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LO61T4 - Why has the mind to be occupied?
London - 9 May 1961
Public Talk 4



0:02 This is J Krishnamurti’s fourth public talk in London, 1961. Krishnamurti: If you will allow me to talk for a little while, and then we can discuss.
0:23 We have been talking the nature of the new mind, and I am sure it cannot be brought about by any will, by any desire, or through any intention or purposeful thought.
1:00 And if we can, I think, discover what its nature is, and perhaps come to that state by understanding the various factors that prevent that state from coming into being.
1:37 And I would like, this evening, if I may, to discuss an issue which may be rather complex, but I hope we can go into it fairly fully, and if we haven’t time tonight, we can go on the next time.
2:06 I do not know if you have ever asked yourselves why one commits oneself to something, why there is an urge to belong to something, to identify oneself with something; why there is this compulsive urge to commit oneself to a certain idea, to a certain group, to a certain way of thought, to the course of a particular action and remain, if one can.
3:31 One commits oneself to communism, let’s say, and one completely identifies oneself with those ideas, with its activities.
3:56 One can see why one does, because one hopes ultimately for Utopia, and all the rest of it.
4:04 But I think that’s only a superficial explanation. I think there is a much deeper, psychological explanation why each one of us wants to belong to something – belong to a certain person, to a certain party, to certain ideas and ideals, and so on. Why?
4:33 What is the inward nature of this urge?
4:42 I think, first of all, there is the desire to act, and to act, one must bring about a certain reform, reformation.
4:52 To change the world in a certain pattern, there must be co operative action. We must do something together to improve the roads, to bring about better sanitation, and all the rest of it.
5:08 So, for collective action, it is apparently necessary that we do commit ourselves to a particular idea.
5:27 This committing ourselves to something is at that level, at the level of activity.
5:36 But if one begins to inquire more deeply, I think one begins to find out, doesn’t one, the urge to identify with something which will give us a sense of assurance, a sense of security.
6:12 I am sure we know many people who have committed themselves to a particular political party, or a particular course of action, or to a particular group of religious thought.
6:27 And as they function in it they begin soon to find out that it doesn’t suit them, they don’t go with it, and they drop it and take up another.
6:42 The former communists have dropped Communism and joined something else.
6:50 Why is there this urge?
7:06 I think it is fairly important to find this out because, I think, it will open the door to inquire into this whole problem of fear.
7:29 Because the mind, surely, is always seeking security, permanency – permanency in relationship with the wife, with the children, with the husband, permanency in idea: idea being knowledge and experience, and the more experience, the more certain in knowledge, the greater the sense of security.
8:30 It is one thing to listen to words, to a description, it’s another thing to experience what those words convey.
8:50 If I may suggest, I hope you are not listening to me, the speaker, trying to capture what he means.
9:06 All that I am talking about is merely to convey descriptively the nature of our own minds.
9:18 And if one is not aware of one’s own thoughts, one’s own activities, mere description is a very superficial thing.
9:34 But if through these words one begins to understand oneself, discover if the mind, if our own minds, each one’s mind, is actually seeking security, and what it implies, then it will have an extraordinary significance.
10:08 But if we are merely satisfied with words and explanations, it seems to me so utterly futile. It’s like a hungry man being satisfied with words about food.
10:35 So, if we could go into this question of fear, why it arises at all, not what we should do about it. We’ll come to that a little latter, perhaps, and that may not be necessary at all; but why it arises, and why the mind is always seeking security not only physically, outwardly, but inwardly.
11:16 Now, when we are talking about outward and the inner... to me it is not... it is only a movement which is expressed outwardly as well as inwardly – it is a movement. There is no such thing as outward world and inward world, it is like a tide going out and then coming in.
11:42 And to separate the two is to bring about a division, a conflict.
11:50 But to understand the inner tide, the inward movement, one must understand the outward-going also, one must be aware of the things outwardly.
12:08 And if one is aware of the things outwardly, and if there is no reaction to the outer as a resistance, as a defence, as escape, then the inward movement is the same, is the same movement which is going inward very deeply, profoundly. And if the mind can follow it, and it can only follow it if there is no division.
12:44 And I think we must, if we may, a little bit think about it.
12:54 You see, most so called religious people divide the outer and the inner: the outward activity as being superficial, unnecessary, evil, and the inner much more significant.
13:30 And so there is a division, and so a conflict. And we discussed the whole significance of conflict the other day.
13:48 And that opens up an enormous...
13:59 a door to enormous inquiry which is really the whole problem of the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the thing experienced, which is again the outer and the inner.
14:32 I don’t want to go into that for the moment, but we’ll inquire into that perhaps another time.
14:47 So, we are inquiring into the question of fear not only caused by outward events, but also the inner demands, the inner compulsions, and the everlasting search for certainty.
15:18 All experience makes us certain, obviously.
15:31 An experience of pleasure makes us demand more; and the more of that pleasure is this urge to be secure in pleasure.
15:59 And, if I love someone, I want to be quite sure that that love is returned, and we establish a relationship of at least hoping for permanency.
16:21 All our society is based on that relationship.
16:28 And, is there anything permanent? Anything?
16:37 And is love permanent?
16:49 Or, we want sensation to be made permanent; and the thing which cannot be made permanent, which is love, goes by. I don’t know if I am making myself clear on that point.
17:15 Again, take the question of virtue.
17:23 The cultivation of virtue, which is the demand to be virtuous permanently, is essentially the desire to be secure. And is virtue ever permanent?
17:48 No, sirs, you follow? Do, do think about this.
18:05 Let’s say I’m angry, or I’ve a lack of goodness, a sense of sympathy, affection.
18:23 And by cultivating non-anger I hope to bring about a state of virtue – virtue being a commodity for convenience, or as a means to something else.
18:55 And is virtue to be cultivated at all?
19:19 Is goodness not cultivable at all, like humility, but that comes into being when there is only attention which is not a thing to be gained.
20:01 Sir, take the question of being loved or to love.
20:27 Is it possible for a mind which is ambitious to know what it is to love?
20:43 And aren’t we all ambitious, in some form or another?
20:55 The clerk who wants to become the manager obviously can never know love.
21:09 Or the saint, so-called saint, who wants to achieve or to realize God, obviously has no love, because he is still ambitious: he is concerned, occupied with himself.
21:39 And as humility, which is not to be cultivated, as goodness cannot be cultivated, put into a straightjacket of discipline, surely a mind that would understand the nature of the thing called, the word called love must obviously be free of this sense of being secure, which makes us essentially vulnerable.
22:31 And is the mind ever capable, is it ever possible, to be really free of fear?
22:52 We want to be secure in this world: our next meal, our health, and we want to be secure in our respectability, we want to be secure in our ideas, we want to be quite sure what happens after death, and our mind is everlastingly pursuing – if you observe it – this demand, this desire to be certain.
24:01 And I do not see how the mind can be free of fear, with all its frustrations, as long as the mind is seeking security.
24:19 Obviously, there must be physical security; we must know where the next food is coming, where you are going to sleep, and all the rest of it, and that is, fairly decent society is all organizing that.
24:36 Probably in about fifty years’ time we all over the world will have physical security.
24:43 At least let’s hope... that is irrelevant.
24:51 But we want to be secure in our actions, we want to be secure inwardly.
25:01 And is that not the cause of fear? Fear of darkness, fear of one’s neighbour, public opinion, fear of losing health, fear of not having capacity, fear of being nobody in this monstrous, aggressive, acquisitive world, fear of not arriving, achieving, of not realizing some state of supreme happiness, bliss or whatever it is, God. And, of course, there is the ultimate fear of death.
25:51 We are not discussing for the moment death. We are just seeing what is fear, trying to uncover what is fear. Obviously, fear is something in relation to something else.
26:13 There is no fear by itself, per se.
26:21 There is fear in relation to something: I’m afraid of my wife, I’m afraid of not being good, not fulfilling, not achieving, and so on and so on and so on – dozens of fears, all in relation to something.
27:15 And, is it possible for the mind to stand completely alone – not isolated, not build towers, walls around itself and so isolate itself – a mind that is completely alone, because a mind is alone when it is no longer seeking security.
28:38 And can one come, can one free, can the mind free itself so totally from all fear?
29:03 You see, time is involved in fear: time by the day, by tomorrow.
29:26 And fear exists where there is thought of tomorrow.
29:41 So time is a factor of fear.
29:53 I don’t... Shall we go into that a little bit?
30:06 I’m getting old, and there is death: from now to tomorrow.
30:20 And the thought of death is the thought of fear.
30:54 If there was no time, the tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the future, if there was no time as tomorrow, would there be fear – of death, of an ending? No, don’t answer me, please, it’s not a question of you answering me and my...
31:22 But if you have gone into this question of fear, you must have uncovered this question of time, not only tomorrow but of the past, which means experience. Can the mind be so alone, totally, away from the past and the future, so that it is not enclosed in the sense of time?
32:19 I don’t know...
32:49 So, the mind is seeking security through identifying itself with an idea, with a belief, with a particular course of action: committing itself to a group of ideas, belonging to Christianity, to Hinduism, to Buddhism, to this or that, which is also the urge to belong, which is contrary to being alone.
33:54 And, most of us are terribly frightened of being alone. Leave that for the moment, we’ll go into that a little later.
34:11 Then, there is conflict which arises from contradiction, and this contradiction is the demand for fulfilment.
34:38 I know there is this constant urge to fulfil, to be, to become, to be something permanent; and there is the question of time: so these are all the factors of fear.
35:18 You can enlarge it, you can go into greater detail, but that’s not of great importance for the moment.
35:38 Having seen the picture, the feeling of the totality of the picture: can the mind wipe away all fear?
36:03 Which means, really, if one can put it in... if you will not misunderstand it, misunderstand what is being said...
36:12 to be alone without relationship.
36:27 And that aloneness is not the opposite of this contradiction which conflict, which relationship creates.
36:37 I feel in that aloneness there is real relationship, not in the other.
36:49 In that there is no fear.
37:13 After all, man has tackled this problem of fear for centuries, millennia, and we don’t seem to be free of it.
37:35 And the extreme forms of fear lead to various forms of neurosis, and so on and so on and so on.
37:48 Now, can you and I be on the instant so totally free from fear?
38:06 Not hypnotize ourselves and say, ‘I am free of fear’, because that is silly.
38:20 Now, this is what I mean by seeing, by seeing the whole of fear, which means essentially the non-being – not the non-being of identifying yourself with something.
39:31 Can we discuss this? Or is there nothing to discuss?
40:10 Questioner: It appears to me that I am frightened of being forced into circumstances where there is nothing I can love, or feel is worthwhile, like living in some great city, working in a factory.
40:45 K: Sir, what will you do about it? I have to work from morning till night in London – suppose I have to – in a beastly little office, with a beastly boss, and all the rest of it: going every day by bus, tube, to an office, and the horror of it all, the routine, the boredom, the excruciating pain.
41:21 Circumstances are forcing one to do that. What shall I do? I have a responsibility – responsibility in quotes – wife, children, mother, and all the rest of it.
41:39 I can’t go away, escape into a monastery, which would also be another horror.
41:46 The routine of getting up every morning at two o’clock, saying the same old prayers, the same old deities, and all the rest of it. No, no, don’t laugh it off, please.
42:01 Anything to escape: in the monastery, and in this world of routine, boredom, dirt, squalor – what shall I do?
42:28 First of all, we are educated wrongly, never to love the thing that one does.
42:42 But that’s a fact. So, we are educated wrongly and I’m caught.
42:49 What shall I do? And I know I can’t escape. Right, sir?
42:57 It would be absurd to escape into romanticism, into beliefs, into churches, into organizations, into Utopias, into this and into that. I see the futility of it and, therefore, I discard it.
43:12 There is no temptation to escape. I am left with the fact, brutal, hard fact.
43:25 What shall I do?
43:39 Tell me, sirs: What shall I do?
43:47 Q: Surely, you can’t do anything about that.
43:54 K: The lady says you can’t do anything about it.
44:13 Sir, have we ever lived with something without resistance?
44:23 Have I lived with my anger without resistance – lived with it: which is not accepting it.
44:37 Living with something – I know the whole inward nature of it – living with it: living with anger, living with envy, not trying to overcome it, or to suppress it, or to transform it, but to live with it.
45:16 Have you ever tried to live with something beautiful, with something really beautiful, a picture, a lovely scenery, a superb, magnificent mountain with a view that is enormous – have you ever lived with it?
45:48 What happens to it if you do live with it? You soon get used to it... Wait, please, just a minute... You get used to it. You have seen it the first time: that has given you a certain sense of release, perception, beauty, and after a few days it fades away, you get used to it. Look at all the peasants in the world, with marvellous scenery round them – they have got used to it.
46:29 And the squalor of modern cities, the dirt, the filth, the appalling brutality of it all, the ugliness, the cruelty: we get used to that also.
46:52 To live either with beauty or with ugliness and not get used to that requires an astonishing energy, doesn’t it?
47:04 I don’t know...
47:25 Not to be overpowered by the ugliness, by ugliness, nor by beauty, but to live with both of them requires extraordinary sensitivity and energy, which means the capacity to digest both, and not be a slave to both.
48:01 Can one do it? Huh? Do please, sir, think it out with me.
48:18 The problem of energy is quite interesting.
48:29 Food doesn’t give energy, the energy of which I’m talking about. Sorry: food does give energy of a certain type, but to live with evil and to live with love demands a totally different kind of energy than the energy that you get through food.
49:27 And, how does one come by this energy which is essentially the nature of the new mind?
49:45 Surely, one comes by it when there is no fear, when there is no conflict, when you don’t want to be something, when you live totally anonymously. What’s the good of my talking all this, talking about all this?
50:21 Surely, all this implies an extraordinary perception of the outer and the inner.
50:35 And most of us are too tired, too old, too living in the past, or in our work, or in some other dark dungeon of our being.
50:58 So what shall we do?
51:12 Sir, to come back to our first question: Can the mind free itself on the instant from all the urge, from all demand, to be secure – to live in a state of complete uncertainty, without going mad?
52:49 Q: Excuse me. Can’t there also be fear if one has, for example, a work that one enjoys very much and gets too much attached to it?
53:00 K: The question is asked if one is attached too much to one’s work which one loves, is that not also fear?
53:15 Yes, sir, because you may lose your capacity.
53:34 You know, capacity is a dreadful thing because it gives you a very good escape.
53:58 A gift of some kind, if you are a good painter, a good talker, if you have the capacity to write, to put together words, capacity as an engineer: it gives you such an extraordinary sense of security, confidence.
54:44 And in this competitive, acquisitive world, if you have not confidence, you are lost, you are gone.
55:00 Surely, to find God, or whatever you like to call it, the mind must be totally empty, mustn’t it, of having no capacity, of having no knowledge, no experience, so no fear – something completely innocent, fresh, young.
56:00 Q: That seems to be the end of myself as I know myself, completely.
56:07 K: Yes, sir, surely.
56:18 I do not know if you have ever tried to live a day so completely that there is no yesterday and no tomorrow, which requires a great deal of understanding of the past.
56:56 The past is not only the word, the language, the thought, but the looking back to yesterday and all its roots in the present, to the things that one has done wrong, said things that were not true, hurt, done damage to somebody – to completely let go of all that, all the pleasures, the pains, the memories – let go.
57:46 I do not know if you have ever tried it, just to walk out of it.
57:59 One can’t walk out of it if there is a regret, or the things remembered which were pleasurable. To let absolutely go.
58:18 You try it sometime – not because I say so, not because you are going to get a reward out of it, some extraordinary experience.
58:40 If you do, it will be just an exchange, a barter. But if you have gone into it, it’s really quite extraordinary for the mind to be completely timeless, though it is the result of time.
59:37 Q: Sir, habit forms quite a large part of what you’re talking about, surely.
59:45 K: Yes, sir.

Q: Habit and memory.
59:52 One sees, sometimes, if we’re very lucky, one sees how false that is, and it’s gone for the moment. Is it just that we don’t see deeply enough to wipe out the whole mark of that habit? Because it does seem to lose strength, but it comes back.
1:00:17 Is it just a question of intensity?
1:00:24 K: You have heard all that question? No?
1:00:32 The question is: habit is so strong, and when one really looks at it, sometimes it drops away, or perhaps it becomes weaker, but it keeps on repeating.
1:00:58 Is it a question of right attention?
1:01:12 Is that it, sir?

Q: Yes.
1:01:20 K: You see, I don’t know... I’m answering questions... We’re discussing, sir, I am not answering your question.
1:01:34 You know, the mind has to be occupied.
1:01:41 With most of us it is so: mind has to be occupied with something, with the kitchen, with the babies, with the house, with job, with its own vanities and virtues, you know, occupied.
1:02:02 And the occupation becomes habit. Right, sir?
1:02:19 Now, why has the mind to be occupied – it doesn’t matter whether it is occupied with sex, with God or with virtue, it is just the same – occupation.
1:02:33 There is no noble occupation or ignoble occupation it is occupation. Hum?
1:02:41 I don’t know if you agree to that, if you see that. Mere substitution of occupation is no release from occupation.
1:02:58 Now, why has the mind to be occupied?
1:03:05 What, sir?

Q: It may be a way of escape.
1:03:11 K: Wait. He’s said it may be escape. Escaping from what?
1:03:25 Escaping from its own frustrations, envy, escaping all the time. No, you’re giving me an explanation. I can give you an explanation also, but that’s not what we’re trying to do, that’s not the intention of this discussion.
1:03:45 K: Yes, sir, it’s escape, all right. No, go a little bit further, sir, don’t... Go into it! Why is the mind occupied?
1:03:59 You say it is escape.

Q: Fear?

K: Fear.
1:04:10 K: Yes, sir, go on adding more. And then what? Wait a minute. You have added: fear, greed, explanation, and then what?
1:04:22 I am not being cynical or rude or rough. We have explained, but the mind isn’t free from occupation.
1:04:36 Q: Because the mind is occupation.

K: The gentleman says, mind is occupation.
1:04:47 The mind that is not occupied is not a mind.
1:04:54 The mind that is not active, thinking, functioning, inquiring, searching, asking, demanding, responding, challenging, is not a mind.
1:05:16 Those are all the symptoms of the mind, it is not the mind.
1:05:24 Huh? Sir, the word ‘door’, the word ‘tree’, is not the door, the tree. I don’t know...
1:05:42 semantically, the two things are entirely different.
1:05:51 Do I realize, does the mind realize itself as occupation?
1:06:02 Or, is there a mind which says, ‘I am occupied’?
1:06:11 You follow? Am I...?

Q: Yes, yes, that’s clear.
1:06:18 What you’re saying is that the mind is in fact occupation, but we’re twisting round onto that and trying to do something about that occupation.

K: No, no, not only that, sir, not only that.
1:06:30 I am trying to say... I want to find out why the mind insists on being occupied.
1:06:37 I am saying, if it is not occupied, it is not mind; if it is not active, if it is not responding, if it is not challenging, if it is not inquiring, you know, all the rest of it, it is not a mind. Why do we say that?
1:07:00 Is occupation, inquiry, search, defence, response, anxiety, fear, guilt – is that the mind?
1:07:14 Is that the nature of the mind? If that is not there, if those things are not there, is there no mind?
1:07:26 Q: The mind on one level, but it’s not all the mind.

K: The mind is on one level, it is suggested, it is not the totality of the mind – that’s all we know, isn’t it, sir? That’s all we know: the anxiety, the guilt, the fear, the... you know.
1:07:57 And what is the totality of the mind as we know?
1:08:04 The totality of the mind as we know is the unconscious as well as the conscious.
1:08:18 Look, please, I must go back a little. We asked ourselves why the mind is occupied.
1:08:32 Q: It can only be occupied if it has memories.

K: Yes, sir. But may I just talk two minutes? Do listen.
1:08:42 Not that I want to take all the time sitting on the platform, and all the rest of it. Why is the mind occupied? What would happen if the mind was not occupied?
1:09:03 Q: If the mind is not occupied, there is deep attention.
1:09:09 K: Not if. No, you see...

Q: When.

K: Not when. I don’t want to think conditionally.
1:09:16 If, when, if this takes place, that will happen. You follow? To me, that’s not thinking at all. Wait a minute. I want to find out why my mind is occupied.
1:09:32 Q: The mind is all the time reacting to various stimuli.

K: Yes, sir. Yes, all right, all right.
1:09:38 Q: That is the process of being occupied.

K: Yes.
1:09:53 Have you ever tried not being occupied?
1:09:58 Q: Yes.

K: Having no occupation, you understand? No thought which says...
1:10:05 no thought at all because every thought is occupation, with something.
1:10:16 Q: It’s impossible to try it.

K: Huh?

Q: It’s impossible to try.

K: What do you mean, impossible to try it?
1:10:22 Q: If the mind is to be empty, one can’t...

K: No, no, no. No, sir. I don’t mean try... Words! Let’s...
1:10:37 Has it ever happened to you when thought has come to an end?
1:10:45 Not one thought. Please, don’t misunderstand me: not one thought which I have gone out and beaten it to death – I don’t mean that. Thought.
1:11:00 Because the moment when there is thought, there is occupation. Thought sets a habit.
1:11:27 You see, that brings us back to the question, thought is fear.
1:11:41 Q: Aren’t we afraid of ceasing when thought ceases?

K: Partly, aren’t we?
1:11:50 Sir, have you looked at anything without thought? I don’t mean blank. You’re all there, fully attentive, your whole being is there.
1:12:04 But have you looked at something in that state, in which there is no thought?
1:12:10 Q: Yes.

K: Huh?
1:12:16 Q: Unconsciously, there is an attempt, sometimes.

K: Have you looked at a flower without naming it, without saying how beautiful it is, saying what a lovely colour it is?
1:12:38 And so on and so on, the chattering of the mind – looked at it without any judgment, evaluation?
1:13:01 You see, if we could look into the problem of fear without any resistance, without accepting or judging, merely to observe it taking place within oneself and live with it. The living with it requires enormous energy so that the mind is completely giving its attention to it.
1:13:57 I hear a statement, somebody tells me, ‘You are a very arrogant man’.
1:14:10 Many people tell me many things: I am this, I am that.
1:14:20 Every statement that they make, I live with it. I do. I’m talking – if you’ll forgive me for a few minutes – about myself. I live with it. I don’t resist it. I neither say it’s right or wrong.
1:14:52 And to live with it requires attention to see if it is true, what somebody has said.
1:15:07 Attention is energy.
1:15:17 Attention, energy is the whole universe, and all the rest of that. That’s irrelevant for the moment.
1:15:30 But to live with it and not distort it, not to say, ‘Well, I’ve been told that before, I am not like that’, or, ‘I am like that, I must change’.
1:15:47 You follow? But live with it: to live with the unpleasant, and to live with the pleasant; to live with suffering, whether it is a toothache, or some other form of suffering.
1:16:18 See... to live with fear, without going mad – to live with it.
1:16:36 You see, we want to live with the pleasant things.
1:16:43 I had a lovely experience yesterday, I want to live with it. It’s dead, gone, and I went to live with something that’s gone, dead; therefore I only live with the memory of something of yesterday, however pleasurable.
1:17:00 The same thing with... But with suffering I don’t want to live with; I want to find a way out quick.
1:17:10 But to live with both, not asking for a solution, not asking for an answer, and not going to sleep with it.
1:17:53 You see, this is, this is meditation. I mustn’t enter into that... sorry. It’s ten past.
1:18:19 We’ll continue with this question day after tomorrow evening. But can’t we in the meantime...
1:18:30 Really there is no such thing as in the meantime, is there?
1:18:38 That’s an old game – in the meantime – it’s an old man’s game, a deadly game.