A personal experience of Krishnamurti's teachings

I read your Krishnamurti piece, which was a clear breakdown of the teaching from a thought based perspective. However, I have some musings which, I believe are worthy of consideration for understanding his work.

(1) The actual doing of looking at a tree is akin to not projecting anything. The doing is all. Whereas the knowledge or thought about a tree is the projection of your memory onto the object, ie they are different. One is passive the other active.
(2) The learning which one comes upon is the awareness that all is a trap. All that is projected out is your memory. The projector, what is projected (which is sound, objects, everything), is all from your personal memory. You (the projector) can never see beyond the trap because you are also your memory. So knowing all is memory and a trap you just de-power from it. What's left is the actual looking, which is passive, as in the tree.
(3) So why bother? Because you have seen the fact of yourself as a trap. The passive looking is intelligence. And when that intelligence is powering, something else can occur. (And that is something you can't encourage or make happen), since will and direction are aspects of the trap.

Tad: I think your summary of Krishnamurti's views captures the essence of his teaching. Are you able, at least sometimes, to put into practice what Krishnamurti wants us to do? Anyway, thanks for your thoughtful (or should I say thought-less?) response.

I'll tell you a story that I have kept secret for six years. I don't talk about it because no one will understand and also I don't want to come across as a nutter.

Six years ago while driving down a motorway, I was watching the signs and trees pass by. I was trying to 'feel' them as they passed. (Already this makes me sound like a crazy man).

Then something happened in my perception. The whole scene seemed to collapse in together and then exploded out in a different direction. (Sort of like collapsing horizontally and exploding vertically). Except it wasn't really vertical or horizontal, but that's the closest I can describe it.

What I saw thereafter was the same motorway traffic and trees, but it was very different. There was a deepness to the scene like I have never imagined. The clarity was rich and heavy. (Words don't really describe it successfully.)

But the most amazing thing was that I saw that I was everything. Everything was me. It just WAS. It was me and no more question about it.

The other thing I can report is that (and this is where it gets really freaky), everything around that was ME was Love. It was like love was a heavy mist within me that was the scene.

I have no idea how long this lasted, probably for no more than a few minutes. But I slowly came out of it and then it was gone. All the time I was driving my car down the motorway at about 70 miles an hour.

Have no idea why I am relaying this to you as it's a very personal thing that happened. It's still vivid in my memory after all this time.

I have never been able to repeat this experience, happening. And I have bloody well tried too, but to no avail.

What I know is, it was real. I found out what Love is. And I also know that even though I can talk about love like everyone else, I know I don't really love, it's just words and doing what's expected.

Tad: Do you meditate?

I used to lie on the floor and concentrate on a spot on the ceiling, until I realised that it wasn't the spot that was important but the actual looking process itself. The spot on the ceiling and all other things outside the body in the environment and all those things inside my head, the feelings, thoughts, wants, bodily pains etc. are all there. They are real. Real in a phenomenological sense that I experience them.

But the phenomena is just passing through the NOW. The process of just looking is all. That is seeing the whole.

The moment you fall off that horse, you fall into being conscious of the object or thought or emotion etc. The falling off is the creation of the "I" and the object.

Once created, you then do something about it or with it. Because you think that is change. (It is not). What you have done is create consciousness as an "it" as opposed to a "me".

So there are only two states. There is the looking process - where "you" are not involved. You are conscious of what is seen and when being it, the "it" or "me" is not there or applicable.

But if something shocks you, or you start to think about something, then "it" or "me" is created instantly. And you try to solve it, which is the mistake.

The person creates the breakup within phenomena because they want to do something.

I have observed that most people are unwilling or unable to simply look and just continue to look, because they do not wish to give up themselves. Their mind does not want to do something which will end itself.

On Love - when I described it from my recollections of my road trip, I was trying to put into words something which was, or seemed tangible. In the same way that the smell of coffee is in the room when you make it. Love was the glue that seemed to be everything that was out there. Except that "out there" was all inside me. All was love.

In everyday life, I am not sure what love is, other than a wish or a hope. It is a diluted thing without real substance and mostly a catch-all word for many other things. Such as lust, care, wanting, desiring, owning and doing the right thing responsibly. But it is not that perfume that I was on that road.

Tad: What you wrote about love suggests to me that it is a feeling of connection or even of unity. If so, then this has something in common with how we normally use the word. It seems to me that your lying on the floor looking at the ceiling is a form of meditation. You state that most people do not want to go into that state of just looking. That applies to me too. I find it boring to just look and soon seek diversion in action or in thought. Doesn't that happen to you as well?

If it's boring then you are avoiding the fact of the ongoing seeing. The boredom is your avoidance strategy. It implies that you have not yet realised the pointlessness of the trap of you taking action against another part of yourself.

I catch myself not seeing, and then have to "watch" the thinking that I am actually doing. What I am actually doing then is learning by negation of the things that are causing a fracture in the whole.

David's website is here.