RAWFIT est. 1999 How am I to transform? I see the truth – at least, I see something in it – that a change, a transformation, must begin at a level that the mind, as the conscious or the unconscious, cannot reach, because my consciousness as a whole is conditioned. So, what am I to do? I hope I am making the problem clear? If I may put it differently, Can my mind, the conscious as well as the unconscious, be free of society? -society being all the education, the culture, the norm, the values, the standards. Because if it is not free, then whatever change it tries to bring about within that conditioned state is still limited, and therefore no change at all.
So, can I look without any motive? Can my mind exist without any incentive, without any motive to change or not to change? Because any motive is the outcome of the reaction of a particular culture, is born out of a particular background. So, can my mind be free from the given culture in which I have been brought up? This is really quite an important question. Because if the mind is not free from the culture in which it has been reared, nurtured, surely the individual can never be at peace, can never have freedom. His gods and his myths, his symbols, and all his endeavors are limited, for they are still within the field of the conditioned mind. Whatever efforts he makes, or does not make, within that limited field, are really futile in the deepest sense of that word. There may be a better decoration of the prison, more light -more windows, better food-but it is still the prison of a particular culture.
J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
