When we die each day to all that is old; there can be the new: J Krishnamurti
Dr. Lalit Kishore, MeriNews. 03 September, 2018...Reproduced [1]
"There can be nothing new; there can be nothing creative, in that which has continuance - which is fairly obvious. It is only when continuity ends that there is a possibility of that which is ever new. But it is this ending that we dread and we don't see that only in ending can there be renewal, the creative, the unknown; not in carrying over from day to day our experiences, our memories and misfortunes. It is only when we die each day to all that is old that there can be the new," writes philosopher and seer J. Krishamurti in his work 'The First and Last Freedom'.
Wondering about the thought of duality of life and death, and quest 'to know how to bridge the living and the ending', Krishnamuti questions, "Is there a division between life and death? Why do we regard death as something apart from life? Why are we afraid of death? And why have so many books been written about death? Why is there this line of demarcation between life and death? And is that separation real, or merely arbitrary, a thing of the mind?"
According to him, due to our conditioning, living is viewed as 'a process of continuity in memory, conscious as well as unconscious, with its various struggles, quarrels, incidents, experiences and so on'. He adds, "When we talk about life, we mean living as a process of continuity in which there is identification. Me and my house, me and my wife, me and my bank account, me and my past experiences - that is what we mean by life, is it not?"
Krishnamurti holds that it is our conditioned mind that 'inquires if there is any relationship between life and death' and 'how to bridge the living and the ending'. He writes, "Our struggle is to establish a relationship between ourselves, which is the result of the known, and the unknown which we call death. Can there be a relationship between the past and something which the mind cannot conceive, which we call death?"
He further explains that when 'something comes to the end, which we call death, there is fear of the unknown; so we want to draw the unknown into the known and our whole effort is to give continuity to the unknown. That is, we do not want to know life, which includes death, but we want to know how to continue and not come to an end.'
Due conditioning and belief thinking, humans often do not want to know life and death, but only want to know how to continue without ending. He puts forth, " It is only when we die each day to all that is old that there can be the new...The new cannot be where there is continuity the new being the creative, the unknown, the eternal, God or what you will."
Thus, according to him one 'who seeks to find a relationship between life and death, to bridge the continuous with that which he thinks is beyond, is living in a fictitious, unreal world, which is a projection of himself' which has been created due to various 'inward attachment through memory to psychological security, the memories that one has accumulated, stored up, and in which one seeks security, happiness'.
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