Conforming to This World Is Not Renewing Your Mind
First of all, to discover anything, there must be great discontent, great questioning, unhappiness; and very few people in the world, when they are discontented, desire to accentuate that discontent, desire to go through it to find out. They generally want the opposite. If they are discontented, they want happiness, whereas, for myself - if I may be personal - I did not want the opposite, I wanted to find out; and so gradually through various questionings and through continual friction, I came t
— J. KrishnamurtiThe Power of Thought
The urge that dominates humanity is the search for power, and this search for power has its origin in thought. After all, what we do in society, which is what we do in relationship with one another and everything else--including our relationships with ideas and material items--and what we do in general, has its origin in the mind. That there might be another way, not rooted in fragmentary thought, is only sought by the few who see through the facade.
Thought is force, a means of control, a move to gain power. In the mind, generally, it is not understanding which is sought, but an attempt to control; control thought with another thought and to scheme, by way of thought, to control environment.
It is thought that there is an entity who controls, who gains power, who has continuity, who must survive. So in this there is fear, there is a hanging on to the entity that provides security; often it is thought that there is fear in ending, when actually there is fear in continuing. The entity, the controller, a creation of thought, would like to live forever and maintain control. So, inwardly there is division and conflict.
The Struggle of Thought
And, therefore, one battles the other; inwardly, an imposition of this controller is used to lord power over thought; and in the world, the individual competes against other individuals and their identifications; group against group, image against image, ego against ego.
Thought Creates the World
And it is all thought to be normal, correct, and respectable. It is assumed that the powerful are correct, that we should be somebody important, and that we are separate competing entities. When all else fails, we seek more dominance and control over others, brutally imposing will. Conversely, we submit to authority, finding security in its brutality, even in its illusion. A person who has power or seeks power often appears to be in contact with reality because he or she has put a certain kind of control on circumstances, based in the status quo. However, such a person is fragmentary, divisive, and so not at all in contact with reality, only in contact with a certain perspective. Because clarity has nothing to do with power and has everything to do with care. But it is not generally seen that authority and power are illusory, produced by thought; projections of memory and fantasy based in psychological time, an attempt to find psychological security in thought, only to create more conflict.
Disruption Leads to Clarity
It is disruptive to see illusion for what it is because everyone relies on it for security. But the problem is, illusion has in it conflict and disorder, so still leads to unhappiness. The dissatisfaction that brings about seeing through illusion, ends illusion and so ends it's confusion and misery. To be discontented is to not just accept things as they are, to not just go with the stream and fall into destructive and illusory patterns: It is to question and doubt what has been set by society, by school, by family, by work, by politics, by economics, by religion, and by the so-called experts. In this there is an underlying intelligence which ends all problems and brings right action.
Krishnamurti on Conformity and Revolution
- What Is Right Action? Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti: What Is Right Action? The collected works of J.Krishnamurti, 1934..1935.