Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd. If you knew what truth is, what God is, you would neither be a theist nor an atheist, because in that awareness, belief is unnecessary. It is the man, who is not aware, who only hopes and supposes, that looks to belief or to disbelief, to support him, and to lead him to act, in a particular way. Now, if you approach it quite differently, you will find out for yourselves, as individuals, something real, which is beyond all the limitations of beliefs, beyond the illusion of words.

But that - the discovery of truth, or God - demands great intelligence, which is not assertion of belief or disbelief, but the recognition of the hindrances created by lack of intelligence. So to discover God or truth - and I say such a thing does exist, I have realized it - to recognize that, to realize that, mind must be free of all the hindrances, which have been created, throughout the ages, based on self-protection and security. You cannot be free of security by merely saying that you are free. To penetrate the walls of these hindrances, you need to have a great deal of intelligence, not mere intellect. Intelligence, to me, is mind and heart in full harmony; and then you will find out for yourself, without asking anyone, what that reality is.