{"id":3000,"date":"2019-09-20T03:52:07","date_gmt":"2019-09-20T03:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tamizhini.in\/?p=3000"},"modified":"2021-03-23T20:02:44","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T14:32:44","slug":"on-enlightenment-j-krishnamurti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tamizhini.in\/?p=3000","title":{"rendered":"On Enlightenment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:<\/em><\/strong> What is enlightenment?<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/em><\/strong> Again this is one of those words that have come from India – to be enlightened. To be enlightened about what? Please let us be rational. For instance, one is enlightened about one’s relationship with another. That is, one has understood that one’s relationship with another is based on one’s image about the other, however intimate. That image has been put together through many years of constant reaction, indifference, comfort, nagging, all that goes on between man and woman. So the relationship is between the two images. That is what one calls relationship. Now, if one perceives the truth of this, one says one is enlightened about it.<\/p>\n

Or, one is enlightened about violence; one sees clearly, without distortion, the whole movement of violence. Or one sees how sorrow arises, and the ending of sorrow is that one is enlightened about it. But we do not mean that. We mean something else: “I am enlightened, I will tell you about it, come to me”.<\/p>\n

If we really go into what enlightenment, illumination, the voice of truth, is, then we must go carefully into the question of time. The so-called enlightened people have said that you come to it through time, gradually, life after life – if you believe in reincarnation – until you come to the point when you are enlightened – about everything. They say it is a gradual process of experience, knowledge, a constant movement from the past to the present and the future, a cycle.<\/p>\n

Now, is enlightenment, the ultimate thing, a matter of time? Is it? Is it a gradual process, which means a process in time, the process of evolution, the gradual becoming? We must understand the nature of time, not chronological time, but the psychological structure which has accepted time: “I hope ultimately to get there”. The desire, which is part of hope, says, “I will ultimately get there”.<\/p>\n

The so-called enlightened people are not enlightened, for the moment they say, “I am enlightened”, they are not. That is their vanity. It is like a man saying, “I am really humble” – when a man says that you know what he is. Real humility is not the opposite of vanity. When vanity ends the other is. Those who have said they are enlightened, say you must attain it, step by step, practice this, do that, don’t do this; become my pupil, I’ll tell you what to do, I’ll give you an Indian name, or a new Christian name, and so on. And you, an irrational human being, accept this nonsense.<\/p>\n