Happines – Parts Per Billion

Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

We are so tied to our minds, our self, our ego that we can only see what our mind is conditioned to see; and the expanse of mind is so vast, that we consider the inability to gauge its limit to its infinite-ness. But, in self-observation we will see that reality is far bigger than our mind. Mind cannot be bigger than reality although it can create a perfect illusion of it being bigger than reality. When we realise how reactive our mind is, how conditioned our mind is we see that it’s the reality in which we are existing and not the mind. Mind is just a facilitator to create a sense of security. The real creativity thus begins when one lets go of their minds, thoughts and observe reality for what it is.
The real intelligence is to be able to see how you are fooling yourselves and how it is twisting your world view. This is possible only when we let go of the self. Love is the fastest and the most direct way to let go of self. Love is the way to get rid of the ego. Loving something, loving someone is the first step towards rejecting the very ego which is responsible for self-deception.
Jiddu Krishnamurti thus encouraged everyone to let go of their egos through self-less love; this itself is enough to solve all the existential conflicts inside us and out there in the world.

Part 3 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s legacy of self-knowledge

“What do you do when you realize fundamentally or deeply that thought cannot end itself? What happens? Watch yourself. When you are fully aware if ‘this fact’, what happens?

(‘this fact’ here refers to an observation that ‘discipline’ doesn’t destroy the self, rather it strengthens it because ‘the self’ created that discipline in the first place)

You understand that any reaction is conditioned and that, through conditioning, there can be no freedom either at the beginning or at the end – and freedom is always at the beginning and not at the end.”

– J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

We, the humans are driven by curiosity. The curiosity to survive – to put in few words. One might say that people are driven by fear, greed, envy, anxiety, power, love, money, fame, glory, sacrifice, humility, honesty, trust, legacy, mania, chaos, terror, and what not. The list is never ending. If you start questioning the origin all such attributes, you will see that humans can be driven by anything, I mean any anything. There is no connecting link per say; the only common thing between all the things which drive people is the people themselves. So, in the last question (possibly the last one) we end up questioning ourselves. We see that along with physical survival we are highly conscious of our non-physical survival. Some may call it the mental survival, some may call it ideological survival, some may even call it spiritual survival. In the end, what we are trying to preserve is the eternal existence of our consciousness. How to preserve this? becomes the question then. That is why in final question we see that we are curious to preserve our own being. That is the ultimate survival. Whatever can facilitate that preservation is the driving force for our existence. If you are scared of something, the fear of that thing will create a curiosity to look out for the ways in which you can avoid it.

Now you will realise that the attributes which are many and driving people in different ways are highly related to the ways people think about themselves and about their surroundings. The identities, the consciousness which we are trying to preserve forever is highly the function of the society we grew up in, the religion we followed, the ideals we admired, the enemies we despised, the culture we cultivated and carried over to the newer generations.

I might be making an overstatement here-

Only those who have undergone unlearning, un-conditioning or at least appreciated the process of unlearning can clearly see how badly we are tied to our thoughts and ultimately our minds.

Death of thinking is death of mind. When they say that ideas live forever – it is also an attempt to ensure eternal survival of a certain type of mind, for mind is not a physical entity to us. Realizing the perishable nature of our body, the mind becomes the most potent entity to ensure the survival of our being.

Then, what’s wrong in ensuring the eternal survival our consciousness?

We will see how Jiddu Krishnamurti showed the reality of our existence. As I have already said, he is the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question.

Short answer is – we are so tied to our minds that we can only see what our mind is conditioned to see; and the expanse of mind is so vast, that we consider the inability to gauge its limit to its infinite-ness. But, in self-observation we will see that reality is far bigger than our mind. Mind cannot be bigger than reality although it can create a perfect illusion of it being bigger than reality. When we realise how reactive our mind is, how conditioned our mind is we see that it’s the reality in which we are existing and not the mind. Mind is just a facilitator to create a sense of security. The real creativity thus begins when one lets go of their minds, thoughts and observe reality for what it is.

In Part 1, I have explained J Krishnamurti’s views on our urge for safety thereby happiness, how we use our thoughts to conveniently justify anything and everything to create that sense of safety, the ways in which our thoughts are stealing the actual reality holding multitudes of possibilities.

In Part 2, I have explained how thoughts originate, how curiosity drives them. It contains Krishnamurti’s observations on how we try to separate thinking to glorify ‘our version’ of wishful reality. Krishnamurti shows us that the moment we reject the separation of our thoughts from ourselves, that is the moment we see that we were just reactive to everything around us. We become observer of the reality for what it is, once we let go the glorification of ‘our thoughts’ – the self.

Now, we will question the very originator of the self – our Mind. Krishnamurti’s observations were revolutionary about the mind. This Part 3 will focus on that and also tie up the previous 2 parts together with it.

Existence Of The Mind – What Is The Mind?

“When you observe your own thinking, you will see it is an isolated, fragmentary process. You are thinking according to your reactions, the reactions of your memory, of your experiences, of your knowledge, of your belief.”

–J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

When we are truly in the territory of observation without any preconception, prejudice, we see what thoughts actually do. Thoughts just try to hook on to something that we are familiar with – it could be good or bad. Thoughts literally create a chain. One link creates sense – logic – connection to another, one train of thought after another. Then we create the whole understanding. Thinking is always reactive. Keep this in mind – thinking is always reactive. If you let thoughts build on themselves, it is amazing to observe what world we create just by our thoughts. The moment you inject certain intent, desire to this world, it immediately deviates from the reality. But, as this world of thoughts has your intent, your desire, it creates that world of safety; we don’t want to lose that familiarity, that comfort. Now as this world contains our desires it becomes our second identity. As the thoughts keep building on, you start associating these set of your thoughts as who you are. This is your non-physical identity now. You now strive to make sure that this non-physical identity lives till eternity.

After seeing this you will see that the mind is the custodian of thoughts, desires, wishes. A wish to be safe to prolong survival, desire to make that prolonged existence happier one, thoughts to support those wishes – desires. Mind is thus picking desirable ideologies, disciplines which will keep feeding the train of thoughts, the chain of thoughts. Thoughts want to ensure their own survival because we have assumed survival of our thoughts as our survival. (Keep in mind we haven’t even started the discussion about reality.)

So, mind is a sieve which keeps on separating the desirable and undesirable parts of reality. There is nothing wrong in that. What happens here which is problematic is our tendency to lean towards the desirable reality only. When mind would see desirable reality, it will start using the power of compounding of thoughts to create a wishful reality which we call as our identity – our self. We want to preserve self to ensure that things that we desire survive. Whatever is not the self, it is the others – the undesirable. The moment mind makes this separation – ego intensifies.

“Our whole tendency is to be separated. Can the mind do anything else but that? Is it possible for the mind not to think separately in a self-enclosed manner, fragmentarily? That is impossible. So, we worship the mind; the mind is extraordinarily important.”

–J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Without separation, our mind fails to recognize itself. If it is not able to separate itself from rest of the things, it cannot feed the desires. If desires are not fed, we will be constantly looking cluelessly for a sense of belonging, a place of security.

Here, I see one tragedy of being human rather an animal. I will explain it:

See there is a possibility that we are free from all the desires. One can be free from all the desires of the world. So, it is a real possibility that man is free from the cage of thoughts, mind and desires and fully observant of the reality around him without any imposition or prejudice right from the birth.

What is the tragedy of every animal is that they are born with the tendency to live (otherwise how would they get in the world in first place, maybe the baby doesn’t even know what is required to survive, so possibly the sense of survival naturally gets transferred from parents to the baby). Have you seen a baby who wants to die the moment he is born? Rather the baby starts crying the moment it senses absence of parental presence or absence of security. By birth we have a survival urge. Evolution has pushed this urge in us from physical to non-physical one. As we have better chances to ensure physical survival we now care more about the survival of our non-physical version. Mind thus becomes very important, thereby consciousness becomes important. That is why if physical survival is not guaranteed, we wish that at least our consciousness lives forever. That is exactly why we praise the minds we have.

Over the time, our desires take over this mind and we then keep on conditioning it with culture, religion, society, community in a certain way. The familiarity of physical body gets further amplified in familiarity of certain way of thinking, certain religion, certain philosophy, certain profession, certain degree, certain community, certain country. The more we find ideas, thoughts familiar to ours the more we want to cling to them. The more we want to reinforce that version of self. We are always separating what reality shows in terms of whether it is favorable to us or not. That is why even if mind and consciousness seem infinite, you will observe that our thoughts have compounded in such an extreme way that we are unable to measure their limits. We have attributed this inability of those compounded thoughts to the infinite-ness of our mind.

If our mind truly is infinite then we should be able to predict the reality or at least handle the undesirability that reality may present in better ways. We all know how disappointed we are with the reality. This shows how strongly we have conditioned our minds towards certain way – that certain way we call our identity, our self, our ego.

“Until we understand how to transcend this separative thinking, this process of giving emphasis to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, whether in the collective form or in individual form, we shall not have peace; we shall have constant conflict and wars. Our problem is how to bring an end to the separative process of thought. Can the thought ever destroy the self, thought being the process of verbalization and of reaction? Thought is nothing else but reaction; thought is not creative.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Now you will appreciate what un-learning can do to our life. It opens a completely different and real world in front of us. Un-learning is the rejection of what we assumed to be true to support our identity. Although it feels uncomfortable, sometimes completely hostile but there is no bigger freedom than the acceptance and implementation of unlearning. It is renewal, evolution of our very being.

The key point is to understand that we are not our mind, we can be bigger than our mind. That needs the rejection of the idea of self. Once we are observant of how dangerously conditioned, prejudices, favored our minds are we will see how we through the agency of our mind are twisting the reality to create the sense of security. The more we twist it, more deviated we are from reality.

And as I already explained that somehow this sense of separation and thereby self-preservation is in our genes by birth, we have to train ourselves to get rid of that sense. Keep in mind that this does not mean self-jeopardization. This plainly means that not imposing our ways on reality to create the sense of security thereby higher chances of preservation of self. That is why unlearning is extremely important.

Reactive Mind Vs Objective Reality

“Do not superimpose what it should do, how it should think or act and so on: that would amount to making mere statements.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

Once you think that you have full control of your mind, the mind will use this sense of its separation from you to build chains of thoughts to support itself. In the end, it all started from you. The moment you see that you and your mind are the same, you accept its conditioning. Now you have a baseline to see the reality. Now you know how your mind is bending the reality. This is the freedom, to see things as they are.

Now that we are understanding that sense of safety was the goal of everything that we are doing all along, we see that our conditioning thereby our thinking and thus our mind in the end are the reason behind all the suffering we go through. Once we see that our mind was the main culprit, we realise that it will be difficult rather impossible to punish my mind, discipline my mind because the more I try to control my mind – more I try to discipline it, the more it reacts, the more it creates thoughts and evades away from the reality. It tries to preserve its identity.

Only when you observe that you are your mind conditioned in certain way to preserve the non-physical existence then you understand the reality you live in. You still have those conditioned thoughts but now you neither want to promote them or suppress them. You are now an observer of the reality. This is an interesting observation.

“When I want to understand, look at something. I don’t’ have to think about it – I look at it. The moment I begin to think, to have ideas, opinions about it, I am already in a state of distraction, looking away from the thing which I must understand.”

–J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

There is one important confusion we must address here:

If I am rejecting the thoughts that I have, the mind that I have, the consciousness that I have – what remains of me? Wouldn’t I end up in an existential crisis? Won’t that shatter my compass? If I am not associated with certain things, how would I make sense of my actions? If I am not able to make sense of my actions or at least the things happening around me, how would I prepare myself to survive in this world? This will completely jeopardize my existence.

The answer is pretty simple if you have read till this sentence:

Rejection of mind as a separate entity is the answer. Unlearning the process of isolation to understand the reality is the answer. Wishful observation is the key problem in the ways we are trying to live the life. Thinking is the second name for wishful observation. You are expecting reality to become something in your ways so you attach certain justification to extract that desirable meaning from the reality you are observing. You are doing this to generate sense of safety, which further ensures eternal survival.

So, it’s not about rejecting mind or the thoughts. It’s observing how our mind, thoughts are already conditioned before we are trying to understand the reality. It’s like we are seeing the reality with certain tint of prejudices and expectations. We have to let go of that filter. We are so attached to this filter because world looks the way we want in this filter, that this tinted illusion has become our reality. The moment someone shatters that filter we end in existential crisis.

You must appreciate that it’s not about hating the prejudices, conditioning or sacrificing yourselves completely to a selfless act. It’s being aware that you have those prejudices when you are observing reality. This self-awareness is what Krishnamurti focused on.

The moment you will try to reject certain thing and accept the another i.e., your mind – you will create certain framework of justifications and you will deceive yourself.

The idea is to know how you are fooling yourselves which is preventing you from understanding the reality.

Delulu is not the solulu. Rather delulu is the best way to reject the very life you are living.

“To have blank mind is to be in a state of stupor, idiocy or what you will, and your instinctive reaction is to reject it. But surely a mind that is very quiet, a mind that is not distracted by its own thought, a mind that is open, can look a t the problem very directly and very simply. And it is this capacity to look without any distraction at our problems that Is the only solution. For that there must be a quiet, tranquil mind.”

–J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Love – Cure To Self-Deception And Surrender To Reality

You know that moment in any pop culture media where the final answer is love? Let me spoil everything for you. The answer to everything is love.

(Be cautious while reading next part, it’s not just that type of love and I am definitely not conditioned to prefer love as the answer. Even for a skeptic, love being the final answer has worthy support. It also guarantees that we can understand the reality for what it is.)

I always had this cringe feeling when everything grand in the narrative ended up with a justification of love. Even the great authors, logical authors, great scientists, great atheists never feel shame to express the power of love and it being the answer to everything. Trust me, I have made every attempt to find the evidences where love might not be the final answer to everything. But turns out that I would never find any evidence against love being the final answer.

The core reason is that we ourselves are the final problem. Let us see how Krishnamurti came to the conclusion of love being the ultimate answer:

“When you realize that any reaction is a form of conditioning and therefore gives continuity to the self in different ways, what actually takes place? You must be very clear in this matter. Belief, knowledge, discipline, experience, the whole process of achieving a result, or an end ambition, becoming something in this life or in future life – all these area process of isolation, a process which brings destruction, misery, wars from which there is no escape through collective action, however much you may be threatened with concentration camp and all the rest of it.”

–J Krishnamurti, The Function of Mind

Now that you have come to the last part of the discussion, it is not a new understanding when I say that our sense of self is reinforced by the desire to support certain way of our conditioning. This steals from us the ability to perceive reality in the way it presents itself. We are always seeing the reality with certain conditioning and trying to change it so that it favors our ways. But as we have illusioned, conditioned understanding of reality, the reality rarely presents itself in the ways we desire it to be. Then we end up in sadness and sorrow and start questioning the futility of our existence. That is why ‘what is the purpose of my existence?’ is the common format of the existential questions for all of us.

What Krishnamurti tried to focus on is different question –

Why am I not experiencing life the way it is?

What is preventing me to live the life the way it is, living the life to its fullest?

The answer is pretty simple now. It’s our conditioning which urges us to prefer certain ways and reject the others. This brings the happiness and sadness. In the efforts to maximize happiness and minimize sadness we have created a system of mind and thoughts to alleviate the pains of suffering – thoughts justify everything. We deceive ourselves with justifications.

“So long as we deceive ourselves in any form, there can be no love. So long as the mind is capable of creating and imposing upon itself a delusion, it obviously separates itself from collective or integrated understanding.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

What does the love do in all this confusion?

Love is the direct way to let go of self. Love is the way to get rid off the ego. Loving something, loving someone is the first steps towards rejecting the very ego which is responsible for self-deception. Even if you are delusional, your actions influenced by those delusions towards the things you love, the people you love will yield unwanted outcomes; and if you truly love them, you will be compelled to let go of the delusion for the benefit of your loved ones. Thus, being selfless through love in true sense ensures real freedom.

Conclusion – Why Is Love Answer To Everything?

“We see the ways of the intellect but we do not see the way of love. The way of love is not to be found through the intellect.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

We saw in Part 1 how and why we crave for safety, familiarity. It ensures our physical and non-physical survival with better odds and most importantly with better satisfaction.

We saw in Part 2 how we dissociate ourselves from our mind and thoughts to create a false sense of safety if the reality does not turn out the way we want. We may delude ourselves if the reality is hurting us. We use thoughts to justify unfairness the reality presents. Our religions, politics, our ideals, everything that we have created now has an innate purpose of creating a safety net. We want to remain in this net because we don’t want the happiness to end. We have intellectualized our minds in such a way that we have justification for every ridiculous illusion and tragedy is that we call it the limitlessness of the mind, infinite nature of the mind.

I am not erasing the idea that the mind is limitless. If our minds – we – ourselves are truly limitless then we should immediately be able to see beyond the seemingly adverse revelations of the reality. Which is the holy gist of all these detailed inquiries of the self.

Then what was the problem with the mind?

The very limitless nature of reality would enable us to become limitless. But is it our delusional clinging to certain way of life for safety which is stealing the real understanding and appreciation of limitless reality. We are clinging to highly complicated and highly compounded thoughts, the way of thinking just because it reinforces the ego.

The real intelligence is to be able to see how you are fooling yourselves and how it is twisting your world view.

After going through what Krishnamurti made us observe, you will realise that whatever must be said has been said already. We have just accepted our delusions because we are fully clung to the way have been living our lives, the way we have been conditioned.

When you are loving someone, there is very slim chance that they will be exactly the way you want them to be. There is plausible reason to say this because the infinite possibilities of reality mold people in different ways. There may be many things in common but the more you know the sooner you will realise that people are filled with different types of conditioning. This will first push you to reject their point of view naturally, then you will try to impose your way on them, your ideologies on them, your conditioning on them. In the final analysis, you will see your ways of worldview failing on them. This is the moment when you will reject your own world view, thereby your ego. Now you will neither reject or accept other people’s worldviews nor will you cling to your ego. Now for the sake of love, you will objectively observe the reality for what it is.

This is how love compels you to let go of your ego. That is why love is the answer to everything because you are the last question of all the investigations of the existence. You will let go of the concept of the self once you start to appreciate things other than you and accept the reality the way it is. What a beautiful way to live!

“Only when you discard completely, through understanding, the whole structure of the self, can that which is eternal, timeless, immeasurable, come into being. You cannot go to it; it comes to you.”

-J Krishnamurti, The function of the Mind

References and further reading:

Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 1 – The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge: Part 2 – Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life
Featured Image of Phantom Galaxy M74 by James Web Space Telescope

Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life

In the constant pursuit of eternal happiness what man forgets is that nothing is everlasting, the sadness exactly like the happiness too shall pass. But, the urge to remain eternally happy and safe, steals the man from actual sense of reality. The illusions of thoughts filled with prejudices, conditioning and the escape from the reality by justifying the same thoughts becomes the endless cycle for such man. The moment man rejects the separation between him and his thoughts and sees that he himself is the originator of every thought is when he starts observing reality for what it truly is. Now there is no urge to seek happiness or the aversion to sadness. The man who is able to observe the reality for what it is and denies the wishfulness has understood what it really means to become free from ‘ego’ – ‘the self’. This is how the man becomes free and fearless.
It is really underrated how much we overvalue our thinking, thoughts, ideologies – for they always create an escape when reality is not how we want it. The man who is able to see through this can appreciate how life is always a continuous flow and not a starting point or destination.
Krishnamurti thus taught about the ability to observe the reality for what it is and without any preconditioning, thinking or prejudices.

Part 2- Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Because I am free, unconditioned, whole – not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal – I desire those, who seek to understand me to be free; not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears – from the fear of religion, from fear of salvation from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, the fear of life itself.

– J Krishnamurti, Truth Is A Pathless Land

Krishnamurti for me is the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question.

I will focus on how Krishnamurti’s teachings – how his ways to dissect our curiosity paves way to understand what it means to be a conscious human being. The further writing is an attempt to address what is thinking and why we think and if not thinking then what makes us real human beings.

In Part 1 on Krishnamurti’s teachings, we touched on following important aspects of what it means to be a human and how distracted we are from our human side:

Krishnamurti most importantly taught how we are trying to bring peace to our lives by associating it with some meaning or purpose. Those who have fair understanding of the gap between what is thought and what is real, they can understand that the world in which we live – the reality in which we exist is constantly changing. Whereas we as human animals are always in the search of stability, that is how we will be able to optimize our energy and efforts to maximize the chances of survival. We crave for longer and peaceful existence in the continuously changing world.

The very continuously changing nature of the reality goes against our wish to live a peaceful, safe and predictable thereby fully controllable, maneuverable life. This resistance between wish and reality splits our thinking, our thoughts from ourselves. This split of ‘we’ – ourselves and our thoughts is the root of all the existential confusion and false sense of happiness – the gratification.

First, we realize that reality will not bend to our wishes, then we give up on real happiness and create our own world of thoughts filled with our facts, our knowledge, personal point of views, prejudices to create certain worldview. This worldview then keeps on feeding itself to grant us gratification. But there comes a point when we see – confront the reality we were masking and running away from, it brings more pain than ever before. It is painful because we distracted ourselves from it, because it never guaranteed eternal happiness – our thoughts granted that eternal happiness while wearing the coat of wishful thinking – gratification. We have separated ourselves from our thoughts in such way that whenever something bad, wrong, unpleasant happens, the blame can be immediately thrown on these thoughts. Thought which we have assumed to be the result of our upbringing, our culture, the unfairness happened to us. We use our thoughts as a separate entity just because we can conveniently find an escape from reality to create a newer one. it has become a tool to find a justification for everything that is unfair to us.

Once we accept how effectively we are deceiving ourselves we come to know that we ourselves are the thoughts, then responsibility follows. We see however painful it may be, this too shall never be constant. We reject the convenience of self-deception, accept who we are and observe the reality for what it is and not how we want it to be.

The moment we become responsible for our thoughts is when we start to see the reality, we start to see the world for what it is, without prejudices. All deceptions are stripped off. We also realise that thinking was mere swaying between acceptance and rejection of two ends – happiness or sadness. We see how much we were bounded due to this swaying – due to this isolation.

The moment we let go the urge to become happy, we let go urge for gratification, then we let go the wishful thinking, then the self-deception dissolves. Once self-deception dissolves, we start to accept our thoughts are our own, then we start to improve ourselves just for the sake of the real truth not for happiness. The life is unshackled from two possibilities of happy or sad into the infinitely many possibilities the reality can offer.

Touching to these ideas we saw in Part 1, how we assign the purpose of our lives just for the sake of gratification, how we separate thinker and thought to reject responsibility, then how the self-deception keeps this cycle going.

Now moving on to the other teachings by J Krishnamurti, I felt a need to understand the quest for happiness. I mean there is nothing wrong in people wishing to feel happy, safe in their lives.

Then I realized what the real problem is; it’s not the wish to become happy, it is the acceptance of certain illusions to become happy. I will throw light on how that happens unknowingly and then we will again come back to Krishnamurti’s ideas on those areas.

The Curious Animal

I think what separates humans from animals is the incessant curiosity for anything and everything that is there to experience; sometimes we are curious about non-existent things too. The extent of curiosity might be different in everyone but it is safe to say that we are way more curious than animals. This curiosity always needs the food of thoughts and reality checks to arrive at a conclusion – that is how we are always reinforcing our consciousness. I think one cannot maintain their conscience or consciousness (call it what you want) if you cannot maintain at least small amount of curiosity in life. Animals have natural routines for survival exactly like we do but I think we are more aware of our own being than the animals do. (might be an overstatement, but you get the point)

Curiosity is not just about some sophisticated questioning to certain sophisticated, complicated part of philosophy, it can be rather very simple. A person thinking about what should be done to get the next meal? – is also one type of curiosity – let us call it the curiosity of ways to get the next meal. This curiosity to get next meal is common for both human and rest of the animals but over the time we have found totally innovative ways, the ways in which animals have not found how to address the same curiosity. So much that now we don’t even consider the curiosity of getting the next meal as a curious problem. Being human thus means that our curiosities also keep on evolving faster than the animals. What was peak curiosity for a primitive man is now a low-level curiosity, we now have much high level and more complicated – sophisticated curiosities.

Starting right from birth till death we carry many curiosities – some of them get answered some remain mysterious, unanswered. The key attribute which remains common in all of us is how satisfied are we when it comes to our curiosities, our personal curiosities? The more curiosities you have found answers to, the more satisfied you will feel. You will have sense of fulfilment; your wishes, ambitions, wants all are connected to your own curiosities. Take one simple example – why do you want that specific job? For some people their curiosity was why some people are happier than others? They see that doing this job gives more money, for some people they see that doing this job will give them happiness, for others this job will wipe away their sorrows. In every possible sense, you can link the curiosity to the very reason of our being.

The Conscious Thinker

If you look closely to the curiosity, you will immediately accept that thoughts are the most important aspect of who we are. We keep on thinking to address our curiosities until they are addressed satisfactorily. That is exactly why thinking is crucial for humans; it shapes our character, our lives and then the lives of everyone around. Now that I have brought in the point of “thinking” you will feel that thoughts play bigger role than curiosity in our lives. And it is right to feel so. But I have reason to weigh curiosity heavier than thoughts or thinking. You will see that smartness can be found in good spirited people and evil people too. When we can develop technologies to save lives, we have developed technologies to bring about mass destruction too. Looking at the current situations the later look more sophisticated. So, if the good person has better curiosities, he will have his curiosities answered in better ways than the lower curiosities of the evil person. See, both sides can have same curiosities as the purpose of their lives but the ways in which their individual thoughts answer that common curiosity gives us either godly men or evil men. So, curiosity supersedes thinking. How you will address that curiosity is how you will be. That is exactly why thoughts are so important. How consciously you think is how you will have your curiosity answered.

Thinking Is Useless

(Just now that we said that thoughts are important.)

The self is a problem that thought cannot solve.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

When you will appreciate different ways of thinking; the process to create thoughts to answer same type of curiosity and the ways that can create totally different human beings you will see that curiosity is mostly the innocent aspect of who we are but the thoughts take shape, color, aspect of who we are, what our experiences are, how we are treated by the people around us, how we treat others. It is not an understatement when I say that thoughts rarely create the true understanding of the reality. And the farther our thoughts are from the reality the more we experience failure and unfulfillment of expectations, sadder we are. Thoughts can create an excellent sense of reality but if not built properly can make people despise the very reality they live in. The closer you are to reality realer will be your curiosities, the realer will be your thoughts and faster will be your satisfaction to the curiosities. Otherwise, we will keep on playing the games of thinking in certain ways and would never be able to satisfactorily answer the greater curiosities of our lives. Every illusion will create next illusion.

Krishnamurti advises to let go of this game of thinking where every illusion reaps newer and more potent illusion, dragging us away from reality.

Thought has not solved our problems and I don’t think it ever will. We have relied on the intellect to show us the way out of our complexity. The more cunning, the more hideous, the more subtle the intellect is, the greater the variety of systems, of theories, of ideas. And ideas do not solve any of our human problems; they never have and they never will.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

The main intent is to understand how self-protecting our thoughts and thinking are. You must appreciate this. The essence is to understand the fact that if thinking would have really solved our problems, we would have immediately stopped the process of thinking. We would have stopped it because it gave us the final solution to the real problem.

You may in thinking out certain facets of the problem, see more clearly another person’s point of view, but thought cannot see the completeness and fullness of the problem – it can only see partially and a partial answer is not a complete answer, therefore it is not a solution

-J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Thinking can create false sense of solution but to certain extent, the reality holds more possibilities than that.

We would see that the more we think about something even fundamental the more complicated it becomes. Thinking may help us to understand perspectives but it never serves us the truth of reality as a whole rather it always gives certain dimensional information. Now this certain dimensional information can be easily poisoned with prejudices and not the facts. Thinking actually steals us from the multiple possibilities of the reality. As the problems from thinking multiply themselves, we are now entangled in the problems which are not even there in reality. We are just multiplying thoughts and problems because we know they give instant happiness for reality doesn’t guarantee eternal happiness. We are running away from truth by treating thoughts in superior ways.

Does that mean that thinking steals away the creativity? It seems counterintuitive! Thinking is the reason why we are creative. So, what exactly is going wrong?

The thing that is going wrong is our habit of separating things and comparing them with our previous knowledge; it’s our habit of grouping things in our old understandings. We try to understand newer things with our older understandings. We keep on filling our knowledge bank. We rarely unlearn anything with completely new perspective.

We fail to unlearn, because of our urge to happen things in certain ways. If you want the reality to happen in certain way, you will always be blinded to the reality which could have had better possibilities, better and beyond the limits of your thoughts.

This is why Krishnamurti focused on self-knowledge. Your pivot becomes you rather that the ways in which you want things to be. Once you understand who you are, you see how cunning your mind is, it always tries to create justifications to escape through a never-ending chain of illusive thoughts.

Once you accept who you are, you will see how the reactive thought got generated from you, that thought is you yourself. Now you see who you are. Once you see who you are, you don’t rely on thoughts to understand the reality. This is what builds the bridge between thinker and thought. This is where thinking is no longer required. You see reality for what it is. You become fearless, free from expectations and free from thoughts. Your actions now have intent instead of a wish.

Now, let us see how to maintain the awareness of self and be free from the illusion of never-ending chain of thoughts.

The Real Baseline – Non-Isolation

It seems to me that before we set out on a journey to find reality, to find God, before we can act, before we can have any relationship with another, which is society, it is essential that we begin to understand ourselves first.

… And it does not mean obviously, that self-knowledge is opposed to, or isolated from relationship. It does not mean, obviously, emphasis on the individual, the me, as opposed to the mass, as opposed to another.

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking?

Krishnamurti paved the way to break out of the vicious cycle of self-deception. When ending up in self-referential paradox the basic question one can ask is how the reference is getting created. We see that we do not actually have an eternal, unchanging baseline. The baseline keeps evolving as our beliefs, experiences keep on changing. To understand ourselves is thus one difficult task. It’s like aiming a moving target, a target which keeps on changing all of its attributes. We realize that what we were calling our baseline – our core was just our thought conditioned by our urge for safety, peace and happiness.

Many think that in order to understand self, one has to isolate themselves from others. The rejection of isolation itself is the purpose of understanding self. Rather the more isolated you will be from others more your thoughts and mind would dominate you. The real purpose of self-knowledge is understanding of ourselves as the whole not as the isolated one.

Self-knowledge thus means the rejection of selfishness and the sense of ego. Then the person starts to understand what it means to think about the events and what it means to see the event. Former is limited because we are wishing for it to happen in certain way, latter hold any possibilities because we are not expecting or imposing what should happen.

Because we are craving for certain anticipation, trying to have certain expectation – we try to isolate our experiences to only those expectation. We blind ourselves by isolation. We see that our experiences create a reaction in us which we try to connect with certain memories, feelings. Then they lead to acceptance or rejection based on the sad or happy feeling generated. Then if that feeling is happy, we crave for more of it; if that feeling is bad, we try to suppress it. And the cycle keeps on going. We get tangled in our own thoughts.

Until and unless I don’t accept that ‘I’ am the originator of my thought I can’t really find that which lies beyond that thought. My thought will create another thought based on my urge to find the sense of security. The thinker has to just observe the thought and not expect it to be desirable or undesirable. This is one difficult task. But it guarantees eternal truth.

So long as effort is divided into the experiencer and the experience, there must be deterioration. Integration is only possible when the thinker is no longer the observer. That is, we know at present there are the thinker and the thought. The observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experienced; there are two different states. Our effort is to bridge the two.

– J Krishnamurti, Can thinking solve our problems?

Krishnamurti explained why our thoughts do so and why we refuse to let go of our thoughts (even though deep down we use our thoughts as a way to justify anything to our convenience, security and peace.) In the pursuit to bring “peace of mind”, the mind created two ends of every thought. The thinker who has already considered himself different from the thought now assumes one side of that thought and then measures his/her worth, goodness/badness by the extent of deterioration from that assumed baseline.

In reality, the very assumptions of either one of the ends of the thought prevents the person to have exposure to the real possibilities lying on the other end rather beyond the whole horizon.

The answer to come out of such bias is to observe that the originator of the thought is the thought itself. There are no two entities – thinker and thought are exactly same. This is where the observer and observed stare into each other’s eyes. Now the observer is not expecting the observed to become a certain way. Observer is now just observing that what it is. There is no need to move to next thought. Only thing that remains is to observe things for what they are.

We now think the thought is separate from the thinker, but is that so? We would like to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

When one starts truly observing there is no need to select one side of a thought, so there is no urge to favor one outcome, rather there is no wish to have certain expectation. As there is no wish to a certain way the mind does not work towards cultivation of one side and deterioration of the another one. Now mind just sees that which is there.

I divide myself into the high and the low in order to continue.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

Earlier there were only two possibilities – either cultivation of that which is desired and suppression/ deterioration of that which was undesirable. But now that when thinker and thought are bridged there are no side, no prejudices, no expectations. This opens totally new possibilities, and these possibilities are as real as the reality we are observing, the reality we are trying to understand.

You will realize how limited we were by our thoughts.

You will see how illusive the thinking loop seems, even though you “thought” your imagination was infinite. Your imagination now feels limited because of your prejudices, biases, memories, culture, knowledge.

Our imagination is way more limited than we think. That is exactly why observing without any prejudice becomes more important. We just refuse to do it because we don’t want to get overwhelmed by the infinite seemingly life-threatening possibilities. We are fearful. We think we are not ready.

Be Watchful Of The Isolation – The division

If I am aware that I am greedy, what happens? I make an effort not to be greedy, either for sociological reasons or for religious reasons; that effort will always be in a small limited circle; I may extend the circle but it is always limited. Therefore, the deteriorating factor is there. But when I look a little more deeply ad closely, I see that the maker of the effort is the cause of greed and he is greed itself; and I also see that there is no ‘me’ and greed, existing separately, but that there is only greed. If I realize that I am greedy, that there is not the observer who is greedy but I am myself greed, then our whole question is entirely different; our response to it is entirely different; then our effort is not destructive.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

This is revolutionary in many senses. As we are dependent on thoughts to understand reality. This dependence is filled with preconditioning right from the moment we are born. Therefore, we always try to mold our observation in the shapes of what we wish to become. If I wish to become a world known robber, I will see the act of stealing as a good one – a stepping stone in my “career”, if I wish to become a world known cop/detective I will see the act of stealing as a wrong one.

But if I have no wish to either become a robber or a cop, I now will have totally new concept of what stealing is. If I am observing a robbery right now with no prejudices, I am seeing the desperation, fear of getting caught in the eyes of the robber. I am seeing the mental stress that cop is going through to solve the case; if the cop is a smart one, I am seeing how he feels sorry for the robbers and how happy he feels that he can easily catch them.

Without prejudices you see that the reality morphs according to the wishes of its observers – the observers having certain expectations from it, certain prejudices.

It is that problem which is creative, in which there is no sense of ‘I’ dominating, becoming, positively or negatively. We must come to that state if we would be creative.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

You have to thus let go of the what is expected and observe what is happening without any preconditions. Then you will see that the negativity or positivity of the same reality became in that certain way because you had already picked either one of the sides. If you wanted to behave like a cop – a successful robbery is nightmare for you; if you wanted to behave life a thief same is the happiest moment of your life.

But if you just want to observe what is there in reality, you will see the desperation in the eyes of the robber and the ways cop chooses to hunt the thief down – even if it would steal his ideals.

You see people degrading themselves to have an illusion of the life they desire. You will feel like helping both of them. You will not feel of favoring either one of them.

This may seem like a person who has let go of life or like a sage, but trust me once you have this real worldview, you will see that you are more than yourself. You will see yourself extending to others, you will have this innate urge to reach out to others, to help them to come out of the illusion of happiness and sadness. You will help people in surprisingly different ways – not just right or wrong ways.

What is important is to see that the maker of effort and the object towards which he is making effort are the same. That requires enormously great understanding, watchfulness, to see how the mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time.

-J Krishnamurti, The thinker and the thought

Once you accept yourself in such way you no longer have craving for happiness and aversion towards sadness. You will see that this current happiness is short lived and so will be the sadness arriving after it. You will see that reality is just a tide of happiness and sadness, we are just swaying in between.

Rather you will start seeing that reality is not just a wave between sadness and happiness – it has other attributes for which words like happiness or sadness would fall short to describe them. You are existing between the superposition of many such waves. This is the real journey towards a creative and realest real life.

You will see that you are not affected by these waves. Not affected does not mean that you are insensitive or numb to these aspects of life, rather now you are more sensitive and open to infinite possibilities of life. You don’t get tangled in thoughts, you now act to pass through the life, instead of attempting to control it. You become fearless. You don’t start any journey to achieve freedom in the end. You become free in the first place before you start the journey to experience the life lying ahead. You truly become free in reality.

We will see in detail why Krishnamurti said that freedom is at the beginning in next part.

“Until we understand how to transcend this separative thinking, this process of giving emphasis to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, whether in the collective form or in individual form, we shall not have peace”

J Krishnamurti

References and further reading:

Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 1 – The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 3 – Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

The Liberation From Thinking and Thoughts

Remembering J Krishnamurti on his birthday.
The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways.
The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal – has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.
We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom. J Krishnamurti’s teaching thus shows us the path to experience the life in our own truest ways.

Part 1 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Jiddu Krishnamurti – one of the greatest philosophers, one of the greatest humans paved a pathway to the modern worldview of the real truth, the real freedom, the real meaning of life, real love and the real life itself. His life story talks for his ideology. Right from his childhood he was nurtured to be the chosen one – the spiritual guide for the world – “the World Teacher”. Certain influential people were already anticipating the coming of the world teacher who will show the way of life to people and bring light into their lives. This society was called the “Theosophical Society”. The Order of the Star in the East (OSE) was the theosophical society which was responsible to let the world know that the world teacher – Maitreya has arrived on earth to show the real path of our very being.

What has created a deep impact on me is the way Krishnamurti handled this matter. That is exactly why his place in my heart is immovable. When the time was right Krishnamurti dissolved the order (keep in mind he was the leader of the OSE). He was groomed to be the chosen one. He had every chance to utilize that for the benefit of the mankind. Krishnamurti dissolved the order and asked every member of the order to not follow him and create their own path to the truth. His talk “Truth is a pathless land” given on the occasion of dissolution of the order of the star in the east is a testimony on what greatness the humanity awaits at the end of their individual journey of their very being. It strengthens the belief that we were really made for something simple yet great.

“I do not want you to agree with me, I do not want you to follow me, I want you to understand what I am saying. This understanding is necessary because your belief has not transformed you but only complicated you, and because you are not willing to face things as they are.”

– J Krishnamurti, Truth Is A Pathless Land

This is me remembering Krishnamurti on his birthday. Krishnamurti for me it the perfect person at perfect time to ask the perfect question. My explanation for the train of concepts and ideas is really long (I apologize for that) so the discussion is split into few parts. Lucky that we had J Krishnamurti who simplified life for us but I think it’s an interesting exercise to connect the dots on how Krishnamurti can remain relevant for the eternity of humanity.

I will focus on how Krishnamurti’s teachings – how the ways to dissect our curiosity paves way to understand what it means to be a conscious human being. The further writing is an attempt to address what is thinking and why we think and if not thinking then what makes us real human beings. Trust me, thinking feels the most unnecessary part when you understand what Krishnamurti taught throughout his life.

Purpose of Life – The Safety And Peace In My Existence

“What is it that most of us are seeking? What is it that each one of us wants? Especially in this restless world, where everybody is trying to find some kind of peace, some kind of happiness, a refuge, surely it is important to find out, isn’t it? what it is that we are trying to discover?”

– J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Krishnamurti tried to answer the curiosity of all curiosities. When we are trying to address curiosities, we find our very own existence at the focal point of the discussion. Then we ask if I am here why am I here? What should I be doing now that I exist?

It is fairly simple yet fundamental question. Krishnamurti was the expert of creating a chain of questions and everyone seeking the reality could create a path of their own to the truth when they honestly started answering these questions. Instead of bringing horse to the water and forcing it to drink the water even if it is not thirsty Krishnamurti’s talks have this way that the horse first becomes aware what it means to be thirsty, then it sees that it is really thirsty, it sees what it is thirsty for and then Krishnamurti’s questions send that horse on its own path to the waters. In the end whether horse finds water or not that is the matter of what the reality is. Horse is fine with that.

Krishnamurti called out that we all want our suffering to end eventually and be happy. But he pointed out that the moment we sense that happiness – every type of happiness is not permanent then we seek for the gratification. Because happiness being a byproduct of process cannot be artificially created whereas gratification can be easily and artificially created. We can create gratification immediately by fooling ourselves. Trust me everyone is ready to fool themselves if it guarantees peace, comfort, safety and thereby gratification – a false sense of happiness.

“I am afraid most of us are seeking gratification. We want to be gratified; we want to find a sense of fullness at the end of our search.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

We create this gratification by isolating ourselves from certain parts of truth which are painful to accept. That is why we have this notion that our thoughts are what we are, if you are happy inside then everything around you will seem happy. So, our thoughts start creating their own reality. This is done by isolation and division. Deep down we know that the uncomfortable truth is the realest reality but we choose to ignore it for the gratification.

“Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

The moment we start building new understandings based on the thoughts responsible for our current gratification we again find those sidelined uncomfortable truths to be the part of the bigger problem, bigger curiosity – now a bigger conflict.

Unless we are not embracing the reality however uncomfortable it may seem we will never find the real peace. It feels really counterintuitive and paradoxical. How can I be happy, peaceful when I recognize that uncomfortable thing? I mean this is the exact uncomfortable thing that steals my peace.

The answer is the inherent nature of our thoughts to divide, split, segregate things/values/attributes to understand the reality.

Thinker Is The Thought

“We do not know ourselves. We know a lot about facts, what the books have said; but we do not know for ourselves, we do not have a direct experience.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Krishnamurti always tried to put a special emphasis on how our own thinking is designed to fool ourselves – the thinker. As we have already appreciated that when the truth – the reality is painful we try to find peace not by the pursuit of truth but by grouping, focusing on thoughts, biases which create gratification and then happiness. We fool ourselves through our own structured thought process however deviating it might be from reality. We create such belief system and accept, follow only those thoughts which keep on feeding those belief systems.

There always comes a time in life when this belief system gets challenged by the very reality we ignored just for the peace of our mind.

So, it is clear that however painful it may seem the truth will always be there. If not eternal peace the next best thing we can have, is the eternal awareness of how that truth, that reality will create pain, how we would react to it (or don’t even react to it) and the way to pass through that pain. This is not possible when we are seeking gratification. In gratification, we just want our wishes to somehow align with our thinking, so we start bluffing ourselves through certain set of thoughts.

“Truth may be something entirely different; and I think it is utterly different from what you can see, conceive, formulate.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

The real peace is knowing that peace is not eternal. Best we can do is to at least be aware what it is instead of what it should be. This is possible when we question the origin of thoughts.

And as I have said before, Krishnamurti was master of questioning the very question! Now he questions the questioner – the thinker. The one from whom thought gets created.

“When you say, ‘I am seeking happiness’, is the seeker different from the thought? Are they not a joint phenomenon, rather than separate processes? Therefore, it is essential, is it not? To understand the seeker, before you try to find out what it is he seeking.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

You can say that whole purpose of Krishnamurti’s teaching, the purpose of his whole life was to make people understand themselves first, to make the thinkers aware of themselves. Then only it is possible to see how the thought gets created from thinker. One has to do this themselves, there is no external agency to understand this.

Krishnamurti understood the impact of truth being conveyed through direct experience. You can read many truths, hear many truths, believe many truths but the truth that you experience yourselves will have bigger impact on how you understand everything.

(That is also why empathy is very important. That could be topic for another day.)

“Does self-knowledge come through search, through following someone else, through belonging to any particular organization, through reading books, and so on? After all, that is the main issue, is it not? that so long as I do not understand myself, I have no basis for thought, and all my search will be in vain. I can escape into illusions, I can run away from contention, strife, struggle; I can worship another; I can look for my salvation through somebody else. But so long as I am ignorant of myself, I have no basis for thought, for affection, for action.

But that is the last thing we want: to know ourselves. Surely that is the only foundation on which we can build. But, before we can build, before we can transform, before we can condemn or destroy, we must know that which we are.”

-J Krishnamurti, What are we seeking

Here Krishnamurti solved the self-referential paradox of truth. When we are using our thoughts to create an understanding of reality which could give us happiness in the mid journey, we realize that reality is actually painful, so we condition our thoughts to certain aspects so that we would at least mask the portion of reality that creates uncomfortable situation. Then for the next quest. the ‘so-called’ suppressed truth brings its head up, so we further keep on masking it. Now we are far away from what is real and what we believe.

That is why Krishnamurti talks about a baseline. A baseline which is not created from external agency. A baseline created from within, created by direct experiences. This baseline can only be created when we see how we ourselves are the generator, originator of our thoughts.

The Convenience Of Self-Deception

“We now think the thought is separate from the thinker; but is that so? We would lie to think it is, because then the thinker can explain matters through his thought. The effort of the thinker is to become more or become less; and therefore, in that struggle, in that action of the will, in ‘becoming’, there is always the deteriorating factor; we are pursuing a false process and not a true process.”

-J Krishnamurti, The Thinker And The Thought

What Krishnamurti spotted and beautifully explained is that we separate our thoughts from ourselves because it becomes easy to disown their consequences when we see that those thoughts may not give us the happiness, peace we wanted. That is why the separation of thoughts from their thinker is one convenient trick we keep on playing to feed gratification. This process leads to self-deception. Then we end up in a thought process where we are so desperate for gratification (because happiness is not eternal so we try to create some convenient form of happiness i.e., gratification) that we are always in a hurry to achieve that which we wished, that which we desired. This self-deception for false security keeps on building until the reality hits hard. Then that pain brings grave hopelessness.

“The seeker is always imposing this deception upon himself; no one can impose it upon him; he himself does it. We create deception and then we become slaves to it.”

-J Krishnamurti, Self-deception

There is a reason why the ultimate face-off with reality hits hard. It’s because our process of separation of thought from ourselves is so potent and self-feeding that it leaves no responsibility on thinker and also gives ways to the thinker to run away from the painful reality through asserting any convenient justification. The cycle of self-deception keeps on feeding itself. Then this same person starts deceiving others who are also desperately in the search of gratification. (These are the false leaders, messiahs who claim to have found the ultimate eternal truth.)

“…the more we deceive ourselves the greater is the strength in the deception; for it gives us a certain vitality, a certain energy, a certain capacity which entails the imposing of our deception on others.”

-J Krishnamurti, Self-deception

(And that is how religions work.)

That is exactly why Krishnamurti was against the formalization of any religious, spiritual society. Even one self-deceiving person can create a complete cage for the people around him and once people sense the security and peace even if it is not the reality people start worshiping that false truth because somehow it easily provides gratification.

Conclusion to Part-1

The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways. The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal – has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.

Krishnamurti’s teachings help us to come out of the cycle of suffering and fear.

Once we start walking on the chain of ideas presented by J Krishnamurti, we realize that we conveniently created a barrier between our sense of being – the thinker and the thoughts because the moment we sense that things won’t go our way we can disown our current thought and bend it into something else through self-deception. This creates an easiest way to gratification – a false sense of happiness but that is not the reality. We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom.

We will see how isolation creates bias in our thinking, what is the role of mind, how can we unlock the infinite possibilities in reality and the real meaning of being a conscious human being in the next part as taught by J Krishnamurti.

Remembering J Krishnamurti on his birthday.
The major focus of J Krishnamurti’s teaching was the awareness of how thoughts are created from ourselves and our constant pursuit to make things happen in a certain way, most preferably in our own ways.
The tragedy of human life can be given in one simple sentence: Man, the thinking animal - has deceived himself so much in the pursuit of happiness that he has given up on the reality in which he was born just for the sake of false sense of short-lived peace. The silver lining of this tragedy is that we ourselves hold the key to our peace. Self-knowledge holds the key to the peace.
We can only understand and appreciate reality and come out of the self-deception once we let go of the separation between the thinker and thought. The rejection of the convenience of self-deceptions paves the way to the real freedom. J Krishnamurti's teaching thus shows us the path to experience the life in our own truest ways.

References:

Truth is a pathless land – J Krishnamurti
The First and Last Freedom – J Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge: Part 2 – Being Watchful Of The Ebb And Flow Of Life
Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge : Part 3 – Minding The Gap Between Ego & Reality

Freedom = Courage (Now + Here)

When it comes to psychology – people consider Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as the de facto rock-stars of the field of psychology. One unnoticed person whose findings deserve equal attention rather more attention was Alfred Adler. He introduced the Individual Psychology to the world which is relevant still today and is way more sophisticated to solve the “so called” troubles of our life. Individual psychology makes a successful attempt to reach to the roots of our suffering and allows us to become truly free.
Alfred Adler’s philosophy is beautifully explained in Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga’s book “The Courage To Be Disliked”. It talks about the feedback loop of self-acceptance, confidence in others and contribution to others to live a real and fulfilled life. The great thing about individual psychology is that it urges us to break the notion of causality and thereby determinism to come out of the painful, suffering inducing cycles of life & death, cause & effect. It shows us that we live in the universe with infinite possibilities and one needs courage to break the logic of determinism to truly appreciate themselves and the infinite possibilities universe has to offer. Individual psychology given by Alfred Adler thus asks us to bear the courage to lose the false-comfort given by causality – predictability and decide our life on our own terms fearlessly and with freedom. It teaches how one can be completely involved in everything but not attached to them at the same time.

On the book – The Courage to be disliked

‘The world is simple, and life is too.’

I have a question for you,

– How is life treating you right now?

Everyone knows that the responses to this question are diverse and dynamic. The answers obviously will be subjective and so it is normal to expect huge variety.

But you know what, deep down everyone (mostly the adults) know the most frequent type of the answer to this simple question. There is innate predictability about what the answer could be.

Life is not treating me fair

Life has become too complicated for me, life is suffering, there is no hope, why can’t I have a single moment of happiness to savor for some time? why do bad things happen to only me? what have I done wrong to someone that ‘everyone’ has turned against me? what should I do – now that I have not achieved what I was supposed to achieve in spite of putting all honest efforts? why is ‘everyone’ – the society always against me when all I have for others is good will?

Deep down we have this undeclared, unexpressed notion that something wrong happened to me which I didn’t deserve. I tried so hard but couldn’t achieve that thing. Trust me every one of us is an expert of hiding these unsettling feelings, overlooking them to move ahead. But it is important to understand that unknowingly they become part of who we are. When we truly and honestly would start inspecting ourselves, we will find these feelings being the reason for the bitterness we carry inside. That is why life is suffering for most of us, being free then is out of the question. First let me be happy for now!

Psychology has always been on the quest of resolving the model of how our mind works. A bigger portion of psychology directly or indirectly works towards understanding how we see happiness and suffering. Because, end goal of how we feel, how we think, how we decide, how we interact, how our personality is created is emerged from either a happy event or sad event which affect why our psyche is in a certain way.

I appreciated this in deeper sense when I came across a book called “The courage to be disliked”. A single book can change your life. Although I have been changed many times before, I couldn’t help but overstate the importance of this special book.

This is my attempt to reorganize the ideas from the book to instantly simplify the core ideas. So, the next discussion may spoil the book for you. (Although it’s not a story book having a climax at the end but the ideas are written in a conversational – dialogue format so, you peel out one layer at a time to reach to the core ideas of individual psychology.)

I am actually spoiling the whole book and my writing on the same heron with these few sentences:

The whole thing boils down how you honor this current moment and not let it be influenced by the fear of past and the anxiety of the future. This complete dedication to the current moment is only possible if you honor yourself first, because only you can experience how this current moment will turn out for you. The moment you start to respect this moment here and now – you will be free.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first
Carl Jung

Now that I have already explained what life ultimately boils down to, it will be important to understand why these sentences hold some gravitas. So, thanks for continuing with me hereon.

Deny trauma – Deny the comfort of causality

The core of individual psychology is the rejection of the causality. Our complete understanding of ourselves and the world we live in is based on the notion of cause and effect. It does immediately feel silly to reject that exact notion thereby making individual psychology illogical.

You will appreciate that not everything in whole can completely be justified or predicted with complete precision using the logic of cause and effect. There will always be some information that cannot be completely known for the given system (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal points in the same direction). Our mind always makes decision, assumptions based on the current information, experiences we have till date and every one know that it is impossible to have all the information and all experiences that are there in the world for a person to understand his/her own existence.

So, in simple words – ‘who we are’ goes beyond the logic of cause and effect. You can be free once you break the chains of cause and effect. In the universe filled with infinite possibilities, there will always be something wrong and illogical, totally disconnected justification to the things happening to you and around you. It will be an injustice if you let that illogical justification define your whole upcoming life.

When we say that I became a person like this because something happened to me in past where I learned my lesson and changed myself into something else, we are just trying to convince ourselves to do things in certain way so that we will have less resistance to get things done in our ways. That is exactly where problems start emerging.

We crave for causality because it grants value to past; because it taught us some valuable outcomes and same causality can help us to predict what would happen in future. We always crave for certainty. But all of us know this by experience that we are rarely good at predicting our future. This furthermore unsettles the mind.

So, trauma is the pre-side-effect of causality (the post-side-effect of causality is the anxiety of the uncertainty of the future). We carry our traumas as badges to flaunt because these traumas feel very personal thus exclusive. The ways in which we carve out our personality from these traumatic experiences gives us a sense of special-ness. These bad experiences, traumas are a big part of our personality maybe due to a survival mechanism implying ‘I should be able to cope up with similar thing if they happen to me in future.’

See, the point is that if we stick to our traumas and fixate our personality on the same, we will never be able to explore the concepts that had better potential to improve our personality (and probably not be traumatic, bitter). We will be stuck in that loop of experiences related to that causality. Given that there are infinite possibilities, there is fair chance than we can be even better than what we were and what happened to us in the past. We are just better at finding reasons to justify our current position because we know we are comfortable here.

No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.

It might seem that when we are rejecting causality, we are choosing a non-nonsensical path. In reality, we are just avoiding the ways in which we are always fooling ourselves to remain in comfort of predictability. Using the excuse of causality, we are actually ‘inventing’ non-real reasons which hide the realest reality we can actually live.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard P. Feynman

Once you deny this causality which you think made you who you are, you will immediately see who you really are. You will leave that burden behind. You will accept yourself for who you are. You will see that you can instantly detach yourselves from your past and your future too. The untapped possibilities open up.

This is self-acceptance in individual psychology.

Once you see how important you yourself are to live your own life, you will say –

“Before past and future let me at least appreciate my own current moment”.

That is now and here. Once you come to the terms with yourself you will realize how everyone is just like you even though we are separated by many aspects of life. Then you will appreciate how others have their own current moments to live and experience in their own ways.

All problems are interpersonal relationship problems – others have their own current moments to experience in their own ways

It is fundamentally impossible for a person to live life completely alone, and it is only in social contexts that the person becomes an ‘individual’.

Nobody can deny the fact that our surroundings make us who we are. Our baselines are our surroundings. A human being is the most basic unit of any society. Our understanding and awareness of self is impossible without a response from surrounding. How would you understand who you are if you never received any reaction, feedback from your surrounding? – It will be a delusional existence. You would have had an idea of who you are but would have been far from what is real.

Thus, when you start seeing that your surrounding will always be interacting with you, you will be able to see every reaction – feedback from surrounding especially people can never be completely cut off. This again feels senseless. If you are born alone, leave this world alone then why couldn’t me being alone throughout my existence be more justified? It is because we never had any sense of absoluteness right from our birth and this sense of absoluteness always remains un-achieved, it is just an ideal condition we are always trying to reach. Our core understandings are only possible with the relativeness, comparison of baselines.

That is exactly why even when you are trying to live your life alone, that ‘loneliness’ itself cannot be justified if there is no understanding of what being ‘together’ means. So, there will always be something connecting you to your surroundings. That is where relationship comes in picture. You cannot run away from interpersonal relationship. You will be surrounded by people (or at least what made them you even when you are sitting lonely).

So, when you are appreciating your current moment, it is natural that others will be respecting their current moments. This understanding will make you appreciate the importance of everyone’s being.

This will make the world around you seem less hostile. You will be filled with kindness for others.

So, you must first accept yourself first otherwise you will not come out of the hideous cycle of comfort of predictability, once you accept yourself to remain in now and here you start seeing here and now of others. You start valuing their here and now. That is why you start allowing people to be who they are, you stop expecting from others. You stop expecting your recognition from others, you stop pleasing people for your own good in the end.

Now that you are free from the burden and pursuit of desirable and predictable, anticipated feedback from surrounding you become tolerant of criticism and even dislike from others. That is truly when you are free. I want to focus on my now and here and nobody can stop me from experiencing that. Then you see this as the basic requirement for others too. This is exactly here the person becomes tolerant towards others. People start putting confidence in each other to create that safe space – the real safe space. People start respecting each other’s boundaries because they themselves have understood that they have their own limitations. This creates the sense of camaraderie – society.

It is precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it is possible for us to build a deep relationship.

This is confidence in others in individual psychology.

Discard other people’s tasks – reject the desire for recognition and accept that you being disliked is not in your hands

When you are appreciating your own now and here to its fullest, you will notice how important it is to reject all other distractions to honor this moment. You will limit these distractions to focus more on this moment. This is where you will see that even though we are molded by our society we have limitations and so do the others. So, it is better if one sets boundaries.

Setting such boundaries helps everyone to focus on their ‘now and here’ in deeper and richer ways.

If you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you?

When one develops this understanding, they will clearly see what lies immediately in their own control and what not. If you are busy in trying to control what cannot be controlled by you, how would you have enough resources to appreciate your ‘here and now’? That why it is important to not focus on what you can’t control. Those will be someone else’s to control, that is not you task. That is exactly why you cannot pressurize people to do things in your ways. People can have their own reasons, limitations to not do things in your ways. It has to come from their side.

Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intention will only lead to an intense reaction.

Building on this understanding, you will start appreciating how doing what you love and not expecting anything in return is more than enough. You did what you love. Whether to appreciate it and recognize it, praise it is in other’s control not yours. Now that you have accepted yourself, you do it for yourself, then you won’t crave for attention from others, then you don’t crave for superiority, dominance. You come on level to level with your surroundings. You appreciate that whatever one wants to become that journey has to be completed by only them. Then you appreciate how we are trying to please others to get things done in our way when they were never in our control. You let go of the things which you cannot control and start focusing on what you can. That is why it is normal that some people (who were trying to get things done from you in their ways) will dislike you for not doing them in their own ways. This shows that you are honoring your ‘now and here’

The cost of freedom in interpersonal relationship is that one is disliked by other people

Once you understand that it’s normal to be disliked, rather that indicates that we are doing our own thing you will appreciate what it really means to be genuinely be appreciated by society. Then you will feel like transferring this feeling to others too. Now that you have experienced this feeling for yourself, you would genuinely want others to feel that to. The things then you will do for others will have no intent of return because you very well know that returning favor is other people’s task.

If one’s means for gaining a feeling of contribution turns out to be ‘being recognised by others’, in the long run, one will have no choice but to walk through life in accordance with other people’s wishes.

The feeling and act of contribution has to be selfless and this selflessness is possible only when you are valuing your ‘now and here’. If you still are not valuing your ‘now and here’, it is very easy for you to get swayed by the likes of others and then you will end up in pleasing others and whether others will be pleased by what you did for that recognition is not in your control. This means the most probable fate is misery.

So, self-acceptance builds courage to do it in your way whether others like it or not. This detachment from opinions of others pushes you to do the things which were impossible before – what else is freedom them? Then you understand the value of self-acceptance. You will then have the selfless feeling to let others experience and understand this. This selfless act for others will feed back into your sense of own being. This will support your feeling of self-acceptance. Once you close this feed-back loop, you will see what others are missing. You will help others in the real way. This will create the sense of belonging for you which further creates the real sense of meaning in life.

This is contribution to others in individual psychology.

Where the center of the world is – there is no absolute cause and effect – there is no such thing as the first start and the last end

If you are ‘the center of the world’, you will have no thoughts whatsoever regarding commitment to the community; because everyone else is ‘someone who will do something for me’, and there is no need for you to do things yourself. But you are not the center of the universe and neither am I.

Adler’s individual psychology thus focuses on a feedback loop of three key things:

One – Self-acceptance – you are who you are ‘now and here’, not what made you who you are

Once you accept yourself you give yourself better chances to live an earnest life

Two – Confidence in others – now that you have appreciated how valuable, irreplaceable and incomparable living in ‘now and here’ is, you let people do their own thing because they have their own ‘now and here’. You put confidence in others, you do it not because you want something in return because returning the favor is in their control. This builds the real sense of community, belonging, safe space.

Three – Contribution to others – Once you start believing in people just like the person you are you appreciate what it means to be felt accepted. You try to support this feeling by contributing back to your safe space. You want it to be done by yourself because you now know that contributing back is in your control – your task. This further crystallizes your sense of self-acceptance.

Now that you have appreciated what it means to become truly free, it is normal to reject the false sense of superiority, false sense of being special. Every moment becomes same to you. This does not mean that you become numb to sadness or happiness. It just means that you appreciate that this too shall pass, all I have to live and experience is ‘now’. You lose the idea of a goal to be achieved and accept the real goal, the real target is to become the process.

Life goes on

For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself.

Although our existence is bound by birth and death, cause and effect. The reality filled with infinite possibilities does not follow that logic and we fail to notice that difference. Just to make the sense of the infinite possibilities we resort to certain assumptions, prejudices, reasons, past events, future expectations. We never question them with complete honesty because questioning them will bring existential crisis. We all know that our foundations really are not pure or absolute. Once you accept this you will see that it is very easy and important to accept who you are now. This further induces kindness for others. This creates the community. This is called Holism in individual psychology.

You must appreciate how causality brings in determinism in our lives. This determinism is kind of responsible for the lack of freedom in our lives. When we are suffering it is this exact determinism imparted by causality that builds helplessness. One must carry the courage to break out of this determinism. The courage is necessary because we never want to let go the comfort of predictability which determinism offers.

We resort to certain version of our life story when we are completely aware that we can totally change our life story. We are always taking the support of ‘I am like this because this happened to me’. This is how everyone’s story is. There are very few people who have dared to say – ‘I have gone through this for long but not anymore.’ This requires for you to appreciate yourselves first, when you accept who you are you move on to the path of improvement whereas when you are trying to act according to the like of people around you, you are actually proving the point that you don’t like the version that you are that is why you are ready to become the one which people would like and tragedy of this path is that the task of being liked by others is not in your control.

That is why whining about why we didn’t reach there would never help us to reach there or even embark on journey in that direction. We are hesitating to make our own move.

As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere, and will only pass our days one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period.

Be real, not a hypocrite

People want to like themselves. They want to feel that they have worth. In order to feel that, they want a feeling of contribution that tells them ‘I am of use to someone’. And they seek recognition from others as an easy means for gaining that feeling of contribution.

The main reason Adler’s individual psychology didn’t receive enough attention is because it feels completely self-contradicting and hypocritical on surface level.

You will find these seeming contradictions everywhere in Adler’s ideas. It will say that we are social animals and are defined by society but in next moment it will say that you need to have the courage to be disliked by the people around you.

One time it says that you should not interfere in other people’s tasks and next time it says that you need to have a feeling of contribution for the same people.

One time it will say that you have to sever the relationships where others are not realizing their own tasks and making life difficult for you and on the other hand it will say that you should be unconditionally confident in others endlessly.

One time it will say that you should completely focus on yourselves and then it will say that you are part of a bigger family, bigger universe and you will be happy when you contribute to this bigger community to create a sense of belonging.

If I am being disliked then how the hell would I be happy?!?

If you inspect each of these seemingly contradicting ideas you will find one simple fact – the fact that we are walking living paradoxes and in spite of that we demand sense and logic about who we are.

The sense of self or individual cannot be appreciated well if you never know what it means to be surrounded by people. And there is always some interchange happening between individuals which makes it a society. We often see society as a group which is everything minus ‘I’. We fail to recognize that if I fix myself in certain way the others around me will fix themselves in response to that way and then most of the individuals who constitute the society will fix themselves in certain way. Means even a single person can effectively change the society.

What people actually miss when they come across the ideas put forth by Alfred Adler is the possibility that we can truly reject causality. I would call this unawareness the curse for the humanity. Our sense of ‘being’ inherently originates from some non-absolute attributes, relative references that we have to accept them as the ultimate truth right from our birth to make the sense out of all these infinite possibilities.

We are so entangled in the suffering and happiness waving between the life and death that we ignore that we are born, dead and again reborn every moment. The trick that causality plays in our life is that it tries to preserve the previous step to justify our current stage thereby freezing our present. Whereas what we should do is to just be in now and here which needs courage because there is no guaranteed layout, map to guide you. You have to walk your path all by yourself.

What people fail to notice is that the comfort of predictability is just in this moment but this sense of comfort has no control over future rather it intensifies the pain due to the randomness of the unpredictable future.

The secret to happy life is to be involved in everything and still not be attached to them.

Part 3 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s legacy of self-knowledge

Existence Of The Mind – What Is The Mind?

Reactive Mind Vs Objective Reality

Love – Cure To Self-Deception And Surrender To Reality

Conclusion – Why Is Love Answer To Everything?

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Part 2- Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

The Curious Animal

The Conscious Thinker

Thinking Is Useless

The Real Baseline – Non-Isolation

Be Watchful Of The Isolation – The division

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Part 1 – Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Legacy Of Self-Knowledge

Purpose of Life – The Safety And Peace In My Existence

Thinker Is The Thought

The Convenience Of Self-Deception

Conclusion to Part-1

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On the book – The Courage to be disliked

‘The world is simple, and life is too.’

Life is not treating me fair

Deny trauma – Deny the comfort of causality

All problems are interpersonal relationship problems – others have their own current moments to experience in their own ways

Discard other people’s tasks – reject the desire for recognition and accept that you being disliked is not in your hands

Where the center of the world is – there is no absolute cause and effect – there is no such thing as the first start and the last end

Life goes on

Be real, not a hypocrite

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