In Conversation With Mary Zimbalist Part 1
J. Krishnamurti’s first of three conversations with Mary Zimbalist At Brockwood Park, which begins with the question of conditioning, its effect on our thinking and what we can do about it. J. Krishnamurti’s reponse is immediately to enquire what we mean by conditioning. Is it the tradition, not only present day tradition, but centuries and centuries of tradition that has been handed down from generation to generation. And is this conditioning the whole background of civilisation, culture, the social impacts and the many, many experiences that one has? Does all this contribute to the conditioning of the brain? Not only all this but also the various impressions, the propaganda, the literature, the television, all this seems to add to the background, to the conditioning of every human being, whether he is very, very, very poor, uneducated, most primitive, and to the most highly educated, sophisticated human beings. This conditioning, he says, seems to be inevitable. It has been a factor that has endured probably for a million years, or fifty thousand years. If all that is the conditioning, or the background of every human being, and that obviously shapes our thinking, controls our reactions and responses, and our way of behaviour, conduct, and the way we eat and think and feel and react, and all that. That seems to be the normal conditioning of human beings. And that has shaped our society in which we live. Mary Zimbalist replies by asking whether the brain can ever be cleansed of all the process of time. Thus begins an intriguing and challenging debate in which, although he does not claim to be a brain specialist, J. Krishnamurti explores issues such as the nature of instinct, of conditioning and knowledge.
