The phrase “not a particle of antagonism” comes from a 1968 conversation between Jiddu Krishnamurti and Huston Smith in Claremont, California.
In this dialogue, Krishnamurti describes the characteristics of a “religious mind”—a state of being that is free from the conditioned, divisive nature of the self.
Key aspects of this concept include:
A Mind That Loves: Krishnamurti defines a truly religious mind as one that “has no hatred,” lives without fear or anxiety, and contains “not a particle of antagonism”.
Absence of Conflict: He argues that most people live in constant conflict, internally and externally, which breeds antagonism and, by extension, violence and war.
Ending of the ‘Self’: The “particle of antagonism” is eliminated only when the ego or “self” (the “me”)—with its accumulation of memories, prejudices, and ambitions—is fully understood and goes silent.
Total Awareness: This state cannot be achieved through cultivation (willpower) but rather through choiceless awareness or “total attention,” which sees the fact of fear and conflict without trying to escape.
Krishnamurti states that when the mind is totally quiet, without the interference of thought as the past, that which is sacred may come into being.
Excerpt from That Dialogue
Krishnamurti (K): So the problem really, sir, is, can we live a different way?
Houston Smith (HS): Hear, hear!
K: A different way in which there are no wars, no hatreds, in which man loves man, without competition, without division, saying you are a Christian, you are a Catholic, you are a Protestant, you are this. That’s all so immature. It has no meaning. It’s an intellectual sophisticated division. And that is not a religious mind at all, that’s not religion. A religious mind is a mind that has no hatred, that lives completely without fear, without anxiety, in which there is not a particle of antagonism. Therefore a mind that loves – that is a different dimension of living altogether. And nobody wants that.
HS: And in another sense everybody wants that.
K: But they won’t go after it.
HS: They won’t go after it?
K: No, of course not. They are distracted by so many other things, they are so heavily conditioned by their past, they hold on to it.
HS: But I think there are some who will go after it.
K: Wait sir, very few.
HS: The numbers don’t matter.
K: The minority is always the most important thing.
HS: Krishnamurti, as I listen to you and try to listen through the word to what you are saying, it seems to me that what I hear is that first, I should work out and each of us should work out his own salvation, not leaning on authority outside; second, not to allow words to form a film between us and actual experience, not to mistake the menu for the meal; and third, not to let the past swallow up the present, take possession, to responding to a conditioning of the past, but rather to be always open to the new, the novel, the fresh. And finally, it seems to me you are saying something like the key to doing this is a radical reversal in our point of view. It is as though we were prisoners straining at the bars for the light, and looking for the glimpse of light that we see out there and wondering how we can get out towards it, while actually the door of the cell is open behind us if only we would turn around, we could walk out into freedom. This is what is sounds to me like you are saying. Is this it?
K: A little bit, sir, a little bit.
HS: All right. What else? What other than that? Or if you want to amplify.
K: Sir, surely sir, in this is involved the everlasting struggle, conflict, man caught in his own conditioning, and straining, struggling, beating his head to be free. And again we have accepted with the help of religions and all the rest of the group that effort is necessary. That’s part of life. To me that is the highest form of blindness, of limiting man to say, ‘you must everlastingly live in effort’.
HS: And you think we don’t have to.
K: Not, ‘I think’, it is so. Sir, it is not a question of thought. Thought is the most…
HS: Let’s delete those two words and just say we don’t have to.
K: But to live without effort requires the greatest sensitivity and the highest form of intelligence. You don’t just say, ‘well, I won’t struggle’, and become like a cow. But one has to understand how conflict arises, the duality in us, the fact of ‘what is’, and ‘what should be’, there is the conflict. If there is no ‘what should be’, which is ideological, which is non real, which is fiction, and see ‘what is’, and face it, live with it without the ‘what should be’, then there is no conflict at all. It’s only when you compare, evaluate with ‘what should be’, and then look with ‘what should be’ at the ‘what is’, then conflict arises.
HS: There should be no tension between the ideal and the actual.
K: No ideal at all. Why should we have an ideal? The ideal is the most idiotic form of conceptual thinking, why should I have an ideal? The fact is burning there, why should I have an ideal about anything?
HS: Well now once more when you speak like that it seems to me that you break it into an either/or.
K: No, no.
HS: Not the ideal but the actual where it seems to me the truth is somehow both of these.
K: Ah, no. Truth is not a mixture of the ideal and the ‘what is’, then you produce some melange of some dirt. There is only ‘what is’. Sir, look, take a very simple example: we human beings are violent. Why should I have an ideal of non-violence? Why can’t I deal with the fact?
HS: Of violence?
K: Of violence without non-violence. The ideal is an abstraction, is a distraction. The fact is I am violent, man is violent. Let’s tackle that, let’s come to grips with that and see if we can’t live without violence.
HS: But can…
K: Please, there is no dualistic process in this. There is only the fact that I am violent, man is violent, and is it possible to be free of that. Why should I introduce the idealistic nonsense into it?
Know Thyself 