Theos-Talk Archives (May 1997 Message tl00289)

Keith mentioned about Gurus. Many of us have many different kinds of ideas
and expectations about a Guru. Some treat the Guru as a spiritual consultant
others treat them as a replacement for their traditional gods. Of course
there are gurus who have exploited their followers. Here is something that
Krishnaji spoke in 1933 about Gurus.

=============================================




    GURUS

    Question: Why should we not follow gurus, who teach the method of
    independent thinking?

    Krishnamurti: I know I have discussed with so many people throughout
    the world this idea of following a guru, a teacher, a master. I am not
    dogmatic. I know the consequences of all that I am saying. I have been
    through that Ä following systems, gurus, and all that myself, and only
    when I freed my mind from all sense of gurus, conformities, and
    systems, only then was there a living reality, not until then. It is only
    when through understanding you completely free yourself from all
    conformity, will you know that living reality, which cannot be explained,
    which is incommunicable, which cannot be found through any path or
    system. This is not rhetoric. I shall explain to you why. To follow a guru
    is destructive. Please let me add here, I know almost all of you, a vast
    majority of you, are seeking a guru. Most of you have gurus. So you are
    here to find out what I think and know. If you think you are going to
    realize that Godhead of understanding, please go ahead. I have nothing
    to say, but the moment you come to me and ask me, "Is a guru
    necessary for understanding?" then I say, "No." On the contrary it is
    destructive. It is not just an idea of  mine. This is not an
intellectual       thing it is a living reality. Until you feel these
things, words have no        meaning. You can attend hundreds of meetings
and even then you will still       remain slavish to a guru.

    Do you know what creates conflict, both in the world of spirituality and in
    the world of action? Take an example and then you will see. If I know
    the right value of money, then money loses its attractiveness, its glory,
    its potential power. As most of us want power, comfort, possession,
    authority, we run after money.

    Now, so long as there are false values, there must be conflict, and no
    guru, no system, no method except your own clarity, your perception, is
    ever going to free your mind from false values. You want a house, you
    want power. It is no good going to a guru, for example, and saying,
    "Please teach me how to find out right values." You go to a guru and
    ask him to teach you spiritual things and yet continue with your daily
    mundane activities, your daily acquisitions. That is, spiritually you
live     in a cloud with your ideas and so on, and in this world of action, you
    exploit others for your own security. Naturally, there is a split, there
is     a division in your life. No guru can bring about right harmony of living
    except your own perspective of right values. Now, to find out right values,
    you cannot say, "Please teach me." You cannot ask the way to
    find right values. Right values depend on countries, climate, position,
    and so on, depending upon the individual. You cannot lay down one
    eternal law. So to discover right values is not to comply with a system
    but to find out what prevents your clarity of perception. Please
    understand this. Now we want to be told what right values are, whether
    we need money or not, how many clothes, how many meals we should
    eat, at what time to get up and so on, and to learn them by heart. This
    is an absurd way of looking at life. Whereas to find  out the subtlety
of     it, try to find  out what prevents you from discovering right values.
Then     you will see that what prevents you is this continual wanting,
craving, the
    desire to possess. Then you will know how to free yourself from craving,
    when you are really up against it. Now you are merely sitting back and
    looking at that part of your being that is wanting possessions and then
    saying separately, "I must not have it." Find out for yourself through
    continued awareness, alertness of mind and heart, what are the causes
    that prevent you from perceiving things in their right proportion,
    in their right beauty. The guru who teaches you the method of
    independent thinking does not exist. Do not say, "My
    particular guru teaches me that." That is an absurd way of getting out of
    it. There is no method, no system; there is no guru who can liberate
    you. I know this is contrary to your sacred literature, to all your ways of
    thinking. I know it, and knowing it, I still assert that it is
impossible     other than your finding out for yourself, in your aloneness,
the true right     values of all things; and in that aloneness alone comes
the ecstasy of     eternal pleasure, not through following or by allowing
yourself to be guided     by another, or by a system. Please understand
this. Where there is
    shaping, where there is conformity to a pattern or to an ideal, there
    cannot be understanding.

    Please let me explain it again. Most of you are trained as Hindus or
    Muslims or in some religious sect. Your mind has been trained from
    childhood on certain definite lines, and your mind is prejudiced. And with
    that prejudice, with that religious inclination, you have all your
principles and prejudices, all your ideas of religion, of God, of
ceremonies; and so you meet me always at an angle, you see me with your
religion. So we meet under experiences partly completed. So we never
understand, so we never follow the significance of every experience, we
never take to ourselves the full perfume of the flower.

    Your minds are so suffocated with ideas which are mostly false that no
    method can free you from past tradition, because the method becomes
    another cage in which you will be caught. So to free the mind, never
    allow your past traditions, your upbringing, your social laws, your
    religious edicts, to penetrate your thinking. The moment you do not
    allow them to penetrate your thinking, you will be free.

    You know, it is tragic to see how we waste our energy. Our struggle
    now is to conform to an ideal. We establish an ideal and then try to
    adjust ourselves to those ideals, systems, and ideas-establish a pattern
    and then struggle to conform. I say, do not do that, but free the mind of
    all sense of conformity, which does not mean that you should do
    exactly what you like.

    Karachi, Pakistan. Third Public Lecture, Feb. 13, 1933

 ======================== end ===========================