"Every time a thought is born, you are born" - UG on 'Thoughts'

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.
---

(Excerpts from book: The Mystique Of Enlightenment; (part 2, page: 45))

There is No Individual there at all - U.G Krishnamurti

What I am trying to say is that there is no individual there at all. There is only a certain gathering of knowledge--which is thought--but no individuality there. The knowledge you have of things is all that you are capable of experiencing. Without knowledge no experience of any kind is possible. You cannot separate experience and knowledge. The "I" is nothing sacred; it is the totality of your knowledge, and you are, unfortunately, stuck with it.

Why are you interested in separating the knowledge you have about yourself--whatever you call yourself? Knowledge is all that is there. Where is the "I"? You have separated the "I" from the knowledge it has of the things about you. It is an illusion.
---

(Excerpts taken from book: Mind Is A Myth; page: 51)

It is terror, not love, not brotherhood that will help us to live together... - UG Krishnamurti

Q: Some would argue that a humanity restored not through science but through love is our only hope.

UG: I still maintain that it is not love, compassion, humanism, or brotherly sentiments that will save mankind. No, not at all. It is the sheer terror of extinction that can save us, if anything can. Each cell of a living organism cooperates with the cell next to it. It does not need any sentiment or declarations of undying love to do so. Each cell is wise enough to know that if its neighbor goes, it also goes. The cells stick together not out of brotherhood, love, and that kind of thing, but out of the urgent drive to survive now.

It is the same with us, but only on a larger scale. Soon we will all come to know one simple thing: if I try to destroy you, I will also be destroyed. We see the superpowers of today signing arms control pacts, rushing to sign no-first-strike accords, and the like. Even the big bully boys, who have among them controlled the world's resources, no longer talk about a winnable nuclear war.

Even the arrogant, swashbuckling United States has changed its tune. It no longer talks -- as it did twenty years ago under Dulles and other cold warriors - of massive retaliation. If you read the Time magazine now, it doesn't talk about the United States as the mightiest, the richest, the most powerful, and the most invincible of all nations. It refers to it as "one of the superpowers."
---

(Excerpts taken from book: Now Way Out; page: 181)

Why do we maintain this position, this duality, this separation...? - U.G Krishnamurti

Q: Why do we maintain this position, this duality, this separation....?

A: That is the only way you can continue. Otherwise you are coming to an end. The 'you' as you know yourself, the 'you' as you experience yourself, that 'you' is the identity there. Through the constant demand for using memory it maintains its continuity. If that 'you' is not there, you don't know what will happen. That is why the phrase, "freedom from the known" is very attractive up to a point.

Once you are free from the known, there is no way you can say anything about it. So, if I am listening to somebody like you who is talking about the need to have the freedom from the known, your emphasis that there is a need to free yourself from the known has already become part of the known. Thought has survived for millions and millions of years, and it knows every trick in the world. It will do anything to maintain its continuity.
---

(Excerpts taken from book: Thought Is Your Enemy; page: 15)

Questioning the solutions requires a tremendous courage !!! - U.G Krishnamurti

Q: You believe that problems solve themselves by going along with your own life?

U.G.: What is the problem? You never look at the problem. It is not possible for you to look at the problem as long as you are interested in the solutions.

Q: Don't you want solutions?

U.G.: You are only interested in solutions, not in solving the problem.

Q: Isn't that the same thing then?

U.G.: In that process, you find out that those solutions are really worthless. Those solutions don't solve your problem, whatever is the problem. Those solutions keep the problems going. They don't solve them. If there is something wrong with your tape recorder, or television, that can be remedied. There is a technician who can help you. But this is an endless process going on and on and on and on, all your life. More and more of something and less and less of the other.

So, you never question the solutions. If you really question the solutions, you will have to question the ones who have offered you those solutions. But sentimentality stands in the way of your rejecting not only the solutions, but those who have offered you the solutions. Questioning that requires a tremendous courage on your part. You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by somebody. You cannot free yourself of that burden by trying to develop that courage.

If you are freed from the burden of the entire past of mankind, then what is left there is the courage.
---

(Excerpts taken from book: The Courage To Stand  Alone; page: 69)

The knowledge--that is all that is there !!! - UG Krishnamuti

Q: Still, we actually feel that there is a thinker thinking these thoughts, sort of a "ghost in the machine", that thinking involves more than the mechanical response of memory.

U.G.: The knowledge--that is all that is there. The "me", "psyche", "mind", "I", or whatever you want to call it is nothing else than the totality of the inherited knowledge passed on to us from generation to generation, mostly through education. You teach the child to distinguish between colors, to read, to imitate manners. It is relative to each culture: Americans learn American manners, Indians learn Indian manners, etc. Gestures of the body, of hands or of face constituted the first language. Later words were added on. We still use gestures to supplement our spoken words because we feel that words alone are inadequate to fully express what we
want to convey.

All this is not to say that we can really know anything about thought. We can't. You become conscious of thought only when you make it an object of thought, otherwise you don't even know you are thinking. We use thought only to understand something out there, to remember something, or to achieve something. Otherwise we don't even know if thought is there or not. Thought is not separate from the movement of thought. Thought is action, and without it you cannot act. There is no such thing as pure, spontaneous, thought-free action at all. To act is to think.

You have a self-starting, self-perpetuating mechanism, which I call the self. This does not mean that there is actually an entity there. I do not want or mean to give that connotation to that word. Where is this ego, or self, that you talk of? Your non-existent self has heard of spirituality and bliss from someone. To experience this thing called bliss you feel you must control your thoughts. It is impossible, you will burn yourself and die if you attempt it.
---

(Excerpts taken from book: Mind Is A Myth, page: 27)

Anything you experience based on thought is an illusion.

You can't experience anything except through thought. You can't experience your own body except through the help of thought. The sensory perceptions are there. Your thoughts give form and definition to the body, otherwise you have no way of experiencing it. The body does not exist except as a thought. There is one thought. Everything exists in relationship to that one thought. That thought is "me". Anything you experience based on thought is an illusion.
---
(Excerpts taken from book 'Mind Is A Myth' ; page: 26)
To Read Online, Knock: Mind Is A Myth - Chapter - The Certainty That Blasts Everything

Knowledge creates images - UG Krishnamurti

Q: So there is no way you can perceive anything except through the knowledge?
A: Knowledge creates images. But there is no way that this physical functioning can create any image. The moment I turn to this side, the whole thing on the other side is wiped out.

Q: I disappear. (Laughs)
A: You disappear, because the eyes are not looking at you but at him or at that chair or at whatever they are focusing themselves on. But if he asks me, "Wasn't she pretty?" 'pretty' is a word, not an image. Do you understand? "She is very 'sharp'". Another word. I will talk about you in words, and it is a word- picture. But the images, the physical images are totally absent. The so-called psychological images have no place in the scheme of things. The eyes are like a camera. If you turn the camera from what it is looking at to something else, the whole thing where it was focused on earlier is wiped out. And what is there in the computer (pointing to his head) is only the word-picture, and probably the sounds.
---
Excerpts taken from book 'Thought Is Your Enemy'; page: 82)

Too read online, knock: Thoughts Is Your Enemy - Chapter - Freak Of Nature 

To be an individual and to be yourself you do not have to do a thing

To be an individual and to be yourself you do not have to do a thing. Culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy we waste trying to become that! But if that energy is released, living becomes very simple. Then what is it that you cannot do?

How simple it would be for every one of us to live in this world! It is so simple.
-
UG Krishnamurti
-
(Excerpts taken from book Thought Is Your Enemy; page: 34)
-
To read online: http://www.ugkrishnamurti.net/ugkrishnamurti-net/enemy3.htm
-

UG Krishnamurti's quote on 'True Guru'

A guru is one who tells you to throw away all the crutches that we have been made to believe are essential for our survival.

The true guru tells you, "Throw them away, and don't replace them with the fancy crutches or even computerized crutches. You can walk; and if you fall, you will rise and walk again."

Such is the man whom we consider, or even tradition considers, to be the real guru, and not those who are selling those shoddy pieces of goods in the market place today. It is a business; it has become a holy business to people.

I am not condemning anything. But as long as you depend upon somebody for solving your problems, so long you remain helpless. And this helplessness is exploited by the people who actually do not have the answers to your problems, but they give you some sort of a comforter. People are satisfied with these comforters and fall for this kind of thing, instead of dealing with the problems by themselves and for themselves.

(Excerpts from book: Thought Is Your Enemy; page: 25)

Mind created God out of fear - UG Krishnamurti

 

What I am trying to put across is that there is no such thing as God. It is the mind that has created God out of fear. Fear is passed on from generation to generation. What is there is fear, not God. If you are lucky enough to be free from fear, then there is no God. 

There is no ultimate reality, no God -- nothing. Fear itself is the problem, not "God". 

-

UG Krishnamurti

(Excerpts from book: Mind Is A Myth; page: 31)

Happiness is a cultural input - UG Krishnamurthi

Happiness is a cultural input there. Is there any such thing as happiness? I would say, no. So, the quest for happiness is a cultural input, and that is the common desire that we know exists everywhere, in every part of the world. That is what we all want, and that want is the most important want in human beings everywhere. Happiness, if you want to use that word, is like any other sensation. The moment thought separates itself from what is called the sensation of happiness, the demand to keep that sensation going longer than its natural duration also occurs with it.

So, any sensation, however extraordinary, however pleasant it may be, is rejected by the body. Keeping that sensation going longer than its duration of life is destroying the sensitivity of the sensory perceptions and sensitivity of this living organism. That is the battle that is going on there.

If you do not know what happiness is, you will never be unhappy.
-

( Excerpts taken from book: Thought Is Your Enemy; page: 56 )

'You don't want to be free from fear' - UG Krishnamurti

 

 

It is the fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead. What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new science, new talk, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks. Fear is the very thing that you do not want to be free from. What you call `yourself' is fear. The `you' is born out of fear; it lives in fear, unctions in fear and dies in fear.

(Excerpts from book 'No Way Out'; page:99)

Death - Ug Krishnamurti

What we call death is nothing but a reshuffling of atoms, and the reshuffling of atoms takes place for the simple reason that the level of energy in this universe has to be maintained. It is for this very reason, that is, to maintain the level of energy, that millions and millions of people have been wiped out through catastrophic
events. For nature it is not catastrophic. An earthquake is as much a necessity, as much a part of the planetary activity, as any other event.

(Excerpts taken from book: No Way Out; page:78,79)

Ug Krishnamurti on "Thoughtless State"

What you experience in your ordinary superficial sleep is nature pushing down the thoughts so that the body and brain can rest. If the thoughts are not effectively pushed down into the subterraneous regions, there will be no sleep. But after this deep sleep, there is no more sleep for the body. The entity that was there before informing itself, "Now I am asleep" and "Now I am awake" is no longer to be found. You can no longer create this division in consciousness between waking and sleeping. So don't bother theorizing about "thoughtless states;" when thought is finished, you die. Until then all talk of thoughtless states are the silly products of thought trying to give itself continuity by believing and searching out a "thoughtless state". If you have ever fancied yourself to be in a thoughtless state, it means that thought was there.
-
UG Krishnamurti

(Excerpts from the book 'Mind is a Myth".)

Ug Krishnamurti with Ramana Maharshi

(Excerpts from the book "The Mystique Of Enlightenment", which depicts the meeting of Ug Krishnamurti with Ramana Maharshi, shared below,

That man was sitting there. From his very presence I felt "What! This man -- how can he help me? This fellow who is reading comic strips, cutting vegetables, playing with this, that or the other -- how can this man help me? He can't help me." Anyway, I sat there. Nothing happened; I looked at him, and he looked at me. "In his presence you feel silent, your questions disappear, his look changes you" -- all that remained a story, fancy stuff to me. I sat there. There were a lot of questions inside, silly questions -- so, "The questions have not disappeared. I have been sitting here for two hours, and the questions are still there. All right, let me ask him some questions" -- because at that time I very much wanted moksha. This part of my background, moksha, I wanted. "You are supposed to be a liberated man" -- I didn't say that. "Can you give me what you have?" -- I asked him this question, but that man didn't answer, so after some lapse of time I repeated that question -- "I am asking 'Whatever you have, can you give it to me?'" He said, "I can give you, but can you take it?" Boy! For the first time this fellow says that he has something and that I can't take it. Nobody before had said "I can give you," but this man said "I can give you, but can you take it?" Then I said to myself "If there is any individual in this world who can take it, it is me, because I have done so much sadhana, seven years of sadhana. He can think that I can't take it, but I can take it. If I can't take it, who can take it?" - -- that was my frame of mind at the time -- you know, (Laughs) I was so confident of myself.

I didn't stay with him, I didn't read any of his books, so I asked him a few more questions: "Can one be free sometimes and not free sometimes?" He said "Either you are free, or you are not free at all." There was another question which I don't remember. He answered in a very strange way: "There are no steps leading you to that." But I ignored all these things. These questions didn't matter to me -- the answers didn't interest me at all.

But this question "Can you take it?" ... "How arrogant he is!" -- that was my feeling. "Why can't I take it, whatever it is? What is it that he has?" -- that was my question, a natural question. So, the question formulated itself: "What is that state that all those people - - Buddha, Jesus and the whole gang -- were in? Ramana is in that state -- supposed to be, I don't know -- but that chap is like me, a human being. How is he different from me? What others say or what he is saying is of no importance to me; anybody can do what he is doing. What is there? He can't be very much different from me. He was also born from parents. He has his own particular ideas about the whole business. Some people say something happened to him, but how is he different from me? What is there: What is that state?" -- that was my fundamental question, the basic question -- that went on and on and on. "I must find out what that state is. Nobody can give that state; I am on my own. I have to go on this uncharted sea without a compass, without a boat, with not even a raft to take me. I am going to find out for myself what the state is in which that man is." I wanted that very much, otherwise I wouldn't have given my life.
_______

Do you have any question which you can call your own? - UG Krishnamurti

Do you have any question which you can call your own? If you can come out with a question which you can call your own, a question that has never, never been asked before, then there is a meaning in talking things over. Then you don't have to sit and ask anybody those questions, because such questions don't exist at all. A question which you can call your own, has never been asked before. All the answers are there for those
questions. You probably do not realize that the questions which you are asking are born out of the answers you already have, and that they are not your answers at all. The answers have been put in there.

So, why are you asking these questions, why are you not satisfied with the answers that are already there? That is my question. Why? If you are satisfied, yes, it's alright, you see. [Then you would say:] "I don't want any answers." Still, the question is there inside of you. Whether you go and ask somebody or expect an answer from some wise man, it is still there. Why is it there?

What happens if the question comes to an end? You come to an end. You are nothing but the answers. That's all that I am saying. If you understand that there is no questioner who is asking the questions, the answer that is there is in great jeopardy. That is why it does not want any answer. The answer is the end of that answer you have, which is not yours.

So, what the hell if it is gone. The answers you have are already dead, they have been given by dead persons. Anybody who repeats those answers is a dead person. A living person cannot give any answer to those questions, because any answer that you get from anybody is a dead answer, because the question is a dead question. That's the reason why I am not giving any answer to you at all. You are living in a world of dead ideas.

All thoughts are dead, they are not living. You cannot invest them with life. That's what you are trying to do all the time: you invest them with emotions. But they are not living things. They can never touch anything living. The spiritual and psychological problems you think you have are really living problems. So, the solutions that you have are not adequate enough to handle the living problems. They are good enough to discuss in a classroom or in some sort of question- and answer ritual -- repeating the same old dead ideas -- but those things can never, never touch anything living, because the living thing will burn out the whole thing completely and totally.

So, you are not going to touch anything living at any time. You are not looking at anything; you are not in contact with anything living, as long as you use your thoughts to understand and experience anything. When that is not there, there is no need for you to understand and experience anything. So anything you experience only gathers momentum -- adds to that -- that's all. There is nothing that you can call your own.

I have no questions of any kind. How come you have so many questions? I am not giving any answers. I repeat this same point day after day, day after day. Whether you understand it or not is of no importance to me.

( Excerpts from the book 'The Courage To Stand  Alone')

Ug Krishnamurti on 'Thoughts'.

 

 

We think that thoughts are there inside of us. We think that they are self-generated and spontaneous. What is actually there is what I call a thought-sphere. The thought-sphere is the totality of man's experiences, thoughts, and feelings passed on to us from generation to generation.

-

UG Krishnamurti

"The body is not interested in anything that you are interested in" - UG Krishnamurti

All our experiences, spiritual or otherwise, are the basic cause of our suffering...The body is not interested in anything that you are interested in. That is the battle that is going on all the time... There seems to be no way out...
-
Ug Krishnamurti

Each individual is unique - Ug Krishnamurti

'Each individual is unique, unparalleled; there is not another one like you in the whole universe. That is your natural state.' But we ignore that fact and try to put everybody in a common mould and create what we call the greatest common factor. Our education, religion and culture are geared towards producing copies of acceptable models, and, in the process, destroying that unique, living quality in a child, in every human being, which is yearning to blossom and express itself. Otherwise, there would be more human flowers. But, given its nature, society cannot be interested in such human flowers. At best, it can put them on a pedestal, domesticate them and make them a part of its structure.
-
UG

Ug Krishnamurthi on "The courage to be on your own".

You never question the solutions. If you really question the solutions you will have to question the ones who have offered you those solutions. But sentimentality stands in the way of your rejecting not only the solutions, but those who have offered you the solutions. Questioning that requires a tremendous courage on your part. You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by somebody. You cannot free yourself of that burden by trying to develop that courage. If you are freed from the entire burden of the entire past of mankind, then what is left there is the courage.
-
UG Krishnamurthi

Ug Krishnamurti about "Conflict with yourself".

When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are isn't there any more, you are not in conflict with yourself.
-
Ug Krishnamurthi

Ug Krishnamurthi on "God or Enlightenment".

God or Enlightenment is the ultimate pleasure, uninterrupted happiness. No such thing exists. Your wanting something that does not exist is the root of your problem. Transformation, moksha, and all that stuff are just variations of the same theme: permanent happiness. The body can't take uninterrupted pleasure for long; it would be destroyed. Wanting a fictitious permanent state of happiness is actually a serious neurological problem.
-
UG

Ug Krishnamurthi about "What is it that separates us from the life around us".

"What is it that separates us from the life around us, and what is it that maintains the separateness, or division, if I may use the word, all the time?" Actually, what divides us is thought. Thought is matter. But that matter cannot stay there for long. The moment the matter is born it has to become part of the energy again. But this demand on our part, or on the part of thought, to maintain continuity, is the demand that drives us to experience the same thing over and over and over again. And thus we are maintaining this superficial, artificial, non-existent duality, division there between our life and the life around us.
-
Ug Krishnamurthi

Give Up...

You are not ready to accept the fact that you have to give up. A complete and total surrender." It is a state of hopelessness which says that there is no way out... Any movement in any direction, on any dimension, at any level, is taking you away from yourself...
-
Ug Krishnamurthi

'You have no answer of your own' - Ug Krishnamurti

We are always talking about thought and thinking. What is thought? Have you ever looked at thought, let along controlling thought; let alone manipulating thought; let alone using that thought for achieving something material or otherwise? You cannot look at your thought, because you cannot separate yourself from thought and look at it. There is no thought apart from the knowledge you have about those thoughts -- the definitions you have. So if somebody asks you the question, "what is thought?" any answer you have is the answer that is put in there -- the answers that others have already given.

You have, through combinations and permutations of ideation and mentation about thoughts, created your own thoughts which you call your own. Just as when you mix different colors, you can create thousands of pastel colors, but basically all of them can be reduced to only seven colors that you find in nature. What you think is yours is the combination and permutation of all those thoughts, just the way you have created hundreds and hundreds of pastel colors. You have created your own ideas. That is what you call thinking. When you want to look at thought, what there is is only whatever you know about thought. Otherwise you can't look at thought. There is no thought other than what there is in what you know about thought. That's all that I am saying. So when that is understood the meaninglessness of the whole business of wanting to look at thought comes to an end. What there is is only what you know, the definitions given by others. And out of those definitions, if you are very intelligent and clever enough, you create your own definitions. That's all.

When you look at an object the knowledge you have about that object comes into your head. There is an illusion that thought is something different from objects, but it is you who creates the object. The object may be there, but the knowledge you have about that object is all that you know. Apart from that knowledge and independent of that knowledge, free from that knowledge, you have no way of knowing anything about it. You have no way of directly experiencing anything. The word "directly" does not mean that there is any other way of experiencing things other than the way you are experiencing things now. The knowledge you have about it is all that is there and that is what you are experiencing. Really, you do not know what it is.

In exactly the same way, when you want to know something about thought, or experience thought, it is the same process that is in operation there. There is no inside or outside. What there is is only the operation, the flow of the knowledge. So you cannot actually separate yourself from thought and look at it.

So when such a question is thrown at you, what should happen is [the realization] that none of the answers have any meaning, because all that is acquired and taught. So that movement stops. There is no need for you to answer the question. There is no need for you to know anything about it. All that you know comes to a halt. It has no momentum any more. It slows down, and then it dawns upon you that it is meaninglessness to try to answer that question, because it has no answer at all. The answers that others have given are there. So you have nothing to say on that thing called thought, because all you can say is what you have gathered from other sources. You have no answer of your own.

(Excerpts from the book: The Courage to Stand Alone (Conversation with the man called UG))