Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986), an Indian speaker and writer on philosophical and spiritual subjects was one of the most remarkable and interesting thinkers of the 20th century. Born into a pious Brahmin family, proclaimed as a young man by the leaders of the Theosophical Society as the awaited World Teacher, made head of the international elite organization known as the Order of the Star, in 1929 he completely dumbfounded his followers in one of the most singular talks ever given in the history of religion.
"Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples."
“Belief is a danger which must be totally avoided if one is to see the truth of what is.”
(The Only Revolution, p. 166)
"Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life."
"All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man."
"Your God Is Not God
A man who believes in God can never find God. If you are open to reality, there can be no belief in reality. If you are open to the unknown, there can be no belief in it. After all, belief is a form of self-protection, and only a petty mind can believe in God. Look at the belief of the aviators during the war who said God was their companion as they were dropping bombs! So you believe in God when you kill, when you are exploiting people. You worship God and go on ruthlessly extorting money, supporting the army; yet you say you believe in mercy, compassion, kindliness.
As long as belief exists, there can never be the unknown; you cannot think about the unknown, thought cannot measure it. The mind is the product of the past, it is the result of yesterday, and can such a mind be open to the unknown? It can only project an image, but that projection is not real; so your god is not God, it is an image of your own making, an image of your own gratification. There can be reality only when the mind understands the total process of itself and comes to an end. When the mind is completely empty-only then is it capable of receiving the unknown. The mind is not purged until it understands the content of relationship -its relationship with property, with people until it has established the right relationship with everything. Until it understands the whole process of conflict in relationship, the mind cannot be free. Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still -only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being."
“A religious mind is not caught in any experience, in any belief, in any concept, which are all the activities of the intellect, which is the thought and thought is memory. I hope you see all this. So we live in the past and the past meets the present, modifies itself and goes on, but it is still rooted in the past.” (Talk 2, Bombay, 27 January 1979)
“... to enquire very deeply into the nature of religion there must be total freedom, freedom from all orthodoxy, tradition, rituals, faith, symbols. That requires, not courage, that requires a deep sense of doubt, doubt of everything that man has put together through thought what he calls religion.”
(Talk 2, New York, 28 March 1982, par. 24)
“So if you look to a priest for your guidance as a teacher, I say he is your destroyer or exploiter. Please, I have nothing against Christian priests or Hindu priests – to me they are all the same. I say they are unessential to humanity. And please do not accept what I am saying as final authority to you, a dogmatic statement. Look at it, consider it yourself. If you accept what I am saying, I will also become your priest; therefore I will become your exploiter.”
(Talk 1, Auckland, 30 March 1934)
“So also with your ideals, your gods, your religions: they are the creation of the desire for escape into comfort. You yourself have made the world into a prison, a prison of suffering and conflict; and because the world is such a prison, you create an ideal god, an ideal freedom, an ideal truth.”
(Talk 4, Alpino , 6 July 1933, par. 22)
“For most of us, religion is obviously a series of dogmas, traditions, what the Upanishads, or the Gita, or the Bible have said; or it is made up of the experiences, visions, hopes, ideas which have sprung from our conditioned minds, from our minds which have been shaped according to the Hindu, the Christian or the Communist pattern. We start with a particular conditioning and have experiences based on it.”
(Talk 1, New Delhi, 10 October 1956, par. 20)
“For most of us, religion is obviously a series of dogmas, traditions, what the Upanishads, or the Gita, or the Bible have said; or it is made up of the experiences, visions, hopes, ideas which have sprung from our conditioned minds, from our minds which have been shaped according to the Hindu, the Christian or the Communist pattern. We start with a particular conditioning and have experiences based on it.” (Talk 1, New Delhi, 10 October 1956, par. 20)
"Organized religion does produce a number of positive effects. Primarily there is the psychological solace that comes to the individual believer. “So you, as individuals, establish various religions which act as your security. No teacher has established these organized, exploiting religions. You yourselves, out of your insecurity, out of your confusion, out of your lack of comprehension, have created religions as your guides.” (Talk 1, Adyar, 29 December 1933, par. 33)
“We give significance, meaning, to a life that has no meaning, the way we live, and the significance, the meaning is what we call religion.” (Talk 3, Rajghat, 30 November 1969, par. 6)
“Religion as the experience of some authority may bind a few people together but it will breed inevitably antagonism; the experience of another is not true, however great the experiencer may be.” (Talk, Colombo, 28 December 1949, par. 6)
“Every organized religion has unfortunately cultivated, for purposes of civilization, the feeling of guilt. ... So, religion, organized belief, has carefully maintained, cultivated this sense that you must toe the line, that you must not sin, that you must not commit ugly things.” (Talk 7, Ojai, California, 6 August 1949, par. 25)
“Without religion there is no culture, for religion is the unifying factor...” (Talk 1, San Francisco, 10 March 1973, par. 7)
"Psychologically, all religions as fundamentally generative of illusion. Though they do provide solace, that solace is based on belief in something that is not actually seen as true, and therefore is fundamentally an escape. “So you are constantly seeking escape, and these attempts at escape you dignify with various spiritual names, with grand-sounding words; these escapes satisfy you temporarily, that is, until the next storm of suffering comes and blows away your shelter.” (Talk 1, Adyar, 29 December 1933, par. 27)
“Our whole social and intellectual structure is based on the idea of gain, of achievement; and when mind and heart are held by the idea of gain, there cannot be true living, there cannot be the free flow of life. Isn’t that so? If you are constantly looking to the future, to an achievement, to a gain, to a hope, how can you live completely in the present? How can you act intelligently as a human being? How can you think or feel in the fullness of the present when you are always keeping your eye on the distant future? Through our religion, through our education, we are made as nothing, and being conscious of that nothingness, we want to gain, to succeed. So we constantly pursue teachers, gurus, systems. “ (Ibid., par. 29)
“Religion, the etymological meaning of that word is not very clear, but it’s generally accepted, religion to be that which is going on in the world, the Christian religion, the Muslim, the Islamic, the Hindu, the Buddhist and so on, with their temples and mosques and churches or cathedrals and all the rituals that go on inside them, and all the things that are in the temples, in the churches, in the mosques, and follow, having certain faiths, belief, and the repetition of certain phrases, doing puja, rituals and so on, the whole structure of superstition – that generally is what is understood to be religion.” (Talk 1, Madras, 31 December 1983, par. 2)
Further, the individual member of a religion is pressed into a condition of psychological bondage. “If I can awaken him [man] to his own strength, to his own understanding, to his own responsibility, to his own action, then I destroy class distinction. Then I do not keep him in the nursery to be exploited as a child by one who is supposed to know more. That is the whole attitude of religions, that you can never find out what truth is – only one or two people find out – therefore let me, as a mediator, help you; therefore I become your exploiter. That is the whole process of religion. It is a clever means of exploiting, being ruthless to keep the people in subjection, as the capitalist class does in exactly the same way – one class by spiritual means, one class by mundane.” (Talk 1, Auckland, 28 March 1934, par. 12)
“So the so-called religions give the pattern of conformity to the mind that is seeking security born of fear, in search of comfort; and where there is the search for comfort, there is no understanding. Our religions throughout the world, in their desire to give comfort, in their desire to lead you to a particular pattern, to mould you, give you various patterns, moulds, securities, through what they call faith.” (Ibid., par. 23)
“Two thousands years of propaganda of the Christians, and fifteen or sixteen hundred years of propaganda of the Muslims, and two or three thousand years or more of the Hindus and the Buddhists. We are slaves to this propaganda called religion, called nations, and so on.” (Talk 1, Ojai, California, 19 May 1984, par. 11)
With this, organized religion produces a state that is essentially imitative, based on performing actions according to formulas that have little or no meaning (as in rituals) and engaged in activities that are based on rules rather than a creative response to life.
“Religion is merely mumbling words, going to the temple, or practicing a discipline – which is all repetitive, copying, imitative, habit forming. And what happens to your mind and to your heart when you are merely imitative? Naturally, they wither, do they not? ... Therefore, emotionally, inwardly, there is no creation, there is no creative response – only dullness, emptiness.” (Talk 5, Bombay, 15 February 1948, par. 8)
“As you ruthlessly seek economic security, out of which is born a morality suited for that purpose, so you have created religions all over the world which promise you immortality through their closed and peculiar disciplines and moralities. As long as this closed morality exists, there must be wars and exploitation, there cannot be the real love of man. This morality, this discipline, is really based on egotism and the ruthless search for individual security.” (Talk 3, Rio de Janeiro, 4 May 1935, par. 10)
“In the pursuit of gain you lose sight of the present. In your pursuit of gain, in your reliance on the past, you don’t fully understand the immediate experience. That experience leaves a scar, a memory which is the incompleteness of that experience, and out of that increasing incompleteness grows the consciousness of the “I”, the ego. Your divisions of the ego are but the superficial refinement of selfishness in its search for gain. Intrinsically, in that incompleteness of experience, in that memory, the ego has its roots. However much it may grow, expand, it will always retain the centre of selfishness.” (Talk 1, Adyar, 29 December 1933, par. 47)
The deepest crux of these negative effects on the individual may be summed up as a profound loss of freedom. By accepting a belief that one does not oneself actually see as true, the mind is thereby prevented from discovering truth as it actually is. “If you discern the falseness of organized belief, that through any particular belief you cannot understand reality, nor through any authority whatsoever can intelligence be awakened, then you as individuals, not as an organized group, will free yourselves from this destructive imposition.” (Talk 2, Montevideo, 26 June 1935, par. 23)
“Religions, with their beliefs, dogmas and creeds, have become tremendous barriers between human beings, dividing man against man, limiting him and destroying his intelligence.” (Talk 1, Montevideo, 21 June 1935, par. 14)
“... there must be conflict so long as there is an ideal, and that so long as the mind is concerned with the future, with what should be, it is not concerned with what is. It is fairly obvious that one cannot have a divided mind, part of the mind thinking of non-violence and the other part occupied with violence. Therefore you see that so long as there is any kind of ideal in the mind there must be a state of contradiction.” (Talk 2, Poona, 10 September 1958, par. 10)
“The outer world is but an expression of our own inner state; as we are inwardly broken up and torn by burning desires, so is the world about us; as there is incessant turmoil within us so is there endless conflict in the world; as there is no inward tranquillity the world has become a battlefield.” (Talk 10, Ojai, California, 29 July 1945, par. 3)
In addition to these individual psychological effects, the negative social effects of organized religion are equally problematic. One is that it sets up an external authority as the basis for social interaction. “Religion with its beliefs, its disciplines, its enticements, its hopes, its punishments, forces you towards righteous behaviour, towards brotherliness, towards love. And since you are compelled, you either obey the external authority which it sets up, or – which amounts to the same thing – you begin to develop your own inner authority as a reaction against the outer, and follow that. Where there is belief, where there is a following of an ideal, there cannot be complete living.” (Talk 1, Adyar, 29 December 1933, par. 38)
“Our whole system of thought and action and living is based on individual aggrandizement and growth at the expense of others. That is a fact, is it not? And so long as that fact in the world exists there must be suffering, there must be exploitation, there must be the division of classes; and no forms of religion can bring about peace, because they are the very creation of human cravings, they are the means of exploitation.” (Talk 1, Auckland, 30 March 1934)
“You all want to be somebody in the state, either Sir Somebody or Lord, you know, and all the rest of it, which is based on possessiveness, possessions; and that has become moral, true, good, perfectly Christian, or perfectly Hindu. It is the same thing. Now we call that morality.” (Talk 1, Auckland, 28 March 1934, par. 17)
But for K the deepest negative social effects lie in what he refers to as their divisiveness. “To me religion is the false result of a false cause, the cause being conflict, and religion merely a means of escape from that conflict. So the more you develop and strengthen the sectarian divisions of religion, the less true brotherhood there will be; and the more you strengthen nationalism, the less will be the unity of man.” (Talk 6, Ojai, California, 23 June 1934, par. 14)
“We say religions unify. On the contrary. Look at the world split up into narrow little sects, fighting against each other to increase their membership, their wealth, their positions, their authorities, thinking they are the truth.” (Talk 6, Ojai, California, 23 June 1934, par. 28)
“We will have misery and tribulation so long as religion is organized to be part of the State, the hand maiden of the State. It helps to condone organized force as policy of the State; and so encourages oppression, ignorance and intolerance. How then can religion allied with the State fulfill its only true function, that of revealing and maintaining eternal value?” (Talk 4, Ojai, California, 17 June 1945, par. 3)
“... organized religions have nothing to do with the sayings of the great teachers. The teachers have said do not kill, love your neighbour, but religions of vested interest encourage and support the slaughter of humanity. (applause) By encouraging nationalism, supporting a special class, with all its organized belief, religion participates in the killing of man. Religions throughout the world not only exploit through fear, but also separate man from man. Such organized religions cannot in any way aid man in the realization of truth.” (Talk 4, Mexico City, 3 November 1935, par. 11)
“Probably one of the few religions in the world that has not shed blood is Buddhism and perhaps after it Hinduism...” (Talks and Dialogues, Sydney 1970, 5th Public Talk, par. 6)
“... there is starvation, there is war, religion has totally failed – it has no more meaning anymore, except to some old ladies and slightly demented people.” (Talk 1, New Delhi, 15 December 1966, par. 3)
And: “ Seeing this throughout the world – and it is your job while you are being educated to see this whole pattern – how will you bring about order? An inner revolution is necessary so as to bring about right relationship between human beings; every other form of revolution brings about more misery. The question is how to bring about right relationship between man and man – not through force, not with bayonets, not through organized religions, not through ideologies – for these have all failed. So how is that revolution, that right relationship to take place?” (Talk Students, Rishi Valley, 30 October 1967)
“Religion is the understanding of the thinker and the thought, which means the understanding of action in relationship. The understanding of action in conduct is religion, not the worship of some idea, however gratifying, however traditional, whoever has said it. Religion is understanding the beauty, the depth, the extensive significance of action in relationship.” (Talk 3, Rajahmundry, 4 December 1949, par. 4, 5)
“Religion is the understanding of the thinker; for what the thinker is, that he creates. Without understanding the process of the thinker and the thought, merely to be caught in a dogma is surely not the uncovering of the beauty of life, of existence, of truth.” (Ibid., par. 3)
In developing this theme of self-understanding, K’s insights disclose three major aspects of true religion. The first centers around the process of the mind’s engaging in a kind of disillusionment, in which it realizes what he calls the denial of the inventions of the mind. “It is a total denial of everything which the mind has invented for its own security.” (Talk 7, Bombay, 13 January 1960, par. 29)
“Religion is not the acceptance of some dogma, tradition, or so-called sacred book. Religion is the inquiry to find the unknown.” (Talk 1, Madanapalle, 12 February 1956, par. 19)
“That complete aloneness, in which there is no fear, has its own extraordinary beauty; it is a state of love, because it is not the aloneness of reaction; it is a total negation, which is not the opposite of the positive. And I think it is only in that state of creation that the mind is truly religious.” (Talk 7, Bombay, 13 January 1960, par. 29)
The second, more positive, aspect of the truly religious mind K describes as the ‘pursuit of the sacred.’ “I am using that word ‘religion’, as the urge, the intense pursuit of that which is sacred, if there is anything sacred.” (Talk 4, Ojai, California, 15 April 1973, par. 2)
“So this morning I would like, if I may, to go into this question of whether there is something really sacred, something immeasurable, which cannot be fathomed by the mind.” (Talk 6, Ojai, California, 21 August 1955, par. 2)
“But that which is truly sacred is beyond the measure of time, it is not to be found within the field of the known.” (Ibid., par. 13)
“Then is there something sacred, not invented by thought? There is nothing sacred in the temples, in the mosques, in the churches. They are all the inventions of thought. So, when you discard all that, is there something sacred, that is nameless, timeless, something that is the outcome of great beauty and total order which begins in our daily life.” (Talk 4, New Delhi, 7 November 1982, par.26)
“When there is silence, there is immense, timeless space; then only is there a possibility of coming upon that which is the eternal, sacred.” (The Wholeness of Life, p. 145)
“That which is mysterious, not in the sense of the mystery that thought has created, that great sense of mystery which scientists are also enquiring into that mystery, that mysterious thing is sacred. It has no symbol, no word. You cannot experience it, because if you experience there is still the experiencer who is the centre, who is the ‘me’ that will experience, therefore still division.” (Talk 7, Saanen, 27 July 1975, par. 32)
“So where there is this emptiness and space there is vast energy. And that energy is sacred.” (Talk 4, Brockwood Park, 6 September 1981, par. 28)
“Is there anything sacred, holy? Obviously the things that thought has put together in the religious sense – investing sacredness in images, in ideas – are not sacred at all. That which is sacred has no division, not one a Christian, another a Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and all the rest of the divisions. That which thought has put together is of time, is fragmentary, is not whole, therefore it is not holy...” (The Wholeness of Life, p. 197)
“And when it is capable of saying, ‘I really know nothing’, that state of complete emptiness which is complete disassociation with the world, and all the world which has made the ‘me’. I wonder if... are you following all this? Then that nothingness is the most sacred thing.” (Discussion 7, Saanen, 7 August 1973, par. 119)
“And when you have compassion then there is truth, that which is truth is the most sacred thing.” (Talk 6, Madras, 26 December 1976, par. 28) “But the beauty about which I am talking offers no stimulation whatsoever. It is a beauty not to be found in any picture, in any symbol, in any word, in any music. That beauty is sacredness, it is the essence of a religious mind, of a mind that is clear in its self-knowing.” (Talk 10, Saanen, 1 August 1965, par. 16)
“... this order, with its virtue and peace, can only come about when you come directly into contact with disorder in your daily life. Then out of that blossoms goodness and then there will be no seeking any more. For that which is, is sacred.” (The Awakening of Intelligence, p. 216-7)
“So the experience of ‘it’ is not possible, but it is there when the mind has gone through this whole business of existence with clarity, in which there is no fear and the understanding of that enormous thing called death and suffering. And out of that comes great compassion.” (Talk 7, Saanen, 27 July 1975, par. 32)
Here it is important to point out that K seems to have moved through two phases regarding the language that he used to speak of the ‘sacred:’ one that we might loosely call ‘theistic,’ in which he uses the term ‘God;’ the other, a ‘non-theistic’ or ‘atheistic’ phase, in which that term was no longer used and even explicitly rejected. In so describing these phases, we must be clear that neither is to be understood, as the terms are usually taken philosophically, as belief positions; for K rejected all beliefs, including both theistic and atheistic, as irrelevant and even impediments to understanding. “If we are brought up in the belief of God, or in opposition to that, thought is influenced, a habit is formed, from generation to generation. Both belief and non-belief in God prevent the understanding of God.” (Talk 7, Ojai, California, 7 July 1940, par. 15)
In the ‘theistic’ phase, very early in his speaking career, although he asserts it nowhere else later, K stated clearly that he had actually realized God. “Please – and I am not saying this with any conceit – I have found a way; not a method that you can practise, a system that becomes a cage, a prison. I have realized truth, God, or whatever name you like to give it.” (Talk Oslo, 5 September 1933, par. 15)
“God, Truth, or whatever you may choose to call reality, cannot be described. That which can be described is not the real.” (Talk 7, Ojai, California, 7 July 1940)
“Memory is the residue of incomplete experiences; therefore, truth, or God, or what you will, is the unknown and it cannot be formulated.” (Talk 4, Bangalore, 25 July 1948, par. 16)
“When you do something with your whole being, in which there is no sense of frustration or fear, no limitation, in this state of action you are yourself, irrespective of any outward condition. I say, if you can come to that state, when you are yourself in action, then you will find out the ecstasy of reality, God.” (Talk 1, Ommen, 4 August 1938, par. 13)
Further, its indescribability not withstanding, in various passages K refers to ‘God’ in ways that indicate that he understood that term as denoting a number of characteristics. One of these is his clear rejection of God as being personal. “Now reality or truth or God, or whatever name you like to give to it, is not egotistic, personal consciousness.” (Talk 3, Buenos Aires, 19 July 1935)
“The capacity to see the whole is Reality, is God, is everything in the Universe.” (Talk 1, Bombay, 26 November 1958, par. 23)
“The mind that is not seeking a culmination, a goal, an end, shall discover truth. Then divinity is not an externalized, unfulfilled desire, but that intelligence which is itself God, which is beauty, truth, completeness.” (Talk 7, Ojai, California, 24 June 1934)
“It is also important to find out what your relationship is to that Creative Reality, God, or what you will – names are of no importance.” (Talk 1, Poona, 24 January 1953, par. 19)
“... that which may be called reality, God, truth, or what you will, is a state of constant renewal, a state of creativeness.” (Talk 2, Brussels, 17 June 1956, par. 2)
“Life itself is action, endless action that has no beginning and no end. It is something that is everlastingly in movement, and it is the universe, God, bliss, reality.” (Talk 2, Bombay, 30 November 1958, par. 10)
“Now to me there is reality; there is an eternal living reality – call it God, immortality, eternity, or what you will.” (Talk 2, Stresa, 2 July 1933) Finally, in describing what might be called overall qualities of God, he equates it with peace, beauty, love. “And that creation is truth, God, or what you will – it has no meaning then. Then that explosion, that creation, is peace; you do not have to seek peace. That creation is beauty. That creation is love.” (Talk 7, Bombay, 3 March 1965)
“So, it seems to me that the function of education is to bring about a release of energy in the pursuit of goodness, truth, or God, which in turn makes the individual a true human being and therefore the right kind of citizen.” (This Matter of Culture, p. 187)
“When there is no illusion ‘what is’ is god or any other name that can be used. So god, or whatever name you give it, is when you are not. When you are, it is not. When you are not, love is. When you are, love is not.” (The Urgency of Change, p. 18)
But K’s theistic language was abandoned in his teachings around 1970-71. Thereafter we find no further use of the term ‘God’ other than as an illusion, very much in the manner of Feuerbach, that is created by the mind in its search for security and permanence. “In belief of God, there is great security, but that God, you have invented it. So you are seeking security in an illusion which you think is real and that gives you a great sense of security; that means you are neurotic in a belief which is your own invention.” (Talk 3, Bangalore, 12 January 1974, par. 31)
“K: When there is absolute silent, total silence, therefore no movement of any kind, when it is completely quiet, there is a totally different kind of explosion which is......
P: Which is God.
K: I refuse to use the word ‘God’ but this state is not an invention. It is not a thing put together by cunning thought because thought is completely without movement.” (Tradition and Revolution, p. 146; 9 February 1971; par. 48-9 on CD-ROM)
“The moment I say there is God, the thinking about it is within the field of thought. The man who has not thought at all, to him there is no God.” (Tradition and Revolution, p. 104; 21 January 1971; par. 26, 27 on CD-ROM)
“And where there is the ending of fear, there is no god. You understand? It is out of our fear, out of our desire, we invent the gods. When a man for him, in whom there is no fear, completely no fear, then he is totally a different human being and he needs no god.” (Talk 3, Madras, 1 January 1983, par. 25)
In his later talks and writings, drawing from the etymological origin of the term ‘religion’ as ‘binding back or together’ (though pointing out the uncertainties noted by scholars concerning that etymology), K focuses more on the third aspect of real religion as ‘gathering together all energy, at all levels, physical, moral, spiritual, at all levels, gathering all this energy which will bring about a great attention. And in that attention there is no frontier, and then from there move. To me that is the meaning of that word: the gathering of total energy to understand what thought cannot possibly capture.’ (Conversation 11 w. Allan Anderson, San Diego, 25 February 1974, par. 5); that is, living in and through intelligence. In this context, he makes it clear that although intelligence transcends the limits of conceptualizing reason, he also points out that reason has its appropriate place. “It really means to bring together all your energies to enquire, to look, to observe, to find out what is truth, if there is any reality beyond the reality of thought, if there is something timeless which is beyond all reason, though reason must be exercised.” (Talk 2, New York, 28 March 1982, par. 24)
“There must be complete freedom, and in that freedom there is a great, tremendous energy because there is an emptiness – not nothingness, emptiness. In that there is that which is beyond all time. This is meditation. This is religion.” (Talk 2, New York, 15 April 1984, par. 21)
“It is this transformation of the individual that constitutes religion, not the mere acceptance of a dogma, a belief, which is not religion at all.” (Talk 2, Madanapalle, 19 February 1956, par. 5)
“Religion is love; ... You can love, be compassionate, only in the present, in the immediate.” (Talk 3, Colombo, 20 January 1957, par. 33)
“We mean by religion absolute freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from conflict, freedom from problems, freedom from sorrow so that a mind, a brain that is completely free, it’s only then there is that quality of love and compassion. Then that state alone can find out what is sacred.” (Talk 1, Madras, 31 December 1983, par. 15)
“Religion, after all, is the discovery of love, and love is something to be discovered from moment to moment. You must die to the love that you have known a second before, in order to ever know anew what love is.” (Talk 9, Bombay, 24 December 1958, par. 15)
“And the religious mind, the religious spirit, is not divorced from beauty.... Beauty implies the highest form of sensitivity – not for pictures, but the sensitivity of a mind that is alive, fresh. And therefore for that mind everything, even the most ugly thing, has its own beauty – this is not an idea.” (Talk 7, New Delhi, 13 November 1963, par. 25)
“Religion is an action which is complete, total, which covers the whole life not separated as the business life, sexual life, scientific life and the religious life.” (Talks and Dialogues, Saanen 1968, p. 101-2)
“Religion, in the deepest sense of that word, is the factor of creation.” (Talk 1, New Delhi, 24 November 1973, par. 17)
“Surely, religion is a way of life: a way of life that is whole, that is not fragmentary, in which there is no conflict whatsoever, which means there is no contradiction in oneself, contradiction of opposing desires, opposing ideas and demands, a total non-fragmentary life, a whole life, a total mind, a whole mind which doesn’t think one thing and do another, doesn’t say one thing and act contrary to what has been said.” (Talk 3, Rajghat, 30 November 1969, par. 10)
“And religion is the uncovering of that which is most holy, which has no name, which is the absolute truth, the origin of everything.” (Talk 4, Colombo, 16 November 1969, par. 10)
“... the real function of religion is to transform man totally, so that he lives in complete harmony, which means complete order and therefore righteous behaviour. That is the total meaning of a religious mind.” (Talk 4, New Delhi, 2 December 1973, par. 1)
“One religion is not going to conquer the rest of the world. They want to – the Hindus want it, the Christians... (laughs) And the mechanical world, which is now being put together, is not going to bring about a new society, a new culture, only religion has always done it – not the present religion. So there needs to be a religion, of not faith, not belief, not rituals, not authority.” (Talk 4, Brockwood Park, 6 September 1981, par. 27)
Reference
1. J. Krishnamurti’s Critique of Religion
http://www.kinfonet.org/articles/33-j-krishnamurti%E2%80%99s-critique-of-religion
2.Daily Quotes of Jiddhu Krishnamurti http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/daily-quote-archive.php
