Notes on J Krishnamurti

Note: One of the rare pictures of K’s younger days, taken in Greece.

These are my notes. They maybe right or wrong. I'll leave that to you. 

Images

Hurt and flattery creates images.  When someone hurts you, or flatters you that image is stored in the brain.  

You don't store what you ate 10 days ago for breakfast. However, if someone had made a vile remark while you were eating breakfast 10 days ago, you would remember that incident in great detail for years to come.

Also, you remember the compliments of your school teacher for years. Good things and bad things create images.  

You have many images of your loved ones: Your spouse and, parents. These images become you. You are these images. These images block ‘What Is’.

When someone hurts you, or praises you, if you are totally aware, you don’t create an image of that situation. When you are NOT attached to these things, your mind becomes free, and you face every situation, without your past knowledge or judgement.

Mind

Human beings are compulsive thinkers. We think all the time. You are thinking something while you read this. Many people don’t realise this. We think about the past incidents and worry. Mind re-plays and exaggerates past negative events and blows them  out-of-proportion.

The solution to this problem is to start living in the PRESENT. You had problems in the past. You might encounter issues in the future. But right NOW, you are peaceful. The more and more you live in the PRESENT, you become AWARE, and eventually enlightened. Children live in the present. They don’t have the concept of Time: Past and Future. So does animals: Dogs and Cats. Only adult human beings have the concept of Time.

Choiceless Awareness

When you enter a room, you notice the things without paying attention. Later, you could probably recall most of the things in the room.

However, if you want to describe the things in writing, notice you end-up writing pages of information. Or, if you were to explain the things in the room to a third person, you would end-up taking long time to explain.

In Choiceless Awareness, you just notice the things without labelling them. You are aware of the things happening around you, but you don’t judge them. When you do that, everything is new.

Psychological Time

Time by the clock is chronological time. Other type of time is psychological time. Psychological time is ‘becoming’. I'm a bad person now, I'll become a good person tomorrow. This becoming creates conflict. A division between 'what is' and 'what should be'.

When you don't have psychological time, you are content with what you are. Your mind fills with space. With this space you'll be more peaceful and aware.

Death

Death is ending.  It is the end of your house, bank account, car. We get identified with material things: You are your bank account, your knowledge, your jewelry.  Death stops all these attachments.

If you don't get attached to these things——it is like dying to these things everyday. And, everyday becomes fresh. You face everyday with new energy.

Pick one thing that is closest to you. Stop its attachment. Do this for as many things as possible.  You'll end-up with bare minimum things. Dying become easier.

Theory of pendulum

Pendulum is most stable at the center. With a stimulus, it moves to the extremes. But cannot be in that state for long. Only at the center it can stay longest.

This is how you should be. When someone hurts you, see yourself drifting from the center. Balance yourself, and come back to the center as soon as you can.

Window Theory

We have many likes and dislikes: You love cars; you hate certain people.

These energies live in you. You are these energies. Your judgements are biased by these convictions.

When you let go these attachments, you become like a window. You face everything without judgement.

Why we can’t find God?

When you seek something, you already have an idea, what you are seeking. For e.g. if you are searching a lost wallet, you already know what you are looking for——the color of the wallet, texture etc. So, when you find the wallet under the dining table, you recognize it immediately.

Can you search a thing that you haven’t seen before?

Let’s say you are looking for Qfwfq. You don’t know what it is. How it looks like? Its color etc. How would you recognize Qfwfq when you find it? Similarly, human mind cannot find God.

We learn about God from Parents, religious leaders, and holy books. What if they are wrong?

Life after death

Many people cannot digest the fact, death ends everything. It is such a devastating reality.

On the other hand, if there’s a hope for continuity, facing death becomes easier. Hence the need for soul, karma, heaven, life after death.

If one really believes in next life——which depends on the deeds of your current life——one would start living a good life, in the current life itself. Fear of becoming a low life creature in the next life, would keep you on toes.

Because this is just a concept, people don’t take it seriously. They continue leading their mundane life.

Thinking

People do not want to think: Who is God? Why we have different religions? What is death? Why we have so many wars?  

These are difficult questions.

People delegate these questions to ‘set-answers’ or gurus. God is like a ocean, where all rivers meet. We have such definitions for most questions. These we got from holy books or parents. These definitions may be incorrect. When we think on these things, there’s a possibility for finding out.

Labelling

Brain is a great repository of information. This information becomes us. We are these convictions.

When we see a object brain immediately labels it, and pushes that away.You see a tree, a house, a bird; the brain labels it  and ignores it. By doing this, you ignore the finer qualities of objects. You miss the nuances: What kind of tree, bird, house?

We generalize things.

Notes on UG Krishnamurti

UG Krishnamurti was a great thinker. Not to be confused with his famous contemporary, Jiddu Krishnamurti (JK). If you follow one, you’ll certainly find the other. Many things are common between them. Both were associated with Theosophical Society, but later their views changed. Not only both disassociated with the Theosophical Society, but broke relationship with each other. UG claimed that though JK preached ‘no isms’, ‘no groups’, ‘no gurus’, he (JK) got tangled in his own teachings and developed a certain followership.

UG spent considerable time searching for enlightenment. Or to find out if it is possible for a common man to get enlightened? His eventual conclusion: There is no enlightenment. Because of this statement, certain people do think UG is enlightened! (One gets enlightened only when one is not looking for it!)

It seems that UG went to Ramana Maharshi, and asked the famous teacher: “This thing called moksha (enlightenment), can you give it to me?”

Ramana Maharshi replied with a counter question: “I can give it, but can you take it?”

This answer irked UG to such an extent, he stayed away from all gurus or people who claimed to be enlightened, then onwards.

Many thinkers (JK, Ekhart Tolle) disagree with Descartes (Father of modern Philosophy), who identified Mind with ‘I’ in his famous axiom: “I think therefore I am”. UG goes little ahead by his own question to Descartes: “What If I don’t think, do I exist therefore?”

Below is a video of talks between Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove and UG.

Notes on Dostoevsky

For long I thought Dostoyevsky was a philosopher; this could be because of the kind of books he wrote. He wasn’t a philosopher, not like Socrates or Kant.  Although, he did influence many philosophers, writers, and thinkers: Freud, Kafka, and Nietzsche for example. Nietzsche was so impressed he claimed that Dostoevsky was the only writer from whom he had learned anything new.

Philosopher or not, Dostoevsky is the only writer who came very close to understand the mysteries of human behavior.

Early in in his writing career, he was imprisoned for his association with a socialist group; He was charged for reading banned literature, and was to be executed with a firing squad; however, at the last moment, the tsar pardoned him and the sentence was converted to a 4 year hard labor in the prison.

This near-death experience made a profound experience on him. In the prison he was not allowed to read any books, except the New Testament.

Themes

Four years of bible study made him a strong believer. Christ became a role model. So much so that, he once said, if he had to choose between ‘Christ’ and ‘Truth’, he would opt for the former. He also created a Christ-like character, Prince Myshkin,  for his book The Idiot. Prince Myshkin is probably the noblest character created in the history of literature. Though a noble person, he was unfit to live in the contemporary society--hence an Idiot. Like Christ, even Prince Myshkin fails in his efforts to save his friends.

Christ like themes appear in Other books as well. In The Brothers Karamazov, there is a parable of Christ's second coming. As soon as the Christ comes second time, he’s imprisoned by a ninety year old man, who asks a lot of questions, but Christ chooses to remain silent. In the end, Christ is released, on condition that he won’t come back again.

(In a similar situation Howard Roark [Fountainhead, Ayn Rand] chooses to remain silent, when questioned by the authorities.)

Dostoyevsky, although a staunch follower of Christ, didn’t like church's interference in politics and other mundane activities. According to him, religion had no business than that of the soul.

Over the period, he got addicted to gambling, and often found short of funds. As a result he had to work on multiple books in parallel. (Unlike Tolstoy, who was quite wealthy, and had the luxury of revising War and Peace a few times over the years.)

Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy as well. The seizures occurred frequently and severely affected his health. However, once he said that these seizures, though painful, served as  epiphany and enlightened him.

Books

Though a strong believer, his books often challenged the religious beliefs. In Crime and Punishment, he asks: Is any person morally superior (Raskolnikov) to kill a fellow human being? Even when the victim (the pawnbroker) is harming the society. And, then the greater question: Is such a crime pardonable?

In The Idiot, we find even the noblest person (Prince Myshkin) is unable to save his friends, inspite of all his goodness.

In The Brothers Karamazov, a small time character questions: whether faith can really move mountains? Yes, says bible, maybe it was a metaphoric statement. Nevertheless Dostoyevsky’s character challenges the reader.

Contribution

Of other things, Dostoevsky is the first writer to employ First Person Point-of-View in writing (Crime and Punishment), which is the favorite writing style of contemporary writers. (Tolstoy employed Omniscient Third Person Point-of-View for War and Peace, which is not a popular choice these days. )

Criticism

Nabokov (Lolita), criticized that Dostoyevsky’s characters don’t grow. They are fully developed at the beginning of the story itself and don’t change over the period.

And, some have criticized his characters talk a lot of philosophy unlike people in real life.

Also, Dostoyevsky’s solution for human problems is salvation through suffering. Many are not convinced by this solution.

Translations

Some of the initial Russian books were translated by Constance Garnett. She neither had Tolstoy’s sense of beauty nor the depth of Dostoevsky.

Nabokov, famously criticised that the english speaking world is neither reading Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky, but they are just reading Constance Garnett!

Luckily the translations by the husband and wife Duo, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, are the best available in the market. Anyone interested in Reading russian literature in English should first look for a Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, with the exception of Gogol. The couple somehow failed to capture Gogol’s humor.

Contemporary writing

In current times, if someone writes like Dostoyevsky, he probably won’t find a publisher. Such writing is no more in vogue.

A new writer, trying to learn the craft, may not find much in Dostoyevsky. Novice writers should go elsewhere.

Among the readers, there’s always a debate on who’s the greatest writer: Tolstoy Or Dostoevsky. Both are great writers, uncomparable. And, yet, I am a bit biased to Dostoyevsky knowing his background and the circumstances in which he wrote his books.

War and Peace is all about Beauty. Tolstoy is a gifted writer. No other writer has written a better picturesque prose than Tolstoy. But what he lacks is the depth of Dostoevsky. Every time you read Dostoyevsky you understand him at a different level. You notice things that you didn’t in the earlier reading, which is not true for Tolstoy, and that makes Dostoevsky a better writer.