Krishnamurti - Looking at life, loving and dying as one movement

AM69T4 - Looking at life, loving and dying as one movement
Amsterdam - 11 May 1969
Public Talk 4

0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s fourth public talk in Amsterdam, 1969.

0:07 Krishnamurti: One often wonders why human beings throughout the world lack passion. They lust after power, position and various forms of entertainment – sexual, religious and other forms of lustful cravings. But apparently one has not that deep passion which dedicates itself to the understanding of the whole process of living. One gives one’s whole energy to fragmentary activity. The bank manager is tremendously interested in his banking, and the artist, the scientist, and so on. And apparently it’s one of the most difficult things, it appears, that to have an abiding, intense passion, to be given over to the understanding of the wholeness of life. 2:50 And as we are going to go into this question of what is the total understanding of the whole business of living, loving and dying. And one needs not intellectual capacity only or a strong feeling but one needs much more than these. One needs great energy that only passion gives. And as we have this enormous problem – complex, subtle and very profound – one must give one’s total attention, which is passion after all, to see and find out for ourselves if there is a way of living wholly different from that which we live now.

4:56 And to understand this, one has to go into several things. One has to enquire into this process of consciousness, both the surface and the deep layers of one’s own mind. But also one has to enquire what is order – not only outwardly, in society, but also one has to ask oneself what is order within. And one has to find out the meaning of living, not give an intellectual significance to living but what it means to live. And also one has to go into this question of what is love and what it means to die. All this, that is, the conscious and the deep hidden recesses of one’s own mind, what order is, what living means actually, and whether one can live a life of complete, total affection, compassion, tenderness, love. 7:27 And to find out for oneself that extraordinary thing called death. These are not fragments of life but it’s a total movement of life, a wholeness of life. And we’ll not be able to understand this if we cut it up, break it up into living, loving and dying. It’s one deep movement. And to understand the wholeness of it, the total process of it, there must be energy, not only intellectual but energy of great feeling. Which is to have motiveless passion so that it’s constantly burning within one.

9:12 And as our minds are fragmented, broken up, it is necessary to go into this question of the conscious and the unconscious, for there begins all division: the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’, the ‘you’ and ‘me’, the ‘we’ and ‘they’. As long as this separation, division exists – nationally, in the family, religious divisions, separate sense of possessive dependencies – as long as this separation in the whole state of consciousness exists, we will inevitably divide life, the living of every day with its tiresome, boredom, routine. 10:52 And that thing which we name as love, limited, hedged about by jealousy, possessiveness, dependence, dominance. And separate from all that, the fear, the inevitability of death. So if we could go into this question seriously, not merely theoretically nor verbally but really investigate for ourselves by looking into ourselves why there is this division, which breeds so much misery, confusion, conflict. One can observe in oneself very clearly the activity of the superficial mind, with its occupation with livelihood, with its technological knowledge, scientific knowledge of... acquisitive knowledge, 12:55 the going to the office, the competition, the superficial operations, activities, of one’s own mind. And there is the hidden past which we... which have not been explored because we don’t know how to explore it. And if we do want to explore it, expose it to the light of clarity, to the light of understanding, we either read some books which tell us all about it or go to some analyst, the professional psychologist or the intellectual philosopher. But we don’t know for ourselves how to look at it. 14:20 Though we may be capable of observing the outward, superficial activity of the mind, we are apparently incapable of examining, looking into this deep, hidden cave in which the whole of the past abides.

14:57 Can the conscious mind look into it? Can the conscious mind with its positive demands and assertions, opinions, judgements, evaluations, can that look into the deeper layers of one’s own being? I do not know if you have ever tried it. And if you have tried it and are sufficiently insistent, sufficiently serious to discover, you might have found for yourself the vast content of the past – the racial inheritance, the experiences of a particular group of people, the religious impositions, the divisions – all of that is hidden there. The casual offering of an opinion springs from that past accumulation essentially based on the past knowledge, experience, which is various forms of conclusions and opinions – whether the mind can look into all this, understand it and go beyond it so that there is no division at all. 17:38 And this is important because we are so conditioned to look at life in fragments, broken up. And as long as this fragmentation goes on, then there is the demand for fulfilment – me wanting to fulfil, to achieve, to compete, to be ambitious. It is this fragmentation of life that makes us so individualistic or collective, self-centred, or identifying oneself with something greater and yet remain separate. It is this deep, abiding division in consciousness, in the whole structure and nature of our being that makes for division in our activities, in our thoughts, in our feelings, and so we divide life in the actual living, that thing called loving and dying. 19:56 And is it possible to observe the movement of the past, which is what is the unconscious – if one can use that word ‘unconscious’ without giving it a special psychoanalytical significance.

20:29 The deep unconscious is the past, and we are operating from that. And therefore there is the present and the tomorrow – the division – the past, the present and the future, which is time. All this may sound rather complicated but it’s not. It’s really quite simple if one can look into oneself, observe oneself in action, observe the ways of your opinions and thoughts and conclusions. And so we are always looking, living, acting from the past, and the past is the totality of our being. When you look at yourself critically you can see your actions are based on a past conclusion, past formula or pattern which projects itself into the future as an ideal, and act according to that ideal. 22:37 So the past is always operating, with its motives, conclusions, formulas, and so the mind and the heart are heavily laden with memories. And this is shaping our life, dividing it, bringing about fragmentation. One must ask this question, whether the conscious mind can see into the unconscious so completely. That is, one has understood the whole content, which is the past. Therefore, that demands a critical capacity. Not self-opinionated critical... criticism, but to be critical, which is to be awake and to watch.

24:28 And if one is greatly awake, then this division in the totality of consciousness ends. And that wakened state is only possible when there is this critical self-awareness without judgement. Because after all, to observe means to be critical, not based on evaluation, on judgement or opinions but to be critically watchful. But if that criticism is personal, limited, hedged by fear or any form of prejudice, it ceases to be critical. Then it becomes merely fragmentary.

26:17 So with that understanding, that we are concerned with looking at life, loving, dying, as a whole movement not as a separative... separate, broken, fragments of life. And to observe it as a total movement, a wholeness of it, one must have this critical – I don’t know what word to use – critical sense of watchfulness, so that no division occurs at any moment. And if it occurs, it is the conditioning of the past – as the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’, the ideal and the factual, and so on. 27:38 So what we are concerned with is the understanding of the total process, the wholeness of living, not with a particular fragment of action of living – what to do with regard to a particular problem, with regard to social activity which is independent of the whole process of living, in which is included the understanding of reality, whether there is such a reality, such immensity, an eternity. It is this whole, total perception and not fragmentary perception we are concerned with. And this can only happen, 28:55 this understanding of the whole movement of life as one single unitary activity is only possible when there is in the whole of our consciousness the ending of one’s own concepts, principles, ideals, divisions, as the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’. If that is clear, and I hope it is, then we can proceed to find out what living is.

29:53 We consider living a positive action – the doing, the thinking, the practical activity, the everlasting bustle, conflict, fear, anxiety, sorrow, guilt, ambition, the competition, the lusting after pleasure with its pain, the desire to be successful, to be somebody – all this is called… what we call living, a positive action with all the conflicts, wars, separative, exclusive, isolating activity. That’s what we call living, which is what is happening in the lives of each one. 31:29 And is that living? With occasional joy, with a movement of compassion without any motive, a generosity without any string attached to it. But those are rare moments of ecstasy, of a bliss that has no past or future. But the living that we call everyday – the going to the office, the anger, the hatred, the disrespect, the contempt, the enmity, is what we call living, which is what we consider extraordinarily positive.

32:46 And the negation of the positive is the only positive. Right? To negate this so-called living, which is quite ugly, lonesome, fearful, brutal and violent, and all the rest of it, to negate all that, to deny all that, not knowing what the other is, is the most positive action. Not the way we live which we call positive. Right? Are we conveying... This is... Are we communicating with each other? You know, to completely deny morality – completely deny it – is to be highly moral, because what we call morality, the social morality, the morality of respectability, the morality of what we have been told is utterly immoral, because we are competitive, greedy, envious, seeking one’s own – you know what is happening; all that. And that’s what we call moral, the social morality. 35:04 Which the religions have maintained, sustained, though they talk about different kind of morality, but they, in their life, in their whole attitude, the hierarchical structure of religious organisation and belief is immoral. And to deny that, which is to negate that – not to react because when you react it is another form of the same thing, which is to resist it. But when you deny it because you understand it, that is not moral. Therefore, then there is morality, the highest form of morality. In the same way, to negate the social morality, to negate the way we are living – our petty little lives, the shallow thinking, the shallow existence, being satisfied at the superficial level with all the things that one accumulates – to deny all that, not as a reaction but seeing the utter stupidity of it, and therefore its destructive nature in living.

37:12 To negate all that is to live. And one can only see this, see the false as the false; and seeing the false as the false is the true.

37:57 Then what is love? Is love pleasure? Is love desire? Is love attachment, dependence, possession? Possess the person whom you love? Dominate, hold, control? Saying, ‘It is mine and not yours’? – my property, the sexual rights and the right of property, in which is involved jealousy, hate, anger, violence. And again that love, which has been broken up into the divine love and the profane love, which is part of the religious conditioning. 39:37 And is all that love? Can you love and be ambitious? Can you love your husband who is ambitious; and he in turn says, ‘I love you’ – can there be such love when there is ambition, competition, fury of success, and so on? Is all that love? Is there love when you possess and dominate another, whether the other is out there or near?

40:41 And to negate all that, not intellectually, not verbally, but actually wipe it out of one’s own being, never to have jealousy, envy, not to compete, to driving ambition. The separation in love, to deny, to negate all that surely is love. And the two cannot go together, ever. The man who is jealous or the woman who is dominating, they don’t know what love means. They may talk about it, they may sleep together, possess each other, depend on each other for comfort, for security, not… Being afraid of loneliness. 42:00 Surely all that is not love. And if the people who say they love their children, would there be war? Would there be division of nationalities – your country, my country, your religion and my religion, your God and my God – would there be separation? And this is what we call love. And our love is a torture, a despair, a feeling of guilt. And this love is generally identified with sexual, sex, which is pleasure. We are not being puritanical or mid-Victorian or prudish.

43:21 We are not saying that there must be no pleasure. When you look at a cloud or the sky or the beautiful face there is a delight. When you look at a tulip, the beauty of it. We are not denying the beauty. Beauty is not the pleasure of thought; it is thought that gives to beauty pleasure. The same way, when we love and there is sex, it is thought that gives it the pleasure of the image of that which has been experienced and the repetition of it again tomorrow. And in this repetition, the pleasure which is not beauty. Beauty, tenderness and the total meaning of love doesn’t exclude sex. 44:59 But now in this modern world, when everything is allowed, the world suddenly seems to have discovered sex. And that has become extraordinarily important. Because probably that is the only escape man has now, where he has freedom. And everywhere else he is a toy, he is pushed around, bullied, violated – intellectually, emotionally, in every way he is a slave. He is broken, violated, and there is the only time he can be free. And in that freedom he comes upon a certain joy and he wants the repetition of that.

46:16 Looking at all this, where is love? And it is the only thing a mind that has, and a heart that is full of love, sees only the whole movement of life, and therefore whatever it does, such love, whatever it does is moral, is good, is beautiful.

47:11 And where does order come into all this? Knowing our life is so confused, disorderly, where does order come in? Is order a matter of design, blueprint, conformity, obedience? We all want order, not only in the house, putting order, things in their proper place, but also we want order outwardly in society in which there is such immense social injustice – the rich and the poor, you know, all that business. And also one wants order inwardly. 48:26 There must be order, deep, mathematical order, and this order, is it to be brought about by conformity to a pattern which we consider to be orderly? And hence the pattern and the fact, and then the conflict. Is not the very conflict in any direction at any time, disorder? And therefore not virtue. The mind that struggles to be virtuous, moral, ethical, struggles, battles, resists, creates disorder, because in that very conflict is disorder. 49:40 So virtue, which is the very essence of order – though we may not like to use that word in the modern world – virtue is order and that virtue is not brought about through conflict of thought, but it comes only when you see disorder critically, with wakened intelligence, understanding in yourself. Then there is complete order of the highest form, which is virtue. And that can only come when there is love.

50:46 Then there is the question of dying, which we carefully have put away far away from us – something that is going to happen in the future. The future may be fifty years or tomorrow, which has nothing whatsoever to do with living. And we are afraid of coming to an end, coming physically to an end and ending perhaps the things that we have possessed, worked for, experienced. The things that you have possessed – the wife, the husband, the house, the furniture, the little garden, and the books that you have written or hoped to write, the poems – and you are afraid to let all that go. Because you are the furniture when you possess furniture; you are the picture when you possess that picture. 52:38 When you have the capacity to play the violin, you are that violin because you are… identified yourself with that. The book, the knowledge, the experience, the furniture – good God, think of it – we are all that and nothing else. Have you ever looked at it that way? You are the house, you know, with the shutters, the little bedroom, with the furniture which you have very carefully polished for years, which you own – and that’s what you are; you are that. And you remove all that and you are nothing.

53:38 And that’s what you are frightened – to be nothing. Isn’t it very strange? We spend forty years going to the office in doing things, and when you stop you have heart trouble and die. You are the office, the files, the manager or the clerk, whatever it is, and you are that and nothing else. And you have a lot of ideas about God, goodness, truth, what society should be, how you react – it must be this, it must be that – that’s all. 54:44 Therein lies our sorrow: to realise for oneself the things that you have accumulated – the shoes, the suits, the dresses, the knowledge, the books, the little mantelpiece on which there are pictures, you are all that. And to realise that you are that is great sorrow, is the greatest sorrow because we don’t realise that. And to see that and find out what it means to die.

55:40 Death is inevitable; all organism must come to an end. But we are afraid to let past go. And we are the past, we are time and we are sorrow and despair, with an occasional beauty, with a flowering of goodness and deep tenderness – a passing thing, not an abiding thing. And so being afraid of death, we say, ‘Shall I live again?’ – you understand? – ‘Shall I live again?’ Which is the battle, the conflict, the suits – right? – the misery, the accumulated experience.

57:00 And the whole of the East believes in that reincarnation. To be reincarnated; that which you are you will be reincarnated. And you are all this – this mess, this confusion, this disorder, and in that you have great hope in the future. You know, and also in reincarnation implies that we will be born next life. Therefore what you do matters now. What you do now, today, not what you’re going to do, how you are going to live when you are born next life, if there is such a thing. If you are going to be born next life, 57:54 what matters is how you live today, because this today is going to sow the seed of beauty or the seed of sorrow. And those who believe so fervently in reincarnation, they don’t know how to behave. And if they were concerned with behaviour, then they would not be concerned with tomorrow. For goodness is in the attention of today, not tomorrow.

58:47 So dying is part of living, and you cannot love without dying. Dying to every thing which is not love, dying to all ideals which are the projection of one’s own demands, dying to all the past, the experience, so that you know what love means and therefore what living means. So living and loving and dying are the same thing, which is to live wholly, completely, now. And then there is action which is not fragmented and therefore contradictory, bringing with it pain and sorrow. 1:00:04 Then living and loving and dying in which there is action. That action is order. And if one lives that way, and one must – not an occasional moment but every day, every minute, then we shall have social order. Then there will be unity of man, and governments then will be run on computers not on these politicians with their personal ambitions and conditioning. So to live is to love and to die.

1:01:34 Do you want to ask any questions? Yes, sir?

1:01:40 Questioner: Can one be free instantly? Live without conflicts…

1:01:50 K: Can one live...

1:01:53 Q: To be free instantly and live without conflicts – instantly or does it take time?

1:02:01 K: Can one live without the past immediately, or the ridding of the past, take time – is that right, sir? Does it take time to get rid of the past, and so prevents one from living immediately? Right? That’s the question.

1:02:41 There is the whole cave hidden – the past, there, down there, like in a cellar where you keep your wine, if you have wine. And is it, to be free of it, does it take time? What is involved in taking time? Which is what we are used to: ‘I’ll take time. I’ll... Virtue is a thing to be acquired step by step, I’ll practice it, day after day, think about it, I’ll get rid of my hate gradually, my violence, slowly’ – that’s what we are used to, that is our conditioning. And so we say, ask ourselves, is it possible to throw away all the past gradually? 1:04:00 Which means time. That is, being violent – one of the conditionings of the past – being violent, I’ll gradually get rid of it. What does that mean? Gradually, step by step. In the meantime, I am being also violent. The idea that doing some... of getting rid of violence gradually is a form of hypocrisy. Obviously. If I am violent, I can’t get rid of it gradually. I must end it immediately. And can I end anything immediately, psychological things immediately? You cannot if you are... if you accept the gradualness of freeing oneself from the past.

1:05:24 What matters is not the gradualness but to see the fact as it is now, without any distortion. If I am jealous, envious, to see it completely, what is involved in it, an observation which is total, not partial. The jealous – why? Why am I jealous? Because I am lonely. The thing I depended upon left me and I am suddenly faced with my loneliness, with my emptiness, with my particular little isolation, and I am afraid of that. Therefore I depend on you, and if you turn away against me, if you turn away I am angry, jealous, annoyed. And the fact is I am lonely, I need companionship, I need somebody not only to cook for me, to give me comfort, sexual pleasure, and all the rest of it, but basically I am alone, lonely. 1:07:09 And that’s why I am jealous. Can I understand this loneliness immediately? I can understand it only if I observe it, not run away from it. Can observe it critically, with awakened intelligence look at it, not find excuses, try to fill it, try to find a new companion. And to look at it, there must be freedom to look. And when there is freedom to look, I am free of jealousy.

1:08:12 So the perception, the total observation, watchfulness of jealousy, and the freedom from it is not a matter of time but giving your complete attention to it, critical awareness without any choice, to observe instantly as it arises. Then there is freedom, not in the future, now, from that which we call jealousy. And the same thing with the violence, anger, any particular habit, whether you smoke, drink, or sexual habits – dozen habits in which we live and cultivate them, hold on to them – to observe them very attentively, completely with your heart and mind, to be intelligently aware of the whole content of it.

1:09:28 Then there is freedom from them. When once there is this awareness functioning, this attention, this watchfulness, then whatever arises – anger, jealousy, violence, brutality, a shade of double meaning, enmity – anything that can be observed instantly, completely. And then in that there is freedom and the thing that is, was, ceases to be. So the past is not to be wiped away through time.

1:10:21 Time is not the way to freedom. Look, we have had how many wars? For the last five thousand years somebody has calculated fifteen thousand wars – killing, killing, killing, in the name of God, in the name of nations, in the name of peace, in the name of beauty – you know. And that is the past. And can you get rid of all that killing, the tradition of killing, the conditioning of our nationalities, and so on and on and on, gradually? 1:11:17 Is not this idea of gradualness a form of indolence, laziness? Or the incapacity to deal with the past instantly as it arises. And to have that astonishing capacity to observe clearly everything as it arises demands attention when it is... when you look. And when you give your mind and heart completely to the... observe, the thing is not. The past ceases. So time and thought does not end the past, for time and thought is the past.

1:12:17 Q: Is thought…

1:12:31 K: Yes, sir. Is thought a movement of the mind, and…?

1:12:51 Q: And is awareness the function of a motionless mind?

1:12:51 K: Is awareness the function of a motionless mind. You understand the question? Is thought a movement of the mind, and is awareness a non-movement state?

1:13:21 As we said the other day, thought is the response of memory, like the computer into which you have fed all kinds of information. And when you ask the... for the... for an answer that which has been stored up in the computer responds. In the same... And so the mind, the brain, is the storehouse of the past, which is the memory. And when it is challenged, it responds in thought according to its knowledge, experience, conditioning, and so on. So thought is the movement, is part of the movement of the mind and the brain.

1:14:30 And the questioner asks: is awareness a stillness of the mind? Can you observe anything – a tree, your wife, your neighbour, the politician, the priest, a beautiful face – can you observe without any movement of the mind? Or the images of your wife, of your husband, of your neighbour, the knowledge of the cloud, the pleasure – all that interferes, doesn’t it? So when there is interference of the image of any kind, subtle or obvious, then there is no observation, there is no awareness – total awareness; there is a partial awareness. 1:16:07 And to observe clearly, there must be no image coming in between the observer and the thing observed. When you look at a tree, can you look at it without the image or the knowledge of that tree – botanical knowledge or the knowledge of your pleasure or the desire, and all the rest of it – can you look at it so completely that space between you... between the observer and the thing observed disappears? Which doesn’t mean that you become the tree – God forbid – but when the space disappears, there is the cessation of the observer and only the thing, that which is observed, remains. 1:17:17 And then in that observation there is perception, seeing the thing so extraordinarily vitally – the colour, the shape, the beauty of the leaf, the trunk. You are then intimately in contact with that which you observe, when there is not the centre of the ‘me’ who is observing. And there is movement of thought, which is part of the brain and the mind, when thought is... when there is the challenge which must be answered in thought.

1:18:09 But to discover something new, something that has never been looked upon, there must be this intense attention without any movement. And that does take place, it is not something very mysterious and occult and, ‘Oh, you have to practice for years’ – which is all sheer nonsense. It does take place when between two thoughts you are observing. You know, the man who was very familiar with the piston ring, with the piston engine, all the engineering knowledge of it, he found the jet propulsion – how did it happen? He knew the whole business of the combustion engine and he was looking for some other thing. 1:19:39 And to look, you must be silent. If you carry all the knowledge of your combustion engine in your look, you can’t find – you’ll find that which you have learnt. That which you have learnt must be dormant, quiet, then you see, discover something new. The same way, to look at your wife, husband, the tree, the neighbour, the whole social structure which is disorder – to see it. Then you find silently, and then you find a new way of looking and therefore new way of living and acting, and so on.

1:20:40 Q: How do we find the power to live without theories and ideals?

1:20:51 K: How do you have the power to live without theories and ideals and formulas.

1:21:02 How do you have the power to live with them? Right? [French] I understand, sir. I am just asking, sir, how do you have this extraordinary energy to live with formulas, with ideals, with theories? How? And you’re living it with those formulas. How do you have the energy? – which energy is being dissipated in conflict. Right? There is the ideal over there and you are here, and you are trying to live according to that. And so there is a division, there is conflict, which is waste of energy. So when you see the wastage of energy, when you see the absurdity of having ideals, formulas, concepts, which is bringing such constant conflict, when you actually perceive it, not theoretically, in your life when you see it, then you have the energy to live without it. 1:22:32 Then you have abundance of it because then there is no wastage of conflict at all. But you see, we are afraid to live that way, because we are conditioned that way – whole propaganda of two thousand years in the Western world of, you know, your beliefs, your saviours, your priests, your Popes, and all the rest of it, they have built this structure of the formulas, the ideals, as they have done for ten thousand and perhaps less years in the East. And we accept them, we live with them, we accept conflict as the way of life. 1:23:42 But when we see all this, not verbally, not theoretically, not intellectually, but feel it, feel it with all your being, the absurdity of living that way, then you have the abundance of energy which comes when there is no conflict whatsoever. Then you have only the fact and nothing else. There is a fact that you’re greedy not the ideal that you should not be greedy – that’s a wastage. But the fact that you are greedy, possessive, dominating, when you are... that is the only fact. When you are... give your whole attention to it, to that fact, 1:24:41 then you have the energy to dissipate it. And therefore you can live freely without any ideal, without any principle, without any belief. And that is loving and dying to everything of the past.

1:25:08 Right, sirs.

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