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self-knowledge, authentic living, full humanity, continual awakening

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti
1895 - 1986

Question: If I were to follow you I should have to leave my church. Krishnamurti: To follow another is evil because it breeds authority, fear, imitativeness. You cannot be led to discover. But we are afraid, we want security. That is why we worship leaders. Everyone says, with so many religions, there are many paths to truth. But there is no path to truth. When the mind is free from fear, truth will come to it, and we won’t need a path to it. 

 

 

 

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Editor’s prefatory comments:

Jiddu Krishnamurti has been an important teacher in my life. I began learning about the “true” and “false” selves about 15 years ago, and his insights served to inaugurate this vital area of enquiry.

He was the one to make clear that “guru” signifies merely “one who points,” not “infallible sage.” Pointing the way is what even the best teachers provide, but no more. One must walk the path of enlightenment alone, no one can do this for us.

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Public Talk 4, New York - 28 May 1954

excerpts

Question: I am attracted by your philosophy, but if I were to follow you I should have to leave my church. What do you offer in exchange?

Krishnamurti: Following another is evil. Please listen to this. To follow another is evil, because it breeds authority, fear, imitativeness. And through following you will never find anything except that which you wish to find, which is your own gratification.

What I am saying is not a philosophy. What we are trying to do is really to discover through our own awareness the process of our self. To discover what is true, we have to find out what is illusory and what is false. You cannot be led to discover. If you are led, there is no discovery. Discovery comes only when the mind is very quiet, not demanding, not asking, not begging, unafraid.

But we are afraid. That is why we worship leaders, that is why we have churches, priests, and the whole gamut of modern civilization. Being afraid, we want to escape from it, we want to find a refuge, and so we belong to something.

I am not asking you to leave your church, or to belong to a church. To me that is all immature activity, it doesn't mean anything. As nationalism separates man and causes wars, so religions, churches separate man and create antagonism. They do not lead to truth.

Though everyone says there are many paths to truth, there is no path to truth. It is to the free mind, the mind that stands alone, uncorrupted, uninfluenced, it is only to such a mind that truth comes - which means, really, a mind that is unafraid.

So, there is nothing to be offered to one who leaves his particular cage and enters another. We are talking, not of the different cages, the different churches and religious organizations, but of understanding oneself.

The way of understanding is not merely to be free from a particular church, from a particular organization, nationality, or belief, but to be totally free, unafraid, and only such a mind can receive that which is ever timeless.

And it seems to me that only such a mind can solve the present problem, not a mind that is becoming more religious, which means becoming more entrenched in a particular dogma, or following a particular system of thought.

Such a mind is not a religious mind. The truly religious mind is a free mind, and being free, it is quiet, still; therefore reality can come into being. It is that reality, which creates its own action, that will solve the problems of the world, not the mind that is burdened with knowledge, or the mind that has accumulated experience, because knowledge, experience is the result of our particular conditioning.

When you realize all this, not merely intellectually, verbally, but when you actually experience it, then you will find that you do not have to belong to anything, that you are a total human being with complete self-knowledge; therefore there is no disturbance, and hence there is that peace of mind in which reality can come into being.

 

 

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