Passages from The Mystique of Enlightenment

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

You are not satisfied with the answers given by others. You come to me -- you think I am a realized man. Answers have been given to those questions, but still you put this question. You want confirmation of what you know, but this man says something which does not fit into your framework, so you don't agree with me. You have to find out the answer to that question.

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

 

Q: What is life ?

UG: You will never know what life is. Nobody can say anything about life. You can give definitions, but those definitions have no meaning. You can theorize about life, but that is a thing which is not of any value to you -- it cannot help you to understand anything. So you don't ask questions like "What is life?" you know. "What is life?" -- there is no answer to that question, so the question cannot stay there any longer. You really don't know, so the question disappears. You don't let that happen there, because you think there must be an answer. If you don't know the answer, you think there may be somebody in this world who can give an answer to that question. "What is life?"-- nobody can give an answer to that question -- we really don't know. So the question cannot stay there; the question burns itself out, you see. The question is born out of thought, so when it burns itself out, what is there is energy. There's a combustion: thought burns itself out and gives physical energy. In the same way, when the question is burnt, along with it goes the questioner also. The question and the questioner are not two different things. When the question burns itself out, what is there is energy. You can't say anything about that energy -- it is already manifesting itself, expressing itself in a boundless way; it has no limitations, no boundaries. It is not yours, not mine; it belongs to everybody. You are part of that. You are an expression of that. Just as the flower is an expression of life, you are another expression of life. What is behind all this is life. What it is, you will never know.

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

 

You are not different from the animal -- you don't want to accept that fact. The only difference is that you think. Thinking is there in the animal also, but it has become very complex in the case of man -- that's the difference. Don't tell me that animals do not think; they do think. But in man it has become a very complex structure, and the problem is how to free yourself from this structure and use it only as an instrument to function in this world -- it has no other use at all -- it has only a contingent value, to communicate something, to function in the workaday world -- "Where is the railway station? Where can I get tomatoes? Where is the market?" -- that's all. Not philosophical concepts -- that has no meaning at all. Wanting anything other than the basic needs -- food, clothing and shelter -- that is where your self-deception begins, and there is no end to your self-deception there. So all this thinking has no meaning at all; it is just wearing you out.

The Mystique of Enlightenment - U.G. Krishnamurti

Thinking is unnecessary except to communicate with somebody. Why do I have to communicate with myself all the time? What for? "I am happy," "I am unhappy," "I am miserable," "That is a microphone," "This is a man," "He is something" -- you see, why are we doing it? Everybody is talking to himself -- only, when he begins to talk aloud you put him in the mental hospital.