Kinfonet Quote of the Day: Only the mind that has emptied itself of the known is creative.

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Krishnamurti Quote of the Day

Saanen Switzerland | On Freedom, Talks by Krishnamurti in Europe 1963

If you are hearing for the first time this statement that you must be free of thought, you may say, " Poor chap, he is crazy." But if you have really listened, not only this time but for the many years during which some of you have perhaps read all about it, you will know that what is being said has an an extraordinary vitality, a penetrating truth. Only the mind that has emptied itself of the known is creative. That is creation. What it creates has nothing to do with it. Freedom from the known is the state of a mind that is in creation. How can a mind that is in creation be concerned with itself? Therefore, to understand that state of mind, you have to know yourself, you have to observe the process of your thinking - observe it, not to alter it, not to change it, but just observe it as you see yourself in a mirror. When there is freedom, then you can use knowledge and it will not destroy humanity. But when there is no freedom and you make use of knowledge, you create misery for everybody, whether you are in Russia, in America, in China or anywhere else. I call that mind serious that is aware of the conflict of the known and is not caught in it, not trying to modify it, to improve the known; for on that path there is no end to sorrow and misery.

Tags: conflict, freedom, knowledge, observation, thought

Related Quotes: Surely it must be possible to function in a sexual relationship with someone you love without the nightmare which usually follows.; From the known you cannot possibly see the unknown;; Man has invented heaven out of hope, for his life has become a hell, an endless conflict from birth to death, coming and going, making money, working endlessly.; All our life is spent in struggle, and we think that struggle is a necessary part of existence.; The self, the "me," is a network of complex desires, each desire having its own impetus and aim, often in opposition to other hopes and pursuits.; Conflict at any level, at any depth, indicates immaturity.; There is no essential difference between the old and the young, for both are slaves to their own desires and gratifications.; We are always caught in this misery of an everlasting battle with ourselves and with society. That is a fact.; There is no release from conflict until there is an understanding of what is.; Become aware of the cause that prevents you from living completely.; When we suffer we seek immediate consolation, comfort, and therefore there is no longer questioning; there is no longer doubt, but mere acceptance.; The moment we have solved one problem, another arises, and so we continue to the end of our lives seeking solutions to an endless series of problems.; You are not concerned with what causes suffering, but you are concerned with the way of escaping from that suffering into perfection.; Do not try to be spiritual, for you do not know what that signifies at all.; Heaven knows, we have conflicts all day long, but we have trained our mind to be cunning, and so pass over these conflicts lightly, escape from them.; Through friction, through continual conflict, memory is being created, memory as the "I" and the "mine", which becomes possessive.; Conflict can exist only between two false things, between that supposed reality which you call the "I", which to me is nothing else but the result of environment, and the environment itself.; You have not solved conflict, you have merely shifted it by substituting a new environment, a new condition, which will in turn produce further conflict.; If you look into your lives, you will see that conflict is continually twisting, perverting, shaping your lives;; There can be struggle only between two false things, conflict between the environment and the result of environment which is the "I".; Some people believe that the "I" has had a birth in the distant past and will continue in the future. It is irrelevant to me, it has no significance at all.; You know we have lost all sense of living normally, simply, directly.; Intelligence and conflict cannot exist together.; In times of peace and quietness, there takes place a gradual change of values, mostly unconscious, and this change, this gradual change, we term the struggle between the old and the young.; How is one to have this intelligence which destroys struggle and conflict and the ceaseless effort which wears out mind itself?; When the mind is not imparting values, which is mere conformity, when there is spontaneous understanding of the prison, which is environment, then there is the action of intelligence, which is freedom.; The turmoil, the end, and the "you" are the same; there is no division.; The illusion of economic security is shown throughout the world by these depressions, crises, wars, calamities, and chaos.; It is the very essence of stupidity to escape from conflict through a series of established values, or through forming a new set of values.; We should go into this question of freedom and enquire whether it is at all possible to be free, or if it is an ideological utopia, a concept which has no reality whatsoever.; Only in total freedom does bliss exist.; From the known you cannot possibly see the unknown;; Freedom is to stand alone, unattached and unafraid, free in the understanding of desire which breeds illusion.; Self-knowledge is not a conclusion, an end; it has no beginning and no end.; It is only the righteous man that develops his will as a means of resistance, and a man of will can never find truth, because he is never free.; Meditation is seeing the constant touching the ever-changing movement of life.; We have divided life into dying and living. And this division has brought about great fear. And out of that fear we invent all kinds of theories, very comforting, may be illusory, but it is very comforting, illusions are comfortably neurotic.; The 'me' is created by thought and the 'me' says: "I am independent of thought".; Freedom is born of the perception that freedom is essential.; Everything we see, every thought we have, shapes our mind; whatever you think now, whatever you have thought in the past and whatever you are going to think in the future, it all shapes the mind.; The mind is never free, pliable, for it is always anchored; it moves within the radius, narrow or wide, of its own centre.; If I have the whole picture in mind then I can take in the detail; but if my mind only operates in a detail then I cannot take in the whole.; I cannot lead you to truth, nor can anyone else; you have to discover it every moment of the day as you are living.; How can one stimulate a desire for freedom?; To live without comparison is to remove a tremendous burden.; To examine, explore, anything, there must be the quality of freedom from all your prejudices, conditioning and so on, even from your own experience;; You may say there is a part of you - the watcher, the super-soul, the Atman - which is not conditioned; but because you think about it, it is within the field of thought, therefore it is conditioned.; I am talking of that living reality in which there is utter freedom from all ideas.; We are influenced not only by external conditions, but also by an inner condition which we develop.; We must find out - if it is possible or not - whether there is a different dimension, a different approach, to life altogether.; Thinking is materialistic, it is a process of matter.; the explanation is never that thing which is explained, that is the word is never the thing.; Your experiences, your inclinations and motives, all that is the movement of the past, which is knowledge.; ...when knowledge interferes in the discovery of the new, there is no discovery of the new.; All one's education, all one's past experience and knowledge is a movement in becoming, both inwardly, psychologically as well as outwardly.; Why do you condemn the acquisition of knowledge?; Love does not compare, and so the envy and torture of 'becoming' cease.; From the known you cannot possibly see the unknown;; You have only one head, care for it, don't destroy it. It's so easy to poison it.; Without innocence, it is impossible to be happy.; Can thought be aware of its own movement? Can thought see itself, see what it is doing, both in the outer and the inner?; Can one see that the whole movement of this illusory memory, which appears so real, can end?; It is odd what importance we give to the printed word, to so-called sacred books.; You cannot find out what is true by assertion. You must sweep the slate completely clean of the known before you can find out.; Time is merely the outcome of our not meeting the fact without knowledge.; Knowledge is never complete, can never be complete.; The brain needs protection, order, it must be completely secure, to function properly.; The centre from which you think, the `me', the self, the ego, is a bundle of memories, and you are nothing else but that.; The 'observer' exists only when you accumulate in the observation;; You tell us to observe our actions in daily life but what is the entity that decides what to observe and when?; Through attachment the inevitable darkness of fear is waiting; Why do we give such deep significance and meaning to the unconscious? - for after all, it is as trivial as the conscious.; What is meditation? Why should one meditate? To find that out, stop meditating.; A mind that is indifferent, is aware of the shoddiness of our civilization, the shoddiness of our thought, the ugly relationships;; You think you are the center of this beautiful earth.; The observer is also the image, only he has separated himself and observes.; Let the thing that you are watching tell its story, rather than you tell it what it should be.; You cannot perceive if you do not ask the right question - and a right question has no answer, because it needs no answer.; There was no observer listening, pitying, and walking behind them. He was not part of them out of love and pity; he was them.; When you say to somebody `I love you', what does it mean?; to observe means to observe without the interference of one's background; but one is the background - you follow?-one's whole being which looks is one's background - as a Christian, as a Frenchman, or as an intellectual.; Observation is not detachment because there is no attachment.; As long as the mind is active in its desire to transform itself, it can only be a model of its own projection; therefore there is no transformation.; To observe means actually to be aware of the interference of thought;; There is only thinking, and thinking is impermanent; There is no such thing as pure thought, or ''free'' thought; We must find out - if it is possible or not - whether there is a different dimension, a different approach, to life altogether.; Thinking is materialistic, it is a process of matter.; Most of us want to be occupied; otherwise we shall feel lost, otherwise we do not know what to do, we will be lonely, we will be confronted with what we actually are; What is the relationship of attention to inattention, and to awareness?; Thought is the very denial of love, and it cannot enter into that space where the me is not.; Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.; You have only one head, care for it, don't destroy it. It's so easy to poison it.; An intelligent mind acts in the field of thought intelligently, sanely, without resistance;; To walk alone, unimpeded by thought, by the trail of our desires, is to go beyond the reaches of the mind.; Can thought be aware of its own movement? Can thought see itself, see what it is doing, both in the outer and the inner?; It is odd what importance we give to the printed word, to so-called sacred books.; To transform, I must look at what is; and I am not looking at it as long as I have an ideal.; Sir, don't follow any authority. Authority is evil. Authority destroys, authority perverts, authority corrupts;; As long as you think time and thought are necessary, in the psychological world, in the world of the self, in the world of psyche, in the world of inside the skin, then you will be perpetually in fear.; In the life we we generally lead there is very little solitude.; If you have no thoughts, there is no thinker; so it is thought that creates the thinker.; The thinker is a fictitious entity, an unreal state. There is only thought; and the bundle of thoughts creates the 'I', the thinker.; Is there any thought which is not conditioned?; Experiencing without memory is one state, and experiencing with memory is another.; The thinker is the thought. They are not separate, they are a joint phenomenon and not separate processes.; Thought is the outcome of incomplete experience.; A fundamental question cannot be answered by somebody else.; Thought is a very strange thing, is it not?; Thinking and feeling are to me the same, because I have lost the distinction of what you call thought and emotion.; Thought is like the waters of a river. It must be in continual movement. Eternity is that movement.; when thought, which is emotion, which is action itself, is unimpeded in its movement, is not compelled or influenced or bound by an idea, and does not proceed from the background of tradition or habit, then that movement is creative.