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LO61T8 - Can the mind be free from conflict?
London - 18 May 1961
Public Talk 8



0:01 This is J Krishnamurti’s eighth public talk in London, 1961.
0:09 Krishnamurti: It seems to me that we have to consider, when we are thinking about fear, we have to consider in relation to that, conflict.
0:49 To me, any form of conflict, outwardly or inwardly, is very destructive; it perverts one’s thinking.
1:11 And when there is conflict, every problem leaves its mark on the mind.
1:26 Mind becomes the soil in which the root of the problem grows.
1:39 And for most of us, conflict seems so natural, inevitable, and we accept it very easily.
1:54 We strive against it, we say we mustn’t be in conflict, but inevitably we are, and perhaps this evening we could go into it and see if the mind cannot be free of it totally, if it is at all possible, living in this rather mad world, if it is possible.
2:37 Now, before we go into that, I would like to talk about what is a way of thinking, a way of looking which is not positive.
3:18 It seems to me that all our positive thinking is really a reaction.
3:38 You know what I mean by positive: when we say, ‘I must and I must not, I should be’, and this positive thinking brings its own reaction as a resistance, which is negation.
4:17 I don’t know if I can communicate this easily because it requires a great deal of understanding of what we call a positive approach to problems.
4:41 The positive approach... one of the positive approaches is explanation of the problem, the rationalizing of it, trying to escape from it, trying to do something definitely in order to be not caught in the problem – that’s what we do in everyday life.
5:18 That process I call positive thinking. It is the reaction to the problem.
5:34 The problem is conflict. We are in conflict about so many things, in all relationships: husband, wife, children, society, in our relationship with ideas, beliefs, dogmas.
6:00 We seem to be perpetually in conflict: in fulfilling and invariably in the frustration that fulfilment brings; the search for truth, for God; to do this or not to do that, what to do, what to think, how to behave, how to correct something which has gone wrong, and so on, this constant war that’s going on within.
6:46 And our approach, it seems to me, is always positive, which is, to do something about it: to escape, to join societies, to seek some kind of drug, whether it’s a religious drug or a tranquilizer or what you will.
7:11 This is a positive approach to the problem, and this positive approach is really a reaction to the problem.
7:28 I feel there is a negative approach. The negative approach is not the reaction to the positive.
7:48 I have a problem, like conflict. I don’t know how to resolve it, so I resort to various forms of escapes, of memory, think it out, battle with myself, and out of that some kind of result, hoping something will happen.
8:25 To me, such approach will not help us to be free from conflict.
8:41 I think there is an approach which is not a reaction, which is not the positive as we know the positive, but it is a negative process of understanding which is not a reaction to the positive.
9:09 I’m going to go into that a little bit. We’ll communicate with each other about it presently.
9:23 You see, the mind must be totally empty to see something new, but this newness is not brought about by the investigation of a problem, analyzing it and going to sleep over the problem. And in that interval, when the mind is exhausted by the problem, a solution does appear.
10:10 If you’re a mathematician, a scientist, or engineer, and all the rest of it, you have a problem, and you try to analyze it, look at it different ways, and the mind is exhausted and goes to sleep over it, or forgets it, and a few days later, or an hour later, you get an answer.
10:30 We all know this, but that is not the outcome of a mind that is new, fresh, empty.
10:54 Such a mind is entirely devoid of conflict.
11:06 It has no problem, and whatever problem arises, whatever challenge comes to it, it does not leave a mark, even for a second, because the mark which endures even for a second leaves an imprint and so conditions the mind. I don’t know if I’m... Please, we’ll go at it; plenty of time.
12:00 You see, only the empty mind – not the blank mind – a mind that is fully alive, responding to every challenge, not as a reaction, not as a problem, completely absorbing it, digesting it and finishes with it immediately, it’s only an empty mind of that quality, of that nature, that can be free from conflict.
12:58 And it is only such a mind that’s passionate.
13:09 To me that word has quite a different meaning from the ordinary accepted meaning.
13:16 I think one has to be passionate; one has to be intense about it, one has to be intense, not about something; all right.
13:32 This intensity is different from enthusiasm, which is temporary.
13:46 And a mind that is in conflict can never be passionate.
13:59 And it’s only the passionate mind that sees the beauty of life, beauty of everything.
14:19 I don’t want to discuss or go into now – perhaps we will another time – what is beauty.
14:29 I don’t know... but that’s an extraordinary thing. We’ll talk about it some other time.
14:52 And is it possible – not theoretically, intellectually, or verbally, or...
15:02 actually possible, not the possibility of hypnotic state, mesmerizing oneself that it is possible or impossible, but is it really possible, living in this world, having relationship, going to office, thinking, feeling, being brutalized by society, is it possible to be free of conflict?
15:51 I don’t know if you have asked yourself that question, or am I imposing that question on you?
16:03 Or perhaps we have accepted conflict as inevitable and therefore God becomes the ultimate refuge of peace, of calmness, of... – you know? – all the rest of it.
16:24 If one has asked this question, can the mind really be free from conflict, then one has to go very much deeper into the problem, which I hope we can this evening.
16:52 Why does conflict arise?
17:14 Why does conflict arise between me and my wife, between me and my neighbour, between me and something which I call an idea?
17:27 Why?
17:43 I’ll answer it in my way, but if you can discover it for yourself why you are in conflict, then I think my explanation and your feeling will meet together.
18:11 You know what I mean? Otherwise communication is not possible.
18:26 You see, I want to know why I’m in conflict, not mere superficial explanation and answer, but I really want to go to the root of it.
18:43 Conflict consciously and unconsciously, deep down in the innermost recesses of my mind, the secret conflicts which nobody knows, I want to go to the very root of it.
19:15 To go into the very depth of it, does one analyze why I’m in conflict, what are the reasons, or does one see it in a flash?
19:46 You know, even the Freudians and the Jungians and the analysts are beginning to change. They feel that they don’t have to take months and years to unravel a poor individual.
20:11 It’s too expensive, and only the rich can afford this, or hospitals, and so they’re trying to find a quicker means. And they have, some of them have: drugs, chemicals, and a direct personal approach, not letting the patient rattle on for day after day, month after month.
20:51 They are finding – not that I have read books about analysis, but I have friends who come and talk to me about all this, analysts, and non-analysts, and all the rest of it.
21:12 So if we are going to analyze, it’s going to take a long time.
21:19 You follow what I mean? And in the process of analysis, unless you’re very, very careful, minutely observing, never twisting what you observe, you will miss what you have... the next examination. You follow?
21:52 So analysis is not the way. Do please realize: analysis, dissecting, tearing it to pieces is not the way, nor controlling, escaping.
22:21 And I want to know why there is conflict, one is a mess of conflicts, contradictions – why?
22:58 Now, how are you going to find out the root of the matter? Not a superficial explanation, or a superficial word, but I want to find out for myself the root of it.
23:34 If I can find out the root of it, then the very discovery of it will not create a reaction which will have a positive action on what is discovered, but you will have a negative approach to it.
23:58 Ah? Vous comprenez... I mean, you understand?
24:12 I’ll go into it. I want to know what is the cause of conflict, the total conflict, the contradictions, desire pulling in different directions, and the fear arising from these conflicts.
24:41 Now, knowing is one thing and actually experiencing is another.
24:52 Right?
25:03 Knowing implies an observer who is looking, and experiencing is a state in which there is no experiencer.
25:39 Is that...? May I go into it in... into that?
25:46 Does one need more explanation about that?
25:57 I can tell you verbally what is the cause of conflict, the deep down, radical cause, and you will know about it, either agree with it, disagree with it, or take it on, accept it and say, ‘Yes, I’ll add it to my further explanations’.
26:36 Or, in the very description of it you are experiencing the central issue that’s creating conflict.
26:47 You...? Ah? You...? Am I making it clear?
26:56 So knowing is one thing and experiencing is another.
27:06 Knowing about God is one thing, or truth, but actual experiencing something of that immensity is quite different.
27:42 Most of us are aware that we are functioning from a centre, the centre which has become knowledge, the centre which is experience, the centre from which all compulsive urges and resistances take place, the centre that is always seeking security.
28:36 You’re not accepting my words; you’re actually experiencing the centre from which you think, the self.
28:59 Where there is a centre there must be a circumference, and the battle is to reach the circumference, and the circumference is always something different from ‘what is’.
29:22 I don’t... Ah?
29:56 I know that. We have experienced it.
30:08 I’ve experienced that all my activities, all my thoughts, all my feelings are shaped, projected, conditioned by the centre.
30:29 The centre then says, ‘I must get rid of it’. There is a division between the centre and the thing that should be, that has been, that was. You’re following?
30:53 So there is always a division.
31:01 And conflict essentially is the war between the ‘should be’ and ‘what is’.
31:13 The ‘what is’, which is the centre, always trying to shape what should be, or trying to become what should be.
31:34 Ah?
31:43 I don’t want to take examples for the moment because I think one should think abstractly, because examples limits the flow of thought.
32:18 So conflict is essentially the process of duality, of the thing that is and the thing that should be, or the thing that I would like to have.
32:58 Now, the centre is the accumulated memories of experiences of the conflict with the opposite, the conflict with what should be. I am a lustful man and I should not be, and the conflict between the two creates the memory which forms the centre. Right?
34:22 Now, can that centre, which is essentially memory – and memory has no reality; it is not a fact; it’s something dead, gone, finished, to be utilized when necessary, but it’s gone, finished, and yet this dead thing is with what we function.
35:09 Ah?
35:18 Our life is guided by the dead thing, by a thing not real, and so fear grows, and so there is the contradiction in desire.
36:19 Let’s leave it there for the moment; let’s attack it differently.
36:44 I think most of us know what it is to be lonely.
37:00 There is a state when all relationship has been cut off, when there is no sense of the future or the past, a complete sense of isolation.
37:27 You may be with a great many people, in a crowd, in a bus, you might be sitting next to your friend or your husband, suddenly this wave comes upon you and you know it, and the instinctive reaction is to turn away from it.
37:55 It’s an appalling void, an emptiness, an abyss, so you turn on the radio, chatter, or join some society and preach about God and truth and love and all the rest of it – escape.
38:14 Whether you escape through God, through cinema, through... I don’t know what else, it’s the same, they’re all the same, all escapes are they same.
38:26 And the reaction is of fear and escape.
38:39 Fear of this sense of complete isolation, and escape, therefore identification with dozens and dozens of things, with God, with – you know? – with nationalities, with your country, with your children, with your name, with your property, all the rest of it, and for which you’re willing to die, fight, struggle.
39:33 Now, and if one realizes one escape...
39:45 if one sees the significance of one escape, all escapes are the same and therefore there is no escape, and therefore there is no conflict. You follow?
40:05 It is from ‘what is’, and the escape to something that creates the conflict.
40:37 And a mind which would go beyond this sense of loneliness, which is the sudden cessation of all memory, of all relationship – you know all this – from which arises jealousy, envy, acquisitiveness, being virtuous – you know? – all the rest of it.
41:18 But the mind has to go through it to be entirely free of conflict so that fear in every form has withered away, because that is the root of it.
41:50 And can the mind see the futility of all escapes through one escape, and therefore no conflict, and therefore there is no observer of the loneliness?
42:21 You follow? There is the experiencing of that loneliness.
42:49 Now, listen.
43:02 After all, this loneliness is the cessation of all relationship.
43:23 Ideas no longer matter; thought has lost its significance.
43:34 Do please... I am describing, but don’t just listen to it because that will... you will be left with ashes afterwards when you leave this hall this evening.
43:55 Because, after all, the purpose of this discussion, these discussions, is to free oneself from all these terrible entanglements, to have something else in life than conflict, to have something much more than fear, and the weariness and the boredom of existence.
44:40 And where there is fear there is no beauty; not the beauty the poets talk about, and the artist paints on a board or a picture, or somebody moulds a statue, but beauty that is something quite different.
45:23 And one has to go through this complete isolation.
45:30 It is there, you haven’t got to go through it. You have escaped from it. It’s there, always following you. It’s there in your heart and your mind and your very depths and recesses of your mind. We have covered it up, escaped, run away, but it’s there.
46:04 And the mind must go through it; it’s like going through a purgation of fire because to us that’s a horrible state.
46:32 Now, can the mind go through it without reaction? The moment you have reaction, you have conflict. You’re following all this?
46:45 If you accept it, you’ve also a burden of it, of acceptance.
46:53 If you deny it, it is still there, you’ll come upon it round the corner.
47:15 So the mind has to go through it. The mind is that loneliness – it hasn’t got to go through – it is that.
47:31 You understand? The moment you think in terms of going through and reaching something else, you’re again in conflict.
47:52 The moment you say, ‘How am I to go through it? How am I to look at it? How am I to absorb it?’ – again you’re in conflict.
48:22 And there is emptiness, there is this extraordinary loneliness which no master, which no guru, which no idea, which no activity will fill it.
48:50 You can fiddle with all of them, play with all of them, but they can’t do... they can’t fill this emptiness, it’s a bottomless pit.
49:08 And it’s not a bottomless pit the moment you are experiencing it. I don’t know if you...
49:31 You see, if one really wants to understand conflict, if the mind is to be entirely free of it, totally, completely, without any apprehension, without pain and anxiety, the mind, in experiencing this extraordinary sense of having no relationship to anything, from that comes a sense of aloneness.
50:42 No, please don’t fiddle with words – you know? – don’t imagine that you’ve got this sense of aloneness.
50:54 It is quite an arduous thing what we’re talking about.
51:10 It is only then, in that sense of aloneness in which there is no fear, it is only then that can move towards the immeasurable, because then there is no illusion, or the maker of illusion, or the power to create illusion.
51:51 As long as there is conflict, there is the power to create illusion.
52:06 And with the cessation of conflict totally, then all fear has ceased, therefore there is no further seeking.
52:21 You...? Oh... After all, you’re here because you are seeking.
52:32 What are you seeking, if you examine it?
52:42 You’re seeking something beyond all this conflict, misery, suffering, agony, anxiety, or a way out.
53:00 But if one understands what we have been talking about, all seeking ceases, which is an extraordinary state of mind.
53:20 You know, life is a process of challenge and response, isn’t it?
53:34 There is the outward challenge of a war, of death, of ten different things, and we respond.
53:46 The response is always conditioned, and the challenge is never new because all our responses are always old.
54:03 I don’t know if... Ah?
54:15 The challenge must be recognized in order to respond, and recognition is the old, obviously.
54:29 The moment I recognize, it’s already in terms of the past.
54:36 Do please see this because I want to move a little further.
54:50 So one realizes that the outward challenges, to a man who is very inward, no longer matter, and he has his own inward responses and challenges.
55:29 I am talking of a mind that is no longer seeking and therefore is no longer having a challenge and a response, which is not a satisfied, contented, ugly state, a cow-like state.
56:00 When you have understood the outward challenge, and also understood the significance of response to the challenge outwardly and to the inward significance of the challenge which one gives to oneself and its responses, and have gone through all this, not take months, years or... gone through it swiftly, then the mind is no longer shaped by environment.
56:50 It is no longer influence-able.
57:11 And the mind that has gone through this extraordinary revolution, then it can meet every problem, without the problem leaving its roots, and therefore, you see, the sense of having fear has completely gone.
58:19 I don’t know how far you have followed this... what we have talked about this evening.
58:36 I feel, you see, if one has listened to this – and listening is an art, listening, not merely hearing – if one has really listened and has gone into oneself so profoundly, and all this is part of that self-knowledge, knowing.
59:19 You see, when one has gone into oneself like this, it’s a purification, and what is purified receives a benediction which is not the benediction of churches.
59:58 I don’t think... Shall we discuss?
1:00:07 I seem to have talked for an hour. I’m sorry.
1:00:28 Questioner: Can you kindly explain a little further, this centre and circumference and where...?
1:00:39 K: Perhaps, sir, we can pick it up another day.
1:00:48 I... somehow I can’t repeat what I’ve said, but I think we’ll pick it up another day, sir.
1:01:09 You see, we have four more – is it four more? – yes, four more talks, these discussions.
1:01:16 They’re really not discussions because I’m talking all the time. Sorry. Four more informal talks.
1:01:37 And I would like to talk about several other things, apart from fear.
1:01:49 I think one has covered fear fairly sufficiently.
1:02:01 There are other things to talk about. There is beauty, death, meditation and what is really a truly religious mind, and so on.
1:02:24 Perhaps we can cover those during these next four talks.
1:02:36 I think that’s enough for this evening, isn’t it?