Yes ‘take it’ till you find out the “fake” that you are, which is nothing; a bunch of memories parading around as a something.
I am interested in many spiritual worldviews and bridges between them. Krishnamurti was my way into the world of spiritual exploration, I gobbled his words up starting in my mid-20s. Then came Buddhism, Seth, Advaita, process philosophy, panpsychism, dual-aspect monism, and more. Through all my evolution, Krishnamurti has retained a special place. Partly because I cut my spiritual teeth on his writings and partly, more importantly, because he seems to have ‘gotten it’ deeply and in an original and paradigm-rocking manner. His teachings are a touchstone for me, I return to them regularly. I rarely talk about Krishnamurti, because I am wary of the forum falling into hero worship, imo a real danger and grotesquely anti-Krishnamurti in spirit. I fall into talking about Advaita and Buddhism because of familiarity, but I’d be happy to stay away from all systems of thought (except my own, which I’d be hard-pressed to get away from).
You should trust that my interest in Krishnamurti is real and deep. It is! Which doesn’t mean I agree with everything he said. That would be the attitude of an acolyte, and ‘acolyte of Krishnamurti’ is about as oxymoronic (and silly) as it gets! Right?
I recall that in his book ‘One Taste’ Wilber writes:
one of Aldous [Huxley’s] best friends for several decades was Krishnamurti (the sage on whom I cut my spiritual teeth)
I remember when reading this intuiting that Wilber’s signature acknowledgement of Krishnamurti’s influence was in fact the total negation of it in favour of the ‘multi-perspectivist’ comparative theories and models (built up out of thought) for which he became famous. That is, from my point of view, Wilber singularly failed to internalise Krishnamurti’s critique of thinking. I feel Wilber has does lasting damage to people’s minds (in the so-called spiritual milieu’) as a result of this.
Is there one teaching of Krishnamurti’s that you accept unequivocally as pointing to something actual?
This doesn’t mean being an acolyte, a follower of K’s. It means that one has understood the reason and logic of his position, and has reasoned it out for oneself so as to see its significance.
For example, Krishnamurti said that thought is limited, fragmentary, and can never under any situation or condition approximate to or capture the whole, the truth, the actual. You seem to not accept this.
Krishnamurti taught that one is the world, that one’s consciousness is the common consciousness of humankind. You seem to not accept this.
Krishnamurti made a distinction between the thought-created world of the imagination, and the actuality of nature. You seem to not accept this.
Krishnamurti taught that meditation is not something to be practiced, it is not something to be built up through stages or progressions or ordered by means of a method or path. You seem to not accept this.
Krishnamurti taught the value and importance of immediate perception, of paying attention to what is occurring in the present moment. You seem to not accept this.
So while you say that Krishnamurti is a touchstone, he seems only to be a touchstone for views you disagree with and have “evolved” away from.
To spend years on a Krishnamurti forum rejecting Krishnamurti’s views does not speak meaningfully to me of a person seriously engaged with what he had to say.
Please show me where I have misunderstood your viewpoint.
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Thank you. I should add that line to the forum guidelines.
The converse, blind acceptance, also speaks to a lack of meaningful engagement.
Yes. There is a creative tension between accepting and denying.
Acceptance in the sense of believing something to be true without investigating it.
Denial in the sense of rejecting something without having properly investigated it.
The tricky thing is that there are such wild extremes of belief and rejection.
There are people who treat K’s words as dogmas, and even the investigation of them is regarded as suspect. This is one extreme.
And there are others who dismiss anything K says without pausing to reflect for a moment that what he said may be the truth. This is the other extreme.
There are aspects of what K talked about that are easier to grasp than others, so one needs a place, a forum, where these subtleties can be investigated, explored, perceived through one’s understanding or awareness.
This is what I feel Kinfonet is for. Not for acolytes or cynics, believers or skeptics.
This reads like a List of Blasphemies from the Inquisition!
I won’t fall for the trap by responding individually to my alleged K-transgressions, but I will say that I don’t absolutely accept anything anyone said. Not even the Vedanta Truths that were supposedly written by Ishvara (God) ITself. They’re all ultimately stories, no exceptions, and that is how I accept them: as stories. That said, stories may point to the Truth. Many of Krishnamurti’s stories do that imo. Ditto for Buddha, Shankara, Lao Tzu, Whitehead, et alia.
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You would prefer to live in stories. I get it. Stories are mental hotels that one can visit to pass the time. Who doesn’t like a good story?
In the world of stories we can imagine ourselves having insight, living in a world of non division. We can make believe.
Or, we can just pass the time speculating, churning out theory after theory, comparing this theory with that theory, everlastingly satisfied with living at the level of theory.
But actualities are not stories. They are clear and present challenges, demands, problems that we have to deal with.
For me, what Krishnamurti is talking about - what the Buddha talked about (from the little I have gathered of it) - is not stories or theories to pass the time: but pointing to actualities that have to be faced.
One can conflate stories with actualities, but such a conflation is only a convenience for people who want to remain at the level of stories; and has no validity when it comes to actual present moment existence.
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“So when you see - please listen sir - when you see reality without illusion which is also reality, the very perception of that reality is your intelligence - right? - in which there is no mixture of reality and illusion and all the rest of it. So when there is observation of reality, which is reality of the tree, reality of the tent, reality which thought has put together, including visions, illusions, when you see all that reality, the very perception of that is your intelligence - isn’t it? Right? So your intelligence says what you are going to do. I wonder if you get this! You understand this? Intelligence is to perceive what is, and what is not. To perceive ‘what is’ and see the reality of ‘what is’, which means you don’t have any psychological involvement, psychological demands, which are all forms of illusion. To see all that is intelligence; and that intelligence will operate wherever you are. Therefore that will tell you what to do.”
JK, “When you are a light to yourself you are a light to the world”, Public Talk 7 Saanen, Switzerland - 25 July 1976.
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The forum is the world.
What hath we wrought?
We are the world.
I don’t see Krishnamurti’s teachings as prescriptive, but as perceptions of fact which he communicated for others to perceive.
So to perceive or realise or see that we are the world, that they way we think, feel live and act is representative of how the world of society thinks, feels, lives and acts, is what matters.
Such a perception may or may not be a beginning of a different way of being. Obviously it won’t be a beginning of a different way of being if it isn’t truly perceived. So it is the realisation of it which matters.
Do we realise for our that we are the world, with the whole meaning of what this implies?
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Do we realize we are the forum, and the forum is the world? Or do we see-feel the forum as an oasis free from the actualities and challenges of the world? Can the forum be both a safe space and the world? Can the world be a safe space?
The forum is clearly not “an oasis free from the actualities and challenges of the world”, and I don’t see the merits of imagining it to be such a place. We carry the world with us on our backs wherever we go.
However there is, perhaps, an opportunity to look at this more closely here. We can look at what is involved in being the world that we are - if we want to look.
I am what I see and hear.
I am my reactions to what I see and hear.
I am the space in which perceptions arise.
I am the contents reacting to awareness.
This is an attempt to map the Buddhist levels/types of truth to Krishnamurti’s:
Buddhism’s conventional truth → Krishnamurti’s actuality and reality
Buddhism’s ultimate truth and ultimate-ultimate truth → Krishnamurti’s truth
Those familiar with Buddhism’s two truths might wonder why there are three truths here. The third, ultimate-ultimate truth, is ineffable nondual suchness. I added it to the normal two truths to make the mapping complete, because Krishnamurti’s ‘truth’ goes beyond the emptiness and dependent origination of ultimate truth.
There is another interpretation of the third truth in Tiantai Buddhism in which the third truth is seen as the middle way between conventional and ultimate truth, similar (metaphorically) to how the unified quantum field is the fundamental ground from which particles and waves arise. In terms of Krishnamurti, the Tiantai third truth is like a unified truth-field from which actuality, duality, and truth arise. I wonder if Krishnamurti ever talks about a unified truth-field?
I hope not Rick!..……