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Our Very Seriousness May Prevent Understanding...J Krishnamurti

Question: Does not this process of constant self-awareness lead to self-centeredness?

Krishnamurti: It does, does it not? The more you are concerned about yourself, watching, improving, thinking about yourself, the more self-centered you are, are you not? That is an obvious fact. If I am concerned with changing myself, then I must observe, I must build a technique which will help me to break up that center. There is self-centeredness as long as I am consciously or unconsciously concerned with a result, with success, as long as I am gaining and putting aside—which is what most of us are doing. The incentive is the goal I am pursuing; because I want to gain that end, I watch myself. I am unhappy, I am miserable, frustrated, and I feel there is a state in which I can be happy, fulfilled, complete; so I become aware in order to gain that state. I use awareness to get what I want; so I am self-centered. Through awareness, through self-analysis, through reading, studying, I hope to dissolve the ‘me’, and then I shall be happy, enlightened, liberated, I shall be one of the elite—and that is what I want. So, the more I am concerned with gaining an end, the greater is the self-centeredness of thought. But thought is ever self-enclosing anyhow, is it not?

So, what? To break down the self-centeredness, I must understand why the mind seeks an end, a goal, a particular result. Why does my mind go after a reward? Why? Can it function in any other way? Is not the movement of the mind from memory to memory, from result to result? I have acquired this, I don’t like it, and I am going to get something else.I don’t like this thought, but that thought will be better, nobler, more comforting, more satisfying. As long as I am thinking, I can think in no other terms; for the mind moves from knowledge to knowledge, from memory to memory. Is not thinking self-centered in its very nature? I know there are exceptions, but we are not discussing the exceptions. In our everyday life, are we not consciously or unconsciously pursuing an end, gaining and avoiding, seeking to continue, putting aside anything that is disturbing, that is insecure, uncertain? In seeking its own certainty, the mind creates self-centeredness; and is not that self-centeredness the ‘me’, which then watches over and analyzes itself? So, as long as we seek a result, self-centeredness must exist, whether in an individual, in a group, in a nation or a race. But if we can understand why the mind seeks a result, a satisfying end, why it wants to be certain—if we understand that, then there is a possibility of breaking down the walls that enclose thought as the ‘me’. But that requires an astonishing awareness of the total process, not only of the conscious, but also of the unconscious levels, an awareness from moment to moment in which there is no gathering, no accumulation, no saying, ‘Yes, I have understood this, and I am going to use it for tomorrow’, a spontaneity which is not of the mind. Only then is there a possibility of going beyond the self-enclosing activities of thought.

Ojai, August 23, 1952

Questioner: I am already an introvert and it seems to me that from what you have been saying, is there not a danger of my becoming more and more self-centered, more of an introvert?

Krishnamurti: If you are an introvert in opposition to an extrovert then there is a danger of self-centeredness. If you put yourself in opposition then there is no understanding; then your thoughts, feelings and actions are self-enclosing, isolating. In intelligently comprehending the outer you will come inevitably to the inner, and thereby the division of the outer and inner ceases. If you oppose the outer and cling to the inner or if you deny the inner and assert the outer, then there is the conflict of the opposites, in which there is no understanding. To understand the outer, the world, you must begin with yourself for you, your thoughts-feelings and actions, are the result of both the outer and the inner. You are the center of all objective and subjective existence and to comprehend it, where are you to begin save with yourself? This does not encourage unbalance, on the contrary it will bring creative understanding, inward peace. But if you deny the outer, the world, if you try to escape from it, if you distort it, shaping it to your fancies, then your inner world is an illusion, isolating and hindering. Then it is a state of delusion which brings misery. To be is to be related but you can block, distort this relationship, thus becoming more and more isolated and self-centered which leads to mental disorder. The root of understanding is within yourself, in self-knowledge.

Ojai, June 18, 1944

Now, being aware of our own ceaseless struggling within the field of self-conscious activity, our self-concern—taking all this multifarious action and contradiction into account, how are we to come to that other state? How is one to live in that moment which is eternity? All this is not mere sentiment or romanticism. Religion has nothing whatever to do with romanticism or sentimentality. It is a very hard thing—hard in the sense that one must work furiously to find out what is truly religious.

Perceiving all the contradiction and confusion that exists in the outward structure of society, and the psychological conflict that is perpetually going on within oneself, one realizes that all our endeavor to be loving or brotherly is actually a pose, a mask. However beautiful the mask may be, behind it there is nothing; so we develop a philosophy of cynicism or despair, or we cling to a belief in something mysterious beyond this ceaseless turmoil. Again, this is obviously not religion; and without the perfume of true religion, life has very little meaning. That is why we are everlastingly struggling to find something. We pursue the many gurus and teachers, haunt the various churches, practice this or that system of meditation, rejecting one and accepting another. And yet we never seem to cross the threshold; the mind seems incapable of going beyond itself.

So, what is it, I wonder, that brings the other into being? Or is it that we cannot do anything but go up to the threshold and remain there, not knowing what lies beyond? It may be that we have to come to the very edge of the precipice of everything we have known, so that there is the cessation of all endeavor, of all cultivation of virtue, and the mind is no longer seeking anything. I think that is all the conscious mind can do. Whatever else it does only creates another pattern, another habit. Must not the mind strip itself of all the things it has gathered, all its accumulations of experience and knowledge, so that it is in a state of innocency which is not cultivated?

Perhaps that is our difficulty. We hear that we must be innocent in order to find out; so we cultivate innocence. But can innocence ever be cultivated? Is it not like the cultivation of humility? Surely, a man who cultivates humility is never humble, any more than the man who practices non-violence ceases to be violent. So it may be that one must see the truth of this: That the mind which is put together, which is made up of many things, cannot do anything. To see this truth may be all that it can do. Probably there must be the capacity to see the truth in a flash—and I think that very perception will cleanse the mind of all the past in an instant.

The more serious, the more earnest we are, the greater danger there is of our trying to become or achieve something. Surely, only the man who is spontaneously humble, who has immense unconscious humility—only such a man is capable of understanding from moment to moment and never accumulating what he has learned. So this great humility of not-knowing is essential, is it not?

But you see, we are all seeking success, we want a result. We say ‘I have done all these things, and I have got nowhere, I have received nothing; I am still the same.’ This despairing sense of desiring success, of wanting to arrive, to attain, to understand, emphasizes, does it not?, the separativity of the mind; there is always the conscious or unconscious endeavor to achieve a result, and therefore the mind is never empty, never free for a second from the movement of the past, of time.

So I think what is important is not to read more, discuss more, or to attend more talks, but rather to be conscious of the motives, the intentions, the deceptions of one’s own mind—to be simply aware of all that, and leave it alone, not try to change it, not try to become something else; because the effort to become something else is like putting on another mask. That is why the danger is much greater for those of us who are earnest and deeply serious than it is for the flippant and the casual. Our very seriousness may prevent the understanding of things as they are.

Brussels, June 25, 1956

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