U. Krishnamurti - The Collected Works

You want to smoke cigarettes, and there are always peddlers selling their own brands of cigarettes. Each one says that his is the one and only one, the best cigarette; and Krishnamurti comes around and says that his is nicotine-free. So the problem is not the gurus, but you. If you don't want to smoke, all these brands will disappear. These gurus are the worst egotists the world has ever seen. All gurus are welfare organizations providing petty experiences to their followers. The guru game is a profitable industry: try and make two million dollars a year any other way. Even JK, who claims he has no possessions, is the president of an eighty-million-dollar empire.

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Choiceless awareness is poppycock. Who is the one being choicelessly aware? You must test this for yourself. That Victorian gentleman has gathered about him the spiritual dead wood of a twenty-, thirty- and forty-year club. What good is that? I lived with him for years, and I can tell you he is a great actor. "Gentlemen, we are taking a journey together" (Laughter) — but you can never go on that journey with him. Whatever you do, it is always the same. What you experience with him is the clarification of thought. You are that thought. He is a do-gooder who should have given up long ago.

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You have to take my word for it. It never comes into my mind that I am different from you. So when you sit here and ask questions, "Why do they ask me these questions?" There are no answers for these questions at all. Nobody in this world can answer these questions. Whatever answers they give are misleading you — you will end up misguided, misled, misspent, after forty years, fifty years.... I know many of these people who have followed these great teachers — many of them, who have been around Krishnamurti for fifty years, sixty years, are coming and asking me "Have I wasted forty years, listening to that man?" Do I have to answer that question? You have to answer; I don't have to answer that question. You have wasted fifty years, and you are going to waste another fifty years. You can come here — nothing will happen, nothing will evolve — you will not get anything from me. That is why I am safe — I live my own life — if somebody comes, I say "Tell me, what can I do? There's nothing much I can do. Thank you. Good-bye."

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(The participants in the following conversation visited UG while attending J. Krishnamurti's annual Saanen camp, nearby UG's Swiss home.)

Q: We want to understand this problem of sorrow.

UG:Look here. Not getting what you want is sorrow — it doesn't matter what you want — happiness, good health, enlightenment — it changes, you know. So, not getting what you want is sorrow.

Q: And that makes us neurotic?

UG:The very nature of mind (if there is a mind) is neurotic, because it wants two things at the same time, so every individual is a neurotic individual. As long as you want two things, you are in a state of neurosis. And when you can't get it, you become psychotic, you become wild. Not that you necessarily go and beat somebody; but you are destroying yourself, because the violence is there inside of you.

What makes you unhappy is the search for a thing that does not exist. Happiness does not exist at all. Similarly, there is no such thing as enlightenment. You may say that every teacher and all the saints and saviours of mankind have been asserting for centuries upon centuries that there is enlightenment and that they are enlightened. Throw them all in one bunch into the river! I don't care. To realize that there is no enlightenment at all is enlightenment. (Laughter)

Thought doesn't stop. Thoughts will always be there, because thought and life are not two different things. Don't imagine that you will be free of thoughts; thoughts may be there or not, but you don't identify yourself with the thoughts at all — there is nothing here to identify itself with a particular movement of thought. They may be there or they may not be there — they are going to be there because life and thought are not two different things — you cannot do a thing about it. When you see that this instrument is not the thing to use to understand anything, then it somehow slows down and falls into its natural rhythm, then it does not become a problem or a burden to you.

You are trying to understand the teaching of somebody through this instrument which is a product of this thinking. You do not, while you are listening to somebody, understand that you are using a wrong instrument. Through this, you cannot understand what somebody is saying — that is the first thing you must understand. Whatever you are doing is a barrier to whatever you want to get, it doesn't matter what you want to get. You see, whatever you are doing is adding fuel, adding momentum to that. So, how is that going to slow down or stop, and when are you going to do that? Tomorrow or the day after? You say "Tomorrow I will understand." There is no tomorrow: this is not going to happen tomorrow; it must happen now or never. So, "I am determined to see what prevents me from understanding what I want to understand." What prevents you from understanding what you want to understand is this very thing which you are using to understand things. This is not my teaching or anybody's teaching, but this is the only

thing: You are trying to understand something through an instrument which is not the instrument to understand.

So, the only thing that keeps you trying is the hope — "If I discuss this matter with this chap tomorrow, probably I'll be able to understand" — but that is not the way. If I don't understand, I don't understand: "I don't know, I don't seem to have any way of resolving this problem." They have given the example of a dog chasing its own tail — it goes on and on and on, and you feel you are getting somewhere. This is the unfortunate situation: you are not getting anywhere; that is not the way at all. Then what is the way? There is no way. Anything I say, you turn into a way and add to the momentum. That is not the way, that is not the path, it has to be yours. So all paths must go. As long as you follow somebody else's path, the path is the product of thought, so it is actually not a new path; it's the same old path, and you are playing the same old game in a new way. It is not a new game; it is the same old game that you are playing all the time, but you think you are playing a new game. When you see the absurdity of what you are doing, maybe you'll realize "What the hell have I been doing for thirty years, forty years, fifty years!"

Do I need twenty years to look at that mountain? I don't need twenty years. I don't know how to look at it. (Somebody is explaining a natural state of his being which is yours, not mine.) What happens when you are in front of the thing that you call a 'mountain', you don't know. (I am describing that state, what actually happens — that is the action

I am talking about.) That acts on you. How that action takes place inside of you, and what happens when it acts on you, is a thing you'll never understand. You have to live through this in order to understand what I'm saying. If you had lived through that, you wouldn't be here and you wouldn't ask all these questions. Either you look at it now, or never. And what keeps you trying is the hope "Maybe next moment I'll be able to understand." You are trying to focus your eyes on what you are looking at and see something more with more clarity than you saw yesterday. So, all the tricks you are playing — that if you look more carefully, with total attention, there is more clarity in what you are looking at — all this is only deception, because all you are doing is clarifying your thinking; you are not looking at anything. You can't look at anything that way; it doesn't take time. So, "What am I to do with this?" Somebody says "Look at a flower," so you look at every line, every petal, the color, the depth and so on and so on. If that is not the way, what is the way, and when are you going to look at it that way?` You must come to a point where you say "I simply can't look at it the way that chap is describing. Really, I don't know. Really, I don't seem to be able to look at it any way other than the way I am looking at it" — first you must come to that point. That means that what the other chap says must go — all he's told you about how to look at the flower must go — then you can deal with the way you are looking at the flower. Then you are stuck with it: you really don't know what to do about this at all. you have to come to a point where you can't do anything at all: "This is an impossible task!" You must first deal with this, rather than with what you want to be.