Reincarnation...with Krishnamurti...

 

In the envelope of time

Reincarnation appears 

Soothing as we dwell in

The seeming reality of the

Day..a settling into this

Plenitude of time..if not now

Another lifetime will do..

The lonely self grasps this

Logical story to fill a gap..

That is..until time is found

Crumbling in the explosion

Of a Birdsong...  

Question: What do you think happens when the physical body dies? Reincarnation?

Krishnamurti: The whole of Asia believes in reincarnation, that there is such a thing as the soul, as the self, which is being constantly made perfect though time. Which means repeated births. If one believes in that, that you will be born next life in a better condition in order to become more and more perfect, until you reach whatever you reach, it implies that you must behave rightly now. If you believe in reincarnation, what is important is what your conduct is now, how you live now, what kind of person you are now, because if you are brutal, if you are violent, if you are ugly, you are going to continue that same thing next life. But most people who believe in this don’t care two pins how they live now – it is just a theory to them. It gives them a kind of comfort because they don’t know what death is, and at least they have some belief.

So there is this whole theory or belief in reincarnation, in the perfection of a human mind growing through time becoming perfect. And you say, ‘What do you believe?’ I say I don’t believe in anything. Now wait a minute, it is not agnostic. I see a different way of living. That is, if you are interested in it, death is something extraordinary, as love, not something to be afraid of. And to find out what it means, one must die every day. To die to every event, every pain, every ambition, to die to all that you have cherished as important. Otherwise you are just living in the past, as most people are. Or rather, not living in the past – they are the past. So can one die to yesterday, to everything? Not just to one particular form of pain or one particular form of fear or pleasure, but the feeling of emptying the mind of all the problems of yesterday.

Interview with Wilfred Thomas at Brockwood Park, 5 October 1970