8. The Ending of Thought

Krishnamurti always talks of experience, knowledge and thought, as ‘of the past.’ Experience and knowledge being residue in the minds, which resulted from experiencing, are of the past, while ‘thought’ which necessarily involves memory, is also of the past. Viewed from this aspect, there can be no knowledge of the present. Thus, he denied knowledge of truth, because truth is seeing ‘what is’ and ‘what is’ per se is of the present. As a matter of fact, he refused to accept that truth can be realized through thought. According to him, thought is experiences, knowledge, plus memory and is definitely limited, in the sense that it is always confined to what had been had ‘in the past.’ But truth is seeing ‘what is’ and ‘what is’ is whatever happening now. Thought cannot be used to see ‘what is’ which is of the present. The new cannot be understood with the old. The way to realization of truth therefore, must be ‘not-thought.’

Krishnamurti does not deny the capacity of thought to create new ideas from available ideas. According to him, it is that capacity of thought–thought to create new ideas, which stands on the way to realization of truth. If thought does not end, there is the danger of confusing a thought-creation–‘what is.’ Thought have to be avoided to avoid the danger. He calls objects made of thought as ‘things.’ According to Krishnamurti, things are the real, as real are the one which are made by thought. These ‘real things’ do not have any actuality, because they are made up from experience and knowledge which is from the past, and past is not now or here. So, the one which are not here, there, and now cannot be called actual. They are in the mind and are not really there. In other words, the mind has to be cleared of things or thoughts. He said that thought ends or rather the mind gets cleared away of thoughts, as there is the realization that they are not actual, that is, they are false. When thought is understood as it is, it will automatically drop away. If we can use the example of illusion of the snake on the rope, it would be like–once we realize that the snake is one’s thought-creation, the snake would disappear and cannot remain in the mind. Now the mind will see the real state of affair as it is. This is seeing truth.

However, question remains on how to see and recognize thing as false or that thought is false. Krishnamurti suggests it through self-knowledge. Self-knowledge reveals that ‘self’ is a thing and is not different from thought. Once the mind realized the non-difference of self and things or thought, the thinker/self disappears. With the disappearance of thinker/self, there would be nobody to act and there could be possibility of looking at thoughts as they are, that is, without trying to control or modify them. When the ‘self’ got inactive, thoughts would reveal themselves as they are, that is, thoughts will appear as they really are–as false. As one comes to realize the falsity of thought, thought ends, leaving the way open for truth.

‘Self’ is generally taken to be the permanent being who owns experience, knowledge, thought, and things–both internal and external. One’s understanding of experience, knowledge, memory, thought or thing is precisely regarded as one’s experience, knowledge, memory or thought. In the sense, these notions are understood always with reference to their owner. But in Krishnamurti’s philosophy, there is in fact, no owner as such, apart from what is claimed to be owned, that is, the owner and the owned are identical. In actuality, if there is no such ‘self’ apart from what is owned, then another question arises as to how the notion of ‘self’ come into being as something existent.

For Krishnamurti, ‘self’ is created by thought and this is the reason why he is so opposed to the notion of ‘someone’s knowledge’ or ‘someone’s memory.’ He gave due respect to knowledge or memory as necessary for practical everyday life. But he always talked about the necessity of seeing the falsity of the ‘self.’ Obviously, it could be said that man needs to understand the need of identity to function outwardly. One needs to identify oneself outwardly as such and such, who is so and so and who owns this and that for practical purposes. But, there is no need for such an identity inwardly. For instance, I certainly do not need to identify myself to myself to attribute an experience to myself. But one does not understand that and when the ‘false need’ is tried to be satisfied, the identification process is turned inward and the ‘self’ gets formed. Or rather we can say that the ‘false need’ itself is created by ‘thought’ and with it is created the ‘self.’ It has been mentioned above that when experiencing actually takes place there is simply the experiencing. When it gets over the same thing becomes experience. But when these experiences are remembered, there starts an application of identifying process.

He further said that as the experiences are now reflected upon as being had and being had, they have to be had by something and there starts the appearance of the ‘self.’ So, whatever experiences are remembered they are remembered as my experiences and whatever knowledge is had is now my knowledge. As there is more remembering of things as one’s own there grows the strength of self and the self comes to be all the remembered owned experiences and knowledge. Thought has created an ‘I’ and this formation of the ‘I’ occurs with the differentiation of this ‘I’ from the knowledge and experience or let us say the totality of thought. In other words, thought not only creates the ‘I’ but also creates with it the division within thought as the thinker and the thought. With this division there is now no more pure experiencing but an experiencer having experiences. But there is no ‘I’ apart from thought. As we look into what this self is, one can easily come to see that there is no self apart from all the factors with which one identifies oneself with.^[1] One is nothing apart from the thoughts. There are only ‘thoughts’ divided by thought itself into thinker and thought. In the absence of thought, the thinker cannot be. The thinker is made up with the experiences, knowledge, memories etc.

Thus, thought is the response of memory, the past. When thought acts it is this past which is acting as memory, as experience, knowledge and opportunity. All ‘will’ is desire based on the past and directed towards pleasure or the avoidance of pain. When thought is functioning it is the past, therefore there is no new living at all. So, there is nothing new in life that way, and when something new is to be found there must be the absence of the past. The mind must not be mixed-up with thought, fear, pleasure, and everything else. When the mind is unmixed the new comes into being. All continuity is thought and when there is continuity there is nothing new. Thought can come to an end when one dies–to die to the past and tradition.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Krishnamurti, J. (2008). ‘The First and the Last Freedom.’ Chennai: Krishnamurti Foundation India, p. 62