explosion from the centre

…is there not a different approach altogether – that is, is it not possible to explode from the centre?

This is a quote from J. Krishnamurti. And in this series, I'm going to be commenting on a few quotations from Krishnamurti, one in each episode.

Krishnamurti's teachings had a big influence on my own spiritual journey, and I've also included an episode on him in the Received Wisdom series. You might like to listen to that as well. It probably gives a brief introduction to Krishnamurti.

So to today's quote is this. "Is there not a different approach altogether? That is, is it not possible to explode from the centre?"

Of course, this is an extract from a book, and the book is a transcript of words spoken by Krishnamurti. And leading up to this particular quote, Krishnamurti had been discussing the way we normally approach our psychological and spiritual development. We are inquiring within ourself. And we tend to be chipping away at our own defences, our ego, our psychological defence. And sometimes the analogy is used of peeling layers off an onion.

And this approach – that is starting on the periphery, on the outside, and slowly digging deeper within ourself – of course, it takes time, and it's a rather slow and arduous process. And there's no guarantee that we're going to get to that centre. Perhaps as we peel layers away, more material is being accreted, is building up in our own psychology. Or perhaps we managed to tunnel to the centre of our being, but only starting from one point and not really touching the rest of our psychology. This is why some people reach some state of enlightenment while still having a lot of unprocessed shadow material. And that can be a very difficult situation both for the individual and for people he is teaching if he becomes a teacher.

What Krishnamurti is saying here is, perhaps there's another way. Perhaps we can explode from the centre. And if this is possible, you can see it carries some advantages. Explode: this is an instantaneous change. It doesn't take time. It's not a process happening slowly in time. It's an instantaneous event, an explosion.

And if you imagine a sphere exploding from the centre, that explosion is going to shatter the whole sphere. It's different from tunnelling in from a particular point on the periphery. So the explosion is much more likely to be total. It's going to transform us completely, in an instant.

So if it's possible, this explosion would certainly be of tremendous significance on our spiritual journey. Now here Krishnamurti is asking, is it possible? And this is Krishnamurti's style: never just to make an assertion, this is the way it should be, or this is the way it should be done. He always invites us to inquire. Is it possible, he's asking, to explode from the centre? And that question, that question can sit in us? Now, if one has not exploded, of course one doesn't know. Maybe it's possible, maybe it's not. And that's a beautiful space to enter in any spiritual inquiry, the space of not knowing, not knowing what is possible.

Sitting with a question like this, is it possible to explode from the centre, allowing that question to seep into one and sitting with it, without trying to figure out an answer. This is really important to understand that all the significant steps on the spiritual journey don't come about from intellectual analysis. Logic is not going to help here. We sit with a question like this. It puts us into the space of not knowing. And it sits in us like an invitation. And that's all we need do: sit with that not knowing and with that invitation and see what happens. Perhaps we explode from the centre. Perhaps we don't.

Now to move away from Krishnamurti's style and add some comments from my own spiritual journey. One reason I like this quote is that I have experienced a great explosion from the centre. In fact, any real insight has this quality, this feeling, feels like an explosion in the mind, coming from somewhere very deep. And I've had many such insights, such realisations, along the way. And each one has had this quality of being rather shocking, shattering, and yes, energetically feeling like an explosion coming from the centre.

It's as if something starts right in the centre of our being, builds up and up and up, until this explosion comes. It tears through one's body energetically. And particularly the mind is fragmented, completely shattered, like the windscreen of a car, broken into a thousand pieces, a million pieces. And for a moment, there's nothing left of us. And then things settle down, and a realisation forms in words, perhaps. Sometimes not. Sometimes there's an energetic explosion that doesn't lead to any understanding in words at all.

And I would say the greatest single shift in my own consciousness, my energy, came as one of these explosions. An explosion from the centre. But it came out of the blue. And that's something else to understand about an explosion: it is unexpected. We might sit with a question in our mind for a while, but probably whilst we are contemplating it in any way, no explosion will happen. And then one day, when we least expect it, probably when we're not thinking about this at all, then, suddenly perhaps, such an explosion happens. And everything is changed.