U. Krishnamurti - The Collected Works

When you succeed in your imagination, that you have controlled your thoughts and experienced some space between those thoughts or some state of thoughtlessness, you feel that you are getting somewhere. That is a thought-induced state of thoughtlessness, a space between two thoughts. The fact that you experience the space between two thoughts and the thoughtless state means that the thought was very, very much there. It surfaces afterwards like the river Rhone which flows through France, disappears and then it comes up again. It has gone underground. The river is still there. You can't use it for purposes of navigation, but ultimately it comes up again. In exactly the same way, all these things which you are pushing down into the subterranean regions (feeling that you are experiencing something extraordinary), surface again -- and then you will find that those thoughts are welling up inside of you.

You are not aware that you are breathing now. You don't have to be conscious of your breathing. Why do you want to be conscious of your breathing? To control your breathing, to expand your lungs, to do what you like with your chest -- that's a different matter. But why do you want to be aware of the movement of breath from the origin to the end? You suddenly become conscious of your breathing. Your breath and thought are very closely related. That's why you want to control your breath. And that, in a way, is controlling the thought for a while. But if you hold your breath for long, it is going to choke you to death in exactly the same way that anything you do to hold or block the flow of thoughts is going to choke you to death, literally to death, or damage something. Thought is a very powerful vibration, an extraordinary vibration. It is like an atom. You can't play with those things.

You are not going to reach your goal of completely controlling your thought. Thought has to function in its own way, in its disconnected, disjointed way. That is something which cannot be brought about through any effort of yours. It has to fall into its normal rhythm. Even if you want to make it fall into a normal rhythm, you are adding momentum to that. It has a life of its own which has, unfortunately, established a parallel life within the movement of life. These two are always in conflict. That will come to an end only when the body comes to an end.

Thought has become the master of this body. Thought has totally mastered the whole thing. It is still trying to control everything that is there. You cannot pull the servant out of the household, no matter what you do. If you forcibly do it, he will burn the whole household, even knowing very well that he will also be burned. It's a foolish thing for him. But that's what you are going to do if you try. Don't push these similes to their logical conclusion, but find out for yourself when you do these things, not just take them lightly. Or, take them lightly and play with them, it's all right. Toys.

Q: Just float along? Nothing to pursue, just float?

U.G.: Even that "floating" is not a voluntary thing on your part. You don't have to do a thing. You are not separate from that. That's all that I am emphasizing. You cannot separate yourself from the thought and say "these are my thoughts." That is the illusion you have, and you cannot be without any illusion. You always replace one illusion with another illusion. Always.

Q: And I accept that as well.

U.G.: You accept that you are always replacing one illusion with another illusion; so your wanting to be free from illusion is an impossibility. That itself is an illusion. Why do you want to be free from illusions? That's the end of you. It's not that I am frightening you, I am just pointing out that it is not just a lighthearted game to play. That is you, you as you know yourself. When that knowledge you have of yourself is not there any more, the knowledge you have about the world also is not there any more. It can't be there any more. It is not going to come to an end that easily. It will always be replaced by another illusion.

You don't want to be a normal person, you don't want to be an ordinary person. That is really the problem. It is the most difficult thing to be an ordinary person. Culture demands you must be something other than what you are. That has created a certain momentum -- a tremendous, powerful movement of thought which demands that you should be something other than what you are. That's all that it is. You can use it to achieve something; otherwise it has no use.

The only use you have for thought is to feed this body and to reproduce. That's all the use you have for thought. It has no other use at all. It cannot be used to speculate.

You can build a tremendous philosophical structure of thought, but that has no value at all. You can interpret any event in your life, and build up another philosophical structure of thought, but it [thought] is not intended for that.

At the same time, you forget that everything you have around you is the creation of thought. You are yourself born out of the thought, otherwise you would not be here at all. In that sense it has a tremendous value, yet it is the very thing that will destroy you.

That's the paradox. Everything that you have created in this world has become possible through the help of that thought, but unfortunately that very thing has become the enemy of man, because you are using thought for purposes for which it is not intended. It can be used for solving the technical problems very well and efficiently, but it cannot be used to solve the problems of life.

Positive thinking, positive living, very interesting, you know. You can't always be positive. How can you be positive? Anything that does not suggest your positive thinking, you call it negative. But positive and negative are only in the field of your thinking. When the thought is not there, it [what is there] is neither positive nor negative. As I was saying, there is no such thing as a negative approach at all. It's a gimmick.

I am telling you to stand on your own -- you can walk, you can swim, you are not going to sink. That's all that I can say. As long as there is fear, the danger of your sinking is almost certain. Otherwise, there is a buoyancy there in the water that keeps you afloat. The fear of sinking is the very thing that makes it impossible for you to let the movement happen in its own way. You see, it has no direction: it is just a movement with no direction. You are trying to manipulate and channel that movement along a particular direction so that you can have some benefits. You are just a movement without a direction.

Q: Actually as human beings, we are rather fond of thinking. But why is this rather funny animal thinking all the time?

U.G.: I will ask you the question. You tell me, when do you think? Not why do you think. That's not the question. When do you think? I am asking you a question, when do you think?

Q: As far as I know, all the time.

U.G.: All the time, and for what? What is responsible for your thinking? When do you think? When you want something, [that's when] you think. It is very clear to me.

Q: Not at all.

U.G.: Of course. You don't even know that you are thinking. Do you know that you are thinking now? It's an automatic thing.

Q: It's an automatic thing, that's right.

U.G.: You don't even know that you are thinking and so why this sudden interest in wanting to find out why you are thinking? I don't even know that I am talking. You don't even know that you are talking. When you asked your questions, "Am I thinking?" you would say, "Yes". That "yes" also is an automatic thing.

Q: I don't care if it's automatic.

U.G.: The whole thing is on automatic. Whatever is put in there, when you are stimulated, it comes out. In the jargon of computer language, the input has to be there. So, this has been going on and on and on and on. When there is stimulation, it comes out. If it [the stimulation] is not there, you see, it [thinking] stops. So that's the reason why you go on, acquiring this knowledge, feeding it all the time.