Jiddu Krishnamurti - A man who believes in God can never find God

Question: Is belief in God necessary or helpful?
Jiddu Krishnamurti : As I said, belief in any form is a hindrance. A man who believes in God can never find God. If you are open to reality, there can be no belief in reality. If you are open to the unknown, there can be no belief in it. After all, belief is a form of self-protection, and only a petty mind can believe in God. Look at the belief of the aviators during the war who said God was their companion as they were dropping bombs!

So you believe in God when you kill, when you are exploiting people. You worship God and go on ruthlessly extorting money, supporting the army - yet you say you believe in mercy, compassion, kindliness. Obviously, such belief is a hindrance to the understanding of reality. All belief in any form is a hindrance, including your belief in God. Your belief is a hindrance to the discovery of the real because it is based on an idea or patterned after a tradition.

As long as belief exists, there can never be the unknown; you cannot think about the unknown; thought cannot measure it. The mind is the product of the past; it is the result of yesterday, and can such a mind be open to the unknown? It can only project an image, but that projection is not real; so your god is not God - it is an image of your own making, an image of your own gratification.

There can be reality only when the mind understands the total process of itself and comes to an end. When the mind is completely empty - only then is it capable of receiving the unknown.

The mind is not purged until it understands the content of relationship - its relationship with property, with people - until it has established the right relationship with everything. Until it understands the whole process of conflict in relationship, the mind cannot be free. Only when the mind is wholly silent, completely inactive, not projecting, when it is not seeking and is utterly still - only then that which is eternal and timeless comes into being.

This is not speculation, something which you can learn from another; it is not sentiment or sensation - it is a thing that has to be experienced. You cannot experience it as long as the mind is active. Silence of the mind is not achieved by action; it is not a thing to be gone after; it comes only when conflict ceases. To understand one's conflict in relationship is the beginning of wisdom, and when the mind is tranquil, that which is eternal comes into being.

Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti talk Ceylon, January 15, 1950

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