“Death is total nothingness. It must be there; for out of that, life is, love is. For in this nothingness creation is. Without absolute death, there is no creation.”
“Strangely death and love always go together; they never separate. You can’t love without death; you can’t embrace without death being there. Where love is there is also death, they are inseparable.”
“You can’t avoid death; you may forget it, you may rationalize it or believe that you will be reborn or resurrected. Do what you will, go to any temple or book it is always there, in festival and in health. You must live with it to know it; you can’t know it if you are frightened of it; fear only darkens it. To know it you must love it. To live with it you must love it, Knowledge of it isn’t the ending of it. It’s the end of knowledge but not of death. To love it is not to be familiar with it; you can’t be familiar with destruction.”
“Accident, disease and old age bring death, but under these circumstances it is not possible to be fully conscious. There is pain, hope or despair, the fear of isolation, and the mind, the self, is consciously or unconsciously battling against death, the inevitable. With feudal resistance against death we pass away. But is it possible – without resistance, without morbidity, without a sadistic or suicidal urge, and while fully alive, mentally vigorous – to enter the house of death? This is possible only when the mind dies to the known, to the self. So our problem is not death, but for the mind to free itself from the centuries of gathered psychological experience, from ever mounting memory, the strengthening and refining of the self.”
“Human mind has divided the world in order to find its own security, which brings about its own insecurity; when one is aware of that then one must inwardly as well as outwardly deny this division, as we and they, I and you, the Indian and the European and the Communist. You cut at the very root of this division. Therefore from that arises the question, can the human mind which has been so conditioned for millennia, can that human mind which has acquired so much knowledge in so many directions, can that human mind change, bring about a regeneration in itself and be free to reincarnate now?”
J. Krishnamurti
Death is the only certainty of life and yet human beings are afraid of it and put it at the very end of life. But can death be part of our day-to-day life? Fear is not so much of death but of losing what one has gathered while living. Is it possible to die to our experiences, our attachments, our pleasures and pains; die to everything that we have gathered psychologically? Krishnamurti calls it psychological death. What is the significance of such death in our daily life? What does it mean to die psychologically while still being alive in the physical body? What has death got to do with love, with creation? What is living and dying from moment to moment? What is reincarnation? What is it that reincarnates? Is it possible psychologically to reincarnate now? Is there continuity after death? What is it that continues? All such and many more related questions will be explored during this workshop. Understanding the significance of death while still living will be the intent of this workshop. It is expected that the participants will at least understand the place of psychological death in day-to-day life and no longer be afraid of it. Various selections from Krishnamurti’s works relevant to the theme of this workshop will be provided as a reading material to each participant. Also links to the relevant videos of Krishnamurti will be provided. Each participant is expected to devote these two days fully to the study in order to benefit maximum from this workshop.