U. Krishnamurti - The Collected Works

The senses function unnaturally in you because you want to use them to get something. Why should you get anything? Because you want what you call the 'you' to continue. You are protecting that continuity. Thought is a protective mechanism: it protects the 'you' at the expense of something or somebody else. Anything born out of thought is destructive: it will ultimately destroy you and your kind.

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It is the repetitive mechanism of thought that is wearing you out. So, what is it that you can do about it? — that's all that you can ask. That's the one and the only question, and any answer that I or anybody gives adds momentum to that movement of thought. What is it that you can do about it? Not one thing. It's too strong: it has the momentum of millions of years. You are totally helpless, and you cannot be conscious of that helplessness.

If you practice any system of mind control, automatically the 'you' is there, and through this it is continuing. Have you ever meditated, really seriously meditated? Or do you know anyone who has? Nobody does. If you seriously meditate, you'll wind up in the loony bin. Nor can you practice mindfulness trying to be aware every moment of your life. You cannot be aware; you and awareness cannot co-exist. If you could be in a state of awareness for one second by the clock, once in your life, the continuity would be snapped, the illusion of the experiencing structure, the 'you', would collapse, and everything would fall into the natural rhythm. In this state you do not know what you are looking at — that is awareness. If you recognize what you are looking at, you are there, again experiencing the old, what you know.

What makes one person come into his natural state, and not another person, I don't know. Perhaps it's written in the cells. It is acausal. It is not an act of volition on your part; you can't bring it about. There is absolutely nothing you can do. You can distrust any man who tells you how he got into this state. One thing you can be sure of is that he cannot possibly know himself, and cannot possibly communicate it to you. There is a built-in triggering mechanism in the body. If the experiencing structure of thought happens to let go, the other thing will take over in its own way. The functioning of the body will be a totally different functioning, without the interference of thought except when it is necessary to communicate with somebody. To put it in the boxing-ring phrase, you have to "throw in the towel," be totally helpless. No one can help you, and you cannot help yourself.

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This state is not in your interest. You are only interested in continuity. You want to continue, probably on a different level, and to function in a different dimension, but you want to continue somehow. You wouldn't touch this with a barge pole. This is going to liquidate what you call "you," all of you — higher self, lower self, soul, Atman, conscious, subconscious — all of that. You come to a point, and then you say "I need time." So sadhana (inquiry and religious endeavor) comes into the picture, and you say to yourself "Tomorrow I will understand." This structure is born of time and functions in time, but does not come to an end through time. If you don't understand now, you are not going to understand tomorrow. What is there to understand? Why do you want to understand what I am saying? You can't understand what I am saying. It is an exercise in futility on your part to try to relate the description of how I am functioning to the way you are functioning. This is a thing which I cannot communicate. Nor is any communication necessary. No dialogue is possible. When the 'you' is not there, when the question is not there, what is is understanding. You are finished. You'll walk out. You will never listen to anybody describing his state or ask any questions about understanding at all.

What you are looking for does not exist. You would rather tread an enchanted ground with beatific visions of a radical transformation of that non-existent self of yours into a state of being which is conjured up by some bewitching phrases. That takes you away from your natural state — it is a movement away from yourself. To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are 'blessed' with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you, nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is a natural man.

Table of Contents

(An Interview by Professor HSK, Mysore, India, 1980)

What is necessary for man is to free himself from the entire past of mankind, not only his individual past. That is to say, you have to free yourself from what every man before you has thought, felt and experienced — then only is it possible for you to be yourself. The whole purpose of my talking to people is to point out the uniqueness of every individual. Culture or civilization or whatever you might call it has always tried to fit us into a framework. Man is not man at all; I call him a 'unique animal' — and man will remain a unique animal as long as he's burdened by the culture

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Nature, in its own way, throws out, from time to time, some flower, the end-product of human evolution. This cannot be used by the evolutionary process as a model for creating another one — that is why I say this is the end-product of human evolution — if it throws out one flower, that's it, you see. Such a flower, you can put it in a museum and look at it — that's all you can do.

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You don't like what I'm saying, because it undermines the whole Indian culture and the psychological superstructure that has been built on the Freudian fraud. That is why the psychologists and religious people are against me — they don't like what I'm saying — that is their livelihood. The whole thing is finished: the whole religious and psychological business will be finished in the next ten or twenty years.

Q: Sir, what part has India to play in the present-day world crisis?

UG:The crisis through which the world is passing has to throw up something [in order for the world] to save itself. I think it has to come, and it will come from the West — I don't know from where, but India has no chance.

Q: Is the questioning genuine there in the West?

UG:It is very genuine. They are questioning their values . Now it is only at the stage of rebellion and reaction, but they want answers. They are very pragmatic people, they want answers; they are not satisfied with just promises.

So that seems to be the situation — otherwise man is doomed, you see. But man will not disappear; he will somehow survive. I am not preaching a theory of doom — I am no prophet of doom. But I believe that it will come from the West. You see, it has to come from somewhere , and India will not be that country.

Q: You are quite sure?

UG:I am certain of that because half my life I've spent in the West — first half in India, and now the second half in the West.

Q: How do you come to this conclusion? Don't you think that India has evolved some sort of a philosophy?

UG:Yesterday I quoted a passage from Emerson. It's very rarely I quote anybody. You see, he makes a statement, a very interesting statement, that if you want your neighbor to believe in God, let him see what God can make you like. There is no use talking about God as love, God as truth, God as this, God as that.

So, this is the most interesting thing: Let the world see what God can make you like. In exactly the same way, you have to set your house in order. It's in chaotic condition — India — nobody knows where it is going. So, if there is anything to your spiritual heritage (and there is a lot; I'm not for a moment denying that; India has thrown up so many sages, saints and saviors of mankind), if that heritage cannot help this country to put its own house in order, how do you think this country can help the world? That is one thing.