Man’s discovery of God ceases to be a discovery if he begins this search with a foregone conclusion in his mind. Most religions impose a certain image of the type of God they would want their followers to worship. Whereas to mind, in the search for truth, which to me is the search for God, the choice does not rest with us as to what to reject or accept.
Truth, God, call it what you will, is an awareness of the totality of existence, of our hopes and desires, our ambitions, our greed, our loves and thousands of other emotions which constitute what passes for the living individual. I believe organized religions stand in the way of this awareness of the totality of existence.
Mind has its own place, a unique place in our lives. Without the use of your mind you won’t be able to find your way back home, and I won’t be able to conduct this conversation without its help. But mind can only move in the sphere of the known, in the sphere of time. Whereas we refer to God as the unknown the timeless, is it not ? Till a certain stage, in the three dimensions world, our mind can serve us to our advantage. But to reach the fourth dimension of existence, the mind instead of moving along the horizontal plane, must learn to shoot up vertically as it were and explode for the timeless, for the unknown to be.
Man being free, is wholly responsible to himself, unguided by any plan, by any spiritual authority, by any divine dispensation whatsoever. As he is free, he is, by that very freedom, limited. If you were not free, you would have a different world from that which exists at present. As the will in everyone is free, it is limited, and because the self is small, without determination or purpose at the beginning, it chooses, it discriminates, has its likes and has its dislikes. In the removal of that limitation, which is self-imposed on the self, lies the glory of the fulfillment of the self, the freedom of the self.
This attainment is not brought about by ecstasy, nor does it lie in the abandoning of oneself to works or to prayer, or in the blind following of another, or in immolation of oneself to a cause. Because the “I”, the self, is in process of achieving, it is creating barriers between itself and its fulfillment, by its eagerness, its struggles, through fear, through innumerable complications. To remove these barriers of limitation, you need constant awareness, constant watchfulness, constant self-reflection, which must be imposed on yourself, never by another. But if you discipline yourself unconsciously, without knowing where you are going, that self-discipline itself becomes a barrier. Understand the purpose of life, and from that very understanding will arise self-discipline. Self-discipline must be born out of the love of Life-vast, immeasurable, whole, unconditioned, limitless, to which all humanity belongs. Because you love that freedom which is absolute, which is Truth itself, which is harmony; by the very force of that love, your self-discipline will make you incorruptible; so you must nourish that love. The incorruptibility of the self is the perfection of life.
Till man is made incorruptible by himself, he will know no happiness, he will be held in the bondage of friendship and the fear of loneliness. The weariness of strife will still hold him. Men must be created who are great in the serenity of harmony. Such men must be born in you. Such men must give rise to new transformations, must become a flame to burn away the dross danger to all unessential, childish things.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
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