Book Review: Beginnings of Learning

'Beginnings of Learning'

By J. Krishnamurti

Phoenix paperback 

This is Krishnamurti’s second book which I finished reading now. And what a wonderful book this is. Krishnamurti was an outstanding philosopher and thinker. He founded many schools in India, the USA and Brockwood Park in Hampshire, UK. This book documents his conversations with some of the students, teachers and parents at these schools (major one is Brockwood Park). The conversations ranged from anything to everything. The goal is to find how to help students/children meet the educational demands of the society without conforming to society’s conventional values. The focus should be on self-awareness, self-learning, avoiding prejudices, learning difference between affection and sentiment, being peaceful and non-violent in true sense, not conforming to other’s values, and acquiring spirit of cooperation.  

The book is in the form of conversations. A student or questioner asks something and then Krishnamurti replies, explains and takes the questioners along with him. The QnAs are very valid for even today’s times; perhaps more valid today to the wider audience.  

Here I have typewritten and reproduced some interesting paragraphs from the same book:  

“Have you thought about violence? What is involved in violence, how does it arise, what is the structure of violence? There is physical violence and there is the violence of obedience – are you obeying and therefore being violent? Do you understand what I mean? Where I obey you and suppress what I think, that suppression will burst out one day. So there is physical violence and violence brought about through obedience, the violence of competitiveness, of conformity. When I confirm to a patter I am violent – you see the connection? When I live a life of fragmentation – that is, when I think one thing and say another, do another – that is fragmentation and that also breeds violence. I may be very quiet, gentle, do all the work I am asked to do, but I flare up: which indicates there has been suppression in me. So violence is not just physical violence, it is a very complex question. And if you haven’t thought about it, when you are faced with violence you will react most unintelligently.” (P191-192) 

“A young man with a sensitive face and hands said, “I am one of those who take drugs. I have taken them regularly for hour or five years; not much; probably every month or so. I am well aware what it is doing to me. I am not quite as sharp as I was. When I am high I think I can do anything. I seem to have tremendous energy and there is no confusion. I see things sharply. I feel like a god on earth, perfect, without any problems, without any regrets. But I can’t maintain that state all the time and I am back on this mad earth. Now I need a stronger dose and where it is leading me I really don’t know. I am uneasy about it now. I can see myself gradually ending up in a mental hospital, and yet the pull of the other state is so strong that I seem to have no resistance. I experienced with it in the beginning because the others did. It was fun in the then, but now it has become a danger. You see how clearly I can explain all this? But yet there is part of me that has become slow, lethargic and ineffectual.” (P244) 

“The idealist who is also a revolutionary, though he may talk convincingly about freedom, inevitably will bring about a dictatorship of the few or of the many. He will also create a personal cult and destroy totally every form of freedom. You may have observed this in the French and Russian revolutions. Your ideal which may come out of the ashes of the present structure will only be speculative Utopia – call it what you like – you want to build a new society. This is what all the physical revolutionaries have done. They start off with equality, social justice, the withering of the state and so on, and end up with tyrannical bureaucracy, insistence on conformity and the exercise of authority in the name of the state. Surely this is not what you want.” (P247) 

“Knowing that you may be hurt, how ill you prevent this hurt taking place? If somebody tells you that you are not clever or beautiful, you get hurt, or angry, which is another form of resistance. Now what can you do? You saw very clearly how the past hurts go away without any effort; you saw because you listened and gave your attention. Now when someone says something unpleasant to you, be attentive; listen very carefully. Attention will prevent the mark of hurt.” (P256)  

It was an interesting and exhaustive read. I recommend this book for all who are interested in learning.  

- Rahul 

Book Review: Freedom from the Known

‘Freedom from the Known’
By J. Krishnamurti
Edited by Mary Lutyens
Krishnamurti Foundation India

I had heard about J. Krishnamurti and his philosophy and was eager to read him. Now that I found his book, there was no stopping. I loved this book and though I didn’t always agree with him or always found his thought in line with mine (for that matter I found him very radical), it was very interesting and enriching to know the way he looks at things. Without doubt he was a very powerful thinker and his thoughts are very logical and relevant.

I think all of us who are interested to explore some of the most puzzling questions of life should definitely read him. This book can be a wonderful start.

I have typewritten and reproduced some paragraphs from his book. The titles and choice or portions are personally mine:

1. Revolt

Revolt is not freedom because when you revolt it is a reaction and that reaction sets up its own pattern and you get caught in that pattern. You think it is something new. It is not; it is the old in a different mould. Any social or political revolt will inevitably revert to the good old bourgeois mentality.

2. Time

I am tempted to repeat a story about a great disciple going to God and demanding to be taught truth. God says, “My friend, it is such a hot day, please get me a glass of water.” So the disciple goes out and knocks on the door of the first house he comes to and a beautiful young lady opens the door. The disciple falls in love with her and they marry and have several children. Then one day it begins to rain, and keeps on raining, raining, raining – the torrents are swollen, the streets are full, the houses are being washed away. The disciple holds on to his wife and carries his children on his shoulders and as he is being swept away he calls out, “Lord, please save me”, and the Lord says, “Where is that glass of water I asked for?”

It is rather a good story because most of us think in terms of time. Man lives by time. Inventing the future has been a favourite game of escape. (P95)

3. Death

To die is to have a mind that is completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longings, pleasures and agonies. Death is a renewal, a mutation, in which thought does not function at all because thought is old. When there is death there is something totally new. Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living. (P104)

4. Love

So what you really say is, “As long as you belong to me I love you but the moment you don’t I begin to hate you. As long as I can rely on you to satisfy my demands, I love you, but the moment you cease to supply what I want I don’t like you.” So there is antagonism between you, there is separation, and when you feel separate from another there is no love. But if you can live with your wife without thought creating all these contradictory states, these endless quarrels in yourself, then perhaps – perhaps – you will know what love is. Then you are completely free and so is she, whereas if you depend on her for all your pleasures you are a slave to her. So when one loves there must be freedom, not only from the other person but from oneself. (P109)

5. Sorrow

Sorrow and love cannot go together, but in the Christian world they have idealised suffering, put it on a cross and worshipped it, implying that you can never escape from suffering except through that one particular door, and this is the whole structure of an exploiting religious society. (P114)

6. Art

Why is it that we depend so much upon art? Is it a form of escape, of stimulation? If you are directly in contact with nature; if you watch the movement of a bird on the wing, see the beauty of every movement of the sky, watch the shadows on the hills or the beauty on the face of another, do you think you will want to go to any museum to look at any picture? Perhaps it is because you do not know how to look at all the things about you that you resort to some form of drug to stimulate you to see better. (P121)

7. Teacher

There is a story of a religious teacher who used to talk every morning to his disciples. One morning he got on to the platform and was just about to begin when a little bird came and sat on the window still and began to sing, and sang away with full heart. Then it stopped and flew away and the teacher said, “The sermon for this morning is over.” (P121)

8. Quite

Thus we see it is not control that leads to quietness. Nor is the mind quite when it has an object which is so absorbing that it gets lost in that object. This is like giving a child an interesting toy; he becomes very quite, but remove the toy and he returns to his mischief-making. We all have our toys which absorb us and we think we are very quite but if a man is dedicated to a certain form of activity, scientific, literary or whatever it is, the toy merely absorbs him and he is not really quite at all. (P150)

- Rahul