Page 104 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

the journal of the krishnamurti schools no.25

may be individual, or a collective self-enclosure, and it results in
the formation of walls of othering and exclusion in terms of race,
religion, gender, ethnicity, caste, and other intersecting categories.
To overcome our restlessness and sense of alienation, we spend
our time in search of the sacred by looking for salvation, ‘self-
realisation’, seeking out a guru or self-improvement classes, in the
hope of attaining individual enlightenment. Krishnamurti rejects this
process as striving towards the attainment of value as it were. Krish-
namurti invites us to explore the question, what does it mean ‘to be’,
not ‘to become’ through a kind of spiritual striving, but simply ‘to be’.
This is possible if we understand that our life is connected with
others, whether these include other humans, nature, objects, or
ideas. We are not distinct individuals separated by caste, class,
race, gender, ethnicity, region or religion but are more importantly,
connected to one another as humans. The idea of the transcendent
as being present in the everyday world, in relationships of
interconnectedness, and interdependence, is the one that bestows
on us the ability to view our relationship with the world as
extending outwards from our small, petty selves. Krishnamurti
has asserted time and again, “we are the world and the world is
us” (1973: 66). We need to understand this and experience this
viscerally, emotionally. “To feel that, to be totally committed to it,
and to nothing else, brings about a feeling of great responsibility
and an action that must not be fragmentary but whole” (1973:66).
To nurture the ability to extend the boundaries of the self, out-
ward to humanity, especially those ‘others’ who appear so different
from ourselves, becomes imperative. In developing empathy, com-
passion, at a visceral, emotional as well as at social, political levels,
it is possible to transform lives in society. Such an understanding
of the self in relationship in the everyday is an expression of the
experience of the transcendent in everyday life. This understand-
ing will not however be without struggle—as there are exigencies
shaped by the intersecting categories of race, gender, religion, and

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