Page 167 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

Working with Insights from Krishnamurti

to think and a perfectly disastrous way to operate in the world. So,
you’ve got to have multiple models.

And the models have to come from multiple disciplines—because
all the wisdom of the world is not to be found in one little aca-
demic department. That’s why poetry professors, by and large, are
so unwise in a worldly sense. They don’t have enough models in
their heads. So, you’ve got to have models across a fair array of dis-
ciplines.

You may say, ‘My God, this is already getting way too tough.’ But,
fortunately, it isn’t that tough—because eighty or ninety important
models will carry about ninety per cent of the freight in making you
a worldly-wise person. And, of those, only a mere handful really
carry very heavy freight.

As a student of K, I read several things into this that might not have
occurred to someone without that exposure.

1. To me, the reference to multiple models spoke directly to what
has been called the second lesson above. All models (products
of thought) are limited. There is no perfect model of the world.
Thought cannot create it. Rather than expend energy on trying
to find the perfect model, learn the art of seeing them as useful
tools, and invest in the even more challenging art of learning the
contexts and conditions in which the model is appropriate. Learn
about both the tool and the context—the hammer and the nail!
The art of thinking better is to improve the range of tools at one’s
disposal and the skills to use them for the appropriate problems.
2. It is the nature of thought that it will torture reality so that it
fits its models. This seems to reveal the other side of the point
made above about thought deserving compassion. It is relent-
less in its power to create narratives and to fit everything into
that narrative—emphasize the parts that fit and obscure facts
that don’t.

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