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One sees the accumulation of knowledge is necessary, to drive a car and so on, so on. If you want to build a bridge you must know the whole, the stresses and the strains and the quality of the earth and so on, so on. That is, our mind has been informed, acquired knowledge and acting from there. This is the everlasting movement of man. You...
...is not to accumulate knowledge about oneself. Please follow this. I want to learn about myself, so I have to observe myself. If I learn about myself through the accumulation of knowledge I do not learn about myself.
...knowledge, and knowledge has become so astonishingly important. And we don't say that knowledge in itself is limited. Now we are going to find out if there is a different action of learning, which is not accumulation of knowledge. You see the difference? You understand this? Please, somebody say yes or no!...
...carpenter, engineer, scientist, physicist and so on. Or go out without knowledge, act and through action learn; which is the same. Right? Both result in the accumulation of knowledge, and this we call learning. Clear? Right? That is our conditioning. Our brains are conditioned to that accumulation of knowledge and...
...be limited, it will always become a routine, mechanical. So we are asking if there is another way of learning. Learning through accumulation of knowledge and acting according to the accumulation of knowledge - you understand? - acting and acquiring knowledge from that action, or having acquired knowledge through various forms, act from that. You...
...mechanical. Haven't you noticed it? If you are at all aware of what is happening around you and in yourself, you are bound to notice it. So, is there another way of acting without the accumulation of knowledge? You understand? Which is to have an insight into the effect of knowledge. I wonder if you all understand this. Have you understood...
And there is another way of learning which is not the accumulation of knowledge. Will you kindly listen to what I have to say? Listen, don't agree or disagree, don't accept or deny, just listen as you would listen to that bird. As I said, as the speaker said just now, we only know one method of learning, which is to accumulate knowledge. And from...
There is another way of learning which is not the accumulation of knowledge, which I am going to explain presently. But first we must understand very clearly where knowledge is absolutely essential - to drive a car, to do anything, speak a language, to know where your house is. So knowledge is essential. But knowledge is always in the past. So we...
...the observation, the interference of thought, and what the result and the effect of all this movement is, just to observe. One wants to learn. Learning is the accumulation of knowledge, generally. Right? School, college, university - or learning about relationship and so on, learning. Having accumulated knowledge then act. Right? The purpose of...
...He must have a mind that is free to observe, to listen, to grasp something that may be just there. So the requirement for learning, which is not merely the accumulation of knowledge, is to have a mind that is not burdened with knowledge. And all our brains are burdened with knowledge. Just see the fact. The more traditional you are, the more you...
...a great change in man. We are questioning that. We are questioning, enquiring into this problem: whether knowledge, which is the accumulation of thousands of years of experience and the accumulation of knowledge, stored up in the brain as memory, whether that knowledge will transform man at all. Please understand this. We think knowledge,...
There is a different way of acting, not from the accumulation of knowledge but having an insight into something immediately; that is, to see, observe with all your attention that any kind of organisation, either spiritual or political - please listen to all this carefully - religious organisations, political organisations, social organisations are not going to solve the human problem at all.
...it out - it doesn't work that way. In understanding the image, in understanding the hurts, in understanding the education in which one has been brought up, in the family, the society, all that, in the understanding of that, out of that understanding comes attention; not the attention first and then wipe it out. You can't attend if you're hurt. If...
...quarrels, disagreements, pain, hurts, suffering - this is our daily existence. And our brains are trained from childhood to solve problems. And we are saying solution prevents the understanding of the problem. Seeking a solution prevents the understanding of a problem. Sorry. Because our brains are trained to solutions. I have a problem with my...
When one understands something must one act on that understanding, or does the understanding itself act? Right? Question clear?
Now, if we have established order by understanding the nature of disorder, which is contradiction, dishonesty, hypocrisy, all the mischief that we have created in the world and in ourselves, and out of the understanding of that comes order, which is a living thing, which is not something put in a strait jacket. It is a living quality that is...
...What the teaching is, or are, says, look at yourself, go into yourself, enquire what there is, understand it, go beyond it, and so on. So you are not understanding the teachings but you are understanding yourself. Only the teachings are a means of pointing, explaining, but you have to do, not the teachings but the understanding of yourself. Is...
And it is one of the most important things to understand, for in the understanding of it perhaps we shall be able to understand and live the whole complex problem of existence, in which is included all relationship, not only the relationship between ourselves and our property, but also the relationship between one another, and the relationship, if there is any, to reality.
...We are trying to find out the truth of the matter, and to find that out you have to share in it, you can't just listen to the speaker. So we are together taking a journey in understanding these problems. When we use the word 'understanding' we mean not intellectual or verbal, but an understanding that takes place when we are serious and examining...
So, as we said, meditation can only begin with the understanding of myself totally, that is part of meditation, part of the beginning of meditation. Without understanding myself the mind can deceive itself, it can have illusions. That is, being conditioned by a particular culture in which one has been brought up, Hindu, Christian or whatever, or...
We have described what suffering is, and you say, 'Yes, I have understood' - have you understood the words, or seen the whole picture the word conveys and the implications of what it has conveyed and you say, 'Yes, I see it, I understand the meaning, the verbal meaning, the content of what I have seen, and I have gone beyond it' - that is understanding.
...agony, the loneliness, the suffering, the pain, desire to be secure - all that and more is my consciousness. Without knowing that, understanding the whole conflicting, destructive combination which is my consciousness, how can I love? How can I have that thing called compassion? So to know, the understanding of oneself, not the improvement of the...
Unless you answer all these questions deeply and find an answer not verbally, but actually ending sorrow, ending fear and understanding the nature of pleasure and the nature of desire, then only there is a possibility of acting as a total, whole, sane human being. This is part of meditation, not merely sitting in a corner and going off into some...
So meditation is a movement, an understanding, of the whole structure and the nature of thought. Right? Because unless there is an understanding totally - I am using the word 'understanding' - an awareness, an apprehension to hold what is the truth of this reality - unless there is complete uncovering of the total works of thought, what it...
...very doing is the way of liberation. Now listen to the question. First liberate yourself from all the chaos, mess, confusion within yourself; and the other, in the very understanding of the confusion, misery, strife, struggle, despair, in the very understanding of it is liberation. The very understanding of that is liberation. Why do you divide...
...this, not to have conflict. So I have the order and this order can be brought about only when I see how chaotic the disorder is. Through the understanding and examination, enquiry into disorder, order is brought about. Order isn't a pattern, which I follow regularly, a blueprint which I accept blindly and go on. Order is something that comes out...
...why is it that we think we understand intellectually? Why do we place understanding intellectually first? Why has that become dominant? You understand my question? I'm sure you all feel, 'I understand it intellectually, very well, what he is talking about'. Then you say to yourself, how am I to put that into action? So the understanding is one...
...I think we have to lay ground rules before we begin to converse together. I think the word 'discussion' is rather misplaced. Discussion means explanation or examination through argument, opinion against opinion, judgement against judgement, one's characteristic conclusions against another. I think that word 'discussion' we shouldn't use, if I may...
...it seems to me, an especially critical place. In our last discussion together we touched on the question of authority, not only in relation to what is out there, that we project, and what is out there that faces us, literally, but also the question at the deeper level of my relationship within that. And the point where in the enquiry, in going...
I came here for a discussion (laughs) - wait, sir - I came here for a discussion, dialogue. Now I am having a dialogue by myself. Too bad! I'll go on because look what it is leading me up to - leading.
May I first talk for a while and perhaps then we can have a discussion, if that is what you wish. Would you like that or shall I talk all the time? What is your wish? That I talk for a while and then we can have a dialogue, a discussion of what has been said? Which would you like?
This is supposed to be a discussion. The word 'discussion' isn't really the right word. Discussion implies argument, opposing ideas, opposing beliefs, opinions and so on. Whereas a dialogue is something we talk over together; talk over together the many problems that one has, with friendship, with a sense of care, attention, and perhaps with the...
Krishnamurti: This is supposed to be a discussion, a dialogue or talking over together any of the things we would like to discuss. So what shall we start with?
You and I are related because you have seen me several times here, we have walked together, had somewhat of a discussion together, and in that discussion, in that walk, in listening to that music - you listened much more than I did - there was a certain relationship. Right? In that relationship, which is a mirror, and you can observe yourself,...
...that I will talk for a little while and then perhaps we can discuss. I mean by discussion not merely expose one's own opinions, judgements but rather share each other's intention, each other's problems and explore together if there is a solution to these problems. That's what I mean by discussion, not just trying to show who is clever and who is...
K: So are you learning from this discussion, from this dialogue, are you learning, or just memorising? See the difference? If you say, 'Oh yes, I have learnt but I don't want to change. It is all right to carry on as I am. I like conflict - right? I like this struggle'. Then carry on! That's what the world is doing anyhow. And you may be...
K: Yes, in its subtle form. So that too has been put away. Then as we said the other day, in another discussion, there is only mind. Right?
I am sorry you have to put up with this for a while. I hope it won't interfere with our discussion or dialogue or talking over together.
And so is it possible in this confused world, with so many contradictions, and such misery and starvation, not only outwardly, but also inwardly, such insufficiency psychologically, outwardly there are so many rich societies, is it at all possible for a human being living in this world to find within himself a clarity that is constant, that is true in the sense not contradictory, is it possible for a human being to find it?
So one sees the utter and complete importance of a human being living harmoniously with his environment, and also inwardly, both in relationship and as a human being, vitally alive, passionate and capable and efficient. And it seems to me that is one of the major problems, if not the problem (sound of baby) - I am afraid it is going to be a choice...
...man has been seeking everlastingly. You may have great prosperity, as they do in the West and in America. You may be hungry, miserable; but a mere solution of these is not the answer, because our human being, the human being is at stake. His house, which is himself, is burning. And to find an answer you must be able to look clearly. And therefore...
K: Right, now. How do you respond to it? All of you, how do you respond to this challenge, that is, can the mind, can you as a human being living in this corrupt society which is so essentially violent - can you - please let me finish - can you be free of violence completely, not fragmentarily?
K: Yes. I, as a common human being, have been irrational. And my life has been totally contradictory and so on, so on, so on, which is irrational. Now can I, as a human being change that?
K: But you're not answering my question, sir. Why as a human being, living in this world, doesn't matter Brazil or Chile or in Russia or here, there is violence, tremendous disorder. And we say I'm not concerned. Then I say, 'Why? Why as a human being I'm not concerned with the things that are happening around us.'
K: Quite. So, sir, what I want to get at is: I am a human being faced with this ending and beginning, and you have abolished that.
So how will you, as a human being, feeling responsible, because your brain, your whole psychological structure is the result of many, many, many million years, that structure is not yours, every human being in the world is of that structure. Because they suffer in China, in the Far East and in the Middle East and here, in the West. They are cruel,...
K: Not as a teacher but as a human being you are conditioned. And so is another human being, what is the relationship between you two?
K: Sir, that's part of me. I'm also empty, as a human being. I also feel terribly lonely - I don't personally - I'm saying as a human being concerned with the question which has been the subject all of our discussions over the last two days, is what am I to do?
...what happens if you don't end it? You follow what I mean? That is, if you don't die everyday to everything that you have acquired psychologically, what happens to that human being? Right? That's what you are asking, isn't it? What happens to me if I can't do all this, and I can't do it because it is so very difficult. I haven't got the energy....
K: Oh, you say we will have such a government who will be efficient to change the outer circumstances, society and all that, and hoping thereby to create a different human being. Is that it? I believe every kind of system to change human being from outside has been tried.
Will I, as a human being, give up my egocentric activity completely? What will make me move away from that? Not me, that is only a way of talking. What will make a human being move away from this destructive, self-centred activity? It comes to the same thing. If he will move away through reward then it's no I mean, that is just another - with it...
K: The human being is irrational. Right? And as long as he is functioning irrationally any other rational factor, he says, 'I refuse to see it'.
...studied it, looked at it, Buddhism, this and the other, Christianity, whatever, Islam and so on. I say these are all just words. How am I as a human being to have this extraordinary feeling about it? You understand? I wonder if I am conveying anything - am I? Because if I have no passion behind it, it is...
...you can't find the immeasurable - you are following all this? So they said, thought, though it is necessary, is bound by time, the past, the present and the future, which is time, and that process of thinking will never find that which is inexhaustible, immeasurable, timeless.
It is important to find out for oneself, not through verbalisation, not through some intellectual, analytical process, but rather find out non-romantically, non-emotionally, non-sentimentally, whether time, to which we are slaves, can ever come to an end and therefore freedom, away from time. The time by the sun, the time as night and day, time as...
...Now you see, you have said something. Which is, escape, suppression, acceptance, which are all implied in analysis, time, which is what? A wastage of energy. I don't know if you see this. That is, I have done all these things, like a silly person, because my wife has run away, I have been through all this. And I suddenly realise time will not...
...is this simple? Can I go on? Now, will it take time? That is, will it take time to see that I'm conditioned? And, the next step is, the decision to uncondition myself, and the effort involved in the unconditioning, and so on - all that is a progression in time. Right? I want to find out if it can be done without time. Go on, sir. Don't say it is...
K: Strong. Psychologically strong. Psychologically give me time so that I'll get rid of my anger, my jealousy or whatever it is, and I'll be free of it. So he's using time as a means of achieving something psychologically.
Then we have said previously, time is contained in the now. See the relationship between the problem and the time, do you see it? Therefore any problem I meet has no time. It must be solved instantly. You have understood this? That implies - may I go on? I hope you are as excited as the speaker is, because he is discovering something new each...
So there is that something that is beyond time, because all time has stopped. That is the true meditation, that is the really true religious mind.
K: Thought. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Twelve o'clock, one o'clock and six o'clock. Thought has created time, time is thought.
K: Right, sir. Now I say to myself, I have observed this in myself, I have observed this movement of thought as time, and that brings fear. It is very clear. That's a fact. Now what am I to do? How am I to completely
Krishnamurti: 'You' don't exist. 'You' can't exist when you are asking what is the source! 'You' are time, movement, environmental influence - you are all that.
...Right, sir. Let's be very, very simple. Anger arises, then you name it. Right? At the moment of the arising of that thing called anger, there is no time. When you name it then it becomes time. Right? So are you asking: is it possible to be aware, or watch the arising of anger, and not name it. If you don't name it, it is out of time, the moment...
JK: Insight being out of time, it is not the result of remembrance; it is not an intuition, or desire, or hope, it is nothing to do with any time and thought.
K: No, just a minute, sir - oh, yes it has - forgive me. So, hasn't it to do with time? You say it has nothing to do with time. Hasn't it to do with time? Learning: I learn one day this and I learn another day that, and keep on adding - right? Right, sir? Would you agree to that? Keep on adding.
The other factor is time. Time being that which has happened, might recur again, and time as future when one has no hope, when one is desperately hopeless. Time plays a great part in our lives. Time as an interval between 'what is' and 'what should be' or 'what might be', and time, an interval between now and the ending of life, which is death. So...
...are always after something, apart from technological knowledge. Apart from learning languages and so on, so on, why is there this sense of wanting, lacking, pursuing something all the time - which is the movement of desire, which is also the movement of thought as time and measure? All that is involved in that. I hope you are following. Can we go...
K: But you want to read that page, you want to learn that subject and other thoughts interfere - why do they interfere? Just go into it slowly.
...That's right. You have got it. You have understood what you have said? Not quite. You are trying to concentrate on this, other thoughts come in, then you try to suppress thoughts, only the other thoughts except this. Right? So what is happening when you suppress? I suppress, I am uncomfortable, I have eaten bad food, and I am full, and I try to...
...Yes. But is that I, who orders his thoughts, different from his thoughts? He may order them, he may discipline them, he may control them, he might say, 'This is right', 'This is wrong', 'This must be done', 'That must not be done', but is the controller, the person who disciplines, brings order, is he different from the things which he is ordering...
K: Not to have thoughts. You see you are not even following what I am saying. You have come to a conclusion when you say, not to have thoughts. You are not really learning.
K: Wait, wait, I am coming to that presently. First see what is happening. You want to concentrate on something, then thoughts come in and then you push them out, again thoughts come in and again you push them out. So you really are not concentrating, are you? Because thoughts come in and disturb you. Now he asked, why do thoughts come in. Right?
K: Look, sir, I was telling you when you concentrate on something other thoughts come in. Right? Then you try to push those thoughts away, and then you try to concentrate. So there is this going on all the time.
K: That's it. Is it not difficult - listen to it carefully - is it not difficult to concentrate on something without thoughts coming in.
K: I don't want to be rude madam, but I am just asking, or being personal: are you aware of the rapidity of your thoughts, and being aware of the rapidity of your thoughts you say, 'Now, is it possible to slow them down so that I can look, taste one thought completely?' - you understand? To see the significance of one thought, all its content, its...
We have talked about concentration, that is, you are thinking, paying attention to something, then other thoughts come in, and you push those thoughts out. And so there is always this conflict - wanting to pay attention to that, thoughts come in, and so there is constant chattering of the brain - chattering, chattering, chattering. Right? Got it?
K: Yes, you try to push other thoughts away. Now what goes on in that process? I am concentrating on this, thoughts come in, then I try to push them away, and then thoughts come in. So I keep this, don't I. Right?
JK: If it has a future it will be exactly the same kind of thing, moving. The same activities, same thoughts, modified but the pattern will be repeated over and over again.
...authority, through imitation and conformity - that's a fact. And therefore freedom cannot exist to such a mind. It can talk endlessly about freedom, and revolt against certain outward forms of restrictions, but it's not a free mind. The mind that is actually free has no inward authority whatsoever, and we have explained very carefully what...
...any distortion, without any illusion then there is no choice. A mind that is choiceless is a free mind, and a mind that chooses and therefore establishes a series of conflicts, contradictions, such a mind is never free because it is in itself confused, divided, broken up.
...and hence no conflict. A mind that is learning, learning, it is in movement, and that which is in movement is free. But a mind that has conclusions, formulas, opinions, judgements, commitments, such a mind is not a free mind. And therefore such a mind, when it meets the immense, complex problem of living is incapable of meeting it wholly, which...
...of mind that is capable of meeting facts as they are, actually facing 'what is', not in terms of 'what should be'. A mind that is caught between 'what is' and 'what should be' is always in conflict, and such a mind is not a free mind. And you need great freedom to perceive what is real, what is true - not according to one's wishes, not according...
K: Of course. But he may be very nice, you may think he is not nice, but he may be very nice, you have to find out. And if you want to find out whether he is nice or not you have to listen to what he has to say. You can't have prejudice beforehand. Or even after. One must have a free mind, a free brain to understand something.
...called living, dying and what it means to love. To enquire one must have a free mind, not a prejudiced mind, not a mind that has opinions, has come to conclusions, tethered to a particular quotation, belief, to a book or to any particular experience or to any particular characteristic or tendency. It's only such a mind can enquire really freely,...
And a man who is competitive, self-centred, lives in ideas, who is jealous, how can he know love? And yet all of you are that, aren't you? You are ambitious, aren't you? Do look at it. You are competitive, and competition means conformity. And when the mind is conforming to a pattern it is not a free mind to enquire.
...you are degenerate. Truth is not yours or mine: it's under no temple, no church, it's not an image, it's not a symbol. It is there for you to see and only the free mind, the lovely, clear, perceptive mind, that sees and acts.
So again, the mind, being free from fear and the search for the deepening and widening of pleasure, and therefore pain with its anxiety, fear and all the burden and travail of pleasure, such a mind is not a free mind. And the mind that believes that there is a God, or that there is no God, is equally conditioned, a prejudiced mind, therefore it's...
...Sir I have been all through that. Look sir, a free mind uses knowledge but it's always free, empty. A mind that is full, a mind that is ridden by beliefs, fears, that mind that is always comparing itself with somebody is not a free mind. When the mind is free there is nothing to know, except how to live, how to function in a world of functions....
And that is very important, because truth demands a free mind, a mind that is completely free. And there is no path to truth, so please, as we are going into this very complex problem, let us listen carefully, with a certain quality of doubt. To doubt requires sensitivity. If you doubt everything, (laughs) then it becomes rather stupid. But to...
K: Is that attention silence of the mind? Which is a healthy, sane mind: uncluttered, unattached, unanchored, free mind, which is the healthiest mind. Therefore I am asking, out of that in that attention, is the mind silent? There is no movement of thought.
...you have, that anyone who practises, follows, is destroying himself and destroying the world. We need a different mind, a free mind, not a mind trained in a particular technique, a mind that is free to observe and to act instantly, from moment to moment. That doesn't need a technique, that's a mechanical mind. A mind that is free is the mind that...
Now, I see the cause of disorder. I don't want to move away from disorder. I see the cause of it: that I am contradictory, that I am angry, the confusion, I see it. I see the cause of it. I am not moving away from the cause or the effect. I am the cause and I am the effect. Do you see that? I am the cause and the things that happen is myself also....
...division between me and you, we and they. This division is part of this disorder. Right? Nationalism is the cause of disorder because it divides people - Muslim, Hindu and all the rest of the nonsense that goes on in the world and therefore disorder.
...in confusion so I attempt to bring about order, so I make a diagram, a sketch of what is order and then I try to follow that. We are saying, if you will kindly listen together, that the very fact is the cause of disorder. Right? Have you understood? Are we together in this a little bit, slightly? Not too much, but just...
K: No, no, no, you are attributing a cause, you are looking for a cause. Give me two seconds. You want to find out what is the cause of disorder. Right?
So is - I am asking, we are asking each other - is the cause of disorder in ourselves, in our brain, is the cause, one of the causes - we're going to look at it, not say this is the one cause or there are many causes. We have to find out the real cause of it, not the multiple causes or causations. What is that? Why we live in disorder, which we...
...in our relationship, in our jobs, there is disorder. And we must find out together what is the cause of disorder, and end disorder in ourselves, not out there, not try to bring about order in the world, in the corrupt society, but order in our lives, which is in our relationship with each other. And that relationship which is order can only be...
...to disorder. We are saying something so totally contradictory to everything you have heard, so please give your mind to this. We are saying, thought, the whole thinking process, may be the cause of disorder. I am going to go into it. We pointed out how desire may be one of the factors of disorder because contradictory desires in our life, opposing...
...So, can my mind not compare? Comparison may be disorder. Comparison itself may be the cause of disorder. Measurement may be disorder. And as long as I am comparing, there must be disorder. I am a bureaucrat and I am comparing myself to a higher bureaucrat, therefore that is disorder. I am comparing my disorder at the present moment with a whiff of...
But when we observe what causes disorder, and as one has become so accustomed to disorder, so one has lived in such disorder we accept it as natural, but when we begin to question it and go into it and see that is the root of it, to observe it, not to do anything about it, then by that very observation begins to dissolve the centre which is the cause of disorder.
...there is a Jew, Arab, Hindu, why this division - the Catholic, non-Catholic and all the rest of it? Obviously, it is so simple. It is so simple you won't see it. The form - right? - the form of your face, your body, then the name - look at what takes place - the name, with the name the associations, so immediately you have a name, a word,...
K: No, sir, no, no, no, sorry. I said, any inducement, in any form, subtle or obvious, I would consider doesn't bring about the depth of great silence. I would consider it's all superficial. I may be wrong. We're enquiring.
So fear in any form, both physiological as well as psychological, distorts clarity and therefore a person that is afraid in any form has no compassion. We will go into the whole question of compassion later, much later. But let's take all this together.
K: Change, mutate. You can't change one form into another form. See that you are actually, the truth, that you are the rest of mankind. Sir, when you see that, feel it in your - if I may use the word - guts, in your blood, then your whole activity, your whole attitude, your whole way of living changes.
...You understand? This is a very important question. And we have gone into it very deeply, if you have gone with it, shared it together. We said, we are name, form and psychological content - you follow? - all that. Memories, really: I remember my name, I identify the name with the form, and the name and the form carry on to the psychological thing,...
...go on from there? Please, don't accept the description, not the words, but see the truth of this thing. As you see the fact of this microphone, see that thing. That 'me' has a name, a form. The 'me' has a label, called 'K' or 'John' and it has its form, it identifies with the body, with the face, with the whole business. So there is the...
...The idea of the body, of course, of course. I said the name and the form. Right? In Sanskrit it has got different names - I won't go into all that. So the 'I' is the name, the form, the biological structure of the form, the psychological content. All that is the 'me'. And that 'me' is the image. So when you say something to me which is unpleasant...
K: Dependence, same thing. Most people here are dependent on you. And what are you going to do about it. I can't do anything about it, but you can do a lot about it. Because I abhor, to me authority in any form in this field is poisonous, therefore I won't go near it.
K: Wait, wait. You said, you are what you are. What are you? Not only you, everybody: what are you? Your name, your form, the way you look: go on, I am telling you, tell me. (Laughs)
So what is this centre? Right? How has it come into being? And as we said, we would talk about death also. When death takes place the centre of this action ends. You follow what I'm saying? I'll explain, I'll go into it carefully. First, we are asking: can the centre come to an end, and yet live in this live, not go off into some monastery,...
...Have we met this somewhat? The centre is the 'me', the ego, the I. That is put together by thought; put together by thought as name, form and all the attributes it has collected around itself. That is the centre, as the 'me'. Now when that centre is operating it is operating in the field of registration; it is always registering - I am hurt, I am...
Then the problem arises: is it possible to act, function naturally, happily, without a centre, without the content of consciousness? Do you understand these questions? We are putting fundamental questions. You may not be used to that. Most of us put questions rather slackly, or indifferently and move off. But we are asking questions that you must...
So we are going to investigate together why human beings throughout the world are so eagerly, so subtly, in a very, very refined way if they are not brutish, if they are not callous, if they are not indifferent, in very, very subtle ways, they are concerned with their centre. And that centre, with its enormous energy, either brings about a...
And, as we said the other day, thought has created the centre, and the centre thinks it is independent - I hope you are following all this, those who have heard it I'll just go over it again - thought has created the centre, that centre thinks it is independent and free of thought, so that centre creates for itself a space - me and my little enclosure, me and the family, which is still small - a little larger enclosure, and so on, so on, the nation.
So we are saying, change implies a state of mind that is not moving from a centre to another centre. Right? Can you do it? That is, a centre which is lonely and moving to a centre which is not lonely. Right? You understand this? The centre is lonely, and to move to a centre which is not lonely is still the movement of loneliness. Just see that....
K: Oh Lord - sir, do you notice for yourself, that you are always acting from a centre? Do you notice this? No? The centre may be a motive, the centre may be fear, the centre may be ambition - you are always acting from a centre, aren't you? I love you - I hate you - I want to be powerful - all action as far as we know now, is from a centre,...
K: And hence conflict between the observer and the observed. Because the observed is the barbed wire which must be jumped over, and the battle begins. Now can the observer, who is the centre, who is the thinker, who is the knower, who is experience, who is knowledge, can that centre be still?
...I will show it to you - or rather I won't show it to you, we will share it together. Have you ever given total attention to anything? Complete attention in which there is no centre from which you attend. Do you understand the question? When there is a centre from which you attend then there is a division. I wonder if you follow this? No, I see you...
...this is part of meditation - you understand? - so that there is no centre from which a direction can take place. You understand? The centre is the motive. If there is no motive there is no centre, and therefore no direction. Therefore, what then? Then there are all the systems of yoga - you know what yoga means? Yoga means to join. I think and I...
That is, we are always acting from a centre. You must have noticed too, if you are at all aware, if one is at all serious, there is always a centre from which you are moving. And that centre is made up of the things which thought has brought about - the 'me', with all the desires, urges, reactions, with all the longings, the loneliness, the...
So is it possible, the questioner asks, to be really free, absolutely not relatively, which is fairly simple. One can be a little unselfish, one can be a little concerned with social welfare, with others and so on, but the centre is always there biting hard, brutal. You all know this. So is it possible to be free of that centre.
K: Of course, it doesn't know but it thinks it can bring all the fragments together, make it a whole. So Dr Bohm is asking the question, which is: did thought exist before the centre, or the centre existed before the thought.
...there is attention. Attention implies there is no centre from which you are attending. When there is a centre from which you are attending, that's merely an extension of the centre. Right? The centre is me or you, and if you are aware from that centre that attention is limited. Right? But there is an attention which has no centre; the centre...
So, can the mind be free of this centre, with its terribly limited space of yardage, which can be measured and expanded and contracted and all the rest of it? Can it? Man has said it can't, and therefore God - you follow, sir? - who became the other centre. So my real concern is this: whether that centre can be completely empty? That centre is...
...Who is it that wants to do something. My girl or my wife or my parents say, 'Do this'. Society demands that I do something, earn a livelihood. It is not, I want to do something, because I realise whatever I do is confusion, but society, parents, everything says, you have to act, you can't sit still on a chair and look at your navel. So what shall...
And this school here, we have been discussing with the teachers, with the parents, and with the architects for the last two years. This school here is entirely different from other schools in India and in England. Here the parents are involved in it, which is a new kind of experiment, because if the children are going to be different, the parents...
...all kinds of urges. Now can this mind know all that? Or shall I blame my parents - my parents who have quarrelled, who don't get on well together, who have bitterness, and anger, you know all that goes on in a restricted family when they are not properly responsible in their relationship. All that and the environment - shall I put it all on the...
If we have children and we are concerned as parents who are also educators, not just parents and then shove them off into a school, but if the parents are concerned and the professional educators are concerned with the whole development of man, how shall we set about it?
K: So find out, all of you, find out your own talent, something of your own, not imposed by education, by your parents, by society, but find out something that you have for yourself.
K: And the parents feel terribly hurt. I saw on the TV what is happening in America. And the woman was in tears - you follow? She said, 'I am his mother, he doesn't treat me as a mother, he just orders me, give me a bottle of milk', and all the rest of it. And he has run away half a dozen times. And this is growing, this separation between the...
So will the parents, the teachers, and the students agree to all this? You are responsible for this. You are responsible, if you are a parent, what your children are going to be. One heard a parent saying, 'Must I sacrifice my life - which is drinking, taking drugs, sleeping with women and so on - for my stupid little children?' You understand...
K: Careful. I am asking a question. He says, you don't want to kill another human being - is that your conviction, is that your religion, do your parents also are religious that way? They ask all these questions, old boy, I am not inventing them.
K: Could you talk about raising children - please! You know, that's one of the things we could talk about, which means really, are the parents educated? - educated in the deep sense of that word, not passing some exams, getting a job and all that - I mean educated. And the parents are not educated therefore the children are not educated. So the...
K: You blame nothing. Right? You don't blame your grandfather, your grandmother, your parents. Please see the importance of this. So it is no good revolting against your parents!
...Just a minute, lady, just a minute. The parents want their children to be safe, secure. So, to be secure in this society you must have a degree, and examination, study, all that. Then they also want - the parents - the parents also want their children to be married and settle down. They have a job, and marry and settle down. 'For god's sake, get...
K: I know, sir, I know, I said so, we said so. Parents are the most dangerous human beings. (Laughter) They destroy their children, because they are uneducated.
K: Because when you've watched, been in America or in this country, children are running away from their parents, thousands are running away. The parents seem to have no control over them. They don't obey, they don't listen, they don't - you follow? They are wild.
...educators are like you and me. They are human, they have their own personal problems, their own difficulties, and the students come already conditioned by their parents, by their neighbours, by other children, and come to these various schools. And the teachers are also conditioned, unfortunately. And you are asking a question of the total human...
...do we face the problem, rather than the children? Because after all the parents are also the educators; not merely the teachers of a school, the parents, though they have brought them into the world, they are also really deeply responsible people to teach them. So, what is our responsibility? How do we meet these problems ourselves - the wars, the...
...is a watching of my chattering. I am aware and in that awareness I am not seeking any reward or punishment, I am just watching. Which means what? I am giving complete attention at that moment. Right? At that second all my energy, all my capacity and attention is there. Which means when there is complete attention, complete, not attention brought...
Now, to observe that insult and many other forms of recording with complete attention at the moment it is given. Then you will say how am I, how is the brain to maintain this attention all the time. Right? That's a wrong question. Because you say, I have learnt a trick and I want to continue keeping that trick. That is, pay attention completely to...
...not condemn it, not run away from it or transmute it to something else but just to observe it. In that observation you bring all your attention in that. Observation means complete attention. Can you so observe? Observe a tree completely, listen to the sound of the breeze in the tree, the birds fluttering, landing on the trees, calling of an...
K: Ah, in order oh, yes - mustn't the body be light and sensitive to pay complete attention. Not too many questions, sir because...
...to sustain attention for an hour and ten minutes, sustained, not pick it up occasionally. There are those moments when you are not giving complete attention and then you say, 'By Jove, I haven't quite understood what you are talking about'. Or you don't know English properly. Or what is being said by the speaker is not clear. Now which is it? If...
Attention is like a fire, when that attention is there that thing which is sorrow, the loneliness, the pain, the anxiety, the tears, when there is that complete attention all that goes, disappears. Attention is a flame.
K: So in answering this question: what is attention, what is the nature of thought that ceases when there is complete attention, and when there is no attention, thought arises. That is what we are going to talk over together.
K: No, no, you have not. And when do you give total attention - do listen to this, please - when do you give total attention, complete attention? When you are threatened. Right? When there is tremendous danger your complete attention is there. And when there is no danger you slip off.
K: The lady says when there is complete attention there is neither the observer nor the observed. Quite right. I mean, I am not saying you are right, I mean if it is so, it is so. And you want to maintain that attention. Right? Now, look: who is the entity that wants to maintain that attention? See what has happened? Do watch it, please watch it....
...It interferes when there is a remembrance, when there is a knowledge of the past as being hurt and so on. You are following all this? It can only stop when you give complete attention in that relationship. You understand? Just think about it. We are investigating. Don't accept anything what the speaker is saying. We must begin with a great deal of...
...born out of that intelligence. You will get it, think about it - no, don't think about it, listen to it. So when you see the false, that is, in that perception there is complete attention, there is no concentration, there is just attention. Attention implies there is no centre from which you are attending. There is a centre which demands...
K: Have you done it, sirs? Now wait a minute: you and I are quarrelling now, it is a quarrel, I'll show you. Will you give your complete attention? Then what happens? If you, as the husband or the wife, give complete attention what happens to the other person? You don't even come Come on, sirs, what happens?
...is no centre. When you concentrate there is a centre. When you are completely attending there is no me, the image, nothing. When, say for instance, you are listening now with complete attention, if you are, what takes place? There is neither agreeing, nor disagreeing, there is such care, such affection, such love, so you are completely listening....
...energy, it's only when there is inattention, when there is no attention the quarrels begin. Right? Do you understand this, sir? When there is complete attention on both sides, there is nothing, no quarrel, no division. Because we think attention means there is a centre from which I am attending. I say attention means there is no centre at all....
As we said, if during the day you are aware - aware, attentive of everything that is happening inside you - and you can pay complete attention to what you do, your gestures, your words, your ideas, your motives, just, you know - attentive, not correcting, just watching - in the same way if when you are called a fool you are completely attentive, then there is no formation of image.
...No, sir, just a minute. I see what human beings have done, which is move from the biological to the psychological, and there they have invented this idea that eventually you will come to godhead, or evolution, enlightenment, reach Brahman, reach whatever it is, nirvana or paradise, or hell. If when a human being sees the falseness of it, actually...
...for clear perception. If you want to think rationally, sanely, healthily, you have to know yourself, you have to search out for yourself the causes of why you think and do certain things, why you are aggressive, brutal, acquisitive, dominating, possessive, which are all the causes of conflict between human beings. And when we wish to bring about a...
...out very respectfully, you are not facing the tremendous issue that is facing man. So, together - I mean together - not you think one way, I think another, together as human beings confronted with this tremendous danger of existence of the whole of humanity. Because the atom bomb, the wars, whether it is in the Middle East or somewhere else, the...
K: All right, let's begin with that, and perhaps we will include all the others. the questioner says, please discuss, or go into, why human beings are enclosed, held in, and never free.
...turmoil, anxieties, agonies, which every human being whether West or East or, North, South, are going through. So we are human beings, not, I am a separate human being therefore I am related to the human beings; I am the rest of humanity. And if I see that fact I will not kill...
...clear on this point. We are not concerned at all with private personal salvation, but we are concerned earnestly, seriously, with what the human mind has become, what humanity is facing, that is human beings, human beings who are not Indians, or Russians, or Americans, human beings who are not labelled as Indians and so on. We are concerned in...
So I have found human beings don't change because they are wasting their energy; don't change because they are exercising their right of will, which they think is extraordinarily noble, which is called freedom of choice; and also they don't know what to do with 'what is' and therefore project 'what should be', and also maybe because that, the nirvana, the moksha, the heaven, is far more important than 'what is'.
...we have to enquire what is a human being, as you are, what is a human being? You go to America, Europe, Russia, China, India, the world over and human beings are suffering, in sorrow, in grief, in ambition, jealousy, hating each other, violence. So you are - please, bear in mind - you are the rest of humanity, because you are like that, right...
K: Why? If you were concerned, as one must be, if one is concerned with humanity, with human beings, with all the things that are going on, what would be the right action that would move him out of one direction to another? Is this question valid, has any significance?
So how shall we, as human beings, set about this? You understand? How shall we begin to enquire if there is something far greater, something that is really enduring, something that is very, very immovable, something that can't be transient, changing according to circumstances, according to cultures and so on? How does one begin to enquire into...
So what shall we, as human beings, seeing perhaps the basic cause of our degeneration, from there, what shall we do? You understand my question? It is this: that having found a cause, or many causes - many causes being this utter disregard for another, the total concern with oneself, which identifies itself with the nation, with the family, with...
K: Would I go and destroy human beings calling them enemies? Would I destroy nature, everything which man is doing now? He is destroying the earth, the air, the sea, everything. Because he feels totally irresponsible.
...there is the problem now - not a problem: what is meditation? Please, take proper positions! (Laughter). I can see it happening! (Laughter) You know man, human beings have always sought, because their minds are everlastingly chattering, everlastingly moving from one thing to another, driven by desire, driven by reward and avoidance, pain, it is...
...is the representative of total humanity - we talked about that. So we are taking a journey, exploration, an investigation together into why human beings decide - decide to do this and decide not to do that, to become this or not that, to follow somebody or not to follow somebody. All our life is a process of decision. And we are asking if you are...
And we were asking yesterday morning whether it is possible to end all sorrow, this constant battle between human beings, the sorrow of the world, and the sorrow of each one of us. And also we were pointing out, together, to each other, why human beings live the way they do. Why human beings, after so many centuries, from the ancient Sumerians,...
...griefs, with our own pains, with our own pity and vanity and all the rest of it. We have a great deal of energy. Look what is happening in the world - tremendous energy to invent new things, new gadgets, new ways of killing others. To go to the moon needs tremendous energy, concentration, both intellectual and actual. We've got tremendous energy,...
As you spend your energy going to the office or the laboratory or a particular scientific discipline and so on - you give great deal of energy in all these directions - for power, money, and position, recognition, fame, all the notoriety of all that - you spend tremendous energy going to the office day after day, day after day, for fifty, sixty years; and trying to cure others when you need curing yourself.
...also we ought to share together the energy, energy that is required in meditation. You need tremendous energy to meditate. So we ought to go into that question of energy. Friction is not energy. When we are in our daily life there is a great deal of friction, conflict between people, the work which we don't like to do, there is a wastage of...
...his video, and all that business. So what is this energy? We cannot possibly exist without this energy. Right? There is no existence on earth without this energy: the trees, tremendous energy to pull up water right to the top, tons of it. That is tremendous energy. To build an aeroplane, hundreds of people are responsible for it. To go to the moon...
...gods. I want to find out. How do I find out? I am burning with it, not just sitting there I want to find out - you understand? I want to find out if there is something real, and for that I must have tremendous energy. So I must first gather this energy, so I must find out how I waste energy. You follow? I obviously waste energy when I believe in...
...are using the word 'energy' not in the scientific sense, but the energy which you need, which the mind needs to go beyond itself. I need tremendous energy to transform envy, not into non-envy but to change envy totally. I need energy. You need energy to get up in the morning. You need energy to work. And we are talking of energy in which there is...
...endless chatter, chatter; wasted in the pursuit of innumerable desires without understanding what is desire and so on. We have got tremendous energy - to go to the moon requires tremendous energy and thousands of people. So we have untold energy if that energy is not misused or...
...we are wasting our energy through all these series of conflicts. And where there is fear, that is the epitome of waste. That is the summation of waste. And we need energy, tremendous energy. As you have tremendous energy when you want to earn money, when you want to become famous, when your sexual appetites demand, you have got tremendous energy....
...is possible to be free from influence which conditions us - right? Is it possible? Find out. Work sir, don't listen. Work at it. Put your tremendous energy into it, you have got tremendous energy, you don't want more. It took you a lot of energy to come here. Use some of that energy, if one may respectfully point out, use some of that energy to go...
...been working together for this whole hour, giving your attention to listening, to seeing, to learning, you must be... you follow? You must have gathered tremendous energy, and with that energy we are going to enquire. Not stimulated by the speaker, then it is like taking a drug, it will be a verbal drug. But if we are moving together, like a...
K: We don't listen or learn because of fear? You know why do we take so long to learn about something like this which is so clear, which is so simple, which gives you such a tremendous practical way of life and gives you tremendous energy? Why do we refuse all this?
...as it is now - extraordinarily alive, full of energy. And where there is highest form of energy there is silence. That energy is not yours or mine, it is this tremendous energy which is nameless, which is timeless. And in that energy - or that very energy is the supreme thing that man has sought, which is the most sacred. And when that sacredness...
...one of our problems, please, you understand? You realise how one wastes energy in conflict, in battles. It took tremendous energy to kill people, wars, now you have no war - actual, physical war - but you have economic war going on - right? - you have religious war. We know how all that energy is being wasted. Now you say, 'I have this energy',...
K: Energy, energy. Now, what happens? This is not some hocus-pocus, some kind of mystical experience. There is actual fear and I have tremendous energy which has come because there is no dissipation of energy. So what takes place? So, wait, wait, wait.
K: The gentleman says that is very encouraging. Don't be encouraged by another. Because then another can also disappoint you. But if you see what is possible then it releases tremendous energy. You understand, sir. Possible.
...enquire into it you are going to discover an awful lot, but if you just listen speculatively you won't find out. So let's begin by being aware, if one is, of the environment in which one lives - the squalor, the dirt, the pollution. You understand, what is taking place around you. Now if you are aware of it, how are you aware of it? Sensorially,...
K: Just listen to what I have to say first, sir. I am violent, and my tradition and all the people around me, environment tells me, and the religious books and so on, so on - society tells me I must be non-violent. But I am violent. So what happens? There is a conflict between 'what is' and 'what should be'.
...feeling, and the demand, what can one do about it all? Can one escape from it into some monastery, into some religious sect, group, community, commune, or join some political party to change the policies, political policies hoping thereby changing the environment, hope to change man. This has been the constant problem: change the environment,...
This evening I think we ought to go into many other problems: which is, what important is it for a human being to change himself when the environment, the society, the culture, is so corrupt, so disintegrating. And one sees the necessity of changing the environment - the environment being the society, the religion, the culture and so on. And what...
Is it the fault of the environment, the education that one has, the culture in which one lives - which is the environment, let's call it that, is it the fault of the environment that man, you, are in constant battle, not only during the day but also during the night when you sleep, from the moment you are born till you die, this battle? If you...
...No. You see you don't understand me, sir. I see that the human mind is shaped by the environment in which it lives - the Eskimo, the Pacific Islander, the Christian and so on, each one is conditioned by the environment in which he lives, the environment is all the rest of it - Catholic, you know, all that. So a child being born in this culture is...
...As long as you have an image about yourself you are going to get hurt. Like a man who says, I have achieved enlightenment - you follow - and he is talking about environment, preaching about environment, such a man knows nothing about environment - about enlightenment. It is just his concept. You...
...mechanical process of memory, on a repetition of an experience and therefore a continuing in the movement of time as past, present and future. Is there an action that is not conditioned by environment? You know the Marxists say that control the environment then you will change man, and that has been tried, and man has not changed. Man is as...
K: No, we were saying the environment can only be, environment in the sense society, the culture, the religion and all that, can only be, radically changed if man himself changes. That's the whole point.
K: Millions of people feel that there is in them something far superior than this ordinary brain, far superior to environment, economics, etc.
...you know all the rest of the words that one invents, pleasant sounding words to cover up a corruption. How is one to go beyond it? And so not being capable we have invented an outside agency, which is environment. Change the environment, the social structure, the economic business and man will inevitably also change. That has proved utterly wrong...
...they're insecure, they are violent, greedy, envious, competitive and so on. They are similar, psychologically, inwardly. Modified perhaps by their culture, by environment, by the climate, but the core of it is similar.
So can we in this talking over together stop all the blaming, or saying the environment, the parents, the past, has made you this. All right, it has made me this, I want to start from here. Right? Can we do that? So I want to know what is going on now, not what has produced it. I don't have to go to Africa to study the gorillas and the apes in...
First of all, the more effort is made to be free of the centre, the more - please listen to this - the more one makes an effort to be free of the centre, that very effort strengthens the self - right? Like those people who go off into meditation of various kinds, trying to impose something upon it and that 'me' then captures that, identifies with...
K: No, sir, there is no effort. Gosh. Is love an effort? To love somebody, does it require effort? Do you really mean this, you are asking this question? To be kind to somebody, does it require effort? To give what little you have to somebody, does that require effort?
...what is one to do? If you are not to make an effort because you see the truth of it, that the more you make an effort the greater the travail of the self. It is the self that is making an effort to be free of itself, and therefore it is still involved in it, imagining that it will be free, imagining that it will be etc. etc. But it is still the...
K: Because it must empty itself without an effort. The moment there is an effort, there is an observer who is making the effort to change the content, which is part of consciousness. I don't know if you see that?
So to see the truth of it. Not tomorrow, not, 'I'll think about it,' but actually now as immediately see the truth of it is to end this whole business of division between me and you and we and they. Then you'll find one can live completely, deeply without violence, without effort. A mind that is making an effort endlessly is not living at all.
K: You see that! It is all these tricks we are playing on ourselves. Do listen sir. Who is asking, who is saying all this? You make an effort to identify yourself with fear.
So, when there is complete order in our life, which is the beginning of meditation, and one understands the nature of awareness, concentration and attention, then all effort has come to an end - all effort. When you put everything in order there is no effort. So the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet - uninvited, not cultivated, something totally...
...does attention take place? Obviously not through effort, right? When you make an effort to be attentive, it is an indication that you are inattentive and trying to make that inattention become attention - you understand? I am tired of these explanations! (Laughter) Personally I have never learnt about any of all this nonsense. Personally nobody...
...be aware, conscious, without any choice, just to observe? Right? And the reply to that, 'I will try'. And to that reply the speaker says, 'Don't try'. The moment you try you are making an effort. And when you make an effort you don't understand anything. Whereas if you don't make effort, but just see, perceive the actual. Right? And then you may...
...communism, and so on, so on. That is on the increase because the good is not flowering. Right? Now to be aware of this fact without any effort - please the moment we make effort we are giving importance to the self, which is the bad (laughs). Right? So to observe the actual fact of the bad without any effort, just to observe it without any choice...
K: I desire that, and to achieve that I make an effort. That effort, the motive of that effort is desire. So will is desire. Right?
K: No, it won't, it won't. It will not if you... all right, let it come back. Go slowly, let it come back and again watch it, without making an effort. You get it?
And to bring about order is to understand disorder. And therefore, order is not according to a blueprint, according to some authority, or your own particular experience. And how this order comes about must obviously be without effort, because effort distorts.
K: To the maker of the effort, who has already identified with something greater, and is making an effort to reach it. It is still the movement of thought.
K: So where is your effort? I made effort before in trying to get rid of the image and the hurt. Now I find that 'I' is the image, which is a fact. Right? Which is so, which is 'what is', which is accurate. So what am I to do? What is there? Be careful! Before, I made effort to get rid of the hurt; now I see how silly it is, then what am I to do...
K: Sir, just play with this a little. I am moving - learning implies movement, constant movement and that which is moving can never accumulate, and when you accumulate it becomes knowledge, which is necessary to function. But in learning which is a constant movement, no opinion, no conclusion can ever be formed. Ah, I have got it! Right?
...a movement. Right? Movement from this to that, or from there to this. Change this to that, thesis and antithesis, and produce synthesis. It is a constant movement of the image, the word, the conclusion. So when the mind realises, sees the observer is the observed, sees, not just verbally accepts some idiotic idea, but actually realises it in his...
...going on. But if the mind can enquire if there is such a state at all possible in life, psychologically, a permanency, or, is life a constant movement, a constant state in which the new is always taking place, only the mind can't see the new, and therefore, or rather - it can't see the new because it is constantly living in the past. So the past...
...Buddhistic attitude, that life is a constant flux. You understand? Constant movement and when that manifests there is an enclosure taking place which becomes the 'you', the 'me', which through time, through constant movement undergoes change, flux, that is their - you understand? The Hindus, the Buddhists, and of course the Christians have their...
...physically and psychologically. That is, the movement from the centre to another centre, or the movement from the periphery to another - you follow? There is this constant movement in all of us. Now if you observe this movement very carefully, and as you observe what takes place in the mind? You are following all...
...aware of the necessity and the functional value of knowledge. And has knowledge any relationship with learning? I see learning is constant movement, in that I have to function and knowledge is necessary but it is a constant movement. And that movement is not thought but constant awareness, perception, insight. The moment that insight makes a...
...movement. There is no movement if it is accumulation. If a river is flowing and it ends up in a lake there is no movement. There is a movement only when there is a constant movement, a constant flow, a strong current. And learning implies that. Learning not only about outward things, scientific facts, but also learning about oneself, because...
...agree or disagree. Find out. Obviously, it is so obvious. Now, what happens then, if dreams are a continuous movement of the daily action, then what happens to the brain, if there is a constant movement, constant activity, constant chattering, what happens to the brain that is constantly.
When we decide, decide between two things, which implies choice, doesn't it? Right? Why do we choose at all? The choice between two houses, two motor cars, two materials - right? - apart from that, what is the necessity for choice?
K: Yes. I am not being cynical, sir, please. I am just saying, have you done it? If you have then you know what it means to be aware. That is, to be aware without censor, without judgement, without choice. Right? That is to look without any choice. Right? Which means what?
...are saying, in meditation, if you are interested, if you pursue it to its utmost depth and height, mind must be completely free of all action of will. The action of will exists when there is choice. Right? I choose that and go along there. When there is choice, there is confusion. Right? Only when you are confused, you begin to choose. Right? Only...
...I ask myself, will any act of desire, which is will, bring this about? Because will plays a great part in our life. Will is based on choice, on decision - I will do this and I will not do that. Will, that is, the concentration of desire, plays an extraordinary part in our life. Haven't you noticed it? I must do this, I must not do that, I will...
So as far as one sees where there is confusion there must be choice and being uncertain the choice gives you the direction, and to follow it you must resist every other form of influence. Right?
Please listen, that is, not to the speaker but yourself. You are asking this question, I am not asking you to ask that question. You are asking that question yourself. Why is there this choice of not to be violent? That's a choice. I am violent, but I'll choose to be non-violent. Why is there that choice?
...we proceeded from there - to be aware. And if you are aware, if there is any choice, that choice distorts observation. If you say, 'Well, my nose must be straight', (laughs) you are not looking at the mirror. So, where there is choice, awareness is a distorting factor. When there is no choice, that means no in that awareness you are aware of the...
...Yes, that is the same thing. When one is very clear you don't choose, when you know exactly what road to take to a certain place there is no choice. It is only when you are uncertain you begin to choose, or ask, question, find out. So I am asking, psychologically choice exists only when you are confused, uncertain - no? When you are very clear...
...what is it to be aware? Phew! When you sit there, are you aware of your surroundings? The man or the woman next to you, just to be aware without any judgement, evaluation, choice. Just watch it. Aware of the tent, aware of the colours round you, the faces, and is it possible to observe without any choice? To look. Because the moment you choose,...
...you choose it - you follow? - you choose, that's all right. But why do you psychologically choose at all? You understand my question? Why do you choose? Doesn't choice come when you are not clear? When I know the road to Madras, there is no need for choice, I just go. So where there is clarity there is no choice. It's only the confused mind that...
I want to find out why I choose at all, why there is such a thing as choice. Does choice exist when I see something very clearly? It is only when there is uncertainty, no clarity, no perception, then I am forced to choose. But if I see something very, very clearly it is finished, there's no choice. I have to go to London and I want to do something...
So we said we're going to observe, be aware of our consciousness. And we said also where there is a choice in observation, saying, 'I prefer this, I don't like this, or this is what I this is right and that is wrong', so choice psychologically distorts clarity, observation. So please observe without choice.
...the culture in which this is gradually coming out of this society, to do what one likes or choose what one likes, is still an indication of violence. Where there is choice there is no freedom. Choice implies confusion, not clarity. When you see something very clearly there is no choice, there is only action. It is only a confused mind that...
...dozen habits. Now, how will you end one of those habits without any resistance? Wait, wait, (laughs) wait, sir. Please, do listen. Because resistance implies choice - and choice implies conflict - wanting, not wanting. And therefore choice invariably arises when there is uncertainty, unclarity, confusion. So what am I to...
...thinking, but actually observe in ourselves when does this process of choosing arise. Do you choose between that road and this road when you know exactly where you want to go and this particular road leads to that, then there is no choice is there? It is only when I do not know where I want to go, or when I am uncertain between this and that, then...
...his mind, his heart, the whole nature of the human being is more or less as it was a million years ago. We have made technological progress but not psychological transformation of the human mind and that is what we are concerned with.
Now can that structure of the human mind, this contradiction, this division, the division between the observer and the observed, the division between me and you, or we and they, the bigger guru and the lesser guru, the better meditation and - you know all that business, can all that be totally transformed so that the mind is entirely new, fresh?
So my mind, the mind, the human mind - not my mind - your mind, the mind has followed this direction for centuries upon centuries, encouraged by the priests, by the philosophers, by the learned people, to know more, more, more, not only about yourself but outside. And if when somebody comes and says, 'Look what you are doing', then the idea that...
...can bring about harmony in relationship and therefore in behaviour. You are following? So that is our problem: how a human mind, your mind, which has been so conditioned by the past, through the present to the future, how can such a mind be changed radically? So that is one question, whether it will take time, time being gradually, taking several...
Now, how does one be free of fear? You understand my question? Because it is absolutely important, if you want to bring about a deep transformation of the human mind, human consciousness, that one should be totally and completely free of psychological fears.
...to the scientists, for many, many million years. Our brain is the result of many, many millennia of time. That brain, that human mind, is now so conditioned with fear, with anxiety, with national pride, with linguistic limitations, and so on. So the question then is, to bring about a different society in the world, you as a human being who is the...
...gives to it but the meaning that is generally understood according to the dictionary. So if that is clear, that we are mutually investigating together into this question whether the human mind can be transformed, whether there can be psychological revolution. And the urgency of human survival, because we are killing each other off, traditionally,...
And we will this morning, if we may, go into this question, not only of meditation but also whether the mind, the human mind, can ever find, come upon, or discover, something that is incorruptible, that is not put together by the human mind with its thought, something that must exist, which will give a perfume, a beauty, a loveliness to life.
K: Sir, if you don't mind, what we are discussing has great significance because we are concerned - please, I must go back to it - we are concerned with the responsibility as a human being to bring about a radical change in the human mind. You understand? That is what we are concerned with, through all the talks, through all the discussions....
K: Are you saying, sir, that that mind has a relationship to the human mind the moment it's moving away from the limitation?
...intellectual or in any way stimulating or a religious circus. We are here because we are serious. The word 'serious' implies that one must be concerned very deeply with what is happening around the world and to what is taking place in the human mind. And those who are serious are entirely committed to this question of how to transform the human...
...do? You understand, sir? I put the question, which you must put it to yourself. This human mind which has lived millions and millions of years in drudgery, in misery, in confusion, in anxiety, in fear, can that mind undergo change, mutate, transform itself entirely? What would be your answer? If you are serious, and earnest and truthful, what...
...one realises in all seriousness what the world is, we are, and we are the world. Then the next problem is: how is the human mind to change? The mind that has been cultivated through millennia, a mind that has been educated, conditioned, a mind shaped by the environment in which it lives, by the culture in which it has flowered. This mind has taken...
...mischief next day. And that you call religious gathering. Whereas what we are talking about is something entirely different. We are concerned with the transformation of the human mind; the human mind which is your mind. Your mind is the mind of the world, and the world's mind is you. And to investigate, go into that requires a great deal of energy...
So that is what we are proposing to discuss whether the human mind, our mind, your mind and my mind - our mind, can be completely free from all institutions, from all the impositions, the pressures of religions, their symbols, their ideologies, their theories, and their dogmas, which is mostly, all of that is superstition, can one be free of that completely?
...All that may be an escape from our own troubles, anxieties, depressions. So can we live an aesthetic life of deep perception? Be aware of our words, be aware of the noise of this country, the vulgarity of human beings. Because one learns far more in silence than in noise. This all may sound platitudes, but they are not. This requires a great deal...
...first, what does it mean to listen? To listen to a statement, to listen to the noise of that crow, to listen to that honking of that car, to listen to your own thought, to your own feelings. And to listen implies no interference of thought. Because the moment thought intervenes by saying, 'It is good or bad, I don't like that noise, I do like that...
K: You are missing the whole thing. He has been in all that noise, all the travail, all that. He is moving away, moving, going up.
K: Yes, he hears the noise of that train going by - that's a very good question. You all heard that train going by - right? Did you respond to that noise completely? You understand, sir? So that there is no resistance to the noise, there is no irritation from the noise. You are totally with the noise. Look at those mountains, which you have looked...
K: How can I have a balance, a harmony between the noise of my activity in the functioning and also inwardly at the same time keep peace and quiet and so on, all that.
...No, don't, not, 'I must be aware'. Are you aware, sir, of that noise of the aeroplane? You don't say, 'I must be aware'. Are you aware of the song of that stream? Are you aware of the shirt, or whatever the lady has put on, the colour of that person sitting next to you - what she looks like, what he looks like, whether they are suffering - are you...
So after having said that with regard to that noise, which is called music, let's proceed with what we were talking about yesterday. I hope that is all right. Unfortunately the wind is blowing from that direction.
K: Please listen to what I I cannot do a thing about the rattle, the noise, the roar of that train, therefore I don't put up a resistance to it, therefore I listen. When I listen there is no noise. There is noise but it doesn't affect me. In the same way when I realise I am neurotic - neurotic, realise it - I am holding on to a particular belief,...
...it together. Time is also another great problem in life. Time chronologically exists - that is obvious. There is no question of arguing about it. We are asking: is there psychological time at all? And if there is psychological time as we have it now, what is that time? Psychologically we have time, that is tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, a year...
Now we are questioning, asking together whether there is psychological time at all. Or it is an illusion which has become almost a reality for all of us. You understand? Are we together in this? That is, our idea of hope is based on that. That is, I am hoping, one is hoping to arrive, to be happy, to have enlightenment, to be good - in the future,...
K: We said that very clearly. There is yesterday, today and tomorrow; that is a reality, that is a measurement also. But we are asking: is there psychological time at all, or thought has invented time, psychological time, in order to feel that it can achieve or live in some kind of security?
K: So where am I now - where are we now? I, a human being, realises all this, has come to the point when he says, 'Can I really be free from this accumulated security and thought and time, psychological time?' Right?
...in which there is delight, and looking forward to that same delight tomorrow - that is that is time. So we are asking, enquiring, observing whether there is whether that psychological time is not an illusion, is not a reality at all. That is, 'what is' does not require to time to resolve 'what is', but to change 'what is' to something else...
...progress, evolve, grow. Right? Time is also fragmentary. There are two kinds of time, aren't there? The physical time, the chronological time by the watch, yesterday, today and tomorrow; and also there is time, the psychological time - I will be. There is psychologically tomorrow, where I should be able to achieve enlightenment. Where I will be...
As I say - the speaker says, time which is a movement invented by thought - psychological time is invented by thought and thought itself is the product of time, that is, it is the product of time because man has acquired knowledge through long evolution, evolution implies time and when we think in terms of time we divide life, we fragment life. I...
Time means movement; time means division - division from here to there; not only physical time, but also psychological time. And physical time is necessary - to acquire knowledge, to work skilfully, to drive a car, to do any technological activity, time is necessary. You can't suddenly become a marvellous flyer, pilot, you have to learn quite...
Time of which we talked about the other day, there are three types of time - the biological time, the psychological time, the time by the watch; that is chronological time, time as psychologically - I will become, I will be, if I am not, if I am angry, I will be less angry tomorrow, all that implies psychological time and there is the biological time in the genes in which time is involved - the growth from childhood to manhood.
...all the blah that goes on. And so to change 'what is' into 'what should be', according to you, the ideal, you need time. So that the chronological time by the watch and the psychological time; you can't avoid the physical time. That is the watch, yesterday, today and tomorrow. Now, we are going to find out if the psychological time which man has...
...time. To learn a language requires time. So time in a certain area is necessary. If you want to catch a train you must be there at a certain time. And is there psychological time at all - the tomorrow? Please understand this carefully otherwise we will create all kinds of mischievous ideas. Time. Time is hope, psychologically. Time is required to...
...Is thinking a factor in fear? Has thinking brought about fear? As one sees time has brought fear, right? Time. Not only time by the clock, but psychological time, the inward time: I am going to be; I am not good, but I will be. I will get rid of my violence, which is again the future. Or, I have been violent, but I won't be. All that implies...
...that into something which is perhaps totally different, we think we need a process of time. Right? Please understand this clearly. That is, the psychological time - the chronological time and the psychological time. We are talking about the psychological time. Time, we said, is a movement as thought is a movement in time. So, is there an ideal,...
...I hope to achieve; I hope to fulfil; I hope to reach heaven, enlightenment. All that psychologically demands time. We are saying time in one direction, one area is necessary, whether this psychological time may be a total illusion. The word illusion implies, the root meaning, etymological meaning of that word is 'to play'; to play with something....
...each other, are we? Time being, there is time by the watch, time as yesterday, today and tomorrow. Time, the chronological time is necessary, it is there. Is there psychological time? You understand? Is there for me, for you, psychologically tomorrow? If there isn't, there is immense fear. Do you understand? If you are confronted with the fact...
So there is an action that is not born out of past remembrances or future hopes and ideals. It is being totally aware of 'what is', and having an insight into 'what is' is the ending of 'what is'. I wonder if you see that? Shall I go on to the next question?
...it is possible to live without conflict, when there is no duality. There is no duality now, not when you reach a certain state of consciousness. There is no actual duality, there is only 'what is'. You understand? Duality exists only when you deny, or try to escape from 'what is' into 'what is not'. Is this clear? Are we all together in this...
So as long as there are illusions, opinions, perceptions, based on the avoidance of 'what is', then that must be relative. Right? Right, sir? Avanti? Shall we go on? Relativeness, which is - I won't go into the word 'relative', that's the word no, I won't - sorry. (Laughter) This can only take place when there is a movement away from the fact,...
...who is looking in. That's only possible when there are no ideologies at all, no sense of achievement. That is, no sense of time. There is time only as evolution when there is this sense of 'what is' and 'what should be'. And all the effort, the strain and the struggle to achieve 'what should be', that is great wastage of energy. Just to perceive...
...of the reasons is having ideals. That is, the idea which is the opposite of 'what is', what actually is, project through thought an idea, an ideal, so there is a contradiction between 'what is' and 'what should be'. That is one of the factors of this conflict. Then the other factor is, we do not know what to do with 'what is', how to deal with it,...
...is the observer different from the observed? Outwardly yes. Inwardly the observer is the observed. Therefore there is no duality, and when there is no duality what is left? Actually what is. Right? Actually what is. Can the mind observe 'what is' without giving it a name - name means symbol, imitation, conformity, recognition - just observe 'what...
Is it part of our education to never come directly in contact with 'what is' because we have ideals, because we have a sense of denial of 'what is', the incapacity to deal with 'what is' - is that why the mind refuses to face 'what is', but always plays around it. Right? Why? Is it our education? Which is, be like somebody else, you are not as...
...have it, the Maoists have it, every human being has more or less this kind of ideology - why? Is it that he cannot understand, or go beyond 'what is', and therefore he thinks by having a conclusion about 'what is' will help him to get over 'what is'. You...
So, what is order? How will you find out? No one to tell you. Neither the politicians, your priests, your books, your gurus, none of them can tell you because they have told you thousands of times, and look where you are! Which is, you live in disorder. Disorder means fragmentation of life, contradiction, say one thing, do another, have ideals and...
First realise what we are doing; that is: 'what is' to become the ideal, which is 'what should be'. The ideal is non-existent, is non-fact. But 'what is' is a fact. Right? So let's understand 'what is' and not the idea of non-violence, which is absurd. This has been preached by various people in India, beginning with Tolstoy and others. This is...
So can the mind remain, hold, observe only 'what is', and not move away in any direction, horizontally, vertically and so on, but purely observe 'what is'? In that observation there is no time at all. Right? Do it sirs and you will see it. That is, psychological time, which we have accepted, and if we go into it very carefully without any...
K: Seeing 'what is'. Wait a minute. How do you see it, how do you approach it? On that depends the totality of 'what is', or only you see the partial of 'what is'. If you see the totality of 'what is' - finished.
...Yes sir, later. Either you have invented it because you don't know how to deal with 'what is', with violence, and therefore it is an escape from 'what is'. Or you think you need an ideal, which is the opposite, to eradicate 'what is'. Or use the ideal as a means of getting rid of 'what is'. The 'what is' is a fact, is actual, but the ideal is...
K: Ah, no. Truth is not a mixture of the ideal and the 'what is', then you produce some melange of some dirt. There is only 'what is'. Sir, look, take a very simple example: we human beings are violent. Why should I have an ideal of non-violence? Why can't I deal with the fact?
So, that is one of the fundamental things you have to understand, that there is no duality, psychologically, there is only 'what is'. And not being able to solve 'what is', we have resorted to 'what is not', which is a withdrawal from 'what is'. 'What is' is violence. Right? That's a fact and non-violence is a non-fact. Can the mind remain...
...not only for the one that I have lost, but also I shed tears for others. There is not only personal sorrow, but there is the sorrow of the world, sorrow of that man walking in the street who will never, never, ride in an aeroplane, who will never become a minister. Don't laugh. You don't know what a torture all this is. That poor man, one meal a...
...And the eastern world has various logical and illogical explanations. But man remains in sorrow, not only personal sorrow but also the immense collective sorrow - the sorrow of wars, what is going on in Vietnam, thousands are being killed, children are being burnt. Not only in Vietnam but also during the last war millions were killed in Russia...
So there is personal sorrow and the vast cloud of sorrow of mankind. Sorrow is not something romantic, sentimental, illogical, it is there. My son dies and it has shattered one's life. And we have lived with this sorrow from time measureless. And apparently one has not resolved this problem. When one suffers one seeks consolation, which is an...
...end, because if it doesn't end there is no love, you cannot have a good society, there can be no goodness. So one must find out, not only one's own personal sorrow, whether it can end, but also not to contribute to the vast collective sorrow. Please, sir, this is very, very serious, it's not a thing you play with, it's not a thing you argue and...
...killing thousands of people. Humanity has suffered. And we are still pursuing that path of war that has brought about tremendous sorrow for mankind. Right? And we have our own personal sorrow. Sorrow is the same whether it is yours or mine. I like to identify myself with my sorrow, and you like to identify yourself with your sorrow. But sorrow of...
...we are asking if sorrow can ever end. Not only personal sorrow, but also the sorrow of all mankind. Sorrow is sorrow, it is not yours or mine. The sorrow that has been created through these five thousand years of war. The sorrow that human beings are preparing for wars. The sorrow of endless division between people, as the Catholics, the...
Sorrow is not only your sorrow, your personal sorrow, but there is the sorrow of the world. The sorrow of those people who have been killed in the war, maimed, blinded, no arms and no legs, just the body, torso, and their relatives; how many mothers have cried, sisters, wives, lovers and so on. Don't you know all this? Or are you only concerned...
...the question is: can the content be emptied? Can sorrow be ended? Not only your personal sorrow but the sorrow accumulated through millennia of mankind. The personal sorrow, I mean the immediate sorrow - I have lost a son, I have lost this, or, you know, the tears, the despair, which is momentary. But there is this vast sorrow of mankind which has...
...love; a mind and a heart that is always aching in loneliness cannot have compassion with its extraordinary intelligence. So together let's enquire if it is possible to end not only our personal sorrow but the sorrow of mankind.
...or even feel this immense sorrow that is in the world. They are so concerned with their own personal sorrow, they overlook the sorrow that a poor man in a little village in India, or in China or in the Eastern world, where they never possibly have a full meal, clean clothes, comfortable bed. And there is this sorrow of thousands of people being...
...the fears, hidden and open, all the pursuits of pleasure, sexual and otherwise. And find out for ourselves what love is. And understand the full significance of not only personal sorrow but also the sorrow of mankind. And also is it possible to understand the final event of our life which is death? All that is our living. And if we are not clear...
How do you observe? Do you observe yourself as an outsider, as a censor, saying, this is right, this is wrong, justifying, condemning, approving, storing up? And if you do, there is contradiction and therefore conflict and therefore violence.
...then thought can be used intelligently, efficiently, objectively. Because it is thought that has created this violence, thought with its ideologies, with its conclusions, with its separative beliefs, ideals, and when one observes thought it is the very basis of fragmentation. All right? Are we communicating with each other? That is, you know we...
K: I am coming Slowly. I am moving, edging our way into this. I want to be quite clear on this point. Violence and to be without violence are two entirely different factors. Right?
K: If I don't end violence today, that violence has existed million years ago, in the human being, then if I don't leave that violence behind or drop it or radically bring about a mutation, I'll be violent tomorrow. This is a fact. So, is there a progress, development of the psyche as evolution? For me personally there isn't. For me - don't accept...
Whereas if you observe violence in yourself, violence brought about through fear, through insecurity, through the sense of loneliness, dependency, the cutting off of your pleasures and so on, if you are aware of that, observe it totally, without analysis, then you have all the energy which has been dissipated through analysis to go beyond 'what is'.
K: Go into it. Don't say, 'that seems'. Go into it, find out if you are violent. And then enquire what is violence. You said, anger, so you will not be angry.
And that violence and deterioration is part of me, so this bundle is me. That's a fact. So I am entirely in contact with it, wholly, there is no part of me that is not touching it entirely. I can't put it ten different ways.
K: I may have inherited, what - violence from the from the apes and so on, so on. Can't I change that? The inherited biological...
...the description is not the described, and therefore is of very little value. You know why you are violent very well, you haven't got to spend years trying to find out the cause of your violence, which is such a waste of time. But to observe violence as it is, without the censor, who then separates himself from the fact that he is violent. Are we...
K: Who is it that is associated with violence? I don't know quite what you really are talking about, madam. Would somebody who has understood what she is saying tell me what it's about? Are you saying that violence is a form of association?
K: Are you saying, sir, we must examine in detail what is happening in the world, the violence or the causes of that violence and then come.
K: Can a person live in this world with all its brutality, violence, contradiction, social upheaval and so on, in complete bliss. Right?
So I am only concerned with 'what is', which is violence. Then what is violence? Obviously to physically hurt somebody, physically to attack somebody, you know, anger and all the rest of it. Or violence is a state of contradiction in which I live. Why is there contradiction? Contradiction exists only when I do not accept 'what is' but always...
...They are trying to stop it. But, sir, look: students and young people are impatient, they want quick results, and so they say by throwing a bomb we will upset, and therefore violence produces more violence, violence produces repression, which is taking place - the police are getting stronger to subjugate the others. And this battle is going on....
K: Yes, madame, we have understood the question. The parents may be free from violence but my children are attracted to violence - what am I to do?
As we talked about it the other day, time and thought are the two major factors in the manufacturing, if I can use that word, fear. We went into the question of time. Shall we go into it again? Yes? You're rather silent, so shall I... I'm not forcing you.
...intellectually that words have no significance, but yet be caught in words. And to go into that question of time as coming to an end - because if it does not come to an end there is only variety in continuation, a modified change in continuity, which is time. Thought can adjust itself to any environment and shape itself according to various...
...alert, aware, is listening, paying tremendous attention to the question, not trying to solve it. So when you do that, that is, when you give complete attention, when you are totally sensitively aware, in that attention there is no question of time. But if you say, 'I need time to be attentive', that is to learn what it is to be attentive, then you...
You have also to understand - we are coming to the immense question of death presently, all this is a part of it - you have to understand this question of time. Time means movement. Right? From here to there, physically; to cover that distance from here to there you need time - time by the watch, time by the sun, time by day or time by year. And...
...there is something called love, all in the future, to be psychologically achieved. Right? Please if I labour this point it is important because when we go into the much deeper question of death, you have to understand this question of time. That is our conditioning. I need time to learn a language. I need time to learn a technique, I need time to...
...it. Right? Please. Right sir? I have been attentive now for a few minutes and it's gone, but I would like that attention to last, to go on. Now when you are attentive, is there any question of time? No. Then why are you asking that you must have time to be attentive, or time must be given for its duration? You understand? When you are attentive,...
...which is very complex. We said we must understand the question of time, apart from the chronological time of yesterday, today and tomorrow - sunrises, sunsets - divided into twenty four hours; we are not talking about that; that's necessary, that exists, and if that doesn't play a part in your life then you'll lose your bus. But we are talking of...
Now if we may, let us talk over together the question of decision, whether it is necessary to decide at all, and the place of will; and also we are going to discuss or talk over together the question of time and space. And perhaps if we have time we can go into the question of meditation too. So we are going to talk over together the machinery...
...tent, expenditure, energy, petrol and all the rest of it, are we together thinking? Not you think and I think, thinking together. Then we can go into this question of time, thinking together, not your time, my time. It is very important because we are going to find out if we think together whether there is psychologically tomorrow at all, because...
...Of course not. Wait, sir. I see brutality, war, very clearly - all the reasons, the whole structure, the army, the navy, the investment - you follow? - the whole of it - nationality, pride of leaders, white and black and all the rest of it - I see it very clearly. In that perception there is clarity, but war still goes on. So. Then what is your...
...cannot live at peace with another human being; why there are separate nations, which is after all a glorified tribalism. And religions, whether it be Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism, they are also at war with each other. Nations are at war, groups are at war, ideologies, whether it is the Russian or the American, or any other category of...
...that pain. Similarly where there is a psychological cause there is an ending of that cause, you understand? Please meet me on this. A war, there is a cause to war - economic, national, prestige, power, and so on. There is a cause to war, it is a division of nationalities, division of ideologies, the totalitarian and the non-totalitarian, the...
K: And also when I go to Vietnam, or fight the war, all responsibility is taken away from me. Somebody else is responsible - the general.
There has been a war, forty years ago, nearly forty years ago, and they write books about it, they are talking about it, they show on the television various exciting scenes about war, the various material for destruction. You know, kept up, keep this going all the time - why? You understand? We will go into it.
...All right, as far as we have understood, we'll do, but have you understood this thing totally? Why don't you see totally, that as long as you have any feeling for nationality, you are breeding war. Why don't you see clearly, that as long as you belong to any sect, any group, any religion, you're breeding war. What prevents you from seeing this?...
K: And man has accepted war as the way of life, whether in the office, or at home, or in the playing field, or anywhere war he has accepted as a way of life, which is the very essence of violence.
...if it is gradual it means time. So what is it? Lord! What is time, sir? When you say 'gradual', what do you mean by that word 'gradual'? A process, step by step, evolve, grow, proceed, progress, step forward. All that implies gradualness, which is time. Right? And you have used time. Time, you say 'Well, I'll be better tomorrow. I will understand...
K: Why should I accept anything? Why should I accept war? Why should I accept violence? Why should I accept I am hurt and it's all right?
K: Right? I call all that which produces war a mediocre life. That's all. You may say that's not mediocrity, then we can discuss it. Right? But if you say, 'It's your mediocrity, it's not mine', then we can't discuss anything.
K: Don't call it war. War means destroying, war means conflict - give it another name but it's there. Now, sir, have you seen this? Have you seen the beauty of this? So a mind that is acting in the past or in the future must contribute to war. A mind that is caught in nationalism, in religious beliefs, rituals, sects and so on, must contribute to...
K: I'm asking you, sir, what am I to do? I have no relationship to the war, I can't just sit still and let the war go by, I'm part of this - you follow? - I've cut myself completely off, and yet I must act. What shall I do?
...to find out. Right? No, you're too young, too small. Fear is one of the most difficult things to understand and to be free of it. Right? People have gone to war, killed each other on account of fear. You understand? I might lose my country, I might lose my property, I might not belong to this group - you understand? So war, killing, has been going...
K: So you are saying this image-building is based on memory. You said something awful yesterday, you were rude to me, you insulted me, you called me a fool; registered, memory, and the building of image. Right? No?
...'motive', the root meaning of that word is 'to move'. To move, not in a particular direction, not self-centred egotistic desire. This becomes difficult - motive implies, as we said, motive is born out of memory. Right? Because I want something which I am missing. Right? That's one form of motive. I want to achieve fame: appear in the beastly...
...my reputation, my 'I must be', 'I must not be', my faith, my belief, my dogma, my religious attitude, politics, fear, pains, pleasure, suffering - all that is me. All that is memory. So all that is memory, me is...
...That's a fact. Round that we build all kinds of pleasure, pain, fear, love, jealousy, that is the core, that is the heart of our existence. And what is thinking? And what is memory? If you have no memory there is no thinking. You understand? A man in a state of amnesia! So memory is the core of it. Right? Memory of your wife, or your husband, or...
...one who is willing to learn, not conform, not obey, not adjust himself to what is being said, not to accept, but to learn. And learning is not merely memorising, storing in the brain what you have heard and hold it as memory. Memory is very limited; you can expand memory, add to it through more knowledge and so on, which we talked about yesterday,...
...then they generally disappear, leaving little trace. There may be a few cases in the higher animals where there's some memory, but it's in man that the memory becomes very significant, remembering all these experiences and anticipating the future you get a very different sort of behaviour. For example, with an animal he might have a bad experience...
...Or do I know it verbally? Or do I know it as something which has happened - please listen to this - something which has happened in the past, which remains as a memory, and that memory says, these are the effects of it, and therefore the memory sees the effects of it, but the mind doesn't see the actual effect of it. I don't know if you see that?...
K: All right, sir. Are you saying our memory, our brain is so conditioned that it is always moving in a direction. Which means what?
K: We said that. Memory, thought, experience, knowledge is limited. Therefore give him any amount of space inwardly it is still limited.
Thinking cannot exist without memory. Right? If I have no if there is no memory there is no thought. Our brain, which is one with all the rest of humanity, not separate little brains, which is such rot - our brains are conditioned by knowledge - right? - by memory. And knowledge, memory are based on experience, both in the scientific world and the...
...on. Superficially you may smile but the agony of pain and loneliness goes on. And one asks whether there is an end to all that. If my son dies, he is gone. But the memory of it remains. The memory of playing together, talking together, walking together, holding hands, looking at the trees and the beauty of the earth. That son is gone but the...
...then begins the problem of separation. Why can't we be simple about this? Look, sir, you've hurt me, you have hit me. At the moment of that - you follow? - then the memory of that remains. Right? Then I say I must hurt you back. So the memory is the observer. Please, apply it to yourself, sir, look at it for yourself. When you have great joy you...
...also there is an art of learning. There is a difference between memory, acquiring, assimilating, gathering information as memory, and also there is learning: learning as though you were seeing something for the first time, seeing yourself for the first time in a mirror so that you see yourself exactly as you are. When one observes so acutely, with...
K: body. Arise, because through our education, where emphasis is made on the cultivation of the intellect as memory and reason, as a function apart from living.
K: No, sir, no, no. Memory is necessary - right? To write a letter, to read a book, to drive a car, linguistic communication, all that is necessary. But inwardly why should there be all this memory carried on: what you said to me, why you hurt me - you follow? All that stuff, throw it out.
...has conditioned the brain. The brain has got extraordinary capacity, as can be seen in what is happening in the technological world, extraordinary capacity, but that capacity has only been developed in one direction, that is, the technological world: as the doctor, surgeon, mathematician, the computer experts and so on. But the human problems,...
So in the world, the technological world, that memory is absolutely necessary, otherwise you can't write a letter, otherwise we can't speak English to each other, you may if you know French or Latin, and so on, that's a different matter. So memory at a certain level is absolutely necessary. And thinking, which has made this world into what it is:...
K: Technologically as well as psychologically. And the technological world is all right, leave it alone, we won't even discuss it - it would become too absurd.
...technology, by the girls, by the marvellous beauty of the land. And they are lost there. Some of them are in the IBM, some invent something new. They seem to flower in the technological world in America. At least some of them do. And of course, nobody goes to England anymore. Perhaps some of them go to Germany. And they apparently do...
...Look, sir, I just want to know, as the gentleman asked, how to look. What it is to look at trees, mountains, at the whole technological world, and also at the world within - I just want to look. And he wants to know, what does it mean to look. Right? And we are making this tremendously complicated. I can't look at you if I have any opinion about...
...and religion and so on. So that is a very serious question. Because there is a possibility of having a brain that is never damaged, then that brain has immense capacity, not in the technological world - it may have also - but much more in the world of the psyche, in the world of non-self. You know, the technological journey is always limited,...
Perhaps most of us do not know what is actually going on in the biological world, in the technological world, in the world of warfare, because most of us are concerned with our daily living, with our own particular problems, with our own fulfilments, and so we generally forget the vast advancement humanity is making in one direction, in the technological world, and totally, completely neglecting in the psychological world, in the world of human behaviour, in the world of consciousness.
...should be a light to oneself and not follow anybody. Except, naturally, in the technological world you have to follow, you have to accept, you have to do all kinds of things there, but in this world of the mind, or if you like to use the word, spirit, authority cripples, destroys that light. One must come upon it for oneself. Truth is something...
...not with beliefs, not with all kinds of superstitious nonsense but a life, our daily every day life. Is it possible to bring complete order without any compulsion, without any pressure, without these two principles acting: reward and punishment? For most of us these two principles are active: reward and punishment. And meditation is not a reward,...
K: Love is the product of reward and punishment. Oh, no, no sir, I did not I am afraid we don't understand English either, perhaps I may not understand English. Which is, I said our life is based on reward and punishment. Right? And that is the movement of thought. If I do this I will get that, which will be better. If I don't do this I may be...
K: Reward, I am frightened, I have been brought up that way, I know I am being programmed, yes, and you repeat that in different ways. So I say please, go on, I am rather bored with this - I am not. You know. So you tell me why you see something physically very, very, very clearly, and psychologically you say 'I don't know what you are talking...
...Yes. The animal instincts are based on reward and punishment - but it is only domesticated animals I believe, that have this reward and punishment conditioning. But generally, I believe, they have told me also, that wild animals don't have, regard, reward and punishment, they kill to eat, that's all, but it is not reward or punishment. Let's leave...
...says, 'I will help you to be detached, do this, this, this. Practise this, this, this'. And I want to be free from it and I accept what the silly man says because I see the importance of being free, and he promises me that if I do this I will have a reward. So I want to be free in order to have a reward. You understand? I am looking for a reward....
...chasing ideas, or chasing gurus, which is the same thing. You are acting. Life is action, as relationship is action. So what is action? Our action is based on reward and punishment, to put it very, very simply. I like life if I can get something out of it. And I will be punished if I don't act rightly, therefore I attempt to act rightly. So our...
...motive. Because the motive dictates the direction, and distorts the observation. Right? That's clear. Then you will say, how can I observe myself without a motive because I am full of motives - motives being reward and punishment essentially. Isn't it? So can one look at oneself freely without this tremendous tradition of man seeking reward and...
K: You can't bully me into it, you can't persuade me into it, you can't give me a reward to see it; you say, well, here it is, look at it. But if you refuse to look at it what am I to do?
We talked about pleasure and all the implications of pleasure, essentially based on reward and punishment. To avoid punishment - you understand? - not physical punishment, but the sense of being, losing, the sense of not having. The having is a reward and the losing is the pain. So we live our daily life on this principle: reward and punishment....
K: No. Will you drop yours? Will I drop my prejudice because I see the importance of having a good relationship. Will that make me do it? You see, in all that is implied a reward, a sense of if you don't do this you will be punished. That again is acting according to a desire of not wanting to be punished or wanting a reward.
K: Obviously. Because all our thinking is based on these two principles: reward and punishment. Our reward is enlightenment, God, Nirvana or whatever you like to call it, away from anxiety, guilt, all the pain of existence, you know, all the misery of it all.
...never observe. We observe things that are convenient, friendly. We observe if there is a reward or punishment. I don't know if you have not noticed our whole upbringing, education in our life, daily life is based on an extraordinary one principle - reward and punishment. Right? You meditate in order to be rewarded. You progress in order to be...
...accumulated. That is the ending. But thought says, 'That isn't good enough. What is the future? I have accumulated so much knowledge. I have been virtuous, struggled, what is the reward for all that?' So our mind, brain, is accustomed to reward and punishment. The reward is the future comfort, future security, a continuity of that which has been....
...It's so obvious. And that reward is away from the pain which he's had. So we are saying, this search for reward or the achievement of the reward, is a movement of time. And is there such a thing at all? We have invented it, it may be illusion. And from this illusion I can't go to reality - I mean to truth. So the mind must be totally, completely...
...Let's go into that a little bit. You see partly it is because I have always concerned in becoming that there is a reward at the end of it and I am always avoiding pain - punishment and reward. And in that cycle I am caught. That is probably one of the reasons why the mind keeps on trying to become something. And the other perhaps is deep-rooted...
...war, one of the causes of conflict between human beings, this fallacy that each one of us is entirely different, we are questioning that very thing. And if we are not, then we are the rest of mankind. You are the rest of mankind. With that goes tremendous responsibility which you may not like to have. We like to avoid...
...at all. Though religions, established religions, the Christian world, the Hindu world and perhaps there is slightly modified in Buddhism and Islam, this idea, this concept, this belief that you are an individual separate from all the rest of mankind and so each one is striving after his own security, his own happiness, his own salvation. But there...
...division between you and another, between you and your religion, between you and your god, between you and your ideologies. So is it possible to understand - not intellectually but deeply, that you are the rest of mankind. Whatever you do, good or bad, affects the rest of mankind, because you are the...
Is this consciousness common to all mankind, common in the sense, not degrading - is this consciousness yours or also the rest of mankind? Wherever one goes, one sees suffering, pain, anxiety, loneliness, insanity, fear, seeking security, caught in knowledge, the urge of desire, loneliness; it is common, it is the ground on which every human being...
...means to suppress it, rationalise, and so on. But if we realise that sorrow is sorrow of all mankind, all humanity - and we are the rest of humanity because we have fears, sorrow, pleasure, anxiety, like the rest of mankind - if we realise sorrow is not my sorrow, that becomes such a small affair. Which is, we are the whole of mankind, we are the...
...possess my god. I am trying to say this sense of isolating process is so strong in us that we can't train ourselves to be out of this. I say, see the fact that you are the rest of mankind, for god's sake see it.
So, if the human being who is the rest of mankind psychologically, if he changes completely, is he not adding, helping, increasing a totally different kind of mind to it? Are you following this? All right, suppose I change radically, belonging, recognising that I am the rest of mankind, and personally I mean it, it is not just intellectual...
