如果没有自知之明，那么无论你如何用功，也不能进入观照状态。我所讲的自知，是指觉知你的每一个念头、心情、言辞和感受，觉知心智的每一个活动。注意，不是觉知超我、大我，那都是子虚乌有的名头，因为所谓高我、梵我，仍然落在思维范畴内，而思维是心灵桎梏的产物，是你记忆的回声——记忆可能来自祖先的传承，或现世的积淀。如果不通过自我觉知首先建立深刻且不褪色的善德，只做所谓冥想修炼，那是十足的自欺与绝对的徒劳。
请注意，对于那些真诚向道之人，明白这一点非常重要，否则你的冥想与现实生活是彼此脱离、泾渭分明的，尽管你打坐冥想，不遗馀力，耗尽馀生，但你见地短浅，无论持任何姿势，无论做任何修为，均毫无意义。
重要的是，你要明白，所谓自知之明就是不带拣择地觉知自我，而自我的源头是你的一堆记忆。所以，要不带诠释地觉知自我，观察心念的活动。但如果你只是通过观察而继续积累，比如该做什么，莫作什么，达成什么，那么真正的观察就阻碍不通了。如果你能观照自心，那么心识瀑流——亦即自我，就止息了。换言之，我必须观察自己的真相，看清真实的自我。如果持有先入之见，比如“我绝不能这副德行”，“我必须那番形象”，这都是来自记忆的回声；如果我这样去观察心念，则真实的心念之流就被阻滞了，因而不再有觉知。
——克里希那穆提《生命书：365观心日课》（The Book of Life: Daily Meditations with Krishnamurti）
Self-Knowing
Without knowing yourself, do what you will, there cannot possibly be the state of meditation. I mean by “self-knowing,” knowing every thought, every mood, every word, every feeling; knowing the activity of your mind—not knowing the supreme self, the big self; there is no such thing; the higher self, the atma, is still within the field of thought. Thought is the result of your conditioning, thought is the response of your memory—ancestral or immediate. And merely to try to meditate without first establishing deeply, irrevocably, that virtue which comes about through self-knowing is utterly deceptive and absolutely useless.
Please, it is very important for those who are serious to understand this. Because if you cannot do that, your meditation and actual living are divorced, are apart—so wide apart that though you may meditate, taking postures indefinitely, for the rest of your life, you will not see beyond your nose; any posture you take, anything that you do, will have no meaning whatsoever.
… It is important to understand what this self-knowing is, just to be aware, without any choice, of the “me” which has its source in a bundle of memories—just to be conscious of it without interpretation, merely to observe the movement of the mind. But that observation is prevented when you are merely accumulating through observation—what to do, what not to do, what to achieve; if you do that, you put an end to the living process of the movement of the mind as the self. That is, I have to observe and see the fact, the actual, the what is. If I approach it with an idea, with an opinion—such as “I must not,” or “I must,” which are the responses of memory—then the movement of what is is hindered, is blocked; and therefore, there is no learning.
JANUARY 28
