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LO61T6 - Can the mind wipe away entirely the conditioning of centuries?
London - 14 May 1961
Public Talk 6



0:00 This is J Krishnamurti’s six public talk in London, 1961.
0:07 Krishnamurti: We’ve been talking about the complete freedom from fear, and obviously it is necessary to be free because fear does create illusions, various forms of self-deceptions, and a mind that has in any way bound to fear, whether it is unconscious or conscious fear, can never find out what is true or what is false.
1:11 And I do not know if we have at all gone very deeply into this question of fear, as we discussed the other day.
1:26 Because without being free, virtue has very little meaning.
1:40 And I would like this morning to discuss, after I’ve talked a little, what is virtue, if there is such a thing at all, or is it merely a social convention and has nothing whatever to do with reality?
2:08 But to comprehend what we would like to discuss, it seems to me that one must approach it with the understanding of what fear is and freeing the mind from it.
2:33 When there is no fear at all, is there virtue?
2:46 Is morality merely a social convention, changing from time to time?
2:59 For most of us, virtue is a resistance, a quality, a morality, is the outcome of resistance, a conflict, and perhaps virtue may have quite a different meaning.
3:28 If we can brush aside all the social morality, which is more or less necessary, like keeping the room in order, but that’s all, it can go no further than that; it’s like having clean clothes.
3:59 For most of us, virtue or morality is a form... is a cloak of respectability, and a respectable mind, the mind that conforms, the mind that obeys, that is pursuing authority, is obviously not a free mind, is a mind that is respectable, puny, limited.
4:47 And whether the mind can be ever free from all form of imitation and, it seems to me, to understand this problem, one has to really wipe away from one’s mind any form of fear.
5:27 And to understand that, surely, one has to go into the problem of authority and imitation, which is essentially a social morality.
5:54 So if we may, let us for the moment consider whether the mind can understand the limitations of imitation, conformity to a pattern, and is it ever possible for the mind to un-condition itself?
6:27 Because, really, goodness, the flowering of goodness, can never take place when the mind is respectable, when the mind is merely conforming, conforming to the social pattern, to an ideological pattern or to a religious pattern, either imposed from outside or cultivated from within.
7:19 Why does one follow – I do not know if you have thought about it at all – not only follow the social pattern, but the pattern that one has set up for oneself through experience, the constant repetition of a certain idea, certain forms of behaviour, and the authority of the book, the authority of someone who says he knows, the authority of the church, and the authority of law, why does one follow all this?
8:38 And where is one to draw the line, where there is no following and where there must be following?
8:54 The following of law is obviously necessary, keeping to the right or the left side of the road, depending on the country which you are in, and so on. And where does authority become detrimental, evil?
9:33 Surely, most of us are seeking power, aren’t we, socially, politically, economically, religiously, and the power that knowledge gives, the power that a technique gives, and the sense of extraordinary power one has when one can completely control one’s body, the power asceticism gives – surely, all that is imitative process, all that is a conforming to the pattern in order to derive certain power, certain position, certain vitality.
11:04 And it seems to me that without understanding the anatomy of power, the urge and the desire for power, position, and all the rest of it, mind can never understand, or be in that state of, humility which is not the thing that is put together.
11:50 So why does one follow at all? Why are you following me, the speaker – if you’re following – why?
12:10 Are you following or listening?
12:19 Those two are different states, are they not, different things altogether.
12:28 You follow when you want to achieve, or arrive, or gain something, which the speaker is supposed to be offering.
12:44 And if the speaker is offering something, then he is really a propagandist, he’s not a truth-seeker.
13:00 And if you’re following someone, obviously you’re afraid, uncertain.
13:07 And we want to be told, encouraged to be certain, to arrive, to succeed.
13:18 But if you’re actually listening, which to me is entirely opposite...
13:26 nothing to do with any form of following or authority or seeking power, then you are listening to find out what is true and what is false, which doesn’t depend on opinion, on knowledge.
13:52 You’re listening to see what is true or what is false. Now, how do you discover what is false and what is true, when you’re listening?
14:15 A mind that is merely arguing is not obviously discovering what is true or false, or arguing within itself, or with a person who is stating certain things.
14:40 You know, one is obviously not listening when there is... when that listening merely provokes a reaction, the reaction according to your knowledge, experience, opinion, education, conditioning.
15:08 You’re not listening, obviously, when you’re making an effort to find out what the other fellow is saying because your whole concern then is...
15:20 goes into making effort, making effort to find out.
15:33 Now, if all these states could be pushed aside, set aside, then there is a state of listening which is attention.
15:55 Attention is not concentration because concentration is bringing the mind to focus upon a particular point and therefore excluding, whereas attention is comprehensive.
16:19 There is attention not only when you are listening to the speaker, but you’re listening to the music, to the church music going on next door, to the traffic, when the mind is totally attentive without a frontier and therefore without a centre.
16:48 Such a mind is listening, and such a mind sees what is true or what is false immediately, without argument, without a reaction, without any form of deduction, induction, and all the rest of it, all the tricks of the mind. It is actually listening and therefore in that very act of listening there is a revolution, there is a fundamental transformation.
17:27 That attention, to me, is virtue.
17:34 It is only in that attention goodness can flower, the simple goodness, being good without all the intellectual trimmings, without any aim, influence of society, education.
18:18 And perhaps that attention is love.
18:25 And love is not a virtue, as we know. And when there is such love, then there is no sin; then one can do what one will; then one is beyond the clutches of society and all the horrors of respectability.
18:57 So we must find out for oneself why one follows, why one has this tyranny of authority – the authority of the priest, the authority of the Bible or the Indian scriptures, and all the rest of it, printed word.
20:00 After all, if one does reject the authority of society – I don’t mean the rejection brought about by beatniks and the English version of that, or the French version, and there are many in Italy, and so on and so on and so on all over the world – if one rejects – not as a reaction, but really sees the futility of this outward conformity to a pattern which is so destructive to a mind that wants to find out what is true, what is real – if one rejects the outer, is it possible to reject the inner, which is experience, to put away experience?
21:22 For most of us, experience is the guide, as knowledge: ‘I know, I believe, I’ve had experiences, I must do what those experiences tell me’.
21:41 They become the authority, and perhaps that’s far more evil, far more destructive than the authority of the policeman, of the law, because such authority leads to every form of illusion and it is the authority of conditioning.
22:17 The Christian always sees visions of Christ, and the Hindu his own gods, because of his conditioning, and that very seeing of those visions, and all the rest of it, makes him extraordinarily more respectable and he becomes a saint.
22:57 Now, can the mind wipe away entirely the conditioning, the conditioning of centuries?
23:24 After all, the conditioning is the past, the many thousand yesterdays, with all their reactions, with all their knowledge, with every leaf of tradition which shapes our mind.
23:52 Do seriously consider this and don’t just brush it aside, saying it’s not possible, or it is possible, and if it is possible, how am I to do it?
24:08 The how doesn’t exist; the how implies ‘in the meantime’.
24:16 A mind that’s concerned with the meantime, in the meantime, is really postponing.
24:35 And if you think it is not possible to un-condition the mind entirely of all the beliefs, to brainwash it so as to become a capitalist or a communist, which implies a better conditioning or a worse conditioning.
25:01 I do not know how you individually react to it. Not that I must... whether you know for yourself – I’d better put it that way – whether you’re conscious of your own conditioning, whether it’s possible to be free of it or not, and what it implies, because that conditioning is the very root of fear, and where there is fear there is no virtue.
25:46 I mean virtue something entirely different from the social morality, the right thing to do, it’s not done, the schoolboy attitude, the right tie – you know? – all that, and whether the mind can really be free of conditioning.
26:35 I do not know if one has gone into it really very profoundly, whether one has the mind, the intelligence, to go in, or one merely repeats, ‘It’s possible’ or ‘It’s not possible’, because it requires a great deal of intelligence.
27:13 I mean by intelligence the understanding of all influence and being free of influence because influence is the conditioning.
27:36 You believe in God, Christ or whatever it is, because you’ve been brought up in it, repeated day after day, the churches, the priests, the books, the Bible.
27:54 In other parts of the world they don’t even think about it, they say it’s all sheer nonsense.
28:09 Where in India you’re told Jesus is the only... Christ is the only saviour, they say, ‘Well, we have also our saints’, and brush it aside. So, whether the mind which has been influenced for centuries upon centuries, not for just one day, the heavy weight of tradition can be put aside without any effort, as just walking out of the hall... as you walk out of the hall, freely, whether you can walk out of this background, and whether the background is not the mind itself.
28:59 The story of the mind is the mind.
29:06 I don’t know if I’m making myself clear.
29:14 The mind is the background, the mind is tradition, the mind is the result of time.
29:33 And so, seeing the hopelessness of its own activity, it says there is the grace of God, it must wait, accept, receive – that’s also another form of influence and therefore the mind then is not an intelligent mind.
30:32 Then what is one to do?
30:39 I’m sure one has gone through all this, not to accept, not to rely, not to be influenced, not to look to authority, and to realize the mind itself cannot do anything. It is its own slave, it has created its own conditioning, and whatever the reaction to that conditioning is further conditioning.
31:19 And every movement, every war that... every warfare, every action that’s going on within it is still within the field of its own values.
31:33 If one has actually, not theoretically, intellectually, verbally, but actually gone into it as far as that, then what happens?
32:08 Do you understand the issue? I hope I am making myself clear.
32:25 The mind that would find, discover what is true, and if there is that thing called the immeasurable, the unnameable, all authority must cease, the authority of the law as well as the authority of experience, which doesn’t mean that I revolt, go the wrong side of the road, but it does mean that I reject, that the mind rejects the authority of all experience, which is knowledge, which is the word, therefore it is confronted with this extraordinary subtle form of influence.
33:48 And when one has walked through all those forms of influences, then the mind is intelligent. That is the real intelligent mind.
34:15 Now, if one has gone into oneself so deeply, which is quite an arduous work – to apply oneself to anything requires energy, not effort – now, if one has gone as far as that, then is there anything of the mind that we know of as the mind?
35:00 And is it not necessary to arrive at that state?
35:07 Because that’s the only creative mode, because writing a poem and painting pictures, putting up a building, and all the rest of it...
35:21 I do not... perhaps you may call it a state of creation, but surely it is not.
35:48 You see, one feels that creation, the thing that we name as God, or truth, or whatever you like to call it, is not for the select few, not for those who have capacity, gift, like Michelangelo, or Beethoven, or one of these modern architects or poets.
36:30 I feel it is possible for everyone – not the gift of expression, I don’t mean that; that is too ridiculous, that is too limited, too silly even to ask – but that extraordinary feeling of immensity, of something that has no barrier, no frontier, of something that is not measured by the mind, put into words.
37:31 That, one feels, I feel, is possible for everybody.
37:40 But it is not a result; it comes into being, I feel, when the mind starts with the nearest thing, which is itself; not with the farthest, unimaginable, unknown, and all the rest of the words, but with the nearest thing, which is itself, and the understanding itself, the self-knowing, and to open it up, go into it, not seeking something outside of it, just to see what it is, because the mind is an extraordinary thing.
38:45 As we know it, it’s the result of time, and time is authority, authority as being good and bad, the thing that must be done, the thing must not be done, the tradition, the influences, the conditioning – all that is time.
39:08 We’ll discuss another day what... the question of time. So can the mind, your mind – I’m not being personal – but the mind, can your mind uncover its own conditioning totally, both the conditioning of the conscious as well as the unconscious, and walk out of it?
39:53 The walking out is an expression, a verbal communication, but there is no such thing as walking out.
40:09 When the mind sees itself conditioned and understands the whole works of it, the whole machinery of it, then at one stroke the mind is on the other side.
40:50 Perhaps we can discuss this.
41:08 Questioner: Sir, in that seeing... provocation in...
41:23 or possibly is it the result of a rather close to...?
41:33 K: The question is asked whether this seeing is a provocation, provocation of every day’s incident, whether you perceive, see your conditioning because of the various challenges of life.
42:16 Sir, what makes one see? Do you see anything – the seeing in the context we are talking about – through any provocation? And if there is a provocation, and you react to that provocation, which you call seeing, is that seeing?
42:58 Q: Reaction is not seeing because reaction is according to my limitation.
43:15 Q: May I suggest that the type of awareness or heightened perception that we’re talking about is sometimes experienced when one sees an accident happening.

K: Is sometimes... what?
43:26 Q: Sometimes experience, when... or one is the witness to an accident, there is a heightening of perception, almost a frozen moment of awareness, it is very close to the type of seeing that I think you are talking about...

K: It is said that seeing is part of that awareness when in that awareness, that perception becomes a freezing point which makes you see.
44:02 Is that it, sir?

Q: Yes, it’s a heightening of the perception.

K: A heightening of perception.
44:11 We are talking about conditioning and the seeing, the perceiving of that conditioning.
44:26 Now, what is, what does this perception mean?
44:34 Do you see your conditioning because I’m pointing it out and because I say if your mind is conditioned you can’t see what is true, therefore, because you hope out of seeing truth there will be eternal bliss, and all the rest of it, therefore you say, ‘I must be free of any my conditioning’.
45:05 Would that be seeing?
45:13 You know, experience is an extraordinary thing.
45:21 Either you experience because somebody tells you, or you experience per se, for itself.
45:36 You know hunger, nobody has to tell you about hunger, or envy, or anger, but if somebody tells you, ‘Look, you must be free of your conditioning’, then you begin to say, ‘By Jove, it may be possible, let me find out’, and your finding out awakens all kinds of experiences, and those experiences become your authority.
46:15 And the discovery of your conditioning, because somebody tells you, is not your discovery. I don’t know if...
46:32 Take a very simple thing: nationalism is a form of conditioning, whether the British conditioning, or the Indian, and so on and so on.
46:55 Obviously, that’s a detriment to the human mind, the human mind, which is either Indian, Chinese, Russian, or English, or American, whatever it is.
47:19 The nationalistic mind is a provincial mind.
47:26 The country may be very large or very small, but it’s still a provincial mind, a mediocre mind.
47:40 Now, do you see the fact, the truth of that for yourself, or somebody else tells you and therefore you say, ‘By Jove, is there any truth in that? Maybe’. Am I making...?
47:54 Q: Please, could you repeat?

K: What?

Q: Please, could you repeat what you said? The aeroplane we couldn’t hear.
47:59 K: Oh, I’m afraid I can’t repeat what I said because I don’t... I don’t think... I’ll put it differently.
48:17 I see very clearly that to belong to any organized thought as religion is very destructive to the discovery of what is true, to the discovery of God, or what you like to call it.
48:33 Mind cannot belong, commit itself to any form of organized thought as belief and dogma. I see that very clearly; nobody has to tell me.
48:48 It’s not because I see human beings belonging to churches and to organizations, to beliefs, to very enlightened belief or a very superstitious belief, and all the rest of it.
49:01 To me it is so.
49:09 Now, I say that.
49:16 Because I say it and because I have a certain reputation, certain... etc., etc., etc., therefore you say to yourself, ‘By Jove, I mustn’t also belong’.
49:31 No, no, don’t try and brush it off, don’t laugh it off. So you’re caught, wanting to belong and yet something tell you, don’t belong.
49:57 So it is not your experience. If it was your... it is a direct perception in which there is no conflict.
50:19 So, a mind that sees the truth of something false or true is perceived immediately without any conflict, without any cause, without any after-results.
50:43 It’s a thing that the mind experiences directly, not a thing that has a cause, that has an ulterior purpose and a motive.
51:14 So, such a perception has a different quality of experience than the experience of someone else’s, which you’re trying to imitate or copy or further along.
51:30 I don’t...
51:37 We have been talking of fear, authority, virtue and conditioning.
51:48 Does one see the fact of one’s own conditioning, the fact, not the opinion, not that you must see?
52:02 And when you do see it, do you see it totally, or do you see it as a part, as a part which is of the book?
52:21 You know... No, what I mean... this, I’ll explain it.
52:28 Do we see totally the conditioning or only the part of the whole? That’s what I mean.
52:48 Do you see the whole volume or only one page of the volume?
53:02 You...? If you see only a page of the volume, you’re not seeing the totality of your conditioning and therefore there will be a battle, there will be a war.
53:22 Am I making myself somewhat clear?

Q: Yes.
53:40 Q: How does one know whether one is seeing the whole volume or only a page?
53:49 K: How does one know whether one is seeing the whole or part. Now, sir, just a minute. How do you... when you use the word ‘know’, what is the content of that word?
54:10 Do you want to be assured?
54:21 Do you want to be made certain that you see the whole and not the part? And if you want to be assured, you’re seeking authority, No, no... so the question... you see, again, to put...
54:42 to find the right answer you must put the right question.
54:53 It was a wrong question, if you’ll pardon my saying that.
55:03 The question is: Is it possible to see the whole, not...
55:10 whether... what you said. How does one see the whole? How does one perceive the totality of one’s conditioning?
55:26 That is the question. The how is not the method, that’s... we understand that.
55:44 Do go into it.

Q: Sir, might I suggest that to find the correct answer you must ask no questions and expect no answers.
55:57 He must to perceive in order...

K: Zen Buddhism.
56:11 You see, sir, it’s much more vital, real, not reading a book but trying to find out for yourself.
56:26 Q: Surely, sir, we all of us in our life have moments when the mind runs down, like a clock, and at such moments, going right back into childhood, we have an instant awareness of everything, but then we try to trap it and keep it. Of course, we know... and in that we lose all hope of it...
56:52 K: The question is, if I may repeat – please correct me if I am wrong – we have moments of clarity when the thing is seen in childhood or, at certain times, we see things very clearly, totally, and we are trapped by the desire to repeat it. That’s right?
57:32 You see, you introduce several things: how to capture the thing, keep hold of it. You can’t. You can’t make something which is immense, and make a... keep it in your fist.
57:57 Don’t please wander away; let’s keep to one thing. It’s nearly twelve; let’s keep to the one thing.
58:06 What is it that brings about the perception of the total?
58:17 What...? I’m putting it wrongly.
58:25 Q: When you no longer seek to keep, to grasp, to bring it to yourself.
58:30 K: It is said when you no longer try to keep, grasp.
58:37 Q: To continue.

K: Continuously. Oh, do listen to that phrase, ‘continuously’. Which means what? Time. Therefore what has continuity is not real.
59:01 Then it becomes a habit.
59:08 You see, that word we all want. We all say, ‘I must have this continuously. I must have your love, your affection, all the time’. We say that to the husband, wife, and all the rest of it; ‘I must have God all the time’.
59:37 What has continuity is not new, is not the state of creation.
59:49 It’s only when there is the dying to each minute that there is the new. We won’t go into that for the moment.
1:00:06 Please let us... give your attention a little bit to this question: What is the state of the mind that sees the whole, the total Don’t try to answer me. You follow? You are trying to find out for yourself.
1:00:44 When do you see something totally? And do you ever see anything totally? Take a tree, a simple thing – I know it’s a very... – a tree. Do you see the totality of tree, or the totality of tree-ness, if I can use such a word?
1:01:12 When you see a river, do you see the totality of all rivers, the river-ness, or do you see only the Thames?
1:01:30 Q: It is possible, I think it has been said...

K: Ah, no, don’t... not, ‘It has been said’... please, sir.
1:01:36 Q: I’m sorry, I beg your pardon. I’ve been quoting. But may I, or anyone that understands...
1:01:43 it is possible, if one is aware to become aware of the universe in a grain of sand because this grain of sand...

K: Sir, I understand all that, sir; I know poets have said it, and all the rest of it. But I just... please, sir, I want to find out now, before I leave the room, what it means to see totally, and whether I’ve seen anything totally? And we’re talking of something, perhaps we don’t even know what it means.
1:02:36 Have we ever watched a flower – watched, not just give it a name and pass it by – watched, which means watching means seeing, listening, feeling with all your being.
1:03:06 Surely, to watch, to see a flower, the river, the person, the trees, the conditioning, implies, does it not, being aware without a centre, without the word.
1:03:36 Look, when one is angry, lustful, in that state there is no centre, is there?
1:03:52 When you’re angry, at the moment of anger, there is no centre, is there?
1:04:00 You’re completely anger. No? Later on comes the centre, which says, ‘By Jove, I shouldn’t have been angry. Silly of me’.
1:04:26 Q: Can’t one say that anger is a state of self-centeredness?

K: No, no, I’m taking...
1:04:34 Can one not say anger is self-centrednes? Please, I don’t... that is, you see... I’m using that, the state, not the condemnatory reaction to anger.
1:04:48 Oh, come... please, sir, don’t waste time over this.
1:04:58 Please, sirs, I have to stop in five minutes, because it’s long enough, an hour and a quarter, the mind can’t stand more than that...
1:05:16 We’re asking whether the mind can see the totality of its own conditioning – the totality, conscious conditioning, the unconscious conditioning, the influences, the tradition, the values, the whole thing, the beliefs, the dogmas, the nationalism – you know? the word ‘British’, the whole thing.
1:05:52 Q: I should say, sir, that we never do see anything.

K: I’m just... quite right. I’m just asking, sir.
1:06:04 Q: We can only feel totally.

K: And when you do feel totally, is there a centre which says, ‘I feel totally’?
1:06:20 Because, to answer that gentleman’s question, I want to know when I feel totally, which means, is there a centre which says, ‘This is the total’?
1:06:33 Q: Yes.

K: No, don’t, please, don’t brush it off because it’s very important – please follow this right through – very important to be free of this conditioning, obviously, because that’s so utterly stupid, both intellectually and every way when one looks at it, it’s silly to be conditioned as a Catholic, as a Protestant, as a Hindu, or as a communist, or this or that, to be conditioned by a label, by a word – good God – and all the content behind that word, that label.
1:07:17 Now, can the mind wipe it away at one stroke, that is, see the thing totally?
1:07:54 You see, virtue lies in that.
1:08:02 The really virtuous man is the man who sees the totality of that.
1:08:19 The rest are not virtuous at all; they’re just toys, playthings in civilization.
1:08:34 Which means, really, can the mind be so totally attentive – not continuous; that’s a horror – totally attentive, aware with all your senses, with all your body, with all your mind, with all your... totally?
1:09:15 Even if you are aware for a fleeting second, you will then never ask, ‘How am I to be totally aware?
1:09:29 What is true to be totally aware? Is it possible?’ I feel we miss so much beauty and love and sense of, oh, immensity, with all our words, quarrels and dogmas, all those silly things that we surround ourselves with.
1:10:08 We don’t really kick them out, and so we are slaves to time.