The Commentaries on Living. Krishnamurti was encouraged by Aldous Huxley to write about his meetings with individuals.
Individuals who are so deficient and defeated that they have nothing to lose by being intrusive and obnoxious.
First of all I should say that I’m not stipulating that others cannot share the books that they are interested in. Please feel free to share those aspects of the books by K that have touched you and that you personally prefer - I don’t want this to be a thread dominated by one person’s preferences at the exclusion of others!
The reason I chose these two books - and I realise that the 2 books I’ve mentioned are talks, not written books as such - is that K was once asked where to begin with his teachings (given that there is a massive library of them, stretching from the pre-dissolution era, and then, in the post-dissolution period, from the early 30s right through until the mid-80s). His answer was to begin at the end and work one’s way backwards.
His own books were the journals (from 1961, 1973, and 1983), and his letters to the schools (if you can call that a literary document). The Commentaries on Living were written in the 1930s and then greatly edited by Rajagopal.
If we start from his last talks, in strictly chronological terms this would mean beginning with The Future Is Now (the talks in India). But because his time in India was cut-short due to the onset of illness, as well as the fact that there was a certain amount of fractiousness at that time with the KFI, it has slightly sad associations for me. Also, as a practical matter, I do not have on hand a physical copy of the book version of his Indian talks (I used to have it, but it went missing at some point).
His Last Talks At Saanen, 1985 contains 5 talks as well as 3 q&a, so one gets a full spread of his teaching output at that time (and the various topics that mattered to him). So, for example, talk 1 begins by looking at what is happening in the world, talk 2 touches on time and thought, talk 3 goes into fear, talk 4 explores beauty, relationship, desire and sorrow, and talk 5 looks at love, death, religion and meditation. I never attended these talks in person, but perhaps because I used to visit Switzerland to hike and attended the annual young people’s gatherings that Gisele used to run, it has happier associations for me.
The other short text I thought to look at is his Washington D.C. talks from 1985, where he condenses his teachings into the space of 2 stand-alone talks.
The reason why I chose the 2nd book, Where Can Peace Be Found? - a selection of talks K gave in 1983 (which I do not plan on going through chapter by chapter) - is that it contains talks that focus on the global issues of war and peace, human consciousness and what lies beyond human consciousness, which I feel are particularly relevant to our global situation right now, and that I do not see much discussion about on other threads.
Given this rationale, I would be happy to include K’s 1983 journal (Krishnamurti To Himself) as this shares the same rough chronological space as the two books I’ve mentioned.
Basically I want to get a sense of what K’s outlook was at the end of his life, the things that were important to him having endured the massive technological and societal upheavals that followed the world wars, the space race and the invention of the computer. I was born in 1976, so have no memory of an earlier period when he spoke - but I vividly recollect the world of the 80s and 90s, around the time that K would have given these talks (up to his death in 1986), so I feel I can relate to them more closely.
K is also a lot more grandfatherly in this period; his language is slightly freer, more relaxed, less exclusive. But this is a very subjective thing.
As I said, these choices reflect my own preferences, and I am happy to be guided on this by others. If there is a strong interest in looking at - for instance - K’s journal from 1983, I would be happy to go with that. But I would prefer to begin with his 80s output first, before skipping back in time to the 60s and 30s (which people are of course welcome to do).
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I get it James, thanks for clarifying your reasons for picking these two books and it is totally fine to go with them. I look forward to your picking and sharing from them. I am learning with you, as we go along. I love your spirit of exploration and inquiry into Ks teachings.
The only reason I pointed out what I did that these are edited K talks, is that I am under the impression that many will not take the time to read Ks actual talks. Even I have a hard time at this point to read talk after talk, a series of talks he gave, say in Saanen.
If you look at youtube, even many of the Krishnamurti videos are short bits, like 6-10 minutes long on a particular subject, instead of a whole talk, for it seems peoples attention spans in modern times is quite short and limited.
Lets keep this attitude and approach going, it is very good. Just two friends (and more) conversing about life together freely, in a friendly, affectionate way, without any one upmanship or authority or knowing more than the other. Just wanting to discuss and learn from each other. Thanks again for this thread and light hearted approach.
Thanks David, I appreciate your input. I should say that I don’t have a clear plan for the book-club aspect of the thread - it was quite a spontaneous impulse to mention it. And I am certainly not expecting a series of line-by-line SparkNotes type discussions on every talk or book we look at!!! (if I had infinite leisure and no worldly commitments, then maybe…). Perhaps we can just see how the thing unfolds?
I was initially thinking of taking up a key line of inquiry or teaching from one of the chapters (of whatever book being looked at) - maybe summarising the passage or providing a summative quotation - and then sharing that here for the sake of discussion, feedback, questioning, doubt, etc. It would not require reading the whole chapter or talk (as this would be too time-consuming).
And, for sure, the conversation is intended to be conducted among friends, “without any one upmanship or authority or knowing more than the other”, just as though we were sitting in a cafe with others, or walking down by the Seine or the Thames (or whichever river runs past where you happen to live).
One possible approach is you sharing whatever you are currently reading of Krishnamurti and want to highlight or discuss or question or doubt, etc. So this way, you are not putting in any extra time. For we all lead busy lives and dont have infinite leisure.
So if you were planning on reading “Last talks on Saanen” because you wanted to, were going to read it next anyways, that is perfect. But dont go out of your way to read something imo.
I have a K friend who sent me a little while ago a few K books to read, which I havent read yet. One was a early Collected Works from the 1930’s and then she sent me a few study books, one on Action and then a book edited by Raymond Martin. I did read a little from Completed Works, a few talks he gave, but so far have not been motivated to read the other books.
Yet I still enjoy reading K from time to time when I am moved, like certain discussions with say Buddhists or Scientists. I also enjoy watching K on youtube with certain subjects, topics that I am interested in.
I have asked several people who are long time K readers, and a certain percentage of them do not read K anymore. They feel they got what he had to say and now they just watch and observe their own minds and lives.
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Mr. James 
I wish to thank the aspiring president of this Dead K Society for a change of heart regarding the membership rules, and seemingly allow others that were most likely inadmissible in previous rules. One hopes this isn’t a strategic move but an actual change of heart on account of my last night’s post about Nazisim/exclusivity, and tribalism, on my own thread. Either way one welcomes the plausible change.
However, without challenging the authority of the future president of this exclusive “group”, if one may humbly point out, using pejoratives such as "poe-faced" may make this change questionable. Which perhaps is a continuity of the many pejoratives / labels you have used in op, such as cynical, authoritarian, k police, troll, etc. Pejoratives and labels which divide us from each other and put others in categories, to be dismissed and made fun of. Or worse, to be “Banished”, like one aspiring member of this group has suggested… Or , how another aspiring member has labeled a person as a “complainer” and dismissed him.
Perhaps in interest of diligence and making sure the rest of humanity don’t get de-humanized by being put into categories that may or may not be true, won’t you consider screening your aspiring members for their subscription into nazi ideology, for mental-emotional instability, and their trolling activities, outside of this group? Or perhaps this group condones all this, IDK.
Lastly, a sense of humor is a great quality, when humor is not at the expense of another fellow human. Not used as a weapon to disparage and belittle people. One doubts if bitter sarcasm and personal insults are good humor. IDK, maybe they are ok in the Dead K Society?
In any case, just a cent, to possibly think about. And congratulations on the formation of this “group”.
I was just listening to a K video on death. In it, he mentions dying everyday to our attachments, pleasures, memories, thoughts, etc not to wait till we physically die. For at death, these are all going to end anyways, so why not end them now he says.
He went on to say this dying everyday to everything is the emptying of the contents of consciousness. I never noticed this before. So this is what he means by emptying of contents of consciousness?
I took the time and found the video transcript of what i watched and maybe we can discuss this a little if there is any interest. It is from a video titled “Dying to everything each minute” and is 23 minutes long, if anyone is interested. Heres part of the transcript:
Look, sir, actually, when you’re living, as you’re living now, with vigour, with energy, with all the travail of life, as now, can you live now, meeting death now?
You understand my question? You understand my question? Please, do you understand my question?
Which is, I’m living. I’m living with my vigour, energy, capacity, though pain and all the rest of it – I’m living, and death means an ending to that living. Right?
Now, can I bring the ending into my living? Have you understood what I am talking about?
That is, to live with death all the time. You understand what I am talking about?
That is, I’m attached to you, end that attachment. Which is death, isn’t it? I wonder if you see this.
I’m greedy, and when you die, you can’t carry greed with you. So, end the greed. Not in a week’s time, or ten day’s time – end it, now.
So you’re living a life full of vigour, energy, capacity, observation, see the beauty of the world, beauty of the earth, and also the ending of that, instantly, which is death.
So, to live before is to live with death. You understand something? Have you captured something?
Which means that you are living in a timeless world. You understand?
You are living a life of constant – everything that you acquire, you are ending, so that there is always a tremendous movement, not a certain place you’re fixed. I wonder if you see all this. Can you do all this? Will you do all this, or will you just listen and say, ‘Well, this is another idea, another concept.’
This is not a concept.
When you invite death, which means the ending of everything that you hold, dying to it, each day, each minute, then you will find – not ‘you’ will – there is. Then there is no ‘you’ finding it, because you are gone. Then there is that state of a timeless dimension in which the movement as we know as time, is not. I wonder if you understand all this.
We will continue with this, tomorrow, because this is the depth of meditation. You understand?
It means the emptying of the content of your consciousness, so that there is no time.
Time comes to an end, which is death. You understand?
Not ten years later or fifty years later, but now.
Hi Vikas - I wasn’t aware of the post you made about exclusivity and tribalism, but it is certainly not my wish for this thread to promote exclusivity and tribalism. By using the term “poe-faced” (I think the spelling is actually po-faced) I actually had myself in mind, because I know that I am sometimes capable of taking myself too seriously!
Let me share with you a little my thinking about all this: I see Kinfonet as a radio with a great many different channels - and every thread here is a different channel - playing different styles and genres of music or spoken content. Some channels simply report the weather, others have news and sport, others are playing R&B, or Country Music, Folk Music, while still others play very loud Rock Music, Death Metal, etc. So I guess my idea for this channel is just some mixture of BBC Radio 4 (i.e. spoken-word current affairs and science content, including Thought for the Day), slow-jazz and classical music, with some Pop music occasionally thrown in for fun.
The point of drawing attention to this, as was done in the OP, is just to make listeners aware of the channel they are tuning into, as not everyone likes jazz, not everyone cares for science, and few people like Pop intermixed with their classical music!
So, in the same way that somebody tuning in to a Weather channel cannot reasonably expect to hear Tibetan chanting, this thread will disappoint those who have tuned to the wrong frequency for the content they actually prefer.
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Thanks David. I watched the extract you mentioned.
In the video K says that because thought is a material process, when the brain comes to an end, thought comes to an end, and so does the ‘me’ (because the ‘me’ has been created by thought).
Then, he asks “What is there?” (once this ending has occurred).
One would think that nothing is left over after the brain dies. But K is apparently more interested with the implications of death rather than what happens with the death of the brain.
Therefore, instead of answering straight away the question he has just asked (i.e. when he asked “What is there?”), he asks instead a different question:
“Can one meet death now, not wait for death to come in the future? Can I bring the ending into my living?"; meaning that "the living ‘before death’ is to live with death.” If thought as accumulation, greed, attachment, etc is going to end with the death of the brain, why not end it before one physically dies?
Only after dwelling on this ‘death while living’ question does he proceed to answer the question he had raised previously (“What is there?”). And the answer, he says, is:
in living this way (i.e. in ending each minute that which one has accumulated) one will find oneself living in a “timeless dimension”. So this timeless dimension is what is ‘there’ when one dies (although it is not clear if by death here he means the actual physical death of the brain, or the subsidence of psychological thought).
When he talks - right at the end - about the emptying of the content of one’s consciousness, it seems he is talking about the ending of what has been psychologically accumulated (which he here refers to simply as “time”).
Death is of course a major theme in K’s teachings, and we are not suggesting it should be ignored. But partly because there is an open thread on the subject right now (titled “Death”), and partly because the initial question we were looking at was consciousness and its contents, I wonder whether it is necessary to go into it at great length here. I am not excluding it, but at some point I would like to circle back to the question of consciousness, because I feel there is a little bit more there to unpack.
However, so as not to ignore your question, maybe I can briefly touch on the topic of death here.
As you know, all historical cultures have attempted to make peace with death in different ways.
Plato talked about how at death each person must drink the waters of Lethe (a river in Hades that compels everyone who drinks of it to forget everything they have previously known, to forget their entire existence in fact, so that when they are reborn they know nothing of their past lives).
The ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh is about someone who could not accept the death of a dear friend, and who travels the world to understand Death, as well as Death’s younger brother Sleep. He fails, and learns to accept that death come for everyone.
Unlike the Mesopotamians, the ancient Egyptians believed that a way to transcend death lay open to human beings (or at least for a few human beings), through a continuous survival in an afterlife. Some of their greatest buildings are tombs, and their greatest (or at least most famous) technology was the incredible mummification of human remains, preserving the dead body for indefinite periods of time. A selected few (generally rulers and the elite) were mummified in this fashion so as to keep them “alive”, and entombed in coffins bearing markings taken from the Book of the Dead (or the Book of Going Forth By Day), which provided instructions for the entombed person to find their way through the passage way of death (with the help of the god Osiris).
So K’s approach is in some ways the complete reverse from that of the Egyptians: he rejects the principle of a future life, because he rejects the whole principle of a psychological future even in ‘this life’ (i.e. in the life ‘before’ death).
So death is not something only for the Pharaohs, or for the elite. Death is for the ordinary person. And death is not something to pay attention to only at the point when the heart stops beating and the brain ceases to receive oxygen. But rather, the Book of the Dead - metaphorically speaking - is to be read now, while living.
As you may know, K sometimes retold the old Indian story (from the Katha Upanishad) about Nachiketa, a story about a child who is accidentally sent by his father to see Death. As K tells it, Nachiketa visits different teachers and asks them each about what death is - some say that death leads to rebirth, while others say that death is annihilation - and he wanders on until eventually he reaches the house of Death (who then instructs him about the nature of thought, time, the self and the ending of the self).
But the part that K pays particular interest to is the prologue of the story, where it mentions that Nachiketa’s father - as a Brahmin - is giving away his worldly goods, a custom that the Brahmins of the time were supposed to carry out every five years, so that they are not able to permanently accumulate anything.
This then is what K’s message is in the excerpt you highlighted: not to accumulate anything psychologically, but to die daily to all one’s reactions, one’s antipathies, one’s desires; so that each day is a new day - so that each day one ‘re-incarnates’ completely afresh.
There’s more to be said on the subject of death of course, but that’s probably enough for now.
Thanks James for watching video and sharing what you shared.
I was actually concentrating on this “Emptying of the content of ones consciousness” wanted to better understand that. I was surprised, and happy to hear K use that phrase in reference to death, dying daily. And yes this coincides well with the “Death” thread that is currently going, about denying thought and the past daily, to end it.
So when I brought this up and posted the excerpt, it was all leading to consciousness and its content, and how does one end ones content so as there to be another different kind of consciousness, very different than we currently know.
Yes - I hear what you are saying. The only issue is that the excerpt we’re discussing is from (I think) talk 5 of a series of talks, and so K had most likely discussed the issue of consciousness in one of the previous talks in that series - the whole significance of which is a little bit missing here.
It’s like arriving late to a symphony and hearing a theme being played in the background of the main movement, but without having any context for it (and so therefore not quite knowing whether it is a significant theme at all - if you know what I mean).
Apparently K’s main focus in the extract is what has been psychologically accumulated - which he also calls (psychological) time - and which he also refers to very briefly at the end as consciousness and its contents. My brain can only walk one step at a time, so all this interplay of meanings becomes a little difficult to make sense of without some kind of context - this is my only objection.
Consciousness and death are clearly related for K - the relationship between them apparently being the emptying of the former in the presence of the latter. But, in the excerpt I watched, the word accumulation seemed to convey well enough the thing to be ‘let go of’, and so the introduction of the word consciousness at the end didn’t feel completely necessary (or clear).
This is why I suggested to walk back a little bit to unpack that word (I know you are not objecting to this, I am just spelling it out in my perhaps too literal manner, perhaps to make it clear for myself!). - I hope you don’t object to this.
Of course, the issue of what consciousness is once it has been wholly emptied of its content is one that I hope we can get to eventually - but K very clearly demarcates that “kind of consciousness” from the usual kind, so we ought not to get ahead of ourselves (much as I am tempted to!). Is this ok with you?
James
I understand. Factual points can’t be twisted around and made into something else, unlike theoretical straws. Perhaps it is strategic to leave them alone. In some cases I’m fine when i see that happen, because I’ve no interest in tearing you to pieces. There is enough of that going around here. So, you don’t have to worry in this case. But hopefully the prickly truth behind the factual points can be seen and is perhaps conducive to one’s inquiries, in the same way as a lesson is learnt. Bye for now.
Its funny, ironic, I was just coming back to write some similar thoughts, but thank you, you expressed it much better than I would have.
It is very important to remember these contexts, and what I shared, posted was just a small part of a talk, from a series of talks he gave, so that needs to be remembered. It is indeed like arriving late to a symphony as you suggest, you dont have any context for it.
No, I dont object to any of this and yes I am okay with how you want to proceed. I would encourage others to join in too.
The only other thing I wanted to bring up is that I think since Ks teachings are not systematized or precise, consistent in the meaning of the words as has been discussed, we have to be constantly aware of these difficulties of his teachings. It is not as easy to dissect or understand as other material.
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So the kind of thing I have in mind to start with (I am replying to David but this is for everyone) is the following…
I don’t have time to develop this properly here, but just to give the gist of it…
Near the beginning of chapter 7 (from the book Where Can Peace Be Found?) - titled Consciousness is shared by all human beings - K says
When you observe the world, you see that all human beings go through, more or less the same forms of suffering, anxiety, insecurity… So is there a difference, apart from labels, apart from culture, between me, as an [American, Russian, English, French, Indian, Chinese; Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, etc] and you? … The psyche is the content of its own consciousness. And that consciousness is shared by all human beings.
Obviously this is part of K’s teaching that ‘we are the world’, but he has concretised it in this teaching about consciousness - a consciousness, he says, that we share with all human beings, no matter how removed from us geographically, in terms of culture, in terms of education, or in terms of temperament.
I would like to explore this a little more (not perhaps today, but over the next however long or short a period), if others are interested.
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Yes, keep exploring. There is no rush, it can be in days, weeks, even months
I just would like to say I am totally interested in your approach and I am reading everything you write here and pondering, reflecting, questioning, exploring, investigating, going into it, etc. I might not always reply or post anything to what you write (and you have the freedom to do the same, dont feel obligated to reply to anything I write) but I am reading and taking all of this seriously.
The above from “Where can peace be found” is indeed a very concretised extract about consciousness and I will indeed stay with it. It is more than enough for now.
But I did want to share one other extract that might have some relevance to this and this is from “The Core of the Teachings” that K wrote as per Mary Luytens request for one of her books on K. This obviously is at the core of Ks teachings, consciousness!
“Man has built in himself images as a fence of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking, his relationships, and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all humanity. So he is not an individual.”
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Funny you should bring this up: A friend and I just had a two-hour dialogue about this paragraph and barely got past the first sentence! Our relationship to images is a huge part of why we are what we are.
Thanks David.
Maybe you could elaborate Rick? - or sum up a relevant part of the conversation you had?
The first sentence (in the quote) communicates the importance that political, religious and personal images (or symbols, beliefs) have for us, and that part of the motivation for building up these images is perhaps for reason of security, to protect ourselves.
What was it about this general observation (from the quote) that interested/interests you?
I second that. I would love to hear more Rick about your interest in this, especially since you spent 2 hours dialoguing about this, particularly the first sentence. That means, it really spoke to you… Please do share what you found so relevant and honed in on.
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K: Is there a difference, apart from labels, apart from culture, between me, as an [American, Russian, English, French, Indian, Chinese; Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist, etc] and you?
K: Man has built in himself images as a fence of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs… [that] divide man from man.
So there are two things:
- We are all human beings, we all share the same basic DNA that goes back to our common ancestors, so we are - at least at the level of our bodies, our genetic history, all kin;
- We are all separated into separate cultures, nations, religious beliefs, as well as separate personal narratives.
In fact, when K talks about our common humanity he seems to mean something even more than the simple fact of our genetic kinship, but that at the level of our consciousness we are also “one” single unitary consciousness (despite all appearances).
But the point is, we are confronted with this very strange fact that, on the one hand,
We are one people (Chapter 9, Where Can Peace Be Found?)
… we are one people, one humanity.
And yet we act as though we were completely separate from each other:
The world is broken up by tribalism (Chapter 2, Where Can Peace Be Found?)
… tribalism at the level of countries (English, German, Swiss, Indian, Chinese, etc), at the level of politics (Left vs Right), and at the level of religions (Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, etc). And also, of course, tribalism at the level of our individual, personal narratives.
If you have seen images of the earth from space - 
- whether the more recent footage from the ISS, or the famous ‘Earthrise’ image from 1968 (a), or the equally famous distant photo of earth taken by Voyager in 1990 (called the ‘pale blue dot’), or another more recent image (taken by Cassini) in which you can see the planet earth from behind Saturn’s rings (b), then you may have a sense of how strange this situation is; i.e. of - simultaneously - existential unity (we are absolutely dependent on each other and the planet earth for survival) and yet tribal separation (including the separation humanity feels from the earth we live on).
(a)
(b)
