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LO61T7 - What significance has desire?
London - 16 May 1961
Public Talk 7



0:00 This is J Krishnamurti’s seventh public talk in London, 1961.
0:09 Krishnamurti: The last few times that we met here we were talking about fear, and perhaps we could approach it from a different angle.
0:24 Because it seems to me that unless one’s mind is totally free from every form of fear, every thought, every action is coloured by fear, and it does breed various forms of illusions, self-deceptions.
0:58 And though we have talked about it at some length, in some detail, I think it might be worthwhile again to approach it from another angle.
1:26 I think it would be worthwhile to find out for oneself how to go into a thing like fear, how to unravel it, not only at the conscious level, but at the deeper layers of one’s mind, in the recesses of one’s own consciousness.
2:01 How does one penetrate into, say for instance, desire? Because desire is, does breed fear; desire does bring about self-contradiction, with its urgency and importance and the demand for self-fulfilment.
2:33 Now, what significance has desire?
2:44 And in the process of uncovering it, can one understand the urge to fulfil, with its frustrations and miseries, and the mind that’s always comparing?
3:14 And it seems to me, where there is comparison, there is the urge for power.
3:23 So all these things are linked together, and if I can, if we can this evening, perhaps we can go into it fairly deeply.
3:39 Because I feel there is a state of mind which is above and beyond feeling and thought, but it requires an enormous understanding of this process of feeling and also the process of thinking because that’s the only thing we have, these two, feeling and thinking.
4:23 The feeling is prompted by desire, strengthened, maintained by the urge of desire; desire always in terms of fulfilment, pleasure, and the avoidance of pain and suffering, and therefore behind desire there is always the shadow of fear.
5:14 A mind that would think precisely, without any perversion, without any twist, it seems to me, must inquire into this whole issue of desire.
5:48 How does one inquire? How does one set about unravelling this extraordinarily subtle thing that is the basis of all psychological promptings?
6:22 And the urge to fulfil invariably brings frustration and with it fear and sorrow. And so people, so-called religious people, say we must put away desire, or dominate it, or suppress it, or sublimate it, or escape from it, various forms, through various identifications with something.
7:02 So there is always the demand, the necessity, where there is fulfilment with its frustration and fear, the demand that it should be transformed into something else.
7:29 Because desire means conflict: I want to be something and in the very process of becoming that something there is conflict, and in the process of conflict there is the avoidance and the escape from conflict.
8:04 And when there is conflict, within and without, expressed in society as acquisitiveness, and inwardly as progress – obviously our society is based on acquisitiveness, the more, more, more, more, with all its conflicts, with all its securities – and inwardly the desire to be always certain and to progress towards certainty.
9:14 And can desire be controlled, and should it be controlled, and must one give full vent to it, full expression to it?
9:31 That’s the problem.
9:40 If one gives full expression to it, there is always the uncertainty of what will be the result of it, and so there is a sense of frustration and fear.
9:57 If one disciplines it, that’s to control it, shape it, direct it, that also involves conflict: the ‘thing what is’ and ‘what should be’.
10:18 And of course, if one suppresses it through various forms of identification with the particular group, with the particular ideas, belief, and so on and so on, there is still conflict. So desire seems to breed conflict, and to escape from this conflict it is maintained that one must suppress it, guide it, discipline it.
10:56 I think this is what happens with most of us. If we are at all intellectual, we kind of shape desire, not to give it full rein.
11:16 Our desires take the form of intellectual conceits and vanities and purposes and cleverness and the acquisition of knowledge.
11:44 And desire is always comparing, and therefore hoping to achieve, to fulfil.
11:59 I do not know if you have ever stopped comparing, comparing oneself with another, one’s dress, one’s look, one’s experiences, and comparing pictures, comparing ideas, and we hope through comparison to comprehend.
13:01 Do we comprehend anything through comparison?
13:10 And can the mind cease to compare altogether and therefore, perhaps, begin to understand what desire is?
13:32 Not how to suppress it... because... I think that’s fairly obvious, we needn’t go into it, that question of suppression, though it is extraordinarily prevalent throughout the world, especially among those people who are trying to keep a record of their saintliness.
14:19 If one suppresses it a little or completely, it’s still there, only it takes different forms of its expression.
14:36 If you suppress passion... Now, passion and lust are two different things; still the same form of desire.
14:53 If you suppress passion – and one must have passion; to live with something beautiful or with something ugly, there must be passion, otherwise that beauty or that ugly thing perverts the mind.
15:25 Passion is energy, and merely suppressing desire does not bring about this extraordinary sense of intensity, of passion.
15:46 But if one identifies oneself, or the desire identifies itself with an idea, with a symbol, with a philosophy, it does bring about a certain intensity.
16:05 You know the people who trot around the world, perhaps including myself
16:15 doing all kinds of good works, trying to tell people what they should be and what they should not be – I don’t mean that kind of intensity, that’s extraordinarily superficial, because if they stop talking, or doing good work, and all the rest of it, they are caught in their own miseries, in their own travail, and so on, all the rest of it.
16:51 But there is an intensity, there is a passion that comes into being when you can understand desire, and to see the complete significance of all suppression or sublimation or substitution, which is an escape.
17:20 I hope you’re not merely listening to words, but are aware of your own forms of desire and quickly, swiftly, perceive the road along which it’s going and where it leads, and your reaction to it, how you have suppressed, how you have identified your desire with something.
18:10 After all, the purpose of these discussions is not to listen to somebody, including myself, but in the process of listening to discover for oneself, to see the map of oneself, to see the extraordinary complexity of oneself – the twists, the narrow paths, the ambitions, the urges, the compulsions, the beliefs, the dogmas, the urges.
18:54 After all, if one doesn’t see all that, one isn’t aware of all that, these meetings are absolutely useless.
19:03 It becomes another form of entertainment, perhaps a little more intellectual, but at the end of it one is left with ashes.
19:20 Words are ashes, and to live by explanation and words, one has an empty life, an arid existence.
19:38 But if one can, in the process of these discussions, really, you know, battle with oneself, unravel things, then perhaps one can go beyond and above this feeling and thought.
20:05 And I would like, if I may this evening, to come to that.
20:12 But one cannot come to it unless one really, not verbally or intellectually, but really understands the enormity of desire and all its significance.
20:42 So I think one can see very clearly that every form of disciplining, controlling, suppressing, or finding a substitute, or sublimating, perverts the beauty of desire and therefore makes the mind and the heart hard, incapable of being young, swift.
21:35 I think that must be clearly perceived.
21:50 And is it possible, trained in a society whose values are acquisitive, whose religious dogmas and beliefs entail every form of twisting, suppressing desire?
22:20 Desire obviously means comparison, and comparison, if one goes into it more deeply, leads to the desire for power.
22:49 And, you see, we talk a great deal about peace and love and all that stuff, every politician all throughout the world everlastingly talking about this, his God, his peace and his love.
23:13 And can a mind that has not understood the whole significance of desire, can it know what love is?
23:31 And when desire is considered evil – and the monasteries are filled with such people; all the religious people are holding on to themselves not to have any more desires, or at least have one desire for God, or for Jesus, or for somebody – can such mind see the immensity of the thing, that word we call love?
24:33 And if one sees the significance of all suppression and therefore there is no longer suppressing, or the urge to suppress, or to transmute, all the rest of it, then what is one to do with the desire?
24:53 It is there, burning, trying to fulfil, trying to speed ahead, identify with the big cars and the big houses, and all the rest of it, it is there. What is one to do?
25:24 I wonder if we ever ask ourselves that question?
25:33 Or we are so used to control it, to shape it, to curb it, to give a ballast to it, or to approximate it with something else, which is comparison. So we never... can we ever stop that process?
26:08 And it is only then one can ask what is one to do with desire. I don’t know if you get to that point, if you have got to that point.
26:24 Which means, really, can one live in this world without ambition?
26:42 Can you go to the office and work without ambition?
26:57 And if you did, would not your competitor wipe you out?
27:05 And is there not fear that if there was no ambition, one would just fade away?
27:26 So do put yourself, if I may suggest, this question. When do you ask what to do with desire?
27:50 Must you go through all forms of fulfilment with their frustrations and their miseries and fears, guilt and anxiety, and then only you will put that question? Or you may put that question only...
28:10 or perhaps you’ll never put that question, but only suppress it all the time, because that has not given you happiness, position, prestige, whatever it is, so you turn in another direction: the outward expression of it and the inward expression of it.
28:29 When one is nobody in this silly, rotten world, you turn inward, but when you’re riding this wave, you’ll never put that question.
28:49 And I think it is important, not only outwardly for the wellbeing of society...
28:57 Sorry, I must withdraw that. Society is always corrupt, has always the seed of destruction and deterioration in it, so you can’t better society. You can perhaps gild the cage.
29:32 But for a mind that really wants to find out, for a mind that is really inquiring, that wants to find out if there is such thing as God, truth, and something beyond all words, one must understand this thing called desire.
30:01 Is it right to be desire-less, to be without desire?
30:20 And if you kill desire – that is, kill all feeling because feeling is part of desire – if you kill desire, there is no feeling, feeling with all its extraordinary sense of – you know? – sensitivity.
31:10 In that sensitivity everything is... all qualities are included.
31:24 So if one has gone into this question of the implications of suppression and therefore no longer suppress it – actually not suppress it, not merely verbally mesmerizing yourself that you’re not suppressing, or substituting or – you know? – doing all kinds of things round it and in it, if you have gone that far and actually have not done it, are not doing it, which is quite an arduous thing, because part of this desire is discontent: discontent with what we are, and back of this discontent is the urge for power, to be something, to fulfil in something.
32:59 And most of us are caught in this wheel of fulfilment and frustration, and the everlasting battle with self-pity, and ultimately, of course, there is the door to despair.
33:38 Now, when one has actually seen all this – not take months, years, days, have a last fling at fulfilment, knowing that it’s going to be misery and yet keep on at it – to cut at the very root of all this, and let it wither away because... see it, see this whole content of our life.
34:37 And then, if one has gone that far, or that near, then what is one to do with desire?
35:04 Is there any need to do anything about desire?
35:13 You follow?
35:21 So far, we have done something about desire: give it the right direction, the right slant, the right aim, the right end.
35:48 And if the mind, which is conditioned, which is always thinking in terms of achievement, if the mind, with all its compulsions, training, education and... all that, is no longer shaping desire as something apart from itself – I hope you’re following all this – if the mind is not interfering, if I can use that word, with desire, then what’s wrong with desire?
36:50 Then is it the thing we have known as desire?
36:57 You follow? Go along, sirs, come with me.
37:11 You see, we have thought of desire as fulfilment, as achievement, as acquiring, gaining, getting rid, in terms of ambition, in terms of fulfilment, in terms of avoidance, in terms of ‘the more’, and when you see the whole of that, then the word ‘desire’ has a different meaning altogether, hasn’t it, or, the feeling which we call desire has a totally different meaning, hasn’t it?
38:35 You see a beautiful car, a lovely house, a lovely dress.
38:51 Before, there was the identification with that thing, or the wanting of that thing, thing, or the idea, ideation, with its fulfilment, frustration, with, you know, the whole social approach to existence in which we have been brought up from childhood: you must be better than your brother, or your uncle, or... etc., etc., etc.
39:42 When one sees the whole content of this conflict and it’s fallen away from within or from your hand, then is desire something which it was?
40:04 You’re getting what I’m talking about?
40:33 You see, after all, feeling, to feel is to think, isn’t it?
40:54 The two are inseparable.
41:07 I see a child in misery, starving, I want to do something about it, curse... cuss the society, the politician, and do something about it.
41:36 The feeling is always... goes with thought, and feeling is perception, sensation, touch, and all the rest of it.
42:02 And to feel is to be sensitive, and the more you’re sensitive, the more you get hurt, so you begin to build a defence, a shield.
42:29 And all this is form of desire.
42:41 To cease to be sensitive is to die, obviously, to be paralyzed. Perhaps most of us are paralyzed.
42:52 That’s what happens to most of us through education, through...
42:59 all the rest of it – you know? – social relationships, contacts, knowledge, everything makes us dull, stupid, insensitive.
43:20 Living in a tomb we try to feel.
43:37 And realizing all this, is there a limit to desire, or...
44:01 I don’t know what word to use for that thing which we have called desire.
44:10 You see what has happened if you’ve gone into it?
44:18 It is no longer feeling or thought.
44:29 It is something entirely different in which feeling and thought are included.
44:41 Do go into...
44:48 Because most of our lives are so terribly dull, routine, boredom – you know? – the horrors of our own existence we know very well, the mediocrity, and we haven’t even a day or a minute if we haven’t understood some of all this, and that’s why probably we’re all so terribly spiritual, mediocre, silly.
45:33 So, we come to this issue, which is really extraordinarily interesting, if you’ve gone into it, that the thing that we’ve called desire with all its corruptions, with its travail, with its miseries, with its suffering, with its impetus, with its enthusiasm, with its interests, and all that, and if one has seen the full depth of it, at one glance one can see it. You know, it’s like you don’t have to get drunk to know what sobriety is.
46:34 In the same way, if one understands one... one sees one fulfilment completely, it’s finished, all fulfilments have ended, every form of being, becoming, ‘should be’ something.
47:02 So let me stop for a little now, and let’s discuss a little bit.
47:15 Because, you see... …I’m sorry.
47:25 Questioner: I’d like to mention that one needs to get drunk to know what drunk is.

K: Ah...
47:33 It is said one needs to know what it is to be drunk, therefore we must drink. That’s rather far-fetched, isn’t it?
47:45 Must one go through murder to know what it is to murder?
47:54 No, sir, don’t let’s be clever. Let’s apply our mind to all this.
48:05 Q:...it’s the contradiction with desire which disturb one and make it so impossible to deal with.
48:15 K: What makes desire... what makes... it is impossible to deal with desire is its contradictions, pulling in different directions.
48:27 Why are there contradictions, sir?
48:35 You understand? Do please follow it through. Why are there contradictions in desire?
48:43 I want to be rich, powerful, or somebody, and I see the futility of it; I see the big people and the... strip them of their names and they’re just nobodies.
49:03 And yet that’s what is happening to us. I want to be something and I see the futility of it, so there’s a contradiction. Now, why?
49:18 Why is there this pull in different directions?
49:25 Why isn’t it in one direction? You follow what I mean? If I want to be a stupid politician, be a stupid politician, get on with it.
49:38 Why this withdrawal from that, the contradiction?
49:51 Ah? Do, please, let’s discuss that for a few minutes. Why?

Q: Maybe it’s because you’re afraid of what might happen if you did do it.

K: Because we’re afraid of what might happen if we’re completely in one thing?
50:05 Q: Yes. If you give yourself entirely to one desire...

K: Ah, wait a minute. Can you?
50:14 Q: No... because you’re afraid to do it.

K: No, but... You’re not answering... Sorry.
50:24 Have you given yourself to anything once, totally, completely?
50:31 Q: Perhaps once or twice, yes, for a few minutes.
50:38 K: Be completely in it?
50:45 Perhaps sexually one is, sometimes. Apart from that, do you know when you have given yourself to something totally?
51:02 Yes? Ah? I... Sorry, I question it.

Q: Does it not happen in the comprehension of art, ever, in listening to music?

K: Ah, wait a minute, sir. The gentleman says in comprehension of art, in listening to music.
51:27 Look what’s happening. A child is absorbed with a toy, the toy absorbs the child.
51:45 You give a boy a toy and he’s completely happy, he’s not restless, he doesn’t... he’s there. The toy is so interesting it’s completely taken him.
51:59 Is that what you want to do? Is that giving yourself to something?
52:10 The politician, the religious man, and all the whole lot of them, they give themselves over to something. Why?
52:19 In that, it means power, position, prestige. The thing absorbs them. The idea of being somebody important is so tremendous, like the toy.
52:40 Is that giving oneself over to something?
52:48 And do you give yourself over to something when you identify yourself with something?
52:56 I mean, there are those people who identify themselves with their country, with their queen, with their kings, with their, you know, works, and that’s another form of absorption. Is that giving oneself over to something?
53:23 Q: Is it possible ever to actually give oneself over to something insofar as if I’m giving myself over, there’s a direction and a feeling of something going out, and there’s a schism between giving...

K: That’s it, that’s exactly right. You see, that’s what I mean.
53:40 We cannot give ourselves over to something.
53:46 Q: Is it possible to give ourselves over to someone?

K: Is it possible to give ourselves over to someone. We try to.
53:58 We try to identify ourselves with the husband, with the wife, with the child, with the name, but there’s always... – you know? – you know it better than I do, so why talk about it?
54:14 No, but you see, you’re missing the... We’re deviating from the thing we’re talking about.
54:21 Q: May I suggest, sir, that the conflict comes through an innate lack of confidence in one’s own abilities, and this is more difficult to overcome than the desire or the direction itself.
54:34 K: The incapacity to deal with the problem is... gives us the conflict.
54:41 That’s what the... Is that right, sir?

Q: Well, the feeling of incapacity.

K: The feeling of incapacity.
54:50 Q: The break comes between the feeling, when one feels that one has the possibility of the direction, but then the other thing comes where... when one wonders whether one has the potential possibility to go in that direction.
55:10 Q: Is not the difficulty the desire to deal with the problem at all?
55:34 Q: Sir, if we’re busy with the contradictions, then it seems to me that the mind provides envelopes for the desire and it keeps on being partial.

Q: It severs us from the desire, in fact; the conflict of one’s essence.
55:48 K: Is there wrong desire and right desire? You see, you’re going back...

Q: Well...
55:57 K: Sir, we’ve covered the whole field; don’t go back to this.

Q: A desire is right and good when it does not damage anything else.
56:08 K: You see how we’ve translated it already, that desire is good, desire is bad, desire is worthwhile, and desire is not worthwhile, the noble and the ignoble, the harmful and the beneficial.
56:34 Look... take that. You have divided it, haven’t you? That very division is the cause of conflict.
56:50 And having the conflict, you have introduced another problem: how to get rid of conflict.
57:05 Why this division?
57:12 Q: If you see the significance of the desire, then there is no conflict.

K: That’s what we were talking for about fifty minutes this evening, to see if one can see the significance of desire, not in terms of the good and the bad – desire.
57:53 And when one sees the significance of desire, which is both the good and the bad, sees the meaning, the total meaning of this conflict and the division, and comprehends it, not just verbally, comprehends it, has put one’s teeth into it, then there is only desire. But you see, we always try to translate in terms of evaluation of good and bad, beneficial, non-beneficial.
58:44 I thought at the beginning I made that fairly clear that wipe away that thing altogether, this division.
58:57 And it’s not easy to wipe it away; it requires – you know? – application, perception, insight.
59:18 Q:...is it possible to get rid of the object and stay with the essence?
59:29 K: The question is, is it possible to get rid of the object and stay with the essence of desire.
59:39 Why should I get rid of the object? What’s wrong with a beautiful car?
59:52 You see, you’re creating conflict for yourself by this division: the essence and the object.
1:00:09 And the essence, the direction of the essence changes the object all the time – that’s the misery of it. As one grows older, one is fed up with the world; as one is young, one wants the world.
1:00:35 You see, we were trying to understand desire and thereby let conflict die away, wither away.
1:01:05 You see, we touched so many things this evening.
1:01:13 The urge for power, which is so imbedded, so strong in all of us; the urge for dominance, whether over a servant, a husband, wife or – you know? – the... madness.
1:02:00 You see, perhaps some of you, in the course of this discussion this evening, have gone into the thing, have seen the thing, that where the mind is seeking fulfilment, there is frustration, and therefore there is misery and conflict.
1:02:23 And the very seeing of it is the dropping of it; not the words, but the feeling to fulfil, to be something, the ignobleness of it.
1:02:49 I mean, the politician does it, the priest does it, the... does it – the vulgarity, if I can use that word.
1:03:01 Can one really drop it, because, you see, it's like you see a poisonous thing?
1:03:10 It’s like a tremendous burden taken off your shoulders. You’re out of it; with a flick it is gone.
1:03:25 Then, you see, if... then you will come to the point which is really extraordinarily significant.
1:03:33 Not all this... it has its own significance, all this, but something else, which is, a mind which has understood the desire, the feeling, the thought, and therefore beyond and above it.
1:03:58 Do you understand what... the very... the nature of such a mind?
1:04:06 Not the verbal description of such a mind; the mind that is highly sensitive, capable of intense reactions without conflict, a mind that is sensitive to every form of the demands, physical and emotional, and the demands of reactions, so that a mind is above all feeling, all thought, which are no longer in the field of so-called desire.
1:05:08 You see, for most of us, all this is a lot of froth, a state to be desired for or to be created. I’m afraid you can’t come to it that way; it’s not come by any means. It comes into being when one really understands all this, when you don’t have to do a thing.
1:05:47 You see, if one could... if you’ll not misunderstand what is being said, if one could leave desire alone, either to let it flower or to let it become... wither away; just leave it alone.
1:06:15 That is the very essence of a mind which is not in conflict.
1:06:51 I think we’d better stop there, hadn’t we?