What is this “me” that says, “I must be,” “I must meditate,” “I must find God,” “I must realize,” “I must be happy,” “I am lonely,” “I must be successful,” “I am frightened,” “I must be told”? Is it not the name, Mr. So-and-so, the form, the form being the body that you see in the mirror, and all the associated memories, all the concepts about yourself, the image about yourself, the image that says, “I am much better than you are”? Are they not all put together by thought? Thought itself is a fragment, and the activity of that fragment is not only the “me,” but the fragments it has created all round you—separate nations, separate classes, wars, the whole of that. And thought is a material process in time. Thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge, stored up in the brain.

So the “me” to which we cling is fictitious. That may be the root cause of fear, clinging to something that is nonexistent. So, there is the fictitious, imagined me, a picture, a symbol, an idea, an image, put together by thought in time, which is a material process, measurement. And that “me,” being uncertain of its very existence, deeply, in the very depths of one’s being, may be the deep fundamental cause of fear. That doesn’t mean that if you have no “me” you cannot live in this world. On the contrary.

Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti

MEDITATION FINALLY CLARIFIED !
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Question: Can the religious mind be acquired through meditation?

KRISHNAMURTI: The first thing to understand is that you cannot acquire it, you cannot get it; it is not to be brought about through meditation. No virtue, no sacrifice, no meditation—nothing on earth can buy this. This sense of attaining, achieving, gaining, buying must totally cease for that to be. You cannot use meditation. What I have been talking about is meditation. Meditation is not a way to something. To discover in every moment of daily life what is true and what is false is meditation. Meditation is not something to which you escape, something in which you get visions and all kinds of thrills—that is self-hypnosis, which is immature, childish. But to watch every moment of the day, to see how your thought is operating, to see the machinery of defense at work, to see the fears, ambitions, greeds, and envies—to watch it all, inquire into it all the time, that is meditation, or a part of meditation. Without laying the right foundation, there is no meditation, and the laying of the right foundation is to be free of ambition, greed, envy, and all the things that we have created for our self-defense. You do not have to go to anybody to be told what meditation is or to be given a method. I can find out very simply by watching myself, how ambitious I am or not. I do not have to be told by another; I know. To eradicate the root, the trunk, the fruit of ambition, to see it and totally destroy it is absolutely necessary. You see, we want to go very far without taking the first step. And you will find if you take the first step that it is the last step; there is no other step.

The Collected Works of
J. Krishnamurti -Volume XII 1961
There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti

THERE IS SOMETHING SO SPECIAL, SO WONDERFUL, SO FREEING ABOUT QUITTING ALL PERSONAL SELF-PROMOTION. A SPIRITUAL ECSTASY IS FOUND WHEN TEACHERS TAKE THEIR LEAVE.

Do please understand this a little; we have not the time to go into it in great detail because we have a vast field to cover this morning.

Knowing the cause, or the innumerable causes that breed fear, will that empty the mind of fear? Or is some other element needed?

When inquiring into what is fear, one has not only to be aware of outward reactions, but also to be aware of the unconscious. I am using that word unconscious in a very simple way, not philosophically, psychologically, or analytically. The unconscious is the hidden motives, the subtle thoughts, the secret desires, compulsions, urges, demands. Now, how does one examine or observe the unconscious? It is fairly simple to observe the conscious through its reactions of likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, but how does one inquire into the unconscious without the help of another? Because if you have the help of another, that other may be prejudiced, limited so that what he interprets he perverts. So, how is one to look into this enormous thing called the hidden mind without interpretation—to look, to absorb, to comprehend it totally, not bit by bit? Because if you examine it fragmentarily, each examination leaves its own mark, and with that mark you examine the next fragment, thereby furthering the distortion. Therefore there is no clarity through analysis. I wonder if you are getting what I am talking about?

We can see, surely, that the discovering of the cause of fear does not free the mind from fear, and that analysis does not bring freedom from it either. There must be a total understanding, a complete uncovering of the totality of the unconscious, and how does one set about it? Do you see the problem?

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti -Volume XII 1961: There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti

When you say, “I am hurt,” what is this “I” that is hurt? You say, “You have hurt me”—by your word, by a gesture, by discourtesy, and so on and so on—what is hurt? Is it not the image that you have built about yourself? Please, do look at it. That image is one of the factors that society, education, and environment have built in you. “You” are that picture, that image, the name, the form, the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, and so on. All that is you, the picture, the image which you are. And that image has been hurt. You have a conclusion about yourself, that you are this or that, and when that conclusion is disturbed you are hurt. So can you live without a conclusion, without a picture, without an image about yourself? As long as you have an image about yourself, you are everlastingly hurt. You may resist it, you may build a wall around yourself, but when there is a wall around yourself, when you withdraw, there is a division, and where there is a division there must be conflict—as with the Arab and the Jew, the Hindu and the Muslim, the communist and the noncommunist. Where there is a division, it is the law that there must be conflict.

So is it possible not to be hurt at all? That is, to have an innocent mind, a mind that is incapable of being hurt. It is very important to find out if one can live that in daily life. Not go off to some monastery or some community where you all agree together, becoming mushy and sentimental, but actually in daily life to find out if you can live without an image and, therefore, never be hurt, which means never to have conflict, never to have psychological division. We are going to find out. We are going to examine whether it is possible to live that way.

Total Freedom:
The Essential Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Hurt and flattery are the same, aren’t they? Both are different forms of hurts. You are flattered, and you like it, and the flatterer becomes your friend. So that also is another form of encouraging the image. The one you want, the other you don’t want. We are now dealing only with what we don’t want, which is not to be hurt; but we want the other, which is pleasurable, which is comforting, pleasing to the images that we have. So both are the same. Now how am I, how is a human being, to be free of hurt? So we have to go into the question of what it is to be attentive.

What does it mean to attend? If you know what it means to attend, it may solve the problem. Have you ever given total attention to anything? Complete attention in which there is no center from which you attend? When there is a center from which you attend then there is a division. Let’s put it differently. You know what it is to be aware. One is aware of the trees under which we are sitting, aware of the branches, the color of the branches and their thickness, of the leaves, the shadows, aware of all the nature, the beauty of it. [The Ojai talks took place in the open in a grove of oaks.] Then you are also aware of sitting on the ground, the color of the carpet, the microphone. And can you be aware of all this, the microphone, the carpet, the earth, the color of the leaves, and so on, the blue shirt, be aware of all that without any choice? To look at it without any choice, judgment, just to look.

Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti

If you can look without any judgment, without any choice, just observe, in that observation there is no observer. The moment the observer comes in prejudice begins, the like and the dislike, “I prefer this, I don’t prefer that,” division takes place. So there is attention only when there is no entity who says, “I am attending.” Please, it is important to understand this. Because if there is attention, when there is an awareness in which there is no choice, no judgment, merely observation, then you will see you will never be hurt again, and the past hurts are wiped away. But the moment the observer comes in then the observer gets hurt.

So, when there is complete attention, there is no hurt. If someone says the speaker is a fool or arrogant; in listening to the word and giving complete attention to it, there is no past hurt or future hurt because there is no entity who is observing. Please, this is very important, because as long as there is a division there must be conflict. It is very important, in dealing with fear, with pleasure, with sorrow, with death, to see that as long as there is a division between the observer, the experiencer, the thinker and the thought, there must inevitably be conflict, division, fragmentation and, therefore, disintegration. So can you observe the tree, yourself, your neighbor, observe life completely attentively? Then can you observe with total attention the picture that you have about yourself? And when you give that complete attention is there a picture at all?

Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti

Question: How can we truly understand ourselves, our infinite riches, without developing a whole complete perception first?otherwise with our comparative perception of thought, we get only a partial understanding of that infinite flow of cause in whose order we move and have our true conscious being.

Question: If you go to the end of conflict for yourself, must you then just accept the conflict which is in the world?

KRISHNAMURTI: Can you divide the world so very neatly and definitely from yourself? Is the world so very different from yourself? You see, sirs, I think, if I may say so, that there is something which has not been understood by us. For me, conflict is a very destructive thing, inwardly as well as outwardly, and I want to find out if there is a way of living without being in conflict. So I do not say to myself that it is inevitable, and I do not explain to myself that as long as I am acquisitive, there must be conflict. I want to understand it, to go through it, to see if I can shatter it, to see if it is possible to live without it. I am hungry to do that, and no amount of description, explanation is going to satisfy me—which means that I have to understand this whole process of consciousness, which is the ‘me’, and in understanding that, I am understanding the world. The two things are not separate. My hate is the hate of the world; my jealousy, acquisitiveness, my urge for success—all this belongs also to the world. So can my mind shatter all this? If I say, “Tell me the way to shatter it,” then I am merely using a method to conquer conflict, and that is not the understanding of conflict.

So I see that I must keep awake to conflict, be aware of it, watch every movement of it in my ambitions, my greed, my compulsive urges, and so on. And if I just watch them, perhaps I shall find out, but there is no guarantee. I feel I know very well what is essential if I would find out—namely, a passion, an intensity, a disregard for words and explanations so that the mind becomes very sharp, alert, observant of every form of conflict. That is the only way, surely, to go to the very end of conflict.

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti -Volume XII 1961: There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti