The Core of
Krishnamurti's Teachings
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 dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or
psychological technique. He has to find it through the understanding of the
contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual
analysis or introspective dissection. Man as built himself images as a fence
of security - religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols,
ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his
relationships and his daily life.
These images are the causes of our problems for they
divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts
already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his
entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality
is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and
environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in
complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to
all mankind. So he is not an individual.
Freedom is not a reaction; freedom
is not choice. It is man's pretense that because he has a choice he is free.
Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment
and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of
evolution of man but lies in the 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 and activity.
Thought is time. Thought is born of
experience and knowledge which are inseparable from time and the past. 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. Thought is
ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no
psychological evolution.
When a man becomes aware of the
movement of his own thoughts he will se the division between the thinker and
the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the
experienced. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then there
is only pure observation. Then only is there pure observation whish is
insight without any shadow of the past or time. This timeless insight brings
about a deep radical transformation of the mind.
Total negation is the essence of
the positive. When there is negation of all these things that thought has
brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion
and intelligence.
This statement was
originally written by Krishnamurti himself on October 21, 1980 for
"Krishnamurti: The Years Of Fulfillment" by Mary Lutyens, the second volume
of his biography, published by John Murray Ltd. in 1983 © Mary Lutyens. On
re-reading it Krishnamurti has added a few sentences to the above. |