When a writer of this column was a fully ordained Buddhist monk it was his pleasure to make acquaintance of Krishnamurti, a famous Indian sage, and exchange some spiritual understandings about the nature of man and his physical experience. Krishnamurti was tenacious in refusing to accept as truth anything that smacked of second-hand experience. There was no point in telling him that God said, or the Buddha said, or Jesus, for he would reply.

"First of all, how do you know? You have been told, you have read it in books. How do you know they are not the fabrications of priests of monks for their own profession, for their own benefit? An authority, seasoned through the mists of time becomes invulnerable, and man accept that authority as being final... That is only the habit of a lazy mind that wants to settle everything by authority, by precedent, saying that because someone has said it, it must be true."

He would say that "All disciple end up killing their Master's teaching." A statement which at first seemed shocking, but with time and awareness becomes self-evident. Nevertheless, it was pretty incisive stuff to anyone brought up in a conditional-belief system, and many who came across his published statements would be outraged, but very few, on meeting the man, would not be impressed by the gentleness, truth and sincerity of Krishnamurti.

The following, though not verbatim, is very close to his original talk to a group of young people in Ojai camp: "All religions are based on absurd ceremonies, exploitation and fear. And who has created them? You and I. Who else creates environment? Who created our social structure, our political structure, our economic and religious structures? We. each one of us had contributed individually and within the structure our family, friends, acquaintances, as infinitum.

Our individual contribution becomes collective and the individual who has helped created the collective becomes the victim of his own environment. The environment now begins to mould the man.

Through ignorance, unawareness of our true relationship to family, friends, enemies and all other beings, we create racial separation, class separation, and exploitation of each other and the earth's resources. We created these separations - you and I. So, individually, we must break them down. There is no other way.

Krishnamurti and the current writer were absolutely united in their common understanding that man creates his own reality. Your ideas of reality are continually being reinforced both consciously and unconsciously, not only within the family, but among all those with whom the family comes in contact. It is very easy to point at others and see clearly that their invisible beliefs, those they take for 'facts of life', limit their experience, yet, at the same time, be totally blind to your own invisible beliefs which you take so readily as truth or characteristics of "the way things are". You get what your mind concentrates upon. Things are never 'the way they are", they are the way you believe they are.