May Gathering online

If the bosses son is breaking the speed limit, just for fun, surely that just means he’s a spoilt brat? And untouchable due to the inequity of the hierarchy in place. The joke seems to be about the illogical aspects of how we sometimes imagine heaven to be.

As with any good joke, there are multiple possible meanings, depending on who tells the joke, and the audience to whom the joke is told. Krishnamurti obviously didn’t invent the joke - he was told it by someone else. So it’s overt meaning is the one you point to - namely that the whole image we have of traditional heaven carries over the same class hierarchy, or social hierarchy that we have ‘on earth’. The joke is that we are so invested in these hierarchies - they are so much a part of our conditioning - that we are rather shocked to see that they still continue even in ‘heaven’!

However, in the context of Krishnamurti’s telling of the joke, the possible meanings that it can have alters. As I said before, I’m not at all suggesting that this is what Krishnamurti himself meant by the joke! - but what I talked about above was the interpretation that came to my mind when I heard it. It’s a minor point, and not one I wish to die on a hill defending as the absolute truth :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks for all of your sharing here James. I really enjoyed reading all that you wrote. And I felt it was very perceptive and well informed.

I will check out your other exchanges on the forum, especially when it involves Buddhism, Vedanta, etc.

By any chance are you on any Krishnamurti zoom dialogue groups?

Very well articulated James. Just would like to add a couple of points.

It is true that what K has said has already been contemplated in ancient Hindu and Buddhist texts. But K 's uniqueness, perhaps due to the very era of modernity he was born in and the fact that he totally avoided tradition is that he has unfolded a teaching completely suitable to these times where thought is given prominence and traditions are looked down on.
There is no other teacher currently who has totally avoided traditional aspects.

Also in the ancient Hindu texts there are two terms ’ Aham bramhasmi’, which means ‘I am the universe’
and ‘Tatwam asi’ , which again loosely translates to ‘you are the universe.’ Also ’ observer is the observed’ and other such phrases are found in these texts. So essentially what K has been expounding is nothing new but it is perhaps best suited for the current modern times.

Drax,

K was very careful throughout his entire life in his talks to be clear that one is NOT anything outside of “what is” seen within, and had said frequently that one is not nature, since one has not created nature. The idea and practise of “I am the universe” is a strictly Hindu pov, and has nothing to do with K’s ‘the observer is the observed’.

When ‘I’ dissolves in awareness the distinction between us and the universe ceases to exist. When there is no separation you are one with the universe.
That is my understanding of K.

The terms I mentioned also convey the same meaning.

Drax,

Well, what you state is clearly contradicted directly by K, as follows:

“We said, “Whatever thought creates is reality”. When thought investigates into what it wants, hoping for something greater, it is still reality. So, it is always moving in its own limitation, in its own area – it may extend it, it may contract it, it may say, “Well, I am the universe, I am the cosmos, I am god”, but it is still thought. Right? So, thought cannot investigate into that, if there is that. Right?”
K: Saanen, 4th Public Dialogue, 30 July 1977

So, to repeat, the idea that one is one with the universe is not part of what K ever spoke, it is strictly a Hindu belief.

I have gone through that discussion. The context is very different there. K is clearly saying there that whatever thought conceives is always limited. It may expand itself to encompass the society, nation, world or the universe so though it may expand itself to fill the universe ( or contract) it is still limited to its area.

Whereas the phrases described are when thought is absent and separation ceases to exist.

Drax,

Moreover,

when you state the above, you are inferring that the self is no more, in other words that all of the conditioning has been seen and understood, so then there is no more “I”, no self. You see, it is the “I” alone that can do an “I am that”, hence there is the seeing that anyone who suggests that insights happen after the dissolution of the “I” is contradicting his[her]self, because without an “I” there can be no insight, and hence no realization… trust everyone else gets that ! (laughs)

While conditioning persists, so does the “I”… and that “I” can invent and associate itself with many things, identifying and tripping with many illusions.

The separation between oneself and “what is” seen is important to be understood in terms of “what is” seen within, right?

See Charlie, here we are just discussing whether K has discovered a new state of mind which no one ever did before.
K himself has used the phrases you are the universe, you are the world etc so many times. And these phrases have been used earlier as well by people who have undergone transformation of at least widely held to have transformed. That’s all.

It is obvious that the description IS NOT the described. They are mere pointers. So mere saying ’ I am that’ does not mean the self exists and saying ’ I am nothing’ doesn’t mean self is absent. It depends on the actuality of one saying it.

Drax,

K never used the above phrase many times, as you suggest - another patently false statement. You won’t even acknowledge the fact that K never said “I am the universe” - the first patently false statement. If you can find one place in all of K’s texts where he said that, please post where and when he made such a statement.

You see, one has a large document which includes all of K’s texts (>24Kb in size, where one did a a simple “find” (took less than a minute), and there is no place where he said, “I am the universe,” apart from only once which one posted above (over all the decades he gave talks) where he dissed (in his usual quiet polite way) anyone who makes such a false statement, showing how it was just an invention of thought…

One is out of this exchange with you, since one sees that you are just playing with words, have a nice day :slight_smile:

“You are the world, and the world is you. Therefore you have a tremendous responsibility.”

Public Talk 2 in Colombo, 9 November 1980

How different is you are the universe from you are the world? It just indicates the state of mind when separation is absent.
Even ‘you are the universe’ I remember coming across but can’t locate right now. Perhaps in one of the biographies. If I find surely will let you know.

It doesn’t matter you want to continue or not. But at least acknowledge that the reference you provided has nothing to do with what is being discussed here. Having a closed mind helps no one.:slightly_smiling_face:

I understand what you are getting at Drax. Sometimes Krishnamurti used language in a way that has resonances with certain Upanishadic expressions, but he was usually quick to distinguish these statements from any traditional formulaic assumptions that his audience might have. For Krishnamurti the traditional Vedantic mahavakyas were invalid because they have become part of tradition, common usage, belief - and only a mind empty of all formulas, beliefs, tradition etc (as well as empty of self) could be termed by K a “religious mind” (i.e. a mind that might genuinely be said to ‘be’ the universe).

If you don’t mind a bit of reading, I have collated together a sequence of excerpts from 1980-1981 where Krishnamurti explicitly examined this area of inquiry (particularly relevant passages will be highlighted in bold). I hope these extracts give you a sense of how Krishnamurti could - at the very same time - both convey an apparently Upanishadic quality of insight (which orthodox Buddhists, for example, would feel very uncomfortable with), and yet follow this up with a clear rejection of any traditional statement of the same insight in traditional Hindu terminology.

One gets a feeling for the ambivalence Krishnamurti had for Upanishadic expressions by reading at a statement dictated by him (in the third person) to Mary Zimbalist in 1980, where he refers to events that had taken place the previous year at Rishi Valley:

For a long time he has been awakening in the middle of the night with that peculiar meditation which has been pursuing him for very many years. This has been a normal thing in his life. It is not a conscious, deliberate pursuit of meditation or an unconscious desire to achieve something. It is very clearly uninvited and unsought…. These peculiar meditations, which naturally were unpremeditated, grew with intensity. Only on the days he travelled or arrived late of an evening would they stop; or when he had to wake early and travel. With the arrival in Rishi Valley in the middle of November 1979 the momentum increased and one night in the strange stillness of that part of the world, with the silence undisturbed by the hoot of owls, he woke up to find something totally different and new. The movement had reached the source of all energy. This must in no way be confused with, or even thought of, as god or the highest principle, the Brahman, which are the projections of the human mind out of fear and longing, the unyielding desire for total security. It is none of those things…. One may ask with what assurance do you state that it is the source of all energy? One can only reply with complete humility that it is so. All the time that K was in India until the end of January 1980 every night he would wake up with this sense of the absolute. It is not a state, a thing that is static, fixed, immovable. The whole universe is in it, measureless to man. When he returned to Ojai in February 1980, after the body had somewhat rested, there was the perception that there was nothing beyond this. This is the ultimate, the beginning and the ending and the absolute. There is only a sense of incredible vastness and immense beauty.

In the Ending of Time discussions that Krishnamurti had with David Bohm in 1981, Krishnamurti continued to explore this insight more deeply, and one gets a sense both of the direction that K was taking in these matters, as well as the hesitancies he had about how his statements might be interpreted by others.

As you may know, in the course of this series of conversations K and Bohm were asking whether time and thought can end, and what takes place when there is an ending (of time and thought):

JK: Now, if there is no inward movement as time, moving, becoming more and more, then what takes place? You understand what I am trying to convey? Time ends…. Now, if that movement ends, as it must, then is there a really inward movement—a movement not in terms of time? … I am a little bit hesitant to talk about this. Could one say, when one really comes to that state, that it is the source of all energy?
DB: Yes, as one goes deeper and more inward.
JK: This is the real inwardness…. One night at Rishi Valley in India I woke up. A series of incidents had taken place; there had been meditation for some days. It was a quarter past twelve; I looked at the watch [laughs]. And—I hesitate to say this, because it sounds extravagant and rather childish—the source of all energy had been reached. And that had an extraordinary effect on the brain, and also physically. Sorry to talk about myself, but you understand, literally any sense of . . . I don’t know how to put it . . . any sense of the world and me, and that—you follow?—there was no division at all. Only this sense of tremendous source of energy.
DB: So the brain was in contact with this source of energy?
JK: Yes. Now, coming down to earth, and as I have been talking for sixty years, I would like another to reach this—no, not reach it. You understand what I am saying? Because all our problems—political, religious—all are resolved. Because it is pure energy from the very beginning of time…. We must be very careful because here the Hindus have this idea too, which is that Brahman is everything. You understand? But that becomes an idea, a principle, and is then carried out. But the fact of it is there is nothing; therefore there is everything, and all that is cosmic energy. But what started this energy? … This, the body, is not different from energy. But the thing that is inside says, “I am totally different from that.” … Does it mean then that there is only the organism living—which is part of energy? There is no K, no “me” at all, except the passport, name, and form, otherwise nothing? And therefore there is everything, and therefore all is energy? … Then what is going on? Is that creation?

(The Ending of Time, The Roots of Psychological Conflict)

In the next conversation they then begin to speak of the source of this creative energy as the “ground” to the universe:

JK: Would you say everything has a cause, and that has no cause at all?… Emptiness and silence and energy are immense, really immeasurable. But there is something that is—I am using the word “greater”—than that… if I say there is something greater than all this silence, energy, would you accept that?.. I feel that is the beginning and the ending of everything
DB: Yes. If we take the ground from which it comes, it must be the ground to which it falls.
JK: That’s right. That is the ground upon which everything exists, space…. energy, emptiness, silence, all that is. All that…
DB: So you could say the ground is neither born nor dies.
JK: That’s right… You see, I am just explaining: Everything is dying, except that. Does this convey anything?
DB: Yes. Well, it is out of that that everything arises, and into which it dies.
JK: So that has no beginning and no ending.

(The Ending of Time, Cleansing the Mind of the Accumulation of Time)

They go on to speak of this ground as a “movement without time”, and that when the mind is ‘of that movement’ then there ceases to be any fear of death:

JK: And I also ask, “Is that movement without time?” It seems that it is the world. You follow?
DB: The universe.
JK: The universe, the cosmos, the whole.
DB: The totality.
JK: Totality. Isn’t there a statement in the Jewish world, “Only God can say ‘I am’”?
DB: Well, that’s the way the language is built. It is not necessary to state it.
JK: No, I understand. You follow what I am trying to get at?
DB: Yes, that only this movement is.
JK: Can the mind be of that movement? Because that is timeless, therefore deathless.
DB: Yes, the movement is without death; insofar as the mind takes part in that, it is the same.
JK: You understand what I am saying?
DB: Yes. But what dies when the individual dies?
JK: That has no meaning, because once I have understood there is no division…
DB: Then it is not important.
JK: Death has no meaning…. I see that there is a movement, and that’s all. Which means death has very little meaning.
DB: Yes.
JK: You have abolished totally the fear of death.
DB: Yes, I understand that when the mind is partaking in that movement, then the mind is that movement.
JK: That’s all! The mind is that movement.
DB: Would you say that matter is also that movement?
JK: Yes, I would say everything is…. In darkness I could invent many things of significance; that there is light, there is God, there is beauty, there is this and that. But it is still in the area of darkness. Caught in a room full of darkness, I can invent a lot of pictures, but I want to get something else. Is the mind of the one who has this insight—who therefore dispels darkness and has understanding of the ground which is movement without time—is that mind itself that movement?

(The Ending of Time, Death Has Very Little Meaning)

Moreover, this “movement without time” is a movement in meditation, a meditation that includes the whole universe!

JK: Would you say—I hope this doesn’t sound silly—that the universe, the cosmic order, is in meditation?
N: If you say that the universe is in meditation, is the expression of it order? What order can we discern which would indicate cosmic or universal meditation?
JK: The sunrise and sunset; all the stars, the planets are order. The whole thing is in perfect order….
DB: Why do you use the word “meditation”?
JK: Don’t let’s use it.
DB: Let’s find out what you really mean here.
JK: Would you say a state of infinity? A measureless state?
N: What exactly did you mean when you said that the universe is meditation?
JK: I feel that way, yes. Meditation is a state of “non-movement movement.”….
DB: Thought has entangled the brain in time.
JK: All right. Can that entanglement be unravelled, freed, so that the universe is the mind? You follow? If the universe is not of time, can the mind, which has been entangled in time, unravel itself and so be the universe?

(The Ending of Time, Cosmic Order)

All throughout these discussions Krishnamurti and Bohm are asking, ‘What is the relationship of the mind that has emptied itself of psychological time and thought - and is therefore still, “without movement” - to the universe?’ Here they return to it again:

JK: We said that this emptiness is in the mind. It has no cause and no effect. It is not a movement of thought, of time. It is not a movement of material reactions. None of that. Which means is the mind capable of that extraordinary stillness without any movement? And when it is so completely still, there is a movement out of it. It sounds crazy!… And is that movement out of stillness the movement of creation? … Creation is eternally new…. but to come to that point where the mind is absolutely silent, and out of that silence there is this movement which is always new…. Would you say that silent movement, with its unending newness, is total order of the universe?
DB: We could consider that the order of the universe emerges from this silence and emptiness and is eternally creative.
JK: So what is the relationship of this mind to the universe? … There is this absolute stillness, and in or from that stillness there is a movement, and that movement is everlastingly new. What is the relationship of that mind to the universe?
DB: To the universe of matter?
JK: To the whole universe: matter, trees, nature, man, the heavens.
DB: That is an interesting question.
JK: The universe is in order; whether it is destructive or constructive, it is still order…. The eruption of a volcano is order.
DB: It is order of the whole universe.
JK: Quite. Now, in the universe there is order, and this mind which is still is completely in order.
DB: The deep mind, the absolute.
JK: The absolute mind. So is this mind the universe?
DB: In what sense is that the universe? We have to understand what it means to say that, you see.
JK: It means is there a division, or a barrier, between this absolute mind and the universe? Or are both the same?
DB: Both are the same.
JK: That is what I want to get at…. Now I say, are the universe and the mind that has emptied itself … are they one?
DB: Are they one?
JK: They are not separate; they are one.
DB: It sounds as if you are saying that the material universe is like the body of the absolute mind.
JK: Yes, all right, all right.
DB: It may be a picturesque way of putting it!
JK: We must be very careful also not to fall into the trap of saying that the universal mind is always there…. They have said that God is always there; Brahman, or the highest principle, is always present, and all you have to do is to cleanse yourself and arrive at that. This is also a very dangerous statement, because then you might say there is the eternal in me.
DB: Well, I think thought is projecting.
JK: Of course! … So we have come to a point that there is this universal mind, and the human mind can be of that when there is freedom.

(The Ending of Time, The Mind in the Universe)

Interesting, right?

Thanks James for putting in so much effort in your dialogues. Truly appreciate that. Obviously you are very well read and have a good grasp in this area. Makes it difficult for me to match. :grinning:

In my reply I did mention that K consciously avoided any tradition of any kind to creep into his teachings and perhaps that makes it best suited for the current modern ‘scientific’ oriented times .

No doubt the quotes you have provided are very interesting. But these are all mere descriptions of what K has perceived. For us lesser mortals these are mere ideas which could be easily converted to images which can be easily grasped.

Will provide a couple of excerpts from your quotes to make my point.,…

In this excerpt the ground( probably universe) neither is born not dies. " Everything is dying except that" probably suggests that is something eternal which contradicts what he says in this excerpt…

What I mean to say is unless we really directly perceive this ourselves they are mere ideas for us which we try to grasp as per our limited understanding. Even the term Brahman has fallen into the same trap of ideas which K probably is warning against. But essentially they convey the same meaning I feel.

Finally thanks for also providing the K equivalent of “you are the universe” which Charlie has been denying so vehemently in the following excerpt ,:slightly_smiling_face:

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Yes - I merely shared these excerpts with you because they give a general sense of the way that Krishnamurti explored this difficult territory - of mind and universe - showing how on the one hand he pointed to the non-duality of the ‘mind’ (properly understood, i.e. empty mind) and the universe, while on the other hand continuously protesting against any traditional formulation of this insight.

This is all I intended to do by sharing the quotes. I wasn’t attempting to elucidate them, explain what they mean, or address apparent contradictions in his language, etc. But just showing how he talked about these matters, to help bring it out more clearly.

I have found some more extracts on the subject that I think are also worth sharing for this purpose… In fact, I may create a new thread - for archival purposes primarily - simply to present the extracts on their own, because they do seem to be an interesting late development in K’s teachings (from the late 1970s onwards mostly) that not everyone interested in K may be aware of.

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Is that like being “a little pregnant”?

Just to say that I, like Drax, also appreciate this James.

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