Topic: A UG Quote

[Endless~Knot]

This one is a stunner:

The human thinking is born out of some sort of neurological defect in the human body. Therefore anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive. ~UG Krishnamurti

Does anyone see why perchance, I might have a problem with what he said here?

[Definitive Journey]

~

No, I don't see why you'd have a problem with it.

Please 'splain.

[Endless~Knot]

~

No, I don't see why you'd have a problem with it.

Please 'splain.

There is no possible way human thinking comes from a 'neurological defect,' and is destructive in all cases. Its as of UG left the human race long ago and sees the whole human race as a series of monsters. To think a defect? Do you really believe this guy?

[Definitive Journey]

~

There is no possible way human thinking comes from a 'neurological defect,' and is destructive in all cases. Its as of UG left the human race long ago and sees the whole human race as a series of monsters. To think a defect? Do you really believe this guy?

"I believe, I believe!" cried the mighty Zamboner from the pulpit.

 

Seriously though, I believe all sorts of stuff, as we all do.  This is what I'm working on.

[≈*≈]

The Mystique of Enlightenment

Part Two


(Compiled by James Brodsky from conversations in India and Switzerland 1973)

I am not out to liberate anybody. You have to liberate yourself, and you are unable to do that. What I have to say will not do it. I am only interested in describing this state, in clearing away the occultation and mystification in which those people in the 'holy business' have shrouded the whole thing. Maybe I can convince you not to waste a lot of time and energy, looking for a state which does not exist except in your imagination.
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Get this straight, this is your state I am describing, your natural state, not my state or the state of a God-realized man or a mutant or any such thing. This is your natural state, but what prevents what is there from expressing itself in its own way is your reaching out for something, trying to be something other than what you are.
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You can never understand this; you can only experience this in terms of your past experience. This is outside the realm of experience. The natural state is acausal: it just happens. No communication is possible, and none necessary. The only thing that is real to you is the way you are functioning; it is an act of futility to relate my description to the way you are functioning. When you stop all this comparison, what is there is your natural state. Then you will not listen to anybody.






There is no teaching of mine, and never shall be one. "Teaching" is not the word for it. A teaching implies a method or a system, a technique or a new way of thinking to be applied in order to bring about a transformation in your way of life. What I am saying is outside the field of teachability; it is simply a description of the way I am functioning. It is just a description of the natural state of man -- this is the way you, stripped of the machinations of thought, are also functioning.

The natural state is not the state of a self-realized God-realized man, it is not a thing to be achieved or attained, it is not a thing to be willed into existence; it is there -- it is the living state. This state is just the functional activity of life. By 'life' I do not mean something abstract; it is the life of the senses, functioning naturally without the interference of thought. Thought is an interloper, which thrusts itself into the affairs of the senses. It has a profit motive: thought directs the activity of the senses to get something out of them, and uses them to give continuity to itself.

Your natural state has no relationship whatsoever with the religious states of bliss, beatitude and ecstasy; they lie within the field of experience. Those who have led man on his search for religiousness throughout the centuries have perhaps experienced those religious states. So can you. They are thought-induced states of being, and as they come, so do they go. Krishna Consciousness, Buddha Consciousness, Christ Consciousness, or what have you, are all trips in the wrong direction: they are all within the field of time. The timeless can never be experienced, can never be grasped, contained, much less given expression to, by any man. That beaten track will lead you nowhere. There is no oasis situated yonder; you are stuck with the mirage.

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This state is a physical condition of your being. It is not some kind of psychological mutation. It is not a state of mind into which you can fall one day, and out of it the next day. You can't imagine the extent to which, as you are now, thought pervades and interferes with the functioning of every cell in your body. Coming into your natural state will blast every cell, every gland, every nerve. It is a chemical change. An alchemy of some sort takes place. But this state has nothing to do with the experiences of chemical drugs such as LSD. Those are experiences; this is not.

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Does such a thing as enlightenment exist? To me what does exist is a purely physical process; there is nothing mystical or spiritual about it. If I close the eyes, some light penetrates through the eyelids. If I cover the eyelids, there is still light inside. There seems to be some kind of a hole in the forehead, which doesn't show, but through which something penetrates. In India that light is golden; in Europe it is blue. There is also some kind of light penetration through the back of the neck. It's as if there is a hole running through between those spots in front and back of the skull. There is nothing inside but this light. If you cover those points, there is complete, total darkness. This light doesn't do anything or help the body to function in any way; it's just there.

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This state is a state of not knowing; you really don't know what you are looking at. I may look at the clock on the wall for half an hour -- still I do not read the time. I don't know it is a clock. All there is inside is wonderment: "What is this that I am looking at?" Not that the question actually phrases itself like that in words: the whole of my being is like a single, big question mark. It is a state of wonder, of wondering, because I just do not know what I am looking at. The knowledge about it -- all that I have learned -- is held in the background unless there is a demand. It is in the 'declutched state'. If you ask the time, I will say "It's a quarter past three" or whatever -- it comes quickly like an arrow -- then I am back in the state of not knowing, of wonder.

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You can never understand the tremendous peace that is always there within you, that is your natural state. Your trying to create a peaceful state of mind is in fact creating disturbance within you. You can only talk of peace, create a state of mind and say to yourself that you are very peaceful -- but that is not peace; that is violence. So there is no use in practicing peace, there is no reason to practice silence. Real silence is explosive; it is not the dead state of mind that spiritual seekers think. "Oh, I am at peace with myself! There is silence, a tremendous silence! I experience silence!" -- that doesn't mean anything at all. This is volcanic in its nature: it's bubbling all the time -- the energy, the life -- that is its quality. You may ask how I know. I don't know. Life is aware of itself, if we can put it that way -- it is conscious of itself.

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When I talk of 'feeling', I do not mean the same thing that you do. Actually, feeling is a physical response, a thud in the thymus. The thymus, one of the endocrine glands, is located under the breast bone. The doctors tell us that it is active through childhood until puberty and then becomes dormant. When you come into your natural state, this gland is re-activated. Sensations are felt there; you don't translate them as 'good' or 'bad'; they are just a thud. If there is a movement outside of you -- a clock pendulum swinging, or a bird flying across your field of vision -- that movement is also felt in the thymus. The whole of your being is that movement or vibrates with that sound; there is no separation. This does not mean that you identify yourself with that bird or whatever -- "I am that flying bird." There is no 'you' there, nor is there any object. What causes that sensation, you don't know. You do not even know that it is a sensation.

'Affection' (this is not my interpretation of the word) means that you are affected by everything, not that some emotion flows from you towards something. The natural state is a state of great sensitivity -- but this is a physical sensitivity of the senses, not some kind of emotional compassion or tenderness for others. There is compassion only in the sense that there are no 'others' for me, and so there is no separation.

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Is there in you an entity which you call the 'I' or the 'mind' or the 'self'? Is there a co- ordinator who is co-ordinating what you are looking at with what you are listening to, what you are smelling with what you are tasting, and so on? Or is there anything which links together the various sensations originating from a single sense -- the flow of impulses from the eyes, for example? Actually, there is always a gap between any two sensations. The co-ordinator bridges that gap: he establishes himself as an illusion of continuity.

In the natural state there is no entity who is co-ordinating the messages from the different senses. Each sense is functioning independently in its own way. When there is a demand from outside which makes it necessary to co-ordinate one or two or all of the senses and come up with a response, still there is no co-ordinator, but there is a temporary state of co- ordination. There is no continuity; when the demand has been met, again there is only the unco-ordinated, disconnected, disjointed functioning of the senses. This is always the case. Once the continuity is blown apart -- not that it was ever there; but the illusory continuity -- it's finished once and for all.

Can this make any sense to you? It cannot. All that you know lies within the framework of your experience, which is of thought. This state is not an experience. I am only trying to give you a 'feel' of it, which is, unfortunately, misleading.

When there is no co-ordinator, there is no linking of sensations, there is no translating of sensations; they stay pure and simple sensations. I do not even know that they are sensations. I may look at you as you are talking. The eyes will focus on your mouth because that is what is moving, and the ears will receive the sound vibrations. There is nothing inside which links up the two and says that it is you talking. I may be looking at a spring bubbling out of the earth and hear the water, but there is nothing to say that the noise being heard is the sound of water, or that that sound is in any way connected with what I am seeing. I may be looking at my foot, but nothing says that this is my foot. When I am walking, I see my feet moving -- it is such a funny thing: "What is that which is moving?"

What functions is a primordial consciousness, untouched by thought.


http://www.well.com/user/jct/

[≈*≈]

Q: Sir, what will happen after death?

UG: All questions about death are meaningless -- and especially for a young person like you. You have not even lived your life. Why do you ask that silly question? Why are you interested in that? A person who is living has no time to ask such questions. Only a person who is not living asks "What will happen after my death?" You are not living. First live your life, and when the time comes.... Let us leave it like that. I am not interested in that kind of philosophy.

Nothing will happen. There is no such thing as death at all. What do you think will die? What? This body disintegrates into its constituent elements, so nothing is lost. If you burn it, the ashes enrich the soil and aid germination. If you bury it, the worms live on it. If you throw it into the river, it becomes food for the fishes. One form of life lives on another form of life, and so gives continuity to life. So life is immortal.

But that is not going to help anybody who is caught up in the fear of death. After all, 'death' is fear, the fear of something coming to an end. The 'you' as you know yourself, the 'you' as you experience yourself -- that 'you' does not want to come to an end. But it also knows that this body is going to drop dead as others do -- you experience the deaths of others -- so that is a frightening situation because you are not sure whether that (`you') will continue if this (body) goes. So then it projects (an afterlife). This becomes the most important thing -- to know whether there is an afterlife or not. Fear creates that, so when the fear is gone, the question of death is also gone.

You can't experience your own death. That is why I tell some of those people who are so much interested in moksha, liberation, that every one of you, all of you without exception, will attain moksha just before you die.

(Laughter) But you can be sure it is too late then: the body is in a prostrate condition and can't renew itself. That death can happen to you now -- it is a thing that happens now.

__________________
You have no way of knowing anything about your death, now or at the end of your so-called life. Unless knowledge, the continuity of knowledge, comes to an end, death cannot take place. You want to know something about death: you want to make that a part of your knowledge. But death is not something mysterious; the ending of that knowledge is death. What do you think will continue after death? What is there while you are living? Where is the entity there? There is nothing there -- no soul -- there is only this question about after death. The question has to die now to find the answer -- your answer; not my answer -- because the question is born out of the assumption, the belief, that there is something to continue after death.

[Endless~Knot]

Of course I havent died yet, but death is just a transition from one way of living to another. We lucid dreamers do feel something which isnt an *I* but is a continuance if we want to walk on or go on, like we were discussing at soma. Someting about seeing your body 'laying there' when you're out, you kinda know 'hey, there is something different from my physical body, but what do you call it?' And while there's all these names (nagual or astral or causal etc), to me, it comes down to having attained consciousness, esp enough that we dont lose that consciousness. Not so weak we're merely ghosts, but not so heavy we're reborn in ways we may not choose, but allow fear to grab ahold of us. But it is true our body will become the 'stuff' of the world. Personally im gonna choose cremation, ashes to ashes dust to dust.

[≈*≈]

Is there a beyond? Because you are not interested in the everyday things and the happenings around you, you have invented a thing called the 'beyond', or 'timelessness', or 'God', 'Truth', 'Reality', 'Brahman', 'enlightenment', or whatever, and you search for that. There may not be any beyond. You don't know a thing about that beyond; whatever you know is what you have been told, the knowledge you have about that. So you are projecting that knowledge. What you call 'beyond' is created by the knowledge you have about that beyond; and whatever knowledge you have about a beyond is exactly what you will experience. The knowledge creates the experience, and the experience then strengthens the knowledge.

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of 'you' is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the 'you' is not there. Why are you trying to experience a thing that cannot be experienced?

________________
You must always recognize what you are looking at, otherwise you are not there. The moment you translate, the 'you' is there. You look at something and recognize that it is a bag, a red bag. Thought interferes with the sensation by translating. Why does thought interfere? And can you do anything about it? The moment you look at a thing, what comes inside of you is the word 'bag', if not bag', then 'bench' or 'bannister', 'step', "that man sitting there, he has white hair." It goes on and on -- you are repeating to yourself all the time. If you don't do that, you are preoccupied with something else: "I'm getting late for the office." You are either thinking about something which is totally unrelated to the way the senses are functioning at this moment, or else you are looking and saying to yourself "That's a bag, that's a red bag," and so on and so on -- that is all that is there. The word 'bag' separates you from what you are looking at, thereby creating the 'you'; otherwise there is no space between the two.

Every time a thought is born, you are born. When the thought is gone, you are gone. But the 'you' does not let the thought go, and what gives continuity to this 'you' is the thinking. Actually there is no permanent entity in you, no totality of all your thoughts and experiences. You think that there is 'somebody' who is thinking your thoughts, 'somebody' who is feeling your feelings --- that's the illusion. I can say it is an illusion; but it is not an illusion to you.

Your emotions are more complex, but it is the same process. Why do you have to tell yourself that you are angry, that you are envious of someone else, or that sex is bothering you? I am not saying anything about fulfilling or not fulfilling. There is a sensation in you, and you say that you are depressed or unhappy or blissful, jealous, greedy, envious. This labelling brings into existence the one who is translating this sensation. What you call "I" is nothing but this word 'red bag', 'bench', 'steps', 'banister', 'light bulb', 'angry', 'blissful', 'jealous', or whatever. You are putting your brain cells to unnecessary activity making the memory cells operate all the time, destroying the energy that is there. This is only wearing you out.

This labelling is necessary when you must communicate with someone else or with yourself. But you communicate with yourself all the time. Why do you do this? The only difference between you and the person who talks aloud to himself is that you don't talk aloud. The moment you do begin to talk aloud, along comes the psychiatrist. That chap, of course, is doing the same thing that you are doing, communicating to himself all the time -- 'bag', 'red bag', 'obsessive', 'compulsive', 'Oedipus complex,' 'greedy', 'bench', 'banister', 'martini'. Then he says something is wrong with you and puts you on the couch and wants to change you, to help you.

Why can't you leave the sensations alone? Why do you translate? You do this because if you do not communicate to yourself, you are not there. The prospect of that is frightening to the 'you'.

_________________

http://www.well.com/user/jct/

[≈*≈]

Oh ... I forgot to 'provide some commentary' ...

UG is such a delight to read! 

[daphne]

Oh ... I forgot to 'provide some commentary' ...

That's ok.. you can still provide the commentary. 

[≈*≈]

Hey Daph!!! Welcome back ... it's nice to see you here 

[≈*≈]

Thinking is unnecessary except to communicate with somebody. Why do I have to communicate with myself all the time? What for? "I am happy," "I am unhappy," "I am miserable," "That is a microphone," "This is a man," "He is something" -- you see, why are we doing it? Everybody is talking to himself -- only, when he begins to talk aloud you put him in the mental hospital. (Laughter)

Q: I think you are suggesting -- and I agree with you -- that it is a very tiresome thing to do. It is wearing us out, so naturally we seek methods to end it.

UG: It is wearing you out, and all methods that we use are adding more and more to that, unfortunately. All techniques and systems are adding to that. There is nothing you can do to end thinking.

Q: Alright then, how did you do it?

UG: "How not to think?" is your question. Do you know what that question implies? You want some way, some method, some system, some technique -- and you still continue to think.

Q: I don't want to think. If this question is wrong, perhaps you could suggest a better question.

UG: I am not sure that you do not want to think. You see, you have to come to a point where you say to yourself "I am fed up with this kind of thing?" Nobody can push you there.

Q: So either you can do it, or you can't do it?

UG: You see, even then you'll find that you can't do it. You see, thought is there when there is a demand for it. When there is no demand for it you don't know whether it is there or not. I am not concerned whether it is there or not. But when there is a need for it, when there is a demand for it, it is there to guide you and to help you communicate with someone. What decides that demand is not here; it is out there. The situation demands its use; it is not self- initiated.

[≈*≈]

"We are all talking of thought. Is it possible for you to look at thought? No, there is another thought which is looking -- that is the tricky part, you see - it divides itself into two -- otherwise you can't look at thought. When one thought looks at another thought, there are not two thoughts, but one thought. It gives you the impression that there are two thoughts, but actually there is only one movement. So, what creates the division? The division is created by thought -- that is the beginning of your thinking. It is a very tricky business. It is one movement, and what is looking at what you call 'thought' is all the definitions you have of thought.

"What is thought?" -- you pose that question to yourself. So, how can you look at that? The question is thought, you see. "What is thought?" -- there's no answer to that; any answer you give is only a definition. You can say "Thought is this".... (I have been saying so many things: "Thought is time; thought is space; thought is matter.") "Thought is this; thought is that" -- you know, that's all you can say.

But if you want to directly look at thought and find out for yourself, you have no way of looking at it. You have no way of finding out what thought is for yourself, because you cannot experience thought; you can experience thought only through the knowledge you have about thought. What happens when you do not accept the answers given by others? Something has got to happen to that question "What is thought?" The question burns itself out, because it has no answer except the answer we know. That question burns itself out, and what you have in place of the question is the answer, energy. This question, thought, is matter. When thought burns itself out, what is there is energy, which is the manifestation of life. In other words, 'life' and 'energy' are synonymous terms."