Self-Knowledge Is a Process
So, to understand the innumerable problems that each one of us has, is it not essential that there be self-knowledge? And that is one of the most difficult things, self-awareness—which does not mean an isolation, a withdrawal. Obviously, to know oneself is essential; but to know oneself does not imply a withdrawal from relationship. And it would be a mistake, surely, to think that one can know oneself significantly, completely, fully, through isolation, through exclusion, or by going to some psychologist, or to some priest; or that one can learn self-knowledge through a book. Self-knowledge is obviously a process, not an end in itself; and to know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship. You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship—in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception.
J. Krishnamurti
J. Krishnamurti
posted by Wendy C. at 7:15 pm
3 Comments:
This requires a lot of observing and thinking. And thinking means judgement, comparison, evaluation. You can never know that a relationship is bad, stupid, unhealthy, sick unless you judge it or compare it with another relationship.
Just observe and pretend there is nothing wrong. Be stoic. However, be wise too. If you had enough, leave.
Yes of course as you say, a lot of observing and thinking it through may be necessary, at least at first, but then you come to that point where you, your mind realizes that thinking it through does no good for seeing something true, or seeing the false in something; at that point the comparing stops, evaluation stops, thinking it through stops and the mind merely sees and comprehends. When comparing, what is taking place? Where is the comparer when s/he is comparing? At that moment the comparer has separated him/her self from what is being compared and so is somewhere in the midst of all the previous comparisons. It is as if one is lost in space, the space of ones own clusters of knowledge and from that space one can only pick and choose what one has already experienced, remembered, stored and is now recalling. There is no freedom in that; there isn't the freedom to see things as they are without the interpreter interfering, making his/her selection based on like and dislike, staying in a comfort zone that does not allow full free inquiry, uninhited looking. To say that a previous or another relationship is necessary to see something limits the mind to only the yolk and the white as it were within the shell, but there is a much larger world there outside the shell that must be seen, explored and comprehended in order for there to be full and complete understanding of what one is.
I think JK uses the word "relationship" in a different sense than a-girl-and-a-boy-type relationship. To JK, a relationship is how we interact with people and things around us such as a job, house, neighbor, car, parents, and so forth. To him, a relation is how we see ourselves in relation to things and people. For example, my "relation" to my job is that of a fear. This is so because I am afraid that I will be nobody without this entity called a "job". JK asks us to introspect and see how we take each of such relation. That is, he suggests examining our feelings/reactions (such as fear, hope, pride, hate, and so forth) for every thing and person that we are in contact with (a "relation").
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