Archive for category: Event Summaries

Reflections from the Meditative Dialogue on June 4, 2025

This meditative dialogue unfolded as a shared space of self-inquiry rooted in silence, presence, and love. Participants gathered not to exchange ideas or knowledge, but to explore the nature of the self, thought, and awareness through a quality of deep listening and stillness.
The session began with introductions, but quickly moved into a shared silence—a reminder that the most meaningful communication often begins beyond words. Participants reflected that true presence emerges when there is no agenda, just an awareness of breath, sound, sensation, and space.

Mukesh emphasized that self-inquiry is not intellectual analysis but a deep shared seeing. Thought cannot understand thought—just as one cloud cannot analyze another. Instead, the group was invited to observe thought gently, without judgment, allowing insight to arise naturally. Several participants explored the subtle creation of the “I” image, which constantly shifts and seeks validation. This ego-structure, often sustained by memory and reactivity, was examined as a source of inner conflict and suffering. Yet, through simple observation, its grip could be loosened—revealing a spaciousness where freedom resides.

A key insight emerged: there is nothing to do, no need to fix or improve the self. When the idea of “doing” is dropped, what remains is presence. In this space, reactions soften, and life unfolds naturally. The mantra became: “Just let go.”

We also reflected that emotions like anger and fear may emerge in our daily living and can be welcomed as natural responses rather than obstacles. The dialogue acknowledged the need to sometimes act firmly in society without losing inner clarity.

The dialogue concluded in silence, with a call to “let the heart be open.” What lingered was not answers, but a felt sense of presence. In letting go of control, in ceasing to chase understanding, one touches the essence of being.

-Mukesh Gupta

Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Eric Hassett
May 25, 2025

On Sunday, May 25th, from 3pm to 4:30pm, a dialogue with four participants and myself took place on the lush green grass outside the Main House near the swimming pool. It was a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine.

A Krishnamurti quote from The Book of Life (Direct Observation, Feb. 15th) was read:

Why do ideas take root in our minds? Why do not facts become all-important—not ideas? Why do theories, ideas, become so significant rather than the fact? Is it that we cannot understand the fact, or have not the capacity, or are afraid of facing the fact? Therefore, ideas, speculations, theories are a means of escaping away from the fact…

You may run away, you may do all kinds of things; the facts are there—the fact that one is angry, the fact that one is ambitious, the fact that one is sexual, a dozen things. You may suppress them, you may transmute them, which is another form of suppression; you may control them, but they are all suppressed, controlled, disciplined with ideas… Do not ideas waste our energy? Do not ideas dull the mind? You may be clever in speculation, in quotations; but it is obviously a dull mind which quotes, that has read a lot and quotes.

… You remove the conflict of the opposite at one stroke if you live with the fact and therefore liberate the energy to face the fact. For most of us, contradiction is an extraordinary field in which the mind is caught. I want to do this, and I do something entirely different; but if I face the fact of wanting to do this, there is no contradiction; and therefore, at one stroke I abolish altogether all sense of the opposite, and my mind then is completely concerned with what is, and with
the understanding of what is.

The group proceeded to discuss awareness, the observer and the observed, psychological time, conditioning, and the ending of the ‘me’. There seemed to be genuine ‘looking’ taking place, along with self-observation.

Eric

Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Eric Hassett
May 18, 2025

On Sunday, May 18th, from 3pm to 4:30pm, a dialogue with ten participants and myself took place on the lush green grass outside the Main House near the swimming pool. It was a beautiful day with plenty of sunshine.

A Krishnamurti quote from the KECC handout titled “Self-Inquiry Meetings” was read:

I think before we begin it should be made clear what we mean by discussion.
To me it is a process of discovery through exposing oneself to the fact. That is, in
discussion I discover myself, the habit of my thought, the way I proceed to think,
my reactions, the way I reason, not only intellectually but inwardly… I feel that if
we could be serious for an hour or so and really fathom, delve into ourselves as
much as we can, we should be able to release, not through any action of will, a
certain sense of energy that is awake all the time, which is beyond thought.”

It was suggested that the dialogue is an opportunity not just for intellectual discussion but also to ‘look’ at the actuality of our daily lives to which Krishnamurti pointed and to ‘do’ what he urged us to do when he said “Do it, sirs!” because such action, when taken, should, as the above quote says, “…release, not through any action of will, a certain energy that is awake all the time, which is beyond thought.”

In connection with this possibility, the group proceeded to discuss awareness, the observer and the observed, psychological time, conditioning, and the ending of the ‘me’. By and large, there seemed to be genuine ‘looking’ taking place, along with self-observation. As the saying goes, “people were truly listening to people truly speaking.”

Eric

Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with James Tousignant
May 4, 2025

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, 8 participants met on the lawn by the outdoor pool to explore “Intellect vs. Intelligence” from Krishnamurti’s The Book of Life.

The participants explored Krishnamurti’s perspective through sharing their personal experiences, beliefs and understanding of the two concepts. Interesting avenues of exploration came about through a question on Emotional Intelligence, and another on how intelligence arises from both emotions and thoughts coming into balance and harmony. A deepening understanding became available when one participant described an image of thoughts and emotions as existing on one plane of experience, and the need for one to rise above that level to a place where both could be seen and held in a more spacious, harmonious wholeness.

James

Self-Inquiry Meeting
On-site Dialogue with Henry Fischer
April 27, 2025

On Sunday fourteen participants gathered for a KECC dialogue at Swanwick.

After a period of silence, newcomers were introduced to dialogue as an all inclusive unfolding process that includes thoughts, emotions, feelings, perception, the senses and the subject which is being explored. The invitation is to see if observation naturally connects us and engages us in a passionate exploration of the unknown rather than an affirmation of what we already know.

The following Krishnamurti quote was read from the Book of Life (May 22). This is only an excerpt however the entire entry was read at the dialogue:

All thought is partial
You and I realize that we are conditioned… The fact is that we are conditioned, and that all thought to understand this conditioning will always be partial; therefore there is never a total comprehension, and only in total comprehension of the whole process of thinking is there freedom…

The facilitator asked if it was possible to see anything afresh without the past interfering. The group quickly challenged this pointing out that it may be an ideal but the actuality is that thought is limited and conditioned. Perhaps there was something fresh in considering what is normally taken as real to instead be the unfolding of thought. In this way, the past is new in that it is freshly occurring.

There were also questions about whether we are actually seeing or if instead we are living inside a kind of projection of memory which we take to be ourselves.

Is freedom possible as an actuality or is it just a projected ideal? What does it mean to see the truth of conditioning and yet not to be defined or limited by it? Is there a freedom from the known which is not idealized or imagined?

The group also looked at fear and whether fear was also a description, a movement away from what is.

Henry Fischer