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AM67T2 - Where there is pleasure there is the shadow of pain
Amsterdam - 21 May 1967
Public Talk 2



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s second public talk in Amsterdam, 1967.
0:10 Krishnamurti: If we may, we’ll continue with what we were talking about yesterday.
0:28 Understanding is an odd phenomena. Understanding is totally different from the dictionary meaning. Understanding is an act of instantaneous perception, the immediate comprehension and, therefore, immediate action. It isn’t that one understands first and then acts, but it is, rather, that when there is total comprehension, which is understanding, there is total action, which is immediate. And this often happens to many of us, it isn’t a very odd phenomena.
1:38 When we give complete attention to something which we want to understand, and we do this when there is a great crisis in our lives, there is an instant comprehension, instant understanding, an instant decision, therefore action. And when the crisis is very great then the understanding and action are simultaneous.
2:16 It isn’t that one understands first and then acts later but the action, which is the doing, is synonymous with understanding.
2:41 And how does this understanding take place?
2:50 What is the structure, the nature of this understanding?
2:57 When do we actually understand?
3:04 You know what the dictionary meaning is, obviously, to comprehend, to investigate, to use one’s mind, and all that; it explains in the dictionary. But when we observe in ourselves the state of understanding, that is, when you say ‘I have understood’ – is it an intellectual comprehension, or an emotional reaction, or it has nothing to do with emotion or with the intellect?
3:53 When we say, when things are very, very serious in our lives, a deep crisis which demands immediate action, how does this action come in which there is no friction at all, in which there is no after-thought, thinking it over and coming to a decision and then acting?
4:29 You must have noticed obviously in one’s own life this peculiar phenomena of what is called ‘understanding’.
4:43 Understanding doesn’t come merely through a conclusion nor through a series of intellectual, introspective examination, nor through ideation, through ideas.
5:09 Please, this is important to understand because what we are going into presently, which is, we are going to discuss not only fear but all the things implied in relation to that.
5:23 So unless we understand this word, its structure, its nature, and what is action involved in this understanding, when we begin to enquire into this question of fear – which most of us have in varying degrees – it seems to me then, it becomes very important to understand the nature of understanding.
6:18 Life is action; the very living is a movement in action; there is no living without action. Living is relationship, not only with a particular individual but also with the whole social structure, both outwardly and inwardly, the psychological structure.
6:56 This whole movement of living, which is relationship, is a movement in action.
7:09 There is no state of mind in which there is no action, even when one totally isolates oneself from the whole phenomena of the world one ends up in an asylum, a mental hospital – but even there, there is action.
7:43 So life, living is a process of relationship, a movement in action.
7:52 So life is action, and to separate life as an idea, and then act from that idea, brings about friction. Please, this is important, if I may say so, to understand.
8:20 It isn’t very difficult, only one has to give a little bit of attention.
8:32 So we are enquiring, first, what is the state of mind that really understands?
8:45 Even the most complex technological problems, when it says, ‘I understood it’ – what is involved in the technological comprehension?
9:00 There, you have accumulated a great deal of information, accumulated knowledge, and relatively, as far as that knowledge goes, you say you have understood the technological problem.
9:20 So the technological problem is entirely different from the human problem and we are discussing human problems, not how to put the motor together or how to work the computers.
9:39 Though a great part of us is mechanical, we are trying to understand this phenomenon of ‘understanding’.
9:50 So, how does this understanding come about?
9:58 That is, when there is a crisis – and life is a crisis if one is tremendously alert, watchful, sensitive, every moment is a crisis.
10:20 A crisis isn’t something that happens occasionally; it’s happening all the time – crisis being the challenge which needs immediate response.
10:39 And when there is a crisis, what takes place?
10:47 One responds according to one’s background, according to one’s conditioning, tendency, inclination.
11:03 Please, just observe it in yourselves as the speaker is going along; don’t merely listen to the words but actually observe, through the words, your own minds, your own actual life of daily living.
11:29 So, when there is a challenge, a crisis, generally one responds according to one’s conditioning, temperament, inclination – which are all contained in the word ‘memory’, background.
11:52 And the background translates the challenge in terms of its own conditioning.
12:05 Isn’t it? If one is a nationalist, one responds according to that conditioning, to a challenge which demands a totally un-nationalistic action.
12:33 And therefore there is a response which is not equal to the challenge and hence conflict.
12:46 This is a very ordinary psychological phenomenon, problem, this actually takes place.
12:54 And in that state when the response to the challenge is not adequate, is not complete, then in that state there is no understanding.
13:12 So, when one says, ‘What is understanding, and how does this understanding come about?’, which is understanding which is not divided, separate from action.
13:29 When you are confronted with some danger – real, imminent, immediate danger – there is complete response. There is no thinking, or acting according to a formula.
13:46 There is immediate action. The understanding of the danger and action are simultaneous.
14:01 And, we are enquiring what is the state of the mind that understands.
14:11 We said understanding does not takes place when there is merely action according to a formula, according to an idea, because when there is action which is derived from an idea there is an interval of time and that action must correspond to the formula, the pattern, the idea.
14:52 And therefore there is a division, and therefore there is a conflict.
14:59 And when does this understanding which is immediate action take place?
15:07 We have said it is not intellectual, it’s not an emotional response, or the response of a background, then what is the state of the mind that says, ‘I understand’ and therefore acts immediately?
15:28 Because unless one understands this, what we are going to discuss presently will have very little meaning – because we are going to go into this question of fear – fear which is not only at the conscious level but also at the very deep-rooted layers of the total consciousness.
16:03 Surely, understanding takes place when the mind is completely quiet.
16:16 When there is no effort, when there is no interference of the ideas, when there is no response of a background.
16:33 Then you say ‘I have understood it’, and there is immediate action.
16:41 You can see this in one’s own life. If you want to understand your child – and I hope you do – then you observe that child without any sense of condemnation, without any sense of comparison with the other brother, other children.
17:13 You watch him at play, crying, being naughty; which is, you are merely watching, in which there is no evaluation whatsoever.
17:32 Therefore the mind is extraordinarily quiet in its very action of watching.
17:39 Which means the mind, being silent, is in a state of great affection.
17:49 I do not know if you have observed that love doesn’t chatter.
18:06 Love is not pleasure, or desire.
18:18 Love is silent; which is nothing to do with the interference of ideation.
18:32 So, understanding is only possible when the mind is completely quiet – not blank, not in a state of abstraction or in a state of identification, but a silence that’s completely active.
19:06 It’s only then that you say, ‘I have understood’ and it’s only then there is complete action, in that state of understanding; and hence no conflict.
19:23 If this is somewhat clear, not verbally, but actually, then we can begin to enquire whether it is at all possible to be completely free of fear, not only at the conscious level but at the deeper layers of consciousness, what’s called the unconscious.
20:21 I wonder if there is a state of the unconscious at all?
20:32 If there is unconsciousness at all? I know it is the fashion of the Freudians and the Jungians and the analysts, and so on and so on, who have established the unconscious, being the deeper layers of the conscious mind.
21:04 And we are questioning whether there is such a state at all.
21:11 I know most of you will say there is, but in examining we have to question everything, never accepting a thing.
21:26 Because we are dealing with a very complex problem, that is the human being who has lived a million years, many million years, in pain, in torture, in misery, in violence, in sorrow.
21:54 And a human being that enquires into the possibility of a total revolution, has to enquire, has to ask fundamental questions and find the right answers for them.
22:16 Which means one has to be very serious.
22:28 First, one has to understand what is action, and what is an action which is derived from an idea.
22:46 Most of us have an idea first, a formula, a pattern and from that act.
23:04 That is, the actual fact is that we are violent by nature.
23:14 Our heritage is from the animal and there is in us a great deal of violence.
23:26 That is a fact. And the non-fact is the idea that we should be non-violent, which is non-fact, and hence what takes place?
23:43 We are always trying to be non-violent when we are violent.
23:55 So the action is always derived from ‘what should be’ and not from ‘what is’.
24:07 You know this peculiar ideology of non-violence which is being used politically in America with regard to the White and Negro problem, and this idea has existed for many, many centuries, the idea of non-violence. The idea.
24:35 Which is, the ideal of not being violent, the ideal, ‘what should be’.
24:46 All ideologies, however noble, are idiotic because they have no validity at all. What has validity is ‘what is’.
25:02 The ‘what is’ is that we are human beings throughout the world and whatever their culture, their background is, they are violent. And when you have an idea of non-violence, which is an idea, and if you are acting according to that ideology, then you are evading the central issue, which is violence.
25:29 You can understand violence only when you give your total comprehension to violence, not when your mind is divided into non-violence.
25:40 Please follow this. So understanding is only possible when all ideologies have totally come to an end.
25:54 Then you can face the fact that you are violent, because then you give your total attention to it, it is not divided into ‘what it should be’.
26:09 So the ideologists are mischief-makers because they are dealing with unrealities.
26:25 You know, religions have done this, organized religions.
26:36 They have said you must love your neighbour – throughout the world, it isn’t just a Christian doctrine.
26:48 But society is so constructed that you destroy your neighbour.
26:58 The fact is you are destroying the neighbour by your greed, by your envy, by your acquisitiveness, by your desire for position, power and prestige.
27:13 Instead of tackling that central problem, we escape into some ideations.
27:26 So in our life ideas predominate, ideas being organized thought, which are conclusions, symbols, images.
27:47 They predominate, and according to those ideas we act, and hence there is, as I pointed out, a division between action and idea.
28:03 And why should I have ideas at all about action?
28:10 If you understand something immediately, you don’t want an idea.
28:18 So ideas or ideologies prevent you from giving your total attention to a problem, and therefore there is no understanding.
28:36 So, is there an action without the formula; that is, the formula, the idea first and then action? We are asking if there is an action without the idea, and there is when life is a crisis, when every movement of everyday action, every activity of our life is immediate.
29:18 So one finds out that there is an action which is not dependent on ideas at all.
29:30 Bearing that in mind, then we can begin to enquire into this question of fear, at the conscious as well as the unconscious level.
29:47 Because as we said yesterday, fear is in relation to something; it doesn’t exist by itself. It is not an isolated phenomena; in life there is no isolated phenomena at all, everything is interrelated.
30:16 And fear we know at the conscious level: losing a job, not having enough food to eat, not fulfilling, not achieving, not becoming a success, and so on, and so on, outwardly.
30:39 That we can fairly intelligently spot without too much analysis.
30:50 And we can deal with these outward phenomena of fears fairly intelligently if the mind is not totally self-centred in its activity.
31:13 And we are going to enquire into fear at the deeper levels of consciousness – because there it has its roots: the fear of death, the fear of not being, the fear of not having love, the fear of not fulfilling, the fear of many, many things that human beings have.
31:50 And before we begin to enquire into the unconscious, which we have so easily accepted, that there is an unconscious, we are questioning whether there is an unconscious at all.
32:12 Which is, what is consciousness? I hope this is not too serious, is it, all this talk? If it is, I’m sorry, because, you see, one has to be serious.
32:38 Only to the serious life is – not to the fanciful, not to the man who is seeking amusement, not to the man who lives in books.
32:56 It’s only the earnest who know what life is; and one has to be serious because the world demands it, not only outwardly but the world inwardly demands that man be serious – not according to a particular pattern of belief, or serious in a particular technological way, but serious totally. To only such a man there is life, and the depth and the fullness and the beauty of it.
33:37 And we are asking: what is the unconscious, if there is such a thing as the unconscious? And what is consciousness?
33:56 That is, when are you conscious?
34:04 Please, we are enquiring into this question of consciousness not according to any philosopher, not according to any analyst or psychologist, or any neurologist, brain experts.
34:26 We are enquiring simply as a human being, as we are. I want to know and you want to know what this extraordinary thing called consciousness is. How does it come into being? Whether there are divisions in it?
34:43 And whether there is a deeper level which is called ‘the unconscious’.
34:52 So, what is consciousness, and when are you aware that you are conscious?
35:12 When do you say, ‘I am conscious, I am aware, I am attentive’?
35:28 You become conscious only when there is pain and pleasure.
35:38 When the pain is intense you are fully conscious – pain being effort, conflict, drive, the drive of ambition, the drive of sex, violence and all the rest of it – you are conscious then.
36:07 Otherwise most of the time we are half asleep. We are drugged by religions, we are drugged by society, by the literature, by propaganda, by the radio, and all the rest of it.
36:29 And most of us are asleep, half asleep, and only we wake up when there is tremendous crisis – as pain, which is danger, or the demand of great pleasure.
36:52 Do please observe this in yourself, please don’t accept what the speaker is saying at all.
37:00 We are communicating with each other, we are taking a journey into ourselves, and therefore there is no guide there; we are walking together.
37:16 There one discovers only these two principles act and only when these two principles are in their full demand do we become conscious.
37:37 Otherwise we are more or less asleep. And in this sleepy condition there are several activities going on; we are not actually asleep.
37:57 So, we are only conscious, or we become conscious only when these two principles are in full movement, full demand, there is an air of these two.
38:17 So, what matters for us are these two things: pleasure, and the avoidance of pain, which is danger, and so on.
38:28 The avoidance of danger is fear.
38:38 What we want, fundamentally, is the continuance of pleasure, whether you go to church, whether you worship God, whether you read books, whether you have sex, whether you have any – that is the drive: pleasure.
38:58 And fear comes in when that pleasure is denied, which is the avoidance of pain, the avoidance of sudden danger.
39:18 Please, observe this in yourself, you will see it. We are not describing something extraordinary.
39:28 And this principle of pleasure and pain operates right through us because we are, as human beings, we are the result of the past.
39:52 You are the result of the past, of two thousand years of Christianity, with all the ideologies, with all the phenomena of propaganda which the Church has given to you for two thousand years, that you are this and that, a dozen things.
40:14 That is, you are the result of two thousand years of a particular propaganda.
40:27 That is the racial, accumulated inheritance. That’s the background. As in India they are the result of ten thousand years or more – it doesn’t matter. So we are – in this consciousness there is the residue of ten thousand years of propaganda, tradition, racial inheritance, memories, motives, pursuits – hidden and obvious.
41:08 The whole of that is consciousness, and that’s what we are.
41:19 We are the total content of man, whether he lives in the Far East, or here, or in America, we are the total content of man’s endeavour, man’s existence.
41:35 Therefore there is no collective and the individual. Do go into this, you will see the extraordinary thing that will take place!
41:46 We are the collective and we are the individual; there is no division.
41:55 And the one who gives emphasis to the collective or emphasis to the individual is unbalanced.
42:08 So, in this total consciousness, in which the principle of pleasure is always functioning, in that there is fear, and in that total consciousness, that total consciousness has been divided into the conscious as well as the unconscious.
42:47 And the unconscious, for most of our lives, plays part in the daily life – your motives, how you are brought up, whether you have been spanked when you were a young baby, and all that silly nonsense.
43:03 That goes on and on and on. Now, is there actually a division between the conscious and the unconscious?
43:22 Or it’s a total movement, all the time operating?
43:30 A total movement, not a divided movement. Right? You know, when do you see something totally?
44:06 Obviously when there is no division. When the mind itself is divided in itself as the intellect, the emotion, the bodily, neurological responses, and so on. You see something totally when the mind is not divided in itself.
44:33 You see the total man, humanity, the human being, when you are not national, when you are not a Christian, when you are not a Hindu.
44:47 You see man throughout the world struggling, misery, sorrow, pain, though he worships his own silly Gods invented by his own memories, fears, this is man throughout the world. And when do you see the totality of man, which is yourself?
45:10 Please follow this. When do you see totally yourself?
45:19 When there is no observer and the observed. That is, when there is no centre as ‘the me’, the observer, with all its background, with its conditioning which divides, then you see the total content of man, the total content of yourself.
45:51 So when there is no division as the conscious as well as the unconscious, there is no division as the West and the East, the peculiar phenomena of various cultures, when these things do not divide, then there is a total comprehension of man, which is of yourself.
46:26 It’s only then that you can look at yourself.
46:35 I don’t know if you have ever tried, as we were hinting yesterday, to look at a tree.
46:47 Holland is full of lovely trees, lovely meadows, and there is a marvellous light because here the sky is very low to the earth and the light is entirely different.
47:09 And if you have ever noticed it, if you have ever observed it, when you look at a tree, do you actually look at the tree or look at the image you have about that tree?
47:28 That is, when you look at your wife or your husband, do you look at him or her through the image?
47:36 Obviously you do; because that’s all we have – the images which have been put together by fear, by demand, by memories of pain and pleasure; and through these images we look at each other. And these images have relationship, and not you and I, we don’t have relationship. It’s only the images have relationship.
48:05 At least we try to establish relationship between the images, therefore all relationship becomes painful.
48:17 Do follow this up and you will see how extraordinarily simple it all becomes: whether you can live without an image – without an image about the tree, or the cloud, without the image about your wife or your husband.
48:43 Then when the images die, you are really then in direct relationship, and that relationship is quite a different fact from the relationship of images.
49:03 In that relationship without the image there is no conflict.
49:15 So, it is only possible to see the totality of this consciousness only when one can observe this whole process – not from a centre, as an observer, as a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, Buddhist, American or all the rest of that silly immature stuff – but actually look at it without any division.
49:46 Then you’ll find that there is no such thing as the unconscious at all.
49:57 Then you will see it as a total movement – and that is a marvellous understanding.
50:12 So, we were saying in this consciousness there is pleasure and pain and the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure at different levels, with different demands, brings about not only sorrow but also fear.
50:41 A mind that’s all the time seeking pleasure – pleasure in different forms, bodily, sensually, sexually, the pleasure of achievement, the pleasure of being, the pleasure of being a success, the pleasure of finding something secure and holding on to it.
51:14 So the mind that pursues pleasure, must inevitably invite its opposite, which is pain.
51:24 The two go together, they are not separate. Please follow this. They are not separate.
51:32 That is, they are only separate when we don’t see the totality of pleasure.
51:53 So, this process goes on in our life, the pursuit of pleasure under any circumstances – the pleasure to be completely secure – and that’s what we are seeking in all relationships.
52:21 And this demand to be secure, to be safe in relationship, because that relationship gives pleasure, inevitably must breed pain, because there is no such thing as security, psychologically.
52:49 We said there must be physical security of food, clothes and shelter but psychologically there is no security.
52:59 You know, that’s an extraordinary thing to understand. Which doesn’t mean life is insecure; psychologically we are seeking security and therefore inviting insecurity.
53:26 And realising there is insecurity only, and when it becomes more and more intense we end up in asylums, in psychotic states.
53:40 But when one realises this total phenomena, that where there is pleasure there is the shadow of pain, and that’s a total process, and when you see the thing totally – as we said when you see the tree totally without the image of the tree – then you will find that fear, psychological fear comes to an end.
54:27 And you cannot see totally when you are making effort.
54:38 You know, we are brought up from childhood to make effort, to struggle, to beat ourselves and others, struggle, struggle, struggle till we die – in school, in college, in life, in the office, at home, in the family – struggle, struggle.
55:06 And we accept struggle, conflict, confusion as the way of life.
55:22 And a mind that is in conflict is not a religious mind at all.
55:37 You know, when the priests throughout the world retire behind the monastery walls, thinking they have avoided conflict with the world, that avoidance is not the ending of conflict.
55:55 They are merely following blindly or intelligently the pattern set, and there they daren’t step out of that pattern because there’s insecurity.
56:12 Their security lies in following the pattern and therefore they are totally insecure.
56:36 And as the mind is everlastingly seeking security and therefore afraid of insecurity, and the seeking of security is the breeding of fear.
56:59 And can the mind live without any sense of security, without becoming hopeless, despair, cynical, bitter, and all the rest of it?
57:19 The mind can be totally free from all sense of security when the mind sees that security breeds insecurity and fear.
57:35 And you can only see it, the totality of anything, when the observer is the observed.
57:45 Therefore fear ceases only when the observer is the thing which he observes, as fear, and hence no conflict at all.
58:02 And a mind, such a mind, which is not tortured, not in conflict, that observes the totality of existence without any division, it’s only such a mind is a religious mind, and it’s only such a mind that can see what is truth – not the tortured mind that is disciplined, forced, struggling, beaten, cynical, bitter or does socially good works.
58:54 And without such a mind there can be no peace in the world.
59:11 Can we now, if we may, ask questions.
59:20 Even if you ask questions in Dutch, somebody will translate it and I will have to repeat that question which I have understood in English because again it's to be re-repeated into Dutch As we were saying yesterday, to ask a question is very important but far more important is to ask the right question.
59:57 It’s only the right question that receives the right answer, and when you do put the right question you already have the answer, you don’t have to ask. No, don’t, it isn’t a witticism, it isn’t a clever remark, it’s a fact, but we never ask fundamental, right questions because we don’t know how to ask. Or, if we do know, we are so frightened because by the very asking we may discover what is true, and truth may be the most deadly, dangerous thing.
1:00:48 So we never ask but are always waiting for someone else to answer.
1:00:59 So, if you wish, you can ask the right question – it doesn’t matter even if it’s a wrong question, it doesn’t matter, we can then make it into a right question!
1:01:41 Madame, if I may request, make the question very brief because I have to repeat that question. If you make it brief, I’ll understand it. I’ll answer it.
1:02:02 Just wait a minute.
1:02:22 Q: If you love your own child, your attention to your child is fairly complete, but if you are a teacher, you cannot give attention to all the children.
1:03:13 K: I have to repeat that question. You can watch your own child, the questioner says, with great affection, but if you are a teacher, you can’t do that.
1:03:34 So the problem is, how to watch when you are a good teacher, isn’t it?
1:03:46 Now, what is a teacher?
1:03:55 In school, you know more than the child and you are imparting, giving him information.
1:04:08 You want him to learn, you want him to acquire knowledge, you want him to know the ways of the world, not only technologically, outwardly, but also you want to help him to understand his inward structure. You are teaching him, so you are the instructor, the leader, the teacher helping him – if you are a teacher.
1:04:42 And you say that in that state it is not possible to love. Is that right?

Q: Not altogether.
1:05:13 The trouble is that you are limited in your activities because of the parents.
1:05:25 K: I understand. When you are a teacher, you are limited in your activity because of the parents, of the society. Right? You may love your child, and you may be a good teacher and love many children, but your activity, your helping the child is conditioned by the society and by the parents. That’s the question. What is one to do?
1:05:58 You can’t scrap the parents! That’s obvious. And you can’t break down the society. I wish one could, but you can’t. And so that goes on. So what is one to do?
1:06:15 Which means, what? You not only have to educate the parents but also educate the educator. Right?
1:06:28 You have to educate the parents and educate the teacher himself.
1:06:35 It isn’t just one-sided affair. Again, it’s the total phenomena of society in which we are living.
1:06:46 The parents throughout the world are only concerned that the child make a good living, a good marriage, be secure, fit into the established order, that he mustn’t revolt. That is what is happening in Russia – he mustn’t criticize, he must accept the social structure of Communism.
1:07:16 And he mustn’t criticize. And it happens the same way here in a different way.
1:07:25 Every parent wants his child to have a safe job, a good home, and goodbye.
1:07:35 In that state there is no affection at all. Love is something totally different.
1:07:46 If the parents loved, there would be no wars.
1:07:55 Do you mean to say that the Americans love their children who are being shot to pieces in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese being shot to pieces?
1:08:09 Do you think if they had loved, this would arise, this phenomena?
1:08:16 We educate wrongly our children, which means we are only concerned with giving them a technological efficiency.
1:08:29 We are not concerned with their inward structure and their inward being, because we do not want a revolution inwardly, because that means our whole social structure may be destroyed.
1:08:50 And we don’t want any kind of disturbance. Nobody wants – the Communists when they get into power, they don’t want disturbance, nor the particular Democratic Party when it gets into power, they don’t want disturbance.
1:09:07 As human beings we don’t want to be disturbed, and so we create a society in which there will be no disturbance.
1:09:21 But life is a movement in which there is disturbance as well as peace.
1:09:32 But when you understand the totality of this movement there is neither so-called peace between two wars or this fear of disturbance – there is quite a different movement altogether.
1:09:51 And that movement cannot be understood even by the most educated teacher if he himself is not part of that total movement of life.
1:10:46 I’m sorry, sir, I haven’t understood. Forgive me.
1:10:58 Would you mind stating briefly what you mean, sir?
1:11:23 Sorry! If somebody has understood or heard clearly, would you mind telling me?
1:11:32 I am sorry, sir, I don’t really get the meaning of what you are trying to explain or ask.
1:12:25 We are part of nature and in nature is time involved?
1:12:37 And after that, sir, what is it?
1:13:07 Would somebody who has understood it – sir, could you kindly explain it in Dutch and somebody who understands it clearly could express it. Not that you don’t express it clearly but I’m afraid I don’t understand it.
1:14:08 Is this becoming an entertainment?
1:14:16 What is the question?
1:14:24 All right, skip it and let’s ask some other question, shall we?
1:14:29 Q: When you get up in a state of fear and you bring yourself into that state of quiet mind which you talk about, that silence, can you then put your finger on the source of that fear?
1:15:12 K: The question is, when you get up in a bad mood, and that bad mood may be fear, and can you find out from where that fear arises? Is that it?
1:15:25 Q: First, you have to get into complete silence…
1:15:33 K: Madame, I didn’t say you should get into that state of complete silence. That becomes another ideology and therefore it becomes idiotic.
1:15:46 I explained very carefully, madame, I explained carefully the state of mind that understands.
1:15:58 You understand only, as you do often, when the mind is very quiet. That’s all.
1:16:10 When you are quiet – I understand – when you are quiet, then will you be able to trace the source of that fear.
1:16:20 That’s right. Do you see what you have asked? First, you think you have that state…
1:16:32 Q: I hope to get it.

K: If you hope, you will never get it.
1:16:40 It is possible only when it occurs, and you can’t go after it.
1:16:49 You are asking a question: when it happens, then will you be able to trace the source of fear.
1:16:57 Then you will have no need to trace the source of fear at all. Then there is no fear at all. I carefully explained it, the speaker went into it in detail, that a mind occupied with its own ideologies, that it should be silent and struggles to bring about that silence, quietness…
1:17:37 If it happens to be silent, then there is no fear, you don’t have to trace fear, then you will meet it. You see, you are speculating.
1:18:05 You know, when a man is hungry the mere description of food will not satisfy him.
1:18:14 He wants food. What most of us are doing, most of the people here, they are imagining they want food and are describing the food. They are not really hungry, hungry to find out, hungry to face this whole phenomena, demanding, not accepting, not obeying.
1:18:51 But unfortunately most of us are satisfied by mere definitions, by ideologies, and therefore we leave the hall with empty hands.
1:19:08 Yes, sir?

Q: You said ideals prevail action.
1:19:19 Can you explain that again?
1:19:35 K: I said, ideals prevent action. I didn’t say prevail, I said prevents.
1:19:44 Ideals prevent action. Ideals of any kind stop action. That is, when I am violent, if I have an ideology of non-violence, I am pursuing non-violence as an ideal but sowing the seeds of violence.
1:20:12 But if I had no ideology at all, then I would be confronted with the fact of violence.
1:20:21 Then I would deal with it directly, not through an idea.
1:20:28 And as long as you have an idea how to deal with violence then the idea becomes an escape from the fact and therefore we are postponing action.
1:20:41 That’s what we are doing. If each of us wanted peace in the world, we would have it.
1:20:48 We don’t. We are Dutchmen, we are Frenchmen, English, Germans, with our separate sovereign governments, with our separate religions, with our separate feelings, and all the rest of it, and hence we are creating war, psychologically.
1:21:14 And we don’t want peace, which means to live every day peacefully, without competition, without comparison, without condemnation.
1:21:34 Then we shall live a life that is peaceful and therefore there will be peace in the world.
1:21:43 But we don’t want peace. We want the peace of our pursuit, which means the peace which brings about destruction.