Questioner: I have been listening to you for fifty years. You have said that one has to die every moment. This is more real to me now than it has ever been.
Krishnamurti: I understand, Sir. Must you listen to the speaker for fifty years and at the end of it you understand what he says? Does it take time? Or do you see the beauty of something instantly and therefore it is? Now why do you and others take time over all this? Why must you have many years to understand a very simple thing? And it is very simple, I assure you. It only becomes complex in explanation, but the fact is extraordinarily simple. Why doesn’t one see the simplicity and the truth and the beauty of it instantly – and then the whole phenomenon of life changes? Why? Is it because we are so heavily conditioned? And if you are so heavily conditioned, can’t you see that conditioning instantly, or must you peel it off like an onion, layer after layer? Is it that one is lazy, indolent, indifferent, caught in one’s own problem? If you are caught in one problem, that problem is not separate from the rest of the problems, they are all interrelated. If you take one problem whether it is sex, relationship, or loneliness, whatever it is – go to the very end of it. But because you can’t do it, you have to listen to somebody for fifty years! Are you going to say it takes you fifty years to look at those mountains? The Awakening of IntelligenceJiddu Krishnamurti
Die to the pursuit of pleasure. Die instantly to attachment, to jealousy.
Not lazy, not self-serving, he’s dying all the time…. He’s in that stream all the time. Immortality beyond death and time has come to an end when that consciousness empties itself completely. It’s part of meditation.
I DO NOT WANT YOU TO AGREE WITH ME, I DO NOT WANT YOU TO FOLLOW ME, I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM SAYING.
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I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set humanity free. I desire to free humanity from all cages, from all fears.
If there are only five people who will listen, who have their faces turned towards eternity, it will be sufficient. Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves?
As I have said, I have only one purpose: to make humanity free, to urge you towards freedom, to help you to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give you eternal happiness, will give you the unconditioned realization of the Self.
I am free, unconditioned, whole, not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal.
That is the only way to judge: in what way are you dangerous to every society which is based on the false and the unessential?
I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying.
I say that you must look within yourselves for the enlightenment, for the glory, for the purification.
I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the Self which is eternal, is the harmony between reason and love. This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is Life itself. I want therefore to set you absolutely, unconditionally free, rejoicing as the bird in the clear sky, unburdened, independent, ecstatic in that freedom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
TRANSCENDING ALL INEQUALITY: NO NEED FOR A TEACHER, GUIDE, LEADER
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So the problem is not how to contact Masters and devas but how to transcend the sense of inequality; seeking to contact Masters is the pursuit of the very, very dull. When you know yourself, you know the Master. A real Master cannot help you because you have to understand yourself. We are all the time pursuing phony Masters; we seek comfort, security, and we project the kind of Master we want, hoping that Master will give us all that we desire. Since there is no such thing as comfort, the problem is much more fundamental—that is, how to go beyond this sense of inequality. Wisdom is not the struggle to become more and more.
Now, is it possible to transcend the sense of inequality? For inequality is there, we cannot deny it. What happens when we do not deny inequality, when we do not come to it with a prejudiced mind, but face it? There is the dirty village, and there is also the nice clean house—both are what is. How do you approach ugliness and beauty? In that lies the solution. The beautiful you wish to be identified with, and the ugly you put aside. For the inferior you have no consideration, but for the superior you have the greatest consideration and deference. Your approach is identification with the higher and rejection of the lower; you look upward with cringing and downward with contempt.
Inequality can be transcended only when we understand our approach to it. As long as we resist the ugly and identify ourselves with the beautiful, there is bound to be all this misery. But, if we approach inequality without condemnation, identification, or judgment, then our response is entirely different. Please try it, and you will see what an extraordinary change occurs in your life. The understanding of what is brings contentment—which is not the contentment of stagnation, not the contentment caused by the possession of property, of an idea, of a woman. Contentment is the state of approach to what is as it is, without any barrier whatsoever. Then only is there love, the love which destroys the sense of inequality, and this is the only thing that is revolutionary, that can transform. Since we have not that flame of revolution, we fill our hearts and minds with ideas of revolution of the left or the right, the modification of what has been. That way there is no hope. The more you reform, the greater the need for further reforms.
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti Volume VI 1949-1952 The Origin of Conflict Jiddu Krishnamurti
Life is a process of challenge and response, and whenever the response is inadequate, there is conflict; and the inadequacy of the response can be removed only through understanding the process of relationship. And as we understand more and more the process of relationship, which is the process of myself in action, there is a possibility of the mind being still. A mind that is not still—whether it is pursuing knowledge or greed or becoming something now or in the hereafter—such a mind is incapable, obviously, of discovering because there must be freedom to discover. And as long as the mind is trying to be something, there can be no discovery. It is only in freedom that there can be discovery, and freedom is virtue, because virtue gives freedom. But, to strive to be virtuous is not freedom; it is another form of becoming, which is self-expansion.
So, virtue is the denial of becoming, and that denial takes place only with the understanding of what is. And when there is this radical transformation through self-knowledge, then there is a possibility of creative living. For, truth is not something to be achieved; it is not an end; it is not something to be gained. It comes into being from moment to moment. It is not a result of accumulated, stored-up knowledge, which is merely memory, conditioning, experience. But truth comes into being from moment to moment when the mind is capable of being free from all accumulations. For, the accumulator is the self—the self that gathers in order to assert, to dominate, to expand, to self-fulfill. Only with the freedom of the self does truth come into being—not as a continuous process, but to be discovered from moment to moment. Therefore, to discover, the mind must be fresh, alert, and still.
Choiceless Awareness – Collected Works 5 Jiddu Krishnamurti
Silence is not to be cultivated, it is not to be deliberately brought about; it is not to be sought out, thought of, or meditated upon. The deliberate cultivation of silence is as the enjoyment of some longed for pleasure; the desire to silence the mind is but the pursuit of sensation. Such silence is only a form of resistance, an isolation which leads to decay. Silence that is bought is a thing of the market in which there is the noise of activity. Silence comes with the absence of desire. Desire is swift, cunning and deep. Remembrance shuts off the sweep of silence, and a mind that is caught in experience cannot be silent. Time, the movement of yesterday flowing into today and tomorrow, is not silence. With the cessation of this movement there is silence, and only then can that which is unnameable come into being. Jiddu Krishnamurti
You are the world, the world is you. You are the society, the culture in which you have been born and brought up. That culture, that society is the result of your efforts, of your greed, your brutality, your violence. So you are the world, you are the community, you are the society, the culture. Do please realize that in this country where there is so much corruption, disorder, callousness, brutality, total indifference, you are responsible, each one, because you are India. You have brought about, put together through time the social structure with its divisions, you have put together the religions, the beliefs, the innumerable gods, and you have built this society. So the world is you and you are the world. Do realize this deeply, feel it with your heart, not with your petty little, cunning, insensitive mind, because that is the fact, and that fact is not a theory, is not an idea. The explanation is not the explained, the description is not what is described.
To bring about a vast, radical revolution – and that radical revolution is necessary not merely outwardly but in oneself unless you change, unless you cease completely to be a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Christian a Communist, merely bringing about a superficial reformation – altering a few patterns here and there, is not going to bring about peace to man at all. So it is your responsibility: it is the way you lead your life, the way you think, your activity, your daily corrupting ways, unless there is a psychological, inward revolution in that, there is no possibility of really deep, profound, social changes.
Krishnamurti in India, 1970-1971
Authentic Reports of Talks Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti was an Indian philosopher, speaker and writer. In his early life he was groomed to be the new World Teacher but later rejected this mantle and withdrew from the Theosophy organization behind it. His interests included psychological revolution, the nature of mind, meditation, inquiry, human relationships, and bringing about radical change in society. He stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasised that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.
