Desintegration and Progress

8/14/2019 Desintegration and Progress

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Disintegration and ProgressProfessor P. Krishna

(Talk delivered at the KFI Gathering in Chennai on 22 January 2005)

Friends,

This is meant to be a dialogue between us, positing the truth as the unknown andinvestigating together to discover it. I mean that seriously, because the opinions of anyindividual, however great he might be, are not important. Agreeing or disagreeing withopinions is not learning. We learnt that from Krishnaji. He told us that even what he saidwas not important, but the questions were important. It was important to investigate themthrough our own observation of life and of our consciousness. He also pointed out that thespirit in which we investigate those questions is more important than the questions

themselves, because one is not doing this inquiry in order to come upon an answer.Answers, ideas and solutions are trivial things. They do not contribute to wisdom; theycontribute to knowledge. For a particular question we can know what the answer is and thatbecomes an idea, a piece of knowledge in our head. But that knowledge does not bringwisdomwisdom being something different, which is a by-product of what he called self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not knowledge about the self, but that understanding whichone has come upon through ones own perception of the truth, so that it is something realfor oneself and not merely an idea. It is only such knowledge, if you might call itknowledge at all, that contributes to wisdom, to an actual transformation within us. It is nota decision to be different but an organic change in the way one relates with people, withthings, with the whole world, and also with oneself.

The dilemma facing our modern society.(if I might summarise it in a few words), is that wehave progressed tremendously in knowledge, in science and technology and in the arts, inphilosophy, in history, geography, the environment and everything else, but we have noevolved psychologically. Through our knowledge we have come upon a lot of power in ourhands and that has enabled us to outwardly change the way we live in our society. If welook at the way we were living in 1905 all over the world, and the way we are living todayin 2005, there has been a tremendous change outwardly. They say that society has changedmore in these last one hundred years than it did in thousands of years before that. But noteverything has changed. Krishnaji raised the question: Has there been psychologicalevolution at all? That means, have we become wiser in the last 1,000 or 2,000 years? Wehave read the Mahabharata and are familiar with the characters desribed there. Are wewiser today than those characters described in that epic, or are we still like Duryodhana,Bhima, Shakuni, Arjuna and all the others? Some of us may be a little wiser than others,but basically dont we all still live with the same divisions, the same hatred, the samepropensity for war, the same cunning and greed which existed 5000 years ago? We are stilloperating in the same manner, which means there has been no psychological evolution atall. When you couple this fact with the fact that we have arrived at tremendous powerwithout growing in wisdom, you can see why society has become so much more dangerous;why there is degeneration all around us.


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If during the Mahabharata instead of having bows and arrows they had had nuclear bombs,I do not know if we would be here today. So, that is the state of modern society: in ourunderstanding and our wisdom we are still primitive, but we now have all this power thathas come from so-called progress. That is what has made things more dangerous. Inwardly,perhaps, we may not have become worse than we were before. I am not sure if the measure

of hatred or inner violence in our consciousness is any different from what it was in ourforefathers; but certainly its manifestation outside, which depends on how much power wehave, has changed a million timesand that is what has made the situation very dangerous.So the fundamental question that one has to ask, even if it seems an impossible question, is:Why have we not grown in wisdom? This dilemma was expressed very beautifully in apoem by T.S. Eliot called The Rock. The last stanza of it summarizes this dilemma andruns like this:

Where is the life we have lost in living?Where is the wisdom we have lost in our knowledge?Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In two thousand years the cycles of heavenTake us away from God and unto dust.

So is progress an illusion? Is our considering ourselves as extremely intelligent beings inthe 21st century false? Are we really intelligent? If we are then why are we facing all thisdegeneration? Krishnaji pointed out that there is no intelligence without love andcompassion. So have we defined intelligence unintelligently? I am just raising a lot of questions for us to deliberate on, and not answering them, because, as I said before, theanswers are not important but the questions are important. We learned from Krishnamurtithe importance of staying with questions, and exploring those questions in our daily lifethrough our own observation of our own consciousness and how it responds in variousrelationships, without coming to any conclusions or forming strong opinions. In thatexploration there is the possibility for a learning mind approaching the issue with humility,to come upon a deeper perception which is not merely a conclusion of thought. It is thatdeep insight, which brings about transformation in consciousness. The rest of it is only achange in ideas, and change in ideas does not contribute to the transformation of consciousness. It does not contribute to self-knowledge or wisdom.

So, this morning I would like to explore this question in that spirit, without the desire tofind answers, merely to explore in order to understand all its implications and to understandwhat is. What is is not only what is visible at the surface, but when one probes deeply onediscovers that there is a lot more that one does not see in the superficial viewing, analysisand argument. So with that awareness that we really do not know the truth and a state of learning which is not attached to any opinions let us explore for the love of understandingwhat is. That is the essence of the religious mind religion being the quest for truth, andtruth being the unknown. So this morning I would like to do that in the form of a dialoguewith oneself and ask fundamental questions.

One such question is, why does anything that man touches, that he discovers, that heinvents become so complicated and complex? We invented moneyit seems a simpleenough invention. Before that, people used to take their goods to the marketplace and had


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to exchange goods which others had brought there, and it must have occurred that it ismuch more sensible to give a slip of paper and say: I have given this much to you and youcan take whenever you want an equivalent amount from me. That paper became the rupeenote when the government stamped it and so on. So a very simple, intelligent deviceinvented for the convenience of barter, so essential. But that invention of ours today has

become this vast economic system with interest rates, foreign exchange rates, stock marketspeculation, investment, and nobody can predict what is going to happen. And what isworse, that damned thing which we invented now dictates our life. Seriously, sir, seriously.It dictates what your children will see, what they will read, what education they will receivein the university. They are no longer free to do what they are interested in doing becausethe money is being dangled in front of them and they are being directed [led] in thatdirection. So we have become slaves to our own invention.

Take sexuality, we did not invent it, we got it as a gift from Nature. Animals have it too,plants have it. It has come to us in evolution. But no animal has made it such a complexthing as we have. That has become this whole world of pornography, the pursuit of pleasure. And now even if you want to buy a car or a toaster, they use sex to promote it.

Einstein found the equation e = mc. A tremendous truth about Nature that mass is simplyanother form of energy. But immediately man said, can I use this to make a bomb? Thatcomes from the hatred in our consciousness. You want to make war, then you want to usethat new discovery for war. And something like 60% of the entire scientific budget comesfrom the budget of the Defence Department, which means that the entire scientific effort isnot merely being directed to discover the truth about Nature, though they might say so, butbecause their intention is to use that to kill. They call it defence. A humorist once said:Never believe something, until the Government denies it. So when they call it defencewe know what they mean.

So why does anything that we do become corrupt, become complicated? This is related tothe question we were asking the other as to what is the relationship between evil and good.If you look at that, you will see that the source of all this disorder outside is the same as thesource of all this disorder within us, in our consciousness. And the root of it is the egoprocess in each human being. You can contain its manifestation, and that is what we aretrying to do through organizations like the United Nation, the police force, and so forth. Weare trying to contain the manifestation of the ego process which creates all this divisionbetween me and you, my country and your country, my religion and your religion, and soon. It brings in this whole business of mine and the other, not mine. And from therearises all the disorder. And if we do not tackle it there, which is what Krishnamurti pointedout, the rest of it follows as a logical consequence. You would only be treating thesymptoms outwardly and containing the symptoms. It is like if one is getting boils all overthe body, and one is busy treating each boil and healing it without ever asking the question:why am I getting all these boils all over the body? There is a cause. Unless you eliminatethat cause, the illness will continue and you are dealing only with the symptoms outside.And the state of the world is like that. We are continuously having wars, and there aredeep-rooted reasons for those wars. Those reasons are not eliminated by the United Nationsor by all the diplomacy and so on. They are maintained. So it is only an outer treatment of the symptoms, and life becomes busy doing this, but it will never solve the problems. Just


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as if you are healing only the boils at each point on your body without ever finding out thedeeper cause that is creating them, the body will remain sick.

So what is the deeper cause? And unless we deal with it there, we are not really dealingwith the thing intelligently. So we must ask ourselves: What is this ego process? From

where does it originate? Is it inevitable? Is it our own creation or has Nature created it? Is itpossible to be free, to end this process within oneself? These are all fundamental questions.They may have been asked for 2,000 years or more, but they are existential, live questions.So one must go into it afresh, without saying to oneself whether it is possible or notpossible, because when you say, it is impossible, it takes away the energy from exploring,because the mind says: Oh, it is impossible, leave it alone; I want to do only that which ispossible, which then makes it impossible all the more. So is it impossible because it isinnately impossible, or is it impossible because we have not paid heed or attention to thisproblem? You cannot answer that question until you have really and sincerely attempted todo it. That is why one must do this exploration without seeking a result out of it, whichmeans for the love of it, just for understanding oneself.

So I ask myself: What is this ego process? Is it there in Nature? After all, we are all part of Nature. And you can see that the trees have no ego. The animals have very little [cut in thetape]. They are like little childrenand we were all little children; we were not born withthe ego. So where does it come from? There may be great disasters in Nature. That tsunamiwave that came and destroyed much. It may be inconvenient for us, but it does not come inorder to kills us. There is no intentionality in Nature, and it is that intentionality which isthe ego. Nature has this cosmic order which follows certain laws that the scientists aretrying to determine. And that order creates all the phenomenasometimes it is convenientfor us, like the rainfall and so on, and sometimes it is inconvenient for us. But it is neitherintentionally trying to create convenience or inconvenience. So there is no ego in Natureanywhere. So why is it there in us? Are we born with it? When I look at that, when I look atchildren, I see that they fight, but the next day they have forgotten; they do not stick onwith their hurt. They are quickly friends again. Whereas if two adults fight, it is so difficultfor them to forget and forgive and to die to that hurt. So obviously we are not born with theego. We have built it up as we grow up.

And you can see in yourself, when you think of your own state as a child and your statenow. It is so difficult for a grown up human being to make friends with another humanbeing. The mind is calculating, cunning. It says: Should I make friends with him or not?Will it be beneficial or not? It goes on all the time in subtle ways. In childhood you did notdo that. You were friends with the neighbours child or with the servants child. There wasan innocence, and that innocence goes away. It is taken away by the ego process. So what isthis ego process? Can we go deeper into it?

In the course of evolution, when the human being came out of the eggwhat he hadthrough genetic mutation and so on, which distinguishes him as a human beingwasenhanced memory, enhanced capacity to thinkand language is included in that capacity,the ability to learn language; every child learns languageand the enhanced capacity forimagination. These were the gifts which were given to us by Nature. But Nature does notdictate which way we should use these gifts. So we have to ask ourselves, have we used


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these additional capacities which we have over the animals, who are were our biologicalancestorsto be more kind, to be more gentle, to be more protective of the earth, of theenvironment, and even of our own species? The answer was given yesterday by Mark Leewhen he told us that in the last ten years human beings have killed 30 million people of their own kind, their own species, in wars. That is how horrendous this ego process is in

each one of us. And that is at the root of the cause why we fight within the family, betweenbrothers, between husband and wife, why we dominate and so on. It is not different fromthe cause of the war in Kashmir or in Ireland or in Iraq. It is the same cause, the samedominationthat which goes on within us, each individual, projects itself in a big way, andthen we object to it and call it war and so on. But then that is only a question of manifestation on a larger scale, but the root of it, the causation, is the same.

So we must examine that causation. If I want to learn about myself I must examine that.How does it begin? If you ask that and you watch a child growing and slowly becomingegotistic, this process becoming stronger, you will see that when these capacities forimagination and thinking and enhanced memory are combined with the instinct of pursuingpleasure and avoiding pain, which is also there in the animal, it now extends to us andbecomes the pursuit of psychological pleasure and pain. It is not just physical pleasure andpain as in the case of animals, but it is now also psychological pleasure and pain. And whenyou combine that with these abilities, the mind is all the time calculating whether it can getmore security in the future, whether it can get more pleasure in the future. So the desire toaccumulate for the future and the desire to protect oneself in the future from any kind of harm seems perfectly natural, in the sense that when you have that instinct and you havethese capacities, it is going to form the egoit is like chemistry. If you start with calcium,carbon and oxygen atoms, you are going to end up with calcium carbonate. It is like that.

So every human being has the capacity for the ego process in his consciousness. But are wecompletely trapped in this, or can we free ourselves by learning about it? After all, thebiologist explains how violence has come into us from our biological past, and theirexplanation is not wrong. But if you accept that explanation, then this violence isinevitable. But that is not true. A human being can add to that violence and become aHitler, or he can become a Gandhi or a Krishnamurti. So one can see that there is a certainamount of freedom which is given to man, which is not given to animals. You cannot makea tiger into a vegetarian, you would have to force him, but a human being, though he wasborn in a non-vegetarian environment, may become a vegetarian, may come uponcompassion, so we have this capacity for change. And that is why this whole question aboutwhat is moral, what is right, and what is immoral and what is wrong arises only for man. If I was completely determined by my past, I am not responsible for what I do. How can youblame me? But that is not completely so. That is why we must exercise these capacities tolearn for ourselves. And we can free ourselves of this through our own understanding of ourselves.

And that is what I understand Krishnamurti is asking us to do. He is saying: You havecultivated enquiry regarding the outer world, as science enquiring into Nature; you havecultivated enquiry into social problems in order to solve them; but you have not cultivatedinquiry in order to understand yourself. You are so ignorant of yourself. In his book,Education and the Significance of Life he says: The ignorant man is not the unlearned


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(meaning the uneducated), but the one who does not know himself. And the learned man isstupid when he relies on his knowledge to give him understanding. Similar things werepointed out by the Budha, by Socrates, and by several others. We worship these people; wehave a very high opinion of [regard for] these people; but have we listened to them? Are wedoing what they asked us to do? Why not? Is it because we are not really convinced of the

truth of this? Why are we still egotistic, even after knowing all the arguments?Logically it can be shown how destructive the ego is. I can do it with you in five minutes.Maybe I should. I am a scientist; I like to make equations. You take anything, any virtue,any qualityadd the ego to it and see what it becomes. Take loveadd the ego to it and itbecomes attachment, possessiveness, jealousy, dependence. Take humilityadd the ego toit and it becomes inferiority, being small, servile. Take power, which is the ability to dothingsadd the ego to it and it becomes domination, exploitation. You take anything. Takesexualityadd the ego to it and it becomes lust, pornography. So the problem is notsexuality or love; there is no problem with what is; there is the problem with this ego. It isthe source of all problems, both in our personal life and out there, in society, because weare the world, if we have understood that. That is what it meanswhatever happens insociety is a reflection or projection of what is happening inside of us.

So we must ask ourselves, is it possible to free ourselves of this ego process? Now if it issomething that Nature has created in us, like my kidneys or my heart, my lungsyoucannot get rid of it, you must only cope with it, manage it. But if it is something which wecreate out of our own thinking or out of our own manner in which we are approaching life,then I can learn not to approach life that wayif I see the danger of it. In the videoyesterday Krishnaji asked that question. He said, Sir, do you perceive the danger of thisthe dangeras you perceive the danger of fire? Do you perceive it that way, orintellectually, argument, and say, yes, I agree, logically correct? That does not work. But if it is danger, then action follows. It is not your action. Then Natures intelligence acts.Nature has put an intelligence into the organism to protect itself. But when you make it intoa virtue, saying I must not be egotistic, but you do not see the danger of it, it continues,and creates this conflict between what we are and what we think we should be. And wehave read that being explained by Krishnaji.

So why are we not aware of its danger, though we can logically create these equations, aswe have just done, and conclude: Yes, the ego is bad for man. It will not go away justbecause you have concluded this. It does not lie within volition. You can decide whichhouse to buy, which job to take, which car to drive or not drive. These are within ourdecision, but you cannot decide not to worry, to be happy, to love, even to make friends, toperceive beauty. So the greatest things in life are those you cannot decide to have, but theycan come to you. They are a by-product of understanding oneself and life, of coming uponsensitivity. In other words, they are a by-product of right living. And to find out about rightliving I have to find out if this ego process can end, and why it goes on. And it does not endbecause I want it to end. It can end if I perceive the danger of it. Can we?

After all, that is the great illusion of mankind, is it not? It thinks that acting out of self-interest is in its self-interest, and does not question that. Is it? After all, that is what we havebeen doing for thousands of yearseach one acting out of self-interest. And that is what


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has brought the world to the present state. So is it really in our interest? We are hurtlingtowards a catastrophe. The next world war, if it comes, will eliminate all of us. We havebrought this danger upon ourselves. So obviously, it is not in our self-interest. And yet, itappears to be in our self-interest, because if I can do something and make a little profit itappears that I will benefit from it. So is it the outcome of a narrow vision? When I see only

up to here, I feel it is beneficial. If I saw very far, both in time and in space, then I wouldsee it is disastrous! So how does one expand ones vision, and why is the vision soconfined?

[Let us] go back to the child. He grows up being attached to his parents, his family. Hegrows up in a society, in a religion, and acquires all that. He starts feeling safe within that.He calls it My house, my religion, my family, and feels secure within that. And that is thetrap of this conditioning which we have to see through. That is a natural process. But if thattraps your thinking, and my thinking thereafter is all the time to secure the profit, thebenefit of the me and the mine, then that is the ego process. Can we see this trap and thedanger of being in this trap, that my thought process is no longer free to enquire? It is allthe time seeking to justify the me and the mine. It is arguing like a lawyer. Each one of us has a personal lawyer sitting up here who is all the time arguing in favour of oneself,me and what I call mine. This means it [the thought process] is no longer an instrumentfor inquiring into what is true. So long as I am seeking profits, or seeking satisfaction forthe me and the mine, I am not seeking the truth. And therefore it is very easy to say Iam a seeker of truth, but are we? Or are we seeking satisfaction in one form or another, inwhich case we are not really seeking the truth?

So can the passion for learning be so strong that it can overcome this instinct of seekingpleasure and avoiding pain, not just physical but psychological pain, hurt. Truth may hurtme. It does; it comes as a revelation, as a disillusion, which means one is going on withsome illusion which one found comforting and pleasant, and then it shocks you. So unlesswe are willing to face psychological pain, and perhaps also physical pain, we cannot reallysay we are in quest of truth. So you can say it is difficult and chicken out, which is whatmost of us do. And we say, It is meant for the Buddha, Im not the Buddha, Im anordinary man, and then we continue. But then see logically that if we continue like that wehave no right to complain about the quarrels, about the wars, about our children gettingkilled in that war, in the riot, because all that is a consequence which follows out of thatkind of living. But we do complain. So it is illogical, irrational. To see the truth of this, is tosee that the mind is caught in illusion, and that all disorder, all division, arises out of thatillusion.

So this quest for self-knowledge is the quest for the ending of illusion, without which thereis no ending of disorder within, and therefore out there in society. But we have notinculcated that quest. That is what Krishnaji was doing. For 60 years he went around theworld pointing out our state, saying: For Gods sake, enquire; see the importance of notcontinuing in illusion.

The only way to end illusion is to enquire into what is true, because illusion means we aretaking something to be true when it is not true, or we are giving tremendous importance tosomething when it is not really that important in life. Both are illusions. So to discover for


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oneself what is the right place of everything in our life, is to discover order. And we reallydo not know that. So it is really something one has to discover, which is unknown. Thetruth is the unknown. That is why Krishnaji called it the art of living. And art issomething that cannot be directed, that cannot be prescribed. You cannot write guidelinesof how to make a beautiful picture. It has the right proportion, and that right proportion

creates beauty. But we have a way of finding out when it is in the wrong placeit willcreate disorder; it will create conflict within me. And I can use that as a source to learn formyself where is that conflict coming from. We normally look for the external cause of thatconflict, but that is not important, though it may be necessary. The important thing is tofind out the inner cause of that conflict and use it as a ground for learning about oneself.Then it becomes an instrument of self-knowledge. Without this learning about ourselves, hepointed out to us, there is no basis or foundation for our meditation, for our practices and soon.

In other words, we are confused human beings, and out of that confusion we are choosingbetween what is pleasant and what is unpleasant. The choice of a confused mind only addsto the confusion. So this pursuit of truth and coming upon clarity is more important that thechoices that we are all the time making. That is the cure, and we are capable of it. In asense, the truth is eternal, it is something that is always there. It has always been there. Thetruth that Patanjali or Socrates talked about is no different than the truth that Krishnamurtiis talking about, or what the truth is, because the truth is the fact. That has not changed. Wehave a consciousness and the eyes to see and the senses to perceive that truth. What isblocking it? The world? I may blame television and propaganda for blocking it, I mayblame my parents for conditioning my mind, but if they had not conditioned it, somethingelse would have. But the fact is there is nothing between me and truth except myself.

So I am seeking to perceive the truth and I am myself in the way. See the truth of that. Howdo you get yourself out of the way? We have to die, to the me, to this ego process. But wecannot die, it is not a voluntary process. But by exploring it, by watching it in our own life,which means not condemning it, because when we condemn something we do not watch.We have to have the patience to watch and see how it arises, what it is doing to our life inall our relationships. And perhaps in that watching it may dawn on the consciousness that Iam myself creating this thing, and that I am myself responsible for creating all this miseryin my life. And when we see the danger of that process maybe it will end. But we do nothave the patience to watch long enough. We are satisfied. If we solve the immediateproblem, we are satisfied. If I may give a metaphor, there is the problem of hatred, of

jealousy, of attachment, desire and frustrationnumerous problemslike a tree with manybranches, and at the root of it is this ego process.

Now when one of these problems manifests in our life and we start enquiring to solve it,and when it is solved, we stop. Do not stop. Continue with it though the pain hasdisappeared. Continue with it. Each one of them has the opportunity [potential] that if youtrace it far enough you will come to the root, and you have the possibility of uprooting thewhole tree. It does not have much significance to cut just one branch, because when theroot is there, another branch will grow. The metaphor is fairly apt. And Krishnaji says:Keep watching. Start with whatever is occupying your mind, but do not accept simpleanswers. Do not escape. Do not get satisfied with solving the immediate problem. Ask why


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did it arise, go deep into it, and it gives you an opportunity to learn about yourself deeply. Itis possible, but we have not really devoted ourselves. We do it on the side, as a hobby, alittle bit. But we have not made that a passion. It is not a question of only analysis andthinking about it, because, as he has explained to us, thought is from memory and all theconditioning is stored in memory. And therefore thought is the instrument of conditioning.

It is not a free instrument; it is a coloured instrument. But it has the value of communication. It has the value of creating the question, but it cannot answer that question.You must not take the question answer from thought, otherwise it is another intellectualconclusion. So is there another instrument in us which is not corrupted by our conditioning?The answer is yes. We are capable of awareness. Without that you could never have thefreedom to come out of conditioning, which influences and traps the thought process. Thatis why he talked about choiceless awareness. Watch choicelessly, watch, do not argue,take the argument only as a question. But the answer comes from watching, not fromconcluding. It is not a logical conclusion. That does not work here. It works in science, butit does not work in this religious quest.

So that is the workto come upon this enquiring mind. There is a quotation there in thebookshop where he says: Sir, you must plough the field, which is what we have done,You must plough the field with thought, analysis, questioning. Then leave it fallow. Theleaving it fallow is important, because in that silence, it regenerates. Thought is not theinstrument of regeneration, but, as I said, it has the value of creating the question. EvenKrishnamurtis books will not give you regeneration. But they can give you the question.But we must explore that question in our own life, in our own consciousness, to receivefrom it the wisdom that it can give, if we put in that work and approach it in that way. Andeach one of us has to do that. It is not enough if Buddha does it and then he gives youguidelines and you will live that way. All that has been triedit has failed. At the end of allthat we are the way we are. That is why Krishnamurti wanted this inculcated in education,because it is necessary for every human being. It is not just that there is a religious manwho will do this and then he will tell us how to live. It is not possible. Each one of us mustgrow in wisdom. Which means this enquiry, this learning mindwhich is investigatingwhat is true and what is falsewe must anchor it in the child, in the student. It is moreimportant to create this enquiry in the mind than the scientific enquiry. The scientists, theyteach science and make it extremely important to inculcate enquiry. But we have not caredto inculcate this inquiry, to create an inquiring mind. And that is why he was interested in adifferent education, which will lay equal emphasis on knowledge and on self-knowledge.

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Desintegration and Progress