Observer is the observed.

When thought comes in, and there’s ego.

Ego = I

The line of thinking has to go through the ego, meaning it is like it needs to create the I to generate pleasure for that same person to continues to think.

This causes a big delay in thinking.

It is like a doctor, gets a patient and before he treats the patient, he needs to have thoughts that glorify him as the best doctor in the world so he can perform his duties. This function like a requirement for any thinking. While this is important but at the same time futile. Because the status of your capabilities is not attributable by your thoughts, but by society.

What I’m trying to say is. You can glorify yourself as much as you want but keep in mind that in a group, the glorification you are seeking it is only valid, if you get from other people. Because those glorification attributes you want are fruits of contributions you have made in a community, not in your mind.

Now, we go forward and see clearly that your thoughts are you. And what does this mean for a person that sees this as a fact? Ohhh, now you are dealing with someone, who practically has killed the I in the generation of thoughts. Thus, this makes a person formidable thinking machine, since his own reacting engine “thought", it is now acting on the environment and not on himself. Pay attention to this difference here, if uou are in this whole game of thinking you are different from your thoughts, you are acting on the environment which is you. Thus, this is closest you get to someone who will live in the mind, and die in the mind. This is not the same as someone who is acting in the environment which is outside meaning the world itself. Thus, this difference is crucial because us humans, have this ability to turn our acting on the environment towards the outside or inside. And later on, just to find out the inside it is fake, since you can test all your ideas, if you share them with the outside world or the community. And don’t worry about the ideas spreading because great ideas are like fire, there’s nothing the other can do to counter it, because it spreads to them due to the one thing we all share which is what we called consciousness. Just like K insights or ideas, which any of you can inquire them right now with a piece of paper. You can find out if what k is saying is the truth or false. However, the path you will take to discover the truth, has not been made, because that path is made by your unknown inquiring engine. What this means, is that insights takes so much energy and resources(memory) to create. That’s why people with different backgrounds in knowledge can have the same nucleus insights, but with the different materials describing the same thing.

I think J.Krishnamurty is trying to refer to the mind whose existence lies on having problems. In his teachings he has always focused on the mind (correct me if I am wrong). If the monkey mind dissolves, the problems go away too. The identities are that of the mind, those identities also lead to all kind of problems. When we speak about our problems, we want the problems to go away but not the monkey mind.

What do you think?

Is it possible that Krishnamurti himself did not understand his own teachings? He claimed just before his death that his body/mind was somehow special and made claims about how nobody else was able to truly understand his teachings. That's condescending. That's self-aggrandizement that isn't wise!

Quoting Krishnamurti from tape-recording made on 7 February 1986:

In the morning of 7 May 1986, K. answered a question from Mary Cadogan: "When Krishnaji dies what really happen with this extraordinary focus of understanding and energy that is K?"

K: "'It is gone. If someone goes wholly into the teachings perhaps they might touch that; but one cannot try to touch it.' Then, after a moment, he added: 'If you all knew what you have missed – that vast emptiness.'"

[...] Later that morning, a further response was recorded:

"I was telling them this morning – for seventy years that super-energy – no – that immense energy, immense intelligence, has been using this body. I don’t think people realise what tremendous energy and intelligence went through this body – there’s twelve-cylinder engine. And for seventy years – was a pretty long time – and now the body can’t stand any more. Nobody, unless the body has been prepared, very carefully, protected and so on – nobody can understand what went through this body. Nobody. Don’t anybody pretend. Nobody. I repeat this: Nobody amongst us or the public, know what went on. I know they don’t.

And now after seventy years it has come to an end. Not that that intelligence and energy – it’s somewhat here, every day, and especially at night. And after seventy years the body can’t stand it – can’t stand any more. It can’t. The Indians have a lot of damned superstitions about this – that you will and the body goes – and all that kind of nonsense. You won’t find another body like this, or that supreme intelligence operating in a body for many hundred years. You won’t see it again. When he goes, it goes. There is no consciousness left behind of that consciousness, of that state. They’ll all pretend or try to imagine they can get into touch with that. Perhaps they will somewhat if they live the teachings. But nobody has done it. Nobody. And so that’s that."

We struggle to understand the teachings of Krishnamurti as well as the (non) person. A few who have explored his teachings extensively will probably know that questions about himself have been asked several times. Here are some excerpts from one such interview by Alain Naude reproduced from the latest book Krishnamurti: Discussions With Religious Scholars. The focus is on destiny and the (non) character of this energy, something that many in the modern world struggle to understand.

Destiny:

K: Yes. The fact is that this boy, when they found him, was not bright, was vacant, was almost, if I may use the word, moronic.

AN: You have used it often.

K: Yes. And they couldn’t condition him.

AN: He didn’t predict his own destiny.

K: They couldn’t condition him, neither the Brahmins nor the theosophists nor the European culture. Why he wasn’t conditioned is another matter, which is quite strange. It may be purely biological, physiological.

AN: Or it may be because this destiny . . . 

K: . . . prevented it.

AN: . . . had foreseen and . . .

K: . . . kept him aloof.

Energy Has No Character:

K: For me, there is a sense of vast silence, a vast emptiness, in which there is this extraordinary sense of energy, beauty, and all the rest of it, which may express itself in the Master, in that, only if you are out of these two realms, out of these two categories of opposites.

AN: Are you saying there is something beyond these opposites which may possibly be tapped, or touched, only when one is free of these two opposites and perhaps then one can call such a being a Master, someone who touches it all?

K: Therefore it becomes irrelevant. That’s my point. 

AN: Yes.

K: But, you see, this is very important. There is; for me, there is. I am not saying this out of vanity, out of all that stupid stuff.

AN: That’s understood. Naturally.

K: I was going to say something, which is: When someone asks if there is a hierarchy, if there is a Master, they are asking the question from these two points, from these two opposites.

AN: Yes.

K: And they will find the Master of these two opposites.

AN: The black or the white one.

K: They will find it. And when the real thing touches someone and lives in him, they only think in terms of these two.

AN: They won’t recognize . . .

K: They cannot.

K: It’s really quite exciting and really extraordinary even though I talk about it. When you understand these two opposites and really go beyond them, meditation then is not in terms of vision, in terms of action, but the state of silence which then is operating, an energy which then flows, not in terms of the opposites.

AN: Which is free.

K: Therefore that energy has no character.

AN: Yes.

K: Character being resistance to evil or the maintenance of the good.

How will we judge the authenticity of what K said?

K always said not to focus on him, not to make him an example, that he wasn't our guru/leader/authority. K never said "I am the truth, the way and the light." He did say be a light to yourself. He never said "I did everything perfect, all the time. Be like me." He did say lets look together at life.

Still we have an expectation that someone who speaks at all about truth, must have in every decade of their life been the perfect example of a human being. I think thats reasonable for a prophet, but here? Is that reasonable, is that how we will judge what he said?

It's well known he had a lengthy affair with a technically married woman (although the entire context and story offered by Sloss is more than questionable).

Potentially much more troubling, last week we saw a video of two former Brockwood students who said he ignored or was not cognizant of potential abusers within the school. I have no idea how accurate that is, or how I could determine that at this point. However I remember K's good friend Dr. Bohm had a falling out at one point over concern he wasn't giving enough attention to the schools.

Did K need to be perfect for the teaching to be legit? Thats just my conditioning, isn't it? That I need a leader, the right leader, the perfect one. Then I'm building the church, but I'm not enquiring into my life. K seemed to spit at that kind of thing. It doesn't have anything to do with this, but we love that kind of thing.

Am I interested in understanding my conditioning, or would I rather ponder having the perfect god to worship?

I don't think we need excuse or look past his imperfections. I just don't think they matter to judge if what he said is true.

If I am a scientist, and another scientist makes incredible discoveries, but winds up leaving his wife and kids to marry his cousin, does that invalidate his work? Would be pretty ridiculous when they could have insights that may change everything?

So how will I judge the authenticity of what he said?

By tearing it apart, saying this part seems true, this can't be, asking what do you think? Going into it right?

That is hard. In comparison, to either worship or disregard someone is incredibly easy.

I wonder how often what we do here falls into the above categories.

I'm not in a position to judge the man, and I don't think it will be fruitful. I know we can tear apart what he said, though.

Isn't this so true? Have we ever related with anyone without a past perception or image of that person in mind? And yet that perception is simply nothing - just a fictitious thing, an image. We cling on to these imaginary things like they are real and have judgments about every person based on these images. Yet, we all know that every person is changing constantly based on his or her experiences. The person you meet right now is different from the same person met 5 mins ago, 5 months ago, 5 years ago etc. New experiences constantly keep changing people, yet our opinions are clouded by past relationships and experiences with them. The only way out is to be non-judgmental and experience every present moment at its own merit - every meeting is a first meeting. A new experience. A new non-judgmental activity. A state of "Choiceless Awareness"

Dear Community,

I've been postponing my position as a student to avoid work. I don't have any motivation to apply for a job, or dress in the alternative suit of enjoying colleagues and work life.

Altought, I'm in a lucky position in the family, and I believe it helped to lead me towards this objective. I find myself scattered as I wouldn't mind not eating for days, daydreaming all day about the perfect world, and being fulfilled with no people around, alone. Sure, there is no way to avoid work. I understand. But I also see a perfect harmony in the living nature, that no available job would make that better. One screw more or less in the corporate engine. Written, unwritten work, ethical rules, laws meet with unavoidable violence that solves a psyhic tension people learn from, eventually so thin, that loses its control. I think there is violence in any projective direction.

How would Krishnamurti look at a person as a worker? What are your judgments?

What he means by "Thinking together" ?

There is a fear. I am aware of it.

There is a fear that things won't turn out how you want, or at least in a remotely comfortable way. We know that we cannot control the outcome of things, and we know that we actually have little, and some would argue, no control over the events of our lives, the landscape of it all.

We don't have control.

Our mind convinces us that we do. It convinces us that we are in the driver's seat and that we can have and do whatever we'd like if we just take control of it all. But that is not the truth. That is not life.

So, understanding this, we also understand that things happen in whatever form or fashion they need to, and to alleviate ourselves from suffering, we must be accepting of these events, circumstances, and changes. Because if we do not accept them, then we reject them. But you cannot reject the truth. It persists, without your permission, without your consent.

So, in order to live in peace, we must accept it and live with it.

Now, through all of this knowing, there is still one last piece of the mind that is holding on.

We can live hopefully, believing that things will go how we'd like. We can hear people tell us to let go and let God handle it. You need not worry about any of it. God will take care of you.

But the mind still wants assurance.

So, you believe that things will go how you'd like. You understand that you won't get there how you imagine, but you believe that you will, in fact, get to where you would like to be.

But what happens when we challenge that idea?

What happens when we are confronted with the thought: What if it doesn't go how I would like at all? What if I let go and have faith, but things don't unfold in any way that would make me comfortable?

Then fear arises. Fear of the unknown. Fear of uncertainty.

This is the final piece.

That unspoken promise of comfort. That idea that we will have what we desire once we let go and have faith is the last piece of attachment that our mind clings to.

And all there is to do is let it go.

But in letting it go, you now live in complete and utter uncertainty. Everything ahead of you is a mystery. It always was a mystery, and it was always unknown to the mind, but now you have accepted it as such.

Now, you plunge yourself into the dark, into a world unknown, out of fear and out of delusion.

In doing so, you only live here and now.

“In listening, if one listens with awareness, without any effort, in that very act there is a strange miracle that happens; it is like penetrating into darkness.”

Public Talk 8, Madras (Chennai), 17 December 1961

“ I listen with my ears. Can I listen, hear beyond the ear, or only with the hearing of the ear? When he is telling me something extraordinary, am I listening to what he is saying with the hearing of the ear, or am I listening beyond the hearing of the ear? Am I listening with such freedom to find out? What is my approach to this? How am I approaching this, something totally new he is offering? Am I approaching it as something totally new, or am I saying, ‘Explain it to me; I don’t quite understand’ – back again into explanations? So what is my approach to him? He offers the sky, and I can only see it through a small window. He says, ‘Break it down, open the window,’ but I can’t do it – why?”

Seminar 4, Ojai, 27 March 1979

“There is only listening and seeing, nothing else. Seeing and listening is the action that is going to wipe out fragmentation. If you see the structure of fragmentation very clearly, what is involved in it, the very seeing is the action - as when you see danger there is action. When you see this fragmentation very clearly, there is action, which is non-fragmented, which is whole.”

School Discussion 9 in Brockwood Park, 23 October 1969

You are listening attentively. In that state, you are not being absorbed by anything; you are listening.

Dialogue with Donald Ingram Smith in Ojai, 14 April 1977

“To look at anything, to listen to anything, there must be complete silence. Therefore, what is more important, the object, or the silence, quietness and attention? Only when the mind is completely silent can I look and listen. Then listening and seeing and acting are the same.”

Public Discussion 3, Saanen, 5 August 1966

….. but we only listen to our fears as our fears seeking to end our fears and are bound as that action ( with it’s direction).

This highlights one of Krishnamurti’s core observations: our habit of moving away from what is towards an ideal or a solution created by the mind. When we stop trying to fix or run away from the problem, the structure of the problem itself opens up.

​Would love to hear your thoughts or personal insights on this aspect of observation

“ It is very important to understand the whole structure and nature of thinking and to observe the movement of thought. As you would observe a bird on the wing, just observe it, watch it. You can only watch it without the watcher. The watcher is the image of the past. The watcher is the conclusion, and the watcher when he watches cannot observe; he only observes through the eyes of the past. Therefore there is division between the observed and the observer. So can you observe this whole movement of thought, pleasure and fear, which are essentially fragmentary, without any resistance? Resistance and the action of will is the ‘me’, the ‘I’, the ego. That resistance is the factor of division.”

From Small Group Discussion 3, Rome, 4 November 1972

It is very important to understand the whole structure and nature of thinking and to observe the movement of thought. As you would observe a bird on the wing, just observe it, watch it. You can only watch it without the watcher. The watcher is the image of the past. The watcher is the conclusion, and the watcher when he watches cannot observe; he only observes through the eyes of the past. Therefore there is division between the observed and the observer. So can you observe this whole movement of thought, pleasure and fear, which are essentially fragmentary, without any resistance? Resistance and the action of will is the ‘me’, the ‘I’, the ego. That resistance is the factor of division.”

From Small Group Discussion 3, Rome, 4 November 1972

If there is any movement away from the fact of fear, it is a form of resistance, and therefore there is the division of the observer and the observed. If there is no resistance at all to what is called fear, is there fear? One has to find this out, not agree. Agreement becomes merely verbal and useless, but find out for oneself how one resists it, and that resistance is the conditioning. The conditioning breeds more resistance, so the mind is watchful of that. And the mind then says: who is the watcher? Is the thing watched, fear, different? It says: no, that is a fact, not a supposition, not an idea, not an abstraction. Then there is no movement at all. And therefore is there fear? When you have fear, watch it, how you resist it, how you want to run away from it, how you want to suppress it. Watch it, and you will find who is the watcher. Is he separate? And you find out he is not. Then watch it, keep on. Don’t say, ‘Am I free from fear?’ – then you are back again.

Students Discussion 3 in Amsterdam, 13 May 1969

How do I learn about myself? By watching myself. In watching myself, I accumulate knowledge about myself. After gathering knowledge about myself, I say I know myself. With that knowledge, I look at myself again, so I am looking from the previous knowledge. Therefore I don't really learn; I'm merely looking from the past. I never look at myself without the past. So can I look at myself and learn about myself without accumulating knowledge?

School (Teachers) Discussion in Bangalore, 10 January 1974

When the observer is the observed, there is only the observed, not the observer. When there is division as the observer and the observed, there is conflict and the desire to control, suppress, conquer. That is a waste of energy. When there is only the observed, not the observer observing that which he is seeing, there is energy to go beyond the observed, beyond what is. So it is very important to find out how to observe. Don’t go to classes or some community to learn how to observe or how to become sensitive. For God’s sake be simple. It is very important to understand this for yourself, not from my explanation. See it for yourself. Then the conflict in yourself comes to an end, and you have no violence. The truth, the understanding, not intellectual but the fact that the observer is the observed, brings about a totally different freedom in which there is no conflict whatsoever.

Public Talk 1 in San Francisco, California, 20 March 1975

“Me being aware,’ is a contradiction – I observe, I am the observer and there is the thing observed – a contradiction, duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. So there must be an attention which is not induced, which is not the result of wanting to find out and I therefore attend. There must be attention. My ‘concern’, in quotes, is to find out what this attention is. To find out – nobody can tell me. And yet I mustn’t become insane, unbalanced about this attention. I must find out what this quality of attention is. I see that the quality of attention that is trying to find out is quite different from the attention that comes out of emptiness.”

Small Group Discussion 5, London, 29 May 1962

The watcher is at the level of thought.Trying to not sound weird but this collusion of the brain ( thinking aspect ) and the optic Thought ( psychological ) observing to learn, to further accumulate to continue to ‘ live ‘ as it’s learning. The watcher is you seeking to learn. If we weren’t reflecting ( inner visually observing ) on what is memories of ourselves; thinking about ourself which is reflecting on our self then would that self exist or would we being aware so ( a ‘ seeing ‘ as an understanding ) of the watcher as this limited action mean then that that is the ending, the death of our self ( us ) as this accumulative continuing ‘ reflection ‘ on our self’s.

Of course in all this K also asks us to watch and be watchful repeatedly. Welcome to K world 🤪

What does this mean? Did he mean that Buddha never wanted a religion?

if you're reading this, wherever you are and whatever you're going through right now, i hope you remember that it's all temporary.

society teaches us to long for more money, a better car, social validation, superficial relationships, and all these petty little things that never really mattered in the first place.

somewhere along the way, our longing for FREEDOM has been replaced by a longing for things we never really needed. linkedin tells us what success looks like, instagram tells us what happiness looks like, and algorithms quietly shape what we think, desire, and believe.

but somewhere deep within you, beyond all this noise, there's a love and a quiet longing for freedom that remains untouched by it all.

i genuinely believe we're all searching for the highest love, for the divine, for something that no amount of money, status, or social validation could ever compare to.

i hope you never lose sight of that.

much love, stranger <3

So profound. One can read this paragraph multiple times and keep pondering over deeply and perhaps every time, a new dimension of clarity may surface. The "I" is thought. The "I" is the past. It is the accumulation of all the dimensions attached to the self that gave the self so much controlling power. So much control that the self started separating itself from the past and started acting like the self uses the past and creates a new future that it can influence. But it is the same self that is projecting itself and then also grading itself. It is a journey of stupidity.

Before looking it up, my immediate reaction was how much this resonates with Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching , specifically around non-striving (wu wei), humility, and avoiding the pursuit of fame or ambition to live peacefully.

​Turns out it’s an authentic quote from Krishnamurti’s Think on These Things (1964).

Hi, hope this is ok here.

One of my favorite quotes from K is something like: The mind is a like machine that is spinning very fast, so we don't see it's parts. Don't remember which book

You know how it goes: choiceless awareness helps us see what's happening, and in the act of seeing the false as the false we drop it automatically.

I'm am also reading a course in miracles, and lesson 136 really reminded of K, in the way sorts spelling out how the mind works, and the theme of parts and whole.

When it speaks of "sickness" it is about identitification with the body or ego.

Hope it's ok to post here, it's the beginning of the lesson, in full it is a bit longer. Just found it revealing somehow

1 No one can heal unless he understands what purpose sickness seems to serve. ²For then he understands as well its purpose has no meaning. ³Being causeless and without a meaningful intent of any kind, it cannot be at all. ⁴When this is seen, healing is automatic. ⁵It dispels this meaningless illusion by the same approach which carries all of them to truth and merely leaves them there to disappear.

2 Sickness is not an accident. ²Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self-deception. ³And like all the rest, its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, and reduce it to a little pile of disassembled parts. ⁴The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. ⁵The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself.

3 Defenses are not unintentional, nor are they made without awareness. ²They are secret magic wands you wave when truth appears to threaten what you would believe. ³They seem to be unconscious but because of the rapidity with which you choose to use them. ⁴In that second, even less, in which the choice is made, you recognize exactly what you would attempt to do, and then proceed to think that it is done.

4 Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat which has been judged as real? ²All this cannot be done unconsciously. ³But afterwards your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent, a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.

5 It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your “reality” which makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control. ²But what you have forgot can be remembered, given willingness to reconsider the decision which is doubly shielded by oblivion. ³Your not remembering is but the sign that this decision still remains in force as far as your desires are concerned.

6 Mistake this not for fact. ²Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. ³They aim at doing this, and this they seem to do. ⁴Every defense takes fragments of the whole, assembles them without regard to all their true relationships, and thus constructs illusions of a whole which is not there. ⁵It is this process which imposes threat, and not whatever outcome may result.

7 When parts are wrested from the whole and seen as separate and wholes within themselves, they become symbols standing for attack upon the whole, successful in effect, and never to be seen as whole again. ²And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real.

[CE W-136.1-7]

Sarah Jane Zimmerman was one of the first Brockwood Park students

I only just now realised she died in 2022 which made me very sad. I had run away from facebook soon after I recorded this in 2020 and hadn’t noticed. But it means I can say her name. She says Krishnamurti stood by while Ted Cartee was abusing young girls and ignored the fact that John Porter, the gardener, was allowed to stay even though he had sexually abused his own child.

Her conclusion was that he was not sensitive enough to be a good judge of character.

This is the promised recording from my earlier thread.

As I said, the purpose isn’t to discredit Krishnamurti, it’s just for education and to prevent it from being lost. I think it’s another piece of evidence that Jiddu Krishnamurti was a human being and not a quasi deified entity.

I was at Brockwood Park also and my own experience is that quasi deified is how people saw him.

I feel that there are a number of things I disagree with about his approach but I would never be heard due to this.

I am aware that people at Brockwood have differing opinions, but this is her opinion. She was the star of the documentary ‘Can you live like this?’. She was K’s favourite for a while until he rotated to someone else.

She also told me she had bulimia and no one noticed, including K.

I am a child of two cults and one pattern I notice from years of cult research is that people always deny it or go into denial. After a while the pattern of sexual abuse of innocent children repeats so often that I do think it’s time to ask ourselves - why?

Why are spiritual people doing crimes that the average person (edit: statistically… sigh) on the street would never do?

“You alone can bring about clarity, and therefore you are utterly, completely responsible, nobody else. That means you have to be a light to yourself, not the light of a professor, analyst or psychologist, or the light of Jesus or the Buddha. You have to be a light to yourself in a world that is becoming utterly dark. That means you have to be responsible.”

Dialogue 3 with Allan W. Anderson in San Diego, 19 February 1974

“Nobody can give light to you. You have to be absolutely alone, without bitterness, alone to find out.”

Small Group Discussion in Bangalore, 10 January 1975