Jiddu Krishnamurti talked about
ignoring gurus and seeing your own truth for yourself. But most people lack either the insight or
self-confidence to become their own light.
This self-ignition requires K’s awakening of spiritual intelligence,
which is just an extended form of critical thinking. In other words, what is the salesman really selling
under the guise of flowery words?
Jiddu Krishnamurti had a severe
critic who is also revered by some as a sage, a guru namely U.G. Krishnamurti.
What follows is a quote. I want you to read it and then critically
evaluate it. What is he really
saying? What he says may sound good, but
if you dig below the surface, you’ll see that what he says is just plain bull.
U.G.:
“It [thought] is a mechanical thing and can solve
only mechanical problems. But you want to use it to understand something
living; that is the problem. It is not intended for that. Human problems are
something living. You cannot use thinking to solve those problems.”
Let us look at UG’s assumptions to see if the
above paragraph has any meaning or value whatsoever:
Assumption One: thought is a mechanical
thing.
What
on earth does this mean? What does it mean to say that thought is mechanical?
Does he mean it’s like a machine with physical cogs and gears? Does he mean it’s
physical? Does he mean thoughts can follow logical rules and construct logical
arguments, but not necessarily? I really don’t know what he means by this
phrase without explaining it better.
Assumption Two: and it can only solve
mechanical problems.
What
on earth does this mean? Thought can only be used to fix Fords and Volvos? It
can only be used to create light bulbs? It can only be used to create,
distribute, market and sell televisions, cameras, clothes and food? It can only
be used to figure out how to build better houses and grow larger crops? It can
only be used to invent and build nation-wide electric power grids and the
industries electricity supports? It can only be used by businesses to calculate
supply and demand for their products and profitability, including the number of
additional employees to hire the coming year?
You see, to me many of the
so-called “mechanical problems” are directly relevant to solving “human
problems” like hunger, shelter, clean water, indoor plumbing and death by
disease and accident.
Assumption
Three: But you want to use it to understand something living; that
is the problem. Human problems are something living.
This is not just an
assumption, it is a definition, stating that “human problems” whatever those
are, are different from “mechanical problems” and never the twain shall meet. But
without explaining what kind of human problems he’s talking about, this
assumption and definition just do not make sense.
Mechanical problems,
logical problems, mathematical problems, can help a farmer produced three times as much grain brother
produce, let automakers make a profit and produce enough cars for the economy
to bear, can create jobs, can build a hospital, staff a hospital, and cure
thousands of people of hundreds and thousands of maladies, can help researchers invent cures for
cancer, polio, the plague, flu, heart disease and diabetes.
Thus it seems the
so-called mechanical problems embrace and solve many of what we would call
human problems.
But looking even
more deeply, his so-called living human problems if they are stated in words, they
are thoughts, which are mechanical. If he can articulate his so-called “living
problems” with words and concepts, just the postulation and articulation of the
problem will automatically result in many different mechanical solutions
created by mind.
Of course this
narrow quote does not show us the context. Within that larger context many of
the assumptions may be spelled out better, and his argument may make sense. From
my own teaching position, I know that the mind has to be overthrown, and one
operates “kinesthetically,” with feeling, with the mind serving a supportive
function, and not being used as the primary tool to interact with the world.
But if we use the
same critical thinking to investigate teachings or writings of any guru,
politician, or teacher of any sort, we have gone a long way towards developing
an awakened spiritual intelligence.
One of my own pet
peeves is another online spiritual teacher named Jeff Brown, a feel-good poet who
romanticizes a humanistic spirituality. Jeff defines his “real” spirituality as
a kind of human striving, even while artfully understating the severity of
suffering by giving it a new and flowery names. He then combines these
sanitized sufferings with poetic soaring, such that it appears he is saying
whatever is happening is a glorious expansion of both his reader’s lives, but
also of the human spirit as a whole. There is very little existentialist angst
or exploration of pain in Jeff’s writings, only constant, extremely positive
thinking, which totally destroys the possibility of an awakening of
intelligence. One lives in a spiritual rose garden with no thorns in Jeff’s
world.
Such should be the
case of my words too. Look at them, see through them, develop your own
spiritual intelligence. Once you can see
through my bull, you can see through it all and awaken.
