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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti
1895 - 1986

To find out whether there is a Reality called God or some other thing, your mind must be completely silent. When a scientist tries to solve a problem, there is great attention given to the issue, and this intense focus quiets the mind, in a natural way. But some who seek for God believe that the mind must be quieted in a strange way, by chantings and posturings, but this cannot quiet but only dull the mind.

 
 

 

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Editor’s prefatory comments:

Jiddu Krishnamurti has been an important teacher in my life. I began learning about the “true” and “false” selves about 15 years ago, and his insights served to inaugurate this vital area of enquiry.

He was the one to make clear that “guru” signifies merely “one who points,” not “infallible sage.” Pointing the way is what even the best teachers provide, but no more. One must walk the path of enlightenment alone, no one can do this for us.

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Public Talk 2, New Delhi - 11 Nov 1965

excerpt

Now, to find out whether there is a Reality called God or some other thing, your mind… must be completely silent… this is an immense problem which we are putting to you, a very complex problem which we cannot answer with yes or no in a minute.

To meet this challenge, you need a mind that is completely quiet… take for example a complex, mathematical problem, or a scientific issue. You have thought about it, you have investigated it…  and you cannot find an answer… Your mind has been tremendously active in the sense of looking, asking, searching, examining to find out the answer and it has not been able to find it. Therefore, it becomes quiet...

So this question can only be met by a mind that is meditating, that is a mind that is completely quiet, not induced to be quiet, not made quiet, not disciplined to be quiet. When the mind has examined this problem widely, a problem which is so complex, in the very examination of that problem there is a process of discipline. And that examination and that discipline which is not conformity, which is not compulsion, which is not pursuing a pattern, which is not drilling the mind to think in a certain way - only such a mind can answer this question. For a mind to examine this very closely, attentively, to be aware of all the implications of all the things like time, change, sensitivity, what is implied in effort, to examine it factually, not according to one's opinions - that demands attention. And an attentive mind has its own discipline. And, therefore, a mind that is attentive is a silent mind.

To put it very simply, when you look at anything, that microphone or that tree, when you look at your wife, your children, or your husband, you can look through your memories; you can look at your wife or your husband through the past memories of hurts and all the rest of it. Or you can look without the interference of the past. To look without the interference of the past is to look in complete silence. And out of that silence comes about a mutation, not thought out, not planned, not conditioned. And it is only such a mutation that can bring about order in the world.

 

Editor's last word:

This is a great insight by K. The scientist does not focus the mind on a pressing question by adopting a certain posture or by chanting certain sounds. But when we seek for God, it is popularly asserted, we must perform these external rituals.

It will be said that seeking for God is different. But this is illusion. God is induced to surrender high-and-lofty insights by means of contorting the body or by mouthing syllables. This is nonsense. How many people do you know who have actually been aided by the posturings and the chantings?

But the scientist provides the right model – not because of a pursuit of science but that a mind devoted with great attention is the only way to break through the barriers of ignorance constructed by the ego.