You just know, sometimes.

I have never heard of Jiddu Krishnamurthi until recently. And when I did, the rest of me that was still struggling to not reject my own insights, settled into peace. I found my peace, I found that my insights were not merely random and erratic, but a recollection and the continuation of a consciousness that has always existed within me as a child. I embraced my lack of conformity, I celebrated my rebellion. They are now eternally redefined. My unconformity is not an oddity,  but a clarity and puritanical approach to life, my life. My rebellion is not mere anger, protracted adolescence and damaged childhood; my rebellion was a defence to protect who I am until the day came when I can surrender who I really am to the being that was safe to Be itself. 

I cannot be accused of being a newbie or an impressionable convert to spirituality. Philosophy and my pursuit of its lineage and spin-offs has been in my veins for as long as I can remember. Nothing in my life, not school, achievements, ambition - has ever driven me as much as this spiritual quest has always. Everything else that I have ever done in my life has been a product of this spiritual quest, an experiment in experiencing the tools that would help me deepen my association with this innate drive, innate quest to spirituality. 

And then I discover Krishnamurthi - and it has been the first time in my life that I have achieved a feeling of transcendental presence through his words. I have also felt this way in my teens when coming across works from 19th century New England writers, whom I later discovered were known collectively as the Transcendentalists; Emily Dickinson, R.W. Emerson, especially, among others.

The difference between knowledge and insight is that, with knowledge, you read to absorb and comprehend and expand your knowledge base, you digest and ponder critically, you are fuelled with a desire to debate and articulate it. You mull over its significance and premise and try to quell your own doubts through rationalising and more cross-referencing. When you read for knowledge, you're absorbing and downloading other people's information, experiences and knowledge and then rebuilding them into your mental experiences and eventually, the things you have downloaded or stored away and who you are becomes inseparable. You are then an amalgamation and identified with the works and opinions and traditions of others as your own. 

Insight can come at anytime. Sometimes they appear so subtly that you cannot pinpoint a particular point in time when that insight appeared. In retrospect, they may or may not arrive according to a timeline. Then one day, it just washes over you, like something you've always known, from the beginning of time, except that you realized that, technically, you've only just known it, or managed to form a more or less complete articulation or expression of it. You might be watching something, or doing something or reading something and it is a feeling that you can understand it without thinking about it or making an effort to contemplate and understand it - unlike what you would be doing reading a textbook or watching a movie. It unfolds in you like something that has always, always been there. It is an understanding which does not require explanation and a contentment that does not require satisfaction. 

If you know this, you should also know that it is something that can never be found by seeking it. So many people like to ask, "How do you know? How do you get there? How do I know when I've found it?" Now I truly get why philosophers seem to talk in circles - they're not talking in circles, it's the others who cannot stop spinning in circles to understand the few words that expresses the completeness of the knowing. - We do not get answers by doing a set of exercises and routines or by following some rituals and lifestyles or reading a set of books. The scientific method and the schooling method are in themselves incomplete methods of fathoming the complete way of existence and life. The scientific method begins with a purpose; a set idea of what to look for and it eliminates everything else that does not fit into what it is looking for. The schooling system teaches you that the answers are a fixed variable and you'll get to it in the end, and the faster you master the content or become skilled in performing an exercise, the sooner you will arrive at a position to be able to answer everything. This sort of thinking sparks the destructive and neverending race to reach the top - the Top where everything else is at the bottom and becomes so obvious - the Top where exploiting anything for personal gain is now fully possible. 

Reading J.Krishnamurthi, I feel that I am right there as an omnipresent entity. Time and Space has collapsed and I understood the things I have always had a hunch about. With a lot of the dialogues he's had with people, I could sense his energy enveloping them. I could feel their self-created confusion, misery, struggles and all the other universal themes that define human suffering. And by the time I read the last few lines he tells them, I sense the dissipitation of their anxiety. How could he transform in a few minutes /  hours, the ignorance and clouded minds of the people he meets into the state of bliss, clarity and surrender by the end of his talk? He is doing the bluetooth thing I have been talking about - the ability to transfer clarity and insight beyond the audibility of words and visibility of gestures; to download what to another person would be years and  years worth of illustrations, insights and sequence into a few bits of clarity. His dialogues and talks would have been grossly edited to be able to give the appearance of that - but that would not make sense, for each title is begun with half the piece given to describing the day and the premise where the talk took place. No one would do such injustice to J.Krishnamurthi - by including so much narrative on the setting and grossly editing the contents of the conversation. So, it must be that he has this ability to bring calmness and clarity with his presence, that his audience can arrive into themselves in minutes and hours what would've taken them a lifetime. 

I think you can sense a true Guru, Channel or Spiritual Leader. The first clue would be that they denounce the need to be measured by their material possessions eventhough presently they may still be surrounded by material things offered by those who are appreciative of them. They would be doing and continue doing what they are doing with or without the success they are achieving and would be the exact same person with or without the comforts, privileges and acclaims. Second, they would not get offended even if a person critices or is sceptical of them. For what they are doing needs no approval nor benefits from devotion. So it doesn't matter or annoy them in any way if they are challenged. Third, you will feel a sense of familiarity and calm around them, like you have known them for a long time and you trust in them even without them asking you to suspend your faith in order to benefit from their teachings. 

I suppose if I did a search or looked up more books on J.Krishnamurthi, I will eventually uncover people who would describe this feeling of being surrounded by instant calm and peace in JK's presence. A feeling of Joy and surrender and aliveness. (And this is what I mean  by Knowledge vs. Insight. To experience something first before knowing or naming it.)