U. G. Krishnamurti

“ Don't you feel that that throwing up of uniqueness by nature is the flowering of uniqueness for the individual? U.G.: That is bound to happen in individuals who, through some chance or accident, manage to free themselves from the burden of the entire past. If the entire collective knowledge and experience of man is thrown out, what is left is a primordial and primeval state without the primitiveness. That kind of individual is of no use to society at all. Like a shady tree, this individual may provide shade, but can never be conscious of his doing so. ”

“ Nature has no use for me, and neither has society. By using the models of Jesus, Buddha, or Krishna we have destroyed the possibility of nature throwing up unique individuals. Those who recommend that you forget your own natural uniqueness and be like someone else, no matter how saintly that person may be, is putting you on the wrong track. It is like the blind leading the blind. When dealing with these yogins and holy men the first wrong turn you take is in trying to relate the way they are functioning with the way you are functioning. ”

“ I submit that nature is attempting to create a unique individual every time something is created. Nature does not seem to use anything as a model. When once it has perfected a unique individual, that individual is thrown off the evolutionary process and is of no further interest to nature. ”

“ There are no persons, and no space within to create a self. What is left, after the continuity of thought is blown away, is one disjointed and independent series of interactions. What happens in the environment around me, happens in here. There is no division. ”

“ It is possible to use, again, the simile of the computer. They, the computers, have become so sophisticated now that they are thinking and self-correcting themselves. We may, someday, just have to plug them in and then follow their advice. If you could let your body function like a computer you would have it. The extraordinary intelligence of the biological organism is all that is necessary for good living, but we are all the time interfering with its natural operation through the medium of thought. Your "natural" bodily computer is already programmed, pressed, and plugged in! ”

“ Is it possible that a survivor of this total death process, a mutant of some sort, could change the course of human destiny, so to speak?
U.G.: The claims they make have really no basis at all, for they speak of affecting the whole of human consciousness. I think that human consciousness in its totality is a tremendously powerful thing, with a strong momentum of its own. I don't think they realize what they are talking about. The whole of human consciousness is a very formidable thing. The only consciousness they know of is that created by thought. ”

“ When I sit here and my eyes are open, the whole of my being is the eyes. It is a tremendous "vista-vision", with everything passing through you. Your looking is so intense and undistracted that the eyes never blink and there is no room left for an "I" that is looking. ”

“ From the point of view of knowledge, there is no way of understanding yourself. The computer machine never asks itself, "How am I functioning?" Really understanding yourself demands not the mere accumulation of data, but a quantum jump. I like to use the example of Newtonian physics. Within the Newtonian framework, things work in a certain way. Another scientist eventually comes along who is able to drop the Newtonian assumptions and thereby is able to perceive a whole new dimension of physics. ”

“ This yoga of renewal is an extraordinary thing. If you observe a newborn baby, you will have observed the way it moves and articulates its whole body, all in a natural rhythm. After the breath and heartbeat come to almost a complete stop, somehow the body begins to "come back". The corpse-like appearance of the body--the stiffness, coldness, and ash covering--begin to disappear. The body warms up and begins to move, and the metabolism, including the pulse, picks up. ”

“ The demand to change one's self and the demand to change the world go out of the system together. I am neither antisocial nor thankful to society. I don't feel any bounden duty to play any part or to help my fellow men. ”

“ I am describing nothing more than a simple physiological functioning of the human organism. Although all this is not apart from nature, it will never fit into any nature study or scientific form of knowledge. ”

“ It just happens out of nowhere. Even the thought of the self or ego has been annihilated. Still there is something there experiencing this death. Otherwise, I would not be able to describe it here. With the absence of any demand to repeat or use this death process, the senses are given a field day. The breath, no longer under the domination of the separative thought structure, can respond fully to the physical environment. Upon seeing a beautiful mountain or sunset, the breath is suddenly drawn out of you, then back in, all in a natural rhythm. ”

“ The first assumption is that you think all human beings are exactly the same. I maintain that no two individuals are the same. Your attempt to arrive at the greatest common denominator is self-defeating. ”

“ Uniqueness is not something which can be turned out in a factory. Society is interested only in the status quo and has provided all these so-called special individuals so that you'll have models to follow. ”

“ This body goes through the death process on a daily basis, so often that, in fact, every time it renews itself it is given a longer lease. When, one day, it cannot renew itself, it is finished and carted off to the ash heap. This death process is yoga, not the hundreds of postures and breathing exercises. When the thought process stops splitting itself in two, the body goes through a clinical death. First the death must take place, then yoga begins. Yoga is actually the body's skill in bringing itself back from the state of clinical death. ”

“ Just as Newtonian principles eventually became a strait-jacket strangling creative thought, so your data about human uniqueness bars your looking at things, including yourself, anew. I like to use the example of Picasso. ”

“ It is a painful process, for the hold of thought over the glands and plexuses is strong and has to be "burnt" off. This can be experienced by an individual. The burning or "ionization" needs energy and space to take place. For this reason the limits of the body are reached, with energy lashing out in all directions. The body's containment of that energy in its limited form brings pain, even though there is no experiencer of pain there. This painful death process is something nobody--not even the most ardent religious practitioners and yogins--wants. ”

“ You want to be like that fellow--the saint, the savior, or the revolutionary--but it is an impossibility. Your society, which is only interested in turning out copies of acceptable models, is threatened by real individuality because it [individuality] threatens its continuity. A truly unique person, having no cultural reference point, would never know that he is unique.
Q: But isn't it possible that the very presence of a unique person, a fully flowered individual, can be of some help to others, not in the sense of providing a model, but in possibly triggering change and uniqueness in others? ”

“ To be free of that miserable genetic destiny, to throw away the "script", demands tremendous courage. You have to brush everything aside to find out. Your problem is not how to get something from somebody, but how to reject everything that is offered by anybody. ”

“ Because the unique individual cannot reproduce himself either physically or spiritually, nature discards him as useless. Nature is only interested in reproducing, and from time to time throwing out a "sport" or unique specimen. ”

“ The movements and postures that the body performs when breaking down the stiffness left over from the death process are beautiful, graceful movements, like those of a newborn baby. Yogins now prescribe savasana, the corpse posture, after the performance of any moving postures. This is backward. You start yoga as a dead stiff body, then the body is renewed through natural rhythmic movements. Probably there was some guru who went through this natural death process and his disciples, watching him return to life, tried to duplicate this death process though breathing and posture techniques. ”

“ These scientists envisage this kind of man as representing the end product of biological evolution, not the science-fiction superman or super spiritual beings. Nature is only interested in creating an organism that can respond fully and intelligently to stimuli and reproduce itself. That's all. This body is capable of extraordinary perceptions and sensations. It is a marvel. I don't know who created it. Scientists in the field of evolution now think that the present breed of humans we have on this planet probably evolved out of a degenerated species. ”

“ The mutation that carried on the self-consciousness must have taken place in a degenerate species. That is why we have messed everything up. It is anybody's guess as to whether anyone can change the whole thing. ”

“ There is a sort of coordination that arises when the organism must function for survival and smooth mechanical operation. Only enough coordination is allowed which is essential to respond to a given situation. ”

“ As it is with the eyes, so it is with the other senses, each having an independent career of its own. The sensual response, which is all that is there, is not modified, censored, or coordinated, but left alone to vibrate in the body. ”

“ Trying to stay out of the way implies that you are waiting for something marvelous to happen. Such waiting prevents the possibility of anything happening. I am telling you all this from my own experience. ”

“ Hunger must burn itself out without knowing satisfaction. The hunger, and the search it entails, is the problem. If you drop the fictitious models of the saint and holy man, you are left with the natural biological arrangement. ”

“ As scientists we want to find out if there is a uniqueness behind the apparent similarities in people. We are interested in human dissimilarities and exceptions. The yogins and religious leaders seem to offer us cases of really exceptional and unique persons. ”

“ When the armor you are wearing around you is stripped away, you find an extraordinary sensitivity of the senses that responds to the phases of the moon, the passage of the seasons, and the movements of the other planets. ”

“ The pineal gland, which controls the whole movement, breathing, and coordination of the body, is greatly affected. When the separative thought structure dies, these glands and nerve plexuses take over the functioning of the organism. ”

“ In fact, it has been strengthened by this conversation. The self will use anything to perpetuate itself; nothing is sacred. If you do try to go deep and demolish what is there, it is only with the idea and purpose of constructing a new superstructure. ”

“ Therefore your search for reality, psychological authenticity, and self-realization is meaningless to me. They are the products of frightened people. The scientific procedure, not the self, gives you a reference point so that you may measure the truth or falseness of what I am saying. ”

“ So wanting to change the world, no matter how noble one may feel about it, is a self-centered, egotistic activity. Is that what you are saying?
U.G.: The man who is trying to free himself from the world, or from what he calls "evil" is actually the most egotistical of men. ”

“ It is not subject to duplication because when it hits you, it hits you at a time and place never before touched by life. It is not an experience at all, and, therefore, cannot be communicated or transmitted. ”

“ No amount of cultivation, of either meekness or courage, will be of any help whatsoever. There is not a thing you can do, for this thing is of one's entire being, and anything you do is fragmentary, partial. ”

“ The thinking consciousness of man can only be affected by propaganda, persuasion, or drugs. Any change from these sources is only within the old framework, and, therefore, useless. What can we change? ”

“ We are a very long way from this primal condition. Somehow, you see, something hits you like lightning and burns the whole thing there. This man then is neither sinner nor saint; he is far outside the framework of society. ”

“ There is no "I". "I" is only a first person singular pronoun. The totality of the thoughts, feelings, experiences, and hopes of mankind constitute the "I". It is a product of the past. That "I" is a symbol of the totality of man's consciousness. ”

“ The answers to this problem, as all your problems, have to come from you, not from these yogins and meditators. You may be making a tremendous mistake. This is what I tell the Western psychologists also. You have no objective relationship with the data and knowledge you collect. Your constant interpretation of data means that you are involved in what you are studying; there is no separate entity. It is the interpreter that is of the greatest importance. ”

“ I can assure you that the holy business won't help you one bit. Further, if the state gets a hold of the means to do genetic engineering, they will use it to take away the last vestiges of man's freedom. ”

“ He achieved a breakthrough and eventually became a model for others. Very cheap artists are now imitating his style. So, one day, Einsteinian physics will have to step aside for a fresh system of knowledge. ”