Krishnamurti's Notebook

by J. Krishnamurti

Seeing a cloud over a mountain, without thought and its responses, is the miracle of the new; it's not "beautiful", it's explosive in its immensity; it is something that has never been and never will be. To see, to listen, consciousness in its entirety must be still for the destructive creation to be. It is the totality of life and not the fragment of all thought. There is no beauty but only a cloud over the mountain; it is creation.

There seemed to be a great rejoicing and shouting among the trees and meadows; they existed for each other and above them was heaven, not the man-made, with its tortures and hopes. And there was life, vast, splendid, throbbing and stretching in all directions. It was life, always young and always dangerous; life that never stayed, that wandered through the earth, indifferent, never leaving a mark, never asking or calling for anything. It was there in abundance, shadowless and deathless; it didn't care from where it came or where it was going. Wherever it was there was life, beyond time and thought. It was a marvellous thing, free, light and unfathomable. It was not to be closed in; where they closed it, in the places of worship, in the market place, in the home, there was decay and corruption and their perpetual reform. It was there simple, majestic and shattering and the beauty of it is beyond thought and feeling. It is so vast and incomparable that it fills the earth and heavens and the blade of grass that's destroyed so soon. It is there with love and death.

The feel of essence is not through the brain nor through some fancy; its not experienceable as a shock; above all it's not the word.You cannot experience it; to experience there must be an experiencer, the observer. Experiencing, without the experiencer, is quite another matter. It is in this "state", in which there is no experiencer, no observer, that there is that "feeling".

Meditation is this attention in which there is an awareness, without choice, of the movement of all things, the cawing of the crows, the electric saw ripping through the wood, the trembling of leaves, the noisy stream, a boy calling, the feelings, the motives, the thoughts chasing each other and going deeper, the awareness of total consciousness. And in this attention, time as yesterday pursuing into the space of tomorrow and the twisting and turning of consciousness has become quiet and still. In this stillness there is an immeasurable, not comparable movement; a movement that has no being, that's the essence of bliss and death and life. A movement that cannot be followed for it leaves no path and because it is still, motionless; it is the essence of all motion.

There was a strong breeze from the west, sweeping through the valley. The rocks were so alive that they seemed to run after the clouds and the clouds clung to them, taking the shape and the curve of the rocks; they flowed around them and it was difficult to separate the rocks from the clouds.

Love never strives after something; it does not make itself perfect. It's the flame without the smoke; in striving to be perfect, there's only greater volume of smoke; perfection, then, lies only in striving, which is mechanical, more and more perfect in habit, in imitation, in engendering more fear.

Being is infinitely more significant than becoming.

There were no frontiers, no measurements and so the silence was not held within experience, to be recognized and stored away. It may never occur again and if it did, it would be entirely different. Silence cannot repeat itself, only the brain through memory and recollection can repeat what had been, but what had been is not the actual.

To deny knowledge, experience, the known is to invite the unknown. Denial is explosive; it is not an intellectual ideational affair, something with which the brain can play. In the very act of denial there is energy, the energy of understanding and this energy is not docile, to be tamed by fear and convenience. Denial is destructive; it is unaware of consequences; it is not a reaction and so not the opposite of assertion.To assert that there is or that there is not, is to continue in reaction, and reaction is not denial. Denial has no choice and so is not the outcome of conflict. Choice is conflict and conflict is immaturity. Seeing the truth as truth, the false as false and the truth in the false is the act of denial. It's an act and not an idea. The total denial of thought, the idea and the word brings freedom from the known; with the total denial of feeling, emotion and sentiment there's love. Love is beyond and above thought and feeling. The total denial of the known is the essence of freedom.