S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 2 5 Shai Tubali It is not difficult to surmise what factors were involved in the spontaneous development of Krishnamurti’s dialogue form in 1948. First, his vehement rejection of the traditional teacher–student relationship and his insistence on the listener’s self-inquiry were less effective as long as he sat on a distant podium and guided a passive audience. Krishnamurti the speaker could urge participants to make the questions he posed their own, but as a persistent questioner in dialogue, he could make it clear to the discussants that facing the questions was their exclusive struggle. Jayakar (1986, 121) was conscious of this when she told Krishnamurti that in personal discussion with him, “there is nothing except ‘what is’ as reflected in oneself. You throw back on the person exactly ‘what is,’” to which he replied, “[b]ut when K throws back, it is yours” [3]. Another advantage was that Krishnamurti’s conviction that for the mind to mutate, all avenues seeking an answer must be shut off, could be fully exercised in this rapid exchange. Like Socrates in the agora, Krishnamurti actively cornered the interlocutor’s mind, preventing it from rushing to its familiar escape routes and exposing the falsity of its apparent knowledge with razor-sharp precision. Jayakar’s relatively brief account already unveils many of the hidden guidelines of the Krishnamurti dialogue. Perhaps most importantly, the dialogue is propelled and sustained by a primary question that is “kept rolling,” while being repeated occasionally after some swift exchanges (Jayakar 1986, 473). Often it is Krishnamurti who formulates the question, based on initial remarks by the group discussion members. The questions chosen are metaphysical and broad by nature, though there seems to be a general agreement between him and the other discussants that the questions should be approached not merely as abstract riddles, but also as pressing human realities that inevitably engage the heart. Nonetheless, the questions play an ironic role in the dialogue, since Krishnamurti does not deploy them to lead to any clear metaphysical or instructive formulations. In fact, he does not even believe that life’s fundamental questions can be answered at all; rather, because these questions are unanswerable, they throw “man back on himself and the way the structure of thought operates” (Jayakar 1986, 298). As soon as the question has been raised, the listener’s mind is tempted into the trap, but it is the dynamics of one’s attempts to provide a conceptual answer that make thought grow aware of its own mechanism, since in its search it can only move within the confines of its own hall of mirrors. Thus, the metaphysical question is utilized to expose what is, the reality of the conditioned mind, which is the struggling questioner themselves. Since there are no answers to life’s great questions, whatever answers may arise are, as a rule, rejected regardless of their specific quality or depth of argumentation. It is Krishnamurti’s contention that the answers that seek to end the probing are limited in that they emerge as verbal reactions deriving from the storehouse of memory and prior knowledge (Jayakar 1986, 478). Thus, although the intellectual instrument is not put aside, it is, in a sense, employed against itself, since it is limited to the rejection of all accumulated knowledge. Furthermore, one should repudiate the entire process of thought, that is, not only its attachments and resulting suffering but also the complementary half of its search for redemption and elevation, since “the hand that seeks to throw away or reject is the same hand that itself holds” (Krishnamurti in Jayakar 1986, 298) [4]. But the repudiation in the dialogue takes place not as an opposing act; upon seeing the false movement of thought, nothing can be done, since any further internal movement one may make is again the continuation of thought. Thus, seeing is taken to be the only possible transformative “action” (Jayakar 1986, 120). Aside from mirroring the avenues of thought, the Krishnamurti dialogue makes use of questions to generate intense energy of awareness. This energy does not arise in spite of the reflexive answers but as a direct outcome of negating these answers. Through the repetition of the questions, followed by an insistence on their urgency and at the same time a refusal to permit any mental dissipation, the mind’s ordinarily scattered attention is gathered and becomes available for the potential breakthrough of insight. Insight, however, is not necessarily an object of discovery but, more fundamentally, a form of awakened intelligence: a state of mind in which there is no remembrance, conclusion, or reaction (Jayakar 1986, 327). As the latter, the term seems to be used interchangeably with listening, a quality of mind that arises through and as a result of the act of total negation and concentrated energy (Jayakar 1986, 327). At this stage, the question, met with non-conceptualizing minds, leads to increasing openness rather than the sense of closure that characterizes confident answers. This openness facilitates different possible experiences. The most significant potential experience, however, is that of the transmutation of the brain (Jayakar 1986, 121). The ongoing invalidation of all answers prevents the mind from moving in its familiar directions; thus, such a mind can no longer be in a state of psychological search (Jayakar 1986, 118–119). But in the Krishnamurti dialogue, the mystic’s tireless questioning keeps pushing the discussants to supply him with
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