Jiddu Krishnamurti, "THE IDEAL vs WHAT IS", Discussion Group, 21st December 1947, Madras, India

Fear exists not by itself but only in relationship to something either external or inside oneself. You are always afraid of something. Fear is the result of (i) doing something which you would not like others to know or (ii) your being uncertain. Thus, fear will cease only when you face 'what is'.

Some say that fear can be got rid of by making an effort or by having the strength or the courage to overcome fear. All effort, will-power, struggle means conflict and conflict cannot lead to cessation of fear.

Why do you not face 'what is'? It is because of the tendency in you to 'become' the ideal, You don't know 'what is' and yet you don't like it, and you would like to become something else which is your ideal, which is naturally intensifying the conflict and the fear. The ideal does not exist nor is it understood. When you understand this and when you don't pursue this 'becoming', then fear ceases and you face 'what is'.
 
From this it is clear that your ideas about ideals and methods to achieve your ideals are all wrong and should be thrown overboard. This gives you release from a really great burden.

~~~How Do You See This Earth?~~~

Neil Moores................For comparison and in connection with this conversation; historically, one can distinguish four different world-views on reality:
1. Physical realism. Only the physical world exists, so it is observing itself.
2. Solipsism. Only the mind exists, so the physical world is like a dream created by the mind.
3. Dualism. The physical world exists, but is also observed by another higher world beyond it.
4. Virtual realism. The physical world is a construct generated by non-physical quantum processing.

 

 

David Grimm..........I think there is one more world view not mentioned above - pantheism, which is similar to the Vedanta philosophy.

 

 

We live where all that we see is impermanent......

how deep it goes

what it is connected to

the very nature of who we are is when analyzed by thought debatable....

and isn't that kinda funny?

that reality isn't self evident?

because it's the self that distorts reality....

like the double slit experiment?

 

knowing creates illusions

thought is the main ingredient of maya

reality is hidden from the created

 

we go to sleep

we wake up

 

in 1976 i went to sleep

and dreamed life as a fundamental christian

in Lamb of God

in 1978 i got kicked out

and that woke me up

 

from thought stilled by true belief the best drug of all

to uncertainty & anxiety knowing life is on a razor's edge

 

i go to sleep dreaming i'm one thing

then reality wakes me up saying no you're not

 

i've done this a few times

i guess i'm always trying to be comfortable

find an image & live behind it

make things easy

live by habit

sleepwalk

pave reality with the asphalt of thought

 

i came to California to caddie @ Pebble Beach

be in play to visit my mother & brother's family

but by death or life they've all flown the coup

the mother died

and The Old Folk's Home

an empty nest

 

it's time to wake up

again

 

impermanence

change

seeing life most differently

with each passing decade

 

death to life

old wineskins can't hold new wine

manna from heaven lasts only for today

 

we live in the moment

and when we die?

 

that would be the ever-new now

the timeless moment?

 

the awakening.....

from the dream of this lifetime

 

going to sleep

waking up

 

thought

death

 

illusions & maya

truth & reality

 

that's how i see this earth......

that seems to be the game of consciousness

we play here.

 

:)

 

 

~~~~~~World of Emptiness~~~~~~

 

   All descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. Yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. That is a mistake. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

   The universe is an empty drum vibrating. ~ David Boem & Jiddu Krishnamurti

   The word is not the thing.
   The description is not the described. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

~~~All of the Personal Dramas of Our Impermanence~~~

 

 

So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-...down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama. ~ Alan Watts ...from "The Nature of Consiousness"; also published as "What Is Reality?" (1989)

~~~Who Can Lead Us Out Of This Mess We're In?~~~

  

 

   Society is not changed by example. Society may reform itself, it may bring about certain changes through political or economic revolution, but only the religious man can create a fundamental transformation in society; and the religious man is not he who practices starvation as an example to impress society. The religious man is not concerned with society at all, because society is based on acquisitiveness, envy, greed, ambition, fear. That is, mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition. Whereas, the truly religious man is totally outside of society, because he is not ambitious, he has no envy, he is not following any ritual, dogma or belief; and it is only such a man who can fundamentally transform society, not the reformer. The man who sets out to be an example merely breeds conflict, strengthens fear, and brings about various forms of tyranny.
   It is very strange how we worship examples, idols. We don't want that which is pure, true in itself; we want interpreters, examples, masters, gurus, as a medium through which to attain something - which is all sheer nonsense, and is used to exploit people. If each one of us could think clearly from the very beginning, or re-educate ourselves to think clearly, then all these examples, masters, gurus, systems, would be absolutely unnecessary, which they are anyhow.

         
   Madras, India | 2nd Public Talk 15th January 1956

The Desire To Be Aware Is The Only Activity Of The Sleeper, The Dreamer........

   Awareness is from moment to moment, it is not the cumulative effect of self-protective memories. Awareness is not determination nor is it the action of will. Awareness is the complete and unconditional surrender to what is, without rationalization, without the division of the observer and the observed. As awareness is non-accumulative, non-residual, it does not build up the self, positively or negatively. Awareness is ever in the present and so, non-identifying and non-repetitive; nor does it create habit.
   Be aware; there is a fundamental difference between being and becoming. To become aware you make effort and effort implies resistance and time, and leads to conflict. If you are aware in the moment there is no effort, no continuance of the self-protective intelligence. You are aware or you are not; the desire to be aware is only the activity of the sleeper, the dreamer. Awareness reveals the problem completely, fully, without denial or acceptance, justification or identification, and it is freedom which quickens understanding. Awareness is a unitary process of the observer and the observed.
   Krishnamurti Ojai, California | 4th Public Talk 1946

   Most of you are faced by some kind of crisis, with regard to money, or people, or love, or death; and when you are caught up in such a crisis you have to choose, to decide. How do you decide? Your decision springs from fear, want, sensation. So you are merely postponing; you are choosing what is convenient, what is pleasant, and therefore you are merely creating another shadow through which you have to pass. Only when you feel the absurdity of your present existence, feel it not just intellectually, but with your whole heart and mind - when you really feel the absurdity of this continual choice - then out of that awareness is born discernment. Then you do not choose: you act. It is easy to give examples, but I shall give none, for they are often confusing.
   So to me, awareness does not result from the struggle to be aware; it comes of its own accord when you are conscious with your whole being, when you realize the futility of choice. At present you choose between two things, two courses of action; you make a choice between this and that; one you understand, the other you do not. With the result of such choice, you hope to fill your life. You act according to your wants, your desires. Naturally, when that desire is fulfilled, action has come to an end. Then, since you are still lonely, you look for another action, another fulfillment. Each one of you is faced with a duality in action, a choice between doing this or that; but when you are aware of the futility of choice, when you are aware with your whole being, without effort, then you will truly discern.
   You can test this only when you are really in a crisis; you cannot test it intellectually, when sitting at your ease and imagining a mental conflict. You can learn its truth only when you are face to face with an insistent demand for choice, when you have to make a decision, when your whole being demands action. If in that moment you realize with your whole being, if in that moment you are aware of the futility of choice, then out of that comes the flower of intuition, the flower of discernment. Action born of that is infinite; then action is life itself. Then there is no division between action and actor; all is continuous. There is no temporary fulfillment which is soon over.
   Krishnamurti Alpino, Italy | 2nd Public Talk, 4th July, 1933

~~~~What's Our Problem?~~~~~~~

 "Relationship is our problem, and not the idea about relationship not at any one particular level but at all the levels of our existence."

 

 

    Jiddu Krishnamurti

~~~~~~~~A Sower Went Out To Sow~~~~~~~~

   There are only two disappointments in this life: the first is when you don't get what you want, and the second is when you do.

   How can I live a life of fulfillment, when the most important thing that exists in all of creation, the creator.....seems....abscent? Looking for life in the things of this world, in their pleasures, always trapped in the realm of beginnings and endings? Sex? Power? Position? Knowledge? Always seeking the timeless in the dreamworld of time? Lost in illusions? Wandering through impermanence? I explored what society, mankind, had to offer. Limited by my conditioning, I had not the eyes to see.

   When you try, and fail, it's like Dylan's lyrics in Love Minus Zero/No Limit: "There's no success like failure and failure's no success at all." Negation, it's the way I navigated through the illusions of this life, on my spiritual pilgrimage, and every path that I took in the end reached a dead end. Failure? Negation? Dead Ends?  What good could spring from such a meandering life?

   Questions. I started asking God questions. Not with my head, full of images, but with my broken heart, and these questions were the seeds that a sower went out to sow. Honest questions born within personal brokeness. Genuine questions, holding out no hope of becoming anything at all. Questions that abandoned all paths, even myself, and most of these questions were a simple one.....why?

   Seeds in fertile ground, watered by the spiritual rains, nurtured by timeless love, the answers to my questions were born in their due season. Never as I expected, always new, of their own accord, and nature. And what fruit was born of all this? Only, trust in the life that sustains me, like a little child, and thankfulness, for all that I have been given.

  It's an impermanent, and violent, dreamworld we live in. All stocked up with maya. Born into it, the darkness of the abstract image. the sterility of thought, we are blind to the timeless. Born into Plato's Cave, we enter a realm where God seems to play Hide and Seek, and we have not the ability to find our way out, or our way home.

  Cosmic Consciousness? Enlightenment? Spiritual Ambition? How can you say you've become somebody when in the end you're not there?  When you see that everything's alive? That you are That? That the knower, the seeker, was always an illusion, and that God was hiding in the place we never expected God to be....inside us all....inside of everything?

  A sower went out to sow, we all ask the same questions and the difference in our answers springs from their source, as the life that asks them, also answers them.

   Thou Art That. 

~~~~~~What Happened To The Knower?~~~~~~

 

 

Advaita (Nonduality, Oneness, One Love)

In Advaita Vedanta, the knower is the last to go. What comes after the knower? Silence! There is nothing else.

Just think how much knowledge you've gathered all these years. Reading so many books. Meditating for years. Seeing so many teachers. Having so many discussions, debates, arguments. Can't you see now this is what's been holding you back? This is what has been holding you back. For you have believed that you're the knower. For you have to become a knower to become free. Yet no one has to know anything for there is absolutely nothing to know. Why is there nothing to know? Because there is only omnipresence, infinity, absolute reality and there is no name for this.

In other words, you cannot know absolute reality. You cannot know pure awareness. As long as there is someone who knows about it, it doesn't exist. It's only when you put an end to knowing that you become the Self. The Self has no shape, no form, no identity. It is no thing. Yet you are that. What are you going to do about it?

~ Robert Adams

...from "The Knower Is The Last To Go!" - January 9th, 1992

~~~Mystery Religion and Personal Religion~~~

   There isn't any adam and eve ashamed of their nakedness within the mystical feminine, these ladies, pictured above. It's a celebration of all of nature, this life, and there seems to be no personal religion and it's judgements clouding their consciousness, at all. It's like The Spearmint Rhino in Las Vegas, Nevada in the late single digit years of the beginning of  the 2000s, except the equation for bodily pleasure doesn't involve any Ben Franklins, a world we have created here in The Great American Spiritual Desert. In Las Vegas 'the savage heart of the american dream' it's most always an orgy 'controlled by money'. The painting above is a celebration of youth. Either way, it's this kind of personal freedom that personal religions have no desire to allow, as their Gods always seem to be dressed up in holy robes, or a business suit.

   Empires and religions walk hand in hand down the corridors of time as The King or The Caesar have a special audience, the preemminent relationship, with their God, or gods. Heirarchial control rests at the top of every totalitarian pyramid of power, be it held by a king, emperor, priest, or shepherd. Speaking for God and telling everyone what God wants them to do is every psychopaths wet dream. When religion gets personal, personal freedom vanishes. Brave New World. 1984. The former ecumenical christian community, Lamb of God, Incorporated. When you have that kind of power it's like an addictive drug, something you have to use, for when you really get down to it all of any society's behaviors can be controlled.

   Constantine and the cannonization of The Bible. Justinian I and the doctrinational elimination of reincarnation. Christianity lifted from obscurity by a dying Roman Empire and shaped in content by two Roman Caesars. Christianity is an extremely personal religion for it guarantees the salvation of your soul, he self, the little you. No longer do you have to fear death for your consciousness will be delivered into eternity by your own personal savior, Jesus, and through what he did you will be able to live forever, in Heaven, with God, and the other people he saved. That power a personal religion gives to the organization that represents God in this world is the deepest penetration and most controlling hook one person can have over another. Knowing God's Will for you creates two classes of people: those who know, and those who are told. An elite class, the master race spiritually speaking, and the common man who needs their help. Personal religions get really personal in their control of all that is personal, and that's why they're the best political religions ever invented. The Roman Empire and The United States of America, so what's the difference between these two? One sold religion 'over the counter', one 'under the counter' due to 'prohibition', but either way their personal religion was sold, it was toxic. The implosion of  Lamb of God personally illustrates just how personally violent personal leaders of personal religions can get, for it's just what happens when you try to establish, and manipulate, that which is sacred. The genocide of the Native American Peoples and the theft of their continent, the religious crusades and all their veiled conquests, The Final Solution of The 3rd Reich and mass extermination, the psychic slaughtering of all the sheep in Lamb of God, all of these holocausts, are examples of how personal religions go toxic. Doctrines that divide the whole, festering the belief that they are the best, that god is on their side, and they the chosen ones, and that all other non believers have no value whatsoever, such are the toxic mutations personal religion manifests, in mankind's consciousness.

   What in time is released into the timeless? What besides That Which Is can reside in both places? Is time just an illusion? What survives death? Mystery religion say that All Is One and the creator of all, That Which Is, is all around us and dancing within this temporary maya, this violent world, our earth, and all of it's seeming seperateness. Mystery religions tear at the veils of the illusions of thought, beg us leave the confines of Plato's Cave, awake from the dream, open our eyes, and see things as they actually are, timeless. The Life is within all of us, no one besides ourselves holds the key of our being alive, to all,  and to everything. Through the valley of the shadow of death, all this seemingly violent impermanence, space time, where everything comes and goes, is born and dies, has it's beginning, and then? The End. Mystery religion embraces the everchanging dance of maya, trusting the life, it is elways dying, always being reborn anew, in the moment; while personal religion, hangs on to what it's got, the illusion, for dear life.

   Mystery religion is molten, fluid, organic, alive and not fixated, while personal religion is set in doctrine, belief, and all the rigidity that the dead words of set cannons brings to consciousness. I've vacillated between these two religions all my life, from spiritualist hippie, to fundamental christian, and now, some kind of vedantist who really doesn't know a thing, but trusts the life that is within us all, like a little child, thankful for all that I have been given.

   Old wineskins can't hold new wine, and maybe next lifetime, I'll be frolicking in the springtime of our youth with those naked girls, having the freedom to be lost, and dance to the mystery. It sure wasn't in this lifetime, until I walked in the door of The Spearmint Rhino in the winter of 2005, and I was 55 years old.

  Life isn't death's opposite, birth is. Life is something altogether different and the only way to 'discover this' is, to live your life, not try to hold onto it, with thought and belief, for old wineskins can't hold new wine. Life is too expansive, alive, connected, whole, sacred, and one for that to happen. Life can not be held in a rigid vessel, for how could time ever contain, that which is timeless?

  Dead trees don't move with the wind.

  

~~~~~Sideways Glances~~~~~

sometimes

 when you're on the move

from one place

 to another

traveling through unknown parts

you see things

 that remind you

 of things

you have not known

in this life

 

things

that seem

timeless

 

like when

 you were young

and

thought you'd find

 what you were looking for

over

 the next horizon

something

fulfilling

something

permanent

 

but death

swallows the moment

and time

separates us from

our loved ones

why

 should we expect

 more

than this?

 

is it that we're in a dream?

and those moments

remind us

that we are dreaming?

 

between rock and sunlight

matter dances

in all manner

of intricate forms

such design

so?

where did all that

 come from?

 

love, death, and beauty

are one

 

only in a dream

does love seem to die

then

become lost

 

in my dreams

i'm always going somewhere

figuring some thing out

with other people

trying

to resolve it

be free

 

get to where i'm going

 

kinda what i do

when i wake up

every morning

 

inbetween times

sideways glances

 

dreams

within

dreams

 

until

the sun

rises

 



Shakespeare and Religion by Aldous Huxley

Shakespeare and Religion by Aldous Huxley

~~~Our Symbols Are Ourselves~~~

and you can't Take That with you ..........................

Kinfonet Quote of the Day: To worship another is to worship oneself; the image, the symbol, is a projection of oneself.

~~~Kinfonet Quote of the Day~~~

Kinfonet Quote of the Day: One takes comfort, security, in any form of illusion. And man apparently needs many illusions.

You can cross reference Jiddu Krishnamurti quotes on this site by topic~~~and this is a great way to explore different facets of spirituality~~~and a very good resource for a meditative jumpstart :)

~~~~~~Becoming Somebody~~~~~~~

  The Horror~~~The Horror~~~~The Horror. Isn't it a damn shame that when you're young and have all that good energy you have to consider becoming somebody~~~measuring yourself with all the rest~~~psychically wrestling with all comparison and envy~~~anxiety and never knowing~~~exactly where you're headed~~~and where it's all gonna end~~~or~~~as Krishnamurti put it~~~in choice there is no freedom. So we follow the artists and listen to the music of our generation~~~and watch a lot of medias and TV~~~taking in society's cues~~~as to how one should be~~~becoming lost~~~in our own conditioning~~~trying to grow our psychic roots into the truth of what is~~~and longing for a world view~~~that is true and real and fulfilling. Psychological becoming is a bitch~~~it robs you of~~~just being~~~who you are~~~and besides that~~~it really doesn't exist~~~it's an illusion~~~Maya~~~just the measure of  insanity needed to make things seem what they are not~~~and isn't that~~~the nature of this world in which we live? We're all fragile human beings~~~all with a wide range of capacities~~~and if you make it to The Today Show and Willard Scott features your longevity on national TV~~~don't worry~~~he won't ask you if you became somebody~~~he'll just wanna know what it is that you do everyday~~~or~~~what is it that you still like to do. So~~~Be Who You Are~~~don't waste your energy on trying to become something different~~~life is for living~~~not accumulation~~~'cause you can't take anything at all~~with you. There is no such a thing as a comfortable life~~~and there is no psychological security~~~for~~~Impermanence~~~does not allow for such things to exist~~~in this world~~~of ours.

~~~~~~~Like A Rolling Stone~~~~~~~

~~~~~~The Spiritual Pilgrimage~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~Back From The Dead~~~~~~

Political Wackjobs: ~~~~~~~~~Just Desert~~~~~~~~~: " 'Why are you going there? It's just desert.' This is what the convenience store clerk told my brother~~~when he said~~~we wer..."

The Spiritual Pilgrimage Blog RIP August 1st 2010

There are many things that happen to us within this violent universe. Things we do to each other. Things we do to ourselves. Within the horribly twisted duality of all the lives that have been led some of us have had a Sophie's Choice to make~~~even responsible for the suffering and death of innocence~~~or someone you loved more than life itself. Sophie had to choose which of her two children would live or die. People driving cars have maimed and killed strangers and loved ones. Fathers have shot and killed their sons, and sons fathers~~~hunting in the woods. Too many military scenarios to mention. Oppenheimer and The Bomb and designers of all types of killing machines. And what do you do with that? Say I didn't? But our brother and sister human beings have been visited with every tragedy imaginable.

How does one put forth an ideal or fundamental belief system as the all encompassing truth? Deal with this messy universe by cleaning it all up with words and thought? Is it that they want to be right and then tell all the others what's right and wrong? No system of thought can embrace the wild duality of things as they exist in this world. There can be no path to truth~~~as Krishnamurti put it Truth is a Pathless Land. Truth is a living thing and only that life that is can embrace us~~~and it~~~all. This is something that thought can not contain. It just Is.

And why do we end up with such tragedy? Such heartache? One thing about this world~~~we pass through it. Have we been somewhere else before? Will death lead us to somewhere different? And where do you find such answers? Not in books~~~although many of the best sellers are such~~~paint by numbers spiritual books.

If there are any questions their answers lie inside of you. Here. In the moment.

One. All is one. Connected. Whole. Alive. Sacred. One.

What Meaning Does This Illusion Hold?

Does God throw us out in the spiritual woods of space time just to see if we can find our way back home? To see in a moment that which is timeless~~~through all the Maya of nature's turnings? The forest for the trees? To see things as they actually are~~~though they seem to be something else~~~through the lens of thought? Or maybe it's a joke how far from the truth we are~~~we all come to~~~when we think we've arrived? It's for sure in this world of duality someone ends up taking every dead end path. Hell~~~I've been on a lot of them. Thank God for figuring a way to clean up all this mess he started with the Big bang~~~cause every galaxy has a black hole at it's center. Death is at the end of everything~~~and that~~~is beautiful. All illusions gotta end don't ya know? And what does it all mean?