K on "Becoming"

Kinfonet Discussion
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Krishnamurti in Norway: “What is it that we call actual life? Earning money, exploiting others and being exploited ourselves, marriage, children, seeking friends, experiencing jealousies, quarrels, fear of death, the inquiry into the hereafter, laying up money for old age all these we call daily life. Now to me, truth or the eternal becoming of life cannot be found apart from these." Sept.5, 1933

“Only when the mind and heart meet every idea, every incident, every experience, every expression of life, fully - only then can there be a continual becoming which is not stagnation.” Sept. 6, 1933

“I am concerned with the sowing of the seed. I am not asking you to follow. I say that the very following of another is the destruction of that life, that eternal becoming . …For me there is an eternal becoming which is an ecstasy; and I want to show that this chaotic existence can be changed to orderly and intelligent co-operation in which the individual is not exploited.” Sept. 12, 1933

Krishnamurti in Adyar: “True search is as a swift-moving river, and in this movement there is understanding, an eternal becoming ." December 29, 1933

“I say that there is immortality, an eternal becoming. The point is not that I know, but that it is. Beware of the man who says, “I know.” Ever becoming life exists, but to realize that, your mind must be free of all preconceived ideas of what it is.” December 31, 1933

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So, are you making the point that in the beginning, K said that “becoming” was a good thing, but later described it as a bad thing?

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Yes. I wanted to see when K’s attitude towards “becoming” turned negative. I wondered if it was the result of all the effort and rigorous training demanded by the theosophists of him to become the vehicle for Maitreya. But in January 1934, he spoke to the theosophists in Aydar and used the word like this “You are becoming more and more superficial, more and more empty, …You have merely changed the object of your desires; thereby becoming more superficial, more vain, more empty…You talk about tolerance, and yet you are becoming more and more exclusive in order "to help the world.”… are becoming more and more narrow, more and more bigoted, sectarian. …You are becoming less and less impressionable….You are becoming machines whose only activity is routine, whose only end is boredom and decay.” I haven’t had much more time to research this on jkrishnamurti.org .

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Thanks for doing this research. I didn’t know “becoming” underwent a radical transformation.

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Seems K’s teachings have always been a work in progress; no steps, no conclusions, and the only directive is to ‘find out for oneself’. Here’s another quote from Ojai in June 1934, “Intelligence is ever becoming, it has no end, no finality.”

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When we use the word “to become” there is definitely time involved, no? I think K has worked this out meticiously in his teachings over and over again.
There is also the original meaning of that word : to come around, to happen.
For something to happen is there time involved?

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I think that when K switched from “becoming” being an eternal ecstasy for him, to being a time-bound nemesis is important to understand. I also like correlating changes in K’s talks and teachings with his personal life. When K was in love with Rosalind, he also seemed more sensitive to the timeless, eternal, ecstasy (Kingdom of Happiness). From my perspective K’s personal life can stand right along side his teachings, no problem with it at all. So, I will search the archives to look for when “becoming” changed from a good thing to a bad thing. But it will all take effort and time to accomplish, there are 12 talks in 1934 where the word ‘becoming’ shows up.

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Good luck with your research.

If I may emit a hypothesis :
K basically switched from talking about the sublime, the divine, the supposed, unknown absolutes out there; to talking about us, what we were actually experiencing.

There is the becoming of life in an absolute sense, which is not the same as my subjective desire to become.

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Life is endless change, X is always becoming Y, endless becoming. That is the objective way of reality. The harm and delusion arises from subjective becoming = avoidance of what-really-is. ?

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Yes, the harm would come from the suffering that I feel and the suffering that I cause to others due to the overwhelming exigence of my need. (my need coming from what I see)

And if my life is only this, that sadly is just harm for harm’s sake.

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Ways of “becoming” !

  • That which is to come
  • That which is coming
  • That what is to come
  • That which will come

So its clear that we cannot escape becoming …

even dead !!!

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just looking at how incomplete this statement is : the whole movement of harm includes of course the build up to the obvious violence, which includes all the pleasure, wealth, pride, effort that I have accumulated, that makes me someone worth all the pain.

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K: “But a mind occupied in becoming something never understands the being. It is the being, the understanding of the being of what one is, that brings an extraordinary elation, a release of creative thought, creative life.” (Sounds like ecstasy, again.) K’s focus seems to be on understanding ‘being’ without the distraction of ‘becoming something’. Rajghat School, Banaras, January 13, 1954

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We take ourselves to be the ‘noise’ of ‘becoming’ when actually what we are is the silence of ‘being’?

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1945 in Ojai seemed to be a significant transition for “becoming”. Here are some nuggets from the talks with links to read more:
1st Public talk Ojai 1945: Mere determination only strengthens the intellect and blunts and hardens it; it is ever self-aggressive in becoming or not-becoming. The ways of the intellect must be understood through constant awareness and its re-education must transcend its own reasoning.

2nd Public talk Ojai 1945: This inward freedom of creative Reality is not a gift; it is to be discovered and experienced. It is not an acquisition to be gathered to yourself to glorify yourself. It is a state of being, as silence, in which there is no becoming, in which there is completeness.

3rd Public talk Ojai 1945: Be silently aware of becoming; experience this silent awareness. Being still and becoming still are two different states. The becoming still can never experience the state of being still. It is only in being still that all conflict is transcended.

4th Public talk Ojai 1945: We think-feel in terms of time, of living, of becoming, or of not becoming, or of death, or of extending this becoming beyond death. The pattern of our thought-feeling moves from the known to the known, from the past to the present, to the future; if there is fear of the future, it clings to the past or to the present.

5th Public talk Ojai 1945: The complete integration of the thinker with his thought cannot be experienced if there is no understanding of the process of becoming and the conflict of opposites. This conflict cannot be transcended through an act of will, it can only be transcended when choice has ceased. No problem can be solved on its own plane; it can be resolved lastingly only when the thinker has ceased to become.

6th Public talk Ojai 1945: Tranquillity of understanding is needed to transcend sorrow, not the conflict and pain of becoming. When the self is not occupied with its own becoming there is an unpremeditated clarity, a deep ecstasy. This intensity of joy is the outcome of the abandonment of the self.

7th Public talk Ojai 1945: If the mind is seeking a result, however noble and worthy, if it is concerned with becoming it ceases to be extensive and infinitely pliable.

8th Public talk Ojai 1945: As long as the I thinks of itself as gaining and losing, becoming and not becoming, thought is time-bound. We think in terms of yesterday, today and tomorrow; I was, I am and I will become. We think-feel in terms of accumulation; we are constantly creating and maintaining the idea of time, of continual becoming. Is not being wholly different from becoming? We can only be when we understand the process and significance of becoming. If we would deeply understand we must be silent, must we not?

9th Public talk Ojai 1945: Meditation is not concentration, it is the creative process of self-discovery and understanding; meditation is not a process of self-becoming; beginning with self-knowledge it brings tranquillity and supreme wisdom, it opens the door to the Eternal.

10th Public talk Ojai 1945: We must first understand the process of becoming and all its implications before we can comprehend what is being… Being is only when there is no effort, positive or negative, to become; only when the becomer is self-aware and understands the enchaining sorrow and wasted effort of becoming and no longer uses will, then only can he be silent.

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The statement by @DanMcD above, though lovely, is not really what K is trying to tell the students in Banaras in 1954 - He’s actually saying that elation and creativity arises not from blind ambition (becoming) but by clearly seeing what we are (a being blinded by ambition).

However, reading the other nuggets presented by @DeNiro - the new agey kind of statement by Dan actually resembles what K is saying in Ojai 1945

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In 1945 K was 50. Here’s a short video clip at age 54 in Sri Lanka: Krishnamurti 1949-50 Sri Lanka

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From Papul Jayakar’s book: "Krishnamurti in later years was to say of himself, ‘Full awakening came in India in 1947 to 1948’. K arrived alone in India (October 1947) for the first time. He had been gone for 9 years.

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