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- Herausgeber: via tolino media
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In this book Samuel Widmer does not attempt to summarize or interpret Krishnamurti’s teaching. He actually recreates it by offering us an insight into what he has received from the ”Master”. Something novel and beautiful has grown out of the merging of the teacher’s and the disciple’s mind, something that mirrors the eternal truth in yet another, new way. Beauty. In his role of psychotherapist, the author set out travelling on the pathless path of truth many years ago. During this journey all roles have fallen away from him. Even the role of therapist. Even the role of disciple. Nothing remains. Marvellous nothingness. Just beauty.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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You Are Beauty
Krishnamurti – Applied in Daily Life
The Influence of His Teaching on Psychotherapy
On the Love Story of a Late Summer
Meditative Contemplations with Samuel Widmer
«You brought beauty
into my life.
You were beauty.
You are beauty.»
A disciple having absorbed the teaching pays tribute to his teacher. A beautiful testimony of a successful teacher-disciple relationship.
In this book Samuel Widmer does not attempt to summarize or interpret Krishnamurti’s teaching. He actually recreates it by offering us an insight into what he has received from the ”Master”.
Something novel and beautiful has grown out of the merging of the teacher’s and the disciple’s mind, something that mirrors the eternal truth in yet another, new way. Beauty.
In his role of psychotherapist, the author set out travelling on the pathless path of truth many years ago. During this journey all roles have fallen away from him. Even the role of therapist. Even the role of disciple. Nothing remains. Marvellous nothingness. Just beauty.
You Are Beauty
Krishnamurti – Applies in Daily Life
The Influence of His Teaching on Psychotherapy
On the Love Story of a Late Summer
Meditative Contemplations with Samuel Widmer
BASIC EDITIONS
This book is also available in German:
Du bist Schönheit
Krishnamurti – angewandt im Alltag
Basic Editions · ISBN 3-9521250-4-0
©2000 Basic Editions·Samuel Widmer
Switzerland
First Edition
Drawings (Pencil)
Samuel Widmer
Layout & DTP
Kurt Marti·CH - 2575 Gerolfingen
eBook (2016)
Romina Mossi · CH - 4574 Nennigkofen
Printing
WB-Druck GmbH+Co BuchproduktionsKG
D - 87669 Rieden am Forggensee
ISBN
3-9521250-7-5 (printed book)
Publisher
Basic Editions
CH - 4574 Nennigkofen
www.basic-editions.ch, [email protected]
for you, Marianna Anna,
charming lady of a lovely summer,
gracious principessa of my shy soul...
but also for you, Jamahal Celia,
deepest of all great loves
and for all of you
who support the growing community:
Manfred, Christine, Marco, Michael, Ueli, Holger, Sascha, Ulrike, Nicole, Markus, Irène, Edi, Bea, Ayse und Heinz, Maya, Uma, Brigitte, Kurt, Cornelia, Heini, Baula, Elisabeth and all your children
Contents
Tuning In
I. Be a Light to Yourself!
1. Truth Is a Pathless Land
2. The First Step Is the Last Step
3. To See What Is
4. The Art of Listening
5. The Art of Seeing
6. Learn About Yourself, the Way You Really Are!
7. The Mind that Can Never Be Hurt
II. The Fragmentation of the Mind
1. Will Is Resistance
2. Whoever Condemns Sexuality Banishes Beauty
3. No Part of the Mind Is Unconditioned
4. No Authority!
5. Life Is a Movement in Relationship
6. The Content of Consciousness Is Consciousness
7. The Way of Doubt
III. Not Being Anything Is the Beginning of Freedom
1. Fundamental Questions
2. The Impossible Question
3. The Observer Is the Observed
4. The First and the Last Freedom
5. You Are the World
6. Total Negation Is the Essence of the Positive
7. The End of Sorrow
IV. The Ego Is the Content of Consciousness
1. Wisdom Is Not Accumulation of Knowledge
2. The Awakening of Intelligence
3. A Life Without a Single Conflict
4. There Is No Psychological Evolution
5. Breaking the Pattern of Ego-Centred Activity
6. The Function of Thought
7. Chronological and Psychological Time
V. Aloneness Is the Transformation
1. Mutation Through Insight
2. The Art of Meditation
3. Stopping the World of Becoming
4. Radical Change
5. Images Destroy Love
6. Standing Alone!
7. Where the Word Falls Silent, the Immeasurable Begins
VI. Meditation Is the Flowering of Goodness
1. Patience Is the Essence of Love
2. Right Action
3. Without Love There Is No Beauty
4. Right Livelihood
5. Without Goodness and Love, One Is Not Educated
6. The Religious Mind Is Explosive
7. In Ending We Find a New Beginning
VII. Love Is Dangerous
1. What Is Trust?
2. To Be a True Human Being
3. The Art of Living
4. To Be Nothing
5. Where You Are, the Other Is Not
6. One Must Go Deep to Know Joy
7. Thought Will Never Touch It
Epilogue and Taking Leave
Tuning In
In the summer of 1997 and once again in autumn that same year I had a chance to recuperate in the wonderful stillness of nature – partly on my own, partly with friends and with my family and finally surprised as well, by an unexpected gift – a special love story – in a little house which is really more a hut, the sort used by mountain farmers in the valleys of the Bernese Oberland.
Krishnamurti had often wandered through this valley during the time he had lived in Tannegg Chalet in Gstaad, when he gave his talks every summer in Saanen. Nothing, therefore, was more natural for me than to involve myself once again with Krishnamurti and his teaching in these surroundings, and inspired by it, to even take on the task of writing a little book myself. Overcome as I was by the energy of this teaching and this personality, both of which had had me under their spell for twenty years or more, it seemed also quite obvious that I should follow Nalini’s call, that of an Indian woman, a doctor, whom I had met in the Krishnamurti school in Rishi Valley a few years earlier – to peep into the annual gathering in remembrance of Krishnamurti, held now as before every summer in Saanen. This brought me into contact with Friedrich Grohe and other people closely associated with Krishnamurti. Out of this contact came the request from Friedrich Grohe that I, as a psychotherapist, could sum up the influence of Krishnamurti’s teaching on psychotherapy – which in turn led to the following article which became already something like a foreword to the book on hand. I shall therefore put it at the head of this small poetic work in a slightly extended form.
As the text which follows will reveal more precisely, this little book is above all meant to recapture what I have personally understood in my exploration of Krishnamurti and the teaching which he offered.
But besides that, it is also meant to be an actual report showing how this teaching may be applied. The teaching is of no use if it is not lived in our daily lives. So every now and then this actuality will pop up between the lines. When accomplished, the teaching has to be a love story in daily life, otherwise there remains something which is not fully understood. It must be a love story with the master, a love story with the teaching, a love story with the source from which it comes, a love story with life, with the scenery of these wonderful valleys which surround us here, and quite concretely, also a love story between human beings.
A special kind of interweaving of love stories took place that summer, love stories old and new, in this charming valley, as this book came into being.
In the true community each one is the great love for each of the others. One great love does not exclude other great love stories, on the contrary, it only helps to make them possible. When there is true love, each and every one is the first one for you. When relationships cease to be ruled by thoughts of possession, a sort of rivalry will be possible in love, which has nothing to do with competition, opposition, comparing, or wanting to be better, but rather, to practise along with the others the art of spoiling each other, to heap joy upon joy, to increase happiness, so that everyone can feel sheltered, nourished, well looked after and happy. True love promotes the love stories of others. It does not feel excluded because it includes itself and does not know any frontiers. The story of true love, of true community has yet to be written. Till now it has never really been lived on this earth on a large scale. To integrate the teaching of Krishnamurti in daily life would bring about a new story, in a way that has not yet been thought about. This book aims at stimulating and helping you towards this goal.
However, as soon as any thought of possession gets the upper hand within us, we want to restrict the love of others so as to prevent our own lack of love, our insufficiency in love and want of it from becoming visible. When love is there each one is eager to help it augment, to make the love of the other increase. Then one enjoys love, wherever it just happens to grow. Everybody competes with each other to be the first in loving, and so through loving everyone is first.
This booklet wants to sing about the intertwining of love stories, very concretely between human beings, to tell you a story, a completely new story about the joint journey into the unknown, which will emerge more from between the lines rather than from what you read in them.
Dear reader, in wanting to delve at once into the spiritual atmosphere of the master, you might wish to skip the following article which forms the main part of the foreword and embark straight away on the seven times seven meditations which succeed the foreword and try to grasp the special fragrance of the teaching of Krishnamurti. In that case you may equally well place the introduction at the end of your reflections as a summary or leave it out completely. But then the love story which has already been woven into the foreword would possibly lose a little of its colour and meaning .
This little book has been thought of, rather, as an incentive to meditate, not to be read through at one sitting. I suggest that each day you choose at the most one of the seven times seven texts, that you carry them around with you, that you chew them thoroughly, digest and enjoy them. The same principle can of course be applied to the many questions which always accompany the text. Each of them is meant to provoke a minor earthquake in your mind. If it doesn’t, it means you have not really allowed yourself to be moved by it. A quick and purely intellectual understanding makes little sense. As for me, the original statements of Krishnamurti from which these texts have arisen worked inside me for many, many years before it was possible for me to develop a comprehensive view of them. And this process will probably never come to an end completely.
Krishnamurti – Applied in Daily Life
The Influence of His Teaching on Psychotherapy
(Draft of an article for the magazine Link, November 1997)
It is wonderful to wake up in the morning in this still and charming side- valley. The sun will not rise over the mountains for quite a while, but the view through the small window of our mountain hut shows that it will be a fine day, full of sunshine. The morning freshness caresses the skin. It smells like just fallen rain. The brook is noisy this morning; it is still swollen from the terrific thunderstorm of the previous evening. Wisps of cloud still lie over the hills and meadows. The grass glitters and the numerous spiders’ webs in it lend it a light, foam-like appearance. And later, as soon as the first rays of the sun reach the valley over the gold covered hill tops, the fields begin to let off steam, and the padded dampness lights up in a thousand crystals before evaporating. The light coloured sky has a fathomless depth. Not a cloud divides its wholeness.
The others still sleep in the house. Soon, the children will be up and will drag me out of bed. Together we will prepare breakfast. You, mature great love, will continue to sleep a while. And we will watch over your sleep. But you, tender new love, will soon kiss my cheek as I rake the fire in the kitchen. What joy to be invited to love both of you, to love all of you!
The youthful stillness of the morning is full of jubilation; it makes the heart throb with expectation. The eyes are alive with the brightness that lies on everything and the ears follow suit, listening quite of their own accord to the noises and sounds which give expression to the basic stillness.
I came into contact with the teaching of Krishnamurtifor the first time in 1973. It was through a girl friend that the book Freedom from the Knowncame into my hands. I was thunderstruck by the lecture, it was as though a bolt of lightning had struck me. It was already some years since I had set out on the pathless path of observation of what is, and had been on the way with the help of others, in a group, and accompanied by various teachers as well. What I read here was therefore not absolutely new to me, but what shook me to the core was the uncompromising truth, the unfiltered realness of what I found there. Each word was like thunder, every sentence like a hammer. I was used to having to sift out every bit of clarity from what other equally qualified people had to say, used to the fact that the most blessed of teachers are not free from confusion and that it is therefore most difficult and troublesome to clarify one’s own confusion in the mirror of relationship to them. And here I finally found something which I had never found before, and have never found again since then: absolute clear-sightedness, pure truth, the voice of a totally impersonal intelligence, a well-spring of insight, as I had never been allowed to touch before.
That was my first contact with Krishnamurti and his teaching and it was followed by years of intensive study of his work. It was only a couple of years later, in 1977, that I met Krishnamurti, the man himself, at a summer gathering in Saanen which I used to visit sporadically from then on, in so far as my duties permitted me to. To see the man Krishnamurti in action was a second revelation. Or maybe it was more a matter of being able to directly see and experience how an immense impersonal energy acted through this person, an energy with which I had already come into superficial contact myself.
All his life, Krishnamurti had refused to be an authority, a master, to have disciples. He had refused to take on the role which had been culled for him – that of the world teacher. But through grappling with him and with his teaching, that is precisely how I recognised him: as the world teacher of our age, who had come to tell us what we will have to learn over the next 2000 years. I had no problem accepting this view, it was the simple perception of a fact. As, due to various circumstances, I had never come into very personal contact with him and had remained, on the whole, aloof from the clique which had formed around him, I was never in danger of getting entangled in any projections, authority conflicts, or dependency in relation to his person. I had already perceived these aspects with other teachers, recognised their dangers and had resisted the temptation of entering into this sort of relationship. So, I could see his calling, recognise the fact that in rejecting the task that others had projected on him, he had actually taken it on in a deeper sense. In the mirror of my affinity to this impersonal light, I could also begin to gradually recognise my own calling. I had also got to know other great teachers: Manuel, with whom I was permitted to live in close personal contact, Bhagwan, whom I had at least personally encountered, and Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan Matus, one of the really great teachers, whom I had been allowed to love only from afar. But in this case I sensed, and on account of it felt myself blessed, to have encountered the sort of person who wanders over this earth only once in a thousand years: the Buddha, the Christ, or whatever they have called him. It is with gratitude that I accepted this blessing.
Not that there should be any misunderstanding between us: Krishnamurti was not my master. Personally, I had had teachers, but never a master. I had never needed one. Krishnamurti is the Master, the Teacher, the teacher for an entire age. There is something entirely impersonal about that.
At that time I found myself simultaneously studying to be a doctor and finally a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. I had always experienced psychotherapy as a process of observation, uncovering and being still with what is, as the transformation which comes about in us through this process. So at first I was irritated to hear that Krishnamurti did not take any interest in the analytical procedure of psychoanalysis. It was only gradually that I understood that within psychotherapy there are two fundamentally different movements, and that the one I myself had spontaneously chosen was the smaller of the two. The bigger movement is actually the one which sees psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as a thinking, intellectual, analytical process; the one that is smaller and more familiar to me is no stranger to the world of Krishnamurti’s thoughts, although it is hardly to be found anywhere else with the same degree of purity. One can also say that analysts, in the sense that Krishnamurti talks about them, avoid relationship, while on the other hand for the smaller group, analysis or psychotherapy is a process of relationship. This smaller movement first seeks to bring about transformation within oneself, that is, in the analyst himself, and then beyond that in the client – helping him to face the inner truth, to see things the way they are, and in this being still with them, to then experience transformation. I discovered that psychotherapy is not just psychotherapy, that what I mean by it is not what is normally meant by it. That on the contrary my understanding represents a small space within the great movement of psychotherapeutic thinking, and this of course separated me increasingly from this community, long before I had really developed within it. But at the same time this environment opened up a space for me in which I could live my vocation, as I increasingly recognised and accepted it. Therefore, it was easy for me to use this background, at least for the time being, as a framework for my work. I saw that my mission was, first of all, to bring about a complete transformation in my own consciousness and to then convey it to other people, to help effect a basic mutation in human consciousness in general that is utterly necessary. For me, psychotherapy had never been a process that was supposed to heal only the superficial symptoms – at the most this was a desirable side effect. Rather, it was an offer to bring about this basic inner revolution in consciousness through the mirror of relationship or – in the framework of group therapy which I began to practise mostly later on – in the mirror of many relationships. This basic revolution of which Krishnamurti had spoken with such impressive clarity.
The psyche is generally seen as a part of consciousness. Krishnamurti used the two terms as synonyms. Psychology is concerned mostly – in fact only – with a certain spectrum of consciousness, above all with needs and problems. Only transpersonal psychology has moved substantially beyond that, to cover a more comprehensive area within which it also deals with questions of love and the divine experience.
Of course, there are also other differences of direction in psychotherapy, such as those that cover up or suppress versus those that uncover and acknowledge. Like the analytical approach or the one which works with one’s perception, they also open or close the door to Krishnamurti’s teaching. But I do not feel obliged to go further into all that.
Altogether, one could say: normal psychotherapy is concerned with what is sick. It is about a re-conditioning or fresh conditioning of the brain. This kind of psychotherapy which is very widespread, is alien to Krishnamurti’s thought. My psychotherapy feels responsible for the totality of man and also for a renewal of society. Its goal is the total deconditioning of the human mind and brain, a radical transformation of the individual and with it, of society. This kind of psychotherapy is the practical application of Krishnamurti’s teaching in day to day life.
In the 25 years that I have spent in psychiatry and psychotherapy and which followed that first contact with Krishnamurti, I have shaken myself increasingly free from that environment and accordingly retreated from it. It is therefore not possible for me to say with real certainty what effect Krishnamurti’s teaching has had on psychotherapy in general. My contact with those who represent it is slim, my study of the actual literature practically zero. In the course of time, I have detached myself almost completely from what was initially a useful placenta. Today I stand on my own, completely alone, without being connected to any society or club, linked only in heart with people who have become friends in the course of my life. The fact that things have developed this way is a sign to me that psychiatry and psychotherapy are on the whole moving in quite a different direction to that which Krishnamurti has indicated in his work. Of course, I cannot furnish any proof of this. It is more a general impression. On the other hand, from my personal relationships with people, I know that there are many working in this field who are influenced, some superficially, some in a deeper way and some also fundamentally, by Krishnamurti’s teaching.
After these introductory words on the theme, I would therefore prefer to speak about the influence of Krishnamurti’s work on my very personal activities, leaving it to the historians to decide to what extent his influence can be felt (or is already felt) in the entire psychiatric and psychotherapeutic movement.
As I have already said, it is not really Krishnamurti’s writing or my contact with him which led me onto the path of choiceless, reactionless observation of what is. I had already set out on this path through my own insight and with the help and guidance of other people. It was rather that his works had supported me and confirmed my insights. At critical junctures, amidst the general confusion in which humanity is lost, they had helped me to find clarity. I saw increasingly that my work as psychotherapist or as spiritual teacher, later on, was an act of integrating that which Krishnamurti had already laid the foundation for. I saw that my lot was to initiate, together with other people, this seemingly impossible task which I think will take two to four thousand years to complete, namely, to anchor this teaching in the human consciousness in such a way that it becomes effective in our daily life.
For me, Krishnamurti was a well-spring. In the first place, a very impersonal source. I never encountered him at a particularly personal level either, so it was easy and also probably helpful to see him that way. Nor was it his person which I experienced as a well-spring; rather, I sensed that a tremendous energy manifested itself through him, an energy to which all of us also can – and ought to – have direct access. As in myself I could not gain this direct access so easily, Krishnamurti and, above all, his books were for a while the agents that led me to this source. I have drunk from this source. I have allowed myself to be thoroughly drenched by it. It went so far that every difference between what I had gained from my personal insights and what I had picked up from the well-spring vanished. In a certain sense, I have learned nothing at all from Krishnamurti. I have not memorized anything, and above all, I have not derived a new system or any such thing from his work. His influence consisted much more in setting me free from all influence, in supporting and encouraging me, in stimulating me to learn, to trust my own perception, and in doing so, to discover what is the same for all of us: the inexhaustible well-spring of the sacred.
Krishnamurti was, however, also a person. He was also the teacher, although that is not what he wanted to be at all. And I loved him as a teacher, I adored him and every now and then felt the need to revere him as the teacher. Because in my dealings with other teachers I had already learnt that one becomes free again from the authority of the teacher when one loves him, when one acknowledges him as the spiritual father, when one bows before him in gratitude and humility, with respect.
“If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him!” is a well known quotation from Zen literature. The sentence is somehow right. Krishnamurti too always maintained that it is the teaching that is important, not the teacher. As long as I cannot break away from the teacher’s authority, as long as his words live on in my mind as his words, the truth cannot unfold in me independently. But personally I have found a way that is better and less violent than to kill the teacher: love frees you; complete merging – not dissociation – makes you independent; because love and death are one, they go hand in hand. In my love for him, my ego dies into the teacher and his teaching, and with it the teacher too dies for me as a person, and the teaching and “my” being are one. Gratitude sets free; resistance binds.
The well-spring, which is finally an inner experience, often reveals itself to us, at first, personified in a human being, because it is easier for us to look at our weaknesses and characteristics,which we have to understand, in a relationship with a concrete person. In this sense, I long felt a need to direct my regard, my great affection and my thanks in some way to Krishnamurti, who has been the most important teacher for me for the longest while. In the meantime I myself had written a whole series of books, which like myself, were permeated with the influence, with the energy, with the light of this well-spring. In these works I had also time and again mentioned this most important influence on my life and my doings. I had also disclosed that in Krishnamurti I had recognised the world teacher, but I still continued to look for a more suitable opportunity to express my appreciation, within a wider framework. Finally and gradually, there grew in me the urge to write a book about Krishnamurti and his influence in my life, under the title which this article bears. It was also to formulate a kind of summary of what I had understood of his teaching, and in this way to offer my respects, although at this point of time Krishnamurti had already been dead for over ten years. “Dear master”, I wanted to say with it, “I recognised you, and I am glad that I was permitted to wander over the earth simultaneously with you and to encounter you. You brought me beauty. You were beauty. You are beauty. Thank you.” I also thought that such a booklet could help to convey his world of thoughts to people who are interested in the field of psychotherapy, and to write it, therefore, was one of my tasks. For me, the task and the purpose of this book are to help to integrate the teaching of Krishnamurti into the daily life of man.
I have written all my books out of an inner compulsion. I do not think them out, rather, they form themselves inside me as an energy, which finally explodes when it has become strong enough, and expresses itself through words. In doing this I have less the feeling of producing something myself, as of following a summons, to let myself be used as a tool for just this inexhaustible force and well-spring, which I had perceived in its purest form in Krishnamurti. Here again, for this new book on Krishnamurti’s teaching, I felt this urge again. It was precisely at this point, as this inner force was ready to flow out of me in a certain form, that I met Friedrich Grohe – via the interesting detour I have already mentioned. I had been in contact with him for a short while, a couple of years ago, and he now requested me to write an article for his magazine Link on this very subject. I was, of course, glad to pursue this, because in the mysterious ways life always has again, it established a connection with the circle which governs Krishnamurti’s legacy, before I had actually begun to work on this book. And this article, to a certain extent, will be a summary of, or even an overview of what I hope to produce in a year or two: Krishnamurti – Applied in Daily Life; a synopsis of his teaching as an invitation for my clients and all those who visit my workshops, to involve themselves with his works.
High up in the mountains we are met by the heat of noon. It smells of perspiration. In keeping with its nature, midday is hotter and much noisier than the morning. People fill it with their activities and all of nature too is restless and diligent. But there is another kind of stillness at present, which permeates everything, the stillness of the naked rocks across, these gigantic mountain tops and the wide open sky over them: an eternal stillness. It captures the heart with its sanctity, and makes our descent in the scorching heat light and friendly.
