U. Krishnamurti - The Collected Works

When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are isn't there any more, you are not in conflict with yourself. If you are not in conflict with yourself, you cannot be in conflict with the society around you. As long as you are not at peace with yourself, it is not possible for you to be at peace with others. Even then there is no guarantee that your neighbors will be peaceful. But, you see, you will not be concerned with that. When you are at peace with yourself, then you are a threat to the society as it functions today. You will be a threat to your neighbors because they have accepted the reality of the world as real, and because they are also pursuing some funny thing called "peace". You will become a threat to their existence as they know it and as they experience it. So you are all alone -- not the aloneness that people want to avoid -- you are all alone.

It's not ultimate reality that one is really interested in, not the teachings of the gurus, not the teachings of the holy men, not the umpteen number of techniques you have, which will give you the energy which you are seeking. Once that movement [of thought] is not there, that will set in motion and release the energy that is there. It doesn't have to be the holy man's teaching. It doesn't have to be any techniques that man has invented -- because there is no friction there. You really don't know what it is.

The movement there [pointing to the listeners] and the movement here [pointing to himself] are one and the same. The human machine is no different from the machine out there. Both of them are in unison. Whatever energy is there, the same energy is in operation here. So, any energy you experience through the practice of any techniques is a frictional energy. That energy is created by the friction of thought -- the demand to experience that energy is responsible for the energy you experience. But this energy is something which cannot be experienced at all. This is just an expression of life, a manifestation of life. You don't have to do a thing.

Anything you do to experience that [energy] is preventing the energy which is already there, which is the expression of life, which is the manifestation of life, from functioning. It has no value in terms of the values we give to whatever we are doing -- the techniques, meditation, yoga, and all that. I am not against any one of those things. Please don't get me wrong. But they are not the means to achieve the goal that you have placed before yourself -- the goal itself is false. If the suppleness of the body is the goal you have before you, probably the techniques of yoga will help you to keep the body supple. But that is not the instrument to reach the goal of enlightenment or transformation or whatever you want to call it. Even the techniques of meditation are self-centered activities. They are all self-perpetuating mechanisms which you use. So the object of your search for ultimate reality is defeated by all these techniques because these techniques are self-perpetuating instruments. You will suddenly realize, or it will dawn on you, that the very search for ultimate reality is also a self-perpetuating mechanism. There is nothing to reach, nothing to gain, nothing to attain.

As long as you are doing something to attain your goal, it is a self-perpetuating mechanism. I use the word self-perpetuating mechanism, but I don't mean that there is a self or an entity. I have to use the word "self" because there is no other word. It's like the self-starter you have in the car. It perpetuates itself. That is all that it is interested in. Anything you want to achieve is a self-centered activity. When I use the term "self-centered activity," you always translate it in terms of something that should be avoided, because selflessness is your goal. As long as you are doing something to be selfless, you will be a self-centered individual. When this movement in the direction of wanting to be a selfless man is not there, then there is no self and there is no self-centered activity. So it is the very techniques, the systems and methods which you are using to reach your goal of selflessness, which are self-centered activities.

Unfortunately, society has placed that goal before us as the ideal goal, because a selfless man will be a great asset to the society, and the society is interested only in continuity -- the status quo. So all those values, which we have accepted as values that one should cultivate, are invented by the human mind to keep itself going.

The goal is what is making it possible for you to continue in this way, but you are not getting anywhere. The hope is that one day, through some miracle or through the help of somebody, you will be able to reach the goal. It is the hope that keeps you going, but, actually and factually, you are not getting anywhere. You will realize somewhere along the line that whatever you are doing to reach your goal is not leading you anywhere. Then you will want to try this, that, and the other. But if you try one and you see that it doesn't work, you will see that all the other systems are exactly the same. This has to be very, very clear, you see.

Whatever pursuit you are indulging in, somewhere along the line it has to dawn on you that it is not leading you anywhere. As long as you want something, you will do that. That want has to be very, very clear. What do you want? All the time I ask you the question, "What do you want?" You say, "I want to be at peace with myself." That is an impossible goal for you because everything you are doing to be at peace with yourself is what is destroying the peace that is already there. You have set in motion the movement of thought which is destroying the peace that is there, you see. It is very difficult to understand that all that you are doing is the impediment, is the one thing that is disturbing the harmony, the peace that is already there.

Any movement [of thought], in any direction, on any level, is a very destructive factor for the smooth and peaceful functioning of this living organism which is not at all interested in your spiritual experiences. It has no interest in any one of those spiritual experiences, however extraordinary they may be. When once you have one spiritual experience there is bound to be a demand for more and more of the same, and ultimately you will want to be in that state permanently. There is no such thing as permanent happiness or permanent bliss at all. You think that there is, because all those books talk of eternal bliss, permanent bliss, or permanent happiness. Yet you know jolly well that it [the pursuit] is not leading you anywhere. So, the mechanism that is involved, the instrument that you are using, is the one that keeps you going because it does not know anything else. It has come into being through so many years of hard work, effort and will. Your wanting to be in a state of effortlessness through the use of effort is not going to succeed. So forget about the effortless state -- it doesn't exist at all. You want to achieve an effortless state through effort -- how the hell are you going to achieve that goal? You forget that everything that you are doing, any movement that is there, any want that is there, for whatever reason, is effort.

Effortlessness is something which cannot be achieved through effort. Anything that you do to stop the effort, is itself an effort. It's really a maddening thing. You have not really pushed yourself into that corner. If you do, then you will really go crazy; but you are frightened of that. You have to see that everything that you are doing to be in that effortless state, for whatever reason you want to be there, is effort. Even wanting not to use effort also is effort. The total absence of will and the total absence of effort, all and every kind, may be called an effortless state; but that effortless state is not something that you can achieve through effort.