The core of the Teaching

The core of the Teaching

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, nor through any philosophical

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 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 choice. It is man’s pretense 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, which are inseparable from time and 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 the 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.

by j. krishnamurti