1. Spirituality:
We eventually learn
that spirituality is not about leaving life's problems behind,
but about continually confronting them
with honesty and courage.
It is about ending our feeling of separation from others
by healing our relationships with parents, co-workers,and friends.
It is about bringing heightened awareness and compassion
to our family life, careers, and community service.
2. Inward Beauty:
To have inward beauty, there must be complete abandonment;
the sense of not being held, of no restraint, no defence, no resistence;
but abandonment becomes chaotic if there is no austerity with it.
And do we know what it means to be austere,
to be satisfied with
little
and not to think in terms of 'more'?
There must be this abandonment with deep inward austerity --
the austerity that is extraordinarily simple
because the mind is not acquiring, gaining,
not thinking in terms of 'the
more'.
It is the simplicity born of abandonment
with austerity that brings about the state of creative beauty.
But if there is no love, you cannot be simple, you cannot be
austere.
You may talk about simplicity and austerity,
but without love they are merely a form of compulsion,
and therefore there is no abandonment.
Beauty obviously includes beauty of form;
but without inward beauty,
the mere sensual appreciation of beauty of form
leads to degradation, disintegration.
3. Beauty is, where you
are not:
Do you have a sense of beauty in your life, or is it mediocre,
meaningless,
an everlasting struggle from morning until night?
What is beauty?
It isn't
a sensual question, nor a sexual question.
It is a very serious question
because without beauty in your heart,
you
cannot flower in goodness.
Have you ever looked at a mountain or the blue sea
without chattering,
without making noise,
really paying attention to the blue sea,
the beauty of the water, the
beauty of light on a sheet of water?
When you see the extraordinary beauty of the earth,
its rivers, lakes,
mountains,
what actually takes place?
What takes place when you look at something
which is actually marvellously
beautiful:
a statue, a poem, a lily in the pond, or a well-kept lawn?
At that moment, the very majesty of a mountain makes you forget yourself.
Have you ever been in that position?
If you have, you have seen that then you don't exist,
only that
grandeur exists.
But a few seconds later or a minute later,
the whole cycle begins, the
confusion, the chatter.
So beauty is, where you are not.
It is a tragedy if you don't see
this.
Truth is, where you are not.
Beauty is, love is, where you are not.
We are not capable of looking
at this extraordinary thing called truth.
4.
To look is one of the most difficult things in life:
To look is one of the most difficult things in life -
or to listen;
to
look and listen are the same.
If your eyes are blinded with your worries,
you cannot see the beauty of
the sunset.
Most of us have lost touch with nature.
Civilization is tending more and
more towards large cities.
We are becoming more and more an urban people,
living in crowded
apartments and having very little space
even to look at the sky of an evening and morning,
and therefore we are
losing touch with a great deal of beauty.
I don't know if you have noticed
how few of us look at a sunrise or a
sunset or the moonlight
or the reflection of light on water.
Having lost touch with nature
we naturally tend to develop intellectual
capacities.
We read a great many books, go to a great many museums and concerts,
watch
television and have many other entertainments.
We quote endlessly from
other people's ideas
and think and talk a great deal about art.
Why is it that we depend so much upon art?
Is it a form of escape, of
stimulation?
If you are directly in contact with nature,
if you watch the movement of a
bird on the wing,
see the beauty of every movement of the sky,
watch the
shadows on the hills or the beauty on the face of another,
do you think you will want to go to any museum to look at any picture?
5.
One has to find out for oneself what it means to die;
then there is no
fear:
How does one find out about this strange thing that we all have to meet
one day or another?
Can you die psychologically today, die to everything that you have known?
For instance:
to die to your pleasure, to your attachment, your dependence,
to end it without arguing, without
rationalizing,
without trying to find ways and means of avoiding it.
Do
you know what it means to die,
not physically, but psychologically,
inwardly?
Which means to put an end to that which has continuity;
to put an end to
your ambition, because
that's what's going to happen when you die, isn't it?
You can't carry it
over and sit next to God!
When you actually die,
you have to end so many things without any
argument.
You can't say to death,
"Let me finish my job, let me finish my book,
all the things I have
not done,
let me heal the hurts which I have given others" —
you have no
time.
So can you find out how to live a life now, today,
in which there is
always an ending to everything that you began?
Not in your office of
course, but inwardly
to end all the knowledge that you have gathered —
knowledge being your experiences, your memories, your hurts,
the
comparative way of living, comparing yourself always with somebody else.
To end all that every day,
so that the next day your mind is fresh and young.
Such a mind can never be hurt,
and that is
innocence.
One has to find out for oneself what it means to die;
then there is no
fear,
therefore every day is a new day —
and I really mean this, one can do this —
so that your mind and your
eyes see life as something totally new.
That is eternity.
That is the quality of the mind that has come upon this
timeless state,
because it has known what it means to die every day
to everything it has
collected during the day.
Surely, in that there is love.
Love is something totally new every day,
but pleasure is not;
pleasure has continuity.
Love is always new and therefore, it is its own
eternity.
6. Intelligence, not
intellect:
There is a vast distinction between intellect and intelligence.
Intellect is merely thought functioning independently of emotion.
When intellect, irrespective of emotion, is trained in any particular
direction,
one may have great intellect, but one does not have intelligence,
because in intelligence there is the inherent capacity
to feel as well as
to reason;
in intelligence both capacities are equally present,
intensely and
harmoniously.
7. On the interval
between thoughts:
If you watch very carefully,
you will see that though the response, the
movement of thought, seems so swift,
there are gaps, there are intervals between thoughts.
Between two
thoughts there is a period of silence
which is not related to the thought process.
If you observe you will see
that that period of silence,
that interval, is not of time;
the discovery of that interval, the full experiencing of
that interval,
liberates you from conditioning—
or rather it does not liberate 'you'
but there is liberation from
conditioning.
It is only when the mind is not giving continuity to thought,
when it
is still with a stillness that is not induced,
that is without any causation—
it is only then that there can be freedom
from the background.
8. Truth is a pathless
land:
Truth is a pathless land;
you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever,
by any religion, by any sect.
9. Truth is eternally
there:
Truth is in everyone;
it is not far, it is not near;
it is eternally there.
10. You must climb
towards the Truth:
You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley.
If you would attain to the mountain-top
you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps,
unafraid of the dangerous precipices.
You must climb towards the Truth,
it cannot be "stepped down" or organized for you.
11. On Organizations:
An organization becomes a framework
into which its members can conveniently fit.
They no longer strive after Truth or the mountain-top,
but rather carve for themselves
a convenient niche in which they put
themselves,
or let the organization place them,
and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.
If an organization be created
to lead man to spirituality,
it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage,
and must cripple the individual,
and prevent him from growing,
from establishing his uniqueness,
which lies in the discovery for himself
of that absolute, unconditioned Truth.
No man from outside can make you free;
nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause,
make you free;
nor can forming yourselves into an organization,
nor throwing yourselves into works,
make you free.
You use a typewriter to write letters,
but you do not put it on an altar and worship it.
But that is what you are doing
when organizations become your chief concern.
"How many members are there in it?"
That is the first question I am asked by all newspaper reporters.
"How many followers have you?
By their number we shall judge
whether what you say is true or
false."
I do not know how many there are.
I am not concerned with that.
As I said, if there were even one man who had been set free,
that were
enough.
You have the idea that
only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness.
No one holds it. 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.
12. Barriers to
understanding:
Your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you.
You are not willing to face things as they are.
You want to have your own gods -- new gods instead of the old,
new religions instead of the old, new forms instead of the old--
all equally valueless, all barriers, all limitations, all crutches.
Instead of old spiritual distinctions, you have new spiritual
distinctions;
instead of old worships, you have new worships.
You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else,
for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone
else.
Your prejudices, your fears, your authorities,
your churches new and
old - -
all these, I maintain, are a barrier to understanding.
I cannot make myself clearer than this.
13. Love has no pain
or pleasure:
All sentiment, all emotions have to do with thought
and therefore, lead to pleasure and pain.
Love has no pain, no sorrow,
because it is not the outcome of pleasure or desire.
14. Envy and jealousy:
Envy and jealousy are not love
and I wipe them out;
I don't go on talking about how to wipe them out
and in the meantime continue to be envious -
I actually wipe them out
as the rain washes the dust of many days off a leaf,
I just wash them away.
15. Sentiment
and emotion breed cruelty:
Sentiment and emotion breed cruelty.
Have you ever looked at it?
Identification with the rag called the national flag
is an emotional and sentimental factor
and for that factor, you are willing to kill another -
and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor?
One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in,
Love is not.
It is emotion and sentiment that breed the cruelty of like and dislike.
16. How
is it possible for the mind to be free?
How is it possible for the mind to be free?
To be free, the mind must not only see and understand
its pendulum-like
swing between the past and the future
but also be aware of the interval between thoughts...
If you watch very carefully, you will see that
though the response, the movement of thought, seems so swift,
there are gaps, there are intervals between thoughts.
Between two thoughts there is a period of silence
which is not related to the thought process.
If you observe you will see
that
the period of silence, that interval, is not of time
and the discovery of that interval, the full experiencing of that
interval,
liberates you from conditioning or rather it does not liberate 'you'
but there is liberation from conditioning....
It is only when the mind is not giving continuity to thought,
when it is still with a stillness that is not induced, that is without any
causation,
it is only then that there can be freedom from the background.
17. The Future is Now:
Speech at the "Order of the Star", which the Theosophic
Society had founded for him - expecting him to be a new world teacher:
"I repeat that I have no disciples. Each one of you is a disciple who
understands the truth and doesn't follow any single person ... The truth
doesn't give hope, it gives understanding .. I claim also that all
ceremonials are superfluous for spiritual growth ... When you want to
search the truth, you have to exceed the limitations of the human mind and
heart widely and find it there, and this truth is within yourself. Isn't
it much simpler to make life itself a goal, instead of having messengers,
gurus who must inevitably narrow the truth and thus deny it ... I claim
that liberation is possible at each stage of evolution for a human who
understands, and that it is not necessary to worship the stages, as you
are doing it ... Don't quote me as an authority later. I refuse to be your
crutch. I will not let you put me into a cage for your admiration. When
you take the fresh air from the top of the mountain into a small chamber,
the freshness of this air will vanish, and stagnation is the result ... I
have never said there is no god, I have said there is only god as it is
manifest within you. But I will not use the word "god" ... I
prefer to call it "life" ... Of course there is neither the good
nor the bad. The good is what you don't fear, the bad is what you fear.
Thus when you destroy the fear, you will be full of spirituality ... When
you love life and put this love before everything else and measure
everything with this love and don't judge it with your fear, then this
stagnation you call moral will vanish ... Don't speculate, friends, who I
am, you will never know it ... Do you think the truth has anything to do
with what you think I were? You don't care for the truth. You are only
interested in that what contains the truth ... Drink the water when it is
pure: I tell you, I have this pure water. I have this balsam, which
purifies, which will heal wonderfully, and you ask me: Who are you? I am
everything, since I am life."
When he dissolved the "Order of the Star":
"I claim that the truth is a pathless territory. And one cannot
approach it by any path, by any religion or sect. This is my point of
view, and I hold it absolutely and unconditionally ... Once you have
understood this, you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A
belief is an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it.
If you still do it, it dies, it crystalizes itself and becomes a belief
system, a sect, a religion, which will be forced onto others. Everybody
throughout the world tries to do that. The truth becomes narrowed and a
toy for those who are weak, who are only temporarily dissatisfied. The
truth cannot be lowered, but each one has to come up to it. You cannot
take the top of the mountain into the valley ... Thus from my viewpoint
this is the first reason to dissolve the Order of the Star. You will
probably found other orders, you will still participate in other
organizations searching for the truth. I don't want to be part of any
spiritual organization, please understand that ... When an organization is
created for that purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a chain and
will mutilate the individual and will be a hindrance to it, it will
prevent it to found its uniqueness, which consists in its own way to find
this absolute, unconditional truth for itself. Thus this is another reason
why I have decided, as I am the leader of this order, to dissolve it.
This
is no great action. Since I don't want any followers, and I mean it that
way. In the moment you follow anybody, you stop following the truth. I'm
not interested whether or not you listen to what I say. I want to cause
something specific in the world, and I will perform that with
imperturbable concentration. I do only deal with one essential matter, to
liberate humans. I want to liberate them from all jails, from all fears
and prevent them to create new theories or philosophies, to found new
religions or new sects. Thus you will of course ask me why I'm travelling
throughout the world and talk. I will tell you why I'm doing that. Not
because I wish to have followers or a particular group of disciples. I
have no disciples, no apostles, neither on earth nor in the mental realm.
I'm not attracted by the temptation of money or the desire to have a
comfortable life. If I wanted to have a comfortable life, I wouldn't visit
a camp, neither would I live in a wet country! I'm now speaking very
openly, since I want to clarify that once and for all. I don't want to
perform this childish discussion every year again. For eighteen years you
have been preparing for this event, the appearance of the world teacher.
For eighteen years you have organized, have searched for somebody who
would bring new delightment to your heart and your mind. For somebody who
would raise you to a new level of life, who would encourage you, who would
liberate you. And now look what happens! Think about it, consider it
yourself, and thereby detect how this belief has changed yourself. Not by
carrying some sign. That is trivial, absurd. In which way did such a
belief throw away all inessential things? Only this way you can judge. In
which way did you become more free, greater, more dangerous for this
society, which is based on the false and inessential? In which way have
the members of this organization of the Star changed? With respect to your
spirituality you rely on somebody else. You rely on somebody else for your
happiness, for your enlightenment. When I say look within yourself, seek
there for your enlightenment, for your greatness, for your purification
and the purity of your self - then none of you wants to do that. There may
be a few, very few. Thus why should we have an organization?
You need a
typewriter to write a letter, but you don't put the typewriter onto an
altar to admire it. But that's what you are doing when organizations
become your main concern. But those who really want to understand, who are
seeking for the eternal, for that what is without beginning or ending,
will proceed together with greater intensity, will become a danger for all
inessential, for all unreal, for the shadows ... We have to create such a
body, and this is my intention. Due to this true friendship - which you
don't seem to know - there will be a real cooperation of all. This will
not happen because of an authority or for some redemption, but because you
will really understand and thus are capable of living in the eternal. This
is something greater as all amusement, as all sacrifice. Thus those are
some of the reasons why I have made this decision after careful
consideration. It doesn't result from some momentary impulse. Neither did
anybody persuade me to it. I cannot be persuaded about such matters. For
two years I have been considering it carefully and patiently, and now I
have decided to dissolve the order. You can found other organizations and
wait for another one. It doesn't interest me. Neither am I interested in
your jails or in new decorations for those jails, nor in creating them. I
am only concerned with the absolute, unconditional liberation of
humans."
When asked about god in the traditional sense:
"We have invented god. The thinking created god for itself.
That means, due to unhappiness, fear and depression
we created something, called god.
God didn't create us after his image - I
wished he had.
Personally I have no belief in anything,
the speaker just faces that what is, what are facts,
the recognition of
the essence of each fact, each thought, all reactions.
He is fully aware of all that.
When you are free of fear, free of suffering, there is no desire for a
god."
"When you get rid of attachment, there will be love ...
When one wants to meet, understand, know oneself,
one has to put aside
every form of authority ...
There is nothing to be learned from somebody else, including the speaker
...
The speaker doesn't have anything he could teach you ...
The speaker is only a mirror where you can see yourself.
Then, when you recognize yourself clearly,
you can put aside the
mirror."
"When humans will not radically change themselves, perform a
fundamental change in themselves - not with god or prayers, all this stuff
is too immature, too infantile - then we will destroy ourselves. NOW a
revolution in the psyche is possible, not thousand years later. We are
living for thousands of years, and we are still barbarians. So if we don't
change ourselves now, we will still be barbarians tomorrow or in thousands
of tomorrows. When I don't stop war today, I will go to war
tomorrow. Expressed simply: The future is now."
18.
It is only in freedom that anything can flourish:
"Every thought and feeling must flower for them to live and die;
flowering of everything in you,
the ambition, the greed, the hate, the
joy, the passion;
in the flowering there is their death and freedom.
It is
only in freedom that anything can flourish,
not in suppression, in control
and discipline;
these only pervert, corrupt.
Flowering and freedom is
goodness and all virtue.
To allow envy to flower is not easy;
it is
condemned or cherished but never given freedom.
It is only in freedom the
fact of envy reveals its colour, its shape, its depth, its peculiarities;
if suppressed it will not reveal itself fully and freely. When it has
shown itself completely, there is an ending of it only to reveal another
fact, emptiness, loneliness, fear, and as each fact is allowed to flower,
in freedom, in its entirety, the conflict between the observer and the
observed ceases; there is no longer the censor but only observation, only
seeing.
Freedom can only be in completion
not in repetition, suppression,
obedience to a pattern of thought.
There is completion only in flowering
and dying;
there is no flowering if there is no ending.
What has
continuity is thought in time. The flowering of thought is the ending of
thought; for only in death there is the new. The new cannot be if there is
no freedom from the known. Thought, the old, cannot bring into being the
new; it must die for the new to be. What flowers must come to an
end."
19. Choice, in
every form, is conflict:
"All existence is choice.
Choice, in every form, is conflict.
Contradiction is inevitable in choice;
this contradiction, inner and outer breeds confusion and misery.
To escape
from this misery, gods, beliefs, nationalism,
commitment to various patterns of activities
become compulsive necessities.
Having escaped, they become all important
and escape is the way of
illusion; then fear and anxiety set in.
Despair and sorrow is the way of choice and there is no end to pain.
Choice, selection, must always exist as long as there is the chooser,
the accumulated memory of pain and
pleasure,
and every experience of choice only strengthens memory
whose response
becomes thought and feeling.
Memory has only a partial significance, to respond mechanically;
this
response is choice. There is no freedom in choice.
You choose according to the background you
have been brought up in,
according to to your social, economic, religious conditioning.
Choice
invariably strengthens this conditioning;
there is no escape from this conditioning, it only breeds more suffering.
[...]
Choice is always breeding misery.
Watch it and you will see it,
lurking, demanding, insisting and begging,
and before you know where you are you are caught
in its net of inescapable
duties, responsibilities and despairs.
Watch it and you will be aware of
the fact.
Be aware of the fact; you cannot change the fact;
you may cover
it up, run away from it, but you cannot change it.
It is there. If you will let
it alone, not interfering with it
with your opinions and hopes, fears and
despairs,
with your calculated and cunning judgments,
it will flower and
show all its intricacies, its subtle ways and there are many,
its seeming
importance and ethics, its hidden motives and fancies.
If you will leave the fact alone, it will show you all these and
more.
But you must be choice-lessly aware of it, walking softly.
Then you will
see that choice, having flowered, dies and there is freedom,
not that you
are free but there is freedom. You are the maker of choice;
you have
ceased to make choice. There is nothing to choose.
Out of this choice-less
state there flowers aloneness.
Its death is never ending. It is always flowering and it is always new.
Dying to the known is to be
alone.
All choice is in the field of the known; action in this field
always breeds sorrow.
There is the ending of sorrow in
aloneness."
20. Love and there is no
sin:
"To the so-called religious, to be sensitive is to sin ---
an evil
reserved for the worldly.
To the religious, the beautiful is temptation ---
to be
resisted; it's an evil distraction to be denied.
Good works are not a substitute for love,
and without love all activity
leads to sorrow--- noble or ignoble.
The essence of affection is sensitivity
and without it all worship is an
escape from reality.
To the monk, to the sanyasi, the senses are the way of pain,
except
thought which must be dedicated to the god of their conditioning.
But thought is of the senses. It is thought that puts together time
and it
is thought that makes sensitivity sinful.
To go beyond thought is virtue
and that virtue is heightened
sensitivity which is love.
Love and there is no sin;
love and do what you will
and then there is no sorrow."
21. The outside is the
inside:
You cannot see and listen to the outside
without wandering on to the
inside.
Really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside
and it is difficult, almost impossible to
separate them.
You look at this magnificent tree and you wonder
who is
watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all.
Everything is so
intensively alive and there is only life
and the watcher is as dead as the
leaf.
There is no dividing line between the tree, the birds and
that man sitting in the shade and the earth that is so abundant.
Virtue is there without thought and so there is order;
order is not
permanent; it is there only from moment to moment
22. The
Pitcher Can Never be Filled:
(On Meditation & Seeking)
Meditation is like going to a well,
the waters of which are
inexhaustible,
with a pitcher that is always empty.
The pitcher can never be filled.
What is important is the drinking of the
waters
and not how full the pitcher is.
The pitcher must be broken to drink the water.
The pitcher is the centre which is always seeking -
and so it can never
find.
To seek is to deny the truth that is right in front of you.
Your eyes must
see that which is the nearest;
and the seeing of that is a movement
without end.
He who seeks, projects that which he seeks and so he lives in
an illusion,
always striving within the limits of his own shadow.
Not to
seek is to find; and the finding is not in the future -
it is there, where
you don't look.
The looking is ever present,
from which all life and
action takes place.
Meditation is the blessing of this action.
Seeking is a personal drive from the centre -
to attain, to belong, to
hold.
In inquiry there is freedom from the very beginning;
looking is the
freedom from the weight of yesterday.
23. 'What is a religious
man?' (Huxley asking J K.):
Krishnamurti changed his tone and rhythm.
He spoke now calmly, with incisiveness:
"I will tell you what a religious man is.
First of all, a religious man
is a man who is alone -
not lonely, you understand, but alone -
with no
theories or dogmas, no opinion, no background.
He is alone and loves it -
free of conditioning and alone -
and enjoying it.
Second, a religious man
must be both man and woman -
I don't mean sexually -
but he must know the
dual nature of everything;
a religious man must feel and be both masculine
and feminine."
Third,
and now his manner intensified again,
"to be a religious man, one must
destroy everything -
destroy the past, destroy one's convictions,
interpretations, deceptions -
destroy ALL self-hypnosis -
destroy until
there is no center;
you understand, NO CENTER."
He stopped.
No center?
After a silence Krishnamurti said quietly:
"Then you are a religious person.
Then stillness comes.
Completely still."
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