No virtue touched it, for it was beyond all the virtues and sanctions of man.
Published in Change Your Mind Change Your Life
Oct 1, 2023 (Medium.com)
I have been into JK’s teachings for 20 years. When I first saw the audio cassette, The Meaning of Life, on a book shelf, I instinctively picked it up. Going through it is a thought revolution.
Instead of trying to give meaning to life, which is a primeval question for all thinkers, he tried to put together an investigation into the nature of the mind that asks this question. A mind that is bored and leads a mechanical life can ask this question.
A mind that is fresh and alive is always vibrant in the present moment. Such a mind that renews itself will never seek answers.
He was a true iconoclast who would tear down institutions and gurus who promised a route to salvation. Including himslef.
The sheer integrity of the man was all around him. The ones who attended his talks vouch for it.
The Opening
Certain aspects of JK’s teaching are paradoxical. You can’t reach the ultimate understanding of life through efforts and choices. So one wonders if listening to and following his teaching is a result of choice and effort.
And if one is not to do anything and just waits for the truth to descend, then it’s even more difficult to assimilate as an understanding.
He tells us that you are confused because you are lost in the maze of words, and words are not the thing—the word water is not the water.
It’s difficult to patch his philosophy without a real understanding of the source of his wisdom. He never quoted any text, religious or non-religious, to drive home his point.
JK never wrote a book. His talks and discussions were transcribed into books with minimal editing.
A few weeks ago, I was listening to Eckart Tolle talk about Jiddu Krishnamurti and how he inspired him. He mentioned a book that JK wrote.
The Krishnamurti Notebook
In 1961–62, JK shared his personal experience, which he never talked about in public. In 1976, with his permission, the manuscript was published.
He refused to talk about his extra-sensory experiences. He said that if I talk more about it, you will try to put it into a formula for others to follow. You will make the taste of this experience your destination and remain caught in it.
Every day, benediction and a wordless calm would descend on him. He writes of waking up to a pain in his spine and head, and that pain remained with him for most of his life. He calls this pain the process.
There was, this morning, that peculiar sacredness filling the room. It had great penetrating power, entering into every corner of one’s being, filling, cleansing, and making everything of itself. The others felt it too. It is the thing every human being craves, and because they craved it, it eluded them.
The monk, the priest, and the sannyasi torture their bodies and their characters in their longing for this, but it evades them, for it cannot be bought; neither sacrifice, virtue nor prayer can bring this love. This life, this lovecannot be if death is the means. All seeking, all asking must wholly erase. — Excerpt from the book, P-21
In one place, he writes that he could remember this with some difficulty. The mechanical recording of the brain goes on, but the experience is not of the mind.
There is no seeking of continuity in bliss. In every seeking lies the desire—the longing for continuity. One form of desire is not better than the other.
A desire for heaven is not different from that of money and fame.
Early this morning, there was a benediction that seemed to cover the earth and fill the room. With it comes all-consuming quietness, a stillness that seems to have within it all movement.
His point of view is very unique. We are trained to find solutions at action points, and he refuses to provide that. His work leads us to the source of intelligence, which is the beginning of all creation.
In the pursuit of ambition and societal pressures, we have lost it. The wellspring of his words comes from his personal encounters with that energy field. In that field, there is the answer to all questions; rather, there are no questions.
Mere knowledge, however deep and wide, does not necessarily indicate intelligence. Capacity is not intelligence. Intelligence is a sensitive awareness of the quality of life—life with its problems and contradictions, miseries and joys. To be aware of all this without choice, without being caught by any one of its issues, and to flow with the whole of life is intelligence.
In one of his Q&A sessions, someone asked,
What will you do if a dictator attacks you? Should you fight him or submit to his authority? The question was asked in relation to his talk on violence, war, and conformity.
If JK says, fight the dictator—it is a form of violence. If he says to submit to his authority, it is conformity; both are antithetical to his teachings.
Instead of choosing binary, he answered, If you have a mind that is unencumbered by the burden of past experiences, you will know then what is the right action.
He was asked, When you don’t learn, how would you grow?
Therein, he differentiates between skill learning and psychological learning. Remembering the skill or cataloging the experience is always important and must be done.
Let’s say I want to learn to drive. So, the art of changing gears, memorizing the right turns, learning signage, and all that is necessary, but remembering your lack of progress or projecting possible failures into the future is psychological memory.
Observing the content of one’s mind is the emptying of it. When one is fully aware of his fears, he gets free from them. Nothing needs to be done.
For JK, it was natural. He called himself a biological freak.
Going through this book is an up-close and personal realization of the very source of his work. And that when you live in consonance with that energy field, you do all the work without ever feeling the load of it.
That is being in a state of love.
Written by Abhishek
·Writer for Change Your Mind Change Your Life
It took me some time to believe I could write stories. I’m a blank slate every morning. https://medium.com/@abhishek1811/m
