The Book of Yourself Newsletter
Issue 49: December 2025
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One of the issues that commonly arises in our relationships is the lack of connection, contact, the sense of distance that exists between one person and another. This same gap is also present between our own desires and their objects, between the idea and the fact, between what we are, what we were and what we should be. The relationship between perception, feeling, thinking and acting, intended to be one fluid and harmonious whole, experiences a series of confusions and contradictions that signal de existence of significant breaks at almost every point. And there is the general experience of everyone being enveloped in their own bubble of conditioned self-interest, which makes for isolation, loneliness, division and conflict. While we may try to bridge this gulf through various sublimations, identifications and escapes, the question remains as to the origin and nature of this divisive space and, more generally, about the central importance of space not only in our lives but in life itself.
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“Everything must have space, the living and the dead, the rock on the hill and the bird on the wing. When there is no space there is death. The fishermen were singing and the sound of their song came down the river. Sound needs space. The sound of a word needs space; the word makes its own space, rightly pronounced. The river and the faraway tree can only survive when they have space; without space all things wither. The river disappeared into the horizon and the fishermen were going ashore. The deep darkness of the night was coming, the earth was resting from a weary day and the stars were on the waters. The vast space was narrowed down into a small house of many walls. Even the large, palatial houses have walls shutting out that immense space, making it their own.”
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Krishnamurti’s Journal, pg. 71
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This is a quote from the entry in Krishnamurti’s Journal dated 22 October 1973, in which K made a beautiful reflection on the topic of space.[1] Using very poetic language, he presents us with the universal need for space for anything to exist, be it alive or inert, and equating the total absence of space with death. One only has to bring to mind the notion of a black hole to picture this absolute need of space for life to exist. Sound needs space. In fact words, properly sounded, create their own. That’s rather beautiful, suggesting that words sculpt their own musical spaces. One might say the same of light, that invisible radiation without which we could not see. The tree and the river would dry up and wither without space. The movement of the river disappearing in the horizon and the movement of the fishermen coming ashore would not be possible without it, nor would the majestic reflection of the stars on the waters as the earth rested from its labours at nightfall. This vastness of the heavens touching the earth so closely was then narrowed down to the walled-in space of the houses, which made it their own.
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In this simple description there is a progression from the fundamental existential need for space, its natural and dynamic nature as the ground of all things, which is an extension of the cosmic vastness, to its enclosure between walls that claiming it for themselves narrow it down and shut out the immensity of space. While our humble or opulent dwellings are meant to offer us shelter, which is another need of organic life, the image is a rich metaphor for the divisive drive for security through possession that is responsible for so much conflict and misery in the world.
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“All things need space. If rats are enclosed in a restricted space, they destroy each other; the small birds sitting on a telegraph wire, of an evening, have the needed space between each other. Human beings living in crowded cities are becoming violent. Where there is no space, outwardly or inwardly, every form of mischief and degeneration is inevitable. The conditioning of the mind through so-called education, religion, tradition, culture, gives little space to the flowering of the mind and heart. The belief, the experience according to that belief, the opinion, the concepts, the word is the ‘me’, the ego, the centre which creates the limited space within whose border is consciousness. The ‘me’ has its being and its activity within the small space it has created for itself. All its problems and sorrows, its hopes and despairs are within its own frontiers, and there is no space. The known occupies all its consciousness. Consciousness is the known. Within this frontier there is no solution to all the problems human beings have put together. And yet they won’t let go; they cling to the known or invent the unknown, hoping it will solve their problems. The space which the ‘me’ has built for itself is its sorrow and the pain of pleasure. The gods don’t give you space, for theirs is yours. This vast, measureless space lies outside the measure of thought, and thought is the known. Meditation is the emptying of consciousness of its content, the known, the ‘me’.”
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Krishnamurti’s Journal, pg. 72
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A series of ethological studies have indeed demonstrated that the lack of space is a cause of violence among animals. Living things require their own space, not only for security and survival but in order to be. Human beings are equally affected by the crowded conditions of life. So space is vital, for without it we are bound to destroy one another. To that lack of physical space must be added the lack of inward space, to which K attributes the same degenerative consequences. In order to flower, the mind and heart need to have their own space, which is overcrowded with conditioning. This conditioned state, stuffed with belief, knowledge, experience, etc., and organised around the verbal centre and narrow confines of the ego, is consciousness itself. The ego exists within the small space it itself creates, which it fills with its problems, sorrows, hopes and despairs.
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This whole emotional and intellective activity is from the known, so consciousness is the known, i.e. memory, the past, which is inherently limited. Because of its limitation, it itself cannot solve the problems it creates. But we don’t perceive this, so we cling to the known in the hope of solving the problems resulting from it. That’s why the space of the self is its sorrow and the pain of its pleasure, as well as the ignorance of its knowledge. While we may invent the unknown in order to step outside this intimate and universal inferno, the gods, being our invention, do not exist outside our own space and are therefore not the providers of freedom. They are the product of thought, which is the response of the known, therefore partaking of its inherent limitation and violent mischief. This consciousness is the narrow dwelling we have built for ourselves, shutting out the vast cosmic space measureless to thought. K’s approach to breaking down the walls of this narrow space is by emptying consciousness of its self-centred cognitive content, or what he calls meditation.
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“The space that thought creates is measurable and so is limited; cultures and religions are its product. But the mind is filled with thought and is made up of thought; its consciousness is the structure of thought, having little space within it. But this space is the movement of time, from here to there, from its centre towards its outer lines of consciousness, narrow or expanding. The space which the centre makes for itself is its own prison. Its relationships are from this narrow space but there must be space to live; that of the mind denies living. Living within the narrow confines of the centre is strife, pain and sorrow and that is not living. The space, the distance between you and the tree, is the word, knowledge which is time. Time is the observer who makes the distance between himself and the trees, between himself and what is. Without the observer, distance ceases. Identification with the trees, with another or with a formula, is the action of thought in its desire for protection, security. Distance is from one point to another and to reach that point time is necessary; distance only exists where there is direction, inward or outward. The observer makes a separation, a distance between himself and what is; from this grows conflict and sorrow. The transformation of what is takes place only when there is no separation, no time, between the seer and the seen. Love has no distance.”
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Krishnamurti’s Journal, pp. 44-45
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K kept repeating that thought is measure, inherently limited and divisive, and so is the space it creates. The cultures and religions it puts together are therefore narrow prisons for the human heart and mind, preventing their flowering. The mind is filled with thought and consciousness is the structure of thought, existing within the little space of the known. K then adds that this space is the movement of time, from the centre to the periphery of consciousness, whether small or expanding. The centre defines the radial confinement and reach of its relationships. But as life must have space, this narrowness of the mind denies living. The narrowness of the centre involves separation, strife and suffering, which for K are not living. The separation or distance between us and the tree is time as word and knowledge, which time is the observer. Time is necessary to cover the distance between two points, which implies an inner or outer direction. The observer creates the distance between himself and what is, from which conflict and sorrow grow. When time as the observer ceases there is no separation between the seer and the seen and there is the transformation of what is. This collapse of distance he calls love.
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“There is a space of nothingness whose volume is not bound by time, the measure of thought. This space the mind cannot enter; it can only observe. In this observation there is no experiencer. This observer has no history, no association, no myth, and so the observer is that which is. Knowledge is extensive but it has no space, for by its very weight and volume it perverts and smothers that space. There is no knowledge of the self, higher or lower; there’s only a verbal structure of the self, a skeleton, covered over by thought. Thought cannot penetrate its own structure; what it has put together thought cannot deny and when it does deny, it is the refusal of further gain. When the time of the self is not, the space that has no measure is.”
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Krishnamurti’s Journal, pg. 95
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The volume of space that thought measures is bound by time. Not so the space of nothingness which the mind cannot enter or experience but only observe. This observer, K says, has no history, no myth, no association and therefore is one with what is. This gives the word a completely different meaning than the one it generally has in the context of the teachings, as it is no longer rooted in knowledge and confined to the narrow space of the past. It is therefore not to be confused with the ego or self that is the essence of the known at the centre of consciousness. This psychological self is a verbal structure, a skeleton covered over by thought, so there is no knowledge of it as an independently existing or objective reality, because it is nothing but memory identified with parts of itself. Which implies that self-knowledge is not knowing the self but the skeletal structure that thought dresses up. Having put it together, thought seems unable to understand and undo it and its denial of it is but a strategy to achieve some further reward. So for the measureless, unlimited space of nothingness to be, the time of self narrowing the walls of consciousness must come to an end. And this is meditation.
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Be well, amigos, and let’s meditate on the needful ending of the time-space of self,
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Photos by J. Gómez Rodríguez: 1. The harbour at sunset, Rianxo, A Coruña, Spain. 2. The Roman bridge, Pontecesures, A Coruña, Spain.
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