Quotes From Awakening Intelligence

“Please, Sirs, don’t merely listen to words and don’t be carried away by them; explanations, definitions, descriptions, are not the fact. The fact is your life, the fact is whether you are aware of it, and you cannot be aware of it through the speaker’s words, which merely describe your condition”

“You don’t have this time-space interval when you have deep physical pain, you act, you don’t theorise, you don’t quarrel about whether there is Atman or no Atman, soul or no soul, you don’t begin to quote the Gita, the Upanishads, the Koran, or the Bible or some saint. Then you are face to face with actual life. Life is that movement which is active, the doing, the thinking, the feeling, the fears, the guilt, the despair—that is life. And one has to be intimately in contact with it. And one cannot be intensely, passionately, vitally, in contact, if there is fear.”

“Fear is what makes us believe, whether our belief is in the ideological community of the Communist, or the theocratical idea of a clergyman or a priest. All these things are born out of fear; obviously all gods, all, are the outcome of our agony; and when we worship them we are worshipping our agony, our loneliness, despair, misery and sorrow. Do please listen to all this—it is your life, not my life. You have to face this and so you have to understand fear. And you cannot understand fear if you don’t understand life. You have to understand the jealousy that you have, the envy—envy and jealousy which are merely the indications of fear. And you can understand totally (not intellectually, there is no such thing as understanding intellectually, there is only understanding totally), you can understand totally and it is like looking at that sunset with your mind, with your heart, with your eyes, with your nerves; it is then you understand. And to understand jealousy, envy, ambition, cruelty, violence (to understand them and give your complete attention at the moment anything happens, at the moment you feel envious, angry, jealous or full of hate[…]”

                    Excerpt From
                    Awakening of Intelligence
                    J. Krishnamurti