We are all so selfish. We are all spending most of the time thinking at ourselves.

We are facing every challenge from our past experience, either we have a negative experience and we face the new experience in trying to avoiding the past experience to come again or we have a positive experience and we propose this past experience to be a guideline, to be an example, the method and the solution to address the new one.

I don’t know if you have notice how eager we are to have a solution when we have a possible issue. We want to know what are the identified actions, which are usually defined from our past experience - either good to be followed or either bad to be avoided - to solve the possible coming issue. From these identified actions we choose the one which will maximize our capacity to avoid the issue. That is what we call responsibility: to take decision, the higher you are in term of responsibility the most important the decision is.

But we never look at the challenge, we are so afraid that we want to take a decision which will make us don’t look at the problem. That fear and our usage of the past limit our responsibility, create a separation between my experience and others experience which dictates our perimeter of action and we never look from a global, shared responsibility. This limited responsibility and fear creates this sense of guilt in not being able to success.

We are always separate, lonely in facing a challenge and this may be the cause of the struggle and the suffering that occurs when we act.

Could we have this quality of “together” facing a challenge? Never letting others influence us in wanting to split the responsibility between you and me. It is also an escape, not wanted to face the challenge.

This sense of guilt increases our fear and reduces and limit our concerns to ourselves. And the vicious circle is there. We are always thinking at ourselves. We never act from the whole.

I met a men once who told me that I did not understand why Krishnamurti was so emphasysing in his talks the ending of thought. For him, it was very simple to end thought. Whenever he wanted to end thought he was going for a ride with his bicycle and there was no more thought.

A bit later, in the conversation, he told me that it was difficult in winter to go for a ride with his bicycle and so he started yoga instead.

This is an interesting text of Krishnamurti on technological habit with student at brockwood. I would like to share with you - Conversation with 4 students at Brockwood 9 June 1985

“K: You are learning to drive a car.
D: Yes.
K: And the instructor tells you how to hold the wheel, what are the pedals, all the rest of it, he
informs you. And then he tells you start slowly and you begin to learn how to drive a car. It
may take you three weeks, or a month, or a week and so on – right? There what have you
done? In that process what has been happening to your brain? Just look at it carefully
before... don’t answer. It has taken you three weeks or much longer to learn how to drive a
car.
A: I have acquired a skill.
K: You have acquired a skill, which means what?
D: Well, you have become used to...
K: Tell me slowly. You talk to me. You keep quiet.
A: I have become familiar with certain things.
K: Go on, tell me more.
C: It has become sort of automatic, sort of reflex because if you drive a car it is the same
things that come out every time that you do it.
K: So what has happened? You have learnt how to drive a car, you have learnt how to shift
the gears, how to put on the brake and how to accelerate, and you listen to the engine, how it
is working, and also you are watching, the road, keeping to your side and so on. And also you
are watching about three hundred yards ahead of you-right? So that you are taking the whole
thing in. The road, the wetness of the road, car and so on. In doing all that what has happened
to your brain? You answer me. All right, take something: you are all learning mathematics,
aren’t you?
B: Yes.
D: Yes.
K: Some kind, not too... so when you are learning mathematics, or history, you are
accumulating information – right? Right? And you are storing that information, the brain is
storing it – right?
A: As memory.
K: As memory. And you use that, to get a job, to pass, and so on, you use that. When you
learn how to write, you are doing the same thing, which is, it becomes almost automatic –
right? But driving, you can’t do quite automatically. See the difference.
B: Yes, you also have to watch.
K: You have to be very careful. You are going about fifty, fifty-five, or sixty, or more, you
have to be very careful. You can’t remove your hands from the steering wheel and talk about,
gesturing, you have to watch. See the difference in the two?”

I would like to talk about Polarity Management that was presented to me in my job.

People who promote Polarity Management say that they are some question which cannot be answered by a problem to solved approach. The problem to solve approach can only have independent right answers. The others ones are problems with more than two opposite answers that are interdependent and it is called a Polarity Management. They say you must distinguish between a solvable problem and an existing polarity which imply that it has to be managed and cannot be solved. So they called it Polarity Management approach. Polarity is not new; we usually use duality or contradiction when we talk about it in our daily life. It is important to mention that to manage those Polarities; each one is look at with a Problem to solve approach as you will see it below.

So they say Polarities are ongoing, chronic issues that are unavoidable and unsolvable and we are going to question that. Attempting to address a Polarity with traditional problem solving skills makes things worse. It mean that we have been educate to solve problem and when we face the challenges that life is throwing to us we respond with a Problem Solving approach. The Solving Problem Approach try to find an answer “either/or” to the problem whereas Polarity Management manage the problem with an “and”. 

Let take an example of Polarity Management which is centralisation / Decentralisation.

The aim of Polarity Management is to manage both opposites in order to avoid the negatives effects of them and to have only the positives ones. In the example chosen in the business area is to have an efficient integration and coordination of systems and a high responsibility of organization near the customers.

It is interesting to see that the negative effect of management is associated to Fear.

Can we look at the core of this Polarity Management which is also usually take as an example in Polarity Management: Relationship?

The Relationship Polarity Management tries to find the right balance in taking care of myself and the others. One thing to notice, life is moving all the time and I’m changing all the time, so this management is an endless process, an endless struggle of avoiding problems and trying to get rid of fear. But we don’t see that the consequences of that changing reality are that fear will always be there and that I will live a life with fear bound to arise at any time.

Now who is the manager? Who is managing that Polarity? Is it not myself? Is it not myself who is struggling to maintain the right relation with others people in myself in order to be satisfied? Then the duality, the polarities lies in myself, no? And another Polarity Management is then to be look at: the myself inward duality Polarity Management.

If we look from outward it Is no more a Polarity Management because there is only me. And not two poles. It is then a problem to solve and the problem is “I”.

And why the problem is “Myself”? Isn’t it because I look at myself with a Problem to Solve approach. If I did not look at Myself with a problem to solve approach, is there a problem anymore? And to go further, isn’t it because at look at myself with a problem to solve thinking that I don’t look at all at myself? I have already set a direction which is to find an answer to the problem.

Now if I look at what is myself inwardly, myself is built of innumerable Polarity Managements: Fear and pleasure, violence and non-violence, desires and frustrations, love and hate, good and bad, and so on.

Can we look at Fear and Pleasure Polarity Management?

But what you are trying to balance, to manage is already the source, the direction you give to management: fear and pleasure. So there is nothing to manage, we are ourselves the duality, the contradiction, the conflict.

So Myself is a bundle of Polarity Management which a basic one is Good and Bad.In every Polarity Management I try to have the right balance between the Good and the Bad, between what give me pleasure, satisfaction and what give me fear. Fear and Pleasure is the same as Good and Bad.

But the good have no relationship with the bad, otherwise the good is born out of the bad and it cannot be the good, it is still the bad. So good and bad is not a Polarity Management. Is it a problem to solve? It is not, neither.

Can we go beyond the problem to solve approach? Can we look at life as not being a problem to solve?

Can we go beyond duality, Polarity Management? And look only at what is, the opposite of ‘what is’ is not a fact.

We usually try to find the right answers to our question and having found them we continue our life. But we never ask if we ask the right question. If we ask a wrong question you cannot possibly have a right answer. Now, can we see that the “I” who is trying to manage myself, who is not separate from himself, can only ask a limited question, limited to himself and never go beyond his own limitations, contradictions, dualities and polarities?

Can we see also that approaching life with a problem to solve approach will not permits to ask the right question because you have already reduce live to a very petty affair?

Can we see that we are fear and not separate from it so that we can act upon it? And escaping from it in trying to find positive results on a hypothetical direction for satisfaction prevent us from asking the right question.

The right question will produce the right answer in looking at the question which is not separate from “me”. Having set a direction, a way to look at the question is already separating myself from the question and prevents me from looking to the question.

Can we ask the right question and go beyond Polarity Management, go beyond duality?

Q: Sir, we have to find out where comparison has its place, where it is necessary and where it isn't.

K: No, forgive me again. We must start by saying, 'Can one live without comparison?' Not 'It helps sometimes and doesn't help at other times', 'Comparison is necessary', or 'Comparison is not necessary'. When the right question is asked, and answered rightly, then that will bring about the right response when comparison is necessary. But I must ask the right question, the fundamental question first. Can I live without comparison? Not 'on some says' or 'sometimes'; if I have answered that question, not verbally or intellectually, but deeply, totally, then I will know when it is necessary and when it is necessary.

It is like knowing what co-operation is completely, deeply. Then only will you know when not to co-operate. But to say, 'Mustn't I co-operate with this and not co-operate with that, isn't it necessary sometimes?' leads to greater and greater confusion. When you know how to co-operate fundamentally - not around an idea, around a feeling, around an emotion, but to co-operate without any resistance - then you will also know very deeply, when not to co-operate. So one must ask the right question first.

Krishnamurti, Brockwood, September 11th 1969