1.4. Profile of a Jnani

It can be quickly shown that if Socrates is a mystic, then he falls into the jnani category, and hence it will be useful to examine some jnani mystics for characteristics that we can be on the lookout for with Socrates. I have chosen Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, and Meister Eckhart as representing respectively the modern iconoclast, an element of the Hindu tradition, and an element of the Christian tradition. Although one would need to take many more examples to make a rounded portrait of the jnani, most of the salient features emerge from these three. They are will documented in that we have substantial primary texts from each, and, with the first two, many proximity texts.

1.4.1. Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti was born in 1895 to a poor Brahmin family in India. Krishnamurti's mother had some presentiment about her future child: she chose, against the explicit religious and caste instructions regarding birth, to deliver Krishnamurti in the puja room (shrine room) of her small house. As a child Krishnamurti was not considered unusual in any way, but was discovered in 1909 by Charles Leadbeater, a leading member of the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society had as its stated goal the preparation for a new World Leader, and before long it declared that it had found it in the person of Jiddu Krishnamurti. He was prepared for this role through occult initiations at the hands of Leadbeater and Annie Besant, a process that involved communications with so-called disembodied 'Masters', and ultimately the excruciatingly painful preparation of his body to become the vessel for the (Buddha) Maitreya. Krishnamurti in later life had no recollection of most of these experiences, and vigorously denied that they contributed to his illumination. He gradually shook off the ministrations of the Theosophical Society, and in a dramatic gesture dissolved the Order of the Star, which was the organisation founded to support his work. He then entered a life of teaching that lasted fifty years. The teachings were his, however, and could be summed up in one phrase: choiceless awareness.

Krishnamurti jettisoned the whole of Indian religious history (as well as all other religious apparatus) and talked for fifty years on the pristine state of a silent mind that lives with choiceless awareness. His emphasis on no-mind borrows nothing from the Zen Buddhists, and he seems to have taken no interest in any mystical figure or teaching, however similar to his own. But his being was illuminated and silent; others made Christ-comparisons throughout his life. Here are some comments from contemporary figures:

George Bernard Shaw called Krishnamurti "a religious figure of the greatest distinction," and added, "He is the most beautiful human being I have ever seen."


Henry Miller wrote, "There is no man I would consider it a greater privilege to meet "


Aldous Huxley, after attending one of Krishnamurti's lectures, confided in a letter, " the most impressive thing I have listened to. It was like listening to the discourse of the Buddha such power, such intrinsic authority "


Kahlil Gibran wrote, "When he entered my room I said to myself, 'Surely the Lord of Love has come." [14]

In August 1922 Krishnamurti underwent three days of a very intense and painful experience the most intense parts of which had no later recollection of. He wrote afterwards of the period:

On the first day while I was in that state and more conscious of the things around me, I had the first most extraordinary experience. There was a man mending the road; that man was myself; the pickaxe he held was myself; the very stone which he was breaking up was a part of me; the tender blade of grass was my very being, and the tree beside the man was myself. I also could feel and think like the roadmender and I could feel the wind passing through the tree, and the little ant on the blade of grass I could feel. The birds, the dust, and the very noise were a part of me. Just then there was a car passing by at some distance; I was the driver, the engine, and the tyres; as the car went further away from me, I was going away from myself. I was in everything, or rather everything was in me, inanimate and animate, the mountain, the worm and all breathing things. All day long I remained in this happy condition.

(later in the same account:)

I was supremely happy, for I had seen. Nothing could ever be the same. I have drunk of the clear and pure waters at the source of the fountain of life and my thirst was appeased. Nevermore could I be thirsty. Never more could I be in darkness; I have seen the Light, I have touched compassion which heals all sorrow and suffering; it is not for myself, but for the world. I have stood on the mountain top and gazed at the mighty Beings. I have seen the glorious and healing Light. The fountain of Truth has been revealed to me and the darkness has been dispersed, Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk of the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated. [15]

This is one of the rare passages where Krishnamurti talks about himself, and is typical of how mystics describe their illumination, but it is in contrast to his later writings.

Krishnamurti is a good example of a jnani, and in connection with Socrates useful in another way: his conversations or dialogues bear some resemblance to the Socratic ones. Here are some extracts from a conversation between Krishnamurti and Jacob Needleman in March of 1971 (some five years after the publication of Needleman's Sword of Gnosis). Needleman has asked a question about the cosmic dimension that is missing in a humanistic psychology, and this has led to a discussion of space, from which Krishnamurti has steered a course towards the 'centre of consciousness':

K RISHNAMURTI: There is no house if there are no walls and no roof. The content is consciousness but we like to separate them, theorise about it, measure the yardage of our consciousness. Whereas the centre is consciousness, the content of consciousness, and the content is consciousness. Without the content, where is consciousness? And that is the space.

Needleman: I follow a little bit of what you say. I find myself wanting to say: well, what do you value here? What is the important thing here?

K RISHNAMURTI: I'll put that question after I have found out whether the mind can be empty of content.

Needleman: All right.

K RISHNAMURTI: Then there is something else that will operate, which will function within the field of the known. But without finding that merely to say ...

Needleman: No, no, this is so.

K RISHNAMURTI: Let's proceed. Space is between two thoughts, between two factors of time, two periods of time, because thought is time. Yes?

Needleman: All right, yes.

K RISHNAMURTI: You can have a dozen periods of time but it is still thought, there is that space. Then there is the space round the centre, and the space beyond the self, beyond the barbed-wire, beyond the wall of the centre. The space between the observer and the observed is the space which thought has created as the image of my wife and the image which she has about me. You follow, Sir?

Needleman: Yes.

K RISHNAMURTI: All that is manufactured by the centre. To speculate about what is beyond all that has no meaning to me personally, it's the philosopher's amusement.

Needleman: The philosopher's amusement ...

K RISHNAMURTI: I am not interested.

Needleman: I agree. I am not interested sometimes, at my better moments, but nevertheless ...

K RISHNAMURTI: I am sorry, because you are a philosopher!

Needleman: No, no, why should you remember that, please.

K RISHNAMURTI: So my question is: "Can the centre be still, or can the centre fade away?" Because if it doesn't fade away, or lie very quiet, then the content of consciousness is going to create space within consciousness and call it the vast space. In there lies deception and I don't want to deceive myself. ...
...
K RISHNAMURTI: We are asking: "Can consciousness empty itself of its content?" Not somebody else do it.

Needleman: That is the question, yes.

K RISHNAMURTI: Not divine grace, the super-self, some fictitious outside agency. Can the consciousness empty itself of all this content? First see the beauty of it, Sir.

Needleman: I see it.

K RISHNAMURTI: Because it must empty itself without an effort. The moment there is an effort, there is the observer who is making the effort to change the content, which is part of consciousness. I don't know if you see that?

Needleman: I follow. The emptying has to be effortless, instantaneous.

K RISHNAMURTI: It must be without an agent who is operating on it, whether an outside agent, or an inner agent. Now can this be done without any effort, any directive which says, "I will change the content"? This means the emptying of the consciousness of all will, "to be" or "not to be". Sir, look what takes place.

Needleman: I am watching.

K RISHNAMURTI: I have put that question to myself. Nobody has put it to me. Because it is a problem of life, a problem of existence in this world. It is a problem which my mind has to solve. Can the mind, with all its content, empty itself and yet remain mind not just float about?

Needleman: It is not suicide.

K RISHNAMURTI: No.

Needleman: There is some kind of subtle ...

K RISHNAMURTI: No, Sir, that is too immature. I have put the question. My answer is: I really don't know.

Needleman: That is the truth.

K RISHNAMURTI: I really don't know. But I am going to find out, in the sense of not waiting to find out. The content of my consciousness is my unhappiness, my misery, my struggles, my sorrows, the images which I have collected through life, my gods, the frustrations, the pleasures, the fears, the agonies, the hatreds that is my consciousness. Can all that be completely emptied? Not only at the superficial level but right through? the so-called unconscious. If it is not possible, then I must live a life of misery, I must live in endless, unending sorrow. There is neither hope, nor despair, I am in prison. So the mind must find out how to empty itself of all the content of itself, and yet live in this world, not become a moron, but have a brain that functions efficiently. Now how is this to be done? Can it ever be done? Or is there no escape for man?

Needleman: I follow.

K RISHNAMURTI: Because I don't see how to get beyond this I invent all the gods, the temples, philosophies, rituals you understand?

Needleman: I understand.

K RISHNAMURTI: This is meditation, real meditation, not all the phoney stuff. To see whether the mind with the brain which has evolved through time, which is the result of thousands of experiences, the brain that functions efficiently only in complete security whether the mind can empty itself and yet have a brain that functions as a marvellous machine. Also, it sees love is not pleasure; love is not desire. When there is love there is no image; but I don't know what that love is. I only want love as pleasure, sex and all the rest of it. There must be a relationship between the emptying of consciousness and the thing called love; between the unknown and the known, which is the content of consciousness.

Needleman: I am following you. There must be this relationship.

K RISHNAMURTI: The two must be in harmony. The emptying and love must be in harmony. And it may be only love that is necessary and nothing else.

Needleman: This emptying is another word for love, is that what you are saying?

K RISHNAMURTI: I am only asking what is love. Is love within the field of consciousness?

Needleman: No, it couldn't be.

K RISHNAMURTI: Don't stipulate. Don't ever say yes or no; find out! ...[16]

This rather long extract may baffle those unfamiliar with Krishnamurti's thought, but it does introduce many of the important elements. We also see that Needleman, despite being a professor of religion and author of many learned book, is somewhat at a disadvantage. In terms of a Socratic dialogue some aspects are similar, some are not. Krishnamurti manipulates the conversation in the direction that interests him regardless of the questioner, who is often left to agree rather impotently, quite possibly lost as to his meaning. He also poses his own questions, and professes ignorance as to their answer. What is also striking towards the end of the passage is how Krishnamurti suddenly introduces love yes, it is secondary, as Krishnamurti is not concerned with the devotional, but it is immediately associated with silence of the mind, or the process of reaching that state. He even hints that one might need nothing else, as Patanjali does.

1.4.2. Ramana Maharshi

Let us look now at another Indian mystic whose life and teachings are clearly jnani: Ramana Maharshi. He was born in 1889 to a middle-class Brahmin family in South India, showed no special aptitude for religion and had no training in spiritual philosophy, but, at the age of seventeen underwent a spontaneous transformation. Ramana described the awakening in his own words.

It was about six weeks before I left Madura [Maharshi's home town] for good that the great change in my life took place. It was quite sudden. I was sitting alone in a room on the first floor of my uncle's house. I seldom had any sickness, and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it, and I did not try to account for it or find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt "I am going to die" and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends; I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, there and then.


The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: "Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies." And at once I dramatised the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word "I" nor any other word could be uttered. "Well then," I said to myself, "this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body I? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the 'I' within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am deathless Spirit." All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. "I" was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that "I". From that moment onwards the "I" or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the "I" continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centred on "I". Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell permanently in it. [17]

Ramana had entered into a state of pure consciousness. His description of it, generally uncluttered with technical terms, is useful for the understanding of jnani: he is describing an unbroken awareness of the centre of his being, capable of existing as the ground to all his sensations and not overwhelmed by them. Any aspirant on the path of awareness will know that attempts to maintain such awareness in the supposedly ideal circumstances of formal meditation practice, where distractions are at a minimum, is hard enough, but to do so while reading or talking is nothing short of miraculous. Ramana had a maturity at seventeen that was remarkable, for the onset of his experience would have been simply frightening even for most adults. Instead, he turned the experience into an enquiry into his nature, an approach that became the core of his pedagogy for the rest of his life.

Ramana's change of orientation was so sudden and so complete that we see him becoming quite indifferent to the manifest world, to the point where he might have died of disease or starvation. This initial period, where he displayed no interest in disciples or teaching, gradually gave way to a more normal religious life and led to a fifty-year spell of teaching the path to self-realisation. Ramana did not advocate renunciation in his pedagogy however, teaching that the challenges of every-day life were to be used as raw material for the quest for one's true identity. Although by temperament his teachings were not explicitly devotional, he exhorted his disciples to rest in the 'cave of the heart', an ancient expression that implies both love and silence. He also recognised that contact with genuine Masters, as opposed to mere 'gurus' (let us be cautious about his terminology while recognising the distinction), could bring the disciple to self-realisation more effectively than any practice. Ramana prefers the more neutral term association (which we also find used in connection with Socrates) than darshan:

1. Association with Sages who have realized the Truth removes material attachments; on these attachments being removed the attachments of the mind are also destroyed. Those whose attachments of mind are thus destroyed become one with That which is Motionless. They attain Liberation while yet alive. Cherish association with such Sages.


2. That Supreme State which is obtained here and now as a result of association with Sages, and realized through the deep meditation of Self-enquiry in contact with the Heart, cannot be gained with the aid of a Guru or through knowledge of the scriptures, or by spiritual merit, or by any other means.


3. If association with Sages is obtained, to what purpose are all the methods of self-discipline? Tell me, of what use is a fan when the cool, gentle, south wind is blowing? [18]

Ramana was the cool wind and who am I? was his pedagogy. His own transformation can be seen in terms of a radical shift of identity, from body to Spirit. The lack of any peak experiences, visions, or manifest ecstasies in Ramana's case is a good argument for reducing the emphasis on mystical experience, as mentioned above.

1.4.3. Meister Eckhart

Johanne Eckhart was born in Germany in 1260 and died in 1328; his title 'Meister' comes from the award of 'Master in Sacred Theology' which he earned in Paris. That Eckhart was a jnani has been clearly established by Rudolf Otto in his Mysticism East and West, a comparison between Eckhart and the 9th century Indian writer Sankara. Otto makes many useful comparisons between Eckhart's major work, the Opus Tripartitum and Sankara's commentaries (principally on the Brahma Sutras), showing that many passages are almost interchangeable. Otto's work is flawed however, because his Christian background requires that in the end he finds vital elements that are present in Eckhart missing in Sankara; these elements, unsurprisingly, are to do with the personal God, love, and ethics. Yet Otto has no sympathy for bhakti, which he dismisses early in his work as excited emotionalism and intoxicated eroticism [19] and later on as 'pathological love [20]' (a description due to Kant), and hence has to invent two types of jnani so that in the end he can dismiss Sankara (and Plotinus while he is at it) while praising Eckhart. Despite all this, Otto is on the right track with Eckhart as jnani.

Let us look at a few passages from Eckhart that demonstrate this. First of all, he speaks of union with God in the manner of via negativa:

As the soul becomes more pure and bare and poor, and possesses less of created things, and is emptied of all things that are not God, it receives God more purely, and is more completely in Him; and it truly becomes one with God, and it looks into God and God into it, face to face as it were; two images transformed into one. ... Some people think that they will see God as if he were standing there and they here. It is not so. God and I, we are one. ... I am converted into Him in such a way that He makes me one Being with Himself not a similar being. By the living God, it is true that there is no distinction! ... The eye by which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My eye and God's eye are one and the same one in seeing, one in knowing, and one in loving. [21]

I find it significant that Eckhart presents us with seeing, knowing and loving in that order: they indicate that his first priority is not love, as it is to a bhakti. Love is essential, we are in no doubt, but it follows seeing and knowing (significant jnani terms) in Eckhart, rather than leads. This is confirmed in part by his clear explanation of how detachment for him is higher than love.

The teachers praise love most highly, as St Paul does when he says: "In whatever tribulation I may find myself, if I have not love, I am nothing."[I Corinthians xiii, 2, 3] But I praise detachment more than all love. First because the best thing about love is that it forces me to love God. On the other hand, detachment forces God to love me. Now it is much nobler that I should force God to myself than that I should force myself to God. And the reason is that God can join Himself to me more closely unite Himself with me better than I could unite myself with God. [22]

This is jnani because it emphasises the effort of the individual to reach God, rather than the ecstatic, devotional love that comes from complete surrender of effort or will. But Eckhart is not arrogant here, either: his humility is demonstrated by his idea that God can effect the union better than the lover in his supplication. To a bhakti the language is completely foreign however: the idea of forcing God is absurd; the bhakti waits for the lover to come (to use the language of Rumi or Kabir); impatient, yes, longing, yes, but never forcing. For Eckhart love always comes second as this passage shows again:

A man should not be afraid of anything as long as his will is good, nor should he be at all depressed if he cannot achieve his aim in all his works. But he should not consider himself to be far from virtue when he find real good will in himself because virtue and everything depend on good will. You can lack nothing if you have true good will, neither love, nor humility nor any other virtue. But what you desire strongly and with all your will is yours. God and all the creatures cannot take it away from you, provided that the will is entire and is a real godly desire, and that it is directed to the present. [23]

Love is secondary to the will here, but a will carefully defined: it is 'good', 'godly', and directed to the present. It is also something that even God cannot take away!

Eckhart, from an Indian perspective, labours under two disadvantages: firstly he has not the language of jnani so well-established in India (though knew the works of Dionysius the Areopagite and Plotinus), and secondly, which is irrespective of jnani and bhakti, he is constrained even further by the permissible range of expression within the Roman Catholic Church (his views eventually led to excommunication, and was saved from burning only by his death just prior to the issue of the Papal Bull that found him guilty of heresy.)

1.4.4. The Jnani Checklist

A picture of a jnani emerges from the brief sketches above of Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, and Eckhart. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Buddhist texts, Dionysius the Areopagite and the works of Douglas Harding could help refine this picture, though there is not space here to cite them at length. We have characterised a jnani as non-devotional, but we must soften this initial definition by saying that the devotional aspect is secondary rather than non-existent. We see that Krishnamurti cannot speak of the meditation that he is trying to define without bringing in love; that Ramana's path of self-inquiry exhorts one to rest in the 'cave of the heart', and that Eckhart also talks continuously of love, as did Paul. But in each case the primary focus is on knowing, seeing, enquiry, and the will. And in other cases of the well-developed jnani one may find it hard to come across any references to love at all.

If we take some of history's great devotional mystics, such as Teresa of Avila, Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Ramakrishna, Rumi and Kabir, then whatever knowing, seeing, enquiry and will is present, they are subordinate to love, or even derided. For them divine love is enough unto itself. Most of us may know or remember the extraordinary happiness of falling in love with a person (usually in the sexual context of courting) and the cooling or sobering that follows either through disappointment or the long years of marriage. This love is caused and like all caused things has to end, but the divine love is uncaused, and does not end; hence the value placed on it by the mystic beyond anything whatsoever. This is not however the orientation or preoccupation of the jnani.

The jnani may or may not speak in theistic terms, as we have seen. Krishnamurti only does so extremely rarely, Maharshi does so as part of an ancient spiritual language, that of Hinduism, and Eckhart does so as part of the Christian spiritual language. The Buddha simply refused to comment on any direct question about the existence of God. What, however is the relationship between jnani and via positiva / via negativa? Again, while the jnani may tend towards the via negativa it is not a direct corollary: Krishnamurti showed a strong nature mysticism in his writings, and Walt Whitman (if I can dare to put him forward as a great jnani) was via positiva par excellence.

Hence, if we are on the lookout for a jnani, as we are with Socrates, we will be looking for an emphasis on knowing rather than loving, on enquiry rather than surrender, on will rather than abandonment; possibly non-theistic rather than theistic, and possibly via negativa rather than via positiva.

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References for Part 2
[14] Chandmal, Asit, One Thousand Moons - Krishnamurti at Eighty-Five, New York: Abrams 1985, p. 9
[15] Lutyens, M. The Life and Death of Krishnamurti, Rider, London, 1991, p. 42
[16] Krishnamurti, J. The Awakening of Intelligence, Victor Gollancz, London, 1973, p. 44
[17] Osborne, Arthur (Ed.) The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi, London: Rider, 1969, p. 7
[18] Osborne, Arthur (Ed.) The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi, London: Rider, 1969, p. 77
[19] Otto, Rudolf. Mysticism East and West, Wheaton, Madras, London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1987, p. 14
[20] Otto, Rudolf. Mysticism East and West, Wheaton, Madras, London: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1987, p. 210
[21] Quoted in Abhayananda, S. History of Mysticism - The Unchanging Testament, Atma Books, Naples, Florida, 1987, p. 299
[22] Eckhart, 'On Detachment' in Meister Eckhart, Selected Treatises and Sermons, London: Collins, 1963, p. 156
[23] Eckhart, 'How the Will can do All Things and how all Virtues Reside in the Will, Provided that it is Just' in Meister Eckhart, Selected Treatises and Sermons, London: Collins, 1963, p. 70. I have used the Quint reading of the last clause, as suggested in the footnote on that page.

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