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Jiddu Krishnamurti on following Him, Gurus, LeadersQuestioner: Surely, sir, in spite of all that you have said about following, you are aware that you are being continually followed. What is your action about it, as it is an evil, according to you? Jiddu Krishnamurti : Sir, we know that we follow - we follow the political leader, the guru, or we follow a pattern, or an experience. Our whole culture, our education, is based on imitation, authority, following. I say all following is evil, including the following of me. Following is evil, destructive, and yet the mind follows, does it not? It follows the Buddha or Christ or some idea or a perfect utopia because the mind itself is in a state of uncertainty, but it wants certitude. Following is the demand for certitude. The mind, demanding certitude, is creating authority - political, religious, or the authority of oneself - and it copies; therefore, everlastingly it struggles. The follower never knows the freedom of not following. You can only be free when there is uncertainty, not when the mind is pursuing certainty. A mind that is following is imitating, is creating authority, and therefore has fear. That is really the problem. We all know that we do follow, we accept some theories, some ideas, a utopia, or something else because deep down in the conscious, as well as in the unconscious, there is fear. A mind that has no fear does not create the opposite, it has no problem of following, it has no guru, it has no pattern, it is living. The mind is in a state of fear - fear of death, fear of something - and to be free it does various activities which lead to frustration; then the problem arises: Can the mind be free from fear, not how to be free? ''How to be free from fear'' is a schoolboy question. From that question, all problems arise - struggle, the achieving of an end, and therefore the conflict of the opposites. Can the mind be free from fear? What is fear? Fear only exists in relation to something. Fear is not an abstract thing by itself, it is in relation to something. I am afraid of public opinion, I am afraid of my boss, my wife, my husband; I am afraid of death; afraid of my loneliness; I am afraid that I shall not reach, I shall not know happiness in this life, I shall not know God, truth, and so on. So fear is always in relation to something. What is that fear? I think that if we can understand the question of desire, the problem of desire, then we will understand and be free from fear. ''I want to be something'' - that is the root of all fear. When I want to be something, my wanting to be something and my not being that something create fear, not only in a narrow sense but in the widest sense. So, as long as there is the desire to be something, there must be fear. The freedom from desire is not the mental projection of a state which my desire says I must be in. You have simply to see the fact of desire, just be aware of it - as you see your image in a mirror in which there is no distortion, in which you see your face as it is and not as you wish it to be. The reflection of your face in the mirror is very exact; if you can be aware of desire in that sense, without any condemnation, if you merely look at it, seeing all its facets, all its activities, then you will find that desire has quite a different significance. The desire of the mind is entirely different from the desire in which there is no choice. What we are fighting is the desire of the mind - the desire to become something. That is why we follow, that is why we have gurus. All the sacred books lead you to confusion because you interpret them according to your desire, and therefore you see only the reflection of your own fears and anxieties; you never see the truth. So it is only the mind that is really in a state in which there is no desire that does not follow, that has no guru. Such a mind is totally empty of all movement; only then, the bliss of the real comes into being. Source - Jiddu Krishnamurti talk February 24, 1954 Related Jiddu Krishnamurti Talks: |
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