813 Free Will and Krishnamurti
Krishnamurti
once again helps me coming to grips with an
issue:
Free Will.
You
can choose between blue cloth and red cloth,
and that is about all
Your life is shaped, controlled by the society
which you have created. You have created the wars, the leaders; you have
created the organized religions of which you are now slaves. So your life is
predetermined. And to be free, you must first be aware that your life is
predetermined, that it is conditioned, that all your responses are more or less
the same as those of everybody else throughout the world. Superficially your
responses may be different; you may respond one way here, another way in India
or in China, and so on, but fundamentally you are held in the framework of your
particular conditioning, and you are never an individual. Therefore it is
absurd to talk about freedom and self-determination. You can choose between
blue cloth and red cloth, and that is about all; your freedom is on that level.
If you go into it very deeply, you will find that you are not an individual at
all. But in going into it very deeply, you will also find that you can be free
from all this conditioning - as a German, as a Catholic, as a Hindu, as a
believer or a nonbeliever. You can be free from it all. Then you will know what
it is to have an innocent mind, and it is only such a mind that can find out
what is truth.
Krishnamurti, Hamburg 1956,Talk 4
I
recently read the book Free Will
by Sam Harris and since the issue had been on my mind - below is the essay WILL from
my book en.light.en.ment -
I was grateful to read K's contribution ... fundamentally you are
held in the framework of your particular conditioning.
As ever, K talks about Freedom ... we all want freedom more than anything, especially freedom from being trapped by our mind and our conditioning. When studying K you'll find that not all is lost, you can well choose to be free. This is the Krishnamurti way: We all can choose to defeat conditioning.
That is a potent message.
