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AM67T4 - Can thought stop?
Amsterdam - 28 May 1967
Public Talk 4



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s fourth public talk in Amsterdam, 1967.
0:10 Krishnamurti: We have been talking over together several things which, it seems to me, are quite important.
0:25 But there is another thing we should consider also, which is this whole question of a mind demanding experiences.
0:53 And without understanding that question and that problem, what we are going to go into a little later – the whole question of a mind that needs to come about a quality of innocency.
1:28 Innocency is far more important than immortality – and to go into that question very deeply, one has to first understand, obviously not intellectually, a mind demanding experiences.
2:08 A petty mind, a narrow, shallow mind is always seeking more and more experiences.
2:23 I mean by that, a petty mind, a narrow mind, a limited mind, a mind that is always concerned with itself, its self-centred activities, a mind that is not very deep.
2:44 So such a petty mind may be very clever, very erudite, have a great deal of capacity technically and analytically, but it still remains a petty, shallow, little mind, the very essence of a bourgeois mind.
3:13 And we are not using that word, ‘bourgeois’, in any sense derogatorily.
3:22 And this mind, and most of our minds are obviously very heavily conditioned, and therefore rather narrow, well established in tradition, in experiences, in adjusting itself to the everyday demands of a monotonous, rather laborious, useless life.
3:56 Such a mind, being very limited, is always exploring wider and deeper experiences.
4:13 It demands not only biological, physiological experiences as sex, and so on, and so on, and so on, but also it demands intellectual, emotional, wider experience of consciousness.
4:35 After all, our daily life, as we know it, the life that one leads, is pretty monotonous, rather empty.
4:58 And following a routine, well established in habits and traditions, the norm is set and it follows those habits, that experienced knowledge, and continues till it dies, till it comes to an end. Such a mind, without any ugly meaning attached to it, such a mind, which we generally will call for the moment, narrow, limited, petty, a shallow mind, demands many experiences.
5:56 It has had physical experiences such as sex, satisfying its various sensory pleasures, but also it demands much wider experiences.
6:16 And that’s why there is this craze in the world at the present – taking drugs in various forms, like LSD, and so on, hoping thereby to expand consciousness and have greater, wider, more meaningful experiences.
6:42 And I think one should understand this craving.
6:52 What is an experience, what is involved in an experience? When one asks that one should have the most marvellous experience that one can possibly have, what do we mean by this experiencing?
7:21 Is it a demand, though legitimate, entirely possible to really have a totally new experience.
7:45 We mean by ‘experience’, to go through something, that’s what the dictionary meaning of that word means, to go through an experience, to go through a state or a response to a challenge to the very end of it, go through.
8:13 In this process of experiencing, several things are necessary.
8:23 As one observes oneself, and I hope each one of us who is listening to this morning talk is not merely hearing a lot of words, either agreeing or disagreeing, but actually examining, using the speaker’s words as a mirror to observe oneself.
8:52 Because it’s very simple to hear a talk on a lovely morning like this.
9:00 It’s too bad that we have to talk here when the sun is out, and the leaves are shining and the water is sparkling.
9:16 To understand this question very deeply, you have to observe your own mind in operation – why we want experiences, what is involved in experiencing.
9:39 Obviously we demand it because our lives are very empty, shallow, petty. It has had enough of the daily routine, and we want something much wider, much deeper, much more lasting.
10:00 And we are looking for experiences. And, of course, there is the ultimate experience of a religious mind, of a mind, not a religious mind, of a mind that is caught in the traps of religious organization, which is merely continuity of propaganda which is not religion at all.
10:20 Such a mind wants the experience of the ultimate, some mystical state, a reality, a God or the projection of their own conditioning.
10:37 If you are a Christian, you will experience that which you have been conditioned to, or an Indian, a Hindu, or Asiatics they are conditioned to their own particular psychology and culture.
11:00 In this process of experiencing, if one observes, as I hope you are observing yourself, is there anything new at all? Or merely the continuity of what has been, modified, extended and given a different significance.
11:40 I hope you don’t mind if I take my coat off, do you? May I? It’s terribly hot.
11:57 Won’t you also take your coats off if you want to?
12:30 In this demand for experience, which is natural, one has to go into this question of what is an experience, what is the nature of it, and is there any new experience at all possible.
13:06 Being dissatisfied with things as they are in our life, we stretch out our consciousness, hoping to grasp some fundamental, new, original, pristine experience.
13:30 And in that, we do not completely understand what is involved.
13:42 All experiences are a response to a condition.
13:55 There is always, if one is greatly alive, there are always challenges, and to which we either respond adequately or inadequately, completely, totally, or partially.
14:17 This response to a challenge is the experiencing – otherwise there is no experience at all.
14:34 And when we ask for deeper, wider, more significant experiences, there in it is involved a process of recognition.
14:53 Isn’t it? If I don’t recognize the new experience, it is not an experience at all.
15:12 If there is an experience, that is something taking place in consciousness, and I don’t recognize the nature of it, it ceases to be an experience.
15:34 So to experience a thing, I must recognize it.
15:43 And to recognize it, I must have already had it, otherwise I can’t recognize it.
15:54 Please, follow this step by step.
16:01 Recognition is necessary in experiencing, otherwise experience is not.
16:09 And to recognize is the response of a memory.
16:17 And therefore any experience that is recognizable is always the old, otherwise it cannot experience.
16:33 Therefore a mind that is seeking a wider and deeper experience and is capable of recognizing it, can never find the new, however much it may demand a new experience.
16:58 Therefore one has to understand whether it is at all possible to be totally free from the whole structure of memory.
17:16 Please, we are not saying you must have no memory, which is absurd.
17:23 We must have memory, technological memory otherwise we shan’t be able to live at all.
17:31 But the memory of a mind that’s always seeking the new, and translating what it finds in terms of the new.
17:48 After all, if you have taken LSD, a chemical like that, it obviously heightens your sensitivity, heightens your perception, you see much more clearly, much more directly, the interval between the observer and the observed is not.
18:17 There is a chemical change in the whole biological – in the metabolism of the body. And in that state one experiences, and that experience obviously is recognizable, otherwise it would be empty.
18:52 So when there is a process of recognition, it is the projection of the past.
19:06 And mind is always functioning within the field of time, which is of memory.
19:20 And can the mind go beyond that?
19:30 Truth is not recognizable, therefore it is always new, fresh.
19:41 A mind that is seeking truth can never find truth, because it is not to be sought after. A petty mind, a small, narrow, little, conditioned mind demanding what truth is or demanding that it must find it, or seeking it out, it will never find it because it is so conditioned that it can never find that immense, immeasurable thing.
20:19 But without coming upon it life becomes dull, stupid, drab, meaningless.
20:30 So is it possible for a mind to come upon that thing which man has everlastingly sought – a state of innocency, freshness, which is constantly renewing itself?
21:10 Is it possible? And we are going to go into that this morning, if we can.
21:24 As we said the other day, the word, the symbol is not the reality.
21:33 The word ‘door’ is not the door.
21:40 So one has to be very attentive not to be caught in words, though we have to use words to communicate.
21:56 Words become a terrible hindrance because we think by understanding the word, defining the word, or the meaning of the structure of a sentence, through explanation, we think we have understood the whole thing.
22:29 So we are going to find out whether a mind that is so heavily conditioned, whether such a mind can free itself totally and be in a state of freedom in which the new is.
23:14 Joy, great ecstasy, cannot be sought.
23:26 You can seek pleasure, excitement, sensation, seek ways and means through entertainment, certain forms of excitement, pleasure; but joy is something that cannot possibly be sought or put together by thought.
24:06 And that joy is not related at all to pleasure or desire.
24:22 So it is important to understand the nature of pleasure and desire.
24:35 You know, throughout the world those people who have belonged to any particular organized religion have always said, you must be without desire to find reality.
24:58 That’s why there are so many monks, and various forms of renunciations of the world, denying pleasure and desire. Monasteries are full of them.
25:17 And by denying pleasure, desire, they hope to find something beyond the category of these.
25:34 What is pleasure and what is desire?
25:41 We must understand this very carefully because otherwise the mind will always be caught in the search for pleasure, or the avoidance of pleasure, or the control of desire; and hence the mind becomes a tortured thing.
26:11 Either the indulgence in pleasure or the suppression of pleasure does deteriorate the quality of the mind.
26:24 And so one has to understand both desire and pleasure, not intellectually, not conceptually but actually.
26:49 The understanding through a concept, through a formula, is not understanding at all. That is, we have an idea of what pleasure is and try to understand the structure and the nature of pleasure through that idea.
27:18 First we conceive, we formulate an ideology and use that ideology or concept to understand.
27:34 We mean by understanding, a direct perception and action without the interval, without the interference of thought and concepts.
27:50 Only then there is understanding and therefore immediate action.
28:00 One can see, obviously, how desire arises.
28:08 It’s not a very complex issue at all. There is obviously first perception, seeing, visually with the eyes, from that there is a certain pleasure if it is beautiful.
28:32 There is first perception, then there is sensation, then there is contact, then out of that contact desire.
28:45 You see a beautiful car. There is perception, seeing, sensation, contact and desire.
29:01 Then thought begins to nourish, sustain and give continuity to that desire.
29:15 Then it becomes pleasure. All this takes place instantly.
29:29 I see a beautiful face, or a beautiful tree, and I touch that face or that tree and in that there is desire, and that desire is sustained by thought, which becomes pleasure. You can observe this in yourself if you are at all watchful, alert.
30:08 When one is aware of this, then is it possible, one asks oneself, is it possible for thought not to interfere.
30:28 You understand? One can see very well how desire arises; then thought comes in and says, I like to have it, I like to possess it, I like to have it continue.
30:56 So thought gives it not only nourishment, sustenance, but also gives it, by thinking about it over and over and over again, a continuity.
31:09 This is what takes place when you have sex, or when you have any deep experience.
31:23 Please, watch what is taking place. You experience and thought, experiencing is the present, which is looking at a car, there is direct perception, then thought comes, thought being the old, and gives a continuity to that desire, which is pleasure, by thinking about it.
31:57 All this, as we said, is instantaneous.
32:11 And is it possible for thought not to interfere at all?
32:24 Because one cannot shut one’s eyes, or ears – you see, you hear, you taste, you look at a beautiful sunset, a tree, a lovely landscape with lakes and mountains, you can’t shut your eyes at all.
32:54 And it is only when thought comes in making the new, which is this direct seeing, to that thought gives a continuity which becomes the memory.
33:25 There was a lovely sunrise this morning.
33:34 One looks at it, it was a beautiful thing, thought has captured it and I want that pleasure repeated tomorrow.
33:50 The old has captured the instant beauty of a sunset, or a sunrise.
34:00 And so thought can never find the new, thought can never experience the new.
34:21 And how is it possible, without control, without subjugation, without denying, for thought not to allow itself to interfere?
34:53 You understand the question? I hope the problem is clear.
35:04 Because, you see, we have lived so long as human beings, over two million years, accumulated so much, so many thousand experiences, and our innocency is not.
35:30 There is nothing new and man, if he is at all alert, awake, is always demanding the new.
35:47 And the entity that is seeking the new is always thought.
36:02 And thought is always the old because it is the response of accumulated memories, experience, knowledge.
36:13 And is it possible for thought not to interfere at all?
36:24 Now we are going to find this out – find out for ourselves if it is at all possible.
36:35 But of course if you say it is not possible, you have already blocked it.
36:43 Or if you say, it is possible, you have also blocked it.
36:51 Either agreement or disagreement with that statement prevents you from going further, which may be what you want. But if you want to go into it very deeply, there must be neither acceptance nor denial, but examination. And to examine there must be freedom, freedom from opinion, conclusion.
37:29 That is, we are asking whether thought, which is always the old, always conditioned, never free, though it may talk endlessly about freedom, peace and love, thought can never find the new.
37:55 And all our life is based on thought from the moment we wake up in the morning till we go to sleep thought is in operation: cunning, desperate, hopeful, in despair, seeking pleasure, denying sorrow, and so on and on and on, endlessly.
38:28 Therefore we are living always in the past, always.
38:39 So when we ask this question whether thought can have a stop, therefore thought which is time can come to an end, at least stop, we are asking a most fundamental question. A fundamental question cannot be answered by somebody else.
38:57 When you ask a fundamental question, all authority has gone.
39:08 Therefore when all authority of every kind is put aside, denied, then you can find out for yourself.
39:28 We are asking a question that demands attention.
39:39 We are asking whether thought can come to a stop, though thought is necessary at certain levels, whether thought can come to an end and not interfere.
40:01 When you look at the sunset, at the tree, at a bird on the wing, when you see a face with which you have lived, to look at it as though for the first time, though you’ve walked in the same road, in the same path, to look at the whole thing as though it never has happened before.
40:36 That is important to find out because from that one can go…
40:43 from that there is a discovery of something entirely different.
40:53 So is it possible for thought to stop?
41:01 You know, man has tried this in different ways, through drugs, through control, through meditation, through the demand or the state when you can receive grace, to lose oneself entirely by identifying oneself in something: in the country, which is an idea, in patriotism, which is again an idea, in a projection which he calls God, which is again a concept, an image, a symbol.
41:54 So he has tried so many ways – by control, by suppression, by identifying himself with something which he calls greater, to forget himself totally through sex, through a particular activity to which he is committed; like a communist is committed to a particular ideology and having identified himself with that ideology he works endlessly for that ideology – but it is still identifying himself with an idea, it is really… he is working for himself calling it for the collective, and so on.
43:02 So is it possible for a mind to become totally empty, totally fresh, completely innocent though it has lived a thousand years?
43:35 To come upon this, one has to enquire into what is awareness, to be aware.
43:47 And one also has to find out what it is to be attentive.
43:57 To be aware of something when you enter this hall, to be aware of the lights, of the shape of the hall, the roof, the carpet, the colour, just to be aware of it without any choice, without any comparison, without any condemnation – just to observe.
44:31 I do not know if you have ever tried it. If you have, and if you are aware, then you will see how you judge, condemn, approve: I like, I don’t like, this is ugly, that is beautiful, this particular colour I don’t like at all, it is repulsive, that colour is very attractive.
45:04 So such statements prevent that awareness, which is to be aware without any choice, then only you are watching, then only you see.
45:31 You know, when you are completely attentive, in that state you see, it’s only love that sees and nothing else, not thought, not the mind, not the intellect.
45:49 So one has to learn how to look, how to hear.
46:01 As we said the other day, learning is not accumulating, learning is always active present.
46:12 It’s not having learnt you observe, you see only in the instant present.
46:30 And when one is so aware, then you begin to discover for yourself, without any preacher, any teacher, any book, any philosophy, any theologian, any priest, or any psychologist, you begin to discover the nature and the structure of your own self, how you look, how you feel, how you think, what your motives are, you are aware of yourself instantly.
47:13 And from that awareness there comes a state of attention.
47:24 You know, most of us are inattentive, that’s our habit. We are never attentive.
47:37 Attention means complete attention, not intellectual, emotional attention but the total attention which one gives when one is completely in front of a danger, or in front of a crisis.
48:01 That attention is virtue. It’s only in that attention virtue can flower.
48:14 And when there is that attention, then you will find out of that comes complete aloneness.
48:29 I do not know if you have ever experienced what loneliness is. I think one has. To be lonely, that is, to feel oneself isolated, having no relationship with anything.
48:56 In that sense of loneliness there is despair, there are moods, one is familiar with that sense of loneliness, and one runs away from it by turning on the radio, reading a book, sex and ten different activities.
49:26 And that loneliness is the very essence of self-consciousness.
49:41 And when one goes beyond all that, there is this state of attention in which there is complete aloneness, which is not isolation, which is not separation, which is not a withdrawal. Because it’s only this aloneness, that is, when the mind is no longer a plaything of thought, when thought has been understood totally – then out of that comes this sense of aloneness.
50:34 And it is that which is innocent, and it is that innocency which is beyond all mortality.
50:47 It is only that innocency which can come upon the new, which is always new, which is timeless.
51:03 This whole process man has sought through meditation.
51:10 Perhaps you do not know that word. The whole of Asia, India including, knows the meaning of that word.
51:25 Here you may use a different word. But man has tried through meditation, through control, through following a system, a method, to come upon this innocency, this freshness, this reality, which is not of time.
51:49 One can only come upon it when you have understood what it means to experience, what pleasure, desire means, and also the nature of awareness and attention. Then out of that total comprehension there is that solitude and aloneness which opens the door and no one, no drug, no priest, no god, no religion will ever give that energy to open that door.
52:56 Perhaps, if you feel like it, we can ask questions and discuss what we have talked about this morning or at the previous meetings.
53:30 I hope, the speaker hopes that he has not stopped you from asking questions because he has said that when one asks the right question the answer is in the question itself; and to ask the right question the mind must be extraordinarily sharp, clear and there must be that sense of care which is affection – otherwise it becomes meaningless. Then you put a question out of bitterness, anger, hopelessness or despair.
54:23 Questioner: Sir, could you distinguish between what you mean by the word ‘recognizing’ and ‘being aware’.
54:45 K: I recognize you because we have met before and I am aware of the ways of your speech, and so on.
55:13 In that, there is a recognition, is there not? I recognize you.
55:20 If we have been friends, or lived together, then you have an image of me and I have an image of you.
55:31 Obviously. And without being aware of these images, which is the image you have about me and the image, if I have one, about you, without being aware of that we may talk about awareness endlessly.
55:58 So we must understand, it seems to me, how images are built. Then when there is no forming of an image at all, recognition is merely a very simple factor, necessary factor, but through that awareness, in which there is no image, there is then a direct relationship, a direct communication, a direct communion with each other.
56:49 Have I answered your question, sir?

Q: Yes, sir.
56:56 Q: Since you say you can’t recognize experience, I think I understand...
57:01 K: No, madame.

Q: But what makes you come to us?

K: Madame, ecoutez, madame. I mean – sorry. I did not say that you cannot recognize experience. It’s only when you recognize, you experience.
57:15 Q: Because it’s all thought whatever you start to recognize, then it’s old.

K: Quite.
57:23 Q: So what makes you come here? I would call that compassion.

K: Ah! The lady asks what makes me come to Holland, or to this place, and talk.
57:37 What has that question to do with what we are discussing?
57:43 Q: You must have a type of feeling...

K: Ah, madame!

Q: A type of feeling, a compassion for us, a true compassion.
57:52 K: The question is – do you come here because you have compassion?
57:59 Q: You come here, you have compassion.

K: Yes, madame, that’s what I am saying. The questioner asks: does the speaker come because he has compassion. That’s the question.
58:19 Now, what value has it? What value has it if the speaker says, ‘Yes, I come because out of compassion’. What does it mean? Where are you? You understand?

Q: But what drives you to come here?
58:51 K: What is the drive, the urge, that makes me come here. Look, madame, it is of so little importance.

Q: But you are here.
59:04 K: It is of so little importance. Do listen to me, please. What does it matter why the speaker comes here at all. What does matter, and it matters immensely, how you listen, what you do with what you have listened, that’s all that matters. How you have listened and what you are going to do with what you have listened to.
59:43 The other question of why the speaker has come, whether he has come out of compassion or this or that is really quite meaningless because if he speaks out of affection, you know it, it doesn’t need any confirmation.
1:00:08 And whether he confirms or denies, it is of no relevant value.
1:00:15 You can’t say to the beauty of a sunset, or of a cloud, why are you like that?
1:00:22 It is as it is, and when you look at it, what matters is how you look at it and what you do with what you have looked.
1:00:43 Please, sir, yes, sir?

Q: How is one to break off a concept that one has carefully built?
1:00:53 K: How is one to break a concept that one has so carefully built?
1:01:04 You know, what does that word ‘concept’ mean? To conceive, to conceive an ideology, to formulate an idea – you understand?
1:01:26 There is the communist ideology, the socialist ideology, the Catholic ideology, the Hindu ideology, the Buddhist, and so on and on and on and on.
1:01:42 Why do we formulate ideas at all?
1:01:51 When do you discover something new? Not when you are caught in ideologies, obviously not.
1:02:01 The man who discovered the jet from the piston, how did he discover it? He knew all about the ways of the piston, the mechanical, the engineering structure of a piston engine, with propeller, and so on; and he discovered the jet only when there was an interval between – please listen – between what he knew and what he was going to find.
1:02:41 That is, when the mind is completely silent between the old and the new.
1:02:52 This happens to us often, this is nothing mysterious. Only the mischief begins when we say, ‘I want to keep that state when I can discover something new.
1:03:08 I want that to continue’. And therefore thought interferes and makes it old and destroys it.
1:03:20 We formulate, or conceive ideas because it is much too dangerous to live without ideas and without concepts, formulas, because we have to live most intensely in the present.
1:03:42 And to live so completely in the present is a dangerous thing. Therefore formulas, beliefs act as a protection.
1:04:01 And a mind that is protecting itself ceases to be a mind.
1:04:09 So when one is aware of all that, aware of it, not how to get rid of it, how to stop it, how to go beyond it, but just to be aware of it, to know the nature and the structure of it.
1:04:23 And then you will see if you really have looked at it, really with great attention, with care, with affection, at the structure of building a concept, then you will find the mind is beyond it. But to give such complete attention, there needs to be a tremendous intensity, energy, demand.
1:05:02 So we have neither the energy, nor the intensity, nor the urgency.
1:05:13 When we want to stop a war, you mean to say we cannot stop it?
1:05:20 But we don’t want to stop wars.
1:05:28 We don’t want peace. Security and peace are two different things.
1:05:46 Q: May I ask a question?

K: As you like, sir.
1:06:16 No, sir, I am afraid you have not quite understood what we have said. I am afraid your question is not very clear either.
1:06:24 But the last I understood. We did not say loneliness is something that we must keep.
1:06:36 Nobody wants to be lonely, one must go beyond it, and one does go beyond it by taking various forms of drugs and amusements and entertainments, whether it’s the entertainment of the church or the entertainment of the cinema or the football.
1:07:06 I have understood, sir, I’ve understood. Do you think loneliness is a form of projection of oneself?
1:07:14 You don’t have to project what you are, that’s what actually takes place, if you have felt it.
1:07:30 I wonder, if I may ask, why we ask questions at all, not of the speaker, but why we ask.
1:07:47 We must ask, we must doubt, we must question everything from the very foundation to the very end of life, one must question, have doubt, have no faith, because people who have faith have been led to a great deal of misery.
1:08:22 Faith in their leaders, whether the political leader or a religious leader, they have brought about destruction, they have brought about anarchy. And so we must question, we must doubt, we must ask, but why do we ask and who is going to tell us?
1:08:56 Please, do listen to this – who is going to tell us?
1:09:04 If somebody is willing to tell you, then that person becomes the authority, then you are caught in the same old trap again.
1:09:17 So we have to find out why you ask. First, from what motive, from what background, from what intensity, with what clarity, with what drive you ask.
1:09:33 Or is it a casual asking when you are sitting comfortably after a good meal.
1:09:43 Or is the question you are asking because you are dissatisfied, therefore finding in the answer satisfaction?
1:09:53 Or you are asking the question to bring clarity to yourself, so that by your own questioning you will begin to see very, very clearly?
1:10:10 And one asks questions because one is confused, and a mind that’s confused can only receive confused answers, it cannot receive clear answer because it’s confused.
1:10:34 So you have to find out if you are asking questions out of confusion, or are you asking questions out of clarity.
1:10:46 If there is clarity, you will never ask a question.
1:10:53 It is only the confused mind that asks, and having asked, because it cannot receive the right answer, remains in confusion. Therefore asking a question reveals your own state of mind to yourself, whether it is confused or not confused. That’s why one has to ask questions, and there is great beauty in the discovery of what actually one is.
1:11:35 Right, sirs.