5. Creative Insight

In May 1944, K began giving talks on Sundays at Oak Grove in Ojai. The starting point was the question of conflagration in the world.

First, we must distinguish between right thinking and right thoughts. While we can adopt correct thoughts by imitating others, happiness is not possible without right thinking. Right thinking cannot be learnt from books or by listening to the opinions of others.

Self-knowledge is a natural starting point. It is often said to be the beginning of wisdom.

Understanding oneself requires continuous and sincere observation. Then things become clear and orderly. This leads to right thinking, and, ultimately, right action.

However, achieving self-awareness is extremely difficult because our mind is accustomed to wandering and being distracted. These wanderings can be the result of habit.

When you observe your thoughts wandering, you will notice how restless your mind is. Insight into the causes leads to right thinking and genuine contemplation. Forcing the mind to be still is akin to death: it becomes stagnant and unrenewed.

We are used to examining only the surface of our consciousness. We are barely aware of the unconscious part. Most problems originate there.

The intellect represents only the thin surface of our conscious self. It is bound by tradition and fear. Our will prevents us from delving deeper. Reality lies only in the creative emptiness of the mind. All great discoveries are made in this space. This occurs when inner contradictions cease.

Clear Your Mind!

In the third talk, K asks his audience if they have ever tried to think and feel every emotion through to the end. He suggests that they write down every thought and feeling whenever they have time. This makes them realise how rapid, disconnected, and wandering their thoughts are. In the evening, they can reflect on what they have been thinking about during the day.

However, if you start to judge or over-edit what you have written, you will no longer understand it. The content is best revealed if it is examined patiently and without judgement. This results in honest and sincere insights.

By doing this, we learn to slow down our thoughts and feelings. More importantly, we learn not to judge them. Constant self-reflection leads to deeper self-awareness, and this passive state of mind is active because we learn through it.

Right thinking is not the outcome of what we think, but how we think. Political and religious propaganda tells us what to think. It is always biased and conditional.

Understanding oneself requires a great deal of detachment, subtlety, perseverance, and penetration. We must be our own psychologists. We must free ourselves from ignorance and sorrow and embark on a journey of discovery, where beliefs have no place.

Find the Treasure of Life

In the fourth talk, K suggested that it might be wise to withdraw from the world at some point and focus on finding oneself. In his view, the best age to do this would be between 40 and 50. Then,
you will discover 'great and imperishable treasures'.

He said that he had made this suggestion to a couple who were visiting him. They rejected the idea outright, even though they felt that their lives were empty.

At the next meeting, someone asked K if he was serious about withdrawing from the world. He assured them that he was serious, but that he didn't mean isolation. Rather, he meant that we should start looking seriously for truth. Even one stone can divert the flow of a stream, and likewise, a small group of people could bring about a change in the course of a culture.

Of course, not everyone can withdraw, but wouldn't it be important if a small group of people really wanted to create a different way of life that wasn't subservient to societal expectations?

Someone asked K why he and other Oriental people were against industrialisation.

"Industrialisation is not a solution for our human problems.It encourages sensate values, bigger and better bathrooms, bigger and better and cars, distractions, and amusements. We want to be distracted, amused, taken away from ourselves, for we are so wretched and poor, empty and sorrowful."

When asked about group meditation, K replied that reality could never be found in the imitative confusion and assertion promoted by religious groups. Truth cannot be organised; it must be discovered by the individual, free from outside influences, and without the hope of reward or the fear of punishment.

One listener wanted to know why K does not address economic and social evils, but instead escapes into some dark mysticism.

K argued that addressing primary issues can help to solve secondary issues. However, economic and social problems cannot be solved without first understanding what causes them. We are responsible for everything we create. Mere outward reform produces superficial results. The right ends will not be achieved through the wrong means.

"Ignorance prevents right thinking and gives primary emphasis to things that are secondary, and so life is made empty, dull, and a mechanical routine from which we seek various escapes. We have pursued wrong values, we have given importance to sensuality, to worldliness, to personal fame and immortality, which produce conflict and sorrow. True value is found in right thinking. There is no right thinking without self-knowledge that becomes with self-awareness."

Someone asked if K believed there were any peace-loving nations.

"No", he replied. K finds the term 'nation' to be separative, exclusive.

"There is no peace-loving nation; all are aggressive, dominant, tyrannical. As long as it remains a separate unit, it breeds untold misery for itself and others. You may not have peace and yet be exclusive. A nation is the glorification of the self and so the breeder of strife and sorrow."

Insight Breaks the Power of Ego

When asked about sex, K said it had become a consuming problem because we have stopped being creative and have become mere 'imitative machines'. Education narrows us, and a competitive society wastes us by telling us what to think, stimulating us sensually and falsely.

Through self-awareness, the repetitive habit of thought patterns are brought into the light of understanding. By disengaging thought from all hindrances and limitations, we free it from our small, self-enclosed mind, giving birth to inward, creative joy.

Suppressing lust will not solve the problem of sex; on the contrary, it will reinforce the ego and make the situation worse. It is important not to identify with the cause, but simply to observe it without judging, condemning, or even accepting it. We must follow and understand the cause at a fundamental level. Then the problem will be solved. The imperishable treasure and joy of the highest wisdom will then be found.

How Wars End?

The eighth talk began with a question: What makes for a simple life? This includes freedom from acquisitiveness, addiction, and distraction. A mind clinging to greed and envy cannot find the real, experience the bliss of truth. Simplicity stems from inner richness and freedom from craving.

The first questioner said that his son had died in the war, and asked how to prevent further wars.

K asked what price the parents were willing to pay to prevent another war and this appalling human slaughter. If we continue to think in terms of nationalities, of racial prejudices, of economic and religious frontiers, then another war is inevitable.

"You might say that it is an evolutionary process which will gradually bring about the necessary change, but it is but a justification of our egotism and narrowness, bigotry, and prejudice. Instead of sweeping away these dangers, we invent a theory of progressive growth and sacrifice to it the happiness of others and ourselves.

To put an end to mass murder, there must be complete inward revolution of thought and feeling which brings about new morality based on freedom from sensuality, worldliness, and the craving for personal immortality."

Another questioner wondered if K was opposed to prayer, given that he never talked about it.

K replied that most of us indulge in petitionary prayer, which cultivates and strengthens the duality between the observer and the observed. It is a joint phenomenon.

He told the story of someone who had prayed to God for a refrigerator. This person believed that his prayer had been answered because he had received a refrigerator and a new house.

We may get what we ask for, but there is a price to pay. If we are greedy and arrogant, getting what we want does not come without consequences.

We cannot attain the immeasurable if we cling to our illusory and trivial desires.

Slow Down Your Life

A third questioner said that he had followed Krishnamurti's advice to write down his thoughts, but he could not think about anything other than trivial matters. Is it the conscious mind blocking subconscious cravings?

K said that if we want to understand a fast-moving machine, we must slow it down; stopping it completely would render it merely a dead matter. We can study its structure as it moves slowly, and we must do the same with the mind.

By observing in this way, we realise that thoughts and feelings are petty and trivial in themselves. However, if we don't understand the small things, our thoughts will never progress. It is just like how we may discover deep treasures by following a thin vein. Small things may hide the deep, but we must follow them.

Blockages may occur because the conscious mind either doesn't want to or doesn't know how to respond to deeper demands. Through constant observation, the extensional awareness emerges through understanding, not concentrating on self-enclosed isolation.

Illusion Creates the Master

The next person to ask a question wanted to know if it is wrong for a person to have a master.

K said that he has tried to answer this question many times, but that few people want to understand. Superstition is difficult to throw off because the mind creates it and becomes its prisoner. If we refuse to accept that our delusional mind has created the master, how can we ever recognise this fact?

"Prejudice, tendency, and conditioning dictate our choice; to discover what is true, these must be set aside. A mind that is seeking a reward cannot understand what is true. Can anyone help you to discover what is true about your own thoughts and feelings? There is no authority that can lead you to the ultimate reality. Do not stop at a signpost, nor get caught up in the pettiness of groups. The authority of another, however great, leads to further ignorance and sorrow."

We Are Copies

The theme of the ninth talk is, once again, living simply.

Our lives are not simple. We have to think a lot about how to act, and it seems almost impossible to live without fighting for the right to live a good life.

Without finding the real thing, there will be no creative joy or inner peace. Our existence is rooted in the past. We are copies, not the real thing.

The 'I' can never understand that which is not of its own creation. It must cease; if it does not, all action leads to disaster.

When asked about getting rid of hate, K replied that no problem can be solved on its own level. The solution must be understood and dissolved at a deeper level of abstraction.

If you try to control or restrain a problem, it will recur in different forms. Extensional awareness reveals us the deeper causes of anger, causing it to fade away and creating the silence that is the only cure.

Gentleness and compassion stem from self-knowledge and right thinking, not from suppression and substitution.

Never Compare!

In the last talk, K reiterated that complex human problems cannot be solved by focusing on immediate solutions or the gratification of sensory desires. Sacrificing the present for the sake of future happiness can lead to cruel thoughtlessness and disaster.

When we focus on the secondary matters, we fail to see the whole picture.

"To seek enrichment in things made by hand or by mind, is to create inward poverty which bring untold misery."

Self-knowledge is the beginning of right thinking.

"The book of self-knowledge has no beginning and no end. It is a constant process of discovery and what is discovered is true and truth is liberating, creative."

A mind burdened by values, prejudices, judgements and comparisons cannot comprehend itself. When the mind is choicelessly aware, it is utterly silent and creatively empty, then the highest is.

Our conditioning prevents us from feeling the human unity directly. We rationalise our conditioning because it is easier to accept what is than to examine it and discover what is true.

We are afraid to examine it in case it reveals hidden fears and leads to greater conflict and suffering. So, we invent a theory of gradual growth towards ultimate human unity and perfection.

Someone asked how to retain a still mind.

"Just as a lake is calm when the breezes stop, so when the mind has understood and thus transcended the conflicting problems it has created, great stillness comes into being. Through constant awareness of the deep process of craving, the cause of self is observed and understood."