Questioner: If I am just pliable can't I go wrong, and therefore must I not be anchored in truth?

Krishnamurti: Truth is discovered in the uncharted sea of self-knowledge. But why do you ask this question? Is it not because you are frightened lest you go astray? Does it not imply that you crave to achieve, to succeed, to be ever in the right? We crave security and this craving prevents the freedom of truth. Those who are deep in self-knowledge are pliable. We see that one of the causes of resistance is specialization, and another is imitation. The desire to copy is complex and subtle. The structure of our thought is based on imitation, religious or worldly. Newspapers, radios, magazines, books, education, governments, organized religions - all these and other factors help to make thought conform. Also, each one desires to conform, for it is easier to conform than to be aware. Conformity is the basis of our social existence, and we are afraid to be alone. Fear and thoughtlessness bring about acceptance and conformity, the acceptance of authority. As with the individual so with the group, with the nation.

Conformity is one of the many means through which the self maintains itself. Thought moves from the known to the known, ever fearful of the unknown, of the uncertain, and yet only when there is uncertainty, when the mind is not in the bondage of the known is there the ecstasy of the real. Thought must be alone for the comprehension of the real. Through self-knowledge the imitative process comes to an end.