Thought is Your Enemy
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Thought is Your Enemy
Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti
A Note at the Beginning
Page: 8 (9.09%) @ 19 Feb 2024 03:57:04 PM
U.G. dismisses the possibility of any experience except through knowledge. According to him, it is knowledge which creates an experience, and it is the experience which in turn strengthens the knowledge. 'Knowledge' does not have any metaphysical or epistemological overtones. It is simply that something is a chair or a table, or that some sensation is pleasurable or painful. In fact, even the process of recognition and naming of something is part of knowledge. The total operation is designated 'thinking'.
Page: 8 (9.09%) @ 19 Feb 2024 03:58:43 PM
What distinguishes us from U.G. is that this knowledge which is operating through the process of thinking is in a declutched state in U.G., while there is a constant undercurrent of thinking activity within us whether we like it or not. Our mind is constantly churning out thought after thought in various shapes, colors, and sizes. U.G. says that it is through this constant thinking that we are maintaining the continuity of what we call the 'I' or 'self'.
CHAPTER 1
Page: 10 (11.36%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:45:43 PM
Thought is not the instrument to help us to live in harmony with the life around us. That is why you create all these ecological problems. But the planet is not in danger; we are in danger.
No Mind, No Soul, Only the Body
Page: 11 (12.50%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:46:49 PM
Thought is something dead and can never touch anything living. It cannot capture life, contain it, and give expression to it. The moment it tries to touch life, it is destroyed by the living quality of life.
Page: 11 (12.50%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:48:29 PM
Q: U.G., I would like to probe into the very essence of your revolutionary and uncompromising statement that there is no soul.
A: There is no self, there is no I, there is no spirit, there is no soul, and there is no mind. That knocks off the whole list, and you have no way of finding out what you are left with. You may very well ask me the question, "Why do you go on telling people about the way you are functioning?" It is only to emphasize that we have been for centuries using some instrument, that is, thinking or mind, or whatever you want to call it, to free ourselves from the whole of what you call the 'I' or the 'self', and all kinds of things. That is what the whole quest of spirit is all about. But once it dawns on you that there is nothing to be free from, then these questions don't arise at all. How that dawned on me, I have no way of finding out for myself.
Page: 11 (12.50%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:50:28 PM
Q: What you are trying to say is that there is only the physical body and nothing else. Is that it?
A: Even that statement cannot be experienced by what is left there. When once the whole thing is flushed out of your system, the statement, "We are left with only the physical body and the universe -- " that statement also cannot stand any more.
Page: 15 (17.05%) @ 20 Feb 2024 04:43:30 PM
Q: So thinking has really no place in understanding….
A: There is no thinking at all. If there is no thinker, there are no thoughts at all. You cannot say there is only thought and there is no thinker. The thoughts do not come from here (pointing to his head), they are coming from outside. The translation of a sensory perception within the framework of your experiencing structure is thought. And you are using those thoughts to achieve a goal.
Page: 17 (19.32%) @ 20 Feb 2024 05:49:33 PM
Q: Why is it that human beings have developed some traits which have made them masterful destroyers of the earth, the air, the water, and everything around them?
A: As I said the last time, this separateness from the totality of things around us, and the idea that the whole thing is created for our benefit and that we are created for a grander and nobler purpose than all the other species on this, planet, are the causes of this destruction. This powerful use of thought is what is destructive. Thought is a self-protective mechanism. So anything that is born out of thought is destructive -whether it is religious thought or scientific thought or political thought -- all of them are destructive. But we are not ready to accept that it is thought that is our enemy.
Page: 18 (20.45%) @ 20 Feb 2024 05:51:47 PM
Q: Why do you think that we have allowed an illusion and unreality to persist in consciousness or human thought….?
A: You are not separate from that illusion. You are the illusion. If one illusion goes, it is always replaced with another illusion. Why? Because the ending of the illusion is the ending of 'you'. That is the death. The ending of belief is the ending of the 'you' that is there. So, that is not the poetic, romantic death -- of "dying to your yesterdays." Physical death is the only way through which you flush out what your whole culture has put in there.
CHAPTER 2
Page: 20 (22.73%) @ 20 Feb 2024 05:57:32 PM
Q: If the pain is in your knee, in your back, or in your head, it is already there….
A: May I say something? Anything that we discuss about pain at this moment has no meaning, because we are not having any pain now. If some pain is really there then we wouldn't discuss it; some action would be there. Q: Yes, that is right. A:Your value system is the one that is responsible for the human malady, human tragedy, forcing everybody to fit into that model.
Throw Away Your Crutches!
Page: 22 (25.00%) @ 22 Feb 2024 12:55:07 AM
We are made to believe that there is such a thing as mind. But there is no such thing as your mind or my mind. Society or culture, or whatever you want to call it, has created us solely and wholly for the purpose of maintaining its own continuity and status quo. At the same time, it has also created the idea that there is such a thing as the individual. But actually, there is a conflict between the two -- the idea of the individual and the impossibility of functioning as an individual separate and distinct from the totality of man's thoughts and experiences.
Page: 23 (26.14%) @ 22 Feb 2024 12:58:32 AM
Q: Can we not at least attempt to refine this thought process to make it constructive and positive?
A: Thought is not the instrument for achieving anything other than the goals set before us by our culture or society, or whatever you want to call it. The basic problem we have to face today is this: the cultural input, or what society has placed before us as the goal for all of us to reach and attain, is the enemy of this living organism. Thought can only create problems; it cannot help us to solve any.
Page: 23 (26.14%) @ 22 Feb 2024 12:59:17 AM
Q: Then is it desirable to be thoughtless?
A: What I am talking about is not a thoughtless state. Even the invention of what is called a thoughtless state, placed before us by many spiritual teachers as a goal to be reached, is created by thought so that it can, by pursuing what it calls a thoughtless state, maintain its own continuity. So whatever we experience in this process of achieving the goal of a thoughtless state strengthens and fortifies the very thing that we are trying to be free from.
CHAPTER 3
Page: 26 (29.55%) @ 22 Feb 2024 01:09:30 AM
The fact of the matter is that when once you have everything that you can reasonably ask for in this world, when all the material needs are taken care of, naturally the question arises, "Is that all?" When once you pose that question "Is that all?" to yourself, you have created a tremendous market for this kind of business, the holy business. These people are exploiting the gullibility and credulity of the people, rather than helping them to resolve the basic problems, the human problems. It is not that simple. So we have to ask such questions over and over again. But all the questions we are asking are born out of the answers that we already have. It never occurs to us to ask why we keep asking the questions when we already have the answers given by the sages, saints, and saviors of mankind. We fail to realize that the answers that they have given us are the ones that are responsible for the tragedy of mankind. We don't question them. If we question the answers, we would be questioning the teachers. If humanity is to be saved from the chaos of its own making, it has to be freed from the saviors of mankind. That does not mean that you would destroy everything. You will have to ask questions not born out of the answers we already have. But is there any answer? That is all. There it stops. And the solution is there for mankind.
The Robot is Dreaming
Page: 30 (34.09%) @ 22 Feb 2024 04:37:44 PM
Q: Why should you not say that each of us has an individual and unique life-path and out of that comes whatever that is?
A: The uniqueness of every individual cannot express itself because of the stranglehold of the experiences of others. After all, you don't exist, and I don't exist. You and I have been created by the totality of those experiences, and we have to use them in order to function sanely and intelligently in this world. Q: So you are creating me now? A:You are creating me. Q: You are creating me now? A:No. I am not creating you because I don't have an image of myself here. So, whatever you see here (pointing to himself) is your own creation and the projection of the knowledge you have of me. I don't know if you get what I am trying to say. I am not involved in what is going on there in you. What is involved here is only a reflection of whatever is there in front of me on the retina. But the translation of it is absent because it is part of that movement that is going on there.
A Jolt of Lightning
Page: 36 (40.91%) @ 24 Feb 2024 01:15:16 AM
The goals that I had set for myself -- self-realization, God-realization, transformation, radical or otherwise, or even enlightenment -- were all false, and there was nothing there to be realized, and nothing to be found there. The very demand to be free from anything, even from the physical needs of the body, just disappeared, and I was left with nothing. Therefore, whatever comes out of me now depends upon what you draw out of me.
CHAPTER 5
Page: 40 (45.45%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:29:49 PM
Q: The Buddhists also talk about no mind.
A: They made a tremendous structure out of that philosophical thought. They talked of the void. They talked of emptiness. You know the whole Buddhist philosophy is built on the foundation of that 'no mind'. Yet they have created tremendous techniques of freeing themselves from the mind. All the Zen techniques of meditation try to free you from the mind. The very instrument that we are using to free ourselves from the thing called 'mind' is the mind. Mind is nothing other than what you are doing to free yourself from the mind. But when it once dawns on you, by some strange chance or miracle, that the instrument that you are using to understand everything is not the instrument, and that there is no other instrument, it hits you like a jolt of lightning.
Love is Only a Trump Card
Page: 42 (47.73%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:32:31 PM
Basically, human nature is exactly the same whether in India or in Russia or in America or in Africa. Human problems are exactly the same. All the problems are artificially created by the various structures created by human thinking. As I said, there is some sort of (I can't make a definitive statement) neurological problem in the human body. Human thinking is born out of this neurological defect in the human species. Anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive. Thought is destructive. Thought is a protective mechanism. It draws frontiers around itself, and it wants to protect itself. It is for the same reason that we also draw lines on this planet and extend them as far as we can. Do you think these frontiers are going to disappear? They are not. Those who have entrenched themselves, those who have had the monopoly of all the world's resources so far and for so long, if they are threatened to be dislodged, what they would do is anybody's guess. All the destructive weapons that we have today are here only to protect that monopoly.
Page: 43 (48.86%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:34:24 PM
The whole mischief originated in the religious thinking of man. Now there is no use in blaming the religious thinking of man, because all the political ideologies, even your legal structures, are the warty outgrowth of the religious thinking of man. It is not so easy to flush out the whole series of experiences which have been accumulated through centuries, and which are based upon the religious thinking of man. There is a tendency to replace one belief with another belief, one illusion with another illusion. That is all we can do.
Page: 43 (48.86%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:36:54 PM
Q: Whatever you say, I feel that the only way for humanity to survive is to bring about a change in the heart -- and that is Love.
A: No, not at all, because love implies division, separation. As long as there is division, as long as there is a separation within you, so long do you maintain that separation around you. When everything fails, you use the last card, the trump in the pack of cards, and call it love. But it is not going to help us, and it has not helped us at all. Even religion has failed to free man from violence and from ten other different things that it is trying to free us from. You see, it is not a question of trying to find new concepts, new ideas, new thoughts, and new beliefs.
Page: 44 (50.00%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:40:18 PM
The basic question that we all have to ask for ourselves is, what kind of a human being do you want? The only answer to this human problem, if there is any answer, is not to be found through new ideas, new concepts, or new ideologies, but through bringing about a change in the chemistry of the human body. But there is a danger even there. When once we perfect genetic engineering and change the human being, there will be a tendency to hand this technology over to the state. It will then be a lot easier for them to push all the people into war and see that they can kill without a second thought. You don't have to brainwash them. You don't have to teach them love or patriotism. Brainwashing takes a century, [as, for example,] brainwashing to believe in God took centuries. The Communists took decades to brainwash their people not to believe in God. But with genetic engineering, there is no need for that kind of brainwashing process. It is a lot easier to change human beings by giving just one injection.
Page: 47 (53.41%) @ 26 Feb 2024 08:13:46 PM
Q: You spoke about the state's collecting taxes and said that the state should do everything to give security to the people and their children.
A: I do not see any reason why anybody should starve on this planet. What are you doing to solve these problems? You may very well throw that same question at me. But I have not set myself up in the business of running this world. They have set themselves up in the business of ruling this or that country. What justification do you have for the fact that forty percent of the people are allowed to starve in India today? It is not spiritual; it is not human either. It is inhuman to let your fellow beings starve. Religion has invented that wonderful thing called charity. Not only that, you don't stop there, but you give a Nobel prize to somebody because of the charitable work that particular individual is doing. That is the most vicious and vulgar thing that the religious man has come up with today.
We Are Heading Towards Disaster
Page: 49 (55.68%) @ 26 Feb 2024 08:19:02 PM
Q: What are your views regarding those who want to understand what this life is all about?
A: The demand to understand and bring about a change in you is the one that is responsible for the demand to understand the world and then bring about a change in the world. They are one and the same. That is why you are interested in listening to others. Through that listening you think you will be able to bring about a change in you and then also a change in the world around you. Basically there is no difference between what is here (pointing towards himself) and what is out there in the world. There is no way you can draw a line of demarcation.
The End of Illusion is Death
Page: 55 (62.50%) @ 26 Feb 2024 10:30:43 PM
Q: Do you mean to say that all the life that we experience is only through the body, through the senses, and that the body contains the whole human being?
A: What exactly do you mean by 'life'? Nobody knows anything about life, and there is no point in defining it. Anything that we say of life is a speculation on our part. What we are trying to understand or experience, life or whatever, is through the help of the knowledge we have of it. But thought is something dead. It is something that can never touch anything living. The moment it tries to touch life and capture it, contain it and give expression to it, it is destroyed by the living quality of life. What we mean by life, however, is not actually life but living. Living is our relationship with the people around us, the life around us, with the whole world around us. And that is all we know. That relationship is actually not a basic relationship, but a relationship that is born out of our demand to become one with life. So, anything we do, any attempt we make to become one with it, is fruitless because there is no way we can establish any relationship with the life around us.
Page: 55 (62.50%) @ 26 Feb 2024 10:31:52 PM
Q: Why do you say that we are not part of it?
A: I am not for a moment assuming or emphasizing that we are not part of it. We are part of it. But the most important question which we should ask ourselves is, "What is it that separates us from the life around us, and what is it that maintains the separateness, or division, if I may use the word, all the time?" Actually, what divides us is thought. Thought is matter. But that matter cannot stay there for long. The moment the matter is born it has to become part of the energy again. But this demand on our part, or on the part of thought, to maintain continuity, is the demand that drives us to experience the same thing over and over and over again. And thus we are maintaining this superficial, artificial, non-existent duality, division there between our life and the life around us.
Page: 57 (64.77%) @ 26 Feb 2024 10:56:58 PM
Q: Why do you think that we live in this illusion, and why does it persist?
A: The illusion persists because if the illusion comes to an end, what can be called clinical death will take place. So, if we give up one illusion, we will always replace it with another.
Q: Why?
A: That is the thing that gives us the feeling of conquering the inevitable end called death. That is the only death that is there. Otherwise, there is no such thing as death at all. And death is the end of the illusion, end of the fear, end of the knowledge that we have of ourselves and of the world around us.
Lost in the Jungle
Page: 63 (71.59%) @ 26 Feb 2024 11:12:39 PM
Q: Would it be possible to have thought without these ideas and still take advantage of nature?
A: I maintain and very often say that thought in its birth, in its content, in its expression, and in its action, is fascist. It is very aggressive. Our very demand to understand nature's laws is to use them for the purpose of maintaining the continuity of thought. All the talk that thought is altruistic and that we are curious to know the laws of nature just for the sake of knowing them is bluff. The very motivation, the drive behind our demand to understand the laws of nature is to use them for the purpose of continuing the human species at the expense of every other form of life on this planet.
Page: 68 (77.27%) @ 27 Feb 2024 11:30:30 AM
Q: And the search for meaning is absurd?
A: Obviously you do not see any meaning. You do not see any purpose in life. Obviously you don't see. (Laughs) I don't mean only you. I mean people. To me to ask that question is so silly, so meaningless, so absurd -- "What is the meaning of life?" It is not life that we are really interested in but living. The problem of living has become a very tiring business -- to live with somebody else, to live with our feelings, to live with our ideas. In other words, it is the value system that we have been thrown into. You see, the value system is false.
Death is a Reshuffling of Atoms
Page: 73 (82.95%) @ 27 Feb 2024 11:38:46 AM
Q: What happens?
A: The balance of energy in nature has to be maintained for some reason. I don't know why. So death occurs only when there is a need for the atoms to maintain the balance of energy in the universe. It is nothing but a reshuffling of atoms. This organism has no way of finding out that it was born at a particular point of time and is going to die at another point of time, and also that it is living at this moment and not dead. The knowledge we have of this living organism -- the birth, the death, and all that -- is absent here (pointing to himself).