Chapter 7
You know I have been talking about fear; and it is very important for us to be conscious and aware of fear. Do you know how it comes into being? Throughout the world we can see that people are perverted by fear, twisted in their ideas, in their feelings, in their activities. So we ought to go into the problem of fear from every possible angle, not only from the moral and economic viewpoint of society, but also from the point of view of our inward, psychological struggles.
As I have said, fear for outward and inward security twists the mind and distorts our thinking. I hope you have thought a little about this, because the more clearly you consider this and see the truth of it, the freer you will be from all dependence. The older people have not brought about a marvellous society; the parents, the ministers, the teachers, the rulers, the priests have not created a beautiful world. On the contrary, they have created a frightful, brutal world in which everybody is fighting somebody; in which one group is against another, one class against another, one nation against another, one ideology or set of beliefs against another. The world in which you are growing up is an ugly world, a sorrowful world, where the older people try to smother you with their ideas, their beliefs, their ugliness; and if you are merely going to follow the ugly pattern of the older people who have brought about this monstrous society, what is the point of being educated, what is the point of living at all?
If you look around you will see that throughout the world there is appalling destruction and human misery. You may read about wars in history, but you do not know the actuality of it, how cities are completely destroyed, how the hydrogen bomb, when dropped on an island, causes the whole island to disappear. Ships are bombed and they go up into thin air. There is appalling destruction due to this so-called advancement, and it is in such a world you are growing up. You may have a good time while you are young, a happy time; but when you grow older, unless you are very alert, watchful of your thoughts, of your feelings, you will perpetuate this world of battles, of ruthless ambitions, a world where each one is competing with another, where there is misery, starvation, overpopulation and disease.
So, while you are young, is it not very important for you to be helped by the right kind of teacher to think about all these things, and not just be taught to pass some dull examinations? Life is sorrow, death, love, hate, cruelty, disease, starvation, and you have to begin to consider all these things. That is why I feel it is good that you and I should go into these problems together, so that your intelligence is awakened and you begin to have some real feeling about all these things. Then you will not grow up just to be married off and become a thoughtless clerk or a breeding machine, losing yourself in this ugly pattern of life like waters in the sands.
One of the causes of fear is ambition, is it not? And are you all not ambitious? What is your ambition? To pass some examination? To become a governor? Or, if you are very young, perhaps you just want to become an engine-driver, to drive engines across a bridge. But why are you ambitious? What does it mean? Have you ever thought about it? Have you noticed older people, how ambitious they are? In your own family, have you not heard your father or your uncle talk about getting more salary, or occupying some prominent position? In our society – and I have explained what our society is, everybody is doing that, trying to be on top. They all want to become somebody, do they not? The clerk wants to become the manager, the manager wants to become something bigger, and so on and so on – the continual struggle to become. If I am a teacher, I want to become the principal; if I am the principal, I want to become the manager. If you are ugly, you want to be beautiful. Or you want to have more money, more saris, more clothes, more furniture, houses, property – more and more and more. Not only outwardly, but also inwardly, in the so-called spiritual sense, you want to become somebody, though you cover that ambition by a lot of words. Have you not noticed that? And you think it is perfectly all right, don’t you? You think it is perfectly normal, justifiable, right.
Now, what has ambition done in the world? So few of us have ever thought about it. When you see a man struggling to gain, to achieve, to get ahead of somebody else, have you ever asked yourself what is in his heart? If you will look into your own heart when you are ambitious, when you are struggling to become somebody, spiritually or in the wordily sense, you will find there the worm of fear. The ambitious man is the most frightened of men, because he is afraid to be what he is. He says, “If remain what I am, I shall be nobody, therefore I must be somebody, I must become a magistrate, a judge, a minister”. If you examine this process very closely, if you go behind the screen of words and ideas, beyond the wall of status and success, you will find there is fear; because the ambitious man is afraid to be what he is. He thinks that what he is in himself is insignificant, poor, ugly; he feels lonely, utterly empty, therefore he says, “I must go and achieve something”. So either he goes after what he calls God, which is just another form of ambition, or he tries to become somebody in the world. In this way his loneliness, his sense of inward emptiness – of which he is really frightened – is covered up. He runs away from it, and ambition becomes the means through which he can escape.
So, what is happening in the world? Everybody is fighting somebody. One man feels less than another and struggles to get to the top. There is no love, there is no consideration, there is no deep thought. Or society is a constant battle of man against man. This struggle is born of the ambition to become somebody, and the older people encourage you to be ambitious. They want you to amount to something, to marry a rich man or a rich woman, to have influential friends. Being frightened, ugly in their hearts, they try to make you like themselves; and you in turn want to be like them, because you see the glamour of it all. When the governor comes, everybody bows down to the earth to receive him, they give him garlands, make speeches. He loves it, and you love it too. You feel honoured if you know his uncle or his clerk, and you bask in the sunshine of his ambition, his achievements. So you are easily caught in the ugly web of the older generation, in the pattern of this monstrous society. Only if you are very alert, constantly watchful, only if you are not afraid and do not accept, but question all the time – only then will you not be caught, but go beyond and create a different world.
That is why it is very important for you to find your true vocation. Do you know what `vocation’ means? Something which you love to do, which is natural to you. After all, that is the function of education – to help you to grow independently so that you are free of ambition and can find your true vocation. The ambitious man has never found his true vocation; if he had, he would not be ambitious.
So, it is the responsibility of the teachers, of the principal, to help you to be intelligent, unafraid, so that you can find your true vocation, your own way of life, the way you really want to live and earn your livelihood. This implies a revolution in thinking; because, in our present society, the man who can talk, the man who can write, the man who can rule, the man who has a big car, is thought to be in a marvellous position; and the man who digs in the garden, who cooks, who builds a house, is despised. Are you aware of your own feelings when you look at a mason, at the man who mends the road, or drives a taxi, or pulls a cart? Have you noticed how you regard him with absolute contempt? To you he hardly even exists. You disregard him; but when a man has a title of some kind, or is a banker, a merchant, a guru, or a minister, you immediately respect him. But if you really find your true vocation, you will help to break down this rotten system completely; because then, whether you are a gardener, or a painter, or an engineer, you will be doing something which you love with your whole being; and that is not ambition. To do something marvellously well, to do it completely, truly, according to what you deeply think and feel – that is not ambition and in that there is no fear.
To help you to discover your true vocation is very difficult, because it means that the teacher has to pay a great deal of attention to each student to find out what he is capable of. He has to help him not to be afraid, but to question, to investigate. You may be a potential writer, or a poet, or a painter. Whatever it is, if you really love to do it, you are not ambitious; because in love there is no ambition.
So, is it not very important while you are young that you should be helped to awaken your own intelligence and thereby find your true vocation? Then you will love what you do, right through life, which means there will be no ambition, no competition, no fighting another for position, for prestige; and then perhaps you will be able to create a new world. In that new world all the ugly things of the older generation will cease to exist – their wars, their mischief, their separative gods, their rituals which mean absolutely nothing, their sovereign governments, their violence. That is why the responsibility of the teachers, and of the students, is very great.
Questioner: If somebody has an ambition to be an engineer, does it not mean that he is interested in engineering?
Krishnamurti: Would you say that being interested in something is ambition? We can give to that word `ambition’ various meanings. To me, ambition is the outcome of fear. But if as a boy I am interested in being an engineer because I want to build beautiful structures, marvellous irrigation systems, splendid roads, it means I love engineering; and that is not ambition. In love there is no fear.
So, ambition and interest are two different things, are they not? If I am really interested in painting, if I love to paint, then I do not compete to be the best or the most famous painter. I just love painting. You may be better at painting than I, but I do not compare myself with you. When I paint, I love what I am doing, and for me that is sufficient in itself.
Questioner: What is the easiest way of finding God?
Krishnamurti: I am afraid there is no easy way, because to find God is a most difficult, a most arduous thing. Is not what we call God something which the mind creates? You know what the mind is. The mind is the result of time, and it can create anything, any illusion. It has the power of creating ideas, of projecting itself in fancies, in imagination; it is constantly accumulating, discarding, choosing. Being prejudiced, narrow, limited, the mind can picture God, it can imagine what God is according to its own limitations. Because certain teachers, priests and so-called saviours have said there is God and have described him, the mind can imagine God in those terms; but that image is not God. God is something that cannot be found by the mind.
To understand God, you must first understand your own mind – which is very difficult. The mind is very complex, and to understand it is not easy. But it is easy enough to sit down and go into some kind of dream, have various visions, illusions, and then think that you are very near to God. The mind can deceive itself enormously. So, to really experience that which may be called God, you must be completely quiet; and have you not found out how extremely difficult that is? Have you not noticed how even the older people never sit quietly, how they fidget, how they wiggle their toes and move their hands? It is difficult physically to sit still; and how much more difficult it is for the mind to be still ! You may follow some guru and force your mind to be quiet; but your mind is not really quiet. It is still restless, like a child that is made to stand in the corner. It is a great art for the mind to be completely silent without coercion; and only then is there a possibility of experiencing that which may be called God.
Questioner: Is God everywhere?
Krishnamurti: Are you really interested to find out? You ask questions, and then subside; you do not listen. Have you noticed how the older people almost never listen to you? They rarely listen to you because they are so enclosed in their own thoughts, in their own emotions, in their own satisfactions and sorrows. I hope you have noticed this. If you know how to observe and how to listen, really listen, you will find out a lot of things, not only about people but about the world.
Here is this boy asking if God is everywhere. He is rather young to be asking that question. He does not know what it really means. He probably has a vague inkling of something – the feeling of beauty, an awareness of the birds in the sky, of running waters, of a nice, smiling face, of a leaf dancing in the wind, of a woman carrying a burden. And there is anger, noise, sorrow – all that is in the air. So he is naturally interested and anxious to find out what life is all about. He hears the older people talking about God, and he is puzzled. It is very important for him to ask such a question, is it not? And it is equally important for you all to seek the answer; because, as I said the other day, you will begin to catch the meaning of all this inwardly, unconsciously, deep down; and then, as you grow up, you will have hints of other things besides this ugly world of struggle. The world is beautiful, the earth is bountiful; but we are the spoilers of it.
Questioner: What is the real goal of life?
Krishnamurti: It is, first of all, what you make of it. It is what you make of life.
Questioner: As far as reality is concerned, it must be something else. I am not particularly interested in having a personal goal, but I want to know what is the goal for everybody.
Krishnamurti: How will you find out? Who will show you? Can you discover that by reading? If you read, one author may give you a particular method, while another author may offer quite a different method. If you go to a man who is suffering, he will say that the goal of life is to be happy. If you go to a man who is starving, who has not had sufficient food for years, his goal will be to have a full tummy. If you go to a politician, his goal will be to become one of the directors, one of the rulers of the world. If you ask a young woman, she will say, “My goal is to have a baby”. If you go to a sannyasi, his goal is to find God. The goal, the underlying desire of people is generally to find something gratifying, comforting; they want some form of security, safety, so that they will have no doubts, no questions, no anxiety, no fear. Most of us want something permanent to which we can cling, do we not.
So, the general goal of life for man is some kind of hope, some kind of safety, some kind of permanency. Don’t say, “Is that all?” That is the immediate fact, and you must first be fully acquainted with that. You must question all that – which means, you must question yourself. The general goal of life for man is embedded in you, because you are part of the whole. You yourself want safety, permanency, happiness; you want something to which to cling.
Now, to find out if there is something else beyond, some truth which is not of the mind, all the illusions of the mind must be finished with; that is, you must understand them and put them aside. Only then can you discover the real thing, whether there is a goal or not. To stipulate that there must be a goal, or to believe that there is a goal, is merely another illusion. But if you can question all your conflicts, struggles, pains, vanities, ambitions, hopes, fears, and go through them, go beyond and above them, then you will find out.
Questioner: If I develop higher influences will I eventually see the ultimate?
Krishnamurti: How can you see the ultimate as long as there are many barriers between you and that? First you must remove the barriers. You cannot sit in a closed room and know what fresh air is like. To have fresh air you must open the windows. Similarly, you must see all the barriers all the limitations and conditionings within yourself; you must understand them and put them aside. Then you will find out. But to sit on this side and try to find out what is on the other, has no meaning.
Chapter 8
As you know, we have been talking a great deal about fear, because it is a very powerful factor in our lives. Let us now talk for a while about love; let us find out whether behind this word and this feeling – which for all of us has so much significance – there is also that peculiar element of apprehension, of anxiety, the thing which grownup people know as loneliness.
Do you know what love is? Do you love your father, your mother, your brother, your teacher, your friend? Do you know what it means to love? When you say that you love your parents, what does it mean? You feel safe with them, you feel at home with them. Your parents are protecting you, they are giving you money, shelter, food and clothing, and you feel with them a sense of close relationship, don’t you? You also feel that you can trust them – or you may not. Probably you do not talk to them as easily and happily as you do to your own friends. But you respect them, you are guided by them, you obey them, you have a certain sense of responsibility towards them, feeling that you must support them when they are old. They in turn love you, they want to protect you, to guide you, to help you – at least they say so. They want to marry you off so that you will lead a so-called moral life and stay out of trouble, so that you will have a husband to look after you, or a wife to cook for you and bear your children. All this is called love, is it not?
We cannot immediately say what is love, because love is not readily explained by words. It does not come to us easily. Yet without love, life is very barren; without love, the trees, the birds, the smile of men and women, the bridge across the river, the boatmen and the animals have no meaning. Without love, life is like a shallow pool. In a deep river there is richness and many fish can live; but the shallow pool is soon dried up by the strong sun, and nothing remains except mud and dirt.
For most of us, love is an extraordinarily difficult thing to understand because our lives are very shallow. We want to be loved, and also we want to love, and behind that word there is a lurking fear. So, is it not very important for each one of us to find out what this extraordinary thing really is? And we can find out only if we are aware of how we regard other human beings, how we look at the trees, at the animals, at a stranger, at the man who is hungry. We must be aware of how we regard our friends, of how we regard our guru, if we have one, of how we regard our parents.
When you say, “I love my father and my mother, I love my guardian, my teacher”, what does it mean? When you respect somebody tremendously and look up to them, when you feel it is your duty to obey them and they in turn expect your obedience, is that love? Is love apprehensive? Surely, when you look up to somebody, you also look down upon somebody else, don’t you? And is that love? In love is there any sense of looking up or looking down, any compulsion to obey another?
When you say you love somebody, don’t you inwardly depend on that person? While you are a child you naturally depend on your father, on your mother, on your teacher, on your guardian. You need to be cared for, to be provided with food, clothing and shelter. You need a sense of security, the feeling that someone is looking after you.
But what generally happens? As we grow older, this feeling of dependence continues, does it not? Haven’t you noticed it in older people, in your parents and teachers? Haven’t you observed how they depend emotionally on their wives or husbands, on their children, or on their own parents? When they grow up, most people still cling to somebody; they continue to be dependent. Without someone to lean on, to give them a sense of comfort and security, they feel lonely, do they not? They feel lost. This dependency on another is called love; but if you observe it very closely you will see that dependency is fear, it is not love.
Most people are afraid to stand alone; they are afraid to think things out for themselves, afraid to feel deeply, to explore and discover the whole meaning of life. Therefore they say they love God, and they depend on what they call God; but it is not God, the unknown, it is a thing created by the mind.
We do the same with an ideal or a belief. I believe in something, or I hold on to an ideal, and that gives me great comfort; but remove the ideal, remove the belief and I am lost. It is the same thing with a guru. I depend because I want to receive, so there is the ache of fear. Again it is the same when you depend on your parents or teachers. It is natural and right that you should do so when you are young; but if you keep on depending when you have grow to maturity, that will make you incapable of thinking, of being free. Where there is dependence there is fear, and where there is fear there is authority; there is no love. When your parents say that you must obey, that you must follow certain traditions, that you must take only a certain job or do only a particular kind of work – in all this there is no love. And there is no love in your heart when you depend on society in the sense that you accept the structure of society as it is, without question.
Ambitious men and women do not know what love is – and we are dominated by ambitious people. That is why there is no happiness in the world, and why it is very important that you, as you grow up, should see and understand all this, and find out for yourself if it is possible to discover what love is. You may have a good position, a very fine house, a marvellous garden, clothes; you may become the prime minister; but without love, none of these things have any meaning.
So, you have to begin to find out now – not wait until you are old, for you will never find out then – what it is you actually feel in your relationship with your parents, with your teachers, with the guru. You cannot merely accept the word `love’ or any other word, but must go behind the meaning of words to see what the reality is – the reality being that which you actually feel, not what you are supposed to feel. If you actually feel jealous, or angry, to say, “I must not be jealous, I must not be angry” is merely a wish, it has no reality. What matters is to see very honestly and very clearly exactly what it is you are feeling at the moment, without bringing in the ideal of how you should feel or will feel at some future date, for then you can do something about it. But to say, “I must love my parents, I must love my teachers”, has no meaning, has it? Because your real feelings are quite different, and those words become a screen behind which you hide.
So, is it not the way of intelligence to look beyond the accepted meaning of words? Words like `duty’, `responsibility’, `God’, `love’, have acquired a traditional meaning; but an intelligent person, a truly educated person looks beyond the traditional meaning of such words. For instance, if someone told you that he did not believe in God, you would be shocked, would you not? You would say, “Goodness, how awful!”, because you believe in God – at least you think you do. But belief and non-belief have very little meaning.
What is important is for you to go behind the word `love’ to see whether you actually do love your parents, and whether your parents actually do love you. Surely, if you and your parents really loved one another, the world would be entirely different. There would be no wars, no starvation, no class differences. There would be no rich and no poor. You see, without love we try to reform society economically, we try to put things right, but as long as we have no love in our heads we cannot bring about a social structure free of conflict and misery. That is why we have to go into these things very carefully; and perhaps then we shall find out what love is.
Questioner: Why is there sorrow and misery in the world?
Krishnamurti: I wonder if that boy knows what those words mean. He has probably seen an over-loaded donkey with his legs almost breaking, or another boy crying, or a mother beating her child. perhaps he has seen older people quarrelling with each other. And there is death, the body being carried away to be burnt; there is the beggar; there is poverty, disease, old age; there is sorrow, not only outside, but also inside us. So he asks, “Why is there sorrow?” Don’t you want to know too? Have you never wondered about the cause of your own sorrow? What is sorrow, and why does it exist? If I want something and cannot get it, I feel miserable; if I want more saris, more money, or if I want to be more beautiful, and cannot have what I want, I am unhappy. If I want to love a certain person and that person does not love me, again I am miserable. My father dies, and I am in sorrow. Why?
Why do we feel unhappy when we cannot have what we want? Why should we necessarily have what we want? We think it is our right, do we not? But do we ever ask ourselves why we should have what we want when millions have not got even what they need? And besides, why do we want it? There is our need of food, clothing and shelter; but we are not satisfied with that. We want much more. We want success, we want to be respected, loved, looked up to, we want to be powerful, we want to be famous poets, saints, orators, we want to be prime ministers, presidents. Why? Have you ever looked into it? Why do we want all this? Not that we must be satisfied with what we are. I do not mean that. That would be ugly, silly. But why this constant craving for more and more and more? This craving indicates that we are dissatisfied, discontented; but with what? With what we are? I am this, I do not like it, and I want to be that. I think I shall look much more beautiful in a new coat or a new sari, so I want it. This means I am dissatisfied with what I am, and I think I can escape from my discontent by acquiring more clothes, more power, and so on. But the dissatisfaction is still there, is it not? I have only covered it up with clothes, with power, with cars.
So, we have to find out how to understand what we are. Merely to cover ourselves with possessions, with power and position, has no meaning, because we will still be unhappy. Seeing this, the unhappy person, the person who is in sorrow, does not run away to gurus, he does not hide in possessions, in power; on the contrary, he wants to know what lies behind his sorrow. If you go behind your own sorrow you will find that you are very small, empty, limited, and that you are struggling to achieve, to become. This very struggle to achieve to become something is the cause of sorrow. But if you begin to understand what you actually are, go deeper and deeper into it, then you will find that something quite different takes place.
Questioner: If a man is starving and I feel that I can be helpful to him, is this ambition or love?
Krishnamurti: It all depends on the motive with which you help him. By saying he is for helping the poor man, the politician gets to New Delhi, lives in a big house and shows himself off. Is that love? Do you understand? Is that love?
Questioner: If I relieve his starvation by my helpfulness, isn’t that love?
Krishnamurti: He is starving and you help him with food. Is that love? Why do you want to help him? Have you no motive, no incentive other than the desire to help him? Do you not get any benefit out of it? Think this out, do not say `yes’ or `no’. If you are looking for some benefit out of it, politically or otherwise, some inward or outward benefit, then you do not love him. If you feed him in order to become more popular, or in the hope that your friends will help you to go to New Delhi, then that is not love, is it? But if you love him, you will feed him without any ulterior motive, without wanting anything in return. If you feed him and he is ungrateful, do you feel hurt? If so, you do not love him. If he tells you and the villagers that you are a wonderful man, and you feel very flattered, it means you are thinking about yourself; and surely that is not love. So, one has to be very alert to find out if one is deriving any kind of benefit from one’s helpfulness, and what the motive is that leads one to feed the hungry.
Questioner: Suppose I want to go home and the Principal says `no’. If I disobey him, I will have to face the consequences. If I obey the Principal, it will break my heart. What am I to do?
Krishnamurti: Do you mean to say that you cannot talk it over with the Principal, that you cannot take him into your confidence and show him your problem? If he is the right kind of Principal you can trust him, talk over your problem with him. If he still says you must not go, it is possible that he is just being obstinate, which means there is something wrong with the principal; but he may have good reasons for saying `no’, and you have to find out. So it requires mutual confidence. You must have confidence in the Principal, and the Principal must have confidence in you. Life is not just a one-sided relationship. You are a human being; so is the Principal a human being, and he also may make mistakes. So both of you must be willing to talk it over. You may want very much to go home but that may not be quite enough; your parents may have written to the Principal not to let you come home. It must be a mutual inquiry, must it not?, so that you do not get hurt, so that you do not feel ill-treated or brutally pushed aside; and that can happen only when you have confidence in the teacher and he has confidence in you. In other words, there has to be real love; and such an environment is what a school should provide.
Questioner: Why should we not do puja?
Krishnamurti: Have you found out why the older people do puja? They are copying, are they not? The more immature we are, the more we want to copy. Have you noticed how people love uniforms? So, before you ask why you should not do puja, ask the older people why they do it. They do it, first of all, because it is a tradition; their grandfathers did it. Then the repetition of words gives them a certain sense of peace. Do you understand this? Words constantly repeated make the mind dull, and that gives you a sense of quietness. Sanskrit words especially have certain vibrations which make you feel very quiet. The older people also do puja because everybody else is doing it; and you, being young, want to copy them. Do you want to do puja because somebody tells you it is the right thing to do? Do you want to do it because you find a pleasant hypnotic effect in repeating certain words? Before you do anything, should you not find out why you want to do it? Even if millions of people believe in puja, should you not use your own mind to discover the true significance of it?
You see, the mere repetition of Sanskrit words, or of certain gestures, will not really help you to find out what truth is, what God is. To find that out, you must know how to meditate. But this is quite a different matter – quite different from doing puja. Millions of people do puja; and has it brought about a happier world? Are such people creative? To be creative is to be full of initiative, full of love, of kindness, of sympathy and consideration. If as a little boy you begin to do puja and go on repeating it, you will become like a machine. But if you begin to question, to doubt, to inquire, then perhaps you will find out how to meditate. And meditation, if you know how to do it properly, is one of the greatest blessings.
Chapter 9
I do not think we shall understand the complex problem of love till we understand the equally complex problem which we call the mind. Have you noticed, when we are very young, how inquisitive we are? We want to know, and we see many more things than the older people do. If we are at all awake, we observe things that the older people do not even notice. The mind, when we are young, is much more alert, much more curious and wanting to know. That is why we learn so easily mathematics, geography, or whatever it is. As we grow older, the mind becomes more and more crystallized, heavy, dull. Have you noticed how prejudiced most older people are? Their minds are not open, they approach everything from a fixed point of view. You are young now; but if you are not very watchful, your mind also will become like that. Is it not then very important to understand the mind, and to see whether, instead of gradually becoming dull, you can be supple, capable of instant adjustments, of extraordinary initiative, of deep research and understanding in every department of life? Must you not know the ways of the mind to understand the way of love? Because it is the mind that destroys love. People who are merely clever, cunning, do not know what love is, because their minds, although sharp, are superficial; they live on the surface, and love is not a thing that rests on the surface.
What is the mind? I do not mean just the brain, the physical organism which reacts to stimuli through various nervous responses, and about which any physiologist can tell you. Rather we are going to find out what the mind is. The mind which says, ` I think; `it is mine; `I am hurt; `I am jealous; `I love; `I hate; `I am an Indian; `I am a Moslem; `I believe in this and I do not believe in that; `I know and you do not know; `I respect; `I despise; `I want; `I do not want’ – what is this thing? Unless you begin now to understand and make yourself thoroughly familiar with the whole process of thinking which is called the mind, unless you are fully aware of it in yourself, you will gradually, as you grow older, become hard, crystallized, dull, fixed in a certain pattern of thought.
What is this thing which we call the mind? It is the way of our thinking, is it not? I am talking of your mind, not somebody else’s mind – the way you think and feel, the way you look at the trees, at the fishermen, the way you consider the villager. Your mind, as you grow older, gradually becomes warped or fixed in a certain pattern. You want something, you crave it, you desire to be or become something, and this desire sets a pattern; that is, your mind creates a pattern and gets caught in it. Your desire crystallizes your mind.
Say, for example, you want to be a very rich man. The desire to be wealthy creates a pattern, and your thinking then gets caught in it; you can think only in those terms, and you cannot go beyond them. Therefore your mind slowly becomes crystallized, it gets hard, dull. Or, if you believe in something – in God, in Communism, in a certain political system – that very belief sets the pattern, because it is the outcome of your desire; and your desire strengthens the walls of the pattern. Gradually your mind becomes incapable of quick adjustment, of deep penetration, of real clarity, because you are caught in the labyrinth of your own desires.
So, until we begin to investigate this process which we call the mind, until we are familiar with and understand our own ways of thinking, we cannot possibly find out what love is. There can be no love as long as our minds desire certain things of love, or demand that it act in a certain way. When we imagine what love should be and give to it certain motives, we gradually create a pattern of action with regard to love; but that is not love, it is merely our idea of what love should be.
Say, for example, I possess my wife or husband, as you possess a sari or a coat. If somebody took away your coat, you would be anxious, irritated, angry. Why? Because you regard that coat as your property; you possess it, and through its possession you feel enriched, don’t you? Through possessing many clothes you feel enriched, not only physically but inwardly; and when somebody takes away your coat, you feel irritated because inwardly you are being deprived of that feeling of richness, that sense of possession.
Now, the feeling of possession creates a barrier with regard to love, does it not? If I own you, possess you, is that love? I possess you as I possess a car, a coat, a sari, because in possessing, I feel very gratified, and I depend on that feeling; it is very important to me inwardly. This sense of owning, possessing someone, this emotional dependence on another, is what we call love; but if you examine it, you will find that, behind the word `love’, the mind is taking satisfaction in possession. After all, when you possess many beautiful saris, or a fine car, or a big house, the feeling that it is yours, inwardly gives you great satisfaction.
So, in desiring, wanting, the mind creates a pattern, and in that pattern it gets caught; and then it grows weary, dull, stupid, thoughtless. The mind is the centre of this feeling of possession, the feeling of the `me’ and the `mine: `I own something’, `I am a big man’, `I am a little man’, `I am insulted’, `I am flattered’, `I am clever’, `I am very beautiful’, `I want to be somebody’, `I am the son or the daughter of somebody’. This feeling of the `me’ and the `mine’ is the very core of the mind, it is the mind itself. The more the mind has this feeling of being somebody, of being great, or very clever, or very stupid, and so on, the more it builds walls around itself and becomes enclosed, dull. Then it suffers, for in that enclosure inevitably there is pain. Because it is suffering, the mind says, “What am I to do?” But instead of removing the enclosing walls by awareness, by careful thought, by going into and understanding the whole process by which they are created, it struggles to find something else outside with which to enclose itself again. So the mind gradually becomes a barrier to love; and without understanding what the mind is, which is to understand the ways of our own thinking, the inner source from which there is action, we cannot possibly find out what love is.
Is not the mind also an instrument of comparison? You know what it means to compare. You say, “This is better than that; you compare yourself with somebody who is more beautiful, or less clever. There is comparison when you say, “I remember a river which I saw a year ago, and it is still more beautiful than this one”. You compare yourself with a saint or a hero, with the ultimate ideal. This comparative judgment makes the mind dull; it does not quicken the mind, it does not make the mind comprehensive inclusive. When you are constantly comparing, what happens? When you see the sunset and immediately compare it with a previous sunset, or when you say, “That mountain is beautiful, but I saw a still more beautiful mountain two years ago”, you are really not looking at the beauty which is there before you. So comparison prevents you from looking fully. If, in looking at you, I say, “I know a much nicer person”, I am not really looking at you, am I? My mind is occupied with something else. To really look at a sunset, there must be no comparison; to really look at you, I must not compare you with someone else. It is only when I look at you fully, not with comparative judgment, that I can understand you. When I compare you with another, I do not understand you, I merely judge you, I say you are this or that. So, stupidity arises when there is comparison, because in comparing you with somebody else there is a lack of human dignity. But when I look at you without comparing, then my only concern is to understand you, and in that very concern, which is not comparative, there is intelligence, there is human dignity.
As long as the mind is comparing, there is no love; and the mind is always comparing, weighing, judging, is it not? It is always looking to find out where the weakness is; so there is no love. When the mother and father love their children, they do not compare one child with another. But you compare yourself with someone better, nobler, richer; you are all the time concerned with yourself in relation to somebody else, so you create in yourself a lack of love. In this way the mind becomes more and more comparative, more and more possessive, more and more dependent, thereby establishing a pattern in which it gets caught. Because it cannot look at anything anew, afresh, it destroys the very perfume of life, which is love.
Questioner: What should we ask God to give us?
Krishnamurti: You are very interested in God, are you not? Why? Because your mind is asking for something, wanting something. So it is constantly agitated. If I am asking or expecting something from you, my mind is agitated, is it not?
This boy wants to know what he should ask of God. He does not know, what God is, or what it is he really wants. But there is a general feeling of apprehension, the feeling, “I must ask, I must pray, I must be protected”. The mind is always seeking in every corner to get something; it is always wanting, grasping, watching pushing, comparing, judging, and so it is never still. Observe your own mind and you will see what it is doing, how it tries to control itself, to dominate, to suppress, to find some form of satisfaction, how it is constantly asking, begging, struggling, comparing. We call such a mind very alert; but is it alert? Surely, an alert mind is a still mind, not one that, like a butterfly is chasing all over the place. And it is only a still mind that can understand what God is. A still mind never asks anything of God. It is only the impoverished mind that begs, that asks. What it asks, it can never have, because what it really wants is security comfort, certainty. If you ask anything of God, you will never find God.
Questioner: What is real greatness and how can I be great?
Krishnamurti: You see, the unfortunate thing is that we want to be great. We all want to be great. We want to be a Gandhi or a prime minister, we want to be great inventors, great writers. Why? In education, in religion, in all the departments of our life, we have examples. The great poet, the great orator, the great statesman, the great saint, the great hero – such people are held up as examples, and we want to be like them.
Now, when you want to be like another, you have created a pattern of action, have you not? You have set a limitation on your thought, bound it within certain limits. So your thought has already become crystallized, narrow, limited, stifled. Why do you want to be great? Why do you not look at what you are and understand that? You see, the moment you want to be like another, there is misery, conflict, there is envy, sorrow. If you want to be like the Buddha, what happens? You struggle everlastingly to achieve that ideal. If you are stupid and crave to be clever, you constantly try to leave what you are and go beyond it. If you are ugly and want to be beautiful, you long to be beautiful till you die, or you deceive yourself into thinking you are beautiful. So, as long as you are trying to be something other than what you actually are, your mind merely wears itself out. But if you say, “This is what I am, it is a fact, and I am going to investigate, understand it”, then you can go beyond; for you will find that the understanding of what you are brings great peace and contentment, great insight, great love.
Questioner: Is not love based on attraction?
Krishnamurti: Suppose you are attracted to a beautiful woman or a handsome man. What is wrong with that? We are trying to find out. You see, when you are attracted to a woman, to a man, or to a child, what generally happens? you not only want to be with that person, but you want to possess, to call that person your own. Your body must be near that persons body. So what have you done? The fact is that when you are attracted, you want to possess, you do not want that person to look at anybody else; and when you consider another human being as yours, is there love? Obviously not. The moment your mind creates a hedge as the `mine’ around that person, there is no love.
The fact is that our minds are doing this all the time. That is why we are discussing these things – to see how the mind is working; and perhaps, being aware of its own movements, the mind will be quiet of its own accord.
Questioner: What is prayer? Has it any importance in daily life?
Krishnamurti: Why do you pray? And what is prayer? Most prayer is merely a petitioning, an asking. You indulge in this kind of prayer when you suffer. When you feel all alone, when you are depressed and in sorrow, you ask God for help; so what you call prayer is a petition. The form of prayer may vary, but the intent behind it is generally the same. Prayer, with most people, is a petition, a begging, an asking. Are you doing that? Why do you pray? I am not saying that you should or should not pray. But why do you pray? Is it for more knowledge, for more peace? Do you pray that the world may be free from sorrow? Is there any other kind of prayer? There is prayer which is really not a prayer, but the sending out of good will, the sending out of love the sending out of ideas. What is it you are doing?
When you pray, generally you are asking God, or some saint, to fill your empty bowl, are you not? You are not satisfied with what happens, with what is given, but you want your bowl filled according to your wishes. So your prayer is merely a petition, it is a demand that you should be satisfied, therefore it is not prayer at all. You say to God, “I am suffering, please gratify me; please give me back my brother, my son. please make me rich”. You are perpetuating your own demands, and that is obviously not prayer.
The real thing is to understand yourself, to see why you are perpetually asking for something, why there is in you this demand, this urge to beg. The more you know yourself through awareness of what you are thinking, what you are feeling, the more you will discover the truth of what is; and it is this truth that will help you to be free.
