Jiddu Krishnamurti on Awareness

 

 

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti - To be free from this disorder is order. Please follow this a little bit. To be free from disorder, which is the social order, is to be actually in order. So, one cannot seek order. Order is a living thing - it is changing, it is moving, it is vital, creative - it isn't just functioning within a pattern established by society, by culture. That society, that culture, has produced great disorder, great misery, conflict. And this conflict, this confusion, however supposedly moral, is immoral; it is disorder. If the mind can understand this disorder and free itself from it, then naturally there will be order.

 

Then the mind won't seek a pattern of order. I don't know if I am making myself clear on this point. This is really very important to understand. Through negation of what is disorder, there is order, but if you pursue order positively, then you will have disorder. If you will negate completely that which is not order - which we consider positive - then out of that negation comes the positive order, which is living. When I see, when the mind understands very clearly that hate is not love, or that jealousy is not love, when you completely deny jealousy anywhere, then you may come upon what love is. You cannot cultivate love, but you can deny that which it is not.

 

So, out of denial of that which is not true comes what is true, and what is true, what is order, cannot be preestablished; if you do, then you are merely suppressing disorder, which will burst out again at another time. Look, all the tyrannies, the dictatorships - the Russian, the Chinese, the Hitlerian, Mussolinian, and so on - they said, ``This is order; this is the way you must think, act, function.'' And Stalin and others have liquidated millions, literally millions, to bring about or-der - what they considered order - which is bringing disorder, obviously, because there is the demand for freedom. There is the demand that the mind shall be free, not be suppressed, not be ordered about by a dictator.

 

So, in the understanding of our life, which is disorder - not an idea of disorder - out of that understanding comes order. Order is not an idea; there is no concept about order. Order is virtue, and one cannot have a preconception of virtue, of what virtue is. Please do follow this a little bit because, just as you cannot possibly cultivate humility, that is, follow a certain system or method - if you do, then it is not humility - so order cannot be cultivated as an ideology according to which you live. This brings about conflict, and conflict is essentially disorder. Do follow this. Conflict within or without is disorder.

 

So, the question is: Is it possible to understand this whole structure of disorder without creating its opposite, for when you create the opposite it breeds disorder. So, can you understand disorder without conflict? The moment there is conflict, there is the indication of its opposite - that you must be orderly. Order is virtue, but when these two opposites exist there is conflict. Can the mind, without creating the opposite, understand disorder without conflict? This is not an intellectual question, this is not something of a puzzle, but it is essentially our problem. We live in a state of disorder - in your own houses there is disorder, confusion, the mess and the dirt, the squalor, which is projected outwardly in your office and in your way of thinking, walking, sitting, spitting, and everything that goes on.

 

Can one be aware of that, and of whether that awareness will bring about a radical revolution now? Freedom is not from something - please do understand, we are going through rather difficult things, and explanation is never the actual thing. Unfortunately, we think that by explaining we understand something, but we don't. Explanation is one thing and actuality is another. The word tree is not the tree, but we confuse the word with the tree. So freedom, what we call freedom, is freedom from something: freedom from anger, freedom from violence, freedom from this utter despair.

 

And, when you are free from something, are you actually free? Please do go into it in yourselves, observe it. Or, is freedom something entirely different and not from something? Being free from something is a reaction, and the reaction can go on repeating itself indefinitely. But the freedom we are talking about is entirely different, the sense of being completely free - not from anything. And, this quality of awareness of what is implied in being free from something, awareness of the whole structure of it, will naturally bring about a freedom which is not a reaction. Is this all getting rather too complicated? Yes?

 

Now, we have to examine what we mean by awareness. Don't translate it into Sanskrit, don't say, ``I must practice it.'' Just try to understand what that English word means and what is implied: the structure and the nature of that word.

 

As we sit here we see, are aware, conscious of, the various colors of the tent. You observe it, you see the various colors, and as you see it you respond, have your reactions of like or dislike to those colors. That is the simple beginning of awareness, of being aware of what you see. Most of us do not see at all; we pass a tree every day of our life and never stop to look at it. We see the squalor on the road, and we do nothing about it.

 

So, we are not observing outwardly the trees, the birds, the sky, the clouds, the beauty of a sunset, the curve of a hill, the smile on a face; we are not aware of these at all, outwardly. But, it becomes much more difficult to be aware inwardly, of what actually is going on. There, outwardly, it doesn't much matter, but inwardly it matters very much because the moment you are aware of yourself, your thoughts, your feelings, your confusion, then you get agitated, you are anxious, you want to change them. But first, what is important is just to observe, without any reaction.

 

Suppose I am angry - I observe it, I do not condemn it, I do not think it is right or wrong. I want to understand it, and to understand anything - it doesn't matter what it is - there must be neither condemnation nor justification; to understand something, the mind must be completely quiet. If I want to understand you, I must not have any prejudice about you. I must not say I like or dislike your face, your color, your race, your language, the way you talk, the way you move - I must just observe you.

 

And, to observe very clearly, the mind must be quiet. It is not a question of how to make the mind quiet, which becomes absurd; the mind cannot be made quiet. If you do, there are dualities: there is the man who says, ``I must make the mind quiet,'' and there is the actuality of the mind which wanders all over the place. This is a conflict. Whereas, if one wants to understand oneself, the mind has to be quiet to look; and you cannot look if you condemn, if you justify, if you falsify, if you are not honest. And, as most of us are trained to be dishonest, never to look at things directly, it becomes extraordinarily difficult for people who have not actually looked - observed a tree, a cloud, the beauty of light on the water.

 

So, awareness is this quality of mind which observes without any justification or condemnation, approval or disapproval, like or dislike - it merely observes. And it becomes rather difficult when you are stirred up emotionally, when your security, when your family, when your opinions, judgments, and beliefs are shaken - and they will be shaken. There is nothing whatsoever that is secure; everything is in change, and we refuse to accept this change, and hence the battle in ourselves. So, when you observe yourself very quietly and the world about you, then out of this observation comes freedom - not the freedom from something. Is this fairly clear?