Tag: Krishnamurti

When the Observer is the Observed – J. Krishnamurti

Space is necessary. Without space there is no freedom. We are talking psychologically . . . It is only when one is in contact, when there is no space between the observer and the observed that one is in total relationship —with a tree for instance. One is not identified with the tree, the flower, a woman, a man or whatever it is, but when there is this complete absence of space as the observer and the observed, then there is vast space. In that space there is no conflict; in that space there is freedom.

Freedom is not a reaction. You cannot say, “Well, I am free.” The moment you say you are free you are not free, because you are conscious of yourself as being free from something, and therefore you have the same situation as an observer observing a tree. He has created a space, and in that space he breeds conflict. To understand this requires not intellectual agreement or disagreement, or saying, “I don’t understand,” but rather it requires coming directly into contact with what is. It means seeing that all your actions, every moment of action is of the observer and the observed, and within that space there is pleasure, pain and suffering the desire to fulfill, to become famous. Within that space there is no contact with anything. Contact, relationship has a quite different meaning when the observer is no longer apart from the observed. There is this extraordinary space, and there is freedom.

-J. Krishnamurti

From The Book of Life, August 18

The entire book can be downloaded here.

The Observer is the Observed – Osho

There is a statement by J. Krishnamurti that “the observer is the observed.” Will you please kindly elaborate and explain what it means?

The statement that “the observer is the observed” is one of the most significant things ever said by any man on the earth. The statement is as extraordinary as J. Krishnamurti was.

It is difficult to understand it only intellectually because the way of the intellect is dialectical, dualistic.

On the path of intellect, the subject can never be the object, the seer can never be the seen. The observer cannot be the observed. As far as intellect is concerned, it is an absurd statement, meaningless – not only meaningless, but insane.

The intellectual approach toward reality is that of division: the knower and the known have to be separate. Only then is there a possibility of knowledge between the two. The scientist cannot become science, the scientist has to remain separate from what he is doing. The experimenter is not allowed to become the experiment itself. As far as intellect is concerned, logic is concerned, it looks absolutely valid.

But there is a knowledge that passeth understanding, there is a knowing that goes beyond science. Only because that kind of knowing which goes beyond science is possible, is mysticism possible, is religiousness possible.

Let us move from a different direction. Science divides the whole of human experience and existence into two parts: the known and the unknown. That which is known today was unknown yesterday. That which is unknown today may become known tomorrow, so the distance is not impossible, not unbridgeable. The distance is only because man’s knowledge is growing, and as his knowledge grows the area of his ignorance diminishes. In other words, as he knows more, the area of the unknown becomes less and the area of the known becomes bigger.

If we follow this logic, the ultimate result will be that one day there will be nothing left as unknown.

Slowly, slowly, the unknown will change into the known, and the moment will come when there is nothing left as unknown. That is the goal of science, to destroy ignorance – but to destroy ignorance means to destroy all possibilities of exploration, all possibilities of the unknown challenging you to move forward.

The destruction of ignorance means the death of all intelligence because there will be no need for intelligence anymore. It will be simply something which was useful in the past – you can put it in a museum – but it is of no use anymore. This is not a very exciting picture.

Mysticism does not agree with science, it goes beyond it.

According to mysticism, existence and experience is divided into three parts: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The known was unknown one day, the unknown will become known one day, but the unknowable will remain unknowable; it will remain mysterious. Whatever you do, the mystery will always surround existence. The mystery will always be there around life, around love, around meditation.

The mystery cannot be destroyed.

Ignorance can be destroyed, but by destroying ignorance you cannot destroy the miraculous, the mysterious.

Krishnamurti’s statement belongs to the unknowable.

I have been telling you that as you meditate . . . and by meditation I simply mean as you become more and more aware of your mind process. If the mind process is one hundred percent taking your whole energy, you will be fast asleep inside – there will be no alertness.

One morning, Gautam Buddha is talking to his disciples. The king, Prasenjita, has also come to listen to him; he is sitting just in front of Buddha. He is not accustomed to sitting on the floor – he is a king – so he is feeling uncomfortable, fidgety, changing sides, somehow trying not to disturb and not to be noticed by Buddha because he is not sitting silently, peacefully. He is continuously moving the big toe of his foot, for no reason, just to be busy without business. There are people who cannot be without business; they will still be busy.

Gautam Buddha stopped talking and asked Prasenjita, “Can you tell me, why are you moving your big toe?” In fact, Prasenjita himself was not aware of it.

You are doing a thousand and one things you are not aware of. Unless somebody points at them, you may not take any note of them.

The moment Buddha asked him, the toe stopped moving. Buddha said, “Why have you stopped moving the toe?”

He said, “You are putting me in an embarrassing situation. I don’t know why that toe was moving. This much I know: that as you asked the question it stopped. I have not done anything – neither was I moving it, nor have I stopped it.”

Buddha said to his disciples, “Do you see the point? The toe belongs to the man. It moves, but he is not aware of its movement. And the moment he becomes aware – because I asked the question – the very awareness immediately stops the toe. He does not stop it. The very awareness, that ‘It is stupid, why are you moving it?’ – just the awareness is enough to stop it.”

Your mind is a constant traffic of thoughts, and it is always rush hour, day in, day out.

Meditation means to watch the movement of thoughts in the mind.

Just be an observer, as if you are standing by the side of the road watching the traffic – no judgment, no evaluation, no condemnation, no appreciation – just pure observation.

As you become more and more accustomed to observation, a strange phenomenon starts happening. If you are ten percent aware, that much energy has moved from the mind process to the observer; now the mind has only ninety percent energy available. A moment comes . . . you have fifty percent of energy. And your energy goes on growing as the mind goes on losing its energy.

The traffic becomes less and less and less, and you become more and more and more.

Your witnessing self goes on increasing in integrity, expanding; it becomes stronger and stronger.

And the mind goes on becoming weaker and weaker: ninety percent observer and ten percent mind, ninety-nine percent observer and only one percent mind.

One hundred percent observer and the mind disappears, the road is empty; the screen of the mind becomes completely empty, nothing moves. There is only the observer.

This is the state J. Krishnamurti’s statement is pointing at. When there is nothing to observe, when there is only the observer left, then the observer itself becomes the observed – because there is nothing else to observe, what else to do? The knower simply knows itself. The seer sees himself.

The energy that was going toward objects, thoughts . . . there are no thoughts, no objects. The energy has no way to go anywhere; it simply becomes a light unto itself. There is nothing that it lights, it lights only itself – a flame surrounded by silence, surrounded by nothingness.

That is Krishnamurti’s way of saying it, that the observer becomes the observed. You can call it enlightenment, it is the same thing: the light simply lights itself, there is nothing else to fall upon. You have dissolved the mind. You are alone, fully alert and aware.

Krishnamurti is using a phrase of his own. He was a little fussy about it . . . not to use anybody else’s phrase, anybody else’s words – not to use anything that has been used by other masters. So his whole life, he was coining his own phrases.

But you can change only the expression, you cannot change the experience. The experience is eternal. It makes no difference whether somebody calls it enlightenment, somebody calls it nirvana, somebody calls it samadhi, somebody calls it something else. You can give it your own name, but remember, the experience should not be changed by your words.

And it is not changed by J. Krishnamurti’s words. They are perfectly applicable, although they are not so glamorous as nirvana, Gautam Buddha’s word, or samadhi, Patanjali’s word, or il’aham, Mohammed’s word. “The observer is the observed” looks too mundane. It certainly points to the reality, but the words in themselves are not very poetic, are very ordinary. And the extraordinary should not be indicated by the ordinary; that is sacrilegious.

So there are many people around the world who have been listening to J. Krishnamurti. They will listen to these words, “The observer becomes the observed,” and they will not have even a far-off notion of nirvana or enlightenment or samadhi.

I don’t like this fussiness. I don’t want to say anything against that old man because he is dead. If he were alive, I would say something against him, certainly. His whole effort – and he lived long, ninety years – was somehow to prove that he was original in everything, even in expressions.

I don’t feel the necessity. If you are original, you are original. There is no need to shout from the housetops that “I am original,” that “I am fortunate that I have not read any sacred scriptures.”

And this is not true because even to avoid samadhi, nirvana, enlightenment, you have to know those words; otherwise, how can you avoid them? He may not have read them himself; somebody else may have read them, and he must have heard it.

And that’s what actually had happened: from his childhood he was being taught to become a world teacher, so others were telling him . . . He was just nine years old, so he was not telling a lie by saying that he had not read the sacred scriptures; but the sacred scriptures were read to him.

This reminds me of a milkman. I was a student in the university and he used to come to the hostel with his small son to give milk to the students. And everybody was suspicious that his milk was at least fifty percent water. Already the purest milk is eighty percent water; then fifty percent more . . .

So it is just the name milk, otherwise it is all water. So everybody was telling him, “You are mixing in too much water.”

And he was a very religious man, worshipping for hours in the temple. And he would say, “I am a religious man. I cannot do this. I can take an oath. This is my son” – and he would put his hand on his son’s head – “Under oath I am saying that if I lie, my son should die. I have never mixed water into milk.”

I listened many times. One day I called him inside my room and closed the door. He said, “What are you doing?”

I said, “You need not be worried, I am also a religious man. Just a little dialogue . . .”

He said, “But why are you closing the door?”

I said, “It has to be very private; otherwise, you will be in difficulty.”

He said, “Strange . . . why should I be in difficulty?”

I said, “Now just tell me exactly. I have seen you mixing water with my own eyes . . .  I had to miss one morning walk just to hide near your place to see it. Just this morning I have seen it. And if you don’t listen to me . . . I don’t have a son, but I can use your son, under oath.”

He said, “Wait! Don’t do that. You are a dangerous man. You can do it to your son but not to my son.”

I said, “What is the harm? Your son is not going to be harmed; truth is truth.”

He said, “That means I will have to tell you the truth.”

I said, “You will have to tell me the truth.”

He said, “The truth is that I never mix water into milk, I always mix milk into water – and that makes all the difference. My oath is absolutely correct. But please don’t say it to anybody, otherwise they will start asking me to take the oath the other way, and that I cannot do. I mix them, but I always mix milk into the water. I am making the water also milky. I am not destroying milk; I am just changing the quality of the water!”

I said, “You are really a religious man.” Now what he is saying is simply the same.

For thousands of years, anybody who has reached to the point of no-mind and only awareness has given names which are far more meaningful than J. Krishnamurti’s words. For example, Patanjali’s word is the most important and the most ancient: samadhi. In Sanskrit, sickness is called vyadhi, and to go beyond all sickness is called samadhi. It has a beauty – going beyond all sickness; attaining wholeness, perfection. It has a beauty and a meaning.

Gautam Buddha used the word nirvana . . . because he was trying to make an effort twenty-five centuries after Patanjali. In these twenty-five centuries Patanjali had been misused. The people who were trying to reach samadhi made it some kind of ego trip. The word “samadhi” is very positive – beyond all illness, wholeness. There is a loophole in it: it can give you an idea that “I will become perfect, beyond all limitations, all sicknesses. I will become whole.” But the danger is that this “I” may be your ego – most probably it will be – because your mind is still there.

The samadhi is true when the mind is gone. Then you can say, “I have gone beyond sickness” because the ego was also a sickness – in fact, the greatest sickness that man suffers from. Now your “I” does not mean ego. It simply means your individuality, not your personality. It simply means the universal in you, just the dewdrop which contains the ocean. The emphasis has changed completely. It is not the dewdrop that is claiming; it is the ocean that is proclaiming.

But because many people became egoistic . . . and you can see those people even today. Your saints, sages, mahatmas, are so full of ego that one is surprised – even ordinary people are not so full of ego. But their egos are very subtle, very refined.

Gautam Buddha had to find a new word, and the word had to be negative so that ego could not make a trick for itself. “Nirvana” is a negative word; it simply means “blowing out the candle” . . . a very beautiful word. Blowing out the candle, what happens? – Just pure darkness remains.

Buddha is saying that when your ego has disappeared like the flame of the candle, what remains – that silence, that peace, that eternal bliss – is nirvana.

And certainly, he was successful: nobody has been able to make nirvana an ego-trip. How can you make nirvana an ego-trip? The ego has to die. It is implied in the word itself, that you will have to disappear in smoke. What will be left behind is your true reality, is your pure existence, is your truth, is your being – and to find it is to find all.

But Buddha had a reason to change the word “samadhi” into “nirvana.” J. Krishnamurti had no reason at all, except that he was obsessed with being original. What he says describes the fact: the observer is the observed – but it has no poetry. It is true, but it has no music.

But that is true about J. Krishnamurti’s whole philosophy: it has no music; it has no poetry. It is purely a rational, logical, intellectual approach. He was trying hard somehow to express the mystic experience in rational and logical terms, and he has been successful in many ways, but he has destroyed the beauty.

He has brought the mystic experience closer to rational philosophizing; but the mystic experience is not philosophy, it is always poetry. It is closer to painting, closer to singing, closer to dancing, but not closer to logic – and that’s what he was doing. And my opposition to him is based on this ground. My effort is to bring mysticism to your dance, to your song, to your love, to your poetry, to your painting – not to your logic.

Logic is good for business; it is good for mathematics. It is absolutely useless as far as higher values are concerned.

-Osho

From The Osho Upanishad, Discourse #14, Q1

Copyright © OSHO International Foundation

An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com, or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.

Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.

 

Listen With Ease – J. Krishnamurti

Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? Then you hear everything, don’t you? You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, the immediate sounds—which means really that you are listening to everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change which comes without your volition, without your asking; and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight.

-J. Krishnamurti

From The Book of Life, Jan. 1st

See also Listening, The Book of Life, Jan. 2nd.

Meditation is to be Aware of Every Thought – J. Krishnamurti

A meditative mind is silent. It is not the silence which thought can conceive of; it is not the silence of a still evening; it is the silence when thought—with all its images, its words and perceptions—has entirely ceased. This meditative mind is the religious mind—the religion that is not touched by the church, the temples, or by chants.

The religious mind is the explosion of love. It is this love that knows no separation. To it, far is near. It is not the one or the many, but rather that state of love in which all division ceases. Like beauty, it is not of the measure of words. From this silence alone the meditative mind acts.

___

Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence. Silence put together by thought is stagnation, is dead, but the silence that comes when thought has understood its own beginning, the nature of itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old—this silence is meditation in which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past.

-J. Krishnamurti

From Meditations

Awakening before Enlightenment

We hear the term ‘awakening’ thrown about today like a rag doll. And as is the case with almost all spiritual terminology, there seem to be levels and levels of meaning for the word ‘awakening.’ It is important to first recognize that we are not necessarily using a common language. When I see what the word ‘awakening’ is being used to point at, from the plethora of spiritual teachers that exists today, it is evident that it is being used to denote many different things.

And it is not just the spiritual teachers who use ‘awakening’ with different meanings; you can find references from the Enlightened Masters as well. There are times in the many books of Osho where he refers to ‘awakening’ as the final enlightenment, and sometimes he is pointing to a step that precedes enlightenment. I find the same situation in the works of J. Krishnamurti, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, and Meher Baba. Although if one looks carefully at the context in which the words are being used, it is not as confusing as it seems.

However, in writing this I am not interested in repeating the words of those remarkable Enlightened Ones, but rather this understanding that I wish to share is one that has been taking shape over the last twenty years and has only now become sufficiently stabilized that I feel willing to express openly.

Before we even begin to look at the different meanings we might ascribe to ‘awakening,’ let us first acknowledge that all individuals are moving through their awakening at a different pace. It is clear that we did not all begin at the same point. This is illustrated when we see that a sage like Ramana Maharshi realizes his enlightenment at the age of sixteen seemingly without effort. In contrast is the experience of Nisargadatta Maharaj in whom enlightenment happened much later in life. Some were prepared from their very childhood for such an event, and some worked through their own efforts at removing the obstacles to the ‘natural state.’ Some of us have lived a life centered in meditation from a young age, and some of us stumbled upon it much later in life perhaps after some major crisis turned our world upside down. So it is important to understand that just because we have not had a certain understanding does not mean that one of our fellow travelers has not. It is equally important to note that if we have experienced some insight or transformation, it is not likely that many will understand what we are talking about.

So let us begin with what each of us (at least anyone who is reading this) has probably experienced. For some of us it might have come like a bolt of lightning, for others it may have always been intuited as truth. And that is that life, the world, is appreciably different from what we were conditioned to believe. Many may describe this realization as an awakening and indeed it is. This awakening would mark the beginning of the journey. It would denote a tremendously important change of direction and priorities in one’s life.

Having changed direction in life, we embark on searching out information, knowledge, understanding, and perhaps a teacher to help guide us along the way. We may be fortunate and come across that guide early on or for some it may take many years. And some may not find the guide in whom trust is a natural and spontaneous flowering and so may just wander from teacher to teacher. Regardless, even without a guide, and certainly with one, it is possible, after an introduction to meditation, after reading the words of those who have known the greatest mystery, after the necessary inner work, to come to an “intellectual understanding” of the lay of the spiritual land. Jean Klein refers to it as a “geometric understanding.” One can almost visualize the obstacles that lie before. This understanding often can come as a flash and could certainly be described as an ‘awakening.’ But here, it is important to note that this intellectual understanding is not the same as being understanding, is not the same as knowingness; it is more like knowledge.

Next, we come to what seems to me to be more worthy of such a moniker as ‘awakening.’ This is when one realizes oneself to be out of the mind’s conditioning. The “goose is out.” Here one is being out of the mind and is able to see the mind clearly as an object of perception. It is not that the mind has disappeared, no, but one is not living within the mind. And it is here that witnessing really emerges. In fact, this is the witness. The mind is still present but one is not captive to its many grips. But it is important at this stage to allow witnessing its full force through meditation. It is here that the “emptying of consciousness” must take place. If one is not mindful, it is extremely easy to slip back into the clutches of the mind. But one is also able to see the horizon. One knows what needs to happen. One cannot make ‘it’ happen, but one does need to create the opportunity. With this awakening the taste is known and so it is natural that real earnestness arises.

For what follows, we will have to take the words and expressions of those who have known as a hypothesis. We accept the hypothesis and in our laboratory of meditation discover for ourselves if it is indeed true. The Enlightened Masters have all said that there does come a complete annihilation of the separate ego-mind, one that is irreversible, and surely it is ‘this’ that deserves the name “Enlightenment.”

So here we come to the point that has been the fuel for this inquiry all these years. Without exposure to the presence of an Enlightened Master, and unfortunately for some even with, it is very easy to believe that the “awakening of the witness” is the end of the journey, is itself enlightenment. Some fellow travelers might very well believe that there is no ending of the mind because that is the limitation of their own experience. They become teachers and this then becomes part of their teaching, thus misdirecting their students. Just as importantly their unfolding stagnates, believing that they have reached the end thus not allowing the space for the “emptying of consciousness” to take place. This is where the exposure to a fully enlightened master should prove extremely helpful. The master does not allow us to make our house in the sand. He continually goads us to keep on to the very end. May we all continue to the very end, Charaiveti, charaiveti (go on, go on to the very end).

-purushottama

This is from the collection of stories, essays, poems and insights that is compiled to form the book From Lemurs to Lamas: Confessions of a Bodhisattva. Order the book Here.

Here is a follow up post After Awakening Before Enlightenment.

See a related post The Seeing I.

 

For more on this topic, you may wish to explore:

The Awakening of the Double-Pointed Arrow

Meditation Involves all Three

And below I am including some links to a few postings that illustrate, much more deeply, what is being said.

A Geometrical Understanding-Jean Klein

Minor Explosions-Osho

The Stages of the Path-Meher Baba

Spiritual Snakes and Ladders-Osho

Attainment-Ramana Maharshi

The Emptying of Consciousness-J. Krishnamurti

Flowering, Awakening, Self-Realization and Enlightenment-Osho

Charaiveti, Charaiveti-Osho

The Emptying of Consciousness – J. Krishnamurti

What is our consciousness? Are there different levels of consciousness? Is there a consciousness beyond the one of which we are normally aware? Is it possible to empty the content of consciousness?

One may use words and give descriptions, but what is named and described is not the fact; so do not be caught in the description.

What is our consciousness? It is to be conscious of, to be aware of, what is going on, not only outside but inside; it is the same movement. Our consciousness is the product of our education, our culture, racial inheritance and the result of our own striving. All our beliefs, our dogmas, rituals, concepts, jealousies, anxieties, pleasures, our so-called love – all that is our consciousness. It is the structure which has evolved through millennia after millennia – through wars, tears, sorrow, depression and elation: all that makes up our consciousness. Some people say you cannot change consciousness. You can modify it, you can polish it, but you have to accept it, make the best of it; it is there. Without the content, consciousness, as we know it, does not exist.

The questioner asks: Is it possible to empty consciousness of all content – the sorrow, the strife, the struggle, the terrible human relationships, the quarrels, anxieties, jealousies, the affection, the sensuality? Can that content be emptied? If it is emptied, is there a different kind of consciousness? Has consciousness different layers, different levels?

In India the Ancient people divided consciousness into lower, higher and yet higher. And these divisions are measured, for the moment there is division there must be measurement, and where there is measurement there must be effort. Whatever level consciousness may have, it is still within consciousness. The division of consciousness is measurement, therefore it is thought. Whatever thought has put together is part of consciousness, however you choose to divide it.

It is possible to empty the content of consciousness completely? The essence of this content is thought, which has put together the ‘me’ – the ‘me’ who is ambitious, greedy, aggressive. That ‘me’ is the essence of the content of consciousness. Can that ‘me’ with all this structure of selfishness be totally ended? The speaker can say, “Yes, it can be ended, completely”. It means that there is no centre from which you are acting, no centre from which you are thinking. The centre is the essence of measurement, which is the effort of becoming. Can that becoming end? You may say: “Probably it can, but what is at the end of it, if one ends this becoming?”

First of all find out for yourself if this becoming can end. Can you drop, end, something which you like, that gives you some deep pleasure, without a motive, without saying, “I can do it if there is something at the end of it”? Can you immediately end something that gives you great pleasure? You see how difficult this is. It is like a man who smokes, his body has been poisoned by nicotine and when he stops smoking the body craves for it and so he takes something else to satisfy the body. So can you end something, rationally, clearly, without any motive of reward or punishment?

Selfishness hides in many ways, in seeking truth, in social service, in selling oneself to a person, to an idea, to a concept. One must be astonishingly aware of all this, and that requires energy, all the energy that is now being wasted in conflict, in fear, in sorrow, in all the travails of life. That energy is also being wasted in so-called meditation.

It requires enormous energy, not physical energy, but the energy that has never been wasted. Then consciousness can be emptied and when it is emptied one may or may not find there is something more, it is up to oneself. One may like something more to be guaranteed but there is no guarantee.

-J. Krishnamurti

From a talk on Consciousness

You can read much more from J. Krishnamurti here.

There are many pdf files of J. Krishnamurti available for download here.

I Don’t Belong to Any Path – Osho

I took sannyas from Swami Shivand of Rishikesh after reading his book Brahmacharya and other books of his.

After some years, I was attracted to Sri Ramana Maharshi and thereafter to Sri Aurobindo due to his integral approach to the divine. From 1959 onwards I was doing meditation on the lines indicated by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Thereafter J. Krishnamurti’s approach attracted me, now yours.

I enjoy and feel happy whenever I read Sri Aurobindo’s works, since he emphasizes living a full life and realization of Integral Divine and gives much emphasis to physical transformation.

You also emphasize not to negate life but to live fully, and have given a new meaning to sannyas.

Hence I am here to embrace this also.

I wonder whether I am on the right path or drifting?

What is this multifarious attraction in me?

Could you help me with a right path if I am drifting?

The first thing to be understood: Before one can come to the right door, one has to knock on many doors. Life is an adventure – of courage, daring, and basically it is trial and error. One has to go astray many times to come to the right path. And when I say the right path, I don’t mean that Sri Ramana’s path is not right, but it must not have been right for the questioner; otherwise there is no need.

Once you have come to the right path for you… and it is always a question of the individual, it has nothing to do with Ramana, Aurobindo or me; it is a question of you. If you have come to me and you feel at home, then your journey has finished. Now there is no need to drift any more, now you can settle and start working – because in drifting work is impossible.

It is as if you start constructing a house and just in the middle you are attracted to something else and you leave it and you start another house; and just in the middle again you are attracted to something else. Then you will live like a vagabond. The house will never be completed. One has to settle somewhere, one has to commit somewhere, one has to take the fatal decision. But it is not difficult. If you have courage, it happens.

One has to be available to many sources. It is good that you have been to Shivanand, to Ramana, to Aurobindo. It shows you have been seeking – but it also shows that nowhere could you feel at home. So the journey continues. The journey has to continue until you come to a point where you can say: Yes, I have arrived. Now there is no need for any more departures. And you can relax. Then the real work starts.

Whatsoever you have been doing is just moving from one place to another. The journey is exciting, but the journey is not the goal. One becomes enriched by the journey. You must have become enriched being open to so many sources; you must have learnt many things – but still the journey continues. Then you will have to seek again and again.

Now you are here. Try to see and try to understand: do you fit with me, or do I fit with you?

Sometimes it is possible that you may have learnt only one thing – how to drift again and again, how to go away again and again. It can become a mechanical habit. Then you will be gone from here also. So don’t allow mechanical habits to lead you. If you don’t fit with me it is perfectly good to go away, because then your being here is going to be a sheer wastage of time for you. But if you fit, then take courage and be committed – because only after the commitment does real work start, never before it.

You think you have been to Shivanand and you think you have been initiated by him, but the initiation has not happened yet, otherwise you would not have been here. Initiation means a commitment: that now one has looked all around – now this is the place to settle. Shivanand may have initiated you, but you have not taken the initiation yet. You have been just a visitor. You have not become intimate with any system of growth.

It is as if the plant has been removed from one place to another again and again. The plant cannot grow; the plant needs that it should settle on one ground so that roots can go deep. If you go on removing the plant again and again, the roots will never grow; and if roots cannot go deeper, the plant cannot go higher.

Hence commitment. Commitment means: now this is the soil for me and I am ready to settle for it. It is risky because, who knows, a better soil may be available somewhere else. So the risk is there, but one has to take that risk some day or other. If you go on and on just waiting for something better, something better, the time may be lost, and by the time you have arrived you will be dead.

The real thing is work. It is good to go around, have a look, visit many places, many people – but don’t make it a habit. That habit is dangerous. It won’t allow you roots. And if roots are not there, the tree cannot be alive, flowers are not possible; fragrance will not spread from you, your life will remain empty.

So the first thing: don’t make your past a pattern to be repeated in the future. Now you are here: don’t do the same thing to me as you have been doing to Shivanand, Ramana, Aurobindo. You don’t know what you have done.

It happened:

A great painter, James McNeill Whistler, is reported to have displayed a just-completed painting to Mark Twain.

Mark looked at the painting judiciously from a variety of angles and distances while Whistler waited impatiently for the verdict.

Finally, Mark leaned forward and, making an erasing gesture with his hand, said, “I’d eradicate that cloud if I were you.”

Whistler cried out in agony, “Careful! The paint is still wet!”

“That’s all right,” said Mark coolly, “I’m wearing gloves.”

You must be wearing gloves. You think you were initiated by Shivanand, but it has not happened. Your gloves won’t allow it. You must be living in a capsule, closed. You must be clever, logical, cunning. You have been on the alert not to be committed anywhere deeply. Hence, before the commitment happens, you move.

You say: “I took sannyas from Swami Shivanand of Rishikesh after reading his book, Brahmacharya, and other books of his.”

Now, if you are impressed by a book written on brahmacharya, it shows much about you. You must have something of a problem concerning sex. It has nothing to do with brahmacharya or Shivanand. You must be obsessed somehow with sex – hence the appeal of brahmacharya. You must have been repressing sex. You must have been brought up with wrong ideas about sex; hence you become impressed by Shivanand’s book on celibacy.

It is not that you are impressed by Shivanand – you are still following your own mind. You could not surrender to him. The phenomenon that you call initiation was intellectual; by reading the books, not by being in the presence of the master. You must be an intellectual, calculating, theorizing. This won’t allow you to move in a deep relationship – and the relationship between a master and a disciple is the deepest, deeper than the relationship between a lover and the beloved.

You may have been impressed by what Shivanand has written, but deep down you search for it again and again. It is not Shivanand that you are impressed, influenced by. You have certain ideas in your mind; wherever you find those ideas appreciated, you feel good. With me it is going to be dangerous. I am not going to appreciate any of your ideas; they are all rubbish. I say that even without knowing what your ideas are, because that is not needed. Unless you are aware, all your ideas are rubbish. So it is not a question of saying that this idea is rubbish and that is good. To me, all thoughts are rubbish; only awareness is valuable. And awareness has no ideas in it. It is a simple, pure light of consciousness.

So it is going to be difficult with me. You may have come to the man now who can shake and shock you. With Shivanand, you thought you were with Shivanand, but basically, deep down, you felt that Shivanand was with you; that’s why you lingered there a little while. This is not going to be so here with me. I am not going to be with you, remember; you have to be with me. I am not going to be with you, I repeat, you have to be with me.

So I am not going to fulfill your expectations in any way. If you have theories, I am against them already without knowing them, because I am against mind and my whole emphasis is how to become a no-mind.

But the questioner seems to be too much in the head: then he became interested in Sri Aurobindo, “because he emphasizes living a full life and realization of the integral divine.” You have some fixed ideas, so whosoever seems to be following your ideas you become impressed by. In fact, you remain impressed only with your own ego. You have been playing an ego game. You have been on an ego trip – that’s why Shivanand, Ramana, Aurobindo, nobody could help you.

As far as I know, if somebody comes back from Ramana, then there must be something very deeply wrong. With Shivanand it is not much of a problem, with Aurobindo also it is not much of a problem. Shivanand is just ordinary. Aurobindo is a great intellectual – a mahapundit, a great scholar. So if somebody comes away, nothing is lost; you have not lost much because there was nothing in the first place to be gained. But if you have come away from Ramana, that shows something deep like a cancer in your soul, because persons like Ramana are very rare – thousands of years pass, then sometimes that quality of being arises. Ramana is like a Buddha, a Jesus, or a Krishna – a very rare phenomenon. But I know why you could not get in tune with Ramana – because of your Shivanands and your Aurobindos. To get in tune with a Ramana means to drop your ego completely. Great courage is needed.

Now you are here. If you are really a seeker, then gather courage and drop the ego and the past. Forget the past; it has been nothing but a nightmare. And don’t go on repeating it; otherwise, you can go on repeating to the very end of time, changing from one person to another. This can become a habit; this shows simply your restlessness. Otherwise to come back from Krishnamurti would have been almost impossible. There is no need.

So now become aware of your basic trouble: something in you is betraying your whole effort; something in you is continuously causing clouds around your intelligence. Your awareness is not sharp.

It happened:

The little girl was invited to dinner one night at the home of a friend. The hostess, knowing that many children don’t like spinach, asked if she liked it.

“Oh yes,” the little girl replied. ”I love it.”

When the platter was passed, however, she refused to take any.

“But, dear,” said the hostess, “I thought you said you liked spinach.”

“Oh, I do,” explained the child, “but not enough to eat it.”

Going to Shivanand, Aurobindo, Ramana, Krishnamurti – and you have some idea that you like and you love these people, but your liking is not enough. You don’t love enough; otherwise you would have eaten them and they would have transformed you.

Become aware! As it is you have wasted a long time already. You can also go from this door empty-handed, but remember, the responsibility is yours. If you take courage I am ready to give you whatsoever can be given. But for visitors nothing can be given, and even if it is given they will not be able to understand.

If you are tired of your journey, going from one place to another, from one person to another, if you are really tired, then here I am ready to give you whatsoever you are seeking – but you will have to fulfill one condition, and that is: a total commitment. Unless you become part of my family, nothing can be given. I would like to give you something even then, but you will not be able to take it; or, even if you take it, you will think it is nothing – because your mind will continuously befog you. It won’t allow you to understand, it won’t allow you to see directly. It won’t allow you to see what type of game you have been playing with yourself.

Up to now it has been a drifting. Become aware how much you have wasted. Many opportunities were there but you have missed them. Now don’t miss this opportunity! But I know: the mind gets in a rut, it becomes a pattern. You go on repeating the same thing again and again, because you become very efficient in repeating it. Now get out of that vicious circle. I am ready to help if you are ready to take my help. And such a help as this cannot be forced on you. You have to take it or not take it. Your freedom has to decide it; it is your choice.

And don’t ask: What is the right path? All paths are right or wrong. It is not a question of deciding which path is right. The only thing to be decided is which path fits you. Of course, Ramana has a certain path – very simple, absolutely nonintellectual. The head was not required at all on that path; the head was to be dropped. If you had allowed him, you would have been beheaded by him. The head was not part of his path. It is a path of the heart.

Just the opposite is Krishnamurti. The path is absolutely true, but the head has to be used and transcended, not to be dropped. That’s why Krishnamurti appeals tremendously to intellectuals – nothing of the heart; everything is analysis, dissection. He is a great surgeon; he goes on dissecting. You give him any problem – he does not, in fact, answer it; he simply dissects it. And if you are listening with deep participation, sympathy, it will be possible that through his dissection he gives you an insight – not the answer, but the insight – and that is your insight. He simply dissects the problem. He is a rare intellectual man; gone beyond intellect, but has gone through it. Ramana bypasses intellect, he never passes through the intellect; his path is of the heart. Krishnamurti’s path is of intellect, of the head, of understanding, dissection, analysis.

Shivanand is not yet enlightened. He has no path – stumbling in the dark. A traditional man, he can make you knowledgeable, but he cannot help you towards the ultimate understanding. A good man, a very good man, but just a good man, not yet a Jesus or a Buddha, not yet a Krishnamurti or Ramana – a simple man. If he becomes enlightened some day in some life, he will be like Ramana – his path will not be of the head. But he is not yet realized.

And then there is Aurobindo: his path is as yet the path of an unenlightened person, moving towards it but yet in the dark. The morning is not very far away, but it has not happened yet. If some day it happens, then he will be a man like Krishnamurti; he will go through the head – a great scholar, he has much appeal for those who like logic-chopping, hair-splitting.

And here I am: all paths are mine, or no path is mine. I am more concerned with individuals. When you come to me, I don’t have a certain path to give you. I look at you to find which path will be suitable for you. I have no fixed path; I have wandered on all the paths, and all paths are true. If it fits, then any path can lead you to the ultimate. If it doesn’t fit, then you can go on struggling, fighting, but nothing is going to happen; you are trying to pass through a wall. You will be hurt, wounded, that’s all; nothing is going to happen.

I don’t belong to any path, hence all paths belong to me. And I am more concerned with the individual seeker. If I see that devotion, worship, prayer, will be helpful to you, I teach you that. If I see meditation will be helpful to you, I teach that. If I see that just understanding, pure awareness, will be helpful, I teach that. If I feel that awareness is going to make you very tense, does not fit with your type, then I teach you to be lost completely in something, absorbed completely in something. Dancing, get into it so much that you become the dance and there is nobody watching it; don’t create any separation and division between you, become the act.

Hence I am going to be very, very contradictory, because to one person I will say something, to another I will say something else, sometimes even just the opposite, diametrically opposite. So whatsoever I have said to you, somebody may come and say to you: Osho has said something else to me. Don’t listen to anybody. Whatsoever I have said to you, I have said to you. Otherwise, you will be confused.

Millions of paths go towards God. In fact there is nowhere else to go. Wherever you are going, you are going towards God. All paths lead to him. But when you are seeking, only one path can lead you. If you start walking on all paths together, you will be lost. One has to choose a path. So please don’t repeat your old pattern.

Now it will be very difficult. I am hurting your ego knowingly – because when I say Aurobindo is not enlightened, I immediately can feel what is happening to you. It is not a question of Aurobindo – whether he is enlightened or not enlightened, who bothers? It is his problem; it is not my problem, it is not your problem. But if you have been following Aurobindo and I say he has not yet become enlightened, your ego is hurt. You, and following an unenlightened person? – never, it is not possible!

When I say Shivanand is good but ordinary, mediocre, of course you will feel hurt because you have been initiated by Shivanand, and how is it possible? – You, so intelligent, being initiated by a mediocre man? No, it is going to hurt, but I do it knowingly.

I will create every sort of trouble for you so that if you stay, you really stay. If you decide to stay, it will be a real decision to stay with me. I am going to be hard. Shivanand, Ramana, Krishnamurti, Aurobindo, it seems, have been too compassionate towards you; hence you could drift.

I will make every effort so that you can go away. I will create a struggle within you, a friction, because that is the only way now; otherwise your old habit will go on functioning. If you come and ask for sannyas from me, I am not going to give it to you easily… because you have been taking things very easily. This sannyas is going to be arduous.

-Osho

From The Search, Discourse #4

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

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Explosion – Vimala Thakar

EXPLOSION

On the 14th August I had another interview with Krishnamurti. While I was waiting for him his hostess was kind enough to come and have a word with me.

‘Do you understand what Krishnaji says?’ She asked.

I said: ‘I feel I do – If I may say so. But everyone can understand if one wants to, can’t one? There is nothing difficult what he says is so simple.’

Krishnaji came out in a little while and led me to a room where we settled down for a serious talk. Here are the notes of our conversation.

Vimala Thakar: I am sharing with you my experience. I have decided after great hesitation to tell you about the present state of my mind because it concerns you in a way…

Krishnamurti: You need not hesitate at all. You can say anything to me – for or against. Do you understand?

V. I have told you about the invasion of a new awareness, irresistible and uncontrollable.

I have told you how it has swept away everything. Now – this has something to do with that healing. If it had come independently I would not have felt as I feel today. If the mind had come by it, say, while listening to you, I would not have felt what I feel today.

Today I feel that the two are related. And I feel deeply indebted to you for both.

That feeling of indebtedness makes the mind heavy and uncomfortable. Your talks have helped me and I am deeply thankful to you for the talks.

But my love for you was never burdened with a sense of indebtedness before. Today it is.

K. Wait a bit. Who told you that the two are related?

V. No one. I feel it.

K. Your feeling may be wrong. Perhaps you are confusing the two. You don’t owe me a damn thing in the world. Do you understand it? The healing has happened. It has taken two persons – you and me – for it to happen. Why not let it remain at that? It is very simple.

V. Are you sure that the two are not related?

K. Yes. Quite sure. You have been listening to the talks. You have a serious mind. The talks were sinking deep into your being. They are operating all the time. One day you realized the truth.

What have I done to it? Look here- you were walking in a forest. You came across another person.

He said: ‘If you walk this way you might arrive earlier.’ You walked. You arrived. You thanked the person. It is as simple as that.

Why should you feel you owe something to me? Why make an issue of it?

V. I can’t tell you why. But I do feel obliged to you.

K. All right why do you feel disturbed over it?

V. Because my affection feels hurt by that. Obligation and indebtedness seem to have polluted love and friendship. Our very relationship seems to be changing.

K. Goodness me. Our relationship need not and should not change. It should be as free as it was before. I wonder if you are frightened…

V. Yes – Krishnaji. I feel a kind of awe, a kind of fear…

K. That’s the crux. There is nothing to feel afraid of. I have not done anything to you. I don’t know how the healing takes place. I know as much as you do. Do you understand? Shake this off. I shall be sorry if our relationship is affected by this. Vimalaji, the earth was ready to receive the rains. She has received with full abandon. No wonder there is new life.

V. So be it Krishnaji. Let me only confess that this sudden invasion does baffle me. It is not due to anything that I have done. As if it is not related to me as an effect is related to its cause. It has descended with an irresistible force. The intensity and the depth of the force know neither increase nor decrease.

K. It happens. Why not watch it?

I prepared to leave. Krishnamurti knew that I was leaving Gstaad for Zurich the same evening. So he said:

‘I hope to find you in excellent health when we meet in India. Have a pleasant journey.’

While I was walking back to the hotel I met Mr. B. who was practicing as a psychiatrist in New York. He had come all the way to attend the talks. He was putting up in the same hotel and we had met several times during the fortnight.

B. Vimala, I have been shaken all over by Krishnamurti’s talks. We had learnt that the unconscious is indestructible. Krishnamurti says: ‘It can drop away.’ I had learned that it has taken a million years for the human mind and the brain to develop to its present state. Krishnamurti says: ‘You can jump out of this mind and brain.’ It is fantastic and incredible.

V. It is neither incredible nor fantastic. He is not presenting a theory or an idea which you could accept or reject. He communicates his experience. He is a challenge to your science of psychology.

Why should not a group of you take it up for scientific investigation? Why not make a research into whether the conscious and the unconscious can be done away with?

Krishnamurti is no fool. He knows what he says and he says what he means.

B. Do you agree with Krishnamurti, that the unconscious can be destroyed completely?

V. I am not a student of psychology. And there is nothing to agree with. I see that what he says is true.

B. Excuse me for being personal. Have you destroyed it?

V. You can’t destroy it, my dear. It gets destroyed. One sees that it has dropped. That is all.

I left Gastaad in the evening and by midnight I was in Zurich. Next day I wrote two letters, one to my father and one to Krishnamurti.

To my father I wrote:

‘Everything has dropped away. A tremendous tempest has swept away everything with one stroke. It is not ‘The cosmic evolution become conscious of itself.’ It is life anew. A journey wither I know not! Why, I know not! No excitement! No enthusiasm. But an intense flame of passion is consuming the whole being. I wish I could describe the strength of integrity which makes me walk now fearlessly. I wish I could describe how I witnessed the ego being torn to pieces and being thrown to the winds. I wish I could communicate what this denudation is! Or may one call it ex-centration? The center of thinking getting dissolved into nothingness.

The words might sound familiar. Perhaps you would say Krishnamurti – type terms and phrases. But you are well aware that borrowed phrases cannot transmit life. Nor can they enable one to see the reality. They cannot give you the moral courage to knock down and pull down your house in which you have lived until now.

Only truth liberates. Only truth transmits fresh life. Truth breathes innocence into you.

Destruction and creation mingle in that breath.’

To Krishanmurti I wrote:

‘I am not making ‘an issue’ of the event. I am trying to understand it in relation to total life. You may tell me, ‘ It is simple.’ My mind looks upon it as something strange. Is it simple to see the total mind being born anew? If one who has suddenly witnessed it happening, feels overwhelmed, would you call it an emotional disturbance?

Let me assure you that it is not the personal aspect (It’s happening in my life) that overwhelms me. Life is neither yours nor mine. Life is life. This phenomenon comes as a challenge to the medical science and to psychology. Does it not?

It is true that I have been listening to your talks for five years. I knew that they were sinking deep into the very being. But surely, that could not cause this sudden explosion. Understanding does not explode; nor does love explode. Or do they? Not that I am sorry for it. Not that I am excited about it? Far from it. I am watching everything with a passionate interest.

I do not think I shall attend anymore talks. I would love, however, to come and see you when you are in India. I would love to sit quietly with you, provided you do not mind sparing some time for a person who wants to see you without any purpose whatsoever.

Thank you very deeply indeed for everything I have received through you.’

After spending three weeks in Zurich I left for India by plane. I was in good cheer. I was relaxed and happy. There was intense alertness to understand every movement of life. Life had fanned a glowing flame of passionate interest.

One could call that state of deep attention an absolutely new experience of meditation. I am sorry it is not quite correct to call it an experience or a state. Both have a beginning and an end. In my case, however, I did not know how it came about; nor had I any idea whether it would continue forever whether it would discontinue the next moment.

-Vimala Thakar

From On an Eternal Voyage, p. 31-34

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Aftermath – From U.G. Krishnamurti: A Life – Mahesh Bhatt

‘The uniqueness of the individual cannot express itself because of the stranglehold of the experiences of others.’ U.G.

U.G. refers to the events that happened to him during the summer of 1967 as the ‘calamity’:

‘I call it a calamity because from the point of view of one who thinks this is something fantastic, blissful and full of beatitude, love, or ecstasy, this is physical torture; this is a calamity from that point of view. Not a calamity to me but a calamity to those who have an image that something marvelous is going to happen… I can never tell myself or anybody that I’m an enlightened man, a liberated man, or a free man, or that I am going to liberate mankind.’

On the eighth day he was sitting on the sofa and suddenly, in his words: ‘There was a tremendous outburst of energy—tremendous energy shaking the whole body and along with the body, the sofa, the chalet and the whole universe—shaking, vibrating. You cannot cause that movement… Whether it was coming from outside or inside, from below or above, I didn’t know—I couldn’t locate the spot. It lasted for hours and hours… There was nothing I could do to stop it; I was totally helpless. This went on for days.’ Then for three days U.G. lay on his bed, his body contorted with pain—it was, he says, as if he felt pain in every cell of his body. Similar outbursts of energy occurred intermittently throughout the next six months, whenever he lay down or relaxed. ‘It’s a very painful process. It’s a physical pain—it has a form, a shape of its own. It is like a river in spate. The energy that is operating there does not feel the limitations of the body; it is not interested; it has its own momentum. It is not an ecstatic, blissful beatitude and all that rubbish!’

U.G. explains that thought had controlled his body to such an extent that when that control loosened, the whole metabolism went agog. Then the movement of his hands changed. They started turning backwards. ‘That is why they say my movements are mudras.’ Certain hormonal changes started occurring in his body. Now he didn’t know whether he was a man or a woman. Suddenly there was a breast growing on the left side of his chest. It took three years for his body to finally fall into a new rhythm of its own. Here U.G. questions the value of this description for the world. Reading about it may be dangerous because people may try to mimic the outward manifestations of the process. People have a tendency to simulate these things and believe that something is happening to them.

His friends observed swellings up and down his torso, neck and head, at those points called chakras. These swellings of various shapes and colors came and went at regular intervals. On his lower abdomen, the swellings were horizontal, cigar-shaped bands. Above the navel was a hard, almond-shaped swelling. A hard, blue swelling, like a large medallion, in the middle of his chest was surmounted by another smaller, brownish-red, medallion-shaped swelling at the base of his throat. These two ‘medallions’ were as though suspended from a varicolored, swollen ring—blue, brownish and light yellow—around his neck, as in the pictures of some Hindu gods. There were other similarities: his throat was swollen to a shape that made his chin seem to rest on the head of a cobra, as in the traditional images of Shiva. Just above the bridge of the nose was a white lotus-shaped swelling. All over the head the small blood vessels expanded, forming patterns like the stylized lumps on the heads of some statues of the Buddha. Like the horns of Moses and the Taoist mystics, two large and hard swellings periodically appeared and disappeared. The arteries in his neck, blue and snake-like, expanded and rose into his head.

U.G. says that his body is affected by everything that is happening around it: Whatever is happening there is also happening here—there is only the physical response. This is affection. You can’t prevent this, for the simple reason that the armor that you have built around yourself is destroyed; so it is very vulnerable to everything that is happening. In his discussions with medical doctors, U.G. learned that the ductless glands are located in exactly the same spots where the Hindus speculated that the chakras were. The thymus gland, it is said, is very active when one is a child. Therefore, children have extraordinary feelings. When they reach the age of puberty, the gland becomes dormant—at least that’s what the scientists say. When this sort of an explosion takes place within the body, which the scriptures refer to as being born again, that gland is automatically activated so that all the extraordinary feelings are there again. ‘Feelings are not thoughts, not emotions; you feel for somebody. If somebody hurts himself there, that hurt is felt here—not as a pain but there is a feeling. You automatically say, “Ouch!”‘ There is an incident in U.G.’s life which illustrates this. He was once staying at a coffee plantation in South India. For some reason a mother started beating her child. She was angry and she hit her child so hard that the child almost turned blue. Somebody then asked U.G., ‘Why did you not interfere and stop her?’ U.G. answered, ‘I was standing there. I was puzzled: “Whom should I pity, the mother or the child?” Both were in a awkward situation: the mother could not control her anger, and the child was so helpless. Then I found all marks corresponding to the marks of the beatings on my back. So I too was a victim of that beating.’ U.G. says that this was possible because consciousness cannot be divided. ‘With this affection, there is no question of your sitting in judgment on anyone.’

Here is another incident: It was some time during the mid-Seventies that U.G. was visiting the hill country in North Goa. Many of his friends from Bombay were with him. One morning a group of people visited him. They were sitting together at the foot of a hillock. Valentine came to join the group. But when she found that the path was steep and slippery, she decided to go back to her cottage.

Then a discussion arose among the people there about what each would have done if Valentine had slipped and fallen. U.G. said nothing. After a while Valentine came back and ventured down the path to join the group. She did indeed slip and fall. No one got up or did anything to help her, not even the person behind her. U.G. pointed out to them that they did nothing even though each of them had said they would help her. One of the members of the group asked U.G., ‘How come you yourself did nothing to help then?’ U.G. replied, ‘I never said that I would give her a helping hand. If, however, you want to see for yourself how I myself was involved in that event…’ and he rolled up the leg of his trouser. They found scratches on his knee similar to those found on Valentine’s knee. Everybody was stunned. U.G. said that there was no significance to these occurrences.

U.G. says that the ‘third eye’, also called the ajna chakra, is the pituitary gland. When once the interference of thought is gone, the function of thought is taken over by this gland: it is this gland, and not thought, that gives the instructions or orders to the body. That is why they probably call it ajna (command) chakra. U.G. says that there is a built-in armor created by thought, which prevents us from being affected by things: Since there is nobody here who uses thought as a self-protective mechanism, thought burns itself up. It undergoes combustion, ionization. Thought is, after all, a vibration. So when this ionization of thought takes place, it throws out, and sometimes it covers the whole body with, an ash-like substance… There is tremendous heat in the body as a result of this. One of the major reasons why U.G. express the ‘calamity’ in pure and simple physical and physiological terms is that it has no psychological or mystical content or religious overtones. Such a thing, U.G. says, must have happened to many people. It is not something that one could especially be prepared for. There is no purificatory method or sadhana necessary for such a thing to happen. Narayana Moorty says that if he had to reduce U.G.’s teaching to one sentence it would be the following: ‘Consciousness is so pure that whatever you are doing in the direction of purifying that consciousness is adding impurity to it.’ U.G. says:

Consciousness has to flush itself out: it has to purge itself of every trace of holiness and of every trace of unholiness, of everything. Even what you consider ‘sacred’ and ‘holy’ is a contamination in that consciousness. Yet it does not happen through any volition of yours. When once the frontiers are broken—although not through any effort or volition of yours—then the floodgates are open and everything goes out. In that process of flushing out, you have all these visions. Suddenly you yourself, the whole consciousness, takes the shape of the Buddha, Jesus, Mahavira, Mohammed or Socrates—only of those who have come into this state; not of great men or leaders of mankind. One of them was a colored man. Then a naked woman with breasts and flowing hair. I was told that there were two saints here in India—Akkamahadevi and Lalleswari—they were women, naked women. Suddenly you have these two breasts and flowing hair. Even the organs change into female organs.

But still there is a division there—you, and the form that your consciousness has assumed, the form of the Buddha, say, or Jesus Christ, or God knows who. The situation there is: ‘How do I know I am in that state?’ But that division cannot stay long; it disappears and something else comes along. Probably the same thing happened to so many hundreds of people. This is part of history: so many rishis, some Westerners—monks—and so many women. All that people have experienced before you is part of your consciousness. I use the expression, ‘The saints go marching out.’ They run out of your consciousness because they cannot stay there any more because all that is impurity, a contamination there.

This flushing out of everything good and bad, holy and unholy, sacred and profane, has got to happen. Otherwise your consciousness is still contaminated, still impure. After that you are put back into that primeval, primordial state of consciousness. Once consciousness has become pure, of and by itself, then nothing can touch it, nothing can contaminate it any more. All the past up to that point is there but it cannot influence your actions any longer.

U.G. saw these visions for three years after the ‘calamity’. He says that the most puzzling and bewildering part of the ‘calamity’ was when the sensory activities began their independent functioning. He says that there was no coordinator linking up the senses. That presented a problem to Valentine. ‘We’d go for a walk and I’d look at a flower and ask her, “What’s that?” She’d say, “That’s a flower.” I’d take a few more steps, look at a cow and ask, “What’s that?” Like a baby, I had to relearn everything. Not actually relearn. All the knowledge was in the background and never came to the forefront.’

Valentine didn’t know what to make out of what was going on. She consulted a leading psychiatrist in Geneva. The psychiatrist told her that unless he saw the person he couldn’t be of help. He asked her to bring U.G. over. But U.G. declined because he knew that something extraordinary had happened inside him. His difficulty was that the people who came to see him didn’t seem to understand the way he was functioning and he didn’t seem to understand the way they were functioning. ‘How can we carry on a dialogue? Both of us have to stop. I am talking like a raving maniac. The difference is only a hair’s breadth. That is why I say you either flip or fly at that moment of calamity.’

Reproduced here are a couple of the most frequently asked questions concerning U.G.’s ‘calamity’. These questions, in a way, also sum up what U.G. himself has to say on this topic:

Q: Are even those who ‘realized’ different from one another?

U.G.: Yes, because their background is different. The background is the only thing that can express itself. What else is there? My expression of it is the background: how I struggled, the path I followed, how I rejected the path of others–up to that point I can say what I did or did not do… Such an individual is different, not only from you, but from all the others who are supposed to be in this state, because of his background.

Q: Although everyone who is supposed to have undergone this ‘explosion’ is unique, in the sense that each one is expressing his own background, there do seem to be some common characteristics.

U.G.: That is not my concern; it seems to be yours. I never compare myself to someone else.

Summing up the account of the happenings surrounding his ‘calamity’, U.G. says: And that’s all there is to it. My biography is over… There is nothing more to write about and there never will be. If people come and ask me questions, I answer. If they don’t, it makes no difference to me… I have no particular message for mankind, except to say that all holy systems for obtaining enlightenment are nonsense and that all talk of arriving at a psychological mutation through awareness is rubbish. Psychological mutation is impossible. The natural state can happen only through biological mutation. The incredible physiological changes continued to occur for years.

U.G. was so bewildered by what had happened to him that he did not speak for a year after the ‘calamity’. He had to practically learn to think and talk all over again, so complete was his mutation. After a year or so he had regained most of his communicative powers. Yet he did not say much. ‘What is there to say after a thing like this?’ he asked. One day the answer came in a flash: ‘I’ll say it exactly the way it is.’ Except for a year’s break in the late Sixties, U.G. has been speaking tirelessly ever since. Of all this U.G. now says: I did not know what was happening to me. I had no reference point at all. Somehow I died and came back to life, free of my past. This thing happened without my volition and despite my religious background. And that is a miracle. It cannot be used as a model and duplicated by others.

-Mahesh Bhatt

From: U. G. Krishnamurti: A Life

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A Bird Calling out of Emptiness – J. Krishnamurti

Dawn was slow in coming; the stars were still brilliant and the trees were still withdrawn; no bird was calling, not even the small owls that rattled through the night from tree to tree. It was strangely quiet except for the roar of the sea. There was that smell of many flowers, rotting leaves and damp ground; earth was waiting for the dawn and the coming day; there was expectation, patience and a strange stillness. Meditation went on with that stillness and that stillness was love; it was not the love of something or of someone, the image and the symbol, the word and the pictures. It was simply love, without sentiment, without feeling. It was something complete in itself, naked, intense, without root and direction. The sound of that faraway bird was that love; it was the direction and distance; it was there without time and word. It wasn’t an emotion that fades and is cruel; the symbol, the word can be substituted but not the thing. Being naked, it was utterly vulnerable and so indestructible. It had the unapproachable strength of that otherness, the unknowable, which was coming through the trees and beyond the sea. Meditation was the sound of that bird calling out of the emptiness and the roar of the sea, thundering against the beach. Love can only be in utter emptiness. The graying dawn was there far away on the horizon and the dark trees were even more dark and intense. In meditation there is no repetition, a continuity of habit; there is death of everything known and the flowering of the unknown. The stars had faded and the clouds were awake with the coming sun.

– J. Krishnamurti

From Krishnamurti’s Notebook, page 222

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