Reality and Verification
The first and most fundamental question that most philosophers and spiritual leaders of the Eastern world must address concerns the nature of reality: what is real and how do you know that it is real. While most Western philosophers and religious leaders don’t have to address the first of these two questions (what is real), the second question resides at the heart of philosophical debates about the verification of real things. We find Christian Science to be one of the few western religions to question the presence and nature of a real world, this questioning is common in Eastern religious traditions such as Buddhism and Daoism. In the West, serious attention is given within the philosophical traditions of Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism (the Vienna Circle); less attention is given within the Eastern philosophical and spiritual traditions to the matter of verification.
In the case of Krisnamurti, an interesting and important distinction is drawn that impacts on what he considers to be the nature and verification of reality. Krishnamurti 1956, pp. 31-32) differentiates between the idea of an experience and actual experiencing:
“Experience is one thing, and experiencing is another. . . . Experience is already in a the net of time, it is already in the past, it has become a memory which comes to life only as a response to the present. Life is the present, it is not the experience.”
While on the surface this highly abstract distinction would seem to have little to say about the focus on personal coaching, there are several important implications that can be drawn from this distinction made by Krishnamurti. Most importantly, for Krishnamurti (1956, p. 13), the process of ongoing experiencing and engaging in personal growth is not easily engaged. We seek to escape from the absolute freedom of experiencing, by relying on established knowledge (Krisnamurti, 1956, p.26):
“Knowledge is essential . . . as coal to the engine; but it cannot reach out into the unknown. The unknown is not to be caught in the net of the known, Knowledge must be aside for the unknown to be; but how difficult that is!
We have our being in the past, our thought is founded upon the past. The past is the known, and the response of the past not the future, but the present. The future is but the past pushing its way through the uncertain present. This gap, this interval, is filled with the intermittent light of knowledge, covering the emptiness of the present; but this emptiness holds the miracle of life.
. . . The mind is frightened of this unknown, and so it escapes into knowledge, into theories, hopes, imagination; and this very knowledge is a hindrance to the understanding of the unknown. To put aside knowledge is to invite fear, and to deny the mind, which is the only instrument of perception one has, is to be vulnerable to sorrow, to joy. . . Understanding of the self is freedom from knowledge.”
Krishnamurti (1956, p. 13) suggests that we often seek to escape from direct experiencing and evolving a distinctive sense of self by identifying with a group or ideology:
“To experience, there must be no fear. Fear prevents experience. It is feat that makes of identification – identification with another, with a group., with an ideology, and so on. Fear must resist, suppress; and in a state of self-defence, how can there be venturing on the uncharted sea. Truth or happiness cannot come without undertaking the journey into the ways of the self. You cannot travel far if you are anchored.”
