J Krishnamurti and a World in Crisis by Ningus Niz

Human history, it seems, has never before witnessed a crisis of the complexity, magnitude, and catastrophic sweep that is being experienced today by mankind and the planet we live on. Its impact is visible in every sphere of our life and is marked by an erosion of values, the collapse of faiths, traditions and ideologies, the breakdown of relationships, and the savage destruction of the earth. Despite the achievements of our age–the information revolution, the rapid growth of scientific knowledge with its technological skills, and so on–no one can deny that solutions to even the most basic problems such as hunger and insecurity, war, exploitation, and injustice remain remote. What is more, the rapid networking of the world's societies has ensured that the crisis is brought to every doorstep –yours and mine–without choice, without option. Nearly a century ago, Krishnamurti saw all this coming. Witness to the dramatic events of the 20th century and endowed with a capacity for acute observation and profound insight, he gave the most brilliant expression to the causes that brought on, and continue to fuel, the global crisis. This exhibit has been put together by Krishnamurti Foundation India in order to share with others Krishnamurti's insights into the nature of the crisis. Our thanks to Krishnamurti Foundation Trust (England), Krishnamurti Foundation of America, and to the many professional and amateur photographers for the use of their work in this humanitarian venture.

J Krishnamurti &

The Crisis Is In You

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

We are facing a tremendous crisis which the politicians can never solve. Nor can the scientists understand or solve the crisis, nor yet the business world, the world of money. The turning point is not in politics, in religion, in the scientific world; it is in our consciousness. The Network of Thought, Ch. 1

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. 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 recognizes 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. Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1

It depends upon you and me, but we do not seem to realize that. If once we really felt the responsibility of our own actions, how quickly we could bring to an end all these wars, this appalling misery! But, you see, we are indifferent. We have three meals a day, we have our jobs, we have our bank accounts, big or little, and we say, ‘For God’s sake, don’t disturb us, leave us alone.’ The First and Last Freedom, Q. 10

Questioner: The cruelty and violence of the world cannot be stopped by my individual effort. And would it not take infinite time for all individuals to change? Krishnamurti: The other is you. This question springs from the desire to avoid your own immediate transformation, does it not? You are saying, in effect, ‘What is the good of my changing if everyone else does not change?’ One must begin near to go far. But you really do not want to change; you want things to go on as they are, especially if you are on top, and so you say it will take infinite time to transform the world through individual transformation. The world is you; you are the problem; the problem is not separate from you; the world is the projection of yourself. The world cannot be transformed till you are. Commentaries on Living 2, Ch. 16

I am talking to the individual because only the individual can change, not the mass; only you can transform yourself, and so the individual matters infinitely. Any true action, any important decision, the search for freedom, the inquiry after truth can only come from the individual who understands. The Collected Works, Vol. 11

In bringing about a radical change in the human being, in you, you are naturally bringing about a radical change in the structure and nature of society. It must begin not outwardly, but inwardly. Talks with American Students, Ch. 1

I do not demand your faith; I am not setting myself up as an authority. I have nothing to teach you–no new philosophy, no new system, no new path to reality. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary. Freedom from the Known, Ch. 2

So now we are going to investigate ourselves together–not one person explaining while you read, agreeing or disagreeing with him as you follow the words on the page, but taking a journey together, a journey of discovery into the most secret corners of our minds. And to take such a journey we must travel light; we cannot be burdened with opinions, prejudices, and conclusions–all that old furniture we have collected for the last two thousand years and more. Forget all you know about yourself, forget all you have ever thought about yourself; we are going to start as if we knew nothing. It rained last night heavily, and now the skies are beginning to clear; it is a new, fresh day. Let us meet that fresh day as if it were the only day. Let us start on our journey together with all the remembrance of yesterday left behind–and begin to understand ourselves for the first time. Freedom from the Known, Ch.1

J Krishnamurti

War: A Spectacular, Bloody Projection Of Ourselves

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

War is merely an outward expression of our inward state, an enlargement of our daily action. It is more spectacular, more bloody, more destructive, but it is the collective result of our individual activities. Therefore you and I are responsible for war, and what can we do to stop it? The First and Last Freedom, Q.10

Zoriah

One wonders, if one is at all serious, why man kills another human–being in the name of God, in the name of peace, in the name of some ideology, or for his country, whatever that may mean, or for the king and the queen, and all the rest of that business. Man has lived on this earth which is being slowly destroyed, and why cannot he live at peace with another human being? Why are there separate nations, which is after all glorified tribalism? And religions are also at war with each other. Ideologies, whether it is the Russian or the American or any other ideology, are all at war with each other, in conflict. And after living on this earth for so many centuries, why is it that man cannot live peacefully on this marvellous earth? This question has been asked over and over again. An organization like this has been formed around that. What is the future of this particular organization? What lies beyond its fortieth year? So it behoves us to ask ourselves whether we as human beings can live peacefully with each other, in a community or in a family.

We do not want to face these things, we do not want to face the fact that you and I are responsible for wars. You and I may talk about peace, have conferences, sit round a table and discuss, but inwardly, psychologically, we want power, position. We are motivated by greed, we intrigue, we are nationalistic, we are bound by beliefs, by dogmas, for which we are willing to die and destroy each other. Do you think such men, you and I, can have peace in the world? To have peace, we must be peaceful. Peace is not an ideal. The First and Last Freedom, Q.10

Would you send your children to war if you loved them? You look after them till they are five so carefully, and after that you throw them to the wolves. That is what you call love. Is there love when there is violence, hatred, antagonism? Beyond Violence, Ch. 3

Questioner: Are you telling me that this war is my doing? Krishnamurti: Yes, it’s your responsibility. You have brought it about by your We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves, nationality, your greed, envy, and hate. You are responsible for war as long as you there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarrelling over have those things in your heart, as long as you belong to any nationality, creed, or ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many race. It is only those who are free of those things who can say that they have not brutalities that go to create organized murder. created this society. Therefore our responsibility is to see that we change, and to help Education and the Significance of Life, Ch. 4 others to change, without violence and bloodshed. Talk to the United Nations ‘Peace on Earth’ Committee, 1985

The Urgency of Change, Ch. 14

Altaf Qadri

You have had in Europe two dreadful wars, with all the brutality, the exterminations of the concentration camps, the butchery, and yet you haven’t changed. You are still Germans, Austrians, Russians, Catholics, and all the rest of it. So you have accepted that as the way of life, haven’t you? Obviously. And can you voluntarily, sanely, put that away? Psychologically begin with that and see where it will lead you. Can one do that? Talks and Dialogues, Saanen 1967, Dialogue 2

To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to the war in yourself. Some of you will nod your heads and say, ‘I agree’, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. The First and Last Freedom, Q. 10

An American lady came to see me a couple of years ago, during the war. She said that she had lost her son in Italy and that she had another son aged sixteen whom she wanted to save; so we talked the thing over. I suggested to her that to save her son she had to cease to be an American; she had to cease to be greedy, cease piling up wealth, seeking power, domination, and be morally simple–not merely simple in clothes, in outward things, but simple in her thoughts and feelings, in her relationships. She said, ‘That is too much. You are asking far too much. I cannot do it because circumstances are too powerful for me to alter.’ Therefore she was responsible for the destruction of her son. The First and Last Freedom, Q. 10

It was under this cloud of war hysteria that Krishnaji opened his series of Oak Grove talks in Ojai in May 1941. I was concerned for him and wondered whether under the unusual circumstances he would soften his anti-War remarks. He did not. He expressed his view as clearly and bluntly as if the War did not exist, lashing out at ‘this mass murder called war’ and proclaiming ‘To kill another is the greatest evil.’ He disarmed hostile questioners with a quiet, even gentle, reminder that their problem was not the person who disagreed with them but their own innate hostility. ‘The war within you’, he kept saying, ‘is the war you should be concerned about, not the war outside.’ At one point I expected a brawl to break out. I could not help but admire his ‘cool’ under these trying circumstances, and I wondered if he would be allowed by the officials keeping an eye on him to finish his talks. Men from the FBI were in the audience. The Reluctant Messiah, by Sidney Field

United Nations Ron Haviv

Altaf Qadri

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Giorgio Ferri

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TheNausea Zoriah

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Francesco Dazzi

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J Krishnamurti &

We Are Brought Up To Be Violent

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

That is a fact: we are violent human beings. From childhood we are brought up to be violent, competitive, beastly to one another. We have never faced the fact. Beyond Violence, Ch. 1

Lakshman Anand

Violence plays an extraordinary part in our life; we never ask whether the mind can be completely and utterly free from violence. We have accepted it as part of life, as we have accepted war as a way of life. And we have our favourite wars; you may not like this particular war, but you don’t mind having other kinds of wars. And we never question whether the mind can be really and truly, deeply free of violence. San Diego 1970, Talk 3

It is our earth, not yours or mine or his. We are meant to live on it, helping each other, not destroying each other. This is not some romantic nonsense but the actual fact. But man has divided the earth, hoping thereby that in the particular he is going to find happiness, security, a sense of abiding comfort. Until a radical change takes place and we wipe out all nationalities, all ideologies, all religious divisions, and establish a global relationship–psychologically first, inwardly, before organizing the outer–we shall go on with wars. If you harm others, if you kill others, whether in anger or by organized murder which is called war, you–who are the rest of humanity, not a separate human being fighting the rest of mankind–are destroying yourself. This is the real issue, the basic issue, which you must understand and resolve. Until you are committed, dedicated, to eradicating this national, economic, religious division, you are perpetuating war. You are responsible for all wars, whether nuclear or traditional.

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Liberal International

Krishnamurti to Himself, 31 March 1983

In a world that is so utterly confused and violent, where there is every form of revolt and a thousand explanations for these revolts, it is hoped that there will be social reformation, different realities and greater freedom for man. In every country, in every clime, under the banner of peace, there is violence; in the name of truth there is exploitation, misery; there are the starving millions; there is suppression under great tyrannies, there is much social injustice. There is war, conscription and the evasion of conscription. There is really great confusion and terrible violence; hatred is justified; escapism in every form is accepted as the norm of life. When one is aware of all this, one is confused, uncertain as to what to do, what to think, what part to play. What is one to do? Join the activists or escape into some kind of inward isolation? Go back to the old religious ideas? Start a new sect, or carry on with one’s own prejudices and inclinations? Seeing all this, one naturally wants to know for oneself what to do, what to think, how to live a different kind of life.

Uhuru1701

SafeState

If we can find a light in ourselves, a way of living in which there is no violence whatsoever, a way of life which is utterly religious and therefore without fear, a life that is inwardly stable, which cannot be touched by outward events, that, I think, will be eminently worthwhile. The Impossible Question, Ch. 1

Peace is not dependent on politicians, on the army; they have too much vested interest. It is not dependent on the priests, nor on any belief. All religions have always talked peace and entered into war. That’s the way of our lives. The Collected Works, Vol. 17 Zoriah Aeionic

Men are bent on slaughtering each other; you are bent on slaughtering your neighbour–not with swords, perhaps, but you are exploiting them, aren’t you, politically, religiously, and economically? You do not want to prevent the impending war because some of you are going to make money. The cunning are going to make money, and the stupid also will want to make more. For God’s sake, see the ugliness, the ruthlessness of it, sir! When you have a set purpose of gain at all costs, the result is inevitable, is it not? The Collected Works, Vol. 6

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.

Lorenzo Moscia

Freedom from the Known, Ch. 6

To be free of violence implies freedom from everything that man has put to another man: belief, dogma, rituals, my country, your country, your god and my god, my opinion, your opinion, my ideal... All those help to divide human beings and therefore breed violence. Beyond Violence, Ch. 6

David Bohm: Do you think it is possible that a thing like this could divert the course of mankind away from the dangerous path it is taking? Krishnamurti: Yes, that is what I think. But to divert the course of man’s destruction, somebody must listen. Somebody–ten people–must listen! Listen to that immensity calling.

Zoriah

The Ending of Time, Ch. 8

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–by and for oneself. Aldous Huxley in his Foreword to The First and Last Freedom

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Division Breeds Conflict: That’s A Law

J Krishnamurti &

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Why is there this division between man and man, between race and race, culture against culture? Why? Religions also have divided man, put man against man– the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, and so on. This terrible desire to identify oneself with a group, with a flag, with a religious ritual, gives us the feeling that we have roots. Krishnamurti to Himself, 31 March 1983

Zoriah

Each one of us wants to live in security. That is natural, that is an instinctive response to have food, clothes, and shelter. Every human being in the world, the most ignorant or the most sophisticated human being, wants security both outwardly and inwardly, to be safe. And this division, the national division, has made that security impossible; outwardly you have wars, you are being threatened by another country, by another ideology, and so you say you must protect yourself. This is what the politicians and all the so-called leaders are saying, because each one of us seeks security in division. We think we can be secure in the family; from the family the nation–the nation is only glorified tribalism. So we seek security in individuality, and we seek security in the family, in various forms of division. So one realizes, not theoretically, not intellectually, but actually in one’s daily life that where there is division there must be conflict. That’s a law, a natural law. If there is a division between a man and a woman, the husband and wife, and so on, there must be conflict between them. This is so. That is why in this country and in other countries there are so many divorces, each one wanting his own way, each one wanting to express himself fully, urged on by the psychologists who say, ‘Don’t restrain, do whatever you want...’.

Tejbir Singh Anand WhirlingMcDervish

Francesco Dazzi

San Francisco Talk, 30 April 1983

If we look into our lives and observe relationship, we see it is a process of building resistance against another, a wall over which we look and observe the other; but we always retain the wall and remain behind it, whether it be a psychological wall, a material wall, an economic wall or a national wall, and we live enclosed because it is much more gratifying, we think it is much more secure. The world is so disruptive, there is so much sorrow, so much pain, war, destruction, misery that we want to escape and live within the walls of security of our own psychological being. That is exactly what is happening throughout the world: you remain in your isolation and stretch your hand over the wall, calling it nationalism, brotherhood or what you will, but actually sovereign governments, armies, continue. Still clinging to your own limitations, you think you can create world unity, world peace–which is impossible. So long as you have a frontier, whether national, economic, religious or social, it is an obvious fact that there cannot be peace in the world.

Estherase Herve Blandin

Maureen Marsh

The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 14

We are concerned rightly with the outward change or reformation of the social structure with its injustice, wars, poverty, but we try to change it either through violence or the slow way of legislation. In the meantime there is poverty, war, hunger, and the mischief that exists between man and man. We seem totally to neglect paying attention to these vast accumulated clouds which man has been gathering for centuries upon centuries–sorrow, violence, hatred, and the artificial differences of religion and race. They are there, as the outward structure of society is there: as real, as vital, as effective. We neglect these hidden accumulations and concentrate on the outward reformation. This division is perhaps the greatest cause of our decline. Meeting Life, Ch. 7 Claude Renault

Shabtai Gold

The process of isolation is a process of the search for power; whether one is seeking power individually or for a racial or national group. After all, that is what each one wants, is it not? He wants a powerful position in which he can dominate, whether at home, in the office, or in a bureaucratic regime. Each one is seeking power, and in seeking power he will establish a society which is based on power, military, industrial, economic, and so on–which again is obvious. Is not the desire for power in its very nature isolating? There is no such thing as living in isolation–no country, no people, no individual, can live in isolation; yet, because you are seeking power in so many different ways, you breed isolation. The nationalist is a curse because through his very nationalistic, patriotic spirit, he is creating a wall of isolation. So nationalism, which is a process of isolation, which is the outcome of the search for power, cannot bring about peace in the world. The man who is a nationalist and talks of brotherhood is telling a lie; he is living in a state of contradiction.

Francesco Dazzi

Lakshman Anand Lakshman Anand

The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 14

Until we dissolve those barriers, which are a self-deception, there can be no cooperation between you and me. Through identification with a group, with a particular idea, with a particular country, we can never bring about cooperation. The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 18

Lakshman Anand

WhirlingMcDervish

So we are asking: Is this confusion, misery, the result of the human brain seeking, at all levels of life, security? Is that the cause? One must have security physically– clothes, food, a roof over one’s head; one must have that. But psychologically, inwardly, is there security at all? And is this chaos the cause of this idea, a concept that each one of us is a separate entity? Because we have never gone into the question that the brain of each one of us is the common brain of humanity. And this desire for security may have brought about this concept of the individual–me and you, we as a group against another group. Is that the cause? Saanen Talk, 6 July 1980 Tenzin Jungchup Lingshar

These calm searching thoughts pierce to the roots of our problems. A profound and fresh approach to self-understanding and deeper insights into the meaning of personal freedom and mature love. Rollo May

Lakshman Anand WhirlingMcDervish Uhuru1701

Lakshman Anand

J Krishnamurti &

Is God An Invention?

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

What would you say if you were not conditioned by your religion, by your fears; what would you say about God? Of course, God is a marvellous investment–you can preach about God and you will make a lot of money–as they are doing. Ojai 1979, Dialogue 3

Claude Renault

Questioner: Do you believe in God? Krishnamurti: Either you put this question out of curiosity to find out what I think, or you want to discover if there is God. If you are merely curious, naturally there is no answer; but if you want to find out for yourself if there is God, then you must approach this inquiry without prejudice; you must come to it with a fresh mind, neither believing nor disbelieving. The Collected Works, Vol. 2

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. And not finding this nameless thing of a thousand names which he has always sought, he has cultivated faith–faith in a saviour or an ideal. Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1 Boaz Rottem

Claude Renault

Claude Renault Francesco Dazzi

Sergio Pessalano Herve Blandin

Chinx786

How can the mind, which is so conditioned, which is shaped by the environment, by the culture in which we are born, find that which is not conditioned? How can a mind that is always in conflict with itself find that which has never been in conflict? So in inquiring, the search has no meaning. What has meaning and significance is whether the mind can be free–free from fear, free from all its petty little egotistic struggles, free from violence, and so on. Can the mind, your mind, be free of that? That is the real inquiry. And when the mind is really free, then only is it capable without any delusion of asking if there is, or if there is not, something that is absolutely true, that is timeless, immeasurable. This Light in Oneself, Ojai 1973

It is not the other shore that is important, but the bank you are on. You are this life of envy, violence, passing love, ambition, frustration, fear; and you are also the longing to escape from it all to what you call the other shore, the permanent, the soul, the Atman, God, and so on. Without understanding this life, without being free of envy, with its pleasures and pains, the other shore is only a myth, an illusion, an ideal invented by a frightened mind in its search for security.

Herve Blandin

Commentaries on Living, Vol.3, Ch. 12

Your belief in God will give you the experience of what you call God. You will always experience what you believe and nothing else. And this invalidates your experience. The Christian will see virgins, angels and Christ, and the Hindu will see similar deities in extravagant plurality. The Muslim, the Buddhist, the Jew, and the Communist are the same. Belief conditions its own supposed proof. What is important is not what you believe but only why you believe at all. Why do you believe? Is it fear, the uncertainty of life–the fear of the unknown, the lack of security in this ever-changing world? The Urgency of Change, Ch. 21

Martien Van Asseldonk

In India they are conditioned one way: they believe in different gods. You come to Europe, they believe in a certain God, in God’s son, in the Absolute, and so on. And there are people who have never, never heard of Christ, and they say, ‘Who is he?’ ‘My God is more important than that man’s’. So it all depends on your conditioning. One doesn’t see this. When the mind is free from that conditioning, what is God? So that is why man, out of his fear, out of his loneliness, out of his extraordinarily hopeless state, says there must be something that will protect him–the father image which he worships. So man creates God. Ojai 1979, Dialogue 3

Claude Renault APPhotos

WhirlingMcDervish

To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd. If you knew what Truth is, what God is, you would neither be a theist nor an atheist, because in that awareness belief is unnecessary. So to discover God or Truth, the mind must be free of all the hindrances which have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. The Book of Life, 21 December

The sadhu told Krishnaji, ‘Sir, for fourteen years now I have devoted myself to meditation, yet I am not able to get into samadhi. I have been practising meditation, dhyana, but I have not been able to go to the depths of it. Can I do this? Will you be able to tell me what my impediments are?’

Yukio Spinosa

Krishnaji asked him to describe the kinds of meditative practices he had been following. After listening to him, he said, ‘Do you realize that you are still acquiring? Open your fist. There is nothing to acquire.’

Herve Blandin

For some minutes, the sadhu was silent. He then got up and prostrated himself before Krishnaji, who then asked him to stay on for some more time. After a while, the sadhu said, ‘Sir, I want to ask you one more question. Is it the impact of your personality that has given me this (experience)? Is this due to your gurukripa (grace of the guru)?’ Herve Blandin

Krishnaji replied, ‘I knew you would ask this question. That is why I asked you to stay on for some more time. This is not something to acquire, but to give up. Release your fist. Leave everything.’ He paused for a moment and said, ‘Is it the new mind that is asking the question? You have been caught up in it again. I took you out of it, but you have gone back to it. If you stand firmly on that and let go everything, “it” will come. “It” will come, not because you want it, but “it” will come.’ A Vision of the Sacred, by Sunanda Patwardhan

J Krishnamurti &

Why Do You Believe?

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Apparently for most of us belief of some kind is necessary: belief in brotherhood, in the end of war, in the end of sorrow, in pacifism, in leading a good life. Why should we have any beliefs? The Collected Works, Vol. 16

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Why do you want to believe in anything? Why do you want to believe in the unity of all human beings? We are not united, that is a fact; why do you want to believe in something which is non-factual? Beyond Violence, Ch. 6

Do you ‘believe’ that the sun rises? It is there to see, you do not have to ‘believe’ in that! Beyond Violence, Ch. 6

Claude Renault

Slate

You all believe in different ways, but your belief has no reality whatsoever. Reality is what you are, what you do, what you think, and your belief is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid, and cruel life. The First and Last Freedom, Q. 16

You may, or you may not, believe in God, but that belief has very little meaning in daily life, where you cheat, where you destroy, are ambitious, greedy, jealous, violent. You believe in God or in a saviour, or in some guru, yet keep that far away so that it does not actually touch your daily life.

Ranjan Kamath

Beyond Violence, Ch. 4

When belief becomes all-important, then you are willing to sacrifice everything for that; whether that belief is real or has no validity does not matter as long as it gives comfort, security, a sense of permanency. Beyond Violence, Ch. 4

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Telegraph UK

We ask protection of the gods whom we have created. It is really quite fantastic!

Zoriah

Tradition and Revolution, Dialogue 3

It is really a very interesting problem, this question of belief and knowledge. What an extraordinary part it plays in our life! How many beliefs we have! The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 6

Martien Van Asseldonk

The men who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima said that God was with them; those who flew from England to destroy Germany said that God was their co-pilot. The dictators, the prime ministers, the generals, the presidents, all talk of God, they have immense faith in God. The people who say they believe in God have destroyed half the world, and the world is in complete misery. The First and Last Freedom, Q. 16

All propaganda is false, and man has lived on propaganda ranging from soap to God. The Only Revolution, Ch. 18

A man who kills out of hate or anger is regarded as a criminal and put to death. Yet the man who deliberately bombs thousands of people off the face of the earth in the name of his country is honoured, decorated; he is looked upon as a hero. Animals are killed for food, for profit, or for so-called sport; they are vivisected for the ‘wellbeing’ of man. Extraordinary progress is being made in the technology of murdering vast numbers of people in a few seconds and at great distances. Many scientists are wholly occupied with it, and priests bless the bomber and the warship.

Claude Renault

Chinx786

Commentaries on Living, Vol. 3, Ch. 32

What causes war, religious, political or economic? Obviously belief, either in nationalism, in an ideology, or in a particular dogma. We are fed on beliefs, ideas and dogmas, and therefore we breed discontent. The present crisis is of an exceptional nature, and we as human beings must either pursue the path of constant conflict and continuous wars–which are the result of our everyday action–or else see the causes of war and turn our back upon them.

Davia Melle

The First and Last Freedom, Q. 10

Belief comes into being when there is fear. One sees the transient things of life–there is no certainty, there is no security, there is no comfort, but immense sorrow–so thought projects something with the attribute of permanency, called God, in which the human mind takes comfort.

Herve Blandin

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Beyond Violence, Ch. 13

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Claude Renault Sergio Pessalano

Belief is not reality. Your belief is the result of your background, of your religion, of your fears, and the non-belief of the communist and others is equally the result of their conditioning. To find out what is true, the mind must be free from belief and non-belief. Claude Renault

Claude Renault TwentySet

The Collected Works, Vol. 8

I am not attacking beliefs. What we are trying to do is to find out why we accept beliefs; and if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then perhaps we may be able not only to understand why we do it, but also be free of it. One can see how political and religious beliefs, national and various other types of beliefs, do separate people, do create conflict, confusion, and antagonism–which is an obvious fact; and yet we are unwilling to give them up. Is it possible to live in this world without a belief–not change beliefs, not substitute one belief for another–but be entirely free from all beliefs, so that one meets life anew each minute? The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 6

Krishnamurti’s observations and explorations of modern man’s estate are penetrating and profound, yet given with a disarming simplicity and directness. To listen to him or to read his thoughts is to face oneself and the world with an astonishing morning freshness. Anne Lindbergh

J Krishnamurti &

We Have Made Religion A Circus

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

The religious mind has nothing whatsoever to do with belief in God; it has no theory, philosophy, or conclusion, because it has no fear and therefore no need for belief. Beyond Violence, Ch. 10

Claude Renault

Sergio Pessalano

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, Ch. 1

Think of a doctor who is a nose and throat specialist, who has practiced for fifty years. What is his heaven? His heaven is nose and throat, obviously! On Right Livelihood

Religion, in the accepted sense of that word, has now become a matter of propaganda, of vested interest, with much property, with a great hierarchical, bureaucratic system of ‘spirituality’. Religion has become a matter of dogma, belief and ritual–something which is totally divorced from daily living. You may, or you may not, believe in God; but that belief has very little meaning in daily life, where you cheat, where you destroy, are ambitious, greedy, jealous, violent. You believe in God or in a saviour, or in some guru, yet keep that far away so that it does not actually touch your daily life. Religion, as it is now, has become an extraordinary phenomenon which has no validity at all. Religions throughout the world, now, are utterly meaningless. We want to be entertained spiritually, and so we go to the church or the temple or the mosque, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with our daily sorrow, confusion, and hatred. A man who is really serious, who really wants to find out if there is something more than this terrible thing called existence, must obviously be completely free from dogma, from belief, from propaganda; he must be free from the structure in which he has been brought up to be a ‘religious man’.

Louk Vreeswijk Sergio Pessalano

Nobo 81

Lakshman Anand

Robert Chroma

Beyond Violence, Ch. 4

Your organized religion is mere copy–following authority, tradition and fear, merely following the example, the ideal. Religion has become routine, religion has become the vain repetition of rituals, practicing of disciplines, the imposition of beliefs, which merely breed habit and imitation. When the mind and heart are caught in copying, they wither. The heart and mind must be swift, capable of deep penetration and understanding, but when they are made into a record-playing machine, they cease to be. The Collected Works, Vol. 4 Robert Chroma

A great many people listen to all kinds of yogis and teachers who tell them what to do, giving them some slogan, some mantra, some word that will give them extraordinary experiences–you know what the speaker is talking about. There is the idea of sexual control in order to have more energy to find God, and all the religious implications of it. Think of all those poor saints and monks, what tortures they go through to find God! And God–if there is such a thing–does not want a tortured mind, a mind that is torn apart, distorted, or that has become dull and lives in stupefaction. Beyond Violence, Ch. 10

PalestinianPundit

The division between the religious life and the world is the very essence of worldliness. The minds of all these people–monks, saints, reformers–are not very different from the minds of those who are only concerned with the things that give pleasure. The Urgency of Change, Ch. 7

I have inquired into the whole field of existence, so that I am not deceived. The mind is very clear about all this, not as a conclusion, not as an idea, but actually. Then it moves into the field where man has inquired and been caught in various forms of illusions; substituting images and making the images sacred, worshipping symbols and forgetting the reality, building around the symbols, the images, great and marvellous cathedrals, temples, and mosques. I see all that–the cropping up of innumerable gurus with their systems, with their craving for power, money, and the degradation of their activities. I see all that. So the mind is not going to be caught in any of this.

Laurent Goldstien-Cassandre Sergio Pessalano

Saanen Dialogues 1973

The only concern of religion is the total transformation of man. And all the circus that goes on around it is nonsense. That’s why truth is not to be found in any temple, church or mosque, however beautiful they are. Beauty of truth and the beauty of stone are two different things. One opens the door to the immeasurable and the other to the imprisonment of man; the one to freedom and the other to the bondage of thought.

Estherase

Krishnamurti’s Journal, 27 September 1973 Claude Renault

The religious mind is something entirely different from the mind that believes in religion. Freedom from the Known, Ch. 16

The religious mind does not belong to any group, any sect, any belief, any church, any organized circus; therefore it is capable of looking at things directly and understanding things immediately. Such is the religious mind, because it is a light to itself. Beyond Violence, Ch. 10

Then what is religion? It is the investigation, with all one’s attention, with the summation of all one’s energy, to find that which is sacred, to come upon that which is holy. The Transformation of Man, Part 2, Ch. 1

Religion is the cessation of the ‘me’. This Light in Oneself, Ch.12

Martien Van Asseldonk

The great achievement of his life was not that he rejected the throne that was Christ’s, but that he succeeded in stepping out of his robes, adorned as he was with every sacred trapping short of a halo, and sat down instead with ordinary human beings to thrash out the practicalities of living a religious life in a modern secular society. It was here, face to face with mothers, plumbers, teachers, students, builders, wasters, or ministers, in the banality of a seminar room and on a plastic chair, that he fulfilled the role prescribed for him. He touched the contemporary nerve and left a residue of influence that is incalculable. He was a herald for the new age, a signpost for future man’s metaphysical aspirations, a star in the east. Star in the East, by Roland Vernon

J Krishnamurti

The Cleansing Of Relationship

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

There is no relationship between two people, not even between the two images they have of each other. Each lives in his own isolation, and the ‘relationship’ is merely looking over the wall. So wherever one looks, superficially or very, very deeply, there is this agony of strife and pain. Conversations, Ch. 12

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Claude Renault Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum

Martien Van Asseldonk

Vinod Sebastian

WhirlingMcDervish Ishai Gonda

TheEightDay

Claude Renault

Babaji

Claude Renault

The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 14

This escape we call ‘relationship’, whether it is relationship with property, with people, or with ideas. And that is the state we live in–using people, things, as a means of covering up our own inward poverty. And we are attached so desperately because in ourselves we are empty, in ourselves we are nothing; being afraid of that emptiness we hold on to outward things, to ideas, to ideals which are self-projected.

Laurent Goldstein-Cassandre

The Collected Works, Vol. 5 Shabtai Gold

So relationship with most of us is actually a process of isolation, and obviously such relationship builds a society which is also isolating. That is exactly what is happening throughout the world: you remain in your isolation and stretch your hand over the wall, calling it nationalism, brotherhood or what you will, but actually sovereign governments, armies, continue. Still clinging to your own limitations, you think you can create world unity, world peace–which is impossible! So long as you have a frontier, whether national, economic, religious or social, it is an obvious fact that there cannot be peace in the world.

Claude Renault

The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 14

So let us explore this curse which man has borne from the beginning of time: why man lives this way; why man is in conflict in his own intimate relationships. Last Talks in Saanen, Talk 1

DrumHellerTheater

Zoriah

Though one may have a wife and children, yet in oneself there is a self-isolating process going on. Though living together in the same house, each one is isolated, with his own ambitions, with his own fears, with his own sorrow. Again, you have your image about her, and she has her image about you, and you have your own image about yourself! The relationship is between these images and is not an actual relationship.

Shabtai Gold Ishai Gonda

Estherase

Beyond Violence, Ch. 3

The mind sees its own description and gets caught in it and thinks it sees the fact, whereas in reality it is caught up in its own movement.

Mark L Edwards

So relationship is the immediate. Relationship is the only thing we have, and without understanding that relationship we can never find out what reality is. So, to bring When I say ‘I know you’, I mean I knew you yesterday. I do not know you actually, about a complete change in the social structure, in society, the individual must now. All I know is my image of you. That image is put together by what you have cleanse his relationship, and the cleansing of relationship is the beginning of his own said in praise of me or to insult me, what you have done to me–it is put together by transformation. The Collected Works, Vol. 6 all the memories I have of you–and your image of me is put together in the same way, and it is those images which have relationship and which prevent us from We have many experiences all the time. We are either conscious or unaware of them. really communing with each other. Each experience leaves a mark; these marks build up day after day, and they become Therefore it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily the image. Someone insults you, and at that moment you have already formed the life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbour, image about the other. Or someone flatters you, and again an image is formed. So your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods–you have inevitably each reaction builds an image. And having created it, is it possible to end it? Conversations, Ch. 12

Beyond Violence, Ch. 3

nothing but images. My wife says to me, ‘You are a fool’. I do not like it, and it leaves a mark on my mind. These images create the space between you and what you observe, and in that space She says something else; that also leaves a mark on my mind. These marks are the there is conflict; so what we are going to find out now, together, is whether it is images of memory. Now, when she says to me, ‘You are a fool’, if at that very minute possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in I am aware, giving attention, then there is no marking at all–she may be right! ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships. Freedom from the Known, Ch. 11 So inattention breeds images; attention frees the mind from the image. This is very Life is relationship, which is expressed through contact with things, with people simple. Beyond Violence, Ch. 2

and with ideas. In understanding relationship we shall have the capacity to meet life fully, adequately. Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship ‘you’ are not. To be is to be related; to be related is existence. ‘You’ exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist, existence has no meaning. It is not because of what you think you are that you come into existence. You exist because you are related, and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.

Krishnamurti said to me, ‘I am not against sex; it’s natural when people are young. But now, Asit, see if you can look at sex differently.’ ‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked. He said, ‘Don’t suppress it. But don’t give in to it. And don’t run away from it.’ ‘Then what do I do, if I don’t suppress it, not turn away from it, nor give in to it?’, I asked. ‘Try it’, he said, ‘you will see.’ I did. I felt the most astonishing energy, a feeling of being totally alive. He said he could see the change in me. The feeling lasted for a week, and I have never been able to recapture it. One Thousand Moons, by Asit Chandmal

Most of us see in relationship, in that mirror, things we would rather see; we do not see what is. We would rather idealize, escape; we would rather live in the future than understand that relationship in the immediate present. The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 14

You Are Second-hand Human Beings

J Krishnamurti &

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

You are the product of your conditioning, you are the product of your society, the product of propaganda, religious and otherwise. You repeat what others have said. All your education is that. You are conditioned, you are not free, happy, vital, passionate. You are frightened human beings, full of the authority of others or of your own particular little authority, of your own knowledge. You are second-hand human beings, intellectually, emotionally. Talk in San Diego, 7 April 1970

Herve Blandin

Amal Karunaratna

HeyokaMagazine

WhirlingMcDervish

Claude Renault

Ace Photos UN

Estherase

Estherase Herve Blandin

Why are human beings throughout the world caught up in tradition, whether it is the tradition of a day or a week or three thousand years? Why? Madras Talk, 6 January 1979

There is nothing sacred about tradition, however ancient or modern. The brain carries the memory of yesterday, which is tradition, and is frightened to let go, because it cannot face something new. Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure, it is in decay. The Only Revolution, Ch. 14

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 Where there is conformity there cannot be freedom, obviously. And yet the mind is that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We have lived on what we always seeking freedom; the more intelligent, the more alert, the more aware, the have been told. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in greater the demand. Talk in Madras, 16 December 1972 us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves, nothing original, pristine, clear. Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1 When you have explored everything about you, when you are no longer held by explanations, by words, by books, by ideas, by all the things the intellect invents, and Your mind is always trying to live in habit so that it won’t be disturbed, so that it has have rejected them all–but not because you cannot find satisfaction in them–when not got to think anew or afresh, to look at problems differently. Tradition says you are in serious doubt; when you observe, examine; when you ask questions and something and you follow. When you accept and follow a tradition, you are not there are no answers–except those offered by the dead ashes of tradition, of disturbed, your mind is dull and likes to be dull. You have disturbances, but you conditioning; and when you deeply and totally reject all this, as you surely must, explain them away by your habitual thinking, so that your mind is never thoughtful, then you are alone, completely alone, because you cannot depend on anything. never alert, never questioning, never uncertain, always half asleep, put to sleep by The Collected Works, Vol. 11 tradition, by habits, by customs. The Collected Works, Vol. 8 Krishnamurti: I want to learn about myself, the ‘myself’ that dreams. Now, do I approach it with the knowledge I have acquired by reading Jung or Freud or the The very word tradition means something handed down from generation to theologians? generation. The word etymologically means ‘betrayal’, ‘treason’. Tradition is to Questioner: From reading Freud you learn about Freud. hand over, from generation to generation, certain values, certain beliefs, ideas, rituals, concepts, conclusions. This has been going on century upon century, like a Krishnamurti: That’s it, sir. I learn about Freud, I do not learn about myself. steam-roller, flattening the human being with these values, conclusions, and so on. Therefore when I learn through Freud about myself, I am not observing myself; I am And when those values, conclusions, concepts, principles are thrown aside, as it is observing the image which Freud has created about me. So I have to get rid of Freud. happening now, we are back to where we started–we are violent, greedy, anxious, So I have to throw away not only Freud and Jung, but also the knowledge which I have gathered about myself yesterday. insecure, uncertain, confused human beings. That’s what is going on, actually. Nobo 81

Meeting Life, Holland 1967

Madras Talk, 6 January 1979

The desire to dominate, to compel and to be obeyed seems so close to man, with all its subtlety, cruelty, and ugliness. The dictators, the priests and the head of the family seem to demand this obedience. Everywhere this pattern is repeated. This desire for power, position, and prestige is encouraged from childhood through comparison and measurement. From this springs conflict, the struggle to achieve, to become a success and to fulfill.

Let us state it again clearly: I see that I must change completely from the roots of my being; I can no longer depend on any tradition because tradition has brought about this colossal laziness, acceptance, and obedience; I cannot possibly look to another to help me to change, not to any teacher, any God, any belief, any system, any outside pressure or influence. What then takes place? Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1

You know, it would be marvellous if you never said a word that is not your own Revolutions try to break this down, but the same pattern is soon repeated with the discovery. Never say anything that you yourself don’t know. Never to say anything that you do not understand, that you have not discovered yourself–you will see then dictators on top. Meeting Life, 1970 that the whole activity of your mind undergoes a tremendous change. The First Step is the Last Step, Ch. 6

Are you aware that you are mediocre? Answer it for yourself. Mediocre means neither high nor low, just hovering in between. If you are aware that you are mediocre, what does it mean? Being poor inwardly we are always striving to be something ‘nobler’. This sense of mediocrity shows itself in outward respectability. And there is the other revolt against mediocrity–the hippies, the long haired, the unshaven, the latest fallouts; it is the same movement. Or you join a community because inwardly there is nothing in you; by joining you become important, and there is action. When you are aware of this mediocrity, this utter sense of insufficiency, this sense of deep frustrating loneliness, you see that it is covered over by all kinds of activities. Questions and Answers, Ch. 38

This sort of language is naked, revelatory and inspiring. It pierces the clouds of philosophy, which confound our thought, and restores the springs of action. It levels the tottering superstructures of the verbal gymnasts and clears the ground of rubbish. There is something about Krishnamurti’s utterances which make the reading of other books utterly superfluous. Henry Miller

J Krishnamurti &

The Vast Human Suffering...

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Why is man born like this? Why has he become after many, many millennia what he is now–suffering, anxious, lonely, despairing, with disease, death, and always the gods somewhere about? Last Talks in Saanen, T.1

Altaf Qadri

Zoriah Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum Zoriah

Martein Van Asseldonk

Zoriah Claude Renault

CalState-LA

Zoriah Unxpektd

MSZCZUZ

Robert Chroma

ABHS

Herve Blandin

Zoriah

Look at your own life, and you will see that our living is always on the border of Suffering is a shock to awaken you, to help you to understand life. But if you sorrow. Our work, our social activity, our politics, the various gatherings of nations immediately seek crutches again in the shape of comfort, companionship, security, to stop war, all produce further war. you deprive the shock of its significance. Another shock comes, and again you go The First and Last Freedom, Ch.1 through the same process. Thus, though you have many experiences during your life, shocks of suffering that should awaken your intelligence, your understanding, There is personal sorrow, the sorrow that comes with the loss of someone you love, you gradually dull those shocks by your desire and pursuit after comfort. the loneliness, the separation, the anxiety for the other. With death there is also the The Collected Works, Vol.1 feeling that the other has ceased to be, and there was so much that he wanted to do. All this is personal sorrow. My son dies; in that is involved my identification with Sorrow is rooted in self-pity, and to understand sorrow there must first be a ruthless my son, my wanting him to be something which I am not, my seeking continuity operation on all self-pity. I do not know if you have observed how sorry for yourself through him; and when he dies all that is denied, and I find myself completely you become, for example, when you say, ‘I am lonely.’ The moment there is self-pity emptied of all hope. In that there is self-pity, fear; in that there is pain which is the you have provided the soil in which sorrow takes root. However much you may justify your self-pity, rationalize it, polish it, cover it up with ideas, it is still there, cause of sorrow. This is the lot of everyone. This is what we mean by sorrow. Tradition and Revolution, Ch.1 festering deep within you. So a man who would understand sorrow must begin by being free of this brutal, self-centred, egotistic triviality which is self-pity. You may And there is suffering which is not only personal, but this vast suffering of man. The feel self-pity because you have a disease, or because you have lost someone by suffering which wars have brought about to innocent people, to people who have death, or because you have not fulfilled yourself and are therefore frustrated, dull; been killed, to the killer and the killed–the mother, the wife, the children–whether but whatever its cause, self-pity is the root of sorrow. they are in the Far East, the Middle East or the West; this vast human suffering, both The Collected Works, Vol.14 physical and psychological. And is my mind, your mind, your consciousness, capable of looking at this fact? Is it possible not to escape from sorrow at all? I cannot face it, I cannot tolerate it. So Talks in Saanen 1974, Talk 5 I escape from it. And there are many escapes–mundane, religious, or philosophical. This escape is a waste of energy. Not to escape in any form from the ache, the pain of Birds die, leaves fall, people grow old; man has disease, pain, sorrow, suffering, a loneliness, the grief, the shock, but to remain completely with the event, with this little joy, a little pleasure, and unending work. Why do we cling to all this? And man thing called suffering–is that possible? clings to life because there is nothing else to cling to. You understand? What do you That Benediction is Where You Are, Talk 4 say? Do you know why you cling? Because you know nothing else. You cling to your house, you cling to your books, you cling to your idols, gods, conclusions, your That is the first thing to see–that you are not different from sorrow. You are sorrow. attachments, your sorrows because you have nothing else, and all that you do brings You are anxiety, loneliness, pleasure, pain, fear, the sense of isolation. You are all unhappiness. To find out if there is anything else, you must let go what you cling to. that. The Flame of Attention, Ch.3 You want to be free from misery, and yet you will not cross the river. So you cling to something that you know, however miserable it is, and you are afraid to let go As long as I treat suffering as something outside–I suffer because I lost my brother, because you don’t know what is on the other side of the river. because I have no money, because of this or that–I establish a relationship to it, and Krishnamurti on Education, Ch.5 that relationship is fictitious. But if I am that thing, if I see the fact, then the whole It is sad to lose someone whom you love. It is sad to realize that one has responded to thing is transformed, it all has a different meaning. The First and Last Freedom, Q.7 all the challenges of life in a petty, mediocre way. And is it not sad when love ends in a small backwater of this vast river of life? It is also sad when ambition drives you, and you achieve–only to find frustration. It is sad to realize how small the mind is. Perhaps we would have to go back to Gautama to find another teacher as convincingly Though it may acquire a great deal of knowledge, though it may be very clever, austere, as rationally lucid and who, offering nothing but liberation from the self, yet can cunning, erudite, the mind is still a very shallow, empty thing. But there is a much bring conviction to those who have so often been disappointed. Gerald Heard more profound sadness than any of these–the sadness that comes with the realization of loneliness, isolation. Though you are among friends, in a crowd, at a party, or talking to your wife or husband, you suddenly become aware of a vast loneliness; there is a sense of complete isolation, which brings sorrow. The Collected Works, Vol.11

J Krishnamurti &

You Can’t Argue With Death

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

You know what your life is, don’t you? It is one battle from the moment you are born until you die, a series of endless conflicts, a series of hopeless endeavours leading nowhere, except to more money, more pleasure, more things. This is your daily, ugly, brutal life. You know it very well, and you are afraid to let that go. You are bound to let it go when you die: you can’t argue with death. Madras 1978, Talk 5

Algo

Ishai Gonda

Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum

Algo

Take a leaf in the spring–how delicate it is, and yet it has extraordinary strength to stand the wind; in summer it matures and in autumn it turns yellow and then it dies. It is one of the most beautiful things to see. The whole thing is a movement of beauty, of the vulnerable. The leaf that is very, very tender, becomes rich, takes shape, meets summer, and then when autumn comes it turns gold. It is a perpetual movement from beauty to beauty. There is fullness in the spring leaf as well as in the dying leaf. Why cannot man live and die that way? What is the thing that is destroying him from the beginning till the end? Look at a boy of ten or twelve or thirteen–how full of laughter he is. By forty he becomes tough and hard, his whole manner and face change. He is caught in a pattern.

Martien Van Asseldonk Tariq

WhirlingMcDervish

Axiepics Claude Renault

Tradition and Revolution, Ch. 10

This is also a form of death: being in the prison of your own self-centred activity, endlessly. When you are caught in your own thoughts, in your own agony, in your own superstitions, in your deadly, daily routine of habit and thoughtlessness, this is also death–not just the ending of the body.

Algo

The Collected Works, Vol. 15

You have lived ten years, thirty years or eighty years; what have you done with your life? Don’t say, ‘I’m going to fulfill next life.’ There is only the present, the beauty of the present, the richness of the present. You have had this life, this extraordinary thing called life, in which there is sorrow, pleasure, fear, guilt, and all the tortures and the loneliness and the despair of life, and the beauty of life. You have had it, and what have you done with it? Do consider it, and it’s very important to ask and to answer it, not to the speaker, but to yourself.

Roberto Candia Lakshman Anand

Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum

When you ask it, don’t go to bed with sorrow, because you have done nothing, you have done absolutely nothing. A life was given to you, the most precious thing in the world, and what have you done? Distorted it, tortured it, torn it to pieces, divided it, brought about violence, destruction, hatred, without love, without compassion, without passion. So when you ask that question–and I hope you are asking seriously–what you have done with your life, inevitably, if you are at all sensitive, you’ll have tears in your eyes. But you’ll have tears because you’re thinking of the past, what you might have done: tears of self-pity. So don’t have tears; for the question is asked, and the answer lies only in the present, not in the tomorrow or the past. Which means, what are you doing now with the life that has been given–now, not tomorrow?

Axiepics

Aleksandr Elisavietskyi

Bombay 1969, Talk 3

You are all so scared of death, aren’t you? Or you have a belief in an after-life; therefore you are not frightened. You have rationalized your life, knowing that it is going to come to an end, the puny, shoddy little life that you live. You are frightened of that; therefore you say, ‘Let’s rationalize it, think about it, clarify it.’

Claude Renault

The whole of Asia believes in an after-life, millions believe in reincarnation. If you believe in reincarnation, then what matters is how you live today because you are going to pay for it next life–how you live, what you do, what you think, what your morality is. So even though you may believe in reincarnation, what matters is how you live now. So you have to face death, not postpone it till old age, some accident, disease, and so on. You have to meet it, you have to understand it, not be afraid of it.

Francesco Dazzi

San Diego 1970, Talk 3

We say we must understand life and avoid death. But if you see life as a whole, then what is death? The organism, by usage, disease, and all the rest of it, comes to an end; it comes quicker when there is conflict. So you can say, ‘That is the end, finished’ or ‘It is the end of the whole structure and nature of the “me”, which has divided itself as we and they, we and you.’ Now, can that ‘me’ die, not eventually, but every day? Then you will know what death is, so that the mind is always fresh tomorrow because you have died to the past. Do it. Die to your pleasure, die to your furniture; that is what you are–the furniture that you have accumulated in your mind, which you call knowledge. So you die every day to everything that you have accumulated. That means emptying the mind of everything known, which means the mind becomes utterly innocent. And it is only such a mind that has this extraordinary religious quality of purity.

MarketingHackz

San Diego 1970, Talk 3

Questioner: May I ask just one question? In what manner should one live one’s daily life? Krishnamurti: As though one were living for that single day, for that single hour. Questioner: How? Krishnamurti: If you had only one hour to live, what would you do? Questioner: I don’t know. Krishnamurti: Would you not arrange what is necessary outwardly, your affairs, your will, and so on? Would you not call your family and friends together and ask for forgiveness for the harm you might have done to them, and forgive them for whatever harm they might have done to you? Would you not die completely to the things of the mind, to desires and to the world? And if it can be done for an hour, then it can also be done for the days and years that remain. Questioner: Is such a thing really possible? Krishnamurti: Try it and you will find out. Commentaries on Living 3, Ch. 5

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Martein Van Asseldonk

‘Sir’, I said, ‘twenty years ago I heard you say that one must enter the house of death with all one’s senses fully alert, not when one is old and decrepit... ‘Yes’, he replied. ‘For me, the line dividing life and death has always been very thin.’ ‘What would happen if you were told that you were going to die tomorrow morning?’ I asked. He smiled, ‘Nothing, I would live exactly as before. I ask nothing of the world. Perhaps that is the answer. I want nothing from human beings or the gods. Nothing from anyone. If death came just now and said, “You go this evening”, it would be all right.’ One Thousand Moons by Asit Chandmal

J Krishnamurti &

An Unequal World

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

You see the beggar on the road. Why is that not a shock to you? Why do you not cry? Why do I cry only when my son dies? We don’t cry there, but we cry here. Why? There is a ‘why’, obviously. There is a ‘why’, because we are insensitive. Exploration into Insight, Ch. 6

Zoriah

Estherase

Unxpectd

Man has divided the earth as yours and mine. Why? Krishnamurti to Himself, 31 March 1983

Is it possible to bring about a world in which the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ do not exist? You understand the problem? That is, the world is divided into those who are rich, who are powerful, who have everything, position, prestige, and those who have not. In the world, there is enormous inequality of capacity–the man who invents the jet plane and the man who drives the plough. There is vast contrast in capacity–intellectual, verbal, physical. We give enormous value and significance to certain functions, and so function assumes status and position. So long as we give status to functions, that gives rise to such inequality that the difference between those that are incapable and those that are capable becomes unbridgeable. The Collected Works, Vol. 7

Galanin

One has not to go to many countries to see all this; it can be observed as one walks along the streets here, or in Europe or America. The physical necessities may be plentiful where materialism is rampant and one can buy anything; but when one comes to this country, one sees this ruthless poverty. One sees also the class struggle–and I am not using that term class struggle in the communistic sense, but merely to convey the observation of a fact without interpreting it in any way. One sees the division of religions–the Christian, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Buddhist –with their various sub-divisions, all clamouring to convert, or to show a different way, a different path.

Karl Ammann

Galanin

The Collected Works, Vol. 9

When you kick the people who are not important to you, and lick the boots of those who are above you, the officials, the politicians, the big ones, is there not an element of fear in this? From the big ones you hope to get something; therefore you are respectful. But what can the poor people give you? So the poor you disregard, you treat them with contempt, you do not look at them, it does not concern you that they shiver in the cold, that they are dirty and hungry. But you will give to the big ones, to the great of the land, even when you have very little, in order to receive more of their favours.

Ybrant

Life Ahead, Ch. 16

Zoriah Zoriah

Have you noticed, in newspapers and magazines, the amount of space given to politics, to the sayings of politicians and their activities? Of course, other news is given, but political news predominates; the economic and political life has become all-important. The outward circumstances–comfort, money, position, and power– seem to dominate and shape our existence. The external show–the title, the garb, the salute, the flag–has become increasingly significant, and the total process of life has been forgotten or deliberately set aside. Commentaries on Living 1, Ch. 11

WhirlingMcDervish

We are investigating together. The speaker is not important. And the speaker really means this. What is important is that you and the speaker investigate together, think together, have one mind together; then if we have one mind we can act together. We can bring about a different society, together. Talk in Ojai, 22 April 1979

Thiago Medeiros Martien Van Aseeldonk

Martien Van Aseeldonk Babaji

Jackson Quinn

Questioner: How can there be progress from one form of society to another without conflict? The ‘haves’ will never voluntarily give up their wealth; they must be forced, and this conflict will bring about a new social order, a new way of life. This cannot be done pacifically. We may not want to be violent, but we have to face facts. Krishnamurti: You assume that you know what the new society should be and that the other fellow does not; you alone have this extraordinary knowledge, and you are willing to liquidate those who stand in your way. By this method, which you think is essential, you only bring about opposition and hate. What you know is merely another form of prejudice, a different kind of conditioning. All response of thought is conditioned, and to bring about a revolution based on thought or idea is to perpetuate a modified form of what was. You are essentially reformers and not real revolutionaries. Commentaries on Living 2, Ch. 8

Not being capable of inward changes, psychologically, we turn to an outside agency: change the environment, the social and economic structure, and man will inevitably also change! That has proved utterly false, though the communists insist on that theory. And religious authorities have said: believe, accept, put yourself in the hands of something outside and greater than yourself. That too has lost its vitality because it is not real; it is merely an intellectual invention, a verbal structure which has no depth whatsoever. The identification of oneself with the nation, that too has brought dreadful wars, misery, confusion, and ever-increasing division. Seeing all this, what is one to do? Escape to some monastery, learn Zen meditation, accept some philosophical theory and commit oneself to that, meditate as a means of escape and self-hypnosis? One sees all this actually, not verbally or intellectually, and sees that it leads nowhere; does one not inevitably throw it all aside, deny it all, completely, totally? Beyond Violence, Ch. 12

Hunger is hunger. It is not your hunger or my hunger: it is hunger. In the Problem is the Solution, Ch. 1

Equality is not possible if there is no love. It is love that destroys the sense of the unequal.

Claude Renault

The Collected Works, Vol. 7 DreamsTime

I remember an insightful advice given by Krishnaji as early as 1976. Krishnaji, Mary Zimbalist, and I were at Malibu. At lunch the discussion turned to ageing and people having serious handicaps and illness. I exclaimed that I would not like to live much longer if I became handicapped or paralysed. His response was rather strange. He said, ‘What arrogance! There are millions of people physically and mentally handicapped and deprived. You cannot dictate terms to life. Whatever comes face it intelligently.’ A Vision of the Sacred by Sunanda Patwardhan

J Krishnamurti &

The Entertainment Trap

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Watching all this in different parts of the world, watching the mind being occupied with amusement, entertainment, sport, if one is in any way concerned, one must inevitably ask: what is the future? Where is all this leading to? Krishnamurti to Himself, 18 March 1983

Ishai Gonda

Louk Vreeswijk

One wonders what is the future of mankind, the future of all those children? You see on television endless entertainment from morning until late in the night. The commercials all sustain the feeling that you are being entertained. There is the entertainment of sport–thirty, forty thousand people watching a few people in the arena and shouting themselves hoarse. And you also go and watch some ceremony being performed in a great cathedral, some ritual, and that too is a form of entertainment. You call that holy, religious, but it is still an entertainment–a sentimental, romantic experience, a sensation of religiosity. Krishnamurti to Himself, 18 March 1983

When the industry of entertainment takes over, when the young people, the students, the children, are constantly instigated to pleasure, to fancy, to romantic sensuality, the words restraint and austerity are pushed away, never even given a thought. You probably won’t even listen to this, to what the implications of austerity are. When you have been brought up from childhood to amuse yourself and escape from yourself through entertainment, religious or otherwise, and when most of the psychologists say that you must express everything you feel and that any form of holding back or restraint is detrimental, leading to various forms of neuroticism, you naturally enter more and more into the world of sport, amusement, entertainment, all helping you to escape from yourself.

Boaz Rottem

Krishnamurti to Himself, 18 March 1983

The rich want to forget themselves in night clubs, in amusements, in cars, in travelling. The clever ones want to forget themselves, so they begin to invent, to have extraordinary beliefs. The stupid ones want to forget themselves, and so they follow people, they have gurus who tell them what to do. The ambitious ones also want to forget themselves in doing something. So all of us, as we mature, as we grow older, want to forget ourselves, and so we try to find something greater with which to be identified.

Sergio Pessalano

Lakshman Anand

The Collected Works, Vol. 8

Sensuality in the world of pleasure has become very important. Pleasure of the senses, of cunning and subtle thought, of words and of the images of mind and hand is the culture of education, the pleasure of violence and the pleasure of sex. Man is moulded to the shape of pleasure, and all existence, religious or otherwise, is the pursuit of it. When the mind is not free and aware, then sensuality becomes a factor of corruption, which is what is going on in the modern world. Krishnamurti’s Journal, 20 October 1973

The cinemas, the magazines, the stories, the way women dress, everything is building up your thought of sex. Why? Why has it become a central issue in your life? When there are so many things calling, demanding your attention, you give complete attention to the thought of sex. Why are your minds so occupied with it? Because that is a way of ultimate escape, is it not? The First and Last Freedom, Q. 21 Louk Vreeswijk

Aeionic

Herve Blandin MSZCZUZ

Herve Blandin

Estherase

Ace Photos

What a strange thing is loneliness, and how frightening it is! We never allow ourselves to get too close to it; and if by chance we do, we quickly run away from it. We will do anything to escape from loneliness, to cover it up. Our conscious and unconscious preoccupation seems to be to avoid it or to overcome it. You may lose yourself in a crowd, and yet be utterly lonely; you may be intensely active, but loneliness silently creeps upon you; put the book down, and it is there. Amusements and drinks cannot drown loneliness; you may temporarily evade it, but when the laughter and the effects of alcohol are over, the fear of loneliness returns. Commentaries on Living 1, Ch. 42

Estherase Ishai Gonda

Becoming aware of this poverty, loneliness, you try to enrich it, try to fill it with knowledge or activity, with amusement or mystery. The more you try to fill it, to cover it up, the more deeply does the real cause of loneliness get buried. The Collected Works, Vol. 3

Nobody can put you psychologically into prison–you are already there! Truth and Actuality, Part 2, Ch. 6 Alex Senson

I hate it when people ask me what Krishnamurti’s teachings is all about. I want to snap back, ‘What it’s all about is what you are all about.’ Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment by Mary Lutyens

Shabtai Gold

J Krishnamurti &

On Love–And What You Call Love

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Love is enjoyment, love is joy, not the puny thing that man has made of it. San Diego 1970, Talk 3

Ishai Gonda

Aleksandr Elisavietskyi

The Write Designs

Martien Van Asseldonk

Zoriah

Shabtai Gold

Claude Renault

Zoriah

Pipermaru74

Herve Blandin Estherase

KCDVTF

Laurent Goldstein-Cassandre

Uhuru1701

Ishai Gonda Sergio Pessalano

I wonder if you have ever known what love is? We have divided life, as we have divided the earth. We talk of love as being either carnal or spiritual and have set a battle going between the sacred and the profane. We have divided what love is from what love should be, so we never know what love is. On Living and Dying, Madras 1959

We talk a great deal about it–love of God, love of humanity, love of country, love of the family–yet, strangely, with that ‘love’ goes hatred. You love your God and hate another’s God; you love your nation, your family, but you are against another family, against another nation. And more and more, throughout the world, love is associated with sex. We are not condemning, we are not judging, we are not evaluating; we are merely observing what is actually taking place.

Laurent Goldstein-Cassandre

Beyond Violence, Ch. 3

In that love there is so much anger, jealousy, envy, possessiveness, domination, the conflict between you and me; in that there is so much pleasure, desire, sexual pleasure–is all that love? Talk in Rome, 11 April 1969

So is love pleasure? Pleasure is the product of thought; having had pleasure of different kinds yesterday, you think about it, you have image upon image built, and that stimulates you, and that gives you pleasure, sexual or otherwise, and that you call love. And is it love? Because in pleasure there is frustration, there is pain, there is agony, there is dependency. Don’t you depend psychologically on another? And when you do, when you depend on your wife or your husband, and you say, ‘I love demonstrate up and down the street–if you have no love, it has no value at all. If you you’, is that love? And in that dependence, is there not fear? love, then you can do what you will. for the man who loves there is no error–or if San Diego 1970, Talk 3 there is an error, he corrects it immediately. A man who loves has no jealousy, no Obviously love is not sentiment. Sentimentality, emotionalism, is merely a form of remorse; for him there is no forgiveness because there is not a moment in which a self-expansion. To be full of emotion is obviously not love, because a sentimental thing that has to be forgiven arises. All this demands deep investigation, great care person can be cruel when his sentiments are not responded to, when his feelings and attention. Beyond Violence, Ch. 3 have no outlet. An emotional person can be stirred to hatred, to war, to butchery. A man who is sentimental, full of tears for his religion, surely has no love. Love is not conflict; love does not know jealousy, hatred, anger, ambition, the desire The First and Last Freedom, Q. 22 for power and position, the demand for self-expression. And to come upon love You may see a beggar in the street, you give him a coin and express a word of there must be the freedom to look at that which is not love–to look at it, to observe it, to know the whole psychological structure of it, to observe it actually. sympathy. Is that love? Is sympathy love? Lakshman Anand

The Collected Works, Vol. 5

Boaz Rottem

Ishai Gonda

The Collected Works, Vol. 17

So one has to find out what love is. If it has a cause–‘I love you because...’ good Love, surely, is a total feeling that is not sentimental and in which there is no sense of separation. It is a complete purity of feeling without the separative, fragmenting God–then it is a trade! Talk in Brockwood, 28 August 1982 quality of the intellect. To love, ‘one’ must die. On Living and Dying, Madras 1959

It is so obvious. If you have love, you don’t ask anybody that you be loved. You see, we are making ourselves into beggars. That is what is happening. When we go to The abandonment of the self is love, compassion: passion for all things–for the church, pray, we are beggars. When we want somebody to help us, we are beggars. starving, the suffering, the homeless, and for the materialist and the believer. Krishnamurti’s Journal, 29 October 1973 Or when we depend on books, we are beggars. It may be all right to be a beggar, but see the consequences of it: you are always depending on somebody else. And there That reality is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in are all those people who will help you fill your bowl with all their rubbish. books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the Saanen Q & A Meeting, 24 July 1983 dead leaf, in the vagrant thoughts, in the fullness of life. For love is not different Life is so rich, has so many treasures, but we go to it with empty hearts; we do not from truth. And where love is, there is transformation. Where there is love, there is know how to fill our hearts with the abundance of life. We are poor inwardly, and revolution. On Self-Knowledge, Benares 1949 when the riches are offered to us, we refuse. Love is a dangerous thing; it brings the only revolution that gives complete happiness. So few of us are capable of love, so few want love. We love on our own terms, making of love a marketable thing. We When he (Krishnamurti) entered my room I said to myself: ‘Surely, the Lord of Love have the market mentality; and love is not marketable, a give-and-take affair. It is a has come.’ state of being in which all man’s problems are resolved. We go to the well with a Kahlil Gibran thimble, and so life becomes a tawdry affair, puny and small. Krishnamurti: A Biography by Pupul Jayakar

Love is not the opposite of anything. It is not the opposite of hate or of violence. Even if you do not depend on anybody and live a most virtuous life–do social work,

J Krishnamurti &

Talking of Freedom…

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Do you know what a free mind is? Have you ever observed your own mind? It is not free, is it? It is extremely difficult for the mind to be free of fear because that implies being really free of the desire to imitate, to follow, free of the desire to amass wealth or to conform to a tradition–which does not mean that you do something outrageous. Life Ahead, Ch. 2

Many philosophers have written about freedom. We talk of freedom–freedom to do what we like, to have any job we like, freedom to choose a woman or a man, freedom to read any book or freedom not to read at all. We are free, and what do we do with that freedom? We use that freedom to express ourselves, to do whatever we like. The totalitarian States have no freedom at all because they have the idea that freedom brings about the degeneration of man. Therefore they control, suppress. So what is freedom? Is it based on choice? Is it to do exactly what we like? Some psychologists say that if you feel something, do not suppress, restrain or control it, but express it immediately, and we are doing that very well, too well. And this is also called freedom. Just look what we have reduced our freedom to! Questions and Answers, Ch. 50

It is strange that we haven’t gone above and beyond the narrow field of suppression, control, obedience, and the authority of ‘the book’. For, in all this, the mind can never flourish. How can anything flourish within the darkness of fear? Meeting Life, Ch. 6 Sergio Pessalano Herve Blandin

Does freedom lie ‘out there’? Where do you begin to search for freedom? In the outward world, where you express whatever you like, which is the so-called ‘individual’ freedom, or does freedom begin inwardly?

Daylife Mediafilter

Questions and Answers, Ch. 50

Most of us demand freedom politically or religiously or to think what we like, and there is the ‘freedom of choice’. Political freedom is all right, and one must have it, but most of us never demand and find out whether it is at all possible to be free ‘inwardly’. Our mind is a slave to its own projections, to its own demands, to its own desires and fulfilments, a slave to its cravings, to its appetites. But we are always wanting freedom outwardly–to go against the society, against a particular structure of society. And this revolt against society, which is taking place all over the world, is a form of violence, which indicates that one is concentrating on outward change without inward change. San Diego 1970, Talk 3

Without freedom man withers away, however great his work, whether in art, science, politics or religion.

Estherase

Conversations, Ch. 3

To know how one is conditioned is the first step towards freedom. But do we know how we are conditioned? The Collected Works, Vol. 8 Herve Blandin

Wellington Grey

The whole of your life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is conforming, imitating, obeying, adjusting to social laws or to a particular idiosyncrasy, which is your own particular character. When you are faced with that, you realize that any activity born of thought, born of an idea, born of a concept–as an idea, an ideology, a formula, a tradition, or a prompting from the past–is imitative.

Ishai Gonda

The Collected Works, Vol. 16

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! Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1

Freedom exists only when there is no confusion inside me, when I am not caught in any trap. There are innumerable traps: gurus, saviours, preachers, excellent books, psychologists and psychiatrists; they are all traps. And if I am confused and there is disorder, must I not first be free of that disorder before I talk of freedom? Should I not begin here, inside me, in my mind, in my heart, to be totally free of all fears, anxieties, despairs, and the hurts and wounds that I have received? Can one watch all that for oneself and be free of them?

Hubpages

Questions and Answers, Ch. 50 Slacktide Wordpress

So you are left with yourself, and that is the actual state for a man to be who is very serious about all this; and as you are no longer looking to anybody or anything for help, you are already free to discover. And when there is freedom there is energy; and when there is freedom it can never do anything wrong. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. And hence there is no fear, and a mind that has no fear is capable of great love. And when there is love, it can do what it will. Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1

We were about to leave when a young man burst in unannounced, asking to see K. K appeared at the door. ‘You want to see me?’ he asked gently. ‘Yes, urgently.’ He was almost shouting. ‘I’ve got to talk.’ ‘Come with me.’

Claude Renault

The man crossed to K, and as they walked down the long hall towards K’s room, we could hear the man relating his problem. Before they reached K’s door, we heard the man suddenly begin to laugh. ‘Yes, of course’, we heard him cry out. Seconds later he re-entered the drawing room. He was radiant. ‘I knew it! I knew he could solve it. Thank you.’ The whole incident could have taken no longer than three minutes. It was a revelation of the immediacy of perception when a person is in crisis, when there is no time for explanations. The Transparent Mind by Ingram Smith

Cal State-LA

Unxpectd

J Krishnamurti &

The Earth Was Breathless In Its Splendour

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

These excerpts are drawn from exquisitely crafted passages that often preface or are incorporated into Krishnamurti’s writings. Said to represent an entirely new genre of literature–a blend of lyrical descriptions of nature, philosophical reflections, and perceptive insights, all informed by a deeply religious sensibility–these passages reflect Krishnamurti’s concern for the earth and the human condition. Tejbir Singh Anand

Shadows filled the earth; it was a morning for shadows, the little ones and the big ones, the long lean ones and the fat satisfied ones, the squat homely ones and the joyful sprightly ones. Krishnamurti’s Notebook, Gstaad 1961

Aleksandr Elisavietskyi

When you look at the stars, there is ‘you’ looking at the stars in the sky; the sky is flooded with brilliant stars, there is cool air, and there is ‘you’, the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, you with your aching heart, you, the centre. That is why you do not know what beauty is or what love is. You talk about it, you write about it, but you have never known it except perhaps at rare intervals of total self-abandonment. When there is no centre and no circumference, then there is love. And when you love, you are beauty.

Algo

Do you have a sense of beauty in your life, or is it mediocre, meaningless, an everlasting struggle from morning until night? Have you ever looked at a mountain or the blue sea without chattering, without making noise, really paying attention to the sea, the beauty of the water, the beauty of light on the sheet of water?

Freedom from the Known, Ch. 11

Bombay Talk 4, 1982

Ranjan Kamath

Algo

Thenausea.com

Man has probably never been so cruel as he is now, so violent. One wonders if man will ever live on this beautiful earth peacefully, with some divinity and love in his heart. Krishnamurti to Himself, 26 April 1983

The sea was asleep and you watched it in wonder… Krishnamurti’s Journal, 6 April 1975

The love of trees is, or should be, a part of our nature, like breathing. They are a part of the earth like us, full of beauty with that strange aloofness. The smoke is going up in a single column across the valley, and below a lorry goes by, heavy with logs of recently cut trees, their bark still on them. A group of boys and girls passes by chattering and shattering the stillness of the wood.

Alex Senson

Meeting Life, Ch.18

Steve McCurry

It was a beautiful morning and the sun was not too hot yet. There was a benediction in the air, and there was that peace before man wakes up. The Only Revolution, India, Ch. 2

Alexandr Elisavietskyi

Please listen to all this, not with the ear, but with your heart. There is the sorrow of disease, there is the sorrow that man feels in complete isolation. There is the sorrow of poverty when you see all these poor, ignorant, dirty, hopeless people. There is sorrow when you see all the animals of the world being killed, destroyed, butchered in laboratories and so on. There is sorrow when you see a young seal being killed by a man with a bludgeon, hundreds of whales being killed. And thousands of people are killed, children are maimed in wars. You know all that…

NASA Francesco Dazzi

It was very early in the morning, and the valley was full of silence. The sun was not yet up behind the hills, and the snow peaks were still dark. As you looked at them, you were aware of the age of the earth and your own impermanence. You passed away, and they remained–the mountains, the hills, the green fields, and the river. They would always be there, and you with your worries, your insufficiencies and sorrow would pass away…

Bombay Talk 3, 1978 Nasiri Photos

Meeting Life, Ch. 7

It is the oldest living thing on the earth; it is gigantic in proportion, in its height and vast trunk. Among other redwood trees, which were also very old, this one was towering over them all; other trees had been touched by fire, but this one had no marks on it. It had lived through all the ugly things of history, through all the wars of the world, through all the mischief and sorrow of man, through fire and lightning, through all the storms of time, untouched, majestic, and utterly alone, with immense dignity. Krishnamurti’s Journal, 20 October 1973

The death of a tree is beautiful in its ending, unlike man’s. A dead tree in a desert, stripped of its bark, polished by the sun and the wind, all its naked branches open to the heavens, is a wonderful sight. A great redwood, many, many hundreds of years old, is cut down in a few minutes to make fences, seats, and build houses or enrich the soil in a garden. That marvellous giant is gone. Reuters

Meeting Life, Ch. 18

Friedrich Grohe

How few, in retrospect, are the experiences of one’s life that really mark breakthroughs in understanding, after which nothing can ever be the same again! At the same time, how extraordinary that they have actually happened. Without them, my life would have been so much the poorer. Here was a real live Buddha pointing at a living rose which only he could smell and see unveiled, in the moment, without the stain of thought and memory on the direct perception. Asking for the Earth, by James George

Thenausea.com

Standing on that hill, one saw three hundred miles of the Himalayas, almost from horizon to horizon, with deep, dark valleys, peak after peak with everlasting snow, not a house in sight, not a village, not a hut. The sun was touching the highest peaks, and all of a sudden the whole continuous range was afire. The earth was breathless in its splendour. And the day began. Meeting Life, Ch.19

Algo

J Krishnamurti &

Krishnamurti–To The Young

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

I am sure you have often heard from politicians, from educators, from your parents and from the public that you are the ‘coming generation’. But when they talk about you as a new generation, they really do not mean it because they make sure that you conform to the older pattern of society. They really do not want you to be a new, different kind of human being. Krishnamurti on Education, Ch. 6

Herve Blandin

You know, when you are very young, full of vitality, eagerness, innocence, there is a delight in everything. All the common things have a meaning, a little marble has a world of meaning; and as we grow older all that becomes dull, the mind becomes dull, which has become educated, which has accepted life in terms of society and adjustment to the pattern of society. We all know this. We never stop to look at a tree, or the evening sky, or the stars. We know our minds are deteriorating all the time; why? Why is there not that sense of innocence–not the cultivated innocence of a clever mind that ‘wishes’ to be innocent, but that state of innocence in which there is no denial or acceptance; it is just what it is. Why? And when old age comes, we are destroyed. Why? The Collected Works, Vol. 11

Herve Blandin

They want you to be mechanical, to fit in with tradition, to conform, to believe, to accept authority. In spite of this, if you can actually free yourself from fear, not theoretically, not ideally, not merely outwardly but actually, inwardly, deeply, then you can be a different human being. Then you can become the ‘coming generation’.

Claude Renault

The older people are ridden with fear–fear of death, fear of losing jobs, fear of public opinion. They are completely held in the grip of fear. So their gods, their scriptures, their pujas are all within the field of fear, and therefore the mind is curiously warped, perverted. Such a mind cannot think straight, cannot reason logically, sanely, healthily, because it is rooted in fear. Watch the older generation, and you will see how fearful it is of everything–of death, of disease, of going against the current of tradition, of being different, of being new.

WhirlingMcDervish

Claude Renault

Krishnamurti on Education, Ch. 6

Your parents and society use that word ‘duty’ as a means of moulding you, shaping you according to their particular idiosyncrasies, their habits of thought, their likes and dislikes. You know, we allow that word ‘duty’ to kill us. The idea that you have a ‘duty’ to parents, to relations, to the country, sacrifices you. Life Ahead, Ch. 16

Opinion and tradition mould our thoughts and feelings from the tenderest age. The immediate influences and impressions produce an effect which is powerful and lasting and which shapes the whole course of our conscious and unconscious life.

Herve Blandin Boaz Rottem

Estherase

Education and the Significance of Life, Ch. 3

The desire to imitate is a very strong factor in our life, not only at the superficial levels, but also profoundly. We have hardly any independent thoughts and feelings. When they do occur, they are mere reactions and are therefore not free from the established pattern. Education and the Significance of Life, Ch. 3

Boaz Rottem

What happens when the world around me controls me, conscripts me, takes me to war, tells me what to do politically, economically, religiously? There are the psychologists and the gurus from the East–they all tell me what to do. If I obey–which is what they all want me to do, promising utopia at the end of it. The root meaning of the word obey is ‘to hear’. By hearing constantly what other people tell me, I gradually slip into obedience. Beyond Violence, Ch. 13 Nasiri Photos

Herve Blandin

Lorenzo Moscia

Herve Blandin

Freedom of mind comes into being when there is no fear, when the mind is not intriguing for position, for prestige, to show off. Is this all too much, too difficult? This is certainly not as difficult as your geography or mathematics. It is much easier, only you have never thought about it. You spend most of your lives in school acquiring information. You are in a school for about ten to fifteen years; yet you never have time to think about any of these things; not a week, not a day, to think fully, completely, of all these things; and that is why these things seem difficult. If you give time to it, then you can see how your mind works, operates, functions. The Collected Works, Vol. 7

Lorenzo Moscia

First of all, can you reject all authority? If you can, it means that you are no longer afraid. Then what happens? When you reject something false which you have been carrying about with you for generations, when you throw off a burden of any kind, what takes place? You have more energy, haven’t you? You have more capacity, more drive, greater intensity and vitality. If you do not feel this, then you have not thrown off the burden, you have not discarded the dead weight of authority.

Aeionic Herve Blandin

Then 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. 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.

Herve Blandin

Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1

Claude Renault

You must question everything, including your pet beliefs, your ideals, your authorities, your scriptures, your politicians. Which means there must be a certain quality of scepticism. When you question, it must be your own particular problem, not a casual, superficial question that will entertain you; it must be something of your own. If this is so, then you will put the right question. And if it is the right question you will have the right answer, because the very act of putting that right question shows you the answer in itself.

Herve Blandin Herve Blandin

Beyond Violence, Ch.8

‘Dear Mr. Smith,

Shabtai Gold

You are a very lucky man indeed to have discovered Krishnamurti at such an early age! I am exactly double your age and came upon his teachings only about four years ago. The same shattering experience. One wonders whether ever before such a teacher, such a human being, has walked the earth. There is in his presence the feeling of something immense, so entirely remote from everyday experience, that by comparison one feels oneself to be puny, totally insignificant, and that recognition brings with it something of an immediate transformation. And although it does not last, yet, on a deeper level, it is experienced as a lasting benediction. Such a one has no need to perform miracles, spectacular healings, and so on, for his very being is a miracle.’ Crisis in Consciousness, by Robert Powell

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And The Beauty Of The Earth Is Forgotten...

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

We treat the earth and its products in the same way. There is no love of earth, there is only usage of earth. If one really loved the earth, there would be frugality in using the things of the earth. We are always using nature, either as an escape or for utilitarian ends; we never actually stop and love the earth or the things of the earth.

What is your relationship with those clouds, full of evening light, or with those silent trees? Do look, sir, at those clouds and the tree as though you were looking for the first time. Look at them without thought interfering or wandering off. Look at them without naming them as a cloud or a tree. Just look with your heart and eyes. They are of the earth as we are! Meeting Life, Ch.18

The Collected Works, Vol. 5

Alex

One may be surrounded by great beauty, by mountains and fields and rivers, but unless one is alive to it all, one might just as well be dead. Think on These Things, Ch. 20

Karl Ammann

Alex

Earth is there to be loved and cared for, not to be divided as yours and mine. It is foolish to plant a tree in a compound and call it ‘mine’.

Karl Ammann

Alex

Alex Senson

The Collected Works, Vol. 5

The whole horizon seemed to be filled with these clouds, range after range, piling up against the hills in the most fantastic shapes, castles such as man had never built. A blackbird was singing in a bush close by, and that was the everlasting blessing.

Karl Ammann Vinod Sebastian

The Only Revolution, Europe, Ch. 2

Ivan Vinod Sebastian

Alex Senson

Sensitivity means being sensitive to everything around–one to the plants, the animals, the trees, the skies, the waters of the river, the bird on the wing; and also to the moods of the people around one, and to the stranger who passes by. This sensitivity brings about the quality of uncalculated, unselfish response, which is true morality and conduct.

AxiePics

There was a farm with huge pigs–mountains of flesh, pink, snorting, ready for the market. They said it was a very good money-making business. You would often see a lorry come up a winding, rough farm road, and there would be fewer pigs the next day. ‘But we must live’, they said, and the beauty of the earth is forgotten.

Alex

Life Ahead, Introduction Thenausea.com

Meeting Life, Ch. 5 AxiePics

AxiePics AxiePics

Vinod Sebastian

As you sat quietly without movement, a bobcat, a lynx, came down. As the wind was blowing up the valley, it was not aware of the smell of that human being. It was purring, rubbing itself against the rock, its small tail up, and enjoying the marvel of the earth. It was afraid of man more than anything else–man who believes in God, man who prays, the man of wealth with his gun, with his casual killing. You could almost smell that bobcat as it passed by you. You were so motionless, so utterly still that it never even looked at you; you were part of that rock, part of that environment. Krishnamurti to Himself, 11 March 1983

Maureen Marsh

Alex Senson AxiePics

There is a tree by the river, and we have been watching it day after day for several weeks when the sun is about to rise. If you establish a relationship with it, then you have relationship with mankind. If you have no relationship with the living things on this earth, you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity.

Karl Ammann

Alex Senson

Krishnamurti told me stories about his encounters with animals–tigers and bears and rattlesnakes and even a lynx. He said, ‘If you are sensitive, you are sensitive to everything. Do you look at flowers, trees, really look?’ ‘No’, I replied. ‘You miss a great deal if you don’t’, he continued. ‘One day I was walking in Benares, and we passed a grove of mango trees. My companion said that the trees hadn’t borne fruit for many years, and they were to be cut down. ‘Watch out!’ I said to the trees. ‘If you don’t bear fruit you will be cut down!’ ‘And what happened?’ I asked. ‘They bore fruit that year’, he replied. ‘I am not saying it had anything to do with me...’

Krishnamurti to Himself, 25 February 1983 Alex Karl Ammann

One Thousand Moons, by Asit Chandmal Alex Karl Ammann

It was a lovely morning, soft with the scent of a rich forest. In the trees close by there was a whole group of monkeys, their faces shining in that morning sun, with long tails and grey, hairy bodies. The babies were clinging to their mothers, and the whole group was quietly watching unafraid, the solitary figure. They watched unmoving. And presently a group of sannyasis, chanting, was going down to a distant village. There were about eight of them, three or four quiet young, all with shaven heads, clad in saffron robes, controlled, with downcast eyes, not seeing the great trees, the thousand flowers and the green, soft hills; for beauty is dangerous– desire may be aroused! Meeting Life, Ch.19

Vinod Sebastian

J Krishnamurti &

You’ve Never Looked At Your Fears, Have You?

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

We have probably never asked ourselves why we allow fear to continue even for a day, even for a minute, knowing what damage, what hatred, what lies, what hypocrisy, what confusion and conflict it creates. The Collected Works, Vol. 15

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Lakshman Anand

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Claude Renault

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First of all we should look together at why human beings, who have lived on this earth for the last 50,000 years or more, have not been able to find, especially in this modern world, security, inward and outward. We have not been able to find complete security for all human beings. We are asking, why is it that, however civilized we are, however cultured, we are still fighting, killing each other?

Selfhelpzone

Varanasi, 11 November 1984

Each one of us wants to live in security. That is natural. That is an instinctive response to have food, clothes, and shelter. Every human being in the world, from the most ignorant to the most sophisticated, wants security, both outwardly and inwardly. San Francisco Talk, 30 April 1983

Being afraid you cling to tradition; you cling to your parents, to your wives, to your brothers, to your husbands. Look at your own lives and the lives about you, how empty everything is!

Uhuru1701

Zoriah

The Collected Works, Vol. 7

You cling to your house, you cling to your books, you cling to your idols, gods, conclusions, your attachments, your sorrows, because you have nothing else, and all that you do brings unhappiness. Krishnamurti on Education, Ch. 5

Craving engenders fear, fear nourishes dependence, dependence on things, people or ideas. The greater the dependence the greater the inward poverty. Becoming aware of this poverty, loneliness, you try to enrich it, try to fill it with knowledge or activity, with amusement or mystery.

Claude Renault

The Collected Works, Vol. 3

Have you ever noticed that we build a fence round ourselves? A fence of selfprotection, a fence to ward off any hurts, a barrier between you and the other, between you and your family, and so on. Right? Last Talks at Saanen, Talk 3

So you see man imprisoned by innumerable walls, walls of religion, of social, political and national limitations, walls created by his own ambitions, aspirations, fears, hopes, security, prejudices, hate, and love. Within these barriers and prisons he is held, limited by the coloured maps of national boundaries, racial antagonisms, class struggles, and cultural group distinctions. Through these walls and through these enclosures he is trying to express what he feels and what he thinks. And the man who succeeds in making himself comfortable in the prison we call ‘successful’.

Estherase

Herve Blandin

have never looked at fear, you have never come directly into communication with it, you have never come directly in contact with it. The moment you say my wife, see what you have done–the image that you have built about her is in contact with the other image; therefore relationship is between image and image. To look at fear The Collected Works, Vol. 2 without naming it, without running away, without trying to overcome it, just to be with it, without any movement away from it–you do it. And if you do it, you will see And that is the state we live in, using people, things, as a means of covering up our own inward poverty. Therefore the things that we use become all-important–the very strange things happening. San Diego 1970, Talk 2 person, the possession, the idea, the belief–because without them we are lost; therefore more knowledge, more people, more things. And yet that which we are, we Surely fear is in the movement away from what is; it is the flight, the escape, the have never understood. avoidance of actually what is; it is this flight away that brings about fear. Also, when The Collected Works, Vol. 5 there is comparison of any kind, there is the breeding of fear: the comparison of what All life is an escape from fear. Your gods, your churches, your moralities are based you are with what you think you should be. Beyond Violence, Ch. 5

on fear, and to understand that you have to understand how this fear comes about. Fear comes when thought looks back to things that have happened in the past or to As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological events that may happen in the future. Thought is responsible for this. security we need–food, clothing and shelter–is destroyed. We are seeking Beyond Violence, Ch. 2 psychological security, which does not exist; and we seek it, if we can, through There is no ‘noble’ escape. All escapes, from drunkenness to God, are the same, power, through position, through titles, names–all of which is destroying physical security. because one is escaping from what is, which is oneself, one’s own inward poverty. The First and Last Freedom, Q. 10

The Collected Works, Vol. 6

Is physical security assured if we are seeking psychological security? That is, if we use property as a means of psychological security, are we not creating physical insecurity? Property becomes extraordinarily important to us because psychologically we are weak; it gives us power, position, prestige, and so we put a fence around it and call it ‘mine’. To protect it, we create a police force, an army, and from that arise nationalism and war. So, in the very desire for psychological security, we bring about physical insecurity! The Collected Works, Vol. 6

So we are asking: psychologically, inwardly, is there security at all? Saanen 1980, Talk 1

So what is one to do, what is the mind to do? You have never looked at fear, have you? You’ve never said, ‘Well, I am afraid, let me look.’ Have you done that? Or you’ve said, ‘I am afraid, let me turn on the radio, or go to church or pick up a book, or resort to a belief’–a movement away. So you

The self is the root of all fear. The Collected Works, Vol. 3

‘Krishnaji turned and faced me, straight and austere, his expressive black eyes alight with a great fire. ‘What do you want out of life, Sidney?’ ‘I’m not sure, Krishnaji. Today, after battling with lawyers, bill collectors, and sitting for weeks in the witness chair in Superior Court, I feel like a truck had run over me. You are telling me to fully accept my present situation, without complaining.’ ‘No, to accept is an attitude of the mind. To understand is to see, to perceive at the deepest level, and be free!’ ‘It’s really easy’, he said casually. ‘But you complicate things. You don’t let Life paint the picture. You insist on doing it your own way.’ The Reluctant Messiah by Sidney Field

J Krishnamurti

The Illusion Of Progress

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

Technological knowledge, however necessary, will in no way resolve our inner, psychological pressures and conflict; and it is because we have acquired technical knowledge without understanding the total process of life that technology has become a means of destroying ourselves. The man who knows how to split the atom but has no love in his heart becomes a monster. Education and the Significance of Life, Ch. 2

MSZCZUZ

We see that there is progress in the obvious sense of that word; there are new inventions, better cars, better planes, better refrigerators, the superficial peace of a progressive society, and so on. It does superficially alter the conduct of our life, but can it ever fundamentally transform our thinking? The Collected Works, Vol. 9

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. There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane, but psychologically the individual has not changed at all! Slate

Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1

Craig White

Self-interest, with the desire for power, position, for fulfilment and so on, is the factor that is destroying not only the world but the extraordinary capacity of our own brain. The brain has remarkable capacity, as is shown in the extraordinary things they are doing in technology. And we never apply that same immense capacity inwardly, to be free of fear, to end sorrow, to know what is love and compassion. We never search, explore that field; we are caught by the world with all its misery. On Fear, Brockwood 1984

Boaz Rottem

The whole world is worshipping success. You are fed on the glorification of success. With the achievement of great success there is also great sorrow.

Algo

Think on These Things, Ch. 20

Louk Vreeswijk

Please listen to all this. On every side we are encouraged to be competitive, to be ambitious, to be successful. Competition, ambition and success are the gods of a particularly prosperous society such as this, and what do you expect? You want juvenile delinquency to become respectable, that’s all.

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The Collected Works, Vol. 9

Wellington Grey

One is so accustomed to conflict and struggle; one even feels that when there is no conflict, one is not growing, not developing, not creating, one is not functioning properly.

Ishai Gonda

Beyond Violence, Ch.12

Man has lived so far by the activity of the brain, keeping it active because he has struggled to survive, to accumulate knowledge skillfully to be secure, to have safety. Now the machine is taking all that over, and what are you? What is the future of man if the machine can take over all the operations that thought does now, and do them far swifter, learn much more quickly–do everything that man can do?

Shabtai Gold Lorenzo Moscia

Ahmed Shokeir

On Mind and Thought, Rajghat 1981

We are going to look at why the brain, which has evolved through thousands of years, has become so limited. In one direction, in the direction of technology, the brain has infinite power. That’s obvious. The brain has put man on the moon, it has given man great comfort, hygiene, communication, and so on. But the brain is limited because it cannot go in any other direction but that. That is, it is incapable at present of going inwardly. And if it can go in one direction with the extraordinary vigour, the extraordinary energy that has been put into the technological world, then it can also go in the other direction, that is, not in the direction of amusement and entertainment but into the world of the psyche, the psychological world. Then it would have extraordinary, infinite capacity, both outwardly, that is, in the technological world, and inwardly, in the psychological world.

Estherase

Mind Without Measure, Madras Talk 1

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Louk Vreeszwijk

All our answers, social, economic, or religious, are sought by a mind that is conditioned and therefore, whatever it is, the answer will be progressively conditioned, never beyond conditioning. That is, instead of worshipping the word God, we now worship the word State, and by using the word State we think we have made tremendous progress. Or if we do not like the word State, we take the word Science as though that is going to solve all our problems. That is, we are always approaching the solution of all our problems with a conditioned thought. The Collected Works, Vol. 7

Organized religion and the modern world go together: they both cultivate the empty heart. We are superficial, intellectually brilliant, capable of great inventions and of producing the most destructive means of liquidating each other, and creating more and more division between ourselves. But we do not know what it means to love; we have no song in our hearts. An empty heart with a technical mind is not a creative human being.

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Brendan Grant

On Nature and the Environment, New Delhi 1948

That’s the main crisis of our life. The crisis is not in the outward technological advancement, but rather in the way we think, the way we live and the way we feel. That is where a revolution must take place.

Farfaraway Zoriah

The Collected Works, Vol. 17

You must start anew. That means radical revolution, not of the bloody kind, which does not solve a thing, but a radical revolution of thought, of feeling, of values. That radical revolution can be brought about only by you and me; a revolution that will create a new, integrated individual must begin with you and me. What we can do, if we are intelligent people, is to tackle the problem ourselves, in the present. Now is the only eternity, not in the future. I must give full attention to the problem. Now!

WhirlingMcDervish

The Collected Works, Vol. 5

WhirlingMcDervish

The greatest of enlightened beings have always spoken with a simplicity and clarity that is shocking. This is the nature of truth, and that is the nature of Krishnamurti. Larry Dossey

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So-called Education–A Major Factor Of Degeneration!

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

What a crazy world this is! You entrust your children to somebody who is not interested in your children; nor are you interested in your children, and so they grow up in fear, in solitude, in anxiety. There is no love at home, no love at school. Right? Please see your responsibility, for God’s sake! In the Problem is the Solution, Ch. 5

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Zoriah

Claude Renault

It seems to me that one of the major factors of deterioration everywhere is the socalled education. What do we mean by education? Why do you send your children to be educated? Is it the mere acquisition of some technical knowledge which will give you a certain capacity with which to lead your life, so that you can apply that technique and get a profitable job? Is that what we mean by education–to pass certain examinations and then to become a clerk, and from a clerk to climb up the ladder of managerial efficiency? The Collected Works, Vol. 7

So we are creating a generation of people like ourselves–dull, insensitive, superstitious, and very clever at business, at making money. As a parent your interest is that he should get a degree and get a good job, and then you wash your hands of him completely. That is what every parent in the world is concerned with–get him a good job, let him marry, and settle down. Settle down to what? To misery, right?

Insis4.es

In the Problem is the Solution, Ch. 5

And society doesn’t want a new person, a new entity; it wants him to be respectable, it moulds him, it shapes him and so destroys the freshness, the innocence of youth. This is what we are doing to all the children around the world. And that child, when it grows into manhood, is already aged; he will never mature.

A.ABCNews

The Collected Works, Vol. 13

There is now scientific knowledge enough to enable us to provide food, clothing and shelter for all human beings, yet it is not done. The politicians and other leaders throughout the world are ‘educated’ people: they have titles, degrees, caps and gowns; they are doctors and scientists; and yet they have not created a world in which man can live happily. So modern education has failed, has it not? And if you are satisfied to be educated in the same old way, you will make another howling mess of life.

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Vinod Sebastian

Life Ahead, Ch. 2

Present-day education is a complete failure because it has over-emphasized technique. In over-emphasizing technique we destroy man. To cultivate capacity and efficiency without understanding life, without having a comprehensive perception of the ways of thought and desire, will only make us increasingly ruthless, which is to engender wars and jeopardize our physical security.

Zoriah

Education and the Significance of Life, Ch.2

So our problem is not the pupil, the child, but the teacher and the parent. The Are we prepared, as parents and teachers, to bring about a new generation of people, teacher’s profession is not a mere routine job, but the expression of beauty and joy, for that is what is implied–a totally different generation of people with totally which cannot be measured in terms of achievement and success. Commentaries on Living 2, Ch. 1 different minds and hearts? Are we prepared for that? Questions and Answers, Ch. 6

Teaching is not mere imparting of information but the cultivation of an inquiring We are concerned with the total development of each human being, helping him to mind. Life Ahead, Introduction realize his own highest and fullest capacity. Any spirit of comparison prevents this full flowering of the individual, whether he is to be scientist or a gardener. The fullest capacity of the gardener is the same as the fullest capacity of the scientist Teaching is the noblest profession–if it can be called a profession at all. It is an art when there is no comparison. The fullest development of every individual creates a that requires, not just intellectual attainments, but infinite patience and love. To be society of equals. With right education, there is no need to seek equality through truly educated is to understand our relationship to all things–to money, to property, to people, to nature–in the vast field of our existence. social and other reforms, because envy with its comparison of capacities ceases. Life Ahead, Introduction Life Ahead, Introduction

To be afraid of being nobody, of not arriving, of not succeeding, is at the root of competition. But when there is fear, you cease to learn. And so it seems to me that it is the function of education to eliminate fear. It involves the elimination of all competition. In this process of competition, you conform and gradually you destroy the subtlety, the freshness, the youth of the brain. Krishnamurti on Education, Ch. 6

So education may have a different meaning altogether–not merely transferring what is printed on a page to your brain. Education may mean opening the doors of perception on to the vast movement of life. It may mean learning how to live happily, freely, without hate and confusion, but in beatitude. Modern education is blinding us; we learn to fight each other more and more, to compete, to struggle with each other. Right education is surely finding a different way of life, setting the mind free from its own conditioning. And perhaps then there can be love which in its action will bring about true relationship between man and man. Conversations, Ch. 5

He invited us (parents and teachers) to sit with him and endure the crucial issues of our lives until we had exhausted the fidgets of our merely plausible or brilliant answers. Concerning the most important matters of our lives, he leaned on us until we could say, ‘I don’t know’ –and mean it. These were painful realizations for most of us, because until then we had lived our whole adult lives in the presumption of knowing. In short, Krishnamurti gave us the gift of our ignorance. To be honest, this was gruelling, bruising work. We complained to him. We were angry with him, hurt by him, even downright disgusted with him. But, finally, never disappointed. In his meetings with us, Krishnamurti brought a single-mindedness that was both sobering and freeing. Vicki and Stan Hodson, parents of The Oak Grove School

J Krishnamurti

The Seer Who Walked Alone

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

In library catalogues Krishnamurti is generally listed as a philosopher. Few academic philosophers would have applied it to him, if only because he had read none of their books, and in all his work there is scarcely a reference to any other writer. Yet what else do you call a man who, for more than half a century, explored and discussed such subjects as freedom, truth, fear, death, suffering, ethics, the purpose of life, and the nature of intelligence? These are some of the perennial subjects of philosophy, and Krishnamurti expounded original ideas on all of them; ideas derived from his own life experience. What an extraordinary life experience it was... Krishnamurti – The Man, The Mystery & The Message, by Stuart Holroyd

Jiddu Krishnamurti had a life of the nature of myth. Born on 11 May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small hill-town in what is now Andhra Pradesh, south India, his mother Jiddu Sanjeevamma and father Jiddu Narianiah were Telugu-speaking Brahmins. As he was the eighth child, in accordance with Hindu custom, he was named after Lord Krishna. Narianiah worked with the Revenue Department of the British Administration. Sanjeevamma, a tender, pious lady, ran an orthodox household, and it was in this environment of strict adherence to the rituals and norms of religious tradition that Krishnamurti grew up. A local astrologer cast the child’s horoscope and assured the father that his son would be a very great man. There was little indication of this in the young Krishnamurti, a sickly child who almost died of malaria at the age of two, and suffered recurrent bouts of the disease years thereafter. Vague, dreamy, and an indifferent pupil at school, Krishnamurti was regularly beaten by his teachers. However, Krishnamurti’s father noticed in him an unusual capacity for silence and a deep absorption in nature; besides, he surprisingly displayed a

natural aptitude for mechanics and devoted hours to repairing watches and, in later years, to working on car engines. The boy was also devoted to his younger brother, Nityananda, who was regarded as remarkably intelligent. When Sanjeevamma died in 1905, Krishna was ten and a half. Narianiah found it difficult to manage his family, especially on retirement in 1907, and he pleaded with Mrs. Annie Besant, then President of the Theosophical Society, for full-time employment at the Society’s headquarters in Adyar in Madras. When Mrs. Besant consented, in January 1909, Narianiah–himself a Theosophist–and his four sons moved to a ramshackle cottage outside the Society’s beautiful, sprawling compound. The Theosophical Society was founded by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, in New York, in 1875. The estate at Adyar was purchased in 1882 and transformed into the Society’s Headquarters. Annie Besant, an articulate and energetic worker for social reform, joined the Society in 1889. In 1890, Besant met Charles W. Leadbeater, a Theosophist and former priest in the Church of England, who was considered a remarkable clairvoyant. When Olcott died in 1907, Besant took over as President. A belief central to Theosophy was the progressive evolution of humanity towards a Universal Brotherhood, guided by Masters–perfected human beings–who periodically appear on Earth to found a new religion. The Theosophists also believed in the concept of a World Teacher, by whose mission on Earth a new religion would permeate human civilization. The next World Teacher was to be Maitreya, the Buddha of Compassion, whose manifestation was imminent. The identification and nurture of the vehicle for the role of World Teacher, the Theosophists felt, was theirs. In 1909 Leadbeater, while walking on the beach outside the Theosophical Society, noticed Krishna, who, he said, had the most wonderful aura ‘without a trace of selfishness’. He immediately proclaimed that this child would be the future World Teacher, but his observation was met with surprise and disbelief since Krishna had nothing to recommend him for this role ‘apart from his wonderful eyes’. Shortly, Krishna and Nitya were brought into the Society’s compound, groomed, and given private lessons. Krishna, who was put through an intensive health regimen, soon began to look remarkably attractive. George Bernard Shaw was later to describe him as ‘the most beautiful human being I ever saw’. In 1911, the Order of the Rising Sun, later known as the Order of the Star in the East (OSE), was formed to herald the arrival of the World Teacher, and that became the first collective acknowledgement of Krishnamurti’s special status. Narainiah transferred guardianship of the boys to Annie Besant in 1911, and a deep bonding developed between Krishnamurti and Besant, whom he came to view as his foster mother. The boys were taken to Europe where they continued their education and came into contact with the educated, wealthy and cultured members of the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society, which by this time had grown to its largest size ever–with over 45,000 members and more than 500 Lodges around the world–was rapidly becoming a powerful world movement. Recipient of large endowments of land and vast sums of money in the service of the World Teacher’s mission, the Society built elaborate structures around Krishnamurti–rituals, meetings, disciples in attendance, and so on. In the summer of 1922, Ojai, California, where the boys had moved for the sake of Nitya’s fight with tuberculosis, Krishnamurti had a life-transforming mystical experience about which he said: ‘I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.’ But when Nitya died in 1925, Krishnamurti’s deep sorrow altered radically his perception of human life. The structures and hierarchies built in his name now seemed to imprison him, and he began distancing himself gradually from the tenets of the Theosophical Society. Annie Besant’s efforts to reconcile Krishnamurti’s revolutionary pronouncements with Theosophy failed. In 1929, Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star, and in a historic speech declared: ‘I maintain that Truth is a pathless land. No organization, no belief can lead to truth.’ He returned to the donors the moneys and vast properties bequeathed to him, including a 5000-acre estate and castle in Holland.

Stepping out of the Theosophical Society and, indeed, out of all organized religions, and renouncing his role as a guru, Krishnamurti reshaped his life around his sole mission: ‘to set man absolutely, unconditionally free’. From then on till his end, he travelled around the world giving talks to large audiences and engaging in discussions with some of the brightest minds of the century. Krishnamurti’s life-long interest in education–‘to create human beings who are integrated and therefore intelligent’–made him found schools, first in India and later in England and America which he visited every year and held dialogues with the students and teachers. In the 1980s, Krishnamurti talked of the importance of Study Centres where serious adults could go in order to take time off from the routine of daily life and study their lives in the light of the teachings. Krishnamurti’s mission was one that seemed to fulfil itself with an intensity that remained undiminished by time and circumstance and, in fact, gathered new energy and momentum as his age advanced. In 1980, he told his biographer that when he stopped speaking, his body would die; the body existed for only one purpose: to reveal the teachings. In California, on 17 February 1986 Krishnamurti died of pancreatic cancer, with a handful of people present at a funeral devoid of ritual and ceremony.

J Krishnamurti

The Sacred Treasure: ‘What Will You Do With It?’

A World In Crisis KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA

So what are you going to do when K is gone? He pours his life into it and discusses with you. Then he’s gone... This is a sacred treasure I leave with you. What will you do with it? Krishnamurti in a discussion with Trustees, Ojai, 20 March 1977

J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is regarded by many as the most significant voice of our times and as one who has had a most profound impact on human consciousness. Dedicating his life entirely to sharing his insights on the human condition, he travelled constantly around the world, giving talks to thousands of listeners, writing, holding discussions with the brightest minds of the century, or just sitting silently with those who sought his compassionate and healing presence. Sage, philosopher and thinker, Krishnamurti illumined the lives of millions the world over–intellectuals and laymen, young and old. It has been estimated that he talked to more people than any other person in recorded history. More than 3,000,000 copies of his books sold worldwide. His material legacy, consisting chiefly of recordings of his talks and dialogues, is vast. And yet Krishnamurti had no ‘philosophy’ to expound; rather, he confronted boldly the problems of contemporary society and analysed with scientific precision the workings of the human mind. He lived through a most tumultuous century that witnessed not only the phenomenal growth of science and technology, but also two world wars, the collapse of faiths, traditions and ideologies, the savage destruction of the Earth, and rapid degeneration in every sphere of human life. He addressed the social, political, and economic issues of the times with an insight that pointed directly to the root of the innumerable problems that confront us: ‘What you are, the world is.’ What may initially bewilder most people is Krishnamurti’s observation that to see the true nature of anything demands neither book knowledge nor intellectual prowess, neither faith nor religious training. All it asks for is a sceptical and attentive observation of life itself. The simpler you are in your approach, the better–a demand that marks a complete departure from the mainstream religious and scientific culture. The implication is profound: the keys to understanding are wrested from the hands of the priest and the pundit, the scientist and the specialist, and given to anyone who cares to see, to understand and be a light to oneself! Couched in plain English and drawing its material from ordinary human life, Krishnamurti’s talks and dialogues bring a daringly original approach to the existential dilemmas that confront us–the problems of living in this modern society with its corruption and violence, the individual’s search for security and happiness, a meaning to life, and the need for man to free himself from his inner burdens of greed, fear, and sorrow. One of Krishnamurti’s most remarkable contributions is his invitation to engage in a novel form of investigation, also called a dialogue when done in a group. This investigation, in form and spirit, points to the very core of his teaching: no new answer can emerge in a mind crowded with memories and knowledge, beliefs and ideals; for it is the dead past that is brought in to deal with the living reality, the what is–conflict, hatred, violence, insecurity, fear, and sorrow. (Perhaps this explains why, throughout human history, our attempts to find solutions to these most persistent problems have failed miserably.) The ruts of the old cannot meet the challenge of the ever-new! What is therefore being demanded in an investigation or dialogue is an engagement that is altogether fresh and original– ‘as if for the first time’, as Krishnamurti put it. Doubts and questions about the outcome of such an exercise are, to be fair, best left unanswered, if only because the nature of the new is beyond both recognition and prediction. The material legacy of Krishnamurti apart, his living legacy lies here–in the life and understanding of countless people whose hearts and minds have been touched and transformed by their attention to what they are. To them, life has returned with an unbounded clarity, joy, and freshness–‘as if for the first time’.

I recall many occasions when we would discuss with Krishnaji how to make the teachings more widely available. He would at first seem interested in all these processes, and listen with extraordinary attentiveness. But frequently he would throw a very large cat into the pigeons of our discussions. ‘Is that all?’ he would demand, with passion. ‘Just a lot of books and tapes and so on...?’ He felt that there was only one thing we all needed to do–to live the teachings.

The Itinerary of Places Krishnamurti spoke in: Argentina: La Plata, Mendoza; Australia: Adelaide, Manley, Melbourne, Newport, Sydney; Austria: Strassburg, Vienna; Belgium: Brussels; Brazil: Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo; Canada: Calgary (Alberta), Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver B.C., Victoria B.C., Westmount (Quebec), Wolf Lake (Vancouver); Chile: Santiago, Valparaiso; England: Brockwood Park, London; France: Paris; Germany: Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg; Greece: Athens, Ekali, Kastri; Holland: Amsterdam, Eerde, Ommen; India: Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, Calicut, Ernakulam, Indore, Karachi (1933), Lahore (1933), Madanapalle, Madras, Nagpur, New Delhi, Pune, Rajahmundry, Rishi Valley, Sangli, Tiruchi, Varanasi, Vizag; Italy: Alpino, Florence, Perugia, Rome, Stresa; Mexico: Mexico City; New Zealand: Auckland, Wellington; Norway: Frognerseteren, Oslo; Puerto Rico: Marcelo Rio Piedras; Scotland: Edinburgh; Sri Lanka: Colombo; Sweden: Stockholm; Switzerland: Geneva, Montreux, Saanen, Schoenried; U.S.A.: Atlanta, Auburndale, Berkeley, Birmingham (Alabama), Chicago, Claremont, Cleveland, Eddington, Hollywood, Kansas, Los Alamos, Los Angeles, Malibu (CA), New York, Oakland, Ojai (CA), Philadelphia, Portland, Rochester (NY), San Antonia, San Diego, San Francisco, San Salito (CA), Santa Cruz (CA), Santa Monica, Seattle, St. Paul (Minn.), Stanford; Uruguay: Montevideo

Luminaries influenced by Krishnamurti: Poet: Kahlil Gibran; Scientists: Dr. David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake, Frijof Capra, and Nobel Laureate & Inventor of the Polio Vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk; Prime Ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi; Literary Figures and Writers: Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Anita Loos, Rom Landau, Iris Murdoch, Howard Fast, Christopher Isherwood, Henry Miller, Robert Powell, Mary Lutyens, Pupul Jayakar; Scholars: Jacob Needleman, Huston Smith, Renee Weber, Dr. Allan Anderson, Fr. Eugene Schallert; Social Reformer: Vinoba Bhave; Psychologists: Dr Hedda Bolgar, Ira Progoff, David Shainberg; Educator: Ivan Illich; Buddhists: Dalai Lama, Walpola Rahula, Chogyam Trungpa; Vedantins: Swami Venkatesananda, Swami Poornananda; Artists: Joseph Campbell, Antoine Bourdelle; Musicians: Leopold Stokowski, Van Morrison.

Krishnamurti's Material Legacy: The Krishnamurti Foundations which came into being around Krishnamurti to organize his travel and publish his works, today house the Krishnamurti Archives that preserve and document the large corpus of his work. This consists of: 9,000 Manuscripts; 600 Video tapes; 2,800 Audio tapes; 7,000 Photographs; Letters from and to Krishnamurti; Translations in world languages; Published Material; and Artefacts of Archival value. Krishnamurti recordings are available in the following formats: Public Talks, Question and Answer Meetings, Discussions, Dinner table Conversations, Radio/TV talks and interviews, and Documentary films. For many decades, his works were circulated surreptitiously in countries with totalitarian regimes, such as China, Vietnam, Thailand, and the USSR. Today, Krishnamurti’s work finds itself translated in at least 50 world languages.: Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese (Brazil), Braille (English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati), Bulgarian, Chinese (Complex), Chinese (Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Singhalese, Slovenian, Sindhi, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, & Yugoslavian. Noted Publishers of Krishnamurti Literature: Victor Gollancz, Penguin Books, Shambhala, Harper & Row, Servire, Mirananda, Open Court, Rider Books, New World Library, Routledge, Avon Books, John Murray, Chetna, Motilal Banarsidas. The Krishnamurti Foundations: Krishnamurti Foundation India; Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd, England; Krishnamurti Foundation of America; Fundacion Krishnamurti Latinoamericana Functions: Publishing Krishnamurti's works, producing translations, running schools for the young and study centres for grown-ups. Making available his teachings in various ways.For websites on Krishnamurti's teachings, see: www.jkrishnamurti.org, www.kinfonet.org The Krishnamurti Schools: India: Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh; Rajghat Besant School, Varanasi; The SchoolKFI, Chennai; The Valley School, Bangalore; Sahyadri School, PuneU.K.: Brockwood Park School, England; U.S.A.: Oak Grove School, CaliforniaSee www.kfionline.org; www.kfoundation.org; www.kfa.orgThe Krishnamurti Study Centres & Retreats:KFI Headquarters, Vasanta Vihar, Chennai; The Krishnamurti School campuses worldwide. Private Initiatives: Krishnamurti’s unique insights into human nature continue to draw large numbers of people across cultural, linguistic, political and generation barriers . His works are now accessible in distant, far-flung corners of the world, touching generations that came much after his time. Several private initiatives, schools, research projects, retreats, environmental conservatories, interactive websites and blogs, translation and publishing houses, libraries and study centres, inspired by Krishnamurti and his teachings have come up in countries across the world–a list that continues to grow with every passing year.

Mary Cadogan in KFT Bulletin 87

Schools based on Krishnamurti’s vision of education, Study Centres, Retreats, Information Centres and Libraries spanning more than 60 countries across the globe, from the Americas to Australia. See www.kinfonet.org