This Light in Oneself

These selections present the core of Krishnamurti's teaching on meditation, taken from discussions with small groups, as well as from public talks to large audiences. His main theme is the essential need to look inward, to know ourselves, in order really to understand our own—and the world's—conflicts. We are the world, says Krishnamurti, and it is our individual chaos that creates social disorder. He offers timeless insights into the source of true freedom and wisdom.

Krishnamurti ranks up there with Kahlil Gibran in what you might call common sense mysticism. Repudiating his upbringing as a Theosophist World Leader, Krishnamurti pushed a sort of religious self-reliance, as evidenced in the title of this collection of essays, This Light in Oneself. Meditation for Krishnamurti has nothing to do with gurus, postures, or concentration exercises, nor is its purpose "to sleep longer, do your job better, or to get more money." What it is can be a bit slippery, though. As Krishnamurti states it, meditation is a psychological state--a kind of choiceless awareness, "a state in which the 'me' is totally absent." His argument comes out gradually in this series of essays that are here published for the first time. But since each essay was originally a self-enclosed lecture on meditation, there is much overlap of material. So the reader must approach the book like a spaceship that circles planets and moons in order to be slingshot to further reaches. Path: unknown. Final destination: enlightenment. --Brian Bruya