1. Two Ways to Live

We humans live in two worlds: one we create by our own minds and the one that we share with all human beings. One is imaginary and the other is real.

We may have different ideas about which world our ego belongs to and where lies the line between real and imagined.

 We know what it means to live with the self, the 'me', the so-called ego. That is our conscious life. This book is about life without the self. It may be the best way to live.

This option may sound strange, absurd, frightening, impossible – or pointless.

It should be made clear that we are talking about the self-image, the subjective picture in our mind, with which we identify and which we call the self, the ego.

This feeling arises in childhood and continues throughout life, more or less actively. The self is the centre of our experiences. It reacts to what is happening around us.

Self-image is created in the brain with the help of memory. An unconscious or sleeping person has no self-image. In some sense, self-image is a living thing.

The Self Is a Prison

To Krishnamurti, the self is a prison in which we have locked ourselves. It would be easy to get out and be free, yet most people choose to remain in their personal prison even if they could live free and happy.

Krishnamurti said there are three reasons for this choice.

Firstly, we are used to the current way of life and accept it without seeking alternatives.

Secondly, we don't seem to know of a better way. This does not occur to us because nobody has told us what life without the self would be like.

The third reason is fear. We cling to what we have, to the familiar and safe, even though our current way of life is distressing in many ways.

True or False?

For 66 years, Krishnamurti tried to show that our self is an illusion created by our mind and that beyond it lies a world that can be reached by letting go of all the unnecessary things we have accumulated in our minds. This material has been collected before we were born and will be collected after we die. We pass our burdens on to the next generation, and the cycle continues.

Krishnamurti offered a radical view of the mind and the world. It challenged the established worldview. He wanted to show us a different way of living, but the prerequisite for this is to give up our current self-centred way of life.

His view culminated in two key phrases: the observer is the observed, and we are the world.

Our current way of thinking is based on a flawed and deluded view of the world. According to this view, the world consists of separate parts that interact with each other and evolve.

According to Krishnamurti, this is not true. The separateness of the parts is an illusion created by the mind, and the being we call the self is its direct manifestation.

It is easy to reject Krishnamurti's idea of wholeness because our sense of humanity is based on our individual identities. The self is the central concept in our worldview, and challenging it requires considerable courage.

The Ego Rejects Facts

The truth of this claim is difficult to investigate because our ego does everything in its power to reject doubts about its own existence. When threatened, the self clings even more tenaciously to itself and its beliefs.

The ego cannot see how the internal and external are connected. For Krishnamurti, these two are inseparable; they are one movement, with the inner creating the outer and the outer creating the inner.

If we want to change the world - as every sane person must want - we must start with ourselves and not with others, just because we cannot change others.

Time Is an Illusion

Most people recognize their own shortcomings. Yet they believe that they can become better human beings simply by improving themselves. Krishnamurti rejected this idea of improvement and showed that time cannot help us solve our problems. Understanding is always immediate.

Another of Krishnamurti's radical ideas relates to time. We live in time – or rather, we imagine that we do. To Krishnamurti, time itself is an illusion created by the mind. Without thought, there is no time. There is only this moment in which we imagine yesterday and tomorrow.

The self is a construct of time. It lives in time; in the past and in the future. This moment is all there is; it is the whole world, its history, and its future. It also includes us, the inner observer who observes the external world and makes emphatic conclusions about ourselves and the world.

Understanding this involves the challenge Krishnamurti presents us with: see that separateness and time are self-created, and that this illusory view causes all our inner problems.

If we dive deep into our minds, we will discover that we are not separate from this energy, but that external and internal worlds are intertwined and cannot be separated from each other.

The Reason Lies Deep Within

The energy of the self is insignificant and self-sufficient. When we feel anxious and afraid, we try to get rid of it in many ways, and perhaps we succeed for a moment.

Krishnamurti showed that the root cause of human problems lies deep within the structure of our consciousness and in the way we act and connect with the world.

Fact and fiction mix in our minds, and we can see the dire consequences in the world. Fact is what is actually happening at any given moment; fiction is what we think about it.

World chaos is a fact that anyone can verify by reading the morning paper or watching the evening news. People hate and kill each other because of their beliefs – yet on the other hand, they also admire and love others.

The Me Is a Mine

The most serious consequence of our misconceptions is our misunderstanding of ourselves, and this is what we are about to dismantle.

Our deeply held beliefs are rarely based on facts. They are a mixture of myths and ideas created in our minds. Some of these are true; many of them are not.

Krishnamurti saw how the mind creates a world based on its own fantasies. This world consists of ideas that we have absorbed from our environment. Although people in different countries have different beliefs, the mechanism is the same for everyone, everywhere.

Our mind collects, stores, and uses perceptions. It does this incessantly and mistakes facts for fiction. This can lead us to believe in misconceptions and start living in fantasies of our own creation.

Direct and Indirect Connection

Krishnamurti first identified this mechanism in himself and then in others. Our mind colours the world. What we see is the content of our consciousness, not the external world itself. We soon begin to shape the world to our own liking.

When people think and wish differently, they want to change the world to suit themselves. This creates a mess, exactly the kind of mess we see in the world right now.

It is important to be aware of this pattern. There are two ways to view it: either as an idea or without the self. The latter may seem impossible, but according to Krishnamurti, it definitely is not.

When we see actual danger, we don't think; we act immediately. In that situation, the 'I' is just a useless hindrance. However, we don't recognize the dangers we create in our minds, always associating them with something external.

Seeing without the self is an option that doesn't occur to us when our minds are dominated by thought. Krishnamurti spent decades trying to show that there is another way to live. Without the self, we are in direct contact with 'what is'.

What is encompasses everything; the mind-made realm and beyond. The self denies us access to this world.

Exposure to the Miracle of Life

In this book, we explore what Krishnamurti said about the two ways of living. We are all somewhat familiar with the way we live now. If you think this way is okay, you are probably not interested in exploring the alternative.

However, if you want to explore whether we humans can live without problems, you may wish to embark on a journey of discovery and experience the timeless, inexplicable miracle of life for yourself.

I have been on this journey since 1977, for 48 years. Before that, I had lived 24 years in the world of my ego. After reading Krishnamurti's books, I noticed amazing changes in the way I perceive the world and myself.

I have now read almost all of his books, translated three of them into Finnish, subtitled dozens of his videos, and listened to audio tapes of his talks. I have also read over twenty books about him.

I want to share the knowledge I have acquired because nothing else I have read has empowered and energised me more than Krishnamurti's thoughts.

For this book, I selected material from a large body of work. Rather than simply repeating what Krishnamurti said, I will refer to his words according to my own understanding.

I do not try to 'live by his teachings', because that is impossible. K explains why: life is always more than any teachings, and it must be approached with humility and wonder, which cannot
be explained.

Krishnamurti's teachings are not words that can be repeated or taught to others; they express the flow of life in which each of us lives alone and all of us live together.

This living energy cannot be confined or proclaimed.

The Nine Cores of the Teachings

While writing Krishnamurti's biography, Mary Lutyens asked him to summarise the essence of his teachings. In October 1980, Lutyens received a reply that provided a good starting point for this book.

Krishnamurti wrote his answers in one long paragraph, but I have grouped them into nine key points:

1. Truth is a pathless land.

Truth cannot be found by any organisation, creed, dogma, priest or ritual, by philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. We have to find it through the mirror of relationship, through understanding the contents of our own mind, through observation, not through intellectual analysis, introspective dissection.

2. Images are the cause of our inner problems.

Humans have built an inner fence of security out of religious, political, and personal images. These ideas manifest as symbols, opinions, and beliefs. The burden of these images dominates people's thinking, our daily life, and relationships.

3. The content of consciousness is common to all people.

A person's perception of life is shaped by the concepts that are established in his mind. Man's consciousness consists of his content and is the essence of his existence. The individuality is the name, the form, and superficial culture we acquire from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of our common consciousness. Man is therefore not an individual.

4. Freedom has no motive.

Freedom is not a reaction or a choice. It is man's pretence that because he has a choice, he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward.
Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. 

In observation, one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.

5. Thought is time.

Thought is born of experience and knowledge, and it is inseparable from time and the past.

6. There is no psychological evolution.

Our action is based on knowledge and therefore on time. Man is therefore always a prisoner of the past. Time is the psychological enemy of humanity.

7. The observer is the observed.

When one becomes aware of the movement of one's thoughts, one will discover a division between thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience.

8. Insight causes a mutation in the mind.

When one discovers this basic division is an illusion, then only is there pure observation, which is insight without any shadow of the past, or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation in the mind.

· Total negation is the essence of the positive.

When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.

The Krishnamurti Challenge

Krishnamurti spoke quite extensively about the challenges of life. All the topics I have chosen for this book relate to how we can live right in a world that is, in many ways, depressing and distressing, even frightening.

Krishnamurti was convinced that most of people's problems are self-created and internal, and that they can all be solved.

Even if the world is chaotic, our own mind doesn't have to be. The key is to see what is. The Krishnamurti challenge is to be free to see things as they are, not as we want them to be. The conditioned self is not free; it is tied to a pole and moves within a very limited area. It lives in constant conflict.

The universe knows how to function; we don't have to worry about that. Let's focus on minding our own mind.

The Message of Freedom

Seeing the world correctly reveals to us the amazing energy that permeates all living things. You could even call life a miracle.

Some consider Krishnamurti's teachings to be gloomy and accusatory, even hopeless, because he spoke so often about how bad the world and humanity are.

However, Krishnamurti specifically emphasized that we don't have to live in conflict, fear, and sorrow, but that we can free ourselves from all evil and torment at any time.

He brought us a message of freedom and joy; he did not want anyone to remain trapped in the small space of their mind.

A few days before his death, Krishnamurti told his close friends that they might not understand what they were missing in life if they did not personally discover the mystery of life for themselves.

See Yourself!

Krishnamurti particularly emphasized that he was not teaching anything, but only wanted to point things out and asked people to see for themselves. His words refer to life as each of us encounters it each moment, not as we want it to be. Everyone must see for themselves; through the eyes of others we don't see the world as it is.

The conditioned self does not see correctly and moves within a narrow, limited area. Moreover, it lives in constant conflict.

This is a challenge we must solve. It is not easy, but perhaps possible. However, according to Krishnamurti, it requires living without the self.

Words Are Not Enough

Krishnamurti explicitly forbade interpreting his teachings, yet we all do exactly so when we listen to him or read his texts. We are forced to use words, even though they mean different things to each of us.

The teachings quoted in this book are from Krishnamurti's public speeches or his conversations with individuals or various groups. He wrote two diaries entirely by himself and dictated one. 

In public speeches, Krishnamurti always spoke spontaneously. 

He described hundreds of conversations he had with people who came to see him in his own words, and these were published in four books. After the three Krishnamurti Foundations were established, most of his conversations were recorded and published as transcripts and in books with minor editing.

Focus On the Whole

This book contains material from Krishnamurti's writings, public talks, and conversations with individuals or groups. He wrote two diaries and dictated a third, and many of the other books are edited transcripts of his talks. During these, he always spoke spontaneously, using simple, everyday words.

He repeated his familiar themes over and over again, approaching them from a slightly different angle each time. To him, they were always new and fresh.

Please understand that the essence of the teachings lies not in the words, but in how we take them to heart when we read or hear them. Words themselves have very little meaning; we must go beyond them, as well as beyond the self.

When speaking of himself, Krishnamurti used the pronoun 'he', the word 'speaker', or simply 'K', because he felt that he had no self, no fixed identity. In this book, I will refer to him as 'K'.

In this book, we will go through his works in chronological order. Direct quotations are in quotation marks; otherwise the text is my presentation of the main points of the speeches and discussions.

I have tried to be as accurate as possible, but I encourage you to check the exact wording of any unclear passages on the official Krishnamurti Foundation website.

Don't Miss It!

Krishnamurti has three powerful messages to us. Firstly, he said that we are not individuals. The self is not a fact but a fiction; an imagined entity. The fact is that we are the world.

Secondly, we can never find truth, but truth may find us when we are in direct contact with what is, and there is no self.

Thirdly, to change the world, we must start with ourselves. This doesn't mean getting rid of the self; it means seeing that it is merely a thought. This radical insight leads to a mutation in the brain cells.

The mutation that takes place in the mind was Krishnamurti's bold claim, which he spoke about for 25 years, first in Paris in September 1961. Mutation revolutionizes perception, but requires direct perception and selflessness.

It is pointless to "seek" mutation or try to get rid of the self. A mutation occurs when the brain is in a state of passive awareness. Then it is beyond time and thoughts.

The Only Step

These three insights of Krishnamurti may seem distinct, but they are actually one process that happens either right now or never. The future exists only in our thoughts. If you take this step, there is no longer a self.

This may sound frightening, but it's your ego that is afraid, because it feels threatened – and it is threatened. As K points out, fear is a product of time and has no place in freedom.

This is the core message of Krishnamurti. We either get it or we don't. No explanation can make it clear to anyone, and understanding it with the conditioned mind is totally meaningless.

Don't Waste Your Life

Whether escaping time and separateness is a liberating opportunity or a frightening threat depends on whether our ego is activated when we hear about it.

Freedom is the most wonderful thing a person can experience, but it may sound like for that you must give up everything you love. That is why many people reject the idea and refuse to even find out what it actually is about.

K often said it is fundamental to understand this. It is also urgent. We see what is happening in the world right now ­– in our world! We are all responsible, not just the leaders who misuse their power.

Krishnamurti didn't promise a reward or a diploma to those who understand themselves. However, he appealed to his listeners several times not to waste their lives but to face courageously the miracle in the midst of which they are living.

Seeing the miracle of life cannot be a threat to anyone. It is an opportunity that can be allowed to unfold. I hope reading this book, you will feel it somehow, and you will let the sweet energy of life flow inside your mind.

Please do not try to understand everything written here. Take the words and look behind them. That is enough.

Seven Parts, One Whole

This book has seven parts.

Part one, "Truth Is a Pathless Land," covers his teachings from 1929 to the early 1950s. All talks have been published in text form, but except for one series at Ojai 1949, there are no recordings.

Part two, "The Observer is the Observed," covers five wonderful books from the 1950s. In them, Krishnamurti spoke extensively about education and the revolution of the mind.

The Commentaries on Living is a trilogy based on notes that Krishnamurti made after meeting hundreds of people around the world in private. In them, he describes people's problems
and presents his own suggestions for solutions.

Part three, "The Mutation Transforms the Mind", covers the 1960s, beginning with Krishnamurti's diary from 1961–1962, in which he mentions the word "mutation" for the first time.

Krishnamurti's Notebook is the only book in which K describes his own inner states of consciousness. Two other books from the 1960s, Life Ahead and This Matter of Culture, deal with education.

Part four, "We Are the World", covers six nice books written between 1960 and 1974.

Freedom from the Known is a comprehensive basic guide that presents the central contents of Krishnamurti's teachings concisely.

The Only Revolution is based on Krishnamurti's notes, in which he recounts his encounters with people. The special theme of the book is meditation.

The Urgency of Change consists of Krishnamurti's answers to questions posed to him.

The Impossible Question contains the talks given in Switzerland in 1971.

The Awakening of Intelligence is a collection of talks and discussions from the early 1970s.

In February 1974, Krishnamurti had conversations with Allan W. Anderson, a professor of religious studies. The eighteen conversations were published as a video series and later in a book entitled A Wholly Different Way of Living.

Part five, "All Time Is Now", begins with Krishnamurti's meetings with scientists in 1974, and then delves into his fine dialogues with David Bohm in 1975 and 1976. They are highlighted in a series of fifteen dialogues from 1980, titled The Ending of Time.

Part six, "Beauty and Love", begins with the brilliant book The Beauty of Life, and moves on to the 1980s, the final years of Krishnamurti.

Part seven, "Life as a Miracle", is my brief summary of Krishnamurti's work and significance. It seems to me that many people missed seeing what he was after: the instant liberation of the human mind.

That is "the Krishnamurti Challenge".

Now or Never

This book presents Krishnamurti's teachings at different times and in different contexts. The same themes are dealt with in slightly different ways in different contexts, but it is not a matter of repeating the same thing, but of connecting with the issue at hand with a fresh mind, not with a comparing brain.

The focus is not on Krishnamurti's words, but on life to which the words refer. So all this is about our lives, yours and mine. Ultimately, every word points to something for which there are no words.

Experiencing life as it is—directly—is a powerful, mind-shattering thing. With a quiet mind, we can hear what the noisy mind covers up. Krishnamurti used the word insight, which also means seeing directly.

When our attention is not focused on anything particular, it is focused on everything, or, in Krishnamurti's words, on what is.

Our brains filter out much of what is essential from life, but for Krishnamurti, the mind encompasses everything possible.

When there is no self, life is a miracle. Then Krishnamurti's statements "the observer is the observed" and "I am the world" are true on a personal level.

Krishnamurti emphasized that he does not try to influence anyone, nor does he appeal to our reasoning or emotions. Seeing directly is a very personal matter.

It is time to start our journey.