What is the Beginning of Thought?

A new fact cannot be seen by thought. It can be understood later by thought, verbally, but the understanding of a new fact is not reality to thought. Thought can never solve any psychological problem. However clever, however cunning, however erudite, whatever the structure thought creates through science, through an electronic brain, through compulsion or necessity, thought is never new and therefore it can never answer any tremendous question. The old brain cannot solve the enormous problem of living.

Thought is crooked because it can invent anything and see things that are not there. It can perform the most extraordinary tricks, and therefore it cannot be depended upon. But if you understand the whole structure of how you think, why you think, the words you use, the way you behave in your daily life, the way you talk to people, the way you treat people, the way you walk, the way you eat - if you are aware of all these things then your mind will not deceive you, then there is nothing to be deceived. The mind is then not something that demands, that subjugates; it becomes extraordinarily quiet, pliable, sensitive, alone, and in that state there is no deception whatsoever.

Have you ever noticed that when you are in a state of complete attention the observer, the thinker, the centre, the 'me', comes to an end? In that state of attention thought begins to wither away.

If one wants to see a thing very clearly, ones' mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering, the dialogue, the images, the pictures- all that must be put aside to look. And it is only in silence that you can observe the beginning of thought-not when you are searching, asking questions, waiting for a reply. So it is only when you are completely quiet, right through your being, having put that question, "What is the beginning of thought?", that you will begin to see, out of that silence, how thought takes shape.

If there is an awareness of how thought begins then there is no need to control thought. We spend a great deal of time and waste a great deal of energy all through our lives, not only at school, trying to control our thoughts- "this is a bad thought, I must suppress it". There is a battle going on all the time between one thought and another, one pleasure dominating all other pleasures. But if there is an awareness of the beginning of thought, then there is no contradiction in thought.

Now when you hear a statement like "Thought is always old" or "Time is sorrow", thought begins to translate it and interpret it. But the translation and interpretation are based on yesterday's knowledge and experience, so you will invariably translate according to your conditioning. But if you look at those statements and do not interpret them all but just give your complete attention (not concentration) you will find there is neither the observer nor the observed, neither the thinker nor the thought. Don't say, "which began first?" That is a clever argument which leads nowhere. You can observe in yourself that as long as there is no thought - which doesn't mean a state of amnesia, of blankness - as long as there is no thought derived from memory, experience or knowledge, which are all of the past, there is no thinker at all. This is not a s philosophical or mystical affair. We are dealing with actual facts, and you will see, if you have gone this far in the journey , that you will respond to a challenge, not with the old brain, but totally anew.

J.Krishnamurti ~ Freedom from the Known (pp. 102-104, Ch.13)