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BR69D1 - How am I to become extraordinarily alert?
Brockwood Park, UK - 9 September 1969
Public Discussion 1



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s first public discussion at Brockwood Park, 1969.
0:10 Krishnamurti: Forgive me for sitting up here. Questioner: Sit down here.
0:18 K: This is supposed to be a dialogue, a discussion, an exchange between ourselves, of not mere ideas but our problems, and see if we cannot understand them and resolve them.
0:45 And so there must be freedom between us, freedom to express whatever you want.
0:59 And freedom to listen to others, not be so occupied with our own problems that we refuse or don’t have the patience to listen to others.
1:17 So, in order to communicate with each other there must be freedom, patience and a sense of deep, inward demand to comprehend, to understand.
1:42 And also to be able to face our problems, not merely remain at the intellectual, verbal level, but go into them very, very deeply, if we will, in this exchange of our feelings, our ideas, our opinions even, and expose ourselves, if we can, to each other – which is rather difficult.
2:18 Otherwise, I am afraid these dialogues or discussions will have very little meaning.
2:28 Can we discuss or exchange or talk with each other at that level, freely, with an intention to enquire into our own selves and problems and difficulties, and have the patience to listen to what others are saying?
3:00 And also to change our opinions, conclusions.
3:11 Can we proceed along those lines?
3:19 Q: Sir, to observe this dual process, does the mind function as a mirror?
3:37 To observe the observer, does the mind function as a mirror?
3:46 K: Must the mind function as a mirror to observe the observer. Is that what we all want to… is that one of the questions we would like to discuss?
4:01 Not that we should not discuss that, but perhaps if we put half a dozen questions together we might find the central issue which will cover all the other questions.
4:18 Can the mind observe, as in a mirror, the observer?
4:35 Because the observer brings about this contradiction, this space between the observer and the observed, this duality, this conflict, this struggle, and to understand the nature of the struggle, conflict, is it possible for the mind to observe the observer which makes this, which brings about this contradiction, this dual existence as the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’, both outwardly and inwardly?
5:23 Yes, sir?
5:25 Q: Could we look into the concern of people who think, who feel, that life has to have meaning?
5:38 K: Could we go into this question of significance or be concerned – you know, you have heard him, haven’t you?
5:58 Right. The enquiry into the significance of life, if there is such a thing.
6:09 Q: Another thing is that thought appears to be quite separate.
6:31 If one can become awake to what is happening in thought, it appears to be separate from the observer.
6:49 K: Need I repeat the questions, because it’s fairly small, so we can…
6:57 Need I repeat the question? No. All right.
7:01 Q: Could you also include the words ‘going deeply within’, which for me seems to bring in the observer all the time?
7:08 K: I beg your pardon.
7:09 Q: The words ‘going deeply within’.
7:10 K: Could we also discuss what it means to go deeply within.
7:15 Q: Sir, could we also discuss this question of energy?
7:29 It seems to me that the little energy we do have we fritter away in various automatic habits.
7:39 K: Yes.
7:40 Q: Could we talk about the use of drugs as a means of coming upon awareness? The use of drugs as a means of coming upon self-awareness, because it seems…
7:45 K: Drugs, the use of drugs, that might help to become more aware of oneself.
7:56 Q: Because it seems that so much of youth is involved in that now.
8:01 K: Yes. Now which questions shall we take?
8:07 Q: Energy.
8:12 Q: Energy.
8:17 Q: Drugs?
8:22 Q: One more to throw off: I wonder if the process of observation, when a certain characteristic comes up in me, in my life, and I go into it, you know, the best I know how or can, or as deeply or as clearly as I can, and then for the time being, under that observation, in seeing it, it dissolves or goes away, and then three days later, two days later, five minutes later, it’s there again, see?
9:02 K: [Laughs] Quite.
9:04 Q: And then maybe I look at it again or try to see it clearly again, and then maybe it dissolves again, but then, you know, again it comes back.
9:17 And the question coming out of this is then: is this really observation that’s been going on, if it comes back?
9:29 K: Quite.
9:30 Q: Is the problem really solved or is it just there within me all the time?
9:37 And then is this true work, or whatever you want to call it?
9:43 K: Shall we take... I beg your pardon.
9:45 Q: Could we maybe discuss whether one needs to be compensated in some way before one can go on to deal with the problem of duality? Does one have to have something like psychotherapy or something before one can reach a point where one can go forward?
10:11 K: I didn’t quite catch the meaning of that question, did you? Does one need to be compensated…
10:16 Q: …by psychotherapy.
10:19 Q: Through psychotherapy, first, go though psychotherapy.
10:23 K: Go through, first, psychotherapy in order to understand oneself?
10:29 Q: Must one be at a certain point of health or something before…?
10:34 K: Must one be at a certain point of health before one goes into this question. Now wait a minute, which shall we take? [Laughter] Q: That is interesting, sir, because so many people are neurotic or disturbed in specific ways which they have difficulties with.
10:56 K: Shall we take that?
10:59 Q: Shall we have a vote?
11:02 K: Take a vote! Oh, no, for God’s sake. [Laughter] Q: Have you had enough questions now?
11:06 K: I think we have had enough questions.
11:13 There are all those questions; can we take one of them that will cover the rest?
11:43 Q: ‘Just looking’, would that cover all of them?
11:58 K: All right, let’s take that question, shall we: must I be in perfect health, or fairly good health, in order to observe myself?
12:17 Perhaps if we take that we can cover the whole lot.
12:24 We’ll try.
12:35 Must I be in good health, fairly, in order to observe myself?
12:48 And out of that means, if I am ill, sick, I cannot look at myself.
13:04 And there is always some kind of trouble, physically: tummy ache, headache, over-tiredness, friction, strain, eating bad food, unhealthy food, and so on – there is always a little trouble going on, all the time, no?
13:31 One isn’t in a perfect health all the time, forever.
13:38 That would be nice if it could be possible but it isn’t.
13:43 Q: Sir, isn’t a great deal of this because we don’t give these small ills attention, because we let our imagination dwell on them and they become much larger than they really are?
14:01 K: Sir, is that the question? I’m just finding out whether an ill person – you know, ill, sick, he hasn’t the energy, he is battling, you know, physically, all the rest of it – he hasn’t the energy to look at himself.
14:20 But we are not in that state, we are not desperately ill. We are a little… we are not pink of health, we are always slightly on the verge of being ill, sick.
14:37 And such a mind, such a state, will it allow me to look at myself? Or that slight ill-health is going to become a barrier to looking at myself.
14:55 I have a headache today, will that prevent me from looking at myself?
15:02 Obviously not. I can look at myself though I have a headache. I can look at myself though I am exhausted. I can watch myself very carefully. I am tired but I am watching.
15:26 So when that question… with that question, if I am not balanced – here comes the difficulty.
15:35 Physically I allow myself to be somewhat ill, and perhaps in that state I can watch myself, but if I am not balanced, that is, psychologically as well as physically, that is psychosomatically, I am not really healthy, then can I look at myself?
15:55 That is the real question, isn’t it?
15:58 Q: And what if one is considerably not balanced?
16:05 K: Yes, we’ll go into that, we’ll go a little bit slowly into that.
16:10 Q: Sir, in order to look at yourself, mustn’t you be rid of all worry and all troubles?
16:26 Mustn’t you cut yourself off from the world, its troubles, your troubles, and look at yourself? Because if you have worry then you won’t be able to look at yourself.
16:29 K: You are saying, sir, are you, that one must completely retire from the world?
16:33 Q: And worry.
16:34 K: And worry and strain and trouble, so as to look at oneself.
16:38 Q: Just forget about it – that’s the thing.
16:40 K: That is, you are saying withdraw completely and look at oneself.
16:47 Is that possible? How do you discover yourself, what you are? Only in relationship, in communication with another.
16:58 Q: But I mean, if you do have the worries, I think it will be a lot harder. I mean, if you are worrying about you health…
17:06 K: Therefore then I have to watch my own worries, how they come about, whether they are self-created or being imposed, and so on, enquiring into that.
17:18 But to say, ‘No, I must withdraw from all worry and then look at myself,’ that’s impossible.
17:26 Even if you withdrew into a monastery [laughs] or became a beggar wandering about – not in Europe, at least, in India – you are still in communication with others.
17:45 So the question is really – as the lady puts it – if one is physically not too unwell, then one can watch oneself – that’s fairly simple – but if one is psychosomatically ill, that is, the mind affecting the body and the body affecting the mind, and slightly neurotic in that state, is it possible to watch myself?
18:16 Through a distortion – I am using different words; I hope we are communicating with each other – through somewhat of a psychosomatic disturbance, can I look at myself?
18:32 If it is very, very superficial I can, but if it is very deep I can’t.
18:39 Q: What about meditative love, won’t that shoot through everything?
18:48 What about meditative love, doesn’t that shoot through it all? Won’t it drive right through it all and clear everything?
18:57 K: Meditative love – will that not break through all the psychosomatic states and nerves and headaches and worries, and all the rest of it.
19:16 I don’t know what we mean by ‘meditative love’. I am not being supercilious, or…
19:28 How do I know what meditative love is? I don’t even know what love is, because I am in conflict, I am disturbed, I am anxious, I have got this neurotic state of mind, I don’t quite see things clearly.
19:50 I believe tremendously in something and therefore it brings about imbalance in myself.
19:58 How can I have this love and meditate when there is all this confusion in me, around me?
20:17 So can I, being somewhat neurotic, look at myself?
20:26 Will my neuroticism allow me to look at myself, whether it is very superficial or very deep?
20:37 And if it is very deep, mustn’t I have a therapy, both physical as well psychological?
20:45 And in that therapy I begin to discover myself.
20:52 And must I go to have that therapy, to an analyst, psychotherapeutical experts?
21:03 Please, sir, this is really quite a deep problem with human beings.
21:14 I find myself, or somebody tells me, I am neurotic. I don’t quite… you know, I can’t think clearly, I can’t see things clearly, I am confused, I am miserable, I try to be something I’m not, I am battling in myself, I want to be so many things, I can’t – I want love, I want some companionship, somebody to understand me.
21:47 And I know I am slightly or deeply unbalanced. If I know I am unbalanced then there is some chance.
21:59 But if I don’t know that I am unbalanced, I think I am positively right in my opinions, in my conclusions, in my outlook, then there is very little chance.
22:15 Then perhaps one may have to go to an analyst and go through all that misery of it. But if I am slightly aware of myself, because I know I am neurotic, I know I don’t see things clearly, I have been wounded in my youth, perhaps sexually, emotionally.
22:41 And that wound remains, it predominates everything else, shapes my outlook.
22:59 And that memory of all that is so strong it throws everything out of line.
23:12 Then what am I to do with that memory, which may have been contributed by the family, by the father, the mother, the environment, all the rest of it, the college, all that – how am I to be rid of that wound, that conditioning?
23:42 Q: And not only that, sir – I can’t find the memory.
23:47 K: Therefore, if I can’t find the memory, what am I to do?
23:53 Q: Or I mistake it. I am looking at the wrong thing.
24:00 K: Yes, I look at the wrong thing, I don’t know the memory, what has wounded me or what has disturbed me, why I am like this – I don’t know.
24:14 Then what am I to do?
24:23 And I have lived many years – I’ve taken to drink, I’ve taken to drugs, I’ve been analysed for the last ten years, spent enormous sums of money, if I have it, and they have all been trying to help me out of this conditioning.
24:46 Q: To live in the present absolutely. Perhaps to live in the present.
24:57 K: Madame, how can I live in the present when I am...? Put yourself, please, in that position.
25:11 I mean, we are all fairly neurotic in one way or another, and we may not know it.
25:18 And when I do know it, that I am slightly unbalanced or deeply unbalanced, can I be aware of it?
25:28 Can I see that I am unbalanced – sexually, physically, emotionally – I believe in one thing and I will fight, resist, anybody who questions that belief, and so on and on and on – can I become aware of this?
25:53 Or must you show it to me? Am I willing to look at it? You say, ‘My dear friend, you are neurotic there, you are holding on, watch it.’ Can I listen to you?
26:11 Or I say, ‘Well, you’re not good enough, you are too prejudiced, I know you, you are my friend and I can’t listen to you.
26:21 I must go to a doctor, specialist.’ Q: It seems to me, sir, that the really essential factor in psychotherapy is not the knowledge and experience of the analyst but the freedom which exists in that relationship.
26:39 K: There! That is the question, isn’t it? Freedom. Am I free to listen?
26:45 Q: Yes.
26:46 K: Or am I resisting?
26:50 Q: Yes. [Pause] Q: If you are free to listen, you have already made a step.
27:17 K: Quite right, but you see, already I am breaking through.
27:30 But if I don’t listen…
27:35 Q: What about the drug? Would that help you to listen?
27:42 K: That is the question that lady was putting. Would a drug help me? Will it? To look at myself, to look at my fear, at my neuroticism?
27:59 Or the drug gives me an artificial experience.
28:04 Q: Sometimes that experience helps you to look at yourself.
28:11 K: Sometimes it helps you to look at yourself, it is said. Therefore I depend on the drug.
28:18 Q: You don’t have to.
28:19 K: No. Wait, sir, not ‘have to’. All right. I take the drug – LSD or whatever I take – and it helps me to watch myself.
28:36 And the watching fades away, I can’t watch myself all the time.
28:45 All my old condition comes up and prevents me from looking at myself because I’m afraid to look at myself.
28:56 The drug may help me to quieten that fear so I can look, but the fear is there.
29:04 Q: The fear is there but sometimes it is an unknown, and sometimes the drug kind of brings it out into the air.
29:13 K: Yes, sir, that is what we are saying. Sometimes it may help one to bring it out.
29:18 Q: Yes, that’s all I’m saying about it.
29:22 K: Yes. But that’s not good enough. Surely that’s not good enough. I can take a drink sometimes and become relaxed, all my conditioning breaks down.
29:37 But that is a very short process.
29:42 Q: After the drug has worn off you forget everything. You’d forget it, wouldn’t you? Would you forget what you have learnt during the drug?
29:53 K: Probably not. I don’t know if you have taken it; I have not taken it. The fact, I feel, to depend on something for perception – chemically, or repetition of words, or a drink, and so on – to depend on something indicates that there is fear already.
30:23 And that fear is exaggerated, sustained by dependence.
30:29 Q: Well, we talk about drugs and I think that we don’t have a clear idea what we mean.
30:36 I think that we have prejudices. We say, ‘Well, this is a drug, and this we call natural.’ And I think something like fresh air can be a drug also.
30:46 For instance, we might be living in a city like New York and say, ‘Well, I’m not able to see clearly and it’s because of this air. I have to get out in the country and take that fresh air.’ And to me that’s a drug, as well as chocolate, or anything.
30:59 I mean, anything that we reach out for in order to change, in order to become more sensitive, we can, I think, look at as a drug.
31:21 K: Sir, fasting – I don’t know if you have ever fasted, just for the fun of it – if you have, it gives you a certain perception, you become much more clear.
31:37 If you do it for a few days only, not if you do it for forty days, then it becomes much more difficult, then that’s quite a different problem.
31:45 If you have fasted for a few days, it makes the body extraordinarily sensitive, alert, watchful.
31:55 And will you keep that up in order to watch yourself all the time, become more sharp, fast every two weeks?
32:04 Q: Sir? A drug is supposed to be a kind of vehicle to take you to yourself, through all your inhibitions, your fears and all.
32:28 But if you go through a drug and go through all your inhibitions, your fears, the things that keep you from knowing yourself, you may know it then, but I think you would have a long term lasting effect if you went through them yourself without drugs, or anything.
32:46 If you went through the fears, got to know them, which you don’t with drugs, really, I don’t think – I don’t know – but if you went through the fears, you got to know them, and you finally reached yourself, wouldn’t you know yourself a bit more?
33:05 I mean wouldn’t you not have to go every day or something to a drug to find out?
33:14 I mean, if you reached yourself at last, wouldn’t you know yourself far better if you, you know, went through your fears?
33:16 K: Yes, sir, I understand. You are saying by taking drugs constantly you might help yourself to know more and more and more and more.
33:24 Q: But what I am saying, if you also do it yourself without any drugs. I mean, with the drug, you get to yourself, I guess – I don’t know – but you don’t see the fears, your inhibitions, you don’t see what is blocking it, you just get to there, you don’t see what’s blocking it.
33:39 If you understand what is blocking it, I think you might understand your mind a wee bit better.
33:44 K: This chap was saying just now that we are prejudiced.
33:52 We say drugs are not good because we are prejudiced against drugs, and so he said – like air and so on – is it prejudice?
34:03 Q: I guess it is.
34:04 K: You think it is? Mary Zimbalist: Sir, isn’t he saying that if you come to a perception of yourself without drugs that it has a more lasting effect, perhaps?
34:24 K: That’s what we are saying, that’s what we are saying. I think that is what he is saying.
34:28 Q: It seems when you are saying ‘drugs’, you know, you have this image of this excess and not this image of using drugs as a means and not having drugs use you as a means...
34:43 K: I understand, sir – taking little by little, and so on.
34:47 Q: Even that seems to me…
34:50 K: No, put it in any way you like, any way. Which is more simple and direct? I am in relationship with my wife, friend, whatever it is – I am in relationship.
35:10 And why cannot I use that relationship to watch myself? Why should I take a drug? There it is right in front of me. There it is, my life. Every minute I’m living in relationship.
35:23 Q: But as we said before, you know, we’re neurotic, I’m neurotic.
35:27 K: Ah – wait a minute, sir. So, I am neurotic. Why should I take a drug when there is a much more direct, simple way of looking at myself, which is in my relationship?
35:41 Will a drug help me to get over my neuroticism? For the time being, you are saying it might help.
35:52 Q: I say it might take you a step ahead so that you can stop taking drugs and then continue, you know...
35:59 K: I understand this, sir, I understand. So you are saying, take it for a while, take it once, take it so as to get over the…
36:10 Q: Maybe.
36:11 K: Maybe.
36:12 Q: Maybe this happens, maybe not.
36:14 K: I really don’t know.
36:15 Q: But relationship only goes so far. There’s a pattern to it; it’s blocked. You see the same things over and over, so how can you learn from that?
36:42 K: Is there not a way of looking at myself in a much more simple and direct way?
36:54 Must I go through all these means – you follow? – drugs or something else? I’m asking myself. If I have no drugs what shall I do to look at myself?
37:10 Q: Well, I think that life itself is the only means, and whether life includes what we call drugs or anything, it’s still life and it’s still the only means we have of looking at ourself.
37:29 K: Then I’ll use everything – that is what you call life.
37:37 Q: If you exclude anything then what you are doing is just excluding.
37:45 K: No, no. No, I am not excluding. I don’t say, ‘I will never take drugs.’ There are drugs, there are ways of escaping from oneself – entertainment, cinemas, books, all kinds of things which are part of life.
38:06 And I am not excluding anything but I’m saying to myself, must I go through any of these particular things?
38:14 Is there not a much more simple and direct way of looking at myself, without exclusion?
38:21 I don’t exclude drug, I don’t exclude sex, I don’t exclude anything, but I say, ‘Look, let’s look, find out if there is not a simpler way.’ Q: Surely, sir, speaking for myself, and I think for most of us, one of the dangers of drugs, being actual chemicals, or a religion, or a technique, is that we begin to depend on these.
38:53 K: Of course, sir.
38:54 Q: And the more we go on, the more we depend on them. And this becomes a screen.
39:01 K: So let’s come back to the question, sir. I am fairly neurotic, I am aware of it. That neuroticism has been brought about through various causes. Here I am. I am slightly unbalanced. Either I know it or I don’t know it. If I know it, I can deal with it. If I don’t know it, what am I to do? There are the two questions.
39:38 Right?
39:39 Q: Can I deal with it if I know it?
39:46 I know it, but can I deal with it?
39:48 K: Now, I know...
39:49 Q: I don’t know it; can I deal with it?
39:50 K: Oh, my! If I don’t know it, what am I to do? I don’t know it! How can I deal with it? If I don’t know that I am slightly off, what am I to do?
40:04 I won’t listen to anybody – that’s part of my neurotic state – I won’t listen to my mother, to you or to anybody.
40:12 What am I to do? I then begin to suffer. If it is a very bad neurosis then I have a pretty bad time. So that’s one thing. If I know it, then my problem is quite different. What am I to do? Drug? Analysis?
40:39 Q: Someone like this is very dependent on other people.
40:53 K: Yes, dependent on other people, and so on. You follow? So what am I to do?
40:59 Q: Well, I think that when we learn something, when we see something, when we know something, that is change.
41:10 K: It’s not quite so easy, sir. I know I don’t like people. I dislike people. That is part of my neurosis. I have been hurt by people, people have brutalised me – school, sex, ten different ways have made me brutal.
41:37 I know I am a hard, cruel entity. All right, I know it. I can’t get rid of it by knowing it. Then I want to find out how to get rid of it, how to become fairly quiet, gentle, and all the rest of it.
41:53 What am I to do when I know that I am neurotic? That is the question we are discussing.
42:05 Can I undo all the damage that has been done to me?
42:12 Q: You mentioned suffering, sir, and it seems to me that for many people that becomes a central issue because they struggle to get out of the suffering.
42:22 K: Yes, sir, that is it. We are putting the same thing in different words, aren’t we – the conflict, the pain, the confusion, the misery that it’s causing.
42:35 And yet I know I am neurotic. It is there, the seed is there, which is producing all these things.
42:44 So how am I to be rid of it?
42:46 Q: Well, you’ve often spoken, sir, of the need to see that we must change totally.
42:55 And you’ve also spoken of the fact that we have to look at ourselves without wanting to change what we see.
43:02 K: Yes.
43:03 Q: Isn’t there some kind of contradiction there?
43:05 K: Is there?
43:07 Q: To me there is. I don’t fully understand that.
43:13 K: Can I look at one thing so completely that includes everything in that?
43:22 Wait, sir, let’s go slowly. Now, here I am. I am aware that I am neurotic and I know the cause of this neuroticism – right? – this imbalance.
43:39 I know it. Now what am I to do? The knowing, merely, doesn’t dissolve it. The discovery that I am neurotic because my father, mother, did something to me, or my neighbour did something, or my wife did something to me – I know it but yet I go on.
44:07 Then what am I to do? Like a compulsive eater, he has to eat an enormous quantity all the time.
44:20 He is a compulsive, he knows it. People have told him, ‘Do watch it, it’s silly,’ but he goes on.
44:26 Q: It seems to have a momentum.
44:33 And is there something which gives it the momentum, which has to stop?
44:39 K: Look, sir, let’s try this.
44:51 Each one of us must know his own peculiar kink, if one does.
44:58 Knowing it, let us see if the cause, which has brought this about, will the understanding of the cause end this?
45:09 Q: Sir, do we really understand the cause of it? We see a superficial cause and we think we have seen the cause. Is there a cause in that sense?
45:22 K: Is there one cause?
45:29 There are ten different causes, maybe.
45:30 Q: There may be billions of causes that bring about this one thing.
45:37 K: Yes, yes.
45:39 Q: And do we understand the purpose of what we do – not the cause but the purpose of feeling, of our neurosis, of our behaviour, of our hatred and so forth, whatever it is?
45:49 K: Yes. Yes.
45:51 Q: But wouldn’t the psychologists say that we knew it then only intellectually, not dynamically, we hadn’t lived…
46:01 K: Now, that’s the point, that’s the point. When we say, ‘I know it, I know the cause of it’ – and it is one of the most difficult things to say, ‘One cause has produced this’ – it may be ten different causes.
46:20 And there is something much more involved in this – don’t let’s go into that for the moment whether it is cause-effect – cause-effect is so definite.
46:35 Or the cause becomes the effect and the effect becomes the cause, all the time going on.
46:42 Well, that’s quite a different matter. Let’s look at this. Can I, knowing the cause – knowing in the sense merely intellectually – dissolve it?
47:04 I say I can’t. And I have to find a way of dissolving it completely, and what is that?
47:14 Q: Don’t we have to look at it in action?
47:23 K: Yes. Don’t we have to look at it in action. I feel angry, violent, and I hit you. Must I go to that extent?
47:33 Q: No, but one knows that if one looks at anger happening at the time, the anger dissolves.
47:44 K: Yes. So we are discussing, sir, a little more... Our question is: mere knowing the cause and the effect and all that doesn’t... Therefore, as that person put it, he said, ‘I must feel it, I must enter, it must be’ – I don’t know, whatever the word – ‘dynamic, or I must have tremendous feeling about it.’ I haven’t got it.
48:13 What am I to do? I can see intellectually why I am in this state, and there I stop.
48:25 How am I to feel this thing so strongly that I do something about it?
48:33 Q: In psychotherapy the idea seems to be that one forms a relationship in which one goes inside of this because somebody else is going inside it with you.
48:51 K: Yes, you mean someone else is also helping you to go into this whole business.
49:03 Someone else, whether it is the guru, whether it is the psychoanalyst, it is your friend. Someone is helping you.
49:10 Q: Sir…
49:12 K: Now, wait a minute, sir. Isn’t this what is being done now? Don’t call it group therapy. Isn’t this what is going on now?
49:33 Q: The ‘going on now’, you mean here?
49:37 K: Here, here.
49:39 Q: Yes.
49:40 K: You say to me I am neurotic. And I listen to you and I say, ‘Yes, you’re perfectly right,’ and I know it intellectually.
49:54 And you say, ‘Don’t look at it intellectually, let’s go into it more, together, deeply, emotionally, dynamically, feel it.’ And you are helping me.
50:13 But I reach a point where you can’t help me any more.
50:26 Q: Sir, is that not a step one must do away with, aids and escapes, to start with?
50:38 Aids and escapes must be out of the way.
50:40 K: Now I’ve reached a point I see I must tackle it deep, in the sense I must feel it with all my heart, with my whole being.
50:52 You have helped me to come to that point. All right. After that I have to do it myself. Right?
50:59 Q: But, sir, one feels often one lacks the energy.
51:07 K: We’ll come to that. Wait a minute, we are coming to that. I am just coming to that. You have helped me to watch myself. You have helped me to be aware of my neuroticism. You have helped me; together gone into this up to a certain point. All that has required energy, attention. If I wasn’t listening to you, I would be out. I’m listening to you because I really want to solve this problem. It is a tremendous burden for me. I can’t get on with people. I’m in tears, I am miserable, I am unhappy. And you have helped me to come to that point, first intellectually, then a little more deeply.
51:56 And I am there, and you can’t help me any more.
52:05 Right? Can you help me to go much deeper? Or can only help me up to a certain point?
52:13 Q: I don’t understand what is this point.
52:26 How do I know this point?
52:27 K: How do I know this point, that nobody can help me beyond that point. How do I know? I have tried, I’ve experimented, I’ve tested.
52:36 Q: But, sir, it can be of tremendous value to be helped up to that point.
52:49 K: Granted, granted.
52:50 Q: I question that even, you know, perhaps because we start out with the idea of someone helping us…
52:58 K: I’m coming to that, madame, you’ll see it in a minute. See what is involved in this question! What is involved in this question is: you have helped me to a point.
53:08 Q: Sir? Sorry, but once this person helped you, isn’t there a danger that you might be dependent on him, and that you don’t really do it yourself.
53:18 You go on to new people.
53:22 K: I am questioning the whole method, sir! I am saying to myself, you are supposed to have helped me, you have led me, we have walked together up to a certain point.
53:37 Q: Right. But then wouldn’t you be dependent on me when we get to that point?
53:42 K: So why can’t I realise this at the very beginning? Why should I go through all this to come to that point?
53:51 Q: Sir, no one in the world can help you...
53:58 K: No, no, don’t say that! You have helped me! You have helped me to realise that you can’t help me.
54:13 Q: Can the...
54:14 K: No, do see that point, sir. Please have the patience. We have walked together. You have pointed out the dangers. You have shown it to me very clearly, my states, both verbally, non-verbally, you have held my hand, you have said, ‘My dear chap, let’s walk together.’ You have done everything.
54:43 And I realise that very little, or only a certain point, up to a certain degree, so suddenly I realise myself, why should I have your help at all?
54:58 Why didn’t I do it at the beginning myself?
55:09 Why must I go through all this help, you know, why can’t I do this myself, right from the beginning?
55:20 Q: But if one sees that, then one has reached a certain intelligence.
55:24 K: Therefore, what does that mean? Can my neurotic state see that point?
55:36 Drug, analyst, sunshine, nudidity [laughs], all the rest of the dozen things that are offered – group therapy, individual therapy, sitting together for twenty-four hours – they are doing all these things – feeling more sensitive by touching each other, touching the grass – all that.
56:10 So, must I go through all this?
56:22 Some people may say, ‘Sorry, I need all that.’ If you want to do that, all right.
56:31 But I am saying to myself, ‘My God, must I go through this?’ Touch you to become sensitive?
56:41 Go to college to become sensitive?
56:50 And I overeat, indulge sexually, do all kinds of things in order to destroy my sensitivity, and then I take a drug to become sensitive, and carry on – you follow?
57:02 It’s crazy!
57:03 Q: It’s just different sorts of drugs.
57:07 K: Therefore, I am saying to myself, how am I to become so extraordinarily alert to my own neurotic state?
57:26 You have pointed out to me, everything tells me – the newspaper, the books, my friend, my wife – everybody is pointing out how unbalanced I am; and I listen to it.
58:00 So what will give me the energy, the drive, the intensity to say, ‘Well, I won’t have…
58:07 I’ll start right away. I’ll go through myself right from the beginning’?
58:16 Q: Maybe the crisis can’t solve itself, but it seems to of its own accord reach a crisis.
58:36 Does that mean anything? Does a crisis mean anything, in relation to…?
58:45 K: Crisis means a shock, sir, a challenge, something that demands your attention.
58:57 Crisis is only possible when there is a challenge. And if you respond to it actively, adequately, the crisis is not a crisis.
59:10 But I can’t; I am weak.
59:14 Q: Doesn’t the very ‘wanting to’ give you the energy?
59:21 K: There is only one thing that will give me energy?
59:26 Q: No, the wanting.
59:29 K: The wanting. The wanting, will that give me energy? The very ‘want’ is a waste of energy. Wanting. I want energy. Now, wait a minute, can we discuss that for the moment? How to bring about energy. That’s the question you asked, somebody asked, how to focus, how to bring all energy into this.
59:57 Q: The passionate desire to understand oneself brings the energy.
1:00:22 K: Desire to understand oneself.
1:00:24 Q: The intense desire to understand myself brings the energy.
1:00:27 K: You see, I understand the question, but…
1:00:33 Q: The looking on at unhappiness in the world and the knowledge that this needn’t be.
1:00:48 K: Intense desire to understand oneself. I haven’t the desire. I want to escape from myself.
1:01:00 Q: Yes, that’s the point, sir.
1:01:03 K: Yes, sir.
1:01:05 Q: Intention.
1:01:06 K: And the whole world is helping me to escape from myself – the religions, the books, the philosophers, the analysts.
1:01:18 Everybody says, ‘My dear chap, run away. For God’s sake, don’t look.’ [Laughter] And you say, ‘I must have desire.’ How does this desire come?
1:01:39 Desire is a greater sensation.
1:01:49 I desire to look at myself, and in the looking at myself I’ll have greater pleasure.
1:01:57 Otherwise I won’t have desire. If there is no reward at the end of it, why should I have a desire?
1:02:03 Q: Is it possible to be in pain and not desire to be out of pain?
1:02:17 K: Sir, if you have got a toothache, it is a natural thing to get rid of it, isn’t it?
1:02:28 Q: Yes.
1:02:29 K: And sometimes you can’t – headache or whatever it is – you can’t. You take aspirin, this or that or whatever you take, and it goes on – what do you do then?
1:02:44 Q: You suffer the pain. You just suffer.
1:02:51 K: No, no. Wait! Look at it! Don’t say, ‘Just suffer’ – go into it a little bit. If you identify yourself with this suffering there is conflict, isn’t there? I don’t know if you are...
1:03:08 Q: That’s the suffering, the conflict.
1:03:12 K: You say, ‘All right, I’ll watch the pain, I’ll watch it.’ Unless it is unbearable – then I either lose consciousness or take some drug, tranquilliser and so on.
1:03:30 But it is not so violently painful, therefore I watch it.
1:03:38 I don’t identify myself with it – not ‘I’, you know what I mean – there is no identification. They say, ‘My God, I must get rid of it’ – fight it, resist it.
1:03:51 Q: Is acceptance resistance?
1:03:53 K: No, sir, don’t… Sir, have you ever noticed, if a dog is barking all the time and you can’t do anything about it, what do you do?
1:04:08 Resist it?
1:04:10 Q: Often.
1:04:11 K: What happens then? You are fighting it and you become more and more and more awake.
1:04:17 Q: Can’t it go the other way round so that one becomes more dull to it?
1:04:25 K: So what do you do?
1:04:26 Q: You can listen to it.
1:04:28 K: Which means what? Don’t resist it; listen to it. Don’t fight it; go with it.
1:04:45 In India this happens often, a dog is barking for hours.
1:04:52 Either you fight it or you go with it, join it.
1:05:00 So in the same way, if there is great pain – unless it is unbearable, that is one thing – if it is painful, I go with it.
1:05:13 There is no resistance. They say, ‘My God, I must get rid of it immediately.’ So we come to the point: how can I have this energy, the vitality, the intensity of that energy which makes me observe so intensely?
1:05:46 Q: I think if something is important enough to the security, the peace of mind, the well-being of the brain, then the energy is concentrated there.
1:06:17 And if it is not important enough then the energy will not be there.
1:06:22 K: So you are saying, sir, if the thing is important enough, there is the energy.
1:06:28 Q: Yes.
1:06:29 Q: But all I know is the wanting to observe it to get over it.
1:06:39 K: Yes. The question before you put that question, there is this question: if you are interested in getting rid or trying to understand fear, then you have the energy.
1:06:58 Right? That is what you are saying. But I am not interested.
1:07:03 Q: I didn’t say interest. I mean, I didn’t say intellectual interest.
1:07:09 K: No, no. Sir, that is what I mean. How do you bring about this vital interest in me to face fear?
1:07:19 And therefore we say, ‘Take a drug, then it will help you,’ or do various things that will help you to look, to be really involved in it.
1:07:30 Q: I come to a point where even my mind puts the fear, for instance, into words. And I see that even my mind is sort of an analyst.
1:07:55 K: Quite.
1:07:57 Q: It cannot help me any further.
1:08:07 K: So the question, we have now come to the point: how do I have enough energy – and I need energy to look at myself, whether I am… myself is neurotic, unbalanced, fear, whatever it is, I need energy.
1:08:33 Q: May I ask why, sir?
1:08:41 I have often felt I don’t quite see why we need energy to look.
1:08:54 K: Energy means attention, doesn’t it? To attend. [Sound of aeroplane] Now, there is that aeroplane – to listen to it without resistance, to listen to it completely without any resistance is attention.
1:09:16 Q: Attention.
1:09:17 K: Isn’t it?
1:09:18 Q: Yes.
1:09:19 K: Otherwise I’ll resist it, I’ll say, ‘For goodness sake, I want to listen to find out what is being said’ – I’ll resist it.
1:09:26 But to listen to that noise completely you need attention.
1:09:32 Q: Yes.
1:09:33 K: Therefore energy, focused to listen. Doesn’t matter, call it any other word.
1:09:41 Q: But, I mean, does it use up energy?
1:09:44 K: No, on the contrary. If I resist it, I lose energy. If I attend to it completely, listen to that aeroplane wholly, I’ve much more energy.
1:10:04 It is only when I resist it, when I am inattentive, when I say, ‘Well...’ – you know?
1:10:07 Q: Well, that’s what uses the energy.
1:10:12 K: The inattention wastes energy.
1:10:14 Q: And the attention brings energy.
1:10:17 K: Brings energy. Is energy. It doesn’t dissipate it. On the contrary, it builds up more and more. Not ‘more and more’ – leave comparison.
1:10:29 Q: Yes, well, I see that, sir. Before it sounded as though you were saying that you must find a lot of energy before you can look.
1:10:35 K: No, no, no, on the contrary.
1:10:37 Q: No.
1:10:38 K: So can I attend so completely in observing, to observe?
1:10:50 Then the problem arises: is the observer different from the thing observed?
1:10:58 Which was the question raised from the beginning. If there is attention, all energy focused in looking, is there an observer?
1:11:15 If there is an observer, then there is inattention [laughs].
1:11:23 Because the observer resists, he has got his prejudices, his opinions, he is saying, ‘This is good, I’ll keep; this is bad, I don’t want it.’ He is fighting it, for pleasure, for pain, avoiding or accumulating.
1:11:40 And that is a dissipation of energy. Right? So can I attend without the observer?
1:11:56 I do when I see the truth of this. You follow? When I see actually that it is a wastage of energy to look with the observer – when the observer looks it’s a wastage of energy.
1:12:13 So can I listen to you freely – it doesn’t matter who it is, young, old, whatever – can I listen freely?
1:12:31 No opinions, no conclusions, saying, ‘You’re right’ – listen, as I listen to that aeroplane, with great attention.
1:12:44 No, not ‘great’ – I listen to it. There is no attention – I listen to it freely. When you tell me I am a fool, I listen to it without reacting.
1:13:05 The reaction is the observer.
1:13:14 Q: In that state does the mind then function as a mirror?
1:13:33 K: In that state is the mind like a mirror.
1:13:43 The mirror that reflects? Mirror only reflects. Surely it is not reflecting.
1:14:00 When it looks at the tree, the tree is not imprinted on the mirror.
1:14:19 So what have I learnt this morning? [Laughs] We must stop because it is getting late. What have I learnt this morning? I have learnt – I am learning, rather – that deeply nobody can help me.
1:14:46 That’s a tremendous realisation.
1:14:53 The helper, whoever wants to help me, he is helping me according to his conditioning. He says, ‘I know better than you do, old boy, let me help you.’ Or, ‘I’ll help you, I’ll be your companion, to walk together.
1:15:09 We’ll watch things together,’ which means I depend on him.
1:15:17 I need someone to support me, in walking.
1:15:24 And I have discovered, if I have to do something ultimately by myself, why don’t I begin right from the beginning, not wait?
1:15:45 I can’t do it because I am frightened, I want support, I want security, I want somebody to tell me, ‘You’re doing very well, old boy, carry on.’ And I have seen that any form of resistance – any form, outwardly or inwardly – any form of resistance is a wastage of energy.
1:16:27 I have an opinion about something or other – prime minister or the Labour Party, or I don’t know, whatever it is – I have an opinion – that there is or there is no God, that this is right, this is wrong – and I am unwilling to change it.
1:16:47 That’s a resistance. And when you say something which is an opinion, your opinion, can I listen to it without resisting, and change because what you say is true?
1:17:04 So I find… not to have opinions at all.
1:17:18 So I see that where there is attention there is an abundance of energy.
1:17:27 And that energy is attention, and that can look, observe without the observer.
1:17:42 The observer is the conditioned entity, the reaction, the resistance. I’ve seen this very clearly, not intellectually but deeply – you know, feel it.
1:17:54 Therefore I’m going to watch if there is any form of resistance creeping up, and I know what to do.
1:18:03 Now I am free to listen.
1:18:11 Free to listen and therefore free, all the time changing.
1:18:21 We had better stop. It’s on Thursday, isn’t it? Right.