Theos-Talk Archives (February 1997 Message tl00163)

MKR wrote:

>Hi
>
>Many times the question arises as to how a single human being can affect >the world. Here is an excerpt from a talk almost over 50 years ago.
>
>..
>
>=============
>
>STONE MAY ALTER THE COURSE OF A RIVER
>
>
>Question:
>
>I had a son who was killed in this war.  He did not want to die.  He wanted
>to live and prevent this horror being repeated.  Was it my fault that he as
>killed?
>
>Krishnamurti:
>
>It is the fault of every one of us that this present horror is going on.  It
>is the outward result of our everyday inner life of greed, ill will, and
>lust, of competition, acquisitiveness, and specialized religion.  It is the
>fault of everyone who, indulging in these, has created this terrible
>calamity. because we are nationalistic, singularistic, passionate, each one
>of us is contributing to this mass murder.

I find it to be preposterous that those who wanted peace, but who were
forced into a choice between war and being annihilated, were
considered to be responsible for war.  It is a travesty of justice to
consider those who do not start wars to be as responsible as those who
do.  Peace will not come about by those who "love peace" not starting
wars.  They already don't, and we still have wars.  It will come about
by those who "love peace" deterring wars.  Pacifism encourages war.


>You have been taught how to kill
>and how to die, but not how to live.

I see no truth to that statement.


>If you wholeheartedly abhorred killing
>and violence in any form, then you would find ways and means to live
>peacefully and creatively.

You would also necessarily live hypocritically, since there is no way
to survive without killing.  A life of "harmlessness" is pure fiction.



>If that were your chief and primary interest,
>then you would search out very cause, every instinct that makes for
>violence, for hatred, for mass murder. Are you so wholeheartedly interested
>in stopping war?  If you are then you must eradicate in yourself the causes
>of violence and killing for any reason whatsoever.  If you wish to stop
>wars, then there must take place a deep, inner revolution of tolerance and
>compassion;

That's what Neville Chamberlain thought.


>then thought-feeling must free self from patriotism, from its
>identification with any group, from greed and those causes that breed >enmity.

I can't imagine a recipe to make war more likely.  Advanced souls do
not have the choice of whether to live in a world of perfect peace or
not.  They only have the choice of how to respond to other greedy
people.  Jesus said "a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough."
The fewer freeloaders there are, the more profitable it is to
freeload.  Those who encourage it by preaching pure cooperation are
partly responsible for it.


>We must reeducate ourselves not to murder, not to liquidate each other for
>any cause

Even the cause of preventing others from murdering?  He was speaking
to the wrong audience.  These are futile words.


>not merely be educated
>technically which inevitably makes for ruthlessness

Capacity for goodness depends on technological advancement.  He is
blaming the wrong culprit.


>The prevention of this ever-increasing destruction and horror depends on
>each one of us, not on any organization or planning, not on any ideology,
>not on the inventions of greater instruments of destruction

It was the atomic bomb that ended it.


>Only by your
>thoughtfulness, by your compassion, by your awakened understanding, can
>there be established goodwill and peace.
>
>July 16, 1944 - Ojai, Califomia

He's got half of the saying "speak softly and carry a big stick"
right.  His solution is too simplistic.  Competition is too inherent
to eradicate and too necessary for evolution for its eradication to be
an improvement.  A balance between cooperation and competition, not
pure cooperation, is the ideal.

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