Table Of ContentQuestioning Krishnamurti
Copyright © 1996 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd.
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Questioning Krishnamurti
J. Krishnamurti in dialogue
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Contents
Foreword
What Is of Most Concern to You?
Jonas Salk
Are You Not Saying What the Buddha Said?
Walpola Rahula and others
How Do We See That Which Is Most Real?
Eugene Schallert, S.J.
What Future Does Man Have?
David Bohm, FRS
Who Is the Experiencer?
Iris Murdoch
Is the Brain Different from a Computer?
David Bohm and Asit Chandmal
Is There an Eastern and a Western Mind?
Pupul Jayakar
Is It Possible to End Fear?
Ronald Eyre
What Is Your Secret?
Bernard Levin
Can One Have Lucidity in this Confused World?
Huston Smith
Why Is Your Teaching So Difficult to Live?
Renée Weber
What Is Meditation?
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
How Can One Overcome the Despair of Bereavement?
Anonymous
Who Are You?
Anonymous
Sources
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I think before we begin it should be made clear what we mean by discussion. To
me it is a process of discovery through exposing oneself to the fact. That is, in
discussion I discover myself, the habit of my thought, the way I proceed to think,
my reactions, the way I reason, not only intellectually but inwardly ... I feel that
if we could be serious for an hour or so and really fathom, delve into, ourselves
as much as we can, we should be able to release, not through any action of will, a
certain sense of energy that is awake all the time, which is beyond thought.
New Delhi, 8 January 1961
We are human beings, not labels.
Colombo, 13 January 1957
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Foreword
Both the life and teaching of Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) have aroused
considerable controversy, ranging from adulation as a ‘World Teacher’, a
twentieth-century Maitreya or Messiah, to the view that he was a fallible, if
extraordinary, human being. Many who knew him felt overwhelmed, deeply
awed even, by a sense of sacredness and unconditional love flowing from him.
Others felt something of this, and a few also felt badly wronged or slighted, and
have responded with a pained ambivalence. Even for those close to him for years,
his personality has remained in some ways an enigma. But whatever the perhaps
inevitable mystery of the person, the books, videos and tapes are there to show
how for more than half a century Krishnamurti argued passionately that the
problems facing us demand a radical transformation of human consciousness.
Was he asking the impossible? Did Krishnamurti undergo such a
transformation himself? And if he did, what relevance does this have for the rest
of us?
This book consists of fourteen conversations, in the last two decades of his
life, in which these questions were debated. Those taking part include scientists,
a Buddhist scholar, philosophers, artists and a Jesuit priest. None of them could
be called ‘devotees’, but were people who came to question, clarify and
challenge. This was something that Krishnamurti had in his lifetime always
urged his listeners and readers to do—not perhaps always successfully.
A question that throbs like a pulse in this book is: can human beings live
without conflict? Throughout these dialogues, Krishnamurti maintains that this
can happen only when outer conflict, be it with another person or collectively in
war, is seen to arise from inner conflict within the individual. The root of such
conflict is a mistaken but powerful focus on ‘what should be’, rather than on
‘what is’, whether in ourselves or others. Or, to put it another way, ideals and
objectives are insidiously found more attractive than looking at and
understanding facts. Usually, if the fact—that which happens—is displeasing,
our tendency is to resist, escape from, or suppress it. But this ‘running away from
the fact’, as Krishnamurti calls it, is dangerous. By reacting in this way, he
argues, we split off a fictitious but strong sense of self from what we experience,
the ‘observer’ from the ‘observed’. This separative self—which is a figment of
thought based on inevitably limited experience, a kind of mental marionette—is
for him the heart of violence, whether between two people or two nations. This is
not, he contends, a problem that just a few unbalanced people have: the whole of
humanity is caught in it.
The many implications of this key and difficult notion of ‘the observer is the
observed’, sketched only very briefly here, are discussed in depth with David
Bohm, a Fellow of the Royal Society and, like a few outstanding theoretical
physicists, also a philosopher.
What then can be done? Instead of a plan of action, Krishnamurti invites the
listener to ‘remain with what is’ in his or her life non-judgmentally, to test
whether what is being experienced will then disclose and clarify its significance.
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In so doing, he argues, we explore not just our own consciousness but human
consciousness as a whole. This is not, therefore, ‘neurotic, lopsided, selfish’
introspection. We are instead ‘observing without an observer’, in which there is
no movement of thought, no labelling, no justification, no condemnation, no
desire to change, but a sense of affection and care. Nor is this some kind of
mystical, or otherworldly, notion. At the end of the conversation with Asit
Chandmal and David Bohm, Krishnamurti cites his own response at the time of
his brother Nitya’s death: ‘there was absolutely no moving from that ... from that
sorrow, that shock, that feeling ... K didn’t go after comfort ... there is no other
fact except that.’ Then another dimension of mind can come into play. The
difficulties we may have in ‘staying with’ experience in this way are discussed
with the American professor of philosophy, Renée Weber.
This is a clear instance of how Krishnamurti’s ‘teaching’ goes to the heart of
the kind of experience that we all share. He puts to us propositions about such
experience, which he invites us not to accept but to test. In his dialogue with
Bernard Levin, he castigates dogma and belief as blocks to understanding. It is
by serious testing and experimenting—to see whether what is said is false or
not—that we can find out the truth for ourselves. Any other way of evaluating
reality, such as reliance on authority or scripture, he sees as turning us into
‘second-hand people’.
As the reply to the final question in this book makes clear, Krishnamurti
disclaimed any status as some kind of ‘role model’ for the rest of us. As he said
in a talk in 1983, ‘the speaker is speaking for himself, not for anybody else. He
may be deceiving himself, he may be trying to pretend to be something or other.
He may be, you don’t know. So have a great deal of scepticism: doubt, question
...’ Not only did he disclaim such a role, he argued strongly that to seek any kind
of exemplar, whether in himself or in anyone else, is psychologically crippling.
By creating a childlike dependency, conformity, and a temporary, but ultimately
false, sense of security in the authority of another, it ‘atrophies the brain’. It is
also religiously, and often politically, divisive, since the proliferation of such
exemplars inevitably creates barriers for the ‘faithful’ between ‘them’ and ‘us’.
And like inner conflict, this dull subservience wastes the energy needed to
explore and respond anew to an ever-changing reality—to the essence of life
itself.
In most of these talks, these issues, including the discussion of death with the
playwright and broadcaster Ronald Eyre, are treated with a passion and humour
that the editor has tried but failed to adequately reproduce.
Is what Krishnamurti says a product of Oriental religious philosophy and
alien to Western ways of thought? The reader may find an answer to this in the
conversations with the Buddhist scholar, Walpola Rahula, and the Jesuit priest,
Eugene Schallert. These may surprise people who have pigeon-holed
Krishnamurti as an ‘Eastern mystic’. In fact there are many significant echoes of
Krishnamurti’s concerns in Western thought. As Iris Murdoch points out, being
and becoming have been constantly debated in Western philosophy, and she
enlists Plato to elucidate some of Krishnamurti’s arguments. Thomas Hobbes’s
remark that ‘whosoever looks into himself shall know the thoughts and passions
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of all other men’ can remind one of Krishnamurti’s ‘I am the world’. It would not
be difficult to cite other examples.
There have also been Western philosophers who have approached the
problem of the self in ways akin to Krishnamurti’s—though without, it also
seems fair to say, the far-ranging and powerful implications he draws for our
everyday experience. When Wittgenstein says that ‘private sensations and the
self are all part of the same picture and they stand and fall together’, some
readers may feel there is no difference between that and ‘the observer is the
observed’. The ‘elusiveness of the ‘I’’ has taxed the minds of philosophers like
Hume and Ryle and many others. Yet despite all this activity there is still no
philosophical or psychological consensus on personal identity and consciousness.
And neuroscientists, for their part, have searched for, and so far failed to find, a
‘homunculus’ or ‘control centre’ in the brain.
Whether Krishnamurti cuts through the jumble of conflicting views on the
self by pinning down what thought can and cannot do is something the reader can
explore. But in any event he makes a radical and liberating appeal to us to ‘clear
the decks’ and to set aside everything that has been affirmed untestably by
religious ‘authorities’, philosophers, psychologists, gurus, and indeed anyone,
including himself, in these matters. The world cries out for a new culture in
which we cease to be ‘second-hand people’ and resolve instead to ‘find out’ for
ourselves. What such a culture would imply is explored with Pupul Jayakar, a
friend and cultural adviser to Indira Gandhi.
For the first-time reader, the range and vocabulary of these conversations may
seem daunting. Is this philosophy, psychology, or religion? Or all three?
Krishnamurti himself did not like giving a name to what he talked about. His
agenda was very open-ended, always totally free to cover any aspect of the
human condition. For Krishnamurti, a religious view of life is inseparable from
exploring whether we mistakenly apply the biological model of evolution to the
psychological sphere; and whether the computer is an accurate simulation of the
human brain. For him, these are not incidental but crucial issues that determine
the quality of our lives, not just topics of intellectual interest.
Also, he decided early in his life not to use a specialized vocabulary. This
means that he uses simple words to describe often complex states of mind. There
are of course many advantages in this but it can also sometimes call for a kind of
decoding by the reader. At times he can be said to redefine words: ‘passion’, for
example, is described as ‘sustained energy in which there is no movement of
thought’; and depending on the context the word ‘knowledge’ is often used in a
psychological sense to cover our likes and dislikes, beliefs, prejudices,
conclusions about ourselves and others. ‘Conflict’ nearly always refers to inner
conflict.
At the same time his vocabulary is fluid, constantly being revised. Although
always concerned to define his terms he can caution us about definitions, because
they can so easily condition and blinker the way we think. Repeatedly he warns
that ‘the word is not the thing, the description is not the described’. Words,
rightly used, are only hints, clues to truths that must be lived.
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While Krishnamurti always stresses that one must ‘start very near’—with
oneself—in order to ‘go very far’, it will be apparent from the opening
conversation, with Jonas Salk, that he saw the situation of each of us as
inseparable from what one might call a ‘planetary view’ of the human condition.
We have grown increasingly aware of our planetary interdependence in trade and
monetary matters and have set up bodies such as the World Trade Organization
and the International Monetary Fund. We have seen the need for World
Conferences on the environment and on population. We have understood that to
forecast the weather of one country as accurately as possible a satellite system
has to scan the world’s weather as a whole. Krishnamurti puts before us
something more fundamental, a testable, worldwide account of the way that
human minds work, wherever they are, of our psychological common ground.
Right action, in whatever sphere, he saw as flowing only from an understanding
of that, starting with one’s own mind. This also includes, in his view, seeing that
religious beliefs and national identities are being clung to neurotically, and that
the psychological apartheid this creates seriously threatens human survival.
Krishnamurti has, it seems, stood back and looked at the whole human
picture, both personal and planetary. The question then arises: can any kind of
organization, however well-intended, succeed without our also doing this? Are
we, all the time, putting the cart before the horse? And are we capable of doing
anything else? Will something happen if we put these questions to ourselves
seriously?
Some forty books have been published of Krishnamurti’s talks and dialogues,
nearly all of them translated into the world’s major languages. The CD-ROM of
his teaching, covering the years 1933 to 1986—the earlier years he described as
‘patchy’—contains the equivalent of some 200 average-sized books. Other
material, transcripts, tapes, letters, would amount to the equivalent of perhaps a
further hundred. What effect has this massive outpouring had? Has anyone been
radically transformed?
Krishnamurti’s own answer to the first question, in New York in the eighties,
was: ‘very little’. On the second one he said, shortly before his death, that
nobody had got in touch with that consciousness of which he had spoken. He
added, ‘perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings’.
For some of us this may be the point where, perhaps with a sigh of relief, one
puts the book back on the bottom shelf. So it was all just too difficult after all.
Yet the questions Krishnamurti puts do not go away so easily. Remarks such as
‘intelligence is understanding what love is’, or ‘be unprepared for the unknown’,
linger in the mind. And looking around for a heartening sign (what would that be
exactly?) that someone else has done it, has changed fundamentally, seems like
furtive sidling out of a role of one’s own—a touch of the artful dodger.
Only when one has done everything one can to test and apply what he says is
one in a position to judge that Krishnamurti is demanding the impossible. That is
the quandary he confronts us with.
One could explain what Krishnamurti says as a massive and endless inquiry
into the state of the human being. But the value of all explanations, including this
one, is bound to fade after a while. As Krishnamurti put it, ‘let us be very clear
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where explanations end and where real perception or experiencing begins. You
can go only so far with explanations, and the rest of the journey you must take by
yourself.’
This book offers such a journey.
David Skitt
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