The Pilgrim and his Holy Pilgrimage

Part 1. The Pilgrim and his Holy Pilgrimage

Chapter 5. Krishnaji answers common criticisms about the teachings.

Krishnamurti does not speak anything new

There is nothing new under the sun. Everything has been thought out, every manner of expression has been given to thought, every point of view has been shown. What has been said will always be said and therefore there can never be anything new from the ordinary point of view -you can only vary the expressions, using different words, different connotations and so on.

But to a man who desires to test anything, any idea for himself, everything becomes new. If there is a desire to get beyond the mere illusions of words, beyond the expressions of thought, beyond all philosophies, and all sacred books, then, in that experiment, everything becomes new, clear, vital.

Krishnamurti gives no positive instruction

Now you will say that I have given you no constructive or positive instruction. Beware of the man who offers you positive methods, for he is giving you merely his pattern, his mould. If you really live, if you try to free the mind and heart from all limitation -not through self-analysis and introspection, but through awareness in action- then the obstacles that now hinder you from the completeness of life will fall away. This awareness is the joy of meditation -meditation that is not the effort of an hour, but which is action, which is life itself.

Krishnamurti is difficult to understand

It is not a question of understanding me. Why should you understand me? Truth is not mine, that you should understand me. You find my words difficult to understand because your minds are suffocated with ideas. What I say is very simple. It is not for the select few. It is for anyone who is willing to try. I say that if you would free yourselves from ideas, from beliefs, from all the securities that people have built up through centuries, then you would understand life.

You can free yourselves only by questioning, and you can question only when you are in revolt -not when you are stagnant with satisfying ideas. When your minds are suffocated with beliefs, when they are heavy with knowledge acquired from books, then it is impossible to understand life.

But most of us do not want to be free; we want to keep what we have gained, either in virtue or in knowledge or in possessions; we want to keep all these. Thus burdened we try to meet life, and hence the utter impossibility of understanding it completely.

So the difficulty lies not in understanding me, but in understanding life itself.

I am afraid that it is not the learned who will understand... What I am saying is not only applicable to the leisured class, to the people who are supposed to be intelligent, well-educated -but also to the so-called masses. Who are keeping the masses in daily toil? The intelligent, those who are supposedly learned. Isn't that so? But if they were really intelligent they would find a way to free the masses from daily toil. What I am saying is applicable not only to the learned, but to all human beings. The man in the street is you...

What is there in what I am saying that is so difficult or dangerous for the average man? I say that to know love, kindliness, considerateness, there cannot be egotism. There must not be subtle escapes from the actual through idealism. I say that authority is pernicious, not only the authority imposed by another, but also that which is unconsciously developed through the accumulation of self-protective memories, the authority of the ego. I say that you cannot follow another to comprehend reality. Surely, all this is not dangerous to the individual, but it is dangerous to the man who is committed to an organization and desires to maintain it, to the man who desires adulation, popularity and power. What I say about nationalism and class distinction is dangerous to the man who benefits by their cruelties and degradation.

Comprehension, enlightenment, is dangerous to the man who subtly or grossly enjoys the benefits of exploitation, authority, fear.

Krishnamurti is not practical in actual life

What is it that we call actual life? Earning money, exploiting others and being exploited ourselves, marriage, children, seeking friends, experiencing jealousies, quarrels, fear of death, the inquiry into the hereafter, laying up money for old age -all these we call daily life.

Now to me, truth or the eternal becoming of life cannot be found apart from these. In the transient lies the eternal -not apart from the transient.

When we look to life as a means to acquisition, whether of things or of ideas, when we look to life as a school in which to learn, in which to grow, then we are dependent upon that self-consciousness, upon that limitation... But if we become utterly individual, completely self-sufficient, alone in our understanding, then we do not differentiate between actual living and truth, or God.

You know, because we find life difficult, because we do not understand all the intricacies of daily action, because we want to escape from that confusion, we turn to the idea of an objective principle (Truth), and so we differentiate, we distinguish truth as being impractical, as having nothing to do with daily life. Thus Truth or God becomes an escape to which we turn in days of conflict and trouble. But if, in our daily life, we would find out why we act, if we would meet the incidents, the experiences, the sufferings of life wholly, then we would not differentiate practical life from impractical truth.

This part of the book contains bits of reports of spontaneous discourses about life and reality, given at different times, and is not intended, therefore, to be read consecutively or hurriedly as a novel or as a systematised philosophical treatise.

The Pilgrim and his Holy Pilgrimage

Part 1. The Pilgrim and his Holy Pilgrimage

Jiddu Krishnamurti. The Pilgrim and his Holy Pilgrimage is a very rare selection of Krishnamurti writings.