RENEWING THE MIND

      You think on one thing, and you are doing something else. But you want to put into practice what you think, so there is this gap between action and thought; and then you ask how to bridge the gap, how to link your thinking to your action.

            Now, when you want to do something very much, you do it, don’t you? When you want to go and play cricket, or do some other thing in which you are really interested, you find ways and means of doing it; y never ask how to put into practice. You do it because you are eager, because your whole being, your mind and heart are in it.

            But in this other matter you have become very cunning; you think one thing and do another. You say, ‘That is an excellent idea, and intellectually I approve, but I don’t know what to do about it, so please tell me how to put in practice’—which means that you don’t want to do it at ll. What you really want is to postpone action, because you like to be a little bit envious, or whatever it is. You say, ‘Everybody else is envious, so why not I?’, and you just go on as before. But if you really don’t want to be envious, and you see the truth of envy as you see the truth of a cobra, then you cease to be envious, and that is the end of it; you never ask how to be free of envy.

             So what is important is to see the truth of something, and not ask how to carry it out—which really means that you don’t see the truth of it. When you meet the cobra on the road, you don’t ask, ‘What am I to do?’ You understand very well the danger of a cobra, and you stay away from it. But you have never really examined all the implications of envy; nobody has ever talked to you about it, gone into it very deeply with you. You have been told that you must not be envious, but you have never looked into the nature of envy; you have never observed how society and all the organized religions are built on it, on the desire to become something. But the moment you go into envy and really see the truth of it, envy drops away.

            To ask ‘How am I to do it?’ is a thoughtless question, because when you are really interested in something which you don’t know how to do, you go at it and soon begin to find out. If you sit back and say, ‘Please tell me a practical way to get rid of greed’, you will continue to be greedy. But if you inquire into greed with an alert mind, without any prejudice, and if you put your whole being into it, you will discover for yourself the truth of greed; and it is the truth that frees you, but your looking for a way to be free.

QUESTIONER: Why are our desires never fully realized? Why are there always hindrances that prevent us from doing completely as we wish?

KRISHNAMURTI: If your desire to do something is complete, if your whole being is in it without seeking a result, without wanting to fulfill—which means without fear—then there is no hindrance. There is a hindrance, a contradiction only when your desire is incomplete, broken up: you want to do something and at the same time you are afraid to do it, or you half want to do something else. Besides, can you ever fully realize your desires? Do you understand? I will explain.

            Society, which is the collective relationship between man and man, does not want you to have a complete desire, because if you did you would be a nuisance, a danger to society. You are permitted to have respectable desire like ambition, envy—that is perfectly all right. Being made up of human beings who are envious, ambitious, who believe and imitate, society accepts envy, ambition, belief, imitation, even though these are all intimations of fear. As long as your desires fit into the established pattern, you are a respectable citizen. But the moment you have a complete desire, which is not of the pattern, you become a danger; so society is always watching t prevent you from having a complete desire, a desire which would be the expression of your total being and therefore bring about a revolutionary action.

            The action of being is entirely different from the action of becoming. The action of being is so revolutionary that society rejects it and concerns itself exclusively with the action of becoming, which is respectable because it fits into the pattern. But any desire that expresses itself in the action of becoming, which is a form of ambition, has no fulfill mind. Sooner or later it is thwarted, imbedded, frustrated, and we revolt against that frustration in mischievous ways.

            This is a very important question to go into because, as you grow older, you will find that your desires are never really fulfilled. In fulfillment there is always the shadow of frustration, and in your heart there is not a song but a cry. The desire to become—to become a great man, a great saint, a great this or that—has no end and therefore no fulfillment; its demand is a ever for the “more”, and such desire always breeds agony, misery, wars. But when one is free of all desire to become, there is no state of being whose action is totally different. It is. That which is has no time. It does not think in terms of fulfillment. Its very being is its fulfillment.    

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The Function of the Mind

WHEN YOU OBSERVE your own mind you are observing not only the so-called upper levels of the mind but also watching the unconscious; you are seeing what the mind actually does, are you not? That is the only way you can investigate. Do not superimpose what it should do, how it should think or act and so on; that would amount to making mere statements. That is if you say the mind should be this or should not be that, then you stop all investigation and all thinking; or, if you quote some high authority, then you equally stop thinking, don’t you? If you quote Buddha, Christ or XYZ, there is an end to all pursuit, to all thinking and all investigation. So one has to guard against that. You must put aside all these subtleties of the mind if you would investigate this problem of the self together with me.

            What is the function of the mind? To find that out, you must know what the mind is actually doing. What does your mind do? It is all a process of thinking, is it not? Otherwise, the mind is not there. So long the mind is not thinking, consciously or unconsciously, there is no consciousness. We have to find out what the mind that we use in our everyday life, and also the mind of which most of us are unconscious, does in relation to our problems. We must look at the mind as it is and not as it should be.

            Now what is mind as it is functioning? It is actually a process of isolation, is it not? Fundamentally that is what the process of thought is. It is thinking in an isolated form, yet remaining collective. When you observe your own thinking, you will see it is an isolated, fragmentary process. You are thinking according to your reactions, the reactions of your memory, of your experience, of your knowledge, of your belief. You are reacting to all that aren’t you? If I say that there must be a fundamental revolution, you immediately react. You will object to that word ‘revolution’ if you have got good investments, spiritual or otherwise. So your reaction is dependent on your knowledge, on your belief, on your experience. That is an obvious fact. There are various forms of reaction. You say ‘I must be brotherly’, ‘I must co-operate’, ‘I must be friendly’, ‘I must be kind’, and so on. What are these? These are all reactions; but the fundamental reaction of thinking is a process of isolation. You are watching the process of your own mind, each one of you, which means watching your own action, belief, knowledge, experience. All these give security, do they not? They give security; give strength to the process of thinking. That process only strengthens the ‘me’, the mind, the self—whether you call that self high or low. All our religions, all our social sanctions, all our laws are for the support of the individual, the individual self, the separative action; and in opposition to that there is the totalitarian state. If you go deeper into the unconscious, there too it is the same process that is at work. There, we are the collective influenced by the environment, by the climate, by the society, by the father, the mother, the grandfather. There again is the desire to assert, to dominate as an individual, as the ‘me’.

                Is not the function of the mind, as we know it and as we function daily, a process of isolation? Aren’t you seeking individual salvation? You are going to be somebody in the future; or in this very life you are going to be a great man, a great writer. Our whole tendency is to be separated. Can the mind do anything else but that? Is it possible for the mind not to think separatively, in a self-enclosed manner, fragmentarily? That is impossible. So we worship the mind; the mind is extraordinarily important. Don’t you know, the moment you are a little bit cunning, a little bit alert, and have a little accumulated information and knowledge, how important you become in society? You know how you worship those who are intellectually superiors, the lawyers, the professors, the orators, the great writers, the explainers and the expounders. You have cultivated the intellect and the mind.

            The function of the mind is to be separated; otherwise your mind is not there. Having cultivated this process for centuries we find we cannot co-operate; we can only be urged, compelled, driven by authority, fear, either economic or religious. If that is the actual state, not only consciously but also at the deeper levels, in our motives, our intentions, our pursuits, how can there be co-operation? How can there be intelligent coming together to do something? As that is almost impossible, religions and organized social parties force the individual to certain forms of discipline. Discipline then becomes imperative if we want to come together, to do thing together.

            Until we understand how to transcend this separative thinking, this process of giving emphasis to the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’, whether in the collective form or in individual form, we shall not have peace; we shall have constant conflict and wars. Our problem is how to bring an end to the separative process of thought. Can thought ever destroy the self, thought being the process of verbalization and of reaction? Thought is nothing else but reaction; thought is not creative. Can such thought put an end to itself? That is what we are trying to find out. When I think along these lines: ‘I must discipline’, ‘I must think more properly’, ‘I must be this or that’, thought compelling itself, urging itself, disciplining itself to be something or not to be something. Is that not a process of isolation? It is therefore not that integrated intelligence which functions as a whole, from which alone there can be co-operation.

            How are you to come to the end of thought? Or rather how is thought, which is isolated, fragmentary and partial, to come to an end? How do you set about it? Will your so-called discipline destroy it? Obviously, you have not succeeded all these long years, otherwise you would not be here. Please examine the disciplining process, which solely thought process, in which there is subjection, repression, control, domination—all affecting the unconscious, which asserts itself later as you grow older. Having tried for such a long time to no purpose, you must have found that discipline is obviously not the process to destroy the self. The self cannot be destroyed through discipline, because discipline is a process of strengthening the self. Yet all your religious support it; all your meditations, your assertions are based on this. Will knowledge destroy the self? Will belief destroy it? In other words, will anything that we are at present doing, any of the activities in which we are at present engaged in order to get at the root of the self, will any of that succeed? Is not all this a fundamental waste in a thought process of isolation, of reaction? What do you do when you realize fundamentally or deeply that thought cannot end itself? What happens? You understand that reaction is conditioned and that, through conditioning, there can be no freedom either at the beginning or at the end—and freedom is always at the beginning and not at the end.

            When you realize that any reaction is form of conditioning and therefore gives continuity to the self in different ways, what actually taken place? You must be very clear in this matter, belief, knowledge, discipline, experience, the whole process of achieving a result or an end, ambition, becoming something in this life or in a future life—all these are a process of isolation, a process which brings destruction, misery, wars, from which there is no escape through collective action, however much you may be threatened with concentration camps and all the rest of it. Are you aware of that fact? What is the state of the mid which says ‘It is so’, ‘That is my problem’, ‘That is exactly where I am’, ‘I see what knowledge and discipline can do, what ambition does’? Surely, if you see all that, there is already a different process at work.

            We see the ways of the intellect but we do not see the way of love. The way of love is not to be found through the intellect. The intellect, with all its ramifications, with all its desires, ambitions, pursuits, must come to an end for love, you co-operate, and you are not thinking of yourself? That is the highest form of intelligence—not when you love as a superior entity or when you are in a good position, which is nothing but fear. When your vested interests are there, there can be no love; there is only the process of exploitation, born of fear. So love can come into being only when the mind is not there. Therefore you must understand the whole process of the mind, the function of the mind.

            It is only when we know how to love each other that there can be co-operation, that there can be intelligent functioning, a coming over together any question. Only then is it possible to find out what God is, what truth is. Now, we are trying to find truth through intellect, through imitation—which is idolatry. Only when you discard completely , through understanding, the whole structure of the self, can that which is eternal, timeless, immeasurable, come into being. You cannot go to it; it comes to you.   

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Psychological Revolution

 LIFE IS SERIOUS; one has to give one’s mind and one’s heart to it, completely; one cannot play with it. There are so many problems; there is so much confusion in the world; there is a corruption of society and the various religious and political divisions and contradictions. There is great injustice, sorrow and poverty—not only the poverty outside but the poverty inside. Any serious man, fairly intelligent and not just sentimentally emotional, seeing all this, sees the necessity of change.

          Change is either a complete psychological revolution in the nature of the whole human being, or it is a mere attempt at the reformation of the social structure. The real crisis in the life of man, you and I, is whether such a complete psychological revolution can be brought about, independent of nationality and of all religious divisions.

          We have built this society; our parents and their parents before them, have produced this corrupt structure and we are the product of that. We are society, we are the world, and if we do not change ourselves radically, really very, very deeply, then there is no possibility of changing the social order. Most of us do not realize this. Everyone, generally the younger generation, says, ‘We must change society.’ We talk a great deal but we do nothing about it. It is we ourselves that have to change, not society. Do please realize this. We have to bring about in ourselves, at the highest and at the deepest levels, a change in our whole way of thinking, living, feeling; then only is the social change possible. Mere social revolution, the change of the structure of society outwardly by physical revolution, inevitably brings about, as has been seen, dictatorship or the totalitarian State, which deny all freedom.

          To bring about such a change in ourselves is a lifetime’s work, not just something for a few days then to be forgotten; it is a constant application, a constant awareness of what is going on, within and without.

          We have to live in relationship, without it we cannot possibly exist. To be relate means to live totally, wholly, for this there must be in ourselves a radical transformation. How shall we radically transform ourselves? If this seriously interests you then we shall have communication with each other; we shall think together, fell and understand together. So how can man, you and I, totally change? That is the question and nothing else is relevant; it is a question not only for the young but also for the old.

          In this world there is tremendous agony, immense sorrow, war, brutality and violence; there is starvation of which you know nothing. One realizes that there is so much that can be done for the vast fragmentation that there is, in the political world with its many parties and in the many religions; they all talk about peace but deny it, for there can only be peace, reality and love, where there is no division.

          So again, seeing this vast fragmentation both inwardly and outwardly, the only issue is that a human being must radically, profoundly, bring about in him—self a revolution. This is very serious problem, it is an issue tat affects one’s whole life; in it is involved meditation, truth, beauty, love. These are not just words. One has to find a way of living where they come into reality.

          One of the most important things in life is love. But what is called love is associated with sex, which has become so tremendously important; everything seems to revolve around sex. Why human beings right through the world, whatever their cultures be, whatever religious sanctions say, find sex so extraordinarily important? And with it is associated the word ‘love’. Why?

          When you look at your own life, you see how it has become mechanical; our education is mechanical; we acquire knowledge, information, which gradually becomes mechanical. We are machines, second-hand people. We repeat what others have said. We read enormously. W are the results of thousands of years of propaganda. We have become psychologically and intellectually mechanical. In a machine there is no freedom. Sex offers freedom; there for a few seconds is freedom, you have completely forgotten yourselves and your mechanical life. So sex has become enormously significant; its pleasure you call love. But is love pleasure? Or is love something entirely different, something in which there is no jealousy, no dependencies, no possessiveness?

                 One has to give one's life to find out what love means, just as one has to give one's whole life to find what meditation is and what truth is. Truth has nothing whatsoever to do with belief.

          Belief comes into being when there is fear. One believes in God because in oneself one is so completely uncertain. One sees the transient things of life; there is no certainty, there is no security, there is no comfort, but immense sorrow. So thought projects something with the attribute permanency, called God, in which the human mind takes the comfort. But that is not truth.

          Truth is something that is to be found when there is no fear. Again, one has to give a great deal of attention to understand what fear is, both physical and psychological fear. One has these problems in life which one has not understood, which one has not transcended. Thereby one continues a corrupt society, whose morality is immoral and in virtue, goodness, beauty, love, of which we talk so much, soon become corrupt.

          Will the understandings of these problems take time? Is change immediate? Or is it to be brought about through the evolution of time? If time is taken—that is to say, at the end of your life you have reached enlightenment—then in that time you continue to sow seeds of corruption, war, hatred. So can this radical inward revolution happen instantly? It can happen instantly when you see the danger of all this. It is like seeing the danger of a precipice, of a wild animal, of a snake; then there is instant action. But we do not see the danger of all this fragmentation which takes place when the ‘self’, the ‘me’, becomes important—and the fragmentation of the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’. The moment there is that fragmentation is yourself there must be conflict; and conflict is the very root of corruption. So it behooves one to find out for oneself the beauty of meditation, for then the mind, being free and unconditioned, perceives what is true.

          To ask questions is important; it is not only that one exposes oneself, but in asking questions one will find for oneself the answer. If one puts the right question the right answer is in the question. One must question everything in life, one's short hair or long hair, one's dress, the way one walks, the way one eats, what one thinks, how one feels—everything must be questioned. Then the mind becomes extraordinarily sensitive, alive and intelligent. Such a mind can love; such a mind alone knows what a religious mind is.

Questioner: What is the meditation of which you speak?

EDITOR : Do you know anything of what meditation means even?

Questioner: I know there are various forms of meditation, but I do not know which one you speak of.

EDITOR :  A system of meditation is not meditation. A system implies a method, which you practice in order to achieve something at the end. Something practiced over and over again becomes mechanical, does it not? How can a mechanical mind, which has been trained and twisted, tortured to comply to the pattern of what it calls meditation—hoping to achieve a reward at the end—be free to observe, to learn?

          There are various schools, in India and further East, where they teach methods of meditation; it is really most appalling. It means training the mind mechanically; it therefore ceases to be free and does not understand the problem.

          So when we use the word ‘meditation’ we do not mean something that is practiced. We have no method. Meditation means awareness: to be aware of what you are doing, what you are thinking, what you feeling, aware without any choice, to observe, to learn. Meditation is to be aware of one’s conditioning, how one is conditioned by the society in which one life, in which one has been brought up, by the religious propaganda—aware without any choice, without distortion, without wishing it were different. Out of this awareness comes attention, the capacity to be completely attentive. Then there is freedom to see things as they actually are, without distortion. The mind becomes unconfused, clear, sensitive; such meditation brings about a quality of the mind that is completely silent—of which quality one can go on talking, but it will have no meaning

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PARENTS AND EDUCATION

THE right kind of education is begin with the educator, who must understand himself and be free from established patterns of thought; for what he is, that he imparts. If ha has not been rightly educated, what can he teach except the same mechanical knowledge on which he himself has been brought up? The problem, therefore, is not the child, but the parent and the teacher; the problem is to educate the

educator.

            If we who are the educators do not understand ourselves, if we do not understand our relationship with the child but merely stuff with information and make him pass examinations, how can we possibly bring about a new kind of education? The pupil is there to be guided and helped; but if the guide, the helper is himself confused and narrow, nationalistic and theory-ridden, then naturally his pupil will be what he is, and education becomes a source of further confusion and strife.

            If we see the truth of this, we will realize how important it is that we begin to educate ourselves rightly. To be concerned with our own re-education is far more necessary that to worry about the future well-being and security of the child.

            To educate the educator—that is, to give him understand himself—is one of the most difficult undertakings, because most of us are already crystallized within a system of thought or a pattern of action; we have already given ourselves over to some ideology, to a religion, or to a particular standard of conduct. That is why we teach the child what to think and not how to think.

            Moreover, parents and teachers are largely occupied with their own conflicts and sorrows. Rich or poor, most parents are absorbed in their worries and trials. They are not gravely concerned about their present social and moral deterioration, but only desire that their children shall be equipped to get on in the world. They are anxious about the future of their children, eager to have them educated to hold secure positions, or to marry well.

            Contrary to what is generally believed, most parents do not love their children, though they talk of loving them. If parents really loved their children, there would be no emphasis laid on the family and the nation as opposed to the whole, which creates social and racial divisions between men and brings about war and starvation. It is really extraordinary that, while people are rigorously trained to be lawyers or doctors, they may become parents without undergoing any training whatsoever to fit them for this all-important task.

            More often than not, the family, with its separate tendencies, encourages the general process of isolation, thereby becoming a deteriorating factor in society.  It is only when there is love and understanding that the walls of isolation are broken down, and then the family is no longer a closed circle, it is neither a prison nor a refuge; then the parents are in communion, not only with their children, but also with their neighbors.

            Being absorbed in their own problems, many parents shift to the teacher the responsibility for the well-being of their children; and then it is important that the educator help in the education of the parents as well.

            He must talk to them, explaining that the confused state of the world mirrors their own individual confusion. He must point out that scientific progress in itself cannot bring about a radial change in existing values; that technical training, which is now called education, has not given man freedom or made him any happier; and that to condition the student to accept the present environment is not conducive to intelligence. He must tell them what he is attempting to do for their child, and how he is setting about it. He has to awaken the parents’ confidence, not by assuming the authority of a specialist dealing with ignorant laymen, but by talking over with them the child’s temperament, difficulties, aptitudes and on.

            If the teacher takes a real interest in the child as an individual, the parents will have confidence in him. In this process, the teacher is educating the parents as well as himself, while learning from them in return. Right education is a mutual task demanding patience, consideration and affection. Enlightened teachers in an enlightened community could work out this problem of how to bright up children and experiments along these lines should be made on a small scale by interested teachers and thoughtful parents.

            Do parents ever ask themselves why they have children? Do the have children to perpetuate their name, to carry on their property? Do they want children merely for the sake of their own delight, to satisfy their own emotional needs? If so, then the children become a mere projection of the desires and fears of their parents.

            Can parents claim to love their children when, by educating them wrongly, they foster envy, enmity and ambition? Is it love that stimulates the national and racial antagonisms which lead to war, destruction and utter misery, that sets man against man in the name of religions and ideologies? 

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Nature and Earth

What is our relationship with nature?

 I do not know if you have discovered your relationship with nature. There is no “right” relationship; there is only the understanding of relationship. Right relationship implies the mere acceptance of a formula, as does right thought. Right thought and right thinking are two different things. Right thought is merely confirming to what is right, what is respectable, whereas right thinking is movement, it is the product of understanding, and understanding is constantly undergoing modification, change. Similarly, there is a different between right relationship and understanding our relationship with the nature. What is your relationship with nature? – nature being the rivers, the trees, the swift-flying birds, the fish in the water, the minerals understanding the earth, the waterfalls and shallow pools. What is your relationship to them? Most of us are not aware of that relationship. We never look at a tree, or if we do, it is with the view of using that tree—either to sit in its shade or to cut it down for lumber. In other words, we look at trees with a utilitarian purpose; we never look at a tree without projecting ourselves and utilizing it for our own convenience.

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Do We Love Our earth, or Just Use It as we Do Each Other?

We treat the earth and its products in the same way. There is no love of earth, there is only usage of earth. If one really loved the earth, there would be frugality in using the things of the earth. That is, sir, if we were to understand our relationship with the earth, we should be very careful in the use we made of the things of the earth. The understanding of one’s relationship with nature is as difficult as understanding one’s relationship with one’s neighbor, wife, and children. Btu we have not given a thought to it, we have never sat down to look at the stars, the moon, or the trees. We are too busy with social or political activities. Obviously, these activities are escapes from ourselves, and to worship nature is also an escape from ourselves. We are always using nature, either as an escape or for utilitarian ends—we never actually stop and love the earth or the things of the earth. We never enjoy the rich fields, though we utilize them to feed and clothe ourselves. We never like to till the earth with our hands—we are ashamed to work our hands.

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Maps Are Political Opinions, Not Facts:

The Earth Is not ‘Yours’ and ‘Mine’

So, we have lost our relationship with nature. If once we understood that relationship, its real significance, then we would not divide property into yours and mine; though one might own a piece of land and build a house on it, it would cease to be ‘mine’ or ‘yours’ in the exclusive sense—it would be more a means of taking shelter. Because we do not love the earth and the things of the earth but merely utilize them, we are insensitive to the beauty of a waterfall, we have lost the touch of life, we have never sat with our backs against the trunk of the tree; and since we do not love nature, we do not know how to love the human beings and animals.

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We Are Caretakers—Each of Us Temporary At That

It does not mean that you cannot use the earth, but you must use the earth as it is to be used. Earth is there to be loved and cared for, not to be divided as ‘yours’ and ‘mine’. It is foolish to plant a tree in a compound and call it ‘mind’.

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