Jk. Mind

 

Bahnschrift SemiBold;JK

what is the mind? Let us go into it, unravel it.

The mind is the capacity to recognize, to hoard knowledge as memory; it is the result of centuries of human endeavour, experience and conflict, and of the present individual experiences in relation to the past and the future; it is the capacity to design, to communicate, to feel, to think rationally or irrationally. There is the mind that feels gentle, quiet, serene, and also brutal, ruthless, superior, arrogant, vain; that is in a state of self-contradiction, pulled in different directions. It is the mind that says, `I am English', or `American', or `Indian'. There is the unconscious mind, the deep down collective, the inherited; and there is the superficial mind that has been educated according to a certain technique, a code of behaviour, action and knowledge. It is the mind that is seeking, searching, wanting permanency, security; the mind that lives on hope, but knows only frustration, failure and despair; the mind that can remember, recollect; the mind that is very sharp, precise; the mind that knows what it is to love, and to want to be loved.

Surely, all that is the totality, is it not? That is the mind which you and I have - and the animals too, only much less of it. And then there is the mind which says it must go beyond all this, must reach out somewhere, must experience a totality, a timeless, immeasurable thing.

So, all that is the mind. We know of it in segments, when we are jealous, angry, hateful; or we are aware of it in self-contradiction; or there are dreams, hints, intimations from the past. All that is the mind. It is the mind that says, `I am the soul, I am the Atman, the higher self, the lower self, this, that and the other'. It is the mind that is caught within the limits of time, because all that is of time. And it is the mind that is a slave to words, like the English are slaves to the words `the Queen', `the Christ', and the Indian is a slave to his set of words; and the Chinese, the Communists to theirs, and so on.

Now realizing all this, then how do you proceed? What, actually, is the mind?

Let us approach it differently. You see, sirs, there must be a change; and a calculated change is no change at all. The change to achieve a certain result, through practice, discipline, control, ruthless domination - all that is merely the continuity of the same thing in a different guise. And the progressive, evolutionary change - that has gone too, we have finished with it. The only change is the radical, immediate change.

 How is the mind to come to that change, so that it has wiped away its conditioning, its brutalities, its stupidities, its fears, its guilt, its anxieties, and is new? I say it is possible, not through the analytical process, not through investigation, examination and all that. I say it is possible to wipe the slate clean. at one stroke, on the instant.

 Do nor translate this as the grace of God; do not say, `It is not possible for me but it may be for someone else' - then we are not facing the issue, we are avoiding it. That is why I said at the beginning that

 we need very clear, precise thinking, a ruthless enquiry.

Question: This instantaneous wiping away - surely, there can be no thought of any kind in it.

Krishnamurti: But how is it to be done, what is the action? You understand, sir, what I mean? You know very well what is happening in the world - probably better than I do, because I do not read newspapers, I do not study them; because I travel and I see people, the big ones and the insignificant ones, and I listen. You know that there must be a tremendous revolution within one to meet the challenge of this chaotic, messy world. I say it is possible: and I would like, if I may, without stopping you from discussing, to continue to enquire along those lines. To bring about a radical change - is not that your problem, whether you are young or whether you are old? So, how do we tackle this thing?

Question: That seems to be something we are trying to grasp but cannot.

Krishnamurti: When we try to grasp, when we try to capture something, surely we are already translating this into terms of the old. Sir, must you not be very clear whether this is your problem? If I am imposing the problem upon you, then there will be a state of contradiction between you and me. I am not imposing, I am only stating the problem. If you do not see it, let us discuss it. But if you do see it, then it is your problem, not mine. Then you and I have a relationship; then we are in contact with each other to find out an answer to it. And if it is not your problem, then I say, `Why isn't it?' Please look at what is happening in the world: there is more and more externalization; the outward things are becoming more and more important - going to the moon, who gets there first; you know all the infantile things that are becoming tremendously important. So, if this is a problem for all of us, then how do we answer it, how do we set about it?

Question: We can only say we do not know.

Krishnamurti: When we say, `I do not know', what do we mean?

I REALLY DONT KNOW

I KNOW BUT WAITING FOR RETRIVAL ........TILL THEN ITS THE NOT KNOWING STAGE

Question: I mean just that.

Krishnamurti: No, excuse me, you do not mean that. Let me unravel it a little bit, because

 there are different states of `knowing' and `not-knowing'. If you were asked a familiar question you would answer immediately, would you not? Because you are familiar with it, your response is instantaneous. If you were asked a more complicated question, you would take time to reply; and the lag between the question and the response is the process of thinking, is it not? That thinking is a looking into memory to find the answer.

 This is obvious; it is not a complicated thing I am talking about, it is very simple. Then if another question were asked, still more complicated, and to which for the moment you do not know the answer, you say, `I do not know', but

 you are waiting - waiting to find out the answer either from the reservoir of your own memory, or for somebody else to tell you. So when you say, `I do not know' it means that you are waiting, expecting to find out. Now, just a minute. Can you honestly say, `I do not know' - which means there is no expectation, and no looking into memory? So there are the two, states, when there is the question of how is there to be a new mind: you can either say, `I do not know', meaning you are waiting for me to tell you; or, you actually do not know, and therefore there is no expectation, no wanting to, experience something - and that may be the essential.

Let us go back a little because I feel it is important to understand what is meant by perceiving, seeing, observing. How do we really see something?

Question: It seems to me that we can only see through words.

Krishnamurti: Do you understand through words? Of course we use words to communicate, so that you can talk to me and I can talk to you; but that is not slavishness to the words. Are we aware how slavish we are to words? The words `English', `Russian', `God', `love' - are we not slaves to these words? And 

being slaves to words, how can you comprehend something that is total, not held within a word? Being a slave to the word `love' - that word which is so misused, corrupted, divided as sexual and divine - , can I understand the total nature of what it is, which must be an astonishing thing?

 The whole universe is contained in the meaning, the significance of that word.

Most unfortunately, you see, we are slaves to words and we are trying to reach something which is beyond words. To uproot, to shatter the words and be free of words gives an extraordinary perception, vitality, vigour. And does it take time, to free yourself from words? Do you say, `I must think about it first', or `I must practise awareness', or `I will read Bertrand Russell'? Or do you actually see that a mind which is a slave to words is incapable of looking, observing, feeling, seeing? - therefore that very clarity, that very truth destroys slavishness.

Question: One might see for an instant, and then the mind comes in again. 

And perhaps we are also slaves to the word `mind'. We worship the mind, and all our education is the cultivation of the mind. And surely, what we are trying to find out is the totality of something which is not the word - the feeling that one embraces the whole thing without the barrier of the word.

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Jiddu Krishnamurti believed in total awareness as being essential for a free mind. Human beings always learned from their past, and it was important that they looked inwards and freed themselves from self-perpetuated torment. It was also necessary that they avoided repression

religion was always the result of past conditioning. A mind should be investigative and scientific. One could not get pleasure without difficulty, for which living in totality, not in segments, was a must. We often dwell on one part of the consciousness and miss its holistic aspect. 

uncover the mind layer by layer to achieve complete growth. Deeper delving into it and a study of J. Krishnamurti's philosophy is a must for the understanding of human consciousness, in a manner that is simple, yet abstract and deep.

Krishnamurti states so very well that one cannot know of something unless the other is also present. He gives the example of non-violence: one cannot know of non-violence unless you know what violence is. Life itself is a movement of relationships, and we try to manipulate and control it even in the most common events of life. For example, when someone praises us, we grow in pride, when someone insults us we have rage filled in us; and what we do is behave in ways that increase positive reactions and decrease negative comments; the point being that we are only living a half automated life, and doing something habitually. He emphasises that total awareness, and continuous awareness, will lead to living a non-habitual life, and no amount of discipline will do it  and once again, discipline is not freedom from the known (Krishnamurti, 1975[3]).

every experience in our life is imprinted deeply in our mind whose strength will vary in pleasure and pain and will crystallise in our life later on. This sounds as familiar as Freud, who said childhood experiences form the base of our adulthood and our adjustment to life; but it is more than this. every action we try to connect positively or negatively to, comes back to form a habit, and does not allow a free mind to grow. Sometimes, even suffering is based on our habits and when we try to overcome one habit, we form another; and eventually, as humans, we form the habit of repression. We must understand that there is no stopping of habits, but rather only a cessation. We have to understand it and overcome it, which is acquired through great alertness and patience. The idea of a free mind is to look inward with this patience and alertness.