Human thinking is born out of some sort of neurological defect in the human body. Therefore, anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive. _______ Religion has invented that wonderful thing called charity. It is the most vicious and vulgar thing that we have done. Nature has provided us with a bounty. But we are individually responsible for the inequities of the world. _______ Thought is opposed fundamentally to the functioning of this living organism. _______ All insights, however extraordinary they may be, are worthless, because it is thought that has created what we call insight, and through that it is maintaining its continuity and status quo. _______ Thought is not the instrument to help us to live in harmony with the life around us. That is why you create all these ecological problems. But the planet is not in danger; we are in danger. _______ The certainty that I have that there is no mind is something which cannot be transmitted to anybody, however hard I may try. You are not ready to accept this statement because the very thing which we are using to communicate is in jeopardy. _______ Thought is something dead and can never touch anything living. It cannot capture life, contain it, and give expression to it. The moment it tries to touch life, it is destroyed by the living quality of life. _______ Thought can only create problems, but it cannot help us to solve the problems. _______ A guru is one who tells you to throw away all crutches. He would ask you to walk, and he would say that if you fall, you will rise and walk. _______ If humanity is to be saved from the chaos of its own making, it has to be freed from the saviors of mankind. _______ The moment you repeat that which is not yours, you have become the follower of somebody. _______ What these gurus in the market place do is to sell you some ice packs and provide you with some comforters. _______ Thought in its birth, in its origin, in its expression, and in its action is very fascist. When I use the word 'fascist', I do not use it in the political sense, but I use it to mean that thought controls and shapes our thinking and our actions. _______ There is reincarnation for those who believe in it. There is no reincarnation for those who do not believe in it. But you have to ask this fundamental question: "What is there now that will reincarnate? Is there any such thing as a soul, 'I', or psyche?" Whatever you see or experience is created by the knowledge we have of that entity. _______ The uniqueness of the individual cannot express itself because of the stranglehold of the experiences of others. _______ To be an individual and to be yourself you do not have to do a thing. Culture demands that you should be something other than what you are. What a tremendous amount of energy we waste trying to become that! But if that energy is released, living becomes very simple. Then what is it that you cannot do? _______ Trying to keep the sensation of happiness, or any other sensation that is pleasurable, going longer than its natural duration, is destroying the sensitivity of the living organism. _______ The mind is interested only in sensuality. In fact, it is born out of sensuality. It maintains its continuity in the field of sensuality. But the body is not interested in any of these except to respond to stimuli. _______ There are actually no problems; rather, what we are saddled with are only solutions. _______ The only 'I' that I can find there is the first person singular pronoun. I have to use that to differentiate from the second person singular pronoun. _______ The perfect man is born out of the value system that we have created. The value system is patterned after the behavior of the great teachers of mankind who have done more harm than good. But every human being is unique. _______ Whatever has happened to me has happened despite everything I did. It was like a jolt of lightning or an earthquake, as it were. Everything that every man thought, felt, and experienced before was flushed out of my system. This has become possible for me not through any effort or volition of mine. That is why I say it is 'acausal', and I have no way of knowing what I am left with. _______ I maintain that memory is not located in any particular area of the body. Every cell in our body is involved. _______ We have put memory and the brain to such a use for which it is not intended. This is one of the reasons why we find that Alzheimer's disease is on the increase. _______ We are no different from, nor are we created for any grander purpose than, the mosquito that is sucking your blood. _______ If there is anything like super-consciousness or higher consciousness that people speak of, you are as much an expression of that as any of the claimants to that cosmic power. Every dog, every cat, every pig, every cow, the garden slug there, you, me, and everybody, even Genghis Khan and Hitler, are an expression of that same thing. Why should nature or some cosmic power, if there is one in the world, need the help of somebody as an instrument to express itself and help others? ________ When everything fails, you use the last card, the trump in the pack of cards, and call it love. _______ The institution of marriage is not going to disappear as long as we demand relationships. It will continue in some way or other. Unmarried couples are more miserable than married couples. _______ The feminist movement will not succeed as long as the woman depends upon the man for her sexual needs. _______ It is just not possible to establish any relationship with anyone around you, including your near and dear ones, except on the level of "What do I get out of that relationship?" The whole thing springs from the separation and isolation that human beings live in today. _______ Sexuality, if it is left to itself, as in the case of other species, is a simple biological need. To survive and reproduce oneself is the object of the living organism. Anything that is superimposed on that is totally unrelated to the living organism. But we have turned sexuality which is biological in its nature into a pleasure movement. _______ Everything that we are confronting today is born out of the religious thinking of man. But religion has no answers for the future of mankind. _______ All experiences, however extraordinary they may be, are in the area of sensuality. If those who have had the monopoly of all the world's resources so far and for so long are threatened to be dislodged, what they would do is anybody's guess. All the destructive weapons that we have today are only to protect them. _______ We have arrived at a point where you cannot destroy your adversary without destroying yourself. It is terror, not love or brotherhood, that will help us to live together. Until this message percolates to the level of human consciousness, I don't think there is help. _______ All the political ideologies, even your legal structures, are the warty outgrowth of the religious thinking of man. ________ Ultimately it is force that counts. As long as it is advantageous to yourself, you talk of law. When the law fails, you use force. _______ I don't see any reason why anybody should starve on this planet. You may ask me what I am trying to do to solve the problem. But let me say that I have not set myself up in the business of running this world. It is they who have set themselves up in the business of ruling this or that country. If they don't do what they are expected to do, then there is something wrong, not with the leaders, but with the people who have put them there in the seats of power. _______ The rich nations are not going to give up what they have unless they are forced to give up. If they are forced to give up, what they would do is anybody's guess. Even if they have everything to lose, I do not think they are going to give up. _______ All the questions we are asking are born out of the answers that we already have. _______ Somewhere along the line, self-consciousness occurred in man which separated him from the totality of life around him. _______ The function of the brain in the body is only to take care of the needs of the physical organism and to maintain its sensitivity. But thought, through its constant interference with sensory activity, is destroying the sensitivity of the body. _______ There is no such thing as death at all for this body. The only death is the end of the illusion, the end of the fear, the end of the knowledge that we have about ourselves and the world around us. _______ There are so many freakish things in nature. If you try to copy them you are lost. _______ Thought is something dead and can never touch anything living. The moment it tries to touch life, it is destroyed by the living quality of life. _______ All that is necessary for the survival of this living organism is already there. All that we have gathered and acquired through our intellect is no match for the tremendous intelligence of the body. _______ The human organism is not interested in your wonderful religious ideas -- peace, bliss, beatitude, or any such thing. It's only interest is its own survival. _______ What society or culture has placed before us as the goal for all of us to reach and attain is the enemy of this living organism. _______ The demand to be prepared for all future actions and all situations is the cause of our problems. Every situation is so different; and our attempt to be prepared for all those situations is the one that is responsible for our not being able to deal with situations as they arise. _______ It is just not possible for us to produce enlightened people on an assembly line. _______ The whole of our culture or civilization is built on the foundation of killing and being killed. _______ We are lost in the jungle. We have tried every possible means of escape. But still we have not succeeded. There is, however, a faint hope that one day, somehow, we can get out of this jungle. But we have only to stand still and let things happen. _______ The brain is only a reactor responding to stimuli. The mechanism that we have implanted in it, as it were, through our education and culture, has made us believe that it is a creator. _______ The question "How to live?" is totally unrelated to the functioning of this living organism. It is already living all the time. _______ When once it is a fact that there is no movement in any direction of improving, changing, or evolving into anything different or better, then what is there is something extraordinary. _______ It would be a horrible world if this planet were to be only full of Jesuses and Buddhas and all the other teachers. _______ Revolution only means revaluation of our value system. After a while things settle down, and then they go at it again. But it is basically a modified continuity of the same. In that process what horrors we have committed, you know! _______ The questions, "Is there any meaning?" "Is there any purpose?" take away the living quality of life. You are living in a world of ideas. _______ The belief in reincarnation is born out of the demand that something will continue after your so-called death. It is the same mechanism which wants to know what will happen after death. For some reason that mechanism, that movement of thought, does not want to come to an end. But, if you want to know if there is anything beyond, you have to die now. _______ Obviously, our relationships are not so loving. So we want to, somehow, make them into loving affairs, loving relationships. What an amount of energy we are putting into making our relationship into a loving thing! It is a battle, it is a war. It is like preparing yourself all the time for war hoping that there will be peace, eternal peace, or this or that. You are tired of this battle, and you even settle for that horrible, non- loving relationship. _______ When once love fails to establish the perfectly ideal relationship between two individuals, what we are left with is hate. If not hate, it is antipathy. _______ Sexuality, if it is left to itself, as it is in the case of other species, other forms of life, is merely a biological need, because the living organism has this object to survive and produce one like itself. Anything you superimpose on that is totally unrelated to the living organism. But we have turned that, what you call sexual activity, which is biological in its nature, into a pleasure movement. _______ Whether you are here, in Russia, or anywhere else, the one thing that anybody and everybody wants in this world is to have happiness without one moment of unhappiness, pleasure without pain. That is just not possible, because this living organism does not know what pleasure is, what happiness is. _______ You are not in living touch with anything. _______ Quotes of http://www.ugkrishnamurti.net/ U.G. Krishnamurti http://www.ugkrishnamurti.org/index.html