Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

Again, I maintain that no organization can lead man to spirituality.

If an organization be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth.

The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.

Before we can understand the richness and the beauty of fulfillment, mind must free itself from the background of tradition, habit, and prejudice.

Most of us have been trained to oppose and not to criticize.

True criticism lies in trying to understand the full significance of values without the hindrance of defensive reactions.

Before you can act fully and truly, you must know the prison in which you are living, how it has been created;

So through our own egotistic desires we have created a world of nationalities and conflicting sovereign governments, whose function is to prepare for war and force man against man.

self-discipline implies a mind that is tethered to a particular thought or belief or ideal, a mind that is held by a condition; and as an animal that is tethered to a post can only wander within the distance of its rope, so does the mind which is tethered to a belief, which is perverted through self-discipline, wander only within the limitation of that condition.

Through the desire for security—financial, moral, and spiritual—you have created a capitalistic environment in which there is nationality, class distinction, and exploitation. We have created it, you and I. This thing hasn’t miraculously come into being. You will again create another capitalistic, acquisitive system of a different kind, with a different nuance, with a different color, so long as you are seeking security. You may abolish this present pattern, but so long as there is possessiveness, you will create another capitalistic state, with a new phraseology, a new jargon. And the same thing

Clinging to all your particular prejudices, hopes, fears, and preferences, you have individually created this environment, so individually you must break it down and not wait for a system to come and sweep it away.

So, until you understand comprehensively your religious, political, economic, and social desires, and their hindrances, the natural functions of life will be of immense importance, and the first place in your life. Hence, all the innumerable problems of greed, of possessiveness, of sex, of social and racial distinctions have their false measure and false value. But if you were to deal with life, not in parts but as a whole, comprehensively, creatively, with intelligence, then you would see that these problems, which are enervating the mind and destroying creative living, disappear, and then intelligence functions normally, and in that there is an ecstasy.

In India, for example, there are millions starving. The Hindu who is a nationalist says, “Let us first become intensely national; then we shall be able to solve this problem of starvation,” whereas to me, the way to solve the problem of starvation is not to become nationalistic, but the contrary; starvation is a world problem, and this process of isolation but further increases starvation. So if the politician deals with the problems of human life merely as a politician, then such a man creates greater havoc, greater mischief; but if he considers the whole of life without differentiation between races, nationalities, and classes, then he is truly a human being, though he may be a politician.

When the mind is still, tranquil, not seeking any answer or any solution, neither resisting nor avoiding—it is only then that there can be a regeneration, because then the mind is capable of perceiving what is true; and it is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion. This fear of life, this fear of struggle and of new experience, kills in us the spirit of adventure; our whole upbringing and education have made us afraid to be different from our neighbor, afraid to think contrary to the established pattern of society, falsely respectful of authority and tradition.

Instead of awakening the integrated intelligence of the individual, education is encouraging him to conform to a pattern and so is hindering his comprehension of himself as a total process. To attempt to solve the many problems of existence at their respective levels, separated as they are into various categories, indicates an utter lack of comprehension.

Education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts; it is to see the significance of life as a whole. But the whole cannot be approached through the part, which is what governments, organized religions, and authoritarian parties are attempting to do.

We may take degrees and be mechanically efficient without being intelligent.

One who has not studied may be more intelligent than the learned.

Education should help us to discover lasting values so that we do not merely cling to formulas or repeat slogans; it should help us to break down our national and social barriers, instead of emphasizing them, for they breed antagonism between man and man. Unfortunately, the present system of education is making us subservient, mechanical, and deeply thoughtless; though it awakens us intellectually, inwardly it leaves us incomplete, stultified, and uncreative.

Systems, whether educational or political, are not changed mysteriously; they are transformed when there is a fundamental change in ourselves. The individual is of first importance, not the system; and as long as the individual does not understand the total process of himself, no system, whether of the left or of the right, can bring order and peace to the world.

The body is not the instrument of the mind, but body, emotions, and mind make up the total human being, and unless they live together harmoniously, conflict is inevitable.

It is essential that we work together, and it is as if we were building a house. If some of us are building and others are tearing down, the house will obviously never be built. So we must individually be very clear that we really see and understand the necessity of bringing about the kind of education that will produce a new generation capable of dealing with the issues of life as a whole, and not as isolated parts unrelated to the whole.

Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.

If one gets used to disturbance it means that one’s mind has become dull, just as one can get so used to beauty around one that one no longer notices it. One gets indifferent, hard and callous, and one’s mind becomes duller and duller. If we do not get used to it we try to escape from it by taking some kind of drug, joining a political group, shouting, writing, going to a football match or to a temple or church, or finding some other form of amusement.

Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly, or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is, therefore, important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly, and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely, and meaningless.

When the industry of entertainment takes over, as it is gradually doing now, when the young people, the students, the children, are constantly instigated to pleasure, to fancy, to romantic sensuality, the words restraint and austerity are pushed away, never even given a thought.

Now, can we as individuals be aware of our conditioning, and is it possible for the mind to break down all this limitation so that it is free to discover what is truth? Because it seems to me that unless we do free the mind from its conditioning, all our social problems, our conflicts in relationship, our wars and other miseries, are bound to increase and multiply, which is exactly what is happening in the world, not only in our private lives, but in the relationship between individuals and groups of individuals, which we call society.

With most of us, the difficulty is that we are unaware of our escapes. We are so conditioned, so accustomed to our escapes, that we take them as realities. But if we will look more deeply into ourselves, we will see how extraordinarily lonely, how extraordinarily empty, we are under the superficial covering of our escapes.

We think that the man whose mind is occupied with God is more sacred than the man who is thinking of money, but they are factually both the same; both want results, both need to be occupied. So, can the mind be without occupation? That is the problem.