To Be Human by Krishnamurti

Author:Krishnamurti [Krishnamurti]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Shambhala Publications
Published: 2016-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

A Radical Mutation in the Mind

QUESTIONER: Could we speak about the brain and the mind? Thinking takes place materially in the brain cells. That is, thinking is a material process. If thinking stops and there is perception without thought, what happens to the material brain? You seem to say that mind has its place outside the brain, but where does the movement of pure perception take place if not somewhere in the brain? And how is it possible for mutation to take place in the brain cells if pure perception has no connection in the brain?

KRISHNAMURTI: Have you got the question? First, the questioner says he wants to differentiate between the brain and the mind. Then he asks if perception is purely outside the brain, which means thought is not the movement of perception. And he asks, if perception takes place outside the brain, which is the thinking and remembering process, what happens to the brain cells themselves, which are conditioned by the past? And will there be a mutation in the brain cells if perception is outside? Is this clear?

So let’s begin with the brain and the mind. The brain is a material function. It is a muscle—right? Like the heart. And the brain cells contain all the memories. Please, I am not a brain specialist, nor have I studied the experts, but I have lived a long time now and I have watched a great deal, not only the reaction of others—what they say, what they think, what they want to tell me—but also I have watched how the brain reacts. So the brain has evolved through time from the single cell, taking millions of years, until it reached the ape and went on another million years until man could stand, and so ultimately there is the human brain. The human brain is contained within the skull, but it can go beyond itself. You can sit here and think of your country, or your home—and in thought, not physically, you are instantly there.

The brain has extraordinary capacity, and technologically it has done the most extraordinary things. But the brain has also been conditioned by the limitation of language, not by language itself but by the limitation of language. It has been conditioned by the climate it lives in, by the food one eats, by the social environment, the society in which it lives, and that society has been created by the brain. So that society is not different from the activities of the brain. It has been conditioned by millions of years of accumulated knowledge based on experience, which is tradition. I am British, you are German, he is a Hindu, he is a black man, he is this, he is that, there is all the nationalistic division, which is tribal division—and the religious conditioning. So the brain is conditioned, and being conditioned it is limited. The brain has extraordinary capacity, unlimited in the technological world, with computers and so on, but it is very, very limited with regard to the psyche.

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