

Think on These Things

Part 1

This Matter of Culture Chapter 11

HAVE YOU EVER sat very quietly with closed eyes and watched the movement of your own thinking? Have you watched your mind working - or rather, has your mind watched itself in operation, just to see what your thoughts are, what your feelings are, how you look at the trees, at the flowers, at the birds, at people, how you respond to a suggestion or react to a new idea? Have you ever done this? If you have not, you are missing a great deal. To know how one's mind works is a basic purpose of education. If you don't know how your mind reacts, if your mind is not aware of its own activities, you will never find out what society is. You may read books on sociology, study social sciences, but if you don't know how your own mind works you cannot actually understand what society is, because your mind is part of society; it is society. Your reactions, your beliefs, your going to the temple, the clothes you wear, the things you do and don't do and what you think - society is made up of all this, it is the replica of what is going on in your own mind. So your mind is not apart from society, it is not distinct from your culture, from your religion, from your various class divisions, from the ambitions and conflicts of the many. All this is society, and you are part of it. There is no `you' separate from society.


You see, all reformers - it does not matter who they are - are merely concerned with bettering the conditions within the prison. They never tell you not to conform, they never say, "Break through the walls of tradition and authority, shake off the conditioning that holds the mind". And that is real education: not merely to require you to pass examinations for which you have crammed up, or to write out something which you have learnt by heart, but to help you to see the walls of this prison in which the mind is held. Society influences all of us, it constantly shapes our thinking, and this pressure of society from the outside is gradually translated as the inner; but, however deeply it penetrates, it is still from the outside, and there is no such thing as the inner as long as you do not break through this conditioning. You must know what you are thinking, and whether you are thinking as a Hindu, or a Moslem, or a Christian; that is, in terns of the religion you happen to belong to. You must be conscious of what you believe or do not believe. All this is the pattern of society and, unless you are aware of the pattern and break away from it, you are still a prisoner though you may think you are free.




Krishnamurti: That is a good question, is it not?




Krishnamurti: Should you have ideas about people? Should you form an opinion, make a judgment about someone? When you have ideas about your teacher, what is important to you? Not your teacher, but your ideas about him. And that is what happens in life, is it not? We all have opinions about people; we say, "He is good", "He is vain", "He is superstitious", "He does this or that". We have a screen of ideas between ourselves and another person, so we never really meet that person. Hawing seen someone do something, we say, "He has done this thing; so it becomes important to date events. Do you understand? If you see someone do something which you consider to be good or bad, you then have an opinion of him which tends to become fixed and, when you meet that person ten days or a year later, you still think of him in terms of your opinion. But during this period he may have changed; therefore it is very important not to say, "He is like that", but to say, "He was like that in February", because by the end of the year he may be entirely different. If you say of anyone, "I know that person", you may be totally wrong, because you know him only up to a certain point, or by the events which took place on a particular date, and beyond that you don't know him at all. So what is important is to meet another human being always with a fresh mind, and not with your prejudices, with your fixed ideas, with your opinions.

Questioner: What is feeling and how do we feel?

Krishnamurti: If you have lessons in physiology, your teacher has probably explained to you how the whole human nervous system is built up. When somebody pinches you, you feel pain. What does that mean? Your nerves carry a sensation to the brain, the brain translates it as pain, and then you say, "You have hurt me". Now, that is the physical part of feeling.

Similarly, there is psychological feeling, is there not? If you think you are marvellously beautiful and somebody says, "You are an ugly person", you feel hurt. Which means what? You hear certain words which the brain translates as unpleasant or insulting, and you are disturbed; or somebody flatters you and you say, "How pleasurable it is to hear this". So feeling-thinking is a reaction - a reaction to a pinprick, to an insult, to flattery, and so on. The whole of this is the process of feeling-thinking but it is much more complex than this, and you can go deeper and deeper into it.

You see, when we have a feeling, we always name it, don't we? We say it is pleasurable or painful. When we are angry we give that feeling a name, we call it anger; but have you ever thought what would happen if you did not name a feeling? You try it. The next time you get angry, don't name it, don't call it anger; just be aware of the feeling without giving it a name, and see what happens.






The urge to find out what truth is, what God is, is the only real urge, and all other urges are subsidiary. When you throw a stone into still water, it makes expanding circles. The expand- ing circles are the subsidiary movements, the social reactions, but the real movement is at the centre, which is the movement to find happiness, God, truth; and you cannot find it as long as you are caught in fear, held by a threat. From the moment there is the arising of threat and fear, culture declines.


Questioner: What do you think of Indians?




Think on These Things

Part 1

This Matter of Culture Chapter 11

Texts and talks of Jiddu Krishnamurti. Krishnamurti quotes. Books about
J Krishnamurti. Philosophy.

Art of War

ancient Chinese treatise by Sun Tzu

free to read online

48 Laws of Power

a different universe by Robert Greene?

free summary online