Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

As long as we think in terms of time, there must be fear of death. I have learned, but I have not found the ultimate, and before I die I must find it; or if I do not find it before I die, at least I hope I shall find it in the next life, and so on. All our thinking is based on time. Our thinking is the known, it is the outcome of the known, and the known is the process of time; and with that mind we are trying to find out what it is to be immortal, beyond time, which is a vain pursuit. It has no meaning except to philosophers, theorists and speculators. If I want to find the truth, not tomorrow, but actually, directly, must not I - the "me", the self that is always gathering, striving and giving itself a continuity through memory - cease to continue? Is it not possible to die while living - not artificially to lose one's memory, which is amnesia, but actually to cease to accumulate through memory, and thereby cease to give continuance to the "me"?

Living in this world, which is of time, is it not possible for the mind to bring about, without any form of compulsion, a state in which the experiencer and the experience have no basis? As long as there is the experiencer, the observer, the thinker, there must be the fear of ending, and therefore of death....And so, if it is possible for the mind to know all this, to be fully aware of it and not merely say, "Yes, it is simple" - if the mind can be aware of the total process of consciousness, see the whole significance of continuity and of time, and the futility of this search through time to find that which is beyond time - if it can be aware of all that, then there may be a death which is really a creativity totally beyond time.