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BR72DSS1.09 - The danger of hurts
Brockwood Park, UK - 22 June 1972
Discussion with Staff and Students 1.09



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s ninth discussion with teachers and students at Brockwood Park, 1972.
0:12 Krishnamurti: What shall we talk about? Any questions?
0:24 You all look rather blank. Questioner: Can we discuss about interest, what it implies if one sees one is interested in something?
0:41 K: Is that what you want to talk about? There isn’t much to talk about that, is there? Either you’re interested in something... You’re playing croquet, aren’t you?
0:52 Q: Sometimes.
0:53 K: I don’t think you’re playing croquet. I played quite a good deal, but I don’t think you’re playing it. You’re smashing at it – (laughs) you’re playing croquet-golf, really.
1:09 What would you like to… Interest. All right, sir, let’s talk about it. I’ll bring you a lot of things in it.
1:26 Are you interested in pain? Physical pain. Haven’t you had pain?
1:37 Q: Yes.
1:38 K: How do you deal with pain? You have a toothache, a tummy ache, a pain in your shoulder, in your fingers, or whatever it is – what do you do with it?
1:56 Q: Go to the doctor.
2:00 K: Go to the doctor. But before you go to the doctor, what do you do with it? (Laughs) Q: You react in different ways.
2:12 K: Yes, what do you do? You react. What is your reaction?
2:16 Q: Try to get rid of it.
2:17 K: Now wait a minute, we are discussing what it is to take interest in life, isn’t it, Tunki?
2:27 Not just interest – interest in the whole phenomena of existence. Aren’t you? Is that what you want to discuss?
2:37 Q: Yes.
2:39 K: All right. I’ve got a handkerchief this time! (Laughter) And one of the problem of life, living, existence, is pain, suffering – physical and psychological.
3:00 First let’s deal with the physical and then we’ll deal with the psychological. And I’m taking interest in it. I want to find out what to do with pain. Now what do you do with pain before you go to the doctor? And even if the doctor gives you a pill or whatever he does, but pain goes on, or it happens...
3:25 Q: Find out why you have that pain.
3:28 K: Yes, you have it because you overate or you broke your thumb, or various forms of pain.
3:37 Physical pain – what do you do with it?
3:43 Q: Bear it.
3:44 K: Bear it? Grin and bear it?
3:46 Q: No.
3:47 K: Don’t grin then but bear it – is that it? Go on, please.
3:51 Q: Most often you have the tendency to get rid of it, to forget it.
4:04 K: You can’t. If you have got a constant toothache, you can’t try to forget it.
4:15 It is there.
4:16 Q: You try to find ways to diminish that pain.
4:23 Find one way or other in order to diminish the pain.
4:24 K: Diminish the pain – you do, you take oil of cloves or this or that.
4:31 But what do you do with it? Oh, you’re missing the point! I’ve got a toothache – right? – and I telephone the dentist and he says, ‘I can’t see you till the day after tomorrow,’ and in the meantime he says take this and that and the other, and I do all that but the pain is still there.
4:55 Right? Now how do I deal with it?
4:58 Q: Support it. We have to support it.
5:01 Q: Give it all your interest.
5:03 K: I bear with it. How do I bear with it? Doesn’t that interest you? Many: Yes.
5:15 K: How do you bear a physical pain? Of course, you don’t grin about it, but what do you do? How do you deal with it? What is your reaction to it? Come on, Brazil, what is... You’re all...
5:34 Q: You struggle with it, you fight it.
5:39 K: You struggle with it, you battle with it, you try to forget it, you try to do all kinds of things with it.
5:52 Right? And so the more you think about it, the more you are concerned about it, the more pain. You follow? Have you noticed it? You have? Yes?
6:07 Q: It does happen when you sit still with it.
6:12 K: You sit still with it, you play with it, you push it round, you do all kinds of things and yet it goes on.
6:23 How do you deal or how does it happen that you struggle with it?
6:37 You say, ‘I must not, I must forget it, I must go out, do something.’ You’re battling with it, aren’t you?
6:45 And the more you battle with it the more it is still there. Now I want to find out if there is a way of dealing with pain without battle.
6:59 Right? Have you got it? Without struggle, without saying, ‘I must bear it, it’s awful, I must be brave, I must not show it, I must conceal it.’ You follow?
7:13 All that is a constant struggle, isn’t it? Now is there a way of dealing with pain without all this?
7:24 Q: Just to acknowledge that you’ve got a pain, that you can’t do anything.
7:28 K: Yes, I’ve acknowledged it, I don’t have to do more, (laughs) I have acknowledged it very much.
7:36 I don’t have to acknowledge it – it is there, the beastly thing. Now what shall I do? Go on, sir, investigate it. Now, Tunki, this is interest, isn’t it? I am interested in pain and how to deal with it without this conflict.
7:58 Aren’t you interested? Are you interested in it? Now, how do you set about it? Come on, exercise your – as Poirot would say – your brain cells.
8:17 You know who Poirot is?
8:22 Q: No.
8:24 K: No? (Laughter) Agatha Christie, do you know her? (Laughter) He’s the detective in Agatha Christie books.
8:33 Q: I see.
8:35 K: A Belgian detective. Now how do you deal with pain without conflict?
8:39 Q: You create the right relationship with the pain. If you just look at the pain and you don’t fight it, you don’t spend any energy, so all your energy goes together with the pain, and so the relation is right and the pain is... (inaudible) K: Are you saying, when you have pain don’t identify yourself with that pain.
9:11 Is that what you’re saying?
9:13 Q: Yes.
9:15 K: We are examining it together, what to do. I have pain and I’m used to fighting it, battle with it, suppress it and run away from it, bear with it – all kinds of things I do.
9:34 I’m asking myself, because I’m awfully interested in finding a way of living in which conflict doesn’t exist with regard to pain, with regard to anything.
9:50 Now, one has physical pain very often. Now how am I to deal with it without battle? The other day I went to the dentist, and it was bad.
10:14 And I found that when you clench your fist and bear it, you know, it becomes more.
10:33 And I found sitting like that – you follow? – if you can (laughs) when he’s drilling, it’s less, because your body is relaxed and you are following the sound – I did this – you are following the sound of the drill.
11:01 You understand? You’re not awaiting or expecting pain, but listening to the drill.
11:11 Have you ever tried all this? No, you fellows don’t try anything. Now – and when I came out, it was all right. I wasn’t sweating, I wasn’t – you know? It was all right. Now I want to find out if you can deal with pain – you, your pain – without any conflict.
11:44 How do you bear it?
11:55 Have you any pain now?
11:56 Q: No.
11:58 K: No? I’m so sorry! (Laughs) If you had, I would suggest that you look at it – you understand what I mean?
12:16 – look at it, watch it, not identify yourself with the pain, but just watch it.
12:28 In your watching you are not against pain or for pain, or divide yourself from pain, but you are just watching it.
12:45 I wonder if you understand what I’m talking about. You understand? Next time you have pain, try that.
12:57 Have you understood what I said? That when you have physical pain, what most people do is battle against it.
13:14 Thought says, ‘I hate that pain, I mustn’t have that pain, it’s terrible, I’m suffering, it’s agony.’ Right?
13:25 Instead of doing that, let thought watch the pain.
13:33 Have you understood it? Instead of attacking pain, watch pain. Oh no – have you understood it, sir?
13:45 Q: Sir, why do you say: let thought watch the pain?
13:52 K: Yes, what else do you watch? Let thought which has struggled against pain – you follow? – thought that has said how terrible it is – let that very thought watch the pain.
14:05 Q: But then if one’s watching it...
14:08 K: Wait, look, listen! You fellows don’t do it! I have pain, pain which is in the tooth, it’s carried to the brain and the brain says, ‘It’s frightfully painful.’ Right?
14:28 Which is thought saying it’s very painful. And then thought says, ‘I must do something about it.’ All that I can do is to fight it – thought can do, is to fight it, or fight it while you’re waiting for the doctor.
14:48 Now let that very thought which has fought it, watch that pain.
14:57 You have understood? So far you have understood? Now go a step further.
15:11 I have pain; the pain is carried through the nervous system as pain, and then thought steps in and says, ‘Terrible!’ and battles with it.
15:30 Now that very thought which is battling with it, I say just let that thought watch the pain. You’ve understood? Now what is the next step? When you watch is there the function of thought at all?
15:49 Q: No.
15:50 K: Wait, wait, do think it out carefully, watch it.
16:00 It’s awfully interesting, you know, if you do this.
16:14 Now go a little step further. If you watch that plant, you watch it by saying: it is a plant, it is yellow, it is this, it is that – right?
16:29 – colour. Now watch it without verbalising. Do it, do it, please. Without verbalising. Right? Can you? Can you look at it without using any word?
17:02 Because the word is the thought, isn’t it? As we talked about it the other day. Now, can you look at it without the word? So in the same way, can you look at that pain without the word, calling it pain?
17:36 I did this the other day sitting in that chair – it was a very comfortable chair (laughs) – and the poor chap was apologising for causing me pain.
17:48 I said, ‘It’s all right, sir, go on.’ And I was watching, watching without any word, so that thought didn’t come into it at all.
18:00 I don’t know if you are following all this. Now, I have taken interest in that. You follow? I have taken interest in the solution of pain.
18:18 Q: Do you mean just physical pain or psychological pain?
18:23 K: No, I said physical. You have understood?
18:32 I’ve got a headache – I never have it, but I have got a headache – because I have overeaten, all kinds of things.
18:44 Now how am I to deal with it instead of getting frightfully het up about it?
18:53 Q: You watch it.
18:55 K: Now, you see... Watch it. Now, the next question: how do you watch it?
19:01 Q: Without meaning.
19:03 K: If you watch it with meaning – you understand? – the meaning being: I must get rid of it, I must suppress it, or ‘How terrible!’ – if you watch it without any significance – I wonder if you understand – then your relation to the pain is entirely different.
19:23 Have you got it? Have you understood some of this? Now you try it next time that you have physical pain – try it.
19:37 Q: Excuse me. When you have a pain, it seems a feeling of pain exists.
19:47 In order to be able to watch the pain as you say from a kind of objective point of view, just watching it without any thought, doesn’t this impose a kind of power you have to put from yourself in order to just watch it?
20:00 K: No, no, no, look, no – not at all, not at all. Look, I can’t alter the colour of that plant, I can’t change the shape of that plant except with a pair of scissors – I just look at it, don’t I?
20:17 Which doesn’t mean I have special power or I want to dominate it – I just watch it.
20:24 In the watching I see much more. Right? If I watch that plant without the word I see much more of the plant, don’t I?
20:38 Try it. You see much more: the shape, the colour, the extraordinary quality of a leaf – you follow? – you see much more.
20:49 Your relationship is direct and not through a word.
21:08 Now can there be a watching of that pain without the word and its significance and its meaning?
21:27 Right? Try it, next time. Now, that’s physical... that is how to deal with pain, physical pain.
21:38 Now I want to find out how to deal with psychological pains. You understand what I mean? Psychological pains, inward pains. You say something to me which hurts me.
21:50 Q: It’s the same case as if you have a fear of a dentist. Before you come to the dentist you feel nervous.
22:00 K: You’re already – yes, yes. Now you hurt me by saying something or other which I don’t like.
22:13 Right? Now how shall I deal with that kind of pain? You understand? We have physical pain and psychological pain. Right? Now how shall I deal with it? How shall I... what shall I do with the hurt that you have given me?
22:41 Q: Look at it.
22:44 K: Now how do I look at it? Do it, don’t theorise about it. I call you an ass. I say, ‘What a fool you are, how stupid you are.’ You shrink.
22:59 That is, being sensitive you withdraw. Like a snail, you know, you withdraw. That’s your hurt, and I have hurt you. Now how do you bear with it without conflict so that that hurt doesn’t remain at all, doesn’t leave a mark, so that your mind is fresh – you understand?
23:28 – young all the time, not capable of being hurt?
23:35 Go on, Mantely.
23:42 Some of you discuss this problem with me.
23:45 Q: If you look at it...
23:47 K: I don’t know. I’m going to discuss with you. You mustn’t come to a conclusion. Don’t do something… don’t say something that you yourself don’t know, yourself haven’t actually seen.
23:58 Q: To be hurt you must have built up an image of yourself.
24:04 K: Well, if you have, why have you built an image of yourself?
24:08 Q: Perhaps because people have been giving you wrong ideas before.
24:17 K: Now, why? Why has the mind – listen to this – accepted ideas of others? Wrong, right, good, bad and all the rest of it – why does the mind do this?
24:34 I am born in Italy, I become a Catholic, my family takes me when I am two or three or very young, baptised, then they take me to the church, they make me repeat – you follow?
24:54 – and the mind absorbs all this – right? – is conditioned by the environment in which he lives.
25:02 Are you following this? Aren’t your minds conditioned by the environment you have lived in? Now I come along and say something against that conditioning. You get hurt. Right? Now why?
25:20 Q: You’ve been used to that conditioning.
25:26 K: Yes, you’re used to that conditioning. All right, go a step further, push.
25:34 Q: You’ve identified yourself with that.
25:39 K: Who is yourself to identify with that?
25:46 Who is you? Go on, go on, push, push.
25:56 Q: Your conditioning.
25:57 K: You are that conditioning, aren’t you? So you are trying to identify yourself. You are that conditioning. So go on, what do you do? I come along and say, ‘How silly to be conditioned. Grow up and be free of it.’ And you get hurt. Why?
26:17 Q: You threaten my security that I have in that conditioning.
26:25 K: Is that it? Is that why? That you are secure in your conditioning and your conditioning is your image.
26:41 ‘The Catholic is much nearer God than the communist.’ (Laughs) Right?
26:50 And you’ve built up that image, that conditioning, and anybody who says something against that conditioning, you either feel insulted, hurt or you put up a defence.
27:05 In that conditioning you feel safe, don’t you?
27:15 Protected. Right? Right? Now how... I come along and say something nasty about your conditioning – why do you get hurt?
27:36 Can you listen to me, my insult, without being hurt? But yet not resist – you follow? – not build a wall. I can say, ‘Well, I don’t care what you say. I know I’m right. There is only one thing which is my Catholicism,’ or communism, whatever it is, ‘and this is right.’ That’s resistance, isn’t it?
28:07 Now can you listen to my insult without resistance and therefore not be hurt?
28:16 You understand?
28:17 Q: If you just observe it without any images about it. Observing without any images.
28:24 K: Yes, old boy, but how do you do that? Because this is a part of life.
28:46 Part of my life is pain, physical. Part of my life is this psychological pain. Part of my existence is fear, death, love, sex, anxiety.
29:01 You follow? This whole phenomenon is my life, the beauty and the ugliness of it, and I am taking tremendous interest in this phenomenon, which is me.
29:20 And I want to find out how to live a life in which there is no battle, because if there is no battle I live much more, I have much more energy.
29:36 Now, I want to find out, because I see it’s a waste of energy to get hurt and to bear a grudge, let that insult remain on my mind, on the mind, as a scratch – I don’t want to have anything of that kind.
29:59 I want to be free. I want to live without any hurt.
30:09 Because from childhood we are hurt.
30:21 Right? Have you found that? Have you found that, Brazil? No? Be simple, go on. You have found that. How do you... what do you do with it, all those hurts you have?
30:46 Do you know what happens when you keep these hurts?
30:57 You become more self-centred, more sensitive in a self-centred way, don’t you?
31:06 You kind of withdraw and hold yourself tight, and your actions and reactions from that become neurotic.
31:19 No?
31:20 Q: What do you mean by hurt? Is it complexity?
31:25 K: No, no. No, Tunki. I say, ‘You are a perfect idiot.’ Wait a minute. I say that. Don’t you get hurt? Be simple.
31:37 Q: Well, I see... (inaudible) K: I say you are an idiot because you don’t do something properly. Don’t you get hurt?
31:42 Q: I can’t say yes or no – it has to happen.
31:43 K: Macché! I’m calling you now. (Laughter) Q: But it could be fantasy.
31:50 K: I am telling you, you are an ass. Don’t you get hurt?
31:53 Q: Not now. (Laughter) K: (Laughs) No, because, you know I’m not… you know very well I’m not calling… if I called you in anger...
32:04 Q: One thing, it’s difficult when you’re not in a real situation.
32:14 K: Look, Tunki, all right. All right, put it the other way, Tunki: haven’t you been hurt?
32:27 Q: Yes.
32:28 K: Now, all right. When you say yes, you have memories of those hurts, haven’t you?
32:36 Q: Vaguely. (Laughter) K: Vaguely or intensely you are aware of them, aren’t you?
32:43 Q: Yes.
32:44 K: Now what happens when you have all these hurts inside you?
32:52 Q: You feel tortured.
32:58 K: Yes. And then what do you do? So when you have all these hurts inside you, I come along and say you are an ass. I add to that, don’t I? So you shrink from me, don’t you? So you are building up a resistance against people, aren’t you? Because they are going to hurt you.
33:18 Q: Yes.
33:20 K: Now what happens then?
33:23 Q: It’s becoming stronger.
33:26 K: Yes. Go on, Tunki, examine it slowly, take interest in it.
33:37 I build up a wall around myself because I don’t want to be hurt. I’ve shed many tears alone by myself. I can’t bear being hurt anymore, so I build a wall round myself, don’t I?
33:53 And my actions will be limited, won’t they?
34:02 I’m frightened. Now can I find a way of living in which I have no hurts at all, either of the past, or of the present, or of the future – no hurt?
34:30 So I’ve got three problems. One, what shall I do with the hurts I have? Right? And what shall I do with the hurts that I may receive?
34:45 And how shall I prevent any hurt at all?
34:53 Come on. What shall I do with the past hurts that I have collected? That’s my museum. What shall I do with them?
35:10 Q: Forget about them, they are past.
35:15 K: They’re past but they are there. What shall I do? Just forget them?
35:21 Q: Aren’t they naturally forgotten? Isn’t it part of nature? I mean, aren’t they naturally forgotten?
35:33 K: Are they forgotten? Wait, sir, no, don’t say they are naturally forgotten – have you forgotten your hurts?
35:44 Q: Unless I want to remember them when I recall them.
35:49 K: Which means they are there to be recalled. Right? So I can’t forget them, because I can recall them.
36:06 So I want to find out first what to do with the hurts I have.
36:13 Second: prevention of hurts. Right? How shall I set about this? Are you interested in this? Many: Yes.
36:27 K: Yes? Good. Apply your brains to this. Now, what shall I do? How shall I wipe out all the hurts I have collected in the past – from my parents, from my fellow students, from, oh, dozens of incidents?
36:47 Q: You still have an image of yourself.
36:51 K: No, old boy, what shall I do? I’ve got them – what shall I do?
37:03 Q: You can’t answer that. The fact is they happen but you don’t have to hold onto the hurt that was there with it at the time.
37:18 K: Yes. What is it – Ted, aren’t you? Ted, that’s right. What do you do, Ted?
37:22 Q: In other words, well, I would treat them just as a fact. The fact is you called me an ass or whatever you said.
37:28 K: Look, you haven’t understood my question. I’ve got a collection of hurts. That’s my precious museum. Now what shall I do with that museum, collection? Collection of many, many, many hurts. I can’t forget them, because I can recall them, they are there, stored up.
37:53 And I want to be free of it – you understand? – because then I live much better.
38:00 Now what shall I do? (Pause) No suggestions?
38:11 Q: I see them in their intensity and drop them.
38:26 K: Now, is that so? Do you drop them? Have you dropped them?
38:37 Q: Some of them.
38:41 K: No, no, no, no, that’s not good enough. Some of them which are most painful or some of them casually painful, others you say, ‘Well, they’re pretty good, I’ll keep some of them.’ (Laughter) Now what shall I do?
39:00 Q: You stop trying.
39:02 K: Now listen to this carefully. If I have collected them, and they will be acting in my life, won’t they?
39:15 Q: Well not necessarily because it can be a past in which you were hurt but your attitude now changed to that, so if it happens...
39:27 K: Yes, I’ve got them, old boy. I’ve got them in my pocket. In my brain I’ve got these hurts. And I’m asking, how shall I deal with them?
39:43 Q: Don’t identify with them.
39:47 K: Don’t identify. But I am the hurt. I can’t identify myself with something which is myself. I am the hurts, I am the museum, I am this collection of hurts.
40:02 No?
40:04 Q: You accept them because they are there.
40:06 K: They are there. But what shall I do? I don’t have to accept something which is there.
40:21 Now the psychologists – you know what psychologists are? Of course. You know, the psychologists say from childhood you have got these collection of hurts and they make you act peculiarly, neurotically, and so they say you must analyse all those hurts.
40:50 I looked up the word analysis and it says ‘to break up’ – you understand? – the word analysis means to break up.
41:04 Are you listening? Now who is the person that’s going to break up?
41:11 Q: You.
41:12 K: Who is you?
41:14 Q: Your conditioning.
41:15 K: Your hurts. So look at the game they are playing. (Laughs) You understand? I am going to break up these hurts, and I am the hurt.
41:34 So what shall I do, recognising – follow this carefully. I see that I am the hurt, and I can’t break up these hurts because I am the hurts.
41:49 Have you got that? If I could separate myself from the hurts then I can do something about it. Right? But I can’t. I am that. Have you got it? Now what shall I do? Go slowly.
42:06 Q: You can separate yourself from the hurts if you become that which watches the hurts.
42:16 K: But I am the hurt – how can I separate myself? I can pretend, I can say I’m not the hurt, but that’s not a fact.
42:37 So what happens? Then I go to the analyst and he says, ‘You have got so many hurts, let us analyse them, break them up.’ Instead of my doing it, he’s doing it – right? – with his hurts.
42:56 (Laughs) You are following all this? So what shall I do? Because I cannot possibly break up, analyse, because I am the analyser and I am the hurt.
43:16 You get this? And this is the problem. Now how shall we deal with a problem of this kind?
43:37 What do you say, Brazil? Come on. None of you are...
43:45 Q: Analyse the person who’s hurt you.
43:49 K: But he’s gone. He’s left his mark on me.
44:01 You are facing these problems all your life. It’s not just now – you’re going to face it.
44:07 Q: Would you consider shyness is a result of hurt?
44:19 K: Maybe. I’m shy because I don’t want to be hurt; I crawl away.
44:37 You understand? My hurts, my collection of my hurts, the museum that I keep is not only on the surface but very deep, aren’t they?
44:52 Now how shall all this be exposed? (Pause) Q: Perhaps by finding the causes, by trying to find the causes.
45:26 K: Causes? My mother beat me, my brother said something unpleasant when I was a small boy. They’re all gone, they’re married and they have their own hurts, and they have left their imprint on me.
45:40 Q: Then why did he beat me?
45:43 K: Oh, my lord, I can’t go on into that. He beat me because his elder brother beat him, or at school an older boy kicked him in the pants.
45:58 God only knows.
45:59 Q: That’s not a hurt that can be remembered after so many years then.
46:06 K: I do remember these things. At the end of fifty years I’ve collected a lot of hurts. You’re not... Are you following all this? Many: Yes.
46:17 K: Now what shall I do? First, I’ve been hurt. I’ve collected a great many hurts. I am those hurts. Me is the hurt. Me, the I, is not different from the hurts that the mind has collected.
46:38 These collections are fairly obvious on the top but deeply hidden.
46:49 And I want to expose them all – you follow? – get rid of the beastly things. Do you know what dreams are? Do you dream? Many: Yes.
47:06 K: Why? Don’t say you don’t know. Why do you dream?
47:12 Q: Some things we cannot fulfil during the dreams. It’s something which you are either too excited during the day, or you cannot fulfil.
47:24 K: No, look, Tunki, don’t answer, first find out. You dream, don’t you?
47:34 Have you found out what those dreams are?
47:44 Do they have any meaning, except nightmares? (Laughs) Q: No, but some...
47:55 K: Tunki, listen carefully, old boy, don’t go off on a detail, which you are inclined to.
48:05 You understand? Don’t go off into detail. Take the dream. The psychologists say through dreams you can find out your hurts. You follow? You have got it?
48:26 Have you found out that you’re hurt through dreams?
48:37 Have dreams any meaning to you?
48:39 Q: Some do.
48:41 K: Some dreams. You see, you fellows... Some dreams. That’s just, you know, that’s typical of... I want to… Some dreams are valuable. What are they? I want to find out – listen to this carefully – I want to find out if I can expose all my hurts – all of them, not just one or two, all of them – and be free of them, out.
49:15 Throw them all out of the window and never come back to it.
49:25 Like a dog that goes back to its vomit. I don’t want to go back to it, it’s finished. Now how shall I do this? You see, dreams – I don’t want to go into all that, that’s too difficult – do not wipe away my hurts so there must be a different way of exposing all my hurts.
50:12 Will my conscious mind – you understand, conscious mind, what that is? – examine the unconscious, hidden?
50:20 Q: Will your conscious mind examine the dreams, are you asking?
50:31 K: No. No, Gregory, I’m asking you – you know what conscious mind is? My conscious mind is talking to your conscious mind. Right? Now, can that conscious mind examine all the hidden hurts?
50:46 Q: It can’t see them all.
50:54 K: I don’t know the... My conscious mind can only know what it can recognise. It says, ‘Yes, that is a hurt, and that’s a hurt,’ but so many hidden things... so many hurts are hidden.
51:18 And only when they’re exposed can the conscious mind say, ‘Yes, these are the various hurts I have.’ You follow what I’m saying?
51:27 So how is that… all those hidden things to be exposed?
51:35 You’ve got my question? You’ve got my question? I have a collection of hurts. I know some of them. I don’t know the rest of them, they’re all hidden. And I can’t pull them out one by one. You understand? I don’t know what they are. If I knew what they are then I’d pull them out. You follow what I’m saying? But I don’t know what they are. I know the obvious hurts but I don’t know the subtle ones, the hidden ones, the secret ones.
52:25 Not knowing, I can’t pull them out. You are following all this? But they must be exposed. How shall I do this?
52:40 It’s too difficult for you.
52:48 What do you say, Rachel? How shall I do it? Give me a suggestion. I come to you, please help me. I’m asking you, please help me because I must be free of all this.
52:59 Q: They all have a common denominator.
53:02 K: What is that?
53:04 Q: The I.
53:05 K: The I – but the I is the hurt.
53:07 Q: That’s right.
53:08 K: Then what shall I do?
53:10 Q: Stay with that fact.
53:16 K: (Laughs) First I see the importance, the necessity, that the mind must have no hurts at all.
53:32 Do you see that? Do you see the importance of a mind that cannot be hurt?
53:43 It doesn’t mean it has built a wall round itself. You understand? A mind that is alive, active, full, rich but cannot be hurt. You can do what you like to it, call it an ass, stupid, kick it – it cannot be hurt.
54:06 Do you see the importance of that? See it as you see that microphone or a danger – do you see it as vitally as that?
54:18 Do you? That if you are hurt your actions will be childish, your actions will be limited, your actions will be neurotic, your actions will be distorted.
54:40 Right? It is only a mind that is not capable of being hurt can act straight, be terribly honest.
54:53 Right? Now do you see the fact of that?
55:00 Q: But if you are those hurts, how can you be hurt anymore?
55:05 K: Wait, I’m coming to that, sir.
55:07 Q: Because hurts can’t get hurt.
55:10 K: But one hurt... you have resisted, you have got a great many hurts, and you can always be hurt.
55:18 Good lord.
55:19 Q: But it seems to me you can only collect another hurt if you think that you are not the hurts, whereas you have said that you are the hurts.
55:38 K: No, but that’s just a theory. If you say, ‘I am the hurt,’ what takes place?
55:45 Q: Well that hurt can’t collect another one.
55:46 K: No, not that hurt. Not a particular hurt – I’m talking of being hurt. I may no longer be hurt by your calling me an idiot, but I may be hurt by your saying, ‘Look, what you’re talking about is nonsense,’ or I may be hurt by somebody saying, ‘You are getting senile.’ Q: But if I was hurt by your saying that I was a fool then I would be thinking of myself as something different from a number of hurts.
56:25 K: Which we do.
56:26 Q: Yes. But now if I agree with you that I...
56:28 K: No, don’t agree with me.
56:29 Q: No, but if I see that I am just those hurts.
56:30 K: Do you see it, or is it just an idea still?
56:31 Q: But if I did see it...
56:33 K: Not if, not if.
56:35 Q: But I couldn’t be hurt again.
56:39 K: But, sir, we are talking – not again – we are talking about the collection of hurts that we have got.
56:48 Not again, being hurt again. I’m talking of the hurts that I have collected during my lifetime. What am I to do with them? That’s what we are discussing. Not how to prevent further hurts – that’s a different question.
57:11 So I’m saying: do you see the absolute fact that a mind that is hurt is incapable of direct action, is incapable of thinking straight, is incapable of being honest?
57:43 And you can add more incapacities but that’s enough. Do you see that? Actually see it, as you see that plant, as you see that microphone, as you see me sitting up here.
57:59 Then from there, perception, watch your hurts.
58:06 I wonder if you see this.
58:16 If you see the truth, the fact, a mind that is hurt is incapable of free action, a mind that is hurt is incapable of affection – right? – is incapable of being very honest, a mind that’s hurt is always frightened of future hurts – if you see all that, what will you do?
59:06 What do you do when you see a danger?
59:10 Q: Walk away from it.
59:15 K: Walk away from it. Why don’t you walk away from this danger?
59:33 You understand my question, Gregory? This is a danger for human existence – right? – fear, neurotic action, and so on, all that I’ve said.
59:48 That’s a tremendous danger. Now why can’t I walk away from it?
59:53 Q: Because you are the danger.
59:57 K: Therefore what shall I do? Watch it, watch it. Now apply your attention to it. What shall I do? (Pause) You’ve got it?
1:00:15 Q: No.
1:00:18 K: Yes, go on – I’ll wait.
1:00:29 (Pause) Think about it very quietly. Look, Gregory, don’t try to force it. You follow? There is the picture – look at it, don’t try to say, ‘Well, I must answer, I must look at it.’ Don’t do any of that, just watch it – it’ll come, you will see.
1:00:56 I have moved away, walked away from the danger of a precipice, of a bus hurtling towards me, or a snake and so on.
1:01:07 I see the physical danger of that – right? – and there is action.
1:01:14 I don’t say, ‘What shall I do?’ – I act. Now do I equally see as clearly this danger, the danger of collecting hurts or keeping the hurts that I have got?
1:01:35 Do I see it? Tremendous danger, much more dangerous than the animal? Right? Do you see it as dangerous?
1:01:52 Q: If you see that it is dangerous you’re not the hurt.
1:01:54 K: Wait, wait, don’t answer me. You’re answering. Wait. If you see it as tremendous danger, what will you do?
1:02:04 Q: I try and act.
1:02:06 K: What do you do with regard to that danger? You walk away. Right? Here also if you see it’s tremendously dangerous, you walk away. Right? You walk away, you have dropped it. God! You’ve got it?
1:02:25 Q: You can only walk away when you’re not... (inaudible) K: That’s all. That is, when you see the danger, it doesn’t touch you.
1:02:39 You understand? Oh, come on! Have you got it, Rachel?
1:02:53 Look, I see the danger of being a Hindu – right? – because that divides me from the Muslim, from the Christian, from the communist, from the American, from the Russian.
1:03:12 You follow? And where there is a division there is a conflict. Right? So I see tremendous danger in it. When I see the danger, it doesn’t touch me – I walk away from it. Right? Then I’m not a Hindu, I’m not a Russian or an Englishman or this or that – I’ve walked away from all that.
1:03:43 Right? Now I’ve got a great many hurts which I’ve collected during my lifetime, and I see what a danger it is.
1:04:02 And I walk, the mind walks away from any hurt. You can’t hurt it. You understand? I wonder if you’ve got this. (Pause) Have you got it? Have you got it, Rachel?
1:04:38 You see, you have got conclusions about hurts: you must have them, you must keep them or you must get rid of them – you follow?
1:04:59 – what to do about them – you have conclusions, ideas, theories. You know what a theory is, the meaning of that word?
1:05:11 Theory means insight. Now watch it. I have an insight into danger and through that insight I’ve come to a conclusion – right?
1:05:30 – and I have lost insight but I’ve got a conclusion. I don’t know if you see it. Then with that conclusion I theorise. You follow? And the new theory is not insight but conditioned by my conclusion.
1:05:53 You’ve understood it? So I have an insight into the hurts, and if I have a conclusion from that, I’ve lost the insight.
1:06:13 Because I need insight for the next occasion. I don’t know... So the moment I have a conclusion which has come about through insight then I’m losing insight.
1:06:29 I must have insight all the time, not a conclusion.
1:06:45 Have you got it?
1:06:54 Gosh, you’re getting freely educated, aren’t you? So live without a conclusion. You have understood this? You see the beauty of it? So that you always have insight, never a conclusion from which you draw an insight.
1:07:13 You get it? So, I have an insight into the danger of hurts.
1:07:29 If I draw a conclusion that I must never be hurt, that prevents the mind from having further insight into a future hurt.
1:07:44 I wonder if you get it. Have you got it? Come on, darling.
1:07:56 (Laughs) So, it is the hurt that prevents insight – right? – and I have no insight because I live and function and act according to conclusions – right?
1:08:31 – therefore I can never be free of hurts. I wonder if you get all this.
1:08:50 So can the mind be free of conclusion – which is a hurt, isn’t it? – so that the mind has constant insight, therefore constant action which is always new?
1:09:18 Ah, I won’t go into all this. You know, it used to be in India, in the ancient India, a teacher had about five or ten disciples, students, and the students lived with them, with the teacher and his family – you understand?
1:09:46 – about twelve of them: father, mother, the teacher, the wife, his children and a few other children.
1:09:53 They all lived together. And the teacher watched them all day. He said, ‘Look, be careful,’ taught them, educated them – you understand? – not only how to read and mathematics, but psychologically he was helping, you know?
1:10:10 Do you know what it does? It creates a new human being. You understand? And that’s what we’re trying to do here.
1:10:37 At least, in my talking every Thursday and Sunday, we are educating each other.
1:10:52 So can you when you leave the room have the insight into hurts and therefore never be hurt again?
1:11:10 You will be hurt again if the insight has produced a conclusion.
1:11:17 You follow? See the beauty. Right. So can you leave this room without any conclusion but having tremendous insight?
1:11:34 You have an insight when you see the bus hurtling towards you.
1:11:42 You have an insight when you see the dangerous snake or a dangerous precipice.
1:11:49 You follow? Same way, keep your insight clear without any conclusion so that you will never be hurt.
1:12:01 And you will never be hurt if you see the truth of this fact: that a mind that is hurt is incapable of clear action, is incapable of seeing what the beauty of life is.
1:12:17 Got it? Right. What time is it?
1:12:24 Q: Quarter to one.
1:12:25 K: Quarter to one. Is that enough for today? Basta! Right.