U G Krishnamurti Quotes and Teachings - A Collection of Thoughts of U G Krishnamurti

U. G. Krishnamurti (1918 – 2007) defies all kinds of human definitions like philosopher, Guru, etc. You can call him what you may want. Here is a collection of U. G. Krishnamurti quotes and thoughts. The best way to understand a person like U. G. Krishnamurti is through his teachings (in his own words).

When everything fails, you use the last card, the trump in the pack of cards, and call it love.

Human problems are exactly the same. All the problems are artificially created by the various structures created by human thinking.

Anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive.

We have arrived a point where you cannot destroy your adversary without destroying yourself.

Every cell is interested in its own survival. It knows in some way that its survival depends upon the survival of the cell that is next to it. It is for this reason that there is a sort of cooperation between the cells. That is how the whole organism can survive. It is not interested in utopias. It is not interested in your wonderful religious ideas. It is not interested in peace, bliss, beatitude, or anything. Its ony interest it is to survive.

Life and death cannot be separated. When what you call clinical death takes place, the body breaks itself into its constituent elements and that provides the basis for the continuity of life. In that sense the body is immortal.

Human nature is basically violent, because thought is violent. Anything that is born out of thought is destructive. You may cover it up with all wonderful and romantic phrases: ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Don’t forget that in the name of ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ millions and millions of people have died, more than in all the recent wars put together. But we now have come to a point where we can realize that violence is not the answer, that it is not the way to solve human problems. So, terror seems to be the only way. I am not talking of terrorists blowing up churches, temples, and all that kind of thing, but the terror that if you try to destroy your neighbor you will possibly destroy yourself. That realization has to come down to the level of the common man.

You never question the solutions. If you really question the solutions you will have to question the ones who have offered you those solutions. But sentimentality stands in the way of your rejecting not only the solutions, but those who have offered you the solutions. Questioning that requires a tremendous courage on your part. You can have the courage to climb the mountain, swim the lakes, go on a raft to the other side of the Atlantic or Pacific. That any fool can do, but the courage to be on your own, to stand on your two solid feet, is something which cannot be given by somebody. You cannot free yourself of that burden by trying to develop that courage. If you are freed from the entire burden of the entire past of mankind, then what is left there is the courage.

All I am saying is that the peace you are seeking is already inside you. Anything you do to free yourself from anything for whatever reason is destroying the sensitivity, clarity, and freedom that is already there.

You see that is the trouble; you dare not question the basic thing, because that is going to destroy something there which is very precious to you; the continuity of yourself as you know yourself and as you experience yourself.

Man cannot be anything other than what he is. Whatever he is, he will create a society that mirrors him.

Love and hate are not opposite ends of the same spectrum; they are one and the same thing. They are much closer than kissing cousins.

Man has created God out of fear. So the problem is fear and not God.

But this individual is neither a theist, nor an atheist, nor an agnostic; he is what he is.

What you are looking for does not exist. You would rather tread an enchanted ground with beatific visions of a radical transformation of that non-existent self of yours into a state of being which is conjured up by some bewitching phrases. That takes you away from your natural state – it is a movement away from yourself.

To be yourself requires extraordinary intelligence, you are ‘blessed’ with that intelligence; nobody need give it to you, nobody can take it away from you. He who lets that express itself in his own way is a natural man.

What is necessary for man is to free himself from the entire past of mankind, not only his individual past. That is to say, you have to free yourself from what every man before you has thought, felt and experience – then only is it possible for you to be yourself. The whole purpose of your talking to people is to point out the uniqueness of every individual. Culture or civilization or whatever you might call it has always tried to fit us into a framework. Man is not man at all; I call him a ‘unique animal’ – and man will remain a unique animal as long as he  is burdened by culture.

Your beliefs are the result of blind acceptance of authority, all second-hand stuff. You are not separate from your beliefs. When your precious beliefs and illusions come to an end, you come to an end.

The body is not concerned with ‘the afterlife’ or any kind of permanency. It struggles to survive and multiply now. The fictitious ‘beyond’, created by thought out fear, is really the demand for more of the same, in modified form. This demand for repetition of the same thing over and over again is the demand for permanence. Such permanence is foreign to the body.

The body is mortal and never asks silly questions like, “Is there immortality?” It knows that it will come to an end and in that particular form, only to continue on in others. Questions about life after death are always asked out of fear.