Chapter 1: What does Krishnamurti say about the nature of immortality?
To know or experience immortality, there must be no ideation. One cannot think about immortality. The mind must be entirely quiet, without movement backward or forward, neither delving nor soaring. That is, ideation must entirely cease. And that is extremely difficult. That is why we cling to words like the soul, immortality, continuity, God,
They all have neurological effects, which are sensations. And on these sensations, the mind feeds. Deprived the mind of these things, it feels lost. So it holds on with great strength to past experiences. which have now become sensations. Is it possible for the mind to be so quiet, not partially, but in its totality, as to have direct experience of that which is unthinkable?
of that which cannot be put into words. What matters is to observe your own mind without judgment, just to look at it, watch it, to be conscious of the fact that your mind is a slave and nothing more. Because that very perception releases energy and it is this energy that is going to destroy the slavishness of the mind. We are only concerned with perceiving what is.
And it is the perception of what is that releases the creative fire.
Chapter 2: How can the mind achieve complete stillness?
The urgency behind the right question, the very insistence of it, brings about perception. The perceiving mind is living, moving, full of energy. And only such a mind can understand what truth is. Truth is a pathless land. Human beings cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual.
Not through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. One has to find it through the mirror of relationships. through the understanding of the contents of one's own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Humans have built in themselves images as a fence of security. Religious, political, personal.
These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates one's thinking. our relationships and our daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide us from one another. Our perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in the mind The content of our consciousness is our entire existence.
The individuality is the name, the form and the superficial culture that we acquire from tradition and environment. Our uniqueness does not lie in the superficial. but in complete freedom from the content of our consciousness which is common to all humanity so one is not an individual freedom is not a reaction freedom is not choice It is our pretense that because we have choice, we are free.
Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive, Freedom is not at the end of our evolution but lies in the first step of our existence. In observation, one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity beyond thought. Thought is time.
Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is a psychological enemy of humans. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time. So we are always a slave to the past. Thought is ever limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution.
When we become aware of the movement of our own thoughts, we will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience.
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Chapter 3: What role do past experiences play in our perception?
We will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation. which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in the mind. Total negation.
is the essence of the positive when there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically only then is there love which is compassion and intelligence What is intelligence? Can intelligence be cultivated? Is intelligence innate? Does thought see the truth of conflict, of division, and all the rest of it?
Or is it the quality of mind that sees the fact and is completely quiet with the fact? Completely silent. Not trying to go beyond it, to overcome it or to change it. but is completely still with the fact. It is that stillness that is intelligence. Intelligence is not thought. Intelligence is this silence and is therefore totally impersonal.
It does not belong to any group, to any person, to any race, to any culture. So my mind has found that there is a silence, not something put together by thought or discipline or practice, but a seeing that thought cannot possibly go beyond itself because thought is a result of the past. And where the past is functioning, it must create division and therefore conflicts.
Can one see that and remain still with it? It is like being completely still with sorrow. When somebody dies for whom you care, whom you have looked after, cherished, loved and been concerned with, there is the shock of loneliness, of despair, a sense of isolation. Everything falls around you.
Can one remain with that sorrow, not seeking explanations and the cause, thinking, why did they go and not I? to remain completely still with it is intelligence that intelligence can then operate in thought using knowledge and that knowledge and thought will not create division
So the question arises, how is the mind, your mind, which is endlessly chattering, endlessly bourgeois, caught in a trap, struggling, Seeking. Following a guru and using discipline. How is that mind to be completely still?
if I do not know this stillness nor know what it is to love therefore I depend on another to love me now can I fathom this emptiness in myself this sense of complete isolation or loneliness? Do we ever come face to face with it at all? Or are we always frightened of it? Always running away from it? the very process of running away from that loneliness is dependence.
So can my mind realize the truth that any form of running away from what is creates dependence, from which arises misfortune and sorrow? It is very difficult and arduous because the mind is so used to distraction, so trained to go away from what is, to turn on the radio, to pick up a book, to talk,
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