Krishnamurti - From Darkness to Light: Poems and Parables

From Darkness to Light: Poems and ParablesThe Collected Works of Krishnamurti, Volume I Copyright 1980 by K. & R. Foundation The Path , privately published in 1923, published by the Star Publishing Trust, 1928; The Search, published by the Star Publishing Trust and George Allen & Unwin, 1927; The Immortal Friend, published by the Star Publishing Trust and Boni & Liveright, 1928; The Song of Life, published by the Star Publishing Trust and Horace Liveright, 1928; Parables and Prose Poems, published in the Star Review and/or the International Star Bulletins between 1927 and 1931. J. KRISHNAMURTI FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT Poems and Parables THE COLLECTED WORKS OF KRISHNAMURTI Volume One

CONTENTS PREFACE The Collected Works of Krishnamurti , of which this volume is the first, is a true record for posterity of the works of this unique human being whose message represents no known organized religion, philosophy or ideology. History has often revealed that the life and experiences of a single human being can be of an unusual character from beginning to end and can have a significant influence on the lives of many others all over the earth.

This is especially so if that person is unique as a thinker and teacher endeavoring to communicate the truth and meaning of human experiences that reach to the deepest level in all of us, as he has discovered them on his journey in search of the truth about life and living. In the life of such a being, as in the lives of many artists, there can be different creative periods, arising out of the experiences of a particular time. These may seem to differ widely in expression but are actually rooted in the same inward creative source, reflecting different insights at different periods of life. Some readers will find this to be true of these teachings and writings of J. Krishnamurti that have been published before over a period of sixty years in various parts of the world. During the more than half a century that Krishnamurti has been a public figure, traveling continually about the world, his message has been heard and read assiduously by thousands of people of all ages who have come to realize that the traditional religious, moral and ethical values have failed to bring about a peaceful and happy social order.

Krishnamurti has provided us with a living restatement of truth, love and beautythe fundamental essence of the truly religious life, a life free of superstition, greed and fearwhich is the only source and foundation of lasting happiness for the individual and for peace and order in our world. K. & R. FOUNDATION PUBLISHERS NOTE J. Krishnamurti is well known throughout the world as a unique thinker and teacher. The K. & R. & R.

Foundation, a California corporation, has as one of its purposes the republication, as originally published, of certain of the works of J. Krishnamurti. These will be contained in The Collected Works of Krishnamurti, of which this is the first volume. In all his writings, Krishnamurti touches on the fundamental truth at the core of all religions, but he gives it a new expression understandable in our time. His expression of this unique realization has naturally varied in the course of the years. There was a time in the very beginning when Krishnamurti expressed himself through poetry and in parables.

These poetic writings represent a facet of Krishnamurti that is characterized by the intensity of his feelings and by his passionate appeal to the individual for self-realization of truth, each in his own unique, inimitable way. In this first volume of his poetry Krishnamurti uses a multitude of similes in describing his feelings that reflect everywhere the beauty and the wonder of nature. The effect of these descriptions is one of immense tenderness and great strength, of love of God and mankind, of acceptance and surrender at the same time. The language of Krishnamurti is that of a seer and a poetinevitably it touches profoundly the human heart. NEITHER TIME... Neither time nor space exists for the man who knows the eternal.

Space and time are real for the man who is yet imperfect and space is divided for him into dimensions, time into past, present and future. He looks behind him and sees his birth, his acquisitions, all that he has rejected. That past is being continually modified by the future which is ever being added to it. From the past man turns his eyes to the future where death, the unknown, the darkness, the mystery, await him. Fascinated by these he can no longer detach himself from them. The mystery of the future holds for him the fulfillment of all his desires, which the past has denied to him, and in his dreams he flies to that brilliant horizon where happiness must exist, where he must seek it.

Fatal error! No one will ever pierce the infinite mystery of the futureimpenetrable in its evanescent illusionneither magician, prophet nor God! But on the contrary it will be the mystery which will engulf man, which will not let him escape, which will break the mainspring of his life. Life is not to be approached through the past, nor through the mirage of the future. Life cannot be approached through intermediaries, nor conquered for another. That discovery can only be made in the immediate presentby the individual for himself and not for othersby the individual who has become the eternal I. That eternal I is created by the perfection of the selfperfection in which all things are contained, even human imperfections. Man, not yet having achieved that condition of life in the present, lives in the past which he regrets, lives in the future where he hopes, but never in the present which he ignores.

This is the case with all men. Balanced between the past and the future, the I is poised as a tiger ready to spring, as an eagle ready to fly, as the bow at the moment of releasing the arrow. This moment of equilibrium, of high tension, is creation. It is the fullness of all life, it is immortality. The wind of the desert sweeps away all trace of the traveler. The sole imprint is the footstep of the present.

The past, the future... sands blown by the wind. J. KRISHNAMURTI 1929 THE PATH PART I There is not a cloud in the sky; there is not a breath of wind; the sun is pouring down cruelly and relentlessly its hot rays; there is a mist caused by the heat, and I am alone on the road. On both sides of me there are fields melting into the far distant horizon; there is not a blade of grass that is green; there is not a flower breathing in this heartbroken country; everything is withered and parched; all crying with anguish of the untold and unutterable pain of ages. There is not a tree in the vast fields under whose shade a tender thing might grow up smiling, careless of the cruel sun.

The very earth is cracked and gaping hopelessly with bared eyes at the pitiless sun. The sky has lost its delicate blue and it is gray with the heat of many centuries. Those skies must have shed gentle rain, this very earth must have received it, those dead plants, those huddled up bushes, those withered blades of grass must once have quenched their thirst. They are all dead, dead beyond all thought of life. How many centuries ago the soothing drops of rain fell I cannot tell, nor can those hot stones remember when they were happy in the rain, nor those dead blades of grass when they were wet. Everything is dead, dead beyond hope.

There is not a sound; awful and fearsome silence reigns. Now and then, there is a groan of immense pain as the earth cracks, and the dust goes up and comes down, lifeless. Not a living thing breathes this stifling air; all things, once living, are now dead. The wide stream beside the road, which in former ages bubbled with mirth and laughter, satisfying many living things with its delicious cool waters, is now dead; the bed of the stream has forgotten when the waters used to flow over it, nor can those dead fish, whose bleached and delicate skeletons lie open to the blinding light, remember when they swam in couples exposing their exquisite, brilliant colours to the warm and life-giving sun. The fields are covered with the dead of many bygone ages, never can the dead vibrate again with the happy pulse of life. All is gone, all is spent, death has trapped in its cruel embrace all living things, all except me.

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