Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

EARLY WRITINGS - 1927 1928 1929

NATIONAL ORGANISERS MEETING

Ommen, Holland, 1928

KRISHNAJI: One need never actively dissociate oneself from anything; by one's attitude one can accomplish all things. If you are going to dissociate yourself from those organizations -and I do not know which organizations are referred to in this question- your dissociation would imply that you are afraid of getting entangled. Because you are frightened of catching diseases you avoid them, but if you are clean, healthy and strong, no disease will attack you.

I do not desire that the Order should become a tabernacle for Truth. We must take care therefore to keep the organization pure, in the sense that it will act as a bridge.

QUESTION: In our desire not to compromise with Truth, we may feel it our duty to dissociate ourselves from spiritual and religious organizations. May not such action on the part of a National Organizer commit the Order to another form of belief or disbelief?

KRISHNAJI: It depends on the individual. I know all that is implied in this question. I am not going to decide this for you, though that is what you want. You would like me to say: Dissociate yourselves from everything; from this, that and the other organization. What would happen if I asked you to do this? You would act upon it, you would be obeying my authority, but there would be uncertainty in your minds and out of this uncertainty there would come to you unhappiness and a great disturbance. But if you decide for yourselves and are certain of your decision, you will not waver and your decision will be your guide. You have all been brought up to rely on authority, but Truth is never found in the authority of another, Truth is not hidden in the shelter of authority. So you have to abandon all authorities and depend upon yourselves. Because you have been nurtured and supported by authority, because all your hopes have been established in authority, you are frightened when I say: Do not depend on authority but depend on your own knowledge of life, on your own intuition, which is the consummation of all intelligence, which again is the result of experience. You want me to exert authority, but to me that would be impossible, as I hold that authority destroys understanding; I hold that you can attain only by your own struggles, by your own doubts, by your own understanding of life. For many years I held many beliefs, I never questioned and I never invited doubt, but rather I shunned it. When I began to think for myself, I no longer accepted the authority of anyone, I began to cast the shadow of doubt on everything. In this manner I put away all shadows and I became the reality. Now I am certain of that which remains with me. I have no fear, for no one can give or take away the Truth which is mine. You must no longer be like children to be told what you should do. It is not in this manner that one finds Truth.

QUESTION: Members of the Order of the Star desire to establish your ideals in the world. Can your ideals be expressed in concrete terms for others or must each one find these ideals for himself? If the latter, can there be coordinated work? Will there not be conflict?

KRISHNAJI: You mean that what I say is not concrete enough. You want disciplines, you want regular, narrow, straight paths laid down on which you can walk. You want me to say that if you follow this, you will attain; if you follow that, you will not attain. You have not understood that what I say is most practical. If it is not practical to you it is because you are not applying it to yourselves, and therefore it will have no power to clear away the dark forest of beliefs in which you are lost. With regard to the conflict, I say that if each one is a lamp unto himself, and guides himself by it, then he will not cast a shadow across the face of another. I do not want to dispute with anyone; I do not want to come into conflict with anyone, because I am following that which I know to be right, and I shall never come into conflict with another; but because you are not following your own light, and are all the time doubting, questioning your own light, wondering whether certain injunctions of authorities are not more certain, you are casting shadows and hence creating confusion.

QUESTION: Most of us have to engage ourselves in some non-creative activity for practical reasons and we find that we are often direct or indirect participators in what we consider action opposed to Truth. How far are we justified in this?

KRISHNAJI: This question is based upon another: What is important and what is unimportant in the light of Truth? Isn't that so? You must first discover what is Truth, and when you have understood though you may not have attained -you will never concede, you will never compromise with that Truth; though in things that are of very little importance in the light of Truth, you will concede and compromise.

QUESTION: Most of us have relied so far on external sources for spiritual inspiration. You ask us to reject such sources as useless. What shall we put in their place?

KRISHNAJI: I do not ask you to reject anything. If you rely on inspiration from outside, there is always the probability, the certainty even, that your inspiration will vanish. I say: Rely for your inspiration on Life itself; be in love with Life, and Life will always inspire you. Be in love with Truth, with the Goal towards which humanity is struggling and you will need no external inspiration. I am not taking anything away, you yourselves are taking away what you no longer need. I am not emptying your cup, it may perchance be that you have filled it with impure waters and now realizing that they are impure, you pour them out, and are filling the cup anew. Please realize that I am not taking away anything. On the contrary, if you understand truly you will find that you are filling, not only your cups, but the cups of others, with the lasting waters that shall quench forever all thirst. But if you do not understand your cup will remain empty, or full to the brim with impure waters. I am afraid that you always consider the negative side of what I am saying, never the positive, never the dynamic but the static; and because of this you feel that you are left with nothing, that you are hollow as a shell. If someone can really take away what you possess then it is not worth possessing. I should welcome anyone who took away those things that are not worth having. How do you think that you can find the lasting, the eternal? By continually putting aside the things that you have gathered, by ever going forward, never remaining in one shelter -however comforting, however protecting it may be- for therein is stagnation and decay. You are afraid of the coming rains that shall wash away the accumulation of ages and make all things pure.

QUESTION: What is the best way to answer the people who inquire about the Order of the Star? When I say that we believe in the presence of the World-Teacher, I find that it is difficult to explain to them what the World Teacher is.

KRISHNAJI: I was talking to a friend of mine in America who had never heard about the World-Teacher. I talked with him for many hours. At the end he said, "I do not know what you are, whether you are the Messiah or the World-Teacher, but what you say seems to be right, and I am going to try to understand and live it".

Later he asked, "Must I accept the fact that you are the World-Teacher or the Messiah?" I said, "Do not bother about this. If what I say has Truth in it -if it shines by its own light, you should follow and understand that light, and that is all that matters". Because I am certain of what I am, it is very simple to me; but because you are uncertain, you find all these difficulties. It is because you believe on authority, that you want to transplant that authority into the hearts of others.

If you as individuals have understood and are transforming your lives., your whole attitude, your minds and hearts, then people will listen to you and you will be able to go out and give them the balm that shall heal their wounds. It is because you are uncertain, because in your minds there is confusion and disturbance, that you do not know how to answer.

QUESTION: If we are asked by people on what ground we believe that you, Krishnaji, are the World-Teacher, what answer would you like us to give?

KRISHNAJI: I know the questioner is very serious, but his seriousness is misleading. If you merely repeat words which you have learned from me, they will have no value to anyone. How do you know that I am the World-Teacher? Some of you know neither Krishnamurti nor the World-Teacher. It is amusing and yet in a sense tragic, that you should pay such importance to words. I have been saying over and over again that it does not matter out of what well you draw the waters so long as the waters are pure, so long as the waters shall quench the thirst of men. You are concerned about the construction of the well and not with the waters.

QUESTION: A friend of mine told me that since he has known Krishnaji and his teachings he feels that he has been greatly helped to look at life with more understanding. He desires in return to help Krishnaji by reaching that inner happiness, of which Krishnaji speaks, but the conditions of his life are so utterly adverse to making happiness for himself possible, that he feels that he simply cannot reach that inner harmony and calmness which seem to be a preliminary condition for happiness and hence liberation.

What should we answer to such a friend, and what can we, who probably are in less adverse conditions of life, do to help him?

KRISHNAJI: In other words, he "feels that he simply cannot reach that inner harmony." You cannot reach that inner harmony away from your circumstances. You cannot attain that happiness away from the world. Because then you would be making that happiness something apart from the life of the world, and I say: The very life of the world in its fulfilment is happiness.

QUESTION: You say that God is man purified. Please explain this.

KRISHNAJI: Friend, are you not God manifested, in limitation? In fulfilling, in freeing that limited life, you attain that Supreme Intelligence without limitation, which is beyond thought. Where is the difficulty? Because the majority of people in the world have an idea that God is a being with a long beard, who is concerned with everyone individually, guiding and protecting him. Life and this idea of God come into conflict. But if you treat Life as this Intelligence -God, Truth, Happiness, Liberation- and not some superhuman being far away, then that Life itself will be an inspiration, that Life itself will guide and will protect you.

Life is God, Nirvana, freedom, and all things. That Life in its fulfilment, in its freedom, is perfection. But do not seek comfort behind these words, or shelter from the understanding, the struggle, the sorrow and the rejoicings of Life.

QUESTION: Have I rightly understood the opinion which you have often given concerning the value of ceremonies? Does it regard only our inner attitude towards them, which must be one of detachment?

KRISHNAJI: If you rely on anything whatsoever for your happiness, for your understanding, then that on which you rely will never give you satisfaction.

You ask me if ceremonies must be put aside. Do not put anything aside. Do what you think is right, not because of what I say. I say that all things on which you depend are crutches and limit you. If you would attain understanding, you must set them aside, but it must be as the outcome of your own understanding and not because of the persuasion of another.

QUESTION: Are the World-Teacher and the World-Mother incarnations of the Universal Masculine and Feminine principles?

KRISHNAJI: Life is neither masculine nor feminine. As I am only concerned with Life, these things have little importance to me. I am concerned with the way to free Life, and these expressions of Life to me are again of little importance.

Is life masculine and feminine? In the expression of Life there is man and woman, but it is Life that matters and not all these expressions of Life. These forms of Life are to you important and not Truth and the way to its attainment which is the way to the freedom of Life. In the light of Truth, the unessentials pass away and the essentials remain. But to attain that understanding, you must struggle, you must strive, you must have tears and doubt. Do not repeat after me words without understanding, for authority is like the pernicious weed that grows in the garden and kills all beautiful flowers.

I want you to be certain that it is Life which matters, that Life alone is of value. I am concerned with Life and the way to free that Life so that happiness may be attained.

QUESTION: Theosophy, as all religions do, teaches us to follow the divine manifestation in its stages of involution and evolution. But the Teacher says that a man can attain liberation at any stage of evolution. Is there not a danger of breaking the laws of evolution in seeking to liberate us before the time arrives?

KRISHNAJI: How can any person liberate you? How can an external authority, however magnificent or great, free you from your desires, from your longings, from your burdens? You will have to free yourselves -and no one can do this for you- and then there will be no breaking of the laws of evolution, even if you were to free yourselves tomorrow. You can bind the future to the present.

On a nice, warm, sunny day, the flowers that come into being rejoice, and do not question the reason why they are brought forth before others.

QUESTION: Yes or no, is the Liberal Catholic Church a direct instrument of the World-Teacher, as in 1925 at the Star Congress in Ommen Dr. Besant declared it to be? She then spoke, as she said, by order and in the name of the Lord Maitreya, the World-Teacher, and now, by the lips of Krishnamurti, the Lord declares that religions and churches are without importance. What about this contradiction?

KRISHNAJI: I say that ceremonies, churches, beliefs, religions, are unnecessary for the freedom of life. I am not going to say: Yes, or No. That is much too easy a way out of your difficulty, and in that direction lies authority and not the cultivation of understanding. Why do you do anything in life? Because somebody tells you to do it? Why do you paint, why do you compose or sing, or do anything else? Because someone else urges you? In obeying the authority of another lies the bondage of Life. If I said yes or no to this question, what would be then your attitude of mind? You yourself must decide. You must come away from the shelter of authority and seek. In that way alone lies freedom and the attainment of happiness. I do not want to say: Reject one and accept the other, and thus again create confusion in your minds. You must ponder over it, and do what you think is right, and not act on authority. Try to look at all these questions not from a limited point of view. In limitation lie confusion and torment, and away from all limitation lie clearness and understanding. All religions, as I have said, are the productions of crystallized, frozen thought. You cannot systematize thought.

No great Teacher wanted to found a religion. True understanding does not lie in bondage.

I am sorry to disturb all your carefully constructed edifices. You come to listen to me and you will take that which is convenient and pleasant to your heart, and you will reject that which is unpleasant. Probably I shall be asked again as I have been asked so often: Are you really the Teacher? You will have to find out for yourselves who I am. You will not find this out by contradictions, wranglings, discussions, controversies; but by striving after Truth, you will discover.

I hope that, by asking these questions, your minds and hearts are freed from confusion. All these questions are based, not upon the desire to find out the Truth, but rather upon the wish to create new authorities in the place of the old. I want to show you the way to free Life, but all the time you are concerned about the unessential things. Not about Life, but about the various manifestations of that Life, the numerous shadows that are cast across that manifestation.

When you understand this which the world needs, all trivialities fall away as the leaves in autumn. But that which is eternal, that happiness which is everlasting and that Truth without variation, without beginning and without end, does not really interest you. You are principally concerned about the immediate shadow of authority, the immediate present in which you are caught up. That is of more importance than that which I am saying. But as the mountain-top is a mystery to the valley, so to the man who dwells in the plains, where lie shadows, changing visions of the eternal, is Truth a mystery. I want you to look, not all the time from the valleys, from the plains, but from the mountain-top.