Questioner: Please elucidate the "surety in negation" idea. You spoke of negative and positive thought. Do you mean when we are positive we make statements that are valueless, because they are tight bound and smug; while when we are negative we are open to thought because we are bankrupt of traditions and able to inquire into the new? Or do you mean we must be positive in that there is no choice between the true and the false and that negation means becoming part of compromise? Krishnamurti: I said that in negation there is surety. Let us expand this idea. When we become aware of ourselves we find that we are in a state of self-contradiction, of wanting and not wanting, of loving and hating and so on. Thoughts and actions born of this self-contradiction are considered to be positive, but is it positive when thought contradicts itself? Because of our religious training we are certain that we must not kill but we find ourselves supporting or finding reasons for killing when the State demands; one thought denies the other and so there is no thinking at all. In a state of self-contradiction thought ceases and there is only ignorance. So let us discover if we think at all or exist in a state of self-contradiction in which thinking ceases to be. If we look into ourselves we realize that we live in a state of contradiction and how can such a state be positive? For that which contradicts itself ceases to be. Not knowing ourselves profoundly how can there be agreement or disagreement, assertion or denial? In this self-contradictory state how can there be surety? How can we in this state assume that we are right or wrong? We cannot assume anything, can we? But our morality, our positive action is based on this self-contradiction and so we are incessantly active, craving for peace and yet creating war, longing for happiness and yet causing sorrow, loving and yet hating. If our thinking is self-contradictory and therefore non-existent there is only one possible approach for understanding, which is the state of non-becoming, a state which may seem to be negation but in which there is the highest possibility. Humility is born of negation and without humility there is no understanding. In negative comprehension we begin to perceive the possibility of surety of agreement and so of greater relationship and of highest thinking. When the mind is creatively empty - not when it is positively directing - there is reality. All great discoveries are born in this creative emptiness and there can only be creative emptiness when self-contradiction ceases. As long as craving exists there will be self-contradiction. Therefore instead of approaching life positively, as most of us do, giving rise to the many miseries, brutalities, conflicts of which we know so well, why not approach it negatively which is not really negation? When I use the terms positive and negative I am not using them in opposition to each other. When we begin to understand what we call the positive, which is the outcome of ignorance, then we shall find that from this is there comes a surety in negation. In trying to understand the ever contradictory nature of the self, of the me and the mine, with its positive craving and denial, pursuit and death, there comes into being the still, creative emptiness. It is not the result of positive or negative action but a state of non-duality. When the mind-heart is still, creatively empty, then only is there reality.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 02:01:38 +0000
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