It’s easy to fool oneself because conditioning hides behind ideas of freedom. Freedom is there when conditioning is not.
Don’t fool yourself – you are conditioned. It’s conditioning that does the fooling.
Don’t approach freedom until you get the depth of conditioning. It’s easy to fool oneself because conditioning hides behind ideas of freedom. Freedom is there when conditioning is not.
Conditioning is like my glasses. It shapes my perception but I can’t see the processes of the shaping. Conditioning is not “bad” or malicious in itself, it just does what it does, unconsciously shaping, etc. But if you don’t sense its processes you will give wrong meanings to your perceptions and so feel and act incoherently. For example a conditioned assumption that deeply tethers the mind is that security is found through identifying who you are with such diverse notions as a country, religion, type of music, football team, etc. Or more subtly, with “truths” you have found through experience. But these are ideas, not actualities. To give a sense of this let’s take the example of football. The actuality is a number of men running after a piece of blown up leather within a painted area having metal poles at each end. This strange behavior can only be given significance by a conditioned perception. A Martian watching this sport would very quickly be convinced there is no intelligent life here.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking conditioning is just an intellectual, philosophical construction that doesn’t touch our emotions and intuitions. Such notions lead to thinking that we can trust our “gut” feelings. But if emotions and feelings are not beyond conditioning, then what is?
“Our problem is: How is the mind to be set free? And, is it possible to set the mind free –not in layers or patches, not in little bits here and there, but totally, right through, the unconscious as well as the conscious? Or, is the mind ever to be conditioned, ever to be shaped? You have to find out for yourself and not wait for me to tell you whether the mind can ever be free. Can the mind only think about freedom, as a prisoner does, and so is doomed never to be free but always to be held within the bondage of its conditioning?
Do you understand the problem? Can the mind ever be totally free, or is it the very nature of the mind to be conditioned? If it is the fundamental quality of the mind to be limited, then there is no question of ever finding out what is reality; then you can go on repeating that there is God or there is no God, that this is good and something else is bad, all of which is within the pattern of a given culture. But, to find out the truth of the matter, you have to inquire for yourself into whether the mind can really be free. I say it can be, which is not for you to accept or reject. It may be true, or it may be my opinion, my fancy, my illusion. And you cannot base your life on somebody else’s discovery, or on his illusion, his fancy, or on a mere idea. You have to find out.”
– Krishnamurti
It’s Conditioning That Does the Fooling
Don’t go to the idea of the unconditioned. This idea is another product of conditioning. Once we have labeled conditioning as “bad” it is a conditioned habit to conceptualize the opposite, as this logically must be “good”. But since it is an idea it is not “what is” and to go beyond conditioning one needs to pay attention to “what is”. “What is” is what is actually directly perceivable by the senses. It is actually what is happening without judgment in the moment – whether it be the movement of the clouds or sea; or a feeling of anger or joy.
Don’t fool yourself – you are conditioned. It’s conditioning that does the fooling. To get this is the first step. Like in a magic trick, what seems to be going on is not what actually is going on. Magicians exploit this vulnerability of ordinary perception and “fool” their audience.
Question: You talk about the ill-effects of conditioning. Yet many psychologists and philosophers say that only through proper conditioning can humans think and act clearly. What’s your answer?
How does conditioning do the fooling? Perception is usually thought of as objective and rational and passively sensing whatever is out there, but the active involvement of conditioning leads to deceptions and confusions. So in daily life we normally believe that we are perceiving an objective reality. But what if both the perceiver and the perception are created by the movement of conditioning? This can lead to a confusion in perception- that “objective reality” seems to be providing evidence that my assumptions and worldview are a true, while in fact what is actually going on is conditioning engaged in a self-validating process.
Could this be a factor in why so many people develop a fixed view of what is true, real, important, etc. in their world, resisting the disturbance of adjusting to what is new and different in their lives? In the words of Warren Buffett: “What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”
It is a shock when actuality comes knocking at the door to shatter a strongly held conclusion or assumption in one’s view. The same could also be said about relationship when a stubborn denial to face an actuality is exposed. The knowledge you have accumulated may have some validity but it is so limited and small compared with the limitless unknowable movement of life. When you see your “certainties” for what they are, a healthy mind might see that true security is in the vast actuality of the unknown.
By Colin Foster
Former Academic Director at Brockwood Park School
Thank you, for more of your knowledge.
In some countries the deep rooted conditioning is so deep rooted its scary.
Regards Seamus
This combination of Colin Foster and Krishnamurti is absolutely fabulous. Mankind has an
obligation to figure out this fact of conditioning in oneself before going into this future
of intellectual and technological uncertainty. We condition our youth from our own
conditioning unknowingly, and they are now being conditioned at very young ages by their
own means from easily accessible technologies. It behooves those of us who read K to
figure this process out for ourselves so that our actions do not contribute to the conditioning
of others and serious dialoguing about this future of technology needs to take place.
Colin,
Thank you for this article.
Sudhanshu
Without conditioning we will not survive, because our sense are built to be conditioned …..if we dont taste the food as good trouhg this sense we will never eat , if we dont feel the sense of intimity touching our partner we will never reproduce …at the condition that i feel ,trough my given sense ,good then i am acting …..this is how thre nature progrsm us ….. the problem of humanity is that of over abusing on sense perception conditilning our and others life badly ….sense trilggrr feeling….abusing create illusivery happines
es lo mas grande e inteligente que he leido ,he buscado por otros autores inclusive hindues pero krisnamurti es para mi al menos lo mas grande e inteligente y humano y sensible que haya leido.
So clear and precise. Thank you for this, it cuts like a knife through the ‘known.’ Can’t trust my responses to life, so I’ll just watch them and maybe in that space, reality will reveal the truth.
I am still confuse because conditioning is harmfull-intuitions are harmfull-clearevidence is harmfull but you can only find the TRUE when you are in the darkness the REALITY cannot be recognized SHE is always NEW. Oh, my god how much things I have to learn.
Really enjoy these messages based on Krishnamurti’s teachings about thoughts/ideas of the mind. These teachings stop the mind chatter and leads to contemplation searching for one’s own truth. To search within is the answer to all questions. We are blessed to have teachers like Krishnamurti who have dedicated their lives to helping others reach into the base of all our problems, our conditioned minds. The further in one goes within self, the consciousness awakens and sees the false realities created by the mind and that it is all ideas/thoughts/beliefs and emotions that create our experiences.
Dear sirs, I’m studying K. Murti’s writings for years now. A long time ago I stood in Chennai for 2 weeks in in your foundation, watching his videos. Later, while I was studying Karnatik music in Kalakshetra for 2 years with the help of ICCR, my daughter went to your school.. During that time one of my teachers gave me the little book, Who am I, by Ramana Maharshi. I was very impressed, though I never went to Aruna Shala. Some years ago I created a project , Karuna, with a Karnatik singer and 3other western musicians, to express the impact of that word on me. I’ m a jazz saxophonist, still running around the world, just in the moment teaching at the Nagaland Conservatory in Dimapur. K Murti is so right in what he is saying, only I feel so alone looking at this world around me with all these crazy people in power, building bombs to destroy this world, the greed, stupid hunt for money and power. – and nothing changed all my life. It’s difficult to detach from all this without flying out this so called facts… Thanks for posting your letters. They remind me not to give up!
Rainer
As I understand it, there is nothing that can be done about conditioning. Any attempt to do something generates further conditioning. Just admitting that you are profoundly conditioned, just the understanding, though, loosens the bonds. Just seeing the conditioning at work without any move against it frees us step by step.
I know of no one with a mind as clear as Krishnamurti. No one has taught me how to look at myself as this man. Thirty years ago Krishnamurti came into my life. Today I live without illusions. It is true, from where you look you are no older than the day you were born. From where you think you are as old as how long you have been accumulating memories of your experiences. If you believe otherwise, you are living an illusion.
Hallo Rainer,
Ich gehe mal davon aus dass du Deutsch bist und ich stimme völlig mit dir ein ! Diese Welt braucht eine neue Ordnung und zwar sehr dringend !
the onil way to understand conditioning is to observe every thought with out judjing condoning in that observation you will understand your conditioning ,there is no method as Krishna ji says.method only need to another form of conditioning,this is how I understood from his teachings
Thank you Colin Foster for this clear writing about the shalow puddle we are in.
Inwardly, there might only one option to ourself; attention.
As attention has no opinion.
Attention is not caused be the ‘me’, which makes devision in what is there to see.
It is this attention one needs, to desolve the squabble in a class.
Attention makes one to be aware.
As ‘K’ explained, attention is part of Love.
Thanks for sharing this moment of attention.
It is hard to wrap our heads around what conditioning really is and how it affects us. I am glad to see Mr. Foster’s comments as an additional part of the exploration of K’s comments. Multiple views in the exploration of this essential topic if very helpful. Not only do we have conditioning, we are conditioning as “self” is not over here and “conditioning” over there. They are one and the same.
It becomes a conditioning again, when conditioning is considered as a self-working process forming the content of consciousness. This leads to a contradiction without no way out. And to apply this contradiction to conditioning is a way to take comfort. So it becomes part of the self-validating process, (which finds reference in this article) and diverts awareness from the movement of thought which is the content of this self-validating process to a judgement in respect to the feeling involved in this process.
Emotions determine the values of our culturally conditioned mind. Emotions are the code the animated ration of Life uses to program all lifeforms to generally think and behave in a rational manner. The key is understanding the ration and meaning of empathy. It’s ration is intended to govern the relationships between all lifeforms enabling Life to exist as one.