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BR69T2 - Why are we not completely aware of the psychological dangers in which we live?
Brockwood Park, UK - 7 September 1969
Public Talk 2



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s second public talk at Brockwood Park, 1969.
0:08 Krishnamurti: Several years ago, a group of people, international, wanted to start a school, and out of that, after considerable investigation and thinking the matter over, we found it must be in England, not in France, Switzerland, in Holland, but here.
0:37 And this place was found for the school.
0:44 And it is not a community in the sense of people living together or brought together for an idea or a principle, or living, sharing their property and so on, and all that kind of thing – it is not a community but it is essentially a school which will be gradually built up to about forty students.
1:15 I hope somebody who is responsible for the school is listening and correcting me if I am wrong.
1:25 There will be about forty students, both boys and girls, international, and the right kind of teachers.
1:37 And every year there will be a meeting like this, either in the spring or late summer, under this tent or whatever its called, and there will also be small gatherings, which will not be in the tent – will be in the big room in the house.
2:06 It will hold about 300, where we can discuss more directly, more intimately, more informally.
2:18 And I hope this is informal here, this morning. What the education is going to be is quite a different matter. That is going to be quite a problem, because the students will be from the age of 15 onwards, up, till they go to a university, or they may not go to a university, or do something else entirely different, but that is the idea, from 15 on.
2:54 We have been discussing about it. What is the point of education at all?
3:06 Is it merely to cultivate the capacity of memory, passing examinations and getting a job, and all the rest of that business, mechanical, rather shallow, empty?
3:27 Or is education something entirely different, plus the technological knowledge – not necessarily passing exams but be prepared to pass exams – again subject to correction from the authorities here.
3:50 I have got an approval of what is being said.
4:05 Of course, in the school, the ordinary curriculum – mathematics, geography, history, language and science and physics and all that will be taught, but something more.
4:17 The ‘more’ is the problem.
4:24 Unless we feel that we understand the whole significance of living and the meaning of life, totally, not merely passing exams, getting a job, getting married, founding a family and fitting into society or not fitting into society, and all that.
4:53 But what is the meaning of all this, meaning of existence, meaning of living?
5:00 Without really understanding that fundamentally, deeply, education has very little meaning.
5:11 What the present society offers as education is a form of violence – is that all right?
5:29 – where the passing of examinations, competition, ambitious drive and all that, this comparing one student against another and destroying the thing that you have compared with, is a form of competitive, ruthless, destructive way of living.
6:00 And what we want to do here is to find out how to live in the world, not apart from it, but yet be non-competitive, but have the drive, the energy, the intensity, without the ambition.
6:32 And that demands a great deal of intelligence on our part, on the part of the teachers, the staff.
6:44 And whether we can manage this depends on us, The responsibility is ours.
6:53 And the school is going to begin on the 20th or 22nd of this month. Is that right? And we want eventually, as there are two schools in India with which I am fortunately or unfortunately connected, this school here and those two schools will be amalgamated, joined or merged, or whatever the word is – interchange of teachers, students and so on.
7:39 So, it is not just a community in the ordinary accepted sense of that word, but a school in which, if this thing can be taught to the student, or create an atmosphere in which the sense of non-dual existence can be cultivated.
8:07 And that is what we intend, and we are going to do it. It isn’t just an idea floating in the air, and we trying to succeed or not succeed.
8:19 We want to do it and we shall do it, and that’s that. Right? Please, if there are any questions about the school and what this place is for and all that, please ask, and I hope you will receive right answers.
8:43 Questioner: What do you mean exactly by non-dual existence?
8:49 K: What do I mean exactly by non-dualistic existence. I have been trying to explain that yesterday.
8:57 Q: [Inaudible] K: Perhaps we shall go into it again today.
9:11 I think one of our major problems is to be sensitive, sensitive not only to one’s own idiosyncrasies and fallacies and troubles but also to be sensitive of others.
9:55 And more and more, one lives in this mechanical world, in this world of very little meaning – the job, the success, the competition, the ambition, the social status, the prestige, and all that, does make for insensitivity to the psychological dangers.
10:28 One is aware of the danger of insecurity, physical insecurity, not having enough money, proper health, clothes and shelter, and so on.
10:45 One is fairly sensitive about all that.
10:55 And one has naturally to be sensitive. But inwardly, the whole psychological structure of ourselves, one is hardly aware of the structure of oneself.
11:18 And there, one feels one lacks great finesse, sensitivity, intelligence to deal with the psychological, inward problems.
11:39 Please don’t be so solemn. Please, I am not a preacher.
11:52 Sitting on a platform doesn’t give me any authority.
12:02 And please don’t treat this as a means of letting off your emotional states, getting devoted and emotional, sentimental about the person sitting on the platform.
12:20 That has no value at all.
12:27 So, what we are saying is: why is it that we are not as aware of the psychological dangers as we are of the physical dangers?
12:51 We are aware of the pitfalls, precipices, poison, snake, wild animal, or we are aware of war, of the destructive nature of it, outwardly.
13:05 Why is it that we are not completely aware inwardly of all the psychological dangers in which we live – like nationalism, the danger of conflict within oneself, the danger of ideologies, concepts, formulas, the danger of accepting authority of any kind, the danger of this constant battle between human beings, however closely, intimately, they are related – why aren’t we aware of all that danger?
14:09 And if some of us are aware of those dangers, how do we deal with them?
14:17 Either we escape from them, suppress them, or try to forget them, or leave it to time to resolve them.
14:35 We do all this because we don’t know what to do.
14:42 Or, as we are people who have read a great deal, we try to apply what others have said.
15:03 So there is never a direct contact with the problem, with the psychological danger directly.
15:12 It is always through somebody, or try to overcome it, suppress it, try to force ourselves to understand it.
15:27 It is never a direct look, a direct communion with the issue.
15:38 And of course the whole modern structure of psychology and the psychologists and the analysts who tell us what we are.
15:56 ‘Study the animal and you will understand yourself better.’ We are the result of the animal, obviously, but we have to understand ourself, not through the animal, or through Freud or Jung or all the specialists, but actually what we are.
16:19 Understand it, not through somebody’s eyes but with our own eyes, with our own heart, with our own mind.
16:30 And when we do that, all sense of following another, all sense of authority comes to an end.
16:39 And I think that is very important. Then we do something directly for its own sake, not because somebody else tells us.
16:55 And I think that is the beginning of what it means to love.
17:09 So can we be aware or become sensitive to the dangers, psychologically to the dangers that we have so carefully cultivated?
17:29 And when we do become aware of them, how do we deal with them?
17:52 Are they dissolved through analysis, through introspection?
18:03 Do we understand the dangers through the psychoanalytical process, whether done by a professional or by yourself?
18:18 Do those dangers disappear? Does time dissolve them, or escaping from them dissolve them, suppressing, transmuting, or thinking about something quite different because you are bored with all this business?
19:03 If analysis is not the way – analysis implies… need we go through all that?
19:15 All right. Analysis implies the analyser, whether it is a professional analyser, the analyst with his background, with his knowledge, with his particular idiosyncrasies – Jungian or Freudian or some other modern expert – he is conditioned, as the analysed is also conditioned.
20:00 If the professional does not help us to completely dissolve the psychological danger in which we live then what is one to do?
20:22 If analysis is not the way, because that involves time – and if you analysed yourself very, very carefully, step by step, your analysis must be so free, without any prejudice, without any bias, and each experiment, each testing, must be so complete, so free, that the next analysis must not carry over the knowledge of the past, otherwise you are using that knowledge to examine the present and therefore you are using that which is dead to understand that which is living.
21:27 I hope you see all this. And that involves time. And if one has to analyse everything every day one has not the time, the energy, and perhaps we will be able to do it the end of one’s life, but then life is finished.
22:05 And perhaps one says to oneself, ‘I will understand myself through my dreams.’ Probably most of us do dream a great deal.
22:30 And it is said unless you dream you may go mad.
22:40 And they have been experimenting, I have been told – not that I am a reader of any of these things – that through experiments they have found that dreaming is necessary, part of existence.
22:56 And one says to oneself, ‘Does one understand oneself through dreams?’ Again, they need interpretation and who is to interpret them, the professional or yourself?
23:20 If you interpret them they must be interpreted very, very correctly, truly.
23:28 And are you capable of doing it?
23:40 And one asks: is it necessary to dream at all?
23:47 Perhaps that may open up a totally different avenue, if one questions the necessity of dreaming.
24:07 Because after all, during the day there are all the strains and stresses, the ugly quarrels, the nagging, the fears, the bullying of the other, and so on – there is this constant, conscious, everyday struggle.
24:43 And perhaps when one goes to sleep, why should these struggles continue?
24:53 Sleep may have a totally different meaning altogether.
25:00 I think it has. So that the brain which has been so active, protecting itself, thinking, planning, struggling throughout the day, that brain when it goes to sleep, why should it continue its activity?
25:25 Why can’t it rest completely so that when it wakes up the next morning it is rejuvenated, it is fresh, young and not burdened?
25:47 So, during the sleep, when the brain is completely quiet – I do not know if you have experimented with it, if you have, not according to the expert but for yourself – if you have gone into it sufficiently deeply, I am sure you have found that a brain so quiet, so relaxed, so extraordinarily alert and orderly, comes to a different state altogether.
26:37 I think sleep has great significance in that way.
26:46 But if that sleep is a constant process of thought, constant movement and reaction of the brain, then that sleep is a disturbance and in that there is no rest.
27:08 So is it possible not to dream at all, knowing that, unless there is order in daily existence, it must dream, because that is a way of an intimation of the unconscious?
27:50 So can the brain be so awake during the day, so free to examine, to observe all its reactions, its conditioning, its fears, its motives, its anxieties, its guilts, so free to observe and not suppress it, not avoid it, so that during the day there is order?
28:44 Because – I don’t know again, are you interested in all this?
28:53 Because of sleep? Or are you going to experience something miraculous, or reach some Nirvanic plain or Buddhist whatever it is?
29:12 It is extraordinarily interesting if you go into this, if you do it yourself, not let somebody else do it for you.
29:29 You know, unless there is order, the brain is disturbed.
29:46 That is the neurotic state because the disordered life is a neurotic state.
29:57 And the more it is disordered, the more the dreams, the tension and all the rest of it goes on.
30:04 So the brain demands order because in order there is security.
30:21 If the animal is constantly being shaken, is disturbed, has no security, obviously it will go mad also.
30:40 So the brain demands order – not order according to a design, to a blueprint, or the order which society says is order.
30:58 What society says is order is disorder.
31:09 So the brain needs order to be completely secure. And it must be secure, not in the sense that it must resist, guard, isolate itself, but it is only secure, orderly, when there is tremendous understanding.
31:38 Or otherwise when you go to sleep there is great deal of disturbance, and so the brain tries to put things in order as you are sleeping.
32:03 And dreams, analysis, time, doesn’t solve our psychological dangers and problems.
32:23 Time being postponement. Time is involved when there is the fact and the idea ‘what should be’.
32:38 The distance between the fact and ‘what should be’, in that there is time involved – I will eventually become good or I will be something.
32:53 All that involves time. And when thought creates time it brings about disorder.
33:15 Time is actually a postponement, a form of laziness. But you don’t have time or use time or say, ‘I will act later on,’ when you see actual physical danger in front.
33:36 You act immediately.
33:45 So time, analysis, dreams, or any form of escape and suppression or sublimation or conflict with the problem does not solve the problem.
34:06 Right? Then what is one to do? May I take my coat off?
34:30 I do not know if you have faced the problem that way.
34:40 That is, through negation face the issue.
34:47 Because we have said analysis is not the way, because we have understood what is implied in it.
35:00 We have looked at it very carefully, not because somebody says analysis is not the way, but we have examined, we have experimented with, we have observed it, therefore we have put it aside.
35:20 So through negation of what is considered the positive, we can then face the fact.
35:32 Now am I, is my mind, my whole being, prepared to put aside this whole technique of analysis, introspection, and all that, completely?
36:12 And in that, a great deal is involved, still more, because most of us live in the past.
36:25 We are the past.
36:34 What happened yesterday shapes the present and so tomorrow.
36:47 We are being reborn every day in the shadow of yesterday.
37:03 And whether the mind, the brain, can be made fresh.
37:13 And in that also there is the whole process of analysis involved.
37:31 To find out for oneself where memory and the action of memory is necessary, which is the past, and where it is totally unnecessary and dangerous.
37:54 Because you have insulted me yesterday, why should I bear it today? Or you have flattered me – why should I carry that burden to today?
38:08 Why can’t I finish it as you are insulting me or flattering me, immediately finish?
38:23 Which means I must be extraordinarily awake as you are talking, alert to your insult and flattery, sensitive.
38:39 And as most of us live in the past, we are the past. And the whole brain is the result of the past, of time, of conditioning, and that is responding, reacting all the time – that there is God, that there is no God, communism, socialism, belong to this sect or that sect, be a Catholic, non-Catholic, you know.
39:21 So the past, modified, is the present and the future.
39:37 And to find out for oneself, with great watchfulness.
39:44 Which is to be greatly sensitive, and therefore with great intelligence, to watch where memory is essential.
39:55 If you had no memory you would not be able to go out of this tent, you would not know where your house was or what your name was.
40:05 You can’t live in a state of amnesia. But also to know, to be aware of the dangers of memory.
40:27 So, when you have discarded all these accepted traditions, norms, patterns of existence – that you must analyse, you must follow, you must obey, you must be ambitious, greedy, envious, be socially moral, therefore immoral, and so on and on and on – when you reject all that, if you are capable of rejecting it – and if you do not reject it you are not free – and you can only reject it because you understand it, not just revolt against it – that has no meaning.
41:25 Then how is the mind to be aware of itself and its dangers?
41:42 And being aware of the danger, what will it do? You follow? What will it do now, after putting aside analysis, the sense of time, suppression and all that?
42:04 How will it deal with the thing it is aware of?
42:13 [Pause] I hope I have made the problem clear.
42:49 What is the state of the mind when it has put aside all these things, like analysis, time, the understanding of memory, the futility of suppression or escape, the idiocy of ideologies – what is the state of the mind that has discovered all this?
43:25 Surely, it has become extraordinarily sensitive, hasn’t it, not only to the outer but also to the inner.
43:53 Being highly sensitive and intelligent, how is it going to deal with the fact that it is jealous or angry or whatever it is?
44:08 Not through analysis – all that is out. What will it do, how will it act?
44:22 And the action must be tested.
44:31 It must show in form as well as in essence, which means the form must change because the essence is also changing.
44:51 So what is the state of the mind that is aware of its own sorrow?
45:02 Let us use that word for the moment. How will it deal with it?
45:15 Can we proceed from there?
45:43 Can we go on from there? Can there be sensitivity if there is a space between the thing that is observed and the observer?
46:14 Am I sensitive to my wife or to my neighbour or to the community if there is an isolation, there is an isolating movement within me, a movement of resistance, of opinion?
46:43 Right? There is no relationship. Therefore there is no sensitivity. So when I discard the fairly obvious things like analysis and so on, my mind has become extraordinarily sensitive, and therefore it is no longer divided in itself as the observer and the observed.
47:17 Right? But it is always testing.
47:32 When there is no separation between the observer and the observed then there is no conflict, and therefore there is immediate action.
47:54 The mind is aware that it is jealous, gossipy, stupid, envious – those are the reactions, responses – and being sensitive, therefore being intimately in contact with that feeling, with that reaction, there is immediate action.
48:28 Which means there is no jealousy. Which a mind is going to test it out.
48:48 So the mind then is a constant movement, constant watchfulness, and therefore capable of immediate action when necessary.
49:03 Right. Is that enough?
49:07 Q: Sir, there is a part of the mind which doesn’t come… which is mechanically moving and which runs along in spite of awareness of what its doing.
49:47 At least there is with me. I can notice certain things going on – emotions and reactions and memories of past happenings, and so on – I am aware of them but they don’t completely resolve, they don’t do away with this feeling of separation.
49:57 Because the mind is mechanical, it is a habit of the mind.
50:06 K: Are you saying, madame, how is one to be free of habit?
50:15 Q: Habit seems to get in the way of a great deal.
50:22 K: It comes to that, doesn’t it? How is one to be free of a habit. Or not a particular habit, but habit.
50:36 That is, how is one to be free of the habit of smoking, suppose, and the whole machinery of habit in which one lives, the routine?
51:02 Right? Can we go into that?
51:06 Q: Sir, it seems to me that you were speaking of sleep just now, and dreaming in sleep.
51:15 Now surely during the daytime we are dreaming in a way. Our minds underneath are dreaming all the time.
51:23 K: Because one is not awake during the day.
51:26 Q: Quite, one isn’t awake. But this is the type of habit I mean.
51:30 K: Yes, yes – habit. Habit of daydreaming, habit of smoking, habit of thinking in a certain formula, habit of pleasure – habit.
51:44 We all know that, what it means.
51:55 I am born as an Indian, I am going to be an Indian, I think as an Indian – that’s my habit, the tradition.
52:02 Or I have joined some new beastly little sect and there I am.
52:14 So, can we go into that?
52:19 Q: Excuse me, sir. Aren’t some of the habits very deeply inherited from primitive... thousands of years ago, that’s why…
52:31 K: Obviously. That is, the habit of violence is inherited from the animal, the habit of obeying, and so on.
52:44 There is this enormous machinery of habit.
52:51 Right? First of all...
52:56 Q: Do you call instinct a habit?
53:00 K: Maybe – the instinct to kill. You see a little insect and you don’t like it, you tread on it.
53:18 The instinct to own a property and say, ‘It’s mine, I’m going to build a wall around it.’ The instinct that she is my wife and nobody must touch her or look at her.
53:33 My family, my country, my God – you know, instinct.
53:44 So, first of all, are there good habits and bad habits, or there is only habit?
53:58 No, no, please be advisedly careful.
54:02 Q: Are there not good hygienic habits? [Laughter] K: Are there not good hygienic habits.
54:16 Q: Is love a habit?
54:19 K: Is laugh a habit.
54:22 Q: Love.
54:25 K: Love – ah! We shall go into that presently, if we may.
54:43 Is habit right or good in itself, whether hygienic, sexual, instinctual or acquired?
55:01 Wait, sir, don’t say no, just look at it, go into it a little bit.
55:12 Habit. We cultivate habit – I did this yesterday, I’ve learnt how to clean my teeth very, very carefully.
55:24 The dentist has pointed out to me and I do it very carefully for two or three days and get into the habit of it and then forget it because now it is routine.
55:42 We are questioning the value of habit at all, if it has any value at all.
55:58 Q: [Inaudible] …clean, and such things perhaps leave us freer.
56:03 K: Habit leaves us free to do other habits. [Laughter] Sorry! [Laughs] Q: Why not call them necessities, then?
56:18 K: That’s quite funny, isn’t it? [Laughter] Now, let’s please be… [laughs] Why do we have habits at all?
56:36 Is it to have more time for other things?
56:43 Q: Yes.
56:45 K: Yes, that’s what that lady said. Will it give you freedom from habit if you have certain habits?
57:00 [Laughter] No, do please… this is a serious question, don’t laugh it off. I cultivate certain habits in the hope that I shall have more time to do what is necessary.
57:17 Does it give me freedom?
57:21 Q: It does not, because habit comes about by conditioning, so therefore you wouldn’t be free, would you?
57:30 K: That’s just it, sir, that’s just it. So we are questioning the whole value of habit.
57:43 Habit makes the mind sleepy, makes the mind dull, insensitive. If I do the same thing over and over and over again, day after day, day after day, like those people who talk about meditation, repeating some words, mantras, they think they are, you know, repeat, repeat, repeat, obviously it makes the mind extraordinarily dull and stupid and quiet.
58:17 Q: I think that it is not the same as cleaning the teeth.
58:25 [Laughter] I mean, why do we have to be so aware of that?
58:32 K: Why should we be aware of cleaning one’s teeth and not making it a habit?
58:44 Why should we have a habit at all, about anything?
58:51 If I learnt how to clean my teeth and it had become a habit then I am not paying attention, and it may do a great deal of damage to my teeth.
59:13 It is one’s sexual habit, all the rest of it. It is routine. And that we call love. Is love a habit?
59:34 And we cultivate habit because we want to be secure.
59:42 We eat the same food, the same neighbours, we are sure of them, sure of my husband, my wife, my children – they are habits – so that I surround myself with complete security.
59:59 So habit is an avoidance of any questioning, of any further investigation, exploration, testing.
1:00:18 So can the mind be awake and not form habits? Do please investigate, find out, keep awake, and therefore be highly hygienic [laughter], and be awake when you are cleaning your teeth.
1:00:48 So the mind doesn’t go to sleep through habit, or made dull through habit.
1:00:59 I do not know if you have ever tested for yourself.
1:01:09 Q: When a musician plays piano, the more he has learnt to play by habit, he has less to concentrate on mechanically.
1:01:21 He can develop artistic expression of what he is trying...
1:01:25 K: We were talking the other day to a musician. He says that is the last thing to do, to fall into a habit.
1:01:36 You are learning all the time, therefore habit has no place.
1:01:41 Q: Surely... [inaudible] …not mechanical.
1:01:43 K: Oh, no! I mean, if I play mechanically… Now, wait a minute. I am sitting here. I have talked for 45 years, all my life. If it has become a habit… [laughter] Q: I think it is a different intelligence coming into play with the piano.
1:02:14 It’s not habit, it’s like driving a motorcar. After a time the actions, the feet and hands are automatic, and if there is danger the automatic nervous system works the pedals.
1:02:27 K: Of course, sir.
1:02:28 Q: It is a form of intelligence.
1:02:29 K: That’s just it. That’s just it. So don’t let us talk about habits at all – good habit and bad habit – but can the mind which has been so conditioned in habits – after all, believing in God is a habit, or not believing in God.
1:02:59 Saying, ‘I am a Catholic,’ or a Hindu or a Buddhist, it is just a habit, a tradition.
1:03:12 Now, can the mind uncondition itself from all habit, habit being opinion?
1:03:27 Having opinion, stick to it and keep on insisting it is right – that’s our habit.
1:03:39 Have opinions; if it’s wrong, change it immediately; or not and therefore not have opinions at all.
1:03:50 Why should one have opinions about anything, you know, about the prime minister?
1:03:59 Q: But, sir, you have been expressing opinions all your life…
1:04:04 K: Ah! He says, ‘You have been expressing opinions’ – I am sorry, I don’t think I am expressing opinion.
1:04:12 I am just stating facts.
1:04:13 Q: That’s an opinion.
1:04:15 K: That is not an opinion. Saying, ‘This is a microphone,’ is not an opinion.
1:04:20 Q: You can call it something else.
1:04:23 K: Ah, no, no, I am not calling it something else.
1:04:30 I am jealous. Full stop. It is not an opinion, it is a fact. I am angry. It is not a conclusion, it is so – I am angry. I am violent, but when I begin to explain what violence is, or it should be tackled in this way, you must have a non-violent state, that is all opinions, conclusions.
1:04:59 But to face the fact that one is violent, there is no explanation, no need for opinion.
1:05:12 I am brown – there it is – but to say, ‘I shouldn’t be brown, I wish I was a little lighter because it’s more popular,’ and all the rest of it, it would be too silly.
1:05:36 So can we please pursue this to the very end? Can the mind be aware of the habit, whatever it is, end it instantly?
1:05:52 Not take months, years over it.
1:06:04 And that’s only possible when your whole being is aware of that fact, not just part of your being, not just a conscious awareness superficially, but the totality of your being aware of a particular habit, like smoking.
1:06:31 What is involved in that habit? The occupation of your hands, you know, all that, your resistance, your pleasure, your narcotic poisoning of the body, and the body demanding it, and so on and on and on – to be totally aware of all that fact.
1:07:00 Like those people who are constantly frowning, doing something or other with their hands, with their face.
1:07:15 So that immediate perception is the immediate action and ending.
1:07:24 But if you say, ‘Well, I’ll take time,’ you are already finished. I mean, there is no question. The sharpness, the intelligence, the sensitivity of the mind is in the action and the testing of the action.
1:07:39 Q: What do you mean by the testing of that action?
1:07:48 K: Give it up; you will find out. Test it. If I smoke, I want to find out all about it. I go into it completely. And if I do I’ll know at the end of it whether to drop it or not to drop it – I’ve tested it.
1:08:16 So, habit in any form does make the mind dull, whether it is the habit of pleasure or the avoidance of pain as a habit.
1:08:38 That means to be on one’s toes all the time, watching.
1:08:53 That means to learn. Learning isn’t habit, it’s a constant process.
1:09:07 Habit is when you have accumulated through learning, which is the knowledge – say, ‘I have knowledge.
1:09:19 I know.’ It is only the stupid man that says, ‘I know.’ There is constant learning; how can habit exist at all?
1:09:39 I think we’d better stop, don’t you?