U. Krishnamurti - The Collected Works

There's no journey . Both are kidding themselves — those who take or pretend to take you on the journey, and those who are trying. You can't walk with me. How can you walk with me? You are so frightened of the thorns there, the stones, you want a trained guide. I myself don't know the terrain. Have you never heard of the proverb that warns you never to walk with a man who has sandals, because he always walks on thorns? You will get into trouble. I myself do not know the terrain; I am just going.

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You can talk of so many things — home truths, "Be good. Be wise." But this has no social content at all: this cannot be used to change the world, reform the world, create a new man, a new world — all that is balderdash. Maybe some people do it just to help some people — that's all right — do something — if it works, it works. But to suggest something like that, knowing very well that it is not going to work, is not right —"Let's give them some new toys to play with. All the traditional things have failed, so here are some new toys, specially imported from Japan" (or God knows where). What are you doing? You are not doing anything; you are repeating new phrases, new words, new idioms — that is all you are doing.

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You don't accept the fact that all that is a contamination there in that consciousness. Whatever you consider sacred, whatever you consider extraordinary — Buddha Consciousness, Christ Consciousness, Krishna Consciousness — is a contamination in that consciousness. It has to purify itself: all that, all that dross — all that is holy, all that is sacred — must go. When that has gone, you are yourself. Otherwise there is dependence: you experience something extraordinary there and start an organization, Krishna Consciousness or some other. These organizations collect twenty million dollars and publish books so that they can transmit, make others experience, those silly things.

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Q: Is there any difference between going to a church and coming here?

UG:Basically the motivation is the same: you are looking for a new teacher, a new Bible, a new order, a new Church — that is all you can do. Basically it's still the same thing: you have not moved one step from the Catholic Church. If religiousness is all you are interested in, there is no need to look anywhere other than in Christianity. The profound statements of the great teachers are not any different in the different religions. All I am saying is that looking to alien lands and religions does not mean anything. You learn new techniques, new systems, new phrases, and then you begin to think and speak in terms of this new language, and probably you feel just great, but basically it does not mean anything at all.

Q: You have shattered all my young dreams.

UG:No, no, you cannot be so sure; they are still there. There is a very powerful plaster — if there is a little crack in your structure, you will plaster it over. It is very powerful — it has millions and millions of years of momentum. It knows all the tricks — it can invent any trick to gain momentum. That is its nature. There isn't anything you can do about it. You can discuss it for forty years, but I promise you, you will not get anywhere. If anyone makes you believe you can get somewhere, he's taking you for a ride. He may be honest. Distrust all honest fellows! Throw them out! There is no one who is honest in this field. No outside agency can help you.

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Q: You totally discard the teachings of the swamis (holy men)?

UG:I am not discarding; I am telling you "Go to a swami and he will give you something. What you want, he will give you. Good luck!" that is all. I can tell you that you are not going to get this at all; it is not something that you can get. I wish you the best of luck. I know very well that it is not something that you or anybody else can get or that anybody can give. I can't give it. If there is somebody who promises, he is just promising, and he is going to take you for a long ride. He is just kidding you. He cannot deliver the goods, so he says "Next life" or "Ten years hence" — he is safe.

Q: What do you ask us to do? What should we do?

UG:I am not asking you to do anything. My problem is that I really don't know where you are — I can't help you in that matter — you have to tell me. Where are you? What makes you think that you are different from me? I am not different form you — I can't be.

You can't be interested in this. How can you be interested in this? — that is my question. How can you be interested in this kind of a thing? What you are interested in is a totally different thing, fancy stuff, fantasy. You may indulge in all kinds of fantasy — that's your affair. If this is not fantasy, you will be interested in some other kind of fantasy. How can you be interested in liquidating yourself? — that is my question. All that you know — 'you' as you know yourself, 'you' as you experience yourself — is interested in continuity. It knows all the tricks: you cannot beat that.

People ask the question — all questions reduce themselves to the one question — "How? How am I going to get what you have? How?" And through 'How?' that structure is permanently establishing itself there and getting its continuity. 'How?' There is no 'how'. If you are interested in 'how', those swamis will help you.

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Q: The people who remain with you for some time are not, by and large, the kind of people I enjoy being with. Association with you seems to encourage lack of generosity, coldness, smugness. I like people who are warm, outgoing, affectionate.

UG:I am not interested in the whole field of self-expression, getting in touch with one's feelings, overcoming inhibitions and so on; I respond to what people come to see me about, the natural state. If people are interested in psychological change, so-called consciousness expansion and all that, let them go to encounter groups, or see psychiatrists and engage in what I call the 'Freudian fraud'. In the end their so-called growth will not bring them happiness and neither will their improved sex lives (if their sex lives improve); at best they will simply have learned to be unhappy in a new and richer way. I am not concerned with that; my interest is in the subject they come to see me about in the first place. My interest is in pointing out the utter impossibility of doing anything whatsoever to attain the natural state.

Anyhow, the people who come to see me do not stay very long. They come a few times or hang around for a few months, then they either go back to their ordinary lives or go on to some fellow who promises them what they seek. Some of them become devotees of Bubba Free John, the latest American avatar. Either way, that's fine with me.

But one thing I will never do is deceive them. I will never suggest in any way that I can give them anything. I will never hook them into some phony baloney idea about practicing undifferentiated awareness and the observer being the same as the observed, and all that.

Q: So it's okay with you if your followers are dreary and uptight?

UG:Everything is okay with me. If you have a million dollars and eight girl friends, that's okay with me. If you are lonely and disagreeable and penniless and dying of cancer, that also is okay with me. I am perfectly happy with everything as it is. I am happy with misery, poverty and death; I am also happy with wealth and psychological fulfillment. I think the solution to your real problems is, in any case, not possible for you unless you undergo the sort of biological transformation that has happened to me. Which is not to say that I ever consider myself superior to you or to anyone else because of this; quite the contrary, the idea of superiority or inferiority never even enters my head for one moment. The total absence of this idea is one of the characteristics of this whole transformation business.