Krishnamurti Subtitles home


LO61T2 - What is thinking?
London - 4 May 1961
Public Talk 2



0:00 This is J Krishnamurti’s second public talk in London, 1961.
0:07 Krishnamurti: We were discussing the day before yesterday, evening, that a great revolution must take place, not only because of the world situation but also it is imperative, it seems to me, that the revolution, an inward, deep, radical revolution is necessary for the mind to be free so as to discover what is true.
1:11 And to bring about that new mind, a mind that is not limited by nationality, by organized religions, by beliefs, by any particular dogma or the limitations of experience, seems to me is essential because it does bring about a creative state, a state which is not merely the production of a certain capacity to invent or paint, and so on, but creative in the more deeper and wider sense.
2:22 That’s what we were more or less discussing the last time that we met.
2:34 And we were wondering how it is possible to have or to bring about such a revolution, what action is necessary.
3:03 And I think we stopped there, and I hope we can continue this evening along those lines.
3:25 I do not know if you have not tried, by joining various groups, various schools of thought and meditation, to find out what to do not only in daily life but also action in the largest sense of that word, not only at a given, particular moment but also action, a total action.
4:24 You must have also wondered what it is to act, what one must do.
4:39 And most of us are eager to find out what to do. I think that is fairly obvious with most of us: we want to know what to do. And perhaps that’s why you are here. That’s why we belong to so many groups and religious bodies and societies: what to think, what to do?
5:17 To me, that’s not the problem at all.
5:26 The ‘what to do’, the mode of conduct, a particular way of life, is really very detrimental to action.
5:46 The ‘what to do’, the demand for a particular course of action implies, does it not, a system from day to day, which eventually will lead to a particular goal, to a particular action, to a particular state of being.
6:29 And after all, most of us living in this mad world, chaotic, ruthless – you know what it is – we are trying to find out through all this messy business a way of living, a way of action which will not create, in the very acting, more problems.
7:19 And I think to understand this really very deeply, one has to understand effort, conflict and contradiction.
7:42 Most of us live in a state of self-contradiction, not only collectively but individually.
7:57 I hope I am not making absolute statements, but I think it is more or less accurate, that we know very rarely moments when there is no conflict, when there is no contradiction within ourselves, when the mind is completely quiet. And that very quietness is an action within itself.
8:29 But most of us do live in contradiction, and from this contradiction there is conflict.
8:48 And most of us are concerned how to be free of this conflict, not only outwardly but inwardly.
9:00 If we could discuss that and go from there, perhaps we shall be able to find out an action which is not merely a reaction.
9:27 For most of us, action is reaction, and is it possible to act, to be in action, without reaction, and therefore create no contradiction within ourselves?
9:52 I don’t know if I am making myself clear. Please, because I happen to sit on a platform, don’t become… If you don’t understand it, let’s discuss it, let us go into it thoroughly.
10:13 Because to me, conflict in any form is very detrimental – to put it mildly – to comprehension, to penetration, to understanding.
10:45 Conflict in any form.
10:53 And we are educated, we are bred, our whole social acquisitive society is based on conflict, on competition.
11:13 And is it possible to free the mind from… Is it possible for the mind to free itself from conflict and thereby uncover this whole process of self-contradiction?
11:41 And perhaps, if we could intelligently discuss this, we might then understand, I think, what it is to act without the conditioning effect of experience and knowledge.
12:18 Can we discuss this, or do you think we are… we can discuss something else better in order to understand And to come by that mind which is in a state of revolution?
12:49 Questioner: Wouldn’t that be sort of acting without thought?
12:54 K: I beg your pardon?

Q: Wouldn’t it be acting without thought?
13:01 K: The lady asks: would that not be acting without thought?
13:27 Are you suggesting that we should be so extraordinarily spontaneous that we are completely unaware or unrelated to anything but merely living from moment to moment, like I don’t know what?
13:45 Is that possible?

Q: It doesn’t seem so but…

K: Wouldn’t that be rather chaotic?
14:01 But perhaps in discussing that question we really should discuss what is thinking.
14:22 What is the mechanism of thinking?
14:38 Can we discuss that?
14:43 Q: Are we our thoughts?
14:51 K: No, just a minute. I don’t know if you have ever thought about the process of thinking.
15:06 What is thinking? I ask you. Just a minute. Here we are. I ask you, what is thinking?
15:15 Q: I should say thinking is a nervous reaction to that which has been experienced.
15:23 We can’t react to something we do not know. That’s how I feel about it.
15:33 K: You know, the electronic machines think. The electronic brains, the computers think.
15:48 Is our thinking also along the same lines? The response of memory, memory being experience, whether the individual or collective, or, you know, all the rest of it, in which is included the nervous response. I ask you, what is thinking?
16:15 Do please experiment with it a little bit. I ask you, what is thinking?
16:24 Before you answer me, or answer the question, shouldn’t one be aware of the process, of the mechanism which replies to that question?
16:44 And the reply to that question and the interval between the question and the response, is the process of thinking, surely.
16:56 Between the challenge and the response – the challenge setting the motion, the mechanism of thought in motion, and the response – all of that is thinking, isn’t it?
17:13 No? Please.
17:26 Am I aware how I think, what is the process of thinking?
17:43 Q: I think only from myself.

K: No, please, it’s no good saying…
17:51 The lady says, I think from myself. What does that… Please.
18:00 Q: I think in that case one must be one’s thought.
18:13 K: I ask you a question: are you a Christian? Are you an Englishman?
18:20 Are you English? – German, whatever it is. You reply according to your belief or non-belief, according to your education, conditioning.
18:42 Now, what is this education, what is this conditioning from which you respond, the background?
18:56 Q: Memory, surely.

K: Memory, isn’t it?
19:05 If I’m born in India and have been educated there, not only in a school but by the society in which I live, I have certain experiences, certain memories, certain storehouse of tradition which has been handed to me, and I respond according to that. That’s the mechanism.
19:39 Like the electronic brain, it is there.
19:47 According to the various demands, I respond, according to my background.
19:56 And this is what we call thinking, isn’t it? Please.

Q: Yes.
20:03 K: Now…
20:10 And according to that thinking I act.
20:21 And according to that inherited or acquired experience I live.
20:42 So my thinking is always very limited and so there is no freedom in thinking.
20:57 I don’t know if… I mean, the idea that one must be free to think or through thinking there is freedom, to me it seems nonsense.
21:25 David Bohm: Isn’t it possible to have creative thinking, for example, to make new discoveries, perhaps in science or mathematics?
21:36 Is thinking entirely the result of conditioning or the past?

K: The gentleman asks, when there is a new discovery in mathematics or any other field, is that the result of conditioned thinking? Isn’t that it, sir?
21:58 DB: That’s the question, yes.
22:15 K: When do we discover anything?
22:24 When do we perceive something new?
22:31 From the piston to the jet – when is the mind capable of seeing something new?
22:47 Whether it is in mathematics or in engineering or in painting, when is the mind capable of seeing something new?
23:07 Q: When it is still, quiet.
23:12 K: The lady says when it is still and quiet.

Q: I would say when the known ways have been exhausted.
23:22 K: Another suggestion is that when the known ways have been exhausted.
23:30 When the known ways have been exhausted, that is, I have a problem in mathematics and I work, work, work, try to tackle it in different ways, and I’m exhausted and I can’t find a way out.
23:42 Then I let it alone. Then the next morning the answer pops up in my mind, or a week later or a month later, it doesn’t matter.
23:57 That is what? When my mind has gone into the problem thoroughly and hasn’t found an answer and gives it up, so there is a quietness with regard to that problem, and as I am getting into the bus I find the answer.
24:26 Right, sir?

DB: Do you say this is not thinking?
24:33 Do you say that this process is not thinking?

K: Wait a minute, we’re going into that, sir. We want to examine this a little bit more.
24:50 There’s a lot involved in this, it isn’t just at one level of the mind.
24:57 The whole unconscious comes into operation also.
25:06 Q: Could one not say that that was from the unconscious? The subconscious.
25:29 K: We are trying to find out, aren’t we, what is thinking?
25:38 And we see most of our thinking is from the background of memory, experience, knowledge, and all the rest of it.
25:46 And there are moments when we see something in a flash, unrelated to the past, which may be false or which may be true. The falseness and the truth of it, depending how we translate according to our conditioning.
26:20 And is all invention, is all the discovery of something new the result of thought, or when thought is completely in abeyance, when the mind is completely quiet, not only the superficial mind but the total mind, the unconscious?
26:49 Because, after all… Shall we go into all that, the unconscious, and all that business?
26:54 Q: Yes.

K: Well? Adiamo.
27:05 Most of us, don’t we, function at the very superficial level most of the time.
27:20 Our jobs demand a superficial activity and our relationship with each other is very superficial.
27:37 Our activities do not demand a total response, the total response of one’s whole being, neither in the office nor in our relationships. And all our education is geared to that superficial response.
28:05 I mean, this is fairly obvious, isn’t it? I am not saying something extravagant.
28:17 And there is the unconscious. We are living on the surface of the mind and there is the deep, unexplored, which is always prompting, giving hints, intimations of something which become dreams, and all the rest of it, again to be translated by the conscious mind according to its conditioning. And is not this whole consciousness conditioned?
29:11 The unconscious is surely the reservoir of the racial: recollections, reflections, traditions, memories and the accumulated knowledge of man.
29:41 And it is there.
29:52 And the superficial mind is educated to a certain technique to live in this modern world.
30:05 So, obviously there is a contradiction between the unconscious and the conscious.
30:13 The conscious mind may be educated to have no belief in God, being an atheist, a communist or what you will. But the unconscious has been trained for centuries to certain forms of beliefs.
30:38 And when the crisis comes, the unconscious responds much more than the conscious mind. You know all this, don’t you, sirs?
31:04 So, consciousness, the totality of it, not only the superficial but also the unconscious, the total being, I feel is conditioned. And any response from the unconscious is not a liberating influence…
31:29 is not a liberating factor, not ‘influence’. Do think about this, don’t agree with me, please. Discuss with me.
31:42 So, a mathematician having a problem and dissolving it without thought, after exploring, after going into the problem, is that solution of the problem something new, totally new, not generating, not springing from the unconscious?
32:14 Q: It’s actually old stuff, isn’t it, really? It comes from the unconscious. It’s not really new, is it?
32:23 K: You see, we must be very careful here, if you don’t mind my asking, that we mustn’t become speculative.
32:37 Either you speak from direct comprehension after exploring into this whole business, or you are merely repeating what somebody has told you or what you have read. If we could for the moment, or perhaps forever, discard what other people have said – Jung, Freud, and all the rest of the analysts and psychologists and the whole gang of them – if you could brush all that aside, if you can, I don’t if know if you can – then you will be able to find out for yourself directly whether it is possible for the total consciousness to be free of its own conditioning, or it is not at all possible.
33:45 If it is not possible, then the total consciousness has to be made better, more worthwhile, more good, a better citizen, and all the rest of it.
34:00 I don’t know if you are following what I am talking about, if I am making myself clear.

Q: Yes, yes.
34:08 K: It’s like living within a prison and decorating the prison: whether the brain is washed by the communist, by the Catholic, by the Protestant, or by the Anglican or the Hindu, is the same.
34:32 And whether it is possible – it is really very… an important and vital question, if you we go into it – whether it is at all possible to go beyond the consciousness which is conditioned, which is limited; whether the mind can ever be free, in the deep sense of the word.
35:01 There are those who say it is not possible because the mind is the result of time, of circumstances, of influence, of environment, and therefore it is just a slave to the environment, to time, and all that we can do is to shape it better, mould it in a better mould, either in the communist mould or in the democratic mould or in the world mould, or whatever it is.
35:35 So the mind will always remain a slave.
35:45 And whether such a mind can ever find that which is beyond time, or whether there is such a thing, there is something beyond the mind.
36:11 Q: What could be such a thing?

K: The lady asks: what could be such a thing? I’m afraid that’s not possible to put into words, just leave that aside. That has no importance at all. There are only two issues: either the mind is capable of freeing itself from all influence and therefore from all environments, either of the past or the future or of the present, or it is not possible.
37:03 The communists don’t believe it is possible, nor the Catholics, nor the religious people.
37:11 They talk about freedom but they don’t believe it, because the moment you leave them you have become a heretic – they excommunicate you, they burn you, they do all kinds… they liquidate you, all the rest of it.
37:36 And is it possible for an action to take place which is not within the field of consciousness, of limitation, of conditioning?
37:52 Do you see the question, sirs?
38:03 Q: The experience of most of us is that it isn’t possible, and yet we have intimations that it can be possible.
38:13 But we don’t know how to receive it.

K: The gentleman says most of us feel that it is possible, in some vague way.
38:23 Q: No, we feel that it isn’t possible.

K: It is not possible?

Q: We try, and we have tried for years, and we never…
38:32 We never achieve it. And yet intimation comes as though it were a possibility.
39:06 K: Are you waiting for me to…
39:13 Q: But you have said it’s not possible.

K: And also that gentleman says it is also possible.
39:21 He has intimation of such a possibility.
39:26 Q: It is possible to stop thinking for a little bit, ordinary thinking. Might that be a step to clear away ordinary thinking first of all, get rid of it?
39:43 K: You see, sir, I don’t know how far one has gone into all this.
40:12 Q: It seems to me that the unconscious mind is the tremendous difficulty. I am sure the conscious mind can be free. I know the conscious mind can be free. It’s the difficulty getting into the unconscious which I find so difficult.

K: Just a minute, sir, I can’t hear.
40:43 What were you saying, sir?

Q: I feel the difficulty is with the unconscious conditioning, which seems so much more powerful, as if one can’t…
40:57 somehow one doesn’t know what one is dealing with. One seems to lack the capacity to penetrate in there.
41:10 K: Do you see, sir, is it possible by analyzing, going into the unconscious step by step, unravelling it and thereby go beyond it – is that possible?

Q: No.
41:38 K: Why do you say no?

Q: Because I’ve tried.

K: Quite right, sir, that’s good enough.
41:46 Q: The effort of going into the unconscious abolishes the possibility of its manifesting itself.
41:53 K: No, you see, the unconscious is a positive process, isn’t it?
42:06 And can you approach the positive process by a positive demand?
42:17 Q: I don’t follow that, sir.
42:28 K: Consciously… I beg your pardon?

Q: Both are under the same limitation.
42:35 K: Yes. The lady says both are under the same limitation. The conscious mind desires or wishes to investigate the unconscious.
42:48 The conscious mind has its own motives for investigation; it wants to be free. The motive is there.
42:57 You follow, sir? There is a motive which makes a conscious mind investigate.
43:07 The motive may be positive or negative – right? – and the unconscious is a positive reservoir, it is not something vague.
43:26 So, a positive motive begins to operate on something which is equally positive.
43:35 Right? And is that possible? And the unconscious, you don’t know what it is. Right?
43:46 You know through its intimations, through hints, you know what you have read about it, but you don’t know for yourself all its content. Right?
44:04 You have the intimations of it through dreams, and all the rest of it, but you don’t know what it is. Therefore it is an unconscious thing.
44:18 And the mind which is conscious wants to investigate it. I hope I’m… Am I right?

Q: Yes.

K: Now, is that possible? Can the conscious mind investigate something which it does not know?
44:40 And will you know it through analysis? Please, sir, don’t brush this aside, it is very important.
44:51 Analyzing by the analyst or analyzing by yourself, will you uncover the whole content of the thing called unconscious of which you are not totally aware?
45:10 You see the problem?
45:15 Q: It’s too vast.

K: No, no, don’t say it is too vast, then you go off at a tangent.
45:27 You are not meeting the point.

Q: That is precisely where we are.

K: Parlez en français.
45:34 Q: Je crois que vos amis ne font pas assez effort pour comprendre.

K: Bien.
45:50 Q: Doesn’t the unconscious express itself through emotion? So you can meet the emotion.
45:57 K: No, whether it expresses through emotion, whether it expresses itself through dreams, hints, intimation.
46:07 Q: There is a relationship between the thought and emotion which has to be investigated, which has to be met.
46:14 K: Wait a minute, sir. You see, you are now saying investigation. Who is the investigator?
46:26 Q: Wouldn’t it be a little more fruitful if we did discuss that of which we are immediately aware, that is, our thinking at this time consciously, rather than the possibilities of what’s going on in the unconscious mind?

K: I was coming to that by going through the…
46:39 Sorry. All right, sir.

Q: Can’t we go where we stopped just now, on the same road?
46:51 K: You see, I do not know if you have gone into the process of thinking – I am coming to your question, sir – into the process of thinking. If you have gone into it, you must have gone into this whole problem of the word, and is there a thinking without the word, without the symbol; the symbol being in the unconscious as well as in the conscious; and whether there is a thinking without the symbol at all?
47:45 Symbol, I mean not only the word but the image, the idea. You know?
48:05 Now, I want to say something. Perhaps you will be able to understand it, or you may say, ‘What the dickens are you talking about?’ I think the process of investigating into the unconscious is a false process.
48:30 I think one has to break away from that whole idea analysis.
48:40 Q: Because the instrument of analysis is wrong.

K: Not only. The gentleman says not only the instrument of analysis is wrong, but I want to suggest that analysis itself is not the way out, that there is a way which is immediate perception.
49:09 I’ll come to that presently.
49:22 Q: Can you say something about immediate perception, because that is just what we don’t understand.

K: I’ll try. I’m going into it a little bit.
49:40 Sir, let’s be clear first that thinking is mechanical.
49:49 Right, sir? We all see that.

Q: Yes.

K: Now, wait a minute, wait a minute.
49:58 What do we mean by seeing? You agreed, you said yes. Now, what do you mean by yes?
50:10 I said all thinking is mechanical because it is the response of memory, the response of knowledge, the response of experience, and therefore all thinking is from the background of this, with this background, which is conditioned. Right?
50:36 And therefore thinking can never be free, therefore it is always mechanical.
50:44 I said that, and you said, ‘Yes, I see’. Now, wait a minute, what do you mean by saying, ‘I see’?
50:51 Please, this is very important, because we are coming to the question of perception, seeing directly.
51:04 Now, what do you mean when you say, ‘I see’? You just now said, ‘Yes, I see’ – what do you mean by that?
51:11 Q: Something inside you makes you realize it.

K: Something inside you makes you realize it.
51:18 Just a minute. Something inside you also makes you realize that you must be a nationalist; something inside you also believes that there is a God, that there is supreme, etc., etc., etc.
51:41 Do you follow?

Q: Yes.

K: If you depend on something which tells you from inside, then you are apt also to have illusions.
51:58 A great many politicians talk about hearing the voice of God; and obviously a nationalist, a politician of any kind, of any genre can never hear the voice of God. So, similarly we may hear voices according to our wishes.
52:20 So I want to come… Please stick to this point, if you don’t mind, for a few minutes. What do you mean by seeing?
52:31 DB: How could you explain this when the explanation will require words or thoughts?
52:38 To ask us to explain seeing.

K: No, sir. Look, I am not trying to ask you to explain in words. Do you know when you say, ‘I see’, what it means to you?
52:58 Q: Responding from the collective.

Q: I feel it should mean that we see it as a fact.
53:16 K: Now, wait a minute. Just a minute. I say nationalism is poison.
53:25 Do you see that as truth?

Q: Yes.
53:32 Q: It agrees with a concept in my mind.

K: Wait, wait, wait. Just a minute please.
53:39 You say yes.

Q: Obvious.

K: And I say to you, to belong to any society, to any organized religion, to have any belief is detrimental to discovery, to discover something new. Do you see that too?
54:08 Q: Not so clearly.

K: No, not so clearly – why?
54:17 Do think it out. Please go into it.

Q: Because the society may be trying to discover something new in itself.
54:29 K: The lady says society is trying to discover something new within itself – can it?
54:37 Q: Who is society?

K: Exactly. I don’t want to enter into… Please, sir, I put to you something very…
54:46 You say nationalism is a… I say nationalism is a poison, and you agree. You say, ‘Yes, I see that very clearly’. To me, I see very clearly to belong to any group, racially, socially, intellectually, religiously, is equally poisonous.
55:19 Q: May I say, sir, that I belong to a group which is working for the United Nations, and it seems to me, in my present way of thinking, that that is a good thing.
55:34 K: Sir…

Q: He is working for the Disunited Nations.
55:43 There is no such thing as the United Nations.

K: Quite right, sir. Quite right, sir.
55:50 You see, how we are… I am asking you a question and if you don’t mind my pointing out, you are on the defensive.
56:05 You saw very clearly that nationalism is a poison. You all agreed.
56:14 But unconsciously, you are English, you’re French; it is there, rooted.
56:28 You say, ‘Yes, I see’, but you don’t equally see, with the same clarity, that belief is destructive to discovery.
56:43 Sir, look, I want to find out if there is a God. I really want to – you understand? – if there is or if there is not. And therefore I must brush aside every concept of God, not only consciously but unconsciously. I must tear out all the roots of Hinduism and Buddhism and all the culture in which I have been brought up to find out.
57:14 There must be no shelter – you understand? – there must be no refuge behind which I say I am doing good work.
57:25 Because my intention is to find.
57:33 And to find, I must ruthlessly get rid of everything that stands in the way.
57:41 Not that I want to do good to society; I am not interested in that for the moment. I am concerned to find out. And if I am so concerned, then I don’t belong to anything.
58:02 Then I have no shelter, intellectual, verbal, physical or emotional.
58:08 Q: Can we become completely free beings? Can we become quite free?
58:15 K: Please, madame.
58:26 In the same way, I want to find out if it is possible to go beyond the conditioning of the conscious mind.
58:51 Not only mere intimations of it, I want to… the mind must go beyond it. Is it possible?
59:03 And to discover if it is possible or not, I must wash away, mustn’t I, from the mind, this whole process of effort and analysis. I don’t know if you… Right, sir?
59:27 Q: I think the great difficulty is often in that process when we have to meet and talk with people who are not experiencing the same thing; one is so isolated.
59:38 K: All that’s irrelevant, sir. Whether one is isolated or related is irrelevant.
59:45 I mean, that’s… No, please, sirs, you are missing my… I’m not making myself clear. We started out this discussion with what to do.
1:00:07 I see in this mad world a new mind is necessary, a new way of looking at life – not according to the communists but a new way.
1:00:24 And that new way must be born out of a complete revolution, not the revolution of the communists or the socialists but a revolution, a revolution from the past, a total cutting away from the past.
1:00:49 And the past is the unconscious as well as the conscious.
1:00:56 All this may sound rather crazy, but you know what it means.
1:01:09 And is it possible to do this? If I say it is not possible, then I accept conditioning and better the conditioning, make it a little more habitable.
1:01:27 If I say it is possible, then I must be aware of the implications of all this.
1:01:39 Aware, not enter into it. You understand? I don’t know if I’m making myself clear.
1:01:52 I am aware that to be a Hindu is detrimental. To have the traditions of the Hindu in any form is binding.
1:02:09 And to belong to any particular organized group of thought is poisonous.
1:02:20 I am trying to find a mild word! And to make an effort still belongs to the past, because our whole education, our structure, our ideas, is based on acquisitiveness, which is effort: I must be more, I must be less, I must achieve, I must not, I must – all that involves effort.
1:02:58 To be or not to be. I see the implication of all that. Not analytically, not through deduction or induction – I see it. When I use the words ‘I see’, I see it factually, not emotionally, not sentimentally, not intellectually or verbally; I see it.
1:03:31 I see it as I see that microphone.
1:03:39 So the very perception of that fact has wiped away that conditioning completely.
1:03:50 I wonder if I am conveying anything to you.

Q: Yes.
1:03:56 K: Don’t agree with me, please. For God’s sake, this is not a social game.
1:04:06 If you see it the same way, you’re out of it instantly.
1:04:18 Q: We are bound to our conditioning by our duties in society, in the family.
1:04:24 K: The gentleman says – quite right – the gentleman says we are bound by duty to our family, to society, to the job, to the country, to the religions in which we have been brought up, and all the rest of it.
1:04:49 Which means that you are putting the family, the society, your individual relationship, in opposition to the fact. Right?
1:05:09 And therefore there is a conflict between the fact and what you call your duty.
1:05:22 And to escape from this conflict, one joins monasteries, one becomes a monk, or one inwardly becomes isolated, builds a wall and then lives in it.
1:05:48 But why do you put this in opposition?
1:05:57 Go into it, find out.

Q: We are afraid, sir.

K: Go into it, find out.

Q: Is there an opposition? Because it seems that what is needed is to see something rather than to do something about it. Whatever one’s duties are, surely one can see whether the thing is true or not.

K: No, sir.
1:06:15 You see, sir, when you use the word ‘duty’, responsibility, you have put yourself in opposition to freedom.
1:06:34 But if you perceived the fact of what I have been talking about, then you would have a totally different action towards what you call duty, to your family, to your society, all the rest of it. You follow?

Q: Yes.

K: All right.
1:07:05 Q: There are certain facts in the world. If one’s family depends on one for bread and butter, I don’t think that’s a duty, it’s just a relationship that has happened in the world.

K: Yes, I understand all that.
1:07:23 Yes. You see, I’m trying to get back – perhaps forcing the issue – to action.
1:07:40 You see, we want to do something about it.
1:07:53 You understand, sir? I know several people all the world over who have disciplined themselves ruthlessly, because they want to find out, they want to see.
1:08:20 They have renounced, they have isolated themselves, they have done everything according to the religious edicts, to what has been told to them, and made tremendous efforts.
1:08:41 And there at the end of it they are dead human beings; dead, withered.
1:08:51 And it is this constant effort to be, to be, to become, that has destroyed them; to become according to a pattern.
1:09:12 Now, when you put society, family, and all the rest of it, which prevents you… or which is not… with this, it is not possible to have the other, then you are introducing a fact of conflict.
1:09:39 Right, sir? And I say don’t introduce the element of conflict in it at all.
1:09:49 See it, and that itself will take care of the other. I don’t know if…

Q: Yes.
1:10:14 K: You see, as I was saying, for most of us, action is reaction.
1:10:23 I flatter you and you respond; I insult you and you respond.
1:10:31 Our action is always reaction. I am talking of something: action without reaction.
1:10:46 That is, the perception which is total action, and that will act.
1:10:57 This is not something queer, odd, some fantastic idea of my own, but if you have gone into yourself, if you have observed the world, if you have watched people, the great ones and the little ones, the saints and the non-saints, the sinner, if you have watched them, studied them, looked at them, you would know that is not that way, because they have built their life on strife, on conflict, on suppression, and all the rest of it, which is a horror.
1:11:53 But you must see the truth of that to be free of that. I don’t know…
1:12:03 Q: That would be unconscious conditioning. There is so much conditioning which is unconscious.
1:12:11 K: The lady says there is so much conditioning which is unconscious.
1:12:19 You see…
1:12:29 Look, shall I go into my unconscious?
1:12:37 And how am I to do it? We all live in the conscious mind and can I unravel every layer, every detail of the unconscious without missing a point?
1:12:52 If I miss a point, I can’t examine thoroughly. You understand?
1:12:59 Is it possible? Is it possible for the conscious mind to enter into something which is unconscious, not open, hidden?
1:13:11 All that I can do is to wait, watch. You follow, sir? Watch as I walk, all day be alert, so that I have a dreamless night. Oh, this… you don’t know all this.
1:13:31 Q: One must be open and vulnerable.

K: No. The lady says we must be open and vulnerable. The ‘must’ is a detriment.
1:13:48 The ‘must’ implies effort. Oh, sirs, don’t you see? It’s simple enough what I…
1:14:02 So, we began by talking about a revolution which is not the result of calculation and thought, because thought is mechanical, thought is a reaction. Communism is a reaction to capitalism and all the horrors – you know all the rest of it.
1:14:37 If I leave one group and join another group, it is still a reaction. If I give up Catholicism and become a Hindu, it is still a stupid reaction.
1:14:49 But if I see the truth that to belong to anything, that to believe in anything, that to have belief as security prevents perception: if I see the truth of that, then there is no conflict.
1:15:18 Take something… I’m afraid we’ll have to stop, it’s a quarter past eight.
1:15:37 We will continue next Sunday morning.
1:15:44 But if we could go into this question of action.
1:15:52 For most of us action is inaction, which is reaction.
1:16:04 I want to find what is freedom, a new mind. I see the urgency, the necessity, the imperative demand of such a mind.
1:16:18 And I don’t know what to do. So I’m concerned with what to do.
1:16:27 You follow? So, I have laid the emphasis on what to do And the ‘what to do’ becomes all-important, and so I say, ‘Now, what shall I do? Tell me’.
1:16:56 So I become the authority, and the authority is the most poisonous thing in the world.
1:17:16 And if we realize inwardly, see the fact that all our action is reaction, which is, I want to arrive, I want to achieve, I want to become something, and from that motive, with that motive I act – is still a reaction.
1:17:39 Can I, can this mind realize that fact?
1:17:48 Realize that fact, not ‘What shall I do if?
1:17:55 What about my family, my job, my this and that?’ But do I see the fact of it?
1:18:13 And if one, if the mind does see the fact, it is an immediate perception – not intuition.
1:18:27 I am not using the word ‘intuition’ purposely because that’s so deceptive.
1:18:38 To see a fact without translating it in terms of the old.
1:18:55 Then I think one will begin to comprehend, perceive what is action which is not reaction – which is essentially the quality of the new mind.
1:19:20 And so we’d better stop.