Self-Knowledge in Krishnamurti’s Philosophy
by Merry Halam | 2017 | 60,265 words
This essay studies the concept of Self-Knowledge in Krishnamurti’s Philosophy and highlights its importance in the context of the present world. Jiddu Krishnamurti was born in 1895 to a Telugu Brahmin family in Madanapalli. His father was as an employee of the Theosophical Society, whose members played a major role in shaping the life of Krishnamur...
3. Relationship (with others)
Krishnamurti also stated that conflict arises because of one’s wrong relationship with others. He elucidates that knowledge is a memory that have been accumulated in a relationship, be it sexual memories, pleasure, pain, antagonism, and also the images and pictures about each other. So, knowledge in relationship is another factor of conflict.
In the words of Krishnmaurti,
‘In a relationship which are moving, not static we form a relationship and later get into the habit of looking at it from a fixed point of view whether the relationship is with one’s wife, or one’s children, or one’s neighbours. Such relationship ceases to be creative, they become dead. Habit of any kind dulls the mind.’[1]
Krishnamurti further said that relationship is based on images and one continues to see things with the help of images which prevent us from seeing things in reality. The image is nothing but the memory which conditioned the everyday life. The relationship is therefore superficial and not real. It is a product of thought. Thought which regulates relationships, is always rooted in the past. So, relationship is not real but dead and old. It involves exploitation and violence.
He therefore says,
‘The relationship is between these two verbal pictures in memory; it is not actual and therefore, there is always division and conflict. When you have been hurt in that relationship, it is the image you have built about yourself that has been hurt.’[2]
The point is, when one is living intimately with another or a thing, one accumulate through that relationship memories of each other. These memories, which are images, prevent actual relationship, and are the dividing factor and therefore lead to conflict. In other words, the images and knowledge that one has each other bring about division and thereby conflict.
To him, it is the memory that makes the observer seems different from the thing being observed. But, when one observes, he/she is observing one’s own image and not observing another. That is, the image that one has built through various interactions. Whenever there is a difference/division between the observer and the observed, there must be conflict. To understand why human being lives in conflict is to find out the causes of this division–observer and observed. He therefore says that, where there is separation, division and breaking up into two parts there must be conflict. That conflict ultimately becomes war that kills people. This has been experienced all over the world, whether the Islamic world or the non-Islamic world. There are very rare instances in the world where there is a relationship in which conflict does not exist and that conflict exist because one has separated the observer and the observed. One thinks to be different from anger, envy, sorrow etc., and does not understand that one is not different from those things. The observer is the background of being a Hindu, Muslim Christian etc., with all the superstition and belief. When one looks and observes without background, the past memories impinging upon the thing being observed, than there is only that which is observed. There is no observer observing the thing observed.