Osho on Jiddu Krishnamurti Teachings and Life


 


An Old poem of J. Krishnamurti:

I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.
I have no shelter;
I am as the wandering waters.
I have no sanctuary, like the dark gods;
Nor am I in the shadow of deep temples.
I have no sacred books;
Nor am I well-seasoned in tradition.
I am not in the incense
Mounting on the high altars,
Nor in the pomp of ceremonies.
I am neither in the graven image,
Nor in the rich chant of a melodious voice.
I am not bound by theories,
Nor corrupted by beliefs.
I am not held in the bondage of religions,
Nor in the pious agony of their priests.
I am not entrapped by philosophies,
Nor held in the power of their sects.
I am neither low nor high,
I am the worshipper and the worshipped.
I am free.
My song is the song of the river
Calling for the open seas,
Wandering, wandering,
I am Life.
I have no name,
I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains.

Osho : Truth has no name, and truth is not confined in any system of thought. Truth is not a theory, a theology, a philosophy. Truth is the experience of that which is. Truth is not intellectual or emotional; truth is existential.

These are the three layers of human consciousness. The first is the intellectual: it theorizes, it spins and weaves beautiful words, but with no meaning at all. It is a very cunning part, very deceptive. It can make you believe in words as if they have some substance. It talks about God, truth, freedom, love, meditation, but it only talks; it is just words and words and words. Those words are empty shells; if you look deep down into them they are hollow.

This part goes on decorating; it uses big jargon to hide its inner emptiness. And our whole education -- social, religious, cultural -- consists only of words. It only cultivates the intellectual part of our being, which is the most superficial. Through the intellect you cannot reach to the divine, through the, intellect you will be lost in the jungle of words. That's how millions of people are lost. Between you and God the greatest barrier is your so-called intellect. Remember, your intellect is not intelligence. Intelligence is a totally different matter.

Intellect is a pseudo coin; it pretends to be intelligence but it is not. And because you don't know the real you are easily deceived by the unreal, by the pseudo. Beware of the intellectual layer of your being, which is the most developed; that is the danger. The most superficial is the most cultivated. The most superficial is the most nourished. From the school to the university, the superficial is being nourished, strengthened. And slowly, slowly you get caught up in it, you become entrapped. Then people think about love; they don't feel, they only think.

Krishnamurti relates an incident which happened when he was travelling in a car. The car accidentally knocked down a poor animal, but two persons inside the car did not notice what had happened because they were engrossed in a conversation on how to be aware!
This is the situation of the majority of humanity.

God is present everywhere. Wherever you turn, He is Open your eyes, He is, close your eyes and He is -- because nothing else exists. God means isness. Anything that participates in existence is divine. But you don't see; you go on talking about God, discussing. You have become so clever in hair-splitting, in logic-chopping. You have become so full of rubbish, which you call knowledge, because you can repeat the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, like parrots. You have to be aware of this dangerous layer that surrounds you like a hard shell.

Krishnamurti is right when he says, "I have no name.... "

The word 'God' is not God, and the word 'love' is not love either. If you become too much engrossed in the word 'god' you will go on missing God forever. If you become too much intrigued by the word 'love' then you can go to the library, you can consult all the books -- and there are millions written about love by people who don't know anything about love -- you can collect great information about love, but to know about love is not to know love. Knowing love is a totally different dimension.

Knowledge about love is very simple; you can become a walking encyclopaedia. You can know all the theories of love without ever testing any theory in your experience, without ever living a single moment of love, without any taste of what love is.

"I am as the fresh breeze of the mountains..."

God is neither old nor new, or, God is the most ancient, and as fresh as the dewdrops in the early morning sun -- because only God is. God is non-temporal; it does not belong to the dimension of time. Hence you cannot call it old or new -- it is fresh, virgin. You need not go into the scriptures. You certainly have to go into the breeze that is passing through the pine trees, you certainly have to go into the fragrance that is being released by the flowers.

Now...! You have to go into This moment with your total being, you have to relax herenow, and all the scriptures will be revealed to you. The Vedas and the Gitas and the Korans will be sung in your deepest core of being. Then you will know that all the scriptures are true; but first your own inner scripture has to be known, understood.

"I have no shelter,
I am as the wandering waters."



Question: Osho, Can An enlightened person be wrong? This refers to what you told us about J. Krishnamurti, who keeps on saying that one does not Need a Master, which is actually not right please comment.

Osho: Prem Pantha, An Enlightened person can never be wrong. Neither J. Krishnamurti is wrong, but he never considers the situation in which you are. He considers only the space in which he is, and that freedom is part of enlightenment. The enlightened person has reached the highest peak of consciousness; his abode is on Everest.

Now it is his freedom to speak according to the peak, the sunlit peak where he is, or to consider the people who are still in the dark valley, who know nothing about the light, for whom the peak of the Everest is only a dream, only a perhaps". This is the freedom of the enlightened person. Krishnamurti speaks in terms where he is.

I speak in terms where you are, I consider you, because if I am speaking to you, you have to be taken in consideration. I have to lead you towards the highest peak, but the journey will begin in the dark valley, in your unconsciousness. If I talk about my experience, absolutely inconsiderate of you, I am right, but I am not useful to you.

An enlightened person is never wrong, but he can be useful or he can be useless. J. Krishnamurti is useless! He is perfectly right; about that there is no question, because I know the peak and what he is saying is certainly true -- from the vision of the peak. Those who have arrived, for them the journey becomes almost a dream phenomenon. For those who have not arrived the journey is real, the goal is just a dream. They are living in two different worlds. When you are talking to a madman you have to consider him; if you don't consider him you cannot help him.

Once a madman was brought to me. He had this crazy idea that one afternoon when he was sleeping, a fly has entered his mouth. And because he used to sleep with open mouth, nobody can deny the possibility. And since then he was very much disturbed because the fly was roaming inside him, jumping inside him, moving in his belly, going to his bladder, circulating in his bloodstream, sometimes in his head, sometimes in his feet. And of course he could not do anything because he was continuously occupied, obsessed with the fly.

He was taken to the psychoanalysts and they said, "This is just in your mind -- there is no fly! And no fly can move in your bloodstream, there is no possibility. Even if a fly has entered it must have died! And now six months have passed; it cannot be alive inside you."

He listened, but he could not believe it because his experience was far more solid. He was taken to the doctors and everybody examined him and they did everything, but finally they will say, "It is just a mental thing. You are imagining." He will listen what they were saying, but he could not trust because his experience was far more certain than their words.

His family brought him to me as a last resort. The man was looking very tired because he was being taken to one person, then to another, then all kinds of physicians -- allopaths and homeopaths and naturopaths -- and he was really tired. In the first place the fly was tiring him, and now all these "pathies", medicines. And everybody was insulting him -- that was his feeling, that they were saying that he was just imagining. Is he a fool or he is mad, that he will imagine such a thing? They were all humiliating him -- that was his feeling.

I looked at the man and I said, "It is so clear that the fly is inside!"
For a moment he was puzzled. He could not believe me, because nobody has said that to him -- because nobody has considered him. And they ALL were right and I was wrong -- there was no fly, but the madman has to be considered.

And I said, "All those fools are just wasting your time; you should have come first here. It is such a simple thing to bring the fly out; there is no need to bother. Medicines won't help -- you are not ill. Psycholanalysis will not help -- you are not crazy."

And immediately he was a changed man! He looked at his wife and said, "Now what do you say? This is the right man," he said, "who really knows. And all those fools were trying to convince me that there is no fly. It is there!"
I said to him that, "It is simple -- we will take it out. You lie down."

I covered him with a blanket and told him to keep his eyes closed and "I will do some mantra, some magic, and we will bring the fly out. You just keep quiet so that the fly sits somewhere. Otherwise the fly is continuously running -- where to catch it?"

He said, "That looks logical. I will keep absolutely still!"
And I said, "Don't open your eyes. Just remain silent, breathe slowly, so the fly settles somewhere, so we can catch hold of it!"

Then I rushed into the house to find a fly. It was a little bit difficult because for the first time I was trying that, but finally I succeeded -- I could get a fly in a bottle. And I came to the man, I moved my hand on his body, and I asked him, "Where the fly is?" And he said, "In the belly." And I touched the belly and I said, "Of course it is there!" And I convinced him that I perfectly believe in him and then I uncovered his blanket and showed him the fly.

And he said to the wife, "Now see! And give this bottle to me; I will go all to those fools and take all the fees that they have taken from me! I have wasted thousands of rupees, and all that they did was they told me I am mad! And now I don't feel the fly anywhere, because it is in the bottle!"

He took the bottle, he went to the doctors.
One of the doctors who knew me, he came to see me. He said, "How you managed? Six months a fly can live in the body? And that man has taken his fee back from me, because he was making such a fuss that I said, 'Better give it back to him!' And he proved that he was right!"
I said, "It is not the point who is right."

Gautam the Buddha defines truth as "that which works". This is the ancientmost pragmatic definition of truth: "that which works"! All the devices are truth in this sense: they work; they are only devices. The Buddha's work is Upaya; Upaya exactly means device.

Meditation is an Upaya, a device. It simply helps you to get nd of that which you have not got in the first place -- the fly: the ego, the misery, the anguish! It helps you to get free of it, but in fact it is not there. But it is not to be told...

And Krishnamurti has been doing that: he has been telling crazy people that the fly does not exist and you don't need any doctor. I say to you: the fly exists and you need the doctor! Because just by telling to you that the fly does not exist is not going to help you at all.

For thousands of years you have been told the ego does not exist. Has it helped you in any way? There have been people who have told, in this country particularly, that the whole world is illusory, MAYA, it does not exist, but has it helped India in any way? The true test is there: whether it has helped, whether it has made people more authentic, more real. It has not helped at all. It has made people more deeply cunning, split, schizophrenic; it has made them hypocrites.

All the religions have done this, because they don't consider you. And you are far more important than the ultimate truth, because the ultimate truth has nothing to do with y ou right now. You are living in a dreamworld; some device is needed which can help you to come out of it. The moment you are out of it, you will know it was a dream -- but a person who is dreaming, to tell him that it is all dream is meaningless.

Have you not observed in your dreams that when you are dreaming it looks real? And every morning you have found that it was unreal. hut again in the night you forget all your understanding of the day -- again the dream becomes real. It has been happening again and again: every night the dream becomes real, every morning you know it is false, but that knowing does not help. In the dream one can even dream that this is a dream.

And that's what has happened in India: people are living in maya, deeply in it, and still talking that "This is all maya." And this talk too is part of their dream; it does not destroy the dream. In fact it makes the dream more rooted in them, because now there is no need to get rid of it -- because it is a dream! So why get rid of it? It does not matter.

In a subtle way all the religions have done this: they have talked from the highest peak to the people for whom that peak does not exist yet. The people are living in darkness, and you go on telling them that darkness has no existence. It is true -- darkness has no existence, it is only the absence of light -- but just by saying to people that darkness has no existence is not going to bring light in.

That's what Krishnamurti is doing; it has been done by many people. Nagarjuna did it -- Krishnamurti is not new, not at least in the East. Nagarjuna did it: he said, "Everything is false. The world is false, the ego is false, nothing exists. Because nothing exists you are already free. There is no need for any meditation, there is no need for any Master. There is no need to find out any device, strategy, technique, because in the first place there is no problem. Why go on looking for solutions? Those solutions will create more problems; they are not going to help."

Nagarjuna did it; before Nagarjuna, Mahakashyap did it, and it has been a long tradition. Zen people have been saying the same thing for centuries. Krishnamurti never uses the word "Zen", but whatsoever he is talking is nothing but Zen -- simple Zen.

Zen says no effort is needed, nothing has to be done. When nothing has to be done, what is the need of a Master? -- because the Master will tell you to do something. Nothing has to be done -- what is the need of the scriptures? -- because the scriptures will tell you to do something, to know something. Nothing has to be done, nothing has to be known. You are already there where you are trying to reach.

And I know this is true, but to talk about this ultimate truth to people who are living in tremendous darkness is futile . Prem Pantha, no enlightened person can ever be wrong, but only few enlightened persons have been of help. The majority of enlightened people have been of no help at all, for the simple reason because they never considered the other.

In fact, George Gurdjieff used to say, "Don't consider the other." It was one of his basic teachings: "Don't consider the other. Just say what is absolutely true." But the absolute truth is truth only when experienced; people are living in relative truth.

My approach is different from Krishnamurti's. I know that one day you will come to that point where nothing is needed -- no Master, no teaching, no scripture -- but right now the scripture can be of help, the methods can be of help, and certainly a living Master can be of immense help. The function of the Master is to give you that which you already have and to take away that which you don't have at all.

Source: from book "I am that" by Osho



Osho Quotes on Jiddu Krishnamurthy

  1. Contradictions are our creations -- remember it -- because we cannot see the total, because we can only see the partial. Hence the contradiction. We can see only the aspect, never the whole -- hence the contradiction. Have you observed? Even if you are watching a small pebble in your palm, you cannot see the whole at one time. You see one part, the other part is hidden. when you see the other part, the first part goes into hiding. You can never see even a small pebble in its totality; not even a grain of sand can you see in its totality. When you are looking at my face, my back is just an inference: maybe it is there, maybe it is not there. When you look at my back, my face is just an inference: it may be there, it may not be there. We never see anything in totality, because the mind cannot see totality in anything. The mind is a partial outlook.

    When the mind is dropped, and the meditation has arisen, then you see the total. Then you see the whole as it is, all the aspects together. Then summer and winter are not separate, then spring and fall are not separate. Then you will see that birth and death are two aspects of the same process. Then happiness and unhappiness are not opposites, they are joined together; like a valley and a mountain, they are together.
    And when you see this togetherness of life, choice stops. Then there is nothing to choose. Have you not seen it? Whenever you choose happiness, you become the victim of unhappiness; whenever you want success, failure comes in; whenever you hope, frustration is waiting for you. whenever you cling to life, death comes and destroys.

    Have you not seen it happen every day, every moment? These are not opposites, they are together. When one sees them together, then what is there to choose? There is nothing to choose; one becomes choiceless. That's what Krishnamurti goes on saying: Be choiceless, be in a state of choiceless awareness -- but it cannot happen unless you have seen the togetherness of things. Once realized, that all things are together, then the choice becomes impossible. Then there is nothing to choose, because whatsoever you choose comes with the opposite. Then what is the point? You choose love and hate comes; you choose friendship and the enemy comes; you choose ANYTHING, and immediately the opposite comes as a shadow. One stops choosing. One remains choiceless.

    And when one is choiceless one has transcended all contradictions. To transcend contradictions is to transcend mind, and to transcend mind is to know what love is. Whatsoever you have known up to now as love has nothing to do with love. It is a misuse of the word. `Love' has been very much misused. There are only a few words which have been misused like `love'. `God' is another, `peace' is another. But `love' is at the top of the list. Everybody talks about love and nobody knows what it is. People sing about it, people write poetry about it, and they don't know what love is.
     
  2. Krishnamurti has been saying that there is no need for a Master. He is right -- and absolutely wrong also. He is right because when you become awakened, you also know that there was no need, you were dreaming. When you become alert, dreaming stops, and then you can't feel what the need was.' It was just a dream, I could have shaken myself out of it.' But it is an afterthought. Even Krishnamurti needed Annie Besant and Leadbeater -- he had his own Masters.

    It is an afterthought. When a thing happens, then you can always feel: I could have done it. But when it has not happened, you cannot even think because your thinking will also be a part of your dream.

    A Master is needed when you are asleep. When you become awakened, you also will think a Master was not needed. Then for you, of course, the Master is not needed. But then many will be deluded because many egoists will surround you, as you will find. You cannot find anywhere else such a mass of egoists as you will find near Krishnamurti, because the moment the egoist hears that no Master is needed, he feels very happy. He says: Right! He always thinks he is the Ultimate; no need to surrender to anybody because ego resists surrender. And this man says that no Master is needed -- egoists feel very happy. Around Krishnamurti you will find all sorts of egoists because it seems very good, very convenient -- no need to surrender.
     
  3. J. Krishnamurti, a man who struggled for ninety years -- his last words have some great meaning. One of my friends was present there. Krishnamurti lamented, he lamented his whole life. He lamented that "people have taken me as an entertainment. They come to listen to me...." There are people who have listened to him for fifty years continually, and still they are the same people as had come for the first time to listen to him. Naturally it is annoying and irritating that the same people... Most of them I know, because J. Krishnamurti used to come only once a year for two or three weeks to Bombay, and slowly, slowly all his followers in Bombay became acquainted with me. They all were sad about this point: What should be done? How can we make Krishnamurti happy?

    The reason was that Krishnamurti only talked, but never gave any devices in which whatever he was talking about became an experience. It was totally his fault. Whatever he was saying was absolutely right, but he was not creating the right climate, the right milieu in which it could become a seed. Of course he was very much disappointed with humanity, and that there was not a single person who had become enlightened through his teachings. His teachings have all the seeds, but he never prepared the ground.

    Zen does not deny entertainment the way J. Krishnamurti condemned it in his last testament to the world. He said, "Religion is not entertainment." That's true, but enlightenment can be vast enough to include entertainment in it.

    Enlightenment can be multidimensional. It can include laughter, it can include love, it can include beauty, it can include creativity. There is nothing to keep it from the world and from transforming the world into a more poetic place, a more beautiful garden. Everything can be brought to a better state of grace.



Question: Beloved Osho, You have said that Krishnamurti can get angry. How is that possible, as in enlightenment there is no one there to be angry?

Osho: Henk Faassen, in enlightenment there is nobody there to get angry, and there is nobody there not to get angry either. So whatsoever happens, happens. Krishnamurti does not get angry the way you get angry. Everything with an enlightened person happens on a totally different plane. His anger comes out of his compassion. Your anger comes out of hate, aggression, cruelty. He becomes angry -- sometimes he starts pulling his hair out, he hits his own forehead -- but out of compassion.

Just think, for fifty years or more he has been teaching a certain kind of truth to the world, and nobody understands him. The same people gather each year to listen to him -- the same people. Once he was talking in Bombay... somebody reported this to me, and the person who reported it to me is an old lady, older than Krishnamurti. She saw Krishnamurti when he was a child, she has seen him and listened to him for fifty years. And because she is a little deaf, very old, she sits in the front on a chair.

And for fifty years Krishnamurti has been saying that there are no methods for meditation, that meditation is not needed at all. Just be in the present and live your life, that's enough meditation, no other technique is needed.... For one and a half hours he poured his heart out, and at the end the lady stood up and asked, "How to meditate?" Now, what do you suppose he should do? He hit his head. This is not your anger. This is so unbelievable! He is tired of this lady, but this lady is not tired of him.

She comes to every talk to listen to him, and asks the same stupid questions. When I say Krishnamurti can get angry, I don't mean, Henk, that he can get angry like you get angry. His anger is out of compassion. This situation is unbelievable! He wants to help this lady and he feels so helpless. He tries this way and that. His message is very simple, singular, one-dimensional. For fifty years he has been saying only a single word. In essence his whole teaching can be printed on one side of a postcard.

He has been saying it in as many possible ways as one can invent, but it is the same citadel that he attacks from the north, from the south, from the west, from the east. And still people go on listening to him and go on asking the same old foolish questions. He certainly gets angry. And when a man like Krishnamurti gets angry, he is pure anger. Many in India have felt very disappointed with Krishnamurti because he gets angry. They have a certain concept that a buddha should not get angry. They go with a prejudice.

And when they see that Krishnamurti can get angry, they are disillusioned, "So this man is not a buddha, he has not become enlightened yet." I say to you that he is one of the most enlightened persons who has ever walked on this earth. Still he can get angry, but his anger comes out of compassion; it is condensed compassion. He cares about you, so much so that he becomes angry. This is a totally different quality of anger.

And when he becomes angry he is real anger. Your anger is partial, lukewarm. Your anger is like a dog who is not certain how to behave with a stranger. He may be a friend of the master, so he wags his tail; he may be an enemy, so he barks. He does both together. On one hand he goes on barking, on the other hand he goes on wagging his tail. He is playing the diplomat, so whatsoever the case turns out to be, he can always feel right. If the master comes and he sees that the master is friendly, the barking will stop and his whole energy will go into the tail.

If the master is angry with the intruder, then the tail will stop completely, and his whole energy will go into barking. Your anger is also like that. You are weighing up how far to go, how much will pay; don't go beyond the limit, don't provoke the other person too much. But when a man like Krishnamurti becomes angry he is pure anger. And pure anger has a beauty because it has totality. He is just anger. He is like a small child, redfaced, just anger all over, ready to destroy the whole world. That's what happened to Jesus.

When he went into the great temple and saw the moneychangers and their tables inside the temple, he was in a rage. He became angry -- the same anger that comes out of compassion and love. Singlehanded, he drove all the moneychangers out of the temple and overturned their boards. He must have been really very angry, because driving all the moneychangers out of the temple singlehanded is not an easy thing. And reports say -- I don't know how far they are right, but reports say that he was not a very strong man.

Reports say that he was not even a very tall man; you will be surprised, he was only four feet six inches. And not only that -- on top of it he was a hunchback. I don't know how far those reports are true, because I don't want to go to court! But it is there in the books, ancient books, very ancient books. So how did this hunchback, four feet six inches high, drive out all the moneychangers singlehanded? He must have been pure rage! Indians are angry about that. They cannot trust that Jesus is enlightened -- just because of this incident.

People have their prejudices, their ideas. Rather than seeing into reality, rather than looking into an enlightened man, they come ready with so many concepts, and unless he fits them he is not enlightened. And let me tell you, no enlightened person is going to fit with your unenlightened prejudices; it is impossible. It happened, a lady came to me. She had been a follower of Krishnamurti for many years, then a small thing disturbed the whole thing and the whole applecart was upturned. The thing was so small that I was surprised.

There was a camp in Holland where Krishnamurti holds a camp every year, and the woman had gone there from India. Nearabout two thousand people had gathered from all over the world to listen to him. The next morning the lectures were going to start, and the woman had gone shopping. And she was surprised, Krishnamurti was also shopping. An enlightened person shopping? Can you believe it? Buddha in a supermarket? And not only that -- he was purchasing a necktie.

Enlightened people need neckties? And not only that -- the whole counter was full of neckties and he was throwing them this way and that, and he was not satisfied with any. The woman watched, looked at the whole scene, and fell from the sky. She thought, "I have come from India for this ordinary man who is purchasing neckties. And even then, of thousands of neckties of all colors and all kinds of material, nothing is satisfying to him. Is this detachment? Is this awareness?"

She turned away. She didn't attend the camp, she came back immediately. And the first thing she did was to come running to me, and she said, "You are right."

I said, "What do you mean?"
She said, "You are right that it was useless wasting my time with Krishnamurti. Now I want to become a sannyasin of yours."

I said, "Please excuse me, I cannot accept you. If you cannot accept Krishnamurti, how can I accept you? Get lost! ... Because here you will see far more disappointing things. What are you going to do with my Mercedes Benz? So before it happens, why bother? What are you going to do with my air-conditioned room? Before it happens, it is better that you go and find some Muktananda, etcetera. You have not been able to understand Krishnamurti, you will not be able to understand me."

People like Krishnamurti live on a totally different plane. Their anger is not your anger. And who knows that he was not just playing with those ties for this stupid old woman? Masters are known to devise things like that. He got rid of this stupid old woman very easily.

Source: from book "The book of wisdom" by Osho


Reason for Dissolving Title of JagatGuru

Osho: When you are in danger and you are facing life, you are for the first time in contact with your soul. The soul is not cheap. You have to put everything at stake. That's why I say even an organized religion can be a positive thing. Buddha was born as a Hindu. Hinduism became the prison. He tried hard to get out of it, and he succeeded. Krishnamurti was trained in a certain discipline, was an inmate of a prison called theosophy -- but he tried hard, broke out of it, became free of it.

If you ask me I will say one thing: if there had been no theosophical imprisonment for him in his childhood, it would have been difficult for him to become a free man. Annie Besant and Leadbeater and other theosophists created the whole situation -- unknowingly, of course, they were not meaning it. They were trying to do something else. They were creating a dogma around him, a cult around him. And they were so hard upon him that it became really impossible to live in it. He Had to get out of it.

The credit goes to those people -- Leadbeater and Annie Besant. If the prison had been a little more comfortable, if the prison had not been so hard and if the discipline imposed had not been so arduous, if the ideals had not been so superhuman, if he had not been asked to play a role so unnatural to him, he might have relaxed, he might have accepted it. That's what has happened to you. A Christian remains a Christian because Christianity is no longer a great pressure. On Sunday you can go to the church -- it is a formality. It remains the life of a non-Christian.

You go on fulfilling the formalities of being a Christian. Your Christianity is not even skin-deep, and the church does not demand much. The church says, "You just come on particular days to the church: when your child is born come to the church for the baptism; when somebody dies, come to the church; when there is marriage, come to the church -- these three things will do and you will remain a Christian. Sometimes on Sundays come and participate in the ritual."

Nothing much is asked. The prison is not much of a prison. It is almost as if you are free, only on Sundays you go to the jail and sit there for one hour and come home and you are again free. Who bothers? Who will fight against it? It is so convenient and comfortable. That's why so many people are Hindus and Mohammedans and Jains -- nobody is asking. These religions are just formal rituals; they don't challenge you. Nothing is at stake. Very difficult to get out of them -- because the prison is very lukewarm. You have become adjusted to it.

It is so convenient and comfortable that you have become adjusted to it. It looks almost like a good policy, a good compromise. Krishnamurti fell into the hands of a very fanatical group -- theosophists. It was a new religion. Whenever a religion is new, it is very fanatical. By and by, it relaxes and compromises and becomes just a social phenomenon; then it is no more religion. Theosophy was just in its beginning, and Krishnamurti was only nine years old when he fell into the hands of those fanatics. They tried hard.

They wouldn't allow Krishnamurti to meet and mix with ordinary children -- no -- because they had a goal that he had to become the world Teacher, JAGADGURU. He had to become the coming-Buddha; he had to become the incarnation of Maitreya. He was not allowed to move with any girl, because he might have fallen in love and the whole dream of the theosophists would have been shattered. He was constantly guarded. He was not allowed to move alone; somebody was always with him, watching him.

And he was forced to follow very strict rules: three o'clock in the morning he had to get up and take a cold bath; and then he had to learn Sanskrit and he had to learn French and he had to learn English and he had to learn Latin and Greek -- because a World Teacher should be well cultured, sophisticated. Just a nine-year-old child! When he was twelve years old, they started forcing him to write a book. Now what can a twelve-year-old child write? In fact, the teacher, Leadbeater, he was writing in his name.

Krishnamurti would write and Leadbeater would correct it and make it perfect. The book still exists. A beautiful book, but you cannot expect it of a boy just twelve years old. It is not from him. Even Krishnamurti cannot remember it. When he has been asked he has said, "I don't remember when I wrote it -- I don't remember at all how it came into being." And they were talking nonsense -- esoteric nonsense: "In his dreams he goes to the seventh heaven, and there God Himself is teaching him."

And just a twelve-year-old child -- very vulnerable, soft, receptive; he would trust. And these people were world-famous; they had great names. And the movement was really big and worldwide; thousands and thousands of lodges were opened all over the world. Just a twelve-year-old boy had become a world-famous personality. Wherever he was going, thousands of people would gather just to see him. If you look at those pictures, you feel pity for him, compassion. He was continuously in a cage.

And it was natural, I think it would have happened to anybody -- it had nothing to do with Krishnamurti. Anybody in his place, if he had any spirit left, would have renounced this whole nonsense, and would have come out of it. It was too much of a prison. He could not write letters to anybody because he might have made some relationship through the letters. A World Teacher needs to be completely unattached. He started feeling a little love for a woman who was old enough to be his mother, but even that was stopped.

It was nothing to do with sexuality or anything; he just started feeling love from the woman. The woman was already a mother of three children -- but the theosophists wouldn't allow it. They stopped it. He was completely in seclusion, never allowed to move into the outside world. He was not allowed to enter in any school, in any college, because there he would meet ordinary people and he would become ordinary.

Special teachers were appointed; he was taught specially. And all around him, just a nine-year-old boy, all around him such big talk -- of Masters, Master K.H. sending messages, letters falling from the roof. They were all managed! Theosophists were caught later on -- they were all managed: the roof was specially made and a letter would drop suddenly, and it was for Krishnamurti -- a message had come from the unknown. Just think of a small boy.... No freedom allowed became a great urge to be free.

One day -- nobody was expecting it, that he would renounce it -- the theosophists had gathered from all over the world for the first declaration in which Krishnamurti was expected to declare that he was the World Teacher and that God had entered into him. Suddenly, without saying anything to anybody.... He could not sleep the whole night.

He brooded over it: he has become a slave, and they are all do-gooders; they have made you a slave because they want to do good to you; and they love you and their love became nauseating; and their well-wishing became poisonous. The whole night he brooded: what is he to do? Whether he has to continue and become part of this nonsense, or get out of it?

And blessed he is that in the morning when they had gathered and they were waiting for God to descend in him and to declare that he is now no more Krishnamurti but Lord Maitreya -- Buddha has entered in him -- he suddenly declined and he said, "It is all nonsense. Nobody is descending in me. I am simply Krishnamurti and I am nobody's Master. And I am not a Jagadguru, not a World Teacher. And I dissolve this nonsense and this organization and the whole thing that has been made around me."

They were shocked! They could not believe it: "Has he gone mad, crazy?" They had put much hope in him, much money; it was a great investment, years of training. But it was going to be so. If he had been absolutely a dead man, then only would he have accepted it. He was alive. They could not kill his life, that aliveness exploded. If he had been a dull, mediocre mind, maybe he would have accepted -- but he has an intelligence, a tremendous awareness. He got out of it. That whole movement and the whole organized thing functioned as a positive challenge.

As far as I see, nothing can hold you. If you are alert, you will use organized religion as a challenge. If you are not alert, then organized religion or no organized religion, wherever you are you will create an imprisonment around you. You carry it around you -- in your cowardice, in your fear, in your urge to be secure and comfortable.

Source: from book "The Discipline of Transcendence, Volume 3" by Osho



Question: Beloved Osho, There is a statement by J. Krishnamurti that "the Observer is the Observed." will you please kindly elaborate and explain what it means?

Osho: The statement that "the observer is the observed" is one of the most significant things ever said by any man on the earth. The statement is as extraordinary as J. Krishnamurti was. It is difficult to understand it only intellectually, because the way of the intellect is dialectical, dualistic. On the path of intellect the subject can never be the object, the seer can never be the seen. The observer cannot be the observed. As far as intellect is concerned, it is an absurd statement, meaningless -- not only meaningless, but insane.

The intellectual approach towards reality is that of division: the knower and the known have to be separate. Only then is there a possibility of knowledge between the two. The scientist cannot become science, the scientist has to remain separate from what he is doing. The experimenter is not allowed to become the experiment itself. As far as intellect is concerned, logic is concerned, it looks absolutely valid. But there is a knowledge that passeth understanding, there is a knowing that goes beyond science.

Only because that kind of knowing which goes beyond science is possible, is mysticism possible, is religiousness possible. Let us move from a different direction. Science divides the whole of human experience and existence into two parts: the known and the unknown. That which is known today was unknown yesterday, that which is unknown today may become known tomorrow, so the distance is not impossible, unbridgeable. The distance is only because man's knowledge is growing, and as his knowledge grows the area of his ignorance diminishes.

In other words, as he knows more, the area of the unknown becomes less and the area of the known becomes bigger. If we follow this logic, the ultimate result will be that one day there will be nothing left as unknown. Slowly slowly, the unknown will change into the known, and the moment will come when there is nothing left as unknown. That is the goal of science, to destroy ignorance -- but to destroy ignorance means to destroy all possibilities of exploration, all possibilities of the unknown challenging you to move forward.

The destruction of ignorance means the death of all intelligence, because there will be no need for intelligence anymore. It will be simply something which was useful in the past -- you can put it in a museum -- but it is of no use anymore. This is not a very exciting picture.Mysticism does not agree with science, it goes beyond it. According to mysticism, existence and experience is divided into three parts: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable.

The known was unknown one day, the unknown will become known one day, but the unknowable will remain unknowable; it will remain mysterious. Whatever you do, the mystery will always surround existence. The mystery will always be there around life, around love, around meditation. The mystery cannot be destroyed. Ignorance can be destroyed, but by destroying ignorance you cannot destroy the miraculous, the mysterious. J. Krishnamurti's statement belongs to the unknowable.

I have been telling you that as you meditate... and by meditation I simply mean as you become more and more aware of your mind process. If the mind process is one hundred percent, taking your whole energy, you will be fast asleep inside -- there will be no alertness.

One morning Gautam Buddha is talking to his disciples. The king, Prasenjita, has also come to listen to him; he is sitting just in front of Buddha. He is not accustomed to sitting on the floor -- he is a king -- so he is feeling uncomfortable, fidgety, changing sides, somehow trying not to disturb and not to be noticed by Buddha because he is not sitting silently, peacefully. He is continuously moving the big toe of his foot, for no reason, just to be busy without business. There are people who cannot be without business; they will still be busy.

Gautam Buddha stopped talking and asked Prasenjita, "Can you tell me, why are you moving your big toe?" In fact, Prasenjita himself was not aware of it. You are doing a thousand and one things you are not aware of. Unless somebody points at them, you may not take any note of it.

The moment Buddha asked him, the toe stopped moving. Buddha said, "Why have you stopped moving the toe?" He said, "You are putting me in an embarrassing situation. I don't know why that toe was moving. This much I know: that as you asked the question it stopped. I have not done anything -- neither was I moving it, nor have I stopped it."

Buddha said to his disciples, "Do you see the point? The toe belongs to the man. It moves, but he is not aware of its movement. And the moment he becomes aware -- because I asked the question -- the very awareness immediately stops the toe. He does not stop it. The very awareness, that `It is stupid, why are you moving it?' -- just the awareness is enough to stop it."

Your mind is a constant traffic of thoughts, and it is always rush hour, day in, day out. Meditation means to watch the movement of thoughts in the mind. Just be an observer, as if you are standing by the side of the road watching the traffic -- no judgment, no evaluation, no condemnation, no appreciation -- just pure observation. As you become more and more accustomed to observation, a strange phenomenon starts happening.

If you are ten percent aware, that much energy has moved from the mind process to the observer; now the mind has only ninety percent energy available. A moment comes... you have fifty percent of energy. And your energy goes on growing as mind goes on losing its energy. The traffic becomes less and less and less, and you become more and more and more.

Your witnessing self goes on increasing in integrity, expanding; it becomes stronger and stronger. And the mind goes on becoming weaker and weaker: ninety percent observer and ten percent mind, ninety-nine percent observer and only one percent mind. One hundred percent observer and the mind disappears, the road is empty; the screen of the mind becomes completely empty, nothing moves. There is only the observer.


This is the state J. Krishnamurti's statement is pointing at. When there is nothing to observe, when there is only the observer left, then the observer itself becomes the observed -- because there is nothing else to observe, what else to do? The knower simply knows itself. The seer sees himself. The energy that was going towards objects, thoughts... there are no thoughts, no objects. The energy has no way to go anywhere; it simply becomes a light unto itself. There is nothing that it lights, it lights only itself -- a flame surrounded by silence, surrounded by nothingness.

That is Krishnamurti's way of saying it, that the observer becomes the observed. You can call it enlightenment, it is the same thing: the light simply lights itself, there is nothing else to fall upon. You have dissolved the mind. You are alone, fully alert and aware. Krishnamurti is using a phrase of his own. He was a little fussy about it... not to use anybody else's phrase, anybody else's word -- not to use anything that has been used by other masters. So his whole life, he was coining his own phrases.

But you can change only the expression, you cannot change the experience. The experience is eternal. It makes no difference whether somebody calls it enlightenment, somebody calls it nirvana, somebody calls it samadhi, somebody calls it something else. You can give it your own name but remember, the experience should not be changed by your words.

And it is not changed by J. Krishnamurti's words. They are perfectly applicable, although they are not so glamorous as nirvana, Gautam Buddha's word, or samadhi, Patanjali's word, or il'aham, Mohammed's word. "The observer is the observed" looks too mundane. It certainly points to the reality, but the words in themselves are not very poetic, are very ordinary. And the extraordinary should not be indicated by the ordinary; that is sacrilegious.

So there are many people around the world who have been listening to J. Krishnamurti. They will listen to these words, "The observer becomes the observed," and they will not have even a far-off notion of nirvana or enlightenment or samadhi. I don't like this fussiness. I don't want to say anything against that old man because he is dead. If he were alive I would say something against him, certainly. His whole effort -- and he lived long, ninety years -- was somehow to prove that he was original in everything, even in expressions.

I don't feel the necessity. If you are original, you are original. There is no need to shout from the housetops that "I am original," that "I am fortunate that I have not read any sacred scriptures." And this is not true, because even to avoid samadhi, nirvana, enlightenment, you have to know those words; otherwise, how can you avoid them? He may not have read them himself; somebody else may have read them, and he must have heard it.

And that's what actually had happened: from his childhood he was being taught to become a world teacher, so others were telling him.... He was just nine years old, so he was not telling a lie by saying that he had not read the sacred scriptures; but the sacred scriptures were read to him.

This reminds me of a milkman. I was a student in the university and he used to come to the hostel with his small son to give milk to the students. And everybody was suspicious that his milk was at least fifty percent water.  Already the purest milk is eighty percent water; then fifty percent more.... So it is just the name milk, otherwise it is all water. So everybody was telling him, "You are mixing in too much water."

And he was a very religious man, worshipping for hours in the temple. And he would say, "I am a religious man. I cannot do this. I can take an oath. This is my son" -- and he would put his hand on his son's head -- "Under oath I am saying that if I lie, my son should die. I have never mixed water into milk."

I listened many times. One day I called him inside my room and closed the door. He said, "What are you doing?"
I said, "You need not be worried, I am also a religious man. Just a little dialogue...."

He said, "But why are you closing the door?"
I said, "It has to be very private; otherwise, you will be in difficulty."

He said, "Strange... why should I be in difficulty?"
I said, "Now just tell me exactly. I have seen you mixing water with my own eyes.... I had to miss one morning walk just to hide near your place to see it. Just this morning I have seen it. And if you don't listen to me... I don't have a son, but I can use your son, under oath."

He said, "Wait! Don't do that. You are a dangerous man. You can do it to your son but not to my son."
I said, "What is the harm? Your son is not going to be harmed; truth is truth."

He said, "That means I will have to tell you the truth."
I said, "You will have to tell me the truth."

He said, "The truth is that I never mix water into milk, I always mix milk into water -- and that makes all the difference. My oath is absolutely correct. But please don't say it to anybody, otherwise they will start asking me to take the oath the other way, and that I cannot do. I mix them, but I always mix milk into the water. I am making the water also milky. I am not destroying milk, I am just changing the quality of the water!"
I said, "You are really a religious man." Now what he is saying is simply the same.

For thousands of years, anybody who has reached to the point of no-mind and only awareness has given names which are far more meaningful than J. Krishnamurti's words. For example, Patanjali's word is the most important and the most ancient: samadhi. In Sanskrit, sickness is called vyadhi, and to go beyond all sickness is called samadhi. It has a beauty -- going beyond all sickness; attaining wholeness, perfection. It has a beauty and a meaning.

Gautam Buddha used the word nirvana... because he was trying to make an effort twenty-five centuries after Patanjali. In these twenty-five centuries Patanjali had been misused. The people who were trying to reach samadhi made it some kind of ego trip. The word `samadhi' is very positive -- beyond all illness, wholeness. There is a loophole in it: it can give you an idea that "I will become perfect, beyond all limitations, all sicknesses. I will become whole." But the danger is that this "I" may be your ego -- most probably it will be, because your mind is still there.

The samadhi is true when the mind is gone. Then you can say, "I have gone beyond sickness" because the ego was also a sickness -- in fact, the greatest sickness that man suffers from. Now your "I" does not mean ego. It simply means your individuality, not your personality. It simply means the universal in you, just the dewdrop which contains the ocean. The emphasis has changed completely. It is not the dewdrop that is claiming; it is the ocean that is proclaiming.

But because many people became egoistic... and you can see those people even today. Your saints, sages, mahatmas, are so full of ego that one is surprised -- even ordinary people are not so full of ego. But their egos are very subtle, very refined. Gautam Buddha had to find a new word, and the word had to be negative so that ego could not make a trick for itself. `Nirvana' is a negative word; it simply means "blowing out the candle"... a very beautiful word. Blowing out the candle, what happens? -- just pure darkness remains.

Buddha is saying that when your ego has disappeared like the flame of the candle, what remains -- that silence, that peace, that eternal bliss -- is nirvana. And certainly he was successful: nobody has been able to make nirvana an ego-trip. How can you make nirvana an ego-trip? The ego has to die. It is implied in the word itself, that you will have to disappear in smoke. What will be left behind is your true reality, is your pure existence, is your truth, is your being -- and to find it is to find all.

But Buddha had a reason to change the word `samadhi' into `nirvana'. J. Krishnamurti had no reason at all, except that he was obsessed with being original. What he says describes the fact: the observer is the observed -- but it has no poetry. It is true, but it has no music. But that is true about J. Krishnamurti's whole philosophy: it has no music, it has no poetry. It is purely a rational, logical, intellectual approach.

He was trying hard somehow to express the mystic experience in rational and logical terms, and he has been successful in many ways, but he has destroyed the beauty.He has brought the mystic experience closer to rational philosophizing; but the mystic experience is not philosophy, it is always poetry. It is closer to painting, closer to singing, closer to dancing, but not closer to logic -- and that's what he was doing.

And my opposition to him is based on this ground. My effort is to bring mysticism to your dance, to your song, to your love, to your poetry, to your painting -- not to your logic. Logic is good for business, it is good for mathematics. It is absolutely useless as far as higher values are concerned.

Source: from book "Osho Upanishad" by Osho

Question: Osho, Could you please tell me your opinion about J. Krishnamurti, who is saying that you won't be free and therefore not happy as long as you follow any tradition, religion or master?

Osho: Wolfgang, Gautam The Buddha has divided the enlightened persons into two categories. The first category he calls the Arhatas and the second Bodhisattvas. The Arhataand the Bodhisattva are both enlightened; there is no difference between their experience, but the Arhata is not a Master and the Bodhisattva is a Master.

The Arhata has attained to the same truth but he is incapable of teaching it, because teaching is a totally different art. For example, you can see a beautiful sunset, you can experience the beauty of it as deeply, as profoundly as any Vincent van Gogh, but that does not mean you will be able to paint it. To paint it is a totally different art. Experiencing is one thing, helping others to experience it is not the same.

There have been many Arhatas but very few Bodhisattvas. The Bodhisattva is both enlightened and skillful to teach what has happened to him. It is the greatest art in the world; no other art can be compared with it, because to say the unsayable, to help people come out of their sleep, to find and invent devices to bring what has happened to him to those who are thirsty for it and help them to get it... it is a rare gift.

Krishnamurti is an Arhata, he is not a Bodhisattva. His enlightenment is as great as anybody else's enlightenment; he is a Buddha, a Jesus, a Lao Tzu. In enlightenment there are no degrees; either one is enlightened or one is not. Once a person is enlightened he has the same flavor, the same fragrance as anyone who has ever become enlightened or will ever become enlightened. But to relate the experience, to communicate the experience is not possible for all.

Once Buddha was asked, "How many people have become enlightened amongst your disciples?"
He said, "Many." He showed..."Look!" Manjushri was sitting by his side and Sariputra and Modgalyayan and Mahakashyap. He said, "These four people are right now present here -- they have become enlightened."
The inquirer asked, "If they have become enlightened why they are not so famous as you are? Why nobody knows about them? Why they don't have thousands of followers?"
Buddha said, "They have become enlightened but they are not Masters. They are Arhatas, they are not Bodhisattvas."

The Arhataknows it but cannot make it known to the others; the Bodhisattva knows it and can make it known to the others. Krishnamurti is an Arhata. Because of this he cannot understand the beautiful world of a Master and his disciples. You ask me, Wolfgang: Could You Please Tell me your Opinion About J. Krishnamurti, Who Is Saying That you won't be Free and Therefore not Happy as Long as you Follow any Tradition, Religion or Master?

He is right. If you follow a tradition, religion or Master -- remember the word "follow" -- you will not be free and you will not be blissful, you will not know the ultimate truth of life: by following nobody knows it. What can you do by following a tradition? You will become an imitator. A tradition means something of the past, and enlightenment has to happen right now! A tradition may be very ancient -- the more ancient it is, the more dead.

A tradition is nothing but footprints on the sands of time of the enlightened people, but those footprints are not enlightened. You can follow those footprints very religiously and they will not lead you anywhere, because each person is unique. If you remember the uniqueness of the person then no following is going to help you, because there cannot be a fixed routine.

That's the difference between science and religion: science depends on tradition. Without a Newton, without an Edison, there is no possibility for Albert Einstein to have existed at all. He needs a certain tradition; only on that tradition, on the shoulders of the past giants in the world of science, he can stand. Of course when you stand on the shoulders of somebody you can look a little farther than the person on whose shoulders you are standing, but that person is needed there.

Science is a tradition, but religion is not a tradition: it is an individual experience, utterly individual. Once something is known in the world of science it need not be discovered again, it will be foolish to discover it again. You need not discover the theory of gravitation -- Newton has done it. You need not go and sit in a garden and watch an apple fall and then conclude that there must be some force in the earth that pulls it downwards; it will be simply foolish. Newton has done it; now it is part of human tradition.

 It can be taught to any person who has a little bit of intelligence; even schoolchildren know about it. But in religion you have to discover again and again. No discovery becomes a heritage in religion. Buddha discovered, but that does not mean you can simply follow the Buddha. Buddha was unique, you are unique in your own right, so how Buddha has entered into truth is not going to help you. You are a different kind of house; the doors may be in different directions. If you simply follow Buddha blindly, that very following will be misleading.

Traditions cannot be followed. You can understand them and understanding can be of immense help, but following and understanding are totally different things. So Krishnamurti is right when he is against following, but when he starts saying that you need not even understand, then he is wrong. Then he is speaking the language of an Arhata and he is unaware of the world of the Bodhisattva. Understanding is possible -- you can understand Buddha. What he is doing for forty years? What efforts has he been making for forty years?

How Wolfgang came to know Krishnamurti's ideas? He is trying to explain, he is trying with great effort to make you understand. You cannot follow Krishnamurti, but you can certainly understand his vision, his perspective, and that will be an enrichment. It will not bring you enlightenment, but it can be used as a stepping-stone. Krishnamurti says he is fortunate that he has not read any religious scriptures. That is not right.

In the first place it is not factual -- he has been taught when he was young all the ancient scriptures, not only of one tradition but of all the traditions, because he was brought up by theologists, Theosophists -- great synthesizers of all the paths and all the religions and all the traditions. Theosophy was one of the greatest efforts ever made to bring all the traditions closer to each other: Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism.

Theosophy was trying to find out the essential core of them all, and Krishnamurti was taught in every possible way all that is great. He may have forgotten about it, and I know that he must have forgotten because he will not lie, he will not say anything deliberately untrue. But he lived in a kind of hypnosis for twenty-five years. He was taken possession by the Theosophists when he was only nine years of age, and then he had been brought up m a very special way.

Many secret methods have been tried upon him: he has been taught while he was sleeping, he has been taught while he was in deep hypnosis, so he does not remember it at all. Only recently Russian psychologists are trying to find ways how to teach children while they are asleep, because if we can teach children while they are asleep much time can be saved. And one thing more: when a child is asleep he can be taught more easily because there is no distraction. His unconscious can be taught directly, which is easier.

When we teach a child through his consciousness it is difficult, because ultimately the teaching has to reach to the unconscious, only then it becomes yours. And to reach to the unconscious through the conscious it takes long time, long repetition. You have to go on repeating again and again and again, then only slowly slowly it settles to the bottom of the conscious, and from that bottom slowly it penetrates into the unconscious.

But in deep sleep, or more precisely in hypnosis -- hypnosis means sleep, deliberately created sleep -- you can reach directly to the unconscious; the conscious can be bypassed, and a thing can be put into the unconscious. The conscious will not know anything about it. Krishnamurti was taught all the great scriptures in a deep hypnosis; he has completely forgotten. Not only that: he has been even manipulated to write while he was in hypnosis.

His first book, At The Feet Of The Master, was written under hypnosis, hence he simply shrugs his shoulders when you ask about that first book -- which is really a rare document of immense value. But he simply says, "I don't know anything about it, how it happened. I can't say that I have written it." Krishnamurti has been experimented upon by Theosophists in many subtle ways, so he is not aware that he has been acquainted with all the great scriptures and all the great documents, and what he goes on saying has reflections of all those teachings They are there, but in a very subtle form.

He cannot quote the scriptures, but what he says is the very essence of the scriptures. A tradition has to be understood, and if you can understand many traditions, of course it will enrich you. It will not make you enlightened, but it will help you towards the goal, it will push you towards the goal. Don't be a follower of any tradition -- don't be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. But it will be unfortunate if you remain unaware of the beautiful words of Jesus, it will be a sheer misfortune if you don't know the great poetry of the Upanishads.

It will be as if a person has not heard any great music -- Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Wagner. If one has not heard, something will be missing in him. It will be a misfortune if you have not read Shakespeare, Milton, Dostoevsky, Kalidas, Bharbhuti, Rabindranath, Kahlil Gibran. If you have not been acquainted with Tolstoy, Chekhov, Maxim Gorky, something in you will remain missing. The same is true if you have not read Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma, Baso, Lin Chi, Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus.

These are very different, unique perspectives, but they will all help you to become wider. So I will not say that traditions are useless; I will say they become dangerous if you follow them blindly. Try to understand, imbibe the spirit. Forget the letter, just drink of the spirit. It is certainly dangerous to belong to a religion because that means you are encaged, imprisoned into a certain creed, dogma. You lose your freedom, you lose your inquiry, your exploration. It is dangerous to live surrounded by a small philosophy.

You will be a frog in the well; you will not know about the ocean. But to understand is a totally different phenomenon. The very effort to understand all the religions of the world will make you free of creeds and dogmas. That's what's happening here. I am talking about all the religions for the simple reason so that you don't become addicted with one standpoint. Life is multidimensional. Certainly Moses has contributed something to it which nobody else has done.

Unless you understand Moses you will miss that perspective, that dimension; that much you will be poorer.And the people who listen to Krishnamurti, they start following him! There are Krishnamurtiites who have been listening him for forty years or even fifty years. I have come across old people of the same age as Krishnamurti w ho have listened to him for fifty years, since 1930, and they have reached nowhere.

All that they have learned is a kind of negativeness: "This is wrong, that is wrong." But what is right? About that there seems to be not even a glimpse in their being. Don't become part of a religion, but visit, be a guest to all the religions. In the temple there is a beauty, in the mosque also, a different kind of beauty, in the church again a different experience. And this is our whole heritage; the whole humanity's past belongs to you. Why choose?

The follower chooses. He insists to be a Christian; he will avoid Upanishads, he will avoid Dhammapada, he will not bother about Koran. He is unnecessarily crippling himself, paralyzing himself. I also say don't follow, but I will not agree with the statement that: don't try to understand. Trying to understand is not following; your understanding becomes more clear, more sharpened. Krishnamurti goes on reading detective novels. Is hc following those detective novels? Is he trying to become a detective?

If he can read detective novels, what is wrong in reading the Upanishads? And detective novels are just ordinary, juvenile, childish. Upanishads are the Himalayan peaks of human consciousness. Don't follow them -- there is no need to follow anybody.

My sannyasins are not my followers, they are just my companions. The word satsang, the word upanishad, means the company of a Master. The disciple is a companion a fellow-traveler, and of course if you are traveling with somebody who knows the territory, who has explored the territory, your journey will become easier, your journey will become richer, your journey will have less unnecessary hazards; you will be able to reach the goal sooner than alone.

Traditions become dangerous only when you cling to them; then certainly there is danger. Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening. If you become a part, then it is dangerous, because then the tradition becomes a hindrance to you for exploring. The tradition insists for belief -- believe in it and believe without inquiry. That's what people are doing, what Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans are doing -- believing into something they have never inquired.

And to believe into something without inquiring is very disrespectful towards truth and towards your own self. No, belief is not going to help -- only knowing can free you. And he says the same about a Master. It is true about ninety-nine so-called Masters, but it is not true about the one, the real one He is ninety-nine percent right, because wherever there are real coins there are bound to be false coins too. A tradition is dead; a religion is a philosophy, a belief, a dogma. If you believe in it, it appears significant; its arguments appear to be very great.

The moment you stand by the side and look with a detached view, you can see the foolishness, the stupidity. You can see that there are assumptions which have not been proved, not been established.

One morning a great philosopher was seen walking down the street touching every pole that he passed. Someone asked him, "Hey, professor, why are you touching all those poles?"
The philosopher grinned and said, "And why are you not touching all those poles?"

It is difficult to answer why you are not touching! The philosophers have their own arguments; you may not be able to argue against them. They may silence you; they may bring great proofs, logical arguments, rationalizations. They may silence you, but that is not going to help.

After giving a speech at Columbia University, the noted philosopher, Bertrand Russell, was answering questions from the audience. One student's critical question brought him to a full stop. For a whole minute he said nothing, his hand over his chin. Then he peered at the student and rephrased the question, making it more precise. He asked the student, "Would you say that this is still your question?"
The student answered delightfully, "Yes."
Again Lord Russell thought, this time even longer, and twice seemed about to speak. Then he said, "That's a very good question, young man. I don't believe I can answer it!"

But there are very few philosophers like Bertrand Russell who will accept that they can't answer. They will invent answers, they will go on and on creating proofs, inventing proofs. For every kind of nonsense you can find proofs, you can argue. Religions are all based on theologies, and the very word "theology" is a contradiction in terms. "Theo" means God, "logy" means logic -- logic about God. In fact, there is no logic about God; there is love but no logic. You can approach the phenomenon God or godliness through the heart, through love, but not through logic.




(My humble salutations to the lotus feet of Sri Jiddu Krishnamurti and
gratitude to the great philosophers and followers of him.)



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