Avoiding Change

Why human beings have not that energy to bring about a radical change in themselves. ?

They have energy, any amount of it – to quarrel, to battle, to kill each other, to divide the world, to fight, to go to the moon. They’ve got energy, but apparently they have not the energy to change themselves radically. So we are asking why – why haven’t we as human beings, have this tremendous energy? I wonder, when you ask, when such a question is put to you, what your response is.

We said man has enough energy. He does everything with great energy – when he hates, he hates; when there is a war he battles, kills; when he wants to escape from what is actually, he has the energy to run away from it – through ideas, through amusement, through gods, through drink. When he wants pleasure, sexual or otherwise, he pursues it with great energy. He has the intelligence to overcome outward environment. He has the energy to go down to the… live at the bottom of the sea or live in the skies. He has got vital energy, but apparently he has not this energy to change, even the smallest habit. Why?

We haven’t the energy to change because we dissipate that energy in conflict within ourselves. Please listen to this a little bit. We are not trying to persuade you of anything, we are not doing propaganda, we are not replacing old ideas with new ideas, but we are trying to discover, understand. You see, we realize that we must change. So there is – let us take as an example violence, brutality – that is a fact. Human beings are brutal, violent and they have built a society which is violent, in spite of all the religious nonsense about loving your neighbour, loving God and all that, just ideas, they have no value whatsoever, because man remains brutal, violent, selfish – that’s a fact. And being violent he invents its opposite, which is not to be violent.

Please watch, go into this yourself with me a little bit. There is violence and he has the opposite of it, which is non-violence, not to be violent. And he is trying all the time to become non-violent. So there is conflict between ‘what is’, which is violence, and ‘what should be’, which is non-violence. There is conflict between the two. And that is the very essence of the wastage of energy. Right? As long as there is a duality between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’, man trying to become, or trying, making an effort to achieve ‘what should be’, that conflict is wastage of energy. Right? That is the very essence of wastage. As long as there is conflict between the opposites, the duality, man has not enough energy to change.

So, why should I have the opposite at all, as non-violence, as the ideal? The ideal is non-real, it has no meaning, it only leads to various forms of hypocrisy. Being violent, pretending not to be violent has no meaning. Or to say, ‘Well, I am an idealist. I will eventually become peaceful.’ That is a great pretension, an excuse. For he’ll take many years or perhaps never be without violence. Therefore he becomes a hypocrite, and in the meantime he’s being violent. So if we could, not in abstraction but actually put aside completely all ideals and only deal with facts. That is, violence. Then there is no wastage of energy. Please, this is really very important to understand. It isn’t a peculiar theory of the Speaker. Don’t say, ‘Well, he brings some oriental philosophy’ – he doesn’t. As long as man lives in the corridor of opposites, he must waste energy and therefore he can never change.

So with one breath you’ve wiped away all ideologies – right? – all opposites. Please do understand this. If you go into it, it is really quite extraordinary what takes place. A man who is angry, to pretend, or try to become non-angry, not to be angry, in that there is conflict going on all the time. But if he says, ‘I’ll observe what anger is, go into it, not try to escape from it, rationalize it.’ Then you have… then there is energy to understand and put an end to anger.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti