Quotes by Krishnamurti

Freedom is the capacity to look at a psychological fact without distortion, and that freedom is at the beginning, not at the end. You must understand that time is a process of evasion and not a fact – except chronological time, which is a fact. But the psychological time that we have introduced – that of gradually bringing about a change in ourselves – has no validity. Because when you are angry, when you are ambitious, when you are envious, you take pleasure in it, you want it; and the idea that you will gradually change has no depth behind it at all. So one removes psychological resistances by observing the fact and not allowing the mind to be caught in unreal, ideational, theoretical issues. When you are confronted with a fact, there is no possibility of resistance; the fact is there.

So freedom is to look at a fact without any idea, to look at a fact without thought. Either you look at a fact with words, which is thought, or with conclusions, which again is thought and words, or with knowledge which you have acquired previously, which again is words based on experience – that is, the result of memory conditioning every form of experience. So you have to look at something without thought – which does not mean looking at something blankly, emptily, but looking at it through the understanding of the whole significance of thought.

There is freedom when the entire being, the superficial as well as the hidden, is purged of the past. Will is desire; and if there is any action of the will, any effort to be free, to denude oneself, then there can never be freedom, the total purgation of the whole being. When all the many layers of consciousness are quiet, utterly still, only then is there the immeasurable, the bliss that is not of time, the renewal of creation.

The intellect can only know freedom within the field, like a man knowing freedom within a prison. It then asks, what is freedom? If this is not it, then what is freedom? Is there such a thing at all? The intellect rejects that there can be no freedom because it is inconceivable that there is no way out of this prison. The clever brains invent maya, atman, brahman. Now, if there is no freedom, is the mind everlastingly condemned to live within this field? What is the point of it all?

I see that this concern about freedom, freedom which is not a formula, which is not a conclusion, is not freedom. Then the mind says, if this is not, then what is freedom? Then it says, I do not know. It sees that in that non-knowing, there is an expectation to know. When I say I do not know what freedom is, there is a waiting and an expectation to find out. That means the mind does not say it does not know, but is waiting for something to happen.

I see that and I discard that. So I really do not know. I am not waiting, expecting. I am not hoping something will happen, some answer will come from an outside agency. I am not expecting a thing. There it is. There is the clue. I know this is not it; there is no freedom here. There is reformation, but not freedom. Reformation can never bring freedom. Man revolts against the whole idea that he can never be free, that he is condemned to live in this world. It is not intellect that revolts, but the whole organism, the whole perception. Therefore it says that as this is not it, I do not know what freedom is. I do not expect a thing, I do not hope or try to find what freedom is. I really do not know.

That not-knowing is freedom. Knowing is prison. This is logically right. I do not know what is going to happen tomorrow. Therefore I am free of the past, free of this field.

So, the mind that lives in a state of not-knowing is a free mind.

Democratically we have freedom of choice, we choose between the liberal, Conservatives, Labour or something else. And we think that having the capacity to choose gives us freedom. Choice is the very denial of freedom. You choose when you are not clear, when there is no direct perception, and so you choose out of confusion, and so there is no freedom in choice – psychologically, that is. I can choose between this cloth and that cloth, and so on; but psychologically we think we are free when we have the capacity to choose. And we are saying that choice is born out of confusion, out of the structure of thought, and therefore it is not free.

We must understand very clearly that our thinking is the response of memory, and memory is mechanistic. Knowledge is ever incomplete, and all thinking born of knowledge is limited, partial, never free. So there is no freedom of thought. But we can begin to discover a freedom which is not a process of thought, and in which the mind is simply aware of all its conflicts and of all the influences impinging upon it.