U. G. Krishnamurti - Philosophy

Philosophy

I have no teaching. There is nothing to preserve. Teaching implies something that can be used to bring about change. Sorry, there is no teaching here, just disjointed, disconnected sentences. What is there is only your interpretation, nothing else. For this reason there is not now nor will there ever be any kind of copyright for whatever I am saying. I have no claims. I am forced by the nature of your listening to always negate the first statement with another statement. Then the second statement is negated by a third and so on. My aim is not some comfy dialectical thesis but the total negation of everything that can be expressed.

Krishnamurti emphasized the impossibility and non-necessity of any human change, radical or mundane. These assertions, he stated, cannot be considered as a "teaching", that is, something intended to be used to bring about a change. He insisted that the body and its actions are already perfect, and he considered attempts to change or mold the body as violations of the peace and the harmony that is already there. The psyche or self or mind, an entity which he denied as having any being, is composed of nothing but the "demand" to bring about change in the world, in itself, or in both. Furthermore, human self-consciousness is not a thing, but a movement, one characterized by "perpetual malcontent" and a "fascist insistence" on its own importance and survival.

Krishnamurti denied the existence of an individual mind. However, he accepted the concept of a world mind, which according to him contained the accumulation of the totality of man's knowledge and experience. He also used "thought sphere" (atmosphere of thoughts) synonymously with the term "world mind". He stated that human beings inhabit this thought realm or thought sphere and that the human brain acts like an antenna, picking and choosing thoughts according to its needs. Krishnamurti held all human experience to be the result of this process of thought. The self-consciousness or "I" in human beings is born out the need to give oneself continuity through the constant utilization of thought. When this continuity is broken, even for a split second, its hold on the body is broken and the body falls into its natural rhythm. Thought also falls into its natural place – then it can no longer interfere or influence the working of the human body. In the absence of any continuity, the arising thoughts combust.

In its natural state, the senses of the body take on independent existences (uncoordinated by any "inner self") and the ductless glands (that correspond to the locations of the Hindu chakras) become reactivated. Krishnamurti described how it is the pineal gland, or the Ajna Chakra, that takes over the functioning of the body in the natural state, as opposed to thought.

Krishnamurti also maintained that the reason people came to him (and to gurus), was in order to find solutions for their everyday real problems, and/or for solutions to a fabricated problem, namely, the search for spirituality and enlightenment. He insisted that this search is caused by the cultural environment, which demands conformity of individuals as it simultaneously places within them the desire to be special – the achievement of enlightenment thus viewed as a crowning expression of an individual's "specialness" and uniqueness. Consequently, the desire for enlightenment is exploited by gurus, spiritual teachers, and other "sellers of shoddy goods", who pretend to offer various ways to reach that goal. According to Krishnamurti, all these facilitators never deliver, and cannot ever deliver, since the goal itself (i.e. enlightenment), is unreachable.

Man is just a memory. You understand things around you by the help of the knowledge that was put in you. You perhaps need the artist to explain his modern art, but you don't need anybody's help to understand a flower. You can deal with anything, you can do anything if you do not waste your energy trying to achieve imaginary goals.

The articulation of his insights, at least in public, did not begin until Krishnamurti was well into middle age. According to Krishnamurti, despite his lifelong efforts to bring about spiritual enlightenment, he underwent a life-altering series of bodily experiences, which he collectively referred to as the "calamity".

According to Krishnamurti, "The so called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to discover. That will be a very shocking thing because it's going to blast every nerve, every cell, even the cells in the marrow of your bones."

I am not anti-rational, just unrational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine.