Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm
Jiddu Krishnamurti and David Bohm form a single arc of inquiry into the nature of fragmentation, intelligence, and the possibility of a mind free from conditioning. Krishnamurti begins with the psychological fact of division, showing how the mind splits itself into observer and observed, controller and controlled, and then suffers within the conflict created by that split. Bohm begins with the structural consequences of this same division, showing how thought fragments the world into competing parts and then forgets that it performed the fragmentation. Their work converges on the insight that fragmentation is not inherent to human nature but is produced by conditioning, reinforced by collective education, and sustained by the mind’s inability to see its own activity.
Krishnamurti’s central movement is the invitation to see rather than strive. He rejects the entire project of self‑improvement as another form of conditioning. The moment the mind tries to change itself, it creates an internal hierarchy: a controller who must discipline the controlled. This division is the root of psychological conflict. When the division ends, what he calls direct perception becomes possible. This is the psychological ground on which Bohm later articulates his structural critique of fragmentation. Krishnamurti’s notion of choiceless awareness is the heart of his methodless method: awareness that does not select, suppress, interpret, or pursue an outcome. Such attention is inherently transformative because it reveals the entire movement of conditioning as it operates. In this state, comparison has no place, and learning becomes an individual movement rather than a competitive race.
One of Krishnamurti’s most radical insights is that the observer is the observed. The observer who judges, resists, or tries to change experience is itself a bundle of memories, reactions, and conditioning. When this is seen, the duality collapses. There is only the movement of thought, seen without a center. This is not mystical; it is psychological clarity. Bohm later echoes this when he describes thought as a system that creates division and then denies its role in doing so. Both are describing the same phenomenon: the mind’s inability to see its own activity.
Krishnamurti uses the phrase freedom from the known to refer to the accumulated content of consciousness: beliefs, fears, images, habits, conclusions. As long as perception is filtered through this content, there is no freedom, only repetition. Freedom is not the result of effort; it is the absence of psychological continuity in the moment of seeing. This anticipates Bohm’s argument that fragmentation is sustained by the inertia of collective thought. Krishnamurti’s dissolution of psychological authority reinforces this. He rejects all spiritual authority, including his own. The moment you follow a teacher, a method, or a tradition, you are back inside the known. Authority is replaced by direct observation. Bohm’s critique of conceptual authority mirrors this: when a theory becomes authoritative, it becomes invisible, and thought loses the ability to question its own foundations.
For Krishnamurti, motive corrupts attention. If you are attentive in order to achieve peace, enlightenment, or transformation, you are still operating from desire and fear. Pure attention has no goal. It is simply the mind being fully present with what is. This is the psychological counterpart to Bohm’s structural claim that competition distorts learning by introducing motive, comparison, and fear. Krishnamurti’s representative works, such as Freedom from the Known, The First and Last Freedom, Commentaries on Living, and his dialogues with Bohm, carry the immediacy of his spoken teaching rather than a constructed system.
Bohm’s central contribution is the analysis of fragmentation. He shows how thought breaks the world into parts and then treats those parts as independently real. This fragmentation is not merely intellectual; it becomes social, political, and psychological. Where Krishnamurti dissolves inner division, Bohm maps the outer structures that arise when division is taken as fact. Bohm argues that thought is not a collection of isolated ideas but a system: self‑reinforcing, conditioned, and largely unconscious. It produces fragmentation and then denies its role in doing so. This parallels Krishnamurti’s insight that the observer is the observed: both point to the self‑referential nature of thought.
For Bohm, fragmentation is the root of incoherence. When individuals, institutions, or societies operate as if their parts are separate, conflict becomes inevitable. He often uses the metaphor of the body: if the liver tried to compete with the heart, the organism would collapse. This is not moral critique but structural analysis. His statement that the desire to compete is a mistake is frequently misunderstood. His point is that competition arises from collective conditioning, especially through education. When learning is organised around ranking, comparison, and external measurement, students internalise fragmentation. They learn to see themselves as separate units in a competitive field. But when learning is done individually, without comparison, the student is not held back or accelerated by others. There is no psychological residue of better or worse. The mind moves according to its own clarity. This is precisely the psychological condition Krishnamurti describes as choiceless awareness.
Bohm’s implicate order provides a structural analogue to Krishnamurti’s psychological wholeness. The implicate order describes a reality in which everything is enfolded into everything else. Fragmentation is a surface appearance, not a fundamental truth. When the mind stops dividing itself, it perceives the world as a coherent whole. This is not a mystical claim. It is a description of what happens when the mind is no longer operating through the filters of memory, comparison, and conditioning. In such a state, perception is direct, and thought becomes a tool rather than a tyrant.
Bohm’s development of dialogue as a method of collective inquiry is deeply influenced by Krishnamurti. Dialogue is not debate; it is a shared exploration of the movement of thought. Its purpose is to reveal the assumptions, reflexes, and conditioned responses that shape perception. Krishnamurti exposes the psychological roots of these assumptions; Bohm articulates their structural consequences. Together, they create a method for uncovering the hidden architecture of conditioning.
For Individua, the convergence of Krishnamurti and Bohm is foundational. Individua is not merely a system; it is a stance toward perception, learning, and autonomy. Krishnamurti provides the psychological foundation: the dissolution of comparison, the end of authority, the clarity of direct perception. Bohm provides the structural foundation: the critique of fragmentation, the analysis of thought as a system, the understanding that competition is a distortion produced by collective conditioning. Individua stands precisely at the intersection of these insights. It is a system designed to restore sovereignty by dissolving the internal and external structures that fragment the mind. It treats learning as an individual movement, not a competitive race. It treats perception as the ground of intelligence, not a tool for achieving outcomes. It treats thought as something to be understood, not obeyed. In this sense, Krishnamurti and Bohm are not influences; they are the philosophical scaffolding on which Individua rests.