Page 194 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

the journal of the krishnamurti schools no.25

self-discovery, and as you begin to understand it, you will see what
an immense relationship it has to your present existence.
—Madras, 3rd Public Talk, 13 December 1956

Like the hero in the tale, we too have a problem with seeing.
The world is blind, humanity is blind, we are blind. Our world is
afflicted with a deadly wasting sickness. The individual and the
world suffer breakdown, stagnation, depression, and addiction. It
is true of persons as well as public systems, and governments. Even
buildings can be anorexic, tall, thin, glassy and remote, or aggres-
sive like military fortresses designed to terrify the customer. Cities
are obese, junked out, choked on traffic and rubbish. Businesses
are paranoid and delusional. There are national obsessions with
endless growth. The economy has to be continually expanding,
requiring more and more consumption. Both economies and per-
sons become manic consumers. Mother Earth is left a waste land.
The new monotheistic god is the economy.
The causes of our malaise, as Krishnamurti has pointed out,
are not only the obvious destructive forces roaming and ruling
the earth, but human consciousness itself. Consciousness as it
manifests in our time is fundamentally ignorant. Not able to see
clearly and not capable of seeing, so that action is always blighted.
The fault is in the very eye that looks at the world. The world is
seen as a Cartesian ‘thing’ out there, objective, brute and mute.
The world, as an economic opportunity to be used and exploited.
Before the axe has cut the tree down, it is already destroyed by
the eye.
Furthermore, the problem is bound up with the deceptive play
of the dualistic mind which constructs the world out of its own
habits, then accords it a reality it doesn’t have. The dualism of sub-
ject/object, of thinker and thought, of observer and observed, of
me and you, seems so real.

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