While both attending college in the early 1980’s, and in my early stages of “awakening” in 1987, I had read several books by important authors on atheism, philosophy and a few of the important religions of the world, including Christianity, Buddhism (emphasis on Tibetan variations), Taoism, Islam, and Hinduism. My intention was not to become better educated in the way others saw God, or themselves, however. I had a purely selfish need in the years following the 1987 revolution within my own heart and soul. I wanted confirmation that I was either insane, or that I had actually “found and experienced truth”, in whatever form that I had received and accepted it at that time and in the years that were to follow.
Jiddu Krishnamurti lived from 1894 through 1986, and was considered a world teacher by many. He saw the need for, and pointed the way to a new collective and individual intelligence as well as anybody who has ever lived. My first exposure to his work was a reading of a paperback book by Krishnamurti, called The Only Revolution, early in 1988.. I had known little of Krishnamurti prior to this time, but after reading this book, I saw, for the first time, a teacher and a teaching that almost identically represented what I had experienced “on the inner plane” of awareness during the apocalyptic meditations and revelations of the summer of 1987. Keep in mind that the word apocalypse literally means the ending of time, which I experienced in meditation. Psychological time ends with the ending of human thought, which never happens for the vast majority of humanity.
Krishnamurti spoke almost poetically, and at length about the potential for experiencing truth, the truth that comes with the ending of knowledge, memory, and psychological time, or, the actual ending of the ego, or self. He described how the mind fragments into various perspectives, creates a main integrator to keep that fragmented consciousness fairly structured, yet fails to perceive that everything that he sees is his own broken self, One of his favorite expressions was
“the observer IS the observed”.
He states unequivocally that “you” as both an individual self, and as an image created by “you” of somebody else, is unreal, without truth or substance, and does not exist other than some illusory conceptual creation of thought.
He talked about the need for liberation, liberation from the culture, the religion, and the teachers that have been created to continue the individual’s imprisonment within society, and which unconscious and semi-conscious individuals within society keep promoting to their own self, and to others. No teacher can effect salvation, it must be worked out within ones own mind, and heart.
To quote Krishnamurti:
“Our whole social and intellectual structure is based on the idea of gain, of achievement; and when mind and heart are held by the idea of gain, there cannot be true living, there cannot be the free flow of life. Isn’t that so? If you are constantly looking to the future, to an achievement, to a gain, to a hope, how can you live completely in the present? How can you act intelligently as a human being? How can you think or feel in the fullness of the present when you are always keeping your eye on the distant future? Through our religion, through our education, we are made as nothing, and being conscious of that nothingness, we want to gain, to succeed. So we constantly pursue teachers, gurus, systems. “
Krishnamurti’s books literally grabbed me, and would not let go, until I read them and re-read them several times. After reading the book “The Ending Of Time”, I knew that the same teaching that informed Krishnamurti, or that was Krishnamurti, was the same teaching that informed me. God, as Krishnamurti experienced God, seemed to be the same God that I was having collisions with. The main difference being that Krishnamurti was able to maintain that state of being constantly, and had for his entire adult life and I, only on special occasions, it seemed.
Krishnamurti died in 1986, yet, somehow, his teachings had mysteriously reached me in 1987, prior to me having ever read about him or what he represented. Saul of Tarsus talked of hearing Jesus Christ’s voice, two years after Jesus’s death on the cross, on the road to Damascus, and this experience caused his conversion to Christianity, and he changed his name to Paul, as a result of this experience. I can’t help but postulate the possibility that either
1). important spiritual teachers, and their primary teachings, remain active in the infinite field of human consciousness, or humanity’s morpho-genetic field after their own deaths, or
2). this information about spiritual transcendence is eternally available within consciousness itself, independent of teachers and teachings, just awaiting someone’s dedication and commitment to its truth so as to bring it forth in their own unique life experience.
What the actual mechanism for delivery of truth’s real message remains unclear, though I have heard the words “prayer” or “telepathy” used by some. Krishnamurti had psychic experiences facilitated by members of the Theosophical Society, such as Charles Ledbetter, where he helped to bring the “Ascended Master Kuthumi” into “communion” with Krishnamurti when he was a teenager. Either way, I had found confirmation that I was not insane, at least not by these new standards, and that one of the greatest teachers of the twentieth century had presented a teaching to the world that not only paralleled my own, but may well have been the source for it, as well.
About Krishnamurti’s teachings, three other points can be made:
First, the current direction of human development makes inevitable serious conflict on various levels. One is increasing conflict among religious communities, as those societies compete for material and political advantage, and within those communities, particularly the suppression of religious views differing from those dominant in a particular society.
Another is the increasing dissonance between religious traditions and the discoveries by science, a dissonance that is totally absent in what K proposes as a new sort of religion.
Third, although it is possible that most of humanity will continue to choose the illusory comfort that comes with the bondage of traditional religions, one can also point out the attractiveness of K’s vision of absolute freedom.
On one hand, the continuation of organized religions would perpetuate all their psychological and social negative effects. On the other, the arising of a religious mind, in K’s sense, on a global scale, with its widespread shift to living in and by intelligence, would seem to be the only valid basis for the solution of the serious problems, such as warfare, environmental degradation, oppression, etc., that emerge from the usual way of trying to satisfy the basic need for food, shelter, clothing, and physical security. That is, K’s proposal is a profound remedy for the ego-centered perspective that currently infects almost all individuals and all social structures. It also points to the liberation of the mind to its full potential for creative living.
Jump on in, our true, loving nature is revealed through immersion in this new understanding.
Please, save yourself
