Jiddu Krishnamurti
The essence of his teaching:
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The essence of Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in his 1929 statement where he said "Truth is a land without a path". No organization, no faith, no dogma, priest or ritual, no philosophical or technical knowledge of psychology can lead man there. He must find it in the mirror of relationship, by understanding the content of his own mind, by observation and not by intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built religious, political or personal images for himself, giving him a feeling of security. These are manifested in symbols, ideas and beliefs. The burden they constitute dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These are the causes of our difficulties, for in every relationship they separate man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts pre-established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is this consciousness. This content is common to all mankind. Individuality is the name, form and superficial culture that man acquires in contact with his environment. The unique nature of the individual does not lie in this superficial aspect, but in complete freedom with regard to the content of consciousness.
Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not the choice. It is man's vanity that drives him to believe himself free by the choice he has. Freedom is pure observation, without guidance, without fear or threat of punishment, without reward. Freedom has no motive; freedom is not found at the end of man's evolution but resides in the first step of his existence. It is in observation that we begin to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in vigilant and choice-free attention in our daily existence.
Thought is time. Thought is born from experience, from knowledge, inseparable from time. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore on time, so man is always a slave to the past.
When man perceives the movement of his own consciousness he will see the division between thinker and thought, observer and observed, experimenter and experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Only then does pure observation appear which is direct vision, without any shadow coming from the past. This penetrating vision, out of time, produces a profound and radical change in the mind.
Total negation is the essence of affirmation. When there is a negation of everything that is not love - desire, pleasure - then love is, with its compassion and intelligence.
This statement was originally drafted by Krishnamurti himself on October 21, 1980, to appear in the second volume - "The Years of Achievement" - of Krishnamurti's Biography by Mary Lutyens (Editions Arista (1984), out of print, for the French translation). On rereading it, Krishnamurti added a few sentences to the above text.
Only innocence can be passionate.
The innocent ignore the pain, the suffering, even if they have lived thousands of experiences.
It is not the experiences that corrupt the mind, but the traces they leave, the residues, the scars, the memories. They accumulate, pile up on top of each other, it is then that the suffering begins.
This suffering is time. Time cannot coexist with innocence.
Passion does not arise from suffering. Suffering is the experience, the experience of everyday life, this life of tortures, fleeting pleasures, fears and certainties. No one can escape these experiences, but there is no obligation to let them take root in the soil of our mind. It is these roots that give rise to problems, conflicts and ceaseless struggles. The only way out is to die every day the day before. Only a clear mind can be passionate.
Without passion, one sees neither the breeze playing in the foliage, nor the sparkling water in the sun. Without passion, there is no love.
What is beauty?
Listener :
... Actually, I really don't know anything except a few mechanical things that are related to my work; I see, speaking with you, that my life is rather dull, or rather it is my mind which is heavy. So how can I awaken to this sensitivity, to this intelligence that makes life extremely beautiful for you?
Krishnamurti:
First, sir, one must refine the senses by looking, by touching, by observing, by listening not only to the birds, the rustling of the leaves, but also the words that you use yourself, the feelings that you have - small and mean though they are - all secret suggestions from your own mind. Listen to them and don't repress them, despise them or try to sublimate them. Just listen to them! Sensitivity of the senses does not mean their satisfaction, does not mean that you have to give in to impulses or resist them, but simply means observing them in such a way that the mind is always alert as when you are walking on a railway track, on a rail. ; you can lose your balance, but immediately you get back on the rail. Thus, the whole organism becomes alive, sensitive, intelligent, balanced, tense. You probably don't think the body is important at all. I've seen you eat, and you eat like you're loading a stove. You may like the taste of the food, but the way you mix the food on your plate is so totally mechanical, so inattentive! When you become aware of all this, your fingers, your eyes, your ears, your body, everything becomes sensitive, alive, docile. It's relatively easy. But, what is more difficult is to free the mind from the mechanical habits, of thought, of feeling and of action which it has been led to assume by the circumstances - by his wife, his children, his work. . The mind itself has lost its elasticity. The more subtle forms of observation escape him. It means seeing yourself as you really are without wanting to correct or change what you see or escape from it - simply seeing yourself as you really are, so that the mind does not fall back into another set of habits. . When such a spirit looks at a flower or the color of a garment or a dead leaf falling from a tree, he is now able to see the movement of that leaf as it falls, and the color of that flower, of a lively way. Thus, both externally and internally, the mind becomes highly alive, flexible, alert; there is a sensitivity that makes the mind intelligent. Sensitivity, intelligence and freedom in action is the beauty of life.
Listener :
Very well. So we observe, we become very sensitive, very vigilant and then what? Is that all there is, just endless marveling about perfectly mundane things? I'm sure everyone does this all the time, at least when they are young, and there is nothing in it to make the earth shake. Then what ? Is there not some subsequent state and not just this observation that you speak of?
Krishnamurti:
You started this conversation by asking a question about beauty, saying you don't feel it. You also said that in your life there is no beauty and, therefore, we are studying this question of knowing what beauty is, not only verbally and intellectually but by perceiving the very pulsation of the thing.
Listener :
Indeed, but when I asked you this question, I was wondering if there was not something beyond this simple sensitive observation that you describe.
Krishnamurti:
Of course, there is something, but unless you have the sensitivity of observation, seeing that which is infinitely greater cannot arise.
Listener :
So many people see with this exalted sensibility! The poets look on with intense feeling, but in all of this there seems to be no breach in the direction of this something infinitely greater, infinitely more beautiful, this something that people call the divine. Because I feel, be it very sensitive or rather heavy, as I am, that unless there is a breakthrough into some totally different dimension, what we perceive are just various shades of Grey. In all this sensitivity that you say comes from observation, it seems to me that there is only a quantitative difference, just a small improvement, and not something really, vastly different. Frankly, I'm not interested in just getting a little more of the same.
Krishnamurti:
So what are you asking now? Ask yourself how to make a breakthrough, through the gray and dull monotony of life, leading to some totally different dimension?
Listener :
Yes. Real beauty must be something other than the beauty of the poet, of the artist, of the alert young mind, although I do not disparage that beauty in any way.
Krishnamurti:
Is this really what you are looking for? Is this really what you want? If so, there must be a total revolution in your being. Is this what you want? Do you want a revolution that shatters all your concepts, your values, your morals, your respectability, your knowledge - that shatters you in such a way that you are reduced to absolute nothingness, that you no longer have any character, that you are no longer the seeker, the man who judges, who is aggressive or perhaps non-aggressive, so that you are completely empty of all that is you? This emptiness is beauty, with its extreme austerity in which there is not a spark of harshness or aggressive assertion. This is what it means to make the breakthrough, and is that what you are pursuing? There must be an amazing intelligence, which is not information or knowledge. This intelligence operates continuously whether you are asleep or awake. This is why we were saying that there must be this observation of the outside and the inside which awakens, which refines the brain. And this very sharpness of the brain makes him quiet. And it is this sensitivity, this intelligence which makes that thought operates only when necessary; the rest of the time the brain is not sleepy, but vigilantly quiet. And so, the brain with its reactions does not create a conflict. It works without struggle and, therefore, without deformation. So the doing and the action is immediate, like when you see danger. As a result, there is always a release from conceptual accumulations. It is this conceptual accumulation that is the observer, the ego, the "me" that divides, resists and builds barriers. When the "me" is not, neither is the breakthrough, then there is no breakthrough; then the totality of life is in the beauty of living, the beauty of relationships, without any substitution of one image for another, then only the infinitely large is possible.