On turning our intellect -'self'- against itself :
“It's thought that is creating all our problems and it is not the instrument to help us solve the problems created by itself.”
“Thought creates frontiers everywhere. That's all it can do. ...it is thought that has created the world; and you draw lines on this planet, "This is my country, that is your country". So how can there be unity between two countries? The very thing that is creating the frontiers and differences cannot be the means to bridge the different viewpoints. It is an exercise in futility.”
“This instrument thought which we have been using to understand has not helped us to understand anything except that every time we are using it we are sharpening it. Someone asked me, 'What is Philosophy? How does it help me in my day-to-day existence?' It doesn't help you in any way except that it sharpens the intellect. It doesn't in any way help you to understand life. If that thought is not the instrument and if there is no other instrument then is there anything to understand?”
“Unfortunately, the servant, which is the thought structure that is there, has taken possession of the house. But he can no longer control and run the household. So he must be dislodged. It is in this sense that I use the term 'natural state', without any connotation of spirituality or enlightenment.”
“The only way for anyone who is interested in finding out what this is all about is to watch how this separation is occurring, how you are separating yourself from the things that are happening around you and inside you. Actually there is no difference between the outside and the inside. It is thought that creates the frontiers and tells us that this is the inside and something else is the outside. If you tell yourself that you are happy, miserable, or bored, you have already separated yourself from that particular sensation that is there inside you. The only way it can maintain its continuity is through the constant demand to know. If you don't know what you are looking at, the 'you' as you know yourself, the 'you' as you experience yourself, is going to come to an end. That is death. That is the only death and there is no other death.”
“Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, traveling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.”
“Knowledge creates experience and experience strengthens the knowledge. This is a vicious circle.”
“Anything you experience based on knowledge is an illusion.”
“There is no meaning in and no purpose to suffering.”
On spirituality :
“Spirituality is the invention of the mind, and the mind is a myth.”
“The 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 because it's going to blast every nerve, every cell, even the cells in the marrow of your bones.”
“The mystique of enlightenment is based upon the idea of transforming yourself. I maintain that there is nothing to change or transform.”
“Consciousness is so pure that whatever you are doing in the direction of purifying that consciousness is adding impurity to it.”
“Unless you are free from the desire of all desires, Moksha, liberation, or self-realisation, you will be miserable.”
“A guru is one who tells you to throw away all the crutches that we have been made to believe are essential for our survival. He would ask you to walk, and he would say that if you fall, you will arise and walk.”
“All I am saying is that the peace you are seeking is already inside you, in the harmonious functioning of the body.”
On the Natural State :
“You actually have no way of looking at the sunset because you are not separated from the sunset. The moment you separate your self from the sunset, the poet in you comes out. Out of that separation poets and painters have tried to express themselves, to share their experiences with others. All that is culture.”
“To be an individual and to be yourself you don't have to do a thing. Culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy — the will, the effort — we waste trying to become that! If that energy is released, what is it that we can't do? How simple it would be for every one of us to live in this world!”
“All that is necessary for the survival of this living organism is already there. The tremendous intelligence of the body is no match for all that we have gathered and acquired through our intellect.”
“As a human body it is an extraordinary piece of creation. But as a human being he is rotten because of the culture.”
“This body doesn't want to learn anything. Left to itself it has tremendous intelligence.”
“When once it throws out everything that has been put in there by your filthy culture, this body will function in an extraordinarily intelligent way. It can take care of everything.”
“The native intelligence of the human body is amazing. That is all it needs to survive in any dangerous situation in life.”
“The native intelligence is what you are born with; the intellect is acquired from what they teach you.”
“(Q:) Are you afraid of death? (A:)There is nothing to die here. The body cannot be afraid of death.”
On himself :
“I am not anti-rational, just un-rational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine.”
“My mission, if there is any, should be, from now on, to debunk every statement I have made. If you take seriously and try to use or apply what I have said, you will be in danger.”
“My interest is not to knock off what others have said [that is too easy], but to knock off what I am saying. More precisely, I am trying to stop what you are making out of what I am saying.”
“The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know. All these therapies, all these techniques, religious or otherwise, are only perpetuating the agony of man.”
- U.G. Krishnamurti
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