Written Messages

Paris 30.5.2023

In a dialogue with J.Krishnamurti a questioner made an observation that most of the people who come to hear him have a defined goal, which is to seek what they variously call Nirvana, liberation, enlightenment, self-realisation, eternity or God. They appear to move from one system of teaching to another in this search and every system seems to have its sacred books, its teachers, its morality, its philosophy, its promises and threats. They all have their own straight and narrow path which excluded the rest of the world and promised at the end some heaven or other. In the process of this seeking they moved from one system to another and some finally gave up while some others thought they had found it and gathered their own set of followers.

His observation was that this seeking of enlightenment caused great havoc. He wished to know, he said, whether there was anything called enlightenment and if there was, what was it?

J. Krishnamurti replied:

“If it is an escape from everyday living, everyday living being the extraordinary movement of relationship, then this so-called realisation, this so-called enlightenment, or whatever name you like to give it, is illusion and hypocrisy. Anything that denies love and the understanding of life and action is bound to create a great deal of mischief; it distorts the mind, and life is made a horrible affair. So if we take that to be axiomatic then perhaps we may proceed to find out if enlightenment - whatever that may mean - can be found in the very act of living. After all, living is more important than any idea, goal or principle. It is because we don’t know what living is that we invent these visionary, unrealistic concepts which offer escape. The real question is, can one find enlightenment in living, in the everyday activities of life, or is it only for the few who are endowed with some extraordinary capacity to discover this beatitude? Enlightenment means to be a light unto oneself, but a light which is not self-projected or imagined, which is not some personal idiosyncrasy. After all, this has always been the teaching of true religion, though not of organised belief and fear.”

Perceptions:

Careful observation of the process of one’s own thought (Swadhyay) will lead one to see:

1.  That all ideas, concepts, imagined heavens and hells, emerge from the corruption of the instincts of Life, namely Survival and Procreation, into fear and sensuality;

2.  That Life doesn’t seek enlightenment. It just lives;

3.  That the seeking of enlightenment is running away from Life;

4.  That the one seeking enlightenment (“I”, mind, the ‘individual’) is just a concept, an entity that does not exist, a myth.

5.  That any enlightenment that may or may not happen connects directly to the process of living - in choice-less awareness — without any pursuit whatsoever of the separative psyche ‘’I’’.

Jai Life