Another person is not reality?
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I really admire you, you are as solid as a rock, nothing can move you. What is your secret?
But rocks have some problems with understanding… 
Another person is a reality, but what he/she says is not reality. It’s hard to believe you are not aware of this difference, reading your illuminated and sofisticated argumentations.
I’m really curious to know what you will invent next.
Yes, I know what you meant, but you didn’t make it clear to the reader. And this is the problem with this discussion forum. Virtually no real exploration of what K “meant” by what he said goes on here because
biases interpret his words rather than examine them in the light of everything else he said. You advocate exploration, but do you ever question your beliefs about what K meant by what he said?
There is definitely some passionate discussion here, but regardless of what we are trying to do through talking with each other, I think the interaction is helpful in making what K said real. Real to our everyday life. “examine them in the light of everything he said.” If I’m being honest with myself, maybe it does take some time to really look at a majority of what K has said. It could be, that “self-knowledge” really is a kind of skill to some degree… maybe to the effect of remembering key phrases, like a musician or athlete remembers when “in the heat of the moment” and split second desicions are necessary.
“but do you ever question your beliefs about what K meant by what he said?” At a certain point, we have to accept that our feet don’t pass through concrete, and that colors are caused by our ability to sense light, and properites inherent in the material itself. To question whether our beliefs are true, is what starts the whole “seeking/wanting” process. So, it is obviously important to question our beliefs about everything. Yet, to question the very process of an idea itself, requires at least some sense of “reality”. Even if it’s a reality based on the ability of our brain to sense our surroundings.
This seems to bring the discussion back to “Wanting and Having”.
Kimo you were and still are discussing about interpretation of K.'s words. WORDS. And now you come and say I didn’t make it clear?
You tell me you know what I mean but this last sentence of yours shows clearly you don’t or you don’t want to. What game are your playing?
I’m not so sure that virtually no real exploration of what K meant goes on here. One thing that I always liked when K spoke was that he often asked the audience before the discussion began to put aside everything they knew about fear, security or anger or anything else that was being discussed. This is what he himself seemed to do. This allowed him to continually discover things as if for the first time. That’s how I see things anyway.
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Hello Inquiry,
It is nice and refreshing for you to share part of your journey. I too am in conflict with moments of certainty and with derived conclusions. I think being cautious of our ‘false measures’ and ‘false values’ may help.
Here is a quote that may pertain to this subject and it is coming from my notes so not sure how accurate the quote is. It motivates me at times.
My notes: If there is no idea of X [goal, certainty, achievement, security, etc] but only the continual movement of thought as understanding as intelligence, then the movement of thought is creative; which alone is freedom.
Actual quote: K “ Most minds are seeking a culmination, a goal, an achievement, and are molding themselves upon the idea of success, and such thought, such thinking is continually limiting itself, whereas if there is no idea of achievement but only the continual movement of thought as understanding, as intelligence, then that movement of thought is creative. That is, creative thinking ceases when mind is crippled by adjustment through influence, or when it functions with the background of a tradition which it has not understood, or from a fixed point, like an animal tied to a post. So long as this limitation, this adjustment, exists, there cannot be creative thinking, intelligence, which alone is freedom”
Best to you in your journey!
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This is quite remarkable, can you remember where you have read it, or heard? K. never fails to surprise us. When you think you have understood all his teaching, something new like that comes up to shake your certainty… 
“Then the movement of thought is creative” I seems to remember that he always stated that thought could never be creative. I’m afraid this will bring quite a few other debates about how we should interpret these words…
I try a first “interpretation” myself
“the continual moviments of thought”
looking at my thought, at what sometimes I do, this may be that if I’m not fixing my thought on some idea, conclusion, I’m not stopping at a first glance of the problem, but I continue to examine and reflect, then it means intelligence is operating. And also that “thought as understanding” makes a difference. In many of our thoughts there is no understanding. So K. is implying that there must be the quality of understanding for thought to be creative.
This is just a fine example about how an apparent logic way of reasoning leads nowhere because is not based on reality.
K. used to say: “No, no one got it” during his talks, that is in precence of an audience. I have heard him saying that personally many times in Saanen. And he said that because, simply, he could read other people minds, and so he knew that nobody there had got it. It’s a well known feature that everybody who went to listen to him then knew and that is mentioned in his biography. So take it or leave it. No interpratation is needed. You may believe it or not, but that’s another story.
Hello voyager,
I would be glad to provide quote…
From the Book: Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti
From: Ojai, California, June 30, 1934
The book has no page numbers, it’s under the title: TO BE A TRUE HUMAN BEING
K: “Now this movement of creative thinking does not seek in its expression a result, an achievement; its results and expressions are not its culmination. It has no culmination or goal, for it is eternally in movement. Most minds are seeking a culmination, a goal, an achievement, and are molding themselves upon the idea of success, and such thought, such thinking is continually limiting itself, whereas if there is no idea of achievement but only the continual movement of thought as understanding, as intelligence, then that movement of thought is creative. That is, creative thinking ceases when mind is crippled by adjustment through influence, or when it functions with the background of a tradition which it has not understood, or from a fixed point, like an animal tied to a post. So long as this limitation, this adjustment, exists, there cannot be creative thinking, intelligence, which alone is freedom.”
I apologize it was purely my conclusions before and not a direct quote. I would rather quote. I’m new to online forums so I’m not sure if I’m able to edit my posting. I shall see.
I think so, yes voyager, you begin anew or fresh with an idea and not bound to the known in ur investigation. And yes then intelligence is operating. Perhaps intelligence is the same as understanding?
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Hello voyager,
Read other people’s minds…Would you please provide the biography you are referring to? I am not interested in the conclusions my thoughts will derive to but would be interested in trying to understand more about the atmosphere of the talks. If you would like to share anything else, please do so.
Thanks a lot for giving the source and the exact quotation. I have not read that book, maybe I’ll buy it…
But I found the verbatim report of the whole talk in Ojai and I’ll read it later. Now I have to do some errands.
A few more considerations about this quote and K.
1934, that is why that sentence looked so unusual of K. I am more accustomed to more recent years.
K. has changed and developped his language, his way of expressing and using words, his terminology, his vocabulary, his wording a lot. I have some books around 1928, for instance and he is unrecognizable because he is still using terminology and a way of explaining things which he took from Theosophy. The difference is so great that it seems he is saying completely different things from what he used to say in his mature years. Slowly he got rid of the old way of expressing himself and developped a new and very pesonal way.
What can we learn from this? Simply that the word is not the thing. However precise his wording could be there is always the risk of losing ourselves in a labirinth of words if we do not explore directly our mind.
Words are deceptive. Often K. used the word “thought” as equivalent to mind, and It seems to me that this is one of those cases. According to his later teaching intelligence is of the mind.
The only official and authorized biografy of K.:
- Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening , London: John Murray, 1975, Shambhala Publications reprint edition 1997: ISBN 1-57062-288-4. First installment of a three-volume biography, covers the period from Krishnamurti’s birth in 1895 to 1933.
- Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment , London: John Murray, 1983, ISBN 0-7195-3979-X, Farrar, Straus, Giroux paperback: ISBN 0-374-18224-8, Avon Books 1991 reprint with US spelling “Fulfillment”: ISBN 0-380-71112-5. Second volume of the Krishnamurti biography, covers the years from 1933 to 1980.
- Krishnamurti: The Open Door , London: John Murray, 1988, ISBN 0-7195-4534-X. Final volume of biography covers years 1980 to 1986, the end of Krishnamurti’s life.
Those are three volumes but there is also a resume in one volume only:
The Life and Death of Krishnamurti , London: John Murray, 1990, ISBN 0-7195-4749-0, Nesma Books India 1999: ISBN 81-87075-44-9, ISBN 0-900506-22-9, also published as Krishnamurti: His Life and Death , St Martins Press 1991: ISBN 0-312-05455-6, an abridgement of her trilogy on Krishnamurti’s life.
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You’ve made a superman of K, and from that belief, all your “exploration” commences.
If that is what you like to believe, for me it’s all right. Things don’t change because you believe one thing or another.
By the way, wisecracks apart, you are still eluding the issue of exploration. You have not yet told me what is your source of information about your brain (apart from Neuroscientists who by the way are not interested in your sense of security/insecurity but only of the physiological aspects of the brain).
For the benefit of all who have never been there:
“And we are asking next: when one has come to a certain point, the senses can develop extra sensory perception, because they become extraordinarily sensitive, telepathy, reads other people’s thoughts, control various forms of clairvoyance and so on and so on. They are still within the field of the senses - right? So they have not this colossal importance that man is giving to them. Right? I wonder if you see this. The speaker has been through all this . Forgive me for entering personally, I have been through all this and one sees the danger of it, caught in all that sensory excitement, all that. It is stupid. So though these things there are definitely, but they are irrelevant.”
Brockwood Park 4th Public Talk September 3rd 1978
“So the mind - I must go into something else too here. In doing all this, in living that way daily, you have certain powers. You understand? What in Sanskrit are called siddhis, which is, you become clairvoyant, because your body becomes astonishingly sensitive, your mind becomes very clear, you can read other people’s thoughts, you have certain capacities which you have never had before, telepathy, and you know, all the rest of it. Now we have been through all that . But to be caught in any of that means you can’t go further. You understand?”
Public Talk 7 Saanen, Switzerland - 25 July 1976
And then the mind without control, without following any system, without all the fears, such a mind becomes completely, utterly still. And in this process you may have certain faculties, as clairvoyance, as telepathy, do some kind of healing, some kind of magic, and now, which is popular in this country, this question of exorcising the devil. A religious man, in the true sense of that word, a religious man who is concerned with the total gathering of one’s energy, to come upon this total silence, a silence in which there is no noise of the ‘me’. And such a religious man is not concerned at all with all the tricks of healing, exorcising, doing some kind of magic. The speaker has been through all that, and don’t touch it!
Public Talk 4 New York, USA - 28 April 1974
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Again another reasoning which apparently seems logic but has no basis on reality.
Inquiry, first of all, try to listen in the true sense, without opposing resistence and putting aside your prejudices, otherwise no communication can take place. You know well how to reason when you want, but fail completely to understand when your barriers and walls are active.
One must understand why he mentioned these powers. I don’t need to explain it to you, it’s so clear.
Then one has to have a wider knowledge of K., of how he behaved, the experiences he had. You can find everything you need in Mary Lutyens biography. K. could read people’s mind since he was a child, but refrained to do so because it would have been an intrusion in the privacy of the person and also for the reasons stated in my quotations. You are lost in those powers and forget more valuable spiritual achievements. However during his talks there was a communication “under the surface” between him and his audience. We can call this communication love. the word is not the thing. The talks were meant as a form of meditation which could lead the people in the marquee to have an insight of what K. said, granted they did the exploration by thelselves and in themselves while he was talking.
So during the talks, at times when he introduced some crucial points, he stopped and asked: "is there anyone who got it? Then stopped and looked around for quite a wile. He was evidenty checking if the insight had occurred. Most of the times he concluded: “No, nobody got it”, but once I heard him saying: “Yes, there is one who got it”.
I’ve spoken with people of the foundation who knew him personally and they confirmed me that K. knew when someone in the audience had really understood what he meant.
You are free not to believe a thing of that. I have no motives to doubt of those people and of K.'s statements. If he lied on that then it has not sense to waste our time and energies in discussing his teaching.
You are a believer. I’m skeptical of what cannot be proved, and feel no need to believe K had supernatural abilities. His teaching was directed to those who had no such abilities…if even such abilities exist.
Ask yourself how you would feel about the teachings if you didn’t believe K could read minds, etc. If the only exceptional thing about him were his assertions that the thinker is thought, the observer the observed, and consciousness is its content, would he be as significant to you?
My dear friend, there is an urgent and much needed question that you must clarify. Why are you here?
Because you appreciate K.'s teachings and think it’s worth trying what he says or instead you don’t value his teachings and so are here just to criticise him and spread your ideas?
If the first is true how can you trust (notice: trust, not believe) him if you think he is a liar?
One can have different opinions and even don’t agree with what K. says but you must have the honesty to declare your position clearly and don’t have an ambiguous behaviour.