What do we mean by a healthy mind? It may help if we use the analogy of a healthy body. Presumably, it is one that has strength and stamina to the right degree; a body that can deal with physical challenges; a body that can deal with infections. Perhaps more such qualities can be added to the list but one gets the general idea. Can we extrapolate these to the mind?
It is of interest to see how chatbots based on large language models (e.g., ChatGPT) respond to such a question. On being asked for the markers of a non-healthy mind and of a healthy mind, the following lists of attributes emerged.
Markers of a ‘non-healthy mind’
1. Negative thoughts, dark thoughts
2. Tendency towards isolation and withdrawal in the face of stress
3. Lack of interest in life; lack of pleasure in simple things
4. Tendency towards substance abuse and addiction
5. Difficulty making decisions
6. Extreme mood swings
7. Distorted perceptions; tendency to ‘overthink’
8. Cynical world view
The word ‘persistent’ can be prefixed to all of the above phrases. (To avoid repetition, we have not done so.)
Markers of a healthy mind
1. Thinks clearly
2. Looks at life afresh each day
3. Is happy to learn, and learns new things
4. Sees good in the world. Has a sense of optimism
5. Has a sense of meaning and purpose, and a feeling that life is meaningful
6. Is self-aware
7. Has meaningful relationships
8.Has the quality of resilience
Note that these are essentially lists of outwardly observable symptoms. Can one force such attributes into existence? Are they subject to the will? Surely not.
Mental health issues have now become widespread all over the world. It has become routine for people of all ages to seek the help of counsellors and therapists. What is one to make of this phenomenon? There are writers and analysts who ascribe much of this to Covid and to social media and smartphones. But surely, the problem is not of such recent origin; we are talking of a problem whose roots lie deep in human consciousness. So, we ask: what will bring a greater quality of health and happiness into our lives and to society?
Before continuing, here are two related quotes that reveal how we have looked at the problem of mental health in the past.
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
—John Milton, in ‘Paradise Lost’
The mind is the sole lens we have on what the world is and what we are. The quality of our mind—the clarity of it, the composure of it— shapes the quality of our lives.
—Maria Popova
The reader would have noted in the list above: ‘has a sense of meaning and purpose, and a feeling that life is meaningful.’ We recall the following lines from Viktor Frankl (a Holocaust survivor):
It’s not pleasure nor success nor power that drives people; it is finding something—a purpose, a meaning—to live and even die for. … To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how’.”
—Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning
There is surely much wisdom in what Viktor Frankl has said. It should be obvious that there is joy in living a life rich with meaning and purpose, and crushing heaviness when life becomes empty and purposeless and devoid of meaning. In the chilling words of Henry David Thoreau written more than one and a half centuries ago: “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation”. Thoreau’s quote tells us that the problem we are talking about is not new; there is nothing ‘modern’ about it.
But there is a difficulty with this diagnosis. From where do meaning and purpose come? Can one manufacture them? Can one will them into being? Surely, meaning and purpose must arise in a natural and organic manner from the substance and fabric of our lives, from the very manner in which we live. It seems to me that we need a different perspective to progress in this exploration.
Mental health and the ‘individual’
There is a related question which we must ask. Is mental health to be thought of only in terms of the individual? Is it just an individual problem, to be solved by that individual? If so, then the best we can do is to help alleviate the symptoms, lessen the pain, and make life tolerable for that individual.
But it is surely not the case that the problem is at the individual level alone: it lies in our very ways of living. We are bringing the problem into existence by our collective way of living and thinking and relating to one another.
In a recent report, we hear Dr Vivek Murthy (Surgeon General of the United States) telling us that loneliness is not simply a bad feeling experienced by a person:
Loneliness is far more than just a bad feeling—it harms both individual and societal health…the harmful consequences of a society that lacks social connection can be felt in our schools, workplaces, and civic organizations, where performance, productivity, and engagement are diminished.
As Krishnamurti has pointed out, the problem is with human consciousness itself, which is fragmented and lacks wholeness. He maintains that wholeness is the well-spring of vitality and a sense of well-being.
What does it mean to be whole?
To take this line of thinking further, we can ask a different question altogether: What does it mean to be ‘whole’? What is the connection between wholeness and a ‘healthy mind’? If there is a connection, how does it manifest, how does it work?
We shall try to make sense of the notion of wholeness by asking what it is to be not whole. How does a lack of wholeness manifest in our lives?
Lack of wholeness really means the following: To be fragmented, inwardly as well as outwardly; to be isolated within some fragment; to be specialised. A careful look at life around us reveals that fragmentation and specialisation have now become a hallmark of human existence. We see an exaggerated emphasis given to a part of oneself, or to a fragment of our lives, each leading to an exaggerated specialisation. We see the worship of success, power, status, knowledge and talent, and a preoccupation with identity, symbols, pleasure, ideas and the will. It is an endlessly repeated theme in the world as it is constituted currently. But such exaggerated emphasis to a fragment of life destroys the balance and harmony that are vital to sane living and vital to peace. It denies wholeness. We are moving away from the wellspring and vitality of the whole, from its joyful momentum. It seems inevitable that our minds will get twisted and lose the quality of simplicity.
Educating for a different way of living
Krishnamurti places a great deal of emphasis on being rightly educated in order to go beyond the trap of fragmentation. In ‘Intent of the Krishnamurti Schools’ we read the following:
It is becoming more and more important in a world that is destructive and degenerative that there should be a place, an oasis, where one can learn a way of living that is whole, sane, and intelligent. [Ojai, 1984]
Note the words: whole, sane, intelligent. We naturally ask, what is sanity? What is intelligence? K has elaborated on this theme on innumerable occasions. In the passage below, he talks about the serious impact of one sided education.
What we now call education is a matter of accumulating information and knowledge from books. Such education offers a subtle form of escape from ourselves and, like all escapes, it inevitably creates misery. Conflict and confusion result from wrong relationship with people, things, and ideas, and until we understand that relationship and alter it, mere learning, the gathering of facts and the acquiring of various skills, can only lead us to engulfing chaos and destruction.
—Chapter 2, ‘Education and the Significance of Life ‘
He goes on to pose this challenge to teachers:
You’ve got so many students here—capable, intelligent. Through what means, what kind of attitude, what kind of verbal explanation, would you educate themin a holistic way of living? I mean by ‘holistic,’ whole, unbroken, not splintered up, not fragmented, as most of our lives are. [How] do you bring about a holistic way of living, an outlook that’s not fragmented in specializations?
—‘The Future is Now’, 7 December 1985, 2nd Dialogue with teachers, Rishi Valley
Let us look separately at three fragmentary phenomena, the worship of knowledge, the preoccupation with identity and the worship of power in human society.
Knowledge
Krishnamurti speaks somewhat enigmatically about the place of knowledge in education:
A school is a place where one learns the importance of knowledge and its limitations. It is a place where one learns to observe the world, to look at the whole of man’s endeavour, his search for beauty, his search for truth and for a way of living without conflict. …
—’Intent of the K Schools’, Ojai, 1984
Note the juxtaposition: ‘importance of knowledge’ and ‘limitations of knowledge.’ Why do we worship skill and knowledge, and what makes us misuse knowledge with such great ease? In every field of human activity we see, with Jacob Bronowski, that the most powerful drive in the ascent of man is pleasure in his own skill. But what is the right place in our lives for this pleasure, this drive?
The story of the development of the H-bomb is a grim example and an extremely interesting one. To develop such a bomb, we need to generate extraordinarily high temperatures in a very small region; this is what enables hydrogen atoms to fuse together and release large amounts of energy. The calculations and technical difficulties involved were formidable, but finally, a breakthrough was made. The elegance of the solution impressed many scientists, and the physicist Robert Oppenheimer called the idea ‘technically sweet.’
However, it is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it, and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That’s the way it was with the atomic bomb. …
This theme has recurred so many times throughout history. Humankind delights in ideas and theories that are technically sweet, no matter how destructive they are to human beings or to the world of animals and birds and forests and the ocean. Their allure is far too great.
And yet, life is not a specialisation. Krishnamurti says:
In this specialised world, where specialists are in demand—scientists, mathematicians, lawyers, doctors, technicians, and so on—every specialisation, though it may create a certain type of intelligence, is not the intelligence of the whole process of living. It is only a fragmentary type of intelligence, a specialisation. But life is not a specialisation, it is a total thing which involves sorrow, pain, desire, conflict, discontent, despair, affection, jealousy, greed, ambition, and death—the whole of it. One has to understand this whole, not just one part of it. To understand this whole, with all its astonishing variety, nuances, subtleties, and extraordinary beauty, one must have total intelligence, not a specialised intelligence.
—Public Discussion 6, Saanen, 9 August 1964
And this is what the purpose of education is: to understand life as a whole. When a child once asked of Krishnamurti, ‘Why must I read?’ he did not deny the knowledge and joy to be gained by reading, but placed it simply as one among a whole range of activities in human living:
Why must you read? Just listen … You never ask why you must play, why you must eat, why you must look at the river, why you are cruel? You rebel and ask why you must do something only when you don’t like to do it. But reading, playing, laughing, being cruel, being good, seeing the river, the clouds—all this is part of life; and if you don’t know how to read, if you are unable to appreciate the beauty of a leaf, you are not living. You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must [also] look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand; for all that is life.
Chapter 3, ‘Think on These Things’
Identity
Another human preoccupation is to hold on to a certain identity, an identity circumscribed by words and symbols and beliefs. Do we understand why we do this? Are we aware that these are various forms of illusion? When we do this, are we aware that we are taking comfort in an idea? While we may believe that our ‘identity’ defines us as an ‘individual’, Krishnamurti questions this assumption:
Obviously, we are not truly individuals. We may each have a different name, different tendencies, a particular house, a particular bank account, we may each belong to a particular family, have certain mannerisms, belong to a certain religion—but that does not make for individuality. Our whole mind is the result of the environmental influences of a particular society, of a particular culture, of a particular religion; and so long as it belongs to any of these particularities, obviously the mind is not simple, is not innocent in its directness. Surely a clear, simple mind is essential, if we are to find out what is real. ——
—Amsterdam, 2nd Public Talk, 19 May 1955
Do we see that identification—with religion, nationality, some experience or some aspect of one’s birth—is due to some accidental factors operating in our lives? It may be difficult to do so, given that we invest so heavily in identification. It may be difficult even to see the suffering brought about by identification and attachment. When we link our entire sense of well-being with identification, it naturally becomes difficult to inquire into it with any degree of objectivity. A question such as ‘why is there such a deep attachment to identity?’ becomes impossible to answer. But if we are concerned with psychological well-being at a larger and deeper level, then we must confront this question. We must ask, ‘what are the consequences of this identification?’ Krishnamurti points out that:
It is fear that makes for identification—identification with another, with a group, with an ideology, and so on. Fear must resist, suppress; and in a state of self-defence, how can there be venturing on the uncharted sea? Truth or happiness cannot come without undertaking the journey into the ways of the self. You cannot travel far if you are anchored. Identification is a refuge. A refuge needs protection, and that which is protected is soon destroyed. Identification brings destruction upon itself, and hence the constant conflict between various identifications.
—Series I, Chapter 2, ‘Identification’, Commentaries on Living
Power
We come to the third phenomenon referred to above—the worship of power—which has been with us for thousands of years. The following two well-known quotes illustrate how strongly we hold on to this tendency.
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
—Lord Acton
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
—Abraham Lincoln
What makes us hunger after power, and hold on to it so obstinately? Here is Krishnamurti on power:
I think we ought to talk about something of which some of us may be aware, namely, the peculiar desire for power over others and over oneself which most of us have.
I think that power is one of the deeper desires behind which really lies that fear which comes from a sense of loneliness, a sense of frustration. What I am saying may be difficult, but please listen. If one can understand this and go beyond, then there is a different kind of state in which love is. If one has not that love, life becomes dull, weary, empty, and shallow.
I think it is important to understand this thing that we call power—not electric power or steam power, not the capacity to do something efficiently—which are all necessary. I am talking of something which is of greater significance and of much deeper value, and without understanding which, efficiency, the capacity of doing things, becomes a means of creating greater misery, greater suffering for man.
—Talks to Students at Rajghat School, 18 January, Banaras, India
It is interesting that the capacity to do things efficiently can become a means of creating greater misery and suffering for humankind, if we do not understand the phenomenon of power and why we seek it so badly.
Krishnamurti now poses a direct challenge to us: can we live without the desire for power and the desire to dominate others? In asking this he introduces an unusual word not to be found in any dictionary—but a word that holds great beauty and promise.
You have to see if you can live in this world without dominating people, without controlling people, without shaping their minds. Because, after all, each one of us is as important as the politician, the wielder of power; each one of us wants to grow in freedom so that we can be what we are, so that we can understand what we are and, from that, act so that we are not imposed upon by society or by our teachers or by our parents or by any other person who is trying to dominate and shape our particular lives. It is very difficult to withstand all this because we ourselves, each one of us, want power. The teacher wants to become the principal, because the principal has power over so many people and he has more money.
When you are controlled by another through money, through position, through status, the feeling that you are an individual, a human being, a single unit, is completely denied, destroyed. Whereas, it seems to me, it is very important in a school of this kind, that we should create a feeling that this is our school, yours, and mine, in the sense that you, as a student, are as important as the teacher or the principal. This feeling of ourness does not exist anywhere in the world, the feeling that this is our earth, yours, and mine, not the Russians’ or the Americans’ or the English or the Africans’, the feeling that it is our world, not a communist world or a socialist world or a capitalist world, the feeling that it is our earth in which you and I and others can live and be free to find out the whole significance of living.
— Talks to Students at Rajghat School, 18 January, Banaras, India
The word we are referring to which is not in any dictionary is ‘ourness’. He continues:
I think this is the only spirit that is going to save the world, not clever scientific inventions but the sense that you and I are creating together in a world which is ours. But that is very difficult to come by because, now, everything is mine and not yours, the mine being divided into many classes, many holdings, many functions, many nationalities. That feeling of ourness does not exist in this world. Without that feeling, we will have no peace in the world. Therefore, it is very important that you, while you are young, should understand this and have this feeling, so that when you go out into the world, you can create a new world and a new generation.
—Talks to Students at Rajghat School, 18 January, Banaras, India
It becomes our responsibility to nurture such a culture in our educational centres. Can we not free ourselves from these bondages of knowledge, identity and power? We must, if there is to be collective security on Earth and if we are to live healthy, sane and happy lives.