The Link #26 - The Transformative Psychology of J. Krishnamurti

Stephen Smith taught for many years at Brockwood Park School, where he was also a Director of Academics; he was later an editor at the KFA. The following is the second half of a talk he gave in January 2006 at the International Conference on Krishnamurti and Consciousness, in Hyderabad, India. This is the first part of his talk.

One difficulty we have in approaching the teachings of Krishnamurti is that he defies, or redefines, the terms. As I argued in my paper The Priesthood of Humankind, he has altered the basis on which the religious life can be lived. This, as much as anything else, is what marks him out, even among enlightened teachers: he defines the terrain in a new way, referring to none of the masters of the past.

This makes it difficult for us in two ways. First, we already have definitions; for instance, in the case of psychology, we have the work of Freud, Jung, Adler, etc. who, while differing greatly in emphasis, work from a similar common ground. No wonder, then, that when speaking of psychological observation, Krishnamurti will say, "Not according to Freud or Jung . . ." He wants to shift our point of attention from the accepted definition they have provided to "something else" — what he is saying. This is the second of our difficulties. Though we may have listened to him many times, who would be so bold as to say he had understood him? Certainly, Krishnamurti thought no one had. (Mary Lutyens: The Open Door)

There is a finesse here that should not be overlooked, for the kind of redefinition in question is not just a matter of changing the terms so as to bring the language into line with the message. In other words, I believe what K is trying to do is not to add to our vocabulary of descriptions but, by a kind of alchemy, to harness and enhance the energy of the mind so that it can and will, in the present moment, come directly into contact with its own state. This, in itself, has several implications and we should, from the outset, be clear what they are.

Firstly, we are all familiar with the story-telling mode of mind. The whole of literature is based on it; it is at once its glory and its limitation. Each of us, we are told, is a living story. Naturally, then, it is in terms of story that Freud and others sought solutions to the problems that troubled people brought to them. Free association allowed patients to regress to the original traumatic experience, say, in childhood, to make it conscious and so be free of it. It was the discovery of the mind by the mind itself and, after this manner, psychoanalysis was born. Obviously, however, it is the mind in time critiquing and releasing part of its own content: it is the action of the part on another part. (Remember, as we go along, that we are looking not only at the story, the thought content, but also at the framework and context of that content, at the very nature of thought itself.)

From time immemorial we have been defined by our story—the story of mankind and our own individual stories—and that is the place where we look for meaning. It may also explain en passant our constant recourse to experience and history as precedents for action now. It is something like a collective belief system, a view of reality we repeat like some mantra in the hope it will teach us how to act now. In spite of all the evidence, we still do this. And, of course, in certain limited areas—psychotherapy is one of them—it works, up to a point. Freud made it work, so did Jung, and we are indebted to them for what they opened up. But they did not challenge the framework itself, that of the mind which is in and of time. This is where Krishnamurti comes in.

He is not in the business of adjusting to society, or even individuation à la Jung. What he is looking to invoke is an instantaneous perception which can free the mind not only of its content, but also of the basis on which it works. This necessarily brings up the question of the ego. Again, in classical psychoanalysis, the ego is the mechanism whereby we are able to shape and organise psychological content, bring order to “the house” and establish an identity. It exists in relation to, and often in conflict with, the drives and urges of the id. The best we can do is to harmonise them in such a way that neither is too dominant: the ego not too controlling, the id not too suppressed. On the sea of competing urges, the ego steers the boat.

It is the ego, of course, that sustains the story, be it the story of myself, the story of my family, of my nation, my religion: the common factor is the me. In this way identity is built. And, identity means being always the same, which implies that one finds security in it. This, again, involves a contradiction since, very obviously, all things change: death and destruction, birth and renewal are part-and-parcel of the scheme of things. To what, then, shall we cling in this sea of flux—to the ego-rudder, the man of the moment? If we do — and we do, repeatedly — then surely we are in for trouble. There is no ultimate solution here, no redemption, no release; only an ongoing series of adjustments, reforms, compromises, halfway houses. It is precisely this state of human affairs, shaped and conditioned by the mind in time, that Krishnamurti brings us to address. And, obviously, it involves much more than my personal story or personal salvation. As we said at the beginning, the terms have changed; the inquiry begins on a different ground. And, it is precisely in terms of the shifting of that ground that we can speak of Krishnamurti’s transformative psychology.

"The first step is the last step," he says. In other words, by this slight twist of the prism, this opening up of a different window, we are already looking out on a different landscape—and that is the beginning of transformation. The looking, listening and learning that go on are not then about the “matter of life,” they are not descriptive; on the contrary, they are the tools of entry into the uncharted waters of the psyche. What happens then is unrepeatable, without precedent and without end, since what has been touched on, what has been tapped, is not the reservoir of knowledge—including all memory and experience, personal and collective—but the still place, the seed of awareness, that waiting-in-the-depth dimension of our being which somehow "darkly" we sense is there. Not that there is evidence for it: the senses and the mind, which are part of experience, cannot bring us to that point. It’s more like an absence than a presence though naturally, at the same time, it is deeply present too—present in the sense that, with brain activity suspended, one becomes attentive to the present moment, now; and this, most of all, is what we miss in the frantic scramble of our daily lives. Along with this attentive focus—which is not forced, formalised or strained-after—there comes the sense of total presence, being here and available for that which is. In this force field, conditioning dissolves.

It is not a matter of the will, for will is still part of conditioning; it is still the psyche talking to itself in the illusory hope it can bring about a change. But, change of a fundamental nature is not possible in terms of the known. This is why Krishnamurti, from the outset, changes the terms and lays out a new ground. For, the new and the old cannot coexist. What’s more, it is only with the coming into being of a unitary perspective, where the observer is the observed, that the true vision is established. Until then, we are in a hall of mirrors, receiving and projecting distorted images, with all the conflict and pain that it involves. Until then, we have hardly begun.

Hence, the importance of negative thinking. What does Krishnamurti mean by it? Is it like Keats’ negative capability?—the ability to suspend the common course of thinking and to await in a state of passive alertness the coming of the Muse, the inspired word. Certainly, that suspension seems necessary; otherwise, one is rapidly overwhelmed by the predictable currents of the thought process. We need to pay attention to thinking itself — to the framework, the structure, not just the content — for without such attention the fragmented mind reasserts itself in terms of content. It doesn’t much matter what the content is — Plato’s cave or a cricket match — what is important is the ongoing drive, the seeming need, to think all the time. We have to question why this is so.

Perhaps it would be useful at this point to draw a distinction between thinking and thought, the present and the past participle. When we do this it becomes obvious that most of what we do is not thinking at all, in the active, present-tense meaning of that word; rather, it is the repetition, the regurgitation and reworking of thought. Rare, indeed, are those fine, clear moments when the brain is intensely alive yet quiet, like the sky at daybreak before the sun appears. Few, in the average human life, are the times when all problems sink to the bottom and we know ourselves as living water. And yet, it is precisely this that is required—the state of the planet alone demands it — not more of the same, but a new vision. As I see it, this is thinking: the mind—cleared of its baggage of impressions, hurts, wounds, the future and the past—able to await, fully present to itself, the emergence of a new day taking shape and form. It is an interface between the timeless and time, and that is why it is so crucially important. If we do this—if we can do this — we are allowing the unconditioned into our lives.

What, then, is this via negativa, this netti-netti approach to truth? What if not the constant attention to what is not, the space between? In his conversation with David Bohm (The Ending of Time) Krishnamurti speaks of “space” and “silence” as being the key factors in inward discovery. And Bohm uses the blank page as a metaphor for that intelligence which allows the meaning of the word to emerge. What is involved is a reorientation of the psyche away from the so-called positive to that which forms the backdrop to it and which emerges in all its strength when the mind is quiet. In other words, this negative is not the opposite of the positive, nor is it used to denote "negative emotions" such as anger, jealousy, etc. No, it has a quite different flavour; it is part of Krishnamurti’s transformative psychology, the central intent and thrust of which is to take us beyond the endless corridor of the opposites. Again, the redefinition of the term is an invitation to us to leave the past behind, to realign our mind to a new possibility. The "message" is not in flat prose but contains, embedded within itself, the transformative figure of a new reality. The point is well worth dwelling on.

There is, in a series of Krishnamurti talks, a conscious build-up from the beginning to the end. He may begin, say, with a consideration of the world, its broken, divided nature, its conflict and violence. This has led certain critics to take him to task for “emphasising the negative,” and certainly his approach is very different from that of most New Age teacher-gurus who want us to feel better about the world and its ways while leaving the ego firmly in place. But, in actuality, this approach is not negative in the pejorative sense: it merely spreads before our eyes the tapestry of what is going on—in the world, that is, externally—as a prelude to going into the mind. And, it is naturally necessary from the outset to see things exactly as they are, rather than through the distortions of delusion. This, too, is part of transformation.

There is, then, a kind of bonding between negative thinking and the discovery of the new. The positive is what we have: structures of religious belief, philosophical systems, scientific theories. They have all contributed something to our stock; at the same time, they are wholly inadequate to meet the challenges we are facing: a completely different response is required. In one of his talks, Krishnamurti referred to this positive as the scaffolding; it is what we have built, so far, externally. Inwardly, we have scarcely begun. Because we live in a world of description, of symbols, ideas, images, we are so addicted to this level of reality that we think and feel that, by better manipulation, we can eventually come upon the solution to our problems. But, the solution to our problems does not lie at that level—not only that, it never will. It lies in and through the investigation of ourselves and that is why, in all honesty, we can speak of Krishnamurti’s psychology.

But, this is not Freudian or Jungian psychology: it has its own terms and norms. From a review of the outer circumstances, the speaker goes on to refer things back to the originator of those circumstances, the human individual. There is no escape from this equation. Collectively and, even more so, individually we are directly responsible for the plight we are in. There are factors at work—image-making, for instance—which all of us indulge in to our own detriment. And, the answer does not lie in better image-making or in exchanging one image for another, but rather in the insight not just into images, but into the image-making process itself. This awareness of the framework as well as the content releases the mind from its automatic activity and allows it to move in a new and “quicker” way.

But, one needs diligence to come to this point; as we said, there is a build-up. Not only that, there are certain key statements, which in Krishnamurti’s Meditation: A Quantum View of Mind I have referred to as “threshold statements.” Most of us, I’m sure, are familiar with them: “The observer is the observed” is one. What is the anatomy of this statement? Why does it hold such central importance, and why does Krishnamurti come back to it so often? I would like to suggest that it is part-and-parcel of the transformative psychology we have been speaking of. The build-up of the survey of the outward display and the inner landscape of the mind brings us to a point of unforced attention where what we are seeing is no longer descriptive, it has gone over imperceptibly into something else. It’s rather like climbing a mountain, thinking about the view from the top, then suddenly being there, actually looking out. The difference between these two states is total. Now we see what, all along, was the point and purpose of the step-by-step climb and why each step had its own right place. Equally, we are now at the top!

This analogy may go some way to illustrating what takes place during the “journey” of a series of talks. There is nothing casual or arbitrary about it. We are brought through the ascent—which is a process of fine tuning—to a point where we can truly look out, as if for the first time, on a vast field. Preoccupied as we normally are, “living in the valley,” we do not see. It is only when, with our mountain guide, we take up the challenge and scale the heights that a wholly different perspective comes alive. It has to do with non-separation, the kind of feeling one gets in mountains when their stately beauty stills the mind. There is no observer, simply observation. Similarly, when we have “climbed,” become aware of our own inner state, we come naturally and easily to a point where the human story is just that—a story—it is not the depth and wealth of things; in fact, it is more like variations on a theme than the theme itself which now stands out. To use a further analogy, it is like the disparate frequencies of light being focused in a laser beam; instead of scattered thought, we now have intensity. And, it is this intensity—both needful and useful—that can take us through to the wider field which is observation without the observer.

Another way in which Krishnamurti expresses the fact of non-separation is via the statement “You are the world.” This is another key milestone on the journey. We live and behave as if we were not the world, which is why there is so much dysfunction and havoc; we take a stance on our own ego-nature, bolstering and defending it against all comers. Or, to use Krishnamurti’s analogy, we take a bucket of water from the vast river of life and spend our time fighting to protect and strengthen it. This is not merely stupid, it is tragic.

Again, it is our vision that is flawed. And yet, it is impossible to see clearly unless the lens is clean and our eye single. For the average person in the Information Age, there is too much to be seen and nothing is seen clearly. This is why confusion continues and intensifies; it’s also why there has to be a change. Proliferation of the same old things—wars, famine, disease and exploitation—cannot resolve the fundamental crisis. And, since the crisis is in our consciousness, it is in our consciousness that the change must occur. Logical as this sounds, it is far from easy. Many blocks, of ancient origin, stand in the way of clear perception. And, understandably perhaps, it is when we feel most threatened that we most readily revert to the established path—witness the return to fundamentalism in religion. We go for what we know in times of crisis, and this is one reason why crises persist.

“You are the world,” while tantamount to, is not the same as “the observer is the observed,” although its scope is similarly vast. It amounts to saying, so far as I understand it, that whatever appears in the world “out there” has its origins in the world “in here.” If war, for instance, as Krishnamurti says, is “the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday life” (The First and Last Freedom) then that war exists in me—it exists in my relationships and in my relationship with myself—in conflict, contradiction and confusion. This is not a theory or a means to stir the mind, it is a blistering reality. And, if we feel it is a blistering reality, then naturally we will do something about it — do not in the sense of start another war, but begin to unfold and fathom in ourselves those depths of violence and deep antagonism which mankind has lived with for a million years. Believe me, it is not depressing, not a recipe for suicide; on the contrary, the enormity of the task—and it gets more enormous the more one proceeds—seems to engender an equivalent energy, a passion to get to the bottom of it. What, exactly, is the world? Who am I?

This is not to imagine a super-self and try to work one’s way into it; rather, it is to observe oneself in action, to penetrate to the core of conflict. This very process is not of time, since time is conflict, psychologically speaking. Nothing, in this process, is being put together; on the contrary, the mind is bearing witness to itself, allowing the content of consciousness to flower. It is something, as a species, we are not accustomed to; thus far, it has been the preserve of the few. But, as things grow more dire, it behoves more of us to take on the challenge for ourselves.