U. G. Krishnamurti

“ This instrument [thought] which we have been using to understand has not helped us to understand anything except that every time you are using it you are sharpening it. Someone asked me, "What is philosophy? How does it help me to live in this day-to-day existence?" It doesn't help you in any way except that it sharpens the instrument of the intellect. It doesn't in any way help you to understand life. ”

“ So every time you experience greed and condemn it you are adding to its momentum. You are not dealing with the actual greed, anger or desire. You are only interested in using them. Take, for example, desirelessness. You want to be free from desire. But you are not dealing with desire but only with the idea of `how to be free from desire'. You are not dealing with something that is living there. Whatever is there or happening there cannot be false. You may not like it and may condemn it because it doesn't fit into your social framework. ”

“ Whatever you experience has already been experienced by someone else. Your telling yourself, "Ah! I am in a blissful state," means that someone else before you has experienced that and has passed it on to you. Whatever may be the nature of the medium through which you experience, it is a second-hand, third-hand, and last-hand experience. It is not yours. There is no such thing as your own experience. ”

“ You cannot fit me into a value system at all. A value system has no use for me, and there is no question of my setting up a holy business. I have no way of telling myself that I am different from you. ”

“ What there is is only the known. There is no such thing, for instance, as the fear of the unknown. You can't be afraid of the unknown, because the unknown, as you say, is the unknown. The fear that you are talking about is the fear of the known coming to an end. That seems to be the problem. When I use this phrase — "the state of unknowing" — it is not a synonymous term for transformation, moksha, liberation, God-realization, self-realization, and what have you. ”

“ It makes no difference. I don't want to indulge in this frivolity that the word is not the thing. If the word is not the thing what the hell is it? Without the word you have no way of experiencing anything at all. ”

“ He said, "We have to help the coming generation." He said that the future belongs to the young generation. I told him, "What the hell are you talking about? Why do you want them to prepare to face their future? ”

“ The impossibility of what is there to express itself is really the problem. What is it that is making it impossible? What prevents the uniqueness, which is the end product of millions and millions of years [of evolution] , to express itself? It [the mind] is just two thousand years old. It is too silly to think that it is going to succeed. It is not going to succeed. You don't go about calling yourself unique. I don't go around the world telling everyone that I am a unique man. ”

“ All our activity is nothing but an extension of the same survival mechanism. But in this process we have succeeded in sharpening that instrument. With the help of that instrument we are able to create everything that we are so proud of — progress, this, that, and the other. You may be able to put this record player together and take it apart. This kind of knowledge can be transmitted from one person to another. But the problems which we are interested in solving — the day-to-day problems, living with someone else, or living in this world — are the living problems. ”

“ The eyes are interested in seeing things but not as beauty; the ears hear things but not as music. The body does not reject a noise because it is the barking of a dog or braying of an ass. It just responds to the sound. If you call it a response to the sound, then we get into trouble. So you don't even know that it is a sound. Anything that is harsh, anything that would destroy the sensitivity of the nervous system, the body cuts out. ”

“ We invent what is called a thoughtless state or an effortless state, I don't know for what reason. Why one should be in an effortless state is beyond me. But to be in an effortless state or to act effortlessly we use effort. ”

“ What has happened is something which cannot but be called an act of courage, because everything, not only this or that particular teacher you had been involved with, but everything that every man, every person, thought, felt, and experienced before you, is completely flushed out of your system. ”

“ The only problem is to find out the inadequacy or uselessness of all the solutions that have been offered to us. The questions naturally are born out of the assumptions and answers that we have taken for granted as real answers. ”

“ We have made a mess of this world so far, and you want to pass this mess on to the younger generation. Leave them alone. If they make a mess of the whole thing, they will pay the price. Why is it your problem today? They are more intelligent than us." Our children are more intelligent than us. ”

“ Whether you are interested in moksha, liberation, freedom, transformation, you name it, or you are interested in happiness without one moment of unhappiness, pleasure without pain, it's the same thing. Whether one is here in India or in Russia or in America or anywhere, what people want is to have one [happiness] without the other [unhappiness] . But there is no way you can have one without the other. This demand is not in the interests of the survival of this living organism. There is an extraordinarily alert, and alacritous quality to it [the organism] . The body is rejecting all sensations. ”

“ Children can express all emotions. If they can't use words, they are able to express their emotions so beautifully, in simple ways. Their whole bodies express their joy, each in a different way. But we are proud of the words we use because for us they are instruments of power. ”

“ And at the same time I don't want to use this [suffering] for my self-aggrandizement, my self-fulfillment. The problem is there, and we are individually responsible for it. Yet we don't want to accept the responsibility for creating the problems. The problems are not created by nature. It is we who have created the problems. There is plenty, there is bounty in nature; but we take away what rightfully belongs to everybody and then say that you should give charity. That's too absurd!
The practice of charity, started by the religious man, is what refuses to deal with the problems squarely. ”

“ We use thought not only for our self-aggrandizement but we also use it to destroy, for no reason, other species of life around us. Physical fear is totally different from the fear of losing what you have, the fear of not getting what you want. ”

“ I don't know for sure how a cat looks at me. Outwardly, the cat looks at me and I look at the cat or at anything else the same way. There is not even looking, you see, if it comes to that. Is there a looking without a looker? Is there any seeing without a seer? ”

“ But there must be some sensitivity without a stimulus.
UG: What I am talking about is the sensitivity of sensory perceptions. But what you are concerned with is sensuality. They are different things. The sensory activity of the living organism is all that exists. Culture has superimposed on it something else which is always in the field of sensuality. Whether it is a spiritual experience or any other experience, it is in the field of pleasure. So the demand for permanence is really the problem. The moment a sensation is translated as a pleasurable one there is already a problem. ”

“ It is you who assumes that somebody is, whoever he is. Good luck to you! Somebody coming and telling me, "That I am" is a big joke. There is nothing to this whole nonsense. I have heard that there is a course in the United States: if you want enlightenment in twenty-four hours they charge you one thousand dollars and if you want it within a week, five hundred dollars, and so on. ”

“ The end of the solution is the end of the problem. We are only dealing with solutions and not with the problems.
Actually there are no problems, there are only solutions. But we don't even have the guts to say that they don't work. Even if you have discovered that they don't work, sentimentality comes into the picture. The feeling, "That man in whom I have placed my confidence and belief cannot con himself and con everyone else," comes in the way of throwing the whole thing out of the window, down the drain. ”

“ There was a well-known professor of psychology at the University of Madras, Dr. Bose. Just a month before my final examinations, I went to him and asked him the question, "We have studied all these six schools of psychology, this, that, and the other, exhaustively, but I don't see in all this a place for the `mind' at all." (At that time I used to say that "Freud is the stupendous fraud of the Twentieth Century." The fact that he has lasted for a hundred years does not mean anything.) ”

“ There is no sensitivity other than the sensitive nervous system responding to stimuli. So, if you are concerned or preoccupied with the sensitivity of anything else, you are blurring the sensory activity. The eyes cannot see, but the moment you see, the translation of sensory perceptions comes into operation. There is always a space between perception and memory. Memory is like sound. Sound is very slow, whereas light travels faster. ”

“ To some extent the body has a way of saving itself from heat, cold, or anything that is inimical to it. It takes care of itself for a short period, and then thought helps you to take the next step to cover yourself, or to move yourself away from the dangerous situation you find yourself in. You will naturally move away from the cement mixer that is making a loud noise and is destroying the sensitivity of your nervous system. ”

“ They say that the brain power of all the ants in an ant-hill is much more than the brain power of a human being. Whatever that is there in the human body is the result of what has been passed on from one species to another. ”

“ They are different every time. We would like to treat them on a par with mechanical problems and use that knowledge and experience [coming from dealing with the mechanical problems] to resolve problems of living. But it doesn't seem to work that way. We cannot pass on these experiences to others. It doesn't help. Your own experiences don't always help you. You tell yourself, for example, "If I had this experience ten years ago, my life would have been different." ”

“ The body is responding to stimuli. It is only a stimulus-responding mechanism. It does not know of any other action. But through the translation of stimulus in terms of human values, we have destroyed the sensitivity of the living organism. You may talk of the sensitivity of the mind and the sensitivity of your feeling towards your fellow beings. ”

“ But the response that I am talking about is something which cannot be experienced by you at all. If I say that the response to a stimulus is spontaneous and that it is a pure action, then that action is no action at all in any ordinary sense of the word. It is one unitary movement. ”

“ The demand to cross over to the other side because there is a rich land there is a kind of drive — the drive for survival. That drive is an extension of this survival mechanism that already exists in nature. You don't have to teach dogs, cats, pigs, and other wild animals, how to search for food, eat and survive. ”

“ We don't stop at that total helplessness; we goes on and on until the dead end. The living teachers and the yet unborn ones are hammering into our heads that they have answers for our problems and that they have the means to save the whole situation. ”

“ The actions born out of the desire may not fall into the society's framework which accepts certain actions as socially acceptable and certain others as anti-social. But you are concerned only about values. ”

“ For us knowledge is power. "I know, and you don't know." That gives you power. There is no such thing as knowledge for knowledge's sake. It is good to write an essay on knowledge for knowledge's sake or art for the sake of art. Is there beauty? What is beauty ? Only when it is framed, you call it beauty. It is thought that frames something, the nature of which we really don't know. To use your word, there is no way of comprehending. We don't even know what is going on there.
Q2: Or when the experience is over .... ”

“ You seem to get pleasure out of the suffering of somebody. But why don't you get the same pleasure when you see a rich man throwing his weight around? They are the same. This you call pleasure and that you call jealousy or envy. ”

“ But ten years hence you will be telling yourself exactly the same thing, "If I had this experience ten years ago, ...." But we are now at this point and your past experiences cannot help you to resolve your problems. The learning concerning mechanical problems is useful only in that area and not in any other. But in the area of life we don't learn anything. We simply impose our mechanical knowledge on the coming generations and destroy the possibility of their dealing with their problems in their own way. ”

“ I have to use that word uniqueness because it is really unique. Even two human bodies are not the same. Now they [the scientists] have come to that conclusion. Unfortunately, all that understanding is the result of the research and experiments in crime laboratories to track down thieves through their finger prints. Not only through prints, but they can track down a man from the smell, or a teeny-weeny bit of his hair. They say that women have more gold than men in their hair. ”

“ But the body rejects both pain and pleasure for the simple reason that any sensation that lasts longer than its natural duration is destroying the sensitivity of the nervous system. But we are interested only in the sensual aspect of the sensory activity. ”