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We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.

There is no need to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

Life

Realization: It was in Ojai, in August 1922, that Krishnamurthy went through an intense, “life-changing” experience. It has been simultaneously,  and invariably, characterized as a spiritual awakening,  a psychological transformation,  and a physical conditioning. Krishnamurthy and those around him would refer to it as “the process”,  and it continued,  at very frequent intervals and varying forms of intensity, until his death.

He said,  “I was supremely happy,  for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk at the clear and pure waters and my thirst was appeased. …I have seen the Light.  I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering;  it is not for myself,  but for the world. …Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart;  my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.”

Death: J. Krishnamurthy died on February 17, 1986, at the age of 90.
Teaching Style:  He taught by holding dialogues and giving public talks across the world on the nature of belief,  truth,  sorrow,  freedom,  death,  the apparently eternal quest for a spiritually-fulfilled life,  and related subjects. He accepted neither followers nor worshipers, seeing the relationship between disciple and guru as encouraging the antithesis of spiritual emancipation – dependency and exploitation. He constantly urged people to think independently and clearly, and invited them to explore and discuss specific topics together with him,  to “walk as two friends”.

Fame: Krishnamurthy is regarded throughout the world as one of the greatest thinkers and religious teachers of all time. He did not expound any philosophy or religion,  but rather talked of the things that concern all of us in our everyday life,  the problems of living in modern society with its violence and corruption;  of the individual’s search for security and happiness; and the need for mankind to free itself from inner burdens of fear,  anger,  hurt,  sorrow,  and so on.

His conception of truth as a “pathless land”,  with the possibility of immediate liberation, is mirrored in teachings as diverse as those of est, Bruce Lee, and the Dalai Lama.  All the teachers and masters who have subsequently appeared on the scene have unavoidably been influenced by his genius. He was,  and is presently, considered a “great teacher” by such diverse religious figures as the respected mystic Ramana Maharshi,  the spiritual teacher Anandamayi Ma,  as well as figures more well-known to the West such as Osho.

Legacy : J. Krishnamurthy was discovered as a teenager by C.W. Leadbeater. He was subsequently raised by Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater within the world-wide organization of the Theosophical Society,  who believed him to be a vehicle for a prophesied World Teacher.

Krishnamurthy as a greatest thinkers and religious teacher, did not want anybody to pose as an “interpreter” of the teaching. He warned his associates on several occasions that they were not to present themselves as spokesmen on his behalf, or as his successors after his death. He emphatically declared that “nobody” – among his associates or the world at large – had understood Krishnamurthy,  his life, or the teaching. He added that the “immense energy” operating in his lifetime would be gone with his death,  again implying the impossibility of successors.

Teachings

Jiddu Krishnamurthy would only refer to his teachings as “the” teachings and not as “my” teachings.

According to him ‘Truth is a pathless land’. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a sense of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man’s thinking, relationships and his daily life. These are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man in every relationship.

All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

According to him, the understanding of the self only arises in relationship, in watching yourself in relationship to people, ideas, and things; to trees, the earth, and the world around you and within you. Relationship is the mirror in which the self is revealed. Without self-knowledge there is no basis for right thought and action.

Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life – perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it! It has no technique and therefore, no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy – if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is the art of meditation.

Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man, but, lies in the first step of his existence!

When man becomes aware of the movement of his own consciousness, he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then, there is only pure observation which is the insight without any shadow of the past. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.

Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past.