Krishnamurti: The Talks on Freedom - It's the Words, not the Speaker

                                             "Look what religions have done: concentrated on the teacher and forgotten the teaching.
                                                            Why do we give such importance to the person of the teacher? ... The vase contains water;
                                                                                              you have to drink the water, not worship the vase.
                                                                                               Humanity worships the vase, forgets the water."
                                                                  (Jayakar Biography: Chapter 46, page 487; ellipsis added)

                                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~
       The man is not the issue - it’s as simple as that.

There is no understanding to be had by studying the man and his life. Knowledge is always limited. In this case, with the two commissioned biographers geographically distanced from the man for most of his adult life, having never lived with him for extended periods of time, this knowledge of the man and his exact mind-state is very restricted indeed.

(As an aside, some argue that the mere fact he commissioned his own biographies indicates he regarded his life and 'personality' to be significant and something to be 'emulated'. This is simply not so, as without a record of his life there would have been endless rumours and speculation after his death. That is, a straightforward narrative of the events in his life would militate against subsequent exaggerations and falsehoods.)

The fact is that no-one, not the biographers, or his secretaries, or his closest associates, ever walked in his shoes, got inside his head and had the life events he encountered during what indisputably amounts to an extraordinary life. There can be no definitive exploration and understanding of all the remarkable events that occurred in that life.

Take 'the process', for example. Beyond the fact that there was some painful "operation" being performed by an unknown power (a cleansing of the brain cells of memory, Jayakar, pp. 124-30, esp., p. 127) - and other parts of the body during the intense episodes involving out-of body experiences, where this operation was carried out by "they" - which went on for most of his life since the 1922 awakening, nothing else is definitively known about it. Nor can it be known, now that he is dead. One can speculate about what this process was or what it may ultimately mean (for example, comparing it to Kundalini, Jayakar, pp. 56-7), but all such investigations are intrinsically false.

Then there is the question of the existence of the 'Masters.' He made it very clear that there indeed was something, which is why he never categorically denied that the Masters existed. What he did say was that the Masters as depicted in Theosophy were a deliberate personification, or personalization, of this immense 'something.' This image was created by Leadbeater, Blavatsky and Besant from their own imagination. These personalities as they depicted them were not real, but a stepping-down of the actual thing. But what was real was something we do not and cannot know, unless we come to the silent mind (Patwardhan, A Vision of the Sacred, pp. 75-76).

Finally there is, of course, the inevitable question of whether he was the actual living manifestation of the Theosophical Society's Lord Maitreya, a term and specific manifestation which he did, in the end, deny (Lutyens, Vol 2, p. 234; Jayakar, pp. 439-40). It is clear that this 'personality' is a self-projection of the mind. This was the conditioning of the Theosophists during his youth; the Maitreya was clearly a mental concept. Yet one can spend years in a fruitless examination of this and all the above extraneous issues (cf. Sanat, passim, 2000).

                                                       "The human tendency is to center everything around the person of the teacher
                                           - not on the essence of what he says, but the person. ... We must be extraordinarily impersonal about all this."
                                                                                                   (Jayakar Biography: Chapter 46, page 488)

So how can we know about all this? It all comes down to speculation and theories and thus a convenient way to occupy the mind with what are inessentials. We want to know, of course, so that we can then label and categorize the man, according to our particular set of ideals and conclusions as to what a ‘guru’ or ‘enlightened’ person should be and how he should act.

Moreover, the biographers (and memoirists) themselves approach the subject, obviously, from a biased point of view. Bias (likes and dislikes, prejudices, pre-formed conclusions) always operates in a mind that is subject to choice. (This is the sole reason the writer has not read the Radha Sloss book, as there is an obvious and inevitable familial/emotional/historical bias in that viewpoint. This is not to say there is no bias in the two primary biographers, Lutyens and Jayakar - there is, again inevitably, and this is the whole point.)

Biographies as a genre can be distinguished between hagiographies or critical evaluations; by their very nature they are not totally impartial and unbiased. There is a motive, hidden or open, to praise or critique, behind their writing. As a result therefore, the life presented is distorted and it is this distortion that presents an incorrect, incomplete picture. Without a complete picture, all discussion is therefore speculative and meaningless.

   All examples are false:
                                                                           "Society is not changed by example."
                                                                             (Collected Works: Volume 9, Madras, 2nd Public Talk, January 15, 1956)

No-one has ever learned anything through the example of another, through so-called role models. History has demonstrably proven this as a fact. We are what we are and we are not radically transformed by the role model provided by another, irrespective of their ‘social standing’ or ‘guru’ status. There is a simple reason for this: one is a unique individual, like all the creatures of the earth, and cannot learn from the example of another but only from an understanding of oneself. So whether this man was a so-called ‘worthwhile example’ for us to model our own lives on, apart from being slavishly escapist and imitative, is entirely irrelevant.

There is also the issue here of what is said to be ‘perfection'. This obviously doesn’t exist but the concept or idea has arisen through certain iconic figures in the past. This man was not perfect and never claimed to be. This is also a convenient, irrelevant and distracting side issue.

   Investigations of the person are circular:

The other essential point about all the discussion concerning the man and his life is that it is a circular process. After years of study you end up precisely where you started, with no deep understanding or insight into the true nature of what you have studied. And the entire examination is colored by personal ideas and expectations about how “gurus” should live and act, based on one’s accumulated knowledge of past “gurus” - which is precisely what is called “conditioning”. In other words, there is not and cannot be any independent, verifiable, completely unbiased assessment.

Does one need anyway to know the life of the speaker behind the words? After all, the life of the speaker is private, just as our lives are private. Are not the words themselves sufficient to determine whether they are factual or not? If one sees in oneself that what is said is presenting a factual picture - in this case an accurate mirror of processes going on within oneself - then what difference does it make who says it?

                                                                "Nobody listened to him, that is why there is Buddhism."
                                                                                (Madras, 3rd Seminar, January 16 1981 - From: The Buddha - Vipassana - J. Krishnamurti ~ Research Study ~)

Or is it that what we are actually after is authority? Do we not really want to put some person up on a pedestal so that we can create an organization around him? This allows us to comfortably stay below him and follow what he says; the personality cult, the guru worship, which is all about the mind imitating someone else. This search for an icon, a leader, someone to hero-worship, is as old as civilization itself. In this case the man openly rejected all followers, pushing everyone back on themselves. Has this caused an inner, latent resentment on the part of us who have not received what we wanted from him: a quick fix for our problems, a master who could hold our hand and lead us to the 'promised freedom', or lay out a clear method to follow in order to attain the long-sought enlightenment? In short, is the problem here merely one of dashed expectations?

Then of course there is the issue of gossip, so strong and prevalent in human nature. There is a prurient interest in the man and his way of life, which is rationalized and masked by the argument that we need to test the man against what he said. Gossip makes us feel better about ourselves; seeing flaws in others rationalizes and justifies our view of our own flaws. Gossip, the search for self-validation, is the activity of an idle and superficial mind.

There is also the issue of putting words into the man’s mouth, now that he is dead, and becoming as it were his mouthpiece, speculating about what he may have meant by certain things, what he would think about certain statements, and paraphrasing him: ‘He was actually saying this, or he actually felt this’; ‘I think what he actually meant was this’, and so on. All such statements are irrelevant and meaningless - they indicate the desire to put someone on a pedestal and imitate them, rather than applying one's one energies to one's confusion, fear and whole state of mind.

The fact of what is said is the only issue and that fact can be seen in the functioning of one’s mind and not in the life or personality of another, no matter how eventful or so-called 'great'. When one sees the process of one's mind as a fact for oneself, another person - any person, irrespective of who they may be - is neither warranted nor required for enlightenment to occur.

   A hidden agenda?

                                 “The speaker is not very valuable. What is valuable, what has significance, is what he is saying.”
                                                                                                                 (Saanen, First Public Talk, July 8, 1984)

Of course, there is often another agenda underlying this whole subject of playing the man and not the words. If a major contradiction can supposedly be found between the man’s actions and his words, then we can be let off the hook: 'If he himself can’t live what he teaches, how can we?' People who say this indicate they have a motive, overt or covert, to find a discrepancy in the talks, and what one seeks to find one invariably tends to see.

Finding this apparent contradiction, the man would then be seen to be hypocritical and thus this calls into question the whole of what he said and enables one to view the words in an entirely different light, or cleverly dismiss them altogether, as the case may be. In short, one has found the ‘perfect out’ from looking at oneself. But, as stated above, there is no such thing as perfection, which is simply an unreal and ideal state constructed by thought. Therefore, no-one is infallible, including this man. So we are holding him up against an unreal and impossible ideal created by our own conditioned expectations. This ideal must be denied:

                                                                          K: "We have to deny knowledge, deny everything. ...
                                                                                        PJ: Does that mean I deny you? Look at what you are saying. ...
                                                                                              K: Yes, you have to deny me," was Krishnaji's response.
                                                                                "What I say is, you cannot deny truth, but you have to deny everything else. ...
                                                                           Can you so deny? Is it the lack of a total denial the reason why the door is not open?"
                                                       (Jayakar Biography: Chapter 34, 'Negation and the Ancient Mind' - page 387; ellipses added)

The plain fact is that the talks and dialogues, when read freely and across the board, critically but without choice or judgment, are an astonishing resource of factual pointers to the makeup of the self, as well as to all the self-created barriers to the silent mind - and thus to human freedom. All the facts are there if we would only look into ourselves. The man himself is irrelevant to all this. It sounds harsh, but that is the way it is.
                                       ~~~~~~~~~~
                                          "Leave the personality completely alone"

                                                    2 Conversations
                                       Taken from The Link #14 ( Spring/Summer 1998), online on the Kinfonet website: www.kinfonet.org
                                                           [Note: Apart from the adding of some emphases and other minor format changes, the
                                                  article below is reproduced here as it was published, word for word, including all original ellipses.]

The Teacher and His Teachings

To some people who are interested in the teachings, the details of Krishnamurti’s life are important, either as part of the teachings or as a contradiction of them. Other people may take the details of Krishnamurti’s life simply as a matter of general interest. And to others still, the details are not important at all. For some time now - in particular since the publication of Lives in the Shadow, and more recently since the reprinting of David Peat’s book Infinite Potential, with its new Afterword (see previous article) - we have been receiving increasing numbers of comments regarding the relationship between the life of the man and the teachings. In this context, we are printing an extract from the Statement by the Krishnamurti Foundation of America about the Radha Sloss book Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti, published by the KFA in 1995. We do this not as an easy answer, nor to stifle inquiry into the matter; rather, simply as one of Krishnamurti’s own responses to the question of the relationship between his life and teachings. We welcome reader’s comments.

Krishnamurti directly addressed the question of the relationship between the life of the teacher and the teachings during the course of two conversations with KFA trustees in early 1972. But as frequently happened when dealing with fundamental issues, Krishnamurti’s approach to answering the question turned out to be quite different from the approach expected by the questioner.

In brief, Krishnamurti’s answer was that the teachings stand on their own, that no person can judge with certitude whether the acts of another do or do not have integrity, and that the desire for consistency between the teacher and the teachings simply mirrors the conditioning of the questioner.

The questioner’s desire for consistency is seen to be rooted in traditional expectations about what one needs to do to lead a religious life, to be a holy man, or to reach some form of enlightenment. Krishnamurti has harsh words for the spiritual elitism implicit in the traditional approaches:

     K: “... First there is this whole idea that it is only for the most super-elite that this can happen. And to come to that state of the elite, you must go through lives, practice, through yoga, through various forms of meditation, you must sacrifice, you must not marry, you must be poor, you must be rich, you must be devout, you must be celibate, do this or not do this, dozens and dozens of things. And people have done it and never got it. They have done all these various things with their lives, tortured themselves ... So it isn’t just something you work towards, or you invite. It’s not progressive achievement. ... It doesn’t function that way ...”

Krishnamurti’s deep concern was not to cultivate a spiritual elite, but to reach everyone:

     K: “But there is the man in the street all the same. What is he going to do? ... He’s concerned with his life, not with Krishnamurti’s life or the Theosophical life or the Catholic life; he’s concerned with his daily life. And when you bring this in, he says, ‘You so immeasurably complicate it.’ And the people want it to complicate ... that is a way of escaping from themselves. So what is the man in the street, the ordinary man - which is you and I really - what does he do? He says, ‘... Personally, I’m not interested in what the Buddha was when he was a young man, whether he had sex, no sex, drugs or no drugs. I’m not interested. What I am interested in is what he is saying’ ... Just tell me, help me, let me enquire, share into this teaching so that I can lead a different kind of life.”

Krishnamurti states unequivocally that one should focus on the teachings and forget about the teacher. But, as the following sequence demonstrates, this is much easier said than done:

Q: “Still, I must admit that, for me at least, I have to believe in the integrity of the teacher.

K:   Wait a minute, Sir. What do you mean by integrity? How do you know?

Q:   Well let me put it this way. What the teacher teaches must be applicable to what happened to him.

K:   How do you know? Wait a minute. Let’s see. How do you know?

Q:   I don’t know but I feel that this has to be true for me to feel motivated by his teaching.

K:   Ah, ah. I’m not interested. I am only interested in the teaching. Nothing else - who you are, who you’re not. Whether
           you’re real or honest. It is my life that I am concerned with, not with your life.

Q:   Well, but this is a teaching that states things about human beings. The man who made these statements must know of what
           he speaks by his life.

K: Apparently. No. What I am trying to say is this, Sir. How do you know whether he is honest or dishonest? Wait. I’m
           just going seriously into this. How do you know whether what he is saying is out of his own life or he is inventing? Inventing
           in the big sense? Or he’s leading a double life?

Q: Let me put it the other way round. I can’t know whether he is leading a double life, but if at any moment I believe that he is,
           that affects his teaching for me. Do you see the difference?

K: I understand. I would say: “Please, leave the personality completely alone.”

Q:   As long as the personality doesn’t get in the way of my ...

K: How do you know? You’re prejudiced. You’re conditioned. You say he must not sleep with somebody. He must not tell a
           lie. He must be a vegetarian. He must etc. etc. etc. That’s your conditioning.

Q: It might be a series of conditionings in order for me to believe.

K: Yes. I say forget that. Concern yourself with your own conditioning, which is much more logical, much more honest.

K:   ... All this implies: why do you want an example? And the teaching says don’t have examples ... People, the man in the
           street wants a perfect example. And perfection isn’t involved in this. That’s stupid. Which doesn’t mean I am defending
           myself. Please, I am very careful about these things.

Q:   This is a new idea to me, that there can be a teaching ...

K: Sir, when the book says, ‘Be a light to yourself”, it means that. You are responsible to yourself, you are your own teacher,
           your own disciple. No authority. It means that. And people can’t stand this, can’t take it at its value, at its depth, but say,
           ‘For god’s sake, help me. Why did you? ... You went through all this. I can’t do this. You must help me to come to it by
           degrees, therefore I must have future lives ...’

Q:   We don’t have to be Krishnamurti to understand what Krishnamurti is saying.

K:    Certainly not. That’s all. And Krishnamurti may be the most hideous man. It has nothing to do with it.

Q:   This is too much for me. Look ...

K:    No Sir, do listen to this seriously. This is very important because you see what you’re saying - you’re caught in this too -
            which is: they used to say in my youth, ‘You must be the perfect instrument: what you do, what you say, how you write.
            Then only the teacher can use you.’ And you are saying exactly the same thing, in a different way, ‘You must show that
            you lead the perfect life.’

Q:    No, no, no. The only thing that your life must show is that it is of one piece of cloth with your teaching, not perfect, one piece
            of cloth.

K:    As I said, how will you know? It’s in the book. How will you know that it is one piece? By reading, by listening, by talking
            to the man, you’ll find out? Besides how will you know that it’s one piece of cloth? The piece of cloth will be cut according
            to your conditioning. And he says, ‘Don’t bother about the cloth. Look at your conditioning.’”
                                                                                   (Copyright 1995: Krishnamurti Foundation of America)

Commentary: No-one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes - it doesn't matter who you are. A so-called Teacher should not be judged against the ideal of perfection, as there simply is no such thing. It is this perfection ideal that is the mind conditioning of the judgers, based on past knowledge or tradition that such a perfect human being can supposedly exist. So, the problem is in the mind of the judger, not the person who is subject to his/her judgment.
                                    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

              A note on the terms: The Teaching, World Teacher, and Philosophy, as applied to the talks:

                                                "The teachings were not the book. The only teachings were, 'Look at yourself'.
                                                    ... There is no understanding of the teaching, only understanding of yourself."
                                                                                                (Jayakar Biography: Chapter 41, page 435; ellipsis added)

As far as possible the use of all these expressions has been eschewed on this site. The problem with them is that the connotations of the words suggest a teacher as a separate “guru”, or prominent dispenser of knowledge, removed and on a higher academic, social or professional level than those being taught. Another connotation is that of a teacher in a religious organization, or a cult, who espouses a traditional dogma. Whereas religion in the talks is solely concerned with an unconditioned mind, free of thought - a mind beyond any and all organizations. All organizations/institutions narrow down the mind, and this includes the foundations currently operating under his name.

The talks are a clear ‘pointing out’ of facts that can be verified by anyone who cares to observe the processes of the mind. The person who points out is not a teacher, or world teacher, in the accepted sense of the word, with a title, position, academic degrees, social prestige, etc. The pointing out is necessary, but beyond that the one who points out is completely unimportant, as outlined above.

It is probable, of course, that the usage of the terms teacher and teaching was pressed upon this man due to the initial influence, background and expectations of the Theosophical Society, through the auspices of its organisation from 1911 onwards called the Order of the Star in the East, which was precisely charged by Annie Besant with preparing the way for the 'Coming of the World Teacher.' Hence, from the very outset, these theosophists and followers projected upon him the title of 'World Teacher' (both a term and role which he did not explicitly deny, though he maintained that the question of whether he was or was not was of no importance, only that one should examine what he said -Lutyens, Volume 4: The Life and Death of Krishnamurti, page 83).

Once caught in these widely held terms it may have been impossible to extricate himself from them. Whatever their origin, the usage of the terms is clearly unfortunate, because of all the connotations and historical associations mentioned, which are very difficult to shake off.

(Similarly, the word philosophy as it applies to the talks is also misleading and is not used, as well as the term philosopher. The original root meaning of the word, from the Greek, means 'love of wisdom'. However, one of the common meanings of the word in use today, in dictionaries, is 'a comprehensive system of belief' - obviously an inappropriate term as applied to the whole scope of the talks.)

Note that in the exchanges above, and this one below, he clearly delineated his role - and explicitly questioned the word "teaching" ~

K: “… You have the idea somebody can teach you. Therefore you begin right off with a fragmentation … you and the teacher, you and the enlightened being - obviously there is a division.”

Q: “But aren’t you teaching?”

K: “Am I? From the beginning the speaker has said there is no teacher and no disciple. He has been saying this for forty-five years [this dialogue took place in 1970] … And you ask: are you a teacher or not? I’ve shown it to you. A teacher implies one who has accumulated knowledge and transmits it to another; like a professor and a student. We are not in that relationship here at all.   We are learning together, we have made that very clear. …

But if you have the feeling that because the speaker sits on the platform he knows better, he is the enlightened one, I say: please don’t attribute things to the person who is sitting on the platform. You know nothing about enlightenment. …“
(The Impossible Question: Part Two, Dialogue 4, page 142; ellipses added)