“[…] In January 1927 Krishnamurti spoke at a meeting in California, and concluded his speech by reading one of his recent poems, which ended with these words:
‘I am the Truth,
I am the Law,
I am the Refuge,
I am the Guide,
The Companion and the Beloved. ’
The imaginative reporter of the ‘Theosophist’ added to this a poetic summing up of the situation: ‘As the last words were uttered there was a sprinkie of light rain that seemed like a benediction and, spanning the valley, a perfect rainbow arch shone out.’
Meanwhile Mrs. Besant was travelling from country to country, giving lectures to packed halls and speaking in her masterly way of the new World Teacher.
Many details of this extraordinary ‘life story’ flashed through my mind when Krishnamurti entered that room.
But after half an hour’s conversation with him I was willing to forget most of the reports I had heard. The picturesque story of his life seemed to me no longer of much importance. How right I was I could not foresee at the time.
We parted friends, and I accepted an invitation to come to stay with Krishnamurti at Eerde. There I should meet his friends from all over the world; and, besides listening to his public speeches, I should also have an opportunity of further personal conversation.”
Uit: Rom Landau, ‘The Throne that was Christ's’ -Krishnamurti, in: God is My Adventure, 1935.
IV
The weather was glorious next moming, and I went to fetch Krishnamurti for a walk. We had not gone very far when we reached a clearing in the huge pine trees high up on the hills, with an endless view over the picturesque coastline. We decided that it would be easier to talk sitting down. Krishnamurti sat down in Eastem fashion with crossed legs on the heather-covered ground. I had already worked out a plan which would enable us to talk every day about certain definite subjects, hoping that this would help us not to lose ourselves and that it would introduce a certain structure into our talks.
‘What is your message to-day?’ I began.
Krishnamurti’s answer came in a very definite tone: ‘I have no message. If I had one, most people would accept it blindly and try to live up to it, merely because of the authority which they try to force upon me.’
‘But what do you ten people when they come and ask you to help them?’
‘Most people come and ask me whether they can learn through experience.’
‘And your answer is?’
‘That they cannot.’
‘No?’
‘Of course not. You cannot learn spiritual truth through experience. Don’t you see? Let us assume that you had a deep sorrow and you learned how to fight against it. This experience will induce you to apply the same method of overcoming grief during your next sorrow.’
‘That does not seem wrong to me.’
‘But it is wrong. Instead of doing something vital, you try to adapt a dead method to life. Your former experience has become a prescription, a medicine. But life is too complicated, too subtle for that. It never repeats itself; no two sorrows in your life are alike. Each new sorrow or joy must be dealt with in that particular fashion that the uniqueness of the experience requires.’
‘How can that be done?’
‘By eliminating the memory of former experiences; by destroying all recollection of our actions and reactions. ‘
‘What remains after we have destroyed them all?’
‘An inner preparedness that brings you nearer truth. You never ought to act according to old habits but in the way life wants you to act spontaneously, on the spur of the moment.’
‘Does this apply to everything in life?’
‘ It does. You must try to eliminate from your life all old habits and systems of behaviour, because no two moments in any life are exactly similar. ‘
‘But all this is only negative, and I don’t find anything positive at all in your scheme of things.’
Krishnamurti smiled and moved nearer me: ‘You don’t need to search for the positive; don’t force it. It is always there, though hidden behind a huge heap of old experiences. Eliminate all of them, and truth or what you call the positive will be there. It comes up automatically, You cannot help it.’
I pondered over his words for a while, then I said: ‘You have just used the word “truth”. What is truth, according to you?’
‘Call it truth or liberation or even God. It is all the same. Truth is for me the release of the mind from all burdens of memory.’
This definition was new to me, but before I could say a word Krishnamurti went on: ‘Truth is awareness, constant awareness of life within and without you. Do you follow?’ Ris voice became almost insistent.
‘I do, but please explain to me what you mean by “awareness” ‘, I replied.
Krishnamurti came even closer to me, and his voice became even more persuasive.
‘What matters is that we should live completely at every moment of our lives. That is the only real liberation. Truth is nothing abstract, it is neither philosophy, occultism nor mysticism. It is everyday life, it is perceiving the meaning and wisdom of life around us. The only life worth dealing with is our present life and every one of its moments. But to understand it we must liberate our mind from all memories, and allow it to appreciate spontaneously the present moment.’
‘I take it that by spontaneous appreciation you mean an appreciation dictated solely by the circumstances of that very moment?’
‘Exactly there can be no other spontaneity of life; and that is precisely what I call real awareness. Do you understand?’
‘I do, but I doubt whether such awareness can really be expressed in words. . . . I think it can only be understood if we actually experience it ourselves. No description can possibly do it justice.’
Krishnamurti did not answer immediately. He was lying on the ground, facing the sky. ‘It is so’, he said slowly;’but what is one to do?’
‘What indeed, Krishnaji? I wondered what you really meant when you told me yesterday that you tried to help people by talking to them. Can anyone who has not himself gone through that state of awareness of which you speak comprehend what it means? Those who possess it do not need to hear about it.’
Krishnamurti paused again, and I could see that he was affected by the turn our conversation had taken. He said after a while: ‘And yet this is the only way one can help people. I think that one clarifies people’s minds by discussing these things with them. Eventually they will perceive truth for themselves. Don’t you agree?’
I knew that Krishnamurti disliked all questions that seemed to arise out of mere curiosity or to depend upon abstract speculation, but I nevertheless asked him:
‘Don’t you think that the limits of time and space must cease to exist once we establish within ourselves a constant awareness of life?’
‘Of course they must. The past is only a result of memories. It is dead stuff. Once we cease to carry about with us this ballast there will be no time limits with regard to the past. The same is true in a slightly different way with regard to the future. But all this talk about seeing into the future or the past is only a result of purely intellectual curiosity. At every lecture I give half a dozen people always ask me about their future and past incarnations. As though it mattered what they were or what they will be. All that is real is the present. Whether we can look into the to-morrow or across continents is meaningless from a spiritual point of view. ‘
‘Don’t you think that conscious perception through time and space can be very valuable? Don’t you think that the results obtained by Rudolf Steiner’s occult perceptions are really helpful to humanity?’
‘I have never studied Steiner, and I wish you would teIl me more about him. All I know about Steiner comes from Dr. Besant’s occasional remarks. I think she had a great admiration for Steiner’s unusual gifts, and was sorry that their relationship had to be broken, but I never studied him properly. As for occult perceptions, for me they are not particularly spiritual: they are merely a certain method of investigation. That’s all. They might be spiritual at times, but they are not always or necessarily so.’
‘You have never read any of Steiner’s books?’
‘No, nor have I ever read any of the other philosophers …. ‘
‘But Steiner was not a philosopher’, I interrupted.
‘Yes, I know. I only meant writers of a philosophical or similar kind. I cannot read them. I am sorry, but I just can’t. Living and reacting to life is what I am interested in. All theory is abhorrent to me.’
Although noon was at hand and it was growing very hot, Krishnamurti suggested a walk towards the sea.
‘Are you writing anything at present?’ I asked him when we reached the road going down to the sea.
‘Yes, I am preparing a book. But it is nothing consecutive just a book of thoughts.’
‘What about your poetry? ‘
‘I feel poetry, but somehow I cannot write it at present. ‘
‘What books do you read? I remember that at one time you used to read a great deal, and that you liked choosing your friends especially from among artists and writers. ‘
‘What books does one read?’ Krishnamurti answered, slightly embarrassed. Questions about his personal habits always seemed to make him uncomfortable. I noticed this repeatedly during my visit at Carmel. Though he derived every detail of his teaching from personal experiences, and preferred talking about it in a personal way, it seemed to me that he withdrew himself, as it were, whenever I put questions that were not connected directly with his mission in life or that dealt with such matters as his personal tastes and habits. Discussion for the satisfaction of intellectual curiosity seemed to cause him discomfort. This was not any result, I believe, of what is usually called natural modesty. It was rather as though he tried to remain perpetually on a plane of inner awareness, and felt uneasy whenever he had to switch over to a plane of intellectual discussion. But he loved ordinary conversation about topical subjects, politics, music, the theatre or travel. It was only when the outside world was brought into direct intellectual relationship with his personality that he shrank away from such interrogation.
‘I am not a specialist of any kind’, said Krishnamurti, in answer to my original question. ‘I read everything that seems interesting: Huxley, Lawrence, Joyce, André Gide….’
‘Did you really mean what you said when you told me that you never read philosophy?’
‘Goodness me, yes! What should I read philosophy for?’
‘Perhaps to learn from it.’
‘Do you seriously think you can learn from books? You can accumulate knowledge, you can learn facts and technicalities, but you cannot learn truth, happiness, or any of the things that really matter. You can read for your entertainment, for thousands of other reasons, but not to learn the essential things. You can only learn from living and acknowledging the life that is your very own. But not from the lives of others.’
‘Does that mean that in your opinion nothing ean ever be learned from books, from the experience of others?’
‘I shall refrain from saying definitely yes, though I feel inclined to do so. The knowledge of others only builds up barriers within ourselves, barriers that stand in the way of an impulsive reaction to life. Of course it is easier to go through life learning from the experience of others, leaning on Aristotle, on Kant, on Bergson or on Freud; but that is not living your life, facing reality. It is merely evading reality by hiding behind a screen created by someone else.’
‘Do you consider this to be true of religion also?’
‘I do. Religions offer people authority in place of truth; they give them crutches instead of making their legs strong; they give them drugs instead of urging them to push out along their own paths in search of truth for themselves. I fear none of the churches to-day has very much to do with truth.’
‘Do many, among the thousands who come to listen to you, ask you questions about religious matters?’
‘Most of them do. There are three questions that crop up over and over again, and no meeting is complete without them, whether I speak in India, in Australia, in Europe or in Califomia. I deduce from their popularity that they must deal with the three most urgent spiritual problems of modem man. They are questions about the values of experience, of prayer and of religion in general.’
Krishnamurti had already given me his opinions of experience and religion, so I only asked: ‘What is your attitude towards prayer?’
‘Prayer in which you ask God for something is in my opinion utterly wrong. ‘
‘Even if you ask God for help to achieve the awareness you were talking about?’
‘Even then. How can anything be spiritual and prayer, I take it, is supposed to be something spiritual that asks for a reward? This is not spirituality but economics, or whatever else you like to call it. In spiritual truth things just are; but there can be no requests, promises or rewards. Things happen in life because they simply have to happen. A reward can never be anything else but fixed, stationary, if you understand what I mean. Spiritual life, true life, must be always moving fluctuating, alive.’
‘But cannot prayer be just a bridge along which we move towards the inner awareness?’
‘It can, but that is not what people generally understand by prayer. What you now mean is simply a state of real living, of inner expectation. This identifies us with truth. Do you see the difference?’
‘I do, and I therefore presume that you deny all “crystallized” forms invented by man for the attainment of truth, such as meditation, yoga or other methods of mental exercise.’
‘Yes, it is so. How can you expect to achieve something which is constantly fluctuating through a method that, in your own words, is crystallized-, or in my words, dead? People often come to me and ask me about the value of meditation. All I can teIl them is that I see no reason why they should meditate on one particular subject, instead of meditating on everything that enters their life, because it seems to me that deliberate concentration on one particular thought, eliminating all others, must create an inner conflict. I consider it wiser to meditate on whatever happens to enter your mind: whether it be about what you will do this afternoon or as to which suit you will put on. Such thoughts are as important if attended to with your full inner awareness as any philosophy. It is not the subject of your thought that matters so much as the quality of your thinking. Try to complete a thought instead of banishing it, and your mind will become a wonderful creative instrument instead of being a battlefield of competing thoughts. Your meditation will then develop into a constant alertness of mind. This is what I understand by meditation. ‘
I remembered Keyserling’s answer to my question on meditation, and was struck by the similarity of the views held by these two so different men.
‘Keyserling’, I said, ‘quite recently told me something of much the same sort. He said that for him meditation was nothing else but facing reality as it came along.’
‘I agree with him in that respect. You can find truth only by your own constant awareness of life. You must not try to live up to somebody else’s standards, because inevitably those of two different men can never be really identical. ‘
‘Does this mean that you believe in the absolute equality of men?’
‘Of course I do, though not in the way Communism understands it. Because I preach equality of races, religions and castes, Communists think that I preach Communism. American Communists often come to visit me at Ojai and say: “We believe in you because you preach the things that we do. But why don’t you join our party?” They don’t understand that I am not only unable to join their party, or any other party, but that I cannot possibly agree with their methods. You can achieve equality among men only by greater knowledge, by deeper understanding, by better education, by making people grasp what life means. How can you do this if the leaders themselves don’t know, if they themselves behave like automatons and preach their particular gospels not from an inner awareness of life and its necessities which means according to real truth but by repeating over and over and over again certain formulae invented by others. You cannot achieve equality by taking their possessions away from people. What you must take away from them is their instinct of possessiveness. This does not apply only to land and money, a factory or a sable coat. It also applies to a book, to a flower, to your wife, your lover or your child. I don’t mean to say that you must not have or enjoy any of these things. Of course you must! But you must enjoy them for the sake of the joy they transmit, and not for the feeling of pleasure that their possession gives you. This fundamental attitude has to be changed before anything else can be done. Nothing can be altered by taking things away from the rich and giving them to the poor, thus developing their feeling of greed and possessiveness.’
V
When we met again we no longer pretended that we were going for a walk but went straight to our pine shadowed resort on the hilI. It was an ideal place for conversation not a single human being passed it all through the day and the view was exalting. The only noise was that of the sea breaking on the cliffs. I no longer felt intimidated by the subjects on which I had considered it my duty to question Krishnamurti; I knew that I could speak freely about everything; and I felt that the moment had arrived when I could question him about sex. Life in England had taught me to assume that sex was of much smaller importance than I had believed it to be in the days when I lived on the Continent. I had learned to treat sex in the way one treats poorer relations or in the way Victorian society treated women’s legs: pretending that they do not exist and never mentioning them. Such an attitude may provide a temporary solution, and it is probably of practical value in all the more conventional circumstances of life. But it does not solve the essential problem. It brings no happiness, nor does it release any of those forces that sex, properly and honestly expressed, ought to create. Hypocrisy, or rather make-believe in matters of sex, may be laudable in the face of certain necessarily superficial aspects of the life of a community; but hypocrisy can never be more than merely a means of escape – it shirks the facing of reality. Hypocrisy pushes sex behind hundreds of screens, each one of which can hide it for only a short while, without doing anything to solve the essential underlying problem. Among the few people who find sexual satisfaction in perfect love the sex problem does not exist – but such people are few. The majority are not capable of regulating their sex impulses in a satisfactory way. Listen to the cases in the police courts of any country; ask your medical friends; invite your married or unmarried friends to teIl you the whole truth about themselves, speak seriously to educationists and you will find out this sad reality for yourself.
I asked Krishnamurti whether he thought it wrong for people with a very strong sexual impulse to give way to it.
‘Nothing is wrong if it is the result of something that is really within you’, was his answer. ‘Follow your urge, if it is not created by artificial stimuli but is burning within you – and there will be no sex problem in your life. A problem only arises when something within us that is real is opposed by intellectual considerations. ‘
‘But surely it is not only intellectual considerations that cause many people to believe the satisfaction of a strong sex urge to be wrong, even if it is too strong to be suppressed. ‘
‘Suppression can never solve a problem. Nor can self-discipline do it. That is only substituting one problem for another.’
‘But how do you expect millions of people, who have become slaves of sex, to solve the friction between their urge and that judicial sense which tries to prevent them from giving way? In England you will find fewer people openly ruled by sex, but consider America; consider most of the countries of the continent of Europe; consider many of the Eastem nations – for them their sex needs are a grave problem.’
I noticed an expression of slight impatience on Krishnamurti’s face. ‘For me this problem does not exist’, he said; ‘after all, sex is an expression of love, isn’t it? I personally derive as much joy from touching the hand of a person I am fond of as another might get from sexual intercourse. ‘
‘But what about the ordinary person who has not attained to your state of maturity, or whatever it should be called?’
‘To begin with, people ought to see sex in its proper proportions. It is not sex as a vital inner urge that dominates people nowadays so much as the images and thoughts of sex. Our whole modern life is propitious to them. Look around you. You can hardly open a newspaper, travel by the underground or walk along a street without coming across advertisements and posters that appeal to your sex instincts in order to sing the praises of a pair of stockings, a new toothpaste or a particular brand of cigarette. I cannot imagine that so many semi-naked girls have ever before walked through the pages of newspapers and magazines. In every shop, cinema and café the lift attendants, waitresses and shop girls are made up to look like harlots so that they may appeal to your sex instincts. They themselves are not conscious of this, but their short skirts, their exposed legs, their painted faces, their girlish coiffures, the constant physical appeal which they are made to exercise over the customer do nothing but stimulate your sex instincts. Oh, it is beastly, simply beastly! Sex has been degraded to become the servant of unimaginative salesmanship. Someone will start a new magazine and, instead of racking his brains for an interesting and alluring title-page, all he does is to publish a coloured picture of a girl with half-opened lips, suggestively hiding her breasts and looking altogether like a whore. You are being constantly attacked, and you no longer know whether it is your own sex urge or the sex vibration produced artificially by life around you. This degrading, emphatic appeal to our sex instinct is one of the most beastly signs of our civilization. Take it away, and most of the so-called sex urge is gone.’
‘I am not a moralist’, Krishnamurti added after a pause; ‘I have nothing against sex, and I am against sex suppression, sex hypocrisy and even what is called sexual self-discipline, which is only a specific form of hypocrisy. But I don’t want sex to be cheapened, to be introduced into all those forms of life where it does not belong. ‘
‘Nevertheless, Krishnaji, your world without its beastly sex appeal will be found only in Utopia. We are dealing with the world as it actually is, and as it will probably be in days to come, long after you and I are gone.’
‘That may be so, but it does not concern me. I am not a doctor; I cannot prescribe half-remedies; I deal simply and solely with fundamental spiritual truth. If you are in search of remedies and half methods you must go to a psychologist. I can only repeat that if you readjust yourself in such a way as to allow love to become an omnipresent feeling in which sex will be an expression of genuine affection, all the wretched sex problems will cease to exist.’
He looked up for a few seconds and then gave a deep sigh. ‘Oh, if you people could only see that these problems don’t exist in reality, and that it is only yourselves who create them, and that it is yourselves who must solve them! I cannot do it for you – nobody can if he is genuine and faithful to truth. I can only deal with spiritual truth and not with spiritual quackery.’ His voice seemed full of disillusion and he stopped and lay back on the ground.
I began to understand what Christ must have meant when He spoke of His love without distinction for every human being, and of all men being brothers. Indeed, the omnipresent feeling of love (in which sex would become meaningless without being eliminated) seemed the only form of love worthy of a conscious and mature human being. Nevertheless I wondered whether Krishnamurti himself had reached that stage of life-awareness in which personal love had given place to universal love, in which every human being would be approached with equal affection.
‘Don’t you love some people more than others?’ I asked. ‘After all, even a person like yourself is bound to have emotional preferences. ‘
Krishnamurti’s voice was very quiet when he began to speak again. ‘I must first say something before I can give you a satisfactory reply to your question. Otherwise you may not be able to accept it in the spirit in which it is offered. I want you to know that these talks are quite as important to me as they can possibly be to you. I don’t speak to you merely to satisfy the curiosity of an author who happens to be writing about me, or to help you personally. I talk mainly to clarify a number of things for myself. This I consider one of the great values of conversation. You must not think therefore that I ever say anything unless I believe it with my whole heart. I am not trying to impress, to convince or to teach you. Even if you were my oldest friend or my brother I should speak in just the same way. I am saying all this because I want you to accept my words as simple statements of opinion and not as attempts to convert or persuade. You asked me just now about personal love, and my answer is that I no longer know it. Personal love does not exist for me. Love is for me a constant inner state. It does not matter to me whether I am now with you, with my brother or with an utter stranger I have the same feeling of affection for all and each of you. People sometimes think that I am superficial and cold, that my love is negative and that it is not strong enough to be directed to one person only. But it is not indifference, it is merely a feeling of love that is constantly within me and that I simply cannot help giving to everyone I come into touch with.’
He paused for a second as though wondering whether I believed him, and then said: ‘People were shocked by my recent behaviour after Mrs. Besant’s death. I did not cry, I did not seem distressed but was serene; I went on with my ordinary life, and people said that I was devoid of all human feeling. How could I explain to them that, as my love went to everyone, it could not be affected by the departure of one individual, even if this was Mrs. Besant. Grief can no longer take possession of you when love has become the basis of your entire being.’
‘There must be people in your life who mean nothing to you or whom you even dislike?’
Krishnamurti smiled: ‘There aren’t any people I dislike. Don’t you see that it is not I who directs my love towards one person, strengthening it here, weakening it there? Love is simply there like the colour of my skin, the sound of my voice, no matter what I do. And therefore it is bound to be there even when I am surrounded by people I don’t know or people whom I “should” not care for. Sometimes I am forced to be in a crowd of noisy people that I don’t know; it may be some meeting or a lecture or perhaps a waiting room in a station, where the atmosphere is full of noise, smoke, the smell of tobacco and all the other things that affect me physically. Even then my feeling of love for everyone is as strong as it is under this sky and on this lovely spot. People think that I am conceited or a hypocrite when I teIl them that grief and sorrow and even death do not affect me. It is not conceit. Love that makes me like that is so natural to me that I am always surprised that people can question it. And I feel this unity not only with human beings. I feel it with trees, with the sea, with the whole world around me. Physical differentiations no longer exist. I am not speaking of the mental images of a poet; I am speaking of reality. ‘
When Krishnamurti stopped his eyes were shining, and there was in him that specific quality of beauty which easily appears sentimental or artificial when described in words, and yet is so convincing when met with in real life. It did not seem magnetism that radiated from him but rather an inner illumination that is hard to define , and that manifests itself as sheer beauty. I now experienced the feeling we sometimes have when confronted by strong impressions of Nature. Reaching the top of a mountain, or the soft breezes of early spring, with the promise of daffodils and leafy woods, can produce occasionally such states of unsophisticated contentment.
Uit: Rom Landau, ‘ Krishnamurti in Carmel’, in: God is My Adventure , 1935.