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"...our idea about ourselves is our escape from the fact of what we are."
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti, Vol.12 p.246 |
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"Understanding of the self only arises in relationship, in watching yourself in
relationship to people, ideas, and
things; to trees, the earth, and the world around you and within you.
Relationship is the mirror in which the self is revealed. Without self-knowledge
there is no basis for right thought and action."
Krishnamurti, A Biography by Pupul Jayakar, p.142 |
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"When we condemn or justify we cannot see
clearly, nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not
observe what is; we look only at the projections we have made of ourselves.
Each of us has an image of what we think we are or what we should be, and that
image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeing ourselves as we actually
are."
Freedom from the Known, p.24 |
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"Ignorance exists only when you don't know yourself. Self-knowing is wisdom. You
may be ignorant of all the books in the world (and I hope you are), of all the
latest theories, but that is not ignorance. Not knowing oneself deeply,
profoundly, is ignorance; and you cannot know yourself if you cannot look at
yourself, see yourself actually as you are, without any distortion, without any
wish to change. Then what you see is transformed because the distance between
the observer and the observed is removed and hence there is no conflict."
Talks in Europe, April 16, 1968, p.56 |
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"Our life is empty from within, because, we have not understood ourselves...
we like to escape from our life, and therefore search for some objective
of life that is irrelevant."
Unknown source |
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"The fundamental understanding of oneself does not come through knowledge or through the
accumulation of experiences, which is merely the cultivation of memory. The understanding
of oneself is from moment to moment...."
The First and Last Freedom, p.46 |
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"To be critical of oneself, to criticize, condemn, or justify oneself - does that bring understanding
of oneself? When I begin to criticize myself, do I not limit the process of understanding, of exploring?
Does introspection, a form of self-criticism, unfold the self? What makes the unfoldment of the
self possible? To be constantly analytical, fearful, critical - surely that does not help to unfold.
What brings about the unfoldment of the self so that you begin to understand it is the constant
awareness of it without any condemnation, without any identification."
The First and Last Freedom, p.202 |
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"If I don't understand the ways of my thoughts, of my feelings, if I don't understand my motives,
my desires, my demands, my pursuit of patterns of action, which are ideas - if I do not know myself,
there is no foundation for thinking; the thinker who merely asks, prays, or excludes, without
understanding himself, must inevitably end in confusion, in illusion."
The First and Last Freedom, p.219 |
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"Illusion is inevitable without self-knowledge. It is childish to be told and to accept that you are
this or that. Beware of the man who offers you a reward in this world or in the next."
Commentaries on Living, First Series, p.20 |
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"The very conception that self-knowledge is difficult to acquire
is a hindrance to self-knowledge. If I may suggest, do not suppose
that it will be difficult, or that it will take time; do not
predetermine what it is and what it is not. Begin. Self-knowledge
is to be discovered in the action of relationship..."
Commentaries on Living, First Series, p.47 |
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"Resistance, which is suppression, substitution or sublimation in any form, is a
hindrance to the flow of self-knowledge..."
Commentaries on Living, First Series, p.47 |
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"To understand what you are is immensely difficult, because it requires complete freedom from
all desire to change what you are into something else. The desire to change yourself breeds
envy, jealousy; whereas, in the understanding of what you are, there is a transformation of
what you are. "
Think on These Things |
