Krishnamurti on Change

If you already know what you are changing to, is that change at all? If one knows what one will be tomorrow, then "what will be" is already in the present. The future is the present; the known future is the known present.

The future is the projection, modified, of what is known now.

"Yes, I see that very clearly. So there is only, then, the question of change, not the verbal definition of what we change to. So we'll limit ourselves to the first question. How do we change? What is the drive, the motive, the force that will make us break down all barriers?"

Only complete inaction, only the complete negation of "what is." We do not see the great force that is in negation. If you reject the whole structure of principle and formula, and hence the power derived from it, the authority, that very rejection gives you the force necessary to reject all other structures of thought—and so you have the energy to change! The rejection is that energy.

"Is this what you call dying to the historical accumulation which is the present?"

Yes. That very dying is to be born anew. There you have the whole movement of change—the dying to the known.

"Is this rejection a positive, definite act?"

When the students revolt it is a positive, definite act, but such action is only very partial and fragmentary. It is not a total rejection. You ask, "Is it a positive act, this dying, this rejection?"

It is and it isn't. When you positively leave a house and enter into another house your positive action ceases to be positive action at all because you have abandoned one power structure for another, which you will again have to leave. So this constant repetition, which appears to be a positive action, is really inaction. But if you reject the desire and the search for all inward security, then it is a total negation which is a most positive action. It is this action only which transforms man.

If you reject hate and envy, in every form, you are rejecting the whole structure of what man has created in himself and outside himself.

Excerpt from

Freedom, Love, and Action, p. 7 ff

by J. Krishnamurti

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