Passages from Mind is a Myth

Mind is a Myth - U.G. Krishnamurti

The attempt to attain permanent happiness and uninterrupted pleasure is only choking the body, doing it violence. Your search for happiness only succeeds in destroying the sensitivity and intelligence of the nervous system. Wanting what does not exist -- the romantic, religious, spiritual stuff -- only adds momentum to that false continuity which destroys the body. It is radically disturbing the chemical balance of the body. The body, which is only interested in survival and procreation, treats both pain and pleasure alike. It is YOU who insist on stopping pain and extending pleasure. The body's response to both pleasure and pain is the same -- it groans.

Mind is a Myth - U.G. Krishnamurti 

What does the body want? It doesn't want anything except to function. All other things are the inventions of thought. The body has no separate independent existence of its own apart from pleasure and pain. The various vibrations affecting the body may differ in intensity, but it is you who divide them into good and bad. You are constantly translating vibrations that hit the body into experiences. You touch the table and it is "hard", you touch the pillow and it is "soft", you touch the woman's arm there and it is "sexy", and you touch the doorknob and it is "not-sexy". Without the constant translation of the sensory activity you have no way of knowing if something is hard, or soft, or sexy. The body's natural intelligence is correctly "processing" the sensory input without your having to do a thing.

Mind is a Myth - U.G. Krishnamurti 

 

You are all the time interfering with the natural functioning of the nervous system. When a sensation hits your nervous system the first thing you do is to name it and categorize it as pleasure or pain. The next step is that you want to continue the pleasurable sensations and stop the painful sensations. First, the recognition of a sensation as pleasure or pain is itself painful. Second, the attempt to extend the life of one kind of sensation ("pleasure"), and to stop another kind of sensation ("pain"), is also painful. Both activities are choking the body. In the very nature of things every sensation has its own intensity and duration. The attempt to extend pleasure and stop pain only succeeds in destroying the sensitivity of the body and its ability to respond to sensations. So, what you are doing is very painful for the body. If you do nothing with the sensations, you will find that they must dissolve into themselves.

Mind is a Myth - U.G. Krishnamurti

 

The only way the human organism can survive and ensure its reproduction is through thought. So thought is very important and even essential to the living organism. Thought determines whether there is action or no action. All animals have these survival thoughts, but, in the case of man, the factor of recognition is introduced, complicating the whole thing enormously. We have superimposed over the natural sensory functioning a never-ending verbalization.