in a space time continuum.

"Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there are an infinite number of processes which elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality." from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.112, Walter Kaufmann transl..

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present."
T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

As Yogaswamy, the sage from Jaffna would often say in Tamil:

"எல்லாம் எப்பவோ முடிந்த காரியம்
- everything was over long, long ago."

I felt somewhat like Woody Allen in the film Annie Hall. A mournful looking Woody Allen is taken to the doctor. The doctor inquires cheerfully, 'So what is the trouble, young man?'. Woody Allen looks even more mournful and says, 'The universe is expanding - and it will explode'. I do not recall the exact words of the Doctor's response but the message was clear - 'Stop wasting your time with stupid thoughts and get on with your life.'

And, here Krishnamurthy was quietly insisting that thought is time. I met Krishnamurthy with a few friends on the morning after his lecture in Colombo. We were all seated on the carpeted floor. I asked Krishnamurthy whether he would expand on that which he had said about time. He looked kindly at me, took my hands in his and started talking. It was almost like some one teaching a child to play table tennis by taking the child's hand together with the bat and showing him the feel of the stroke.

Perhaps Krishnamurthy did not want to be quite as brutal as the Zen master who when asked by his pupil 'what is enlightenment' replied 'cowdung'. It is said that the pupil eventually recognised that the words of any teacher, however wise, as to what was enlightenment, would be like the dung that the cow excreted after chewing the cud.

A few months later, I participated as a panelist in a discussion meeting with Krishnaji at Adyar. A Tibetan monk was another participant. I particularly remember the ending of the morning session. Krishnamurthy had talked about the computer, artificial intelligence and the brain for about 20 minutes and as he finished, the entire audience (of about 100) fell into a deep silence - and the silence was pregnant.

In the silence, I was reminded of Krishnamurthy's oft quoted statement: "Reality is the interval between two thoughts". The modern rationalist discourse founded on Descartes' search for certainty and the Cartesian conclusion "I think, therefore I am", seemed somehow far removed from reality.

Irreverently I thought of Peter Sellers in the film 'Party'. Sellers plays the role of an Indian and he is asked by someone: 'Who do you think you are?'. Sellers draws himself up to his full height, looks piercingly at the questioner and replies: 'Sir, in India we do not think, we know who we are!'

Today, the so called certainties of modernism are yielding to the more wholistic approach of the post modern world. Many have begun to grasp the force of reason in Aurobindo's remarks:

"The capital period of my intellectual development was when I could see clearly that what the intellect said might be correct and not correct, that what the intellect justified was true and its opposite was also true. I never admitted a truth in the mind without simultaneously keeping it open to the contrary of it.. And the first result was that the prestige of the intellect was gone."

Krishnamurthy's teachings were summarised with his approval, on 21 October 1980, in this way:

"The core of Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said: 'Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique.He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

Man has built in himself images as a fence of security, religious, political, personal.

These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness,which is common to all mankind. So he is not an individual.

Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a 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.

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution.

When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only 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.

Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence."

The last time that I met with Krishnamurthy was in January 1984. I was in Chennai and I went to hear him at Adyar. I was invited to join Krishnaji at lunch on the following day. It was a simple vegetarian meal and there were four or five of us at the table. I told Krishnaji that he had said something the previous evening and that I had not seen it quite in the same way before. He laughed. I continued: 'You said that the 'I' was always in the past'. Krishnaji's eyes twinkled. He said: 'It clicked, did it?'

Krishnamurthy inquired about the July 1983 incidents in Sri Lanka and he was horrified to learn at first hand about some of the attacks and the resulting plight of the Tamil people. He had been thinking about visiting Sri Lanka at the end of the year but had decided against going.

The conversation at the lunch table was easy and informal. Krishnaji spoke about his love for fast cars in the days of his youth. He related a joke about a Soviet astronaut. There was this Soviet astronaut, he said, who had gone to the moon and returned to Moscow. The astronaut was feted by the Soviet people and the final reception before his world tour was held in the Kremlin. The Kremlin reception rooms, with their high domes, huge chandeliers and plush red carpets were packed to capacity.

The Soviet President, Brezhnev took the astronaut to a quiet corridor and asked: "Tell me, when you went up there, did you see God?". The astronaut, looked around cautiously and replied in a whisper "Yes, I did." Brezhnev said: "I thought as much, but make certain that you do not tell anybody else about this."

I smiled and Krishnamurthy went on. The astronaut left on his world tour and he was given grand receptions in Germany, in England and in the United States. The final reception of the world tour was in the Vatican in Rome. The reception rooms in the Vatican with their high domes, huge chandeliers and plush red carpets were packed to capacity. The Pope invited the astronaut to a secluded corridor and asked: " Tell me, when you went up there, did you see God?"

The astronaut looked around cautiously, and remembering Brezhnev's command, replied: "No, I did not see God." The Pope said: "I thought as much, but please do not tell anybody else about this."

All of us at the table joined with Krishnaji in the laughter. The conversation then turned to the possibility of Krishnamurthy addressing the United Nations.

Krishnaji looked at me and said: "Sir, if you were asked to address the United Nations, what would you say?". I was taken aback at the directness and suddenness of the query. I hesitated. I did not want to make a fool of myself - and appear presumptuous in his presence. I decided to take what appeared to me the cautious option. I replied: "Krishnaji, I do not think that I would have anything to say".

Krishnamurthy's response was quick: "Does that mean that you have nothing to say?" And as I was trying to recover from the force of the body blow, Krishnamurthy delivered the knockout. He said: "Does that mean that you do not care?".

It was a learning process. My 'modesty' was shown up to be pretentious. Many years later in 1987, after the Indo Sri Lanka Accord was signed, I was invited to speak in London on the Accord and its effect on the struggle for Tamil Eelam. I commenced my talk by relating this story about Krishnamurthy and went on to say:

"I must confess that it was with some hesitation that I accepted the invitation to speak this evening. But as I reflected on that meeting with Krishnaji in Adyar, I was persuaded to accept because I cannot deny that I do care about what is happening to us as a people and because it would be wrong for me to say that I have nothing to say about the Tamil struggle and the Indo Sri Lanka Accord."

For me, Jiddu Krishnamurthy will always be the essential gnana yogi, the man who denied that he was a messiah but who spoke and wrote for more than fifty years thereafter, to ever growing audiences and who insisted to the end:

"No man from outside can make you free... No one holds the Key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity...".

Selected Quotations - Jiddu Krishnamurthy
  • It is the truth that frees, not your effort to be free.
  • The authority of another is blinding; only in utter freedom is the Supreme to be found.
  • 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.
  • As long as you have concepts you never see what is true
  • You believe in an atman, because that is the popular thing... you also like to believe there is something very superior in you, which is permanent, which is divine, and so on - which is all an intellectual concept and does not actually alter the ways of your life.
  • You cannot understand after action has taken place, but only in the moment of action itself. You can be fully aware only in action.
  • Contentment and discontent are like the two sides of a coin. To be free from the ache of discontent, the mind must cease to seek contentment.
  • The search for the beyond is merely an escape from what is; and if you want to escape, then religion or God is as good an escape as drink... All escapes are on the same level...
  • Intelligence is not personal, is not the outcome of argument, belief, opinion or reason. Intelligence comes into being when the brain discovers its fallibility, when it discovers what it is capable of, and what it is not.... When (thought) sees that it is incapable of discovering something new, that very perception is the seed of intelligence.
  • Labels seem to give satisfaction. We accept the category to which we are supposed to belong as a satisfying explanation of life. We are worshippers of words and labels; we never seem to go beyond the symbol, to comprehend the worth of the symbol. By calling ourselves this or that, we ensure ourselves against further disturbance, and settle back. One of the curses of ideologies and organized beliefs is the comfort, the deadly gratification they offer. They put us to sleep, and in the sleep we dream, and the dream becomes action. How easily we are distracted! And most of us want to be distracted; most of us are tired out with incessant conflict, and distractions become a necessity, they become more important than 'what is'. Commentaries on Living I: Series One
  • When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. Freedom from the Known, pp. 51-52
  • But even when we are sharpened and quickened intellectually by argument, by discussion, by reading, this does not actually bring about that quality of sensitivity. And you know all those people who are erudite, who read, who theorize, who can discuss brilliantly, are extraordinarily dull people. So I think sensitivity, which destroys mediocrity, is very important to understand. Because most of us are becoming, I am afraid, more mediocre. We are not using that word in any derogative sense at all, but merely observing the fact of mediocrity in the sense of being average, fairly well educated, earning a livelihood and perhaps capable of clever discussion; but this leaves us still bourgeois, mediocre, not only in our attitudes but in our activities. The Awakening of Intelligence
  • The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically, there is nothing in the world that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing. That is a scientific fact, as well as a psychological fact. Because, your leaders�religious and political�and your books�sacred and profane�have all failed, and you are still confused, in misery, in conflict. So, that is an absolute, undeniable fact. " Bombay, Second Public Talk" (1962)
  • Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare�something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state�something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption. Man has always asked the question: what is it all about? Has life any meaning at all? He sees the enormous confusion of life, the brutalities, the revolt, the wars, the endless divisions of religion, ideology and nationality, and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thing we call living, is there anything beyond it? Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this very easily in ourselves. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, 'Tell me all about it�what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?' and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are second hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. And that is what millions of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation, going off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave or wandering from village to village with a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds to conform to an established pattern. But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull through discipline and conformity�such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according to its own distortion. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • The traditional approach is from the periphery inwards, and through time, practice and renunciation, gradually to come upon that inner flower, that inner beauty and love�in fact to do everything to make oneself narrow, petty and shoddy; peel off little by little; take time; tomorrow will do, next life will do�and when at last one comes to the centre one finds there is nothing there, because one's mind has been made incapable, dull and insensitive. Having observed this process, one asks oneself, is there not a different approach altogether�that is, is it not possible to explode from the centre? Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • The world accepts and follows the traditional approach. The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another; we mechanically follow somebody who will assure us a comfortable spiritual life. 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. So if we completely reject, not intellectually but actually, all so-called spiritual authority, all ceremonies, rituals and dogmas, it means that we stand alone and are already in conflict with society; we cease to be respectable human beings. A respectable human being cannot possibly come near to that infinite, immeasurable, reality. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • That is the first thing to learn�not to seek. When you seek you are really only window-shopping. The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • I think there is a difference between the human being and the individual. The individual is a local entity, living in a particular country, belonging to a particular culture, particular society, particular religion. The human being is not a local entity. He is everywhere. If the individual merely acts in a particular corner of the vast field of life, then his action is totally unrelated to the whole. So one has to bear in mind that we are talking of the whole not the part, because in the greater the lesser is, but in the lesser the greater is not. The individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity, satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concerned with the total welfare, the total misery and total confusion of the world. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • We human beings are what we have been for millions of years�colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear and gentleness; we are both violence and peace. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, and the structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals. The outward social structure is the result of the inward psychological structure of our human relationships, for the individual is the result of the total experience, knowledge and conduct of man. Each one of us is the storehouse of all the past. The individual is the human who is all mankind. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • As human beings living in this monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves, can this society, based on competition, brutality and fear, come to an end? Not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actual fact, so that the mind is made fresh, new and innocent and can bring about a different world altogether? It can only happen, I think, if each one of us recognises the central fact that we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen to live or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world.
    We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • What can a human being do�what can you and I do�to create a completely different society? We are asking ourselves a very serious question. Is there anything to be done at all? What can we do? Will somebody tell us? People have told us. The so-called spiritual leaders, who are supposed to understand these things better than we do, have told us by trying to twist and mould us into a new pattern, and that hasn't led us very far; sophisticated and learned men have told us and that has led us no further. We have been told that all paths lead to truth�you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door�which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd. Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to�then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are�your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • You cannot depend upon anybody. There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you�your relationship with others and with the world�there is nothing else. When you realize this, it either brings great despair, from which comes cynicism and bitterness, or, in facing the fact that you and nobody else is responsible for the world and for yourself, for what you think, what you feel, how you act, all self-pity goes. Normally we thrive on blaming others, which is a form of self-pity. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • It is important to understand from the very beginning that I am not formulating any philosophy or any theological structure of ideas or theological concepts. It seems to me that all ideologies are utterly idiotic. What is important is not a philosophy of life but to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life, inwardly and outwardly. If you observe very closely what is taking place and examine it, you will see that it is based on an intellectual conception, and the intellect is not the whole field of existence; it is a fragment, and a fragment, however cleverly put together, however ancient and traditional, is still a small part of existence whereas we have to deal with the totality of life. Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • When we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this seems to me all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody need tell you how to look. You just look. Can you then, seeing this whole picture, seeing it not verbally but actually, can you easily, spontaneously, transform yourself? That is the real issue. Is it possible to bring about a complete revolution in the psyche? Freedom From The Known (1969)
  • Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind. Freedom From The Known (1969)
Foreword by Aldous Huxley to The First and Last Freedom by Jiddu Krishnamurthy
Aldous HuxleyMan is an amphibian who lives simultaneously in two worlds--the given and the home-made, the world of matter, life and consciousness and the world of symbols. In our thinking we make use of a great variety of symbol-systems--linguistic, mathematical, pictorial, musical, ritualistic. Without such symbol-systems we should have no art, no science, no law, no philosophy, not so much as the rudiments of civilization: in other words, we should be animals.

Symbols, then, are indispensable. But symbols--as the history of our own and every other age makes so abundantly clear--can also be fatal. Consider, for example, the domain of science on the one hand, the domain of politics and religion on the other.

Thinking in terms of, and acting in response to, one set of symbols, we have come, in some small measure, to understand and control the elementary forces of nature. Thinking in terms of, and acting in response to, another set of symbols, we use these forces as instruments of mass murder and collective suicide.

In the first case the explanatory symbols were well chosen, carefully analysed and progressively adapted to the emergent facts of physical existence. In the second case symbols originally ill-chosen were never subjected to thorough-going analysis and never re-formulated so as to harmonize with the emergent facts of human existence. Worse still, these misleading symbols were everywhere treated with a wholly unwarranted respect, as though, in some mysterious way, they were more real than the realities to which they referred.

In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events; on the contrary, things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.

Up to the present symbols have been used realistically only in those fields which we do not feel to be supremely important. In every situation involving our deeper impulses we have insisted on using symbols, not merely unrealistically, but idolatrously, even insanely.

The result is that we have been able to commit, in cold blood and over long periods of time, acts of which the brutes are capable only for brief moments and at the frantic height of rage, desire or fear.

Because they use and worship symbols, men can become idealists; and, being idealists, they can transform the animal's intermittent greed into the grandiose imperialisms of a Rhodes or a J. P. Morgan; the animal's intermittent love of bullying into Stalinism or the Spanish Inquisition; the animal's intermittent attachment to its territory into the calculated frenzies of nationalism.

Happily, they can also transform the animal's intermittent kindliness into the life-long charity of an Elizabeth Fry or a Vincent de Paul; the animal's intermittent devotion to its mate and its young into that reasoned and persistent co-operation which, up to the present, has proved strong enough to save the world from the consequences of the other, the disastrous kind of idealism. Will it go on being able to save the world?

The question cannot be answered. All we can say is that, with the idealists of nationalism holding the A-bomb, the odds in favour of the idealists of co-operation and charity have sharply declined.

Even the best cookery book is no substitute for even the worst dinner. The fact seems sufficiently obvious. And yet, throughout the ages, the most profound philosophers, the most learned and acute theologians have constantly fallen into the error of identifying their purely verbal constructions with facts, or into the yet more enormous error of imagining that symbols are somehow more real than what they stand for.

Their word-worship did not go without protest. "Only the spirit," said St. Paul, "gives life; the letter kills." "And why," asks Eckhart, "why do you prate of God? Whatever you say of God is untrue." At the other end of the world the author of one of the Mahayana sutras affirmed that "the truth was never preached by the Buddha, seeing that you have to realize it within yourself".

Such utterances were felt to be profoundly subversive, and respectable people ignored them. The strange idolatrous over-estimation of words and emblems continued unchecked. Religions declined; but the old habit of formulating creeds and imposing belief in dogmas persisted even among the atheists.

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 psycho-physical 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.

In this volume of selections from the writings and recorded talks of Krishnamurti, the reader will find a clear contemporary statement of the fundamental human problem, together with an invitation to solve it in the only way in which it can be solved--for and by himself. The collective solutions, to which so many so desperately pin their faith, are never adequate.

"To understand the misery and confusion that exist within ourselves, and so in the world, we must first find clarity within ourselves, and that clarity comes about through right thinking. This clarity is not to be organized, for it cannot be exchanged with another. Organized group thought is merely repetitive. Clarity is not the result of verbal assertion, but of intense self-awareness and right thinking. Right thinking is not the outcome of or mere cultivation of the intellect, nor is it conformity to pattern, however worthy and noble. Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self- knowledge, what you think is not true."

This fundamental theme is developed by Krishnamurti in passage after passage. "There is hope in men, not in society, not in systems, organized religious systems, but in you and in me."

Organized religions, with their mediators, their sacred books, their dogmas, their hierarchies and rituals, offer only a false solution to the basic problem.

"When you quote the Bhagavad Gita, or the Bible, or some Chinese Sacred Book, surely you are merely repeating, are you not? And what you are repeating is not the truth. It is a lie: for truth cannot be repeated."

A lie can be extended, propounded and repeated, but not truth; and when you repeat truth, it ceases to be truth, and therefore sacred books are unimportant.

It is through self-knowledge, not through belief in somebody else's symbols, that a man comes to the eternal reality, in which his being is grounded. Belief in the complete adequacy and superlative value of any given symbol-system leads not to liberation, but to history, to more of the same old disasters.

"Belief inevitably separates. If you have a belief, or when you seek security in your particular belief, you become separated from those who seek security in some other form of belief. All organized beliefs are based on separation, though they may preach brotherhood."

The man who has successfully solved the problem of his relations with the two worlds of data and symbols, is a man who has no beliefs.

With regard to the problems of practical life he entertains a series of working hypotheses, which serve his purposes, but are taken no more seriously than any other kind of tool or instrument.

With regard to his fellow beings and to the reality in which they are grounded, he has the direct experiences of love and insight. It is to protect himself from beliefs that Krishnamurti has "not read any sacred literature, neither the Bhagavad Gita nor the Upanishads".

The rest of us do not even read sacred literature; we read our favourite newspapers, magazines and detective stories.

This means that we approach the crisis of our times, not with love and insight, but "with formulas, with systems"--and pretty poor formulas and systems at that. But "men of good will should not have formulas"; for formulas lead, inevitably, only to "blind thinking".

Addiction to formulas is almost universal. Inevitably so; for "our system of up-bringing is based upon what to think, not on how to think".

We are brought up as believing and practising members of some organization--the Communist or the Christian, the Moslem, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Freudian. Consequently

"you respond to the challenge, which is always new, according to an old pattern; and therefore your response has no corresponding validity, newness, freshness. If you respond as a Catholic or a Communist, you are responding--are you not?--according to a patterned thought. Therefore your response has no significance. And has not the Hindu the Mussulman, the Buddhist, the Christian created this problem? As the new religion is the worship of the State, so the old religion was the worship of an idea."

If you respond to a challenge according to the old conditioning, your response will not enable you to understand the new challenge. Therefore what "one has to do, in order to meet the new challenge, is to strip oneself completely, denude oneself entirely of the background and meet the challenge anew".

In other words symbols should never be raised to the rank of dogmas, nor should any system be regarded as more than a provisional convenience. Belief in formulas and action in accordance with these beliefs cannot bring us to a solution of our problem. "It is only through creative understanding of ourselves that there can be a creative world, a happy world, a world in which ideas do not exist."

A world in which ideas do not exist would be a happy world, because it would be a world without the powerful conditioning forces which compel men to undertake inappropriate action, a world without the hallowed dogmas in terms of which the worst crimes are justified, the greatest follies elaborately rationalized.

An education that teaches us not how but what to think is an education that calls for a governing class of pastors and masters. But "the very idea of leading somebody is anti-social and anti-spiritual". To the man who exercises it, leadership brings gratification of the craving for power; to those who are led, it brings the gratification of the desire for certainty and security. The guru provides a kind of dope.

But, it may be asked, "What are you doing? Are you not acting as our guru?" "Surely," Krishnamurti answers,

"I am not acting as your guru, because, first of all, I am not giving you any gratification. I am not telling you what you should do from moment to moment, or from day to day, but I am just pointing out something to you; you can take it or leave it, depending on you, not on me. I do not demand a thing from you, neither your worship, nor your flattery, nor your insults, nor your gods. I say, This is a fact; take it or leave it. And most of you will leave it, for the obvious reason that you do not find gratification in it."

What is it precisely that Krishnamurti offers? What is it that we can take if we wish, but in all probability shall prefer to leave? It is not, as we have seen, a system of beliefs, a catalogue of dogmas, a set of ready-made notions and ideals. It is not leadership, not mediation, not spiritual direction, not even example. It is not ritual, not a church, not a code, not uplift or any form of inspirational twaddle.

Is it, perhaps, self-discipline? No; for self-discipline is not, as a matter of brute fact, the way in which our problem can be solved. In order to find the solution, the mind must open itself to reality, must confront the givenness of the outer and inner worlds without preconceptions or restrictions. (God's service is perfect freedom. Conversely, perfect freedom is the service of God.) In becoming disciplined, the mind undergoes no radical change; it is the old self, but "tethered, held in control".

Self-discipline joins the list of things which Krishnamurti does not offer. Can it be, then, that what he offers is prayer? Again, the reply is in the negative. "Prayer may bring you the answer you seek; but that answer may come from your unconscious, or from the general reservoir, the store-house of all your demands. The answer is not the still voice of God."

Consider, Krishnamurti goes on,

"what happens when you pray. By constant repetition of certain phrases, and by controlling your thoughts, the mind becomes quiet, doesn't it? At least, the conscious mind becomes quiet. You kneel as the Christians do, or you sit as the Hindus do, and you repeat and repeat, and through that repetition the mind becomes quiet. In that quietness there is the intimation of something. That intimation of something, for which you have prayed, may be from the unconscious, or it may be the response of your memories. But, surely, it is not the voice of reality; for the voice of reality must come to you; it cannot be appealed to, you cannot pray to it.

You cannot entice it into your little cage by doing puja, bhajan and all the rest of it, by offering it flowers, by placating it, by suppressing yourself or emulating others. Once you have learned the trick of quieting the mind, through the repetition of words, and of receiving hints in that quietness, the danger is--unless you are fully alert as to whence those hints come--that you will be caught, and then prayer becomes a substitute for the search for Truth. That which you ask for you get; but it is not the truth. If you want, and if you petition, you will receive, but you will pay for it in the end."

From prayer we pass to yoga, and yoga, we find, is another of the things which Krishnamurti does not offer. For yoga is concentration, and concentration is exclusion.

"You build a wall of resistance by concentration on a thought which you have chosen, and you try to ward off all the others."

What is commonly called meditation is merely "the cultivation of resistance, of exclusive concentration on an idea of our choice". But what makes you choose?

"What makes you say this is good, true, noble, and the rest is not? Obviously the choice is based on pleasure, reward or achievement; or it is merely a reaction of one's conditioning or tradition. Why do you choose at all? Why not examine every thought? When you are interested in the many, why choose one? Why not examine every interest? Instead of creating resistance, why not go into each interest as it arises, and not merely concentrate on one idea, one interest? After all, you are made up of many interests, you have many masks, consciously and unconsciously. Why choose one and discard all the others, in combating which you spend all your energies, thereby creating resistance, conflict and friction.

Whereas if you consider every thought as it arises--every thought, not just a few thoughts--then there is no exclusion. But it is an arduous thing to examine every thought. Because, as you are looking at one thought, another slips in. But if you are aware without domination or justification, you will see that, by merely looking at that thought, no other thought intrudes. It is only when you condemn, compare, approximate, that other thoughts enter in."

"Judge not that ye be not judged." The gospel precept applies to our dealings with ourselves no less than to our dealings with others. Where there is judgement, where there is comparison and condemnation, openness of mind is absent; there can be no freedom from the tyranny of symbols and systems, no escape from the past and the environment.

Introspection with a predetermined purpose, self-examination within the framework of some traditional code, some set of hallowed postulates-- these do not, these cannot help us.

There is a transcendent spontaneity of life, a `creative Reality', as Krishnamurti calls it, which reveals itself as immanent only when the perceiver's mind is in a state of `alert passivity', of `choiceless awareness'. Judgement and comparison commit us irrevocably to duality.

Only choiceless awareness can lead to non-duality, to the reconciliation of opposites in a total understanding and a total love. Ama et fac quod vis. If you love, you may do what you will. But if you start by doing what you will, or by doing what you don't will in obedience to some traditional system or notions, ideals and prohibitions, you will never love.

The liberating process must begin with choiceless awareness of what you will and of your reactions to the symbol-system which tells you that you ought, or ought not, to will it. Through this choiceless awareness, as it penetrates the successive layers of the ego and its associated sub- conscious, will come love and understanding, but of another order that that with which we are ordinarily familiar.

This choiceless awareness--at every moment and in all the circumstances of life--is the only effective meditation. All other forms of yoga lead either to the blind thinking which results from self-discipline, or to some kind of self-induced rapture, some form of false samadhi. The true liberation is "an inner freedom of creative Reality".

This

"is not a gift; it is to be discovered and experienced. It is not an acquisition to be gathered to yourself to glorify yourself. It is a state of being, as silence, in which there is no becoming, in which there is completeness. This creativeness may not necessarily seek expression; it is not a talent that demands outward manifestation. You need not be a great artist or have an audience; if you seek these, you will miss the inward Reality. It is neither a gift, nor is it the outcome of talent; it is to be found, this imperishable treasure, where thought frees itself from lust, ill-will and ignorance, where thought frees itself from worldliness and personal craving to be. It is to be experienced through right thinking and meditation."

Choiceless self-awareness will bring us to the creative Reality which underlies all our destructive make-believes, to the tranquil wisdom which is always there, in spite of ignorance, in spite of the knowledge which is merely ignorance in another form. Knowledge is an affair of symbols and is, all too often, a hindrance to wisdom, to the uncovering of the self from moment to moment. A mind that has come to the stillness of wisdom

"shall know being, shall know what it is to love. Love is neither personal nor impersonal. Love is love, not to be defined or described by the mind as exclusive or inclusive. Love is its own eternity; it is the real, the supreme, the immeasurable."

A Brief Introduction to the Work of Krishnamurti - Professor David Bohm
David BohmMy first acquaintance with Krishnamurti's work was in 1959 when I read his book "First and Last Freedom."

What particularly aroused my interest was his deep insight into the question of the observer and the observed.

This question had long been close to the centre of my own work, as a theoretical physicist, who was primarily interested in the meaning of the quantum theory.

In this theory, for the first time in the development of physics, the notion that these two cannot be separated has been put forth as necessary for the understanding of the fundamental laws of matter in general.

Because of this, as well as because the book contained many other deep insights I felt that it was urgent for me to talk with Krishnamurti directly and personally as soon as possible. And when I first met him on one of his visits to London, I was struck by the great ease of communication with him, which was made possible by the intense energy with which he listened and by the freedom from self-protective reservations and barriers with which he responded to what I had to say.

As a person who works in science I felt completely at home with this sort of response, because it was in essence of the same quality as that which I had met in these contacts with other scientists with whom there had been a very close meeting of minds. And here, I think especially of Einstein who showed a similar intensity and absence of barrier in a number of discussions that took place between him and me. After this, I began to meet Krishnamurti regularly and to discuss with him whenever he came to London.

We began an association which has since then become closer as I became interested in the schools, which were set up through his initiative.

In these discussions, we went quite deeply into many questions which concerned me in my scientific work. We probed into the nature of space and time, and of the universal, both with regard to external nature and with regard to mind.

But then, we went on to consider the general disorder and confusion that pervades the consciousness of mankind. It is here that I encountered what I feel to be Krishnamurti's major discovery.

What he was seriously proposing is that all this disorder, which is the root cause of such widespread sorrow and misery, and which prevents human beings from properly working together, has its root in the fact that we are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought. Or to put it differently it may be said that we do not see what is actually happening, when we are engaged in the activity of thinking.

Through close attention to and observation of this activity of thought, Krishnamurti feels that he directly perceives that thought is a material process, which is going on inside of the human being in the brain and nervous system as a whole.

Ordinarily, we tend to be aware mainly of the content of this thought rather than of how it actually takes place. One can illustrate this point by considering what happens when one is reading a book. Usually, one is attentive almost entirely to the meaning of what is being read. However, one can also be aware of the book itself, of its constitution as made up out of pages that can be turned, of the printed words and of the ink, of the fabric of the paper, etc. Similarly, we may be aware of the actual structure and function of the process of thought, and not merely of its content.

How can such as awareness come about? Krishnamurti proposes that this requires what he calls meditation.

Now the word meditation has been given a wide range of different and even contradictory meanings, many of them involving rather superficial kinds of mysticism.

Krishnamurti has in mind a definite and clear notion when he uses this word. One can obtain a valuable indication of this meaning by considering the derivation of the word. (The roots of words, in conjunction with their present generally accepted meanings often yield surprising insight into their deeper meanings.)

The English word meditation is based on the Latin root "med" which is, "to measure." The present meaning of this word is "to reflect," "to ponder" (i.e. to weigh or measure), and "to give close attention." Similarly the Sanskrit word for meditation, which is dhyana, is closely related to "dhyati," meaning "to reflect." So, at this rate, to meditate would be, "to ponder, to reflect, while giving close attention to what is actually going on as one does so."

This is perhaps what Krishnamurti means by the beginning of meditation. That is to say, one gives close attention to all that is happening in conjunction with the actual activity of thought, which is the underlying source of the general disorder.

One does this without choice, without criticism, without acceptance or rejection of what is going on. And all of this takes place along with reflections on the meaning of what one is learning about the activity of thought. (It is perhaps rather like reading a book in which the pages have been scrambled up, and being intensely aware of this disorder, rather than just "trying to make sense" of the confused content that arises when one just accepts the pages as they happen to come.)

Krishnamurti has observed that the very act of meditation will, in itself, bring order to the activity of thought without the intervention of will, choice, decision, or any other action of the "thinker." As such order comes, the noise and chaos which are the usual background of our consciousness die out, and the mind becomes generally silent. (Thought arises only when needed for some genuinely valid purpose, and then stops, until needed again.)

In this silence, Krishnamurti says that something new and creative happens, something that cannot be conveyed in words, but that is of extraordinary significance for the whole of life. So he does not attempt to communicate this verbally, but rather, he asks of those who are interested that they explore the question of meditation directly for themselves, through actual attention to the nature of thought.

Without attempting to probe into this deeper meaning of meditation, one can however say that meditation, in Krishnamurti's sense of the word, can bring order to our overall mental activity, and this may be a key factor in bringing about an end to the sorrow, the misery, the chaos and confusion, that have, over the ages, been the lot of mankind, and that are still generally continuing, without visible prospect of fundamental change, for the forseeable future.

Krishnamurti's work is permeated by what may be called the essence of the scientific approach, when this is considered in its very highest and purest form.

Thus, he begins from a fact, this fact about the nature of our thought processes. This fact is established through close attention, involving careful listening to the process of consciousness, and observing it assiduously.

In this, one is constantly learning, and out of this learning comes insight, into the overall or general nature of the process of thought. This insight is then tested. First, one sees whether it holds together in a rational order. And then one sees whether it leads to order and coherence, on what flows out of it in life as a whole.

Krishnamurti constantly emphasizes that he is in no sense an authority. He has made certain discoveries, and he is simply doing his best to make these discoveries accessible to all those who are able to listen. His work does not contain a body of doctrine, nor does he offer techniques or methods, for obtaining a silent mind. He is not aiming to set up any new system of religious belief. Rather, it is up to each human being to see if he can discover for himself that to which Krishnamurti is calling attention, and to go on from there to make new discoveries on his own.

It is clear then that an introduction, such as this, can at best show how Krishnamurti's work has been seen by a particular person, a scientist, such as myself. To see in full what Krishnamurti means, it is necessary, of course, to go on and to read what he actually says, with that quality of attention to the totality of one's responses, inward and outward, which we have been discussing here.

Copyright � Krishnamurti Foundation of America P.O. Box 1560, Ojai, CA 93023

Biographical Notes on David Bohm

David Bohm was for over twenty years Professor of Theoretical Physics at Birkbeck College, University of London. Since receiving this doctorate at the University of California Berkeley, he has taught and done research at U.C., Princeton University, University de Sao Paulo, Haifa and Bristol University.

His publications include: Quantum Theory; Causality and Chance in Modern Physics; one chapter in Observation and Interpretation; Special Theory of Realitivity; and Wholeness and the Implicate Order; Unfolding Meaning; and various papers in Theoretical Physics, British Journal for Philosophy of Science, and others.

Several of David Bohm's discussions with Krishnamurti appear in the following books published by Harper and Row: Truth and Actuality; The Wholeness of Life; The Ending of Time; The Future of Humanity. In addition there are audio and video tapes of some discussions.

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Books on Line
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 1 - The Art of Listening
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 2 - What Is Right Action?
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 3 - The Mirror of Relationship
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 4 - The Observer Is the Observed
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 5 - Choiceless Awareness
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 6 - The Origin of Conflict
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 7 - Tradition and Creativity
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 8 - What Are You Seeking?
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 9 - The Answer Is in the Problem
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 10 - A Light to Yourself
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 11 - Crisis in Consciousness
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 12 - There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 13 - A Psychological Revolution
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 14 - The New Mind
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 15 - The Dignity of Living
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 16 - The Beauty of Death
The Collected Works Of J. Krishnamurti - Volume 17 - Perennial Questions
Commentaries On Living 1
Commentaries On Living 2
Commentaries On Living 3
Action and Relationship
The First And Last Freedom

Foreword by Aldous Huxley - Chapter 1 - Introduction - Chapter 2 - What Are We Seeking - Chapter 3 - Individual And Society - Chapter 4 - Self-Knowledge - Chapter 5 - Action And Idea - Chapter 6 - Belief - Chapter 7 - Effort - Chapter 8 - Contradiction - Chapter 9 - What Is The Self - Chapter 10 - Fear - Chapter 11 - Simplicity - Chapter 12 - Awareness - Chapter 13 - Desire - Chapter 14 - Relationship And Isolation - Chapter 15 - The Thinker And The Thought - Chapter 16 - Can Thinking Solve Our Problems - Chapter 17 - The Function Of The Mind - Chapter 18 - Self-Deception - Chapter 19 - Self-Centred Activity - Chapter 20 - Time And Transformation - Chapter 21 - Power And Realization -

- Question and Answers -

Question 1 - On The Present Crisis - Question 2 - On Nationalism - Question 3 - Why Spiritual Teachers? - Question 4 - On Knowledge - Question 5 - On Discipline - Question 6 - On Loneliness - Question 7 - On Suffering - Question 8 - On Awareness - Question 9 - On Relationship - Question 10 - On War - Question 11 - On Fear - Question 12 - On Boredom And Interest - Question 13 - On Hate - Question 14 - On Gossip - Question 15 - On Criticism - Question 16 - On Belief In God - Question 17 - On Memory - Question 18 - Surrender To What Is - Question 19 - On Prayer And Meditation - Question 20 - On The Conscious And Unconscious Mind - Question 21 - On Sex - Question 22 - On Love - Question 23 - On Death - Question 24 - On Time - Question 25 - On Action Without Idea - Question 26 - On The Old And The New - Question 27 - On Naming - Question 28 - On The Known And The Unknown - Question 29 - Truth And Lie - Question 30 - On God - Question 31 - On Immediate Realization - Question 32 - On Simplicity - Question 33 - On Superficiality - Question 34 - On Triviality - Question 35 - On The Stillness Of The Mind - Question 36 - On The Meaning Of Life - Question 37 - On The Confusion Of The Mind - Question 38 - On Transformation -

Eduction And The Significance Of Life
Eight Conversations
Five Conversations
Flight Of The Eagle
Freedom From The Known

- Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7 - Chapter 8 - Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 - Chapter 15 - Chapter 16

Life Ahead
Think On These Things
Talks In Europe 1967
Talks And Dialogues Saanen 1967
Talks And Dialogues 1968
Talks In Europe 1968
Talks With American Students 1968
Talks And Dialogues 1970
Sri Lanka Talks 1980
Talks In Saanen 1974
The Brockwood Park Talks And Discussions 1969
Krishnamurti In India 1970-71
Krishnamurti In India 1974-75
Washington DC Talks 1985
Meditations 1969
The Only Revolution
You Are The World
Tradition And Revolution
The Urgency Of Change
The Impossible Question
The Awakening of Intelligence
A Dialogue with Oneself
Beginnings of Learning
A Wholly Different Way Of Living - Conversations With Allan W. Anderson
Beyond Violence
Exploration Into Insight
Inward Flowering
Wholeness Of Life
Krishnamurti On Education
Education as Service
Truth And Actuality
Krishnamurti's Journal
Krishnamurti's Notebook
The Way Of Intelligence
The Book Of Life
The World Of Peace
From Darkness To Light
Krishnamurti To Himself
Last Talks At Saanen 1985
Krishnamurti At Los Alamos
Letters To Schools Volume 1
Letters To Schools Volume 2
Mind Without Measure
Network Of Thought
On Love
Questions And Answers
The Book Of Oneself
The Ending Of Time - Conversations with David Bohm
The Future Of Humanity, Conversations With David Bohm
The Future Is Now
The Flame Of Attention
663 Later- and Unpublished Text

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