"A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove"
About this Quote
Krishnamurti challenges the idol of consistency by pointing to the way it becomes an allegiance to a pattern. When the mind clings to a prior conclusion or an ideology, it seeks to make every new fact fit the established groove. That reduces thinking to repetition: phrases are recited, arguments are recycled, and attention stops encountering the living fact of the moment. Thoughtless here does not mean empty-headed; it means unobservant, running on the rails of habit rather than moving with alert, fresh intelligence.
The image of a groove echoes a record needle stuck in the same track. Patterns are comforting because they promise certainty and identity. But they are also secondhand; they arise from memory, belief, and authority. Krishnamurti held that psychological understanding demands choiceless awareness, not a method or system. A system guarantees consistency and, for that very reason, blinds. When the mind seeks to be consistent with what it believed yesterday, it resists what is seen today. The defense of consistency then becomes self-justification.
He was not advocating contradiction for its own sake or rejecting practical reason. Trains should run on schedules and bridges need calculations. His target is the search for continuity in matters of the psyche: fear, desire, sorrow, and the image of the self. There, logic easily rationalizes attachment and pleasure, codifying them as principles. A living mind, he suggests, does not pledge loyalty to yesterday. It watches, learns, and if reality shifts, it shifts without internal conflict. To many this looks inconsistent; to him it is the mark of intelligence.
The context is his lifelong refusal of dogma, from dissolving the Order of the Star in 1929 to repeating that truth is a pathless land. He distrusted propaganda, sects, and even spiritual techniques, because all promise freedom while carving grooves. The antidote is direct perception: to see without the screen of slogans, and to let understanding, not conformity, shape action.
The image of a groove echoes a record needle stuck in the same track. Patterns are comforting because they promise certainty and identity. But they are also secondhand; they arise from memory, belief, and authority. Krishnamurti held that psychological understanding demands choiceless awareness, not a method or system. A system guarantees consistency and, for that very reason, blinds. When the mind seeks to be consistent with what it believed yesterday, it resists what is seen today. The defense of consistency then becomes self-justification.
He was not advocating contradiction for its own sake or rejecting practical reason. Trains should run on schedules and bridges need calculations. His target is the search for continuity in matters of the psyche: fear, desire, sorrow, and the image of the self. There, logic easily rationalizes attachment and pleasure, codifying them as principles. A living mind, he suggests, does not pledge loyalty to yesterday. It watches, learns, and if reality shifts, it shifts without internal conflict. To many this looks inconsistent; to him it is the mark of intelligence.
The context is his lifelong refusal of dogma, from dissolving the Order of the Star in 1929 to repeating that truth is a pathless land. He distrusted propaganda, sects, and even spiritual techniques, because all promise freedom while carving grooves. The antidote is direct perception: to see without the screen of slogans, and to let understanding, not conformity, shape action.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
|---|
More Quotes by Jiddu
Add to List
