We have to understand another phenomenon in life, which is
death: death from old age, or disease, and accidental death,
through disease, or naturally. We grow old inevitably, and
that age is shown in the way we have lived our life, it shows
in our face...
So there is old age. And there is this extraordinary thing called
death, of which most of us are dreadfully frightened. If we are
not frightened, we have rationalized this phenomenon intellectually
and have accepted the edicts of the intellect. But it is still there.
And obviously there is the ending of the organism, the body.
And we accept that naturally, because we see everything dying.
But what we do not accept is the psychological ending of the"me",
with family, with the house, with success, the things I have done,
and the things I have still to do, the fulfillments and the frustrations
- and there is something more to do before I end! And the
psychological entity, we're afraid that will come to an end -
the "me", the "I", the "soul", in various forms, words, that we give
to the center of our being.
Does it come to an end? Does it have continuity? The East
has said it has a continuity: there is reincarnation, being born
better in the next life if you have lived rightly. If you believe in
reincarnation, as the whole of Asia does, then in that idea is
implied, if you observe it very closely, that what you do now,
every day, matters tremendously. Because in the next life you're
going to pay for it or be rewarded depending on how you have
lived. So what matters is not what you believe will happen in
the next life, but what you are and how you live. And that is
implied also when you talk about resurrection. Here (in the West)
you have symbolized it in one person and worship that person,
because you yourself don't know how to be reborn again in your
life now.
So what matters is how you live now - not what your beliefs are...
But we are also afraid that the center, called the "I", may come
to an end. We ask: Does it come to an end?
You have lived in thought; that is, you have given tremendous
importance to thinking. But thinking is old; thinking is never new;
thinking is the continuation of memory. If you have lived there,
obviously there is some kind of continuity. And it is a continuity
that is over, finished. It is something old; only that which ends
can have something new. So dying is very important to understand;
to die; to die to everything that one knows. [believes].
You know, one has collected so much, not only books, houses,
bank account, but inwardly. the memories of insults, the memories
of flattery, the memories of neurotic achievements, the memory of
holding onto your own particular experience, which gives you a
position. To die to all that without argument, without discussion,
without any fear, just to give it up. Do it psychologically - of course
we don't actually give up our wife/husband, our clothes, our children,
or our house, but inwardly, don't be attached to anything. Love is
not attachment. Where there is attachment, there is fear. And fear
inevitably becomes authoritarian, possessive, oppressive, dominating.
But to die to everything within oneself! [attachments, ideas, concepts,
beliefs]. This means that the mind, which is not of thought - the mind
becomes utterly quiet, silent, naturally, without any force, without
any discipline. And in light of that silence all actions can take place,
the daily living, from that silence. And if one were lucky enough to
have gone that far, then in that silence there is quite a different
movement, which is not of time, which is not of words, which is not
measurable by thought, because it is always new. It never dies.
J Krishnamurti
from talks in Europe 1968
Amsterdam
May 19, 1968
~
Photo - Mystic Meandering
Ethereal Window
