Theos-Talk Archives (July 2011 Message tt00085)

One of the ideas presented to theosophists and anyone interested in
spirituality is that there is a system and a method of step by step progress
that can be achieved. While I am yet to meet a person who can, from personal
experience, confirm this. On the other hand, there is always the statement
that a lot of spiritual and occult matters cannot be put in writing just
like a book of grammar. They are some thing you gradually understand within
you. Many Teachers have tried to explain this to the masses but few have
listened. The great Hindu Reformer - Shri Shankaracharya and admonished
Hindus that all the rituals and gimmicks do not yield real results. But they
still go on because many believe they will help them.

Recently, I ran into an interesting brief comment on this by Jiddu
Krishnamurti, which some may like to read. Here is the excerpt.

Question: After having listened eagerly to
you for so many years, we find ourselves
exactly where we are. Is this all we can
expect?

Krishnamurti: The difficulty in this
problem is that we want a result to
convince ourselves that we have
progressed, that we have been transformed.
We want to know that we have
arrived. And a man who has arrived, a
man who has listened and got a result,
has obviously not listened at all. . . .
But as I have said before, there is no
arriving, there is only the movement
of learning and that is the beauty of
life. If you have arrived there is nothing
more . . .

And if that answer doesn't entirely free
us from the sense of paradox, and from
the urge to know and be sure, let us for
a moment regard Krishnamurti's own
course of development in this regard.
Perhaps most telling is his response
to the following question, put to him
by Rom Landau (author of God is My
Adventure) in Carmel, California, in
1934:

How did you come to this state
of unity with everything?'

Krishnamurti: People have asked me
about it before, and I always feel they
expect to hear the dramatic account of
some sudden miracle through which I
suddenly became one with the universe.
Of course nothing of the sort
happened. My inner awareness was
always there; though it took me time
to feel it more and more clearly; and
equally it took time to find words that
would at all describe it. It was not a
sudden flash, but a slow yet constant
clarification of something that was
always there."

MKR


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]