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

this is not an experience at all.

      The saints are trying to tell you, so they are always in the field of duality; whereas the sage or seer, or whatever you want to call him, is in the state of undivided consciousness. He does not know that he is a free man, so for him there is no question of trying to free others. He is just there, he talks about it, and then he goes. Gaudapada had no disciples — he refused to teach anybody. Ramana Maharshi at least was our contemporary — we now something about him. He taught nobody, initiated nobody. Such a man does not depend upon the authority of anybody. Great teachers never use any authority, and they do not interpret the saints. The saints help you to look at things differently, to interpret things differently.

      You cannot become a sage through any sadhana (spiritual practice); it is not in you hands. A sage cannot have a disciple, a sage cannot have a follower, because it is not an experience that can be shared. (Even an ordinary experience, you can't share with others. Can you tell somebody who has never experienced sex what the sex experience is like?) The sages and seers are original and unique because they have freed themselves from the entire past. (Even the mystic experience is part of the past.) Not that the past goes for such a man; but for him the past has no emotional content — it is not continually operative, coloring the actions.

      This is the ultimate: You have to totally surrender yourself. There is no jnana marga (path of wisdom); there is no marga (path) at all. It is total surrender — throwing in the towel, throwing in the sponge — and what comes out of that is jnana (wisdom). it is not surrender in the ordinary sense of the word; it means there isn't anything you can do. That is total surrender — total helplessness. It can't be brought about through any effort or volition of yours. If you want to surrender to something, it's only to get something. That's why I use the words 'a state of total surrender'. It's a state of surrender where all effort has come to an end, where all movement in the direction of getting something has come to an end. All wanting, be it this wanting or that wanting, is totally absent.

      But, first of all, there's no hunger. A hungry man will do anything and everything to satisfy his hunger, and then he will discover that there is nothing he can do to satisfy it. Even the hope must go that some miracle will happen and it will descend upon you from somewhere. If there is nothing you can do to satisfy your hunger, something will happen. All those to whom this kind of thing has happened have really worked hard, touched rock-bottom, staked everything. It does not come easily. It is not handed over to you on a gold platter by somebody.

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      It is a very simple thing — so simple that the complex structure does not want to leave it alone. But at the same time I ask "Is there anything that you can do?" Nobody can create the hunger. I always give the simile of the rice husk: when once it is lighted, it goes on burning, burning, burning, till the whole thing is burnt up. It is a thing which you cannot artificially create. You will probably be inspired or hypnotized by some kind of go-getter or hypnotist — there are so many.

      There is no such thing as experience here. You seem to know. You imagine. Imagination must come to an end. I don't know how to put it. The absence of imagination, the absence of will, the absence of effort, the absence of all movement in any direction, on any level, in any dimension — that is the thing. That is a thing that cannot be experienced at all — it is not an experience. You are interested in experiencing bliss, beatitude, love, God knows what, but that is a worthless thing. If I experience bliss, is that bliss? It is created by the knowledge I have. It is the knowledge. To be free from knowledge is not an easy thing. You are that knowledge — not only the knowledge that you have acquired in this life, but the knowledge of millions and millions of years, everybody's experiences. People have some experiences, you see, and on that they build a tremendous superstructure.

       Q: You say it's a simple thing, but then you say it's a difficult thing.

      UG: No, you see, the thing is so simple that the complex structure does not want to leave it alone.

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      I don't like the articles written about me. You are trying to present me as a religious man, which I am not. You are failing to comprehend the most important thing that I am emphasizing. These articles don't give any idea of what I am expressing. There is no religious content, no mystical overtones at all, in what I am saying. Man has to be saved from the saviours of mankind! The religious people — they kidded themselves and fooled the whole of mankind. Throw them out! That is courage itself, because of the courage there; not the courage you practice.

      What is the good of repeating Abhayam vai Brahman (The ultimate reality is fearlessness)? Fearlessness is not freedom from all the phobias. The phobias are essential for the survival of the organism. You must have the fear of heights and the fear of depths — if that is not there, there is a danger of your falling. But you do not want to teach courage to man to fight on the battlefield. Why do you want to teach him courage? To kill others and get killed himself — that is your culture. Crossing the Atlantic in a balloon or the Pacific on a raft — anybody can do that — that is not courage. Fearlessness is not a silly thing like that.

      Courage is to brush aside everything that man has experienced and felt before you. You are the only one, greater than all those things. Everything is finished, the whole tradition is finished, however sacred and holy it may be — then only can you be yourself — that is individuality. For the first time you become an individual. As long as you depend upon somebody, some authority, you are not an individual. Individual uniqueness cannot express itself as long as there is dependence. You don't have to depend upon any authority; it has an authority of its own. You will never interpret anything, you will never rely on any authority, and yet you won't call yourself 'unique'.

      The problem is that even if such a person doesn't talk, his very presence becomes a model for somebody. The fact that somebody sits here from morning till evening — what can I do about it? Sometimes they go into trances — they say "How can you deny what is happening to me?" and I say "You may do what you like." How can I convince you that I have nothing more than you have? I don't have anything that you don't have. Your wanting something from somebody is the cause of your misery. The end of illusion is the end of you. So you can't be without illusion; you can only replace one illusion with another illusion.

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      It is very difficult to make you understand the absurdity of the whole of sadhana. (I am blocking every escape, as it were. Even that outlet has to be blocked to put you in a corner. You must be choked to death, as it were.) Only a real teacher can find that out and tell you; nobody else. (Not those people who interpret the texts and Puranas — all that is totally unrelated.) Only such a man can talk. And such a man never encourages any kind of sadhana, because he knows that if this kind of a thing has to happen to somebody, that person will not need the help of anybody; in spite of everything it will happen.

      Whatever you are doing is blocking its happening. It is misleading to put it that way, because there is nothing to happen. You don't realize that whatever you are doing is a self-centered activity. Whatever you are doing in any direction is only strengthening or distorting the whole thing. The whole of sadhana is self-centered activity — it is very difficult to understand that. The instrument that you are using is born in the field of cause and effect — it cannot conceive of anything happening without cause and effect — that is why that is not the instrument (to understand this); and there is no other instrument.

      This is acausal. It is a quantum jump. It jumps from here to there — you cannot link up these things. You put me on the other side of the river. You want to cross in a boat. That boat is a leaky boat, and you will sink. There is no other bank, and there is no river to cross, no boat — it is very difficult for you to understand that. You have created an image and put the image on the other side. I say "No, for goodness sake, I am on the same bank, there is no river to cross, and no boatman is necessary!"

      Nobody can guide you. You have no guide lines, because he himself doesn't know. If I knew, I would guide you along. Such a man cannot guide or lead you anywhere. It is not that I am against gurus — not at all.