The moment you are conscious that you are humble, you are not humble. So happiness is not a thing to be pursued; it comes. But if you seek it, it will evade you.
Actual freedom is freedom from dependency, attachment, from the craving for experience. Freedom from the very structure of thought is to be a light to oneself.
Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens. Can one put aside all these screens through which we listen, and really listen?
A mind that listens with complete attention will never look for a result because it is constantly unfolding; like a river, it is always in movement. Such a mind is totally unconscious of its own activity, in the sense that there is no perpetuation of a self, of a “me,” which is seeking to achieve an end.
To respond to any challenge according to one’s conditioning is merely to expand the prison, or to decorate its bars.
Sirs, if you are listening and are not acting, it is like a man who is always tilling but never sowing. It is better not to listen to a truth than to listen without acting, for then it becomes a poison.
Krishnamurti becomes very relevant. Because for him the mind that is capable of producing harmony between nations – groups of human beings – is inseparable from the mind that brings about harmony between two human beings. There is no division between the two activities in a mind that is fully aware.
But what is the point of education at all? Is it merely to cultivate the capacity of memory, passing examinations and getting a job and all the rest, or is education something entirely different? Something more!
Intelligence is not knowledge. If you could read all the books in the world it would not give you intelligence. Intelligence is something very subtle; it has no anchorage. It comes into being only when you understand the total process of the mind – not the mind according to some philosopher or teacher, but your own mind. Your mind is the result of all humanity, and when you understand it you don’t have to study a single book, because the mind contains the whole knowledge of the past.
When there is real danger time disappears, doesn’t it? There is immediate action. But we do not see the danger of many of our problems and therefore we invent time as a means of overcoming them. Time is a deceiver as it doesn’t do a thing to help us bring about a change in ourselves. Time is a movement which man has divided into past, present and future, and as long as he divides it he will always be in conflict.
A problem exists only when the mind desires to get somewhere, to achieve, to become something.
The brain is nourished by reaction and experience; it lives on experience. But experience is always limiting and conditioning; memory is the machinery of action. Without experience, knowledge and memory, action is not possible but such action is fragmentary, limited. Reason, organized thought, is always incomplete; idea, response of thought, is barren and belief is the refuge of thought. All experience only strengthens thought negatively or positively.
Truth cannot be given to you by somebody. You have to discover it; and to discover, there must be a state of mind in which there is direct perception.
The problem now arises of the observer and the observed. The observer says, “I am empty; I don’t like it,” and runs away from it. The observer says, “I am different from the emptiness.” But the observer is the emptiness; it is not emptiness seen by an observer. The observer is the observed. There is a tremendous revolution in thinking, in feeling, when that takes place.
To be free we have to revolt against all inward dependence, and we cannot revolt if we don’t understand why we are dependent. Until we understand and really break away from all inward dependence we can never be free, for only in that understanding can there be freedom.
A profession is only a part of life; but there are also those parts which are hidden, subtle and mysterious.
In all our relationships each one of us builds an image about the other and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves... The actual relationship between two human beings or between many human beings completely ends when there is the formation of images.
Questioner: Does the soul survive after death? KRISHNAMURTI: If you really want to know, how are you going to find out? By reading what Shankara, Buddha or Christ has said about it? By listening to your own particular leader or saint? They may all be totally wrong. Are you prepared to admit this – which means that your mind is in a position to inquire? You must first.
IN THE LIFE we generally lead there is very little solitude. Even when we are alone our lives are crowded by so many influences, so much knowledge, so many memories of so many experiences, so much anxiety, misery and conflict that our minds become duller and duller, more and more insensitive, functioning in a monotonous routine. Are we ever alone? Or are we carrying with us all the burdens of yesterday?
Self-knowledge is obviously a process, not an end in itself; and to know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship. You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship – in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception.