J Krishnamurti and A World in Crisis

Human history, it seems, has never before
witnessed a crisis of the complexity, magnitude,

and catastrophic sweep that is being
experienced today by mankind and the planet we
live on. Its impact is visible in every sphere of our
life and is marked by an erosion of values, the
collapse of faiths, traditions and ideologies, the
breakdown of relationships, and the savage
destruction of the earth.
Despite the achievements of our age–the

information revolution, the rapid growth of
scientific knowledge with its technological skills,
and so on–no one can deny that solutions to
even the most basic problems such as hunger
and insecurity, war, exploitation, and injustice
remain remote. What is more, the rapid
networking of the world's societies has ensured
that the crisis is brought to every doorstep
–yours and mine–without choice, without option.
Nearly a century ago, Krishnamurti saw all this

coming. Witness to the dramatic events of the
20th century and endowed with a capacity for
acute observation and profound insight, he gave
the most brilliant expression to the causes that
brought on, and continue to fuel, the global crisis.
This exhibit has been put together by

Krishnamurti Foundation India in order to share
with others Krishnamurti's insights into the
nature of the crisis. Our thanks to Krishnamurti
Foundation Trust (England), Krishnamurti
Foundation of America, and to the many
professional and amateur photographers for the
use of their work in this humanitarian venture.
J Krishnamurti
&
A World
The Crisis Is In You In Crisis
KRISHNAMURTI FOUNDATION INDIA
We are facing a tremendous crisis which the politicians

can never solve. Nor can the scientists understand or
solve the crisis, nor yet the business world, the world of
money. The turning point is not in politics, in religion, in
the scientific world; it is in our consciousness.
The Network of Thought, Ch. 1
All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws, and ideologies have failed
completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. As human beings living in this
monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves: Can this society, based on competition, brutality and fear, come to
an end? Not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actual fact, so that the mind is made fresh, new
and innocent and can bring about a different world altogether. It can only happen, I think, if each one of us
recognizes the central fact that we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen to
live, or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world.
Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1
It depends upon you and me, but we do not seem to realize that. If once we really felt the responsibility of our
own actions, how quickly we could bring to an end all these wars, this appalling misery! But, you see, we are
indifferent. We have three meals a day, we have our jobs, we have our bank accounts, big or little, and we say,
‘For God’s sake, don’t disturb us, leave us alone.’
The First and Last Freedom, Q. 10
Questioner: The cruelty and violence of the world cannot be stopped by my individual effort. And would it not
take infinite time for all individuals to change?
Krishnamurti: The other is you. This question springs from the desire to avoid your own immediate
transformation, does it not? You are saying, in effect, ‘What is the good of my changing if everyone else does
not change?’ One must begin near to go far. But you really do not want to change; you want things to go on as
they are, especially if you are on top, and so you say it will take infinite time to transform the world through
individual transformation.
The world is you; you are the problem; the problem is not separate from you; the world is the projection of
yourself. The world cannot be transformed till you are.
Commentaries on Living 2, Ch. 16
I am talking to the individual because only the individual can change, not the mass; only you can transform
yourself, and so the individual matters infinitely. Any true action, any important decision, the search for
freedom, the inquiry after truth can only come from the individual who understands.
The Collected Works, Vol. 11
In bringing about a radical change in the human being, in you, you are naturally bringing about a radical change
in the structure and nature of society. It must begin not outwardly, but inwardly.
Talks with American Students, Ch. 1
I do not demand your faith; I am not setting myself up as an authority. I have nothing to teach you–no new
philosophy, no new system, no new path to reality. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You
have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
So now we are going to investigate ourselves together–not one person explaining while you read, agreeing or
disagreeing with him as you follow the words on the page, but taking a journey together, a journey of discovery
into the most secret corners of our minds. And to take such a journey we must travel light; we cannot be
burdened with opinions, prejudices, and conclusions–all that old furniture we have collected for the last two
thousand years and more. Forget all you know about yourself, forget all you have ever thought about yourself;
we are going to start as if we knew nothing.
It rained last night heavily, and now the skies are beginning to clear; it is a new, fresh day. Let us meet that fresh
day as if it were the only day. Let us start on our journey together with all the remembrance of yesterday left
behind–and begin to understand ourselves for the first time.
Freedom from the Known, Ch.1
J Krishnamurti
&
War: A Spectacular, Bloody Projection A World

In Crisis
Of Ourselves
War is merely an outward expression of our

inward state, an enlargement of our daily
action. It is more spectacular, more bloody,
more destructive, but it is the collective
result of our individual activities. Therefore
you and I are responsible for war, and what
can we do to stop it?
The First and Last Freedom, Q.10
Zoriah
One wonders, if one is at all serious, why man kills another human–being in the We do not want to face these things, we do not want to face the fact that you and I are
name of God, in the name of peace, in the name of some ideology, or for his country, responsible for wars. You and I may talk about peace, have conferences, sit round a
whatever that may mean, or for the king and the queen, and all the rest of that table and discuss, but inwardly, psychologically, we want power, position. We are
business. Man has lived on this earth which is being slowly destroyed, and why motivated by greed, we intrigue, we are nationalistic, we are bound by beliefs, by
cannot he live at peace with another human being? Why are there separate nations, dogmas, for which we are willing to die and destroy each other. Do you think such
which is after all glorified tribalism? And religions are also at war with each other. men, you and I, can have peace in the world? To have peace, we must be peaceful.
Ideologies, whether it is the Russian or the American or any other ideology, are all at Peace is not an ideal.
war with each other, in conflict. And after living on this earth for so many centuries,
why is it that man cannot live peacefully on this marvellous earth? This question has Would you send your children to war if you loved them? You look after them till they
been asked over and over again. An organization like this has been formed around are five so carefully, and after that you throw them to the wolves. That is what you
that. What is the future of this particular organization? What lies beyond its fortieth call love. Is there love when there is violence, hatred, antagonism?
year? So it behoves us to ask ourselves whether we as human beings can live Beyond Violence, Ch. 3
peacefully with each other, in a community or in a family.
Questioner: Are you telling me that this war is my doing?
Talk to the United Nations ‘Peace on Earth’ Committee, 1985
Krishnamurti: Yes, it’s your responsibility. You have brought it about by your
We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves,
nationality, your greed, envy, and hate. You are responsible for war as long as you
there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarrelling over
have those things in your heart, as long as you belong to any nationality, creed, or
ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many race. It is only those who are free of those things who can say that they have not
brutalities that go to create organized murder. created this society. Therefore our responsibility is to see that we change, and to help
Education and the Significance of Life, Ch. 4
others to change, without violence and bloodshed.
Altaf Qadri The Urgency of Change, Ch. 14
You have had in Europe two dreadful wars, with all the brutality, the exterminations
of the concentration camps, the butchery, and yet you haven’t changed. You are still
Germans, Austrians, Russians, Catholics, and all the rest of it. So you have accepted
that as the way of life, haven’t you? Obviously. And can you voluntarily, sanely, put
that away? Psychologically begin with that and see where it will lead you. Can one
do that?
Talks and Dialogues, Saanen 1967, Dialogue 2
To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to the war in yourself.
Some of you will nod your heads and say, ‘I agree’, and go outside and do exactly the
same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years.
An American lady came to see me a couple of years ago, during the war. She said
that she had lost her son in Italy and that she had another son aged sixteen whom she
wanted to save; so we talked the thing over. I suggested to her that to save her son she
had to cease to be an American; she had to cease to be greedy, cease piling up wealth,
seeking power, domination, and be morally simple–not merely simple in clothes, in
outward things, but simple in her thoughts and feelings, in her relationships. She
said, ‘That is too much. You are asking far too much. I cannot do it because
circumstances are too powerful for me to alter.’ Therefore she was responsible for
the destruction of her son.
It was under this cloud of war hysteria that Krishnaji opened his series of Oak Grove talks in Ojai
in May 1941. I was concerned for him and wondered whether under the unusual circumstances he
would soften his anti-War remarks. He did not. He expressed his view as clearly and bluntly as if
the War did not exist, lashing out at ‘this mass murder called war’ and proclaiming ‘To kill another
is the greatest evil.’ He disarmed hostile questioners with a quiet, even gentle, reminder that their
problem was not the person who disagreed with them but their own innate hostility. ‘The war
within you’, he kept saying, ‘is the war you should be concerned about, not the war outside.’
At one point I expected a brawl to break out. I could not help but admire his ‘cool’ under these
trying circumstances, and I wondered if he would be allowed by the officials keeping an eye on
him to finish his talks. Men from the FBI were in the audience.
The Reluctant Messiah, by Sidney Field
United Nations
Altaf Qadri Ron Haviv
APPhotos
WhirlingMcDervish IllinoisPhoto Zoriah
Giorgio Ferri
TheNausea TheNausea TheNausea TheNausea

Zoriah Zoriah
Kevin Knodell Francesco Dazzi
APPhotos
IllinoisPhoto Zoriah
J Krishnamurti
&
We Are Brought Up To Be Violent A World

In Crisis
That is a fact: we are violent human beings.

From childhood we are brought up to be
violent, competitive, beastly to one
another. We have never faced the fact.
Beyond Violence, Ch. 1
Lakshman Anand
Lakshman Anand
Violence plays an extraordinary part in our life; we never ask whether the mind can
be completely and utterly free from violence. We have accepted it as part of life, as
we have accepted war as a way of life. And we have our favourite wars; you may not
like this particular war, but you don’t mind having other kinds of wars. And we never
question whether the mind can be really and truly, deeply free of violence.
San Diego 1970, Talk 3
It is our earth, not yours or mine or his. We are meant to live on it, helping each other,
not destroying each other. This is not some romantic nonsense but the actual fact.
But man has divided the earth, hoping thereby that in the particular he is going to
find happiness, security, a sense of abiding comfort. Until a radical change takes
place and we wipe out all nationalities, all ideologies, all religious divisions, and
establish a global relationship–psychologically first, inwardly, before organizing
the outer–we shall go on with wars. If you harm others, if you kill others, whether in Liberal International IllionoisPhoto
anger or by organized murder which is called war, you–who are the rest of humanity,
not a separate human being fighting the rest of mankind–are destroying yourself.
This is the real issue, the basic issue, which you must understand and resolve. Until
you are committed, dedicated, to eradicating this national, economic, religious
division, you are perpetuating war. You are responsible for all wars, whether nuclear
or traditional.
Krishnamurti to Himself, 31 March 1983
In a world that is so utterly confused and violent, where there is every form of revolt Uhuru1701
and a thousand explanations for these revolts, it is hoped that there will be social
reformation, different realities and greater freedom for man. In every country, in
every clime, under the banner of peace, there is violence; in the name of truth there is
exploitation, misery; there are the starving millions; there is suppression under great
tyrannies, there is much social injustice. There is war, conscription and the evasion
of conscription. There is really great confusion and terrible violence; hatred is
justified; escapism in every form is accepted as the norm of life. When one is aware
of all this, one is confused, uncertain as to what to do, what to think, what part to
play. What is one to do? Join the activists or escape into some kind of inward
isolation? Go back to the old religious ideas? Start a new sect, or carry on with one’s
own prejudices and inclinations? Seeing all this, one naturally wants to know for
oneself what to do, what to think, how to live a different kind of life.
SafeState
If we can find a light in ourselves, a way of living in which there is no violence

whatsoever, a way of life which is utterly religious and therefore without fear, a life
that is inwardly stable, which cannot be touched by outward events, that, I think,
will be eminently worthwhile.
The Impossible Question, Ch. 1
Peace is not dependent on politicians, on the army; they have too much vested
interest. It is not dependent on the priests, nor on any belief. All religions have
always talked peace and entered into war. That’s the way of our lives.
Zoriah
Aeionic
Men are bent on slaughtering each other; you are bent on slaughtering your
neighbour–not with swords, perhaps, but you are exploiting them, aren’t you,
politically, religiously, and economically? You do not want to prevent the
impending war because some of you are going to make money. The cunning are
going to make money, and the stupid also will want to make more. For God’s sake,
see the ugliness, the ruthlessness of it, sir! When you have a set purpose of gain at all
costs, the result is inevitable, is it not?
It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a
person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized
butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much
more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or Lorenzo Moscia
anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are
separating yourself from the rest of mankind.
To be free of violence implies freedom from everything that man has put to another
man: belief, dogma, rituals, my country, your country, your god and my god, my
opinion, your opinion, my ideal... All those help to divide human beings and
therefore breed violence.
David Bohm: Do you think it is possible that a thing like this could divert the course
of mankind away from the dangerous path it is taking?
Krishnamurti: Yes, that is what I think. But to divert the course of man’s destruction,
somebody must listen. Somebody–ten people–must listen! Listen to that immensity Zoriah
calling.
The Ending of Time, Ch. 8
A clear contemporary statement of the fundamental human problem, together with an

invitation to solve it in the only way in which it can be solved–by and for oneself.
Aldous Huxley in his Foreword to The First and Last Freedom
Robert Chroma
Zoriah
Digital Design Studio
Digital Design Studio
WhirlingMcDervish
J Krishnamurti
Division Breeds Conflict: That’s A Law

&
A World
In Crisis
Why is there this division between man and man,

between race and race, culture against culture? Why?
Religions also have divided man, put man against man–
the Hindus, the Muslims, the Christians, the Jews, and so
on. This terrible desire to identify oneself with a group,
with a flag, with a religious ritual, gives us the feeling that
we have roots.
Zoriah
Each one of us wants to live in security. That is natural, that is an instinctive response
to have food, clothes, and shelter. Every human being in the world, the most
ignorant or the most sophisticated human being, wants security both outwardly and
inwardly, to be safe. And this division, the national division, has made that security
impossible; outwardly you have wars, you are being threatened by another country,
by another ideology, and so you say you must protect yourself. This is what the
politicians and all the so-called leaders are saying, because each one of us seeks
security in division. We think we can be secure in the family; from the family the
nation–the nation is only glorified tribalism.
So we seek security in individuality, and we seek security in the family, in various Tejbir Singh Anand
WhirlingMcDervish
forms of division. So one realizes, not theoretically, not intellectually, but actually
in one’s daily life that where there is division there must be conflict. That’s a law, a Francesco Dazzi
natural law. If there is a division between a man and a woman, the husband and wife,
and so on, there must be conflict between them. This is so. That is why in this
country and in other countries there are so many divorces, each one wanting his own
way, each one wanting to express himself fully, urged on by the psychologists who
say, ‘Don’t restrain, do whatever you want...’.
San Francisco Talk, 30 April 1983
If we look into our lives and observe relationship, we see it is a process of building
resistance against another, a wall over which we look and observe the other; but we
always retain the wall and remain behind it, whether it be a psychological wall, a
material wall, an economic wall or a national wall, and we live enclosed because it is
much more gratifying, we think it is much more secure. The world is so disruptive,
there is so much sorrow, so much pain, war, destruction, misery that we want to
escape and live within the walls of security of our own psychological being. That is Estherase
Herve Blandin Maureen Marsh
exactly what is happening throughout the world: you remain in your isolation and
stretch your hand over the wall, calling it nationalism, brotherhood or what you will,
but actually sovereign governments, armies, continue. Still clinging to your own
limitations, you think you can create world unity, world peace–which is impossible.
So long as you have a frontier, whether national, economic, religious or social, it is
an obvious fact that there cannot be peace in the world.
The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 14
We are concerned rightly with the outward change or reformation of the social
structure with its injustice, wars, poverty, but we try to change it either through
violence or the slow way of legislation. In the meantime there is poverty, war,
hunger, and the mischief that exists between man and man. We seem totally to
neglect paying attention to these vast accumulated clouds which man has been
gathering for centuries upon centuries–sorrow, violence, hatred, and the artificial
differences of religion and race. They are there, as the outward structure of society is
there: as real, as vital, as effective. We neglect these hidden accumulations and
concentrate on the outward reformation. This division is perhaps the greatest cause
of our decline.
Meeting Life, Ch. 7
Shabtai Gold Claude Renault
The process of isolation is a process of the search for power; whether one is seeking Francesco Dazzi
power individually or for a racial or national group. After all, that is what each one
wants, is it not? He wants a powerful position in which he can dominate, whether at
home, in the office, or in a bureaucratic regime. Each one is seeking power, and in
seeking power he will establish a society which is based on power, military,
industrial, economic, and so on–which again is obvious. Is not the desire for power
in its very nature isolating?
There is no such thing as living in isolation–no country, no people, no individual,
can live in isolation; yet, because you are seeking power in so many different ways,
you breed isolation. The nationalist is a curse because through his very nationalistic, Lakshman Anand
Lakshman Anand
patriotic spirit, he is creating a wall of isolation. So nationalism, which is a process

of isolation, which is the outcome of the search for power, cannot bring about peace
in the world. The man who is a nationalist and talks of brotherhood is telling a lie; he
is living in a state of contradiction.
Until we dissolve those barriers, which are a self-deception, there can be no

cooperation between you and me. Through identification with a group, with a
particular idea, with a particular country, we can never bring about cooperation.
The First and Last Freedom, Ch. 18 Lakshman Anand WhirlingMcDervish
WhirlingMcDervish
So we are asking: Is this confusion, misery, the result of the human brain seeking, at
all levels of life, security? Is that the cause? One must have security physically–
clothes, food, a roof over one’s head; one must have that. But psychologically,
inwardly, is there security at all? And is this chaos the cause of this idea, a concept
that each one of us is a separate entity? Because we have never gone into the
question that the brain of each one of us is the common brain of humanity. And this
desire for security may have brought about this concept of the individual–me and
you, we as a group against another group. Is that the cause?
Saanen Talk, 6 July 1980
Tenzin Jungchup Lingshar
These calm searching thoughts pierce to the roots of our problems. A profound and fresh
approach to self-understanding and deeper insights into the meaning of personal freedom
and mature love.
Rollo May
Lakshman Anand Lakshman Anand

WhirlingMcDervish Uhuru1701
J Krishnamurti
&
Is God An Invention? A World

In Crisis
What would you say if you were not conditioned by

your religion, by your fears; what would you say
about God? Of course, God is a marvellous
investment–you can preach about God and you
will make a lot of money–as they are doing.
Ojai 1979, Dialogue 3
Claude Renault
Questioner: Do you believe in God?

Krishnamurti: Either you put this question out of curiosity to find out what I think,
or you want to discover if there is God. If you are merely curious, naturally there is
no answer; but if you want to find out for yourself if there is God, then you must
approach this inquiry without prejudice; you must come to it with a fresh mind,
neither believing nor disbelieving.
Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond
material welfare–something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless
state–something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human
corruption. And not finding this nameless thing of a thousand names which he has
always sought, he has cultivated faith–faith in a saviour or an ideal.
Boaz Rottem
Claude Renault Claude Renault

Francesco Dazzi
How can the mind, which is so conditioned, which is shaped by the environment, by
the culture in which we are born, find that which is not conditioned? How can a mind
that is always in conflict with itself find that which has never been in conflict? So in
Sergio Pessalano
Herve Blandin
inquiring, the search has no meaning. What has meaning and significance is whether
the mind can be free–free from fear, free from all its petty little egotistic struggles,
Chinx786
free from violence, and so on. Can the mind, your mind, be free of that? That is the
real inquiry. And when the mind is really free, then only is it capable without any
delusion of asking if there is, or if there is not, something that is absolutely true, that
is timeless, immeasurable.
This Light in Oneself, Ojai 1973
It is not the other shore that is important, but the bank you are on. You are this life of
envy, violence, passing love, ambition, frustration, fear; and you are also the
longing to escape from it all to what you call the other shore, the permanent, the soul,
the Atman, God, and so on. Without understanding this life, without being free of
Herve Blandin envy, with its pleasures and pains, the other shore is only a myth, an illusion, an ideal
invented by a frightened mind in its search for security.
Commentaries on Living, Vol.3, Ch. 12
Your belief in God will give you the experience of what you call God. You will
always experience what you believe and nothing else. And this invalidates your
experience. The Christian will see virgins, angels and Christ, and the Hindu will see
similar deities in extravagant plurality. The Muslim, the Buddhist, the Jew, and the
Communist are the same. Belief conditions its own supposed proof. What is
important is not what you believe but only why you believe at all. Why do you
believe? Is it fear, the uncertainty of life–the fear of the unknown, the lack of
security in this ever-changing world?
The Urgency of Change, Ch. 21
In India they are conditioned one way: they believe in different gods. You come to
Europe, they believe in a certain God, in God’s son, in the Absolute, and so on. And
there are people who have never, never heard of Christ, and they say, ‘Who is he?’
‘My God is more important than that man’s’. So it all depends on your conditioning.
One doesn’t see this. When the mind is free from that conditioning, what is God? So
that is why man, out of his fear, out of his loneliness, out of his extraordinarily
hopeless state, says there must be something that will protect him–the father image
Martien Van Asseldonk
which he worships. So man creates God.
Ojai 1979, Dialogue 3
Claude Renault
APPhotos
To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd. If you knew what Truth is, what
God is, you would neither be a theist nor an atheist, because in that awareness belief
is unnecessary. So to discover God or Truth, the mind must be free of all the
hindrances which have been created throughout the ages, based on self-protection
WhirlingMcDervish
and security.
The Book of Life, 21 December
The sadhu told Krishnaji, ‘Sir, for fourteen years now I have devoted myself to meditation,
Yukio Spinosa
yet I am not able to get into samadhi. I have been practising meditation, dhyana, but I have
not been able to go to the depths of it. Can I do this? Will you be able to tell me what my
impediments are?’
Krishnaji asked him to describe the kinds of meditative practices he had been following.
After listening to him, he said, ‘Do you realize that you are still acquiring? Open your fist.
Herve Blandin
There is nothing to acquire.’
For some minutes, the sadhu was silent. He then got up and prostrated himself before
Krishnaji, who then asked him to stay on for some more time. After a while, the sadhu said,
‘Sir, I want to ask you one more question. Is it the impact of your personality that has given
me this (experience)? Is this due to your gurukripa (grace of the guru)?’
Krishnaji replied, ‘I knew you would ask this question. That is why I asked you to stay on
Herve Blandin
for some more time. This is not something to acquire, but to give up. Release your fist.
Leave everything.’ He paused for a moment and said, ‘Is it the new mind that is asking the
question? You have been caught up in it again. I took you out of it, but you have gone back to
it. If you stand firmly on that and let go everything, “it” will come. “It” will come, not
because you want it, but “it” will come.’
A Vision of the Sacred, by Sunanda Patwardhan
J Krishnamurti
&
Why Do You Believe? A World

In Crisis
Apparently for most of us belief of some kind

is necessary: belief in brotherhood, in the
end of war, in the end of sorrow, in pacifism,
in leading a good life. Why should we have
any beliefs?
NASA
Why do you want to believe in anything? Why do you want to believe in the unity of
all human beings? We are not united, that is a fact; why do you want to believe in
something which is non-factual?
Do you ‘believe’ that the sun rises? It is there to see, you do not have to ‘believe’ in
that!
Claude Renault Slate
You all believe in different ways, but your belief has no reality whatsoever. Reality
is what you are, what you do, what you think, and your belief is merely an escape
from your monotonous, stupid, and cruel life.
You may, or you may not, believe in God, but that belief has very little meaning in
Ranjan Kamath
daily life, where you cheat, where you destroy, are ambitious, greedy, jealous,
violent. You believe in God or in a saviour, or in some guru, yet keep that far away so
that it does not actually touch your daily life.
When belief becomes all-important, then you are willing to sacrifice everything for
that; whether that belief is real or has no validity does not matter as long as it gives
comfort, security, a sense of permanency.
Telegraph UK Ace Photos Beyond Violence, Ch. 4
Zoriah
We ask protection of the gods whom we have created. It is really quite fantastic!
Tradition and Revolution, Dialogue 3
It is really a very interesting problem, this question of belief and knowledge. What
an extraordinary part it plays in our life! How many beliefs we have!
The men who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima said that God was with them;
those who flew from England to destroy Germany said that God was their co-pilot.
The dictators, the prime ministers, the generals, the presidents, all talk of God, they
have immense faith in God. The people who say they believe in God have destroyed
half the world, and the world is in complete misery.
All propaganda is false, and man has lived on propaganda ranging from soap to God.
The Only Revolution, Ch. 18
A man who kills out of hate or anger is regarded as a criminal and put to death. Yet
the man who deliberately bombs thousands of people off the face of the earth in the
Claude Renault
name of his country is honoured, decorated; he is looked upon as a hero. Animals are
killed for food, for profit, or for so-called sport; they are vivisected for the ‘well-
being’ of man. Extraordinary progress is being made in the technology of murdering
vast numbers of people in a few seconds and at great distances. Many scientists are
Chinx786
wholly occupied with it, and priests bless the bomber and the warship.
Commentaries on Living, Vol. 3, Ch. 32
What causes war, religious, political or economic? Obviously belief, either in

nationalism, in an ideology, or in a particular dogma. We are fed on beliefs, ideas and
Davia Melle
dogmas, and therefore we breed discontent. The present crisis is of an exceptional
nature, and we as human beings must either pursue the path of constant conflict and
continuous wars–which are the result of our everyday action–or else see the causes
of war and turn our back upon them.
Herve Blandin
Belief comes into being when there is fear. One sees the transient things of life–there
TextualBulldog is no certainty, there is no security, there is no comfort, but immense sorrow–so
thought projects something with the attribute of permanency, called God, in which
the human mind takes comfort.
WhilringMcDervish Belief is not reality. Your belief is the result of your background, of your religion, of
Claude Renault
your fears, and the non-belief of the communist and others is equally the result of
Sergio Pessalano
their conditioning. To find out what is true, the mind must be free from belief and
non-belief.
Claude Renault The Collected Works, Vol. 8
I am not attacking beliefs. What we are trying to do is to find out why we accept
beliefs; and if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then
perhaps we may be able not only to understand why we do it, but also be free of it.
One can see how political and religious beliefs, national and various other types of
beliefs, do separate people, do create conflict, confusion, and antagonism–which is
Claude Renault
TwentySet
an obvious fact; and yet we are unwilling to give them up. Is it possible to live in this
world without a belief–not change beliefs, not substitute one belief for another–but
be entirely free from all beliefs, so that one meets life anew each minute?
Krishnamurti’s observations and explorations of modern man’s estate are penetrating and
profound, yet given with a disarming simplicity and directness. To listen to him or to read
his thoughts is to face oneself and the world with an astonishing morning freshness.
Anne Lindbergh
J Krishnamurti
&
We Have Made Religion A Circus A World

In Crisis
The religious mind has nothing whatsoever to

do with belief in God; it has no theory,
philosophy, or conclusion, because it has no
fear and therefore no need for belief.
Claude Renault
Claude Renault Sergio Pessalano
Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we

perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain
patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit
our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of
the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. And that is what millions
of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation, going
off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave, or wandering from village to
village with a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds
to conform to an established pattern. But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind
which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been
made dull through discipline and conformity–such a mind, however long it seeks,
will find only according to its own distortion.
Think of a doctor who is a nose and throat specialist, who has practiced for fifty
years. What is his heaven? His heaven is nose and throat, obviously!
On Right Livelihood
Religion, in the accepted sense of that word, has now become a matter of
propaganda, of vested interest, with much property, with a great hierarchical,
bureaucratic system of ‘spirituality’. Religion has become a matter of dogma, Sergio Pessalano
Louk Vreeswijk
Nobo 81
belief and ritual–something which is totally divorced from daily living. You may, or
you may not, believe in God; but that belief has very little meaning in daily life,
where you cheat, where you destroy, are ambitious, greedy, jealous, violent. You
believe in God or in a saviour, or in some guru, yet keep that far away so that it does
not actually touch your daily life.
Religion, as it is now, has become an extraordinary phenomenon which has no

validity at all. Religions throughout the world, now, are utterly meaningless. We
want to be entertained spiritually, and so we go to the church or the temple or the
mosque, and that has nothing whatsoever to do with our daily sorrow, confusion,
and hatred. A man who is really serious, who really wants to find out if there is Robert Chroma Lakshman Anand
something more than this terrible thing called existence, must obviously be
completely free from dogma, from belief, from propaganda; he must be free from
the structure in which he has been brought up to be a ‘religious man’.
Your organized religion is mere copy–following authority, tradition and fear,

merely following the example, the ideal. Religion has become routine, religion has
become the vain repetition of rituals, practicing of disciplines, the imposition of
beliefs, which merely breed habit and imitation. When the mind and heart are
caught in copying, they wither. The heart and mind must be swift, capable of deep
penetration and understanding, but when they are made into a record-playing
machine, they cease to be.
Robert Chroma
A great many people listen to all kinds of yogis and teachers who tell them what to
do, giving them some slogan, some mantra, some word that will give them
extraordinary experiences–you know what the speaker is talking about. There is the
idea of sexual control in order to have more energy to find God, and all the religious
implications of it. Think of all those poor saints and monks, what tortures they go
through to find God! And God–if there is such a thing–does not want a tortured
mind, a mind that is torn apart, distorted, or that has become dull and lives in
stupefaction.
Beyond Violence, Ch. 10 PalestinianPundit
The division between the religious life and the world is the very essence of
worldliness. The minds of all these people–monks, saints, reformers–are not very
different from the minds of those who are only concerned with the things that give
pleasure.
The Urgency of Change, Ch. 7
I have inquired into the whole field of existence, so that I am not deceived. The
mind is very clear about all this, not as a conclusion, not as an idea, but actually.
Then it moves into the field where man has inquired and been caught in various
forms of illusions; substituting images and making the images sacred, worshipping
symbols and forgetting the reality, building around the symbols, the images, great Laurent Goldstien-Cassandre
Sergio Pessalano
and marvellous cathedrals, temples, and mosques. I see all that–the cropping up of
innumerable gurus with their systems, with their craving for power, money, and the
degradation of their activities. I see all that. So the mind is not going to be caught in
any of this.
Saanen Dialogues 1973
The only concern of religion is the total transformation of man. And all the circus
Estherase
that goes on around it is nonsense. That’s why truth is not to be found in any temple,
church or mosque, however beautiful they are. Beauty of truth and the beauty of
stone are two different things. One opens the door to the immeasurable and the
other to the imprisonment of man; the one to freedom and the other to the bondage
of thought.
Krishnamurti’s Journal, 27 September 1973
Claude Renault
The religious mind is something entirely different from the mind that believes in
religion.
The religious mind does not belong to any group, any sect, any belief, any church,
any organized circus; therefore it is capable of looking at things directly and Martien Van Asseldonk
understanding things immediately. Such is the religious mind, because it is a light to

itself.
The great achievement of his life was not that he rejected the throne that was Christ’s, but
that he succeeded in stepping out of his robes, adorned as he was with every sacred trapping
Then what is religion? It is the investigation, with all one’s attention, with the short of a halo, and sat down instead with ordinary human beings to thrash out the
summation of all one’s energy, to find that which is sacred, to come upon that which practicalities of living a religious life in a modern secular society.
is holy. It was here, face to face with mothers, plumbers, teachers, students, builders, wasters, or
The Transformation of Man, Part 2, Ch. 1 ministers, in the banality of a seminar room and on a plastic chair, that he fulfilled the role
prescribed for him. He touched the contemporary nerve and left a residue of influence that
Religion is the cessation of the ‘me’. is incalculable. He was a herald for the new age, a signpost for future man’s metaphysical
This Light in Oneself, Ch.12 aspirations, a star in the east.
Star in the East, by Roland Vernon
J Krishnamurti
The Cleansing Of Relationship

&
A World
In Crisis
There is no relationship between two people, not even

between the two images they have of each other. Each
lives in his own isolation, and the ‘relationship’ is
merely looking over the wall. So wherever one looks,
superficially or very, very deeply, there is this agony
of strife and pain.
Conversations, Ch. 12
NasiriPhotos
Claude Renault
Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum Martien Van Asseldonk
WhirlingMcDervish Vinod Sebastian

Ishai Gonda
TheEightDay
Claude Renault
If we look into our lives and observe relationship, we see it is a process of building Babaji
resistance against another, a wall over which we look and observe the other; but we
always retain the wall and remain behind it, whether it be a psychological wall, a
material wall, an economic wall or a national wall. So long as we live in isolation,
behind a wall, there is no relationship with another; and we live enclosed because it Claude Renault
is much more gratifying, we think it is much more secure.

This escape we call ‘relationship’, whether it is relationship with property, with Laurent Goldstein-Cassandre
people, or with ideas. And that is the state we live in–using people, things, as a
means of covering up our own inward poverty. And we are attached so desperately
because in ourselves we are empty, in ourselves we are nothing; being afraid of that
emptiness we hold on to outward things, to ideas, to ideals which are self-projected.
Shabtai Gold
So relationship with most of us is actually a process of isolation, and obviously such

relationship builds a society which is also isolating. That is exactly what is
happening throughout the world: you remain in your isolation and stretch your hand
over the wall, calling it nationalism, brotherhood or what you will, but actually
sovereign governments, armies, continue. Still clinging to your own limitations,
you think you can create world unity, world peace–which is impossible! So long as
you have a frontier, whether national, economic, religious or social, it is an obvious Claude Renault
fact that there cannot be peace in the world.

So let us explore this curse which man has borne from the beginning of time: why
man lives this way; why man is in conflict in his own intimate relationships. DrumHellerTheater
Last Talks in Saanen, Talk 1 Zoriah
Though one may have a wife and children, yet in oneself there is a self-isolating
process going on. Though living together in the same house, each one is isolated, Shabtai Gold
Ishai Gonda
with his own ambitions, with his own fears, with his own sorrow. Again, you have
your image about her, and she has her image about you, and you have your own
image about yourself! The relationship is between these images and is not an actual Estherase
relationship.
The mind sees its own description and gets caught in it and thinks it sees the fact,
Mark L Edwards
whereas in reality it is caught up in its own movement.

So relationship is the immediate. Relationship is the only thing we have, and without
understanding that relationship we can never find out what reality is. So, to bring
When I say ‘I know you’, I mean I knew you yesterday. I do not know you actually, about a complete change in the social structure, in society, the individual must
now. All I know is my image of you. That image is put together by what you have cleanse his relationship, and the cleansing of relationship is the beginning of his own
said in praise of me or to insult me, what you have done to me–it is put together by transformation.
all the memories I have of you–and your image of me is put together in the same The Collected Works, Vol. 6
way, and it is those images which have relationship and which prevent us from
really communing with each other. We have many experiences all the time. We are either conscious or unaware of them.
Each experience leaves a mark; these marks build up day after day, and they become
Therefore it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily the image. Someone insults you, and at that moment you have already formed the
life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbour, image about the other. Or someone flatters you, and again an image is formed. So
your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods–you have inevitably each reaction builds an image. And having created it, is it possible to end it? Beyond Violence, Ch. 3
nothing but images.
My wife says to me, ‘You are a fool’. I do not like it, and it leaves a mark on my mind.
These images create the space between you and what you observe, and in that space She says something else; that also leaves a mark on my mind. These marks are the
there is conflict; so what we are going to find out now, together, is whether it is images of memory. Now, when she says to me, ‘You are a fool’, if at that very minute
possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in I am aware, giving attention, then there is no marking at all–she may be right!
ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships.
So inattention breeds images; attention frees the mind from the image. This is very
Life is relationship, which is expressed through contact with things, with people simple. Beyond Violence, Ch. 2
and with ideas. In understanding relationship we shall have the capacity to meet life
fully, adequately.
Krishnamurti said to me, ‘I am not against sex; it’s natural when people are young. But
Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without
now, Asit, see if you can look at sex differently.’
relationship ‘you’ are not. To be is to be related; to be related is existence. ‘You’ ‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.
exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist, existence has no meaning. It is He said, ‘Don’t suppress it. But don’t give in to it. And don’t run away from it.’
not because of what you think you are that you come into existence. You exist ‘Then what do I do, if I don’t suppress it, not turn away from it, nor give in to it?’, I asked.
‘Try it’, he said, ‘you will see.’
because you are related, and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that I did. I felt the most astonishing energy, a feeling of being totally alive. He said he could see
causes conflict. the change in me. The feeling lasted for a week, and I have never been able to recapture it.
One Thousand Moons, by Asit Chandmal
Most of us see in relationship, in that mirror, things we would rather see; we do not
see what is. We would rather idealize, escape; we would rather live in the future than
understand that relationship in the immediate present.
J Krishnamurti
You Are Second-hand Human Beings

&
A World
In Crisis
You are the product of your conditioning, you are the

product of your society, the product of propaganda,
religious and otherwise. You repeat what others have said.
All your education is that. You are conditioned, you are not
free, happy, vital, passionate. You are frightened human
beings, full of the authority of others or of your own
particular little authority, of your own knowledge. You are
second-hand human beings, intellectually, emotionally.
Talk in San Diego, 7 April 1970
Herve Blandin
Amal Karunaratna HeyokaMagazine
WhirlingMcDervish
Claude Renault
Ace Photos
UN
Estherase
Estherase
Herve Blandin
Why are human beings throughout the world caught up in tradition, whether it is the
tradition of a day or a week or three thousand years? Why?
Madras Talk, 6 January 1979
There is nothing sacred about tradition, however ancient or modern. The brain
carries the memory of yesterday, which is tradition, and is frightened to let go,
because it cannot face something new. Tradition becomes our security, and when the
mind is secure, it is in decay.
The Only Revolution, Ch. 14
For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our Nobo 81
books, our saints. We say, ‘Tell me all about it–what lies beyond the hills and the
mountains and the earth?’ and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means Where there is conformity there cannot be freedom, obviously. And yet the mind is
that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We have lived on what we always seeking freedom; the more intelligent, the more alert, the more aware, the
have been told. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in greater the demand. Talk in Madras, 16 December 1972
us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves, nothing original, pristine, clear.
When you have explored everything about you, when you are no longer held by
explanations, by words, by books, by ideas, by all the things the intellect invents, and
Your mind is always trying to live in habit so that it won’t be disturbed, so that it has have rejected them all–but not because you cannot find satisfaction in them–when
not got to think anew or afresh, to look at problems differently. Tradition says you are in serious doubt; when you observe, examine; when you ask questions and
something and you follow. When you accept and follow a tradition, you are not there are no answers–except those offered by the dead ashes of tradition, of
disturbed, your mind is dull and likes to be dull. You have disturbances, but you conditioning; and when you deeply and totally reject all this, as you surely must,
explain them away by your habitual thinking, so that your mind is never thoughtful, then you are alone, completely alone, because you cannot depend on anything.
never alert, never questioning, never uncertain, always half asleep, put to sleep by The Collected Works, Vol. 11
tradition, by habits, by customs.

Krishnamurti: I want to learn about myself, the ‘myself’ that dreams. Now, do I
approach it with the knowledge I have acquired by reading Jung or Freud or the
The very word tradition means something handed down from generation to theologians?
generation. The word etymologically means ‘betrayal’, ‘treason’. Tradition is to
Questioner: From reading Freud you learn about Freud.
hand over, from generation to generation, certain values, certain beliefs, ideas,
rituals, concepts, conclusions. This has been going on century upon century, like a Krishnamurti: That’s it, sir. I learn about Freud, I do not learn about myself.
steam-roller, flattening the human being with these values, conclusions, and so on. Therefore when I learn through Freud about myself, I am not observing myself; I am
And when those values, conclusions, concepts, principles are thrown aside, as it is observing the image which Freud has created about me. So I have to get rid of Freud.
happening now, we are back to where we started–we are violent, greedy, anxious, So I have to throw away not only Freud and Jung, but also the knowledge which I
insecure, uncertain, confused human beings. That’s what is going on, actually. have gathered about myself yesterday.
Meeting Life, Holland 1967
Madras Talk, 6 January 1979
Let us state it again clearly: I see that I must change completely from the roots of my
The desire to dominate, to compel and to be obeyed seems so close to man, with all being; I can no longer depend on any tradition because tradition has brought about
its subtlety, cruelty, and ugliness. The dictators, the priests and the head of the family this colossal laziness, acceptance, and obedience; I cannot possibly look to another
seem to demand this obedience. Everywhere this pattern is repeated. This desire for to help me to change, not to any teacher, any God, any belief, any system, any
power, position, and prestige is encouraged from childhood through comparison outside pressure or influence. What then takes place?
and measurement. From this springs conflict, the struggle to achieve, to become a Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1
success and to fulfill.

You know, it would be marvellous if you never said a word that is not your own
Revolutions try to break this down, but the same pattern is soon repeated with the discovery. Never say anything that you yourself don’t know. Never to say anything
dictators on top. that you do not understand, that you have not discovered yourself–you will see then
Meeting Life, 1970 that the whole activity of your mind undergoes a tremendous change.
The First Step is the Last Step, Ch. 6
Are you aware that you are mediocre? Answer it for yourself. Mediocre means
neither high nor low, just hovering in between.
This sort of language is naked, revelatory and inspiring. It pierces the clouds of
philosophy, which confound our thought, and restores the springs of action. It levels the
If you are aware that you are mediocre, what does it mean? Being poor inwardly we tottering superstructures of the verbal gymnasts and clears the ground of rubbish. There
are always striving to be something ‘nobler’. This sense of mediocrity shows itself is something about Krishnamurti’s utterances which make the reading of other books
in outward respectability. And there is the other revolt against mediocrity–the utterly superfluous.
Henry Miller
hippies, the long haired, the unshaven, the latest fallouts; it is the same movement.
Or you join a community because inwardly there is nothing in you; by joining you
become important, and there is action. When you are aware of this mediocrity, this
utter sense of insufficiency, this sense of deep frustrating loneliness, you see that it is
covered over by all kinds of activities.
Questions and Answers, Ch. 38
J Krishnamurti
&
The Vast Human Suffering... A World

In Crisis
Why is man born like this? Why has he become after

many, many millennia what he is now–suffering,
anxious, lonely, despairing, with disease, death, and
always the gods somewhere about?
Last Talks in Saanen, T.1
Altaf Qadri
Zoriah Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum

Zoriah
Martein Van Asseldonk Zoriah

Claude Renault
CalState-LA
Zoriah
Unxpektd
MSZCZUZ Robert Chroma ABHS Herve Blandin Zoriah
Look at your own life, and you will see that our living is always on the border of Suffering is a shock to awaken you, to help you to understand life. But if you
sorrow. Our work, our social activity, our politics, the various gatherings of nations immediately seek crutches again in the shape of comfort, companionship, security,
to stop war, all produce further war. you deprive the shock of its significance. Another shock comes, and again you go
The First and Last Freedom, Ch.1
through the same process. Thus, though you have many experiences during your
life, shocks of suffering that should awaken your intelligence, your understanding,
There is personal sorrow, the sorrow that comes with the loss of someone you love,
you gradually dull those shocks by your desire and pursuit after comfort.
the loneliness, the separation, the anxiety for the other. With death there is also the The Collected Works, Vol.1
feeling that the other has ceased to be, and there was so much that he wanted to do.
All this is personal sorrow. My son dies; in that is involved my identification with Sorrow is rooted in self-pity, and to understand sorrow there must first be a ruthless
my son, my wanting him to be something which I am not, my seeking continuity operation on all self-pity. I do not know if you have observed how sorry for yourself
through him; and when he dies all that is denied, and I find myself completely you become, for example, when you say, ‘I am lonely.’ The moment there is self-pity
emptied of all hope. In that there is self-pity, fear; in that there is pain which is the you have provided the soil in which sorrow takes root. However much you may
cause of sorrow. This is the lot of everyone. This is what we mean by sorrow. justify your self-pity, rationalize it, polish it, cover it up with ideas, it is still there,
Tradition and Revolution, Ch.1 festering deep within you. So a man who would understand sorrow must begin by
being free of this brutal, self-centred, egotistic triviality which is self-pity. You may
And there is suffering which is not only personal, but this vast suffering of man. The
feel self-pity because you have a disease, or because you have lost someone by
suffering which wars have brought about to innocent people, to people who have
death, or because you have not fulfilled yourself and are therefore frustrated, dull;
been killed, to the killer and the killed–the mother, the wife, the children–whether
but whatever its cause, self-pity is the root of sorrow.
they are in the Far East, the Middle East or the West; this vast human suffering, both The Collected Works, Vol.14
physical and psychological. And is my mind, your mind, your consciousness,

capable of looking at this fact? Is it possible not to escape from sorrow at all? I cannot face it, I cannot tolerate it. So
Talks in Saanen 1974, Talk 5
I escape from it. And there are many escapes–mundane, religious, or philosophical.
This escape is a waste of energy. Not to escape in any form from the ache, the pain of
Birds die, leaves fall, people grow old; man has disease, pain, sorrow, suffering, a
loneliness, the grief, the shock, but to remain completely with the event, with this
little joy, a little pleasure, and unending work. Why do we cling to all this? And man
thing called suffering–is that possible?
clings to life because there is nothing else to cling to. You understand? What do you That Benediction is Where You Are, Talk 4
say? Do you know why you cling? Because you know nothing else. You cling to
your house, you cling to your books, you cling to your idols, gods, conclusions, your That is the first thing to see–that you are not different from sorrow. You are sorrow.
attachments, your sorrows because you have nothing else, and all that you do brings You are anxiety, loneliness, pleasure, pain, fear, the sense of isolation. You are all
unhappiness. To find out if there is anything else, you must let go what you cling to. that.
The Flame of Attention, Ch.3
You want to be free from misery, and yet you will not cross the river. So you cling to
something that you know, however miserable it is, and you are afraid to let go
As long as I treat suffering as something outside–I suffer because I lost my brother,
because you don’t know what is on the other side of the river.
Krishnamurti on Education, Ch.5 because I have no money, because of this or that–I establish a relationship to it, and
that relationship is fictitious. But if I am that thing, if I see the fact, then the whole
It is sad to lose someone whom you love. It is sad to realize that one has responded to thing is transformed, it all has a different meaning.
all the challenges of life in a petty, mediocre way. And is it not sad when love ends in
a small backwater of this vast river of life? It is also sad when ambition drives you,
and you achieve–only to find frustration. It is sad to realize how small the mind is.
Perhaps we would have to go back to Gautama to find another teacher as convincingly
Though it may acquire a great deal of knowledge, though it may be very clever, austere, as rationally lucid and who, offering nothing but liberation from the self, yet can
cunning, erudite, the mind is still a very shallow, empty thing. But there is a much bring conviction to those who have so often been disappointed.
Gerald Heard
more profound sadness than any of these–the sadness that comes with the
realization of loneliness, isolation. Though you are among friends, in a crowd, at a
party, or talking to your wife or husband, you suddenly become aware of a vast
loneliness; there is a sense of complete isolation, which brings sorrow.
The Collected Works, Vol.11
J Krishnamurti
&
You Can’t Argue With Death A World

In Crisis
You know what your life is, don’t you? It is one battle from
the moment you are born until you die, a series of endless
conflicts, a series of hopeless endeavours leading nowhere,
except to more money, more pleasure, more things. This is
your daily, ugly, brutal life. You know it very well, and you are
afraid to let that go. You are bound to let it go when you die:
you can’t argue with death.
Madras 1978, Talk 5
Algo
Ishai Gonda Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum
Algo
Take a leaf in the spring–how delicate it is, and yet it has extraordinary strength to Martien Van Asseldonk
Tariq
stand the wind; in summer it matures and in autumn it turns yellow and then it dies. It
is one of the most beautiful things to see. The whole thing is a movement of beauty,
of the vulnerable. The leaf that is very, very tender, becomes rich, takes shape, meets
summer, and then when autumn comes it turns gold. It is a perpetual movement from
beauty to beauty. There is fullness in the spring leaf as well as in the dying leaf.
Why cannot man live and die that way? What is the thing that is destroying him from
the beginning till the end? Look at a boy of ten or twelve or thirteen–how full of
Axiepics WhirlingMcDervish
laughter he is. By forty he becomes tough and hard, his whole manner and face Claude Renault
change. He is caught in a pattern.

Tradition and Revolution, Ch. 10
This is also a form of death: being in the prison of your own self-centred activity,
endlessly. When you are caught in your own thoughts, in your own agony, in your
own superstitions, in your deadly, daily routine of habit and thoughtlessness, this is Algo
also death–not just the ending of the body.

You have lived ten years, thirty years or eighty years; what have you done with your
life? Don’t say, ‘I’m going to fulfill next life.’ There is only the present, the beauty of
the present, the richness of the present. You have had this life, this extraordinary Roberto Candia
thing called life, in which there is sorrow, pleasure, fear, guilt, and all the tortures Lakshman Anand Lebanese Bloggers’ Forum
and the loneliness and the despair of life, and the beauty of life. You have had it, and
what have you done with it? Do consider it, and it’s very important to ask and to
answer it, not to the speaker, but to yourself.
When you ask it, don’t go to bed with sorrow, because you have done nothing, you
have done absolutely nothing. A life was given to you, the most precious thing in the Axiepics
world, and what have you done? Distorted it, tortured it, torn it to pieces, divided it,
brought about violence, destruction, hatred, without love, without compassion,
without passion.
So when you ask that question–and I hope you are asking seriously–what you have Aleksandr Elisavietskyi
done with your life, inevitably, if you are at all sensitive, you’ll have tears in your
eyes. But you’ll have tears because you’re thinking of the past, what you might have
done: tears of self-pity. So don’t have tears; for the question is asked, and the answer
lies only in the present, not in the tomorrow or the past. Which means, what are you
doing now with the life that has been given–now, not tomorrow?
Bombay 1969, Talk 3
You are all so scared of death, aren’t you? Or you have a belief in an after-life;
therefore you are not frightened. You have rationalized your life, knowing that it is
going to come to an end, the puny, shoddy little life that you live. You are frightened Claude Renault
of that; therefore you say, ‘Let’s rationalize it, think about it, clarify it.’
The whole of Asia believes in an after-life, millions believe in reincarnation. If you

believe in reincarnation, then what matters is how you live today because you are
going to pay for it next life–how you live, what you do, what you think, what your
morality is. So even though you may believe in reincarnation, what matters is how
you live now. So you have to face death, not postpone it till old age, some accident, Francesco Dazzi
disease, and so on. You have to meet it, you have to understand it, not be afraid of it.
We say we must understand life and avoid death. But if you see life as a whole, then
what is death? The organism, by usage, disease, and all the rest of it, comes to an
end; it comes quicker when there is conflict. So you can say, ‘That is the end,
finished’ or ‘It is the end of the whole structure and nature of the “me”, which has
divided itself as we and they, we and you.’ Now, can that ‘me’ die, not eventually,
but every day? Then you will know what death is, so that the mind is always fresh
tomorrow because you have died to the past. Do it. Die to your pleasure, die to your MarketingHackz
furniture; that is what you are–the furniture that you have accumulated in your
mind, which you call knowledge. So you die every day to everything that you have
accumulated. That means emptying the mind of everything known, which means
the mind becomes utterly innocent. And it is only such a mind that has this
extraordinary religious quality of purity.
Questioner: May I ask just one question? In what manner should one live one’s daily
life?
Krishnamurti: As though one were living for that single day, for that single hour.
Questioner: How?
Krishnamurti: If you had only one hour to live, what would you do? Algo Martein Van Asseldonk
Questioner: I don’t know.

Krishnamurti: Would you not arrange what is necessary outwardly, your affairs, ‘Sir’, I said, ‘twenty years ago I heard you say that one must enter the house of death with
your will, and so on? Would you not call your family and friends together and ask for all one’s senses fully alert, not when one is old and decrepit...
forgiveness for the harm you might have done to them, and forgive them for ‘Yes’, he replied. ‘For me, the line dividing life and death has always been very thin.’
‘What would happen if you were told that you were going to die tomorrow morning?’ I
whatever harm they might have done to you? Would you not die completely to the asked.
things of the mind, to desires and to the world? And if it can be done for an hour, then He smiled, ‘Nothing, I would live exactly as before. I ask nothing of the world. Perhaps
it can also be done for the days and years that remain. that is the answer. I want nothing from human beings or the gods. Nothing from anyone. If
Questioner: Is such a thing really possible? death came just now and said, “You go this evening”, it would be all right.’
One Thousand Moons by Asit Chandmal
Krishnamurti: Try it and you will find out.
J Krishnamurti
&
An Unequal World A World

In Crisis
You see the beggar on the road. Why is that not a shock
to you? Why do you not cry? Why do I cry only when my
son dies? We don’t cry there, but we cry here. Why?
There is a ‘why’, obviously. There is a ‘why’, because
we are insensitive.
Exploration into Insight, Ch. 6
Zoriah
Unxpectd Estherase
Man has divided the earth as yours and mine. Why?

Is it possible to bring about a world in which the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ do not
exist? You understand the problem? That is, the world is divided into those who are
rich, who are powerful, who have everything, position, prestige, and those who have
not. In the world, there is enormous inequality of capacity–the man who invents the
jet plane and the man who drives the plough. There is vast contrast in
capacity–intellectual, verbal, physical. We give enormous value and significance to
certain functions, and so function assumes status and position. So long as we give
status to functions, that gives rise to such inequality that the difference between
those that are incapable and those that are capable becomes unbridgeable.
One has not to go to many countries to see all this; it can be observed as one walks
along the streets here, or in Europe or America. The physical necessities may be
plentiful where materialism is rampant and one can buy anything; but when one
Galanin Galanin Karl Ammann
comes to this country, one sees this ruthless poverty. One sees also the class
struggle–and I am not using that term class struggle in the communistic sense, but
merely to convey the observation of a fact without interpreting it in any way. One
sees the division of religions–the Christian, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Buddhist
–with their various sub-divisions, all clamouring to convert, or to show a different
way, a different path.
When you kick the people who are not important to you, and lick the boots of those
who are above you, the officials, the politicians, the big ones, is there not an element
of fear in this? From the big ones you hope to get something; therefore you are
respectful. But what can the poor people give you? So the poor you disregard, you
Ybrant treat them with contempt, you do not look at them, it does not concern you that they
shiver in the cold, that they are dirty and hungry. But you will give to the big ones, to
the great of the land, even when you have very little, in order to receive more of their
favours.
Life Ahead, Ch. 16
Have you noticed, in newspapers and magazines, the amount of space given to
politics, to the sayings of politicians and their activities? Of course, other news is
given, but political news predominates; the economic and political life has become
Zoriah
Zoriah all-important. The outward circumstances–comfort, money, position, and power–
seem to dominate and shape our existence. The external show–the title, the garb, the
salute, the flag–has become increasingly significant, and the total process of life has
been forgotten or deliberately set aside.
We are investigating together. The speaker is not important. And the speaker really
means this. What is important is that you and the speaker investigate together, think
WhirlingMcDervish
together, have one mind together; then if we have one mind we can act together. We
can bring about a different society, together.
Talk in Ojai, 22 April 1979
Questioner: How can there be progress from one form of society to another without
Thiago Medeiros
Martien Van Aseeldonk conflict? The ‘haves’ will never voluntarily give up their wealth; they must be
forced, and this conflict will bring about a new social order, a new way of life. This
cannot be done pacifically. We may not want to be violent, but we have to face facts.
Krishnamurti: You assume that you know what the new society should be and that
the other fellow does not; you alone have this extraordinary knowledge, and you are
willing to liquidate those who stand in your way. By this method, which you think is
essential, you only bring about opposition and hate. What you know is merely
another form of prejudice, a different kind of conditioning. All response of thought
is conditioned, and to bring about a revolution based on thought or idea is to
perpetuate a modified form of what was. You are essentially reformers and not real
Martien Van Aseeldonk
Babaji
revolutionaries.
Not being capable of inward changes, psychologically, we turn to an outside

agency: change the environment, the social and economic structure, and man will
inevitably also change! That has proved utterly false, though the communists insist
on that theory. And religious authorities have said: believe, accept, put yourself in
the hands of something outside and greater than yourself. That too has lost its
Jackson Quinn
vitality because it is not real; it is merely an intellectual invention, a verbal structure
which has no depth whatsoever. The identification of oneself with the nation, that
too has brought dreadful wars, misery, confusion, and ever-increasing division.
Seeing all this, what is one to do? Escape to some monastery, learn Zen meditation,
accept some philosophical theory and commit oneself to that, meditate as a means of
escape and self-hypnosis? One sees all this actually, not verbally or intellectually,
and sees that it leads nowhere; does one not inevitably throw it all aside, deny it all,
completely, totally?
Hunger is hunger. It is not your hunger or my hunger: it is hunger.

In the Problem is the Solution, Ch. 1
Equality is not possible if there is no love. It is love that destroys the sense of the
Claude Renault
unequal.
DreamsTime
I remember an insightful advice given by Krishnaji as early as 1976. Krishnaji, Mary

Zimbalist, and I were at Malibu. At lunch the discussion turned to ageing and people
having serious handicaps and illness. I exclaimed that I would not like to live much longer
if I became handicapped or paralysed. His response was rather strange.
He said, ‘What arrogance! There are millions of people physically and mentally
handicapped and deprived. You cannot dictate terms to life. Whatever comes face it
intelligently.’
A Vision of the Sacred by Sunanda Patwardhan
J Krishnamurti
&
The Entertainment Trap A World

In Crisis
Watching all this in different parts of the world,

watching the mind being occupied with amusement,
entertainment, sport, if one is in any way concerned,
one must inevitably ask: what is the future? Where is all
this leading to?
Ishai Gonda
Louk Vreeswijk
One wonders what is the future of mankind, the future of all those children? You see
on television endless entertainment from morning until late in the night. The
commercials all sustain the feeling that you are being entertained. There is the
entertainment of sport–thirty, forty thousand people watching a few people in the
arena and shouting themselves hoarse. And you also go and watch some ceremony
being performed in a great cathedral, some ritual, and that too is a form of
entertainment. You call that holy, religious, but it is still an entertainment–a
sentimental, romantic experience, a sensation of religiosity.
When the industry of entertainment takes over, when the young people, the students, Boaz Rottem
the children, are constantly instigated to pleasure, to fancy, to romantic sensuality,

the words restraint and austerity are pushed away, never even given a thought. You
probably won’t even listen to this, to what the implications of austerity are. When
you have been brought up from childhood to amuse yourself and escape from
yourself through entertainment, religious or otherwise, and when most of the
psychologists say that you must express everything you feel and that any form of
holding back or restraint is detrimental, leading to various forms of neuroticism, you
naturally enter more and more into the world of sport, amusement, entertainment,
all helping you to escape from yourself.
The rich want to forget themselves in night clubs, in amusements, in cars, in

travelling. The clever ones want to forget themselves, so they begin to invent, to Sergio Pessalano
have extraordinary beliefs. The stupid ones want to forget themselves, and so they
follow people, they have gurus who tell them what to do. The ambitious ones also
want to forget themselves in doing something. So all of us, as we mature, as we grow
older, want to forget ourselves, and so we try to find something greater with which to
be identified. Lakshman Anand
Sensuality in the world of pleasure has become very important. Pleasure of the
senses, of cunning and subtle thought, of words and of the images of mind and hand
is the culture of education, the pleasure of violence and the pleasure of sex. Man is
moulded to the shape of pleasure, and all existence, religious or otherwise, is the
pursuit of it. When the mind is not free and aware, then sensuality becomes a factor
of corruption, which is what is going on in the modern world.
Krishnamurti’s Journal, 20 October 1973
The cinemas, the magazines, the stories, the way women dress, everything is
building up your thought of sex. Why? Why has it become a central issue in your
life? When there are so many things calling, demanding your attention, you give
complete attention to the thought of sex. Why are your minds so occupied with it?
Because that is a way of ultimate escape, is it not?
Louk Vreeswijk
Aeionic
Herve Blandin
MSZCZUZ
Herve Blandin
Estherase Ace Photos
What a strange thing is loneliness, and how frightening it is! We never allow
ourselves to get too close to it; and if by chance we do, we quickly run away from it.
We will do anything to escape from loneliness, to cover it up. Our conscious and
unconscious preoccupation seems to be to avoid it or to overcome it. You may lose
yourself in a crowd, and yet be utterly lonely; you may be intensely active, but
loneliness silently creeps upon you; put the book down, and it is there. Amusements
and drinks cannot drown loneliness; you may temporarily evade it, but when the
laughter and the effects of alcohol are over, the fear of loneliness returns.
Estherase Becoming aware of this poverty, loneliness, you try to enrich it, try to fill it with
Ishai Gonda
knowledge or activity, with amusement or mystery. The more you try to fill it, to
cover it up, the more deeply does the real cause of loneliness get buried.
Nobody can put you psychologically into prison–you are already there!
Truth and Actuality, Part 2, Ch. 6
Alex Senson
I hate it when people ask me what Krishnamurti’s teachings is all about. I want to snap
back, ‘What it’s all about is what you are all about.’
Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment by Mary Lutyens
Shabtai Gold
J Krishnamurti
&
On Love–And What You Call Love A World

In Crisis
Love is enjoyment, love is joy, not the puny

thing that man has made of it.
Ishai Gonda
Aleksandr Elisavietskyi
The Write Designs
Zoriah Shabtai Gold

Claude Renault
Zoriah
Pipermaru74
Herve Blandin
Estherase
KCDVTF
Laurent Goldstein-Cassandre Uhuru1701 Ishai Gonda

Sergio Pessalano
I wonder if you have ever known what love is? We have divided life, as we have
divided the earth. We talk of love as being either carnal or spiritual and have set a
battle going between the sacred and the profane. We have divided what love is from
what love should be, so we never know what love is.
On Living and Dying, Madras 1959
We talk a great deal about it–love of God, love of humanity, love of country, love of
the family–yet, strangely, with that ‘love’ goes hatred. You love your God and hate
another’s God; you love your nation, your family, but you are against another
family, against another nation. And more and more, throughout the world, love is Laurent Goldstein-Cassandre
associated with sex. We are not condemning, we are not judging, we are not
evaluating; we are merely observing what is actually taking place.
In that love there is so much anger, jealousy, envy, possessiveness, domination, the
conflict between you and me; in that there is so much pleasure, desire, sexual
pleasure–is all that love?
Talk in Rome, 11 April 1969
So is love pleasure? Pleasure is the product of thought; having had pleasure of

different kinds yesterday, you think about it, you have image upon image built, and
that stimulates you, and that gives you pleasure, sexual or otherwise, and that you
call love. And is it love? Because in pleasure there is frustration, there is pain, there
is agony, there is dependency. Don’t you depend psychologically on another? And Lakshman Anand Boaz Rottem Ishai Gonda
when you do, when you depend on your wife or your husband, and you say, ‘I love
demonstrate up and down the street–if you have no love, it has no value at all. If you
you’, is that love? And in that dependence, is there not fear?
San Diego 1970, Talk 3 love, then you can do what you will. for the man who loves there is no error–or if
there is an error, he corrects it immediately. A man who loves has no jealousy, no
Obviously love is not sentiment. Sentimentality, emotionalism, is merely a form of remorse; for him there is no forgiveness because there is not a moment in which a
self-expansion. To be full of emotion is obviously not love, because a sentimental thing that has to be forgiven arises. All this demands deep investigation, great care
person can be cruel when his sentiments are not responded to, when his feelings and attention.
have no outlet. An emotional person can be stirred to hatred, to war, to butchery. A
man who is sentimental, full of tears for his religion, surely has no love.
The First and Last Freedom, Q. 22 Love is not conflict; love does not know jealousy, hatred, anger, ambition, the desire
for power and position, the demand for self-expression. And to come upon love
You may see a beggar in the street, you give him a coin and express a word of there must be the freedom to look at that which is not love–to look at it, to observe it,
sympathy. Is that love? Is sympathy love? to know the whole psychological structure of it, to observe it actually.
The Collected Works, Vol. 5 The Collected Works, Vol. 17
So one has to find out what love is. If it has a cause–‘I love you because...’ good Love, surely, is a total feeling that is not sentimental and in which there is no sense of
God–then it is a trade! separation. It is a complete purity of feeling without the separative, fragmenting
Talk in Brockwood, 28 August 1982 quality of the intellect. To love, ‘one’ must die.
On Living and Dying, Madras 1959
It is so obvious. If you have love, you don’t ask anybody that you be loved. You see,
we are making ourselves into beggars. That is what is happening. When we go to The abandonment of the self is love, compassion: passion for all things–for the
church, pray, we are beggars. When we want somebody to help us, we are beggars. starving, the suffering, the homeless, and for the materialist and the believer.
Or when we depend on books, we are beggars. It may be all right to be a beggar, but
see the consequences of it: you are always depending on somebody else. And there
That reality is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in
are all those people who will help you fill your bowl with all their rubbish.
Saanen Q & A Meeting, 24 July 1983 books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the
dead leaf, in the vagrant thoughts, in the fullness of life. For love is not different
Life is so rich, has so many treasures, but we go to it with empty hearts; we do not from truth. And where love is, there is transformation. Where there is love, there is
know how to fill our hearts with the abundance of life. We are poor inwardly, and revolution.
On Self-Knowledge, Benares 1949
when the riches are offered to us, we refuse. Love is a dangerous thing; it brings the
only revolution that gives complete happiness. So few of us are capable of love, so
few want love. We love on our own terms, making of love a marketable thing. We
have the market mentality; and love is not marketable, a give-and-take affair. It is a When he (Krishnamurti) entered my room I said to myself: ‘Surely, the Lord of Love
has come.’
state of being in which all man’s problems are resolved. We go to the well with a Kahlil Gibran
thimble, and so life becomes a tawdry affair, puny and small.

Krishnamurti: A Biography by Pupul Jayakar
Love is not the opposite of anything. It is not the opposite of hate or of violence.
Even if you do not depend on anybody and live a most virtuous life–do social work,
J Krishnamurti
&
Talking of Freedom… A World

In Crisis
Do you know what a free mind is? Have you ever observed your
own mind? It is not free, is it? It is extremely difficult for the
mind to be free of fear because that implies being really free of
the desire to imitate, to follow, free of the desire to amass
wealth or to conform to a tradition–which does not mean that
you do something outrageous.
Life Ahead, Ch. 2
Many philosophers have written about freedom. We talk of freedom–freedom to do

what we like, to have any job we like, freedom to choose a woman or a man, freedom
to read any book or freedom not to read at all. We are free, and what do we do with
that freedom? We use that freedom to express ourselves, to do whatever we like.
The totalitarian States have no freedom at all because they have the idea that
freedom brings about the degeneration of man. Therefore they control, suppress. So
what is freedom? Is it based on choice? Is it to do exactly what we like? Some
psychologists say that if you feel something, do not suppress, restrain or control it,
but express it immediately, and we are doing that very well, too well. And this is also
called freedom. Just look what we have reduced our freedom to!
It is strange that we haven’t gone above and beyond the narrow field of suppression,
control, obedience, and the authority of ‘the book’. For, in all this, the mind can
never flourish. How can anything flourish within the darkness of fear?
Meeting Life, Ch. 6
Sergio Pessalano
Herve Blandin
Does freedom lie ‘out there’? Where do you begin to search for freedom? In the
outward world, where you express whatever you like, which is the so-called Daylife
‘individual’ freedom, or does freedom begin inwardly? Mediafilter
Most of us demand freedom politically or religiously or to think what we like, and

there is the ‘freedom of choice’. Political freedom is all right, and one must have it,
but most of us never demand and find out whether it is at all possible to be free
‘inwardly’. Our mind is a slave to its own projections, to its own demands, to its own
desires and fulfilments, a slave to its cravings, to its appetites. But we are always
wanting freedom outwardly–to go against the society, against a particular structure
of society. And this revolt against society, which is taking place all over the world, is
a form of violence, which indicates that one is concentrating on outward change
without inward change.
Without freedom man withers away, however great his work, whether in art, Estherase
science, politics or religion.

To know how one is conditioned is the first step towards freedom. But do we know
how we are conditioned?
Herve Blandin
Wellington Grey
The whole of your life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is
conforming, imitating, obeying, adjusting to social laws or to a particular
idiosyncrasy, which is your own particular character. When you are faced with that,
you realize that any activity born of thought, born of an idea, born of a concept–as an
Ishai Gonda idea, an ideology, a formula, a tradition, or a prompting from the past–is imitative.
To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of
yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour
and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this a great
deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself,
without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be–because the
moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor!
Freedom exists only when there is no confusion inside me, when I am not caught in
any trap. There are innumerable traps: gurus, saviours, preachers, excellent books,
Hubpages psychologists and psychiatrists; they are all traps. And if I am confused and there is
disorder, must I not first be free of that disorder before I talk of freedom? Should I
not begin here, inside me, in my mind, in my heart, to be totally free of all fears,
anxieties, despairs, and the hurts and wounds that I have received? Can one watch all
that for oneself and be free of them?
Slacktide Wordpress
So you are left with yourself, and that is the actual state for a man to be who is very
serious about all this; and as you are no longer looking to anybody or anything for
help, you are already free to discover. And when there is freedom there is energy;
and when there is freedom it can never do anything wrong. There is no such thing as
doing right or wrong when there is freedom. And hence there is no fear, and a mind
that has no fear is capable of great love. And when there is love, it can do what it will.
Claude Renault
We were about to leave when a young man burst in unannounced, asking to see K.
K appeared at the door. ‘You want to see me?’ he asked gently.
‘Yes, urgently.’ He was almost shouting. ‘I’ve got to talk.’
‘Come with me.’
The man crossed to K, and as they walked down the long hall towards K’s room, we could
hear the man relating his problem. Before they reached K’s door, we heard the man
suddenly begin to laugh. ‘Yes, of course’, we heard him cry out. Seconds later he re-entered
the drawing room. He was radiant. ‘I knew it! I knew he could solve it. Thank you.’
The whole incident could have taken no longer than three minutes. It was a revelation of the
immediacy of perception when a person is in crisis, when there is no time for explanations.
The Transparent Mind by Ingram Smith
Cal State-LA Unxpectd

J Krishnamurti
&
The Earth Was Breathless In Its A World

In Crisis
Splendour
These excerpts are drawn from exquisitely crafted
passages that often preface or are incorporated into
Krishnamurti’s writings. Said to represent an entirely
new genre of literature–a blend of lyrical descriptions
of nature, philosophical reflections, and perceptive
insights, all informed by a deeply religious
sensibility–these passages reflect Krishnamurti’s
concern for the earth and the human condition.
Tejbir Singh Anand
Shadows filled the

earth; it was a morning
for shadows, the little
ones and the big ones,
the long lean ones and
the fat satisfied ones,
the squat homely ones
and the joyful sprightly
ones.
Krishnamurti’s Notebook, Gstaad 1961
Aleksandr Elisavietskyi
When you look at the stars, there is ‘you’ looking at the stars in the sky;
the sky is flooded with brilliant stars, there is cool air, and there is
Algo
‘you’, the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, you with your aching
heart, you, the centre. That is why you do not know what beauty is or
Do you have a sense of beauty in your life, or is it mediocre, meaningless, an what love is. You talk about it, you write about it, but you have never
everlasting struggle from morning until night? Have you ever looked at a mountain known it except perhaps at rare intervals of total self-abandonment.
or the blue sea without chattering, without making noise, really paying attention to When there is no centre and no circumference, then there is love. And
the sea, the beauty of the water, the beauty of light on the sheet of water? when you love, you are beauty.
Bombay Talk 4, 1982 Freedom from the Known, Ch. 11
Algo
Ranjan Kamath Thenausea.com
Man has probably never been so cruel as

he is now, so violent. One wonders if man
will ever live on this beautiful earth
peacefully, with some divinity and love in
his heart.
Krishnamurti to Himself, 26 April 1983
The sea was asleep and you

watched it in wonder…
Krishnamurti’s Journal, 6 April 1975
The love of trees is, or should be, a part of our nature,

like breathing. They are a part of the earth like us, full Alex Senson
of beauty with that strange aloofness. The smoke is

going up in a single column across the valley, and
below a lorry goes by, heavy with logs of recently cut
trees, their bark still on them. A group of boys and
girls passes by chattering and shattering the stillness
of the wood.
Meeting Life, Ch.18
Steve McCurry
It was a beautiful morning and the sun was not too

hot yet. There was a benediction in the air, and
there was that peace before man wakes up.
The Only Revolution, India, Ch. 2
Alexandr Elisavietskyi
Please listen to all this, not with the ear, but with your heart. There is the sorrow of disease, there is
the sorrow that man feels in complete isolation. There is the sorrow of poverty when you see all NASA
these poor, ignorant, dirty, hopeless people. There is sorrow when you see all the animals of the Francesco Dazzi
world being killed, destroyed, butchered in laboratories and so on. There is sorrow when you see a It was very early in the morning, and the valley was full of silence.
young seal being killed by a man with a bludgeon, hundreds of whales being killed. And thousands The sun was not yet up behind the hills, and the snow peaks were
of people are killed, children are maimed in wars. You know all that… still dark. As you looked at them, you were aware of the age of the
Bombay Talk 3, 1978 earth and your own impermanence. You passed away, and they
Nasiri Photos
remained–the mountains, the hills, the green fields, and the river.
They would always be there, and you with your worries, your
insufficiencies and sorrow would pass away…
Meeting Life, Ch. 7
It is the oldest living thing on the earth; it is gigantic in proportion, in its height and vast trunk. Among other
redwood trees, which were also very old, this one was towering over them all; other trees had been touched
by fire, but this one had no marks on it. It had lived through all the ugly things of history, through all the
wars of the world, through all the mischief and sorrow of man, through fire and lightning, through all the
storms of time, untouched, majestic, and utterly alone, with immense dignity.
The death of a tree is beautiful in its ending, unlike man’s. A

dead tree in a desert, stripped of its bark, polished by the sun
and the wind, all its naked branches open to the heavens, is a
wonderful sight. A great redwood, many, many hundreds of
years old, is cut down in a few minutes to make fences, seats,
and build houses or enrich the soil in a garden. That marvellous
giant is gone.
Reuters
Meeting Life, Ch. 18
Friedrich Grohe
Thenausea.com
How few, in retrospect, are the experiences of one’s life that really mark
breakthroughs in understanding, after which nothing can ever be the same Standing on that hill, one saw three hundred miles of
again! At the same time, how extraordinary that they have actually happened. the Himalayas, almost from horizon to horizon, with
Without them, my life would have been so much the poorer. deep, dark valleys, peak after peak with everlasting
snow, not a house in sight, not a village, not a hut. The
Here was a real live Buddha pointing at a living rose which only he could smell
sun was touching the highest peaks, and all of a sudden
and see unveiled, in the moment, without the stain of thought and memory on
the whole continuous range was afire. The earth was
the direct perception.
Asking for the Earth, by James George breathless in its splendour. And the day began.
Meeting Life, Ch.19
Algo
J Krishnamurti
&
Krishnamurti–To The Young A World

In Crisis
I am sure you have often heard from politicians, from

educators, from your parents and from the public that you are
the ‘coming generation’. But when they talk about you as a new
generation, they really do not mean it because they make sure
that you conform to the older pattern of society. They really do
not want you to be a new, different kind of human being.
Krishnamurti on Education, Ch. 6
Herve Blandin
You know, when you are very young, full of vitality, eagerness, innocence, there is a
delight in everything. All the common things have a meaning, a little marble has a
world of meaning; and as we grow older all that becomes dull, the mind becomes
dull, which has become educated, which has accepted life in terms of society and
adjustment to the pattern of society. We all know this. We never stop to look at a tree,
or the evening sky, or the stars. We know our minds are deteriorating all the time;
why? Why is there not that sense of innocence–not the cultivated innocence of a
clever mind that ‘wishes’ to be innocent, but that state of innocence in which there is
no denial or acceptance; it is just what it is. Why? And when old age comes, we are
destroyed. Why?
Herve Blandin
They want you to be mechanical, to fit in with tradition, to conform, to believe, to Claude Renault
accept authority. In spite of this, if you can actually free yourself from fear, not
theoretically, not ideally, not merely outwardly but actually, inwardly, deeply, then
you can be a different human being. Then you can become the ‘coming generation’.
The older people are ridden with fear–fear of death, fear of losing jobs, fear of public
opinion. They are completely held in the grip of fear. So their gods, their scriptures, WhirlingMcDervish Claude Renault
their pujas are all within the field of fear, and therefore the mind is curiously warped,
perverted. Such a mind cannot think straight, cannot reason logically, sanely,
healthily, because it is rooted in fear. Watch the older generation, and you will see
how fearful it is of everything–of death, of disease, of going against the current of
tradition, of being different, of being new.
Your parents and society use that word ‘duty’ as a means of moulding you, shaping
you according to their particular idiosyncrasies, their habits of thought, their likes
and dislikes. You know, we allow that word ‘duty’ to kill us. The idea that you have a
‘duty’ to parents, to relations, to the country, sacrifices you.
Life Ahead, Ch. 16
Opinion and tradition mould our thoughts and feelings from the tenderest age. The
immediate influences and impressions produce an effect which is powerful and
lasting and which shapes the whole course of our conscious and unconscious life. Herve Blandin
Boaz Rottem Estherase
The desire to imitate is a very strong factor in our life, not only at the superficial
levels, but also profoundly. We have hardly any independent thoughts and feelings.
When they do occur, they are mere reactions and are therefore not free from the
established pattern.
Boaz Rottem
What happens when the world around me controls me, conscripts me, takes me to
war, tells me what to do politically, economically, religiously? There are the
psychologists and the gurus from the East–they all tell me what to do. If I
obey–which is what they all want me to do, promising utopia at the end of it. The
root meaning of the word obey is ‘to hear’. By hearing constantly what other people
tell me, I gradually slip into obedience.
Nasiri Photos Herve Blandin
Freedom of mind comes into being when there is no fear, when the mind is not
Herve Blandin
intriguing for position, for prestige, to show off. Is this all too much, too difficult?
This is certainly not as difficult as your geography or mathematics. It is much easier,
only you have never thought about it. You spend most of your lives in school
acquiring information. You are in a school for about ten to fifteen years; yet you
never have time to think about any of these things; not a week, not a day, to think
Lorenzo Moscia
fully, completely, of all these things; and that is why these things seem difficult. If
you give time to it, then you can see how your mind works, operates, functions.
Lorenzo Moscia
First of all, can you reject all authority? If you can, it means that you are no longer
afraid. Then what happens? When you reject something false which you have been
carrying about with you for generations, when you throw off a burden of any kind,
what takes place? You have more energy, haven’t you? You have more capacity,
Aeionic
Herve Blandin more drive, greater intensity and vitality. If you do not feel this, then you have not
thrown off the burden, you have not discarded the dead weight of authority.
Herve Blandin
Then there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority,
the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions,
knowledge, ideas, and ideals. To be free of all authority, of your own and that of
another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh,
always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion.
You must question everything, including your pet beliefs, your ideals, your
authorities, your scriptures, your politicians. Which means there must be a certain
Claude Renault Herve Blandin
Herve Blandin quality of scepticism. When you question, it must be your own particular problem,
not a casual, superficial question that will entertain you; it must be something of
your own. If this is so, then you will put the right question. And if it is the right
question you will have the right answer, because the very act of putting that right
question shows you the answer in itself.
Beyond Violence, Ch.8
‘Dear Mr. Smith,
You are a very lucky man indeed to have discovered Krishnamurti at such an early age! I
Shabtai Gold
am exactly double your age and came upon his teachings only about four years ago. The
same shattering experience.
One wonders whether ever before such a teacher, such a human being, has walked the
earth. There is in his presence the feeling of something immense, so entirely remote from
everyday experience, that by comparison one feels oneself to be puny, totally
insignificant, and that recognition brings with it something of an immediate
transformation. And although it does not last, yet, on a deeper level, it is experienced as a
lasting benediction. Such a one has no need to perform miracles, spectacular healings, and
so on, for his very being is a miracle.’
Crisis in Consciousness, by Robert Powell
Sergio Pessalano Estherase

J Krishnamurti
&
And The Beauty Of The Earth A World

In Crisis
Is Forgotten...
These excerpts are drawn from exquisitely crafted

passages that often preface or are incorporated into
Krishnamurti’s writings. Said to represent an entirely
new genre of literature–a blend of lyrical descriptions
of nature, philosophical reflections, and perceptive
insights, all informed by a deeply religious
sensibility–these passages reflect Krishnamurti’s
concern for the earth and the human condition.
Karl Ammann
What is your relationship with those clouds, full of evening light, or with those silent trees? We treat the earth and its products in the same way.
Do look, sir, at those clouds and the tree as though you were looking for the first time. Look There is no love of earth, there is only usage of earth. If
at them without thought interfering or wandering off. Look at them without naming them as one really loved the earth, there would be frugality in
a cloud or a tree. Just look with your heart and eyes. They are of the earth as we are! using the things of the earth. We are always using
Meeting Life, Ch.18 nature, either as an escape or for utilitarian ends; we
never actually stop and love the earth or the things of
the earth.
Alex
One may be surrounded by great beauty, by mountains and fields and

rivers, but unless one is alive to it all, one might just as well be dead.
Think on These Things, Ch. 20
Alex Karl Ammann
Earth is there to be loved and

cared for, not to be divided as Alex Karl Ammann
yours and mine. It is foolish to

plant a tree in a compound and
call it ‘mine’. Alex Senson
The whole horizon seemed to be filled with these clouds, range after
range, piling up against the hills in the most fantastic shapes, castles
Vinod Sebastian
Karl Ammann
such as man had never built. A blackbird was singing in a bush close
by, and that was the everlasting blessing.
The Only Revolution, Europe, Ch. 2
Ivan
Vinod Sebastian
Alex Senson
Sensitivity means being sensitive to

AxiePics
everything around–one to the plants, the
There was a farm with huge
animals, the trees, the skies, the waters of the
pigs–mountains of flesh, pink,
river, the bird on the wing; and also to the
snorting, ready for the market. moods of the people around one, and to the
They said it was a very good stranger who passes by. This sensitivity brings
Alex
money-making business. You about the quality of uncalculated, unselfish

would often see a lorry come response, which is true morality and conduct.
up a winding, rough farm Life Ahead, Introduction
road, and there would be fewer Thenausea.com
pigs the next day. ‘But we

must live’, they said, and the
beauty of the earth is
forgotten.
Meeting Life, Ch. 5
AxiePics AxiePics
AxiePics
As you sat quietly without movement, a bobcat, a lynx, came

down. As the wind was blowing up the valley, it was not aware
of the smell of that human being. It was purring, rubbing itself
against the rock, its small tail up, and enjoying the marvel of the
Vinod Sebastian
earth. It was afraid of man more than anything else–man who
believes in God, man who prays, the man of wealth with his gun,
with his casual killing. You could almost smell that bobcat as it
passed by you. You were so motionless, so utterly still that it
Vinod Sebastian
never even looked at you; you were part of that rock, part of that
environment.
Maureen Marsh
Alex Senson
AxiePics
There is a tree by the river, and we have

Karl Ammann
been watching it day after day for
Alex Senson
several weeks when the sun is about to
rise. If you establish a relationship with
it, then you have relationship with
mankind. If you have no relationship
with the living things on this earth, you
may lose whatever relationship you have
Krishnamurti told me stories about his encounters with animals–tigers and bears and rattlesnakes and with humanity.
even a lynx. Krishnamurti to Himself, 25 February 1983
He said, ‘If you are sensitive, you are sensitive to everything. Do you look at flowers, trees, really
Alex
look?’ Karl Ammann
‘No’, I replied.
‘You miss a great deal if you don’t’, he continued. ‘One day I was walking in Benares, and we passed a
grove of mango trees. My companion said that the trees hadn’t borne fruit for many years, and they
were to be cut down. ‘Watch out!’ I said to the trees. ‘If you don’t bear fruit you will be cut down!’
‘And what happened?’ I asked.
‘They bore fruit that year’, he replied. ‘I am not saying it had anything to do with me...’
One Thousand Moons, by Asit Chandmal
Alex
Karl Ammann
It was a lovely morning, soft with the scent of a rich forest.

In the trees close by there was a whole group of monkeys,
their faces shining in that morning sun, with long tails and
grey, hairy bodies. The babies were clinging to their
mothers, and the whole group was quietly watching
unafraid, the solitary figure. They watched unmoving. And
presently a group of sannyasis, chanting, was going down
to a distant village. There were about eight of them, three
or four quiet young, all with shaven heads, clad in saffron
robes, controlled, with downcast eyes, not seeing the great
trees, the thousand flowers and the green, soft hills; for
beauty is dangerous– desire may be aroused!
Meeting Life, Ch.19
Vinod Sebastian
J Krishnamurti
&
You’ve Never Looked At Your Fears, A World

In Crisis
Have You?
We have probably never asked ourselves why we

allow fear to continue even for a day, even for a minute,
knowing what damage, what hatred, what lies, what
hypocrisy, what confusion and conflict it creates.
Terrorofthelord.com
Estherase Canada.com
Unxpectd Francesco Dazzi
Breakingitdown.blog.com
Smallbiztechnology.com
Robert Chroma Lakshman Anand WhirlingMcDervish Zoriah Altaf Qadri

Listverse
Babaji
Chinx786
WhirlingMcDervish Claude Renault
Claude Renault Genny Bove
Rigbysface
First of all we should look together at why human beings, who have lived on this
earth for the last 50,000 years or more, have not been able to find, especially in this
modern world, security, inward and outward. We have not been able to find
complete security for all human beings. We are asking, why is it that, however
Selfhelpzone
civilized we are, however cultured, we are still fighting, killing each other?
Varanasi, 11 November 1984
Each one of us wants to live in security. That is natural. That is an instinctive

response to have food, clothes, and shelter. Every human being in the world, from
the most ignorant to the most sophisticated, wants security, both outwardly and
inwardly.
San Francisco Talk, 30 April 1983
Being afraid you cling to tradition; you cling to your parents, to your wives, to your
brothers, to your husbands. Look at your own lives and the lives about you, how
Uhuru1701
empty everything is! Zoriah
You cling to your house, you cling to your books, you cling to your idols, gods,
conclusions, your attachments, your sorrows, because you have nothing else, and all
that you do brings unhappiness.
Craving engenders fear, fear nourishes dependence, dependence on things, people

or ideas. The greater the dependence the greater the inward poverty. Becoming
aware of this poverty, loneliness, you try to enrich it, try to fill it with knowledge or Claude Renault
activity, with amusement or mystery.

Have you ever noticed that we build a fence round ourselves? A fence of self-
protection, a fence to ward off any hurts, a barrier between you and the other,
between you and your family, and so on. Right?
Last Talks at Saanen, Talk 3
Estherase
So you see man imprisoned by innumerable walls, walls of religion, of social,
political and national limitations, walls created by his own ambitions, aspirations,
Herve Blandin
fears, hopes, security, prejudices, hate, and love. Within these barriers and prisons
he is held, limited by the coloured maps of national boundaries, racial antagonisms, have never looked at fear, you have never come directly into communication with it,
class struggles, and cultural group distinctions. Through these walls and through you have never come directly in contact with it. The moment you say my wife, see
these enclosures he is trying to express what he feels and what he thinks. And the what you have done–the image that you have built about her is in contact with the
man who succeeds in making himself comfortable in the prison we call ‘successful’. other image; therefore relationship is between image and image. To look at fear
without naming it, without running away, without trying to overcome it, just to be
with it, without any movement away from it–you do it. And if you do it, you will see
And that is the state we live in, using people, things, as a means of covering up our
own inward poverty. Therefore the things that we use become all-important–the very strange things happening. San Diego 1970, Talk 2
person, the possession, the idea, the belief–because without them we are lost;
therefore more knowledge, more people, more things. And yet that which we are, we Surely fear is in the movement away from what is; it is the flight, the escape, the
have never understood. avoidance of actually what is; it is this flight away that brings about fear. Also, when
there is comparison of any kind, there is the breeding of fear: the comparison of what
All life is an escape from fear. Your gods, your churches, your moralities are based you are with what you think you should be. Beyond Violence, Ch. 5
on fear, and to understand that you have to understand how this fear comes about.
Fear comes when thought looks back to things that have happened in the past or to As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological
events that may happen in the future. Thought is responsible for this. security we need–food, clothing and shelter–is destroyed. We are seeking
psychological security, which does not exist; and we seek it, if we can, through
There is no ‘noble’ escape. All escapes, from drunkenness to God, are the same, power, through position, through titles, names–all of which is destroying physical
because one is escaping from what is, which is oneself, one’s own inward poverty. security.
The self is the root of all fear.

Is physical security assured if we are seeking psychological security? That is, if we The Collected Works, Vol. 3
use property as a means of psychological security, are we not creating physical
insecurity? Property becomes extraordinarily important to us because
psychologically we are weak; it gives us power, position, prestige, and so we put a
fence around it and call it ‘mine’. To protect it, we create a police force, an army, and ‘Krishnaji turned and faced me, straight and austere, his expressive black eyes alight with
from that arise nationalism and war. So, in the very desire for psychological security, a great fire. ‘What do you want out of life, Sidney?’
‘I’m not sure, Krishnaji. Today, after battling with lawyers, bill collectors, and sitting for
we bring about physical insecurity! weeks in the witness chair in Superior Court, I feel like a truck had run over me. You are
telling me to fully accept my present situation, without complaining.’
‘No, to accept is an attitude of the mind. To understand is to see, to perceive at the deepest
So we are asking: psychologically, inwardly, is there security at all? level, and be free!’
Saanen 1980, Talk 1
‘It’s really easy’, he said casually. ‘But you complicate things. You don’t let Life paint the
picture. You insist on doing it your own way.’
So what is one to do, what is the mind to do? The Reluctant Messiah by Sidney Field
You have never looked at fear, have you? You’ve never said, ‘Well, I am afraid, let
me look.’ Have you done that? Or you’ve said, ‘I am afraid, let me turn on the radio,
or go to church or pick up a book, or resort to a belief’–a movement away. So you
J Krishnamurti
&
The Illusion Of Progress A World

In Crisis
Technological knowledge, however necessary, will in no

way resolve our inner, psychological pressures and
conflict; and it is because we have acquired technical
knowledge without understanding the total process of
life that technology has become a means of destroying
ourselves. The man who knows how to split the atom but
has no love in his heart becomes a monster.
MSZCZUZ
We see that there is progress in the obvious sense of that word; there are new
inventions, better cars, better planes, better refrigerators, the superficial peace of a
progressive society, and so on. It does superficially alter the conduct of our life, but
can it ever fundamentally transform our thinking?
We human beings are what we have been for millions of years–colossally greedy,
envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy
and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear and gentleness; we are both
violence and peace. There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet
plane, but psychologically the individual has not changed at all!
Slate Craig White Freedom from the Known, Ch. 1
Self-interest, with the desire for power, position, for fulfilment and so on, is the
factor that is destroying not only the world but the extraordinary capacity of our own
brain. The brain has remarkable capacity, as is shown in the extraordinary things
they are doing in technology. And we never apply that same immense capacity
inwardly, to be free of fear, to end sorrow, to know what is love and compassion. We
never search, explore that field; we are caught by the world with all its misery.
Boaz Rottem On Fear, Brockwood 1984
Algo
The whole world is worshipping success. You are fed on the glorification of success.
With the achievement of great success there is also great sorrow.
Think on These Things, Ch. 20
Please listen to all this. On every side we are encouraged to be competitive, to be

ambitious, to be successful. Competition, ambition and success are the gods of a
Louk Vreeswijk
Twentyset
Unxpectd
particularly prosperous society such as this, and what do you expect? You want
juvenile delinquency to become respectable, that’s all.
One is so accustomed to conflict and struggle; one even feels that when there is no
Wellington Grey
Ishai Gonda
conflict, one is not growing, not developing, not creating, one is not functioning
properly.
Beyond Violence, Ch.12
Man has lived so far by the activity of the brain, keeping it active because he has
Ahmed Shokeir
Shabtai Gold
Lorenzo Moscia
struggled to survive, to accumulate knowledge skillfully to be secure, to have safety.
Now the machine is taking all that over, and what are you? What is the future of man
if the machine can take over all the operations that thought does now, and do them
far swifter, learn much more quickly–do everything that man can do?
On Mind and Thought, Rajghat 1981
We are going to look at why the brain, which has evolved through thousands of
years, has become so limited. In one direction, in the direction of technology, the
brain has infinite power. That’s obvious. The brain has put man on the moon, it has
given man great comfort, hygiene, communication, and so on. But the brain is
Estherase
limited because it cannot go in any other direction but that. That is, it is incapable at
present of going inwardly. And if it can go in one direction with the extraordinary
vigour, the extraordinary energy that has been put into the technological world, then
it can also go in the other direction, that is, not in the direction of amusement and
entertainment but into the world of the psyche, the psychological world. Then it
would have extraordinary, infinite capacity, both outwardly, that is, in the
technological world, and inwardly, in the psychological world.
Mind Without Measure, Madras Talk 1
Smallbuztechnology.com EC.Europa.EU
All our answers, social, economic, or religious, are sought by a mind that is
Louk Vreeszwijk
conditioned and therefore, whatever it is, the answer will be progressively
conditioned, never beyond conditioning. That is, instead of worshipping the word
God, we now worship the word State, and by using the word State we think we have
made tremendous progress. Or if we do not like the word State, we take the word
Science as though that is going to solve all our problems. That is, we are always
approaching the solution of all our problems with a conditioned thought.
Organized religion and the modern world go together: they both cultivate the empty
ABC News
Beachblogger
heart. We are superficial, intellectually brilliant, capable of great inventions and of
producing the most destructive means of liquidating each other, and creating more
and more division between ourselves. But we do not know what it means to love; we
CubeFigures Brendan Grant have no song in our hearts. An empty heart with a technical mind is not a creative
human being.
On Nature and the Environment, New Delhi 1948
Farfaraway That’s the main crisis of our life. The crisis is not in the outward technological
Zoriah
advancement, but rather in the way we think, the way we live and the way we feel.
That is where a revolution must take place.
You must start anew. That means radical revolution, not of the bloody kind, which
WhirlingMcDervish
does not solve a thing, but a radical revolution of thought, of feeling, of values. That
radical revolution can be brought about only by you and me; a revolution that will
create a new, integrated individual must begin with you and me. What we can do, if
we are intelligent people, is to tackle the problem ourselves, in the present. Now is
the only eternity, not in the future. I must give full attention to the problem. Now!
WhirlingMcDervish The greatest of enlightened beings have always spoken with a simplicity and clarity that is
shocking. This is the nature of truth, and that is the nature of Krishnamurti.
Larry Dossey
NASA
J Krishnamurti
&
So-called Education–A Major Factor A World

In Crisis
Of Degeneration!
What a crazy world this is! You entrust your children to somebody
who is not interested in your children; nor are you interested in
your children, and so they grow up in fear, in solitude, in anxiety.
There is no love at home, no love at school. Right? Please see your
responsibility, for God’s sake!
Blog.OleNepal WhirlingMcDervish
Baldev Kapoor
Zioneocon ABC.Net.AU
Indianadec
Blog.Com.NP Tibetech.Blogspot
Herve Blandin
Zoriah Claude Renault
It seems to me that one of the major factors of deterioration everywhere is the so-
called education. What do we mean by education? Why do you send your children to
be educated? Is it the mere acquisition of some technical knowledge which will give
you a certain capacity with which to lead your life, so that you can apply that
technique and get a profitable job? Is that what we mean by education–to pass
certain examinations and then to become a clerk, and from a clerk to climb up the
ladder of managerial efficiency?
So we are creating a generation of people like ourselves–dull, insensitive,

superstitious, and very clever at business, at making money. As a parent your
interest is that he should get a degree and get a good job, and then you wash your
hands of him completely. That is what every parent in the world is concerned Insis4.es
with–get him a good job, let him marry, and settle down. Settle down to what? To
misery, right?
And society doesn’t want a new person, a new entity; it wants him to be respectable,
it moulds him, it shapes him and so destroys the freshness, the innocence of youth. A.ABCNews
This is what we are doing to all the children around the world. And that child, when it
grows into manhood, is already aged; he will never mature.
There is now scientific knowledge enough to enable us to provide food, clothing and
shelter for all human beings, yet it is not done. The politicians and other leaders SMH.Com.AU Vinod Sebastian
throughout the world are ‘educated’ people: they have titles, degrees, caps and
gowns; they are doctors and scientists; and yet they have not created a world in
which man can live happily. So modern education has failed, has it not? And if you
are satisfied to be educated in the same old way, you will make another howling
mess of life.
Life Ahead, Ch. 2
Present-day education is a complete failure because it has over-emphasized

technique. In over-emphasizing technique we destroy man. To cultivate capacity
and efficiency without understanding life, without having a comprehensive
perception of the ways of thought and desire, will only make us increasingly
ruthless, which is to engender wars and jeopardize our physical security. Zoriah Zoriah
Education and the Significance of Life, Ch.2
So our problem is not the pupil, the child, but the teacher and the parent. The
Are we prepared, as parents and teachers, to bring about a new generation of people, teacher’s profession is not a mere routine job, but the expression of beauty and joy,
for that is what is implied–a totally different generation of people with totally which cannot be measured in terms of achievement and success.
different minds and hearts? Are we prepared for that? Commentaries on Living 2, Ch. 1
Teaching is not mere imparting of information but the cultivation of an inquiring

We are concerned with the total development of each human being, helping him to mind.
realize his own highest and fullest capacity. Any spirit of comparison prevents this Life Ahead, Introduction
full flowering of the individual, whether he is to be scientist or a gardener. The

fullest capacity of the gardener is the same as the fullest capacity of the scientist Teaching is the noblest profession–if it can be called a profession at all. It is an art
when there is no comparison. The fullest development of every individual creates a that requires, not just intellectual attainments, but infinite patience and love. To be
society of equals. With right education, there is no need to seek equality through truly educated is to understand our relationship to all things–to money, to property,
social and other reforms, because envy with its comparison of capacities ceases. to people, to nature–in the vast field of our existence.
Life Ahead, Introduction
Life Ahead, Introduction
To be afraid of being nobody, of not arriving, of not succeeding, is at the root of

competition. But when there is fear, you cease to learn. And so it seems to me that it
He invited us (parents and teachers) to sit with him and endure the crucial issues of our
is the function of education to eliminate fear. It involves the elimination of all lives until we had exhausted the fidgets of our merely plausible or brilliant answers.
competition. In this process of competition, you conform and gradually you destroy Concerning the most important matters of our lives, he leaned on us until we could say, ‘I
the subtlety, the freshness, the youth of the brain. don’t know’ –and mean it. These were painful realizations for most of us, because until
then we had lived our whole adult lives in the presumption of knowing. In short,
Krishnamurti gave us the gift of our ignorance.
So education may have a different meaning altogether–not merely transferring what
is printed on a page to your brain. Education may mean opening the doors of To be honest, this was gruelling, bruising work. We complained to him. We were angry
perception on to the vast movement of life. It may mean learning how to live with him, hurt by him, even downright disgusted with him. But, finally, never
disappointed. In his meetings with us, Krishnamurti brought a single-mindedness that
happily, freely, without hate and confusion, but in beatitude. Modern education is was both sobering and freeing.
blinding us; we learn to fight each other more and more, to compete, to struggle with Vicki and Stan Hodson, parents of The Oak Grove School
each other. Right education is surely finding a different way of life, setting the mind
free from its own conditioning. And perhaps then there can be love which in its
action will bring about true relationship between man and man.
J Krishnamurti
&
The Seer Who Walked Alone A World

In Crisis
In library catalogues Krishnamurti is generally listed as a philosopher.

Few academic philosophers would have applied it to him, if only because
he had read none of their books, and in all his work there is scarcely a
reference to any other writer. Yet what else do you call a man who, for more
than half a century, explored and discussed such subjects as freedom,
truth, fear, death, suffering, ethics, the purpose of life, and the nature of
intelligence? These are some of the perennial subjects of philosophy, and
Krishnamurti expounded original ideas on all of them; ideas derived from
his own life experience. What an extraordinary life experience it was...
Krishnamurti – The Man, The Mystery & The Message, by Stuart Holroyd
Jiddu Krishnamurti had a life of the nature of myth. Born on 11 May 1895 in natural aptitude for mechanics and devoted hours to repairing watches and, in later
Madanapalle, a small hill-town in what is now Andhra Pradesh, south India, his mother years, to working on car engines. The boy was also devoted to his younger brother,
Jiddu Sanjeevamma and father Jiddu Narianiah were Telugu-speaking Brahmins. As Nityananda, who was regarded as remarkably intelligent.
he was the eighth child, in accordance with Hindu custom, he was named after Lord
Krishna. Narianiah worked with the Revenue Department of the British When Sanjeevamma died in 1905, Krishna was ten and a half. Narianiah found it
Administration. difficult to manage his family, especially on retirement in 1907, and he pleaded with
Mrs. Annie Besant, then President of the Theosophical Society, for full-time
Sanjeevamma, a tender, pious lady, ran an orthodox household, and it was in this employment at the Society’s headquarters in Adyar in Madras. When Mrs. Besant
environment of strict adherence to the rituals and norms of religious tradition that consented, in January 1909, Narianiah–himself a Theosophist–and his four sons
Krishnamurti grew up. A local astrologer cast the child’s horoscope and assured the moved to a ramshackle cottage outside the Society’s beautiful, sprawling compound.
father that his son would be a very great man. There was little indication of this in the
young Krishnamurti, a sickly child who almost died of malaria at the age of two, and The Theosophical Society was founded by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and
suffered recurrent bouts of the disease years thereafter. Vague, dreamy, and an Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, in New York, in 1875. The estate at Adyar was purchased
indifferent pupil at school, Krishnamurti was regularly beaten by his in 1882 and transformed into the Society’s Headquarters. Annie Besant, an
teachers. articulate and energetic worker for social reform, joined the Society in 1889.
In 1890, Besant met Charles W. Leadbeater, a Theosophist and former priest
However, Krishnamurti’s father noticed in him an unusual capacity for in the Church of England, who was considered a remarkable clairvoyant.
silence and a deep absorption in nature; besides, he surprisingly displayed a When Olcott died in 1907, Besant took over as President.
A belief central to Theosophy was the progressive evolution of humanity towards a

Universal Brotherhood, guided by Masters–perfected human beings–who
periodically appear on Earth to found a new religion. The Theosophists also believed
in the concept of a World Teacher, by whose mission on Earth a new religion would
permeate human civilization. The next World Teacher was to be Maitreya, the
Buddha of Compassion, whose manifestation was imminent. The identification and
nurture of the vehicle for the role of World Teacher, the Theosophists felt, was theirs.
In 1909 Leadbeater, while walking on the beach outside the Theosophical Society,
noticed Krishna, who, he said, had the most wonderful aura ‘without a trace of
selfishness’. He immediately proclaimed that this child would be the future World
Teacher, but his observation was met with surprise and disbelief since Krishna had
nothing to recommend him for this role ‘apart from his wonderful eyes’.
Shortly, Krishna and Nitya were brought into the Society’s compound, groomed,
and given private lessons. Krishna, who was put through an intensive health
regimen, soon began to look remarkably attractive. George Bernard Shaw was later
to describe him as ‘the most beautiful human being I ever saw’.
In 1911, the Order of the Rising Sun, later known as the Order of the Star in the East
(OSE), was formed to herald the arrival of the World Teacher, and that became the
first collective acknowledgement of Krishnamurti’s special status.
Narainiah transferred guardianship of the boys to Annie Besant in 1911, and a deep
bonding developed between Krishnamurti and Besant, whom he came to view as his
foster mother. The boys were taken to Europe where they continued their education
and came into contact with the educated, wealthy and cultured members of the
Theosophical Society.
The Theosophical Society, which by this time had grown to its largest size ever–with
over 45,000 members and more than 500 Lodges around the world–was rapidly
becoming a powerful world movement. Recipient of large endowments of land and
vast sums of money in the service of the World Teacher’s mission, the Society built
elaborate structures around Krishnamurti–rituals, meetings, disciples in attendance,
and so on.
In the summer of 1922, Ojai, California, where the boys had moved for the sake of
Nitya’s fight with tuberculosis, Krishnamurti had a life-transforming mystical
experience about which he said: ‘I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal
Beauty. I am God-intoxicated.’
But when Nitya died in 1925, Krishnamurti’s deep sorrow altered radically his
perception of human life. The structures and hierarchies built in his name now
seemed to imprison him, and he began distancing himself gradually from the tenets
of the Theosophical Society. Annie Besant’s efforts to reconcile Krishnamurti’s
revolutionary pronouncements with Theosophy failed.
In 1929, Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star, and in a historic speech
declared: ‘I maintain that Truth is a pathless land. No organization, no belief can lead
to truth.’ He returned to the donors the moneys and vast properties bequeathed to
him, including a 5000-acre estate and castle in Holland.
Stepping out of the Theosophical Society and, indeed, out of all organized religions,
and renouncing his role as a guru, Krishnamurti reshaped his life around his sole
mission: ‘to set man absolutely, unconditionally free’. From then on till his end, he
travelled around the world giving talks to large audiences and engaging in
discussions with some of the brightest minds of the century.
Krishnamurti’s life-long interest in education–‘to create human beings who are

integrated and therefore intelligent’–made him found schools, first in India and later
in England and America which he visited every year and held dialogues with the
students and teachers. In the 1980s, Krishnamurti talked of the importance of Study
Centres where serious adults could go in order to take time off from the routine of
daily life and study their lives in the light of the teachings.
Krishnamurti’s mission was one that seemed to fulfil itself with an intensity that
remained undiminished by time and circumstance and, in fact, gathered new energy
and momentum as his age advanced. In 1980, he told his biographer that when he
stopped speaking, his body would die; the body existed for only one purpose: to
reveal the teachings. In California, on 17 February 1986 Krishnamurti died of
pancreatic cancer, with a handful of people present at a funeral devoid of ritual and
ceremony.
J Krishnamurti
&
The Sacred Treasure: A World

In Crisis
‘What Will You Do With It?’
So what are you going to do when K is gone? He pours his

life into it and discusses with you. Then he’s gone...
This is a sacred treasure I leave with you. What will you do

with it?
Krishnamurti in a discussion with Trustees, Ojai, 20 March 1977
J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is regarded by many as the most

significant voice of our times and as one who has had a most profound
impact on human consciousness. Dedicating his life entirely to sharing
his insights on the human condition, he travelled constantly around the
world, giving talks to thousands of listeners, writing, holding
discussions with the brightest minds of the century, or just sitting
silently with those who sought his compassionate and healing presence.
Sage, philosopher and thinker, Krishnamurti illumined the lives of

millions the world over–intellectuals and laymen, young and old. It has
been estimated that he talked to more people than any other person in The Itinerary of Places Krishnamurti spoke in:
recorded history. More than 3,000,000 copies of his books sold
Argentina: La Plata, Mendoza;
worldwide. His material legacy, consisting chiefly of recordings of his Australia: Adelaide, Manley, Melbourne, Newport,
Sydney;
talks and dialogues, is vast. Austria: Strassburg, Vienna;
Belgium: Brussels;
Brazil: Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo;
And yet Krishnamurti had no ‘philosophy’ to expound; rather, he Canada: Calgary (Alberta), Montreal, Toronto,
Vancouver B.C., Victoria B.C., Westmount (Quebec),
confronted boldly the problems of contemporary society and analysed Wolf Lake (Vancouver);
with scientific precision the workings of the human mind. He lived Chile: Santiago, Valparaiso;
England: Brockwood Park, London;
through a most tumultuous century that witnessed not only the France: Paris;
Germany: Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg; Luminaries influenced by Krishnamurti:
phenomenal growth of science and technology, but also two world wars, Greece: Athens, Ekali, Kastri;
the collapse of faiths, traditions and ideologies, the savage destruction Holland: Amsterdam, Eerde, Ommen; Poet: Kahlil Gibran;
India: Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Bombay, Scientists: Dr. David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake,
of the Earth, and rapid degeneration in every sphere of human life. He Calcutta, Calicut, Ernakulam, Indore, Karachi (1933), Frijof Capra, and Nobel Laureate & Inventor of the
addressed the social, political, and economic issues of the times with an Lahore (1933), Madanapalle, Madras, Nagpur, New Polio Vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk;
Delhi, Pune, Rajahmundry, Rishi Valley, Sangli, Tiruchi, Prime Ministers: Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi
insight that pointed directly to the root of the innumerable problems that Varanasi, Vizag; and Rajiv Gandhi;
Italy: Alpino, Florence, Perugia, Rome, Stresa; Literary Figures and Writers: Bernard Shaw,
confront us: ‘What you are, the world is.’ Mexico: Mexico City; Aldous Huxley, Anita Loos, Rom Landau, Iris
New Zealand: Auckland, Wellington; Murdoch, Howard Fast, Christopher Isherwood,
Norway: Frognerseteren, Oslo; Henry Miller, Robert Powell, Mary Lutyens, Pupul
What may initially bewilder most people is Krishnamurti’s observation Puerto Rico: Marcelo Rio Piedras; Jayakar;
Scotland: Edinburgh; Scholars: Jacob Needleman, Huston Smith, Renee
that to see the true nature of anything demands neither book knowledge Sri Lanka: Colombo; Weber, Dr. Allan Anderson, Fr. Eugene Schallert;
nor intellectual prowess, neither faith nor religious training. All it asks Sweden: Stockholm; Social Reformer: Vinoba Bhave;
Switzerland: Geneva, Montreux, Saanen, Schoenried; Psychologists: Dr Hedda Bolgar, Ira Progoff, David
for is a sceptical and attentive observation of life itself. The simpler you U.S.A.: Atlanta, Auburndale, Berkeley, Birmingham Shainberg;
(Alabama), Chicago, Claremont, Cleveland, Eddington, Educator: Ivan Illich;
are in your approach, the better–a demand that marks a complete Hollywood, Kansas, Los Alamos, Los Angeles, Malibu Buddhists: Dalai Lama, Walpola Rahula, Chogyam
departure from the mainstream religious and scientific culture. The (CA), New York, Oakland, Ojai (CA), Philadelphia, Trungpa;
Portland, Rochester (NY), San Antonia, San Diego, San Vedantins: Swami Venkatesananda, Swami
implication is profound: the keys to understanding are wrested from the Francisco, San Salito (CA), Santa Cruz (CA), Santa Poornananda;
hands of the priest and the pundit, the scientist and the specialist, and Monica, Seattle, St. Paul (Minn.), Stanford; Artists: Joseph Campbell, Antoine Bourdelle;
Uruguay: Montevideo Musicians: Leopold Stokowski, Van Morrison.
given to anyone who cares to see, to understand and be a light to oneself!
Krishnamurti's Material Legacy:
Couched in plain English and drawing its material from ordinary human The Krishnamurti Foundations which came into being around Krishnamurti to organize
life, Krishnamurti’s talks and dialogues bring a daringly original his travel and publish his works, today house the Krishnamurti Archives that preserve and
approach to the existential dilemmas that confront us–the problems of document the large corpus of his work. This consists of: 9,000 Manuscripts; 600 Video
tapes; 2,800 Audio tapes; 7,000 Photographs; Letters from and to Krishnamurti;
living in this modern society with its corruption and violence, the Translations in world languages; Published Material; and Artefacts of Archival value.
individual’s search for security and happiness, a meaning to life, and the Krishnamurti recordings are available in the following formats: Public Talks, Question and
need for man to free himself from his inner burdens of greed, fear, and Answer Meetings, Discussions, Dinner table Conversations, Radio/TV talks and
interviews, and Documentary films.
sorrow.
For many decades, his works were circulated surreptitiously in countries with totalitarian
One of Krishnamurti’s most remarkable contributions is his invitation regimes, such as China, Vietnam, Thailand, and the USSR. Today, Krishnamurti’s work
to engage in a novel form of investigation, also called a dialogue when finds itself translated in at least 50 world languages.: Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese (Brazil),
Braille (English, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati), Bulgarian, Chinese (Complex), Chinese
done in a group. This investigation, in form and spirit, points to the very (Simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek,
core of his teaching: no new answer can emerge in a mind crowded with Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada,
memories and knowledge, beliefs and ideals; for it is the dead past that is Korean, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal), Punjabi,
Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Singhalese, Slovenian, Sindhi, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil,
brought in to deal with the living reality, the what is–conflict, hatred,
Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Uzbek, Vietnamese, & Yugoslavian.
violence, insecurity, fear, and sorrow. (Perhaps this explains why,
throughout human history, our attempts to find solutions to these most Noted Publishers of Krishnamurti Literature:
persistent problems have failed miserably.) The ruts of the old cannot Victor Gollancz, Penguin Books, Shambhala, Harper & Row, Servire, Mirananda, Open
Court, Rider Books, New World Library, Routledge, Avon Books, John Murray, Chetna,
meet the challenge of the ever-new! What is therefore being demanded Motilal Banarsidas.
in an investigation or dialogue is an engagement that is altogether fresh
and original– ‘as if for the first time’, as Krishnamurti put it. The Krishnamurti Foundations:
Krishnamurti Foundation India; Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd, England;
Krishnamurti Foundation of America; Fundacion Krishnamurti Latinoamericana
Doubts and questions about the outcome of such an exercise are, to be
fair, best left unanswered, if only because the nature of the new is Functions: Publishing Krishnamurti's works, producing translations, running schools for
beyond both recognition and prediction. The material legacy of the young and study centres for grown-ups. Making available his teachings in various
ways.For websites on Krishnamurti's teachings, see: www.jkrishnamurti.org,
Krishnamurti apart, his living legacy lies here–in the life and www.kinfonet.org
understanding of countless people whose hearts and minds have been
touched and transformed by their attention to what they are. To them, The Krishnamurti Schools:
life has returned with an unbounded clarity, joy, and freshness–‘as if for India: Rishi Valley School, Andhra Pradesh; Rajghat Besant School, Varanasi; The School-
KFI, Chennai; The Valley School, Bangalore; Sahyadri School, PuneU.K.: Brockwood
the first time’. Park School, England; U.S.A.: Oak Grove School, CaliforniaSee www.kfionline.org;
www.kfoundation.org; www.kfa.orgThe Krishnamurti Study Centres & Retreats:KFI
Headquarters, Vasanta Vihar, Chennai; The Krishnamurti School campuses worldwide.
I recall many occasions when we would discuss with Krishnaji how to
make the teachings more widely available. He would at first seem Private Initiatives:
Krishnamurti’s unique insights into human nature continue to draw large numbers of
interested in all these processes, and listen with extraordinary
people across cultural, linguistic, political and generation barriers . His works are now
attentiveness. But frequently he would throw a very large cat into the
accessible in distant, far-flung corners of the world, touching generations that came much
pigeons of our discussions. ‘Is that all?’ he would demand, with
after his time. Several private initiatives, schools, research projects, retreats, environmental
passion. ‘Just a lot of books and tapes and so on...?’
conservatories, interactive websites and blogs, translation and publishing houses, libraries
and study centres, inspired by Krishnamurti and his teachings have come up in countries
He felt that there was only one thing we all needed to do–to live the
across the world–a list that continues to grow with every passing year.
teachings.
Mary Cadogan in KFT Bulletin 87
Schools based on Krishnamurti’s vision of education, Study Centres, Retreats,
Information Centres and Libraries spanning more than 60 countries across the globe, from
the Americas to Australia. See www.kinfonet.org

J Krishnamurti and A World in Crisis

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Human history, it seems, has never before

witnessed a crisis of the complexity, magnitude,

Despite the achievements of our age–the

Nearly a century ago, Krishnamurti saw all this

This exhibit has been put together by

We are facing a tremendous crisis which the politicians

War: A Spectacular, Bloody Projection A World

War is merely an outward expression of our

TheNausea TheNausea TheNausea TheNausea

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We Are Brought Up To Be Violent A World

That is a fact: we are violent human beings.

If we can find a light in ourselves, a way of living in which there is no violence

A clear contemporary statement of the fundamental human problem, together with an

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Division Breeds Conflict: That’s A Law

Why is there this division between man and man,

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patriotic spirit, he is creating a wall of isolation. So nationalism, which is a process

Until we dissolve those barriers, which are a self-deception, there can be no

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Is God An Invention? A World

What would you say if you were not conditioned by

Questioner: Do you believe in God?

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Why Do You Believe? A World

Apparently for most of us belief of some kind

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What causes war, religious, political or economic? Obviously belief, either in

We Have Made Religion A Circus A World

The religious mind has nothing whatsoever to

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Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we

Religion, as it is now, has become an extraordinary phenomenon which has no

Your organized religion is mere copy–following authority, tradition and fear,

understanding things immediately. Such is the religious mind, because it is a light to

The Cleansing Of Relationship

There is no relationship between two people, not even

WhirlingMcDervish Vinod Sebastian

is much more gratifying, we think it is much more secure.

So relationship with most of us is actually a process of isolation, and obviously such

fact that there cannot be peace in the world.

Last Talks in Saanen, Talk 1 Zoriah

whereas in reality it is caught up in its own movement.

You Are Second-hand Human Beings

You are the product of your conditioning, you are the

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tradition, by habits, by customs.

success and to fulfill.

The Vast Human Suffering... A World

Why is man born like this? Why has he become after

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MSZCZUZ Robert Chroma ABHS Herve Blandin Zoriah

physical and psychological. And is my mind, your mind, your consciousness,

You Can’t Argue With Death A World

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change. He is caught in a pattern.

also death–not just the ending of the body.

The whole of Asia believes in an after-life, millions believe in reincarnation. If you

Questioner: I don’t know.

An Unequal World A World