THE
CORE OF THE TEACHINGS
The following statement was written by Krishnamurti himself on October 21, 1980
in which he summarises 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 organisation,
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."
(c) 1993 The Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd,
Brockwood Park, Bramdean, Hampshire, England.
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