6. Truth and Freedom

In the first of ten talks given in Ojai in 1945, Krishnamurti began by saying that, in order to understand the confusion and misery in the world, we must first find clarity within ourselves. He said that this cannot be achieved without intense self-awareness and right thinking. However, it must be understood that the self and the world are not two separate entities, but one and the same fundamental movement.

In essence, people are not fundamentally different. Inwardly we are all the same: one humanity. Only artificial boundaries separate us.

While we may be intellectually aware of unity, but if we separate knowledge from emotion, we will never experience the unique oneness of human beings. Experiencing this unity it requires an open mind and awareness, and means going beyond the dualistic patterns of thought.

Human beings are complex, so we must observe things directly and simply. Observing without comparing frees us from a great burden and allows us to break free from the chains of duality.

Who punishes who?

The first questioner asks: Should those guilty of the monstrous horrors and barbarities committed in the concentration camps be punished?

K asked a counter-question: Who is to punish them? We are all responsible for the actions of this civilisation because we have all contributed to it.

The faults of one country cannot be overlooked by highlighting the atrocities of another. When we accept killing, we set in motion a torrent of endless misfortune.

We are responsible for wars because we do not condemn them. It is hypocritical of us to want to punish others for their atrocities while ignoring our own evil deeds.

The root causes of violence must be eradicated. This requires patience and gentleness, not the bloody condemnation. Humanity does not need more suffering. By killing a murderer, we become murderers ourselves. There can be no love through bloodshed, an army is not an instrument of peace.

Reading constant news reports of war dulls our minds, and we fail to notice the brutality that prevails in society. When we are forced, threatened, and controlled, it becomes difficult to stay sensitive.

Freedom Brings Alertness

To avoid becoming blunted and hard, we must stop rushing around and distracting ourselves, and become more aware of our own pursuits and surroundings. Sensitive alertness requires freedom from influences that dull and harden us.

Developing the intellect at the cost of our deeper and clearer feelings brings about ruthlessness and the worship of success. This creates unbalance, which we then try to restore through willpower.

With one hand people deal in blood and money, while trying to be kind, affectionate, and thoughtful with the other. Integration is only possible if there is clarity of understanding at all levels of consciousness.

All reform within the pattern of duality is a step backwards; creative peace can only be found beyond this.

Self Is a Trick

In the second talk, K returned to a theme that he has addressed hundreds of times: Why do we imagine that there is a thinker separate from thoughts?

It's a cunning trick of the mind, a self-deception that is hard to detect. This time, K did not go into much depth, merely stating that we must experience "the inseparable unity of the thinker and his thought", and describing this experience as "liberation and inexpressible joy".

The first questioner wanted to know whether a new war can be avoided.

Not as long as the powerful states see it as their right to oppress the weak ones, the ruling elite exploit the ruled, as long as there is hatred, and as long as priests justify intolerance and the liquidation of another being to protect their own interests.

"What you are the world is. If you are nationalistic, patriotic, aggressive, ambitious, greedy, then you are the cause of conflict and war. If you belong to any particular ideology, to a specialized prejudice, even if you call it religion, then you will be the cause of strife and misery."

The war that had then ended, had not changed the core of humanity. People have not uprooted the causes that led to war. Therefore, nothing has changed fundamentally, and wars will continue to be fought.

An inveterate smoker said he has tried several times to give up the habit, but failed. Now he was asking for help.

K advised him not to try to give up the habit, because fighting against habits only strengthens them. We must understand the whole problem of habits – including their mental, emotional and physical aspects. If we don't understand the deeper causes of a habit, we end up forcing ourselves to act in a certain way. Sometimes changing one habit can lead to adopting a new one. Only in the flame of awareness one can free oneself from a habit.

Conflicts Cannot Ennoble Us

The third talk explores the endless series of inward conflicts and highlights the joy of overcoming them. If we don't get rid of these conflicts, they will consume us, leaving our lives utterly wasteful and empty.

Most of us accept the situation without considering doing anything about it. Many people glorify conflict, seeing it as an essential part of being human. They are supposed to help us grow and ennoble us. This is nonsense.

In the midst of conflict there is no understanding at all, only a a blind struggle. Prolonged conflict does not lead to understanding, but rather to apathy or delusions.

The problem of conflict is so complex that it must be approached in a very simple way. One must be conscious of wanting to become something without judging it. When one is able to calmly acknowledge the situation, the duality ends, and the conflict disappears from the mind in a miraculous way.

Once you understand the entire mechanism that generates and sustains conflict, you can transcend its causes.

Everyone has experienced what it feels like to be free from desire and the conflict it creates. In the quiet moments of a still night or while watching a sunset, the self being temporarily absent, you can feel intense, creative joy and pure ecstasy. The struggle begins when we want that wonderful moment to be repeated.

But is it possible to live in a space where that timeless reality is present all the time? Pursuing such a reality is the activity of the self, and takes us back to a world of contradictions, so that path is blocked.

Without self-awareness, we live in constant contradiction and uncertainty. Awareness reveals the self and frees us from all evil, but most people don't know how to be aware. When faced with contradictions, the self takes over and tries to resolve the situation.

When we want something, we can become quite ruthless. Whether we are striving to survive in the mundane world or in the so-called spiritual world, it doesn't really matter. Striving must not be condemned if we want to understand it. It is enough to observe its effects on us.

Becoming still and being still are two different states. The latter flourishes when there are no conflicts.

No Escape

In the fourth talk, K received feedback. Someone found his talks very depressing. He is looking for inspiration to help him through life and wishes that K would cheer him with words of courage and hope. He wanted to know what is wrong with seeking inspiration?

K replied that we seek inspiration because we want to fill the void of our inner loneliness. We try to run away from this void and cover it up in different ways, but all stimuli have the same effect. We might have a drink, get excited by a painting, go to a concert or attend a religious service.

Stimulation breeds dependence and causes fear. We move from one stimulus to another, but the result is always the same: insensitivity and mental disorientation.

Cheer and happiness are not ends in themselves. Our search will end when we find what we are looking for, and only then will our struggle and pain cease. This inner journey must be undertaken without seeking a result or desiring liberation. Then the journey itself will liberate and renew us.

Reality is to be experienced, not speculated upon. Only by dying to ourselves each day can there be eternal renewal. It is difficult to let go if you want to achieve something or cling to what you have gathered. Immerse yourself in the living waters and let go of both pleasant and unpleasant memories.

From Becoming to Being

In the fifth session, K answered questions. Before doing that, he said that the world had become utterly ruthless and our sensate values were in a state of degradation.

In the outer world, it seems as though there is no hope, no clarity or creative, renewing understanding. Understanding can only be discovered within ourselves, not through example or authority.

The outer world has no inherent significance; it is significant only in relation to the inner world.

"We have lost the feeling of humanity: we feel responsible only to the class or group to which we belong. We have lost compassion, the love of the whole, and without this quickening flame of life we look to politicians, to priests, to some economic planning for peace and happiness."

There is no hope in this, because only each individual can awaken the necessary compassion for human well-being.

"We must die each day to all experiences and accumulations, fears and hopes, and we can only do this by actively being aware of our conflicts, and then being passively still. We must live each day the four seasons, the spring, summer, autumn and winter of passivity. As in winter the fields lie fallow, open to the heavens, to revitalize themselves, so the mind-heart must allow itself to be open, creatively empty. Then only can there be the breath of Reality."

The mind must be open, creatively empty. This cannot be achieved through the act of will; it requires heightened sensitivity.

There is a vast difference between becoming still and being still.

"You never say to a child: become still, but: be still. We say to ourselves we will become and for this becoming we have various excuses and interminable reasons and so we are never still."

"Only with the death of becoming is there being", says K.

"In moments of great creativity and great beauty, there is utter tranquillity. In these moments there is complete absence of the self with its conflicts. But these moments are rare and happen unexpectedly. The self soon returns."

In this "living stillness, when all craving has ceased, is the bliss of reality".

A man said he is an inventor and has invented several devices used in the current war. He was opposed to killing and wanted K to advise him on how to use his capacity.

K replied that if one does not take life in its fullness and the ultimate purpose of existence into account, then using the talent will lead to destruction. If talent is not based on self-knowledge, self-expression will cause misery and disaster. This problem concerns all of us, whether we are artists or doctors.

"Beware of mere talent. With self-knowledge the craving for self-fulfilment is transformed", K concluded.

Nobody Owns the World

In the next session, a questioner asked what is wrong with defending ourselves and responding to an attack. If the evil in Central Europe had not been destroyed, it would eventually have destroyed the Americans.

K warned against thinking in terms of defence and attack. Only when everyone abandons greed, ill will and nationalism, the craving for power and other forms of criminality and cruelty, will there be peace and love.

"We want peace, and yet we cultivate those causes that bring about war and destruction. We want happiness and freedom, and yet we indulge in lust, ill will and thoughtlessness. We pray for understanding and yet deny it in your daily life; we want to enjoy both opposites and so we are confused and lost."

Misery is not created by one group or race; we must all thoughtfully abandon the causes of these calamities. Only then will there be peace and joy.

Another questioner asked how to deal with a spiritual experience. K stated that the mind is incapable of being open to great ecstasy. The experience is greater than the experiencer, so we try to reduce it to our own level, to our sphere of comprehension.

Our mind is active and noisy, not still. It must interpret, translate, and organise the experience, enmeshing it in its own triviality, and that which it cannot express.

If we cling to memories, we cannot understand the living present. It is important to be aware of your own attachments and not to cling to yesterday's experiences. The deeper the experience, the more likely it is to be misinterpreted.

Experiences can also be misused. If we allow nationalism and greed to dominate our minds, we will use our experiences to justify slaughtering our neighbour or bombing our brothers.

You Are Many Selves

In the ninth talk, the questioner said that he wants to understand himself and make a definite effort to live fully and truthfully.

K asked him who wants to understand whom. This is not a clever counter-question, because there are multiple selves within each of us. Which self does he want to understand? Should he choose the most appealing one and reject the rest? Is there a self above and beyond all the contradictory selves?

The self is nothing more than a bundle of memories, changing emotions, intelligence, and ignorance. By following the self, we select certain aspects and ignore the rest. Who is the judge who makes these choices?

If we can observe without making a choice, the separate parts lose their meaning, and we begin to see the whole. Right thinking opens the door to the eternal.

Another questioner wanted unmistakable signs by which the liberation of another can be objectively recognized.

K asked why the questioner does not investigate this for himself, to see if he can free himself without guidance from others. Can anyone else know better than us what goes on inside our heads? And if they claim to, why on earth should we believe them rather than our own observations?

When we are in distress, we cry out for help, and help is available. We take cues from and obey those who seem to know better. However, K stressed that we can only enlighten our minds by rejecting all authority and observing our inner selves.

Someone asked whether one should meditate alone or in a group. K said that both have their merits, but the important thing is to understand the importance of meditation.

Meditation is not about boosting the self, but understanding it. In a group, we are vulnerable to the influence of others, whereas meditating alone can only reinforce our own prejudices.

Without self-understanding, meditation becomes self-centred. However, the right kind of meditation can free and enlighten our minds, so that we find inner peace and the need to become something else ceases.

Living Bliss

In his last talk in Ojai in 1945, K explored whether an enduring state of creative tranquillity exists and whether the conflict between opposites can ever end. Can an imperishable ecstasy be found in a world splintered into many fragments?

We cannot find it unless we understand ourselves and free ourselves from desire. Without freedom, we cannot find truth or experience freedom. We must be free from saviours, teachers, leaders, good and evil, authority and imitation – free from the self that is created by contradiction and pain.

Each person must walk this road alone. In the search for truth, we must all be both the master and the pupil. The more persistently and earnestly we observe ourselves, the more we free ourselves from our self-created bondage.

"In the bliss of the Real, the experiencer and the experience cease. Mind-heart must die each day for eternal being."

Let Thought Unfold

A year later, in 1946, K gave six talks in Ojai. In the first, he asked people to consider what they seek in life, and to ask themselves whether they wanted to expand and nourish the self, or to understand and transcend it.

Rather than listening to the talk, K hoped that people would discuss the issue amongst themselves. The result was rather confused, with people rambling from one issue to another.

In the sixth talk, K provided a summary. He said that the activity on the surface of the mind, called the intellect, could never solve life's many difficulties because deep within us there is much unexplained darkness and confusion.

Thought is outwardly active, building and destroying, but inwardly there is a void and despair. The self can never penetrate through its own darkness. It cannot find the truth, yet it can and often does invent its own.

If we allow our thoughts to unfold, we will see that each seemingly separate thought is connected to all others. There is no need to wander from one teacher to another, window shopping; it is enough to look within ourselves.

Understanding the ways of the self leads to freedom. Virtue is freedom and orderliness. It requires serious work in a spirit of freedom.

"In silence, in supreme tranquillity, when the restless activity of memory has ceased, there is the immeasurable, the Eternal."