Question: Even after the end of the British rule, there is no radical change in the system of our education. The stress as well as the demand is for specialization, technical and professional training. How best can education become the means to the realization of true freedom?

Krishnamurti: Sir, what do we mean by true freedom? Political freedom? Or is it freedom to think what you like? Can you think what you like? And does thinking bring about freedom? Is not all thinking conditioned thinking? So, what do we mean by true freedom?

So far as we know, education is conditioned thinking, is it not? All that we are concerned with is to acquire a job or use that knowledge for self-satisfaction, for self-aggrandizement, to get on in the world. Is it not important to see what we mean by true freedom? Perhaps if we understand that, then the training in some technique for professional specialization may have its value. But merely to cultivate technical capacity without understanding what is true freedom leads to destruction, to greater wars; and that is actually what is happening in the world now. So let us find out what we mean by true freedom.

Obviously the first necessity for freedom is that there should be no fear - not only the fear imposed by society but also the psychological fear of insecurity. You may have a very good job and you may be climbing up the ladder of success; but if there is ambition, if there is the struggle to be somebody, does that not entail fear? And does that not imply that he who is very successful is not truly free? So fear imposed by tradition, by the so-called responsibility of the edicts of society, or your own fear of death, of insecurity, of disease - all this prevents the true freedom of being, does it not?

So freedom is not possible if there is any form of outward or inward compulsion. Compulsion comes into being when there is the urge to conform to the pattern of society, or to the pattern which you have created for yourself, as being good or not good. The pattern is created by thought which is the outcome of the past, of your tradition, of your education, of your whole experience based on the past. So, as long as there is any form of compulsion governmental, religious or your own pattern which you have created for yourself through your desire to fulfil, to become great - there will be no true freedom. It is not an easy thing to do, nor an easy thing to understand what we mean by true freedom. But we can see that as long as there is fear in any form we cannot know what true freedom is. Individually or collectively, if there is fear, compulsion, there can be no freedom. We may speculate about true freedom, but the actual freedom is different from the speculative ideas about freedom.

So, as long as the mind is seeking any form of security - and that is what most of us want - as long as the mind is seeking permanency in any form, there can be no freedom. As long as individually or collectively we seek security, there must be war, which is an obvious fact; and that is what is happening in the world today. So there can be true freedom only when the mind understands this whole process of the desire for security, for permanency. After all, that is what you want in your Gods, in your gurus. In your social relationships, your governments, you want security; so you invest your God with the ultimate security, which is above you; you clothe that image with the idea that you as an entity are such a transient being, and that there at least you have permanency. So you begin with the desire to be religiously permanent; and all your political, religious and social activities, whatever they are, are based on that desire for permanency - to be certain, to perpetuate yourselves through the family or through the nation or through an idea, through your son. How can such a mind which is seeking constantly, consciously or unconsciously, permanency, security, how can such a mind ever have freedom?

We really do not seek true freedom. We seek something different from freedom, we seek better conditions, a better state. We do not want freedom; we want better, superior, nobler conditions; and that we call education. Can this education produce peace in the world? Certainly, no. On the contrary, it is going to produce greater wars and misery. As long as you are a Hindu, Mussulman, or God knows what else, you are going to create strife, for yourself, for your neighbour and nation. Do we realize this? Look at what is happening in India! I do not have to tell you because you already know it.

Instead of being integrated human beings, you are thinking separatively; your activities are fractioned, broken up, disintegrated - your Maharashtra, your Gujurat, your Andhra, your Tamil - you are all fighting; that is the result of this so-called freedom and so-called education. You say that you have unity religiously; but actually you are fighting, destroying each other, because you do not see the whole process of living, because you are only concerned with tomorrow or to have better jobs. You will go out after listening and do exactly the same thing. You will be a Maharashtrian forgetting the rest of the world. As long as you are thinking in those terms you are going to have wars, miseries, destruction. You will never be safe, neither you nor your children, though you want to be safe and therefore you are thinking in this narrow regional way. As long as you have these ways, you have got to have wars.

Your present way of living indicates that you really do not want to have freedom; what you want is merely a better way of living, more safety, more contentment, to be assured of a job, to be assured of your position, religiously, politically. Such people cannot create a new world. They are not religious people. They are not intelligent people. They are thinking in terms of immediate results like all politicians. And you know that as long as you leave the world to politicians, you are going to have destruction, wars, misery. Sirs, please don't smile. It is your responsibility, not your leaders' responsibility; it is your own individual responsibility.

Freedom is something entirely different. Freedom comes into being; it cannot be sought after. It comes into being when there is no fear, when there is love in your heart. You cannot have love and think in terms of a Hindu, a Christian, a Mussulman, a Parsi, or God knows what else. Freedom comes into being only when the mind is no longer seeking security for itself, either in tradition or in knowledge. A mind that is crippled with knowledge or burdened with knowledge is not a free mind. The mind is only free when it is capable of meeting life at every moment, meeting the Reality which every incident, which every thought, which every experience reveals; and that revelation is not possible when the mind is crippled by the past.

It is the responsibility of the educator to create a new human being to bring about a different human being, fearless, self-reliant, who will create his own society - a society totally unlike ours; because ours is based on fear, envy, ambition, corruption. True freedom can only come when intelligence comes into being - that is, the understanding of the whole total process of existence.