Order of the Star in the East
Manual
International Self-Preparation Group (1925)

Introductory Note

In 1921 at the Star Congress in Paris, Krishnaji met several of his National Representatives, and discussed with them the work of the Order. His interest in all that was being done in the various countries was very great, and many conversations took place in which he asked for suggestions for future work. The result of these appeared in the October Herald, 1921, where we read that:

Following a suggestion which had worked well in Holland, Mr. Krishnamurti urged very strongly that each country should, if possible, form four different groups:

1. Propaganda
2. Meditation
3. Study and Action
4. Self-Preparation

and in his speech given at the Champs-Elysée Theatre on July 27th, 1921, he speaks very strongly on individual preparation saying that we have to a great extent:

been willing to prepare the outer world, but rarely willing to mould the world that is within ourselves. We are afraid to do many things, we are afraid to practise what we believe, we are afraid to face certain realities of life. Why should we prepare ourselves? we ask. . . and in reply I say 'verily it needs an arduous preparation, a special understanding to be able to respond immediately to the noble appeal of the Master of Compassion.'

At the close of his lecture he says:

Try to realise the immensity of life, practise the presence of the Lord in your daily life, do not try to find seek happiness in little things, where you will not find it, but seek happiness in infinity and then you will realise the spirituality that knows no compromise.

With those indications of the necessity for self-preparation and of the goal to be attained, it was left to us to find out the way that leads to it. Wisely, Krishnaji abstained from giving any rules, wanting everyone to find out for himself the line most efficient. And so each National Representative set out to make experiments - till in 1923 a tentative scheme, evolved in America, appeared in the Herald, which Krishnaji hoped all National representatives would study and follow as far as possible. And in March of the same year we received his first Message, with the clearly defined condition "that all who applied for membership should mean business". Great enthusiasm was created by the very close relationship those Messages established between Krishnaji and the members of the Self-Preparation Group, and the stimulus they gave to the work can hardly be overestimated.
Of course, some members interpreted these Messages to literally; for instance, when Krishnaji recommended certain kinds of diet, they followed them as if their spiritual life depended upon diet alone. An amusing incident in Ehrwald shows us how little such members understood what he meant. Once several members were staying in the village whilst Krishnaji and a group of his friends were living in Mr. Steinacker's lovely chalet. Krishnaji in his remarks on diet had hinted that he considered chocolates not very wholesome, and yet many of his young people came down to the village daily to buy chocolates till they almost exhausted the supply of the small shop, and this gave rise to shocked surprise and unreasonable comment.
While there were others who paid very little heed to valuable advice given in the Messages, they said "Well, Krishnaji does not make it a hard and fast rule, and he always says, use your common-sense." These members were lax in their practise and used their common sense not for what was best for their growth, but for their convenience.
So things went on till the Vienna Congress in 1923 and there we met Krishnaji many times to discuss difficulties and possibilities. A wonderful sense of power and love was felt by all at these meetings, when he impressed us so strongly with the need for "honest introspection without morbidness," and for "action instead of reposing lazily in our armchairs".
It was however at the Arnhem-Ommen Congress, 1924, that for the first time the note was struck, which since then has been so strongly the predominant one, that Self-Preparation should lead to Discipleship and that all must and could reach the Path if only they willed strongly enough. No one who had the privilege of assisting at the afternoon meetings at Arnhem will ever forget the deep earnestness and love with which he assured us that he would give us all the help he could.
Definite conditions of admission were issued as a result of the opinions gathered from various sources, though the greatest freedom was given in regard to details. It was announced that a discipline for members would, in due course, be issued by Krishnaji, and that it would be left to the option of members to follow it, and in the meantime National Representatives were invited to find out what the majority of their members wished. When the Protector of the Order presided over a meeting of members of the Self-Preparation Group in Ommen during the summer of 1925, it was found that the desire for a discipline was certainly not unanimous: some thought it would be a great help, and others, that it would prove a hindrance. In consequence of that, no discipline was given.
The spirit of Self-Preparation as understood by Krishnaji is expressed in the following words, which he used at Ommen:

For me, Self-Preparation consists of one vital thing: we must control karma. The purpose of Self-Preparation is to make you realize that you need capacity, power to change, in order to be able to serve the teacher.

And now, here in Adyar in December, 1925, where the realisation has come to so many of what hitherto was perhaps mere expectation, it is inevitable that this will also apply to self-Preparation. And so some of us feel, that a new chapter is about to begin, and that it will be written in characters of Light, shedding a glory over all who read.

 

The Purpose of the Group

The Order of the Star in the East is now entering upon quite a new phase. Since the Star Day of December 28th, 1925, the Order has come definitely into closer touch with the mighty force of spirituality which is behind our movement.
     When the World teacher is with us, humanity will be divided into two classes, those who will follow rapidly along the mighty Path which the Teacher will point out, and those who will idle away the precious years in the slow waters of normal evolution. This division of the people has occurred whenever a mighty Teacher has appeared in the world. When the Lord Buddha was with us. His power and His teachings divided India into two such classes. When Christ appeared in Palestine, there were two such divisions of the Jews. It is but a natural classification, and when the World Teacher is with us once more, this will occur again.
     Even within the Order itself there will be such a differentiation. Hence the members must NOW decide which path they will follow. For those who will follow the swift and exacting path, we have established an International Self-Preparation Group, the purpose of which is to prepare the members to understand the teachings of the Lord and to cooperate with Him. Above all, this Group exists for the sole purpose of training the members to put into practise the teachings that we have already at our disposal.
     Now I want to emphasise one very important point concerning the Group. It is our intention that it should be, throughout the world, a magnificent success, worthy of our ideals, and an instrument suitable for the Teacher to use. To assure ourselves of this, I ask the members in all sincerity, not to join the Self-Preparation Group unless they desire earnestly and honestly to help and co-operate with those who "mean business". I would therefore earnestly beg them not to make the Group futile and ineffective.
     The Group is but one among the many ways of preparing the world for the Teacher. Hence there is NO compulsion whatsoever for any member of the Order to join it. The Star is so wide in its attitude and its outlook, that it can embrace all kinds of activities and be friendly towards them all. So members who do not like the Group and its underlying principles, can work along other and equally important channels that will be used by the Teacher. Hence no member should adopt an intolerant attitude towards any of his fellowmembers who may be working along different lines.
     I would beg those who want to become members, to make up their minds BEFORE they join the Group and NOT AFTER. We want to have in the Group only those who have decided, at all costs, to follow the swift and exacting Path. I want to point out that those who join the Group bear a great responsibility and this responsibility always abides with them, for on each one of the members depends our success and our usefulness. So, friends, I would urge on you all the great importance of the Group; please do not join merely out of curiosity, for we mean business. The work is of the utmost importance and as individuals, with our troublesome personalities, we are of no consequence in the eyes of the Master. With this fact made absolutely clear to ourselves, let us proceed; and we should not forget this truth at any time, however high or low our condition may be.
     I am quite convinced that the blessing of the Teacher abides always with those who make a sincere and honest attempt. The great Being is the absolute judge and HE judges according to the service and the love we extend towards humanity.

J. Krishnamurti

 

The Ideal

I intend this Group to be entirely composed of those who have but ONE desire, ONE thought, and ONE purpose in life - to tread the noble Path that leads to glorious Enlightenment and perfect Peace. They must be prepared to sacrifice themselves utterly for their idealism and to attain their goal at all costs, irrespective of everybody and everything. They must be prepared to give up their petty personalities for the great work and to carry out in their daily life the teachings and the knowledge that they may obtain in years to come. Their purpose in life must be to become perfect by following the Plan laid down by God for Humanity and to achieve that perfection as soon as possible. Their whole life, their entire energy, their utter devotion, however small or great, must be consecrated at the altar of sacrifice and to the Master.

 

The Relation between The Eastern School of Theosophy and The International Self-preparation Group

We have among the members of the Self-Preparation Group two distinct classes of individuals; those who belong to the Eastern School of the Theosophical Society and those who do not. The former have their own system of meditation to which they must strictly adhere and to which usually they cannot add any other system. To this group of people, then, we do not here give any instruction with regard to their own special meditation, and we only address ourselves to that body op people who are Star members and who do not already practise another system of meditation. But I would suggest that those members of the Eastern School who belong to this Group may yet take part in the daily aspiration, as this does not interfere with their meditation in the Eastern School.

J. Krishnamurti

 

Hints to Members

It often happens to members, on reading the Messages, get the mistaken idea that they come straight from the very Highest. This of course is not so.
When, for instance, I wrote some months ago about diet, I indicated what I thought was right; I carefully said, that the suggestions made suited me and were certainly not intended as hard and fast rules for others. Yet, when I was in America and took a weak cup of coffee, one of the members said "What! You drink coffee, when you told us we must not do so?" If people will not use their common-sense, absurd difficulties are bound to arise.
They should not blindly follow anything that anybody says, it does not matter who it its. If they think a thing is wrong, let them not do it, and if they think it is right, let them do it. What the Teacher requires of us is, that we should be sanely independent, that we should act on our own judgement and be leaders in our turn, instead of mere followers.
By following blindly we are apt to create a new religion or sect and that is the last thing we desire.
In my Messages I try to express my own ideas, my own particular way of looking at life, and they may be the Master's words or they may not; in this respect members must use their own judgement.
My Messages are only meant to serve as a guide along the road, but they are certainly not the Path itself. You must yourselves become the Path, before you can really tread it.

J. Krishnamurti

 

Nos. 1 and 2.

The Message from The Head of the Order of the Star in the East

(For Self-preparation Groups Only)

March and April, 1925

The time has come when each of us ought to be trying to find out why he is here and what is the definite plan which the Master has in view for him. I am convinced that each one of us has a definite part to play in the great Plan, and we should be using our imagination to try and find out that part. This will give us confidence and strength to change.
For myself I have absolute belief in what the Master wishes me to be. I am going to play a definite role and to play it properly, there must be transformation and remoulding. I know that the Master requires certain things of me. He wants me to be selfless, He wants me to be capable along certain definite lines, He wants me to become a true disciple. I know this because I have thought about it and worked for it, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously.
It is the same with each one of us, and it is our business to find out what the Master wants and then to set about preparing ourselves as quickly as possible.
As a first step we must make our belief stronger and more definite. If you believe, you may fail for the first year, two years, ten years, but if your belief is strong enough, no amount of failure will shake it and you will succeed in the end because you have seen and known and worked. It is belief which determines the way one looks, the way one's mind works, one's attitude to everything. If you are a real fanatic in belief, you will become a disciple to-morrow.
So you have to find out how far your belief is real or mere lip-service, examine yourselves impersonally and find out how far your strength will carry you and where your weakness lies.
It is belief and desire, which give us the capacity to change. When the wind blows, unless you are properly clothed, you will catch cold, unless you are strong and your feet firmly planted on the ground, you will be blown hither and thither. So will be the breath of the Lord, like a rushing mighty wind. The time is coming when in the nature of things there must be segregation. If we are strong, we shall become stronger; if we are noble we shall become more magnificent; if we are weak we shall go under; if we are sinners we shall become more sinful. So we must train ourselves now in order that we may be able to stand in the future when the Teacher is here.
If we need a particular lesson we are generally thrown into the world and the world hammers us day and night and gradually it moulds us through suffering, through failure, through disappointment till we accumulate experience.
Now we have not got the time for all these things, we have to sit down and experience through our imagination and arrive at the fruit of experiences which do not actually take place.
In the world outside we learn to be unselfish, to co-operate, to be tolerant, shall we do less for the Master?
If we were all disciples, all combining for one purpose, what a tremendous force we should be in the world. This is the one thing worth living for, there is nothing else. Do not have the desire to be great by yourself or to evolve by yourself. Spiritual growth comes by helping others, by feeling and co-operating with others, not by evolving alone. If we opened all our windows, our emotional windows, our intellectual windows, we should see the world changed. The man who has shut all his windows, who does not want to go outside and breathe the fresh air is useless to the Master. And most of us I am sure are in that state. We have only got one or two windows open and we think that it is enough. We have not the courage to open all the windows and let in the sunshine and fresh air. The Master needs all our windows to be opened so that through them we can pour His sun-shine on the world.
I feel sure that we have all come to the definite position where each one of us is under the eyes of the Master. He must love each one of us as a mother loves her child, and He must know the definite plan that each should follow, and He must watch us as a, mother watches her child, sometimes encouraging, longing for us to arrive at the goal where we shall be able to stand by ourselves. On us now rests a great responsibility. The Master has put us in the world to carry on His work. How far and in what manner shall we respond to His trust?

J. Krishnamurti

 

 

Private

International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji I

These Messages are a development of a series of talks which began first with a small group at Pergine, in 1924. Some of my friends have felt that to continue such talks, and to write them down for distribution to a wider circle, might be helpful to the Order, and it is in this hope that I do what I have been asked to do.
     The first thing, however, that I should like to point out, in connection with these Messages, is that I do not pretend to speak as a great authority; for I am not one. I only wish to put forward my ideas of things - my idea of the Master, of happiness, of enlightenment, of being great - on the chance of it being found helpful by others. Please do not think I am a final authority or anything of that kind. Just as a painter might paint a given scene differently from other painters, so shall I give my own point of view, and I want you always to remember this fact. I have my own ideas about the Masters, about being happy and so on; and only as such, and not as claiming any allegiance, do I put them forward.

THE MASTER

     Let me speak, first of all, of the Masters. I think there is too often, in our minds, the idea that a Master is something artificial, something outside us, a miracle of perfection, Who lives away in the mountains apart from us, a Being alien to us and not one of ourselves. Certainly, in many books, both Theosophical and non-Theosophical, I find this idea - that the Masters are remote from us, that They are different from us, that They have different points of view, that They occupy a different level. In a way, all this is true; but to me the Master is never limited by the artificiality of a painted picture, or of a book, nor have I the idea that He is far away. You know how Bishop Leadbeater has described the Masters in minute detail, - how They live, where They live, what They look like, and so on. Now C. W. L., as you know, has always been my Guru; but, for all that, I want to put the idea of the Masters in another way. Whenever I myself have seen a Master - and I have not done so very often - I have always seen Him in rather a "vague" way. If you asked me to describe Him in minute detail, I could not do so. I could not tell you the exact colour of His eyes or of His beard, nor could I tell you how He dresses. I have not that scientific clearness of vision which Bishop Leadbeater has, and which is necessary for such detailed apprehension.
     When I see a Master, it is like the flash of a passing bird or the impression of a passing cloud. You cannot describe these things afterwards; but you know they have been there, and the memory remains with you. l f you were asked to describe a beautiful tree or a flower, you would (unless you have a mind which is trained to observe as minutely as Bishop Leadbeater does) describe the general colour, you would describe the general appearance, the general beauty of it, but you could not go into details. You could not tell how many leaves o petals or branches it had. It is in the same way I am aware of the Masters. I do not say that the one way is better than the other; but it is difficult for some of us, at least for me, to adapt ourselves to that other point of view - as when the Masters are described in minute detail, or when a picture of Them is placed before you and you are asked to meditate upon it.
     The idea that the Master is a separate Being, or that He lives apart from us, although true in a way, is difficult for me to understand, because I like to feel one with Him. I like to feel that I can take His arm; I like to feel that I can have Him in my room as a part of myself. It is like having a flower in the room. You can always look at it, and it somehow takes a different aspect, a different colour, every time you do so. You cannot (at least, it is difficult for me) describe the flower, as it is, because it is always changing. At one moment it seems intensely living, at another time it appears almost dead. I do not say that the Master is ever "almost dead"; but it is in this kind of ever-varying way that I see Him. There is never a moment when He is not in my room; whatever I am doing He is beside me. When I am depressed, He is there. When I am happy, He is there. And when He is there, you yourself are the Master. Please do not think I am conceited. It is so difficult to explain what one means in these matters.
     When I see, for instance, a fisherman and his boat, or the way he is throwing his net, I can imagine the Master doing that and doing it to perfection. The fisherman may be cruel, and the Master is not cruel, but you can see the beauty of the Master in the fisherman's net as he throws it. I hope you see my point of view. It is that I feel that the Great Ones should not be treated as though They were remote and alien, as though They were foreign to us, as though They were strangers.
     Again, I, for my part, do not divide the Masters into various classifications. I do not say that this One belongs to the First Ray and that One to the Second, and so on. To me They are all one; They are all part of the same flower; and when each one of us arrives, as we must arrive, at that lofty stage, then we also shall become petals of that flower. As you know, I have had my own experiences of seeing the Masters and so on. In a way, they have helped to confirm my mind; but the mere idea itself that They are there, that They are the culmination of happiness and enlightenment, is sufficient. If, for instance, a Master appeared to me physically and showed Himself, it would not give me any surer proof of His existence than I have already. It is not because l have seen His face that I believe in Him, but because it is the natural thing that He should exist. It is a natural sequence of events. It is a natural thing that They should be beautiful, that They should be happy, that They should have all the wonderful qualities of perfected humanity. They are the realised Ideals of man-made-perfect, and there is nothing artificial about Them, as we are too often inclined to think.
     It seems to me that we ought to feel much more as though They were a part of us, and that we should not wait for visions and for the reading of books to convince us, but should think of Them as belonging to the natural course of evolution - as the result of a process just as simple as that which makes the river go to the sea, or the tree grow to its full height. Indeed, as the tree to the sapling, so does the Master stand to each one of us. He is our natural consummation, our goal made manifest. He may be miles ahead of us, but He is natural; and that is why our devotion, both to the Masters and to the activities which They want us to carry out in the world, should be utterly natural and not forced.
     And if you look at it from that point of view, if you realise that the Masters are the outcome of natural processes and that They are the culmination and the perfection of the world - that They are the perfect flower, whereas we are still the buds - then you can understand what it really means to be a disciple. Then you can really become disciples instead of merely labelling yourselves as such, because then you will want to be natural and to achieve.
     I feel that we make too much of something which is natural. If you go out into the sunshine and feel the fullness of life, you do not want to talk about it; you do not want other people to listen to you. And if the eventual outcome of our lives is to be perfect, to be like the Masters, again I want to say that They are not outside us, that They are not mysterious Beings dwelling in the far regions of the earth. They are near us, They are with us, and we have to grow to be like Them. Sooner or later we, too, must develop Their capacity, Their intelligence, Their commonsense, Their love and Their adoration. For as They are in fulfilment, we are in promise and potentiality.
     They are human, but They are divinely human. The feelings of mankind are Theirs, but They have purified and exalted these into divinity. And this is what we, also, have to do. It is not that we should not have feelings; it is not that we should not have desires. It is merely that we should make them divine and beautiful and wonderful to look at, as They have made Theirs.
     And that is why, in a way, I have a kind of shrinking feeling, when I hear people discussing the qualities and the attitude that we need, if we are to be great, and saying that to attain these things we must struggle. That is all artificiality and is never more than partly true. There is something much more wonderful than all this, much more beautiful than any of us can describe. If you have felt Their glory you cannot describe that glory to others any more than you can describe a wonderful sunset. You can say that there is such and such a colour in the north, and another in the south; but you can never express in words or in painting, in prose or in poetry, what the real sunset is; for in the very act of expression the thing loses its life. What matters is the feeling, the depth of the Feeling that you experience, when you see a sunset, or when you see a Master; and to develop that depth of feeling seems to me to be the duty of us all. But to develop it, to enlarge it and make it perfect, we must have a certain goal, we must have a certain determination, certain desires, and we can only get them if we live in the right way.
     It is so difficult to say all these things, to express what one feels; but I do want, for the moment, to put my own point of view. I may be wrong - but it seems to me that, when you are climbing a mountain, you do not think of the summit all the time. You think only of the climbing. You simply go on until you get to the top. You do not wonder, the whole time, how far you have reached. You just push ahead until you have arrived at the top. It is the same way with life itself and with our feelings about life. The idea of the summit, the idea of the Masters, must become part of our nature. We must go on and on and on, with the thought of Them, rather as an unconscious "urge" in our natures, than clearly defined and separated off as a "goal".
     For instance, if I had a son, I should make him see that the Master is not a fur-away beacon, towards which he must travel, but is there whenever he does anything perfect, whenever he does anything beautiful, whenever he is clean, whenever he has the right attitude of mind; that, whenever he looks at a sunset or a sunrise, whenever he is walking with the head erect and a joyful heart, the Master is there; that all his actions, if beautiful and done with right feeling, with fitness and grace, are the actions of the Master and not his own. You are each your own Master, if you do things perfectly; and this is true even of the smallest things, such as the correct wearing of a coat or the tying of a tie. These little insignificant things are to me a kind of symbol of the real thing. You cannot imagine the Master putting on or taking off anything in an ugly fashion He is the ideal of perfection. He is the apotheosis of "rightness"; and so everything we do, if we do it beautifully, is done by the Master, and ceases to be a mere meaningless act of daily life.
     So the central thought of this first message to you is simply this - that the artificiality of our way of thinking about things has made the Masters also, artificial for us, causing us to look on Them as though they were far away, a goal towards which we have to struggle, instead of something ever present and as near to us as breathing. Even the way to Them is simple, for it is really no "way". The moment you are natural in your beauty, then you yourselves have Found the Masters, for you have become Them. It is not out of conceit, or from a feeling of superiority, that I can speak of Them as my Friends, just as many of you are my friends; that I can go to Them with my ordinary troubles in life and know that They would see exactly where They should sympathise and where They should criticize. For me, it would be just like a child going to its Mother or its Father. When you get that point of view, you can never be miserable or lonely or unhappy, when you suffer.
     For instance, when my brother died, I felt utterly lost. You have no idea how I felt for two or three days - for more than that, for a week perhaps. I still miss him; I shall always miss him physically, but I feel that he and I are working together, that we are walking along the same path, on the same mountain side, seeing the same flowers, the same creatures, the same blue sky, the same clouds and trees. That is why I feel as if I were part of him; and only when I get tired do I begin to say: "My brother is not here". But at once my mind pulls me up and tells me how absurd is such a thought.
     So long as our thinking is artificial, so long as we think of the Masters or of any perfect thing as apart from us, as separate from our being, we shall always have to struggle. But the moment we regard Them as natural, as something belonging quite simply to our every-day life, then the whole thing becomes perfectly easy. Then do we find real happiness. Then are we on the way to becoming disciples; - nay, on the way to becoming the Masters Themselves.

 

Private

International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji II

You remember that, in the first Message, we were talking of the reality of the Masters; how the Masters exist as a part of Nature; and how in all beauty, whether it be the beauty of a fisherman throwing his net or the spiritual loveliness of the perfectly evolved soul, there is the same quality, the same tone; so that we should break down, as far as possible, the artificial barrier that our mentality creates between the Master and ourselves, and cease to think of the Master as an anomaly, or as something far away from us, and we should realise that He is everywhere, in all moving and non-moving things. That was our general idea.
In the present Message I want to place before you another idea, which is as old as the hills and has been written about very often: namely, that the Master is not perfect if He has not a pupil, and the pupil is not perfect if there is not a Master; so that it is natural that the Master should exist, and it is equally natural that there should be a pupil. There is a beautiful saying in Sanskrit: "Because of the lotus the water is made more beautiful; because of the water, the lotus is made more beautiful. Because of the water and the lotus the lake looks more beautiful." Exactly in the same way, you cannot separate the Master from the pupil. They are one; they must be one, in order to create the beauty. Without the natural environment of life the beauty of the Master is not revealed; it is concealed. So is it also with the pupil. Until he has learned what the world has to teach him, he cannot reveal his own beauty and approach the Master.
We must have it absolutely clear in our minds that the Master is the outcome, the apotheosis, of all creative action. We must realise that it is all natural, just as it is natural for the tree to come to its full growth, even though, while it is still young, it may need artificial support in order to keep it straight. So, too, for us who are trying to become the tree which shall provide shelter, which shall have scented flowers, which shall give shade, and which shall bear fruit, there must be, at first, the artificial props of initiation, acceptance, and so on; but we must always remember that, in themselves, they are not the vital thing. They are, as it were, the mere scaffolding of growth. But if you can complete your growth, unconscious of the scaffolding, so much the better.
Intellectually, too, the idea that the Master exists is quite natural, quite reasonable. What is the good of life if, at the end of it, we do not become perfect, something noble, wonderful, glorious? The idea of Re-incarnation, too - is it not perfectly natural, even though it may sometimes seem a little depressing? For, there are times when the idea that we have to carry on this unfortunate game all through a whole succession of lives, until we have conquered and attained, is rather depressing. Yet, the idea in itself is perfectly natural; it is logical, and it is not something that has been invented by Theosophists and Hindus to satisfy our mental cravings. To me it is as natural as the sunrise and the sunset. I feel the same about Karma. The thing must be true, and it must be true in a sense which fits in naturally with life as we know it.
If we do not make these truths part of ourselves by interpreting them in a simple and natural manner, they become outside things and cease to fit easily and helpfully into our lives. In the same way the idea of perfectibility along all lines, of the possibility of a development of all good qualities to the point which is represented by the Master, appeals to our imagination tremendously; and that is why we have to cultivate our imagination, so that mentally, emotionally and physically, the idea of the culmination of perfection, the glory of the man as he evolves, becomes quite natural, and quite comprehensible; above all, a thing of plain common sense.
If we have this idea of the Master as a Being, human like ourselves, then He is simply a person, an individual, who has become perfect. I often think that the Master, is Krishnamurti made perfect, or somebody else made perfect; in that way He becomes part of me, part of my very understanding, of my very breath, to whom I can go with anything, my sorrow, my depression, my jealousies, or my happiness, my adoration, my glorification. He is in fact father, mother, son, daughter, wife - everything. And we have to impress this idea upon our minds, because, as I said yesterday, the mentality always wants something outside to cling to, something against which it can lean. The Master is not a person against whom we can lean. How can one lean against Him when He is a part of us, when He is ourselves, when He is the very air that we breathe? So you lose that sense of depression, loneliness and other trivial things. How can a leaf feel lonely? It is part of the tree. You will see sometimes the wind shaking a particular leaf and the whole tree is perfectly still. That leaf may seem somewhat separate, somewhat proud of being shaken by the wind, when the other leaves are not shaken. It is the same with each one of us. We feel that we are separate, but in reality we are a part of the whole of humanity. We are both the lowest and the highest, the stone and the God, not separate individuals cut off from all the others. Of course we are different in many ways, but that does not mean that we are separate. We have our own temperaments, our own desires. We have to follow our own special paths, but they all lead to the same summit. It becomes much more interesting, much finer, to look at the whole of life in that way.
The Master becomes more beautiful, more glorious, more divine, more comprehensible if each one of us feels that we have to make ourselves pupils, in order to make Him more wonderful. The moon by itself cannot be beautiful; it is the darkness that makes the beauty of the moonlight. It is exactly the same with the Master and the pupil. They are one; they are complementary. They become more beautiful when they are together and no longer separate. They become more divine, more understandable, more human, when they are together and can understand each other.
Anybody in the world - it does not matter whether he has the special label of probationer, or accepted pupil, or initiate - anybody who has these feelings becomes a pupil; anybody who desires intensely, who longs intensely, becomes a pupil; and the feeling that you are a pupil, while somebody else is not, becomes puerile, childish; and you naturally squash that kind of idea at once. Many who are in the Theosophical Society and in our Order only begin to take notice of people when they hear that they bear certain labels. I have noticed this during the recent Convention. The moment we know certain people are on probation we greet them very deferentially; when we find out that they have become accepted pupils, the hands go higher still; and when we hear that they are Initiates, well, you know the rest!
You see how artificial we have made it all, how ridiculous, how ugly! What does it matter whether you are known as a probationary pupil or not, if you have the right feeling, the right desire? This is far more interesting, far more beautiful, than the mere labels to which we attach so much importance. I do not say these do not help, I do not say that labels have not a certain value. They may help to bring you to your destination, like a luggage label; they may prevent you from going wrong because then you know you have certain responsibilities. But do not worship the label.
When I see a fisherman, or a blade of grass that has been broken on the road, to me they are as worthy as those who are labelled. The blade of grass has been broken and the grass has suffered. Some unfortunate person has trodden on it, and it must have suffered. Suffering and love and happiness are common to all things; these are far more valuable, far more interesting, far more dignified than the mere worship of labels and the contentment it brings. I cannot put it more strongly than I have done; but I will say this also; - if we do not guard ourselves against all this narrowingdown of life, we shall not approach the Master even though a thousand persons say that we are approaching Him; we shall not realise the Master even though we may worship in front of Him; we shall not truly see His face even though we may be able to describe the colour of His eyes and of His hair.
So long as we can realise that a broken blade of grass, or an animal which is hurt, or a man who has suffered, are all the same, are all parts of us, we can approach the Master. Sometimes I feel wounded when I see a flower on the road or an ant that somebody has trodden upon and killed. You cannot help those things; they happen; but I feel as though somebody had hurt me. And if you have that sense, that tremendous feeling, that depth of understanding of the oneness of all, then the beauty of the Master comes nearer; and every tree, every flower, every drop of water, every cloud, every storm has a different meaning. Then every day becomes a wonder; every hour becomes more glorious; then you want to be happy, then you want to be enlightened, because that is the only natural thing to be. You know we all of us feel sometimes, - certainly I have very often felt, - the glory of the Master, the simplicity of it all, the perfection in that simplicity. But instead of making us simple - so that we become perfect in our emotions, in our minds, in our bodies, - all that we do tends to make us complicated.
We do not understand that the Master is the embodiment of simplicity. I am sure the Master is never angry; and yet one can imagine He can be annoyed, simply because it is a natural thing to be. Even though now He may be above it, even though He may have conquered it, yet He must have gone through what we ourselves are going through. He must once have had all the feelings that we have, but now He has arrived at the mountain-top. He is as white as the snow and as cold as the snow. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean that He has not affections. I know that I shall have letters afterwards asking me why I say that the Master is cold. Surely He is full of affection. But one can see how the Master can look at things with the tremendous dignity which comes from absolute detachment, and yet have, within, the bubbling spring of love. Both can exist, even as snow and living springs exist in nature. The Masters are as natural and as ordinary as the sunrise and the sunset. Who cares nowadays for the sunrise except the few? Who cares to study quietly at sunset? It is the man who has trained himself to look at the sunset, who has learnt to still his body and his mind and his emotions at the sunset hour, who can sit down quietly and worship it. If you want to become like the Master you must have all these things, all these qualities, all these movements of the mind under perfect control, so that they may become part of your very nature and not something for which you are still struggling.

J. Krishnamurti

 

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International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji III

I think that for those who are Indians, the idea of the Masters, the idea of Perfect Beings who have been human and are still human, is quite normal and obvious and natural; while it is especially difficult for those who have been brought up in the West really to comprehend this idea. They want convincing; they want positive proofs. They want a Master to appear and tell them: "I exist; follow Me".
I remember, the last time I was crossing from America, one or two people, Americans, began to talk to me, and I think they typified the attitude of the West and of America. They noticed that I was different, that I was a vegetarian, that I was better mannered, that I held myself somewhat aloof - not necessarily out of pride and conceit, but merely that I did not do all the things that it was the fashion to do on the steamer; and one young friend said: "Why do you not enjoy yourself? Why do you not behave like the rest of us? Why don't you smoke? Why don't you flirt? Why don't you do everything that we are accustomed to do?" When he asked me that question, it made me wonder why I did not do those things. I could not reply that it was because I had such wonderful ideals that I was above such enjoyments! I had no proper answer to give on the spur of the moment: but I suppose the fact was that, because I held certain beliefs, those other things no longer gave me pleasure. It means of course, a difference in evolution; it means that one has in a way outgrown the things which other people enjoy. I am not conceited about it; please do not ever think that of me, because I am not like that. Then, two or three days later, he insisted on talking to me again about various things, and towards the end of our interview, when we had got to the point of talking quite naturally to one another, I put before him the idea of the Masters; and the first thing he said to me was: "But how do you know? You have no positive proof; you might have been deluded; you might have had hallucinations; You may be wrong". Then, for the first time, it struck me that Westerners, Europeans, people who have been brought up along different lines from ours, want proofs, they want definite concrete definitions of the Master. The Master must be endowed with certain qualities, with a certain environment, before they can recognise Him as a Master. And it is very difficult for anyone, especially for me, to give proofs of the existence of a Master, to prove that He is a human being, and yet that He has powers which we have not. For those of us, who are Indians, the conception is a perfectly natural one. We can no more doubt it than we could doubt that the sun rises and that the sun sets.
Now, of course in India there is also sometimes scepticism, and the desire for proof. But there is always in the background of the Indian mind and imagination the idea that the Masters do exist and that they are attainable; that you can approach them and become like Them. I have been brought up in the idea that the Masters do exist, although naturally I have had my own doubts like everybody else. But I have conquered my doubts, not because I have had tremendous proofs, not because the Masters have appeared to me, not because They have done certain things to me and made me see Them, but because I cannot help it. I cannot help believing in Them. My whole faith, my whole imagination, my whole heart, my whole affection and devotion are behind that belief, because it is in the natural sequence of things; it is more natural for me to believe than not to believe. To me such an idea has not got to be proved.
I think the Western mind, and in some few cases the Eastern mind also, has a special difficulty with regard to this question. To my mind it is a form of disease, and I think you can only get over it, if you appreciate the beautiful, the real, the attractive side of life, and treat the idea of the Masters as something not extraneous, but natural. You do not doubt that the moon, the sunlight, and the stars are really beautiful in themselves. Nobody has to come and point out to you that a starlit night is really wonderful. You feel it instinctively. You appreciate it; you want to be alone in order still better to appreciate such beauty. It is the same thing with the Master. Whenever I see a beautiful thing, a great mountain, the sea, still water, the sky or the flowers, I try to image to myself that the Master must embody all those things, that the Master must have those superficial beauties before He can have the inner beauty, that He must be the child, that He must be the stars, the daylight; He must be the embodiment of everything. If you use your imagination in the right way, I think the idea that the Masters are different from us becomes rather absurd.
As I said, if you believe in such a Master definitely enough, you make Him so real that He becomes like one of us. You must materialize Him and yet not concretise Him. You must draw Him and yet not paint Him in exact colours. If you are able to do that, if you have the capacity to do that, then the Masters become real. To most of us at present They are not real. You may be on the Probationary Path or high Initiates, but if They are not real to you, They are not a part of you. We do not enjoy Them, as we enjoy a real friend, a real brother. We do not feel one with Them; They are still on the circumference instead of being in the centre. And to make the Masters become a part of us, to make Them become one with us, is the primary duty of any pupil, of any Initiate, or of any other person in the world who wishes to place his feet on the Path.
I often feel, when people get up and talk about the Master, that they have not really grasped the idea - that they are still searching for Him in the dark, that they are still groping for Him all over the place, in books, in solitary walks, in love-affairs and so on. You do not find the Master in that way, any more than you would find the real beauty of life by sitting in a room and studying. You must have a certain sense of greatness, a certain sense of imagination, a certain sense of beauty; in other words, you must be evolved before you can reach the Master.
You can only get the reality of the Master, you can only feel Him, if you have the appreciation of the beauty of life. I think sometimes that the people who are real artists, real painters, real admirers of beauty, are nearer to the Masters than many of Their professed Followers, because the artist has the elan, the spring that will take him to the heart of things.
If you can grasp that fundamental idea that the Masters are not strangers, not people who live Far away, or who are entirely different from us, then They become real to you. They become more real if you treat Them as you treat your dearly loved Friends, as you treat your brother or wife or child. You do not show them only one side of your life and hide the other side. You are never unnatural to your brother or your wife or, your child or your mother. You are just natural in your house. In the same way must we treat the Masters.
Usually if you go to a meeting where the words "the Masters" are uttered, people at once put up their hands and bow their heads. There is a false devotion, a false idea of the Masters. I am urging this so strongly, because we are getting more and more into this way of thinking. The moment we are happy, the moment we are natural, the moment we are really affectionate and appreciate beauty, the Masters become real to us.
Of course it does not mean that we must not study, that we must not meditate on pictures which are centres of force; those are all helpful, but we must not be satisfied with them. We must find the real source of the rivers, we must find the real mountain from which everything flows. Until we have done that, until we have been able to soar to that height, the Masters and the Path and the idea of Service are not real.
In my messages I shall explain, if I can, why I do certain things, why I feel in a certain way, and why I think in a certain way. It is not, as I repeat over and over again, because I am big or different from everybody else, but because it is my nature to take things in that way. For example people say to me: "How wonderful of you to have got over your brother's death!", as though I had done something extraordinary. When we suffer there is always a sore; there always will be a sore as long as we are human beings; but the attitude of mind and emotions which aggravates that sore should not exist, and that is what we have got to learn. As long as we are living human beings with ordinary human faults and sufferings, we shall always have sores, we shall always feel pain. But the training begins when you are able to avoid increasing those sores, when you can avoid aggravating them or making them more hideous than they are already. If we wish to become pupils of the Master, if we desire to learn what the Path means, we must understand these little things. We must not struggle against what is inevitable, but must be clever enough to yield to it and, by so yielding, to disarm it of its power to hurt.
Then the Master becomes real. I assure you I have not seen the Master, as others may have done, or as they so frequently say they have. But I defy anybody to say that the Master is more real to him than He is to me. It does not mean that He must appear before me, that He must show Himself, that He must display His qualities and His wonderful aura, that He must show Himself in His physical body. Those things do not make the Master real to me. It is the idea that the Masters are there, that They are beautiful, that They are the perfection of myself, that appeals to me. That They are human, that They can enjoy themselves better than I can, that They can suffer, (if They do suffer,) that They know what it means to climb and to struggle - that is what appeals to me.
That is why to me the Masters are so real. For each one of us the proof of the reality of the Masters must come from within ourselves. It becomes unreal when you preach and lecture about it, for then it becomes at once an artificial thing. It is not necessary for me to tell you that at such and such a time the sun sets and the moon comes up and the stars show themselves. You know it, you see it, for yourselves. You do not need anybody else in the world to convince you of those ordinary physical things which exist around you, because you have been brought up with them, you have eyes to see, you observe, you learn to feel and to think for yourselves. It is the same about the Masters. They are not something that X or Y has to explain to you and to paint for you in colours. To each one of us the very idea itself should be sufficient, the very background of this idea should be sufficient. Just because my picture of the Masters satisfies me individually, it does not follow that it will satisfy each one of you; and I think it should not satisfy you, because each one of you has to attain these things for yourself.
Then the reality will become so intense that you can no longer doubt it. I dislike the word "doubt" because there is an implication that the thing in question may be real or not. When once you have seen the sea and felt its immense power, its potential dignity and its tremendous strength, you know, what it feels like to be the sea; but if you go to a person who has never seen the sea and tell Him all the wonderful things about it, about the life it contains, about its little ripples and its tremendous waves, of course he will doubt its reality and it is natural to doubt it. But if you take him to the sea and show it to him, although he may see it in a different way, although he may be attracted by things not noticed by you, yet he now knows what the sea is with its shifting sands. You must become the sea itself before you can know the feelings of the sea. You must be the drop of water before you can understand the greatness and the strength and the immensity of the ocean. So it is with the Master. Until you become one with the Master, a part of Him, you cannot comprehend Him. If you can do this, then life becomes easy and simple and really wonderful. It does not matter then what happens to you, for you just go on until you are the ocean, until you become the Master.

J. Krishnamurti

 

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International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji IV

In the last three Messages I have tried to explain what I mean by the Master and why the ideal of perfection is a constant source of inspiration to all of us.
I often ask myself why I do certain things, why I eat in a particular way, why I am kind to others, why others are kind to me, why I am polite, - in fact all the usual questions that one sometimes asks oneself. And I think the answer, at least for myself, is that I want to try to achieve in all that I do during the day, the perfection of the Master. I will tell you what I mean: I want - and surely everybody in the world wants - to be like some ideal, for example, to be like the Master, or to be like some great poet, some great painter or some great musician. Ever since I was a small boy, I well remember, I have wanted to be something along spiritual lines. I remember a friend asking me when I was a small boy what I wanted to do when I was grown up. He said to me: "I am going to be a shop-keeper, I want to keep a shop." I do not remember what I replied, but I know it gave me a shock to think that I might become like him a shop-keeper, because all the time I wanted to become something else.
Now, I want to be like the Master, but my idea of the Master is not a very individualistic one. As I said at the beginning, to me the Master is like myself, but much more wonderful, much more beautiful. All the things that I can attribute to Him are not enough to describe Him. For, I, Krishnamurti, do not always see the Master as He is, and I do not always have Him in my mind, because I know that clouds of my own making come between me and the Master. On a cloudy day there are shadows and certain trees are darkened by the shadows but others remain lit up. There are clouds in the sky but the sun is always shining. It is the clouds that intervene, it is the clouds that come between the sun and the trees. And it is the same with us. I know that I shall be a Master, that I can be a Master if only the clear space of the sky was ever between me and the Master, with nothing to obstruct, or to make false shadows, nothing to move or come between us.
But it does not depress me to know that the clouds are sometimes there, for I feel my Master must once have had His shadows and clouds and He will understand my shadows and clouds. It is very difficult to explain all this because I have never thought about these things very precisely; I do not like to think too precisely about the Master, for thereby I feel the ideal becomes rather common, loses its serenity, its dignity, its distinction. That is my personal opinion.
I do not have the ideal of the Master consciously and purposely with me throughout the day, and yet unconsciously the ideal is always there in front of me. I have not read books about the Masters, probably because I have been brought up in Theosophy and therefore, perhaps, my instinct has been to keep off those subjects. But to me the Master is just as real as to anyone else. I have not striven consciously, I have not said to myself, "To-day and to-morrow I am going to acquire certain qualities, the day after to-morrow I am going to try to develop others." I have grown naturally. I am not setting myself up as an ideal for you, I am not putting myself upon a pedestal for you to worship. That would be absurd. But I want you to see my point of view, and perhaps it may help some of you. If it does not, it does not much matter.
You know, if you have a brother who is always correcting you when you do what is wrong, your instinct when he is not there, is to think, "Am I doing the right thing?" If you have a certain thought, immediately you find yourself thinking the opposite thought. If you are angry you say, "How absurd to be angry." If you are jealous you think immediately of the opposite of jealousy. I have watched people and when I see people angry, I say, "must not do that." When I see people really nice, I say, "I must copy certain things those people do." So all day long one is adjusting oneself quickly and steadily. You have a determination to go along a certain path, and you can only do that if you can keep the sky clear in front of you - that absolutely cloudless blue sky which is the Master. And if each one of us feels the nearness of the Master in the beautiful things around us, in pictures, in individuals, in trees, in clouds, or in anything we see, at once there is the immediate response. Instead of waiting for the Master to come and open us up, we open ourselves up and we become like those beautiful things. This has been my experience.
Why do we all want to be happy? Because happiness is the only thing worth achieving in the world. I receive knocks, I struggle, I have difficulties of every kind, but I do not think I have ever been deeply depressed, except on the day when I heard that my brother had passed away. My natural instinct is always to be happy. I always cultivate that, because if we are not happy, nothing in the world is worth while. There is nothing in the world to be miserable about, really; not even in the death of someone who means everything to us, nor in all the little things which we think matter so much. And that is why the moment you feel happy, you really see beauty in all things. The moment you are enthusiastic in your happiness you will see the real Master, but not otherwise. We are all struggling to be happy, and that is why we do not see the Master. In a way unhappiness always brings ugliness; it is not beautiful; it is not natural. But if you are happy, in the real sense of the word, if you are joyous, then you will see everything in a new light. Then you will want to create this happiness for others, and it is by bringing it to them that the Master comes nearer to you.
Happiness is a thing which should be second nature to us; it should be as easy to be happy as to be depressed. Watch people's faces. They get depressed so quickly. I do not see why it should not be easier to be happy than to be depressed. I am talking about something which I have experienced personally, because I too have had to struggle. My nature is not unhappy or depressing but I have experienced certain things in my life which have made me say: "Am I really happy?" "Have I really conquered?" And I think I can honestly say that I am happy and that I have really conquered. Now I am not struggling to be wonderful or to become a great disciple. Joy is in my nature, I cannot help being happy. If I am depressed I see at once how absurd it is to be depressed, so immediately I change. If we have the sunshine, at once we notice the shadows. So I am able to keep my balance over things. This happiness is a really quiet happiness; it does not mean that we should be skipping about the place like young gazelles, or that we should go up and pat everyone on the shoulder, but it is a kind of dignified happiness; and I should say that it is the first requirement for the comprehension of the Master or of anything beautiful.
If you are feeling depressed and with that feeling of misery you approach anything beautiful you will never see its real beauty. It will be superficial; just the outside may appeal to you but you will not perceive the real inner beauty. And that is why most of us do not understand what we are talking about when we get up on platforms and talk about the Masters. We have just seen the superficial dignity and greatness and we think we have understood it and are capable of explaining it to others. But if you are happy, if you are really intensely joyous, then you will see and feel and know the reality. Perhaps you will not talk so much about it, but you will know what it means. You will gain every quality in the world if you are happy in this way. For this happiness is the source of true happiness to others; it is the stream that will go through every land, that will bring new life to all living things, refresh all creation, and ultimately merge itself in the eternal sea.
Nothing can stop us if we have that attitude. For if we are happy, we shall be able to take so many more along with us, we shall make others see what it means to be happy, we shall be able to enjoy life and make others enjoy it. You can take away my Master, you can take away everything I prize in life, but if I thought you were going to take away from me this sense of happiness I should feel really lost. When I am happy, the idea of being separate, of being individualistic, of being proud and conceited entirely disappears, because I want to make others happy, I want to make everything right and help to put everything in its proper position and place.
I think, for those of us who are struggling, who are learning to walk, it takes years and years and years to learn these things. We are just beginning to discover what shadows and lines mean, what the whole world means, what little things mean and what big things mean. And if you do not have clearly in front of you this view of happiness and possess it yourselves, you may study for centuries and yet you will not get the right attitude, the right sense of proportion in life. Happiness brings you to the goal. Happiness makes you enlightened, makes you big, makes you really one with the Master, one with beauty. Without it you cannot really help others when they get depressed. You may have sympathy, you may want to put your arms round them, but you will not have the real sympathy that can truly help.
And for me the Master not only embodies all these things, but He is a kind of friend with whom I can go out for a walk and to whom I can explain my point of view. Not that I actually go out for a walk with the Master, but that is my attitude towards Him. I do not put Him on a pedestal merely and go on my knees and worship Him, but I take Him as my real friend. I dislike the word 'Brother' because it has been so much misused; for me, anyhow, it has lost its beauty. The idea of a 'friend' is to me much more beautiful. That is why I treat the Master as though He were a real Friend of mine.
If we treat the Master in that way, how simple it becomes, how dignified, how distinctive and how real, instead of something superficial, something artificial. The Master will become part of us, one with us, instead of a separate someone to whom we give and from whom we receive. If you think of it, you do not receive anything really, from the sun; you are surrounded by the sun, you are part of the sun. There is his life in every part of the solar system, and it is the same with the Master. Try to realise what a drop of water must feel in the sea. Its sense of separation is lost; it is absolutely one with the sea and there is no idea of "here am I, a drop of water, and there is the huge sea". By identifying itself with the sea, it enjoys the power, the strength, the beauty and the dignity of the sea, because it is part of it, and not simply a separate drop of water. That idea to me is inspiring. I want to be like the sea, I want to be like the Master, because then I feel so much happier. That is why; not because I want to help so and so. I will naturally help if I am happy.
That is why I lay so much stress on being happy. The idea that we must go out and help and serve and work, out of a forced and artificial sense of duty, is appalling to me. It is depressing. But look at it from the other point of view. Because you are happy, because you are clean, because you are really big and feel things, you will want to bring others to be as you are and feel as you do. You must not begin from the wrong end of the stick. Do not think that by going and working in slums and by worrying other people with work that you are going to obtain happiness. That may come later on, or it may come at the end of life, but if you are instinctively happy, naturally happy, then you will go and work in the slums far better, and you will make other people really like you. Other people will want to be your friends because they feel and know you are happy, because they know you are really different. You are an example instead of being merely like them, and yet you are one of them.
That is why those people who get depressed, who feel weak or sentimental or anything of that sort, miss the real beauty and fun of life, and cannot come near the Master. They cannot come near the beauty of life. You see, if you are happy, then your attitude, your desires, the way you act, your gestures, your life, everything changes. These things become real, they become natural, and therefore they become really beautiful. At present we are trying to do things, to simulate things which we do not understand. We are trying to mould ourselves into something, and we do not know what it is we are trying to achieve. We have read about it, we have thought about it, but it is not part of us, and that is why it is not real to us, and that is why it is of no permanent value in our lives. You may meditate and read, but if you are not natural, if you are not instinctively beautiful you will not achieve your goal, you will not come near the Master.

J. Krishnamurti

 

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International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji V

I think we have now got an idea, at least a general conception, of what the Master is, and we can perceive the beauty of that idea, and I know we also have the desire, the longing to become part of that beauty. But before we can achieve, before we can attain, we must develop naturally certain essential qualities. In some cases we may have to spend years and in others only a few months at this work. You may have to spend only a few weeks in acquiring the necessary qualities, if you are sufficiently observant and have the capacity and the desire to adapt yourselves quickly and to change. But the first thing above all else as I said in my last message, is to be happy. We must be so supremely happy that the qualifications, desires and everything else come as a natural consequence of that happiness.
A friend of mine told me that when I was a small boy I used to be very miserable and often got upset and unhappy. I am sure I was often depressed and easily made unhappy, but now I have utterly forgotten that I could ever be depressed. Now I am happy, and the happiness which I have gained has produced so strong an effect that it is impossible for me to revert to that earlier stage. We all tend to get depressed occasionally - that is to be expected - but that depression should not be a prominent feature in us, and should not conquer us. Happiness and joyousness, should be our dominant note. When once you have tasted something really nice, something that gives you real physical pleasure, then if you taste anything bitter you instinctively make a comparison with what you enjoyed on a former occasion. It should be like that with us when once we have tasted real happiness. We should always revert to it, and the reversion should come quickly, and not take weeks and months. It is the satisfaction and the after-effect of that satisfaction that matters, and that is why to me happiness is the first requisite for a disciple, or for anyone in the world who is striving. Do not let us think that this is limited to those who are labelled as Initiates or anything of that kind. For anyone who wants to be beautiful, who wants to enjoy himself in life, who wants to create, the first thing he must acquire is happiness. He must be happy and then, as I said, the other necessary qualities will come naturally, without struggle.
To me then happiness is the first quality. Then comes desire . . . desire of the right kind. I am not an exception: I know I have innumerable desires all day long. I have the desire to go away sometimes and not see anybody . . . and also other ordinary desires that all of us have. I think we should have those desires, but we should use them, to change the quality of our desires. It is no use crushing out all desires and being desireless. To be desireless is certainly the final stage of perfection, but we have none of us reached it yet, and if we, at our stage, have the idea that we must become desireless, that we must kill out all desire, we become vaguely nebulous and weak. Then we have no will to drive us on, and that is why, we must have desires even if, for the time being, they happen to be of the wrong kind. But the nobler and the purer the desire, the nobler will be our attitude towards life.
In India there is the idea that if you are to be a spiritual man or woman you must be absolutely desireless, that nothing must affect you, neither likes nor dislikes. But you can only come to that stage when you have tasted what the desires bring you in their fruition, when you have gone through the various results of desire, when you know what each desire brings. You cannot arrive at perfection in a day. If you have desires, you can use them to get the right desires; but if you have not any desire, you will not arrive anywhere, because it simply means, unless you are quite an exceptional person, that your mentality, your will, cannot stand up against things.
You generally find that a person who has no desires is weak. I am referring to the ordinary sort of person who is in the world and loves the world. When such a person says he has no desires, I do not believe it. He is not what he pretends to be. He has desires, but he thinks that he has conquered them all. It is like some of us saying, "I should like to give up everything to the Masters." If such a person can do so it is because he has nothing to give, neither money, nor wealth, nor capacity of any kind, so naturally he can give up everything. But when a rich man like Henry Ford gives up, it means something. For such people it means that they have conquered so much of the physical desires, and that they have realised what it is to conquer, and what it is to sacrifice. You see so many sanyasis, so many people in the world professing that they have given up everything. They can do it easily because they have nothing to give up! They have not got the capacity to lead, or to follow, to admire, to worship or to adore. It is these many weak followers that hamper every cause. This sort of giving up is all based on a wrong conception. If you are really willing to give up everything to the Master, you must first be sure you have something to give. You have your body, your mind, your capacities, your devotion, but they must be tested in the fire of experience. You must have suffered, you must have evolved, you must have created before you can be worthy to give. But the "giving up" of most people is no better than it would be if I were to go to one of these Orders which has plenty of money behind it, and offer myself up, knowing I should then live comfortably all the rest of my life. That is not the proper desire, the proper motive. We may camouflage our motive, we may hide it in whatever way we like, but if we are weak and have no real capacities we have nothing to give. I assure you there are thousands in the Theosophical Society like that, as well as in the Star and other organisations.
That is why it is so essential to have desires of the right kind, desires that produce, that create, that give you energy to act. Then you can do things; then you can give qualities that are worth while, even though you have nothing else to give. Then your gift will be welcome, for the Master does need each one of us. He needs us with the qualities we have evolved, The things that we have experienced, for He knows then that we are capable of a certain definite usefulness to Him.
Just imagine a man of the world, one who has really conquered, who has mastered the world, who has gained all that the world can give of honour, of glory, of university degrees, and of distinction. If such a person gives it all up it really means something. I do not say that you should chase after those glories and wait till you have acquired them, before you can give yourselves up to the Master; but I do say this: We must have capacities, a right sort of devotion, and a right attitude of mind before we can give up ourselves or the world.
It is so much easier to give up the world than to live in it. I often want to retire into the mountains, for that would be much nicer, much pleasanter than getting tired out in trying to adjust oneself to one's environment, or being tactful when one is surrounded by a number of people. When one gives it all up and retires, one has not to face any of these things. It is much the easiest path, but through the easiest path one does not evolve. It is through knocks, through suffering, through being uncomfortable in mind and emotion that we evolve. It is the constant friction that matters in life, and the moment we seek a comfortable path of self-satisfaction or contentment we make no further headway. You know what happens to a river which is a side branch or backwater. It just goes in there and stagnates. It has no outlets. There it breeds mosquitoes and collects green slime and there it remains for ever and ever until an outlet is dug by somebody. And this is what happens to all of us unless we have the right sort of desire, the constant urge to go and hurl ourselves against things.
That is why desire is so essential, not the wrong kind of desire, not the commoner desires, the usual physical desires, desires of passion and all that kind of thing. Those also we have to go through and get them over as soon as possible. For most of us they are over - at least I hope so. When you have experienced those desires you know that they are useless, for they can never give you real and lasting satisfaction. Most of you know that; hence you must have gone through those desires and passed beyond them. But to have experienced and conquered them develops your will and gives you a certain amount of understanding and sympathy with other people.
To have no desires, to be utterly desireless, is an ideal which we shall attain the more quickly because we have gone through so many desires. For my part I feel that the physical desires do not attract me any more, that they no longer cling to me, but there are other and subtler desires too which I shall soon overcome. But I am very glad I have had those desires for I know now what it means to struggle, what it means to avoid them; I have learned by experience how to be clever in avoiding them and what to do and what not to do. That experience gives me strength and when I see those desires coming along, they leave me absolutely unaffected. I am not saying this to put myself on a pedestal or to pose as a big person; on the contrary these things are supremely easy if we but exercise our will: We can leave all these desires behind us and forget them.
Another thing which we should all have is common sense. You have read over and over again in Bishop Leadbeater's and in Dr. Besant's books about common sense and how you should use your own intelligence and your own judgment and never be carried away by anything that happens, and how you should not accept anything until your mind and your intuition, until your whole being accepts it. We think - I don't know why - that if certain people make statements that we must accept them or else our souls will go to perdition. Yes: they will go to perdition if we accept them without reason, without feeling convinced about them. It does not matter who makes the statements, they may even come from the very highest source. If you do not agree, be honest. Use your common sense and try to understand the meaning before you accept anything.
Spirituality does not mean that you should accept anything or admit anything before your mind and your emotions have accepted it. The explanation of this is simple. Until a statement becomes a part of your very nature, acceptance of it is mere hypocrisy and that is the last thing the Master wants from us, for it is an unbeautiful thing. You are beautiful when you are natural, and you are certainly not natural when you are hypocritical, when you just follow blindly something which you do not feel, which you do not understand, which does not really appeal to you. I assure you it does not matter who says it, what messenger or what writer gives it out, you must use your own common sense and your judgment before accepting it. Blind obedience or blind following, no Master, no Teacher has ever asked. One can see why; it is because He wants beauty; He demands that you shall evolve; that you shall develop yourselves so that you shall become creators of the beautiful; that you may be examples and not mere copies. You must develop; that is the fundamental thing; and when you accept and swallow ideas blindly, you do not develop; you just stagnate; you become narrow; and that is why it is so essential to have and to stand by common sense. It does not mean that when you do not accept you should create trouble, that you should shout from housetops that you think everybody is wrong! No: you should just keep quiet until you are convinced for yourself. Everything will come right; nothing can go wrong; even though we all think everything will go wrong, I assure you nothing will go wrong if we have the right attitude. A river may go through filthy soil, yet in the end it will reach the sea. So that is why I say that we all need to use common sense. And using common sense does not mean that we should become obstinate, that we should become dogged or aggressive. It simply means that we must not throw ourselves into anything that we do not accept or change ourselves into something of which we cannot see the object and meaning.
If someone tells you to do a certain thing against your conscience, (and you know and I know that the Masters never do that) please take it for granted he is not a Master. No Master would ever say, "If you do not do this, you will go to damnation." And another thing is, we should never accept any labels, unless we feel that they represent a reality for ourselves. But if you do not accept them, keep quiet. Give the other person every opportunity to prove himself worthy of the label attached to him. You will see as time goes on, there will be more and more of this sort of thing, of these distinctions and these segregations. In a way it is natural; they are bound to be, and they are right. Even if you dislike labels or consider those that have them, unworthy, keep quiet and do not make trouble. It is so much better to keep quiet about things with which you do not agree; it is so much more beautiful, and all will come out right in the end; - things always do, I assure you.
And that is how we must learn to use our common sense. We must train our minds not to accept anything passively or blindly, no matter how great the person who speaks to us. You cannot work effectively, you cannot become spiritual, if you merely walk blindly by the instructions of another. You must be able to trace the road by the river, you must be able to see the signposts, you must be able to see the path for yourself before you can tread it properly. And we must use our minds, not to stir up discontent in others, but to produce an inner dissatisfaction in ourselves, so that we may become eager to change of our own accord. That is where our work lies. Reformation must come from the intimate knowledge which each one of us possesses and from the desire to change, to become more beautiful, more glorious and more noble. And you can only do this if you use common sense all the time.
Occultism or spirituality is the essence of common sense, and the simplicity of it is so natural. A thing is beautiful because it is simple and not complicated; a complicated thing is rarely beautiful. The simplest method, the direct method is the quickest method of taking us to the heights of spirituality and we can only find it through common sense and not by high-sounding words, or extraordinary labels.
I do not want to make you put your hands to your heads and feel that you should get discontented with things as they are. But if you are discontented, then find out the quickest means to get out of that state. If you are contented, go ahead. But mind that your contentment is natural, that you have solved the difficulty for yourselves, that you have conquered the problem, and that you have got on top of the difficulties and not merely shirked them. Contentment should not mean that you just shut your eyes to the difficulties. The mind that is always questioning, though it is dangerous to do so, has its value, because it means that you will find, you will know for yourself what perfection means. That is why you have got to note these things with a mind that is the ultimate perfection of common sense. And you must have desires of the right kind so that through desires you can train your will which must be like steel, literally like steel, so that it does not bend to anything. I do not mean that you should develop obstinacy; anyone in the world can easily develop that. But you must have a will of the right type, that will carry you forward the moment you have seen your goal, that will put aside everything that stands in the way. Then you will attain the ideal.

J. Krishnamurti

 

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International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji VI

People have often asked me to define the Path. They have asked me if I have found it, if it is something definite, something concrete; if I could point it out to them in some definite country, up some known mountain.
I think we have to guard ourselves against making the Path into something concrete, something tangible. To me the Path is myself, it is the embodiment of myself. I some- times sit in front of a beautiful picture, or a statue, or a great tree, and looking at it, I imagine the essence of the beauty of all these as the Path. One morning, with the picture of the Lord Buddha before me, I was thinking of this; and looking long enough into His eyes, I could see through them the Path; I could see all humanity, the whole essence of the Path through Him. I could see it stretching mile upon mile, never ending, with innumerable shades.
The Path is evolution. It is not something outside of us, an artificial ladder which we have to climb to reach a height. It is natural, like the mountain path. We go on ascending and we get at each step a different view, a different aspect of the valley below; and we may stay for years examining each step, each view. We are evolving, humanity is evolving, all creation is evolving, so there is constant variation, constant change. The Path is never the same, it is infinitely varied, beautiful, and dignified. It is above the Master, above everything. The Masters are the shrines along the Path at which you can stay and offer your devotion, your flower, your life, everything; but the Path, Though it is the essence of the Masters, though it is the embodiment of the Masters, is above them, stretches far beyond Them.
Imagine the Path as a road, an ordinary road; at the wayside are shrines, and worshippers wait at these shrines, enjoying the shade of the trees, and feeling the immensity of life with its constant struggle and its happiness. At every step on the road there is a shrine; and at every shrine there is a different feeling, a different devotion, a different appeal. Steps and stages are there, but they are not the Path; they are but the milestones. Our attention is fixed all the time, not on the milestones, not on the shrines - though they must be there - but on the final end, the final goal. And thus viewing the Path, we have imagination, feelings, devotion, admiration, and adoration, boundless within us. The Path is ever fresh and immense, and can never be narrowed down.
The more we advance, the greater must be the immensities of the shrines, the immensities of the images in the shrines; but yet the Path goes on. Evolution is the Path. When we begin to evolve, when we are capable of thinking, of feeling and of acting, then we are on the Path. It has no beginning and no end. On it you see people - some near, some far ahead of you, - struggling or walking happily. Such is the Path which we all must tread.
To me, as I said, the Path is myself; the Path is happiness, the Path is sorrow, pleasure, the sense of enjoyment, and the sense of perfection and well-being in the physical body. The Path is nobility of character, it is dignity, distinction, beauty and love; everything pure and great that human beings have, is the Path. It is the essence of all these things. You may study books; but if you have no real conception of this idea of the Path, no book, no Teacher, will ever satisfy you by their explanations of what it is. And that is what we have to get before we can tread it; and that is what we have to grasp with all our understanding, with our soul.
So if you have that understanding of the Path, you become yourself the Path; and thus, through you, others can achieve the same happiness. It is not the Path of the individual, the Path of the separated self, the Path of qualities, the Path of shrines or of idols; but it is above all these. To me, the Path is the embodiment of all that is beautiful or ugly, evil or good.
The Path demands of you every qualification, every experience, all the thoughts and imagination that you possess. There is no limit, there is no end to perfection, not even to the perfection of a Master. His perfection may be our ideal, our longing, our glory; but you can imagine that beyond Him there must be greater perfection, greater understanding, and greater knowledge. Thus, the idea of the Hierarchy is very simple. You have trodden the Path a certain distance; and if a person ahead of you is willing to help you onwards, to tell you of shades and of the dangerous precipices ahead of you, you can but be grateful for his guidance.
There is no essential difference between the person who is ahead of you and the person who is far behind you. We are all walking on the same Path, the same never-ending, ever-changing Path. But you want to make everyone in the world understand this. You want everyone to see for himself the glory of the Path. There should be no idea that we must struggle to help, struggle to co-operate, struggle to be happy. If you are natural, if your feelings are natural, if your enthusiasm is natural, you will come to that perfection, that glory.
I do not say that this Path is only that which I have described. I may understand it myself, after ten years, after ten days, differently; because I may then get a different view of it. I am still at a stage where I only see the landscape around me, but in a few years time I may have walked a little ahead and seen different views of it. I want to insist on this, because we must not narrow down, nor must we invent and introduce dogmas for the understanding of the Path. It is ever open and you can never close it.

J. Krishnamurti

 

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International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji VII

The principal requirement for the Path, with its many variations and constant changes, is discrimination. If you would assimilate every experience and understand every step, you must develop discrimination, and you have to use this faculty constantly in guiding yourself along the Path. You must gain judgment and common sense, by learning to distinguish between right and wrong, between the true and the false; by developing a sane balance between your feelings, your thoughts and your actions.
On the Path you must have a balanced mind, able to distinguish right from wrong, the beautiful from the ugly, the useful from the useless. All the time, as you follow the Path, there are new views, new appearances, new ideas presenting themselves to the mind; and you must be able to choose rightly between them all.
That man cannot walk swiftly on the Path who makes the wrong choice, either on the physical plane with regard to material things, or on the spiritual plane with regard to teachings and teachers whom he follows. If he chooses wrongly in lesser things, he will choose the wrong shrine at which to worship. Everything is important in life, but discrimination comes first; and if we use it properly, it becomes very simple and we develop common sense.
Even when people take a walk, their attitude differs. Some people are attracted by the right thing, by beauty of form or colour, by a beautiful view, by the lovely trees, by the flowers and the sky. Another person's attention will be attracted by something else, and the beauty disappears and he sees only one small ugly thing. It is all a question of training.
You often hear the phrase used of a person: "He has got good taste." This does not only mean that he has got good taste in clothes, but in his feelings and general outlook; he may be trusted to behave in a certain manner under difficult circumstances, he is not easily upset by flattery, by admiration, by the glories of the world. Such a person is reliable, and will be really useful to the world, to the Path and to the Masters. If, on the contrary, a man of bad taste is placed in a certain position, he is easily upset, his imagination is captured by the world, and he forgets the demands of the Path.
You cannot imagine a Master having bad taste. Whatever He does, whether He takes a step in the mere exercise of His body or whether He lectures or talks, there will be perfect dignity, absolute command of Himself; whatever He does will be done in the must perfect taste, with the highest beauty. Whereas with us, there is always the doubt as to whether we shall do the right thing, whether, we shall appreciate beauty or not, whether we shall discriminate rightly between the ugly and the beautiful. These things may seem trivial, and yet they are the biggest things in life.
It is this power of discrimination which constitutes the difference between the aristocrat and the boor. Personally, I believe a great deal in the idea of aristocracy, that is, in the true aristocracy; not in the person who possesses a title and gives himself airs, but in the aristocrat who instinctively has the right feeling at any given moment and in any circumstances. In the ordinary phrase, he is a gentleman. If we make that idea into a bigger thing, carried on to another plane, the gentleman becomes spiritual. The aristocrat has been trained for ages, not only in this life but in past lives. He has submitted to restrictions here, made efforts there, till it has become instinctive with him to do the right thing wherever he is, whether he be in a cottage or in a palace, whether he be in the poor man's house or in the ashrama of the Master. Years of training have taught him to maintain certain standards, whereas the boor will be clumsy and by his clumsiness he will upset others. Because he has not had the training, he is incapable of discrimination between right and wrong, between the beautiful and the ugly, and to him it is all a mass of confused ideas. It is these things which stamp a person for what he is.
On the Path both can exist, the bourgeois and the aristocrat, but the aristocrat always goes ahead because he feels that he has a duty to perform as an example, and this gives him an essential nobility. It should make him eager to turn round and help others and not feel that his nobility makes him proudly distinctive or superior. After all, that feeling of superiority only comes from ignorance and will vanish when he learns that the Path is endless, that there are millions ahead of him on that Path as there are millions behind him.
In this manner we have to create a new aristocracy. The distinctions will be between those who know and those who do not know, those who doubt and those who believe. When the Teacher comes, as He has come, and when He speaks certain people will understand at once and others will not, some will misjudge and other will recognise the Truth.
If you have practised discrimination rightly, you will know what it is to be superior to everything that happens, in the right sense of the word. Events pass you by and leave you untouched. If they are great, you go along with them; if they are noble, you feel more nobly. If they are small, you let them pass you by. If you are excited, it is only in a balanced way. You use your excitement to make yourself big, to walk a little further. It is the power of discrimination which distinguishes the saint and the sage from the savage. When the savage has to make his choice between two ugly things, he will probably choose the uglier one; but the sage chooses between the beautiful and the still more beautiful, because his power of perception and of discrimination has grown by exercise. He no longer has to make his choice between little things; he is detached from them, he is above them.
You should be striding from mountain top to mountain top, not keeping at the same level, but always climbing higher and higher and never slipping back. When you are walking up a mountain, if you slip it means that you have to make a greater effort to gain the level which you had reached before. If you want to get to the top, you must continue, you must not rest, you must not relax your efforts. You may take time, but you must not slip back.
To gain discrimination, you must take time and work at it deliberately and with patience. You can act swiftly and suddenly when you have reached a certain stage, because you have been trained to right action; but in the early stages you must take time and weigh your motives, your actions, your feelings. Take the case of a musician; for many years he practises in private before he dares to come out before the public. It is the same with those who are treading the Path; they must have training, and show meticulous care in the choice of the things which are set before them; because the further you go along, the greater will be the demand for common sense, the greater the demand for discrimination of the right kind.
Do not narrow down this particular quality, because if you have acquired this, you will also attain all other qualities. If you are the embodiment, the essence, of discrimination, you need have no other quality in the world, because in that all is included. If you have this quality in its perfect essence, you use your intelligence, your emotions, your whole body, to create a new atmosphere. It is because we do not have it that we are continually struggling. Once you have gained it, nothing in the world can touch you. And then begins the real happiness, the real glory of thinking, feeling, acting, and living.

J. Krishnamurti

 

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International Self-preparation Group

Message from Krishnaji VIII

We were discussing not long ago the value and necessity of discrimination in order to understand the Path and human life generally. I want to go more into detail so as to make the idea of discrimination clearer.
It is quite obvious that to be able to discriminate in the right way you must have mind, you must have intelligence. It would be impossible for an idiot to tread the Path. You must not be cranky, you must be sane; and to be sane you must have an intelligent mind and a right outlook. We are not concerned for the moment with the higher mind; we are concerned with the mind functioning on the physical plane, and which needs to be well-trained; able to read, to understand, to grasp the various meanings of life. That lower mind is essential, though full of danger. It is the lower mind which gives us a clear perception of things on the physical plane. We must have that clear perception, as also the capacity to understand and to assimilate, because without a mind, without intelligence, without intellectual criticism and judgment of the right kind, it is impossible to advance. I dislike that word "advance", because it has been so misused. "Advance", to me, means going about your ordinary daily life with intelligence. If you are walking along an ordinary road towards the goal, you are bound to advance. It is the same thing with the Path. If you want to reach another shrine, you do not worry as to whether you are progressing or taking steps, or acquiring labels; you just go on.
If you are to grasp the various opportunities which present themselves along the Path, you must be able to judge for yourself, you must have this lower mind well developed. You cannot be purely devotional, for that means that you are not perfectly balanced; neither can you be purely intellectual. You must have the combination of both intellect and devotion, and not aim at being merely an intellectual giant or an absolute devotee. This means that you must study, study everything, not only along one particular line. The lower mind, if it is properly trained, does not make you merely critical; we can all criticise. It means that you are able to exercise right judgment, and by the practice of this judgment you grow big.
You cannot train the lower mind simply by shutting your eyes and becoming a devotee. You must observe; you must put out mental tentacles in all directions, because you must acquire the result of all experiences without necessarily indulging in those experiences.
You must learn to use the lower mind to create new thoughts, new ideas, new ways of thinking, and not just follow the old ruts; because then you will be able to judge for yourselves, and not merely follow in the footsteps of another. We all have the instinct to follow, we want to be led, we want to be a follower of X, Y or Z, instead of making ourselves into X, Y or Z. Why do we want to follow? Because we do not trust our minds, our judgment, our intuition; we are willing to remain small people instead of standing on our own feet and making our own decisions and acting for ourselves in the right sense and without conceit. That is why it is so important, so essential, to understand what this Path requires, because then you can lead, you can train others, you can make them feel differently about the things that really matter in life.
We all want to create; that is the instinct both of the animal and of the human being; but in creation, especially in mental creation, we must be individualistic - in the sense that we must follow our own particular dharma. But it does not mean that we should be separate or conceited.
If you have a mind that is always judging and balancing and weighing things, then there is no question of ever being unnatural, hypocritical, or unreal about things. We all pretend to some extent. This pretending has its value; but pretension of the wrong kind becomes hypocrisy, and hypocrisy will gradually grow into our being if we are not careful. If we do not like a thing, let us be honest and say so. It is not possible for us all to like the same things. The Path is so wide, so incredibly extensive, that there is room on it for millions of people with different points of view. They will all arrive at the same shrine, however they come. We must use our own minds, our own eyes, and judge for ourselves; and not swallow anything and everything that other people put before us, whether we like it or not. If we like it, let us dissect it and see why we like it. If we do not like it, let us equally examine it, and find out if our dislike is well-founded or the result of prejudice.
Mind is Brahman; it is the essence of God, and not something to be despised and put aside. But like everything else in the world, you must train the mind, you must carefully guard it and shield it. The mind has its potential value; and it is absurd for any of us to set it aside and not to use it, and shut our eyes to the realities and the unrealities of life.
If you have such a trained mind, you will be able to distinguish between the desires of the elemental of the body and the mind itself, between the emotions and the real Self. The body has its own feelings, its own instincts and desires. If you leave it alone, it will act in a certain fashion and make tremendous efforts to get its desires satisfied.
Most of us do not know how to distinguish between the body and the real Self; we are in a state of complete confusion. It needs much training to distinguish between the mind, the emotions and the body. There are so many varieties of desire; and you can only distinguish between those varieties if your mind, if the real Self, is able to exert itself and assert itself.
You can see how a child is swayed by his natural instincts, how he is at one moment noisy and hilarious, and at the next moment depressed. That is because the real Self has not yet entered, has not yet taken control of the body; and so the body has a good time on its own account. It is much the same with us all. We think we are far superior to the child, but we are still childish in many ways; but when we have learned to use this capacity of discrimination to distinguish the real Self from its physical vehicle, then the irritations, the petty desires, the jealousies and dislikes and hatreds, will disappear.
There is so much ugliness all around - in ourselves, in others, in our circumstances, in our feelings and in our minds. It is the lower expression, the lower consciousness of the Supreme; and through these small things, you can grow to understand the higher expression of the Supreme, the real God. To me there is nothing which is intrinsically evil, nothing which smacks of the devil; the black magician himself must be a part of the same divinity, although he may be of a lower stratum.
The mind is the highest thing that we have in us, because the mind, if it is properly trained, becomes the intuition. We have to work so as to arrive at that perfect knowledge, that perfect intuition, which we can trust without the least hesitation. The lower mind must become one with the buddhic mind, which is the essence of intuition.
Until you have gained this perfect balance, you do not tread the Path in the right way. When you have gained it, you acquire a certain independence, a certain poise, and you will never be carried away by outer circumstances. You become impersonal, and nothing really effects you except as you desire it. Then you also develop a tremendous will to accomplish things.
You must use the lower mind as a link with the higher. You cannot possibly do without it; but it is dangerous to exaggerate the lower mind, because then it becomes unbalanced. To me, spirituality is perfect balance, it is the apotheosis of common sense. If you put some beautiful thing before a lunatic, he will not be able to appreciate its beauty. We do not appreciate real beauty, real greatness, until we have a spark of beauty or a spark of divinity or greatness in ourselves. We must have the essence of all qualities before we can really understand, before we can really enjoy the swing, the march on the Path. We must learn, though our feet may be bleeding, though we may suffer, though we may be really happy. We must have the desire, the determination, to know for ourselves. We must reach that stage where knowledge becomes certainty instead of a second-hand belief, where knowledge becomes a part of us, where knowledge is ourselves. Then we shall know the real joy of living, we shall have found the essence of happiness.

    J. Krishnamurti