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The Book of Yourself course consists of a series of 14 thematic chapters.
The intent of the course is to take an in-depth journey into our shared humanity as compassionately and insightfully reflected in J. Krishnamurti’s teachings, in an attempt to understand ourselves and thereby become fully responsible for our lives.
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Each chapter consists of a selection of texts covering the given topic and a set of Power Point slides summarizing these texts. References to relevant audiovisual material are also given.
Each chapter comes with a prerecorded presentation on the given theme. These presentations are accessed separately and are mostly based on the Power Point summaries.
In keeping with the participatory nature of the course, a series of live zoom dialogues are scheduled. These dialogues will have a duration of two hours.
Chapter 1: Krishnamurti’s biography and teachings.
Since Krishnamurti’s work forms the basis of our exploration, we begin our journey with a brief review of Krishnamurti’s biography and a general first approach to the nature of his teachings.
Chapter 2: The art of living
To understand the contents of this book, we must first be able to read it. This implies learning how to observe without bias or distortion, the essence of which is being aware of the facts without the interference of the past.
Chapter 3: Nature and causes of disorder and conflict
The evidence of history and what is currently happening in the wider world as well as in our more immediate environments points to a persistent and pervasive state of contradiction, disorder and conflict in our relationship with nature and with each other.
Chapter 4: Violence and the quest for peace.
Violence and its untold suffering have been with us since time immemorial and we seem unable to put an end to it. While violence may have its roots in our animal background, that instinctual aggressiveness is now part of our social organization and psychological constitution.
Chapter 5: Life, relationship and action.
We exist in relationship. The quality of relationship is of the greatest importance because as our relationships are, so is our life. However, our relationships with nature, things, people and ideas are generally marked by use and convenience, which involve dependence and violence.
Chapter 6: Love, attachment and the search for security.
The essence of relationship is love. But we don’t seem to know what love is. We know it as attachment, possessiveness and the search for security, which lead to domination, jealousy and conflict, which are not love.
Chapter 7: You are the world.
We are not separate individuals because we all share the same structure of consciousness and go through the same process of experience, independently of our culture and background. Such complete identity between self and world dissolves the standard divisions and conflicts of nationality, ideology and belief and is the ground of compassion and its total responsibility.
Chapter 8: Nature and content of consciousness.
Reading the book of oneself means understanding consciousness, which is the way of self-knowledge and the key to our education as human beings. Consciousness is its content, and this content is common to all mankind.
Chapter 9: Thought, time and self.
Thought is the operating principle of consciousness. Thought is time because it is based on memory, which is the past, which then projects itself through the present into the future. This grounding of thought in memory limits it and makes it incapable of meeting life.
Chapter 10: Conditioning and freedom.
In our inward journey we are confronted with a series of apparent oppositions. Beginning with the wide panorama of fragmentation and conflict and its universal suffering, we are then faced with our ultimate responsibility for the world, for all humanity, at the core of which lies the necessity of self-knowledge and transformation.
Chapter 11: Becoming and the ending of time.
As already indicated, thought is rooted in memory, in the past. This time-bound quality of thought is the ground of its limitation and the origin of the will to become. Physically we try to improve our material and social condition.
Chapter 12: Meditation and the religious mind.
Thus far our concern has been to lay the foundation of order psychologically and in our relationships. This implies a quality of wholeness or goodness which is the essence of the spiritual quest, at the heart of which lies meditation.
Chapter 13: Beauty, intelligence and compassion.
While the ending of time would seem to be the last chapter in the book of yourself, that ending is but the beginning of a deeper inward journey. The movement of meditation brings about the emptying of the psychological content of consciousness.
Chapter 14: Death, creation and the sacred.
The teachings take us on a journey through the whole field of life, through the tidal movement of the inner and the outer, through the existential and psychological patterns and vicissitudes of time. But this journey would be incomplete without the integration of life and death.