Authority corrupts both leader and follower

"Self-awareness is arduous, and since most of us prefer an easy, illusory way, we bring into being the authority that gives shape and pattern to our life. This authority may be the collective, the State; or it may be the personal, the Master, the savior, the guru. Authority of any kind is blinding, it breeds thoughtlessness; and as most of us find that to be thoughtful is to have pain, we give ourselves over to authority. Authority engenders power, and power always becomes centralized and therefore utterly corrupting; it corrupts not only the wielder of power, but also him who follows it. The authority of knowledge and experience is perverting, whether it be vested in the Master, his representative or the priest. It is your own life, this seemingly endless conflict, that is significant, and not the pattern or the leader. The authority of the Master and the priest takes you away from the central issue, which is the conflict within yourself."

– J. Krishnamurti

Public Talk 4
Santa Monica, California, USA
March 26, 1972

Our consciousness is always limited.

How is the mind to transform itself without conflict and have an energy that is totally different from the energy that is brought about through conflict; an energy that never deteriorates, an energy that renews itself all the time, without any motive?

Can thought stop?

Control has no place in meditation.

Q: Aren’t you making a distinction between thought in action versus not using thought? Aren’t you making a distinction between memory of facts, like your address, versus memory patterns, especially patterns of relationship?

Q: How did this idea of thought ever come about?

Q: Speaking of the masses, does man have a single, homogenous personality or is he made up of many facets and faces which comprise the totality?

Q: Are there any judgments which do not do violence to truth?

Note: a total of 2 minutes and 20 seconds of missing video is replaced by audio only.

Public Talk 3
Brockwood Park 1975

Can we end suffering at all levels inwardly?

Can there be love, not just personal love but the enormous feeling of compassion?

What is the total significance of death, the ending of what we know as life?

That which ends has a new beginning, not that which has a continuity. Can there be an ending to time?

Has time created the centre, the ‘me’?

What is immortality, eternity, a timeless state? What happens to those caught in the movement of time?

What is the relationship between one who is out of the stream of sorrow and one who is in it?