“Experiencing is conditioned by experience, the past. Freedom is the emptying of the mind of experience. When the brain ceases to nourish itself through experience, memory and thought, when it dies to experiencing, then its activity is not self-centred. It then has its nourishment from elsewhere. It is this nourishment that makes the mind religious.”
“That which is sacred has no attributes. A stone in a temple, an image in a church, a symbol is not sacred. Man calls them sacred, something holy to be worshipped out of complicated urges, fears and longings. This “sacredness” is still within the field of thought; it is built up by thought and in thought there’s nothing new or holy. Thought can put together the intricacies of systems, dogmas, beliefs, and the images, symbols. Its projects are no more holy than the blueprints of a house or the design of a new aeroplane. All this is within the frontiers of thought and there is nothing sacred or mystical about all this. Thought is matter and it can be made into anything, ugly or beautiful.”
“We mean by religion, not the organised religions which are really sectarian, however many they may be. We mean by religion: gathering together all energy to investigate if there is anything sacred. That is the meaning we are giving – not the propagandists’ religion, not the religion of belief, dogma, tradition, or rituals with their hierarchical outlook. But we are using the word ‘religion’ in that sense: to gather all together, all energy, which will then be capable of investigating the possibility, if there is a truth which is not controlled or shaped or polluted by thought.”
“It is only a sacred mind that can see the most supreme sacred, the essence of all that is sacred, which is beauty. God isn’t something that man has invented, or created out of his image and longing and failure. But when the mind itself becomes sacred then it opens the door to something that is immeasurably sacred. That is religion. And that affects the daily living, the way I talk, the way I treat people, the conduct, behaviour – all that. That is the religious life.”
“Where there is attention, there is silence… unfathomable silence. That silence has never been touched by thought, and only then that for which man has searched from time immemorial: something sacred, something nameless, supreme, comes.”
J. Krishnamurti
As human beings progress more and more technologically, they seem to be losing touch with nature. They don’t consider themselves as part of nature but think that everything in nature is for their use and consumption. Animals are killed and eaten and exploited in various ways. Trees are cut down to free the space for industrial activity or to be used in various ways. Although human beings share the same consciousness with the other living beings in nature, they don’t have any sense of being related to them. As they relate with nature, so they relate with each other. What is nature? How are human beings related to it? How does relationship with nature affect the relationship among human beings? What is the natural way of living? What is cosmos? What is the place of human beings in cosmos? All such questions cannot be explored without understanding the nature and structure of our consciousness. So what is our consciousness? How does it come into being? Consciousness is common to all living beings, yet every human being thinks that his consciousness is separate from that of the rest of the living beings. So, without transforming this separative consciousness, we may not be able to discover our true relationship with nature. Understanding our relationship with all that exists through transformation of our consciousness will be the main focus of study in this workshop. 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.