Continuing with the selected excerpts from Mrs Pupul Jayakar's remarkable K Biography ( taken out of the temporal context they seem to have a more profound impact on the listening mind)

In December 1964 I was in Madras, staying at Vasant Vihar. Krishnaji very often had supper with us. Achyut Patwardhan, Madhavachari, Nandini, and Balasundaram were present. A discussion began after supper. I asked, “What is the one action necessary for there to be a breakthrough in the mind? The exploration that had to be done, has been done. There is self-knowing awareness, the eyes are open, the ears listen, the mind is awake. Yet there is no totality of perception and compassion. One total action appears needed to break through.”

Krishnaji felt it was a good question and we should go into it, discuss it. The next night, we tried to discover what is that one action. Krishnaji said, “Perception—can perception and the movement of the heart be one?”
“Perception that is rich with essence—how does it arise?” I asked.
Krishnaji said, “It must be an act of tremendous simplicity.” He was quiet. The very discussion created an atmosphere of energy in the room. Like a flame, it seared through the corridors of consciousness. There was deep, limitless silence. My body could not bear the intensity in the room and sought the support of the wall. Krishnaji sat erect, his back straight, his head unmoving. We sat, and time ceased.

(...) For us (the members of KFI) in India, 1967 was a year of gloom. Krishnaji appeared agitated and critical. There was a sense of flux in his words; a feeling was evident that major changes were in the offing. Addressing the Foundation for New Education in Bombay on February 9, 1967, Krishnaji had spoken with passion of his apprehensions regarding the Foundation in India.

“I want to say certain things, and what I am going to say is in no spirit of criticism or condemnation. I really do not have, in my heart or mind, any sense of judgment. So, that must be clearly understood from the beginning.
“I have been talking now for over forty-five years. Rishi Valley and Rajghat came into being with one intention. These two places were to have been the center of the teachings and, if I may use the word without being misunderstood, holy places. I think it about time we took stock of what is actually happening; whether these two places are the centers of the teachings. And whether there is that sense of ‘otherness’ in these two places.

“I have used an expression which may have given rise to misunderstanding. I have said that the schools ‘must be saved’ as an oasis in this country; saved from the chaos that is going on all around. Because I really feel most profoundly and I get rather stirred up about it, so forgive me if I speak hesitatingly, I feel that the flowering, after all these years, is still not taking place.
“And, I may never come back, I may die. If I do come back, as I was telling Mama [Madhavachari], it will be for a short time, not for these five months at a time. Physically I cannot do it any more, because I am not sleeping very well and I am getting too tired.

“So, you will have to consider that I am gone. Anything can happen. I can die. The decision may be taken, not by anybody else but by me, alone, never to return, or to return for very short periods. I do not know what is going to happen in the future, and I really mean this.
“So, can these two places be saved? You understand? Not saved from Balasundaram (who was then Principal of the Rishi Valley School) , or someone else, or from corruption or things like that, but saved as an oasis?
“As I was telling Kittyji this morning, and also Pupul at lunchtime, we have to do something very very drastic. I do not know what you are going to do. My days are limited, probably ten years more or less, and I want to concentrate everything I have and not waste my energy. I am speaking sanely, unemotionally, not sentimentally.

“So, what are we going to do to ‘save’ these places? Please understand what we mean by that word ‘save.’ To save in the sense of making them [an] oasis in this mad world. And, if I do not come back, if I die, what is going to happen? After forty years, what have we produced? You all have given a great part of your life to this—and what has happened? If you say, ‘we are doing our best’ or ‘we are doing everything we can,’ then somehow that is not good enough any more. I am not saying what you are doing is right or wrong. I do not feel that way, but what are we going to do?”
(There was a long pause).

“The same thing has happened at Ojai. You may know that there is a disturbance between the K. W. Inc. as it is now, and myself—and there is trouble. We all started out together to build something deep, something lasting, something worthwhile there as well as here. But there it is not flowering either.
“So, what can we do here? What can we do to save these places so that they become an oasis for these teachings? How can we make it into something really worthwhile? I have talked to Mama (Madhavachari) many times about this, for several years, and I say to myself now, ‘What are we going to do?’ ”
Madhavachari was interrupting Krishnaji with explanations and excuses, but Krishnaji was not prepared to listen to him.
“I understand all that you are saying,” he continued. “We have discussed this together several times at Rajghat, at Rishi Valley. For seven years now, we have discussed this. I am asking what are we going to do now? Forget the past, forget that I said this and you said that, forget that ‘we are doing our best.’ The only question is, ‘What are we going to do?’
“Take it, Mama, I may die tomorrow, I don’t intend to, but if I die, what will happen? Will you carry on just as before? Put it to yourself, Mama.”
Madhavachari said, “I think when a great crisis like that comes...”
“It ( the great crisis) is here, Mama.” Krishnaji said.

(...)

One night at supper, at which Nandini, Asit Chandmal, and I were present, Krishnaji started talking about the Theosophical Society and Annie Besant. This was the first time in twenty-one years that he had spoken to us at length of the Theosophical Society.

Krishnaji was exploring the mystery that surrounded the discovery of the boy, Krishnamurti. He was probing delicately, tuning the ear to intimations and insights that might arise in discussion. His statements on the Theosophical Society were clear and precise. He made no comment as to whether they were true or illusion. Sensing the “otherness” in Krishnaji, we listened, asking few questions and letting him speak.

Krishnaji said that the Masters had told C. W. Leadbeater to find a boy who was a Brahmin, who came from a good family, and who had a “face as described.” It was the duty of the Theosophical Society to protect the body of the child, and to provide an atmosphere of complete security for two years. If the body was prepared and ready, Lord Maitreya would give the boy the 'mind'. When Leadbeater saw Krishnamurti on Adyar beach, he perceived that there was no selfishness in the boy’s aura.

Krishnaji asked himself how it was that the boy remained unaffected; he then advanced several theories to explain how the boy remained untouched. Was it that, through birth and rebirth, the child had evolved to perfection? Or had the Lord Maitreya protected the body till it was mature? Had the boy been born without a formal character or personality, allowing him to remain vague, untouched by his earlier years

He then spoke of the Theosophical Society hierachy—the highest was the “Lord of the World,” then the Mahachohan, then the Buddha. The Bodhisattva Maitreya was considered equal to the Buddha. Below them were the Masters; each with a different name—one a Tibetan Lama, another an Indian aristocrat, another a Polish count.
The boy, who was totally innocent and unaffected, still had to be protected so that evil could not touch him, could not enter him.
Mrs. Besant had insisted that two initiates accompany Krishnaji all the time. She said, “Since you are always alone within, you must never be physically alone.” There was a reservoir of the good in the boy that should not be contaminated. He said he needed protection even in 1969, for his character was still unformed. “The other night, while meditating, I could see that the boy still existed exactly as he was, nothing had happened to him in life. The boy is still as he was. The body still needs to be protected from evil.” He paused again, and said, “I still feel protected.”

He then spoke of the early years, when the boy Krishnamurti’s body had to be completely protected and given security for two years; but the mind was not to be touched, for “the Lord would give him the rest.” There were long silences between his sentences. K said the body had to go through a lot of pain because there were still imperfections in the brain.
Asit Chandmal asked, “How does the good allow evil in the form of a human being to come near?”
“I can’t push away anybody or anything,” K said. “I can’t say ‘go away’; it has to leave me. Isn’t it strange that it does?” He then asked, “What is the force which completely protects something so that it is innocent and unaffected? You must be extremely careful if you open the door; evil or good can enter. Evil finds it easy to enter, the good much more difficult. Evil is not the opposite of the good,” he repeated. “There is no relationship between the two.”

Krishnaji then went on to speak of the initiations he had gone through in the Theosophical Society. According to the secret doctrines of the Society there were three initiations. After two, things could still go wrong. But, after the third, the being could not be affected by anger, sex, money. They were all too trivial.
It was nearly midnight before Krishnaji went to bed.

In his public talks and discussions he raised a fundamental question: Is there such a thing as an individual, or is man merely a movement of the collective? Krishnaji said that to be an individual, there had to be a revolution in the collective (consciousness ?) as revealed in knowledge and tradition. And so man had to discover his own incorruptibility.

“It is necessary to ask questions to which there are no answers. So that the question throws man back on himself and the way the structure of thought operates. The hand that seeks to throw away or reject is the same hand that itself holds.”

Later, during a walk in Bombay, he said that “the act of seeing and listening activates the senses. Seeing, without the word as thought intervening, creates energy.”
He also spoke about the urgency “to know the self as it is, not as one wishes it to be, which is illusion, an ideal and fictitious. It is only that ‘which is’ that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. The understanding of what you are—ugly, beautiful, wicked, evil—understanding without distortion is the beginning of virtue. Virtue alone gives freedom.”

We talked over the ancient role of the Brahmin; his gift of teaching had to be a free gift. As a Brahmin, he would not accept dakshina, charity. He felt he had a right to be supported by the state. Poverty was his birthright; so was learning.

Indian myth delighted Krishnaji. He often made me repeat the legend of Narada, the semicelestial musical mendicant who traveled ceaselessly, carrying the gossip of the world of the gods from one god to another. Narada, anxious to learn the secret of Maya, came on Vishnu as he rested in a grove of trees. After the salutations were over, Narada asked the god of the blue waters the secret of his maya—the web of illusion that covered the world of man and his actions. Vishnu agreed to teach it, but told Narada that as he was thirsty, would he first fetch him some water. Narada wandered into the forest seeking a homestead. After some time he came to a house and knocked at the door. It was opened by a ravishingly beautiful young woman who smiled at him with her large lotus eyes as she turned to fetch the water. Narada was infatuated, and lingered for days in her company.

Time passed. Narada married his love and, as year followed year, children were born. Narada lived in bliss with his wife and children. A year came when it rained incessantly, the waters of the rivers overflowed their banks and a gigantic flood swept away Narada’s house and the surrounding trees. Holding his wife by one hand, clutching a child with the other and with yet another child perched on his shoulder, Narada waded through the waters to reach higher ground. But soon the waters reached his chest, and then his chin. One by one the children who clung to him were swept away, until only his wife remained. It was night and the darkness added to the terror that engulfed him; the waters continued to rise and his wife, unable to hold on to his arm, was separated from him and the waters claimed her. Then Narada, alone, lifted his arms and cried out to the gods. Suddenly, a voice was heard. “Ten minutes have passed. Where is my glass of water?”

This post was last updated by John Raica Sat, 08 Dec 2018.

( continuing the selected excerpts from Mrs Pupul Jayakars K biography)

In his talks to the children and teachers K questioned the place of knowledge in the transformation of man. The minds of the children were alive, quickened by direct contact with K’s presence, the benediction, an ocean in which he walked and talked. The clarity and depth of the insights revealed in the talks were startling. In the talks K emphasized the two instruments available to the human mind: knowledge, which enables one to gain mastery over the material environment; and intelligence, which is born of observation. To the child he said, “A new mind is only possible when the religious spirit and the scientific attitude form part of the same movement of consciousness.” To K they were not separate movements that had to be fused, but a new movement inherent in intelligence and in the creative mind.

A child asked him about death. “There are two kinds of death,” he said. “Bodily death and death of thought.” The body, the physical organism, has to end. “We are not afraid of that. We are afraid that thought as the ‘me,’ which has lived, acquired money, family, the ‘me’ that wants to become important, will end.” He asked the child, “Do you see the difference between the physical dying and the ‘me’ dying?”

*He introduced the children to self-knowing and meditation. At the end of one talk, he said, “First of all, sit completely quiet, comfortably, sit very quietly, relax. Now, look at the trees, at the shape of the hills, and look at the quality, the color, of the trees. Do not listen to me. Watch and see those trees, the yellowing trees, the tamarind, and then look at the bougainvilleas. Look not with your mind, but with your eyes. After having looked at the colors, the shapes, and the shadows of the trees, of the hills, the rocks, then from the outside move to the inside. Close your eyes, close your eyes completely. You have finished looking at things outside, and now with your eyes closed, look at what is happening inside. Watch what is happening inside you. Do not think, but just watch. Do not move your eyeballs, just keep them very very quiet. There is nothing to see now, you have seen all the things around you, now you are seeing what is happening inside your mind. And to see what is happening inside your mind, you have to be very quiet inside. And when you are quiet, do you know what happens to you? You become very sensitive, you become very alert to things outside and inside. Then you find that the outside (world) 'is' ( not divided from ?) the inside (world) . Then you find out that the observer 'is' the observed."

“Can frustration flower? How do you question so that frustration unfolds, so that frustration flowers? It is only when thought flowers that it can naturally die. Like the flower in a garden, thought must blossom, it must come to fruition and then it dies. In the same way, thought must be given freedom (inner space ?) to 'die'. And the right question is whether there can be freedom for frustration to flower and to die?”

A teacher asked what he meant by “flowering.” Krishnamurti answered, “Look at the garden, the flowers in front over there! They come to bloom and after a few days they wither away, because it is their nature. Now, frustration must be given freedom so that it blossoms.

“Your question was: ‘Is there a momentum which keeps moving, keeping itself clean, healthy?’ That momentum, that flame which burns, can only be when there is freedom for everything to flower—the ugly, the beautiful, the evil, the good, the stupid—so that there is not a thing suppressed, so that there is not a thing which has not been brought out and examined and burnt out. And I cannot do that if through the little things I do not discover frustration, misery, sorrow, conflict, stupidity, dullness. If I only discover frustration through reasoning I do not know what frustration means.”

The teachers were unable to understand, and questioned further. “You see, to you flowering is an idea. The little mind always deals with symptoms and never with the fact. It does not have the (inner ?) freedom to find out. It is doing the very thing which indicates the little mind, for it says, ‘It is a good idea, I will think about it,’ and so it is lost for it is then dealing with idea, not with fact. It does not say, ‘Let it flower, and see what happens.’ Then it would discover. But it says, ‘It is a good idea, I must investigate the idea.’ ”
He told the teachers that most people were prisoners of little things. Then he asked, “Can I see the symptom, go into the cause, and let the cause flower? But, I want it to flower in a certain direction, which means I have an opinion on how it should flower. Now, can I go after that? Can I see that I prevent the cause flowering because I am afraid I do not know what will happen if I allow frustration to flower? So, can I go into why I am afraid? I see, that so long as fear exists there can be no flowering. So I have to tackle fear, not through the idea of fear, but tackle it as a fact, which means, can I allow fear to blossom? All this requires a great deal of inward perception. Can I just allow ‘what is’ to blossom?”

This post was last updated by John Raica Mon, 10 Dec 2018.

Talking anbout lost & found pages from K's Book Of Life
here's a most memorable one recorded by Vanda Scaravelli in the early 60's

(...) The next day he (K) was ill with fever. In that state he ‘went off’ and Vanda recorded what was said by the being left in charge of the body. But it was no longer a child’s voice speaking; the voice sounded quite natural: "Don’t leave me. He has gone far away, very far away. It has been told to you to look after him. He should not have gone out. You should have told him. At table he is not all there. You must tell him with a look so that other people don’t see it, and he will understand. Nice face to look at. Those eyelashes are wasted for a man. Why don’t you take them? That face has been very carefully worked out. They have worked and worked for so long, so many centuries, to produce such a body. Do you know him? You cannot know him. How can you know the running water? You listen. Don’t ask questions. He must love you if he lets you come so near him. He is very careful not to allow his body to be touched by other people. You know how he treats you. He wants that nothing should happen to you. Don’t do anything extravagant. All that travelling was too much for him. And those people in the plane, smoking, and all that packing all the time, arriving and going, it has been too much for the body. He wanted to arrive in Rome for that lady [Vanda]. Do you know her? He wanted to come quickly for her. He gets affected if she is not well. All that travelling – no, I am not complaining. You see how pure he is. He allows nothing for himself. The body has been all this time on the edge of a precipice. It has been held, it has been watched like mad all these months and if it lets go, he will go very far. Death is near. I told him it was too much. When he is in those airports he is by himself. He is not quite there. All that poverty in India, and the people die. Terrible. This body too would have died had it not been found. And all that dirt everywhere. He is so clean. His body is kept so clean. He washes it with so much care. This morning he wanted to convey something to you. Don’t stop him. He must love you. Tell him. Take a pencil, tell him: “Death is always there, very close to you, to protect you. And when you take shelter you will die.”

The following 'lost & found' excerpts are describing the beginnings of K's ( kundalini ?) 'process' in 1923 ( from Mary Lutyens official K Biography)

( ...) Neither Leadbeater nor Mrs Besant was able to account for K’s strange condition. The former (CWL) was particularly mystified as is shown in this letter to Mrs Besant of May 12, 1923: It is evident that in all higher matters the methods of progress differ for each individual. I do not understand why such terrible physical suffering should come to our Krishna. Surely the Brahmin body is exceptionally pure, and should need less in the way of preparation than the average European vehicle. In my own case I have no recollection of anything in the least commensurate with this when I was passing through the same stage, though there was certainly a great deal of excessive discomfort in the development of the Kundalini. It may be, as you suggest, that this is part of the preparation of that body for its Great Occupant, yet nothing has been said as to any hastening of the Coming. But it might well be that years must elapse after the completion of this preparation, in order that the body might fully recover from it before having to undergo the strain of the actual occupancy. The case is so unique that I suppose the truth is that we can only wait and watch.

Lady Emily (Lutyens) was at Plymouth to meet K and Nitya on June 11. They went to stay at West Side House, Wimbledon, with Miss Dodge and Lady De La Warr, and Lady Emily was invited to stay there too for the first night. She vividly remembered having breakfast with the brothers alone the next morning and beginning to talk to K about his experience, whereupon he immediately went off into a dead faint. Nitya told her that K could not talk about it; if anyone mentioned it he just put his head down and became unconscious.

Now that I have seen more of Krishna & Nitya I can say more of the impression they make upon us all. Krishna seems outwardly little changed though perhaps more beautiful, but one is conscious at every moment of a controlled but immense concentrated power flowing from him. In his talk last Sunday he had no notes & spoke for 45 mins, fluently, easily & yet with such tremendous earnestness & force it was like listening to the throbbing of a great machine.

In the middle of August K’s ‘process’ started again even more severely. On August 15 (1923 ) Lady Emily began to write a diary letter to Mrs Besant describing these strange evening occurrences:

(...) At dinner time he was obviously hardly conscious & almost directly afterwards he went right ‘off’ and the body began to sob & groan. We all sat very quietly outside except the faithful Nitya— it lasted till 9 o’c. when he came round & went off to bed. But at 12 o’c. he began again, & again Helen & Nitya sat by him till 1 o’c. & once again in the early morning. He said that Helen was very nervous & naturally so as at first it is awful to witness such suffering & to realize his consciousness is not there. It is very curious that he seems to need a woman’s presence & also that the vitality of Americans seems to supply something that he needs.

Yesterday he was naturally very tired & we spent the morning quietly in the woods reading & he seemed very happy ... and again Krishna went to his own room with Nitya & Helen & was ‘off’ again until 9 o’c. This time he seemed in much less pain & did not groan much, but when he woke up at 9 o’c. he was very dazed & confused. ... Thursday [August 16] Yesterday was rather a curious day as at lunch time Krishna was very boisterous & full of jokes. It is very curious to watch the phases through which Krishna passes. Sometimes he is just a frolicsome boy with apparently not a serious thought in the world. Then swiftly he changes & becomes the Teacher—stern & uncompromising, urging his pupils onward towards swift progress. Again he is just tortured with the pain in his spine—not speaking & just wanting quiet—or most strange of all the figure that comes to dinner—beautiful, with unseeing eyes mechanically eating his food & shrinking at every sound. Most beautiful of all when he sits in meditation chanting mantrams—his soul going out in worship. These phases succeed each other in such swift succession that it is something of a strain to be always prepared for them.

Last night ... Krishna was away for just two hours—not in much pain apparently but just talking vaguely. He said that his body must not eat so much at night & must take more exercise.
Sat [August 18]. Last night just as he went off Krishna said that they must wake him up at 8.30. Then almost immediately some of the Great Ones came. Nitya apparently saw & heard Them on the balcony in front of Krishna’s room. When They left Nitya felt something of himself go after Them and then he fainted. Krishna was conscious of this & called to him & he came round at once. Apparently, Krishna’s body faints off & Helen & Nitya have to revive it. Sometimes he will come back if they just call him, sometimes they have to pour water on him but he asked them not to do this if they could help it as it hurt him so much. Before he came back his elemental said: ‘Krishna is standing there & laughing. I wonder what he is laughing at.’ Nitya suggested that he should ask him, but he said ‘Oh, no I couldn’t’. ...

Sunday. ... When Krishna went up last night he again said they must wake him at 8.30 & then he said that Someone was coming & asked Helen & Nitya to wait outside. This they did for about five minutes when they heard him fall with a bang & went in. He seems to have been in great pain last night & swooned a good many times. He told them at the end that he was too tired for more to be done, but it would be continued tonight. ...

Wed. Yesterday ... Krishnaji went off at the usual hour & suffered terribly. Helen was very tired & not very well & the physical 'elemental' seemed conscious of this & tried to control his groans—but at one time they were so bad that Krishna came back & asked what was happening. They said nothing & when he had gone again the physical elemental or whatever is in charge of the body was dreadfully distressed at having brought Krishna back & said Krishna had told him to control himself & he had done his best & could not help it.

Nitya told me of the message Master K.H. gave him. He said Krishna was wasting energy & that he ought to read books which would increase his vocabulary but not give him set opinions. [After this they all tried to learn a Shakespeare sonnet by heart every day.]

Thursday. Yesterday ... the evening performance was very bad, the worst that has yet been. An hour of concentrated agony. Krishna sent Nitya & Helen out of the room once as it was so bad. Downstairs we could hear him banging himself on to the floor & his awful groans & it was hard to keep one’s thoughts resolutely turned away. When I went up afterwards he looked so tired & his poor eyes all bloodshot. The pain has been chiefly in his head during these days here. ... He lies upon the floor upon a rug but sits up in his agony & then faints away & falls with a bang. Happily he seems to sleep soundly & in the morning he is not too tired. This morning we had a good walk & to see him leaping down the hills so full of grace & beauty & vitality it is almost impossible to believe what his poor body has endured each night.

Sunday. Yesterday the evening performance was more than usually agonizing ... just when he was at his worst the Church bells rang & caused him such a shock of agony that Krishna had to come back & apparently consulted with 'Them' if anything more could be done to the body that night. The physical elemental begged them to continue. Afterwards he said ‘That was a very narrow shave. Those bells nearly tolled for my funeral.’ When they rang again later Helen called Krishna to come back & take charge till they stopped again. He seemed very nervous all the rest of the time & even when I went up afterwards Krishna kept saying ‘What is the matter? I feel so uncomfortable tonight.’ He [the physical elemental] also told them that Krishna must go out & take exercise even when it rained. Monday. Last night was very bad. We could hear his dreadful cries & apparently he said ‘It has never been as bad as this’. After the worst is over he generally has about half an hour when he is a little child again. He then thinks that Helen is his Mother.

With this week a new phase of intensity seems to have begun in Krishna’s nightly experiences. On Monday [September 3] he suffered terribly or rather the body & was twice sick. On Tuesday he was in great pain all day & was sick again after every meal keeping nothing down except his evening milk. Wednesday he was told he must eat nothing but fruit & this he kept down. Thursday he was told to fast all day only drinking water. This reduced him to such a state of weakness that the evening’s work was wasted as nothing could be done to the poor exhausted body. He had to be given food & hot bottles to revive him, & when I went to say goodnight his poor face looked so thin & haggard. ... Krishna was very much annoyed at the waste of time & reproached Nitya & Helen for letting him fast, but of course they were following his own instructions. Now he is to use moderation—he no longer eats the evening meal, but has his bath while we eat, & then has his food after all is over. This seems to answer better.

They seem to work on him the last two nights with greater concentration & intensity—it has been very awful to hear his cries & sobs. It sounds like some animal in awful pain. But he has his food now soon after 8 o’c. & seems very cheerful & happy when I go up to say goodnight to him. ... It is wonderful how quickly Krishna’s body recuperates. Even after that day of fasting when he seemed too weak to move, next morning he walked and played rounders as vigorously as ever.

September 20. On that evening K brought through a message from the Master Kuthumi which he relayed to Nitya who immediately wrote it down: Nitya Listen. This is finished here, this is the last night. It will be continued in Ojai. But this depends upon you. You both should have more energy. On what you do in the next month will depend the success. You have to be exceedingly careful. Let nothing stand in the way. You have both of you to put on more fat, in order to have more energy. Let everything be consecrated to the success of this. It has been a success here. But Ojai depends entirely on you, there it will be continued with much greater vigour if you are ready

Here are a few very rare excerpts from Mary Lutyens' & Mary Zimbalist’s interviews with K, dating from the late 70's :

ML: The teachings are not simple. How did they come out of that vacant boy?

K: You ( have to ?) admit a mystery. The boy was affectionate, vacant, not intellectual (but) what is important in this is the vacant mind. Was the vacancy intended for the manifestation? The boy must have been strange from the beginning. Was the body prepared through many lives or did this 'force' pick out the vacant body? This vacancy was guarded. By what?

ML: That is what we are trying to find out.

K: Right through life it has been guarded, protected. Amma [Mrs Besant] always saw that there were two initiates to guard me. I don’t think it is that (but) the vacancy has never gone away. At the dentist for four hours not a single thought came into my head. Only when talking and writing does ‘this’ come into play. I am amazed. From that age till now – eighty or so – to keep a mind that is vacant. What does it? You can feel it in the room now. It is happening in this room now because we are touching something very, very serious and it comes pouring in. The mind of this man from childhood till now is constantly vacant.

ML: When you give talks is your mind vacant?

K: Oh, yes, completely. I see that the boy’s mind is the same now. The other thing is here now. Don’t you feel it? It is like throbbing.

ML: The essence of your teaching is that everyone can have it.

K: Yes, is it kept vacant for this 'thing' to say, ‘Though I am vacant, you – X – can also have it’?

ML: You mean it is vacant in order to be able to say that this can happen to everyone?

K: That’s right. That 'thing' must have said, ‘There must be vacancy or 'it' cannot function.’ Did 'it' find a boy that was most likely to remain vacant? This boy apparently didn’t have any fear of going against Leadbeater, going against Theosophy, against authority. Amma, Leadbeater – they had great authority. That 'thing' must have been operating. ( However ?) this must be possible for all mankind. If not, what is the point of it? (...) Is the vacancy ( due to ?) a lack of selfishness – the self – my house, attachment? But how did the vacancy with its 'non-self' come about? An explanation is that K’s 'ego' might have been in touch with the Lord Maitreya and the Buddha and said, ‘I withdraw; that is more important than my beastly self.’ It doesn’t feel clean, right. The Lord Maitreya saw this body with the least ego, wanted to manifest through it and so it was kept uncontaminated. Another peculiar thing in all this is that K has always been attracted to the Buddha. Is that reservoir the Buddha? The Maitreya?

Mary Zimbalist: Do you ever feel 'something' coming into you?
K: 'It' comes into the room when we are talking seriously.

ML: Can we rule out something from outside?
K: I don’t. There is an element in all this which is not man-made, thought-made, not self-induced. Is this something which we mustn’t touch, is not penetrable? I have often felt it is not my business, that we will never find out.To find out the truth of the matter you have to have your mind empty. Not my mind which is in emptiness. We have come to a point where our brains, our instruments of investigation, have no meaning.

ML: Might someone else be able to find out? And would it be right to enquire?

K: You might be able to because you are writing about it, but I can never find out. Water can never find out what water is. Can you feel it in the room? It is getting stronger and stronger. My head is starting. If you asked the question and said: ‘I don’t know’, you might find it. If I was writing it I would state all this. I would begin with the boy completely vacant.

ML: Do you mind it said that you want it explained?

K: I don’t care. But I’m sure if others put their minds to this they can do it. I’m absolutely sure of this. Also, I am sure I can’t find it.

ML: Will the 'mystery' ( of that ?) mind being found?

K: No, the mystery will be gone.

Mary Zimbalist: But the mystery is something sacred.

K: The sacredness will remain. ( ...)

ML: Your teaching is very complicated. If you read it would you understand it?

K: Oh, yes, yes.

ML: Who made the Teachings? You? The mystery? Knowing you as K, the man, it is hard for me to think of you making the teachings.
K: There is a sense of vacuity and then 'something' comes. But if I sat down to it I might not be able to. It is like – what is the biblical term? – 'revelation'. It happens all the time when I’m talking.

ML: It is difficult for me not to personify a 'power' – a protection by someone. A power to protect is too vast a conception for our limited brains but perhaps this power, which I think is really love, found a conductor in (K's ) 'vacant' mind.

K: It must be a special body. How did that body come about and remain uncorrupted? It means that the 'power' was guarding it.

ML: And training it – opening it up with ‘the process’?

K: That comes later.

ML: It started as soon as the body was strong enough.

K: Yes, it is a 'freak', in the kindly sense. The 'freak' was kept for the Teaching, the freak is totally unimportant. Anyone can accept the teaching, see the truth of it.

Mary Zimbalist: The freak is necessary to give out the teaching but non-freaks can receive it?

K: Yes, yes. Amma and Leadbeater maintained that a Bodhisattva was to manifest and they must find a body – the tradition of the Avatar manifesting. The Buddha went through all that, the suffering, etc., then threw it aside and became enlightened. What he taught was original but he went through all that. But here is a freak who didn’t go through any of it. Jesus may have been a freak too. The power must have watched over this body from the moment it was born. Was it the power wanting to manifest that created the boy or was it that the power saw a Brahminical family, an eighth child, and said, ‘That is the boy’? That thing is in the room. If you ask it what it is, it wouldn’t answer. It would say, ‘You are too small.’ We said the other day that there is a reservoir of Good that must manifest. But all this is sacred and I don’t know how you will convey not only the sacredness but everything else we have talked about. Why was he put through the Ojai experience? Was it because the body wasn’t sufficiently tuned?

Mary Zimbalist: You never tried to escape pain.

K: Of course not. You see it has begun – the pain – about half an hour ago. ? Are we trying to touch a mystery? The sacred is there and because it is sacred it is vast. What happens when I die? What happens here? Is it all depending on one man? Or are there people who will carry on? There are the books but they are not enough. If they really had it they would be freaks like K. The freak is saying, ‘Are there people who have drunk the waters and will carry on?’

(...) ML was able to talk to K again in the autumn at Brockwood. K began by saying that when he first started speaking he had used the language of Theosophy but that from 1922 (the year of his experience at Ojai) he had found his own language. He then commented again on his vacant mind and said, ‘When the mind is empty, it only knows it was empty afterwards.

ML: When does it cease to be empty?

K: When it is necessary to use thought, to communicate. Otherwise it is empty. During the seminar – while I am talking it comes out.

ML: Do you 'see' something?

K: No, 'it' comes out without my thinking about it. As it comes out, it becomes logical, rational. If I think it out carefully (like the Letters to the Schools ?) , write it down, nothing happens.

ML: Does it come from somewhere outside yourself?

K: I feel that there is another kind of protection which is not mine. There is a separate form of protection as if the future is more or less laid down. A different kind of protection, not only of the body. The boy was born with that peculiarity – he must have been protected to survive through all he did. Somehow the body is protected to survive. Some element is watching over it. Something is protecting it. The Maitreya (explanation ) is too concrete, is not simple enough. But I can’t look behind the curtain. I tried with Pupul and various Indian scholars who pressed me. I was inclined to believe that K was being used, and had been used since 1922, by 'something' from outside. This did not mean that he was a medium. A medium is separate from what he or she ‘brings through’, whereas K and whatever it was that manifested through him were for the most part one. His consciousness was as permeated with this 'other thing' as a sponge with water.

Before the year was out, K was to undergo another psychic experience, while he was in India. On 21 February 1980, at Ojai, he dictated an account of it to Mary, referring to himself in the third person:

" For a long time he had been awakening in the middle of the night with that peculiar meditation which has been pursuing him for very many years. This has been a normal thing in his life. It is not a conscious, deliberate pursuit of meditation or an unconscious desire to achieve something, so each meditation has a quality of something new and fresh in it. There is a sense of accumulating drive, unsought and uninvited. Sometimes it is so intense that there is pain in the head, sometimes a sense of vast emptiness with fathomless energy. Sometimes he wakes up with laughter and measureless joy.

With the arrival in Rishi Valley in the middle of November 1979 the momentum increased and one night in the strange stillness of that part of the world, with the silence undisturbed by the hoot of owls, he woke up to find something totally different and new. The ( meditative ) movement had reached the source of all energy. This must in no way be confused with 'God' or the highest principle, the Brahman, which are the projections of the human mind out of the unyielding desire for total security. It is none of those things. Desire cannot possibly reach it, words cannot fathom it, nor can the string of thought wind itself around it. One may ask with what assurance do you state that it is the source of all energy? One can only reply with complete humility that it is so. All the time that K was in India until the end of January 1980 every night he would wake up with this sense of the absolute. It is not a state, a thing that is static, fixed, immovable. The whole universe is in it, measureless to man. When he returned to Ojai in February 1980, after the body had somewhat rested, there was the perception that this is the Ultimate, the beginning and the ending and the absolute. There is only a sense of incredible vastness and immense beauty."

Anyway, the following quite unique excerpts contain Mrs Mary Lutyens 'reading' of the 'facts' mentioned in the post above - as well as K's own view of them :

(...) "K stopped at Brockwood for a few days in February 1973 on his way from Bombay to Los Angeles. I was now deeply absorbed in writing the account of his early life which was to become the first volume of a three-volume biography, but I had misgivings as to the advisability of publishing it, the story was at once so crazy and yet somehow so sacred; therefore I went to Brockwood for the day to talk it over with him.

Alone with him after lunch in the large drawing room of the West Wing, I put my doubts to him. He replied instantly, ‘Can’t you feel 'it' in the room? Well, that is your answer.’ I am not in the least psychic but at that moment I did feel a slight throbbing in the room which might easily have been imagination. He evidently felt it coming from outside himself and giving its approval. ‘What is this "power"? What is behind you? I know you have always felt protected but 'what' or 'who' is it that protects you?’
‘It’s there, as if it were behind a curtain,’ he answered, stretching out a hand behind him as if to feel an invisible curtain. ‘I could lift it but I don’t feel it’s my business to.’ When I left that afternoon K had gone up to his room to rest, and my daughter, who had driven me from London, was waiting impatiently in the car outside. Having said goodbye to people in the school, I had to return to the West Wing to get my coat from the cloakroom. As I passed the open door of the drawing room, with no thought in my head but to hurry, a great power rushed out at me, terrifying in its force. Was it hostile to me? One thing I do know is that it was not imaginary or auto-suggestive. I came to the conclusion that it was not personally hostile. It was as I imagine it would be like to be caught in the whirlwind of a propeller. Was this the source, the energy, that went through K so frequently?

I did not know at the time that the year before, at Ojai, K had been questioned on this same subject of the 'power' behind him by a group of trustees of the American Foundation, K had said on that occasion, speaking of himself in the third person:

"First of all we are enquiring into something which K himself has never enquired into. He has never said, ‘Who am I?’ I feel we are delving into something which the conscious mind can never understand, which doesn’t mean I am making a mystery of it. There is 'something'. Much too vast to put into words. There is a tremendous reservoir, as it were, which if the human mind can touch can reveal something which no intellectual mythology, invention, dogma, can ever reveal. I am not making a mystery of it – that would be a stupid childish trick, a most blackguardly thing to do because that would be exploiting people. Either one creates a mystery when there isn’t one or there is a mystery which you have to approach with extraordinary delicacy and hesitancy. And the conscious mind can’t do that. It is there. It is there but you cannot come to it, you cannot invite it. There is something but the brain can’t understand it".

K was most indignant when it was suggested at this same meeting that he might be a medium. ‘Of course I’m not a medium; that’s obvious. That [explanation] would be too childish, too immature.’

Was he aware, he was asked, that he was being used? ‘No. That would be like a petrol station which is being used by others.’ He then asked in his turn: ‘Is something going on in the brain uninvited by me – the various experiences like at Ojai and other times? For instance, I woke up at 3.30 and there was a tremendous sense of energy, bursting energy, great beauty, all kinds of things happened. This kind of experience is going on all the time when the body isn’t too tired.’

At this time K described more fully to Mary Zimbalist this waking in the night. She noted it down and passed it on to me in a letter: ‘I woke at three with a sense of extraordinary power, light burning in the mind. There was no observer. The testing was from the outside but the observer didn’t exist. There was only that and nothing else. The power penetrated the whole being. I sat up and it lasted three hours.’ He told Mary that he often woke with some extraordinary feeling of new and vast energy.

A few years later, he asked her (MZ) to write down another experience he had had, which was again relayed to me in a letter: " Before beginning asanas, he [K] generally sits very quietly, thinking about nothing. But this morning a strange thing took place, most unexpected and in no way invited – and besides you cannot invite these things. Suddenly it appeared as though in the very centre of his brain, head, right inside, there was a vast space in which was unimaginable energy. It was there, but nothing whatever is registered, for that which is registered is a waste of energy. If one can so call it, it was pure energy in a limitless state, a space that had nothing but this sense of immensity. One doesn't know how long it has lasted but this morning it was there, and as this is being written it is as though it was taking root and becoming firm. These words are not really the thing itself".

K’s descriptions of the ( intelligent ?) energy that entered him should be carefully noted in view of the tape recording he made shortly before his death, the last he ever made.
Many people will feel that any attempt to solve the mystery of Krishnamurti is not only a waste of time but wholly unimportant; it is the teaching that matters, not the man. But for anyone who knew the young Krishna and participated in some of those early events and cannot accept that the teaching developed in his own brain, a tantalising enigma will remain unless, perhaps, one can succeed in emptying one’s own brain. In much the same way, K had said in that last tape:

" I was telling them this morning – for seventy years that super-energy – no – that immense energy, immense intelligence, has been using this body. I don’t think people realise what tremendous energy and intelligence went through this body – there’s twelve-cylinder engine. And for seventy years – was a pretty long time – and now the body can’t stand any more. Nobody, unless the body has been prepared, very carefully, protected and so on – nobody can understand what went through this body. Nobody. Don’t anybody pretend. Nobody. I repeat this: nobody amongst us or the public, know what went on. I know they don’t. And now after seventy years it has come to an end. Not that that intelligence and energy – it’s somewhat here, every day, and especially at night. And after seventy years the body can’t stand it – can’t stand any more. It can’t. The Indians have a lot of damned superstitions about this – that you will and the body goes – and all that kind of nonsense. You won’t find another body like this, or that supreme intelligence operating in a body for many hundred years. You won’t see it again. When he goes, it goes. There is no consciousness left behind of that consciousness, of that state. They’ll all pretend or try to imagine they can get into touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings. But nobody has done it. Nobody. And so... that’s that ".

The following inspired lines are from another 'lost & found' page from the Book of Life. As for the name of the author...well, who cares ?

“Do not think that I am indifferent to the sufferings of the weakest ones because I give my time and attention to the strong. Like the ministering angels, I go where I am most needed. Only the strong ones can learn what I have to teach. The weak ones are the charges of the Messiahs and their followers. But nevertheless, between us and the Messiahs there is brotherhood and there is mutual understanding. Each works in his own field. The Messiahs help the many; we help the few. Their reward in love is greater than ours; but we do not work for reward any more than they do. Each follows the law of his being.”

More 'lost & found' pages from K's Journals

( Experiential Hint:) If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with ( the whole consciousness of ) humanity.

(...) By chance it happened that one lived for some months in a small dilapidated house, high in the mountains, far from other houses. There were lots of trees and as it was spring there was perfume in the air. The solitude was of the mountains and the beauty of the red earth. The towering peaks were covered with snow and some of the trees were in bloom. One lived alone amidst this splendour. The forest was nearby, with deer, an occasional bear and those big monkeys with black faces and long tails, and of course there were serpents too. In deep solitude in strange ways one was related to them all. One could not hurt a thing, even that white daisy on the path. In that relationship the 'space' (the psychological 'distance' ?) between you and them didn't exist; it was not contrived; it was not an intellectual or an emotional conviction that brought this about but simply it was so.

A group of those large monkeys would come around, especially in the evening; a few were on the ground but most of them would be sitting in the trees quietly watching. Surprisingly they were still; occasionally there would be a scratch or two and we would watch each other. They would come every evening now, neither too close nor too high among the trees, and we would be silently aware of each other. We had become quite good friends but they didn't want to encroach upon one's solitude. Walking one afternoon in the forest one came suddenly upon them in an open space. There must have been well over thirty of them, young and old, sitting among the trees round the open space, absolutely silent and still. One could have touched them; there was no fear in them and sitting on the ground we watched each other till the sun went behind the peaks.

More excerpts from K's Journal ( 1973-75)

The guru had announced a few days before that he wished to pay a call. He arrived and his disciples came streaming in afterwards, one by one. The sky was intensely blue that morning and the shadows were long.

Q: You deny being a guru but you are a 'guru of gurus'. I have observed you from your youth and what you say is the ( living ?) truth which few will understand. For the many we are necessary, otherwise they would be lost; our authority saves the foolish. Tradition is a rampart and only the very few can stand alone and see the naked reality. What, if one may be allowed to ask, is the experience of that absolute Reality?

K: Reality is not to be experienced ( by the self-centred 'experiencer' ?) . There's no path to it and no word can indicate it; it is not to be sought after and to be found (by him ?) . The very word 'truth' is not Truth; the description is not the described.

Q: The ancients have told of their experiences, their bliss in meditation, their super-consciousness, their holy reality. If one may be allowed to ask, must one set aside all this and their exalted example?

K: Any authorit(ative advice on ?) on meditation is the very denial of it. The complete elimination of the "meditator", of the "experiencer", or of the "thinker", is the very essence of meditation. This freedom (from the thought-controlling entity ?) is the daily act of meditation. The freedom from the known is ( allowing ?) the flowering of meditation. There is no system and so there is no direction to truth & to the beauty of meditation. To follow another, his example, his word, is to banish truth. Only in the mirror of relationship do you see the face of 'what is'. ( The living spirit of ?) Truth has no tradition, it cannot be handed down.

**

In the silence of deep night and in the quiet still morning when the sun is touching the hills, there is a great mystery. It is there in all living things. If you sit quietly under a tree, you would feel the ancient earth with its incomprehensible mystery. On a still night when the stars are clear and close, you would be aware of the mysterious order of all things. In that utter silence of the mind this mystery expands without time and space. There's mystery in those ancient temples built with infinite care, with an attention which is (born of) love. The myths that are concealed in the deep layers of the mind are not (really ?) mysterious (since) in these secret recesses of the mind, ( the living spirit of ?) truth has been pushed aside by symbols, words, images; in them there is no mystery, they are the churnings of thought. Mystery is quite another thing. It is not a (personal) 'experience', to be stored up and remembered; to be in communion with that, the mind, the whole of you, must be at the same level, at the same time, with the same intensity as That which is called mysterious. This (communion) is Love and with ( its living presence ?) the whole mystery of the universe is open.

This post was last updated by John Raica Tue, 26 Mar 2019.

Continuing the selected excerpts from K's Journal (1973-75)

(...) He (the young K) was standing by himself on the low bank of the river with no one around, alone, unattached and far away. He was about fourteen or less. They had found his brother and himself quite recently and all the fuss and sudden importance given to him was around him. He was the centre of respect and devotion and in the years to come he would be the head of organizations and great properties. All that and the dissolution of them still lay ahead. Standing there alone, lost and strangely aloof, was his first and lasting remembrance of those days and events. He doesn't remember his childhood, the schools and the caning. He was told years later by the very teacher who hurt him that he used to cane him practically every day because he couldn't study or remember anything he had read or been told. Later the teacher couldn't believe that boy was the man who had given the talk he had heard. He was greatly surprised and unnecessarily respectful.
All those years passed without leaving scars, memories, on his mind; his friendships, his affections, even those years with those who had ill-treated him somehow none of these events have left marks on him. He never consciously blocked any happening, pleasant or unpleasant, entering into his mind. They came, leaving no mark and passed away.

The island, the river and the sea are still there, the palms and the buildings. The sun was coming out of masses of clouds, serried and soaring to the heavens. In only a loin cloth the fishermen were throwing their nets to catch some measly little fishes. Late in the evening it was pleasant among the mangoes and scented flowers. How beautiful is the earth (...)

One has to be a light to oneself; this 'light' is the ( inwardly guiding ?) Law. To be a light to oneself is not to follow the light of another, however reasonable and/or convincing. Freedom is to be a light to oneself; then it is not an abstraction, a thing conjured by thought. Actual freedom is freedom from dependency, attachment, from the craving for experience. Freedom from the very structure of thought is to be a light to oneself. In this light all action takes place and it is never contradictory.There is no "how", no system, no practice. There is only the seeing which is the doing. You have to see (for yourself ?) , not through the eyes of another. This light, this law, is neither yours nor that of another. There is only light. This is Love

High in the mountains there were hardly any birds, there were some crows, there were deer and an occasional bear. The huge redwoods, the 'silent ones', were everywhere, dwarfing all the other trees. It was a magnificent country and utterly peaceful, for no hunting was allowed. Every animal,every tree and flower was protected. Sitting under one of those massive redwoods, one was aware of the history of man and the beauty of earth. A fat red squirrel passed by most elegantly, stopping a few feet away, watching and wondering what you were doing there. The earth was dry, though there was a stream nearby. Not a leaf stirred and the beauty of silence was among the trees.

Going slowly along the narrow path, round the bend was a bear with four cubs as large as big cats. They rushed off to climb up trees and the mother faced one without a movement, without a sound. About fifty feet separated us; she was enormous, brown, and prepared. One immediately turned one's back on her and left. Each understood that there was no fear and no intention to hurt, but all the same one was glad to be among the protecting trees, squirrels and the scolding jays.

.

This post was last updated by John Raica Wed, 27 Mar 2019.

Continuing the excerpts from K Journal

As a young boy, he (the young K) used to sit by himself under a large tree near a pond in which lotuses grew; they were pink and had a strong smell. From the shade of that spacious tree, he would watch the thin green snakes and the chameleons, the frogs and the watersnakes. His brother, with others, would come to take him home. It was a pleasant place under the tree, with the river and the pond. There seemed to be so much space, and in this the tree made its own space.To that pond would come snakes and occasionally people; it had stone steps leading down to the water where grew the lotus.The long, thin, green snake was there that morning; it was delicate and almost among the green leaves; it would be there, motionless, waiting and watching. The large head of the chameleon was showing; it lay along a branch; it changed its colours quite often.

The two brothers would sit with many others in the room with pictures; there would be a chant in Sanskrit and then complete silence; it was the evening meditation. The younger brother would go to sleep and roll over and wake up only when the others got up to leave. The room was not too large and within its walls were the images of the Sacred.
When, (years later) he brother died, there was no movement in any direction away from sorrow. This non-movement is the ending of time.

The ( mental) space that thought creates is measurable and so is limited; cultures and religions are its product. But the mind is filled with thought and is made up of thought; its consciousness is the structure of thought, having little space within it. The space (of the known ?) which the centre makes for itself is its own prison. Its relationships are from this narrow space but there must be space to live; that of the mind denies living. Living within the narrow confines of the centre is strife, pain and sorrow and that is not living. The space, the distance between you and the tree, is the word, knowledge which is time. Time is the ( creation of the ) 'observer' who makes the distance between himself and the trees, between himself and 'what is'and from this grows conflict and sorrow. The transformation of what is takes place only when there is no separation between the seer and the seen. Love has no distance.

The old villager wearily passed you by, as you were sitting on a bridge looking at the sunset; he was almost blind, limping, carrying a bundle in one hand and in the other a stick. It was one of those evenings when the colours of the sunset were on every rock, tree and bush; the grass and the fields seemed to have their own inner light. The sun had set behind a rounded hill and amidst these extravagant colours there was the birth of the evening star.
The villager stopped in front of you, looked at those startling colours and at you. You looked at each other and without a word he trudged on. In that communication there was affection, tenderness and respect, not the silly respect but that of religious men. At that moment all time and thought had come to an end. You and he were utterly religious, uncorrupted by belief, image, by word or poverty. You often passed each other on that road among the stony hills and each time, as you looked at one another, there was the joy of total insight.

This post was last updated by John Raica Thu, 28 Mar 2019.

More selected excerpts from K's Journal (1973)

There is in Sanskrit a long prayer to Peace. It was written many, many centuries ago by someone to whom (the inner & outer ?) Peace was an absolute necessity, and perhaps his daily life had its roots in that.
"May there be peace among the gods, in heaven and among the stars; may there be peace on earth, among men and four-footed animals; may we not hurt each other; may we be generous to each other; may we have that intelligence which will guide our life and action; may there be peace in our prayer, on our lips and in our hearts".
There is no mention of 'individuality' in this peace; that came much later. There is only 'ourselves' - our peace, our intelligence our knowledge, our enlightenment. The sound of Sanskrit chants seems to have a strange effect. In a temple, about fifty priests were chanting in Sanskrit and the very walls seemed to be vibrating.

There is a path that goes through the green, shining field, through a sunlit wood and beyond. Hardly anyone comes to these woods, full of light and shadows. It is very peaceful there, quiet and isolated. There are squirrels and an occasional deer, shyly watchful and dashing away; the squirrels watch you from a branch and sometimes scold you. These woods have the perfume of summer and the smell of damp earth. There are enormous trees, old and moss-laden; they welcome you and you feel the warmth of their welcome. Each time you sit there and look up through the branches and leaves at the wonderful blue sky, that peace and welcome are waiting for you. You went with others through the woods but there was aloofness and silence; the people were chattering, indifferent and unaware of the dignity and grandeur of the trees; they had no relationship with them and so in all probability, no ( authentic) relationship with each other. The relationship between the trees and you was complete and immediate; they and you were friends and thus you were the friend of every tree, bush and flower on earth. You were not there to destroy and there was peace between them and you.

( The inner) Peace is not an interval between the ending and beginning of conflict, of pain and of sorrow. It is not (to be found ?) in any holy building, in any book, in any person. No one can lead you to it, but in meditation it is (present)
Meditation itself is the movement of ( inward harmony & ) Peace. The action of meditation is intelligence. Meditation is none of those things you have been taught (in school ?) or experienced (at home ?) . The putting away of what you have learnt or experienced (in the past ?) is meditation. The freedom from the 'experiencer' is meditation. When there is no peace ( & harmony ?) in one's relationships, there is no peace in meditation; it is an escape into illusion and fanciful dreams. It cannot be demonstrated (scientifically ?) nor described (poetically ?) but you will be aware of it (or of its presence ?) through the virtue of your life.

Heavy clouds and mists were there that morning; it was going to rain. It would take several days to see the blue sky again. But as you came into the wood, there was no diminishing of that peace and welcome. There was utter stillness and incomprehensible peace. The squirrels were hiding and the grasshoppers in the meadows were silent and beyond the hills and valleys was the restless sea.

(...) In the ancient temple it was cool and pleasant; the bare feet were aware of the solid slabs of rocks, their shapes and their unevenness. Many thousands of people must have walked on them for a thousand years. It was dark there after the glare of the morning sun and in the corridors there seemed to be few people that morning and in the narrow passage it was still darker. This passage led to a wide corridor which led to the inner shrine. There was a strong smell of flowers and the incense of many centuries. And a hundred Brahmanas, freshly bathed, in newly washed white loin cloths, were chanting. Sanskrit is a powerful language, resonant with depth. The ancient walls were vibrating, almost shaking to the sound of a hundred voices. The dignity of the sound was incredible and the sacredness of the moment was beyond the words. It was not the words that awakened this (inward sense of) immensity but the depth of the sound of many thousand years held within these walls and in the immeasurable space beyond them. It was not the meaning of those words, nor the clarity of their pronunciation, nor the dark beauty of the temple but the quality of sound that broke walls and the limitations of the human mind.( Listening to ?) the song of a bird, the distant flute, the breeze among the leaves, all these break down the walls that human beings have created for themselves.

In the great cathedrals and lovely mosques, the chants and the intoning of their sacred books it is the sound that opens the heart, to tears and beauty. Without space there's no beauty; without space you have only walls and measurements; without space there's no depth; without space there's only poverty, inner and outer. You have so little space in your mind; it's so crammed full of words, remembrances, knowledge, experiences and problems. There's hardly any space left, only the everlasting chatter of thought. And so your museums are filled and every shelf with books. Then you fill the places of entertainment, religious or otherwise. Or you build a wall around yourself, a narrow space of mischief and pain. Without space, inner or outer, you become violent and ugly.

Everything needs space to live, to play and to chant. That which is Sacred cannot love without space. You have no ( free inner ?) space when you hold, when there is sorrow, when 'you' become the centre of the universe. The space (of the "known" ?) that 'you' occupy (inwardly) is the (fenced ?) space that thought has built around 'you' and that is (accumulating inner) misery and confusion. The space (the psychological distance ?) that thought measures is the division between you and me, we and they. This division is ( causing an) endless pain.

There's that solitary tree in a wide, green, open field.

(...) You have only one head (& one brain ?) and look after it for it's a marvellous thing. No machinery, no electronic computers can compare with it. It's so vast, so complex, so utterly capable, subtle and productive. It's the storehouse of experience, knowledge, memory. All thought springs from it. What it has put together is quite incredible: the great cathedrals, the lovely mosques and the sacred temples (along with ) the wars, the illusions, the ideals, the pain and misery, It is fantastic what it has done and what it can do. But one thing it apparently cannot do: change completely its ( self-centred) behaviour in its relationship to another to another (fellow) man. It never realizes that the me 'is' the you, that the observer 'is' the observed. Its 'freedom' is (within) its own prison; it is educated to live in the (inner) prison (of its own past ?) , only making it more comfortable, more pleasurable. You have only one head, care for it, don't destroy it. It's so easy to poison it.

He (K) always had this strange lack of ( psychological) distance between himself and the trees, rivers and mountains. There was never a ( self-protecting) wall between him and another. He was not withdrawn, aloof, but like the waters of a river. He had so few thoughts; no thoughts at all when he was alone. His brain was active when talking or writing but otherwise it was quiet and 'active' (inwardly awake ?) without (any mental ?) movement. This strange ( inward) activity, without direction, seems to go on, sleeping or waking. He wakes up often with that activity of Meditation; something of this nature is going on most of the time. The other night he woke up aware that something like a ball of fire, light, was being put into his head, into the very centre of it. He watched it objectively for a considerable time, as though it were happening to someone else. It was not an illusion, something conjured up by the mind.
Dawn was coming and through the opening of the curtains he could see the trees.

This post was last updated by John Raica Sun, 31 Mar 2019.

( ...) As he talked the sun was setting and deep silence descended upon us. After a while, when the stars were very close to the earth, he said: "That is the silence I have been looking for everywhere, in the books, among the teachers and in myself. I have found many things but not this. It came unsought, uninvited. Have I wasted my life in things that did not matter? You have no idea what I have been through, the fastings, the self-denials and the practices. I saw their futility long ago but never came upon this silence. What shall I do to remain in it, to maintain it, to hold it in my heart? I suppose you would say do nothing, as one cannot invite it. But shall I go on wandering over this country, with this repetition, this control? Sitting here I am conscious of this sacred silence; through it I look at the stars, those trees, the river. Though I see and feel all this, I am not really there. As you said the other day, the observer 'is' the observed. I see what it means now. The benediction I sought is not to be found in the seeking. It is time for me to go."

The river became dark and the stars were reflected on its waters near the banks. Gradually the noises of the day were coming to an end and the soft noises of the night began. You watched the stars and the dark earth and the ( noisy ?) world was far away. Beauty, which is ( the Grace of ?) Love, seemed to descend on the earth and the things of it.

(...) You must be alone with the trees, meadows and streams. You are never alone if you carry the things of thought, its images and problems. The mind must not be filled with the rocks and clouds of the earth. It must be empty as the newly-made vessel. Then you would see something 'totally', something that has never been. You can't see this if 'you' are there; you must 'die' to see it. You may think you are the important thing in the world but you are not.You may have everything that thought has put together but they are all old, used and begin to crumble.

This post was last updated by John Raica Mon, 01 Apr 2019.

(...) It was one of those mountain rains that lasts three or four days, bringing with it cooler weather. The earth was sodden and heavy and all the mountain paths were slippery; small streams were running down the steep slopes and labour in the terraced fields had stopped. The trees and the tea plantations were weary of the dampness; there had been no sun for over a week and it was getting quite chilly. The mountains lay to the north, with their snow and gigantic peaks. The flags around the temples were heavy with rain; they had lost their delight, their gay colours fluttering in the breeze. There was thunder and lightning and the sound was carried from valley to valley; a thick fog hid the sharp flashes of light.

The next morning there was the clear blue, tender sky, and the great peaks, still and timeless, were alight with the early morning sun. A deep valley ran down between the village and the high mountains; it was filled with dark blue fog. Straight ahead, towering in the clear sky was the second highest peak of the Himalayas. You could almost touch it but it was many miles away; you forgot the distance for it was there, in all its majesty so utterly pure and measureless. By late morning it was gone, hidden in the darkening clouds from the valley. Only in the early morning it showed itself and disappeared a few hours later. No wonder the ancients looked to their gods in these mountains, in thunder and in the clouds. The divinity of their life was in the benediction that lay hidden in these unapproachable snows.

His disciples came to invite you to visit their guru; you politely refused but they came often, hoping that you would change your mind. So it was decided that their guru would come with a few of his chosen disciples. Several of us were sitting on a thin mattress on the floor when he entered the room and we got up and offered him the mattress. He sat on it cross-legged, putting his cane in front of him; that thin mattress seemed to give him a position of authority. He had 'found truth' & 'experienced' it and so he, who knew, was opening the door for us. What he said was law to him and to others; you were merely a seeker, whereas he had found. You might be lost in your search and he would help you along the way, but... you must obey.

Quietly you replied that all the ( spiritual) 'seeking and finding' had no meaning unless the mind was free from its ( cultural) conditioning; that freedom is the first and last step, and obedience to any authority in matters of the mind is to be caught in illusion and action that breeds sorrow.

He looked at you with pity, concern, and with a flair of annoyance, as though you were slightly demented. Then said, "The greatest and final experience has been given to me and no seeker can refuse that."

If ( The Ultimate ?) Reality or Truth is ( recognised & ) 'experienced' , then it is only a projection of your own mind. There is no path to Truth (but...) you will come upon it when the mind is free of all the things ( that the self-centred thought ?) has put together.

He got up and left, followed by his (rather disappointed ?) disciples.

This post was last updated by John Raica Tue, 02 Apr 2019.

(...) It is quite dark and the trees are silent, waiting for the dawn and the sun to rise behind the hills. It comes so slowly, penetrating the whole world. And here in this quiet secluded house, surrounded by orange trees and a few flowers, it is extraordinarily quiet.
Slowly, with great patience, the dawn begins in the deep silence of the night and the hills and the trees are beginning to awaken. In silence the dawn begins, it gets lighter and lighter, and the dew is on the leaf and the sun is just climbing over the hill. The first rays of the sun are caught in those tall trees, in that old oak that has been there for a very, very long time. And the mourning dove begins with its soft mournful call. Across the road, across the orange trees, there is a peacock calling. Even in this part of the world there are peacocks, at least there are a few of them. And the day has begun.

It is a wonderful day. It is so new, so fresh, so alive and full of beauty. It is a new day without any past remembrances, without the call of another. There is great wonder when one looks at all the beauties - those bright oranges with the dark leaves, and the few flowers, bright in their glory. One wonders at this extraordinary light which only this part of the world seems to have. One wonders as one looks at the creation which seems to have no beginning and no end - the creation of a new morning. This morning it is as it has never been before, so bright, so clear. And the blue hills are looking down.

There is a squirrel with a long bushy tail, quivering and shy in the old pepper tree which has lost many branches; it is getting very old. It must have seen many storms, as the oak has in its old age, quiet, with a great dignity. It is a new morning, full of an ancient life; it has no time, no problems. It exists and that in itself is a miracle. It is a new morning without any memory. All the past days are over, gone, and the voice of the mourning dove comes across the valley, and the sun is now over the hill, covering the earth. And it too has no yesterday. The trees in the sun and the flowers have no time. It is the miracle of a new day.

Q: We want continuity a of the things we have known and remembered. Otherwise what are we? Continuity is in the very roots of our being. To be is to continue. There is a continuity from the moment we are born until we die, with all the experiences, all the knowledge that man has acquired. Is it an illusion?

K: What has continuity? That oak, probably two hundred years old, has a continuity until it dies or is chopped down by man. And what is this continuity which man wants, craves for? The name, the form, the bank account, the things remembered? Memory has a continuity, remembrances of that which has been. The whole 'psyche' (psychological identity ?) is memory and nothing else. If one examines diligently, without any bias or conclusion, one begins to see that our whole existence with the vast network of memories, remembrances, the things that have happened before, all have continuity. And we cling to that desperately.

Although there is no continuity except ( that of our) memory, is there in the whole human being, in the brain, a place, a spot, an area small or vast, where ( the psychological ) memory doesn't exist at all, which memory has never touched? It is a remarkable thing to look at all this, to feel your way sanely, rationally, see the complexity and the intricacies of memory, and its continuity which is, after all, knowledge. Knowledge is always in the past, knowledge is the past. The past is vast accumulated memory as tradition. And when you have trodden that path diligently, sanely, you must inevitably ask: is there an area in the human brain, or in the very nature and structure of a human being, not merely in the outer world of his activities but inwardly, deep in the vast quiet recesses of his own brain, something that is not the outcome of memory, not the movement of a continuity?
The hills and the trees, the meadows and the groves, will continue as long as the earth exists, unless man in his cruelty and despair destroys it all.
If (inwardly ) there is no continuity what is there? There is 'nothing'. One is afraid to be nothing. Nothing means not a thing - nothing put together by thought, nothing put together by memory, remembrances, nothing that you can put into words and then measure. There is most certainly, definitely, an area where the past doesn't cast a shadow, where time, the past or the future or the present, has no meaning.

We have always tried to measure ( or capture ?) with words something that we don't know. What we do not know ( the Unknown ?) we try to understand and give it words and make it into a continuous noise. And so we clog our brain which is already clogged with past events, experiences, knowledge. We think knowledge is psychologically of great importance, but it is not. You can't ascend ( spiritually ?) through knowledge; there must be an end to knowledge for the new to be. 'New' is a word for something which has never been before. And that area cannot be understood or grasped by words or symbols: it is there beyond all remembrances.

This post was last updated by John Raica Wed, 03 Apr 2019.

( Continuing the excepts from K's Journals )

I wonder if one ever asks whether time has a stop - time to become, time to fulfil? Is there anything to learn about all that? Or can one see that the whole movement of this illusory memory, which appears so real, can end? If time has a stop, then what is the relationship between that which lies beyond time and all the physical activities of the brain as memory, knowledge, remembrances, experiences? What is the relationship between the two? Knowledge and thought, as we have often said, are limited. The 'limited' cannot possibly have any relationship with the 'unlimited' but the 'unlimited' can have some kind of communication with the limited, though that communication must always be limited, narrow, fragmentary.

That which is immeasurable cannot be measured by words. We are always trying to put the immeasurable into a frame of words, but the symbol is not the actual. So with the clouds hanging on the tree tops and all the birds quiet, waiting for the thunderstorm, this is a good morning to be serious, to question the whole of existence, to question the very gods and all human activity. Our lives are so short and during that short period there is nothing to learn about the whole field of the psyche, which is the movement of memory; we can only observe it. Observe without the observer who is the essence of the past. Just watch. Watch those clouds shaping and reshaping, watch the trees, the little birds. It is all part of life. When you watch attentively, with diligence, there is nothing to learn; there is only that vast space, silence and emptiness, which is all-consuming energy.

(...) Everything was alive that morning. As we watched, there was a sense of great joy and the heavens were blue, the sun was slowly coming out of the hills and there was light. As we watched the mocking bird on the wire, it was doing its antics, jumping high, doing a somersault, then coming down on the same spot on the wire. As we watched the bird enjoying itself, jumping in the air and then coming down circling, with its shrill cries, its enjoyment of life, only that bird existed, the 'watcher' didn't exist. The watcher was no longer there, only the bird, grey and white, with a longish tail. That watching was without any movement of thought, watching the flurry of the bird that was enjoying itself.

We never watch for long. When we watch with great patience, watch without any sense of the watcher, watch those birds, those droplets on the quivering leaves, the bees and the flowers and the long trail of ants, then time ceases, time has a stop. One doesn't take time to watch or have the patience to watch. Learning is time but watching has no time. Or when you listen, listen without any interpretation, without any reaction, listen without any bias. Listen to that thunder in the skies, the thunder rolling among the hills. One never listens completely, there is always interruption. Watching and listening are a great art - watching and listening without any reaction, without any sense of the listener or the see-er. By watching and listening we learn infinitely more than from any book. But if your senses are not highly awakened you cannot really watch and listen and learn, not only how to act but about learning, which is the very soil in which the seed of goodness can grow.

We like that freedom to choose; we think that choice gives us a sense of freedom - but there is no choice when you see things very, very clearly. And that leads us to an awareness without choice - to be aware without any like or dislike. When there is this really simple, honest, choiceless awareness it leads to another factor, which is attention. The word itself means to stretch out, to grasp, to hold on, but that is still the activity of the brain, it is in the brain. Watching, awareness, attention, are within the area of the brain, and the brain is limited - conditioned by all the ways of past generations, the impressions, the traditions and all the folly and the goodness of man. When one is attentive to all this, choicelessly aware, then out of that comes insight. Insight is not an act of remembrance, the continuation of memory. Insight is like a flash of light. You see with absolute clarity, all the complications, the consequences, the intricacies. Then this very insight is action, complete. In that there are no regrets, no looking back, no sense of being weighed down, no discrimination. This is pure, clear insight - perception without any shadow of doubt. When there is clear insight into violence, for instance, that very insight banishes all violence. That insight is (occurring) outside the brain, if one can so put it. It is not of time. It is not of remembrance or of knowledge, and so that insight and its action changes the very brain cells. That insight is complete and from that completeness there can be logical, sane, rational, action.

This whole movement from watching, listening, to the thunder of insight, is one movement; it is not coming to it step by step. It is like a swift arrow. And that insight alone can uncondition the brain, not the effort of thought, which is determination, seeing the necessity for something; none of that will bring about total freedom from conditioning. All this is (about) time and the ending of time. Man is time-bound and that bondage to time is the movement of thought. So where there is an ending to thought and to time there is total insight. Only then can there be the flowering of the brain. Only then can you have a complete relationship with the mind.

(...) From ancient times all civilizations have had this concept of measurement. All their marvellous buildings were based on mathematical measurement. When you look at the Acropolis and the glory of the Parthenon, and the hundred and ten floor buildings of New York, they have all had to have this measurement.
Measurement is not only by the rule; measurement exists in the very brain: the better, the more. This comparative process has existed for time beyond time. We are always comparing. And the brain, being conditioned to measurement, to comparison, tries to measure the Immeasurable - measuring with words that which cannot ever be measured. It has been a long process for centuries upon centuries and this (mental habit ?) comparison has brought a great many fears and sorrows.

In ( the field of) meditation there must be no measurement. This meditation must not be a conscious meditation in deliberately chosen postures. This meditation must be totally un-conscious, never knowing that you are meditating. It must be something that is not deliberately set about. Only then is meditation a movement in the infinite, measureless to man, without a goal, without an end and without a beginning. And that has a strange action in daily life, because all life is one and then becomes sacred.

One never realizes how sacred life is, not only your little life but the lives of millions of others, from the things of nature to extraordinary human beings. And in meditation which is without measurement, there is the very action of that which is most noble, most sacred and holy.

The other day a man was sitting on the banks of a river wrapt in a fawn coloured cloth. His hands were hidden, his eyes were shut and his body was very still. He had beads in his hands and he was repeating some words and the hands were moving from bead to bead. He had done this for many years and he never missed a bead. And the river rolled along beside him. its current was deep. One does not know for how many years this man had been repeating his mantra and rolling the beads. He was 'meditating' - at least people thought he was meditating and probably he did too. So all the passers-by looked at him, became silent and then went on with their laughter and chatter. That almost motionless figure - one could see through the cloth only a slight action of the fingers - had sat there for a very long time, completely absorbed, for he heard no other sound than the sound of his own words and the rhythm of it, the music of it. And he would say that he was meditating. There are a thousand others like him, all over the world, in quiet deep monasteries among the hills and towns and beside the rivers.

Meditation must take place in the quiet stillness of the night, when you are suddenly awake and see that the brain is quiet and there is a peculiar quality of meditation going on. It must take place as silently as a snake among the tall grass, green in the fresh morning light. It must take place in the deep recesses of the brain. Meditation is not a ( personal) achievement. Meditation begins with the ending of comparison, the ending of the becoming. As the bee whispers among the leaves so the whispering of meditation is action.

It is a beautiful world and man is so indifferent to it, spoiling the earth, the rivers and the fresh-water lakes.
But let's leave all that behind and walk along a narrow path, up the hill where there is a little stream which in a few weeks will be dry. You and a friend are walking along the path, talking now and then, looking at all the various colours of green. And as you go along up the path, just managing to walk along together side by side, you happen to pick up something ravishingly beautiful, sparkling, a jewel of extraordinary antiquity and beauty. You are so astonished to find it on this path of so many animals which only a few people have trodden. You look at it with great astonishment. It is so subtly made, so intricate that no jeweller's hand can ever have made it. You hold it for some time, amazed and silent. Then you put it very carefully in your inside pocket, button it, and are almost frightened that you might lose it or that it might lose its sparkling, shining beauty. And you put your hand outside the pocket that holds it. The other sees you doing this and sees that your face and your eyes have undergone a remarkable change. There is a kind of ecstasy, a speechless wonder, a breathless excitement.

When the man asks: 'What is it that you have found and are so extraordinarily elated by?' you reply in a very soft, gentle voice that you picked up Truth. You don't want to talk about it, you are rather shy; the very talking might destroy it. And the man who is walking beside you is slightly annoyed that you are not communicating with him freely, and he says that if you have found the truth, then let's go down into the valley and 'organize' it so that others will grasp it and perhaps it will help them. You don't reply, you are sorry that you ever told him about it.

( Spiritual ?) Institutions and organizations throughout the world have not helped man. There have been such institutions of many, many kinds from the most ancient of days, and they have not inwardly changed man. Institutions can never change man psychologically, deeply.
Thought is inventing all these, not only the democratic organizations or the totalitarian organizations; thought is also perceiving, realizing, that what it has created has not basically changed the structure, the nature of one's own self. The institutions, the organizations and all religions are put together by thought, by a cunning, clever, erudite thinking .

So thought, which is the outcome of knowledge, has not changed man and will never change him because knowledge is always limited and will always be limited. So again one asks: can thought become aware of itself, thought which has put together all our consciousness - action and reaction, the sensory response, the sensuality, the fears, the aspirations the pursuit of pleasure, all the agony of loneliness and the suffering which man has brought upon himself through wars, through his irresponsibility, through callous self-centredness? All that is the activity of thought, which has invented the limitless and the god who lives in the limitless. All that is the activity of time and thought.

When thought realizes itself, sees where knowledge is necessary in the physical world and realizes its own limitation, it then becomes quiet, silent. Only then is there a new instrument which is not put together by time or thought, totally unrelated to knowledge. This new instrument is the intelligence born of compassion. That perception brings a deep mutation in the very brain cells themselves, and its action is always the right action, clear, precise, without the shadow of the past and time.

(...)

Everything seems to have a 'sound' ( a vibration of its own ?) . That tree in the field, in its solitude, has that peculiar sound of being separate from all other trees. The great sequoias have their own deep lasting ancient sound. Silence has its own peculiar sound. And of course the endless daily chatter of human beings about their business, their politics and their technological advancements and so on, has its own sound. A really good book has its peculiar vibrations of sound. The vast emptiness also has its throbbing sound.

Our actions and reactions are so quick. There isn't a pause before the reaction takes place. A question is put and immediately, instantly, one tries to seek an answer, a solution to a problem. There is not a pause between the question and the answer. After all, we are the ebb and flow of life - the outward and the inward. We try to establish a relationship with the outward, thinking that the inward is something separate, something that is unconnected with the outer. But surely the movement of the outer is (reflecting ?) the flow of the inward. They are both the same, like the waters of the sea, this constant restless movement of the outer and the inner, the response to the challenge. This has been the way of life, a life of constant pain and pleasure.

We never seem to learn that it is one movement. The waters of the sea withdraw from the shore, then the same water comes in, lashing the shores, the cliffs. Because we have separated the external and the inner (life) , contradiction begins, the contradiction that breeds conflict and pain. Perhaps this may be one of the major causes of conflict, yet we never seem to learn to live without this contradiction. The outer and the inner are one, a unitary movement, not separate, but whole. One may perhaps intellectually comprehend it, accept it as a theoretical statement or intellectual concept, but when one lives with concepts one never learns. The concepts become static. You may change them but the very transformation of one concept to another is still static, is still fixed.

But to have the sensitivity of seeing that life is not a movement of two separate activities, the external and the inward, to perceive non-verbally this life as a whole movement is to learn (holistically ?) . Learning about it is not a matter of time, though, not a gradual process, for then time again becomes divisive. To see the truth of it in an instant, then it is there, this action and reaction, endlessly - this light and dark, the beauty and ugliness. That which is whole is free from the ebb and flow of life, of action and reaction. Beauty has no opposite.

(...) It was spring, and the sky was extraordinarily blue; there wasn't a cloud in it, and the sun was just warm, not too hot. It felt nice. And the leaves were shining and a sparkle was in the air. It was really a most extraordinarily beautiful morning. The high mountain was there, impenetrable, and the hills below were green and lovely. And as you walked along quietly, without much thought, you saw a dead leaf, yellow and bright red, a leaf from the autumn. How beautiful that leaf was, so simple in its death, so lively, full of the beauty and vitality of the whole tree and the summer.

Why do human beings die so miserably, so unhappily, with a disease, old age, senility, the body shrunk, ugly? Why can't they die as naturally and as beautifully as this leaf? What is wrong with us? In spite of all the doctors, medicines and hospitals, we don't seem able to die with dignity, simplicity, and with a smile.
Once, walking along a lane, one heard behind one a chant, melodious, rhythmic, with the ancient strength of Sanskrit. One stopped and looked round. An eldest son, naked to his waist, was carrying a terracotta pot with a fire burning in it. He was holding it in another vessel and behind him were two men carrying his dead father, covered with a white cloth, and they were all chanting. One knew what that chant was, one almost joined in. They went past and one followed them. They were going down the road chanting, and the eldest son was in tears. They carried the father to the beach where they had already collected a great pile of wood and they laid the body on top of that heap of wood and set it on fire. It was all so natural, so extraordinarily simple: there were no flowers, there was no hearse, there were no black carriages with black horses. It was all very quiet and utterly dignified.

As you teach children mathematics, writing, reading and all the business of acquiring knowledge, they should also be taught the great dignity of death, not as a morbid thing that one has to face eventually, but as something of daily life - the daily life of looking at the blue sky and the grasshopper on a leaf. If you see the nature of death, you can explain it to them gently and make them feel that the living and the dying are one - not at the end of one's life after fifty, sixty or ninety years, but that death is like that leaf. Look at the old men and women, how unhappy and how ugly they look. Is it because they have not really understood either the living or the dying? They have used life, they waste away their life with incessant conflict which only exercises and gives strength to the self, the 'me', the ego.

We spend our days in such varieties of conflict and unhappiness, with some joy and pleasure and work, work, work. And at the end of one's life one faces that thing called death and is frightened of it. One thinks it can always be understood, felt deeply. The child with his curiosity can be helped to understand that death is not merely the wasting of the body through disease, old age and some unexpected accident, but that the ending of every day is also the ending of oneself every day.

To grasp this whole movement of life requires intelligence, not the intelligence of thought, or books, or knowledge, but the intelligence of love and compassion with its sensitivity. One is very certain that if the educator understands the significance of death and the dignity of it, the extraordinary simplicity of dying then he may be able to convey to the student, to the child, that dying, the ending, is not something to be frightened of, for it is part of one's whole life, so that as the student, the child, grows up he will never be frightened of the ending.

And one would like to help in education to bring death into some kind of reality, actuality, not of someone else dying but of each one of us, however old or young, having inevitably to face that thing. It is not a sad affair of tears, of loneliness, of separation.
As one looked at that dead leaf with all its beauty and colour, maybe one would very deeply comprehend what one's own death must be, not at the very end but at the very beginning. Death isn't some horrific thing, something to be avoided, something to be postponed, but rather something to be with day in and day out. And out of that comes an extraordinary sense of immensity.

( Here are brief excerpts from Mrs Pupul Jayakar "K Biography", describing K's early dialogues )

" (...) It was during the early months (of 1948) in Bombay that 'dialogue' as a major instrument of exploration into Krishnaji’s teaching was born. Through the years it would flower in subtlety and insight. In the earlier years the group discussions were ( structured) in the form of 'question and answer', but the insightful probing into the hidden depths of the mind were absent.

The first discussions were confused and dispersed. A question was asked of K. His fluid (& transparent ?) mind took in the question and turned it back, challenging the questioner and the group to seek the answer within the field of their own self-knowing. K spoke slowly, with many pauses, bending forward as if each response was ( uttered) for the first time. He listened to his own responses with the same openness and receptivity as he did to the voice of the questioner.

The energy of Krishnaji’s response was met by struggling minds, battling with confusion, conditioned to respond from memory and to seek solution from a higher authority, inner or outer, spiritual or temporal. We found Krishnaji’s way difficult to comprehend. We strained to understand the words of Krishnaji and to apply them to our own minds. We attempted to reach beyond his words with the only instruments of enquiry available — memory and thought. But... these were the very instruments that were being challenged, and there was a sense of bewilderment. The (experiential hints & ) 'clues' were missing and the participant's mind, clinging to words, was a battlefield of despair and conflict.

Krishnaji spoke over and over again of the seeing of “what is,” the real, and not “what should be” as well as of the need for man to transform himself ( inwardly) before he could transform ( the outward) society, for he 'is' society. He spoke of being free of ( the attachment to one's psychological ?) memory which distorts and hindersthe ( holistic) understanding of the present, a ( very personal) memory that is (identifying itself as) self-consciousness (engaged in a constant effort of) “being” and “becoming.” In these early discussions Krishnaji refused to give an immediate answer, an easy solution. He demanded a seeing and penetration into the question itself, by seeing the 'ground' from which the question and answer arose. To ( meditatively ?) pause & ponder, was allowing the awakening of a “listening” that annihilates the illusion of outer and inner, awakening a ( holistically integrated ) state ( of mind) that can deal ( directly ?) with the question.

The discussions proceeded ( hopelessly ?) slowly. K moved from ( a thread of ?) thought to another, pushing, blocking, retreating, advancing. In the very movement of this step-by-step inward observation the thought process slowed down until, in a (lucky ?) instant, the inner perceptions of the participants awoke, and there was direct contact of perception with mind and its flux. The first “seeing” of mind was the starting point of enquiry. It was the cue that unraveled and revealed and, in the very revealing, illumined the question and the answer.

The people who investigated with K were discovering the structure and nature of ( their own) consciousness and the immense strength and resilience of the thinking process. To observe the movement of the mind caught in thought and to “see” its own inadequacy had in it the excitement and awe of discovery, of traveling in an uncharted terrain.
A new ( experiential) methodology born of seeing and listening was unfolding, new perceptions were awakening. The energy generated by the question was not permitted to dissipate in the reflexive answers and responses that arose from the store house of memory.

As K was challenging the minds of the participants, every cell in his body and mind was awake. His relentless questioning opened up the (self-locked doors of the listener's ) psyche; in K’s very challenging there arose rare insights into the human condition.
Like a (radar?) antenna, K’s mind reached out to sense the minds of the participants. When the dialogue got bogged down or the group entered into sterile dialectics and the discussion was barren, K’s mind would take a 'leap' (of insight ?) , carrying the discussion out of its rut. He brought into the discussion the nature of love, death, fear and sorrow; feelings and situations that were of the skin and heart; and suddenly the discussion would come in direct, tactile contact with the problem.

The breakthrough in these discussions began one morning in 1948 when Rao Sahib Patwardhan said that the ideals and beliefs that had carried him through the ( pre-war) political struggle had crumbled under him. He was faced with a 'blank wall' and felt that the time had come for him to reexamine his fundamental beliefs. Then he turned to Krishnaji and asked him :

RS : What do you mean by "creative thinking"?

K : Do you want to go into it now and see whether you cannot experience (directly ?) this state of 'creative thinking' ? For starters, how does one think?

RS : A ( real life) problem arises, and to meet the problem thoughts arise.

K: How do you try to solve a problem?

RS : By trying to find out an answer.

K : But surely, if you cannot see the whole content of the problem—how can then your answer be the right one?

RS : If I do not find the right answer the first time, I will try other ways of finding it...

K: Whatever way 'you' (the time-bound 'thinker' ?) try to find an answer it will only be a partial answer, and one wants a complete answer. How then will you find a complete answer?

RS : If I cannot see the problem completely, I obviously cannot find the right answer...

K: So you are no longer looking for an answer ?

RS : No (or...not really ?)

K : What is the state of your mind when it is no longer looking for an answer (within the field of the known) ? What can you do, Sirs (& Ladies ?) when you are faced with a 'blank wall' (perceptive condition) ? You can’t just leave it, you have to do something !

PJ : Drop ( the psychological) memory ?

K: What is the state of your mind when you 'drop' this memory?

PJ : My mind is now 'still' and so flexible, so swift and alive.

K: Go slowly, don’t trample ( on) it. It ( the state of feedom from psychological memory?) is so delicate, don’t strangle it. To be still after tilling and sowing, is to give birth to Creation.

(PJ's added comment :) : Years later I said to Krishnaji, “Having a personal discussion with you, one is exposed to an ( inner state of ) no-thingness. It is like facing something totally empty. There is nothing except ‘what is’ as it is reflected in oneself. You throw back on the person exactly ‘what is.’ K replied, “That is what Aldous used to say. But when K throws back, it is yours.”

Continuing the selected excerpts from K's Journal, cca 1983)

(...) There is a scent in the air of many flowers and the sky is blue, dotted with passing clouds. The beauty of such a morning is timeless. It isn't this morning: it is the morning of the whole world.
You sit quietly far from everything and look at the blue sky, feel the whole earth, the purity and the loveliness of everything that lives and moves on this earth - except man of course.
Man is... what he is now after many thousands of centuries of time. And he will go on perhaps in the same manner; what he is now is what he will be tomorrow and a thousand tomorrows. Time, evolution, has brought him to what he is now. The future is what he is unless, of course, there is a deep abiding mutation of his whole psyche.

Time has become extraordinarily important to man, to all of us - man inwardly pins his ( personal) hopes on time. One can understand that time is necessary to travel, to reach a port, to reach land after a long flight to the desired place. The 'desired place' is (thought's projection in ?) the future. ( Thinking in terms of) time is necessary in that realm of material achieving, gaining, becoming proficient in some profession, in a career that demands training. But is the (mentality of) time ( necessary) in the 'psychological' (inner) world - that is, to change 'that which is' to something totally different? Is it not one of the divisive concepts of man that has brought about conflict? After all, the ideologies, the left, right or centre, are put together by study, by the activity of thought, weighing, judging, and coming to a conclusion, and so shutting the door on all further enquiry. Ideologies have existed perhaps as long as man can remember. They are like belief or faith that separate man from man. And this separation comes about through (thought's usage of ? ) time.

So the question is: is there a possibility of bringing about a change in 'what is', the (inward) actuality, by totally disregarding the movement of time? Is there a possibility of changing (man's collective heritage of ?) violence without time being involved at all - but to radically end it without ( introducing the) time (factor ) ?

Q: Why do you say, sir, that time is unnecessary for change?

K: Let us together find out what is the truth of the matter: what does (the psychological ) change imply? We live ( inwardly) in disorder, confused, uncertain, seeking reward and avoiding punishment. We want to be secure, yet everything we do seems to bring about insecurity. The constant urge to move away from "what is" brings about disorder in our daily life.

Q: That I understand, that ( inwardly we try to) 'escape' from (dealing directly with) "what is". We never consider carefully, diligently, what is going on, what is happening now in each one of us. If we have a great deal of ( existential) pain, psychologically, inwardly, we never look at it carefully. We want immediately to erase it, to find some consolation. This I understand. I am getting a glimmer of what you are saying. I am beginning to feel the implication of change without time

K: So let us ask the question: is there a timeless perception of "that
which is (going on inwardly or outwardly ?) "? That is, to look at, to observe "what is" without the ( memories of the ) past - to look at that feeling, at that reaction, which we call 'envy' and observe this feeling without the 'actor', the ( inward) 'actor' who is ( impersonating ?) all the remembrance of things that have happened before. ( Thought's self- projected ?) time is intricate and subtle. And really to understand the nature and the depth of ( the psychological) time one has to meditate upon whether this 'time' has a stop, whether in the field of the psyche 'time' can ever come to an end? When you look at the heavens, the planets and the unimaginable number of stars, can that universe be understood by the time-bound quality of the mind? Is time necessary to understand the whole movement of the cosmos and of the human beings, or to see instantly that which is always true?

One should just observe the whole (inner) movement of time, which is really the ( background activity ?) of thought. Thought and time are not two different things, two different movements, actions. Time is thought and thought is time. So, to put it differently: is there an actual ending of thought? That is, the ending of ( living inwardly in the field of) knowledge? We are asking whether the (self-centred) accumulative process of knowledge, gathering more and more information, pursuing more and more the intricacies of existence, can end? Can thought, which ( inwardly) is after all this self-centred activity of selfishness, can all that come to an end?

When 'death' comes there is the ending of all that. But we are not talking about the final ending, but whether we can actually perceive that thought, time, have an ending. ( One's 'psychological' ?) knowledge is the result of accumulation through time of various (personal & collective ) experiences, the recording of various incidents, happenings, which are naturally stored in the brain, this ( innate ) 'recording' is the essence of time. Can we ( figure ) out where the ( factual) recording is necessary, and whether psychological recording is necessary at all? It is not dividing the the necessary knowledge and skill, but beginning to understand the nature of recording, why human beings record and from that recording react and act. ( EG:) When one is insulted or psychologically hurt by a word, by a gesture, by an action, why should that (psychological) hurt be recorded? Is it possible not to record the flattery or the insult so that the ( inward free space of the ?) psyche is never cluttered up, so that it has vast space, and the (time-bound ) 'psyche' that we are conscious of as the "me", which again is put together by thought and time, comes to an end?

We are always afraid of something that we have never seen, perceived - of something not experienceable . You can't experience ( the timeless dimension of) Truth (because) the 'experiencer' (entity) is the result of time, accumulated memory, knowledge and so on.
As we said at the beginning, ( the 'live' observation of the psychological process of ) time demands quick, watchful, attentive understanding. In our daily life can one live without time, inwardly? The roots of Heaven are not in time and thought.

Q: Sir, your various statements about time and thought seem now, while I am listening to you, so simple, so clear, and perhaps for a second or two there is the ending and stopping of time. But when I go back to my ordinary routine, the weariness and the boredom of it all, I will (very likely ?) pick up the old threads. It seems so extraordinarily difficult to 'let go' these ( time binding) threads ( of self-centred thinking ?) and look ( holistically) at the way of time. I am beginning to understand that there is a possibility of (the newly awakened brain for ) 'not recording'. I realize that I ( the thoughtful thinker ?) 'am' the record. One can see that fairly easily and perhaps put all that aside. But the 'ending of thought' and of the intricacies of ( its self-projected ) time need a great deal of ( meditation homework in terms non-dualistic) observation, a great deal of investigation. But who is there to investigate, if the investigator himself is the result of time? You are really saying; just give total attention to the ordinary things of life and there discover the possibility of ending ( the selfsustained process of ?) 'time and thought'. Thank you indeed for this very interesting ('imaginary' ?) talk.

(...) There is a cabin high among the hills, somewhat isolated among those gigantic sequoia trees. Their bark is rose-coloured and resists fire. They are really quite gigantic in size, their trunks are enormous and if you sit very still under them in the morning light, with the sun among the tree tops, all the (local) squirrels will come up quite close to you. They are very inquisitive like the blue-jays, for there are blue jays too, always ready to scold you, asking why you are there, telling you that you are disturbing their area and should go away as quickly as possible. But if you remain quiet, watching, looking at the beauty of the sunlight among the leaves in the still air, then they will leave you alone, accept you as the squirrels do.

It was not the (camping) season, so the cabins were empty and you were alone, and at night it was so silent. And occasionally the bears would come and you could hear their heavy bodies against the cabin. It could have been quite a savage place, for modern civilization had not quite destroyed it. You have to climb from the plains, up and up and up, until you reach this sequoia forest. And in this cabin, surrounded by these old ageless trees, you were alone day after day, watching, taking long walks, hardly meeting anyone. From such a height you could see the plains, sunlit, busy; you could see the cars like small insects chasing one another. And up here only the real insects were busy about their day. There were a great many ants. The red ones crawled over your legs but they never seemed to pay much attention to you.

From this cabin you fed the squirrels. There was one particular squirrel that would come every morning and you had a bag of peanuts and you would give them to it one by one: it would stuff it in its mouth, cross over the window-sill and come to the table with its bushy tail curled up, almost touching its head. It would take many of these shelled peanuts, or sometimes even the unshelled ones, and jump back across the window-sill down to the veranda and along the open space into a dead tree with a hollow in it which was its home. It would come perhaps for an hour or more wanting these peanuts, back and forth, back and forth. And it was quite tame by then, you could stroke it, it was so soft, so gentle, it looked with eyes of surprise and then friendship. It knew you wouldn't hurt it. One day, closing all the windows when it was inside and the bag of peanuts was on the table, it took the usual mouthful and then went to the windows and the door, which were all closed, and realized it was a prisoner. It came hopping along to the table, jumped on to it, looked at one and began to scold. After all, you couldn't keep that lively beautiful thing as a prisoner, so you opened the windows. It jumped down to the floor, climbed over the window-sill, went back to the dead trunk and came right back asking for more. From then on we were really great friends. After it had stuffed that hole full of peanuts, probably for the winter, it would go along up the trunks of the trees chasing other squirrels and would always come back to its dead trunk. Then sometimes of an evening it would come to the window-sill and sit there and would chatter, looking at me, telling me something of the day's work, and as it grew darker it said goodnight and jumped back to its home in the hole in the dead old tree. And the next morning early it would be there on the window-sill calling, chattering, and the day would begin.

Every animal in that forest, every little thing, was doing the same - gathering food, chasing others in fun and in anger, and the big animals like the deer were curious and looked at you. And as you climbed to a moderate height and went along a rocky path, you turned and there was a big bear, black with four cubs, as large as large cats. It pushed them up a tree, the four of them, and they climbed up to safety, and then the mother turned round and looked at me. Strangely we weren't afraid. We looked at each other for perhaps two or three seconds or more and then you turned your back and went down the same path. Only then, when you were safe in your cabin, did you realize how dangerous had been this encounter with a mother bear with four cubs.

Life is an endless process of becoming and ending. This great country was still unsophisticated in those days; it was not so terribly advanced technologically and there was not too much vulgarity, as there is now. Sitting on the steps of that cabin you watched and everything was active - the trees, the ants, the rabbits, the deer, the bear and the squirrel. Life is action. Life is a series of continuous, endless action until you die. Action born of desire is distorted, is limited, and this limited action must invariably, do what you will, bring about endless conflict. Anything that is limited must in its very nature breed many problems, crises. It is like a man, like a human being, who is all the time thinking about himself, his problems, his experiences, his joys and pleasures, his business affairs - completely self-centred. The activity of such a person is naturally very limited. One never realizes the limitation of this self-centredness. They call it sel-fulfilment, expressing oneself, achieving success, the pursuit of pleasure and becoming something inwardly, the urge, the desire to be.

Now the blue-jay has come back; it is there after its morning meal, scolding to be noticed. And you threw it a few peanuts. It scolded first, then hopped down to the ground, caught a few of them in its beak, flew back on to the branch, flew off, came back scolding. And it too, day by day, became gradually tame. It came quite close with bright eyes, its tail up, the blue shining with such brightness and clarity - a blue that no painter can catch. And it scolded other birds. Probably that was its domain and it didn't want any intruders. But there are always intruders. Other birds soon came. They all seemed to like raisins and peanuts. The whole activity of existence was there.
The sun now was high in the heaven and there were very few shadows, but towards the evening there will be long shadows, shapely, sculptured, dark with a smile.

Is there an action not ( born) of desire? If we ask such a question, one can probe to find an action which is of intelligence. The action of desire is not intelligent; it leads to all kinds of problems and issues. Is there an action of intelligence? When one actually sees, not theoretically nor verbally, that the action of desire is corrupt, distorted, the very perception is the beginning of that intelligence from which action is totally different. That is, to see the false as the false, the truth in the false, and truth as truth. Such perception is that quality of intelligence which is neither yours nor mine, which then acts. That action has no distortion, no remorse. It doesn't leave a mark, a footprint on the sands of time. That intelligence cannot be unless there is great compassion, love. There cannot be compassion if the activities of thought are anchored in any one particular ideology or faith, or attached to a symbol or to a person. There must be (inward) freedom to be compassionate. And where there is that flame, that very flame is the movement of intelligence.

Continuing the selected excerpts from K's Journal (1983) with a rather exhaustive meditation on the inward significance of living & dying

Q: On such a beautiful morning I would really like to understand, not merely intellectually or descriptively, why, with so many others, I dread the ending of life ? I was discussing this fact with a friend of mine whose wife has recently died. He was a rather lonely man and he was inclined not only to live in his memories but also to find out for himself through seances & mediums whether his wife, whom he really loved, had just evaporated into thin air, or was there still a continuity of her in another dimension, in another world than this? Strangely enough he found that at one of these seances the medium mentioned his name and said that she had a message from his wife. And the message was something only known to her and to him.
I would like to have a dialogue with you, if I may, about what is the meaning of it all - this whole business of living and dying. I have come a long way so perhaps you would be good enough to take time and have the quiet patience to talk over this subject with me.'

K: Doubt is a precious thing. It cleanses, purifies the mind. The very questioning, the very fact that the seed of doubt is in one, helps to clarify our investigation. Not only doubting what all the others have said, including the Asiatic world's acceptance that there is ( a psychic ) continuity, but in doubting there is a certain freedom ( from the known) which is necessary for our enquiry.
So, if one is actually, deeply concerned to find out the truth of the matter (living and dying is a very complex problem, an issue that requires a very careful examination) where should we begin? With life or with death? With living or with the ending of that which we call living?

Q: I think we ought to begin with the beginning of existence, man's existence, with one's existence as a human being. From the beginning, like every other child in the world, poor or rich, there was a well developed psyche, the self-centred activity. It is strange, as you look back upon it, that it begins from very early childhood, that possessive continuity of me as J. Smith. He went through school, expanding, aggressive, arrogant, bored, then into college and university. And as my father was in a good business I went into his Company. I reached the top, and on the death of my wife and children, I began this (spiritual) enquiry. As happens to all human beings, it was a shock, a pain - the loss of the three, the memories associated with them. And when the shock of it was over I began to enquire, to read, to ask, to travel in different parts of the world, talking the matter over with some of the spiritual leaders, the gurus. I read a great deal but I was never satisfied. I haven't become morbid but I want to know the truth of it all, if there is such a thing as truth about living and dying.

K: How is the 'psyche', the ( temporal) self, the I, put together? How has this thing come into being, from which arises the concept of the individual, the "me", separate from all others? How is this momentum set going - this momentum, this sense of the 'I', of the 'self'? We will use the word "self" to include the person, the name, the form, the characteristics, the ego. How is this 'self' born? Does the self come into being with certain characteristics transmitted from the parents? Is the self merely a series of reactions? Is the self merely the continuity of centuries of tradition? Is the self put together by circumstances, through accidents, happenings? Is the self the result of evolution - evolution being the gradual process of time, emphasizing, giving importance to the self? Or, as some maintain, especially the religious world, does the outward shell of the self really contain within itself the soul and the ancient concept of the Hindus, of the Buddhists? Does the self come into being through the society which man has created, which gives strength to the formula that you are separate from the rest of humanity? All these have certain truths in them, certain facts, and all these constitute the self. So would you say that wherever there is any kind of possession there must be the beginning of the ( time-bound ?) self. And from this instinct, this reaction, the self gradually increases in strength, in vitality, and becomes well-established. The possession of a house, the possession of land, the possession of knowledge, the possession of certain capacities - all this is the movement of the self. And this movement gives the feeling of separateness as the 'individual'.

Now; is the 'you', the 'self', separate from the rest of mankind? Just because you have a separate name, a separate physical organism, certain tendencies different from another's,and perhaps a talent - does that make you an 'individual'? This idea that each one of us throughout the world is separate from another, is that an actuality? Would you consider yourself as a separate individual with a separate brain which is yours and nobody else's? Is your thinking individual at all? Or is there only thinking, which is shared by all humanity, whether you are the most scientifically talented person or the most ignorant, primitive? All this ( large spectrum of existential ?) questions and more arise when we are considering the death of a human being. So would in examining all this logically, sanely, reasonably, consider yourself to be an ( isolated) individual? This is an important question in the context of ( finding the truth about) the meaning of death.

Q: I see what you are driving at: that I have reduced a vast complex living of the rest of mankind to a very small, petty little affair. Are you saying in effect that I am not an individual at all? My thinking is not mine? And my brain is not mine, separate from others? Is this what you are hinting at? Is this what you are maintaining? Is this your conclusion?'

K: If one may point out, the word "conclusion" isn't justified. To conclude means to shut down, to end. We are just pointing out that you, sir, 'are' the rest of humanity, psychologically, deeply. Your ( self-centred) reactions are shared by all humanity. Your brain is not yours, it has evolved through centuries of time. So we are questioning deeply whether there is an 'individual' ( a separated consciousness) at all. We are ( deep down inwardly) the whole of humanity; we are the rest of mankind. This (inward realisation) is necessary, when we are going to talk over together the meaning of death.

Q: I am not certain why I have always considered myself to be separate from you or from somebody else. What you say seems to be true but I must think it over, I must have a little time to assimilate all that you have said so far.

K: Time is the enemy of perception. If you are going to think over what we have talked about so far, it is going to take time. And time is a brand new factor in the perception of that which is true.

Q: If I understand you clearly, you are pointing out that tradition, long conditioned thinking, can bring about a ( mental) fixation - accepting the idea that we are separate individuals; and as I thought more about it I really do grasp what is involved in that. But I really came to find out (the whole truth ) about death, and I see the importance of beginning with one's comprehension of oneself, and through ( unlocking ?) the 'door of the self' come to the question of what is death.

K: The beauty of a sunset, if you are watching it sensitively, is ( given to be) shared by all human beings. And ( similarly) our consciousness ( in which is included our reactions and actions, our ideas and concepts and patterns, systems of belief, ideologies, fears, pleasures, faith, the worship of something which we have projected, our sorrows, our griefs and pain ) is also shared by all human beings. When we suffer and make it into a personal affair, we shut out all the suffering of mankind. So our consciousness is not actually yours or mine; it is the consciousness of man, evolved, grown, accumulated through many, many centuries. And this consciousness is (focussing itself as) the 'self', as the "me", the I, the ego, the personality and so on. I think it is necessary to understand this ( holistic aspect) very deeply, as blood is the natural process of all human beings. When one realizes ( the inward truth of) this, our responsibility ( for the total consciousness of the world ?) becomes extraordinarily important. We are responsible for everything that is happening in the world as long as the ( self-centred) content of our consciousness continues. As long as fear, nationalities, the urge for success - as long as all that exists we are part of the human movement.

This point is utterly important to understand that the 'self' (-identified consciousness) is put together by thought. Thought is not, as we have said, yours or mine; thinking is not individual thinking. Thinking is shared by all human beings. And when one has really deeply seen the significance of this, then I think we can ( finally ?) understand the nature of what it means to die.
As a boy you must have followed a small stream gurgling along a narrow little valley, the waters running faster and faster, and have thrown something, such as a piece of stick, into the stream and followed it, down a slope, over a little mound, through a little crevasse - followed it until it went over the waterfall and disappeared. This 'disappearance' is ( the apparent ending of) our (temporal) life. So leaving all that ( poetical metaphor) aside, what is the meaning of death? What to you, sir, does death mean?'

Q: To me it means that all I have been, all that I am, suddenly comes to an end through some disease, accident or old age. Of course I have read about the belief in reincarnation, but as far as I can understand, death means the ending of a living thing; the death of a tree, the death of a fish, death of a spider, death of my wife and children, a sudden cutting off, a sudden ending of that which has been living with all its memories, ideas, pain, anxiety, joys, pleasures, seeing the sunset together - all that has come to an end. And the remembrance of all that, not only brings tears but also the realization of one's own inadequacy, one's own loneliness. I think we generally mean that; death means that. It is to me the ending.

K: But Sir, from the moment one is born until one dies, what is the way we live -and it is up to you, if your life is one constant struggle? Conflict, pain, joy, pleasure, anxiety, loneliness, depression, and working, working, working, labouring for others or for oneself; being self-centred and perhaps occasionally generous, envious, angry, trying to suppress the anger, letting that anger go rampant, and so on. This is what we call 'living' - living with lies, illusions and hatred, the weariness of it all, the boredom, the inanities: this is our life. Not only yours but the life of all human beings on this earth, hoping to escape from it all. This process (of self-centred existence) has gone on from the ancient of days until now - labour, strife, pain, uncertainty, confusion, and ( occasional) joy and laughter.
The ending of all this ( self-centred continuity) is called death. Death puts an end to all our attachments, however superficial or however deep. The attachment of the monk, the sannyasi, the attachment of the housewife, the attachment to one's family, every form of attachment must end with death.

There are several ( transcendental ?) problems involved in this: one, the question of immortality. Is there such a thing as immortality? That is, that ( inward spiritual essence) which is not mortal. The immortal (part of the human psyche) is that which is beyond time and is totally unaware of this ending. Is the 'self-centred consciousness ?) the "me", immortal? Or does it know death? The self can never become immortal. The "me", the I, with all its qualities is put together through time, which is thought; that ( temporal) 'self' can never be immortal.

Secondly (this is a little bit more complex): is it possible to live ( inwardly ) with death? Why have we divided death from living? Death is part of our life, it is part of our existence? The living and the dying are inseparable. The ( thought sustained ) envy, the anger, the sorrow, the loneliness, and the pleasure that one has, which we call 'living', and this ( unknown ?) thing called death - why separate them? Why keep them miles apart? This is a (perrenial) problem which we should understand and see the inward implications.

Another question involved is the issue of ( psychological) time - the ( thought-projected) time that separates the living from the ending. Where there is ( a mentality of ) separation, time is involved. Sustaining this ( illusory ) division between that which is called 'death' and that which is called 'life', is to me a major factor.
It is time that has put the self together and it is thought that sustains the ego, the self. This separation, this division, is brought about by thought and time, as living and dying. And to live a life with death means a profound change in our whole outlook on existence. To end attachment without time and motive, that is dying while living. Where there really is love there is no division of time, thought and all the complexities of life, all the misery and confusion, the uncertainties, jealousies, anxieties involved.

One has ( as meditation homework ?) to give a great deal of attention to time and thought. Time as the past, modified and continuing as the future is (creating ) a 'continuum' and thought (subliminally ?) clings to this. It clings to something which it has itself created, put together.

Another question is: as long as human beings represent the entire humanity - you 'are' the entire humanity, what happens when you die? When you or another live, you are (inwardly) the manifestation of that vast stream of (time-bound collective) consciousness, of behaviour and so on: you 'are' of that stream. This (collective) stream ( of self-interest) has ( seriously) conditioned the human brain, and as long as we remain conditioned by greed, envy, fear, pleasure, joy and all the rest of it, we are part of this stream.
Your ( physical) organism may end but (inwardly) you are of that stream, as you are (even now) while living, that stream itself. That stream ( of collective thought & time ?)is changing, slow at times, fast at others, deep and shallow, narrowed by both sides of the bank and breaking through the narrowness into a vast volume of water - and as long as you are ( part of) of that stream there is no (authentic inward) freedom from the confusion and the misery of all the ( collective & personal) accumulated memories and attachments. **It is only when there is the 'ending' of that stream, the ending of it, only then is there quite a different dimension of the human consciousness . That dimension cannot be measured by words. This (inward) ending is the whole significance of dying and living. So leaving all that aside, what is the meaning of death? What to you, sir, does death mean?'
To me it means that all I have been, all that I am, suddenly comes to an end through some disease, accident or old age. Of course I have read and talked to Asiatics, to Indians, for whom there is a belief in reincarnation. I don't know whether this is true or not, but as far as I can understand, death means the ending of a living thing; the death of a tree, the death of a fish, death of a spider, death of my wife and children, a sudden cutting off, a sudden ending of that which has been living with all its memories, ideas, pain, anxiety, joys, pleasures, seeing the sunset together - all that has come to an end. And the remembrance of all that, not only brings tears but also the realization of one's own inadequacy, one's own loneliness. And the idea of separation from one's wife and children, from the things that one has worked for, cherished, remembered, held on to, the attachments and the pain of attachment - all that and more ceases suddenly. I think we generally mean that; death means that. It is to me the ending.

Sir, what is living? From the moment one is born until one dies, what is living? It is very important to understand the way we live - why we live this way after so many centuries. It is up to you, is it not, sir, if it is one constant struggle? Conflict, pain, joy, pleasure, anxiety, loneliness, depression, and working, working, working, labouring for others or for oneself; being self-centred and perhaps occasionally generous, envious, angry, trying to suppress the anger, letting that anger go rampant, and so on. This is what we call living - tears, laughter, sorrow, and the worship of something that we have invented; living with lies, illusions and hatred, the weariness of it all, the boredom, the inanities: this is our life. Not only yours but the life of all human beings on this earth, hoping to escape from it all. This process of worship, agony, fear has gone on from the ancient of days until now - labour, strife, pain, uncertainty, confusion, and joy and laughter. All this is part of our existence.
`The ending of all this is called death. Death puts an end to all our attachments, however superficial or however deep. The attachment of the monk, the sannyasi, the attachment of the housewife, the attachment to one's family, every form of attachment must end with death.

There are several problems involved in this: one, the question of immortality. Is there such a thing as immortality? That is, that which is not mortal, for mortal implies that which knows death. The immortal is that which is beyond time and is totally unaware of this ending. Is the self, the "me", immortal? Or does it know death? The self can never become immortal. The "me", the I, with all its qualities is put together through time, which is thought; that self can never be immortal. One can invent an idea of immortality, an image, a god, a picture and hold to that and derive comfort from it, but that is not immortality.`Secondly (this is a little bit more complex): is it possible to live with death? Not morbidly, not in any form of self-destructiveness. Why have we divided death from living? Death is part of our life, it is part of our existence - the dying and the living, and the living and dying. They are inseparable. The envy, the anger, the sorrow, the loneliness, and the pleasure that one has, which we call living, and this thing called death - why separate them? Why keep them miles apart? Yes, miles of time apart. We accept the death of an old man. It is natural. But when a young person dies through some accident or disease, we revolt against it. We say that it is unfair, it shouldn't be. So we are always separating life and death. This is a problem which we should question, understand - or not treat as a problem, but look at, see the inward implications of, not deceptively.

Another question is the issue of time - the time involved in living, learning, accumulating, acting, doing, and the ending of me as we know it; the time that separates the living from the ending. Where there is separation, division, from here to there, from "what is" to "what should be", time is involved. Sustaining this division between that which is called death and that which is called life, is to me a major factor.
When there is this division, this separation there is fear. Then there is the effort of overcoming that fear and the search for comfort, satisfaction, for a sense of continuity. (We are talking about the psychological world not the physical world or the technical world.) It is time that has put the self together and it is thought that sustains the ego, the self. If only one could really grasp the significance of time and division, the separation, psychologically, of man against man, race against race, one type of culture against another. This separation, this division, is brought about by thought and time, as living and dying. And to live a life with death means a profound change in our whole outlook on existence. To end attachment without time and motive, that is dying while living.
`Love has no time. It is not my love opposed to your love. Love is never personal; one may love another but when that love is limited, narrowed down to one person, then it ceases to be love. Where there really is love there is no division of time, thought and all the complexities of life, all the misery and confusion, the uncertainties, jealousies, anxieties involved. One has to give a great deal of attention to time and thought. Not that one must live only in the present, which would be utterly meaningless. Time is the past, modified and continuing as the future. It's a continuum and thought holds on, clings to this. It clings to something which it has itself created, put together.

Another question is: as long as human beings represent the entire humanity - you are the entire humanity, not representing it, just as you are the world and the world is you - what happens when you die? When you or another die, you and the other are the manifestation of that vast stream of human action and reaction, the stream of consciousness, of behaviour and so on: you are of that stream. That stream has conditioned the human mind, the human brain, and as long as we remain conditioned by greed, envy, fear, pleasure, joy and all the rest of it, we are part of this stream. Your organism may end but you are of that stream, as you are, while living, that stream itself. That stream, changing, slow at times, fast at others, deep and shallow, narrowed by both sides of the bank and breaking through the narrowness into a vast volume of water - as long as you are of that stream there is no freedom. There is no freedom from time, from the confusion and the misery of all the accumulated memories and attachments. It is only when there is the ending of that stream, the ending, not you stepping out of it and becoming something else, but the ending of it, only then is there quite a different dimension. That dimension cannot be measured by words. The ending without a motive is the whole significance of dying and living. The roots of heaven are in living and dying.

( ...) Some time ago, staying with a friend high in the (Himalayan ) hills, the host suggested that we get the car and go into the forest to see a tiger if we could. So towards evening we got into an open car with a chauffeur driving us and went deep into the forest for several miles. It was getting quite dark and the headlights were on, and as we turned round, there it was sitting right in the middle of the road waiting to receive us. It was a very large animal, beautifully marked, and its eyes, caught by the headlights, were bright, scintillating. It came growling towards the car, and as it passed just a few inches from the hand that was stretched out, the host said, 'Don't touch it, it is too dangerous, be quick for it is faster than your hand.' But you could feel the energy of that animal, its vitality; it was a great dynamo of energy. And as it passed by one felt an enormous attraction towards it. And it disappeared into the woods.

(...) Probably love has totally disappeared from this world. Love implies generosity, care, not to hurt another, not to make another feel guilty, to be generous, courteous, and behave in such a manner that your words and thoughts are born out of compassion. Love is as real, as strong, as death. It is as still as the waters of the sea and as powerful as the sea; it is like the running waters of a rich river flowing endlessly, without a beginning or an end.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why man lives a fragmentary life; he never seems to love what he is doing - though perhaps a few people do. If one lived by the work one loves, it would be very different - one would understand the wholeness of life. We have broken up life into fragments: the business world, the artistic world, the scientific world, the political world and the religious world. We seem to think that they are all separate and should be kept separate. So we become hypocritical, doing something ugly, corrupt, in the business world and then coming home to live peacefully with our family; this breeds hypocrisy, a double standard of life.

Sitting on that rock, looking down into the valley, with a lizard beside you, you daren't move in case the lizard should be disturbed or frightened. And the lizard too is watching. And so the world goes on and all the sham and the shame of illusions will probably go on, the thousands of human problems getting more and more complex and intricate. Only the intelligence of love and compassion can solve all problems of life. That intelligence is the only instrument that can never become dull, useless.

(...) Everything seems to live ( exist ?) in its own order - the sea with its tides, the new moon and the setting of the full moon, the lovely spring and the warmth of summer. Even the earthquake of yesterday has its own order. Order is the very essence of the universe - the order of birth and death and so on. It is only man that seems to live in such disorder, confusion.

Talking to the visitor sitting on the veranda, with the red climbing rose and a young wisteria and the smell of the earth and the trees, it seemed such a pity to discuss about disorder. When you look around at those dark hills and the rocky mountain and hear the whisper of a stream which will soon be dry in summer, it all has such curious order that to discuss human disorder, human confusion and misery, seems so utterly out of place. But there he is, friendly, knowledgeable and probably given (addicted ?) to thought.

'If one may ask,' the visitor began, 'what to you is the most important thing in life? What to you is the most essential quality that man must cultivate?'

K: If you can 'cultivate' it then it is not the most essential thing. It must happen naturally, easily, without any self-centred motives. The most important thing for each human being, surely, is to live in order, in harmony with all the things around him - even with the noise of the great towns, without letting it affect or alter the course of his life, alter or distort the order in which he is living. Surely, sir, order is the most important thing in life, or, rather, one of the most important.

Q: Would this "order" be a quality of a brain that can act correctly, happily, precisely?'

K: Order isn't created by thought. Order isn't something that you follow day after day, practise, conform to. As the streams join the sea, so the River of ( Intelligent & Universal ?) Order, is endless. But that order cannot be if there is any kind of effort, any kind of struggle to achieve, or to put aside disorder and slip into a routine, into various well defined habits. All that is not order. Conflict is the very source of disorder, is the very cause.

Q: Everything struggles (to survive) , doesn't it? Those trees, they have struggled to exist, struggled to grow. The marvellous oak there behind this house, it has withstood storms, years of rain and hot sunshine, it has struggled to exist. Life is conflict, it is a turmoil, a storm. And you are saying, are you not, that Order is a state in which there is no conflict? It seems almost impossible, like talking in a strange language, something utterly foreign to one's own life, one's own way of thinking. Do you, if I am not impudent, live in this Order in which there is no conflict whatsoever?

K: Is it very important, sir, to find out if another (person) is living without effort, without conflict? Shouldn't you rather ask if you, as a human being, who live in disorder, can find out for yourself the many causes - or perhaps the main cause - of this disorder? Those flowers know neither 'order' nor 'disorder', they just 'exist'. Of course, if they were not watered, looked after, they would die, and dying also is ( part of ) their order. The hot sun will probably destroy them next month, and to them that is order.
It seems to be in the nature of the world: the big things live on little things, and the bigger live on the big. This is the cycle in the world of nature. And in that there is neither order nor disorder. But we know for ourselves from time to time the sense of total harmony and also the pain, the anxiety, the sorrow, the conflict. The cause of ( man's inner) disorder is the everlasting (self-centred desire of ?) becoming - to become something, to seek identity, the struggle to be. As long as the brain, which is so heavily conditioned, is measuring, 'the more', 'the better', moving psychologically from 'this' to 'that', it must inevitably bring about a sense of conflict, and this is disorder. Not only the words 'more', 'better', but the reaction of achieving, gaining - as long as there is this division, duality, there must be conflict. And out of conflict is disorder.

Perhaps one is ( sometimes?) aware of all this, but being negligent in this awareness, one 'carries on' in the same way day after day all the days of one's life. This (inward sense of) duality is not only verbal but has the deeper division as the 'thinker' and the 'thought'. The thinker is put together by thought, the thinker is the (self-identified response of the ) past, the thinker is knowledge, and thought too is born out of knowledge. Actually there is no division between the thinker and the thought, they are one inseparable unit; but thought plays a clever trick upon itself, it divides itself. Perhaps this constant division of itself, its own fragmentation, is the cause of ( man's inner) disorder. Just to see the truth of this, that the perceiver 'is' the perceived, ends disorder.

The mocking bird has gone but the mourning dove is still there with its plaintive cry. And soon its mate joins it. They sit together on that wire, silent, motionless, but their eyes are moving, looking, watching for danger. And so the morning ends and the sun now is bright and there are a thousand shadows. The earth is quiet and man is lost and confused.

(...) When there is this simple, clear watching and listening, then there is an awareness - awareness of the colour of those flowers, red, yellow, white, of the spring leaves, the stems, so tender, so delicate, awareness of the heavens, the earth and those people who are passing by. And that leads us to an awareness without choice - to be aware without any (personal) reaction like or dislike. When there is this really simple, honest, choiceless awareness it leads to another factor, which is attention. Watching, awareness, attention, are within the area of the brain, and the brain is limited - conditioned by all the ways of past generations, the impressions, the traditions and all the folly and the goodness of man.

When one is attentive to all this, choicelessly aware, then out of that comes insight. Insight is not an act of remembrance, the continuation of memory. Insight is like a flash of light. You see with absolute clarity, all the complications, the consequences, the intricacies. Then this very insight is action, complete. In that there are no regrets, no looking back, no sense of being weighed down, no discrimination. This is pure, clear insight - perception without any shadow of doubt. Most of us begin with certainty and as we grow older the certainty changes to uncertainty and we die with uncertainty. But if one begins with uncertainty, questioning with real doubt man's behaviour, all the religious rituals and their images and their symbols, then out of that doubt comes the clarity of certainty. When there is clear insight into violence, for instance, that very insight banishes all violence. That (inward clarity of ?) insight is (originating ?) outside the brain, if one can so put it. It is not of time. It is not of remembrance or of knowledge, and so that insight and its action changes the very brain cells. That insight is complete and from that completeness there can be logical, sane, rational, action.

This whole movement from watching, listening, to the thunder of insight, is one movement; it is not coming to it step by step. It is like a swift arrow. And that insight alone can uncondition the brain, not the effort of thought, which is determination, seeing the necessity for something; none of that will bring about total freedom from conditioning. All this is time and the ending of time. Man is time-bound and that bondage to time is the movement of thought. So where there is an ending to thought and to time there is total insight. Only then can there be the flowering of the brain. Only then can you have a complete relationship with the mind.

(...) Putting aside what we are now faced with, the immediacy of the issues can we not together discover the true causes and put them aside, dissolve them? This needs the ( inward) urge to find the truth.
Why is there this division between man and man, between race and race, culture against culture, one series of ideologies against another? Why? Why is there this separation? Man has divided the earth as yours and mine - why? Is it that we try to find security, self-protection, in a particular group, or in a particular belief, faith? In a small tribe or in a very large tribe there is a sense of being together, having the same language, the same superstitions, the same kind of political, religious system. And one feels safe, protected, happy, comforted. This terrible desire to identify oneself with a group, with a flag, with a religious ritual and so on, gives us the feeling that we have roots, that we are not 'homeless wanderers'. There is the desire, the urge, to find one's roots.

This is really a very important and urgent question: whether man, you, can bring about this change in yourself - not say. 'If I change, will it have any value? Won't it be just a drop in a vast lake and have no effect at all? What is the point of my changing?' That is a wrong question, because ( consciousness-wise ?) you are the rest of mankind. You are the world, you are not separate from the world. You are not an American, Russian, Hindu or Muslim. You are apart from these labels and words, you are the rest of mankind because your consciousness, your reactions, are similar to the others. You may speak a different language, have different customs, that is superficial culture - all cultures apparently are superficial - but your consciousness, your reactions, your faith, your beliefs, your ideologies, your fears, anxieties, loneliness, sorrow and pleasure, are similar to the rest of mankind. If you change it will affect the whole of mankind.

What will make you realize the appalling situation that we have brought about now? What will make you turn your face against all division - religious, national, ethical and so on? Will more suffering? But you have had thousands upon thousands of years of suffering and man has not changed; he still pursues the same tradition, same tribalism, the same religious divisions of 'my god' and 'your god'.
The gods or their representatives are invented by thought; they have actually no reality in daily life. Most religions have said that to kill human beings is the greatest sin. Long before Christianity, the Hindus said this, the Buddhists said it, yet people kill in spite of their belief in god, or their belief in a saviour and so on; they still pursue the path of killing. Will the reward of heaven change you or the punishment of hell? That too has been offered to man. And that too has failed. No external imposition, laws, systems, will ever stop wars. They will stop only when you, as the rest of humanity, see the truth that as long as there is division in any form, there must be conflict, limited or wide, narrow or expansive, that there must be struggle, conflict, pain. So you are responsible, not only to your children, but to the rest of humanity. Unless you deeply understand this, not verbally or ideationally or merely intellectually, but feel this in your blood, in your way of looking at life, in your actions, you are supporting organized murder which is called war. The immediacy of perception is far more important than the immediacy of answering a question which is the outcome of a thousand years of man killing man.

The ( consciousness of the ?) world is sick and there is no one outside you to help you except yourself. We have had leaders, specialists, every kind of external agency, including god - they have had no effect; they have in no way influenced your psychological state. They cannot guide you. No statesman, no teacher, no guru, no one can make you strong inwardly, supremely healthy. As long as you are in disorder, as long as your house is not kept in a proper condition, a proper state, you will create the external 'prophet', and he will always be misleading you. Your house is in disorder and no one on this earth or in heaven can bring about order in your ( inner) house. Unless you yourself understand the nature of this disorder, the nature of conflict, the nature of division, your house, that is you, will always remain in disorder, at war. Until man becomes responsible for the other human beings, there cannot possibly be peace in the world.

(...) It is good to wake up without a single thought, with its ( time related ?) problems. Then the mind is rested; it has brought about order within itself and that is why sleep is so important. Either it brings about order in its relationship and action during the waking hours, which gives to the mind complete rest during sleep, or during sleep it will attempt to arrange its affairs to its own satisfaction. During the day there will again be disorder caused by so many factors, and during the hours of sleep the mind will try to extricate itself from this confusion.

Mind, brain, can only function efficiently, objectively, where there is order. Conflict in any form is disorder. Consider what the mind goes through every day of its life: the attempt at order in sleep and disorder during waking hours. This is the conflict of life, day in, day out. The brain can only function ( harmoniously ?) in security, not in contradiction and confusion. So it tries to find it in some neurotic formula but the conflict becomes worse. Order is the transformation of all this mess. When the observer is the observed there is complete order.

In the little lane that goes by the house, shaded and quiet, a little girl was sobbing her heart out, as only children can do. She must have been five or six, small for her age. She was sitting on the ground, tears pouring down her cheeks. He (K) sat down with her and asked what had happened but she couldn't talk, sobbing took all her breath. She must have been struck or her favourite toy broken or something which she wanted denied by a harsh word. The mother came out, shook the child and carried her in. She barely looked at him for they were strangers. A few days later, walking along the same lane, the child came out of her house, full of smiles, and walked with him a little way. The mother must have given her permission to go with a stranger. He walked often in that shaded lane and the girl with her brother and sister would come out and greet him. Will they ever forget their hurts and their sorrows or will they gradually build for themselves escapes and resistances? To keep these hurts seems to be the nature of human beings and from this their actions become twisted.

Can the human mind never be hurt or wounded? Not to be hurt is to be innocent. If you are not hurt you will naturally not hurt another. Is this possible? The culture in which we live does deeply wound the mind and heart. The noise and the pollution, the aggression and competition, the violence and the education all these and more contribute to the agony. Yet we have to live in this world of brutality and resistance: we are the world and the world is us. What is the thing that is hurt? The image that each one has built about himself, that is what is hurt. Strangely these images, all over the world are the same, with some modifications. The essence of the image you have is the same as of the man a thousand miles away. So you are that man or woman. Your hurts are the hurts of thousands: you 'are' the other.

Is it possible never to be hurt? Where there is wound there is no love. Where there is hurt, then love is mere pleasure. When you discover for yourself the beauty of never being hurt, then only do all the past hurts disappear. In the full present the past has lost its burden.
He (K) has never been hurt though many things happened to him, flattery and insult, threat and security. It is not that he was insensitive, unaware: he had no image of himself, no conclusion, no ideology. Image is resistance and when that is not, there is vulnerability but no (psychological recording of) hurt. You may not seek to be vulnerable, highly sensitive, for that which is sought and found is another form of the same image. Understand this whole movement (of image making ?) , not merely verbally, but have an insight into it. Be aware of the whole structure of it without any reservation. Seeing the truth of it is the ending of the 'image builder'.

(...) Coming back from the airport on a shaded road with the parrots, green and red, screeching around the trees, one saw across the road what appeared to be a large bundle. As the car came near, the bundle turned out to be a man lying across the road, almost naked. The car stopped and we got out. His body was large and his head very small; he was staring through the leaves at the astonishingly blue sky. We looked up too to see what he was staring at and the sky from the road was really blue and the leaves were really green. He was malformed and they said he was one of the village idiots. He never moved and the car had to be driven round him very carefully. The camels with their load and the shouting children passed him without paying the least attention. A dog passed, making a wide circle. The parrots were busy with their noise. The dry fields, the villagers, the trees, the yellow flowers were occupied with their own existence. That part of the world was underdeveloped and there was no one or organization to look after such people. There were open gutters, filth and crowding humanity and the sacred river went on its way. The sadness of life was everywhere and in the blue sky, high in the air, were the heavy-winged vultures, circling without moving their wings, circling by the hour, waiting and watching.

What is sanity and insanity? Who is sane and who is insane? Are the politicians sane? The priests, are they insane? Those who are committed to ideologies, are they sane? We are controlled, shaped, pushed around by them, and are we sane?
What is sanity? To be whole, non-fragmented in action, in life, in every kind of relationship that is the very essence of sanity. Sanity means to be whole, healthy and holy. To be insane, neurotic, psychotic, unbalanced, is to be ( inwardly ) fragmented, broken up in action and in the movement of relationship which is existence. To breed antagonism and division, which is the trade of the politicians who represent you, is to cultivate and sustain insanity, whether they are dictators or those in power in the name of peace or some form of ideology. And the priest: look at the world of priesthood. He stands between you and what he and you consider truth, saviour, god, heaven, hell. He is the 'interpreter', the representative; he holds the keys to heaven; he has conditioned man through belief, dogma and ritual; he is the real propagandist. He has conditioned you because you want comfort, security, and you dread tomorrow. The artists, the intellectuals, the scientists, admired and flattered so much are they (holistically) sane? Or do they live in two different worlds - the world of ideas and imagination with its compulsive expression, wholly separate from their daily life of sorrow and pleasure?

The world about you is fragmented and so are you and its expression is conflict, confusion and misery: you are the world and the world is you. Sanity is to live a life of action without conflict. Action and idea are contradictory. Seeing is the doing and not ideation first and action according to the conclusion. This breeds conflict. The analyser himself is the analysed. When the analyser separates himself as something different from the analysed, he begets conflict, and conflict is the area of the unbalanced. ( When) the observer 'is' the observed therein lies sanity, the whole, and with the holy is love.

Selected excerpts from the K Notebook ( 1961-1962)

To be beyond sorrow is to love. Sorrow is the loneliness of
the empty mind that has built a wall around itself, the wall of
resistance and anxiety. It’s this loneliness that breeds sorrow;
the sympathy, the consideration which this loneliness offers is
the action of escape. In itself it is poor and out of ( its inner) poverty there is not a new thing. Love is the new thing and sorrow cannot meet it. Sorrow continues, like the weed in
the garden; it flourishes and builds temples, churches and
tyrannies. To face every fact, not with words and conclusions,
to 'see' it without (a mental) distortion brings about that energy which is essential to meet every movement of life.
It was a still night and that strange Otherness was there with
its Immensity; it was a flame that left no ash.

(...) There’s an (inner) quietness which is not the opposite of disturbance; in this quietness the mind can travel very far, beyond the measure of time. It’s free to travel, there are no hindrances, no barriers, no self-imposed restrictions. Every talent, every specialization, every ambition prevents this freedom and when there is no ( inner)freedom, there is death and decline.
Freedom (from the known ?) is at the beginning and not at the end. To wander through life, without ever being shaped by some frustration and guilt is then as the deep wide river which purifies itself; its very movement is the purification. You have to see it and not act about it; if you see it then it is there, indestructible, never ending; if you don’t, no effort, no conniving will ever bring it. It’s there, only see it.

Again, the brain was utterly still, every thought and feeling
wholly absent for that otherness, that incredible immensity
filled the room and the space beyond the walls. There was bliss.

Seeing is an art as listening.To 'see' knowledge must be kept in the books and not in the mind; knowledge interprets, chooses, giving colour, opinion, weighing, criticising, choosing and then there is no
seeing. When the mind is so crowded and the heart dull with
sorrow, how can there be seeing? What you see then is your own
projections, your own desires, your own fears but you don’t see
what is. It goes by and you are lost with your own toys. But
when you do see, do listen, then that act is the miracle that
transforms, that has emptied the mind and the heart of the past.
You don’t have to do anything, thought is incapable of this
miracle; then that seeing is love, as listening is. There must be emptiness to see, to listen there must be a quietness.

The sun came out through a mile-long blue patch
and there was glory. Every leaf was washed clean, every leaf
shone, with drops of sparkling water, every bird was out,
chattering, singing, flying, a whole group of crows were
settling down on the wires, thirty-seven of them, and parrots
were screeching across the sky. It was a marvellous moment of
light, clear and incredibly rich. Far away there was the sound
of a bugle and a motor-bicycle roared, but the blue sky
remained and there were a thousand shadows.

There was no death in that clear light nor time to gain; it was a marvellous moment and it is always there, but you have to 'turn the corner', just beyond your property, your family, your work and responsibility. You have to be alone without loneliness.
Meditation is a constant flowering and in that deep
silence, there was a movement which the meditative mind alone could understand. It was not a movement in time and thought could not follow it; thought can only trace its own patterns moulded in the past. To dissolve the past is the 'far away' beginning of meditation. The fire that burns away the past, the structure of time, is the act of seeing.
Seeing is complete attention.