Osho said that the main thing in Krishnamurti’s teaching is the message “don’t follow anyone except yourself.” That is to say, long and sometimes forceful training has left its mark on all of his message. Truly, Krishnamurti claimed that the Path to Truth does not exist; that teachers and masters are not needed, just as no organizations, churches or orders are needed. “Truth is a pathless land,” he would state, but continued to transmit the Truth to the extent he himself knew it. Exposition of that Truth that was revealed to him became the main cause of his life, and of course, it was far wider than a call to follow no teachings.

In fact, Krishnamurti always spoke about the state of awareness and about nothing else. Even so, he did not designate paths to it; he simply described it, as a person who was in a state of awareness, sensing himself and the world, and that was it. Being outside of time (that is, in “the here and now”); non-attachment to the past and the reactions of the mind; independence of any ideas; awareness without choice – all of this is the description of a state of full awareness, and in fact a fairly detailed one.

It worked this way: Krishnamurti would tell unaware people how an aware person behaves and senses himself, and they, impressed with what they had heard, tried to behave in the same way. In other words, Krishnamurti gave them a model of behavior, which people could try to measure against themselves, making the Teacher an example for imitation. While denying the presence of the Way, Krishnamurti still provided a certain knowledge from which people could create for themselves a surrogate of the Way, since the Teacher could not provide them with anything else. That is the nature of the human mind – in order to begin to act, it needs an example of similar action, a certain algorithm, which by following, it could do something. 

Krishnamurti’s words provided examples of an attitude toward oneself and reality, and you could try to borrow that attitude and, from time to time, act by relying on it. Such an approach did not in any way rid a person of unawareness, but it did give him a certain new point of departure and evaluation of events; a new position for the mind. Thanks to this, a student of Krishnamurti could be inspired and for some time react and act anew, but then mechanical reactions would nevertheless would gain the upper hand, and no profound changes would occur. Deeper layers of conditionality and ideas imbibed at an early age nevertheless prevail over new ideas, no matter how fervently a person tries to inculcate them in himself. The chief result of such efforts is a contrariness and confusion of reactions in a person who, for example, goes to church and observes fasts, but in many situations behaves like a true atheist, forgetting about Jesus and the Christian commandments completely.

Approximately the same thing happened with the admirers of the speeches and books of Krishnamurti. And the same thing happens, it must be said, with the followers of all Teachers without exception who appeal only to the minds of listeners. It may seem to you that truth expressed in words touches your heart and produces a certain inspiring effect; perhaps that is how it really is. But the dry remnants of the verbal effect remain only in the mind, and all the rest of the reactions pass without a trace – you remember them, perhaps, and you wish repetition of these wonderful sensations, but that is it. Incorporation of new ideas into the mind gives it new means of action, almost never replacing old stereotypes and reactions. Sometimes a new idea enters into the old in a kind of symbiosis, broadening and changing it. But sometimes they contradict one another, and then a person’s reactions entirely depend on which idea suddenly began to dominate in his mind, and he behaves accordingly. Without targeted work on freeing oneself of attachment to ideas, without non-identification with mind – it is impossible to change a given situation. Krishnamurti for some reason tried to forget about how he himself went through serious practical preparation for the fulfillment of the mission of a Teacher. Or does he believe that this preparation didn’t give him anything, and it was completely unnecessary?