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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Reincarnation On Trial

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Editor’s note: In this excerpt from his September 30, 1967 London lecture, Krishnamurti offers additional insight into the limited benefits of experience. I would like to offer the excerpt and then comment.

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Man has always sought in various forms this feeling of something that must be beyond the transitory...

Man out of his loneliness and despair has given sacredness to an idea, to an image made by the hand or by the mind. The image has become extraordinarily important to the Christian, to the Hindu, to the Buddhist and so on, and they have invested the sense of sacredness in that image… That is what we are asking ... whether there is, beyond the [religious] symbol, the word, anything real, true, something completely holy in itself?

To understand that, or to come upon it, one must first investigate this whole question of experience… our daily life is so shallow, empty and dull… we want deeper, wider experiences… Most of us want deep fundamental lasting experience: an experience that will be completely satisfying, an experience that will never be destroyed by thought...

Behind this demand for experience there is the desire for satisfaction. We want to be satisfied but nothing satisfies us - sex, so-called love, so-called daily existence which is very shallow - we want something very deep and very satisfying and so there is our demand for great, wide, deep experience. So the demand for satisfaction dictates [and leads us to crave] the experience…To have great satisfaction is a great pleasure; the more lasting, deep and wide that experience the more the pleasure. So pleasure dictates the form of experience that we demand… pleasure is the measure by which we measure the experience. So in seeking something fundamental - as what is true - and is there anything which is really holy in life?

... It is really a very interesting question this… If one is merely seeking satisfaction through an experience, then satisfaction is the measure and anything that is measurable is within the limits of thought and is apt to create illusion. One can have marvellous experiences and yet be completely in delusion. You can see Christ, Buddha or whatever it is and you will inevitably see these people in visions according to your conditioning. The Catholic believer who practises, he strengthens his background and his conditioning and the experiences become stronger - and to him that is the real - but it is obviously a projection of his demands, of his own urges, of his own background and therefore it has no validity at all.

Editor's note: K is correct. See how this craving, this demand for projection of one's own conditioning, played out in a famous NDE.

... It is a well-known phenomenon which has been practised for generations, for thousands of years in India, the Mantra Yoga it's called, and it is so obvious, it is so infantile. One can induce the mind, by repetition of a word, to be quiet, to be gentle, to be soft, but it is still a petty little mind, it is still a shoddy little thing. It's like the experiments of those people who take a piece of stick, which they pick up in the garden, and put it on the mantelpiece; every day they put a flower there, give a flower to it! Within a month they are worshipping it and not to give a flower to that stick is a calamity, a sin!

One can make the mind, induce the mind to do anything it wants, or produce any vision. But meditation is not following a system, it is not repetition, a constant imitation; meditation is something that demands an astonishingly alert mind, great sensitivity in which there is no sense of bringing something about through demand, no illusion. So one has to be free of all demands, therefore of all experience, because the moment you demand, you will experience; and that experience obviously will be according to your conditioning.

To be free of demand and satisfaction necessitates investigation into oneself; it necessitates understanding the whole nature of demand. Demand is born out of duality. 'I am unhappy and I must be happy.' The demand that I must be happy, in that very thing is unhappiness. The opposite always contains its own opposite.

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Editor's note: the above excerpt was also discussed in an "aloneness" article.

Kairissi. Elenchus, the above Krishnamurti quote helped us to explain a facet of “aloneness is not loneliness”, but can we also use it to clarify the “R” error?

Elenchus. I think so; in fact, what he said is just as applicable to “R” as it is to underlying causes of loneliness.

K. Tell us what you see.

E. Krishnamurti is saying that we look to experience, in the present world, to provide a “satisfaction,” a sense of something very deep that will “fill us.”

K. But experience can never take us to where we want to go, in any ultimate and truly meaningful sense.

E. This is not the purpose of experience.

K. But people keep trying, and believing, that, with enough experience, satisfaction is just around the corner.

E. Yes – just one more vacation cruise, one more super-sex weekend, one more big night out of eating and drinking, one more promotion at work, one more zero at the end of the bank balance.

K. But, none of this gives us what we’re looking for.

E. In fact, if we actually get what we think will satisfy us, then, almost immediately, we're filled with feelings of "it's not enough, I'm still not happy."

K. And so, what we’re looking for, says Krishnamurti, is that “deep and fundamental, lasting experience, which can never be destroyed by thought”; an experience which is so “satisfying” and so “pleasurable” that it will “fill us up” on a permanent basis.

E. But, in the history of the world, this has never happened - at least, not by way of experience, something coming to us from the outside. True, some experiences are more satisfying, more pleasurable than others but, even for the fairly good ones, even during the experience itself, we’re already succumbing to fears of loss, perceptions of “I might lose this,” or “how can I get this again,” or “I wish it could be more intense,” and many other misgivings.

K. We’ve talked about this in the “Omega” book. There are articles on Krishnamurti’s principle of “no you and no me.” We can’t go into that here, but readers will want to learn of this as it’s very important. Essentially, whenever there is “subject and object,” there’s room for the ego to inject its doubts and fears. And this absolutely destroys what little pleasure there might be in any situation.

E. As for the issue at hand, concerning experience’s efficacy to provide basis of lasting and fully satisfying spiritual change, well, the very same principles apply once again.

K. Elenchus, here on the “reincarnation” main-page, we have offered about a hundred different writings exploring the poverty of experience as ticket to permanent spiritual change. And yet, it’s probably true, most believers in “R” remain unconvinced. Why do you think this intransigence occurs?

E. Well, for many, “R” has become a belief-system of the world – like a religion. We wouldn’t expect to convince, just by presentation of facts, a believer of the Baptist faith, or the Catholic, or the Seventh-Day Adventist. And we’ve talked about this “spirit of cultism” many times.

K. Actually, in Krishnamurti’s lecture, he referenced, one more time – as he’s done so many times -- this whole issue of why people cling to thought-forms. He says that belief-systems give people comfort in their lives, which is beset by fears of death, fears of never being happy, fears of losing out, and the like. But, what would you say is the “comfort” in “R”? I for one see it as an utterly repugnant teaching, and no lover would ever be happy with it.

E. Many afterlife teachers, channeled information, have explained the process. Most people feel that they really botched this trip to the Earth, so they want a “do over.” They’re subliminally afraid of some sort of judgment on the other side, so they’re looking for a way to make it right.

K. Remediation is a good thing, but they’re going about it all wrong. Reality doesn’t support “R.”

E. But, for right now, people will cling to the “comfort” of the “R” religion.

K. Krishnamurti was asked by one of his listeners, to the effect, when we endeavor to improve ourselves by meditation and spiritual practice, and we grow spiritually, isn’t this practice and growth also an experience? – so maybe experience can mature the soul, after all? But, he said, this isn’t exactly what is happening. Accessing “the truth” by way of meditation is not so much an experience, in the ordinary sense of the term, as it is an altered state of consciousness.

E. This was an excellent distinction, and absolutely correct. Now, those who approach “R” as a religion will not be satisfied with this answer and may retort, sounds like an experience to me. But, I will say, I have personally known what Krishnamurti is talking about, it’s not theory to me, and while, on a superficial level, it could be called an experience, it is, in fact, an altered state of consciousness.

K. And here’s another difference. The word “experience”, in its very origin, speaks to something “ex-” or outside oneself. But Krishnamurti is talking about an inner transformation – nothing at all from the outside. This is a huge difference.

E. And when one personally begins to perceive how this works, one feels, and knows, the inner “sparks” of wisdom enveloping one’s spirt; and in this knowing, there is a direct perception of how one is being changed, from the inside out – I will say, a perception “in real time.” And when this “knowing” happens for you, you will be in no doubt that the doctrine of “R” is utterly fallacious and has no hope of being correct.

K. Until then, people will cling to the “comfort” of their religions.

E. The illusion of "R" will all come crashing down for them, often in “the shadowlands,” when they cross over, and try to find someone to help them reincarnate. That’s when the fairy-tales dry up. See many accounts of this rude awakening on the “sensibility” page.

K. A final thought to end this discussion. Krishnamurti asked, is there anything that is completely holy in itself?

E. Yes, what is that final word on satisfaction and impetus to lasting spiritual change?

K. A religionist would point to some holy relic, some holy ritual, or the like. And believers in "R" would effectively say that "holiness" for them resides in much experience, in 100,000 lives.

E. There is, for us, but one thing that is "holy" - it is the sanctity of one's own mind. The mind, the true self, the soul, is linked to God, to Universal Consciousness, at the depths of being, and this linkage makes our mind holy. The transformation of the mind occurs by God directly opening the "windows" of the soul, in an unpacking of the inner riches.

K. Everything that was put there in our "made in the image" construction. And God needed to invent eternity to bring out all of the latent potential concealed therein.

postscript

E. Consider, too, this statement by Krishnamurti from his July 9, 1967 lecture.

“There is not only the outward authority, but there is inward authority of one's own experience, of ideals which guide one's life. There is yesterday's authority which is as destructive as the authority of a thousand years. To understand ourselves needs no authority of yesterday, or of a thousand years, because we ourselves are a living thing, moving, never resting, always flowing.”

E. We are not some inert lump of clay-person, simply buffeted by outside forces of experience which might perfect us. This view is altogether wrong.

K. This is the central truth: We, our essential selves, extensions of Universal Consciousness (UC), are a churning, seething, roiling mass of existential energy. Change comes from within, directed by UC - not from without, not from experience. And this is why change can come in one cosmic moment of clarity. It will come whenever UC allows us the relevant "sparks" of insight to change. And then the change is permanent.

E. And this is why he said:

"That is why one must know more about oneself and the more one knows about oneself the more mature one is. Immaturity lies only in one's ignorance of oneself."

K. "R" totally misrepresents the human condition, what we are in our essential selves.