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BR80DCO1 - Why haven't we changed?
Brockwood Park, UK - 15 September 1980
Committees Discussion 1



0:29 Krishnamurti: What shall we talk about? Would you help me, please?
0:55 Doris Pratt: What you said yesterday, Krishnaji, seemed so vast. What you said yesterday, you and David together, opened a vista which was so vast, it seemed, as far as I was concerned. At the beginning, I even practically went to sleep trying to understand what was being said. And then it seemed to me that you were talking about the little self, its cocoon of self-concern, and also the vast universe. And you explained that the little self has been built up through millennia, and seemed to be suggesting that it could jump out of this cocoon quickly into some sort of vast state in which the cosmos and the universe and the stars and nature were all included. And it seemed too much.
2:14 K: Is that what you want to talk about?
2:16 DP: Probably not.
2:24 K: I’m bit at a loss, please. Maybe we’ll all sit together quietly. Shall we?
3:02 Questioner: Perhaps a real communication between all of us.
3:12 K: This is a meeting, isn’t it, of those who are representatives of certain countries and the teachers and the workers here at Brockwood. So it’s a gathering rather of different types of mentalities, and so on. Now…
3:38 Dorothy Simmons: Krishnaji, it’s just the staff and the foreign committees.
3:42 K: Foreign committees, that’s right.
3:43 DS: Yes. And really, I think that it was to address the foreign committees, the reason of your wanting to communicate with them all, what they were doing.
3:57 K: Is that what…
4:02 DS: That is why you wanted them here, to sort of get to know them more.
4:14 Brian Jenkins: Krishnaji, it seems that most of us here, committee members and staff members, have been listening to you for quite some time.
4:22 K: Unfortunately, yes.
4:27 BJ: Is it a case in which we’re all hopeless, we don’t listen? Could we discuss this, why it is we haven’t changed?
4:47 K: Shall we go into that? Would you like to go into it? I have listened to a man for, say, twenty years, and I know intellectually, more or less. what he’s talking about. He’s not only talking about the intellectual capacity to reason, logic and sanity, but also he is trying to point out something different. And I’ve listened to him for a considerable time. And I ask myself, after having listened to him, why my mind isn’t so quick, apprehensive, in the sense ‘apprendere’, take it on, absorb, and I look at my own daily life, and I see it is more or less what I have been before I listened to him, even though I’ve listened to him for twenty years and more, and I ask myself why. Shall we go into this?

Q: Yes.
6:23 K: And I ask myself why. Why, though I logically, with reason and exercising as much brain capacity as I have, to understand, and I see all these explanations and the verbal exchange – I understand all that very well, because I have read quite a bit; I’m not just an ignorant person, I’m fairly intelligent, fairly alive to the world situation, and read books, and so on, and yet I find I cannot break through, I cannot change my way of life. Why? Is it I am weak? My wife, my children, the society I live in, I have lived in it for thirty years, forty, fifty, sixty or eighty, and that society and my career are so demanding, so exacting that I cannot bring myself or have enough energy to deal with this. So what shall I do? And I see what he says is important. If I didn’t feel it important, I wouldn’t go near him. But I do feel that it’s important, and I can see it will affect the whole structure of society, myself, my relationships, and so on. I see the goodness of it. And I can’t somehow bring myself to live it. So, what is the cause of it? Is there a single cause which I can put my hands on, or are there are many causes for this terrible lack of deep, profound interest? I have my career. My wife is not interested in what I’m... in all this, so I have a battle at home, a struggle at home. She wants to live a worldly life and I partly want to live it, but a greater part of me doesn’t like all that, so there is a tug-of-war going on in the family. I have to earn a livelihood because I have a responsibility of two children, or one child, a wife who is demanding, and I have very little energy left. Or I live alone, and the loneliness and separation, the isolation, is also intensely powerful. So I’m caught in this. What shall I do? You’re all very interested in this?

Q: Yes.
10:52 K: What shall I do? I can go a certain distance with the speaker, what he has said, but inwardly, I feel I must go the whole way, right to the very end of his – I want to, if I may use that word without any kind of effort, I want to catch up with him. Not as in competition or ambition or desire – I see it is so utterly important, but I can’t bring myself to that point. Why? Right? Is it my physical body, the organism, has been so misused, sexually, over-indulgence in food, drink and chatter and pubs, and all that? Have I abused the body, so the body doesn’t respond? So what shall I do? The body has set... has got into a certain habit: nicotine, drink, alcohol, and the indulgence in eating meat and heavy drink, you know, all that. So the body has become rather coarse, heavy, dull, and that obviously does affect the mind. The body has its own intelligence, I see. If it had grown naturally, without all the smoking, drinking, indulgence of various kinds, if it had been allowed to grow healthily, it has its own intelligence, but the body has lost it, or rather partially lost it. So can this body regain or capture that original capacity to live, very sensitive, healthy, strong body, or is it too late? I don’t feel anything is too late. So I have to watch, I have to change my whole way, physically, my whole way of living – no more smoking, no more drinking, no indulgence of various kinds – make the body active, healthy, in various forms, exercises, and so on, so on. I want to… I will do it, because if the body is insensitive, not alive physically, sluggish, and I have to make it there – right? – and I’m going to do it. Instead of getting up at seven o’clock, I’ll get up at five o’clock. I have done all this, personally. I’ll get up at five o’clock and work, make the body active, no more smoking, no more drinking, perhaps no more eating meat – and all that. I won’t. That’s one thing. The next step: am I emotionally overindulging, in that? I don’t know if I’m conveying anything. That is, am I emotionally exaggerated? Am I emotionally… or rather, allowing my emotions to have an extraordinary part in my life? Probably I am. I’m having conversation with myself!

Q: No.
16:38 K: All right, I’ll go on. So I have to be clear first whether my emotions are dominating my life: the emotions of pleasure, emotions of imagination, romanticism, sentimentality, which may, if I give way to them, lead to a kind of neurotic state. Am I doing that in my life? And I see I am partially doing it, kind of being slack and emotional, letting emotions dominate my thinking, my observation, my perceptions, my speech, and gradually work myself into a kind of isolated… I can’t stand noise, I can’t stand meeting too many people, and I must be alone, I can’t... You follow? Does this apply to you? Am I talking to anybody? So I have to watch that very, very carefully, because as he pointed out very clearly in his talks, it’s not a matter of control but it’s a matter of observation. And he has explained it very carefully, what is the nature of observation in which there is no observer, no duality, but only observe. All right, I’ve caught on to that. So I observe my emotions very carefully, so there is no sentimentality of any kind, no romantic indulgence and daydreams and, you know, all that. All right, I have observed it, so I’m going to watch in my walks, in my talk, when I go out with others, I’m going to watch it very carefully. In my relationship to my wife, if I have one, I am going to tell her, I am going to tell her that I am no longer going to be emotionally caught by her.
19:33 Mary Zimbalist: Sir, is this a digression? You very seldom speak about emotion. You seldom go into what emotion is. You do refer to it in this very derogatory term.
19:48 K: No, no, emotions I mean by, emotional reactions.
19:53 MZ: Well, is affection an emotion?

K: No, no.
19:59 MZ: Why?

K: No. I’ll go into that presently. Wait a minute. Give me a chance. I’m talking. I’m having a conversation with myself. You can come into it a little later, all of you. I’m going to tell her, and she will of course flare up. What idiocy all this is! She’ll flare up, but I’m going to watch it. I’m going to be... I’m not going to allow this kind of nonsense to go on with my life. Emotions, I’ll watch it. Then my next step is: what is my relationship to her and to the rest of the world, to the particular and to the general? I am going through all the things he has pointed out, not because I’m following him, not because I want to worship him or anything – I don’t indulge in all that kind of stuff – but I see the logic of it, the sanity of it, the reasonableness of it. And he has pointed out a very curious thing in relationship, which is not to have an image about another. And I have images about others, about Mrs Thatcher, about Callaghan, or the TUC leaders, or about my wife – I have images. And of course, I have the images of all the priests that have built the peculiar religious images in my mind. So I’m going to work through them. I’m going to see why I have them, what is their value, if they have any significance whatsoever, and I am going to observe them unemotionally – that’s what I mean – without any sense of keeping some and avoiding the others; keeping the favourite images and getting rid of those which are not pleasant. But I’m going to examine all of them, so that my mind is free from all images. Right? I’ve gone pretty far, if I’ve gone so far. I am going to tell my wife. I’m going to explain to her, if she will listen to me. Probably she won’t because she wants all the images. She’s been brought up as a Catholic or Protestant, and I happened to fall in love with her when we were very young; which is not love at all but sensory, sexual responses, and now I’m caught in it. Am I all right so far?

Q: Yes.
24:07 K: I’m caught in it, so I have a certain responsibility to see about the children, whom I like, and I feel responsible for them, and to a certain limit, to a certain extent, towards my wife. And I want to establish a relationship with her that’s not sexual merely, that’s not a kind of mutual exploitation – all right? – mutual encouragement, mutually scratching each other’s back, and all the rest of it – I don’t want all that kind of relationship. And I’m going to see, explain as much as I can, take time, have patience. I’m going to tell my wife, if she can stand it.
25:27 DS: Isn’t he part of it, Krishnaji? Hasn’t he begotten the situation?
25:35 K: I don’t quite follow. I can’t hear.
25:37 DS: I mean, isn’t it a mutual admiration society? Isn’t he part of that?
25:41 K: Yes, she, but I’m not. But I’m not; I’ve walked out of that particular kind of relationship. I don’t want that kind of relationship. It’s nonsensical, it’s no relationship at all. I see it very clearly this. So I’m going to... I am working on my wife and on myself. You may consider... I may... she may consider this rather ruthless, rather egotistic, personal salvation, or whatever the words a wife would use to insult me, but I will pursue it persistently, consistently, day after day, because I feel that what has been said for twenty years is tremendously important to me. It is tremendously absorbing, exciting, and has a tremendous vitality behind it. And I begin to see and gather this vitality in myself because my body now has become sensitive, alert, watchful, full of... And also I have watched the emotions. They have a certain part but they don’t play havoc with my life. And my relationship, I have seen the necessity of not being attached.
27:42 BJ: But Krishnaji, there might be something in my wife’s comment if she says that it’s your personal salvation.
27:48 K: Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I have listened to the lady. I’m not so intolerant, I’m not so stupid. I’ve listened to her. But she goes up to a certain point but not further, because she has her own ambitions, her own way of life, she’s a Catholic or a Protestant, or believes in some nonsensical guru and puts on a robe and mala, and all the rest of it. You know all that stuff, good stuff? She says, ‘I want to go to India. I want to go and see the latest guru there’, and she comes back with his picture on it and...
28:32 DS: But Krishnaji, these people here that you’re talking to have not done that.
28:40 K: My wife has done that.

DS: Your wife has not.
28:43 K: I am talking about myself. I am talking about...
28:48 DS: These people here that you’re talking to have gone into those things.
28:52 K: No. They have not done it, but they may an image of the speaker in their mind, which is another garland, which is another way of... So, you see, I’ve got very few more years to live, perhaps twenty years, and I want to… at the end of, it I want to have something tremendous in my life. I want it not in the sense of desire; because I have understood all the explanations he has given, and I see the logic of it and the sanity of it, and I want to burst through all this. Then I want to find out if I am lonely, which has been covered up by relationship, by jobs, by career, and all the rest of it. I want to find out if I am really deeply lonely, which has been perhaps covered up by knowledge, by books, by every kind of entertainment, religious and otherwise. So I find I am lonely. Loneliness is part of the wounds that I have received from childhood. I’ll work through that. I won’t escape, and all the rest of it. I won’t. You understand? I am getting... as I move along, I am getting more and more vitality, strength, and intention goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Then sorrow – I won’t go through all that, I understand all that. Then I come to a point: love, compassion. I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll go into it later. So is my mind – mind in the sense my brain, the whole structure of my way of thinking, looking, all that – is that distorted, stultified, dull? Because I have read a great deal and perhaps I’ve accumulated a great deal of knowledge. That may be one of the impediments. So do I function from knowledge? Of course, to have a career and work in a job, and all that, I must have knowledge. That’s understood; I won’t go into that. Is my life based on knowledge, or is there freedom from knowledge and so a way of living totally different? I am going to find out; I don’t know. The speaker, to whom I have listened for twenty years, points to something different. I haven’t captured it, but I’m inquiring. So, I’m asking myself: is my knowledge directing my life? Knowledge being all the experiences, both personal and general, and the knowledge that society, civilization, that human beings have gathered through centuries; is that knowledge directing, making a way of life for me? Or is there a way of living and speaking and acting from freedom, freedom from knowledge? This is what I want... this is the most important thing. As he pointed out, this is the most important thing to find out. Am I psychologically, having gathered a great deal of psychological information, psychological accumulation of images and knowledge and facts, and all that, which is me, am I acting from that, or is there a way of acting totally differently? I don’t know if you are interested in all this. Are you?
35:09 Q: Yes, sir.
35:10 MZ: Sir, I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but are you not making a sort of caricature in a way of ‘Mr Average Human Being’? This is what every human being brings to the problems that you’re discussing.

K: I can’t hear.
35:29 MZ: I’m sorry. You’re making a picture of a sort of average human being.

K: I am an average human being.
35:37 MZ: No, may I suggest that probably – I can’t speak for anyone else – but probably everybody in this room has been through all this, has looked at these things in themselves.
35:48 K: Ah, I question it.
35:50 MZ: Well, could it be more immediate? Could we not take this generality…

K: No, I am being very particular.
35:56 MZ: …and could we discuss what problems are?
35:58 K: I am being very particular. I don’t see what’s the difference. I don’t quite understand. I may be wrong; please, correct me.
36:07 MZ: Well, I feel that you’re painting a general picture which is accurate in most human beings. I feel you are describing things which probably the people in this room have all come up against in their own examination. Could we somehow find out...
36:26 K: No, Maria, the point is: why haven’t we changed?
36:30 MZ: Yes, but...

K: Wait, I am explaining.
36:33 MZ: But these are generalities within your teaching.
36:36 K: No, no. I explained – it may be my body that’s interfering.
36:40 MZ: But we all know that. Surely we know that, don’t we?

K: Is it so?
36:47 DP: Well, I don’t think we do all know it by a long chalk. I think that this generality is not a generality, it’s very much a particularity for most of us.
36:57 MZ: Go ahead.
37:00 DP: It’s going through step by step.
37:05 MZ: I question it.
37:06 K: Wait a minute, let’s approach it differently. Have I to go through all this? As an ordinary person sitting there instead of here, have I to go through all these steps? I’ve understood; I have read what he has said; I have listened. After all, I have listened for twenty years. I must be either an extraordinarily stupid man or I have listened without a great deal of attention. Right? So am I to go through all this, step by step – body, mind, emotion, all that – or can I capture the whole thing? Would that satisfy you? Can I capture the essence of what that man has been saying? The essence of it. If I can capture the essence of it, that may really change my whole being. Right? Is that what you’re trying to say, Maria?
38:53 MZ: I’m not trying to say anything. I was simply suggesting that what you had described, which was in a sense looking at different factors in the human mind, is something that surely people who have read you and been listening to you for as long as this group has, have already examined. Surely they must be aware of all that.
39:15 K: No...
39:15 Q: I think that what you say later is very interesting: to touch the essence of all that…
39:27 K: No, sir. Mr Jenkins asked, before we started all this, he said: why is it, after having listening to you for some umpteen years, so many years, that I haven’t changed? That was the basic question. And I said it may be your body, it may be your emotions. So, are we going step by step into it and trying to change each, or is there a way of meeting the whole problem, not partially, not bit by bit; taking it as a whole and resolving it? Would that be right?
40:25 BJ: But Krishnaji, it seems that you can’t jump straight into that without having done some of the preliminary work of having a healthy body, and so on.
40:33 K: I mean, have we... Now, how shall we start this? If you have worked through all the physical body, and so on, so on, then you come to a point, either you capture the very essence of what he is talking about – and is that essence of what he… is that something outside, or in me, that essence? Have I understood it as part of my investigation or – how shall I put it? – as something that I’m trying to reach? I don’t know…
41:32 DP: It seems to me that our conditioning is so very deep. You see, we have said that it is the result of millions of years and it’s…
41:42 K: No, but Miss Pratt, I have listened to him for twenty years, and he is talking endlessly about conditioning. What the... why haven’t I unconditioned myself?
41:54 DP: Because I have been in this groove for millennia.
41:57 K: No, no. D

P: The brain has.
42:00 K: Then if you have been in the groove from the very beginning of your time, of your life, it’s...
42:04 DP: It’s like suddenly receiving a proposal of marriage – it’s all so sudden. Suddenly we have to...
42:12 Q: Sorry, please, I have the necessity to solve that now, not tomorrow.
42:18 K: Yes, sir. But we must meet that...
42:21 Q: Now, not tomorrow.
42:22 K: Yes, sir, but we must meet her question. You see...
42:26 DP: You are talking to a person who is rooted in habit.
42:32 K: All right. Just a minute, just a minute.
42:34 DP: Grooves so deep.

K: Wait a minute, wait a minute. You have been caught in deep habit, deep conditioning, deep in a trench, caught, conditioning. You have listened to him for twenty years; why haven’t you done anything about it?
42:56 DP: That’s what I want to know.
42:58 K: Wait. What do you mean that you want to know?
43:00 DP: I do.
43:03 K: He has explained very carefully, practically almost in every talk, in every dialogue, in every conversation, for the last twenty, thirty, forty years, or sixty years, that… how to… what to do about it. Right? Why haven’t you done it?
43:32 DP: Because I haven’t heard it properly.
43:36 K: Good Lord! After twenty years, you haven’t heard?
43:40 DP: I know, but just the repetition of words isn’t enough.
43:43 K: No, you mean... What’s the matter with me? After hearing for twenty... D

P: I am sorry for myself.
43:52 K: After hearing him for twenty years, he talked about hearing, learning, seeing – good Lord – all the art of it, and so on – I have listened him for so long, and I haven’t broken from my conditioning?
44:10 DP: Relatively speaking, I have listened to him a very little time, compared with the time in which I have been conditioned. Very little time. Break it all down and it’s probably a few hours of listening, even though it’s in terms of years. It’s not enough. Or else I must go on listening or...
44:30 K: So what shall I do? D

P: I don’t know. I am wondering.
44:33 K: What do you mean, you are wondering?
44:35 DP: I am wondering.
44:38 K: Wondering about what? D

P: What to do. Because it’s clear to me that I love what this man is talking about, I love this picture that he builds up and…
44:55 K: Wait. I understood.
44:56 DP: I would like to be like that, but the fact is I am not. And you say: why not?
45:04 K: I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want to be anything. But I am saying... he is saying to me: first, understand that you are conditioned, understand the nature of your conditioning, the cause of your conditioning and the way to dissolve that conditioning.
45:28 DP: That all sounds so easy.

K: No.
45:30 DP: Just like pick up the textbook and read it and you’ve got the answer.
45:36 K: Miss Pratt, I’m afraid we are not listening to each other. If I am Miss Pratt and I say to myself: I have listened to this man, why haven’t I changed? Is my conditioning so deeply-rooted that I can’t solve it? Something must be wrong with me.
46:05 DP: No, that may be the case. Conditioning is very deep. Why should there be something wrong with me?
46:12 Q: Sir, there are no stronger words…

K: Nom de chien!
46:17 Q: No attention then.
46:19 K: I’m afraid we’re not getting any... Miss Pratt is saying, sir, that she is so deeply conditioned that she doesn’t know how to get out of it. Right?
46:32 DP: That must be the case. Yes.
46:43 K: And if I may ask: why? Why, after being told umpteen times the nature of the conditioning, why haven’t I, Miss Pratt, Miss X, why haven’t I done something about it?
47:10 DP: Because it hasn’t been my sole concern. There have been other concerns in my life.
47:18 K: No, that’s not an explanation, sorry. One can’t accept that. D

P: That’s a fact.
47:24 K: One can’t accept that because if I have... the speaker has said over a hundred times the nature of conditioning, why haven’t I applied even a little bit of it?
47:38 Ingrid Porter: Krishnaji, I question whether it makes any difference whether it has been said a hundred times or just once. You said a little while ago: does one maybe not listen with complete attention? Surely, I think that may be the trouble, because we don’t listen.

K: All right, Miss Porter, why haven’t you listened with complete attention?
47:57 Q: Well, that’s the question. I’m wondering whether listening to this person is not just becoming another escape for most of us.
48:15 DP: It’s not that.
48:23 K: Why haven’t I, after listening to all the... living in the same house, talking to him endlessly and all the listening, why haven’t I done something about it? You follow what I’m saying? If I have toothache, I do something about it. Why don’t I? You follow? I’m asking this. Is it I am lazy? Is it something wrong with me, mentally?
49:02 DP: "How I am" doesn’t give me the pain of toothache. "How I am" seems fairly all right. I don’t get any toothache from it. Perhaps I don’t suffer enough. I don’t know, that sounds absurd.
49:19 K: I didn’t hear.
49:20 DP: Perhaps I don’t suffer enough. But that seems absurd.

K: Oh, that’s it, so we go back to that. That is, if I suffer enough, I’ll become intelligent.
49:29 DP: Well, then I’ll have the toothache of which you speak.
49:32 K: No, no, no. No, toothache you actually do something.
49:36 DP: I know, but we haven’t the toothache with regard to this.
49:39 K: No. But when you introduce the word ‘suffering’, that I must suffer in order to understand, in order to do something, is this old… our old conditioning, that I must go through a great deal of hell before I come to heaven.
49:59 DP: But you yourself did that. You said ‘toothache’.
50:02 K: Oh no, I’ve not said that.
50:03 DP: You said, ‘Toothache; go to the dentist’, so you used an analogy of suffering.
50:09 K: Sorry, I did not say that. D

P: Didn’t you? What did you say?

K: I said… I said, when I have a toothache, I do something about it.
50:22 DP: Yes, because of the suffering.
50:23 K: But the psychological suffering as a means to enlightenment is such nonsense.
50:31 DP: You said that.
50:37 K: So what shall we do now? Mary Zimbalist says to me… says: we have been through all that.
50:53 BJ: Krishnaji, you said: why don’t we do something about it? But this doing something seems to be something rather elusive. I mean, probably we’ve tried...
51:03 K: Sir, just a minute. He explained that too, blast him! He explained that. He said either do something or don’t do anything about it. He said the very not doing anything about it is the ending of it. He has also said all these things. If I constantly am doing, I am moving in the same circles. So if I realise I am doing… I am moving round and round in the same circles, I stop. I don’t do anything. And the circle ends. That’s why I’m asking...
51:57 Q: Sir, I think that we can speak presently and practically about awareness, an awareness of something. For example, I am the present. How approximate the present? For example, I am the present. But psychologically, how do I become aware of that, put aside that state – no? – penetrate it? For that penetration, the mind becomes still, negative, and after the positive movement comes in, which is the negative, and creation takes place. Sometimes…
52:42 K: I don’t quite follow you, sir.
52:45 Q: No?

K: No.
52:46 Q: For example, I am depressed – no? – psychologically bad. How I approximate that, how I am becoming aware of that, and becoming the mind, looking at my state inside, become the mind negative? Is negative… a different movement comes in that reaches the negative?
53:21 K: What do you mean? I don’t quite follow "negative" – what do you mean?
53:26 Q: No, the mind is still, observing itself, observing the present state. The mind becomes still, quiet. No?
53:36 K: Yes. Yes.
53:38 Q: Then in that quietness a new movement appears. I read that thing in some lecture that you gave.
53:46 K: Yes, sir. What?
53:48 Q: The positive movement reaches the quiet mind.
53:52 K: Don’t call it positive/negative, just that a new movement takes place.
53:55 Q: Takes place. In that movement, the thing changes. The mind is full of vitality and creative.
54:11 K: Oh, I don’t know. Yes.
54:13 Q: I don’t speak very well English, but I read that in a discussion that you had.
54:25 K: Are you saying, sir, that when one is depressed, by looking at it very carefully, you know, in the right manner, by observing it without the observer...
54:41 Q: Yes, looking at it.
54:43 K: Do we understand each other, what we are saying when we say ‘without the observer’?
54:49 Q: Without saying anything about it, moving about it.
54:53 K: No. No, sir.

Q: No?
54:55 K: No. I am depressed, or I am any of the factors. I am depressed. How do I look at that depression? That is where the clue is. How do I observe the depression? Is that depression different from me who is observing it?
55:25 Q: It is the same.
55:31 K: Yes. So there is a division between me who is the observer and the depression. Right? So there is a division. Then, as there is a division, there is conflict. So I do something about that depression to end the conflict. Right?
55:57 Q: Yes.

K: No, you are not... I have lost you. I can feel it.
56:04 Q: I see it…
56:07 K: Jesus!
56:08 Q: I feel my depression.
56:15 K: Would you follow step by step? I’ll go into it. Right, sir?
56:18 Q: Yes.
56:19 K: I am depressed, and I hear somebody say, ‘Observe it’. And I say, ‘All right, I’ll observe it’. I say I am depressed, and he has also said, ‘The observer, is he different from the thing that is observed?’ You understand? The observer thinking he’s different from the thing he observes. Right? Have we gone so far together?
57:02 Q: Yes, sir.
57:03 K: Now, is the observer different? Or he thinks he is different. You understand my question?
57:13 Q: Yes, sir. He thinks he is different.
57:16 K: No, go into it, sir, slowly.

Q: Yes, sir.
57:21 K: Now, there is depression and the observer. Who is the observer who thinks he is different from depression? Who is that observer? Is that observer the word ‘depression’? Is the observer something which has been accumulating during the past, and when depression comes, he recognises it as depression? I wonder if you’re following all this.
58:15 BJ: Yes, sir.
58:18 K: He recognises it. So, he places the present depression into the past mould. Right? Right? And then he says, ‘I am different from the actuality’. Right? Is that so? Is not depression me? Right? Is not depression part of the observer? Right? Don’t agree with me unless you see this, don’t nod your head and say yes. Now, look sir, let’s begin very simply – good Lord. I am angry. Is that anger different from me? Go on, sir. Is that anger different from me? Obviously not.
59:22 Q: It’s not different.
59:27 K: So why is depression not me?
59:31 Q: As I function in the thought process, then my brain creates depression.
59:46 K: Español. Parle Español.
59:50 Q: While I am working in the mould of the thought process...
59:55 K: Lentamente, lentamente. [Slowly, slowly]
59:57 Q: While I am working in the process of thinking as a thinker separate from thought, then my being creates… depression is created.
1:00:09 K: No, sir. No. Look, sir, let’s begin. Don’t begin with the depression, let’s begin with simple things like anger. Right? Is anger different from me? Or anger is me.

Q: It is me, yes, sir.
1:00:35 K: Right?

Q: Yes.
1:00:37 K: Now, why do you say, ‘Depression is different from me’? Do you understand my question? I am depression.
1:00:48 Q: Yes.
1:00:50 K: Right? Right, sir?

Q: Yes, sir.
1:00:53 K: So, what have you done when you say, ‘I am that’? You have removed the division – haven’t you? – and therefore conflict. No? Sir, look, if I am different from the Muslim – you understand? – I am an Arab, or I am the Jew and I say, ‘I am different from the Arab’. Right? Right? Am I? Or it is only my conditioning, my education? But I am a human being, as he is. So the name – right? – the culture, the religion divides us. Right? Right, sir?

Q: Yes, sir.
1:02:01 K: So, in the same way, depression, anger is me. Then if it is me, what am I to do? You understand my...
1:02:16 Q: Yes, sir.
1:02:19 K: No, I don’t think we meet it.
1:02:20 Q: What am I to do? I can look at it, no? Depression is present. Then I look as I look at you.
1:02:32 K: No, sir. No, sir. Good Lord! Would somebody else explain what I’m talking about? Will you? Somebody do it, please, if they understand what I’ve said.
1:02:52 DP: It is not easy to understand actually what the gentleman is saying. Perhaps we could do it afterwards.
1:03:07 K: Maria, would you?
1:03:08 MZ: Well, his point of confusion, I don’t think the rest of us understand because of the language problem.
1:03:15 Q: I can be very quiet. If my mind is quiet, the mind is quiet, there is no more depression.
1:03:22 K: I don’t know.

Q: I don’t know if…
1:03:31 K: I haven’t understood, sir.

Q: No?
1:03:33 K: I haven’t… there is no communication between us at the present moment. Maria, have you understood what he said?
1:03:42 MZ: No, I haven’t, that’s the…
1:03:44 Q: If I see that I am depressed is a mental creation, then what I do is stay still.
1:03:53 K: So, you have a picture…
1:03:55 Q: Any movement of the mind creates more depression or is a escape from this state.
1:03:59 K: Yes, sir. Sir… yes.
1:04:05 Q: I remain still, the whole body, the whole being, still, quiet, all the body. Because if I move, I increase depression. I don’t know if it is right.

K: Sir, would you explain, sir. What is the question? Q: The question is: when the mind is completely quietness, then all the problems are resolved.
1:04:29 K: Of course, that’s understood. That’s understood.
1:04:32 Q: I said that.
1:04:34 K: That is, when the mind is completely quiet, there’s no problem. Then the question arises: how is one to have this complete quiet mind?
1:04:48 Q: Yes, that’s it. How is the body, how is the brain…
1:04:51 K: Yes. Si señor. Si.
1:04:54 Q: In the beginning and the middle and the end of awareness, in that example – it’s an example – but I think that it clarifies us approximately the other problem and the other question.
1:05:10 K: Capito, si, si.
1:05:12 Shakuntala Narayan: I think he’s jumping a step, because you’re talking about the observer being the observed, but he’s talking about a state that’s after.
1:05:22 K: Oh, well… S

N: He’s talking about quietness, but I think we are still stuck at the observer observing anger without the observed. I think we are not quite clear.

K: No. Look, we started with this whole problem this morning asking: why is it I am not changing?
1:05:45 Q: It’s the same.

K: Right? I don’t know anything about quiet mind, I don’t know anything about anything, I just know that I am not changing. Right? Fundamentally, I have remained as I have, slightly modified, for the last eighty years, fifty years or thirty years. I am just more or less the same.
1:06:11 Right?

Q: Yes.
1:06:12 K: Why? Why don’t I move from this? And Miss Pratt replies to that: ‘I am deeply, heavily, profoundly, irrevocably conditioned’. And I say: you have listened to this man – Miss Pratt has actually – for about probably fifty years, and why haven’t you done anything about it? It’s a legitimate question. You say, ‘I can’t do anything about it because I don’t know what to do’. Either you have not listened to the man at all or you are really unwilling to break through this conditioning. Full stop. I want to learn Sanskrit, or Latin or Greek, whatever it is, and I have spent thirty years learning. At the end of it, if I don’t… if I haven’t learned anything about it, I say, ‘My God, what’s wrong with me?’ So I give up whatever language I am trying to learn and forget about it – I say, ‘Yes, I am deeply conditioned. All right, it’s a fact, let’s get on with it’. But you see, we know we are conditioned, and we also know we shouldn’t be conditioned, so the battle goes on. Right? Right? And I say don’t have a battle about… don’t struggle to be unconditioned – all right, accept it, and get on with it. But if you don’t want to, if you feel that being conditioned is rather unnecessary, then you do something about it. That’s all. Have we answered your question: why don’t we change? Why don’t we, after listening to you for some time, why is it that we more or less remain in the same narrow groove?
1:09:07 DP: Not really. It isn’t answered. I can’t believe on the one hand that one hasn’t listened. I can’t believe that.

K: I don’t know. All that I’m saying: either you have listened and see the importance and break, or you say, ‘Well, it’s all right’, and… I play with it.
1:09:35 MZ: Are you saying that we want to hold on to the comfortable part of conditioning? We want to stay in the habit, because that’s the way it is.
1:09:44 K: Yes, yes, that’s it.
1:09:45 MZ: But at the same time we realise something’s wrong, but not enough to do something about it.
1:09:51 K: You see, I am one of that kind that wants to go the whole hog. Sorry to use that expression. I want to go to the very end of it. I don’t want to come to the middle of it and be a slightly mediocre enlightened person.
1:10:12 Q: Sir, we can follow with words of depression… Thus I think it’s very important we clarify many of the and how we are conditioned. What are we doing wrong?
1:10:29 K: I’m afraid, sir, most of us want to play with it, want to go halfway with it. Right? What do you say? You have listened to me. At last, I can get at somebody! You have listened to me for twenty years; why haven’t you changed? I’m not being personal. Why haven’t you changed?
1:11:17 SN: I think, sir, that one difficulty is that the brain works at things piecemeal. I mean, the brain works at one thing at a time instead of looking at the whole.
1:11:31 K: All right, why doesn’t it do it as a whole?
1:11:34 SN: Because as you were talking I was thinking. You know, you were talking about, you know, working at the physical or whatever, you know, seeing that you’re not alcoholic, or… I mean, those are things that are not difficult to work at.
1:11:52 K: But I haven’t... S

N: I think most of us…
1:11:53 K: But, my lady, you haven’t answered my question. You have listened to all this for twenty years, I’m pretty sure, at least twenty years – why haven’t you changed? You know, merely looking at it one bit by bit by bit doesn’t solve it. You know it very well.
1:12:27 Raman Patel: Perhaps we don’t taste this as an actuality but just imagine about it, I suppose.
1:12:41 Q: I am questioning myself if really I want to change.
1:13:04 K: Well, it’s quarter to one. Have we stopped? Have we stopped talking about change? Because we can go on with this thing, this thing going, day after day, saying, ‘Why am I not changed? Why should I change? I am partly... I see part of it, I didn’t see the whole of it. Why don’t I see the whole of it? I am this, I am...’ You can go on like this for the next forty years. By then, I’ll be dead and you’ll be also probably going. So, have we answered this question, why we in this room, who have listened to the poor chap for forty years or twenty years, why haven’t we changed? You can give a hundred explanations. Right? At the end of the ninety-nine explanations you are where you are. Right? Then what will you do? Go to lunch. Much the safest!