The Individual and Society: The Bondage of Conditioning电子书

Editor’s Note

Talking things over together as two friends…

I. An overview

II. What is the individual? What is society? What is the relationship between them?

Obviously, society exists for the individual, and not the other way round. Society exists for the fruition of man; it exists to give freedom to the individual so that he may have the opportunity to awaken the highest intelligence.

Why is society crumbling, collapsing, as it surely is? One of the fundamental reasons is that the individual, you, has ceased to be creative.

The individual’s responsibility is not to society, but to himself. And if he is responsible to himself, he will act upon society.

III. The importance of the individual

Anything really true must be totally individual not in the sense of self-centeredness, but individual in the sense that each one of us must experience for himself, uninfluenced, something which is not the outcome of any self-centered interest or drive.

What the individual is, the society is.

In any creative action it is the individual who matters.

As long as the individual, which is you and I, does not take responsibility for the complete transformation of society, society will remain as it is.

IV. The bondage of conditioning

Introduction

What is conditioning?

The mind is the result of conditioning.

Surely, we are aware, not of our conditioning, but only of conflict, of pain and pleasure.

Factors of conditioning: Organized religion, nationalism, governments

Religion, as it is, is essentially based on ideas, on faith, on authority. But most of us are caught in it and we cannot get out. To get out, to break through our conditioning requires a great deal of energy.

The mind must be free from belief and nonbelief.

So, the individual is destroyed through compulsion, through propaganda, and is controlled, dominated for the sake of the society, for the sake of the state and so on.

We are bound by beliefs, by dogmas, for which we are willing to die and destroy each other.

V. Problems of unconditioning

Man, the human being, has done everything to bring about a radical change; and yet, fundamentally, man has not changed at all. We are what we have been for two million years!

Thought, which is the product of yesterday, can only respond in terms of yesterday, of time.

The difficulty, it seems to me, lies in understanding the fact that any form of change in a conditioned mind gives only a different conditioning, not a transformation.

When a conditioned mind seeks an answer to a problem, it is going around in circles; its search has no meaning.

Freedom from conditioning comes into being only when we see the necessity of a mind that is unconditioned. But we have never thought about it, we have never inquired…

VI. Wrong approaches to unconditioning

Effort does not clear up any of our problems.

The thinker and his thoughts are the outcome of desire.

There is peace only when there is no desire to become something.

It is only a confused mind that chooses.

Power and authority

The fact is that the human mind is seeking power; and in the search for power it loses its individuality.

To be free of society implies psychological freedom that is, to be totally free from ambition, from envy, greed, power, position, prestige.

The authority of one’s conditioning leads to every form of illusion.

Reform

Total transformation can never take place within the pattern of any society, whether that society be tyrannical or so-called democratic.

Analysis.

Analysis is not the way to understand the unconscious.

To meet the challenge of the new, the mind must be new.

Methods, systems, patterns.

There is no method to uncondition you.

To see the truth, there must be freedom.

Self-improvement

Religiously, socially and politically, there is the constant urge of self-improvement.

Self-improvement is progress in sorrow, not the cessation of sorrow.

You have taken the wrong road. You have walked a long, weary way and you discover that the path or road doesn't lead to where you want to go.

VII. Can the mind ever free itself from conditioning?

Introduction

Freeing the Mind from Conditioning

I say it is definitely possible for the mind to be free from all conditioning.

By simply being aware of the whole process of your conditioning without justification or condemnation you will see that you are introducing a new factor altogether.

Can we not be aware of that conditioning so easily and deeply that the very process of conditioning which is after all the desire to be secure, the desire to have permanency is burned away at the root?

1. Awareness, attention

By awareness I mean a state of watchfulness in which there is no choice.

2. Self-knowledge (self-knowing):

To discover the whole process of self-knowledge we have to be aware in relationship.Relationship is the only mirror we have, a mirror that will not distort, a mirror in which we can exactly and precisely see our thought unfolding itself.

We must first see the importance, the necessity of understanding oneself, for without understanding oneself, no problem can be resolved, and the wars, the antagonisms, the envy and strife, will continue.

Without self-knowledge do what you will, reform, have every kind of revolution, you will never create a world in which the individual becomes a total being and so can influence society.

In self-knowledge is the whole universe; it embraces all the struggles of humanity.

Your mind is humanity, and when you perceive this, you will have immense compassion.

3. Meditation

To me, meditation is something entirely different from what your books and your gurus have taught you. Meditation is the process of understanding your own mind.

To be choicelessly aware of everything about you and within yourself, is meditation.

This slowing down of thinking and the examining of every thought is the process of meditation.

When the mind is completely quiet, without any illusion, without any kind of self-hypnosis, there is the coming into being of something which is not put together by the mind.

When the mind is totally aware of its conditioning, there is only the mind; there is no ‘you’ separate from the mind.

The understanding of experience, ambition, and envy is the right foundation for meditation.

It is only when the mind has understood itself totally, comprehended itself widely so that it is without any barrier and is dead to everything it has known then only reality comes into being.

VIII. Krishnamurti on true or right education:

We have never thought about unconditioning the adult mind, and not conditioning the child. Surely, education is both curative and preventive.

The true function of education is to give you complete freedom to grow and create a different society, a new world.

It is the function of the teacher to help you to find out what you are, and he cannot help you to do that if he is comparing you with somebody else.

Finding one’s vocation

Whatever it is, if you really love to do it, you are not ambitious; because in love there is no ambition.

Happiness is . . . not a thing to be sought after.

Inward richness implies standing alone . . .

So, I think that a real school through its students should bring a blessing to the world. For the world needs a blessing; it is in a terrible state.

Fear and discipline

Discipline at all costs should be avoided . . .

Goodness comes into being only when you have intelligence, when you have love, when you have no fear.

Fear cripples our thinking . . .

So, it is very important from the tenderest age to help the child to see the implications of fear, and to be free of it. The moment you are frightened, there is an end to freedom.

Education and freedom

The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time.

IX. Krishnamurti on war and peace

To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me.

Peace is not something created by the mind, and it can be understood only when the heart is full.

X. In summation

Bibliography