Book Summary: The Natural State, in the words of U.G. Krishnamurti (Part 2/3)
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Drop all beliefs
Holiness and sacredness are merely contaminants of true purity. Purity is not something you can find in water; it is the natural state of water itself. You don't search for purity in the water—you simply remove the impurities, and the water's inherent purity is revealed. In the same way, you cannot "find" purity within yourself. There is nothing to seek or attain. By stripping away all false beliefs, you return to your natural state.
The search is always in the wrong direction, so all that you consider very profound, all that you consider sacred, is a contamination in that consciousness.
You have to become completely disillusioned then the truth begins to express itself in its own way. It is useless to try to discover the truth. The search for truth is absurd.
The search for awakening is like searching for purity in water. The very act of searching is an outward action—a projection that introduces contamination. Purity is the inherent nature of water, so seeking holiness, sacredness, or anything else is merely projecting beliefs that further taint it. You just need to restore the water to its original state. It’s as simple as that.
Your belief in a unitary movement of life is just a groundless belief, lacking any certainty. You have cleverly rationalized what the gurus and holy books have taught you. Your beliefs are the result of blind acceptance of authority, all secondhand stuff. You are not separate from your beliefs. When your precious beliefs and illusions come to an end, you come to an end.
However, we are often too afraid to let go of our beliefs and frameworks. We crave something to hold on to, erecting traditions and rituals as guardrails to create a sense of security, a fearful sense of losing the “self.” However, awakening is about dismantling the walls of beliefs and frameworks and freeing yourself from illusions. Cling tightly to the beliefs, and when cracks appear, quickly patch them up. Instead of addressing self-conflicting feelings and logic, we mask them with sweet layers of love, compassion, or other comforting ideals, glossing over the underlying problem.
You pick up thoughts which are beneficial to you to protect thought. Thought is a protective mechanism. What is it that it is protecting? It is protecting itself. It will do everything possible to prevent itself from breaking up. So even if you introduce the so-called spiritual pursuits it is only the strengthening of that.
You want to know what my state is and make it part of knowledge, i.e. the tradition, but knowledge must come to an end. Your wanting to know only adds momentum to your knowledge. It is not possible to know what this is because knowledge is still there and is gathering momentum. The continuity of knowledge is all you are interested in.
What prevents one from returning to the natural state is the outward search, meaning one may become a scholar of scriptures, mastering the history of various spiritual practices, yet without dismantling the self. As long as the focus stays outward rather than inward, the search continues—pilling up and accumulation of methods, teachings, and knowledge, yet without any real progress toward the natural state.
We are slaves to our ideas and beliefs. We are not ready to throw them out. If we succeed in throwing them out we replace them with another set of beliefs, another body of discipline.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with categorizing our experiences into “-isms” or frameworks, as this simplifies complex knowledge into digestible pieces, helping our brains process new information. However, this approach carries a dilemma: by categorizing, we risk creating boundaries that confine ideas and limit our ability to fully explore the spectrum of experience. We may become trapped in these frameworks or ideologies, losing the ability to see beyond the boxes of the framework.
We are cursed by our preconceived notions and beliefs, which prevents us from experiencing things with fresh eyes. When encountering new ideas or experiences, instead of perceiving them as they are, we try to fit them into our pre-existing frameworks. This confines us to second-hand knowledge, preventing us from truly experiencing things in their original form or through first-hand experience. Labeling something "right" if it fits into our framework and "wrong" if it doesn’t.
Beliefs aren’t limited to religious doctrines, but include atheism or any belief system that narrows our perception and limits or restraining us from seeing the true reality.
Letting go of beliefs can be terrifying. At first, it may feel like you’re plummeting into an abyss, falling into an empty void with nothing to hold onto. In a sense, that’s exactly what happens. This is why awakening and healing both require immense courage. However, you’ll soon realize that this free fall is like a sensation of floating—free from the gravitational pull of old attachments and beliefs—the natural state. In this state, you are no longer bound by beliefs and are free to move in any direction—the libration.
I found that whatever I wanted was what they wanted me to want. Whatever I thought was whatever they wanted me to think. So there was no way out of this. Somewhere along the line something hit me, “There is nothing there to be transformed, nothing there to be changed. There is no mind there nor is there any self to realize. What the hell am I doing?”
That spark hit me like a shaft of lightning, like an earthquake. It shattered the whole structure of my thought and destroyed everything that was there, all the cultural input. It hit me in a very strange way. Everything that every man had ever thought, felt, and experienced before was drained out of my system. In a way, it totally destroyed my mind, which is nothing but the totality of man's experiences and thoughts. It destroyed even my identity.
You can't understand what I am saying. It is an exercise in futility on your part to try to relate the description of how I am functioning to the way you are functioning.
Sometimes, it means surrendering and dropping all the beliefs we hold dearly.
It means there isn't anything you can do. That is total surrender, total helplessness. It can't be brought about through any effort or volition of yours. If you want to surrender to something it's only to get something. That's why I call it a state of total surrender. It's a state of surrender where all effort has come to an end, where all movement in the direction of getting something has come to an end.
We often hold a preconceived notion of harmony, envisioning peace as something attainable through external actions—we tell ourselves that inner peace will come if we eat organic food, practicing meditation and yoga, achieving enlightenment, or expecting others to align with our ideologies, vote the same candidate, or believe in the same god. But true peace doesn’t arise from external circumstances; it comes from within after we relinquish false projections and let go of self-confining beliefs.
As long as we cling to these beliefs, we remain trapped in a self-projected reality. Real peace is found by letting go of the very ideology of peace itself. It comes when we are free from the internal and external conflicts that distract and divide us. Focus on your inner world first—save yourself before attempting to save the world. This isn’t selfishness; it’s the clarity of mind necessary for true peace.
As long as you are doing something to be selfless you will be a self-centered individual. When this movement in the direction of wanting to be a selfless man is not there, then there is no self and there is no self-centered activity.
If you are not in conflict with yourself you cannot be in conflict with the society around you. As long as you are not at peace with yourself it is not possible for you to be at peace with others. Even then, there is no guarantee that your neighbors will be peaceful, but, you see, you will not be concerned with that.
Your problems continue because of the false solutions you have invented. If the answers are not there the questions cannot be there. They are interdependent. Your problems and solutions go together. Because you want to use certain answers to end your problems, those problems continue. The numerous solutions offered by all these holy people—the psychologists, the politicians—are not really solutions at all. That is obvious. If there were legitimate answers there would be no problems. They can only exhort you to try harder, practice more meditations, love, and more and more of the same. That is all they can do.
All this thinking has no meaning at all. Thinking is unnecessary except to communicate with somebody. Everyone is talking to themself. It is wearing you out and all methods that we use are adding more and more to that, unfortunately. All techniques and systems are adding to that. There is nothing you can do to end thinking. You see, you have to come to a point where you say to yourself, “I am fed up with this kind of thing.”
The natural state is not about achieving a state without thoughts—that’s impossible. The phrase "All this thinking has no meaning at all" doesn’t suggest you should stop thinking altogether. Rather, it encourages letting go of the self-confining thoughts—those that drive you to become someone else, to search for meaning externally rather than looking inward.
Thinking is a valuable tool to dismantle the frameworks that trap you. Teachings are not meant for accumulating more knowledge or reinforcing the very beliefs that bind you. Sadly, many people use their thinking to defend their beliefs rather than liberate themselves.
You have built an armor created an armor with this thought, and you don't allow yourself to be affected by things.
People often cherry-pick information that aligns with their existing frameworks, avoiding the discomfort of confronting self-conflicting feelings and thoughts at all costs instead of examining their assumptions or emptying the basket and throwing away the rotten apples.
Through thinking you cannot understand a thing. You are translating what I am saying in terms of the knowledge you already have just as you translate everything else, because you want to get something out of it. When you stop doing that, what is there is what I am describing. The absence of what you are doing—trying to understand or trying to change yourself—is the state of being that I am describing. Because you are not interested in the everyday things and happenings around you, you have invented the beyond, timelessness, God, truth, reality, enlightenment or whatever, and search for it.
Many people dismiss ideas that don’t align with their existing reference points. They may hear the words, but they’re not truly listening. Instead, they selectively accept only what fits within their preconceived notions and assumptions, remaining trapped in an echo chamber where they hear only their own interpretations, rather than understanding what others are trying to convey. This creates a significant barrier to changing perspectives. Consequently, even after years of spiritual practice, they remain living in the same framework of thinking, stuck in the same mindset, without making any real progress.
If others fit me into their frameworks it is their business. We do not have any vested interest in that. You will probably fit me into some framework and say that so-and-so said this before. That is my misfortune wherever I go. J. Krishnamurti people come, Rajneesh people come, others come, and they say, “You are saying the same thing!” How the hell do you know I am saying the same thing? Do you know anything of what he is talking about? First of all, you must know what he is talking about and what is there behind it and then you can compare what I am saying with what he is saying.
To be really on your own, the whole basis of spiritual life, which is erroneous, has to be destroyed. It does not mean that you become fanatical or violent, burning down temples, tearing down the idols, destroying the holy books like a bunch of drunks. It is not that at all. It is a bonfire inside of you. Everything that mankind has thought and experienced must go.
Society has placed that goal before us as the ideal goal because a selfless man will be a great asset to the society, and the society is interested only in continuity, the status quo. So all those values which we have accepted as values that one should cultivate are invented by the human mind to keep itself going.
The goal is what is making it possible for you to continue in this way, but you are not getting anywhere. The hope is that one day, through some miracle or through the help of somebody, you will be able to reach the goal. It is hope that keeps you going, but actually and factually you are not getting anywhere. You will realize, somewhere along the line, that whatever you are doing to reach your goal is not leading you anywhere. Then you will want to try this, that and the other. But if you try one and you see that it doesn't work you will see that all the other systems are exactly the same.
“I am blocking every escape. Each outlet has to be blocked to put you in a corner. You must be choked to death, as it were.” U.G.’s teaching is akin to Chan's teaching, "Kill the Buddha." It’s not about literal violence or bloodshed, but rather about dismantling all your beliefs, to liberate yourself from self-imposing constraints. Even those you hold sacred or ones that seem most central to your spiritual identity.
The consciousness is so pure that whatever you are doing in the direction of purifying that consciousness is adding impurity to it. Consciousness has to flush itself out, it has to purge itself of every trace of holiness, every trace of unholiness, everything. Even what you consider sacred and holy is a contamination in that consciousness.
A note regarding U.G.'s statement: He was on the final stretch of the spiritual marathon. After dismantling everything, he found himself still clinging to the last obstacle—the search itself. This mirrors my mother’s experience. She had been on her spiritual journey since her late twenties, exploring Christianity, Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism, A Course in Miracles, Zen/Chan, Jed McKenna, and finally, she was struck by U.G.’s words: "Let go of the search."
Initially, she was concerned, thinking, "If I drop the search, won’t that mean I’ll never find what I’m seeking?" This is a profound dilemma and a common struggle for many seekers nearing the end of their spiritual journey—the fear that letting go of the search means losing any chance of finding the way out of this maze. At this point, only relinquishing the very search, overcoming the fear, and abandoning the search to leap into the abyss.
However, a word of caution: many spiritual seekers stop the search before it even begins, lingering at the starting line. They haven't yet dismantled the framework of self, yet believed they have arrived.
Some, instead of letting go, build even larger and more complex frameworks, accumulating metaphysical knowledge and spiritual experiences that ultimately become barriers to awakening. The true leap requires not holding onto anything, including the search itself.