Truth is a Pathless Land

Meeting Jiddu Krishnamurti
Nadesan Satyendra, 10 May 1998

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..

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...".

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.

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 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 -

- 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