Krishnamurti - On Freedom

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born in India in 1895 and, at the age of thirteen, taken up by the Theosophical Society, which considered him to be the vehicle for the world teacher whose advent it had been proclaiming. Krishnamurti was soon to emerge as a powerful, uncompromising, and unclassifiable teacher, whose talks and writings were linked to any specific religion and were neither of the East nor the West but for the whole world. Firmly repudiating the messianic image, in 1929 he dramatically dissolved the large and monied organization that had been built around him and declared truth to be a pathless land, which could not be approached by any formalized religion, philosophy, or sect.

For the rest of his life he insistently rejected the guru-status that others tried to foist upon him. He continued to attract large audiences throughout the world but claimed no authority, wanted no disciples, and spoke always as one individual to another. At the core of his teaching was the realization that fundamental changes in society can be brought about only by a transformation of individual consciousness. The need for self-knowledge and an understanding of the restrictive, separative influences of religious and nationalistic conditionings, was constantly stressed. Krishnamurti pointed always to the urgent need for openness, for that vast space in the brain in which there is unimaginable energy. This seems to have been the wellspring of his own creativity and the key to his catalytic impact on such a wide variety of people.

He continued to speak all over the world until he died in 1986 at the age of ninety. His talks and dialogues, journals and letters have been collected into more than sixty books. From that vast body of teachings this series of theme books has been compiled. Each book in the series focuses on an issue that has particular relevance and urgency in our daily lives.

How is one to transform, to bring about this radical change from becoming to being? A person who is becoming and therefore striving, struggling, battling with himselfhow is such a person to know that state of being that is virtue, that is freedom? I hope I am making the question clear. That is, I have been struggling for years to become something: not to be envious, to become non-envious. And how am I to shed, to drop the struggle, and just be? Because, as long as I struggle to become what I call righteous, I am obviously setting up a process of self-enclosure; and there is no freedom in enclosure. So all that I can do is to be aware, passively aware, of my process of becoming. If I am shallow, I can be passively aware that I am shallow, without the struggle to become something. If I am angry, if I am jealous, if I am unmerciful, envious, I can just be aware of that and not contend with it. The moment we contend with a quality, we give emphasis to the struggle, and therefore strengthen the wall of resistance. This wall of resistance is considered righteousness, but for a righteous man, truth can never come into being. It is only to the free man that truth can come, and to be free, there cannot be the cultivation of memory, which is righteousness.

So one has to be aware of this struggle, of this constant battle. Just be aware without contention, without condemnation, and if you are truly watchful, passively yet alertly aware, you will find that envy, jealousy, greed, violence, and all these things drop away, and there comes orderquietly, speedily, there comes order that is not righteous, that is not enclosing. For virtue is freedom, it is not a process of enclosure. It is only in freedom that truth can come into being. Therefore, it is essential to be virtuous, not righteous, because virtue brings order. It is only the righteous man that is confused, that is in conflict; it is only the righteous man that develops his will as a means of resistance, and a man of will can never find truth, because he is never free. Being, which is recognizing what is, accepting and living with what isnot trying to transform it, not condemning itbrings about virtue, and in that there is freedom. Only when the mind is not cultivating memory, when it is not seeking righteousness as a means of resistance, is there freedom, and in that freedom there comes reality, the bliss of which must be experienced.

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Question: You dont seem to think that we in India have won our independence. According to you, what would be the state of real freedom?

Krishnamurti: Sir, freedom becomes isolation when it is nationalistic, and isolation inevitably leads to conflict, because nothing can exist in isolation. To be is to be related, and merely to isolate yourself within a national frontier invites confusion, sorrow, starvation, conflict, warwhich has been proved over and over again. So independence as a State apart inevitably leads to conflict and to war, because independence for most of us implies isolation. And when you have isolated yourself as a national entity, have you gained freedom? Have you gained freedom from exploitation, from class struggle, from starvation, from conflicting religiosity, from the priest, from communal strife, from leadership? Obviously you have not. You have only driven out the white exploiter, and the brown has taken his placeprobably a little more ruthlessly. We have the same thing as before, the same exploitation, the same priests, the same organized religion, the same superstitions, and class wars. And has that given us freedom? Sir, we dont want to be free. Dont let us fool ourselves. Because freedom implies intelligence, love; freedom implies non-exploitation, non-submission to authority; freedom implies extraordinary virtue. As I said, righteousness is always an isolating process, for isolation and righteousness go together; whereas virtue and freedom are co-existent. A sovereign nation is always isolated, and therefore can never be free; it is a cause of constant strife, of suspicion, antagonism, and war.

Surely freedom must begin with the individual, who is a total process, not antagonistic to the mass. The individual is the total process of the world, and if he merely isolates himself in nationalism or in righteousness, then he is the cause of disaster and misery. But if the individualwho is a total process, not opposed to the mass, but who is a result of the mass, of the wholeif the individual transforms himself, his life, then for him there is freedom. And because he is the result of a total process, when he liberates himself from nationalism, from greed, from exploitation, he has direct action upon the whole. The regeneration of the individual is not in the future but now, and if you postpone your regeneration to tomorrow, you are inviting confusion, you are caught in the wave of darkness. Regeneration is now, not tomorrow, because understanding is only in the present. You dont understand now because you dont give your heart and mind, your whole attention, to that which you want to understand. If you give your mind and heart to understand, you will have understanding. Sir, if you give your mind and your heart to find out the cause of violence, if you are fully aware of it, you will be non-violent now. But unfortunately, you have so conditioned your mind by religious postponement and social ethics that you are incapable of looking at it directlyand that is our trouble.

So understanding is always in the present and never in the future. Understanding is now, not in the days to come. And freedom, which is not isolation, can come into being only when each one of us understands his responsibility to the whole. The individual is the product of the wholehe is not a separate process, he is the result of the whole. After all, you are the result of all India, of all humanity. You may call yourself by whatever name you like, but you are the result of a total process, which is man. And if you, the psychological you, are not free, how can you have freedom outwardly; of what significance is external freedom? You may have different governmentsand good God, is that freedom? You may have the multiplication of provinces, because each person wants a job, but is that freedom? Sir, we are fed by words without much content; we darken the councils with words that have no meaning; we have fed on propaganda, which is a lie. We have not thought out these problems for ourselves, because most of us want to be led. We dont want to think and find out, because to think is very painful, very disillusioning. Either we think and become disillusioned and cynicalor we think and go beyond. When you go beyond and above all thought process, then there is freedom. And in that there is joy, in that there is creative being, which a righteous man, an isolated man, can never understand.