Before trying to understand some unusual
concepts about reality, we must be willing to drop most of our core lifelong
beliefs.
“You see that you
have many opinions and conclusions.
You don’t know why you have them or how to be free of them.
Start with not knowing.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You don’t know why you have them or how to be free of them.
Start with not knowing.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
We did not question our beliefs, we took them
as absolute truth:
“Many of our ideas and beliefs about ourselves
and the world are so deeply ingrained that we are unaware that they are beliefs
and take them, without questioning, for the absolute truth. For instance, we
believe that we are a body, that we are a man or a women and that we were born
and will die. We believe that we are an entity amongst other innumerable other
entities, and that this entity resides somewhere in the body, usually behind the
eyes or in the chest area. We believe that we are the subject of our experience
and that everything and everyone else is the object. We believe that we, as this
subject, are the doer of our actions, the thinker of our thoughts, the feeler of
our feelings, the chooser of our choices. We believe that this entity we
consider ourselves to be, has freedom of choice over some aspects of experience
but not others. We believe that time and space are actually experienced, that
they existed before we did and will continue to do so after we have
died.”
Rupert Spira, “The Transparency of
Things”
The mind will reject new, unconventional ideas
that do not fit in with what has already been accepted:
“The mind has built a powerful edifice of
concepts about Reality that bears little relation to actual experience and, as a
result, Consciousness has veiled itself from itself.”
Rupert Spira, “The
Transparency of Things”
It is easier to start from a not-knowing
state.
“It is only when the mind is free from the old
that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The most clear, complete advice is:
“I hope that you will listen, but not with the
memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to
something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions,
its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future
understanding.
Just observe yourself, how you are listening,
and you will see that this is what is taking place. Either you are listening
with a conclusion, with knowledge with certain memories, experiences, or you
want an answer and you are impatient. You want to know what is it all about,
what life is all about, the extraordinary complexity of life. You are not
actually listening at all.
You can only listen when the mind is quiet,
when the mind doesn’t react immediately, when there is an interval between your
reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness,
there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not
intellectual understanding.
If there is a gap between
what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in
that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a
few seconds – in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the
interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain, and the
old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic
sense.
When there is an abeyance of that, when the
reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the
new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old
brain.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
