U. Krishnamurti - The Collected Works

The basic pleasures you are indulging in, I am not against at all. Whatever you do, I am not against it at all. Because you think there is something more interesting than what you are doing, there is restlessness — because you have an 'ideal way' of doing things, a 'perfect way' of doing things. Why is this going on?

Q: We want to feel that we have spent our life usefully.'''' UG: And at the end of your life you will tell yourself that you have wasted all your life. You are not doing anything to change; you have invented a 'next life'. Your dissatisfaction is very artificial. If you were really interested in mankind, you would really be doing something to change.

Once the question "How to live?" is dropped, living itself becomes the most important thing. You must be free from the burden of culture. Of course you can't just throw away the culture — for example, taking a morning bath and all that. But it's so simple — I also take my bath — what is so religious about it? You think that there is something more interesting than what you are doing. If that is knocked off, what you are doing becomes very, very interesting.

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You have been told that you should practice desirelessness. You have practiced desirelessness for thirty or forty years, but still desires are there. So something must be wrong somewhere. Nothing can be wrong with desire; something must be wrong with the one who has told you to practice desirelessness. This (desire) is a reality; that (desirelessness) is false — it is falsifying you. Desire is there. Desire as such can't be wrong, can't be false, because it is there. Anger as such can't be false, because anger is there. You are talking of some energy which those people have defined as God or God knows what. Don't you see that it is the very thinking that has turned this into a problem? Anger is energy, desire is energy — all the energy you want is already in operation there. What the hell do you want energy for? You are destroying this energy through thinking. It is only thinking that has created the problem. Without thinking, there is no problem there. What I'm saying is that through thinking you cannot solve the problem; thinking can only create problems.

You hope that you will be able to resolve the problem of desire through thinking, because of that model of a saint who you think has controlled or eliminated desire. If that man has no desire as you imagine, he is a corpse. Don't believe that man at all! Such a man builds some organization, and lives in luxury, which you pay for. You are maintaining him. He is doing it for his livelihood. There is always a fool in the world who falls for him. Once in a while he allows you to prostrate before him. You will be surprised if you live with him. You will get the shock of your life if you see him there. That is why they are all aloof — because they are afraid you will catch them some time or the other. The rich man is always afraid that you will touch him for money. So too the religious man - he never, never comes in contact with you. Seeing him is far more difficult than seeing the President of your country — that is a lot easier than seeing a holy man. He is not what he says he is, not what he claims he is.

But those men who have 'made it' — they live amongst the people — you can see them always there.

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Q: What is the meaning, the purpose, of life?

UG:You are asking me "Has anything any purpose?" Look here, a lot of meanings and purposes have been given to you. Why are you still looking for the meaning of life, the purpose of life? Everybody has talked of the meaning of life and the purpose of life — everybody. Answers have been given by the saviours, saints and sages of mankind — you have thousands of them in India — and yet today you are still asking the same question, "Has life any purpose or meaning?" Either you are not satisfied or you are not really interested in finding out for yourself. I submit that you are not really interested, because it's a frightening thing. It's a very frightening thing. Is there any such thing as truth? Have you ever asked that question for yourself? Has anybody told the truth?

Q: There are so many truths.

UG:They are all liars, fops, fakes and cheaters in the world, who claim they have searched for and told the truth! Alright, you want to find out for yourself what this truth is. Can you find out? Can you capture the truth and hold it and say "This is truth?" Whether you accept or reject, it's the same: it depends on your personal prejudices and predilections. So if you want to discover the truth for yourself, whatever it is, you are not in a position to either accept or reject. You assume that there is such a thing as truth you assume that there is such a thing as reality (ultimate or otherwise) — it is that assumption that is creating the problem, the suffering, for you.

Look here, I want to experience God, truth, reality or what you will, so I must understand the nature of the experiencing structure inside of me before I deal with all that. I must look at the instrument I am using. You are trying to capture something that cannot be captured in terms of your experiencing structure, so this experiencing structure must not be there in order that the other thing may come in. What that is, you will never know. You will never know the truth, because it's a movement. It's a movement! You cannot capture it, you cannot contain it, you cannot express it. It's not a logically ascertained premise that we are interested in. So, it has to be your discovery. What good is my experience? We have thousands and thousands of experiences recorded — they haven't helped you. It's the hope that keeps you going — "If I follow this for another ten years, fifteen years, maybe one of these days I will...." because hope is the structure.

Q: So he spends a lifetime and finally discovers that he's discovered nothing.

UG:Nothing. That's the discovery. So-called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to discover. That will be a very shocking thing — "Why the hell have I wasted all my life?" It's a shocking thing because it's going to destroy every nerve, every cell, even the cells in the marrow of your bones. I tell you, it's not going to be an easy thing, it's not going to be handed over to you on a gold platter. You have to become completely disillusioned, then the truth begins to express itself in its own way. I have discovered that it is useless to try to discover the truth. The search for truth is, I have discovered, absurd, because it's a thing which you cannot capture, contain, or give expression to.

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Q: Can you describe and communicate your state?

UG:You see, the moment I try to communicate something, it is gone; it is only a shadow of it; that's not it.

Q: Is it an incommunicable experience?

UG:No, it cannot be experienced. You cannot communicate what you cannot experience. I don't want to use those words, because 'inexpressible' and 'incommunicable' imply that there is something which cannot be communicated, which cannot be expressed. I don't know. There is an assumption that there is something there which cannot be expressed, which cannot be communicated. There is nothing there. I don't want to say there is nothing there, because you will catch me — you will call it 'emptiness', 'void' and all that sort of thing. (Laughter)

I can only put it this way: whatever is there cannot be experienced — whether there is anything there, I don't know — I have no way of knowing it at all. To put it in your own Vedantic terminology, there is no such thing as the unknown at all. Whatever you know of what is called the 'unknown' is not the unknown. Whether there is any such thing as the unknown, I really don't know. Whatever you know of that unknown, whatever you experience of what you call the 'unknown', is not the unknown, because it has become part of your knowledge.