The Mind Shuts Out The Sentient Space

Mar 3, 2004, 12.00am IST
Lata Khubchandani.

J Krishnamurti departed from this world 17 Februarys ago. He was a philosopher deeply sceptical of the smokescreen that is the mind. Krishnamurti’s every realisation was the out- come of a spontaneous, non- biased, non-preconceived way of living, with no mind playing the filter. In truth he had little to teach, save that knowledge is not taught but realised. But his audiences made a teaching even out of that!
JK’s constant refrain was that what he said was not to be learnt and turned into a concept for future use. He would explain that our mind is full of preconceptions, and therefore ‘listening’ takes place in an already programmed brain. Rather, there is no listening at all.


JK spent his life trying to communicate the essence of understanding — that it had to be felt rather than understood. He was at least partially successful in his endeavour; des-pite the messy propensities of the mind, those who were touched by JK could never really be like those who had never had anything to do with him. Of course, JK baulked at the thought of being a guru! He was intangibly understood, beyond the confines of words, but some part of the human understanding grasped the subtlety of his communication.


“Truth is a pathless land”, he would say. Man cannot arrive at it through any organisation, creed, dogma, priest or ritual, or even philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He would have to seek truth, the kernel of understanding, through the “mirror of relationship”. This is pro-bably the essence of what JK taught all his life.


What is mirror of relationship? Typically, JK does not explain, knowing that the search for precision in words and theory would kill the essence. What JK meant was that man, on discovering facets of himself, is able to reflect a particular facet of another person. The other person sees himself reflected in the first person and feels ‘understood’.


Therefore, understanding proceeds from heightened self-awareness. The self-realised man also needs relationships to fully perceive how self- realised he is, because more non-realised people would see themselves mirrored in him. The more he mirrors them, the more he expands as a human being, because he has understood more of himself by being able to reflect others. There is no self-realisation in isolation because there is no one to reflect, and that makes one limited.


Ironically, this can lead to an understanding of one’s own mind. What is one’s mind all about when one is able to reflect a saint, a sinner, a murderer, a rapist, a social worker, a child and an old man all at once? Does it mean one has come to realise that one is a sinner, a saint, a killer and a kind, generous being as well — that all these qualities co-exist with appa-rent harmony in one’s mind? How is that possible? If I live by killing others, how can I be a good, kind person?


Krishnamurti categorically said a mind with dichotomy was a fragmented one. All of us are fragmented minds, as we hold diverse and contradic-tory characteristics as living, vibrant qualities. But love cannot be experienced by a mind that hates. Is it possible not to hate anyone? The truth is that if one hates anybody one becomes incapable of love without realising it.


Love in this situation is conceptualised, not felt. When one experiences pure love, there is a sense of holism, exhilaration, freedom and benignity. There cannot be space for hate in this situation. Love and hate cannot be experienced simultaneously. JK made his communications experiential, as though one were walking through the experience and not merely talking about it. He is gone, but his effulgence helps us recognise the cobwebs within.