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Jiddu Krishnamurti on how to
control thought and on Authority
Questioner: We have been told that thought must be
controlled to bring about that state of tranquillity necessary to
understand reality. Could you please tell us how to control thought?
Jiddu
Krishnamurti : First, sir, don't follow any authority. Authority is
evil. Authority destroys, authority perverts, authority corrupts; and a
man who follows authority is destroying himself and destroying also that
which he has placed in a position of authority. The follower destroys
the master as the master destroys the follower. The guru destroys the
pupil as the pupil destroys the guru.
Through authority you will never find anything. You
must be free of authority to find reality. It is one of the most
difficult things to be free of authority, both the outer and the inner.
Inner authority is the consciousness of experience, consciousness of
knowledge. And outward authority is the state, the party, the group, the
community. A man who would find reality must shun all authority,
external and inward. So, don't be told what to think. That is the curse
of reading - the word of another becomes all-important.
The question begins by saying, ''We have been told.'' Who is there to
tell you? Sir, don't you see that leaders and saints and great teachers
have failed, because you are what you are? So leave them alone. You have
made them failures because you are not seeking truth; you want
gratification. Don't follow anyone, including myself; don't make of
another your authority. You yourself have to be the master and the
pupil. The moment you acknowledge another as a master and yourself as a
pupil, you are denying truth. There is no master, no pupil, in the
search for truth.
The search for truth is important, not you or the
master who is going to help you to find the truth. You see, modem
education, and also the previous education, have taught you what to
think, not how to think. They have put you within a frame, and that
frame has destroyed you, because you seek out a guru, a teacher, a
leader, political or other, only when you are confused. Otherwise you
never follow anybody. If you are very clear, if you are inwardly a light
unto yourself, you will never follow anyone. But because you are not,
you follow; you follow out of your confusion, and what you follow must
also be confused. Your leaders as well as yourself are confused,
politically and religiously. Therefore, first clear up your own
confusion, become a light unto yourself, and then the problem will
cease. The division between the master and the pupil is unspiritual.
Now, the question wants to know how to control thought. First of
all, to control it you must know what thought is and who is the
controller. Are they two separate processes or a joint phenomenon? You
must first understand what thought is, must you not, before you say, ''I
will control thought''; and also you must know what the controller is.
Is there a controller without thought? If you have no thoughts, is there
a thinker? The thinker is the thought; the thought is not separate from
the thinker; they form a single process.
So, you have only thoughts left, not the thinker. Though you use the
words I think, it is only a form of communication; there is actually
only a state in which thought is. And thought creates the thinker who
then communicates his thought. The thinker is merely the verbalization
of the thought.
So, we have to find out what is thought. Then we shall know whether it
is possible to control it or not and why you want to control it. There
may be quite a different approach to putting an end to the thought
process, but it is not by control. Because, the moment you exert
control, making an effort through an act of will, you do not understand
thought. You are then merely condemning one thought and justifying
another. That which you have justified, you want to hold onto. That
which you condemn, you want to push aside. So, let us find out what we
mean by thought.
What is thought? Without memory there is no thought, is there? Thought
is the result of accumulated experience, is it not, which is the past.
Without the past, there can be no thought in the present, can there? So
thought is a response of the past to the present challenge. That is,
thought surely is the reaction of memory. But, what is memory? Memory,
the continuance of remembering, is the verbalization of experience,
isn't it? There is challenge, response - which is experience - and that
experience is verbalized. That verbalization creates memory, and the
response of memory to challenge is thought. So thought is verbalization,
isn't it?
I do not know if you have ever tried to think without words. The moment
you think, you must use words. I am not saying that there is not a state
in which there is no verbalization. We are not discussing that. The
thought is the word. Without verbalization, without the word, thought -
the thought that we know - is not. So, if you see that the word - the
verbalization - is the thought process, then it is not a question of
controlling thought, but of the cessation of thinking as verbalization.
Where there is verbalization of an experience, there must be thought.
To think is to verbalize.
So, our problem is not
how to control thought, but whether it is possible not to verbalize, not
to put everything into words. Why do we put our responses, our
reactions, into words? Why do we do that? For one obvious reason - to
communicate, to tell another our feeling. Also, we verbalize in order to
strengthen that feeling, don't we, in order to fix it, in order to look
at it, in order to recapture that feeling which is gone. The word has
taken the place of the feeling which has gone. So the word becomes
all-important, and not the feeling, not the response, not the
experience. The word has taken the place of experiencing. So, the word
becomes the thought, which prevents experiencing.
Our problem, then, is this: Is it possible not to verbalize, not to
name, not to give a term? Obviously it is possible. You do this often,
only unconsciously. When you are faced with a crisis, with a sudden
challenge, there is no verbalization. You meet it fully. So, it is
possible, but only when the word is not important, which means when
thought is not important, when the idea is not important. When an idea
assumes importance, then the pattern becomes important, the ideology
becomes important, and the revolution based on an idea becomes
important; but a revolution based on an idea is not a revolution, it is
merely the continuation, the modified continuity of an old idea, an idea
of yesterday.
So, the word becomes important only when experiencing is not important,
when there is not the state of experiencing, which is to meet the
challenge without verbalization, without the screen of words. You give
life to the word, which is memory, when it is that memory which meets
the challenge, because memory has no life in itself, has it? The word
has no meaning in itself. It gains vitality, strength, impetus,
fullness, only when the past, the memory, meets the challenge.
Therefore, out of the living, the dead comes to life.
And as it gains more life from that which in itself is dead, then
thought becomes all-important. Thought by itself has no meaning except
in relation to the past, which is verbal. And it is not a question of
controlling thought. On the contrary, a controlled mind is incapable of
receiving truth. A controlled mind is an anxious mind, a mind that is
resisting, suppressing, substituting, and such a mind is afraid, and how
can a mind that is anxious be still? How can a mind that is afraid be
tranquil? There can be tranquillity only when the mind is no longer
caught in the net of words. When the mind is no longer verbalizing every
experience, then naturally it is in a state of experiencing.
Where there is experiencing, there is neither the experiencer nor the
experienced. In that state of experiencing, which is always new, which
is always being - though one can communicate that being by using words -
one knows that the word is not the experience, the word is not the
thing, the word has no content; only the experience itself is full of
content.
Then, experiencing is not verbalization. Experiencing
is the highest form of understanding because it is the negation of
thinking. The negative form of thinking is the highest form of
comprehension, and there can be no negative thinking when there is
verbalization of thought. So, it is not a question of controlling
thought at all but of being free from thought. It is only when the mind
is free from thought that there is a perception of that which is, of
that which is eternal, which is truth.
Source: Jiddu Krishnamurti talk February 20, 1949
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