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BR80CJLD - What is it to be serious?
Brockwood Park, UK - 6 October 1980
Conversation with J-L. Dewez D



0:21 Jean-Louis Dewez: Mr. Krishnamurti, we are going to have two dialogues together, hoping it will be worthwhile. Maybe we can have some continuity in between the two, and to do so, I had in mind to pick the broadest subject, which might contain all the others. I hope we could keep in mind the problem of living, life. It encompasses everything, and this might allow us to refer to the problems we are really facing. But before we start, I hope we can go into the question of seriousness. Obviously, we are faced with this question: why do we do what we do, and just how serious are we? After all, everybody has talked about living.
1:22 Krishnamurti: Parlé, oui. [Talked about it, yes.]
1:25 JLD: Apparently, there are different ways to look at seriousness. For example, someone may say, ‘Well, I am a serious and rational person, I am going to listen to this gentleman in order to discover what philosophical school this person belongs to’. This might be considered a serious approach. Another approach might be, ‘Well, I have known Krishnamurti for a long time, I have read his books and I am going to deepen my understanding of Krishnamurti’. Both these approaches might be considered serious. But is this the seriousness you have been speaking about? Is it the one we need? So, what is seriousness in the true sense of living?
2:27 Krishnamurti: Vous me demandez. [You asking me] what is it to be serious? I think we can say that there must be humour in it, not a long face, dried-up face, without any sense of humour, without any laughter, and always a mournful, tearful face, and rather concerned with abstractions. That, as it generally is... And if you want really to be serious, one has to be… have all this – laughter, humour – and also have a certain quality of ‘approfondir’ – go into things seriously, deeply.
3:53 JLD: When one puts a general question such as the problem of living, we can easily see all the intellectual reflections that come up and so the individual is considered serious. Is this discussion going to change something? Are we having it because the ideas are nice and well laid out? Or are they going to challenge something?
4:36 K: Sir, when we are talking about seriousness, it concerns the whole of life. And it requires a certain sense of wider dimension, a mind that’s not merely erudite, that has read a lot, that can express itself very, very clearly – all that is beside the point. What is the quality of mind that is serious? Is that what you are asking? JLD: Yes, it is.
5:32 K: I really never thought about it. I think one is serious, naturally and effortlessly, with a sense of ease, when you are confronting this world, which is degenerating, which is corrupt, which is permissive to do... all that. When you face all that, it makes you either cry or you are rather helpless, or you have become serious to resolve some of the problems.
6:17 JLD: Among the problems we have in one’s family, around us and in us, I would like to talk about this problem of living. Because if a young, or not so young, person looks at other people, what does he see when he is thinking about the problem of living? He sees mostly the aging process, problems getting worse. – I am not only talking about physical aging – There is a saying at home which says that getting old is like a shipwreck – not only physically; you can see people getting more and more self-enclosed. One gets the impression that before people turn into adults, or until they reach their 20s, some flowering occurs, but then there is a slow descent to death, a shrinking, looking for a safe enclosed place, for narrowed relationships or for always the same type of relationships. And the first thing that comes to mind is how painful it is to grow old while living.
7:56 K: Is that the problem, sir? Is that the real… what is happening in the world? Not only in France, all over the world, is that... We reach a certain age – 20, 30, 40 – and then a slow decline and death. Why should this happen? Why should a mind decline, become senile, gaga as it grows? Is that what you are asking? JLD: Yes.
8:42 K: Is it, sir, we give such tremendous importance to the so-called education, which from the very beginning conditions the mind? Vous comprenez?
9:02 JLD: Yes, I understand what you have just said.
9:05 K: Is that one of the problems? The mind which is alive, fresh, young, is put into a cadre [frame], and it has to learn certain subjects, certain ideas, and so on, in order to earn a livelihood. JLD: Yes, I see that. What bothers me with that formulation is that it might give the impression that teachers are responsible for it. In fact, one is under the impression that the minds are self-enclosing themselves.
9:56 K: I am coming to that, I am coming to that. I am asking, is it education that closes in the mind? Is it the innumerable concepts and ideas and ideals about life, the innumerable theories brought out by philosophers, and so on, or is it also religion? Are all these the factors that make the mind, which is fresh, alive when it is young, gradually enclosed, narrowed down? This narrowing down of the mind, is that the beginning of senility, gagaism?
11:01 JLD: Yes, in any case, it brings about conflicts. We see people suffering, personal friends suffering in their narrow prison.
11:12 K: Étroite, c’est ça. [Narrow, yes.]
11:16 JLD: And we can see that sometimes they are building it themselves. For example, they quarrelled with somebody and then keep on remembering that this person is bad, that he did something to them. These walls make them suffer. They quarrel with their children and shut them out from their life. The mind gets more and more entrenched in the repetition of its suffering.
11:43 K: That’s it, sir. Is that it? The constant repetition, going to the office, repetition of sex, repetition of various habits of thought, repeat, repeat, so that the mind, whether it is… becomes mechanical. Is that what you are saying?
12:14 JLD: Yes. I don’t know if it is so. Why this repetition?
12:21 K: That obviously is very simple to answer – why human beings right through the world with their extraordinary capacities technologically, they’re always thinking of new things, new inventions, new ways of solving technological problems, but when it comes to human relationship, when it comes to the human mind, it falls into a groove of repetition. Because in repetition there is security, one feels safe.
13:09 JLD: Nowadays, we see people losing their job or something else, sometimes late into their professional career. They find themselves lost, with the problems of learning a new job, changing their environment, losing the image they had of themselves through… the image they had of themselves through…
13:38 K: Yes, sir. That’s what’s happening. They are changing from one career to another, but that is an outward change. But inwardly, psychologically, they remain the same, more or less, modified, but it’s the same pattern being repeated over and over again. why do human begins psychologically, inside the skin as it were, why do they... Why haven’t they deeply, profoundly transformed themselves?
14:34 JLD: Generally we think it is not possible.
14:38 K: Ah voilà. That’s just it. I mean, there are all those people who say, accept the human condition, you can’t change it; you can modify it, you can embellish it, but essentially the human condition cannot be changed.
15:00 JLD: We generally accept that we train with moral ideals, we train children up to a certain age. And then we say, ‘He has such and such defect, such and such quality’, and that's it for life.
15:14 K: Oui, c’est ça. JLD: He is trained, it is over. There are two different stages in life: for the second one, you start with your defects and qualities, and you finish with them. And you will not change.
15:28 K: No, we are questioning that. We are saying, why do we accept that? Why do we say that the human condition can never be changed, radically? Is it because humanity has not changed at all? For millions of years, human beings have remained in a state of fear, conflict, anxiety, sorrow, loneliness, tout ça. And therefore you... because they have lived that way, we say that’s human conditioning, you can’t change it. On that basis, many philosophies are founded. There are all the… people who are writing books said – you know all the rest of it. So, are you asking whether the human mind, which has evolved so long through time and through various influences and experiences, from the very small child to adolescent, seeking a job, family, sex, children, and gradually declining – are you asking whether the human mind is condemned to that?
17:15 JLD: This is, anyway what many people think, and we can see the damage it produces when one grows old. I know, for example, people who from a certain age say, ‘I have seen enough of man’s wicked ways that I have no...’ They become cynical. They have accumulated all the experiences of deceptions and they have..
17:44 K: Je suis comprends. But is that so, sir? I mean, if we accept that the human spirit, the human mind can never transform itself, then we will always live in prison, which is a terrible concept, terrible feeling.
18:09 JLD: All the more terrible that it is a prison which is built on the hazard of our origins of our upbringing, if we had problems or if we were privileged, etc. This prison is not even created by us, it is...
18:24 K: Oui, oui. Oui, c’est ça.
18:26 JLD: This is another contradiction.
18:31 K: So, sir, look at it: we have had physical revolutions – communism; before that – the French revolution; we have had every kind of revolution based on ideas, concepts, theories, and it only... it all ends in changing the hierarchy. Right? But man has never asked – I don’t know if they have, that may be too strong a statement – a man has never inquired if it is possible to change totally the human nature, the human psychological structure. You follow? JLD: Oui, oui.
19:42 JLD: Yes. The revolutionaries, especially the Marxists, think that if you change society, The fundamental structure of man will be changed.
19:49 K: Yes.
19:50 JLD: One needs to change the environment.
19:55 K: Yes. Change the environment, but it’s then… they have not done it.
20:02 JLD: No.
20:09 K: And the religious people... I mean, the communists, the fascists, all those socialists, and so on, they are only concerned with the outer – right? – outer structure of society, work, whether it’s... you know, all that. And the religious, the Western religions have said you can’t have perfection in this world, only in the next. So, that has been another barrier. Kingdom of Heaven – you know all that. And there is the whole Asiatic outlook that the world will always be that way, will always be sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes without wars, and so on, but that’s the state of the world, and so, one must leave it, get away from it – which the Christian monks and the Asiatic people do, some of them. You can’t change the world. It is inherently destructive, inherently has the quality of degeneration, so, leave it, go off into monasteries or into solitude – you know, the whole religious attitude. So, you see, again we come back to the fundamental question. Man’s brain, man’s mind and heart have more or less remained the same, through millennia. Right? And is that inevitable?
23:00 JLD: When we say he remains the same, we mean really that for an individual, not only he does not stay exactly the same, but he will keep on accumulating destruction, wounds; and life, more often than not, ends up in agony...
23:25 K: So, sir, given that situation, as it is now – as it is now, there is complete permissiveness – right? – total disregard for human life, and this, the threat of wars all the time; given that situation, and also, add to that, the separative, narrow religious spirit – given that situation, what shall we do? That’s the real problem, isn’t it? Overpopulation, division of nationalities, division of races, more and more tribalism.
24:28 JLD: And the division of families…

K: Familles, c’est ça.
24:31 JLD:..one family quarrelling with another family across the street.
24:35 K: Oui, divorce. JLD: Oui, le divorce, oui…
24:38 K: Tout ça existe. [All that exists.] Now, either you look at it flippantly, that is, facetiously, or say, well, you can’t do anything about it, and I’I join that, or you begin to question the whole thing. You begin to question all the religious faiths, Christianity, the whole religious world you begin to question, doubt.
25:20 JLD: And I ask myself the question: I am not already on that slippery slope, meaning...
25:28 K: What do you mean by that?
25:29 JLD: Well, what I mean is that we can see that almost everybody grows old in this way. Am I also currently growing old this way?
25:36 K: Ah, c’est ça, c’est ça. Am I a nationalist, am I a Hindu, a Buddhist, Islam, or a Christian? If I can discard all those, then what am I? I am afraid. I am afraid not to… I am afraid to stand alone. Human beings crave to depend on somebody. Right? Whether it is one’s wife or one’s idea, or on the pope, on a religious symbol, one is always demanding that one must be in a state of constant dependence.
26:43 JLD: So how... I can very well say to myself that I am not a nationalist and even convince myself that I am not, without realising it, but how can the mind see whether it is or it is not in a process of getting old, accumulating and degenerating? How can the mind get out of this process that we see?
27:19 K: Sir, either that process, the way we are living, either you face it as a fact, or you make an abstraction of what you see into a concept, and then work on that concept. Vous comprenez? Which do we do? Say, for example, if I am violent, as most human beings are, if one is violent, that’s a fact. Deal with the fact, not with an idea, a concept of not having violence. You understand all this, of course. JLD: Yes. I remember having read something you said about nonviolence. At the time, I was shocked when you said that both violence and nonviolence were two ideas. Because when we see the violence in the world we tend to say, ‘I am going to join a nonviolent movement’. And in reality it is also a trap because we think we are nonviolent, but by doing so we are still violent...
28:54 K: C’est ça.
28:55 JLD:..one is violently nonviolent.
29:03 K: You see, sir, there is always this tendency or fact: violence/nonviolence, greed/non-greed, cruelty/kindliness – there is always this corridor of opposites. Right?
29:30 JLD: Always naming things, words.
29:32 K: Oui, c’est ça. But the opposite doesn’t exist, only what is exists.
29:55 JLD: You see, to go back to the problem of living, one of the things I have noticed is that this problem, when we have… there is a saying which talks about the life ahead, and this sentence makes me ponder because we always have the impression that our life is ahead of us. But when we say that, at the same time we create fear, not a specific fear but a kind of anxiety related to time.
30:34 K: Oui. Sir, when you put a question like that: la vie [life]… Yes. I mean that among all the problems we face in life, the mind tends to put life ahead of oneself.
31:01 K: Devant soi. [Ahead of oneself.]
31:03 JLD: Isn’t this part of our problem?

K: You see, when you say, ‘life in front of me’, what does that imply? It implies a future, the future which I see as being terrible, with all the violence, noise, brutality, and so by saying ‘life in front of me’, I have already created a sense of fear in myself.
31:46 JLD: And then will I find work? What type of work will I do?
31:49 K: Oui, c’est ça.
31:50 JLD: Will I have children, a husband, a wife, etc.? And one tends to accept life as is, looking at it as if it was something to think about And I was wondering if it was not…
32:09 K: Sir, but shouldn’t one – not ‘what is my future?’ – shouldn’t one question what is the meaning of all this? What is living? Shouldn’t one ask what does it mean to live?
32:37 JLD: One always tends to answer this question in terms of doing something, of accomplishing something.
32:44 K: But, sir, life is also action. Right? Life is also relationship. Life is also earning a livelihood. Life also means exercise, walk – all that. Life means all that human beings are doing now. That is life. Their terror, their anxiety, their loneliness, their despair, depression – all that is their life.
33:25 JLD: So, ultimately, my question is: is this way of looking at life – not being part of life, but to see it a bit like an observer saying, ‘What is my future?’ – one of the causes of this progressive decline of the mind?
33:43 K: Oui, oui.
33:57 JLD: When one observes this…
34:02 K: Sir, but how do you observe life? There is war going on in Iraq and Iran. There is bombing in Paris, in Rome, all over the place. The terrorists. There is national divisions, religious divisions, the hierarchical approach to life in the religious world as well as in the physical world. Now, how do you look at all this? How do you observe it? As an outsider, as though you are not part of it? Or you are that! Vous comprenez ce que je veux dire? [You understand what I want to say?] How do you... how does one look at all this? I think that’s a very important question. If you regard it as something outside of you, that human beings have created that – and as you yourself are a human being part of this world, you are that also.
35:39 JLD: Usually one says, ‘They are crazy to fight like that’, etc.
35:43 K: Oui, oui. But...
35:45 JLD: We see them as from outside, having no reasons to fight. We do not feel involved.
35:55 K: But, sir, come back to the real issue: is the world different from me, from you, from another? The world in which there is injustice, cruelty, wars, violence, is that different from each one of us?
36:19 JLD: You mean to say, are the qualities of the world different from the qualities and defects of man?
36:25 K: C’est ça. We have said, ‘That’s not me’. But we are that!
36:31 JLD: We say that violence isn’t mine...
36:34 K: Oui, c’est ça. So, human beings have constructed this society, with all it’s absurdities and cruelties, and human beings are the society. If they have produced it, they are it. And to observe this movement with eyes that are my eyes, not somebody else’s eyes. I don’t know if I am making it clear. That world is me, because I have contributed to it. I am violent. I have faith in some kind of religious figure, which divides. I am anti-Jew or pro-this. So I am the world. I think this is a basic truth, which we don’t face. We think the world that’s... what’s happening out there is different from me. I quarrel with my wife, if I have one, I beat, I get angry, I am violent, I am envious. All that I am; I have extended it as the world.. to the world. So the world is me. Can we look at it that way? Can we observe the world, actually what’s going on out there, and then observe what’s going on inside? They are both... the one is extreme, but I am also part of that.
38:52 JLD: I don’t see it that easily in, for example, a war between two nations. But when one sees someone from one’s own family suffering from a divorce, and from their quarrels about children, for this type of war, can’t we ask the same question…
39:19 K: C’est ça, c’est ça.
39:20 JLD: …for this same observation? Should one look at it wondering who’s right, who’s wrong, putting oneself in the position of an external judge, presumably objective, or should one observe it as being part of this suffering and of all these causes which…
39:59 K: Sir, we have talked, we have stated the problems, we have seen that human beings are unwilling to change. They accept the conditions, they try to modify the conditions, but never radically change the conditioning. And to find out why human beings are like… as they are doing, as they are living now, demands not only the outward investigation, but also inwardly. But very few people want to do this. It’s much too serious. They’d rather go to a religious entertainment or to football, rather than say, ‘Look, I have created the world. My fathers, my grandparents, we have all contributed to the world, as it is now, let us find out if we can’t change it’. Not physical revolution, that doesn’t answer the problem. Communist revolution, a different kind of revolution, social – that doesn’t answer the deeper problems. It’s only by answering the deeper problems you will solve the social problems. But nobody... very few people are willing to do this. They want to escape from all this.
41:46 JLD: It all seems too farfetched, too difficult to do, too...
41:52 K: Sir, it is difficult, naturally, but to learn mathematics, geography, physics or anything takes a long time; to become a doctor, it takes ten years. And you won’t even spend an hour to find out all this, in yourself. It seems so ridiculous!
42:32 JLD: Among all the ways life makes things continue, accumulate, degenerate, there is one thing I would like to talk about if you do not mind. It is still related to the same problem, it is about decision making. You know, the problem of deciding, making a choice and then acting, this is what perpetuates problems.

K: C’est ça. And people always decide in the same way or take the past into account. And one thing that struck me recently, which is the problem of... When one decides something, is this decision loaded with too many things from the past? Of course some knowledge needs to be kept in the mind, for example, insults, problems, privileges, etc., but if you have all this in mind when you act, when you live, every decision perpetuates, buries, worsens…
43:54 K: C’est ça. So, sir, what is – may I put a rather contradictory question? – why should one decide? Why should there be choice? Decision, choice and things along that line, one thinks one has freedom.
44:29 JLD: Freedom meaning freedom of choice, doesn’t it?
44:32 K: Liberté de choix. [Freedom of choice.] But are you free? Because you can choose between this job and that job, going to this town or that town, choose my wife or children, to what school I will send – all that, we call that freedom. And in the communist world, you can’t do all that. So, one has to go... again, it becomes rather serious: what is freedom? And if there is freedom, will there be choice? Will there be decision?
45:23 JLD: This is a question which challenges the entire philosophical thinking of the West, where freedom is choice.
45:31 K: Oui, je sais, je sais. [Yes, I know, I know.] I question it. A mind that’s very clear, there is no need for choice. It’s only the mind that’s confused, between this and that, should I do this, should I do that, that begins to choose and decide. But if the mind sees everything very, very clearly, there is no need for decision. Vous comprenez? Of course, sir, it goes quite the contrary to the idea of freedom of choice. Freedom isn’t so simple as that.
46:28 JLD: Freedom of choice, this idea is part of the whole Western education...
46:35 K: C’est ça, je sais. JLD:..it is very deeply rooted.
46:38 K: We are caught in that illusion, that choice implies that you are free.
46:52 JLD: You know, what makes people react to this idea, to this question, is the fact that religious people also say, ‘Do not choose, you only have to do what I am telling you to do and follow the commandments. You don’t have to choose’.
47:09 K: Voilà. It’s the same. C’est une blague, tout ça. [All this is a joke, all this.] After all, sir, you condition the human mind through a belief, through a symbol, through a personal saviour or a saviour; you condition the mind through years of propaganda, two thousand years of propaganda, and you say: there is no need for choice – obey, have faith. But if you begin to question the whole structure, it falls down.
48:12 JLD: So, precisely, regarding your question: on one side you have the people who say freedom is choice. On the other side you have those who say there is a divine morality, you do not need to choose, you just need to obey.

K: C’est ça.
48:29 JLD: These are the two paths usually…
48:31 K: But both are – what shall we say? Both are based on authority of the church, authority of religious structure, and the other is this idea that man is free and therefore he can choose. But is man free at all?
48:59 JLD: Meaning, when I choose, am I free?
49:04 K: C’est ça.
49:10 JLD: And you can see this in some problems, if we realise that the decisions we are making, the choices we are taking, are dictated by the past. Here, we can see that if it is dictated by the past, then where is freedom?

K: C’est ça. To go really... if you want to go very deeply into this: does knowledge give you freedom? You may have freedom through knowledge in the outward world – to fly, to swim, you know, all that – but inwardly, are you free? Of course, not. You are attached, you believe, you have faith.
50:08 JLD: That is to say, finally, instead of asking, ‘Are we free?’, it should be, ‘Can I do something totally new?’
50:15 K: C’est ça.
50:17 JLD: Whenever I decide, am I totally new, or… Yes, I see.
50:28 K: You see, there are those people who say, who have written a great many books, and scholars and scientists have said, man ascends through knowledge. Right? Man has passed through millennia, he has accumulated a great deal of knowledge, you see it – all that. Now, we are questioning: does knowledge help man to really free himself from all the travail of life?
51:15 JLD: Yes, and here I wish we would make a distinction. It is not a fundamental one, but it would help. There is knowledge, for example about mathematics or about how to drive a car, but is the knowledge I have of other people, for example, giving me real freedom, or on the contrary it will… You see, when I think someone is such and such or does so and so, I believe I have knowledge…
51:49 K: Sir, what is knowledge? There is a vast field of technological knowledge, with all its problems, which the mind can solve. The mind now is becoming more and more capable of solving all technological problems. Right?
52:13 JLD: By creating other problems at the same time.
52:19 K: They are all psychological problems. So, we are asking: what is knowledge? What is knowledge, both in the technological world and in the psychological realm? It is experience.
52:45 JLD: Yes, and the abstraction coming from experience.
52:48 K: Yes. Experience, knowledge of vast human endeavour, both in the outward world and in this psychological world. So, knowledge can never be complete. Right? I don’t know if you... JLD: Yes, I see what you mean.
53:21 K: So, my choice, based on knowledge, that choice must be incomplete. And the whole religious world says, obey. That’s also based on knowledge.
53:44 JLD: Yes, but this problem of living without a trace, in each action, in each decision, we have polluting conflicts associated with it, you see?
54:00 K: Oui, oui. So, this knowledge in effect…
54:15 K: You see, sir, the whole world, as we know it now, is based on thought. Thinking has produced all this. Right? And unless the quality of thinking changes, this will be perpetuated. And we are saying, knowledge can never – never, under any circumstances – be complete. And thought born of knowledge can never be complete either. So, when I choose, or when I obey, it’s based on incomplete knowledge, whether it is divine or human, it’s still transmitted by thought. And thought must be limited. When all the religious world is based on some authority, that is also part of knowledge, part of thought and therefore totally limited. If we face that fact, we can do something about all this – that thought is not the way to... for all the solution of all of our problems.
56:26 JLD: This also goes against the standards of philosophy and education.
56:29 K: Ah oui, je sais. Je sais.
56:40 JLD: And what is terrible is to see in individuals’ lives that people base everything on thought and know how to explain the causes of their conflicts. They know how to explain, and all what follows from there. Thought is able to rationalise all that to explain why it is caught in a certain conflict, but man keeps sinking…

K: …and he stays there.
57:11 JLD: He has found the explanations and the words – jealousy – well, so many words…
57:18 K: Sir, we live on words and explanations. And if the word is not the thing, then you push aside the word and face reality, what is actually going on.
57:37 It’s time to stop. Finished, sir.