Kinfonet Quote of the Day: Belief is merely an escape from the present conflict.

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Auckland New Zealand | 2nd Talk in Town Hall 1st April, 1934

How can you live intelligently, and therefore harmoniously, if you are bound by beliefs? After all, belief is merely an escape from the present conflict. A man that is in immense conflict with life, wanting to understand, has no belief, he is in the process of experimentation; he does not positively believe and then continue with the experiment. A scientist does not start with a belief in his experiments, he starts experimenting. And a man who is bound by authority, social or religious, surely he cannot live harmoniously, therefore spiritually, intelligently. Authority, then, is merely the process of imitation, falseness. A man who is full of thought is free of authority, because authority merely makes him into an imitative machine, into a cog - whether in a social or religious machine. Therefore such a man can live harmoniously, and in that harmony his mind and heart are normal, sane, full, complete, not burdened with fear.

Tags: authority, belief

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It does not depend on titles or degrees, revelation or authority.; We accept thoughtlessly or unconsciously so many conditions imposed by society or by religion, accept them as being true.; An authority seasoned through the mists of time becomes invulnerable, and then man accepts that authority as being final.; When you begin to perceive that influence or authority in any form, gross or subtle. must pervert thought, then the mind, in freeing itself from its limitations, is capable of true discernment.; To understand the deep significance of authority and compulsion. you need very delicate and careful thought.; To discuss and intellectually discover what is intelligence would be, I feel, a waste of time and energy, for that would not lift the burden of ignorance and illusion.; You have to understand your own desire, which is creating authority and to which you are a slave;; You are not going to miss a spiritual opportunity by not coming here.; If you follow anybody, it does not matter who it is, you are creating further compulsion, further limitation, and so destroying intelligence, true fulfilment.; Religion, surely, is the uncovering of reality. Religion is not belief.; As long as mind is caught up in belief, there is no understanding, there is no freedom.; Truth is truth, one, alone; it has no sides, no paths; all paths do not lead to truth.; Freedom cannot be given; freedom is something that comes into being when you do not seek it;; Every habit, repetition, rituals strengthened by belief and dogma, sensory responses, can be and are refined, but the alert awareness, sensitivity, is quite another matter.; A satisfactory explanation, or a comforting belief, can put you soothingly to sleep; but is that what you want?; That is the nature of belief: taking for granted, accepting something to be true when your own enquiry, your own vitality, energy, has not found out, you believe.; Belief implies accepting as true what we don't know.; Do you agree with the teachings of Buddha?; By studying what we consider important in life, those things which we have accepted - the values, the standards, the beliefs, the innumerable things that we hold - by examining them, perhaps we shall find out the ways of our own thinking and thereby know ourselves.; All men, everywhere in the world have a belief, it does not matter what it is, and that belief guides their mind, whereas life should guide and not belief.; You have to believe in God only when there is no understanding, and you cannot have understanding by searching for it.; Where there is a search for comfort, security, there must be a pattern, a mould, in which we take shelter, and therefore we begin to preconceive what God must be, and what truth must be.; As beliefs separate people, condition people, keep them apart, so possessiveness, expressing itself as class-consciousness and growing into nationality, keeps people apart.; I hold that to have a belief is a limitation.; To really think, the mind must not be tethered to a belief.; To me, truth has no aspects; it is one, and that which is complete, whole, has no aspects.; To be a theist or an atheist, to me, are both absurd.; Most minds have identified themselves with a belief, and therefore their thought is always circumscribed, limited by that belief or ideal;; Self-discipline implies a mind that is tethered to a particular thought or belief or ideal, a mind that is held by a condition;; Both the believer and the non-believer in God and immortality are wrong, because the mind cannot comprehend reality until it is completely free of all illusions.; Should not traditions, beliefs, dogmas be questioned?; Man is almost suffocated in the prison of false values, of which he is unconscious.; Your traditions and your beliefs are shelters under which you take cover in time of trouble.