UG Krishnamurti

"The so called self-realization is the discovery for yourself and by yourself that there is no self to discover. That will be a very shocking thing because it's going to blast every nerve, every cell, even the cells in the marrow of your bones.”

"Thought is violence because it is trying to protect itself. There is a basic contradiction in what the body demands and the movement of the thought which is interested in self-perpetuation. There is no such thing as you and me. The totality has created you and me. You have no isolated existence. The demand of being an individual is the real cause of suffering. The "how" is absent for me. The "hows" dished out in the market-place are not for me. The one who is living doesn't ask how to live."

Thought has survived for millions and millions of years, and it knows every trick in the world. It will do anything to maintain its continuity.

Q: If every one of us is unique, that implies that our code of enlightenment, if there is such a thing, would also be unique so that each of us reaches that state individually and uniquely.

A: Exactly. That is what I am trying to emphasize. It is just not possible for us to produce enlightened people on an assembly line. You know, if you look at history, even a country like India, which prides itself as a land of spirituality, has produced only a very few enlightened people. You can count them on your fingers.

But unfortunately, in the market place, we have many claimants who say that they are enlightened, and they are in turn out to enlighten everybody. There is a market for that kind of thing. The demand and supply principle is responsible for that. But actually an enlightened man or a free man, if there is one, is not interested in freeing or enlightening anybody. This is because he has no way of knowing that he is a free man, that he is an enlightened man. It is not something that can be shared with somebody, because it is not in the area of experience at all.

When the reference point is gone there is no knowing....Then came the usual question, "Why do they say that the world is an illusion?" U.G. replied, "The centre is created here; the space is created by thought. Measurement starts from a reference point. All measurements are illusory. "Maya" means "measure" and not "illusion". If the reference point goes by any chance, there is no way of knowing anything. Then there is no outside or inside."

Because you are trying to understand what I am saying. Through thought and thinking you cannot understand anything. But that [thought] is the only instrument. When that [instrument] cannot be used, and there is no other instrument, what is there to understand? There is nothing to understand. That's what you need to know -- that there is nothing at all to know.

"If the endlessly continuing thought process is cut off even once, even for a thousandth of a second, then thoughts can never be linked again. That break will create tremors throughout the body like a terrible earthquake. Like an atomic explosion it will shake, move and burn every nerve and blood cell in the body. With that the thinker is gone. The senses start functioning independently of each other. From then on all bodily processes are carried on automatically, like a machine. Only the 'you' who you think runs the machine is not there."

UG Krishnamurti