Krishnamurti Subtitles
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AM69T1 - Why don’t we have the energy to change?
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| 0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s first public talk in Amsterdam, 1969. |
| 0:08 Krishnamurti: When one looks around in the world and observes what is happening there – the students’ riots, the class prejudices, the black against the white, the wars, the political confusion, tyrannies, bigger nations suppressing little nations, the division in nationalities, the religious divisions, and the utter confusion outwardly. And also one is aware inwardly of the extraordinary conflict, struggle, the pain, the sorrow, the anxiety, the loneliness, the despair, the lack of love, the fear. Looking at all this, outwardly and inwardly, one wonders – I’m sure you must have also – why we go on like this, why we accept the social morality, which is really quite immoral, the confusion in which one lives, the uncertainty, the endless wars to which man is committed, the national division, religious separation, and so on, why we accept this at all, why we accept the moral, social environment in which we live, knowing very well that is utterly immoral, knowing for ourselves, not emotionally or sentimentally, but looking at the world and at ourselves, why is it that we live this way? 3:47 Why is it our educational system, which turns out not human beings but mechanical entities trained to accept certain jobs and peter out, die? |
| 4:16 Education, science, religion has not solved our problems at all. And so, looking at all this inevitable and certain confusion, why each one of us accept and conform instead of shattering the whole process in ourselves. I think we should ask this question, not intellectually, not in order to find some god, some realization, some peculiar temperamental happiness, which inevitably lead to escapes of various kinds, but looking at it quietly, with steady eyes, without any judgment and evaluation, we should ask, as grown up people, why is it that we live this way – live, struggle and die. 6:29 And when we do ask such a question seriously, with full intention to understand it, philosophies, theories, speculative ideations have no place at all. What matters is not ‘what should be’ or ‘what might be’, or what principle one should follow or what kind of ideals we should have, or to what religion, to what guru we shall turn to – all those responses are obviously utterly meaningless when you are confronted with this confusion, with the misery in which we live, this constant conflict. 8:05 We have made life into a battlefield, each one against the other, each family, each group, each nation. And seeing all this, not as an idea, not something that you think exists, but actually observe it, feel it in your bones, and when you are confronted with it, one asks oneself why. |
| 9:08 What is it all about? Why do we go on this way, neither living, loving, and with a great dread and fear and terror, die? And when you do ask this question, what is one to do? And this question can only be asked, not by those people who are comfortably settled in some peculiar ideals, who have got a comfortable house and home and a little money, who are highly respectable, bourgeois – if they do ask questions, such people, then they translate it according to their own peculiar satisfying demands. 10:40 But as this is a very human, common, ordinary problem, which touches the life of every one of us – the rich and the poor, the young and the old – why do we accept it? Why do we live this – a monotonous, stupid, ritualistic, meaningless life? Going to the office 40 years of one’s life, working in a laboratory or a factory, breeding a few children, educating them – God knows, in most absurd ways – and then die? I think you should ask this question, ask it with all your being to find out. 12:16 And when you do ask, the inevitable question is whether human beings can ever change radically, deeply, fundamentally, so they are different human beings with different eyes to look at the world anew, with a different heart, not filled with hatred, antagonism, racial prejudices, and all the rest of the nonsense, with a mind that’s very clear, that has tremendous energy. |
| 13:23 So, seeing all this – the wars, the absurd divisions which religions have brought about, the separation between the individual and the community, the family opposed to the rest of the world, each human being clinging to some peculiar ideals, dividing himself into me and you and we and they – seeing all this, both objectively and psychologically, inwardly, I think there is only one question, one fundamental problem involved in all this: whether the human mind, which is so heavily conditioned, can change, not in some future incarnation, not at the end of one’s life, but change radically, so that the human mind becomes new, fresh, young, innocent, unburdened, so that we do know what it means to love and to live in peace. |
| 15:39 I think this is the only problem. When this is solved, every other problem – economic, social, bureaucratic, wars, and all the rest of it – will come… will have a… not wars will end, but there will be a different kind of structure of society. So our question is whether the mind, the brain and the heart live as though for the first time uncontaminated, fresh, innocent, so that one knows what it means to live happily, ecstatically, with deep love. You know, there is the danger of listening to rhetorical questions. 17:16 This is not a rhetorical question at all. This is not a mere speculative, verbal, intellectual examination. It is our life. So we are not concerned with words or with ideas. And most of us are so caught up with words, never realizing deeply the word is never the thing, the description is never the described. And if we could, during these five talks and answering questions, and so on, if we could understand this deep problem, whether the human mind, in which is involved the brain and the heart – they are not three separate things, the brain, the mind and the heart, they are a total being – that brain, that mind, that heart that has been so conditioned through centuries, millennia, through propaganda, through fear, through social economic influences, whether that mind can undergo a radical transformation, so that man can live peacefully, not only in a little country like Holland, peacefully right throughout the world with great love, with great ecstasy, and the realization of that which is immeasurable. 20:14 So that is our problem. |
| 20:22 Mind, which is so burdened with the past – past memories, traditions – whether such a mind can, without effort, without struggle, without conflict, bring in itself the flame of change, burn away the dross of yesterday. Having put that question, which I am sure every thoughtful, serious person does put, where shall we begin? The change in the establishment, in the bureaucratic world, in the social structure, that is, outwardly, shall we begin there? Or inwardly, which is psychologically? |
| 22:19 The world, the outside, with all its technological knowledge, the marvels of man, what man has done, in the scientific field, in the technical field, in the business world – shall we begin there and bring about change, revolution? And man has tried that, too. He’s said, ‘Let us change the outward things, because when you change the outward things radically, like all the bloody revolutions have done, historically, then we can… man will change. 23:29 Then inwardly he will be a happy human being’. The communist revolution and other revolutions have said this – bring order in the outer and there will be order within. And also they said it doesn’t matter if there is no order within, what matters is that we should have order, whatever that may mean, in the world, outside, ideational order, a Utopia, for which millions have been killed. |
| 24:23 Or shall we begin elsewhere? Which doesn’t mean that you let the present social order with all its confusion, disorder, remain as it is. |
| 24:52 So we will begin inwardly, psychologically. And is there a division, such a division as the inner and the outer? Or there is only one movement in which the inner and the outer exist, not as two separate things, but a movement. |
| 25:34 Please, I think it is very important if we are to establish, not only verbal communication, which is to speak the common language, which is English, if you understand English, using words that we both understand, but also there must be a different kind of communication, because we are going to go into things very, very deeply and very seriously. And there must also be a different kind of communication, not merely verbal communication. There must be – if one may use that word – communion. 26:57 Communion implies that both of us are profoundly concerned, both of us care, both of us look at this problem with affection, with a demand of… with an urge to understand it. So there must be not only a verbal communication but also a deep communion in which there is not a question of agreement or disagreement. Agreement and disagreement should never arise, because we’re not dealing with ideas, with opinions, with concepts or ideals. We are concerned with this problem of human change, and your opinion or my opinion has no value at all. 28:26 Or if you say, ‘Well, it is impossible to change human beings, they have been like this for two billion years, they will go on like this’ – if you say that you have already blocked yourself, you won’t proceed, you won’t begin to enquire, explore. Or if you say it is possible, then you’ll live in a world of possibilities, not realities. So one must come to this question without agreement or disagreement, without saying it is or it is not possible. You must come to it with a fresh mind, 29:17 eager to find out, young enough to examine, explore. So we must not only establish clearly the verbal communication but also we should have, between the speaker and yourself, a communion, a sense of care and friendship and affection which exists when we are tremendously concerned about something. When a husband and wife are deeply concerned about their children, they put aside all opinions, their particular like and dislike, because they are concerned about the child. And in that concern, it is not an opinion that controls action. 30:54 In that concern, there is great affection. So similarly, there must be that feeling of deep communion between you and the speaker, so that we are both faced with the same problem, with the same intensity, at the same time. Then we can establish this communion which alone brings about a deep understanding. |
| 31:47 So there is this question: how is the mind, so deeply conditioned for millions of years, which has lived… which has created a brutal world, a world of violence, a morality which is no morality at all, which has accepted war as the way of life, which segregates itself in the family, how is such a mind to radically change? I hope you are putting this question to yourself, because you see, unless there is deep morality, which is not the social morality, unless there is deep austerity, which is not the austerity of the priest with its harshness and violence, unless there is order within, deeply, this search for truth, for reality, for God or whatever name you like to give to it, have no meaning whatsoever. |
| 34:12 So perhaps those of you who have come to find out how to realize God or some mysterious experience, will, I am afraid, be disappointed. Because unless you have a new mind, a fresh mind, eyes that see very clearly without any distortion, you cannot possibly see what is true, you cannot possibly understand the immeasurable, the nameless, that which is. So, if you are merely wanting wider, deeper experiences, but lead a shoddy, silly, monotonous, meaningless life, then you will have experiences that won’t be worth anything. |
| 35:42 So we must go together into this question. This question is very complex because there… many things are involved, and to understand it, there must be freedom and energy – those two things one must have – a great energy and freedom. That is, there is this complex problem of living, and as we live, our lives are empty, shallow, ugly, violent, despairing, lonely. |
| 37:02 And to understand it, not verbally, intellectually, there must be freedom to observe. And if you are tied to a particular belief, if you are tethered to a particular ideational Utopia, like the communists or the socialists or the Catholics or the protestants, obviously you are not free to look. Or you have your own peculiar little guru. Or if you have committed yourself to a particular system of thought, you are not free to look, to observe. And to observe very clearly, you must have great energy. So we’ll begin with that. |
| 38:24 There is this vast, complex mind, so conditioned – Catholic, protestant, security, ambition, tradition – and a mind that has become so shallow, except along the technological field – going to the moon is a marvellous achievement of technology. But those who put together the rocket or the Apollo 8 or the 9, whatever it is, they have their own shoddy little lives – petty, jealous, anxious, frightened, ambitious. There is this mind, conditioned, and we are asking whether such a mind can be completely free from all its conditioning so that it lives a totally different kind of life. |
| 40:01 And to find out, there must be freedom to observe, not as a Christian, not as a Catholic, not as a Dutchman or a German or a Hindu or a Russian – all the rest of it. To observe, which means there must be freedom. And to observe very clearly, and that very observation is action. That very observation brings about radical revolution. And to have that… such observation, you need great energy. |
| 40:58 So we are going to find out what prevents this energy, why we have not the energy, the drive, the intensity to change. So we are concerned with the understanding of why human beings have not that energy to bring about a radical change in themselves. They have energy, any amount of it – to quarrel, to battle, to kill each other, to divide the world, to fight, to go to the moon. They’ve got energy, but apparently they have not the energy to change themselves radically. So we are asking why – why haven’t we as human beings, have this tremendous energy? I wonder, when you ask, when such a question is put to you, what your response is. |
| 43:11 We said man has enough energy. He does everything with great energy – when he hates, he hates; when there is a war, he battles, kills; when he wants to escape from what is actually, he has the energy to run away from it – through ideas, through amusement, through gods, through drink. When he wants pleasure, sexual or otherwise, he pursues it with great energy. He has the intelligence to overcome outward environment. He has the energy to go down to the… live at the bottom of the sea or live in the skies. He has got vital energy, but apparently he has not this energy to change, even the smallest habit. Why? |
| 44:44 We haven’t the energy to change because we dissipate that energy in conflict within ourselves. |
| 45:01 Please listen to this a little bit. We are not trying to persuade you of anything, we are not doing propaganda, we are not replacing old ideas with new ideas, but we are trying to discover, understand. |
| 45:37 You see, we realize that we must change. So there is – let us take as an example violence, brutality – that is a fact. Human beings are brutal, violent and they have built a society which is violent, in spite of all the religious nonsense about loving your neighbour, loving God, and all that, just ideas, they have no value whatsoever, because man remains brutal, violent, selfish – that’s a fact. And being violent, he invents its opposite, which is not to be violent. Please watch, go into this yourself with me a little bit. There is violence and he has the opposite of it, which is non-violence, not to be violent. 47:21 And he is trying all the time to become non-violent. So there is conflict between ‘what is’, which is violence, and ‘what should be’, which is non-violence. There is conflict between the two. And that is the very essence of the wastage of energy. Right? As long as there is a duality between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’, man trying to become, or trying, making an effort to achieve ‘what should be’, that conflict is wastage of energy. Right? That is the very essence of wastage. As long as there is conflict between the opposites, the duality, man has not enough energy to change. |
| 48:52 So, why should I have the opposite at all, as non-violence, as the ideal? The ideal is non-real, it has no meaning, it only leads to various forms of hypocrisy. Being violent, pretending not to be violent has no meaning. Or to say, ‘Well, I am an idealist. I will eventually become peaceful’. That is a great pretension, an excuse. For he’ll take many years or perhaps never be without violence. Therefore he becomes a hypocrite, and in the meantime he’s being violent. So if we could, not in abstraction but actually put aside completely all ideals and only deal with facts. That is, violence. Then there is no wastage of energy. |
| 50:30 Please, this is really very important to understand. It isn’t a peculiar theory of the speaker. Don’t say, ‘Well, he brings some oriental philosophy’ – he doesn’t. As long as man lives in the corridor of opposites, he must waste energy and therefore he can never change. |
| 51:25 So with one breath you’ve wiped away all ideologies – right? – all opposites. Please do understand this. If you go into it, it is really quite extraordinary what takes place. A man who is angry, to pretend, or try to become non-angry, not to be angry, in that there is conflict going on all the time. But if he says, ‘I’ll observe what anger is, go into it, not try to escape from it, rationalize it’. Then you have… then there is energy to understand and put an end to anger. |
| 52:51 So the mind, being conditioned, merely to develop a conceptual freedom in which mind will be free from conditioning, that is an idea that the mind must be free from conditioning, and therefore there is a duality between the fact and ‘what should be’. I don’t know if you are following all this. Therefore it is wastage of energy. Whereas if you say, ‘Well, I’ll find out in what manner the mind is conditioned, what makes the mind conditioned’, not how to uncondition it. I don’t know if you see the importance of this. 54:10 It’s like going to the surgeon when one has cancer. The surgeon is concerned with operation and removing the disease. But if you are… if the patient is thinking about what a marvellous time he’s going to have afterwards, or frightened about it, then it is a wastage of energy. So we are only concerned with the fact that the mind is conditioned – mind being heart, and all the rest of it, the brain – and not that the mind should be free. 55:07 If the mind is unconditioned, it is free. You don’t have even to say, ask what will happen after. So we are going to find out, examine very closely what makes the mind so conditioned, what are the influences that have brought about this conditioning, and why we accept this conditioning. |
| 56:02 Why is the mind conditioned? First of all, tradition plays an enormous part in life; tradition of 10,000 or million years, that’s part of us. In that tradition is involved physical security. The brain has been developed to find and be secure physically. Right? Otherwise one cannot live without security; that’s the very first, primal, animal demand that there be security physically – have a house, food, clothing, shelter – must have it. 57:54 But the psychological usage of that security brings about chaos within and without. Right? Are you following all this? Physically, one must have security – you must know where the next meal is coming, you must have shelter, must be clothed. But the psyche, which is the very structure of thought, wants also to be secure inwardly. It not only wants security outwardly but also it wants security inwardly, security in all its relationships. 59:12 So the trouble then begins. There must be physical security for everybody, not for the few. But that physical security for everybody is denied when the psychological security is sought, through nations – following all this? – through a particular religion, through the family. May I go on with it? I hope you understand that we have established some kind of communication between us. |
| 1:00:12 So, there is the conditioning, which is necessary, of physical security, but when the… when there is the search and the demand for psychological security, then conditioning becomes tremendously potent. That is, psychologically in our relationship – that is relationship with ideas, people and things, there we want security – right? we want to be secure psychologically, in our relationship. And is there security at all, in any relationship? 1:01:37 Obviously there isn’t. You’re following all…? Psychologically wanting security is to deny outward security. Right? If I want to be secure psychologically as a Hindu born in India, with all the traditions and superstitions and ideas, because to live with that gives me great security, because it identifies… I identify myself with the larger, and that gives me great comfort, a feeling psychologically secure. So I worship the flag, the nation, the tribe, and so divide myself against the rest of the world. 1:02:54 And this division brings about insecurity physically. Right? Obviously. When I worship the flag, the nation, the tradition, the customs, the religious dogmas, superstitious, and all that, and separate myself and the nation, with its armies, with its war, obviously I must deny security physically for everybody else. Right? |
| 1:03:48 So the mind needs physical security, which is denied, destroyed when it seeks psychological security. This is a fact not an opinion. It is so. When I seek security in my family, my wife, my children, my house, you know, mine, I must be against the world, I must separate myself from the rest of the families, or against the rest of the families. |
| 1:04:47 So, one can see very clearly how the conditioning begins, how through propaganda of 2,000 years the Christian world believes, worships the culture it has. All tradition, propaganda, words. Which is the same thing going on in the East, which is 10,000 years old, with all its traditions, propaganda. So the mind, through propaganda, through tradition, through the desire to be secure, begins to condition itself. |
| 1:06:07 And is there any psychological security? Please go into this with the speaker a little bit. Is there any security psychologically in relationship? Relationship being with ideas, with people and with things. Relationship means to be in contact directly with things, otherwise you are not related. If I have an idea, an image about my wife, I am not related to her. I may sleep with her but I am not related to her, because my image of her prevents my directly coming into contact with her. And she with her image prevents her relationship with me directly. |
| 1:07:47 So, is there any psychological certainty, security? Your ideas, which is your belief. And yet the mind is always seeking security, permanency. And obviously when you observe very closely any relationship, however intimate, there is no certainty, no security. You can see it, sirs. I mean, it’s so simple. When the husband and wife or the boy or the girl marry or whatever they do and wants to establish a firm relationship, what happens? When the wife or the girl or the boy or the husband looks at another, 1:09:04 there is fear, there is jealousy, there is anxiety, there is anger, hate, envy. And there is no permanent… permanency in any relationship. And yet the mind wants it all the time, the feeling of belonging. So that is the factor of conditioning. Which is, through propaganda, newspapers, magazines, from the pulpit, the Church repeating over and over and over again for 2,000 years the mass, brought up in a particular culture that says there is God and there is the saviour, there is the mass, only that – repeat, repeat, repeat, and obviously at the end of 2,000 years you repeat it and you believe that there is God. 1:10:40 And in the communist world they repeat that there is no God, and they repeat it over and over and over again in every newspaper, say that’s a bourgeois idea, nonsense. And they say there is no God. There is not much difference between you who believe and those who don’t believe, because you are both the result of propaganda, tradition. |
| 1:11:21 So one becomes tremendously aware, not to rely or not to be influenced at all. Therefore you find out what it means not to be influenced. Please follow this. When you a read a newspaper, you are influenced consciously or unconsciously. When you read a novel, a book, influenced, pressure, strain, put into some category and forced. That is the whole purpose of propaganda, to buy a particular soap. It begins at school and you go right through life repeating what others have said. 1:12:33 And therefore you are never… therefore you are second-hand human beings. And how can such a second-hand human being find out something that is original, that is true? Therefore it is very important to understand what is conditioning and go into it very deeply. And as you look at it, you have the energy to break down all those conditionings that hold the mind. |
| 1:13:27 Perhaps as we have talked for an hour and a quarter – I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the time has gone by – perhaps you’d like to ask questions and so go deeply into this matter. Bearing in mind it’s very easy to ask questions, but to ask the right question is one of the most difficult things. Which doesn’t mean the speaker is preventing you from asking questions. Because we must ask questions, we must doubt everything everybody has said – the books, the religious authorities, everything we must question, doubt, be sceptical. 1:14:55 But also we must know when to let scepticism go by. And to ask the right question, because in that very question is the answer. So if you are willing – it doesn’t mean we want to prevent you from asking questions – if you are willing, please do. |
| 1:15:42 Questioner: Sir, are you crazy? |
| 1:15:47 K: Sir, are you crazy – is that the question? |
| 1:15:52 Is that the question? Are you asking the speaker if he is crazy? |
| 1:15:58 Q: Yes. |
| 1:16:01 K: Good. I wonder what you mean by that word ‘crazy’. Unbalanced, mentally ill, with peculiar ideas, unhealthy mentally, neurotic, off-balance – all that is implied in that word ‘crazy’. Now, who is to judge, you or somebody else, whether the speaker is crazy or not? Seriously, please, who is to judge? Will the crazy person judge who is crazy and who is not crazy? And – please follow this up a little more – if you judge, whether balanced or unbalanced, is judgment… is not judgment part of this craziness of this world? 1:17:32 To judge somebody, not knowing a thing about him, except the reputation, the image that you have about him. And if you judge according to the reputation, propaganda, this, that, all the things, then are you capable of judging? And the implication of judgment is vanity, whether the neurotic is vain or the sane man is vain it’s the same – vanity. Can vanity perceive what is true, or do you need great humility to look, to understand, to love? |
| 1:18:36 Sir, it’s one of the most difficult things to be sane in this abnormal, insane world. Sanity means to have no illusion whatsoever about oneself or about another. That is, to have no image at all about oneself. To say I am this, I am that, I am great, I am small, I am better, I am noble – all those are images about oneself. And when one has an image about oneself, one is surely insane; one lives in a world of illusion. And I am afraid most of us do. When you call yourself a Dutchman – forgive me for saying so – you are not quite balanced. You separate yourself, isolate yourself, as they do when they call themselves Hindu. These nationalistic, religious divisions, with their armies, with their priests, indicate a state of mental insanity. |
| 1:20:35 Q: …thinking in the opposite? |
| 1:20:41 K: How can you understand violence without having the opposite of it – is that the question? |
| 1:21:03 Ah – when the mind wants to stay with violence, it also invites the ideal of non-violence. |
| 1:21:15 Look, that’s very simple. I want to remain with violence, which is what I am, human beings are – brutal. I want to remain with it, but I have the tradition of 10,000 years which says don’t be violent, cultivate non-violence. So there is the fact that I’m violent and mind says, thought says, look, you must also be non-violent. Right? That’s my tradition, that’s my conditioning. How am I to be free of my conditioning so that I look, I remain only with violence and understand it, go through it and finish with it? Not only at the superficial level but also deep down, so-called at the unconscious level. How am I, how is the mind to… not to be caught in the ideal? Is that the question? Right, that’s the question. |
| 1:22:45 Madame, I haven’t finished with this question. I haven’t finished this question. Please… Monsieur. Je vous en pris… |
| 1:24:21 Sorry, please, sirs, do listen. We are not talking about Martin Luther King or Mr Gandhi or X, Y, Z. We are not concerned with these people at all. They have their ideals, their conditioning, their political ambitions, and I am not concerned with any of that. We are dealing with what we are – we – you and I. You and I, human beings – of that human being, you are. As a human being, we are violent. As a human being, we are conditioned through tradition and propaganda, culture, to have the opposite. We use the opposite when it suits us and we don’t use the opposite when it doesn’t suit us. 1:25:36 We use it politically or spiritually in different ways. We are saying, when the mind wants to stay with violence and understand it completely, the tradition, the habit comes in and interferes. It says, ‘Don’t be violent, you must have the ideal of non-violence’. You know, sir, that is one of the things that has been preached in India for 10,000 years; it isn’t something new. Only the newness of it is that it has been used politically. But it has been preached for – oh! – long before the Christian era. Even they said cultivate the opposite. |
| 1:26:50 Now, please, let me finish this question, give… You see, each one of us has his own question and is concerned with his question, how to put it, and is not listening to what is being said. I’m sorry, do please listen and put aside your particular question for the time being. You’ll have time to ask it either today, tomorrow and the next three other meetings. Have a little patience, please. |
| 1:27:29 There is the fact and there is the tradition. How am I… how is the mind to break away from the tradition in order to give all its attention to violence? That is the question. Right? Have you understood the question? There is the fact that I’m violence and there is the tradition which says I must not be, because it – etcetera. Now, then I will look not at violence but at the traditional only. You understand? If it interferes with my wanting to pay attention to violence, why does it interfere? Why does it come in? 1:28:34 Therefore my concern is not understanding violence but understanding the interference of tradition. You’ve got it? So I give my attention to that so that it doesn’t interfere. So I find out why – why does tradition play such an important part in one’s life? Which is, tradition being habit. Habit, whether it is the smoking habit, drinking habit, sexual habit, habit of speech, and so on – why do we live in habits? |
| 1:29:24 And are we aware of our habits? Are we aware of our traditions? If you are not completely aware, understand the tradition, the habit, the routine, then it is bound to impinge, interfere with that which you want to look at. So why does the mind cultivate and live in habits? – because it is one of the easiest things to live in habits. To call oneself a Hindu is a habit. But to break down implies great many things – I may lose my job, I may not marry my daughter to another beastly Hindu. I am using the word ‘beastly’ in the ordinary sense of that word – I’m not condemning it. 1:30:40 So I am afraid, because to live in habits gives me security, makes me feel certain, because all the other human beings are doing the same. To suddenly get up in a Dutch world and say, ‘I am not a Dutchman’ is a… – you might lose your job. You’ll certainly lose it if you are in the Catholic world and say, ‘I’m not a Catholic’. So there is fear. And if you say, ‘I am against this whole established order’, which is disorder, you’ll be thrown out. So you’re afraid, so you accept. 1:31:37 So tradition plays an extraordinarily important part in our life, to do the same thing over and over and over again. Have you ever tired to eat a different meal to which you are not accustomed to? Find out and you will see how your stomach, your tongue will rebel. Or if you are in the habit of smoking, repeat, repeat, repeat, and to break it up – oh! – you’ll spend years: fight it, fight it, fight it. |
| 1:32:21 So the mind finds security in habits – my wife, my family, my children, my house, my furniture. When you say, ‘My furniture’, you are that furniture. You will laugh, but when that particular furniture which you love is taken away from you, you get angry. You are that furniture, that house, that money, that flag, and to live in that is to live not only a shallow, stupid life but to live in routine and in boredom. And when you live in routine and boredom you must have violence. |
