Addiction

I remember an interview once with Krishnaji, when I told him I want him I wanted to discuss my problem. The problem was that I wanted to give up smoking. And he said to me, "Miss Pratt, you' ve been talking to me about your problem, but really there are four things: there' s one, the fact is that you smoke. Then there comes the myth that you smoke and like it. The second is the myth that you wish you didn't smoke, and then comes the ideal, you wish you could be the ideal, somebody who had never smoked; and fourthly there is the inner emptiness that makes one either smoke, or go in for sex or anything else. So that you had a struggle between the fact, and the emptiness and in the middle was the myth", and then he said, "By Jove, I had a myth once." He said, "I had the myth that I was to be the world teacher when I really was an ordinary young man. At that time -and I wanted to do everything that a young wants to do: fall in love, get on a motorbike, race around- I was just a young man. I had a struggle between the myth and the fact."
Doris had the early opportunity to have long thoughtful discussions with Krishnamurti. In one of them, he revealed his equivocal avowal of his role in this early statement made to her:
"The tears of all the world have produced the world teacher."