Freedom is pure observation without direction,
without fear of punishment and reward.
A selection of quotes from J Krishnamurti
When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experience and the experiencer.
He will discover that this division is an illusion.
Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time.
This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.
From The Core of the Teaching, written by Krishnamurti on October 21, 1980.
All Rights Reserved. Copyright ©1980 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd.
Truth Is a Pathless Land
– J Krishnamurti
Perception without the perceiver in meditation
is to commune with the height and depth of the immense.
Perception without the word, that is, without thought, is one of the strangest phenomena. Then the perception is much more acute, not only with the brain, but also with all the senses. Such perception is not the fragmentary perception of the intellect nor the affair of the emotions. It can be called a total perception, and it is part of meditation. Perception without the perceiver in meditation is to commune with the height and depth of the immense.
This perception is entirely different from seeing an object without an observer, because in the perception of meditation there is no object and therefore no experience. Meditation can, however, take place when the eyes are open and one is surrounded by objects of every kind. But then these objects have no importance at all. One sees them but there is no process of recognition, which means there is no experiencing.
What meaning has such meditation? There is no meaning; there is no utility. But in that meditation there is a movement of great ecstasy which is not to be confounded with pleasure. It is the ecstasy which gives to the eye, to the brain and to the heart the quality of innocency.
Without seeing life as something totally new, it is a routine, a boredom, a meaningless affair. So meditation is of the greatest importance. It opens the door to the incalculable, to the measureless.
– J Krishnamurti, Meditations
In that state of creation,
of creativity of the new, which is timeless,
there is no action of the ‘me’ at all.
I do not know if any of you have had a moment of creativity.
I am not talking about putting some vision into action; I mean that moment of creation when there is no recognition.
At that moment, there is that extraordinary state in which the ‘me’, as an activity through recognition, has ceased.
If we are aware, we shall see in that state there is no experiencer who remembers, translates, recognizes, and then identifies; there is no thought process, which is of time.
In that state of creation, of creativity of the new, which is timeless, there is no action of the ‘me’ at all.
Is it possible for the mind to be in that state … without regard to time?
… because that is the door to love; all other doors are activities of the self.
– J Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom
The First and Last Freedom
– J Krishnamurti
There is either the ‘me’ or the seeing, there can’t be both.
‘Me’ is non-seeing. The ‘me’ cannot see, cannot be aware.
Let us begin as though we know nothing about [awareness] at all and start from scratch. Let us not make any assertions, dogmatic or subtle, but let us explore this question which, if one really went into it very deeply, would reveal an extraordinary state that the mind had probably never touched, a dimension not touched by superficial awareness. Let us start from the superficial and work through.
We see with our eyes, we perceive with our senses the things about us – the colour of the flower, the humming bird over the flower the light of this Californian sun, the thousand sounds of different qualities and subtleties, the depth and the height, the shadow of the tree and the tree itself. We feel in the same way our own bodies, which are the instruments of these different kinds of superficial, sensory perceptions. If these perceptions remained at the superficial level there would be no confusion at all. That flower, that pansy, that rose, are there, and that’s all there is to it. There is no preference, no comparison, no like and dislike, only the thing before us without any psychological involvement. Is all this superficial sensory perception or awareness quite clear? It can be expanded to the stars, to the depth of the seas, and to the ultimate frontiers of scientific observation, using all the instruments of modern technology.
Questioner: Yes, I think I understand that.
Krishnamurti: So you see that the rose and all the universe and the people in it, your own wife if you have one, the stars, the seas, the mountains, the microbes, the atoms, the neutrons, this room, the door, really are there. Now, the next step; what you think about these things, or what you feel about them, is your psychological response to them. And this we call thought or emotion. So the superficial awareness is a very simple matter: the door is there. But the description of the door is not the door, and when you get emotionally involved in the description you don’t see the door. This description might be a word or a scientific treatise or a strong emotional response; none of these is the door itself. This is very important to understand right from the beginning. If we don’t understand this we shall get more and more confused. The description is never the described. Though we are describing something even now, and we have to, the thing we are describing is not our description of it, so please bear this in mind right through our talk. Never confuse the word with the thing it describes. The word is never the real, and we are easily carried away when we come to the next stage of awareness where it becomes personal and we get emotional through the word.
So there is the superficial awareness of the tree, the bird, the door, and there is the response to that, which is thought, feeling, emotion. Now when we become aware of this response, we might call it a second depth of awareness. There is the awareness of the rose, and the awareness of the response to the rose. Often we are unaware of this response to the rose. In reality it is the same awareness which sees the rose and which sees the response. It is one movement and it is wrong to speak of the outer and inner awareness. When there is a visual awareness of the tree without any psychological involvement there is no division in relationship. But when there is a psychological response to the tree, the response is a conditioned response, it is the response of past memory, past experiences, and the response is a division in relationship. This response is the birth of what we shall call the ‘me’ in relationship and the ‘non-me’. This is how you place yourself in relationship to the world. This is how you create the individual and the community. The world is seen not as it is, but in its various relationships to the ‘me’ of memory. This division is the life and the flourishing of everything we call our psychological being, and from this arises all contradiction and division. Are you very clear that you perceive this? When there is the awareness of the tree there is no evaluation. But when there is a response to the tree, when the tree is judged with like and dislike, then a division takes place in this awareness as the ‘me’ and the ‘non-me’, the ‘me’ who is different from the thing observed. This ‘me’ is the response, in relationship, of past memory, past experiences. Now can there be an awareness, an observation of the tree, without any judgement, and can there be an observation of the response, the reactions, without any judgement? In this way we eradicate the principle of division, the principle of ‘me’ and ‘non-me’, both in looking at the tree and in looking at ourselves.
From Awareness at www.kinfonet.org, where you can find an excellent collection of Krishnamurti’s writing.
The Impossible Question
– J Krishnamurti
the awakened eye 