Photo: Sri Atmananda Krishna Menon, Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation
Shri Atmananda Krishna Menon offered a rare gift: a philosophy of the understanding of our essential self, which harmonises the mind, the heart and the senses. Prior to discovering Krishna Menon’s teachings, I had primarily been on a devotional path. For the previous twenty years, I had been immersed in classical Advaita Vedanta through the teachings of Shantananda Saraswati. I loved this path, but something was missing for me. My heart was deeply immersed in the love of God, but my mind had questions about the nature of reality. These questions lingered, eluding resolution within the framework of classical Vedanta. As a result, I experienced a division between my heart and mind. While my heart had been nourished by the Vedantic tradition, my love of truth remained unmet, with questions that quietly but insistently sought resolution.
At the time, I was working as a potter, making forms—a craft that expressed my deep love for the world. Thus, I experienced not only the division between head and heart but also a disconnect between these and my perceiving faculties, or my experience of the world. As an artist, I loved objects. Having spent my life creating forms, I could not bring myself to reject the world in favour of the witness of experience. I longed for my respect for the mind and my experience of the world to be integrated into my love of truth, rather than standing in opposition to it.
I felt a lack of resolution. The three realms of my experience—thinking, feeling and perceiving—were not yet unified. As a result, the mind, the body and the world seemed to stand in opposition to one another. Classical Vedanta had deeply nurtured the feeling dimension of my experience. However, my faculties of thinking and perceiving remained unintegrated. I loved the mind, and I wanted to use it. I loved the world, and I wanted to embrace it. Ignoring these realms felt unbearable. I yearned to bring these three dimensions of my experience into harmony.
In the late ’90s, my understanding underwent a profound transformation when Francis Lucille introduced me to the teachings of Krishna Menon. His teachings gave me permission both to think and to embrace the world. His lines of higher reasoning and exploration of the world offered a clear pathway forward. Through Krishna Menon’s teachings, I experienced a great unification of my mind, my heart and the world. I tasted the unity of thinking, feeling and perceiving.
The way of the mind and the way of the heart—or the path of knowledge and the path of devotion—are well described in the spiritual traditions. These are classically known as Jnana Yoga and Bhakti Yoga, respectively. Before encountering Krishna Menon’s teachings, these two paths seemed to stand in opposition. Traditionally, thinking and perceiving are regarded solely as means of fragmenting reality into names and forms. As a result, they are often considered obstacles on the spiritual path. Consequently, classical teachings typically encourage us to turn away from both the mind and the world.
In contrast, Krishna Menon did not regard the mind or the world as obstacles. He recognised thinking and perceiving as legitimate pathways to truth, each in its own right. Through his teachings, I discovered a philosophy that unified the three elements of my experience—thinking, feeling and perceiving. Finally, I could integrate the two ‘missing’ elements—thinking and perceiving—into my love of truth.
Krishna Menon not only inspired me to think, but he showed me how to think. He demonstrated how thought, far from being an obstacle, could become a powerful instrument in the service of truth. It was through his teaching that I discovered the unity of the path of knowledge and the path of devotion. I came to understand that the way of knowledge and the way of love are, in essence, one and the same path. As Krishna Menon said, ‘You do not know anything but yourself. You do not love anything but yourself. Both knowledge and love have yourself as their object. Therefore, you are pure knowledge and love.’ With his characteristic clarity and concision, he reveals that knowledge, love and self are one indivisible reality.
While the paths of knowledge and devotion are well articulated in the traditions, the path of beauty remains mostly unexplored. An exploration of perception is seldom included in the traditions, apart from that of Kashmir Shaivism. The traditional Advaita teaching, for instance, encourages us to turn away from the world. Krishna Menon, however, provides a pathway through the world. Using lines of higher reasoning, he unveils perception, revealing the essence of the world as consciousness itself. All we know of the world is perception. All we know of perception is the experience of perceiving. All we know of the experience of perceiving is knowing. And it is knowing that knows that knowing. Hence, there is only knowing knowing only knowing. In other words, consciousness is all that is ever known. You are that without being ‘you’, and the world is that without being ‘a world’.
Krishna Menon expressed a sacred vision of the world that resonated deeply with me as an artist, namely, that truth and beauty are one. As Krishna Menon said, ‘Beauty is truth itself and that is yourself.’ This wisdom is echoed in the West by the poet Keats:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty” — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
This is the great reconciliation between truth and beauty, unifying thought and perception in a single understanding.
This unification is the silent aspiration of all great artists. The role of the artist is to make forms that return the mind to its source. All great art initiates us into a sacred vision of the world, one in which the world is seen as the infinite. As a potter, I had explored this path for years, making forms that reflected my sense of the infinite. I called it ‘Rupa Yoga’, as rupa is the Sanskrit word for ‘form’. Rupa Yoga invites us to contemplate the world as an expression of the infinite. The forms we encounter—whether physical objects, relationships or even the fleeting sensations of the body—are not obstacles but pathways to truth. Each form arises within and is pervaded by the same luminous awareness that knows it. The artist invites us to see through the apparent solidity of forms and recognise their essential transparency and unity with being. Through this seeing, the world of form becomes a celebration of the formless, and life itself is revealed as the radiant play of awareness.
Krishna Menon’s teaching reconciled the two great loves of my life: the love of truth and the love of beauty. By day in my studio, I pursued the path of beauty—the way of perception. In the evenings, I turned to the path of devotion through the Shankacharya’s teachings and the path of knowledge through Ramana Maharshi and Krishna Menon. From sunrise to sunset, I walked three paths. But Krishna Menon gave me a rarified gift. His teaching distilled the essence of these three paths—knowledge, love and beauty—into a single, unified understanding. In the end, it became clear that truth, love and beauty are one: our essential self, pure consciousness, shining through—and as—all thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
1. Atmananda Krishna Menon, Notes on Spiritual Discourses with Shri Atmananda, Volume 1, trans.
by Nitya Tripta (Trivandrum: Advaita Publishers, 1959), note 80.
2. Ibid., note 471.
3. Keats, John, Ode on a Grecian Urn (1820).
