Welcome to the Quotes & Excerpts page of KFI Kolkata, where we share the timeless wisdom of Jiddu Krishnamurti, a philosopher and speaker who challenged conventional thought and inspired profound self-inquiry. Drawn from the Krishnamurti Foundation Trust and his extensive writings, these carefully curated quotes and excerpts explore themes such as freedom, awareness, love, and the nature of the self. Each reflection invites you to question, observe, and discover truth in your own experience, embodying Krishnamurti’s call to live with clarity and compassion. Dive into these insights and let them spark your journey of understanding.
LIFE BEGINS WHEN THOUGHT ENDS
If you pass on through the meadows with their thousand flowers of every color imaginable, from bright red to yellow and purple, and their bright green grass washed clean by last night’s rain, rich and verdant – again without a single movement of the machinery of thought–then you will know what love is.
To look at the blue sky, the high full-blown clouds, the green hills with their clear lines against the sky, the rich grass and the fading flower–to look without a word of yesterday; then, when the mind is completely quiet, silent, undisturbed by any thought, when the observer is completely absent–then there is unity.
Not that you are united with the flower, or with the cloud, or with those sweeping hills; rather there is a feeling of complete non-being in which the division between you and another ceases.
The woman carrying those provisions which she bought in the market, the big black Alsatian dog, the two children playing with the ball–if you can look at all these without a word, without a measure, without any association, then the quarrel between you and another ceases. This state, without the word, without thought, is the expanse of mind that has no boundaries, no frontiers within which the I and the not-I can exist.
Don’t think this is imagination, or some flight of fancy, or some desired mystical experience; it is not. It is as actual as the bee on that flower or the little girl on her bicycle or the man going up a ladder to paint the house – the whole conflict of the mind in its separation has come to an end. You look without the look of the observer, you look without the value of the word and the measurement of yesterday.
The look of love is different from the look of thought. The one leads in a direction where thought cannot follow, and the other leads to separation, conflict, and sorrow. From this sorrow, you cannot go to the other. The distance between the two is made by thought, and thought cannot by any stride reach the other.
As you walk back by the little farmhouses, the meadows, and the railway line, you will see that yesterday has come to an end: life begins where thought ends.
J. Krishnamurti
The Only Revolution
"Thought moves from the present to the future and back again like a restless animal tied to a post. It moves within its own radius, narrow or wide, but is never free of its own shadow."
J. Krishnamurti
"To be occupied is the nature of the mind and its activity springs from this. This restless activity has the appearance of life but it is not life. The death of occupation, of the mind is the beginning of silence, of total silence."
J. Krishnamurti
Commentaries on living
"If you understand silence, you will know what existed before thought"
J. Krishnamurti
1969
"It is an illusion to think we are seeking God. We are not. We don't have to search for light. There will be light when there is no darkness. Through darkness, we cannot find light."
J. Krishnamurti
"Only when the brain has cleaned itself of its conditioning, greed, envy, ambition, then only it can comprehend that which is complete. Love is this completeness."
Krishnamurti’s Notebook
New York 1961
"It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free."
J. Krishnamurti
1969
"When the brain is completely awake, the mind becomes quiet. When the brain is completely awake, there is no fragmentation, no separation, no duality. The quality of this quietness is of the highest importance. You can make the mind quiet with drugs and all kinds of tricks, but such deceptions breed illusion and contradiction.
Quietness is the highest form of intelligence, which is never personal or impersonal, never yours or mine. Being anonymous, it is whole and immaculate. It defies description for it has no quality. This is awareness, this is attention, this is love, this is the highest.
The brain must be completely awake – that’s all. As in the jungle you must keep terribly awake to survive, so in the jungle of the world you must keep terribly awake to live completely."
J. Krishnamurti
The Urgency of Change
"Beauty is in complete order. But most of us do not have that sense of beauty in our lives. We may be great artists, great painters, experts in various things, but in our own daily life, with all the anxieties and miseries, we live, unfortunately, a very disordered life. It is a fact. You may be a great scientist, you may be a great expert in a subject, but you have your own problems, struggles, pain, anxieties and the rest of it. We are asking, is it possible to live in complete order within, not impose discipline, control, but to inquire into the nature of this disorder, what are the causes, and to dispel, move away, wash away the cause. Then there is a living order in the universe."
Jiddu Krishnamurti
"We are talking of something entirely different, not of self-improvement but of cessation of the self."
Jiddu Krishnamurti
"To observe your secret thoughts, your secret motives, the fears that have not been discovered, the hopes, the sorrows, the longings, the deep motives - to discover those, to bring them out to the surface demands an extraordinarily sharp mind. And the mind is sharp only when it is quiet."
The New Mind
"When death comes, it does not ask permission. It destroys you on the spot. In the same way, can you totally drop hate, envy, pride of possession, attachment to beliefs, opinions and ideas? Can you drop all that in an instant."
J. Krishnamurti
"To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still."
J. Krishnamurti
"If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation."
J. Krishnamurti
"When there is always the awareness that cleanses the brain of any accumulation as memory, then the 'me' achieving, the 'me' in conflict comes to an end because you have put your house in order."
Krishnamurti’s Notebook
New York 1961
"It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will."
J. Krishnamurti
1969
"It cannot be sought after, because the mind is too silly, too small; your emotions are too shoddy; your way of life too confused for that enormity, that immense something to be invited into your little house, your little corner of living which has been trampled and spat upon. You cannot invite it."
"When there is only the organism without the self, perception, both visual and non-visual can never be distorted. There is only seeing 'what is' and that very perception goes beyond 'what is'. The emptying of the mind is not an activity of thought or an intellectual process. The continuous seeing of 'what is', without any kind of distortion, naturally empties the mind of all thought and yet that very mind can use thought when it is necessary."
J. Krishnamurti
Respectfully Sir/ Mam,
I was going through J Krishnamurti Sir’s writings perticulary during his Theosophical Years, I found that he wrote many books and articles like at the feet of the master, Education as Service, so my question is does the archives contain all his written books like The Pool of Wisdom, The Immortal Friend and his writings in Herald of the Star, Star Bulletin, And the event schedule like International Bulletin of The Order of the Star in the East?