Page 139 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

A Philosopher of the Self

does facilitate insights about the human condition, how could it
be otherwise?
Rather than a theorist, Krishnamurti was a seer and a teacher.
Among the things he thought he saw are certain inherently distort-
ing psychological structures that bring about a division in almost
everyone’s consciousness between ‘the observer’ and ‘the observed’.
This division, he believed, is a potent source of conflict—both
internally for the individual, and through the individual external-
ized for society as a whole. Krishnamurti also proposed a way to
remove these damaging structures, or, more accurately, to facilitate
their removal. That is what he intends—a radical transformation
in human consciousness.
Krishnamurti talked a great deal more than he wrote. His talks
were not lectures but, rather, attempts to engage his audience in
a dialogue in which he and they are wholly focused on the same
aspect of experience or behaviour. His talks were, in effect, guided
meditations. That is, they were attempts by Krishnamurti to go
through an experiential process with his audiences—with you—
the result of which is that something about your understanding
of your own experience and its effect on your behaviour is clar-
ified. As such, his talks—transcribed and edited as if they were
writings—make unusual demands on the reader, especially if the
reader is a philosopher who is accustomed to looking for a theo-
retical punchline when reading something that seems to put forth
philosophical views. In Krishnamurti’s thought, rather than theo-
retical punchlines, there is an opening to important insights, for
instance, about the nature of identification and its role in the for-
mation of the self. To have such insights, Krishnamurti suggests,
one has to look freshly.
Krishnamurti spoke with a distinctive voice. As an uncom-
promising enemy of authority, even of the authority of one’s own
past experience, his focus was on examining current experience

121