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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Reincarnation On Trial

Jiddu Krishnamurti: Experience involves remembrance, time - which is the past. What we see is a product of our cultural conditioning. Therefore the experiencer is the experienced.

 

 

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A major premise of reincarnationism asserts that experience, especially, much experience, has the power to transform and evolve the human spirit.

This is a deeply flawed proposition, on a number of levels; for example, the soul, the sacred “true self,” remains untouched by whatever occurs at the surface of life and will unfold itself on its own schedule.

However, for our purposes at the moment, we shall be well served by considering certain teaching by Jiddu Krishnamurti.

“you are the experience”

About 40 years ago, Rupert Sheldrake interviewed Krishnamurti. During the discussion, the latter offered, in my opinion, an astonishingly lucid comment on the nature of experience:

Sheldrake: What you were saying about the attention when one is looking at a mountain, for example - are you suggesting that if I have that kind of attention to everything that I experience that I can…

Krishnamurti: (in a teasing way, interrupting) You experience?

S. Yes, alright, but…

K. But you are the experience!

S. Yes…

"the experiencer is the experienced"

K. That means that there is no experience!

S. (beginning to laugh) There’s just attention, you mean?

K. (nodding assent) (pausing) Experience involves remembrance… time… which is the past… therefore the experiencer is the experienced!

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“The ‘real’ is near you. You do not have to seek it. And a man who seeks the truth will never find it. Truth is in ‘what is,’ and that is the beauty of it. But the moment you conceive it, the moment you seek it, you begin to struggle, and a man who struggles cannot understand. That is why we have to be still, observant, passively aware.”

 

Editor’s note: In his lecturing, around the world for 60 years, Krishnamurti frequently would help his listeners understand that the conditioned mind can never find the truth. We think we’re experiencing new things but in reality the egoic mind sees only the past written upon the present.

Freedom from this mental enslavement can never be accomplished by “more time” – not even 100,000 lifetimes --- as this would only compound the illusion of “new experience.”

What is required is a timeless moment of clarity by which the past is dissolved.

See the bank of Krishnamurti lectures.

 

from the Gospel Of Thomas

restless, chattering, endless motion, ever seeking

Krishnamurti lecture: 26.May.1966.

“When one is awake, with Light in oneself, there is no seeking. Only the man in darkness is always searching for light, for more experience…A monkey is restless, scratching itself, chattering, endless movement. So is our mind. One says, ‘I must control it’ and concentrate. We don’t realize that the entity demanding control is still the entity that is like the monkey.”

K. I think everything we’ve said above concerning “motion and rest” is somewhat valid and helpful, but Krishnamurti might have inadvertently offered clarity here. The “monkey mind” is never at rest.

E. I think you’re onto something here. Krishnamurti says that if we have Light within ourselves, then the frantic search for satisfaction ceases.

K. We feel ourselves, at a deep level, to be “enough.”

E. And so, spell it out for us, Kriss. What is the cryptic statement of “motion and rest” really about?

K. The whole book of Thomas’ Gospel is that of drawing distinction between those who know about the inner Light and those who don’t.

E. Yes… very good… this would mean then, according to this view, that the world is divided into these two camps –

K. -- those who are at “rest” and those who are in constant “motion.”  

E. And look at the context in "Thomas." Jesus said, if they ask you, what is the evidence that you are from the Light? - tell them, "It is motion and rest."

K. In other words, everyone is led by one of these. The world is in constant "motion" but those of the Light are in a state of "rest."

 

 

 

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