15. KRISHNAMURTI: "THAT DELICATE POISE"

“Peace can come only when there is love. If you have peace merely through security, financial or otherwise, or through certain dogmas, rituals, verbal repetitions, there is no creativeness; there is no urgency to bring about a fundamental revolution in the world. Such peace only leads to contentment and resignation. But when in you there is the understanding of love and beauty, then you will find the peace that is not a mere projection of the mind. It is this peace that is creative that removes confusion and brings order within oneself. But this peace does not come through any effort to find it. It comes when you are constantly watching, when you are sensitive to both the ugly and the beautiful, to the good and the bad, to all the fluctuations of life. Peace is not something pretty, crafted by the mind; it is enormously great, infinitely extensive, and it can be understood only when the heart is full.”

“To me there is a reality, an immense living truth; and to comprehend that, there must be utter simplicity of thought. What is simple is infinitely subtle, what is simple is greatly delicate. … I say there is this living reality, call it God, truth, or what you like, and it cannot be found or realized through search…. Whenever mind is seeking, it must inevitably imply a division…. which does not mean that mind must be contented, does not mean that mind must be stagnant. There is that delicate poise, which is neither contentment, nor this ceaseless effort born of search, of this desire to attain, to achieve; and in that delicacy of poise lies simplicity…a simplicity born of this delicacy of thought, in which there is neither search nor contentment.”
“I mean by thought, not mere intellectual reasoning, which is but ashes, but that poise between emotion and reason, between affection and thought; and that poise is not influenced, is not affected by the conflict of the opposites. But if there is neither the capacity to think clearly, nor the intensity of feeling, how can you awaken, how can there be poise, how can there be this alertness, awareness? So life becomes futile, inane, worthless.

Hence the very first thing to do, if I may suggest it, is to find out why you are thinking in a certain way, and why you are feeling in a certain manner. Don't try to alter it, don't try to analyze your thoughts and your emotions, but become conscious of why you are thinking in a particular groove and from what motive you act. Although you can discover the motive through analysis, although you may find out something through analysis, it will not be real; it will be real only when you are intensely aware at the moment of the functioning of your thought and emotion; then you will see their extraordinary subtlety, their fine delicacy. So long as you have a 'must' and a 'must not' in this compulsion you will never discover that swift wandering of thought and emotion. And I am sure you have been brought up in the school of 'must' and 'must not',’ and hence you have destroyed thought and feeling. You have been bound and crippled by systems, methods, by your teachers. So leave all those 'musts' and 'must nots.' This does not mean that there shall be licentiousness, but become aware of a mind that is ever saying, 'I must'; and 'I must not'; Then, as a flower blossoms forth of a morning, so intelligence happens, is there, functioning, creating comprehension.”