What Are You Seeking? by J. Krishnamurti

Author:J. Krishnamurti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Krishnamurti Foundation America

It is very important to understand fear, especially in a country that is overpopulated, that is deep in tradition—whether modern or scientific or ancient. As long as there is fear, there can be no creativity, and it is only the creative mind that is the real, that is unique. Awareness in which there is no choice does not destroy that creative reality.

Your mind from childhood is conditioned, it is educated from childhood in fear, it is subjugated, it is compelled, pursued, compared, various values are imprinted upon it; how can such a mind be a free mind? All that it knows is fear. Therefore it everlastingly struggles to do good and to avoid evil. The very doing good is to overcome fear; it is not freedom from fear but the overcoming of fear; therefore, there is still fear. How can such a mind be creative, be happy?

The mind that is free from fear is the creative mind; such a mind, through awareness, through self-knowledge, cannot lose that reality. The mind can be free only through self-knowledge—not the self-knowledge of the specialist, not the self-knowledge of Ramanuja or Buddha or the Christ; such “self-knowledge” is not self-knowledge. To know yourself according to somebody, Marx or Buddha or what you will—that is not knowing yourself. You can physically know yourself only if you are aware of yourself, aware of your actions, thoughts, feelings, words. But you cannot be aware of the total process, see the fullness of that awareness, if you compare, if you choose, if you say, “This is good, that is bad.” So, self-knowledge through awareness does not destroy, does not sap away initiative. You have no initiative. You just follow some powerful personality, somebody who you think is a leader. So long as you follow anybody, any authority, any book, you are not creative. You are following because of fear, and the understanding of fear is the beginning of creativity.

It is very difficult to understand fear. I am not talking of the cultivation of the opposite. The mind which is cultivating the opposite is still caught in fear. The awareness of which I have been talking is a choiceless state in which you can see things as they are and not as you wish them to be, in which you can know exactly what you are, without any choice, and that awareness is intelligence. The man who is constantly choosing is not an intelligent man. A man is truly intelligent when there is no choice, for choice is the outcome of his background, and a free mind is not a mind of choice. Choice will exist as long as there is fear, choice will exist as long as you have any kind of authority at different levels of your consciousness. Therefore, to follow another is destructive. But to be completely aware is to be the light yourself.

Questioner: What is the true value of equality? Is equality a fact or an idea?

KRISHNAMURTI : To the idealist, it is an idea, to the man who observes, it is a fact.

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