Jiddu Krishnamurti

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

The God of thought is invented; the sacred appears only when thought falls silent

L'innommableIl le dit expressément

Jiddu Krishnamurti rejects both belief and disbelief in God, since both are products of thought, and thought, he holds, is conditioned memory: whatever it imagines about the divine is a projection of its own fear and desire for security. In his speech dissolving the Order of the Star (1929) he states that truth is a pathless land, to which no religion, sect or authority leads. At the same time, in his talks and in the diary known as Krishnamurti's Notebook he speaks of the immeasurable, the sacred, an «otherness» that appears when the mind is completely still, without seeking it. On this he refuses to build doctrine: to name it would be to bring it back into the field of the known. The ultimate exists, but no word, image or belief reaches it.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

The self is a bundle of memories; the observer is the observed

L'ego est une construction de la penséeIl le dit expressément

Jiddu Krishnamurti holds that the psychological «I» is a construction of thought: a bundle of memories, images, hurts, pleasures and conclusions that thought accumulates and then treats as a central entity. That centre presents itself as the observer who judges, controls and wishes to change, but, according to him, the observer is not separate from the observed: whoever tries to master anger is made of the same stuff as the anger. Understanding this, not as an idea but in the very act of observing, ends inner conflict. Krishnamurti also rejects the search for a higher Self or a soul, which he regards as another projection of thought seeking security. What he proposes is not to discover a true self but to see the structure of the self with choiceless awareness; in that seeing, he says, freedom begins.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

Thought creates fear and sorrow by projecting past and future

La pensée et le temps psychologiqueIl le dit expressément

For Jiddu Krishnamurti, psychological suffering is the work of thought. Thought is memory, and by projecting itself into time it creates fear: fear of losing what one has, of not becoming what one wants, of death. Sorrow over a loss, he holds, is mostly self-pity and the self's sense of loneliness, clinging to its image of the other and to its own continuity. He distinguishes physical pain, which is a fact, from psychological suffering, which thought prolongs by comparing, remembering and anticipating. His proposal is not to console oneself or flee into explanations, but to remain with suffering without moving away from it, to look at it completely without the observer who wants to escape. In that total attention, he claims, suffering ends, and with its ending comes passion, which he also calls compassion.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

Dying to the known every day: there is no other serious question about death

Mourir chaque jour au connuIl le dit expressément

Krishnamurti refuses to answer what lies after death and shifts the question. For him, the desire to know whether one continues is the desire for the self to continue, that is, memory, attachments and accumulated images; beliefs in reincarnation or heaven are consolations of thought in the face of its own end. What he proposes is to die now, while living: to end each day with everything one has accumulated — pleasures, grudges, knowledge about oneself — without arguing with death or postponing it. Only in that psychological ending, he holds, is there renewal, something new, and in it life, love and death are not separate. To someone who asks about reincarnation he replies that, if one believes in it, the consistent thing would be to live with complete rectitude today, since what one is now is what would continue.

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Truth is a pathless land: no method, master or organisation leads to it

Sans méthode : l'attention totaleIl le dit expressément

Jiddu Krishnamurti formulated his position in 1929, when he dissolved the Order of the Star in the East that had been built around him: truth is a pathless land and cannot be reached through any religion, sect or organisation. From then on he held for six decades that every method, practice or discipline produces new conditioning, because it springs from the same thought that seeks a result. Freedom is not an end reached through time; it lies at the beginning: in the immediate, choiceless perception of what one is, of one's fears, desires and conflicts, observed without condemnation or justification. That observation, if it is total, by itself brings about a transformation that no effort can manufacture.

Faut-il un maître ?

Following another destroys freedom: he wanted no disciples or followers

Aucune autorité spirituelleIl le dit expressément

Jiddu Krishnamurti is the most radical example of this position, and his life explains it. Raised from childhood by the Theosophical Society to be the World Teacher, in 1929 he dissolved the organisation built around him and declared that he wanted no followers, because following someone means ceasing to seek truth for oneself. For the rest of his life he held that psychological authority, that of the guru, the priest or the sacred book, is incompatible with freedom: it creates dependence, fear and imitation. He did distinguish technical authority, that of the doctor or scientist, which is legitimate. Inwardly, each must be a light to oneself, and he did not present himself as an authority.

Le monde est-il réel ?

Thought manufactures the psychological world; you are the world

Un réseau de causes sans substanceCela se déduit de sa doctrine

Jiddu Krishnamurti does not deny physical reality: the tree, the mountain or the river are not creations of thought. What he examines is the psychological and social world, which he regards as the product of conditioned thought: the self, national and religious divisions, conflicts. In the dialogues with the physicist David Bohm collected in Truth and Actuality he distinguishes reality, everything thought can touch and build, from truth, which thought does not reach. He repeats that the individual is the world and the world is the individual: society is the projection of what each person is. There is thus no permanent substance behind the self, but a conditioned process of memory and reaction.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

Where the self is, love is not: love is not attachment, jealousy or pleasure

Ce qui apparaît quand le moi cesseIl le dit expressément

Krishnamurti refuses to define love positively and proceeds by negation. Love is not attachment, which fears loss; it is not jealousy, possession or dependence; it is not pleasure, which thought remembers and wishes to repeat; it is not duty or respectability. All of that, he holds, is the activity of the self, of the centre that protects and prolongs itself. When one sees clearly what love is not, without rejecting or cultivating it, what it is may appear. That is why love cannot be practised or learned like a technique: there is no path to it, because every path is walked by the self. In Freedom from the Known and in the anthology On Love and Loneliness he links it with compassion and intelligence, and states that without love no social reform changes anything.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

Choosing is not freedom: the one who chooses is a product of conditioning

Il n'y a pas d'agentIl le dit expressément

Krishnamurti turns the question around. The freedom of choice we usually defend is, in his view, an illusion of the conditioned mind: the one who chooses is the «self», a bundle of inherited memories, fears and desires, so that its choice always repeats the past. Hence he speaks of choiceless awareness, in which conditioning is observed without an observer judging it. When one sees that the observer is the observed, the conflict between what I am and what I should be ends, and in that ending, not in a decision, lies freedom. In *The First and Last Freedom* and *Freedom from the Known* freedom is not something reached at the end of a path, but what is there at the beginning, when the choosing centre ceases.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

Meditation is not a method: it is attention without a centre or effort

La méditation n'est pas une techniqueIl le dit expressément

Krishnamurti rejects every meditation system: repeating a mantra, controlling the breath or following a teacher's steps only produces a mechanical, dulled mind, and also strengthens the self that wants to achieve something. Meditation, as he describes it in *Freedom from the Known*, *The Only Revolution* and his journals, is not something practised for a while each day but a quality of attention that observes every thought and feeling without condemning or justifying it, without an observer who chooses. From that attention a silence arises that has not been sought. It is not a path to a goal: it is self-understanding in the act of living, and it begins by seeing one's own mind as it is.

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

Thought is born of memory and can never touch the new

La pensée est limitéeIl le dit expressément

Krishnamurti is the reference for this key. His analysis, constant from *The First and Last Freedom* to his dialogues with the physicist David Bohm collected in *The Ending of Time* (1985), holds that thought is the response of memory, and memory is the result of accumulated experience; therefore thought is always limited and old, and cannot touch what is new, the immeasurable. Useful in the technical sphere, it becomes a source of conflict when it claims to reach truth or to build a self. In his 1929 speech dissolving the Order of the Star he declared that truth is a pathless land, unreachable by any organisation, creed or method. Only when thought sees its own limit and falls quiet can another perception arise.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

You are the world: without transforming consciousness, every reform repeats the conflict

La révolution est intérieureIl le dit expressément

Krishnamurti rejects both withdrawal and conventional activism. He holds that the individual is not separate from society: you are the world, and the violence, greed and division seen outside are projections of each person's consciousness. Political revolutions, economic reforms and religious organisations change the surface but leave the centre untouched, and that is why conflict reappears in another form. The only real revolution is the radical transformation of the mind, which is not achieved by following a leader or a system. Consistently, in 1929 he dissolved the Order of the Star, created for him, declaring that truth is a pathless land. He did not preach withdrawal: he lived travelling and speaking in public, and founded schools in India, England and the United States to educate children free of fear and competition.

Ojai, California · Estados Unidos

Krishnamurti Retreat and Pine Cottage, Ojai

Krishnamurti Foundation of America

Ojai was Krishnamurti's Californian home for decades, and there the Krishnamurti Foundation of America keeps two places open to the public. The Krishnamurti Retreat occupies eleven acres of nature where one may withdraw to enquire, with in-person programmes, silent retreats and an annual gathering. Pine Cottage, the house where he lived, now hosts the Krishnamurti Center and Library, dedicated to the study of his teachings, with a library and daily video screenings. The foundation also offers multi-day online dialogue programmes for those unable to travel, keeping the spirit of open enquiry at the centre.

Bramdean, Hampshire · Reino Unido

The Krishnamurti Centre, Brockwood Park

Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

The Krishnamurti Centre is the retreat house built beside Brockwood Park School, in the South Downs National Park, at Krishnamurti's own wish. Its motto sums it up: a place of no authority, where nothing is imposed. Group retreats are built on dialogue and supported by the teacher's recordings and texts to enquire into a particular aspect of the teachings; there are also silent retreats, longer gatherings and individual stays with access to the library, video room and quiet room. It offers single en-suite rooms and vegetarian meals, and outside group retreats there is no structured guidance.

Chennai, Tamil Nadu (sede) y otros centros en la India · India

Vasanta Vihar and the KFI centres

Krishnamurti Foundation India

Vasanta Vihar in Chennai was Krishnamurti's home in India and is now the headquarters of Krishnamurti Foundation India and a retreat and study centre. The foundation organises residential retreats and stays on campus intended, in its own words, for stepping away from routine and observing without plunging into new knowledge. KFI also has retreat centres in Uttarkashi, in the Himalaya, and in Jalna, study centres in Mumbai, Kolkata and Cuttack, and the schools he founded, such as Rishi Valley and Rajghat, whose study centres also host guests interested in the teachings.