In Krishnamurti’s vision, what is ordinarily called the “self” is not an enduring spiritual core but a psychological construction born of thought and conditioning. It consists of memories, experiences, beliefs, fears, desires, and the many identifications that accumulate through family, culture, religion, and personal history. This “me” is essentially the past operating in the present, carried as psychological time: what has been and what is imagined one will become. Thought, rooted in memory, creates the sense of an inner center—an observer, a chooser, a controller—and then treats that center as something real and separate.

This constructed self is sustained by continual mental activity: the movement of thought projecting itself into the future as hope, fear, and ambition, and clinging to the past as knowledge and conclusion. It identifies with possessions, relationships, nationalities, beliefs, and roles, and in doing so generates a sense of “me” opposed to “not-me.” From this division arise comparison, jealousy, fear, and the whole field of psychological conflict. Krishnamurti holds that the supposed inner observer is not separate from what is observed; the observer is part of the same movement of thought and memory. The self is therefore not a fixed entity but a process of becoming, a continuous, self-centered movement that is inherently fragmentary.

Because this self is a product of the known—of what has already been experienced and stored as memory—it inevitably limits perception. It approaches life through the screen of its own content, and thus cannot encounter anything wholly new or true. Krishnamurti regarded this as the root of illusion and suffering: as long as consciousness is organized around this psychological center, there is division, fear, and conflict. The self, in this sense, is essentially empty of any permanent essence; it is a pattern, not a substantive being.

For Krishnamurti, freedom does not lie in refining, strengthening, or spiritualizing this self, nor in positing some “higher” or “true” self as an ideal. Such pursuits remain within the same field of thought and continue the movement of becoming. What matters is a direct, choiceless observation of the whole activity of the self—its desires, fears, identifications, and defenses—without judgment, analysis, or the urge to change it into something else. In such clear seeing, the self’s illusory nature can be revealed, and the psychological movement that sustains it can come to an end. When this happens, there is a quality of awareness no longer centered in “me” or “I,” a selfless clarity in which intelligence and compassion can operate without division.