Becoming Aware  of J.Krishnamurthy

by Jayaram V

Jiddu Krishnamurthy lived form moment to moment, without the conflict of choice and recognition, with total awareness and understanding, and free from the compulsions of a mind that is accustomed to conditioning and the need for security. He was completely original in the sense that whatever he said came out of his present awareness and his unadulterated understanding of the immediate experience. There was no pretension or recognition of any authority on his part. He was free completely and truly. He recognized no authority, neither of Jesus nor of the Buddha nor of his own. He approved no religion or religious dogma that demanded recognition or acceptance or surrender. Throughout his teachings (if you can call it that), he quoted none, recommended no scripture, nor approved any saint or religious guru as an authority figure.

I wonder how he managed to live in that state of complete freedom and stay that way for a life time without being burdened by our compulsion to establish some kind of balance between our material and spiritual needs. It is not easy to lead a life of a choiceless and unconditional awareness and at the same time deal with the challenges of modern life which does not approve even the slightest hint of reservation against an established order or dictates of authority symbols. 

It is difficult to say whether he had any particular aim or goal in life, because to say so means to contradict what he chose to oppose in the first place. He was against all forms of conditioning and recognition of authority. In his opinion to understand the ways of the mind was the means to true awareness and understanding. The first step in gaining true awareness is to understand how the mind builds its own defenses to cope with fear or find security through submission to authority and imitation of experience. Through ones own personal observation and experience, one becomes truly aware of how the conditioned self functions and through that awareness one becomes truly free. This has to be done not because some one told you, not because some one has experienced it and not because you have been prompted by your own fear or expectation. It has to happen on its own, spontaneously, the way a flower blooms or the sky opens up after a heavy shower.

Freedom comes when you are truly free. True freedom is when you are free from everything: your past, your conditioning, your experiences, your knowledge, your reflexive actions and responses, your notions of this and that, your acceptance of authority figures, your memory which is but accumulated experience, and your very awareness that is rooted in the memory of your previous experiences. Freedom does not come through dependence upon or slavery to someone else's opinion or authority. True liberation means unconditional freedom from all limitations and attachments. You are not free as long as you are tied to things that are not truly yours or not established in you. To experience truth you have to become truly aware of it, right at this moment. Truth is not a recollection or restatement of an accumulated memory. It is a direct awareness borne out of a personal experience that cannot be explained or transferred or communicated to others. It begins with self-awareness or true knowledge of oneself, which comes from pure observation that is not tainted by any expectation or notion or theory or compulsion or authority and gives rise to true awareness of self. This in brief is the summary of his entire philosophy. 

What he spoke was not new. He was asking us to free ourselves from our bondage to ignorance that comes from our conditioning and others' knowledge. We can find traces of it in the teachings of the Buddha, the Upanishads and the teachings of Saivism and Vaishnavism. However Jiddu Krishnamurthy put it all in an extraordinarily unique way, that is at once simple, personal, modern and direct in its appeal, without the complexity and pretension of religious jargon, so that no previous study or knowledge of any ism or religion is required to understand it.

When he abandoned the theosophical movement and severed his connection with his mentors, his action was not directed against one specific movement or a group or organization. It was against all forms of authority and conditioning itself. For him it was a necessary first step that was in total conformity with the fundamental shift in his awareness. It was a declaration of freedom, total and complete, from his conditioned past and submission to authority, borne not out of some personal need but out of an awareness of true freedom. He renounced the world and its myriad tentacles of control, just as the Buddha did a few thousand years ago, to regain the simplicity and directness of moment to moment existence. He set aside all manners of recognition, authority, previous knowledge, sense of duality, importance of experience and acceptance of previous conditioning to find the presence of eternity and oneness of existence in the moment of his attention. 

Probably J. Krishnamurthy would not have personally approved what I am trying to do here: quoting him or writing about him. He would have said that whatever I was writing here was not true because it came from my accumulated knowledge, my conditioned self, my notions of authority figures and a myriad other things, but not from my true awareness of pure and direct experience. He would have politely asked me with his big expressive eyes not to quote him as an authority figure or a standard measure of knowledge and wisdom. 

So true to his approach, the best way to view these quotations is to pay attention to them with a fresh mind, free from the compulsions of formal education,  authority of scriptures, personalities, dogmas and religion, accumulated knowledge, experience and mental conditioning. 

Is that possible for ordinary human beings? See for your self. 

Jayaram V
02/28/2007

Excerpts From the Teachings and Speeches of J.Krishnamurthy

• Experience: 
  • One cannot describe or give to another the fullness of an experience. Each one must live it for himself. (ALPINO, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1ST JULY, 1933)
  • Do you have an experience which is not recognized? Do you understand what it means? Because that is after all God, that is the Truth, that is the Eternal or what you will. The moment you have a measure with which to measure, that is not Truth. Our Gods are measurable; we know them previously. Our scriptures, our friends and our religious teachers have so conditioned us that we know what every thing is. All that we are doing is merely this process of recognition. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
• Awareness: 
  • How can you find out what you really feel and think? From my point of view, you can do that only by being aware of your whole life. (ALPINO, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1ST JULY, 1933)
• Authority: 
  • As long as you do not understand the cause of authority, you are but an imitative machine, and where there is imitation there cannot be the rich fulfillment of life. (ALPINO, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1ST JULY, 1933) 
  • You are responsible for such external authorities as religion, politics, morality, for such authorities as economic and social standards. Out of your emptiness, out of your incompleteness, you have created these external standards from which you now try to free yourself. (ALPINO, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1ST JULY, 1933)
• Problems: 
  • Now it is my intention to show that so long as we deal with these problems apart, separately, we but increase the misunderstanding, and therefore the conflict, and thereby the suffering and the pain; whereas, until we deal with the social problem and the religious and economic problems as a comprehensive whole, not as divided, but rather see the delicate and the subtle connection between what we call religious, social or economic problems - until you see this real connection, this intimate and subtle connection between these three, whatever problem you may have, you are not going to solve it. AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND 1ST PUBLIC TALK 28TH MARCH, 1934
• System: 
  • I have no system. I think systems are pernicious things, because they may for the moment alleviate the problems, but if you merely follow a system you are a slave to it. AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND 1ST PUBLIC TALK 28TH MARCH, 1934 
  •  What brings about comprehension is not to search for a new system, but to discover for yourselves, as individuals, not as a collective machine but as individuals, what is false and what is true in the existing system, not to substitute a new system for the old. AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND 1ST PUBLIC TALK 28TH MARCH, 1934
• God: 
  • Sir, why do you want to know whether God is masculine or feminine? Why do we question? Why do we try to find out if there is a God, if it is personal, if it is masculine? Is it not because we feel the insufficiency of living?  AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND TALK TO BUSINESSMEN 6TH APRIL, 1934
  • Our God is merely a means of escape from these things; whereas, to me, there is something much more fundamental, real. I say there is something like God; let us not inquire into what it is. You will find out if you begin to really understand the very conflict which is crippling the mind and heart: this continual struggle for self-security, this horror of exploitation, wars and nationalities, and the absurdities of organized religion. If we can face these and understand them, then we shall find out the real meaning instead of speculating; the real meaning of life, the real meaning of God. AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND TALK TO BUSINESSMEN 6TH APRIL, 1934
  • Do you have an experience which is not recognized? Do you understand what it means? Because that is after all God, that is the Truth, that is the Eternal or what you will. The moment you have a measure with which to measure, that is not Truth. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952

• Completeness of Action: 
  • Only when mind is free of the division of time can true action result. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • When action is born of completeness, not in the division of time, then that action is harmonious and is freed from the trammels of society, classes, races, religions and acquisitiveness. To put it differently, action must become truly individual. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • By individual action I mean action that is born of complete comprehension, complete understanding by the individual, understanding not imposed by others. Where that understanding exists, there is true individuality, true aloneness - not the aloneness of escape into solitude, but the aloneness that is born of the full comprehension of the experiences of life. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • For the completeness of action, mind must be free of this idea of time as yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If mind is not liberated from that division, then conflict arises and leads to suffering and to the search for escapes from that suffering. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
• Security
  • Physical security is a crude form of security, but since it has been impossible for the majority of mankind to attain that security, man has turned to the subtle form of security which he calls spiritual or religious. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • When you are satiated with physical security or when you cannot attain it, you turn to what you call spiritual security. And when you turn to that, you establish and vitalize those things which you call religion and organized spiritual beliefs. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • Because you seek security you establish a form of religion, a system of philosophical thought in which you are caught, to which you become a slave. Therefore, from my point of view, religions with all their intermediaries, their ceremonies, their priests, destroy creative understanding and pervert judgment. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • So security is but escape. And since most people are trying to escape, they have made themselves into machines of habit in order to avoid conflict. They create religious beliefs, ideas; they worship the image of an imitation which they call God; they try to forget their inability to face the struggle by losing themselves in work. All these are ways of escape. 
• Belief in God
  • Most of our conceptions of God, of reality, of truth, are merely speculative imitations. Therefore they are utterly false, and all our religions are based on such falsities.
  • A man who has lived all his life in a prison can only speculate about freedom; a man who has never experienced the ecstasy of freedom cannot know freedom. So it is of little avail to discuss God, truth; but if you have the intelligence, the intensity to destroy the barriers around you, then you will know for yourself the fulfillment of life. You will then no longer be a slave in a social or religious system. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
• Authority: 
  • Now in order to safeguard security, you create authority. Isn't that so? To receive comfort, you must have someone or some system to give you comfort. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • To have security, there must be a person, an idea, a belief, a tradition, that gives you the assurance of security. So in our attempt to find security, we set up an authority and become slaves to that authority. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
  • In our search for security we set up religious ideals that we, in our fear, have created; we seek security through priests or spiritual guides whom we call teachers or masters. Or, again, we seek our authority in the power of tradition - social, economic, or political. STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
• Method: 
  • So I say, do not seek a way, a method. There is no method, no way to truth.STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933
• Immortality: 
  • You have many ideas concerning completeness of life and immortality. But, to me, this immortality, this richness, this completeness of life can only be understood and lived when the mind is wholly free from the limitations, the stupidities, that environment, past and present, inherited or acquired, is continually placing about us. NEW YORK CITY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 11TH MARCH, 1935
• Conditioning: 
  • Now, you are conditioned by environment. You are the result of your past and present environment, and what you express, calling it individuality or self-expression, is nothing but the expression of that conditioning environment. NEW YORK CITY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 11TH MARCH, 1935
  • To me, the true expression of individuality is that intelligence which is awakened through freeing the mind from the conditioning environment of the past and the present. NEW YORK CITY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 11TH MARCH, 1935
• Freedom from Inner Limitations: 
  • Until we discover, through experiment, our subtle and deep limitations, with their reactions, and so free ourselves from them, we shall lead a life of confusion and strife. For these limitations prevent the pliability of mind-emotion, making it incapable of true adjustment to the movement of life. This lack of pliability is the source of our egotistic competition, fear and the pursuit of security, leading to many comforting illusions. OJAI 1ST TALK IN THE OAK GROVE 5TH APRIL, 1936
• Clarity of Thought: 
  • To understand the confusion and misery that exist in ourselves, and so in the world, we must first find clarity within ourselves and this clarity comes about through right thinking. 
  • This clarity is not to be organized for it cannot be exchanged with another. 
  • Clarity is not the result of verbal assertion but of intense self-awareness and right thinking
• Group Thinking: 
  • Organized group thought becomes dangerous however good it may appear; organized group thought can be used, exploited; group thought ceases to be right thinking, it is merely repetitive. Clarity is essential for without it change and reform merely lead to further confusion.   OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1945
• Self Knowledge: 
  • Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge what you think is not true. OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1945
  • Without self-knowledge understanding is not possible. OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1945
  • You must approach the understanding of the self simply, without any pretensions, without any theories. OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1945
  • If I would understand you I must have no preconceived formulations about you, there must be no prejudice; I must be open, without judgment, without comparison. OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1945
  • Through approximation we think we are understanding, but is understanding born of comparison, judgment? Or is it the outcome of non-comparative thought? If you would understand something do you compare it with something else or do you study it for itself? OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1945
  • The understanding of oneself is from moment to moment; if we merely accumulate knowledge of the self, that very knowledge prevents further understanding, because accumulated knowledge and experience becomes the center through which thought focuses and has its being. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 4 'SELF-KNOWLEDGE'
  • To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 4 'SELF-KNOWLEDGE'
  • If we have no beliefs with which the mind has identified itself, then the mind, without identification, is capable of looking at itself as it is - and then, surely, there is the beginning of the understanding of oneself. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 6 'BELIEF'

• The Problem of Duality: 
  • Change or reform merely within the pattern of duality produces only further confusion and pain and hence is retrogression.  OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1945
• Listening: 
  • Though we appear to be incapable of listening, it seems to me that it is one of the most necessary and essential things that we have to do, you and I have to do. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • You should not translate what I am saying, or interpret what I am saying, or understand it according to your background; because when you do that, you stop all thinking. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • To listen without interpretation requires extraordinary alertness of mind. Please try during these discussions and at home to really listen to each other without interpretation, just to listen without translating according to your prejudices. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • After all, translations mean that you have previous knowledge which confines thought, prevents it from penetrating further and deeper. So it is essential that you and I should establish the right kind of relationship. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • I do not believe in authority of any kind; and if you treat what I am saying as authoritarian, then you stop listening. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
• Recognition: 
  • By recognition, I mean something that happens when you meet or see somebody. You then have a subjective reaction, emotion, and you recognize; you give it a name; and that recognition only strengthens each experience; and each experience limits, conditions, and narrows down the self. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • So, if you would understand what is reality, what is God, that centre of recognition must completely end. Otherwise, what have you? The projection of your mind and memory, what you have learnt from the past, with which you recognize what is happening. And what is happening is your own experience projected. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • If I want to know what truth is, my mind must be in a state in which no recognition can ever take place. Is that possible? MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • Do you have an experience which is not recognized? Do you understand what it means? Because that is after all God, that is the Truth, that is the Eternal or what you will. The moment you have a measure with which to measure, that is not Truth. 
  • Our Gods are measurable; we know them previously. Our scriptures, our friends and our religious teachers have so conditioned us that we know what every thing is. All that we are doing is merely this process of recognition. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
• Retreating From Conditioning: 
  • And I think it is essential sometimes to go to retreat, to stop everything that you have been doing, to stop your beliefs and experiences completely, and look at them anew, not keep on repeating like machines whether you believe or do not believe. You would then let in fresh air into your minds. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • Stop being a member of some society. Stop being a Brahmin, a Hindu, a Christian, a Mussulman. Stop your worship, rituals, take a complete retreat from all those and see what happens. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
  • In a retreat, do not plunge into something else, do not take some book and be absorbed in new knowledge and new acquisition. Have a complete break with the past and see what happens. Sirs, do it, and you will see delight. You will see vast expanses of love, understanding and freedom. When your heart is open, then reality can come. Then the whisperings of your own prejudices, your own noises, are not heard. That is why it is good to take a retreat, to go away and to stop the routine - not only the routine of out ward existence but the routine which the mind establishes for its own safety and convenience. MADRAS 1ST PUBLIC TALK 5TH JANUARY 1952
• The Unconscious:
  • The conscious mind can absorb very little. You can only absorb what has been taught in the school; that is not very much. But the unconscious is also being treated in the school, the interactions between you and the teacher, between you and your friends; all that is going on underground. That matters much more than the mere absorption of facts on the surface. RAJGHAT 3RD TALK TO BOYS AND GIRLS 12TH DECEMBER 1952
• Comparison: 
  • One of the things that prevents the sense of being secure is comparison. When you are compared with somebody else, in your studies or in your games or in your looks, you have a sense of anxiety, a sense of fear, a sense of uncertainty. So, as we were discussing yesterday with some of the teachers, it is very important to eliminate, in our school here at Rajghat, this sense of comparison, this sense of giving you grades or marks, and ultimately the fear of examination. BANARAS, INDIA 7TH JANUARY 1954 4TH TALK TO STUDENTS AT RAJGHAT SCHOOL
• Being: 
  • To be is to be related, and there is no such thing as living in isolation. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 4 'SELF-KNOWLEDGE' 
  • When one is interested in understanding what is, the actual state of the mind, one does not need to force, discipline, or control it; on the contrary, there is passive alertness, watchfulness. This state of awareness comes when there is interest, the intention to understand. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 4 'SELF-KNOWLEDGE'

• Memory and Experience: 
  • The fundamental understanding of oneself does not come through knowledge or through the accumulation of experiences, which is merely the cultivation of memory. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 4 'SELF-KNOWLEDGE'
• Fear: 
  • If you consider, you will see that one of the reasons for the desire to accept a belief is fear. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 6 'BELIEF'
• Belief: 
  • If we have no beliefs with which the mind has identified itself, then the mind, without identification, is capable of looking at itself as it is - and then, surely, there is the beginning of the understanding of oneself. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 6 'BELIEF'
  • Belief destroys; and this is seen in our everyday lifeTHE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 6 'BELIEF'
• Effort and Control: 
  • I think we shall understand the significance of life if we understand what it means to make an effort. Does happiness come through effort? Have you ever tried to be happy? It is impossible, is it not? You struggle to be happy and there is no happiness, is there? THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 7 'EFFORT'
  • Joy does not come through suppression, through control or indulgence. You may indulge but there is bitterness at the end. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 7 'EFFORT'
  • You may suppress or control, but there is always strife in the hidden. Therefore happiness does not come through effort, nor joy through control and suppression; and still all our life is a series of suppressions, a series of controls, a series of regretful indulgences.  THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 7 'EFFORT'
  • Does love or understanding come by strife? I think it is very important to understand what we mean by struggle, strife or effort. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 7 'EFFORT'

• Struggle: 
  • Being aware that we are empty, inwardly poor, we struggle either to collect things outwardly, or to cultivate inward riches. There is effort only when there is an escape from that inward void through action, through contemplation, through acquisition, through achievement, through power, and so on. That is our daily existence. I am aware of my insufficiency, my inward poverty, and I struggle to run away from it or to fill it. This running away, avoiding, or trying to cover up the void, entails struggle, strife, effort. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 7 'EFFORT'
• Simplicity: 
  • Simplicity is not merely adjustment to a pattern. It requires a great deal of intelligence to be simple and not merely conform to a particular pattern, however worthy outwardly. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 11 'SIMPLICITY'
  • A great many saints, a great many teachers, have renounced the world; and it seems to me that such a renunciation on the part of any of us does not solve the problem. Simplicity which is fundamental, real, can only come into being inwardly; and from that there is an outward expression. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 11 'SIMPLICITY' 
  • A simple person sees much more directly, has a more direct experience, than the complex person. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 11 'SIMPLICITY' 
  • That simplicity comes only through self-knowledge, through understanding ourselves; the ways of our thinking and feeling; the movements of our thoughts; our responses; how we conform ...to be safe, to be secure. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 11 'SIMPLICITY' 
  • When one is seeking security, one is obviously in a state of fear and therefore there is no simplicity.     
  • Without being simple, one cannot be sensitive - to the trees, to the birds, to the mountains, to the wind, to all the things which are going on about us in the world; if one is not simple one cannot be sensitive to the inward intimation of things. 
  • Most of us live so superficially, on the upper level of our consciousness; there we try to be thoughtful or intelligent, which is synonymous with being religious; there we try to make our minds simple, through compulsion, through discipline. But that is not simplicity. 
  • To be simple in the whole, total process of our consciousness is extremely arduous; because there must be no inward reservation, there must be an eagerness to find out, to inquire into the process of our being, which means to be awake to every intimation, to every hint; to be aware of our fears, of our hopes, and to investigate and to be free of them more and more and more. Only then, when the mind and the heart are really simple, not encrusted, are we able to solve the many problems that confront us. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 11 'SIMPLICITY'
• Awareness: 
  • When you are aware, you see the whole process of your thinking and action; but it can happen only when there is no condemnation. 
  • When I condemn something, I do not understand it, and it is one way of avoiding any kind of understanding. I think most of us do that purposely; we condemn immediately and we think we have understood. If we do not condemn but regard it, are aware of it, then the content, the significance of that action begins to open up. Just be aware - without any sense of justification - which may appear rather negative but is not negative. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 12 'AWARENESS' 
  • If I want to understand you, I have to be passively aware; then you begin to tell me all your story. Surely that is not a question of capacity or specialization.  THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 12 'AWARENESS'
• To Be Aware Without Choice: 
  • What is important, surely, is to be aware without choice, because choice brings about conflict. The chooser is in confusion, therefore he chooses; if he is not in confusion, there is no choice. Only the person who is confused chooses what he shall do or shall not do. The man who is clear and simple does not choose; what is, is. Action based on an idea is obviously the action of choice and such action is not liberating; on the contrary, it only creates further resistance, further conflict, according to that conditioned thinking. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 12 'AWARENESS'
• To Be Aware Without Memory: 
  • The important thing, therefore, is to be aware from moment to moment without accumulating the experience which awareness brings; because, the moment you accumulate, you are aware only according to that accumulation, according to that pattern, according to that experience. That is your awareness is conditioned by your accumulation and therefore there is no longer observation but merely translation. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 12 'AWARENESS'
  • Where there is translation, there is choice, and choice creates conflict; in conflict there can be no understanding. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 12 'AWARENESS'
• Self Centered Love: 
  • Love is the only thing that is eternally new. Since most of us have cultivated the mind, which is the result of time, we do not know what love is. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 19 'SELF-CENTRED ACTIVITY'
  • We talk about love; we say we love people, that we love our children, our wife, our neighbor, that we love nature; but the moment we are conscious that we love, self-activity has come into being; therefore it ceases to be love. THE FIRST AND LAST FREEDOM CHAPTER 19 'SELF-CENTRED ACTIVITY'
• Organized Religion: 
  • First of all, one cannot belong to any organized religion. I think that is one of the most difficult things for most human beings; they want to cling to some kind of hope, belief, some kind of theory or conclusion, or an experience of their own, giving it a religious significance. Any kind of attachment and therefore dependence on one’s particular, secret experience or the accumulated experience of the so-called saints, the mystics, or your own particular guru or teacher, all that must be completely and wholly set aside. I hope you are doing it, because a religious mind is not burdened with fear, or seeking out any form of security and pleasure. A mind that is not burdened with experience is absolutely necessary to find out what meditation is. In seeking experience lies the way to illusion. Beyond Violence Chapter 10 The Religious Mind
• Meditation:
  • Meditation is the emptying of the mind, totally. The content of the mind is the result of time, of what is called evolution; it is the result of a thousand experiences, a vast accumulation of knowledge, of memories. - Beyond Violence Chapter 10 The Religious Mind
  • The mind is so burdened with the past because all knowledge is the past, all experience is the past, and all memory is the accumulated result of a thousand experiences—that is the known. Beyond Violence Chapter 10 The Religious Mind
• Authority: 
  • I am saying this most undogmatically: do not listen to anybody—including the speaker, especially the speaker—because you are very easily influenced, because you are all wanting something, craving for something, craving for enlightenment, for joy, for ecstasy, for heaven; you are caught very easily. So you have to find it out completely by yourself. Therefore there is no need to go to India, or to any Zen Buddhist monastery, to meditate, or to look to any teacher; because if you know how to look, everything is in you. Therefore you put aside completely all authority, all looking to anybody, because truth does not belong to anybody, it is not a personal matter. Meditation is not a private, personal pleasure or experience. Beyond Violence Chapter 10 The Religious Mind

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