How to See God

Read another chapter of Krishnamurti's "On God". It is about sacredness and how to find God or the ground of our Being. It forms part of his talk at Saanen on lst August 1965.

Krishnamurti thinks that when we listen to a speaker, who the speaker is is not important but what he says is because what he says is the voice of our own self talking aloud. Through the words of the speaker, we are listening to ourselves, not to the speaker. But to listen is not to accumulate knowledge but to learn. If we accumulate knowledge and listen from that accumulation, from our background of knowledge, then we are not listening. We have to listen with care, with extraordinary attention. Attention is denied when we try to justify, to condemn or otherwise evaluate what we hear instead of listening, perceiving and seeing.

To learn, we have to watch and follow our every thought, every feeling, every intention, every motive. Watching is being aware with our eyes, with our ears, with our insight, of all the values that human beings have created and by which we are conditioned. Only this state of total awaressness will end all seeking. To Krishnamurti, seeking and finding is a waste of energy because when the mind itself is unclear, confused, frightened, miserable, anxious, all we find in this chaotic state of mind is more chaos. However, when there is inward clarity: when the mind is not frightened, not demanding reassurance, then all seeking will cease and hence there will be no finding per our old conceptions.

To Krishnamurti, seeing God or truth is not itself a religious act. Only attaining inward clarity through self-knowing is: through being aware of all one's intimate, secret desires and allowing them to unfold, never correcting, controlling, indulging but always watching them. Out of this constant watching comes extraordinary clarity, sensitivity and a tremendous conservation of energy. When we feel miserable, anxious, quarrelsome, jealous, frightened, insulted or flattered, that's a waste and dissipation of energy. Everything that we do, think and feel is an outpouring of energy. But if we understand that there is a natural coming together of all energy or if we spend our lives trying diligently, but relaxed and naturally to bring together various contradictory expressions of energy, then we may hope to be able to go from the peripheral to the essence of sacredness.

Not only is seeing God or seeing truth not a "religious" act and not only is sacredness of the essence of religion, Krishnamurti thinks that sacredness has nothing to do with religious organizations, nor with the mind that is caught and conditioned by a belief, a dogma ( to which nothing is sacred except the God it has created or the ritual it has put together or the various sensations it derives from prayer, worship, devotion etc.). To him, there is nothing sacred about dogmatism, ritualism, sentimentality or emotionalism. The symbol, the words, the person, the picture, the images, a particular so-called "religious" experience are never sacred or religious in themselves. To him, they are all "juvenile". What is sacred and religious is the attitude we adopt towards and the way we treat the acitivities of our own mind: we must watch, be aware first of outward things e.g. behavior, gestures, costumes, shapes, sizes and the color of a tree, the appearance of a person, of a house etc. for otherwise, we can never "ride the tide of inward awareness" . It is the same tide which goes out and comes in. He says, "unless you know the outward tide, you will never know what the inward tide is."

Then he talks about a most important topic constantly on the lips of Buddhist: awareness or mindfulness. This is what he says; "Most of us think that awareness is a mysterious something to be practised and that we should get together day after day to talk about awareness. You don't come to awareness that way at all. But if you are aware of outward things--the curve of a road, the shape of a tree, the color of another's clothes, the outline of the mountains against a blue sky, the delicacy of a flower, the pain on the face of a passer-by, the ignorance, the envy, the jealousy of others, the beauty of the earth--then, seeing all these outward things without condemnation, without choice, you can ride the tide of inner awareness. Then you will become aware of your own reactions, of your own pettiness, of your own jealousies. From the outward awareness, you come to the inward; but if you are not aware of the outer, you cannot possibly come to the inner." Therefore, we must first learn to really see and feel the objective phenomena that is out there in the world around us without any judgement, any valuation, any of our prior attitudes, preconceptions, any habits of thought accumulated, learned from years and years of our past experience when previously exposed to such outer objects and phenemona. He urges us that  when any of such prior mental habits, attitudes etc. first emerge within our mind, we must watch how they enter into our mind and how they change the way we perceive the objects and phenomena under observation. In other words, the attainment of awareness goes by a two-way process: the primary observation of those outer phenomena and then a secondary observation of the process of the primary observation ie. a monitoring of the processes of the primary observation.

Krishnamurti explains: "When there is inward awareness of every activity of your mind and your body, when you are aware of your thoughts, of your feelings, both secret and open, conscious and unconscious, then out of this awareness there comes a clarity that is not induced, not put together by the mind. And without that clairty, you may do what you will, you may search the heavens, and the earth, and the deeps but you will never find out what is true."  There is thus an irony in the behavior of those who think they are "practising awareness". Awareness is not a method. Awareness is not an aim, not a target to be achieved. Awareness is not a practice. Awareness is a result. Ironically, the moment we think we are practising awareness, true awareness escapes us. It is a bit like a dog chasing its own tail or like the behavior of the mythical Ouropoulos, a serpent which swallows its own tail. Paradoxically, we can only arrive at true awareness by adopting an attitude of what I would call "a relaxed alertness or watchfulness". No doubt, this takes a lot of "practice", the kind condemned by Krishnamurti. Paradoxically, the "aim" of the "practice", both condemned by Krishnamurti from the ultimate point of view, is to dispense with the need of further practice. To me, for the ordinary guy, we can only dispense with further practice when the practice has switched from the conscious to the "unconscious" or "automatic" mode ie. when through long practice, we do not even have to "consciously" think or even be "aware" that we are practising and will still be able to be doing so. This is by no means easy to achieve. It really takes a lot of practice over substantial periods of time but if we do it right, we may arrive at that state earlier than others. However, he does have a point about the risk of our practice becoming a habit, which may ironically prevent us from being truly aware.

Krishnamurti emphasizes the importance of the naturalness, of the automaticness of such awareness. He says: " So one who would discover what is true must have the sensitivity of awareness, which is not to practise awareness. The practice of awareness only leads to habit and habit is destructive of all sensitivity. Any habit, whether it is the habit of sex, the habit of drink, the habit of smoking, or what you will, makes the mind insensitive; and a mind that is insensitive, besides dissipating energy, becomes dull. A dull, shallow, conditioned, petty mind may take a drug and for a second it may have an astonishing experience, but it is still a petty mind. What we are now doing is finding out how to put an end to the pettiness of the mind." We must learn to be sensitive to what is happening without judgement, without prejudice, without prior preconceptions, without prior values, without being influenced by our prior experiences of similar phemonena in the past. There is a good Zen equivalent to what Krishnamurti is saying to the effect that at the start of Zen practice, a mountain is a mountain; in the middle of the Zen practice, a mountain is no longer a mountain, but after the Zen practice, a mountain is a mountain again. But it is a different mountain from the mountain before the beginning of the Zen practice that one sees.

Krishnamurti tells us what is a "religious" mind : "Pettiness is not ended by gathering more information, more knowledge, by listening to great music, by seeing the beauty spots of the world and so on; it has nothing to do with that at all. What brings about the ending of pettiness is the clarity of self-knowing, the movement of the mind that has no restrictions. It is only such a mind which is religious." He says that the essence of religion is sacredness but to him, sacredness is not in any church, temple, mosque or image. But when one understands what is sacredness, then life has a different meaning altogether and has a new beauty: the beauty of the silence of all desires. He says, "Beauty is not that which stimulates. When you see a mountain, a building, a river, a valley, a flower, or a face, you may say it is beautiful because you are stimulated by it but the beauty about which I am talking offers no stimulation whatsoever. It is a beauty not to found in any picture, any symbol, in any word, in any music. That beauty is sacredness. It is the essence of a religious mind, of a mind that is clear in its self-knowing. One comes upon that beauty, not by desiring, wanting, longing for the experience, but only when all desire for experience has come to an end; and that is one of the most difficult things to understand.". To him, a mind that is seeking experience is still moving on the periphery, and the translation of each experience will depend on your particular conditioning: whether you are Christian, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu or a Communist. Whatever it is you are, your experiences will obviously be translated and conditioned according to your background. The more you demand experience, the more you are strengthening that background. He says, "This process is not an undoing of, nor a putting an end to, sorrow; it is only an escape from sorrow." To him, a mind which is clear in its self-knowing has no need of experience. "It is what it is". He says, "So clarity comes through self-knowing, and not through the instruction of another, whether he be a clever writer, a psychologist, a philosopher or a so-called religious teacher."

Krishnamurti thinks that, with the achievement of clarity of mind will come spontaneity and love. To him, there is no sacredness without love. He says,"When once there is is clarity of self-knowing, then love with its gentleness follows; there comes a spontaneous quality of humility and also this freedom from the past through death." He thinks that "it is one of the most marvellous things in life to discover something unexpectedly, spontaneously, to come upon something without premeditation and instantly see the beauty, the sacredness, the reality of it." But we must never actively seek it. He says, "A mind that is seeking and wanting to find is never in that position at all". To him, love is not a thing to be "cultivated". Love cannot be put together by the mind. There must be a spontaneous quality to love. Like humility, it cannot be practised. He says, "It is only the vain man who attempts to be humble; it is only the proud man who seeks to put away his pride through practising humility. The practice of humility is still an act of vanity. To listen and therefore to learn, there must be a spontaneous quality of humility, and a mind that has understood the nature of humility never follows, never obeys. For how can that which is completely negative, empty, obey or follow anyone?" With this clarity of self-knowing comes also death to our past. To achieve clarity of mind in self-knowing, we must "die to the past, to everything of yesterday". If we don't, our mind will still be caught in its longings, in the shadows of memory, in its conditioning. But to die to yesterday easily, voluntarily, without argument or justification, requires energy . Argument, justification and choice are a waste of energy and when one argues etc, one cannot die to yesterday.

When we achieve clarity in self-knowing, not only will we become naturally and spontaneously humble and loving, we shall also become creative. To Krishnamurti, "Creation is not self-expression, it is not a matter of putting paint on a piece of canvas, or wiritng a few or many words in the form of a book or making bread in the kitchen, or conceiving a child. ...There is creation only when there is love and death. Creation can come only when there is a dying every day to everything, so that there is no accumulation as memory. Obviously, you must have a little accumulation in the way of your clothing, a house, and personal property, I am not talking about that. It is the mind's inward sense of accumulation and possession--from which arise domination, authority, conformity, obedience--that prevents creation, because such a mind is never free. Only a free mind knows what death is and what love is and for that mind alone, there is creation. In that state, the mind is religious. In this state, there is sacredness."

Krishnamurti urges us to engage in cleansing our mind from our past. He says, "You have to go through all this for yourself, not verbally, but actually. You actually have to die to everything you know, to your memories, to your miseries, to your pleasures. And when there is no jealousy, no envy, no greed, no torture of despair, then you will know what love is and you will come upon that which may be called sacred...When once the mind comes upon this sacredness, then every act is a cleansing act. Through its very movement the mind is making itself innocent, and therefore it is not accumulating. A mind that has discovered this sacredness is in constant revolution, not economic or social revolution, but an inner revolution through which it is endlessly purifying itself. Its action is not based on some idea or formula. As the river with a tremendous volume of water behind it cleanses itself as it flows, so does the mind clean itself when once it has come upon this religious sacredness."  

At the root, core, the foundation of Krishnamurti's thought is the idea of awareness: awareness of the functioning of the mind and hence the need to perceive the world as it is, without prejudice, without preconception, without judgement, without argument, without justification, without comment, without immediately jumping to criticism and without being influenced by our own past experiences nor our subjective desires for the future. Once this state is achieved, then what follows is spontaneous humility, love, creation and the constant cleansing of the mind itself through this awareness. It is a self-corrective process, as he says, like the movement of the flow of the river as it passes over the land down its natural course towards the sea, the river will cleanse the  itself as it goes along. This is his concept of what is religious, what is sacred, of seeing "God". His concept of God is not a static image. To him, God is neither an aim, an ideal, an image, a being who commands us, who demands worship from us or who rewards and punishes, whether in this life or in the next. In a sense, there is no God, only a process of finding, of discovering, of experiencing God. It is a never ending process. Perhaps it is in that sense that God is eternal, immortal, infinite. God is eternal, immortal, infinite because it is not a concept within time. It is a process which whilst it operates within time for a human being, transcends the limitation of time and even of place and even of feelings and of thought itself.