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Welcome to my blog, here you can find quotes and stories from master Jiddu Krishnamurti. For more information about his books can go to www.kfa.org

Jiddu Krishnamurti

(May 11, 1895–February 17, 1986), was born in Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh, India and discovered, in 1909, as a teenager by C.W. Leadbeater on the private beach at the Theosophical headquarters at Adyar in Chennai, India. He was subsequently raised under the tutelage of Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater within the world-wide organization of the Theosophical Society, who believed him to be a vehicle for a prophesied World Teacher. As a young man, he disavowed this destiny and also dissolved the Order established to support it, and eventually spent the rest of his life travelling the world as an individual speaker and educator on the workings of the human mind. At age 90 he addressed the United Nations on the subject of peace and awareness, and was awarded the 1984 UN Peace Medal. He gave his last talk in India a month before his death, in 1986, in Ojai, California.His supporters, working through charitable trusts, founded several independent schools across the world—in India, England and the United States—and transcribed many of his thousands of talks, publishing them as educational philosophical books.His official biographer, Mary Lutyens wrote a book about Krishnamurti's early life in India, England, and finally in Ojai, California, entitled Krishnamurti: The Years of Awakening. She was a close associate of his from the Order of the Star, and knew him from the early days until the end of his life. This book contains many insights into this period of his life, about which he rarely spoke. Lutyens wrote three additional volumes of biography: The Years of Fulfillment (1983), The Open Door (1988), and Krishnamurti and the Rajagopals (1996). Additionally, she published and abridgement of the first three volumes, The Life and Death of Krishnamurti (1991). Other published biographies of Krishnamurti include: Krishnamurti, A Biography (1986), by associate Pupul Jayakar and Star In the East: Krishnamurti, The Invention of a Messiah (2002), by Roland Vernon.BirthJiddu Krishnamurti came from a family of Telugu-speaking Brahmins. His father, Jiddu Narianiah, graduated from Madras University and then became an official in the Revenue Department of the British administration, rising by the end of his career to the position of rent collector and District Magistrate. His parents were second cousins, having a total of eleven children, only six of whom survived childhood. They were strict vegetarians, even shunning eggs, and throwing away any food that the "shadow of an Englishman crossed". (Lutyens, Awakening, p 1)He was born in a small town about 150 miles (250 km) north of Madras, India. His birthdate has been also stated as May 12, however Mary Lutyens, points out, that the Brahmin day is calculated from dawn and he was born at 12:30 AM, so therefore on May 11. It's only the Western world who would state this was May 12. "As an eighth child, who happened to be a boy, he was, in accordance with Hindu orthodoxy, called after Sri Krishna who had himself been an eighth child."YouthIn 1903, the family moved to Cudappah and Krishna contracted malaria, a disease with which he would suffer recurrent bouts over many years. In 1904, his eldest sister died, aged twenty. In his memoirs, he describes his mother as "to a certain extent psychic" and how she would frequently see and converse with her dead daughter. Krishna also states that he saw his dead sister on some occasions. In Dec 1905, his mother, Jiddu Sanjeevamma, died at Cudappah, when Krishnamurti was ten years old. Krishna says: "I may mention that I saw her [my mother] after she died" (Lutyens, p 5)"Narianiah, though an orthodox Brahmin, had been a member of the Theosophical Society since 1881 (Theosophy embraces all religions)." (Lutyens, p 7). This was while Helena Blavatsky was still its alive and living in India. Narianiah had retired at the end of 1907 and wrote to Annie Besant to recommend himself as a caretaker for the 260-acre Theosophical estate at Adyar. He had four boys and Annie thought they would be a disturbing influence and so turned him down. He continued his requests and finally was accepted as an assistant to the Recording Secretary of the Esoteric Section. His family which included, himself, his four sons, and a nephew moved there on Jan 23, 1909. It was a few months after this last move that Krishna was discovered by C.W. Leadbeater, who believed him to be the awaited vessel.Leadbeater's InfluenceThis discovery created a bit of a problem, as there was already a conflicting claim made for Hubert van Hook (b 1896), son of Dr Weller van Hook, a surgeon in Chicago, and the General Secretary of the Theosophical Society in the United States. Hubert was also chosen by Leadbeater and after she left her husband, his mother brought him to India for special training. After Krishna was found, Hubert was soon dropped. (Lutyens, p 12)Leadbeater had a history of being in the company of young boys, and gossip about that was vehemently denied by Annie Besant. The gossip erupted into a scandal in 1906 and led to Leadbeater's resignation from the Theosophical Society, however at the end of 1908 he was re-instated on a vote. (Lutyens, p 15)Hubert and Mrs Van Hook, his mother, also arrived at Adyar and stayed there for some time.Separation from fatherKrishna, or Krishnaji, as he was often known, and his younger brother Nitya were educated at the Theosophical compound and later taken to England to finish their education. His father at first grateful of the oportunities they got this way but also pushed into the background by the swirl of interest around Krishna, ended up in a lawsuit against the Society to try to protect his parental interests. As a result of this separation from his family and home, Krishnamurti and his brother Nitya became extremely close and in the following years they often travelled together.A philosophical awakeningLutyens states that there came a time when Krishnamurti fully believed that he was to become the World Teacher. The death of his brother Nitya on November 11, 1925 at age 27 from tuberculosis, however, shook his fundamental belief in the masters, the leaders of the Theosophical Society and the whole idea of the world teacher (Lord Maitreya) project. He had prayed for his brother's life to be spared and it was not. The experience of his brother's death shattered his remaining illusions. [more on the World Teacher Project]From The Song of Life (1931):My brother died; We were as two stars in a naked sky. He was like me, Burnt by the warm sun...He died; I wept in loneliness. Where'er I went, I heard his voice and his happy laughter. I looked for his face in every passer by and asked each if he had not met with my brother; But none could give me comfort. I worshipped, I prayed, But the gods were silent. I could weep no more; I could dream no more. I sought him in all things, in every clime. I heard the whispering of many trees Calling me to his abode. And then, in my search, I beheld Thee, O Lord of my heart; In Thee alone I saw the face of my brother. In Thee alone, O my eternal Love, Do I behold the faces Of all the living and all the dead.[Krishnamurti's early teachings]From 1925 onward things were to never be the same again....An old dream is dead and a new one is being born, as a flower that pushes through the solid earth. A new vision is coming into being and a greater consciousness is being unfolded. ...A new strength, born of suffering, is pulsating in the veins and a new sympathy and understanding is being born of past suffering---a greater desire to see others suffer less, and, if they must suffer, to see that they bear it nobly and come out of it without too many scars. I have wept, but I do not want others to weep; but if they do, I know what it means. (from The Herald of the Star, January 1926)In 1925, he was expected by Theosophists to enter Sydney, Australia walking on water, but this did not eventuate and he visited Australia the following year by ship.This new vision and consciousness reached a climax in 1929, when Krishnamurti rebuffed attempts by Leadbeater and Besant to continue with The Order of the Star, the section of the Theosophical Society devoted to the coming of the World Teacher. Krishnamurti subsequently disbanded the Order, whose head he was. On the opening day of the annual Star Camp at Ommen, Holland, August 2, 1929, in front of several thousand members, he gave a speech disbanding the Order, saying:You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of the truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to help him organize it."I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path.After disbanding the Order and drifting away from the Theosophical Society and its belief system, he spent the rest of his life holding dialogues and giving public talks on his observations on the nature of truth, sorrow and freedom. Krishnamurti did not accept followers, because he saw the relationship between a guru and a disciple as essentially exploitative. He asked people to explore together with him and "walk as two friends". He accepted gifts and support given to him (his main residence being on donated land in Ojai, California) and continued with lecture tours and the publication of books for more than half a century.Later years and "farewell talksIn his later years, J. Krishnamurti spoke at the United Nations in New York, on the 11th April 1985, where he was awarded the United Nations 1984 Peace medal.In November of 1985, he revisted the places he had grown up in India, holding a last set of farewell talks between then and January 1986. These last talks were on fundamental principles of belief and lessons. Krishnamurti commented that he did not wish to invite Death, but was not sure how long his body would last, he had already lost some 6 kg (13 lb) and once he could no longer talk or teach, he would have no further purpose. He said a formal farewell to all four points of the compass, the so-called 'elephant's turn', on the Adayar shore where he had long ago come to the attention of others. His final talk, on January 4, 1986, invited his co-participants to examine with him the nature of inquiry, the nature of life, and the nature of creation. It ended:"So we are inquiring what makes a bird. What is creation behind all this? Are you waiting for me to describe it, to go into it? ... Why? Why do you ask [what creation is]? Because I asked? No description can ever describe the origin. The origin is nameless; the origin is absolutely quiet, it's not whirring about making noise. Creation is something that is most holy, that's the most sacred thing in life, and if you have made a mess of your life, change it. Change it today, not tomorrow. If you are uncertain, find out why and be certain. If your thinking is not straight, think straight, logically. Unless all that is prepared, all that is settled, you can't enter into this world, into the world of creation.""It ends." (these two words are hardly audible, breathed rather than spoken)"This is the last talk. Do you want to sit together quietly for a while? All right, sirs, let us sit quietly for a while." (quotes in this section from "The Future Is Now: Last Talks in India")J. Krishnamurti passed away two and a half months later at the age of 90 from pancreatic cancer. His remains were cremated and scattered by friends and former associates in the three countries where he had spent most of his life, India, England and United States of America.InfluenceThroughout his long life, Krishnamurti exerted a great influence at the confluence of educated philosophical and spiritual thought. Because of his ideas and his era, Krishnamurti has come to be seen as an exemplar for modern spiritual teachers - particularly those who disavow formal rituals and dogma. His conception of truth as a pathless land, with the possibility of immediate self-realization, is mirrored in New Age teachings as diverse as those of est, Bruce Lee, and even the Dalai Lama.Krishnamurti was close friends with Aldous Huxley. Huxley wrote the foreword to The First and Last Freedom. Krishnamurti was also friends with, and influenced the works of, the mythologist Joseph Campbell and the artist Beatrice Wood.Criticism of KrishnamurtiKrishnamurti has been criticized, sometimes as to whether he practiced what he preached. A number of people who knew him through the years pointed out that Krishnamurti’s life expresses something of the Indian Brahmin lifestyle, for he was supported, even pampered, through the years by devoted followers and servants. The questions then arise as to whether his attitudes were conditioned by indulgence and privilege.In her 1991 book, Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti, Radha Rajagopal Sloss, the daughter of Krishnamurti's associates, Rosalind and Desikacharya Rajagopal, wrote of Krishnamurti's relationship with her parents including the secret affair between Krishnamurti and Rosalind which lasted for many years. The public revelation was received with surprise and consternation by many individuals in the Krishnamurti community, and was also dealt with in a rebuttal volume of biography by Mary Lutyens (Krishnamurti and the Rajagopals, 1996).Sloss's allegations were centered around the notion that the secret liasion indicated that Krishnamurti had lead a deceptive double life in that he was believed to be celibate by his public following. A later biographical volume by Roland Vernon (Star in the East: Krishnamurti, the Invention of a Messiah), questions the ultimate impact of the revelations when compared to Krishnamurti's body of work as a whole.Krishnamurti's once close relationship to the Rajagopals deteriorated to the point that Krishnamurti in his later years, took Rajagopal (head of Krishnamurti Writings, Inc.) to court in order to recover certain rights, manuscripts and personal corespondence being witheld by Rajagopal. The resulting litigation and cross complaints continued for many years, and were not resolved until after the death of Krishnamurti in 1986. Krishnamurti's biographer Mary Lutyens placed the preponderance of responsibility for the acrimony of the lawsuits and resulting damage to Krishnamurti's reputation on the personal animosity of the Rajagopals resulting from their loss of influence in Krishnamurti's life.

World Teacher

Question: What meaning and value do you attach to the term "World Teacher"? Is everyone who reaches liberation a "World Teacher"?
K: Do not trouble yourself with terms, labels and phrases. I look upon the "world teacher" as one who has realized truth. The ocean cannot be brought to the river, so the river must seek the ocean. Likewise, in order to attain this state of liberation, which may be likened to the sea, the individual must go towards that sea; it cannot come into him because it cannot be conditioned. To me the reality of the "world teacher" is not in the name, but in the fact of attaining this liberation, this enlightenment. To me the reality is that an indivual can attain to that freedom of self-consciousness, to that purification, to that liberation of the self which gives to him immense calmness, serenity, pliability, strength and affectionate detachment from all things.
The Early Jiddu Krishnamurti
His Teachings
The booklet At The Feet Of The Master (1919) by Alcyone (a penname of Jiddu Krishnamurti’s) is still widely read and appreciated in theosophical circles, although Krishnamurti's teachings in later years show a very different focus from the content of this early work. At the Feet of the Master contains a clear aim, and clear practical suggestions on how to behave and deal with thoughts and actions in daily life. Four qualities are mentioned for instance that are considered necessary on the path: discrimination, desirelessness, good conduct and love. This is the kind of advice many people crave for, in their personal lives. At later stages of his life, Krishnamurti started to avoid to give this kind of advice. Here and there he does give some, mostly to individuals, but one really has to search for it long and hard, because the essence of his teachings was that one should find out for oneself how things work.
Someone already familiar with his later speeches and books might actually experience a certain feeling of glee when taking a look at Krishnamurti's writings in the early days, for he does all the things we tend to do ourselves. In Towards Discipleship (1), a book which is the verbal (thought not checked) account of his conversations with a small group of students, he tells them: "There are always two sides: there is yourself and there is the Master. The Master must grow much bigger than yourself, so that the self is absorbed in the Master." (p. 43) A more familiar theme: "You must have the lamp and the match to light it. And you must have the desire to keep the light all the time brilliant." (p. 70) He tells them to strive for an ideal fully, not just partially, as for instance on page 99: "We have all decided in the very depths of our being that we must do only one thing in the world, that is, to become perfect disciples, the most wonderful beings in the world, to represent the Master. It is the daily repetition of that desire, that determination, that gets us anywhere, when it is combined with our continual effort." And, surprisingly, he says: "I feel, I am sure, that we have been to the Master often, all of us, in a way, and that He has given us His blessing." He is not satisfied however with the progress people are making. This is a theme that might be at the root of his later refusal to talk about these things. It reappears regularly during the rest of his life, but in these early days it is expressed more desperately somehow, more personally perhaps. One day he says for instance: "If they [the masters] cannot provide us with the inspiration, what is the use of trying to realize the Masters? Why is there not in each one of us a stronger desire to change more rapidly?" (p. 25)
From 1926 onwards, Krishnamurti starts expressing points of view in his published lectures, which sound more familiar and which correspond more closely to his later teachings. The wording is still theosophical-like, but the content is already very much in the vain of "I don't want to influence you". In the speech "The Pool of Wisdom" (1926 (2)) he says for instance: "I want from the very outset to say that I speak in all humility, though I may perhaps use strong phrases, that I do not want you to obey blindly or listen without thought, that I speak in the sincerity which I feel and that you must listen likewise if you would properly understand.[…] I would ask you to look at it, not emotionally, not sentimentally, not mesmerised by words, but with your minds, not to be carried away by mass hypnotism, not to act as one of a crowd, but to use your minds individually and think the problem out for yourselves. Where there are large crowds gathered, we find people all thinking alike; when their feelings are stirred, they are apt to be forced along a particular line laid down by the speaker who is for the moment on the platform. You will be doing a great injustice, a great injustice, to yourselves if you do that."
With hindsight, the moment when The Lord was said to have spoken through him at the end of 1925 seems to have been the turning point. This is the kind of mystical dimension to his life that later followers have tried to downplay, but Krishnamurti himself was convinced something special happened then. The "Process" had been going on for some years already. He had had his first initiation years before. But from that moment onwards, Krishnamurti threw away all crutches and started to urge people to find out for themselves. Actually, this is a continuation of one of the elements he already stressed in Towards Discipleship: the belief that we should be a lamp unto ourselves. This element grew so important to the world teacher eventually that ultimately all other aspects that had seemed important to him before were eclipsed.
I suppose this is the road each of us must travel: whether slow or fast (and Krishnamurti always urged fast), crutches must be abandoned, and insight must be found independently. We must be lamps unto ourselves. No compromise. Although we will have to accept that most of us will compromise in actual fact.

If Parents Love Their Children

If parents love their children, they will not be nationalistic, they will not identify themselves with any country; for the worship of the State brings on war, which kills or maims their sons. If parents love their children, they will discover what is right relationship to property; for the possessive instinct has given property an enormous and false significance which is destroying the world. If parents love their children, they will not belong to any organized religion; for dogma and belief divide people into conflicting groups, creating antagonism between man and man. If parents love their children, they will do away with envy and strife, and will set about altering fundamentally the structure of present-day society. As long as we want our children to be powerful, to have bigger and better positions, to become more and more successful, there is no love in our hearts; for the worship of success encourages conflict and misery. To love one’s children is to be in complete communion with them; it is to see that they have the kind of education that will help them to be sensitive, intelligent and integrated.

Understandig Causes Of Psychological Problems

As this is the last talk, perhaps it might be just as well if I made a brief summary of what we have been discussing for the last six weeks. Our life is beset with so many problems at different levels. We have not only the physical problems, but the much more subtle and more intricate psychological problems; and without solving the psychological problems or even trying to understand their subtleness, we seek merely to rearrange their effects. We try to reconcile the effects without really understanding the causes which produce these effects. Therefore, it seems to me much more important to understand the psychological conflicts and sorrows than merely to rearrange the pattern of effects; because, the mere reconciliation of effects cannot profoundly and ultimately solve the problems that are produced. If we merely rearrange the effects without understanding the psychological struggles that produce these effects, we will naturally produce further confusion, further antagonism, further conflict. So, in understanding the psychological factors that bring about our well-being, there may be a possibility - and I think there is a definite possibility - of creating a new culture and a new civilization; but it must begin with every one of us, because, after all, society is my relationship with you, and your relationship with another. Society is the outcome of our relationship, and without under standing relationship, which is action, there can be no cessation of conflict. So, relationship and its effect and cause must be thoroughly understood before I can transform or bring about a radical revolution in the ways of my life.
We are concerned, then, with the individual problem and our own psychological sufferings. In understanding the individual problem we will naturally bring about a different arrangement in its effects, but we should not begin with the effects; because, after all, we do not live by the effects alone but by the deeper causes. So, our problem is how to understand suffering and conflict in the individual. Mere verbal explanation of suffering, mere intellection, the perception of the causes of suffering, does not resolve suffering. That is an obvious fact; but as most of us are fed on words, and as words have become of such immense importance, we are easily satisfied by explanations. We read the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, or any other religious book which explains the cause of suffering, and we are satisfied; we take the explanation for the resolution of suffering. Words have become much more significant than the understanding of suffering itself; but the word is not the thing. Any amount of explanation, any amount of reasoning, will not feed a hungry man. What he wants is food, not the explanation of food, or the smell of food. He is hungry, and he must have the substance that nourishes. Most of us are satisfied by the explanation of the cause of suffering. Therefore, we don't take suffering as a thing to be radically resolved, a contradiction in ourselves that must be understood. How is one to understand suffering? One can understand suffering only when explanation subsides and all kinds of escapes are understood and put aside, that is, when one sees the actual in suffering. But you see, you don't want to understand suffering; you run away to the club, you read the newspaper, you do puja, go to the temple, plunge into politics or social service - anything rather than to face that which is. So, the cultivation of escapes has become much more important than the understanding of sorrow; and it requires a very intelligent mind, a mind that is very alert, to see that it is escaping and to put an end to escapes.
How, I have explained that conflict is not productive of creative thinking. To be creative, to produce what you will, the mind must be at peace, the heart full. If you want to write, to have great thoughts, to enquire into truth, conflict must cease; but in our civilization, escapes have become much more significant than the understanding of conflict. Modern things help us to escape, and to escape is to be utterly uncreative, it is self-projection. That does not solve our problem. What does solve our problem is to cease to escape and to live with suffering; because, after all, to understand something, one must give full attention to it, and distractions are mere escapes. To understand escapes, which is to put an end to them by seeing their falseness, and to perceive the whole significance of suffering, is a process of self-knowledge; and without self-knowledge, without knowing yourself fundamentally, not the mere superficial effects of your actions, but the whole total process of yourself, both the thinker and the thought, the actor and the action - without that self-knowledge, there is no basis for thought. You can repeat like a gramophone, but you will not be the music-maker, there will be no song in your heart.
So, through self-knowledge alone an suffering come to an end. After all, what does suffering mean - not as a verbal explanation, but as a fact? How does suffering arise, not merely as a scientific observation, but actually? In order to know, to find out, surely discontent is essential. One must be thoroughly discontented in order to find out. But when there is discontent - and most of us are discontented - we find an easy way of smothering that discontent. We become something - clerks, governors, ministers, or what you will - , anything to smother that flame, that spark, that dissatisfaction. Materially as well a psychologically we want to be sure, we want to be secure, we do not want to be disturbed. We want certainty, and where the mind is looking for certainty, security, there is no discontent; and most of us spend our lives doing this, we are all seeking security. Obviously there must be physical security, food, clothing and shelter; but that is denied when we seek psychological security - psychological security being self-expansion through physical necessities. A house in itself is not important except as shelter, but we use the house as a means of self-aggrandizement. That is why property becomes very important, and hence we create a social system which denies the right distribution of food, clothing and shelter.
So, it is discontent that drives, that creates, that urges us on; and if we can understand discontent without smothering it by the search for certainty, psychological security, if we can keep that discontent and its flame alive, then our problem is simple; because, that very discontent is creative, and from that we can move on. But the moment we smother discontent, put it away, resist it, hide it, then the mind is concerned merely with the reconciliation of effects, and discontent is no longer a means of going forward, plunging into something unknown. That is why it is so important for each one really to understand oneself. The study of oneself is not an end, but a beginning; because, there is no end in understanding oneself, it is a constant movement. If you observe yourself very carefully, you will see that there is no fixed moment when you can say, `I understand the whole totality of myself', it is like reading many volumes. The more one studies oneself, the more there is to be studied. Therefore, the movement of the self is timeless; and that self is not the high or the low, but the self which is from moment to moment, with its actions, its thoughts, its words. That self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, and in that self-knowledge one discovers a state of utter tranquillity in which the mind is not made still, but is still; and only when the mind is still, when it is not caught up in the thought process or occupied with its own creations - only then is there creativeness, is there reality. It is this creativeness, this perception of reality which will free us from our problem, not the search for an answer to the problem.
So, self-knowledge is the technique of meditation, and without self-knowledge there is no meditation. Self-knowledge is not something acquired from a book, or from a guru or teacher. Self-knowledge begins in understanding oneself from moment to moment, and that understanding requires one's full attention to be given to each thought at any particular moment without an end in view; because, there cannot be complete attention when there is condemnation or justification. When the mind condemns or justifies, it does so either to deny or to escape what it perceives. It is much easier to condemn a child than to understand a child. Similarly, when a thought arises, it is easier to put it away or discipline it than to give it your undivided attention and thereby discover its full significance. Therefore, the problem is to understand oneself, and one can approach it rightly only when there is no justification, condemnation or resistance - and then you will find that the problem unfolds like a map.
To discover what is eternal, the process of the mind must be understood. You cannot think about the unknown; you can think only about the known, and what is known is not the real. Reality cannot be thought about, meditated upon, pictured, or formulated; if it is, it is not real, because it is merely the projection of the mind. It is only when the thought process ceases, when the mind is literally and utterly still - and stillness can come about only through self-knowledge - , that reality is understood; and it is the real that resolves our problems, not our cunning distractions and formulated escapes.

Jiddu Krishnamurti About Himself

Friend, do not concern yourself with who I am; you will never know. I do not want you to accept anything I say. I do not want anything from any of you; I do not desire popularity; I do not want your flattery, your following. Because I am in love with life, I do not want anything.These questions are not of very great importance;what is of importance is the fact that you obey and allow your judgement to be perverted by authority.Your judgement, your mind, your affection, your life are being perverted by things which have no value, and herein lies sorrow

Ceremonies And Conversion

IN A LARGE enclosure, among many trees, was a church. People, brown and white, were going in. Inside there was more light than in the European churches, but the arrangements were the same. The ceremony was in progress and there was beauty. When it was over, very few of the brown talked to the white, or the white to the brown, and we all went our different ways.
On another continent there was a temple, and they were singing a Sanskrit chant; the Puja, a Hindu ceremony, was being performed. The congregation was of another cultural pattern. The tonality of Sanskrit words is very penetrating and powerful; it has a strange weight and depth.
You can be converted from one belief to another, from one dogma to another, but you cannot be converted to the understanding of reality. Belief is not reality. You can change your mind, your opinion, but truth or God is not a conviction: it is an experience not based on any belief or dogma, or on any previous experience. If you have an experience born of belief, your experience is the conditioned response of that belief. If you have an experience unexpectedly, spontaneously, and build further experience upon the first, then experience is merely a continuation of memory which responds to contact with the present. Memory is always dead, coming to life only in contact with the living present.
Conversion is change from one belief or dogma to another, from one ceremony to a more gratifying one, and it does not open the door to reality. On the contrary, gratification is a hindrance to reality. And yet that is what organized religions and religious groups are attempting to do: to convert you to a more reasonable or a less reasonable dogma, superstition or hope. They offer you a better cage. It may or may not be comfortable, depending on your temperament, but in any case it is a prison.
Religiously and politically, at different levels of culture, this conversion is going on all the time. Organizations, with their leaders, thrive on keeping ma in the ideological patterns they offer, whether religious or economic. In this process lies mutual exploitation. Truth is outside of all patterns, fears and hopes. If you would discover the supreme happiness of truth, you must break away from all ceremonies and ideological patterns.
The mind finds security and strength in religious and political pattern, and this is what gives stamina to the organizations. There are always the die-hards and the new recruits. These keep the organizations, with their investments and properties, going, and the power and prestige of the organizations attract those who worship success and worldly wisdom. When the mind finds the old patterns are no longer satisfying and life-giving, it becomes converted to other more comforting and strengthening beliefs and dogmas. So the mind is the product of environment re-creating and sustaining itself on sensations and identifications; and that is why the mind cling to codes of conducts patterns of thought, and so on. As long as the mind is the outcome of the past, it can never discover truth or allow truth to come into being. In holding to organizations it discards the search for truth.
Obviously, rituals offer to the participants an atmosphere in which they feel good. Both collective and individual rituals give a certain quietness to the mind; they offer a vital contrast to the everyday, humdrum life. There is a certain amount of beauty and orderliness in ceremonies, but fundamentally they are stimulants; and as with all stimulants, they soon dull the mind and heart. Rituals become habit; they become a necessity, and one cannot do without them. This necessity is considered a spiritual renewal, a gathering of strength to face life, a weekly or daily meditation, and so on; but if one looks more closely into this process, one sees that rituals are vain repetition which offer a marvellous and respectable escape from self-knowledge. Without self-knowledge, action has very little significance.
The repetition of chants, of words and phrases, puts the mind to sleep, though it is stimulating enough for the time being. In this sleepy state, experiences do occur, but they are self-projected. However gratifying, these experiences are illusory. The experiencing of reality does not come about through any repetition, through any practice. Truth is not an end, a result a goal; it cannot be invited, for it is not a thing of the mind.

Jiddu Krishnamurti's Questions

Jiddu Krishnamurti was an exquisite teacher. But for me personally his most interesting feature, the aspect he was best at and most inspiring in, were his questions.His questions go to the core of the difficulties of our lives and are both aimed at our intuitiveness and our insensitivity. So all I have done here is give some of those questions. Relatively many are on the subject of education of the young.The source is printed below the question in small type.
Do you know the world is mad, that all this is madness - this fighting, quarrelling, bullying, tearing at each other?
Is this right, is this what education is meant for, that you should be willingly or unwillingly fit into this mad structure called society?
Since you are young, fresh, innocent, can you look at all the beauty of the earth, have the quality of affection? And can you retain that?
So what are you going to do?
Do you know what love is? Do you know what it is to love people?
What is it that we call time? Can you divide this instant from the rest?
Can the cells in the brain bring about a mutation in themselves, not through drugs, not through various genetic processes, but can the brain cells themselves say, "This is all wrong - change"? ... Can the brain cells themselves, uninfluenced, undrugged, see what they have created and say, "this is wrong - mutate" ?
Do we see that logic has a limitation?
Where does self-interest begin and where does it end? Is there an end to self-interest? Or is all action born out of self-interest?
What is our relationship to a flower, to a bird that passes by? And what is our relationship with each other - not with the speaker but with each other - with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with the environment, with your neighbor, your community, the government, and so on? What is our relationship to all this? Or are we just isolated, self-concerned, intensely interested in our own way of life?
Do you know what it means to attend, to pay attention?
There are these three kinds of knowledge - scientific, collective, personal. Do they collectively make for intelligence?
Now what is knowledge? Is knowledge related to intelligence?
Are you becoming sensitive, alert?
Are you thinking objectively, clearly, with intelligence, understanding? Is there a harmony between knowledge and intelligence, a balance between the two?
Now what is the function of an educator? Is it merely to give you information, knowledge, or is it to bring about this intelligence in you? If I were a teacher here, do you know what I would do?
How is the mind, which is conditioned, to unravel itself, to get out of conditioning? How do you propose to get out of it?
First of all, do you know that you are conditioned? How do you know? Is it only because somebody has told you that you are conditioned that you know?
Do you know what virtue is - to be moral, to be good?
Do you ever walk by yourself? Or do you always go with others?
How can there be a complete development of the body, of the emotions, of the capacity to think deeply and widely, so that the whole being becomes astonishingly alive to everything about it, to every challenge, to every influence? And is that possible, in a world like this, a world where technological knowledge is all important, where making money, being an engineer or an electronic expert is assuming such importance? Is it possible to be sensitive?
But can you have technological knowledge, be able to do things, make a little money and still live in the world with intensity, with intensity, with clarity, with vision?
Now, is it possible to learn without authority? Do you know what learning is?
Is it possible to have knowledge and yet learn to be free from fear?
When do you learn most? Have you ever watched yourself learning?
How will you find out about fear? Are you afraid of public opinion, public opinion being what your friends think of you?
Suppose I am afraid of my neighbor, my wife, my god, my country - now what is that fear? Is it actual or is it merely in thought, in time?
So can I say, "I am going to look at that fear now, not ten days later"? Can I invite what they [society, my parents etc.] are going to say in the present and look at it and if they happen to be right, can I accept it? Why should I be frightened? And if they are wrong, I also accept that. Why should they not be wrong? Why should I be frightened?
Can that "me" die to a wish? Can I say "I do not want that wish, I do not want that pleasure"? Can I end it, die to it?
When you woke up this morning, did you look out of the window?
Have you ever thought what it means to be serious? Is it the stopping of laughter? To have a smile on your face, would that indicate that you are not serious? To want to look at a tree and see the beauty of a tree, would that be lack of seriousness? To want to know why people look that way, what they wear, why they talk that way, would that be lack of seriousness? Or would seriousness be always having a long face, always saying: "Am I doing the right thing, am I conforming to a pattern"?
Life is both pleasure and pain, is it not? ...
But why should we cling to pleasure and avoid pain? Why not merely live with both? ...
If you cling to pleasure what happens? You get attached, do you not?
Is it possible to live in this world without an image about yourself?
Can you watch your gestures, the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you behave, whether you are hard, cruel, rough, patient?
Can one behave the same inwardly, whatever the circumstances? Can one's behavior spring from within and not depend on what people think of you or how they look at you?
What is thinking and why have we made problems with it? Why do we have problems in our life? ...
What is a problem and what is the meaning of that word problem?
Why is it that all our life, from the moment we are born till we die, we have problems - about death, about fear, about a hundred things? Are you asking this question, or am I asking it for you?
Why do we think at all? Is there a different way of action? Is there a different manner of approaching life, of daily living, that doesn't require thinking at all? ... What is thinking? ... If you had no memory of yesterday, no memory at all of any kind, would you think? ... So what is memory?... Now, what is knowledge? How does it come about? ... So what is experience?
What are you apart from your name and profession, your vows, following some guru? What are you? Or I'll put it another way - are you your name, are you your profession, are you part of the community, part of the tradition? ... Actually, what are you? Is this the first time that this question has been put to you - what are you? Aren't you your fear, aren't you your name, aren't you your body? Aren't you what you think you are the image have built about yourself? Aren't you all that? Aren't you your anger? Or is the anger separate from you? Come on, sirs, aren't you your fears, your ambitions, your greed, your competition, your uncertainty, your confusion, your pain, your sorrow - aren't you all that? Aren't you the guru you follow? So, when you identify yourself with that, aren't you all that? Or are you something higher up - superself, superconsciousness? ...
Who has put all this together? Or is there only one structure? Who has divided all this? Who has said I'm a Hindu or I'm a Muslim? Is it merely propaganda? Who created the division between countries? Thought? Or is it desire, the longing to be identified, to be safe?
I am asking you most respectfully, who has created this division? Is it thought? Of course, but behind thought there is something else. Who is doing all this, apart from thought? What is the desire, what is the urge, what is the movement behind it? Security, isn't it? ...
Is there security at all? Is there any place where I can say, "I'm safe"? ...
Why do you want security? Is there security in your thinking? Is there security in your relationship - with your wife and with your children? Is there security in your job?

Lectures By J. Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born in Madanapalle, South India on May 12, 1895. For more than sixty years he traveled the world giving public talks and private interviews to millions of people of all ages and backgrounds, saying that only through a complete change in the hearts and minds of individuals can there come about a change in society and peace in the world. He died on February 17, 1986 in Ojai, California, at the age of ninety and his talks, dialogues, journals and letters have been preserved in seventy books and in hundreds of audio and video recordings.
The century in which Krishnamurti lived saw two world wars, continuous political, ethnic and religious violence, mass murder on an unprecedented scale and the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world. In addition, overpopulation, environmental degradation and the collapse of social institutions have bred fear and cynicism about people's ability to solve their ever-multiplying problems. In virtually every public talk he gave, Krishnamurti addressed this global crisis, calling on his listeners to give serious attention to the psychological structures that breed violence and sorrow in their lives.
Throughout his lifetime, Krishnamurti insisted that he wanted no followers. "To follow another is evil," he said, "it does not matter who it is." He created no organization of believers and disciples, authorized no one to become an interpreter of his work and asked only that, after his death, those who shared his concerns preserve for posterity an authentic record of his talks, dialogues and writings and make them widely available to the public. This book contains excerpts from Krishnamurti's published work.
Because of the very serious nature of the issues that Krishnamurti raised, he felt it was of primary importance that those interested in inquiring with him begin their investigation in the right spirit. He reminded his audiences that he was not trying to convince them of anything, nor was he an instructor. In a public talk in Varanasi, India, in 1981, he described his approach this way: "This is a conversation between two friends, two friends who have a certain affection for each other, a certain care for each other, who will not betray each other and have certain deep common interests. So they are conversing amicably, with a sense of deep communication with each other, sitting under a tree on a lovely cool morning with dew on the grass, talking over together the complexities of life."
Krishnamurti frequently met with smaller groups of people to discuss the problems of everyday living and to go deeply into the nature of existence. These groups were most often comprised of teachers, students and parents associated with the schools which Krishnamurti helped bring into being, and they often included scientists, psychologists and scholars. Krishnamurti set no criteria for those who could attend these small dialogues. The active participants at a single session sometimes ranged from internationally renowned figures to the housecleaners at the homes Krishnamurti visited.
Is it possible to be responsible for the whole of mankind, and therefore responsible for nature? That is, is it possible to answer adequately, totally to your children, to your neighbour, for all the movement that man has created in his endeavour to live rightly. And to feel that immense responsibility, not only intellectually, verbally, but very deeply, to be able to answer to the whole human struggle of pain, brutality, violence and despair? To respond totally to that, one must know what it means to love.
That word love has been so misused, so spoilt, so trodden upon, but we will have to use that word and give to it a totally different kind of meaning. To be able to answer to the whole there must be love. And to understand that quality, that compassion, that extraordinary sense of energy, which is not created by thought, we must understand suffering. When we use the word understand, it is not a verbal or intellectual communication of words, but the communication or communion that lies behind the word. We must understand and be able to go beyond suffering, otherwise we cannot possibly understand the responsibility for the whole, which is real love.
So, to understand this responsibility for the whole, and therefore that strange quality of love, one must go beyond suffering. What is suffering? Why do human beings suffer? This has been one of the great problems of life for millions of years. Apparently very few have gone beyond suffering, and they become either heroes or saviours, or some kind of neurotic leaders, and there they remain. But ordinary human beings like you and me never seem to go beyond it. We seem to be caught in it. And we are asking now whether it is possible for you to be really free of suffering.
Do you have a sense of beauty in your life, or is it mediocre, meaningless, an everlasting struggle from morning until night? What is beauty? It isn't a sensual question, nor a sexual question. It is a very serious question because without beauty in your heart, you cannot flower in goodness. Have you ever looked at a mountain or the blue sea without chattering, without making noise, really paying attention to the blue sea, the beauty of the water, the beauty of light on a sheet of water? When you see the extraordinary beauty of the earth, its rivers, lakes, mountains, what actually takes place? What takes place when you look at something which is actually marvellously beautiful: a statue, a poem, a lily in the pond, or a well-kept lawn? At that moment, the very majesty of a mountain makes you forget yourself. Have you ever been in that position?
If you have, you have seen that then you don’t exist, only that grandeur exists. But a few seconds later or a minute later, the whole cycle begins, the confusion, the chatter. So beauty is, where you are not. It is a tragedy if you don't see this. Truth is, where you are not. Beauty is, love is, where you are not. We are not capable of looking at this extraordinary thing called truth.
So what will make you change? Please ask yourself, burn with that question, because we have fallen into habit. Your house is burning, and apparently you do not pay attention. So, if you don’t change, society remains as it is. And clever people are coming along saying that society must change, we need a new structure — and the structure then becomes more important than man, as all revolutions have shown.
After considering all this, is there a learning, is there an awakening of intelligence, is there a sense of order in our lives? Or are we going back to the same routine? If you have that intelligence, that goodness, that sense of great love, then you will create a marvellous new society where we can all live happily. It's our earth not Indian earth, or English earth, Russian earth; it's our earth where we can live happily, intelligently, not at each others' throats. So, please give your heart and mind to find out why you don't change - even in little things. Please pay attention to your own life. You have extraordinary capacities. It is all waiting for you to open the door.

J. Krishnamurti Quotes

Insight is not an act of remembrance, the continuation of memory. Insight is like a flash of light. You see with absolute clarity, all the complications, the consequences, the intricacies. Then this very insight is action, complete. In that there are no regrets, no looking back, no sense of being weighed down, no discrimination. This is pure, clear insight - perception without any shadow of doubt. Most of us begin with certainty and as we grow older the certainty changes to uncertainty and we die with uncertainty. But if one begins with uncertainty, doubting, questioning, asking demanding, with real doubt about man's behaviour, about all the religious rituals and their images and their symbols, then out of that doubt comes the clarity of certainty.
"If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation."
" ...In our relationship with children and young people, we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can be quickly repaired, but with living beings who are impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have great understanding, the strength of patience and love... "
"Do not think about yourself, but be aware of the thought, emotion, or action that makes you think of yourself."
"Why do you want to read others´ books when there is the book of yourself?"
For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it means to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it.
"The mind has to be empty to see clearly."
"If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there's no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for "sport," for food, or for knowledge. Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty. You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places but you are a killer and so lose their friendship. You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband "
"Truth is more in the process than in the result."
"Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering."
"Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness, and conflict comes when you seek consolation, forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions."
.. Human beings, each one, right through the world, go through great agonies, the more sensitive, the more alert, the more observant, the greater the suffering, the anxiety, the extraordinary sense of insoluble problems. .. And the point is, is it possible for the mind to be totally free from suffering and yet not become indifferent, callous, irresponsible, but to have that passion, the intensity, the energy that freedom brings, freedom from suffering.
The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically there is nothing in the world, that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing. That is a scientific fact, as well as a psychological fact. Because, your leaders – religious and political – and your books – sacred and profane – have all failed, and you are still confused, in misery, in conflict. So, that is an absolute, undeniable fact.
From these prejudices there arises conflict, transient joys and suffering. But we are unconscious of this, unconscious that we are slaves to certain forms of tradition, to social and political environment, to false values.
To me, then, true criticism consists in trying to find out the intrinsic worth of the thing itself, and not in attributing a quality to that thing. You attribute a quality to an environment, to an experience, only when you want to derive something from it, when you want to gain or to have power or happiness. Now this destroys true criticism. Your desire is perverted through attributing values, and therefore you cannot see clearly. Instead of trying to see the flower in its original and entire beauty, you look at it through coloured glasses, and therefore you can never see it as it is.
You are Christians; find out what is true and false in Christianity - and you will then find out what is true. Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and cruelties, and then you will find out what is true. Why do you want philosophies?
So let us decide whether you want a shelter, a safety zone, which will no longer yield conflict, whether you want to escape from the present conflict to enter a condition in which there shall be no conflict; or whether you are unaware, unconscious of this conflict in which you exist. If you are unconscious of the conflict, that is, the battle that is taking place between that self and the environment, if you are unconscious of that battle, then why do you seek further remedies? Remain unconscious.

War

Q-How can we solve our present political chaos and the crisis in the world? Is there anything an individual can do to stop the impending war?Krishnamurti: War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday life, is it not?War is merely an outward expression of our inward state, an enlargement of our daily action. It is more spectacular, more bloody, more destructive, but it is the collective result of our individual activities. Therefore, you and I are responsible for war and what can we do to stop it? Obviously the ever-impending war cannot be stopped by you and me, because it is already in movement; it is already taking place, though at present chiefly on the psychological level. As it is already in movement, it cannot be stopped- the issues are too many, too great, and are already committed. But you and I, seeing that the house is on fire, can understand the causes of that fire, can go away from it and build in a new place with different materials that are not combustible, that will not produce other wars. That is all that we can do. You and I can see what creates wars, and if we are interested in stopping wars, then we can begin to transform ourselves, who are the causes of war.An American lady came to see me a couple of years ago, during the war. She said she had lost her son in Italy and that she had another son aged sixteen whom she wanted to save; so we talked the thing over. I suggested to her that to save her son she had to cease to be an American; she had to cease to be greedy, cease piling up wealth, seeking power, domination, and be morally simple – not merely simple in clothes, in outward things, but simple in her thoughts and feelings, in her relationships. She said,” That is too much. You are asking far too much. I cannot do it, because circumstances are too powerful for me to alter.” Therefore she was responsible for the destruction of her son.Circumstances can be controlled by us, because we have created the circumstances. Society is the product of relationship, society changes; merely to rely on legislation, on compulsion, for the transformation of outward society, while remaining inwardly corrupt, while continuing inwardly to seek power, position, domination, is to destroy the outward, however carefully and scientifically built. That which is inward is always overcoming the outward.What causes war – religious, political or economic? Obviously belief, either in nationalism, in an ideology, or in a particular dogma. If we had no belief but goodwill, love and consideration between us, then there would be no wars. But we are fed on beliefs, ideas and dogmas and therefore we breed discontent. The present crisis is of an exceptional nature and we as human beings must either pursue the path of constant conflict and continuous wars, which are the result of our everyday action, or else see the causes of war and turn our back upon them.Obviously what causes war is the desire for power, position, prestige, money; also the disease called nationalism, the worship of a flag; and the disease of organized religion, the worship of a dogma. All these are the causes of war; if you as an individual belong to any of the organized religions, if you are greedy for power, if you are envious, you are bound to produce a society which will result in destruction. So again it depends upon you and not on the leaders – not on so-called statesmen and all the rest of them. It depends upon you and me but we do not seem to realize that. If once we really felt the responsibility of our own actions, how quickly we could bring to an end all these wars, this appalling misery! But you see, we are indifferent. We have three meals a day, we have our jobs, we have our bank account, big or little, and we say, “For God’s sake, don’t disturb us, leave us alone”. The higher up we are, the more we want security, permanency, tranquility, the more we want to be left alone, to maintain things fixed as they are; but they cannot be maintained as they are, because there is nothing to maintain. Everything is disintegrating. We do not want to face these things, we do not want to face the fact that you and I are responsible for wars. You and I may talk about peace, have conferences, sit round a table and discuss, but inwardly, psychologically, we want power, position, we are bound by beliefs, by dogmas, for which we are willing to die and destroy each other. Do you think such men, you and I, can have peace in the world? To have peace, we must be peaceful; to live peacefully means not to create antagonism. Peace is not an ideal. To me, an ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is - which we will go into presently, in another talk. [not on this website] But to have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin, not to live an ideal life, but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them. As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the physiological security we need – food, clothing and shelter – is destroyed. We are seeking psychological security, which does not exist; and we seek it, if we can, through power, through position, through titles, names – all of which is destroying physical security. This is an obvious fact, if you look at it.To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me. Economic revolution without this inward revolution is meaningless, for hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states – greed, envy, ill-will and possessiveness. To put an end to sorrow, to hunger, to war, there must be a psychological revolution and few of us are willing to face that. We will discuss peace, plan legislation, create new leagues, the United Nations and so on and on; but we will not win peace because we will not give up our position, our authority, our money, our properties, our stupid lives. To rely on others is utterly futile; others cannot bring us peace. No leader is going to give us peace, no government, no army, no country. What will bring peace is inward transformation which will lead to outward action. Inward transformation is not isolation, is not a withdrawal from outward action. On the contrary, there can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself. Some of you will nod your heads and say, “ I agree”, and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be stopped only when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else. If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself; peace will come only when you yourself are peaceful, when you yourself are at peace with your neighbour.
Questioner: Why do men fight?Krisnamurti: why do young boys fight? You sometimes fight with your brother, or other boys here, don't you? Why? You fight over a toy. Perhaps another boy has taken your ball, or your book and therefore you fight. Grown-up people fight for exactly the same reason, only their toys are position, wealth and power. If you want power and I also want power, we fight, and that is why nations go to war. It is as simple as that, only philosophers, politicians, and the so-called religious people complicate it. You know, it is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience-to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears- and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.

Fear And Insecurity

KRISHNAMURTI: ...What is this fear? Why are you, why is anybody, afraid? Is it based on not wanting to be hurt? Or is it that one wants complete security, and not being able to find it - this sense of complete safety, of protection, physically, emotionally, psychologically - one becomes terribly anxious about living? - so there is this sense of uncertainty. Now why is there fear? You have been hurt, haven't you? And out of that hurt you do all kinds of things. We resist a great deal, we don't want to be disturbed; out of that feeling of hurt we cling to something which we hope will protect us. Therefore we become aggressive towards anything that attacks what we are holding on to for protection. As a human being sitting here, wanting to resolve this problem of fear what is it that you are frightened of? Is it physical fear - fear of physical pain? Or a psychological fear of danger, of uncertainty, of being hurt again? Or of not being able to find total, complete security? Is it fear of being dominated, and yet we are dominated? So what is it that you are frightened of? Are you aware of your fear?
Questioner: I fear the unknown.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now listen to that question. Why should one be afraid of the unknown, when you know nothing about it? Please enquire into it.
Questioner: I have an image of what has happened to me and there is the fear that it might happen again.
KRISHNAMURTI: But is it the fear of letting go of the known? Or fear of the unknown? You understand? Fear of letting go the things I have gathered - my property, my wife, my name, my books, my furniture, my capacities - to let go the things that I know, that I have experienced: is that the fear? Or is it fear of the future, the unknown?
Questioner: I find that my fear generally is of what will happen not of what is happening.
KRISHNAMURTI: Shall we go into that?
Questioner: It isn't that one is frightened of what might happen tomorrow, but of losing own's own recognitions, one's satisfactions, today.
KRISHNAMURTI: Look, the gentleman asked a question which was "I am not frightened of yesterday or of today, but I am frightened of what might happen tomorrow, in the future." Tomorrow may be twenty-four hours away or a year, but I am frightened of that.
Questioner: But the future is the result of all the expectations one has because of the past.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am frightened of the future, how shall I deal with this? Don't explain it to me, I want to find out what to do with this fear. I am frightened what might happen: I might get ill, I might lose a job, a dozen things might happen to me, I may go insane, lose all the things which I have stored up. Now please enquire.
Questioner: I think perhaps is it not the future that we fear but rather the uncertainty of the future, new events which cannot be predicted. If the future were predictable there would be no fear, we should know what would happen. Fear is a sort of defence of the body against something completely new, against the whole uncertainty of what life is.
KRISHNAMURTI: "I am afraid of the future because the future is uncertain." I don't know how to deal with this uncertainty, with my whole being, therefore I am afraid. Fear is an indication of this uncertainty of the future, is that it?
Questioner: That's only a part of it. There are other fears too.
KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, we are taking one fear; we will discuss various forms of fears presently. The gentleman says, "I am not really frightened of anything except the future. The future is so uncertain, I don't know how to meet it. I haven't the capacity to understand not only the present, but also the future." So it is this sense of uncertainty that indicates fear. Whatever the explanation be, the fact is that I am frightened of tomorrow. Now how shall I deal with it? How shall I be free of that fear?
Questioner (1): Looking at one's response to the uncertainty of the future it seems it might be inadequate.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am frightened of tomorrow, of what might happen. The whole future is uncertain, there might be an atomic war, there might be an ice age - I am frightened of all that. How am I to deal with it? Help me, don't theorise about it. don't give me explanations!
Questioner (2): We are frighted because we are pretending, playing games, and we are afraid, of being exposed.
KRISHNAMURTI: But you are not helping me! Aren't you frightened of the future, Sir? - stick to this.
Questioner: Yes, perhaps.
KRISHNAMURTI: Now, how are you going to deal with it?
Questioner: By living in the present.
KRISHNAMURTI: I don't know what that means.
Questioner (1): For me it has been helpful to realise what I have been afraid of in the past, and why I have been afraid, and to submit this to examination. This helps me to face the future.
Questioner (2): First of all we have got to understand what we mean by the future.
KRISHNAMURTI: Thats what I am trying to find out.
Questioner: The first thing we have to do is not to be afraid of being frightened.
KRISHNAMURTI: Oh, that is a cliche, that doesn't help me!
Questioner: One has to realise you can't help me out: fear is always there. One has to understand fear is going to be a life companion.
KRISHNAMURTI: Sir, you have not fed me. You have given me a lot of words, ashes. I am still frightened of tomorrow.
Questioner (1): That is just the problem. You can't help anyone.
Questioner (2): Can't you wait for tomorrow and let things come, see what happens?
Questioner (3): I know the necessity for physical security, but I want to understand my need for psychological security.
KRISHNAMURTI: He means that, Sir. He probably has some security physically, but psychologically he is frightened of tomorrow. He has got a little bank account, a little house and all the rest of it, he is not frightened about that; he is frightened of what might happen in the future.
Questioner (1): Is it possible to live with your uncertainty?
Questioner (2): If we knew what was going to happen, we should not be afraid.
Questioner (3): Sitting here I am not afraid, but thinking about tomorrow I get frightened.
KRISHNAMURTI: Thought does it.
Questioner: When we are frightened now, it is a fact. If we accept the fact and if we live totally in the present, we forget the future.
KRISHNAMURTI: Right, let's look. I want to find out what causes this fear of tomorrow. What is tomorrow? Why does tomorrow exist at all? You understand? I am going to answer it.
I want to find out how thought arises, how fear arises. I think about tomorrow, and the past has given me a sense of security; though there may have been a great many uncertainties in the past, on the whole I have survived. Up to now I am fairly safe, but tomorrow is very uncertain and I am frightened. So I am going to find out what causes this fear of tomorrow. The response of my whole being to that insecurity of tomorrow, being uncertain, is fear. So I want to find out why fear arises when I think about the future. Which means the future may be all right, but my thinking about it makes the uncertainty. I don't know the future, it may be marvellous or it may be deadly, it may be terrible, or most beautiful, I don't know; thought is not certain about the future. So thought, which has always been seeking certainty, is suddenly faced with uncertainty. So why does thought create fear? You follow?
Questioner: Because thought divides and creates distance between past and future, and fear enters into this space.
KRISHNAMURTI: The questioner says, "Thought separates the future from the past and divides what might be. This separation of 'what is' and 'what might be' is part of this fear." If I did not think about tomorrow, there would be no fear, I would not know the future, I would not even care. Because I think about the future- the future which I don't know, the future which is so uncertain-my whole response, psychologically as well as physically, is to say "My God, what is going to happen?" So thought breeds fear.
Questioner: Is thought the only psychological function that is able to bring about fear? There are some other irrational functions like feeling; that might bring about fear as well.
KRISHNAMURTI: I am taking that one particular thing, there are other factors too.
Questioner (1): There is fear of the unknown, fear of tomorrow; it is based on attachment to a belief, or some formula. The fear can be understood if I see why I am attached to a particular convention or belief.
Questioner (2): What about fear of existence?
KRISHNAMURTI: All these are involved, are they not? The attachment to a belief, to a formula, to a certain ideological concept which I have built for myself, all these are part of this fear. Now I want to find out by seeing what is fear. I said to you earlier that I have done something in the past of which I am ashamed, or of which I am frightened: I don't want it to recur. Thinking about what I have done in the past breeds fear, doesn't it? Thinking about what might happen in the future also breeds fear. So I see- I may be wrong- that thought is responsible for the fear, both the past and of the future. And thought is also responsible for fear by projecting an ideal, a belief, and holding on to that belief and wanting certainty out of that belief; it is all the operation of thought, isn't it? So I have to understand why thought thinks about the future, why thought goes back to some event which has brought fear. Why does thought do this?
Questioner: Thought can help itself by imagining all the possibilities of terrible things that could happen in the future, so it can make some plans to prevent these things happening. It tries to protect itself by imagining.
KRISHNAMURTI: Thought also helps you to protect yourself, through insurance, thought building a house, avoiding wars; thought cultivates fear and also protects it, doesn't it? We are talking about thought creating fear, not how it protects. I am asking why thought breeds this fear.
Questioner: Fear come from the discriminating aspect of thought. Thought is fear. This gives thought a kind of energy.
KRISHNAMURTI: Thought is energy.
Questioner: This gives thought a different kind of energy.
KRISHNAMURTI: Go into it, it is both.
Questioner: It is accumulating memories. Thought seems to resist its termination-fear and pleasure seem to be somewhat similar- by the state where thought doesn't exist eludes me.
KRISHNAMURTI: So I force myself to think about things that are happening and not about things that don't happen?
Questioner: Think about things that are happening.
KRISHNAMURTI: But my mind is always watching what might happen. Doesn't this happen to you? Let's be quite simple and honest. We want to think about the things that are happening but thought also keeps an eye on what might happen. And when I am not thinking about this, that pops up!
Questioner: Sir, the feeling "I am" has nothing to do with the pleasure and nothing to do with fear and thought. I think only "I am". I don't have fear. This feeling "I am" has nothing at all to do with thought.
KRISHNAMURTI: When you say "I am"- what do you mean by those words?
Questioner: The feeling to be present, to be sitting here, and there is no fear in it.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is not the problem, Sir.
Questioner: First of all we must find out if certainty exists, then there won't be fear.
KRISHNAMURTI: How shall we find out?
Questioner: I see the whole process of thought as a trap.
KRISHNAMURTI: Go into it; each person pursues something else. Let me state what I feel the problem is. I am afraid of tomorrow because tomorrow is uncertain. So far I have been fairly certain in my life; though there have been occasions on which I have been frightened, somehow I have got over them. But the sense of fear of tomorrow, which is so uncertain- atomic war, the casual wars that might explode into all kinds of horrors, losing money- I am in a state of convulsion about the future. Now what am I to do? I want to be free, if I can, of the fear both of the past and the future, of the fears deep down and the superficial fears.
Don't give me explanations, "Do this", "Don't do that." I want to find out what fear is; whether it is fear of darkness, of uncertainty, whether it is fear of attachment, holding on to something, or to some person or idea. I want to find out what is the root of it, how to escape from it, now how to smother is. I want to see the structure of fear. If I can understand that, then something else can take place. So I am going to investigate what fear is. Let me go on a little while, may I? Fear exists for me because I am thinking about tomorrow; despite you assurance that tomorrow is perfectly all right, I still feel fear. Now why am I thinking about tomorrow? Is it because the past has been so good, has given me a great deal of knowledge and this has become my security, and I have no knowledge about the future? If I could understand the future and reduce that to my knowledge, then I would not be frightened....So follow this: I want certainty of tomorrow, and certainty can only exist where there is knowledge, when I say, "I know". Can I know anything except the past? The moment I say "I know" it is already the past. When I say "I know my wife", I know her in terms of the past. In the past there is certainty and in the future there is uncertainty. So I want to draw the future into the past so that I will be completely safe. I see fear arises where thought is operating; if I did not think about tomorrow there would be no fear.
Questioner: Fera seems to be something instinctive. I feel that fear is an energy, that some force is there.
KRISHNAMURTI: You see, each of us has an opinion. Each of us is quite sure we know how to deal with fear. We explain it, we give cause, we think we understand it, and yet at the end of it we are frightened. I want to go behind all that and find out why fear exists at all. Is it the result of thought thinking about the future? Because the future is very uncertain about thought is based on memory, accumulated as knowledge, as centuries of experience, and out of that come thought. Thought says, "Knowledge is my security". And now you are telling me to be free of tomorrow, which is uncertain, if I know what tomorrow is, there will be no fear. What I am cracing for is certainty of knowledge. I know my past, I know what I did ten years or two days ago. I can analyse it, understand it, live with it; but I don't know tomorrow and therefore not knowing it makes me afraid. Not knowing means: not having knowledge of. Now can thought have knowledge about something which does not know? So there is fear. Thought trying to find out the future, and not knowing what its content is, it is afraid. Why is thought thinking of tomorrow, about which it knows nothing? It wants certainty, but there may be no certainty. Please answer my question, not your question.
Questioner: The living system needs to think about tomorrow, this is a fundamental rule of life: if needs some sort of prediction.
KRISHNAMURTI: I said that, Sir.
Questioner: We must follow this rule of life. There are psychological disturbances due to imagination which project awful fears, as you say, but it is impossible to prevent human beings from thinking in a logical fashion.
KRISHNAMURTI: If I may say so, we did say thought is necessary to protect physical survival. That is part of our life, that is what we are doing all the time.
Questioner: I don't agree, I think thought is not necessary for survival. Animals have the instinct for survival without the fear which is our trouble.
KRISHNAMURTI: Madam, we are mixing up two things. Please we tried to explain this at the beginning.
Questioner: She's right, human thought replaces instinct.
KRISHNAMURTI: I agree with you. One must know that tomorrow the house will be there. Physical survival and planning for the future are essential, aren't they? Without that we can't survive.
Questioner (1): When you see it all clearly, fear has no time.
Questioner (2): Thought thinks of living in the present, and must also think of tomorrow.
KRISHNAMURTI: The weather is hot, I must plan to buy some trousers that will be cool. That means planning for tomorrow. I have to go to India in the winter. I shall plan, which is the future. We are not denying that, on the contrary. What we are talking about is fear of uncertainty.
Questioner: We have no confidence in ourselves.
KRISHNAMURTI: That I really don't understand. Who is "yourself" to have confidence in? Are you such a marvellous human being to have confidence in yourself?
Questioner: Why not?
KRISHNAMURTI: What is yourself?
Questioner: Humanity.
KRISHNAMURTI:What is humanity? That good and the bad, the wars- we have been through all that. We are concerned with fear. We must use thought to survive. But to survive, thought has divided the world as my country, your country, my government, your government, my God, your God, my guru, your guru: thought has created this. Thought it wants to plan to survive, thought has divided the world which destroys itself, of which I am apart of. So I have to understand the nature of thought, where it is necessary, and where it is diabolical, where it is destructive and where it creates fear- that is my problem.
Questioner: To be safe.
KRISHNAMURTI: You see, thought must think about tomorrow in order to be safe, that is clear. And also you see that thought, thinking about tomorrow, creates fear. Now why?
Questioner (1): Because we want to continue.
Questioner (2): Because we are tied to pleasure.
KRISHNAMURTI: We haven't solved this problem because we refuse to leave our particular little opinions, judgements and conclusions. Let's abolish them and think anew. For me it is very simple. Thought must create fear because thought cannout ever find security in timel tomorrow may exist at all, pyschologically. And because of that uncertainty, thought projects what it wants for tomorrow: safety, what I have acquired, what I have achieved, what I possess, all that. And that too is completely uncertain. So can thought be quiet about the future? That's my point. Can thought be quiet, which means:function where it is necessary for physical protection; and therefore no divisions, no separate Gods, no warmongers. Let thought be quiet so that time as tomorrow does not exist. Therefore I have to understand what is to live now. I don't understand what it is to live now, nor have I understod what it is to live in the past, therefore I want to live in the future, which I don't know, as I don't know what the present is. So I am asking, can I live completely, wholly, today? I can only do that when I have understood the whole machinery and the functioning of thought, and in the very understanding of the reality of thought there is silence. And when the mind is quiet there is no future, no time.

Freedom And Fear

For most of us, freedom is an idea and not an actuality. When we talk about freedom, we want to be free outwardly, to do what we like, to travel, to be free to express ourselves in different ways, free to think what we like. The outward expression of freedom seems to be extraordinarily important, especially in countries where there is tyranny, dictatorship; and in those countries where outward freedom is possible one seeks more and more pleasure, more and more possessions.
If we are to inquire deeply into what freedom implies, to be inwardly, completely and totally free - which then expresses itself outwardly in society, in relationship - then we must ask, it seems to me, whether the human mind, heavily conditioned as it is, can ever be free at all. Must it always live and function within the frontiers of its own conditioning, so that there is no possibility of freedom at all? One sees that the mind, verbally understanding that there is no freedom here on this earth, inwardly or outwardly, then begins to invent freedom in another world, a future liberation, heaven and so on.
Put aside all theoretical, ideological, concepts of freedom so that we can inquire whether our minds, yours and mine, can ever be actually free, free from dependence, free from fear, anxiety, and free from the innumerable problems, both the conscious as well as those at the deeper layers of the unconscious. Can there be complete psychological freedom, so that the human mind can come upon something which is not of time, which is not put together by thought, yet which is not an escape from the actual realities of daily existence? Unless the human mind is inwardly, psychologically, totally free it is not possible to see what is true, to see if there is a reality not invented by fear, not shaped by the society or the culture in which we live, and which is not an escape from the daily monotony, with its boredom, loneliness, despair and anxiety. To find out if there is actually such freedom one must be aware of one's own conditioning, of the problems, of the monotonous shallowness, emptiness, insufficiency of one's daily life, and above all one must be aware of fear. One must be aware of oneself neither introspectively nor analytically, but actually be aware of oneself as one is and see if it is at all possible to be entirely free of all those issues that seem to clog the mind.
To explore, as we are going to do, there must be freedom, not at the end, but right at the beginning. Unless one is free one cannot explore, investigate or examine. To look deeply there needs to be, not only freedom, but the discipline that is necessary to observe; freedom and discipline go together ( not that one must be disciplined in order to be free). We are using the word `discipline' not in the accepted, traditional sense, which is to conform, imitate, suppress, follow a set pattern; but rather as the root meaning of that word, which is `to learn.' Learning and freedom go together, freedom bringing its own discipline; not a discipline imposed by the mind in order to achieve a certain result. These two things are essential: freedom and the act of learning. One cannot learn about oneself unless one is free, free so that one can observe, not according to any pattern, formula or concept, but actually observe oneself as one is. That observation, that perception, that seeing, brings about its own discipline and learning; in that there is no conforming, imitation, suppression or control whatsoever - and in that there is great beauty.
Our minds are conditioned - that is an obvious fact - conditioned by a particular culture or society, influenced by various impressions, by the strains and stresses of relation- ships, by economic, climatic, educational factors, by religious conformity and so on. Our minds are trained to accept fear and to escape, if we can, from that fear, never being able to resolve, totally and completely, the whole nature and structure of fear. So our first question is: can the mind, so heavily burdened, resolve completely, not only its conditioning, but also its fears? Because it is fear that makes us accept conditioning.
Do not merely hear a lot of words and ideas - which are really of no value at all - but through the act of listening, observing your own states of mind, both verbally and nonverbally, simply inquire whether the mind can ever be free - not accepting fear, not escaping, not saying, `I must develop courage, resistance,' but actually being fully aware of the fear in which one is trapped. Unless one is free from this quality of fear one cannot see very clearly, deeply; and obviously, when there is fear there is no love.
So, can the mind actually ever be free of fear? That seems to me to be - for any person who is at all serious - one of the most primary and essential questions which must be asked and which must be resolved. There are physical fears and psychological fears. The physical fears of pain and the psychological fears as memory of having had pain in the past, and the idea of the repetition of that pain in the future; also, the fears of old age, death, the fears of physical insecurity, the fears of the uncertainty of tomorrow, the fears of not being able to be a great success, not being able to achieve - of not being somebody in this rather ugly world; the fears of destruction, the fears of loneliness, not being able to love or be loved, and so on; the conscious fears as well as the unconscious fears. Can the mind be free, totally, of all this? If the mind says it cannot, then it has made itself incapable, it has distorted itself and is incapable of perception, of understanding; incapable of being completely silent, quiet; it is like a mind in the dark, seeking light and never finding it, and therefore inventing a `light' of words, concepts, theories. How is a mind which is so heavily burdened with fear, with all its conditioning, ever to be free of it? Or must we accept fear as an inevitable thing of life? - and most of us do accept it, put up with it. What shall we do? How shall I, the human being, you as the human being, be rid of this fear? - not be rid of a particular fear, but of the total fear, the whole nature and structure of fear?
What is fear? (Don't accept, if I may suggest, what the speaker is saying; the speaker has no authority whatsoever, he is not a teacher, he is not a guru; because if he is a teacher then you are the follower and if you are the follower you destroy yourself as well as the teacher.) We are trying to find out what is the truth of this question of fear so completely that the mind is never afraid, therefore free of all dependence on another, inwardly, psychologically. The beauty of freedom is that you do not leave a mark. The eagle in its flight does not leave a mark; the scientist does. Inquiring into this question of freedom there must be, not only the scientific observation, but also the flight of the eagle that does not leave a mark at all; both are required; there must be both the verbal explanation and the nonverbal perception - for the description is never the actuality that is described; the explanation is obviously never the thing that is explained; the word is never the thing.
If all this is very clear then we can proceed; we can find out for ourselves - not through the speaker, not through his words, not through his ideas or thoughts - whether the mind can be completely free from fear.
The first part is not an introduction; if you have not heard it clearly and understood it, you cannot go on to the next.
To inquire there must be freedom to look; there must be freedom from prejudice, from conclusions, concepts, ideals, prejudices, so that you can observe actually for yourself what
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fear at all? That is: you can observe very, very closely, intimately, what fear is only when the `observer' is the `observed.' We are going to go into that. So what is fear? How does it come about? The obvious physical fears can be understood, like the physical dangers, to which there is instant response; they are fairly easy to understand; we need not go into them too much. But we are talking about psychological fears; how do these psychological fears arise? What is their origin? - that is the issue. There is the fear of something that happened yesterday; the fear of something that might happen later on today or tomorrow. There is the fear of what we have known, and there is the fear of the unknown, which is tomorrow. One can see for oneself very clearly that fear arises through the structure of thought - through thinking about that which happened yesterday of which one is afraid, or through thinking about the future - right? Thought breeds fear - doesn't it? Please let us be quite sure; do not accept what the speaker is saying; be absolutely sure for yourself, as to whether thought is the origin of fear. Thinking about the pain, the psychological pain that one had some time ago and not wanting it repeated, not wanting to have that thing recalled, thinking about all this breeds fear. Can we go on from there? Unless we see this very clearly we will not be able to go any further. Thought, thinking about an incident, an experience, a state, in which there has been a disturbance, danger, grief or pain, brings about fear. And thought, having established a certain security, psychologically, does not want that security to be disturbed; any disturbance is a danger and therefore there is fear.
Thought is responsible for fear; also, thought is responsible for pleasure. One has had a happy experience; thought thinks about it and wants it perpetuated; when that is not possible there is a resistance, anger, despair and fear. So thought is responsible for fear as well as pleasure - isn't it? This is not a verbal conclusion; this is not a formula for avoiding fear. That is, where there is pleasure there is pain and fear perpetuated by thought; pleasure goes with pain, the two are indivisible, and thought is responsible for both. If there were no tomorrow, no next moment, about which to think in terms of either fear or pleasure, then neither would exist. Shall we go on from there? Is it an actuality, not as an idea, but a thing that you yourself have discovered and which is therefore real, so you can say, `I've found out that thought breeds both pleasure and fear'? You have had sexual enjoyment, pleasure; later you think about it in the imagery, the pictures of thinking, and the very thinking about it gives strength to that pleasure which is now in the imagery of thought, and when that is thwarted there is pain, anxiety, fear, jealousy, annoyance, anger, brutality. And we are not saying that you must not have pleasure.
Bliss is not pleasure; ecstasy is not brought about by thought; it is an entirely different thing. You can come upon bliss or ecstasy only when you understand the nature of thought - which breeds both pleasure and fear.
So the question arises: can one stop thought? If thought breeds fear and pleasure - for where there is pleasure there must be pain, which is fairly obvious - then one asks oneself: can thought come to an end? - which does not mean the ending of the perception of beauty, the enjoyment of beauty. It is like seeing the beauty of a cloud or a tree and enjoying it totally, completely, fully; but when thought seeks to have that same experience tomorrow, that same delight that it had yesterday seeing that cloud, that tree, that flower, the face of that beautiful person, then it invites disappointment, pain, fear and pleasure.
So can thought come to an end? Or is that a wrong question altogether? It is a wrong question because we want to experience an ecstasy, a bliss, which is not pleasure. By ending thought we hope we shall come upon something which is immense, which is not the product of pleasure and fear. What place has thought in life? - not, how is thought to be ended? What is the relationship of thought to action and to inaction? What is the relationship of thought to action where action is necessary? Why, when there is complete enjoyment of beauty, does thought come into existence at all? - for if it did not then it would not be carried over to tomorrow. I want to find out - when there is complete enjoyment of the beauty of a mountain, of a beautiful face, a sheet of water - why thought should come there and give a twist to it and say, `I must have that pleasure again tomorrow.' I have to find out what the relationship of thought is in action; and to find out if thought need interfere when there is no need of thought at all. I see a beautiful tree, without a single leaf, against the sky, it is extraordinarily beautiful and that is enough - finished. Why should thought come in and say, `I must have that same delight tomorrow'? And I also see that thought must operate in action. Skill in action is also skill in thought. So, what is the actual relationship between thought and action? As it is, our action is based on concepts, on ideas. I have an idea or concept of what should be done and what is done is approximation to that concept, idea, to that ideal. So there is a division between action and the concept, the ideal, the `should be; in this division there is conflict. Any division, psychological division, must breed conflict. I am asking myself, 'What is the relationship of thought in action?" If there is division between the action and the idea then action is incomplete. Is there an action in which thought sees something instantly and acts immediately so that there is not an idea, an ideology to be acted on separately? Is there an action in which the very seeing is the action - in which the very thinking is the action? I see that thought breeds fear and pleasure; I see that where there is pleasure there is pain and therefore resistance to pain. I see that very clearly; the seeing of it is the immediate action; in the seeing of it is involved thought, logic and thinking very clearly; yet the seeing of it is instantaneous and the action is instantaneous - therefore there is freedom from it.
Are we communicating with each other? Go slowly, it is quite difficult. Please do not say, so easily, `yes.' If you say 'yes,' then when you leave the hall, you must be free of fear. Your saying `yes' is merely an assertion that you have understood verbally, intellectually - which is nothing at all. You and I are here this morning investigating the question of fear and when you leave the hall there must be complete freedom from it. That means you are a free human being, a different human being, totally transformed - not tomorrow, but now; you see very clearly that thought breeds fear and pleasure; you see that all our values are based on fear and pleasure - moral, ethical, social, religious, spiritual. If you perceive the truth of it - and to see the truth of it you have to be extraordinarily aware, logically, healthily, sanely observing every movement of thought - then that very perception is total action and therefore when you leave you are completely out of it - otherwise you will say, `How am I to be free of fear, tomorrow?,
Thought must operate in action. When you have to go to your house you must think; or to catch a bus, train, go to the office, thought then operates efficiently, objectively, nonpersonally, nonemotionally; that thought is vital. But when thought carries on that experience that you have had, carries it on through memory into the future, then such action is incomplete, therefore there is a form of resistance and so on.
Then we can go on to the next question. Let us put it this way: what is the origin of thought, and who is the thinker? One can see that thought is the response of knowledge, experience, as accumulated memory, the background from which there is a response of thought to any challenge; if you are asked where you live there is instant response. Memory, experience, knowledge is the background, is that from which thought comes. So thought is never new; thought is always old; thought can never be free, because it is tied to the past and therefore it can never see anything new. When I understand that, very clearly, the mind becomes quiet. Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life.
Seeing all this, seeing that freedom is necessary to examine - and to examine very clearly there must be the discipline of learning and not of suppression and imitation - seeing how the mind is conditioned by society, by the past, seeing that all thought springing from the brain is old and therefore incapable of understanding anything new, then the mind becomes completely quiet - not controlled, not shaped to be quiet. There is no system or method - it does not matter whether it is Zen from japan, or a system from India - to make the mind quiet; that is the most stupid thing for the mind to do: to discipline itself to be quiet. Now seeing all that - actually seeing it, not as something theoretical - then there is an action from that perception; that very perception is the action of liberation from fear. So, on the occasion of any fear arising, there is immediate perception and the ending of it.
What is love? For most of us it is pleasure and hence fear; that is what we call love. When there is the understanding of fear and pleasure, then what is love? And `who' is going to answer this question? - the speaker, the priest, the book? Is some outside agency going to tell us we are doing marvellously well, carry on? Or, is it that having examined, observed, seen non-analytically, the whole structure and nature of pleasure, fear, pain, we find that the `observer,' the `thinker' is part of thought. if there is no thinking there is no 'thinker,' the two are inseparable; the thinker is the thought. There is a beauty and subtlety in seeing that. And where then is the mind that started to inquire into this question of fear? - you understand? What is the state of the mind now that it has gone through all this? Is it the same as it was before it came to this state. It has seen this thing very intimately, it has seen the nature of this thing called thought, fear and pleasure, it has seen all that; what is its actual state now? Obviously nobody can answer that except yourself; if you have actually gone into it, you will see that it has become completely transformed.
Questioner: ( Inaudible)
Krishnamurti: It is one of the easiest things to ask a question. Probably some of us have been thinking what our question will be while the speaker was going on. We are more concerned with our question than with listening. One has to ask questions of oneself, not only here but everywhere. To ask the `right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem. One cannot look at the problem very clearly if one is concerned with the answer, with the solution. Most of us are so eager to resolve the problem without looking into it - and to look into one has to have energy, intensity, a passion; not indolence and laziness as most of us have - we would rather somebody else solved it. There is nobody who is going to solve any of our problems, either political, religious or psychological. One has to have a great deal of vitality and passion, intensity, to look at and to observe the problem and then, as you observe, the answer is there very clearly.
This does not mean that you must not ask questions; on the contrary you must ask questions; you must doubt everything everybody has said, including the speaker.
Questioner: Is there a danger of introspection in looking into personal problems?
Krishnamurti: Why shouldn't there be danger? To cross the street there is a danger. Do you mean to say, we must not look because it is dangerous to look? I remember once - if I may repeat an incident - a very rich man came to see us and he said, `I am very, very serious and concerned with what you are talking about and I want to resolve all my `so and so' you know the nonsense that people talk about. I said, 'All right, Sir, let us go into it,' and we talked. He came several times, and after the second week he came to me and he said, `I am having dreadful dreams, frightening dreams, I seem to see everything around me disappearing, all kinds of things go; and then he said, `Probably this is the result of my inquiry into myself and I see the danger of it; after that he did not come any more.
We all want to be safe; we all want to be secure in our petty little world, the world of `well established order' which is disorder, the world of our particular relationships, which we do not want to be disturbed - the relationship between wife and husband in which they hold together tight, in which there is misery, distrust, fear, in which there is danger, jealousy, anger, domination.
There is a way of looking into ourselves without fear, without danger; it is to look without any condemnation, without any justification, just to look, not to interpret, not to judge, not to evaluate. To do that the mind must be eager to learn in its observation of what actually is. What is the danger in `what is'? Human beings are violent; that is actually `what is; and the danger they have brought about in this world is the result of this violence, it is the outcome of fear. What is there dangerous about observing it and trying to completely eradicate that fear? - that we may bring about a different society, different values? There is a great beauty in observation, in seeing things as they are, psychologically, inwardly; which does not mean that one accepts things as they are; which does not mean that one rejects or wants to do something about `what is; the very perception of `what is' brings about its own mutation. But one must know the art of `looking' and the art of `looking' is never the introspective art, or the analytical art, but just observing without any choice. Questioner: Is there not spontaneous fear?
Krishnamurti: Would you call that fear? When you know fire burns, when you see a precipice, is it fear to jump away from it? When you see a wild animal, a snake, to withdraw, is that fear? - or is it intelligence? That intelligence may be the result of conditioning, because you have been conditioned to the dangers of a precipice, for if you were not you could fall and that would be the end. Your intelligence tells you to be careful; is that intelligence fear? But is it intelligence that operates when we divide ourselves into nationalities, into religious groups? - when we make this division between you and me, we and they, is that intelligence? That which is in operation in such division, which brings about danger, which divides people, which brings war, is that intelligence operating or is it fear? There it is fear, not intelligence. In other words we have fragmented ourselves; part of us acts, where necessary, intelligently, as in avoiding a precipice, or a bus going by; but we are not intelligent enough to see the dangers of nationalism, the dangers of division between people. So one part of us - a very small part of us - is intelligent, the rest of us is not. Where there is fragmentation there must be conflict, there must be misery; the very essence of conflict is the division, the contradiction in us. That contradiction is not to be integrated. it is one of our peculiar idiosyncrasies that we must integrate ourselves. I do not know what it really means. Who is it that is going to integrate the two divided, opposed, natures? For is not the integrator himself part of that division? But when one sees the totality of it, when one has the perception of it, without any choice - there is no division.
Questioner: Is there any difference between correct thought and correct action?
Krishnamurti: When you use that word `correct', between thought and action, then that `correct' action is `incorrect' action - isn't it? When you use that word `correct' you have already an idea of what is correct. When you have an idea of what is `correct' it is `incorrect,' because that `correct' is based on your prejudice, on your conditioning, on your fear, on your culture, on your society, on your own particular idiosyncrasies, fears, religious sanctions and so on. You have the norm, the pattern: that very pattern is in itself incorrect, is immoral. The social morality is immoral. Do you agree to that? If you do, then you have rejected social morality, which means greed, envy, ambition, nationality, the worship of class, all the rest of it. But have you, when you say `yes'? Social morality is immoral - do you really mean it? - or is it just a lot of words? Sir, to be really moral, virtuous, is one of the most extraordinary things in life; and that morality has nothing whatsoever to do with social, environmental behaviour. One must be free, to be really virtuous, and you are not free if you follow the social morality of greed, envy, competition, worship of success - you know all those things that are put forward by the church and by society as being moral.
Questioner: Do we have to wait for this to happen or is there some discipline we can use?
Krishnamurti: Must we have a discipline to realize that the very seeing is action? Must we?
Questioner: Would you talk about the quiet mind - is it the result of discipline? Or is it not?
Krishnamurti: Sir, look: a soldier on the parade ground, he is very quiet, with a straight back, holding the rifle very exactly; he is drilled, drilled day after day, day after day; any freedom is destroyed for him. He is very quiet; but is that quietness? Or when a child is absorbed in a toy, is that quietness? - remove the toy and the toy becomes what he is. So, will discipline (do understand this, Sir, once and for all, it is so simple) will discipline bring about quietness? It may bring about dullness, a state of stagnancy, but does it bring about quietness in the sense, intensely active, yet quiet?
Questioner: Sir, what do you want us people here in this world to do?
Krishnamurti: Very simple, Sir: I don't want anything. That's first. Second: live, live in this world. This world is so marvellously beautiful. It is our world, our earth to live upon, but we do not live, we are narrow, we are separate, we are anxious, we are frightened human beings, and therefore we do not live, we have no relationship, we are isolated, despairing human beings. We do not know what it means to live in that ecstatic, blissful sense. I say one can live that way only when one knows how to be free from all the stupidities of one's life. To be free from them is only possible in becoming aware of one's relationship, not only with human beings, but with ideas, with nature, with everything. In that relationship one discovers what one is, one's fear, anxiety, despair, loneliness, one's utter lack of love. One is full of theories, words, knowledge of what other people have said; one knows nothing about oneself, and therefore one does not know how to live.
Questioner: How do you explain different levels of consciousness in terms of the human brain? The brain seems to be a physical affair, the mind does not seem to be a physical affair. In addition, the mind seems to have a conscious part and an unconscious part. How can we see with any clarity in all these different ideas?
Krishnamurti: What is the difference between the mind and the brain; is that it, Sir? The actual physical brain, which is the result of the past, which is the outcome of evolution, of many thousand yesterdays, with all its memories and knowledge and experience, is not that brain part of the total mind? - the mind in which there is a conscious level and the unconscious level. The physical as well as the nonphysical, the psychological, isn't all that one whole? - is it not we who have divided it as the conscious and unconscious, the brain and the not-brain? Can we not look at the whole thing as a totality, nonfragmented?
Is the unconscious so very different from the conscious? Or is it not part of the totality, but we have divided it? From that arises the question: how is the conscious mind to be aware of the unconscious? Can the positive which is the operative - the thing that is working all day - can that observe the unconscious?
I do not know if we have time to go into this. Are you not tired? Please, sirs, do not reduce this to an entertainment, as one can, sitting in a nice warm room, listening to some voice. We are dealing with very serious things, and if you have worked, as one should have, then you must be tired. The brain cannot take more than a certain amount, and to go into this question of the unconscious and the conscious requires a very sharp, clear mind to observe. I doubt very much if at the end of an hour and a half you are capable of it. So may we, if you agree, take up this question later?