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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti
1895 - 1986

Is there such a thing as real change? We remember ourselves from childhood days and realize that we’re still the same person. This can cause us to question, is change even a possibility?

 
 

 

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Editor’s prefatory comments:

Jiddu Krishnamurti has been an important teacher in my life. I began learning about the “true” and “false” selves about 15 years ago, and his insights served to inaugurate this vital area of enquiry.

He was the one to make clear that “guru” signifies merely “one who points,” not “infallible sage.” Pointing the way is what even the best teachers provide, but no more. One must walk the path of enlightenment alone, no one can do this for us.

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Public Talk 5, London - 06 May 1965

excerpt

I would like this evening, if I may, to talk about change and about meditation. One must have asked oneself, I'm quite sure, whether one changes at all.

I know that outward circumstances change; we marry, divorce, have children; there is death, a better job, the pressure of new inventions, and so on. Outwardly there is a tremendous revolution going on in cybernetics and automation.

One must have asked oneself whether it is at all possible for one to change at all, not in relation to outward events, not a change that is a mere repetition or a modified continuity, but a radical revolution, a total mutation of the mind.

When one realizes, as one must have noticed within oneself, that actually one doesn't change, one gets terribly depressed, or one escapes from oneself.

So the inevitable question arises, can there be change at all? We go back to a period when we were young, and that comes back to us again. Is there change at all in human beings?

Have you changed at all? Perhaps there has been a modification on the periphery, but deeply, radically, have you changed? Perhaps we do not want to change, because we are fairly comfortable. We have a government that looks after one, a welfare state, an assured job, old age pensions, and all the rest of it; so perhaps there is no motive to change...

Is there a change at all? And if we do change, is it a movement which is not in time?

A change in space, in time, created by thought, or put together by thought, is no change at all. Because change brought about through an act of will, which is the space between what I am and what I should be, is still within the field of time.

I want to change. I see that I am terribly unhappy, depressed, ugly, violent, with an occasional flash of something other than the mere result of a motive; and I exercise my will to do something about it. I say I must be different, I must drop this habit, that habit; I must think differently; I must act in a different way; I must be more this and less that. One makes a tremendous effort and at the end of it one is still shoddy, depressed, ugly, brutal, without any sense of quality. So one then asks oneself if there is change at all.

Can a human being change?

A change within the field of time, one observes, is no change. I want to be peaceful; I want to be quiet, inwardly silent, aware, intelligent, vital; I want to have a sense of beauty; and I strive after it all. This striving becomes an effort, and I am never actually what I want to be. I am always just groping after it.

So, at the end of a few years or a few months or a few days, one gives it up and goes back to the old pattern. One is depressed, becomes cynical, gets irritable, takes to drink or to church, or whatever it is that one does. Or one goes to an analyst and explores the unconscious, taking months, or years, if one has the money. We carry on that way, endlessly, with a terrible sense of fear, anxiety and dread, until we die in despair. We are fairly familiar with all that.

So one asks oneself, "How is it possible to change, without all this process, and suddenly find oneself in a new dimension?"

As we said the other day, the "How" is disorder; disorder arises from asking the question, "How am I to jump from this to that; how am I to bring about a change within myself so fundamental, so radical, that I have a new mind, that I am a new human being?" ...

So I ask myself, "How am I to do it?"...

 

Editor's last word:

was anyone actually transformed by the teachings of Krishnamurti

This question was asked in the book, Infinite Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm, by Dr. David Peat.

Physicist David Bohm was Krishnamurti’s most famous disciple. Near the end of their lives, Bohm and K had a falling out. The teachings could not prevent ordinary squabbling and “protecting one’s territory.”

Krishnamurti, along with close associates, asked, had anyone been truly changed by the teachings? Bohm wanted to say yes, but he hesitated and wondered if he had.

Strangely, Krishnamurti asked if he himself had been truly, inwardly benefited!

And the comment was made, too, where is the transformation among the inner circle of K’s helpers and attendants, those closest to the teachings? No one could really point to anything definite.

All of this is problematic, and very telling, concerning the efficacy of “going within” and discovering the inner life; meaning, great teachings are not enough; if one approaches them in a materialistic manner, they will not help you, even if you promote them to others.

Is change possible?

In the above lecture, K points out, what many of us realize, that at core being we have not changed since we were children. I recognize within myself the same essential energies and dispositions of my childhood person. I have not changed. And yet, of course, at the periphery of life, I have learned many things, and that young boy of eight years old would draw few similarities with this old man’s thoughts.

The question, “Is change possible,” may be the wrong question, or at least the wrong focus. What I mean is this.

What we are on the deep inside is linked to universal consciousness. This is another way of saying that our core essence, the sense of “me,” is derived from God’s own mind.

These foundational energies of all reality cannot and will never change. And this is why we still remember ourselves as the same, even decades ago. This is not going to change, and we wouldn’t want it to.

However, as a universal principle, our core being is heavy laden and enshrouded, at the surface of life and personality, with many immaturities, many imperfections. And they’re not so easily discarded.

And so the question becomes, how can we change this outer shell, this accumulated encrustment of attributes which needs a little fine-tuning?

Here’s what I’ve discovered. “Change” may not the very best term to describe what we need. It’s not like alchemy, of turning lead into gold. We don’t want a radical makeover but something else.

On the deep inside, we already enjoy a flawlessness, a made-in-the-image shimmering-glistening perfection. What is needed is not change in the sense of uprooting ourselves but more along the lines of a seed of ideal personhood that needs to germinate and sprout.

This, right here, is our way forward. Absolutely. We already have, and are, everything we need and want, we just need to bring it to the surface of being.

These concepts are discussed on a thousand WG pages - but Deng Ming-Dao is one of the best teachers on this subject. We can all thrill to his insights:

eventually, you'll experience exquisite, unimaginable things, know things, see things, as if from nowhere, but no one will believe you

"Spiritual practice must be uninterrupted. We may be anxious because we see very little happening on a daily basis, but we must be patient until we can see what the accumulation of our effort yields. Self-cultivation means steady gradual progress…

"After long self-cultivation, one’s accumulated energy reaches a threshold and then bursts out, full, breathing, and vibrant… When one’s spiritual energy emerges, it feels like a swan rising from the water...

"Once you have reached this level of stored energy, you will be a different person.”

"If you spend a long period of time in study and self-cultivation, you will enter ... a world of extraordinary perceptions. You experience unimaginable things, receive thoughts and learning as if from nowhere, perceive things that could be classified as prescient.

"Yet if you try to communicate what you experience, there is no one to understand you, no one who will believe you. The more you walk this road, the farther you are from the ordinary ways of society... To speak to them of the wonders you have seen is often to engage in a futile bout of miscommunication. That is why it is said that those who know do not speak." Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao