Seeking the truth

Question: Grains of truth are to be found in religions, theories, ideas and beliefs. What is the right way of separating them?

Krishnamurti: What do we mean by religion? Surely, not organised religion, not Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity - which are all organised beliefs with their propaganda, conversion, proselytism, compulsion, and so on. Is there any truth in organised religion? It may engulf, enmesh truth but the organised religion itself is not true.

Therefore, organised religion is false, it separated man from man. You are a Mussalman, I am a Hindu, another is a Christian or a Buddhist - and we are wrangling, butchering each other. Is there any truth in that? We are not discussing religion as the pursuit of truth, but we are considering if there is any truth in organised religion. We are so conditioned by organised religion to think there is truth in it that we have come to believe that by calling oneself a Hindu one is somebody, or one will find God.

How absurd! Sir, to find God, to find reality, there must be virtue. Virtue is freedom, and only through freedom can truth be discovered - not when you are caught in the hands of organised religion, with its beliefs. And is there any truth in theories, in ideals, in beliefs? Why do you have beliefs? Obviously because beliefs give you security, comfort, safety, a guide.

In yourself you are frightened, you want to be protected, you want to lean on somebody, and therefore you create the ideal, which prevents you from understanding that which is; therefore, an ideal becomes a hindrance to action…Without removing the causes of ignorance, there cannot be enlightenment; and to seek enlightenment when the mind is unenlightened is utterly empty, meaningless.

Therefore, I must begin to see the false in my relationships with ideas, with people, with things. When the mind sees that which is false then that which is true comes into being: and then there is ecstasy, there is happiness.

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