2. Bondage from Dependence

Dependence is caused by various unseen factors which go on influencing man’s life right from childhood. Krishnamurti states that for century man has been spoon-fed by his teachers, authorities, books, and saints. One is told to live in a certain way and follow a certain thing.

Krishnamurti said,

‘Social and environmental influences–the society in which we are born, the culture in which we have been raised, economic and political pressures and so on. These influences are our own product. Society is the outcome of man’s relationship with man, which is fairly obvious. This relationships one of use, of need, of comfort, of gratification, and it creates influences and values that bind us. The binding is our conditioning.’^[1]

That means one lives on words and his/her life is shallow and empty and reduced to a second hand person. One lived on what has been told or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. Thus, men are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in them, nothing original or clear.^[2]

According to Krishnamurti there are two dimensions of dependence. They are physical and psychological dependence. Since childhood one physically depends on parents, relatives and so on. In the same way, one depend on teachers for educations, one depend on the cook for meal, post man for receiving and delivery of letters etc.

Thus, one physically depends on one’s fellow being for different kinds of assistance and services. In short, whatever helps one receives that involves physical action is called by Krishnamurti as physical dependence. Beside physical dependence, Krishnamurti also talks about psychological dependence.

In his own words,

‘You depend on your parents, don’t you? You depend on your teachers, you depend on the cook, on the post man, on the man who brings you milk and so on. That kind of dependence one can understand fairly easily, but there is a far deeper kind of dependence which one must understand before one can be free.’^[3]

That dependence is that man depends on another for his own happiness. It is not the mere physical dependence on another but the inward psychological dependence from which one derives the so-called happiness. According to him, when one depends on somebody in that way one becomes slave.

In explaining the causes of dependence, Krishnamurti elucidates that because there is the feeling of insufficiency, poverty and emptiness one is extraordinarily lonely, and it is the loneliness, the emptiness and the extreme inward poverty and self-enclosure that makes one depends on a person, on knowledge, on poverty, on opinion and on so many other things which seem necessary. He feels that it is very difficult to be aware and to be fully cognizant of those facts because one is always trying to escape from it. In fact, one temporarily escapes from it through listening to the radio and other forms of amusement, through going to church, performing rituals, acquiring knowledge etc. Man does not want to see or learn that he is empty and efforts are put to distract oneself from it. As this is done, one could not learn the actuality that one is empty, which is truth. To learn about one’s own emptiness one cannot look at it if one’s mind is all the time seeking a distraction from the fact that it is empty. And that distraction takes the form of attachment to a person, to the idea of God, to a particular dogma or belief and so on. In this regard, Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher also talks of the problems of distraction in his concept of ‘bad faith.’ In common parlance, the concept of ‘bad faith’ is used to describe the phenomenon where human beings under pressure from social forces adopt false values and disown their innate freedom.

Sartre cited an example with a cafe waiter, whose movements and conversation are distracted as a waiter. His voice oozes with an eagerness to please. He carries food rigidly and ostentatiously. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. His exaggerated behaviour illustrates that he is acting as a waiter, as an object in the world, whose essence is to be a waiter. The problem is that, the waiter is identifying himself with his role as a waiter in the mode of being in-itself. Being in-itself refers to all things that are non-human. It is Sartre’s explanation of the ‘phenomenon of being,’ an existent thing. It is simply the act of existing, and is separated from consciousness. In other words, the waiter is discarding his real nature for-itself, to adopt that of the in-itself. He is thus denying his transcendence as for-itself, in favour of the in-itself. Such a denial can be found in Krishnamurti’s assertion that man denies or tries to deny his nothingness. Man has to see that he is nothing; in trying to be something man starts the whole process of dependence.

According to Krishnamurti, one can never become free by depending as dependence leads to further conditioning. Krishnamurti however, says that it is possible to stop depending on people. When the mind understands the futility or the uselessness of trying to feel its own emptiness through dependence then it is capable of looking at it without fear and this looking is important. The mind should continue to look at that emptiness without any evaluation. When the mind looks without evaluation, it comes to see that it escapes or runs away from itself. But running away does not end the problem for the very process of running away creates fear. When the mind realized the futility of running away then only it can face ‘what is.’ This is seeing without conditioning and being free from conditioning. So, Krishnamurti thinks that the difficulty lies in one’s incapacity to look at oneself without judgement, without condemnation, comparison, because one has been trained to compare, to judge, to evaluate and to give an opinion. Only when the mind sees the futility of all those judgement and evaluation, it would be capable of looking at itself. Then which one has feared as being lonely and empty is no longer empty. Therefore, there is no psychological dependence on anything. To Krishnamurti, loneliness is the pain and the agony of solitude. It is the state of isolation when one as an entity does not fit in with anything like one’s own group, one’s own country, wife and children etc., and is therefore, cut off from others. In order to understand loneliness one must come to it without any sense of getting away from it which is a form of escape. So, one must approach it without any sense of fear. The very act of getting away from loneliness is in itself a form of inward paucity. So, to understand loneliness all escapes must come to an end.

Similarly, Krishnamurti also talks of the causes of physical dependence. As one grows older one depends on society, on a job, and when these fails one depends upon faith. There is always dependence or faith in something and that dependence sustains a person, gives him vitality and energy. With all those dependences there is always fear, fear of losing all these supports and thus conflict goes on.

He however said that, freedom is not a state of independence but is a state in which there is not any dependence. This must be understood very clearly before one can go into the question of why man depends or falls into the trap of attachment with all its miseries. Being attached one tries to cultivate a state of independence–which is another form of resistance.

He says,

‘To be free is not merely to do what you like; or to break away from outward circumstances, but to understand the whole problem of dependence.’^[4]

To explain further, he said that the more one is attached the greater the dependence. The attachment is not only to persons but to ideas and things. One is attached to a particular environment, to a particular country and so on. And from this come dependence and therefore resistance. The object of attachment is one’s territorial or sexual domain. One protects and resists any form of encroachment on it from others. One limits the freedom of the person to whom one is attached and also limits one’s own freedom. So attachment is resistance. One is attached to something or somebody. That attachment is possessiveness and possessiveness is resistance, so attachment is resistance.

Krishnamurti emphasized the importance of ‘knowing the self’ to understand the problems of dependence and for that matter freedom. He says that ‘self’ is a very complex thing. And this ‘self’ is made up not merely of all the thoughts which one thinks but also of all the things that have been put into one’s mind by other people, by books, by the news papers, by the leaders of the community etc. It would not therefore, be possible to comprehend the problem of dependence without understanding the ‘self’ which is comprised of so many hidden influences. It would be possible to understand oneself only when one tries to be what one really is. And this is possible when one is not trying to be something; one is trying to imitate, which means one must be ‘in revolt against the whole tradition of trying to become to be something.’^[5]

Thus, Krishnamurti said that dependence is one of an important barrier to man’s freedom. As man grow older, they start depending emotionally on parents, on wife, husband, guru or some idea. That dependence is the beginning of bondage. Until one understands the nature of dependence one can never be free. Only in that understanding of the problem of dependence there can be real freedom.

The human mind has been caught up in tradition since time immemorial. Krishnamurti says that the mind becomes traditional by conditioning itself through social, cultural and environmental conditions. And a traditional mind being conditioned is a mind that mechanically interacts with people, nature and ideas. The traditional mind is not free for it functions strictly within tradition and freedom is not to be within limit, even if that limit is put by tradition.

In Krishnamurti’s own word,

‘A conditioned mind is not free, because it can never go beyond its own borders, beyond the barrier it has built around itself; that is obvious. And it is very difficult for such a mind to free itself from its conditioning and go beyond, because this conditioning is imposed upon it, not only by society but by itself. This is the prison in which most of us are caught, and that is why your parents are always telling you to do this and not to do that.^[6]

He further said that conditioning is essentially a psychological process and should be differentiated from the conditions that constitute environment; whereas environment is a given fact, conditioning is thinking of the environmental conditions in a certain specific way and this is bondage because it prevents seeing of ‘what is’ in freedom. Conditioning is binding, and since it is self-created it can be dissolved. So, there can be freedom from bondage, from conditioning, but not from conditions, from environment.

Identification is another way of conditioning the mind. As most of us would like to be more important and greater there is always inner dissatisfaction and emptiness. Thus, one identified oneself with the guru, certain organisation, tradition, and nation etc., to have a feeling of belonging and to experience power and recognition.

To quote Krishnamurti’s own word,

‘This identification with something greater–the party, the country, the race, the religion, god–is the search for power. Because you yourself are empty, dull, weak, you like to identify yourself with something greater.’^[7]

When one identifies with certain element conditioning process starts, because any identification necessitates the acceptance of norms and obligations. The desire and craving to identify oneself with something greater ultimately generates the desire for more power. Identification with ideas or things which conditions the mind is brought about through the process of desire. Desire is born of psychological memory. It seems that, what Krishnamurti implies by the expression, ‘Psychological memory’ is the memory that evaluates experience in terms of acceptable or avoidable. In short, psychological memory is the essential factor that determines ‘choice’ which is an essential element of desire. Identification with psychological memory, that is, the equation of experience with the circumstance of its being, becomes desire. That desire when strengthened through mental occupation becomes the self-centre. To be free from conditioning does not mean that one can destroy all memory and have a blank mind. Memory in fact, is necessary for the culture and civilisation of any kind. But psychological memory, the occupation with desire, the demand for more, of experience is the cause of bondage.

As Krishnamurti points out:

‘We cannot deliberately put memory aside; but we can let the memories go by without corrupting the mind, without being occupied with any particular memory, pleasant or unpleasant. It is this occupation that conditions the mind, this concern with the particular memory from childhood or from yesterday which I have acquired and to which I cling to.’^[8]

Thus, it is only psychological memory which is kept alive through the occupation of mind that constitutes conditioning and not the factual memory. To Krishnamurti, there is factual memory which is not binding, and based on it there is psychological memory which conditions the mind in terms of the known and makes it incapable of perceiving new things. Factual memory does not arouse a reaction in the mind, but psychological memory is inevitably a source of reaction. Occupation of the mind with psychological memory manifests itself in the power of the mind for acquiring things, possessing people in relationship and holding on to ideas as belief. Through acquisition, the mind fortifies the self-centre and raises further hindrances to the perception of ‘what is,’ and so it strengthens its conditioning, its resistance to the swift movement of life further. This resistance which is the cause of duality and conflict is offered by the self as a device of self-protection. Thus, the demand for psychological security and comfort, the urge for the continuity of the self, becomes the cause for further conditioning, for its continuity.

The demand for psychological security outwardly manifests itself as the desire for success which is the fear of failure.

As Krishnamurti pointed,

‘After all, our conditioning, be it social, economic, religious and so on, is all based on the worship of success. We all want to be successful; we all want to achieve a result. If we fail in this world, we hope to make a success of it in the next. If we are not very successful politically, economically, we want to be successful spiritually. We worship success.’^[9]

Thus, the mind is conditioned by the desire to be successful, to be somebody, which is to be secure psychologically, to continue as an isolated entity, as the ‘I.’

Apart from the conditioning of the mind by the factual past which is history, the mind is also conditioned by psychological past which is tradition. Thus, psychological inheritance dictates all aspects of life. The brain derives power from this psychological inheritance, defends and limits itself to its own groove. Krishnamurti says that the past constitutes the background of mind and includes the racial, communal, religious memories and experiences. The pattern of traditions in which the mind is set has not changed at all. It perpetuates itself. It has been continued for millions of years and there is no basic change in human beings.

He says as an example,

‘Suppose I had an affair which gave me pleasure. Then thought comes along and says: I would like to repeat it. So it brings affair, memory, reaction to memory as thought, thought building images, demanding images. All this is part of tradition, the carrying over of yesterday into tomorrow.’^[10]

He therefore says that, a person who is born as Brahmin continues to be the same till he dies, moving in the same circle, in the same pattern and in the same framework. The traditional mind is not free from thought that is born of experience, tradition and memory. It is anchored in the past and therefore cannot be free.^[11]

So, the older the civilisation is the greater the pressure of tradition. The habit of repeating the past is stronger in the mind which is ancient.

In Krishnamurti’s own word he says that:

‘The older the civilisation, the greater the weight of tradition, of authority, of discipline which burdens the mind. People who belong to an old race, as in India, are more conditioned than those who live in America, for example, where there is more social and economic freedom and where people have fairly recently been pioneers.’^[12]

Krishnamurti maintains that all our experiences and perceptions, however modern they seem to be, are traditional. One’s perception is tradition as they are based on conclusion and prejudices. They are the product of the mind which is traditional and dominated by the past. Tradition is not only belief but also knowledge. Tradition is knowledge, since it is knowledge of the past. To know is to be in the past.

He argues,

‘After all, knowledge is a form of tradition, is it not? And tradition is the cultivation of memory. Tradition in mechanical affairs is essential, but when tradition is used as a means of guiding man inwardly, it becomes a hindrance to the discovery of greater things.’^[13]

So, knowledge is itself tradition and freedom is beyond tradition. Tradition or knowledge is the continuity of the past which includes disposition, control, sublimation, suppression. Tradition is resorted for the sake of security and comfort. The mind finds itself secure and comfortable in following a certain kind of belief and idea. By identifying ourselves with tradition, the mind feels anchored and ultimately gets conditioned by it, which is another form of bondage.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Krishnamurti, J. (2006). ‘Commentaries on Living.’ (2^nd Series), India:Penquin books, p. 5

[2]:

Krishnamurti, J. ‘Freedom from the Known.’ (Mary Lutyens Edition, 1969), New Work: Harper Collins Publisher, p.10.

[3]:

Holroyd, S. (1980). ‘Quest of the Quit Mind: Philosophy of Krishnamurti.’ Northamptenshire: Aquarian Press, p.42.

[4]:

Krishnamurti, J. ‘Think on These Things.’ (D Rajagopal Edition, 2014), Chennai: Krishnamurti Foundation India, p. 20

[5]:

Krishnamurti, J. (2014). ‘Think on these Things.’ Chennai: Krishnamurti Foundation India, p.13

[6]:

Krishnamurti, J. (2010). ‘Life Ahead.’ Chennai: Krishnamurti Foundation India, p. 49

[7]:

Lutyens, M. (Ed.), (2002). ‘The Krishnamurti Reader.’ Haryana: Penguin Books, p. 79

[8]:

Krishnamurti's Talks, (1953). (Verbatim Report) London. Retrieved from, http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/print.php?tid=431&chid=4750, dated, 21st July 2014.

[9]:

Krishnamurti’s fourth Talk in Paris (1950). ‘On Creativity.’ Retrieved from, http://jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/print.php?tid=357&chid=4677, dated, 15^th April 2014.

[10]:

Krishnamurti, J. (1972). ‘Tradition and Revolution.’ Madras: Krihnamurti Foundation India, p. 78.

[11]:

Krishnamurti’s 9th Talk to Students at Rajghat on January 14, 1954. As Cited by P. Kesava Kumar in Jiddu Krishnamurti: A Critical Study of Tradition and Revolution, Delhi: Kalpaz Publication, p. 61.

[12]:

Krishnamurti, J. (2010). ‘Life Ahead.’ Chennai: Krishnamurti Foundation India, p. 49

[13]:

Lutyens, M. (Ed.), (2002). ‘The Krishnamurti Reader.’ Haryana: Penguin Books, p. 146