Krishnamurti said in 1934, "Why do you only want to be a student of books and not a disciple of life?" If you can find out what is true and what is false in your surroundings, you will naturally know what reality is. He kept pointing out that only this "book of life," which thought could not manipulate, a book of eternal change and vitality, was worth reading, and that everything else was only second-hand information. Endless experiences, deeply rooted in fear, anxiety, pain, happiness and the beliefs that human beings have accumulated over thousands of years, are all in the depths of your heart, and you are the "book of life".
Listen to the inner voice
Questioner: When I listened to your speech, I seemed to understand the meaning of your words, but as soon as I left here, I couldn't figure it out again. I really want to use your words in my life.
Krishna: You should listen to your own inner voice and not to the speaker. If you listen to the speaker, he will become your authority and thus your understanding - this is the most terrible thing, because then you will establish a cult of authority. So all you have to do is listen to your own voice. What you see now is an image that the speaker has painted, and that image is your inner world. If this is clear, you can look at your own heart and say to yourself, "Now I finally see the truth about myself, but I don't want to do anything to it." In this way, the troubles in the heart cease. But if you say, "I finally see the truth about myself, I must change the state in front of me," then you will try to change this state according to your own understanding. When the speaker is speaking, if you can listen quietly to your heart, then from this listening there will be a clear understanding, and your heart will become sound and strong. It neither surrenders nor resists; it becomes lively, it becomes preoccupied—only such people can create new worlds.
Watch with all your attention
Learning can seem like a very difficult thing to do, and listening is not an easy task. We never really hear anything because our hearts are not free: our ears are stuffed with what is known, so it is difficult to hear anything anymore. If you can listen with your whole life, your hearing is an element of liberation, but unfortunately you never really listen, so you can't have true understanding.
You can only understand something by investing all your life in it, but if learning is forced, then the process of learning becomes a accumulation of knowledge. Learning, like reading a novel, requires a single-minded reading to understand the intricacies of character structure. Even if you want to understand the new leaves in spring or the green leaves in the middle of summer, you must wholeheartedly observe its symmetrical texture and feel its texture, so that you can understand the essence of this leaf. In a small leaf, there is amazing vitality and beauty. If you want to know a leaf, a small flower, a floating cloud in the sky, or the sunset, you must look at them wholeheartedly.
Learning requires a quiet heart
You have to find new things on your own, so you have to let go of all the burdens, especially knowledge, when you first hit the road. It is relatively easy to experience life through knowledge and faith, but such experiences are only the product of self-projection, and they are usually false and untrue. If you want to discover something new for yourself, you can't carry the baggage of old age, especially knowledge—the knowledge of others, no matter how great, does not belong to you. You always see knowledge as a tool for the pursuit of security, and you want to make sure that your experience is the same as that of Buddha and Christ, but a person who constantly protects himself through knowledge is obviously not a true seeker.
If you want to discover what the truth is, you can't follow any path. When you're experimenting or trying to discover something new, your mind has to be quiet, doesn't it? A mind full of knowledge will only prevent you from seeing new things. Our greatest difficulty is that the activity of the mind has become too important, that it constantly prevents us from seeing new things, from seeing another thing that is happening at the same time as we already know. Knowledge, then, is an obstacle to the seeker, and it prevents us from realizing what is outside of time.