8 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 4 Second Dialogue Analysis The second dialogue (Jayakar 1986, 385–391) confirms the results of my exposition and analysis above, but since the inquiry it offers is a conscious reflection on Krishnamurti’s unique method of total negation, it throws light on other dimensions of the Krishnamurti dialogue. One central dimension revealed through this group discussion is the dialogue as a mystical initiation. Jayakar (1986, 391), who attended this session, likens the experience to the Vedic tradition in which the guru holds the disciple in the “darkness of the within,” as if in an embryo, for three nights, while “the gods gather to witness the birth.” Similarly, she writes, Krishnamurti enabled his companions’ minds to “directly touch his mind” (Jayakar 1986, 391). This sense of mystical initiation is explicitly pointed out by the teacher himself when he refers to a door that has to be opened as a result of their exploration: “I have a feeling that there is something waiting to enter, a Holy Ghost is waiting; the thing is waiting for you to open the door, and it will come” (Jayakar 1986, 386). And when the conversation came to a close, he remarked: “I think we are opening the door slightly” (Jayakar 1986, 391). This implies that Krishnamurti believed that his dialogical process had a considerable transformative and religious potential. The gathering, which took place in Vasant Vihar, Delhi, in 1980, included close associates of Krishnamurti and centered on the higher educational aims of one of his Indian schools, the Rishi Valley School. As always, the expectation of the educators that the mystic would play his role as the school’s founder by laying out an instructive vision is quickly thwarted when Krishnamurti assumes instead the position of a passionate questioner (Jayakar 1986, 385). Thus, the dialogue is inaugurated by a primary question that Krishnamurti formulates on the basis of some preliminary exchanges: “How is Narayan [note: a teacher at the Rishi Valley School] actually going to help the students – not just talk to them, but to awaken intelligence, to communicate what it is to penetrate at great depth?” (Jayakar 1986, 385). In this case, the primary question is already a “how” question, which, as we may recall, prompts the listeners to fall into the trap of answering from the field of experience and knowledge. Thus, the “how” itself is an invitation to the process of negation. Unprepared for this sudden turnabout, Narayan suggests hesitantly that he would meet both teachers and students in small groups daily (Jayakar 1986, 385). But Krishnamurti rejects the option of external action, insisting that this could not bring about the element he most hopes for beyond all learning capacities and the cultivation of virtues: “something totally unworldly” (Jayakar 1986, 385). He thus develops the question further, moving away from the educational theme to a far broader metaphysical concern: “What is the thing that changes the whole mind, the whole brain?” (Jayakar 1986, 386). From this point onward, the way of inquiry and this fundamental question will become inseparable; the dialogical process will mirror the answer by offering an experiential initiation into this elusive factor that changes the brain. Accordingly, the conversation undergoes dramatic quickening just when the mystic begins to search for a state in which the brain is so quick that it never rests, but is only “moving, moving, moving” (Jayakar 1986, 385). It is intriguing to note that the Krishnamurti dialogue does not seek the well-known culmination of final inner rest, which is so common in East Asian mystical philosophies. Consider, for instance, the Katha Upanishad’s statement according to which “when the five senses are stilled, when the mind is stilled, when the intellect is stilled, that is called the highest state by the wise” (Upanishads 2007, 91). For Krishnamurti, although one’s awakened mind is steadfast “like an immovable rock,” it is also insatiably dynamic (Jayakar 1986, 391). After referring to the door that “needs to be opened by both of us”– that is, through the act of dialogue – Krishnamurti begins to employ his usual method of total negation, this time repudiating the entire range of religious and mystical practices that have striven to engender this “sense of benediction” (Jayakar 1986, 386). This negation of all possible movements toward the sacred strongly echoes his 1929 declaration that “truth is a pathless land.” However, the dialogical procedure enables Krishnamurti to actively prevent his listeners’ minds from traversing these pathways. By rejecting widely accepted spiritual exercises such as meditation and self-observation as insufficient and limited, while deploying the question to grope for that subtle transformative factor, Krishnamurti gathers and deepens the energy in the room (Jayakar 1986, 387). And when he is asked about the nature of the door that has to be opened, he evades the pitfall of forming a constructive statement and goes on with his negatory dialectic (Jayakar 1986, 387). While the intent behind the negation of all religious and mystical practices is quite clear – discovering truth’s pathless land by rejecting all paths leading to it – the reasons Krishnamurti offers for the invalidity of the ancient paths are less convincing. First, he measures their potency according to their results, arguing that “millions have meditated” but failed to evoke benediction (Jayakar 1986, 386). But Krishnamurti never recognized even a single person as having attained this benediction as a result of his method of negation (Jay-
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