The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue: From Classical Dialogues to Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Method (Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, 41) [1st ed. 2023] 3031400739, 9783031400735

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Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41

Shai Tubali

The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue From Classical Dialogues to Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Method

Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures Volume 41

Editor-in-Chief Purushottama Bilimoria, The University of Melbourne, Australia University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA Series Editor Christian Coseru, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, USA Associate Editor Jay Garfield, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Assistant Editors Sherah Bloor, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Amy Rayner, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Peter Yih Jiun Wong, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia Editorial Board Balbinder Bhogal, Hofstra University, Hempstead, USA Christopher Chapple, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, USA Vrinda Dalmiya, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, USA Gavin Flood, Oxford University, Oxford, UK Jessica Frazier, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Kathleen Higgins, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA Patrick Hutchings, Deakin University, The University of Melbourne Parkville, Australia Morny Joy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada Carool Kersten, King's College London, London, UK Richard King, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK Arvind-Pal Maindair, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA Rekha Nath, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Tuscaloosa, USA Parimal Patil, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

Laurie Patton, Duke University, Durham, USA Stephen Phillips, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA Joseph Prabhu, California State University, Los Angeles, USA Annupama Rao, Columbia University, New York, USA Anand J. Vaidya, San Jose State University, San Jose, USA The Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures focuses on the broader aspects of philosophy and traditional intellectual patterns of religion and cultures. The series encompasses global traditions, and critical treatments that draw from cognate disciplines, inclusive of feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial approaches. By global traditions we mean religions and cultures that go from Asia to the Middle East to Africa and the Americas, including indigenous traditions in places such as Oceania. Of course this does not leave out good and suitable work in Western traditions where the analytical or conceptual treatment engages Continental (European) or Cross-cultural traditions in addition to the Judeo-Christian tradition. The book series invites innovative scholarship that takes up newer challenges and makes original contributions to the field of knowledge in areas that have hitherto not received such dedicated treatment. For example, rather than rehearsing the same old Ontological Argument in the conventional way, the series would be interested in innovative ways of conceiving the erstwhile concerns while also bringing new sets of questions and responses, methodologically also from more imaginative and critical sources of thinking. Work going on in the forefront of the frontiers of science and religion beaconing a well-nuanced philosophical response that may even extend its boundaries beyond the confines of this debate in the West  – e.g. from the perspective of the ‘Third World’ and the impact of this interface (or clash) on other cultures, their economy, sociality, and ecological challenges facing them – will be highly valued by readers of this series. All books to be published in this Series will be fully peer-reviewed before final acceptance.

Shai Tubali

The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue From Classical Dialogues to Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Method

Shai Tubali School of Philosophy University of Leeds Leeds, UK

ISSN 2211-1107     ISSN 2211-1115 (electronic) Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures ISBN 978-3-031-40073-5    ISBN 978-3-031-40074-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to convey my gratitude to the subject of my research, Jiddu Krishnamurti, whose mind has remained an unfathomable mystery to me even after decades of contemplation and long and arduous years of academic study. Very much like Krishnamurti’s dialogical technique that is scrutinized within the pages of this book, the nature of Krishnamurti’s mind seems to me an unanswerable question worth holding for as long as possible. Furthermore, my deep appreciation is extended to Dr Mikel Burley, who served as my supervisor at the University of Leeds during both my master’s and my PhD research. This four-year, patient and open-minded dialogue enabled me to hone many of the statements and conclusions made in this book. Boundless thanks to my friends and collaborators, Tamar and Nir Brosh, for their unwavering support throughout the creation of this book. They have been my steadfast sounding boards, eager to engage with every newly birthed chapter. While they may not be professional philosophers, their unmistakable love of wisdom makes them philosophers in the classical sense: devotees of wisdom who allow it to shape and guide their lives’ paths. Lastly, I must acknowledge my Springer editor, Christopher Coughlin. From the very first moment that the somewhat vague vision of this book was placed on his table, he faithfully nurtured its evolution, offering his kindness and empathy until the book’s final manifestation.

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Pre-Introduction

The translations used for the main classical sources are as follows: Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2005. In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pāli Canon. Boston: Wisdom. Nāgārjuna. 1995. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Trans. and commentary by J. L. Garfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Śaṅkarācārya. 1960. Brahma-Sūtra-Śaṅkara-Bhās.ya. Trans. Vinayak Mahadev Apte. Mumbai: Popular Book Depot. The Bhagavad Gita. 2007. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. The Supreme Yoga: Yoga-Vāsis.t.ha. 2010. Trans. Swami Venkatesananda. Motilal Banarsidass. The Upanishads. 2007. Ed. E. Easwaran and M.N. Nagler. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Tripura Rahasya. 2003. Trans. Swami Sri Ramanananda Saraswathi. Bloomington: World Wisdom.

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Contents

1

Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 The Dialogical Disposition of Krishnamurti’s Work ������������������������������     2 Hadot and the Classical Philosophical Dialogue ������������������������������������     4 Understanding Krishnamurti Through the Hadotian Lens����������������������     5 The Krishnamurti Dialogue and Multicultural Philosophy ��������������������     7 The Journey Ahead����������������������������������������������������������������������������������    11 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    14

Part I The Classical Philosophical Dialogue 2

 ‘Know Thyself’: Hadot and the Conception of Transformative Philosophy������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   19 The ‘Organized Totality’ of Classical Philosophy ����������������������������������    21 Transformative Philosophy����������������������������������������������������������������������    26 The Communal Dimension of Transformative Philosophy ��������������������    30 Sages or Philosophers?����������������������������������������������������������������������������    33 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    38

3

‘You Have Dispelled My Doubts and Delusions’: Dialogue in Classical India and Classical Greece ������������������������������������������������   41 The Dialogical Dimension of Indian Philosophies����������������������������������    42 The Conversational Nature of Greek Philosophy������������������������������������    51 The Beginnings of the Transformative Dialogue ������������������������������������    55 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    57

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 ‘When People Are Questioned, and the Questions Are Well Put’: Transformative Dialogue in the Upaniṣads and in Plato����������������������   61 Dialogue as Transformation��������������������������������������������������������������������    62 The Teacher as a Midwife������������������������������������������������������������������������    66 The Two Types of Transformation ����������������������������������������������������������    71 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    73

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5

Contents

Dialogues of Life and Death: Transformative Dialogue in Plato’s Phaedo and in the Kaṭhopaniṣad��������������������������������������������   75 Death as an Opportunity��������������������������������������������������������������������������    77 Soul-Liberation in the Phaedo ����������������������������������������������������������������    80 ‘Know Thyself to Be Pure and Immortal!’����������������������������������������������    83 Where Mysticism Diverges from Transformative Philosophy����������������    86 Complete and Incomplete Endings����������������������������������������������������������    92 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    95

Part II The Krishnamurti Dialogue 6

 ‘We Are Inquiring Together’: The Dialogical Nature of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Work������������������������������������������������������������������������������   99 Krishnamurti as a Rebel��������������������������������������������������������������������������   100 The Awakening of Intelligence����������������������������������������������������������������   110 Krishnamurti’s Teachings as a Living Praxis������������������������������������������   117 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   121

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‘Questions to Which There Are No Answers’: The Method Behind the Krishnamurti Dialogue��������������������������������������������������������  123 The Birth of a New Method ��������������������������������������������������������������������   125 First Dialogue Analysis����������������������������������������������������������������������������   131 Second Dialogue Analysis ����������������������������������������������������������������������   134 On Krishnamurti’s Question and Negation����������������������������������������������   139 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   142

8

‘The Thunder of Insight’: The Final Destination of Krishnamurti’s Dialogue������������������������������������������������������������������������  145 First Stage: The Method��������������������������������������������������������������������������   148 Second Stage: The Preparatory Stage������������������������������������������������������   151 Third Stage: The Shift of Insight ������������������������������������������������������������   155 Fourth Stage: The Ultimate State������������������������������������������������������������   159 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   165

9

 ‘Come and Join Me’: Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Scholars����������  167 Krishnamurti and the Life of the Mind����������������������������������������������������   168 Murdoch–Krishnamurti: Trying to ‘Build Up Structures’ ����������������������   172 Needleman–Krishnamurti: Looking Beyond the Self’s Barbed-Wire Fence����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   179 Understanding Krishnamurti��������������������������������������������������������������������   185 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   188

Contents

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Part III Krishnamurti and the Classical Philosophical Dialogue 10 S  ocrates, Kōan, Krishnamurti: Questions as a Spiritual Exercise�����������������������������������������������������������������������������  193 Socrates: Refutation as Cleansing������������������������������������������������������������   195 Kōan: Rooting Out the Entire Mind��������������������������������������������������������   203 Krishnamurti: The Answer is in the Question������������������������������������������   208 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   213 11 N  āgārjuna, Śaṅkara, Krishnamurti: Negation as a Spiritual Exercise�����������������������������������������������������������������������������  215 Nāgārjuna: The Relinquishing of All Views��������������������������������������������   218 Śaṅkara: ātman Is Left Unnegated ����������������������������������������������������������   226 Krishnamurti: The Denial of Knowledge������������������������������������������������   230 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   235 12 Conclusions and Implications ����������������������������������������������������������������  239 Main Conclusions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   239 Transformative Philosophy or Mysticism?����������������������������������������������   244 Implementing the Krishnamurti Dialogue ����������������������������������������������   251 References������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   253 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  255

Chapter 1

Introduction

The purpose of this book is to contribute to the study of philosophical and religious forms of dialogue by unveiling the method behind the unique dialogue developed by mystic and thinker Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986). While academic interest in Krishnamurti’s thought and work is undoubtedly on the rise,1 a direct and comprehensive treatment of his dialogical method is still missing. In this book, I will offer an extensive analysis of Krishnamurti’s dialogue, using numerous recordings of one-on-one and group discussions and conversations, documented both in written form and, in some cases, in their original video or audio format. I aim to uncover the underlying structure, patterns of argumentation, methodology, and purpose of this dialogue, as well as its recurring theoretical contents. Although Krishnamurti himself generally rejected the cultivation of systems and techniques, I argue that this negatory element is an inseparable part of his methodology, and that there are easily identifiable patterns through which Krishnamurti strove to realize his dialogical aims. These discursive patterns serve to broaden our understanding of the possibilities of philosophical and religious dialogues and further illuminate established forms of dynamic discourse, such as the widely examined Socratic method. For this reason, I refer to this method, whose existence has evaded Krishnamurti’s adherents and scholars alike, as the Krishnamurti dialogue.

 Among the doctoral theses and academically oriented books written about Krishnamurti in the past few decades, we could mention: Hunter (1988); Rodrigues (1988); Martin (1997, 2002); Agrawal (2002); Boutte (2002); Anderson and Krishnamurti (1991); Anderson (2012); Suri (2008); Kumar, A. (2011); Kumar, K. (2015); Williams (2015); Jones (2016); and Sanat (1999). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_1

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1 Introduction

The Dialogical Disposition of Krishnamurti’s Work Indian-born Jiddu Krishnamurti began developing his unique form of dialogue in 1948 (Jayakar 1986: 117). The emerging format would rapidly grow into a major instrument of exploration of his thought and teaching. During the following thirty-­ seven years – until 1985, one year before his death – Krishnamurti employed this type of joint discourse in hundreds of dialogues with eminent philosophers, theologians, scientists, and students, in both India and the West (Williams 2015: 701). The blossoming of this dialogue form at that time was not without context. In the years 1947 and 1948, Krishnamurti felt that his inner journey of mystical awakening had come to full fruition and consequently, his teaching career as an independent mystic and thinker began to manifest more lucidly and expressly (Jayakar 1986: 110). During these years, Krishnamurti established the five forms of communication that would characterize his teaching from then on: public talks, personal interviews, spontaneously shared insights, silences, and dialogues (ibid.). In 1929, eighteen years prior to this internal and external revolution, the young Krishnamurti faced an audience of three thousand believers and boldly dissolved the religious order of which he was the president. In this historic speech, he gave voice to an insight that would prove to be his unchanged position throughout his adult life, maintaining that ‘Truth is a pathless land’, and that it is therefore unapproachable and unorganizable by any religion or sect (Jayakar 1986: 78–81). He thus committed himself to freeing others from all cages, including the entrapments of new theories and philosophies (ibid.). This credo gradually gave shape to a transmission that was utterly unconventional for a religious leader. His teaching had to embody his belief in the search for truth as a non-hierarchical, cooperative effort of both teacher and interlocutor; his wish to speak to particular individuals rather than addressing everyone; and his declared purpose of bringing about a transformation in the listener instead of presenting a theory. When his set of methods finally reached its mature expression during the years 1947–1948, it became evident that the only way Krishnamurti could remain faithful to his commitment was by adhering to a teaching whose disposition was intrinsically dialogical. This dialogical disposition was expressed not only in the actual dialogues in which Krishnamurti engaged, but also in his lectures and sessions of questions and answers. As Williams (2015: 666) notes, ever since his rejection of his religious destiny as Theosophy’s world teacher, Krishnamurti’s predominant role was that of a questioner. A persistent rhetorical element of his discourse was the way he would challenge his listeners by posing questions that were often directly related to their particular belief system (ibid., 662, 666). Even while speaking to large crowds, when the communication could not be mutual, a sense of togetherness – ‘a participatory consciousness’ – was evident, since the listeners would be encouraged to feel that these were their questions (ibid., 670–671). This was perhaps the feature that most distinguished Krishnamurti’s talks from any other speeches: his insistence on actively involving his audience in an ongoing

The Dialogical Disposition of Krishnamurti’s Work

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process of impersonal self-observation and an immediate verification of that which had been reflected upon (Needleman 1970: 157). Without such an engagement, one could not comprehend the ‘unwarranted leaps and unorthodox juxtapositions’ of Krishnamurti’s ideas, which could only be understood on the basis of the material of the listener’s own observation (ibid., 163). Thus, the act of listening did not centre on the ideas of the speaker but on one’s own patterns of thinking and action (ibid., 159). Rather than a presentation of a method that should be practised and tested after the lecture, the talk was an on-the-spot self-observation that was itself the beginning of a different way of life (ibid., 160). Although the Krishnamurti dialogue was developed without much deliberation, it can be thought of as a natural, perhaps inevitable, evolution of his teachings. In dialogue, Krishnamurti’s initial aspirations as a freethinker seemed to reach their ultimate fulfilment. As I shall demonstrate in this book, no other form of philosophical discourse could realize Krishnamurti’s radical ideas more effectively, nor could any other form better enable us to grasp the importance of his philosophical contribution. Krishnamurti poured into his unique form of dialectic his rejection of the traditional teacher–student relationship by throwing questioners back on themselves; his conviction was that any additional answers would only overload the already heavily stuffed thoughts of the listener and hinder the awakening of intelligence, and he conceived of questioning and doubt as liberators of the human mind. To bring the contribution of the Krishnamurti dialogue more sharply into focus, I shall place it within a broader context of the Eastern and Western philosophical and religious use of dialogue and its origins in antiquity. Since this form of discourse has mainly been lost, for reasons that will be explored below, one must turn to times and cultures in which dialogue functioned as a prominent tool for the collaborative discovery of truth and served philosophies whose aims were different to those of modern academic philosophy. I thus set out to explore this theme by returning to the beginnings of both Western and Eastern philosophies, which, significantly, also gave rise to the earliest extant manifestations of the philosophical and religious dialogue. I focus my attention on forms of dialogue that were practised in Greece and India during the period known as the Axial Age2: Plato’s Socratic discourse and the guru–disciple conversations in the Hindu Upaniṣads. Although these two forms of dialogue are substantially different from one another in terms of their philosophical and mystical methods and goals, they fall within the scope of what may be termed ‘the transformative dialogue’: an expression of a certain philosophical activity in both cultures whose purpose was not to construct and defend theories, but rather to establish different types of existential consciousness in the hearer’s mind. To borrow Victor Goldschmidt’s formula, which was originally applied to Plato’s dialogues, ‘These dialogues aim not to inform but to form’ (quoted in Hadot 2009: 91). This approach, which associates dialogue with philosophy as a transformation of one’s way of life, has been suggested by the hermeneutic approach of Pierre Hadot, which I have adopted for the purposes of this book.  I am aware of the controversial nature of Karl Jaspers’s notion of the Axial Age (e.g. Boy and Torpey 2013; Smith 2015). 2

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1 Introduction

Hadot and the Classical Philosophical Dialogue Pierre Hadot (1922–2010), emeritus professor of classical history at the Collège de France, was highly acclaimed by scholars of classical philosophy for his commentaries on Plotinus, as well as his study of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (Apple 2010: 191). He is, however, best known for his radical and controversial reassessment of Greco-Roman philosophy as a whole (ibid.). Hadot’s realization was the unintentional result of grappling with a methodological problem: how to approach the well-known phenomenon of apparent incoherences and contradictions in works authored by classical philosophical writers, such as Plato’s aporetic dialogues or Plotinus’ inconsistent treatises (Davidson 1995: 19; Hadot 2009: 89). Like many other scholars, he first attempted to treat these works as he would read any text of modern philosophy, expecting that they would lay out systematic theories and criticizing them for failing to do so (Hadot 2009: 52–53, 90). At a certain point, Hadot came to the conclusion that a correct reading of these classical texts and their so-called defects could only take place if one situated them within the ‘living praxis from which they emanated’ (Davidson 1995: 19). As such, one realizes that these texts are not meant to measure up to modern standards, for the simple reason that Greek and Roman philosophers did not aim to provide systematic theories in the first place (ibid.; Hadot 2009: 90). Placed within their original context, classical philosophical texts are illumined not as teachings ‘addressed to everyone, that is to say, to no one’ (Hadot 2009: 56), but rather as texts written for students who had determined to follow the particular way of life practised by their chosen philosophical school, or for potential students who considered doing so (Apple 2010: 192). The purpose of the writings was to ‘lead disciples along a path of spiritual progress’, by justifying these transformative ways of life and presenting the school’s formative and demanding ‘spiritual exercises’ (ibid.). In other words, the true mission of Greek philosophers was to equip disciples with a method with which they could orient themselves, in both thought and life (Hadot 2009: 90). This type of living discourse was, in effect, a spiritual exercise (áskēsis), a practice designed to ‘produce a certain psychic effect in the reader or listener’ (Davidson 1995: 19–20), thus bringing about a transformation of both one’s vision of the world and one’s very sense of self (Hadot 2009: 87). Though fully aware of the disconcerting Christian and mystical connotations of the term, Hadot deliberately chose to define the Greek exercises as ‘spiritual’, to indicate that they engaged the individual’s entire psyche (Hadot 1995: 82). Besides the animated form of philosophical discourse, spiritual exercises included inner discourse, such as meditation, dialogue with oneself, and exercises of the imagination, and actions that directed daily behaviour, such as ‘mastery of oneself’ and the ‘discipline of desires’ (Davidson 1995: 31). Philosophy as a way of life started with cultivating the ability to converse with oneself (Hadot 1995: 91). Learning to dialogue – first with oneself and only later with others – was, in effect, the basis of any other spiritual exercise (ibid.). This relation of the self to itself was the actualization of the Socratic dictum, ‘Know

Understanding Krishnamurti Through the Hadotian Lens

5

thyself’ (Davidson 1995: 20). But dialogue was also the most essential form of philosophical discourse: in its ambition to be a living voice and ‘still more a life than a voice’, classical philosophy was exercised, above all, in oral form, while written work would only echo or complement it (ibid., 20, 23). Even then, philosophical writings were notes taken by students during a course, or answers to questions, or texts designed for presentation in public readings, addressed to specific people; unlike modern philosophical books, they always documented particular circumstances and exchanges, ‘a living relationship between people’ (Hadot 2009: 52–55). Hadot explains that this is the reason that we come up against incoherences and contradictions in classical works: since none of them was a monologue, they always included, even implicitly, the dimension of the interlocutor, which reduced the element of absolute, pure, and orderly thought (Hadot 1995: 105). This dimension of the interlocutor was the single element that maintained the classical texts as practical exercises: in dialogue, the philosopher’s main task is to guide the listener towards a final mental state; thus, the dialogue is a sort of good-­ spirited combat that aspires to alter points of view and convictions (Hadot 1995: 91). This is the reason for all the ‘starts and stops, hesitations, detours, and digressions’ that we find in classical works (Davidson 1995: 20). The ‘impression of slowness’ also supports the potential readers who require time to transform their perception (Hadot 2009: 52, 59). Since the dialogue is a spiritual exercise whose purpose is to set the conditions for the transformation of the listener, rhetoric alone is not enough – a dialectic is needed, with the satisfaction of resolution being less valuable than the road travelled in common, the practice of the philosophical method itself (Hadot 1995: 92–93). The dialogue makes the search for truth a joint effort rather than a transference of wisdom, compelling the interlocutors to test the truthfulness of all that is said for themselves and to formulate their own moral and practical opinions (Cooper 1997: xix–xxi). This dialogical nature of philosophy, Hadot notes, increasingly diminished after the first century, when the first commentaries on early texts began to emerge (Hadot 2009: 53). From the Middle Ages, dialogue only appears as a literary form, ‘without the philosophical teaching itself taking a dialogical form’ (ibid., 55). Hadot relates the loss of dialogue as a transformative method to the disappearance of the communal aspect of philosophy, but for the very same reason he concludes that it is almost impossible to bring the dialogical nature of classical philosophy back to life (ibid.). As I shall demonstrate in Chaps. 2 and 4, the philosophical dialogue and philosophy as a way of life are deeply interrelated, perhaps even inseparable; thus, the two have disappeared together.

Understanding Krishnamurti Through the Hadotian Lens The recent resurgence of interest in the idea of áskēsis has been evoked not only by Hadot’s observations but also by the works of Foucault and Martha Nussbaum, each of whom considers classical spiritual exercises as constructively challenging to

6

1 Introduction

some key assumptions of modern philosophy (Antonaccio 1998: 70, 74).3 This growing rediscovery of the origins of Western philosophy goes hand in hand with an increasing recognition on the part of scholars of Asian philosophy that Hadot provides a multicultural ‘alternative framework for understanding philosophy as a practice and a discipline’ (Fiordalis 2018: 9). This framework enables us to utilize an effective model for comparing Eastern and Western philosophical discourses (ibid.), but it also paves the way for a philosophical hermeneutics of Eastern modes of thought (which would ordinarily be classified as ‘religious’), an understanding of their apparent incoherences and contradictions, and a reading that considers the context in which they came into being (Apple 2010: 193). After all, neither Parmenides’ On Nature nor the Bhagavadgītā measures up to the conventional conception of the reasoned argument (Nicholson 2015: 152), but only because their conception of the purpose of reasoned argument – and of what constitutes a well-­ reasoned argument  – differs from the modern ‘conventional’ one. Thus, Hadot’s interpretive principles have since been applied to more effective readings of Hindu and Buddhist texts by scholars of Asian philosophies (e.g. Apple 2010; Ganeri 2013; Nicholson 2015; Fiordalis 2018). Hadot himself came to recognize, despite his hostility to comparative philosophy, the existence of what he called ‘troubling analogies between the philosophical attitudes of antiquity and those of the Orient’ – analogies that can be employed in such a way that each philosophical attitude illuminates the other (Hadot 2002: 278). The foundational philosophical attitude of classical Western and non-Western philosophies is, indeed, identical: Greek and Roman thinkers, as well as Buddhist and Confucian philosophers, acted as ‘guides to living’, invested in philosophy as a way of life (Hidalgo 2020: 411–412). In light of the profound interrelation between philosophy as a way of life and the transformative dialogue, it is no wonder that the latter should be another striking aspect of classical philosophies’ commonality. For all these reasons, a Hadotian reading enables us to comprehend the unique philosophical status of dialogue-based texts that have been written with the intention of bringing about a transformation in the mind of the interlocutor and reader and reorienting their way of life. The limitation of Hadot’s hermeneutic approach is well known: Hadot insisted on including even theorists like Aristotle in his way of reading, assuming that all classical texts should be understood as spiritual exercises rather than attempts at establishing a metaphysics. Nonetheless, in the case of Krishnamurti, who outspokenly objected to the philosophical project of theory-­ building (Rodrigues 2001, 29–30, 200), it is reasonable to assume that this type of methodological approach would enable an optimal understanding of the text. Since Krishnamurti’s declared goal as a philosopher  – a ‘philosopher’ in the Hadotian sense4  – was the transformation of the human mind, I read his dialogues as a  Michel Foucault, whose work was influenced by Hadot, uses different terms – ‘care of the self’ and ‘techniques of the self’ – arguing that classical philosophy functioned as an ‘art of existence’ and that its áskēsis was designed to intensify one’s relation not with the cosmos, but with oneself (Antonaccio 1998: 78–79). 4  See Chap. 12 for finer distinctions. 3

The Krishnamurti Dialogue and Multicultural Philosophy

7

development of the tradition of the classical transformative dialogue or, simply put, as spiritual exercises: dialectical processes whose methods are employed not for the presentation of ideas but for facilitating an instantaneous and experiential insight. Moreover, I argue that interpreting Krishnamurti’s discourse as a metaphysical presentation, thus departing from his own clear intention, significantly hinders our ability to understand it. There is an ongoing scholarly debate on the philosophical status of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s teachings. Kumar (2015: 184–185) observes two approaches: one that demonstrates that Krishnamurti developed a philosophy consisting of metaphysics, epistemology, pedagogy, and ethics,5 and one that points out that Krishnamurti himself was highly critical of any system-building. Quoting Krishnamurti as saying that ‘philosophy means love of truth, not love of ideas’, Kumar concludes that while Krishnamurti appreciated philosophy in its etymological sense, his thought could not be classified into either Western or Eastern philosophies (ibid., 186–187). At the same time, Kumar does make the effort to place Krishnamurti in a historical context, drawing parallels between him and other philosophical traditions (ibid., 187). However, the way we situate Krishnamurti in a historical context and in relation to other philosophical traditions depends on our evaluation of the nature of the philosophical projects of these traditions. For instance, asserting, like Kumar (2015: 187), that the Greek model limited itself to truth achieved by the intellect alone would lead us to conclude that Krishnamurti was not a philosopher in this specifically Greek sense. But in the light of Hadot’s re-evaluation of the philosophy of classical Greece and its application to classical Indian texts, the debate on Krishnamurti as a philosopher becomes less crucial, since the very meaning and role of philosophy have been redefined. Thus, the mutually informing critical comparison that I will draw throughout this book will evidence the existence of classical ingredients of the transformative philosophical dialogue in Krishnamurti’s dialogue, as well as his innovation in this field. This, I believe, will make an important contribution to the rapidly growing secondary literature on Krishnamurti: by integrating his dialogue into this cross-cultural historical lineage, we finally shift from defending his teachings as either philosophical or anti-philosophical to a more lucid reading of his dialectic within its authentic frame of reference.

The Krishnamurti Dialogue and Multicultural Philosophy Illuminating Krishnamurti’s method within the broader context of a cross-cultural examination of Eastern and Western forms of transformative dialogue serves as a contribution not only to a deeper understanding of Krishnamurti’s work, but also to  See, for instance, Rodrigues (1988), who offers a systematic analysis of Krishnamurti’s metaphysical thought, and also Boutte (2002), who offers an analysis of his ‘phenomenology of compassion’. 5

8

1 Introduction

the developing field of ‘Multicultural Philosophy’ (Van Norden 2017), also called ‘Cosmopolitan Philosophy’ (Ganeri 2018) and ‘Fusion Philosophy’ (Siderits 2016). This field is the outcome of a vibrant discussion among academic philosophers about taking the project of comparative philosophy to the next level. In Van Norden’s (2017: 9–10) plea for a richer academic environment, in which philosophy students study the Bhagavadgītā in the same way that they study Plato’s Republic, he argues that the advance of academic philosophy is suffocated by its Eurocentric orientation. He points out that philosophy’s definition as an insular dialogue that entirely relies on the classical Greeks – a definition defended by Western luminaries such as Heidegger and Derrida – is a ‘recent, historically contingent, and controversial view’ (ibid., 19). Van Norden goes on to suggest that while philosophy itself is etymologically Greek, the assertion that non-Western philosophies are not ‘good philosophy’ is founded on both unfamiliarity with the materials and a conditioned response (ibid., 16, 148). We have no substantial reason to regard Plato’s dialogues as philosophical while dismissing Asian philosophical dialogues – seemingly contradictory or unpersuasive arguments can also be found within our most cherished philosophical literature (ibid., 14, 147). The fact that such texts do not follow Western rules of philosophical argumentation should not dissuade us; on the contrary, this may be their source of strength, since they offer fresh perspectives and alternative solutions for yet unsolved problems that Western philosophers still grapple with (ibid., 144), and even frame problems that have not been sufficiently addressed in the Anglo-European canon (ibid., 9–10). Furthermore, as E. H. Smith observes, ‘philosophy has in fact been many things in the 2,500 years or so since the term was first used’; thus, gross generalizations such as the ‘Western conception of philosophy’ or the ‘Indian view of liberation’ are so implausible that the only reasonable thing to do is to allow an open border through which more specific comparisons and dialogues could thrive (ibid., 30–31). Ganeri (2018) contends that Van Norden’s proposal is no more than a repetition of the old idea of comparative philosophy, which falsely presupposes that cultures are ‘integrated wholes’, each upholding its own essential identity. Cultures, Ganeri believes, are ‘fluid, amorphous beings’, and thus, philosophy is practised not by cultures but by individuals. Instead, he envisions a cosmopolitan philosophy, ‘to which cultural boundaries are invisible, because ideas do not carry passports and are not owned by one nation or another’ (ibid.).6 Nonetheless, as Burley (2019: 5–6) notes, both Ganeri’s cosmopolitan philosophy and the idea of fusion philosophy advocated by Mark Siderits – which aims to ‘combine philosophical resources’ for the ‘purpose of solving philosophical problems’ – are, beyond terminological differences, congruent with Van Norden’s appeal. The same can be said about other voices that seek to challenge the boundaries of the project of transcultural philosophy.

 Burley (2019: 9) justifiably identifies a limitation in this fluid vision, since philosophical traditions, whether Eastern or Western, do have their own internal heritage, which also preserves their coherence. For instance, Western philosophy is, after all, ‘a conversation over time’, whose ‘ongoing succession of responses and counter responses’ was largely inaugurated by Plato’s dialogues (ibid.). 6

The Krishnamurti Dialogue and Multicultural Philosophy

9

Consider, for instance, Fiordalis’s (2018: 2–3) claim that the different frameworks of cross-cultural philosophy are still overly cautious in their focus on topics and questions already identifiable by modern analytically trained philosophers and in their hope to evidence systematic reasoning and argumentation in Eastern texts worthy of Western consideration. This insistence on absolute commonality, Fiordalis argues, only reinforces the predetermined conception of what makes a theory or an argument properly philosophical (ibid., 3–4). The generally praiseworthy endeavour of multicultural philosophy should be further problematized in order to realize its furthest destinations and deepest potentials. In the case of my own exploration, there are four ways in which this study may stimulate the current discussion. Firstly, the Hadotian hermeneutic approach provides a fertile ground for the understanding of practice-based philosophies that have thrived in both West and East, thus enabling us to consider dialogues of diverse cultures and religions under the umbrella term of the transformative dialogue. Reading these philosophies in Hadot’s way brings us to re-evaluate the very act of philosophizing – not only how we philosophize, but more importantly, why. This naturally leads us to the second point: aided by the Hadotian reading, one discovers that the marked distinctions that currently delimit Western academic philosophy and that make transcultural philosophy such a great undertaking become increasingly subtle the further we go back in time. By the time we have reached the ever-flowing spring of modern Western philosophy – Greco-Roman philosophy – the project of unifying philosophies of East and West seems nearly redundant – if we consider motivation and purpose to be crucial factors in the evolution of philosophy. As a result of their common predominant conception of philosophy as transformation, both classical Indian philosophy and classical Greek philosophy were largely dialogical in form and nature (see Peters and Besley 2019: 1; Hadot 1995: 91; Easwaran 2007: 20; Nicholson 2015: 153). These dialectical dialogues were not merely intended to establish theoretical conclusions, since they also had the practical purpose of transforming the interlocutors and their way of life.7 This purpose, strikingly different from the orientation of modern academic philosophy,8 was pivotal in the designation of the philosophical strategy selected by the philosopher – hence, the why greatly affected the how. Thus, by turning to the origins of the philosophical dialogue, we find a powerful perspective that does not unite East and West but, more fundamentally, reveals a radical commonality in their understanding of philosophy as transformation. This discovery, as Davidson (1995: 2, 35) suggests in his assessment of Hadot, does more than enable us to correct our view on the history of philosophy – it also calls into question our present and future philosophical paradigm. The deeper we probe into our philosophical ancestry and ‘free philosophy and its history from the  Not only the imagined or actual participant in the discussion, but also the future reader or hearer of the text. 8  With the exception of some modern moral philosophy which is intended to bring about a change in ethical action. One example is the contribution to animal welfare campaigns made by Peter Singer’s (2009) Animal Liberation. 7

10

1 Introduction

sterile constraints of abstract theorizing and academic specialization’ (Carlson, quoted in Hadot 2009: 241), the more we dig out vital components which may have been suppressed by modern Western philosophy. In light of the fact that the academic activity we call ‘philosophy’ would be considered, in the eyes of classical philosophers, a discourse in the limited sense of the term, rather than doing philosophy (Davidson 1995: 26), we could at least challenge the boundaries of the academic discourse by legitimizing other old and new forms of philosophical engagement. Philosophy may also be a choice of life, a therapy, ‘a means to overcome oneself’, an active component of the ‘concrete life of humans’ (Hadot 2009: 55–56, 60). Its contemplation can make us ‘citizens of the universe’, fill us with mystical feelings, be driven by ‘meaningful life experiences’, and prepare us to ‘face challenging life experiences’ (Van Norden 2017: 154–156). The realization that Socrates and Confucius alike engaged in philosophical dialogue for the sake of a significant ethical purpose, personal cultivation, and perfection (ibid., 158–159) is also an invitation to join them in seeking out the types of contemplative activities that could philosophically transform humans. Seen from this perspective, the rise of interest in Hadot’s research, the turn to áskēsis in moral philosophy and religious ethics (Antonaccio 1998: 70), and the intense fascination of leading thinkers with Krishnamurti and his dialogue all seem to stem from the same source: a longing for certain buried aspects of philosophy as an active player in human life; for a philosophy that, just like physics and medicine, can produce practical results; for texts that not only inform but also transform; for logic and reasoning that are at the service of a greater purpose; for the forgotten art of the philosophical dialogue; and for the spiritual exercise as an intimate practice of philosophy (Hadot 1995: 81). Thus, the type of dialogue examined in this study encourages us to revisit the lost practice of transformative philosophy, in that it reveals new pathways of philosophical and religious inquiry that bear thought-­ provoking practical implications. On the other hand, a third way in which this book may broaden the discussion of multicultural philosophy is by making important distinctions that tend to become blurred as a result of our aspiration to integrate all forms of spiritual exercise into the unified category of philosophy. It is my contention that the question of differentiating between philosophy and materials or ideas that may or may not become the subject of philosophical study should be raised. Must all the activities classified as transformative dialogue be considered a part of the philosophical spectrum? Would it be patronizing to exclude some of the practices presented in this book from philosophy’s project and to determine that they are mystical or religious, since they not only lack certain crucial ingredients but also vocally reject the centrality of the intellect in the search for truth and wisdom? In this respect, despite the sense of open borders between philosophy, mysticism, and self-transformation, the example of the Krishnamurti dialogue helps to highlight incompatibilities between the three. The fourth and last main contribution made by this book is the comprehensive presentation of one living expression of multicultural philosophy. In terms of cultural influences, Krishnamurti embodied the India–West dialogue: born in India and raised in an environment suffused with the heritage of classical Hindu thought and

The Journey Ahead

11

ritual (Jayakar 1986: 15–17), he later continued his education in Europe, and throughout his adult life, he toured Europe, America, and Asia, while frequently pausing for long periods of teaching in India. More importantly, Krishnamurti’s manner of presentation seemed to blend elements of the Indian guru–disciple tradition and Western inquiry (Williams 2015: 671), and his dialogue contained dialectical elements typified in classical Western philosophy on the one hand and South Asian mysticism on the other.

The Journey Ahead Prior to delving into the unique case of the Krishnamurti dialogue, I aim in Part I to provide the reader with a broader discussion of the origins of the philosophical and religious dialogue in classical Greece and classical India. My presentation of extant dialogues will lean on a Hadotian reading that will help us to construe them aright as examples of what may be classified as the transformative dialogue. In Chap. 2, I introduce a model of ‘transformative philosophy’: a type of philosophical activity, practised by both Greek and Indian philosophers and mystics, in which the transformative dialogue thrived as a central spiritual exercise. This model builds on Hadot’s contention that classical philosophy was a continuum of teaching and training, intended to transform all aspects of the practitioner’s being through practical, committed, and lived exercises. I discuss the interrelations between the different components of this philosophy, in which the argument-based discourse constituted only one ingredient of a complete system. The model of transformative philosophy, I suggest, consists of five essential components: mystical experience (or alternatively, existential conviction); practices, both internal (within oneself) and external (in life); argument-based (or systematic) discourse; a way of life (or embodiment); and a communal or dialogical dimension. Chapter 3 zooms in on the dialogical component of transformative philosophy. I offer a historical overview of the emergence of the transformative dialogue in both Greece and India, indicating that this was an integral part of a greater transition: during the fourth and third centuries bc a great flourishing of philosophical systems began to threaten the mythopoetic world view by insisting on the human mind’s philosophical and mystical capacity to liberate itself. The fact that both the Greek and Indian traditions adopted the dialogue form for the expression of ideas at the time of this historical and philosophical transition suggests that dialogue could serve as an effective tool for the expression and realization of this shift. Chapter 4 is devoted to explicating and illustrating more generally the particular type of dialogue employed by transformative philosophies in classical India and Greece. Drawing similarities between Platonian and Upaniṣadic dialogues, I outline the ethical and practical characteristics of the transformative dialogue. On the basis of these characteristics, I delineate the conditions that the successful transformative dialogue requires for its fulfilment. Finally, I discuss the transformative potential of

12

1 Introduction

a dialogue, suggesting two primary types of mind-altering outcome for both literary participants and willing readers. Having focused on the common nature of the transformative dialogue, I move to a more careful analysis of two sample dialogues: Plato’s Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad.9 Comparative philosophers have already shown great interest in juxtaposing this particular Platonic work with various South Asian texts, including the Kaṭhopaniṣad, which shares with the Phaedo enough common features for a comparative analysis to be fruitful. Above all, both dialogues are intensely preoccupied with the notions of self-liberation and self-transcendence in the face of death. These commonalities also enable me to bring important dissimilarities in the dialogical processes into focus, revealing that there is still a substantial difference between the nature of the philosophy celebrated by the Greeks and the mystical thought developed by the Upaniṣadic sages. Thus, I suggest dividing the general spiritual exercise of transformative dialogue into the two subcategories of the philosophical and the mystical transformative dialogue. In Part II, which comprises the central discussion of this book, I turn to an in-­ depth exploration of Krishnamurti’s dialogical method, drawing on my previous study of the transformative dialogue and its variations. My aim is to show, based on the Hadotian hermeneutic approach, that Krishnamurti’s discourse as a whole – like classical types of transformative dialogue  – cannot be evaluated as isolated and abstract ideas, since it fundamentally exists only in dialogue, even when the discourse takes the lecture form. Chapter 6 is devoted to a biographical investigation, with the intention of identifying the early signs of the eventual dialogue form that already existed in Krishnamurti’s youth and initial teaching career. I also establish my claim that aside from the explicit dialogical format, Krishnamurti’s discourse was designed to engage listeners in a dialogical process that relied on their internal response. In Chap. 7, I finally focus my attention on the distinctive method behind the Krishnamurti dialogue that enabled it to accomplish its transformative goals.10 Employing a thorough analysis of the early development of Krishnamurti’s dialogical methodology and two typical dialogues, I accentuate the hidden and sometimes befuddling techniques and intentions that guide their progression. In particular, I highlight the dialogue’s most revolutionary tools of investigation, which, I believe, are Krishnamurti’s primary contribution to the field of the philosophical and religious dialogue: his use of unanswerable questions and his practice of mystical negation. Chapter 8 is concerned with the nature of the transformed state which Krishnamurti’s method strives to either reveal or establish – and the way that his dialectical tools aim to fulfil it. To elucidate what Krishnamurti hoped to achieve through his unique process of investigation, I delineate a model that outlines the

 Parts of this chapter were previously published by the Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion (2022a: 54–87). 10  Parts of this chapter were previously published by the journal Spirituality Studies (2022b: 2–13). 9

The Journey Ahead

13

four different stages of his dialogue: the method, the preparatory stage, the shift of insight, and the ultimate state. Furthermore, I highlight positive pronouncements made by Krishnamurti which deviate from his general approach of persistent negation, and identify implicit connections between the process of question and negation and the mentioned mystical states. I conclude Part II with an analysis of two dialogues between Krishnamurti and renowned philosophers. In general, Krishnamurti and many great intellectuals of his time felt drawn to each other and considered it meaningful not only to engage in dialogue but also to carefully record a large number of their discussions. These discussions, especially those between Krishnamurti and various philosophers and theologians, reveal meaningful tensions between philosophy and mysticism, as well as familiar problems from the field of the philosophy of mysticism. I have focused my analysis on Krishnamurti’s conversations with Iris Murdoch and Jacob Needleman, as these exchanges not only highlight differences between the academic model of critical thinking and Krishnamurti’s processes of transformative inquiry, but also demonstrate how the two of these both enrich and provoke one another. In order to determine the degree to which Krishnamurti’s techniques either continue or depart from similar techniques applied in traditional forms of transformative dialogue, Part III is devoted to two comparative studies. These studies help me to evaluate Krishnamurti’s contribution to the philosophical and religious dialogue. In Chap. 10, I examine the use of questions in the Socratic dialogue, the kōan tradition of Rinzai Zen, and the Krishnamurti dialogue. My exploration begins with a discussion of the nature and purposes of Socrates’ elenchus and continues to the way that the Japanese Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism deploys riddles to achieve its transformative state of satori. On the basis of these presentations, I highlight similarities and dissimilarities both between these two schools of thought and practice and between each of these two schools and Krishnamurti’s conception and technique of unanswerable questions. Ultimately, this brief comparative study will demonstrate that Krishnamurti’s use of questions blends the ‘Western’ process of philosophical inquiry and Eastern-oriented mystical ends. Chapter 11 shifts the focus to Krishnamurti’s other major technique, his use of negation, in comparison to Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s practices of negation. I introduce the Buddha’s imponderables and the way Nāgārjuna developed these segments of the Buddha’s Dharma into the system of the Mādhyamika. I then present Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta as a negative philosophy and demonstrate the ways that his method corresponds to and stands in contrast to Nāgārjuna’s negation. These presentations enable me to highlight the uniqueness of Krishnamurti’s dialectical negation: while these two classical approaches are tools for the elimination of metaphysical views and epistemological approaches, Krishnamurti’s is a psychological and post-­ traditional negation whose aim is to do away with past, knowledge, and authority. In the book’s final part, ‘Conclusions and Implications’, I offer an appraisal of the different ways that exploration of the Krishnamurti dialogue may advance our understanding in relevant fields: from research on Krishnamurti’s thought to areas such as the philosophical and religious dialogue, Pierre Hadot’s methodology, and

14

1 Introduction

multicultural philosophy. Additionally, since my study exists on the border between philosophy and mysticism, I argue that the Krishnamurti dialogue helps us to make finer distinctions between philosophy, transformative philosophy, and mystical activity. Last, I suggest possible practical uses of the method in forms of philosophical and religious inquiry.

References Agrawal, M.M. 2002. Freedom of the Soul: A Post-Modern Understanding of Hinduism. New Delhi: Concept. Anderson, Allen W. 2012. On Krishnamurti’s Teachings. Ojai: Karina Library Press. Anderson, Allan W., and J. Krishnamurti. 1991. A Wholly Different Way of Living. London: Viktor Gollancz. Antonaccio, Maria. 1998. Contemporary Forms of Askesis and the Return of Spiritual Exercises. The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 18: 69–92. https://doi.org/10.5840/asce19981811. Apple, James B. 2010. Can Buddhist Thought Be Construed as a Philosophia, or a Way of Life? Bulletin of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy: 191–204. Boutte, Veronica. 2002. The Phenomenology of Compassion in the Teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, 1895–1986. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press. Boy, John D., and John Torpey. 2013. Inventing the Axial Age: The Origins and Uses of a Historical Concept. Theory & Society 42: 241–259. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-­013-­9193-­0. Burley, Mikel. 2019. Philosophizing Within and Across Traditions: Discussing Bryan Van Norden’s Proposal for Multicultural Philosophy. Paper presented at the Multicultural Philosophy Conference, Manchester Hall, Manchester, 15 July 2019. Cooper, John M. 1997. Introduction. In Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, vii–xxviii, 49–50, 557–558. Indianapolis: Hackett. Davidson, Arnold. 1995. Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy. In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot. Trans. Michael Chase, 1–45. Oxford: Blackwell. Easwaran, Eknath. 2007. Introduction. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 13–47, 63–67. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Fiordalis, David, ed. 2018. Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path. Berkeley: Mangalam Press. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2013. Philosophy as a Way of Life. In Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, ed. Michael Chase, Stephen Clark, and Michael McGhee, 116–131. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2018. Taking Philosophy Forward [Review of Taking Back Philosophy]. Los Angeles Review of Books, August 20. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/taking-­philosophy-­forward/ Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael Chase. Hoboken: Blackwell. ———. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hidalgo, Javier. 2020. Why Practice Philosophy as a Way of Life? Metaphilosophy 51 (2–3): 411–431. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12421. Hunter, Alan. 1988. Seeds of Truth: J.  Krishnamurti as Religious Teacher and Educator. PhD Dissertation, University of Leeds. Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press.

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Kumar, Ashwani. 2011. Understanding Curriculum as Meditative Inquiry: A Study of the Ideas of Jiddu Krishnamurti and James Macdonald. PhD Dissertation, University of British Columbia. Kumar, Kesava. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution. Delhi: Kalpaz. Martin, Raymond. 1997. Introduction. In Krishnamurti: Reflection on the Self. Chicago: Open Court. ———. 2002. On Krishnamurti. Belmont: Wadsworth. Needleman, Jacob. 1970. The New Religions. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Nicholson, Andrew. 2015. Dialogue and Genre in Indian Philosophy. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 151–169. New York: Routledge. Peters, Michael A., and Tina Besley. 2019. Models of Dialogue. Educational Philosophy and Theory: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1684801. Rodrigues, Hillary. 1988. ‘Insight’ and ‘The Religious Mind’ in the Teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Dissertation, McMaster University. ———. 2001. Krishnamurti’s Insight. Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing. Sanat, Ariel. 1999. The Inner Life of Krishnamurti. Wheaton: Quest. Siderits, Mark. 2016. Studies in Buddhist Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singer, Peter. 2009. Animal Liberation: The Definitive Classic of the Animal Movement. New York: Harper Perennial. Smith, Andrew. 2015. Between Facts and Myth: Karl Jaspers and the Actuality of the Axial Age. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 76 (4): 315–334. https://doi.org/10.108 0/21692327.2015.1136794. Suri, Amina S. 2008. The Philosophical Basis of J Krishnamurti’s Teachings: A Reappraisal. PhD Dissertation, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Tubali, Shai. 2022a. A Dialogue of Life and Death: Transformative Dialogue in the Katha Upanishad and Plato’s Phaedo. Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion 27: 54–87. ———. 2022b. Questions to Which There Are No Answers: The Method Behind Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Dialogue. Spirituality Studies. 8 (1): 2–13. Van Norden, Bryan. 2017. Taking Back Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. Williams, Chris V. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher. Millers Point: Sydney School of Arts & Humanities.

Part I

The Classical Philosophical Dialogue

Chapter 2

‘Know Thyself’: Hadot and the Conception of Transformative Philosophy

‘Can Socrates’ discourse be separated from the life and death of Socrates?’ asks Pierre Hadot (2002: 6). In principle, the answer is ‘yes’. It is possible to isolate Socrates’ thought, study it independently of his way of life, and even greatly benefit from it. A more accurate question would be whether we can fully comprehend Socrates the philosopher when we separate him from Socrates the human being who lived and died the way he did.1 The fact that Plato enveloped the Socratic dialogues with numerous references to Socrates’ unique presence, choices, and actions was not just a matter of literary embellishment. When Socrates finally speaks, we find his discourse a natural continuation of his living practice. His way of being and his form of discourse seem to flow from and into one another. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia (1994: 130), in response to the demand that he stop posing questions and refuting everyone’s opinions and instead disclose what he holds justice to be, Socrates answers, ‘I never stop showing what things are just in my opinion. If not by speech, I show it rather by deed.’ Thus, when we grapple with Socrates’ ideas, we usually also see in our mind’s eye the man who was capable of fearing nothing, exhibiting indifference to everything that others deemed valuable, and drinking without ever becoming intoxicated (Symposium, 220a–b). We can also vividly visualize him standing motionless and meditating for an entire day (ibid., 220d), or discussing and practising his philosophy of death and immortality while calmly drinking poison and preparing to die (Phaedo, 117). As Nietzsche, who modelled himself upon Socrates (Hollingdale 2001: 77), wrote, for young people of the elite, it was the image of the ‘dying Socrates that became the new ideal, never before encountered’ (Hadot 2002: 41).

 As we shall see in Part II, the same question applies to Krishnamurti. Even academics were first struck by Krishnamurti’s intensity of quietude and great energy (see, for instance, Anderson 2012: 13). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_2

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But, as Hadot’s lifelong research reveals to us, Socrates was not exceptional in demonstrating a philosophy that both speaks and shows. This ‘continuous philosophy’ that is tangibly ‘seen in acts and deeds’ and that takes place ‘at all times and in all parts, in all experiences and activities’ (Plutarch 2013: 16) was the very heart of the vast majority of classical Greek philosophies – and, as I shall suggest later in this chapter, the core of most classical Indian philosophies as well. In an attempt to embrace the totality of this philosophical approach, Hadot finally determined to name it ‘spiritual exercises’ (Hadot 1995: 82). Though he was well aware of the contentious use of the term ‘spiritual’, other adjectives he had considered – such as ‘psychic’, ‘moral’, or ‘intellectual’ – seemed to cover only aspects of a complete reality (ibid.). The greater part of classical philosophy, after all, acted as a continuum of teaching and training, intended to transform all aspects of the practitioners’ being through practical, committed, and lived exercises (Davidson 1995: 21). However, the term ‘spiritual exercises’ may be somewhat misleading: the use of the plural in ‘exercises’ and the closeness of the term to ‘practices’ can obscure the fact that philosophy as a whole was an exercise (Hadot 2009: 88). Thus, the questions of what is spiritual exercise and what is classical philosophy, at least in terms of its general orientation, are one and the same: it was a culture of philosophy as a spiritual exercise. In this chapter’s first section, I intend to expand Hadot’s view of classical philosophy as a spiritual exercise, suggesting a model of the interrelations between the different components of this type of philosophy, which may be termed ‘transformative philosophy’. This integrative model, I will show, consists of five essential ingredients: transformation (or purification) of the mind; practices – both internal (within oneself) and external (in life); argument-based (or systematic) discourse; a way of life (or embodiment); and a communal or dialogical dimension, which will be discussed separately in the third section. The second section will be dedicated to exploring, in greater detail, the nature of transformative philosophy and its various expressions in both classical Greece and classical India. While keeping in mind exceptions such as classical India’s sceptics (Ajñāna) and materialists (Lokāyata or Cārvāka) and classical Greek theorists like Aristotle – not to mention the evident diversity of voices among transformative philosophies in both traditions – I shall strive to accentuate commonalities in order to achieve general definitions. Since I employ the Hadotian lens, which originally was exclusively focused on Greco-­ Roman philosophy (and critical of attempts at comparative philosophy), I will start the study with the beginnings of Western philosophy and only later carefully build on this by incorporating Indian forms of classical philosophy into the discussion. Finally, in the fourth section, I will shift the centre of gravity from the component that Hadot highlights the most – philosophy as a way of life – to another component that strikes me as the truly foundational one around which all other ingredients revolved: the transformation and purification of the mind. This shift will lean on the realization that in this type of philosophy, transformation of oneself and philosophy were, in reality, inextricably linked. In terms of the broader aspiration of this book, such a model will ultimately enable me to suggest a more effective treatment of the Krishnamurti dialogue in the light of classical forms of philosophy.

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The ‘Organized Totality’ of Classical Philosophy When we read a written work by a classical philosopher, we are often encountering only a fragment of the philosophy itself and can easily misjudge the philosophy on the basis of the fragment. For instance, historians generally recognize that Plato’s dialogues ‘fall short of the Platonic philosophy’ and ‘transmit to us only a particularly limited and impoverished image’ of his activity within the academy he established (Brison, quoted in Hadot 2002: 73). To comprehend the way that the philosophical discourse, documented in many of these works, functioned in classical times, we need to stretch our imagination beyond the words. We need to picture a philosophical life, in which philosophy was not a profession or expertise but a holistic activity whose purpose was to enable a sublime way of being. We should further imagine a philosophy in which argument-based discourse constituted only one component of a complete system and thus existed in relation to other, more crucial components. While the concept of a system certainly existed in antiquity, it was intended to describe not an intellectual construction but an ‘organized totality whose parts depended on each other’ (Hadot 2009: 90). In classical Greece, didactic requirements split philosophical activity into the three branches of logic, physics, and ethics, but in the lived act of philosophy, they were ‘aspects of the very same virtue and very same wisdom’ (Davidson 1995: 25). They were fundamentally and practically indistinguishable, and their theoretical distinction was only designed to direct the practitioner’s attention to different relations each time – to the cosmos, other people, or the intellect itself (ibid.). It was the same Logos that guided both theoretical and lived forms of logic, physics, and ethics, and it was the same Logos towards which the faculty of reasoning, the meditation on the cosmos, and the practice of virtues strove (ibid., 24–25). To better grasp this unified system, we first need to take a careful look into each of the components and its relation to the other philosophical activities. Although the classical Greek distinction between logic, physics, and ethics could be a convenient framework for this exploration, I would like to offer here an expanded model consisting of four essential ingredients: transformation (or purification) of the mind; practices, both internal (within oneself) and external (in life); argument-based (or systematic) discourse, and a way of life (or embodiment). To this complex we should later add the communal or dialogical dimension.2 This model, as I will  Hidalgo (2020: 411–412), who strongly believes that classical philosophical traditions of both West and East acted principally as ‘guides to living’, suggests that philosophy as a spiritual exercise involves two main ingredients: first, philosophical reasoning and reflection about how we should live, and second, behavioural, cognitive, and social strategies, such as internal practices and communal engagement, that alter the practitioner’s behaviour and attitudes in accordance with their philosophical commitments. Although such a model captures the intense relationship within the classical systems between reflection and its actualization through practice and a way of life, it risks reducing the discourse to a reflection on the ‘good life’ and limiting the philosophical commitment to knowing how to live well. 2

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demonstrate in the following sections, effectively accommodates a significant number of schools among the philosophical cultures of both classical Greece and classical India. The component of the transformation or purification of the mind often seems to be played down in Hadot’s writings and the writings of scholars who follow in his footsteps – at least relative to the far more emphasized ‘choice of life’ or ‘way of life’ (Hadot 2002: 3). Nonetheless, there are enough instances in which Hadot himself defines the general aim of classical Greek philosophy as the progression and the ‘ever-renewed effort’ towards the ideal state of ‘wisdom’ (Hadot 1995: 103, 2002: 44; Apple 2010: 196).3 Furthermore, all spiritual exercises  – whether Platonian, Stoic, or Epicurean – were exclusively designed to lead to a state in which the mind returns to its true nature (Hadot 1995: 103). Although we cannot know for certain the original meaning of the maxim ‘Know thyself’, which was inscribed on the pediment of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, one significant interpretation seems to be identical to the underlying motivation behind all spiritual exercises: knowing oneself in one’s essential being by ‘separating that which we are not from that which we are’ (ibid., 90). This ‘return to the essential’ leads to knowledge of oneself and of the world, liberation from passions and desires, and a shift from egoistic individuality to the objectivity of participation in universal nature or thought (ibid., 102–103). The different Greek schools of thought  – such as the Platonian, Aristotelian, Cynic, and Pyrrhonian schools – developed their own universal attitudes with which they hoped to purify their members from that which they were not and to achieve the state of wisdom (Davidson 1995: 34). For instance, the universal Stoic attitude cultivated the perception of cosmic wholeness of which one is an inseparable part, as well as the concentration on the lived presence of the instant, where one can see the world as if for the first or last time and contact the totality of time and of the world (ibid.). Another example is the Epicurean attitude that strove to reduce desires in order to return to the ‘simple and pure pleasure of existing’ (ibid.), which can be experienced by the undisturbed, free, and tranquil mind (ataraxia) (Bergsma et al. 2008: 400). In Plato, we read that the quest for this state of wisdom cannot be satiated in human life, hence his perception of philosophy as an unending pursuit. While sitting on his deathbed, Plato’s Socrates maintains that since the body and its desires keep us ‘too busy to practice philosophy’, a complete and final attainment of the state of wisdom (sophia) can only be accomplished by the philosopher after death, when the soul has escaped the body altogether and one can ‘observe things in themselves with the soul by itself’ (Phaedo, 66b–e). Consequently, since the entire purpose of the  This was also Hadot’s cardinal misgiving about Foucault’s reading of áskēsis: the fact that Foucault omitted the element of the existential attitude, or ‘lived physics’, that had been essential in the eyes of the classical philosopher, in favour of the purely ethical context of ‘care of the self’ (Davidson 1995: 24–25). Hadot contends that the transformation of the self offered by spiritual exercises was possible only when the self was positioned within the broader context of the totality of the cosmos (ibid.). 3

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practice of philosophy is fulfilled at the time of dying and in death, the philosopher, who is eager to merge into wisdom, is also eager for death (ibid., 64a). Until this final merging with ‘pure knowledge’, we can only aspire to be closest to it by minimizing the effects of the ‘body’s folly’ (ibid., 67a). Here we find an important confirmation that, in Platonian terms, ‘philosophy’ is the pursuit of ‘wisdom’, and that ‘wisdom’ is equated with ‘pure knowledge’, which is the transcendent state of the soul being by itself. Furthermore, philosophical knowledge cannot be formulated like other bodies of knowledge: it springs from the soul, surfacing, as it were, in the form of remembrance (Hadot 2002: 71). Thus, philosophy is learning to remember (ibid., 27). While the component of the transformation of the mind was the ultimate purpose of philosophy as a spiritual exercise among classical Greek and classical Indian transformation-based traditions, internal and external practices were structured imitations of these spontaneous states of mind. For instance, the genuine awareness of impermanence is transformed into the Stoic Epictetus’ practice according to which when kissing one’s child, one should imagine that they will die tomorrow (Hidalgo 2020: 422). By repeating these practices on a daily basis, the practitioner’s hope was to achieve the essential reality at which the practice was pointing. Thus, the practices were simulations of reality designed to lead back to it. Other practices – physical, as in dietary regimes, intuitive, as in contemplation, or therapeutic, as in the ordering of one’s passions and emotional responses – were intended to prepare and mature the practitioner’s body and mind for the leap to the purified state of mind and the philosophy teacher’s discourse (Hadot 2002: 6). All practices, without exception, sought to make the individual into the kind of being that their chosen philosophy endorsed (Hidalgo 2020: 421). For this purpose, they had to take the form of repeated routines rather than sudden realizations (ibid., 422). Only a frequent engagement could finally make their lessons a ‘habitus of the soul’, an unshakable conviction deeply embedded in the depths of one’s being (Davidson 1995: 22–23). The goal was to become a master of oneself (Hadot 2002: 66) and the practices both imitated and invoked the soul’s reign over body and mind. In this sense, although the practices, unlike eschatologically oriented religious practices, were designed to facilitate not only transformation in this life, but also the ‘simple happiness of existing’ in the present instant (Cottingham 2005: 7–8), the dimension of time was necessary for the transformation to take root and blossom. The practices functioned as an integral part of a philosophy that could not be grasped only through theoretical engagement. For philosophy as a spiritual exercise to be comprehended in its totality, it was necessary to practise it continuously by oneself on oneself and, through the practice, to achieve glimpses into the sublime state of wisdom. Without the experiential dimension, which involved one’s entire soul and being, the complete truth of such a philosophy could not be realized. Experience was, in this sense, not superior to intellectual analysis, as Cottingham asserts (2005: 5–6), but, more accurately, the complementary counterpart to the theory, since it filled the gaps that intellectual understanding could not reach. That is why these practices involved not only reason but also other psychological

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faculties, such as memory, imagination, and affectivity (Davidson 1995: 23; Antonaccio 1998: 74). The third component of philosophy as a spiritual exercise, that of argument-­ based or systematic discourse, existed not merely to rationally justify or reaffirm the existential attitude and style of life, as Hadot contends (quoted in Davidson 1995: 30–31; Apple 2010: 192), but more importantly, to lead the practitioner’s mind to the experiential state of wisdom. Before anything else, the discourse was a translation of existential revelations that provided the philosophy teachers with a ‘vision of things as they are’ (Hadot 1995: 58). It was the existential, not the ethical, that gave shape to the metaphysical.4 The philosopher then attempted to ground and defend this vision logically and systematically in a way that could confidently guide the student towards a similar experience. Such an experience was the moment in which the discourse had achieved its ultimate purpose by enabling the disciple to leap to wisdom; thus, the theory prepared the intellect for a state beyond words and reason and could only be fulfilled in this way (Hadot 2002: 4–5). Consider, in this context, Diotima’s description, as conveyed by Socrates in the Symposium (210–211), of the ever-refining initiations into the mystery of Love that the disciple should pass through until they reach the ‘goal of Loving’ and behold that which was the ‘reason for all their earlier labors’ (including love of knowledge that gives birth to ‘beautiful ideas and theories’): beauty itself, an indescribable transcendent state beyond form and measurement. The discourse alone was not the philosophy, but only an element of it, a ‘representation of the world’ guided by the existential attitude (Davidson 1995: 31). The first task of coherent reasoning was to echo the truth of the internal revelation, out of the conscious knowing that the truth was a complete realization and that logic could only demonstrate or express it. ‘Truth’ could not be contained in abstract theories, but existed as a totality of experience and idea, a complex structure in which experience gave life to theory and theory led to experience. In this sense, the experience–theory relationship was reciprocal and mutually reinforcing without one or the other being logically prior. For instance, Plato’s theory of Forms existed simultaneously as a metaphysical and ontological thesis and as an experiential, liberating, purifying, and transforming process intended to bring the student to self-­ conquest and self-knowledge. To fully realize its truthfulness, one had to spiritually detach oneself from physical objects and ascend to the ‘place beyond heaven’, where it was possible to catch sight of the ‘subject of all true knowledge, visible only to intelligence, the soul’s steersman’ (Phaedrus, 247c–d). That is not to say that the discourse was not rational by nature and did not offer rational explanations of the world (Hadot 2002: 10). Undoubtedly, the ancients wished to found their theories on meticulous demonstration and acceptable arguments (ibid., 11), as well as to pose precise problems and propose solutions to them

 For a contrary view, see Hadot, quoted in Antonaccio (1998: 77–78).

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(ibid., 74).5 In Hadot’s writings, one may sometimes get the impression that systematic presentations were only designed to produce ‘assurance in the soul, peace and serenity’ (Davidson 1995: 22). But they were not merely a means to an end: even as an isolated component, the classical philosophical discourse clearly strove to introduce a coherent and consistent system of thought. The classical forms of áskēsis were practised against a conceptual background that linked human reason and a rational order of nature: since ‘a life lived according to nature was a life lived according to reason’, cultivating a proper vision of the world could bring ‘rational order to the soul’ (Antonaccio 1998: 75–76). Nonetheless, even in this conceptual framework we find an existential hope – the hope of aligning one’s being with the cosmic order through the use of the rational. In this sense, the discourse did not function merely as a preparation for wisdom. It was, in itself, an exercise of wisdom (Hadot 2002: 49), a practice for teacher and student alike that, in Aristotle’s view, enabled the intellect to participate in the ‘divine way of life’ and actualized the ‘divine in the human’ (Davidson 1995: 29).6,7 As such, it was not fully committed to the task of procuring an ‘exhaustive explanation of all reality’; it only needed to link a small group of principles that possessed the greatest transformational efficacy (ibid., 22). For this transformational effect, its form of presentation and argumentation was also modified (ibid.), taking detours and turns before answering a question in its effort to achieve formation rather than provide information (Hadot 2009: 88–89). In this way, it also employed philosophical reasoning to purge the student’s mind of the pretences of reason, as well as wrong obligations and aims in life (Ganeri 2013b: 128–130; Hidalgo 2020: 413–415). We can imagine that the students participated in the discourse before and after their practices. The practices revealed to the students existential truths and deepened their insight, but they were not complete without the intellectual discourse that placed the experience in a broader metaphysical context and elaborated on its implications. At the same time, the discourse served as a vital preparation for later practices by enhancing one’s confidence in the purpose of the practice and directing the mind to seek the conceptual aspect of the truth, as it was emphasized during the presentation, in the realm of experience. Thus, theory and practice could only be considered in light of each other (Fiordalis 2018: 12). In the same way, the discourse laid the foundation for the fourth component of philosophy as a spiritual exercise,  One could say that without the ingredient of rational reflection and the active and conscious application of the intellect to the discovery of truth and wisdom, it is no longer possible to identify a certain human activity as a philosophy at all (Hidalgo 2020: 426). For instance, such an activity might instead be a religious way of life that solely relies on ‘dogmatic appeals to divine revelation and authority’ (ibid.). 6  Hadot remarks that although Plato’s academy included training in dialectics, Plato considered such a mastery dangerous, fearing that young people might believe that any position could be defended or attacked (Hadot 2002: 62–63). For this reason, Plato’s dialectics was not a purely logical exercise but a joint effort to attain self-transformation (ibid.). 7  Elaborate discussions of Aristotle’s perception of human divinity can be found in KamińskaTarkowska (2012) and Keena (2021), among other works. 5

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that of a way of life or embodiment. The theoretical presentation helped the disciple to deduce from the direct experience, the revelations achieved during the practices, and the metaphysical world view a corresponding way of life. But the theory also depended on its actualization. This is what Davidson means when he writes, ‘The goal of discourse is actually actions’ (1995: 27–28): the theoretical could not be fully realized as long as it remained in the kingdom of ideas; it could only be completed when it culminated in its lived ethical form. In philosophy as a spiritual exercise, the ideas must flow into life. Moreover, their validity is tested according to the extent to which they actually infiltrate one’s life. The same was true with regard to experiences gained during practice. This is concisely expressed in Plato’s response to an old man who told him he was participating in classes on virtue: ‘When will you finally begin to live virtuously?’ (Insole 2016: 29). A philosophy could be defended or condemned according to the qualities of the mode of life of those who endorsed it (Davidson 1995: 30). Since the evidence of the truthfulness of a statement was not its intellectual lucidity but its degree of embodiment, ‘every person who lived according to precepts of Chrysippus or Epicurus was a philosopher’ (ibid.). Classical Greek philosophers harshly criticized those among them who were content with developing dialectical subtleties (ibid., 21). One was a philosopher (rather than a sophist) only if one lived philosophically (ibid., 27); that is, only if one demonstrated a concrete commitment to a choice of life (Hadot 2009: 60). In Blaise Pascal’s (1958: 93) words, the writings of Plato and Aristotle were the least philosophical part of their lives, whereas ‘the most philosophical part was living simply and quietly’. But, demonstrating once again the circularity of philosophy as a spiritual exercise, the way of life was not only the evidence of one’s association with wisdom – a noble life of self-restraint and constant purification was also essential for one’s ability to leap to wisdom, ‘for it is not permitted to the impure to attain the pure’ (Phaedo, 67b). Now that we have closely considered each of the four components, in itself and in its relation to the other philosophical activities, it is easier to picture the organized totality of classical philosophy. The following section will be devoted to explicating the prevalent perception of the transformative value of philosophical truth in the Greek and Indian traditions, as opposed to the isolated and theory-based perception of truth in conventional modern philosophy.

Transformative Philosophy The demand that both teacher and disciple should embrace all these components – transformational experience, internal and external practices, rational discourse, and way of life – as a total, indivisible system was the very heart of the culture of philosophy as a spiritual exercise. Of course, the ratio between these four ingredients could significantly differ, not only among the various schools of thought in either classical Greece or classical India, but even in the changing emphasis placed by the philosophy teacher according to the students’ needs. The latter is particularly true in

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light of the predominantly dialogical nature of these two traditions of classical philosophy: both were conveyed to specific people under specific circumstances (Hadot 2009: 52–55; Ferrer 2018: 282–283). But in all cases, we could say that this complexity represented an underlying conception of philosophical truth. Truth was the totality of direct experience (as revealed in practices), theory (achieved by logical thinking), and its fulfilment and embodiment as a way of life. Through transformative experiences, one revived the memory of one’s true nature  – since the philosophical truth already existed ‘within the soul itself’ and only had to be discovered (Hadot 2002: 27); through theory, one could align one’s rational thinking with the rational order of nature and the cosmos; and through embodiment, one confirmed the validity of the truth and its ability to form a human. Without all of these components, there could be no full realization of the philosophical truth. Internal practices had to be guided by theory and the truth discovered in them had to be lived. An activity of logical thinking that did not relate to experience and did not lead to a way of life was not considered to be a ‘philosophy’. And the way of life was only the fulfilment of the knowing that was established and confirmed by one’s intellect, soul, and spirit. If, for instance, the disciple’s goal was to realize the truth of the essential nature of the self as either the Platonian psyche or the Upaniṣadic ātman rather than a body,8 they would need to experience it first hand, not just once but over and over again. Through a repeated internal practice, they would be able to establish the inner shift to this radically new identity. They would also have to attend to discourse that would mindfully lead them to their innermost being, while enabling them to anchor it to a broad metaphysical worldview that distinguished psyche or ātman from the physical dimension or positioned it in relation to the cosmos or the divine scheme. Last, the disciple would strive to live in a way that both demonstrated the truth of identifying themselves as a soul rather than a body and nourished inner qualities that increased their ability to reaffirm their newfound psyche or ātman identity. These dynamics should be imagined as an uninterrupted continuum and as a circular process in which each part leads to and from one another. Above all, the philosophical truth had to have the power to transform. Since the purpose of philosophy as a spiritual exercise was the transformation of the individual – which, in some cases, culminated in the ‘salvation of the soul’ (Hadot 2002: 65) and in becoming ‘eternal by transcending oneself’ (Hadot 1995: 82) – a truth that did not bear a liberating or redeeming effect could not be counted as truth at all. Hadot draws a distinction between ‘notional assent’, by which one accepts a theoretical proposition but commits to it only abstractly, and ‘real assent’, in which acceptance of a proposition entails a commitment by the individual to change their life (Hadot 2009: 58). Thus, in classical philosophical thought, whose systems relied on real assent, truth and transformation were inseparable. A truth claim was not made without the added conviction that it bore a transformational efficacy

 In the last section of this chapter, I will argue that there is at the very least a strong similarity between these two terms. 8

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(Fiordalis 2018: 5). That is not to say that the ancients did not care whether their theories failed to depict reality as it was as long as they were sufficiently transformative, but that they strongly believed that if a theory were true, it must be liberating as well. Truth and the elevation of the spirit were essentially synonyms9: by rising above inferior reasoning, above what is obvious to the senses, and towards pure thought and objective reality, one’s psyche and spirit would inevitably change (Hadot 2009: 89). In light of the model of classical philosophy as a complex system whose purpose was to realize truths that existed only as a totality and as a liberating force, the term ‘spiritual exercises’ may not be sufficiently inclusive. As I mentioned earlier, the use of the plural in ‘exercises’ and the closeness of the term to ‘practices’ prevent us from realizing the way that classical philosophy functioned as a holistic structure. When Hadot (2009: 87) explains the etymological development of the term, he mentions scholars like Jean-Pierre Vernant and Louis Gernet who employed it in relation to techniques. But then he feels compelled to comment that this term may be misconstrued as referring to exercises that only complement theory (ibid.). Yet another problem arises from using the adjective ‘spiritual’, which makes us instantly think of Christian religion and spirituality (ibid., 92). Though Hadot contends that Saint Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises originated from classical thought (ibid., 93), one may question whether ‘spiritual’ truly encompasses the range of philosophical activities of the ancients and whether the borders that distinguish philosophy from spirituality should not be defended. I would therefore suggest that the term ‘transformative philosophy’ better captures the purpose of classical philosophy as a complete system. The integrative model of transformative philosophy enables us to reflect upon two contemporary activities that generally seem to isolate and highlight one of the four components. The first is the turn to ‘spiritual exercises’ evident in the ‘current popular fascination with alternative and so-called New Age forms of spirituality, secular therapies, and self-help manuals’ (Antonaccio 1998: 70). Among other things, we can think of the vibrant Stoic movement and the rapidly growing mindfulness movement, which utilizes practical teachings and techniques of Buddhism (Hidalgo 2020: 412). Such movements extract internal or external practices from their broader original context, which entailed a commitment to a metaphysical and cosmological world view as well as a way of life. Making use of Stoic practices for their psychological and physiological benefits may be legitimate in itself. In fact, Hadot himself encourages his readers to strip the classical practices of their

 There is some risk in forming such a connection. For example, Stoic or Buddhist acceptance can be a conclusion based on a right perception of reality or merely a strategy for achieving peace of mind. One could easily become interested in a philosophy that liberates from suffering for the simple reason that suffering is painful. Nietzsche famously differentiated belief-based religious practices that ‘strive for peace of soul and happiness’ and the unconditional inquiry-based search for truth. It may be suggested that as long as one’s peace of soul and happiness are the by-products of an activity that seeks to see things as they are, this could be defended as a philosophy (Hollingdale 2001: 32). 9

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outmoded contexts, including the philosophical discourses that justified them, and to reveal them as a ‘permanent possibility of the human spirit’ (Davidson 1995: 34). Since to Hadot, philosophical discourses of antiquity are ‘nothing but clumsy attempts, coming after the fact, to describe and justify inner experiences’ (Hadot 1995: 212), the experiences enabled through these practices can be easily imported into any conceptual framework. However, this poses the risk of distorting our view of transformative philosophy as a unified movement of experience, theory, and embodiment. Maria Antonaccio (1998: 77–78) demonstrates the way that Hadot reduces the classical discursive activity to a theory ‘in the service of practice’ and to a metaphysics governed by ethics. She further argues that since the transformative efficacy of these exercises lay in the student’s adoption and grasp of a cosmic perspective – a claim made by Hadot himself  – the practices inevitably lose some of their self-­ transcending power in their transition to modernity (ibid., 81–83).1011 Another problem in isolating practices is the utilization of mystical experiences that have replaced the disciple’s engagement in complete mystical ways of life (Jones 2016: 335–337). Separating mystical experiences from the commitment to the rigor of traditional metaphysical doctrines, transcendent goals, and ethical codes may actually lead us to the atrophy of mysticism itself (ibid.). Whereas New Age spirituality preserves the practical component of classical philosophy, Western academic philosophy, which developed from the philosophical activity that emerged during the fifth-century-BC Athenian ‘Age of Pericles’ (Hadot 2002: 15), seems to highlight its theoretical and discursive ingredient. No doubt, the fact that the isolated theories of the Greeks were beneficial enough to inaugurate the entire enterprise of Western philosophy is, in itself, a testimony to their intrinsic strength. However, as an isolated component that is now considered to be philosophy itself, the discourse has become an activity that is concerned with the explicit philosophical argument (Nicholson 2015: 152). In this climate, works such as Parmenides’ On Nature and the Bhagavadgītā require a great deal of defending to qualify as philosophy, since outside their original contexts, ‘much of what classical Greeks and Indians said and wrote now sounds strange to us’ (ibid.). Since from this position it is almost impossible to imagine the classical texts within the living structure of transformative philosophy, scholars of both Eastern and Western classical philosophy toil over proving that these traditions demonstrated systematic investigation of questions and argumentation as well (Fiordalis 2018: 3–4). More generally, as soon as the theoretical element has detached from the interdependent existence of the four components, it has become the pursuit of a purely formal path (Hadot 2009: 55). In its movement towards increasing purity, it has abandoned the  See also discussion in Burley (2019: 443–444).  See also Tomlinson (Fiordalis 2018: 18), who points out that a training for death can only become meaningful within the context of a tradition that accepts rebirth, like that of the Buddhists or the Pythagoreans – or at the very least the survival of the soul, as argued in Plato’s Phaedo. Such a training cannot be fully realized unless one embraces the conception that death is not the final end but an opportunity. 10 11

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dialogical nature of the discourse (ibid.). Inevitably, it has also lost touch with direct experience, which, for the ancients, carried a transformative and sometimes transcendental component of the truth, and it has disengaged the rational activity from its higher purpose of aligning with the rational order of nature. Moreover, by progressively distancing itself from the concrete life of humans, it is no longer committed to inspiring ‘passionate engagement with the problems important to human life’ (Van Norden 2017: 158). This is especially tangible in ethics, which has been severed from its roots in áskēsis, causing modern moral theory to lose the crucial aspect of the formation of persons in particular moral contexts (Antonaccio 1998: 70–72). Nevertheless, this classical integrative model cannot be revived within the academic framework, for the simple reason that in order to exist and to sustain its rich complexity, transformative philosophy requires a communal way of life (Hadot 2009: 55–56, 59). This naturally leads us to the fifth component of my model.

The Communal Dimension of Transformative Philosophy The fifth component constituted not only the living praxis from which the classical texts emanated (Apple 2010: 192), but also the structure that enabled the very existence of this type of philosophy. This condition, Hidalgo (2020: 423) suggests, can explain the mushrooming of philosophical communities in classical Greece, from Plato’s academy to Epicurus’ garden. A community of like-minded adherents and mutual assistance was able to support the individual soul on its hazardous journey towards transformative wisdom, intellectual clarity, and the embodiment of knowledge and practice in a fully realized philosophical life. The philosophy teacher sowed the seed of discourse in the student’s mind, but the seed could germinate only through the daily and organized interchange between master and disciple, with the aim of fulfilling transformative ends  – ‘in other words, a philosophical school’ (Hadot 2002: 56–57). In the words of the Stoic Seneca (Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, 7:1), ‘The living word and life in common will benefit you more than written discourse’, since in reality, ‘it was not Epicurus’ school which made great men’ of his students, ‘but his companionship’. Hadot demonstrates the communal life of classical Greek philosophy through Plato’s academy and Aristotle’s school (Hadot 2002: 57–90). Plato purchased a small property on the outskirts of Athens to enable the members of his school to meet and live together, thus institutionalizing Socrates’ conception of ‘education by living contact and by love’ (ibid., 57, 60). The community consisted of free, equal people, united in their keen interest in research and virtue alike (ibid., 59). They were generally divided into older members, who were researchers and teachers, and younger ones, who were students, and the studies were free of charge (ibid., 59, 60). Although the institution’s vibrant activity included mathematical research and philosophical discussion, Hadot’s research proposes that Plato’s primary concern was political (ibid., 78): providing young men with a knowledge that was superior to that which the Sophists offered, out of the conviction that philosophy alone could

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prepare the aspirant for just leadership (ibid., 58–59).12 Of course, in ‘philosophy’ as a training for political life, Plato meant the inseparability of a rigorous rational method (theory), love of the good (ethics), and inner transformation (mystical soul-­ remembrance); governing a city and governing oneself were one movement of self-­ flourishing (ibid., 59–60). To accomplish a conversion which involved the whole soul, certain spiritual practices, whose traces have been left in many passages from Plato’s dialogues, were in use in the academy: for instance, preparation for sleep and peaceful dreaming; maintaining one’s calm in misfortune; preparation for death, and the sublimation of love (ibid., 65–70). But even geometry and science in general were a transformative engagement, intended to ‘purify the mind from sensible representations’ (ibid., 61). Hadot goes on to show that even Aristotle’s school – which, at first glance, may seem closer in its ideals to contemporary academic philosophy and its tendency to isolate the theoretical component – was, in actuality, another form of transformative philosophy. This school, whose aims were less political and more purely philosophical, centred on theoria, that is, a life wholly dedicated to the activity of the mind (Hadot 2002: 77–78). Its older teachers and younger students celebrated their devotion to the highest knowledge: knowledge which is ‘its own goal and its own reward’ (ibid., 78–79). They engaged in a tireless pursuit of information in every area (ibid., 82). Nonetheless, the purpose of this practice was the attainment of the self-transcending divine Intellect, which resulted in philosophical happiness: the virtuous life of the mind freed the practitioner from the inconveniences of the active life, evoked marvellous pleasures untainted by pain or egoistic impurity, and eliminated worry (ibid., 78, 80). It was driven by an ‘almost religious passion for reality in all its aspects’, a search for ‘traces of the divine in all things’ (ibid., 82). Hadot convincingly concludes that Aristotle’s use of the term ‘theoretikos’ was intended to describe a philosophy which is practised and lived, and which leads to happiness (ibid., 80–81). In this respect, Aristotle’s type of transformative philosophy is comparable to Nyāya, the ‘most outwardly “theoretical” of the Indian philosophical schools’, to which ‘acquiring knowledge of a certain privileged sort is the key spiritual exercise’ (Ganeri 2013b: 120–121). Transformative philosophy in classical India took the form of the integrative education developed by the Vedic Gurukulas, communities of masters and students (Ferrer 2018: 281), and the ‘forest academies’ of the Upaniṣads (Easwaran 2007: 28). Like in classical Greece, it was a philosophy of the ‘living word’, based on oral transmission and, therefore, dialogical in nature – a ‘genuine Socratic pedagogy’ in which dialogue was deemed essential to the educational process in its power to ‘unveil the most important things in life’ (Ferrer 2018: 281, 283, 286, 287). We can find the reflection of this pedagogy – which the Greeks called ‘psychagogy’, the

 It is difficult to accept Hadot’s insistence that the academy’s spiritual guidance was ultimately designed for political aims. Radically transforming practices that prepare the superior part of the soul for a state of harmony with the universe and assimilation into the deity (Hadot 2002: 66) seem to direct the individual to aims far beyond the earthly role of a politician. 12

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direction of souls (Davidson 1995: 21)  – in the master–disciple dialogues of the Upaniṣads (Ferrer 2018: 287). As Ferrer (2018: 282) observes, the Gurukulas, which consisted of a small number of male disciples between the ages of 8 and 21 who lived together with their master, bore a resemblance to transformation-based classical Greek communities, at least in terms of structure and purpose. Adhering to ideals that are not far from Plato’s formula of ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful’, the young students were steeped in a spiritual atmosphere and in natural surroundings, combining a simple life and manual work with deep contemplation (ibid., 288–289). Since education meant helping the student to ‘unfold from within what is already inside’ (ibid., 285),13 the process of learning was not authoritative or strictly institutionalized, but characterized by a profound communion between master and pupil and imbued with mutual love, a sense of equality, natural respect, and total freedom of thought and inquiry (ibid, 282–283).14 This child-centred form of education was ‘essentially transformative rather than informative’ (Ferrer 2018: 289). While the integrative syllabus did train the intellect – incorporating, among other things, etymology, logic, astronomy, and cosmology – even this type of study was directly linked to a more experiential form of inner realization (ibid.). Scientific and mathematical content was taught not mechanistically but in a way that was inseparable from the spiritual quest, as a unity of science and spirituality that was also found in Pythagoras’ and Plato’s communities (ibid., 286). The foundation of the syllabus was inherently mystical, designed to support the student in realizing by themselves the highest knowledge or wisdom (jñāna) (ibid., 285, 288). The emphasis was that ‘philosophy must be based on experience’: an instruction given by the teacher would then be followed by a personal experiential study (ibid., 282). The final step was the shift from intellectual comprehension to a living inner experience – ‘an ontological transformation, the unfolding of the metaphysical truth’ from within (ibid., 286). Thus, education was, ultimately, an initiation: in the end, what truly mattered was the emptying of the mind of lesser forms of knowledge in order to uncover one’s essential Self (ātman) (ibid., 289). The unique form of higher education taught at the Upaniṣadic ‘forest universities’ was similar: it trained the intellect and involved an active inquiry, while centring on brahmavidyā, the science of the supreme, in which the mind as the medium of knowing and its faculty of attention were the object of study, not only through discursive thinking but primarily through pure concentration (Easwaran 2007: 26). Prior to being accepted, the student had to be meticulously tested for their ‘singleness of purpose’ and their burning desire to apprehend reality beyond ordinary knowing (ibid., 23). Such a candidate would be prepared to devote a traditional  Ferrer (2018: 284–285) notes that in Sanskrit, there is not a single word but many that express the core of the Indian holistic philosophy of education. ‘Vinaya’ is closest to the two different Latin roots of the English word ‘education’: ‘educare’ and ‘educere’ (ibid.). 14  This type of educational community would develop in the transition from the classical world to the Middle Ages, eventually becoming more institutionalized in the form of the medieval universities (Ferrer 2018: 283). 13

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period of twelve years to a ‘complete, strenuous reordering of one’s life’ (ibid.). The teacher was the living example, an embodiment of what the scriptures promised: nothing was as vital as the relationship between the disciple and the one who knew the way, not from books or hearsay (ibid., 23, 31). In addition to their oral-dialogical nature and the conception of discourse as the direction of souls, classical Greek and classical Indian communal models of transformative philosophy share several common features, although the relative importance of these may vary significantly. In both models, the role of the teacher as a living example is crucial, but next to the philosophical hierarchy we identify a general atmosphere of equality and freedom of inquiry, which is inextricably linked to the unique type of self-knowledge that these communities sought.15 The Indian and Greek schools introduced philosophies that necessitated practice as a form of self-­ verification and realization of the experiential dimension of the truth. The communities were concerned with a total transformation of one’s whole person and way of life, and for this purpose, they implemented processes of internal practices, such as meditation and visualization, as well as external practices of purification and self-­ control. Both frameworks promoted truths that bore a transformative potential and even their scientific knowledge was ultimately employed as a spiritual exercise. For both, one’s own mind was the vehicle of liberation if one only used it for right inquiry and self-contemplation. The two types of communities strove towards the philosophical happiness that arises from the merging with the pure or divine Intellect. Their conception of knowledge was that of a remembrance and a return to the essential reality; thus, the pretences of reason had to be replaced with an emptying of oneself to make room for the rediscovery of the original state. This immense focus on knowledge of oneself as the most valuable kind of knowledge now deserves a closer look.

Sages or Philosophers? In the transformative philosophy of classical Greece and classical India, philosophy and direct knowledge of oneself were inherently inseparable. What lay at the heart of the existential conviction of these classical philosophies was an ontological revelation of a primordial beingness. Transformation meant, above all else, the transformation that takes place as a result of the discovery of one’s essential existence, which ultimately alters one’s ethical relationship with life. Thus, the Delphic dictum ‘Know thyself’, which applies to both traditions, came first, whereas the other maxim, ‘Nothing in excess’, which was inscribed next to it, only followed. This was also the real question in the Socratic dialogue: not what was being talked about but  One may justifiably argue that these accounts are based on a speculative idealization of what these communities were like. For instance, these were, after all, schools exclusively for members of elite families – specifically brahmin boys in the Indian context – and thus their atmosphere of equality was limited to a highly hierarchical social framework. 15

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who was doing the talking (Hadot 2002: 28). In Socrates’ presence, one felt obliged to take a distance from one’s familiar self and to question oneself on the grounds of the feeling that one was not what one ought to be (ibid., 29). However, Socrates was not unusual in his insistence on the primacy of self-knowledge. Of course, the conception of the nature of one’s primordial being was contestable and divided not only these two great philosophical traditions but also the many schools that thrived in each tradition. In Greece, among other conceptions, we can find Socrates’ pure state of not-knowing (which will be discussed in Chap. 10), Plato’s psyche and Forms (see Chaps. 4 and 5), and the Epicurean undisturbed mind. Even though Epicurus’ metaphysical perception of humans as conglomerations of atoms moving in the void is clearly materialistic and mechanistic (Bergsma et al. 2008: 400, 419), he advocates his own form of pure or essential existence, which arises from the ‘stable atomic structures of our souls’ (ibid., 400). Similarly, the Platonian dualistic idea of the psyche determined the nature of Plato’s form of transformation: an awakened soul that has spiritually separated from the body by purifying itself of its passions (Davidson 1995: 28). The Stoics, on the other hand, conceived of a transformation into a cosmic self that has become situated in the ‘immense event of the universe’ (Hadot 2009: 96). In classical India, the two predominant religions, Hinduism and Buddhism, developed seemingly opposing conceptions of the return to the nature of things, primarily the Upaniṣadic ātman and Brahman and the Buddhist anātman and Śūnyatā. In both cases, the aspirant’s striving towards bare reality gave shape to a transformation of the self into a less involved and less attached one (Ganeri 2013a: 5). Since Buddhist metaphysics was founded on the negation of self, its idea of returning to one’s essence could be generally described as the recovery of the original and pure state of the mind. Thus, Jonardon Ganeri’s (2013b: 116) assertion that in essence, all spiritual exercises were a ‘return to the self’ seems to exclude this important distinction.16 On the other hand, when Ganeri points out that all spiritual exercises were characterized by a sense of ‘inwardness’, this is a sound generalization: indeed, to uncover one’s true being, one had to isolate it from the perceptual world by withdrawing the senses and turning inward (ibid., 117–119). This was true in the case of the Upaniṣadic sages, who encouraged their disciples and readers to refamiliarize themselves with the universal Self that dwelt within them and, in doing so, to achieve wisdom and immortality, just as was true in the case of Marcus Aurelius, who spoke of retreating to the ‘daimon’ within (ibid., 117–119).17 Far from Foucault’s interpretation of spiritual exercises as techniques that form and cultivate a new self, the spiritual exercises of classical Greece and classical India were restorative rather than generative (Ganeri 2013b: 122): like the natural state of health, the individual could only return to an original state by removing disturbances and obstacles (ibid., 118). This was why Hadot adhered to Plotinus’

 For further discussion of the Buddhist conception of original reality, see Chap. 8.  It is clear, however, that, unlike the Greeks, the sages and philosophers of Upaniṣadic India exhibited a ‘unique preoccupation with states of consciousness’ (Easwaran 2007: 25). 16 17

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metaphor of the sculptor who merely uncovers something that already exists in the marble: in turning inward, one worked on one’s statue until one’s inherent divine glory could shine out (ibid., 117). This could be realized through internal practices, but also through external practices of moderation and self-restraint: since desire conceals one’s true being, the mind had to be unchained from the shackles of worries, passions, and desires – shackles that it had put on itself due to its inclination to attach to things that are ‘external’ to oneself (ibid., 27, 127). One significant example that demonstrates the fact that classical philosophy set out to accomplish self-transcendent goals is the way that both philosophical cultures treated sexuality as a spiritual exercise. Students at the Upaniṣadic ‘forest academies’ were taught to understand sex as the most powerful desire and therefore the richest source of personal energy (Easwaran 2007: 34). Perceiving sexuality as an essentially pure, creative, and spiritual energy, which is commonly dissipated as a result of sexual activity, they practised brahmacarya: the transformation of tapas, the heated creative force, into tejas, the radiant splendour of a loving, compassionate, and creative personality (ibid., 35). Rather than suppressing this force, the ideal was to live out of the freedom that results from having one’s senses and passions completely rechannelled (ibid.). Among the Greeks, philosophers extensively practised a renunciation of sexual pleasure, or at least extreme moderation in this field, in order to exhibit a ‘perfect supremacy of oneself over oneself’ (Foucault 1990: 20, 31). Foucault (ibid., 23) shows that this type of spiritual exercise was developed in an environment in which the philosopher, as a free man, was permitted to express his power and liberty. Thus, the practice of self-mastery (enkrateia) reflected a relationship between the philosopher and his own soul: the soul was likened to the acropolis that was threatened by invasion, and giving this energy (which was excessive by nature) power over the soul implied a spiritual defeat (ibid., 64, 66–67). Moderation or renunciation were either evidence of the living presence of the soul or a way to reach it. Here, too, we find the attainment of wisdom as the ultimate philosophical goal: sexual abstinence could ‘give access to a spiritual experience of the very essence of truth and love’ and, at the same time, the authenticity of the philosopher’s achievement was proven by the fact that he was able to remain unaffected in the face of physical temptation (ibid., 20).18 This focal point of the transformative philosophies of classical Greece and classical India led to a type of philosophical discourse which was primarily founded on a knowledge that existed outside the discourse and stood at the beginning of the chain of argumentation (Hadot 2002: 3, 75). The global vision, which the philosopher derived from their direct experience, came first and therefore gave shape to the specific teaching and the way it was transmitted (ibid., 3). Thus, the philosophical discourse originated in an existential conviction, not the other way around (ibid.).19  This paragraph clearly reflects the androcentric nature of the philosophical schools in both Greece and India. 19  See also Hadot’s argument that ‘it is mystical experience that founds negative theology, and not the reverse’ (Davidson 1995: 29). 18

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This gave rise to what can be termed reverse philosophy, a philosophy that starts at the end: the discourse was launched with a conclusion that was then established logically. The philosopher employed reason to reinforce an intuitive perception of reality and to demonstrate that reason is indeed a reflection of a higher order. What emerged from the rigorous logical reasoning was not newfound conclusions but the expectation that the interlocutor would join in the revelation. In that respect, the dialogical nature of these systems was not expressed in a joint effort, since the philosophers knew for certain where they were leading to. For instance, when Socrates argues that one must not commit suicide,20 it is easy to observe his logical construction, but at the foundation of his argument he places the axiom that human beings are one of the possessions of the gods (Phaedo, 62b–c). Of course, many philosophies could be accused of placing their final conclusion at the beginning of their inquiry, but this seems to be a definite characteristic of traditions that demand praxis as the only way for the individual to confirm and grasp their doctrines in full.21 This is the true reason for the contradictions found in classical works, so long as the reader attempts to study them as representations of complete and independent doctrines: it is not only because the works were written for followers of specific schools (Apple 2010: 192), but also because the discourse was a movement by which the individual rose above himself ‘toward something which lies beyond him’ (Hadot 2002: 63). Being an attempt to convey and lead to a state whose totality escaped the fragmented perception of reason, the discourse was logical and systematic only to the extent that it successfully guided the particular interlocutor towards this state. The philosopher took into account that ‘every attempt to explain produces contradictions and inconsistencies’ (Easwaran 2007: 41). Moreover, often the purpose of the discourse was to reach a state of philosophical impasse (aporíā)22 in order to reveal the limits of language and its inability to communicate existential experience (Hadot 2002: 65). The ideal of a primordial and untainted reality, which can only be attained by trans-logical means, contained a mystical seed that blossomed in Plato’s writings to a degree that makes them comparable to the Upaniṣadic Self-oriented metaphysics and soteriology.23 While Hadot recognizes the final mystical destination of some of  As opposed to a situation in which the laws of the state, which are but a reflection of the divine order, command an individual to take their own life, as eventually occurred in Socrates’ case (Crito, 50–54c). 21  In the case of religious praxis, which is rooted in the ‘reasons of the heart’, this tendency is more extreme, since the praxis does not complement theory, but rather precedes intellectual assessment (Cottingham 2005: 9, 16). Against Plato’s assertion that any belief must be fastened by the chain of reasoning to gain the status of knowledge, Cottingham suggests that religious believers may be content with having their commitments supported and grounded by rational deliberation (ibid., 13, 16). 22  A state of philosophical perplexity, in which the individual, empty-handed, is confronted with a seemingly insoluble impasse in an inquiry. See extensive discussion in Chap. 10. 23  To this hybrid we should add religion. Platonic philosophy, for instance, is practised within the context of one’s relationship with the deities. The Symposium, which appears to be a speech contest, is, to the speakers, a participation in a religious ceremony, honouring the deity Eros, the god of love (177a–d). And Socrates’ last words in the Phaedo (118a) show concern about an offering to Asclepius that should be made after his death. 20

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the classical Greek philosophers, Plato in particular, he dedicates much effort to drawing a distinction between philosophers and saints. To this end, Hadot returns to the Symposium, where he identifies a historical transition, in which Plato gave a new meaning to the word ‘philosophy’ and established the model of the philosopher (Hadot 2002: 39–40). According to Hadot’s reading of Socrates’ dialogue with the Mantinean priestess, Diotima, philosophers are inherently caught in a tragic condition of desiring wisdom that forever escapes them (ibid., 46–47). Unlike saints, who accomplish wisdom, the philosophical way of life and discourse are determined by the idea of the transcendent ontological state called wisdom (ibid.).24 Thus, the philosophical activity existed, as well as measured its progress, in relation to what Plato (and also the Stoics and other Greeks) termed ‘wisdom’: ‘a kind of transcendent state which could be attained only by a sudden, unexpected mutation’ (ibid., 49) amid long intervals of gradual and deliberate cultivation. Hadot (ibid., 44) suggests that ‘wisdom represents the perfection of knowledge’, but mentions that according to Plato and Aristotle, this attainment of indivisible intuition and the transcendent point of view can only take place infrequently (ibid., 49, 80, 86). This, however, does not diminish the existential orientation of Plato’s transformative philosophy: like mystics, the philosopher looks to a vision comparable to that ‘enjoyed by people initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis’ (Hadot 2002: 70). Furthermore, nothing in the Symposium insinuates that the philosopher is doomed to remain stuck between ignorance and wisdom: philosophy is likened to desire in the sense that it is the urge that, when followed all the way, can finally lead to initiation into the ultimate reality (211a–c). Neither Diotima nor Socrates distinguishes the philosopher from the one who is capable of fully attaining the mysteries of Love and immortality (210a). If anything, Diotima’s ladder of beauty, which is offered to the young philosopher Socrates, only proves the extent to which no borderline is marked to separate the mystical from the philosophical. Moreover, the qualities attributed to Plato’s Socrates in the Symposium do not seem to fall short of those of a sage25,26: Socrates, as described by Alcibiades, was indifferent to the courting of Athens’s most beautiful boy (Symposium, 219c) – a testimony that, coming immediately after Diotima’s description of the final initiation into the mysteries of Love, seems to confirm that Socrates had indeed been initiated by the Mantinean priestess and thus learned to behold true beauty (Hadot 2002: 49); his mystical presence was so irresistible that it provoked in the soul a state of philosophical possession and drunkenness (ibid., 30); he was completely shielded from the desire for money (Symposium, 219e); and he could immerse himself in contemplation while standing, glued to the same spot, for twenty-four hours  As previously mentioned, Plato’s Socrates confirms in the Phaedo (68a–b) that the philosopher can fully merge into wisdom only after death. 25  In the Phaedo (64d–e), Socrates deems it obvious that the philosopher is the one who has freed his soul from association with the body and is thus utterly indifferent to the pleasures of food, drink, and sex, as well as earthly possessions. These are also traditional characteristics of a sage. 26  Other Greek philosophers, like Pyrrho and Epicurus, were also admired by their disciples as sages and even gods (Bergsma et al. 2008: 405). 24

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(ibid., 220d). Socrates was also, according to his own testimony, guided by a dáimōn, a divine voice that spoke to him, urged him to speak or to avoid speaking, and stopped him from doing certain things (Hadot 2002: 34; Phaedrus, 242c–d). And his famous not-knowing, or more accurately, his awareness that he did not know, only meant that he had nothing to say or teach within the boundaries of the theoretical content of knowledge (Hadot 2002: 27). In the light of his mystical speeches in works such as the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, and the Symposium, Plato’s Socrates’ insistence on playing the role of a simple midwife, who aids others in giving birth to their own self-discovery (ibid., 34), seems similar to the strategies of reluctance employed by the Upaniṣadic sages: the initial efforts of concealment are designed to motivate the hearer in the direction of a quest for the ‘concealed truth about a hidden self’ (Ganeri 2013a: 19). Nevertheless, Plato’s psyche and the Upaniṣadic ātman were concealed not because they were secret knowledge but because they were the subject itself, rather than an object within the world of comprehended objects. One could not hope to catch one’s true being, in the same way that it was impossible to ‘catch a sound in the air’ (Ganeri 2013a: 98). This is what Socrates implied when, in response to Crito’s question in the Phaedo (115d), ‘But how shall we bury you?’ he answered, ‘In any way you like, if you can catch me and I do not escape you’. This rider in the body-chariot is not something that one has, it is who one is. But since the one who does the perceiving cannot be perceived (Ganeri 2013a: 28), it cannot be directly taught, and for this reason, both Plato and the Indian seers required different strategies and indirect methods to engage students and readers alike in the active pursuit of self-discovery (ibid., 2–3, 221). Their intention was not only to announce the truth about the nature of one’s being, but also to penetrate the student’s inner world, purify it of attachments to false senses of the self, and help the sculptor to chip away at their block of marble (ibid.). This intention, as we shall see in the following chapters, determined both the content and the form of the Upaniṣadic and Socratic dialogues, which were primarily an exercise of self-realization.

References Anderson, Allen W. 2012. On Krishnamurti’s Teachings. Ojai: Karina Library Press. Antonaccio, Maria. 1998. Contemporary Forms of Askesis and the Return of Spiritual Exercises. The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 18: 69–92. https://doi.org/10.5840/asce19981811. Apple, James B. 2010. Can Buddhist Thought Be Construed as a Philosophia, or a Way of Life? Bulletin of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy: 191–204. Bergsma, Ad, Germaine Poot, and Aart Liefbroer. 2008. Happiness in the Garden of Epicurus. Journal of Happiness Studies 9: 397–423. Burley, Mikel. 2019. Prioritizing Practice in the Study of Religion: Normative and Descriptive Orientations. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 79 (4): 437–450. https://doi. org/10.1080/21692327.2017.1344135. Cottingham, John. 2005. The Spiritual Dimension. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Davidson, Arnold. 1995. Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy. In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot. Trans. Michael Chase, 1–45. Oxford: Blackwell. Easwaran, Eknath. 2007. Introduction. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 13–47, 63–67. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Ferrer, Albert. 2018. Integral Education in Ancient India from Vedas and Upanishads to Vedanta. International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 6 (6): 281–295. https://doi. org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v6.i6.2018.1373. Fiordalis, David, ed. 2018. Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path. Berkeley: Mangalam Press. Foucault, Michel. 1990. The Use of Pleasure. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2013a. The Concealed Art of the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013b. Philosophy as a Way of Life. In Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, ed. Michael Chase, Stephen Clark, and Michael McGhee, 116–131. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael Chase. Hoboken: Blackwell. ———. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hidalgo, Javier. 2020. Why Practice Philosophy as a Way of Life? Metaphilosophy 51 (2–3): 411–431. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12421. Hollingdale, R.J. 2001. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Insole, Christopher. 2016. The Intolerable God: Kant’s Theological Journey. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press. Kamińska-Tarkowska, Sonia. 2012. What Can Grow from the Divine Seed? The Divinity of Human Beings According to Aristotle. Studia Religiologica 45 (3): 173–182. Keena, Justin. 2021. Plato on Divinization and the Divinity of the Rational Part of the Soul. Plato Journal 21: 87–95. Nicholson, Andrew. 2015. Dialogue and Genre in Indian Philosophy. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 151–169. New York: Routledge. Pascal, Blaise. 1958. Pascal’s Pensées. Boston: E.  P. Dutton & Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/18269/18269-­h/18269-­h.htm Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. ———. 2002. Phaedo. Trans. David Gallop. New York: Oxford University Press. Plutarch. 2013. The Complete Works of Plutarch. East Sussex: Delphi Classics. The Upanishads. 2007. Transl. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Tomlinson, Davey. 2018. Philosophy as a Way to Die. In Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path, ed. D.V.  Fiordalis, 217–244. Berkeley: Mangalam Press. Van Norden, Bryan. 2017. Taking Back Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. Xenophon. 1994. Memorabilia. Trans. Amy L. Bonnette. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Chapter 3

‘You Have Dispelled My Doubts and Delusions’: Dialogue in Classical India and Classical Greece

How important is the form chosen by philosophers or philosophical traditions to convey their ideas? Does the chosen method of presentation reflect the philosophy itself, or perhaps even serve as an extension of the philosophy? Andrew Nicholson (2015: 151) argues that whereas form and content are profoundly interrelated, questions of textuality are largely regarded by philosophers as immaterial to philosophy’s subject matter, which is the ideas proper. But the fact that a ‘particular moment in the history of philosophy is marked by particular kinds of texts’ (ibid.) should not be overlooked when trying to fully comprehend the living philosophical culture that produced such texts.1 It may be especially appropriate to study content and form as one inseparable unit when it comes to the philosophical traditions of classical India and classical Greece, whose systems functioned solely as an ‘organized totality whose parts depended on each other’ (Hadot 2009: 90).2 In their aspiration to affect every dimension of the student’s being and life, the predominant philosophical systems of classical India and classical Greece alike constituted what Pierre Hadot and those scholars who follow in his footsteps broadly classify as philosophy as spiritual exercise (Hadot 1995: 82), or, in my own terms, transformative philosophy.3 As demonstrated in Chap. 2, transformative philosophy is a holistic activity that consists of five essential ingredients: transformation (or purification) of the mind; practices, both internal (within oneself) and external (in life); argument-based (or systematic) discourse; a way of life (or embodiment); and

 For works that analyse the interrelations of philosophical thought and its form of presentation, see Apple’s analysis of Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (2010: 191–202); Ganeri’s analysis of the Upaniṣads (2013: 13–38); Nicholson’s analysis of some of the Gītās (2015: 151–167); and Black’s analysis of the Mahābhārata (2021). 2  Hadot uses this phrase only in reference to classical Greek philosophy. 3  As I shall indicate in the Conclusions and Implications chapter, John Taber (1983) has also identified the phenomenon of transformative philosophers. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_3

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a supportive communal (or dialogical) framework. This type of philosophy is defined, above all, by its purpose: it is a system whose philosophical truth has the power to transform the listener’s or reader’s state of being. Since it is concerned with the transformation of the individual, a truth that does not have a liberating or redeeming effect cannot be considered a truth at all. In this kind of philosophy, it can be assumed that the way in which ideas are conveyed is of great significance. In this chapter and the chapter that follows, I seek to elucidate the special role that the philosophical dialogue played in the transformative philosophies of classical India and classical Greece. In light of the intense interrelation between content and form, why did these philosophical traditions make such extensive use of the dialogue form as a means of imparting and handing down their ideas? How were the dialogue form and the transformative intent of these philosophies interrelated? The first section of this chapter offers a brief exposition of dialogue in classical India, exemplifying the extensive use of the written dialogue among India’s divergent schools and religions. I will strive to show how, from the Upaniṣads onwards, dialogue became a vitally important structure that facilitated a Hadotian ‘purposeful discussion’: philosophical inquiry that did not hope to accomplish consistent logical arguments and unblemished metaphysical presentations, since its fulfilment lay in common experience and soul-liberation. The written dialogic form, mostly relying on guru-to-student transmission, was not a literary technique for evoking the reader’s emotional identification, but a way to establish faith in the master and the doctrine in the reader or hearer’s heart, sometimes by testing the effectiveness of the teachings under challenging real-life situations. In the second section, I will explore the emergence of dialogue in classical Greek philosophy, drawing on Hadot’s important distinction between the implicit oral and dialogical nature of this tradition and the more explicit dialogue form of some of its textual compositions. I shall argue in the concluding section that by juxtaposing the historical and philosophical developments in both India and Greece at that time, we are able to observe that the emergence of the transformative dialogue in these traditions, most notably signified by the Upaniṣads and Plato’s dialogues, was an integral part of a greater transition that took place during the fourth and third centuries bc: a moving away from the mythopoetic world view towards philosophical systems that insisted on the human mind’s capacity to liberate itself. Thus, the transformative dialogue served as an effective tool for the expression and realization of this shift.

The Dialogical Dimension of Indian Philosophies In classical India, we can easily identify the broad dialogical nature of the tradition of transformative philosophy. As demonstrated in Chap. 2, the primacy of the internal practice of meditative discourse (Easwaran 2007: 26); the centrality of the master–student dialogue, which relied on sequences of question and answer (ibid., 23, 31; Nagler 2007: 298, 304); the fact that even dialogues that aimed to train the intellect were directly linked to a more experiential form of transformative

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discourse (Ferrer 2018: 286, 289); the crucial factor of the interlocutor and the specificity of communication that gave shape to every philosophical presentation (ibid., 282–283); and the precedence of the oral transmission and performed dialogue over the written word (ibid., 281, 283, 286, 287; Patton 2014) – all these were strongly evident in both the semi-institutionalized educational system of the Vedic Gurukulas and the ‘forest academies’. However, whereas in classical Greece we find only one major tradition  – the direct students of Socrates – that almost entirely relied on the written dialogue form, dialogue as a form of textual composition seems to be even more predominant in the philosophical activity of classical South Asia (Nicholson 2015: 153). Moreover, we can identify many recurring interreligious dialogical patterns, as well as similar dialogical purposes, in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain literature. As such, dialogue is an important gateway to the understanding of the textual world of classical India (ibid.), but not only as a ‘self-conscious mirror’ through which the texts echo the ‘orality of their own transmissions’ (Black and Patton 2015: 1). As I shall argue, the frequent choice of the dialogue form as early as the oldest extant texts conveys an implicit dimension of the Indian philosophies.4 The earliest appearance of dialogical texts, dating back to roughly the twelfth to tenth centuries bc, is found in twenty Sūktas (hymns) in the hymn-based Ṛgveda, which were written in a conversational style and were regarded by later interpreters as ‘saṃvāda’, or the ‘dialogue hymns’ (Bera 2017: 146). The original uses of these particular hymns have remained ambiguous. While some scholars have attempted to resolve their fragmentary and enigmatic character by suggesting that these conversations were a part of long-lost narratives and dramatic performances (Winternitz 2010: 100–102),5 Winternitz correctly remarks that poems like the Ṛgveda dialogue hymns are not uncommon in Indian literature: similar semi-epic and semi-dramatic poems, consisting primarily or completely of conversations, can be found in the Mahābhārata, the Purāṇas, and Buddhist literature (ibid., 102). In the Ṛgveda dialogue hymns, we find one of the first instances of the Sanskrit term saṃvāda, which can be translated as ‘dialogue’, when the poet begs the deities Mitrá and Váruṇa to protect him from the one who ‘has no pleasure in questioning, nor in repeated calling, nor in dialogue’ (Ṛgveda, 8.101.4ab).6 Nevertheless, though presented in the dialogue form, the Saṃvāda-sūktas did not usher in the era of the transformative philosophical dialogue: these hymns, containing exchanges between

 The limited scope of my overview prevents me from discussing some major sources of Indian dialogues, such as the Rāmāyaṇa and the Tantras. Additionally, other dialogical dimensions of the Indian philosophies are left untreated: for instance, the intriguing phenomenon of intertextual dialogue, which can be found in doxographies (see Bouthillette 2020) and the Purāṇas (see Rohlman 2015). 5  Peters and Besley (2019: 2) consider the Ṛgveda dialogue hymns to be a precursor to Sanskrit drama. See also Bodewitz (2009: 252–254), who raises intriguing questions about the as yet unclear uses of these particular hymns. 6  Aside from saṃvāda, other Sanskrit words that are used to describe conversational episodes between characters are anuvāda, upadeśa, pradeśa, samāgama, and saṃbhāṣya (Black 2021: 9). 4

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deities and between deities and seers, are mostly occupied with establishing ceremonial and social duties, or creation myths. Later, dialogue became a major literary device that framed and structured texts in the Upaniṣads.7 Nevertheless, as Elizabeth Rohlman (2015: 140) indicates, the Upaniṣads signified a departure from the Vedas’ path to insight: rather than studying and fulfilling the guidelines dictated by the ritual texts, one had to engage in philosophical inquiry, but not as a solitary practice, since knowledge is realized by means of discussion and thereby involved at least two participants – ideally, a guru and his students. Indeed, the importance ascribed by the Upaniṣadic dialogic form to the lineage of gurus led to the association of specific individuals with specific thought, thus establishing the guru as the incarnation of knowledge (ibid.). The dialogues of the older Upaniṣads allow us a glimpse into a vibrant dialogue-­ based culture of transformative philosophy: priests and famed wandering teachers, including learned women, assembling at the princely courts in order to conduct their debates before the king, who would often surprise the attendees by involving himself in the philosophical conversations, or the school life, in which travelling scholars would undertake long journeys just to be in the presence of a teacher who drew disciples from far and wide (Winternitz 2010: 246–247). While the Upaniṣads brim with dialogues between husbands and wives, fathers and sons, gurus and students, and kings and scholars, researchers sometimes interpret the primary purpose of the Upaniṣadic project as debate-winning and reputation-­ building (e.g. Oliver 1971: 49–52; Kennedy 1998: 171–189). As will be demonstrated in Chap. 4, although we cannot rule out this type of reading altogether, particularly when the text itself introduces explicit reward-based debates (see, for instance, King Janaka’s contest in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, III: 1.1–12, to which I shall return in the following chapter), we should be careful not to overlook the fact that claim, reason, and analogy are ultimately employed to achieve a shared ‘knowing episode’ (pramā), which may lead to liberation (mokṣa) (Lloyd 2013: 292). In this sense, the discussions are committed to being ‘fruitful dialogues’, to borrow a phrase used by another classic, the Tripurā Rahasya, whose dialogues between the guru Dattātreya and the Kshatriya Paraśurāma include the following lines: 2–5. Hearing with a distracted mind is as good as not hearing, for the words serve no useful purpose, resembling the fruit-laden tree seen in a painting. 6. Man is quickly benefited if he turns away from dry, ruinous logic and engages in purposeful discussion. 7. Appropriate effort must follow right discussion; for a man profits according to the zeal accompanying his efforts. 8. You find, my dear, that aimless discussions are fruitless and that earnest efforts are fruitful in the world. (7. 2–8)

Rather than point–counterpoint debates aimed at winning, Lloyd (2013: 292–293) illuminates the Upaniṣadic dialogues as an expression of Nyāya vāda: a ‘truth-­ centered and rhetorically egalitarian method of analogical debate’ cultivated by  Etymologically, ‘sitting down near’, that is, at the feet of the master (Easwaran 2007: 19). Despite the hierarchical positioning, this also implies dialogical relations. 7

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Indian philosophers over 2500 years (ibid., 285). Much like the Aristotelian argument in the West, this approach to reasoning and its five-part method, codified in Akṣapāda Gautama’s (c.550 bc) Nyāya Sūtras, has become an integral part of Indian argument traditions and has been adopted by all six orthodox Hindu schools, Jains, Buddhists, and Muslims (Lloyd 2013: 286, 297). These unique Indian forms and goals of persuasion were not systemized on the basis of abstract philosophy: they grew out of informal living discourses, such as intra- and interreligious debates and guru–student discussions, and they aspired to represent the ‘Indian ideal of public debate’ (ibid., 286, 278, 291, 294). Lloyd rightly identifies the purpose of the Nyāya method, which emerged primarily in the context of religious dialogues rather than inter-scholar discussions, as the striving towards a perceptible common experience (ibid., 286, 290). Indeed, this type of dialogue is guided by vāda, described by Pakṣilasvāmin Vātsyāyana, a logician of the Nyāya school, as a ‘discussion which aims at ascertaining the truth’ (Gotama 1990: 19). Truth, however, can only be that which is spiritually liberating and thus, its attainment requires engaged interaction, focused listening, and the discussants’ willingness to withhold their social and ideological differences and hierarchical tensions. Additionally, truth is not arrived at through solid argumentation: the argumentation is shaped around one’s religious convictions and heavily relies on metaphors and analogies (Dṛṣṭānta), which are relational by nature, since they derive not from the speaker’s effort to convince but from the direct interaction with the respondent (Lloyd 2013: 292, 294). While the Upaniṣads reflect Nyāya’s forms and goals of philosophical discourse, the epic Mahābhārata treats itself as another Upaniṣad, thereby signifying that it consciously retains at least some of the literary and philosophical features of the ideal Upaniṣadic dialogue: ‘In this work, Kṛṣṇa Dvaipāyana has uttered a holy Upaniṣad’ (1.1.191). This implies that the Mahābhārata similarly deploys the dialogue form not only as an organizing structure and a literary device,8 but also as a medium through which philosophical and religious teachings are vitally conveyed (Black 2021: 2–3). Furthermore, the Mahābhārata’s self-description as an Upaniṣad indicates that its intentions are transformative. This has been deemed self-evident by traditional commentators, who perceived the text as a literary work whose goal is emotional tranquillity (śānti) and ultimately liberation (mokṣa) (Dhand 2008: 10), or, in Vrinda Dalmiya’s and Gangeya Mukherji’s (2018: 16) words, a ‘moral training’ designed to ‘initiate change in its listeners and readers’. Finally, as usefully observed by David Shulman (1996: 153), the Mahābhārata follows the ‘Upaniṣadic speculative tradition’ in that it engages its discussants, and consequently its readers, in praśnas: baffling questions that give rise to further reflection  – in the Mahābhārata’s case, moral questions and profound dharmic uncertainties triggered by weighty situations.

 The Mahābhārata’s opening scene employs dialogue as an organizing structure through a complex and multilayered introduction containing a dialogue within a dialogue within a dialogue. This structure can often be found in religious and philosophical Indian literature (see my discussion of the Hindu Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha and the Jain Vasudevahiṇḍī below). 8

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The Mahābhārata’s intense occupation with dilemmas over actions in accordance with dharma leads Brian Black (2021: 9–10, 19) to read its dialogues as constantly developing, open, and unpredictable: ‘dynamic encounters between competing voices’ devoid of any ‘central authoritative position’. Inspired by Gadamer’s interpretation of Plato’s works, Black steers clear of the search for a unifying and abstract doctrine and chooses to focus on the questioning as an ever-­ unfolding process of understanding (ibid., 10). This, Black argues, is substantiated by the way the Mahābhārata’s dialogues tend to leave questions unresolved  – a tendency of non-closure that he surprisingly also identifies in the Upaniṣads, in that they point at something that transcends the limits of the discourse (ibid., 11). To this, Black adds another Gadamerian perspective that accentuates the specificity of the individuals and circumstances involved (ibid.). All these dialogical dimensions of the dharma, Black concludes, make dialogue an indispensable part of dharmic living (ibid., 19). Nevertheless, as I shall demonstrate in Chaps. 4 and 5, it is my contention that whereas Gadamer’s approach is apposite when it comes to Plato’s dialogues, a Hadotian reading is more beneficial for grasping the original intentions of authors of Indian religious and philosophical texts, including the Mahābhārata. Although Hadot shares Gadamer’s emphasis on the specificity of individuals and circumstances, this should not be over-emphasized at the expense of the understanding that the dialogue and its discussants function in the service of a universal teaching as well as a complete and final realization, and are designed to reinforce the school’s doctrine and spiritual path (Apple 2010: 192). This teaching and realization are abstract only in the sense that they are timeless and unchanging. What makes them tangible and actual is their immediate non-theoretical, transformative implications. This is certainly true in relation to the Upaniṣadic dialogues, which are never open discussions, even when they point at truth as an ontological realization that transcends verbal communication. But this also becomes evident when we read the Mahābhārata’s famed Bhagavadgītā Kṛṣṇa–Arjuna dialogue. The Bhagavadgītā is a dramatic text whose narrative frames the dialogue, thus placing it in a concrete situation. However, it is also didactic in that its dramatization and the particular dharmic dilemma it introduces are designed to convey fundamental teachings. Like in many other works, such as the Kaṭhopaniṣad and Yoga-­ Vāsiṣṭha, the extreme circumstances – in the Bhagavadgītā’s case, Arjuna casting away his bow and arrows in the midst of a battlefield (1.47) – are intended not only to engage the listener and reader emotionally and morally, but also to test the vitality of the teachings and to demonstrate their ability to produce a viable action. Nonetheless, the circumstances are mainly instrumental  – a point that becomes clearer when we consider the extreme unlikelihood of a lengthy and relaxed discourse consisting of 650 verses in the midst of a battlefield (Winternitz 2010: 437). While Arjuna’s moral claims against the battle are sound and able to evoke the reader’s empathy, Kṛṣṇa surprises us by immediately contextualizing this dilemma within a broader soteriological challenge: ‘How have you fallen into a state so far from the path to liberation?’ (2.2). Thus, the text announces itself as a transformative dialogue whose purpose is self-realization. Accordingly, Arjuna instantly

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positions himself as a disciple rather than a competitive voice: ‘My will is paralyzed, and I am utterly confused. Tell me which is the better path for me. Let me be your disciple. I have fallen at your feet; give me instruction’ (2.7). Even though Arjuna’s role as a questioner helps to develop the conversation (Black 2021: 8), his questions are primarily meant to establish Kṛṣṇa’s authority as the divine guide to the ‘end of all knowledge’ (2.16). To borrow Platonic terminology, the dialogue is a process of psychagogy. Kṛṣṇa’s response to Arjuna’s despair clarifies that the dramatic situation is designed to confirm the indestructability of yoga’s dharma: should Arjuna choose to put the principles of yoga into practice, he will be able to ‘break through the bonds of karma’ (2.39), attain ‘perfect evenness of mind’ (2.38), and demonstrate ‘skill in action’ (2.50). Kṛṣṇa’s call to devote oneself to yoga’s disciplines is likewise directed to the listener and reader of the dialogue: the text was, after all, written for students in order to remove their doubts, deepen their commitment to the dharma, and enhance their devotion to Kṛṣṇa (by invoking the vision of Kṛṣṇa’s breathtaking form; see 11.9–52). As the text comes to a close, readers are instructed to meditate on its ‘holy words’ faithfully and without doubt as a form of worship to Kṛṣṇa (18.70–71). Arjuna himself confirms that the dialogue’s purpose has been accomplished: ‘You have dispelled my doubts and delusions, and I understand through your grace. My faith is firm now, and I will do your will’ (18.73). Thus, there is no sense of open ending: the dharmic question has been absolutely resolved. Another major Hindu literary body of work, the mythic and cosmological Purāṇas, continues the Upaniṣadic tradition of dialogue. As Elizabeth Rohlman (2015: 140–141) points out, during the period in which the Purāṇas were formed (between 350 and 1000 ce), the revolution inaugurated by the Upaniṣads – intellectual inquiry rather than ritualistic activity; knowledge attained by means of discussion and intersubjectivity; the personalization of wisdom and the guru as the incarnation of knowledge – was the prevailing paradigm. Accordingly, the Purāṇas’ understanding of knowledge is that it must be transmitted paramparā, that is, in the way of lineage: narratives lean entirely on the format of a student posing a question and a sage responding by relating a story, while drawing on a vast range of textual sources (ibid., 141). This didactic format is followed throughout the wide spectrum of Purāṇic literature not as a mechanical device that moves the narrative forward but as an essential philosophical conviction that knowledge requires discourse and the involvement of a guru (ibid., 149).9 Consequently, since the encyclopaedic scope of the eighteen great (maha) and eighteen lesser (upa) Purāṇas far transcends even the traditionally recognized characteristics of a Purāṇa,10 it may be preferrable to seek a  See, for instance, the sages’ appeal to Śuka at the beginning of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa to transmit all that he knows, since ‘teachers disclose even their deepest secrets to an affectionate pupil’ (I: 1.8); and indeed, this Purāṇa is the ‘ripe fruit of the wish-yielding tree of the Vedas, that has been dropped down from the mouth of Śuka’ (I: 1.3.). 10  Traditionally, a Purāṇic text is supposed to address five ‘topics’ (pañcalakṣaṇa): creation or evolution (sarga), re-creation (pratisarga), genealogy (vaṃśa), cosmic cycles (manvantara), and accounts of royal dynasties (vaṃśānucarita) (Coburn 1980: 341). In actuality, many of the Purāṇas 9

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more didactic definition of what makes a text effectively function as a Purāṇa. Greg Bailey (1995: 13–14) suggests that one should better identify works worthy of being titled Purāṇas according to their instructive function: their wish to promote a specific theological vision. To this characteristic, Rohlman (2015: 140) adds the dialogue form as the means to the fulfilment of the work’s didactic function.11 Early Buddhist literature also made extensive use of the dialogue form. Dialogue is certainly the predominant method of presentation of the Buddha’s discourses (sūtras, or suttas in Pali) as preserved in the Pāli Canon.12 Of course, one would surmise that this form of presentation was chosen not necessarily for its literary and philosophical effects on the listener or reader, but for the more immediate purpose of preserving the living exchange with an admired master of transformation. This aspiration to record a living exchange of an initially undocumented oral transmission is thus no different to the dialogical nature of the New Testament. In the Buddha’s case, after his passing, those who participated in or witnessed the live exchange would gather periodically in order to recite all that they had recalled (Bodhi 2005: vii). In time, these recitations were written down, while the body of work called the Nikāyas (from the first century bc) strove to be the closest to the Buddha’s teachings in his own words (ibid., ix). Thus, the chantlike character of the suttas seems to be both the result of the way in which the Buddha’s teachings were memorized for several hundreds of years and a method through which the knowledge could be better assimilated by the hearer or reader. The Buddha’s so-called recorded dialogues clearly reflect Hadot’s characterization of transformation-oriented classical dialogues. The teachings do not constitute abstract philosophy, since they result from interactions with specific monks (bhikkhus) and other truth-seekers who approach the Buddha with their individual concerns and queries. Furthermore, the dialogues were written down with the intention of augmenting committed and interested students’ grasp of the dhamma. As such, they are designed to provide listeners and readers not with an impeccable theory but with mind-altering pronouncements and existential conviction, internal and external practices, a way of life,13 and a selective and purposeful metaphysics.14 We find several suttas that elucidate the selective nature of the Buddha’s metaphysical presentation – suttas that indicate that for the Buddha, shying away from theoretical elaborations was an essential element of the teaching itself. In the Saṃyutta Nikāya (56:31), for instance, the Buddha likens his teaching to a few leaves that he picks up from the ground, explaining that just as they are nothing compared to the numerous leaves that have remained on the trees, he too chooses to do not abide by this rule and either address only some of these topics or expand on other objectives, such as aesthetics and even the art of warfare (ibid., 342). 11  These seem to be overgeneralized definitions, since many other works could fall into these categories. 12  Other manifestations of Buddhist dialogues can be found in the Jātakas (between 300 bc and ad 400), and in later Mahāyāna sources, such as the Prajñāpāramitā. 13  Specifically, the ‘Noble Eightfold Path’. See Saṃyutta Nikāya 12:65. 14  Another characteristic of transformation-oriented classical dialogue, which is explicitly present in the Buddha’s discourses, is the spirit of friendship (e.g. Saṃyutta Nikāya 45:2).

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teach but a small fraction of his direct knowledge. What he has jettisoned is knowledge that cannot benefit his monks, that is ‘irrelevant to the fundamentals of the spiritual life’, and that does not lead to nibbāna (or nirvāṇa).15 In other places, the Buddha attacks those ascetics and Brahmins who revel in what he defines as ‘volitional formations’ (saṅkhāra): mental constructs that ultimately lead to bondage (Saṃyutta Nikāya 56:42). Thus, one must not hope to weave out of the Buddha’s dialogues a comprehensive and systematic explanation of reality: the gaps in the theory have been left there on purpose. The Buddha strives to equip his listeners with a liberating insight into the nature of reality, which he deems ‘proper wisdom’ and which naturally leads to a life of equanimity and renunciation (Majjhima Nikāya 54, Potaliya Sutta). Like in the Mahābhārata, and in the Bhagavadgītā in particular, the indestructible nature of the Buddha’s dhamma is sometimes tested and proven in severe circumstances, as we read in the dramatic dialogue between Dighāvu, an agonized lay follower on his deathbed, and the Buddha, who pays him a visit and guides him towards liberation (Saṃyutta Nikāya 55:3). However, even though the Buddha’s interlocutors often prompt his discourse, they do not function as engaged discussants: for the most part, having posed the initial questions, they disappear into the background in order to allow the Buddha’s monologic teaching to flower, either briefly confirming the Buddha’s line of argumentation or reappearing close to the dialogue’s conclusion to proclaim their satisfaction and resulting transformation. This is true even in the case of discussants who are determined to challenge the integrity of the Buddha’s philosophy (e.g. Majjhima Nikāya 63, Cūḷamāluṅkya Sutta; Majjhima Nikāya 72, Aggivacchagotta Sutta). Last, a large number of Jain works are abundant with dialogue as a compositional feature. Canonical texts include the Rayapaseniya and the Vivagasuyam, and among the non-canonical literary works we can find the Vasudevahiṇḍī and Hemachandra’s Sthavirāvalīcaritra (Black and Patton 2015: 2). Centring on the Śvetāmbara canon, Anna Esposito (2015: 79) shows that Jain dialogues as a whole are invested in the effort to establish knowledge of oneself as a means to salvation and a right way of life. Read in this context, it becomes clear that the dialogue form is intended not only to enable a more vivid doctrinal presentation (other literary devices can achieve this as well), but also to serve as a validation of the truthfulness of the contents: since Jina Mahāvīra is regarded as an omniscient and thus flawless being, his direct words cannot be doubted, and thus the explicit dialogue form reaffirms the scripture’s sacredness and deepens the listener’s and reader’s emotional identification with the contents (ibid., 81–82).16

 A similar statement is made in the Māluṅkyaputta dialogue in the Cūḷamāluṅkya Sutta (Majjhima Nikāya 63), which will be elaborated on in Chap. 11. 16  Whereas in most cases the question-and-answer exchanges in the Śvetāmbara canon are extremely formalized and systematized, one exception is the Viyāhapannatti (‘Proclamation of Explanations’), to which Jozef Deleu (1996) has devoted an entire book. Deleu suggests that this text, which introduces an unorderly and disjointed diversity of topics, is the only genuine dialogue text, capturing Mahāvīra’s active personality and authentic flow of transmission before systematization took over (ibid., 34ff). 15

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Esposito (2015: 83, 88–89) argues that the dialogues in the Śvetāmbara canon are primarily intended to provide Mahāvīra with different opportunities to demonstrate the supremacy of his being: from his ability to know everything, including actual mind-reading (Viyāhapannatti, V.4, 83–8), to his success in converting a wide variety of individual partners, each belonging to a different class, and refuting objectors’ claims in ways that confirm the superiority of Jain above Brahmanical wisdom.17 This justifies a Hadotian approach to religious and philosophical Jain literature as well, since scriptural Jain dialogues are strategically designed to uphold both the teacher and his doctrine. This is also the central motivation behind Jain narrative literature. As shown by Esposito (2015: 92), some dialogues – especially sermons given by religious figures, but also parables and instructive tales told by laymen and laywomen – have explicit didactic ambitions. Traders, merchants, and aristocrats, but also Gods and even animals, partake in these didactic dialogues (ibid.). This type of dialogue is often dedicated to instructing opponents, mainly those following the materialistic doctrine (Nāstikavādin), and to removing doubts and errors that hinder their ability to pursue the right path (ibid., 93). Other dialogues, which have an implicit didactic intention, conceal their religious messages behind enjoyable narratives, while employing the dialogue form to literally amalgamate the often overwhelming variety of their tales (ibid., 96). The oldest extant example of Jain narrative literature, the Vasudevahiṇḍī (c. fifth century ce), displays yet another use of the dialogical structure by conveying a philosophical message through the form itself. It presents a multilayered main story and numerous secondary stories, relayed by different narrators, each involved in separate dialogues, while increasingly adding further narrative layers and disrupting all chronological lines. Esposito (ibid., 90–91, 96) perceptively concludes that this dizzying effect on the reader, who becomes completely lost in a thicket of dialogues without a centre, has a philosophical purpose: one can directly experience the ‘complex and incomprehensible nature of the world’, including the multiplicity of former lives and the relative nature of all relationships. In this context, we may consider other Indian works, such as the Hindu Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, that utilize this literary device for similar philosophical transmissions. In the case of Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, the ever-expanding nature of the narrative and its numerous dialogues seem to illustrate the work’s core notion that ‘This world-­ appearance is a confusion, even as the blueness of the sky is an optical illusion’ (I:2).18

 See also Deleu (1996: 40).  Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, whose dialogical process explicitly strives to serve as the ‘raft with which men will cross the ocean of Saṃsāra’ (2.11), opens with a discussion of the problem of liberation – which of the two is conducive to liberation, work or knowledge? – between two sages, Sutīkṣna and Agastya. This becomes the underlying question of the entire work and its numerous sub-narratives and dialogues. Agastya relays a legend in which a son asks his guru and father the same question. The father answers his son’s question by telling him another ancient legend, in which Vālmīki tells the story of the dialogue between Rāma and Vasiṣṭha. This is a way of expressing a fractal reality: a multiplicity of forms that emphasizes the one Self in all forms, and countless 17 18

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Having briefly outlined early manifestations of the dialogue form in classical India, let us devote some attention to the dialogical nature and writings of classical Greek philosophies.

The Conversational Nature of Greek Philosophy Any discussion of Hadot’s conception of the dialogical character of classical Greek philosophy should include a distinction between two dimensions that are not necessarily related: on the one hand, the fundamentally oral and conversational nature of this tradition and, on the other hand, the textual dialogue form, which is mainly found in the genre of the Socratic dialogue commonly employed by Socrates’ disciples, such as Plato and Xenophon. In Hadot’s vision, classical philosophy was dialogical in essence and relied on dialogue as a transformative method until the first century bc, when the philosophical discourse began to change into scholastics by shifting to commentaries on early texts (Hadot 2002: 151, 2009: 53). Thus, to Hadot, even texts that do not appear in the dialogue form, such as Aristotle’s treatises, indirectly reflect the ‘ethics of dialogue’ and are the echo of oral and live exchanges (Hadot 2002: 63–64, 87–88). Furthermore, Hadot identifies a direct relation between this conversational nature and the transformative intent of Greek philosophy, in its aspiration ‘to be more a living voice than writing and still more a life than a voice’ (Hadot, quoted in Davidson 1995: 23). Hadot may rightly be criticized for interpreting all classical works as dialogues in disguise. Even though most of Aristotle’s works are clearly read as lecture notes from oral lessons given by Aristotle at the academy (Hadot 2002: 63–64), lectures can be understood as dialogues in the same way that a writer of a monograph may take their reader into consideration. Moreover, there are sufficient examples of works written by philosophers of antiquity, such as Plotinus’ treatises, but even they are considered by Hadot to be an indirect echo of oral teaching (ibid., 151). We can also assume that besides the transformative intent, the fact that classical philosophy was ‘more a living voice than writing’ had something to do with the simple reason that the dissemination of the written word was technically less feasible. Nonetheless, Hadot’s evaluation of Greek philosophy as ethically dialogical has enough to rely on. To begin with, for the classical Greek philosophers, dialogue was not only the preferred form of discourse but also constituted an essential component of the internal practices that were designed to lead the philosopher to self-­knowledge. The foundation of transformative philosophy was the meditative discourse, which was – in the words of Antisthenes, one of Socrates’ disciples – the ability to converse with oneself (Hadot 1995: 91). For Plato, thought was a discourse without the voice, since it was the soul’s ‘conversation with itself’ (Sophist, 264b). Hadot manifestations that point at the unmanifest. In Kṛṣṇa’s words in the Bhagavadgītā: ‘There has never been a time when you and I and the kings gathered here have not existed, nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist’ (2.11).

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observes that dialoguing with oneself was a common practice among the ancients, whether for Pyrrho, who would speak aloud to himself, or Epictetus, who advised that one should take solitary walks to converse with oneself (Hadot 2002: 179). Inner dialogue was a means to battle with oneself and to influence and transform oneself, but it also formed the basis of all spiritual exercises, as well as the spiritual exercise practised in common, which was the dialogue with others (Hadot 1995: 91, 2002: 179). The most indispensable external dialogue was the living discussion with one’s philosophy teacher (Hadot 2002: 104). This discussion took place on the basis of the student’s inner dialogue and at the same time prepared the student for the next steps of the meditative discourse. The form of instruction tended to be dialectical, based on a sequence of questions and answers, and inaugurated by the student’s ‘thesis’, which was the fundamental question that was argued for or against (ibid.). This method of engagement, Hadot remarks, was maintained throughout antiquity, most noticeably in the Socratic tradition followed by Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics (ibid., 103–104). Thus, what we find in most of the classical philosophical texts written from the Socratic era to the first century bc is, in fact, answers to questions posed by either the students or the teacher in the course of a living conversation, which were subsequently modified into treatise-like books (Hadot 2009: 52–53). Daniel Klein (2012: xi) captures these dynamics when he describes the atmosphere at the table in Epicurus’ garden, where men and women listen with great attention to their master’s words: ‘He has thought about his philosophy long and hard, honing it in his discussions with others. He is welcoming of his students’ questions, patient with their misunderstandings, tolerant of opposing views.’ The textual transformation of this ‘culture of the question’ explains the style of discussion we find not only in Plato’s dialogues but also in Aristotle’s and Plotinus’ treatises – rather than instantly satisfying one’s desire for knowledge by providing an immediate answer, they take detours and use repetitions which were originally strategies for helping their students to learn how to reason and to absorb the knowledge into the depths of their being (Hadot 2009: 52–53, 88–89). In this respect, the path traversed together, in the form of the Platonian exercise of dialogue or the Aristotelian discussion of problems, possessed a greater developmental potential than the result or the solution did (Hadot 2002: 87–88). Hadot further comments that even the seemingly intellectual exercises of Platonic dialogues such as the Sophist or Philebus were designed for the sole purpose of learning how to dialogue, which meant rising beyond one’s individual viewpoint to a universal perspective by submitting oneself to the norms of reason (ibid., 177–178). Since the main philosophical activity consisted of the philosopher’s answers to the disciples’ questions, it can be easily inferred that the answers were tailored to the needs and developmental requirements of specific people rather than being universally applicable. The classical books document particular exchanges, ‘a living relationship between people rather than an abstract relation to ideas’ (Hadot 2009:

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54–55).19 The fact that the audience was always well defined is reflected in Epictetus’ statement that everyone felt that the words of his teacher, Musonius, were personally addressed to them (ibid.). It is striking to consider in this light the fact that the majority of works written by Plato – thirty-three of them – owe their titles to the names of specific discussants. Gadamer’s hermeneutical approach to Plato also accentuates the personal dimension of Plato’s dialogues: the dialogues capture specific situations, in which Socrates speaks to individuals whose particular concerns define the limits of what Socrates can say (Smith 1980: ix–x). Thus, the success of a developing discussion of this kind is measured not by its logical rigor and ultimate resolution, but by its ability to bring the essence of the subject matter to light and to elucidate the question (ibid.).20 In the philosophy of classical Greece, Hadot maintains, there were hardly any monologues. The implicit or explicit dimension of the interlocutor gave shape to both oral and written teaching (Hadot 1995: 105). This demand for concrete and practical guidance significantly reduced the element of dogmatic and purely theoretical presentation and maintained the texts as transformative spiritual exercises, which were designed to guide the listener towards a final mental state (Hadot 2009: 91). The resulting incoherences and contradictions we find in the written works reflect the presence of a discussant who required not a systematic and absolute expression of the philosopher’s thought but an individual tempo and economy that conditioned the content (Hadot 1995: 105). This includes literary genres such as consolations and correspondence, which were naturally addressed to friends or disciples under specific circumstances of life (Hadot 2009: 55). Finally, Hadot’s conception of classical Greek philosophy as ethically dialogical is supported by the fact that its discourse, from the pre-Socratics’ era onwards, was designed for listening rather than reading: the majority of texts were either oral classes transformed into the written word or writings intended to be vocally presented in public readings (Hadot 1995: 52–55). Plato’s dialogues, for instance, were written with the intention to be read aloud (Hadot 2009: 52–53), whereas most of Aristotle’s texts were revised preparatory lecture notes which were artificially grouped and interpreted by his successors and commentators as a complete system (Hadot 2002: 87–88). In this culture of transformative philosophy, it was strongly believed that only the living word, shared with the sufficient slowness that assimilation and transformation required, could accomplish the task of altering the student’s world view (Davidson 1995: 20). This conversational nature of Greek philosophy might have led to the dialogical form of some of the texts. Aside from the broader dialogical nature of Greek philosophy, the genre of the Socratic dialogue, whose writers chose the textual dialogue form as their medium, was thriving (Hadot 2002: 23–24). Deeply affected by Socrates’ unique figure and  See also Hösle (2012:xvi), who conceives of the philosophical dialogue form as an embodiment of both the logical (theoretical) and the ethical (practical) aspects of philosophy: real conversations can never be mere exchanges of arguments, since the individual propositions are presented by persons who are involved in relations between people. 20  See also Gadamer (1985: 186). 19

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form of discussion, his disciples aspired to preserve the form of inquiry that ultimately made the Athenian jury condemn him to death (ibid.). Thus, what we now recognize as the exclusive style of Plato’s dialogues  – in which the character of Socrates almost always assumes the role of the questioner – was not Plato’s invention (ibid.).21 Hadot treats the Platonic dialogues as ‘model exercises’: rather than transcriptions of actual discussions, they function as literary creations which aim to present the ideal dialogue (Hadot 1995: 91). Of course, there is a reason to wonder why Plato, who unequivocally deemed the oral and interpersonal discourse superior to the written one, would toil over the creation of textual dialogues, even if they seem to retain their ethically dialogical dimension (Hadot 2002: 71–72). Hadot’s explanation, building on Plato’s statement that ‘Written discourse goes rolling around in every direction’, is that Plato strove to extend his influence beyond his school and make himself known through the conventional method of public readings (ibid., 72–73). In doing so, he hoped to propel others towards doing philosophy, and indeed, there is evidence that the dialogues spread outside Athens and drew new students (ibid.). Plato’s choice to represent the philosophical life through the Socratic dialogue seems to spring not only from the fashionable use of this form, but mainly from the fact that the written Socratic dialogues were able to preserve the ethical value of the living dialogue, as it was exercised in the academy, with a greater transformative depth (Hadot 2002: 71, 73). The modern reader, who expects the dialogues to function as a methodical presentation of a theoretical system, may find it hard to imagine the intense participatory role they are expected to assume in the dialogue they have the illusion of overhearing (ibid., 73). If Plato did have a systematic doctrine, he certainly avoided using the dialogues to represent it: his texts aspire to set not only the fictional interlocutor but also the reader on a path that does not necessarily lead to the satisfaction of a final insight, but enables the practice of the philosophical method and creates the conditions for the transformation of both direct and indirect participants (Hadot 1995: 92–93). In fact, it is the very avoidance of the more conventional ‘transference of wisdom’ that obliges both discussant and reader to actively assess the truthfulness of the statements, re-evaluate cherished assumptions, and accomplish their own realizations (Cooper 1997: xix–xxi). Plato engages us in psychagogy, ‘the art of seducing souls’, by leading us along a dialectical, tortuous, and often dizzying path, which demands walking hand in hand with him, for as long as his interlocutor or reader is not persuaded, the next step of the dialogue cannot be taken (Hadot 1995: 92). Around one year before Plato’s death (350 bc), another disciple of Socrates, Xenophon, offered a different use of the dialogue form with the intention of communicating other aspects of Socrates’ legacy. Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues  – which were compiled into his Memorabilia, memoirs of Socrates  – lack the instructive and persuasive tone of Plato’s writings. While Plato intended to train  In Plato’s works, however, we find the peculiar choice to represent himself through fictional characters and to avoid using the first person – as opposed to Xenophon, who appears to document certain dialogues he had with the historical Socrates (Hadot 2002: 71; Bruell 1994: vii). 21

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readers in the art of philosophizing, Xenophon undertook the task of depicting a Socrates who was less a profound thinker and more an ethical figure (Bruell 1994: x, xii). Bruell (ibid., x, xii) suggests that Xenophon made use of the Socratic dialogue in this way for two reasons. First, the Memorabilia aimed to defend Socrates’ good reputation and to establish his historical role by cautiously introducing him as a non-mystic, a relatively ordinary human being who set out to benefit and advise his companions, relatives, and fellow citizens (ibid., xi). Second, Xenophon himself was less interested in philosophy as transformative self-knowledge and far more impressed with philosophy as moral guidance  – in particular, its ability to throw light on earthly matters, such as personal relationships, economy, and politics (ibid., xii).22 Thus, unlike in Plato, who clearly interpreted the Delphic dictum ‘Know thyself’ as an invitation to a profound self-realization which he considered philosophy, in Xenophon’s dialogues, knowing oneself implies an ethical transformation which leads to a life of self-control and continence (ibid., xv).

The Beginnings of the Transformative Dialogue Of the many Indian dialogical texts, drawing a comparison between the Upaniṣads and Plato’s dialogues strikes me as the most relevant to this book. Both are early texts, based on teachings that were transmitted and expounded around the same time,23 and in both, the dialogue form frames the entire text rather than being ‘embedded within texts of other literary prose and poetic styles’ (Black and Patton 2015: 2–3). In addition, their dialogues were designed for the sole, unambiguous purpose of exposing and assimilating philosophical truths. But more importantly, in many respects, these two literary projects inaugurated the Greek and Indian traditions of transformative philosophy.24 Both marked and enabled a crucial transition from more ritual-based and mythical religious thinking to a philosophical thinking that focused on human consciousness and self-knowledge. Whether it was the Greek rationality or the Indian pure awareness, power was finally seen to ‘rest in man himself’ (Nagler 2007: 302).

 However, as Bruell (1994: x) points out, in his own individual life, Xenophon did not follow faithfully the Socratic model of philosophy as a way of life. 23  Hadot (2002: 332) estimates that Socrates began to teach in Athens in 435 bc and continued until his death in 399 bc, and that Plato began writing sometime after Socrates’ death and kept on writing until his own death fifty years later in 349 or 348 bc (Cooper 1997: xii). The Pre-Buddhist Upaniṣads were written as early as the seventh to sixth centuries bc, and later canonical Upaniṣads appeared in the fifth and late fourth century bc, while the remaining others were probably written in the last few centuries bc (Olivelle 1998: 7, 12). 24  Compare Nagler (2007: 295, 302), who considers the Upaniṣads to be the ‘purest source of India’s spiritual tradition’ and civilization, and Whitehead, who perceived the European philosophical tradition as a whole as ‘a series of footnotes to Plato’ (quoted in Burley 2019: 9). 22

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In classical Greece, philosophical thinking itself – in the form of the shift from ‘personified elements’ to a rational explanation of the world – began as early as the sixth century bc (Hadot 2002: 9–10). However, the term philosophíā was first defined in the fourth century bc by Plato, whose works seemed to be the culmination of this historical ‘milestone in the history of thought’ as well as the initiation of a new era – a final departure from the focus on mythical narratives of creation and the beginning of insistence on argument-based rigorous demonstration (ibid., 10). But this method of argumentation sprang from a radically mystical interpretation of the maxim ‘Know thyself’, which had been handed down by the sixth-century Seven Sages (ibid., 21, 63). In classical India, while the Upaniṣads constituted an attachment to the sacred hymn and ritual collections called the Vedas, they were significantly classified as Vedānta, ‘the end of the Vedas’ (Nagler 2007: 297–298). The anonymous Upaniṣadic authors, presumably teachers in the forest ashrams, were deeply engaged in transforming a sacrificial religion into a ‘great mystical religion true for all time’ (Sarma, quoted in ibid., 299). In this major shift from a mythical religious thinking to a mystical philosophy, the Upaniṣads jettisoned rituals, or at least began treating them as ‘symbols of self-realization’ (ibid., 298),25, 26 and introduced a different universe, in which the Vedic gods were transformed into aspects of a single being called Brahman (Easwaran 2007: 21). In Olivelle’s (1998: 3) words, the Upaniṣads should be thought of as the texts that ‘document the transition from the archaic ritualism of the Veda into new religious ideas and institutions’. Furthermore, they have turned their gaze away from the phenomenal world and preferred to look inward to investigate the innate nature of human consciousness, only to find deep within it the indivisible Brahman itself (ibid.). Now, fundamental questions could be answered by human minds that looked into themselves, without mediation of organized religion and rituals, and redemption could be achieved by the power of one’s own direct understanding (ibid.). The fact that both the Greek and Indian traditions adopted the dialogue form for the expression of ideas at the time of this historical and philosophical transition suggests that dialogue could serve as an effective tool for the expression and realization

 Since the Upaniṣads were not composed by one author, it is understandable that we sometimes find a complete negation of rituals (see, for instance, Añgiras’ view in the Muṇḍakopaniṣad, 1.2.1–10, or Nāciketa’s provocation in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.1.2) and sometimes an appreciation of them as a preliminary practice (see the significance given to the fire sacrifice in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.1.12–14). This is comparable to Socrates’ criticism of Dionysian worship in the Phaedo (69c–d), which is later contradicted by the importance he ascribes to a ritualistic offering to Asclepius (ibid., 118a). 26  See, e.g., J. L. Brockington (1981: 41), who demonstrates that the Vedic sacrificial rituals are ‘internalized’ in some of the Upaniṣads and that this process of internalization began in the Āraṇyakas: ‘The Kauṣītaki Āraṇyaka in particular expounds the prāṇāgnihotra, “the fire oblation through breath,” as a substitute for the basic rite. This idea of the inner, mental offering as distinguished from the outer, formal sacrifice is an important element in the transition from the Brāhmaṇas to the Upaniṣads.’ 25

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of this shift. Both the Upaniṣadic authors and Plato could have written treatise-like summaries of actual dialogues, but they saw fit to retain the dialogical character of their traditions and to involve their readers in either documented or fictional interpersonal communications. It is my contention that the dialogue form could authentically represent this passage to the era of transformative philosophy, in which it was discovered that the human mind had the philosophical capacity to liberate itself. But it was not the dialogue form in itself that could facilitate this transformative process; rather, it was a specific type of dialogue, which I call the ‘transformative dialogue’.

References Apple, James B. 2010. Can Buddhist Thought Be Construed as a Philosophia, or a Way of Life? Bulletin of the Institute of Oriental Philosophy: 191–204. Bailey, Greg. 1995. Ganesapurana: Part 1: Upasanakhanda. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Bera, Bimalesh. 2017. Few Dramatic Suktas of Rigveda Samhita. International Journal of Sanskrit Research 3 (4): 146–148. Black, Brian. 2021. In Dialogue with the Mahābhārata. New York: Routledge. Black, Brian, and Laurie Patton. 2015. Introduction. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 1–21. New York: Routledge. Bodewitz, H.W. 2009. The Dialogue of Yama and Yami (RV. 10, 10). Indo-Iranian Journal 52: 251–285. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2005. In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pāli Canon. Boston: Wisdom. Bouthillette, Karl-Stéphan. 2020. Dialogue and Doxography in Indian Philosophy: Points of View in Buddhist, Jaina, and Advaita Vedānta Traditions. New York: Routledge. Brockington, John L. 1981. The Sacred Thread. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bruell, Christopher. 1994. Introduction: Xenophon and His Socrates. In Xenophon Memorabilia. Trans. Amy L. Bonnette, vii–xxii. New York: Cornell University Press. Burley, Mikel. 2019. Philosophizing Within and Across Traditions: Discussing Bryan Van Norden’s Proposal for Multicultural Philosophy. Paper presented at the Multicultural Philosophy Conference, Manchester Hall, Manchester, 15 July 2019. Coburn, Thomas B. 1980. The Study of the Purāṇas and the Study of Religion. Religious Studies 16 (3): 341–352. Cooper, John M. 1997. Introduction. In Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, vii–xxviii, 49–50, 557–558. Indianapolis: Hackett. Dalmiya, Vrinda, and Gangeya Mukherji. 2018. Introduction: To Do. In Exploring Agency in the Mahābhārata: Ethical and Political Dimensions of Dharma, ed. Sibesh Chandra Bhattacharya, Vrinda Dalmiya, and Gangeya Mukherji, 1–27. Abingdon: Routledge. Davidson, Arnold. 1995. Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy. In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot. Trans. Michael Chase, 1–45. Oxford: Blackwell. Deleu, Jozef. 1996. Viyahapannatti (Bhagavai): The Fifth Anga of the Jaina canon. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Dhand, Arti. 2008. Woman as Fire, Woman as Sage: Sexual Ideology in the Mahābhārata. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Easwaran, Eknath. 2007. Introduction. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 13–47, 63–67. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Esposito, Anna Aurelia. 2015. Didactic Dialogues: Communication of Doctrines and Strategies of Narrative in Jain Literature. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 79–98. New York: Routledge. Ferrer, Albert. 2018. Integral Education in Ancient India from Vedas and Upanishads to Vedanta. International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 6 (6): 281–295. https://doi. org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v6.i6.2018.1373. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1985. Philosophical Apprenticeships. Cambridge: MIT Press. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2013. The Concealed Art of the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gotama. 1990. The Nyāya Sūtras of Gotama. Trans. Satish Chandra Vidyabhusan. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael chase. Hoboken: Blackwell. ———. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hösle, Vittorio. 2012. The Philosophical Dialogue: A Poetics and Hermeneutics. Trans. Steven Rendall. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Kennedy, George A. 1998. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, Daniel. 2012. Foreword. In Epicurus: The Art of Happiness. Trans. George K. Strodach, vii–xi. New York: Penguin. Lloyd, Keith. 2013. Learning from India’s Nyāya Rhetoric: Debating Analogically through Vāda’s Fruitful Dialogue. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 43 (3): 285–299. Nagler, Michael N. 2007. A Religion for Modern Times. In: The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 295–336. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Nicholson, Andrew. 2015. Dialogue and Genre in Indian Philosophy. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 151–169. New York: Routledge. Olivelle, Patrick. 1998. The Early Upanishads. New York: Oxford University Press. Oliver, Robert T. 1971. Communication and Culture in Ancient China and India. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Patton, Laurie. 2014. The Biggest Loser in the Doniger Controversy? Indian Traditions of Debate. HuffPost. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-biggest-loser-in-the-_1_b_4852776. Peters, Michael A., and Tina Besley. 2019. Models of Dialogue. Educational Philosophy and Theory: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1684801. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Rohlman, Elizabeth M. 2015. The Dialogue of Tradition: Purāṇa, Gītā, and Theological Heritage. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 137–150. New York: Routledge. Shulman, David. 1996. The Yakṣa’s Questions. In Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes, ed. Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Shulman, 151–167. New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, P.  Christopher. 1980. Translator’s Introduction. In Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato, Hans-Georg Gadamer. Trans. P.  Christopher Smith, ix–xv. New Haven: Yale University Press. Taber, John. 1983. Transformative Philosophy: A Study of Sankara, Fichte and Heidegger. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. The Bhagavad Gita. 2007. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales: Nilgiri Press.

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The Supreme Yoga: Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha. 2010. Translated by Swami Venkatesananda. Motilal Banarsidass. Tripura Rahasya. 2003. Trans. Swami Sri Ramanananda Saraswathi. Bloomington: World Wisdom. “Vedas: Rig Veda.” n.d. Hindu Scriptures. https://www.hinduscriptures.in/scriptures/vedas/rig-­ veda/mandala-­viii/suktha-­lxxxi-­to-­ciii/topic-­101. Accessed 10 Oct 2022. Winternitz, Maurice. 2010. A History of Indian Literature. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

Chapter 4

‘When People Are Questioned, and the Questions Are Well Put’: Transformative Dialogue in the Upaniṣads and in Plato

In Chap. 3, I argued that the fact that the monumental literary projects of the Upaniṣads and Plato’s works were mostly framed as dialogues is inseparable from the historical and philosophical shift represented and enabled by these works. Both Plato’s writings and the Upaniṣads marked a transition from a mythopoetic, ritual-­ based, and deity-oriented religion to a perspective that focused on the human mind’s ability to liberate itself by the power of its own reason.1 Thus, we can identify in the two bodies of work the central theme of ignorance of one’s true nature as the only source of bondage and suffering and, in contrast, self-knowledge as the only source of liberation (Gold 1996: 19–20). Correspondingly, their dialogue form served to exhibit a new relationship between a teacher devoted to the release of the already-­ existing but dormant powers of the student’s mind and a fully engaged disciple who seeks and demands an experiential realization of the truth. The dialogue form was not merely an attempt to preserve the oral nature of the Socratic and Upaniṣadic traditions, nor was it employed only for the sake of a ‘more dramatic presentation of character and theme’ – rather, it expressed the ‘necessity for dynamic interaction with other minds as an approach to the Truth’ (Dillon 2000: 526), since its type of dialogue centred not on a systematic and absolute expression of the philosopher’s thought but on the interlocutor’s existential realization. This type of transformative dialogue, introduced for the first time by Plato and the unknown authors of the Upaniṣads, was shaped and structured with the intention to effect a lasting change in the mind and way of life of both the fictional discussant and the potential hearer or reader. On the basis of my brief introductions to dialogue in classical India and Greece in Chap. 3, I will devote the present chapter to explicating and illustrating more generally the particular type of dialogue employed by these philosophies, which I  For views that support this argument, see, for instance, Dillon (2000: 526, 545, 548) and Nagler (2007: 302). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_4

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refer to as transformative dialogue. By drawing similarities between Platonian and Upaniṣadic dialogues, I will be able to outline, in the first section, the ethical and practical characteristics of the transformative dialogue. The second section will delineate the conditions that the successful transformative dialogue requires for its fulfilment. Finally, I will devote the third section to a discussion of the transformative potential of a dialogue, suggesting two primary types of mind-altering outcome for both literary participants and willing readers. In terms of the broader vision of this book, this will enable me, in Part II, to shed light on the interconnection between Krishnamurti’s thought and the dialogue form that he developed.

Dialogue as Transformation Just like transformative philosophy in general, the textual transformative dialogue is not identified by the methodology it employs, but rather by its intention and purpose. It is a one-way process: a dialectical dynamic whose goal is to actively and directly alter the interlocutor’s mind. Furthermore, the dialogue’s process of transformation is designed in a way that can alter the discussant’s world view both while it is taking place and later, as a radical reorientation of one’s state of mind and way of life. In that respect, most of the Upaniṣads and Plato’s works fall into the category of the transformative philosophical dialogue, despite the fact that the methods they use for the revelation and assimilation of their truths greatly differ. However, even the choice of method cannot be distinguished from the dialogue’s ultimate destination. In the transformative dialogue, the methods are not mere devices that lead to the realization of the philosophical truth, since they are, in themselves, spiritual exercises that carry transformative significance and implications (Hadot 2002: 49). For instance, classical Greek rationality, as elucidated through Plato’s image of the soul as a charioteer (Phaedrus, 246a–b, 248a–b), was the evidence of the presence of the soul as the governor of sensual desires (Schiltz 2006: 451, 456). This implies that exercising logic was, in itself, a way to arouse this transcendent element that can rule the body. Even more broadly, by bringing rational order to the soul, the spiritual exercise of logic could align one’s being with cosmic order (Antonaccio 1998: 75–76). Thus, Jayakar (1986: 472) errs in her contention that the Platonian texts merely exploit the intense dynamics of dialogue in order to establish logic and reason at its end, while neglecting the transformation of the other participants. Plato’s project of rationality was not essentially different from the aspiration that guided the classical Indians, who, according to Jayakar (ibid.), deployed dialogue to awaken spiritual inquiry, in which logic was used as a tool: both traditions pushed logic to its limits in order to enable the discussants to finally transcend it and move beyond thought altogether. The chief commitment of the transformative dialogue is the experiential realization of self-knowledge. In Plato’s letters  – in which he finally writes in the first person rather than representing his philosophical thinking through semi-fictional characters – he makes it clear that the knowledge with which he is concerned cannot

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be formulated and written like other sciences (Letter VII, 341c).2 The former can only be achieved as a result of a ‘long-continued intercourse between teacher and pupil, in joint pursuit of the subject’, when ‘suddenly, like flashing forth when a fire is kindled, it is born in the soul and straightway nourishes itself’ (ibid.) – in other words, a transformative dialogue. Similarly, the Muṇḍakopaniṣad (1.1.4–5) regards the ‘study of the Vedas, linguistics, rituals, astronomy, and all the arts’ as lower knowledge, whereas the higher knowledge is ‘that which leads to self-realization’, which therefore can only be exercised in a direct interaction with a ‘teacher who has realized the Self’ (ibid., 1.1.12). The Upaniṣadic dialogues as a whole are single-­ mindedly occupied with the practice of parā, ‘transcendent’ knowledge which goes beyond both objective and subjective knowledge, as opposed to aparā, ordinary or ‘nontranscendent’ knowledge (Nagler 2007: 314–315).3 Parā is a type of knowledge that demands from the discussant, among other non-intellectual properties, the readiness to have their being and actions transformed through the sheer power of spiritual insight  – an insight whose source can only be a ‘living teacher who is equally ready to impart it’; thus, the dialogical form is an indication of a shared interest in the transformative process (ibid.). This does not mean that the transformative dialogue avoided conveying fragments of theories, which could be considered non-transcendent and ordinary objective knowledge. Like any other form of philosophical discourse, this type of dialogue provided ‘information about being, matter, heavenly phenomena, and the elements’ (Hadot 2009: 91). This intent may sometimes be overlooked in the case of the Upaniṣads, which appear to record non-theoretical, inspired teachings rather than instructive philosophy (Easwaran 2007: 20). However, as Nagler (2007: 307) points out, the Upaniṣadic sages not only wished to guide the cognitive growth of others towards a direct perception of reality, but also attempted to explain life’s processes and systems in a true and useful way. The Praśnopaniṣad’s dialogue, for instance, consists of five questions posed by Pippalāda’s sincere students to their beloved master. The questions urge Pippalāda not only to elaborate his teachings on meditation and self-realization, but also to disclose theories on the active forces in creation and human physiology, the process of rebirth, the mysteries of the sleep and dream states, and even the transformation of the sexual drive. These questions can be classified as aparā, but the master skilfully weaves theoretical propositions and instructive knowledge into his discourse without wavering from the ultimate goal of the transformative dialogue, which is the students’ spiritual illumination. Thus, the elaborate instructive teachings end with the disciples’ adoring exclamation, ‘You have taken us across the sea to the other shore’ – a clear indication that the answers were transformative (Question VI: 8). Both the Upaniṣads and Plato’s works contain theoretical presentations, but they are never fully committed to the construction of systematic and complete theories, which is, as Hadot (1995: 92) notes in relation to  Plato’s authorship of the Seventh Letter has been the subject of some dispute (e.g. Notomi 2022).  Objective knowledge is the study of the world as an object separate from oneself, whereas subjective knowledge is understanding gained as a result of inner experience. Transcendent knowledge is beyond inner and outer, since it is the experience of the world as oneself (see Nagler 2007: 315). 2 3

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Plato’s dialogues, the reason that the modern philosophy reader often finds them quite frustrating and puzzling to read. In the final analysis, since their project is transformation rather than information, the way they impart the theory – the intense selectivity of the information as well as the manner of its expression – is intended to evoke a certain mode of being in the listener. Similarly, the fact that the classical transformative dialogue was entirely focused on the experiential realization of specific students does not necessarily imply that it was consistently dialogical, that is, dynamically involving the interlocutor. Williams (2015: 671–672), who relies on Krishna Nath’s observation of differences in tempo and structure between the Upaniṣads and Plato’s dialogues, points out that whereas most of Plato’s dialogues took the form of quick and intense exchanges between Socrates and his discussants, the Upaniṣads generally relied on the Indian tradition of a brief question and a long answer. This tradition consisted of oral teachings transmitted to either a single student or a group of disciples, in which a brief question would be posed only to trigger a lengthy discourse; what commenced as a dialogue would blossom into a major sermon (ibid.). Thus, even though the answer retained the conversational, individualized, and transformative orientation, it was no longer a dialogue in the sense of an interpersonal engagement. Nevertheless, even the Upaniṣads sometimes depart from the more traditional structure and introduce dynamic sessions (see, for example, the dialogue between Uddālaka and his son, Śvetaketu, in the Chāndogyopaniṣad, VI: 1.1–16.3). In addition, the transformative dialogue often introduced long, sometimes uninterrupted monologues performed by the master in the midst of discussion. Sooner or later – as we find, for instance, in the dialogue between Death and Nāciketa in the Kaṭhopaniṣad (e.g., 1.2.15–25, 1.3.1–16)  – the presence of the seeker of truth becomes absorbed into the gushing river of the master’s teaching; the questioner remains the sole addressee of the teacher’s discourse and at the same time appears to be only instrumental in the teacher’s delivery of the secret knowledge.4 There are enough occurrences in Plato’s energetic dialogues as well in which the disciple becomes mainly instrumental in allowing Socrates to introduce his pattern of thinking, either by functioning chiefly as a yeasayer or by turning into a hidden presence as soon as Socrates leaps into a long, often poetic and mythic monologue (see, for example, Socrates’ speech in the Phaedrus, 244–257). In such episodes, it seems that the dialogue form has been lost, or at least that it has become a simple storytelling device ‘to create variety within the monologue’ (Williams 2015: 671–672). However, in the transformative dialogue, monologues still form part of a larger whole, which is itself a dialogue, since even then, and sometimes to a greater extent, the listener remains active by absorbing the teaching and being transformed by it. Such dramatic monologues are, in fact, the time in which the disciple’s listening heightens and the opportunity to engage in an experiential revelation of all that has been said is granted. During the lengthy answer or speech, remarks on the teacher’s part – such as the constant references made by Socrates to his companion Phaedrus

 See more on this point in my discussion of the Kaṭhopaniṣad in Chap. 5.

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in the Phaedrus (252b–c), from ‘You beautiful boy’ to ‘You may believe this or not as you like’ – make it clear that it is the student, and consequently the hearer or reader of the text, who is the sole focus and purpose of the teaching. On occasion, we receive a final proof of this active listening when we finally return to the dialogue form and find either the interlocutor declaring their unswerving trust in the master’s words or their own transformation, or the teacher confirming the disciple’s resulting realization, where the measure is never the student’s intellectual comprehension but rather their newfound state of being. This can also be the conclusion of the anonymous narrator, as in the proclamation at the end of the Kaṭhopaniṣad (II: 3.17): ‘Freeing himself from all separateness, [Nāciketa] won immortality in Brahman’. Last, the fact that the dialogue’s purpose is imparting a transcendent knowledge that metamorphoses the student’s being does not mean that the Upaniṣads and Plato’s writings only demonstrate fully realized transformative dialogues. In each of these types of classical text, successful dialogues rely on a master–student relationship based on profound mutual trust (see, for example, the interaction between Simmias, Cebes, and Socrates in the Phaedo, or the dialogue between Narada and Sanatkumara in the Chāndogyopaniṣad, VII: 1.1–26.2). But not all texts exhibit such ideal conditions, and we should therefore avoid generalizing these works as compilations of dialogues between teachers and students. For example, Ferrer (2018: 287) argues that the Upaniṣadic dialogues resemble the ‘genuine Socratic pedagogy’ found in Plato’s works, in the way that they employ the shared passionate exploration of master and disciple in order to unveil the most fundamental issues of consciousness and reality. Similarly, Nagler (2007: 298, 304) limits the Upaniṣads to utterances of forest sages given to their intimate disciples. However, in the Upaniṣads there are not only intimate dialogues but also public debates, in which philosophers demonstrate sequences of challenge and counterchallenge in front of their audiences. An evocative example is King Janaka’s contest in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (III: 1.1–12), in which Gārgī challenges Yājñavalkya to a debate on the nature of Brahman. In the same way, Plato’s Symposium presents a speech contest, which is amicable yet unabashedly ambitious. Such examples are a good reason to surmise that both texts echo debates and speech contests that took place within these philosophical cultures. Aside from competitive dialogues, some of Plato’s books, such as the Euthyphro or the Alcibiades, depict fierce and frustrating debates between Socrates and interlocutors who are not willing to be guided by him. But even these so-called unsuccessful or competitive dialogues can be classified as transformative dialogues, above all because the answers sought by the contestants are not primarily theoretical but transformational. For the participants of the Symposium, grasping the true nature of Eros, the god of love, is not merely intellectual entertainment, but knowledge that has an important bearing on the way they serve this god and ethically engage in sexuality. Thus, beyond the satisfaction of victory or the bitterness of defeat lies a far more crucial reflection, and that is

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whether someone else has modelled a greater degree of self-transformation.5 It is also possible to imagine the reason that reports of fictional or actual debates which involve the admired teachers found their way into these two canonical compilations: beyond the more obvious fact that they display the unfailing power of the teachings, debates are an invitation to a transformative dialogue. It is clear that Yājñavalkya would not dialogue with his devoted pupil, Samashrava, in the way he responded to Gargi’s questions in front of a crowd of furious Brahmins (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, III: 1.1–12); his answers were designed to open the door to those who were ready to be transformed, and the following dialogue between Yājñavalkya and King Janaka shows us that at least one walked through the door (ibid., IV: 1–23). But even when the philosopher’s invitation is rejected, as exemplified in the futile dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato’s Euthyphro, the missed opportunity can be highly educative: through demonstration of what debilitates a dialogue, the transformative potential for the reader becomes even clearer. But what exactly is the transformative potential of a dialogue, and what are the conditions for its fulfilment? I shall now attempt to answer this question, by scrutinizing Platonian and Upaniṣadic dialogues which demonstrate successful encounters between philosophers and their interlocutors.

The Teacher as a Midwife We cannot explore the conditions for the fulfilment of the transformative dialogue outside the context of the historical transition within which it came into being. As discussed earlier, during the fourth and third centuries bc, in both Greece and India, a great flourishing of philosophical systems began to threaten the mythopoetic world view, which had been established for a long period of a thousand years or more (Dillon 2000: 525–526). This was not a uniform movement, but rather a diversity of schools debating the nature of reality and suggesting opposing theories that ranged from the mystical to the materialist (ibid.). Dillon (ibid., 548–549), who observes striking similarities between the ideas that spread in both cultures, and more generally a common intellectual enterprise, argues that we should treat the Axial Age as a classical ‘Age of Enlightenment’ and study its world synchronically. Despite the overwhelming diversity of the philosophical systems, it is possible to characterize this age as the era of transformative philosophy, in which theories were frequently directed to some form of inner transformation and a resulting way of life. This principle of inner transformation emerged from the newfound realization of the philosophical capacity itself to liberate the human mind through the power of its own insight, unaided by divine grace or the mediation of priests. The fact that the texts that best represent this era were recorded as dialogues reflected what

 Another good example is Xenophon’s Symposium, in which Socrates and his companions debate the question of who is the most self-controlled among them in matters of love (Bruell 1994: xv). 5

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philosophy, as opposed to religious dogma, really meant: the centre of gravity was no longer the perfect knowledge of the teacher but rather the teacher’s expertise in enabling students to attain an insight by themselves.6 From this dramatic shift, the entire ethics of the transformative dialogue evolved. The most persistent assumption behind the dialogue form of both the Upaniṣads and Plato’s works is that the knowledge sought already lies dormant within the student’s interior, whether it is the Platonian soul or the Upaniṣadic Self that ‘dwells within the cavern of the heart’ (Muṇḍakopaniṣad, 2.1.9). In fact, this is the very reason behind Socrates’ insistence on maintaining his role as a questioner: it is not really because he knows nothing, but because this form of interrogation aids the interlocutors in giving birth to ‘their’ own truth (Theaetetus, 150c; Hadot 2002: 27). The teacher can only function as a midwife, since knowledge must emerge from the individual alone (Hadot 2002: 27). Recollecting Socrates’ teaching, Cebes explains that when people are questioned in the right manner, ‘they always give the right answer of their own accord, and they could not do this if they did not possess the knowledge and the right explanation inside them’ (Phaedo, 73a; see also Socrates’ explanation of his method followed by the well-known interrogation of Meno’s slave in Meno, 81d–82a). This principle, according to which the immortal soul is only required to recollect what it already knows, is also the underlying motivation of the Upaniṣadic dialogues: like a sculptor who ‘merely exposes something that pre-exists in the marble’, they help the discussant to return to the Self (Ganeri 2013b: 117, 122). Thus, a major characteristic of the transformative dialogue is the significance its authors ascribed to this new reality of self-authority. In classical Greece, Plato’s writings marked a departure from the pre-Socratic philosophers, who introduced themselves as possessors of truth and wrote in genres which suited their intellectual ambition and authoritative tone (Cooper 1997: xix). Faithful to Socrates’ example, Plato brought to life the image of a philosopher who refuses to hand down a final truth and insists on a shared search for truth that completely relies on the joint effort of committed souls and strives towards a common attainment (ibid., xix). Thus, the Socratic irony of pretending that he should become the interlocutor’s pupil (Euthyphro, 5b, 11e) conveys more than the mission of revealing the illusion of human wisdom: it originates from the conviction that one’s soul has seen and learned everything and ought to recollect now ‘the things it knew before’ (Meno, 81d). Following this epistemological and metaphysical law of self-authority, Socrates can only base his responses on ‘what the interlocutor admits that he himself knows’ (Hadot 2002: 62–63). This is why the reader of Plato’s dialogues finds out, sooner or later, that they are expected not to learn and accept ready-made knowledge but to collaborate with the text by thinking for themselves about what in it is true and by making the effort to come into contact with their own knowledge (ibid., xx). Socrates’ words to Alcibiades that ‘It’s the job of one man, and one skill, to know

 Dillon (2000: 526) also recognizes the meaningfulness of the dialogue form within the context of this historical shift, as an individualization of the human relationship with the truth. 6

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all these things: himself, his belongings, and his belongings’ belongings’ (Alcibiades, 133e) constitute a demand that is likewise addressed to the reader. Cooper (1997: xx–xxi) convincingly argues that this demand of the reader to go ever deeper in their questioning enables Plato’s dialogues to break through the limits of the written work and to maintain themselves as a living tradition, as it were; an ongoing and dynamic process of self-inquiry. The dialogues in the Upaniṣads, on the other hand, differ in that the teachers, when properly persuaded, disclose a final truth. But the truth that is presented points at a dormant potential within the discussant and entirely depends on the student’s willingness to look inside and to verify its ontological reality. As an external teaching, it cannot be fully understood (Ferrer 2018: 282). The ethics of the Upaniṣadic philosophers does not allow them to say, ‘Believe this’; they can only say, ‘If you do x, y, and z, you can confirm it for yourself’ (Nagler 2007: 296). They provide both student and reader with a testimony about reality and let them decide whether they wish to realize it (ibid.). In their universe, one cannot sin if one refuses to exercise self-authority, since ‘ignorance is its own punishment’ and ‘wisdom is its own reward’ (ibid.). The declared purpose of the dialogue as the awakening of knowledge within the student gave rise to a different hierarchical structure. Since the teacher’s main concern is not enforcing their authority but rather devoting themselves to the disciple’s transformation, the atmosphere is at all times respectful, friendly, and open. Both teacher and disciple are fully aware that they depend on one another in order to fulfil the ultimate goal of the interaction. The philosophy master is expected to persuade and they can only reveal further steps in the investigation according to their interlocutor’s ability to assimilate as well as explicitly consent. This is strongly demonstrated in the way that Simmias and Cebes question Socrates’ argumentation in the Phaedo (84c–89a): in spite of their admiration for the sage, they boldly challenge his convictions, since it is also Socrates’ lucidity and ability to lead them back to themselves that is put to the test.7 More fundamentally, there is no essential difference between master and follower: in reality, it is a conversation between souls, both in need of self-cultivation, while one happens to be more mature and more firmly established in self-­ remembrance. The dialogue is an opportunity for the less awakened soul to know itself by looking at a soul (Alcibiades, 133b), and for the realized one to extricate the other from its earthly bondage through the power of love.8 In Socrates, it is the sublimated relationship between lovers (Peters and Besley 2019: 2) or the love of a father or an elder brother (Apology, 31b). In the Upaniṣads, even though the relationships are more hierarchical and less mutually involving – as encounters between ‘those who have known and realized the truth and others who have not’ (Baniwal  As Hadot (2002: 64) points out, this ethics of non-dogmatic dialogue was practised in Plato’s academy as well: Plato’s students were also free-thinking members and they felt welcome to strongly reject their master’s theories. 8  Compare this to the Aristotelian Magna Moralia’s idea that ‘self-knowledge is best gained through a philosophical friendship in which we see ourselves, as if in a mirror’ (Cooper 1997: 558). 7

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2018: 5)  – they still strive to move from the dialectical to the ‘sphere of the “between”’, which is neither in one nor in both together, but only in the dialogue itself, and in the participants’ wish to transcend objective and subjective knowledge and identify the one Self in one another (ibid., 3). The commitment to the conditions of self-authority, soul-communion, and love does not imply that the transformative dialogue is not based in hierarchy. Despite Socrates’ proclamation that ‘I have never been anyone’s teacher’ (Apology, 33a), there is, both in the Upaniṣads and in Plato’s dialogues, a natural hierarchy that arises from the student’s recognition of an expert in self-transformation who can confidently guide a revelatory process. In that respect, the transformative dialogue is not an open-ended discussion but a well-targeted process which always derives from the existential certainty of the philosopher. The dialectical dynamic that follows is intended to establish this conviction in the realm of reason and to lead the interlocutor to the same position. It is never a joint effort in the sense of a shared discovery, but an effective method for cornering the discussant’s mind, dismantling its cherished conceptions, and leading it to an authentic insight. Thus, the Upaniṣads and Plato’s works alike lack the genuine aspects of mutuality and inclusion that characterize dialogue in Martin Buber’s sense9: what maintains their dialogical spirit is the context in which they are situated – the philosopher’s encounters with other persons whose souls are identical in essence even to the soul of the most mature master (Baniwal 2018: 4, 6). The hierarchical nature of the dialogue is also found in the disciple’s dependency on the extraordinarily charismatic presence and radiating confidence of the philosophy teacher. This hidden factor may be the cause of a misreading of the texts, since the modern reader encounters only their dialectical layer without consideration of the underlying transmission of a transformative presence behind the words. We cannot fully comprehend the life-changing effect of the conversation in the Phaedo if we disregard Socrates’ ultimate ‘proof’ of the all-transcending power of the soul: the self-controlled and joyful manner by which Socrates approaches his death (59e). To this we should add the transference of the philosopher’s mastery of self-inquiry to the interlocutor’s mind, to the extent that eventually the student feels that they have performed the inquiry by themselves, which is the only way they can become internally convinced. Initially, it was the student borrowing the teacher’s skills of probing, thus seeing through the teacher’s eyes; later, it is the student seeing through their own eyes. This takes its most explicit form in Socratic dialogues such as the Alcibiades (112e–114e), when Alcibiades is led to admit that it is the answerer of the questions, not the questioner, who says everything, and that it is only when he hears himself say, ‘Yes, that’s how it is’, that he can be completely persuaded. The conditions fulfilled by the teacher  – existential conviction and power of influence through both presence and skill of self-inquiry – are complemented by the  In Buber’s conception of genuine dialogue, one ought to cultivate a kind of presence towards other beings in which one is open to being influenced by them. At the same time, one learns to respond to the other as a whole person and to create a space in which the other can speak their own words and meaning (Gordon 2011: 207). 9

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conditions that only a student ready for the act of transformative dialogue can realize. First, the dialogue derives its energy from a question raised by the disciple that is not fundamentally intellectual or logical, but a matter of life and death, a genuine crisis of identity and meaning. When Cebes urges Socrates to reveal whether the soul is destroyed ‘on the day the man dies’ (Phaedo, 70a), it is because he is facing the major crisis of the imminent death of a beloved teacher, and when Nāciketa similarly implores Yama to tell him whether the dead still exist, his question is the only wish left in him after moving away from life’s pleasures and desires (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.1.20–29). But for the transformative discovery to take place, the pressing question must be accompanied by the recognition that even if one is well versed in the matter discussed, one possesses no knowing of the transcendent, parā type, and the acknowledgement that precisely the disturbing weight of accumulated ordinary knowledge is the problem (Martin 1997: xi). This recognition goes hand in hand with the prerequisite of having profound trust in both the teacher as an embodiment of a complete knowing of the parā type, and the normative values that exist independently of any individual perspective and underlie the rationality of the dialogue (Hadot 2002: 74–75). Paradoxically, the interlocutor is encouraged to express doubt in the course of the dialogue. When Socrates’ argument is called into question by Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo and the discussion seems to reach a dead end, the philosopher-sage astounds the participants by receiving the doubts pleasantly, kindly, and admiringly (89a). Doubt, so long as it constructively emerges from the solid foundation of trust, seems to fertilize the transformative dialogue: since it is understood as the student’s wish to internalize the knowledge and experience it fully, it is deployed by the philosopher to take the dialogue to the next level and achieve an even greater trust in the student’s heart in the indestructibility of the teaching. Above all, the discussant who expects to be transformed should remain throughout the entire interaction in a state of active listening. In the transformative dialogue, the apparently passive participant cannot be merely a humble receiver: without collaboration and personal effort, the discourse cannot act on the listener and afford them ‘access to truth and reality’ (Hadot 2002: 88–89). To allow the insight to come to life within themselves, the interlocutor adopts a special form of listening that transforms ‘right opinion’ (orthe doxa) into knowledge through intense reflection (Mitchell 2006: 183). Active listening allows for internal change while the discussion is taking place: if one listens with one’s whole being, one can see, and if one sees, one changes on the spot. This is the reason for mysterious occurrences such as Nāciketa’s arising from Yama’s monologue fully freed and immortal (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.17). More than mere listening, it is a process of becoming identified with the desired knowledge that culminates in becoming the object of knowledge itself (Nagler 2007: 315–316). When a student participates in this creative way, not only is their truth enkindled within them, but they also become the teacher’s midwife, helping to deliver the secret truth that lies dormant within the teacher’s mind. Thus, it is not only Nāciketa that is redeemed at the end of the dialogue but also the great knowledge that Yama initially refuses to divulge (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.1.22–1.2.4).

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The Two Types of Transformation If all these conditions have been satisfied, the transformative dialogue can fully unfold and flower. The various transformations it makes possible for the character depicted in the text, and consequently for the reader or hearer of the dialogue, may be generally divided into two types: the major ones that take place within the depths of the dialogue itself and secondary transformations that are expected to occur after and outside the discourse. We could also think of them as varying degrees of metamorphosis, with the in-dialogue changes being the most intense and profound. I shall briefly delineate both types, starting from the secondary possible shifts that prepare for activities outside the discussion. The first and perhaps the most obvious shift is that the dialogue succeeds in propelling the discussant to integrate the philosophical practice into their life by demonstrating its significance and the psychological and ethical dangers of its absence. In fact, failed dialogues often end in the philosopher’s hope that they have at least managed to plant a seed in the resistant interlocutor’s mind that will later germinate and develop into the practice of self-cultivation (Alcibiades, 119a). One could speculate that this hope is the reason that textual dialogues in the Upaniṣads and Plato’s writings strive to imprint in their readers emotionally haunting images, such as young Nāciketa visiting Death or Socrates drinking the hemlock calmly and contentedly (Nicholson 2015: 160–161). Another lasting effect of the dialogue can be accomplished by establishing the rationality of the school’s conception of the ideal way of life, as well as confidence in its fundamental dogma (Hadot 2002: 175). This – as we see in Xenophon’s Symposium, where Socrates vows to set a perfect example of sexual restraint (Bruell 1994: xv), or in the Phaedo (89e–91e), where he ensures that his discussants have been relieved of all doubt in relation to the soul’s immortality – is necessary for the student to adhere to the challenging philosophical journey. Even more fundamentally, imbuing the disciple’s heart with certainty is a form of therapy that liberates them from the anxiety of existential incertitude, as we find in Phaedo’s exclamation, ‘How well he [Socrates] healed our distress’ (ibid., 89a). In addition to these two potential shifts, a successful dialogue leads and directs both the student in the text and the student who is reading or hearing the text to philosophical activities that can only be fulfilled outside the discourse, such as meditating alone, visualization, self-purification, and implementation of the knowledge in real-life situations. We should be reminded here that even the most fruitful dialogue between master and student could not spare the disciple from the daily effort of the practice of philosophy, which was, in both classical India and classical Greece, the purification of the soul. Any metaphysically oriented discourse had immediate ethical implications, since, to both philosophical traditions, metaphysics and ethics were inseparable (Nagler 2007: 320; Mitchell 2006: 184). However, the true flowering of the transformative dialogue was as an event of instantaneous transformative consequences. As Socrates promises in the Alcibiades: ‘Answer my questions, Alcibiades. If you do that, then, God willing … you and I

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will be in a better state’ (127e). The first major in-dialogue shift is the dialogue’s potential to awaken the student from slumber to a degree that their previous state of mind is recognized as one of sheer unconsciousness and illusion. The interlocutor, now shocked into alertness, is thus led to renounce false confidence and intellectual pride. For Socrates, proving to Athenians who thought they were wise that their wisdom amounted to nothing was a task entrusted to him by the god Apollo (Hadot 2002: 25–26). His method of logical refutation (elenchus)  – commonly distinguished from Plato’s dialectic – was devoted to purifying souls from the ailment of apparent wisdom (Peters and Besley 2019: 2) by bringing the individual to state one thing and soon after to state the very opposite. These conflicting answers revealed the difference between existential soul-knowing and ordinary knowledge, since ‘whenever someone doesn’t know something, his soul will necessarily waver about it’ (Alcibiades, 117b). In the Upaniṣads, on the other hand, the dialogues aspire to awaken the disciple from an illusion so inclusive – the very perception of the world as a diversity – that it threatens to include the very arguments presented by the dialogues (Ganeri 2013a: 124). It appears that the intention of the philosophy teacher is to guide, through constant annihilation of any differentiating perception, towards the destruction of the possibility of the dialogue itself, and thus to the all-unifying truth beyond it. Like antidotes ‘which eliminate other poisons in the body before themselves disappearing’, they employ arguments which must be fundamentally false to destroy other false beliefs until what remains as a residue is the truth (ibid., 128).10 It is the truth, as the experiential realization of an already existing reality untainted by ordinary knowledge and false sensory perception, that is the most radical and immediate achievement of the transformative dialogue. In a way only accomplishable by a dialogue – owing to its specificity, persistence, and directness of inquiry – the trusting and actively engaged student is finally brought to a recognition of a reality that has always been right under their nose. This type of dialogue never teaches anything that is foreign or external to one’s being: by listening to the philosopher-sage, the interlocutor’s mind is reminded of what their soul has always remembered, since the ability to identify certain statements as true can only derive from a previous, currently dormant knowing.11 This is why the recognition is not merely intellectual but must include an emotional and spiritual resonance. Nonetheless, this immanent reality is not an object of knowing. Since it abides within the interlocutor, the dialogue, slowly but surely, passes from the shattering of ordinary knowledge to pointing at the seeker of knowledge (Hadot 2002: 28). The real question in the Socratic dialogue is not ‘what is being talked about’ – not even the questioning of the apparent knowledge – but ‘who is doing the talking’ (ibid., 28–29). In Socrates’ world, the Delphic inscription ‘Know thyself’ is inherently ontological, not ethical (Alcibiades, 124b), and it is the basis of all knowledge,  Ganeri himself prefers a less destructive interpretation according to which there must be an immanent element of truth even in a false belief, which makes the false ‘operative in guiding the believer from error to truth’ (2013a: 129). 11  Examples of this will be provided in Chap. 5. 10

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without which any other forms of knowledge, including what one does and why, collapse like a house of cards. Thus, in this unexpected turn to self-inquiry, the inscription transforms into ‘See thyself’, which practically implies that the eye looking ought to look at ‘something in which it could see itself’ (ibid., 132d). This reverse gaze that looks into the looker is also a known Upaniṣadic formula, as we find in Uddālaka’s questioning of his son, Śvetaketu, who has returned, intellectually satisfied, from twelve years of studying the Vedas (Chāndogyopaniṣad, VI: 1.1–1.3). Through the dialogue, Śvetaketu is humbled by the recognition that he has not yet been taught that by which everything else is known: the Self which is, as Uddālaka constantly reminds him, his very own self (ibid., VI: 1.4–16.3). This final perception of oneself as the object of discussion is a state that the dialogue can indicate but cannot conceptually contain, since a significant component of this truth lies beyond the limits of the discourse, in a realm that can be reached only through the interlocutor’s choice and ability of self-transcendence. The dialogue, perhaps more than other forms of discourse, exposes the inability of language to communicate such an existential experience directly, since the self or soul, as a simple and indivisible phenomenon, is inaccessible to any definition (Hadot 2002: 65, 75, 88). Certainly, the Upaniṣads also recognize that language cannot enable us to know ourselves in our totality or the world in its totality, as well as sharing the ultimate quest for the experience of the ‘immediate and the wordless’ (Baniwal 2018: 2). Thus, if the transformative dialogue has achieved its most sublime goal by leading the listener to a non-discursive, instantaneous intuition of reality, it allows both philosopher and student to rise together to the level of universality, in which the dialogue itself, in its interpersonal essence, is finally revealed as the wish to go beyond one’s illusory self and abide in the domain of the ‘between’, where the true self can be known and shared (ibid., 3; Hadot 2002: 32). These conditions and forms of transformation will be demonstrated, in the following chapter, through more detailed comparative analyses of Plato’s Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad.

References Antonaccio, Maria. 1998. Contemporary Forms of Askesis and the Return of Spiritual Exercises. The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 18: 69–92. https://doi.org/10.5840/asce19981811. Baniwal, Vikas. 2018. Dialogue as Method in Buber’s and Upanishadic Thought. In Proceedings of WAVES, the 13th International Conference of the World Association for Vedic Studies, August 2–5, 2018. Dallas: Vedic Traditions for Education and Learning. Bruell, Christopher. 1994. Introduction: Xenophon and His Socrates. In Xenophon Memorabilia. Trans. Amy L. Bonnette, vii–xxii. New York: Cornell University Press. Cooper, John M. 1997. Introduction. In Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, vii–xxviii, 49–50, 557–558. Indianapolis: Hackett. Dillon, Matthew. 2000. Dialogues with Death: The Last Days of Socrates and the Buddha. Philosophy East and West 50 (4): 525–558. https://doi.org/10.1353/pew.2000.0005. Easwaran, Eknath. 2007. Introduction. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 13–47, 63–67. Tomales: Nilgiri Press.

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Ferrer, Albert. 2018. Integral Education in Ancient India from Vedas and Upanishads to Vedanta. International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 6 (6): 281–295. https://doi. org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v6.i6.2018.1373. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2013a. The Concealed Art of the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013b. Philosophy as a Way of Life. In Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, ed. Michael Chase, Stephen Clark, and Michael McGhee, 116–131. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Gold, Jeffrey. 1996. Plato in the Light of Yoga. Philosophy East and West 46 (1): 17–32. https:// doi.org/10.2307/1399335. Gordon, Mordechai. 2011. Listening as Embracing the Other: Martin Buber’s Philosophy of Dialogue. Educational Theory 61: 207–219. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-­5446.2011. 00400.x. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael Chase. Hoboken: Blackwell. ———. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Martin, Raymond. 1997. Introduction. In Krishnamurti: Reflection on the Self. Chicago: Open Court. Mitchell, Sebastian. 2006. Socratic Dialogue, the Humanities and the Art of the Question. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 5 (2): 181–197. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022206063653. Nagler, Michael N. 2007. A Religion for Modern Times. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 295–336. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Nicholson, Andrew. 2015. Dialogue and Genre in Indian Philosophy. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 151–169. New York: Routledge. Notomi, Noburo. 2022. Plato, Isocrates and Epistolary Literature: Reconsidering the Seventh Letter in Its Contexts. Plato Journal 23: 67–79. https://doi.org/10.14195/21834105235. Peters, Michael A., and Tina Besley. 2019. Models of Dialogue. Educational Philosophy and Theory: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2019.1684801. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. ———. 2002. Phaedo. Trans. David Gallop. New York: Oxford University Press. Schiltz, Elizabeth A. 2006. Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato’s Phaedrus. Philosophy East and West 56 (3): 451–468. https://doi.org/10.1353/ pew.2006.0044. The Upanishads. 2007. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Williams, Chris V. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher. Millers Point: Sydney School of Arts & Humanities.

Chapter 5

Dialogues of Life and Death: Transformative Dialogue in Plato’s Phaedo and in the Kaṭhopaniṣad

The Phaedo, Plato’s dramatization of the last hours of Socrates, his admired philosophy master, was probably written during the years 380–370 bc, twenty or thirty years after Socrates had been tried for impiety and condemned to death (Dillon 2000: 526). However, the Phaedo, which was also known to the ancients as On the Soul (Cooper 1997: 49), cannot be relied on as an accurate historical account. Like other Platonic works from what are known as the Middle Dialogues – the Gorgias, Symposium, Republic, and Phaedrus – and perhaps even more intensely, the Phaedo is characterized by numerous elements of literary and pedagogical drama, such as theatrical tension, timing, tempo, pauses, and gestures, as well as being imbued with symbolism and myth (Cohen 1976: 317). Another significant aspect of the Middle Dialogues that distinguishes them from the rest of Plato’s corpus is their extreme metaphysical and ethical dualism, which involves an intense dismissal of the reality of the body, the senses, and the transient world (Cohen 1976: 317). This is perhaps most evident in the Phaedo, which presents, among other explicitly mystical meditations, the audacious claim that death is preferable to life since the philosopher, being formless, is finally free to merge into the desirable state of pure knowledge (67a–e). The Phaedo’s intense preoccupation with the notions of self-liberation and self-­ transcendence in the face of death is strikingly reminiscent of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. It is therefore not surprising that comparative philosophers have shown great interest in comparing this particular Platonic work to various South Asian texts: the Phaedo has been compared to the philosophy underlying yoga and Patañjali, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta, the canonical account of the Buddha’s final days (see, respectively, Gold 1996; Cohen 1976; Dillon 2000). As Dillon (2000: 525, 539) remarks, the Phaedo’s thematic closeness to doctrines developed in India during the same historical period, known as the Axial Age, is so remarkable that it seems likely that the cultural contact largely facilitated by © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_5

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the Royal Road of Persia, which extended from Ionia to India, included an actual exchange of ideas. There is no substantial evidence of this, other than Pythagoras’ alleged journey to India, where he absorbed Indian philosophy and sciences and probably embraced the theory of metempsychosis  – a significant possibility that could illuminate the deeper roots of the Phaedo’s Pythagorean orientation – and a brief, late anecdote depicting Socrates’ philosophical conversation with an Indian who visited Athens (ibid., 526). It is likely, however, that Plato drew on more immediate sources, since not only the Pythagoreans but also the Orphics and Empedocles cultivated the idea of ceaseless transmigration from which the soul struggles to be released (ibid., 539–540). Thus, though expounders of reincarnation were relatively rare and peripheral in classical Greece compared to the vast mainstream and multi-­ religious agreement among the Indians (ibid., 539), the Phaedo could have emerged from the fertile ground of Greek thought. Among the various articles that have drawn a comparison between the Phaedo and certain Hindu and Buddhist texts, the most relevant to our discussion is Raj Singh’s (1994) analysis of the theme of death-contemplation as a catalyst for self-­ transformation, as found in the dialogues of the Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad (c. fifth century bc).1 In light of these existing comparative explorations, one is right to ask why we should require yet another comparison between the Phaedo and South Asian texts, the Kaṭhopaniṣad in particular. What gap am I aiming to fill in this chapter? There are two major ways of considering the similarities and dissimilarities between the Phaedo and Hindu and Buddhist writings. The first and most obvious one is thematic, and indeed, all the past comparisons, including Singh’s,2 have been concerned with (successfully) establishing a common thematic ground. The other, less-travelled path is a methodological exploration – focusing less on what is said and more on the method of presentation, in order to unveil the intense interrelation between content and form, that is, the way the form throws light on the philosophical materials. Several scholars have analysed the Phaedo as a drama and the way that this literary dimension unveils philosophical content (see, for instance, Arieti 1991; Sedley 1995; Jansen 2013) and a few have also briefly treated its dialogical nature and structure (Sedley 1995: 3; Dillon 2000: 528; Kuperus 2007: 199–206). But to my best knowledge, there is no comparative literature that seriously juxtaposes the dialogical character of Plato’s works with that of the Upaniṣads, let alone the Phaedo’s with that of the Kaṭhopaniṣad. In the previous chapter I demonstrated the value of a form-based comparison between these major compilations of dialogues. Of course, this close, general  The Kaṭhopaniṣad, on the other hand, has been compared to the Phaedrus, another of Plato’s works from his Middle Dialogues period (Schiltz 2006). The Phaedrus, we should be reminded, is also considerably dedicated to proving and establishing the concept of the soul’s immortality (ibid., 456). 2  It must be pointed out that even Singh’s paper has not covered all the comparative possibilities, since he is chiefly occupied with the Phaedo’s opening discussion, in which Socrates raises the provocative notion that philosophy is, by nature, a preparation for death (Singh 1994: 10). 1

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affinity between the two works does not explain why I have decided to analyse the dialogical dynamics of Plato’s Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad. These two texts, I shall demonstrate in the following section, have enough common features for a comparative analysis to be fruitful; thus, by means of such an analysis, I will be able to discern notable divergences amid the texts’ common features. I will start by demonstrating how the two dialogues fulfil all of the conditions necessary for the realization of the transformative dialogue, as outlined in the previous chapter. I will then discuss significant differences in their dialogical dynamics, drawing on the distinction I made in Chap. 4 between transformations that take place within the dialogue itself and secondary transformations that are expected to occur after and outside the discourse. I will also highlight other elements, such as aim, method, structure and tempo, the teacher–interlocutor relationship, the role of doubt, expectation, and the end result. Such differences, I believe, should lead us to conclude that although both dialogues ‘aim not to inform but to form’ (Hadot 2009: 91),3 each belongs to a different stream or subcategory of the transformative dialogue: the Phaedo falls into the subcategory of the transformative philosophical dialogue, whereas the Kaṭhopaniṣad can be classified as a transformative mystical dialogue. In the context of this book, this distinction will significantly aid in the classification of the Krishnamurti dialogue in relation to the classical dialogue, as well as the revelation of its more innovative aspects.

Death as an Opportunity The Kaṭhopaniṣad and the Phaedo have three important commonalities; two are textual and structural and one is thematic, though all three are intrinsically linked. The first important commonality is that both texts strive to leave their pedagogical mark on the reader through memorable and highly developed narratives, which abound with dramatic elements and allegorical layers. As Ahrensdorf (1995: 1) notes, though many of Plato’s books – particularly his Middle Dialogues – employ dramatic means to celebrate the triumph of the philosophical life, none of his other dialogues comes as close to being a true tragic drama that overshadows the process of argumentation as the Phaedo does. Similarly, Easwaran (2007: 63–64) suggests that the Kaṭhopaniṣad has earned its popularity owing to its exceptionally successful and dynamic allegory, which preserves the balance between the story and its archetypal significance. He further maintains that the Kaṭhopaniṣad is, in structure and context alike, more of an organic whole than any of the other Upaniṣads (ibid., 66). Thus, whereas the dialogical structure exists in most of Plato’s works and the Upaniṣads, the extended dramatization in both texts enables the presentation of humans who are confronted with an intense and overpowering reality – death itself – using philosophy as their only weapon. Should the heroes emerge victorious, they

 Here I borrow Victor Goldschmidt’s formula, which was originally applied to Plato’s dialogues.

3

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will also prove to the reader that their philosophy remains indestructible, even in the face of the nemesis of all mortals. The second important commonality is thematic, as has already been recognized by Singh (1994: 9, 10, 12): the bond between death-contemplation and genuine philosophy. However, since this common theme could also be explored in treatise form or in a more focused dialogue, an even stronger case for the similitude of the two books can be made – the essentially similar structures of the two narratives. The settings designed by the Greek and Indian authors enable a seeker of truth (a young philosopher, if you will) to ask a spiritual authority about the nature of death and the possibility of the survival of the soul (Phaedo: 63d, 70a–b; Kaṭhopaniṣad 1.1.20–22). But since their questions are posed within highly dramatic circumstances – Nāciketa is sitting in the house of death and his teacher is death himself, and Simmias and Cebes are sitting next to Socrates’ prison bed, a few hours before his unjustly imposed death – their interrogation is not an abstract musing but an urgent inquiry. In both cases, the students do not ask for the truth, but demand it with such intensity that their teachers feel compelled to share their hidden knowledge and, at the same time, the students are more receptive to their teachers’ guidance (Easwaran 1997: 63–64). The unusual settings of the two dramas also require the teachers to rise to the highest level of spiritual authority. This may not be so extraordinary in the case of the Upaniṣads, which are abundant with gurus who confidently reveal universal mysteries, although the god of death, who is the Kaṭhopaniṣad’s guru, is reluctant to assume this position at first (1.1.23–25).4 But for Plato’s Socrates to shed any trace of irony5 and to be portrayed not as an orator, expositor, or intellectual midwife, but as someone who ‘teaches with his whole personality’, is quite a leap (Cohen 1976: 318). This radical shift, as I already mentioned, has been understood by scholars as evidence that in the Phaedo, Plato the theorist merely exploits the historical figure of Socrates (see, for instance, Sedley 1995: 13). However, the Phaedo itself seems to offer a more convincing explanation. Socrates treats this last dialogue with his close students as his ‘swan song’, an opportunity to sing his most beautiful song upon realizing that the end is near, in praise of his master, the god Apollo, and the blessing of the underworld (84e–85b). We may assume that in his last hours, even the historical Socrates preferred to establish his legacy in the hearts and minds of his intimate disciples rather than lead them to aporíā – a state of philosophical puzzlement – to demonstrate once again the limits of human knowledge. It only makes sense that a teacher like him would forgo his dialogical tactics in order to impart his most honest and direct realization, and that he would emerge as a philosophical Heracles6 to combat, fiercely but constructively, his students’ subtlest doubts until they had become fully convinced that they should take good care of

 Yama’s initial reluctance is extensively discussed by Ganeri (2013a: 15–17).  For a contrary view, see Ahrensdorf (1995: 5), who believes that Socrates retains his ironic position. 6  Phaedo, 89c. 4 5

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their own selves (115b). Thus, the so-called unreasonable shift from the Apology’s agnostic Socrates to the Phaedo’s mystical figure is not necessarily a departure from the historical figure of Socrates7: in the Apology, Socrates defends his position in front of an angry crowd, whereas in the Phaedo, he devotes his entire energy to a select group of philosophers who, as Ahrensdorf (1995: 9) shows, struggle to embrace the philosophical life despite its obvious deadly hazards. However, the spiritual authority of Yama, the god of death, and that of Socrates have a deeper commonality. In addition to being perfect gurus with knowledge of the nature of death, Yama and Socrates are the face of death, dramatic representations of the underworld. In the Vedas, Yama was the first human who died, and in his death he initiated the path of mortality, which all humans have since followed, and became the ruler of the departed (Macdonell 1995: 172). But in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, Yama is requested by the boy Nāciketa to mark an altogether different path: the path of immortality. This is an extremely ironic situation, since it implies that death should ‘put death itself to death’ (1.2.5) by leading a mortal to a realm in which the god of death himself is powerless and death is, truly, non-existent.8 Socrates is just about to drink the hemlock potion, and the preparations for his death and his process of dying are dramatically woven into the dialogue and often disrupt it. But he is not merely a dying person: in Cicero’s words, Socrates’ language makes him seem ‘not as one thrust out to die but as one ascending to the heavens’ (quoted in Ahrensdorf 1995: 1). He speaks as if from the afterlife, as if he has already walked through death’s transparent gate. Like Yama, he is a human who would soon attain a deity-­ like status, abandoning human incarnation and living for eternity in the presence of the gods (Phaedo, 69c). In summary, in both texts we find evocative situations that allegorically represent confrontations of individuals with the reality of death. However, these confrontations are philosophically constructive, deriving from the assumption that dying is, after all, a positive experience, a chance to reveal the truth about one’s original nature which may be less accessible in life itself (Cohen 1976: 325). Accordingly, these circumstances allow keen students to pose burning questions about the nature of death and that which lies beyond it, and create an opportunity for their spiritual masters, who already embody the state beyond death, to provide an elaborate answer. The complex answers offer transformative death-contemplations that eventually give rise to a new state of mind and a different way of life, thus leading to the final resolution of the dramatic tension. Thus, theme and structure, or content and form, are deeply intertwined in both the Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad – an indication of a transformative dialogue that is centred not on a theoretical discussion but on a genuine existential crisis. Drama and dialogue are, in both cases, powerful devices that aspire to involve fictional discussants and readers alike in a direct meditation on death and death-transcendence.

 For a contrary view, see Sedley (1995: 10) and Cooper (1997: 49).  We could speculate that this is at least one dramatic reason that Yama should be reluctant to disclose his secret self-knowledge. 7 8

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These striking resemblances enable me to bring important similarities and dissimilarities in the dialogical processes into focus – similarities and dissimilarities which, I argue, have much to convey to us philosophically.

Soul-Liberation in the Phaedo The Phaedo is one of several Western philosophical texts whose interpretation greatly benefits from a thorough comparison with South Asian texts. All of the scholarly works mentioned above enable us to better grasp the profound themes with which Plato is preoccupied in this book and to classify it as a dialogue focused on self-transformation. Upon setting the Platonic dialogue and similar Indian and Tibetan texts side by side, it becomes even clearer that Plato’s book is designed to radically affect the actual state of mind and way of life of its readers (Cohen 1976: 322). For instance, Gold (1996: 17–18) argues that commentators tend to overlook the centrality of the theme of lúsis (freedom or deliverance), as well as the role of philosophy as a means to this liberation, in the Phaedo. He asserts that by drawing a comparison to Patañjali’s Yoga-Sūtra, the importance Plato himself ascribes to soul-liberation can be finally restored (ibid., 17–18, 27). This is also the case when the Phaedo is brought into dialogue with the Kaṭhopaniṣad: since the two works share an unequivocal passion for the potential liberation of the soul from illusory attachment to earthly identification, arising from a conscious confrontation with death, they illuminate each other as works primarily designed for soul-guidance. However, even before deploying the Kaṭhopaniṣad to illuminate the core intentions of the Phaedo, we have at least four reasons to argue that the Phaedo chiefly functions as a liberating dialogue. First, if there is any Platonian text that supplies us with a clear definition of what philosophy is, it is no doubt the Phaedo. Interestingly, Hadot (2002: 39–40, 44–47) asserts that it is in the Symposium that Plato gives a new meaning to the term ‘philosophy’ as an unfulfillable striving towards transcendent wisdom. While his observation does contain some truth, which I will highlight near the end of this chapter, Socrates’ speech in the Symposium only elucidates the nature of the philosophical drive, while it is the Phaedo that tells us in so many ways that a philosopher is one who is preoccupied with the ‘release and separation of the soul from the body’ (67d) and that philosophy’s aim is to persuade ‘the soul to withdraw from the senses’ (ibid., 83a). This makes it clear that for Plato philosophy is not the art of argumentation; philosophical argument is simply a purifying tool that helps the soul to withdraw from the sensory world and enter the realm of the Forms, thus extricating it from its false corporeal identity (ibid., 84a–b; Singh 1994: 10–11). This act of purification is not driven by a moral or religious ideal, but by the mystical aim of self-knowledge whose final goal is a state comparable to that of the Upaniṣads: a soul that is immersed in blissful formlessness and never again reincarnates (Phaedo, 114c). Given this explicitly trans-logical, mystical orientation, we may well wonder if and how Plato’s philosophy ultimately

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differs from mysticism, a question to which I shall return in the last section of this chapter. The second reason for regarding the Phaedo as a liberating dialogue strongly supports the understanding that philosophy is not the process of argument construction: although there is no doubt that the Phaedo’s Socrates deems his arguments extremely meaningful – for a man who is just about to die, he invests a tremendous amount of energy in putting together a complex set of four undefeatable ‘proofs’ of the immortality of the soul  – they are not the only method used to establish the importance of leading a life of philosophical dedication. Though analytic philosophical interpretations are drawn to focus on the four arguments, Socrates’ vital transmission of his fundamental approach to philosophy and death is conveyed more effectively through other dramatic means (Singh 1994: 10). The text weaves the practice and demonstration of the philosophical method into a broader drama that is abundant with emotional tensions and either fearsome or alluring mythical elements (Jansen 2013: 338, 341). Even the crisis of faith that takes place between the third and fourth arguments, during which Socrates warns against misology (hatred of arguments) that inhibits one’s search for wisdom, is embellished with emotional and mythical details (Phaedo, 89a–c). After all, as one of the two main discussants, Cebes, mentions, believing the soul to be immortal requires both ‘a good deal of faith and persuasive argument’ (ibid., 70b). The fact that the ‘proofs’ are not so persuasive in the eyes of most scholars9 may not be, in itself, a reason to suspect that Plato thought they were unimportant. But this at least somewhat reaffirms Hadot’s theory that the frustrating experience of the modern reader engaging with the classical texts is based on a fundamental misunderstanding, since, broadly speaking, Greek philosophers did not aim to provide systematic theories in the first place (Davidson 1995: 19; Hadot 2009: 90). What drove Plato to write the Phaedo was not necessarily his conviction that he had come up with the ultimate proof for the soul’s immortality, but rather his espousal of a more general view which underlay these theories (Cohen 1976: 319). This may explain the fact that the arguments are built on the basis of unchecked axioms, which everyone accepts unreservedly, such as Socrates’ statement that ‘the gods are our guardians’ and ‘men are one of their possessions’ (Phaedo, 62b). We ought to consider the fact that according to the theory of Forms, which is unconditionally accepted by all the discussants, ‘learning is no other than recollection’ (ibid., 72e), and thus the arguments do not constitute a constructive theory but instead serve as reminders of an untaught, innate truth. It is only when one fails to find this truth for oneself that one should stick to the ‘most irrefutable of men’s theories’ and use it as a raft to ‘sail through the dangers of life’ (ibid., 85d). So, if the arguments are not the centrepiece of the Phaedo, what does Plato strive to achieve? This leads us to the third reason that the Phaedo should be read as a book of transformation.

 The fourth and last argument is particularly criticized, probably due to its ambition to put an end to all remaining doubts. Both Ahrensdorf (1995: 3–4) and Cohen (1976: 324) consider this argument to be anticlimactic, since it heavily relies on religious faith and mysticism. 9

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Nowhere in the text do we find an indication that Socrates succeeds in guiding his discussants towards an experiential fulfilment of the philosophical goal of stripping their souls of their earthly costumes (nor does any expectation of such a fulfilment appear within the book). However, there is a great deal of evidence that the transformation that the Phaedo seeks to establish is the dispelling of any doubts in the hearts of Socrates’ students concerning the superiority of philosophical life. Ahrensdorf (1995: 9–12, 15) convincingly shows that the aim of relieving the discussants’ fears in the face of death was not purely existential but also arose within a more pressing political context: The young philosophers encircling Socrates’ deathbed were witnessing how the philosophical life can lead to one’s execution, at a time of persistent persecution of philosophers. Sophists and philosophers, from Pythagoras and the Pythagorean community to Xenophanes and Zeno, were either exiled or condemned to death, and several philosophers – among them Anaxagoras, Protagoras, and Diagoras – were accused and convicted of impiety for both political reasons and dishonouring the gods of the classical cities (ibid.). Even Simmias, Socrates’ other main discussant in the Phaedo, bitterly remarks that the majority of men agree that ‘philosophers are nearly dead’ and that ‘they deserve to be’ (Phaedo, 64b). In such a climate, it may be reasonable to think that Plato’s purpose was not so much establishing the doctrine of the soul’s immortality, but demonstrating in an unforgettable fashion the immortality of philosophy itself – philosophy’s capacity to overcome the oppressive Athenian regime, doubt and the frailty of the human heart, and ultimately, life and death.10 This brings us to the fourth and last reason: the truly unfailing ‘argument’ that establishes the triumph of the philosopher’s spirit and the philosophical method alike is the way Socrates approaches his imminent death (Sedley 1995: 20–21; Singh 1994: 10). Simply by showing how Socratic philosophy is expressed in a moment of truth, the Phaedo persuades both participants and readers that philosophy can be a way of life. The drama that Plato masterfully weaves makes it impossible for the reader to remain entirely focused on the process of argumentation. Even when the discussion becomes intensely engaging, it is hard to forget the tragic context in which it takes place. And in case we do forget, Plato frequently disrupts the dialogue by introducing real-life instances that prove how unyielding Socrates’ position is: when, for example, Socrates ignores his executioner’s recommendation to speak less in order to avoid the torment of drinking more poison (63e) or laughs at Simmias’ and Cebes’ hesitation to present further qualms that may bother him in his ‘present misfortune’ (84d–e). It is the dramatic contrast between the severity of the situation and Socrates’ astonishing equanimity that reinforces the philosophical world view and reaffirms the teacher’s ability to teach us (59e); the realization that one’s lifelong practice of philosophy can make one so extraordinarily available at such a moment and fully capable of responding with compassion and patience to disciples who are troubled by their own fears (89a).11 In the end, what proves to be

10 11

 See also Jansen (2013: 337, 339).  Dillon (2000: 548) finds this attitude comparable to the Buddha’s last days.

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the truly successful therapy is witnessing the way that Socrates dies. Herein lies the value of the dramatic transformative dialogue, which clarifies, in its insistence on presenting a concrete situation, that its aim is to vividly demonstrate the change it endorses.

‘Know Thyself to Be Pure and Immortal!’ The Kaṭhopaniṣad is also a dramatic transformative dialogue, in that it not only speaks of self-transformation but also shows an actually transforming human. However, unlike Plato, who attempts to design his creation as a historical document, the Kaṭhopaniṣad’s author presents a purely allegorical, supernatural drama. A psychologically and spiritually mature boy named Nāciketa criticizes his father for making a shallow and hypocritical religious offering. When his angered father exclaims that he would make his own son an offering to death, the sincere Nāciketa recognizes the truth in it: sooner or later, we are all offered to the lord of death (1.1.4–6). Thus, he visits the house of death to request vidyā (ontological knowledge), first-hand mystical truth about that which lies beyond death. There, his sincerity is tested twice: first, when he is expected to wait for Yama for three full days, and second, when Yama offers to grant him a great abundance of earthly pleasures in place of the transcendent knowledge he seeks (1.1. 23–25). Eventually, the reserved deity fully acknowledges the exceptional ardour of the young seeker and reveals himself as a ‘delighted teacher’ (Easwaran 2007: 66). From then on, the dialogue mostly consists of Yama’s monologues that culminate in Nāciketa’s jīvanmukti: soul-liberation while still in a human body. As soon as we bring the Kaṭhopaniṣad and the Phaedo into dialogue, it is easy to identify that what Nāciketa implores the deity to disclose to him is not essentially different from what Simmias and Cebes request from their philosophy master. These three students, who represent the truth-seeking aspect of the ideal reader, ask for existential certainty rather than theoretical or objective knowledge. Although Socrates’ disciples are more doubtful than Nāciketa about their chances to attain profound self-knowledge (84d), they still hope for a ‘divine doctrine’ whose certitude could alleviate the fears of the child in them (ibid., 77e, 85d). It is also evident that Yama and Socrates are not so keen to impart arcane knowledge of the subtle realities of the hereafter  – even though both eventually provide metaphysical descriptions and hints (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.2.6–7; Phaedo, 108a–114c) – since as masters of inner transformation, they deploy the presence of death to foster liberation here and now. For both, to behold the face of death, as Nāciketa puts it (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.1.27), implies a radical change in one’s relationship with life, the realization that it is of vital importance to engage now in focusing on and cultivating knowledge of the soul’s reality (Phaedo, 107c). Since the soul is immortal, death is not an escape but rather the continuation of one’s ignorance or one’s awakening (ibid., 107d). This shared recognition gives shape to psychagogic dialogues whose immediate purpose is to encourage discussant and reader alike to practise purification from earthly

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identities and attachments, both during and after the discourse, through inquiry, self-control, and meditation. The historical shift from deity-oriented and ritual-based religious practice to the immanent power of self-liberation – which is generally represented by the Upaniṣads and Plato’s dialogues – is particularly evident in these texts that are occupied with the ultimate fate of the soul. Both prescribe no specific righteous acts that grant deliverance and although they do not deny the value of religious ceremonies and offerings (Phaedo, 118a; Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.1.15–19), they consider them secondary and limited (Phaedo, 69d; Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.1.3). They also leave no hope for divine salvation before or after death. To be sure, deities are mentioned in both works (after all, Yama himself is a deity), but not as forces that can save humans from themselves. In the Kaṭhopaniṣad (1.2.20), for instance, God may bestow the grace12 of Self-revelation, but only upon those aspirants who have made immense efforts. The primary effort that is required is insight, and insight can be achieved through single-­ minded, contemplative dialogue between sincere souls. Such conversation helps to turn the discussant’s gaze towards the divine element that resides not in the heavens but within their mind and is not formed but rather exposed (ibid., 2.3.9; Ganeri 2013b: 117–118). What Nāciketa is expected to become aware of when he looks into his mind – the ‘indivisible ātman’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.13)  – is not substantially different from Socrates’ concept of the soul, which is ‘most like the divine, deathless, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, always the same as itself’ (Phaedo, 80b). Nonetheless, since the object discussed is the subject discussing, and since the self is a presence that is separated from both mind and senses (Domanski 2006: 50; Schiltz 2006: 461), this divine element exists outside the boundaries of the verbally objectifying discourse, and it is a non-object that, as Wittgenstein famously put it, ‘can be shown’ but ‘cannot be said’ (Wittgenstein 2022: 4.1212). Thus, the two masters not only draw from their own experiential knowledge but also attempt to bring it to life as a direct realization in their students. It only makes sense that both sanctify stillness as a method of contacting this truth: Yama proclaims that through ‘complete stillness … one enters the unitive state’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.11), and Socrates remarks that ‘one should die in good omened silence’, and therefore requests his students to keep quiet and control themselves (Phaedo, 117e). The awakening of the discriminating intellect (buddhi or vijñāna in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, and nous in the Phaedo) is still of great importance, since it plays a dual role of harnessing and directing the body and the lower mind and turning the mind’s attention away from external objects and towards the innermost reality of the self (Domanski 2006: 50, 52–53; Schiltz 2006: 460). This twofold role is deeply related to the practice of purification, which is strongly endorsed by Plato and the anonymous Upaniṣadic author: purification is exercised in the discourse itself  – when the intellect guides the mind, through the cleansing power of wisdom, towards

12  Dhātuḥ prasādāt, which may be translated as ‘by the grace of the Creator’ (The Upaniṣads 2007: 349–350).

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an unwavering rejection of the senses – and outside the dialogue, when the intellect commits body and mind to a self-controlled, spiritually elevating way of life. In both texts, the practice of purification is not ethically oriented; rather, it stems from an ontological recognition – the lucid awareness of death that brings us to acknowledge the meaninglessness of transient possessions and events and to wisely determine to invest in the imperishable self  – and it is cultivated for the sake of the attainment and embodiment of this knowledge (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.2.24; Schiltz 2006: 461–462). In the words of Phaedo’s Socrates, purification is the act of separating the soul ‘as far as possible from the body’ (67d). Thus, the problem is existential – ignorance of oneself – and if this is resolved, an ethical engagement in life naturally follows. Yama exclaims twice in his parting words, ‘Know thyself to be pure and immortal!’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.17); it is this recognition of a pre-birth purity – accessible through inquiry and meditation, when ‘the soul passes into the realm of what is pure’ and experiences itself as untainted by even the slightest corporeality (Phaedo, 79d) – that drives us to lead a life of virtue. A way of life that rejects the senses and passing pleasure is a reflection of one’s choice of the perennial joy of wisdom. This necessarily implies that the other way of life, that of satisfaction of the senses, is nothing but a rejection of this wisdom (Schiltz 2006: 459).13 The disciple should be occupied with purification for the mystical reason of striving to merge into pure knowledge or the Godhead. Since the impure is prevented from attaining the pure (Phaedo, 67b), whereas ‘pure water poured into pure water becomes the very same’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.1.15), one can fulfil this much-expected reunion only in one’s unobstructed Self-form. Thus, the transformative orientation of these two dialogues is guided by their shared commitment to this type of purification process. Both express, implicitly and explicitly, unshakable confidence that their dialogical dynamics are powerful enough to lead the reader in the direction of complete realization of this purification that ultimately uncovers that which is already pure. This commitment is demonstrated by the fact that the two sides of the discussion, students and teachers alike, sufficiently fulfil all the conditions necessary for the realization of the transformative dialogue, as outlined in Chap. 4. On the students’ part, Nāciketa, Simmias, and Cebes provide the dialogue with its initial energy by raising a question that is literally a matter of life and death, to which they seek an existential resolution. None of them pretends to possess transcendent knowledge and they are thus willing to jettison the disturbing weight of their accumulated ordinary knowledge. All three profoundly trust that their teachers are an embodiment of a complete knowing. Driven by their sincere wish to be transformed while the discussion is taking place, they remain throughout the entire interaction in a state of active listening and collaborate with the teachers by investing  However, it may be suggested that Plato’s conception of the interrelations between the sensory world and the ‘place beyond heaven’ (Phaedrus, 247d) – the sublime realm of the Forms – is more complex, since he considers the world perceived by the senses a reflection of the Forms that is ultimately and positively designed to remind us of the primordial reality (Phaedo, 75b). 13

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personal effort. In their commitment to the process, they elicit not only their own latent existential truth but also the secret truth that lies dormant within the teacher’s mind. Socrates and Yama clearly insist not on imparting their perfect knowledge or enforcing their authority but rather on enabling their interlocutors to attain insight by themselves, since their premise is that the knowledge sought already lies dormant in the student and therefore must be uncovered by the individual alone in the form of an awakened memory. This recognition of the mutual dependency necessary for a successful outcome of the interaction contributes to their unique role as authorities that are respectful, friendly, and open at all times. Although each dialogue is not an open-ended discussion and there is a natural hierarchy that arises from the students’ acknowledgement of their teachers’ mastery of self-­ transformation, it is, ultimately, a non-hierarchical conversation between souls, in which one participant happens to be more mature and more practised at self-­ remembrance. Finally, both Socrates and Yama display existential certainty, charismatic presence, and radiating confidence on which their students rely, as well as an ability to lend their powers of self-inquiry to the interlocutor’s mind, until their students begin to see through their own eyes. Nevertheless, the fact that the Kaṭhopaniṣad and the Phaedo unfold on the common ground of passion for transformative purification does not mean that there are no profound dissimilarities that specifically delimit the transformation each offers. To these important distinctions, which ultimately prove that each work belongs to a different subcategory of the transformative dialogue, I shall devote the remaining part of this chapter.

Where Mysticism Diverges from Transformative Philosophy Transformative dialogue is intended to provide us, the readers, with an opportunity to observe humans like us aspiring to turn an ontological truth into a living revelation within their minds and hearts by employing various forms of intense reflection. In rare instances, the authors may choose to display a failed attempt to do so, in order to further illuminate the missed potential of the transformative dialogue. However, whether a dialogue is considered a success or a failure depends on the particular aims of the specific tradition to which it belongs. As I have demonstrated in the three previous chapters, as well as the present chapter, the objectives of the Socratic tradition and the Upaniṣadic sages, as explicitly declared in the Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad, are essentially similar: both developed a dualistic approach that perceives one’s original self as utterly distinguished from one’s physical existence.14 Accordingly, they are occupied with the  I have chosen, for the exclusive purpose of this discussion, to adopt the most common interpretation of the Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad as metaphysically dualistic (in the Western “mind/body dualism” sense). Indeed, the very conception of soul liberation involves a dualistic approach in that 14

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project of the purification of the soul, or ātman, from the contamination of attachment to the sensory world and its accompanying earthly identity. Consequently, in Plato and the Upaniṣads alike, ethical behaviour results from this ontological commitment, since the motivation for a pure life is mystical rather than moral. This reaffirms my thesis from Chaps. 2 and 4 that Platonian philosophy and Upaniṣadic thought share a common conception of the final goal of both the philosopher and the mystic, as well as of the path leading to its fulfilment. However, this joint destination does not necessarily imply that the two traditions should deploy their method of transformative dialogue to achieve the same results. In Chap. 4, I proposed that the various transformations made possible by this form of dialogue may be generally divided into two types: major transformations that take place within the depths of the dialogue itself and secondary transformations that are expected to occur after and outside the discourse. From this distinction we can deduce that it is not possible to evaluate the success of a transformative dialogue without considering what it set out to achieve in the first place. If the success of a transformative dialogue is measured solely by its ability to bring about an immediate existential change in the discussant, then we must conclude that not only the Phaedo but also the rest of Plato’s dialogues are failed dialogues. Surely, not even one of the philosophers surrounding Socrates’ deathbed experiences the actual immortality of the soul. Simmias, one of the two major discussants, remains hesitant to embrace the conviction Socrates offers, even after accepting the validity of the arguments, due to the enormity of the subject and the frailty of the human heart (Phaedo, 107b). In response, Socrates himself agrees that the initial hypotheses require further examination and analysis, expressing the hope that the argument will be perfected after his death by others (ibid.). Crito disappoints Socrates by asking him, ‘How shall we bury you?’ after an entire discourse dedicated to proving that he, Socrates, cannot die (ibid., 115c–d). And when Socrates drinks the hemlock, all participants burst into tears  – although Phaedo states that they were grieving for their own loss and not for their master’s fate, Socrates still needs to hush them and to lead them back to the detached and transcendent view of the soul (Sedley 1995: 17–18). As Dillon (2000: 530–531) points out, much of the drama in the Phaedo is dedicated to the contrast between the

one is urged to detach an everlasting entity from a temporal reality. Nevertheless, this choice can be argued against. We could say that this particular type of dualistic approach is, in fact, cultivated for non-dualistic ends: one disengages from a limited perception of oneself only to end up as an all-inclusive being. Thus, these books may also be read in the context of metaphysical idealism or neutral monism, thus transcending Cartesian dualism, which distinguishes minds from physical objects (Banks 2010: 173). Accordingly, the soul (and even the material body and world) in Platonic dialogues can be viewed as only provisionally separate from the divine totality (“the good”) of which it remains a manifestation, and the soul (and material world) in the Upaniṣads can be understood entirely as aspects of Brahman – and in both traditions, these entities may be viewed as only separate from their originating source insofar as they are ignorantly perceived to be separate. This interpretation, however, would be more easily aligned with the Upaniṣadic vision, since nowhere in Platonic metaphysics do we find this type of extreme Upaniṣadic and Śaṅkarian non-­ dualistic, indeed uniform, perception of reality.

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master’s serenity and the students’ doubts and emotional distress. In the end, it becomes obvious that only Socrates’ behaviour and action are truly consistent with the knowledge of the Forms, and thus we are shown the limits of the logos, its inability to bridge the gap between intellectual agreement and authentic experience and to penetrate the heart of the disciple through successful dialectic (ibid., 531–532). Other works written by Plato end in a similarly disappointing tone. The Euthyphro concludes with Socrates ironically begging Euthyphro not to walk away from him, leaving him, Socrates, in the darkness of ignorance (16); the Symposium’s anticlimactic ending describes how Socrates attempts to conclude his argument while everyone around him is too fatigued to follow his line of reasoning (223d); the Alcibiades seems to end with Alcibiades’ encouraging promise that he will dedicate himself to self-cultivation; however, Socrates responds with disbelief, poignantly remarking that sooner or later Alcibiades will be defeated by Athens’ overwhelming powers (135e); and the Republic concludes with Socrates’ conditional and future-­ dependent statement that ‘if we are persuaded by me, we’ll believe that the soul is immortal and able to endure every evil and every good’ (621c). In stark contrast, the Kaṭhopaniṣad culminates in Nāciketa’s total and irreversible transformation. Not only does he learn the entire discipline of meditation, but he also frees himself from separation and achieves ‘immortality in Brahman’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.17). It is unclear whether the boy has accomplished this remarkable state at the end of this one dialogue, as a later result of it, or after a long period of discussions and meditative practices of which the written dialogue is only a representation. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad concludes with the great creator deity Prajāpati recognizing the complete understanding his children have achieved as the outcome of his one-syllable teaching (V: 2.2). And the Chāndogyopaniṣad’s last sentences are (probably) Indra’s exclamation that, after one hundred and one years of studies with his master, he has attained the ‘pure realm of Brahman’ and will never again be lost (VIII: 13.1–15.1). Moreover, if we consider the possibility that content and form are inseparable in texts written by authors of transformative schools of thought (a point illustrated in Chap. 3), we should expect that the way the dialogue evolves would reflect and demonstrate the subject of discussion – death, in the case of the Kaṭhopaniṣad and the Phaedo. Thus, death should not be merely the topic discussed but also the method through which the dialogue enables transformation. In this regard, the Kaṭhopaniṣad again presents a successful process: Nāciketa not only converses with Yama but also manages to merge his mind with the mind of Death himself. One could say that he goes through death and re-emerges in what can be thought of as a rebirth in the formless state of an immortal being. In the Phaedo, on the other hand, the initiatory element is completely absent and death remains an object of contemplation. The concept of death, however, does undergo a radical abstraction: from a physical event, it develops into a metaphor for a conscious philosophical life; death becomes a practice, a spiritual exercise, in the sense of dying to the world. But one may determine that the Phaedo is a failed dialogue only if one insists that a transformative dialogue should culminate in a major metamorphosis that

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takes place in the hearts and minds of the discussants within the depths of the dialogue itself. Plato, I argue, does not aim to show that his form of philosophical dialogue can lead to such drastic mystical illuminations. Rather, he is occupied with the other type of purpose of the transformative dialogue: the secondary transformations that are expected to occur after and outside the discourse. And the fact that the Indian and Greek dialogues eventually drift away from one another in their striving towards different purposes is a matter that demands our attention. When Schiltz (2006: 451, 455), for instance, attempts to show, in her comparison of the Kaṭhopaniṣad and Plato’s Phaedrus, that the two creations intend to direct the student to the best way of life, she seems to overlook the ending of the Indian text, which tells us that the Kaṭhopaniṣad not only justifies the choice of a ‘life spent in pursuit of wisdom’ but endorses direct and immediate self-realization, after which the individual is no longer their ordinary self. No doubt, the Phaedrus is zealously devoted to the aim of directing the reader to the ideal life: its extensive mystical, mythical, and poetic descriptions (246–251) are designed to recover the soul’s memory and, in doing so, to inspire the philosopher’s soul to apply the practical aspects of the doctrine of the Forms as intensely as possible. The Phaedo is even more keen to accomplish this task, which is persuading the hearers and readers to practise philosophy, both in its ultimate form of withdrawing the soul from any physical interferences and in its intellectual and practical expression of the philosophical method. If we measure the success of the Phaedo’s dialogue in terms of its ability to persuade us of the invincible power and nobility of the philosophical way of life, we are likely to judge that it has indeed engraved in us a deeply humbling impression.15 The Phaedo, in this sense, is Socrates’ final defence of the philosophical commitment (Phaedo, 63b, 64a; Ahrensdorf 1995: 2), as well as a defence of the figure of the true philosopher. As such, it works extremely well: owing to the Phaedo, ‘The dying Socrates became the new ideal, never before encountered’ (Nietzsche, quoted in Hadot 2002: 41). The conviction that Plato strives to instil in us is not achieved by introducing perfect, undoubtable arguments  – after all, as the author of a non-­ historical literary work, he could have easily reshaped Simmias’ and Crito’s responses to avoid leaving unresolvable suspicion and confusion in the text. Rather, his wish is to demonstrate the way that an unwavering commitment to philosophy as a way of life gives rise to a great being such as Socrates, the way that philosophical contemplation prepares a human for the fearsome encounter with death, and the way that the philosophical method can be used as the soul’s weapon in the face of confusion and adversity, even if this weapon requires constant honing. Since the Phaedo and other works by Plato are designed to prepare the reader for a commitment to the philosophical life that can only take place after the dialogue  We also know that Phaedo, the Phaedo’s narrator, had come to recognize the superiority of the philosophical life, since he founded his own school of philosophy after Socrates’ death (Sedley 1995: 8); Plato, the dialogue’s author, was driven by Socrates’ death sentence to build his academy (Hadot 2002: 58); and Euclides, one of the silent participants in the dialogue, began writing Socratic dialogues (Cooper 1997: 51). 15

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has occurred, they do not depict sudden alterations in the existential state of the discussants or mystical victories, as the Upaniṣads do, nor do they encourage the interlocutor to attempt to effect such transformations during the dialogue. Rather, their role is to convince hearers and readers at a deep level; that is why they make use of arguments (Hadot 1995: 92), which are all about attempting to prove a point, even when they ultimately aim at a mystical end and a radical transformation that should happen in this lifetime. While no logical argument can lead us to a direct experience, it is often persuasive enough to propel us to adhere to the practice. Thus, a growing conviction as a result of a sound argument is the indication that Socrates and his partners have made progress in the dialogue. Nevertheless, Plato’s dialogues establish the doctrines of Plato’s academy, heal students’ doubts, and constantly realign the mind with the practice of self-purification, using not only logic but also myth, poetry, and the teacher’s living example. When Socrates finishes telling his lengthy myth of the afterlife in the Phaedo, he adds that such extensive and repetitive descriptions act like incantations on one’s mind and eventually establish in it a firm trust in the reality of the soul’s immortality (Phaedo, 114d). Interestingly, in the same breath he emphasizes that no reasonable person would insist that the reality of the afterlife is precisely as he illustrated it (ibid.). Indeed, it is evident that the Phaedo encourages and embraces intellectual reservation and critical thinking. Plato’s elaborate description of the philosophical crisis that disheartens not only the main discussants, Simmias and Cebes, but also the silent participants (ibid., 84c–91c), or Plato’s choice to leave Simmias in doubt and Crito in misunderstanding (ibid., 107b, 115d–e) are not merely designed to stand in contrast with Socrates’ outstanding figure. Constructive doubts are inherent in the philosophical method itself. The philosopher never claims to possess absolute authority (Dillon 2000: 546); in fact, he is susceptible to the scrutiny of the interlocutor as well as his own ongoing re-evaluation. A truth can be established rather than being eternally reconsidered only after one has ensured that it is built on a chain of thoroughly tested arguments. But if there is even the slightest shadow of doubt, the dialogue does not have to be concluded with a triumphant and definitive statement. Since at least to some extent philosophy’s project is a continuous one and its dialectic is ‘an “open” method’ (Kuperus 2007: 193), the dialogue’s open end is not an indication of poor results; on the contrary, it leads to further discussion, an invitation to a deeper commitment or a more engaged practice (Nicholson 2015: 159–160). We find no such ongoing re-examination or open-endedness in the Kaṭhopaniṣad. Whereas the Phaedo is structured as a continuous conversation, a ping-pong of highly absorbing and breathtaking dialogue that is intended to disperse doubt and establish conviction, the Kaṭhopaniṣad’s interest in an on-the-spot, complete realization dictates an altogether different dialogical rhythm. Nāciketa starts as a demanding questioner, but soon disappears into the background, giving way to Yama’s lengthy answers – in fact, monologues within the dialogue. This uninterrupted discourse allows for a meditative assimilation of both verbal messages and non-verbal transmission, an increasing alignment of the discussant with the teacher’s guidance that is ultimately aimed at the agreed destination of the student

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becoming one with that which the teacher is consistently pointing at. For this instant illumination, one does not need to be persuaded, and thus no arguments are employed. What is required is ‘not so much instruction as inspiration’ (Easwaran 2007: 20), a constant repetition and elaboration of a number of encoded messages that magically illuminate the student’s interior (see, for instance, the seven verses that end with the same exclamation, ‘For this Self is supreme!’ in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.1.2–15). Though an ascetic way of life is laid out, the disciple’s insight occurs within the boundaries of the discourse, and thus the discourse does not merely prepare but makes transformation possible. This sense of precious opportunity makes us realize that Nāciketa’s silence does not imply that his presence is a mere literary device that aids in the unfolding of Yama’s teaching. On the contrary, the fulfilment of the dialogue rests entirely on his shoulders. If the implementation of the guidance is instantaneous, Nāciketa must be extraordinarily alert to seize the opportunity and become himself the knowledge by strongly identifying with it until he reaches a state where any distinction between the listening subject and the object of discussion falls away (Nagler 2007: 315–316). This diverges profoundly from the inner work expected from the Phaedo’s young philosophers. Simmias and Cebes should carefully and diligently follow Socrates’ process of argumentation and test its validity, and therefore cannot afford to allow him to proceed without them for even a single moment. The fact that most of Socrates’ statements are responded to with plain agreement – which may raise the suspicion that the engaging dialogue is, in actuality, a monologue – only exemplifies this condition for the success of the Platonian dialogue: Plato finds it extremely important to keep adding these affirmatory responses due to the dialogue’s nature of intense interdependence; the interlocutor’s pronounced agreement is the only way Socrates can continue. Plato places Simmias and Cebes next to each other to demonstrate how one student, like Simmias, can fail to remain in the balance between critical thinking and profound conviction, and another, like Cebes, can constructively apply the philosophical method by being able to raise wise opposing arguments and at the same time embrace an argument once convinced (Phaedo, 95b–96a, 107a–b).16 But if it is true that Plato’s dialogues do not aspire to deliver the mystical state they so clearly long for, if they are indeed but a method of persuasion and preparation for the philosophical activity that can only take place afterwards, we are right to ask: did Socrates or Plato advocate other forms of practice besides arguments that could authentically lead to the experiential condition of the soul’s immersion in ‘the realm of what is pure, ever existing, immortal and unchanging’ (Phaedo, 79b) and finally to a bodiless existence in indescribably beautiful realms (ibid., 114c)? I already demonstrated above that Socrates’ definition and purpose of philosophy in the Phaedo are mystically oriented and should be distinguished from the

 See also Sedley’s discussion of the different roles of Simmias and Cebes (1995: 17, 19). It is evident that Simmias’ instability as a philosopher is the catalyst for Socrates’ long warning against misology (Phaedo, 90b–91c). 16

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philosophical method.17 This implies that what philosophy demands of us is far more revolutionary than anything the process of argumentation could ever bring about. Plato’s faithful reader may indeed intuit that the author directs them towards certain practices outside the discourse: for instance, when one reads about Diotima’s stairs of beauty in the Symposium (210b–21b) or when one reads in the Phaedrus about the refinement of erotic infatuation that culminates in the soul’s ability to grow its wings (250d–256e). No doubt, such poetic speeches in themselves can awaken in the reader some limited degree of meditative immersion in the Forms, or at the very least the longing for such immersion. And we certainly detect moments in which Socrates seems to practise not dialectic but intense forms of quiet reflection (Symposium, 174e, 220d). However, there is no evidence in Plato’s oeuvre as a whole that he or Socrates endorsed other spiritual exercises.18 It may be speculated that in reality, Plato’s academy did practise certain spiritual exercises, but since the dialogues were intended to be read publicly (Hadot 2009: 52–53), Plato chose to depict them in a concealed, metaphorical manner.19 After all, philosophy in classical Greece was at that time a life-endangering activity, whereas the forest sages of the Upaniṣads, though explicitly challenging the status of the mythopoetic world view, could thrive in a non-hostile environment (Sarma, quoted in Nagler 2007: 297–298).

Complete and Incomplete Endings These important dissimilarities – in the dialogue’s purpose (definition of success and failure and fundamental expectation), teacher–interlocutor relationship, main method (argument versus repetition), rhythm and nature of exchange, the role of doubt (encouraged versus irrelevant), the final outcome (open versus closed ending), and the truth that is revealed (truth in progress versus final truth) – signify an even more radical difference. They demonstrate that although Plato’s dialogue is full of mystical thought and is designed to evoke in the reader the longing for mystical self-liberation, it is not, on the whole, a mystical text. In the final analysis, I contend, the Phaedo and the Kaṭhopaniṣad belong to different subtypes of the transformative dialogue: the Phaedo is a transformative philosophical dialogue, whereas the classical Indian work is a transformative mystical dialogue. These subcategorizations are broadly applicable to Plato’s entire compilation of dialogues and to the Upaniṣadic compendium of dialogues. Moreover, these divergent paths demonstrate that although these two traditions extensively engaged in transformative ideas and  It may be suggested that Western academic philosophy has borrowed from Plato the philosophical method while discarding the purpose for which it was developed. 18  Socrates does refer here and there in the Phaedo to the secret initiation rites of the Orphic mystery religion (62b, 69c–d). 19  Gold (1996: 24–25), for instance, attempts to interpret the myth that appears near the end of the Phaedo as a cryptic description of a mystical practice which is similar to Yoga’s prāṇāyāma and meditation. 17

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practices that centred on the liberation of the soul and the importance of self-­ purifying activities as the path leading to it, there is still a substantial difference between the nature of the philosophy celebrated by the Greeks and the mystical thought developed by the Upaniṣadic sages. Philosophy, as Socrates and Plato understood it, seems to maintain the tension between one’s striving towards a final attainment of the truth and one’s inability to achieve complete knowledge. Although the Phaedo leaves little doubt that Socrates attained a profound experiential revelation of the unadulterated soul, Socrates makes it clear, already at the beginning of the dialogue, that it is impossible for the philosopher to achieve ‘any pure knowledge’ while in the body (66e). Since during one’s physical existence one can only hope to be ‘closest to knowledge’ (ibid.), it should make sense that the true philosopher would gladly die knowing that what awaits them in the underworld is a final merging with their much sought-after wisdom in its purest form (ibid., 68a). This is further illumined by Hadot’s (2002: 44–45) analysis of the Symposium, in which he concludes that Plato’s philosopher is a lover of wisdom in the sense that they long for a state of absolute merging with wisdom that forever eludes them. Thus, philosophy is not wisdom but a ‘way of life and discourse determined by the idea of wisdom’; a dynamic tension that is ironically ‘defined by what it lacks’ (ibid., 46–47). This conception of philosophy may explain why none of Plato’s dialogues insists on a final accomplishment or resolution, instead seeming content to leave us with incomplete endings. And it may also elucidate the fact that Socrates refuses to assume the absolute authority of the mystic – even when he eventually rises to the heights of the mystical planes in his extensive geographical, topographical, and moral description of the upper worlds, he opens with a hesitant ‘We are told that …’ (Phaedo, 107e). Some room for doubt, some caution, must be retained at all times, since the human mind cannot transcend the limits of knowledge imposed on it by physical interferences and the inherent mystery of life and death.20 The mystical thought of the Upaniṣads, on the other hand, is determined to resolve, and even destroy, the tension between the mind aspiring to pure knowledge and absolute reality. It is not keen to engage the inquiring mind in an analytical process, nor does it foster the cultivation of doubt that sustains the distance between oneself and the mystical realization. Mystical thought is guided by the wish to settle, once and for all, any dual existence of inquirer and truth. Of the two, it is the thinking, objectifying mind that needs to be dissolved, and thus we can conclude that the Upaniṣadic dialogues aim to bring to an end not only the spiritual quest of the fictional seeker but also the very possibility of a dialogue (Ganeri 2013a: 124). This is why Yama declares that the Self ‘cannot be known … through hearing discourses about it’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.2.23). Of course, the mystical advantage is that the living revelation with which it supplies the disciple manages to penetrate the

20  See also Schiltz (2006: 463–464), who demonstrates how the Kaṭhopaniṣad’s final resolution and the Phaedrus’s incomplete and future-dependent ending reflect ‘the differing views about the nature and accessibility of knowledge of the self’.

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thicket of existential fear that seems to hover, unresolved, over the heads of the Phaedo’s participants. Perhaps the strongest thematic expression of the disparity between the mystical thought of the Kaṭhopaniṣad and the Phaedo’s philosophy is their different conceptions of self. While Socrates’ depiction of the pure soul is not fundamentally different from Yama’s ātman, the Upaniṣadic ātman, the individual soul, rapidly collapses into a non-dual universal reality, since as soon as the soul is unveiled, it becomes clear that it is essentially indistinguishable from the totality of existence, or Brahman (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.2.8). As a result, everything, including the differentiating consciousness that identifies and categorizes reality’s distinct components, becomes sucked into the whirlpool of this realization and turns into yet another representation or embodiment of the Self (Ganeri 2013a: 31). In contrast, in the Phaedo, the soul, even in its most untainted condition, remains separate from the Forms and beholds them from the outside, as a pure subject that contemplates a pure object. This subtle gap, or tension, is retained also in Plato’s other peaks of inner revelation, as captured in Diotima’s ultimate state of Beauty itself (Symposium, 211a–d), or in the Phaedrus’s ability of the immortal souls to glimpse into the realm of the Forms, ‘the place beyond heaven’ (247c). Nowhere in Plato’s writings do we find a final absorption in the totality of existence. The soul ‘resembles the divine’ (Phaedo, 80a), but never loses its distinctive outlines, even when they seem to become nearly transparent. Thus, it remains knowable, in fact the ‘most valuable object of investigation’ (Schiltz 2006: 463). As Cohen (1976: 320, 326) points out, the Phaedo chooses to remain one step behind the non-dualistic mystical vision, in that it refrains from asserting that the final form of perfect knowledge is the mind’s ‘identity with what it knows’; thus the mind retains its individual boundaries even in the face of the full recognition of the Forms. Indeed, we know for a fact that Plato was aware of this possible leap, since in the Theaetetus Socrates declares his profound reverence for Parmenides, whose conception of absolute truth seems to be far closer to that of the Kaṭhopaniṣad (Domanski 2006: 47–49). Nonetheless, expecting Plato to take this leap would be a great misunderstanding, since philosophy derives its contemplative powers from the subject–object or lover–wisdom relationship. We should be reminded that although both the Indian and the Greek texts reject objective learning as a means of achieving genuine knowledge (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.2.23; Phaedo, 96b–100a), they retreat to different subjective domains: the former withdraws to the pre-cognitive realm of the unknowable Self, whereas the latter is content with retreating to the domain of pure, pre-sensory thought and seeking there the ‘truth of existence’ (Singh 1994: 11–12). This conscious choice made by Socrates to remain, in Heidegger’s words, the ‘purest thinker of the west’ (ibid., 12), has given rise to Western philosophy as we know it. Having, then, examined the notion of transformative dialogue in relation to classical Greek and Indian sources, in Part II we begin to consider how the transformative dialogue has been utilized by a twentieth-century figure, Jiddu Krishnamurti.

References

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References Ahrensdorf, Peter J. 1995. The Death of Socrates and the Life of Philosophy: An Interpretation of Plato’s Phaedo. New York: State University of New York Press. Arieti, James A. 1991. Interpreting Plato: The Dialogues as Drama. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Banks, Erik C. 2010. Neutral Monism Reconsidered. Philosophical Psychology 23 (2): 173–187. Cohen, Maurice. 1976. Dying as Supreme Opportunity: A Comparison of Plato’s ‘Phaedo’ and ‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead’. Philosophy East and West 26 (3): 317–327. https://doi. org/10.2307/1397862. Cooper, John M. 1997. Introduction. In Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, vii–xxviii, 49–50, 557–558. Indianapolis: Hackett. Davidson, Arnold. 1995. Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy. In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot. Trans. Michael Chase, 1–45. Oxford: Blackwell. Dillon, Matthew. 2000. Dialogues with Death: The Last Days of Socrates and the Buddha. Philosophy East and West 50 (4): 525–558. https://doi.org/10.1353/pew.2000.0005. Domanski, Andrew. 2006. The Journey of the Soul in Parmenides and the Katha Upanishad. Phronimon 7 (2): 47–59. Easwaran, Eknath. 2007. Introduction. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 13–47, 63–67. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2013a. The Concealed Art of the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013b. Philosophy as a Way of Life. In Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, ed. Michael Chase, Stephen Clark, and Michael McGhee, 116–131. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Gold, Jeffrey. 1996. Plato in the Light of Yoga. Philosophy East and West 46 (1): 17–32. https:// doi.org/10.2307/1399335. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael Chase. Hoboken: Blackwell. ———. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jansen, Sarah. 2013. Plato’s Phaedo as a Pedagogical Drama. Ancient Philosophy 33 (2): 333–352. https://doi.org/10.5840/ancientphil201333225. Kuperus, Gerard. 2007. Traveling with Socrates. In Philosophy in Dialogue: Plato’s Many Devices, ed. Gary Alan Scott, 193–211. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Macdonell, Arthur Anthony. 1995. Vedic Mythology. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Nagler, Michael N. 2007. A Religion for Modern Times. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 295–336. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Nicholson, Andrew. 2015. Dialogue and Genre in Indian Philosophy. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 151–169. New York: Routledge. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. ———. 2002. Phaedo. Trans. David Gallop. New York: Oxford University Press. Schiltz, Elizabeth A. 2006. Two Chariots: The Justification of the Best Life in the Katha Upanishad and Plato’s Phaedrus. Philosophy East and West 56 (3): 451–468. https://doi.org/10.1353/ pew.2006.0044. Sedley, David. 1995. The Dramatis Personae of Plato’s Phaedo. In Philosophical Dialogues: Plato, Hume, Wittgenstein, ed. Timothy J. Smiley, 3–26. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singh, Raj R. 1994. Death-Contemplation and Contemplative Living: Socrates and the Katha Upanishad. Asian Philosophy 4 (1): 9–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/09552369408575385. The Upanishads. 2007. Trans. Eknath Easwaran. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2022. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung. London: Kegan Paul. https://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/tlp.pdf

Part II

The Krishnamurti Dialogue

Chapter 6

‘We Are Inquiring Together’: The Dialogical Nature of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s Work

Numerous semi-academic books and a number of academic theses have been written with the aspiration to fathom the enigma of Krishnamurti’s life and teachings.1 Some ponder his private and inner life and are largely biographical (e.g. Sanat 1999; Williams 2015). Others consider philosophically central themes in his thought, such as ‘insight’ (Rodrigues 2001) or ‘revolution’ (Kumar 2015), or, more generally, attempt to systemize his thought (e.g. Shringy 1977; Martin 2002). However, thus far, no scholar has undertaken the task of exploring Krishnamurti’s main methodology: the dialogical nature and structure of his discourse, as well as the explicit dialogue form initially developed by him (albeit in a non-deliberate manner) in 1948. In this chapter, and the three chapters that follow, I argue that a thorough examination of the structure of Krishnamurti’s discourse is a major key to unlocking the uniqueness of his thought and his religious and philosophical contribution. Moreover, it is my contention that the very attempt to grasp Krishnamurti’s ideas in isolation from their forms of transmission significantly limits the possibility of attaining any considerable insight into the innovative aspects of his work. In other words, disregarding the method may hinder our capacity to understand what it is exactly that Krishnamurti hoped to achieve, since after all, the method was the embodiment of his main idea. I will start by looking into the events of Krishnamurti’s early life in order to identify the biographical origins that brought about the dialogical character of his work. In Krishnamurti’s case, perhaps significantly more than most thinkers, his mature thought was inseparable from the evolution of his personality and the lessons he derived from the highly unusual sequence of events that had taken place  I have generally elected to adopt the term ‘teachings’, used by Krishnamurti to refer to his work. As Hunter (1988: 51) points out, this choice of term indicates that Krishnamurti himself perceived his work not as a presentation of a logical train of thought, but rather as a dynamic contact between teacher and audience. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_6

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throughout the early phase of his life, between the years 1895 and 1929 (Hunter 1988: 14). Since my interest is not in offering a general or extensive biographical outline, I shall centre my attention on events and crises that contributed to the crystallization of Krishnamurti’s world view. I will demonstrate how the major frictions experienced by the young Krishnamurti between conformity and rebellion and between conditioning and freedom finally gave rise to his insistence on engaging his audiences in an extreme form of non-authoritative lectures. This biographical investigation will help us to lay the foundations for a profound understanding of the meaning and function of dialogue in his teaching. In the chapter’s second section, I will show, based on analyses of some of Krishnamurti’s earliest talks and writings (primarily a lecture from 1935) and some of his latest talks and texts (primarily a speech from 1986), that this dialogical nature found its expression not only in the later development of the Krishnamurti dialogue, but also implicitly in what appeared to be monologic public talks. By demonstrating the scope and depth of this underlying structure of his work, I will establish my claim that dialogue as a principle was an essential component of Krishnamurti’s pedagogy regardless of the particular modes of presentation, since it was the method that successfully conveyed and supported his ethics as a thinker and a mystic. This discussion of the interrelations between ideas and forms of presentation will lead to the concluding section of this chapter, which draws on my study, in Part I of this book, of the transformative dialogue and its variations as viewed from the Hadotian angle. Hadot’s approach, which is instrumental in enabling a contextualized reading of classical expressions of transformative philosophy, can also facilitate an apprehension of the goals of Krishnamurti’s implicit and explicit forms of transformative dialogue. Even when the discourse takes the lecture form, I maintain, its contents cannot be evaluated as isolated ideas, since Krishnamurti’s teaching fundamentally exists only in dialogue.

Krishnamurti as a Rebel Krishnamurti’s extraordinary life story has been elevated to a level of unidimensional hagiography by his admirers and by Krishnamurti himself, who carefully cultivated it for purposes of public image. It is, however, somewhat surprising that even scholars (e.g. Needleman 1970: 166–167; Rodrigues 2001: 1–25; Hunter 1988: 19–35) seem to embrace quite uncritically the conventional narrative. It is presented as the story of an Indian-born boy whose mind was utterly vacant and whose personality was exceptionally unformed. At the age of 13, the boy was identified by a professed seer of the Theosophical Society, which in those days propagated prophecies of the impending advent of the ‘World Teacher’, as the worthy vehicle for the embodiment of this teacher: the Bodhisattva Maitreya, who was in search of a suitable body. The adolescent Krishnamurti was subsequently prepared for the role for a long period of fourteen years, while thousands formed an order of

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worshippers in anxious anticipation of the new religion expected to be heralded by the saviour. However, an uncontrolled sequence of mystical experiences at the age of 27 led Krishnamurti to throw ‘the whole thing over’ (Needleman 1970: 167), disband the organization built around him, and embark on a lone journey as a ‘secular philosopher’ antagonistic to any organized religious belief (Jayakar 1986: 82). Nevertheless, a close reading of not only biographical research but also comprehensive biographies written by admiring students (Lutyens 1997, 2003; Jayakar 1986) illuminates Krishnamurti as a far more complex, even contradictory personality. Krishnamurti was not ‘completely vacant’ or free of conflicts and desires,2 nor was he a mere passive participant in the Theosophical drama, or a secular philosopher who genuinely disowned his role as the vehicle of Lord Maitreya.3 These discrepancies should not be overlooked, since it is only by highlighting the tensions that evidently took place in him during the first phase of his life that we can achieve an insight into the dynamics that resulted in the ripening of his mature thought. By ‘first phase’  – the phase that is relevant to the biographical investigation of this chapter  – I refer to the turbulent period that commenced in Krishnamurti’s early childhood and culminated in his dissolution of the organization and severance from the Theosophical Society in 1929 (when Krishnamurti was 34 years old). During the second phase, which lasted until 1948, Krishnamurti’s thought reached its fully developed form, and from 1949 onwards, he became the accomplished teacher mostly known to the millions who have been influenced by his teachings.4 The first phase of Krishnamurti’s life strongly reflects the themes he was later most concerned with as a teacher: the tensions between conformity and rebellion and between conditioning and freedom. In 1934, in one of the earliest talks he gave as an independent teacher, he describes the essential human struggle as the conflict between the ‘I’ that is the result of environment – nothing but the ‘product of the reactions to environment’ – and the environment that gave rise to it in the first place (Krishnamurti 1996a: 16). This demonstrates the immense importance he ascribed to the condition of being inwardly unshaped as a necessary condition for authentic freedom. According to Krishnamurti’s own journal (quoted in ibid., 154–155), this was his natural state since boyhood: purely observing and listening without a thought entering his mind, untouched by anything that was said or done to him, experiencing no distance between him and nature. In 1983, the elderly Krishnamurti, intensely pondering the unusual mind he had been born with, likened the boy he had  At the beginning of an interview with English journalist Bernard Levin, Krishnamurti opens with the bewildering statement that ‘I have never had conflict in my life’ (Krishnamurti 2008). 3  See Needleman (1970: 166–167), who portrays the young Krishnamurti as utterly passive and dominated by the Theosophists until his sudden decision to dissolve the order, which was followed by an unwavering rejection of his role as the World Teacher. However, as late as in 1985, when he was 90, Krishnamurti gave a special talk at a conference of the United Nations, in which he was introduced by the chairman, before and after, as the ‘World Teacher’. On both occasions, he seemed to calmly accept the title (Krishnamurti 2014b). 4  This biographical division is not conventional, although all biographers mark 1929 as the watershed in his life, whereas 1948 was marked by Krishnamurti himself as a leap to ‘full awakening’ (Jayakar 1986: 110). 2

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been to a ‘vessel, with a large hole in it, whatever was put in, went through’ (Jayakar 1986: 28). This boy, he felt, still existed in him exactly as he was, as if nothing had happened to him in life (ibid., 297). His official biographer, Mary Lutyens (1997: 3–4, 6, 21), confirms that the child was also outwardly perceived as vague, dreamy, selfless, with a vacant expression and a deep aversion to book-learning and memorizing, so much so that it was suspected that he was intellectually disabled. However, it is not possible to understand Krishnamurti’s personal evolution without considering the more active component of this vacancy, that of resistance to having his mind moulded by any human-made or external conditioning. One cannot remain unaffected unless one possesses an intense degree of independent spirit. This exceptional openness of mind was the reason that the alleged clairvoyant Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) identified in the 13-year-old Krishnamurti a potentially superb ‘vehicle’ for embodying the presence of Maitreya on earth (Lutyens 1997: 21). At that point, in 1909, Leadbeater, together with the freshly elected president of the Theosophical Society, Annie Besant – both direct students of the deceased Madame Blavatsky, who had founded the Society – were attempting to fulfil Blavatsky’s prophecy from 1889 that the ultimate purpose of the organization would be to prepare humanity for the reappearance of the World Teacher (ibid., 12). Initiated by Blavatsky’s purported encounters with two Tibetan masters, the Theosophical Society was founded on the belief that these masters were members of the Great White Brotherhood (perfect beings who assisted in directing humanity’s spiritual evolution), and that above the Brotherhood, there was a hierarchy of sublime beings, among them the Lord Maitreya  – the World Teacher  – and the Buddha. Directly instructed by these masters, the Society believed in exploration into the mysteries of nature and latent human powers (Jayakar 1986: 21), and strove to amalgamate the various classical and modern forms of religion, philosophy, and science into one universal religion of humankind (Sanat 1999: 10). But above all was the search for the ideal ‘vehicle’, and Krishnamurti was not the only candidate. Prior to Krishnamurti, another boy of 13 – the American Hubert van Hook – was picked out by Leadbeater, and since Besant had proclaimed that the Teacher would this time appear in a Western form (Lutyens 1997: 12), he seemed to be an even better fit than the awkward-looking, unhealthy, and apparently dim-witted Indian boy. However, Leadbeater was adamant that Krishnamurti would grow to be a great spiritual teacher and orator, and soon followed messages from the masters that he, Leadbeater, should train the boy in an attempt to make him worthy of being used by Maitreya (ibid., 21–23). Krishnamurti and his younger brother, Nitya, were removed from school, strictly isolated from the company of all other children, disconnected from their Brahmanic environment, instructed to adopt Western manners, and permitted to associate only with those under Theosophical influence (ibid., 25, 30–31). Nevertheless, Krishnamurti’s mind was not to be shaped, since it was supposed to be prepared only by the Lord himself (Jayakar 1986: 28, 297). Soon after, Leadbeater began to undergo with the boy a series of initiations conducted by the masters so that Krishnamurti could be accepted into discipleship and eventual adepthood (Lutyens 1997: 27).

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These processes are conventionally described as if Krishnamurti were no more than a passive participant in Leadbeater’s confident spectacle, and near the end of his life Krishnamurti himself perceived it as a period of subservience, as if the uncertain boy, who never bothered about what was happening, simply did what he was asked to do (Jayakar 1986: 28). In reality, the adolescent Krishnamurti was far from a mere people-pleaser. To begin with, Krishnamurti had vivid visions of the dead from when he was 8 (Lutyens 1997: 5–6), and he continued to experience visions independently of any Theosophical influence and even when he grew highly critical of the Society (e.g. ibid., 83). In fact, privately, as Sanat’s research (1999: xi, xii) convincingly proves on the basis of numerous well-documented instances, Krishnamurti experienced visions and underwent other mystical experiences, of the type which he publicly denounced and even ridiculed, on a daily basis until he breathed his last.5 Furthermore, letters written by the young Krishnamurti indicate that he was deeply involved in the initiatory process and was capable of retaining clear memories of the exchange with the masters, an exchange that he later put down on paper and that appeared in his first book, At the Feet of the Master (Lutyens 1997: 28, 34–35, 38). At the age of 89, Krishnamurti described himself at that earlier time as a lonely, shy boy, who detested personal worship and would hide behind the curtain whenever asked to speak (Krishnamurti 2012). But extant documents show that he volitionally asked to teach a small group of disciples much older than him as early as 1910 and appointed himself head of the order, which gradually grew in numbers (Lutyens 1997: 43–44). Later, Krishnamurti played a highly active role in the development of the cult of believers in the World Teacher, named the Order of the Star in the East (ibid., 46, 52); permitted hundreds of worshippers to fall at his feet (ibid., 55); announced, in the name of the masters, the acceptance into discipleship of several people (ibid., 51, 74); and voluntarily and confidently gave speeches at Theosophical conventions (ibid., 126–127, 129, 134). At the age of 18, he wholeheartedly defended the Theosophical doctrine and demanded to take on new leadership roles and responsibilities himself (ibid., 77, 103). Hunter, who observes that Krishnamurti absorbed much of the Theosophical ideology and preserved some elements of the doctrine even in his independent teaching (1988: 18–19), suggests that although he was undoubtedly nourished by the Society, he possessed an ‘innate power of remarkable force’ (ibid., 35). This power grew regardless of any environmental input, and indeed, other boys who had been proclaimed by Leadbeater to be future Buddhas, notably van Hook and Rajagopalacharya, failed to fulfil the promise (Lutyens 1997: 83, 39). Soon after the 18-year-old Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya were guided to leave India behind and move to the West, England in particular, Krishnamurti’s innate independent power developed into a rebellious spirit and an inwardly stormy  See, for example, the series of physically agonizing mystical experiences Krishnamurti underwent when he was 53, during which he repeatedly identified the source of the purgatory process as the Theosophical masters, and later announced, at the culmination of the process, the blessed visitation of the Buddha (Jayakar 1986: 131–132, 134). 5

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and conflicted young adulthood. He was torn, not between his own longings and the Society’s oppressive expectations, but between contradictory forces within himself; a ‘continuous fight, fight, & then some more fighting’ (Krishnamurti, quoted in Lutyens 1997: 138). Most biographers and scholars tend to mark the mystical experiences he went through in 1922 as the origin of his rebellion, but this had been surging in him ‘quietly but surely’ for a long time (ibid.). These years were characterized by a great sense of loneliness, unhappiness, and disorientation (ibid., 111, 138). Pampered by rich sponsors, he enjoyed, on the surface, an aristocrat-like status, leading a carefree and rather earthbound lifestyle. But deep inside, he was intensely questioning his destined role. While actively engaged in guiding his order of believers, he longed for a private, quiet life, and would often ask in protest, ‘Why did they ever pick on me?’ (ibid., 86). At the same time, he struggled to regain his passion for serving the masters and was confident that sooner or later he would resume his commitment (ibid., 89, 127). Furthermore, he was keen to please his Theosophical sponsors and to announce his unwavering devotion to Besant and Leadbeater (ibid., 80, 126), but as a result of his growing firmness of opinion and insight, he could not help becoming extremely critical of the organization’s ‘old school’, with its preoccupation with personalities and rituals (ibid., 95, 112). This culminated in secret plans to one day change Theosophy from top to bottom (ibid., 121). Gradually, two elements that once were unified in his mind grew apart: the organization, which he was now observing as a disillusioned outsider, and the essential connection with the masters, which he faithfully retained (ibid., 125). This ‘most rebellious mood’, as Krishnamurti described it in a letter in 1920 (ibid., 122), was not the typical disquiet and revolt of the young. Rebellion was perhaps one of the greatest features of his thought and discourse, a quality he conveyed not only thematically but also through the manner of his speech. Even at the age of 85, Krishnamurti provoked a questioner, who complained that listening to Krishnamurti only aggravated his general dissatisfaction, to become ‘totally, completely dissatisfied with everything, with all structures of thought’; if he did so, Krishnamurti concluded, they would finally meet, since Krishnamurti, like the questioner, was ‘totally aflame with discontent’ (Krishnamurti 2015). This was, in fact, what he believed was the approach that contributed the most to his eventual experience of mystical union with the ‘Beloved’.6 In 1928, the young Krishnamurti gave a poetic articulation of this position that he now impassionedly prompted his listeners to cultivate: I have long been in revolt from all things, from the authority of others, from the instruction of others, from the knowledge of others … Until I was in that state of revolt, until I became dissatisfied with everything, with every creed, with every dogma and belief, I was not able to find the Truth. Until I was able to destroy these things by constant struggle to understand what lies behind them, I was not able to attain the Truth I sought. Naturally, I did not think of all these things while I was young. They grew in me unconsciously but now I can place

 In the early 1920s, Krishnamurti was still using Theosophical jargon to express his inner revelation (Hunter 1988: 33). 6

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all the events of my life in their proper order and see in what manner I have developed to attain my goal. (Krishnamurti 1928: 22)

He went on to describe the method he had been unconsciously deploying since boyhood: a constant, critical observation of all the different forms of the human search for happiness as demonstrated by individuals and collectives; watching those trapped in their desires, enslaved by their possessions, bound by their love, learning, or traditions, or trying to forget their unhappiness through amusement (ibid., 23–24). His negation was total and all-inclusive, and he never allowed himself to be satisfied by any of these forms or caught up in any of these confusions (ibid.). It is worth reminding ourselves that although he was generally quite insincere about the knowledge he derived from books, during those years Krishnamurti was a fervent reader, most affected by two other known negators and rebels: Nietzsche, in particular his Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the Buddha, whose words ‘All conquering and all knowing am I, detached, untainted, untrammeled … Whom shall I call Teacher? Myself found the way’ especially impressed him (Hunter 1988: 20–21; Rodrigues 2001: 13–14). Both thinkers seemed to leave their mark on his eventual teaching. When Krishnamurti’s rebellion finally erupted, it should not have come as a surprise to those in the Society and the Order awaiting his mature manifestation. In 1922, Krishnamurti alerted his listeners that the World Teacher would not teach what they all would like to hear, but rather ‘wake us all up’ (Lutyens 1997: 135). Not only Krishnamurti, but also earlier Theosophical publications warned their readers that the words of the World Teacher would be unacceptable to the rigid-­ minded (ibid., 87), and that they would most likely contradict all traditions and, even worse, compel their listeners to drop all traditions to be able to start anew (ibid., 130, 251). It has often been concluded by biographers and scholars that the immense and bewildering mystical process Krishnamurti underwent during the years 1922–1924 propelled him to finally cast off his belief in the masters and in the World Teacher.7 However, numerous documents from that time evidence that, in fact, this period of inner revelations and transformations only reinforced his previously shaken conviction and that this certainty, which remained in him until the last days of his life, had nothing to do with the dissolution of the Order in 1929 and his well-known objection to organized religious structures.8 To begin with, what induced Krishnamurti’s mystical ‘process’ in 1922 was his resolve to devote once again his entire attention to the masters of Theosophy (Sanat 1999: 57). He thus began to meditate daily in order to align his being with the ‘Buddhic plane’ and with the noble wish he identified in it to selflessly serve the Lord Maitreya; as a result, he found himself  See, for example, Hunter (1988: 21).  In truth, this period did not even put an end to Krishnamurti’s loyalty to the Order and the Society. This was a gradual process of disillusionment that began in 1925, when both Krishnamurti and leaders of the Society made proclamations that clarified beyond doubt that they no longer trod the same spiritual path (see, for instance, Lutyens 1997: 249–251, 277–278). Ironically, these disputes took place precisely when Krishnamurti felt most settled in the role of the World Teacher (ibid., 250). 7 8

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embracing the rather effortless practice of concentrating on Maitreya’s image all day long (Lutyens 1997: 158). This newly discovered focus rapidly transported him and those around him into a ‘world where Gods again walked among men’ (Nitya, quoted in ibid., 153). All of a sudden, Krishnamurti’s body seemed to undergo intense preparations for the penetration of Maitreya’s presence (ibid., 156). This physically excruciating, operation-like preparation was purportedly conducted by ethereal emanations of the masters – ‘seen’ by both Krishnamurti and others – who would often take Krishnamurti with them and leave his body behind (ibid., 157, 159). At the peak of this brief process, Krishnamurti experienced that his sense of self expanded to a degree that it became all-permeating, and soon after, he left his body and experienced a direct contact with the ‘mighty Beings’ that entirely eliminated the profound discontent and unhappy inner search of the preceding years (ibid., 158–160). However, this unfathomable peace was not to be enjoyed, since Krishnamurti was at once plunged into a most painful and completely uncontrolled sequence of purificatory initiations. When asked by an interviewer in 1984 about the nature of this process, Krishnamurti cautiously replied, ‘there is a great tradition among the serious religious people … that you must go through various forms of self-purification, not by starving … or torturing the body, but a sense of inward cleansing, as it were, a purification of the brain that is not self-centred’ (Krishnamurti 2012). This is a somewhat surprising answer, in light of Krishnamurti’s lifelong effort to keep himself out of any traditional frame of reference. Biographers and scholars (e.g. Jayakar 1986: 47–48; Sanat 1999: 47) who are also believers in Indian mystical ideas tend to place this extraordinary ‘inward cleansing’ within the context of the classical Indian concept of kundalini awakening  – explosive primordial energies that ordinarily lie mostly dormant in the base of the spine but, when activated, can rise and effect radical transformations of consciousness. This interpretation was at least partly espoused by the young Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya (Lutyens 1997: 166). Nonetheless, the process seemed to have unique features that were not in keeping with either classical depictions of kundalini rising or the notion of Theosophical initiations, and this left the dumbfounded Leadbeater to conclude that the unorthodox circumstances of Maitreya’s descent made the case incomparable (ibid., 171). Krishnamurti never doubted that this excruciating purgation was conducted by the masters, and he would even relay direct messages from the masters to Nitya, among them the curious statement that ‘it is the first time that this experiment is being carried out in the world’ (ibid., 182, 188).9 This process, which was to recur several times in the course of his life (Rodrigues 2001: 17), was undoubtedly the origin of one of his most persistent ideas, that the brain cells that store up memory of past experiences must be biologically transmuted for a new mind to arise (Hunter 1988: 34; Sanat 1999: 63). Nothing in this process damaged Krishnamurti’s faith in Theosophy and his role in it. On the contrary, the Krishnamurti of that period felt more aligned than ever

 Krishnamurti echoed this message ten days before he died (Sanat 1999: 204–205).

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with the prophecy Leadbeater made about him in 1909 (Lutyens 1997: 188). He was deeply involved in both the Order of the Star and the Society (ibid., 169), continued to accept initiates in the name of the masters (ibid., 160), and gave talks whose purpose was to ‘make the existence of the Masters an intense reality’ (Nitya, quoted in ibid., 171). But now he would speak as ‘someone who has found his goal’ (ibid.) and an unmistakable and immense concentrated power would flow from him, like the ‘throbbing of a great machine’ (ibid., 172). In 1925, he finally shifted from referring to himself as the messenger of the masters to ecstatic first-person pronouncements, causing many of his hearers to believe that it was the Lord Maitreya who spoke through him: ‘I belong to all people, to all who really love, to all who are suffering’ (ibid., 223, 233). A year later, he made it clear that now that his consciousness was blending into the consciousness of the ‘one Teacher’, he knew his destiny and work with certainty (ibid., 241, 246). Even in his old age, discussions with his close students reveal that Krishnamurti never cast aside this occult terminology involving Maitreya and the World Teacher (Jayakar 1986: 296–297; Lutyens 2003: 227). So, what could possibly cause the rift between him and the Theosophical Society? On the surface, three external events should be considered milestones in the deterioration of Krishnamurti’s relationship with the Order of the Star and the Society. First was the fact that in the midst of his intense cleansing process, he found out, to his horror, that members of the Order, including Annie Besant, appointed themselves the World Teacher’s ten apostles (Lutyens 1997: 300). This reinforced in him the suspicion that the Theosophical ideal was contaminated with politics and issues of personal power. Several months later, the 27-year-old Nitya died, leaving his older brother in a profound crisis of faith. Krishnamurti was convinced that Nitya would be protected by the masters, since Nitya’s presence was vital for his life mission (ibid., 219). The entire future, as so confidently outlined by Leadbeater and Besant, crumbled, giving way to a new vision that, in Krishnamurti’s words, emerged just as a flower would push ‘through the solid earth’ (ibid., 220). However, the greatest catalyst for Krishnamurti’s separation from the Society was the growing antagonism among members of the Order of the Star towards him, as a result of the revolutionary statements he began to make in 1927. The cult of believers began to notice more and more that their messiah was moving away from the complex hierarchical system of invisible masters, a physical embodiment of Maitreya’s consciousness, and initiates, as well as the clear conceptual framework of a stage-by-stage path (Lutyens 1997: 244–245). Absolute reality became faceless and formless, and it could not be found in the authoritative figure but in ‘every blade of grass’ (ibid., 249–250, 262). The question of whether the World Teacher manifested himself in Krishnamurti became utterly unimportant, since it diverted one’s attention from one’s true existential thirst to discussions of authority (ibid.). Although Krishnamurti still confirmed his role as the World Teacher even when his decision to disband the Order was resolute, he wished this question to remain from then on ‘as vague as possible’ (ibid.) – not because he became disillusioned with this identity, but because he finally became one with it, and so all that mattered was what the Teacher had to teach.

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It is intriguing to observe that during this time Krishnamurti voiced statements that were in accord with one of his major influences, Nietzsche. Rather than being the comforter, he prompted his perplexed listeners to ‘live dangerously’, while retaining a ‘constant turmoil within’ (Lutyens 1997: 192, 244). Krishnamurti’s seeker of truth was a rebel, who was mostly terrified of the easy option of mediocrity, and who, in Nietzsche’s words, would unhesitatingly ‘venture on new paths, in conflict with custom, in the insecurity that attends independence’ (quoted in Hollingdale 2001: 32). When questioned about the reality of the masters, Krishnamurti pointed out that at each stage of his growth, a certain image of the divine – Krishna, the Masters, Maitreya, the Buddha – would be presented to him, and his visions would be shaped around that particular image (Lutyens 1997: 249). Similarly, in one of his best-known letters the 21-year-old Nietzsche wrote to his sister that ‘if we had believed from our youth onwards that all salvation issued from someone other than Jesus, from Mahomet for instance, is it not certain that we should have experienced the same blessings?’ (ibid.). While there is no reason to assume that Krishnamurti ever read this particular letter, he would certainly agree with Nietzsche’s final verdict in it that ‘every true faith … accomplishes what the person holding the faith hopes to find in it’ (ibid.).10 By the time Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star in his historic 1929 speech given to more than three thousand members, the ‘clear-cut division’ was not purely his volition but also a timely response to the intense resentment among Theosophists to the pathless path he was delineating (Lutyens 1997: 264–266). As George Arundale, General Secretary of the Theosophical Society, conveyed bluntly, ‘You go your way & we will go ours’ (ibid.). It would be unreasonable to dismiss the Theosophists’ unhappiness with Krishnamurti’s one-pointed ‘direct path’11 as a childish resistance to the World Teacher’s actual words. After all, Theosophy had been founded on the basis of an integrative approach according to which all the distinct and seemingly contradictory religious revelations were to be unified into one universal religion (ibid., 279). In the end, the organization could not have contained Krishnamurti’s final form, since Krishnamurti was by nature and since early childhood a rebel unfit for any limiting framework and would probably have sooner or later retired from the Society even if everyone around him had remained steadfast believers. Driven by restless inner forces, he could only bring his unrest to a final resolution by fulfilling his yearning for absolute and unconditioned freedom, in which he could retain the essential truths while doing away with the form. This was what Krishnamurti defined as having gained an ‘insight’ into the nature of organizations (Rodrigues 2001: 22): he identified the fear of standing alone as the

 In general, the similarities between Krishnamurti’s analysis of the conditioned mind, including the conditioned religious mind, and Nietzsche’s observations about the same subject are so striking that they call for serious comparative research. Compare, for instance, Krishnamurti (1996a: 10–14) and Nietzsche (2010: 28–31). 11  This was, according to one of Krishnamurti’s letters from that time, the way that critical Theosophists labelled his emerging teachings. 10

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psychological power that held organizations such as Theosophy together.12 No doubt, his readiness to stand alone was admirable in that it demonstrated the fact that Krishnamurti ‘never wanted anything for himself – money, power or position’ (Lutyens 1997: 85),13 and indeed, he has never been accused of misusing his power (Hunter 1988: 32–33). Nevertheless, there was an even more impressive and refined expression of this rebellion. For Krishnamurti, Raymond Martin (1997: xii) writes, revolting against authority in one’s life was not limited to reliance on organizations, teachers, and systems of thought, for he understood authority in a far broader sense that was, in effect, unprecedented. Even though we identify paragons of critical thinking, like Socrates, or critical looking, like the Buddha, Krishnamurti observed that our doubting and questioning are still seriously limited, since one has to rebel against the very accumulative activity of one’s mind, which develops its own authority in the form of knowledge, including what one has learned in previous self-examinations (ibid.). Thus, one must be careful not to allow any form of conditioning into one’s mind, including the most refined concepts that could foster a sense of religious consolation and metaphysical excitement (Needleman 1970: 165), since even that implies psychological enslavement. Here we are reminded of Krishnamurti’s own journey, with the boy’s mind remaining essentially vacant and resistant to influence from the beginning to the end, and the constant observation that quietly negated all possible forms of human searching for happiness and any escape routes from the pain of not finding it. In Krishnamurti’s eyes, these were the two capacities that liberated him – resistance to having his mind moulded and total negation – whereas the exact opposite tendencies were those which kept Theosophists in bondage. Thus, the commitment Krishnamurti made in his historic 1929 speech, according to which his sole purpose would be from then on to ‘set man absolutely, unconditionally free’ (Jayakar 1986: 82), implied complete abstinence from even the subtlest types of conditioning of the human brain. At least publicly, Krishnamurti would vehemently refuse to feed his interlocutors’ overladen minds with even one more concept. This commitment included the blurring of the question of the World Teacher (Hunter 1988: 31) and the negation of his own authority, which led to the paradoxical, indeed apparently contradictory, position he took as a spiritual authority who rejected all authorities. As far as Krishnamurti was concerned, there was no contradiction. He was a teacher – the World Teacher, in fact – but a genuine teacher has no knowledge to offer and is utterly incapable of liberating anyone. The active and positive

 See, for instance, Krishnamurti’s dialogue with Father Eugene Schallert, where he asserts that reality is approachable ‘only when the organized religious belief completely goes’ (Krishnamurti 2014c). 13  However, Krishnamurti was known to be someone who enjoyed living in luxury. In an interview, biologist and author Rupert Sheldrake, who became friends with Krishnamurti and conducted several dialogues with him, told me that Krishnamurti would always go first class on aeroplanes, have the best cars, and live in a wonderful style and in beautiful houses, and that he was ‘kind of an Edwardian dandy’ (Sheldrake, personal communication, 26 January, 2021). 12

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traditional role of the guru as the dispeller of darkness was thus replaced with a teacher whose sole purpose was completed as soon as he pointed out the door, leaving the individual to ‘do all the work’ (Krishnamurti, quoted in Sanat 1999: 23). In his search for the form of expression that could optimally reflect this unwavering stance, Krishnamurti finally transformed his role from that of an answerer to the Socratic position of a questioner (Williams 2015: 666). It was only in this way that he could transfer the entire responsibility into the mind of his listeners, compelling them to stand alone, while he, the speaker, functioned as nothing more than a mirror, from which one could receive nothing except for one’s quiet and unobscured reflection. ‘I wish I could invent a new language’, Krishnamurti exclaimed in a speech in 1926 (Lutyens 1997: 244). By the mid-1930s Krishnamurti began to emancipate himself from Theosophical terminology and to struggle with finding his own vocabulary that could retain a transmission of liberating power without leaving any imprint of further conditioning (Rodrigues 2001: 15). This was not only a question of content but also a matter of form, and therefore it was then that he started developing a unique and perplexing form of dialogical presentation. Slowly but surely, his thought and methodology became one. As soon as his approach had stabilized, he never strayed from this way of teaching, and except for minor developments in topic and phrasing, he demonstrated a remarkably repetitive type of discourse (Hunter 1988: 25, 52–53).

The Awakening of Intelligence From the mid-1930s onwards, Krishnamurti ceased giving lectures and speeches in the classical sense. Attending his discourse became a confusingly non-hierarchical, cooperative effort, based on Krishnamurti’s ideal of a friendly conversation during which rank, ‘the importance of one who knows … and the other who is curious’, was forgotten (Krishnamurti’s journal, quoted in Krishnamurti 1996a: 146–147). A salient purpose of the talks was to enkindle in his listener the same spirit of internal, total rebellion that had roared in him since childhood; to prompt the listener to evoke within themselves the qualities that liberated his mind, namely resistance to conditioning and painful but bold observation of human reality. Krishnamurti believed that if he led his hearers to this position of absolute inner solitude, they could tap into a condition he called ‘insight’: a perception so immediate and complete that it bypasses the ordinary mechanism of mental understanding, bringing about a psychological transformation that is radical enough to involve a biological mutation and the release of an energy which is ever-present but beyond thought’s reach (Krishnamurti 1996a: 258, 1996b: vi). The main methodology he deployed to evade the almost inescapable concept-inducing dynamics of a lecture and to prepare the ground for the possibility of insight was a highly demanding, ethically dialogical process.

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Nonetheless, we can only understand what Krishnamurti hoped to achieve through his dialogue if we consider the fact that the actual arising of insight was of little concern to him. The dialogue’s purpose was what Krishnamurti defined as the awakening of intelligence (Krishnamurti 1996a: 15), a quality or state of mind that could eventually engender insight but was, in itself, an inner revolution, even if it initially caused unrest rather than a sense of illumination. This is demonstrated in one of the entries of Krishnamurti’s last journal, written in 1983, in which he narrates at length what seems to be a fictional conversation between a boy and his ‘educator’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 146–152). Since Krishnamurti authored this piece, he did not depend on a resisting audience and could have freely led the boy to a profound insight at the end of the talk, thus exemplifying what he actually meant by ‘insight’. Instead, he concludes the dialogue on a frustrating note, in a way that resembles many of Plato’s dialogues that are left unfulfilled (see, for instance, Euthyphro, 15d–16, or Alcibiades, 135e). The boy laments that ‘You have made it all seem so very difficult, so very complex, so very awesome, frightening’, to which the educator responds, ‘I am just pointing all this out to you’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 152). Thus, Krishnamurti’s unique dialogical discourse was designed to develop in the hearer a new type of critically observing intelligence that is brought about by the acute awareness of all forms of conditioning and is, in itself, immune to conditioning. How this could come about is briefly hinted in the example above – Krishnamurti would be ‘just pointing out’ – but there were, in fact, complex rhetorical means he used to give full-length talks that left no imprint on the participant aside from the profound impression of a heightened, complete awareness. The technique was already practised visibly, albeit less skilfully, in his earliest discourses as a non-­ Theosophist teacher. One revealing instance is a talk from 1935, entirely dedicated to answering the question Krishnamurti was struggling with the most having embarked on his lone journey: what was it that he wanted to do and wished his listeners to do (Krishnamurti 1996a: 10)? Characteristically, he elucidates what it is that he wants to do not only by directly confronting the question, but also by showing it in the way that the teaching unfolds. Krishnamurti opens with what at that time was still the much-needed clarification that he was by no means a Theosophist or, in general, a religious leader. This is also a preparation for a vocabulary that is defiantly non-religious and somewhat Nietzschean, one that prevents the hearer from forming any romanticized otherworldly image. As he introduces the preliminary question that he guesses the hearers of an uncategorizable speaker would be puzzled by – what is the nature of the process in which he wishes to involve them? – he promptly answers it by asserting that he is concerned with helping the individual to cross the stream of sorrow and attain ‘complete fulfillment’ through ‘clear thinking’ rather than ‘fantastic sentiment’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 10). But clear thinking for Krishnamurti implies deploying thinking not for positive construction of further ideas, such as more liberating perspectives, but for complete perception of the ways that human thought produces false constructs, leading to the formation of external social and religious

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structures that, in their turn, constrain human thought. Thus, although we hear at the outset about the promised transcendent fulfilment, very few words are dedicated to it, providing neither substantial description of this state nor any path leading to it, whereas most attention centres on the urgent need to grow aware of the ‘tradition, habit and prejudice’ that lurk behind one’s already limited listening and hinder the hearer’s capacity for ‘complete understanding of life’ (ibid.). This knowledge of the limitation of our listening, Krishnamurti points out, is the prerequisite for the attainment of such transcendent fulfilment. However, the ability to critically observe things as they are, without tradition, background, opposition, or defensive reactions, is also the pathless path he implores us to take if we are interested in the awakening of our true intelligence (ibid.). Having prepared our listening, Krishnamurti goes on to show us the predicament of the fragmented world created by our very own divisive thought, and immediately after, he details the various solutions our thought might automatically offer. But Krishnamurti wishes us to take a deep, penetrating look, without escaping to any reaction, including the rush towards a resolution that would become nothing more than another conceptual prison. He goes on to emphasize self-responsibility, stresses that he would supply us with no system of philosophy, and once again urges us to begin to free ourselves ‘from the net of illusions’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 11). ‘How?’ we might ask, but for Krishnamurti, ‘how?’ is the nemesis of intelligence, since in a true, unwavering, and unresisting seeing of our self-created delusion, liberation takes place instantly. If soon after he himself raises the question, ‘How can there be this profound individual revolution?’ it is not because he intends to provide a direction, but only because he strives to generate energy in us. For a moment, he appears to head towards an answer: the solution, he says, is simple, but ‘I am afraid you will reject it as not being positive’ (ibid., 12). While the listener yearns for constructive instructions, all one can and should do is achieve an understanding of the hindrances that prevent fulfilment, a full consciousness of the prison in which one lives and of the way it has been created (ibid.). Thus, Krishnamurti invites his silent interlocutor to participate, on the spot, in the quality of mind that he has come to identify as the source of his liberation. The prison, we learn through Krishnamurti’s quasi-Nietzschean analysis, consists of our search for security and continuity, which leads to clinging to structures such as family, nation, and religion (Krishnamurti 1996a: 12).14 It is human thought that has invented God and the soul, through its fearful search for self-continuance, for immortalizing itself (ibid., 13), a fearful search of which Krishnamurti is acutely aware, since it probably led his audience to attend this very talk. If one were following this elaborate though non-systematic description all the way, one would expect some alternative to be proposed. For Krishnamurti, however, this was the alternative, for he repeats the principle of his unique form of ‘critical looking’ (Martin  Krishnamurti’s analysis in this talk seems to echo several fundamental concepts of Nietzsche’s philosophy, including slave morality, the will to power, and the human invention of the metaphysical world. See, for instance, Hollingdale (2001: 134–135, 143, 165). 14

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1997: xii) according to which we must ‘become conscious of all this intricate structure … and be willing to eradicate it’ at all costs (Krishnamurti 1996a: 13). His carefully selected words have been designed to generate an extreme degree of rebellious spirit in us so that, upon seeing as he sees, we at once move away from the false. The mind distancing and freeing itself from the false is, therefore, all that Krishnamurti’s dialogue offers us, and all that Krishnamurti maintains to be necessary and, in fact, possible. Our ‘first concern is to become conscious of the prison’, and in this awareness we should include the various ways that our thought seeks to evade this conflict with tradition and custom by creating other, deceivingly better ideals (ibid., 14). But it is only this conflict and doubt that awakens the ‘true intelligence which alone can solve the many human problems’ and which is the foundation of authentic transcendent fulfilment (ibid.). This intelligence, we may thus conclude, has been the talk’s purpose, and its realization is entirely dependent on the internal reflection and response of the participant. Skip fifty-one years later to Krishnamurti’s last series of talks in Madras, India, and you will find that the far more rhetorically skilful thinker has not only retained the very same non-authoritative dialogical structure but brought it to its most extreme expression (Krishnamurti 2014a). He noticeably honed the tools he had devised in his thirties: pointing out the socially and religiously conditioned angle from which people listen; deliberately sabotaging any opportunity for steady argument-­construction or an espousal of positive concepts; emphasizing total self-­ responsibility and diminishing the importance of the speaker; reflecting the human predicament and the problem of thought while rejecting any escape routes; and persistently guiding towards the awakening of intelligence, that is, seeing as liberation or as the light that dispels the darkness (Krishnamurti 1996a: 20). To these rhetorical strategies he added some of his most significant dialogical instruments, namely an unconventional use of questions followed by negation of all possible answers, and a repeated appeal to the audience for internally active participation. This series of three public conversations took place in 1986, the year of Krishnamurti’s death, and they revolved around metaphysical questions on life, creation, energy, and death. I shall focus here on the second talk, posthumously titled ‘Fear destroys love’, at the end of which he announced: ‘The speaker cannot carry on. He is ninety-­ one. That’s good enough.’ Krishnamurti opens with the question ‘What is love?’ But quickly afterwards, he abandons this question in favour of many others, such as ‘What is energy?’ ‘What is thought?’ ‘What is fear?’ ‘What is death?’ and ‘What has suffering to do with time?’  – so much so that one suspects that for Krishnamurti, all these terms are essential synonyms, pointing at the one and only reality. Even though fifty minutes later he does return to discuss love, as if the previous layers of discussion have indeed brought us to a lucid recognition of the nature of love, even then he does not offer any definition or meaningful answer (all we hear is that ‘love and death go together’ or that ‘love is the result of the enormous vitality of freedom’). All of these concepts are employed in a non-contextual manner and seem to serve as indicators of a certain existential revelation. If the listener is intellectually keen to follow

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Krishnamurti’s line of argumentation, they will frustratedly realize that there is none; almost like in a chain of associative thoughts, we are introduced to a question that is then followed by an apparently unrelated observation, usually on the nature of thought, and by a call for the participants to engage more deeply, only to jump to an altogether different question.15 This apparent philosophical feebleness can be understood only if we consider the fact that Krishnamurti is engrossed in a half-audible dialogue; when he poses a question, he waits for his interlocutor to silently respond, whether by reflecting on their unenlightened mind or by coming into contact with their own meditative spaces. In effect, he holds the question for us while showing us what it is like to ask with our entire being, as if our life depended on it. There is nothing more ironic than attending a lecture by an authoritative figure, one who ‘knows’, only to realize that all the questions that are constantly being raised remain hanging in the air, waiting to be picked up by us and embraced as our very own questions.16 Nonetheless, Krishnamurti does not wish us to make use of the questions to arrive at satisfying, positive answers that would liberate us at first and conceptually imprison us later. Such metaphysical questions, he believed, had no real answers, but still it was necessary to ask them (Jayakar 1986: 295). If he repeatedly raises unanswerable questions and elaborates on them, as he does in this talk, it is because these questions mirror our thought’s failure to capture any living reality, since human thought entirely relies on the already-dead memory of past experience and knowledge. This is, as Kumar (2015: 87–88) writes, the ‘traditional brain’ that can only function within the field of the known. Thus, the real answer to the question lies in the total perception of the limits of thought, a perception which is the meaning of insight. Insight dissipates the activity of thought and unveils a reality untouched and unshaped by it.17 Just like in the 1935 talk, we are reminded that the answer lies in the very act of inquiry, doubt, conscious thinking, and immensely energized awareness.18 Aside from this unwonted utilization of questions, the half-audible dialogue is also revealed when we notice the degree to which the discourse leans on the participants’ internal activity. There are countless instances in this 1986 talk in which Krishnamurti begs his listeners to recognize the dialogical nature of the discourse, mentioning time and again that ‘This is not a lecture’; ‘We take a journey together’; and ‘We are talking over it like good friends’. Similarly, he insists that the listeners must not sit back, since this is their inquiry and their life: ‘The speaker has talked about it a lot, but don’t go to the books  – you must inquire anew’; ‘We have to  The structural analysis in this paragraph is generally applicable to Krishnamurti’s public discourse. Compare to Hunter’s (1988: 52) outline of Krishnamurti’s method. 16  See also Williams (2015: 670–671) on participatory consciousness and the role of questions in Krishnamurti’s public talks. 17  What exactly ‘thought’ means, within the context of Krishnamurti’s philosophy, will be extensively illuminated in the following chapter. 18  In Hunter’s (1988: 55) words, Krishnamurti’s talks were not designed to provide solutions but to teach ‘an approach that can resolve any problem’. 15

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inquire, if you can listen at all’; ‘The speaker has done this, but you have to do it’; ‘You want to find out so don’t go to sleep’; ‘Don’t say “yes” in agreement … Don’t accept it, examine!’ (Krishnamurti 2014a). At times, this degree of dependency seems to bring Krishnamurti to despair, and he exclaims, for instance, that ‘It won’t make a difference if you listen to me or not, because you will carry on exactly as you believed … You won’t change a thing.’ Certainly, such depth and demands of speaker–audience interdependence are rare in philosophical discourses, and the only other example that comes to mind is Plato’s Socratic dialogues, where it is evident that Socrates cannot make even one further step without his hearer’s explicit consent (Hadot 1995: 92). To be sure, Krishnamurti does make more substantial observations that are intended to enhance the listener’s own inquiry. But faithful to the principle demonstrated in his 1935 discourse, according to which all the mind can do is perceive the false in totality, he supplies his audience not with positive constructs but with clear-­ cut depictions of the illusory. We hear that human thought is the generator of tremendous energy that has created the world, but at the same time, we are made to understand that thought is limited, since it has been formed as a result of experience, knowledge, memory, and desire. It remains unclear why Krishnamurti logically separates thought’s tremendous creative energy from that of the rest of nature. Aren’t nature’s creative powers tremendous but limited in their own way? Could not thought be another expression of the creative cosmic force? How has this duality come about? And does he negate the entire constructive enterprise of the human species? From within the confines of limited thought, Krishnamurti tells us, we are unable to tap into the energy and origins of creation, but we should still feel the freedom to inquire into the mystery unaided. Finally, Krishnamurti, following his question ‘What does it mean to die?’, leads the audience to a psychospiritual process of dying, which can take place if one leaves everything that is within the field of the known behind and moves to a state of sheer aloneness, far away from the human-made world and everything that has been put together by thought, including the fabrication of the self. At this point, the subject matter and the form of inquiry become one, revealing that since the purpose of the dialogue is to bring thought to its end, the dialogue itself has been all about learning and experiencing how to die, which brings to mind Socrates’ conception of philosophy as ‘practice for dying and death’ (Phaedo, 64a). What Krishnamurti strove to achieve in his public discourse has been explored extensively throughout this chapter. The question that remains unsolved is whether his listeners could genuinely work with and respond to this unfamiliar method of presentation. After all, as Krishnamurti himself remarks in a moment of frustration in this 1986 talk, their ‘brains are not trained for this’. Judging from numerous accounts of participants, it seems that Krishnamurti’s manner of guidance left many of them baffled. Undoubtedly, the emotional and spiritual experience while attending the talk was profound. Rupert Sheldrake (personal communication, 26 January 2021) describes that while Krishnamurti was engaged in his discourse, he felt that he was ‘in the presence of one of the ancient rishis sitting under a tree giving

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discourses in the Himalayas’; the atmosphere was ‘electric’, ‘completely absorbing’, and ‘there was a sense of presence and transmission’, so much so that Sheldrake felt that ‘this enlightenment’ was completely in his reach. But when the discourse was over, and a session of questions and answers followed, people would ask ‘in a very timid way fairly obvious questions’ (ibid.). It was not evident at all that this unique form of half-audible dialogue, in which the speaker demands to talk questions over together while he is visibly engrossed in a discourse, achieved its goal or equipped participants with the capacity to inquire later on their own – in reality, it seemed to cause much confusion (Rodrigues 2001: 32–33). Again, it should be emphasized that Krishnamurti did not aim to lead anyone to an actual total insight, firstly since his hope was to awaken the intelligence of critical looking and secondly because he never regarded awakening as a final state but rather as a dynamic, riverlike quality of the mind. Nevertheless, Krishnamurti himself was generally frustrated and even complained that he was like ‘someone singing to the deaf’ (Hunter 1988: 39). Although Krishnamurti’s frustration is understandable from his point of view, it is clear that for the listener, involving oneself in such transformative dialogue was exacting. To raise oneself to the state of active or dialogical listening demanded by Krishnamurti, one had to be willing to follow a set of spoken and unspoken conditions. The listener had to be open to being assisted by Krishnamurti’s silent presence and power of inquiry as catalysts for their own understanding (Hunter 1988: 53, 55), but never put Krishnamurti on a pedestal and neglect their own self-observation. One could not expect a systematic presentation or ‘theoretical punchlines’ (Martin 1997: xiii) and could not busy oneself with the unwarranted logical leaps made by Krishnamurti, since this was really a reflective process that verified the statements experientially, not philosophically (Hunter 1988: 53). It is, in the end, a matter of seeing rather than intellectual consideration, and for seeing to be possible, one’s listening must be unprejudiced, that is, free from religious, psychological, or scientific pre-formulations and concerns (Rodrigues 2001: 34). If one finds oneself agreeing or disagreeing, this means that one has listened merely to reinforce a previous opinion, in which case one has learned nothing new (Needleman 1970: 157). Similarly, if one’s listening is limited to looking for and finding exactly what one seeks, including a specific exalted state of mind, nothing new can be realized (ibid., 158). However, even discovering something new does not imply that any final answer to the discourse’s questions will be offered; in effect, it is guaranteed that the questions will remain hanging in the air. The listener’s main object of attention should be not so much what is stated, but the reactive processes of their own consciousness in action (Rodrigues 2001: 26). One must be willing to take a penetrating, painful look at one’s own reality while denying the automatic search for consolation or justification, not to mention the hope for a ‘how to’ that could launch a more familiar process of gradual, time-based improvement. Last, communication with Krishnamurti is possible only if the attendant is ready to try now, not after the talk, to attain this instantaneous looking and inner verification, since real seeing is acting without delay (Needleman 1970: 158–159).

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Krishnamurti’s Teachings as a Living Praxis True to the dialogical character of his teachings, Krishnamurti’s publications include five books written directly by him – as a result of the encouragement of English writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley (Rodrigues 2001: 24) – and at least seventy-­ five books based on oral communication, such as public talks and dialogues, while the body of his work is estimated as a whole at more than one hundred million words (Krishnamurti Foundation Trust n.d.). However, although his books already sold millions of copies during his lifetime, Krishnamurti, very much like Socrates (Phaedrus 278a), was steadfast in his scepticism about the value of the written word (Hunter 1988: 41). He doubted that anyone could learn from books, and from 1948 onwards he became little interested and hardly involved in books published under his name (ibid., 41–42).19 Although research into his early life reveals clear literary influences such as Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and anthologies of Buddhist scriptures (ibid., 20–21), he discouraged his audience from relying on reading. In light of all that has been suggested above in relation to the dialogical nature of his philosophy, it is understandable that he preferred the immediacy of live speech and recordings of such oral communications, which were always given without notes, usually free of charge and open to anyone, to an audience that listened in engrossed silence and responded internally to the challenges posed by his relentless questioning (ibid., 37). Without doubt, with some effort a determined philosopher could weave fragments and recurring assertions of Krishnamurti’s lectures and dialogues into a consistent set of metaphysical and epistemological doctrines that also bears ethical implications (Hunter 1988: 23–24). For instance, disconnected from Krishnamurti’s unique form of expression, one may conclude that despite his vehement rejection of even the subtlest form of affiliation with any traditional framework, his metaphysics was more or less Buddhist in its insistence on anātman (the absence of permanent self or soul) and its disavowal of a creator-God.20 Buddhist monk and scholar Walpola Rahula identified many such striking similarities between the Buddha’s doctrine and Krishnamurti’s teachings (Williams 2015: 663–664), not only in the metaphysical realities they portray but also in the transformative paths they delineate for their listeners. Indeed, in 1958 Krishnamurti himself conveyed to an American writer the sentiment that the Buddha was the one who ‘came closest to teaching and realizing the ultimate truth’ (ibid., 662). More generally, ever since Krishnamurti embarked on his independent teaching career, over a period of fifty-seven years, he presented a logically coherent teaching that was complete, at least within the criteria of his own philosophy (Rodrigues 2001: xiv). The overwhelming amount of written and recorded materials he left  It should be noted, however, that it was Krishnamurti who asked Shiva Rao and later, Mary Lutyens to write his official biography (Lutyens 1997: ix). 20  However, at least publicly, Krishnamurti clearly repudiated the concepts of rebirth and the cessation of rebirth, as well as karma, all utterly indispensable to Buddhist thought. 19

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behind could be developed into a theory that measured up to the academically recognized standard (ibid., 30). Yet the important question that should be asked is why this would need to be done at all. Was Krishnamurti’s philosophical capacity too frail to systemize his thought, or was there a fundamental, meaningful reason that his teachings were presented in a manner inconsistent with theoretical standards? The fact that Krishnamurti himself unequivocally resisted any analytic, hermeneutic, or comparative discussions of his teachings and generally questioned the usefulness of scholarly studies (Rodrigues 2001: 29–30) is, in itself, one good reason to argue that his teachings were designed for an altogether different purpose. When asked whether one should put aside their intellectual instrument to grasp his teachings, Krishnamurti replied, ‘Of course not. I said, “put aside knowledge”’; for him, knowledge as the intellectual, accumulative process was utterly different from the employment of the intellect for an immediate, pure perception that is unencumbered by knowledge (Jayakar 1986: 478). In fact, he altogether rejected the very possibility of ‘intellectual understanding’ (Needleman 1970: 161). Thus, a formalistic approach would deny the sole aim of a teaching that strives to establish in its listener a condition of openness, especially since a major source of this condition is the rejection of dogmatism and conceptualization (Hunter 1988: 23–24). It is, as Sanat (1999: xiii) observes, a pure investigation into ‘that which is’, and on its way it jettisons any limiting perspectives, not only because it hopes to achieve a living reality but because by the very act of discarding all perspectives it achieves it. However, this feature of Krishnamurti’s work is not enough to substantially differentiate it from the general quest of mystics who seek to still the mind’s conceptual and emotional functions and its sense of self in an attempt to attain an unmediated contact with reality (Jones 2016: 5). If we strive to discern the uniqueness of Krishnamurti’s project, we should look elsewhere. Here, again, I return to the significance of Krishnamurti’s method. Being overly occupied with structuring Krishnamurti’s philosophy involves a graver error, that of removing his statements from the only living context in which they could exist and breathe. Here we return to Hadot’s revealing conclusion about classical philosophies, which applies to Krishnamurti’s work as well: the statements pronounced by the master in conversation can only be understood when situated within the ‘living praxis from which they emanated’ (Davidson 1995: 19), a praxis whose central concern was its transformative psychic effect on the recipient and whose addressees were individuals committed to a spiritual way of life. This is perhaps what Needleman (1970: 157) indicates when saying that ‘nothing about Krishnamurti is as interesting as his work from moment to moment with the people who come to hear him speak’. Krishnamurti’s philosophy, as I understand it, exists only in dialogue, with the interlocutor filling the gaps, the empty spaces that are left by the speaker with much deliberation. When Krishnamurti poses a question (and he does so constantly), he rarely intends to supply his audience with an answer, but genuinely believes that the listener should be the answerer. As such, his philosophy contains an unusual measure of dependency on the listener, and for this reason, unedited transcripts of his talks are abundant with remarks imploring his audience to participate in the investigation. As Rodrigues (2001: xiii) suggests, we cannot

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consider Krishnamurti’s talks as expository lectures, since they were, in actuality, unique forms of discourse and dialogue entirely designed to facilitate ‘insight’ in the listener.21 No doubt, certain coherent statements are made repeatedly, but these statements are meant to show rather than tell; they foster seeing and experiencing and depend on response. They do not possess a solid metaphysical status, nor are they presented with such ambition. Krishnamurti pronounces these statements without placing them in any philosophical or religious context, and without attempting to ground them through logical explanations or even pointing out how they constructively flow from one to another. Of course, one could argue that this is the case in any form of transformative or mystical philosophy, since, by their very nature, these philosophies rely on the listener to be validated and realized. Certainly, the Hindu sages who engaged with their students in dialogues in the Upaniṣads, or the Buddha who conversed with disciples as depicted in the Pāli Canon, had every intention to convey teachings that were both potentially transformative and wholly dependent on the listener’s willingness to existentially verify their truths within themselves. Similarly, we identify this intensely interdependent nature of the dialogue in many of Plato’s works, where Socrates cannot advance in his argument without the interlocutor’s pronounced agreement, even if these are mere affirmatory responses. But this is comparable only partly to Krishnamurti’s teachings, since, unlike these masters, he did not possess a philosophy in the sense of a knowledge that existed independently of the discursive activity.22 Krishnamurti’s approach was, I suggest, an unusual case of an innovative religious thought that cannot be understood in separation from the form of its presentation. Thus, the dialogical nature of his activity as a spiritual authority was the most remarkable thing about his being and life’s work. This is the reason that trying to understand Krishnamurti through his ideas can be an extremely frustrating task. On the one hand, his discourse introduced the same concepts over and over again with astonishing persistence. In fact, his ideas remained so essentially unmodified that at the age of 85, when asked by his biographer Mary Lutyens to summarize the essentials of his teachings in a written form, he started by declaring: ‘The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said Truth is a pathless land’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 257).23 This implies that as far as Krishnamurti was concerned, he did not move away from  Nonetheless, Rodrigues’s efforts are dedicated to uncovering the underlying structure of Krishnamurti’s teachings in terms of philosophical consistency rather than their dialogical dynamics. 22  As will be shown in Chap. 10, if we were able to confidently disengage Plato’s early works from the rest of his corpus, asserting that these best represent the historical Socrates (as some scholars problematically suggest; see Cooper 1997: xii–xiii for a contrary view), the type of non-teaching conveyed in these early texts could come closer to Krishnamurti’s teachings. Martin (2002: xi), for instance, draws parallels between the two philosophers based on the observation that both did not possess a theory but primarily functioned as questioners who encouraged critical examination of their audiences’ preconceptions. 23  In later stages of his life, including in public talks, Krishnamurti often referred to himself in the third person, sometimes as ‘the speaker’ or even as ‘K’, to emphasize impersonality. 21

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the premise that inaugurated his independent teaching career for fifty-one years. On the other hand, while the statements made during his discourses are logically comprehensible, the dialogical process as a whole is not conventionally logical at all. What seems to be a sequence of ideas is really disjointed and fragmented assertions that appear without being tied into one another by logical implications (Needleman 1970: 163). While speaking, Krishnamurti does not seem committed to any proper argumentation, and thus one is left to conclude that his teaching is founded on a sharing of his direct experience of self-observation and that following his words makes sense only if one is ready to invest energy in observing oneself as well (ibid.). It is, therefore, the material of one’s self-observation that intuitively connects the different ideas (ibid.). The more one listens to, or reads a transcript of, a typical Krishnamurti discourse, the more one realizes that Krishnamurti did not perceive his discourse as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge or even a particular existential mode, but rather as a process of awakening of the interlocutor’s intelligence. In his own words, derived from one of his earliest talks in 1934, ‘It is my purpose during these talks not so much to give a system of thought, as to awaken thought’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 15).24 The discourse is a participatory event, a radical form of dialogue during which the speaker merely prompts the listener to engage in their own active self-inquiry. He does so by lending his powers of self-observation to the interlocutor, even if the interlocutor is technically passive and silent (Needleman 1970: 169), while tirelessly emphasizing that the burden of observation lies entirely on their shoulders. In his austere guidance, Krishnamurti seems extremely careful to facilitate self-reflection without providing any substantial answers to questions he himself poses or conditioning the already-loaded mind with additional concepts. In this way, he assumes an ironic role, since it is obvious that those attending his lectures hope to receive answers to their pressing philosophical and existential questions from a spiritual authority, one who ‘knows’, whereas he insists on acting as their very own mirror, lucidly showing them their own reflections. This is the source of Krishnamurti’s confusing insistence on rejecting the conventional position of the guru. In a discussion between him and the Indian saint Anandamayi Ma (1896–1982), the latter argued against Krishnamurti’s illogical stand, since ‘When you say one does not need any Guru, sadhana etc., you automatically become the Guru of those who accept your view, particularly as large numbers of people come to hear you speak and are influenced by you’. Krishnamurti’s dodged the challenge and the logical and ethical problems it presented and left Anandamayi dissatisfied when he replied that ‘if you discuss your problems with a friend he does not thereby become your Guru’ (‘Jiddu Krishnamurti’ n.d.). Nevertheless, we should remind ourselves that the ethics of the Socratic transformative dialogue also included a rejection of the teacher–student relationship and an emphasis instead on friendship (e.g. Apology 33b), while at the same time

 The way Krishnamurti employs the term ‘thought’ and less crystallized terminology in his early phase can be equated with intelligence and awareness. 24

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preserving some sort of natural hierarchy.25 Ultimately, Krishnamurti’s sole purpose is to eliminate any concept that might stand between the listener and ‘that which is’, and thus the seeker’s reaching hand is left at the end of the talk not only empty, but perhaps even robbed of what little cherished presuppositions it previously clung to. Remove Krishnamurti’s philosophy from this context of the space of the ‘between’ and you will find his line of thought nearly incomprehensible. While the implicitly dialogical discourses persisted until the end of Krishnamurti’s life, all these explosive dialogical potentials finally burst forth in the explicit dialogue form that first emerged in 1948, finally giving shape to a unique form of conversation that was the most distilled expression of Krishnamurti’s philosophy. This explicit dialogue form will be the focus of our attention in the following chapter.

References Cooper, John M. 1997. Introduction. In Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, vii–xxviii, 49–50, 557–558. Indianapolis: Hackett. Davidson, Arnold. 1995. Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy. In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot. Trans. Michael Chase, 1–45. Oxford: Blackwell. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael Chase. Hoboken: Blackwell. Hollingdale, R.J. 2001. Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy. New  York: Cambridge University Press. Hunter, Alan. 1988. Seeds of Truth: J.  Krishnamurti as Religious Teacher and Educator. PhD Dissertation, University of Leeds. Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press. Krishnamurti Foundation Trust. n.d. Krishnamurti’s Books. https://kfoundation.org/krishnamurti-­ books/. Accessed 17 June 2022. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1928. Life in Freedom. Adyar: Star Publishing Trust. Available at: https:// www.holybooks.com/wp-­content/uploads/Krishnamurti-­Life-­in-­Freedom-­Early-­Writings.pdf. Accessed 10 Oct 2022. ———. 1996a. Total Freedom. New York: HarperCollins. ———. 1996b. Questioning Krishnamurti: J. Krishnamurti in Dialogue: Dialogues with Leading 20th Century Thinkers. San Francisco: Thorsons. ———. 2008. Krishnamurti & Bernard Levin: Part 1 (of 3). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=M1AvljMbU8c&t=312s ———. 2012. Krishnamurti on Channel 4 TV(1984). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ssEZDhLgiwE ———. 2014a. J. Krishnamurti – Madras (Chennai) 1986 – Public Talk 2 – Fear Destroys Love. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBCHw0rrJZY ———. 2014b. J. Krishnamurti – New York 1985 – United Nations Talk – Why Can’t Man Live Peacefully on the Earth? YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcga8ATBNh0

 See Chap. 5.

25

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———. 2014c. J. Krishnamurti – San Diego 1972 – Convers. 1 with E. Schallert – Goodness only Flowers in Freedom. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwZ1pXrtWas ———. 2015. I Am Discontented with Everything. What Is Wrong with Me? | J. Krishnamurti. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-­1HdbNZDgQ Kumar, Kesava. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution. Delhi: Kalpaz. Lutyens, Mary J. 1997. Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening. Berkeley: Shambhala. ———. 2003. Krishnamurti: The Years of Fulfilment. Brockwood Park: Krishnamurti Foundation Trust. Martin, Raymond. 1997. Introduction. In Krishnamurti: Reflection on the Self. Chicago: Open Court. ———. 2002. On Krishnamurti. Belmont: Wadsworth. Needleman, Jacob. 1970. The New Religions. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2010. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. https://holybooks-­lichtenbergpress.netdna-­ ssl.com/wp-­content/uploads/Thus-­Spoke-­Zarathustra-­by-­F.-­Nietzsche.pdf Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Rodrigues, Hillary. 2001. Krishnamurti’s Insight. Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing. Sanat, Ariel. 1999. The Inner Life of Krishnamurti. Wheaton: Quest. Shringy, Ravindra Kumar. 1977. Philosophy of J. Krishnamurti: A Systematic Study. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Sri Ma Anandamayi. n.d. Jiddu Krishnamurti. https://www.anandamayi.org/jiddu-­krishnamurti/. Accessed 17 June 2022. Williams, Chris V. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher. Millers Point: Sydney School of Arts & Humanities.

Chapter 7

‘Questions to Which There Are No Answers’: The Method Behind the Krishnamurti Dialogue

In the previous chapter, I analysed the unique form of Krishnamurti’s public presentations, demonstrating that, on the whole, his teachings were essentially and ethically dialogical; every lecture was, in effect, a half-audible dialogue whose fulfilment entirely relied on the hearer’s internal response. Soon after Krishnamurti embarked on his independent teaching career in 1929, he positioned himself primarily as a questioner: his method, as Hunter (1988: 52) points out, was to introduce a series of probing, exploratory questions to his audience, urging them to find an answer within themselves, and to then go on by further developing the questions or by taking a sudden turn to another topic, which would be approached in a similar way. This baffling process of repeated, answerless exploration of questions was designed to lead the listener to an experiential insight. But apart from this indirect type of dialogue, Krishnamurti engaged – from 1948 to 1985, a year before his death – in numerous explicit dialogues. These were either group conversations or one-on-one dialogues, and the great diversity of discussants included disciples, scientists, philosophers, psychologists, theologians, and politicians, as well as religious leaders and wandering monks (sadhus), and even schoolteachers and schoolchildren.1 A large number of these discussions have been transcribed and have appeared in print, whereas many others can easily be found online, in their original video or audio format. These dialogues should be by no means regarded as secondary to Krishnamurti’s public talks; in fact, I consider them to be a pivotal expression of his philosophical worldview and the quintessence of his methodology, which is also his greatest innovation in the field of religious thought.2  The latter were members of the various schools Krishnamurti founded. See, for instance, Krishnamurti (2014). 2  In fact, I contend that Krishnamurti’s philosophical constructs, such as his metaphysical observations, are significantly less impressive than his methodological contribution. This philosophical feebleness will be illuminated in the present chapter and in Chap. 9. 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_7

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In this chapter, I intend to establish that although Krishnamurti did not recognize this reality – recognizing it would have implied going against his very own credo as a teacher – there is a distinctive and unparalleled method behind his explicit dialogue form. This method (or spiritual exercise, in Hadot’s terms), whose existence has evaded Krishnamurti’s students and scholars alike, is, I argue, as innovative as what has become widely known as the Socratic method. For this reason, I shall refer to it as the Krishnamurti dialogue, notwithstanding the fact that this term does not exist elsewhere. Intriguingly, Krishnamurti’s method and the Socratic method seem to share important common features, the most striking being the fact that they centred on teaching the discussants how to examine their ways of thinking rather than what to think. However, in the final analysis, they strove to achieve different purposes. I shall highlight both the commonalities and the disparities between the systems in this chapter and in Chap. 10. My aim to establish the concept of the Krishnamurti dialogue in this chapter will be accomplished by analysing recurring structures in two sample dialogues that are representative of Krishnamurti’s method. To make the point that this systematic approach was deployed in all of Krishnamurti’s dialogues and not just some of them, I have deliberately selected dialogues from diverse sources, with different discussants, and on unrelated topics. Nonetheless, I have restricted myself to group and one-on-one discussions with disciples, leaving Krishnamurti’s conversations with academics to Chap. 9. My reason for doing so is that it is reasonable to expect that the method found its freest, most fulfilled expression with interlocutors who were genuinely and expressly eager to be guided and changed through it. Thus, we can say that the dialogues with willing students were far closer to what I term in this book the ‘transformative dialogue’ (see Chaps. 3 and 4). On the other hand, while many discussions with scholars did contain noticeable elements of a transformative dialogue, they were generally more limited to an exchange, and often collision, of ideas and opinions. Certainly, if we consider the ideal conditions necessary for the realization of the transformative dialogue, as outlined in Chap. 4, many of these dialogues hardly satisfy them. However, since this confrontation between Krishnamurti’s form of dialogue and the academic way of thinking involves a kind of mutually informing critical comparison, it is a source of great insight, and therefore deserves its own chapter. My starting point will be to introduce the way that Krishnamurti began, quite unintentionally, to develop his dialogical method together with some of his closest students. I will extricate from these spontaneous group discussions the major tools and purposes of the Krishnamurti dialogue, which were evident even in those early days of hesitant manifestation. This will be followed by analyses of two dialogues, from which I shall deduce the major components of Krishnamurti’s method. Most of my attention will be devoted to what I deem his two most revolutionary tools of investigation: an unconventional use of questions and an innovative employment of the mystical principle of negation, or the via negativa. By placing these two tools in broader philosophical and mystical contexts, I hope to highlight the uniqueness of Krishnamurti’s approach. Last, I will conclude by evaluating the purposes of this method – that is, what Krishnamurti hoped to achieve – and the different ways that

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this dialogue form served to realize his goals as a teacher and a mystic. In addition, I will briefly identify the type of this dialogical method within the framework of the transformative dialogue, a task that will reach its fulfilment in Chap. 9. But before beginning to delve into the origins of the method, I feel compelled to address one potential criticism of my venture. One may justifiably ask how it is possible to unveil a system behind a process that is founded on the premise that it has no system and moreover, that it is an anti-system.3 After all, it was Krishnamurti’s profound conviction that whenever he entered into dialogue, he was capable of listening and responding to questions posed by either his interlocutors or himself from a completely fresh state of mind, unencumbered by memory, time, past experience, or prior discussions (Jayakar 1986: 327). Nonetheless, this assertion, which has generally been uncritically accepted by his adherents, should be seriously questioned, since, as Hunter (1988: 52–53) correctly observes, ‘repetition was a key factor in Krishnamurti’s teachings’, so much so that ‘the essentials of his teaching could certainly be grasped from a careful study of a few series of talks’. Hunter’s statement is also applicable to Krishnamurti’s apparently spontaneous guidance in his transformative dialogues; in anything repetitive, one can identify hidden but stable patterns – even in a self-recognized anti-system, since a piecemeal negation of all methods is also, in the end, a method. We may reasonably argue that Krishnamurti’s own perception was limited in that it ignored and even denied the existence of the dialogue as an observable phenomenon. This insistence on the ‘inside of the mystical experience’ is typical of mystics and is known to any epistemologist striving to translate, understand, and weigh such experiences in acceptable terms (Blackwood 1963: 201). Thus, Krishnamurti’s experience that he always approached a dialogue from an ever-new condition can only be partly true, since at the same time, the dialogue flow is predictable, conditioned, and even imitable. We could thus offer a middle path based on Krishnamurti’s own definition of truth as a ‘pathless land’ (Lutyens 1997: 272)  – that the Krishnamurti dialogue was a methodless method, a method that derived its power from its unconditional rejection of the very validity of the idea of a method.

The Birth of a New Method Before turning to the analyses of two examples of the mature form of Krishnamurti’s transformative dialogue, it is worthwhile to closely inspect the significant development that took place in his teachings during the year 1948. It was then, during his  It seems that every Krishnamurti scholar finds themselves in the position of defending the scholarly attempt itself to study his teachings systematically. See, for instance, Rodrigues (2001: xiii), who feels compelled to justify his choice to uncover structures within Krishnamurti’s teachings, due to the fact that not only Krishnamurti but also people who have been considerably exposed to his teachings have had the impression that ‘no such structure exists’. 3

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long stay in Bombay, that Krishnamurti seemed to move away from the more traditional, guru-oriented group discussions which he had practised with his students until then (Jayakar 1986: 117). According to Williams (2015: 671), Krishnamurti’s guru-oriented dialogues were in line with the Indian dialogical tradition, taking the form of a brief question and a long answer or discourse. This type of dialogue, which we often find in the Upaniṣads or the Pāli Canon, was a framework that enabled the student to elicit direct, oral teachings from the master. The 1948 shift, however, marked a transition to an altogether different form that was closer in structure and spirit to the rapid, dynamic, and analytical exchanges between master and disciple known to us from those Platonic dialogues that typify the Socratic method (or elenchus). And it is particularly revealing to observe the emergence of this form, including the intellectual and spiritual labour pains that accompanied it, since the clash between the previous mode of discussion and the new form of communication brings into sharp focus the foundations on which the Krishnamurti dialogue eventually blossomed. My only source for the documentation of this shift is Pupul Jayakar’s J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Fortunately, Jayakar approaches this time of transition with great care and penetrating insight, making it possible for us to uncover major characteristics of the unfolding process. Jayakar offers an insider’s view, since soon after she met Krishnamurti in 1948, she became his ardent student and joined the small group discussions that gave rise to the new dialogue form. Her account is even more noteworthy in that she seems to be one of the very few writers who have acknowledged the fact that there were underlying principles behind the spontaneous dialogue flow.4 Although she never endeavoured to unveil the dialogues’ actual method, her biography explicitly declares that ‘A new methodology born of seeing and listening was unfolding’ (1986: 188). And thirty years later, she opened an interview with Krishnamurti by saying, ‘You say there is no way to truth, no method involved. But as I observe you, a certain process has revealed itself’ (ibid., 327). Lastly, Jayakar clearly felt that the method consolidated over the years as the result of a joint effort rather than the master’s exclusive guidance. ‘We developed’, she writes, ‘a step-by-step observation of the process of thought and its unfoldment’ (ibid., 120). Jayakar mentions that in later years, Krishnamurti was to say that his full mystical awakening came about in India in 1947–1948 (1986: 110). The fact that the internal shift took place around the same time is, I believe, meaningfully related to his ability to bring forth the new dialogue, since in so many ways, as I shall show below, this method was the fully realized expression of the unique position he took after leaving behind his role as a Theosophist leader (see Chap. 6). To begin with, this was the last, and perhaps the inevitable, step he felt he had to take in order to

 Rodrigues’s research also mentions, albeit briefly, the dialogues as facilitators of insight. See, for instance, Rodrigues (2001: 26–27). 4

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withdraw from the authoritative role of the teacher as a knower: placing himself as the questioner within a dynamic dialogical structure.5 Jayakar (1986: 117) describes the first Bombay discussions as ‘confused and dispersed’. It was evident that Krishnamurti was groping for a new type of engagement. The participants began to notice that when a question was asked of him, he would immediately turn it back onto the questioner, employing the question not so much as an answer-seeking mechanism but more as a magnifying reflector of the mind’s conditioned responses and its inability to provide any genuine answer (ibid.). Moreover, Krishnamurti appeared to be in an exceptional state of listening, equally listening to everyone’s reactions as well as his own responses, thus replacing the usual division between speaker and audience with a sense of unified flow. The struggling discussants, accustomed to asking for solutions from a higher authority, quickly realized that Krishnamurti was making use of the questions to negate not only his expected role but also their own inner authority: he would not allow them to respond from memory, insisting on the inadequacy of the one instrument of inquiry that was available to them – thought. During the conversations, Krishnamurti rejected the wish of the discussants to find relief in an answer, and thus his negation was total, including those answers that seemed to be intellectually satisfying or spiritually sophisticated. For him, the probing itself was the source of realization. Accordingly, he demanded a ‘penetration into the question itself’, not as a dual process involving a questioner and an object of investigation, but as a process involving an observation of the questioner themselves as reflected in the silent mirror of the question, and an immediate existential confrontation that unsettled any abstract or distant position (Jayakar 1986: 118). By ‘pushing, blocking, retreating, advancing’, Krishnamurti arrested the thought process of his interlocutors and plunged their attention into the recesses of the mind, ‘until, in an instant, the perceptions of the participants awoke’ (ibid.). Seeing the nature and mechanism of the mind as it is, in Jayakar’s analysis, was the key to the existential illumination of both question and answer. Jayakar goes on to observe that in this unconventional way, a new ground of inquiry was being established. The method seemed to consist of Krishnamurti’s ‘relentless questioning’, which ‘opened up the psyche’ and led to an extremely refined perception of the ‘grooves in which thought moved’ (Jayakar 1986: 118). At the same time, he generated energy in his discussants by holding the question without letting them defuse it through reflexive answers that constantly arose from the storehouse of their memory. Krishnamurti indirectly explained the emerging method to his hearers by saying that one should ‘shut off all the avenues seeking an answer’, so that the mind could enter a radically new state (ibid., 118–119). For this reason, the discussions were not constructive, in the sense of theory-building or idea-­ making; rather, the ‘movement of negation’ met the ‘positive movement of thought’  Still, we cannot ignore the paradoxical role of Krishnamurti in these dialogues: while it is true that from Krishnamurti’s break with Theosophy in 1929, his predominant role was that of a questioner (Williams 2015: 666), one could rightly argue that, in effect, he remained the authority figure (see my discussion in Chap. 9). 5

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(ibid., 120). This ultimately brought about a state of total non-thought and the cessation of the questioner, thus fulfilling the South Asian mystical ideal of non-duality (ibid., 121).6 Jayakar depicts an incident from those early conversations in which she finally, after much inner struggle, succeeded in experiencing a direct perception as a result of this method. Krishnamurti introduced the question of whether it was possible to live without the psychological content of memory. While some of the participants were debating and her own mind was wandering restlessly, she overcame her initial resistance to the notion of non-self and felt drawn to test directly whether one could drop memory on the spot. She describes how clarity instantly permeated her being and how, as she spoke from this stillness and Krishnamurti encouraged her to reflect on the state of her mind in the absence of memory, her senses withdrew and her mind became potent, flexible, swift, and alive, as if it ‘had been washed clean’ (Jayakar 1986: 120). In light of my analysis of the hidden dialogical structure of Krishnamurti’s lectures in Chap. 6, it is not difficult to surmise what factors were involved in the spontaneous development of his dialogue form in 1948. Compared to the lecture form, these dynamics enabled Krishnamurti to accomplish more of his initial aspirations as a mystic and a dialogue-oriented teacher. 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.7 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, ‘But when K throws back, it is yours’. Another advantage was that Krishnamurti could fully exercise in this rapid exchange his conviction that for the mind to mutate, all avenues seeking an answer must be shut off. 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. Whereas in passive listening to his lectures, one’s thinking was not necessarily pushed to its limit and lucidly mirrored – it could still conceptualize, keep its attachments intact, roam around, or grow drowsy – his newfound method enabled him to gather everyone’s energy, keep their senses awake, and ensure that ‘attention fills the mind’ (Jayakar 1986: 472). This was a spiritual exercise that was to be done with one’s eyes wide open and without delay; the intense and demanding setting made it  This, as we shall see in Chap. 10, is reminiscent of the use of kōans in Rinzai Zen, as a means of befuddling the practitioner’s mind to the point that normal analytical thought breaks down. 7  The Tibetan Buddhist monk Rinpoche Samdhong remarked on his dialogues with Krishnamurti: ‘[He] never puts anything into a person. But his challenge touches a germinating point within, which enables the listener to awaken and for “what is” to unfold’ (Jayakar 1986: 314). 6

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difficult for the participant to retreat from the confrontation with ‘what is’, the non-­ reactive recognition of life’s actuality which Krishnamurti believed was necessary for authentic transformation (ibid., 120). Even more significantly, in these conditions of profound participation, the mystic was able to reveal to the other members of this type of ‘religious dialogue’ that which he could only gesture at during his lectures – that at the depths of listening, the separate and dual identities of questioner and listener dissolve into a unified movement of inquiry (ibid., 472), in which, as Krishnamurti puts it, ‘only the question remains’ (ibid., 473). 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 of 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’ (ibid., 298).8 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, in Krishnamurti’s view, constitutes the struggling questioner themselves. Since there are no answers to life’s great questions – such as the questions of the meaning of life and death or the nature of God – whatever answers may arise are, as a rule, rejected regardless of their specific quality or depth of argumentation. It is Krishnamurti’s contention that answers that seek to end the probing are limited in that they emerge as verbal reactions drawn 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,  Krishnamurti’s belief that metaphysical questions should be held in one’s mind rather than answered in order to allow the questions to ‘operate’ often led him to end a dialogue by repeating the question. See, for example, Jayakar (1986: 424), where he asks, after a long discussion during which he did not provide any answer to the central question: ‘So, have we understood the nature of God?’ 8

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quoted in ibid., 298).9 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 in the sense of being aware is taken to be the only possible transformative ‘action’ (ibid., 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). The term thus 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 the concentrated energy (ibid.). At this stage, the question, met with non-conceptualizing minds, leads to increasing openness rather than the sense of closure that characterizes confident answers.10 This openness facilitates different possible experiences, some of which may occur within the individual’s heart of hearts, while others may be consciously shared by a few or even all discussants. For instance, group members may find themselves realizing Krishnamurti’s ideal of complete abandonment of authoritative mediation, as a result of which a state of unified mind that is both asking and answering can be experienced (Jayakar 1986: 473).11 Another intriguing outcome may be that the process of inquiry becomes, in itself, an existential demonstration of the ‘answer’ to the question: when asking about the nature of death, for example, the total negation of the known may be indicated by Krishnamurti as a volitional act of dying.12 The most significant potential experience, however, is that of the transmutation of the brain (Jayakar 1986: 121), which will be explored more lengthily later in this chapter. The ongoing invalidation of all answers prevents the mind from moving in its familiar directions, and such a mind can no longer be in a state of psychological searching (ibid., 118–119). But in the Krishnamurti dialogue, the mystic’s tireless

 This rejection of both attachment and the search for liberation can be construed as a development of the Buddhist middle path, beyond the Buddha’s ethical middle path and Nāgārjuna’s metaphysical middle path (see Raju 1954: 702). But perhaps it is even closer to Tilopa’s middle path as conveyed in his Ganges Mahāmudrā: ‘Do not approve or reject appearances … Not abandoning or adopting, all of existence is liberated in Mahāmudrā’ (Nyenpa 2014: 18). 10  Hunter (1988: 23–24) correctly points out that Krishnamurti’s talks as a whole are intended not to reinforce any type of metaphysical conviction but to convey and establish a state of openness. 11  This is not to say that the Krishnamurti dialogue was perfectly non-authoritative, since it was, after all, a transformative dialogue, as outlined in Chap. 6. 12  For another example, see Jayakar (1986: 118–119). See also Rodrigues (2001: 26), who explores this principle. 9

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questioning keeps pushing the discussants to supply him with an answer, while it swiftly disproves all of their statements. This paradoxical condition puts unusual pressure on the brain, which is accustomed to ‘movement in time’, and thus in the absence of movement, there is a tremendous focus of energy, which, according to Krishnamurti, causes the brain cells to mutate in order to conduct this extraordinary state of undirected awareness (ibid., 121).13 In Krishnamurti’s words, the brain shifts from ‘movement’, as becoming, to ‘activity’ (Krishnamurti 1996: 155). This mutation, which constitutes the basis of ‘total insight’14 and the discovery of reality beyond thought, can be understood as the ultimate purpose of Krishnamurti’s method, as well as the new dimension that he added to the field of religious inquiry (Jayakar 1986: 121).

First Dialogue Analysis The Krishnamurti dialogue continued to evolve ‘in subtlety and insight’ after the 1948 shift (Jayakar 1986: 117). Its major characteristics, as outlined above, nonetheless persisted, regardless of the identity of the discussants, specific locations, period, or subjects of discussion. To demonstrate this consistency, I shall analyse two sample dialogues derived from various sources and different contexts: the first one took place in Ojai, California, in 1977 (Krishnamurti 1996: 227–236) and the second is a dialogue from 1980 with friends and associates in Delhi, India (Jayakar 1986: 385–391). The first dialogue revolves around the question: ‘What is the relation between Krishnamurti’s teaching and truth?’ This discussion is particularly revealing, since the way Krishnamurti treats a subject that calls for a reflection on the objective validity of his teachings greatly emphasizes his method of turning the question into an intense self-observation of the questioner themselves. In addition, the epistemological nature of the question – how do we know Krishnamurti is telling the truth? – is employed by Krishnamurti to evaluate the epistemological tools one has at one’s disposal when one approaches such an inquiry. The dialogue commences when the two anonymous discussants introduce the question in the presence of a small group of disciples. In response, Krishnamurti asserts that there are only two possibilities: he is ‘either talking out of the silence of truth’ or ‘out of the noise of an illusion’ (Krishnamurti 1996: 227), but quickly thereafter he asks his companions: ‘So which is it that he is doing?’ (ibid.). From then on, although both discussants and readers can still recognize the authoritative figure in this conversation, it is the questioners’ question. The mystic is resolute to ‘go slowly, for this is interesting’ (ibid.); there is no rush, since the transformation does not lie in supplying an answer but in the tortuous unfoldment of the question

13 14

 For a discussion of the nature of this neurophysiological mutation, see Chap. 8.  See Rodrigues (2001: 112–119).

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and the ways the brain handles it. Aware of criticism of his work – that his approach could be a mere reaction to a conditioned childhood15 – Krishnamurti challenges his interlocutors by asking them: ‘How will you find out? How will you approach this problem?’ This is an obvious trap, since one of the most consistent principles of Krishnamurti’s method is that the very search for ‘how’ is inherently flawed, an expression of a fragmented thought (Jayakar 1986: 119). ‘I am asking what you do’, Krishnamurti wonders, pressing his companions to shift the focal point of the inquiry to the mind of the one who listens to his teaching (Krishnamurti 1996: 227). Now what is scrutinized is not the truthfulness of the discourse but the quality of the mind that assesses what it hears: ‘Am I listening to him with all the knowledge I have gathered … or what my own experience tells me?’ (ibid., 228), and then, ‘Am I capable of listening to what he is saying with complete abandonment of the past? … Are you?’ (ibid., 229). We started by asking whether the speaker speaks out of silence, but this is useless, Krishnamurti indicates, since what should trouble us is whether the evaluating faculty is too conditioned to tell the difference. Impressively, he advocates cultivating a sceptical mind, in the sense of questioning both everything that is being said by him, the teacher, and one’s own prejudice (ibid., 228). From here on, Krishnamurti progresses carefully, tirelessly returning to the question of ‘How would you answer this question?’ (Krishnamurti 1996: 229), while blocking all mental pathways and angles and building up the energy in the room by fending off gratifying answers. He rejects even reasonable statements, ones he himself is likely to voice later on – for instance, ‘When I have come to the conclusion that it is the truth, then I am already not listening’ (ibid.). We can only assume that he rejects them on the grounds that they are derived from the storehouse of memory and are driven by the wish to diminish the intensity. More generally, he begins to deploy his method of inclusive negation, which, in this dialogue, is aimed at repudiating all the different epistemological tools, one after another. After Krishnamurti has negated past knowledge as a tool of evaluation, he points out that the logical instrument, one’s sensitivity to false or incoherent statements, can be ‘very false’ in itself (Krishnamurti 1996: 229).16 Soon after, he negates one’s deepest feeling, intuition, and self-verification based on direct experience of change in response to the teaching, since ‘it may be self-evident to you and yet an illusion’ (ibid., 230). The scepticism he demonstrates is, again, justified, since many people have verified extremely unsound and even damaging ‘truths’ within themselves. Thus, both logic as the measure that is supposed to safeguard us from unstable subjective truths and one’s most intimate truths are rejected. In the same way, Krishnamurti regards trusting the truthfulness of the speaker’s words based on a solid relationship of love and affection as a ‘very dangerous thing too’ (ibid., 231). And when a discussant suggests that it is the sense of silence permeating the  See also Rodrigues (2001: 165, 192).  Krishnamurti does employ logic from time to time to expose false statements, as a part of his method of negation (see, for example, Krishnamurti 1996: 230, 233). However, for him, the heart of the failure of every statement is the fact that it has emerged from the field of knowledge. 15 16

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teacher’s presence that evidences where the teaching comes from, Krishnamurti alerts them that even a silent mind can be self-created rather than genuinely spontaneous, as a result of great discipline (ibid.). Last, even mystical direct perception, an insight into the teacher’s transmission, is denied, since devout Christians and disciples of gurus would also testify to the very same truthfulness (ibid., 233). Having relentlessly negated all these options, Krishnamurti keeps on asking: ‘How do you in your heart of hearts … know that he is speaking the truth?’ (Krishnamurti 1996: 232). It is a tremendous question, he says, not ‘just a dramatic or intellectual question’, and it must be answered urgently, even though he deems all answers futile and all the familiar tools of investigation useless (ibid.). Clearly, his aim is to keep the discussants’ minds in a state of unusual pressure. When, overwhelmed by the paradoxical situation, a discussant wonders whether ‘one can ever get an answer’ or whether perhaps this is a fundamentally ‘false question’, Krishnamurti compels the inquirer to resolve even this puzzlement by themselves (ibid., 233). At certain points he seems to adopt an approach that resembles Socratic irony17: pretending to be guided by the other’s more confident wisdom and even helping to develop the other’s answer only to refute the statement even more sharply (ibid.). And the way that the discussion finally reaches a ‘positive’ conclusion  – ironic in nature, as we shall see – is Socratic as well, since Krishnamurti extricates the answer from one of the questioners, thus making it their answer: K: Isn’t there a terrible danger in this? Q: I am sure there is a danger. K: So you are now saying that one has to walk in danger. Q: Yes. K: Now I begin to understand what you are saying. (ibid., 234)

We also realize at this stage what Krishnamurti was endeavouring to achieve. Since it negates the entire range of epistemological instruments, one is left to conclude that Krishnamurti’s teaching offers no security – as opposed to the confident reliance on gurus and priests (Krishnamurti 1996: 235). It is, Krishnamurti says, a path ‘full of mines, the razor’s edge path’ (ibid., 234). This is strikingly similar to the Lord of Death’s words to Nāciketa in the Kaṭhopaniṣad (1.3.14): ‘Sharp like a razor’s edge, the sages say, is the path, difficult to traverse’. What Krishnamurti advocates is a dynamic state of total awareness without ever settling into any comfortably permanent position; again, a quality of mind rather than an answer. Since the answer is the unfolding probing itself, we may be reminded of one of the principles of the Krishnamurti dialogue, according to which the dialogical process often serves as an existential demonstration of the ‘answer’ to the question. This dialogue

 If we regard Socrates’ irony in an even broader sense, we could say that Krishnamurti’s insistence on remaining the questioner at all times is also an ironic expression (though Krishnamurti clearly lacked Socrates’ humorous and mocking approach). Consider Hadot (2002: 25), who perceives Socratic irony as the ‘attitude of someone who knew nothing’, as a result of which the philosopher did anything but reply if someone asked him a question. Like Krishnamurti’s, Socrates’ questions were designed to help his interlocutors give birth to the truth (ibid., 27), although in Krishnamurti’s case, he seemed to aspire to midwife an altered state of mind. 17

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shows both the discussants and the reader what it is like to be in an energetic, ceaselessly flowing state of inquiry. This is demonstrated even more clearly by the fact that after the probing into the primary question has ‘ended’, the dialogue, very much like some of the anticlimactic endings of Plato’s dialogues (as exemplified in Chap. 5), moves on to a secondary question: ‘Is perception continuous so that there is no collection of the debris?’ and, once again, the question is, in itself, a reflection of a dialogue that never accumulates debris (Krishnamurti 1996: 236). Krishnamurti’s insight, therefore, is not a final state, since ‘final’ indicates time; rather, it is, subjectively speaking, a non-accumulative state that is completely outside of time. Krishnamurti concurs with a discussant who suggests that the form of inquiry practised by him is ‘the way all science works’, in that ‘every statement must be in danger of being false’ (Krishnamurti 1996: 234). This is partly true: science is indeed a tireless exploration that strives to transcend belief, subjective perception, and absolute or final truths. In this sense, it can be proposed that Krishnamurti blends elements of scientific inquiry into his mystical exploration. However, whereas the Krishnamurti dialogue ambitiously declares that it is an anti-­ accumulative project, scientific paradigms constructively evolve throughout the centuries, building upon those discoveries that have survived a great deal of scrutiny while discarding those that have not withstood the test of time. Even the great leaps of insight taken by science every now and then have all been deeply rooted in the evolution of knowledge. Furthermore, the scientific form of inquiry not only negates what others have said but also consciously and positively communicates with previous and contemporary discussions. It also heavily relies on epistemological devices, such as logic and evidence, that Krishnamurti is willing to use only to a very limited degree (ibid., 235).18

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 method of 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 (ibid., 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’ (ibid.). 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

 These dissimilarities and others will be extensively discussed in Chap. 9, in the context of my analysis of Krishnamurti’s conversations with scientists and academics. 18

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something waiting to enter, a Holy Ghost is waiting; the thing is waiting for you to open the door, and it will come’ (ibid., 386). And when the conversation came to a close, he remarked: ‘I think we are opening the door slightly’ (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 centred on the higher educational aims of one of Krishnamurti’s 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 [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?’ (ibid.). 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’ (ibid.). 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?’ (ibid., 386). From this point onwards, the form 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 a 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’ (ibid.). 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 South Asian mystical philosophies.19 Although one’s awakened mind is steadfast ‘like an immovable rock’, it is also insatiably dynamic (ibid., 391).20 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).21  For instance, ‘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’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.10). 20  I shall explore the subtle tensions between this notion of dynamism and the idea that insight occurs in a timeless state in Chap. 8. 21  This surprisingly theistic and dualistic vocabulary is one example of Krishnamurti’s inconsistent metaphysics (see Chap. 8). 19

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This negation of all possible movements towards 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 (ibid., 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 (ibid.). 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 classical 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 who attained this benediction as a result of his method of negation, whereas in this dialogue he mentions that in the Buddha’s case, after fifty years there were two, Sāriputta and Moggallāna, who accomplished the ultimate state (ibid., 387). This implies that well-paved paths may lead to the sacred, and more successfully than Krishnamurti’s anti-path.22 Second, his statement that he himself did not need to go through ‘all these disciplines’ (ibid., 391) certainly does not prove that outside of Krishnamurti’s individual case, paths leading to the sacred are inherently wrong. Sheldrake (personal communication, 26 January 2021) points out that as a result of this insistence, Krishnamurti’s devotees were left with nothing, did not know what to do, and remained trapped in a perpetual state of waiting for spontaneous insight. Krishnamurti’s highly subjective conclusion may lead us to infer that his notion of religion is rooted in his personal transformational experience (Rodrigues 2001: 202), and that it should be classified accordingly as a sharing rather than an actual teaching.23 While the claims Krishnamurti makes about the ineffectiveness of all paths are questionable, his main argument in this dialogue, which is also his justification of the methodless method of total denial, is more substantial. Krishnamurti asserts that there is a yet-unattempted possibility – a chapter that ‘has not been studied so far’ (Jayakar 1986: 391) – in the field of mystical pursuit. To grasp this possibility, it should be noted that for Krishnamurti, human thought is not limited to the individual brain’s mental creation and image-making activity, since everyone’s brains are also products and storehouses of the accumulated experience and knowledge of humanity as a whole (Kumar 2015: 86). This leads the mystic to conclude that  Krishnamurti conveyed his frustration with his students’ failure to respond to the teaching more than once. See, for example, Jayakar (1986: 280): ‘[Krishnamurti] said that he had been speaking in India for thirty years and nothing had happened. “There is not one person who is living the teaching.”’ 23  Rodrigues (2001: 202) establishes this classification within the framework set by Ninian Smart’s six elements of religious traditions: the philosophical, mythic, ethical, practical, experiential, and social. 22

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‘because my mind is the human mind which has experimented with all that and yet has not come upon this benediction … I won’t touch all that’ (Jayakar 1986: 387). His method of total negation is therefore rooted in the logic that all optional pathways of religious search, which appear to be outside the seeker, already exist in their brain, and so there is no need to take these paths that, at least unconsciously, have already been taken. This is also the one factor he believes changes the whole mind, since now, by negating all forms of human searching, the mind can attain the very state it has sought for countless millennia. Krishnamurti’s innovation, to which I shall return in the following section, is his proposition that even the noblest traditions of mystical transcendence are now registered as knowledge within the brain and, as such, repeating their practices can only perpetuate the mind’s conditioning. Nonetheless, this unprecedented form of renunciation that Krishnamurti offers to his discussants seems to be highly unrealistic in light of its prerequisite that one should already be established in a state of unity consciousness. After all, how many people can proclaim, as Krishnamurti does in this dialogue, that ‘I am the saint; I am the monk; I am the man who says, I will fast, I will torture myself physically, I will deny all sex …’ (ibid.)? Once again, we may wonder whether Krishnamurti’s impassioned contemplation is, in effect, an inspiring sharing of his exceptional subjective reality, which, as shown in Chap. 6, was already remarkable in his childhood, and which was spontaneously characterized by this mode of all-inclusive negation. Nonetheless, Krishnamurti is adamant that this ‘act of total denial’ can be shown and shared and that it is the lack of total denial that keeps the door closed (Jayakar 1986: 389). Unlike many other dialogues, in which Krishnamurti repudiates answers suggested by discussants, here Krishnamurti plays a double role in that he is mostly the one raising the answers that he himself quickly rejects.24 After negating the path of the ascetic and its well-known practices of renunciation, celibacy, fasting, and solitude, he questions whether it is immense energy that opens the door, but considering the fact that missionaries possess great passion, he abandons this option (ibid., 387). Similarly, it is not Krishnamurti’s own passion and presence that can bring the student any closer to the sacred. In fact, one of the climactic moments in this dialogue is when the teacher demonstrates that he includes in his negation even his own teaching of self-knowledge, regarding it as yet another path that leads nowhere (ibid., 388, 389). But Krishnamurti does not stop at negating religious forms of searching: he goes on to deny all the experiments done by humans in the hope of attaining this blessedness, such as alcohol, sex, and drugs, but also study and knowledge (ibid., 390). And when the main discussant, Narayan, is overwhelmed by the magnitude of this method, commenting that the ‘lack of strength of the body and the

 The fact that Krishnamurti is largely absorbed in a form of self-dialogue, ignoring many remarks and queries from his associates, reaffirms the classification of his dialogues as transformative dialogues. When I introduced the conditions necessary for the realization of the transformative dialogue in Chap. 4, I pointed out that this type of dialogue is not a joint effort in the sense of a shared discovery, but an effective method of dismantling the discussant’s conceptions and leading them to an authentic insight. 24

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mind creeps in’, the teacher’s reply is: ‘I am eighty-five and I say, you have to deny’ (ibid.). It is not that Krishnamurti negates the various paths as a form of systematic scepticism. In his words, this is not a ‘blind denial … the denial has tremendous reason, logic behind it’ (ibid., 389). He is very far from negators such as the sixth-century-­ bc Indian ascetic Sañjaya, whose approach of giving negative answers to all questions while holding no view of his own was rebuked by the early Buddhists (Raju 1954: 694).25 In this dialogue, Krishnamurti not only proves that his negation has a positive end,26 but also establishes negation as his pathless path.27 In light of this, it is clear that the criticism made by the Indian saint Anandamayi Ma (1896–1982) that ‘[Krishnamurti] has one fault: while his way is certainly valid he does not accept the validity of approaches other than his own’ (‘Jiddu Krishnamurti’ n.d.) is rooted in a misunderstanding: he could not have accepted other paths since this is his path. His all-inclusive denial is an exercise in the cessation of all movements of searching, through which the mind is led to freedom from even the subtlest form of experimentation (Jayakar 1986: 389–390). In this respect, we can say that negation is Krishnamurti’s unique form of internal renunciation. Krishnamurti is fully aware that this total negation requires an unusual degree of maturity compared to what he views as the immaturity characterizing guru-­ followership (Jayakar 1986: 388). He also understands how delicate this act is, since upon negating all paths, one may easily abandon the urgency of one’s search and sink into spiritual lethargy (ibid.). His negation is an uncommon type of middle path that retains the exigency of the search while keeping its energy unwasted and undirected, gathering it instead for the state of insight: ‘Where do you get your perceptions?’ asked Narayan. Krishnaji said, ‘By not doing any of this.’ ‘By not doing will I get it?’ asked Narayan. Krishnaji’s voice came from depth, it was held in eons. ‘No.’ (ibid., 391)

Since this is a mystical transformative dialogue,28 Krishnamurti expects his students to ‘see’ that the brain has already tried all of these pathways and need not repeat any of them, and, in this very act of seeing, to jump out of the ‘circle which man has woven around himself’ (Jayakar 1986: 391). After all, any movement the mind would make is another expression of the activity of searching; thus, an unobstructed perception of the illusory is the only available action of the negating mind. In actuality, even within the intense setting of this dialogue form, which enables Krishnamurti to instantly block all mental routes of escape, his associates seem unable to face the absolute negation promoted by him. ‘Please answer me’, Krishnamurti implores them, ‘This is a challenge. You have to answer. Are you still experimenting?’ (ibid.,  See my lengthy discussion of Sañjaya’s form of negation in Chap. 11.  Krishnamurti summarizes this well: ‘Total negation is the essence of the positive’ (1996: 258). 27  In this sense, Krishnamurti’s negative approach, whose essence is affirmation of transcendent reality, is in line with the mystical via negativa – ultimately, there is a negation of negation (Jones 2016: 227–228). 28  See my classification in Chap. 5’s last section. 25 26

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389). But near the end of the discussion, his companions begin to withdraw from this unwavering focus and their comments are mainly attempts to diffuse the gathered energy by returning to opinion-based exchanges and balancing views (ibid., 391). Is this because they have not truly dared to give it a try, or is it that the Krishnamurti dialogue, and this example in particular, puts an unrealistic pressure on the listener to remain so incredibly awake without relief? Needless to say, Krishnamurti himself remains fully capable of holding the question: as he often does, he concludes the dialogue by leaving a question to hang in the air.29

On Krishnamurti’s Question and Negation The close analyses of the 1948 early group discussions and the two mature demonstrations of the process have indeed unveiled recurring structures of the Krishnamurti dialogue. Among these hidden structures, however, we can identify two major methodological components that deserve greater attention, since they are, I suggest, Krishnamurti’s most notable contribution to the field of religious and mystical thought. Furthermore, these tools  – unanswerable questions and methodological negation – elucidate the purposes of his dialogue form and therefore make it possible for us to place it in relation to other forms of the transformative dialogue. It should be remarked once again (see footnote 102) that if we examine Krishnamurti’s philosophical constructs in isolation from his methodology, we may come to the conclusion that his metaphysics is not only unoriginal30 but also fundamentally feeble. In fact, his most foundational philosophy, which is an attack on the enterprise of human thought as a whole, should be called into question. Krishnamurti maintains that human thought is exclusively responsible for the world’s disorder and that prior to its emergence, there was perfect order (Jayakar 1986: 393). Nevertheless, as biologist Rupert Sheldrake points out in his discussion with the mystic (Krishnamurti 2014h), we can observe disorder and conflict in the natural world as well. Human beings have not invented the competition and enmity between the species and their territorial wars; rather, human conflict seems to be a development of these primitive impulses and instincts, whereas rational thinking has helped humanity to evolve beyond these primal forces.31 Krishnamurti’s radical criticism of human thought is one refutable point among many others, which will be pinpointed in Chap. 9. However, here I argue that expecting Krishnamurti’s statements to

 In this case, ‘Now, can you do this to the student?’ (Jayakar 1986: 391).  Rodrigues (2001: 184–195), for instance, indicates that Krishnamurti was heavily influenced by the teachings of the Buddha. Accordingly, he offers a comprehensive and convincing comparison between Krishnamurti’s teachings and Buddhist thought. 31  A similar objection is made by biologist Jonas Salk during a dialogue with Krishnamurti (quoted in Eastman 2018: 8). 29 30

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measure up to academic or even purely logical standards is, in itself, an error,32 since, as suggested above, his innovation has been in offering new tools of inquiry, that is, teaching us not what to think but how to stop thinking altogether. First, we should consider Krishnamurti’s tool of unanswerable questions, which derives from such an unorthodox perspective that it brings us to reflect on the philosophical and mystical functions of questions. Krishnamurti’s method shows us that one can deploy a question not for the sake of obtaining information and not even for the sake of true knowledge or solid metaphysical truths (if we consider questions in the philosophical and mystical domains as knowledge-seeking acts). It further demonstrates that a question can be practised with the intention to eliminate existing information and even as a part of a general attempt to transmute the memory-­based brain altogether. The history of philosophy has shown us another prominent figure who often employed questions to reveal the limits of knowledge and to destroy unchecked mental certainties: Socrates. Nevertheless, what Socrates attempted to achieve through his elenchus greatly differed from the motivation behind Krishnamurti’s questioning. The real difference between the two systems lies not in structure but in purpose: elenchus aims at disproving a given thesis, typically the interlocutor’s answer to the principal question (Hintikka 1993: 8), whereas Krishnamurti was not looking to detect and refute logical incoherences, but to enable the question itself to meditatively operate on the discussants’ minds. Rather than a logical entity whose role is to lead to judgement, the question is practised as the compulsive drive to face and explore the existential mystery, a drive that is so primordial that it resides at the core of the mind and merely takes the shape of verbal questions. Ordinarily, this driving force behind all human searching for transcendent knowledge becomes limited, since the brain responds to the presence of a question in the habitual way of finding a confident answer within the field of the known, that is, memory, prior experience, and ready-made authoritative formulations. Since the seeking and the finding are carried out by the same conditioned activity of human thought, such answers, Krishnamurti tells us, can only lead us in the opposite direction to that which we were striving to achieve in the first place. Thus, the Krishnamurti dialogue demonstrates the way that a question can liberate the mind and open it wide so that it becomes genuinely capable of contacting that which exists outside of thought’s domain. Questions, as the truth-seeking mechanism, release their potential transformative power only when we have blocked all pathways of false finding. They have subtler activities, such as leading the questioner beyond the divisions of subject and object, inquirer and object of inquiry, and they are unanswerable in the sense that they forever uncover a living truth that cannot be appropriated by thought. This renders all accumulated answers, including the noblest ones, meaningless, and for this reason, important questions should be asked every time anew.  Eastman (2018: 1–14) devotes an entire paper to demonstrating that Krishnamurti’s philosophy, which appears to be logical and reasonable, is utterly irrelevant to anyone wishing to explore objective metaphysical truths (ibid., 6). 32

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In addition to unanswerable questions, the other major tool of the Krishnamurti dialogue is what I term ‘methodological negation’: a transference of the principle of mystical negation from the realm of metaphysics and epistemology to the realm of methodology. According to Jones (2016: 229), the approach of negation is one of the elements that distinguish mystics from theists: the theist ascribes positive features to God, whereas the mystic perceives the negative way as a corrective to positive depictions which by nature can only be borrowed from the phenomenal realm.33 It is thus both a device utilized by those attempting to convey their mystical experiences34 and a ‘speculative theological strategy’ for figuring out the logic of notions about the supreme being (ibid.). Negation as an epistemic act has been broadly used by South Asian mystics. We find its earliest expressions in the sixth-­century-­bc Sañjaya, who employed negation as a tool of scepticism in a way that perhaps inspired the Greek philosopher Pyrrho (Raju 1954: 695, 703), but also in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, where the reality of Brahman is famously described as ‘not this not that’, or ‘neti neti’.35 However, negation was also introduced into the Western theistic tradition through the via negativa approach of Neoplatonism, most notably represented by Plotinus, who later influenced mystical thinkers such as Augustine and Eckhart (Jones 2016: 226). The type of negation expressed in the Krishnamurti dialogue cannot be adequately placed within the framework of metaphysical and epistemological negation. Krishnamurti did not devise an analytical tool for the evaluation of the ontological status of certain realities or entities. The problem that his dialectical negation tackles is that of time, memory, accumulation, and conditioning. In other words, what he negates is the past, in which any existing religious or mystical path is inevitably included, since humanity’s past as a whole is ingrained in one’s brain as thought-­ forms. This form of negation as a radical position of the mind, or as the vitality of the unconditioned brain, can be considered his unique contribution to the via negativa approach.36 One may surmise that in developing his negation, Krishnamurti was seeking out a method that could do the impossible: avoiding even the subtlest action of the dualistic, self-enhancing mind, by leading the mind itself to realize the futility of its action (Shringy 1977: 202). Since the problem of human existence is action based on idea, any ‘positive’ or constructive approach involving will and self-interest merely perpetuates our conditioning in a modified form (ibid., 193, 198). Thus, the negative approach is the only available one: in its non-fragmented awareness, it ‘breaks the circle of ignorance from within, as it were, without strengthening it’  Nevertheless, Jones’s depiction of the mystic applies to apophatic theists as well.  In this context of putting mystical experiences into words, negation is a known practice among mystics, who tend to defend their experiences as ‘ineffable’. To resolve the epistemological problem that arises from this, Blackwood (1963: 202–206) suggests that it is not that mystics argue that all descriptive statements are false, but rather that all descriptive statements are ‘inapplicable or inappropriate’. 35  See, for instance, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, III: 8.7–8. 36  I shall accentuate Krishnamurti’s contribution to the via negativa approach in Chap. 11. 33 34

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(ibid., 199). In Krishnamurti’s eyes, what appears to be a positive approach is, in effect, a negative one, since it ultimately reaffirms the false, while his way, which consists entirely of seeing the false, is ‘not negation. On the contrary; this awakening of creative intelligence is the only positive help that I can give you’ (quoted in ibid., 197–198). Shringy (ibid., 201) suggests that Krishnamurti’s process of negating the false, being a simple and direct form of choiceless awareness, is, in the end, neither affirmative nor negative. Moreover, what methods and techniques can be relevant in light of the fact that the unconditioned reality is only discovered as a result of the shedding of the false (ibid., 203)? In the final analysis, the Hadotian reading of the two sample dialogues illuminates Krishnamurti’s method and its two major tools as a system that has no philosophically constructive ambitions, but rather mystical and transformative ones. Although the method does engage certain elements of the philosophical mind, in terms of theory-building it is exclusively concerned with destroying existing mental structures, while its only positive end is the potential emergence of a new state of mind. It may thus be proposed that the Krishnamurti dialogue functions as a transformative mystical dialogue (as opposed to the transformative philosophical dialogue; see Chap. 5). Of course, even as a mystical exchange, it has an undeniable uniqueness. This can be generally defined as a process of questioning designed to block all ordinary pathways of thought with the intention to prepare the mind for an unfamiliar condition in which the activity of insight is made possible.37 To this we should add that the process is an ironic spiritual exercise, since the exercise is, to a great extent, an anti-­ exercise, as well as the negation of all spiritual exercises. This paradoxical situation is enhanced by the teacher’s position as a lucidly mirroring questioner who negates his own significance while guiding the dynamics with great confidence. In essence, the method does not aim to accomplish a total or instantaneous insight; rather, in a way that is similar to Krishnamurti’s lectures (see Chap. 6), though far more actively, it is designed for the ‘awakening of creative intelligence’ (Krishnamurti, quoted in Shringy 1977: 197–198) by which one may achieve total insight. It was for this reason that the confusion and helplessness expressed by many participants were of no concern to Krishnamurti: his dialogue was primarily meant to provoke, agitate, and revolutionize, and in this respect, it was a successful transmission.

References Blackwood, R.T. 1963. Neti, Neti: Epistemological Problems of Mystical Experience. Philosophy East and West 13 (3): 201–209. Eastman, Peter. 2018. Krishnamurti Explained: A Critical Study. PhilPapers. https://philpapers. org/rec/EASKEA. Accessed 17 June 2022.

 It should be remarked that the method’s clear structure makes it perfectly imitable, so long as one is inclined to employ it for mystical ends. 37

References

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Hadot, Pierre. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1993. Socratic Questioning, Logic and Rhetoric. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 47, 184 (1): 5–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23949451 Hunter, Alan. 1988. Seeds of Truth: J.  Krishnamurti as Religious Teacher and Educator. PhD Dissertation, University of Leeds. Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1996. Questioning Krishnamurti: J.  Krishnamurti in Dialogue: Dialogues with Leading 20th Century Thinkers. San Francisco: Thorsons. ———. 2014. J.  Krishnamurti  – Brockwood Park 1985  – Discussion with Students 3  – Isn’t Comparison a Form of Violence? YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nU5Tapp 3W4&t=2519s ———. 2014h. J. Krishnamurti – Ojai 1982 – Discussion with Scientists 1 – Roots of Psychological Disorder. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoMS5b2MLRc Kumar, Kesava. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution. Delhi: Kalpaz. Lutyens, Mary J. 1997. Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening. Berkeley: Shambhala. Nyenpa, Sangyes. 2014. Tilopa’s Mahamudra Upadesha: The Gangama Instructions with Commentary. Ithaca: Snow Lion. Raju, Poola T. 1954. The Principle of Four-Cornered Negation in Indian Philosophy. The Review of Metaphysics 7 (4): 694–713. Rodrigues, Hillary. 2001. Krishnamurti’s Insight. Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing. Shringy, Ravindra Kumar. 1977. Philosophy of J. Krishnamurti: A Systematic Study. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. The Upanishads. 2007. Translated by Eknath Easwaran. Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press. Williams, Chris V. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher. Millers Point: Sydney School of Arts & Humanities.

Chapter 8

‘The Thunder of Insight’: The Final Destination of Krishnamurti’s Dialogue

In Chap. 7, I presented a detailed analysis of Krishnamurti’s style of transformative dialogue. My efforts centred on demonstrating that behind Krishnamurti’s so-called spontaneous and ever-new manner of conversation, we can identify a distinct dialogical method: a process of questioning designed to block all ordinary pathways of thought with the intention of preparing the mind for an unfamiliar state in which insight is made possible. My analysis unveiled the two unique tools that the Krishnamurti dialogue deploys to achieve its goal: an innovative use of unanswerable questions and an all-inclusive negation of the type which has been conventionally applied, in the field of mysticism and apophatic theology, to descriptions – or, rather, anti-descriptions – of the Absolute or God. Nevertheless, since Krishnamurti’s technique is unwaveringly faithful to its internal logic of open questions and negation, it leaves the researcher with their own open question: what exactly is the positive ontological state which the method strives to either reveal or establish? It may be argued that the question itself is faulty since it posits that the Krishnamurti dialogue does lead to a particular positive end result. Why, for instance, could it not be similar to the persistent negation practised by the seventh–sixth-century-BC Indian sceptic and materialist Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta? Sañjaya’s form of negation, which at least appeared to be the beginning and end of every philosophical conversation he had engaged in, was later classified by Gautama Buddha as vitaṇḍā: criticism without any position or constructive effort, triumphantly disproving every doctrine while proving none (Raju 1954: 694–695). However, we know for a fact that Krishnamurti’s negative approach is not purely destructive: numerous comments in his diaries, biographical accounts, lectures, and discussions indicate that, in his eyes, the negative method is truly a positive one (Shringy 1977: 197–198), ultimately preparing the mind for a positive ontological revelation which he called interchangeably the ‘Ground’, the ‘sacred’, the ‘otherness’, the ‘immeasurable’, and ‘Love’ (Rodrigues 2001: 139–141). Since Krishnamurti is expressly reluctant to feed the process of image-formation, which © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_8

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to him is the crux of the problem of human suffering (Krishnamurti 1967), he keeps the mentions of this ontological reality brief, mostly and sparingly referring to it towards the end of the text or the discourse. This reality is there, waiting to be discovered, both made available by the preceding process of inquiry and untouched by it in terms of cause and effect. Thus, in the present chapter I aim to delineate the nature of Krishnamurti’s concept of ultimate reality, as well as the intricate ways in which the dialogical process is designed to disclose it. Any discussion aiming to distinguish the dialogue’s resulting state from the technique leading to it must face the perplexing fact that Krishnamurti himself refuses to differentiate between method and goal. This refusal – perhaps the most challenging thing about Krishnamurti’s teaching in general, and his dialogical method in particular  – is grounded in Krishnamurti’s understanding of the concept of freedom.1 As he himself wrote in his brief summary of his teachings in 1980: ‘Freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man, but lies in the first step of his existence’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 257).2 Thus, ‘the means is the end’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 113): freedom is not a desired final destination that may or may not be accomplished at the end of the transformative process, but rather the awakened perception with which the individual approaches this process in the first place. Merina Islam (2016: 21) misconstrues this major Krishnamurti tenet when concluding that for him, meditation is linked with freedom in a relation of cause and effect. After all, precisely this relation of cause and effect has been the traditional view of meditative techniques as a bridge leading from bondage to freedom, and it is this view that Krishnamurti hopes to repudiate by presenting a sort of circular process which begins and ends in the very same state. Thus, his ambition seems to be closer to the radical notion one often finds in Chán Buddhism or, less frequently, in Buddhism in general, of the ultimate falsity of the dual notion of path and goal – for instance, the famed concept of the ‘no-way’ (Wong 1998: 11).3 Nevertheless, even proponents of the ‘sudden enlightenment’ approach, which will be discussed in the third part of this chapter, have employed techniques and cultivated a path. The fact that Krishnamurti insisted on this rather unrealistic stance of selfless, liberated observation as the initial condition of the aspirant’s mind should not dissuade us from identifying the goal of his dialogical method. After all, what Krishnamurti declares and what he does are two different things, just as we realize when struggling with other paradoxical dimensions of his personality and teaching, such as his being an anti-guru guru (Peat 1997: 21). While he ardently rejects the possibility that his process of questioning can bring about the ‘sense of the immeasurable’ (Anderson and Krishnamurti 1991: 265), the structure of his transmission  Maxwell (1994:60) also believes that this factor contributes to the elusiveness of Krishnamurti’s approach. 2  See also Krishnamurti (1987b: 53). 3  This is exemplified in a stanza allegedly uttered by the Buddha, which became the basis for Chán Buddhism: ‘The way resembles no ways whatsoever, The no-way is in itself a way, Now is the time to transmit the no-way’ (Wong 1998: 11). A similar paradoxical vision is conveyed by the tantric Buddhist Tilopa: ‘With no path to travel, keeping to the buddha path’ (Nyenpa 2014: 11). 1

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in lectures and dialogues alike reveals a more complex picture. The seemingly analytical, careful inquiry, which consists of several rounds of question and negation intermixed with austere observations of the human reality of ignorance and suffering, is often disrupted near the end by a poetic and elevating description of a transcendent reality which seems to be what remains in the wake of Krishnamurti’s method of self-emptying. This is also demonstrated in the broader structure of Krishnamurti’s series of talks: in each series Krishnamurti used to provide what, for him, was a ‘conceptually accurate account of the human condition’, but in the final talk he would take a leap and turn to ‘discuss religion, death and meditation’, bearing witness to the transcendent and affirming his religious vision (Hunter 1988: 54–55). It thus seems safe to conclude that Krishnamurti believed that his question and negation could somehow remove a distracting barrier, allowing the unshielded mind to behold the ‘absolute truth.’ We should therefore understand his vehement rejection of the conception of a goal as a warning that the ultimate reality cannot be forcefully but only delicately unveiled. Moreover, this implies that in actuality, freedom is not the first and the last step (Krishnamurti 1987b: 53): freedom as a first step may be a unique feature of the Krishnamurti dialogue, but the dialogue’s final destination is a metaphysical reality for which the free mind can only prepare. Since there is, after all, a method and a goal, as well as an initial state and a resulting state, it becomes clear that scrutinizing the interrelations between all these elements is a task of great importance. My aim to gain insight into the ultimate destination of the Krishnamurti dialogue  – and consequently, to complete the model outlined in Chap. 7  – will be achieved in this chapter by employing two methods. Firstly, I shall draw on analyses of five sample discussions. These dialogues, which are derived from diverse sources and different phases of Krishnamurti’s life and involve a variety of discussants, seem to represent various dimensions of the Krishnamurti dialogue: a public dialogue engaging anonymous interlocutors on human relationships and image-­ formation (Krishnamurti 1967); a group discussion with peers at Brockwood Park in 1970, titled ‘Violence and the “Me”’ (Krishnamurti 1987b: 487–506); a conversation with the theologian Allan W. Anderson in 1974, titled ‘Meditation and the Sacred Mind’ (Anderson and Krishnamurti 1991: 255–269); a dialogue with the physicist David Bohm in 1975, titled ‘Thought and Perception’ (Krishnamurti 1999: 67–82); and a 1981 discussion of the ‘nature of God’ with his biographer and student Pupul Jayakar (Jayakar 1986: 416–424). My intention, however, is not to offer extensive analyses of these dialogical processes, but to highlight positive pronouncements made by Krishnamurti which deviate from the general approach of inclusive negation, identify implicit connections between the process of question and negation and the mentioned mystical states, and examine the endings of the dialogues, which sometimes disclose a resulting realization or final revelation (and at other times, seem to end in aporíā, to borrow Socratic terminology). Secondly, in the chapter’s third and fourth sections I will further illuminate my findings by conducting a brief comparative study of similarities and dissimilarities between the resulting state of Krishnamurti’s dialogical method and that of other doctrines and methods of transformation. In particular, I shall draw a comparison between

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Krishnamurti’s positive descriptions and Richard Jones’s (2016) concept of mystical experiences, as well as the religious experience known in the philosophy of mysticism as ‘pure consciousness events’ (Forman 1986) and the Buddhist notions of gradual and sudden enlightenment (Wong 1998). Based on these analyses, I offer here a model that delineates the four different stages of the Krishnamurti dialogue: the method, the preparatory stage, the shift of insight, and the ultimate state. Accordingly, the chapter is divided into four corresponding sections. This model, I suggest, can clearly elucidate what Krishnamurti hoped to achieve through his unique process of shared investigation.

First Stage: The Method The dynamic and rapid sequence of question and negation constitutes the main part of any Krishnamurti dialogue. Although these two tools and their different functions and purposes were discussed in Chap. 7 at length, they should be succinctly reintroduced here, this time on the basis of the five dialogues I have chosen to discuss in this chapter and in relation to the other, consecutive stages. The process itself can be described as a living demonstration of the activity of thought through the persistent mirroring effect of question and negation, with the intention of leading to the collapse of this activity.4 David Bohm, who had conducted numerous conversations with Krishnamurti between the years 1965 and 1983,5 provided a concise summary of this method in later years: ‘His [Krishnamurti’s] basic thing was to go into thought, to get to the end of it, completely, and thought would become a different kind of consciousness’ (Horgan 2018). The way that Krishnamurti goes into thought and gets ‘to the end of it’ is by formulating a transformative question, repeating it frequently, and utilizing the paradoxical technique of demanding an answer while negating nearly all suggested answers as useless memory or conditioned reaction. This technique, Krishnamurti believes, puts great pressure on the participants’ minds, pressure whose purpose, as we shall discover in the following section, is ultimately constructive. In the intervals between each round of question and negation, Krishnamurti deploys his transformative question to mirror the participants’ actual and daily reality (what he terms ‘what is’). To this he adds an intense awareness of the intricate and subtle ways in which ‘thought’, being confronted with its self-created, violent, and selfish reality, instantly seeks to escape to a corresponding ideal, such as non-violence or selflessness. This novel type of self-observation, which may be called ‘negative observation’ and which is in effect an inseparable part of the negation process, clearly deviates from the conventional religious activity whose incentive is the hope of transcendence and

 Krishnamurti uses ‘thought’ interchangeably with the ‘known’ or the ‘self’.  With the exception of Pupul Jayakar, Bohm seems to have been Krishnamurti’s most persistent discussant. 4 5

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the movement towards a higher ideal. Whether Krishnamurti provides sufficient materials for this aim of complete perception of ‘what is’ is a different question: in most cases, he seems to expect his interlocutors to ‘see’ a reality that has not been substantially illuminated. Krishnamurti’s employment of unanswerable questions is extensive: in the public dialogue which I have sampled for this chapter (Krishnamurti 1967), there are 192 question marks in Krishnamurti’s parts of the dialogue, whereas his discussants, who naturally start off as the questioners and end up as the ones struggling to offer answers to Krishnamurti’s questioning, require only twenty-three. This rapid shift from the traditional guru position to the near-Socratic approach of passing the responsibility on to one’s interlocutor is a persistent feature of the Krishnamurti dialogue: in this context, the function of the unanswered question is to throw his discussants back upon themselves (Burden 1959: 272). Questions ‘to which there are no answers’, as Krishnamurti puts it (Jayakar 1986: 298), have other significant functions in his dialogue: they force the mind to move away from the field of the known and to settle in the unknown as its starting point (Peat 1997: 29), and in holding them indefinitely while delaying reaction, the discussants gather energy that then acts on the brain (Jayakar 1986: 422–423). Lastly, this type of question, which naturally resists all answers, inaugurates and propels the process of negation and its sub-activity of ‘negative observation’. Anyone familiar with the kōan tradition of the Japanese Rinzai sect will be struck by certain commonalities between the function of questions in the Krishnamurti dialogue and the way that questions have been employed by this form of Zen practice. The kōan’s non-rational riddle, which often takes the form of a question, is introduced to the student by the master who, in doing so, assumes the position of the questioner (Zug 1967: 86). As a part of the master’s efforts to guide the pupil towards a final realization of the kōan, they may engage the student in a rapid series of questions called mondō to compel them to supply spontaneous and intuitive answers (ibid.). Just like Krishnamurti’s unanswerable questions, the role of the kōan is not to develop intellectual agility but to transcend the intellect altogether (ibid., 84); to ‘let the intellect see by itself how far it can go, and also that there is a realm into which it as such can never enter’ (Suzuki, quoted in ibid., 83). Aside from marking the limits of the known, the teacher’s demand that the novice bring the kōan to a resolution while continuously rejecting their second-hand replies is designed to generate increasing psychic pressure, to a degree that finally, ‘the entire personality, mind and body, is thrown into the solution’ (Suzuki, quoted in ibid., 83–84).6 The process of negation in the Krishnamurti dialogue completes the act of holding questions and delaying reactions. The unanswerable question functions as a looking glass that motionlessly reflects the mind’s struggle to provide an unconditioned answer, whereas the active repudiation of the answers aims to empty and

 I shall discuss the closeness of the kōan’s solution, which takes the form of satori (or enlightenment), to Krishnamurti’s ultimate state, in Chap. 10. 6

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purify the mind. Furthermore, by energetically disconfirming nearly all of the interlocutors’ suggestions, Krishnamurti attempts to block the brain’s movement along its familiar mental circuits, thus prompting it to rise to a different type of intelligent activity. But above all, Krishnamurti’s negative approach, which has occasionally been compared in this regard to that of the eighth-century Hindu philosopher Śaṅkara and that of the second-century Nāgārjuna (Rodrigues 2001: 181, 2007: 92–93),7 is founded on the premise that only through a rigorous negation of all knowledge and experience can one come upon the positive – ‘that positive state of innocency’ (Krishnamurti, quoted in Maxwell 1994: 68–69). Thus, the exclusive function of the dialogue is to make the discussant aware of the modes of bondage that delimit one’s life: one ought to speak of hate rather than love and conditioning rather than freedom, for realization is nothing more than the ‘removal of unreality’ (ibid.).8 As demonstrated in Chap. 7, this seems to be in line not only with Śaṅkara’s and Nāgārjuna’s forms of negation, but more broadly with the principle of mysticism and apophatic theology. Based on this position, Burden (1959: 278) explains, Krishnamurti treats even the noblest ideals and most cherished beliefs as nothing more than cobwebs on the window through which one hopes to see God. Krishnamurti’s 1981 discussion of the ‘nature of God’ with his biographer and student Pupul Jayakar and other disciples (Jayakar 1986: 416–424) not only illustrates my analysis above but also presents an exceptional example of a self-aware dialogue: a dialogue which directly addresses the underlying method of question and negation that guides it. This degree of self-awareness is clearly owing to the fact that the 86-year-old Krishnamurti is conversing with some of his closest students after decades of shared investigation. Thus, while Jayakar’s initial question seeks to inquire into the ‘nature of, call it God – call it creation – the ground of being’ (ibid., 416), the core of the discussion is the way in which one should approach a question. Since for Krishnamurti, the question of the nature of God is, after all, an unanswerable question – not only because he must position himself as a questioner, but more straightforwardly because he does not know ‘what God is’ and ‘probably … can never find out’ (Jayakar 1986: 419)  – the question can only be deployed to throw light on the workings of the human mind (ibid., 416). Accordingly, he formulates a negative question that quickly takes the place of Jayakar’s metaphysically constructive one: can the mind be completely free from all accumulated knowledge and experience, wiping out the ‘accumulation of a million years’ (ibid., 417, 419)? Delving into this question, Krishnamurti believes, should ultimately lead to the understanding of the nature of God (ibid., 423), since the nature of the divine reality can only be ascertained when the brain has completely purified itself. Krishnamurti makes it clear that this form of all-inclusive negation, including the negation of the very ‘feeling that one knows’ (ibid., 416), is not merely the rejection of the rising  See an elaborate comparison in Chap. 11.  Rohit Mehta, who engaged in dialogues with Krishnamurti, writes with frustration: ‘What after all has Krishnamurti given to me? … I go to him with my rich harvest, but he cuts that all and throws it away unceremoniously, and in return what does he give? All that he does is sowing seed after seed of doubt, but gives nothing positive to work upon’ (Mehta 1979: v). 7 8

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movement of thought in one’s mind, but rather a penetration into the most ancient and unconscious impressions that have been amassed over eons at the root of one’s being (ibid., 416–417). Needless to say, he does not explain how one may accomplish this awesome task, for reasons that will be elaborated in the following section. In his form of negation, it is the questioner’s mind that gave rise to the concept of God in the first place, and therefore the focus of the question is not the reality of God but the subtle processes of human thought (ibid., 420). If there is anything sacred, it may only be contacted by stripping the mind of its made-up duality of self and God, and letting it stand bare and unmoving in the face of a mystery which it does not already know. This is, as Krishnamurti mentions, ‘a very cleansing attitude’ (ibid.), his form of religious purification. However, as previously mentioned, at a certain point Jayakar grows aware of the way that Krishnamurti’s mind faces the question. For most minds, she points out, the presence of a question, such as ‘Do you believe in God?’, is what grains of sugar are for ants: the mind instantly gravitates towards the question, programmed to respond (Jayakar 1986: 421–422). Krishnamurti, on the other hand, like a ‘pond that holds water’, chooses to remain with the question quietly, withholding the familiar movement of the mind towards it and renouncing the wish to find an answer (ibid.). If one is purely attentive without dissipating the mind’s energy, Krishnamurti maintains, the accumulated energy itself begins to operate and the answer comes of its own accord (ibid.). Thus, his question, ‘Can one have a mind that is capable of not reacting immediately to a question?’ invites exactly this quality of a mind that no longer answers but only listens.

Second Stage: The Preparatory Stage The method of question and negation is designed to lead the discussant to the preparatory stage. This is, in fact, one of the most essential tenets of the ethics of the Krishnamurti dialogue: neither the teacher nor the interlocutors can advance beyond this stage by means of conscious volition. This tenet is made explicit in Krishnamurti’s discussion of ‘meditation and the sacred mind’ with the theologian Allan W. Anderson (Anderson and Krishnamurti 1991: 255–269). When Anderson suggests that Krishnamurti’s method of continually returning to questioning while dismissing all answers as mere noise is the only way of intuiting the possibility of silence, Krishnamurti is alarmed: the ‘sense of the immeasurable’, he clarifies, cannot be induced by his questioning, since real silence is acausal by nature (ibid., 265). In truth, if the aim of the dialogue were an instantaneous insight into the nature of reality, the overwhelming majority of Krishnamurti’s discussions would necessarily be considered failed attempts, since they do not culminate in the relief

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of insight.9 Nevertheless, Krishnamurti’s words imply that his form of dialogue is inherently unconcerned with the two later stages of insight and ultimate reality.10 All one can do is to empty the content of one’s self-centred consciousness in order to allow space within the mind (ibid., 259–260). In this way, one gives shape to a ‘sacred mind’, which may or may not perceive the ‘most supreme sacred’ (ibid., 263). The function of Krishnamurti’s preparatory stage seems to be in line with that of the more generally recognized preparatory stage prescribed by mystics. The mystic strives to empty the mind of all ‘differentiated mental content’ with the intention of achieving a state of ‘inner poverty’ (to borrow Meister Eckhart’s term): ‘a state free of any created will, of wanting anything, of knowing any “image”, and of having anything’ (Jones 2016: 8–9). In the Buddhist Eightfold Path, for instance, this state bears a resemblance to samyak smṛti – ‘right mindfulness’, as opposed to samyak samādhi, ‘right concentration’ – which is concerned with the removal of conceptual barriers in order to expand the student’s perception to a state of ‘pure awareness’ that mirrors the flow of reality as it is (ibid., 10).11 Judging from Jones’s analysis, mystics aspire to establish the state of inner poverty based on the expectation that there is a cause and effect relation between this act of self-emptying and a direct awareness of a transcendent power, or even an identity with the Godhead (ibid.). Nevertheless, mystical scriptures such as the Kaṭhopaniṣad supply us with subtler descriptions which are closer to Krishnamurti’s distinction: while ‘complete stillness’ is the preparatory state in which ‘one enters the unitive state’ (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.11), one can behold the ultimate ‘glory of the Self’ only through divine grace (dhātuḥ prasādāt) (ibid., 1.2.20).12,13 Although the Upaniṣadic conception of grace largely differs from Krishnamurti’s understanding of the non-volitional leap of insight,14 both share the notion that one’s own efforts can only lead one to the  This is demonstrated well in Krishnamurti’s last journal, where he narrates a discussion between an ‘educator’ and a ‘boy’ (Krishnamurti 1996a: 146–152). Since this is an imagined discussion, one would expect Krishnamurti to present a fully realized, Upaniṣadic dialogue, which accomplishes the stage of insight. Instead, the conversation ends in the boy’s frustration: ‘Sir, you have made it all seem so very difficult, so very complex’ (ibid., 152). 10  We may be reminded here of some of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, whose mystical goal is declared repeatedly, while the discussion seems to only prepare the students for a direct experience that is expected to occur after and outside the discourse. In the Phaedo, for instance, neither Socrates nor his interlocutors make a conscious attempt to induce the ultimate experience of the soul unshackling itself from physical bondage (See Chap. 5). 11  Rodrigues (2001: 106) has also identified the commonality between Krishnamurti’s preparatory state and Smṛti. 12  The translation of this term, however, has been a source of controversy. Easwaran (The Upaniṣads 2007: 349–350) makes the choice of translating dhātuḥ prasādāt as ‘by the grace of the Creator’ while others translate it as ‘by the stilling of the constituents’, i.e. the senses. Swami Krishnananda (2011: 53) similarly reads the term as ‘god’s grace’. 13  Krishnamurti makes a similar declaration in his conversation with Iris Murdoch: grace may be in itself unattainable and untransmittable, but the least one could do is to ‘be in a state to receive that’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 124). 14  There are instances, however, in which Krishnamurti alludes to a possible intervention of divine grace. See, for example, Krishnamurti (1996b: 124); Jayakar (1986: 386). 9

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threshold of the transcendent reality, and that even this is accomplished by utilizing the negative means of stilling the mind and the activity of self and will. The characteristics of Krishnamurti’s preparatory stage, gathered from the five sample dialogues, also correspond to features of the mystical state of inner poverty. Both Maxwell (1994: 71–72) and Jones (2016: 17–18), for instance, identify Krishnamurti’s ‘choiceless awareness’ – the term coined by him to designate his preparatory stage – as congruent with the state of non-categorizing mindfulness and other non-concentrative forms of Buddhist practice.15 Within the context of the Krishnamurti dialogue, choiceless awareness can be thought of as the state of the brain which results from the rapid and highly engaging exchange of question and negation. As Krishnamurti expounds to one of his anonymous discussants in a public dialogue, once one has persistently asked a question over and over again, one must ‘leave the question’, keep quiet, and wait (Krishnamurti 1967). In this state, in which the brain is no longer occupied with the activity of thought and becomes instead imbued with undirected awareness, one is finally receptive to communication with what Krishnamurti ambiguously calls mind: a dimension utterly unpolluted by thought which may then operate on the brain (Jayakar 1986: 453–454; Rodrigues 2001: 104, 106).16 More specifically, as a direct outcome of Krishnamurti’s questioning, the preparatory stage of choiceless awareness is characterized by the gathering of one’s energy that was previously dissipated due to internal searching, controlling, and asking (Anderson and Krishnamurti 1991: 263). This regathered energy is thus transformed, within the religious mind, into heightened attention (ibid., 264). Another expression of the choicelessly aware brain is that it is humbled by the presence of the unanswerable question and acknowledges that it knows nothing (Jayakar 1986: 418, 420). Not knowing is a major factor contributing to the absolute motionlessness of such a brain (ibid., 418). The other factor that gives rise to this utter stillness is the ceaseless negation of any traditional or personal answers which are already stored within the brain (ibid., 415). However, in order to establish the stage of choiceless awareness, one ought to refrain not only from grasping at past mental images but also from further image-­ making while engaged in the dialogue (Krishnamurti 1967). The problem, Krishnamurti points out, lies in the fact that whenever the brain is faced with a blunt reflection of ‘what is’, it moves away from this confrontation by developing a certain ideal representing the promise of redemption. But ultimately, even if this ideal appears to transcend thought, it is thought’s own product and can therefore never be a genuine release: human thought weaves its universe of unhappiness and then creates a corresponding escapist world of liberation (Anderson and Krishnamurti 1991: 257, 261). This recognition of the two faces of thought finalizes the stage of aware quietude: upon seeing the movement of thought as a whole, both the ‘what is’ and  I am aware of the limitations of Krishnamurti’s term, since it seems to involve the experience of ‘not choosing’ or ‘lacking any choice’. A more precise term would be ‘undirected awareness’. 16  In this chapter’s last section, I shall point out that Krishnamurti’s conception of the mind bears similarities to that of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism. 15

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the ‘what should be’, the brain jumps out of thought’s vicious circle (ibid., 255–256). The result of this holistic perception is an absence of internal activity and choice: ‘no bias, no prejudice, no tension, no saying, “the answer must be this or that”’ (Krishnamurti 1967). In the absence of volition, even profound experiences throughout the dialogue are allowed to dissolve into the brain’s choiceless awareness, since the brain retains its non-attached and non-registering attitude in the face of both illusion and moments of lucidity (Jayakar 1986: 419). All these outlines of Krishnamurti’s preparatory stage – energized and concentrated attention; internal non-activity resulting from the renunciation of knowing, familiar answers, image-making, and the division in thought; and the avoidance of clinging to and registering profound experiences – are comparable to the conventional mystical state of inner poverty as delineated by Jones above. Like Krishnamurti, a great many mystical schools would equate this state, in which the emotional and conceptual apparatuses of the mind have been stilled, with the temporary cessation of the activity of the individuated self (Jones 2016: 5). One may argue that by designing the preparatory stage in this way, Krishnamurti and the various mystical traditions alike hope to establish an inward empty space that emulates certain qualities of the ultimate reality and thus becomes attractive to it. For instance, the elimination of inner division through complete stillness mirrors the nature of the unitive state (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.3.10–11). If this stage is thoroughly pursued, one’s self becomes assimilated in the Godhead, just as ‘pure water poured into pure water becomes the very same’ (ibid., 2.1.15). Nonetheless, what seems to distinguish the conditions of Krishnamurti’s stage of choiceless awareness from those of classical mystical preparations is a complementary dimension of a revolutionary and dynamic spirit, occasionally described by Krishnamurti as the ‘flame of discontent’: a quality of great passion and intensity capable of deep instantaneous insight (Krishnamurti, quoted in Rodrigues 2001: 110–111). This added dimension turns Krishnamurti’s ideal state of mystical receptivity into a paradoxical one: intensely awake but utterly empty, rebellious but silent, dissatisfied but free of will. Burden (1959: 279) terms this ‘alert passivity’. However, this expression is too mild to capture the unusual nature of Krishnamurti’s preparatory stage, since it still corresponds to traditional descriptions of meditation as a balanced blend of alertness and stillness. We have a good reason to infer that there is a close causal connection between the unique characteristic of Krishnamurti’s method of question and negation and this particular aspect of his preparatory stage. The continuous doubting gradually builds towards a state which is motionless and stimulating at the same time. As Krishnamurti explains to his anonymous interlocutors at the end of a long and tortuous public dialogue, ‘the moment thought stops chewing its own tail, you’re full of energy’ (Krishnamurti 1967). Such an intense mind, he continues, has the power to dissolve all inner conflict and, with it, the sense of ‘I’ (ibid.) – a rather unwonted relation between increased energy and the state of non-self. This aspect of the preparatory stage is also engendered through Krishnamurti’s style of dialogue, which greatly differs from orthodox forms of transformative guidance and seems far closer

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in spirit to Socrates’ elenchus: it is impassioned and demanding, stormy and breathless, fast-moving and filled with interruptions and broken sentences. Nonetheless, the method itself cannot be the cause of this dimension of Krishnamurti’s preparatory stage: naturally, the method is preceded by a more fundamental world view that gives shape to it. One persistent element of Krishnamurti’s perception as a mystic and thinker, which may have contributed to the zestful nature of his inquiry and its resulting state of mind, is that, for him, reality and truth are not static, but a constant flux and an ever-new revelation (Burden 1959: 279; Mathur 1984: 95), hence his vehement resistance to all forms of final mystical achievements. Another possible factor enhancing the stormy character of both the method and the stage of preparation is the fact that Krishnamurti includes in his act of negation any traditional frame of reference within which the mind operates. One may suggest that tradition-based mystics tend to settle in the state of inner poverty while retaining the Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist contexts within which their practice is made meaningful. While not impossible, it is rare to find instances in which religious masters include the demand to renounce the tradition itself within their guidelines on the negative state of inner poverty. Furthermore, even after emerging from the practice, the traditional meditator does not usually disown their school or religion but rather returns to function in it. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Krishnamurti’s spirit of negation, which insists on disengaging the mind from any human-made structure, inherently contains a rebellious aspect and should produce revolutionary types of practice and preparatory stage.17 Yet there is a third and last factor which may have been responsible for this added fiery ingredient of Krishnamurti’s stage of preparation: his conviction that the attainment of liberating insight greatly depends on the individual’s degree of passion, since ‘insight is passion’, an event which is inherently imbued with immense energy (Kumar 2015: 153).

Third Stage: The Shift of Insight When one is choicelessly aware, Krishnamurti writes in his last journal, then ‘out of that comes insight’ (1987b: 73). Insight is like a flash of light, thunder, or a swift arrow: striking from outside the brain and the movement of time, its ‘absolute clarity’ deconditions the brain, ends thought and time-based perception, and finally changes the brain cells (ibid., 73–74). This sort of sudden enlightenment became increasingly prominent in Krishnamurti’s mature teachings, replacing the notion of self-learning and ongoing observation (Jayakar 1986: 388). With the emergence of the Krishnamurti dialogue in 1948, Krishnamurti seemed to have found the vehicle  Kumar identifies this revolutionary dimension in Krishnamurti’s approach to traditional methods: any freedom attained through existing systems of thought and practice is by nature a modified form of the same conditioned reality, and thus it may reform ‘what is’ but never transform it – on the contrary, it eventually becomes a stifling framework for the mind to function within (2015: 150–152). 17

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for the preparation of the mind for the arising of insight. Nevertheless, since insight has nothing to do with the step-by-step processes of learning and understanding, it may be indicated by the teacher as a tangible possibility, but can never be the product of the dialogue itself. Krishnamurti would often urge his discussants to seize the unique opportunity provided by the transformative dialogue, as he does, for instance, in the 1970 group discussion: ‘Do it now, sir! I am showing it to you!’ (1987b: 505). However, soon after, he seems content with concluding the session open-endedly – in this particular case, with a discussion of the hindrances to direct seeing (ibid., 506). In the simplest sense, insight in the Krishnamurti dialogue is an unobstructed realization of that which the dialogue points out. Bohm confirmed that while engaging in intense conversations with Krishnamurti, he could see ‘some of the things that Krishnamurti was talking about – some of them directly, and not secondhand’ (Peat 1997: 21), which indicates that Bohm experienced instances of insight. However, more precisely, insight is a ‘direct perception of what-is’ (Rodrigues 2001: 108), that is, a liberating perception of a negative reality. It is a penetrating seeing into the intricacies and subtleties of the thought process; the way human thought weaves its illusions. Whereas many would distinguish the instance of seeing from the way one should later act upon this seeing, for Krishnamurti, insight itself is a union of perception, action, and outcome (1987b: 73), or, put simply, a life-altering event.18 A holistic vision of the entire mechanism of the thought process seems to require that one should somehow settle in a space outside this mechanism. The question of the nature of this space had remained open in Krishnamurti’s discourse throughout the greater part of his teaching career. However, during the last decades of his life, Krishnamurti, inspired by his metaphysical discussions with Bohm, ceased to use the terms ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ interchangeably and began to suggest that the activity of insight takes place within the mind rather than the brain: the mind, situated outside the brain as it were, could operate on the brain and ultimately employ it for its own higher purposes (Maxwell 1994: 59). In the 1970 group discussion titled ‘Violence and the “Me”’, Krishnamurti demonstrates this distinction when he poses this transformative question: ‘So the mind now asks: is it possible to live without the “me”?’ (Krishnamurti 1987b: 503). Thus, the question becomes the mind’s own investigation. In this discussion, he seems to identify this differentiation as the crux of both the problem of and the solution to inherent human violence: one has to realize that the mind which observes the ‘entire map of violence’, which manifests as both inward and outward struggle and division, is ‘entirely different from the “me”

 Mathur (1984: 100) strongly criticizes Krishnamurti’s contention that awareness alone has the power to put an end to human suffering. He argues that becoming passively aware of a psychological problem can only be considered a first step, which should then be followed by more cerebral and intentional processes like analysis and understanding (ibid., 102). However, Mathur seems to overlook the fact that in most of Krishnamurti’s dialogues a great deal of attention is devoted to going into the roots of the problem prior to the preparatory stage of non-acting. Moreover, Mathur ignores the rich Hindu and Buddhist heritage of sudden enlightenment, which is compatible with Krishnamurti’s conception of insight. 18

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which sees it and is afraid to break from it’ (ibid., 504). In this pure observation, ‘which is not of the “me”’, lies the mind’s ability to awaken and to liberate the brain from its violent tendency (ibid., 505). What exactly the mind is – whether it is the ‘universal mind’, as Maxwell (1994: 59) and Rodrigues (2001: 190) suggest, or an individual, non-material apparatus untainted by thought – was never sufficiently elucidated by Krishnamurti. What is indisputable is the relation between the dialogue’s preparatory stage and the possibility of making this shift from brain to mind. One could say that the role of the preparatory stage is to prepare the ground for this type of leap by guiding the brain to a state which is utterly devoid of thought. As Rodrigues points out (ibid., 108), it is this freedom from thought that allows the flowering of insight within the mind and consequently, the mind’s capability to direct and organize the brain. In addition, the brain’s motionlessness creates a space for the mind’s unique type of seeing, which occurs only when linear perception and all familiar processes of understanding have come to a halt (Krishnamurti 1987a: 503, 506). The particular insight for which Krishnamurti’s preparatory stage makes one ready is a total one. Whereas the brain is capable of penetrating into the nature of individual phenomena, in a piecemeal fashion, the mind’s undivided vision does not have to go through the comprehension of the many different components of human suffering, such as fear, greed, and attachment to pleasure. As Krishnamurti explains to Bohm in their dialogue titled ‘Thought and Perception’, the total perception of the nature of thought as a whole instantly ‘clears the entire field’ (Krishnamurti 1999: 79). This action may be likened to cutting a tree at the roots instead of continuously chopping branches. However, Krishnamurti makes it clear that if we perceive the fundamental nature of thought, all the various fragments are illuminated as well (ibid.). This is also true the other way around: just as seeing the whole picture would enable one to know the ‘essence of all the pieces of the same holograph’, so too any fragment of reality, seen through the mind’s magnifying glass, can potentially reveal the entire universe created by thought and thereby be a source of total insight (Rodrigues 2001: 113). In both cases, Krishnamurti maintains, total insight has the power to dramatically affect – ‘transmute’, in his words – the brain cells. Krishnamurti does not justify this audacious claim and also seems quite uncertain about what this transmutation may entail in biological terms: when Bohm questions him on whether this would involve a new mode of action of the brain cells or the functioning of different brain cells altogether, Krishnamurti answers hesitantly, ‘I don’t know, I think it works differently’ (Krishnamurti 1999: 82). Nevertheless, he is confident that insight’s direct perception ‘penetrates the physical structure of the brain’, and that this comes as a shock to the brain, which is unaccustomed to this foreign intervention of the mind (ibid., 70–71). This implies that Krishnamurti’s ultimate aspiration in discourse is to set the conditions for the emergence of a brain activity of a different order.19  Sanat (1999: 62, 63–64) considers the notion that instantaneous insight could bring about a biological mutation, which transcends the conventional idea of a psycho-spiritual transformation, the centrepiece of Krishnamurti’s insights and observations. Accordingly, he goes to great lengths to 19

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While Krishnamurti’s speculation about the ability of insight to affect the brain cells may strike the reader as unintelligible, it should be noted that the principle of life- and mind-altering instantaneous insight has been prevalent in different Buddhist schools – so much so that the originality of Krishnamurti’s concept should be called into question. Rodrigues (2007: 91–92), who raises the possibility that Krishnamurti’s teachings should be regarded as a form of Buddhadharma (a non-traditional extension of the Buddha’s teachings), introduces this quotation from The Awakening of Faith, a Chinese summary of the central ideas of Mahāyāna Buddhism: [Those] who have fulfilled the expedient means will experience the oneness in an instant; they will become aware of how the inceptions of mind arise, and will be free from the rise of any thought. Since they are far away from even subtle thoughts, they are able to have an insight into the original nature of Mind.

This brief excerpt alone indicates that major Buddhist streams have conveyed the principle of instant realization of reality, which derives from the cessation of mental activity and which includes awareness of the roots of thought, as well as insight into the primordial nature of Mind. Wong (1998: 9) argues that the 8400 paths allegedly transmitted by the Buddha may be categorized into the two central approaches of the gradual path and sudden enlightenment. While advocates of the gradual path side with the scriptural notion of an enlightenment which can only be fulfilled by means of practice over countless lifetimes (ibid., 10), practitioners of sudden enlightenment, such as adepts and aspirants of Chán Buddhism, derive their inspiration from classical statements like the Brahmajāla Sūtra’s, according to which ‘all sentient beings possess the Buddha nature’: what in the way of gradual enlightenment is interpreted as ‘I can become Buddha’ may also be radically construed as ‘I am Buddha’, the implication of which is that the mind is innately spotless and requires no process of purification (ibid., 9–10, 17). Zug (1967: 83–84) illuminates the same Buddhist principle of sudden realization through the vivid example of Zen’s ultimate state of satori, in which the novice attains insight into their true nature, thus leaping from intellectual and second-hand apprehension – the equivalent of ‘thought’, in Krishnamurti’s terminology – to intuitive and immediate knowledge of reality. Furthermore, Krishnamurti’s concept of total insight, which is capable of swiftly clearing the entire field of thought, can be recognized in classical texts such as Tilopa’s Mahāmudrā Upadeśa: ‘A tree grows with trunk, branches, and foliage. If its single root is cut, the hundreds of thousands of branches will dry up. Likewise, if the root of mind is cut, the foliage of samsara will dry up’ (Nyenpa 2014: 11). It may be argued that insight in Buddhist traditions is a positive recognition of the inherent Buddha-nature of one’s mind, whereas Krishnamurti’s insight exclusively involves the perception of the negative. Nevertheless, sudden realization is the unyielding comprehension of all illusory constructs, which, in its wake, lifts the veils enwrapping the positive ultimate reality. To use the language of The Awakening ground Krishnamurti’s suggestion in a biological context, an effort for which he finds support in Bohm’s validation of the possibility of brain mutation (ibid., 65–66, 71).

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of Faith, the awareness of the way that the ‘inceptions of mind arise’ ultimately reveals Mind’s original nature. On the other hand, insight as the foundation for a positive discovery can also be found in the subtle structure of the Krishnamurti dialogue. Krishnamurti conveys this delicate connection in his 1981 dialogue with Pupul Jayakar: Can I have insight, the depth of insight into the movement of knowledge so that the insight stops the movement? Not I who stop the movement nor the brain that stops the movement. In that is the ending of knowledge and the beginning of something else. So I am concerned only with the ending of knowledge, consciously, deeply. There is this enormous feeling that comes of oneness, a harmonious unity. (Jayakar 1986: 420)

If the inquirer concerns themselves solely with the comprehension of the movement of knowledge, this negative concern could stir a profound insight within the mind that instantly ‘stops the movement’. But the ending of knowledge also means the ‘beginning of something else’, which is positive by nature: an enormous feeling of oneness. This description captures the entire rationale behind Krishnamurti’s method: the preparatory stage sets the conditions for a liberating negative insight, which can never take place by means of one’s own volition, since it does not arise as a product of thought. What remains after the thunder of insight has faded away is the absolute reality, unmediated and bare.20 The remaining part of this chapter will be devoted to exploring the nature of this reality.

Fourth Stage: The Ultimate State The five dialogues I have sampled reflect well Krishnamurti’s general tendency to refer to the positive ultimate state sparingly, and usually just before the end of the discussion. His choice to affirm the positive as the final step of the discourse should not be understood as a mere rhetorical means, devised to allow a relief from the condensed negative observation or to retain the hearer’s hope for a ‘promised land’. As previously pointed out, while Krishnamurti identifies a direct connection between his method of question and negation and the resulting preparatory stage, he is adamant that there can be no cause-and-effect relation between the character of his method and preparatory stage, on the one hand, and the transcendent stages of insight and ultimate reality, on the other. He therefore sees no point in directing the discussants’ attention to an inherently unachievable positive state. Even more subtly, elaborating on the ultimate state might provide materials for the formation of new images in the hearer’s brain. This would lead to further conditioning and consequently inhibit the individual’s ability to settle in the preparatory stage of wide open, choiceless awareness. Since the preparatory stage is the only realistic goal of

 This interrelation between insight and the ultimate state is captured by Hunter, who remarks: ‘Insight into the human condition could lead to some sort of relationship with a transcendent dimension’ (1988: 75–76). 20

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the dialogue, any positive discussion would be self-defeating. These profound considerations play a major part in Krishnamurti’s choice to deploy either poetic or negative adjectives, such as the ‘unnameable’ or the ‘immeasurably sacred’ (Anderson and Krishnamurti 1991: 262–263), to capture the absolute reality, even when he finally affords descriptive glimpses of this reality. Another reason is more universal: mystics of all ages have tended to puzzle epistemologists by insisting on the ‘ineffability’ of their (lengthily described) religious experiences (Blackwood 1963: 201).21 Clearly, what distinguishes the Krishnamurti dialogue from other types of traditional discourse is its method of question and negation, as well as the unique dimension of passionate and revolutionary spirit added to its preparatory stage. But since these preliminary stages are intended to facilitate the two advanced stages, yet are causally unrelated to them, they have no bearing on the nature of the ultimate discovery which may or may not take place. Thus, the more we turn our attention to Krishnamurti’s insight and final metaphysical realization, the more we find that his uniqueness grows significantly vaguer and that his religious experiences fall within the scope of classical mystical descriptions. If this is so, why would Krishnamurti consider all other religious and mystical paths fundamentally misguided and insist on isolating his teachings from theirs? What Krishnamurti attacks is not the ultimate reality pointed at by religions and mystical schools but rather the illusory paths which claim to lead to it. His teachings acknowledge what he deems the essence of religion, since for him, as Hunter (1988: 77) puts it, ‘religion is the capacity of experiencing directly that which is immeasurable’.22 Nevertheless, the paths designed by religions are still a continuation of world and thought: they constrain the perception of their adherents by entrapping them inside boxes of mental images instead of facilitating the mind’s own ability to come into contact with the vastness outside these boxes. Thus, Krishnamurti departs from all these systems in his choice to make the negation of the path-principle his technique for reaching the very same ultimate state.23 Although Krishnamurti’s mature discourse refrains from any familiar religious and mystical vocabulary, the descriptions of his form of metaphysical enlightenment are easily recognizable: a shift in awareness, in which the personal consciousness has been dissolved as if it had never been and the private mind has become irreversibly adsorbed in the universal or primordial mind, operating from then on as an inseparable part of the whole. In his 1981 dialogue with Pupul Jayakar,

 Krishnamurti himself explicates this choice when saying: ‘You want me to tell you what reality is. Can the indescribable be put into words? Can you measure something immeasurable? Can you catch the wind in your fist?’ (Krishnamurti, quoted in Burden 1959: 278). 22  This shared essence of religion was recognized by the 32-year-old Krishnamurti in 1927, when he openly proclaimed that ‘Into that Life the Buddha, the Christ have entered … I have entered into that Life’ (Lutyens 1997: 261). 23  As I will demonstrate in Chap. 11, this includes a departure from the ‘sudden awakening’ schools of Buddhism, since in Krishnamurti’s view, even these seemingly pathless awakenings occur in and refer to a traditional framework. 21

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Krishnamurti chooses to describe the ultimate reality as the ‘ground from which everything originates’ (Jayakar 1986: 416, 423)  – a term embraced by the aged Krishnamurti to capture an all-supporting reality which transcends both the manifest universe and the universal mind (Maxwell 1994: 59). Krishnamurti makes it clear to Jayakar that the only way this ‘ground’ or ‘eternal beginning’ may be uncovered in meditation is by the disappearance of the meditator (Jayakar 1986: 423). This self-dissolution reveals an uninterrupted state of meditation in which the universe itself is immersed, and which takes place independently of human awareness (ibid.). Once again, we are reminded of the direct interrelation between insight and the ultimate state: when the illusion of self comes to an end, this state of meditation naturally arises.24 And when this genuine meditative state arises, one has experientially resolved the question of the nature of God (ibid., 424). Krishnamurti’s ‘ground’ is comparable to a type of revelation which is available within the range of what Richard H. Jones classifies as ‘introvertive mystical experiences’: ‘an inner wellspring of reality lying outside the realm of time and change that grounds either phenomenal consciousness or all of the phenomenal realm’ (Jones 2016: 20). Furthermore, the notion of self-dissolution as a condition for divine awareness is prevalent among mystics of all traditions. These mystical experiences, Jones usefully observes, are distinguished from ‘numinous’ experiences in that they do not involve a ‘reality distinct from the experiencer’ (ibid., 4). While Burden (1959: 278) relates Krishnamurti’s insistence on the non-separability of subject and object to his ‘Eastern background’, Jones identifies this condition of the absence of self-consciousness as the foundation for God-knowing in Christian mystics, like Meister Eckhart, as well: there should be ‘no self, no subject or object, and no sense of ownership’ (Jones 2016: 22). Thus, by resolving the misconception of oneself as an independent, self-contained entity, mystics claim to undergo a resulting direct experience of the ‘bare being-in-itself’ (ibid., 8, 12). This insight into the unreality of self may finally lead to what Jones regards as ‘depth-mystical experience’, in which the activity of self and self-will have been stilled to a degree that one’s experience has become freed of all mental differentiations, leaving one awake but in a state of pure beingness (ibid., 21–22). This is what is often termed a ‘pure consciousness event’: in Forman’s (1986: 49) definition, the subject is conscious but with no object for consciousness, not even the sense of experiencing anything. Krishnamurti delineates this internal event precisely in his 1975 dialogue with Bohm, ‘Thought and Perception’, when he outlines a condition in which the mind is devoid of thoughts (unless functionally necessary) and free of the sense of centre, or an experiencing ‘me’ (Krishnamurti 1999: 72–73, 76). In the absence of thought, Krishnamurti concludes, there can be no consciousness, or, put differently, ‘consciousness must be something quite different’ (ibid., 81–82). Indeed, reviewed in positive terms, this event of ‘contentless awareness’ may lead

 This condition constitutes the core of Krishnamurti’s credo as a teacher: ‘The teaching says, “Where you are the other is not”’ (Jayakar 1986: 310). 24

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the mystic to infer that the mind, rather than being empty, has been occupied by pure, all-pervading consciousness (Jones 2016: 22). Nonetheless, mystical enlightenment would take place when one’s transformation involves not an isolated non-experience experience, but the ending of the sense of an individual ego as a way of life: a psychological and epistemic change and a subsequent living in accordance with reality (Jones 2016: 26). Krishnamurti emphasizes this mystical way of life in his group discussion with peers in 1970, titled ‘Violence and the “Me”’: living without the ‘me’ implies having ‘no conflict, no dualistic activity within oneself, no resistance, no opposition, no ambition to be somebody’; one must become ‘free of all irritation, all anger, [and] any form of anxiety’ (Krishnamurti 1987b: 492–493). Since Krishnamurti’s conception of insight and the ultimate state is strikingly compatible with accounts of other mystics throughout history, even his most fervent methodological negation of all traditional views cannot make him immune to comparative study – especially involving South Asian philosophies and practices. For instance, scholars like Mathur (1984: 98) and Rodrigues (2001: 182–184) have drawn a comparison between Krishnamurti’s notion of the ‘ground’ and the concept of Brahman in Śaṅkara’s school of Vedānta, which is the ground (adhiṣṭhāna) of phenomenal appearances, ultimately transcending all attributes (nirguṇa brahman). Moreover, Krishnamurti’s understanding of meditation, as described above, is congruent with the Vedāntic nirvikalpa samādhi, a state which ends any subject/object distinction and leads to the absorption of self (ātman) in Brahman’s infinite light (Rodrigues 2001: 182–184). However, all scholars seem to be in agreement that in the end, Krishnamurti’s insight and ultimate state are closer to pure Buddhism than to anything else (Burden 1959: 280).25 This view is strongly affirmed by the five sample dialogues, which avoid any constructive language in relation to the self, thus distancing themselves from the Hindu notion of ātman. The discussions solely revolve around the negative realization that the ‘me’ is nothing but a creation of thought; thought’s attempt to deny its temporariness by fixing a permanent reality of its own (Krishnamurti 1999: 76). Since the act of insight itself is a centreless or selfless perception of the unreality of the self, one can say that a major purpose of the Krishnamurti dialogue is the revelation of the reality of non-self and the attainment of a mind which is no longer occupied with the ‘me’ (Krishnamurti 1987b: 501). Clearly, this focal point of the dialogue is in line with the Buddhist concept of anātman as a key to the ending of suffering.

 We have substantive biographical evidence that Krishnamurti felt an exceptional affinity with Gautama Buddha and with Buddhism at large. Krishnamurti compared his life’s work to the Buddha’s (e.g. Jayakar 1986: 387; Sanat 1999: 207; Rodrigues 2007: 86). He was also profoundly affected by reading the Buddha’s Way of Virtue, admitted that everything worth saying had already been said, particularly by the Buddha, and spoke affectionately of the Buddha and Buddhist teachings in private meetings (Hunter 1988: 86, 90, 91) – yet another confirmation that his all-negating public discourse and dialogue were methodological rather than metaphysical. 25

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Inspired by this similarity, a great many scholars have attempted to identify Buddhist notions and practices in Krishnamurti’s discourse. Some, like Burden (1959) and Maxwell (1994), have argued that although Krishnamurti seems to generally echo fundamental Buddhist themes such as awareness, impermanence, anātman, emptiness, and compassion, he should be classified more specifically as a transmitter of a type of radical Zen (Maxwell 1994: 62–63). However, in the context of our discussion, which distinguishes goal from method, it becomes clear that what these writers really mean is that Krishnamurti’s style and technique of discourse – that is, his method of question and negation and his form of preparatory stage – are akin to the iconoclastic, non-dogmatic, and non-conformist attitude of Zen. Indeed, both approaches evade categorization, object to rituals, insist on unmediated encounter between the individual and ultimate reality, reject the religious ideal of becoming someone else, and prefer direct knowledge of oneself which removes the ‘creator of all problems’ within us and, at the same time, makes one aware of what one naturally is (Burden 1959: 280).26 But could we say that the ultimate state at which Krishnamurti points is also closer to the Buddhist conception of final attainment than the Advaita Vedānta conception? Rodrigues (2001: 183–184) suggests that Krishnamurti departs from Śaṅkara’s perception of the Absolute in that Śaṅkara seems to depict Brahman as pure being, whereas Krishnamurti’s ‘Ground’ strives to convey a non-being, or a ‘creative movement in emptiness’, rather than a ‘supreme, static entity’. This focus on non-being, Rodrigues hypothesizes, may take Krishnamurti closer to the Buddhist emphasis on non-self-existence (ibid.). But even Rodrigues admits that in the end, it is not so easy to distinguish between nirguṇa brahman and the Buddha’s śūnyatā, or emptiness (ibid.). In addition, it is difficult to substantiate the claim that Krishnamurti’s ultimate state is indeed a unique vision of creative emptiness which deviates from the more recognizable mystical Absolute, especially when we consider statements about the final realization made by Krishnamurti, such as the one uttered in a dialogue with Jayakar: ‘There is only being and beginning’ (Jayakar 1986: 396).27 On the other hand, the last phase of Krishnamurti’s teachings, in which he introduced the mind as a metaphysical entity existing separately from the brain, does bear resemblance to the doctrine of the pure, unborn, and imperishable mind presented by Yogācāra Buddhism. Like Krishnamurti, this tradition asserts that ‘when ignorance stops, through insight, all that remains is Mind’ (ibid., 189–191).  Nevertheless, we should not lose sight of the fact that Zen is a traditional framework with its own hierarchy and rituals, steady practices, and recognizable stages of attainment (e.g. Heine and Wright 2007). Thus, the similarity advanced by Burden and Maxwell may be more carefully identified in the phenomenon termed ‘Protestant Buddhism’: a style of Buddhism that emphasizes individual experience as opposed to subservience to the monastic Sangha (Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1990). 27  Mathur (1984: 97) also dedicates a great deal of attention to Krishnamurti’s concept of ‘creative emptiness’, as if it were a vision of the ultimate reality. However, the only quotation he presents as evidence indicates that when Krishnamurti refers to ‘creativeness’, he speaks of ‘a state in which the self is absent’, which implies a way of being in the world. Krishnamurti conveys a similar idea in his dialogue with Anderson (1991: 262). 26

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Any attempt to pin down Krishnamurti’s ultimate state only becomes more complicated the more we include in our study materials written directly by Krishnamurti, dialogues with close students, private discussions, and letters to friends. Maxwell (1994: 73) points out that in discourse, Krishnamurti generally adheres to the principle of negation, employing positive religious terms only occasionally and elusively, but in his personal accounts, such as his notebooks and journals, these terms are found more frequently. This, again, confirms the methodological (rather than metaphysical) nature of his discourse. Thus, the more we delve into Krishnamurti’s private world, the more we can identify a terminology which seems to move away from the strictly non-dualistic language of his public discourse.28 We may find, for instance, expressions of what Jones (2016: 5–6) considers the other class of mystical experiences, which he terms ‘extrovertive mystical experiences’, or nature mysticism: a sense of ‘unity with the flux of impermanent phenomena’, involving a ‘passive receptivity to what is presented in sensory events’ and a recognition of a ‘transcendent reality immanent in nature’ (ibid., 12–13).29 Similarly, there are instances in which Krishnamurti seems to prefer a more complex metaphysics that unifies spiritual and material, infinite and finite, immanence and the transcendent, without blurring these distinctions (Burden 1959: 280). We may also observe with bewilderment occasions on which Krishnamurti sounds more like a Christian mystic than a nondualistic Vedāntin or Buddhist, to a degree that the possibility of Western influences may be raised.30 In such cases he employs a religiously dualistic vocabulary, for instance regarding the need to open the door to a ‘holy ghost’ in order to receive ‘benediction’ (Jayakar 1986: 386), being in communion with the ‘other’ (Sanat 1999: 203), or all-transcendent love (on which he puts a great deal of emphasis). Despite all that, we should remember that the exploration of the exact nature of the ultimate state or its direct experience are not the goal of the Krishnamurti dialogue. What concerns Krishnamurti is whether he can lead his discussants to the preparatory stage, which is the vibrant quality of mind produced by the process of question and negation. This is summarized well by Krishnamurti towards the end of his dialogue with Anderson: Therefore one asks, when the mind is utterly silent, what is the immeasurable, what is the everlasting, what is the eternal? Not in terms of God and all the things man has invented. Actually to be that. Now silence in that deep sense of the word opens the door. Because there you’ve got all your energy, not a thing is wasted, there is no dissipation of energy at all. Therefore in that silence there is the summation of energy. (Anderson and Krishnamurti 1991: 263)  This certainly challenges Renée Weber’s conclusion that Krishnamurti is completely invested in the transcendent face of reality and that he represents a form of mysticism interested in nothing but ultimate union (Hunter 1988: 79). 29  Jones classifies both Krishnamurti’s choiceless awareness and Buddhist mindfulness into the group of extrovertive mystical experiences, since both aspire to establish a state of ‘bare attention’ – receiving the constant flux of the sensory world without choice, categorizing reaction, or fragmentation (2016: 14–15, 17–18). 30  Especially when we consider the fact that it was the theologian Paul Tillich (2015) who popularized the phrase ‘Ground of Being’. 28

References

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References Anderson, Allan W., and J. Krishnamurti. 1991. A Wholly Different Way of Living. London: Viktor Gollancz. Blackwood, R.T. 1963. Neti, Neti: Epistemological Problems of Mystical Experience. Philosophy East and West 13 (3): 201–209. Burden, Jean. 1959. Krishnamurti and The Pathless Land. Prairie Schooner 33 (3): 271–281. Easwaran, Eknath. 2007. Introduction. In The Upanishads. Trans. Eknath Easwaran, 13–47, 63–67. Tomales: Nilgiri Press. Forman, Robert. 1986. Pure Consciousness Events and Mysticism. Sophia 25: 49–58. Gombrich, Richard, and Gananath Obeyesekere. 1990. Buddhism Transformed. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Heine, Steven, and Dale S.  Wright, eds. 2007. Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Horgan, John. 2018. David Bohm, Quantum Mechanics and Enlightenment. Scientific American, July 23. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-­check/ david-­bohm-­quantum-­mechanics-­and-­enlightenment/ Hunter, Alan. 1988. Seeds of Truth: J.  Krishnamurti as Religious Teacher and Educator. PhD Dissertation, University of Leeds. Islam, Merina. 2016. J Krishnamurti’s Insight on Meditation. Tattva – Journal of Philosophy 8 (1): 19–26. https://doi.org/10.12726/tjp.15.2. Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. n.d. e. 4th Public Dialogue  – 5th August 1967 [online]. jkrishnamurti. org. https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/4th-­public-­dialogue-­5th-­august-­1967. Accessed 17 June 2022. ———. 1987a. Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal. San Francisco: Harper & Row. ———. 1987b. The Awakening of Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1996a. Total Freedom. New York: HarperCollins. ———. 1996b. Questioning Krishnamurti: J. Krishnamurti in Dialogue: Dialogues with Leading 20th Century Thinkers. San Francisco: Thorsons. ———. 1999. The Limits of Thought: J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm. New York: Routledge. Krishnananda, Swami. 2011. Commentary on the Katha Upanishad. Rishikesh: The Divine Life Society, Sivananda Ashram. Kumar, Kesava. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution. Delhi: Kalpaz. Lutyens, Mary J. 1997. Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening. Berkeley: Shambhala. Mathur, Dinesh Chandra. 1984. J. Krishnamurti on Choiceless Awareness, Creative Emptiness and Ultimate Freedom. Diogenes 32 (126): 91–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/039219218403212606. Maxwell, Patrick. 1994. The Enigma of Krishnamurti. Journal for the Study of Religion 7 (2): 57–81. Mehta, Rohit. 1979. J. Krishnamurti and the Nameless Experience: A Comprehensive Discussion of J. Krishnamurti’s Approach to Life. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Nyenpa, Sangyes. 2014. Tilopa’s Mahamudra Upadesha: The Gangama Instructions with Commentary. Ithaca: Snow Lion. Peat, David F. 1997. Look for Truth – No Matter Where It Takes You. What Is Enlightenment? 6 (1): 17–29. Available at: https://s3.eu-­central-­1.amazonaws.com/wieoldissues/wie_en_weboptimized/EN_issue_11.pdf. Accessed 10 Oct 2022. Raju, Poola T. 1954. The Principle of Four-Cornered Negation in Indian Philosophy. The Review of Metaphysics 7 (4): 694–713. Rodrigues, Hillary. 2001. Krishnamurti’s Insight. Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing. ———. 2007. An Instance of Dependent Origination: Are Krishnamurti’s Teachings Buddhadharma? Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies 3 (9): 85–102.

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Sanat, Ariel. 1999. The Inner Life of Krishnamurti. Wheaton: Quest. Shringy, Ravindra Kumar. 1977. Philosophy of J. Krishnamurti: A Systematic Study. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Suzuki, Daisetsu Teitataro. 1994. The Zen Koan as a Means of Attaining Enlightenment. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle. Tillich, Paul. 2015. Ground of Being. Selma: Mindvendor. Wong, Ngai. 1998. The Gradual and Sudden Paths of Tibetan and Chan Buddhism: A Pedagogical Perspective. Journal of Thought 33 (2): 9–23. Zug, Charles G. 1967. The Nonrational Riddle: The Zen Koan. The Journal of American Folklore 80 (315): 81–88.

Chapter 9

‘Come and Join Me’: Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Scholars

Krishnamurti and many great intellectuals of his time felt drawn to one another and considered it meaningful not only to engage in dialogue but also to carefully record a large number of their discussions. This does not mean that Krishnamurti was exclusively interested in conducting dialogues with scholars. As demonstrated in Chaps. 6 and 7, his teaching as a whole was, essentially, as dialogical as Socrates’, and from 1948 onwards a more explicit dialogue form branched out from it. The hundreds of recorded and often transcribed dialogues in which Krishnamurti participated included many significant discussions with scientists, philosophers, theologians, and psychologists, but also conversations with religious leaders and thinkers (such as the Hindu Venkatesananda Saraswati and the Buddhists Chögyam Trungpa and Walpola Rahula), as well as journalists and literary authors, teachers and schoolchildren, and his own direct students. Thus, his dialogue with academics was but one expression of a far broader interest in the very act of dialogue and its potential transformative value. Nonetheless, it is hard to think of another religious figure who similarly attracted the attention of prominent twentieth-century intellectuals (Needleman 1970: 165) – with the exception of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, though he is not an independent mystic but a major political and religious leader. In this chapter, I seek to investigate this meeting point between Krishnamurti and prominent intellectuals, starting with Krishnamurti’s approach to the academic mind and the potential sources of this mutual interest. The Krishnamurti–scholars dialogue involves a kind of mutually informing critical comparison: certain aspects of Krishnamurti’s ideas and presentation are brought more sharply into view when they are analysed in the light of the academic way of thinking, and the academic position is illuminated – and some of its limitations are exposed – when it is brought into dialogue with Krishnamurti’s challenge. What was the common ground between the two sides? How did the two enrich each other’s world views and how did they provoke one another? And also, in what way did the Krishnamurti dialogue manifest in this type of scholar–mystic interaction? © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_9

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Since this is a philosophical study, I shall focus my analysis in the second and third sections on conversations with philosophers. I have deliberately selected dialogues with two highly established philosophers  – Iris Murdoch and Jacob Needleman – who were also expressly interested in the nature of mystical realization and had also had prior meditative experience (but neither of them was Krishnamurti’s follower). This combined interest enabled Murdoch and Needleman to bring together the academic and the mystical worlds in their discussions with Krishnamurti. The analyses of these dialogues, one after another, are particularly fruitful since the two dialogues are, in a way, opposites. The first, between Krishnamurti and Murdoch, is what I shall call a ‘failed’ dialogue, one that is filled with misunderstandings and is very far from the ideal of the Krishnamurti dialogue in the sense that it is not transformative by nature. However, the dialogue is extremely revealing in that it highlights the differences between the academic model of critical thinking and Krishnamurti’s processes of inquiry. The second (though chronologically the first) discussion, between Krishnamurti and Needleman, is what can be regarded, in the context of the Krishnamurti dialogue, as a ‘realized’ dialogue, largely owing to Needleman’s readiness to follow Krishnamurti’s flow of inquiry even at the expense of intellectual clarity. After these extensive analyses, I will draw general conclusions which will also derive from other dialogues. These communications, I shall demonstrate, substantiate and develop my conclusion in Chap. 7 that contrary to the common view, Krishnamurti was far more interested in designing a mystically oriented transformative method for the fulfilment of the state of non-self than in making any metaphysically or ethically meaningful statements.

Krishnamurti and the Life of the Mind Krishnamurti’s conflicted and arduous personal relationship with academic studies is well documented. He had felt an aversion towards book learning as early as his first years at school and had been, in fact, so dreamy as to be considered mentally undeveloped by his exasperated teachers (Lutyens 1997: 4, 22; Jayakar 1986: 18). To this disposition, we should add an unsettled lifestyle due to his father’s frequent employment relocations and Krishnamurti’s disease-stricken body, both of which contributed to his falling far behind the other schoolchildren (Lutyens 1997: 4). In later years, after Krishnamurti and his younger brother, Nitya, were transferred to England by the Theosophists, they were expected by their legal guardian, Annie Besant, to advance to higher education, preferably at Oxford or Cambridge. Whereas Nitya demonstrated sharp intellectual skills, Krishnamurti struggled with what their tutor described as an inability to ‘express his thoughts readily’ (Lutyens 1997: 102). ‘My difficulty at present’, the desperate Krishnamurti wrote to Besant in 1916, ‘is that my brain … is not very developed’ (ibid., 97). He would study for days on end, eager to please his ‘mother’, but, when faced with an actual entrance examination, he would leave a blank paper (Jayakar 1986: 41–42). Eventually, both Besant and he abandoned the idea: even if there were a faint chance of him being granted an interview by any of the elite colleges, more than a few rejected his

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application on the spot in view of his reputation as the ‘brown Messiah’ (Lutyens 1997: 100; Jayakar 1986: 41–42). We have good reason to surmise that Krishnamurti’s childhood clashes with his schoolteachers and later struggles with academic studies prompted him to develop his alternative educational vision. When he was just 17 years old, he authored, supported by George Arundale, the small book Education as Service (1912), outlining the ideal school, a space governed by love and run by teachers guided by the noblest aspirations (Lutyens 1997: 59). In later years, he would found several schools whose focal point was the student’s and the teacher’s self-observation (Needleman 1970: 176–179).1 We cannot judge with certainty what the determining factor was that hindered Krishnamurti’s academic path: his inborn resistance to this form of thinking, a lack of cerebral skills, or a blend of both. Nevertheless, even as a fully developed mystic and thinker, Krishnamurti vehemently refused to regard intellectual studies as anything more than a futile effort that keeps one away from the attainment of true liberating insight. As he told an educator from one of his schools: ‘Study. But you know at the end of forty years, you are where you are, right?’ (Jayakar 1986: 390). This is not to say that Krishnamurti encouraged his discussants to renounce their intellectual faculties – he actually considered these instrumental in the realization of ‘immediate perception’ (ibid., 470). What he rejected was the relevance of the thinking mind to the field of mystical or religious understanding; in this field, Krishnamurti felt, one’s obsession with ideas and the history of human thought could only undermine the process of inner exploration. Thus, when approached by scholars who identified similarities between his teachings and other systems of thought, he resented their comparative and analytic approach, insisting instead on introducing his ideas outside of any familiar theoretical context (Rodrigues 2001: 29–30, 200). Moreover, he vocally expressed his reservations about the possibility of having his work systemized within the academic framework (ibid., 195–196). This implies that even if scholars did undertake the task of translating Krishnamurti’s thought into a more conventional academic presentation – by mending its inconsistencies and incomplete or contradictory statements – one could justifiably question the validity of contributing to a process that Krishnamurti himself was so strongly opposed to (ibid.). In light of all this, it may come as a surprise that Krishnamurti and many pre-­ eminent thinkers considered it productive to engage in dialogue. Krishnamurti’s first, albeit undocumented meaningful contact with a major intellectual was his dialogues with Aldous Huxley during the 1940s. The two became close friends and went for long walks in and around Los Angeles (Jayakar 1986: 91). Huxley was baffled and intrigued by Krishnamurti’s mind, which derived its strength not from knowledge but from perception born of silence, and lamented that his own information-­laden mind was incapable of accessing such direct perception. Just before his death in 1961, having heard Krishnamurti speak in Saanen, Switzerland,

 See also Hunter’s unpublished doctoral dissertation (1988), which examines Krishnamurti as an educator. 1

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Huxley was awestruck by Krishnamurti’s uncompromising negation of all ‘escapes and surrogates’ and likened his experience to listening to a discourse of the Buddha (ibid., 92). But the majority of Krishnamurti’s discussions with scholars and thinkers took place much later, from the late 1960s onwards, and grew in number and intensity the more Krishnamurti became known and his teachings crystallized. These conversations were often filmed or taped professionally, with the intention to disseminate them publicly, and indeed they all now appear freely online. Among the academics involved, we can find professor of religious studies Huston Smith (Krishnamurti 2014a),2 philosopher Jacob Needleman (Krishnamurti 2018), biologist Rupert Sheldrake (Krishnamurti 2014f), psychoanalyst David Shainberg (Krishnamurti 2017a), medical researcher Jonas Salk (Krishnamurti 2014k), and novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch (Krishnamurti 2016b). We know that some of the communications were initiated by Krishnamurti himself or his direct disciples,3 whereas others were presented by the scholars not as dialogues per se but as their own wish to ‘interview’ him.4 However, Krishnamurti also had long-term exchanges with scholars: the theologian Allan W. Anderson, whose dialogues with Krishnamurti were compiled in the book A Wholly Different Way of Living, and, most famously, the physicist David Bohm, whose far-reaching conversations with Krishnamurti were conducted between the years 1965 and 1983 and gathered into four books.5 When Krishnamurti was once privately asked how he could engage in dialogues with scientifically oriented minds, as someone who lacked proper academic training and was hardly knowledgeable in any of these fields, his answer was that he was able to invoke a ‘Buddha consciousness’ that made it possible for him to ‘see through another’ and communicate with them at their own level of understanding (Williams 2015: 673). Nevertheless, while some of the discussions reflect a high degree of mutual understanding, others seem to be filled with subtle clashes and confusions. What was it that these significant intellectuals found in Krishnamurti in light of the facts that his line of thought did not obey any academic standards and their  Forty-two years after his interview experience with Krishnamurti, Smith (Krishnamurti 2010) described it negatively as ‘disconcerting … like he [Krishnamurti] was trying to throw me off balance’. He said that he ‘had no idea where that guy’s head was’ and that when people suggested that Krishnamurti was not ‘conversing with you’ but ‘really working on you’, he responded that if this had been the case, ‘I don’t think he succeeded in changing me’. This can be explained, as I shall show later in this chapter, as Krishnamurti’s attempt to realize the Krishnamurti dialogue with Smith. 3  See, for example, Anderson (2012: xvi, 13). 4  See, for example, Krishnamurti (1996b: 99); Krishnamurti 2014a; Needleman (1971). 5  On meeting Krishnamurti, Bohm felt his ‘intense energy’ as a listener and his ‘freedom from selfprotective reservations’ and later compared Krishnamurti to Einstein ‘in his ability to explore deeply in a spirit of impersonal friendship’ (Williams 2015: 699–700). However, as Sheldrake, who was friends with both Krishnamurti and Bohm, remarks, in the end Bohm ‘fell out with [Krishnamurti]’ (personal communication, 26 January 2021). See also Rodrigues (2001: 165), who describes how Bohm confided his ‘concerns about Krishnamurti’s conditioning’ to a friend, in four different letters. 2

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conversations with him left most of them philosophically dissatisfied? While Krishnamurti vehemently refused to partake in the academic project of constructive and accumulative thinking, his disposition as a speaker and discusser was by nature intellectual and rational, not only in its vocabulary and style but also in its insistence on a step-by-step shared inquiry as the only path leading to truth. This careful and responsible form of presentation noticeably set him apart from other mystics and spiritual leaders and positioned him somewhere on the borderline between philosophy and mysticism – a status which was as confusing as it was enticing. Thus, by his presence, Krishnamurti seemed to enable these thinkers to pursue their yearning for philosophy as transformation, or, to borrow Hadot’s term, philosophy as a way of life. Troxell and Snyder (1976: 148–149) put it well when suggesting that ‘Krishnamurti may lead philosophers away from reliance on abstract thought to greater concern for direct awareness of ourselves in the world’. For instance, one can say that higher education teaches us how to apply thought but not how to observe thought arising or study internal mental processes (Rodrigues 2001: 157). Returning briefly to Hadot, we should recall that the barriers separating philosophy from the now mystically oriented processes of self-transformation were not so starkly marked when the project of philosophy was first conceived in classical Greece and classical India. Thus, it is possible that Krishnamurti filled a gap for these thinkers by helping them to recover certain vital components that might have been neglected by modern Western philosophy. To this point, however, we should add another factor that contributed to Krishnamurti’s attractiveness: his impassioned negation of all belief systems and, in fact, of the very need to believe in order to attain mystical revelation. This led rationalists to identify Krishnamurti as a reliable guide to the realm of the spirit and to sometimes even conclude (quite wrongly) that, in Bohm’s words, Krishnamurti’s work was ‘permeated by the essence of the scientific approach, in its highest and purest form’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: i).6 Biologist Rupert Sheldrake (personal interview, 26 January 2021), who engaged in three recorded dialogues with Krishnamurti in 1982, confirms that this was a main source of attraction for sophisticated people such as philosophers and other academics. He points out that Krishnamurti ‘was operating at a time when there was at least in the West a very widespread scepticism about religion’, particularly among leading intellectuals who expressed a ‘scornful dismissal of all religions as rooted in superstitions’. Krishnamurti, Sheldrake observes, emerged in this climate as a ‘kind of sanitized version of Eastern spirituality’, completely modern and beyond all traditional categories, offering a spirituality without religion and appealing to people to deal with the most basic feature of their existence, namely consciousness.7 Sheldrake concludes that Krishnamurti represented for the intelligentsia the alluring idea that one can simply ‘go to the absolute

 As shown in Chap. 7, Krishnamurti himself adopted this view, according to which his form of inquiry was close in spirit to the scientific approach (1996a: 234). 7  Sheldrake goes on to suggest that Krishnamurti was a pioneer in the spiritual-but-not-religious world movement. 6

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essence without all that unnecessary study’ and that by getting rid of all this baggage of heritage and faith, the ‘enlightenment would just shine through’. What Krishnamurti gained from these dialogues, besides the obvious fact of having his teaching associated with and exposed to influential great minds, is rather unclear. We are aware that he reformulated some of his statements in response to the refusal of some of the questioners to accept what he regarded as self-evident – in particular, his terminology was reshaped as a result of his exchanges with Bohm (Hunter 1988: 43). Whatever Krishnamurti’s motivations had been, they waned after seventeen years of intense discussions when, in 1985, a year before his death, he was not only physically worn out and terminally ill, but also felt no longer ‘challenged’ by leading thinkers, who, according to him, could only communicate through the maze of knowledge in which they were caught (Williams 2015: 701). It is illuminating that Krishnamurti’s last recorded conversation with a major thinker, which was also one of the two dialogues to which he referred as his reason for giving up on the academic mind (ibid.),8 was his dialogue with Iris Murdoch. When we scrutinize the exchange, we can understand why.

Murdoch–Krishnamurti: Trying to ‘Build Up Structures’ Iris Murdoch’s (1919–1999) most significant contribution as a philosopher has been her work in moral philosophy, notably her book The Sovereignty of Good (1970). After turning from British linguistic philosophy to continental existentialism (primarily Sartre), which dissatisfied her as well, she devoted her energy to the development of a unique form of moral realism. Murdoch aimed to capture empirically the phenomenon of moral thinking, drawing on Plato, Kant, Simone Weil, Wittgenstein, and others (see Broackes 2014). When Murdoch comes to meet Krishnamurti at Brockwood Park9 in 1984, for two recorded sessions in a single day, she brings all of these different passions and influences into the discussion. The 65-year-old Murdoch approaches Krishnamurti (who is 89, two years before his death) with reverence, and it is clear from her questions that she has delved into his writings and that her curiosity is not purely intellectual but also deeply personal, having been involved in her past in a certain system of meditation (Krishnamurti 1996b: 113). Her appreciation of his work is conveyed close to the end of their discussions, when she remarks: ‘If the world lost people who are concerned with what you are concerned with I think that it would in some way lose its centre’ (ibid., 124). Murdoch comes to the dialogue driven by her wish to grasp Krishnamurti’s thought. Accordingly, her relentless demand for intellectual clarity is the dominant

 The other dialogue was his 1983 conversation with Jonas Salk (Williams 2015: 701).  A boarding school Krishnamurti himself founded in 1969.

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catalyst of the discussion.10 In fact, she opens the conversation by saying ‘I have a lot of questions’ and pointing at her notes (Krishnamurti 1996b: 99),11 thus positioning herself primarily as an interviewer and not so much as a philosopher in her own right. Not that Krishnamurti is even remotely interested in Murdoch’s life of the mind – one of the most persistent patterns of Krishnamurti’s explorations with scientists and philosophers was his fervent avoidance of deploying their expertise for the enrichment of the interaction, since this could only be counterproductive in terms of what he was hoping to achieve through his negation-oriented method. Incorporating Murdoch’s insights into the inquiry would imply agreeing to her efforts of construction. As a consequence, there is a clash of interests: whereas Murdoch, despite the many mutual misinterpretations, seems to be content by the end of the talk, stating that ‘by thinking about Plato,12 I have come to some understanding of what you have been saying’ (ibid., 128), Krishnamurti remains dissatisfied. Murdoch was not open to immersing herself in the unique process of the Krishnamurti dialogue, which is, as defined in Chap. 7, a process of questioning designed to block all ordinary pathways of thought with the intention to prepare the mind for an unfamiliar condition in which the activity of insight is made possible. Since Krishnamurti himself is wholly invested in the fulfilment of his method, the challenge Murdoch offers of developing his ideas by drawing careful and aware contextual distinctions and resolving important contradictions is simply irrelevant to him. When Murdoch wonders, ‘as someone wishing well to men, isn’t it important for you to make connections?’, he remains unaffected and returns to his usual form of questioning (ibid., 119) – hence his eventual conclusion that talks with philosophers such as Murdoch do not ‘hold great challenges’ for him (Williams 2015: 701). Murdoch’s half-apologetic statement in the midst of the discussion that ‘I am always trying to build up structures’ (Krishnamurti 2016) – particularly metaphysical and ethical ones – reveals the cause of the underlying tension that appears right from the start, when she seeks to understand Krishnamurti’s concept of ‘experience’ in light of his view that experience should come to an end (Krishnamurti 1996b: 99). Murdoch is convinced that to understand the nature of the ‘experience’ Krishnamurti wishes to discontinue, one must first distinguish between the many different types of experiences (for instance, the continuity of a person’s consciousness, or the experience of one’s past life), while he strives to resolve the problem by addressing the unitary problem of the experiencer, the one ‘who experiences the

 If my analysis henceforth gives the impression that I am highly sympathetic to Murdoch’s views, this is only because I strive to emphasize the inability of Krishnamurti’s dialogue to fulfil our expectation that it should involve logical consistency. 11  Since I have analysed these discussions using both the edited transcription, which appears in the book Questioning Krishnamurti (1996b: 99–128), and the videos, I will sometimes indicate physical gestures and body language. 12  In the context of this book, the fact that Murdoch can comprehend Krishnamurti by drawing on Plato reaffirms my contention that juxtaposing Plato’s dialogues and Krishnamurti’s dialogues can better illuminate both. 10

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whole thing’ (ibid., 99–100). One way to explain these opposing inclinations is the dividing line between the mystic who strives towards unified vision and self-knowledge and the scholar who is interested in differentiation, variety, and objectivity.13 Krishnamurti evades any metaphysical obligation to define ‘experience’ – although he does arbitrarily exclude ‘love’ from the realm of experience – and attempts to inaugurate the Krishnamurti dialogue by formulating a transformative question, of whether the experiencer is different from the experience, and repeating it tirelessly (ibid., 100–101). This question is not an Upaniṣadic search for the all-­experiencer Self (Kaṭhopaniṣad, 2.1.3–5) but rather a Buddhist-oriented pursuit of anātman, non-self. For Krishnamurti, the falsity of this duality is so self-evident that it requires no logical argumentation, and he expects the final conclusion of his own inquiry to be accepted unquestioningly. While acknowledging the reality of selfless experiences, Murdoch defends the intuitive experience of a continuous ‘me’, which, in the inner world, takes the form of an organizing faculty capable of ordering one’s thoughts. ‘One does not have to be a philosopher’, she argues justifiably, ‘to think that one is divided’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 101). For Murdoch, as a moral philosopher, this is not only a metaphysical but also a psychological description of a much-­ needed and healthy separation, owing to which one is capable of determining the thoughts and feelings one should best identify with, making choices, judging oneself, and taking ethical and even legal responsibility for one’s actions.14 Therefore, the individual must be separate from the contents of their consciousness. But for Krishnamurti, the purpose of the discussion is not elucidating the statements he makes, but pointing at a liberating non-dual state, a state that can instantly and radically heal the existential problem of inner fragmentation. Another significant dispute revolves around the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Murdoch struggles to understand Krishnamurti’s anti-evolutionary stance according to which one could never become good. Krishnamurti speaks of the ‘good’ as utterly unrelated to the world of opposites and becoming, in a way that makes it clear why Murdoch eventually resorts to Plato in order to grasp him: Krishnamurti’s conception of the ‘good’ sounds similar to Plato’s vision of the ‘place beyond heaven’, where the Forms, such as Justice, exist in their unadulterated state, ‘a being that really is what it is’ (Phaedo, 247c). For Krishnamurti, the concept of the ‘good’ is ‘totally divorced from the bad’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 103), a statement which is logically unreasonable, since one cannot conceive of the ‘good’ without its opposite concept, in the same way that good health exists only in relation to bad health. It may be suggested that Krishnamurti distinguishes ‘Good’ from the adjective ‘good’,

 Consider also the broader context of the essential differences between analytic thinkers, who have generally shaped Western thought, and holistic thinkers, who have dominated Eastern thought (Jones 2016: 236–237): the former are drawn to objects and tend to isolate and categorize objects and understand the whole by how the parts work, while the latter prefer orientation to context and environments, the ‘perceptual field as a whole’, and understanding the parts by starting with the whole. 14  Since the realization that the ‘thinker is the thought’ is the key insight in Krishnamurti’s teachings in terms of its liberating potential (Shringy 1977: 351), this important logical error radically challenges his philosophy. 13

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as in a good person or a good quality, just as Plato considers our ability to refer to and compare perceived relative realities as only owing to our pre-birth recognition of the Forms (Phaedo, 76e). Murdoch, nevertheless, insists that there must be a spectrum along which the bad grades into good and sometimes the bad and the good ‘grade into each other’ in one human being (Krishnamurti 1996b: 103), a perception which acknowledges the scale of actual human experience and moral development. But Krishnamurti has no interest in relative moral life and in being a good person in the ordinary sense of the word (ibid., 119). He demands an absolute resolution to the problem of the bad, one that is not ethical but metaphysical, since one has to ‘start from there all the time’: uprooting the metaphysical source of the bad, which is the divisive nature of thought itself (ibid.). This factor, he asserts, forever impedes the possibility of world peace (ibid.). Murdoch, however, finds this black-and-white approach to fragmentation dissatisfying, arguing that whereas one type of fragmentation may be the source of conflict, another exists for a justified discursive reason, enabling our intellectual interest to ‘spread itself out’ to the world (ibid., 119–120). She objects to Krishnamurti’s striving towards a state of idealistic unity, pointing out that this fragmentation is exercised while they are conversing and employing a natural language and concepts (ibid.). In the end, what separates Murdoch from Krishnamurti is her conviction that it is one’s philosophical duty to ‘redeem’ the fragmented, phenomenal world, by bringing it into goodness  – for example, the gradual effort to establish goodness in the world, an effort which is unjustly negated by Krishnamurti as futile.15 Just as the good is divorced from the bad, so too Krishnamurti’s concept of ‘love’ permits only the unmixed, undifferentiating, desireless, and unattached type of love (Krishnamurti 1996b: 104, 109). If love is tainted by conflict, desire, or jealousy, it is not the ‘real thing’, since love exists outside the brain and has nothing to do with the field of experience. Krishnamurti does not elucidate the term itself, which has become, through his negation, utterly foreign to the ordinary human condition, and he also refuses to let Murdoch make it comparable to the notion of perfect love in Christian mysticism (ibid.). Similarly, he rejects the possibility of a scale of love, which may accept, for instance, a selective or relational ‘virtuous love’, that is, one’s harmless attachment to another (ibid., 105). Plato may come to our aid once again to enable us to comprehend Krishnamurti’s non-contextual language by invoking the Forms – Love ‘itself by itself with itself’ (Symposium 211b) – although even Plato believed that earthly but pure forms of relational love can serve us as reminders that ultimately lead back to the recognition of the Forms (Phaedrus 249d–256e). Krishnamurti thus attempts to initiate a Krishnamurti dialogue by practising intense negation of all the familiar forms of love, with the result that, at a certain point, the exhausted Murdoch holds her head in despair and finally begins to adopt his terminology herself (Krishnamurti 1996b: 109).  See, for instance, the extensive research evidencing mathematically that the world has become less dangerous and more peaceful than ever (University of York 2020). Consider also Steven Pinker, who argues in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2012) that we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species’ existence. 15

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Nonetheless, Krishnamurti’s question-and-negation persists, based on his unitary and rather reductionist vision, when Murdoch introduces into the conversation what, for him, is love’s nemesis: desire. Not only does the presence of love exclude desire, he maintains, but also there can be no low or high desires; desire is desire, even if it is one’s desire for unity with God, as found in Christian mysticism (Krishnamurti 1996b: 105–106). He presses the question of the nature of desire on Murdoch, but immediately rejects her reasonable suggestion that desire is a ‘tension between a condition that exists and a condition that does not exist’, since he is obviously guiding her towards his own ready-made answer (ibid., 106). Murdoch finds it impossible to answer a question that does not recognize the many different faces of desire. She argues that there are some good desires, which are a source of energy and motivation, and doubts his implicit position that the very activity of desire must be overcome (ibid., 107–108). Ultimately, she is right, since Krishnamurti’s verdict according to which desire is ‘identification with sensation’ (ibid., 107) cannot be applied to the diversity of desire, including the case of desire for God.16 Murdoch’s insistence on systematizing Krishnamurti’s thought reveals what is perhaps his most apparently illogical idea: his prescription that we watch without being a watcher. Discussing envy, Krishnamurti states that since the thinker is the thought, one cannot act on envy but only ‘watch it very, very carefully’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 110). But, as Murdoch correctly points out, one can certainly become less envious, which implies that one can deliberately act on envy (ibid.). Krishnamurti really means that pure observation can get one closer to the discontinuity of the processes of the self, but he conveys this principle poorly, even more so when he asserts: ‘If it is me I watch it’ (ibid.). If you are envy, how can you watch it? If it is watchable, is there still no distance between the ‘I’ and the object observed? And is not the choice and activity of watching also ‘acting’? More fundamentally, can there really be pure watching that does not alter the object of internal observation, especially when a subtle motivation propels the act of watching? Murdoch notices this complication when she asks: ‘So there is a you who is watching the envy?’ (ibid.). Even if Krishnamurti feels no metaphysical commitment, considers himself above the rules of logic, and focuses his efforts on his method of liberation,17 the instruction itself, in which Murdoch is personally interested, is contradictory. One may wonder whether Krishnamurti is so engrossed in his mystical attainment that he deems it perfectly feasible to watch one’s envy without a self, especially when he mentions parenthetically that ‘when you are watching a bird … there is no you’ (ibid.). Murdoch protests that this kind of watching is difficult, but, for some unclear reason, Krishnamurti considers it reasonable to recommend paying ‘a great deal of attention’ and not letting ‘a single thought slip by’, without training, discipline, or even a centre of volition within the human mind directing the activity (ibid., 111).

 To be fair, Krishnamurti’s definition of desire is in line with the Buddha’s observation of desire as presented in the early Buddhist scriptures. A fragment of the Buddha’s cycle of suffering captures the process of contact–feeling–craving–clinging (Ñanamoli 2021: 25–26). 17  Like so many other mystics throughout history (see Blackwood 1963: 201, 208–209). 16

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‘You have given me the end but not the means’, Murdoch complains, but for Krishnamurti, ‘the means is the end’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 113), that is, one has to somehow start with freedom rather than aspire to it.18 His suggestion to Murdoch is to watch her envy as if it were a ‘precious, intricate jewel’, without cultivating the ideal of being free from envy or the hope that the envy may be dissolved (ibid., 110–111). Perhaps he believes that envy can only come to an end when there is no inner split that enhances one’s conflict,19 but the suggestion as it is leaves her in confusion: first, it implies that there is after all a centre in us that can choose to adopt a certain form of observation, and second, as Murdoch suspects, it is impossible to watch all those psychological elements which Krishnamurti himself passionately judges as unwanted and inherently limiting – desire, envy, fragmentation – without the motivation to make them disappear. It is Krishnamurti who introduces the ideal state of goodness and love that have no opposites, the total absence of self and experience, and watching without judging, and when he speaks at length about the ugliness of the human condition, he urges his listeners to change their reality; thus, judgement is inescapable (ibid., 116). Even his concept of meditation is ideal and devoid of gradation: there can be no subtle hope or deliberate effort to achieve a certain state, no meditator, and no experience, selfless experiences included (ibid., 113). Any systematic cultivation of meditation as practice would only culminate in great disillusionment (ibid., 127). The more the dialogue progresses, the clearer it becomes that Krishnamurti is steadfast in his unwillingness to build bridges – not only between philosophy and mysticism but also between the truth-seeker and the absolute state Krishnamurti represents. He disapproves of Murdoch’s wish to ‘become selfless’, since, for him, only the understanding of the self brings the self to its end, but even this understanding is not a process but a near-inaccessible insight that may or may not be generated by way of negation (Krishnamurti 1996b: 114). It is likewise meaningless and even damaging to be a virtuous individual who greatly benefits many people as long as this person possesses a sense of self (ibid., 125–126). This either/or dichotomy between an ‘ideal mode of being’ of ‘complete unitary selflessness’ and anyone who is not in this state and is therefore ‘sunk in illusion’ troubles Murdoch greatly, for relative reality becomes deprived of any depth, variety, or gradation (ibid., 115, 118). She suggests that Krishnamurti is a ‘very unusual person’ who has had the ‘gift of grace’, and that what he has achieved easily would be extremely difficult for most people (ibid., 122, 124). Her suggestion leads to a moment that emphasizes the unbridgeable gap: Murdoch: Somebody may say, all right, but you are just you, you are by yourself—I mean you may be showing what is a human potential. Krishnamurti: Come and join me, come and join me. Murdoch: Yes, well. (ibid., 122)

 This principle can also be found in Krishnamurti’s summary of his teachings (1996a: 257).  Although Krishnamurti refutes even this possibility by emphasizing that ‘it is not the ending of envy but the attention that matters’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 114). 18 19

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The only way Murdoch can make sense of Krishnamurti’s insistence on this uncompromising position is by looking to Plato’s more logical construction of the same ideas, such as the difference between the reality of being and the unreality of becoming, and the ‘absolute separateness’ of the ‘timeless and eternal’ from life’s ordinary process and from worldly idols, including common virtues (Krishnamurti 1996b: 113, 127–128).20 But, Murdoch wonders, in his well-known allegory of the cave from which one moves out into the light, Plato also speaks of coming back into the cave to liberate everyone else as well – would not Krishnamurti feel the same ethical obligation to affect humankind? (ibid., 123). Here, again, Krishnamurti is logically ambiguous. He would, on his own initiative, help another who is caught in illusion, but he rejects Murdoch’s suggestion that this betrays an implicit moral position, maintaining that he would neither think this person should change nor wish them to change (ibid., 116). Krishnamurti states that the last thing he wants is to influence anybody. In order to justify this claim, he says (somewhat absurdly) that those who have tried to help others have either achieved very little  – since suffering is still being experienced – or, like Adolf Hitler, have damaged the world in their attempt to help (ibid.: 122–123). In the same breath, he invites Murdoch and everyone else to partake in radically changing their psychological structures so that ‘we will change the world’, but he laments that there are only a few who are willing to do so (ibid.: 124). Both Murdoch and Krishnamurti are entrenched in their positions throughout their dialogues. Despite her personal interest in Krishnamurti’s teachings, Murdoch retains her critical and comparative thinking, focuses her efforts on understanding Krishnamurti’s mind, and seems reluctant to try out the possibility of a transformative dialogue. Krishnamurti, on the other hand, refuses to join Murdoch in her aspiration to construct philosophical structures, and one can imagine that he is dissatisfied with the fact that Murdoch resolves her struggle to comprehend his ideas by resorting to the scholarly solution of comparing him to Plato. In all his conversations with academics, Krishnamurti is immovable in his conviction that a true dialogue should lead to insight, not to the reinforcement or enhancement of one’s existing knowledge. But what happens when a scholar chooses to accept Krishnamurti’s invitation? The two Needleman–Krishnamurti dialogues, which were conducted thirteen years before Krishnamurti’s meetings with Murdoch, provide us with an opportunity to explore this intriguing possibility.21

 In his brief comparison between Plato and Krishnamurti, Kumar (2015: 189–190) also identifies the closeness of Krishnamurti’s conception of the mind to Plato’s pure and transcendent Forms, as well as their shared criticism of idol worshippers. Nonetheless, he wrongly judges that Plato’s Forms belong to the pure intellect, whereas Krishnamurti’s go beyond the intellectual (ibid., 190). It is true that Plato maintains that one may communicate with the Forms through pure concepts, but pure concepts only echo the existence of the Forms in the ‘place beyond the heaven’ (Phaedrus, 247d). 21  Other examples of insight-oriented discussions with scholars can be found in Krishnamurti’s dialogues with Allan W. Anderson and David Bohm. 20

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 eedleman–Krishnamurti: Looking Beyond the Self’s N Barbed-Wire Fence Jacob Needleman (1934–2022) was a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University, and formerly Director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He was the editor of the Spirit of Philosophy series, whose aim was to reposition the teachings of great Western philosophers within the context of the modern spiritual quest.22 Among the numerous books he authored, he published in 1970 his pioneering study of alternative spirituality in America, titled The New Religions, in which he not only popularized the term ‘new religious movements’ but also dedicated an entire chapter to Krishnamurti as one expression of the phenomenon. His two conversations with Krishnamurti took place a year after the book’s publication.23 Just like Murdoch, the 37-year-old Needleman also comes to the recordings as primarily an interviewer rather than a philosopher.24 He even brings with him questions to Krishnamurti (who is 76 at the time) gathered from his philosophy students after discussing Krishnamurti’s teachings at class (Krishnamurti 1987: 22–23, 25). But unlike Murdoch, Needleman seldom preserves his position as an interviewer and deliberately sheds much of his critical thinking with the conscious intention to allow Krishnamurti to guide him towards an actual direct perception. As I shall demonstrate later, Needleman agrees to immerse himself in Krishnamurti’s unique vocabulary, dogmatic concepts, and reductionist views while suppressing his scholarly inclination to compare, contextualize, and be wary of illogical statements. One does not need to speculate that Needleman does so out of the understanding that only in this way can he, the discussant, benefit from Krishnamurti’s presence: his analysis of Krishnamurti’s lectures in the book he published a year before speaks for itself. The listener, Needleman writes, must make a constant effort of self-­observation and immediate verification of the problems Krishnamurti presents, otherwise it becomes impossible to follow his train of thought and his statements appear ‘discontinuous, full of unwarranted leaps and unorthodox juxtapositions of ideas’ (1970: 157). Without this deeply engaged personal verification, all that is left for the listener is the limited and conditioned form of verification: agreeing or disagreeing, reinforcing an already existing opinion or rejecting anything that does not match it (ibid., 157–158). We should not expect to find, Needleman continues, ideas that are ‘connected with logical implications’; one can grasp the connection between the ideas only based on the ‘material of one’s own observation’ (ibid., 163). We must

 A series of the no-longer-existing Element Books publishing house.  The dialogues are publicly available in written form  – they constitute the opening chapter of Krishnamurti’s comprehensive book, The Awakening of Intelligence (Krishnamurti 1987: 21–56) – as well as in their original audio form (Krishnamurti 2018). My analysis derives from both formats in order to include the unfiltered and unedited living exchange between the philosopher and the mystic. 24  Both recordings took place in Malibu, California, on the same day. 22 23

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accept Krishnamurti’s postulation that as far as self-knowledge is concerned, ‘there is no such thing as intellectual understanding’ (ibid., 161). We therefore must try, and try now, to participate in this shared instantaneous movement of something that is quicker than thought and thus involves no time (ibid., 159). We ought to remind ourselves that this is not a method to be tried after the lecture at home: the discovery of how to live lies in this instantaneous self-observation, which is aided by Krishnamurti’s speech, presence, and life of thought (ibid., 161, 169). Needleman’s analysis helps to illuminate the dissonant nature of the Murdoch– Krishnamurti interaction: Murdoch does not treat the dialogues as a process of ongoing self-observation and self-verification aided by Krishnamurti’s presence, and thus limits her listening to a verification of the truthfulness of his statements, in isolation from his own methodical approach. The more she strives for an intellectual understanding of Krishnamurti’s ideas, the more these ideas depart from their living source and appear to be logically disconnected and ‘filled with unwarranted leaps’.25 Moreover, Krishnamurti’s ideas, which are alive only within the context of dynamic self-observation, fail to provide the ethical implications which Murdoch hopes to derive from them. The result is a rapid and restless exchange, throughout which Murdoch looks for something that cannot be found. This dissonance is strikingly different from the Needleman–Krishnamurti sessions (also in temperament and tempo, if one listens to the original audio recordings): these talks are imbued with an intimate and spacious atmosphere, a sense of attentive listening, long silent gaps, and little discussion of terminology and logical contradictions. Although the editors of Krishnamurti’s book titled the first dialogue with Needleman ‘The Role of The Teacher’, it is, in actuality, a dialogue on the limits of knowledge. In response to Needleman’s question of whether Krishnamurti regards the current ‘spiritual revolution’ among the young as a hopeful possibility,26 Krishnamurti instigates his unconditional negation, attacking all movements of organized spirituality  – their promised experiences and mystical assertions  – as being mere forms of entertainment (Krishnamurti 1987: 21–22). As always, Krishnamurti’s negation knows no subtleties or gradation, since it is not concerned with the quality of the negated contents but with using these contents methodologically as a springboard for what he terms the awakening of intelligence: what matters is whether one can ‘discard the whole thing and start anew … as though one knew absolutely nothing’ (ibid., 22). It is clear, however, that Krishnamurti aims to challenge Needleman’s academic mind as well, since he quickly adds that starting anew can be hard only for an individual who has filled themselves with other people’s knowledge (ibid.). Not that Krishnamurti regards academic activity itself  – the  This may remind us of what Hadot realized after being confronted with the problem of the apparent incoherencies of the classical Greek philosophy texts: ‘Greek philosophers did not aim, above all, to provide a systematic theory of reality, but to teach their disciples a method with which to orient themselves, both in thought and in life’ (2009: 89–90). 26  These were still the days of the ‘flower children’, who especially flourished in California, and this movement was of great interest to Needleman as an investigator of the new American spirituality. 25

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passing of knowledge from one scientist to another – as inessential (ibid., 51): he refers to the mind leaning on other people’s ideas and placing its investigation in the realm of self-knowledge and truth within any traditional frame of reference. When Needleman complains, on behalf of his students and himself, that they find it impossible to follow Krishnamurti’s prescription, Krishnamurti suggests that their questioning is still too limited (ibid., 23), which is exceptionally provocative given that scholars take pride in their critical thinking. But again, the confusion begins when one treats Krishnamurti’s statements as metaphysical or ethical assertions rather than an unusual type of thought experiments within the exclusive context of the Krishnamurti dialogue. When Krishnamurti urges Needleman to consider what he would do ‘if there were no books, no gurus’, he is not concerned with the implications of this question but with inviting the philosopher to a transformative process (Krishnamurti 1987: 23). In itself, the statement is highly problematic: how could the human brain evolve at all without being constantly stimulated by other ideas and perspectives? And is this state even possible – does not even Krishnamurti’s negation derive its power and passion from all the systems it negates? When he later rejects Needleman’s point that one requires the help of a teacher in order to evolve, vehemently spurns any book reading, and opposes the wish for new experiences as well as the reliance on past experiences and knowledge (ibid., 23–25), does that mean he endorses a human culture in which no one reads or learns? Why is experience or knowledge from the past unreal, and why should experience or knowledge from the present and going into oneself be more ‘real’ – can we not identify a living truth in classical texts or profound traditions? The following fragment of the conversation proves that this is a technique rather than a teaching: Needleman: I am not trying to pin this down to something, but I find my students and I myself, speaking for myself, when we read, when we hear you, we say, ‘Ah! I need no one, I need to be with no one’ – and there is a tremendous deception in this too. Krishnamurti: Naturally, because you are being influenced by the speaker. Needleman: Yes. That is true. (Laughter). (ibid., 25)

If even Krishnamurti’s most repeated statement that one should not rely on authority in the field of self-quest should be included in our negation, since otherwise we do rely on his authority, this finally pulls the logical carpet from under our feet. The problem of listening to someone who tells us to never listen to anyone may remind us of Epimenides the Cretan, who proclaimed, paradoxically, that ‘All Cretans are liars’. Does Krishnamurti really believe that our mind should thrive in total isolation? Probably not, since soon after he demonstrates the genuine function of this thought experiment: when he once again asks Needleman what he would do if there were no guru, no drug, no organized religion, and the philosopher answers that ‘perhaps there’d be a moment of urgency there’, Krishnamurti responds: ‘That’s it’ (Krishnamurti 1987: 25–26). What he hopes for is to elicit from his listener a sense of urgent inquiry, not to formulate an ethical instruction. Thus, when Needleman again protests against Krishnamurti’s subsequent declaration that all religions, churches, education, and philosophy have failed us, and wishes for subtler distinctions, he still takes Krishnamurti’s words at face value (ibid., 26).

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Needleman requires three more rounds of debate on the validity of various statements before he becomes vulnerable to Krishnamurti’s method of transformation. The first dispute is when Krishnamurti rejects the concept of effort as a promoter of growth, contending that since reality is already here, one only needs to know how to look rather than ‘make effort to look’ (Krishnamurti 1987: 27). Needleman makes the reasonable claim that one has to study even this mode of subtle listening, to which Krishnamurti replies, ‘We can do it now’ (ibid., 28–29). Next comes Krishnamurti’s statement that ‘thought is mechanical’, whose truthfulness he expects Needleman to somehow ‘see’ without any argumentative foundation (ibid., 29–30). Needleman agrees to ‘assume’ this unexamined statement in order to scrutinize what he hopes will be Krishnamurti’s subsequent line of argument, but Krishnamurti demands that he not assume anything, to which Needleman yields: ‘Alright, alright, I am listening’ (ibid.). Obviously, such discussions do not measure up to any academic standard: what does Krishnamurti mean by ‘thought’? Was Einstein’s creative thought mechanical? And, on the other hand, is not Krishnamurti’s ever-repetitive line of inquiry mechanical? When Needleman calls attention to the fact that the concept of thought cannot be generalized in this way, Krishnamurti is adamant that thought can be nothing but a response of memory, while understanding ‘has nothing to do with thought’ and is not the outcome of thought (ibid., 30). This conclusion arrives without any substantial process of reasoning and so, even if we accept that understanding is a non-verbal experience, there is no reason to infer that this experience of total perception cannot be the culmination of a thought process, arising after thought has considered the different fragments. The last debate revolves around the concept of ‘energy’, and here again Krishnamurti implements his reductionist view when he proclaims that there are no different types of energy – cosmic or human, physical or mental – and that we distinguish the various energies only because we have divided an otherwise indivisible life (Krishnamurti 1987: 31). This tendency towards unification at the cost of overgeneralization is, as mentioned in the Murdoch–Krishnamurti analysis, the project of the mystic, but it is also, more specifically, a necessary move in the all-inclusive negation of the Krishnamurti dialogue.27 However, the statement itself is problematic: scientifically speaking, we identify different forces and energies, which are not inventions of the mind but descriptions of the interplay of the phenomenal world. Needleman suggests that division, such as the Hindu distinction between the higher Self (ātman) and the lower self, helps people to tell reality from illusion (ibid.).28 Krishnamurti swiftly rejects the possibility of gaining knowledge through division, overlooking the fact that even in his negation he deploys distinctions to attain true knowledge, and contends that it is only one’s false inner split – the perceived division between thinker and thought – that brings about this fragmented vision of the  Nevertheless, it is puzzling that Krishnamurti, who zealously distinguishes selfless goodness from self-centred action in his dialogues with Murdoch, unites self-driven energies, such as anger, with non-self energies in these dialogues. 28  This resembles Murdoch’s view of the usefulness of fragmentation (Krishnamurti 1996b: 119–120). 27

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world (ibid., 31–32). In Krishnamurti’s terms, there are ‘differences’ but no ‘division’, but it remains unclear why ‘division’ should have negative connotations, unless he believes that division necessarily has the psychological significance we ascribe to the kinds of differences described above. All these debates, however, only appear to be philosophical discussions. As far as Krishnamurti is concerned, the uncompromising unifying approach he represents in these exchanges serves as a preparation for the descent of insight: the first debate is meant to encourage Needleman to put effort aside and to open himself to a perception that is not of time; the second is designed to make him capable of temporarily leaving behind the verbal and memory-based activity of thought; and the purpose of the third debate is to loosen his mind’s grip on distinctions. Unlike in the frustrating dialogues with Murdoch, the brief moment of insight which elevates this conversation to the level of a transformative dialogue does come, albeit unexpectedly: Krishnamurti and Needleman observe the hills before them as they become beautifully lit and they both grow silent (Krishnamurti 1987: 32). This delicate sharing of beauty enables Krishnamurti to abandon the previous role play of mystic and philosopher, and he thus confidently positions himself as a sort of Zen master and Needleman as the hesitant student. He takes advantage of this moment, during which Needleman can watch without a dividing and intervening observer, to show Needleman that in the same way, one can watch one’s own mind without attempting to change any of its contents (ibid.). Just as he did with Murdoch, Krishnamurti returns here to his logically perplexing principle of absolutely passive non-self watching, but this time it proves to be far more effective within the purely experiential context of silencing the mind. But what happens, Needleman wonders, when the selfless experience fades away and is slowly forgotten, especially when one is alone and without the ‘help that is between us’? (ibid., 33). Here Krishnamurti is at his best, zooming in on the intricate ways in which thought can become entangled when it holds on to a beautiful but passing moment; how it then pursues the ‘dead memory of it, not the living beauty’, driven to retrieve by means of control a quality that could only be revealed in its absence (ibid., 33–35). When Needleman returns to the more familiar perception of a process in time and remarks that he should indeed ‘learn’ to see reality that way, Krishnamurti is alarmed, insisting that if Needleman truly sees now that the moment of beauty has become a memory, he ‘will never go near it again’ (ibid., 34). This is, in effect, the meaning of what Krishnamurti terms insight (Rodrigues 2001: 108). Near the end of the first session, Krishnamurti leaves Needleman with what is perhaps a personal message to an individual whose life has been devoted to the pursuit of academic philosophy. Raising the question of why human culture worships thought, he quickly rejects all of Needleman’s propositions with the intention to guide him towards his own determined answer: thought (of course, any thought) only operates within the field of knowledge, in a self-made prison, protected by the limits of the barbed-wire fence; thus, only the mind that agrees to shed its protection and admit that it really does not know can come into contact with the divine intelligence outside the fence (Krishnamurti 1987: 37–38).

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In their ensuing dialogue (Krishnamurti 1987: 39–56), recorded on the same day, Krishnamurti and Needleman are already able to reach the heights of their exploration. Having been touched by a moment of direct perception, Needleman is far more willing to abandon his logical rigor and to place himself in the temporary position of a disciple in the hope of probing deeper into the nature of non-dual reality. When Krishnamurti takes his usual ‘unwarranted leaps’, Needleman leaps with him. Here we find the philosopher listening and responding in ways that may remind us of the passive Upaniṣadic students who disappear into the background only to permit the discourse to fulfil its deepest transformative potential.29 Similarly, we can think of many of Socrates’ interlocutors, whose function in Plato’s dialogues seems to be reduced to that of yeasayers but is in truth the active confirmation without which Socrates cannot take even one more step.30 Krishnamurti also proves that he has transcended the division between questioner and answerer when, at a certain point, he is reminded that he is dialoguing with a philosopher: Krishnamurti: To speculate what is beyond all that … at least I can’t do it. It has no meaning to me, personally. That’s the philosopher’s amusement. I am not interested. Needleman: The philosopher’s amusement, I agree. I’m not interested sometimes too, at my better moments, but nevertheless … Krishnamurti: I am sorry, you are a philosopher, I am sorry! I forgot you are a philosopher, sorry. Needleman: No, no, no, why should you remember that? No, no, please. (ibid., 45)31

Needleman inaugurates the discussion by introducing an academic question: does not Krishnamurti’s focus on the individual’s self-authority put his teachings in danger of becoming a form of humanistic psychology which excludes the cosmic dimension of humans as a part of a vaster reality? (Krishnamurti 1987: 39). Nonetheless, in his forty-five-minute response, Krishnamurti slowly and elegantly dismantles the subject–object division that lies at the heart of this question in order to unveil a reality devoid of both inner and outer space. Without answering Needleman’s question directly and cerebrally, Krishnamurti shows his discussant how his teachings could never be reduced to a form of human-centred psychology, since their greatest concern is the way that humans have created a sense of isolated self (which Krishnamurti terms the centre) surrounded by its own limited inner space, thus giving rise to a false sense of relationality toward the ‘other’, be it God, the cosmos, or other people. When Needleman happens to stray from the path of the experiential, referring to forms of sacred teachings and art, Krishnamurti insists that they should find out together what the ‘sacred’ is by analysing the way the isolated centre has invented the image of the sacred, which then appears to exist outside the boundaries of one’s inner space (ibid., 43). One can only hope to tap into that which is truly sacred if the centre is still to a degree that the inner space becomes absorbed in the vaster space (ibid., 42–44). They both agree that this is ‘logical’ (ibid., 41),  See, for example, Nāciketa’s silence in the Kaṭhopaniṣad, 1.2.15–2.2.13.  For instance, Cebes and Simmias in certain parts of the Phaedo (e.g. 103c–107a). 31  To highlight the nuances of the exchange, I have drawn here on the original recording instead of the edited book. 29 30

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but the logic guiding their shared exploration clearly derives its power from other, non-logical sources. Krishnamurti begs Needleman to ‘see’ and to see now, even when Krishnamurti accelerates his pace and makes pronouncements that he is unwilling to put to the test, such as the ‘absolute fact’ that there can be no consciousness when there is no content of consciousness (ibid., 44, 46). Needleman, however, does manage to follow enough to experience a collapse of the dual notions of humanism and sacred teachings, seeing that these are not really two separate compartments: if one looks into the human, one finds the sacred, and vice versa (ibid., 46). As they approach the end of this fully realized Krishnamurti dialogue, Krishnamurti points out what the process itself has shown us: consciousness can empty itself and free itself of its content,32 leaning neither on grace nor on effortful action, by means of the liberating power found in the repeated activity of question and negation (ibid., 47–48).

Understanding Krishnamurti The various scholars’ eagerness to understand Krishnamurti’s mind is the factor that determines most of all the structure of their conversations with him. As previously noted, these are not dialogues in the sense of mutual enrichment, and the thinkers’ fields of expertise are barely acknowledged, let alone employed for the sake of a deeper insight into the subject. With the exception of Murdoch, we also cannot say that any of the scholars genuinely poses a serious challenge to Krishnamurti.33 As Eastman (2018: 8, 10) notes in his criticism of the compilation of dialogues Questioning Krishnamurti, these exceptionally sharp minds put soft questions to Krishnamurti and let him get away easily with sidestepping the questions and hardly ever getting to the point. When one closely watches or listens to the original recordings, it becomes clear that just as the scholars are either too eager to learn or too respectful to challenge Krishnamurti’s thought, Krishnamurti positions himself in the authoritative and commanding role of one who has come to guide his interlocutors rather than share with them. If he needs them to be actively engaged, it is only for the purpose of the actualization of his type of transformative dialogue, in which he is exclusively interested. While the carefully edited transcripts cannot disclose these dynamics, the  Note the apparent contradiction between Krishnamurti’s previous assertion that there cannot be contentless consciousness and his later contention that consciousness can be emptied of content. First, he seems to echo the phenomenological notion that consciousness is inseparable from its content. Soon after, he is a Buddhist or a Hindu, describing the ideal of pure consciousness. One may suggest that consciousness empties itself to the point of non-existence. However, Krishnamurti’s second statement grants consciousness an independent ontological status. 33  I have identified a similar non-challenging attitude among researchers of Krishnamurti’s thought, who tend to praise Krishnamurti in the main body of their work while leaving only specific and limited sections to what they term criticism of Krishnamurti, which they generally fend off by considering it unjustified. See, for instance, Rodrigues (2001: 151–165). 32

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recordings reveal an intensely inattentive and impatient Krishnamurti who more often than not ignores questions, interrupts his discussants, or even harshly silences them. Although he urges his partners to practise their independence of thought, what he really means is that he wishes them to see what he sees.34 Noting Krishnamurti’s highly authoritative role, Sheldrake (personal interview, 26 January 2021) says, ‘I wasn’t quite sure how interested he was in anything I said. I got the impression he was sort of waiting for keywords, and then he would start on a kind of riff. So I wasn’t sure whether this was meant to be a real dialogue or whether it was meant to look like a dialogue.’ Obviously, what happened to Sheldrake and to many others was that Krishnamurti attempted to draw them into a transformative dialogue. However, in the overwhelming majority of the discussions, and except for rare cases such as Needleman’s in which the scholar consciously abandons their critical thinking for the sake of inner revelation, the intellectuals seem either unsure about what is expected of them or disinclined to give Krishnamurti’s radical process of question and negation a try, and generally tend to defend the tradition of accumulated knowledge from which they came. What we can learn from the comparison between the Murdoch–Krishnamurti dialogues and the Needleman–Krishnamurti dialogues is that when one constantly pauses to understand Krishnamurti’s statements philosophically, all that remains is a sterile discussion, but when one acknowledges the experiential dimension of the conversation, the dialogue itself can operate as a method for mystical non-dual realization. This may not be so different from my analysis of the Phaedo in Chap. 5, where I argued that it is unwise to busy ourselves with the noticeable fact that Socrates’ four arguments are unpersuasive, since Socrates’ vital transmission is conveyed more effectively through other dramatic means, and even his arguments do not constitute a constructive theory but serve as reminders of an untaught, innate truth.35 Likewise, if we do not get stuck assessing Krishnamurti’s words as actual statements – if we do not confuse a method with either metaphysical statements or ethical instructions – we can finally follow him. This, I believe, is the only way to understand Krishnamurti and to realize his so-called ‘teachings’. This is the fundamental error Eastman (2018: 2–14) makes in his critical reading of Krishnamurti’s dialogues with scholars. In his view, while Krishnamurti’s technique may appear to be perfectly logical and reasonable, anyone hoping to explore objective metaphysical truths by keeping track of his line of argument would come to realize that Krishnamurti irresponsibly bypasses coherence in the process ‘even while supposedly respecting it’ (ibid., 2, 4, 6). Readers or viewers could only be persuaded to accept this illogical process if they negated themselves at their mental  Lama Anagarika Govinda, one of Krishnamurti’s detractors, observes that Krishnamurti is ‘impatient of the slightest contradiction or the slightest question that does not fit into his system’ (Rodrigues 2001: 192). 35  Nevertheless, this comparability has its limits: in the final analysis, Socrates is a transformative philosopher rather than a mystic (this distinction will be extensively discussed in the Conclusions and Implications chapter). 34

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core (ibid., 10). Eastman is confident that Krishnamurti believed himself to be establishing a consistent argumentation and was simply unable to notice his disorganized thinking due to his lack of training in the ‘exigent demands of intellectual discipline’ (ibid., 13–14). It is true that when we evaluate Krishnamurti’s statements in isolation from the method in which they function, we end up being profoundly critical and frustrated, or at the very least unimpressed.36 One may identify, as I have done throughout this chapter, uninformed views that suffer from extreme overgeneralization, such as Krishnamurti’s criticism of the ultimate failure and limitation of all religious and mystical movements of the past. Other views, like his recommendation that one should never read or learn or his conviction that human society has never progressed by means of gradual evolution, have destructive cultural and psychological implications. Yet another group of views seem provocatively unbalanced, such as the claims that any knowledge that is rooted in the past can only be limiting and damaging or that our memories are all dead and meaningless. But all of these statements, I argue, are designed to effect in the hearer or reader a particular state of mind; they are meant to lead the thought-bound and time-bound mind from the prison of the known to the uncharted territory beyond the barbed-wire fence where not knowing and intelligence are one and the same. Nevertheless, even if we espouse this perspective and begin to treat Krishnamurti’s discourse as a method, we are faced with two major difficulties. First, is it possible to submit oneself to a method that is based on a chain of unsound statements? Should not one’s mind feel at ease with the logical flow in order to settle into the transformative process? After all, one is expected to assume Krishnamurti’s narrow perspective, that is, to view reality as he wishes us to view it. One possibility is to undertake the project of systemizing and filling the gaps in Krishnamurti’s thought in a way that could finally enable the critical mind to follow the transformation it offers. As demonstrated by the efforts of researchers such as Shringy (1977) and Rodrigues (2001), this may be a viable task, provided that the scholar is not taken aback by the paradoxical nature of Krishnamurti’s statements. Perhaps, for instance, Krishnamurti’s uncontextualized proclamations can be positioned in their appropriate frame of reference, for example by speaking of his form of love as ‘love in the absolute (or universal) sense’ while not repudiating the existence of the spectrum of love altogether. In the end, this was Murdoch’s source of struggle during the dialogues and what Sheldrake (personal interview, 26 January 2021) considers the chief hindrance to Krishnamurti’s conversations with academics: the fact that terms and ideas were not grounded in context. ‘Words can mean different things in different contexts’, Sheldrake explains. ‘The word “knowledge” or the word “mind” can have many meanings depending on the philosophical framework. And yet he [Krishnamurti] would take these rather abstract words and talk about them. It was just like in a hermetically sealed vessel, with no reference to anything else.’ Thus,  For a contrary view, see Rodrigues (2001: 176–177), who refutes the claim that Krishnamurti’s philosophy is inconsistent and argues that it is perfectly complete, with an ontology, cosmology, and epistemology of its own. 36

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considering Krishnamurti’s assertions in a comparative manner may appease one’s logical faculties and allow for deeper immersion in the process, but it risks diminishing the radical and urgent nature of the system. A second major difficulty in following Krishnamurti’s method, revealed most starkly in the Murdoch dialogues, is that his technique starts from the end: based on his conviction that ‘the beginning is the first step and the last step’ (Krishnamurti 1987: 53), Krishnamurti transforms the final outcome of non-self into the initial position one must assume when approaching the act of self-observation. For the most part, transformative mystical methods are designed to guide the meditator towards the state of non-self, accepting that the road leading to this state inevitably involves a subtle activity of one’s ego. Thus, we could say that the practice is an activity of the self that ultimately eradicates the self.37 Krishnamurti, on the other hand, insists unrealistically on a state of selfless observation that he terms ‘choiceless awareness’ as the only valid starting point (Rodrigues 2001: 156), since observation and quietness ‘are not possible when the self is present’ (ibid., 191–192). Given that the observer is already non-existent, any form of internal action, including intentional practice, would only reinforce the illusion; thus, unintentional watching is all one can ever do. But both logically and practically, Krishnamurti’s only prescription puts us in an impossible situation: even the ultra-fine act of redirecting one’s awareness to a state of choicelessness involves a choice, that is, the choice to be choiceless, and therefore, also a centre which chooses to redirect its awareness. Moreover, the very act must be fuelled by motivation and purpose. This implies that while Krishnamurti’s suggested form of self-observation is perhaps the closest to the ideal state of non-­ self observation, it must necessarily engage the separate self or the inner doer, especially when he wishes us, as he passionately tells Murdoch, to not ‘let a single thought slip by without knowing what it is’ (Krishnamurti 1996b: 111).

References Anderson, Allen W. 2012. On Krishnamurti’s Teachings. Ojai: Karina Library Press. Blackwood, R.T. 1963. Neti, Neti: Epistemological Problems of Mystical Experience. Philosophy East and West 13 (3): 201–209. Broackes, Justin, ed. 2014. Iris Murdoch, Philosopher. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eastman, Peter. 2018. Krishnamurti Explained: A Critical Study. PhilPapers. https://philpapers. org/rec/EASKEA Hadot, Pierre. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hunter, Alan. 1988. Seeds of Truth: J.  Krishnamurti as Religious Teacher and Educator. PhD Dissertation, University of Leeds.

 See, for instance, Tilopa’s Mahāmudrā instructions, which suggest varying degrees of intensity, from the non-teaching according to which ‘the mind looks into mind’ to breathing techniques for ‘those of little intelligence’ who are unable to ‘abide in this state’ (Nyenpa 2014: 3, 15). 37

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Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1987. The Awakening of Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1996a. Total Freedom. New York: HarperCollins. ———. 1996b. Questioning Krishnamurti: J. Krishnamurti in Dialogue: Dialogues with Leading 20th Century Thinkers. San Francisco: Thorsons. ———. 2010. Present! – Huston Smith and His Interview with J. Krishnamurti. YouTube. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9d1JgJfLHg ———. 2014a. J. Krishnamurti and Huston Smith – Authority is Destructive – Claremont 1968. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPgbKfsyTUU ———. 2014f. J. Krishnamurti – Ojai 1982 – Discussion with Scientists 1 – Roots of Psychological Disorder. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoMS5b2MLRc&t=2538s ———. 2014k. J.  Krishnamurti  – Ojai 1983  - Conversation with Jonas Salk  – What makes us change? YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIyL2qcResY&t=591s ———. 2016. J. Krishnamurti & Iris Murdoch – Brockwood Park 1984 – Dialogue 2. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYl8DX46VBc ———. 2016b. J. Krishnamurti & Iris Murdoch – Brockwood Park 1984 – Dialogue 1. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDnwK-383Qs ———. 2017a. J. Krishnamurti & David Shainberg – New York 1983 – Dialogue - Memory, Thought and the Illusion of Continuity. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCtGnCRd5QU ———. 2018. Audio | J. Krishnamurti & J. Needleman – Malibu 1971 – Dialogue 1 – The Role of the Teacher. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhfdRE1wONY Kumar, Kesava. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution. Delhi: Kalpaz. Lutyens, Mary J. 1997. Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening. Berkeley: Shambhala. Ñanamoli, Bhikkhu. 2021. The Life of the Buddha: According to the Pali Canon. Onalaska: Pariyatti Publishing. Needleman, Jacob. 1970. The New Religions. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Nyenpa, Sangyes. 2014. Tilopa’s Mahamudra Upadesha: The Gangama Instructions with Commentary. Ithaca: Snow Lion. Pinker, Steven. 2012. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. London: Penguin. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Rodrigues, Hillary. 2001. Krishnamurti’s Insight. Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing. Shringy, Ravindra Kumar. 1977. Philosophy of J. Krishnamurti: A Systematic Study. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. The Upanishads. Translated by Eknath Easwaran. Tomales, CA: Nilgiri Press, 2007. Troxell, Eugene A., and William S.  Snyder. 1976. Making Sense of Things: An Introduction to Philosophy. New York: St. Martin’s Press. University of York. 2020. Study Settles the Score on Whether the Modern World Is Less Violent. ScienceDaily, June 16. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200616113913.htm Williams, Chris V. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher. Millers Point: Sydney School of Arts & Humanities.

Part III

Krishnamurti and the Classical Philosophical Dialogue

Chapter 10

Socrates, Kōan, Krishnamurti: Questions as a Spiritual Exercise

Having devoted close attention to recurring patterns of the Krishnamurti dialogue in Part II, it has become clear that the two components of unanswerable questions and methodological negation lie at the heart of Krishnamurti’s method. These tools, I have suggested, constitute Krishnamurti’s most notable contribution to the field of religious and mystical thought (and perhaps even to potential forms of philosophical investigation, as I will propose in my concluding chapter). While the assertions he makes are not necessarily original and are often logically flawed, his innovative approach should be looked for elsewhere: in his techniques of inquiry, whose purpose is to teach us not what to think, but how to think in ways that are conducive to the transformation of the mind. In order to throw light on these two unique methods, I shall dedicate the book’s third and last part to juxtaposing them with other question- and negation-based traditions. The present chapter will centre on Krishnamurti’s technique of handling questions. Intriguingly, although Krishnamurti’s discourse largely consists of questions in the explicit form of interrogative sentences, this dimension of his work has never been the focus of any of the scholarly or semi-academic writings dedicated to Krishnamurti’s thought.1 The most conscious examination of this aspect can be found in J. Krishnamurti: A Biography (1986) and Fire in the Mind (2016), both of which were authored by Pupul Jayakar, who had often reflected, together with Krishnamurti, on the hidden structures of his form of inquiry. To illuminate Krishnamurti’s unconventional use of questions, I will contrast it with two traditions which, perhaps more than any other Eastern or Western traditions, have employed questions as an active transformative component of their philosophical and religious paths: first, the classical Greek dialogue-based lineage that began with Socrates’ form of questioning, whose most documented expression has been Plato’s Socratic  We do find brief references to Krishnamurti’s unusual form of questioning in Martin (1997: xi– xv) and Williams (2015: 671–673). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_10

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dialogues, and second, the kōan tradition as it has been practised by the Japanese Rinzai school of Zen. As I shall indicate in the chapter’s last section, this brief comparative study, which explores practices of questions among these three systems, inevitably evokes a broader philosophical discussion of the nature and function of questions. In her article ‘What is a Question’ (2018), philosopher Lani Watson points out that historically, philosophers have rarely engaged in an explicit exploration of the nature of questions.2 Even Socrates, Watson correctly observes, a man who believed in philosophical questioning as a way of life and who was ultimately willing to sacrifice himself in defence of this conviction, does not dedicate any of his investigations to the nature, role, and value of questions themselves (ibid.). While in the last fifty years or so, philosophers such as Nuel Belnap and Thomas Steel (in The Logic of Questions and Answers, 1977) and linguists such as Lauri Karttunen (in ‘The Syntax and Semantics of Questions’, 1977) have begun to treat this question more directly, they have done so with a strong emphasis on the logical and linguistic analyses of questions (Watson 2018). Given that philosophy is a field whose entire concern is devoted to questions (or problems), it is surprising that there are so few philosophical studies of questions. One could think of a long list of questions that may enrich and deepen this discussion. For instance, what is the subject–object relationship between the questioning mind and its question? How does one approach questions philosophically? Do questions function only as information-seeking and knowledge-­ seeking mechanisms? Can they have a transformative effect that is independent from the answers at which one may or may not arrive? Where do philosophical questions arise from? What is an ‘answer’ and what are its potential sources? Are there, philosophically speaking, right and wrong questions? Are there questions to which there are no answers? What is the epistemic character of questions?3 These questions and others have been addressed, albeit mostly indirectly, by the question-based approaches of Plato’s Socrates, the Zen kōan, and Krishnamurti. Moreover, these approaches challenge conventional uses of questions in that they offer us a radically different conception of questions as áskēsis, or spiritual exercise (to borrow Hadot’s term). In fact, I maintain that unless we turn to the Hadotian hermeneutic approach, which I applied to Eastern and Western forms of the classical dialogue in Part I and to Krishnamurti’s dialogues throughout Part II, it becomes quite difficult to comprehend the role that questions play in the metamorphosis of those who partake in the exercise. These systems involve forms of questioning that pose questions not as a way to obtain metaphysically constructive answers but as self-standing entities whose activity can transform minds and hearts. Reading these forms of inquiry as spiritual exercises may be more obvious in the case of Krishnamurti and the Zen kōan, but less so when it comes to Socrates’ elenchus,  Likewise, philosopher Felix S.  Cohen (1929: 350–351) maintains that logicians have almost entirely neglected this question, and thus that this has remained ‘a virgin field for logical exploration’ (ibid., 351). 3  This last question, Jaako Hintikka (2007: 5) confirms, has been generally overlooked by philosophers. 2

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which is often construed as a project of rational analysis of views leading to the aporetic outcome of not-knowing. Nonetheless, the Hadotian approach helps us to illuminate the function of Socratic questioning as a device for a reorientation of one’s mind and way of life. While Hadot himself acknowledges the dialogical dimension of Plato’s discourse as ‘a kind of communal spiritual exercise’ (1995: 90), he nevertheless seems to overlook the most persistent device that catalyses this type of spiritual exercise. The fact that not only Plato but also the kōan tradition and Krishnamurti’s discourse are systems of transformative dialogue suggests that the need for these uses of questions emerges within the particular context of master–disciple psychagogy (‘guidance of the soul’). Furthermore, we could say that the transformative dialogue has given rise to otherwise unknown functions of questions. I shall begin my exploration with a discussion of the nature and purposes of Socrates’ elenchus. I will continue by examining the way that the Japanese Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism deploys riddles to achieve its transformative state of satori, or Zen enlightenment. On the basis of these presentations, I will return to Krishnamurti’s conception and technique of unanswerable questions in order to highlight similarities and dissimilarities between these three schools of thought and practice. Ultimately, this brief comparative study will demonstrate that while Krishnamurti’s use of questions is significantly closer in style to Socrates’ dynamic and ongoing form of philosophical investigation, its mystical purpose is more akin to that of the kōan tradition. This unique use of a ‘Western’ process of philosophical inquiry for the sake of Eastern-oriented mystical ends may be perceived as a meeting point of East and West, and thus a potential source of ‘multicultural philosophy’.4

Socrates: Refutation as Cleansing5 Whereas some scholars argue that Socrates has no distinguishable pedagogical approach, and thus that there is no consistent ‘Socratic method’ (e.g. Carpenter and Polansky 2002: 89–100), others, such as Gregory Vlastos, not only identify a coherent system of questioning but also consider it Socrates’ ‘greatest contribution … among the greatest achievements of humanity’ (quoted in Reich 1998: 68). One should assume that the latter are right: if there had been no method, how could we otherwise explain the facts that Socrates’ disquieting conversations gave rise to a generation of imitators after his death – an imitation that took the form of a new literary genre (the logoi sokratikoi) – and that Plato’s academy formalized his technique into a method of philosophical training (Hadot 1995: 149; Hintikka 1993: 9)? Nevertheless, since different texts seem to make different uses of questions, it is impossible to assess Socrates’ methodological approach to questions without

 See my discussion of this term (Van Norden 2017) in the Introduction.  Sophist, 203e.

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determining first which group of Plato’s dialogues should actually be classified as authentic Socratic dialogues. While Hadot (1995: 91) believes that it is not possible to delimit the borderline between the ‘Socratic’ and the ‘Platonic’ and that Plato’s dialogues are always essentially ‘Socratic’, there seems to be near-unanimous agreement among scholars (e.g. Meyer 1980; Graham 1992; Reich 1998; Hintikka 2007; Farnsworth 2021) that such distinctions can be made after all. The most common distinction is founded on the assumption that when Plato, prompted by Socrates’ death, had set about writing his first Socratic dialogues,6 he had still been faithful to Socrates’ method of elenchus, but the more he developed his own voice as a philosopher-teacher and also drew on other influences, the more his writings departed from the historical Socrates, hence the differentiation between the early, middle, and late dialogues. Cooper (1997: xii–xiv), on the other hand, strongly criticizes the scholarly leaning towards this elegant division, justifiably pointing out that we possess extremely limited chronological evidence and that the true motivation behind this theory is an interpretive thesis about the evolving nature of Plato’s authorship. But in the end, even Cooper concludes that even without a chronological distinction, we can identify a large group of dialogues that can be understood as closer to the way that the historical Socrates used to philosophize7: challenging young men to critically examine their convictions through the rational scrutiny of relentless questioning, without imposing on them any superfluous moral knowledge of his own or offering positive philosophical theses (ibid., xv–xvi).8 The rest of the Platonic canon  – for instance, the Phaedo and the Republic  – stands in stark contrast to the typical Socratic dialogues in its treatment of questions and therefore falls within the scope of what Cooper and others would consider Platonian. While Plato clearly utilizes familiar ingredients of Socrates’ method, he seems to build on it not in order to make overconfident assertions come apart, but with the opposite intention of systemizing and absolutizing certain statements. Questions that culminate in the state of not-knowing in Socrates’ discussions all of a sudden lead to absolute knowing. Furthermore, questions are no longer left unresolved at the end of the dialogue, since the focal point becomes answers, or judgements, that are considered independently from the questions to which they respond (Meyer 1980: 281–282). For this reason, Meyer (ibid., 281) declares that ‘questioning died with Socrates … and philosophy turned into ontology’. Furthermore, Plato shifts from philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom to an epistemological definition of knowledge and knowledge-justification (Farnsworth 2021: 50; Hintikka 2007: 35, 81). This transformation expresses itself in five ways, all of which are deeply  Presumably, a year after Socrates’ death, in 398 bc (Cooper 1997: xii).  Especially if we examine these dialogues in light of Plato’s representation of Socrates in his speech of defence in the Apology and Xenophon’s literary account (Cooper 1997: xv). 8  According to Cooper (ibid., xv), these include twenty of Plato’s thirty-six authentic works: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Alcibiades, Second Alcibiades, Hipparchus, Rival Lovers, Theages, Charmides, Laches, Lysis, Euthydemus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Greater and Lesser Hippias, Ion, Menexenus, Clitophon, and Minos. 6 7

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interrelated. The first three are doctrinal: Socrates is no longer a moral figure but a metaphysical master (Reich 1998: 74); the elenchus is replaced with dialectic as recollection – providing the student with what is necessary for their knowledge to be ‘reawakened’ (Meyer 1980: 285); and what one ought to be reminded of are the absolute essences, or the Forms (ibid., 287). The remaining two concern the dialogical flow: the presence of the interlocutor has a diminishing role and the master becomes significantly more authoritative (ibid., 285), and accordingly, questioning becomes a rhetorical rather than cognitive procedure (ibid., 287).9 Thus, although I believe that there can be an integrative reading of Plato’s entire corpus – one that would merge these two groups of dialogues into a complete process, in which the former flows into and prepares for the latter – for the sake of this chapter, I shall concentrate on the typical Socratic dialogues, which seem far closer in spirit to Krishnamurti’s employment of questions. Socrates’ elenchus, as Hintikka (2007: 70–71, 83) maintains, is a method of questioning, a form of inquiry that entirely relies on question–answer steps in order to pursue true knowledge and to derive rational conclusions. Although Meyer (1980: 283) suggests that ‘questions’ in this case do not necessarily appear in the form of interrogative sentences and that they are, in effect, synonymous with ‘problems’, the Socratic method is mostly expressed through questions in their explicit grammatical structure. Plato’s Socrates confirms this conception of elenchus as a question-­based technique when he imagines being questioned by the laws of the state, which reproach him in this way: ‘Socrates, do not wonder at what we say but answer, since you are accustomed to proceed by question and answer’ (Crito, 50d). Elenchic questions are, in this sense, the intelligent, logic-promoting activity that enables the progression of the dialogue.10 Since the historical Socrates has (or perhaps, as I will discuss later, pretends to have) nothing to transmit or to defend, he can only ask questions while refusing to answer them himself (Hadot 1995: 152–153). But the term elenchus – Latin for the Greek élenkhos, which translates as ‘refutation’ (Hake 2014: 29) – implies that this form of questioning is designed for a particular end: the negation of existing views and values. Thus, his questions are a tool for avoiding the construction of beliefs that are assumed to be knowledge and for eliminating false beliefs that were previously assumed to be knowledge by those who held them. For the sophist as well as for the Platonic philosopher whose practice is more concerned with theory construction, a question is the pupils’ plea for the master’s existential certainty and an opportunity for the teacher to reassert pre-existing convictions. Socrates, on the other hand, deems questions the master’s device for questioning their students’ answers, that is, a way of converting statements into problems (Meyer 1980: 281–283). Even more essentially, Socrates insists that the  While I generally agree with Meyer on these two points, I doubt whether this is always the case in Platonic dialogues. For instance, the Phaedo’s main discussants, Simmias and Cebes, play a major role in the dynamics of the dialogue (see Chap. 5). 10  Hintikka (2007: 83) quotes R. G. Collingwood: ‘[e]very statement that anybody ever makes is made in answer to a question.’ 9

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philosopher’s role is to maintain the problematic nature of the discourse and to uphold questioning as a state of mind (Farnsworth 2021: 43). Rather than finding rest in answers, one learns to think in questions and to allow a philosophical activity that is an unending and dynamic pursuit (ibid., 44). The elenchic process of questioning opens with a principal and often definitory question, such as ‘what is pious, and what is impious?’ (Euthyphro, 5d). Refraining from providing an answer of his own, Socrates takes his discussant’s position as the dialogue’s starting point (Hadot 1995: 153). However, since this is his partner’s position, Socrates must entirely rely on their answers in order to proceed (ibid.). In addition, whatever logical inferences he may draw can only be derived from the materials contained in their answers (Hintikka 2007: 95). From the moment the partner’s claim has been stated, Socrates’ questions are no longer open-ended: since his questioning aims to close in on the discussant’s mind, he switches to leading questions, the answers to which are mostly of the brief, yes-or-no variety, which one can only confirm or deny (Farnsworth 2021: 45–46, 48–49). This style of cross-­ examination seems to achieve the double effect of slowing down the pace of the discussion and putting growing pressure on the answerer. Socrates’ persistent questioning strives to bring the interlocutor to acknowledge the full range of the consequences of their assertions, usually by demonstrating these consequences through a certain activity with which the discussant is familiar and determining the nature of the practical knowledge required to perform this activity well (Hadot 1995: 153). Nonetheless, by the end of the investigation, one’s confident value system has been deeply shaken, since one is compelled to admit that one lacks the most vital ingredient that lies at the core of this particular activity, as we find in the case of Alcibiades, who is brought to realize that as a potential ruler, he is unable to rule himself (Alcibiades, 122a). Generally speaking, the elenchus functions as a ‘test for consistency and coherence’: sooner or later, Socrates, who appears to be sincere in his attempts to establish the truthfulness of the other’s thesis, brings his companion to pronounce a belief that opposes the initial statement, and consequently confronts them with the reality of their moral and logical contradiction (Reich 1998: 69, 72). This, in itself, is not a proof of the falsity of the proffered assertion, but it is enough to call the integrity of the interlocutor’s belief system into question. Whereas the interrogated individual is now left empty-handed and in a state of great embarrassment, for Socrates, as I shall suggest below, this eventual state of aporíā implies a successful liberation from the illusion of false conviction. The befuddlement of aporíā – a term derived from the Greek aporos, which translates as being ‘without passage’ (Hake 2014: 30) – has been best illustrated by Meno’s proclamation after his conception of virtue has been overpowered by Socrates’s questioning: Socrates, before I even met you I used to hear that you are always in a state of perplexity and that you bring others to the same state, and now I think you are bewitching and beguiling me, simply putting me under a spell, so that I am quite perplexed … Both my mind and my tongue are numb, and I have no answer to give you. (Meno, 80a–b)

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A close analysis of one of Plato’s typical Socratic dialogues, the Crito, confirms the claim that the purpose of the elenchus is to assess the truthfulness of a statement by testing its consistency. In this discussion, which revolves around Crito’s failed attempts to extricate Socrates from the Athenian prison prior to the implementation of his death sentence, Socrates revisits his own argument that ‘one must not value all the opinions of men’ (Crito, 47a). What makes an argument true, or at the very least the ‘argument that on reflection seems best’ to him at present (ibid., 46b), Socrates explains, is whether one’s statement applies to all possible conditions – whether it ‘stays the same or not’ (ibid., 48b). Thus, the role of questions is to introduce, sometimes by applying reductio ad absurdum, different situations that may demonstrate either the inapplicability or the applicability of the statement. The argument must withstand even the most extreme circumstances, since this would imply a victory of the unaffected reason, a communication with a truth that has remained unbreakable in the face of the changing phenomenal world (e.g. ibid., 48b–c). The questions, therefore, persist throughout the discussion in order to develop the problematic aspects of the initial assertion. Since the questions are turned in the direction of Socrates’ companion (in this case, Crito), the companion is compelled to challenge the validity of his own assertion and to ultimately negate it himself. On the other hand, questions are also the catalyst for the development of constructive arguments: whenever the questioning has shown that a certain statement has remained steadfast after exhausting all possible implications, this becomes the consented basis of the deliberation, from which one can draw further logical inferences (ibid., 49e).11 Although the Crito both establishes and exemplifies the way that Socratic questioning can yield irrefutable statements, scholars have been divided on the question of whether the elenchus can lead to truth – a truth known to Socrates – or can only culminate in not-knowing and open-endedness. As Reich (1998: 71–73) correctly points out, the source of this debate lies in the paradoxical nature of Plato’s Socrates, who sometimes seems to vehemently defend his position as a not-knower (e.g. Apology, 21d, 23b) and sometimes promotes his method as a way of leading to unwavering certainty and truth (e.g. Gorgias, 474a)  – and at least once upholds these two positions at the same time (ibid., 508e–509a). This debate is of great significance in our context, since it has a bearing on the understanding of the role that questions play in Socrates’ dialogues: are his questions designed to bring the interlocutor to a disorienting aporetic state, and if this is their only function, in what sense does this state satisfy Socrates’ intentions as a master-philosopher? Does Socrates believe that questioning can help to acquire knowledge? Even if we fundamentally accept the widespread conception of the elenchus as a method whose purpose is to refute and to reveal inconsistency without yielding truth (Meyer 1980: 284; Reich 1998: 71),12 the Crito has shown us that this inconsistency-unveiling  For instance, the axioms that ‘the most important thing is not life, but the good life’ (Crito, 48b) and that ‘neither to do wrong nor to return a wrong is ever correct’ (ibid, 49d). 12  Gregory Vlastos and Richard Robinson argue that not only does the elenchus not prove any truth, it also does not prove falsity (Reich 1998: 71; Hake 2014: 29). 11

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process can also reveal consistency: a statement can be declared to be true if it has remained applicable to all possible cases of a given type. While the statement may and should be subject to further testing, so long as it ‘still holds’ (Crito, 48b), it can certainly be the basis of philosophical conviction.13 As for the question of whether Socrates’ inquiry leads to a truth already known to him, it is difficult to accept Socrates’ soothing proclamation that he is eager to ‘examine the question together’ with his discussant (e.g. Crito, 46d, 48e). When Socrates expresses the willingness to test the consistency of an argument, he already knows what he intends to defend or refute: ‘If you can make any objection while I am speaking, make it and I will listen to you, but if you have no objection to make, my dear Crito, then stop now from saying the same thing so often’ (ibid., 48e). The questioner, who rapidly becomes the answerer, may instigate the questioning process, but as Socrates advances in his investigation, the discussant’s active involvement increasingly diminishes (ibid., 50d–54d). Thus, although Socrates’ fiery interrogations were often intended to undermine the authority of those who presumed to be possessors of knowledge – those influential citizens of the Polis who had long since ceased to question or to welcome questioning of their convictions (Meyer 1980: 281–282) – Socrates’ own authority, as the confident leader of the discussion, is maintained throughout the dialogues. Meyer (ibid., 284) seems to take Socrates’ pretence that he searches along with his companions at face value, portraying the method as a process throughout which the absolutely equal interlocutors ask each other questions and progress by gaining mutual understanding. But Meyer’s suggestion that a dialectic based on questions and answers prevents any possibility of an authoritative voice seems to miss the most crucial element of Socratic irony. Socrates, Hadot (1995: 153) points out, splits himself into the one who knows how the dialogue should end, and the one who sincerely embarks on the dialectical path along with his discussant, while the interlocutor has no idea where he is being led to (ibid.).14 But if Socrates knows where his method of elenchus should lead to, what is his final destination? Is the aporíā achieved at the end of a typical dialogue destructive, in the sense that it is purely interested in robbing the individual of their arrogant conviction? Does Socrates, like the sophists, enter the debate with the sole motivation of utilizing a highly effective rhetorical technique in order to get the upper hand?15 We know that in the Apology (21b–d), Socrates describes the way that his method came into being: perplexed by the Delphic oracle’s proclamation that no one is wiser than him, Socrates set out to question reputedly wise men with the hope  As soon as this positive purpose of Socrates’ refutation is incorporated into our understanding of the elenchic process, it becomes clearer why the Socratic method constitutes the solid foundation of Western philosophical argumentation. 14  Hintikka (2007: 96–97) offers a subtler distinction: Socrates may know nothing, but he certainly knows which questions he ought to ask. Thus, he possesses strategic (rather than definitory) knowledge, which endows him with the ability to anticipate what his interlocutor’s answers might be. 15  Socrates (Apology, 23c) himself points out that some of his young listeners imitate his method and try to question others with the intention of displaying their rivals’ lack of knowledge. 13

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of finding a counterexample to the oracle’s judgement and absolving himself of the claim to wisdom. Yet was this initial self-testing the lasting purpose of his dialectic of questions and answers? Even scholars, such as Reich (1998: 75), who have concluded that Socrates’ not-knowing was sincere and that his elenchus had no purpose other than refutation, would agree that Socrates was not a sceptic who possessed no positive views of his own. This becomes more clearly evident when we take into account the fact that Socrates had contextualized his method within a broader religious framework of service to the god Apollo (Apology, 30e), and that his successors, like Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Plato, never propagated sceptical views but were in fact fervent theory-builders (Hadot 2002: 23). In the end, Reich (1998: 69) acknowledges that Socrates’ cross-examination ‘breaks down in order to build up’ and that its therapeutically cleansing effect is intended to ‘wake men out of their dogmatic slumbers into genuine curiosity’ (Robinson, quoted in ibid., 72). The conception of the elenchus as therapy is captured most vividly in the Sophist: Doctors who work on the body think it can’t benefit from any food that’s offered to it until what’s interfering with it from inside is removed. The people who cleanse the soul, my young friend, likewise think the soul, too, won’t get any advantage from any learning that’s offered to it until someone shames it by refuting it, removes the opinions that interfere with learning, and exhibits it cleansed, believing that it knows only those things that it does know, and nothing more … For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we have to say that refutation is the principal and most important kind of cleansing. (Sophist, 230b–e)

By applying a Hadotian hermeneutic approach, we can begin to read the aporetic state as a transformative opportunity or, in Hadot’s terminology, as a spiritual exercise. This means that aporíā as a purpose of the Socratic dialogue cannot be fully understood so long as it is studied as the end result of a logical procedure: we should also consider the additional layer of potential spiritual metamorphosis, which does not appear in the text for the simple reason that it is fulfilled within one’s interior or after the dialogue’s last words have been pronounced. The fact that Socrates had no system to teach, Hadot (1995: 157) reminds us, is because ‘his philosophy was a spiritual exercise, an invitation to a new way of life, active reflection, and living consciousness’. This commitment to the awakening of consciousness – to midwifing the other’s mind (Theaetetus, 150c) – was also the reason that Socrates entirely relied on the dialogical form (Hadot 1995: 163). The dialogue is not designed to equip the interlocutor and reader with a particular form of knowledge, which can be effectively transmitted in other forms of discourse, but rather to make the experience of true activity of the mind as palpable and accessible as possible (ibid., 154). The disquieting questioning compels Socrates’ companion to ascend to a state of heightened self-consciousness, and thus it can be said that Socrates functions as the living representation of the interlocutor’s awareness at its peak (ibid., 149, 154–155).16 The resulting shock of aporíā may prompt the discussant and reader to  The transformation of questioning into self-questioning is depicted well in Laches (188a): ‘Whoever comes into close contact with Socrates and associates with him in conversation must necessarily, even if he began by conversing about something quite different in the first place, keep on being led about by the man’s arguments until he submits to answering questions about himself.’ 16

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admit the urgency of ‘existential consciousness’ and self-care (epimeleia heautou) (Hadot 1995: 156). Questioning, in this atypical dialectical context, may not act as refutation in the narrow sense of the term. For this reason, Tarrant (2002: 68–69) suggests moving away from the habit of employing the word élenkhos, which is borrowed from the realm of rivalry and competition, in favour of the more collaborative term exétasis, which translates as ‘testing’, and which Socrates applies to his interrogative activity thirteen times in the Apology. Exetasis, Tarrant clarifies, captures the nature of the Socratic dialogue, which is both amicable in spirit and centred on the examination of the depth of knowledge possessed by an individual (ibid., 72). This reorientation lays the foundations for a transformative reading of the aporíā: aporíā not as a dead end but as the beginning of one’s own search for true knowledge. In the Meno, Socrates develops this notion straightforwardly, after Meno’s slave boy has reached the aporetic state: SOCRATES: Indeed, we have probably achieved something relevant to finding out how matters stand, for now, as he does not know, he would be glad to find out … Do you think that before he would have tried to find out that which he thought he knew though he did not, before he fell into perplexity and realized he did not know and longed to know? MENO: I do not think so, Socrates. SOCRATES: Has he then benefitted from being numbed? MENO: I think so. (Meno, 84c)

This implies that despite the famed Socratic irony, what drives this method of questioning is not the wish to embarrass someone by exposing their inner contradictions but rather, the belief that this type of exposure may initiate souls into the philosophical way of life. The aporíā is thus not a shaming experience but a humbling one, giving rise to self-reflection and an open-minded quest for authentic answers (Hake 2014: 33). First, questions, as information- and knowledge-seeking activity, are deployed with the intention of revealing the false information that one has inattentively gathered. Consequently, the revelation throws the respondent back on themselves so that they reflect on where they truly are and begin to cultivate consciousness. In this way, not knowing becomes the fertile ground on which Socrates’ notion of the good life can finally blossom. Fiona Leigh’s (2020: 273) useful analysis illuminates this consequential reflection and development. Exploring Socrates’ transformative aims, she suggests that his method of testing does not seek to make one aware of one’s ignorance, but rather to make one conscious of the dormant positive knowledge that one genuinely possesses. She thus concludes that the function of the Socratic dialogue is to facilitate ‘cognitive self-knowledge’ by mirroring one’s own authentic convictions which, in the absence of philosophical inquiry, have remained hidden from one’s own view (ibid., 248, 259, 260). Questions are therefore not only a device for eliminating false beliefs but also a force that provokes and elicits the best parts of oneself, the godlike regions of one’s soul (Alcibiades, 133c). This can be understood as Plato’s interpretation of the Delphic dictum ‘know thyself’: growing aware of what one truly thinks

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as well as learning to exercise one’s own capacity for reason (Leigh 2020: 248).17 The type of reading suggested by Leigh is clearly exemplified in the Alcibiades, which is an exercise in cognitive self-knowledge. Socrates insists, somewhat manipulatively, that since he is the persistent questioner throughout the entire dialogue, the only one who can make all the various claims is Alcibiades himself, the persistent answerer (Alcibiades, 112e, 113a). In Socrates’ view, Alcibiades could never be persuaded by accepting the master’s position in the same way that he could be if he heard himself say these things and became aware of saying them himself (ibid., 114e). Like Hadot, Leigh infers from this example and others that Socrates’ cross-­ examination was a vital component of the care of one’s soul and a preparation for a philosophical way of life (Leigh 2020: 249–250). The awakened individuals, who have adopted the epistemic standards laid out by the dialectical process, can employ these standards to commit themselves to a continuing scrutiny of the logical consistency of their claims and beliefs and to ongoing assessment of their function as self-mastered, reasonable beings (ibid., 253, 270, 271).

Kōan: Rooting Out the Entire Mind18 Zen kōan is another question-based tradition, but as opposed to the Socratic dialogue, it emerged within a religious and mystical context, and thus its transformative aims as a spiritual exercise are far more explicit. Kōan is rooted in the pivotal developments that took place within Chinese Buddhism in the Sòng dynasty (960–1279) and that gave shape to Zen (pronounced ‘Chán’ in Chinese) as we presently know it (Schlütter 2008: 1). After Chán Buddhism had spread to a degree that it became the major form of elite monastic Buddhism, a doctrinal dispute between the Cáodòng and Línjì traditions in the twelfth century split the school into two competing approaches to enlightenment and practice: the ‘silent illumination’ (mozhao) of the Cáodòng (Jp. Sōtō) tradition and the kanhua Chán (‘Chán of observing the word’) of the Línjì (Jp. Rinzai) tradition (ibid., 1, 3). Schlütter (ibid., 3) describes this split as a defining event in the history of Chán Buddhism, since it brought a fundamental problem of Zen philosophy into sharp focus: how can one set out to become enlightened if Chán maintains that one is already and originally enlightened? The approach of silent illumination endorsed a form of seated meditation, or zuòchán (Jp. zazen), which could facilitate the realization of one’s Buddha-­ nature, whereas the ‘Chán of observing the word’ prescribed a relentless focus on

 Leigh’s view of the Platonian ‘know thyself’ is quite limited to the rational dimension of selfknowledge. As I demonstrated in Chaps. 3, 4, and 5, for Plato’s Socrates reason is but a reflection of the soul’s active presence in the individual. Thus, the term ‘soul’ as the practice of reason cannot be analysed in isolation from other uses, such as those that are abundantly found in the Phaedo and the Phaedrus. 18  Suzuki (1994: 85). 17

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the punchline (the huatou) of a gōng’àn (Jp. kōan) in order to attain a climactic breakthrough experience of original enlightenment (ibid., 3, 107). Although kōans (literally, ‘public notices’ or ‘public announcements’) may strike the reader as nonsensical riddles, they are in fact brief pronouncements, exchanges, and anecdotes that derive from discourse records and biographies of antecedent Zen masters (Hake 2014: 39).19 Each kōan is thus an encapsulation of a certain spontaneous expression of the master’s awakened mind in response to their disciples’ queries (ibid.). This implies that kōans are preserved answers that have been eventually transformed into questions – or, at least, riddles, since not all kōans appear in the explicit form of interrogative sentences. As Suzuki (1994: 81–82) explains in his discussion of the evolution of kōans, in the beginning of Zen history, a question would be raised by the aspirant and the response given to it would be on the basis of the master’s rapid and intuitive assessment of the questioner’s mental state and the particular help that was required for their awakening. The master’s response, however, would often lead the aspirant to an aporetic state (to borrow Platonian terminology). As these exchanges of questions and answers (Jp. mondō) were gradually documented in the growing Zen literature, these living experiences became the subject of intellectual interpretations (ibid., 82). The kōan system was thus an indispensable way of reanimating the experiential and liberating content of these statements by employing them as pointers, that is, exercises that test the limits of the intellect and help to effect Zen consciousness in the form of satori (ibid.). In this way, an answer handed down by one of the school’s ancestors would transform into a question that the Zen master directed to their student. This may remind us of the spiritual exercise of the Alcibiades: here, again, the master is the questioner and the sole answerer is the student (Zug 1967: 86), while the true answer is not an intellectual comprehension but self-knowledge  – in Zen’s case, a full illumination of one’s being. Any attempt to logically fathom a kōan would be greatly discouraging: being an ‘anomalous development of the riddle’, the kōan is intended to avoid forming any rational relationship between the referent and the descriptive elements (Zug 1967: 81). Nevertheless, the widespread tendency, even among some scholars, to infer from this that the kōan’s ultimate purpose is to aporetically befuddle the novice’s mind (e.g. ibid., 83; Hake 2014: 39) overlooks deeper motivations beyond the shock tactic. There is no question that Zen masters throughout the ages have expressed a keen wish to ‘make the calculating mind die’ and to ‘root out the entire mind that has been at work since eternity’, and for this purpose, they have utilized the kōan as a way of exhausting their students’ cognitive powers (Suzuki 1994: 71–72). But this by no means implies that the masters’ answers are merely absurd. As Hooper (2007: 288) correctly points out, the nonsensical language of the kōan is only apparent, since kōans earnestly convey the essentials of Zen philosophy.  We generally know of around 1700 kōans. However, the two major collections are the Pi-yen lu (Jp. Hekigan-roku), which consists of one hundred kōans (selected and commented on by a Chinese priest, Yüan-wu, in 1125), and the Wu-men kuan (Jp. Mumon-kan), a collection of fortyeight kōans compiled in 1228 by the Chinese priest Hui-k’ai. 19

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What clearly distinguishes Zen pedagogy from those schools that straightforwardly promote religious metaphysics is that the former maintains, in a rather Wittgensteinian way, that one ought to ‘say nothing except what can be said’ and show what cannot be said (Wittgenstein 2022: 6.53). In this sense, Zen is a philosophy that refuses to answer questions (Hooper 2007: 286)  – or at least refuses to answer them in a way that is less than a complete demand for instant and direct realization. But while Zen’s refusal to entertain metaphysical speculations is unrelenting,20 this insistence does not mean that Zen has no metaphysical statement of its own. When the master Chao-chou exclaims ‘Wu!’ (literally, ‘not’ or ‘none’) in response to the question of whether there is Buddha-nature in a dog (Suzuki 1994: 80), this not only indicates a rejection of a metaphysical notion but, more importantly, aims to lead to a collapse of all dual notions in favour of a reality in which the metaphysical and the phenomenological, the sensory and the transcendent, are one and the same. The negation of Buddha-nature as a concept is intended to give rise to the revelation of the Buddha-nature in the midst of life itself. In their riddle-­ like answers, Zen masters demonstrate that the sacred and our everyday mind are one inseparable movement, by insisting that the metaphysical appears in any concrete daily act and in any object in sight (Hooper 2007: 286). Another kōan exemplifies one more crucial dimension of Zen consciousness: [Tai-hui] used to carry a short bamboo stick which he held forth before an assembly of monks, and said: ‘If you call this a stick, you affirm; if you call it not a stick, you negate. Beyond affirmation and negation, what would you call it?’ (Suzuki 1994: 87)

This kōan involves us in the familiar Buddhist debate about existence and non-­ existence, but it does so through a direct encounter with a so-called object in the world rather than a purely abstract metaphysical discussion.21 By disabling one’s capacity to either affirm or negate the existence of the stick, one may achieve an experiential fulfilment of the middle way. Moreover, Tai-hui’s question challenges the listener’s and the reader’s intellectual processes of naming and objectification. It thus ‘draws the meditator into an awareness of the bond that exists between perceiver and perceived’ (Hooper 2007: 289). The dynamics of the novice’s work with the kōan – the way that they face and handle the riddle that has been chosen for them by the master  – is particularly revealing in the context of our discussion. Since the masters position themselves as questioners, the riddle does not flow equally in both directions: the master introduces the kōan, whereas the burden of coming up with potential answers lies entirely on the student’s shoulders (Zug 1967: 86). Furthermore, in this type of transformative dialogue, the master represents the superior vantage point of the awakened mind and assumes the position of the evaluator of progress (Hake 2014: 39–40). There is no intention on the master’s part of sparing the disciple the  After all, Zen represents a moving away from Mahāyāna’s metaphysical doctrine (Hooper 2007: 286). 21  See the first section of Chap. 11, which discusses the Buddha’s imponderables and Nāgārjuna’s middle way.

20

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awesome task of solitary inquiry: on the contrary, the master deliberately (albeit carefully) increases the student’s psychic tension by demanding that they devote concentration to the kōan day and night, with the intention of leading them towards a transformative crisis (Zug 1967: 83; Suzuki 1994: 69). In addition to the kōan, the master may deploy the mondō, a rapid and random exchange of questions and answers that leaves no room for thoughtful answers. In this way, the baffled monk can sometimes arrive at an unexpected insight into their individual kōan (Zug 1967: 86). Naturally, the novice’s initial attempts at resolving the kōan tend to involve an insistence on identifying rational connections between its different components (Zug 1967: 83). However, the trans-logical master–interlocutor dialogue  – also referred to as the ‘root case’ – rapidly frustrates the student’s discursive thinking to the point that they become absorbed in an intense and effortful deliberation (Hake 2014: 39–40). This period typically freezes one’s mind into a ‘single, all encompassing ball of doubt’ wholly centred on the kōan, a state that prepares the novice for a sudden awareness of the deeper intent that lies at the core of the root case (ibid.). Suzuki (1994: 86–94) introduces a great many inspirational guidelines imparted by Zen masters to their kōan initiates, all of which are primarily concerned with the degree of concentration that is required for the positive, healthy breakdown to occur: one should have every thought fixed on the kōan day and night, whether sitting or lying, walking or standing, with the same degree of unwavering focus that a mother hen sitting on her eggs or a hungry person looking for food would have; the spirit of inquiry must never be released, as if one were carrying the burden of a heavy debt. At the same time, Suzuki continues, one should steer clear of any attempt to settle into a false solution based on mere speculation and imagination, paying attention instead to the kōan’s unintelligibility and inaccessibility: in Zen terminology, the kōan must be devoid of taste and flavour, that is, without any appetizing intellectual clue (ibid., 90). Additionally, the guidelines recommend that whatever has been accumulated in one’s mind, including all learning, clever sayings, and even the truth of Zen and the Buddha’s teachings, should be relinquished (ibid., 87). At a certain point, this extraordinary mental strain brings the student to a state of profound disorientation and lack of control, as if they were a living corpse or a man hanging over a precipice. This state contains various contradictory feelings: the sense of having one’s mind and body wiped out of existence or thrown into an abyss is intermixed with growing impatience, disquiet, and a strange type of joy (ibid., 90). These, according to the Zen masters’ testimonies, are indications of the approaching ultimate realization. If the necessary experience of psychological impasse is lived through, sooner or later the seemingly formidable wall separating the practitioner from the existential solution breaks down, and the kōan resolves itself by reproducing the master’s state of consciousness, of which the kōan has been an expression within the student’s mind, personality, and body (Suzuki 1994: 81). The descriptions of the realization of the so-called answer are deeply poetic: we hear of a sudden apprehension of the mind of the Buddhas and the patriarchs, an

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apprehension whose light illuminates the entire universe, revealing the great wheel of Dharma in every single grain of dust (ibid., 91); the inexpressible joy of drinking the waters of true knowledge (ibid., 94); and the experience of having one’s brain smashed into pieces while realizing that the truth has always been in one’s possession (ibid., 87). In master Tai-Hui’s words, one discovers that ‘all the teachings of the ancient worthies expounded in the Buddhist Tripiṭaka, the Taoist Scriptures, and the Confucian Classics, are no more than commentaries upon your own sudden cry, “Ah, this!”’ (ibid., 89). This ‘aha’ moment is traditionally conveyed by the student not in propositional language but through a demonstration – in other words, it is shown rather than said (Hooper 2007: 287–288). Having explored the dynamics of Zen questioning and its resulting existential answer, we should raise the question of whether this question-based tradition bears any resemblance to the Socratic method. Do these two traditions share a similar or even identical conception of the transformative uses and aims of questions? In her brief comparative study of the elenchus and the Zen kōan, Hake (2014) identifies four intriguing similarities. First, both practices lead to an aporetic state whose aim is not merely to baffle the interlocutor but to awaken their mind (ibid., 41–42). In this sense, aporíā is deemed by these schools a healthy and constructive condition that makes one conscious of one’s false assumptions about reality and lays the foundations for the quest for genuine wisdom (ibid.). The second commonality suggested by Hake (ibid., 38, 42) is that Zen’s demand that one remain in one’s empty ‘beginner’s mind’ while eschewing the ‘expert mind’ is essentially comparable to Socrates’ not-knowing. More generally, she indicates that both systems have a similar perception of wisdom as a state of mind which is not achieved by learning but through the opposite activity of emptying one’s mind (ibid., 38). However, typical Socratic dialogues tend to culminate in aporíā, whereas the process of kōan, if followed all the way, makes use of aporíā as an intermediate stage after which one attains blissful illumination. Additionally, although both approaches deploy questions not to seek out information but to establish an existential type of knowledge, their understanding of knowledge greatly differs. Thus, Hake’s (ibid., 42) suggestion of a third similarity  – that Socrates’ wisdom of thoughtfulness and Zen’s wisdom of mindfulness are close synonyms  – seems to underplay Socrates’ philosophical conception of selfknowledge as the cognizance of oneself as a rational being, on the one hand, and Zen’s emphasis on the ‘beginner’s mind’ as a way to regain one’s original boundless nature on the other. The need for a finer distinction becomes even more acute in Hake’s fourth and last similarity: she (ibid., 44) believes that Socrates’ unusual role as a teacher of ignorance, one whose paradoxical mission is to make others learn in the negative sense about their lack of knowledge, is close to the Zen masters’ function as ones who lead their kōan students towards an aporetic crisis. Nevertheless, the masters’ depictions of satori strongly indicate that the undertaking of kōan is done with a conscious anticipation on the part of both teacher and student of an exceptionally positive destination.

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Krishnamurti: The Answer is in the Question22 While both Socrates and the Zen kōan tradition have made use of questions as primary methodological devices, it is difficult to find an explicit reference to the philosophical and mystical purposes of questions in the literature of these traditions. On the other hand, even though Krishnamurti would never consider his way of using questions a persistent method, he seems to be more conscious of questioning as a transformative activity or, in other words, as a spiritual exercise. For instance, in some of his public lectures, especially in the introductory sections of sessions of questions and answers, Krishnamurti would ruminate on the right use of questions – presumably due to the audience’s understandable expectation of receiving substantial answers to their queries. In one of these sessions, Krishnamurti (1982) opens by wondering, ‘Do questions need answers – or are there only questions?’ What really matters, Krishnamurti (ibid.) asserts, is not the answer to the question but the way that one meets and responds to the challenge posed by the question. Thus, instead of searching for answers, one has to learn the art of probing questions: shifting one’s attention to one’s inward reaction to the question and examining hidden motivations, such as the desire to escape the gravity of the question and to settle for some quickly gratifying answer (ibid.). Krishnamurti suggests moving closer to the question itself and delving into it, with great hesitation and sensitivity and without conclusion or relying on authority, since, after all, ‘the answer is in the question’ (ibid.). This implies that when questions are treated independently from answers, they can lucidly mirror the subtle mechanism of the mind, including the way that the mind offers escapist answers. Moreover, if we gain insight into the way the mind operates in response to the question, the one answer that we truly seek is eventually revealed in the form of existential understanding. A year earlier, Krishnamurti (1981) initiated a session of questions and answers by asking, ‘What is the role of the question in life?’ In his opening words, he warned his listeners not to question only at times of distress; otherwise, one’s questioning is nothing more than seeking a way out of sorrow. Instead, one should adopt a questioning mind, not a limited activity but a resolute inner position (ibid.). This quality of the questioning mind, Krishnamurti points out, is a constant destructive activity that goes against the brain’s desire for psychological security – the security that it finds in knowledge and learning, among other things. Krishnamurti made further and subtler observations on his approach to questions on two occasions. The first was in an interview with Pupul Jayakar in 1978, which had begun with Jayakar’s wish to explore the way that Krishnamurti’s mind operated and developed into an investigation of how Krishnamurti received a question (Jayakar 1986: 326–327). To illustrate these inner dynamics, Krishnamurti likens his mind to a pond, while the question is a stone thrown into it: A pond is absolutely quiet, a question is dropped into the pond, the pond is pure water without all the pollution that man has put into it, which is the past. The pond is clear, clean 22

 Krishnamurti (n.d. b).

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water, and into that water a question is put as a pebble and the reply is the wave. I think that is how it functions. (ibid., 329)

This pondlike mind, Krishnamurti explains, is utterly empty in the sense that it contains no remembrance or recording of previous answers, and therefore no barriers (ibid., 327). In another attempt to capture this state, he suggests that when he receives a question, he hears it both with the ordinary physical ear and through a ‘hearing with the non-ear’, a state of holistic quietness which has nothing to do with the ordinary processes of recollection and comparison to stored memories and knowledge (ibid., 327–329). Clearly, Krishnamurti hopes to bring the participants in his dialogues to the same state of mind in which he claims to be absorbed. This effort became the conscious focus of a dialogue in 1981, titled ‘The Nature of God’, which I already analysed in Chap. 8 from a different angle. While the preliminary question posed by Jayakar revolves around the discovery of God’s nature, Krishnamurti insists on bringing his listeners closer to his own frame of mind by holding the question indefinitely while pushing away any satisfying information-­ laden answers. He employs the question as a tool of mystical negation and psychological cleansing, asserting that when the question is listened to with a not-knowing attitude, it has the power to wipe away ‘everything man has put together’ (ibid., 416–417, 420). This seems strikingly similar to Socrates’ and the Zen masters’ stance that aporíā is the necessary starting point of the true quest for wisdom. Krishnamurti further confirms Jayakar’s remark that commonly, the presence of questions sets one’s mind in motion, triggering it as it were to gravitate towards the question, in the same way that ants gather around grains of sugar, whereas in Krishnamurti’s case, no such movement takes place, and the question is held quietly and left unanswered, in a state of delayed reaction (ibid., 421–423). Thus, one can measure the degree to which one’s brain is programmed by the way one approaches a question. When one refuses to allow the mechanical and programmed response of the brain to take over, Krishnamurti maintains, the very act of holding the question leads to an accumulation of energy that has its own momentum and its own way of giving rise to existential answers (ibid., 422–423). Based on the four examples above and my extensive discussion of Krishnamurti’s methodological use of questions in Part II, it has become clear that Krishnamurti offers a radical metamorphosis of the nature of questions, which transcends the conventional role of questions in philosophical investigation. Furthermore, it may be proposed that Krishnamurti ascribes to questions an ontological status of their own, since for him, questions are no longer merely the ‘beginning of thought, important only as an instrument for attaining the end of thought, the judgment’ (Cohen 1929: 351), and they are not defined in terms of their answers (Watson 2018). As soon as they are released from the burden of functioning as answer-­ provokers, Krishnamurti believes, questions become a gateway to a yet unknown reservoir of wisdom, energy, and liberating power. Thus, in Krishnamurti’s spiritual exercise, the participant moves in the reverse direction, that is, from potential answers back to the question, and in doing so, they not only purge their mind of

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burdensome memory and accumulated knowledge, but also establish a new relationship with the unknowable. In Krishnamurti’s view, every fundamental philosophical question, such as the question of the nature of God, begins as a primordial urge to explore the existential mystery. Nonetheless, due to the conditioned nature of human thought, this innate longing behind all human search for transcendent knowledge quickly becomes satiated by ready-made answers that have been amassed in humanity’s storehouse of memory, established knowledge, and authority. Since both seeking and finding are carried out by the same conditioned activity of human thought, one’s inquiry can only end in further limitation. Krishnamurti’s application of questions, on the other hand, suggests returning to the pre-thought, mind-widening nature of questions, so that the mind becomes genuinely capable of contacting that which exists outside thought’s domain. Moreover, since metaphysical questions are unanswerable in the sense that they uncover an ever-fresh, living truth that cannot be accumulated and appropriated by thought, in Krishnamurti’s type of spiritual exercise these questions should be asked anew every time. Although Krishnamurti’s approach seems to broaden the existing range of philosophical and mystical uses of questions, it is difficult to pinpoint a substantial difference in his treatment of questions compared to that of Socrates or the Zen kōan tradition. After all, all three schools of thought utilize questions as a revolutionary form of psycho-spiritual transformation, and more specifically, as a negatory device for the declared purpose of mind-purification. Each of these practices has developed its unique way of turning questions from an information-seeking activity into a knowledge-erasing activity, with the intention of demonstrating the limits of knowledge and reaching the edge of thought. All three have designed their techniques in a way that strongly avoids answers in the form of metaphysical construction, since their one and only motivation is to establish an existential type of self-knowledge and a resulting philosophical or religious way of life.23 Additionally, all dialogical approaches employ questions as a way of pressuring and cornering the discussant’s mind, and they do so by demanding an answer while rejecting all suggested answers. As a direct outcome of their persistent use of questions as negation, these methods achieve a type of aporíā, which is ultimately destined to propel the interlocutor into authentic self-knowledge.24 Another commonality is that in all three practices, the master strives to function primarily as a questioner. In doing so, they hope to serve as the representation of the disciple’s awakened consciousness so that the student can be reminded of their own philosophical or religious resources. Thus, their forms of questioning are intended to arouse an individual’s latent consciousness to a degree that the individual becomes fully responsible for resolving their own existential problems. Accordingly, all these schools of thought insist that they have no

 I am aware of the fact that Zen, as an extension of Mahāyāna Buddhism, rejects the concept of ‘self’. ‘Self-knowledge’, in this context, refers exclusively to knowledge of one’s true nature. 24  Countless dialogues of Krishnamurti’s end in an aporetic state. See, for instance, my analysis of the dialogue titled ‘What is the Relation between Krishnamurti’s Teaching and Truth?’ in Chap. 7. 23

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system to teach, and for this reason, their philosophies are spiritual exercises that can only be realized in this form of relentless questioning. In many respects, however, Krishnamurti’s method of questioning can be considered closer to the Socratic method. First, we should remind ourselves that the Zen kōan is significantly distinguished from the two other spiritual exercises in that its purpose is to realize given traditional answers which have been preserved throughout the ages. Kōan is, after all, answers afforded by masters who were absorbed in a transcendent state, and its riddle-like form is only a later development of these documented dialogues and pronouncements. Even in its later form, the question is resolved when the monk’s mind merges into the past master’s ultimate answer, or, in other words, when the monk’s being becomes the master’s answer. In this sense, the negatory element in the kōan is more limited: it applies to ordinary answers but never to the adept’s statement, whose metaphysical status is deemed absolute and unquestionable. In the end, it can be said that there is nothing more tradition-­ affirming than kōan: it is an unwavering focus on the school’s spiritual legacy. Moreover, the student should only tackle one question and arrive at one final answer, even if this answer may be demonstrated in manifold ways. Thus, there is no interest in a persistent and open inquiry, since Zen’s ultimate destination is to put an end to questioning. To this we should add the fact that even though the Zen teacher who introduces the kōan serves as a questioner, they also function as a highly authoritative presence. Rather than active participants in a collaborative inquiry, they are situated in an unmoving position towards which the disciple strives to progress. As opposed to the traditional limits presented by the Zen kōan, Socrates and Krishnamurti seem to offer a different model of dialogical dynamics and questioning. In certain fragments of Krishnamurti’s dialogues, one could imagine that this is how Socrates would have engaged in a dialogue had he lived in the twentieth century. One impressive example is the closing part of the second dialogue between Krishnamurti and Jacob Needleman (Krishnamurti 1987: 50–56). Needleman raises the question of whether traditions still have some value in their ability to inspire people to follow ethical ways of living (ibid., 50). In response, Krishnamurti employs familiar Socratic tactics. First, he makes progress only when Needleman consents to the steps he takes in his inquiry, while it is clear that he himself knows where he is going. Second, he is adamant that Needleman is the one who makes all the statements. Third, he seems to ironically lead Needleman towards making erroneous statements. Last, he shares with Socrates not only the technique but also the ethics of the dialogue when he concludes that the only role of good companionship is to tell those pursuing it that they do not need anyone in order to see themselves. Thus, a dialogue’s sole purpose is to put the other in a corner so that they cannot escape and to force them to look at themselves (ibid., 55). Both masters adopt this unorthodox method of directing questions to their discussants in order to avoid positioning themselves as knowers and with the intention of emptying others’ knowing minds as well. In addition, both deploy questioning to undermine authority and to foster doubt in the mind of the individual in order to guide them towards profound sovereignty. As already pointed out, there is a significant degree of pretence in their proclaimed intention to walk the path of

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investigation in tandem with the interlocutor, on the basis of shared not-knowing – no doubt, Hadot’s (1995: 153) description of the way that Socrates splits himself into two applies to the Krishnamurti dialogue as well. Thus, while both disavow any claims of knowledge, they do not seem to abandon their authoritative function as leaders of the dialogue even for a brief moment. Nonetheless, they definitely do their best to avoid imprinting answers of their own in their discussants’ minds, and instead centre on the examination of whatever answers their students provide. By encouraging their companions to recognize that these are their own statements, after all, they help them to attain ‘cognitive self-knowledge’ (to borrow Leigh’s words). Above all, both Socrates and Krishnamurti are determined to retain the spirit of inquiry even after the dialogue has come to an end: they are genuinely interested in an ongoing flow of awakened intelligence and curiosity – love of wisdom, if you will – rather than a fixed and static state of wisdom into which all questions have been dissolved. They seem to share what Krishnamurti terms the ‘questioning mind’, a source of philosophical vitality and even positive restlessness.25 This closeness to Socrates’ philosophical investigation may indicate that Krishnamurti’s dialogue fuses the philosophical mind with the mystical spirit. Notwithstanding the close affinities between these two processes of questioning, this comparison reaches its limits when we begin to turn our attention to the aims of Socrates’ and Krishnamurti’s methods. As much as Krishnamurti’s form of interrogation appears to be analytical, he is certainly indifferent to matters such as the validation or refutation of logical consistency, and his questions do not attempt to establish a rational foundation as a reflection of the presence of the soul within the individual. What Socrates deems ignorance and self-knowledge has nothing to do with Krishnamurti’s understanding of these terms, which is far more mystical in essence. For Krishnamurti, the question is not a logical device but a meditative force, a meeting point between the questioning mind and the unknowable that has the ability to draw the questioner into a state of mystical union. Thus, while Socrates is a philosopher of the Hadotian type – that is, one whose philosophy can only be fulfilled as a realized existential state – his aims, at least as shown in Plato’s typical Socratic dialogues, are not as mystical as those of Krishnamurti and the Zen kōan tradition. Even when Krishnamurti seems keen on tirelessly retaining the spirit of the questioning mind, his use of questions as negation is ultimately driven by the wish to accomplish an existential response in the form of complete illumination – in his words, total insight, and in Zen terminology, satori. This may suggest that what Krishnamurti does is to offer, through his insight into questions, an innovative synthesis of philosophical investigation and mystical inquiry. On the one hand, the highly dynamic flow of his questioning process and the focus on the awakening of critical intelligence resembles the cerebral philosophical investigation developed by Socrates. On the other hand, what his questions value as true and what they aspire to bring about is more akin to the purely mystical  A large number of dialogues guided by Krishnamurti culminate in a sense of aliveness, total absence of security, and an energized and intense mind (e.g. Jayakar 1986: 390–391; Krishnamurti 1996: 234; Needleman 1970: 175). 25

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hopes of the kōan practice. ‘Mystical’, in this context, indicates not only a religious way of life which is perfectly aligned with the higher impulses of one’s soul, but a final collapse of the division between subject and object, a state of totality to which the conceptually unanswerable question is but a gateway. In other words, Krishnamurti utilizes questions as a dynamic process of philosophical inquiry for mystical ends. Thus, in the way that his questioning amalgamates ingredients of classical Western philosophy and East and South Asian mysticism, it may be considered a meeting of East and West, a vital expression of multicultural philosophy.26

References Belnap, Nuel B., and Thomas B. Steel. 1977. The Logic of Questions and Answers. London: Yale University Press. Carpenter, Michelle, and Ronald Polansky. 2002. Variety of Socratic Elenchi. In Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond, ed. Gary Alan Scott, 89–100. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Cohen, Felix S. 1929. What Is a Question? The Monist 39 (3): 350–364. Farnsworth, Ward. 2021. The Socratic Method. Boston: Godine. Graham, Daniel. 1992. Socrates and Plato. Phronesis 37 (2): 141–165. https://doi. org/10.1163/156852892321052588. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life. Ed. Arnold I. Davidson. Trans. Michael Chase. Hoboken: Blackwell. ———. 2002. What Is Ancient Philosophy? Trans. Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hake, Stephanie E. 2014. How and Why to Analogize Socratic Questioning to Zen Buddhist Koan Practice. Socrates Journal 2 (3): 27–45. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1993. Socratic Questioning, Logic and Rhetoric. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 47, no. 184(1): 5–30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23949451. Hintikka, Jaakko. 2007. Socratic Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hooper, Carl. 2007. Koan Zen and Wittgenstein’s Only Correct Method in Philosophy. Asian Philosophy 17 (3): 283–292. https://doi.org/10.1080/09552360701708753. Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Karttunen, Laurie. 1977. Syntax and Semantics of Questions. Linguistics and Philosophy 1 (1): 3–44. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00351935. Krishnamurti, J. (n.d. b). 1st Public Questions Brockwood Park August 31, 1982. Jiddu-krishnamurti.net. Accessed June 17, 2022. https://www.krishnamurti.org/ transcript/1st-question-answer-meeting-6/. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1987. The Awakening of Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row. ———. 1996. Total Freedom. New York: HarperCollins. ———. 2016. Fire in the Mind: Dialogues with Pupul Jayakar. Brockwood Park: Krishnamurti Foundation Trust.

 Any similarities between Krishnamurti’s methods on the one hand and those of Socrates or Zen on the other occurred either accidentally or as a consequence of a haphazard process of unconscious absorption on Krishnamurti’s part. 26

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———. n.d.a. Ojai 4th Public Question & Answer Meeting 14th May 1981. jiddu-krishnamurti. net. https://jiddu-­krishnamurti.net/en/1981/1981-­05-­14-­jiddu-­krishnamurti-­4th-­public-­ question-­and-­answer-­meeting. Accessed 17 June 2022. Leigh, Fiona. 2020. Self-Knowledge, Elenchus and Authority in Early Plato. Phronesis 65 (3): 247–280. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685284-­bja10020. Martin, Raymond. 1997. Introduction. In Krishnamurti: Reflection on the Self. Chicago: Open Court. Meyer, Michel. 1980. Dialectic and Questioning: Socrates and Plato. American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (4): 281–289. Needleman, Jacob. (1970). The New Religions. New York: Tarcher/Penguin. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett. Reich, Rob. 1998. Confusion About the Socratic Method: Socratic Paradoxes and Contemporary Invocations of Socrates. Philosophy of Education Archive: 68–78. Schlütter, Morten. 2008. How Zen Became Zen. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Suzuki, Daisetsu Teitataro. 1994. The Zen Koan as a Means of Attaining Enlightenment. Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle. Tarrant, Harold. 2002. Elenchos and Exetasis: Capturing the Purpose of the Socratic Interrogation. In Does Socrates Have a Method? Rethinking the Elenchus in Plato’s Dialogues and Beyond, ed. Gary Alan Scott, 61–77. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Van Norden, Bryan. 2017. Taking Back Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press. Watson, Lani. 2018. What Is a Question. The Philosophers’ Magazine, August 17. https://www. philosophersmag.com/essays/186-­what-­is-­a-­question Williams, Chris V. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher. Millers Point: Sydney School of Arts & Humanities. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2022. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung. London: Kegan Paul. https://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/tlp.pdf. Zug, Charles G. 1967. The Nonrational Riddle: The Zen Koan. The Journal of American Folklore 80 (315): 81–88.

Chapter 11

Nāgārjuna, Śaṅkara, Krishnamurti: Negation as a Spiritual Exercise

In the previous chapter, I illuminated Krishnamurti’s dialogical method of asking unanswerable questions by juxtaposing it with Socratic questioning on the one hand and with the Japanese Rinzai Zen kōan on the other. I will now turn to Krishnamurti’s other major device, which was introduced and demonstrated in Chaps. 7 and 8: methodological negation. To gain a deeper insight into the role that this form of negation played in the Krishnamurti dialogue, I shall compare it to two well-researched negation-based philosophies. The first will be Nāgārjuna’s (c.150–250 ce) Buddhist philosophy of the ‘middle way’ (madhyamaka), in particular his most prominent work The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā). The second will be the eighth-century Śaṅkarācārya’s (hereafter Śaṅkara) Hindu system of Advaita Vedānta, mainly his commentary on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and his independent work A Thousand Teachings (Upadeśasāhasrī). Both Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s forms of negation will be explicated within the broader contexts of their traditional origins: the Buddha’s undeclared questions (avyākata) in the Pāli Canon in the case of the former and the Upaniṣadic neti neti (‘not this, not that’) negation in the case of the latter. Naturally, the question of why I have chosen these two mystically oriented philosophers as Krishnamurti’s most effective objects of comparison in the field of negation should arise. After all, we can think of a great variety of Eastern and Western mystics who have practised religious negation as a device for conveying and defending the ineffability of their mystical experiences. Similarly, there are apophatic or negative theologians in various traditions who have employed negation as a ‘speculative theological strategy’ for figuring out the logic of notions about the supreme being and eliminating constructive depictions of God which can only be borrowed from the phenomenal realm (Jones 2016: 229). As an epistemic act, negation has been broadly used by East Asian mystics. Its earliest extant expressions are

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found in the sixth century bc, in both the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad and the figure of Sañjaya Belathiputta, who employed inclusive negation as a tool of scepticism (Raju 1954: 694–695).1 However, negation was also introduced into the Western theistic tradition through the via negativa approach of Neoplatonism, most notably represented by Plotinus, which influenced later Christian mystical thinkers such as Saint Augustine and Meister Eckhart (Jones 2016: 226) and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (Pessin 2016). The choice to consider the component of negation in the Krishnamurti dialogue in relation to these two pronounced expressions of the Indian tradition of mystical negation has meaningful implications: in this way, Krishnamurti’s negative approach is philosophically contextualized and as a result, the question (which will be addressed in the chapter’s last section) of whether his method continues, develops, or departs from this tradition emerges. Indeed, there are good reasons to suggest that Krishnamurti’s negative path falls within the scope of the Indian practice of negation. First, to my best knowledge Krishnamurti never made reference to any form of Western mystical thought, whereas he certainly spoke of Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara on several occasions, sometimes critically (e.g. Krishnamurti 2014) and sometimes appreciatively (e.g. Krishnamurti 2017: 264). As I will show in the third section of this chapter, Krishnamurti possessed deep awareness of Nāgārjuna’s method of negation. Second, several Krishnamurti scholars have identified substantial interconnections between Krishnamurti and these thinkers (e.g. Shringy 1977: 203; Rodrigues 2001: 181–183, 187–188; Rodrigues 2007: 92–93), although what I deem the most significant comparable feature  – negation  – has eluded them. However, what makes Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s forms of negation even more relevant to the discussion of Krishnamurti’s methodological negation is the fact that all three were practised within the framework of a transformative dialogue (I will return to the subtle relationship between dialogue and the act of negation later in this chapter).2 While Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is not presented in an explicit dialogue form, questions posed by the philosopher’s opponents are woven into the text as catalysts for the unfolding of Nāgārjuna’s complex negation (for instance, XIII: 4).3 Śaṅkara’s commentaries, as Shearer (2017: xxiv) points out, are mostly structured as a dialectical debate between the ‘Vedāntin’ (Śaṅkara) and one or more of his ‘Opponents’ – a structure that feeds the process of negation in that it enables the elimination of all thinkable wrong views until only truth stands forth. This common conversational dimension accentuates yet another shared characteristic of these systems of negation: as I shall demonstrate later, all three mystic thinkers deploy these types of dialectics not to construct abstract metaphysics but to  I shall return to Sañjaya’s form of negation in the following section.  It is worth mentioning that the scriptures that inspired Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s practices of negation – the Buddha’s Dharma talks in the Pāli Canon and the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, as well as a significant number of other Upaniṣads – had also been largely narrated in the explicit form of a dialogue. 3  This reading of the text is supported by Nāgārjuna scholars such as Jay L. Garfield (for example, 1995: 209; Garfield and Priest 2003: 11). 1 2

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dynamically and strategically lead the interlocutor’s mind to a particular experiential insight. To borrow Victor Goldschmidt’s formula, which was originally applied to Plato’s dialogues, ‘These dialogues aim not to inform but to form’ (Hadot 2009: 91). Thus, this implicit and explicit transformative intention of Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s works calls for the same Hadotian hermeneutic approach which I have applied to Krishnamurti’s dialogues throughout Part II of this book. Thus far I have shown that a critical reading of Krishnamurti’s form of argumentation uncovers a great deal of puzzling incoherences and contradictions that will be an issue for the reader only if they expect to find carefully built philosophical statements. On the other hand, if we adopt Hadot’s approach, which enabled him to properly contextualize Greco-Roman texts and which has later been applied by a number of scholars of Asian philosophies (e.g. Apple 2010; Ganeri 2013a, b; Nicholson 2015; Fiordalis 2018), we can finally acknowledge the function of the Krishnamurti dialogue and its inclusive negation as a form of spiritual exercise (áskēsis): a practice designed to ‘produce a certain psychic effect in the reader or listener’ (Davidson 1995: 19–20). Similarly, I argue, Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s dialectical processes of negation  – including their rational and systematic presentations and forms of argumentation – can only be fully understood as transformative methodological tools rather than metaphysical systems.4 A Hadotian reading may be problematic (though not completely implausible) when applied to theory-seekers such as Aristotle. Nonetheless, when it comes to Buddhist and Hindu masters whose declared interest is in leading ‘disciples along a path of spiritual progress’ (Hadot 2009: 52–53), Hadot’s interpretive approach enables us to remain faithful to the texts’ original intent, without which scholars become overly occupied with heated debates on the logical validity of the statements (as so often found among Nāgārjuna’s interpreters).5 By any standard, Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara are transformative philosophers. For transformative philosophers, the activity of philosophy, including the most meticulously structured logical processes, can only be completed by a highly active interlocutor in the form of a leap beyond the logical process itself and a direct perception of what their philosophy could only indicate. Of all the strategies and tools utilized by transformative philosophers, negation is perhaps the ideal demonstration of Hadot’s thesis (as well as my own thesis). As a feature of the transformative dialogue, I suggest, negation appears to involve a meaningful ontological discussion, while in actuality it is an effective method for destroying all conceivable metaphysical claims.6 Simply put, it is a spiritual exercise that prepares for a particular experience and facilitates it: the discussant’s ability to perceive reality with naked eyes and a bare mind. I shall start by introducing the Buddha’s imponderables and the way that Nāgārjuna developed these segments of the Buddha’s Dharma into the system of the  For a contrary view, see Raju (1954: 703), who perceives Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s negation (particularly, their use of four-cornered negation) as ‘a principle expressive of ultimate reality’. 5  See, for instance, the debate between Stafford L.  Betty (1983: 123–138, 1984: 447–450) and David Loy (1984: 437–445). 6  In Śaṅkara’s case, as I will show in the second section, all metaphysical claims but one. 4

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middle way (madhyamaka). In this section, I aim to demonstrate the transformative nature of this system, based on the original text as well as the scholarly works of Stafford L. Betty, Purushottama Bilimoria, and others. The next section will be dedicated to the presentation of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta as a negative philosophy and to the ways in which his method corresponds to and stands in contrast to Nāgārjuna’s negation. On the basis of these two presentations, I will be able to highlight the uniqueness of Krishnamurti’s dialectical negation: while the two classical paragons of the negative approach practised by Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara are tools for the elimination of metaphysical views and epistemological approaches, Krishnamurti’s is a psychological and post-traditional negation whose aim is to do away with past, knowledge, and authority.

Nāgārjuna: The Relinquishing of All Views The Catuṣkoṭi, or four-cornered negation, has been utilized by Indian logicians and metaphysicians since at least the sixth century bc. It is founded on a form of logic and rhetoric that views any proposition through four potential positions (or corners, koṭi): a proposition may be true (and thus not false), false (and thus not true), both true and false, or neither true nor false (Garfield and Priest 2003: 13). This seems to distance Indian thought from Western logical traditions, which have been shaped by Aristotle’s law of excluded middle (for every proposition, either the proposition itself or its negation can be true) and which accordingly consider only two positions for each problem (ibid.).7 Nevertheless, this apparent departure from the commonly valued laws of logic has been refuted by Staal (1962: 68) and even more fundamentally by Seyfort Ruegg (as elucidated by Bilimoria 2017: 30), both of whom, I believe, interpret the Catuṣkoṭi in its proper context. As we shall soon find out, the Catuṣkoṭi’s form of negation consciously builds on the principles of non-­ contradiction and excluded middle but, being a therapeutic device, it ultimately transcends (while including) these laws in order to halt all discursive thinking (ibid.). The Catuṣkoṭi is a philosophical attack on any imaginable metaphysical and epistemological assumptions. It rejects all four potential positions – ‘S is neither P, nor not-P, nor both P and not-P, nor neither P nor not-P’ – and therefore leaves no possibility of constructive thinking. This practice has been employed for the evaluation of the nature of a hypothesized entity and of any assertion made in relation to

 However, the logical gulf separating Indian thought from Western logical traditions seems to be gradually being bridged as a result of efforts initially made by twentieth-century Western philosophers in response to logical paradoxes. Two important developments have been the emergence of paraconsistent logic, which accommodates inconsistency in a controlled way, viewing inconsistent information as potentially informative, and the subsequent modern form of dialetheism (“two-way truth”), which transcends the law of non-contradiction by maintaining that there are indeed true contradictions (Priest et al. 2022a, b). 7

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it, including concepts such as reality, the ultimate, self, and causation (Bilimoria 2017: 25–26). While one of the four positions may be applied to describe conventional and relative reality, ultimate reality forever remains untainted by conceptualization and therefore evades all four (ibid., 26). This may suggest that one major reason that the Catuṣkoṭi came into existence was the need to formulate a different type of logic that could both philosophically tackle and help to realize the transcendent reality. There was, however, another use for the Catuṣkoṭi in classical India: those who adhered to Ajñāna, the school of radical scepticism, applied this form of negation in order to refute any view, whether positive or negative, without propagating any positive doctrine of their own (Raju 1954: 694). In order to make their unfixable position even firmer, members of this school, whose foremost representative was the seventh–sixth-century-BC ascetic philosopher Sañjaya Belathiputta,8 practised the fivefold formula of denial: an expanded form of four-cornered negation that included the denial of denials (takkivādam), or the rejection of the dialectician’s own view, which can be phrased as ‘I do not say “no, no”’ (Jayatilleke 1963: 135–136).9 This made any conversation practically impossible, since the position of Ajñāna logicians was indisputable (Raju 1954: 694). Gautama Buddha was aware of the Ajñāna sceptics’ implementation of the Catuṣkoṭi and he sharply criticized it in his discussion of ‘doctrines of endless equivocation’ (Amarāvikkhepavāda) in the Brahmajāla Sutta.10 Referring to ‘recluses and brahmins who are endless equivocators’,11 Gautama Buddha demonstrates the ways that they respond to ontological questions by resorting to evasive statements on four grounds (III: 61–66). He himself ascribes their feeble reactions to factors such as a fear of making mistakes, a fear of clinging, a fear of being cross-­ examined, and even sheer dullness and stupidity (ibid.). While the grammatical structure of their negation appears to be identical to that of his and Nāgārjuna’s Catuṣkoṭi, it is devoid of intentionality and merely designed to cover up destructive criticism without expressing any constructive position of their own (Raju 1954: 695). Consequently, the Buddha’s followers would refuse to engage in debates with those sophists (vitaṇḍavādins), whose method was generally espoused by anyone who wished to achieve an easy victory in a controversy (ibid.). The Buddha’s rejection of the fivefold formula is meaningful since it sheds light on his and Nāgārjuna’s forms of negation as well. Of course, since we derive our judgement of Sañjaya and the other sceptics from the way in which they were  We know of Sañjaya only through early Buddhist literature which refers to him critically (Jayatilleke 1963: 135). 9  Jayatilleke (ibid., 138) maintains that this formula was not only Sañjaya’s, but was shared by all classical Indian sceptical schools of thought. 10  The Brahmajāla Sutta contains a thorough negation of sixty-two views that prevailed among recluses in the time of the Buddha. 11  Or ‘eel-wrigglers’, a term which should be understood as either denoting verbal jugglery or as an analogy that likens sceptics to eels that constantly squirm about in the water and are difficult to get hold of (Jayatilleke 1963: 122). 8

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perceived by the early Buddhists, it is impossible to determine whether Sañjaya and his associates genuinely regarded the Catuṣkoṭi as a mere weapon of scepticism. But we can at least deduce that the Buddha’s vehemently critical view of the fifth mode – the denial of denial – indicates that he believed that he was defending a constructive doctrine through his employment of four-cornered negation. We should thus approach the Buddha’s practice of the Catuṣkoṭi as both a substantial argument and a technique aimed at a transformative insight and a Dharmic way of life. The Buddha’s negation is lucidly depicted in his dialogue with the wanderer Vacchagotta in the Aggivacchagotta Sutta (Bodhi 2005: 367–369) and in his dialogue with the monk Māluṅkyaputta in the Cūḷamāluṅkya Sutta (ibid., 230–233). In the first dialogue, the Buddha replies to Vacchagotta’s question of whether he holds ‘any speculative view at all’ by declaring that he has put away all speculative views in favour of gaining insight into the nature of phenomena and a resulting cessation of clinging (ibid., 367). While the Buddha attempts to focus Vacchagotta’s mind on the path of transformation, the latter sticks to his metaphysical interrogation by wondering about the afterlife of a liberated monk. In response, the Buddha implements four-cornered negation in a way that appears to be identical to that of Sañjaya’s. He does not negate any statement, but only emphasizes the epistemological limits: the statement that the monk is either reborn or not reborn does not ‘apply’ (upeti), but nor do the statements that the monk is both reborn and not reborn, or neither reborn nor not reborn (ibid.). The Buddha then pacifies Vacchagotta’s dazzled mind by explaining that this teaching is ‘unattainable by mere reasoning’, ungraspable as long as one holds on to any view, and can only be realized through direct experience (ibid., 368). He further likens the condition of the liberated one to a burning fire that has been extinguished and thus can no longer be fuelled by anything or move in any direction (ibid.). The four directions of east, west, north, and south, in which the fire can no longer go, are comparable to the four directions blocked by the Catuṣkoṭi. Descriptions, whether positive or negative, can only capture recognizable entities and forms, whereas the untethered state is ineffable, ‘hard to fathom like the ocean’, and ‘liberated from reckoning in terms of consciousness’ (ibid.). The Vacchagotta dialogue elucidates the nature of the Buddha’s Catuṣkoṭi. First, his form of nearly inclusive negation does not aim to destroy the fundamental laws of logic.12 The Buddha is perfectly conscious of the validity of these laws in relation to recognizable and defined phenomena, and his explanation only acknowledges the existence of a state that is freed not only from the shackles of clinging, but also from the constraints of logic.13 Second, the Buddha’s negation is only nearly inclusive, since it is exercised for the sake of pointing out a soteriologically positive, albeit  Jones (2016: 13) convincingly unveils the reasoning behind the Buddha’s strategy of negation in the Vacchagotta dialogue. 13  This brings us back to negation as a practice among mystics who tend to defend their experiences as ‘ineffable’. Blackwood (1963: 202–206) suggests that it is not that mystics argue that all descriptive statements are false, but rather that all descriptive statements are ‘inapplicable or inappropriate’ when it comes to their transcendent realizations. Thus, mystics simply disregard syntactic and 12

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unfathomable, state. In addition, we learn that his negation does not attack speculative views because they are necessarily wrong. He is, in fact, quite indifferent to the question of the truthfulness of a statement, since he is only concerned with the act of holding on to views as a hindrance to transformation. In other words, the discourse longs to liberate, not to resolve metaphysical problems.14 For this reason, Vacchagotta, who was not a philosopher but a wanderer striving to achieve nirvāṇa, was not left disoriented, but declared that the Buddha ‘has made the Dharma clear in many ways, as though he were turning upright what had been overthrown’ (Majjhima Nikāya i 489, in Bodhi and Ñāṇamoli 2015: 107). As a methodological tool, the Buddha’s four-cornered negation enabled him to jettison futile philosophical discussions and to crystallize a Dharma which was entirely devoted to the transformative process of his discussants. This interpretation is further strengthened through the Māluṅkyaputta dialogue in the Cūḷamāluṅkya Sutta (Bodhi 2005: 230–233), in which the monk Māluṅkyaputta becomes disturbed by the fact that the Buddha has neither affirmed nor disaffirmed major speculative views (ibid., 230). He thus urges the Buddha to disclose whether he knows or does not know the truth about these matters (ibid., 231). In response, the Buddha narrates the allegorical story about a man wounded by a poisonous arrow who dies only because he refuses treatment until he obtains full information about his attacker and the bow and arrow that injured him (ibid.). In this allegory, the Buddha manifestly rejects any philosophical discourse that lacks immediate therapeutic and transformative implications. However, the Buddha takes an even bolder step when he asserts that by clinging to speculative views – any of the four potential positions in relation to a proposition – the ‘spiritual life cannot be lived’ and one is doomed to remain in the cycle of death and rebirth (Bodhi 2005: 232). He meaningfully concludes the dialogue by emphasizing that what he has left undeclared is not an oversight on his part but another way of conveying the transformative intention behind his Dharma: the Dharma must contain only those fundamental ingredients which are vital for the insight that leads directly to nirvāṇa (ibid., 233). Since the heart of the Dharma is that clinging is the root cause of ignorance and suffering, holding on to any view is a form of clinging and is therefore Dharmically damaging. Naturally, this would include the attachment that a Buddhist monk may have to the concepts of emptiness (sūnyatā) and non-self (anātman). If conventional Buddhism cultivates the notion of non-self, this must be a violation of the Buddha’s own law of the imponderables, since his refusal to answer the question of whether there is an eternal entity like the Self (ātman) was a part of a four-cornered negation, which inevitably implies that he also considered the statement that there is no Self to be inapplicable (Raju 1954: logical rules, such as the law of non-contradiction, which are only relevant as long as one wishes to ‘make learning possible’ (ibid., 207–209). 14  See also Ganeri’s (2013a: 51–53) useful point that the Buddha’s negation in the Vacchagotta dialogue was not to keep secret knowledge in his fist but to ensure that he would not impart knowledge that is unnecessary and therefore ultimately harmful. Thus, using negation he could challenge the premise of the question itself (ibid. 53).

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696; Bilimoria 2017: 27). The Buddhist dogma of the non-self (anātman) is thus an example of a transformative methodology that has turned into a metaphysical view. At this point precisely, Nāgārjuna’s negation, which faithfully practises the Buddha’s renunciation of all conceptual extremes, becomes vital for the Buddhist who seeks to grasp the Buddha’s highest Dharma. Nāgārjuna’s magnum opus The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā), which builds on the Vacchagotta and Māluṅkyaputta dialogues, seems to be devoted to ensuring that the Buddha’s application of four-­ cornered negation would not be replaced with conventional dogmatism. The Buddhist Catuṣkoṭi is therefore a way to protect the ultimate Dharma of sūnyatā as that to which no view may apply and as that which can be attained only by not clinging to any view. The ‘middle way’ (madhyamaka) as a dynamic spiritual exercise is designed to maintain this extremely delicate equilibrium. This is made clear when Nāgārjuna states, in a way that presumably refers to the Māluṅkyaputta dialogue, that: The victorious ones have said That emptiness is the relinquishing of all views. For whomever emptiness is a view, That one will accomplish nothing. (Mūlamadhyamakakārikā XIII: 8)

This fundamental stanza throws light on Nāgārjuna’s motivation for writing the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.15 Absolute reality must not be formulated positively or negatively (but also not both or neither positively and negatively) since this puts the practitioner in danger of ignoring the paradoxical nature of emptiness and espousing a view instead of attaining nirvanic extinguishment. The importance of elucidating this point is not for the sake of philosophical precision and coherence but for the transformative purpose of preventing a fruitless practice. However, this potential trap awaits only those who grapple with the ultimate truth and ultimate reality. As previously emphasized, the views that must be discarded are inherently views about the absolute nature of reality, and for this reason, mystical negation and its expression in the form of the Catuṣkoṭi are tools for accessing the transphenomenal reality. Nāgārjuna is clearly aware of his particular target, since he differentiates between two realities and their corresponding truths: conventional reality and truth as opposed to ultimate reality and truth (XXIV: 8–10; Garfield and Priest 2003: 4–5). But because the latter – the ‘truth of the highest meaning’ (paramārtha-satya) – is practically unteachable, and we cannot even state that there are ultimate reality and truth at all, we are left to conclude that all existing truths are only ‘conventional’ (ibid., 10). Nevertheless, we should be cautious not to infer, as Garfield and Priest do (2003: 11), that ‘there is no such thing as the ultimate nature of reality’. After all, the Catuṣkoṭi acts as a total negation of all possible reasonable statements; therefore, the correct conclusion should be that Nāgārjuna’s negation says nothing about the  Nāgārjuna clearly deems the refutation of all views the centrepiece of the Buddha’s Dharma, since he concludes his work by praising Gautama Buddha for teaching the ‘true doctrine which leads to the relinquishing of all views’ (XXVII: 30). 15

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nature of ultimate reality, since it is wholly focused on our inability to attach to it any existing view, such as being or non-being. An additional error would be to conclude that Nāgārjuna deviates from the three characteristics of the Buddha’s four-­ cornered negation: following the laws of logic, being uninterested in a philosophical resolution of metaphysical problems, and pointing out an ontologically positive state. While the two others will be addressed later, it should be emphasized in relation to the third characteristic that even though the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā appears to be a work of unyielding negation, Nāgārjuna is far from a sceptic, and he certainly does not employ a fivefold negation that ‘seals’ the act as an utterly negative pronouncement. On the contrary, Nāgārjuna’s Catuṣkoṭi leaves a strong sense of positive metaphysical reality that must only be guarded by the negative approach. Betty (1983: 128–129) correctly identifies the erroneous assumption of some scholars that Nāgārjuna’s reductio ad absurdum arguments (Prāsaṅgika) function only to mirror the faulty logical consequences of his adversaries’ views, and that he does not possess any positive judgement of his own. Unlike criticism of theories, Betty argues, a negation of positions entails having a very definite and well-formed position, even if it remains unspoken (ibid., 129). Firstly, we ought to remember that the complex process of negation in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā opens and closes with prostration to the ‘Perfect Buddha, the best of teachers’ (Garfield 1995: 2) who ‘taught the true doctrine’ (ibid., 83). The Buddha’s doctrine has thus remained uninfluenced by the fiercest form of negation in the history of South Asian philosophy. In general, a careful reading of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā reveals that it also contains important passages that betray Nāgārjuna’s constructive distinctions and axioms (Garfield and Priest 2003: 11), even when they are formulated negatively, such as the fundamental and absolute assertion that ‘all things lack entitihood’ (XIII: 3). Secondly, the fact that Nāgārjuna negates all theories without replacing them with a superior theory is only because the ultimate truth cannot even be conceptualized, let alone theorized. Nāgārjuna’s unusual way of handling the Catuṣkoṭi for the sake of establishing a complete vision of the Buddha’s emptiness (sūnyatā) can be easily misconstrued as a form of nihilism. Indeed, this accusation was pointed at Nāgārjuna and his followers even by his contemporaries, who failed to grasp the subtleties of Nāgārjuna’s middle way (Raju 1954: 702). As Garfield (1995: 212) explains, when Nāgārjuna speaks of the relinquishing of all ‘views’, the term ‘view’ (dṛṣṭi) implies any ontological assumption about the existence or non-existence of a certain entity – existence in the sense of possessing essence or unceasing, inherent self-existence (svabhāva). In this sense, emptiness does not imply a negative reality of non-­ existence, but the total absence of independent entitihood in all things: the fact that all things exist only in dependence on one another (in Buddhist terminology, dependently co-arisen (XXIV: 18)). At the same time, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that emptiness is in itself a something, a mere substitute for the Upaniṣadic Brahman or another form of Kantian noumenal realm around which essence-less entities revolve, hence Nāgārjuna’s famed principle of the emptiness of emptiness (Garfield and Priest 2003: 6). Believing that a comprehension of the Buddha’s emptiness is the greatest

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task of the Buddhist and that any misperception of it is soteriologically deadly (XXIV: 11), Nāgārjuna felt compelled to ensure that the Buddha’s Dharma of emptiness would not crystallize as a ‘view’, and thus he added a negation of emptiness and put nothing in its place (King 1957: 106). Consequently, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā’s vision leaves us with no knowledge and no ignorance, no Four Noble Truths and no attainment of nirvāṇa (XXV: 5–13): in the end, ‘No Dharma was taught by the Buddha at any time, in any place, to any person’ (XXV: 24). Being neither a nihilist position nor a positive metaphysics, Nāgārjuna’s middle way transcends not only the extremes of existence and non-existence but even the middle, for he implements the fourth corner of the Catuṣkoṭi and thereby declares that emptiness is not neither being nor non-being (Raju 1954: 703). Raju (ibid., 701–702) usefully clarifies that śūnya in mathematics means ‘zero’ and that in a metaphysical sense, it should be interpreted as ‘that which is neither positive nor negative’. Like Nāgārjuna’s conception of emptiness, the arithmetical zero comes midway between the positive and negative numbers; in terms of plus and minus, it is an indeterminate number. However, zero is not only not positive or negative, but also not both positive and negative. It is not even neither positive nor negative, since to be other than positive or negative, an entity must have a determinate nature, whereas the zero is indeterminate (ibid.). In this sense, fourfold negation is the perfect expression of sūnyatā’s zero, the ultimate essence-less nature of all things. Having laid out the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā’s main occupation, one may still wonder whether Nāgārjuna’s intent was to develop a logical procedure that could defend the Buddha’s Dharma of emptiness by effectively eliminating any potential metaphysical claim about self-existing and permanent entities. This brings us back to the second characteristic of the Buddha’s negation – disinterest in a philosophical resolution of metaphysical problems – which is entirely espoused by its expounder, Nāgārjuna. The majority of scholars (e.g. Betty 1983, 1984; Loy 1984; Garfield and Priest 2003; Bilimoria 2017) would agree that ultimately the ‘dominating drive behind Nāgārjuna’s writing the Karikas was his desire to save, not to explicate or describe’ (Betty 1983: 134). The process of negation is designed to prepare for and lead to a particular mode of consciousness, and is therefore a form of spiritual exercise.16 But this is not a reason to infer that Nāgārjuna’s procedure of negation is philosophically incoherent (or, as some scholars put it, consistent only within the narrow bounds of Mādhyamika Buddhist thought), since it also loyally follows the third characteristic of the Buddha’s negation, that of transcending-while-including the laws of logic. Moreover, the logic of Nāgārjuna’s work does unavoidably establish certain substantial metaphysical statements – after all, even the conclusion that fundamental ontology is an impossibility is a fundamentally ontological conclusion (Garfield and Priest 2003: 15).

 In this sense, the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā is in line with the general tendency of some forms of Indian and Buddhist debate to value reasoning and argumentation not only for their truth-preserving and truth-validating properties, but also for their ability to promote truth (Ganeri 2013a: 125). 16

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Thus, while some philosophers, like Betty (1984: 449), tend to gravitate towards the one extreme of insisting that Nāgārjuna was ‘a mystic disguised as a philosopher’, and others, like Garfield and Priest (2003: 17), are devoted to proving that he was not a ‘simple mystic’, I would suggest following in the footsteps of the Buddha and Nāgārjuna and taking a middle way of reading the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā within its original purpose of religious inquiry, while acknowledging the fact that Nāgārjuna’s logic tackles a philosophical problem that arises at the limits of thought. For instance, Betty (1984: 448–449) argues that Nāgārjuna’s prasaṅga functions as the ultimate Indian kōan, that is, utilizing whatever irrational techniques the master may deem helpful to lead the aspiring Buddhist to reality (as opposed to a sincere philosophical attempt to describe reality). Elsewhere, Betty (1983: 124, 135–136) suggests that, being first of all a realized mystic who only deployed his unique logical presentation as a means to enlightenment (upāya), Nāgārjuna may have formulated the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā not to convey a world view but to dazzle the opponent into a state of ‘bewildered submission’. But while Nāgārjuna’s negation, like the kōan, may be thought of as a metaphysical riddle whose ultimate resolution is found in an existential state, it is ultimately far from a kōan: his logical procedure, which struggles to capture the overwhelming paradoxicality that is found at the limits of thought, points at an intellectual frontier where the practitioner must complete the philosophical act by leaping to a trans-logical, not alogical, state.17 For the logician who attempts to follow the reasoning, the dialectical process seems to end in nothing, but for the aspirant who has completed the philosophical act, it ends in nirvāṇa. Thus, the middle way approach would classify Nāgārjuna as a transformative philosopher: not a mystic disguised as a philosopher, but one whose philosophy aims at leading beyond itself. On the other hand, this approach should also shy away from what Betty (1983: 135–136) regards as overextending Nāgārjuna’s work by isolating the logical procedure from its mystical context and zooming in on the consistency of the arguments in order to render it a Western-approved logic (e.g. Staal 1962; Garfield 1995; Garfield and Priest 2003; Jones 2016: 252–258).18 One ought to remember that in transformative philosophy, the apparent philosophical holes and missteps are not necessarily meant to be filled by the sincere logician, since they may have been left there on purpose as signposts directing to nirvanic realization. We can identify philosophers’ tendency to become engrossed in heated debates on the logical validity of many canonical texts of transformative philosophy, among them the four arguments of Plato’s Phaedo (see Chaps. 4 and 5), which can only be fully comprehended through the suggested middle way. While the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā consists of a series of analytical investigations of various entities, the mind exploring its impressive logical intricacies should  With the word ‘trans-logical’ I also indicate that contrary to Betty’s qualm (1984: 448), the ladder of logic is not a mere apparatus that one ought to kick out from beneath oneself after climbing up it, but a form of discriminating wisdom on which one builds. 18  This is stated cautiously, since certain forms of South Asian argumentation, including four-cornered negation and Nāgārjuna’s use of it, can help Western thought to accept other forms of logic and thus to arrive at broader logical formulas. 17

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at the same time interact with the text as a living expression and experience of the middle way. After all, although its technique is thoroughly cerebral, the negation does not aspire to leave us to think about the middle way, but rather to establish it as our predominant perception. Thus, for the receptive mind, Nāgārjuna’s Catuṣkoṭi is a dynamic process that, like a sharp blade, gradually cuts off all reference points, in the form of views or conceptual extremes (and in light of Nāgārjuna’s complete negation, we should regard all concepts as extremes), until one becomes utterly unable to hold on to any ‘thing’ (or ‘essence’). As Bilimoria (2017: 30–31) explains, this is achieved by blocking the activities of conceptual development (prapañca) and dichotomizing conceptualization (vikalpa): fourfold negation exhausts all the complementary opposites of affirmation and negation available to our discursive thinking, and in the absence of a ‘third’ position between the positive and the negative to which the discursive thought could cling, the mind becomes still. This ‘zeroing’ of ‘all the discursively conceivable extreme positions’ is the experience of the middle way: when the four values cease to exist, a resulting affirmation of a fifth value of ‘silence’ comes into being (ibid., 31). This may take place when we read these lines: Everything is real and is not real, Both real and not real, Neither real nor not real. This is Lord Buddha’s teaching. Not dependent on another, peaceful and Not fabricated by mental fabrication, Not thought, without distinctions, That is the character of reality (that-ness). (XVIII: 8–9)

Such verses aim to position the reader’s mind in a state of equilibrium by promoting a conceptual destruction, including the destruction of the destruction itself. Fourfold negation finalizes the collapse of all dualistic structures so that the mind becomes lucid enough to experience the real thatness (tattva) of the phenomenal world (Jones 2016: 258).

Śaṅkara: ātman Is Left Unnegated According to the majority of scholars, the philosopher-mystic Ᾱdi Śaṅkara (‘first Śaṅkara’, also called Ādi Śaṅkarācārya) led his extremely impactful albeit brief life between the years ad 788 and 820. It is interesting to note that Śaṅkara’s system of Advaita Vedānta has sometimes been criticized as ‘Mahāyāna Buddhism in disguise’; the Hindu classic Padma-purāṇa goes as far as calling Śaṅkara ‘a Crypto-­ Buddhist’ (pracchanna-Bauddha) (Dasgupta and Mohanta 1998: 349). Nevertheless, as Dasgupta and Mohanta (ibid., 361) carefully demonstrate, although Śaṅkara’s thought indicates both awareness of and inspiration from Buddhist streams, he was

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a committed Vedāntin who overtly considered his philosophy ‘Upaniṣadic’.19 This statement can be easily confirmed by the fact that ten of the twenty-five masterworks which have been proven to be Śaṅkara’s are commentaries (Bhāṣya) on various Upaniṣads, and that more generally, sixteen of them are interpretations of classical Hindu scriptures (Shearer 2017: xvii). Yet another convincing piece of evidence for the non-Buddhist and distinct nature of Śaṅkara’s Upaniṣadic conception of the ultimate reality can be found by juxtaposing Nāgārjuna’s methodology of negation with that of Śaṅkara. While it is reasonable to identify in Śaṅkara’s intellectual and logical efforts a striving towards a constructive philosophy20  – Betty (1984: 449) contends that unlike Nāgārjuna, Śaṅkara made genuine rational attempts to bridge between relative reality and absolute reality – it should be emphasized that what lies at the heart of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta is an approach of negation (Dura 2018: 89). Even the term, which translates as ‘the supreme knowledge of non-duality’, indicates a reality that is defined by and realized through what it is not. This is an approach of stripping away, in which the visible fragmentation of the phenomenal world into countless independently existent beings is persistently denied, along with an ensuing rejection of any limiting adjectives attached to Self and ultimate reality (Rodrigues 2001: 181). As these are shed, one veil after another, one’s ātman and the absolute reality, which are the world’s unceasing backdrop, reveal themselves as an attribute-less and indivisible unity (ibid., 181). This should not be understood only within the narrow limits of apophatic theology, since the focus is not on obtaining a faithful non-description of the Godhead, but on negation as a transformative methodology targeted at the liberating experiential recognition of oneself as ātman through casting aside anything that cannot be the Self (hence, an object) until the pure subject is laid bare. In a way that resembles Nāgārjuna’s efforts to establish the Buddha’s Dharma of emptiness through his unique Catuṣkoṭi, Śaṅkara’s non-dual philosophy is an interpretation and development of the Upaniṣadic vision. Thus, his negation is partly a technique that outmanoeuvres the formation of rigid concepts and retains the purity of the classical teachings. However, the Upaniṣads also convey directly the notions of negative metaphysics and Self-realization through negation by introducing the  In the collective memory of mainstream Hinduism, Śaṅkara is honoured as a philosopher-saint whose efforts to give a coherent structure to disparate Hindu beliefs and practices have safeguarded Hinduism from the challenges posed by the rise of Buddhism (Shearer 2017: xiii). There are also substantial examples of criticism of Buddhist views in Śaṅkara’s works (e.g. Brahmasūtrabhāṣya II.2.18–32). 20  Shearer (2017: xxiii) considers Śaṅkara’s employment of relentless reasoning, logic, and dialectic a part of his methodological toolkit (upāya, or useful means), which is only utilized to either defend or advance the radical cognitive insight (jñāna) which lies at the core of the Advaitin perspective of non-dualism. Thus, Shearer concludes, Śaṅkara is not a philosopher since he does not maintain a consistent conceptual position and does not believe that truth can be proven or brought about by any of these methodological tools (ibid.). This brings us back to the concept of transformative philosophers. 19

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method of neti neti (‘not this, not this’ or ‘neither this, nor this’). The method is presented for the first time in several passages of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (c.700 bc), which quote the sage Yājñavalkya, who provides ample examples of neti neti. For instance: The sages call it ākāśa, the Imperishable. It is neither big nor small, neither long nor short, neither hot nor cold, neither bright nor dark, neither air nor space. It is without attachment, without taste, smell, or touch, without eyes, ears, tongue, mouth, breath, or mind, without movement, without limitation, without inside or outside. It consumes nothing, and nothing consumes it. (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad III: 7–8)

Śaṅkara’s (1950: 517–519) commentary on this verse involves a useful demonstration of fourfold negation. Śaṅkara explains that Yājñavalkya refuses to entertain familiar theistic concepts produced by those who claim to be ‘knowers of Brahman’ (ibid., 517). Indirectly communicating with the law of excluded middle, which determines that either a proposition or its negation must be true, he shows that if the imperishable is not big, then it logically must be other than big; but both options are rejected, and the proposition that the imperishable is ‘long’ and its negation are also invalidated (ibid., 518). Consequently, this fourfold negation of size eliminates all the characteristics of a substance (ibid.). As the negation unfolds, we find out that we have run out of all imaginable attributes. The reason for this attribute-less condition and its inevitable negative description, Śaṅkara clarifies, is the fact that Brahman is ‘one only without a second’: it is only possible to identify an entity that has defined barriers which separate and distinguish it from other entities (ibid., 519). According to Śaṅkara, even terms such as ātman and Brahman, or any positive characterizations of Brahman (reality, knowledge, and infinity), are only meant to remove other attributes (Jones 2016: 225). Naturally, in the process of description it is impossible to avoid superimposing limiting adjuncts (Upādhi) on the real, but these subtly ignorant terms are more than unavoidable discursive errors, since they are also useful as antidotes to more severe forms of ignorance: knowledge negates materiality, reality negates knowledge, and so forth (ibid.). For this reason, the discourse is always, in essence, a process of negation (Apavāda) (ibid.). This principle of terms superseding other terms derives from the classical Indian pedagogic strategy of ‘using a thorn to remove a thorn’: deploying recognized mental categories in order to ultimately transcend them (Shearer 2017: xxiv). Nonetheless, as Jones (2016: 227) cautions, Śaṅkara does not even posit the contrary – Brahman without features (nirguṇa) – since it is wrong to assume that a transcendent reality-in-itself can have any phenomenal property or its opposite. This last point of the removal of the negative content of nirguṇa Brahman may seem comparable to Nāgārjuna’s final move of the emptiness of emptiness. But the Upaniṣadically inspired Śaṅkara does this in order to achieve radically different results. While in the case of Nāgārjuna the positive – that which should be defended by the act of negation – remains implicit, to Śaṅkara negation is possible only in relation to something real (Jones 2016: 227–228). Logically, if everything is negated and the negation has no unnegatable axis around which it revolves, the process of

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negation which declares that everything is illusion is itself an illusion. Śaṅkara (1950: 19) captures this logical problem when he tells his opponent in his commentary on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad: ‘If all notions are false, your view that all notions are unreal cannot be established.’ For Śaṅkara, the unnegatable axis is Brahman and its reflection in the individual as the Self. The neti neti process is utilized by the mind seeking to return to its identity with ātman, and thus its ‘not this, not this’ truly means ‘I am not this. I am not this’, whereas ‘this’ refers to the characteristics that are falsely attached to the Self (Śaṅkara 1979: 108). The Self remains the silent witness of the entire process of negation, whose purpose is to purify the mind and to lead to a stable awareness of the independently existent and acausal Self (ibid.). In a circular statement that may be misconstrued as a form of sophistry, Śaṅkara summarizes this principle: ‘It is impossible to deny the Self, as it is the true Self of the one who denies’ (Śaṅkara 1960: 433–434). Since negation is designed to counteract the manifestations of ignorance (avidyā), the denial attacks the phenomenal world and any descriptions of the ultimate that have been borrowed from the phenomenal world, while stopping short of negating Brahman (Dura 2018: 91). In this sense, the advaitic negative approach is directly related to the thesis of superimposition (adhyāsa): it strives to remove the appearance of the world of the many which has been superimposed on the non-dual nature of Brahman (ibid., 90–91). Not only does this approach avoid Nāgārjuna’s step towards voidness, it constitutes a declaration that there is nothing besides Brahman (ibid., 91).21 As such, it is not fundamentally different from the Chāndogyopaniṣad’s positive statement of Tat tvam asi (‘thou art that’) (ibid., 93). For this reason, Śaṅkara’s last step must be the negation of negation, which is the only correct way to express the ultimate. These are, in Śaṅkara’s view, the limits of the Catuṣkoṭi, whose inclusive negation can express the relativity of the phenomenal world, but can never contain that which lies beyond negation and affirmation (Raju 1954: 703, 705). Brahman does not exist within fourfold negation, but outside of it, or rather as its supportive foundation: the negation flows from this affirmative basis and eventually returns to it (ibid., 712–713). This conviction propelled Śaṅkara’s followers to formulate a fifth denial in order to enhance the Catuṣkoṭi’s capacity to communicate the underlying presence of Brahman: Brahman is not ‘neither Being nor Non-Being nor both nor neither’ (ibid., 705). After all, this formula, which may be valid as a representation of the nature of the phenomenal world, fails to capture Brahman, which cannot be non-being, or both being and non-being, or neither, because it must be positive (ibid). Notwithstanding the fact that both Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s forms of negation are tools for expressing and unveiling the ultimate metaphysical truth and reality, their negative approaches hope to establish different convictions and mystical experiences. Unsurprisingly, the differences lie in the traditional sources which they  Raju (1954: 704), who contrasts Śaṅkara’s negation with that of Nāgārjuna, mentions that while śūnya in Sanskrit means both the mathematical and metaphysical zero, another word employed by the Sanskrit writers to describe the mathematical zero is Pūrṇa, which means the full rather than the empty. 21

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strive to uphold: either the Buddha’s Dharma or the Hindu Upaniṣads. Thus, Nāgārjuna is keen on proving the absence of essence in any imaginable entity, including emptiness itself, and for this reason, he deems the inclusive fourfold negation an ideal vehicle for his transmission. Śaṅkara, on the other hand, aims at uncovering the illusion of the multitude and leaving only one essential being, without a second. Naturally, this constructive task, which is closely related to the project of apophatic theology, cannot utilize the basic Catuṣkoṭi as a complete model.22 Another meaningful distinction, in the context of the transformative methodologies of these two systems, is that Nāgārjuna’s negation removes any fixed point of attention, whereas Śaṅkara’s strives to permanently fix our attention on one point. These distinctions, nevertheless, become less acute the more we remind ourselves that from the perspective of transformative philosophy, the dialectical process of negation is meant to defend and bring about a mode of consciousness which is intrinsically positive, including an affirmation of the world view of the tradition’s founding fathers and an existential certainty. After all, as Raju (1954: 703) emphasizes, neither Nāgārjuna nor Śaṅkara would consider himself a sceptic or agnostic, and their processes of negation steer clear of the destructive forms of the sceptics’ fivefold negation because they are driven to persuade their opponents to acknowledge the existence of a certain transcendent truth. The fact that Nāgārjuna does not say ‘yes’ does not imply that he only says ‘no’, and thus, his transmission is not that there is nothing except for the essence-less world of phenomena, but that one can state nothing about the nature of absolute reality.23 We may safely conclude that the acts of negation of these two philosopher-mystics confirm the general assessment that religious negation is a moral and intellectual purifying discipline that prepares the adherent for the positive experience and concept of their particular religion (King 1957: 115).

Krishnamurti: The Denial of Knowledge At this stage, it is clear that Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara share the notion that the ultimate reality can only be contemplated and approached through the employment of relentless processes of negation of views. Moreover, both philosopher-mystics are in agreement that negation serves not only the purpose of metaphysical discussion, but more importantly the transformative intent of their traditions. Returning to the recurring patterns which I identified in a large number of Krishnamurti’s dialogues in Chaps. 6, 7, 8, and 9, we can deduce that Krishnamurti’s method springs from a

 Raju (1954: 709–710) effectively classifies Nāgārjuna’s conception of fourfold negation as ‘metaphysical relativism’ and Śaṅkara’s negation as ‘metaphysical absolutism and phenomenal relativism’. 23  For a supportive view, see King (1957: 112–113), who concludes that Nāgārjuna’s outer scepticism is intended to serve his inner truth. 22

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similar faith in the mind-altering powers of negation and its ability to function as a pathless path that leads directly to the revelation of reality. Krishnamurti goes as far as declaring that the negative approach, which consists of unwavering awareness of the false and the avoidance of conceptual development, is, in effect, the truly positive one, whereas positive approaches are ‘negative’ in that they are ‘destructive to intelligence’: by equipping us with methods, ideals, and destinations, they weaken our ability to face the reality of our lives (Shringy 1977: 197). On the other hand, Krishnamurti clarifies, what others may perceive as his negative approach is, in reality, his determination to awaken a certain type of creative intelligence, which can become stimulated only through pointing out the false without recourse to fast but temporary solutions; thus, this type of intelligence is the only positive help that he can give his hearers (ibid., 198). In this way, Krishnamurti differentiates between the negative as a methodology whose goal is utterly constructive and liberating, and negativity as a harmful attitude. To this we should add Krishnamurti’s recommended way of handling the false as soon as we have discovered it within ourselves and in our lives: although seeing the false as ‘false’ involves an inevitable judgemental position, one should apply an awareness-based perception that involves neither affirmation nor rejection and is therefore not negative in the limited sense of the word (ibid., 201). Metaphysically, Krishnamurti believes that truth is revealed when the negation process has been completed. This is the source of his well-known principle of truth as a pathless land, which is in line with Śaṅkara’s dictum regarding prāptasya prāpti, ‘the discovery of the existent’: according to Krishnamurti, since the ultimate reality is ever-present, any positive action, such as goal-oriented methods or affirmative language, will only reinforce the illusion and distance the aspirant from it (Shringy 1977: 201). On the other hand, the removal of positive action through persistent negation can eventually unveil this unconditioned and uncreated existence. While this intimation of an essential reality may resemble Śaṅkara’s emphasis on an unnegatable reality at the edge of negation, Krishnamurti’s conception of negation seems to be closer in spirit to that of the Buddha and Nāgārjuna. One example of the close affinities between Krishnamurti’s negation and the Buddhist negative approach is the Buddha’s declared motivation for his rejection of speculative views. In both the Vacchagotta dialogue and the Māluṅkyaputta dialogue, the Buddha makes it clear that he has put away all speculative views in order to focus his disciples’ attention on the vital insight into the nature of phenomena. He adds that any philosophical discourse that lacks immediate transformative implications and promotes adherence to views is Dharmically damaging. Likewise, Krishnamurti’s negation of all views is guided by his insistence on remaining with ‘what is’ for the same reasons (Rodrigues 2001: 186). Another example is that Krishnamurti does not tend to conclude his dialectical negation with absolute affirmations, and there are instances in which he explicitly attacks permanent realities such as Śaṅkara’s

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ātman and Brahman (e.g. Rodrigues 2001: 181–182; Krishnamurti 1996: 127–128).24 While Śaṅkara’s attention is permanently fixed on Brahman’s pure albeit indescribable being, the negation utilized by Krishnamurti has no interest in validating the reality of a supreme and static noumenon, and its affirmation of the absolute is as implicit as Nāgārjuna’s. What is usually focused on is the cessation of the illusion of any substantial independent existence and the causally unrelated arising of that which cannot be known or experienced, and in this sense, the metaphysics seems to echo Nāgārjuna’s indeterminate zero (Rodrigues 2001: 183–184). Krishnamurti’s negative approach has been deemed comparable to Nāgārjuna’s by many Buddhists. When the 21-year-old Dalai Lama first heard of the unusual nature of Krishnamurti’s teachings in 1956, he remarked: ‘A Nāgārjuna!’ (Jayakar 1986: 205). Prominent Buddhists who engaged in discussions with Krishnamurti felt that this was what Nāgārjuna would have said had he been alive at that time, and some still refer to him as a significant teacher in the Nāgārjuna tradition (ibid., 435, 494). The experience of the Tibetan leader Samdhong Rinpoche, who attended Krishnamurti’s talks as a young man, was that Krishnamurti’s teachings enabled him to understand Nāgārjuna better (Rodrigues 2007: 92–93). Krishnamurti himself learned with interest about the nature of Nāgārjuna’s negation in 1981: the negation was introduced to him as the refutation of all doctrines, including that of the Buddha (Jayakar 1986: 436). In a dialogue with Pupul Jayakar in 1983, Krishnamurti related to Nāgārjuna’s negative approach appreciatively: The Indian tradition, from the Buddha to Nāgārjuna and the ancient Hindus, has said that there is the state of nothingness for which, they said, you must deny everything. Nāgārjuna came to that point, as far as I understand; I may be mistaken, it is what I have been told. He denied everything, every movement of the psyche … It is there in the books, or it is there in tradition. Why haven’t they pursued that? Even the most intelligent of them, even the most religious devotee – devoted not to some structure but to the feeling of the divine, the sense of something sacred – why haven’t they pursued denying? (Krishnamurti 2016d: 264–265; see also Krishnamurti 2014).

However, Krishnamurti, who was never interested in the subtleties of distinctions, was only partly correct in considering Nāgārjuna’s form of complete denial identical to his own methodological negation. In this case, an interest in making important distinctions can be fruitful since it brings Krishnamurti’s unique contribution to the field of religious negation into sharp focus. Contrasting Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s methods of negation, as presented in this chapter, with my analysis of Krishnamurti’s dialectical negation in Chaps. 6, 7, 8, and 9, reveals four meaningful differences, all of which are interrelated. First, it becomes clear that Krishnamurti pays very little attention to logical structures in his dialectics: his negation is piecemeal, his logic is mostly unpersuasive, and one cannot identify classical formations such as the Indian Catuṣkoṭi in his presentation. There is a good reason for this. Unlike Nāgārjuna and  Since Krishnamurti is not as philosophically coherent as Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara, this should be stated with reservation: while his dialogical negation generally avoids affirmative assertions about the ultimate truth, Krishnamurti’s diaries, biographies, and public discourses include numerous contradictory descriptions of the nature of the already existing reality (see Chap. 8). 24

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Śaṅkara, Krishnamurti cannot be classified as a transformative philosopher, since he is both indifferent to the philosophical need for carefully built logical statements and coherent metaphysical systems, and exclusively passionate about the transformative insight.25 Consequently, as I shall explicate below, Krishnamurti’s negative approach is not a tool for the examination of the nature of metaphysical entities. A second difference is that unlike Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara, Krishnamurti does not face ‘opponents’ in order to answer their queries and qualms in an authoritative tone, but rather involves himself in a dynamic dialogue whose purpose is to draw the interlocutor into the process of question and negation. The aims of his particular negation led Krishnamurti to abandon the more recognizable Indian tradition of dialogue: a brief question posed by a disciple or a group of disciples and an ensuing lengthy answer or discourse (Williams 2015: 671).26 This was replaced with an energetic dialogical flow that could facilitate the realization of the particular purposes of Krishnamurti’s negation. These purposes are also the third and fourth aspects that distinguish Krishnamurti’s approach from Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s forms of negation. When Krishnamurti praises Nāgārjuna for denying ‘everything, every movement of the psyche’, with the intention of supporting his own method of negation, he is clearly unaware of the fact that they do not deny the same psychic movement. Nāgārjuna relinquishes views in the sense of inapplicable binary existential propositions (antadvaya) (Bilimoria 2017: 27), and both Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara utilize the methodology of negation in order to evaluate and undermine certain ontological and epistemological convictions. As transformative philosophers, they do so with the hope of accomplishing both philosophical constructs and mystical outcomes. This type of ambition stands in stark contrast to the function of negation in Krishnamurti’s dialogues, where it does not tackle metaphysical illusions, but psychological ones. Herein lies the third distinction between Krishnamurti’s negative approach and the approaches of his antecedents: the psychic movement that it challenges is the mind’s clinging to past experience and past knowledge. Negation is thus a device for wiping away the accumulation of time, memory, and conditioning within the human psyche. While this may include the removal of philosophical assertions, it is done not for the sake of metaphysical correction of views, but because these assertions are perceived as a crystallization of the past in the form of knowledge. Thus, the aspect of the mind on which his negation is entirely centred is what Krishnamurti terms the ‘traditional’ or ‘old’ mind: the human mind as a product of biological evolution, history, and culture, which is consequently trapped in the realm of the known and can only respond from the past (Kumar 2015: 85–86).

 This distinction will be elaborated on in the concluding chapter.  Nevertheless, Krishnamurti mainly abandoned this structure only in his close group discussions and one-on-one conversations. His public discourse generally retained the traditional guru–student dialogue. 25 26

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For Krishnamurti, the term ‘traditional’ is understood in a broad sense: while it certainly includes the lineages of wisdom and practice of established religious or mystical paths as a part of humanity’s heritage that is currently imprinted in one’s brain as thought-forms, it is the tradition that the mind has woven for itself by erecting a solid structure of experience and knowledge in which it finds its illusory sense of security (Kumar 2015: 94). Thinking, the activity of the traditional mind, ‘starts from experience which becomes knowledge stored up in the cells of the brain as memory, then from memory there is thought’ (Krishnamurti, quoted in ibid., 87). Through his negation, Krishnamurti exposes the mind’s clinging to knowledge and technique, whose psychological source is the fear of uncertainty; in doing so, he aspires to engender a radical renewal of the human psyche. For this reason, when Pupul Jayakar and other students draw Krishnamurti into a discussion of the nature of God, rather than deploying his negation to assess the validity of statements made in relation to the deity, Krishnamurti targets it at the conscious and unconscious tradition of knowledge which has been amassed over eons in the depths of the human psyche (Jayakar 1986: 416). What troubles Krishnamurti is not the question of the nature of God, but the unrealistic conviction of an overloaded consciousness that it can genuinely investigate the question (ibid., 417). In the face of this question, one ought to negate ‘deeply at the very root of one’s being’ so that the ‘feeling that one knows’ ceases to be, and in its stead, a mind untainted by knowledge, which is therefore utterly still, comes into being (ibid., 420). This leads us to the fourth and last aspect that distinguishes Krishnamurti’s negation from Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s negation-based exercises: an unconditional rejection of all past knowledge entails the negation of even the most refined traditions of mystical enlightenment. Krishnamurti does not shy away in the least from the far-reaching implications of the destruction of invaluable teachings and practices of transcendence. He considers these to be an integral part of the activity of thought, since for him, whatever has taken the form of a well-paved path can only be a repetition and modification of the past. In this he would naturally include the invalidation of practices such as the various forms of the Catuṣkoṭi, or any other fixed logical pattern for that matter, asserting that the mind exercising the Catuṣkoṭi already knows what it should expect as an outcome, and thus that even this subtle mystical negation can only condition the mind. Nevertheless, while it is no longer possible to rely on doctrines and methods as sources of liberation, the act of negating them has a tremendous liberating power. Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s forms of negation, on the other hand, were partly designed to guard the vitality of their traditions of knowledge. For instance, Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā does not exercise the Catuṣkoṭi in a way that robs the Buddha’s conventional Dharma of its truthfulness, but rather struggles to reconcile it with the ultimate truth, which can only be revealed by negation (XXIV: 8–10). The fact that the entire negation remains within the Buddhadharma’s frame of reference is made clear when the book culminates in yet another prostration to Gautama as the deliverer of the true doctrine (XXVII: 30). One may

References

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surmise that Krishnamurti would have vehemently criticized this apparent limitation of Nāgārjuna’s negation had he been fully informed about the exact nature of the practice of the middle way (madhyamaka), which would imply that Nāgārjuna does not deny everything after all. Nonetheless, we can only judge whether a certain method is limited or not within the context of what it aims to achieve, and in this regard, Nāgārjuna’s and Śaṅkara’s spiritual exercises have successfully conveyed their philosophical and transformative intentions. At the same time, this distinction clarifies the degree to which Krishnamurti’s negative approach signifies a departure from classical forms of negation, such as the Indian catuṣkoṭi and Abrahamic apophatic theology: Krishnamurti’s spiritual exercise takes place outside any religious framework and derives much of its power from the elimination of the mind’s clinging to the false safety of the religious edifice. In this sense, it calls for an unprecedented degree of renunciation and independence on the part of the spiritual aspirant. When Krishnamurti audaciously proclaims, near the end of a dialogue which lays out the intricacies of his form of negation, that ‘this chapter has not been studied so far’ (Jayakar 1986: 391), he is correct. It is difficult to think of another mystic or philosopher who has employed negation in a spontaneous and fully engaging dialogical process, with a focused transformative intent and without recourse to logical procedures. It is even more challenging to try to think of another figure who has made use of the principle of negation in order to break away from the grip of memory and psychological accumulation – while also considering knowledge and the entire array of religious paths to be nothing more than a self-perpetuating movement of the past within our minds. In Krishnamurti’s view, this is the last step of negation that no one has taken thus far, a step which is absolutely essential for a radical and complete liberation of the contemporary mind.

References accesstoinsight.org. 2010. Brahmajāla Sutta: The All-Embracing Net of Views [online]. Available at: https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.01.0.bodh.html. Accessed 17 June 2022. Apple, James B. 2010. Can Buddhist Thought Be Construed as a Philosophia, or a Way of Life? Journal of Oriental Philosophy: 191–204. Betty, Stafford L. 1983. Nāgārjuna’s Masterpiece: Logical, Mystical, Both, or Neither? Philosophy East and West 33 (2): 123–138. ———. 1984. Is Nāgārjuna a Philosopher? Response to Professor Loy. Philosophy East and West 34 (4): 447–450. Bilimoria, Purushottama. 2017. Thinking Negation in Early Hinduism and Classical Indian Philosophy. Logica Universalis 11: 13–33. Blackwood, R.T. 1963. Neti, Neti: Epistemological Problems of Mystical Experience. Philosophy East and West 13 (3): 201–209. Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 2005. In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pāli Canon. Boston: Wisdom.

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Bodhi, Bhikkhu, and Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli. 2015. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikāya. Somerville: Wisdom, in association with the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Dasgupta, Sanghamitra, and Dilip Kumar Mohanta. 1998. Some Reflections on the Relation Between Sankara and Buddhism. Indian Philosophical Quarterly 25: 349–366. Davidson, Arnold. 1995. Introduction: Pierre Hadot and the Spiritual Phenomenon of Ancient Philosophy. In Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot. Trans. Michael Chase, 1–45. Oxford: Blackwell. Dura, Ioan. 2018. ‘Defining the Indefinable’: The Hermeneutics of the Upanishadic Negation Neti, Neti in Sankara’s Apophatic Theology. In Proceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy, 89–94. Charlottesville: Philosophy Documentation Center. Fiordalis, David, ed. 2018. Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path. Berkeley, CA: Mangalam Press. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2013a. The Concealed Art of the Soul. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013b. Philosophy as a Way of Life. In Philosophy as a Way of Life: Ancients and Moderns: Essays in Honor of Pierre Hadot, ed. Michael Chase, Stephen Clark, and Michael McGhee, 116–131. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Garfield, Jay L. 1995. The Text and Commentary. In The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way, Nagarjuna. Trans. Jay L. Garfield, 87–359. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garfield, Jay L., and Graham Priest. 2003. Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought. Philosophy East and West 53 (1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1353/pew.2003.0004. Hadot, Pierre. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jayakar, Pupul. 1986. J. Krishnamurti: A Biography. Haryana: Penguin India. Jayatilleke, Kulatissa Nanda. 1963. Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge. London: George Allen & Unwin. http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/Early%20Buddhist%20Theory%20 of%20Knowledge_Jayatilleke.pdf Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press. King, Winston L. 1957. Negation as a Religious Category. The Journal of Religion 37 (2): 105–118. https://doi.org/10.1086/484903. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 1996. Questioning Krishnamurti: J.  Krishnamurti in Dialogue: Dialogues with Leading 20th Century Thinkers. San Francisco: Thorsons. ———. 2014. J.  Krishnamurti  – San Diego 1974  – Conversation 1  – Knowledge and the Transformation of Man. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux-­1aRB8Res ———. 2016d. Fire in the Mind: Dialogues with Pupul Jayakar. Brockwood Park: Krishnamurti Foundation Trust. ———. 2017. Fire in the Mind: Dialogues with Pupul Jayakar. Brockwood Park: Krishnamurti Foundation Trust. Kumar, Kesava. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution. Delhi: Kalpaz. Loy, David. 1984. How Not to Criticize Nagarjuna: A Response to L. Stafford Betty. Philosophy East and West 34 (4): 437–445. https://doi.org/10.2307/1399177. Nāgārjuna. 1995. The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way. Trans. and commentary by J.L. Garfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nicholson, Andrew. 2015. Dialogue and Genre in Indian Philosophy. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 151–169. New York: Routledge. Pessin, Sarah. 2016. The Influence of Islamic Thought on Maimonides. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/maimonides-­islamic/#:~:text=Maimonides%20 follows%20the%20Islamic%20Neoplatonic. Accessed 17 Juny 2022. Priest, Graham, Francesco Berto, and Zach Weber. 2022a. Dialetheism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/. Accessed 25 June 2023. Priest, Graham, Koji Tanaka, and Zach Weber. 2022b. Paraconsistent Logic. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-­paraconsistent/. Accessed 25 June 2023.

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Raju, Poola T. 1954. The Principle of Four-Cornered Negation in Indian Philosophy. The Review of Metaphysics 7 (4): 694–713. Rodrigues, Hillary. 2001. Krishnamurti’s Insight. Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing. ———. 2007. An Instance of Dependent Origination: Are Krishnamurti’s Teachings Buddhadharma? Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies 3 (9): 85–102. Śaṅkarācārya. 1950. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama. ———. 1960. Brahma-Sūtra-Śaṅkara-Bhāṣya. Trans. V. M. Apte. Mumbai: Popular Book Depot. ———. 1979. A Thousand Teachings. Trans. Sengaku Mayeda. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Shearer, Alistair. 2017. In the Light of the Self: Adi Shankara and the Yoga of Non-Dualism. Hove: White Crow. Shringy, Ravindra Kumar. 1977. Philosophy of J. Krishnamurti: A Systematic Study. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal. Staal, J. Fritz. 1962. Negation and the Law of Contradiction in Indian Thought: A Comparative Study. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 25 (1): 52–71. https://doi. org/10.1017/s0041977x00056251. Williams, Chris V. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: World Philosopher. Millers Point: Sydney School of Arts & Humanities.

Chapter 12

Conclusions and Implications

Since my multifaceted study has ambitiously aimed to enrich and contribute to different fields of research, I shall divide this concluding chapter into three sections. In the first section, I will present a succinct summary of the claims established by this book. I will then, in the following two sections, suggest broader implications of these conclusions: firstly, a distinction between theoretical philosophy, transformative philosophy, and mysticism, and secondly, a practical implementation of the Krishnamurti dialogue that may inspire not only religious discourse but also philosophical forms of inquiry.

Main Conclusions While Krishnamurti’s dialogue has been the focus of my study, the exploration of this particular form of discursive methodology has provided fertile ground for a broader discussion of dialogue as a type of spiritual exercise. Why do certain philosophical presentations and religious discourses take the form of dialogue? Are there certain goals which are attainable through dialogue but which other forms of investigation are unable to achieve? In what ways does dialogue fulfil philosophical and religious aims? And also, how far can it go – can the practice of philosophical and religious dialogue transform us? All the dialogically oriented traditions explored throughout this book – from the Upaniṣadic sages, the early Buddhists, Socrates, and Plato to Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara, the Zen kōan masters, and Krishnamurti – are confident that dialogue has the power to transform. Moreover, they conceive of dialogue not merely as a process whose aim is to equip participants with tools for transformation, but as a transformative event in itself.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2_12

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As indicated by the great diversity of traditions above, the phenomenon of transformative dialogue transcends cultures and religions as well as the outmoded division of East and West. This implies that any project involving multicultural, cosmopolitan, or fusion philosophy would benefit from integrating this dimension into its discussions. To my best knowledge, thus far very little comparative study has been conducted in relation to the principle of the transformative dialogue. This is one gap in the current literature that I have endeavoured to fill. For this purpose, I started by turning to the Axial Age, a period in which both South Asian and Western philosophies were predominantly concerned with philosophy as transformation. Indeed, these philosophies abounded with expressions of the philosophical and religious dialogue, whose mind- and life-altering destinations can easily be discerned. Since these traditions practised master–student dialogue as a pivotal component of their philosophical activity and also often conveyed their ideas in the textual dialogue form, analysis of their extant literatures has made it possible for me to outline the transcultural characteristics of the transformative dialogue.1 It can generally be averred that in both philosophical cultures, the transformative dialogue functioned as a prominent tool for the collaborative discovery of truth. However, the truth that should be discovered in transformative philosophies does not lie in the realm of the cerebral; rather, it is the attainment of a certain existential consciousness that consequently alters the practitioner’s way of life. The dialogue is a process that guides the interlocutors along the pathways of their own mind, away from faulty assumptions and certainties about life and self and towards a liberating and natural state of mind. Above all, as opposed to most forms of philosophical and religious discourse, transformative dialogues are not designed for a transmission of wisdom; on the contrary, their dialectical tools foster the transference of responsibility for the search for wisdom from the dialogue’s master-guide to the participants, who are pushed into realizing this wisdom within themselves using the power of their own intelligence. This dramatic transference of responsibility becomes even more explicit when placed in the historical context of the emergence of the transformative dialogue during the Axial Age. In this context, the transformative dialogue can be understood as a signifier of a shift from deity- and myth-oriented religion to a philosophical insistence on the human mind’s ability to liberate itself. This historical passage gave rise to numerous schools of thought and practice for which philosophical activity and the question of happiness were interlinked. Happiness, however, was conceived of not as a form of divinely granted salvation, but rather as a self-reliant state of being. In this climate, a dispute among the various schools  – for instance, between Aristotle’s divine Intellect and Epicurus’ refined pleasure, or between Śaṅkara’s Self-realization and Nāgārjuna’s middle way – would centre not only on metaphysical distinctions, but also on the way that individuals could bring themselves to a state in which they could put an end to their misery and attain inner freedom. The most foundational dispute  – that between mystical and either materialist or

 See Chap. 4.

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intellectual solutions to the problem of happiness – has led me to suggest, on the basis of my analyses of Upaniṣadic and Socratic dialogues, a finer division within the transformative dialogue between the subtypes of the mystical and the philosophical transformative dialogue (Chap. 5). Krishnamurti’s method, the focal point of my study, can be viewed as a continuation and a development of the transcultural tradition of transformative dialogue. This is partly owing to its novel uses of the philosophically and mystically familiar techniques of unanswerable questions and negation. Intriguingly, as soon as we place this method in the broader context of philosophical and religious traditions of dialogue – a form of ‘dialogical dialogue’2 which has not been attempted thus far – it becomes evident that the Krishnamurti dialogue is a hybrid of the philosophical and the mystical subtypes (this illuminating realization will be further explored below). Nevertheless, we ought not to forget what has enabled the juxtaposition of great traditions of past and present with Krishnamurti’s practice: the Hadotian lens, which has served not only as the meeting point between classical philosophies and the Krishnamurti dialogue, but also as a philosophical methodology through which it has become possible to gain a deeper insight into Krishnamurti’s thought. To my best knowledge, Krishnamurti’s teaching and practice have never been examined by tools of philosophical methodology. I have elected to adopt Hadot’s hermeneutics because the framework provided by his lifelong study of the Greco-­ Roman texts profoundly legitimizes philosophical expressions whose goals are predominantly transformative. Although my own reading has eventually led me to finer and more careful distinctions (see explanation in the following section), this conception of philosophy as transformation, I have argued, is the optimal way one can access Krishnamurti’s thought. Indeed, Krishnamurti’s discourse is not only devoid of philosophical efforts in the theoretical or even logically consistent sense, but it also defiantly opposes such efforts. Even when Krishnamurti appears to strive towards logical lucidity, he sidesteps philosophical commitments for the simple reason that he is exclusively concerned with leading his listeners and discussants to a certain mystical experience that can potentially bring about a lasting transformation of their mind. Thus, the hope to grasp Krishnamurti’s discourse by seeking theoretical consistency or metaphysical descriptions would only lead to frustration. As I demonstrated by contrasting the Murdoch–Krishnamurti and Needleman– Krishnamurti dialogues (Chap. 9), if one wishes to benefit from Krishnamurti’s guidance, one must succumb to a line of inquiry which is philosophically disruptive. This form of transformation-oriented reading is reinforced when we begin to delve into the dialogical nature of Krishnamurti’s discourse. As I have shown in my discussion of classical transformative philosophies, interest in self-transformation and a strong inclination towards dialogue-based philosophical activity are often inextricably linked: since a psychagogic process is driven by the master-­philosopher’s wish to direct the interlocutors’ minds to a liberating state, but also ethically relies

 Here I deploy Raimon Panikkar’s term to convey my own wish to facilitate a ‘new revelatory experience’ based on a ‘depth-dialogue of religious or spiritual experience’ (Hall 2016: 3, 5). 2

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on the self-redeeming powers of the individuals involved, a dialogue is required.3 Thus, we identify in Krishnamurti’s type of discourse elements of the great traditions of transformative dialogue. First, a Hadotian reading makes it clear that even Krishnamurti’s lectures, which have understandably baffled many, can only be understood as implicit dialogues. Second, what Krishnamurti had practised in his lectures to a limited degree eventually blossomed into an explicit dialogue form, which, I have argued, constitutes the ideal and ultimate fulfilment of his aspirations as a thinker in the field of self-transformation. Third, both the public lectures and the actual dialogues show easily identifiable patterns of a method consisting of four stages, methodological tools, and specific goals. Nevertheless, since Krishnamurti scholars and semi-academic authors have looked elsewhere in their wish to fathom Krishnamurti’s unconventional thought, they have tended to pay little attention to his method. Last, as previously mentioned, when we draw a comparison between the techniques and goals of the Krishnamurti dialogue and textual dialogues of dialogue-­ oriented traditions, we come to realize that Krishnamurti’s method includes and transcends both the philosophical and the mystical forms of transformative dialogue: while the method is similar in its dynamic and dialectical spirit to the early Socratic dialogues, it is far closer, in terms of its destinations, to the South Asian ideal of non-duality, as found, among other places, in the Upaniṣadic dialogues. Since Krishnamurti’s method cannot be adequately classified as one subtype of transformative dialogue, it can be considered a representation of a transcultural philosophical activity and thus an intriguing candidate for studies of multicultural philosophy, as a living embodiment of the India–West dialogue. This view is enhanced by the fact that one of the two major techniques of the Krishnamurti dialogue is a piecemeal negation of all the responses that participants offer to Krishnamurti’s questioning, with the intention of freeing his discussants from the past – past in its broadest sense, including all traditions, all spiritual and intellectual authorities, and any type of spiritual, psychological, or intellectual knowledge. Aside from contributing to the study of the widespread principle of transformative dialogue and the scholarly literature on Krishnamurti’s thought, my research helps advance Hadot’s methodology. As detailed in the Introduction, a long list of scholars of South Asian philosophy have come to recognize the usefulness of Hadot’s ‘alternative framework for understanding philosophy as a practice and a discipline’ (Fiordalis 2018: 9). Consequently, we find a growing literature that employs the Hadotian lens for purposes of comparative study of Eastern and Western philosophical discourses and for a philosophical hermeneutics of Eastern modes of thought. It thus seems safe to acknowledge Hadotian hermeneutics as another form of philosophical methodology, in company with more established models in Western and comparative thought, such as Ricoeur’s, Gadamer’s, and Raimon Panikkar’s. Notwithstanding its dogmatism – its insistence on encompassing every expression

 The concept of psychagogy – etymologically, ‘soul-guidance’ – originates in Plato (Phaedrus, 261b and 271d). 3

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of classical philosophy under the umbrella of philosophy as a way of life without the slightest reservation and its tendency to dismiss the metaphysical efforts of the antecedents of Western philosophy4 – Hadot’s methodology makes it possible for us to read transformative texts philosophically, without immediately resorting to religious hermeneutics. This is particularly beneficial when it comes to philosophical dialogues, since Hadot views the ethically dialogical inclination of classical philosophy as inseparable from its aim of transforming minds and souls: for transformation to take root, an eloquent presentation of ideas would not suffice; one had to go through engaging dynamics with the philosophy teacher. Consequently, Hadot’s reading helps to reveal a certain type of philosophers who have functioned as guides to living rather than guides merely to thinking. In Western philosophy, vivid examples of this type of philosopher can be found more easily as we move further back in time, all the way to a point at which the conception of philosophical activity in the West was not substantially different from that of predominant traditions of thought in classical India. In this way, Hadot enables us to explore the phenomenon of transformative dialogue without borders and to define it on the basis of its nature and goals rather than a particular tradition, thus allowing for what Panikkar’s interreligious hermeneutics considers a depth-dialogue of spiritual experience (Hall 2016: 3). Any rigorous implementation of Hadot’s approach inevitably provokes a discussion of the boundaries and limitations of modern academic philosophy. By looking back at the prevailing classical conception of philosophical activity, one has to wonder why philosophy has become the life of the mind in the most isolated sense of the phrase, that is, an intellectual activity that has no or little bearing on the reality of one’s life. Nicholson (2015: 166–167) proposes this humbling recognition when he points out that the abstract knowledge with which academic philosophers are occupied has so little to do with philosophy as it was originally devised by the ancients – love of wisdom and practical advice on how one should live the good life – that philosophy departments may require a new name. Of course, we should wonder whether philosophers ought to be committed to an age-old conception of philosophy, but this would not resolve the problem of the extreme abstraction of a field whose primary concern, perhaps even more than psychology, is to face profoundly existential questions. Thus, by drawing on Hadot’s methodology and confronting the challenge that Krishnamurti presented to philosophers and other scholars, this study brings neglected aspects of philosophy to the fore: philosophy as a spiritual exercise that actively transforms the human mind. This last point, which takes us beyond the immediate and direct conclusions of this book, will be further illuminated in the following sections. While I am confident that my conclusions are well grounded, this study is not without limitations. Naturally, due to my intense focus on the specific case of  See, for instance, Maria Antonaccio’s (1998: 77–78, 81–83) discussion of the limitations of the Hadotian view, which is addressed in Chap. 2. Interestingly, Ryan Duns (2020: 503), who refers to criticism levelled against Hadot’s work by John Cooper, Brad Inwood, and Martha Nussbaum, suggests that we should read Hadot’s own work as paideía, a ‘work of formation’ (ibid., 504). 4

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Krishnamurti’s transformative dialogue, my research on classical expressions of transformative dialogue has not been as meticulous as it could be. Indeed, I have only touched on the abundant literary legacy of dialogue-based transformative philosophies and, for the sake of this study, I have applied generalizations where there are important and revealing exceptions. It is thus reasonable to assume that a more thorough investigation into the philosophical and religious dialogues of the ancients may yield more perceptive results and distinctions, perhaps calling into question elements of the Hadotian approach that I have adopted relatively uncritically. Another limitation is directly related to my analysis of the Krishnamurti dialogue: the scope of this book has not allowed me to uncover significant patterns of this method beyond unanswerable questions and all-inclusive negation. Nevertheless, it is my contention that further analysis of these dialogical dynamics, in the same way that scholars keep exploring subtleties of the Socratic method to this day, can establish more firmly the method’s uniqueness and contribution to the field of the philosophical and religious dialogue. On the basis of these main conclusions, I shall devote the remainder of this chapter to potential implications of my study.

Transformative Philosophy or Mysticism? The question of whether Krishnamurti was a philosopher or not has occupied many scholarly and semi-scholarly writers. This question seems inescapable, due to Krishnamurti’s own evasion of any categorization of his work, as a part of his all-­ inclusive negation, and the mystifying character of his teachings, which on occasion appear to be philosophical and at other times are purely mystical, poetic, or instructional. But why do scholars, myself included, deem it important to classify Krishnamurti’s work? By determining whether Krishnamurti was a philosopher or not, it becomes clearer what one should expect from his teachings and writings and how one should read and engage with them. In this study’s context, this type of clarity can also facilitate the optimal reading of the Krishnamurti dialogue. The majority of writers, each for their own reasons, have come to the conclusion that Krishnamurti cannot be adequately classified as a philosopher, proposing instead titles such as a ‘religious leader’ (Hunter 1988: 50, 81–85); ‘a seer and a teacher’ (Martin 1997: xiii); and ‘an awakener of truth’ (Suri 2008: 23–25). Additionally, some have insisted on discussing Krishnamurti’s thought outside any Western or Eastern philosophical context (Kumar 2015: 184–185) or while avoiding any academic or abstract approach to his teachings (Anderson 2012: 15–16). This general appraisal of Krishnamurti’s work is congruent with my own findings. Interestingly, in the earlier stages of my research, I was guided by the conviction that Krishnamurti’s teaching, despite its easily recognizable gaps and holes, constituted a complete and intricate philosophy which only needed to be formulated and developed. Even later, after I had placed Krishnamurti in the framework provided by Hadot, it seemed plausible to at least consider him a philosopher in the Hadotian

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sense. However, after careful analyses of countless dialogues, I have come to realize that my intentions of pulling Krishnamurti’s thought and practice into philosophy’s realm were not only unfulfillable but also somewhat unfair. My efforts to categorize Krishnamurti’s thought, against the backdrop of Greek and Asian forms of transformative philosophy, have finally led me to a more thorough examination of the border that separates philosophy from other fields, such as religious thought and praxis, mysticism, and self-transformation. This examination has yielded greater distinctions, which are often overlooked and even blurred by cross-cultural philosophers in their generally justified attempt to enable a non-­ hierarchical philosophical pluralism. It is clear that introducing thinkers like Krishnamurti or Nāgārjuna into modern academic philosophy would pose a significant challenge and perhaps even a threat to the acceptable boundaries of the discipline. On the one hand, such so-called fresh voices can aid in stretching the limits of philosophy as we know it, but on the other hand, their presence implicitly invites us to reflect upon those limits. Indeed, when faced with Asian texts that defy Western notions of argument-construction and logic, Western philosophy becomes conscious of itself in many helpful ways. But too often, self-conscious Western philosophers turn to one of two extremes: either opening the borders completely and demolishing the concept of traditions of thought (in favour of individual philosophies), or seeking to legitimize these ways of thinking by proving that after all, they do measure up to academic standards.5 A middle way would be to take advantage of the opportunity inherent in this confrontation with challenging materials in order to draw clearer distinctions, but without rejecting the philosophical potency of these materials or withdrawing to a conservative approach. First, even if we dispose of the general division of East and West – and my present study certainly provides us with enough good reasons to do so – it makes little sense to follow Ganeri’s (2018) ‘cosmopolitan philosophy’ to a degree that we turn our backs on the reality of traditions of thought. There are easily identifiable predominant tendencies and specific environments that foster the emergence of particular forms of philosophical activity. This type of modus vivendi is evident when observing the classical Greeks’ inclination towards philosophy as a way of life, or when noticing modern academic philosophy’s tendency towards abstraction and argument-construction  – even when we acknowledge a great many exceptions. Second, the most vital differentiation should be made not between East and West or certain traditions of thought, but rather between three approaches to the conception of and investigation into truth: two forms of philosophy – theoretical and transformative – and mysticism.6

 See my discussion of Van Norden (2017), Ganeri (2018), and Fiordalis (2018) in the introduction. Notice, in particular, how this polarization is demonstrated in Fiordalis’s criticism of Siderits’s ‘Fusion philosophy’ (2018: 3–4). 6  These categories ought to be treated as ideal types (to borrow Max Weber’s typological term) rather than watertight categories into which actual individuals could neatly be fitted. 5

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Generally, I maintain that we should be careful not to blur the distinctiveness of philosophy’s project. Even if we remove the expectation that Asian texts (or Krishnamurti’s dialogues, for that matter) conform to both the academically recognized form of argumentation and Western logic, we can still identify more essential and intuitive criteria for our evaluation of a certain mental activity as a form of philosophy. Otherwise, what would distinguish one’s musings on life and reality from substantial philosophical efforts? Here, I am in agreement with Stafford Betty (1984: 448–449) when he writes that a philosophical activity must involve at the very least a minimal ‘intelligible, rational, logical account and analysis of reality’; a careful attempt to describe the real and not just to evoke it or lead to it (as poets or mystics may sometimes do).7 However, I suggest that there is a deeper reason behind Betty’s expectation: at the core of philosophy’s project we can find the belief in the central role that human intellect plays in the search for wisdom. In other words, the intellect is understood as a major tool of truth-evaluation and truth-discovery. Philosophy is thus a study of the nature and knowledge of reality which is achieved by employing logical and rational tools, based on the assumption that these faculties of the human mind can provide and reflect an objective and coherent perception of life and the world.8 This hope that human reason can capture reality accurately (even if it sometimes endeavours to prove the intellect’s inability to do so) may be likened to the classical Greek trust in geometry, pronouncedly expressed by Plato, as a field in which the concept of proof made it ‘the very paradigm of what we mean true and certain knowledge to be’ (Bursill-Hall 2002: 3–4, 6). Furthermore, philosophical activity entails a certain commitment to one’s ideas about reality and consequently a sincere effort to justify one’s claims.9 This partly manifests in the conception of the process of argumentation as the intellect’s way of establishing truth. As a part of this commitment, thinkers tend to be aware of a context, a certain history of ideas of which their notion is a part, and are thereby engaged in a conscious dialogue with previously articulated views in order to hone their own arguments. Last, it can be said that the philosophical approach to wisdom is

 Betty wrote this as a part of his defence of his judgement of Nāgārjuna as a non-philosopher. As stated in Chap. 11, I do not side with this specific judgement. Moreover, I believe that the division into three categories rather than two would be helpful for an assessment of Nāgārjuna’s particular philosophical activity. 8  This definition includes the study of mystical claims about knowledge of reality. 9  This by no means implies that mystic or religious adherents lack foundational metaphysical and epistemic commitments to their worldviews. However, as Cottingham (2005: 13) perceptively points out, unlike the commitment that underlies conventional modes of philosophical inquiry, neither the mystic nor the believer lean on having their belief anchored in a chain of reasoning as a necessary condition for this belief to gain the status of knowledge. While they are happy to provide their commitments with rational support and grounding, the wellspring of their commitments is primarily “reasons of the heart”: either their belief or their direct experience (ibid., 16). 7

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characterized by a constructive tendency, that is, a layer-by-layer conceptual building towards the truth.10 When this core philosophical activity takes place in a world of its own, away from commitment to praxis and manifestation, it may be classified as theoretical philosophy.11 This is what we mostly find in contemporary departments of philosophy. Nevertheless, there have been enough instances in which this core activity has functioned in the service of a greater whole. In these instances, which can be broadly categorized as transformative philosophy, reasoning has been not just one technique among others, but also a mere springboard for an existential truth that transcended it. What retains the philosophical character of this type of activity is the efforts invested to construct consistent metaphysical, logical, and ethical descriptions of life and the world. Transformative philosophers make sincere use of logical and rational tools with the intention of establishing their claims. However, while the process of argumentation is pursued with full commitment, the philosopher is aware of the inherent limitation of this process and is also conscious of the existence of other faculties of the mind which are likewise meant to operate and blossom. Since the theoretical procedures are vital for transformation to occur, but never constitute the complete understanding of life and existence, the attainment of wisdom must always be completed through the act of internal metamorphosis. For this reason, it is not unusual for transformative philosophers to deploy negation of mental constructs, especially when it comes to descriptions of the transcendental. John Taber (1983: 1) describes transformative philosophers as figures for whom philosophy has been a quest for higher states of consciousness rather than verifiable ideas. They are ‘philosophers intent on effecting a total transformation of consciousness, the basic relationship between the knower and the things he knows’ (ibid., 2). Nevertheless, as Taber notes, theoretical philosophers, who are the mainstay of present-day philosophy departments, are inevitably reluctant to study transformative philosophers under this category. Proposing Plato as one notable candidate for this category  – an observation which has been confirmed throughout this book– Taber points out that Plato employs dialectic as an instrument, with full awareness of his inability to deliver truth in the form of a perfected logical proof. Like Fichte and Śaṅkara, Taber’s main subjects of study, Plato’s dialectic comes with a praxis, a programme for cultivation of one’s spirit, and an emphasis on the trans- or pre-­ logical spiritual faculties of the mind (ibid., 2). Based on my own study, I would add Socrates and Nāgārjuna to this list, although I know that the position of the latter is not as obvious. However, unlike Taber, I contend that this category may overlap with the category of mysticism, but should not include only mystically oriented philosophers, since transformation of the mind and the resulting existential  This, as we perhaps remember, is construed by Hadot, based on Plato’s Symposium, as the tragic fate of the philosopher, who can only pursue wisdom but never fully accomplish it. 11  ‘Theoretical’ in a sense that is broad enough to encompass what is sometimes (rather loosely) termed practical philosophy (i.e. primarily moral and political philosophy) as well as the more obviously theoretical branches of philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, etc.). 10

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consciousness and way of life have also been the main concern of materialist philosophers, such as Epicurus and even Nietzsche and Camus. Comparative study of transformative philosophers may be particularly beneficial for the project of multicultural philosophy, in its efforts to enable an open dialogue between theoretical philosophy and alternative forms of thinking. Unlike mystics, transformative philosophers utilize elements of philosophical activity recognizable by modern academic philosophy in addition to their intense focus on the transformative effects of their ideas. The third and last approach that should be considered in the context of this book is mysticism. While in some cases the border between mystically oriented transformative philosophy and mysticism seems elusive, mystics do not rely on philosophy’s major tools of logic and reasoning. This does not imply that mystics are irrational, but that they are confident that truth and wisdom are inherently transrational.12 Thus, the mystical project derives from the belief that truth should be experienced rather than understood. Furthermore, as opposed to philosophy’s ongoing process of discovery and correction towards the truth, mystics typically maintain that truth can be fully realized.13 This conviction determines both the way they explore truth and wisdom – valuing only direct insight into the nature of reality and the inside of the mystical experience – and the way they ultimately share their revelation with others. When they choose to discuss their ineffable subjective findings, they tend to do so without supplying their insights with convincing argumentation or even a committed description. In fact, mystics feel comfortable with leaving holes in their descriptions of reality and pronouncing contradictory statements. Often their presentation lacks the metaphysical construction needed for an intellectual comprehension of the universe and may also be devoid of explicit ethics (Jones 2016: 174). Moreover, when mystics do feel the urge to speak, it is for the declared purpose of liberating others from existential ignorance  – even if their method of presentation consists in an eloquent intellectual expression. Paraphrasing Betty’s (1984: 448–449) statement above, what the mystic hopes for is not capturing the truth through verbal or conceptual formulations but rather leading to the truth. Indeed, their guidance tends to require an emptying of the mind of all conceptual content (Jones 2016: 172). This is not to say that mystics never produce rational arguments or that they do not communicate with the doctrines of their traditional framework when they have one.14 Additionally, we should not deduce from my classification that mysticism does not contain philosophically potent materials, in the same way that films or poetry may be deemed relevant to philosophical scrutiny. This may often be confusing, since philosophically potent contents seem like philosophy. Nevertheless, these contents can only blossom into a philosophy if philosophers engage with them and  This has been pointed out by several philosophers (e.g. King 1957: 105; Blackwood 1963: 207–209; Jones 2016: 233–234). 13  See my discussion of Hadot’s interpretation of Plato’s definition of philosophy in Chap. 2. 14  This, however, excludes cases of mystic-philosophers (Jones 2016: 174), since in the present categorization, these fall within the scope of transformative philosophy. 12

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reformulate them in a philosophical context. In other words, a dialogue between philosophers and mysticism is necessary, since in the meeting point, a philosophy can come into being. If this judgement appears to discredit the mystical project, this is far from my intention. Asserting that something is not philosophical does not imply that it is less meaningful. Paraphrasing Betty (1983: 136) once again, this distinction does not dishonour mystics but aims to honour them for the right reasons. Of course, the present classification does not resolve the debate on who should be considered a theoretical philosopher, a transformative philosopher, or a mystic. The elusive border between transformative philosophy and mysticism has already been a cause of a great many disputes over the philosophical quality of certain thinkers, as we have seen in Nāgārjuna’s challenging case.15 Whether the original and declared intentions of the idea-maker matter or not is another intriguing question. Nonetheless, in my view, the Upaniṣadic writers should be perceived as mystics – and this is written with full consciousness of the fact that the Upaniṣads have since given rise to great philosophy, in that the views and arguments they contain have been highly developed in orthodox Hindu philosophical systems, such as Vedānta that explicitly acknowledge their debt to these original scriptures. Similarly, I would regard another tradition explored in this study, the Zen kōan spiritual exercise, as mystical by nature, despite the obvious fact that Zen sprang from Mahāyāna Buddhism, whose metaphysical views are elaborate and complex. After my extensive analysis of Krishnamurti’s thought and the Krishnamurti dialogue in particular, it should come as no surprise that according to this classification, we ought to consider him someone in whom the mystical tendency is stronger than the tendency towards philosophy, even philosophy of a transformative nature. Krishnamurti’s own words, when he answers the question ‘What is philosophy?’ (2017), make this straightforwardly discernible: Philosophy means the love of truth, not according to some theory or speculative concepts or imagination, but to lead, in daily life, a truthful life. The truth is not according to some system, some guru, some pattern that traditionally has been established, but in the understanding of oneself, not according to some psychologist or analyst, but understanding yourself in daily life, to see what you are exactly, without any distortion, without any despair or regret, just to see in your daily relationships what you are. What you are is the truth.

Krishnamurti’s answer equates philosophy with a way of life, a process of actual self-understanding without theory. But if for a moment it seems that this is similar to Hadot’s conception of philosophy as a way of life, Krishnamurti’s emphasis on the absence of any speculative concepts indicates that the core philosophical activity has been rendered irrelevant. Thus, according to Krishnamurti, philosophy and one’s quest for truth are a process of self-transformation. Quite expectedly, Krishnamurti’s negation of even the subtlest forms of self-­ classification also includes an emphatic rejection of the term ‘mystic’: ‘My teaching’, he proclaims, ‘is neither mystic nor occult’ (quoted in Kumar 2015: 206–207). But when Krishnamurti negates the term ‘mysticism’, he actually refers to the term

15

 See the Betty–Loy debate in Chap. 11.

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in its common, non-scholarly connotation, in the sense of something mysterious or otherworldly.16 The features of the mystic mind briefly outlined above leave little doubt that Krishnamurti should be scholarly classified as a mystic, and that the very expectation that one should find in his teachings a philosophy that satisfies the criteria for being classed either as theoretical or as transformative only stifles the true potential of Krishnamurti’s teachings. Even though Krishnamurti’s form of collaborative inquiry may appear to be intellectually rigorous, his line of inquiry echoes the Upaniṣadic jñāna yoga, a path of knowledge whose aim is non-dual realization achieved by a unique form of mental practice (Jones and Ryan 2007: 511). Krishnamurti’s discourse is exclusively designed to facilitate a state of direct inner perception and is not only indifferent to possible intellectual achievements along the way but also turns against such achievements as a way of realizing insight. While his discourse attempts to be logical and reasonable, logic and reasoning are not the main tools of inquiry, and when contradictions or theoretical gaps are indicated by participants, Krishnamurti refuses to disentangle them in an intellectually satisfying way. Instead, he is convinced that the statements he makes are self-explanatory and that all one should do is simply ‘see’ what he is pointing at (Hunter 1988: 83–84). Furthermore, Krishnamurti objects to any type of brick-by-brick, accumulative understanding. The discourse unfolds in a disjointed manner: initially developed arguments are abandoned and quickly replaced with further claims, and metaphysical or ethical constructs may appear here and there but are later vehemently negated. Krishnamurti, after all, speaks in order to liberate minds and hearts. In his view, truth can be attained through direct revelation, but since it lies completely beyond the limits of human thought, it may only be known if all mental activity comes to an end, that is, if the entire contents of one’s mind have been emptied. To maintain this intellectual abstinence, Krishnamurti’s notions are offered outside any philosophical or even religious context. Moreover, whatever context may arise in the listener’s mind Krishnamurti incorporates into his negation to augment the process of the emptying of the mind. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake (personal interview, 26 January 2021), who made friends with Krishnamurti and partook in three recorded dialogues with him in 1982, succinctly summarizes Krishnamurti’s non-philosophical approach: ‘A philosopher would have a systematic presentation of ideas and relate them to other philosophies and he didn’t do that. It was more trying to throw away other philosophies or other attitudes or other beliefs, which he thought stood in the way of this instant enlightenment.’

 Richard Jones (2016: 172–173) identifies Krishnamurti as a modern mystic and determines that Krishnamurti’s conditions for truth-realization are all expressions of the mystic mind. Among these conditions, Jones includes choiceless awareness (ibid., 17–18), the empty brain (ibid., 62), inner stillness as a condition for the revelation of the nature of reality (ibid., 192), direct awareness of fundamental reality (ibid., 171), the destruction of all images and conceptual contents of the mind (ibid., 172–173), and the sense of separate self as something that has been patched together by the analytical mind (ibid., 192). 16

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Implementing the Krishnamurti Dialogue In this last brief section, I would like to consider approaching the Krishnamurti dialogue not only as a subject of further theoretical study but also as a new form of philosophical and religious engagement. While the present study has only been an initial attempt at analysing the Krishnamurti dialogue, it has been one of my major hopes to succeed in establishing the method’s potential practical relevance to philosophy, in the same way that the Socratic method has taken root in the field of practical philosophy – even though Krishnamurti’s method is not philosophical in the first place, but rather designed to engender direct mystical realization. Throughout this book, I have shown time and again that what Krishnamurti offers us is not ideas but a method for the examination of ideas. The following words written by Rob Reich (1998: 68) about Socrates’ contribution to the human mind apply to Krishnamurti as well: In contrast to most other great thinkers, Socrates’ primary legacy is not a contribution to humanity’s storehouse of knowledge, but a pedagogy; not substance but process. To overstate only slightly, for Socrates, and for our understanding of him, method is all.

Nevertheless, the commonality between the two thinkers does not end there. First, the techniques employed by each of them are quite similar: Krishnamurti’s practice of unanswerable questions corresponds to Socrates’ elenchus and Krishnamurti’s negation corresponds to Socrates’ aporíā. Moreover, both methods act as powerful cleansers and awakeners: rather than replacing a false opinion with a so-called true opinion, they help to remove the cobwebs of dogmatic thinking and cluttered reason.17 Of course, the differences between the methods are significant. Socrates functions in the realm of transformative philosophy. He removes the cobwebs of one’s thinking by employing logical procedures, and the practice of his method primarily fosters the development of critical thinking skills. Krishnamurti, on the other hand, functions as a mystic whose method aims to lead to a direct perception of existential illusion and reality. However, the fact that Krishnamurti’s dialogue is concerned with the attainment of a transcendent state does not imply that it cannot serve as an important contribution to forms of philosophical dialogue.18 In fact, I suggest that Krishnamurti’s method may aid philosophers in gaining insight into philosophical questions. What the Krishnamurti dialogue can do for philosophers who tackle either age-­ old or present-day philosophical problems is to enable them to meet these questions afresh, with their minds unencumbered by the accumulation of past knowledge and ready-made answers. Quite unavoidably, the mind of a modern academic philosopher is laden with information in the form of quotations, references, and

 I am paraphrasing Reich’s (1998: 69, 72) words on the Socratic method here.   As previously mentioned, mysticism may contain philosophically potent materials and perspectives. 17 18

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comparisons. These are not discarded within the Krishnamurti dialogue, but only perceived as inherently limited in their ability to be sources of authentic wisdom. Thus, the dialogue is inaugurated on the foundation of a mutual agreement that the participants are in search of an insight rather than a repetition of stored knowledge. This creates the right conditions for a dialogical environment which is guided by not-­knowing rather than overconfidence and authority. Practically, this implies formulating a question while determining to hold onto it without any quick relief.19 The questioners are not focused on seeking a resolution to the question, but instead observe the way their minds interact with it, including the subtle and intricate ways in which their minds respond in a conditioned manner. Whatever answers may emerge, they are appreciated only to a limited degree, since they are understood to be automatically generated reactions rooted in past perceptions. By returning every now and then to the question and listening to it ever more closely, and by repeatedly cornering the mind and blocking its escape routes, the discussants gradually hone their minds’ awareness and evoke a certain intensity intermixed with internal stillness. This unusual degree of attention serves as a preparation for the arising of an insight: a seeing into the question which derives not from mere information or tradition of thought but from the intelligence of an awake mind. Clearly, even this sketchy description constitutes a great challenge to academic thinking, which almost wholly relies on reference and comparison and operates within the framework of its philosophical tradition. Here we ought to consider Raymond Martin’s (1997: xii) remark that Krishnamurti challenges philosophers who take pride in their critical thinking to examine whether they have learned all they need to know about questioning authority and whether their doubting has gone far enough. It should be pointed out, however, that in this type of spiritual exercise, gathered knowledge is transcended only for the duration of the practice, for the sake of a potential direct perception. Thus, for an academic philosopher, the negation of the Krishnamurti dialogue would be implemented in the same way that Nāgārjuna negates the Buddhist path while remaining a devout Buddhist and Zen kōan negates Mahāyāna while being, in practice, a part of it. While philosophy as spiritual exercise was, to a large extent, the origin of our contemporary way of philosophizing, it is impossible to revive the culture of transformative philosophy within the modern academic framework. Hadot (2009: 55–56, 59) is correct when he writes that the classical transformative orientation cannot be recovered due to the missing communal dimension. Nonetheless, a willingness to at least experiment with actual spiritual exercises transmitted by transformative philosophies and potentially philosophical mystical teachings may be one fruitful next step of the multicultural philosophy project. It is doubtful that expressions of transformative philosophy can be fully grasped by studying them from the point of view of theoretical philosophy and deploying them to stretch the

 Although forms of transformative dialogue require a certain degree of hierarchical philosopher– disciple interaction, a moderator who facilitates the process should suffice. 19

References

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boundaries of theoretical philosophy. In the end, what transformative philosophies invite us to do is to engage with them to a point that our very conception of truth and reality is called into question. Thus, actively applying their spiritual exercises in philosophy studies – particularly transformative dialogues that may inspire the creation of dialogical environments in the classroom – may deepen the understanding of traditions whose knowledge strives to transform the mind that studies them.

References Anderson, Allen W. 2012. On Krishnamurti’s Teachings. Ojai: Karina Library Press. Antonaccio, Maria. 1998. Contemporary Forms of Askesis and the Return of Spiritual Exercises. The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics 18: 69–92. https://doi.org/10.5840/asce19981811. Betty, Stafford L. 1983. Nāgārjuna’s Masterpiece: Logical, Mystical, Both, or Neither? Philosophy East and West 33 (2): 123–138. ———. 1984. Is Nāgārjuna a Philosopher? Response to Professor Loy. Philosophy East and West 34 (4): 447–450. Blackwood, R.T. 1963. Neti, Neti: Epistemological Problems of Mystical Experience. Philosophy East and West 13 (3): 201–209. Bursill-Hall, Piers. 2002. Why Do We Study Geometry? Answers Through the Ages. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Cottingham, John. 2005. The Spiritual Dimension. New York: Cambridge University Press. Duns, Ryan. 2020. Pierre Hadot and Philosophy. The Classical Review 70 (2): 503–505. Fiordalis, David, ed. 2018. Buddhist Spiritual Practices: Thinking with Pierre Hadot on Buddhism, Philosophy, and the Path. Berkeley: Mangalam Press. Ganeri, Jonardon. 2018. Taking Philosophy Forward [review of Taking Back Philosophy]. Los Angeles Review of Books, August 20. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ taking-­philosophy-­forward/ Hadot, Pierre. 2009. The Present Alone Is Our Happiness. Trans. Marc Djaballah. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Hall, Gerald. 2016. Raimon Panikkar’s Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue. In Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Edmund Kee-fook Chia, 251–264. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hunter, Alan. 1988. Seeds of Truth: J.  Krishnamurti as Religious Teacher and Educator. PhD Dissertation, University of Leeds. Jones, Richard. 2016. Philosophy of Mysticism. New York: State University of New York Press. Jones, Constance A., and James D.  Ryan. 2007. Encyclopedia of Hinduism. New  York: Facts on File. King, Winston L. 1957. Negation as a Religious Category. The Journal of Religion 37 (2): 105–118. https://doi.org/10.1086/484903. Krishnamurti, Jiddu. 2017. What Is Philosophy. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=D0-­ozr9XmW07 Kumar, Kesava. 2015. Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution. Delhi: Kalpaz. Martin, Raymond. 1997. Introduction. In Krishnamurti: Reflection on the Self. Chicago: Open Court. Nicholson, Andrew. 2015. Dialogue and Genre in Indian Philosophy. In Dialogue in Early South Asian Religions, ed. Brian Black and Laurie Patton, 151–169. New York: Routledge. Plato. 1997. Complete Works. Ed. J.M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett.

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Reich, Rob. 1998. Confusion About the Socratic Method: Socratic Paradoxes and Contemporary Invocations of Socrates. Philosophy of Education Archive: 68–78. Suri, Amina S. 2008. The Philosophical Basis of J Krishnamurti’s Teachings: A Reappraisal. PhD Dissertation, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. Taber, John. 1983. Transformative Philosophy: A Study of Sankara, Fichte and Heidegger. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Van Norden, Bryan. 2017. Taking Back Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press.

Index

A Adhiṣṭhāna, 162 Ajñāna, 20, 219 Akṣapāda Gautama and Nyāya Sūtras, 45 Anātman, 34, 117, 162, 163, 174, 221, 222 Anaxagoras, 82 Anderson, A.W., 1, 19, 146, 147, 151, 153, 160, 163, 164, 170, 178, 244 Antisthenes, 51, 201 Aparā, 63 Apophatic theology, 145, 150, 227, 230, 235 Aporíā, 36, 78, 147, 198, 200–202, 207, 209, 210, 251 Aristippus, 201 Aristotle and the law of excluded middle, 218 Arjuna, 46, 47 Ataraxia, 22 ātman, 27, 32, 34, 38, 84, 87, 94, 162, 182, 221, 226–230, 232 Augustine, 141, 216 Aurelius, M. and Meditations, 4 Axial age, 3, 66, 75, 240 B Belaṭṭhiputta, Sañjaya, 145 Besant, A., 102, 104, 107, 168 Bhagavadgītā, 6, 8, 29, 46, 49, 51 Blavatsky, H., 102 Bohm, D., 147, 148, 156–158, 161, 170–172, 178

Brahman nirguṇa brahman, 162, 163, 228 Brahmavidyā, 32 Brahmins, 49, 66, 219 Buber, M., 69 Buddha Buddha’s undeclared questions (avyākata), 215 Buddhi, 84 C Catuṣkoṭi, 218–220, 222–224, 226, 227, 229, 230, 232, 234, 235 Cebes, 65, 67, 68, 70, 78, 81–83, 85, 90, 91 Chán Buddhism (Zen Buddhism), 13, 146, 158, 195, 203 Chrysippus, 26 Cicero, 79 Confucius, 10 Cosmopolitan philosophy, 8, 245 Cynicism, 22 D Daimon, 34 Derrida, J., 8 Dharma (dhamma), 13, 46–49, 207, 217, 221, 222, 224, 227, 230, 234 Diagoras, 82 Diotima, 24, 37, 92, 94 Dṛṣṭānta, 45

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Tubali, The Transformative Philosophical Dialogue, Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures 41, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40074-2

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256 E Eckhart, M., 141, 152, 161, 216 Eleusis, 37 Empedocles, 76 Enkrateia, 35 Epictetus, 23, 52, 53 Epicurus, 26, 30, 34, 37, 52, 240, 248 Epimenides, 181 Eros, 65 Euclides, 89 Exétasis, 202

Index

G Gadamer, H.-G., 46, 53, 242 Gītās, 41 Ground, 9, 24, 34, 48, 76, 86, 110, 119, 127, 132, 145, 150, 157, 161–164, 167, 202, 219, 239 Gurukulas, 31, 32, 43

145–164, 167–188, 193, 212, 215–217, 230, 233, 239, 241, 242, 244, 246, 249, 251–253 and mind, 101, 102, 109, 112, 127–130, 132, 133, 136, 140, 146–148, 151, 153, 155, 156, 158, 162, 163, 167–172, 178, 185, 208 and Nāgārjuna, 13, 232–235, 245 and negation, 105, 127, 137–142, 145, 150, 162, 175, 180–182, 193, 215, 216, 231–234, 244, 249–251 and the Order of the Star in the East, 103 and the pathless land, 2, 119, 125, 136, 231 and Socrates, 117, 128, 133, 193–213, 239, 251 and thought, 1, 13, 62, 101, 169, 172, 176, 185, 187, 193, 241, 242, 244, 245, 249 and unanswerable questions, 12, 13, 139, 140, 145, 149, 150, 193, 195, 215, 241, 244, 251 and the World Teacher, 100–103, 105, 107–109 Jiddu, N., 102, 103, 106, 107, 168 Jīvanmukti, 83 Jñāna, 32, 227, 250

H Hadot, P., 3, 19, 41, 62, 77, 100, 124, 171, 194, 217, 241 Heidegger, M., 8, 94 Huxley, A., 117, 169, 170

K Kant, I., 172 Karma, 47, 117 Kṛṣṇa, 45–47 Kundalini, 106

J Jaspers, K., 3 Jātakas, 48 Jayakar, P., 2, 11, 62, 101–103, 106, 107, 109, 114, 118, 125–132, 134–139, 147, 148, 150–155, 159–164, 168, 169, 193, 208, 209, 212, 232, 234, 235 Jiddu Krishnamurti and brain, 106, 115, 131, 138, 150, 153, 156, 158, 168, 208 as a child, 101, 108, 137, 169 and choiceless awareness, 142, 153, 154, 164, 188 and creative emptiness, 163 and education, 135, 169, 181 and insight, 2, 108, 110, 111, 116, 119, 124, 126, 131, 133, 134, 142, 145–164, 169, 174, 178, 183, 215, 241 and the Krishnamurti dialogue, 1, 3, 7–13, 20, 77, 100, 109, 113, 123–142,

L Leadbeater, C.W., 102–104, 106, 107 Logoi sokratikoi, 195 Logos, 21, 88 Lokāyata (Cārvāka), 20 Lúsis, 80

F Foucault, M., 5, 6, 22, 34, 35 Fusion philosophy, 8, 240

M Ma, Anandamayi, 120, 138 Mahābhārata, 43, 45, 46, 49 Mahāparinibbāṇa Sutta, 75 Mahāvīra, 49, 50 Mahāyāna, 158, 205, 210, 226, 249, 252 Maimonides, 216 Maitreya, 100–102, 105–108 Māluṅkyaputta, 220–222, 231 Mindfulness, 28, 152, 153, 207 Misology, 81, 91 Mitrá, 43

Index Moggallāna, 136 Mokṣa, 44, 45 Mondō, 149, 204, 206 Multicultural philosophy, 7–11, 14, 195, 213, 242, 248, 252 Murdoch, I., 13, 152, 168, 170, 172–180, 182, 183, 185, 187, 188 Musonius, 53 Mystical experiences, 11, 29, 35, 101, 103, 104, 125, 141, 148, 161, 164, 215, 229, 241, 248 Mysticism, 10, 11, 13, 14, 29, 81, 86–92, 145, 148, 150, 164, 171, 175–177, 213, 239, 244–250 N Nāciketa, 56, 64, 65, 70, 71, 78, 79, 83–85, 88, 90, 91, 133, 184 Nāgārjuna and Mādhyamika, 13, 224 and Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, 41, 215, 216, 222–225, 234 Nāstikavādin, 50 Needleman, J., 3, 13, 100, 101, 109, 116, 118, 120, 167–170, 179–184, 186, 211, 212 Negation, 12, 13, 34, 105, 109, 113, 124, 125, 127, 130, 132, 134–142, 145, 147–151, 153–155, 159, 160, 162–164, 170, 171, 175, 177, 180–182, 185, 186, 193, 197, 205, 209, 210, 212, 215–235, 241, 242, 244, 247, 249–252 Neti neti, 141, 215, 228, 229 Nietzsche, F., 19, 28, 89, 105, 108, 112, 117, 248 Nikāyas, 48 Nirvāṇa (nibbāna), 49, 221, 224, 225 Nirvikalpa samādhi, 162 Nous, 84 Nussbaum, M., 5, 243 Nyāya vāda, 44 O Orphism, 92 Orthe doxa, 70 P Pāli Canon, 48, 119, 126, 215 Panikkar, R., 241–243 Parā, 63, 70 Paramparā, 47 Parmenides and On Nature, 6, 29

257 Patañjali and Yoga-Sūtra, 80 Pericles, 29 Philosophíā, 56 Plato Alcibiades, 65, 196 and the academy, 25, 30, 31, 68, 90, 92, 195 and the Forms, 24, 34, 80, 174, 175, 178 and the Middle Dialogues, 75–77 Apology, 196, 199 Crito, 196, 199 Euthyphro, 65, 66, 111, 196 Gorgias, 75, 196, 199 Laches, 196 Letter VII, 63 Meno, 67, 202 Phaedo, 12, 29, 73, 75–94, 196, 203, 225 Phaedrus, 62, 75, 76, 85, 89, 178, 203 Philebus, 52 Republic, 8, 75, 88, 196 Sophist, 51, 52 Symposium, 37, 65, 75, 80, 93, 94, 175, 247 Theaetetus, 94 Plotinus and Neoplatonism, 141, 216 Plutarch, 20 Prajñāpāramitā, 48 Pramā, 44 Prasaṅga, 225 Praśnas, 45 Protagoras, 82, 196 Psychagogy, 31, 47, 54, 195 Psyche, 4, 27, 28, 34, 38, 127, 232–234 Purāṇas, 43, 47, 48 Pure consciousness events, 148, 161 Pyrrho, 52, 141 Pythagoras, 32, 76, 82 R Rāmāyaṇa, 43 Rebirth (reincarnation), 63, 76, 88, 117, 221 Ṛgveda and saṃvāda, 43 Rinzai Zen and kōan, 13, 128, 194, 204, 215 and Sōtō, 203 S Saint Ignatius, 28 Salk, J., 139, 170, 172

258 Saṃsāra, 50, 158 Samyak samādhi, 152 Samyak smṛti, 152 Śaṅkara and A Thousand Teachings (Upadeśasāhasrī), 215 and Advaita Vedānta, 13, 218, 226, 227 Saṅkhāra, 49 Śānti, 45 Sāriputta, 136 Satori, 13, 158, 195, 204, 207, 212 Seneca, 30 Sheldrake, R., 109, 115, 116, 136, 139, 170, 171, 186, 187, 250 Simmias, 65, 68, 70, 78, 82, 83, 85, 87, 89–91, 184 Singer, P., 9 Smith, H., 170 Socrates elenchus, 13, 126, 140, 155, 194–197, 200, 201, 251 Socratic dialogues, 13, 19, 33, 38, 51, 53–55, 69, 72, 89, 115, 152, 193–194, 196, 197, 199, 201–203, 207, 212, 241, 242 Socratic irony, 67, 133, 200, 202 Socratic method, 1, 124, 126, 195, 197, 200, 207, 211, 244, 251 Sophia, 22 Sophism, 26, 30, 82, 197, 200, 219 Spiritual exercise (áskēsis), 4, 5, 10–12, 20, 23–27, 31, 33, 35, 41, 52, 62, 88, 124, 128, 142, 193–213, 215–235, 239, 243, 249, 252 Sthavirāvalīcaritra, 49 Stoicism, 22, 28, 30, 34, 37, 52 Sudden enlightenment (sudden awakening), 146, 148, 155, 158 Śūnyatā, 34, 163 Sūtras (suttas), 48 Śvetāmbara canon, 49, 50 T Tantras, 43 Tapas, 35 Tejas, 35 Theosophy (theosophical society), 2, 100–102, 104–109 Tibetan Book of the Dead, 75 Tilopa, 158, 188 Transformative dialogue, 3, 6, 7, 9–13, 42, 46, 55–57, 61–73, 75–94, 100, 116, 120, 124, 125, 137–139, 145, 156, 178, 183,

Index 185, 186, 195, 205, 216, 217, 240–244, 252, 253 Tripura Rahasya, 44 U Upaniṣads Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, 44, 65, 66, 88, 141, 215, 216, 228, 229 Chāndogyopaniṣad, 64, 65, 73, 88, 229 and dialogue, 11, 44–46, 62, 63, 65–67, 93, 152, 242 Kaṭhopaniṣad, 77, 86, 174 Muṇḍakopaniṣad, 67 Praśnopaniṣad, 63 Upāya, 225, 227 V Vacchagotta, 220–222, 231 Vajrayāna Buddhism, 153 Váruṇa, 43 Vasudevahiṇḍī, 49, 50 Vedānta, 56, 162, 163, 215, 218, 226, 227, 249 Vedas, 44, 56, 63, 73, 79 Via negativa, 124, 141, 216 Vidyā and avidyā, 229 Vijñāna, 84 Vinaya, 32 Vitaṇḍā, 145 W Wittgenstein, L., 84, 172, 205 X Xenophanes, 82 Xenophon and Memorabilia, 19, 54 Y Yama, 70, 79, 83–86, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94 Yoga, 47, 75, 92, 250 Yogācāra Buddhism, 163 Yoga-Vāsiṣṭha, 46, 50 Z Zazen (zuòchán), 203 Zeno, 82