To be Mature is to Empty the Mind of All Fear - J Krishnamurti

For most of us maturity is a process of ripening in experience, in knowledge; that is what we call maturity. A mature person, we say, is one who has had a great deal of experience, who is wise in years, who knows how to adjust himself to unforeseen circumstances, and so on. Moving in time he has gradually arrived at a fully ripened state. We consider that in time the mind matures by freeing itself from ignorance, ignorance being a lack of knowledge of worldly affairs, a lack of experience and capacity. A young person, we say, needs time to mature. By the time he is sixty he will have suffered; through all the pressures, the strains, the travails of life he will have gathered experience, knowledge, and then perhaps he will be mature.

Now, to me maturity is something entirely different. I think it is possible to be mature without going through all the pressures and travails of time. To be completely mature, whatever one’s age, implies that one is able to deal immediately with any problem that arises, and not carry it over to the next day. To carry over a problem from one day to the next is the very essence of immaturity. It is the immature mind that continues in problems from day to day. A mature mind can deal immediately with problems whenever they arise; it does not give soil for problems to take root, and such a mind is in a state of innocency.

So, to be mature is to learn and not to acquire knowledge. The acquisition of knowledge is essential at a certain level. You must have knowledge in dealing with mechanical things, as when you are learning to drive a car. You acquire knowledge in learning a language, in studying electrical engineering, and all the rest of it. But to be in the state of maturity of which I am speaking is to see oneself as one actually is from moment to moment, without accumulating knowledge about oneself; because that maturity implies breaking away from the past, and the past is essentially the piling up of knowledge.

© "Vasanta Vihar Newsletter" (July-October, 2005) published by Krishnamurti Foundation India, Vasanta Vihar, 124 Greenways Road, Chennai 600 028. Website: www.kfionline.org/www.jkrishnamurti.org. Reprinted with permission.

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