Jiddu Krishnamurti (photo from http://www.buddhasangha.com/)

This short excerpt is from Krishnamurthi’s response in one of his many talks he participated in during his life time (1895 – 1986) where he is explaining the state of higher awareness and his rational for trying to achieve it:

[…….]

Mind cannot think completely, fully, if it is tethered to a belief.  It is like an animal that is tied to a post by a string.  It does not matter if that string be long or short; it is tied, so that it cannot wander fully, freely, extensively, completely; it can only wander within the length of the string.  Surely such wandering is not thinking; it is only moving within a limited circle of a belief.  Now, men’s minds are tethered to a belief, and therefore they are incapable of thinking.  Most minds have identified themselves to a belief, and therefore their thought is always circumscribed, limited by that belief or ideal; hence the incompleteness of thought.  Beliefs separate people.  So, if you see that, if you really recognize with your whole being that belief is conditioning thought, then what happens?  You become aware that your thought is conditioned, aware that your thought is caught up, tethered to a belief.  In the flame of awareness, you will recognize the foolishness, and therefore you are beginning to free the mind from the conditioning, and hence you begin to think completely, fully.

Please experiment with this, and you will see that life is not a process of continual battle, battle against standards as opposed to what you want to do.  There is then, neither what you want to do, nor the standard, but right action, without personal identification.

Take another example.  You are afraid of what your neighbor might say – a very simple fear.  Now, it is not good developing the opposite, which is to say, “I don’t care what the neighbor says, “ and do something in reaction to that opposition.  But if you really become aware of why you are afraid of your neighbor, then fear ceases altogether.  To discover that “why”, the cause of it, you have to be fully aware in that moment of fear, and then you will see what it is; you are afraid of losing a job, you want to fit into society, and all the rest of it.  So, you begin to discover through this process of alertness of mind, this continual awareness; and in that flame the dross of the false standards is burnt away.  Then life is not a battle.  Then there is nothing to be conquered.

[……]

Where the mind is enslaved, conditioned, there must be conflict, there must be suffering, because, after all thought is like waters of a river.  It must be in continual movement.  Eternity is that movement.  If you condition that free flowing movement of thought, of mind and heart, then you must have conflict and then that conflict must have a remedy and then the process begins; the searching for remedies, the substitutes, and never trying to find out the cause of this conflict.  So, through the process of full awareness, you liberate the mind and heart from the hindrances which have been set about them through the environment; and as long as environment is conditioning the mind, as long as the mind has not discovered the true significance of the environment, there must be conflict…

[source: http://lazydabbler.wordpress.com/2009/10/]