The Teachings of U. G. Krishnamurti. U. G. Krishnamurti

prejudices and predilections. So if you want to discover the truth for yourself, whatever it is, you are not in a position to either accept or reject. You assume that there is such a thing as truth you assume that there is such a thing as reality (ultimate or otherwise) — it is that assumption that is creating the problem, the suffering, for you.

      Look here, I want to experience God, truth, reality or what you will, so I must understand the nature of the experiencing structure inside of me before I deal with all that. I must look at the instrument I am using. You are trying to capture something that cannot be captured in terms of your experiencing structure, so this experiencing structure must not be there in order that the other thing may come in. What that is, you will never know. You will never know the truth, because it's a movement. It's a movement! You cannot capture it, you cannot contain it, you cannot express it. It's not a logically ascertained premise that we are interested in. So, it has to be your discovery. What good is my experience? We have thousands and thousands of experiences recorded — they haven't helped you. It's the hope that keeps you going — "If I follow this for another ten years, fifteen years, maybe one of these days I will...." because hope is the structure.

       Q: So he spends a lifetime and finally discovers that he's discovered nothing.

      UG: Nothing. That's the discovery. So-called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to discover. That will be a very shocking thing — "Why the hell have I wasted all my life?" It's a shocking thing because it's going to destroy every nerve, every cell, even the cells in the marrow of your bones. I tell you, it's not going to be an easy thing, it's not going to be handed over to you on a gold platter. You have to become completely disillusioned, then the truth begins to express itself in its own way. I have discovered that it is useless to try to discover the truth. The search for truth is, I have discovered, absurd, because it's a thing which you cannot capture, contain, or give expression to.

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       Q: Can you describe and communicate your state?

      UG: You see, the moment I try to communicate something, it is gone; it is only a shadow of it; that's not it.

       Q: Is it an incommunicable experience?

      UG: No, it cannot be experienced. You cannot communicate what you cannot experience. I don't want to use those words, because 'inexpressible' and 'incommunicable' imply that there is something which cannot be communicated, which cannot be expressed. I don't know. There is an assumption that there is something there which cannot be expressed, which cannot be communicated. There is nothing there. I don't want to say there is nothing there, because you will catch me — you will call it 'emptiness', 'void' and all that sort of thing. (Laughter)

      I can only put it this way: whatever is there cannot be experienced — whether there is anything there, I don't know — I have no way of knowing it at all. To put it in your own Vedantic terminology, there is no such thing as the unknown at all. Whatever you know of what is called the 'unknown' is not the unknown. Whether there is any such thing as the unknown, I really don't know. Whatever you know of that unknown, whatever you experience of what you call the 'unknown', is not the unknown, because it has become part of your knowledge.

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      What do you want? Tell me, what is it? Look here, you can't ask for a thing which you don't know, and you don't know a thing about this — now or then — even assuming for a moment that you are an enlightened man, you have no way of knowing anything about it. This can never become a part of your knowledge.

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      This has understood that it is not possible to experience anything any more. I don't know if I quite make myself clear. The individuality, the isolation, the separation (or whatever you want to call it) is not there any more. What separates you, what isolates you, is your thought — it creates the frontiers, it creates the boundaries. And once the boundaries are not there, it is boundless, limitless. Not that you can experience that boundlessness and limitlessness of your consciousness; the content of your consciousness is so immense that you can't say anything about it. That is why I use the words "It's a state of not knowing." You really don't know. But how do you know that you do not know? It's not that you say to yourself that you do not know; but in relation to the ordinary state of consciousness you have no way of knowing that at all — nobody has any way. There is not even an attempt on your part to grasp something.

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      You don't accumulate experiences. If you want to experience one thing, the whole series of mysteries are there knocking on your door. That is not an experience at all. You are interested in experiencing the ultimate reality, truth, God, God knows what; but it's futile for you to attempt to experience a thing which you cannot experience. It doesn't mean that it is beyond the experiencing structure — "It's a thing which I cannot describe, which I cannot...." — you see, it's not all that stuff; the experiencing structure comes to an end. If you don't recognize what you are looking at — that flower as a flower, that rose as a rose — it means you are not there . What are you? You are nothing but a bundle of all these experiences, the knowledge you have about them.

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      I see, and I don't know what I'm looking at. My sensory perceptions are at their peak capacity, but still there is nothing inside of me which says "That is green. That is brown. You have white hair. You wear glasses...." The knowledge I have about things is in the background — it is not operating. So, "Am I awake? Am I asleep?" — I have no way of knowing it for myself. That is why I say that in this consciousness there is a total absence of any division into wakeful, dreaming and deep-sleep states. This may be called turiya (to use your Sanskrit term) — not transcending these things; a total absence of this division.

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       Q: There are no dreams in your world?

      UG: In a way, the whole of life is like a great big dream. I am looking at you, but I really don't know anything about you — this is a dream, a dream world — there is no reality to it at all. When the experiencing structure is not manipulating consciousness (or whatever you want to call it), then the whole of life is a great big dream, from the experiential point of view — not from this point of view here; but from your point of view. You see, you give reality to things — not only to objects, but also to feelings and experiences — and think that they are real. When you don't translate them in terms of your accumulated knowledge, they are not things; you really don't know what they are.

       Q: So, this state of not knowing is like living in a dream?

      UG: To you. In relation to the reality you give to things, you would call this state of not knowing a 'dream'. I really don't even know whether I am alive or dead.

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      Here there is no such thing as reality any more, let alone the ultimate reality. I function in the world as if I accept the reality of everything the way you accept it. For example (I always ask this), is it possible for you to experience the three-dimensional space in which you are functioning? No. You must have knowledge — length so many feet, width, height so many feet. How can you experience the three-dimensional space except through knowledge? So even this cannot be experienced — let alone the fourth dimension — we really don't know about it. So I can say that the walls don't exist for me, in the sense that there is no direct experience of the wall over there. That does not mean that I will knock myself against the wall when I move in that direction. It's like the water flowing: when there is an obstacle to the water, there is an action there — either it overflows or it takes a diversion. And that action is possible only when the knowledge that is there in the background comes into operation — then there is an action there. But here and now, when I begin to walk in that direction, there is no question of an obstruction or anything there.

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