KRISHNAMURTI 's QUOTES

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QUOTE #001 --- Below are some extracts from the book "The Life and Death of Krishnamurti", his biography written by Mary Lutyens (here re-translated by me from the German edition - hopefully not too horrible) Speech at the "Order of the Star", which the Theosophic Society had founded for him - expecting him to be a new world teacher: "I repeat that I have no disciples. Each one of you is a disciple who understands the truth and doesn't follow any single person ... The truth doesn't give hope, it gives understanding .. I claim also that all ceremonials are superfluous for spiritual growth ... When you want to search the truth, you have to exceed the limitations of the human mind and heart widely and find it there, and this truth is within yourself. Isn't it much simpler to make life itself a goal, instead of having messengers, gurus who must inevitably narrow the truth and thus deny it ... I claim that liberation is possible at each stage of evolution for a human who understands, and that it is not necessary to worship the stages, as you are doing it ... Don't quote me as an authority later. I refuse to be your crutch. I will not let you put me into a cage for your admiration. When you take the fresh air from the top of the mountain into a small chamber, the freshness of this air will vanish, and stagnation is the result ... I have never said there is no god, I have said there is only god as it is manifest within you. But I will not use the word "god" ... I prefer to call it "life" ... Of course there is neither the good nor the bad. The good is what you don't fear, the bad is what you fear. Thus when you destroy the fear, you will be full of spirituality ... When you love life and put this love before everything else and measure everything with this love and don't judge it with your fear, then this stagnation you call moral will vanish ... Don't speculate, friends, who I am, you will never know it ... Do you think the truth has anything to do with what you think I were? You don't care for the truth. You are only interested in that what contains the truth ... Drink the water when it is pure: I tell you, I have this pure water. I have this balsam, which purifies, which will heal wonderfully, and you ask me: Who are you? I am everything, since I am life." When he dissolved the "Order of the Star": "I claim that the truth is a pathless territory. And one cannot approach it by any path, by any religion or sect. This is my point of view, and I hold it absolutely and unconditionally ... Once you have understood this, you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you still do it, it dies, it crystalizes itself and becomes a belief system, a sect, a religion, which will be forced onto others. Everybody throughout the world tries to do that. The truth becomes narrowed and a toy for those who are weak, who are only temporarily dissatisfied. The truth cannot be lowered, but each one has to come up to it. You cannot take the top of the mountain into the valley ... Thus from my viewpoint this is the first reason to dissolve the Order of the Star. You will probably found other orders, you will still participate in other organizations searching for the truth. I don't want to be part of any spiritual organization, please understand that ... When an organization is created for that purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a chain and will mutilate the individual and will be a hindrance to it, it will prevent it to found its uniqueness, which consists in its own way to find this absolute, unconditional truth for itself. Thus this is another reason why I have decided, as I am the leader of this order, to dissolve it. This is no great action. Since I don't want any followers, and I mean it that way. In the moment you follow anybody, you stop following the truth. I'm not interested whether or not you listen to what I say. I want to cause something specific in the world, and I will perform that with imperturbable concentration. I do only deal with one essential matter, to liberate humans. I want to liberate them from all jails, from all fears and prevent them to create new theories or philosophies, to found new religions or new sects. Thus you will of course ask me why I'm travelling throughout the world and talk. I will tell you why I'm doing that. Not because I wish to have followers or a particular group of disciples. I have no disciples, no apostles, neither on earth nor in the mental realm. I'm not attracted by the temptation of money or the desire to have a comfortable life. If I wanted to have a comfortable life, I wouldn't visit a camp, neither would I live in a wet country! I'm now speaking very openly, since I want to clarify that once and for all. I don't want to perform this childish discussion every year again. For eighteen years you have been preparing for this event, the appearance of the world teacher. For eighteen years you have organized, have searched for somebody who would bring new delightment to your heart and your mind. For somebody who would raise you to a new level of life, who would encourage you, who would liberate you. And now look what happens! Think about it, consider it yourself, and thereby detect how this belief has changed yourself. Not by carrying some sign. That is trivial, absurd. In which way did such a belief throw away all inessential things? Only this way you can judge. In which way did you become more free, greater, more dangerous for this society, which is based on the false and inessential? In which way have the members of this organization of the Star changed? With respect to your spirituality you rely on somebody else. You rely on somebody else for your happiness, for your enlightenment. When I say look within yourself, seek there for your enlightenment, for your greatness, for your purification and the purity of your self - then none of you wants to do that. There may be a few, very few. Thus why should we have an organization? You need a typewriter to write a letter, but you don't put the typewriter onto an altar to admire it. But that's what you are doing when organizations become your main concern. But those who really want to understand, who are seeking for the eternal, for that what is without beginning or ending, will proceed together with greater intensity, will become a danger for all inessential, for all unreal, for the shadows ... We have to create such a body, and this is my intention. Due to this true friendship - which you don't seem to know - there will be a real cooperation of all. This will not happen because of an authority or for some redemption, but because you will really understand and thus are capable of living in the eternal. This is something greater as all amusement, as all sacrifice. Thus those are some of the reasons why I have made this decision after careful consideration. It doesn't result from some momentary impulse. Neither did anybody persuade me to it. I cannot be persuaded about such matters. For two years I have been considering it carefully and patiently, and now I have decided to dissolve the order. You can found other organizations and wait for another one. It doesn't interest me. Neither am I interested in your jails or in new decorations for those jails, nor in creating them. I am only concerned with the absolute, unconditional liberation of humans." When asked about god in the traditional sense: "We have invented god. The thinking created god for itself. That means, due to unhappiness, fear and depression we created something, called god. God didn't create us after his image - I wished he had. Personally I have no belief in anything, the speaker just faces that what is, what are facts, the recognition of the essence of each fact, each thought, all reactions. He is fully aware of all that. When you are free of fear, free of suffering, there is no desire for a god." "When you get rid of attachment, there will be love ... When one wants to meet, understand, know oneself, one has to put aside every form of authority ... There is nothing to be learned from somebody else, including the speaker ... The speaker doesn't have anything he could teach you ... The speaker is only a mirror where you can see yourself. Then, when you recognize yourself clearly, you can put aside the mirror." "When humans will not radically change themselves, perform a fundamental change in themselves - not with god or prayers, all this stuff is too immature, too infantile - then we will destroy ourselves. NOW a revolution in the psyche is possible, not thousand years later. We are living for thousands of years, and we are still barbarians. So if we don't change ourselves now, we will still be barbarians tomorrow or in thousands of tomorrows. When I don't stop war today, I will go to war tomorrow. Expressed simply: The future is now." --- back to top

QUOTE #002 --- "Every thought and feeling must flower for them to live and die; flowering of everything in you, the ambition, the greed, the hate, the joy, the passion; in the flowering there is their death and freedom. It is only in freedom that anything can flourish, not in suppression, in control and discipline; these only pervert, corrupt. Flowering and freedom is goodness and all virtue. To allow envy to flower is not easy; it is condemned or cherished but never given freedom. It is only in freedom the fact of envy reveals its colour, its shape, its depth, its peculiarities; if suppressed it will not reveal itself fully and freely. When it has shown itself completely, there is an ending of it only to reveal another fact, emptiness, loneliness, fear, and as each fact is allowed to flower, in freedom, in its entirety, the conflict between the observer and the observed ceases; there is no longer the censor but only observation, only seeing. Freedom can only be in completion not in repetition, suppression, obedience to a pattern of thought. There is completion only in flowering and dying; there is no flowering if there is no ending. What has continuity is thought in time. The flowering of thought is the ending of thought; for only in death there is the new. The new cannot be if there is no freedom from the known. Thought, the old, cannot bring into being the new; it must die for the new to be. What flowers must come to an end." From Krishnamurti's Notebook (written 1961/62), Harper & Row , 1984; ISBN 0-06-064795-7 ---

QUOTE #003 --- "All existence is choice; only in aloneness there is no choice. Choice, in every form, is conflict. Contradiction is inevitable in choice; this contradiction, inner and outer breeds confusion and misery. To escape from this misery, gods, beliefs, nationalism, commitment to various patterns of activities become compulsive necessities. Having escaped, they become all important and escape is the way of illusion; then fear and anxiety set in. Despair and sorrow is the way of choice and there is no end to pain. Choice, selection, must always exist as long as there is the chooser, the accumulated memory of pain and pleasure, and every experience of choice only strengthens memory whose response becomes thought and feeling. Memory has only a partial significance, to respond mechanically; this response is choice. There is no freedom in choice. You choose according to the background you have been brought up in, according to to your social, economic, religious conditioning. Choice invariably strengthens this conditioning; there is no escape from this conditioning, it only breeds more suffering. [...] Choice is always breeding misery. Watch it and you will see it, lurking, demanding, insisting and begging, and before you know where you are you are caught in its net of inescapable duties, responsibilities and despairs. Watch it and you will be aware of the fact. Be aware of the fact; you cannot change the fact; you may cover it up, run away from it, but you cannot change it. It is there. If you will let it alone, not interfering with it with your opinions and hopes, fears and despairs, with your calculated and cunning judgements, it will flower and show all its intricacies, its subtle ways and there are many, its seeming importance and ethics, its hidden motives and fancies. If you will leave the fact alone, it will show you all these and more. But you must be choicelessly aware of it, walking softly. Then you will see that choice, having flowered, dies and there is freedom, not that you are free but there is freedom. You are the maker of choice; you have ceased to make choice. There is nothing to choose. Out of this choiceless state there flowers aloneness. Its death is never ending. It is always flowering and it is always new. Dying to the known is to be alone. All choice is in the field of the known; action in this field always breeds sorrow. There is the ending of sorrow in aloneness." From Krishnamurti's Notebook (written 1961/62), Harper & Row , 1984; ISBN 0-06-064795-7 ---

QUOTE #004 --- "To the so-called religious to be sensitive is to sin, an evil reserved for the worldly; to the religious the beautiful is temptation, to be resisted; it's an evil distraction to be denied. Good works are not a substitute for love, and without love all activity leads to sorrow, noble or ignoble. The essence of affection is sensitivity and without it all worship is an escape from reality. To the monk, to the sanyasi, the senses are the way of pain, save thought which must be dedicated to the god of their conditioning. But thought is of the senses. It is thought that puts together time and it is thought that makes sensitivity sinful. To go beyond thought is virtue and that virtue is heightened sensitivity which is love. Love and there is no sin; love and do what you will and then there is no sorrow." From Krishnamurti's Notebook (written 1961/62), Harper & Row , 1984; ISBN 0-06-064795-7 --- back to top

QUOTE #005 --- "You cannot see and listen to the outside without wandering on to the inside. Really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside and it is difficult, almost impossible to separate them. You look at this magnificent tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all. Everything is so intensively alive and there is only life and the watcher is as dead as the leaf. There is no dividing line between the tree, the birds and that man sitting in the shade and the earth that is so abundant. Virtue is there without thought and so there is order; order is not permanent; it is there only from moment to moment [...]" From Krishnamurti's Notebook (written 1961/62), Harper & Row , 1984; ISBN 0-06-064795-7 ---

QUOTE #006 --- The Pitcher Can Never be Filled Meditation is like going to a well, the waters of which are inexhaustible, with a pitcher that is always empty. The pitcher can never be filled. What is important is the drinking of the waters and not how full the pitcher is. The pitcher must be broken to drink the water. The pitcher is the centre which is always seeking - and so it can never find. To seek is to deny the truth that is right in front of you. Your eyes must see that which is the nearest; and the seeing of that is a movement without end. He who seeks projects that which he seeks and so he lives in an illusion, always striving within the limits of his own shadow. Not to seek is to find; and the finding is not in the future - it is there, where you don't look. The looking is ever present, from which all life and action takes place. Meditation is the blessing of this action. Seeking is a personal drive from the centre - to attain, to belong, to hold. In inquiry there is freedom from the very beginning; looking is the freedom from the weight of yesterday. From "Meeting Life", by J. Krishnamurti ---back to top

QUOTE #007 --- If One is the World Questioner: If one is the world, what does it mean to step out of the stream, and 'who' steps out of it? Krishnamurti: [...] The stream is the constant struggle and misery of all human beings, whether communist, socialist or imperialist: it is the common ground on which we all stand. To be free of that, there is no 'who' that steps out of it; the mind has become something totally different. It is not: 'I step out of it'; the mind is no longer in it. If you are attached and you end attachment, something totally different takes place; it is not that you are free from attachment. There is a different quality, a different tone to one's whole life when one realizes this tremendous fact, that we are humanity. From "Meeting Life", by J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #008 --- To Die to Every Yesterday "Out of silence look and listen. Silence is not the ending of noise; the incessant clamour of the mind and heart does not end in silence; it is not a product, a result of desire, nor is it put together by will. The whole of consciousness is a restless, noisy movement within the borders of its own making. Within this border silence or stillness is but the momentary ending of the chatter; it is the silence touched by time. Time is memory and to it silence is short or long; it can measure. Give to it space and continuity, and then it becomes another toy. But this is not silence. Everything put together by thought is within the area of noise, and thought in no way can make itself still. It can build an image of silence and conform to it, worshipping it, as it does with so many other images it has made, but its formula of silence is the very negation of it; its symbols are the very denial of reality. Thought itself must be still for silence to be. Silence is always now, as thought is not. Thought, always being old, cannot possibly enter into that silence which is always new. Out of this silence, look and talk. The true anonymity is out of this silence and there is no other humility. The vain are always vain, though they put on the garment of humility, which makes them harsh and brittle. But out of this silence the word 'love' has a wholly different meaning. This silence is not out there but is where the noise of the total observer is not. [...]" From "Meeting Life", by J. Krishnamurti --- back to top

QUOTE #009 --- "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. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind." J. Krishnamurti, "Freedom from the Known," pp.51-52 ---

QUOTE #010 --- "Is the problem not one of refusing to accept a leader? This alone brings equality in social and economic relationships. When thrown on his own responsibility, man will inevitably question. And in questioning there is no higher, no lower. Any system based on acceptance of capacity differences to establish status must inevitably lead to a hierarchical society, and so breed class war. . . . What is it that gives dignity to man? Self-knowledge--the knowledge of what you are? The follower is the greatest curse." J. Krishnamurti, "Krishnamurti, A Biography" by Pupul Jayakar, p.146-7 ---

QUOTE #011 --- "All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary." J. Krishnamurti, "Freedom from the Known," p.21 --- back to top

QUOTE #012 --- "[...] it is important to understand, not intellectually but *actually* in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods--you have nothing but images. The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships. Now the very attention you give to a problem is the energy that solves that problem. When you give your complete attention--I mean with everything in you--there is no observer at all. There is only the state of attention which is total energy, and that total energy is the highest form of intelligence. Naturally that state of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness, comes when there is total attention, not disciplined stillness. That total silence in which there is neither the observer nor the thing observed is the highest form of a religious mind. But what takes place in that state cannot be put into words because what is said in words is not the fact. To find out for yourself you have to go through it." J. Krishnamurti, "Freedom from the Known," pp.92-93 ---

QUOTE #013 --- "The core of Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said 'Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest, or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of security - religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols,ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominate man's thinking, relationships and daily life. These are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man in every relationship. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is this consciousness. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from his environment. The uniqueness of the individual does not lie in the superficial but in the total freedom from the content of consciousness. Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom in not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence. Thought is time. Thought is born of experience, of knowledge, which are inseparable from time. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own consciousness he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical change in the mind. Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things which are not love -- desire, pleasure -- then love is, with its compassion and intelligence." J. Krishnamurti --- back to top

QUOTE #014 --- "Relationship... 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 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." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #015 --- "To understand a problem obviously requires a certain intelligence, and that intelligence cannot be derived from or cultivated through specialization. It comes into being only when we are passively aware of the whole process of our consciousness, which is to be aware of ourselves without choice, without choosing what is right and what is wrong. When you are passively aware, you will see that out of that passivity - which is not idleness, which is not sleep, but extreme alertness - the problem has quite a different significance; which means there is no longer identification with the problem and therefore there is no judgement and hence the problem begins to reveal its content. If you are able to do that constantly, continuously, then every problem can be solved fundamentally, not superficially." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #016 --- If One is the World Questioner: If one is the world, what does it mean to step out of the stream, and 'who' steps out of it? Krishnamurti: [...] The stream is the constant struggle and misery of all human beings, whether communist, socialist or imperialist: it is the common ground on which we all stand. To be free of that, there is no 'who' that steps out of it; the mind has become something totally different. It is not: 'I step out of it'; the mind is no longer in it. If you are attached and you end attachment, something totally different takes place; it is not that you are free from attachment. There is a different quality, a different tone to one's whole life when one realizes this tremendous fact, that we are humanity. --- back to top

QUOTE #017 --- To Die to Every Yesterday "[...] Out of silence look and listen. Silence is not the ending of noise; the incessant clamour of the mind and heart does not end in silence; it is not a product, a result of desire, nor is it put together by will. The whole of consciousness is a restless, noisy movement within the borders of its own making. Within this border silence or stillness is but the momentary ending of the chatter; it is the silence touched by time. Time is memory and to it silence is short or long; it can measure. Give to it space and continuity, and then it becomes another toy. But this is not silence. Everything put together by thought is within the area of noise, and thought in no way can make itself still. It can build an image of silence and conform to it, worshipping it, as it does with so many other images it has made, but its formula of silence is the very negation of it; its symbols are the very denial of reality. Thought itself must be still for silence to be. Silence is always now, as thought is not. Thought, always being old, cannot possibly enter into that silence which is always new. Out of this silence, look and talk. The true anonymity is out of this silence and there is no other humility. The vain are always vain, though they put on the garment of humility, which makes them harsh and brittle. But out of this silence the word 'love' has a wholly different meaning. This silence is not out there but is where the noise of the total observer is not." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #018 --- "Every thought and feeling must flower for them to live and die; flowering of everything in you, the ambition, the greed, the hate, the joy, the passion; in the flowering there is their death and freedom. It is only in freedom that anything can flourish, not in suppression, in control and discipline; these only pervert, corrupt. Flowering and freedom is goodness and all virtue. To allow envy to flower is not easy; it is condemned or cherished but never given freedom. It is only in freedom the fact of envy reveals its colour, its shape, its depth, its peculiarities; if suppressed it will not reveal itself fully and freely. When it has shown itself completely, there is an ending of it only to reveal another fact, emptiness, loneliness, fear, and as each fact is allowed to flower, in freedom, in its entirety, the conflict between the observer and the observed ceases; there is no longer the censor but only observation, only seeing. Freedom can only be in completion not in repetition, suppression, obedience to a pattern of thought. There is completion only in flowering and dying; there is no flowering if there is no ending. What has continuity is thought in time. The flowering of thought is the ending of thought; for only in death there is the new. The new cannot be if there is no freedom from the known. Thought, the old, cannot bring into being the new; it must die for the new to be. What flowers must come to an end." J. Krishnamurti --- back to top

QUOTE #019 --- "All existence is choice; only in aloneness there is no choice. Choice, in every form, is conflict. Contradiction is inevitable in choice; this contradiction, inner and outer breeds confusion and misery. To escape from this misery, gods, beliefs, nationalism, commitment to various patterns of activities become compulsive necessities. Having escaped, they become all important and escape is the way of illusion; then fear and anxiety set in. Despair and sorrow is the way of choice and there is no end to pain. Choice, selection, must always exist as long as there is the chooser, the accumulated memory of pain and pleasure, and every experience of choice only strengthens memory whose response becomes thought and feeling. Memory has only a partial significance, to respond mechanically; this response is choice. There is no freedom in choice. You choose according to the background you have been brought up in, according to to your social, economic, religious conditioning. Choice invariably strengthens this conditioning; there is no escape from this conditioning, it only breeds more suffering. [...] Choice is always breeding misery. Watch it and you will see it, lurking, demanding, insisting and begging, and before you know where you are you are caught in its net of inescapable duties, responsibilities and despairs. Watch it and you will be aware of the fact. Be aware of the fact; you cannot change the fact; you may cover it up, run away from it, but you cannot change it. It is there. If you will let it alone, not interfering with it with your opinions and hopes, fears and despairs, with your calculated and cunning judgements, it will flower and show all its intricacies, its subtle ways and there are many, its seeming importance and ethics, its hidden motives and fancies. If you will leave the fact alone, it will show you all these and more. But you must be choicelessly aware of it, walking softly. Then you will see that choice, having flowered, dies and there is freedom, not that you are free but there is freedom. You are the maker of choice; you have ceased to make choice. There is nothing to choose. Out of this choiceless state there flowers aloneness. Its death is never ending. It is always flowering and it is always new. Dying to the known is to be alone. All choice is in the field of the known; action in this field always breeds sorrow. There is the ending of sorrow in aloneness." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #020 --- "To the so-called religious to be sensitive is to sin, an evil reserved for the worldly; to the religious the beautiful is temptation, to be resisted; it's an evil distraction to be denied. Good works are not a substitute for love, and without love all activity leads to sorrow, noble or ignoble. The essence of affection is sensitivity and without it all worship is an escape from reality. To the monk, to the sanyasi, the senses are the way of pain, save thought which must be dedicated to the god of their conditioning. But thought is of the senses. It is thought that puts together time and it is thought that makes sensitivity sinful. To go beyond thought is virtue and that virtue is heightened sensitivity which is love. Love and there is no sin; love and do what you will and then there is no sorrow." J. Krishnamurti ---back to top

QUOTE #021 --- "You cannot see and listen to the outside without wandering on to the inside. Really the outside is the inside and the inside is the outside and it is difficult, almost impossible to separate them. You look at this magnificent tree and you wonder who is watching whom and presently there is no watcher at all. Everything is so intensively alive and there is only life and the watcher is as dead as the leaf. There is no dividing line between the tree, the birds and that man sitting in the shade and the earth that is so abundant. Virtue is there without thought and so there is order; order is not permanent; it is there only from moment to moment [...]" J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #022 --- "He was a big man, heavily built, with large hands. He must have been a very rich man. He collected modern pictures and was rather proud of his collection which the critics had said was very good. As he told you this you could see the light of pride in his eyes. He had a dog, big, active and full of play; it was more alive than its master. It wanted to be out in the grass among the dunes, racing against the wind, but it sat obediently where its master had told it to sit, and soon it went to sleep from boredom. Possessions possess us more than we possess them. The castle, the house, the pictures, the books, the knowledge, they become far more vital, far more important, than the human being. He said he had read a great deal, and you could see from the books in the library that he had all the latest authors. He spoke about spiritual mysticism and the craze for drugs that was seeping over the land. He was a rich, successful man, and behind him was emptiness and the shallowness that can never be filled by books, by pictures, or by the knowledge of the trade. The sadness of life is this--the emptiness that we try to fill with every conceivable trick of the mind. But that emptiness remains. Its sadness is the vain effort to possess. From this attempt comes domination and the assertion of the me, with its empty words and rich memories of things that are gone and never will come back. It is this emptiness and loneliness that isolating thought breeds and keeps nourished by the knowledge it has created. It is this sadness of vain effort that is destroying man. His thought is not so good as the computer, and he has only the instrument of thought with which to meet the problems of life, so he is destroyed by them. It is this sadness of wasted life which probably he will be aware of only at the moment of his death--and then it will be too late. So the possessions, the character, the achievements, the domesticated wife, become terribly important, and this sadness drives away love. Either you have one or the other; you cannot have both. One breeds cynicism and bitterness which are the only fruit of man; the other lies beyond all woods and hills." J. Krishnamurti, "The Only Revolution," p. 126-7 ---back to top

QUOTE #023 --- "Tradition says you must have a guru, a teacher, to help you to meditate, he will tell you what to do. The West has its own form of tradition, of prayer, contemplation and confession.. But in the whole principle that someone knows and you do not know, that the one who knows is going to teach you, give you enlightenment, in that is implied authority, the master, the guru, the savior, the Son of God and so on. They know and you do not know; they say, follow this method, this system, do it day after day, practice and you will eventually get there - if you are lucky. Which means you are fighting with yourself all day long, trying to conform to a pattern, to a system, trying to suppress your own desires, your own appetites, your own envy, jealousies, ambitions. And so there is the conflict between what you are and what should be according to the system; this means there is effort; and a mind that is making an effort can never be quiet; through effort mind can never become completely still. Tradition also says concentrate in order to control your thought. To concentrate is merely to resist, to build a wall around yourself, to protect an exclusive focusing on one idea, on a principle, a picture, or what you will. Tradition says you must go through that to find whatever you want to find. And when you see actually -- and you can see it only if you are not committed to it and can look at it objectively - then you can discard it completely. One must discard it completely, for then the mind, in the very discarding, becomes free and therefore intelligent, aware, and not liable to be caught in illusions." J. Krishnamurti, Salle de la Chimie, Paris, April 24, 1969 ---

QUOTE #024 --- "You have voluntarily to examine your life, not condemn it, not say this is right or this is wrong but look. When you do look in that way, you will find that you look with eyes that are full of affection - not with condemnation, not with judgement, but with care. You look at yourself with care and therefore with immense affection - and it is only when there is great affection and love that you see the total existence of life." J. Krishnamurti, Madras 1965 --- back to top

QUOTE #025 --- "Non-violence has been preached over and over again, politically, religiously, by various leaders that you have had - non-violence. Non-violence is not a fact; it is just an idea, a theory, a set of words; the actual fact is that you are violent. That is the fact. That is 'what is'. But we are not capable of understanding 'what is' and this is why we create this nonsense called non-violence. And that gives rise to the conflict between 'what is' and 'what should be'. All the while you are pursuing non-violence you are sowing the seeds of violence. This is so obvious." J. Krishnamurti, The Flame of Attention HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-064814-7, pp. 46-47 ---

QUOTE #026 --- "To concentrate implies bringing all of your energy to focus on a certain point; but thought wanders away and so you have a perpetual battle between the desire to concentrate, to give all your energy to look at a page, and the mind which is wandering, and which you try to control. Whereas attention has no control, no concentration. It is complete attention, which means giving all your energy, your nerves, the capacity, the energy of the brain, your heart, everything, to attending." J. Krishnamurti, The Flame of Attention, p.28 ---

QUOTE #027 --- "Freedom can only come about naturally, not through wishing, wanting, longing. Nor will you find it by creating an image of what you think it is. To come upon it the mind has to learn to look at life, which is a vast movement, without the bondage of time, for freedom lies beyond the field of consciousness." J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From the Known --- back to top

QUOTE #028 --- "Man has always asked the question: what is it all about? Has life any meaning, at all? He sees the enormous confusion of life, the brutalities, the revolts, the wars, the endless divisions of religion, ideology and nationality, and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thing we call living, is there anything beyond it?" "And not finding this nameless thing of a thousand names which he has always sought, he as cultivated faith -- faith in a saviour or an ideal -- and faith invariably breeds violence." "In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behavior as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this in ourselves very easily." [...] "The world accepts and follows the traditional approach. The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another; we mechanically follow somebody who will assure us a comfortable spiritual life. It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our minds and our way of life." J. Krishnamurti From chapter one, Freedom From the Known (HarperCollins, ISBN 0-06-064808-2) ---

QUOTE #029 --- "We have been told that all paths lead to truth -- you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door -- which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd. Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to -- then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are -- your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears. So you see that you cannot depend on anybody. There IS no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you -- your relationship with others and the world -- there is nothing else." J. Krishnamurti Page 15, 'Freedom From the Known', HarperSanFrancisco, ISBN 0-06-064808-2 --- back to top

QUOTE #030 --- "Do you love anything? Your wife, your children, your so-called country; do you love the earth, love the beauty of a tree, the beauty of a person? Or are you so terribly self-centered that you never have any perception of anything at all? Love brings compassion. Compassion is not doing some social work. When you are asked most profound questions, which stir you up, you become negligent. When I ask you a question of that kind, whether you love somebody, your faces are blank. And this is the result of your religion, of your devotion to your nonsensical gurus, your devotion to your leaders - not devotion, you are frightened, therefore you follow. So ask yourself, if one may suggest it, walking along the path with you as a friend: do you know what love means? Love that does not demand a thing from another. Ask yourselves. It does not demand a thing from your wife, from your husband - nothing, physically, emotionally, intellectually is demanded from another. Not to follow another, not to have a concept, and pursue that concept. Because love is not jealousy, love has no power in the ordinary sense of that word. Love does not seek position, status, power. But it has its own capacity, its own skill, its own intelligence." J. Krishnamurti, 26 November 1981, Benares, India ---

QUOTE #031 --- "How strange love is and how respectable it has become, the love of God, the love of the neighbour, the love of the family. How neatly it has been divided, the profane and the sacred; the duty and the responsibility; obedience and the willingness to die and to deal out death. The priests talk of it and so do the generals, planning wars; the politicians and the housewife everlastingly complain about it. Jealousy and envy nourish love, and relationship is held in its prison. When death takes away love there is the photo in the frame or the image which memory keeps on revising or it is tightly held in belief. Generation after generation is bred upon this and sorrow goes on without an end. Continuity of love is the stability and security in relationship, and in relationship there must be no change for relationship is habit and in habit there is security and sorrow. To this unending machinery of pleasure and pain we cling and this thing is called love. To escape from its weariness, there is religion and romanticism. The word changes and becomes modified with each one but romanticism offers a marvellous escape from the fact of pleasure and sorrow. And, of course, the ultimate refuge and hope is God who has become so very respectable and profitable. But all this isn't love. Love has no continuity; it cannot be carried over to tomorrow; it has no future. What it has is memory, and memories are ashes of everything dead and buried. Love has no tomorrow; it cannot be caught in time and made respectable. It is there when time is not. It has no promise, no hope; hope breeds despair. It belongs to no god and so to no thought and feeling. It is not conjured up by the brain." 4th October 1961, Il Leccio, Italy [Krishnamurti's Notebook] --- back to top

QUOTE #032 --- "Relationship... 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 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." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #033 --- "That state of mind which is no longer capable of striving is the true religious mind, and in that state of mind you may come upon this thing called truth or reality or bliss or God or beauty or love. This thing cannot be invited. Please understand that very simple fact. It cannot be invited, it cannot be sought after, because the mind is too silly, too small, your emotions are too shoddy, your way of life too confused for that enormity, that immense something, to be invited into your little house, your little corner of living which has been trampled and spat upon. You cannot invite it. To invite it you must know it and you cannot know it. It doesn't matter who says it, the moment he says, 'I know', he does not know. The moment you say you have found it you have not found it. If you say you have experienced it, you have never experienced it. Those are all ways of exploiting another man -- your friend or your enemy." "One asks oneself then whether it is possible to come upon this thing without inviting, without waiting, without seeking or exploring -- just for it to happen like a cool breeze that comes in when you leave the window open? You cannot invite the wind but you must leave the window open, which doesn't mean you are in a state of waiting; that is another form of deception. It doesn't mean you must open yourself to receive; that is another kind of thought." "...is it possible to break through this heavy conditioning of centuries immediately and not enter into another conditioning..." "...Like humility you cannot cultivate love. Humility comes into being when there is a total ending of conceit -- then you will never know what it is to be humble. A man who knows what it is to have humility is a vain man. In the same way when you give your mind and your heart, your nerves, your eyes, your whole being to find out the way of life, to see what actually is and go beyond it, and deny completely, totally, the life you live now -- in that very denial of the ugly, the brutal, the other comes into being. And you will never know it either. A man who knows that he is silent, who knows that he loves, does not know what love is or what silence is." From "Freedom from the Known", J. Krishnamurti --- back to top

QUOTE #034 --- In Jayakar's biography of K she recalls a question K once asked her. Please consider the following to be in quotes: Out of great depth, Krishnaji spoke. What takes place if the Buddha says to me, 'Ending of sorrow is the bliss of compassion'? I am one of his audience. I don't examine this statement. I don't translate the statement into my way of thinking. I am only in a state of acute total attention of listening. There is nothing else. Because that statement has enormous truth, tremendous truth. That is enough. Then I would ask the Buddha, 'I am not capable of that intense capacity of listening, so please help me.' and the response is, 'First listen to what I am saying. There is no outside agency that the mind or thought have invented.' But I am frightened, for I see it means giving up everything that I cling to. So, I ask, 'How am I to be detached?' The moment I say 'how' I am lost. He (the Buddha) says 'Be detached,' but I am not listening. I have great reverence for him, but I am not listening. Because attachment has a tremendous place in my life. So, he says, 'Throw it out, throw it out, in one instant.' He paused for a long time. 'The moment you have perception into the fact you are free of the fact.' Jayakar asks K, 'Is it a question of seeing the totality of that statement of the Buddha, "Be detached," without the words?' 'Of course, the word is not the thing.The statement, the flowering is not the thing. There must be freedom from the word. Intensity of listening is the crux of it,' Krishnaji said. 'What is it that gives one that intensity?' I probed. 'Nothing.' The statement was absolute. 'Our whole way of thinking is based on becoming, evolving. It has nothing whatsoever to do with enlightenment. 'The mind' (K continues) 'is heavily conditioned. It does not listen. K says something totally true. Something immovable, irrevocable, and it has tremendous weight, like a river with volumes of water behind it. But X does not listen to that extraordinary statement.You (Jayakar) asked a question: Has there been a fundamental change in K from the 1930s, 1940s? I say, no. There has been considerable change in expression. Now, if you are listening with intensity, then what takes place when a statement is made - that time, process, evolution, including knowledge - has to be abandoned. Will you listen to that? If you do, you are actually abandoning them. After all, listening, seeing totally, is like thunder or lightening that destroys everything. To go through the whole process is not to deny this instant thing.' 'That's it - you have now said it.' 'What?' asked Krishnaji. 'It means going through the whole thing, without denying the instancy,' I said. 'That doesn't mean time is involved.' 'But man translates it as time,' said Krishnaji. ---

QUOTE #035 --- "I am not talking for my benefit. Although I have talked for fifty-two years I am not interested in talking. But I am interested to find out if you can also discover the same thing so that your own life will be totally different, transformed, so that you have no problems, no complexities, no strife or longing. That is the reason the speaker is talking, not for his own gratification, not for his own enjoyment, not for his own fulfillment." J. Krishnamurti --- back to top

QUOTE #036 --- The end of a discussion in "The Wholeness Of Life", J. Krishnamurti: K: In that state there is no result, no cause, no effect. That mind acts out of compassion. Therefore there is no result. Q: But in some sense it would look as if there were a result. K: But compassion has no result. A is suffering, he says to X, "Please help me to get out of my suffering." If X really has compassion his words have no result. Q: Something happens but there is no result. K: That's it. Q: But I think people generally are seeking a result. K: Yes. Let's put it another way. Does compassion have a result? When there is a result there is a cause. When compassion has a cause then you are no longer compassionate. Q1: It is an extremely subtle thing, because something happens which seems final and yet is not. Q2: But compassion also acts. K: Compassion is compassion, it doesn't act. If it acts because there is a cause and an effect, then it is not compassion: it wants a result. Q: It acts purely. K: It wants a result. Q: What makes it want a result is the idea of separation. Somebody says, "There is a person suffering, I would like to produce the result that he is not suffering." But that is based on the idea that there is me and he. K: That's it. Q: There is no he and no I. There is no room, no place to have this result. K: It is a tremendous thing! One has to look at it very, very carefully. Look, "The world is me and I am the world". When I say me, you exist: both of us are there. The you and the I are the results of man's misery, of selfishness, and so on - it is a result. When one looks into the result, goes into it very, very deeply, the insight brings about a quality in which you and I - who are the result - don't exist. This is easy to agree on verbally, but when you see it deeply there is no you and no me. Therefore there is no result - which means compassion. The person upon whom acts wants a result. We say, "Sorry, there is no result." But the man who suffers says, "Help me to get out of this", or, "Help me to bring back my son, my wife", or what- ever it is. He is demanding a result. This thing has no result. The result is the world. Q: Does compassion affect the consciousness of man? K: Yes. It affects the deep layers of consciousness. The I is the result of the world, the you is the result of the world. And to the man who sees this deeply with a profound insight, there is no you or I. Therefore that profound insight is compassion - which is intelligence. And the intelligence says: If you want a result I can't give it to you, I am not the product of a result. Compassion says: This state is not a result, therefore there is no cause. Q: Does this mean there is no time either? K: No cause, no result, no time. ---back to top

QUOTE #037 --- "The beginning of meditation is self-knowledge, which means being aware of every and thought and feeling, knowing the layers of my consciousness, .... To know the deeply concealed activities, the hidden motives, responses, thoughts and feelings, there must be tranquility in the conscious mind.... That superficial mind must understand the right significance of its activities and thereby bring tranquility to itself." "It can bring about tranquility, peace, stillness, only be understanding its own activities, by observing them, by being aware of them, by seeing its own ruthlessness .... It is only when all these have projected themselves and are understood,when the whole consciousness is unburdened, unfettered by any wound, any memory whatsoever, that it is in a position to receive the eternal.... If you really want to know yourself...you can follow without condemnation or justification, every movement of thought and feeling; by following every thought and feeling as it arises you bring about tranquility which is not compelled, not regimented, but which is the outcome of having no problem, no contradiction. It is like the pool that becomes peaceful, quiet, any evening when there is no wind; when the mind is still, then that which is immeasurable comes into being." From J. Krishnamurti, "The First and Last Freedom" in the section on Prayer and Meditation ---

QUOTE #038 --- From J. Krishnamurti, "The First and Last Freedom" in the section on Prayer and Meditation: "The beginning of meditation is self-knowledge, which means being aware of every and thought and feeling, knowing the layers of my consciousness, .... To know the deeply concealed activities, the hidden motives, responses, thoughts and feelings, there must be tranquility in the conscious mind.... That superficial mind must understand the right significance of its activities and thereby bring tranquility to itself." "It can bring about tranquility, peace, stillness, only be understanding its own activities, by observing them, by being aware of them, by seeing its own ruthlessness .... It is only when all these have projected themselves and are understood,when the whole consciousness is unburdened, unfettered by any wound, any memory whatsoever, that it is in a position to receive the eternal.... If you really want to know yourself...you can follow without condemnation or justification, every movement of thought and feeling; by following every thought and feeling as it arises you bring about tranquility which is not compelled, not regimented, but which is the outcome of having no problem, no contradiction. It is like the pool that becomes peaceful, quiet, any evening when there is no wind; when the mind is still, then that which is immeasurable comes into being." --- back to top

QUOTE #039 --- "To seek is to deny the truth that is right in front of you.Your eyes must see that which is the nearest; and the seeing of that is a movement without end....Not to seek is to find; and the finding is not in the future - it is there, where you do not look.The looking is ever present, from which all life and action takes place. Meditation is the blessing of this action...Seeking is a personal drive from the centre - to attain, to belong, to hold. In inquiry there is freedom from the very beginning; looking is the freedom from the weight of yesterday." From the book "Meeting Life", J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #040 --- "If you have read this book for a whole hour, attentively, that is meditation." "Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just part of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive." "Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life -- perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy, if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of the birds or looking at the face of your wife or child." From "Freedom From the Known", J. Krishnamurti (page 116) ---

QUOTE #041 --- From "Freedom From the Known", J. Krishnamurti (page 116): "If you have read this book for a whole hour, attentively, that is meditation." "Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just part of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive." "Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life -- perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody. That is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy, if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to the singing of the birds or looking at the face of your wife or child." --- back to top

QUOTE #042 --- "It is always difficult to keep simple and clear. The world worships success, the bigger the better; the greater the audience the greater the speaker; the colossal super buildings, cars, aeroplanes and people. Simplicity is lost. The successful people are not the ones who are building a new world. To be a real revolutionary requires a complete change of heart and mind, and how few want to free themselves. One cuts the surface roots; but to cut the deep feeding roots of mediocrity, success, needs something more than words, methods, compulsions. There seem to be few, but they are the real builders--the rest labor in vain. One is everlastingly comparing oneself with another, with what one is, with what one should be, with someone who is more fortunate. This comparison really kills. Comparison is degrading, it perverts one's outlook. And on comparison one is brought up. All our education is based on it and so is our culture. So there is everlasting struggle to be something other than what one is. The understanding of what one is uncovers creativeness, but comparison breeds competitiveness, ruthlessness, ambition, which we think brings about progress. Progress has only led so far to more ruthless wars and misery than the world has ever known. To bring up children without comparison is true education." J. Krishnamurti, "Krishnamurti, A Biography", by Pupul Jayakar, pp. 255-256 ---

QUOTE #043 --- "Thought is never new, for thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge. Thought, because it is old, makes this thing which you have looked at with delight and felt tremendously for the moment, old. From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new. There is no time in the new." J. Krishnamurti, "Freedom from the Known," pp. 36 ---

QUOTE #044 --- "To know the whole process, the totality of oneself, does not require any expert, any authority. The pursuit of authority only breeds fear. No expert, no specialist, can show us how to understand the process of the self. One has to study it for oneself. You and I can help each other by talking about it, but none can unfold it for us, no specialist, no teacher, can explore it for us." -- Krishnamurti, "The First And Last Freedom," 1954, p. 75. --- back to top

QUOTE #045 --- - A conversation that Laura Archera Huxley had with Krishnamurti which she recounts in her book "This Timeless Moment" - At the time she was married to Aldous Huxley who was a long-time friend of K's. Laura Huxley writes of a lunch given by Signora Vanda Scaravelli in her chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland. Only the Scaravellis, the two Huxleys and K himself were present at the lunch, and much of the conversation centered around Laura's new book "Recipes for Living and Loving." LH had been much involved in psycho-therapy work and she "told our hosts how my recipes had succeeded with some people for whom the orthodox methods had failed. Krishnamurti asked a few questions and listened intently. We spoke about vitamins and imagination, solitary confinement, LSD, alcoholism, and the congress on extrasensory perception that Aldous had recently attended in the South of France." After lunch Signora Scaravelli suggested that Laura and K might want to have a private chat. They moved out to the terrace of the chalet "where Aldous could see us silhouetted against the sweeping view of the Alps." Later, Aldous asked her, "What in the world happened between you and Krishnamurti? You two were gesticulating with such animation and excitement - it almost looked as though you were having a fight. What happened?" Now follows Laura's account of this conversation with K in which she asked him questions that many students of his teachings have wanted to ask. His replies were immense. "The silent pantomime Aldous had seen through the French window must have been descriptive of our conversation - an extraordinary conversation against an extraordinary panorama. Krishnamurti and I had stood, walked, and sat on the terrace of the Swiss chalet, enveloped by high peaked mountains and pine woods of all gradations of green, light exhilarating green, and the deeper green of the vast mountain pastures. Brightness again, in luminous sky and in shining flowers, in sensuous undulating valleys, in Krishnamurti. Brightness everywhere. The first thing I asked Krishnamurti, continuing our table conversation about psychotherapy, was how he dealt with the problem of alcoholism. He said nonchalantly that it had happened quite often that people, after one or two interviews with him, stopped drinking. When I asked how this came about, he said he did not know. He dismissed the subject and asked me whether LSD, mescaline, and the psychedelic substances in general were really of any benefit or just gave a temporary illusion. I told him of the medical research done in Canada in the field of alcoholism - of unexpected and successful results reported by Canadian doctors with a number of hopeless alcoholics who stopped drinking after only one or two administrations of LSD, and without further therapy. Krishnamurti seemed surprised. He was silent for a few moments. There was something that he was going to say: also I had the feeling that his inner intensity was too powerful for the medium of words. I had no idea what was coming, but I knew something was about to happen. Silently he was holding my eyes with his dark burning look. Then with an extremely intense voice, he exploded. 'You know, I think that those people who go about helping other people...' He stopped - then, with even more piercing gaze, he spat out the next words like bullets of contempt: 'those people..they are a CURSE!' After the conversation at the table I had no doubt that 'those people' included me. The accusation and the fire with which he flung it at me were for an instant paralyzing. Then, almost without thinking, I asked, 'What about you? What do you think you are doing? You go about helping other people.' As though he had never thought of himself as belonging to that cursed category, Krishnamurti was taken aback for a moment, totally surprised and perplexed. Then, with disarming simplicity and directness, he said, 'But I don't do it on purpose!' It was the most extraordinary of statements. Aldous was enormously impressed by it, and also very touched and amused. Of course he understood it. But I must have looked bewildered, for Krishnamurti, in a softer, calmer way, said, 'It just happens, do you see?' Alas, I did not see very well. Krishnamurti continued, 'I am not a healer, or a psychologist, or therapist, or any of those things.' The words 'healer,' psychologist,' 'therapist,' burst from him like projectiles ejected by compressed power. 'I am only a religious man. Alcoholics or neurotics or addicts - it doesn't matter what the trouble is - they get better quite often - but that is not important; that is not the point - it is only a consequence.' 'What is wrong with such a consequence?' I asked. 'I only give people techniques or recipes or tools to help them to do what they need to do - what is wrong with using the transformation of energy to change those miserable feelings into constructive behaviour?' That had been what we had discussed at lunch. I knew that Krishnamurti was violently opposed to dogmas, rites, gurus, and Ascended Masters - to all the gadgetry of those organized powers whose aim is to impress the masses with keeping the godhead and its graces as their supreme and private monopoly. But I had no idea that he also objected to psycho-physical exercises, such as my recipes. Unaware of this fact, I had innocently exposed myself and my work. Now I realized that he had restrained himself during lunch, tactfully waiting until we were alone. He did not restrain himself now: vehemently, with unspeakable intensity he spoke. 'No! No! Techniques - transformation - no - rubbish! One must destroy - DESTROY...EVERYTHING!' Fleetingly a thought crossed my mind: how easily such a man can be misunderstood, misinterpreted! I wanted to understand - I knew that he wanted me to understand, but how to ask - that was the question. "But what do YOU do?' I repeated. And he repeated: 'Nothing - I am only a religious man.' It had the sound of a final statement, a baffling one to me. Six words, I thought, but hundreds of different meanings, according to each person's conditioning. Perhaps he was simply restating what Christ had said: 'But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.' But I was not thinking about Christ - I wanted to know what Krishnamurti meant by 'a religious man.' 'What is a religious man?' (Huxley asking K.) Krishnamurti changed his tone and rhythm. He spoke now calmly, with incisiveness. 'I will tell you what a religious man is. First of all. a religious man is a man who is alone - not lonely, you understand, but alone - with no theories or dogmas, no opinion, no background. He is alone and loves it - free of conditioning and alone - and enjoying it. Second, a religious man must be both man and woman - I don't mean sexually - but he must know the dual nature of everything; a religious man must feel and be both masculine and feminine. Third,' and now his manner intensified again, 'to be a religious man, one must destroy everything - destroy the past, destroy one's convictions, interpretations, deceptions - destroy ALL self-hypnosis - destroy until there is no center; you understand, NO CENTER.' He stopped. No center? After a silence Krishnamurti said quietly, 'Then you are a religious person. Then stillness comes. Completely still.' Still were the immense mountains around us. Infinitely still." ---back to top

QUOTE #046 --- A person who had listened to Krishnamurti for many years once said to him: "I see the extraordinary effect that the teachings have had on me and that they have on others. There seems to be something in them beyond the words which has the ability to change people's lives. I have now listened to you for many years and I know all the words. In terms of just words I could say many of the things that you say but I know that when I say them they don't have the same impact. I feel that this is because, while I know the teachings, I don't live them." Krishnamurti was nodding in agreement with this and the questioner continued. "My question to you is; when you say something like 'the world is you and you are the world' and you live it, it is clearly true. If I say 'you are the world and the world is you' and I don't live it, is that statement still true?" Krishnamurti was quiet for a moment and then said slowly, "Well yes, the statement is still true when you say it, but it has no truth in it." ---

QUOTE #047 --- "I wonder if one realizes, not as an idea, not as something of romantic appeal, but as an actual fact, that one is the world -- psychologically, inwardly, one is the world. Go to India, they have the same problems as here, suffering, loneliness, death, anxiety, sorrow. Wherever one goes this is the fact common to humanity. When you hear this statement that psychologically, inwardly, one is the world, do you make of it an idea? Or do you actually realize it as you realize it when a pin is thrust into your thigh or your arm, the actual pain of it? You don't have an idea about that; it is so, there is pain. So does one actually realize that immense fact, feel it as something vital, something that is tremendously actual? If one does, then that psychological fact affects the mind, the brain -- not one's little mind narrowed by national or family concerns -- it affects the human brain. When one realizes that, it brings a sense of great responsibility, without any sense of guilt, but a sense of tremendous responsibility for all things connected with human beings, how one educates one's children, how one behaves, and so on. If one actually realizes this immensity - it is immense - then the particular entity as 'me' seems so insignificant; all ones little worries become so shoddy. When one sees this fact, when it is felt in one's heart and mind, one covers the earth; one wants to protect everything, for one is responsible." J. Krishnamurti, 1980, Bulletin 40, Ojai ---

QUOTE #048 --- "The brain is not forcing itself to be quiet. If it is forcing itself to be quiet then it is still in operation of the past. In that there is division, there is conflict, there is discipline and all the rest of it. But if the old brain understands, or sees the truth - that as long as it is in constant response to any stimulus, it must operate along the old lines - if the old brain sees the truth of that, then it becomes quiet. It is the truth that brings about quietness - not the intention to be quiet." From J. Krishnamurti, 'The Awakening of Intelligence' p. 377 --- back to top

QUOTE #049 --- "Thought has created the problems which surround us and our brains are trained, educated, conditioned, to the solving of problems...It is essential that we understand the nature of our thinking and the nature of our reactions which arise from our thinking." (page 20) "From experience we acquire knowledge, from knowledge memory; the response of memory is thought, then from thought to action, from that action you learn more, so the cycle is repeated. That is the pattern of our life. That form of learning will never solve our problems because it is repetition." (page 25) "Suppose I have great sorrow for the death of someone with whom I have lived for many years. Then there is this sorrow which is the essence of isolation; we feel totally isolated, completely alone. Now, remain completely with that feeling, not verbalizing it, not rationalizing it, or escaping from it, or trying to transcend it - all of which is the movement that thought brings about. When there is that sorrow and thought does not enter into it at all - which means you are completely sorrow, not trying to overcome sorrow, but totally sorrow - then there is the disappearance of it. It is only when there is the fragmentation of thought that there is travail." (page 65) From J. Krishnamurti "The Network of Thought" ---

QUOTE #050 --- Q: ... You see a mountain and you recognize that it is a mountain, not an elephant. To differentiate in this way, surely, there must be judgment and evaluation? K: You see the mountain, you recognize it and the recognition is only possible when a memory of the mountain has been established. Obviously, otherwise you can't recognize it. Q: I remember when I came to Switzerland as a small child and I saw a mountain for the first time, it was without any remembrance. It was very beautiful! K: Yes, Sir, when you see it for the first time you don't say, "It is a mountain". Then somebody tells you that it is a mountain and the next time you recognize it as such. Now, when you observe, there is the whole process of recognition. You don't confuse the mountain with a house or an elephant, it is a mountain. Then the difficult problem arises: to observe it non-verbally. "That is a mountain", "I like it or I don't like it", "I wish I could live up there", and so on. From J. Krishnamurti, 'The Awakening of Intelligence' p. 329 --- back to top

QUOTE #051 --- "As you watch, you learn that the observer is merely a bundle of ideas and memories without any validity or substance, but that fear is an actuality and that you are trying to understand fact with an abstraction which of course, you cannot do. But, in fact, is the observer who says, 'I am afraid', any different from the thing observed which is fear? The observer is fear and when that is realized there is no longer any dissipation of energy in the effort to get rid of fear, and the space-time interval between the observer and the observed disappears. When you see you are a part of fear, not separate from it-that you are fear- then you cannot do anything about it; then fear comes totally to an end." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #052 --- "Ideas have become far more important to us than action---ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present---that is, livings is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #053 --- "As long as there is a time interval between the observer and the observed it creates friction and therefore there is a waste of energy. That energy is gathered to its highest point when the observer is the observed, in which there is no time interval at all. Then there will be energy without motive and it will find its own channel of action because then the "I" does not exist." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #054 --- "A man who is fully aware is meditating.... If you are interested to discover the whole process of yourself--not merely the superficial part but the total process of your whole being--then it is comparatively easy. If you really want to know yourself, you will search out your heart and mind to know their full content and when there is intention to know , you will know. Then you can follow, without condemnation or justification, every movement of thought and feeling; by following every thought and every feeling as it arises you bring about tranquility which is not compelled, not regimented, but which is the outcome of having no problem, no contradiction. It is like the pool that becomes peaceful, quiet, any evening when there is no wind; when the mind is still,then that which is immeasurable comes into being." From J. Krishnamurti "The First and Last Freedom" (p.221): --- back to top

QUOTE #055 --- "That silence which is not the silence of the ending of noise is only a small beginning. It is like going through a small hole to an enormous, wide, expansive ocean, to an immeasurable, timeless state. But this you cannot understand verbally unless you have understood the whole structure of consciousness and the meaning of pleasure, sorrow and despair, and the brain cells themselves have become quiet. Then perhaps you may come upon that mystery which nobody can reveal to you and nothing can destroy. A living mind is a still mind, a living mind is mind that has no centre and therefore no space and time. Such a mind is limitless and that is the only truth, that is the only reality." From J. Krishnamurti, "Freedom from the Known": ---

QUOTE #056 --- "The mind itself is petty, small, and by merely saying it is petty you haven't dissolved its pettiness. You have to understand it, the mind has to recognize its own activities, and in the process of that recognition, in the awareness of the trivialities which it has consciously and unconsciously built, the mind becomes quiet. In that quietness is the creative state and 'this' is the factor which brings about transformation." From J. Krishnamurti, "The First and Last Freedom", page 276: ---

QUOTE #057 --- "It is desire that creates illusion - through desire one wants fulfillment, one hopes for something more. Unless you understand the whole nature and structure of desire, the mind will inevitably create illusion. Can your mind, having understood the activity of desire, know its relative value and therefore be free to observe? Which means you observe without any kind of illusion. [...] I am not talking for my benefit. Although I have talked for fifty-two years I am not interested in talking. But I am interested to find out if you can also discover the same thing so that your life will be totally different, transformed, so that you have no problems, no complexities, no strife or longing.That is the reason the speaker is talking, not for his own gratification, nor for his own enjoyment, not for his own fulfillment." From a talk given by Krishnamurti at Saanen, July 29, 1979, "A Quiet Mind." ("Meeting Life," pages 204/5): ---

QUOTE #058 --- "Meditation is something that is not contrived, organized. Meditation IS. It begins with the first step, which is to be free of all your psychological hurts, accumulated fears, anxiety, loneliness, despair, sorrow. That is the foundation, that is the first step, and the first step is the last step. If you take that first step it is all over...The ending of sorrow is love. Where there is that love there is compassion. And that compassion has its own integral intelligence. And when that intelligence acts, that action is always true. There is no conflict where there is that intelligence." J. Krishnamurti, a Bombay Talk 1985 --- back to top

QUOTE #059 --- "Desire is always in contradiction. I desire contradictory things, which doesn't mean that I must destroy desire, suppress, control or sublimate it, I simply see that desire itself is contradictory. It is not the objects of desire but the very nature of desire which is contradictory. And I have to under- stand the nature of desire before I can understand conflict. In ourselves we are in a state of contradiction, and that state of contradiction is brought about by desire, desire being the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain." From J. Krishnamurti, "Freedom from the Known": ---

QUOTE #060 --- "It is important to understand from the very beginning that I am not formulating any philosophy or any theological structure of ideas or theological concepts. It seems to me that all ideologies are utterly idiotic. What is important is not a philosophy of life but to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life, inwardly and outwardly. If you observe very closely what is taking place and examine it, you will see that it is based on an intellectual conception, and the intellect is not the whole field of existence; it is a fragment, and a fragment, however cleverly put together, however ancient and traditional, is still a small part of existence whereas we have to deal with the totality of life. And when we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this seems to me all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody need tell you how to look. You just look." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #061 --- "Awareness is observation without condemnation. Awareness brings understanding because there is no condemnation or identification but silent observation. If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. There must merely be the silent observation of a fact. There is no end in view but awareness of everything as it arises.... First, there is awareness of things about one, being sensitive to objects, to nature, then to people, which means relationship; then there is awareness of ideas. This awareness, being sensitive to things, to nature, to people, to ideas, is not made up of separate processes, but is one unitary process. It is a constant observation of everything, of every thought and feeling and action as they arise within oneself" From J. Krishnamurti, "The First and Last Freedom" page 173: --- back to top

QUOTE #062 --- "We said, this 'me' is a living thing, a movement. All the time it is adding to itself and taking away from itself. And this 'me', this movement, is the root of all violence. Not only this 'me' as something static which invents the soul, which invents God, Heaven and punishment---it is the whole of that. We are asking: does the mind realize that the 'me' is the cause of this mischief? The mind---use the word intelligence if you like---which sees the whole map of violence, all the intricacies, sees it by observing, this mind says: that is the root of all evil. So the mind now asks: is it possible to live without the 'me'?... Seeing is acting. Now, does the mind see this whole map of violence and the root of it? And what is it that sees? If the 'me' sees it, then it is afraid to live differently, then the 'me' says, 'I must protect myself, I must resist this, I am afraid'. Therefore the 'me' refuses to see the map. But the seeing is not the 'me'... Do we realize that the mind which is observing this entire map is entirely different from the 'me' which sees it and is afraid to break from it? There are two different observations: the 'me' seeing, and 'seeing'. The 'me' seeing must inevitably be afraid and must therefore resist and say, "How shall I live? What shall I do? Must I give this up? Must I hold on?" and so on. We said: any movement of the 'me' is violence. But there is a mere seeing of the map, which is entirely different. Is this clear? Now, which is it that you are doing?..." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #063 --- "Saturday, April 23, 1983. The clouds are still hanging over the hills, the valley and the mountains. Occasionally there is an opening in the sky and the sun comes through, bright, clear, but soon it disappears. One likes this kind of morning, cool, fresh, with the whole world green around you. As the summer comes on the sun will burn all the green grass, and the meadows across the valley will be parched, dry, and all the grass with the bright green will have gone. In the summer all the freshness has gone. One likes these quiet mornings. The oranges are so bright and the leaves, dark green, are shining. And there is a perfume in the air from the orange blossom, strong, almost suffocating. There is a different kind of orange to be picked later on before the summer heat. Now there is the green leaf, the orange and the flower of the same tree at the same time. It is a beautiful world and man is so indifferent to it, spoiling the earth, the rivers and the bays and the fresh-water lakes. But let's leave all that behind and walk along a narrow path, up the hill where there is a little stream which in a few weeks will be dry. You and a friend are walking along the path, talking now and then, looking at all the various colours of green. What a variety there is, from the lightest green, the Nile green, and perhaps even lighter, bluer, to the dark greens, luscious, full of their own richness. And as you go along up the path, just managing to walk along together side by side, you happen to pick up something ravishingly beautiful, sparkling, a jewel of extraordinary antiquity and beauty. You are so astonished to find it on this path of so many animals which only a few people have trodden. You look at it with great astonishment. It is so subtly made, so intricate that no jeweller's hand can ever made it. You hold it for some time, amazed and silent. Then you put it very carefully in your inside pocket, button it, and are almost frightened that you might lose it or that it might lose its sparkling, shining beauty. And you put your hand outside the pocket that holds it. The other sees you doing this and sees that your face and your eyes have undergone a remarkable change. There is a kind of ecstasy, a speechless wonder, a breathless excitement. When the man asks: 'What is it that you have found and are so extraordinarily elated by?' you reply in a very soft, gentle voice (it seems so strange to you to hear your own voice) that you picked up truth. You don't want to talk about it, your are rather shy; the very talking might destroy it. And the man who is walking beside you is slightly annoyed that you are not communicating with him freely, and he says that if you have found the truth, then let's do gown into the valley and organize it so that others will understand it, so that others will grasp it and perhaps it will help them. You don't reply, you are sorry that you ever told him about it. [...]" From "Krishnamurti to Himself", pp. 85: --- back to top

QUOTE #064 --- "Why should you accept what anybody says about these matters---including myself? Why should you accept any authority about the inward movement of life? We reject authority outwardly; if you are at all intellectually aware and observant politically you reject these things. But we apparently accept the authority of someone who says, "I know, I have achieved, I have realized." The man who says he knows, he does not know. The moment you say you know, you don't know. What is it you know? Some experience which you have had, some kind of vision, some kind of enlightenment? I dislike to use that word "enlightenment". Once you have experienced that, you think you have attained some extraordinary state; but that is past, you can only know something which is over and therefore dead." J. Krishnamurti ---

QUOTE #065 --- "...death is extraordinarily like life when we know how to live. You cannot live without dying. You cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. This is not an intellectual paradox. To live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness, there must be dying to every- thing of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanical mind can never know what love is or what freedom is... Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living." From J. Krishnamurti, "Freedom From The Known" ---

QUOTE #066 --- "to look at myself without any formula -- can one do that? Otherwise you can't learn about yourself obviously. If I say, I am jealous, the very verbalization of that fact, or of that feeling, has already conditioned it. Right? Therefore I cannot see anything further in it. Now the question is: can the mind be free of this egocentric activity? Right? That is really the question, not whether it is so or not. Which means can the mind stand alone, uninfluenced? Alone, being alone does not mean isolation. Sir, look: when one rejects completely all the absurdities of nationality, the absurdities of propaganda, of religious propaganda, rejects conclusions of any kind, actually, not theoretically, completely put aside, has understood very deeply the question of pleasure and fear, and division -- the `me' and the `not me' -- is there any form of the self at all?" J. Krishnamurti, "Observing Without The `Me' Brockwood Park, First Public Talk, September 5, 1970 ---

QUOTE #067 --- "When you go away from here, you will have various ideas about awareness, love, truth, fear, and all the rest of it. Those very ideas are going to prevent learning. But if you are aware a little bit, then you are learning and then intelligence can operate through learning in daily life." J. Krishnamurti from 'The Awakening of Intelligence', p 426 --- back to top

QUOTE #068 --- "I realise my life is wrong. Nobody has to point that out; it is so. That is a fact and you come along and tell me that you can do something instantly. I don't believe you. I feel it can never happen. You come and tell me this whole struggle, this monstrous way of living, can be ended immediately. My brain says, sorry, you are cuckoo, I don't believe you. But K says, look, I will show it to you step by step. You may be god, you may be the Buddha, but I don't believe you. And K tells you, listen, take time, in the sense, have patience. Patience is not time. Impatience is time. Patience has no time." J. Krishnamurti, The Way of Intelligence, p. 59 ---

QUOTE #069 --- Questioner: How can one reconcile the demands of society with a life of total freedom? Krishnamurti: What are the demands of society? Tell me, please. That you go to the office from nine to five, or the factory, that you go to a nightclub for excitement after all the boredom of the day's work, take a fortnight or three weeks' holiday in sunny Spain or Italy? What are the demands of society? That you must earn a livelihood, that you must live in that particular part of the country all your life, practise as a lawyer, or a doctor, or in the factory as a union leader, and so on. Right? Therefore one must also ask the question: what is this society that demands so much, and who created the wretched thing? Who is responsible for this? The church, the temple, the mosque, and all the circus that goes on inside them? Who is responsible for all this? Is the society different from us, or have we created the society, each one of us, through our ambition, through our greed, our envy, our violence, through our corruption, through our fear, wanting our security in the community, in the nation - you follow? We have created this society and then blame the society for what it demands. Therefore you ask: can I live in absolute freedom, or rather, can I reconcile with society and myself seek freedom? It is such an absurd question. Sorry, I am not being rude to the questioner. It is absurd because you