U.G. Krishnamurti Quotes & Sayings

Food, clothing and shelter - these are the basic needs. Beyond that, if you want anything, it is the beginning of self-deception. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The plain fact is that if you don't have a problem, you create one. If you don't have a problem you don't feel that you are living. — U.G. Krishnamurti

But we have turned that, what you call sexual activity, which is biological in its nature, into a pleasure movement. There must be two, you know. I love somebody and somebody else loves me. Wherever there is division, there can't be love. We are trying to bridge this gap, which is horrible for us, which has no meaning, which is demanding something from us, with this fancy idea that there must be love between these two individuals. — U.G. Krishnamurti

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. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Q.= WHO AM I? WHO ARE YOU?
U.G = You are what you are doing RIGHT NOW! — U.G. Krishnamurti

The framing of what there is by the mind is what you call beauty. — U.G. Krishnamurti

A messiah is the one who leaves a mess behind him in this world. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Everything you stand for, believe in, experience and aspire to is the result of thought. And thought is destructive because it is nothing more than a protective mechanism, programmed to protect its own interests at all costs. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The fact is that we don't want to be free. What is responsible for our problems is the fear of losing what we have and what we know. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The questioner has to come to an end. It is the questioner that creates the answer; and the questioner comes into being from the answer, otherwise there is no questioner. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Those who are marching into the battlefield and are ready to be killed today in the name of democracy, in the name of freedom, in the name of communism, are no different from those who threw themselves to the lions in the arenas. The Romans watched that fun with great joy. How are we different from them? Not a bit. We love it. To kill and to be killed is the foundation of our culture. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Human thinking is born out of this neurological defect in the human species. Anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive. Thought is destructive. Thought is a protective mechanism. It draws frontiers around itself, and it wants to protect itself. It is for the same reason that we also draw lines on this planet and extend them as far as we can. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The body is not interested in anything you are interested in. And that is the battle that is going on all the time. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Life has to be described in pure and simple physical and physiological terms. It must be demystified and depsychologised — U.G. Krishnamurti

When once we are freed from the goal [of solving problems], the question of whether it is a positive approach or a negative approach does not even arise. — U.G. Krishnamurti

There is no such thing as experience here. You seem to know, you imagine. Imagination must come to an end ... I don't know how to put it. The absence of imagination, the absence of will, the absence of effort, the absence of all movement in any direction, on any level, in any dimension - THAT is the thing. That is a thing that cannot be experienced at all. It is not an experience. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Society has put before you the ideal of a 'perfect man'. No matter in which culture you were born, you have scriptural doctrines and traditions handed down to you to tell you how to behave. You are told that through due practice you can even eventually come into the state attained by the sages, saints and saviors of mankind. And so you try to control your behavior, to control your thoughts, to be something unnatural. — U.G. Krishnamurti

I am simply pointing out that at the rate at which we are going the whole genetic engineering technology will end up in the hands of the political system to be used for the complete control and subjugation of man. — U.G. Krishnamurti

It would be more interesting to learn from children, than try to teach them how to behave, how to live and how to function. — U.G. Krishnamurti

I discovered for myself and by myself that there is no self to realize
that's the realization I am talking about. It comes as a shattering blow. It hits you like a thunderbolt. You have invested everything in one basket, self-realization, and, in
the end, suddenly you discover that there is no self to discover, no self to realize
and you say to yourself "What the hell have I been doing all my life?!" That blasts you. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The search ends with the realization that there is no such thing as enlightenment. By searching, you want to be free from the self, but whatever you are doing to free yourself from the self is the self. How can I make you understand this simple thing? There is no 'how'. If I tell you that, it will only add more momentum to that (search), strengthen that momentum. That is the question of all questions: "How, how, how?" — U.G. Krishnamurti

There is no such thing as truth. The only thing that is actually there is your 'logically' ascertained premise, which you call truth. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Charity is the filthiest invention of the human mind: first you steal what belongs to everyone; then you use the law and various other means to protect it.

You give charity to prevent the have-nots from rebelling against you. It also makes you feel less guilty. All do-gooders feel 'high' when they do good. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The body cannot be afraid of death. The movement that is created by society or culture is what does not want to come to an end. . . . What you are afraid of is not death. In fact, you don't want to be free from fear. . . . It is the fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead. What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new science, new talk, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks. Fear is the very thing that you do not want to be free from. What you call "yourself" is fear. The "you" is born out of fear; it lives in fear, functions in fear and dies in fear. — U.G. Krishnamurti

My interest is to point out to you that you can walk, and please throw away all those crutches. If you are really handicapped, I wouldn't advise you to do any such thing. But you are made to feel by other people that you are handicapped so that they could sell you those crutches. Throw them away and you can walk. That's all that I can say. 'If I fall....' - that is your fear. Put the crutches away, and you are not going to fall. — U.G. Krishnamurti

If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you. Everything man has thought, felt and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place. — U.G. Krishnamurti

What is morality? It is not the following of enjoined rules of conduct. It is not a question of standing above temptations, or of conquering hate, anger, greed, lust and violence.
Questioning your actions before and after creates the moral problem. What is responsible for this situation is the faculty of distinguishing between right and wrong and influencing your actions accordingly.Life is action. Unquestioned action is morality. Questioning your actions is destroying the expression of life. A person who lets life act in its own way without the protective movement of thought has no self to defend. What need will he have to lie or cheat or pretend or to commit any other act which his society considers immoral? — U.G. Krishnamurti

You will be peaceful when all your ideas about awareness are dropped and you begin to function like a computer. You must be a machine, function automatically in this world, never questioning your actions before, during, or after they occur. — U.G. Krishnamurti

We don't want to be free from fear. All that we want to do is to play games with it and talk about freeing ourselves from fear. — U.G. Krishnamurti

As a human body it is an extraordinary piece of creation. But as a human being he is rotten because of the culture. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Man is just a memory. You understand things around you by the help of the knowledge that was put in you. You perhaps need the artist to explain his modern art, but you don't need anybody's help to understand a flower. You can deal with anything, you can do anything if you do not waste your energy trying to achieve imaginary goals. — U.G. Krishnamurti

If anyone thinks he can help you, he will inevitably mislead you, and the less phony he is; the more powerful he is, the more enlightened he is, the more misery and mischief he will create for you. — U.G. Krishnamurti

My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody. — U.G. Krishnamurti

It is fear that makes you believe that you are living and that you will be dead.What we do not want is the fear to come to an end. That is why we have invented all these new minds, new sciences,new talks, therapies, choiceless awareness and various other gimmicks. — U.G. Krishnamurti

There is no power outside of man. Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God. — U.G. Krishnamurti

I am not out to liberate anybody. You have to liberate yourself, and you are unable to do that. What I have to say will not do it. I am only interested in describing this state, in clearing away the occultation and mystification in which those people in the 'holy business' have shrouded the whole thing. Maybe I can convince you not to waste a lot of time and energy, looking for a state which does not exist except in your imagination. — U.G. Krishnamurti

There is nothing there - no soul - there is only this question about after death. The question has to die now to find the answer - your answer; not my answer - because the question is born out of the assumption, the belief, that there is something to continue after death. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Someone asked me, "What do you have to say about Rajneesh after his death?" I said that the world has never seen such a pimp nor will it ever see one in the future. He combined Western therapies, the Tantric system, and everything that you could find in the books. He made a big business out of it. He took money from the boys; he took money from girls, and kept it for himself. He is dead and so we don't say anything. Nil nisi bonum (Of the dead speak not unless it be good) — U.G. Krishnamurti

The problem is this: nature has assembled all these species on this planet. The human species is no more important than any other species on this planet. For some reason, man accorded himself a superior place in this scheme of things. He thinks that he is created for some grander purpose than, if I could give a crude example, the mosquito that is sucking his blood. What is responsible for this is the value system that we have created. And the value system has come out of the religious thinking of man. Man has created religion because it gives him a cover. This demand to fulfill himself, to seek something out there was made imperative because of this self-consciousness in you which occurred somewhere along the line of the evolutionary process. Man separated himself from the totality of nature. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Yes! is the thing that blows the whole structure apart. — U.G. Krishnamurti

freedom exists not in finding answers, but in the dissolution of all questions. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Your situation and prospects only seem hopeless because you have ideas of hope. Knock off that hope and the crippling feelings of helplessness go with it. — U.G. Krishnamurti

I am not anti-rational, just unrational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine. — U.G. Krishnamurti

You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by somebody. — U.G. Krishnamurti

You think when you don't want to do anything. Thinking is a poor alternative to acting. Your thinking is consuming all your energy. Act, don't think! — U.G. Krishnamurti

Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is you. There is nothing there inside you other than that. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Nature is interested in only two things
to survive and to reproduce one like itself. Anything you superimpose on that, all the cultural input, is responsible for the boredom of man. — U.G. Krishnamurti

You love fear. The ending of fear is death, and you don't want that to happen. I am not talking of wiping out the phobias of the body. They are necessary for survival. The death of fear is the only death. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The fear of extinction will probably bring us together, not 'love' or feeling of brotherhood. — U.G. Krishnamurti

To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence. You are blessed with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you; nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in its own way is a "Natural Man". — U.G. Krishnamurti

You are not ready to accept the fact that you have to give up. A complete and total 'surrender'.

It is a state of hopelessness which says that there is no way out. Any movement in any direction, on any dimension, at any level, is taking you away from yourself. — U.G. Krishnamurti

There is no need to change this world at all; and there is no need to change yourself either. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Each cell of a living organism cooperates with the cell next to it. It does not need any sentiment or declarations of undying love to do so. Each cell is wise enough to know that if its neighbour goes, it also goes. The cells stick together not out of brotherhood, love and that kind of thing, but out of the urgent drive to survive. It is the same with us, but only in a larger scale. Soon we will all come to know one simple thing: if I try to destroy you, I will also be destroyed. — U.G. Krishnamurti

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of 'you' is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the 'you' is not there. Why are you trying to experience a thing that cannot be experienced? — U.G. Krishnamurti

We are not created for any grander purpose than the ants that are there or the flies that are hovering around us or the mosquitoes that are sucking our blood. — U.G. Krishnamurti

*Only if you reject all the other paths can you discover your own path. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Society or culture or whatever you might want to call it, has created us all solely and wholly for the purpose of maintaining its continuity and status quo. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The body is a fortuitous concourse of atoms. There is no death for the body, only an exchange of atoms. Their changing places and taking different forms is what we call 'death.' It's a process which restores the energy level in nature that has gone down. In reality, nothing is born and nothing is dead. — U.G. Krishnamurti

This question haunted me all my life and suddenly it hit me: 'There is no self to realize. What the hell have I been doing all this time?' You see, that hits you like lightning. Once that hits you, the whole mechanism of the body that is controlled by this thought is shattered. What is left is the tremendous living organism with an intelligence of its own. What you are left with is the pulse, the beat and the throb of life. — U.G. Krishnamurti

You know, this dialogue is only helpful when we come, both of us, to a point and realize that no dialogue is possible, that no dialogue is necessary. When I say 'understanding', 'seeing', they mean something different to me. Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more; there is nothing there that says "now I understand!" - that's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere. — U.G. Krishnamurti

What is there to understand? The significance of life? How long will it take to understand the significance and the meaning of life? 20 years? 30 years? And the same question will be here in another 20 years, I guarantee you. Until you stop asking that question. When that question is not there, you are there. So that's the reason why you keep asking the question: you do not want the question to come to an end. When that comes to an end, there will not be anybody, left there, to find out the meaning, the purpose and the significance of life. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Don't follow me, I'm lost. — U.G. Krishnamurti

All your experiences, all your meditations, all your prayer, all that you do, is self-centred. It is strengthening the self, adding momentum, gathering momentum, so it is taking you in the opposite direction. Whatever you do to be free from the self also is a self-centred activity. — U.G. Krishnamurti

The very motivation, the drive behind our demand to understand the laws of nature is to use them for the purpose of continuing the human species at the expense of every other form of life on this planet. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Wanting has to go. Wanting to be free from something that is not there is what you call "sorrow." Wanting to be free from sorrow is sorrow. There is no other sorrow. You don't want to be free from sorrow. You just think about sorrow, without acting. Your thinking endlessly about being free from sorrow is only more material for sorrow. Thinking does not put an end to sorrow. Sorrow is there for you as long as you think. There is actually no sorrow there to be free from. Thinking about and struggling against "sorrow" is sorrow. Since you can't stop thinking, and thinking is sorrow, you will always suffer. There is no way out, no escape. — U.G. Krishnamurti

I have searched everywhere to find an answer to my question, 'Is there enlightenment?' but have never questioned the search itself. Because I have assumed that goal of enlightenment exists, I have had to search. It is the search itself which has been choking me and keeping me out of my natural state. There is no such thing as spiritual or psychological enlightenment because there is no such thing as spirit or psyche at all. I have been a damn fool all my life, searching for something which does not exist. My search is at an end. — U.G. Krishnamurti

All I can guarantee you is that as long as you are searching for happiness, you will remain unhappy. — U.G. Krishnamurti

There is no such thing as permanence at all. Everything is constantly changing. Everything is in a flux. Because you cannot face the impermanence of all relationships, you invent sentiments, romance, and dramatic emotions to give them certainty. Therefore you are always in conflict. — U.G. Krishnamurti

You cannot experience the death of anybody — U.G. Krishnamurti

You say that I am living in illusion. But poverty, work, war, they are not illusions. Are they? In what sense am I being deluded? What you experience through your separative consciousness is an illusion. You can't say that falling bombs are an illusion. It is not an illusion, only your experience of it is an illusion. The reality of the world that you are experiencing now is an illusion. That is all I am trying to say. If you say that — U.G. Krishnamurti

I may sound very cynical, but a cynic is really a realist. — U.G. Krishnamurti

When you'r no longer identified with roles and labels and conventional definition of person — U.G. Krishnamurti

Life is simply a process of stimulus and response; and stimulus and response are one unitary movement. — U.G. Krishnamurti