Lost in thought is a common phrase while lost in no thought is not.
We’ve all driven miles without thinking about the road we were on or the scenery we passed. Abruptly we come to, realizing that we were driving while not thinking about it.
We’ve all stared at waves or at a roaring fire without noticing the passing moments.
Those unconscious but awake times are not what Krishnamurti is writing about. In his example one is walking about fully aware and awake and non-judgmental. Difficult.
I’m sure Krishnamurti met Aldous Huxley at some point, I will have to look that up.
It’s extremely doubtful that K ever took LSD and I am somewhat sad that he didn’t. He could have made insights into the mind that his sober self would have never achieved.
Inspired by Huxley’s Doors of Perception, I took acid twice to see what all the hullabaloo was about.
I was overlooking the street from the top of a two story stairwell, facing the street. A brown UPS truck roared up. The mundane became magnificent.
The UPS Man, the UPS Man! He’s arrived! Where’s the package? There, he’s going to the back door of the truck. Getting the package. Oh, boy, he’ll be coming up the stairs soon. Look at him go! Charge up those stairs! Yes! Where’d he go? He’s delivered the package, now he’s racing back down the stairs. Off goes the truck. Fantastic.
I treasured every second of that delivery under LSD. I knew what was coming and looked forward to all of the steps. Talk about being in the moment, I was the moment. The ordinary march of life changed its sound and canter, it was no longer ordinary but extraordinary.
As I said, I only took that drug twice and only carefully controlled circumstances. People and the drug vary so I cannot recommend it to anyone. Having said that, glimpsing a new world inside the present world was illuminating beyond anything I had ever experienced.
For most of us, though, we can only occasionally enter Krishnamurti’s judge-less state by luck and circumstance. LSD forces it on you. But that is like being forced to eat the most delicious desert you have ever had. You don’t want to eat cheesecake at every meal and be consumed by it. But taking a few bites sure tastes good.
This is an excerpt from The Only Revolution (external, unsponsored link), provided by the Krishnamurti Foundation of America.
Life Begins Where Thought Ends
“If you pass on through the meadows with their thousand flowers of every color imaginable, from bright red to yellow and purple, and their bright green grass washed clean by last night’s rain, rich and verdant–again without a single movement of the machinery of thought–then you will know what love is. To look at the blue sky, the high full-blown clouds, the green hills with their clear lines against the sky, the rich grass and the fading flower–to look without a word of yesterday; then, when the mind is completely quiet, silent, undisturbed by any thought, when the observer is completely absent–then there is unity. Not that you are united with the flower, or with the cloud, or with those sweeping hills; rather there is a feeling of complete non-being in which the division between you and another ceases.
The woman carrying those provisions which she bought in the market, the big black Alsatian dog, the two children playing with the ball–if you can look at all these without a word, without a measure, without any association, then the quarrel between you and another ceases. This state, without the word, without thought, is the expanse of mind that has no boundaries, no frontiers within which the I and the not-I can exist.
Don’t think this is imagination, or some flight of fancy, or some desired mystical experience; it is not. It is as actual as the bee on that flower or the little girl on her bicycle or the man going up a ladder to paint the house–the whole conflict of the mind in its separation has come to an end. You look without the look of the observer, you look without the value of the word and the measurement of yesterday. The look of love is different from the look of thought. The one leads in a direction where thought cannot follow, and the other leads to separation, conflict, and sorrow. From this sorrow, you cannot go to the other. The distance between the two is made by thought, and thought cannot by any stride reach the other.
As you walk back by the little farmhouses, the meadows, and the railway line, you will see that yesterday has come to an end: life begins where thought ends.”
J. Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti Foundation photo. Link to the KFA: https://www.kfa.org
