BY J. KRISHNAMURTI

Our human problems demand clear, simple and direct thinking. Some of you may perhaps imagine that by listening to a few words from me, your problems will be solved. There is a desire for immediate remedies for the many aches and sorrows, and for superficial alterations which will revolutionize your thought and action.

There is only one way to find intelligent happiness, and that is through your own perception, discernment; and through action alone you can dissolve the many impediments that stand in the way of fulfillment. If you can perceive for yourself simply and directly the limitations that prevent deep and complete living, and how they have been created, then you yourself will be able to dissolve them.

I would beg of you, in listening to me, to pass beyond the convenient and satisfactory illusion which has divided thought as Oriental and Occidental. Truth is beyond all claims, peoples and systems. And please do not put aside what I say by thinking that it is not practical but merely some form of hazy mysticism. I would beg of you not to think in terms of formulae, systems, catch-phrases, but to free the mind from the background of many generations, and think anew directly and simply. Please do not think that by calling me some convenient name, you have understood what I have said. We must think anew and understand the human problem as a whole, and then only can we live harmoniously and intelligently. Where there is true individual fulfillment, there will also be the true well-being of the whole, the collective.

If each one of you can fulfill, live in complete harmony–which demands great intelligence and not the pursuit of egotistic desires–then there will be the well-being of the whole. Though we must have a complete revolution of thought and desire, it must be the outcome of voluntary comprehension on the part of the individual, and not compulsion.

As most of you are deeply interested in happiness and in fulfillment, if you will carefully understand what I say, and act, then there will be the true ecstasy of life.

There is intense suffering throughout the world. There is hunger amidst plenty. There is exploitation of class by class, of women by men, and of men by women. There is the absurdity of nationalism which is only the collective expression of egotistic search for security.

The chaos is the objective expression of that inward suffering of man. Subjectively there is uncertainty, the agonizing fear of death, of incompleteness, of emptiness. Our action in the subjective and objective world is but the expression of egotistic desire for security. So the mind has created many impediments, limitations, and till we completely and thoroughly understand these impediments and voluntarily liberate ourselves from them, there cannot be true fulfillment.

By individually understanding and liberating ourselves from these limitations, we can create true and necessary action, and thereby change the environment. A great many people think that there must be a mass movement in order to bring about individual fulfillment. But to create a true mass movement there must first be a complete revolution of thought and desire in the individual, in you. This, to me, is true revolution, individual action and voluntary change. It must begin with you, with the individual, and not with a vague, collective mass. Each individual who is caught up in suffering must change, he must understand the cause of his own sorrow and the hindrance he has created around himself. It is no use merely seeking a substitution, for that will in no way solve our human problems and agonies. That is merely a false judgment to a false condition. Most of us searching for a substitution are merely clinging to our own egotistic pursuits.

Do not, please, at the end of this talk, say that I have not given you a positive system. I am going to try to explain how our sorrows have been created; and when you discern the cause for yourself, then there will be direct action which alone will be positive. The action born of comprehension, of intelligence, is not the limitation of a system.

Each individual is seeking security, both subjectively and, objectively. His subjective search is for certainty, so that the mind can cling to it, undisturbed. And his objective search is for security, power and comfort.

Now what happens when you seek security, certainty? There must be fear; and if you are conscious of your own thought, you will discern that it has its root in fear. Morality, organised religion and social system and standards, are based fundamentally on fear, for they are the outcome of desire on the part of the individual to be secure. Though you may not have any religious belief, yet you may have the desire to be subjectively secure. Let us understand the structure of what we call a religion.

As I said, when one seeks security there must be fear; to be subjectively certain, you seek what you call immortality, God, or an absolute reality. In search of that security, you accept teachers who promise this immortality, and you come to regard them as authorities, to be feared, to be worshipped. And where there is this fear, there must be dogmas, creeds, beliefs, ideals and traditions to hold the mind.

What you call a religion is nothing but an organised form of individual self-protection for subjective security. To administer this authority based on fear, there must be priests, who become your exploiters. You are the creators of exploiters, for through fear you have created the cause for exploitation, Religion has become an organised belief, a crystallised form of thought, of morality, of oppression, domination. Religion, whose God is fear–though we use such words as love, kindness, brotherhood to cover up that deep fear–is nothing but a subjective submission to a system which assures us security. I am talking of religion as it is throughout the world, the religion of exploitation, of vested interest.

Then there is the objective search for security through egotistic power essentially based on fear and so on exploitation. If you look at our present system. you will see that it is nothing but a series of cunning exploitations of man by man. Family becomes the very centre of exploitation. I mean by this, that intense desire for self-perpetuation, through accumulative possessions, which necessitates the exploitation of your neighbour. Family should be the true expression of love, and not of exclusiveness. From this there develop classes, the superior and the inferior; and the means of acquiring wealth accumulate in the hands of the few. Then there follows the disease of nationalism, nationalism as a means of exploitation, of oppression. This dangerous disease of nationalism is dividing people, as religions are doing. From this there arise sovereign governments, whose business it is to prepare for war. Wars are not a necessity; to kill another human being is not a necessity.

Thus, seeking your own security, you have created many impediments of which you are entirely unconscious; and these impediments are not only turning you into a machine, but are preventing you from being a true individual. In becoming conscious of these limitations there arises conflict. You do not want conflict, you merely desire satisfaction, security, and so these hindrances continue to create sorrow and turmoil. But you will find true happiness, fulfillment, reality, only when you come into conflict with the values that now oppress and limit the mind. Examining these values intellectually does not reveal their true significance. Mere intellectual examination will create conflict, and only through suffering do you begin to understand their deep, concealed meaning.

Most people are acting mechanically in a system; so it is essential that they come face to face with those values and impediments of which they are conscious. In this there is the awakening of true intelligence, which alone can bring about fulfillment. This intelligence, which is unique, will reveal the eternal. As the sun comes out clear and bright through the dark clouds, so through your own discernment and in the purity of your own action comes the realization of that life which is ever renewing.

Question. The economic system cannot change until human nature changes, and human nature will not change so long as the system exists and encourages human nature to remain as it is. How then will the break come?

Answer. Do you think that this present system has come into being spontaneously, of its own accord? It is created by human nature, as it is called. Human nature must change, and not merely the system. A system may help or hinder, but fundamentally the individual must begin to transform himself.

Surely, if all of you really thought profoundly about the whole question of war, for example, this murder on a grand scale, this murder in uniform, with decorations, shouts of joy and praise, with trumpets and banners, with blessings from priests, if you thought and felt deeply about this and perceived its cruelty and infantile absurdities, its appalling maltreatment of man, forcing him to become a military machine through the many exploiting means of nationalism and so on–if you, as individuals, really perceived this horror, surely you would refuse to be used for furthering war and exploitation. You, as individuals, would not be used, exploited through propaganda. You, as individuals, would lose all sense of nationality.

How are we going to change any exploiting system, economic religious or social, unless we begin with ourselves, unless we see profoundly the necessity for such a change–not just for a moment, but continually in our daily lives? But when you feel the pressure of the present system being exerted by your neighbours, by your bosses, by your employees, and by your leaders, it becomes very difficult for you to maintain this comprehension. So the mind-heart must perceive the utter necessity of freeing itself from its own apparently ceaseless wants. As this needs individual effort, which we dislike, we look to a system to help us out of this misery; we hope that a system will force us to behave decently and intelligently. That way leads to regimentation and greater misery, not to deep fulfillment.

Unless you profoundly feel all this, and are making an effort to be free from your self-imposed limitations, the system will imprison you, the system will become a self-sustaining process. Though it is lifeless, it will be maintained by your individual energies born of fear. Here again there is a vicious circle. Want creates the system of exploitation, and the system maintains that want. So the individual is caught up in this machine, and he says: How am I to get out of it? He looks to others to lead him out of it, but he will be led only to another prison, to another system of exploitation. He himself, through his ignorance and its self-active process, has created the machine that holds him, and it is only through himself, through his own discernment of the process of the ‘I’, that there can ever be true freedom and fulfillment. ^l