U. G. Krishnamurti

“ The self-consciousness that occurred in the human species may be a necessary thing. I don't know. I am not claiming that I have a special insight into the workings of nature. Your question can be answered only that way. You see for yourself. That's why I say that the very foundation of the human culture is to kill and to be killed. It has happened so. If one is interested in looking at history right from the beginning, the whole foundation of humanity is built on the idea that those who are not with us are against us. That's what is operating in human thinking. ”

“ What makes you think that the world can be any different? Why do you want to change the world? All these utopias, all these ideas of creating a heaven on this earth are born out of the assumption that there is a heaven somewhere there and that we have to create that heaven on this planet. ”

“ The problem is this: nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. ”

“ One thing that I emphasize all the time is that without knowledge you can't experience anything. What you do not know, you cannot experience. It is the knowledge that creates the experience, and it is the experience that strengthens the knowledge. At every moment of our existence, we have to know what is happening outside of us and what is happening inside of us. That is the only way you can maintain this continuity. ”

“ Where do you draw the line between life and death? The definition of death is eluding the legal profession; so far they are unable to define what death is. For all practical purposes we have to consider that it's the same as clinical death. But in nature there is no birth and there is no death. Nothing is ever born, and nothing ever dies. ”

“ I understand your problem. The actions of life are outside the field of thought. Life is simply a process of stimulus and response; and stimulus and response are one unitary movement. But it is thought that separates them and says that this is the response and that is the stimulus. Any action that is born out of thinking is destructive in its nature because thought is a self-perpetuating mechanism. ”

“ The cooperation there springs from the total selfishness of mutual survival. It's like the cell in your body which also can survive only when it cooperates with the cell next to it. Otherwise it has no chance of survival. That's the only way we can live together. But that has to percolate to the level of, if you want to use that word, your `consciousness'. Only then you will live in this world peacefully. ”

“ The intellect is created by culture and is acquired. The intelligence that is necessary for survival is already there in the physical organism. You don't have to learn a thing. You need to be taught, you need to learn things only to survive in this world which we have created, the world of ideas. ”

“ What I am emphasizing is, if your energy is not wasted in pursuit of some mythical certainties offered to us, life becomes very simple. But we end up being wasted, misled and misspent individuals. If that energy is released, what is it that we can't do to survive in the midst of these complexities of the world created by our culture? It is very simple. The attempt to sidestep these complexities is the very thing that is causing us all these problems. ”

“ You are the one that is all the time talking of bringing about a change. At the same time everything around you and inside of you is in a flux. It is constantly changing. Everything around you is changing; yet you don't want change. You see, that's the problem. Your unwillingness to change is really the problem, and you call it a tradition. You dub "unwillingness to change with the changing things," a great tradition. ”

“ Nature is only interested in perfecting the species. But we have superimposed on that the idea of a perfect man, and that idea is the problem. The idea is born out of the assumption that there is a perfect man like all these Buddhas, Jesuses, and others. You are trying to model your life after these great teachers. You want your behavior patterns to be like theirs. But it's just not possible. A `perfect being' does not exist at all. A perfect being is the end product of human culture, that is, the being we think as the perfect being. ”

“ They are giving you false comfort, and that is what people want. What I am saying is not what the mainstream of population is interested in, either here or anywhere else in the world. They hear what they want to hear. What I say is of no interest to them. If you say that God is redundant, it is not a rebellion against anything: you know religious thinking is outdated and outmoded. But I go one step further and say that all political ideologies are nothing but the warty outgrowth of the same religious thinking of man. ”

“ As long as you live in this world you have to fight for your share. That is why they teach you, send you to a school, and give you some tools. That is what society has done to you. But religion comes along and tells you that you should fight for your share without expecting anything in return. That is why you are turned into a neurotic individual. ”

“ It is all the time exploding. Any attempt on my part to understand anything at any given moment is exploded because that [thought] is the only instrument I have, and there is no other instrument. This instrument cannot invent a thing called hope again anymore. There is no hope of understanding. The moment it [thought] is forming something there, it is exploded, not through any volition, not through any effort, but that's exactly the way it happens. It is continuously happening all the time. That is the way life is moving along. It has no direction.
The body has no need to understand anything. ”

“ Nature has provided us with tremendous wealth on this planet. If what they say is correct, twelve billion people can be fed with the resources that we already have on this planet. If eighty percent of the people are underfed, then there is something wrong — something is wrong because we have cornered at one place all the resources of this world. ”

“ That's just the way the human body is functioning. If there is some danger to it, the body throws in everything that is available and tries to protect itself. If it cannot, it gives in. But in a way the body has no death. The atoms in it are put together and what happens at death is a reshuffling of the atoms. They will be used somewhere else. So the body has no birth or death, because it has no way of experiencing that it is alive or that it will be dead tomorrow. ”

“ When death has provided the basis for the continuity of life, how can you call it death? It's a different matter that it is no consolation to me or to the one who has lost his near and dear one. But you can't say that it [the corpse] is dead. Now they are saying that the hair keeps growing, the nails keep growing, and brain waves continue for a long time even after the so called clinical death. ”

“ So going back to my point, nature's interest is only to create perfect species. It does not use any model. Every human being is something extraordinary and unique. If a being does not fit into the scheme of things, nature discards it and starts all over again. ”

“ The body cannot be afraid of death. The movement that is created by society or culture is what does not want to come to an end. How it came to an end [in U.G.] I really don't know. What you are afraid of is not death. In fact, you don't want to be free from fear. ”

“ If the world can't find a label for you, what kind of label do you find for the world?
UG: I am quite satisfied with the world! [Laughter] Quite satisfied. The world cannot be any different. Traveling destroys many illusions and creates new illusions for us. I have discovered, to my dismay, if I may put it that way, that human nature is exactly the same whether a person is a Russian, or an American or someone from somewhere else. ”

“ What you call thought is only the activity of the neurons in the brain. In other words, thought is memory. A stimulus activates the brain through the sensory perceptions and then brings memory into operation. It is nothing marvelous. It is just a computer with a lot of garbage put in there. So it is not a creator. The brain is not interested in solving any of the problems created by us. It is singularly incapable of dealing with the problems created by thought. Thought is outside and it is extraneous to the brain. ”

“ You cannot survive unless the one that is next to you also survives. It's not cooperation on the basis of love and brotherhood, but it's the way this human body is functioning, the way that animals are functioning that can protect you. Animals do not kill their fellow beings (they are also beings, you see) for an ideology or for God.
You are not decent and decorous enough to admit that all your spiritual experiences — bliss, beatitude or love — are also sensual activities. ”

“ They may call it a revolution. But revolution is only a revaluation of things. You will only end up creating another value system which may be slightly different from the value system that we want to destroy. ”

“ You don't grab the whole thing. You grab the whole thing because you have been taught by religion, culture or something else to do so. Animals kill only for their survival and leave the rest of their game. ”

“ That understanding is the one that is expressing itself now. And it cannot be used as an instrument to understand anything. It cannot be used as an instrument to guide, direct or help me, you or anybody. ”

“ There is no other way. I don't even have the impetus to express myself. You may very well ask me, "Why the hell do you talk? Why the hell do you meet people?" It is you who have brought all these people. ”

“ You call this a table, and that you call a dead corpse: but actually there is life there. You see the decomposition that is taking place in the dead body is a form of life. Of course, that's no consolation to the one who has lost his wife. ”

“ The body does not want to learn anything or know anything, because it has that intelligence — native, innate intelligence — that helps it to survive. If this body is in a jungle, it will survive; if it doesn't, it's gone. ”

“ It is the fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead. What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new science, new talk, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks. Fear is the very thing that you do not want to be free from. ”

“ It is out of this cowardice that the whole religious thinking is born.
Q: You were saying in some context that anger is not bad, and that anger cannot do any harm.
UG: Anger is like an outburst of energy. It is like the high tide and the low tide in the sea. The problem is, "What to do with anger?" The question, "What to do with anger?" is something put in there by culture, because society considers an angry man a threat to its status quo, to its continuity. ”

“ So, to kill and to be killed in the name of God, represented by the church in the West, and all the other religious thinking here in the East, was the order of the day. That's why there is this fundamentalism here in this country now. The Chinese — what horrors they have committed, you will be surprised: they killed scholars and religious people. They burned and buried the books of Confucius and other teachers. Today the political ideologies represented by the state are responsible for the killings of people. ”

“ I am one of the most traveled persons in this world. I have been traveling ever since I was fourteen, and since then I have never lived in any place for more than six months at a time. My traveling is not born out of my compulsive need to travel. ”

“ The natural state is the functioning of this living organism. It is not a synonymous term for enlightenment or God-realization or self-realization. What is left here is this pulsating living organism. ”

“ The Buddha, Jesus, and other teachers had what they thought was the path towards that consciousness.
UG: I am questioning the very idea of consciousness. There is no such thing as consciousness at all. Consciousness is nothing but knowledge. ”

“ That is the reason why now they are trying to define death in the courts — there in France and other countries. They find it so difficult to define death. And now in the United States they have gone one step further. They keep the dead bodies in deep freeze so that one day medical science will come up with a cure for the disease that was responsible for the death of that body. ”

“ When once you are finished with this duality, (I am using the word with much caution, although I don't like to use it,) when you are no longer caught up in the dichotomy of right and wrong or good and bad, you can never do anything wrong. As long as you are caught up in it, the danger is that you will always do wrong; and if you don't do wrong, it is because you are a frightened `chicken'. ”

“ That is why when it [the revolution] settles down, it calls for another revolution. Even the talk of continuous revolution of Mao Tse-tung has failed. In the very nature of things, a revolution has to settle down. ”

“ This is done not with the idea of arriving at a positive position; the negation is made for the sake of negation because nothing can be expressed, and you can't say this is the truth. There is no such thing as truth. ”