Krishnamurti Subtitles home


BR72DSS1.10 - Love and beauty
Brockwood Park, UK - 25 June 1972
Discussion with Staff and Students 1.10



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s tenth discussion with teachers and students at Brockwood Park, 1972.
0:12 Krishnamurti: What shall we talk about? (Pause) Nothing?
0:23 (Laughs) (Pause) Have you no suggestions?
0:42 (Pause) You know what is happening in the world, don’t you, more or less?
1:14 Great changes have to take place socially, morally, politically, religiously.
1:25 And where shall we begin?
1:33 There are all those group of people who say that the environment controls the mind, the environment shapes the mind, the environment brings about right morality, right action – change the environment then you have social justice.
1:59 You know that group. Have you heard about it? Oh yes, come on, you must know something about it.
2:13 Many books have been written – philosophers, economists, Marx and others – emphasising that man can be changed and only the possibility of such a change is through social revolution.
2:46 And there are those, some extreme left philosophers – not left in the political sense or the economic sense but in the religious sense, extreme – they say the world can be changed only if the human being voluntarily brings about a revolution in himself.
3:19 The whole of Asiatic outlook before Mao Tse Tung came into being, as far as I understand it, they said the world as it exists around us is of very little importance.
3:39 It has importance but not so much as how you live, what you think, whether you find a reality, God, and give your life to that, and then things will happen rightly around you.
3:58 You’ve understood the two? The commissar on one side and – what is it? – and the yogi. Ah, you all know about it – the commissar and the yogi.
4:14 You understand the question, don’t you?
4:22 Do you, Gregory? Do you understand it? No? Questioner: No.
4:35 K: Good. (Laughter) The world needs to be changed, doesn’t it? There’s social injustice, wars, economic competition, difference of classes, the very rich and the very poor, all the people who go into the factory and the few remaining on top doing nothing, born with a silver spoon in their mouth and who have retired for the rest of their life.
5:08 And seeing that – the wars, social injustice, racial differences, poverty, extreme starvation as in India, overpopulation – you know, that’s happening in the world – now how do you bring about a change in that?
5:37 And one sees a change is absolutely necessary. How can one live with somebody who is starving next door – you understand? – and you have three or five meals a day?
5:56 You have clean clothes and somebody in a village has absolutely nothing.
6:06 I’ve lived in India three months, four months of the year, and I go to different places, and I see this in every village.
6:18 You’ve no idea what poverty is like – terrible. I’ve seen a woman putting on the same shirt all the time I was there.
6:33 I was there for a month and a half. You understand what that means? She had no soap, didn’t wash, except casually, probably, and hardly any food, and when I want back next year and I asked about her, she was dead in childbirth.
6:57 How do you change all this?
7:03 Q: Is it really necessary, sir, to have all the photographing going on?
7:11 Must it be so? It’s rather distracting.
7:15 K: All right, all right. How do you change all this? You understand? The extreme riches, extreme poverty, the ghetto and the west end, the very, very rich and the very poor, or people well-fed overeating and families that have absolutely nothing.
7:42 My family was like that – you understand? – hardly any food, though they were high class and all the rest of it. You’ve no idea. But I’ve forgotten it, but it doesn’t matter, that exists now. Then there are wars, destroying, people destroying each other, killing each other. There are national divisions, religious divisions, political divisions. You follow? Now, there must be change in all this. So people say, the revolutionaries, the revolutionaries in the sense who are physical revolutionaries – you understand?
8:26 – changing the political, economic system through a revolution, whether it’s the French Revolution or the Communist Revolution or the Mao Revolution or a new kind of revolution, they say change the environment – you understand now?
8:43 – change the political system – dictatorship or Fascism or other forms of revolution – change that, change politically, environmentally, economically, then these things will also happen.
9:06 Then from that they develop an ideology – you know? – and fight for that ideology, and so on and so on.
9:18 Then there are the whole group who say that’s not the way to do it.
9:27 Change the human being. The human being will control the environment how much you may change.
9:37 He will bring about a corruption because in himself he is corrupt. You understood? I’m putting it very crudely and quickly. Now you – you’re going to be educated, you’re being educated, and you will leave here – what is your action?
10:00 What will you do with regard to this? Do you see this in two compartments – you understand what I mean? – the religious, the inward life of man separated from the external?
10:19 You understand? Or do you see it as a unitary movement, harmonious movement, moving together?
10:30 You have understood? Not the commissar and the yogi, but the yogi-commissar. (Laughs) You understand? You have understood? Now what is your response to this?
10:47 Or you have not thought about it at all. Have you thought about it at all?
11:01 You haven’t, have you? If you have, as we are doing now, what do you feel is the thing to do?
11:11 Q: I wonder what you think of the idea that the natural environment, the physical elements that govern in terms of weather and so on, these are as callous in some ways as the differences between human beings.
11:37 There is an inner quality between the action of one...
11:38 K: Sir, would you, if I may, this is for the – I don’t want to appear rude or am I rude? – this is meant for the students here for the time being.
11:46 We’ll discuss this when we have meetings in September – we can thrash all this out.
11:53 So if you will refrain, if I may suggest – let the students deal with this question, students here or students generally.
12:07 Now what do you say? That means dividing life, dividing life as politics, business, labour – what is it?
12:33 – the artist, the poet, the literary man and the religious man – you follow?
12:43 – break it all up, and give more emphasis to the physical survival, physical existence, physical wellbeing, in co-operation with each other.
12:55 That – you understand? – or is it a harmonious action all together, an integrated action?
13:05 I don’t know if you follow. You have understood my question? Now what is it you feel is the right thing to do?
13:20 Q: Have an international agreement.
13:23 K: Have an international agreement. You know, that’s one of the most hypocritical things that they have all been practising for the last I don’t know how many years.
13:37 Q: If you don’t have agreement you have friction.
13:41 K: No, wait, look, Gregory, it’s not like that. International – that’s keep your nation, be a national and yet be international. You understand? How can you do it? Be a Hindu, hold on to all your nonsense as a Hindu and yet be international with the Muslim.
14:00 You understand? Living together when they have been fighting. Is that possible?
14:03 Q: No.
14:04 K: No. And yet everybody won’t give up their nationalism. They want it. You follow? So how will you, entering into all this misery, mess, confusion – what will you do?
14:29 From where do you approach this problem? You know, this is an immense question, it’s not just a trivial question.
14:41 This has been thought about, talked about, acted upon probably from the very beginning of man.
14:50 Shall I act outwardly – you follow? – bring an outward order, or shall I bring an inward order and forget the outer?
15:04 And there have been philosophies, like in India – they said the outer is an illusion. You understand? They put up with it – it’s ugly, it is dirty, it is monstrous, it is full of disease, corruption – don’t bother about it.
15:22 There are people, great groups of people, who said that outward thing is silly, don’t be concerned with it, live as best as you can, be concerned inwardly.
15:38 You have understood?
15:43 Q: But can you separate the two?
15:50 K: They have separated the two.
15:54 Q: Yes, but inwardly they pretend to be sort of good but... (inaudible) K: No, Tunki, just look. They have, the world has separated this, man’s existence into these two categories.
16:08 (It’s all right.) They have said, ‘Forget the individual.
16:30 You don’t matter. What you think, what you do, you don’t matter, the State matters only.’ That means the State, the whole community – serve the people, forget yourself.
16:47 There have been dictatorships, there have been… oh, every kind of experiment has been made, right through the world – small communities, large communities, saying we will live a life economically, socially, in a small community where there is no division, we’ll share everything together.
17:19 I belonged to such a community once, but it didn’t work.
17:29 You’ve understood the question now?
17:36 Now what do you think is the right approach to this?
17:54 God on the one side – or Jesus or Brahmin on one side – on the other something else – you follow?
18:02 – food, clothes, shelter and that alone. There are these two divisions.
18:14 Now first of all, why has man divided life into this, the outer and the inner?
18:27 Why do you think?
18:34 Are you going to sleep?
18:42 Q: Because he’s greedy.
18:44 K: Because he’s greedy – is that it?
18:50 Q: Perhaps, sir, because he can’t reconcile the two.
18:57 He can only think in opposites and can only choose one or the other.
19:00 K: Look, if I lived in a cold climate like in England – perpetual rain, that’s our (laughs) permanent weather for the time being – I’d have to work – wouldn’t I?
19:13 – very hard, till my land. I’ve no time to think, so I give all my life to survive.
19:28 And I go on Sunday and talk about God, Jesus and – you follow? – play with it, but I must survive. So I give tremendous importance to survival, physical survival.
19:47 You understand? And in India the weather is pleasant, hot, you don’t have to do much, and you have fruit, this, you survive on a little, and so you can then think more – you follow?
20:04 – inwardly and all the rest of it.
20:14 Now what will bring about a harmonious action?
20:22 What is the source? What is the energy? What is the approach to life that will bring a total integration, a total unity, a harmony to all this?
20:46 You have understood my question? What do you think? That is, shall I bring about a Marxist revolution or a Mao revolution or a revolution of a different kind, physically, so that everybody has enough food, clothing, shelter, a little freedom, social justice, no poverty, helping each other – you understand? – and insisting on that, training people for that, through education, through constant propaganda, repetition, serve the people, help the people, don’t think about yourself, all co-operating to build a better society?
21:56 That’s being done in the communist world, perhaps more in the Maoist world, and democratically they are trying to vaguely do it.
22:11 This is going on. And there is also the inward life of man.
22:24 You understand? He’s unhappy. He may have all the food, clothes and shelter. He might be helping each other, serve the people, but inwardly he’s still vague, empty, unhappy, longing for something more than mere physical survival.
22:47 And so there is this division going on all the time. You follow? Now what will bring about a unity in this so that his inward life is as rich as his outward life?
23:08 Do you understand? Outward life with all its technology, science, the beauty of the earth, the trees, poetry – you know, all that – and also inwardly tremendously alive, active, free, and find the reality, beauty, and all that – a unity in this.
23:33 What is the factor of this unity? You have understood? Now you have understood my question? Good.
23:41 Q: The factor – what do you mean?
23:45 K: The factor. What is the principle, what is the catalyst? What is the word? What will bring about this unity together, this division together?
24:11 You have understood my question, Gregory? Now what do you think it is? So that my life, your life, will be inwardly as clear, pure, unpolluted as outwardly, so that you are a total human being, helping each other, co-operating, serving each other, and inwardly tremendously, you know, free and ecstatic and all the rest of it.
24:57 Have you got the picture right, the question clear? Now you answer it. You’ve got to because you are going to face this.
25:09 Q: I tend to feel that in most places people aren’t encouraged to find what is true for themselves, you see, so that what they find is real, that they see it, you see?
25:37 K: Look, you have got to understand this problem. How do you bring about this sense of whole, this sense of inward riches as well as outward riches?
25:52 What is the water, what is the drink – doesn’t matter – that will give you this thing?
26:03 You know, this has been the eternal problem.
26:16 So they say, ‘Love God and everything will be right.’ You understand?
26:31 God as an idea, God as an image, God as beauty – love that – and if you really love it then you’ll act as a total human being.
26:54 You understand? Then you will help each other, then you will work for each other, then we’ll create a community in which there is no corruption, no pollution – everything will fit in beautifully.
27:09 Now see the difficulty. There is the Christian God (laughs) – you understand? – Muslim God, the Hindu God, and so they say all paths lead to God.
27:23 You follow? The trick they’re playing. You’ve understood? You have your God and I have my God, he and she, and we all meet, through our path, at the centre.
27:38 Now is that possible? I cling to my belief, you cling to your belief, and she and he, and through somehow some miraculous act we’ll all meet there.
28:06 You have understood? You know, if you go to an Indian village, whether in the north or in the south, really a village, you will find that underneath a tree they have put two or three bricks and put colour on them and put flowers there.
28:41 That has become – you understand? – the shrine, a feeling that there they are creating something holy.
28:56 Now extend that same thing, that same feeling, that same idea, which becomes the cathedral.
29:05 You’ve seen it? You understand what I am talking? Last night I turned on casually the television and Kenneth Clark – you know who he is?
29:19 Yes? Good – he was talking about Christian civilisation and Chartres, which is just south of Paris, two hours from Paris, 11th century, and he was talking how it was built and so on.
29:38 Now, I suddenly thought, ‘How very strange.’ The village in India, the poor people, put their two bricks together in a certain shape, coloured it, put a few flowers round it and then build a wall round it so that it remains as a shrine, and as it evolves it becomes the cathedral, the great Gothic monument – you understand? – with Jesus as the centre.
30:11 No, don’t laugh, just see the fact.
30:24 And the villager will not accept your God, and you will not accept the God of the villager, naturally.
30:43 So one has to find out what is the water, what is the energy, what is the movement that brings about a total harmony in the human being so that he’s outwardly incorruptible as well as inwardly.
31:12 You’ve understood my question? Now you answer it. Don’t sit back and say, ‘Well, you tell us.’ You answer it. You discuss it with me.
31:27 Where shall I begin: there or here?
31:39 You understand? Leave this alone, change that, or leave that alone and change this.
31:53 You’re getting it? Or in changing I will change the outer. It’s not outer and inner, but the outer is the inner, the inner is the outer.
32:24 I don’t know, you... So, there is no commissar and the yogi, not the division, but there is neither commissar nor the yogi.
32:45 You understand? No, you don’t see it.
32:54 Now let’s look at it differently. Do you know what love is?
33:06 Come on, Brazil, what do you say? What is love?
33:13 Q: It’s when you and someone else have no differences, no division.
33:21 K: Now, wait a minute, don’t say anything, as we said the other day, that you yourself haven’t experienced.
33:33 Don’t say something that you don’t know. Is that a fact to you, that there is no division between you and me?
33:51 If there is no division you say there is love. Right? That’s just an idea, isn’t it? Or is it a fact to you? Fact in the sense there is no division. If it isn’t a fact, don’t say it.
34:16 Then you deceive yourself – you follow? – then you become – not you – a hypocrite. Then you say one thing and feel something else.
34:32 So one has to find this thing, what love is, because man again has been talking about it endlessly.
34:52 Because perhaps that may be the factor, that may be the thing that brings this strange sense of harmony.
35:02 You understand? If I – not if; I won’t talk like that.
35:16 Now what is love? They have said, ‘Love God, eschew evil, love your neighbour as yourself, love your wife, have no hate, don’t kill,’ – you understand?
35:41 – ‘don’t harm another by word, by gesture, by thought.’ Then they say in that, then you will know what love is.
36:07 Q: Isn’t it a feeling of care?
36:17 K: Care, attention, a sense of tenderness, beauty, politeness, consideration.
36:26 You understand? I can go on giving words, but the description is not the fact, is it?
36:35 You’ve understood? I can describe that plant over there, but the description is not the plant, is it?
36:48 Most of us are satisfied with the description. You understand? So how will you, as you grow up, and as you are growing up, some of you are going to leave and not come back here again – I hope you’re coming back sometime – how do you meet this problem?
37:15 You’ve got to meet it. You’ve got to educate yourself to find out what this is.
37:29 If you loved, do you think you would kill another, go to a war and kill people?
37:40 If I loved my son, would I allow him to be killed – you understand? – by government, by an idea, by kings?
37:51 You understand? You’re going to have children, you’re going to have a family, and will you allow your children to go out and be killed in Vietnam?
38:07 Don’t say no. You follow? Vietnam or a future war or a war between England and Wales. (Laughs) So what is love?
38:39 You are understanding now? Is it compassion? You know? Passion for all, which means care for all.
38:59 Have you got such a feeling or are you only thinking about your own pleasures, your own improvement, your own success, your own place in this beastly little land?
39:15 The land is beautiful but if you have a place in the land it becomes beastly. You understand?
39:33 Do you feel for those people in Vietnam, the north and the south, the Americans – you follow? – the whole, how they are killed, tortured, burnt, suffering?
39:50 You understand? Do you feel any of that for them?
40:00 You know, sentiment is not love. You understand? Do you see the difference between love and sentiment?
40:21 The people who are sentimental can be terribly cruel. Have you understood that? No, come on, sir.
40:37 So I have to find out what love is, because that may be the factor, the real thing that will bring about a harmony so that my life outwardly and inwardly will be rich, so that I love people, so that I care for people, I educate people, not allow societies, governments to kill people – which are my children.
41:09 You follow?
41:17 Now how do you come by this? You understand my question, Gregory? How do you have this flame of passion for things? Not sex, passion, but how do you have this passion to see, you know, to have this sense of not hurting people, not wanting to exploit people, not wanting everything to yourself.
41:57 Come on, sirs! You see, people have said, ‘Love God and things will be right.’ You understand?
42:15 God is an idea, is an image.
42:28 God is something which society, churches, religious organisations have conditioned man to believe in.
42:39 Or if they have not conditioned, your own fear, you say, ‘My God…’ – not my God – you say, ‘My life is so short, my life is so ugly, I suffer so much agonies about others, and there must be something much more,’ and I long for that and I begin to invent it.
43:12 I knew a man, he used to come to see me several times. He said one year he was walking on the beach and he picked up a stone washed by the waves, and it had a peculiar shape, a rather lovely shape, so he took it home and put it on the mantelpiece.
43:40 And he looked at it, and he said, ‘How nice it would be if I could put a flower or two round it.’ And he put some flowers.
43:51 And every day he put flowers. You understand? And gradually that stone, that little ceremony, he said, ‘To me that was God.
44:08 That was the most sacred thing in my life.’ You understand?
44:19 And you’re doing the same thing in the church or in a temple or in a mosque.
44:22 Q: But he’s very fragile because if somebody comes along and breaks that stone or steals that stone then...
44:37 K: That’s just it, he gets angry.
44:45 He’ll kill the man. You know, when he came to see me he told me all this and I said to him, ‘Sir, that’s all just out of your imagination, isn’t it, your thinking?’ He was quite shocked by it.
45:03 You follow? And a few days later he came back, ‘You’re perfectly right.’ You know, because I didn’t want to convince him of anything, I felt very sorry, affection, all the rest of it, and so he came back, he said, ‘You are perfectly right, I’ve understood it and I’ve removed it.’ And removed it after many, many years – you understand? – it isn’t just...
45:30 Q: But isn’t it the feeling of beauty the first time? Isn’t it there is something?
45:40 K: Now have you got a sense of beauty, Tunki?
45:59 (Pause) What is beauty?
46:09 What do you think is beauty? Gregory, come on, sir, what do you think is beauty?
46:23 When you look at that tree, the tree in the wind, the young, fresh spring leaves, or the slip of a new moon, or you see a cat walking across the lawn, or the face of a beautiful person, beautiful face – what is beauty?
46:46 Q: Something which is pleasing to you, something which pleases you.
46:54 K: Which pleases you. And something that doesn’t please you, is that ugly?
47:09 So you say beauty is pleasure.
47:19 Right?
47:27 (Pause) So is pleasure love?
47:36 Poor chap – I’m awfully sorry to bring up all these things.
47:44 You’re going to face all these things later on so you might just as well face it now.
47:57 Q: That can’t be love.
48:02 K: Why not? Pleasure. Sex is pleasure, and you call that love.
48:16 I own this property, it’s mine, I love this property, it gives me great security, great pleasure.
48:29 My family, I possess them, they possess me – that gives me great delight because I belong to something, I belong to a group.
48:42 When I call myself an Englishman it gives me great pleasure because I belong to a great country, which has history, which has had an empire.
48:54 You follow? It gives me great pleasure. Is that beauty?
49:04 Q: Maybe it is beauty to the person who is saying it.
49:14 K: Now look at something, look at a tree, look at that plant.
49:24 I look at it and you look at it. ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘what is there? That is nothing,’ and you say, ‘Goodness, how beautiful that is.’ Or you look at a building, architecturally in proportion, in depth, in shape, it takes form in a beautiful surrounding against the sky.
49:53 You go into an ecstasy looking at it, and I say, ‘Let’s go and have tea!’ (Laughs) You look at Van Gogh and say, ‘How could he do such a marvellous thing?’ or hear some Beethoven, Mozart or Bach, and say, ‘Oh!’ and I say, ‘Well, let’s have pop music, shall we?’ So what is beauty?
50:30 Does it lie in the building, in the tree, in the music – you understand? – in the poem, or does it lie in you, who are looking, reading the poem?
50:54 The poem may have beauty but you have beauty therefore that becomes more beautiful. You understand?
51:06 Have you got that beauty?
51:13 Beauty means – I won’t tell you; you work at it.
51:24 If I see a building and because it has taken shape like a cathedral with the vast columns going into the sky and the dome, or some of these modern buildings, in themselves they are beautiful – you understand? – in themselves, and I say, ‘How beautiful,’ because in themselves they are beautiful.
51:58 So is my appreciation of beauty dependent on the building – you understand? – on the name of the architect and so on, so on, so on, or is it in me?
52:18 If it is outside of me – you follow? – then I’m back again in the same position, which is the outward beauty and inward corruption.
52:32 You follow? I am nothing, I have nothing, I don’t know what beauty is, but that is beautiful.
52:39 Q: But when you differentiate between beautiful and ugly...
52:41 K: I’m just... I’m coming to that presently – don’t pick me up too quickly – I’m coming to that. See the clever boys?
52:53 You know, this is a real Indian mind that. (Laughter) They love to work on theories. Theory as we said, insight – we’ll go into it. Now just a minute. So, what is beauty to you?
53:12 Q: Is it the sense of perception?
53:17 K: Have you got it, Tunki? Don’t say a thing that isn’t real to you. Don’t put into words that you yourself haven’t felt.
53:32 You know what hunger is, don’t you?
53:39 It’s yours. You have a hunger. Then you don’t pretend. I am hungry – you know? – that’s a fact. But if you talk about something that’s not a fact to you then you play double, you become a hypocrite.
53:57 I mean, I’m talking inwardly, not outwardly. Go on. So I’m asking you: have you such sense of beauty? And what does that mean, beauty?
54:19 Q: Could it be to be harmony?
54:28 K: Harmony. That means no conflict – isn’t it? – between the outer and the inner, or inner and outer.
54:38 Which means there is no division in you.
54:45 You don’t say, ‘This is ugly, I’m going to avoid, and this is beautiful, I’m going to cling to.’ In yourself there is no division.
54:54 Right? Is that a fact to you? So that you live a life in which there is no division, and therefore no conflict, no corruption taking place.
55:26 Now you see, when you have got to... when you see that, you will not say a word which you yourself haven’t felt, you will be silent, won’t you?
55:40 (Laughs) Won’t you? That gives you tremendous honesty, doesn’t it?
55:55 And that makes you serious – say, ‘I will say only things that I feel, that I have really felt inside me, otherwise I won’t say it.’ You know what anger is.
56:09 Of course, because you know what it is, you have felt it, you have experienced it, you have lived with it.
56:19 And when you say, ‘I’m angry,’ that has a reality.
56:26 But when you say, ‘Harmonious is beauty,’ I say, ‘Well, look, for God’s sake, don’t say that till you have this fact in your hands, in your mouth, in your eyes.’ Q: Well, sometimes when one wakes up fresh in the morning and then one does physical exercise or whatever it is, and afterwards there is a feeling of you open your eyes and feel that nature is, or the building round you, you look at it, it’s different then from the habitual look.
57:03 K: Quite. How does that happen? What you are saying is we have got used to so many things – we live next to a tree and never have looked at it.
57:21 We have looked at it casually, but one morning you wake up and see the tree and it has got something.
57:28 Your look and your feeling and that tree, there is tremendous relationship between that.
57:37 Now how does this take place? For the time being you have forgotten your habitual look, haven’t you?
57:59 So, a discarding of the past – you understand? – helps you to look. Right? You have understood? (Pause) You know, we talked about, the other day, we talked about meditation.
58:32 Do you remember? Have any of you done it?
58:41 Have you been to that place, that shack, that shed?
58:49 Have you sat in it? What happened? What did you do?
59:04 Did you watch your thought, or was it too difficult? Or did you find it awfully difficult to sit quietly for even two minutes?
59:15 Absolutely quiet without a single movement of the body – did you find it difficult?
59:26 Gregory? Have any of you done it? Then if you have done it, what did you find?
59:37 What was your mind doing? Going over old things, old habits? ‘I should have done this, I should have done that, I mustn’t think this, I must do that.’ You follow?
59:55 Were you doing that? Yes? Then what did you do?
1:00:01 Q: Have it be exposed.
1:00:05 K: What did you do, actually? You sat there, after some time you got your body quiet, then you were watching your mind, and the mind went on along the old rut, groove.
1:00:24 Then what happened next?
1:00:34 Go on. (Laughs) Or haven’t you gone so far as that?
1:00:44 You see what this does if you do it properly? It gives you a perception of yourself. Right? See what you are and your relationship to the world, your relationship to another, which is the world.
1:01:13 So I find for myself, I find that I cannot possibly live – live in the sense a life in which I divide myself as a Hindu, as a Buddhist, as a communist, as a socialist, as a Mao, non- Mao – as long as there is division in me I must be in a torture.
1:01:56 For me that’s a reality. You follow what I mean? For a minute I won’t have conflict. It isn’t a decision, it isn’t a conclusion, it isn’t an act of will, but I see the fact and therefore I live with the fact.
1:02:15 You understand what I am saying? I live with the fact that division is a dreadful thing.
1:02:26 That is a fact. It’s like my living with a tremendously dangerous animal.
1:02:40 I act because it’s a dangerous animal. In the same way, I see that any form of conflict is the most destructive thing.
1:02:51 That’s a fact. Therefore my relationship to the world is different.
1:03:06 You understand what I am saying?
1:03:17 Now, can you who are being educated at Brockwood, living in a small community, knowing each other, knowing each other’s phrases, words, gestures, pleasant, unpleasant, knowing each other’s beauty and ugliness – knowing it, you are not unaware of it – can you live in a state where there is no conflict between you and another?
1:03:56 Because when there is conflict you can’t co-operate.
1:04:05 You understand? You know, co-operation, which means working together, used to take place when many people believed in an idea.
1:04:26 You understand? Say, for instance, we believe in God, in something, in a belief, and we all work together for that belief.
1:04:42 You understand? Right? We’re all working together for a belief, or for somebody, or for an authority – right?
1:04:57 – or for a conclusion, an ideology. Is that co-operation? You understand? You are my boss, you are my authority, and I say, ‘Well, I’ll co-operate with you,’ because you promise me God, or a reward, or a better room.
1:05:22 Is that co-operation? Obviously not. So is co-operation based on a personal motive?
1:05:42 Or because I like you, because you have a nice face, you’re very pleasant to me, I’ll co-operate with you.
1:05:55 But I won’t co-operate with somebody who is not pleasant to me.
1:06:04 Or I’ll co-operate with somebody who believes what I believe in.
1:06:11 All that is obviously not co-operation. Now, have I the spirit of co-operation? You understand? Naturally – you follow? Have you? Come on, sir.
1:06:33 Which means you co-operate because you love – you understand?
1:06:43 – not because you’re seeking pleasure.
1:06:55 And when you’re seeking pleasure then you’re hurt, aren’t you? Or is that too much? I seek pleasure in your company, in working with you, and when that pleasure is thwarted I am hurt.
1:07:18 Therefore I won’t co-operate with you, I get angry.
1:07:27 And I see that is not co-operation – that is, working together – so I say, what is it that helps, that brings about real sense of co-operation, working together?
1:07:41 It doesn’t matter what you think, what I think – but together. Isn’t it? If I love you, if I care for you, if I feel tremendously concerned what you do, what you think, how you walk – you follow? – then I co-operate with you.
1:08:09 I may criticise you. I won’t be hurt. I wonder if you’re following all this.
1:08:28 So you see, from all this there is free enterprise in America where the individual runs amok, and there are the totalitarian states where the individual doesn’t matter at all, only the State.
1:09:03 Or there are those groups, vast group of people, who are educated to co-operate, serve each other.
1:09:12 And there are those people who say, ‘God is only the real thing and everything else doesn’t matter.
1:09:27 If I know how to love that reality then I will act rightly, co-operate, I’ll be unselfish.’ Now, seeing all this – you see the picture, don’t you? – all of it, not just my picture, the whole picture of the world – division, religious divisions, and in the Christian world there are divisions in Christianity – Catholic, Protestant, you know, the Unitarian, the Baptist, non-Baptist – God! – and also in India the same thing – the divisions between business man and the artist, the politicians and the housewife – division in which the individual becomes tremendously important, and in another field like Communism, the individual doesn’t matter, he’s suppressed.
1:10:43 Look at all that. Don’t come to any conclusion. Look at it. And can you look at it without taking sides?
1:11:05 And when you don’t take sides with this or that, or the left or the right or the centre, then how will you act?
1:11:17 What will you do, living in this world where there is left, centre and right, extreme left, extreme right, both religiously and economically, all that?
1:11:31 What is your place in this?
1:11:41 And you have to find a place in this. Or you might say, ‘Well, I don’t belong to any of this.’ Because I look at it all differently.
1:12:04 I have a different feeling about all this, because I feel I love human beings, therefore I’m neither this nor that, nor German, Russian, communist, socialist – I am a human being who knows what love is.
1:12:32 Can you say that? Say it, not verbally but mean it, that’s what you feel.
1:12:56 And you have to find out also what it is to have a mind that is creative.
1:13:19 You understand? Is creativeness born through conflict?
1:13:30 I am in a conflict, tremendous conflict, and I have a talent to write a poem.
1:13:40 You follow? I have a talent – write a poem, for science or modelling or whatever it is – I have a talent for the fiddle, for the flute, for something or other.
1:14:00 And out of my conflict, out of my strain, out of my tears I produce, I bring about a composition, I write a composition.
1:14:13 Is that creative?
1:14:20 My life is corrupt, little, small, petty, and I write a marvellous book and all the critics say, ‘What a great creative human being he is.’ You follow?
1:14:41 Is that creative? Go on, sir.
1:14:54 I am corrupt, I am polluted, and I want no pollution outward, outside of me.
1:15:04 You understand? I’m unhappy, tortured, I’m lonely, desperate, but I’ve got a marvellous talent for music.
1:15:28 And you say, ‘What a great artist he is.’ Don’t you?
1:15:40 I say he’s not an artist. I once talked to a great musician. He came to see me and we were talking about this. I said this and he has never been near me again. Quite right – I’m glad he was never again. I knew a multimillionaire, tremendously rich, marvellous jewels, emeralds literally as big as that – oh, tremendously.
1:16:24 He came to see me. He used to come and see me, listen to the talks, and gradually he said, ‘I must come and see you, have an interview.’ So I used to see him.
1:16:38 And one day he said to me, ‘You know, I’m having terrible dreams, I’m disturbed, disturbing dreams which I never had before in my life.
1:16:50 I’m tremendously disturbed in my sleep.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know, everything seems to be churned up.’ You understand?
1:17:03 Are you following all this?
1:17:06 Q: Yes.
1:17:08 K: And I said, ‘Naturally, sir, because you’ve lived a life coining money, bullying people, you know, all the rest of it, and when we have talked about it suddenly you are waking to all that and the dreams are an intimation of your corrupt life.’ And he says, ‘Is that so?’ I said, ‘What do you mean, asking me?
1:17:42 Isn’t it a fact?’ And he began to see it. And you know, he never came near me again, because he said, ‘You’re a disturbing factor, I won’t come.’ And I’m very glad.
1:17:55 And I’ve never seen him again.
1:18:03 So if you – you follow? – you must be the disturbing factor.
1:18:10 That’s real education. Not because you want to disturb people. In yourself you’re very clear.
1:18:25 In yourself there is no conflict. You know what it means to really love people. And also you have to find out if there is something beyond this life.
1:18:48 You follow? We discussed the other day about death.
1:19:04 And you have to find out if there is really something immeasurable. Call it God – the name doesn’t matter – something real, you know? Find out.
1:19:22 Then you’ll be really educated human beings.
1:19:31 What’s the time? Isn’t that enough?
1:19:34 Q: Quarter to one.
1:19:36 K: Right. Is that enough? (Pause) Q: Sir?
1:20:11 You said we might go to the shed sometime. Previously in one of your talks you said we might go to the meditation shed, some of us.
1:20:21 K: I would go? I forgot about it. All right, sir, I’ll find time tomorrow – some of us go and sit in that room.