Today I want to write about something which I have been aware of for a long time but wasn’t able to articulate.. And my little understanding of it comes from trying to read J Krishnamurti. I was aware about Krishnamurti and had tried to listen to his talks but in all honesty I had found him abstruse and very difficult to follow. I recently restarted reading Krishnamurti partly because my son had taken a fancy to him and was reading him and I didn’t want to appear to be clue less.. So I ordered “The First and Last Freedom” and started to read…
Before I dwell on the main point, a slight aside.. I was simply amazed by the fact that my son was reading Krishnamurti.. Growing up, I mostly read Enid Blyton and the likes.. When I was a little older, I started reading Alistair Maclean, Ken Follet, Agatha Christie, Erle Stanley Gardener… Most of my reading it seems were escapist.. Growing up in small towns books were the only escape mechanism for me and I would get lost playing one of the characters from the books I had read or was reading… There was occasional reading of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain but these were few and far between… The only serious reading I ever did till I reached my schooling was read Oscar Wilde and I was hooked to him.. I am not sure why I got pulled towards him and I think it had to do with a movie I saw about him on DD which captured his last days.. I just fell in love with his writing -so simple but never simplistic, profound but never sanctimonious and fantastical but always very grounded…. I remember a rather embarrassing incident in my 12th when our English teacher asked us if we had read classics and all I could say was nothing but Wilde to much amusement…
I think my reading had also a lot to do with the kind of books we got prescribed and I really feel I missing out on reading Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley etc.. I tried reading them when I could but by this time I had lost the appetite to put in an effort.. Slowly and surely my readings became more diverse and I took fancy to existentialists in my late 30s.. I guess I was a decade late.. So my serious reading, if I may say so, was late by 10–15 years… And perhaps that’s the reason that its only when I am at this stage in life, I seem to be discovering old gems… Which is perhaps good too because only now I think I have the maturity of thought to understand them… And so was the case with Krishnamurti…..
Before I get down to the main topic, I had always wondered how words on the one hand provided us an outlet for expression but on the other hand puts constraints on the expression.. And its very simple and intuitive if you come to think of it.. If your definition of love is different from someone else’s definition then it creates what can best be called gap in understanding…. So if for me love is understanding and if for someone else love is about sweet nothings — there is a problem!!! I know its very simplistic but it provides a perfect segue into what I want to say….
There is a reason we give names- either because we want to communicate our feeling about it or want to have a shared understanding etc.. If I say I am happy, I am giving name to that feeling or emotion that I have.. And it’s as much for me as for others that I name that feeling or emotion.. Now let’s say I see a flower and say its a rose… By giving the name “rose” we believe we have understood what that object is, classified it and so on… We have put it in a category — flower and specifically category “rose”… Now this is where it becomes interesting.. By calling something “rose” we believe we have understood the essence of what a rose is.. we have in a way captured the beauty of the rose in all its manifestations… But what Krishnamurti says is that by giving it a name we have got the body but missed the soul.. So if I weren’t to name it, I would every time I see this flower would be majestically drawn to it, would observe it and would partake the soul of it…
Krishnamurti’s fundamental point is that by giving name or label we categorise something and understand it in terms of that category.. If we weren’t to label and name we would be forced to consider our relationship to it.. He says labelling is a convenient way of justifying, denying, condemning , disposing of anything… And the labelling comes from a core within.. The core is memory; memory of various experiences, which have been given names, labels, identifications. With those named and labelled experiences, from that centre, there is acceptance and rejection, determination to be or not to be, according to the sensations, pleasures, and pains of the memory of experience. And this core is the word…. Is it possible to think without words? Thinking comes into being through verbalisation; or, verbalisation begins to respond to thinking. And basically what this means is that, the centre, the core is the memory of innumerable experiences of pleasure and pain, verbalised. And what this leads to is that the words become much more important, labels become much more important, than the substance; and we live on words!!!!
If there is no word, no label, then there would be no centre.. There is a dissolution, there is an emptiness.. And when the label has been taken away we are forced to confront whatever it is and look at it afresh….We thus become more alert, more understanding, more observing… Let’s take the case of feeling and ask a simple question.. Is the feeling different from label? I believe, label intensifies the feeling.. In our mind feeling and labelling happens instantaneously… If there were a gap between feeling and labelling, we would be able to deal with the feeling… This can happen when mind is no longer the centre as the thinker made up of words, of past experiences — which are all memories, labels, stored and put in categories, in pigeonholes…..
There is a transcendent spontaneity of life, a “creative reality” as Krishnamurti calls it, which reveals itself as immanent only when the perceivers mind is in the state of “ alert passivity” of “choiceless awareness”. When the mind isn’t labelling it is quiet and in a state of tranquility…. So what is needed is to quieten the mind and see things for what they are and not pigeon hole them….
Taking a very trivial example… Loving someone is about feeling love.. The moment a name is given to that feeling and the connection between two individuals put in a category, what we have done is we have lost the essence of the purity of what love is.. Instead of being governed by their feelings, they are now governed by the norms of the category.. Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. Love happens when you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing…. You put it in a category and surely you have lost it… Then you are pursuing the idea of love…..
The human mind according to Krishnamurti prefers and craves security. It wishes to be certain all times and in all circumstances. And how does it ensure that it is certain? Well, based on memories, life experiences, emotions etc. it constructs an image of ourselves. But this perception keeps us from realising who we really are. This self image also acts as a barrier to being in direct contact with what’s in present and now…. What this self image does is that it transforms the experience into the known (which is based on memory), giving us a second hand view of life. And this results in us being in a condition of duality.. The one who observes (the observer) and the one who is observed (the self truth).
This is true for the vast majority of our experiences, with the exception of those that occur for the first time. For example, a new place, river, mountain, or other natural feature that is being explored for the first time, or any event involving danger or tragedy in which all senses are engaged. Everything is new to the mind in these circumstances, so it does not comprehend it in terms of memory; instead, all of the senses are active, and the mind is peaceful and tranquil. As a result, there is no accumulated ego here to decide what it loves or doesn’t like. Rather, the self accepts the entire experience without any internal intervention. That is, there is no option, and he refers to this state as “choiceless consciousness” or “choiceless awareness”…..
I don’t claim to understand Krishnamurti and I have just started reading him.. But this idea of how naming destroys meaning was something which resonated with me…. I guess in time I would have a better grasp and better understanding of Krishnamurti and his philosophy…. It was the genius of Shakespeare when he said
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
