Krishnamurti Subtitles home


LO61T3 - Can the mind experience without leaving a residue as memory?
London - 7 May 1961
Public Talk 3



0:00 This is J Krishnamurti’s third public talk in London, 1961.
0:07 Krishnamurti: Perhaps you’ll let me talk for a little while and then we can discuss.
0:22 What we have been talking about the last two times that we met was the necessity of having a new, fresh mind.
0:44 Everywhere one goes there is an awful mess of… an awful mess, a great deal of suffering not only physically but inwardly, a great deal of confusion.
1:05 And it seems to me, instead of tackling the suffering, the confusion, we are trying to escape from them all, either to the moon or in entertainments or in various forms of delusions.
1:32 But yet, in spite of all this, there is a continuity of constant suffering and confusion, and to break through all this, one needs a fresh, new mind.
1:50 That is what we were more or less talking about the other day.
1:59 And I would like this morning to continue where we left off, which was how to live in this world without conflict.
2:20 Because it seems to me that a mind in conflict is a dull mind, is made dull by conflict.
2:36 A mind occupied with conflict is a dull mind, a mediocre mind.
2:50 And we are all in conflict of various kinds, at different levels, in different forms.
2:59 And we put up with them or we try to escape from them, either in social reform, in entertainments, and too readily the churches offer escapes, with their rituals and strange words and beliefs and dogmas, which offer a certain form of romantic escape and romantic consolation.
3:40 But actually, in spite of all these escapes, there are conflicts; we are still in conflict. And so as we grow older and older, and the escapes become inevitable and constant, the mind becomes more and more dull, heavy, stupid.
4:09 I think that is the fact with most of us. There may be a few exceptions, that in spite of this conflict, in spite of the misery, there is a break in the clouds: one sees very clearly, and a sense of quietness, a sense of depth comes into being.
4:53 And I think we should go into this matter, because to inquire, to go deeply into it, is an arduous task.
5:05 It requires hard work. It’s not just listening to a talk or discussing a few ideas, but to really go into it very deeply, to eradicate conflict altogether, conflict in every form, requires a very sharp mind, requires a mind that is capable of penetration, that’s not caught in the net of words.
5:53 And we are apt, I’m afraid, to merely listen or hear certain words and certain ideas, and just skim on the surface of it.
6:09 And that’s why year after year we listen to all these talks, which become rather stupid at the end of it, because we are merely then dealing with ideas and never for ourselves go deeply into the matter and eradicate all conflict.
6:38 So I think we should this morning confine ourselves to see if it is possible, actually, not theoretically, not verbally, to see if the mind can really understand the nature of conflict and perhaps come out of it renewed, fresh, young and innocent.
7:23 An innocent mind is never in conflict; it is in a state of action, and a mind in action is never in conflict.
7:43 A mind that is all the time deciding, moving, can never be in conflict. It is only the mind that has a certain contradiction within itself that is perpetually in conflict, in struggle.
8:18 Please, as I am talking, don’t merely listen to my words because they have no meaning by themselves, they have just ordinary meaning.
8:31 But if you can look at yourself, look at your own minds and your own hearts, see what are your contradictions, if you have any.
8:44 But I’m sure you have many; you can’t help it.
8:53 And as I am going to go into it rather deeply, don’t merely follow what you hear, the verbal expression, but actually follow it through experience, which is directly.
9:11 Then perhaps at the end of the talk, end of the discussion, you will have a clarity, a sense of freedom from this appalling weight of conflict.
9:38 I don’t think we see the importance of being free from conflict.
9:46 We have accepted it from childhood, all our education in all the schools throughout the world is the breeding ground of conflict: to compete with somebody who is much cleverer than you are.
10:09 And as we grow older, they’re following the example, the leader, the authority, the ideal.
10:18 And so there is ‘what should be’ and what is actually; there is a cleavage and hence there is a contradiction.
10:31 I am this and I should be that; and the ‘should be that’ is the constant urge, and from that there is the action of ‘what should be’.
10:54 And so we are perpetually creating within ourselves this conflict, this contradiction.
11:16 There is not only the outward, the worldly conflicts, the ideals, the competitions, the ambitions to be, to arrive, to achieve – if one is ugly, to be more beautiful; if one is not clever, one should become more clever, more intelligent – the perpetual drive of modern society; not only copying the Joneses but also copying God, copying Jesus; not only in fashion but also in virtue.
12:24 So there is this outward war between peoples, between nations, between races, between the spacemen.
12:55 And one observes that, as you must observe it, as every day you must see it.
13:07 One rejects that – being too stupid, worldly, insane, mad – rejects it, and then one turns inward.
13:29 There again is the same problem, the problem of achieving, being, becoming something inwardly: peaceful, quiet, happy, to understand God, truth, love, heaven.
13:54 And there again the battle is going on.
14:04 It is really the same movement: the outward movement has become the inner movement.
14:19 The inner movement, the inward look, the inward search, is a reaction to the outer, and therefore it is still the same movement. It is like the tide that goes out and comes in.
14:54 And if one is aware of this, not verbally, not intellectually, but actually aware, in the fact it is so, there is no arguing about it: these are obviously psychological and actual facts.
15:16 You may dispute whether it is possible to go beyond this.
15:31 We haven’t come to that point yet. But the fact is the conflict is outward and inward, and it does breed an astonishing sense of brutality, an efficiency that leads to ruthlessness.
16:00 The outward movement does breed, bring about progress, prosperity.
16:09 And one can see what is happening in the world: where there is a great deal of prosperity there is less and less of freedom.
16:23 One can observe it in America very clearly, where there is extraordinary prosperity, and the sense of freedom, the sense of pioneering is gradually disappearing.
16:47 And inwardly too, when there is conflict we want to escape from that conflict.
17:00 And the greater the intensity of that conflict, the greater sense of activity: the do-gooders, the people who go around reforming, the saints, and those who are very capable of writing. The greater the tension in conflict, in contradiction, the greater the activity. If they have the capacity, that expresses itself, that conflict, that tension through that capacity. We know all this, which is, there is outward and inward contradictions, pulling in different directions: the drive of everyone who is ambitious.
18:34 Obviously, where there is ambition there is no love in any form; where there is ambition there is obviously no quietness, there is no sympathy, pity, affection.
19:05 And escapes from conflict, whether in relationship, conflict between two people, conflict between nations, conflict… – conflict, escape from conflict – and the object to which the mind escapes, whether it’s God, drink, a belief, a nationality, prosperity, bank account, such escape leads more deeply into that form of security which is illusory.
20:16 And most of our minds live in myths, in speculative ideas.
20:33 So, conflict increases, and from that there is an action, and that action further breeds contradiction. And so we are caught in this, in a wheel of effort, conflict, contradiction, and from that we act.
21:06 And from this action which is creating further suffering, further mess, further confusion, we try to escape. The ultimate escape of course is God, whatever that may mean, that word.
21:28 Or escape into the innumerable forms of sects, beliefs – you know, all the rest of the things that are going on in the world.
21:48 So there is action outwardly which is breeding discord, and inwardly action which is a reaction from the outward action, which also engenders, breeds suffering.
22:16 These are all obvious facts; I am only putting them into words.
22:28 This is the lot of everyone. And the mind is always seeking to escape from this conflict, always trying to escape, through suppression, which the saints throughout the world advocate, which is really a form of discipline, putting the lid on everything.
23:19 If it isn’t discipline, it is activity: social reform, taking up causes, trying to further brotherhood, you know, the activity, people move, act, agitate, doing something.
23:52 So, all that we know is action which breeds further misery, further distortion, further illusion and further suffering, outwardly and inwardly.
24:19 Every relationship, it begins so fresh, so young and so new, to deteriorate into something ugly, venomous.
24:40 There is this contradiction of love and hate, the opposites, the dual processes of which you are all so aware.
24:56 And we are trying to cover up all that – that’s our everlasting prayer.
25:08 And the gods do reply, unfortunately, because they offer escapes.
25:26 So that’s the picture, the picture of an idea and action corresponding to that idea, approximating to that idea.
26:03 So the intellect, the mind creates the idea and the mind tries to act in approximation to that idea.
26:19 So there is a cleavage and we are always trying to build a bridge.
26:29 And we never succeed in building the bridge because the idea is stable, because we have created it, firm, fixed; but action must be variable, constantly changing, because the world’s demand, the constant movement of change so there is a conflict.
26:51 You know all this.
26:59 And we have never said to ourselves, being aware of all these tremendous tensions, ugly wrenches, demands, we never have asked ourselves whether it is possible at all to live in this world without conflict.
27:51 And is it possible?
28:00 Because it is only a mind that is not in conflict, really, deeply, you know, not to have a single movement of conflict, it is only such a mind that is creative.
28:19 It doesn’t mean the poets and the painters and the architects are creative at all – they are not; they have got a certain gift, a certain capacity, occasionally see a flash of something and put it out in marble or write a poem or put up a building. I don’t call those people creative because they are still at war with the world, with themselves.
28:46 They are driven by their ambitions, by their jealousies, by their angers, hatreds and venomous existence.
29:02 And to find God or whatever you like to call it, to find Him, not invent and cling to some idea, you know, to really discover if there is such a thing, the mind must be totally free from conflict.
29:21 Not the freedom that we imagine which comes through suppression, not a mind that is warped, twisted to conform to an idea which we call pattern, ideal.
29:39 So all this requires enormous work.
29:46 Perhaps some of you old people, like us, we are already finished; I may not, we may not.
30:01 But this is the eternal problem, isn’t it, really? I do not know if you have not seen those pictures in that cave in Dordogne, 17,000 years ago: the colours are very bright because the wind, the draught has never come there.
30:30 It’s depicting man struggling with animals, horses, bulls, lovely horns, extraordinary movement.
30:43 It is the same struggle.
30:55 Now, what shall we do?
31:10 The mind realizes this, the intelligent mind, the mind that has worked, not just sat back and read books – that is sentimental – but a mind that has gone into itself, observed, observed the world – the world of the politician, the world of the saints, the world of the family, the world of the authority – observed it and also worked hard, observed inwardly.
31:52 Because that is really self-knowledge, to go within yourself very deeply.
32:13 And if some of you have done it, you must have asked yourselves if it is at all possible to be free from conflict, from contradiction, from this battle, war between the opposites, because you have to answer this question, you can’t just sit back and let somebody else answer, it has no meaning. Because you suffer, you are in conflict; it’s not somebody else says there is no conflict, somebody else says you must be out of it.
33:11 So if we could discuss it, could talk it over.
33:25 And this is nothing to do with age, whether you are old, young – you know.
34:00 Really, if I put the problem differently, to live is to act.
34:10 You can’t live without action, unless you are completely paralyzed, inwardly dead.
34:25 Everything we do is action, every movement of thought, every gesture, every idea, every wave of the mind is action.
34:52 And every action does breed a reaction, and from that reaction another action.
35:08 So all our action is reaction.
35:17 So we are caught in it.
35:24 Now, is it possible to live with extraordinary abundance of action which is not the result of conflict, escape and contradiction, which has no roots in conflict?
36:03 I don’t know if I am making myself clear.
36:22 Q: It is a thing that happens to us occasionally, like the wind in the trees, dead leaves blowing along, but we don’t know how it happens. It comes in spite of ourselves and goes.
36:40 K: The gentleman says this sense of effortless living comes and goes, like a leaf falling off a tree.
36:52 We occasionally are aware of it but we don’t know how it happens. That’s what the gentleman says.
37:01 Now, do look at it, do listen to what he said. It happens occasionally, and the memory of it remains and the desire for the repetition of it begins and so there is a conflict.
37:28 Do you see that? I have an experience of delight – looking at a lovely cloud or a lovely face, a beautiful smile – and it has left an imprint of pleasure, delight, joy, an ecstasy. And I want that repeated and I begin the conflict.
38:09 Do you see?
38:16 Please follow this out right through and you will see it, you will see for yourself something.
38:29 Q: The conflict starts from the wanting.

K: The gentleman says conflict starts from wanting – does it?
38:45 What’s wrong with wanting to see something beautiful?
38:51 Q: No, wanting again.

K: No, wait. Wanting again. Now, wait a minute, sir. All wanting is wanting again.
39:07 There would be no wanting if there is not a previous tasting of it, a previous recollection. And the wanting is the further recognition of what has been.
39:21 Do listen to it, sirs.
39:27 Q: What about our want of God? It isn’t a recognition.

Q: That’s not…

K: The lady asks: what about the wanting God?
39:37 Good Lord, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? Whether you want a woman, a baby, want to see the beautiful sunset and the repetition of it, and wanting God, surely…
39:57 Oh, good Lord! You see, you are missing the… Wanting – is that the problem?
40:11 Q: It’s resistance to the want that breeds the contradiction.

K: The gentleman says resistance to want that breeds contradiction – is that so?
40:30 Wanting breeds conflict, and any form of resistance breeds conflict.
40:40 But is that the issue? But the gentleman, he asked, ‘I have this occasional flutter of beauty and I don’t know how to maintain it’.
41:05 That’s the everlasting cry of the artist, isn’t it? So he takes to drink, women – you know, the good old… – wanting to capture. And we do the same, we live in the past: ‘Oh, what a lovely youth I had, happy days’, the things that have gone, the remembered faces and memories.
41:44 We want to recapture. So what is the issue in it?
41:51 Is it the want, the resistance, or something else?
41:59 Q: It’s a desire to secure the continuation.
42:06 K: He says, the desire to secure the continuation. Again the desire, the same thing: desire, resistance.
42:17 You can enlarge desire, put it in a different way, in details, but it’s the same thing, the desire for something and the resistance to that desire.
42:28 Just a minute, sir. Is that the issue?
42:43 Q: The resistance to that desire is the expression of another desire.

K: Same thing, sir.

Q: So there is a conflict.
42:48 K: No, you’re missing, you’re going… Please, sir. You are not following right through what that gentlemen asked. He says, ‘I have a feeling occasionally and I want more of it, I want it repeated, I want further, the glory of it’.
43:16 So, to desire and to resist both create conflict, don’t they?
43:23 And therefore all the saints have said no desire, wipe away desire.
43:30 When you see a woman, turn your back; don’t have beautiful pictures, don’t look at the sky, don’t look at the trees, don’t have a beautiful feeling; smother it, control it, don’t be passionate.
43:53 You follow? Is that the issue, is that the thing, or something else?
44:05 Q: It might be that there is… desire.
44:12 Q: It might also be the natural resistance to any desire which comes.
44:19 I mean not your resistance to it but the resistance of circumstances, the unattainable.
44:27 K: Yes, sir, but it is still the same thing, isn’t it?

Q: Yes.

K: Resistance, whether the attainable, resistance to the world, resistance to the family.
44:37 What were you saying? Understanding desire?

Q: I said I don’t think I understand desire.
44:43 K: Is that the problem?
44:51 Look, sir, you have created a problem, have you not, when you have had an experience and you want to further that experience, to have more of it, to renew it in order to continue it. Haven’t you created a problem, either of resistance or of yielding? And yielding creating its own further problem. Right?
45:22 We have created a problem, haven’t we? How to maintain a certain state?
45:31 Right? Is that clear or am I putting it… We have created a problem; whether the problem is small or large, that’s not the point. It’s a problem.
45:45 Now, what is a problem?
45:53 Q: It is the mind inflicting on something which is not of itself.

K: No, sir, surely…
46:08 The problem is surely something which is not understood. When I have understood something, the problem ceases.
46:17 To a mechanic, a problem… something in a motor that doesn’t work is no problem, he knows what to do.
46:32 Here we don’t know what to do, so it’s a problem. The not-knowing is a problem.
46:39 If we knew what to do, there would be no problem. But we see we can’t destroy desire, that would be too appalling, too stupid; it would be the vulgarity of the saints.
46:58 Sorry if I shock you, but doesn’t matter. And resistance is also a form of suppression.
47:10 Right? So, problem is the question.
47:19 Now, what is there to understand about desire? Not very much. You know what desires are, how they come into being. And the resistance to it is also… you know how it comes: by our background, by our tradition, by our education; this is right, this is wrong, I must do this and I must not do that, I must be respectable at any price, and that respectability recognized by society.
47:59 That’s the cry, we want.
48:08 Now, go a little bit further into it. What is a problem? What creates a problem?
48:15 Q: The memory. The memory of the experience.
48:21 K: The lady says the memory of experience. Now, memory and experience.
48:35 You cannot cut out experience, can you? – that is to die, that is to shut your eyes, ears, not breathe, die, paralyzed, become insensitive.
48:50 So you must have experience. Living is experience. To look out of the window, to listen to me – life is experience. Right? No?
49:07 But with us, each experience leaves its residue as memory, the scar.
49:26 You’re following this?

Q: Yes.
49:32 K: So memory is the problem, not desire or resistance.
49:54 Can the mind live in experiencing without leaving a residue as memory? You are following? No, this is quite a…
50:11 Sir, you may understand this verbally, but it is an extraordinary thing to go into. And to find out, if you can, that requires a tremendous vitality and energy.
50:32 You understand the issue?
50:39 We cannot, mind cannot escape from experience.
50:50 We do, by thickening the walls of belief, by not accepting things as they are.
51:10 We refuse to see the world is one, the earth is yours and mine; but we have divided it as the English earth and the European and the Indian earth, the Russian, and stay there, paralyzed within those walls.
51:44 So we refuse experience because we don’t want any change.
52:01 So we cultivate memory, adding to it and taking away.
52:14 And the issue is, can the mind receive everything without leaving an imprint?
52:29 Do think about it; it is not a thing you agree or disagree, or say it is not possible or it is possible.
52:42 It’s only such a mind is alive, a mind that is experiencing, living, feeling, looking, vibrating – alive.
53:01 But a mind isn’t alive when it is burdened with all the centuries of memory, which is what we call knowledge, tradition.
53:22 But yet we can’t wipe away knowledge, it must be there, otherwise you’ll not know how to get to your house.
53:38 So, to live without the interference of the past.
53:52 Q: You said just now that the earth is one. I don’t see how that fits in.

K: Oh, sir, that’s… Probably it doesn’t.
54:06 We’re all feeling that the earth is – you know?
54:21 Q: Isn’t the problem that that to prevent memory leaving its imprint on the mind, we must be possessed of a tremendous interest in every one of our experiences?

K: No, no, you see…
54:35 Now, look what you have said: We must be interested in every one of our experiences. We must. The ‘must’ has already sown the seed of conflict.
54:59 Q: Yes, I can see that but I suppose the question which I was going to ask is quite illegitimate now: how can this interest come, how can this interest be brought about?
55:13 K: Yes. The gentleman asked: how can this interest be brought about? I’m afraid… Now, just a minute, sir. To find the right answer, you must ask the right question.
55:30 If you ask a wrong question, you are going to get a wrong answer, not only from me, from yourself. Is your question a right question?
55:43 No, no, don’t say probably not.
55:51 Your question is how to awaken interest. Is that the right question?
56:01 Q: It’s not how do ‘I’ awaken interest, but how does interest come?
56:07 K: How does interest come – is that the right question?

Q: Is it possible to awaken interest?
56:14 Q: Isn’t it rather, why am I not interested?

K: Why am I not interested – is that the right question?
56:21 Please, sirs, do listen to my demand, what I said just now. If you put the right question, you get the right answer. It’s like playing the right tone on the violin.
56:42 And you can only play the right tone when the string is in right tension.
56:54 Right? Are you putting that question in right tension?
57:06 Tension, I don’t mean – you know what I mean: not conflict tension, and all that.
57:16 Is that the right question? Do please look at it. You’ll answer it for yourself.
57:24 Or the very question you are putting is preventing you from discovering the action which is not what is the action.
57:43 You see the difference, sir? I don’t know if I…
57:52 Have you caught it?
58:01 Look, sir, I’ll put it differently. I’m not pushing you too much, am I? I’m not absorbing all the talk; it doesn’t matter to me, you can talk.
58:15 I see, actually see visually the conflict in the world and within, this contradiction, inside and outside, and the effort to do something to integrate, to build a bridge, to be peaceful, to avoid all… to do something – which also involves conflict.
59:04 I see this inescapably, it’s a fact.
59:12 Any action on my part about the fact is still a reaction because I want to do something about it. You are following all this?
59:32 The wanting to do something about it is the reaction of trying to escape from it, repudiate it, resist it, to go beyond it.
59:46 Right? So I’m still caught in reaction, therefore still conflict.
59:56 You’re following?
1:00:10 So the desire, the urge, the impulse to do something about it is the problem.
1:00:25 The ‘what to do’ is the problem.
1:00:35 If you see that you cannot do a thing about it, but the fact is there – I don’t know if you’re following all this – then the fact gives you the answer.
1:00:55 Not you try to find an answer in the fact. Right?
1:01:30 You see, the fact is outwardly and inwardly there is conflict.
1:01:38 The fact is I do something outwardly and inwardly to overcome that conflict. The fact is my mind, my whole being is torn in different directions, and so there is self-contradiction. I realize that, not merely verbally but as an actual fact.
1:02:05 I can’t escape from it, it is so. Then I proceed to do something about it.
1:02:21 The desire to do, the impulse, the compulsion to do something about it is the problem, not the fact. I don’t know if… Technician: Owing to a technical fault, the remainder of this session, which lasted about 15 minutes, is not included in the recording