Please read the Glossary of My Terms to be able to follow this post.
In my late 20’s I discovered Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895 – 1986) and Ramana Maharshi (1879 – 1950). Their draw for me was their being plainly in a special condition; heart-seated, clear that neither doctrine nor intellect was applicable to finding liberation from earthware. Now, in my mid 70’s, I have found the words of Rumi and Hafez and Kabir; these transport me swiftly and surely to heartnosis.
Rumi and Hafez were moved to express their condition and insights and guidance through poetry, a Persian phenomenon far older than Islam. It is interesting that following the advent of Islam into Persia the mystics we know of – the Sufis – practised the rituals of Islam till the end of their days; many of their words are free of any trace of creed, some even express transcendence of religion.
Another anomaly : the Sufi mystics are moved – W h o l e l y and S o l e l y – by salvation from a misery-making world … at the same time they extol the oneness and beauty of all creation. But then they didn’t have YouTube to bring home the ghastly cruelty enshrined in nature.
Jiddu Krishnamurti : In 1979 I was in Mumbai, staying at my parents’. It had become plain that an accountancy career was not for me. But having still little idea of what work would fulfil me I was feeling gloomy. One day my parents went to listen to Krishnamurti speaking publicly, and I went with them. The man produced a discourse and engaged with persons who had questions. Many crows were in the grove in which he sat; they cawed incessantly. I comprehended very little. However, I felt lifted. I went again another day. At the end of that session the organisers invited for a chat, persons interested in involvement with the work of the Krishnamurti Foundation. I went along and a few days later had opportunity to read from K’s discourses when he was in his middle years. This material was very different to anything I’d encountered before. I read only a little and felt energised. Thereafter I went to the Krishnamurti boarding school in Varanasi, where I contributed some English teaching in return for board and lodge. It was a nourishing experience. Compared with the schools I’d been in, the relationship between the teachers and pupils was friendlier, more supportive, an altogether pleasanter atmosphere prevailed. After a month I wanted to stay on, but Helper pulled against it.
When I returned to England, K was at the Krishnamurti boarding school in Hampshire (Brockwood Park). I got myself included in a group discussion with K to extend over a few days. On the first day I developed a reservation about K’s interventions, found the discussion unrewarding, and did not participate in the subsequent sessions. Thereafter I read more from K’s books and records of his conversations with students, teachers and others. I also attended one of the large gatherings at the school that lasted a few days. K sat on a podium and embarked on discourses, lastly responding to some questions that had been submitted in writing.
To this day nothing has detracted from the impression I obtained, as did all who encountered K, that he dwelled in a condition removed from the ordinary. This was owing to, aside from the extraordinary circumstances of his life, his full and resonant descriptions of that special condition, his bearing and visage. K would describe his condition as being in the world but not of it; a condition in which the heart was full and the mind empty. More than one item sets his teaching apart from Gnosticism. One is that doctrine, ritual, practice of any kind can only detract from the attainment of liberation; another, that tutelage is counterproductive.
Following the Brockwood Park gathering I attended, I began to have certain notions. I undertook a careful reading of a few of K’s published talks and question and answer sessions. This resulted in a firming of the notions, which are shared below. More videos and reading and musings later my confidence in these notions is high.
K always referred to the propensities of the mind as ‘conditioning’, the – total – neutralisation of which was his principal advocacy; and he held this out as being within the art of the possible. But something that is constitutive, dyed in the wool is not conditioning. It is observable without too much difficulty, that the ego is hard-wired into humans (as every other creature). To have spoken of the egoic proclivities as conditioning and endlessly addressed himself to their – total – dissolution, was a curious project.
Whilst holding that the mind/thought is the obstacle to illumination, K endlessly invoked thought process. Mainly, he talked and wrote. Words set the mind turning – as night follows day. Furthermore, he urged listeners to “enquire”, “go into it” … is enquiry separable from thought ??
K did much public quaffing of beauty in Nature, portraying beauty as a quality in itself – a misrepresentation. Furthermore, he said little, if anything about the colossal cruelty in the animal kingdom, his references to nature were couched in unqualified adoration.
Engagement with psychoanalysts is something K appears to have evaded. Let’s look at his account of a discussion he titled ‘Psychoanalysis and the Human Problem’ https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/series-ii-chapter-40-psychoanalysis-and-human-problem Examining the applicability of psychoanalysis to ” the human problem ” is an absurdity … would you examine the applicability of deep sea exploration for the designing of a boat? Early in the account K slips in that the discussant was “a psychologist and an analyst”. The discussant’s representations are odd for an ‘analyst’ (the term is not inclusive, referring to only those who’ve undergone a psychoanalysis training, which is at considerable remove from the training of a psychologist). The psychologist cum hypnotist says, “There is certainly something in what you say but as analysts I don’t think we are prepared to go so deeply into the whole causation of human misery.” In fact, to psychoanalysts the human condition is not rocket science; furthermore, its amelioration is not their trade. ‘Whole causation’ is not analyst-speak; it is most certainly K-speak. K had discussions with a Dr David Shainberg, referred to somewhere as a psychoanalyst. Dr Shainberg professed an assortment of trainings, including psychoanalysis. Persons with an aptitude for psychoanalysis don’t go in for multiple qualifications and – especially – do not practice psychiatry. Shainberg was, in his own words, a ‘practising psychiatrist’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzQF09RhlaU&list=PL1n30s-LKus4ipHYdBpKt1-AdSN181Lc0
Disorder’ is a word much used by psychiatry, tacked onto the locus of a symptom – ‘eating disorder’ for instance. K availed of this practice to fashion for himself a passport to psychology discussion, being the term ‘psychological disorder’. He was poorly equipped for such discussion, evading as he did the unconscious. For psychology, ‘psychological disorder’ is a use-less term; and for the lay person a misleading one. Let’s look at K’s exchanges with a psychiatrist and three others in a discussion titled ‘Roots of Psychological Disorder’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoMS5b2MLRc K appears to be confused about psychotherapy. Also, he introduces a concept, ‘conditioning to suffer’, which he proceeds to obfuscate. The concept itself could do with examination.
Confusion: K ventures that the way psychotherapy is practised is crucially flawed, “not holistic”; it engages with the client’s history though what would be curative is a movement away from it. The psychiatrist fails to point out that psychotherapy is sought for – only – such difficulties as impede normal functioning … the woes constituting the human condition are not the province of psychotherapy; they are the stamping ground of entities like Confucious, G Buddha, Norman Vincent Peale and yes, J Krishnamurti-! Assisting a claustrophobia sufferer to use lifts and the metro, a compulsive hand washer to do only hygiene related washing, a serial rapist or murderer to desist, requires working with items specific to the individual. Analogy : a broken leg is peered at very closely (x-rayed) and fixed … the patient is not sent away with a prescription for flying lessons on basis that eliminating walking will in itself result in healing of the injury.
Conditioning to suffer : At 28:45 K brings back a thesis he’d touched on earlier, that humans are afflicted with a conditioning to suffer. But he’d also pointed to the involuntary and complete erasure of the memory of distress (physical and emotional) from events like child-birth, toothache, his own operation … which indicates a propensity to not suffer. A defensible perspective is that we forget the pain of any injury that has healed, be it physical or non-physical (sense of failure, loss, rejection, trauma, and so on) … Novak Djokovic is not continually plagued by matches he lost. So K’s “conditioning to suffer” refers, I am inclined to deduce, to feelings reflecting unhealed experiences (owing to egoic activity), and common anxiety. As regards the latter, there is a stronger case for seeing it as stemming from the survival imperative than from a suffering wish.
Lastly, K was very invested in his appearance. Much contrivance was evident in the arrangement of hair from the back of the head to cover baldness at the sides and top (photo below). At some point he appeared to have taken to colouring his eyebrows … a shade of brown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFWBaBdH2qw His apparel was unfailingly impeccable, of splendid fit, likely custom-tailored. Odd behavior for a man who held himself out as a living example of one devoid of ego. And while he emphatically urged the effacement of The Teacher (himself), he appears not to have shrunk from having his striking visage on the cover of some publications.
The phenomenon of K is consistent with earthscheme … a “World Teacher” who spent a long life captivating millions and leaving them in a muddle sugared with invocations of nature’s beauty.
Ramana Maharshi : came into gnosis at an early age. Arriving in Tiruvannamalai (South India) before he was twenty, he remained there for the rest of his life. His lifestyle was simplicity … no sartorial preoccupations here.
RM felt that anything words could convey was inferior to what might be received by someone through just being in his presence in silence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVYv9ktilQw This chariness around words was entirely congruous with a heartnosis-like condition.
RM’s message was “The only useful purpose of the present birth is to turn within and realise the Self. There is nothing else to do.” An interpretation of this – rather than the literal meaning – has much resonance for one who has had a taste of gnosis … the Self here is in the register of infinite ease and love, in which all preoccupations are absent.
Tiruvannamalai is situated at the foot of Arunachala. ‘Aruna’ means red, bright like fire, the fire of wisdom. ‘Chala’ signifies hill. RM was deeply drawn to this hill, referring to it as the spiritual heart of the world … of this I can make neither head nor tail.
Stefan Hoeller : is a scholarly proponent of Gnosticism of our day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCrr3uCmgB8 The extent and depth of his learning, and his exposition so clear and richly seasoned with humour, can only be highly admired. He holds that we can aspire to and do something conducive to gnosis. “ There’s an intimation that something very wonderful is available … and if we are ready to receive it, then we can climb out of the grave like Lazarus and then we are in the resurrected, the glorified state … And it only needs an initiatory change inside, something needs to click and then we are back where we belong … and may that day and that hour come soon, until which time we pray, and we aspire and we study, and our aspiration will not be without reward.” My experiences say that neither aspiration nor prayer, and even less study, can bring gnosis … fundamentally, gain-seeking however wholesome, is in this regard sterile. Krishnamurti’s “Truth is a pathless land” works for me here.
So, can heartnosis be facilitated by an other ?
Late in his life when JK was asked whether he knew of anyone who had shed their ‘conditioning’, he replied, emphatically, “Not a single person.” Certainly, my first exposure to JK – in which I understood nothing of the words – struck a chord; placed gnosis on my radar … palpably. Subsequent exposure produced no fresh resonance.
Did anyone who availed of RM’s presence and or advocacy find the illumination he dwelled in? Some who were significantly helped appear in the considerable material on the internet, but no-one who’d found total release from the human condition – that is not to say ofcourse that no-one had. Also, RM did convey that progression towards that condition could straddle more than one life.
JK and RM were not – in their lives as JK and RM at least – assisted into their conditions by anyone. JK was discovered by virtue of his aura when he was twelve, by Charles Leadbeater, Theosophist … he was already in a special condition. Later in life he experienced a deepening of that condition. RM had, when he was sixteen, an experience he felt was ‘akrama mukti’ (sudden liberation). The biography Sri Ramana Vijayam, describing the period a few years before this liberation, quotes RM, “Some incomplete practice from a past birth was clinging to me. I would be putting attention solely within, forgetting the body. Sometimes I would be sitting in one place, but when I regained normal consciousness and got up, I would notice that I was lying down in a different narrow space”.
There is substantial testimony for the conversion by Shams of Tabriz, of Rumi, from scholar/preacher to mystic, and that in a short time. Observations on most of the process are not available; the two went into seclusion for forty days. Rumi emerged transformed. He said, “I was raw, Shams cooked me; I was a stone, he made me a gem; I was nothing, he made me everything.”