Jiddu Krishnamurti

"Most people’s minds are asleep... drugged by knowledge, scripture or what someone else said" 

"The significant problems of the world today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created them" (Albert Einstein)

Studying the penetrating teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, one comes to the conclusion that problems

created by thought cannot be solved by thought. Thought.... thinking... and the abstractions that result can be a perilous field especially for most of us who do not understand the workings of the mind, the nature of time and the meaning of love. Most of us are completely identified with our thinking, our beliefs, values etc... We think we are our thoughts. But who is doing all this thinking? Where does a thought come from? Who is the observer? What is the observed? Can we penetrate the superficial meaning of words to find reality? And if we can, What do we find?

The thinking part of the mind does not like these questions much... because it has been happily in control of our lives for a long time and is not really interested in any truth that would reduce it's grip on controlling what we think is real. Such questioning threatens the very existence of the mind-created self and it will do desperate things to protect itself. This desperation is reflected in the conflict and chaos of today's world...

"Intelligence has nothing whatsoever to do with thought. You maybe very clever, very good at arguing, very learned. You may have experienced, lived a tremendous life, been all over the world, investigating, searching, looking, accumulating a great deal of knowledge, practiced Zen or Hindu meditation, but all that has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence. Intelligence comes into being when the mind, the heart, and the body are really harmonious. Therefore the body must be highly sensitive, not overindulging in eating, drinking, sex, and all the rest that makes the body dull, heavy. You have to understand all that. The very seeing the fact of that makes you eat less, gives the body its own intelligence. If there is an awareness of the body, which is not being forced, then the body becomes very, very sensitive, like a beautiful instrument "

"One of the most difficult tings in the world is to look at anything simply. Because our minds are very complex, we have lost the quality of simplicity... the simplicity that can look directly at things without fear- that can look at ourselves as we actually are without any distortion- but rather following with an intention to understand- a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't know how to look at, or listen to, our own being any more than we know how to look at the beauty of a river or listen to the breeze among the trees"

The following are some excerpts from the book "Think on These Things". You may also wish to check out www.pathless.com , a non-profit foundation for more material and information about his teachings as well as sign up for a free monthly newsletter. We recommend it strongly!

Questioner: It is said that in each one of us truth is permanent and timeless; but' since our life is transitory, how can there be truth in us?

Krishnamurti: You see, we have made of truth something permanent. And is truth permanent? If it is, then it is within the field of time. To say that something is permanent implies that it is continuous; and what is continuous is not truth. That is the beauty of truth: it must be discovered from moment to moment, not remembered. A remembered truth is a dead thing. Truth must be discovered from moment to moment because it is living, it is never the same; and yet each time you discover it, it is the same.

What is important is not to make a theory of truth, not to say that truth is permanent in us and all the rest of it--- that is an invention of the old who are frightened both of death and of life. These

marvelous theories--- that truth is permanent , that you need not be afraid because you are an immortal soul, and so on--- have been invented by frightened people who's minds are decaying and whose philosophies have no validity. Life has to be discovered from moment to moment, from day to day; it has to be discovered,  it cannot be taken for granted. If you take it for granted that you know life, you are not living. Three meals a day, clothing, shelter, sex, your job, your amusements and your thinking process, is not life. Life is something to be discovered; and you cannot discover it if you have not lost, if you have not put aside the things that you have found. Do experiment with what I am saying. Put aside your philosophies, your religions, your customs, your racial taboos and all the rest of it, for they are not life. It you are caught in those things you will never discover life; and the function of education, surely is to help you to discover life all the time.

A man who says he know is already dead, But the man who thinks," I don't know" , who is discovering, finding out, who is not seeking an end, not thinking in terms of arriving or becoming-- such a man is living, and that living is truth.

From: Psychological Slaves to Time...

So we are asking whether time as a means of psychologically advancing towards a particular principle, towards a particular concept, towards a particular projection of what should be, whether there is such time at all, whether there is a psychological tomorrow at all, and whether time in that sense psychologically can ever come to an end? Please understand this very carefully because in this is implied the whole question of death and suffering. If one doesn't understand this basic problem, the other, the others like love, death, suffering, all that becomes superficial. So we are asking a fundamental question: whether time psychologically can come to an end? Or psychologically time is necessary as a movement towards a particular goal, to a purpose, an achievement and all the rest of it? You have got the question clear?

This psychological entity as the 'me', the 'I', the 'you', the 'we' and 'they', that whole way of thinking

on which our society is based, and our relationship with each other, what part does time play in bringing about suffering in that? Whether I as a human being with all my psychological structure and nature has a tomorrow at all? Or is it an invention of thought so that I have a hope, so that I have something towards which I can go to, something which I can cultivate in the future? Cultivation implies a movement in time. So we are asking a question, which is: our conditioning, if one observes your own conditioning, our conditioning is a psychological advance towards what you may call god, or towards enlightenment, or towards a deeper understanding, or towards a fulfillment, all in the future. So we are caught in this network, network of the future, which is, there is light, there is enlightenment, there is something called love, all in the future, to be psychologically achieved. Right? Please if I labor this point it is important because when we go into the much deeper question of death, you have to understand this question of time. That is our conditioning. I need time to learn a language. I need time to learn a technique, I need time to learn how to drive a car. There, time is necessary. But we have taken over psychologically that time. And have projected a future, that I will be good, I will be something. The speaker is questioning the whole of that. Or there is not psychological future, but only the ending of time which is totally now. You understand this?

You see we live either in the past, a remembrance, in all the things of the past, or in the future - I will meet you tomorrow, how happy it will be, and how unfortunate it was that this happened in the past, or how happy I was in the past, and I hope that happiness, that joy, that something celestial will take place tomorrow. So we are always caught in the psychological time as memory of the past, and the hope of the future. That is time as memory, time as hope and we don't know what it is to live totally now. Because now is life, not there or behind. Am I making myself clear, not verbally? If you observe yourself, if you are aware of yourself, this is what is going on all the time in us - the past and the future. In that there is suffering. So I have to find out, the mind has to enquire, examine and find out whether there is a timeless state which is called the now. This has been the haunt, the search of deep persons concerned with life. Which means is love a memory - either as the past or the future, I will love you, or I have loved you. And do I know or understand, or have an insight, or be aware of what love is now? You are following, we are sharing together? And why do we, as human beings, live in this battle of the past and the future, which is the psychological time? Therefore there is an effort to forget the past, an effort to put away the future and try to live in the present. That is, I want to live in the present. We don't understand what that means but we immediately react to every reaction that we have, idiotic, rational, stupid or neurotic - doing the thing now, whatever we want, this is what is happening.

And we are asking: as long as man, human beings, the mind, is looking to the future, which means hope, which means a sense of advancement, moving towards the ideal and so on, is that the truth or a reality created by thought? You are following this? Please do follow this. Thought whatever it thinks about is a reality, but is not truth. Reality means the act of thinking about something which then becomes real. That is reality of a hope, reality of a purpose, reality of an ideal, reality of an enlightenment, all are the projections of thought. Therefore thought has made that real. But that reality is not truth. Thought cannot think about truth. Now the truth of finding out a way of living, not a way, of living without the future and without the past. To find that out, which is the truth, thought cannot invent it, then it becomes an illusory reality. You have got it, what I am talking about? I can't keep on repeating this, I want to get on.

So, can the mind uncondition itself from the psychological hurts and images and pleasures of yesterday, and the psychological demands of the future, the hopes, the longings, can that mind, can it uncondition itself and find, see the truth of what it is to live totally now, in the now, and therefore that is the truth?