Part 1. The Pilgrim and his Holy Pilgrimage
Chapter 1. Krishnamurti describes his long journey towards
attainment and perfection and of finally entering into that sea of
liberation and happiness which is the fulfilment of life.
I would show you how I have found my beloved, how the beloved is
established in me, how the beloved is the Beloved of all, and how the
Beloved and I are one so that there can be no separation either now or
at any time. Naturally, I did not think of all these things while I was
young. They grew in me unconsciously. But now I can place all the events
in my life in their proper order and see in what manner I have
developed to attain my goal and have become my goal.
Ever since I was a boy I have been, as most young people are, or
should be, in revolt. Nothing satisfied me. I listened; I observed; I
wanted something beyond the mere phrases, the maya of words. I wanted to
discover and to establish for myself a goal. I did not want to rely on
anyone. I do not remember the time when I was being moulded in my
boyhood, but I can look back and see how nothing satisfied me.
EUROPE
When I went to Europe for the first time I lived among people who
were wealthy and well-educated, who held positions of social authority,
but whatever their dignities or distinctions, they could not satisfy me.
I was in revolt also against Theosophists with all their jargon, their
theories, their meetings, and their explanations of life. When I went to
a meeting, the lecturers repeated the same ideas which did not satisfy
me or make me happy. I went to fewer and fewer meetings; I saw less and
less of the people who merely repeated the ideas of Theosophy. I
questioned everything because I wanted to find out for myself.
I walked about the streets, watching the faces of people who perhaps
watched me with even greater interest. I went to theatres. I saw how
people amused themselves trying to forget their unhappiness, thinking
that they were solving their problems by drugging their hearts and minds
with superficial excitement. I saw people with political, social or
religious power, and yet they did not have that one essential thing in
their lives, which is happiness.
I attended labour meetings, Communist meetings, and listened to what
their leaders had to say. They were generally protesting against
something. I was interested, but they did not give me satisfaction. By
observation of one type and another I gathered experience vicariously.
Within everyone there was a latent volcano of unhappiness and
discontent.
I passed from one pleasure to another, from one amusement to another,
in search of happiness, but found it not. I watched the amusements of
the young people, their dances, their dresses, their extravagances, and
saw they were not happy.
I watched people who had very little in life, who wanted to tear down
those things which others had built up. They thought that they were
solving life by destroying and building differently and yet they were
unhappy. I saw people who desired to serve going into those quarters
where the poor and the degraded live. They desired to help but were
themselves helpless. How can you cure another of disease if you are
yourself a victim of that disease?
I saw people satisfied with the stagnation which is unproductive,
uncreative -the bourgeois type who never struggles to be above the
surface or falls below it and so feels its weight. I read books on
philosophy, religion, biographies of great people, and yet they could
not give me what I wanted.
INDIA
Then I came to India and I saw that the people there were deluding
themselves equally, carrying on the same old traditions, treating women
cruelly. At the same time they called themselves very religious and
painted their faces with ashes. In India they may have the most sacred
books in the world; they may have the greatest philosophies; they may
have constructed wonderful temples in the past, but none of these were
able to give me what I wanted. Neither in Europe nor in India could I
find happiness.
USA
Still lacking the fixed purpose from which comes the delight of
living, I went to California. Circumstances forced me there because my
brother was ill. There among the hills we lived in a small house in
complete retirement, doing everything for ourselves. If you would
discover Truth, you must for a time withdraw from the world. In that
retired spot my brother and I talked much together. We meditated, trying
to understand, for meditation of the heart is understanding.
There I was naturally driven within myself, and I learned that as
long as I had no definite goal or purpose in life, I was, like the rest
of mankind, tossed about as a ship on a stormy sea. With that in my
mind, after rejecting all lesser things, I established for myself my
goal. I wanted to enter into eternal happiness. I wanted to become the
very goal. I wanted to drink from the very source of life. I wanted to
unite the beginning and the end. I fixed that goal as my Beloved and
that Beloved is life, the life of all things. I wanted to destroy the
separation that exists between man and his goal. I said to myself that
as long as there is this void of separation between myself and my goal
there is bound to be misery, disturbance and doubt. There will be
authority which I must obey, to which I must yield. As long as there is
separation between you and me there is unhappiness for us both. So I set
about destroying all the barriers that I had previously erected.
I began to reject, to renounce, to set aside what I had gathered and
little by little I approached my goal. When my brother died, the
experience it brought me was great -not the sorrow- sorrow is momentary
and passes away, but the joy of experience remains. If you understand
life rightly then death becomes an experience out of which you can build
your house of perfection, your house of delight. When my brother died,
that gap of separation still existed in me. I saw him once or twice
after death but that did not satisfy me. How can you be satisfied alone?
You may invent phrases; you may have great knowledge of books, but as
long as there is within you separation and loneliness, there is sorrow.
So I have walked and struggled towards that light which is my goal,
which is the goal of all humanity because it is humanity itself.
You cannot separate life from any expression of life and yet you must be able to distinguish between life and its expressions.
Before I began to think for myself, I took it for granted that I,
Krishnamurti, was the vehicle of the World Teacher because many people
maintained that it was so. But when I began to think, I wanted to find
out what was meant by the World-Teacher, what was meant by the taking of
a vehicle by the World-Teacher, and what was meant by His manifestation
in the world. When I was a small boy, I used to see Shri Krishna, with
the flute, as He is pictured by the Hindus, because my mother was a
devotee of Shri Krishna. When I grew older and met with Bishop
Leadbeater and the Theosophical Society, I began to see the Master K. H.
-again in the form which was put before me, the reality from their
point of view- and hence the Master K. H. was to me the end. Later on,
as I grew, I began to see the Lord Maitreya. That was two years ago, and
I saw Him then constantly in the form put before me. Now lately, it has
been the Buddha whom I have been seeing, and it has been my delight and
my glory to be with Him.
To me 'the Beloved' is all -it is Shri Krishna, it is the Master K.
H., it is the Lord Maitreya, it is the Buddha, and yet it is beyond all
these forms. What does it matter what name you give? You are fighting
over the World Teacher as a name. My Beloved is the open skies, the
flower, every human being. I said to myself: until I become one with all
the Teachers, whether They are the same is not of great importance;
whether Shri Krishna, Christ, the Lord Maitreya are one is again a
matter of no great importance. I said to myself: as long as I see Them
outside as in a picture, an objective thing, I am separate, I am away
from the centre; but when I have the capacity, the strength, the
determination, when I am purified and ennobled, then that barrier, that
separation, will disappear. I was not satisfied till that barrier was
broken down, till that separateness was destroyed. Till I was able to
say with certainty that I was one with my Beloved, I never spoke... I
never said: I am the World-Teacher; but now that I feel I am one with
the Beloved, I say it, not in order to impress my authority to you, not
to convince you of my greatness, nor of the greatness of the World
Teacher... but merely to awaken the desire in your own hearts and in
your own minds to seek out the Truth.
If I say, and I will say that I am one with the Beloved, it is
because I feel and know it. I have found what I longed for. I have
become united, so that henceforth there will be no separation, because
my thoughts, my desires, my longings -those of the individual self- have
been destroyed. Hence I am able to say that I am one with the Beloved
-whether you interpret it as the Buddha, the Lord Maitreya, Shri
Krishna, the Christ, or any other name... I have always in this life,
and perhaps in past lives, desired one thing; to escape, to be beyond
sorrow, beyond limitations, to discover my Guru, my Beloved -which is
your Guru and your Beloved, the Guru, the Beloved who exists in
everybody, who exists under every common stone, in every blade of grass
that is trodden upon. It has been my desire, my longing, to become
united with Him so that I should no longer feel that I was separate, no
longer be a different entity with a separate self. When I was able to
destroy that self utterly, I was able to unite myself with my Beloved.
Hence, because I have found my Beloved, my Truth, I want to give it to
you... My purpose is not to create discussions on authority, on
manifestations in the personality of Krishnamurti, but to give the
waters that shall wash away your sorrows, your petty tyrannies, your
limitations, so that you will be free, so that you will eventually join
that ocean where there is no limitation, where there is the Beloved.
World Teacher
The term World Teacher is only a name and as a label it has no value.
But it has great value to those who are held in bondage by labels, by
the maya, the illusion of words. For the creation or the coming into
being of the flower of humanity, for the attainment of that fullness of
life everyone is responsible. By that I mean that for the creation of
the individual who attains the life eternal, without beginning or end,
in which the source and the goal have their being, all conditioned life
has helped. By its longing to be free, conditioned life has helped to
produce this Flower. As the lotus makes the waters beautiful and as the
waters are necessary for the beauty of the lotus, so the bondage of
every individual and the cry of every individual in bondage helps to
create the one who is eternally free. Hence when that being, individual
or life -do not make it concrete and personal- when that life which has
been separate, held in bondage, attains to that life which is as the
ocean without limitation, then that conditioned life becomes the World
Teacher. I am using words that you can twist and utilize according to
your belief or non-belief, but Truth has nothing to do with belief or
with non-belief. The fragrance of the flower of the lotus does not
depend upon the passer-by. The beauty of the Flower is created by the
tears of the world.
Life is eternal and when after many centuries there is a being who
attains and fulfils that life, it is his delight and glory to make that
unconditioned life understood by those who have not yet attained.
Whether you call that being the World Teacher, the Buddha, the Christ
or anything else, is not of importance. To give waters to the thirsty,
to open the eyes of the blind, to call out the prisoners from their
prison and to give light to those who sit in the shadow of their own
creation, is the delight of the one who has attained. And whether the
waters that shall quench that thirst are contained in a particular
vessel or the voice of him who calls is sweet or musical is of very
little importance. So long as there is the awakening desire within each
one to answer, to take to their lips the waters that shall quench their
thirst, to tear away the covering from their eyes, and to hear the cry
in their prison -that is of value. Life is the fulfilment of all things,
and in the freedom of that life is the attainment of Truth. And the
individuals who have attained that life are life themselves. It is
humanity that places a limitation on that life, and looks at that life
through its limitations.
This life which is the flower of humanity, which is the freedom of
humanity, which is the attainment of humanity, which is the beginning
and the end of humanity, this life which is the eternal Truth, cannot be
described in words. This world has no words, it is and it is not. And
from the point of view of limitation from which every one of you is
looking, there cannot be an understanding of the immensity which is
without limitation. When a being enters into that life, he is life, he
is the flower of humanity. I hope I have made it as vague as possible
because if I made it clear for you, I should have placed a limitation on
truth, I should have betrayed truth.
