Krishnamurti Subtitles home


BR75T1 - What is the function of thought?
Brockwood Park, UK - 6 September 1975
Public Talk 1



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s first public talk at Brockwood Park, 1975.
0:10 As we are going to have only four talks and two discussions we ought to make it as brief and to the point as possible.
0:40 We must all be very concerned with what is going on in the world: the fact of disintegration, the violence, the brutality, the wars and dishonesty in high political field.
1:07 So in the face of all this disintegration, what is correct action?
1:22 What is one to do to survive in freedom and be totally religious?
1:40 We are using the word ‘religion’ not in the orthodox sense at all, which is no religion, but the meaning of that word being, ‘gathering together all energy to find out what is the place of thought and where its limitations are, and to go beyond it’.
2:14 That is the true significance and the meaning of that word ‘religion’.
2:21 If you look into a good dictionary you will find that. And so what is one to do in this disintegrating, corrupt, immoral world, what is a human being – not the individual because there is no such thing as the individual – we are human beings, we are collective, not individual, we are the result of various influences, collective influences, forces, conditioning and so on.
3:03 So as human beings, whether we live in this country, or in America or in Russia or in India, which is going through a terrible time, what is one to do?
3:17 What is the correct, right action?
3:29 To find this out, if one is at all serious and I hope we are serious here, otherwise you wouldn’t have come, what is one to do?
3:38 Is there an action that is total, whole, not fragmented, that is both correct, accurate, that is compassionate, religious in the sense we are using that word, which has nothing whatsoever to do with belief, dogma, rituals, conditioning of a certain type of religious enquiry, what is a human being confronted with this problem to do?
4:32 To find an answer, not imaginary, fictitious or pretended, to find the true, the right answer one must enquire into the question of what is the whole movement of thought.
4:58 Because all our conditioning, all our activity, all our religions, all our political, economic, social, moral life is based on thought.
5:15 I hope we are meeting each other in this problem.
5:26 Thought has been our chief instrument in all the fields of life, in all the areas: religious, non-religious, political, economic, social, moral and personal relationship.
5:51 I think that is fairly obvious.
5:58 Please, if I may point out, we are talking this thing over together.
6:16 We are enquiring into this together, so you are sharing it, your responsibility is to share it, not just merely listen to a few ideas, agree or disagree, but to share it, which means you must give attention, to it, you must care for it, this problem must be serious, this problem must be something that touches your mind, your heart, your everything in life – otherwise there is no sharing, there is no communion, there is no communication except verbally or intellectually and that has very little value.
7:04 So we are together enquiring into this question.
7:14 And what is the responsibility of thought, knowing its limitation, knowing that whatever it does is within the limited area, and in that limited area is it possible to have correct, accurate response and action?
8:07 At what level does one find for oneself, as a human being, the right action?
8:22 If it is imaginary, personal, according to an idea or a concept, or an ideal, it ceases to be correct action.
8:34 I hope we are understanding each other. The ideal, the conclusion is still the movement of thought as time, as measure.
8:53 And thought has created all our problems – in our personal relationship, economically, socially, morally, religiously, thought has not found an answer.
9:19 And we are trying to find out, if we can, this morning, and the next two or three talks, what is a human being concerned seriously in the face of this enormous problem, which is very complex, and being committed, responsible, what is the action that is whole, non-traditional, non-mechanistic, which is not a conclusion, a prejudice, a belief?
10:25 That is, I want to find out, if I am at all serious, how am I to act – in which action there is no pretension, an action that has no regrets, an action that does not breed further problems, an action that will be whole, complete and answer to every issue, whether at the personal level or in the most complex social level?
11:17 I hope this is your problem.
11:24 Unless we solve this problem very deeply, talking about meditation, what is god, what is truth and all the rest of it has very little meaning.
11:41 One must lay the foundation, otherwise you cannot go very far.
11:51 One must begin as close as possible to go very far, and the nearness is you, as a human being living in this monstrous society, corrupt and all the rest of it.
12:16 And one must find for oneself an action that is whole, non-fragmented, because the world is becoming more and more dangerous to live in, it is becoming a desert and each one of us has to be an oasis.
12:53 And to bring about that, not isolated existence, but a total human existence, our enquiry is into the problem of action.
13:20 Can thought solve our problems – thought being the response of memory, experience and knowledge?
13:34 The response of memory. Memory is a material process. Thought is material and chemical, and all the scientists agree about this.
13:57 And the things that thought has created, if you observe in the world and in ourselves, is the world of reality, the world of things.
14:27 Reality means – I won’t go into the root meaning of all that – the word means ‘the thing that exists’ – not imagined, not fictitious, something that is actual, real.
14:51 Reality means the thing. And to find out what truth is one must be very clear where the limitations of reality are, and not let it flow into the world that is not real.
15:11 I don’t know if you are following all this.
15:18 May we go on? We are all together in this?
15:28 So when one observes in the world and in oneself, thought has created an extraordinarily complex problem of existence.
15:49 Thought has created the centre as the ‘me’ and the ‘you’.
15:59 And from that centre we act.
16:06 Please look at it yourself, observe it, you will see it for yourself.
16:15 You are not accepting something the speaker is talking about, don’t accept anything.
16:23 You know when one begins to doubt everything, then from that doubt, from that uncertainty grows certainty, clarity; but if you start with imagination, belief, conclusions and live within that area you will end up always doubting.
16:58 So here we are trying to investigate, enquire, look into things that are very close to us, which is our daily life, with all its misery, conflict, pain, suffering, love and anxiety, greed, envy, all that.
17:27 As we said, thought has created the ‘me’, and so thought in itself being fragmentary makes the ‘me’ into a fragment.
17:50 Right? When you say I, the ‘me’, I want, I don’t want, I am this, I am not that, it is the result of thought.
18:05 And thought itself being fragmentary – thought is never the whole, so what it has created becomes fragmentary.
18:21 My world, my religion, my belief, my country, my god and yours, so it becomes fragmentary.
18:32 So thought intrinsically is a process of time, measure and therefore fragmentary.
18:42 I wonder if you see this. If you see this once very clearly, then we will be able to find out what is action, a correct, accurate action in which there is no imagination, no pretension, nothing but the actual.
19:19 Right. So we are trying to find out what is action that is whole, that is not fragmentary, that is not caught in the movement of time, which is not traditional and therefore mechanical.
19:59 One wants to live a life without conflict and yet live in a society that doesn’t destroy freedom and yet survive.
20:30 As the societies and governments throughout the world are becoming more and more centralised, more and more bureaucratic, our freedom is getting less and less.
20:43 Freedom is not what one likes to do, what one wants to do, that is not freedom.
20:53 Freedom means something entirely different: freedom from this constant battle, constant anxiety, uncertainty, suffering, pain, all the things that thought has created in us.
21:19 So is there an action which is not based on the mechanical process of memory, on a repetition of an experience and therefore a continuing in the movement of time as past, present and future.
22:01 Is there an action that is not conditioned by environment?
22:18 You know the Marxists say that control the environment then you will change man, and that has been tried, and man has not changed.
22:37 Man is as primitive, vulgar, cruel, brutal, violent and all the rest of it, though they are controlling the environment.
22:52 And there are those who say, don’t bother about the environment but have a belief in some divinity and that will guide you.
23:13 You must know all this. And that divinity is the projection of thought. So we are back again in the same field.
23:31 So realising all this what is a human being to do?
23:46 And can thought, which is material process, which is a chemical process, therefore a thing, a thing which is real, which has created all this structure, can that very thought solve our problems?
24:21 You understand my question?
24:29 So one must very carefully, diligently, find out what are the limitations of thought, and can thought realise itself its limitation and therefore not spill over into the realm which thought can never touch?
25:06 I wonder if you see. Right? You understand my question?
25:33 Thought has created the technological world, the house, the bicycle, the aeroplane, and thought has also created the division between you and me.
25:56 Thought has also created the image of you and the ‘me’, and these images separate each one of us.
26:09 Thought can only function in duality, in opposites, and therefore all reaction is a divisive process, separative process.
26:43 And thought has created time, not only division between human beings, nationalities, religious beliefs, rituals, dogmas, political differences, opinions, conclusions, all that is the result of thought.
27:10 Thought has also created the division between you and me, as form and name.
27:21 And thought has also created the centre which is the ‘me’ as opposed to you, and therefore there is a division between you and me.
27:34 Thought has also created this whole structure of social behaviour, which is essentially based on tradition, which is mechanical.
27:50 Thought has also created the religious world – the Christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Muslim, and with all the divisions, all the practices, all the innumerable gurus that are springing up like mushrooms.
28:17 (Laughter) No, it is awfully serious all this, you don’t know how deadly serious all this is, how they are all destroying all this!
28:32 And thought has created what it considers is love.
28:53 And is compassion the result of love, the result of thought?
29:02 That is our problem, those are all our problems – the technological world, the world of relationship between man and woman and so on, in which the image is the most formidable barrier, and the social behaviour which has become totally immoral, each one seeking his own pleasure, his own security, his own existence and denying everything else.
29:56 And in the world of religion it has projected the saviours, the gurus, the gods, all kinds of fantastic, imaginary things, fictitious, unreal.
30:17 And yet we are trying to solve all these problems through thought. I wonder if you get it.
30:33 Right? And can thought see itself as the mischief-maker, see itself as a necessary instrument in the creation of a society which is not immoral?
31:03 Can thought be aware of itself? You understand my question? Please do follow this. Can your thought become conscious of itself?
31:25 And if it does, is that consciousness part of thought?
31:37 You understand? One can be aware of the activities of thought, and one can choose those activities as good and bad, and worthwhile and not worthwhile, but the choice is still the result of thought.
32:12 And therefore it is perpetuating conflict and duality.
32:24 Right? Can thought be attentive to its own movements?
32:35 Or is there an entity outside the field of thought who directs thought?
32:50 You are following all this?
32:58 You understand? I can say, ‘I am aware of my thoughts, I know what I am thinking’.
33:13 But that entity that says, I know what I am thinking, that ‘I’ is the product of thought.
33:27 And that entity then begins to control, subjugate, or rationalise thinking.
33:38 So there is an entity we say, that is different from thought – but it is essentially thought.
33:53 So what we are trying to explain is: thought is tremendously limited, it plays all kinds of tricks, it imagines, it creates a super-consciousness – but it is still thought.
34:23 So our problem then is: can thought realise for itself where it is essential to operate, where it is accurate in its operation and totally limited in every other direction?
35:00 That means, one has to go into this question of human consciousness.
35:13 You know this sounds very philosophical, very complicated, but it isn’t.
35:21 Philosophy means the love of truth – not love of words, not love of ideas, not love of speculations, but the love of truth.
35:36 And that means you have to find out for yourself where reality is, and that reality cannot become truth.
35:49 You cannot go through reality to come to truth. You must understand the limitations of reality, which is the whole process of thought.
36:02 Right? You know when you look into yourself, which is knowing yourself, knowing your consciousness – why you think, what your motives are, what your purposes are, what your beliefs are, what your intentions are, what your pretensions are (laughs), what your imaginations are – all that is your consciousness.
36:44 That consciousness essentially is the consciousness of the world. I wonder… Please do see this. Your consciousness is not radically different from the consciousness of a Muslim, Hindu, anybody else, because your consciousness is filled with anxiety, hope, fear, pleasure, suffering, greed, envy, competition, that is your consciousness.
37:19 And the beliefs and your gods, everything is in that consciousness.
37:34 The content of that makes consciousness. The content of that is thought. Right? The thought that has filled the consciousness with the things it has created.
37:56 Look into yourself and you will see how extraordinarily obvious it is.
38:06 And from this content, which is tradition, which is conditioned, which is the result of thought, we are trying to find a way to act within that area – right? – within that area of consciousness which thought has filled with the things of thought.
38:37 And one asks: if thought cannot solve all our problems – human problems, not technological problems, not mathematical problems, then how can it go, or how can it limit itself and not enter into the field of the psyche, into the field of the spirit – we can use that word for the moment.
39:26 You see as long as we function within that area we must always suffer, there must always be disorder, there must always be fear and anxiety.
39:56 So my question is: can I, can a human being bring about order in the world of reality, and when you have established order, when thought has established order in the world of reality, then it will realise its own tremendous limitation.
40:35 I wonder if you see. Right? We live in a world of disorder, not only outwardly but inwardly.
40:57 And we have not been able to solve this disorder.
41:05 We try everything – meditation, drugs, accepting authority, denying authority, pursuing freedom and denying freedom.
41:26 We have done everything possible to bring about order – through compulsion, through fear, through various forms of motivations – but still we live in disorder.
41:44 And a disordered mind is now trying to find out if there is a correct action – you follow?
41:59 A disordered mind is trying to find out if there is a right, accurate, correct action.
42:16 And it will find an action which is incorrect, disorderly, not whole.
42:28 Therefore in the world of reality in which we live we must bring order.
42:39 I wonder if you see this?
42:49 Order is not the acceptance of authority.
43:01 Order is not what one wants to do.
43:09 Order is not something according to a blueprint.
43:17 Right? So order must be something highly mathematical, because the greatest mathematical order is the total denial of disorder, within oneself and therefore within a human being.
43:51 Can you look at your disorder, be aware of it, not choosing particular forms of disorder and accepting others and denying others, but see the whole disorder?
44:14 Disorder implies conflict, self-centred activity, the acceptance of a conclusion and living according to that conclusion, the ideal and the pursuit of ideal which denies the actual, can you totally deny all that?
44:54 It is only when you deny totally all that, there is order. I wonder if you see this – the order that is not created by thought in the world of reality.
45:08 You understand? We are separating the world, separating reality and truth.
45:22 We say reality is everything that thought has created: and in that area, in that field, there is total disorder, except in the world of technology.
45:48 In that field human beings live in complete disorder, and this disorder is brought about by the things which we have explained – conflict, the pursuit of pleasure, fear, suffering, death, all that.
46:14 Can you become aware of all that and totally deny it, walk away from it?
46:25 And out of that comes order in the world of reality.
46:32 So in that world of reality behaviour is something entirely different when you have denied all that – you understand what I am talking about? – when you have denied the ‘me’, which is the product of thought, which creates the division, the thought that has created the ‘me’ and the super-consciousness, all the rest of it – all the imaginations, the pretensions, the anxieties, the acceptance and the denial.
47:17 That is, the content which is so traditional, to deny that tradition is to have order.
47:36 Then we can go into the question of what truth is, not before, because then it becomes pretentious, hypocritical, nonsensical.
47:53 In that one has to understand the whole question of fear, how human beings live in fear, and that fear is now becoming more and more acute, because the world is becoming so dangerous a place, where tyrannies are increasing, political tyrannies, bureaucratic tyrannies and therefore denying freedom for the mind to understand, to enquire.
48:39 So can we as human beings, living in this disorderly world and disintegrating world, become, not in theory or in imagination, but actually an oasis in a world that is becoming a desert?
49:25 This is really a very serious question.
49:33 And can we human beings educate ourselves totally differently?
49:47 And we can do that only if we understand the nature and the movement of thought as time, which means really understanding oneself as a human being – to look at oneself not according to some psychologists, Freudians and Jungians and all the rest of it, but to look at ourselves actually as we are, and discover for ourselves how disorderly a life we lead – a life of uncertainty, a life of pain, living on conclusions, beliefs, memories – and becoming aware of it and that very awareness washes away all this.
51:15 So perhaps, there is no time this morning to go into – perhaps we will tomorrow morning – into this question of fear which seems to dominate all our minds, consciously or unconsciously.
51:43 And that fear guides our life, not gods, not divinities, not destiny, not something imagined, but actually this fear of not only physical survival but also fear of not knowing, fear of not understanding the whole significance of life, fear in a very, very limited, small area of our self-induced activity.
52:35 So we can perhaps go into that tomorrow because that is a very complex problem.
52:44 So for this morning can we talk over together by questioning and enquiring what we have talked about?
52:58 You understand? Please, you are asking questions not of me, not of the speaker; we are asking questions of ourselves, saying it aloud so that we can all share it because your problem is the problem of everybody else.
53:26 Your problem is the problem of the world, you are the world. I don’t think we realise that. You are actually the world, in the very deepest essence.
53:40 Your manners, your dress, your name and your form may be different but essentially, deep down you are the world, you have created the world and the world is you.
53:56 So if you ask a question you are asking it for the whole of mankind. I don’t know if you see that. Which doesn’t mean that you mustn’t ask questions (laughter), on the contrary.
54:13 Questioning then becomes a very serious matter, not a glib question and a glib answer, some momentary question and forget it and pick it up another day.
54:35 If you ask, ask something profound a really human problem.
54:39 Q: Did you say that by walking away from the disorder of tradition, we create order?
54:57 Is that what you…
55:00 K: Yes, that is what I meant. Now just a minute. That needs a great deal of explanation. What you mean by tradition; what you mean by walking away; what you mean by order.
55:13 Q: In addition to that question, the seeing of this disorder already implies that the see-er has gone, that you have walked away.
55:26 K: That is what I was going to go into. There are three things involved in this: order, walking away, and the observation of disorder.
55:39 Walking away from disorder and the very act of moving away from it is order.
55:50 Now first how do you observe disorder?
55:59 How do you observe disorder in yourself?
56:08 Are you looking at it as an outsider looking in, as something separate from you and therefore there is a division between you and the thing which you are observing?
56:31 Or are you looking at it, if I may ask, not as an outsider, looking at it without the outsider, without the observer who says, ‘I am disorderly’?
56:50 Am I making this question… Look, let us put it round the other way. When you look at something, say those trees and that house, there is a space between you and that tree and that house.
57:07 The space is the distance and you must have a certain distance to look, to observe.
57:19 If you are too close you don’t see the whole thing.
57:27 So if you are an observer looking at disorder there is a space between you and that disorder.
57:42 Then the problem arises: how to cover that space, how to control that disorder, how to rationalise this disorder, how to suppress it, or whatever you do.
58:00 But if there is no space, you are that disorder. I wonder if you see that?
58:08 Q: How can I walk away from it?
58:13 K: One moment, I understand and I am going to show it to you. I am going to go into that. You understand my question? One looks at one’s wife – if you have a wife or a husband, or a boy or a girl, nowadays they don’t marry.
58:38 So when you observe your wife, or your husband, your boy or girl, or your friend, how do you observe him or her?
58:49 Watch it please. Go into it, it is so simple. Do it! How do you observe? Do you observe directly, or do you observe that person through an image, through a screen, through a distance?
59:21 Obviously, if you have lived with a person, it doesn’t matter for a day or ten years, there is an image, a distance.
59:33 You are separate from that, from her or him.
59:42 And when you observe disorder you have an image of what order is.
59:52 Or an image which says, this disorder is ugly.
59:59 So you are looking at that disorder from a distance, which is time, which is traditional, which is the past.
1:00:13 So you are looking at disorder from a distance.
1:00:22 And you can only… Put it this way: is that distance created by thought, or does this distance exist actually?
1:00:40 When you say, ‘I am angry’ – is anger different from you? No, so you are anger. So you are disorderly, not you separate from disorder. Right? I think that is clear. Right. So you are that disorder. Any movement – please follow this – any movement of thought away from that disorder is still disorder.
1:01:19 No? Because that disorder is created by thought.
1:01:29 That disorder is the result of your self-centred activity, the centre that says, ‘I am different from somebody else’ and so on, so on, so on.
1:01:39 That is, all that produces disorder. Now can you observe that disorder without the observer?
1:01:52 Q: Then you will find it in yourself. Then you criticise the others.
1:02:00 K: No, no. I am not talking about criticising the others. That has very little meaning, criticising others.
1:02:08 Q: No, what you found in the other, if you find it in yourself...
1:02:13 K: No, madame, no, no, no. The other is me. He may have a red shirt, or a woman, or a man, or dark-coloured or whatever it is, essentially the other is me – he has his anxieties, his fears, his hopes, his despairs, his suffering, his pain, his loneliness, his misery, his lack of love and all the rest of it – that man is me.
1:02:55 If that is clear then I am not criticising another, I am aware of myself in the other.
1:03:06 Q: That is what I meant.
1:03:10 K: Bien, bien. So can I observe, is there an observation without the past, the past being the observer?
1:03:27 Can you look at me, or look at another without all the memories, all the chicanery, all the things that go on, just look?
1:03:43 Can you look at your husband, wife and so on, without a single image?
1:03:53 Can you look at another without the whole past springing up?
1:04:08 You do it when it is absolutely a crisis.
1:04:15 When there is a tremendous challenge you do look that way.
1:04:23 But we live such sloppy lives, we are not serious, we don’t work.
1:04:33 Q: How can you live permanently at crisis pitch?
1:04:47 K: (Laughs) I’ll answer that question sir, after we have finished this.
1:04:58 So the walking away from it, is to be totally involved in that which you observe.
1:05:22 I cannot walk away from my disorder if I know I am that disorder.
1:05:36 But I can walk away from it if I say, that is different from me. I am already miles away from it. And when I observe this disorder without all the reactions, the memories, the things that crop up in one’s mind, then in that total observation, that very total observation is order.
1:06:07 I wonder if you see this. Which means sirs and ladies, whether you have ever looked at anything totally – whether you have looked at your political leaders, your religious beliefs, your conclusions, the whole thing upon which we live, which is thought, whether you have looked at it completely.
1:06:43 And to look at it completely means no division between you and that at which you look.
1:06:53 I can look at the mountain and the beauty of it, the line of it, the shadows, the depth, and the dignity, and the marvellous isolation and beauty of it.
1:07:10 And it is not a process of identification.
1:07:17 I cannot become the mountain – thank god! – or the tree.
1:07:24 That is a trick of imagination. But when I observe without the word, the ‘mountain’, I see, there is a perception of that beauty entirely, and there comes a passion out of that.
1:07:49 And can I observe another, my wife, friend, child, whatever it is, can I observe totally?
1:07:58 That means can I observe without the observer who is the past?
1:08:06 That means observation implies total perception. There is only perception, not the perceiver.
1:08:18 Then there is order. Right.
1:08:20 Q: If there is only perception and no perceiver, what is it that looks? If I see that I am disorder, what is it that sees it?
1:08:34 K: Now go into it, sir.
1:08:41 Disorder is a large word, let us look at it. When you see that you are violent, and that violence is not different from you, you are that violence – right?
1:08:58 – what takes place? Let us look at it round the other way. What takes place when you are not the violence? You say violence is different from me, what happens then?
1:09:19 In that there is division, in that there is trying to control violence, in that there is a projection of a state of non-violence, the ideal, and conformity to that ideal, therefore further conflict, and so on.
1:09:38 So when there is a division between the observer and the observed, the sequence of that is a continuous conflict in different forms and varieties, and shapes; but when the observer is the observed, that is when the observer says, ‘I am violent, the violence is not separate from me’, then there is a totally different kind of activity that goes on: there is no conflict, there is no rationalisation, there is no suppression, control, there is no non-violence as an ideal: you are that.
1:10:33 Then what takes place? I don’t know if you have ever gone into this question.
1:10:40 Q: Then what is you?
1:10:45 K: There is no ‘you’ madame.
1:10:46 Q: But you always say ‘you’.
1:10:48 K: No, madame, that is a way of speaking. Just a minute.
1:10:55 Q: One cannot speak…
1:10:57 K: Wait, I understand. Look, please. You see the difference between the observer and the observed. When there is a difference between the observer and the observed there must be conflict in various forms because of the division.
1:11:16 When there is a political division, when there is a national division, there must be conflict, as it’s going on in the world.
1:11:23 Though we are all human beings, we call each other Arabs, Jews or whatever it is, and we are butchering each other.
1:11:34 Where there is division there must be conflict: that is law.
1:11:41 And when the observer is the observed, when violence is not separate from the observer, then a totally different action takes place.
1:12:02 Which is, if you have gone into it, the word ‘violence’ is already condemnatory.
1:12:13 Right? It is a word we use in order to strengthen violence, though we may not want it, we strengthen it by using that word.
1:12:29 Don’t we? So the naming of that feeling is part of our tradition.
1:12:43 If you don’t name it then there is a totally different response.
1:12:55 And because you don’t name it, because there is no observer different from the observed, then that feeling that arises which you call violence, is non existent.
1:13:12 You try it and you will see it. You can only act when you test it.
1:13:22 But mere agreement is not testing it. You have to act and find out. Right. The next question was about challenge. Must we always live with challenge?
1:13:41 Q: I said crisis.
1:13:45 K: Crisis – same thing. Aren’t you living in crisis? There is a political crisis in this country, economic crisis, crisis with your wife or with your husband, crisis means division, doesn’t it?
1:14:20 Which means crisis apparently becomes necessary for those people who live in darkness, who are asleep – no?
1:14:35 If you had no crisis you would all go to sleep.
1:14:45 And that is what we want – for god’s sake leave me alone, to wallow in my little own pond, or whatever it is.
1:14:57 So crisis comes all the time.
1:15:04 Now a much deeper question to that is: is it possible to live without a single crisis and keep totally awake?
1:15:20 You understand? Crisis, challenge, shocks, disturbance exist when the mind gets sluggish, traditional, repetitive, unclear.
1:15:44 Can the mind become completely clear, and therefore to such a mind there is no challenge?
1:15:54 Is that possible?
1:16:02 That means – we have to go much deeper still – which means we live on experiences, to change our minds, to further our minds, to enlarge our minds, experiences, we think, will open the door to clarity.
1:16:32 And a man that has no experience, we think he is asleep or dull or stupid.
1:16:40 A man that has no experience but is fully awake is an innocent mind, therefore he sees clearly.
1:16:56 Now is that possible? Don’t say yes or no.
1:17:03 Q: When you say he has no experience, do you mean in the sense that he is ignorant of basic life?
1:17:18 K: No, no, no, no. Ah, you associate basic love which is sex, isn’t it?
1:17:24 Q: No, basic life.
1:17:26 K: Life, sorry – which is the same thing.
1:17:37 (Laughter) Sir, look: we are conditioned by the society in which we live, by the food we eat, clothes, climate.
1:18:00 We are conditioned by the culture in which we live, by the literature, by the newspapers, by everything our mind is shaped, consciously, or unconsciously.
1:18:14 When you call yourself a Christian, or a Buddhist or whatever it is, that is your conditioning.
1:18:25 And we move from one conditioning to another conditioning. I don’t like Hinduism, I jump into Christianity, or into something else.
1:18:36 If I don’t like one guru, I follow another guru. So we are conditioned. Is it possible to uncondition the mind so that it is totally free?
1:18:56 That means is it possible to be aware of your total conditioning – not choose which conditionings you like, but total conditioning, which is only possible when there is no choice and when there is no observer.
1:19:20 To see the whole of that conditioning, which is at both the conscious level as well as at the unconscious level, the totality of it.
1:19:33 And you can see the totality of something only when there is no distance between you and that – the distance created as movement of thought, time.
1:19:53 Then you see the whole of it. And when there is a perception of the whole then the unconditioning comes into being.
1:20:05 But we don’t want to work at that kind of thing. We want the easiest way about everything. That is why we like gurus, the priests, the politicians, the authority, the specialist: they know, I don’t know, they will tell me what to do, which is our traditional acceptance of authority.
1:20:36 Q: A question about true action. Actually as we are, every action is a self-centred activity. So when you see that, you are afraid to act because everything has no significance.
1:20:55 So there is a thought there. That is the reality, it’s not a choice or an imagination.
1:21:07 You are facing a terrible void and you think...
1:21:11 K: No, wait. I understand the question sir.
1:21:14 Q: Even material activity.
1:21:21 K: When there is an observation and you see you can’t do anything, then you say there is a void.
1:21:35 Just hold on to that sentence, to that phrase.
1:21:42 When there is an observation, you realise you can’t do anything and therefore there is a void.
1:21:52 Is that so? When I see that I have been able to do something before, there was no void.
1:22:12 You understand? I could do something about this, join the Liberal Party, or whatever it is, or become a neurotic whatever it is.
1:22:27 (Laughter) Sorry! Before, I could do something, and I thought by doing something there was no void, because that void I had filled by doing something, which is running away from that void, that loneliness, that extraordinary sense of isolation.
1:23:06 And now when I see the falseness of that, this doing, doing about something which doesn’t give a significance or answer, then I say to myself, ‘I observe, I am the observer and I am left naked, stark naked, empty void.
1:23:29 I can’t do anything. There is no significance to existence.’ Yes sir.
1:23:38 Before, you gave significance to existence, which is the significance created by thought, by all kinds of imagination, hope and all the rest of it, and suddenly you realise that thought doesn’t solve the problems and you see no meaning in life, no significance.
1:24:09 So you want to give significance to life – you understand?
1:24:22 You want to give it. Life itself has no significance but, you follow? (Laughter) No, don’t laugh. This is what we are doing.
1:24:38 Living itself has no meaning, for most of us, now. When we are young we say ‘Well, at least I’ll be happy’, sex and you know, all the rest of it. As we grow older we say, ‘My god, it is such an empty life’, and you fill that emptiness with literature, with knowledge, with beliefs, dogmas, rituals, opinions, judgements, you know, and you think that has tremendous significance.
1:25:03 And you have filled it with words, nothing else but words.
1:25:10 Now when you strip yourself of words you say, ‘My god, I am empty, void’.
1:25:18 Q: It is words.
1:25:21 K: Still words, that is all I am saying.
1:25:28 Still words. So when you see that thought has created what you considered significance, now when you see the limitation of thought, and what it has created has no significance, you are left empty, void, naked – why?
1:25:54 Aren’t you still seeking something? Isn’t thought still in operation? When you say, ‘I have no significance, there is no significance to life’, it is thought that has made you say there is no significance because you want significance.
1:26:27 But when there is no movement of thought life if full of significance. There is tremendous beauty. Ah, you don’t know anything of this.
1:26:39 Q: Thought is afraid not to think.
1:26:45 K: So thought is afraid not to think. So we will go into that tomorrow. The whole problem of thought creating fear and trying to give significance to life.
1:27:08 If one actually examined one’s life, there is very little meaning, isn’t there?
1:27:20 You have pleasant memories, or unpleasant memories, which is in the past, dead, gone, but you hold on to them.
1:27:32 There is all this fear of death. You have worked and worked and worked – god knows why – and there is that thing waiting for you.
1:27:44 And you say, ‘Is that all?’ So we have to go into this question of the movement of thought as time and measure.
1:27:59 Right sir.