Krishnamurti on Dogma & Make-Believe Religion

"We have reduced religion to mere ritual or belief, and our gods, our self- disciplines lead, not to reality, but only to respectability. Our gods have really no meaning at all, and religion has become merely a series of beliefs and rituals without significance. Their influence is conditioning, like any other organised influence, whether it be the communist, Christian, or the Hindu. The influence of dogma, belief, ritual, is tyrannical, limiting because it conditions and therefore makes the mind small, petty. Being confronted by immense problems, we are meeting them with our conditioned minds, and so we make these vast problems stupid and petty, thereby increasing the problems.

So, is it not very important to find out, actually to understand and experience for oneself, how the mind can be free from all the influences which religion has imposed? Because religion which is organised obviously does not lead to reality. Reality can come into being only when the mind is free, when the mind is unconditioned. And is it possible not to belong to any religious group or organisation, to any church, but to stand alone and find out what is true? Surely, religion as we know it is a process of make-believe.

From childhood we are forced into a particular pattern of thought, and the mind believes for it's own security, for it's own safety; but religion is something totally different, is it not? It is a state in which reality can come into being - reality, truth, God, or what name you will. But when the mind is conditioned, shaped by belief, can it ever be free to receive that which is true? Is not religion the state of mind in which the known is not, so that the unknown can come into being? Because, after all, our gods are self-projected. We create our gods, we pursue ideals and beliefs, because they give us satisfaction, comfort, solace. But surely none of these things free the mind to discover reality and that is why it seems to me very important to strip ourselves of all these conditionings, not as an ultimate gesture, but right from the beginning, and to find out whether the mind can remain uncorrupted."

Quotes taken from "Krishnamurti's Talks in America. May 28, 1954

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