Deconstructing Krishnamurti

Scott Forbes, who was an important associate of Krishnamurti’s during his later years, and also a close friend of Mary Zimbalist, wrote a book about Krishnamurti’s last months. The book is entitled Krishnamurti, Preparing to leave. Published in 2018, it recounts Forbe’s experiences at Brockwood Park School, where he was once the principal, and also his travels and experiences with Krishnamurti in Saanen, India, and Ojai. The book is more a memoir than an explication of the author’s understanding of the Teachings. Scott Forbes was 37 years old when Krishnamurti died, and was one of his trusted companions, to the extent that he was allowed to be at K’s side during his final days.

I liked the book because it does not attempt to preach to the reader about the Teachings. It is more of a personal narrative of events. Scott Forbes is open about his admission of not understanding the Teachings; neither when he was 37, nor presumably nowadays. He was the person who recorded Krishnamurti’s deathbed statement in Ojai, and he is firm in his understanding that it was Krishnamurti’s intention to go on the record as saying that no one “got” the teachings.

All the same, Scott Forbes remains in awe of Krishnamurti, and has devoted his life to focusing on Krishnamurti’s educational efforts. He is currently involved in a project which has as its aim a kind of quantification of K’s educational philosophy. Throughout the book, Scott Forbes stresses what might be called K’s mysterious presence and power. He doesn’t claim to understand the source of the Teachings. He does seem to think that K set out a sufficient roadmap for a practical educational methodology to be developed, which has become his life’s work.

The quote in question is as follows (italics belong to Scott Forbes):

"It seems important to say that whatever effect meeting or knowing Krishnnaji had, it is absolutely clear that the effect alone did not facilitate a greater or deeper understanding of Krishnaji’s Teachings. Krishnaji maintained through his life and even to the very end, that nobody else lived the Teachings. He also insisted that people could. This is important to state, as there could be the mistaken impression that those who met or knew Krishnaji have a better understanding of the Teachings than those who are not so lucky. This is simply not true." - Scott Forbes, Krishnamurti, Preparing to Leave

Whether Forbes has encountered those people since K’s death who have claimed that K was too ill at the end to know what he was saying, and is trying to set the record straight, or if he has met self-described or self-appointed “successors” to K, he does not specify. But his motive in writing that passage seems to me to be that he wants to clarify exactly what K wanted to be understood by others involved in the Teachings and foundations at the end of his life, that nobody was “living” the Teachings. The understanding and compassion which K demonstrated and lived had not been enough, on their own, to generate transformation in others.

In another interesting passage from this book, Forbes writes, that he deliberately did not question certain things that K told him because he accepted that these things were beyond his understanding. “I don’t understand gravity,” He writes, “but I know how to follow its dictates.” This all reminded me of an important feature of Buddhism, or at least some schools of Buddhism, holding that it’s imperative that those who are studying the Dharma should do their best to live within an ethical framework. The ethics that are being put forward by such teachings are part of an important and broader scaffold which is generated by a mind of greater understanding, in Forbes’s comparison a “law of gravity.”

Whether we are talking about a comprehensive mind or about gravity, these things do function as a kind of authority or lodestar. Perhaps K would have used the term “order” in describing such a mind, or the law of gravity; but I have to wonder whether his constant needling about “authority” in the end had the opposite effect of what he intended.

It’s been quite a year, and a lot of perspectives have surely broadened, including my own, so just to get started, here’s an interesting take on Krishnamurti which I found the link to a few days ago: Uh oh. Just now discovered that apparently this other blog site, Medium, does not allow its articles to be linked to on WordPress which makes some kind of sense. Anyway, the name of the article from Medium is “Krishnamurti, the lonely Hollywood Star” by Jules Evans, and maybe you can find it. Some of the perspective given by this author is not very flattering, to put it mildly, but the point I am going to make is that different people can have different takes when they interpret various material according to their their own subjective past experience and in present subjective contexts, the latter presumably according to where they are GOING with it. I don’t believe that Niko and I are intending to discount anything of value that K had to contribute, and there’s much of value, but rather we’re trying to kind of separate for ourselves the wheat from the chaff by looking at the material a little more comprehensively and at the same time perhaps encouraging and maybe even in some way inspiring others to take a deeper look.

So, from this perspective, is it in some way possible to entirely separate the message of this particular person from the story of this person? Am not really sure, and kind of winging it, but it’s very obvious that looking at a particular story is interconnected with understanding the meaning of the story, so the question comes up — when we find deeper meaning, what do we DO with it? Is there simply an on the spot one time internal reorganization or is there or at least can there be an ongoing process of reorganization? And this all does have to do with time, as it happen over clock time, but Krishnamurti brought up the concept of “psychological time.” Now many people have a problem with this particular terminology. We can grasp the basic idea, I think, but find it difficult, or at least I do, to understand the functional value of giving such a presentation. In short, there was some line of reasoning involved in using this particular terminology, but looking from a different angle, what could be the actual reason for it? In other words, is it of value to understand exactly why I am processing data from a certain angle or is this simply a story, ie, contrivance of psychological thought to be eliminated so that we can get to what Krishnamurti called “truth,?”

I think I need to start writing here again, and I will write more frequently this time. So what is the origin of the Gurdjieff teaching? It is Tibetan Buddhism.  How sure I am of this? About 99.9 percent. There is a LOT of evidence it is so. Though I cannot appropriately give all of this evidence here,  I will give some of it in a future message.

This said, there has been a large and still strong ongoing response to one particular message, “What Krishnamurti Wrote About Gurdjieff.”  Many people have read this message from very many countries.  Assuming it is a matter of curiosity, that is perfectly understandable. If I had not already read that material, I would want to read it, too. What I am wondering–and I do not particularly like this term, but it hits the spot–is what these people are trying to “flesh out.” I am assuming that in most or even all of these cases it is not just idle research on a topic that has caught one’s fancy, but part of an individual search.

People know I have been struggling with this, and I will write more in the future. For now:

When you keep repeating the same stuff over and over. you find different ways of saying it to make it seem original, and even make poetry,  but it is all by format. Sad. He hooked on this idea of “meditation” and stayed there until the idealized end, but little to nothing about doing and how to do it. No practicality. It took me decades to see it, imo because something was wrong with me. Thank ‘God’ I had another teaching.  And money was involved;  craving for beauty and vitality and setting up conditions to increase that for oneself is a form of currency which does involve accumulation. (This is a sticking point which may be difficult to understand.). There is a motive even though the teacher implies he does not have a motive, and that is wrong. Being poor is different. Of course all of this accumulation is held within the body. When you hold onto it, hold onto an image, you are STIFF. Look at the pictures.  Is that alive? Is it flowing? And if you take away the ‘beauty’ do not support the consensus around that, you will be shut down, at least verbally. remember, all of humanity are just the dumb masses:-)  So, in the flower is a worm, and that is subject for inquiry. There are people who actually studied this discrepancy factor within its various demonic modes of shape shifting and learned how to use it for actual and not pretend transformation.

All of this is just grist for the mill , at least for someone who is aware of the subject/oject relationship and experimenting with and studying how to turn that around and make exchanges within oneself for the sake of ones brother, but what if the teacher pretends there is not a motive? All well and fine on some level if he is not consciously aware he is doing it. But what if he DOES know he is doing it? That would be disingenuous.

 

This message from Saurab was originally posted on the email list J_Krishnamurti, and thank you very much,  Saurab.

experiencer:

K wrote the following in one of his books:

“It was not the quietness of exhaustion, or of relaxation, but a stillness that was very alert. There was no point from which the mind was still; there was no observer of this tranquillity; the experiencer was wholly absent.”

Now, if the experiencer was wholly absent, how could K talk about it later ? The recording of the experience must have taken place with reference to an entity who could later recall what was recorded…. But when K says that the experiencer was wholly absent, it does not make sense to me…..

saurab

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Comment by Wry:   It might be worthwhile to inquire into what the “experiencer” who was reading those words was experiencing,  to look carefully at the dynamic of creating a really vivid experience,  even what what some might call (and K sometimes did use this word),   a “sacred” experience, through the use of imagery and making inaccurate correlations,  The poetry of his language in conjunction with a  distortion of physical reality was obviously in some way effective in attracting and deeply resonating with many readers,  myself at one time very much included.  Illusion (and delusion:-) can be very alluring and seductive.

 

Sorry it took so long to get back here,  but am going to try to write more regularly.  So,  this topic seems to be attracting a lot of people. Am not sure why,  but probably because the subject is charged  in that there are these two different approaches, one involving what could be called releasing and the other involving a form of harnessing.  Anyone who knows even a little about these two approaches can see this is true, right?  So, if we figure out some way to reconcile this kind of  obvious discrepancy,  then we will have some kind of new understanding that we can apply to our own personal practice.  Now was Krishnamurti even advocating a particular  practice?  Well, yes he was, obviously. When you tell anyone to do or not do anything,  this is obviously related to doing. Not doing is a form of doing. Try to think about this.

From Google: ” There is a particular approach of negation that can be found in both Hinduism and Buddhism.   The Hindu version I will refer to as “neti neti”.  From Google: “neti neti (नेति नेति) is a Sanskrit expression which means “not this, not this”, or “neither this, nor that” (neti is sandhi from na iti “not so”). It is found in the Upanishads. Neti neti,is the method of Vedic analysis of negation.”

And from Wikopedia:  “Neti neti”:

“significance of Neti neti:  neti neti, meaning, “Not this, not this”, is the method of Vedic analysis of negation. It is a keynote of Vedic inquiry. With its aid the Jnani negates identification with all things of this world which is not the Atman, in this way he negates the Anatman. Through this gradual process he negates the mind and transcends all worldly experiences that are negated till nothing remains but the Self. He attains union with the Absolute by denying the body, name, form, intellect, senses and all limiting adjuncts and discovers what remains, the true “I” alone.^[1] L.C.Beckett in his book, Neti Neti, explains that this expression is an expression of something inexpressible, it expresses the ‘suchness’ (the essence) of that which it refers to when ‘no other definition applies to it’.^[2] Neti neti negates all descriptions about the Ultimate Reality but not the Reality itself. Intuitive interpretation of uncertainty principle can be expressed by “Neti neti”^[3] that annihilates ego and the world as non-self (Anatman), it annihilates our sense of self altogether.^[“

Note that when you strip everything away, you get to this larger “Self” which is kind of hiding underneath all of these false ideas and illusions about the nature of reality,and this self or Self is considered to be ones true self (Self:-)

But the approach of Gurdjieff was quite different, actually. He did speak about the essence of a person, but he was meaning something else.

To be continued; will go into this gradually,  little by little.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Due to a time consuming development in my personal life I have not been able to write here for a while, but am going to start writing again soon. I notice there is a big interest inKrishnamurti/ Gurdjieff, so will kind hone is from that angle and try to write something soon, maybe later today. Niko is very busy, too, but she will write here again, also.