Krishnamurti and Tolle: "Don't Mind What Happens"

In his best-selling book, "A New Earth," Eckhart Tolle recounts a singular moment in a lecture given by the great enlightened thinker, Jiddu Krishnamurti. Stopping his lecture momentarily, Krishnamurti asked his audience if they wanted to know his "secret" The lecture hall reportedly went silent as the audience waited to hear the pith of Krishnamurti's teaching, the kernel at the heart of the often obscure wisdom that Krishnamurti sought to convey. "This is my secret," he is purported to have said, "I do not mind what happens."

Tolle utilizes this story to emphasize the importance of being "in alignment with what happens." "To be in alignment with what is," he points out, "means to be in a relationship of inner nonresistance with what happens. It means not to label it mentally as good or bad, but to let it be."

This is undoubtedly part of Krishnamurti's "secret," after all sources as diverse as Shakespeare and the Ashtavakra Gita point out the truth that "nothing is either good or bad, but our thinking makes it so." And, on that level, Krishnamurti is surely pointing out that he does not make a judgment on whether what is happening at any moment is good or bad, positive or negative. However, contemplating on this singular event in Krishnamurti's teaching, I find additional (although related) meanings in this "secret."

Krushnamurti must, as set out above, have meant at one level that he does not "mind what happens" by judging its aspects as being positive or negative, good or bad. What happens, happens. It is what it is. And, Krishnamurti apparently took a position of neutrality and non-resistance to whatever happened as Tolle discusses.

At a second level, I suspect that Krishnamruti meant he does not "mind what happens" in the sense that at a deep level he does not take responsibility for what happens externally. Take, for example, the shopkeeper who leaves his store in the care of a clerk while he steps out to do the banking. "Mind the store while I'm gone," he might say. In this sense, I suspect that Krishnamurti knew that there is no one individual who can "mind what happens" collectively, although he undoubtedly recognized that most of us cannot resist trying vainly to shape and manage life's circumstances. The vast majority of us are heavily invested in things turning out the way that we think that they should. We seize responsibility to assure these outcomes, and thus "mind what happens."

"To pursue the unattainable is insanity," Marcus Aurelius observed, "yet the thoughtless can never refrain from doing so." How many of us seek to attain control of, and manage what happens all around us? The vast, vast majority I would guess. Thus, arises the insanity of "minding" what happens.

At a third level - and this may be the most basic level - I suspect that Krishnamurti meant he did not "mind what happens" in an active sense, with "mind" being the active verb. Krishnamurti, undoubtedly did not "mind what happens" by mechanically turning it over and over in his mind, by chewing on it figuratively, or by letting thoughts of what happens preoccupy his psyche. He did not mentally "mind what happens," or mentate upon it.

To not "mind what happens" in these three senses implies that one has acquired a radical acceptance of what is - neither judging, manipulating, or ruminating on what occurs in one's life. It is, as Krishnamurti notes, a "secret" that we do not have to come to grasps with reality in such manners, but need only accept what happens as it is on its face, as an isolated moment in our lives.

Tolle and Jung: Collective Insanity, Ego and the Human Psyche

In his insightful and liberating best-seller, "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose," author, Eckhart Tolle, the recipient of a sudden, profound and lasting enlightenment experience, examines the nature of the human ego and, in the following passages, warns us of the dangerous realities it poses, individually and collectively, to our very survival.

"The achievements of humanity are impressive and undeniable. We have created sublime works of music, literature, painting, architecture and sculpture. More recently, science and technology have brought about radical changes in the way we live and have enabled us to do and create things that would have been considered miraculous even two hundred years ago. No doubt: the human mind is highly intelligent. Yet its very intelligence is tainted by madness. Science and technology have magnified the destructive impact that the dysfunction of the human mind has upon the planet, other lifeforms, and upon humans themselves. That is why the history of the twentieth century is where that dysfunction, that collective insanity, can be most clearly recognized. A further factor is that this dysfunction is actually intensifying and accelerating."

"The First World War broke out in 1914. Destructive and cruel wars, motivated by fear, greed, and the desire for power, had been common occurrences throughout human history, as had slavery, torture and widespread violence inflicted for religious and ideological reasons. Humans suffered more at the hands of each other than through natural disasters. By the year 1914, however, the highly intelligent human mind had invented not only the internal combustion engine, but also bombs, machine guns, submarines, flame throwers, and poison gas. Intelligence in the service of madness! In static trench warfare in France and Belgium, millions of men perished to gain a few miles of mud. When the war was over in 1918, the survivors looked with horror and incomprehension upon the devastation left behind: ten million human beings killed and many more maimed and disfigured. Never before had human madness been so destructive in its effect, so clearly visible. Little did they know that this was only the beginning."

"By the end of the century, the number of people who died a violent death at the hand of their fellow humans would rise to more than one hundred million. They died not only through wars between nations, but also through mass exterminations and genocide, such as the murder of twenty million "class enemies, spies, and traitors" in the Soviet Union under Stalin or the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. They also died in countless smaller inner conflicts, such as the Spanish civil war or during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia when a quarter of the country's population was murdered."

"We only need to watch the daily news on television to realize that the madness has not abated, that it is continuing into the twenty-first century. Another aspect of the collective dysfunction of the human mind is the unprecedented violence that humans are inflicting on other lifeforms and the planet itself - the destruction of oxygen producing forests and other plant and animal life; ill-treatment of animals in factory farms; and poisoning of rivers, oceans, and air. Driven by greed, ignorant of their connectedness to the whole, humans persist in behavior that if continued unchecked, can only result in their own destruction."

"The collective manifestations of the insanity that lies at the heart of the human condition constitute the greater part of human history. It is to a large extent a history of madness. If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies" (his own unconsciousness projected outward), criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals."

"Fear, greed and the desire for power are the psychological motivating forces not only behind warfare and violence between nations, tribes, religions, and ideologies," Tolle notes, "but also the cause of incessant conflict in personal relationships. They bring about a distortion in your perception of other people and yourself. Through them, you misinterpret every situation, leading to misguided action designed to rid you of fear and satisfy your need for more, a bottomless hole that can never be filled."

This is not new information, our collective insanity has been brought to our attention over and over again for millennia by sages and enlightened teachers. It is just the acceleration of destructive intensity and deadly methodologies that increasingly threaten us today. Jiddu Krishnamurti, one of the great enlightened teachers of the twentieth century who influenced Tolle's work, clearly pointed out that what we collectively face is "a crisis in consciousness." Meanwhile, the great Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, clearly warned us that the only danger we are facing is that which comes from ourselves and our unexamined human psyche.

"We are the origin of all coming evil," Jung presciently observed, in the following interview conducted shortly before his death, fifty years ago, in 1961.

The Ego, Collective Insanity and Awakening

"What is it," spiritual teacher and author, Eckhart Tolle asks, "that impels humans to violence? Not just the obvious violence . . . but also (the) violence in relationships that may not even be physical violence - the violence at work, the fighting battles for a little bit of power, a little bit more position, more power, a little bit more money, (to be) more right than you. Where does that come from," he asks, "that self-inflicted suffering?"

"It comes," Tolle suggests, "from not knowing yourself beyond the needy little entity that is the mind-identified 'me' with its story. Not only does it meed more," Tolle observes, "it also needs conflict."




"What," he asks, "is the mind-identified 'self' that needs conflict? Why does it need it?"

"Look at a simple thing like the need to be right," he suggests. "A lot of the conflict in relationships is based on the need to assert my position as right, for 'me' to be right. Which implies, I need you to be wrong. And an enormous amount of emotional force goes into defending one's mental position, and proving that:  'I am right and you are wrong'. This is one of the ways in which that the mind-made 'me' strengthens itself. Because if I can be right, I have added a little bit to my sense of 'self'.'"

"Collective identities need to be right, too," Tolle notes. In an additional video clip (below) featuring both Tolle and the late Jiddu Krishnamurti, both spiritual teachers talk about our collective insanity and the possibility of an emergence of spirituality in modern society, as well as what the consequences may be if no such emergence takes place.

"For humanity to take responsibility, primarily you have to take responsibility for your consciousness," Tolle observes. Our collective consciousness, he suggests, is going through "a transitional process." "Your state of consciousness," he notes, "determines what kind of world you create, what kind of action you take, and what consequences your actions have."

"I don't think anybody who reads history can doubt (that) there is a deep-seated dysfunction in humans (which) has been there for thousands of years. And," he warns, "if there is no shift in that, then the dysfunction will destroy us."

"Either you are not serious," Krishnamurti notes,  "and (you) want to live a very, very superficial life - and that superficiality temporarily satisfies you - or you really don't care, as long as your immediate pleasures (and) immediate satisfactions (are seen to)."

Krishnamurti: 'On Love'

"Love is a many splendoured thing," says the poet. "God is love," we read in the Bible. "Love means never having to say you are sorry," Ali McGraw told Ryan O'Neill in the film, version of "Love Story." And, not surprisingly, given that love is so fundamental to who we are as a man or woman - our greater or lesser ability to give and receive love defining who we are as individuals - all of the great spiritual teachers have weighed in on what love is and does.

To the modern enlightened teacher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, it was in the process of overcoming the 'self' or ordinary human ego in order to truly love another - with all the attendant pain and suffering beforehand - that the great utility of love proved itself. Or, as Jesus observed, on a metaphysical plane as well as literally, perhaps: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13). For it is in overcoming the ego, or by dying to 'self,' that we awaken into the higher consciousness and timeless eternity of this present moment.

"How easy it is," Krishnamurti observes in his book, Commentaries on Living, "to destroy the thing we love! How quickly a barrier comes between us, a word, a gesture, a smile! Health, mood and desire cast a shadow, and what was bright becomes dull and burdensome."

"Through usage we wear ourselves out," he notes, "and that which was sharp and clear becomes wearisome and confused. Through constant friction, hope and frustration, that which was beautiful and simple becomes fearful and expectant. Relationship is complex and difficult, and few can come out of it unscathed."

"Though we would like it to be static, enduring, continuous, relationship is a movement," Krishnamurti notes, "a process which must be deeply and fully understood and not made to conform to an inner or outer pattern. . . . Love in a relationship is a purifying process as it reveals the ways of the self. Without this revelation, relationship has little significance."

Who has not experienced this shift in a love affair, when the bliss of first being in love falls away, and the cruel caricature of the ego emerges either in one's self or the one that one loves, thereby tainting (perhaps permanently and fatally) one's perception of the beloved? It is, sadly, the inevitable failure of love to reach its full potential when love is bound by the all-too-human and egoic impulse.

"But how we struggle against this revelation! The struggle," Krishnamurti notes "takes many different forms; dominance and subservience, fear or hope, jealousy or acceptance, and so on and on."

"The difficulty," he observes, "is that we do not love; and if we do love we want it to function in a particular way, we do not give it freedom. We love with our minds and not with our hearts. Mind can modify itself, but love cannot. Mind can make itself invulnerable, but love cannot; mind can always withdraw, be exclusive, become personal or impersonal," he observes."

"Our difficulty," Krishnamurti points out, "lies in that which we call love, which is really of the mind. We fill our hearts with the things of the mind and so keep our hearts empty and expectant. It is the mind," he notes, "that clings, that is envious, that holds and destroys."

"Our life," he writes, "is dominated by the physical centers and by the mind. We do not love and let it alone, but crave to be loved, we give in order to receive, which is the generosity of the mind and not of the heart. The mind is ever seeking certainty, security; and can love be made certain by the mind?"

"Can the mind," asks Krishnamurti, "whose very essence is of time, catch love, which is its own eternity?"

[Krishnamurti, "Commentaries on Living: First Series," pp. 40-41]

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

[Here, is Part One of Krishnamurti lecture on "Love and Freedom." Links to the remaining portions of his talk are attached, below.]

"Love and Freedom," Part Two.

"Love and Freedom," Part Three.

"Love and Freedom," Part Four.

"Love and Freedom," Part Five.

"Love and Freedom," Part Six.

"Love and Freedom," Part Seven.

"Love and Freedom," Part Eight.

Krishnamurti: On a World Crisis of Consciousness

In 1966, Jiddu Krishnamurti, either a man before his time or, perhaps, a timeless man, observed: "The crisis . . . in the world is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions, a particular way of life - whether it is the American way, or the European way, or the Asiatic way."

"And, considering what the world is now, with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression, tremendous advances in technology and so on . . . though man has cultivated the external world and has more or less mastered it, inwardly he is still as he was. The great deal of animal still in him is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive (and) competitive. And he has built a society along these lines."

Listening to this enlightened teacher almost fifty years later, one has to ask: 'Have we changed, or have we just become more so?'

"Question:   Of what significance is hope and faith to living?"

Jiddu Krishnamurti
(1895-1986)

"Krishnamurti:   I hope you won't think me harsh if I say there is no significance at all. We have had hope. We have had faith - faith in church, faith in politics, faith in leaders, faith in gurus - because we have wanted to achieve a state of bliss, of happiness and so on, and hope has managed this faith. And, when one observes through history - through our life - all that faith and hope has no meaning at all because what is important is what we are. What we actually are, not what we think we are, or what we think we should be, but actually what is. If we know how to look at what is, that would bring about a tremendous transformation."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

"We are the product of the society in which we live," Krishnamurti observes, "(of) the experience, the knowledge and all the rest of it. And there is nothing original. We repeat, repeat, repeat. To find out anything new requires tremendous inquiry and meditation."

"You don't just get it by just coming to a meeting for an hour and thinking about meaning," Krishnamurti warns, "one has to work tremendously hard."

"This requires much more alert, much more careful examination," he notes. "And one does not have the energy, the patience or the interest, because this is non-profitable. It does not bring you profit, financially or any other way."

"When you are really faced with a problem of war, of famine, of death, of poverty and so on," says Krishnamurti, "you can't argumentatively discuss about it. One has to deal with it. One has to put one's teeth into it. And you cannot artificially (and) intellectually have teeth to put to problems that are vital."

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

A half century after Krishnamurti's talk, and in a world evermore rife with existential problems - global warming, climate change, species extinction, over-population, hunger, intolerance, war, pollution and poverty - are we, or are the  leaders we allow to govern us, any more willing to put "teeth into" the problems that so manifestly cry out for our attention?

It seems not. Therefore, more so than ever it is apparent that we still face a crisis -  a crisis of both consciousness and conscience.