Seer for the present age

Where the mind is disoriented and the world has lost its calm, where injustice is rampant and pride rules the self, can peace be sought? J. Krishnamurti has the answer, says O. R. RAO.

TWO reactions to such a headline could be: "Why one more seer in this post-modern age of universal relativism?" or "A seer? What can he offer us?" The answer is that Krishnamurti offers us nothing - no path, no formulae to set right the time which is out of joint, but only holds up a mirror for everyone to see themselves clearly in, and then decide for themselves how they wish to live.

"To have no opinion of what religion is, is to be free to enquire into it, into the quality of the mind that is religious. To enquire into this there must be freedom from all authority." Krishnamurti is a religious teacher who calls for a spirit of doubt and enquiry (and not for blind faith and acceptance) in the field of the spirit.

It is a truism that ours is an age of crisis in the human consciousness, an age of spiritual confusion and disorientation, both for the individual and for society.

The individual who in pre-modern societies, felt secure in a web of meaningful relationships in the family, caste, class or profession by firmly held religious beliefs, and general social consensus, now finds all these relationships disintegrating in the universal corrosion of religious faith and by the rapidity of social and economic change... If none of the values we profess to live by has any transcendental source beyond mere social consensus, is life worth living? These and a hundred other questions of life vex all thinking persons in today's world.

Our age is proud to call itself the Age of the Knowledge Explosion, but this explosion has brought us no nearer to clarity. Every intellectual advance and every scientific breakthrough which is expected to be the panacea for many ills, comes instead as a double-edged weapon - witness the cases of nuclear science (massed warheads or electrical power?); of genetic engineering (for better health or dangerous manipulation of life forms such as made to order babies?) electronic media (for spreading education, or for mindless entertainment, consumerism and propagandist control?) Knowledge may indeed have exploded in the modern age, but what is this knowledge for? We have no clear answers.

What is Krishnamurti's response to this situation? His vision is so multifaceted and so rich in meanings that to try to encapsulate it in a few sentences would be presumptuous. However, by way of an introduction, and to provide one way of entry into his teaching, we could perhaps put it somewhat as follows.

Instead of giving way to a frenzied rush to any ideological panacea that suggests itself, and instead of clutching at the straws of proffered religious faiths and philosophical doctrines which have lost any vitality they might once have had, he urged people to watch with total attention these movements of the mind and the heart. He urged us to be aware of the total contents of our being - of the restless movements of the senses, and of thought, feeling and volition, which try to appropriate objects, people, and every aspect of the world for their gratification. He bids us to watch the ubiquitous self-image which is the personification of insecurity, but is for ever seeking security in identifications with its possessions, achievements, qualities and so on. He asks us in short, to be choicelessly aware of all the ego-centric and incoherent movements of the self which does its best to avoid seeing things as they are, to avoid seeing for instance, that life and death go together...

However, and this is vital, these movements of the self have to be watched not in a judgemental, moralistic way but with total objectivity, "with affection" as he says. This is very important, and in watching the inner landscape of ourselves, there should be no suppression. "Listen to your desire, as you would listen to the wind among the trees"; "Watch your fear as you would watch a jewel"; "Let envy bloom and fade like a flower."

Only when we thus "stay with what is" and are impersonally aware of all the incoherences in our being can their power over us begin to diminish and we can look with fresh eyes at all the life-enhancing qualities and energies in "the world and all that therein is". Only then can some clarity within us begin to emerge.

When we choicelessly watch the incoherences in ourselves , many truths are discovered - that "you are the world", which means we are not possessors of a unique individuality as we imagined, but are emotionally, psychologically and mentally almost totally conditioned by the society in which we live; that "the observer is the observed" which means that what we think we see is almost always not what is actually there, but our own projection; that "the thinker and the thought are the same" and "the controller is the controlled" which means while we imagine we are in control of our thoughts, it is the thoughts which control us; that "to be is to be related" which means our whole being consists of and is revealed in the relationships we have with other persons, with possessions, with ideas, with Nature and so on. Hence we can discover ourselves in the "mirror of relationships", by choicelessly watching our responses in relationships.

The question Krishnamurti poses to his listeners, then, is whether they actually find in their own experience anything other than their conditioning, anything corresponding to a pure transcendental Self, any realm of pure being. Is there a pure detached state of being or mind from which we can observe or control our conditioned thoughts? If we look into ourselves and are "choicelessly aware" of the structure of ourselves, we will have to admit there is no such pure state of the being untouched by the observed contents of the mind. If I am envious and strive to detach myself from the envy and to control it, the striving and the control provides a link between the envious state and the "controlling" mind. There is a dynamic tension vibrating in this link which unites the observed state and the observing mind. Thus the "observer is the observed," "the thinker is the thought" and "the controller is the controlled". These pairs of opposite poles are linked together in a dynamic symbiosis. If I believe that my mind has been completely conditioned by the colonial imperialism of the West, and if, wishing to free myself of their conditioning, I react against it, the "Western mind", through this reaction, is still controlling me.

However, if I do not fret against this tension, but stay with it and watch it peacefully and lucidly, there is a sudden "happening"...

This is not a lyrical outburst designed to hide the fact of a conditioning. Universal conditioning is a fact. However, that there are different forms of conditioning-by religion, culture, class and so on-is not so crucial as the fact that conditioning is universal. Humanity grows out of the soil of conditioning, and scientist and scholar, worker and peasant, "all stand on the same ground". The scientist may be an intellectual pioneer, but like the worker he too has to take thought for the morrow. This prevents us from escaping into elitism or an empty Narcissism, and enables us to appreciate and be enhanced by the life- enhancing qualities found in people other than the exceptionally talented. In this there are the seeds of empathy with other people who, we realise, are subject to the same compulsions as we, and in this also are the seeds of a true morality stronger than those constructed out of philosophical axioms which may be as fragile as a house of cards. It is such empathy that enables us to be enhanced by the great works of art, literature and science as manifestations of the human spirit which have grown out of the common soil of humanity.

Such a conclusion will not be acceptable to all. Indeed to some, for instance the Marxists, this is a vacuous statement, a platitude meant to mislead and divert attettention from the "real reality" which is that conditioning is the result of economic exploitation which in turn is embedded in the logic of class conflict as it unfolds in History. The answer according to the Marxist ideology of course lies in the systemic solution of revolution. However, are systemic solutions the final solution? The history of such solutions during the past century, and the atrocities committed in their name should give us pause, to say the least.

What then is the answer? For Krishnamurti, "the inner always overcomes the outer", which means that the inward psychological state of being is what determines the quality of outward actions, and not vice-versa. "Hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states-greed, envy, ill-will and possessiveness." War itself is "the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday life (and), it is merely and outward expression of our inward state, an enlargement of our daily action." To end conflict, war and exploitation, there needs to be an inward transformation from incoherence to clarity, from conflict to inward peace. "To have peace, we must be peaceful", and "to go far we have to begin very near".

Is this too simplistic an answer? Is it a better or a worse answer than the systemic ones? Krishnamurti pushes us back into ourselves to ponder over these issues instead of coming up with ready answers and facile solutions. And so what happens to all those questions about the family, education, social cohesion and to the difficult questions raised by the advance of technology? Krishnamurti: "There are no answers to life's questions. The state of mind that is questioning is more important than the question itself. And to understand anything you must live with it, you must observe it, you must know all its contents, its nature, its structure, its movements...." And out of such observation true clarity may emerge.

The writer is a trustee, Krishnamurti Foundation India.

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