Total Freedom

His popularity sometimes fluctuated, but Krishnamurti persisted in his efforts to “set man absolutely, unconditionally free.”

Again and again, Krishnamurti declared that people do not need guidance, they need awakening. This high confidence in human potential was rooted in the belief that each individual has no limit on development, if he can eschew the cultural barnacles that load his being: “A theory based on another man’s experience in matters of the psyche or of an inward life has no meaning at all…. We have to let it go completely because we have to stand alone.”

And yet, the essential message is unchanged: “When one sees life as it is, when one sees oneself as one is, [only] from there can one move [ahead].”

Introduction

When first privileged to meet Krishnamurti, I was deeply struck by the intensity of his quietude. The intensity bespoke great energy and his quietude expressed a settled tranquility. Such a combination is rare; indeed, so rare that on encountering it nothing can be taken for granted.

Choicelessness is the mind’s equivalent of the silence out of which intelligible utterance arises, of “that emptiness in which the things of the mind can exist but the things are not the mind … that emptiness has no center and so is capable of infinite movement. Creation is born out of this emptiness but it

is not the creation of man putting things together. That creation of emptiness is love and death.” This last sentence points directly and immediately to the character of the instant for both self-awakening and self-misunderstanding. Unless there is a psychological death to our self-identification with memory and upon the same instant a total understanding of need, we remain collapsed into the content of thought and a timely response to the instant eludes us:

“When there is a total understanding of need, the outward and the inner, then desire is not a torture. Then it has a quite different meaning, a significance far beyond the content of thought and it goes beyond feeling, with its emotions, myths and illusions. With the total understanding of need, not the mere quantity or the quality of it, desire then is a flame and not a torture. Without this flame life itself is lost. It is this flame that burns away the pettiness of its object, the frontiers, the fences that have been imposed upon it. Then call it by whatever name you will, love, death, beauty. Then it is there without an end.”

Without seeing life as something totally new, it is a routine, a boredom, a meaningless affair. So meditation is of the greatest importance. It opens the door to the incalculable, to the measureless.”

Krishnamurti invites us to begin the most radical self-inquiry since it opens out upon the infinite space of awareness. Self-inquiry begins by asking not what am I but what am I not?

The question is astonishingly yet frighteningly simple; frightening because it entails the deepest sense of aloneness, since none but oneself can ask the question nor answer it. Yet, with the patience, courage, and radical trust to hang in there without bolting from it one discovers the unlonely aloneness of that “meditation which is absolutely no effort, no achievement, no thinking, the brain is quiet, not made quiet by will, by intention, by conclusion and all that nonsense; it is quiet. And, being quiet, it has infinite space.”

Truth Is A Pathless Land

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystalized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley.

They no longer strive after Truth or the mountaintop, but rather carve for themselves a convenient niche in which they put themselves, or let the organization place them, and consider that the organization will thereby lead them to Truth.

If an organization be created for this purpose, it becomes a crutch, a weakness, a bondage, and must cripple the individual, and prevent him from growing, from establishing his uniqueness, which lies in the discovery for himself of that absolute, unconditioned Truth.

Of what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new, but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant selves? If I speak strongly, please do not misunderstand me; it is not through lack of compassion. If you go to a surgeon for an operation, is it not kindness on his part to operate even if he causes you pain? So, in like manner, if I speak straightly, it is not through lack of real affection, on the contrary. As I have said, I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him toward freedom, to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the self. Because I am free, unconditioned, whole—not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is eternal—I desire those, who seek to understand me, to be free; not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears—from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want anything from anyone.

As I said before, my purpose is to make men unconditionally free, for I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self, which is eternal, is the harmony between reason and love. This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth, which is Life itself. I want, therefore, to set man free, rejoicing as the bird in the clear sky, unburdened, independent, ecstatic in that freedom. And I, for whom you have been preparing for eighteen years, now say that you must be free of all these things, free from your complications, your entanglements.

You are accustomed to being told how far you have advanced, what is your spiritual status. How childish! Who but yourself can tell you if you are beautiful or ugly within? Who but yourself can tell you if you are incorruptible? You are not serious in these things.

My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free.

Part 1 Early Works

What I Want To Do

You may ask, “What is it that you want to do? If you don’t want us to join any society or accept certain theories, what is it then that you want to do?” What I want to do is to help you, the individual, to cross the stream of suffering, confusion and conflict, through deep and complete fulfillment. This fulfillment does not come through egotistic self-expression, nor through compulsion and imitation. Not through some fantastic sentiment and conclusions, but through clear thinking, through intelligent action, we shall cross this stream of pain and sorrow. There is a reality which can be understood only through deep and true fulfillment.

To be truly critical is not to be in opposition. Most of us have been trained to oppose and not to criticize. When a man merely opposes, it generally indicates that he has some vested interest which he desires to protect, and that is not deep penetration through critical examination. True criticism lies in trying to understand the full significance of values without the hindrance of defensive reactions.

Either you are conscious of the chaotic state of the world, or you are completely asleep, living in a fantastic world, in an illusion. If you are aware, you must be grappling with these problems.

True collective action can take place only when you, the individual, who are also the mass, are awake and take the full responsibility for your action without compulsion.

So the question is: How can there be this profound individual revolution? If there is this true, voluntary revolution on the part of the individual, then you will create the right environment for all, without the distinction of class or race. Then the world will be a single human unit.

To have this profound revolution, you must become fully conscious of the structure which you have created about yourself and in which you are now caught. That is, we have now certain values, ideals, beliefs, which act as a net to hold the mind, and by questioning and understanding all their significance, we shall realize how they have come into existence. Before you can act fully and truly, you must know the prison in which you are living, how it has been created; and in examining it without any self-defense you will find out for yourself its true significance, which no other can convey to you. Through your own awakening of intelligence, through your own suffering you will discover the manner of true fulfillment.

Each one of us is seeking security, certainty, through egotistic thought and action, objectively and subjectively. If you are conscious of your own thought, you will see that you are pursuing your own egotistic certainty and security, both outwardly and inwardly. In reality, there is no such absolute division of life as the objective and the subjective world. I make this division only for convenience.

Your first concern is to become conscious of the prison; then you will see that your own thought is continually trying to avoid coming into conflict with the values of the prison.

That is, the mind wants to escape into an illusion rather than face the suffering which will inevitably arise when it begins to question the values, the morality, the religion of the prison.

As long as the mind is caught up in false values, there cannot be fulfillment. Completeness alone will reveal truth, the movement of eternal life.

WHAT ARE YOU SEEKING?

Now, I hope you won’t say at the end of my talks that you have found something, because the moment you have found something you are already lost; it is an anchor to which mind clings and, therefore, that eternal movement, this true search of which I am going to speak, ceases. And most minds are looking for a definite aim, with this definite desire to find, and when once there is established this desire, you will find something. But it won’t be something living; it will be a dead thing that you will find and, therefore, you will put that away to turn to another; and this process of continually choosing, continually discarding, you call acquiring wisdom, experience, or truth.

Out of the desire to immortalize that which is false you create religions, sociological systems and divisions, political methods, economic panaceas, and moral standards.

To put it differently: What you consider to be the truth is but self-consciousness, the “I,” which is all the time trying to become immortal, and the environment, which I say is the continual movement of the false. This movement of the false becomes your ever-changing environment, which is called progress, evolution. So to me, happiness, or truth, or God, cannot be found as the outcome of the result of environment, the “I,” the continually changing conditions.

Now, what is the “yourself’? It is but the result, the product, of environment. So what are you doing? You are fighting one false thing with another false thing, and environment will be false so long as you do not understand

Most of us are enmeshed, caught up in the process of trying to overcome, to run away from circumstances, environment; we are not trying to find out what it means, what is its cause, its significance, its value. When you see the significance of environment, it means drastic action, a tremendous upheaval in your life, a complete, revolutionary change of ideas, in which there is no authority, no imitation. But very few are willing to see the significance of environment, because it means change, a radical change, a revolutionary change, and very few people want that. So most people, vast numbers of people, are concerned with the evasion of environment; they cover it up, or try to find new substitutions by getting rid of Jesus Christ and setting up a new savior; by seeking new teachers in place of the old, but they do not ever inquire whether they need a guide at all. This alone would help, this alone would give the true significance of that particular demand.

If you look closely you will see that your search is nothing but a search for comfort and security and escape; not a search for understanding, not a search for

truth, but rather a search for an evasion and, therefore, a search for the conquering of all obstacles; after all, all conquering is but substitution, and in substitution there is no understanding.

So what are you doing? What is happening to each one of you? What are you trying to do in your lives? You are seeking; and what are you seeking? There is a conflict between yourself and the constant movement of environment. You are seeking a means to overcome that environment, so as to perpetuate your own self, which is but the result of that environment; or, because you have been thwarted so often by environment, which prevents you from self-expressing, as you call it, you seek a new means of self-expression through service to humanity, through economic adjustments, and all the rest of it.

But if you understand the significance of environment, that is, wealth, poverty, exploitation, oppression, nationalities, religions, and all the inanities of social life in modern existence, not trying to overcome them but seeing their significance, then there must be individual action, and complete revolution of ideas and thought. Then there is no longer a struggle, but rather light dispelling darkness. There is no conflict between light and darkness. There is no conflict between truth and that which is false. There is only conflict where there are opposites.

The Significance Of Environment

When you seek a solution, a means of dissolving the conflict, you merely try to superimpose, or substitute in its place, a new set of ideas, a new set of theories, or you try to run away from conflict altogether. When people desire a solution for their conflict, that is what they seek. If you observe, you will see that when there is conflict, you are at once seeking a solution for it. You want to find a way out of that conflict, and you generally do find a way out; but you have not solved the conflict, you have merely shifted it by substituting a new environment, a new condition, which will in turn produce further conflict. So let us look into this whole idea of conflict, from where it arises, and what we can do with it.

So, if you observe, if you look into your lives, you will see that conflict is continually twisting, perverting, shaping your lives; and intelligence, which is the perfect harmony of mind and heart, has no part in your lives at all. That is, environment is continually shaping, molding your lives to action, and naturally out of that continual twisting, molding, shaping, perversion, conflict is born. So where there is this constant process of conflict there cannot be intelligence.

Conflict can exist only so long as there is reaction to that environment which produces the “I,” the self. The majority of people are unconscious of this conflict—the conflict between one’s self, which is but the result of the environment, and the environment itself; very few are conscious of this continuous battle. One becomes conscious of that conflict, that disharmony, that struggle between the false creation of the environment, which is the “I,” and the environment itself, only through suffering. Isn’t that so? It is only through acuteness of suffering, acuteness of pain, acuteness of disharmony, that you become conscious of the conflict.

What happens when in that intensity of suffering you become fully conscious of the battle, the struggle which is going on? Most people want an immediate relief, an immediate answer. They want to shelter themselves from that suffering and, therefore, they find various means of escape such as religions, excitements, inanities, and the many mysterious avenues of escape which we have created through our desire to protect ourselves from this struggle.

suffering can only awaken the mind to great intensity. And when the mind is acute, then it begins to question—the environment, the conditions, and in that questioning, intelligence is functioning; and it is only intelligence that will lead man to the fullness of life and to the discovery of the significance of sorrow. Intelligence begins to function in the moment of acuteness of suffering, when mind and heart are no longer escaping, escaping through the various avenues which you have so cleverly made, which are so apparently reasonable, factual, real. If you observe carefully, without prejudice, you will see that so long as there is an escape you are not solving, you are not coming face-to-face with conflict and, therefore, your suffering is merely the accumulating of ignorance.

To put it again differently, so long as we are seeking solutions, so long as we are seeking substitutions, authorities for the cause and the alleviation of conflict, there must be identification of the mind with the particular; whereas if the mind is in that state of intense suffering in which all the avenues of escape are blocked, then intelligence will be awakened, will function naturally and spontaneously.

What is environment? Environment is created, this whole human structure has been created, by human fears, longings, hopes, desires, attainments. Now, you cannot make a perfect environment because each man is creating, according to his fancies and desires, new sets of conditions; but having an intelligent mind, you can pierce through all these false environments and, therefore, be free of that “I” consciousness. Please, the “I” consciousness, the sense of “mine,” is the result of environment, isn’t it? I don’t think we need discuss it because it is pretty obvious.

The question is not whether we can create a perfect environment, but rather how to awaken that intelligence which shall be free of environment, imperfect or perfect. I say you can awaken that intelligence by questioning the full value of any environment in which your mind is caught up. Then you will see that you are free of any particular environment, because then you are functioning intelligently, not being twisted, perverted, shaped by environment.

K: I said yesterday that there can be struggle only between two false things, conflict between the environment and the result of environment, which is the “I.” Now between these two lie innumerable avenues of escape, which the “I” has created, which we call vice, goodness, morality, moral standards, fears, and all the many opposites;

and the struggle can exist only between the two, between the false creation of the environment, which is the “I,” and the environment itself. But there cannot be struggle between truth and that which is false. Surely that is obvious, isn’t it? You may be viciously opposed because the other man is ignorant. It doesn’t mean you mustn’t fight—but don’t assume the righteousness of fighting. Please, you know there is a natural way of doing things, a spontaneous, sweet way of doing things, without this aggressive, vicious righteousness.

This brings in the idea of karma. You know what it means, that you have a burden in the present, the burden of the past in the present. That is, you bring with you the environment of the past into the present, and because of that burden, you control the future, you shape the future. If you come to think of it, it must be so, that if your mind is perverted by the past, naturally the future must also be twisted, because if you have not understood the environment of yesterday it must be continued today and, therefore, as you don’t understand today, naturally you will not understand tomorrow either.

So one is caught up in this vicious circle, and hence the idea of continual rebirth, rebirth of memory, or rebirth of the mind continued by environment.

A Dynamic Society

Here I am using the word self-discipline as in the question, that is, disciplining one’s self after a certain pattern, preconceived or preestablished and, therefore, with the desire to attain, to gain, whereas to me the very process of discipline, this continual twisting of mind to a particular preestablished pattern, must eventually cripple the mind. The mind, which is really intelligent, is free of self-discipline, for intelligence is born out of the questioning of environment and the discovery of the true significance of environment.

Take a primitive man; what does he do? In him there is no discipline, no control, no suppression. He does what he desires to do, this primitive. The intelligent man also

does what he desires, but with intelligence. Intelligence is not born out of self-discipline or suppression. In the one instance it is wholly the pursuit of desire, the primitive man pursuing the object he desires. In the other instance, the intelligent man sees the significance of desire and sees the conflict; the primitive man does not, he pursues anything he desires and creates suffering and pain. So to me self-discipline and suppression are both alike—they both deny intelligence.

You know we have lost all sense of living normally, simply, directly. To get back to that normality, that simplicity, that directness, you cannot follow methods, you cannot merely become automatic machines; and I am afraid most of us are seeking methods because we think that through them we shall realize fullness, stability, and permanency. To me methods lead to slow stagnation and decay and they have nothing to do with real spirituality, which is, after all, the summation of intelligence.

You know, the moment you begin to think, really begin to feel, you must have this burning desire for a drastic change, drastic revolution, complete reorientation of thinking. Now,

I think we give the rather false excuse that we must not hurt our families and our friends. You know when you want to do something vital, you do it, irrespective of your family and friends, don’t you? Then you don’t consider that you are going to hurt them. It is beyond your control; you feel so intensely, you think so completely that it carries you beyond the limitation of family circles, classified bondages. But you begin to consider family, friends, ideals, beliefs, traditions, the established order of things, only when you are still clinging to a particular safety, when there is not that inward richness, but merely the dependence on external stimulation for that inward richness.

It is to be found only when you are completely naked, stripped of your longings, hopes, securities; and in that direct simplicity is the richness of life.

Now karma is the bondage, the reaction born out of the environment, which the mind has not understood. As I tried to explain yesterday, if we do not understand a particular condition, naturally the mind is burdened with that condition, with that lack of understanding; and with that lack of understanding we function and act and, therefore, create further burdens, greater limitations.

So to live each moment now without the burden of the past or of the present, without that crippling memory created by the lack of understanding, mind must ever meet things anew. It is fatal to meet life with the burden of certainty, with the conceit of knowledge, because, after all, knowledge is merely a thing of the past. So when you come to that life with a freshness, then you will know what it is to live without conflict, without this continual straining effort. Then you wander far on the floods of life.

Living In Ecstasy

To me there is a reality, an immense living truth; and to comprehend that, there must be utter simplicity of thought. What is simple is infinitely subtle, what is simple is greatly delicate. There is a great subtlety, an infinite subtlety and delicacy, and if you use words merely as a means of getting to that delicacy, to that simplicity of thought, then I am afraid you will not comprehend what I want to convey. But if you would use the significance of words as a bridge to cross, then words will not become an illusion in which the mind is lost.

That is, when the mind is trying to overcome, it must create duality, and that very duality negates understanding and creates the distinctions. That duality influences the mind, and hence a mind influenced by duality cannot understand the significance of environment or the significance of the cause of conflict. These psychological influences are merely reactions to environment from that center of “I” consciousness, of like and dislike, or antitheses, and naturally where there are antitheses, opposites, there can be no comprehension.

That is, if my experiences and remembrances of the past are becoming hindrances in the present through their reaction, then I cannot comprehend or live fully, intensely, in the present.

You react to the past because the present has lost its significance, or because you want to avoid the present; so you go back to the past and live in that emotional thrill, in that reaction of surging memory, because the present has little value.

And you cannot fill that insufficiency by overcoming obstacles, by substitutions, by escaping or by accumulating, which is merely the cunning of the mind lost in the pursuit of gain. Suffering is merely that high, intense clarity of thought and emotion which forces you to recognize things as they are. But this does not mean acceptance, resignation. When you see things as they are in the mirror of truth, which is intelligence, then there is a joy, an ecstasy; in that there is no duality, no sense of loss, no division. I assure you this is not theoretical.

am not giving you a mold or a code by which you can live, or a system which you can follow. All that I am saying is, that to live creatively, enthusiastically, intelligently, vitally, intelligence must function. That intelligence is perverted, hindered, by what one calls memory, and I have explained what I mean by that, so I won’t go into it again.

To me, the true artist is one who lives completely, harmoniously, who does not divide his art from living, whose very life is that expression, whether it be a picture, music, or his behavior; who has not divorced his expression on a canvas or in music or in stone from his daily conduct, daily living. That demands the highest intelligence, highest harmony. To me the true artist is the man who has that harmony. He may express it on canvas, or he may talk, or he may paint; or he may not express it at all, he may feel it. But all this demands that exquisite poise, that intensity of awareness and, therefore, his expression is not divorced from the daily continuity of living.

To Be A True Human Being

What we call happiness or ecstasy is, to me, creative thinking. And creative thinking is the infinite movement of thought, emotion, and action. That is, when thought, which is emotion, which is action itself, is unimpeded in its movement, is not compelled or influenced or bound by an idea, and does not proceed from the background of tradition or habit, then that movement is creative.

So the question which every thoughtful person puts to himself is how can he awaken this creative thinking; because when there is this creative thinking, which is infinite movement, then there can be no idea of a limitation, a conflict.

It has no culmination or goal, for it is eternally in movement. Most minds are seeking a culmination, a goal, an achievement, and are molding themselves upon the idea of success, and such thought, such thinking is continually limiting itself, whereas if there is no idea of achievement but only the continual movement of thought as understanding, as intelligence, then that movement of thought is creative.

Now if this movement of thought is clear, simple, direct, spontaneous, profound, then there is no conflict in the individual against society, for action then is the very expression of this living, creative movement.

Most people wait for the increase of pain before they act, and during this waiting period they want to know how to be aware. No one can tell them. They are waiting for the increase of pain before they act; that is, they wait for pain through its compulsion to force them to act, and in that compulsion there is no intelligence. It is merely environment which forces them to act in a particular way, not intelligence. Therefore when a mind is caught up in this stagnation, in this lack of tenseness, there will naturally be more pain, more conflict.

You see that in mere accumulation there cannot be creative thinking; and yet mind is pursuing accumulation. Therefore, in becoming aware of that, you create a conflict, and that very conflict will dissolve the cause of accumulation.

“If so, what causes the changes in the physical processes, and how?” As far as I understand the questioner, he wants to know what produces this action, this action which is forced upon him by environment. He acts in a particular manner, compelled by environment, but if he understood environment intelligently, there would be no compulsion whatever; there would be understanding, which is action itself.

to free the mind, there must be great intensity; there must be this continual alertness, observation, which itself creates conflict. This alertness itself produces a disturbance, and when there is that crisis, that intensity of conflict, then mind, if it is not escaping, begins to think anew, to think creatively, and that very thinking is eternity.

Being Vulnerable To Truth

So your action loses its significance, its value, because you are concerned with the attainment of an objective, not with the fulfillment of intelligence which is action; you are concerned with the arrival, not with that which is fulfillment itself.

Then you begin to ask, what is the end, the purpose of living? This is what most people ask; this is what is in the minds of most people here. Why are we living? What is the end? What is the goal? What is the purpose? You are concerned with the purpose, with the end, rather than with living in the present; whereas a man who fulfills never inquires into the end because fulfillment itself is sufficient.

The very inquiry into the purpose of life indicates the lack of intelligence in the present; and the man who is fully active—not lost in activities, as most Americans are, but fully active, intelligently, emotionally, fully alive—has fulfilled himself. Therefore, the inquiry into an end is futile, because there is no such thing as an end and a beginning; there is but the continual movement of creative thinking, and what you call problems are the results of your ploughing through this turmoil toward a culmination.

You want to arrive at that perfect evasion which you call ideals, at that perfect refuge which you call the purpose of life, which is but an escape from the present turmoil.

Now to me, the turmoil, the end, and the “you” are the same; there is no division. This division is artificial, and it is created by the desire to gain, by the pursuit of acquisitive accumulation, which is born of insufficiency.

To me, as I said, there can be no such distinction, because the moment you fulfill there can no longer be the actor and the act, but only that creative movement of thought which does not seek a result, and so there is a continual living, which is immortality.

But you have divided life. Let us consider what this “I,” this actor, this observer, this center of conflict, is. It is but a long, continuous scroll of memory. This “I” is a scroll of memory in which there are accentuations. These accentuations or depressions we call complexes, and from these we act. That is, mind, being conscious of insufficiency, pursues a gain and, therefore, creates a distinction, a division. Such a mind cannot understand environment, and as it cannot understand it, it must rely on the accumulation of memory for guidance; for memory is but a series of accumulations which act as a guide toward an end.

You say to yourself, “I am shallow; I recognize the fact, and how am I going to get rid of it?” I say, do not seek to get rid of it, which is merely a process of substitution, but become conscious, become aware of what is causing this insufficiency.

Part 2 Insights into Everyday Life

The First And Last Freedom

If, during this discourse, anything is said which is opposed to your way of thinking and belief, just listen; do not resist. You may be right and I may be wrong; but by listening and considering together we are going to find out what is the truth. Truth cannot be given to you by somebody. You have to discover it; and to discover, there must be a state of mind in which there is direct perception.

Understanding comes through being aware of what is. To know exactly what is. the real, the actual, without interpreting it, without condemning or justifying it, is, surely, the beginning of wisdom.

So, we can have understanding of what is when we recognize it without condemnation, without justification, without identification. To know that one is in a certain condition, in a certain state, is already a process of liberation; but a man who is not aware of his condition, of his struggle, tries to be something other than he is, which brings about habit. So, then, let us keep in mind that we want to examine what is, to observe and be aware of exactly what is the actual, without giving it any slant, without giving it an interpretation. It takes an extraordinarily astute mind, an extraordinarily pliable heart, to be aware of and to follow what is: because what is is constantly moving, constantly undergoing a transformation, and if the mind is tethered to belief, to knowledge, it ceases to pursue, it ceases to follow the swift movement of what is. What is is not static, surely it is constantly moving, as you will see if you observe it very closely. To follow it, you need a very swift mind and a pliable heart—which are denied when the mind is static, fixed in a belief, in a prejudice, in an identification; and a mind and heart that are dry cannot follow easily, swiftly, that which is.

When there is confusion in the world, psychologically and in every way, you enclose yourself in some kind of security, either that of a bank account or that of an ideology; or else you turn to prayer, you go to the temple, which is really escaping from what is happening in the world. More and more sects are being formed, more and more “isms” are springing up all over the world. Because the more confusion there is, the more you want a leader, somebody who will guide you out of this mess, so you turn to the religious books, or to one of the latest teachers; or else you act and respond according to a system which appears to solve the problem, a system either of the left or of the right. That is exactly what is happening.

Society by itself is nonexistent. Society is what you and I, in our relationship, have created; it is the outward projection of all our own inward psychological states. So if you and I do not understand ourselves, merely transforming the outer, which is the projection of the inner, has no significance whatsoever; that is, there can be no significant alteration or modification in society so long as I do not understand myself in relationship to you.

Understanding myself is not a matter of time; I can understand myself at this very moment. If I say, “I shall understand myself tomorrow,” I am bringing in chaos and misery, my action is destructive. The moment I say that I “shall” understand, I bring in the time element and so am already caught up in the wave of confusion and destruction. Understanding is now, not tomorrow. Tomorrow is for the lazy mind, the sluggish mind, the mind that is not interested. When you are interested in something, you do it instantaneously, there is immediate understanding, immediate transformation. If you do not change now, you will never change, because the change that takes place tomorrow is merely a modification, it is

not transformation. Transformation can only take place immediately; the revolution is now, not tomorrow.

Ambition

Does not this desire for success, for applause, bring conflict both within and without? Would being free of ambition mean decay? Is it stagnation to have no conflict? We can drug ourselves, put ourselves to sleep with beliefs, with doctrines, and so have no deep conflicts. For most of us, some kind of activity is the drug. Obviously, such a state is one of decay, disintegration. But when we are aware of the false as the false, does it bring death? To be aware that ambition in any form, whether for happiness, for God, or for success, is the beginning of conflict both within and without, surely does not mean the end of all action, the end of life.

Why are we clever and ambitious? Is not ambition an urge to avoid what is? Is not this cleverness really stupid, which is what we are? Why are we so frightened of what is? What is the good of running away if whatever we are is always there? We may succeed in escaping, but what we are is still there, breeding conflict and misery. Why

are we so frightened of our loneliness, of our emptiness? Any activity away from what is is bound to bring sorrow and antagonism. Conflict is the denial of what is or the running away from what is; there is no conflict other than that. Our conflict becomes more and more complex and insoluble because we do not face what is. There is no complexity in what is, but only in the many escapes that we seek.

The Individual And The Ideal

The ideal is a marvelous and respectable escape from the actual. The ideal of nonviolence, like the collective utopia, is fictitious; the ideal, the what should be, helps us to cover up and avoid what is. The pursuit of the ideal is the search for reward. You may shun the worldly rewards as being stupid and barbarous, which they are; but your pursuit of the ideal is the search for reward at a different level, which is also stupid. The ideal is a compensation, a fictitious state which the mind has conjured up. Being violent, separate, and out for itself, the mind projects the gratifying compensation, the fiction which it calls the ideal, the utopia, the future, and vainly pursues it. That very pursuit is conflict, but it is also a pleasurable postponement of the actual. The ideal, the what should be, does not help in understanding what is; on the contrary, it prevents understanding.

To know the mind, must you not be aware of its activities? The mind is only experience, not just the immediate, but also the accumulated. The mind is the past in response to the present, which makes for the future. The total process of the mind has to be understood. “Where am I to begin?” From the only beginning: relationship. Relationship is life; to be is to be related. Only in the mirror of relationship is the mind to be understood, and you have to begin to see yourself in that mirror.

What may appear to be small, limited, if approached rightly, reveals the fathomless. It is like a funnel, the narrow opens into the wide. When observed with passive watchfulness, the limited reveals the limitless. After all, at its source the river is small, hardly worth noticing.

Even if you begin with some peripheral activity, you are in relationship with it, the mind is the center of it. Whether you begin near or far, you are there. Without understanding yourself, whatever you do will inevitably bring about confusion and sorrow. The beginning is the ending.

“I have wandered far afield. I have seen and done many things, I have suffered and laughed like so many others, and yet I have had to come back to myself. I am like that sannyasi who set out in search of truth. He spent many years going from teacher to teacher, and each pointed out a different way. At last he wearily returned to his home, and in his own house was the jewel! I see how foolish we are, searching the universe for that bliss which is to be found only in our own hearts when the mind is purged of its activities. You are perfectly right. I begin from where I started. I begin with what I am.”

Fear And Escape

Fear can exist only in relation to something. As an abstraction, fear is a mere word, and the word is not the actual fear. Do you know specifically of what you are afraid?

Of course, the vast majority escape from themselves. But by escaping from yourself, you have become dependent. Dependence grows stronger, escapes more essential, in proportion to the fear of what is. The wife, the book, the radio, become extraordinarily important; escapes come to be all-significant, of the greatest value. I use my wife as a means of running away from myself, so I am attached to her. I must possess her, I must not lose her; and she likes to be possessed, for she is also using me. There is a common need to escape, and mutually we use each other. This usage is called love. You do not like what you are, and so you run away from yourself, from what is.

Time And Transformation

Surely a life that has significance, the riches of true happiness, is not of time. Like love, such a life is timeless; and to understand that which is timeless, we must not approach it through time but rather understand time.

It is interesting to realize that our lives are mostly spent in time—time, not in the sense of chronological sequence, of minutes, hours, days, and years, but in the sense of psychological memory. We live by time, we are the result of time. Our minds are the product of many yesterdays and the present is merely the passage of the past to the future. Our minds, our activities, our being, are founded on time; without time we cannot think, because thought is the result of time, thought is the product of many yesterdays and there is no thought without memory.

Is there time apart from the mind? Surely time, psychological time, is the product of the mind.

As I said, happiness is not of yesterday, happiness is not the product of time, happiness is always in the present, a timeless state. I do not know if you have noticed that when you have ecstasy, a creative joy, a series of bright clouds surrounded by dark clouds, in that moment there is no time: there is only the immediate present. The mind, coming in after the experiencing in the present, remembers and wishes to continue it, gathering more and more of itself, thereby creating time.

First of all, why do we want to change what is, or bring about a transformation? Why? Because what we are dissatisfies us; it creates conflict, disturbance, and disliking that state we want something better, something nobler, more idealistic. Therefore, we desire transformation because there is pain, discomfort, conflict.

“I will get out of it in time. I will practice nonviolence, I will practice non-envy, I will practice peace.” Now, you want to practice nonviolence because violence is a state of disturbance, conflict, and you think that in time you will gain nonviolence and overcome the conflict. What is actually happening? Being in a state of conflict you want to achieve a state in which there is no conflict. Now is that state of no conflict the result of time, of a duration? Obviously not, because while you are achieving a state of nonviolence, you are still being violent and are, therefore, still in conflict.

To understand anything, any human or scientific problem, what is important, what is essential? A quiet mind, is it not? A mind that is intent on understanding. It is not a mind that is exclusive, that is trying to concentrate, which again is an effort of resistance. If I really want to understand something, there is immediately a quiet state of mind. When you want to listen to music or look at a picture which you love, which you have a feeling for, what is the state of your mind? Immediately there is a quietness, is there not? When you are listening to music, your mind does not wander all over the place; you are listening. Similarly, when you want to understand conflict, you are no longer depending on time at all; you are simply confronted with what is, which is conflict. Then immediately there comes a quietness, a stillness of mind.

Revolution is only possible now, not in the future; regeneration is today, not tomorrow. If you will experiment with what I have been saying, you will find that there is immediate regeneration, a newness, a quality of freshness; because the mind is always still when it is interested, when it desires or has the intention to understand.

A man who relies on time as a means through which he can gain happiness or realize truth or God is merely deceiving himself; he is living in ignorance and, therefore, in conflict. A man who sees that time is not the way out of our difficulty and who is, therefore, free from the false, such a man naturally has the intention to understand; therefore, his mind is quiet spontaneously, without compulsion, without practice. When the mind is still, tranquil, not seeking any answer or any solution, neither resisting nor avoiding—it is only then that there can be a regeneration, because then the mind is capable of perceiving what is true; and it is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

Sorrow From Self-Pity

As though one were living for that single day, for that single hour. “How?” If you had only one hour to live, what would you do?

Would you not die completely to the things of the mind, to desires, and to the world? And if it can be done for an hour then it can also be done for the days and years that may remain. “Is such a thing really possible, sir?” Try it and you will find out.

Education And The Significance Of Life

But there is an intelligent revolt which is not reaction, and which comes with self-knowledge through the awareness of one’s own thought and feeling. It is only when we face experience as it comes and do not avoid disturbance that we keep intelligence highly awakened; and intelligence highly awakened is intuition, which is the only true guide in life.

Education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts; it is to see the significance of life as a whole. But the whole cannot be approached through the part, which is what governments, organized religions, and authoritarian parties are attempting to do.

It is in the understanding of ourselves that fear comes to an end. If the individual is to grapple with life from moment to moment, if he is to face its intricacies, its miseries and sudden demands, he must be infinitely pliable and, therefore, free of theories and particular patterns of thought.

Life Ahead

Discipline always limits the mind to a movement within the framework of a particular system of thought or belief, does it not? And such a mind is never free to be intelligent. Discipline brings about submission to authority. It gives the capacity to function within the pattern of a society which demands functional ability, but it does not awaken the intelligence which has its own capacity.

We must differentiate here between function and status. Status, with all its emotional and hierarchical prestige, arises only through the comparison of functions as the high and the low. When each individual is flowering to his fullest capacity, there is then no comparison of functions; there is only the expression of capacity as a teacher, or a prime minister, or a gardener, and so status loses its sting of envy.

The child’s natural curiosity, the urge to learn, exists from the very beginning, and surely this should be intelligently encouraged continually, so that it remains vital and without distortion, and will gradually lead him to the study of a variety of subjects. If this eagerness to learn is encouraged in the child at all times, then his study of mathematics, geography, history, science, or any other subject, will not be a problem to the child or to the educator. Learning is facilitated when there is an atmosphere of happy affection and thoughtful care. Emotional openness and sensitivity can be cultivated only when the student feels secure in his relationship with his teachers. The feeling of being secure in relationship is a primary need of children. There is a vast difference between the feeling of being secure and the feeling of dependency. Consciously or unconsciously, most educators cultivate the feeling of dependency, and thereby subtly encourage fear, which the parents also do in their own affectionate or aggressive manner.

This sense of security in the child is not the opposite of insecurity. It is the feeling of being at ease, whether in his own home or at school, the feeling that he can be what he is, without being compelled in any way; that he can climb a tree and not be scolded if he falls. He can have this sense of security only when the parents and the educators are deeply concerned with the total welfare of the child.

To be sensitive is to love. The word love is not love. And love is not to be divided as the love of God and the love of man, nor is it to be measured as the love of the one and of the many. Love gives itself abundantly as a flower gives its perfume; but we are always measuring love in our relationship and thereby destroying it.

Does not love have about it a refinement which expresses itself as respect and good taste? Does it not also bring about the purification of the mind, which otherwise has a tendency to strengthen itself in pride? Refinement in behavior is not a self-imposed adjustment or the result of an outward demand; it comes spontaneously with this quality of love. When there is the understanding of love, then sex and all the complications and subtleties of human relationship can be approached with sanity and not with excitement and apprehension.

It is necessary that the body be in excellent health, that it be given the right kind of food and have sufficient sleep. If the senses are not alert, the body will impede the total development of the human being. To have grace of movement and well-balanced control of the muscles, there must be various forms of exercise, dancing, and games. A body that is not kept clean, that is sloppy and does not hold itself in good posture, is not conducive to sensitivity of mind and emotions.

The elimination of fear is the beginning of attention. Fear must exist as long as there is an urge to be or to become, which is the pursuit of success, with all its frustrations and tortuous contradictions. You can teach concentration, but attention cannot be taught, just as you cannot possibly teach freedom from fear; but we can begin to discover the causes that produce fear, and in understanding these causes there is the elimination of fear.

You will find that when there is love—which expresses itself through humility, courtesy, patience, gentleness—you are already free of the barriers which insensitivity builds; and so you are helping to bring about in the child this state of attention from a very tender age. Attention is not something to be learned, but you can help to awaken it in the student by not creating around him that sense of compulsion which produces a self-contradictory existence.

Experience does not liberate or enrich the mind, as we generally think it does. As long as experience strengthens the experiencer, there must be conflict. In having experiences, a conditioned mind only strengthens its conditioning, and so perpetuates contradiction and misery. Only for the mind that is capable of understanding the total ways of itself can experiencing be a liberating factor. Once there is perception and understanding of the power and capacities of the many layers of the hidden, then the details can be looked into wisely and intelligently.

Freedom From The Known

If you do not follow somebody you feel very lonely. Be lonely then. Why are you frightened of being alone? Because you are faced with yourself as you are and you find that you are empty, dull, stupid, ugly, guilty, and anxious—a petty, shoddy, secondhand entity. Face the fact; look at it, do not run away from it. The moment you run away fear begins.

We are all engaged in the pursuit of pleasure in some form or other—intellectual, sensuous or cultural pleasure, the pleasure of reforming, telling others what to do, of modifying the evils of society, of doing good—the pleasure of greater knowledge, greater physical satisfaction, greater experience, greater understanding of life, all the clever, cunning things of the mind; and the ultimate pleasure is, of course, to have God. Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly, or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is, therefore, important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly, and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely, and meaningless. You may ask why then should life not be guided by pleasure? For the very simple reason that pleasure must bring pain, frustration, sorrow and fear, and, out of fear, violence. If you want to live that way, live that way. Most of the world does anyway, but if you want to be free from sorrow you must understand the whole structure of pleasure. To understand pleasure is not to deny it. We are not condemning it or saying it is right or wrong, but if we pursue it, let us do so with our eyes open, knowing that a

mind that is all the time seeking pleasure must inevitably find its shadow, pain. They cannot be separated, although we run after pleasure and try to avoid pain. Now, why is the mind always demanding pleasure? Why is it that we do noble and ignoble things with the undercurrent of pleasure? Why is it we sacrifice and suffer on the thin thread of pleasure? What is pleasure and how does it come into being? I wonder if any of you have asked yourself these questions and followed the answers to the very end?

Pleasure comes into being through four stages—perception, sensation, contact, and desire. I see a beautiful motorcar, say; then I get a sensation, a reaction, from looking at it; then I touch it or imagine touching it, and then there is the desire to own and show myself off in it. Or I see a lovely cloud, or a mountain clear against the sky, or a leaf that has just come in springtime, or a deep valley full of loveliness and splendor, or a glorious sunset, or a beautiful face, intelligent, alive, not self-conscious and, therefore, no longer beautiful. I look at these things with intense delight and as I observe them there is no observer but only sheer beauty like love. For a moment I am absent with all my problems, anxieties, and miseries—there is only that marvelous thing. I can look at it with joy and the next moment forget it, or else the mind steps in, and then the problem begins; my mind thinks over what it has seen and thinks how…

It is the same with sexual desire or any other form of desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. To react is perfectly normal. If you stick a pin in me I shall react unless I am paralyzed. But then thought steps in and chews over the delight and turns it into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, the more strength thought gives to pleasure. So thought creates and sustains pleasure through desire, and gives it continuity; and, therefore, the natural reaction of desire to…

Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when…

with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain.…

if you can look at it without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear and, therefore, tremendous joy. It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same as it was yesterday. You struggle to achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense but the same inward quality of the mind, and you are hurt and disappointed because it is denied to you. Have you observed what happens to you when you are denied a little pleasure? When you don’t get what you want you become anxious, envious, hateful. Have you noticed when you have been denied the pleasure of drinking or smoking or sex or whatever it is, have you noticed what battles you go through? And all that is a form of fear, isn’t it? You are afraid of not getting what you want or of losing what you have.

you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure, not cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, never looking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitality of their understanding—but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. Then you will have tremendous joy in life. You cannot think about joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.

We are trying to understand violence as a fact, not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being, and the human being is myself. And to go into the problem I must be completely vulnerable, open, to it. I must expose myself to myself—not necessarily expose myself to you because you may not be interested—but I must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing right to the end and at no point stops and says I will go no further.

Can you look at anger as if it were something by itself? Can you look at it completely objectively, which means neither defending it nor condemning it? Can you? Can I look at you if I am antagonistic to you or if I am thinking what a marvelous person you are? I can see you only when I look at you with a certain care in which neither of these things is involved. Now, can I look at anger in the same way, which means that I am vulnerable to the problem, I do not resist it, I am watching this extraordinary phenomenon without any reaction to it?

with all the dulling of the mind that this conditioning results in. To learn, to discover, something fundamental you must have the capacity to go deeply. If you have a blunt instrument, a dull instrument, you cannot go deeply. So what we are doing is sharpening the instrument, which is the mind—the mind which

has been made dull by all this justifying and condemning. You can penetrate deeply only if your mind is as sharp as a needle and as strong as a diamond. It is no good just sitting back and asking, “How am I to get such a mind?” You have to want it as you want your next meal, and to have it you must see that what makes your mind dull and stupid is this sense of invulnerability which has built walls round itself and which is part of this condemnation and justification. If the mind can be rid of that, then you can look, study, penetrate, and perhaps come to a state that is totally aware of the whole problem.

When you say you dislike or hate someone that is a fact, although it sounds terrible. If you look at it, go into it completely, it ceases, but if you say, “I must not hate; I must have love in my heart,” then you are living in a hypocritical world with double standards. To live completely, fully, in the moment is to live with what is, the actual, without any sense of condemnation or justification—then you understand it so totally that you are finished with it. When you see clearly the problem is solved.

Freedom comes only when you see and act, never through revolt. The seeing is the acting and such action is as instantaneous as when you see danger. Then there is no cerebration, no discussion or hesitation; the danger itself compels the act and, therefore, to see is to act and to be free. Freedom is a state of mind—not freedom from something but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and, therefore, so intense, active, and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformity, and acceptance. Such freedom implies being completely alone.

You are never alone because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday; your mind is never clear of all the rubbish it has accumulated. To be alone you must die to the past. When you are alone, totally alone, not belonging to any family, any nation, any culture, any particular continent, there is that sense of being an outsider. The man who is completely alone in this way is innocent and it is this innocence that frees the mind from sorrow.

We carry about with us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that totally is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young—not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age—and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.

In this solitude you will begin to understand the necessity of living with yourself as you are, not as you think you should be or as you have been.

You must care for it as you would care for a newly planted tree, protect it against the sun, against the storm. You must care for it, not condemn it or justify it. Therefore, you begin to love it. When you care for it, you are beginning to love it. It is not that you love being envious or anxious, as so many people do, but rather that you care for watching.

So can you—can you and I—live with what we actually are, knowing ourselves to be dull, envious, fearful, believing we have tremendous affection when we have not, getting easily hurt, easily flattered, and bored—can we live with all that, neither accepting it nor denying it, but just observing it without becoming morbid, depressed, or elated?

That is, is freedom to be achieved through a gradual process? Obviously not, because as soon as you introduce time you are enslaving yourself more and more. You cannot become free gradually. It is not a matter of time.

But by denying sexuality they put out their eyes and cut out their tongues for they deny the whole beauty of the earth. They have starved their hearts and minds; they are dehydrated human beings; they have banished beauty because beauty is associated with woman. Can love be divided into the sacred and the profane, the human and the divine, or is there only love? Is love of the one and not of the many?

When you cry for your brother who dies, cry for him. It is very easy to cry for yourself because he is gone. Apparently you are crying because your heart is touched, but it is not touched for him, it is only touched by self-pity and self-pity makes you hard, encloses you, makes you dull and stupid.

If you understand this, which means to come in contact with it as directly as you would touch a tree or a pillar or a hand, then you will see that sorrow is self-created, sorrow is created by thought, sorrow is the outcome of time.

But you don’t know how to come to this extraordinary fount, so what do you do? If you don’t know what to do, you do nothing, don’t you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no center at all. Then there is love.

Krishnamurti To Himself

The understanding of the nature of what you are, without any distortions, without any bias, without any reactions to what you discover you are, is the beginning of austerity. The watching, the awareness, of every thought, every feeling, not to restrain it, not to control it, but to watch it, like watching a bird in flight, without any of your own prejudices and distortions—that watching brings about an extraordinary sense of austerity that goes beyond all restraint, all the fooling around with oneself and all this idea of self-improvement, self-fulfillment. That is all rather childish. In this watching there is great freedom and in that freedom there is the sense of the dignity of austerity. But if you said all this to a modern group of students or children, they would probably look out of the window in boredom because this world is bent on its own pursuit of pleasure.

You can’t escape it, my friend. You can’t escape from this deep unfathomed turmoil unless you really give thought to it, not only thought but see by careful attention, diligent watching, the whole movement of thought and the self. You may say all this is too tiresome, perhaps unnecessary. But if you do not pay attention to this, give heed, the future is not only going to be more destructive, more intolerable, but without much significance. All this is not a dampening, depressing point of view; it is actually so. What you are now is what you will be in the coming days.

What is sanity? To be whole, nonfragmented in action, in life, in every kind of relationship, that is the very essence of sanity. Sanity means to be whole, healthy and holy. To be insane, neurotic, psychotic, unbalanced, schizophrenic, whatever name you might give to it, is to be fragmented, broken up in action and in the movement of

relationship, which is existence.

Action and idea are contradictory. Seeing is the doing and not ideation first and action according to the conclusion. This breeds conflict. The analyzer himself is the analyzed. When the analyzer separates himself as something different from the analyzed, he begets conflict, and conflict is the area of the unbalanced. The observer is the observed and therein lies sanity, the whole, and with the holy is love.

Part 3 Life’s Questions

We are reminded that the answers are in the penetration of the questions themselves.

WHAT IS IT TO BE SERIOUS?

What do we mean by being serious? And are we ever really serious? Most of us think very superficially; we never sustain a particular intention and carry it through because we have so many contradictory desires, each desire pulling in a different direction. One moment we are serious about something, and the next it is forgotten, and we pursue a different object at a different level. And is it possible to maintain an integrated outlook toward life?

Is a mind that is torn by innumerable desires, each pulling in a different direction, capable of discovering what is true, however much it may try?

A man who says, “All this is unreal; therefore, let us find the real,” is escaping from reality.

CAN WE CREATE A NEW CULTURE?

I think that one of the greatest problems confronting man at this present time is the question of creativeness, how to bring about the creative release of the individual, and if we can consider the question, not merely verbally, but go into it very deeply, perhaps we shall be able to discover the full significance of that word creativeness. It seems to me that this is the real issue, not what kind of political reform to work for, or what kind of religion to follow. How is it possible to bring about the creative release of the individual, not only at the beginning of his existence, but throughout life? That is, how is the individual to have abundant energy rightly directed so that his life will have expansive and profound significance?

I feel that revolution is necessary at the most profound level, not fragmentary revolution, but integrated revolution, a total revolution starting not from the outside but from within; and to bring about that total revolution, surely we must understand the ways of our own thought, the whole process of our thinking, which is self-knowledge. Without the foundation of self-knowledge, what we think has very little meaning.

CAN YOU UNDERSTAND THE FACT OF EMPTINESS?

QUESTIONER: Beyond all superficial fears there is a deep anguish, which eludes me. It seems to be the very fear of life—or perhaps of death. Or is it the vast emptiness of life? KRISHNAMURTI: I think most of us feel this; most of us feel a great sense of emptiness, a great sense of loneliness. We try to avoid it, we try to run away from it, we try to find security, permanency, away from this anguish. Or, we try to be free of it by analyzing the various dreams, the various reactions. But it is always there, eluding us, and not to be resolved so easily and so superficially. Most of us are aware of this emptiness, of this loneliness, of this anguish. And, being afraid of it, we seek security, a sense of permanency, in things or property, in people or relationship, or in ideas, beliefs, dogmas, in name, position, and power. But can this emptiness be banished by merely running away from ourselves?

With most of us, the difficulty is that we are unaware of our escapes. We are so conditioned, so accustomed to our escapes, that we take them as realities. But if we will look more deeply into ourselves, we will see how extraordinarily lonely, how extraordinarily empty, we are under the superficial covering of our escapes. Being aware of that emptiness, we are constantly covering it up with various activities, whether artistic, social, religious, or political. But emptiness can never finally be covered—it must be understood.

Then we shall see that the emptiness is not different from ourselves, that the observer is the observed. In that experience, in that integration of the thinker and the thought, this loneliness, this anguish, disappears.

WHAT IS OUR BASIC PROBLEM?

I also see that my problem is not to find God because I do not know what that means. I may have read innumerable books on the subject, but such books are merely explanations, words, theories which have no actuality for a person who has not experienced that which is beyond the mind. And the interpreter is always a traitor, it does not matter who that interpreter is.

You feel that you must become somebody in this world, a great man or a rich man, and if you are fortunate you say it is because you have done good in the past—all that nonsense about karma, and so on. Inwardly also you want to become somebody—a saint, a virtuous man—and if you observe this whole movement of becoming, this pursuit of the “more,” both outwardly and inwardly, you will see that it is essentially based on envy.

And if you have ever observed it, you will know that your mind is always pursuing the “more.” You had a certain experience yesterday, and you want more of it today; or, being violent, you want to be nonviolent, and so on. These are all the activities of a mind which is concerned with itself.

Few people are concerned with themselves except in the sense of achieving success. I do not mean that kind of concern. I mean being concerned with the transformation of oneself. But first of all, most of us do not see the importance, the truth, of change; and secondly, we do not know how to change, how to bring about this astonishing, explosive transformation within ourselves. Changing in mediocrity, which is to change from one pattern to another, is no change at all.

We have also said, “I must follow the ideal of non-envy,” which is equally absurd, because we project the ideal of non-envy and are envious in the meantime.

mind which says, “I do not know,” and which does not want to become something has totally ceased to be envious. Then you will find that righteousness has quite a different meaning. Righteousness is not respectability; it is not conformity; it has nothing to do with social morality, which is mere convenience, a manner of living made respectable through centuries of compulsion, conformity, pressure, and fear. A mind that is really humble, in the sense I have explained, will create its own righteousness, which is not the righteousness of a pattern. It is the righteousness of living from humility and discovering from moment to moment what is truth. So your problem is not the world of newspapers, ideas, and politicians, it is the world within yourself—but you have to realize, to feel the truth of this, and not merely agree because the Gita or some bearded gentleman says it is so. If you are aware of that inner world and are watching yourself without condemnation or justification from day to day, from moment to moment, then in that awareness you will find there is a tremendous vitality. The mind that is accumulating is frightened to die, and such a mind can never discover what is truth. But to a mind that is dying every minute to everything that it has experienced, there comes an astonishing vitality because every moment is new; and only then is the mind capable of discovery.

only when the mind is explosive that it is capable of discovering or creating something original, new.

HOW DO YOU APPROACH THE PROBLEMS OF LIVING?

We notice as we grow older that the mind—the instrument of understanding, the instrument with which we probe into any problem, to inquire, to question, to discover—if misused, deteriorates, disintegrates, and it seems to me that one of the major factors of this deterioration of the mind is the process of choice.

All our life is based on choice. We choose at different levels of our existence. We choose between white and blue, between one flower and another flower, between certain psychological impulses of like and dislike, between certain ideas, beliefs, accepting some and discarding others. So our mental structure is based on this process of choice, this continuous effort at choosing, distinguishing, discarding, accepting, rejecting.

Now, is not choice ambition? Our life is ambition. We want to be somebody, we want to be well thought of, want to achieve a result. If I am not wise, I want to become wise. If I am violent, I want to become nonviolent. The “becoming” is the process of ambition. Whether I want to become the biggest politician or the most perfect saint, the ambition, the drive, the impulse of becoming is the process of choice, is the process of ambition, which is essentially based on choice.

What do we mean by it, and is it possible to live without ambition? We see that ambition breeds competition—whether in children, in school, or among the big politicians, all the way up. This ambition produces certain industrial benefits, but in its wake, obviously there is the darkening of the mind, the technological conditioning, so that the mind loses its pliability, its simplicity and, therefore, is incapable of directly experiencing.

Is there not a difference between the flowering mind and the becoming mind? The becoming mind is a mind that is always growing, becoming, enlarging, gathering experience as knowledge. We know that process full well in our daily life, with all its results, with all its conflicts, its miseries and strife, but we do not know the life of flowering. And is there not a difference between the two which we have to discover—not by trying to demarcate, to separate, but to discover—in the process of our living? When we discover this, we may perhaps be able to set aside this ambition, the way of choice, and discover a flowering, which is the way of life, which may be true action.

So if we merely say that we must not be ambitious without the discovery of the flowering way of life, the mere killing of ambition destroys the mind also because it is an action of the will, which is the action of choice.

Perhaps that way, that approach to life, is essentially wrong, and there might be another approach, which is the flowering of life, which could express itself without accumulation. After all, we know when we are conscious of striving after something, of becoming something; that is ambition, the seeking of a result. But there is an energy, a force in which there is a compulsion without the process of accumulation, without the background of the “me,” of the self, of the ego; that is the way of creativity. Without understanding that, without actually experiencing that, our life becomes very dull; our life becomes a series of endless conflicts in which there is no creativity, no happiness. And perhaps if we can understand not by discarding ambition but by understanding the ways of ambition—by being open, by comprehending, by listening to the truth of ambition—perhaps we may come upon that creativity in which there is a continuous expression which is not the expression of self-fulfillment but is the expression of energy without the limitation of the “me.”

The mind going away from the problem creates fear; the very movement of going away, the flight from the problem, is fear. I am in despair because I have done something which is not right, or some misery comes upon me, or I have done a terrible wrong, or my son is dead, or I have very little to eat. My mind, not being able to resolve the problem, creates a certainty, something to which it can cling, an image which it carves by the hand or by the mind.

How I approach the aches and sorrows and miseries in my life is important, not hope, because if I know how I approach them, then I shall be able to deal with them.

The mind will always create problems. But what is essential is that when we make mistakes, when we are in pain, to meet these mistakes, these pains, without judgment, to look at them without condemnation, to live with them and to let them go by. And that can only happen when the mind is in the state of noncondemnation, without any formula; which means, when the mind is essentially quiet, when the mind is fundamentally still; then only is there the comprehension of the problem.

When you say you must find out the truth, will you find truth? Or does truth come into being only when the mind is not occupied, when the mind is empty to receive, not to gather, not to accumulate. Because you can only receive once. But if what you have received you make into memory with which you are occupied, then you will never receive again. Because the receiving is from moment to moment. Therefore, it is of timelessness.

So the mind, which is of time, cannot receive the timeless. So the mind must be completely still, empty, without any movement in any direction. And that can only take place with a mind that is not occupied—not occupied with the “more,” with a problem, with worry, with escapes; not conditioned in any belief, in any image, in any experience. It is only when the mind is totally free, then only is there a possibility of immense profound stillness; and in that stillness that which is eternal comes into being. That is meditation.

WHAT IS THE CENTRAL CORE OF YOUR THINKING?

What is that “me” that is so concerned with itself? I think about myself, that is the core, the heart of my thinking.

But it is the core, the root of it. Why do I want to identify myself? Because then I feel safe. I have pleasant memories of people and places so I identify myself with that. I see that in identification I am much more secure. Right?

K: I am coming to that. First, I want to be clear in myself and in talking it over find out why I should identify. And when necessary I will identify. That is, I must first understand what it means to cooperate. Then, when I am really deeply cooperating, then I will know when not to cooperate. Not the other way round. I don’t know if you see this. If I know what is involved in cooperation, which is a tremendous thing—to work together, to live together, to do things together—when I understand that, then I will know when not to cooperate. Now I want to know why I identify myself with anything. Not that I shouldn’t identify if there is a necessity of identification in action, but before I find out how to act, or with whom I can cooperate, I want to find out why there is this urge to identify. To have security, is that the reason? Because you are far from your country, from your family, you identify with this house, with a group, to be safe, protected.

K: Look what happens. I have identified myself with an ideology, with a group of people, or a person; it is part of me. I must protect that, mustn’t I? Therefore, if it is threatened I am lost, I am back again to my insecurity. So what takes place? I am angry with anybody who attacks or doubts it. Then what is the actual thing that takes place?

So what does it mean to cooperate? What does it mean to cooperate when there is no “me”? Otherwise you can’t cooperate. I may try to cooperate around an idea, but there is always the “me” that is trying to identify itself with the thing that I am doing. So I must find out why it is that I am thinking about myself all day long: how I look; that somebody is better than me; why somebody has hurt me, or somebody has said, “What a nice person you are.” Why am I doing this all day long? And at night too, when I’m asleep this goes on: “I am better than you”; “I know what I am talking about”; “It is my experience”; “You are stupid, I am clever.” Why? S: It seems a lot of it becomes a habit. K: What is habit? S: Not being aware. K: No. What is habit? Not how is it formed. S: Repetition of a movement. K: Right. Why is there a repetition of this movement? Why is habit formed? You will see something extraordinary if you go slowly. We have all got short hair or long hair; why? Because others do it?

S: Is that habit or imitation? K: See what takes place. First you imitate others, then you say, “Short hair is square.” S: Is a custom a habit too? K: Yes. I don’t want to go too quickly into this. Isn’t all thinking habit? You agree? S: Well, it is something you do over and over again. K: Go on, see what you can discover for yourself when we go into this whole question of habit. S: It is really a situation with an old reaction, isn’t it? K: A new situation we meet with old responses. Is not identification a habit? S: Yes.

K: Because you are insecure. So do you know the nature of this machinery that makes for habit? Are you aware that you are always operating by habit? To get up at six o’clock every day, to believe, to smoke, not to smoke, to take drugs. You follow? Everything is reduced to habit—it may be of a week, ten days, or fifty years, but the habit is formed. Why does the mind fall into this groove? Haven’t you asked yourself why you have a habit? Have you watched your mind working in habit?

S2: It takes really a lot of energy to live without habit. K: I am coming to that. Don’t jump, move from step to step. I am asking myself: Why does the mind always live in habit? I thought that yesterday, I still think that today, and I will think the same about it tomorrow—with slight modifications perhaps. Now why does the mind do this?

K: Which means that the mind functions in habit for various reasons, like a machine. It is easier, it avoids loneliness, fear of the unknown, and it implies a certain order to say, “I will follow that and nothing else.” Now why does the mind function in a groove, which is habit? S: Its nature is that. K: But if you say that, then you stop inquiring. We know the reasons that the mind functions in habit; are you actually aware of it?

K: We said that the personality, the ego, the “me” which says, “I am frightened, I want order, laziness, all that are different facets of the ‘me.’” Can the mind live without habit? Except for the biological habits, the regular functioning of the body, which has its own mechanism, its own intelligence, its own machinery. Why does the mind accept habit so quickly? The question, “Can it live without habit?” is a tremendous

question.

Functioning in the field of the known, it feels safe.

K: Because the known may change or may be taken away or get something added to it. But the mind is always functioning in the field of the known because there it feels secure. So the known is the habit, the known is knowledge—that is, knowledge of science, of technology, and the knowledge of my own experiences. And in that there is mechanical habit. Now I am asking: Can the mind move from the known—not into the unknown, I don’t know what that means—but be free and move away from the borders of the known?

K: To watch without any question of wanting an answer means infinite watchfulness. Not impatience. Watch carefully, then everything comes out. If you and I quarrel, I don’t want to carry it in my mind, in thought, I want to finish it. I’ll come to you and say, “I am sorry, I didn’t mean it”; and it is finished. But do I do that? Have you learned a lot—not have learned, but are you learning. seeing what it means to learn?

WHAT IS THE RELATION BETWEEN KRISHNAMURTI’S TEACHING AND TRUTH?

K: No, the word is not the truth. That’s why we said either he is talking out of the silence of truth or out of the noise of illusion.

K: I have learned to be aware of the dangers around me and also to face danger all the time and, therefore, to have no security. The inquirer might say, “This is too much,” and go away! So this is what I want to get at. Can the mind, which has been conditioned for centuries to be secure, abandon that and say, “I will walk into danger”? That is what we are saying. It is logical, but in a sense it is illogical.

How you observe fear matters; whether you observe it as an observer or the observer is that. You perceive that the observer is the observed, and in this action there is distortion, confusion. And you examine that confusion, which is born of fear, and in the very process of examination you have an insight. Do it, you will see it—if you don’t limit yourself; in saying, “I am too frightened, I can’t look,” you run away from it.

K: How you observe, how you investigate, that is the real thing. That is, perception can take place only when there is no division between the observer and the observed. Perception can take place only in the very act of exploring. To explore implies that there is no division between the observer and the observed. Therefore, you are watching the movement of fear and in the very watching of it there is an insight. I think that is clear.

K: What can you do actually? Somebody comes to you and says, “I am in deep sorrow.” Do you talk to them out of compassion, or from a conclusion, or out of your own particular experience of sorrow, which has conditioned you? Do you answer according to your conditioning? A Hindu who is conditioned in a certain way says, “My dear friend, I am so sorry, but in the next life you will live better. You suffered because you did this and that,” and so on. Or a Christian would respond from some other conclusion. And he takes comfort in it. Because a man who is suffering wants some sort of solace, someone on whose lap he can put his head. So what he is seeking is comfort and avoidance of this terrible pain. Will you offer him any of those escapes? Whatever comes out of compassion will help him. Q: Are you saying that as far as sorrow is concerned you can’t directly help anyone, but the energy of compassion itself may be of help? K: That’s right; that’s all.

K: Can we put the whole thing differently? Do you seek excellence, not excellence, for instance, in a building, but the essence of excellence? Then everything falls away, doesn’t it? Or do you seek excellence in a certain direction and never the essence of excellence? As an artist I seek excellence in my painting and get caught in that. A scientist gets caught in something else. But an ordinary human being, not a specialist, just an average intelligent human being who does not take drugs, does not smoke, is fairly intelligent and decent; if he sought the essence of excellence, would this happen? The essence would meet all this. I wonder if I am conveying something?

K: Listen carefully first. Don’t object or reject and say if and but. That very demand for excellence, how you demand it, brings the essence of it. You demand it passionately. You demand the highest intelligence, the highest excellence, the essence of it, and when fear arises, then you—

K: Total insight is the flame of passion that wipes away all confusion. It burns away everything else. Don’t you then act as a magnet? The bees go toward the nectar. In the same way don’t you act as a magnet when you are passionate to create? Is it that there is this lack of fire? That may be the thing that is missing. If there is something missing, I would ask for it.

Part 4 You Are the World

In all that time the message of his talks was in essence as it had been in the early years: Truth is a pathless land; each of us represents all humanity and one needs to be a light to oneself, free of all authority.

The Core Of Krishnamurti’S Teaching

Man has built in himself images as a sense of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man’s thinking, relationships, and daily life. These are the causes of our problems, for they divide man from man in every relationship. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is this consciousness. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form, and superficial culture he acquires from his environment. The uniqueness of the individual does not lie in the superficial but in the total freedom from the content of consciousness.

Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretense that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man, but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence.

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience, of knowledge, which are inseparable from time. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and, therefore, time, so man is always a slave to the past. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own consciousness he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation, which is insight without any shadow of the past. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical change in the mind.

Total Action Without Regret

The content of his consciousness is what has been put into it, what he has learned, what his thoughts are, and its own emotions, which thought recognizes.

When you look, who is the observer who is looking at the content? Is it different from the content? This is really a very important question to ask, and to which to find an answer. Is the observer different from the content and, therefore, capable of changing it and going beyond it? Or is the observer the same as the content? First, look. If the observer—the “I” that looks, the “me” that looks—is different from the observed, then there is a division between the observer and the observed and, therefore, conflict: “I must not do this; I should do that”; “I must get rid of my particular prejudice,” and I adopt a new prejudice; “I must get rid of my old gods,” and I take on new gods. So when there is a division between the observer and the observed, there must be conflict. That is a principle, that is a law. So, do I observe the content of my consciousness as it I were an outsider looking in, altering the pieces and moving the pieces to different places? Or am I the observer, the thinker, the experiencer, the same as that which is observed, experienced, thought?

If I look at the content of my consciousness as an outsider observing, then there must be conflict between what is observed and the observer. There must be conflict, and in that conflict we live: the “me” and the “not me,” “we” and “they.” If “I,” the observer, am different from anger, I try to control it, suppress it, dominate it, overcome it, and there is conflict. But is the observer different at all? Or is he essentially the same as the observed? If he is the same, then there is no conflict, is there? The understanding of that is intelligence. Then intelligence operates and not conflict.

Only when intelligence operates will there be peace, the intelligence that comes when one understands that there is no division between the observer and the observed. The insight into that very fact, that very truth, brings this intelligence. This is a very serious thing, for then you will see that you have no nationality; you may have a passport but you have no nationality. You have no gods. There is no outside authority, nor inward authority. The only authority then is intelligence. It is not the cunning intelligence of thought, which is mere knowledge operating within a certain area, and that is not intelligence.

A movement in a particular direction, seeking a certain pleasure, not wanting to do this or that, makes one incapable of seeing the whole.

If I have the whole picture in mind, then I can take in the detail; but if my mind only operates in details, then I cannot take in the whole. If I am concerned with my opinions, with my anxieties, with what I want to do, with what I must do, I cannot see the whole.

So can the mind be free of direction? Which does not mean that it is without direction. When it operates from the whole, the direction becomes clear, very strong and effective; but when the mind only operates in a direction according to the pattern it has set for itself, then it cannot see the whole. There is the content of my consciousness. The content makes my consciousness. Now, can the mind look at it as a whole? Can it just look without any direction, without any judgment, without any choice? That implies no observer at all, for the observer is the past. Can it look with that intelligence which is not put together by thought? For thought is the past. Do it. It requires tremendous discipline; not the discipline of

suppression, control, imitation, or conformity, but a discipline that is an act in which the truth is seen. The operation of truth creates its own action, which is discipline.

Intelligence operates when the mind sees the whole, the endless whole—not my country, my problems, my little gods, my meditations. It sees the whole implication of living. And this quality of intelligence has its own tremendous energy.

So can thought ever bring about an action that is total, whole, sane, not contradictory? Our life is contradictory: we live at different levels—at the business level, the family level, the scientific level, the religious level, or at the artistic level—each

opposing the other, each specializing in his own department.

To inquire very deeply into whether there is an action that is not based on the movement of thought, you need a great deal of energy, not the energy of trying to find an end, not the energy that you have when you are moving in a particular direction, but the energy that can change the content of consciousness.

So there must be freedom from direction. Please see the logic of it, the sanity of it. There must be freedom from a conclusion. Although a conclusion may give one a great deal of energy, it is a kind of energy that is wasteful. The mind must be free of the response of thought. It must be free of ideals because they again have direction. The mind must be free of all the divisive movements of thought, as nationality, as race, as religion.

So, can the mind put away authority because it sees the truth about it, the significance of it, the nature of it? Not just as a reaction against authority, as we do, because when you react against authority you are creating another authority. That is obvious. Can the mind, your mind, be free of the traditional approach of analysis, introspectively trying to improve? Because you see the truth of being free of authority;

Attachment gives a certain occupation to the mind; you constantly think about something. The brain and the mind say, “I must be occupied with something”—with my god, with my sex, with my drink; “I must be occupied”—with the kitchen, or with some social order, or commune, or whatever it is. Out of this demand for occupation there is attachment, holding on to something. Why must the mind be so occupied?

It is out of the empty feeling and loneliness, from not being totally whole, that the mind is attached. Can the mind live, be vital, energetic, full of depth, without attachment? Of course it can.

One can see that there is no division between the outside and the inside, it is an interrelationship. One sees that, and one also sees that one needs energy to transform the mind. So one discards everything that is wasteful, everything that is psychological, everything that breeds division and conflict within the mind. It can be done only when there is an observation of it, not a resistance to it. There is such observation only when the observer is the observed. The observer is the past, put together by

thought in terms of experience, knowledge, memory, tradition; they are the essence of the observer.

We said that the observer is the observed and that when there is a division between the observer and the observed, the “me” and the “not me,” then there is conflict. That conflict is essentially a waste of energy. And when you look into it and find that the observer is the observed, you remove conflict altogether and you have enormous energy because it is no longer wasted in conflict.

Thought is the measure of fear. Thought is the response of memory, which is experience and knowledge stored up in the brain cells and tissues. Thought is matter. The whole world is constructed from thought, is based in its very nature and substance and activity on thought. One has to find out whether it is thought that has bred fear. Not how to be free of fear; freedom from fear will inevitably come about when one understands the structure, the nature, and the functioning of thought.

If the mind lives totally in the material world, then nothing exists but matter, which is thought, consciousness and will. If the mind lives there, fear will go on, because there, there is nothing else but the demand for material security and permanency. Where there is that demand, there must be fear.

The speaker wants to point out that one can live completely in daily life, without any control, against all the traditions, against all your education, your social and moral behaviors. To live a life absolutely without any controls means you have to understand very, very deeply who is the controller and what is the controlled, for this is part of meditation. Is the controller different from that which he is controlling, which is thought? Some say the controller is different, that he is the higher self, that he is part of the higher consciousness, that he is the essence of understanding or the essence of the past, which has accumulated so much knowledge. But the controller is still within the field of thought; and however much that thought may be elevated, it is still within the area of time and measure.

Thought can project itself into all kinds of states, into all kinds of illusions, and when thought says there is the higher self, it is still within the field of thought and, therefore, that higher self is still matter. When you see that the controller is the controlled, the whole aspect of meditation changes. Meditation means the emptying of consciousness of its content. Then only can the mind and the brain be absolutely quiet. That absolute—not relative—that absolute quietness is necessary to observe.

Can the mind empty itself of time, direction, and movement, which implies the ending of thought? That is the whole problem.

Meditation implies a gathering of all energy. You have established order, relationship, behavior; therefore, you are not dissipating energy in that field. That energy is necessary to look without the observer and you have the energy to go beyond. With that energy, which has not been dissipated, the mind sees that there is an area which is not touched by thought. But all this requires tremendous attention and discipline. It is not just a plaything for immature people. Meditation requires tremendous discipline. The word discipline means to learn—not control, subjugate, imitate, and conform. Discipline means to learn. From the word discipline comes “disciple,” one who is willing to learn from the master, to learn. But here there is neither a disciple nor a master but only the act of learning, all the time. And that requires a great deal of attention, a great deal of energy, so that you are watching and thus, you create no

illusions. It is so easy to create illusions; they come when you are pursuing, demanding, wanting, an experience. Desire creates illusions. All this implies a mind that is very, very serious and a heart that is of love, that has never been hurt.

A Relationship With The World

Each person has an image of the other. That is an actuality, isn’t it? And you call that relationship. That is a relationship between two pictures, between two images. Right? You are not agreeing with the speaker, you are looking at the fact. These pictures or images or conclusions are memories, which each has put together, stored up in the brain. And they are reacting to each other according to those images. You have been hurt, and that hurt is a memory, stored up in the brain, and that reacts. So our relationship is not actual but from memories.

When you say, “I am hurt,” what is this “I” that is hurt? You say, “You have hurt me”—by your word, by a gesture, by discourtesy, and so on and so on—what is hurt? Is it not the image that you have built about yourself? Please, do look at it. That image is one of the factors that society, education, and environment have built in you. “You” are that picture, that image, the name, the form, the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, and so on. All that is you, the picture, the image which you are. And that image has been hurt. You have a conclusion about yourself, that you are this or that, and when that conclusion is disturbed you are hurt. So can you live without a conclusion, without a picture, without an image about yourself?

Thought has filled our consciousness with its own fragments, and then thought says, “I must go beyond this fragment, I must find enlightenment, I must find God, I must find truth, I must find Nirvana,” whatever you like to call it. A fragment is trying to understand that which is whole—that which is sane, healthy, holy—the word whole implies all that. So the fragment has been trying to grasp or come upon that which is whole. So it meditates, it controls, it tries to follow a system in order to arrive at that, but it is still the movement of time as a fragment in measure.

Can one look at what is without a prejudice, without prejudgment? Can you look at what is without the observer, who is the past? Say you are envious of people, how do you look at that envy? Are you looking at it as an observer who is different from envy? You look at it as though you are separate from envy, but the fact is that you are envy. You are not the observer who is different; the observer himself is that. So the observer is the observed. Please, this is really very important to understand. When you have grasped the truth that the observer is the observed, then that which is observed undergoes radical change. What prevents a radical change of what is is the interference of the observer, who is the past. To understand this removes all conflict.

To live in this world sanely, without the psyche, the “me,” is a tremendous challenge. That requires a mind that can think meticulously, correctly, objectively, having all the senses fully awakened, not drugged by alcohol, speed, and all the rest of it. You must have a very healthy mind, and when it is drugged or smoking, drinking, you do not have a healthy mind; all that destroys the mind, makes the mind dull.

What is the root cause of fear?

What is the root of fear? Is it not being able to find complete security, psychologically, inwardly? Complete, total certainty, security Is it that we are seeking permanency, something that will endure, that will last, that is final?

All those are factors of wasting energy. If you don’t waste energy—and that only takes place when the observer is the observed—then you have that immense energy to transform what is. The very observation is the energy which transforms “that which is.” Get this, and then you will see that you are completely free from psychological fears. If you have listened with all your heart and your mind, then when you get up you are free of fear. That means you have listened. That means it is your problem and it is absolutely necessary to solve it, not tomorrow, but instantly. That is, when you perceive something, then you act instantly, and that perception is only possible when the perceiver is the perceived, because there you have total energy. Total observation is only possible when there is no observer—the observer being the past. When there is that total attention given to observation, that which is observed undergoes a fundamental transformation. Got it? Do it!

Why does the human mind pursue pleasure? We are not saying that there should not be pleasure, but we are going to investigate into the nature of pleasure because apparently human beings are everlastingly committed to pleasure. Why is there this great demand for pleasure, the easiest way of action, the most comfortable way of living, the pursuit not only of physical, sensory pleasures, but psychological pleasures?

So the monks, the Indian sannyasis, try to suppress desire, and in the process of repression identify themselves with an image, with a name, and thereby think they have solved the problem. They are burning inside with desire but they suppress it through rituals, through discipline, through every form of conformity, effort.

Is it possible for the organism, this biological instrument with its brain, never to deteriorate? Our brain as it gets older deteriorates. Can the brain be young all the time and not deteriorate? When there is constant friction, constant effort, constant struggle, biologically as well as psychologically, the brain must deteriorate. Is there a way of living without effort and so the brain is always young, fresh, active, decisive. It is possible. Is one aware daily of the constant battle in oneself—trying to be something, trying to imitate, trying to conform, becoming the ideal, which is the mechanical process? Do you know, are you conscious that you are doing this? Don’t ask how to stop it, how to break the mechanical routine, but be aware of it without any choice, just look at it, because if you introduce an effort you have already destroyed it.

If you are totally aware during the day of all the mechanical movement, the ways of your thinking, desire, then you will find at night when you go to sleep, in spite of what all the scientists say, there are no dreams. The mind, the brain is quiet because all your problems, all your activities have been dissolved during the day, if you are attentive, are watchful, aware.

Apart from the biological ending of the organism, what is death? What is it that you are so frightened of? Is it the ending of your experiences? The ending of your knowledge?

aware of the universe around you, then be aware of the universe inside. The universe inside is much more complex. The universe inside is our whole consciousness. And the consciousness is its content. The universe inside is much more complex, much more subtle, and if one has the energy, the capacity, the intensity, and the clarity, to go into it, there is a tremendous depth in that.

So meditation implies a life of great order and, therefore, great virtue, morality. And it implies the understanding and the depth of beauty. And it implies the emptying of that consciousness which is you, with all your attachments, fears, hopes, despairs, the emptying of all that by observing. Then you have energy which alone can discover that which is eternal, which has no beginning and no ending.

The Wholeness Of Life

One wants to find out what is the basis of this disorder, the root of it. To find out, how do we approach it? How do we approach the problem of disorder in order to resolve it totally? What is your approach? Are you approaching to find order out of disorder and, therefore, your approach is already directed? Suppose I am in disorder and I have the desire to bring about order. That very desire dictates what the order must be, whereas if I approach the problem of disorder as though I want to find the root of it, then my direction is not diverted, wasted in various intellectual, verbal, and emotional directions, but my whole attention is directed to the cause of it.

So you are the world and the world is you. It is not an idea or a concept, a Utopian nonsense; it is a fact. And that mind is utterly confused. And we are trying to discover for ourselves the root of it.

You hear a statement like this, that as long as you think you are separate from another human being psychologically, there must be conflict and disorder. That is a fact.

Now is that attachment, the feeling of dependence, clinging, holding on to somebody, different from me? Or I am that? I am attachment. If one realizes that, conflict ends. It is so. Not that I must get rid of it, not that I must be independent, detached; detachment is attachment; if I try to become detached I am attached to that detachment. So now am I very clear that there is no division: When I say I am attached, I am attachment, I am the state of attachment. Therefore, I have removed completely all conflict, haven’t I? Do you realize that? I am that.

Before, I wasted energy in suppressing, trying to find how not to be confused, going to some guru or someone else. All that I have done is a wastage of energy. Now when there is the realization that I am confused, what has happened? Come with me! My mind then is completely attentive to confusion. My mind is in a state of complete attention with regard to confusion. Right? Therefore, what takes place? When there is complete attention, there is no confusion. It is only when there is no attention that confusion arises. Confusion arises when there is division, which is inattention.

Where there is fear there is no freedom, there is no love, there is discontent. To see this, you must have the capacity to run—not physically but inwardly run, jump—not go step by step like a snail.

One sees what fear does in our life. Fear brings darkness to the mind. We are not talking of a particular neurotic fear, but about fear itself. When we understand the root of fear, fear about something particular disappears. If I am afraid of the dark, that is my particular fear and I want that particular fear to be resolved; I am not concerned with the whole field of fear. But if I understand the whole field of fear, the other thing doesn’t exist. We are concerned with the whole field of fear. Can that fear be dissolved completely, so that

Why does the mind live in time? It has evolved in time. The present mind that we have has evolved through thousands of years. And that is normal and healthy, obviously. But we are asking why time has become so important psychologically, inwardly. Please ask yourself. Is it because we are always avoiding what is in order to become something else, moving from this to that? Psychologically I am this, but I should not be this but that. Psychologically I am unhappy, but I must be happy. The “must” or “will” or “shall be” is the movement of time. So the mind is caught in time because it is always moving away from this, from what is. It will change in time: “I will be good, give me time.” That is like developing a muscle.

So the question is then: Can what is be transformed immediately, which means never allowing time to interfere? Listen to this, you will find out, it is really simple. If we apply our mind we can solve anything.

Time means accumulating knowledge about oneself. But when there is no time at all, psychologically, there is nothing.

Living means the dying, otherwise you are not alive. And most of us are frightened of dying because we have never been able to live properly, we have never lived. We have lived in conflict, in struggle, in pain, in anxiety, and we call that living. Living is not all that. If all that can be ended, then there is living. So you are then living and dying. They go together, like a flower with perfume; the perfume is not apart from the flower, it is there. This is the actual ending of senility, if you go into it very deeply, so the mind never gets old like a machine that is always wearing itself out because of friction.

Taking postures, following systems of Buddhist meditation, Tibetan meditation, Christian meditation, Tantric meditations, and the meditations set by your favorite guru. Aren’t all those really abnormal? Why should I take a certain position to meditate? Why should I practice, practice, practice? To arrive where? Can I follow a system—twenty minutes in the morning, twenty minutes in the evening—to have a quiet mind? Having achieved a little quiet mind I can go off and do other mischief all day long.

You have to go into the question of who is the controller and who is the controlled. Our whole life, if you observe, is this: controlling and not controlling: I must control my emotions; I must control my thinking; I can only control my thinking by constant practice; and to practice I must have a system. A system implies a mechanical process, making the mind more and more mechanical. It is already mechanical now but we want to make it much more dull.

You want something far beyond all that; you are always craving for more delightful, more extravagant, experience. Why does the mind demand experience? Ask yourself, please. There is only one thing. A mind that is very clear is free from all entanglements of attachment. Such a mind is a light to itself. Therefore, it does not want an experience, there is nothing to experience. You cannot experience enlightenment. The very idea of experiencing it is a stupid thing to say; to say, “I have achieved enlightenment,” is really dishonest. You cannot experience truth because there must be an experiencer to experience. If there is no experiencer, there is no experience at all. But we are attached to our experiencer and, therefore, we are always asking for more and more and more.

See what tricks I have played on myself. I am caught in time. I don’t say, “Why should I struggle at all?” If I can end this struggle that is enlightenment. To have no shadow of conflict. But we do not want to give up all those efforts; we are caught in time. And to be free of time is to be free to have pure observation, and then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet. You don’t have to make the mind quiet. If you end all conflict, the mind naturally becomes quiet.

So one must begin very near, very near. And when you begin very near, there is no far. When you begin near, there is no distance and, therefore, there is no time. And it is only then that that which is most holy can be.

The Ending Of Sorrow

My friends, if you have listened to yourself, the speaker is only a mirror in which you see yourself as you are. If you see yourself as you are, then you can throw away the mirror, break it. The mirror is not important. It has no value. What has value is that you see clearly in that mirror yourself as you are, the pettiness, the narrowness, the brutality, the anxieties, the fears. When you begin to understand yourself then you go profoundly into something that is beyond all measure. But you must take the first step. And nobody is going to help you to take that first step.

Without passion, life becomes rather dull, meaningless. And the ending of sorrow brings about passion.

Love is something that comes into being when there is no fear, when there is an end to sorrow. Then that very love becomes compassion, which is passion, with its immense intelligence.

Now, psychologically, inwardly, is there an opposite? Your tradition says there is. Books have been written about it saying that it is only the liberated who are free from duality—which is such utter nonsense. Sorry. You and I can look at this problem very simply—simply, not with all the complications of philosophers. There is duality outwardly, but inwardly, psychologically, inside the skin there is only one thing.

We are trying to eliminate altogether this conflict between what is and “what should be.” Then the brain is free and full of energy to face things as they are. So there is the living and the dying as two opposites.

Then the brain is being reborn afresh, so that it has tremendous freedom. So, when living, be with death, so that you are a guest in this world, so that you have no roots anywhere, so that you have a brain that is amazingly alive. Because if you carry all the burdens of yesterday, your brain becomes mechanical, dull.

Truth Most Holy

First psychologically, inwardly, because if there is a certain quality of freedom inwardly, then we shall produce a society in which there will be no conflict. It is our responsibility as human beings, as so-called individuals, seriously to put our brains, our energy, our passion, into discovering for ourselves—not according to any philosopher or psychiatrist, but find out for ourselves—whether this conflict between human beings can end.

How can there be a relationship between two people when each one is pursuing his own desires, ambitions, greeds? In this relationship, because there is this division, there is no love. That word love is spoiled, spat upon, degraded; it has become merely sensuous, pleasurable. Love is not pleasure. Love is not something put together by thought. It is not something dependent on sensation. So how can there be right, true relationship between two people when each one considers his own importance?

Your consciousness is not yours. Your consciousness is made up of its content. Without the content there is no consciousness. Your consciousness, like that of the rest of humanity, is made up of beliefs, fears, faith, gods, personal ambitions. Your whole consciousness is made up of all this, put together by thought.

So the past is the present; what you are now is the result of the past. And tomorrow, or a thousand tomorrows, is what you are now, so the future is now. In the now, all time is contained. This is a fact too, an actuality, not a theory. What you are is the result of the past and what you will be tomorrow is what you are now. If I am violent now, tomorrow I will be violent. So tomorrow is in the now, in the present, unless I radically, fundamentally, bring about a mutation. Otherwise I will be what I have been. We have had a long evolution, evolving to what we are now. And if we carry on that game, we will be violent, we will be barbarous the next day. So as all time is contained in the now—which is a fact, an actuality—can there be total mutation now in all our behavior and our way of living, thinking, feeling? Because if we don’t radically, psychologically bring about a mutation, then we will be exactly what we have been in the past. Is it possible to bring about this psychological mutation at all?

You know, when you have been going north all your life, following a particular direction, or no direction, just wobbling as most people do, if somebody comes along

and tells you most seriously that going north leads nowhere, there is nothing at the end of it, you listen seriously, not only with the hearing of the ear but deeply. “Go east or south,” you are told, and you say, “I will do it.” At that moment you have taken a new turn and there is a mutation. The speaker is making it very simple, but it is a very complex problem: to realize deeply that we have been going on this way for centuries and we have not changed at all. We are still violent, brutal, and all the rest of it. If we actually perceive that, not intellectually or verbally but deeply, then we turn in another direction. At that second there is the mutation in the very brain cells themselves.

Thinking is the word. The word is important, the sound of the word, the quality of the word, the depth, the beauty of a word. Especially the sound. Thinking is part of memory, isn’t it? If we had no memory at all, would we be able to think? We wouldn’t. Our brain is the instrument of memory—memory of things that have happened, experience, and so on, the whole background of memory.

We are going to face the truth of things, not live in delusions. With delusions it is very difficult to observe. If you are deluding yourself and not facing actualities, then it becomes impossible to look at oneself as one is. But we like delusions, illusions, every form of deception, because we are frightened to look at ourselves. To look at ourselves very clearly, accurately, precisely, is only possible in the mirror of relationship; that is the only mirror we have. In the mirror of relationship you see what you are, if you allow yourself to see what you are.