Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

Why does the mind grow old? It is old, is it not, in the sense of getting decrepit, deteriorating, repeating itself, caught in habits, sexual habits, religious habits, job habits, or various habits of ambition. The mind is so burdened with innumerable experiences and memories, so marred and scarred with sorrow that it cannot see anything freshly but is always translating what it sees in terms of its own memories, conclusions, formulas, always quoting; it is authority-bound; it is an old mind.

You can see why it happens. All our education is merely the cultivation of memory; and there is this mass communication through journals, the radio, the television; there are the professors who read lectures and repeat the same thing over and over again, until your brain soaks in what they have repeated, and you vomit it up in an examination and get your degree and go on with the process - the job, the routine, the incessant repetition. Not only that, but there is also our own inward struggle of ambition with its frustrations, the competition not only for jobs but for God, wanting to be near Him, asking the quick road to him. So, what is happening is that through pressure, through stress, through strain, our minds are being crowded, drowned by influence, by sorrow, consciously or unconsciously. ...We are wearing down the mind, not using it.