Krishnamurti & the Art of Awakening

«« previous quote

next quote »

Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Ojai, California | 8th Public Talk 14th July, 1940

Questioner: You talk of meditative awareness but you never talk of prayer. Are you opposed to prayer?

Krishnamurti: In opposition there is no understanding. Most of us indulge in petitionary prayer and this form of prayer cultivates, strengthens duality, the observer and the observed, which are a joint phenomenon. Only when this duality ceases is there the whole. However much you may petition your answer will be according to your demand, but it will not be of the real. The answer to a desire is in the desire itself. When the mind-heart is utterly still, utterly silent, then only is there the whole, the eternal.

Some time ago I saw a person who said he had been praying to God and one of his petitions was for a refrigerator. Please do not laugh. And he had acquired not only a refrigerator but also a house, so his prayers were answered and God was a reality, he asserted.

When you ask you will receive but you will have to pay for it; according to your demands you are answered but there is a price for it. Greed replies to greed. When you ask out of greed, out of fear, out of want, you will have an answer but you must pay for it and you pay for it through wars, strife and misery. The centuries of greed, cruelty, ill will, ignorance manifest themselves when you call upon them. So to indulge in prayer without self-knowledge, without understanding, is disastrous. The meditative awareness of which I have been speaking is the outcome of self-knowledge in which alone there is right thinking, and it is this that frees the mind-heart from the dual process of the observer and the observed, for they are a joint phenomenon, a joint occurrence. The observer is ever conditioning the observed and it is extremely difficult to go beyond the observer and the observed, to go beyond and above the created. The thinker and his thought must cease for the Eternal to be. I have been trying to explain in my talks how to clarify the confusion that exists between the observer and the observed, the thinker and his thought, through self-knowledge and right thinking. For without self-clarification, the observer is ever conditioning the observed and so can not go beyond himself and becomes imprisoned. He is caught in his own delusion. For the realization of that which is not created, not made up, thought-feeling must transcend the created, the result, the self; thought-feeling must cease to demand, cease to acquire, cease to be distracted by any form of ritualism and memory. If you will experiment you will discover how extremely difficult it is for thought to be wholly free from its own chattering and creation. Only when it is so free, only when the observer and the observed have ceased, is there the Immeasurable.

Tags: duality, greed, illusion, will

Related Quotes
Why do we live with this sense of duality, opposing each other at all levels of our existence, resisting each other and bringing about conflict and war?
Our very search for the understanding of life, for the meaning of life, our struggle to comprehend the whole substance of life or to find out what truth is, destroys our understanding.
What is it that we mean when we say a soul? An individual entity?
The desire to become, without understanding duality, is a vain struggle;
We must become aware of this complex problem of duality through constant watchfulness, not to correct but to understand;
In all of us there is the dormant will to destroy like anger, ill will, which extended leads to world catastrophes; and also within us there is the desire to be thoughtful and compassionate.
The more you comprehend yourself and so bring about right thinking the less you will find that there is any tendency, any ignorance, any force within you that cannot be transcended.
Any becoming involves non-becoming and as long as there is becoming there must be duality with its endless conflict.
As long as the thinker is concerned only with the modification of his thoughts and not with the fundamental transformation of himself, so long conflict and sorrow will continue.
We falsely separate the thought from the thinker and so try to deal only with the part, to educate and modify the part, thereby hoping to transform the whole.
Just as long as effort is made to become, so long will duality exist, the thinker separating himself from his thought.
As this conflict [of opposites] is wearing you out in your daily life, it is absolutely necessary for you to understand it and thus be free from this conflict.
It is only when one understands the centre which is the individual from which the left and the right come into being, there can be true revolution, not revolution to the left or to the right. but, as long as you are thinking in terms of the left or the right, you cannot understand the centre.
Is love also a response, a reaction not to be named and so left to wither?
The problem of duality, which your sacred books have said you must transcend, which all your life you have struggled to transcend but in which you are still caught, seems to me, fallacious.
The thinker plays an insidious and clever trick on himself and separates himself from the thought and then does something about thought.
How does the 'thinker' come into being?
The 'I' comes into being through desire; then the 'I' feels established and creates the desire which is outward, the desire and 'I' thus becoming two separate entities, which means that the thinker and the thought are separate.
You admit that the thinker and the thought are one and yet there is no change in your way of living. Why?
In 'becoming' there is always the dual; in 'being' there is no duality.
To pursue the known in different forms is a game of self-deception, and then the meditator is the master, there is not the simple act of meditation.
Your mind is hedged about with barriers set up through your cravings, which are the result of sensation and perception.
When does need become greed?
Being poor inwardly, psychologically, spiritually, one thinks of enriching oneself through possessions, with ever increasing complex demands and problems.
You may be able to overcome greed through the mere exertion of the will of denial, but that does not lead to understanding, to love, for such a will is the product of conflict and therefore cannot free itself from greed.
It is only when we are really inwardly free from greed, not merely in our outward relationship and action, that there can be peace and disinterested action.
Questioner: What guarantee have I that the new faculty of which you speak will come into being?
It would be a comparatively simple matter to organize and distribute effectively if we were satisfied with our daily fundamental needs only.
To live in the world of greed without greed needs deep understanding; to live simply - earning a right livelihood in a world organized on economic aggression and expansion - is possible only for those who are discovering inward riches.
So long as the mind is after the achievement of a result there is bound to be greed.
We have to find out what is the accurate, correct, right action, or right livelihood in the world of reality, and reality includes illusion
Can there be honesty - that is, clear insight, seeing things as they are - if there is a principle, an ideal, an ennobled formula?
The craving for experience is the beginning of illusion.
Freedom is to stand alone, unattached and unafraid, free in the understanding of desire which breeds illusion.
Meditation is seeing the constant touching the ever-changing movement of life.
A satisfactory explanation, or a comforting belief, can put you soothingly to sleep; but is that what you want?
For me, revolution is synonymous with religion. I do not mean by the word 'revolution' immediate economic or social change; I mean a revolution in consciousness itself.
One takes comfort, security, in any form of illusion. And man apparently needs many illusions.
We have divided life into dying and living. And this division has brought about great fear. And out of that fear we invent all kinds of theories, very comforting, may be illusory, but it is very comforting, illusions are comfortably neurotic.
The religious mind does not depend on time for its development.
Instead of discerning the cause, you think that you can comprehend yourself through another. This looking to the example of another only leads to illusion and suffering.
Most of us do not want to die to anything, particularly to that which gives us pleasure, to the memory of things that we have known and cherished.
The power to create illusion is vastly more significant to understand than to understand reality.
That which is real will be known when the various forms of illusions have ceased.
Most minds have identified themselves with a belief, and therefore their thought is always circumscribed, limited by that belief or ideal;
What happens to a house whose walls you are merely decorating though its foundations are rotten?
If you don't understand something and merely try to modify it, your action must increase the barriers, must build up new sets of barriers;
Not having that creative intelligence which is the comprehension of environment, man begins to play within the walls of his prison, he begins to embellish and decorate the prison and he makes himself comfortable within its walls;
Intelligence is the only solution that will bring about harmony in this world of conflict, harmony between mind and heart in action.
There is no security, no comfort, but only clarity of thought which brings about the understanding of the fundamental cause of suffering, which alone will liberate man.
Our present search for reality is nothing but the search for a greater and more magnificent illusion.
The very search for reality is an illusion, because it is but an escape.
When there is true discernment there is the ecstasy of the immeasurable, which cannot be imagined or preconceived, but only experienced.
Illusion divides itself infinitely.
The continual process of awakening the mind from its own limitations is true experience.
We have many stupidities and limitations which are slowly destroying intelligence, such as ideals, beliefs, dogmas, nationalism and the possessive idea of family;
A man who would understand truth must be free from the desire for security and comfort.
In pursuit of an illusion, one often feels an exhilaration, an emotionalism; but when one examines this emotional structure, it is nothing but a limitation, the building up of walls of refuge.
Until the mind-heart is deeply, profoundly conscious of its own process, its own power to create illusions, there cannot be discernment.
To inquire into the unconditioned state when one's mind is limited is so utterly futile.
It is one of the illusions of the mind that creates the hope of something beyond its own darkness.
The conflict between the actual and the illusory must continue till either the unreal overcomes the actual or the actual breaks through all safeguards, all escapes, and begins to reveal its deep significance.
As the mind is capable of creating illusion this power must be understood before it can be wholly free from its own self-created distractions.
We translate all experience in terms of our own conditioning, the deeper it is the more alertly aware must we be not to misread it.
Just as the sensate man creates havoc in the world, the man of ideation with a framework of references also creates mischief; in fact, the latter does more harm.
Since it is extremely difficult and arduous to be aware, you spin out theories, you escape through property, through name and family, and all the rest of the absurdities which bring about destruction.
It is such a phoney superficial world, so ugly if you look behind the curtain; and we are decorating the curtain and hoping that everything will be right behind it.
Sincerity can never be simple; sincerity is the breeding ground of the will, and will cannot uncover the ways of the self.
It is only the righteous man that develops his will as a means of resistance, and a man of will can never find truth, because he is never free.
Freedom cannot be given; freedom is something that comes into being when you do not seek it;
Is silence to be cultivated, carefully nurtured and strengthened? And who is the cultivator? Is he different from the totality of your being?
We are saying: Be dead to love; it doesn't matter. Live entirely in your intellect and in your verbal manipulations, your cunning arguments.
You cannot brush the past aside. It is there.
An ambitious man, whether he be a merchant, a politician, or a so-called saint is essentially a self-contradictory human being.
Have the teachings attributed to the great teachers - Christ, Buddha, Hermes and others - any value for the attainment of the direct path to truth?
The energy which seeks truth creates its own discipline without any form of imposition; and as the river finds the sea, so that energy finds its own freedom.
You can't empty the mind, do what you will you can't empty it, because the desire to empty it is part of the activity of the self.
Is there an action which is not the result of effort, which is not the action of will?
Will is the outcome of the conflict of choice, but discernment is choiceless.
There are two kinds of will - the will that is born out of desire, want, craving, and the will that is of discernment, comprehension.
The change in will is submission to the authority of ideal and conduct. The change of will is discernment, intelligence, in which there is not the conflict of antitheses.
The will to exist, the will to become perfect, the will to succeed, the will to acquire, the will to find God, is the urge of egotism.
Will living according to a pattern, an ideal, following it ruthlessly, meditating upon it, bring you to the discovery of yourself?
Is each one aware of the mechanical process of the intellect, of the will, which destroys the spontaneous, the real?
Creative emptiness is not to be run after or sought by devious ways. It must happen. Truth is.
The desire to be satisfied creates will, which maintains itself by its own continual effort.
Being poor inwardly, psychologically, spiritually, one thinks of enriching oneself through possessions, with ever increasing complex demands and problems.
You may be able to overcome greed through the mere exertion of the will of denial, but that does not lead to understanding, to love, for such a will is the product of conflict and therefore cannot free itself from greed.
Understanding is not brought about through the mere exertion of a one-sided will but through that experimental approach which has that peculiar quality of wholeness.
All overcoming is a form of ignorance and violence; only understanding can free thought from bondage.
It is only when we are really inwardly free from greed, not merely in our outward relationship and action, that there can be peace and disinterested action.
To understand the complex causes of conflict and the desire to be free from it, requires not the mere will to be free, but constant awareness in our daily life.
The motive for cultivating the opposite matters greatly; if it is a desire to escape from the struggle and pain of envy, then its opposite becomes identical with itself and so there is no freedom from envy.
Without self-knowledge, to make a choice between the opposites must inevitably lead to further ignorance and sorrow.
This abandonment of the self is not an act of will;
An intelligence which is the product of desire, of self-expansion, is ever creating resistance, and it can never bring about tranquillity.
It is truth alone that frees, not the activity of will.
[Understanding] involves change of will altogether and not merely change in will.
You cannot overcome a hindrance; the hindrance has to be understood by approaching it without condemnation, without judging, without a desire to alter it.
You will have understanding only when you consider the problem, when you accept it, look at it, become aware of its significance completely, and even love it.
All greatness, like love, comes to you. If you pursue love it will never come, but if you are open, still, not demanding, it will come.
So, as long as the thinker is separate from his thought, there will be problems, one after the other, innumerable problems;