Page 138 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

the journal of the krishnamurti schools no.25

it did. Science is part of that fruit. So is the modern disposition to
question the authority of received views.
Have we learned all we need to know about questioning author-
ity? Have we gone far enough? Or is our questioning still seriously
limited? Contemporary philosophers and students of philosophy
tend to think that we have carried the questioning process about
as far as it can go…But up to this point we have questioned mainly
only explicit beliefs. In addition to these beliefs might we not still
take a great deal that is questionable for granted? And if we do,
couldn’t this also be an obstacle we need to overcome?
Krishnamurti was not the first to propose critical looking. Oth-
ers, such as the Buddha, had already proposed it. But Krishnamur-
ti’s approach was different and perhaps better suited to sceptically
minded philosophers and students of philosophy. For one thing,
Krishnamurti was anti-authority to a degree that few thinkers have
ever been. He had no use for creeds or theories. He discouraged
people from examining themselves in an institutional setting or
as part of a spiritual discipline. He taught that in examining one-
self one should not rely even on what one has learned in previous
examinations. The freedom we need to see what is true, he said, is
freedom from the known. And because he spoke to us in a contem-
porary idiom, it may be easier for us to understand what he said.
Krishnamurti had little use for academic philosophy. Occasion-
ally he dismissed it as a waste of time, or worse as a generator of
theories that become obstacles in an individual’s attempt to under-
stand him or herself. Yet…much of what Krishnamurti said is
deeply relevant to philosophy. Its relevance is not that he had theo-
ries to propose or critiques of extant theories. Krishnamurti’s focus
is on insights. His talent as a teacher is that he facilitates them.
As it happens, many of the insights he helps his readers to have
are centrally relevant to contemporary philosophy, particularly to
theories about human subjectivity and values. And if indeed he

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