The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence. ?

Jiddu Krishnamurti

A sage is someone who can put into words the aspects of our mysterious nature that
most of us can only feel.

At times in my life I have been overwhelmed by the world and confused about the
purpose of it all. I spent much time in anguish, behaving in self-destructive ways,
wondering why happiness was so elusive.

In this struggle, I passed many years looking outward for the source of turmoil in
my world, trying to tweak, upgrade and replace parts of my life that seemed
culpable for my sorrows; a different job, new friends, more education, better
stuff. This always led me back, of course, to where I started, still confused,
still unsatisfied, still searching for someone and something to blame.

it iss

Words are more than just the sum of their meaning, they are powerful incantations,
capable of conjuring up great inspiration or of casting damning spells. Philosophy
is something that can heal, yet no doctor can prescribe it and no one can predict
which words a person must hear to break through to a better place in life.

The potent words of the great Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti fell into my
life at precisely the right time, ringing true enough in my mind and in my heart to
carry me to brighter days.

Until then, no other spokesman of truth had challenged me so bluntly to take

personal responsibility for everything that is wrong in my life and everything that
is misaligned in the world, pointing out so truthfully that the world is as we
create it. None other had demanded so fervently that I look deep within for the
answers to suffering, pointing out the inattention I was giving to my own life. No
one else had challenged everything I thought I knew about my personal history and
my culture, exposing the conditioning of my own mind, compelling me to change.

And for this I share with you these 17 Krishnamurti quotes that will turn your
world view outside in, urging you to reconsider your culture religion, politics and
family, guiding you towards a new awareness, intelligence and the truest freedom.

Mostly taken from his public talks in the late 1960s, these quotes have the power
to unleash us from our chains and set us free into a powerful new present where our
humanity can finally reign supreme over our fearfulness.

I hope you find solace in them as I have, and that you share them with those whom
you love, stirring within them the deep truths that can liberate us from the
pitfalls of our own consciousness and the fabrications of our culture.

J. Krishnamurti

1. Our minds are conditioned that is an obvious fact conditioned by a

particular culture or society, influenced by various impressions, by the strains
and stresses of relationships, by economic, climatic, educational factors, by
religious conformity and so on. Our minds are trained to accept fear and to escape,
if we can, from that fear, never being able to resolve, totally and completely, the
whole nature and structure of fear. So our first question is: can the mind, so
heavily burdened, resolve completely, not only its conditioning, but also its
fears? Because it is fear that makes us accept conditioning.

2. I wonder why we divide life into fragments, the business life, social life,
family life, religious life, the life of sport and so on? Why is there this
division, not only in ourselves but also socially we they, you and me, love and
hate, dying and living? I think we ought to go into this question rather deeply to
find out if there is a way of life in which there is no division at all between
living and dying, between the conscious and the unconscious, the business and
social life, the family life and the individual life.

These divisions between nationalities, religions, classes, all this separation in

oneself in which there is so much contradiction why do we live that way? It
breeds such turmoil, conflict, war; it brings about real insecurity, outwardly as
well as inwardly. There is so much division, as God and the devil, the good and the
bad, what should be and what is.

3. Man has always sought immortality; he paints a picture, puts his name on it,
that is a form of immortality; leaving a name behind, man always wants to leave
something of himself behind. What has he got to give apart from technical
knowledge what has he of himself to give? What is he? You and I, what are we,
psychologically? You may have a bigger bank account, be cleverer than I am, or this
and that; but psychologically, what are we? a lot of words, memories,
experiences, and these we want to hand over to a son, put in a book, or paint in a
picture, me. The me becomes extremely important, the me opposed to the
community, the me, wanting to identify itself, wanting to fulfill itself, wanting
to become something great you know, all the rest of it. When you observe that
me, you see that it is a bundle of memories, empty words: that is what we cling
to; that is the very essence of the separation between you and me, they and we.

4. How is the mind, the brain included to be completely quiet? Some say breathe
properly, take deep breaths, that is, get more oxygen into your blood; a shoddy
little mind breathing very deeply, day after day, can be fairly quiet; but it is
still a shoddy little mind.

5. We look at conditions prevailing in the world and observe what is happening

there the students riots, the class prejudices, the conflict of black against
white, the wars, the political confusion, the divisions caused by nationalities and
religions. We are also aware of conflict, struggle, anxiety, loneliness, despair,
lack of love, and fear. Why do we accept all this? Why do we accept the moral,
social environment knowing very well that it is utterly immoral; knowing this for
ourselves not merely emotionally or sentimentally but looking at the world and at
ourselves why do we live this way? Why is it that our educational system does not
turn out real human beings but mechanical entities trained to accept certain jobs
and finally die? Education, science and religion have not solved our problems at
all.

Looking at all this confusion, why does each one of us accept and conform, instead
of shattering the whole process in ourselves?

6. This is a very human, ordinary problem, which touches the life of everyone of
us, rich and poor, young and old, why do we live this monotonous, meaningless life,
going to the office or working in a laboratory or a factory for forty years,
breeding a few children, educating them in absurd ways, and then dying? I think you
should ask this question with all your being, in order to find out. Then you can
ask the next question: whether human beings can ever change radically,
fundamentally, so that they look at the world anew with different eyes, with a
different heart, no longer filled with hatred, antagonism, racial prejudices, but
with a mind that is very clear, that has tremendous energy.

Seeing all this the wars, the absurd divisions which religions have brought
about, the separation between the individual and the community, the family opposed
to the rest of the world, each human being clinging to some peculiar ideal,
dividing himself into me and you, we and they seeing all this, both
objectively and psychologically, there remains only one question, one fundamental
problem and this is whether the human mind, which is so heavily conditioned, can
change. Not in some future incarnation, nor at the end of life, but change
radically now, so that the mind becomes new, fresh, young, innocent, unburdened, so
that we may know what it means to love and to live in peace.

7. To deny conventional morality completely is to be highly moral, because what we

call social morality, the morality of respectability, is utterly immoral; we are
competitive, greedy, envious, seeking our own way you know how we behave. We call
this social morality; religious people talk about a different kind of morality, but
their life, their whole attitude, the hierarchical structure of religious
organization and belief, is immoral. To deny that is not to react, because when you
react, this is another form of dissenting through ones own resistance. But when
you deny it because you understand it, there is the highest form of morality.

In the same way, to negate social morality, to negate the way we are living our
petty little lives, our shallow thinking and existence, the satisfaction at a
superficial level with our accumulated things to deny all that, not as a reaction
but seeing the utter stupidity and the destructive nature of this way of living
to negate all that is to live. To see the false as the false this seeing is the
true.

8. If people who say they love their children meant it, would there be war? And
would there be division of nationalities would there be these separations?

9. If the mind is unconditioned it is free. So we are going to find out, examine

very closely, what makes the mind so conditioned, what are the influences that have
brought about this conditioning, and why we accept it. First of all, tradition
plays an enormous part in life. In that tradition the brain has developed so that
it can find physical security. One cannot live without security, that is the very
first, primary animal demand, that there be physical security; one must have a
house, food, clothing. But the psychological way in which we use this necessity for
security brings about chaos within and without. The psyche, which is the very
structure of thought, also wants to be secure inwardly, in all its relationships.
Then the trouble begins. There must be physical security for everybody, not only
for the few; but that physical security for everybody is denied when psychological
security is sought through nations, through religions, through the family.

10. Then there is the question of dying, which we have carefully put far away from
us, as something that is going to happen in the future the future may be fifty
years off or tomorrow. We are afraid of coming to an end, coming physically to an
end and being separated from the things we have possessed, worked for, experienced
wife, husband, the house, the furniture, the little garden, the books and the
poems we have written or hoped to write. And we are afraid to let all that go
because we are the furniture, we are the picture that we possess; when we have the
capacity to play the violin, we are that violin. Because we have identified
ourselves with those things we are all that and nothing else. Have you ever
looked at it that way? You are the house with the shutters, the bedroom, the
furniture which you have very carefully polished for years, which you own that is
what you are. If you remove all that you are nothing.

And that is what you are afraid of of being nothing. Isnt it very strange how
you spend forty years going to the office and when you stop doing these things you
have heart trouble and die? You are the office, the files, the manager or the clerk
or whatever your position is; you are that and nothing else. And you have a lot of
ideas about God, goodness, truth, what society should be that is all. Therein
lies sorrow. To realize for yourself that you are that is great sorrow, but the
greatest sorrow is that you do not realize it. To see that and find out what it
means is to die.

11. Can you observe anything a tree, your wife, your neighbor, the politician,
the priest, a beautiful face without any movement of the mind? The images of your
wife, of your husband, of your neighbor, the knowledge of the cloud or of pleasure,
all that interferes, doesnt it? So when there is interference by an image of any
kind, subtle or obvious, then there is no observation, there is no real, total
awareness there is only partial awareness. To observe clearly there must be no
image coming in between the observer and the thing observed. When you look at a
tree, can you look at it without the knowledge of that tree in botanical terms, or
the knowledge of your pleasure or desire concerning it? Can you look at it so
completely that the space between you the observer and the thing observed
disappears? That doesnt mean that you become the tree! But when that space
disappears, there is the cessation of the observer, and only the thing which is
observed remains. In that observation there is perception, seeing the thing with
extraordinary vitality, its color, its shape, the beauty of the leaf or trunk; when
there is not the center of the me who is observing, you are intimately in contact
with that which you observe.

12. If I think I am very beautiful and you tell me I am not, which may be a fact,
do I like it? If I think I am very intelligent, very clever, and you point out that
I am actually a rather silly person, it is very unpalatable to me. And your
pointing out my stupidity gives you a sense of pleasure, does it not? It flatters
your vanity, it shows you how clever you are. But you do not want to look at your
own stupidity; you want to run away from what you are, you want to hide from
yourself, you want to cover up your own emptiness, your own loneliness. So you seek
out friends who never tell you what you are. You want to show others what they are;
but when others show you what you are, you do not like it. You avoid that which
exposes your own inner nature.

13. Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of

intelligence. You cannot go out and buy freedom in the market. You cannot get it by
reading a book, or by listening to someone talk. Freedom comes with intelligence.

But what is intelligence? Can there be intelligence when there is fear, or when the
mind is conditioned? When your mind is prejudiced, or when you think you are a
marvelous human being, or when you are very ambitious and want to climb the ladder
of success, worldly or spiritual, can there be intelligence? When you are concerned
about yourself, when you follow or worship somebody, can there be intelligence?
Surely, intelligence comes when you understand and break away from all this
stupidity. So you have to set about it; and the first thing is to be aware that
your mind is not free. You have to observe how your mind is bound by all these
things, and then there is the beginning of intelligence, which brings freedom. You
have to find the answer for yourself. What is the use of someone else being free
when you are not, or of someone else having food when you are hungry?

To be creative, which is to have real initiative, there must be freedom; and for
freedom there must be intelligence. So you have to inquire and find out what is
preventing intelligence. You have to investigate life, you have to question social
values, everything, and not accept anything because you are frightened.

14. Have you ever thought about why you are being educated, why you are learning
history, mathematics, geography, or what else? Have you ever thought why you go to
schools and colleges? Is it information, with knowledge? What is all this so-called
education? Your parents send you here, perhaps because they themselves have passed
certain examinations and taken various degrees. Have you ever asked yourselves why
you are here, and have the teachers asked why you are here? Do the teachers know
why they are here? Should you not try to find out what all this struggle is about
this struggle to study, to pass examinations, to live in a certain place away from
home and not be frightened, to play games well and so on? Should your teachers not
help you to inquire into all this and not merely prepare you to pass examinations?

15. So religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the
mind; and the mind then is never free. But it is only in freedom that you can find
out what is true, what is God, not through any belief; because your belief projects
what you think God ought to be, what you thinkought to be true. If you believe God
is love, God is good, God is this or that, your very belief prevents you from
understanding what is God, what is true.

16. A conditioned mind is not free because it can never go beyond its own borders,
beyond the barriers it has built around itself; that is obvious. And it is very
difficult for such a mind to free itself from its conditioning and go beyond,
because this conditioning is imposed upon it, not only by society, but by itself.
You like your conditioning because you dare not go beyond. You are frightened of
what your father and mother would say, of what society and the priest would say;
therefore you help to create the barriers which hold you. This is the prison in
which most of us are caught, and that is why your parents are always telling you
as you in turn will tell your children to do this and not do that.

17. Now, there are many people who will tell you the purpose of life; they will
tell you what the sacred books say. Clever people will go on inventing various
purposes of life. The political group will have one purpose, the religious group
will have another, and so on and on. And how are you to find out what is the
purpose of life when you yourself are confused? Surely, as long as you are
confused, you can only receive an answer which is also confused. If your mind is
disturbed, if it is not really quiet, whatever answer you receive will be through
this screen of confusion, anxiety, fear; therefore the answer will be perverted. So
the important thing is not to ask what is the purpose of life, but to clear away
the confusion that is within you. It is like a blind man asking, What is light?
If I try to tell him what light is, he will listen according to his blindness,
according to his darkness; but from the moment he is able to see, he will never ask
what is light. It is there.