Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

That is what is happening. When you are seeking an attainment, a result, an overcoming of the turmoil, and not considering the “you,” the “I” consciousness, and the end which you are ceaselessly and consciously, or unconsciously, pursuing, naturally you must create exploiters, either of the past or the present; and you are caught up in their pettinesses, their jealousies, their disciplines, their disharmonies, and their divisions. So the mere desire to go through this turmoil ever creates further problems, for there is no consideration of the actor or the manner of his action, but merely the consideration of the scene of turmoil as a means to get to an end. Now to me, the turmoil, the end, and the “you” are the same; there is no division. This division is artificial, and it is created by the desire to gain, by the pursuit of acquisitive accumulation, which is born of insufficiency. In becoming conscious of emptiness, of shallowness, one begins to realize the utter insufficiency of one’s own thinking and feeling, and so in one’s thought there arises the idea of accumulation, and from that is born this division between “you,” the self-consciousness, and the end. To me, as I said, there can be no such distinction, because the moment you fulfill there can no longer be the actor and the act, but only that creative movement of thought which does not seek a result, and so there is a continual living, which is immortality.