Passages from The Courage to Stand Alone

The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti

Where do you think these questions take their birth? How do they formulate themselves in you? They are all mechanical questions. What I am trying to emphasize all the time is that it is essential for you to understand how mechanical the whole thing is. There is nobody who is asking the questions there. There is no questioner who is asking the questions there. There is an illusion that there is a questioner who is formulating these questions and throwing them at somebody and expecting somebody to answer them.

The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti

 

What exactly do people mean when they talk of consciousness? There is no such thing as unconsciousness. Medical technology can find out the reason why a particular individual is unconscious, but the individual who is unconscious has no way of knowing that he is unconscious. When he comes out of that unconscious state, he becomes conscious. So do you think you are conscious now? Do you think you are awake? Do you think you are alive? It is your thinking that makes you feel that you are alive, that you are conscious. That is possible only when the knowledge you have about things is in operation. You have no way of knowing or finding out whether you are alive or dead. In that sense, there is no death at all, because you are not alive. You become conscious of things only when the knowledge is in operation. When the knowledge is absent, whether the person is dead or alive is of no importance to this movement of thought which comes to an end before what we call "death" takes place.

The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti

It is the object that creates the subject. This runs counter to the whole philosophical thinking of India. The subject comes and goes and comes and goes in response to the things that are happening there. It is the object that creates the subject and not the subject that creates the object. This is a simple physiological phenomenon which can be tested. For example, if there is no object there, there is no subject here. What creates the subject is the object. There is light. If the light is not there you have no way of looking at anything. The light falls on that object, and the reflection of that light activates the optic nerves, which in turn activate the memory cells. When the memory cells are activated, all the knowledge you have about that object comes into operation. It is that process which is happening there that has created the subject. And the subject is the knowledge you have about it. The word "microphone" is the eye. There is nothing there other than the word microphone. When you reduce it to that you feel the absurdity of talking about the self -- the lower self, the higher self and self knowing, self-knowledge, knowing from moment to moment is absolute rubbish, balderdash!

The Courage to Stand Alone - U.G. Krishnamurti
 

Sound, the olfactory nerves, smell, and the sense of touch, the operation of any one of these sensations necessarily creates the subject. It's not one continuous subject which is gathering all these experiences, piling them up together, and then saying "this is me," but everything is discontinuous and disconnected.