Society has to be in a state of constant revolution

It is well known that the power to think is what makes us different from other living beings, but this unfortunately is also the reason why we may consider ourselves higher in the order of nature. This very essential power is mostly used and abused over time.

Our mind is misinterpreted, and we must start using it differently than it is used, and not as an object for self-protection and self-expansion. We are no more primitive humans, and survival instincts have to be abandoned so as to achieve higher awareness. He talks of how, if society has to remain truly human, it must be in a state of constant revolution and re-evaluation.

The mind is being used more for ego-centred acquisitiveness and for personal growth and power, in turn lessening others opportunities. We must try and belong to an organic society and not an organised one; because an organised society will always follow a hierarchy; and the standards of morality may exist, but not necessarily in the nobler sense like that of an organic society .

An organic society means that its members have no choice but to belong to it. However, it goes even further. It implies that they have no desire but to belong to it, for their interests and those of the society are the same; they identify themselves with the society. Unity here is not a principle proclaimed by the authorities, but a fact accepted by all the participants.

No great sacrifice is involved. One's place in society may be onerous or undignified, but it is the only one available; without it, one has no place in the world. The opposite of this perspective, with rights and liberties granted to an individual, is what forms an organised society.

This world is full of chaos and it is the human being who must understand that he is part of that chaos — the cause and the effect. Bringing of the unconscious to the conscious is the first fruit of intelligence.

It marks the reaching of the human level and there should be no conflict. This integration of the entire mechanism of consciousness will open to awareness, vistas of perception and experience of affection and action beyond our boldest dreams.

Every experience in our life is imprinted deeply in our mind whose strength will vary in pleasure and pain and will crystallise in our life later on. This sounds as familiar as Freud, who said childhood experiences form the base of our adulthood and our adjustment to life; but it is more than this.

Every action we try to connect positively or negatively to, comes back to form a habit, and does not allow a free mind to grow. Sometimes, even suffering is based on our habits and when we try to overcome one habit, we form another; and eventually, as humans, we form the habit of repression. We must understand that there is no stopping of habits, but rather only a cessation.

We have to understand it and overcome it, which is acquired through great alertness and patience. The idea of a free mind is to look inward with this patience and alertness. On doing so, we free ourselves of the thinker who cages us. Once we destroy this cage of controlled thoughts, man finds a new freedom, which is not a freedom from painful experiences, but a release from the scar these experiences used to leave on the mind.

Jiddu Krishnamurti