A man who says, ‘I want to change, tell me how to’, seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not. He wants an authority whom he hopes will bring about order in himself. But can authority ever bring about inward order? Order imposed from without must always breed disorder. You may see the truth of this intellectually, but can you actually apply it so that your mind no longer projects any authority, the authority of a book, a teacher, a wife or husband, a parent, a friend or of society? Because we have always functioned within the pattern of a formula, the formula becomes the ideology and the authority; but the moment you really see that the question, ‘How can I change?’ sets up a new authority, you have finished with authority for ever.
Let us state it again clearly: I see that I must change completely from the roots of my being; I can no longer depend on any tradition because tradition has brought about this colossal laziness, acceptance, and obedience; I cannot possibly look to another to help me to change, not to any teacher, any God, any belief, any system, any outside pressure or influence. What then takes place?
First of all, can you reject all authority? If you can, it means that you are no longer afraid. Then what happens? When you reject something false which you have been carrying about with you for generations, when you throw off a burden of any kind, what takes place? You have more energy, haven’t you? You have more capacity, more drive, greater intensity and vitality. If you do not feel this, then you have not thrown off the burden, you have not discarded the dead weight of authority.
But when you have thrown it off and have this energy in which there is no fear at all—no fear of making a mistake, no fear of doing right or wrong—then is not that energy itself the mutation? We need a tremendous amount of energy, and we dissipate it through fear, but when there is this energy which comes from throwing off every form of fear, that energy itself produces the radical inward revolution. You do not have to do a thing about it.
So you are left with yourself, and that is the actual state for a man to be who is very serious about all this; and as you are no longer looking to anybody or anything for help, you are already free to discover. And when there is freedom, there is energy; and when there is freedom it can never do anything wrong. Freedom is entirely different from revolt. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. You are free, and from that centre you act. And hence there is no fear, and a mind that has no fear is capable of great love. And when there is love, it can do what it will.
What we are now going to do, therefore, is to learn about ourselves, not according to me or to some analyst or philosopher—because if we learn about ourselves according to someone
else, we learn about them, not ourselves—we are going to learn what we actually are.
Having realized that we can depend on no outside authority in bringing about a total revolution within the structure of our own psyche, there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas, and ideals. You had an experience yesterday which taught you something, and what it taught you becomes a new authority—and that authority of yesterday is as destructive as the authority of a thousand years. To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting. When we look at ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday, we will fail to understand the living movement and the beauty and quality of that movement.
To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.
So now we are going to investigate ourselves together—not one person explaining while you read, agreeing or disagreeing with him as you follow the words on the page, but taking a journey together, a journey of discovery into the most secret corners of our minds. And to take such a journey we must travel light; we cannot be burdened with opinions, prejudices, and conclusions—all that old furniture we have collected for the last two thousand years and more. Forget all you know about yourself, forget all you have ever thought about yourself; we are going to start as if we knew nothing.
One of the greatest religious teachers of all-time, sage, philosopher, and religious teacher, Krishnamurti had illuminated the lives of millions the world over; it is estimated that he talked to more people than any other person in recorded history.