Part 1 -- J. KRISHNAMURTI - A Biography by Pupul Jayakar

Krishnaji refused to move from “what is”, the actual. He refused to discuss abstracts like God or eternity while the mind was a whirlpool of lust, hatred,and jealousy.

Thought can only come to an end when the thinker understands himself, when he sees that the thinker and the thought are not two separate processes.

To be free from aggression is not to become weak or humble. (p.11)

“If religion perish here, it will perish everywhere and in India’s hand is laid the sacred charge of keeping alight the torch of spirit amid the fogs and storms of increasing materialism. If that torch drops from her hands, its flame will be trampled out by the feet of hurrying multitudes, eager for worldly goods; and India, bereft of spirituality, will have no future, but will pass on into the darkness, as Greece and Rome have passed.” (Annie Besant) (P.23)

You have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity.

Right action is only possible when the mind is silent and there is a seeing of ‘what is’. Action that arises from this seeing is free of motive, of the past,free of thought and cause. (p.128)

To love is to be chaste, pure, incorruptible. (p.142)

We feel that the ‘I’ is permanent, because all other thoughts come and go. If the thinker is permanent, then thought can be changed, controlled, transformed
by the thinker. But is not the ‘I’ the result of thought ? Your mind separates the ‘I’ from thought because it cannot bear impermanency. Thought cannot move from the known to the unknown. To free the mind from the known is all the mind can do. To find out what lies beyond words, words must cease. I can only use words to get to the door. (p.146-147)

Anandamai Ma, the most famous of the then-living deified “Mothers”, with a very large following in North India, came to meet Krishnaji. They met in the garden, as the Mother never entered the home of a householder. She did not speak English, and spoke through a translator. She had a radiant, smiling presence. She said that she had seen a photograph of Krishnaji many years before and knew that he was very great. She asked him, “Why do you deny gurus ? You who are the Guru of Gurus”.

He (Krishnaji) replied, “People use the guru as a crutch”.

The mind is cause and effect, it is caught in time, it has a beginning and an end. Mind can never experience that which is without cause, the timeless, that which has no beginning and no end.

Religion comes when the mind has understood the working of itself. When the mind is quiet, very still - the stillness is not the peace of death; this stillness is very active, very alert, watchful. To find out what God - Truth is, one has to understand sorrow, and the struggle of human existence. To go beyond the mind there must be a cessation of the self, the ‘me’. It is only then, that which we all worship, seek, comes into being.

The straight line being the ‘I’ and the horizontal bar, the negation of the ‘I’. (regarding the sign of the cross) (p.214)

God is a phrase. To realize God, you must have a free mind, a good mind that does not follow anybody. A mind that has no guru, no system.

I think in one way, you think in another. We mislead a whole generation. One has to be free, man has to be free to speak of God. The Communists say there is no God, you say God is. You are both conditioned. You are both saying the same thing. That is the calamity. There is no your or my way of meditation. There is only meditation.

People take politics very seriously in India. Politics is most destructive. When people say they are working for peace, for reform, it is always the ‘I’ that
is important. People who touch politics cannot have a fresh mind. The world needs fresh minds, clear minds, not minds that are conditioned by being Hindus or Muslims.

The mind has become so mechanical. It needs and seeks a goal in life. We follow paths to a goal. We never question. We are too respectable. But one must have a free mind, not a mind burdened with tradition, with the past. Extreme freedom is needed. But the moment you think you are free, you are not free. One has to unearth oneself, unravel oneself, delve into the corners of one’s mind - ignite the mind. (p.222-225 -- talks with Vinobaji)

Can the mind, without motive, let go ? That is real renunciation. Keep the mind clean, alert, watchful, observe every thought, see its significance without motive, urge, or compulsion, then there comes an energy that is not your own, which descends upon you. There is a limitless being, and in that energy is reality. (p.236)

Life is short and there is so much to discover not outwardly but within. There are vast unexplored regions within and don’t let a day go by without discovering something. Be explosive inwardly and then the outer things will take care of themselves.

Fear really destroys and perverts all seeing. It breeds illusion; it dulls the mind, it destroys dignity. Search it out - be open to it. Don’t find excuses for it. Go into it ruthlessly. Be aware of every form of fear and wash it away. Don’t let it remain with you for a single minute. There is no innocency where there is fear, jealousy, attachment. Be burningly aware of it. (p.247)

When you see fear, enquire into it, face it, then it goes away.

There are two kinds of death. Bodily death and death of thought. We are not afraid of that (bodily death). We are afraid that thought as the ‘me’, which has lived, acquired money, family, the ‘me’ that wants to become important, will end. (p.250)

You have finished looking at things outside, and now with your eyes closed, look at what is happening inside. Watch what is happening inside you. Do not think, but just watch. Do not move your eyeballs, just keep them very very quiet. There is nothing to see now, you have seen all the things around you, now you are seeing what is happening inside your mind. And to see what is happening inside your mind, you have to be very quiet inside. And when you are quiet,do you know what happens to you ? You become very sensitive, you become very alert to things outside and inside. Then you find that the outside is the inside. Then you find out that the observer is the observed.

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 state of being in which all man’s problems are resolved. We go to the well with a thimble and so life becomes a tawdry affair, puny and small.

Be alert to all your thoughts and feelings, don’t let one feeling or thought slip by without being aware of it and absorbing all its content. Absorbing is not the word, but seeing the whole content of the thought-feeling. It is like entering a room and seeing the whole content of the room at once, its atmosphere and its spaces. To see and be aware of one’s thoughts makes one intensively sensitive, pliable, and alert. Don’t condemn or judge, but be very alert.

Experiences are inevitable, perhaps necessary; life is a series of experiences, but the mind need not be burdened with its own accumulative demands. It can wipe off each experience and keep itself innocent - unburdened. This is important, otherwise the mind can never be fresh, alert and pliable.

To bring up children without comparison is true education. (p.259)

Thoughts may not be easy but the more one asks of life, the more fearful and painful it becomes. To live simply, uninfluenced, though everything and everyone is trying to influence, to be without varying moods and demands is not easy, but without a deep quiet life, all things are futile.

The opposite of pride is not humility - it is still pride, only it is called humility; the consciousness of being humble is a form of pride.

What is important is not to prove or disprove a point, but to find out the truth.

The ‘what is’ is not different from the thinker. The thinker is that ‘what is’, the thinker is not separate from that ‘which is’. (p.263)

To allow the free flow of life, without any residue being left, is real awareness.

Not to retain, but to have the freedom of life to flow without restraint, without choice, is complete awareness.

Money does spoil people. There is a peculiar arrogance of the rich. With very few exceptions, in every country, the rich have that peculiar atmosphere of being able to twist anything, even the Gods, and they can buy their Gods.

Happy is the man who is nothing. (p.267)

Choice is conflict and the mind is back again to its own entanglements.The stillness of the mind is the freedom from duality.

There is a life without will, without choice. This life comes into being when the life of will comes to an end. (p.271)

Source: http://www.celextel.org/jkbooks/biographyofjk.html