(To part 1)
Self-Revolution
The pioneers mentioned above had in common that they saw deep self-knowledge as the door to inner revolution: the continued self-knowledge of the ego, which is facilitated and deepened by being touched by the “other”, which ultimately makes the revolution within possible. They left no doubt that the path is neither self-optimization nor escapism, but the end of the old and a completely new creation.
What the pioneers discovered and formulated now underpins the view of many spiritual thinkers of the 21st century. It meets with the life experience of many. The possibilities for a new, more complete understanding of the human being have grown. The vastness of an unfathomable, but nevertheless present “other” has become tangible. At the same time, we are facing the next challenge: to live from this new way of thinking, because only then will self-revolution become reality.
Opening ourselves to the unknown
To put the new thinking into life, love is needed. What kind of love is that? In it, hearts open up to the unknown, trust grows in it, and human hearts become real hoards of connection and unity with the source. It is in the heart that man acquires knowledge in truth. Enlightening knowledge, which arises from a resonance to the innermost, always has both aspects: wisdom and love. Nevertheless, hearts need to be purified so that a first step towards unity can be taken. And it needs even more: For after the conquest of the heart, will and action must be opened to the new being. Here lie the great barriers of habit and self-preservation. This is where man fights the battle between his higher knowledge and his continuing existence as a pure being of nature, which also has its convictions about the meaning of being human. They calibrate the I-consciousness again and again to separation, fear and aggression. Only after a long process of maturation, the comprehensive decision for the spiritual being becomes possible – a spiritual being that can be lived here and now and that can carry and penetrate all facets of everyday life.
It is not only the awareness of the spiritual being that has become atmospheric in the course of time. The path to it has been taken by many, and many are still taking it. All this has left traces in the breathing field of the earth, which can be followed by all people who perceive something of it. The questions suggest themselves: How much knowledge does man need in order to react immediately to it, to live directly from it? Are we already mature enough to be able to read the intuition of our heart purely? If this were the case, then every person, no matter where he or she is, could find access to the innermost being. If enough people seriously follow the path of self-revolution, the necessary clarity will arise for all, the clarity that breaks through the encapsulated thinking and feeling of the ego.
Quotations from Krishnamurti’s Notebook, London 1976:
Krishnamurti on enlightenment:
“Certain things are fairly clear: 1. One must be wholly “indifferent” to it coming and going. 2. There must be no desire to continue the experience or to store it away in memory. 3. There must be a certain physical sensitivity, a certain indifference to comfort. 4. There must be self-critical humorous approach. But even if one had all these, by chance, not through deliberate cultivation and humility, even then, they are not enough. Something totally different is´necessary or nothing is necessary. It must come and you can never go after it, do what you will. You can also add love to the list but it is beyond love. One thing is certain, the brain can never comprehend it nor can it contain it. Blessed is the one to whom it is given.”
23rd July 1961
Krishnamurti on creative destruction:
“There was no violence in this destruction; not the destruction to bring about a new change – change is never new – but total destruction of what has been so that it can never be. There was no violence in this destruction; there is violence in change, in revolution, in submission, in discipline, in control and domination but here all violence, in any form with a different name, has totally ceased.It is this destruction that is creation.
But creation is not peace. Peace and conflict belong to the world of change and time, to the outward ans inward movement of existence, but this was not of time or any movement in space. It is pure and absolute destruction and only then can the “new” be.”
31st July 1961
Jan van Rijckenborgh and Catharose de Petri on the development of consciousness on the path:
The consciousness ordinary human beings know and possess is by nature egocentric. It has a focus and is therefore an ego in the absolute sense. It is not possible for such a human being to imagine another kind of consciousness, transcending the human. ‚
Even so, another kind of consciousness really is possible. The consciousness of what we call the `new human being’ is constituted quite differently. It is not I-central. It is fundamentally I-less, not in a moral or ethical sense, but absolutely, for it does not possess a focus. It could be described as being seated in the microcosm as a whole, a consciousness which is microcosmically all-embracing.
This microcosmic consciousness develops further, expanding into a cosmically conscious state, and then into a macro-cosmically conscious state. One can best describe this state as consciousness in the self, and simultaneously consciousness in all other things, in all other beings.
The Chinese Gnosis. A commentary on part 1 of Lao Tzu’s Tao te Ching, Haarlem 1996, p. 104 (chap. 10-II)
