A FALSE DIVISION
J.
Krishnamurti
To most of us, profession is apart
from our personal life. There is the world of profession and technique, and the
life of subtle feelings, ideas, fears and love. We are trained for a world of
profession, and only occasionally, across this training and compulsion, we hear
the vague whisperings of reality. The world of profession has become gradually
overpowering and exacting, taking almost all our time, so that there is little
chance for deep thought and emotion. And so the life of reality, the life of
happiness, becomes more and more vague and recedes into the distance. Thus we
lead a double life: the life of profession, of work, and the life of subtle
desires, feelings, and hopes.
This division into the world of
profession and the world of Sympathy, love, and deep wanderings of thought, is
a fatal impediment to the fulfillment of man. As in the lives of most people
this separation exists, let us inquire if we cannot bridge over this
destructive gulf.
With rare exceptions, following any
particular profession is not the natural expression of an individual. It is not
the fulfillment or complete expression of one’s whole being. If you examine
this, you will see that it is a careful training of the individual to adjust
himself to a rigid inflexible system. This system is based on fear,
acquisitiveness and. exploitation. We have to discover by questioning deeply
and sincerely, not superficially, whether this system to which individuals are
forced to adjust themselves is really capable of liberating man’s intelligence,
and so bringing about his fulfillment. If this system is capable of truly
freeing the individual to deep fulfillment, which is not mere egotistic
self-expression, then we must give our entire support to it. So we must look at
the whole basis of this system and not be carried away by its superficial
effects.
For a man who is trained in a
particular profession, it is very difficult to discern that this system is
based on fear, acquiitiveness and exploitation. His mind is already vested in
self-interest, so he is incapable of true action with regard to this system of
fear. Take, for example, a man who is trained for the army or navy; he is
incapable of perceiving that armies must inevitably create wars. Or take a man whose
mind is twisted by a particular religious belief; he is incapable of discerning
that religion as organised belief must poison his whole being. So each
profession creates a particular mentality, which prevents the complete
understanding of the integrated man.
As most of us are being trained or
have already been trained to twist and fit ourselves to a particular mould, we
cannot see the tremendous importance of taking many human problems as a whole
and not dividing them up into various categories. As we have been trained and
twisted, we must free ourselves from the mould and reconsider, act anew, in
order to understand life as a whole. This demands of each individual that he
shall, through suffering, liberate himself from fear. Though there are many forms
of fear, social, economic and religious, there is only one cause, which is the
search for security. When we individually destroy the walls and forms that the
mind has created in order to protect itself, thus engendering fear, then there
comes true intelligence which will bring about order and happiness in this
world of chaos and suffering.
On one side there is the mould of
religion, impeding and frustrating the awakening of individual intelligence,
and on the other the vested interest of society and profession. In these moulds
of vested interest the individual is being forcibly and cruelly trained,
without regard for his individual fulfillment. Thus the individual is compelled
to divide life into profession as a means of livelihood, with all its stupidities
and exploitations; and subjective hopes, fears, and illusions, with all their
complexities and frustrations. Out of this separation is born conflict, ever
preventing individual fulfillment. The present chaotic condition is the result
and expression of this continual conflict and compulsion of the individual.
The mind must disentangle itself
from the various compulsions, authorities, which it has created for itself
through fear, and thus awaken the intelligence which is unique and not
individualistic. Only this intelligence can bring about the true fulfillment of
man.
This intelligence is awakened
through the continual questioning of those values to which the mind has become
accustomed, to which it is constantly adjusting itself. For the awakening of
this intelligence, individuality is of the greatest importance. If you blindly
follow a pattern laid down, then you are no longer awakening intelligence, but
merely conforming, adjusting yourself, through fear, to an ideal, to a system.
The awakening of this intelligence
is a most difficult and arduous task, for the mind is so timorous that it is
ever creating shelters to protect itself. A man who could awaken this
intelligence must be supremely alert, ever aware, not to escape into an
illusion; for when you begin to question these standards and values, there is
conflict and suffering. To escape from that suffering, the mind begins to
create another set of values, entering into the limitations of a new enclosure.
So it moves from one prison to another, thinking that it is living, evolving.
The awakening of this intelligence
destroys the false division of life into profession or outward necessity, and
the inward retreat from frustration into illusion, and brings about the
completeness of action. Thus through intelligence alone can there be true
fulfillment and bliss for men.
(From Triveni 1937)