Swanwick Star Issue No. 1 (2008)

1968 J. Krishnamurti: Talks at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan

“Most of us in this confused and brutal world try to carve out a private life of our own, a life in which we can be happy and peaceful and yet live with the things of this world. We seem to think that the daily life we lead, the life of struggle, conflict, pain and sorrow, is something separate from the outer world of misery and confusion. We seem to think the individual, the you? is different from the rest of the world with all its atrocities, wars and riots, inequality and injustice and that this is something entirely different from our particular individual life. When you look a little more closely, not only at your own life but also at the world, you will see that what you are, your daily life, what you think, what you feel, is the external world, the world about you. You are the world, you are the human being that has made this world of utter disorder, the world that is crying helplessly in great sorrow. It is you, the human being that has built this world. So that world outside you is not different from the world in which you live your private life.”

“When we understand ourselves, the authority of any specialist, psychosociological or any other, comes to an end. Because most of us, unfortunately, are slaves to other people’s ideas.”