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What is the purpose of existence as we know it now? -
not theoretically but actually? What is the purpose of
our everyday existence? just to survive, isn't it? -
with all its misery, with all its sorrow and confusion,
wars, destruction and so on. We can invent theories, we
can say: "This should not be, but something else should
be." But those are all theories, they are not facts.
What we know is confusion, pain, suffering, endless
antagonisms. We know also, if we are at all aware, how
these come about.
The purpose of life, from moment to moment, every day,
is to destroy each other, to exploit each other, either
as individuals or as collective human beings. In our
loneliness, in our misery, we try to use others, we try
to escape from ourselves - through amusements, through
gods, through knowledge, through every form of belief,
through identification. That is our purpose, conscious
or unconscious, as we now live. Is there a deeper, wider
purpose beyond, a purpose that is not of confusion, of
acquisition? Has that effortless state any relation to
our daily life ?
Certainly that has no relation at all to our life. How can it have? If my
mind is confused, agonized, lonely, how can that be
related to something which is not of itself? How can
truth be related to falsehood, to illusion? We do not
want to admit that, because our hope, our confusion,
makes us believe in something greater, nobler, which we
say is related to us. In our despair we seek truth,
hoping that in the discovery of it our despair will
disappear.
So we can see that a confused mind, a mind ridden with sorrow, a mind that
is aware of its own emptiness, loneliness, can never
find that which is beyond itself. That which is beyond
the mind can only come into being when the causes of
confusion, misery, are dispelled or understood. All that
I have been saying, talking about, is how to understand
ourselves, for without self-knowledge the other is not,
the other is only an illusion.
If we can understand the total process of ourselves,
from moment to moment, then we shall see that in
clearing up our own confusion, the other comes into
being. Then experiencing that will have a relation to
this. But this will never have a relation to that. Being
this side of the curtain, being in darkness, how can one
have experience of light, of freedom? But when once
there is the experience of truth, then you can relate it
to this world in which we live.
If we have never known what love is, but only constant
wrangles, misery, conflicts, how can we experience that
love which is not of all this? But when once we have
experienced that, then we do not have to bother to find
out the relationship. Then love, intelligence,
functions. But to experience that state, all knowledge,
accumulated memories, self-identified activities, must
cease, so that the mind is incapable of any projected
sensations. Then, experiencing that, there is action in
this world.
Surely that is the purpose of existence - to go beyond the self-centred
activity of the mind. Having experienced that state,
which is not measurable by the mind, then the very
experiencing of that brings about an inward revolution.
Then, if there is love, there is no social problem.
There is no problem of any kind when there is love.
`Because we do not know how to love we have social
problems and systems of philosophy on how to deal with
our problems. I say these problems can never be solved
by any system, either of the left or of the right or of
the middle. They can be solved - our confusion, our
misery, our self-destruction - only when we can
experience that state which is not self-projected.
Source: from book "The
First and Last Freedom" by Jiddu Krishnamurti
Related Article:
"Jiddu Krishnamurti life in words of Osho"
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