4. KRISHNAMURTI: YOU ARE THE WORLD

"If you have been so prepared then to withdraw from worldliness at any age, you withdraw to flow into deep and pure awareness, you withdraw not into isolation but to find the real; to help to transform the ever congealing, conflicting society and state. … But if you really thought it worthwhile, then you would set about it, not as a wonderful act of renunciation, but as a natural and intelligent thing for a thoughtful man [woman] [the human] to do. How extraordinarily important it is that there should be at least some who do not belong to any particular group or a race or to any specialized religion or society! They will create the true brotherhood of man [woman] [the human] for they will be seeking truth. To be free from outward riches there must be the awareness of inward poverty, which brings untold riches. The stream of culture may change its course through a few awakened people. These are not strangers but you and me.”

“What is important is not to let hate take root in your mind … If each time hate arises you let it go by, then you will find that your mind becomes very sensitive without being sentimental; therefore it will know love.”

“The world, then, is an extension of yourself. If you as an individual desire to destroy hate, then you as an individual must cease hating. To destroy hatred, you must dissociate yourself from hate in all its gross and subtle forms, and so long as you are caught up in it, you are part of that world of ignorance and fear. Then the world is an extension of yourself, yourself duplicated and multiplied. The world does not exist apart from the individual. It may exist as an idea, as a state, as a social organization, but to carry out that idea, to make that social or religious organization function, there must be the individual. His [her] ignorance, his [her] greed, his [her] fear maintain the structure of ignorance, greed, and hate. If the individual changes, can he [she] affect the world, the world of hate, greed, and so on? First make sure, doubly sure, that you, the individual, do not hate. Those who hate have no time for thought; they are consumed with their own intense excitement and with its results. They won’t listen to calm, deliberate thought; they are carried away by their own fear; and you cannot help these people, can you, unless you follow their method, which is to force them to listen, but such force is of no avail. Ignorance has its own sorrow. After all, you are listening to me because you are not immediately threatened, but if you were, probably you would be thoughtful. The world is an extension of yourself so long as you are thoughtless, caught up in ignorance, hatred, and greed, but when you are earnest, thoughtful, and aware, there is not only a dissociation from those ugly causes which create pain and sorrow, but also in that understanding there is a completeness, a wholeness.” --

“The mind can pursue sensations, desires, but it cannot love. Love must come to the mind. And when once love is there, it has no division as sensual and divine – it is love. That is the extraordinary thing about love: it is the only quality that brings a total comprehension of the whole of existence.”