10. Repression

The essence of repression is conflict. By repressing a part of the universe that is not to his liking, man creates a worldview that is at odds with the real world as well as the worldview of his fellow repressing individuals.

His repressed version is under threat of contradiction from the other realities that differ from it, and he must use conflict as a means of protecting his personal illusion. Conflict may come in the form of overt force, various manipulations, passive aggressive victimhood, or other techniques that are destructive to the world that the repressing man feels alienated from.

Repression is the ego’s way of creating a fictional history that further binds man into a cycle of more repressing and being repressed. Repression is self-perpetuating and requires more repression to keep the repressing ego alive. The repressed man is not able to see the world independently of his ego, and his dependence upon that ego forces him to produce more repression.

In the end, repression creates nothing but victims. For his ego to coexist with others, man must repress those outside of himself, either overtly through force or covertly through his passiveness. But those victims of repression are only the outward manifestation of the ultimate victim of repression – the repressing man who can never be peace with his own nature. See page 42, Being and the End of History.

“We never see that we are the total environment because there are several entities in us, all resolving around the ‘me,’ the self … This separation is the beginning of conflict, inward and outward.”
J. Krishnamurti

2. Fear of the Unknown

Man is alienated from the universe by his unwillingness to accept the unknown. He craves for security and certainty in his life, but finds himself in a world that is inherently uncertain. If he accepts the great unknown that is his nature, man experiences “being” in the world, but if he turns his back on Nature, he assumes the burdens of conflict and anxiety as he struggles to “become” something in the world.

Western civilization’s relationship with Nature is that of alienation. Western man considers himself apart from Nature, a superimposition of something grand atop something that is mundane. He believes that civilization progresses while Nature remains quaintly “very natural.” Western civilization measures its members by the distance they have traveled from the “natural state.” He measures his wisdom by how much of the unknowable that he knows.

Western civilization, more than others, is dominated by the myth of guilt and redemption, and, like a carrot on a stick, the repressed and enslaved man of western civilization seeks redemption and scorns the temptations of freedom in order to obtain a reward in heavenly eternity. Man’s goal is a paradise that is apart and alienated from the unknowable Nature and is the product of the knowing mind.

The mind divides itself into the high and the low – the high being the security, the permanent entity – but still remaining a process of thought and therefore of time.

J. Krishnamurti