| "So without understanding the nature and structure of conflict - not theorise about it, not offer your opinion against the speaker's, or follow a particular system in order to get rid of conflict, but actually examine for ourselves to see what is conflict, how it arises and whether it is at all possible to be free from it completely. And from there if it is possible to be free from conflict, from violence, brutality, the aggressive life that one leads. Then in the understanding of it then there is a possibility, it seems to me, of right conduct. Because after all we are human beings related to each other, not Muslims and Hindus, Catholics and Englishmen and Russians and all the rest of the nationalistic, linguistic, religious differences, which is obviously childish, immature. So, could we, not intellectually or verbally, go into this question, because a mind that is free from... that is in conflict, at whatever level, conscious or at the deeper levels of the mind, such a mind is incapable of discovering what is truth, if there is such thing as god. A mind in conflict must inevitably escape, because it hasn't resolved its conflicts. Therefore the only possibility is to escape - that escape be religious entertainment, or a speculative, theoretical dogmatism, or indulge in various forms of nationalistic absurdities.
. . .
Are you waiting for the speaker to tell you what is the truth of the matter? We have shown the nature of analysis. We can see very well that the analyser, the entity, the observer, the thinker, says, I am going to analyse myself - anger, jealousy, whatever it is. And is the analyser different from the thing which he analyses? Surely he is not different; he is part of that anger, part of that jealousy, that fear. He is that fear, though he may pretend to be different, outside looking in. And if he is separate then when he analyses deeply, his analysis must be extraordinarily accurate, true, without any distortion, because if he analyses, if his analysis is somewhat distorted, then all future analysis becomes also distorted. And if we are going to analyse, then it takes time - days, months, years. Like a man who is violent, aggressive, brutal, he says, 'I will eventually become peaceful.' In the meantime he is sowing seeds of mischief and violence. And psychologically is there tomorrow at all? It is only pleasure and fear breed the idea that there is tomorrow, but actually is there tomorrow, psychologically not chronologically?"
– J. Krishnamurti
Public Talk 1
London, England - 12 March 1969 |
