J. KRISHNAMURTI – The Core of the Teachings

The following statement was written by Krishnamurti himself on October
21, 1980 in which he summarizes the teachings. It may be copied and
used provided this is done in its entirety. No editing or change of any
kind is permitted. No extracts may be used.

“The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in the statement he
made in 1929 when he said: ‘Truth is a pathless land’. Man cannot come
to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma,
priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or
psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of
relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own
mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or
introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of
security – religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols,
ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking,
his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of
our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is
shaped by the concepts already established in his mind.

The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content
is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and
superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The
uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete
freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all
mankind. So he is not an individual.

Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. It is man’s
pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure
observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward.
Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution
of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one
begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the
choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. Thought is
time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge which are inseparable
from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our
action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a
slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant
conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution.

When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see
the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the
observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that
this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which
is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless
insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.

Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation
of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically,
only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.”

© 1993 The Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd,
Brockwood Park, Bramdean, Hampshire, England