To Be Completely Mature

From Krishnamurti’s Book COLLECTED WORKS VOL. 13

One must know what is meant by learning, maturity, and self-knowing. These are not mere words, they are not just concepts, the meaning of which is easily captured. To go behind and see the real significance of the words requires a great deal of understanding. By understanding I mean that effortless slate in which the mind is totally aware without any impediments, without any bias, without any struggling to understand what the speaker is saying. What the speaker is saying has very little importance in itself. The really important thing is for the mind to be so effortlessly aware that it is in a state of understanding all the time. If we don’t understand and merely listen to words, we invariably go away with a series of concepts or ideas, thereby establishing a pattern to which we then try to adjust ourselves in our daily or so-called spiritual lives.

Now, what I would like us to do this morning is something entirely different. I would like us from the very beginning to be in this state of effortless awareness, so that together we can go very deeply into the feeling, into the meaning that lies behind these words.

There is no movement of learning when there is the acquisition of knowledge; the two are incompatible, they are contradictory. The movement of learning implies a state in which the mind has no previous experience stored up as knowledge. Knowledge is acquired, whereas learning is a constant movement which is not an additive or acquisitive process; therefore the movement of learning implies a state in which the mind has no authority. All knowledge assumes authority, and a mind that is entrenched in the authority of knowledge cannot possibly learn. The mind can learn only when the additive process has completely ceased.

It is rather difficult for most of us to differentiate between learning and acquiring knowledge. Through experience, through reading, through listening, the mind accumulates knowledge; it is an acquisitive process, a process of adding to what is already known, and from this background of knowledge we function. Now, what we generally call learning is this very same process of acquiring new information and adding it to the store of knowledge we already have. One learns a language, for example, bit by bit, gradually building up one’s knowledge of the syntax, the colloquial phrases, and so on – and that is probably what most of you are doing now. In listening to the speaker you are learning in the sense of acquiring knowledge. But I am talking about something entirely different. By learning I do not mean adding to what you already know. You can learn only when there is no attachment to the past as knowledge, that is, when you see something new and do not translate it in terms of the known.

We will discuss this later if you have not understood it, because I think it is important to differentiate between learning and acquiring knowledge. The mind that is learning is an innocent mind, whereas the mind that is merely acquiring knowledge is old, stagnant, corrupted by the past. An innocent mind perceives instantly, it is learning all the time without accumulating, and such a mind alone is mature.

But for most of us maturity is a process of ripening in experience, in knowledge, that is what we call maturity. A mature person, we say, is one who has had a great deal of experience, who is wise in years, who knows how to adjust himself to unforeseen circumstances, and so on. Moving in time he has gradually arrived at a fully ripened state. We consider that in time the mind matures by freeing itself from ignorance, ignorance being a lack of knowledge of worldly affairs, a lack of experience and capacity. A young person, we say, needs time to mature. By the time he is sixty he will have suffered; through all the pressures the strains, the travails of life he will have gathered experience, knowledge, and then perhaps he will be mature.

Now, to me maturity is something entirely different. I think it is possible to be mature without going through all the pressures and travails of time. To be completely mature, whatever one’s age, implies that one is able to deal immediately with any problem that arises, and not carry it over to the next day. To carry over a problem from one day to the next is the very essence of immaturity. It is the immature mind that continues in problems from day to day. A mature mind can deal immediately with problems whenever they arise; it does not give soil for problems to take root, and such a mind is in a state of innocency.

So, to be mature is to learn and not to acquire knowledge. The acquisition of knowledge is essential at a certain level. You must have knowledge in dealing with mechanical things, as when you are learning to drive a car. You acquire knowledge in learning a language, in studying electrical engineering, and all the rest of it. But to be in the state of maturity of which I am speaking is to see oneself as one actually is from moment to moment, without accumulating knowledge about oneself; because that maturity implies breaking away from the past, and the past is essentially the piling up of knowledge.