Question: Instead of addressing heterogeneous crowds in many places and dazzling and confounding them with your brilliance and subtlety, why do you not start a community or colony and create a reference for your way of thinking? Are you afraid that this could never be done?
Krishnamurti: Sir brilliance and subtlety should always be kept under cover, because too much exposure of brilliance only blinds. It is not my intention to blind or show cleverness, that is too stupid; but when one sees things very clearly, one cannot help setting them out very clearly. This you may think brilliant and subtle. To me, what I am saying is not brilliant: it is the obvious. That is one fact. The other is, you want me to found an ashram or a community. Now, why? Why do you want me to found a community? You say that it will act as a reference, that is, something which can be pointed out as a successful experiment. That is what a reference implies, does it not? - a community where all these things are being carried out. That is what you want. I do not want to found an ashram or a community, but you want it. Now, why do you want such a community? I will tell you why. It is very interesting, is it not? You want it because you would like to join with others and create a community, but you do not want to start a community with yourself; you want somebody else to do it, and when it is done you will join it. In other words, Sir, you are afraid of starting on your own, therefore you want a reference. That is, you want something which will give you authority of a kind that can be carried out. In other words, you yourself are not confident, and therefore you say, `Found a community and I will join it'. Sir, where you are you can found a community, but you can found that community only when you have confidence. The trouble is that you have no confidence. Why are you not confident? What do I mean by confidence? The man who wants to achieve a result, who gets what he wants, is full of confidence the business man, the lawyer, the policeman, the general, are all full of confidence. Now, here you have no confidence. Why? For the simple reason you have not experimented. The moment you experiment with this, you will have confidence. Nobody else can give you confidence; no book, no teacher can give you confidence. Encouragement is not confidence; encouragement is merely superficial, childish, immature. Confidence comes as you experiment; and when you experiment with nationalism, wit even the smallest thing, then as you experiment you will have confidence, because your mind will be swift, pliable; and then where you are there will be an ashram, you yourself will found the community. That is clear, is it not? You are more important than any community. If you join a community, you will be as you are - you will have somebody to boss you, you will have laws, regulations and discipline, you will be another Mr. Smith or Mr. Rao in that beastly community. You want a community only when you want to be directed, to be told what to do. A man who wants to be directed is aware of his lack of confidence in himself. You can have confidence, not by talking about self-confidence, but only when you experiment, when you try. Sir, the reference is you, so, experiment, wherever you are, a whatever level of thought. You are the only reference, not the community; and when the community becomes the reference, you are lost. I hope there will be lots of people joining together and experimenting, having full confidence and therefore coming together; but for you to sit outside and say, `Why don't you form a community for me to join?', is obviously a foolish question.
J. Krishnamurti /The Collected Works, Vol. V
