Be ruthlessly free of society psychologically

As long as you are acquisitive, envious, ambitious, seeking power, position, prestige, society approves of it; and on that you base your action. That action is considered respectable, moral. But it is not moral at all. Power in any form is evil: the power of the husband over the wife or the wife over the husband, the power of the politicians. The more tyrannical, the more bigoted, the more religious the power, the more evil it is. That is a fact, a provable, observable fact, but society approves of it. You all worship the man in power, and you base your action on that power. So, if you observe that your action is based on acquisitiveness of power, on the desire to succeed, on the desire to be somebody in this rotten world, then facing the fact will bring about a totally different action, and that is true action,not the action which society has imposed upon the individual. So, social morality is not morality at all; it is immoral; it is another form of defending ourselves, and therefore we are being gradually destroyed by society. A man who would understand freedom must be ruthlessly free of society psychologically, not physically. You cannot be free of society physically because, for everything, you do depend on society -the clothes that you wear, money, and so on. Outwardly, nonpsychologically, you depend on society. But to be free of society implies psychological freedom, that is, to be totally free from ambition, from envy, greed, power, position, prestige.

J. Krishnamurti/Collected Works, Vol. XIII",110, Individual and Society

From the urge to be something springs leadership

So, the mind is everlastingly seeking to be something, and thereby increasing its own sense of power, position, prestige. From the urge to be something springs leadership, following, the worship of success; and hence there is no deep individual perception of inward reality. If one actually sees this whole process, then is it possible to cut at the root of one's search for power? Do you understand the meaning of that word power? The desire to dominate, to possess, to exploit, to depend on another, all that is implied in this search for power. We can find other and more subtle explanations, but the fact is that the human mind is seeking power and, in the search for power, it loses its individuality.

J. Krishnamurti/Collected Works, Vol. IX",274, Individual and Society

If you accept an authority at the beginning

Freedom is at the beginning as well as at the end, and if you accept an authority at the beginning, you will always be a slave at the end.

J. Krishnamurti/Collected Works, Vol. XVII", 218, Individual and Society

We are not basically free at all

It is one of the fallacious concepts that man is free. Of course, man is free to choose, but when he chooses he is already in confusion. When you see something very clearly, then you do not choose. Please look at this fact in yourselves. When you see something very clearly, where is the necessity of choice? There is no choice. It is only a confused mind that chooses, that says, 'This is right, this is wrong, I must do this because it is right,' and so on, not a clear precise mind that sees directly. For such a mind there is no choice. You see, we say that we choose and therefore we are free. That is one of the absurdities we have invented, but we are not basically free at all. We are conditioned, and it requires an enormous understanding of this conditioning to be free.

J. Krishnamurti/Collected Works, Vol. XVII",270, Individual and Society

We are not basically free at all

It is one of the fallacious concepts that man is free. Of course, man is free to choose, but when he chooses he is already in confusion. When you see something very clearly, then you do not choose. Please look at this fact in yourselves. When you see something very clearly, where is the necessity of choice? There is no choice. It is only a confused mind that chooses, that says, 'This is right, this is wrong, I must do this because it is right,' and so on, not a clear precise mind that sees directly. For such a mind there is no choice. You see, we say that we choose and therefore we are free. That is one of the absurdities we have invented, but we are not basically free at all. We are conditioned, and it requires an enormous understanding of this conditioning to be free.

J. Krishnamurti/Collected Works, Vol. XVII",270, Individual and Society

You worship success

We all want to become something: a pacifist, a war hero, a millionaire, a virtuous man, or what you will. The very desire to become involves conflict, and that conflict produces war. There is peace only when there is no desire to become something, and that is the only true state because in that state alone there is creation, there is reality. But that is completely foreign to the whole structure of society, which is the projection of yourself. You worship success. Your god is success, the giver of titles, degrees, position, and authority. There is a constant battle within yourself, the struggle to achieve what you want. You never have a peaceful moment, there is never peace in your heart because you are always striving to become something, to progress. Do not be misled by the word progress. Mechanical things progress, but thought can never progress except in terms of its own becoming.

J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works, Vol. VI, 196

The individual is destroyed through compulsion

Organized religion, organized belief, and totalitarian states are very similar because they all want to destroy the individual through compulsion, through propaganda, through various forms of coercion. The organized religion does the same thing, only in a different way. There, you must accept, you must believe, you are conditioned. The whole tendency both of the left and of the so-called spiritual organizations is to mold the mind to a particular pattern of conduct because the individual left to himself becomes a rebel. So, the individual is destroyed through compulsion, through propaganda, and is controlled, dominated, for the sake of the society, for the sake of the state and so on. The so-called religious organizations do the same, only a little more suspiciously, a little more subtly, because, there too, people must believe, must repress, must control, and all the rest of it. The whole process is to dominate the self in one form or another. Through compulsion, collective action is sought. That is what most organizations want, whether they be economic organizations or religious. They want collective action, which means that the individual should be destroyed. Ultimately, it can only mean that. You accept the Left, the Marxist theory or the Hindu, Buddhist or the Christian doctrines, and thereby you hope to bring about collective action.

J. Krishnamurti/Collected Works, Vol. VI",279, Individual and Society

Belief is not reality

Belief is not reality. You may believe in God, but your belief has no more reality than that of the man who does not believe in God. Your belief is the result of your background, of your religion, of your fears, and the nonbelief of the communist and others is equally the result of their conditioning. To find out what is true, the mind must be free from belief and nonbelief. I know you smile and agree, but you will still go on believing because it is so much more convenient, so much more respectable and safe. If you did not believe, you might lose your job, you might suddenly find that you are nobody. It is being free of belief that matters, not your smiling and agreeing in this room.

J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works, Vol. VIII",294, Individual and Society

They think they know what is good for man

It seems to me that the whole world is intent on capturing the mind of man. We have created the psychological world of relationship, the world in which we live, and it in turn is controlling us, shaping our thinking, our activities, our psychological being. Every political and religious organization, you will find, is after the mind of man after in the sense of wanting to capture it, shape it to a certain pattern. The powers-that-be in the communist world are blatantly conditioning the mind of man in every direction, and this is also true of the organized religions throughout the world, who for centuries have tried to mold the way of man's thought. Each specialized group, whether religious, secular, or political, is striving to draw and to hold man within the pattern of that which its books, its leaders, the few in power think is good for him. They think they know the future; they think they know what is the ultimate good for man. The priests, with their so-called religious authority, as well as the worldly powers, whether it be in Rome, in Moscow, in America, or elsewhere, are all trying to control man's thought process, are they not? And most of us eagerly accept some form of authority and subject ourselves to it. There are very few who escape the clutches of this organized control of man and his thinking.

J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works, Vol. X",98, Individual and Society

Can the mind only think about freedom, as a prisoner does?

You have to find out for yourself, and not wait for me to tell you, whether the mind can ever be free. Can the mind only think about freedom, as a prisoner does, and so is doomed never to be free but always to be held within the bondage of its conditioning?

J. Krishnamurti/The Collected Works, Vol. X",166, Individual and Society