34 Jiddu krishnamurti (1895 –1986)

G. Vedaparayana

Birth and Childhood

Born in 1895 in Madanapalle, Chittoor district, South India, Krishnamurti was discovered to be a suitable human vehicle for the coming of the Messiah. Adopted by Dr. Anee Besant he was proclaimed to be the Maitreya Bodhisattava who would bring salvation ton humankind. Trained in occult matters the boy krishnamurti was taken in his astral body to the Masters believed to be living in Tibet in their astral bodies. The boy composed a book, At the Feet of the Master, comprising the message he received from them. In 1911, a world-wide organization ‘The Order of the Star of the East’ was founded with Krishnamurti (K) as its head. Thousands of people became its members who defied and adulated him. Later on, having got vexed with the occult, the ceremonial activities and the hierarchical outlook of the theosophists, K. began to regret and question his playing the role of the World Teacher. In 1922, he underwent a ‘process’ that revealed to him the eternal Truth, Joy and Beauty. The profound change it brought in him became more pronounced when, in 1925, his younger brother, Nityananda died of tuberculosis, much against the assurances given to him by the theosophists that the Masters would surely protect the brother. The event dejected him deeply and transformed his sorrow into boundless compassion. In 1929, K. disbanded ‘The Order of the Star of the East’ and declared: I maintain that truth is a pathless land and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion,by any sect…. My only concern is to set man absolutely and unconditionally free’. In 1930, he resigned from the Theosophy and became an independent thinker never identifying himself with any religion, sect, ideology or organization. Dedicating his life-time for spreading the message of Truth, for urging people to understand and transform themselves, K. travelled around the world for more than sixty years giving talks to thousands of enraptured listeners, holding dialogues and discussions with some of the brightest minds of the 20th century. More than fifty books have been compiled out of his talks and dialogues. He has also authored a few seminal books. K. the seer who walked on this earth lightly and alone died in 1986.

Philosophy

To K. Philosophy is not a conceptual, a speculative activity of dealings with abstract ideas: it is not an argumentative affair of proving or disproving, justifying or denouncing anything; nor is it a pursuit of convincing people of a conviction or a dogma. Philosophy is neither exegetical nor hermeneutical—not an interpretation of a text or the life-world; it is neither a construction of grand eloquent theories not their deconstruction; it is not a body of justified true beliefs, not a series of theories of successive reform, not even the eclecticism of borrowing and reconciling the prevalent ideas. Philosophy is not a defensive strategy, a pastime of the strong minds that disagree for the heck of it, and find delight in it; it is neither the partisan position of committing oneself to a particular view not the cynically skeptical attitude of doubting everything; much less is philosophy a capacity of the mind for resting contentedly in endless contradictions. The function of philosophy, according to K., is not grappling with the specialized, the technical problems of metaphysics, epistemology, logic and ethics; it is not raising the contentious issue of realism, idealism, skepticism, solipsism etc., and trying to solve them in vain; nor is it a logical, an analytical search for linguistic meaning and clarity, an investigation into the logical rules governing linguistic expressions; it is not even the existential, phenomenological demonstration of the tragic finale, the absurdity of human existence.

The main objective of K’s philosophy is to bring about a radical psychological transformation of the human being. K. contends that human beings have remained the same as they were in the beginning – divisive, conflicting and brutish; we have not been able to think-together, work-together, live-together and work-together in peace and harmony; we have been fighting and killing each other for millions of years, in spite of tremendous advances in the field of science and technology; there have been breath taking strides in physics and biology; robots that can out think us are designed; animals have been cloned and the creation of the choice babies is in the offing; the human brain which has evolved for millions of years has been able to tackle the technological problems of computation, communication, transport and medicine; it has been able to explore the material world of atom and outer space; but it has not able to solve the human problem of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, disease and death thereof; it has not been able to purge itself of the sense of separation, anger, envy, hatred, ambition, competition and aggression; it has not been able to put an end to the problems of inequality, injustice, division, conflict violence and war. Habituated to look outward, the brain has not been to look inward and resolve the crisis in consciousness, the root of all other crises, the fundamental crisis in consciousness namely, division and conflict, is at the source of the perennial wars, the manufacturing of the sophisticated weapons of mass destruction and the consequent colossal loss of human and natural recourses; it is also responsible for the savage destruction of the planet resulting in the environmental problems of the loss of the biodiversity and the consequent climate change; newer and more serious problems continue to crop up as long as the inner crisis persists. In the absence of psychological revolution, the evolution and explosion of knowledge for outer progress will play havoc in our lives; safety and security of life will further deteriorate; the science and technology generated civilization, the fossil fuel driven development, the LPG driven economic growth and the knowledge based society as a whole will not sustain. Inward transformation alone can decisively save us from the impending nuclear or environmental holocaust of blowing ourselves up or polluting ourselves into extinction; all other kinds of revolutions – political, economic, and technological – are of no avail in saving humanity from gradual or eventual self-destruction. K. observes that the inward change is instantaneous and not evolutionary and so does not require time; time indeed is a barrier to psychological change; it impedes the actual. Immediate insight into the fact of division; indeed, time at the psychological level is responsible for the creation and continuity of division and suffering of humanity.

Choiceless Awareness

Choiceless awareness is seeing ‘what is’ as it actually is; it is the perception of a fact without an idea, a conception, or knowledge about it; it is observation without the division as the observer and the observed; the awareness is without justification or condemnation, identification or exclusion; it is without comparison, effort or resistance; there is neither thought nor time in it. Awareness is not concentration, the focusing of thought in a particular direction, on a particular aspect of the ‘what is’; nor is awareness an analysis, a step by step examination of the ‘what is’. Awareness is an undivided and inclusive, a holistic attention of the totality of the ‘what is’ with one’s whole being and energy, with diligence love and care; it is giving freedom to ‘what is’ and allowing it to flower and reveal its story, without interference of thought and time. The awareness brings about the insight which reveals the truth of the fact, the ‘what is’ and transforms it radically; observation without the observer brings about a mutation in the observed. One has to be aware of oneself, the whole of one’ s consciousness without choice, and bring about a fundamental inner transformation, which affects the whole consciousness of humanity; the change that the awareness brings about is so deep and irreversible that it ‘effects’ a mutation in the brain cells themselves.

Thought and Truth

Thought is the response of memory to a challenge, the movement of the past in the present; it is always conditioned by, dependent on the past; unconditioned, independent thought does not exist; thought it is the result of a result, since it is the product of the past which is also a result; thought is a material process, for the memory in which it is anchored is matter; memory is matter since it is stored in the brain which is which is a material substance – all that is recorded in the brain is nothing but matter. Therefore, there is nothing sacred about thought; thought at all levels is temporal, a passage of the past to the future; the activity of thought is divisive and fragmentary involves contradictions and conflicts; its energy is always deteriorating and dissipating; it functions by dividing itself as thinker and thought; but the so-called thinker, the “self” is not different from thought; the thinker is only a refuse, a residue of thought; thought manifests itself as the thinker only to give itself continuity; but whatever it does, thought remains to be finite, cannot be free from its moorings – all its inventions, including God are petty. K. calls the whole realm of thought a reality; anything that the thought thinks about, operates upon, whether reasonably or unreasonably, is a reality; the reality of thought may be factual or illusory; it is factual when it reflects a fact as it is, in a straight way, and illusory when it reflects a fact in a distorted manner.

Truth is totally outside the field of thought; truth ‘is’ when thought is not. Thought is a thing, whereas truth is ’nothing’, not-a-thing. In truth there is not a thing that is put together by thought. Thought is conditioned, whereas truth is absolutely and unconditionally free. Truth has nothing to do with memory; only the mind that has cleansed itself of the past and explodes in the present can comprehend truth. Thought is tradition and continuous whereas truth is eternal and from moment to moment. Devoid of any centre or circumference, truth is boundless and infinite; its energy is immense, without beginning and end; it is not dissipating but creative and ever expanding; its activity is not divisive or fragmentary but holistic and immeasurable. Thought is a betrayal, a travesty of truth which is intrinsically intransient and immaterial; it can never touch the sacred and incorruptible truth. There is only a one-sided relation between the two: thought can never relate itself with truth, whereas truth can relate itself with thought and regulate it to function in a straight, an orderly way; devoid of the light of truth, thought goes berserk and creates confusion. What we need is truth and actuality, the reality as truly reflected by thought.

Knowledge and Wisdom

Knowledge is the process of thinking, experience or consciousness; to know is to think, to experience or to be conscious; all these are the responses of memory to a stimulus by verbalizing it. Knowledge is also thought, experience or memory stored in the brain. Knowledge is of two kinds – factual and psychological. Factual knowledge is that which is of instrumental value, essential for our physical security; it includes all information useful for our activities from speaking a language to going to the moon; it is the result of thought functioning in the world of facts and actuality. Whereas, psychological knowledge is what thought has fabricated and gathered as a means of inward security; it is the result of thought functioning in a crooked way at the psychological level; it is also the result of thought using the factual knowledge for self-aggrandizement; it is a conglomeration of several desires, motives, beliefs images and symbols; it also embodies ambition, envy, hatred, anger, fear and sorrow; there is also division, contradiction, and conflict in it. Psychological knowledge constitutes consciousness, the psyche, or the “self” which is common to all humanity; it sustains itself continuously by generating its own energy out of its self-contradiction.

Psychological knowledge comprising the “self” is positively a barrier to wisdom; the “self” and wisdom do not go together; there can be no wisdom as long as there is the self-centered, conscious activity of knowledge and thought. So also, factual knowledge which is necessarily superficial and materialistic can never comprehend wisdom; knowledge is, as it were, only a flash of light between two darknesses and it cannot go beyond or above that darkness; it is a covering, a cloak which conceals wisdom; the known can never know the unknown; the conditioned should cease for the unconditioned to be; knowledge is not the coin for the purchase of wisdom; Knowledge, however ancient, vast or sophisticated it may be, cannot evolve into wisdom; so the whole idea of gathering knowledge through time and effort as a means to wisdom is wrong; all time has to cease for the timeless to be. Wisdom is the nothingness of the mind which is beyond all the accretions that the mind has gathered. Nothingness is what we actually are. Wisdom lies in ‘being nothing’ without knowing it, without reducing it to knowledge, to abstraction. Wisdom is freedom from the known, the past. To know is to be ignorant and not-to-know is to be wise. Wisdom is a ‘state’ of not-knowing, a State of ‘being’ without ‘becoming’.

Art of Living

The art of living is the greatest of all arts, greater than writing a poem, painting a picture or playing on the flute; it is living and dying from moment to moment, without the residue, the continuity of the past. It is living by dying to the past each moment; to die is not to record, not to accumulate knowledge at the psychological level. In it each moment of perception is new; the first step is the last step. Death is not merely at the end of life, the extinction of the body through disease and old age; death is also the ending of oneself psychologically, inwardly. Everything on this earth lives and dies. Withers away and comes into being every day. So also we have to die each day, each moment and live anew, afresh; death is not a sad affair, something to be avoided, but an ecstatic moment to live-with day-in and day-out. It is living with death that there comes a an extraordinary sense of immensity and meaning. Living without dying is dreadful, whereas living in dying is beyond time and sorrow. The art of living is the resilience of the mind to renew itself each moment, each day.

Human Relations

Life is relationship which is the mirror of the life-world; it is in relationship that we can learn what we actually are; there is division and conflict in relationship since it is based on images and judgments: the images, the judgments about oneself and others – that I am an Indian, a Hindu, a Pakistani, a Muslim, a British, a Christian and so on – are responsible for crisis in human relationships; even the judgments the images of value that I am good, superior and the other is bad and inferior, breed separation; the images, the conclusions constitute the “self”, the centre which hinders harmonious human relations; self-centered activity is responsible for all kinds of problems of relationship the images are the products of the psychological knowledge gathered by thought for inner security; but thought and knowledge can never give the security; it is only the ending of the image-making mechanism of thought that there is true security; only the mind that has totally cleansed itself of all images can relate itself with everything without friction; it is only in the emptiness of the mind that there is true love which is without a centre or circumference and therefore boundless. Love is of the nature of supreme intelligence suffused with sensitivity, care and responsibility; devoid of all images, the sensitive mind is incapable of hurting a thing and also incapable of being hurt. Love alone can bring about a radical change in human relations and in the world as a whole; to it, all are one and the world is its home.

Individual and Society

K. says, ‘you are the world and the world is you’. Society is relationship, the psychological extension of individuals, their collective will and action; without people society is an abstraction, does not have an independent existence, a mechanism of its own. The crises in society – hunger, poverty, injustice, insecurity violence and war – are due to the crisis in the consciousness of the individual; it is because we are inwardly divisive, conflictingly and brutal that there is confusion mess and misery in the world. The so called revolutions – the green, the white, the blue, the industrial the informational—have not brought about a real qualitative change in the world. Division, violence insecurity, the nuclear and environmental threats are growing. A radical psychological revolution is the only way out of the crisis in all its dimensions; instantaneous transformation in the inward being of the individual alone can establish a world of peace and prosperity; bereft of it, all development is pseudo, unjust and lopsided, a sane society of security and sustainability requires holistic and wise individuals.

Nature and Environment

We are destroying Nature and degrading the environment at an unprecedented and alarming rate; this is due to our utilitarian and insensitive attitude to Nature; we are treating Nature as merely a commodity meant for consumption; instead of using it wisely for our well-being and preserving it for future generations, we are exploiting it indiscriminately. The anthropocentric outlook and activity is responsible for the ecological imbalance; self-centered, acquisitive and greedy approach to Nature is at the root of environmental crisis. Individuals’ and nations’ exclusive approach to development is the cause of plundering Nature; each individual, each nation is trying to progress without a sense of sharing the natural wealth. A global approach to development with a spirit of distributive justice will reduce the pressure on earth; we should put an end to our divisive, confrontationist and aggressive attitude to Nature. Destroying Nature oblivious of its intrinsic value is like cutting the branch on which we are sitting; it is wrong to think that we, the humans are the only privileged ones of the planet; all species the flora and fauna, have a right to live, have a role play in Nature. Similarly, this earth is neither of the Capitalists nor of the Communists, nor of the Americans, nor of the British; it is our earth and we all have to live on it. Nature itself is the greatest source of global outlook; watching Nature and being in communion with it helps in bringing about intelligence, sensitivity that puts an end to our sense of separation and destruction; it also helps in bringing about a communion with others, with everything that is there in the Cosmos. Intelligence is the creative principle that protects humanity and Nature as a whole; an intelligent person never kills anything to satisfy his tongue, never destroys Nature to amass wealth.

Education

The aim of education is not merely to train the student in a particular technique for serving the society and earning a livelihood; to educate is not only to produce excellent technocrats, specialists but also to create human beings of excellent conduct; the teacher has to educate the student to flower in goodness which means living actively with love and affection, without being self-centered, without authority and ambition. True religion is living a life of goodness daily, not occasionally on Fridays, Saturdays or Sundays; it is living with people, with Nature and environment with total peace and harmony; to be religious is not going to temple, a church or mosque, but to live excellently which does not mean living in excellent houses, eating excellent food or driving excellent cars, but living with highest capacity of care and concern for everything. The sole aim of education is to bring about a true human being in whom the scientific temper and the true religious spirit go together; the true educator is one who while imparting knowledge helps the student to flower in goodness; the teacher has to give the student freedom to flower in excellence, by pointing the way to truth without being authoritarian, without imposing beliefs and convictions on the student; the teacher has to see that the student develops in himself or herself that quality of mind which is highly intelligent and sensitive; the cultivation of this sensitivity, this intelligence is surely the function of any teacher, whether the Guru or the instructor of technology.

Summary:

Jiddu Krishnamurti is one of the greatest thinkers of 20th century who has offered a unique philosophy of life and education which is relevant for our times since the world is in an unprecedented crisis. He has advocated a radical psychological transformation of the individual for the total transformation of the life-world. He held that crisis in the world is due to the crisis in the consciousness of humanity which is the same as the individual consciousness. So, a real and holistic change in the world warrants a radical transformation in the consciousness of the individual. Education is the main source of brining about transformation in the individual and in society at large.

Web links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti
• http://www.kfionline.org/krishnamurti/introduction
• http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/about-krishnamurti/biography.php
• http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=308&chid=4637
• http://www.katinkahesselink.net/kr/relationships.html

 Bibliography

• Lutyens, Mary – Krishnamurti – The Years of Awakening, Krishnamurti Foundation India, Madras, 1975
• Lutyens, Mary – Krishnamurti – The years of fulfillment, Krishnamurti Foundation India, 1980
• Krishnamurti, J – The Tradition and revolution, Orient Longman,1972  Krishnamurti, J – Commentaries on living, First Series, B.I. Publications, 1972
• Krishnamurti, J – First and Last Freedom, Victor Collanez , 1964
• Krishnamurti, J – Freedom From the Known, B.I. Publications, 1975
• Krishnamurti, J – The Wholeness of Life, Krishnamurti Foundation, London, 1978
• Krishnamurti, J – The Only Revolution, Victor Collanez, 1970
• Krishnamurti, J – Beyond Violence, B.I.Publication, 1976
• Krishnamurti, J – You are the World, Krishnamurti Foundation, India, 1975 Krishnamurti, J – On Education, Orient Longman, 1974