Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

A False division

J. Krishna Murthi

A FALSE DIVISION
J. Krishnamurti
To most of us, profession is apart from our personal life. There is the world of profession and technique, and the life of subtle feelings, ideas, fears and love. We are trained for a world of profession, and only occasionally, across this training and compulsion, we hear the vague whisperings of reality. The world of profession has become gradually overpowering and exacting, taking almost all our time, so that there is little chance for deep thought and emotion. And so the life of reality, the life of happiness, becomes more and more vague and recedes into the distance. Thus we lead a double life: the life of profession, of work, and the life of subtle desires, feelings, and hopes.
This division into the world of profession and the world of Sympathy, love, and deep wanderings of thought, is a fatal impediment to the fulfillment of man. As in the lives of most people this separation exists, let us inquire if we cannot bridge over this destructive gulf.
With rare exceptions, following any particular profession is not the natural expression of an individual. It is not the fulfillment or complete expression of one’s whole being. If you examine this, you will see that it is a careful training of the individual to adjust himself to a rigid inflexible system. This system is based on fear, acquisitiveness and. exploitation. We have to discover by questioning deeply and sincerely, not superficially, whether this system to which individuals are forced to adjust themselves is really capable of liberating man’s intelligence, and so bringing about his fulfillment. If this system is capable of truly freeing the individual to deep fulfillment, which is not mere egotistic self-expression, then we must give our entire support to it. So we must look at the whole basis of this system and not be carried away by its superficial effects.
For a man who is trained in a particular profession, it is very difficult to discern that this system is based on fear, acquiitiveness and exploitation. His mind is already vested in self-interest, so he is incapable of true action with regard to this system of fear. Take, for example, a man who is trained for the army or navy; he is incapable of perceiving that armies must inevitably create wars. Or take a man whose mind is twisted by a particular religious belief; he is incapable of discerning that religion as organised belief must poison his whole being. So each profession creates a particular mentality, which prevents the complete understanding of the integrated man.
As most of us are being trained or have already been trained to twist and fit ourselves to a particular mould, we cannot see the tremendous importance of taking many human problems as a whole and not dividing them up into various categories. As we have been trained and twisted, we must free ourselves from the mould and reconsider, act anew, in order to understand life as a whole. This demands of each individual that he shall, through suffering, liberate himself from fear. Though there are many forms of fear, social, economic and religious, there is only one cause, which is the search for security. When we individually destroy the walls and forms that the mind has created in order to protect itself, thus engendering fear, then there comes true intelligence which will bring about order and happiness in this world of chaos and suffering.
On one side there is the mould of religion, impeding and frustrating the awakening of individual intelligence, and on the other the vested interest of society and profession. In these moulds of vested interest the individual is being forcibly and cruelly trained, without regard for his individual fulfillment. Thus the individual is compelled to divide life into profession as a means of livelihood, with all its stupidities and exploitations; and subjective hopes, fears, and illusions, with all their complexities and frustrations. Out of this separation is born conflict, ever preventing individual fulfillment. The present chaotic condition is the result and expression of this continual conflict and compulsion of the individual.
The mind must disentangle itself from the various compulsions, authorities, which it has created for itself through fear, and thus awaken the intelligence which is unique and not individualistic. Only this intelligence can bring about the true fulfillment of man.
This intelligence is awakened through the continual questioning of those values to which the mind has become accustomed, to which it is constantly adjusting itself. For the awakening of this intelligence, individuality is of the greatest importance. If you blindly follow a pattern laid down, then you are no longer awakening intelligence, but merely conforming, adjusting yourself, through fear, to an ideal, to a system.
The awakening of this intelligence is a most difficult and arduous task, for the mind is so timorous that it is ever creating shelters to protect itself. A man who could awaken this intelligence must be supremely alert, ever aware, not to escape into an illusion; for when you begin to question these standards and values, there is conflict and suffering. To escape from that suffering, the mind begins to create another set of values, entering into the limitations of a new enclosure. So it moves from one prison to another, thinking that it is living, evolving.
The awakening of this intelligence destroys the false division of life into profession or outward necessity, and the inward retreat from frustration into illusion, and brings about the completeness of action. Thus through intelligence alone can there be true fulfillment and bliss for men.
Triveni: Jan.  1937

Like what you read? Consider supporting this website: