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ОглавлениеTwo Conversations:J. Krishnamurti and Professor Jacob Needleman
2On inner space; on tradition and dependence
Conversation between J. Krishnamurtiand Professor J. Needleman
Needleman:1 There is much talk of a spiritual revolution among young people, particularly here in California. Do you see in this very mixed phenomenon any hope of a new flowering for modern civilisation, a new possibility of growth?
KRISHNAMURTI: For a new possibility of growth, don’t you think, Sir, that one has to be rather serious, and not merely jump from one spectacular amusement to another? If one has looked at all the religions of the world and seen their organised futility, and out of that perception seen something real and clear, perhaps then there could be something new in California, or in the world. But as far as I have seen, I am afraid there is not a quality of seriousness in all this. I may be mistaken, because I see only these so-called young people in the distance, among the audience, and occasionally here; and by their questions, by their laughter, by their applause, they don’t strike me as being very serious, mature, with great intent. I may be mistaken, naturally.
Needleman: I understand what you are saying. My question only is: perhaps we can’t very well expect young people to be serious.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is why I don’t think it is applicable to the young people. I don’t know why one has made such an extraordinary thing out of young people, why it has become such an important thing. In a few years they will be the old people in their turn.
Needleman: As a phenomenon, apart from what is underneath it all, this interest in transcending experience—or whatever one wants to call it—seems to be a kind of seed-ground from which certain unusual people aside from all the phoneyness and all the deceivers, certain Masters perhaps, may spring up.
KRISHNAMURTI: But I am not sure, Sir, that all the deceivers and exploiters are not covering this up. “Krishna-consciousness” and Transcendental Meditation and all this nonsense that is going on—they are caught in all that. It is a form of exhibitionism, a form of amusement and entertainment. For something new to take place there must be a nucleus of really devoted, serious people, who go through to the very end. After going through all these things, they say, “Here is something I am going to pursue to the end.”
Needleman: A serious person would be someone who would have to become disillusioned with everything else.
KRISHNAMURTI: I would not call it disillusioned but a form of seriousness.
Needleman: But a pre-condition for it?
KRISHNAMURTI: No, I wouldn’t call it disillusionment at all, that leads to despair and cynicism. I mean the examination of all the things that are so-called religious, so-called spiritual: to examine, to find out what is the truth in all this, whether there is any truth in it. Or to discard the whole thing and start anew, and not go through all the trappings, all the mess of it.
Needleman: I think that is what I tried to say, but this expresses it better. People who have tried something and it has failed for them.
KRISHNAMURTI: Not “other people”. I mean one has to discard all the promises, all the experiences, all the mystical assertions. I think one has to start as though one knew absolutely nothing.
Needleman: That is very hard.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, Sir, I don’t think that is hard. I think it is hard only for those people who have filled themselves with other people’s knowledge.
Needleman: Isn’t that most of us? I was speaking to my class yesterday at San Francisco State, and I said I was going to interview Krishnamurti and what question would you like me to ask him. They had many questions, but the one that touched me most was what one young man said: “I have read his books over and over again and I can’t do what he says.” There was something so clear about that, it rang a bell. It seems in a certain subtle sense to begin in this way. To be a beginner, fresh!
KRISHNAMURTI: I don’t think that we question enough. Do you know what I mean?
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: We accept, we are gullible, we are greedy for new experiences. People swallow what is said by anybody with a beard, with promises, saying you will have a marvellous experience if you do certain things! I think one has to say: “I know nothing.” Obviously I can’t rely on others. If there were no books, no gurus, what would you do?
Needleman: But one is so easily deceived.
KRISHNAMURTI: You are deceived when you want something.
Needleman: Yes, I understand that.
KRISHNAMURTI: So you say, “I am going to find out, I am going to enquire step by step. I don’t want to deceive myself.” Deception arises when I want, when I am greedy, when I say, “All experience is shallow, I want something mysterious”—then I am caught.
Needleman: To me you are speaking about a state, an attitude, an approach, which is itself very far along in understanding for a man. I feel very far from that myself, and I know my students do. And so they feel, rightly or wrongly, a need for help. They probably misunderstand what help is, but is there such a thing as help?
KRISHNAMURTI: Would you say: “Why do you ask for help?”
Needleman: Let me put it like this. You sort of smell yourself deceiving yourself, you don’t exactly know . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: It is fairly simple. I don’t want to deceive myself—right? So I find out what is the movement, what is the thing that brings deception. Obviously it is when I am greedy, when I want something, when I am dissatisfied. So instead of attacking greed, want, dissatisfaction, I want something more.
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I have to understand my greed. What am I greedy for? Is it because I am fed up with this world, I have had women, I have had cars, I have had money and I want something more?
Needleman: I think one is greedy because one desires stimulation, to be taken out of oneself, so that one doesn’t see the poverty of oneself. But what I am trying to ask—I know you have answered this question many times in your talks, but it keeps recurring, almost unavoidably—the great traditions of the world, aside from what has become of them (they have become distorted and misinterpreted and deceptive) always speak directly or indirectly of help. They say “The guru is yourself too”, but at the same time there is help.
KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, you know what that word “guru” means?
Needleman: No, not exactly.
KRISHNAMURTI: The one who points. That is one meaning. Another meaning is the one who brings enlightenment, lifts your burden. But instead of lifting your burden they impose their burden on you.
Needleman: I am afraid so.
KRISHNAMURTI: Guru also means one who helps you to cross over—and so on, there are various meanings. The moment the guru says he knows, then you may be sure he doesn’t know. Because what he knows is something past, obviously. Knowledge is the past. And when he says he knows, he is thinking of some experience which he has had, which he has been able to recognise as something great, and that recognition is born out of his previous knowledge, otherwise he couldn’t recognise it, and therefore his experience has its roots in the past. Therefore it is not real.
Needleman: Well, I think that most knowledge is that.
KRISHNAMURTI: So why do we want any form of ancient or modern tradition in all this? Look, Sir, I don’t read any religious, philosophical, psychological books: one can go into oneself at tremendous depths and find out everything. To go into oneself is the problem, how to do it. Not being able to do it one asks, “Would you please help me?”
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: And the other fellow says, “I’ll help you” and pushes you off somewhere else.
Needleman: Well, it sort of answers the question. I was reading a book the other day which spoke of something called “Sat-san”.
KRISHNAMURTI: Do you know what it means?
Needleman: Association with the wise.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, with good people.
Needleman: With good people, Ah!
KRISHNAMURTI: Being good you are wise. Not, being wise you are good.
Needleman: I understand that.
KRISHNAMURTI: Because you are good, you are wise.
Needleman: I am not trying to pin this down to something, but I find my students and I myself, speaking for myself, when we read, when we hear you, we say, “Ah! I need no one, I need to be with no one”—and there is a tremendous deception in this too.
KRISHNAMURTI: Naturally, because you are being influenced by the speaker.
Needleman: Yes. That is true. (Laughter.)
KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, look, let’s be very simple. Suppose, if there were no book, no guru, no teacher, what would you do? One is in turmoil, confusion, agony, what would you do? With nobody to help you, no drugs, no tranquillisers, no organised religions, what would you do?
Needleman: I can’t imagine what I would do.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s it.
Needleman: Perhaps there would be a moment of urgency there.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s it. We haven’t the urgency because we say, “Well, somebody is going to help me.”
Needleman: But most people would be driven insane by that situation.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am not sure, Sir.
Needleman: I’m not sure either.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, I am not at all sure. Because what have we done up to now? The people on whom we have relied, the religions, the churches, education, they have led us to this awful mess. We aren’t free of sorrow, we aren’t free of our beastliness, our ugliness, our vanities.
Needleman: Can one say that of all of them? There are differences. For every thousand deceivers there is one Buddha.
KRISHNAMURTI: But that is not my concern, Sir, if we say that it leads to such deception. No, no.
Needleman: Then let me ask you this. We know that without hard work the body may get ill, and this hard work is what we call effort. Is there another effort for what we might call the spirit? You speak against effort, but does not the growth and well-being of all sides of man demand something like hard work of one sort or another?
KRISHNAMURTI: I wonder what you mean by hard work? Physical hard work?
Needleman: That is what we usually mean by hard work. Or going against desires.
KRISHNAMURTI: You see, there we are! Our conditioning, our culture, is built around this “going against”. Erecting a wall of resistance. So when we say “hard work”, what do we mean? Laziness? Why have I to make an effort about anything? Why?
Needleman: Because I wish for something.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. Why is there this cult of effort? Why have I to make effort to reach God, enlightenment, truth?
Needleman: There are many possible answers, but I can only answer for myself.
KRISHNAMURTI: It may be just there, only I don’t know how to look.
Needleman: But then there must be an obstacle.
KRISHNAMURTI: How to look! It may be just round the corner, under the flower, it may be anywhere. So first I have to learn to look, not make an effort to look. I must find out what it means to look.
Needleman: Yes, but don’t you admit that there may be a resistance to that looking?
KRISHNAMURTI: Then don’t bother to look! If somebody comes along and says, “I don’t want to look”, how are you going to force him to look?
Needleman: No. I am speaking about myself now. I want to look.
KRISHNAMURTI: If you want to look, what do you mean by looking? You must find out what it means to look before you make an effort to look. Right, Sir?
Needleman: That would be, to me, an effort.
KRISHNAMURTI: No.
Needleman: To do it in that delicate, subtle way. I wish to look, but I don’t wish to find out what it means to look. I agree this is much more to me the basic thing. But this wish to do it quickly, to get it over, is this not resistance?
KRISHNAMURTI: Quick medicine to get it over.
Needleman: Is there something in me that I have to study, that resists this subtle, much more delicate thing you are speaking about? Is this not work, what you are saying? Isn’t it work to ask the question so quietly, so subtly? It seems to me it is work to not listen to that part that wants to do it . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: Quickly.
Needleman: For us particularly in the West, or maybe for all men.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am afraid it is all over the world the same. “Tell me how to get there quickly.”
Needleman: And yet you say it is in a moment.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is, obviously.
Needleman: Yes, I understand.
KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, what is effort? To get out of bed in the morning, when you don’t want to get up, is an effort. What brings on that laziness? Lack of sleep, over-eating, over-indulging and all the rest of it; and next morning you say, “Oh, what a bore, I have to get up!” Now wait a minute, Sir, follow it. What is laziness? Is it physical laziness, or is thought itself lazy?
Needleman: That I don’t understand. I need another word. “Thought is lazy?” I find that thought is always the same.
KRISHNAMURTI: No Sir. I am lazy, I don’t want to get up and so I force myself to get up. In that is so-called effort.
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: I want that, but I shouldn’t have it, I resist it. The resistance is effort. I get angry and I mustn’t be angry: resistance, effort. What has made me lazy?
Needleman: The thought that I ought to be getting up.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s it.
Needleman: All right.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I really have to go into this whole question of thought. Not make out that the body is lazy, force the body out of bed, because the body has its own intelligence, it knows when it is tired and should rest. This morning I was tired; I had prepared the mat and everything to do yoga exercises and the body said “No, sorry”. And I said, “All right”. That is not laziness. The body said, “Leave me alone because you talked yesterday, you saw many people, you are tired.” Thought then says, “You must get up and do the exercises because it is good for you, you have done it every day, it has become a habit, don’t relax, you will get lazy, keep at it.” Which means: thought is making me lazy, not the body is making me lazy.
Needleman: I understand that. So there is an effort with regard to thought.
KRISHNAMURTI: So no effort! Why is thought so mechanical? And is all thought mechanical?
Needleman: Yes, all right, one puts that question.
KRISHNAMURTI: Isn’t it?
Needleman: I can’t say that I have verified that.
KRISHNAMURTI: But we can, Sir. That is fairly simple to see. Isn’t all thought mechanical? The non-mechanical state is the absence of thought; not the neglect of thought but the absence of it.
Needleman: How can I find that out?
KRISHNAMURTI: Do it now, it is simple enough. You can do it now if you wish to. Thought is mechanical.
Needleman: Let’s assume that.
KRISHNAMURTI: Not assume. Don’t assume anything.
Needleman: All right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Thought is mechanical, isn’t it?—because it is repetitive, conforming, comparing.
Needleman: That part I see, the comparing. But my experience is that not all thought is of the same quality. There are qualities of thought.
KRISHNAMURTI: Are there?
Needleman: In my experience there are.
KRISHNAMURTI: Let’s find out. What is thought, thinking?
Needleman: There seems to be thought that is very shallow, very repetitive, very mechanical, it has a certain taste to it. There seems to be another kind of thought which is connected more with my body, with my whole self, it resonates in another way.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is what, Sir? Thought is the response of memory.
Needleman: All right, this is a definition.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, no, I can see it in myself. I have to go to that house this evening—the memory, the distance, the design—all that is memory, isn’t it?
Needleman: Yes, that is memory.
KRISHNAMURTI: I have been there before and so the memory is well established and from that there is either instant thought, or thought which takes a little time. So I am asking myself: is all thought similar, mechanical, or is there thought which is non-mechanical, which is non-verbal?
Needleman: Yes, that’s right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Is there thought if there is no word?
Needleman: There is understanding.
KRISHNAMURTI: Wait, Sir. How does this understanding take place? Does it happen when thought is functioning rapidly, or when thought is quiet?
Needleman: When thought is quiet, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Understanding is nothing to do with thought. You may reason, which is the process of thinking, logic, till you say, “I don’t understand it”; then you become silent, and you say, “Ah! I see it, I understand it.” That understanding is not a result of thought.
Needleman: You speak of an energy which seems to be uncaused. We experience the energy of cause and effect, which shapes our lives, but what is this other energy’s relationship to the energy we are familiar with? What is energy?
KRISHNAMURTI: First of all: is energy divisible?
Needleman: I don’t know. Go on.
KRISHNAMURTI: It can be divided. Physical energy, the energy of anger and so on, cosmic energy, human energy, it can all be divided. But it is all one energy, isn’t it?
Needleman: Logically, I say yes. I don’t understand energy. Sometimes I experience the thing which I call energy.
KRISHNAMURTI: Why do we divide energy at all, that is what I want to get at; then we can come to it differently. Sexual energy, physical energy, mental energy, psychological energy, cosmic energy, the energy of the businessman who goes to the office and so on—why do we divide it? What is the reason for this division?
Needleman: There seem to be many parts of oneself which are separate; and we divide life, it seems to me, because of that.
KRISHNAMURTI: Why? We have divided the world into Communist, Socialist, Imperialist, and Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, and nationalities, linguistic divisions, the whole thing is fragmentation. Why has the mind fragmented the whole of life?
Needleman: I don’t know the answer. I see the ocean and I see a tree: there is a division.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. There is a difference between the sea and the tree—I hope so! But that is not a division.
Needleman: No. It is a difference, not a division.
KRISHNAMURTI: But we are asking why the division exists, not only outwardly but in us.
Needleman: It is in us, that is the most interesting question.
KRISHNAMURTI: Because it is in us we extend it outwards. Now why is there this division in me? The “me” and the “not me”. You follow? The higher and the lower, the Atman and the lower self. Why this division?
Needleman: Maybe it was done, at least in the beginning, to help men to question themselves. To make them question whether they really know what they think they know.
KRISHNAMURTI: Through division will they find out?
Needleman: Maybe through the idea that there is something that I don’t understand.
KRISHNAMURTI: In a human being there is a division—why? What is the “raison d’être”, what is the structure of this division? I see there is a thinker and thought—right?
Needleman: I don’t see that.
KRISHNAMURTI: There is a thinker who says, “I must control that thought, I must not think this, I must think that”. So there is a thinker who says, “I must”, or “I must not”.
Needleman: Right.
KRISHNAMURTI: There is the division. “I should be this”, and “I should not be that”. If I can understand why this division in me exists—Oh look, look! Look at those hills! Marvellous, isn’t it?
Needleman: Beautiful!
KRISHNAMURTI: Now, Sir, do you look at it with a division?
Needleman: No.
KRISHNAMURTI: Why not?
Needleman: There wasn’t the “me” to do anything with it.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s all. You can’t do anything about it. Here, with thought, I think I can do something.
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I want to change “what is”. I can’t change “what is” there, but I think I can change “what is” in me. Not knowing how to change it I have become desperate, lost, in despair. I say, “I can’t change”, and therefore I have no energy to change.
Needleman: That’s what one says.
KRISHNAMURTI: So first, before I change “what is”, I must know who is the changer, who it is that changes.
Needleman: There are moments when one knows that, for a moment. Those moments are lost. There are moments when one knows who sees “what is” in oneself.
KRISHNAMURTI: No Sir. Sorry. Just to see “what is” is enough, not to change it.
Needleman: I agree. I agree with that.
KRISHNAMURTI: I can see “what is” only when the observer is not. When you looked at those hills the observer was not.
Needleman: I agree, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: The observer only came into being when you wanted to change “what is”. You say: I don’t like “what is”, it must be changed, so there is instantly a duality. Can the mind observe “what is” without the observer? It took place when you looked at those hills with that marvellous light on them.
Needleman: This truth is absolute truth. The moment one experiences it one says, “Yes!” But one’s experience is also that one forgets this.
KRISHNAMURTI: Forget!
Needleman: By that I mean one continually tries to change it.
KRISHNAMURTI: Forget it, and pick it up again.
Needleman: But in this discussion—whatever you intend—there is help coming from this discussion. I know, as much as I know anything, it could not happen without the help that is between us. I could look at those hills and maybe have this non-judging, but it wouldn’t be important to me; I wouldn’t know that that is the way I must look for salvation. And this, I think, is a question one always wants to bring. Maybe this is the mind again wanting to grab and hold on to something, but nevertheless it seems that the human condition . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, we looked at those hills, you couldn’t change that, you just looked; and you looked inwardly and the battle began. For a moment you looked without that battle, without that strife, and all the rest of it. Then you remembered the beauty of that moment, of that second, and you wanted to capture that beauty again. Wait Sir! Proceed. So what happens? It sets up another conflict: the thing you had and you would like to have again, and you don’t know how to get it again. You know, if you think about it, it is not the same, it is not that. So you strive, battle. “I must control, I mustn’t want”—right? Whereas if you say, “All right, it is over, finished”, that moment is over.
Needleman: I have to learn that.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, no.
Needleman: I have to learn, don’t I?
KRISHNAMURTI: What is there to learn?
Needleman: I have to learn the futility of this conflict.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. What is there to learn? You yourself see that that moment of beauty becomes a memory, then the memory says, “It was so beautiful I must have it again.” You are not concerned with beauty, you are concerned with the pursuit of pleasure. Pleasure and beauty don’t go together. So if you see that, it is finished. Like a dangerous snake, you won’t go near it again.
Needleman: (Laughs) Perhaps I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is the question.
Needleman: Yes, I think that must be so, because one keeps going back again and again.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. This is the real thing. If I see the beauty of that light, and it is really extraordinarily beautiful, I just see it. Now with that same quality of attention I want to see myself. There is a moment of perception which is as beautiful as that. Then what happens?
Needleman: Then I wish for it.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then I want to capture it, I want to cultivate it, I want to pursue it.
Needleman: And how to see that?
KRISHNAMURTI: Just to see that is taking place is enough.
Needleman: That’s what I forget!
KRISHNAMURTI: It is not a question of forgetting.
Needleman: Well, that is what I don’t understand deeply enough. That just the seeing is enough.
KRISHNAMURTI: Look, Sir. When you see a snake what takes place?
Needleman: I am afraid.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. What takes place? You run, kill it, do something. Why? Because you know it is dangerous. You are aware of the danger of it. A cliff, better take a cliff, an abyss. You know the danger of it. Nobody has to tell you. You see directly what would happen.
Needleman: Right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now, if you see directly that the beauty of that moment of perception cannot be repeated, it is over. But thought says, “No, it’s not over, the memory of it remains.” So what are you doing now? You are pursuing the dead memory of it, not the living beauty of it—right? Now if you see that, the truth of it—not the verbal statement, the truth of it—it is finished.
Needleman: Then this seeing is much rarer than we think.
KRISHNAMURTI: If I see the beauty of that minute, it is over. I don’t want to pursue it. If I pursue it, it becomes a pleasure. Then if I can’t get it, it brings despair, pain and all the rest of it. So I say, “All right, finished.” Then what takes place?
Needleman: From my experience, I’m afraid that what takes place is that the monster is born again. It has a thousand lives. (Laughter.)
KRISHNAMURTI: No Sir. When did that beauty take place?
Needleman: The place when I saw without trying to change.
KRISHNAMURTI: When the mind was completely quiet.
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Wasn’t it? Right?
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: When you looked at that, your mind was quiet, it didn’t say, “I wish I could change it, copy it and photograph it, this, that, and the other”—you just looked. The mind wasn’t in operation. Or rather, thought wasn’t in operation. But thought comes immediately into operation. Now one has asked, “How can thought be quiet? How can one exercise thought when necessary, and not exercise it when it is not necessary?”
Needleman: Yes, that question is intensely interesting to me, Sir.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is, why do we worship thought? Why has thought become so extraordinarily important?
Needleman: It seems able to satisfy our desires; through thought we believe we can satisfy.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, not from satisfaction. Why has thought in all cultures with most people become of such vital concern?
Needleman: One usually identifies oneself as thought, as one’s thoughts. If I think about myself I think about what I think, what kind of ideas I have, what I believe. Is this what you mean?
KRISHNAMURTI: Not quite. Apart from identification with the “me”, or with “not me”, why is thought always active?
Needleman: Ah, I see.
KRISHNAMURTI: Thought is always operating in knowledge, isn’t it? If there was no knowledge, thought would not be. Thought is always operating in the field of the known. Whether mechanical, non-verbal and so on, it is always working in the past. So my life is the past, because it is based on past knowledge, past experience, past memories, pleasure, pain, fear and so on—it is all the past. And the future I project from the past, thought projects from the past. So thought is fluctuating between the past and the future. All the time it says, “I should do this, I should not do that, I should have behaved.” Why is it doing all this?
Needleman: I don’t know. Habit?
KRISHNAMURTI: Habit. All right. Go on. Let’s find out. Habit?
Needleman: Habit brings what I call pleasure.
KRISHNAMURTI: Habit, pleasure, pain.
Needleman: To protect me. Pain, yes pain.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is always working within that field. Why?
Needleman: Because it doesn’t know any better.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. No. Can thought work in any other field?
Needleman: That sort of thought, no.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, not any thought. Can thought work in any other field except in the field of the known?
Needleman: No.
KRISHNAMURTI: Obviously not. It can’t work in something I don’t know; it can only work in this field. Now why does it work in this? There it is, Sir—why? It is the only thing I know. In that there is security, there is protection, there is safety. That is all I know. So thought can only function in the field of the known. And when it gets tired of that, as it does, then it seeks something outside. Then what it seeks is still the known. Its gods, its visions, its spiritual states—all projected out of the known past into the future known. So thought always works in this field.
Needleman: Yes, I see.
KRISHNAMURTI: Therefore thought is always working in a prison. It can call it freedom, it can call it beauty, it can call it what is likes! But it is always within the limitations of the barbed-wire fence. Now I want to find out whether thought has any place except in there. Thought has no place when I say, “I don’t know.” “I really don’t know.” Right?
Needleman: For the moment.
KRISHNAMURTI: I really don’t know. I only know this, and I really don’t know whether thought can function in any field at all, except this. I really don’t know. When I say, “I don’t know”, which doesn’t mean I am expecting to know, when I say I really don’t know—what happens? I climb down the ladder. I become, the mind becomes, completely humble.
Now that state of “not knowing” is intelligence. Then it can operate in the field of the known and be free to work somewhere else if it wants to.
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA
26 MARCH 1971
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1 Jacob Needleman is Professor of philosophy at San Francisco State College; author of The New Religions, and editor of the Penguin Metaphysical Library.
ON INNER SPACE; ON TRADITION AND DEPENDENCE
Conversation between J. Krishnamurtiand Professor J. Needleman
Needleman: In your talks you have given a fresh meaning to the necessity for man to become his own authority. Yet cannot this assertion easily be turned into a form of humanistic psychology without reference to the sacred, transcendent dimension of human life on earth in the midst of a vast intelligent Cosmos? Must we not only try to see ourselves in the moment, but also as creatures of the Cosmos? What I am trying to ask about is this question of cosmic dimension.
KRISHNAMURTI: As soon as we use that word “dimension”, it implies space, otherwise there is no dimension, there is no space. Are we talking about space, outward space, endless space?
Needleman: No.
KRISHNAMURTI: Or the dimension of space in us?
Needleman: It would have to be the latter, but not totally without the former, I think.
KRISHNAMURTI: Is there a difference between the outer space, which is limitless, and the space in us? Or is there no space in us at all and we only know the outer space? We know the space in us as a centre and circumference. The dimension of that centre, and the radius from that centre, is what we generally call that space.
Needleman: Inner space, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, inner space. Now if there is a centre, the space must always be limited and therefore we divide the inner space from the outer space.
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: We only know this very limited space but we think we would like to reach the other space, have immense space. This house exists in space, otherwise there could be no house, and the four walls of this room make its space. And the space in me is the space which the centre has created round itself. Like that microphone . . .
Needleman: Yes, centre of interest.
KRISHNAMURTI: Not only centre of interest, it has its own space, otherwise it couldn’t exist.
Needleman: Yes, right.
KRISHNAMURTI: In the same way, human beings may have a centre and from that centre they create a space, the centre creates a space round itself. And that space is always limited, it must be; because of the centre, the space is limited.
Needleman: It is defined, it is a defined space, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: When you use the words “cosmic space” . . .
Needleman: I didn’t use the words “cosmic space”; I said cosmic, the dimension of the Cosmos. I wasn’t asking about outer space and trips to the planets.
KRISHNAMURTI: So we are talking of the space which the centre creates round itself, and also a space between two thoughts; there is a space, an interval between two thoughts.
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: And the centre having created that space round itself, there is the space outside the limit. There is a space between thinking, between thoughts; and also a space round the centre itself, and the space beyond the barbed-wire. Now what is the question, Sir? How to expand space? How to enter a different dimension of space?
Needleman: Not how to but . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: . . . not how to. Is there a different dimension of space except the space round the centre?
Needleman: Or a different dimension of reality?
KRISHNAMURTI: Space, we are talking about that for the moment, we can use that word. First I must see very clearly the space between two thoughts.
Needleman: The interval.
KRISHNAMURTI: This interval between two thoughts. Interval means space. And what takes place in this interval?
Needleman: Well, I confess I don’t know because my thoughts overlap all the time. I know there are intervals, there are moments when this interval appears, and I see it, and there is freedom there for a moment.
KRISHNAMURTI: Let’s go into this a bit, shall we? There is space between two thoughts. And there is space which the centre creates round itself, which is the space of isolation.
Needleman: All right, yes. That is a cold word.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is cutting itself off. I consider myself important, with my ambition, with my frustrations, with my anger, with my sexuality, my growth, my meditation, my reaching Nirvana.
Needleman: Yes, that is isolation.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is isolation. My relation with you is the image of that isolation, which is that space. Then having created that space there is space outside the barbed-wire. Now is there a space of a totally different dimension? That is the question.
Needleman: Yes, that embraces the question.
KRISHNAMURTI: How shall we find out if the space round me, round the centre, exists? And how can I find out the other? I can speculate about the other, I can invent any space I like—but that is too abstract, too silly!
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: So is it possible to be free of the centre, so that the centre doesn’t create space round itself, build a wall round itself, isolation, a prison—and call that space? Can that centre cease to be? Otherwise I can’t go beyond it; the mind cannot go beyond that limitation.
Needleman: Yes, I see what you mean. It’s logical, reasonable.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is, what is that centre? That centre is the “me” and “non-me”, that centre is the observer, the thinker, the experiencer, and in that centre is also the observed. The centre says, “That is the barbed-wire I have created round myself.”
Needleman: So that centre is limited there too.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. Therefore it separates itself from the barbed-wire fence. So that becomes the observed. The centre is the observer. So there is space between the observer and the observed—right Sir?
Needleman: Yes, I see that.
KRISHNAMURTI: And that space it tries to bridge over. That is what we are doing.
Needleman: It tries to bridge it over.
KRISHNAMURTI: It says, “This must be changed, that must not be, this is narrow, that is wide, I must be better than that.” All that is the movement in the space between the observer and the observed.
Needleman: I follow that, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: And hence there is conflict between the observer and the observed. Because the observed is the barbed-wire which must be jumped over, and so the battle begins. Now can the observer—who is the centre, who is the thinker, who is the knower, who is experience, who is knowledge—can that centre be still?
Needleman: Why should it wish to?
KRISHNAMURTI: If it is not still, the space is always limited.
Needleman: But the centre, the observer, doesn’t know that it is limited in this way.
KRISHNAMURTI: But you can see it, look. The centre is the observer, let’s call him the observer for the moment—the thinker, the experiencer, the knower, the struggler, the searcher, the one who says, “I know, and you don’t know.” Right? Where there is a centre it must have a space round itself.
Needleman: Yes, I follow.
KRISHNAMURTI: And when it observes, it observes through that space. When I observe those mountains there is space between me and the mountains. And when I observe myself there is space between me and the thing I observe in myself. When I observe my wife, I observe her from the centre of my image about her, and she observes me with the image which she has about me. So there is always this division and space.
Needleman: Changing the approach to the subject entirely, there is something called the sacred. Sacred teachings, sacred ideas, the sacred, which for a moment seems to show me that this centre and this space you speak about is an illusion.
KRISHNAMURTI: Wait. One has learnt this from somebody else. Are we going to find out what is the sacred, then? Are we looking because somebody has told me, “That is sacred”, or that there is a sacred thing? Or is it my imagination, because I want something holy?
Needleman: Very often it is that but there is . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: Now which is it? The desire for something holy? The imposition on my mind by others who have said, “This is sacred?” Or my own desire, because everything is unholy and I want something holy, sacred? All this springs from the centre.
Needleman: Yes. Nevertheless . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: Wait. We will find this out, what is sacred. But I don’t want to accept tradition, or what somebody has said about the sacred. Sir, I don’t know if you have experimented? Some years ago, for fun, I took a piece of rock from the garden and put it on the mantelpiece and played with it, brought flowers to it every day. At the end of a month it became terribly sacred!
Needleman: I know what you mean.
KRISHNAMURTI: I don’t want that kind of phoney sacredness.
Needleman: It’s a fetish.
KRISHNAMURTI: Sacredness is a fetish.
Needleman: Granted. Most of it is.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I won’t accept anything that anybody says about what is sacred. Tradition! As a Brahmin one was brought up in a tradition which would beat anybody’s tradition, I assure you!
What I am saying is: I want to find out what is holy, not man-made holiness. I can only find out when the mind has immense space. And it cannot have that immense space if there is a centre. When the centre is not in operation, then there is vast space. In that space, which is part of meditation, there is something really sacred, not invented by my foolish little centre. There is something immeasurably sacred, which you can never find out if there is a centre. And to imagine that sacredness is folly—you follow what I mean?
Can the mind be free of this centre—with its terribly limited yardage of space—which can be measured and expanded and contracted and all the rest of it? Can it? Man has said it can’t, and therefore God has become another centre. So my real concern is this: whether the centre can be completely empty? That centre is consciousness. That centre is the content of consciousness, the content is consciousness; there is no consciousness if there is no content. You must work this out . . .
Needleman: Certainly what we ordinarily mean by it, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: There is no house if there are no walls and no roof. The content is consciousness but we like to separate them, theorise about it, measure the yardage of our consciousness. Whereas the centre is consciousness, the content of consciousness, and the content is consciousness. Without the content, where is consciousness? And that is the space.
Needleman: I follow a little bit of what you say. I find myself wanting to say: well, what do you value here? What is the important thing here?
KRISHNAMURTI: I’ll put that question after I have found out whether the mind can be empty of the content.
Needleman: All right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then there is something else that will operate, which will function within the field of the known. But without finding that merely to say . . .
Needleman: No, no, this is so.
KRISHNAMURTI: Let’s proceed. Space is between two thoughts, between two factors of time, two periods of time, because thought is time. Yes?
Needleman: All right, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: You can have a dozen periods of time but it is still thought, there is that space. Then there is the space round the centre, and the space beyond the self, beyond the barbed-wire, beyond the wall of the centre. The space between the observer and the observed is the space which thought has created as the image of my wife and the image which she has about me. You follow, Sir?
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: All that is manufactured by the centre. To speculate about what is beyond all that has no meaning to me personally, it’s the philosopher’s amusement.
Needleman: The philosopher’s amusement . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: I am not interested.
Needleman: I agree. I am not interested sometimes, at my better moments, but nevertheless . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: I am sorry, because you are a philosopher!
Needleman: No, no, why should you remember that, please.
KRISHNAMURTI: So my question is: “Can the centre be still, or can the centre fade away?” Because if it doesn’t fade away, or lie very quiet, then the content of consciousness is going to create space within consciousness and call it the vast space. In that there lies deception and I don’t want to deceive myself. I don’t say I am not brown when I am brown. So can that centre be absorbed? Which means, can there be no image, because it is the image that separates?
Needleman: Yes, that is the space.
KRISHNAMURTI: That image talks about love, but the love of the image is not love. Therefore I must find out whether the centre can be completely absorbed, dissolved, or lie as a vague fragment in the distance. If there is no possibility of that, then I must accept prison.
Needleman: I agree.
KRISHNAMURTI: I must accept there is no freedom. Then I can decorate my prison for ever.
Needleman: But now this possibility that you are speaking about, without searching for it consciously . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: No, don’t search for it!
Needleman: I say, without searching for it consciously, life or something suddenly shows me it is possible.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is there! Life hasn’t shown me. It has shown me, when I look at that mountain, that there is an image in me; when I look at my wife I see that there is an image in me. That is a fact. It isn’t that I have to wait for ten years to find out about the image! I know it is there, therefore I say: “Is it possible to look without the image?” The image is the centre, the observer, the thinker and all the rest of it.
Needleman: I am beginning to see the answer to my question. I begin to see—I am speaking to myself—I am beginning to see that there is no distinction between humanism and sacred teachings. There is just truth, or non-truth.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s all. False and true.
Needleman: So much for that. (Laughter)
KRISHNAMURTI: We are asking: “Can the consciousness empty itself of its content?” Not somebody else do it.
Needleman: That is the question, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Not divine grace, the super-self, some fictitious outside agency. Can the consciousness empty itself of all this content? First see the beauty of it, Sir.
Needleman: I see it.
KRISHNAMURTI: Because it must empty itself without an effort. The moment there is an effort, there is the observer who is making the effort to change the content, which is part of consciousness. I don’t know if you see that?
Needleman: I follow. This emptying has to be effortless, instantaneous.
KRISHNAMURTI: It must be without an agent who is operating on it, whether an outside agent, or an inner agent. Now can this be done without any effort, any directive—which says, “I will change the content” ? This means the emptying of consciousness of all will, “to be” or “not to be”. Sir, look what takes place.
Needleman: I am watching.
KRISHNAMURTI: I have put that question to myself. Nobody has put it to me. Because it is a problem of life, a problem of existence in this world. It is a problem which my mind has to solve. Can the mind, with all its content, empty itself and yet remain mind—not just float about?
Needleman: It is not suicide.
KRISHNAMURTI: No.
Needleman: There is some kind of subtle . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: No, Sir, that is too immature. I have put the question. My answer is: I really don’t know.
Needleman: That is the truth.
KRISHNAMURTI: I really don’t know. But I am going to find out, in the sense of not waiting to find out. The content of my consciousness is my unhappiness, my misery, my struggles, my sorrows, the images which I have collected through life, my gods, the frustrations, the pleasures, the fears, the agonies, the hatreds—that is my consciousness. Can all that be completely emptied? Not only at the superficial level but right through?—the so-called unconscious. If it is not possible, then I must live a life of misery, I must live in endless, unending sorrow. There is neither hope, nor despair, I am in prison. So the mind must find out how to empty itself of all the content of itself, and yet live in this world, not become a moron, but have a brain that functions efficiently. Now how is this to be done? Can it ever be done? Or is there no escape for man?
Needleman: I follow.
KRISHNAMURTI: Because I don’t see how to get beyond this I invent all the gods, temples, philosophies, rituals—you understand?
Needleman: I understand.
KRISHNAMURTI: This is meditation, real meditation, not all the phoney stuff. To see whether the mind—with the brain which has evolved through time, which is the result of thousands of experiences, the brain that functions efficiently only in complete security—whether the mind can empty itself and yet have a brain that functions as a marvellous machine. Also, it sees love is not pleasure; love is not desire. When there is love there is no image; but I don’t know what that love is. I only want love as pleasure, sex and all the rest of it. There must be a relationship between the emptying of consciousness and the thing called love; between the unknown and the known, which is the content of consciousness.
Needleman: I am following you. There must be this relationship.
KRISHNAMURTI: The two must be in harmony. The emptying and love must be in harmony. And it may be only love that is necessary and nothing else.
Needleman: This emptying is another word for love, is that what you are saying?
KRISHNAMURTI: I am only asking what is love. Is love within the field of consciousness?
Needleman: No, it couldn’t be.
KRISHNAMURTI: Don’t stipulate. Don’t ever say yes or no; find out! Love within the content of consciousness is pleasure, ambition and all that. Then what is love? I really don’t know. I won’t pretend any more about anything. I don’t know. There is some factor in this which I must find out. Whether the emptying of consciousness with its content is love, which is the unknown? What is the relationship between the unknown and the known?—not the mysterious unknown, God or whatever name you give it. We will come to God if we go through this. The relationship between the unknown, which I don’t know, which may be called love, and the content of consciousness, which I know, (it may be unconscious, but I can open it up and find out)—what is the relationship between the known and the unknown? To move between the known and the unknown is harmony, is intelligence, isn’t it?
Needleman: Absolutely.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I must find out, the mind must find out, how to empty its content. That is, have no image, therefore no observer. The image means the past, or the image which is taking place now, or the image which I shall project into the future. So no image—no formula, idea, ideal, principle—all that implies image. Can there be no formation of image at all? You hurt me or you give me pleasure and therefore I have an image of you. So no image formation when you hurt me or give me pleasure.
Needleman: Is it possible?
KRISHNAMURTI: Of course it is. Otherwise I am doomed.
Needleman: You are doomed. In other words I am doomed.
KRISHNAMURTI: We are doomed. Is it possible when you insult me to be completely watchful, attentive, so that it doesn’t leave a mark?
Needleman: I know what you mean.
KRISHNAMURTI: When you flatter me—no mark. Then there is no image. So I have done it, the mind has done it: which is, no formation of image at all. If you don’t form an image now, the past images have no place.
Needleman: I don’t follow that. “If I don’t form an image now . . . ?”
KRISHNAMURTI: The past images have no place. If you form an image, then you are related to it.
Needleman: You are connected to the past images. That is right.
KRISHNAMURTI: But if you don’t form any?
Needleman: Then you are free from the past.
KRISHNAMURTI: See it! See it!
Needleman: Very clear.
KRISHNAMURTI: So the mind can empty itself of images by not forming an image now. If I form an image now, then I relate it with past images. So consciousness, the mind, can empty itself of all the images by not forming an image now. Then there is space, not space round the centre. And if one delves, goes into it much further, then there is something sacred, not invented by thought, which has nothing to do with any religion.
Needleman: Thank you.
. . .
Needleman: I have another question which I wanted to ask you. We see the stupidity of so many traditions which people hallow today, but aren’t there some traditions transmitted from generation to generation which are valuable and necessary, and without which we would lose the little humanity that we now have? Aren’t there traditions that are based on something real, which are handed down?
KRISHNAMURTI: Handed down . . .
Needleman: Ways of living, even if only in an external sense.
KRISHNAMURTI: If I hadn’t been taught from childhood not to run in front of a car . . .
Needleman: That would be the simplest example.
KRISHNAMURTI: Or to be careful of fire, be careful of irritating the dog which might bite you, and so on. That is also tradition.
Needleman: Yes, that certainly is.
KRISHNAMURTI: The other kind of tradition is that you must love.
Needleman: That is the other extreme.
KRISHNAMURTI: And the tradition of the weavers in India and other places. You know, they can weave without a pattern and yet they weave in a tradition which is so deeply rooted that they don’t even have to think about it. It comes out with their hands. I don’t know if you have ever seen it? In India they have a tremendous tradition and they produce marvellous things. Also there is the tradition of the scientist, the biologist, the anthropologist, which is tradition as the accumulation of knowledge, handed over by one scientist to another scientist, by a doctor to another doctor, learning. Obviously that kind of tradition is essential. I wouldn’t call that tradition, would you?
Needleman: No, that is not what I had in mind. What I meant by tradition was a way of living.
KRISHNAMURTI: I wouldn’t call that tradition. Don’t we mean by tradition some other factor? Is goodness a factor of tradition?
Needleman: No, but perhaps there are good traditions.
KRISHNAMURTI: Good traditions, conditioned by the culture in which one lives. Good tradition among the Brahmins used to be not to kill any human being or animal. They accepted that and functioned. We are saying: “Is goodness traditional? Can goodness function, blossom in tradition?”
Needleman: What I am asking then is: are there traditions which are formed by an intelligence either single, or collective, which understands human nature?
KRISHNAMURTI: Is intelligence traditional?
Needleman: No. But can intelligence form, or shape a way of living which can help other men more readily to find themselves? I know that this is a self-initiated thing that you speak of, but are there not men of great intelligence who can shape the external conditions for me, so that I will not have quite as difficult a time to come to what you have seen?
KRISHNAMURTI: That means what, Sir? You say you know.
Needleman: I don’t say I know.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am taking that. Suppose you are the great person of tremendous intelligence and you say, “My dear son, live this way.”
Needleman: Well I don’t have to say it.
KRISHNAMURTI: You exude your atmosphere, your aura, and then I say, “I’ll try it—he has got it, I haven’t got it.” Can goodness flower in your ambience? Can goodness grow under your shadow?
Needleman: No, but then I wouldn’t be intelligent if I made those my conditions.
KRISHNAMURTI: Therefore you are stating that goodness cannot operate, function, flower in any environment.
Needleman: No, I didn’t say that. I was asking, are there environments which can be conducive to liberation?
KRISHNAMURTI: We will go into this. A man who goes to a factory every day, day after day, and finds release in drink and all the rest of it . . .
Needleman: This is the example of a poor environment, a bad tradition.
KRISHNAMURTI: So what does the man who is intelligent, who is concerned with changing the environment, do for that man?
Needleman: Perhaps he is changing the environment for himself. But he understands something about man in general. I am talking now about a great teacher, whatever that is. He helps, he presents a way of life to us which we don’t understand, which we haven’t verified ourselves, but which somehow acts on something in us to bring us a little together.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is satsun, which is the company of the good. It is nice to be in the company of the good because we won’t then quarrel, we won’t fight each other, we won’t be violent; it is good.
Needleman: All right. But maybe the company of the good means that I will quarrel, but I’ll see it more, I’ll suffer it more, I’ll understand it better.
KRISHNAMURTI: So you want the company of the good in order to see yourself more clearly?
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Which means you depend on the environment to see yourself.
Needleman: Well perhaps in the beginning.
KRISHNAMURTI: The beginning is the first step and the last step.
Needleman: I don’t agree.
KRISHNAMURTI: Let’s go into it a little bit. See what has happened. I go with good men because in that ambience, in that atmosphere I see myself more clearly, because they are good I see my idiocies.
Needleman: Sometimes it happens that way.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am taking this.
Needleman: That is one example, right?
KRISHNAMURTI: Or I am also good, therefore I live with them. Then I don’t need them.
Needleman: No we don’t need them then. All right.
KRISHNAMURTI: If I am good I don’t need them. But if when I am not good and come into their presence, then I can see myself clearly. Then to see myself clearly I must have them. This is what generally takes place. They become important, not my goodness. This happens every day.
Needleman: But is there not such a thing as weaning the baby by blackening the breast? It happens that I do need these men, maybe in the beginning.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am going to question it, I want to find out. First of all, if I am good I don’t need them. I am like those hills and birds which have no need.
Needleman: Right. We can rule that out.
KRISHNAMURTI: When I am not good I need their company, because in their company I see myself clearly; I feel a breath of freshness.
Needleman: Or how bad I am.
KRISHNAMURTI: The moment I have a horror of myself, in the largest sense of the word, I am merely comparing myself with them.
Needleman: No, not always. I can expose the image I have of myself as a lie.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now I am questioning whether you need them to expose yourself as a liar.
Needleman: In principle, no.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, not in principle. Either it is so, or it is not.
Needleman: That is the question.
KRISHNAMURTI: Which means if I need them, then I am lost. Then I will for ever hang on to them. Sir, this has happened since human relationships began.
Needleman: Yes it has. But it also happens that I hang on for a while and then I right it.
KRISHNAMURTI: Therefore why don’t you, the good man, tell me: “Look, begin, you don’t need me. You can watch yourself now clearly.”
Needleman: Maybe if I told you that, you would take it utterly wrongly and misunderstand me completely!
KRISHNAMURTI: Then what shall I do? Go on hanging onto you, run after you?
Needleman: Not what shall you do, but what do you do?
KRISHNAMURTI: What they generally do is run after him.
Needleman: They generally do, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: And hold on to his skirts.
Needleman: But that is perhaps because the teacher is not intelligent.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. He says, “Look, I can’t teach you my friend, I have nothing to teach. If I am really good I have nothing to teach. I can only show.”
Needleman: But he doesn’t say it, he does it.
KRISHNAMURTI: I say, “Look I don’t want to teach you, you can learn from yourself.”
Needleman: Yes, all right. Suppose he says that.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, he says learn from yourself. Don’t depend. That means you, being good, are helping me to look at myself.
Needleman: Attracting you.
KRISHNAMURTI: No. You are putting me in a corner so that I can’t escape.
Needleman: I see what you are saying. But it is the easiest thing in the world to escape.
KRISHNAMURTI: I don’t want to. Sir, you tell me, “Don’t depend, for goodness has no dependency.” If you want to be good you cannot depend on anything.
Needleman: Anything external, yes all right.
KRISHNAMURTI: On anything, external or inward. Don’t depend on anything. It doesn’t mean just don’t depend on the postman, it means inwardly don’t depend.
Needleman: Right.
KRISHNAMURTI: That means what? I depend. He has told me one thing: “Don’t depend on me or on anybody, wife, husband, daughter, politician, don’t depend.” That’s all. He goes away. He leaves me with that. What shall I do?
Needleman: Find out if he is right.
KRISHNAMURTI: But I do depend.
Needleman: That’s what I mean.
KRISHNAMURTI: I do depend on my wife, on the priest, on some psycho-analyst—I do depend. Then I begin. Because he tells me the truth—you follow, Sir? It is there, I have to work it out. So I have to find out if it is the truth, or if it is a falsehood. Which means I must exercise my reason, my capacity, my intelligence. I must work. I can’t just say, “Well he has gone”. I depend on my cook! So I have to find out, I have to see the truth and the false. I have seen it. That doesn’t depend on anybody.
Needleman: Right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Even the company of the good doesn’t teach me what is good and what is false, or true. I have to see it.
Needleman: Absolutely.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I don’t depend on anybody to find what is true and what is false.
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA
26 MARCH 1971
3Religious experience. Meditation
Questions: Observer and observed; fragmentation; resistance.
KRISHNAMURTI: We are going to examine together the question of what is hidden in the consciousness, in the deeper layers of the mind—which is generally called the unconscious. We are concerned with bringing about a radical revolution in ourselves and so in society. The physical revolution which is advocated all over the world at the present time does not bring about a fundamental change in man.
In a corrupt society, such as this, in Europe, India and elsewhere, there must be fundamental changes in the very structure of society. And if man remains corrupt in himself, in his activity, he will overcome whatever the structure be, however perfect; therefore it is imperative, absolutely essential that he change.
Is this change to be brought about through the process of time, through gradual achievement, through gradual change? Or does the change take place only in the instant? That is what we are going to examine together.
One sees that there must be change in oneself—the more sensitive, the more alert and intelligent one is, the more one is aware that there must be a deep, abiding, living change. The content of consciousness is consciousness—the two are not separate. What is implanted in consciousness makes up consciousness. And to bring about a change in consciousness—both in the obvious and in the hidden—does it depend on analysis, on time, on environmental pressure? Or is the change to take place totally independent of any pressure, of any compulsion?
You know, this question is going to be rather difficult to go into, because it is quite complex and I hope we shall be able to share what is being said. Unless one goes into this matter very seriously, really taking trouble, with deep interest, with passion, I am afraid one will not be able to go very far; far in the sense not of time or space, but very deeply within oneself. One needs a great deal of passion, great energy and most of us waste our energies in conflict. And when we are examining this whole business of existence, we need energy. Energy comes with the possibility of change; if there is no possibility of change, then energy wastes away.
We think we cannot possibly change. We accept things as they are and thereby become rather dispirited, depressed, uncertain and confused. It is possible to change radically and that is what we are going to examine. If you will—do not follow exactly what the speaker is saying, but use his words as a mirror to observe yourself and enquire with passion, with interest, with vitality and a great deal of energy. Then perhaps we can come to a point where it will be obvious that without any kind of effort, without any kind of motive, the radical change takes place.
There is not only the superficial knowledge of ourselves, but there is also the deep, hidden content of our consciousness. How is one to examine it, how is one to expose the whole content of it? Is it to be done bit by bit, slowly gradually?—or is it to be exposed totally and understood instantly, and thereby the whole analytical process comes to an end?
Now we are going to go into this question of analysis. To the speaker, analysis is the denial of action; action being always in the active present. Action means not “having done” or “will do”, but doing. Analysis prevents that action in the present, because in analysis there is involved time, a gradual peeling off as it were, layer after layer, and examining each layer, analysing the content of each layer. And if the analysis is not perfect, complete, true, then that analysis being incomplete, must leave a knowledge which is not total. And the next analysis springs from that which is not complete.
Look, I examine myself, analyse myself and if my analysis is not complete, then what I have analysed becomes the knowledge with which I proceed to analyse the next layer. So in that process each analysis becomes incomplete and leads to further conflict, and so to inaction. And in analysis there is the analyser and the analysed, whether the analyser is the professional, or yourself, the layman; there is this duality, the analyser analysing something which he thinks is different from himself. But the analyser, what is he? He is the past, he is the accumulated knowledge of all the things he has analysed. And with that knowledge—which is the past—he analyses the present.
So in that process there is conflict, there is the struggle to conform, or to force that which he analyses. Also there is this whole process of dreaming. I don’t know whether you have gone into all this yourself, or probably you have read other people’s books, which is most unfortunate; because then you merely repeat what other people have said, however famous they are. But if you don’t read all those books—as the speaker does not—then you have to investigate yourself, then it becomes much more fascinating, much more original, much more direct and true.
In the process of analysis there is this world of dreams. We accept dreams as necessary, because the professionals say, “You must dream, otherwise you go mad”, and there is some truth in that. We are enquiring into all this because we are trying to find out whether it is possible to change radically, when there is so much confusion, so much misery, such hatred and brutality in the world; there is no compassion. One must, if one is at all serious, enquire into all this. We are enquiring not merely for intellectual entertainment but actually trying to find out if it is possible to change. And when we see the possibility of change, whatever we are, however shallow, however superficial, repetitive, imitative, if we see that there is a possibility of radical change, then we have the energy to do so. If we say it is not possible, then that energy is dissipated.
So we are enquiring into this question, whether analysis does produce a radical change at all, or whether it is merely an intellectual entertainment, an avoidance of action. As we were saying, analysis implies entering into the world of dreams. What are dreams, how do they come into being? I don’t know if you have gone into this; if you have, you will see that dreams are the continuation of our daily life. What you are doing during the day, all the mischief, the corruption, the hatred, the passing pleasures, the ambition, the guilt and so on, all that is continued in the world of dreams, only in symbols, in pictures and images. These pictures and images have to be interpreted and all the fuss and unreality of all that comes into being.
One never asks why should one dream at all. One has accepted dreams as essential, as part of life. Now we are asking ourselves (if you are with me) why we dream at all. Is it possible when you go to sleep to have a mind that is completely quiet? Because it is only in that quiet state that it renews itself, empties itself of all its content, so that it is made fresh, young, decisive, not confused.
If dreams are the continuation of our daily life, of our daily turmoil, anxiety, the desire for security, attachment, then inevitably, dreams in their symbolic form must take place. That is clear, isn’t it? So one asks, “Why should one dream at all?” Can the brain cells be quiet, not carry on all the business of the day?
One has to find that out experimentally, not accepting what the speaker says—and for goodness sake don’t ever do that, because we are sharing together, investigating together. You can test it out by being totally aware during the day, watching your thoughts, your motives, your speech, the way you walk and talk. When you are so aware there are the intimations of the unconscious, of the deeper layers, because then you are exposing, inviting the hidden motives, the anxieties, the content of the unconscious to come into the open. So when you go to sleep, you will find that your mind, including the brain, is extraordinarily quiet. It is really resting, because you have finished what you have been doing during the day.
If you take stock of the day, as you go to bed and lie down—don’t you do this?—saying, “I should have done this, I should not have done that”, “It would have been better that way, I wish I hadn’t said this”—when you take stock of the things that have happened during the day, then you are trying to bring about order before you go to sleep. And if you don’t make order before you go to sleep, the brain tries to do it when you are asleep. Because the brain functions perfectly only in order, not in disorder. It functions most efficiently when there is complete order, whether that order is neurotic or rational; because in neurosis, in imbalance, there is order, and the brain accepts that order.
So, if you take stock of everything that has been happening during the day before you go to sleep, then you are trying to bring about order, and therefore the brain does not have to bring order while you are asleep: you have done it during the day. You can bring about that order every minute during the day, that is if you are aware of everything that’s happening, outwardly and inwardly. Outwardly in the sense of being aware of the disorder about you, the cruelty, the indifference, the callousness, the dirt, the squalor, the quarrels, the politicians and their chicanery—all that is happening. And your relationship with your husband, your wife, with your girl or boyfriend, be aware of all that during the day, without correcting it, just be aware of it. The moment you try to correct it, you are bringing disorder. But if you merely observe actually what is, then what is, is order.
It is only when you try to change “what is” that there is disorder; because you want to change according to the knowledge which you have acquired. That knowledge is the past and you are trying to change “what is”—which is not the past—according to what you have learnt. Therefore there is a contradiction, therefore there is a distortion, therefore this is disorder.
So during the day, if you are aware of the ways of your thoughts, your motives, the hypocrisy, the double-talk—doing one thing, saying another, thinking another—the mask that you put on, the varieties of deception that one has so readily to hand, if you are aware of all that during the day, you don’t have to take stock at all when you go to sleep, you are bringing order each minute. So when you do go to sleep you will find that your brain cells, which have recorded and hold the past, become totally quiet, and your sleep then becomes something entirely different. When we use the word “mind”, we include in that the brain, the whole nervous organism, the affections, all the human structure; we mean all that, not something separate. In that is included the intellect, the heart, the whole nervous organism. When you go to sleep then, the process has totally come to an end, and when you wake up you see things exactly as they are, not your interpretation of them or the desire to change them.
So analysis, for the speaker, prevents action. And action is absolutely essential in order to bring about this radical change. So analysis is not the way. Don’t accept, please, what the speaker is saying, but observe it for yourself, learn about it, not from me, but learn by watching all these implications of analysis: time, the analyser and the analysed—the analyser is the analysed—and each analysis must be complete, otherwise it distorts the next analysis. So to see that the whole process of analyses, whether it is introspective or intellectual analysis, is totally wrong! It is not the way out—maybe it is necessary for those who are somewhat, or greatly, unbalanced; and perhaps most of us are unbalanced.
We must find a way of observing the whole content of consciousness without the analyser. It is great fun if you go into this, because you have then rejected totally everything that man has said. Because then you stand alone; when you find out for yourself, it will be authentic, real, true, not dependent on any professor, any psychologist, any analyst and so on.
So one must find a way of observing without analysis. I’m going to go into that—I hope you don’t mind my doing all this, do you? This is not group therapy! (Laughter) This is not an open confession, it is not that the speaker is analysing you, or making you change and become marvellous human beings! You have to do this yourself, and as most of us are secondhand or third-hand human beings, it is going to be very difficult to put away totally all that has been imposed on your minds by the professionals, whether by religious or scientific professionals. We have to find out for ourselves.
If analysis is not the way—and it is not, as far as the speaker is concerned, as he has explained—then how is one to examine or to observe the total content of consciousness? What is the content of consciousness? Please don’t repeat what somebody else has said. What is your total content? Have you ever looked at it, considered it? If you have, is it not the various recorded incidents, happenings, pleasurable and non-pleasurable, various beliefs, traditions, the various individual recollections and memories, the racial and family memories, the culture in which one has been brought up—all that is the content, isn’t it? And the incidents that take place every day, the memories, the various pains, the unhappiness, the insults, all that is recorded. And that content is your consciousness—you, as a Catholic, or Protestant, living in this western world with the search for more and more and more, the world of great pleasure, entertainment, wealth, incessant noise of the television, the brutality—all that is you, that’s your content.
How is all that to be exposed?—and in the exposing of it, is each incident, each happening, each tradition, each hurt, each pain to be examined one by one? Or is it to be looked at totally? If it is to be examined bit by bit, one by one, you are entering into the world of analysis and there is no end to that, you will die analysing—and giving a great deal of money to those who analyse, if that’s your pleasure.
Now we’re going to find out how to look at these various fragments, which are the content of consciousness, totally—not analytically. We are going to find out how to observe without any analysis at all. That is, we have looked at everything—at the tree, at the cloud, at the wife and the husband, at the girl and the boy—as the observer and the observed. Please do give a little attention to this. You have observed your anger, your greed or your jealousy, whatever it is, as an observer looking at greed. The observer is greed, but you have separated the observer because your mind is conditioned to the analytical process; therefore you are always looking at the tree, at the cloud, at everything in life as an observer and the thing observed. Have you noticed it? You look at your wife through the image which you have of her; that image is the observer, it is the past, that image has been put together through time. And the observer is the time, is the past, is the accumulated knowledge of the various incidents, accidents, happenings, experiences and so on. That observer is the past, and he looks at the thing observed as though he were not of it, but separate from it.
Now can you look without the observer? Can you look at the tree without the past as the observer? That is, when there is the observer, then there is space between the observer and the observed—the tree. That space is time, because there is a distance. That time is the quality of the observer, who is the past, who is the accumulated knowledge, who says, “That is the tree”, or “That is the image of my wife.”
Can you look, not only at the tree, but at your wife or your husband, without the image? You know, this requires tremendous discipline. I am going to show you something: discipline generally implies conformity, drill, imitation, conflict between what is and what should be. And so in discipline there is conflict: suppressing, overcoming, the exercise of will and so on—all that is implied in that word. But that word means to learn—not to conform, not to suppress, but to learn. And the quality of the mind that learns has its own order which is discipline. We are learning now to observe, without the observer, without the past, without the image. When you so observe, the actual “what is”, is a living thing, not a thing looked upon as dead, recognisable by the past event, by past knowledge.
Look, Sirs, let’s make it much simpler than this. You say something to me which hurts me, and the pain of that hurt is recorded. The memory of that continues and when there is further pain, it is recorded again. So the hurt is being strengthened from childhood on. Whereas, if I observe it completely, when you say something which is painful to me, then it is not recorded as a hurt. The moment you record it as a hurt, that recording is continued and for the rest of your life you are being hurt, because you are adding to that hurt. Whereas to observe the pain completely without recording it, is to give your total attention at the moment of the pain. Are you doing all this?
Look, when you go out, when you walk in these streets, there are all kinds of noise, all kinds of shouting, vulgarity, brutality, this noise is pouring in. That is very destructive—the more sensitive you are the more destructive it becomes, it hurts your organism. You resist that hurt and therefore you build a wall. And when you build a wall you are isolating yourself. Therefore you are strengthening the isolation, by which you will get more and more hurt. Whereas if you are observing that noise, are attentive to that noise, then you will see that your organism is never hurt.
If you understand this one radical principle, you will have understood something immense: that where there is an observer separating himself from the thing he observes, there must be conflict. Do what you will, as long as there is a division between the observer and the observed, there must be conflict. As long as there is division between the Muslim and the Hindu, between the Catholic and the Protestant, between the Black and the White, there must be conflict; you may tolerate each other, which is an intellectual covering of intolerance.
As long as there is division between you and your wife, there must be conflict. This division exists fundamentally, basically, as long as there is the observer separate from the thing observed. As long as I say, “Anger is different from me, I must control anger, I must change, I must control my thoughts”, in that there is division, therefore there is conflict. Conflict implies suppression, conformity, imitation, all that is involved in it. If you really see the beauty of this, that the observer is the observed, that the two are not separate, then you can observe the totality of consciousness without analysis. Then you see the whole content of it instantly.
The observer is the thinker. We have given such tremendous importance to the thinker, haven’t we? We live by thought, we do things by thought, we plan our life by thought, our action is motivated by thought. And thought is worshipped throughout the world as the most extraordinarily important thing, which is part of the intellect.
And thought has separated itself as the thinker. The thinker says, “These thoughts are no good”, “These are better”, he says, “This ideal is better than that ideal”, “This belief is better than that belief”. It is all the product of thought—thought which has made itself separate, fragmented itself as the thinker, as the experiencer. Thought has separated itself as the higher self and the lower self—in India it is called the atman, the higher. Here you call it the soul, or this or that. But it is still thought in operation. That’s clear, isn’t it? I mean, this is logical, it is not irrational.
Now I am going to show you the irrationality of it. All our books, all our literature, everything is thought. And our relationship is based on thought—just think of it! My wife is the image which I have created by thinking. That thinking has been put together by nagging, by all the things which go on between husband and wife—pleasure, sex, the irritations, the exclusions, all the separative instincts that go on. Our thought is the result of our relationship. Now what is thought? You are asked that question, “What is thought?” Please don’t repeat somebody else—find out for yourself. Surely thought is the response of memory, isn’t it?—memory as knowledge, memory as experience which has been accumulated, stored up in the brain cells. So the brain cells themselves are the cells of memory. But if you did not think at all, you would be in a state of amnesia, you would not be able to get to your house.
Thought is the response of the accumulated memory as knowledge, as experience—whether it is yours, or the inherited, the communal experience and so on. So thought is the response of the past, which may project itself into the future, going through the present, modifying it as the future. But it is still the past. So thought is never free—how can it be? It can imagine what is freedom, it can idealise what freedom should be, create a Utopia of freedom. But thought itself, in itself, is of the past and therefore it is not free, it is always old. Please, it is not a question of your agreeing with the speaker, it is a fact. Thought organises our life, based on the past. That thought, based on the past, projects what should be tomorrow and so there is conflict.
From that arises a question, which is, for most of us, thought has given a great deal of pleasure. Pleasure is a guiding principle in our life. We are not saying that it is wrong or right, we are examining it. Pleasure is the thing that we want most. Here in this world and in the spiritual world, in heaven—if you have a heaven—we want pleasure in any form—religious entertainment, going to Mass, all the circus that goes on in the name of religion. And the pleasure of any incident, whether it is of a sunset, or sexual, or any sensory pleasure, is recorded and thought over. So thought as pleasure plays a tremendous part in our life. Something happened yesterday which was a most lovely thing, a most happy event, it is recorded; thought comes upon it, chews it and keeps on thinking about it and wants it repeated tomorrow, whether it be sexual or otherwise. So thought gives vitality to an incident that is over.
The very process of recording is knowledge, which is the past, and thought is the past. So thought, as pleasure, is sustained. If you have noticed, pleasure is always in the past; or the imagined pleasure of tomorrow is still the recollection projected into the future, from the past.
You can also observe that where there is pleasure and the pursuit of pleasure, there is also the nourishing of fear. Haven’t you noticed it? Fear of the thing I have done yesterday, fear of the physical pain which I had a week ago; thinking about it sustains the fear. There is no ending of that pain when it’s over. It is finished, but I carry it over by thinking about it.
So thought sustains and gives nourishment to pleasure as well as to fear. Thought is responsible for this. There is fear of the present, of the future, fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of not fulfilling, fear of not being loved, wanting to be loved—there are so many fears, all created by the machinery of thought. So there is the rationality of thought and the irrationality of thought.
There must be the exercise of thought in doing things. Technologically, in the office, when you cook, when you wash dishes—knowledge must function perfectly. There is the rationality, the logic of thought in action, in doing. But also thought becomes totally irrational when it sustains pleasure or fear. And yet thought says, “I cannot let go of my pleasure”; yet thought knows, if it is at all sensitive or aware, that there is pain coming with it.
So to be aware of all the machinery of thought, of the complicated, subtle movement of thought! This is really not at all difficult once you say, “I must find out a way of living that is totally different, a way of life in which there is no conflict.” If that is your real, your insistent, passionate demand—as is your demand for pleasure—to live a life, inwardly and outwardly in which there is no conflict whatsoever—then you will see the possibility of it. Because, as we have explained, conflict exists only when there is division between “me” and “not me”. Then if you see that, not verbally or intellectually—because that is not seeing—but when you actually realise that there is no division between the observer and the observed, between the thinker and the thought, then you see, then you observe actually “what is”. And when you see actually “what is”, you are already beyond it. You don’t stay with “what is”, you stay with “what is” only when the observer is different from the “what is”. Are you getting this? So when there is this complete cessation of division between the observer and the observed, then “what is” is no longer what is. The mind has gone beyond it.
Questioner: How can I change this identification of the observer with the observed? I can’t just agree with you and say “Yes, it’s true”, but have to do something about it.
KRISHNAMURTI: Quite right. Sir, there is no identification at all. When you identify yourself with the observed, it is still the pattern of thought, isn’t it?
Questioner: Precisely, but how do I get out of that?
KRISHNAMURTI: You don’t get out of it, I’ll show it to you, Sir. Do you see the truth that the observer is the observed?—the fact of it, the logic of it. Do you see that? Or don’t you?
Questioner: It is still only a comment which arises; the truth does not exist.
KRISHNAMURTI: The fact does not exist?
Questioner: No, a comment of agreement arises.
KRISHNAMURTI: But you see that fact, don’t you? Don’t agree or disagree, this is a very serious thing; I wish I could talk about meditation, but not now, for this is implied in it. Sir, see the importance of this. The truth is that “I am anger”—not “I” am different from anger. That is the truth, that is a fact, isn’t it? I am anger; not “I” separate from anger. When I am jealous, I am jealousy; not “I” am different from jealousy. I make myself separate from jealousy because I want to do something about it, sustain it or get rid of it or rationalise it, whatever it is. But the fact is, the “me” is jealous, isn’t it?
Now how am I to act when I am jealous, when “me” is jealousy? Before, I thought “I” could act when I separated myself from jealousy, I thought I could do something about it, suppress it, rationalise it, or run away from it—do various things. I thought I was doing something. Here, I feel I am not doing anything. That is, when I say “I am jealousy”, I feel I can’t move. Isn’t that right, Sir?
Look at the two varieties of activity, at the action which takes place when you are different from jealousy, which is the non-ending of jealousy. You may run away from it, you may suppress it, you may transcend it, you may escape, but it will come back, it will be there always, because there is the division between you and jealousy. Now there is a totally different kind of action when there is no division, because in that the observer is the observed, he cannot do anything about it. Before, he was able to do something about it, now he feels he is powerless, he is frustrated, he can’t do anything. If the observer is the observed, then there is no saying, “I can or can’t do anything about it”—he is what he is. He is jealousy. Now, when he is jealousy, what takes place? Go on, Sir!
Questioner: He understands . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: Do look at it, take time. When I think I am different from my jealousy, then I feel I can do something about it and in the doing of it there is conflict. Here on the other hand, when I realise the truth of it, that I am jealousy, that “I”, the observer, am the observed, then what takes place?
Questioner: There is no conflict.
KRISHNAMURTI: The element of conflict ceases. There conflict exists, here conflict does not exist. So conflict is jealousy. Have you got it? There has been complete action, an action in which there has been no effort at all, therefore it is complete, total, it will never come back.
Questioner: You said analysis is the deadly tool to thought or consciousness. I perfectly agree with you and you were about to say that you would develop the argument that there are fragments in the brain or in thought or in consciousness which will be anti-analysis. I should be grateful, Sir, if you would continue to develop that part of the argument.
KRISHNAMURTI: Of what, Sir?
Questioner: You mentioned the fragments will not constitute any conflict or struggle, they will be anti-analytical.
KRISHNAMURTI: I just explained, Sir, there must be fragmentation when there is the observer and the observed, as two different things. Sir, look, this is not an argument, there is nothing to develop. I have gone into it fairly thoroughly, we can spend of course lots more time, because the more deeply you go into it the more there is. We have broken up our life into many fragments, haven’t we?—the scientist, the businessman, the artist, the housewife and so on. What is the basis, what is the root of this fragmentation? The root of this fragmentation is the observer being separate from the observed. He breaks up life: I am a Hindu and you are a Catholic, I am a Communist, you are a bourgeois. So there is this division going on all the time. And I say, “Why is there this division, what causes this division?”—not only in the external, economic, social structure, but much more deeply. This division is brought about by the “me” and the “not me”—the me that wants to be superior, famous, greater—whereas “you” are different.
So the “me” is the observer, the “me” is the past, which divides the present as the past and the future. So as long as there is the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, there must be division. Where the observer is the observed, conflict ceases and therefore jealousy ceases. Because jealousy is conflict, isn’t it?
Questioner: Is jealousy human nature?
KRISHNAMURTI: Is violence human nature? Is greed human nature?
Questioner: I wanted to ask you another question, if I may. Am I right or wrong, according to what you’ve been telling us, to say, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he? So we must watch our thoughts and profit from experience.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s just it. As you think, what you think, you are. You think you are greater than somebody else, that you are inferior to somebody else, that you are perfect, that you are beautiful or not beautiful, that you are angry—what you think you are. That’s simple enough, isn’t it? One has to find out whether it is possible to live a life where thought has its rational function, and see where thought becomes irrational. We’ll go into that tomorrow.
Questioner: To continue with jealousy: when the jealousy is “me”, and “me” is the jealousy, the conflict ends, because I know it’s the jealousy and it disappears. But when I listen to the noises in the street and the “me” is the noise, and the noises are “me”, how can conflict end when that noise will go on for ever?
KRISHNAMURTI: It’s fairly simple, Madam. I walk down the street and that noise is terrible. And when I say that noise is “me”, the noise does not end, it goes on. Isn’t that the question? But I don’t say the noise is me, I don’t say the cloud is me, or the tree is me, why should I say the noise is me? We pointed out just now, that if you observe, if you say, “I listen to that noise”, listen completely, not with resistance, then that noise may go on for ever, it does not affect you. The moment you resist, you are separate from the noise—not identify yourself with the noise—I don’t know if you see the difference. The noise goes on, I can cut myself off from it by resisting it, putting a wall between myself and that noise. Then what takes place, when I resist something? There is conflict, isn’t there? Now can I listen to that noise without any resistance whatsoever?
Questioner: Yes, if you know that the noise might stop in an hour!
KRISHNAMURTI: No, that is still part of your resistance.
Questioner: That means that I can listen to the noise in the street for the rest of my life with the possibility I might become deaf.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, listen, Madam, I am saying something entirely different. We are saying, as long as there is resistance, there must be conflict. Whether I resist my wife, or my husband, whether I resist the noise of a dog barking, or the noise in the street, there must be conflict. Now, how is one to listen to the noise without conflict—not whether it will go on indefinitely, or hoping it will come to an end—but how to listen to the noise without any conflict? That is what we are talking about. You can listen to the noise when the mind is completely free of any form of resistance—not only to that noise, but to everything in life—to your husband, to your wife, to your children, to the politician. Therefore what takes place? Your listening becomes much more acute, you become much more sensitive, and therefore noise is only a part, it isn’t the whole world. The very act of listening is more important than the noise, so listening becomes the important thing and not the noise.
NEW YORK CITY
18 APRIL 1971
Questions: The concept of good and bad; sharing; pain and fear; how to be free of the past?
KRISHNAMURTI: I would like to talk about relationship, about what love is, about human existence in which is involved our daily living, the problems one has, the conflicts, the pleasures and the fears, and that most extraordinary thing one calls death.
I think one has to understand, not as a theory, not as a speculative, entertaining concept, but rather as an actual fact—that we are the world and the world is us. The world is each one of us; to feel that, to be really committed to it and to nothing else, brings about a feeling of great responsibility and an action that must not be fragmentary, but whole.
I think we are apt to forget that our society, the culture in which we live, which has conditioned us, is the result of human endeavour, conflict, human misery and suffering. Each one of us is that culture; the community is each one of us—we are not separate from it. To feel this, not as an intellectual idea or a concept, but to actually feel the reality of this, one has to go into the question of what is relationship; because our life, our existence, is based on relationship. Life is a movement in relationship. If we do not understand what is implied in relationship, we inevitably not only isolate ourselves, but create a society in which human beings are divided, not only nationally, religiously, but also in themselves and therefore they project what they are into the outer world.
I do not know if you have gone into this question deeply for yourself, to find out if one can live with another in total harmony, in complete accord, so that there is no barrier, no division, but a feeling of complete unity. Because relationship means to be related—not in action, not in some project, not in an ideology—but to be totally united in the sense that the division, the fragmentation between individuals, between two human beings, does not exist at all at any level.
Unless one finds this relationship, it seems to me that when we try to bring order in the world, theoretically or technologically, we are bound to create not only deep divisions between man and man, but also we shall be unable to prevent corruption. Corruption begins in the lack of relationship; I think that is the root of corruption. Relationship as we know it now is the continuation of division between individuals. The root-meaning of that word individual means “indivisible”. A human being who is in himself not divided, not fragmented, is really an individual. But most of us are not individuals; we think we are, and therefore there is the opposition of the individual to the community. One has to understand not only the meaning of that word individuality in the dictionary sense, but in that deep sense in which there is no fragmentation at all. That means perfect harmony between the mind, the heart and the physical organism. Only then an individuality exists.
If we examine our present relationship with each other closely, be it intimate or superficial, deep or passing, we see it is fragmented. Wife or husband, boy or girl, each lives in his own ambition, in personal and egotistic pursuits, in his own cocoon. All these contribute to the factor of bringing about an image in himself and therefore his relationship with another is through that image, therefore there is no actual relationship.
I do not know if you are aware of the structure and the nature of this image that one has built around oneself and in oneself. Each person is doing this all the time, and how can there be a relationship with another, if there is that personal drive, envy, competition, greed and all the rest of those things which are sustained and exaggerated in modern society? How can there be relationship with another, if each one of us is pursuing his own personal achievement, his own personal success?
I do not know if one is at all aware of this. We are so conditioned that we accept it as the norm, as the pattern of life, that each one must pursue his own particular idiosyncrasy or tendency, and yet try to establish a relationship with another in spite of this. Isn’t that what we are all doing? You may be married and you go to the office or to the factory; whatever you are doing during the whole of the day, you pursue that. And your wife is in her house, with her own troubles, with her own vanities, with all that happens. Where is the relationship between those two human beings? Is it in bed, in sex? Is a relationship so superficial, so limited, so circumscribed, not in itself corruption?
One may ask: how then are you to live, if you do not go to the office, pursue your own particular ambition, your own desire to achieve and to attain? If one does not do any of this, what is one to do? I think that is a wrong question altogether, don’t you? Because we are concerned, are we not, in bringing about a radical change in the whole structure of the mind. The crisis is not in the outer world, but in consciousness itself. And until we understand this crisis, not superficially, not according to some philosopher, but actually deeply understand it for ourselves by looking into it and examining it, we shall not be able to bring about a change. We are concerned with psychological revolution and this revolution can only take place when there is the right kind of relationship between human beings.
How is such a relationship to be brought about? The problem is clear, isn’t it? Please, share this problem with me, will you? It’s your problem, not my problem; it’s your life, not my life, it’s your sorrow, your trouble, your anxiety, your guilt. This battle is one’s life. If you listen merely to a description, then you will find that you are only swimming on the surface and not resolving any problem at all. It is actually your problem, and the speaker is merely describing it—knowing that the description is not the described. Let us share this problem together, which is: how can human beings, you and I, find a right relationship in all this turmoil, hatred, destruction, pollution, and among these terrible things which are going on in the world?
To find that out, it seems to me, one must examine what is taking place, see what actually “is”. Not what we should like to think it should be, or try to change our relationship to a future concept, but actually observe what it is now. In observing the fact, the truth, the actuality of it, there is a possibility of changing it. As we said the other day, when there is a possibility then there is great energy. What dissipates energy is the idea that it is not possible to change.
So we must look at our relationship as it is actually now, every day; and in observing what it is, we shall discover how to bring about a change in that actuality. So we are describing what actually is, which is: each one lives in his own world, in his world of ambition, greed, fear, the desire to succeed and all the rest of it—you know what is going on. If I am married, I have responsibilities, children, and all the rest of it. I go to the office, or some place of work, and we meet each other, husband and wife, boy and a girl, in bed. And that’s what we call love, leading separate lives, isolated, building a wall of resistance round ourselves, pursuing a self-centred activity; each one is seeking security psychologically, each one is depending on the other for comfort, for pleasure, for companionship; because each one is so deeply lonely, each demands to be loved, to be cherished, each one is trying to dominate the other.
You can see this for yourself, if you observe yourself. Is there any kind of relationship at all? There is no relationship between two human beings, though they may have children, a house, actually they are not related. If they have a common project, that project sustains them, holds them together, but that’s not relationship.
Realising all this, one sees that if there is no relationship between two human beings, then corruption begins—not in the outward structure of society, in the outer phenomenon of pollution, but inner pollution, corruption, destruction begins, when human beings have actually no relationship at all, as you haven’t. You may hold the hand of another, kiss each other, sleep together, but actually, when you observe very closely, is there any relationship at all? To be related means not to be dependent on each other, not to escape from your loneliness through another, not to try to find comfort, companionship, through another. When you seek comfort through another, are dependent and all the rest of it, can there be any kind of relationship? Or are you then using each other?
We are not being cynical, but actually observing what is: that is not cynicism. So to find out what it actually means to be related to another, one must understand this question of loneliness, because most of us are terribly lonely; the older we grow the more lonely we become, especially in this country. Have you noticed the old people, what they are like? Have you noticed their escapes, their amusements? They have worked all their lives and they want to escape into some kind of entertainment.
Seeing this, can we find a way of living in which we don’t use another?—psychologically, emotionally, not depend on another, not use another as a means of escape from our own tortures, from our own despairs, from our own loneliness.
To understand this is to understand what it means to be lonely. Have you ever been lonely? Do you know what it means?—that you have no relationship with another, are completely isolated. You may be with your family, in a crowd, or in the office, wherever you are, when this complete sense of utter loneliness with its despair suddenly comes upon you. Till you solve that completely, your relationship becomes a means of escape and therefore it leads to corruption, to misery. How is one to understand this loneliness, this sense of complete isolation? To understand it, one has to look at one’s own life. Is not your every action a self-centred activity? You may occasionally be charitable, generous, do something without any motive—those are rare occasions. This despair can never be dissolved through escape, but by observing it.
So we have come back to this question, which is: how to observe? How to observe ourselves, so that in that observation there is no conflict at all? Because conflict is corruption, is waste of energy, it is the battle of our life, from the moment we are born till we die. Is it possible to live without a single moment of conflict? To do that, to find that out for ourselves, one has to learn how to observe our whole movement. There is observation which becomes harmonious, which is true, when the observer is not, but only observation. We went into that the other day.
When there is no relationship can there be love? We talk about it, and love, as we know it, is related to sex and pleasure, isn’t it? Some of you say “No”. When you say “No”, then you must be without ambition, then there must be no competition, no division—as you and me, we and they. There must be no division of nationality, or the division brought about by belief, by knowledge. Then, only, can you say you love. But for most people love is related to sex and pleasure and all the travail that comes with it: jealousy, envy, antagonism, you know what happens between man and woman. When that relationship is not true, real, deep, completely harmonious, then how can you have peace in the world? How can there be an end to war?
So relationship is one of the most, or rather the most important thing in life. That means that one has to understand what love is. Surely, one comes upon it, strangely, without asking for it. When you find out for yourself what love is not, then you know what love is—not theoretically, not verbally—but when you realise actually what it is not, which is: not to have a mind that is competitive, ambitious, a mind that is striving, comparing, imitating; such a mind cannot possibly love.
So can you, living in this world, live completely without ambition, completely without ever comparing yourself with another? Because the moment you compare, then there is conflict, there is envy, there is the desire to achieve, to go beyond the other.
Can a mind and a heart that remembers the hurts, the insults, the things that have made it insensitive and dull—can such a mind and heart know what love is? Is love pleasure? And yet that is what we are pursuing, consciously or unconsciously. Our gods are the result of our pleasure. Our beliefs, our social structure, the morality of society—which is essentially immoral—is the result of our pursuit of pleasure. And when you say, “I love somebody”, is it love? That means: no separation, no domination, no self-centred activity. To find out what it is, one must deny all this—deny it in the sense of seeing the falseness of it. When you once see something as false—which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human—then you can never go back to it; when you see a dangerous snake, or a dangerous animal, you never play with it, you never come near it. Similarly, when you actually see that love is none of these things, feel it, observe it, chew it, live with it, are totally committed to it, then you will know what love is, what compassion is—which means passion for everyone.
We have no passion; we have lust, we have pleasure. The root-meaning of the word passion is sorrow. We have all had sorrow of some kind or another, losing somebody, the sorrow of self-pity, the sorrow of the human race, both collective and personal. We know what sorrow is, the death of someone whom you consider you have loved. When we remain with that sorrow totally, without trying to rationalise it, without trying to escape from it in any form through words or through action, when you remain with it completely, without any movement of thought, then you will find, out of that sorrow comes passion. That passion has the quality of love, and love has no sorrow.
One has to understand this whole question of existence, the conflicts, the battles: you know the life that one leads, so empty, so meaningless. The intellectuals try to give it a meaning and we also want to find significance to life, because life has no meaning as it is lived. Has it? The constant struggle, the endless work, the misery, the suffering, the travail that one goes through in life, all that has actually no meaning—we go through it as a habit. But to find out what the significance is, one must also understand the significance of death; because living and dying go together, they are not two separate things.
So one must enquire what it means to die, because that is part of our living. Not something in the distant future, to be avoided, only to be faced when one is desperately ill, in old age or in an accident, or on a battlefield. As it is part of our daily life to live without a single breath of conflict, so it is part of our life to find out what it means to love. That is also part of our existence, and one must understand it.
How do we understand what death is? When you are dying, at the last moment, can you understand the way you have lived?—the strains, the emotional struggles, the ambitions, the drive; you are probably unconscious and that makes you incapable of clear perception. Then there is the deterioration of the mind in old age and all the rest of it. So one has to understand what death is now, not tomorrow. As you observe, thought does not want to think about it. It thinks about all the things it will do tomorrow—how to make new inventions, better bathrooms, all the things that thought can think about. But it does not want to think about death, because it does not know what it means.
Is the meaning of death to be found through the process of thought? Please do share this. When we share it, then we will begin to see the beauty of all this, but if you sit there and let the speaker go on, merely listening to his words, then we don’t share together. Sharing together implies a certain quality of care, attention, affection, love. Death is a tremendous problem. The young people may say: why do you bother about it? But it is part of their life, as it is part of their life to understand celibacy. Don’t just say, “Why do you talk about celibacy, that’s for the old fogeys, that’s for the stupid monks.” What it means to be celibate has also been a problem for human beings, that also is part of life.
Can the mind be completely chaste? Not being able to find out how to live a chaste life, one takes vows of celibacy and goes through tortures. That is not celibacy. Celibacy is something entirely different. It is to have a mind that is free from all images, from all knowledge; which means understanding the whole process of pleasure and fear.
Similarly, one has to understand this thing called death. How do you proceed to understand something of which you are terribly frightened? Aren’t we frightened of death? Or we say, “Thank God I’m going to die, I’ve had enough of this life with all the misery of it, the confusion, the shoddiness, the brutality, the mechanical things by which one is caught, thank God all this will end!” That is not an answer; nor is it to rationalise death, or to believe in some reincarnation, as the whole Asiatic world does. To find out what reincarnation means, which is to be born in a future existence, you must find out what you are now. If you believe in reincarnation, what are you now?—a lot of words, a lot of experience, of knowledge; you are conditioned by various cultures, you are all the identifications of your life, your furniture, your house, your bank account, your experiences of pleasure and pain. That’s what you are, aren’t you? The remembrance of the failures, the hopes, the despairs, all that you are now, and that is going to be born in the next life—a lovely idea, isn’t it!
Or you think there is a permanent soul, a permanent entity. Is there anything permanent in you? The moment you say there is a permanent soul, a permanent entity, that entity is the result of your thinking, or the result of your hopes, because there is so much insecurity, everything is transient, in a flux, in a movement. So when you say there is something permanent, that permanency is the result of your thinking. And thought is of the past, thought is never free—it can invent anything it likes!
So if you believe in a future birth, then you must know that the future is conditioned by the way you live now, what you do now, what you think, what your acts are, your ethics. So what you are now, what you do now, matters tremendously. But those people who believe in a future birth don’t give a pin about what happens now, it’s just a matter of belief.
So, how do you find out what death means, when you are living with vitality, with energy, full of health? Not when you are unbalanced, or ill, not at the last moment, but now, knowing the organism must inevitably wear out, like every machinery. Unfortunately we use our machinery so disrespectfully, don’t we? Knowing the physical organism comes to an end, have you ever thought about what it means to die? You can’t think about it. Have you ever experimented to find out what it means to die psychologically, inwardly?—not how to find immortality, because eternity, that which is timeless, is now, not in some distant future. To enquire into that, one must understand the whole problem of time; not only chronological time, by the watch, but the time that thought has invented as a gradual process of change.
How does one find out about this strange thing that we all have to meet one day or another? Can you die psychologically today, die to everything that you have known? For instance: to die to your pleasure, to your attachment, your dependence, to end it without arguing, without rationalising, without trying to find ways and means of avoiding it. Do you know what it means to die, not physically, but psychologically, inwardly? Which means to put an end to that which has continuity; to put an end to your ambition, because that’s what’s going to happen when you die, isn’t it? You can’t carry it over and sit next to God! (Laughter) When you actually die, you have to end so many things without any argument. You can’t say to death, “Let me finish my job, let me finish my book, all the things I have not done, let me heal the hurts which I have given others”—you have no time.
So can you find out how to live a life now, today, in which there is always an ending to everything that you began? Not in your office of course, but inwardly to end all the knowledge that you have gathered—knowledge being your experiences, your memories, your hurts, the comparative way of living, comparing yourself always with somebody else. To end all that every day, so that the next day your mind is fresh and young. Such a mind can never be hurt, and that is innocence.
One has to find out for oneself what it means to die; then there is no fear, therefore every day is a new day—and I really mean this, one can do this—so that your mind and your eyes see life as something totally new. That is eternity. That is the quality of the mind that has come upon this timeless state, because it has known what it means to die every day to everything it has collected during the day. Surely, in that there is love. Love is something totally new every day, but pleasure is not, pleasure has continuity. Love is always new and therefore it is its own eternity.
Do you want to ask any questions?
Questioner: Supposing, Sir, that through complete, objective, self-observation I find that I am greedy, sensual, selfish and all that. Then how can I know whether this kind of living is good or bad, unless I have already some preconceptions of the good? If I have these preconceptions, they can only derive from self-observation.
KRISHNAMURTI: Quite, Sir.
Questioner: I also find another difficulty. You seem to believe in sharing, but at the same time you say that two lovers, or husband and wife, cannot base their love, shouldn’t base their love, on comforting each other. I don’t see anything wrong in comforting each other—that is sharing.
KRISHNAMURTI: The gentleman says, “One must have a concept of the good, otherwise, why should one give up all this ambition, greed, envy and all the rest of it?” You can have a formula or a concept of what is better, but can you have a concept of what is good?
Questioner: Yes, I think so.
KRISHNAMURTI: Can thought produce what is good?
Questioner: No, I meant the conception of such good.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, Sir. The conception of good is the product of thought; otherwise how can you conceive what is good?
Questioner: The conceptions can only be derived from our self-observation.
KRISHNAMURTI: I’m just pointing that out, Sir. Why should you have a concept of the good at all?
Questioner: Otherwise how do I know whether my life is good or bad?
KRISHNAMURTI: Just listen to the question. Don’t we know what conflict is? Do I have to have a concept of non-conflict before I am aware of conflict? I know what conflict is—the struggle, the pain. Don’t I know that, without knowing a state when there is no conflict? When I formulate what is good, I will formulate it according to my conditioning, according to my way of thinking, feeling, my particular idiosyncrasy and all the rest of my cultural conditioning. Is the good to be projected by thought?—and will thought then tell me what is good and bad in my life? Or has goodness nothing whatsoever to do with thought, or with a formula? Where does goodness flower?—do tell me. In a concept? In some idea, in some ideal that lies in the future? A concept means a future, a tomorrow. It may be very far away, or very close, but it is still in time. And when you have a concept, projected by thought—thought being the response of memory, the response of accumulated knowledge depending on the culture in which you have lived—do you find that goodness in the future, created by thought? Or do you find it when you begin to understand conflict, pain and sorrow?
So in the understanding of “what is”—not by comparing “what is” with “what should be”—in that understanding flowers goodness. Surely, goodness has nothing whatsoever to do with thought—has it? Has love got anything to do with thought? Can you cultivate love by formulating it and saying, “My ideal of love is that”! Do you know what happens when you cultivate love? You are not loving. You think you will have love at some future date; in the meantime you are violent. So is goodness the product of thought? Is love the product of experience, of knowledge? What was the second question, Sir?
Questioner: The second question was about sharing.
KRISHNAMURTI: What do you share? What are we sharing now? We talked about death, we talked about love, about the necessity of total revolution, about complete psychological change, not to live in the old pattern of formulas, of struggle, pain, imitation, conformity and all the rest of those things man has lived for through millennia and has produced this marvellous, messy world! We have talked about death. How do we share that together?—share the understanding of it, not the verbal statement, not the description, not the explanations of it? What does sharing mean?—to share the understanding, to share the truth which comes with the understanding. And what does understanding mean? You tell me something which is serious, which is vital, which is relevant, important, and I listen to it completely, because it is vital to me. To listen vitally, my mind must be quiet, mustn’t it? If I am chattering, if I am looking somewhere else, if I am comparing what you are saying with what I know, my mind is not quiet. It is only when my mind is quiet and listens completely, that there is the understanding of the truth of the thing. That we share together, otherwise we can’t share; we can’t share the words—we can only share the truth of something. You and I can only see the truth of something when the mind is totally committed to the observation.
To see the beauty of a sunset, the lovely hills, the shadows and the moonlight—how do you share it with a friend? By telling him, “Do look at that marvellous hill”? You may say it, but is that sharing? When you actually share something with another, it means you must both have the same intensity, at the same time, at the same level. Otherwise you can’t share, can you? You must both have a common interest, at the same level, with the same passion—otherwise how can you share something? You can share a piece of bread—but that’s not what we are talking about.
To see together—which is sharing together—we must both of us see; not agree or disagree, but see together what actually is; not interpret it according to my conditioning or your conditioning, but see together what it is. And to see together one must be free to observe, one must be free to listen. That means to have no prejudice. Then only, with that quality of love, is there sharing.
Questioner: How can one quieten, or free the mind, from interruptions by the past?
KRISHNAMURTI: You cannot quieten the mind: full stop! Those are tricks. You can take a pill and make the mind quiet —you absolutely cannot make the mind quiet, because you are the mind. You can’t say, “I will make my mind quiet”. Therefore one has to understand what meditation is—actually, not what other people say it is. One has to find out whether the mind can ever be quiet; not: how to make the mind quiet. So one has to go into this whole question of knowledge, and whether the mind, the brain cells, which are loaded with all the past memories, can be absolutely quiet and come into function when necessary; and when it is not necessary, be completely and wholly quiet.
Questioner: Sir, when you speak of relationships, you speak always of a man and a woman or a girl and a boy. Will the same things you say about relationships also apply to a man and a man, or a woman and a woman?
KRISHNAMURTI: Homosexuality?
Questioner: If you wish to give it that name, Sir, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: You see, when we are talking of love, whether it is of man and man, woman and woman, or man and woman, we are not talking of a particular kind of relationship, we are talking about the whole movement, the whole sense of relationship, not a relationship with one, or two. Don’t you know what it means to be related to the world?—when you feel you are the world. Not as an idea—that’s appalling—but actually to feel that you are responsible, that you are committed to this responsibility. That is the only commitment; not to be committed through bombs, or committed to a particular activity, but to feel that you are the world and the world is you. Unless you change completely, radically, and bring about a total mutation in yourself, do what you will outwardly, there will be no peace for man. If you feel that in your blood, then your questions will be related entirely to the present and to bringing about a change in the present, not to some speculative ideals.
Questioner: The last time we were together, you were telling us that if someone has a painful experience and it is not fully faced, or is avoided, it goes into the unconscious as a fragment. How are we to free ourselves from these fragments of painful and fearful experiences, so that the past won’t have a grip on us?
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, Sir, that is conditioning. How does one free oneself from this conditioning? How do I free myself from my conditioning of the culture in which I was born? First, I must be aware that I am conditioned—not somebody telling me that I am conditioned. You understand the difference? If somebody tells me I am hungry, that’s something different from actually being hungry. So I must be aware of my conditioning, which means, I must be aware of it not only superficially, but at the deeper levels. That is, I must be aware totally. To be so aware, means that I am not trying to go beyond the conditioning, not trying to be free of the conditioning. I must see it as it actually is, not bring in another element, such as: wanting to be free of it, because that is an escape from actuality. I must be aware. What does that mean? To be aware of my conditioning totally, not partially, means my mind must be highly sensitive, mustn’t it? Otherwise I can’t be aware. To be sensitive means to observe everything very, very closely—the colours, the quality of people, all the things around me. I must also be aware of what actually is without any choice. Can you do that?—not trying to interpret it, not trying to change it, not trying to go beyond it or trying to be free of it—-just to be totally aware of it.
When you observe a tree, between you and the tree there is time and space, isn’t there? And there is also the botanical knowledge about it, the distance between you and the tree—which is time—and the separation which comes through knowledge of the tree. To look at that tree without knowledge, without the time-quality, does not mean identifying yourself with the tree, but to observe the tree so attentively, that the boundaries of time don’t come into it at all; the boundaries of time come in only when you have knowledge about the tree. Can you look at your wife, or your friend, or whatever it is without the image? The image is the past, which has been put together by thought, as nagging, bullying, dominating, as pleasure, companionship and all that. It is the image that separates; it is the image that creates distance and time. Look at that tree, or the flower, the cloud, or the wife or the husband, without the image!
If you can do that, then you can observe your conditioning totally; then you can look at it with a mind that is not spotted by the past, and therefore the mind itself is free of conditioning. To look at myself—as we generally do—I look as an observer looking at the observed: myself as the observed and the observer looking at it. The observer is the knowledge, is the past, is time, the accumulated experiences—he separates himself from the thing observed.
Now, to look without the observer! You do this when you are completely attentive. Do you know what it means to be attentive? Don’t go to school to learn to be attentive! To be attentive means to listen without any interpretation, without any judgement—just to listen. When you are so listening there is no boundary, there is no “you” listening. There is only a state of listening. So when you observe your conditioning, the conditioning exists only in the observer, not in the observed. When you look without the observer, without the “me”—his fears, his anxieties and all the rest of it—then you will see, you enter into a totally different dimension.
NEW YORK CITY
24 APRIL 1971
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE. MEDITATION
Questions: The analogy of dirt; awareness; consciousness; love; psychological time.
KRISHNAMURTI: We said that we would talk over together a very complex problem, which is: is there a religious experience, and what are the implications of meditation? If one observes, it appears that throughout the world man has always been seeking something beyond his own death, beyond his own problems, something that will be enduring, true and timeless. He has called it God, he has given it many names; and most of us believe in something of that kind, without ever actually experiencing it.
Various religions have promised that if you believe in certain forms of rituals, dogmas, saviours, you might, if you lead a certain kind of life, come upon this strange thing, whatever name one likes to give to it. And those who have directly experienced it, have done it according to their conditioning, to their belief, to their environmental and cultural influences.
Apparently religion has lost its meaning, because there have been religious wars; religion does not answer all our problems, religions have separated peoples. They have brought about some kind of civilising influence, but they have not changed man radically. When one begins to enquire if there is such a thing as religious experience and what that experience is, why one calls it “religious”, obviously one must first have a great deal of honesty. It is not to be honest according to a principle or a belief, or to some form of commitment, but to honestly see things exactly as they are, without any distortion, not only outwardly, but also inwardly: never to deceive oneself. For deception is quite easy if one craves for some kind of experience, call it religious or otherwise—if one takes a trip and so on. Then you are bound to be caught in some kind of illusion.
One has to find out for oneself, if one can, what religious experience is. One needs a great sense of humility and honesty, which means never to ask for experience, never to demand for oneself a reality or an achievement. So one has to look very closely at one’s own desires, attachments and fears and understand them wholly, if one can, so that the mind is in no way distorted, so that there will be no illusion, no deception. And one has to ask also: what does it mean to experience?
I do not know if you have gone into that question at all. Most of us are bored with the usual experiences of every day. We are tired of them all, and the more one is sophisticated, intellectual, the more one wants to live only in the present—whatever that may mean—and invent a philosophy of the present. The word experience means to go through, to go right to the end and finish with it. But unfortunately for most of us, every experience leaves a scar, a memory, pleasant or unpleasant, and we want to retain only the pleasant ones. When we are asking for any kind of spiritual, religious, or transcendental experience, we must try to find out first of all whether there is such an experience, and also what experience itself means. If you experience something and you cannot recognise it, then that experience ceases to be. One of the essential meanings of experience is recognition. And when there is recognition, it has already been known, has already been experienced, otherwise you could not recognise it.
So when they talk about religious, spiritual, or transcendental experience—that word is so misused—you must already have known it, to be able to recognise that you are experiencing something other than an ordinary experience. It seems logical and true that the mind must be able to recognise the experience, and recognition implies something you have already known, therefore it is not new.
When you want experience in the religious field, you want it because you have not solved your problems, your daily anxieties, despairs, fears and sorrows, therefore you want something more. In that demand for more lies deception. That is fairly logical and true, I think. Not that logic is always true, but when one uses logic and reason healthily, sanely, one knows the limitations of reason. The demand for wider, deeper, more fundamental experiences only leads to a further extension of the path of the known. I think that is clear, and I hope we are communicating, sharing with each other.
Then also in this religious enquiry one is seeking to find out what truth is, if there is a reality, if there is such a thing as a state of mind that is beyond time. Search again implies a seeker—doesn’t it? And what is he seeking? How will he know that what he has found in his search is true? Again, if he finds what is true—at least what he thinks is true—that depends on his conditioning, on his knowledge, on his past experiences; search then merely becomes a further projection of his own past hopes, fears and longings.
A mind that is enquiring—not seeking—must be totally free of these two, that is, of the demand for experience and the search for truth. One can see why, because when you are seeking, you go to various teachers, read various books, join various cults, follow various gurus and all the rest of it, like window-shopping. Such a search has no meaning whatsoever.
So when you are enquiring into this question, “What is a religious mind, and what is the quality of mind that is no longer experiencing anything at all?”—you must find out if the mind can be free from the demand for experience and can completely end all seeking. One has to investigate without any motive, without any purpose, the facts of time and if there is a timeless state. To enquire into that means to have no belief whatsoever, not to be committed to any religion, to any so-called spiritual organisation, not to follow any guru, and therefore to have no authority whatsoever—including that of the speaker especially. Because you are very easily influenced, you are terribly gullible, though you may be sophisticated, may know a great deal; but you are always eager, always wanting, and therefore are gullible.
So a mind that is enquiring into the question of what is religion, must be entirely free of any form of belief, any form of fear; because fear, as we explained the other day, is a distorting factor, bringing about violence and aggression. Therefore the mind that is enquiring into the quality of the religious state and movement, must be free of this. That demands great honesty and a great sense of humility.
For most of us, vanity is one of the major impediments. Because we think we know, because we have read a great deal, because we have committed ourselves, have practised this or that system, followed some guru peddling his philosophy, we think we know, at least a little bit, and that’s the beginning of vanity. When you are enquiring into such an extraordinary question, there must be the freedom of actually not knowing a thing about it. You really don’t know, do you? You don’t know what truth is, what God is—if there is such a thing—or what is a truly religious mind. You have read about it, people have talked about it for millennia, have built monasteries, but actually they are living on other people’s knowledge, experience and propaganda. To find out, surely one must put aside all that completely, and therefore the enquiry into all this is a very serious matter. If you want to play with it, there are all kinds of so-called spiritual, religious entertainments, but they have no value whatsoever to a serious mind.
To enquire into what is a religious mind, we must be free of our conditioning, of our Christianity, of our Buddhism, with all the propaganda of thousands of years, so that the mind is really free to observe. That is very difficult because we are afraid to be alone, to stand alone. We want security, both outwardly and inwardly; therefore we depend on people, whether it is the priest, or the leader, or the guru who says: “I have experienced, that is why I know.” One has to stand completely alone—not isolated. There is a vast difference between isolation and being completely alone, integral. Isolation is a state of mind in which relationship ceases, when in your daily life and activity you have actually built a wall around yourself, consciously or unconsciously, so as not to be hurt. That isolation obviously prevents every form of relationship. Aloneness implies a mind that does not depend on another psychologically, is not attached to any person; which does not mean that there is no love—love is not attachment. Aloneness implies a mind that is deeply, inwardly without any sense of fear and therefore without any sense of conflict.
If you go as far as that, then we can proceed to find out what discipline means. For most of us discipline is a form of drill, of repetition; either overcoming an obstacle, or resisting or suppressing, controlling, shaping, conforming—all that is implied in the word discipline. The root-meaning of that word is to learn; a mind that is willing to learn—not to conform—must be curious, must have great interest, and a mind that already knows, cannot possibly learn. So discipline means to learn why one controls, why one suppresses, why there is fear, why one conforms, compares, and is therefore in conflict. That very learning brings about order; not order according to a design or pattern, but in the very enquiry into the confusion, into the disorder, there is order. Most of us are confused for a dozen reasons, which we needn’t go into for the moment. One has to learn about confusion, about the disorderly life one leads; not try to bring order into the confusion, or into the disorder, but to learn about it. Then, as you are learning, order comes into being.
Order is a living thing, not mechanical, and order surely is virtue. A mind that is confused, conforming, imitating, is not orderly—it is in conflict. And a mind that is in conflict is disorderly and therefore such a mind has no virtue. Out of this enquiry, out of learning, comes order, and order is virtue. Please observe it in yourself, see how disordered one is in one’s life, so confused, so mechanical. In that state one tries to find a moral way of living, which will be orderly and sane. How can a mind that is confused, conforming, imitative, have any kind of order, any kind of virtue? The social morality, as you observe, is totally immoral; it may be respectable, but what is respectable is generally disorderly.
Order is necessary, because only out of order can there be a total action and action is life. But our action brings disorder; there is political action, religious action, business action, family action—they are fragmentary actions. And naturally such action is contradictory. You are a businessman and at home you are a kindly human being—at least you pretend to be; there is contradiction and therefore there is disorder. A mind that is in disorder cannot possibly understand what virtue is. And nowadays, when there is permissiveness of every kind, virtue and order are denied. The religious mind must have this order, not according to a pattern, or a design laid down by you or by another. But that order, that sense of moral rectitude, comes only when you understand the disorder, the confusion, the mess that one lives in.
Now all this is to lay the foundation for meditation. If you don’t lay the foundations, meditation then becomes an escape. You can play with that kind of meditation endlessly. And that is what most people are doing—leading ordinary, confused, messy lives and somehow finding a corner to bring about a quiet mind. And there are all these people who promise to give you a quiet mind, whatever that may mean.
So for a serious mind—and it is a very serious thing, not a game—one must have this freedom from all belief, from all commitments, because one is committed to the whole of life, not to one fragment of it. Most of us are committed to physical or political revolution, or to a religious activity, to some kind of religious, monastic life and so on. Those are all fragmentary commitments. We are talking of freedom, so that you can commit your whole being, your whole energy, vitality and passion to the whole of life, not to one part of it. Then we can proceed to find out what it means to meditate.
I don’t know if you have gone into this at all. Probably some of you have played with it, have tried to control your thoughts, followed various systems, but that is not meditation. One has to dispose of the systems one has been offered: Zen, Transcendental Meditation, the various things that have been brought over from India and Asia, in which people are caught. One has to go into this question of systems, of methods, and I hope you will; we are sharing this problem together.
When you have a system to follow, what happens to the mind? What do systems and methods imply—a guru? I don’t know why they call themselves gurus—I can’t find a strong enough word to deny that whole world of gurus, of their authority, because they think they know. A man who says “I know”, such a man does not know. Or if a man says, “I have experienced truth”, distrust him completely. These are the people who offer systems. A system implies practice, following, repetition, changing “what actually is” and therefore increasing your conflict. Systems make the mind mechanical, they don’t give you freedom, they may promise freedom at the end, but freedom is at the beginning, not at the end. To enquire into the truth of any system, if you have no freedom at the beginning, then you are bound to end up with a system and therefore with a mind which is incapable of subtlety, swiftness and sensitivity. So one can dispose entirely of all systems.
What is important is not controlling thought, but understanding it, understanding the origin, the beginning of thought, which is in yourself. That is, the brain stores up memories—you can observe this yourself, you don’t have to read books about it. If it had not stored up memories it would not be able to think at all. That memory is the result of experience, of knowledge—yours, or of the community, of the family, of the race and so on. Thought springs from that storehouse of memory. So thought is never free, it is always old, there is no such thing as freedom of thought. Thought can never be free in itself, it can talk about freedom, but in itself it is the result of past memories, experiences and knowledge; therefore it is old. Yet one must have this accumulation of knowledge, otherwise one could not function, one could not speak to another, could not go home, and so on. Knowledge is essential.
In meditation one has to find out whether there is an end to knowledge and so to freedom from the known. If meditation is a continuation of knowledge, is the continuation of everything that man has accumulated, then there is no freedom. There is freedom only when there is an understanding of the function of knowledge and therefore freedom from the known.
We are enquiring into the field of knowledge, where it has its function and where it becomes an impediment to further enquiry. While the brain cells continue to operate, they can only operate in the field of knowledge. That is the only thing the brain can do, to function in the field of experience, of knowledge in the field of time—which is the past. Meditation is to find out if there is a field which is not already contaminated by the known.
If I meditate and continue with what I have already learnt, with what I already know, then I am living in the past, within the field of my conditioning. In that there is no freedom. I may decorate the prison in which I live, I may do all kinds of things in that prison, but there is still a limitation, a barrier. So the mind has to find out whether the brain cells, which have developed through millennia, can be totally quiet, and respond to a dimension they do not know. Which means, can the mind be totally still?
This has been the problem of all religious people throughout the centuries; they realise that you must have a very quiet mind, because then only can you see. If you are chattering, if your mind is constantly in movement, rushing all over the place, obviously it cannot look, it cannot listen totally. So they say, “Control it, hold it, put it in a prison”; they have not found a way of bringing about a mind that is completely and utterly quiet. They say, “Don’t yield to any desire, don’t look at a woman, don’t look at the beautiful hills, the trees and the beauty of the earth, because if you do, it might remind you of a woman, or a man. Therefore control, hold on, and concentrate.” When you do all that, you are in conflict, and therefore there has to be more control, more subjugation. This has been going on for millennia, because they realise they must have a quiet mind. Now, how does the mind become quiet?—without effort, without control, without giving it a frontier? The moment you ask “how” you are introducing a system. Therefore there is no “how”.
Can the mind become quiet? I don’t know what you are going to do about it when you see the problem, when you see the necessity, the truth of having this delicate, subtle mind, which is absolutely quiet. How is it to happen? This is the problem of meditation, because only such a mind is a religious mind. It is only such a mind that sees the whole of life as a unit, as a unitary movement, not fragmented. Therefore such a mind acts totally, not fragmentarily, because it acts out of complete stillness.
The foundation is a life of complete relationship, a life that is orderly and therefore virtuous, a life that is extraordinarily simple inwardly, and therefore totally austere—the austerity of deep simplicity, which means that the mind is not in conflict. When you have laid that foundation, easily, without any effort—because the moment you introduce effort there is conflict—you see the truth of it. Therefore it is the perception of “what is” that brings about a radical change.
It is only the still mind that understands that in a quiet mind there is a movement that is totally different, that is of a different dimension, of a different quality. That can never be put into words, because it is indescribable. What can be described is what comes up to this point, the point when you have laid the foundation and seen the necessity, the truth, and the beauty of a still mind.
For most of us, beauty is in something, in a building, in a cloud, in the shape of a tree, in a beautiful face. Is beauty “out there”, or is it a quality of mind that has no self-centred activity? Because like joy, the understanding of beauty is essential in meditation. Beauty is really the total abandonment of the “me”, and the eyes that have abandoned the “me” can see the trees, the beauty of it all, and the loveliness of the cloud; that happens when there is no centre as the “me”. It happens to each one of us, doesn’t it?—when you see a lovely mountain, when you come upon it suddenly, there it is! Everything has been pushed aside except the majesty of that hill. That mountain, that tree, absorbs you completely.
It is like a child with a toy—the toy absorbs the child, and when the toy is destroyed the child is back again in whatever he is doing, in his mischief, in his crying. Likewise with us: when you see the mountain, or the single tree on a hilltop, it absorbs you. And we want to be absorbed by something, by an idea, by an activity, by a commitment, by a belief, or we want to be absorbed by another; which is like the child with a toy.
So beauty means sensitivity—a body that is sensitive, which means the right diet, the right way of living, and you have all this, if you have gone that far. I hope you will, or are doing it now; then the mind will inevitably and naturally, unknowingly, become quiet. You can’t make the mind quiet, because you are the mischief-maker, you are yourself disturbed, anxious, confused—how can you make the mind quiet? But when you understand what quietness is, when you understand what confusion is, what sorrow is and whether sorrow can ever end, and when you understand pleasure, then out of that comes an extraordinarily quiet mind; you don’t have to seek it. You must begin at the beginning and the first step is the last step, and this is meditation.
Questioner: When you make the analogy of the mountain, the hills, the beautiful sky—that’s wrong for these people, that’s not the analogy for them—the analogy is the dirt.
KRISHNAMURTI: Right, take that—the analogy of the dirty streets of New York, the analogy of squalor, poverty, the ghettos, the wars to which each one of us has contributed. You don’t feel that way, because you have separated yourself, isolated yourself; therefore, having no relationship with another, you become corrupt and allow corruption to spread in the world. That’s why this corruption, this pollution, these wars, this hatred, cannot be stopped by a political or religious system, or by any organisation. You have to change. Don’t you see this? You have to cease completely to be what you are. Not through will—meditation is the emptying of the mind of will; then a totally different action takes place.
Questioner: If one can have the privilege of becoming totally aware, how can we then help those who are conditioned, who have a deep resentment in them?
KRISHNAMURTI: Why, if I may ask, do you use the word privilege? What is there_ sacred or privileged about being aware? That’s a natural thing, isn’t it, to be aware? If you are aware of your own conditioning, of the turmoil, the dirt, the squalor, the war, the hatred, if you are aware of all that, you will establish a relationship with another so complete, that you are related to every other human being in the world. You understand this? If I am related to somebody completely, totally—not as an idea or an image—then I am related to every human being in the world. Then I will see I will not hurt another—they are hurting themselves. Then go, preach, talk about it—not with the desire to help another, you understand?—that’s the most terrible thing to say, “I want to help another”. Who are you to help another?—including the speaker.
Sir, look, the beauty of the tree or the flower doesn’t want to help you, it is there; it is for you to look at the squalor or at the beauty, and if you are incapable of looking at it, then find out why you have become so indifferent, so callous, so shallow and empty. If you find out that, then you are in a state where the waters of life flow, you don’t have to do anything.
Questioner: What is the relationship between seeing things exactly as they are and consciousness?
KRISHNAMURTI: You only know consciousness by its content, and its content is what is happening in the world, of which you are a part. To empty all that is not to have no consciousness, but a totally different dimension. You cannot speculate about that dimension—leave that to the scientists, to the philosophers. What we can do is to find out whether it is possible to uncondition the mind by becoming aware, by becoming totally attentive.
Questioner: I don’t know myself what love is or what truth is, or what God is, but you describe it as, “Love is God”, instead of “Love is love”. Can you explain why you say “Love is God”?
KRISHNAMURTI: I didn’t say love is God.
Questioner: I read one of your books . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: I’m sorry, don’t read books! (Laughter) That word has been used so much, is so loaded by man’s despairs and hopes. You have your God, the Communists have their gods. So find out, if I may suggest, what love is. You can only find out what love is, by knowing what it is not. Not knowing intellectually, but actually in life putting aside what it is not—jealousy, ambition and greed, all the division that goes on in life, the me and the you, we and they, the black and the white. Unfortunately you won’t do it because it needs energy, and energy comes only when you observe actually what is and don’t run away from it. When you see actually what is, then in the observing of it, you have the energy to go beyond it. You cannot go beyond it if you are trying to escape from it, to translate it, or to overcome it. Just observe actually what is, then you have abundance of energy, then you can find out what love is. Love is not pleasure, and to really find that out, inwardly, for yourself, do you know what that means? It means that there is no fear, that there is no attachment, no dependency, but a relationship in which there is no division.
Questioner: Could you talk about the role of the artist in society—does he serve a function beyond his own?
KRISHNAMURTI: Who is an artist? Someone who paints a picture, writes a poem, who wants to express himself through painting or through writing a book or a play? Why do we divide the artist from the rest of us?—or the intellectual from the rest of us? We have placed the intellectual at one level, the artist perhaps at a higher level, and the scientist at a still higher level. And then we say, “What is their role in society?” The question is not, what is their role, but what is your role in society; because you have created this mess. What is your role? Find out, Sir. That is, find out why you live within this world of squalor, hatred and misery; apparently it does not touch you.
Look, you have listened to these talks, shared some of the things together, understood, let’s hope, a great deal. Then you become a centre of right relationship and therefore it is your responsibility to change this terrible, corrupt, destructive society.
Questioner: Sir, could you go into psychological time?
KRISHNAMURTI: Time is old age, time is sorrow, time doesn’t heed. There is chronological time by the watch. That must exist, otherwise you won’t be able to catch your bus, cook a meal, and all the rest of it. But there is another kind of time, which we have accepted. That is, “Tomorrow I will be, tomorrow I will change, tomorrow I will become”; psychologically we have created time—tomorrow. Is there a tomorrow, psychologically? That question fills us with dread to ask seriously. Because we want tomorrow: “I shall have the pleasure of meeting you tomorrow, I am going to understand tomorrow, my life will be different tomorrow, I will realise enlightenment tomorrow.” Therefore tomorrow becomes the most important thing in our life. You have had sex yesterday, all the pleasures, all the agonies—whatever it is—and you want it tomorrow, because you want that same pleasure repeated.
Put that question to yourself and find out the truth of it. “Is there a tomorrow at all?”—except in thought which projects tomorrow. So tomorrow is the invention of thought as time, and if there is no tomorrow psychologically, what happens in life today? Then there is a tremendous revolution, isn’t there? Then your whole action undergoes a radical change, doesn’t it? Then you are completely whole now, not projecting from the past, through the present, into the future.
That means to live, dying every day. Do it, and you will find out what it means to live completely today. Isn’t that what love is? You don’t say, “I will love tomorrow”, do you? You love or you don’t love. Love has no time, only sorrow has time—sorrow being thought, as in pleasure. So one has to find out for oneself what time is, and find out if there is a “no tomorrow”. That is to live, then there is a life which is eternal, because eternity has no time.
NEW YORK CITY
25 APRIL 1971
Two Conversations:J. Krishnamurti and Alain Naudé
Conversation between J. Krishnamurtiand Alain Naudé
Naudé:1 You speak about the whole of life. When we look about us there is so much disorder everywhere; it seems that people are so confused. In the world we see that there is war, ecological disorder, political and social disorder, crime, and all the evils of industrialisation and over-population. And it seems that the more people try to solve these problems the more they augment. Then there is man himself, who is full of problems. He has not only the problems of the world about him, but is full of problems inwardly—loneliness, despair, jealousy, anger—all this we may call confusion. And presently he dies. Now we have always been told that there is something else, which has variously been called God, eternity, creation. And about this man knows nothing. He has tried to live for this, in relation to this; but it has again made problems. It seems from what you have said so many times that one must find a way of dealing with these three sets of problems, these three aspects of life at the same time, because these are the problems confronting man. Is there a way to ask the question properly so that it will answer these three sets of problems at the same time?
KRISHNAMURTI: First of all, Sir, why do we make this division? Or is there only one movement which must be taken on the wave itself? So first let’s find out why we have divided this whole existence into the world outside of me, the world inside of me, and something beyond me. Does this division exist because of the chaos outwardly and are we only concerned with the outer chaos, and totally neglect the inner chaos? Not finding a solution for the outer, or for the inner, we then try to find a solution in a belief, in the divine?
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: So in asking a question of this kind, are we dealing with the three things separately, or as a total movement?
Naudé: How can we make them into a unitary movement? How are they related? What is the action in man which will make them the same?
KRISHNAMURTI: I wouldn’t come to that yet. I would ask: why has man divided the world, his whole existence, into these three categories? Why?—and from there move. Now why have I, as a human being, divided the world outside of me from the world inside me, and from the world which I am trying to grasp—of which I know nothing—and to which I give all my despairing hope?
Naudé: Right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now why do I do this? Tentatively we are asking: is it that we have not been able to solve the outer with its chaos, confusion, destruction, brutality, violence and all the horrors that are going on, and therefore we turn to the inner and hope thereby to solve the outer? And not being able to solve the inner chaos, the inner insufficiency, the inner brutality, violence and all the rest of it, not being able to solve anything there either, then we move away from both, the outer and the inner, to some other dimension?
Naudé: Yes, it is like that. That is what we do.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is what is happening all the time around us and in us.
Naudé: Yes. There are the problems outside which engender the problems inside. Not being able to deal with either, or both, we create the hope of some other, some third state, which we call God.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, an outside agency.
Naudé: An outside agency which will be the consolation, the final solution. But it is also a fact that there are things which are really outer problems: the roof leaks, the sky is full of pollution, the rivers are drying up, there are such problems. And there are wars—they are visible outer problems. There are also problems which we think to be inner problems, our secret and closed longings, fears and worries.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes.
Naudé: There is the world, and there is man’s reaction to it, man’s living in it. And so there are these two entities—at least in a practical sort of way we can say there are. And so probably the trying to solve practical problems overflows into the inner state of man and engenders problems there.
KRISHNAMURTI: That means we are still keeping the outer and the inner as two separate movements.
Naudé: Yes, we are. We do.
KRISHNAMURTI: And I feel that is a totally wrong approach. The roof does leak and the world is over-populated, there is pollution, there are wars, there is every kind of mischief going on. And not being able to solve that we turn inward; not being able to solve the inward issues we turn to something outer, still further away from all this. Whereas if we could treat the whole of this existence as one unitary movement, then perhaps we would be able to solve all these problems intelligently and reasonably and in order.
Naudé: Yes. It seems that is what you speak about. Would you mind telling us how these three problems are really one thing?
KRISHNAMURTI: I am coming to that, I am coming to it. The world outside of me is created by me—not the trees, not the clouds, the bees and the beauty of the landscape—but human existence in relationship, which is called society, that is created by you and by me. So the world is me and I am the world. I think that is the first thing that must be established: not as an intellectual or an abstract fact, but in actual feeling, in actual realisation. This is a fact, not a supposition, not an intellectual concept, but it is a fact that the world is me and I am the world. The world being the society in which I live, with its culture, morality, inequality, all the chaos that is going on in society, that is myself in action. And the culture is what I have created and what I am caught in. I think that is an irrevocable and an absolute fact.
Naudé: Yes. How is it that people don’t see this enough? We have politicians, we have ecologists, we have economists, we have soldiers all trying to solve the outside problems simply as outer problems.
KRISHNAMURTI: Probably because of a lack of the right kind of education: specialisation, the desire to conquer and go to the moon and play golf there, and so on and so on! We always want to alter the outer hoping thereby to change the inner. “Create the right environment”—the communists have said it a hundred times—“then the human mind will change according to that.”
Naudé: That is what they say. In fact, every great university, with all its departments, with all its specialists, one could almost say that these great universities are founded and built on the belief that the world can be changed by a certain amount of specialised knowledge in different departments.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. I think we miss this basic thing, which is: the world is me and I am the world. I think that feeling, not as an idea, that feeling brings a totally different way of looking at this whole problem.
Naudé: It is an enormous revolution. To see the problem as one problem, the problem of man and not the problem of his environment, that is an enormous step, which people will not take.
KRISHNAMURTI: People won’t take any step. They are used to this outward organisation and disregard totally what is happening inwardly. So when one realises that the world is me and I am the world, then my action is not separative, is not the individual opposed to the community; nor the importance of the individual and his salvation. When one realises that the world is me and I am the world, then whatever action takes place, whatever change takes place, that will change the whole of the consciousness of man.
Naudé: Would you like to explain that?
KRISHNAMURTI: I, as a human being, realise that the world is me and I am the world: realise, feel deeply committed, am passionately aware of this fact.
Naudé: Yes, that my action is in fact the world; my behaviour is the only world there is, because the events in the world are behaviour. And behaviour is the inner. So the inner and the outer are one because the events of history, the events of life, are in fact this point of contact between the inner and the outer. It is in fact the behaviour of man.
KRISHNAMURTI: So the consciousness of the world is my consciousness.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: My consciousness is the world. Now the crisis is in this consciousness, not in organisation, not in bettering the roads—tearing down the hills to build more roads.
Naudé: Bigger tanks, intercontinental missiles.
KRISHNAMURTI: My consciousness is the world and the consciousness of the world is me. When there is a change in this consciousness it affects the whole consciousness of the world. I don’t know if you see that?
Naudé: It is an extraordinary fact.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is a fact.
Naudé: It is consciousness that is in disorder; there is no disorder anywhere else.
KRISHNAMURTI: Obviously!
Naudé: Therefore the ills of the world are the ills of human consciousness, and the ills of human consciousness are my ills, my malady, my disorder.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now when I realise that my consciousness is the consciousness of the world, and the consciousness of the world is me, whatever change that takes place in me affects the whole of consciousness.
Naudé: To this people always say: that’s all very well, I may change, but there will still be a war in Indo-China!
KRISHNAMURTI: Quite right, there will be.
Naudé: And ghettos and over-population.
KRISHNAMURTI: Of course, there will be. But if each one of us saw the truth of this, that the consciousness of the world is mine, and mine is the world’s; and if each one of us felt the responsibility of that—the politician, the scientist, the engineer, the bureaucrat, the business man—if everybody felt that, what then? And it is our job to make them feel this; that is the function of the religious man, surely?
Naudé: This is an enormous thing.
KRISHNAMURTI: Wait, let me go on. So then it is one movement. It is not an individual movement and his salvation. It is the salvation, if you like to use that word, of the whole of man’s consciousness.
Naudé: The wholeness, and the health of consciousness itself, which is one thing and in which is contained what appears to be the outer, and what appears to be the inner.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s right. Let’s keep to that one point.
Naudé: So what you are speaking about is in fact that health, that sanity, and that wholeness of consciousness, which always has been in fact an indivisible entity.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, that’s right. Now when the people who want to create a different kind of world, the educators, the writers, the organisers, when they realise the world as it is now is their responsibility, then the whole of the consciousness of man begins to change. Which is what is happening in another direction, only they are emphasising organisation, division; they are doing exactly the same thing.
Naudé: In a negative way.
KRISHNAMURTI: In a destructive way. So from that the question arises: can this human consciousness, which is me—which is the community, which is the society, which is the culture, which is all the horrors that are produced by me in the context of the society, in the culture which is me—can this consciousness undergo a radical change? That is the question. Not escape into the supposed divine, not escape. Because when we understand this change in consciousness the divine is there, you don’t have to seek it.
Naudé: Would you please explain what this change in consciousness consists of?
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s what we are going to talk about now.
Naudé: And then perhaps we can ask about the divine if it arises.
KRISHNAMURTI: (Pause) First of all, is there any possibility of a change in consciousness? Or is any change made consciously no change at all? To talk about a change in consciousness implies changing from this to that.
Naudé: And both this and that are within consciousness.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is what I want to establish first. That when we say there must be a change in consciousness, it is still within the field of consciousness.
Naudé: The way we see the trouble, and the way we see the solution, which we call change—that is all within the same area.
KRISHNAMURTI: All within the same area and therefore no change at all. That is, the content of consciousness is consciousness and the two are not separate. Let’s be clear on that point too. Consciousness is made up of all the things that have been collected by man as experience, as knowledge, as misery, confusion, destruction, violence—all that is consciousness.
Naudé: Plus so-called solutions.
KRISHNAMURTH: God, no-God, various theories about God, all that is consciousness. When we talk about change in consciousness we are still changing the pieces from one corner to the other.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Moving one quality into another corner of the field.
Naudé: Juggling with the contents of this huge box.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, juggling with the contents. And therefore . . .
Naudé: We are changing variables in the same set of things.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s right. You have put it perfectly, better than I have. When we talk about changing, we are really thinking of juggling with the contents—right? Now that implies a juggler and the thing with which he is juggling. But it is still within the field of consciousness.
Naudé: There are two questions which arise. Are you saying that there is no consciousness at all outside of the content of consciousness? And secondly, that there is no entity at all to juggle, there is no entity called ‘me’ outside of this content of consciousness?
KRISHNAMURTI: Obviously not.
Naudé: These are two big statements, Sir. Would you be kind enough to explain them?
KRISHNAMURTI: What is the first question?
Naudé: The first thing you are saying, if I have understood correctly, is: that this consciousness which we are discussing, which is all we are and all we have, and which we have seen is the problem itself, you are saying that this consciousness is its very content, and that there is nothing to be called consciousness outside of the content of consciousness?
KRISHNAMURTI: Absolutely right.
Naudé: Are you saying, outside of man’s problems, outside of his misery, outside of his thinking, outside of the formulations of his mind, there is nothing at all we call consciousness?
KRISHNAMURTI: Absolutely right.
Naudé: This is a big statement. Would you explain this? We all think—and this has been postulated by Indian religions since the beginning of time—that there is a super-consciousness outside of this shell which is the consciousness we are talking about.
KRISHNAMURTI: To find out if there is something beyond this consciousness, I must understand the content of this consciousness. The mind must go beyond itself. Then I shall find out if there is something other than this or not. But to stipulate that there is has no meaning, it is just a speculation.
Naudé: So are you saying that what we commonly call consciousness, and what we are talking about, is the very content of this consciousness? The container and contained are an indivisible thing?
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s right.
Naudé: And the second point you are making is: that there is no entity to decide, to will, and to juggle, when the contents to be juggled are absent.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is, my consciousness is the consciousness of the world, and the consciousness of the world is me. This is a truth, not just my invention or dependent on your acceptance. It is an absolute truth. Also the content is consciousness: without the content there is no consciousness. Now when we want to change the content we are juggling.
Naudé: The content is juggling itself, because you have a third point, that there is nobody outside of this content to do any juggling at all.
KRISHNAMURTI: Quite right.
Naudé: So the juggler and the content are one, and the container and the content are one.
KRISHNAMURTI: The thinker who within this consciousness says that he must change, is consciousness trying to change. I think that is fairly clear.
Naudé: So that the world, the consciousness and the entity who supposedly will change it, are all the same entity, masquerading, as it were in three different roles.
KRISHNAMURTI: If that is so, then what is a human being to do to bring about a total emptying of the content of consciousness? How is this particular consciousness, which is me and the world with all its miseries, how is that to undergo complete change? How is the mind—which is consciousness, with all its content, with the accumulated knowledge of the past—how is that mind to empty itself of all its content?
Naudé: But people will say, hearing what you have said, understanding it imperfectly, they will say: can that consciousness be emptied, and when that consciousness is emptied, supposing this were possible, doesn’t that reduce one to a state of considerable vagueness and inertia?
KRISHNAMURTI: On the contrary. To have come to this point requires a great deal of enquiry, a great deal of reason, logic, and with it comes intelligence.
Naudé: Because some people may think that the empty consciousness, which you speak about, is something like the consciousness of the child at birth.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, Sir, not at all. Let’s go slowly at this, step by step. Let’s begin again. My consciousness is the consciousness of the world. The world is me and the content of my consciousness is the content of the world. The content of consciousness is consciousness itself.
Naudé: And also that is the entity who says he is conscious.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now I am asking myself, realising I am that, what is then changed?
Naudé: What is changed which will solve these three sets of problems that are really one?
KRISHNAMURTI: What is implied by change? What is implied by revolution?—not physical revolution.
Naudé: We have gone beyond that.
KRISHNAMURTI: Physical revolution is the most absurd, primitive, unintelligent destruction.
Naudé: It is fragmentation in this consciousness.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes.
Naudé: Are you asking what it is which will restore order to this consciousness?—an order which is whole.
KRISHNAMURTI: Can there be order within this consciousness?
Naudé: Is that the next step?
KRISHNAMURTI: That is what you are asking.
Naudé: Yes. Since we see that the disorder, which is the sorrow and the suffering, is the disorder in this indivisible consciousness, the next question must be: what are we going to do about it?
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes.
Naudé: And since there is no entity who can do something about it . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: Wait, don’t jump to that immediately.
Naudé: Because we have seen that the disorder is the entity.
KRISHNAMURTI: Do we realise that? No. Do we realise that the thinker is part of this consciousness and is not a separate entity outside this consciousness? Do we realise that the observer, seeing the content, examining, analysing, looking at it all, is the content itself? That the observer is the content?
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: But stating a truth is one thing, the realisation of it is another.
Naudé: That’s right. I think we do not fully understand that there is no entity separate from this thing we are trying to change.
KRISHNAMURTI: When we talk of change it seems to imply that there is an entity separate within the consciousness, who can bring about a transformation.
Naudé: We think that somehow we can step aside from the mess and look at it and juggle with it. We always tell ourselves, “Well, I’m still here to do something about it.” And so we juggle more and more.
KRISHNAMURTI: More mess, more confusion.
Naudé: A change of decor and things get worse.
KRISHNAMURTI: The consciousness of the world is my consciousness. In that consciousness is all the content of human endeavour, human misery, human cruelty, mischief, all human activities are within that consciousness. Within that consciousness man has brought about this entity which says, “I am separate from my consciousness.” The observer there says, “I am different from the thing observed.” The thinker says, “My thoughts are different from me.” First, is that so?
Naudé: We all believe that the two entities are different. We say to ourselves, “I must not be angry, I must not be sorrowful, I must improve, I must change myself.” We are saying this either tacitly or consciously all the time.
KRISHNAMURTI: Because we think these two are separate. Now we are trying to point out that they are not separate, that they are one, because if there is no thought at all there is no thinker.
Naudé: That is right.
KRISHNAMURTI: If there is nothing observed there is no observer.
Naudé: There are a hundred observers and a hundred thinkers during the course of the day.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am just saying: is that so? I observe that red-tailed hawk flying by. I see it. When I observe that bird, am I observing with the image I have about that bird, or am I merely observing? Is there only mere observation? If there is an image, which is words, memory and all the rest of it, then there is an observer watching the bird go by. If there is only observation, then there is no observer.
Naudé: Would you explain why there is an observer when I look at the bird with an image?
KRISHNAMURTI: Because the observer is the past. The observer is the censor, is the accumulated knowledge, experience, memory; that is the observer, with that he observes the world. His accumulated knowledge is different from your accumulated knowledge.
Naudé: Are you saying that this total consciousness, which is the problem, is not different from the observer who is going to deal with it, and this would seem to bring us to a deadlock, because the thing we are trying to change is the person trying to change it? And the question is: what then?
KRISHNAMURTI: That is just it. If the observer is the observed, what is the nature of change in consciousness? That is what we are trying to find out. We realise that there must be a radical revolution in consciousness. How is this to take place? Is it to take place through the observer? When the observer is separate from the observed, then this change is merely juggling with the various contents of consciousness.
Naudé: That’s right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now let’s go slowly. One realises that the observer is the observed, the thinker is the thought, that is a fact. Let’s stop there a minute.
Naudé: Are you saying that the thinker is the totality of all these thoughts which create the confusion?
KRISHNAMURTI: The thinker is the thought, whether it is many, or one.
Naudé: But there is a difference, because the thinker thinks of himself as some sort of crystallised concrete entity. Even through this discussion, the thinker sees himself as the concrete entity to whom all these thoughts, all this confusion belongs.
KRISHNAMURTI: That concrete entity, as you say, is the result of thought.
Naudé: That concrete entity is . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: . . . put together by thought.
Naudé: Put together by his thoughts.
KRISHNAMURTI: By thought, not “his”, by thought.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: And thought sees that there must be a change. This concrete entity, which is the result of thought, hopes to change the content.
Naudé: Itself.
KRISHNAMURTI: And so there is a battle between the observer and the observed. The battle consists of trying to control, change, shape, suppress, give a new shape, all that, that is the battle that goes on all the time in our life. But when the mind understands the truth that the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, is the thought, is the experience, is the observed, then what takes place?—knowing that there must be a radical change.
Naudé: That is a fact.
KRISHNAMURTI: And when the observer, who wants to change, realises he is part of what has to be changed ?
Naudé: That he is in fact a thief pretending to be a policeman to catch himself.
KRISHNAMURTI: Right. So what takes place?
Naudé: You see, Sir, people don’t believe this; they say, “By exercising will I have stopped smoking, by exercising will I have got up earlier, I have lost weight and I have learnt languages”; they say, “I am the master of my destiny, I can change”—everybody really believes this. Everybody believes that he is capable somehow of exercising will upon his own life, upon his own behaviour, and his own thinking.
KRISHNAMURTI: Which means, one has to understand the meaning of effort. What it is, why effort exists at all. Is that the way to bring about a transformation in consciousness? Through effort, through will?
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Which means what? Change through conflict. When there is the operation of will, it is a form of resistance; to overcome, to suppress, to deny, to escape—all that is will in action. That means life is then a constant battle.
Naudé: Are you saying that simply one element in this consciousness is dominating another?
KRISHNAMURTI: Obviously. One fragment dominates another fragment.
Naudé: And that there is still conflict? There is still disorder by that very fact. Yes, this is clear.
KRISHNAMURTI: So, the central fact still remains. There must be a radical transformation in consciousness and of consciousness. Now, how is this to be brought about? That is the real question.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: We have approached it by thinking that one fragment is superior to the rest, to the other fragments within the field of consciousness.
Naudé: Indeed we have.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now that fragment which we call superior, intelligence, intellect, reason, logic, is the product of the many other fragments. One fragment has assumed authority over other fragments. But it is still a fragment and therefore there is a battle between it and the many other fragments. So is it possible to see that this fragmentation does not solve our problems?
Naudé: Because it causes the division and the conflict, which right from the start was our problem.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is, when there is division between man and woman there is conflict. When there is a division between Germany and England or Russia, there is conflict.
Naudé: And all this is division within consciousness itself. Also, the exercise of will upon consciousness is again a division within consciousness.
KRISHNAMURTI: So one has to be free of the idea that through will you can change the content. That is important to understand.
Naudé: Yes, that the exercise of will is simply the tyranny of one fragment over another.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s simple. One also realises that to be free of will is to be free of this fragmentation.
Naudé: But religions in the world have always called upon will to come in and do something.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. But we are denying the whole of that.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: So what is a mind to do, or not to do, when it sees will is not the way, when it sees that one fragment taking charge over another fragment is still fragmentation and therefore conflict?—and therefore still within the field of misery. Then what is such a mind to do?
Naudé: Yes, this is really the question.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now, for such a mind is there anything to do?
Naudé: When you say that, one says, “If there is nothing to do then the circus goes on.”
KRISHNAMURTI: No, Sir. Look! The circus goes on only when there is the exercise of will.
Naudé: Are you saying that the circus that we have been discussing and trying to change, is in fact made up of will?
KRISHNAMURTI: My will against your will, and so on.
Naudé: My will against another part of me.
KRISHNAMURTI: And so on.
Naudé: My desire to smoke . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s just it. A mind which starts by saying, “I must change,” realises that one fragment asserting it must change is still in conflict with another fragment, which is part of consciousness. It realises that. Therefore it also realises that will, to which man has become accustomed, which he takes for granted is the only way to bring about change . . .
Naudé: … is not the factor of change.
KRISHNAMURTI: Is not the factor of change. Therefore such a mind has come to quite a different height.
Naudé: It has cleared up a great deal.
KRISHNAMURTI: A vast quantity of rubbish.
Naudé: It has cleared up the division between the inner and the outer; the division between consciousness and its content. It has cleared up also the division between the conscious entity and the consciousness belonging to him and the various fragments. And it has cleared up the division between different fragments in that consciousness.
KRISHNAMURTI: So what has happened? What has happened to the mind that has seen all this? Not theoretically but actually felt it and says, “No more will in my life”. Which means no more resistance in my life.
Naudé: This is so extraordinary it is like finding the sky at the bottom, one day. It is such a great change, it is difficult to say what the extent of that change is.
KRISHNAMURTI: It has already taken place! That is my point.
Naudé: You are saying that there is no more will, there is no more effort, there is no more division between the outside and the inside . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: … no more fragmentation within consciousness.
Naudé: No more fragmentation.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is very important to understand, Sir.
Naudé: No more observer separate from what he has observed.
KRISHNAMURTI: Which means what? No fragmentation within consciousness. Which means consciousness only exists when there is conflict between fragments.
Naudé: I am not sure that I have understood that. Consciousness is its fragments?
KRISHNAMURTI: Consciousness is its fragments and consciousness is the battle between the fragments.
Naudé: Are you saying that there are only fragments because they are in conflict, in battle? When they are not battling together they are not fragments, because they are not acting as parts. The acting of one part on another ceases. That is what it means when you say fragmentation. That is what fragmentation is.
KRISHNAMURTI: See what has taken place!
Naudé: The fragments disappear when they are not acting against each other.
KRISHNAMURTI: Naturally! When Pakistan and India . . .
Naudé: . . . are no longer fighting, there is no more Pakistan and India.
KRISHNAMURTI: Naturally.
Naudé: Are you saying that that is the change?
KRISHNAMURTI: Wait, I don’t know yet. We’ll go into it. A human mind has realised that the world is “me” and I am the world, my consciousness is the consciousness of the world, and the world’s consciousness is me. The content of consciousness with all its miseries and so on is consciousness. And within that consciousness there are a thousand fragmentations. One fragment of those many fragments becomes the authority, the censor, the observer, the examiner, the thinker.
Naudé: The boss.
KRISHNAMURTI: The boss. And so he maintains fragmentation. See the importance of this! The moment he assumes the authority, he must maintain fragmentation.
Naudé: Yes, obviously. Because it is a part of consciousness acting on the rest of consciousness.
KRISHNAMURTI: Therefore he must maintain conflict. And conflict is consciousness.
Naudé: You have said that the fragments are consciousness; and are you now saying that the fragments are in fact the content?
KRISHNAMURTI: Of course.
Naudé: Fragments are conflict. There is no fragment without conflict?
KRISHNAMURTI: When is consciousness active?
Naudé: When it is in conflict.
KRISHNAMURTI: Obviously. Otherwise there is freedom, freedom to observe. So radical revolution in consciousness, and of consciousness, takes place when there is no conflict at all.
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA
27 MARCH 1971
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1 Alain Naudé, musician, for six years closely associated with Krishnamurti as his secretary and assistant, and (as he says) above all as his student. At present living in the U.S.A.
Conversation between J. Krishnamurtiand Alain Naudé
Naudé: Do good and evil really exist, or are they simply conditioned points of view? Is there such a thing as evil and if so what is it? Is there such a thing as sin? And is there such a thing as goodness? And what is it to be really and deeply good?
KRISHNAMURTI: I was thinking this morning on the same theme as your questions imply, whether there is an absolute good and absolute evil: as the Christian idea of sin and the Asiatic idea of Karma—as action which breeds more misery and more sorrow and yet out of that conflict of sorrow and pain a goodness is born. I was thinking about it the other day when I saw on the television some men killing baby seals. It is a terrible thing, I turned my head away quickly. Killing has always been wrong, not only human beings but animals. And religious people, not the people who believe in religion, but the really religious mind, has always shunned every form of killing. Of course, when you eat a vegetable you are killing—a vegetable—but that is the least form of killing and the simplest form of survival: I wouldn’t call that killing. One has watched in India, in Europe, and in America the acceptance of killing in war, in organised murder, which war is. Also “killing” people with words, with a gesture, with a look, with contempt: this form of killing has also been decried by religious people. But in spite of it all, killing has been going on—killing, violence, brutality, arrogance, aggressiveness—all ultimately leading, in action or in thought, to hurting, to brutalising others. Also one has seen those ancient caves in North Africa and in the South of France where man is shown fighting animals, where perhaps fighting evil is understood. Or is it fighting as a form of amusement, to kill something, to overcome? So when one looks at all this, one asks if there is such a thing as evil in itself, totally devoid of the good; and what is the distance between evil and good. Is evil the diminution of good, slowly ending in evil? Or is good the diminution of evil, gradually becoming good? That is, through the time interval, moving from goodness to evil, and from evil to good?
Naudé: You mean are they two ends of the same stick ?
KRISHNAMURTI: Two ends of the same stick—or are they two wholly separate things? So what is evil and what is good? The Christian world, the Inquisition, used to burn people for heresy, considering that was good.
Naudé: The Communists do the same.
KRISHNAMURTI: The Communists do it in their own way: for the good of the community, for the good of society, for the good of an economic well-being for the whole of man, and so on. In Asia too they have done all this kind of thing in various forms. But there has always been a group, until recently, where killing in any form was considered evil. Now all that is slowly disappearing, for economic and cultural reasons.
Naudé: You mean the group that avoids killing . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: … is gradually disappearing. So there it is. Now is there such a thing as absolute good, and absolute evil? Or is it a gradation: relative goodness and relative evil?
Naudé: And do they exist as facts outside of conditioned points of view? For instance, for the Frenchman during the war the invading German was evil; and similarly for the German, the German soldier was good, he represented protection. Now is there a good and an evil, absolutely? Or is it simply the result of a conditioned point of view?
KRISHNAMURTI: Is goodness dependent on the environment, on the culture, on economic conditions? And if it is, is it good? Can goodness flower as an environmental, cultural conditioning? And is evil also the result of environmental culture? Does it function within that frame, or does it function outside it? All these questions are implied when we ask: is there an absolute goodness and absolute evil?
Naudé: Right.
KRISHNAMURTI: First of all, what is goodness? Isn’t the word “goodness” related to the word “God”? God being the highest form of the good, truth, excellence, and the capacity to express in relationship that quality of godliness, which is goodness; and anything opposite that is considered evil. If goodness is related to God, then evil is related to the devil. The devil being the ugly, the dark, the . . .
Naudé: . . . the twisted . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: . . . the distorted, the purposefully directed harmful, such as the desire to hurt—all that is contrary to the good; that is, the idea of God being good and the devil being the evil—right? Now I think we have more or less indicated what is good and what is evil. So we are asking if there is such a thing as absolute good and absolute, irrevocable evil.
Naudé: Evil as a fact, as a thing.
KRISHNAMURTI: Therefore let us first examine if there is absolute good. Not in the sense of goodness being related to God, or approximating itself to the idea of God, because then that goodness becomes merely speculative. Because God to most people is really a pretence of a belief in something—something excellent, noble.
Naudé: Felicity?
KRISHNAMURTI: Felicity and so on. Now what is good? I feel goodness is total order. Not only outwardly, but especially inwardly. I think that order can be absolute, as in mathematics I believe there is complete order. And it is disorder that leads to chaos, to destruction, to anarchy, to the so-called evil.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Whereas total order in one’s being, order in the mind, order in one’s heart, order in one’s physical activities—the harmony between the three is goodness.
Naudé: The Greeks used to say that perfected man had attuned in total harmony his mind, his heart and his body.
KRISHNAMURTI: Quite. So we shall say for the moment that goodness is absolute order. And as most human beings live in disorder they contribute to every form of mischief, which ultimately leads to destruction, to brutality, to violence, to various injuries, both psychic and physical. For all that one word may be used: “evil”. But I don’t like that word “evil” because it is loaded with Christian meaning, with condemnation and prejudice.
Naudé: Conditioning.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s right. In India and in Asia the words “evil”, “sin”, are always loaded—as “goodness” is always loaded. So could we brush away all the accumulations around these words and look at it as though anew. That is: is there absolute order in oneself? Can this absolute order be brought about in oneself and therefore in the outer world? Because the world is me, and I am the world; my consciousness is the consciousness of the world, and the consciousness of the world is me. So when there is order within the human being then there is order in the world. Now can this order, right through, be absolute? Which means: order in the mind, in the heart and in the bodily activities. That is, complete harmony. How can this be brought about? That is one point.
Then the other point is: is order something to be copied according to a design? Is order pre-established by thought, by the intellect, and copied in action by the heart? Or in relationship? So is order a blueprint? How is this order to be brought about?
Naudé: Right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Order is virtue. And disorder is non-virtue, is harmful, is destructive, is impure—if we can use that word.
Naudé: One thinks of the Sanskrit word “Adharma”.
KRISHNAMURTI: Adharma, yes. So is order something put together according to a design drawn by knowledge, thought? Or is order outside the field of thought and knowledge? One feels there is absolute goodness, not as an emotional concept, but one knows, if one has gone into oneself deeply, that there is such a thing: complete, absolute, irrevocable goodness, or order. And this order is not a thing put together by thought; if it is, then it is according to a blueprint, but if it is imitated then the imitation leads to disorder, or to conformity. Conformity, imitation, and the denial of what is, is the beginning of disorder, leading ultimately to what may be called evil. So we are asking: is goodness, which is (as we said) order and virtue, is it the product of thought? Which means can it be cultivated by thought? Can virtue ever be cultivated? To cultivate implies to bring slowly into being, which means time.
Naudé: Mental synthesis.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. Now is virtue the result of time? And is order therefore a matter of evolution? And so is absolute order, absolute goodness, a matter of slow growth, cultivation, all involving time? As we said the other day, thought is the response of memory, knowledge, and experience, which is the past, which is stored up in the brain. In the brain cells themselves the past is. So does virtue lie in the past and is it therefore cultivatable, to be pushed forward? Or is virtue, order, only in the now? The now is not related to the past.
Naudé: You are saying that goodness is order and that order is not the product of thought; but order, if it exists at all, must exist in behaviour, behaviour in the world and in relationship. People always think that proper behaviour in relationship, in the world, must be planned, that order is always the result of planning. And quite often people get the idea, when they have listened to you, that awareness, the state of being you speak about in which there is no room for the action of thought, they get the feeling that this is a sort of disincarnate energy, which can have no action and no relationship to the world of men and events and behaviour. They think that therefore it has no real value, and not what you might call a temporal and historical significance.
KRISHNAMURTI: Right, Sir.
Naudé: You are saying that goodness is order and order is not planned.
KRISHNAMURTI: When we talk about order, don’t we mean order in behaviour, in relationship, not an abstract order, not a goodness in heaven, but order, goodness in relationship and action in the now. When we talk about planning, obviously there must be planning at a certain level.
Naudé: Architecture.
KRISHNAMURTI: Architecture, building railways, going to the moon and so on, there must be a design, a planning, a very coordinated, intelligent operation taking place. We are surely not mixing up the two: there must be planning, order, cooperation, the carrying out together of certain plans, a well laid-out city, a community—all that demands planning. We are talking of something entirely different. We are asking if there is absolute order in human behaviour, if there is absolute goodness, as order, in oneself and therefore in the world. And we said order is not planned, can never be planned. If it is planned, then the mind is seeking security, because the brain demands security; seeking security it will suppress, or destroy, or pervert what is and try to conform, imitate. This very imitation and conformity is disorder, from which all the mischief begins, the neuroses and various distortions of the mind and the heart. Planning implies knowledge.
Naudé: Thinking.
KRISHNAMURTI: Knowledge, thinking and ordering the thought as ideas. So we are asking: is virtue the outcome of planning? Obviously it is not. The moment your life is planned according to a pattern then you are not living, you are merely conforming to a certain standard and therefore that conformity leads to contradiction in oneself. The “what is” and the “what should be”, that breeds contradiction and therefore conflict. That very conflict is the source of disorder. So order, virtue, goodness is in the moment of the now. And therefore it is free of the past. That freedom can be relative.
Naudé: How do you mean?
KRISHNAMURTI: One may be conditioned by the culture in which one lives, by the environment and so on. One either frees oneself totally from all the conditioning and therefore is absolutely free; or there may be partial unconditioning.
Naudé: Yes, get rid of one set of conditions . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: . . . and fall into another.
Naudé: Or just discard one set like Christianity and its taboos.
KRISHNAMURTI: So that slow discarding may appear orderly, but it is not; because the slow peeling off of conditioning may temporarily give the appearance of freedom, but is not absolute freedom.
Naudé: Are you saying that freedom is not the result of a particular operation with regard to one conditioning or another?
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s right.
Naudé: You have said that freedom is at the beginning and not at the end. Is that what you mean?
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, that’s it. Freedom is now, not in the future. So freedom, order, or goodness, is now, which expresses itself in behaviour.
Naudé: Yes, else it has no meaning.
KRISHNAMURTI: Otherwise it has no meaning at all. Behaviour in relationship not only with a particular individual, who is close to you, but behaviour with everybody.
Naudé: In the absence of all those elements of the past which make most people behave, what will make us behave? This freedom seems to so many people such a disincarnate thing, such a bleak sky, such an immaterial thing. What is it in that freedom which will make us behave in the world of people and events with order?
KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, look. We said in the last conversation that I am the world and the world is me. We said the consciousness of the world is my consciousness. My consciousness is the world’s consciousness. When you make a statement of that kind, either it is purely verbal and therefore has no meaning at all, or it is something actual, living, vital. When one realises that it is vital, in that realisation is compassion—real compassion, not for one or two, but compassion for everybody, for everything. Freedom is this compassion, which is not disincarnate as an idea.
Naudé: As a state of withdrawal.
KRISHNAMURTI: My relationship is only in the now, not in the past, because if my relationship is rooted in the past I am not related now. So freedom is compassion, and that comes when there is the real deep realisation that I am the world, the world is me. Freedom, compassion, order, virtue, goodness are one; and that is absolute. Now what relationship has non-goodness—which has been called evil, sin, original sin—what relationship has that with this marvellous sense of order?
Naudé: Which is not the product of thinking, of civilisation, of culture.
KRISHNAMURTI: What is the relationship between the two? There is none. So when we move away from this order—move away in the sense of misbehave—does one enter into the field of evil, if we can use that word? Or is evil something totally apart from the good?
Naudé: Whether deviation from the order of goodness is already an entry into the field of evil, or can these two not even touch at all?
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s right. I may misbehave. I may tell a lie. I may consciously or unconsciously hurt another, but I can clear it. I can wipe it away by apologising, by saying “forgive me”. It can be done immediately.
Naudé: It can be ended.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I am finding out something, which is: the non-ending of it, carrying it over in one’s mind day after day, as hate, as a grudge . . .
Naudé: . . . guilt, fear . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: . . . does that nourish the evil? You follow?
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: If I continue with it, keep within my mind the grudge which I bear against you, carry it on day after day, the grudge which involves hate, envy, jealousy, antagonism—all that is violence. So what is the relationship of violence to evil and goodness? We are using the word “evil” very . . .
Naudé: . . . cautiously.
KRISHNAMURTI: Cautiously. Because I don’t like that word at all. So what is the relationship between violence and goodness? Obviously none at all! But the violence which I have cultivated—whether it is the product of society, the product of the culture, the environment, or inherited from the animal—that violence, by becoming aware of it, can be wiped away.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Not a gradual wiping away; wipe it away as you wipe out a clean . . .
Naudé: . . . take a mark off the wall.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then you are always in that goodness.
Naudé: Are you saying that goodness is a wholly negative affair then?
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, it must be.
Naudé: And in that way the negative is not related at all to the positive, because it is not the result of a gradual decline or accumulation of the positive. The negative exists when the positive is wholly absent.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes; put it round the other way. The negation of the grudge, the negation of violence and the negation of the continuity of the violence, that negation of it is the good.
Naudé: Is the emptying.
KRISHNAMURTI: The emptying of violence is the richness of the good.
Naudé: Therefore the good is always intact.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, it is never broken up, not fragmented. Sir, wait! So is there such a thing as absolute evil? I don’t know if you have ever considered this: I have seen in India little statues made of clay in which needles, or thorns, have been put; I have seen it very often. The image is supposed to represent a person whom you want to hurt. In India there are very long thorns, you have seen them, from bushes, and they are stuck into these clay statuettes.
Naudé: I didn’t know they did that in India.
KRISHNAMURTI: I have seen it. Now there is a determined action to produce evil in another, to hurt another.
Naudé: An intent.
KRISHNAMURTI: The intent, the ugly, deep, hatred.
Naudé: Deliberate. This must be evil, Sir.
KRISHNAMURTI: What is its relationship to good—good being all that we have said? This is a real intent to hurt people.
Naudé: Organised disorder, one might say.
KRISHNAMURTI: Organised disorder, which is the organised disorder of a society that rejects the good. Because the society is me. I am the society; if I don’t change, society cannot change. And here is the deliberate intention to hurt another, whether it is organised as war or not.
Naudé: In fact, organised war is the group manifestation of the phenomenon you are speaking about in India, putting the thorns through the little statues.
KRISHNAMURTI: This is well known, this is as old as the hills. So I am saying this desire to hurt, consciously or unconsciously, and yielding to it, and giving it sustenance, is what? Would you call that evil?
Naudé: Of course.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then we shall have to say that will is evil.
Naudé: Aggression is evil. Violence is evil.
KRISHNAMURTI: Wait, see it! Will is evil, because I want to hurt you.
Naudé: Someone might say though: the will to do you good—is that will also evil ?
KRISHNAMURTI: You cannot will to do good. Either you are good, or not good, you can’t will goodness. Will being the concentration of thought as resistance.
Naudé: Yes, you said that goodness is the absence of a blueprint.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I am asking: is evil related to the good, or are the two things totally apart? And is there such a thing as absolute evil? There is absolute good, but absolute evil cannot exist. Right?
Naudé: Yes, because evil is always cumulative, it is always to some degree or another.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. So a man with the deep intention to hurt another—some incident, some accident, some affection or care, might change the whole thing. But to say that there is an absolute sin, absolute evil, is the most terrible thing to say. That is evil.
Naudé: The Christians have personified evil as Satan and as an almost immutable force, almost equal to the good, almost equal to God. The Christians have enthroned evil almost eternally.
KRISHNAMURTI: Look, Sir. You have seen those bushes in India, they have got long thorns, nearly two inches long.
Naudé: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: There are snakes which are poisonous, deadly poisonous, there are other things which are frighteningly cruel in nature, like the white shark, that appalling thing we saw the other day. Is that evil?
Naudé: No.
KRISHNAMURTI: No?
Naudé: No, Sir.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is protecting itself: the thorn is protecting itself against the animal so that the leaves are not eaten.
Naudé: Yes and so is the snake.
KRISHNAMURTI: So is the snake.
Naudé: And the shark is following its nature.
KRISHNAMURTI: So see what it means. Anything that is self-protective in the physical sense is not evil. But protecting oneself psychologically, resisting any movement, leads to disorder.
Naudé: If I may interrupt here. This is the argument which many people use about war. They say that building up an army and using it, for instance, in South East Asia is the kind of physical protection which the shark . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: That is too absurd an argument. The whole world is divided up for psychological reasons as “my country” and “your country”, “my God” and “your God”—that and economic reasons are the cause of war, surely? But I am trying to get at something different. Nature is terrible in certain ways.
Naudé: Ruthless.
KRISHNAMURTI: We human beings looking at it say, “That’s evil, how terrible”.
Naudé: Lightning.
KRISHNAMURTI: Earthquakes which destroy a thousand people in a few seconds. So the moment we assert that there is absolute evil, that very assertion is the denial of the good. Goodness implies total abnegation of the self. Because the “me” is always separative. The “me”, “my family”, the self, the person, the ego, is the centre of disorder, because it is a divisive factor. The “me” is the mind, is thought. And we have never been able to move away from this egocentric activity. To move completely away from it is complete order, freedom, goodness. And to remain in the circle of self-centred movement breeds disorder; there is always conflict there. And we attribute this conflict to evil, to the devil, to bad karma, to environment, to society; but the society is me and I have built this society. So unless this “me” is totally transformed, I am always contributing, to a major extent or to a minor extent, to disorder.
Order means behaviour in freedom. And freedom means love and not pleasure. When one observes all this one sees very clearly that there is a marvellous sense of absolute order.
MALIBU, CALIFORNIA
28 MARCH 1971
