CL68DYP5 - The mind that is free of authority is a very intense, alive mind home
Claremont, California - 15 November 1968
Discussion with Young People 5

Text-only version

0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s fifth discussion with students at Claremont Colleges, 1968.
0:11 I think we ought to go rather deeply into the question of authority, to understand the total feeling of authority, not any one particular authority – the authority of the parents, the authority of the experts, the authority of the so-called teachers who say they know – but consider this rather complex problem, how man, human beings, each one, accept so readily authority, follow it, conform ourselves to the pattern set by the original author. I wonder why one accepts authority. Please don’t say, bring in: mustn’t the child have authority of the parent, and so on, but we’re talking amongst grown-up people. 1:42 So one asks why we human beings accept authority. Obviously it is out of fear. Older generations think they know and we don’t know, we are rather frightened of going wrong and making a mistake, being rather uncertain, wishing to be secure. And we accept authority – the authority of the specialist, the authority of the teacher, guru, and all the rest of it. And most of us, being frightened, wanting to find some kind of safety, security, we obey. One sees the tyrannical dictators with their authority, and the more one is liberal, democratic, one revolts against that kind of authority. 3:25 But the authority of a Church, of those who represent the entity who knows, we accept that very easily. Again there is this problem of authority, obedience and fear, there is the authority of the law, there is the authority of the expert, there is the authority of the one who knows, psychologically, spiritually, and we don’t know, or we pretend not to know because we want to be quite sure that we are doing the right thing. And if one rejects, or understands the whole structure of authority and rejects it, not only the authority of another but also one’s own authority of experience – because after all that’s the only thing we have to go by, our own experience. 5:20 If you don’t accept the experience of the older, more erudite, more so-called spiritual entity, then we have to rely on our own experience, knowledge.
5:40 Can we rely on our experience? Is experience the criterion? And is not experience the most dangerous thing? Experience involves a great many things. It’s a complex phenomena. The word experience implies going through, right through to the very end of it and finishing it. But we don’t finish any experience, we retain the memory of that experience and use that memory as a guide – don’t we? And so experience is a thing of the past, a memory, a dead thing, which if we had gone through it completely would have left no mark. But experiences, for most of us, leave an imprint. 7:45 And we have a thousand of these imprints. And will they be our guide? And if they are our guide, the criterion by which we can conduct our life, morality and so on, is the past the authority? Is the tradition – and it is a tradition, whether it is ten thousand years old or two days old – can one rely on it? And that tradition, that memory, that accumulated knowledge becomes the authority by which we guide ourselves, psychologically as well as in other fields. I hope we are all thinking, or rather, going through with this question.
9:26 Can a mind be free of authority, one’s own or somebody else’s, so that there is no impingement of the past, so that the mind is always alert, learning in the present? This is an important question, it seems to me, because if we are inquiring into freedom, not as abstraction, not as an ideal or a philosophical question, but actually, whether our mind, the mind that you and I have, whether that mind can ever be free. If it is controlled, shaped by the past, can it ever be free? 10:52 And if it is not free, it cannot possibly see clearly. So though we have a thousand experiences of different kinds, both conscious as well as unconscious, can the mind not contain these experiences and use them as an authority for further guidance? That is, put it differently, can the mind live through an experience completely, so it doesn’t leave a mark? So that the mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, vulnerable, not something old, dead, and heavily laden. 12:33 Can the mind experience completely the challenge, whatever the challenge be, and if it is a challenge it must be new or otherwise it is not a challenge – not the great challenge but everyday challenge, and live it, respond to it so completely, so wholly, that it doesn’t leave a residue, a mark, a memory? Am I putting the problem clearly? If the mind is to understand something new, it must be able to look without the whole burden of the past. Because if the mind recognizes the experience as an experience – recognition – when that takes place the recognition is from the past. 14:29 I mean, the word recognise implies that. I recognize you because we met each other yesterday. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to recognize you. So one asks, is there ever a new experience at all, or always the repetition of the old, because every experience is recognized? Are you following? Am I making this somewhat clear? No? Or is it clear as mud?
15:30 We have a problem. The problem is an actual problem, not a theoretical problem, not a problem of mathematics or a theoretical, conceptual problem – actual problem – which is, man has lived – oh – two million years, they say, or more, and that mind has been conditioned. The conditioning is this memory, through thousand experiences, not only of the single human being but also of the collective. And within that collective memory and conditioning we live – that’s our life. And therefore the mind is a prisoner. 16:36 It may occasionally go out, hoping to find more, but it is always tethered to the past. And if one is to find reality – doesn’t matter what name one gives to it – the mind must be free to look, to observe, to find out. So can the mind experience, go through a challenge so completely that it leaves no mark? So that each time it’s cleansed through the experience. I wonder if I’m making myself clear. Won’t somebody tell me if it is clear or not? [Laughs]
17:50 Questioner: Yes.
17:53 K: Right. So that is the challenge – not a theoretical challenge but an actual one – can the mind that you have, can it experience – and it must experience, there are experiences by the dozen, all the time – but go through with them, finish with them completely, so that it doesn’t leave a mark? So that each experience is a purgation rather than leave its residue. Right? So, one questions then all authority – the authority of the sacred books of the East or of the Bible or of any authority – the authority being the tradition, one’s own tradition or the tradition sanctified by the church, by the temple, by the mosque. 19:42 So when one goes into it, one strikes at the very root of authority. And the mind that is free of authority is a very intense, alive mind. So is it possible? Is it possible for a mind that is insulted to meet that challenge – or flattered – to meet that challenge and finish with it on the instant, not carry it over the next day or the next minute. Does this mean anything? You insult me or you flatter me – can I receive that insult, however subtle, however brutal, however polished, receive that insult, be so completely aware of it, the truth of it or the falseness of it, that it doesn’t leave any mark? 21:33 Or when you flatter, not to be emotionally entangled in the words and the implications of those words – see the falseness or the truth in that and finish it. That demands a mind that is intensely aware of both the insult and the flattery, attending. One can. This is really quite a complex problem, I hope you will be able to go into it this afternoon. One can consciously, at the conscious level, at the waking level of the mind, be aware of the challenges in its different forms, both personal and communal. 23:07 But there are experiences, challenges which we do not see but there they are, which the unconscious may recognize as a challenge. And can the whole of consciousness, both the conscious as well as the deeper recesses of the mind, that is, the whole of consciousness, can it go through an experience so completely it leaves no mark and therefore no tradition and therefore no authority? Are you following all this? Please, this is not an intellectual exercise. There is nothing intellectual about it. 24:41 This is the actual everyday problem. [Pause]
25:19 So here we are, as a human being, carrying a tremendous burden of tradition. The tradition is the human being; he is not different from the tradition. He is the tradition, both at the conscious as well as the unconscious level. And to analyze the unconscious level takes infinite time. And there is no time – by the end of it I’ll be dead. If I keep on everlastingly analyzing for the next fifty years, I shall be so worn out, the mind will be exhausted, I am ready for death, or the analyzer is ready for death – poor chap – that’s what is happening. 26:47 And what am I to do? You understand the question? It’s quite an important, vital question. I can’t explore the unconscious leaf by leaf, layer by layer, bit by bit – there’s no time for that. And also the analyzer is the analyzed. Right? I can’t say to myself, ‘Well, I’ll analyze my unconscious.’ Who is the analyzer who is going to analyze his unconscious? He’s part of the unconscious, he’s part of the analyzed. That’s a trick he can play upon himself, dividing himself as the analyzer and the thing to be analyzed. I mean, that game we can go on indefinitely. 28:08 So there is vast tradition, entrenched, which holds the mind, which becomes the authority. So what am I to do? Would you kindly tell me what am I to do? I see the problem very clearly. The mind of the human is caught in this and he says next: what am I to do to free from the past and meet the challenge as though for the first time, so that the mind remains always young? Which is not a vain, ambitious question, not a question of vanity, which an old man puts to himself. So what is one to do?
29:59 Now, when one asks that question: what is one to do – you’re asking a positive question, aren’t you? You want to find out what to do. It’s a positive demand: tell me what to do. It may be a wrong question altogether. And it is a wrong question. The question is: what am I not to do? I don’t know if you are following this. If I ask you, ‘What am I to do?’ you will say, ‘Do this, this, this’ – you’ll give me a method, a practice, which is all in the part of that memory, of that tradition, obviously. 31:35 So it is a wrong question altogether. But if you ask, if you say to me, ‘Don’t do anything, don’t ask, don’t do anything,’ which is the negation of the positive. I don’t know if you’re meeting this. I deny the wrong question. I won’t even look at that wrong question. Therefore, the right question is: what am I not to do? Negative questioning. It is only through negation I come to the positive, not through the positive to further positiveness. I don’t know if you’re meeting this. 32:43 That is, sirs, the social morality of greed, envy, ambition, war, hatred, competition, which is called moral, to find what morality is I must deny what is immoral, which is, the denial of greed, envy, and all the rest of it. Which means the mind must be... the mind must purgate itself from the social morality in order to be moral. Through negation of what is considered moral, the negation of it is morality. Right? No? Is this difficult or puzzled?
33:51 Q: It’s clear.
33:52 K: Clear, bene. I don’t know how clear, but it doesn’t matter. So in the same way, I realize the wrong question will inevitably bring about wrong answers – I’ll be caught in it, mind will be caught in it – the wrong question and the wrong answers to that question. So I ask: what is the right question? I see this phenomena of this extraordinary complex problem of authority, and can I do anything? Whatever I do – please follow this a little bit – whatever I do with regard to that phenomena, with regard to that problem, is the outcome of the past, which is the problem. 35:19 Right? Are we going together? If I say I can do something about it, the I, the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, is part of the problem, so whatever he does either nourishes the problem, interferes with the problem or moves the problem to a different level, but the problem is still there. I see that. Therefore the only thing I can do is to do nothing. Please, doing nothing is one of the most extraordinarily active things, most intelligent thing. If the mind has come to that point where it says: I can do nothing – not through laziness, indolence, not through helplessness, not through some despair and bitterness, but it sees the whole structure of authority. 37:43 And then it says – and it won’t put the wrong question – therefore it says, ‘I can do nothing,’ realising that whatever he does will sustain, nourish the problem. The doing nothing implies – what does it imply? I can go on. I don’t know if you’re coming with me.
38:34 Q: This is my meditation.
38:37 K: Sirs, just... it is really quite... go into it, sir, yourselves, if you have come to that point. Knowing, demanding that the mind must be free, otherwise it is a prisoner, otherwise it is in constant conflict, misery, confusion, torn by different authorities. And in that there is no love, no consideration, nothing at all. So in the demanding of freedom, which is everything which is not free, which contributes to slavery, to imprisonment – the mind has come to that point, not theoretically but actually doing it. Then what does it mean not to do a thing about the problem?
40:10 Q: To be alert.
40:16 K: To be alert. The mind becomes alert.
40:18 Q: To be the problem.
40:22 K: To be the problem. Are you all guessing? This isn’t a jigsaw puzzle. You understand, sir, what it means to negate, to negate everything? Do you understand what it means? Just a minute, sir. I’ll come to... [Pause] Look, sir...
41:29 Q: Are you saying that a negative and a negative equals a plus?
42:01 K: I don’t know what that means, sir, sorry.
42:06 Q: It’s an algebraic construction. Negation is a positive thing. To negate something which is negative, doesn’t that bring another positive, something else which is positive?
42:15 K: No, no. Sir, forget algebraical questions. [Laughter] Let’s be simple about this matter. Look, I want to find out if there is God or not. I must negate all belief. No? All belief – belief in God or non-belief in God. That means I can only deny belief, negate belief and be free of belief – which is merely my fear that has bred this belief and the propaganda – I must be free of all belief to find out. I can be neither a believer or non-believer – the mind must be free of both. That means the mind must be free of fear. The mind must be in that state, not neurotically but so highly alert, alive, to inquire, to find out. 44:23 The negation of what is false is only possible when I’m willing to face fear, be alone, be discarded, whatever it is. Then I have the energy to go into this question, whether there is or there is not. And I must have energy, not some sentimental belief and romantic ideas and all the rest of that rubbish. So, the denial of the false is the uncovering of what is true. I don’t have to seek truth. Right? The denial of all authority is a state of mind that is free. So it has no problem at all. I don’t know if you are following all this.
46:03 Q: Where do you get the concept of denial? I don’t see how you can deny all authority and still be left with something... [inaudible]
46:20 K: Would you say it a little louder, please?
46:25 Q: In a case of denying all authority, where do you get the concept of denial from?
46:30 K: Oh, there is not a concept. Sir, actually it is not a concept at all. I see how authority is bred – I see it actually – bred by my fear of doing something wrong, inwardly, psychologically, as well as outwardly, and so I rely of tradition, which is knowledge, experience – I went through all that. So, it is not a concept at all, it is an actual fact. It’s not something of thought. We won’t go into that – that becomes too complex for the moment. He was saying something. You, sir.
47:44 Q: Oh, well... [inaudible]
47:45 Q: May I ask a question, sir? When you throw out all the past then...
47:52 K: Ah, not when. [Laughs]
47:58 Q: You say…
48:01 K: Either you do it or don’t do it – not when and if and if this happens or that happens. Sir, look, when you see something poisonous, when you see a great danger, you don’t stand by and say, ‘When the danger is over what shall I do?’ [Laughter] You act. You jump away or run away or do something. Here we are playing an intellectual game – ‘When I see the authority is futile, and so on, then...’ – you follow? That is an impossible position.
48:49 Q: Well, let’s say that I see that then.
48:56 K: [Laughs] Ah, you can’t... [Laughter] Sorry, sir, you can’t say, ‘Let us say I see it, suppose I see it, then what next?’
49:01 Q: I’ll put it this way: I see it. [Laughter]
49:09 K: Yes, sir.
49:10 Q: Now is there anything left?
49:14 K: You’ll find out, sir.
49:15 Q: Right. What I find out is nothing.
49:17 K: Ah. All right, sir, then that’s the end of it. [Laughter]
49:23 Q: If you go completely through an experience so that it leaves no mark upon your mind, of what value was the experience, or of what value would future experiences be?
49:51 K: What value has an experience if you go right through it – is that it? That’s it. So you’re asking: has experience any value at all? Right? What does experience do? The mind is generally sluggish, indolent, lazy. Experience comes along, shakes it, tries to wake it up. If the challenge is great, it wakes up for the time being and relaxes. Right? This is what takes place. My son dies – I am taking the extreme case – and I’m shocked, there is intense sorrow, all the rest of it, and presently I find a rationalized belief, an escape, and I’m back again, asleep. 51:08 Generally, experience should keep one awake, obviously – but it doesn’t. So there is that type of mind that has experience, experiences, is awakened for a moment, and goes back to sleep again. Then there is the other type – these are not categories, this happens. – I’m not dividing so that you say, ‘My God, which category do I belong?’ I’m not doing that. Then there is the mind that depends on experience to keep awake. Right? It invites experience in order to keep awake. And that’s equally a deadly mind. And so one asks: can the mind keep – this is an important question – can the mind keep awake without any experience? 52:28 That is, only a mind that has understood the whole problem of experience and therefore has understood itself, which is demanding experience and living in experience, either the past or the present or the future – it’s only such a mind that is a light to itself, because it doesn’t depend on any experience, and therefore very alive, and all the rest of it.
53:13 Q: You can’t avoid experiences, can you?
53:17 K: You cannot avoid experience, can you. Can you? You can’t.
53:25 Q: If a mind is alive and without experiences, neither the two types of needing experiences or just alive during the experience, is there any value to a future experience? Once it is alive, is there any continued value to experience?
54:00 K: Sir, we questioned that. Has a mind... has experience any value at all? We’ve had ten thousand or fifteen thousand wars, hate, agony, tears – have we learned anything? Have we learned by watching others, being jealous of their wife or husband, or oneself being jealous? That’s an experience and yet we go on.
54:53 Q: I was wondering, is authority the result of incomplete experience?
55:05 K: Is authority the result of incomplete experience – is that the question? Sir, no, I didn’t say that, sir. Isn’t all our... aren’t all our experiences incomplete? We never go through with them and beyond them. So we are questioning the whole structure of authority as experience. The man who has evolved more than I, who knows more – that is, you know, the whole hierarchical conception of life – the guru, you know, all that business. And also one is questioning why one demands authority, both outward and inner. 56:21 And in exploring it and asking... in exploring it one comes upon this strange phenomena that we live in the past – the past is the experience, the tradition. That becomes the authority. And one asks: is it possible to be free of the past? Which means to meet experience completely, not with the past. Sir, please, this requires... you know, this is real meditation, it isn’t just exchange of words. Yes, sir?
57:05 Q: You’re not really asking me to deny myself because I am myself a... [inaudible]
57:13 K: That’s right, sir, that’s just it. I didn’t…
57:18 Q: You’re asking me to deny that self, final authority... [inaudible]
57:26 K: That is right, sir. To deny oneself completely – the ego, the me. Because the me, the ego, is the past. The ego is the conflict between what is and what should be.
57:49 Q: I would choose to keep that ego as a reference point.
58:02 K: You’d keep the ego as a reference point. Referring to what? How to live?
58:11 Q: Well, it’s going to give me an essential sense of self.
58:22 K: To give the sense of self. That is, to identify oneself with something. Right? Now, look what it means: identify myself with the country, with the wife, with the family, with an idea, with the property. Right?
58:50 Q: Well, we’re human, you see. [Laughter]
58:58 K: That’s a... [laughs] [Laughter] that’s rather a feeble way out of it. [Laughter] You’re saying as human beings we must suffer, we must go through this, otherwise we’re not human beings. My God! I identify myself with the country, with an idea, with property, with the memory of yesterday’s sex, or pleasure and this and that, because in myself there is nothing. I am nothing. Inwardly there is nothing – emptiness, loneliness. 59:52 And it is this loneliness that identifies in order to be something. And this identification has led to innumerable wars and bloodshed, into fragmentations, of my religion and your religion, my God and your God. And it surely it’s only utterly an immature mind – I’m not talking about yours, sir – that clings to this fancy of identification.
1:00:45 Q: Do you think that love can free man?
1:00:59 K: Do you think love can free man. Love is not a means to something, is it? Love is not something to be used; it’s not a utilitarian thing – I love you in order to free you. My God!
1:01:37 Q: But I mean... [inaudible] ...but by itself.
1:01:47 K: Do we know what that word means, love? I’m not saying you don’t. Do we know it? Do we see what is implied in it? Through negation of what it is not, we may come upon it. Right? Love is not jealousy. Right? That means when my wife looks at somebody else, I’m not jealous – not just an idea. When somebody has done me harm, I don’t hate him. So love is not jealousy, hate, envy, seeking prestige, position, all the rest of it – love is none of these things. So in denying what is not, the other is. Sir?
1:03:16 Q: I think that on my own level I understand what you say should be, but then I try to apply this, but then I forget and I’m lazy and I’m drawn in all sorts of different directions.
1:04:08 K: May I suggest something, sir, that might be considered? We are, most of us are inattentive and rarely we are attentive. In the moments of attention there is no application – you’re attending. You don’t say, ‘I must remember’ – you attend at that moment. So what is important is to be aware of inattention. That’s all. I don’t know if you see. You understand, sir? That’s all.
1:04:55 Q: Well, I do realize this, but also I know there even comes a time, I mean, like right now, I sit here and I realize this and I realize that’s what is important to me. But then there are times that come up that I know I should be realizing that but I don’t.
1:05:23 K: Leave it then, leave it. Sir, let’s be clear on this point. Most of us... and all our misfortune arises when we are inattentive. Attention is the highest form of the good. And most of us, being inattentive, we try to cultivate attention. Right? I say, don’t do that, you can’t cultivate inattention and make it become attention. Right? I’m inattentive. I have tasted or felt or known or seen what attention means, and I realize I’m inattentive. Now what I want to do then is try to cultivate inattention and let it become attention, push inattention to make it attention. Right? Which is another conflict. So I say don’t do that but be attentive when you are inattentive. I don’t know... Right? That’s all. You don’t have to do anything else.
1:07:02 Q: I see that but…
1:07:04 K: No, no. [Laughter]
1:07:09 Q: As to what to do I see that, but also... the thing is that sometimes I don’t even want to do that.
1:07:29 K: Doesn’t matter then. Don’t force yourself to do something, sir, play with all this happily.
1:07:40 Q: No, I don’t want to force myself. I wonder if you can give me some insight as to why at these times I don’t even... [inaudible]
1:07:45 K: Because probably – please, sir, I am saying probably, you understand, I’m not the Delphic Oracle – probably we eat wrongly, we indulge too much, not enough sleep. Physically – please follow this a little bit – the physical intelligence has been destroyed, the bodily intelligence has been destroyed through our taste, because everybody indulges – you know, in smoke, drink and all the rest of it – so we have destroyed the intelligence of the body itself through the excess of our own tastes, and all that. So that may be one of the reasons why we don’t want to do a thing about anything. 1:08:46 And also one of the pestiferous causes of this is indolence, laziness – say, ‘Well, what does it matter? Let it go one more day, something will happen.’ So we submit to laziness. That’s another factor. Another factor is, if we pay too much attention it might bring us all kinds of trouble. No? Right? So I say, ‘Let it go.’ By looking too deeply I see too many things which might disturb myself, my family, my relationship, my examination, my future job, you know, all the rest of it, so I close the lid. And – let me, sir – and also we want encouragement, somebody to tell us, ‘Look, old boy, you’re doing very well, carry on.’ 1:10:14 [Laughter] Somebody to talk to us, to be friendly with us, to hold our hands, metaphorically and actually. And nobody is going to do it – you understand? – nobody is sufficiently interested in you or in me to say, ‘Look, let’s talk it over,’ because the other has his own problems. So, we are afraid to stand alone. You understand, sir? So these are the many contributory causes why the mind says: for God’s sake, enough! Right? Yes, sir?
1:11:05 Q: Are you saying that we should not worry about anything like authority or anything external but meet each experience and have fun with it and then meet the next one?
1:11:22 K: Ah, not have fun with it, sir. [Laughter] [Laughs] My son dies – I can’t have fun with it. All experiences aren’t funny – most experiences are deadly, frightful, agonising. And to see this whole problem of experience – oh, sir, this requires extraordinary maturity. And our education doesn’t make us mature, it makes us older. Our society doesn’t help us to mature in the deep sense of that word. I mean, consider for a minute, if the parents loved their children, really loved them, talked to them – you know, all that – hold their hands, go into it, be really affectionate, considerate, do you think there would be a war? 1:12:42 Do you think there would be Draft? Do you think I would like to see my son killed? No, sir! For love of my country, for my God, for my king, for some idea. We don’t love people. We don’t love our sons. It’s a tragic world, sir. Yes?
1:13:15 Q: [Inaudible] ...a brief discussion on what kind of experiences people who see each other without images might undergo. What type of relationships can individuals have to look at each other without images?
1:13:33 K: Ah, I see – what is the relationship between two human beings when there are no images – is that it?
1:13:42 Q: Yes, sir.
1:13:45 K: First of all, one has to go into this question of how these images are put together. When my wife insults me, I don’t finish it – I carry it over. Right? That’s the beginning of the image. And when I dominate my wife, the wife has the image of me. Right? So there is... we are building images all the time, through incomplete experience. Right? When my wife nags me or I brutalise her – whatever we do in that ugly relationship, which is the relationship of image between image and image – there is no relationship. To find out the other, what it means to have a relationship without an image, it means to love, sir. To love means to have no image at all. I think that’s enough, isn’t it? Yes, sir?
1:15:10 Q: Wouldn’t you say that a completely free mind is an omniscient mind?
1:15:29 K: Omniscient. Completely free mind is an omniscient mind. I don’t quite know what that word omniscient means. Free mind is more important than what is the omniscient about. Sir, look, sir, what is wisdom? Wisdom is not something that one buys in a book. Wisdom is not the outcome of experience. Wisdom doesn’t come through sorrow. Wisdom doesn’t come through great deal of accumulation of knowledge. Wisdom comes when there is the ending of sorrow, and that can only end with self-knowing. When there is the self-knowing then there is freedom. And that freedom is the highest form of intelligence.
1:16:56 I think that’s enough, isn’t it, for this evening?
🢁