Quotes from book
Mind is a Myth

Name: Mind is a Myth
Author: U.G. Krishnamurti

“Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 4: There Is Nothing To Understand
Context: If you are freed from the goal of the "perfect","godly", "truly religious" then that which is natural in man begins to express itself. Your religious and secular culture has placed before you the ideal man or woman, the perfect human being, and then tries to fit everybody into that mold. It is impossible. Nature does not exist at all. Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals, whereas culture has invented a single mold to which all must conform. It is grotesque.

“I am simply pointing out that at the rate at which we are going the whole genetic engineering technology will end up in the hands of the political system to be used for the complete control and subjugation of man.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 4: There Is Nothing To Understand

“If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you. Everything man has thought, felt and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 4: There Is Nothing To Understand

“I have been a damn fool all my life, searching for something which does not exist. My search is at an end.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Quoted in Introduction by Terry Newland
Mind is a Myth (1987)
Context: I have assumed that the goal, enlightenment, exists. I have had to search and it is the search itself which has been choking me and keeping me out of my natural state. There is no such thing as spiritual or psychological enlightenment because there is no such thing as spirit or psyche. I have been a damn fool all my life, searching for something which does not exist. My search is at an end.

“I have assumed that the goal, enlightenment, exists.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

“It is the ones who believe in God, who preach peace and talk of love, who have created the human jungle. Compared to man's jungle, nature's jungle is simple and sensible! In nature animals don't kill their own kind. That is part of the beauty of nature. In this regard man is worse than the other animals. The so-called "civilized" man kills for ideals and beliefs, while the animals kill only for survival.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 1: The Certainty That Blasts Everything

“There has been no qualitative change in man's thinking; we feel about our neighbours just as the frightened caveman felt towards his. The only thing that has changed is our ability to destroy our neighbor and his property.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 1: The Certainty That Blasts Everything
Context: Our mind (and there are no individual minds — only "mind", which is the accumulation of man's knowledge and experience) has created the notion of the psyche and evolution. Only technology progresses, while we as a race are moving closer to complete and total destruction of the world and ourselves. Everything in man's consciousness is pushing the whole world, which nature has so laboriously created, toward destruction. There has been no qualitative change in man's thinking; we feel about our neighbours just as the frightened caveman felt towards his. The only thing that has changed is our ability to destroy our neighbor and his property.

“Our mind (and there are no individual minds — only "mind", which is the accumulation of man's knowledge and experience) has created the notion of the psyche and evolution.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

“Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow.”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 3: Not Knowing Is Your Natural State
Context: Thought can never capture the movement of life, it is much too slow. It is like lightning and thunder. They occur simultaneously, but sound, travelling slower than light, reaches you later, creating the illusion of two separate events.

“There is no such thing as truth. The only thing that is actually there is your "logically" ascertained premise, which you call "truth."”

U.G. Krishnamurti book Mind is a Myth

Source: Mind is a Myth (1987), Ch. 1: The Certainty That Blasts Everything