Passages from The Mystique of Enlightenment

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

Q: Is there any difference between going to a church and coming here?

UG: Basically the motivation is the same: you are looking for a new teacher, a new Bible, a new order, a new Church -- that is all you can do. Basically it's still the same thing: you have not moved one step from the Catholic Church. If religiousness is all you are interested in, there is no need to look anywhere other than in Christianity. The profound statements of the great teachers are not any different in the different religions. All I am saying is that looking to alien lands and religions does not mean anything. You learn new techniques, new systems, new phrases, and then you begin to think and speak in terms of this new language, and probably you feel just great, but basically it does not mean anything at all.

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

 

If anyone makes you believe you can get somewhere, he's taking you for a ride. He may be honest. Distrust all honest fellows! Throw them out! There is no one who is honest in this field. No outside agency can help you.

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

How can you be interested in liquidating yourself? -- that is my question. All that you know -- 'you' as you know yourself, 'you' as you experience yourself -- is interested in continuity. It knows all the tricks: you cannot beat that. People ask the question -- all questions reduce themselves to the one question -- "How? How am I going to get what you have? How?" And through 'How?' that structure is permanently establishing itself there and getting its continuity. 'How?' There is no 'how'. If you are interested in 'how', those swamis will help you.

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

 

I have nothing to offer. All I can offer is the assurance that all inquiry, like all philosophical discussion, is useless, that no dialogue is possible, and that your questions, like everyone else's, serve no purpose whatsoever. Understanding, in the sense in which I mean it, is that state of being where the questions aren't there anymore. 

Q: You mean it is a state of not thinking? 

UG: It is a state where thinking and life are not two things, but one thing. It is not an intellectual state; it is more like a state of feeling (although I use the word 'feeling' in a different sense than that in which you use the word). It is a state of not seeking. Man is always seeking something -- money, power, sex, love, mystical experience, truth, enlightenment -- and it is this seeking which keeps him out of his natural state. And although I am in a natural state, I cannot help someone else, because it is my natural state, not his.