Krishnamurti - Can we deal with life as a whole?

Krishnamurti Subtitles

LO65D1 - Can we deal with life as a whole?
London - 22 April 1965
Public Discussion 1

0:00	This is J. Krishnamurti’s first public discussion in London, 1965.
0:30	Krishnamurti: How shall we proceed with a gathering like this? Shall we discuss?
0:46	Or would you like to ask questions? Or would you like me to talk a little while and then discuss?
0:54	Questioner: Yes.
1:29	K: I always feel, after being all over… practically all over the world, that a tremendous inward revolution in every human being must take place; not an ideological revolution or mere intellectual changes of concepts and formulas.
2:19	I feel we are coming to an impasse, intellectually, emotionally, sentimentally.
2:29	There is no future in those… in that direction at all. Intellectually one sees the utter hopelessness, the useless life that one leads, life that has no meaning whatsoever, and sentimentally, emotionally, it is very shallow, empty; that has no significance either, to become sentimental, devotional, accepting the religious concepts, gods and images, worship ritual – that too has utterly no meaning.
3:40	So what is one to do?
3:48	Most thoughtful people have put aside religious beliefs, dogmas, gods, rituals – you know?
4:03	all that circus that goes on in the name of religion.
4:12	And when you do put aside those things, one feels tremendously empty, lonely, despair, and is one ready to commit suicide or become very… join some mystical association or create something within oneself, and so on.
4:46	If one does deny literally everything, as one must – one’s own concepts, formulas, projections, ideas, fears, hopes, and all the rest of that thing which we carry about in our daily life, and if it is possible to reject all those intelligently, not as a reaction, and not commit oneself to any particular political or religious party or idea or even action, then what… where is one? I don’t know if you feel that way at all.
5:50	And if you do, if one does, without throwing oneself into the lake, is there anything more? After all, that’s what we are trying to find out, isn’t it?
6:16	Not accepting any authority, any personal salvation and all that, that becomes too immature.
6:34	When one does arrive at that position, is there anything more?
6:52	Anything more which is not self-projected, which is not an imagination, a vision, a heightened sensitivity, which are all fairly simple to explain and to understand and to bring it about.
7:21	If one is at all serious, what does one do?
7:31	How do we proceed further? That I would like to discuss. I don’t know if you want to discuss that.
8:07	I mean, the fairly obvious things I think one can come to grips with it, like wars, the whole of the East starving, poverty and the enormous technological revolution that’s going on, the electronic brain and the automation giving enormous leisure to man – not immediately but perhaps in fifty years or twenty years, and man is going to have a great deal of leisure; he’s going to be freed from labour, the incessant toil.
9:04	And what is going to happen?
9:24	So, if one is at all serious – I mean by that word, not a determined seriousness which is brought about by will, but a seriousness that comes naturally when one observes the whole superficial tendencies of man and what’s going on in the world and in ourselves, one inevitably, I think, comes to a certain quality of seriousness.
10:21	And if one is serious in that sense and if one has come – and one must have after all these years of discussing, talking, living, struggling with life, one must naturally, I think, must have come to certain rejection, certain denials of the things which have been imposed on man by his own ambition, greeds, and so on, and by the society which he has created.
11:16	When one rejects all that, one does become rather serious.
11:30	I mean by seriousness, not going to various groups of meditation and schools of yoga and – you know? – all that stuff.
11:51	If one is at all serious in that way, what actually takes place?
12:08	And I think it would be perhaps worthwhile to discuss, to go into that, because we can go on ploughing everlastingly and never sowing, and most of us, I’m afraid, do that: keep on ploughing and not know how to sow or not have the capacity to intelligently proceed after ploughing.
12:55	So if we could, in these five meetings here or some other hall, if we could discuss that, perhaps it would be worthwhile.
13:39	Q: Krishnamurti, you talk about preparing and ploughing. The point is, we don’t know what to sow.
13:46	We get to the point where we don’t know what to do. K: The lady says, ‘We don’t know what to do.
13:55	We think we have ploughed but after that, we don’t know how to sow or what to do’.
14:12	Q: Isn’t that because we don’t have... to know how to be?
14:20	I mean, it’s very easy to think things but it’s not so easy just to be able to be.
14:32	K: I’m afraid I have to repeat the question because people don’t hear it.
14:39	The lady says it is a matter of being, not ploughing or sowing, but we don’t know how to be.
14:59	Q: What do you mean by sowing, Krishnaji?
15:10	K: That’s only a simile, sir, don’t run the simile to death.
15:32	I mean, sowing... ploughing is really like going within oneself, and the very ploughing, if one goes within oneself very deeply, is the sowing; it is not the two different things.
15:49	So we can’t carry on with that simile.
16:00	I don’t know how you feel about it – we are trying to make this as informal as possible – whether after all these years of struggle, sorrow, searching, joining this group and that group, seeking the masters, seeking something mysterious, trying to find something permanent, some hope, something called the eternal, the out of time, and so on and so on, we have played with all these things, searched for them, struggled... gone after them, joined the communist party, the socialist party, become… lead a very, very simple life, as they do in India – a loincloth and one meal a day, thinking that is the religious life, sitting on a bank, meditating endlessly.
17:31	We have played with all this. You may not have directly done these things but you observe it, and if one has observed it intelligently, one intelligently without reaction, rejects it.
17:53	There are the various schools where they teach you how to be aware, practice, and you see through that too. You see where communism has led to.
18:14	And if one is at all aware of all this, one wants peace, one wants a certain quality of mind, and not deceive oneself endlessly.
18:41	I’m sure you have done all this. I don’t know… I mean, let’s… I suppose one can’t assume, can one? Or shall… one has to start all over again from the beginning about unconditioning the mind, how to uncondition the mind, whether it is possible to uncondition the mind, whether it’s at all possible to be free from fear, despair, anxiety, greed, envy, the seeking of power, position, prestige, all those things. Hm?
19:16	Q: Sir, do you think the person who is free of all these things, who has reached the state of mind you envisage, can you see him functioning in society as it is?
19:24	K: No; obviously not. Q: Then where does he go? K: That’s just it.
19:38	Q: There are many young people today who have travelled throughout the world who feel they have reached something and they can’t settle in society so they live more or less as criminals…
19:48	K: I know, sir, I know. I know. Q: … they never become...
19:59	K: No, leave… sir, leave the others alone. If one has done all this oneself: joined the communist party, gone out of it; become a religious person, gone out of it; gone to a monastery for a month or two and see the whole business of it, left it; read all the clever books, and so on and so on and so on.
20:32	If one has done some of that or at least felt his way through all that, not necessarily joining them, then what?
21:00	Do we look to another to tell us what to do? You follow, sir? Q: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you, sir. K: Do we look to another, to somebody to tell us what to do?
21:14	Obviously not. Obviously, if you have done… if you have gone through all this, you throw all the authority aside; authority in the sense, not law; you know what I mean, and so on. Right. Then what you have to do?
21:35	You can’t look to another; you can’t put your faith in another; you have no trust in another; and you have yourself, yourself in relation with society.
21:51	Or rather, you are society because you are a human being, a human being who has lived for two million years, creating this appalling world, because in himself he is miserable, he is… all the rest of it, he creates this and so he is that; he is society, which he has created.
22:21	That’s fairly obvious too. And realizing that, what is one to do?
22:34	That there is no authority outside you to tell you what to do – right? – that any hope, any despair is part of oneself; either you create, in hope, great things, great images and Utopias and gods, and all the rest of it, or, being in despair, you join some footling little society or jump in the lake. If you don’t do any of those things, which is very difficult, and that may be the real crux with all of us, the real issue, that we have not reached a point – I’m not… I’m just suggesting – where… or in which we have not rejected completely in everything, without cynicism, without bitterness, without despair… – you…? – all that, and it may not be possible to reach such a point, so clean – you know what I mean? – without any distortion, without any reaction; a point which you come to without reaction.
24:17	And that demands tremendous discipline in oneself, tremendous attention, alertness and one may not want all that.
24:41	So if one has come to that point where there is no distortion – if it is at all possible – where the mind can function very clearly, not in departments, as a whole, and if one can come to that with energy, with vitality, with – you know? – freedom, is there anything more? You…? I don’t know if I’m making myself clear.
25:37	And is it possible to come to that point, humanly, knowing what society is, the influence of society, one’s own background, the tradition, the influences, the conditioning, and how cunning, subtle the mind is to slip through?
26:18	Q: Sir, even if we reached this point, most of us have to function within society simply to earn our daily bread; is there then always... thrown back? K: So living – that’s what I mean – living in a society and being out of it, in the other sense, can one come to that point?
26:43	Because living is action, living is relationship, living is a movement; not business and living. I don’t...
27:01	affection, love and go to office with competition, hate… the two…
27:13	Taking the thing as a whole, is it possible to live in this world and come to that point?
27:29	Not escaping into monasteries, and all that stuff – it has no meaning, or identifying oneself with a particular nation, group and the nationalism, working for… – you know? – all that.
27:48	Can one, living in this world, come to that point? If one can’t, then we must make the best of this world and therefore no significance in this appalling boredom and monotony of life. Right?
28:19	Going to the office for forty years – my God – to earn a livelihood and that’s the end of it.
28:31	What for? And seeing that, one revolts, one becomes a beatnik or a... all the rest of it.
28:41	So… or one becomes extraordinarily superficial, wanting to be entertained endlessly.
29:15	Because I don’t know if… you must also have seen and read and heard or been told, as I have, that automation and the computer is going to give man tremendous leisure, and what is he going to do with that leisure? They’re already talking about a twenty-hour week.
29:56	Q: Sir, from the question you’ve put, does it permit any discussion? You yourself have become the Pope, the church... K: Ah, no, no; oh, for God’s sake; no; no; no, sir; no, sir; no, no.
30:11	I said that just right away – no authority.
30:18	Q: You just have to reach that point and remain there, then. K: That’s what I mean. Q: And find out what it is for yourself.
30:24	K: Yes. How do we come to that point? You follow, sir? Most of us are groping in the dark.
30:37	We read so much. So many religious people have said so many things and all the clever writers and the existentialists, this, that... you know?
30:53	Q: From what you’re saying, then, there is no answer in words. K: There is, sir. Wait; let’s think about it; don’t let us come to any finality, any decision yet.
31:10	I think… I feel this is very important how we come to that point.
31:19	I don’t know… Q: Yes.
31:25	Q: Do we come to it or is it that we have never really been out of it?
31:33	K: No... Ah, ah, ah… I wouldn’t like to say we have never been… we are always in it, which is what is implied in that... Q: We may not be aware of it. K: Ah, that’s right, sir, that’s right. We’re always in it but we’re not aware of it.
31:47	But we are aware of our misery, of our despair, of our endless conflict with ourselves, and when we are free of that, perhaps we are there, whatever that…
32:07	Q: We don’t want to look at it, do we? K: Beg your pardon, sir? Q: We don’t want to look at it. K: I don’t know. I…
32:32	Q: But the question you’ve made, you cannot give an answer other than calling it by heaven or nirvana or some such…
32:39	K: No, sir; no; no; no, sir.
32:46	I am merely asking where one is. Right; let me put it that way.
32:57	Q: I think we are trying to come to this position but we always see that it is a reaction; we’re not coming to it spontaneous or freely.
33:05	It’s always an attempt through reacting to something else. K: Yes, sir. Isn’t it… here one is, thirty years or forty years or eighty years one has lived. Where is one?
33:22	Still in the same cage?
33:32	Or, as a reaction, gone out of it, created another cage, or, not finding an answer to life or the whole thing, just drift?
33:54	So would it be right to ask oneself where one is, not as a reaction, not as a… just as a challenge?
34:09	And it would be very interesting to find out one’s own response to that challenge.
34:27	Q: You don’t mean the place where one is; you mean the state of mind. K: Yes, sir. Not at Wimbledon.
34:40	Q: Sir, the problem is that one arrives at a point, one suddenly feels, ‘I am here’, one is free of everything and suddenly one is afraid of this void.
34:51	This void is actually a mental concept; one doesn’t give it a chance to come upon you; but before it actually comes upon you, you think it’s going to swallow you up and you set off the other reaction all over again, you create fear and off you go all over again. K: So, if you asked yourself, that would be your response.
35:16	Q: So the problem is how to remain without remain continuously eating up one’s mind before it gets a chance of having… K: No, sir, no, I wouldn’t... I don’t know…
35:29	It is not continuously remaining in a certain state. Q: No, I didn’t really mean that… K: No, no.
35:34	Q: I mean... comes to it; one doesn’t give it a chance. One comes to something unknown and just as we go to approach it, we think…
35:41	we look back, in a sense, and we begin to think...
35:48	K: I understand. Quite.
35:56	Q:...the thing that one thinks one wants with one hand, the other hand is fighting against. With one hand, I say I want, you know, peace… K: All that implies, doesn’t it, conflict?
36:07	Q: Exactly; yes. K: And conflict is contradiction; contradiction, conflict and effort.
36:15	That’s our circle. Q: Because of... it is impossible to have this concept without an ideal... K: No, no, no concept at all. Sir, look, we live with love and hate, don’t we, anger and pleasure; this conflict going on in us, always, endlessly.
36:44	And there is this contradiction, which breeds effort, and effort is a reaction. I don’t know… You know all this.
36:58	Q: To answer the question whether it is possible, something else is possible also is a duality...
37:04	K: No, no, no, I only put it as a… not… you know, sir, it is not something that you are seeking, that… all the rest of it. Where… I put the question differently: where is one?
37:19	Q: Unless you are already there, you cannot put the question... K: No... I’m… Let’s leave that question aside.
37:26	Let’s put the question differently. I’ve lived for forty years, let’s say.
37:34	Where am I?
37:42	I’m married, child, sex, anger, jealousy, ambition, house, family, the quarrels, the… – you know? – the mistakes, the failures – I’m all that; wanting more, fighting for more – you know? – and I say, ‘Now, where am I at the end of forty years or eighty years, where am I? In the same old grind?’ Q: Not quite the same but almost. K: Ah… Modified.
38:27	Q: Sir, isn’t the problem that one is… one’s mind is like a tape recorder; one has recorded over it for so many years the same thing, the same thing, the same thing...? K: Yes sir; yes… Q: One comes to oneself once that this is all rubbish; the answer is to rip it out. So what is one to do?
38:41	At the moment of ripping it out you think... recorded a little bit more on here, a little bit more variety, perhaps, so you go putting off the thing, to rip it up or not rip it up...
38:52	K: So, you say, one says to oneself, ‘I am a machine that’s endlessly repeating’, repeating modified – you know? – not always the same gramophone, the same sound but it’s modified, changed a little bit but it’s in the same pattern.
39:14	Then what is one to do? If one realizes that, what is one to do?
39:22	Break it? And how to break it without creating another pattern?
39:27	Q: But one doesn’t have to break it if one realizes and says to oneself, ‘I am a machine that’s doing this, that and the other’; the minute one has that realization, because one is looking at it, one simply can’t possibly go on being it. K: So how do you look at it?
39:44	How do you become aware that you are a machine and not let the recorder create another pattern of machine, another recorder, and so on, so on, the endless repetitions modified?
40:09	How is one to be so aware of one’s own mechanical ways of thinking and to be free without creating another mechanism going?
40:31	I don’t know if I’m making myself clear. Q: What one, it seems to me, has to do is to become more aware of any environment in which one is at any given time, because by doing that, you’re more in the present…
40:44	K: All right… Then what do you mean by aware, being aware?
40:54	I am aware of my environment – hm? – the society, the family, the friends, the business I live in.
41:05	Q: No, I merely mean putting one’s attention out on the immediate environment such as the wall, the people, the... K: Wait, just… let’s just begin slowly. When we talk about being aware, what do we mean by that word?
41:21	Q: Looking. K: Looking. How do you look?
41:27	Q: In order to look, one must have distance. K: Ah… How do you look?
41:32	Q: In order to look there must be no looker. K: That’s right, sir. Now, are we exchanging words or facts?
41:45	I don’t know if you… You follow, sir, what I mean? Q: Yes.
41:53	Q: I... aware is to listen implies the establishment of a relationship.
42:03	K: No sir, just a minute, sir. I’m first of all asking the meaning of that word, to be aware.
42:11	I am aware that I’m sitting in front of this microphone.
42:19	And I say to... what do I mean by being aware of that? I see it and I know it’s a microphone, and that’s fairly simple, there is nothing to it. But I am aware of you sitting there and of me sitting here.
42:45	I am… is there any relationship between you and me?
42:54	I don’t… That’s part of awareness, isn’t it?
43:05	Do I look at you with my peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, tendencies, prejudices, or do I look at you without all that?
43:20	If I look at you with all my contents of my mind, then I’m not looking at you; I’m not aware of you.
43:35	I see... is it verbal or factual?
43:42	Intellectual concept that I’m not aware of you when my mind is crowded – is that just a concept, or is it a fact, a realization that I’m not aware of you when I am this, when I’m full of my own fears, hopes, problems, and all the rest of it? So there can be only a contact, an awareness, a communion between you and me when you and I both, at the same time, at the same level, with the same intensity, are free of your background, of my background, then we can communicate.
44:31	And after all, that is love. Q: Is it possible?
44:39	K: And all that is awareness, surely. Not only am I aware of the colours of the wall and the people, the colour of the dresses, and so on, so on, and also my inward reaction to all that, and my reaction based on my conditioning, and whether it’s possible to be free of those conditionings.
45:10	Verbally you can go on endlessly talking about this, but to be actually be aware of my conditioning and stepping out of it, as it were, if it is possible, and see what that relationship is then.
45:40	After all, that is movement of life, not my prejudices meeting your prejudices; that stops everything.
46:04	So can I take stock of myself without any kick, without pleasure or pain, just to take stock of myself as I am?
46:37	First superficially, that is, superficially in the sense consciously, at the conscious level and then at the deeper level.
46:53	And, in taking stock of myself, am I the observer taking stock?
47:00	I don’t know if you are…
47:07	Then, as long as there is an observer taking stock, then he becomes the censor.
47:18	And is it possible to take stock without the censor? I don’t know if you…
47:30	All this demands tremendous vitality, energy and attention.
47:43	And if one can’t do it, one is not serious, and we can go around playing…
47:53	So that’s why I… we suggested… where are we?
48:04	Am I still caught in my own problems: sex, financial, oh, dozen problems, conscious or unconscious? If I have conscious problems, perhaps I have not the capacity to deal with them.
48:35	And if I have the capacity and have dealt with them and pushed them aside, then also there are the unconscious problems, problems which are deeply seated, problems which are so in the recesses of one’s mind, so secret that one has never looked at or exposed or one is frightened to look at.
49:13	Can one bring all this out and recognize them as they are, not as I wish them to be?
49:32	And can we deal with them not bit by bit – totally?
49:40	I don’t… Am I…? It seems to me that is the major issue with most of us, that we don’t seem to be able to meet life as a whole or ourselves as a whole.
50:05	Because we are life, we are society, we are the human being who has lived for a million years and more, two, and to take this whole entity, not the intellectual entity, the emotional entity, the physical entity, but the total thing, because each reacts on the other, each is related to the other, most intricate manner; take the whole thing and deal with it as a whole.
50:45	Q: Sir, am I right in saying that fundamentally there is only one thing? It may be in a thousand forms but the only thing in the world is the primeval fear and everything else, even love, is just some...
50:59	K: Yes, partly; yes, that’s right, fear. Q: Negative fears... K: I mean, the animals are afraid and we are part of that animal; we have… born with all these fears and anxieties, and all the rest of it.
51:13	Taking fear... all right, take fear as a whole, not, ‘I’m afraid of my wife or husband or my boss or this…’ – fear, and deal with it as a whole and be rid of it so completely inwardly so it never touches you.
51:35	Is it possible? Q: There is fear of making a mistake, sir... K: I don’t mind making mistakes, that’s a very small affair.
51:50	That’s part of our fear, making mistakes, not always being right.
51:57	Q: But it could be serious while driving... K: Yes, sir; yes, sir…
52:04	Q: Surely there is a way through this and I think pursuing earlier, that all these things, these confusions and conflicts and fears are looking back in oneself, which is
52:18	past mental picture of things that have happened or projections of the past which might happen so that in order to be free and park all this and leave it so it doesn’t affect one, one has to be able to look out at any environment where one is.
52:32	K: Yes, that’s what we said, we must look out and then from that outward approach the inner; it is not just keep looking out; it is a movement, surely.
52:43	It’s a tide that goes out and comes in; it’s an endless process… This is… begin with the outer and come in, and from inner, outer, not two different things.
52:57	Q: You mean, sir, there is no distinction really between the inside, which is the mind, and the outside, which is the world?
53:02	K: Yes, sir; yes, sir… Inside the skin and outside the skin. Q: There is really no distinction; not really.
53:10	K: Sir, I’m coming to that, sir. Look, can we deal with life as a whole, which is the inner as well as the outer? Not the intellectual concept and another concept; not dividing the intellect, the emotion, the… the whole thing, conscious as well as the unconscious.
53:40	Because if we don’t take it as a whole and break it up and then try to solve the problems which each broken part, fragmentary… fragment creates a problem, we shall… there is no end to it.
54:04	Because we live in fragments: I am a human… I am one thing in the office, I am another thing in the family and I am totally another thing when I’m by myself… in the bus or walking in a wood.
54:26	Q: Is not the whole problem in that? K: That’s what I’m saying.
54:33	That’s the whole problem. Consciously I’m one thing, unconsciously I’m another.
54:47	Now, is it possible to look at this whole… to look at it as a whole and not as fragments, and dealing with fragments?
55:06	Q: Excuse me, I’m not trying to be pedantic; you know when you say to look at it as a whole; is it possible you could give some…
55:13	you know, it’s very difficult for me to grasp, to look at it. K: I’m coming to that, sir; slowly, I want… We’ll come to it.
55:26	Q: It’s not very difficult, though. K: What, sir? Q: To look at it as a whole...
55:31	K: I’m not sure; I’m not sure. That’s not… No, I wouldn’t call it difficult; I wouldn’t call it difficult.
55:37	Q: Not in the sense of trying to make an effort to look... K: Yes; I wouldn’t call it difficult.
55:43	Q: No. K: We are so conditioned; we are so used to dealing with life in fragments.
56:03	And is it possible for a human being to take life as a whole and look at it as a whole? Now, that’s what I want to get at. Right? Shall we proceed?
56:16	Q: We mustn’t have the idea that it is difficult. That’s what prevents us from seeing it. K: Ah, no, no, I don’t know yet. I don’t know what it is to be… whether it is difficult or easy. All that I know is that we have dealt… Q: It seems difficult to us.
56:28	K: No, no, no, you don’t know what it means to look at life as a whole, therefore you can’t call it difficult or easy.
56:39	All that we know is that our life is fragmentary.
56:45	Q: But if we were to remove the idea of difficulty, perhaps we could see it...
56:50	K: Yes, sir. But, you see, we are not concerned that we are dealing…
57:00	that we are… our life is fragmentary.
57:07	I’m a scientist, a professor, a biologist, a businessman, a technician and I’m something else at the other end and we live that way, in compartments.
57:28	Now, first I have to realize that – right? – not whether to look at life as a whole is difficult or not; first I have to realize the way I live.
57:54	Now, how do I realize it? Do I realize it because you tell me that I live fragmentarily, and because you have told me, then I realize it?
58:12	I don’t know if you… Or I realize it without your telling me?
58:20	You don’t have to tell me that I’m hungry; I know it when I’m hungry.
58:43	So how does one realize this thing? Through experience? I don’t know… Am I making myself clear? Or someone tells you? Or is it your first-hand experience; your own, not somebody else’s?
59:13	Q: No, it’s a fact, isn’t it, when you see it…? K: Ah, ah, wait, sir; wait, sir. It’s terribly difficult. Don’t be too quick at this.
59:21	It is terribly difficult for me to realize that I’m a liar.
59:38	I can find out that I’m a liar because of circumstances, pressures, fears, and all the rest of it, but that’s still a reaction, not a realization.
59:51	I don’t know…
1:00:00	So I must first find out or learn as a thing for myself, an original thing, whether… realize my fragmentary way of life.
1:00:30	Q: Why do you say that’s the central problem, Krishnaji? K: What? Q: That I live in a fragmentary fashion.
1:00:35	K: I don’t say it’s simple. Q: No, why do you say it’s the central problem, the most important... the core? K: Because...
1:00:44	I am trying to solve problems fragmentarily and hence increasing my problems.
1:00:58	When I look at life as a whole and deal with it as a whole, then my whole way of living, thinking, feeling is totally different.
1:01:21	Then I’m terribly honest. You follow?
1:01:31	Q: It’s a principal barrier that prevents us from... K: All the rest of it. That’s one of the… I say it’s one of the major issues, if you like to put it.
1:01:50	So how does one realize anything?
1:01:57	How do I realize that I am living a fragmentary life and that way of living brings about innumerable problems, and hence contradiction and hence conflict and effort?
1:02:15	This cycle goes on and on and on.
1:02:20	Q: Your ordinary thought is limited so it must necessarily bring a fragmentary life. You can only think in small parts, in the conscious mind. K: At present, yes; but perhaps there is a different way of thinking or not thinking, which will solve this fragmentary problem.
1:02:45	Q: But you said that to live, to look at life totally, one has to be aware of oneself totally, and that, for me, is the question.
1:03:01	K: No, sir; no, sir... I beg your pardon... I’m only…
1:03:09	No, let… I am aware that I live a fragmentary life.
1:03:21	Now, how am I aware of it? That’s very important for me to find out.
1:03:29	Q: Sir, if I watch myself and I see that I am awake, I am asleep, I am...
1:03:40	I go deeper and I don’t sleep, I don’t dream, then I find myself in a fragmentary... process.
1:03:49	K: No, madame, let us stick to this one thing for a minute, if you don’t mind.
1:04:04	I realize, I see my way of life. The way of my life is fragmentary: office, house, family... – you know? – fragmentary.
1:04:22	Now, how do I realize it? How do I know it?
1:04:31	Is it an intellectual concept or a reality?
1:04:43	Q: It creates conflict; the bits get in conflict with one another and that creates a disturbance and I recognize that there are these fragments.
1:04:57	Q: There’s no disturbance if one...
1:05:04	Q: The fragments are a... of which we’re always aware of.
1:05:09	K: No, I’m trying to… Sir, we are trying to establish, if it is possible, what we mean by realizing.
1:05:23	Q: One looks at things as one wishes to see them instead of seeing them as they are, and it’s that wishing to see it that is really the conditioning that brings that about and one must get rid of that conditioning. K: Ah, no, not ‘get rid’, I mean, then… Q: I mean, one must realize the conditioning.
1:05:44	K: You know, there is a difference when somebody tells me that I’m in conflict because of the fragmentary way of living, and when, without being told, I realize it; I know it.
1:06:04	It is not an intellectual thing; I know my life is fragmentary.
1:06:12	Q: Because I’ve come... K: Ah? Beg your pardon?
1:06:19	Beg your pardon? Q: Conscious is not fragmentary… K: I don’t… my… please, this… let’s keep it simple at first; we’ll… it becomes complicated a little later. Let’s begin slowly.
1:06:34	You see, we are second-hand human beings and our experiences, except perhaps for hunger and sex, is second-hand, all… everything, practically.
1:07:02	And is the realization that I’m fragmentary second-hand or original? That’s all.
1:07:09	If it is original, then it has quite a different vitality; it has quite... it brings a tremendous energy.
1:07:26	Q: Actually, Krishnaji, you wake up to it... K: No, no, no, please; no, madame.
1:07:33	Q: But it is just that point, isn’t it, that to realize war must take a part in it than my thought; it isn’t a thought... K: So, what is it… – no, sir, just a minute what is it that takes part, the ‘more’?
1:07:51	Not only thought… Q: My feeling. K: Your feeling, your nerves… Hm? Q: My whole body.
1:07:57	K: Your whole body. That means what? Q: The totality of it. K: Go on, sir, go on… Go on a little more; proceed; don’t... don’t…
1:08:10	Do we look at anything with all our being: with our mind, with our heart, with our body, with our nerves, with our eyes, with our smell – you follow? – everything?
1:08:32	Does it ever happen?
1:08:45	Q: The paradox… there’s a paradox because... – I mean an actual one, I don’t mean a conceptual one – we realize that we are fragmented because while we are doing one thing, a part of us wants to do something else; you know, like you’re looking but... ...are going in another direction; you’re doing a job and you’re thinking something else. You realize this because of the intrusion of something which is not a part of a whole. K: Ah, no… Q: When you are whole, there is not a realization of the part. You are a whole; there’s no part to realize...
1:09:20	K: Yes, sir, but how do I come to that? How does the mind come to that state when there is no intrusion? Everything is... whole. I don’t know if I’m conveying anything.
1:09:35	Ah? What, sir? Q:... you’re just doing something that you’re totally interested in doing. K: No, no, no, no; you’re not… No, no, no, no…
1:09:47	That… the total interest is merely a concentration.
1:09:57	You… I’m afraid we must go very, very slowly, step by step; otherwise we can’t… we are jumping. Q:...in a moment of crisis.
1:10:12	K: But life is a crisis. Not ‘in a moment of crisis’; everything is… terrible, life is.
1:10:23	Q:...evaluation, if all the time there is evaluation going on and that will have to stop. K: Sir, will you give me two minutes; let me talk a bit, a little bit?
1:10:41	One knows that one lives a fragmentary life and one also knows, in the sense, intellectually, verbally, that these fragments create the opposites and hence the contradiction, conflict and effort. One knows that verbally, intellectually.
1:11:09	To know it, to be… to know it completely, not through intellect, not through mere words, demands quite a different approach, surely. Right?
1:11:30	To know you…
1:11:37	Now, wait a minute; let’s begin. To know you – what does it mean to know somebody?
1:11:50	I know you because I’ve been… we are friends, we have met several times before. I have certain memories, certain reactions, and according to those memories, reactions and prejudices, experiences, I say I know you. So I really don’t know you. I only know the past of which I am aware.
1:12:21	Right? So I really don’t know you. I only know you when the past doesn’t interfere, surely.
1:12:34	Right? So, in the same way, I live a fragmentary life, and any effort on my part to integrate the fragments creates another fragment, surely.
1:13:05	So I… there is no integration of fragments. Right?
1:13:14	I don’t know if you… So I must look at it in a totally different way.
1:13:22	I must approach this problem entirely differently. Now, how am I to do it?
1:13:37	Therefore I… no action of will is going to bring the fragments to an end.
1:13:45	Right? Would you…? Are we going along together? That means no action of will at any level. That’s very difficult. Right?
1:14:04	But all my life I have exercised will and now to suddenly deny that will is almost impossible. I don’t know if…
1:14:20	It is this will that has created the fragments: I will, and I will not. I don’t know if you are…? Right, sirs?
1:14:33	So I have to look at it quite differently. I have to understand the nature of will so that will doesn’t interfere.
1:14:45	I don’t know if… Am I proceeding…? Can I proceed? Are we…?
1:14:54	Can I proceed? Right. Now, what is will?
1:15:02	Don’t define it.
1:15:10	To find out what is will, because we are coming to something, which is, to live a life without will. You follow? I don’t know…
1:15:33	What is will?
1:15:41	When do you say, ‘I will. I must’ – determination, a drive, a resistance?
1:16:11	When does this will come into operation?
1:16:20	When you desire something very strongly or don’t desire, surely. Right?
1:16:28	When I desire strongly, which is based on pleasure or displeasure; when I want something, then will comes into operation. That is, when there is the urgency of desire and that desire meets resistance or an easy way out, then that creates will. This is fairly simple and clear. Now, what is desire?
1:17:31	So, without understanding desire, which breeds will, which separates life into fragments, I shall not be able to solve this whole fragmentary issues. Right?
1:17:52	So I must be completely familiar, learn about desire; not destroy it, not resist it, not say to myself, ‘I must be without desire’, which is all too silly.
1:18:17	So I must be completely au fait with it; I must know all the movements of it: the physical desires, the emotional reactions which we call desires and the intellectual concepts, the goals, the objectives that create desire.
1:18:48	I don’t know… I must know the whole of it, not just one fragment of desire.
1:19:13	Q: It’s only when there is opposition that we are conscious of desire. K: Ah, no, sir; no, no; no, no. Q: If there is no opposition...
1:19:19	K: Ah, no, no, no, no… Not only opposition.
1:19:26	I see a beautiful car, I want it. There is no opposition. I see a beautiful person and I rejoice in it.
1:19:40	If you are very sensual, you say... all the rest of it.
1:19:49	Q: If, sir, if fear is fundamental to all life, then living can only be a succession of more or less futile efforts to escape from fear.
1:20:01	Each effort to escape brings its own reaction… K: Surely. Q: … and so life is just a series of conflicts...
1:20:07	K: Ah... Sir, we will come to the understanding of fear through the understanding of desire.
1:20:14	You will see the connection.
1:20:24	So I must find out what is desire, how it comes into being and what gives continuity to desire.
1:20:38	Right?
1:20:54	Please, I’m not against desire; I’m not saying one must live a life without desire; that’s all... it has no meaning, all that. I must know for myself the origin, the beginning of desire, how it comes into being, how it takes hold and what gives it a process which, as it moves, gathers strength, and then the battle to resist it.
1:21:34	You…? I must learn this whole phenomenon, about this whole phenomenon.
1:21:55	So what is desire? I think it’s fairly simple, isn’t it?
1:22:08	Seeing, contact, sensation and the feeling from that sensation which is, ‘I’d like to have, I don’t like to have’.
1:22:20	It’s fairly… that’s fairly… I mean, we needn’t spend time on this issue, how desire arises.
1:22:30	I see a beautiful car, the lines, and all the rest of it and I want it. Q: Well, it’s no problem if you’ve got the money. K: Wait, that… no, no…
1:22:43	I’m not talking about the problem of having a car or not a car, sir. No, I want to know how desire arises. Of course, if I have the money or if I have not money, I deal with it. But I want to know how it comes into my being, how desire exists, how it flowers, what gives it nourishment.
1:23:15	I can… This is fairly simple. I see a beautiful thing, a beautiful house, a beautiful woman, a beautiful man, a car – it doesn’t matter what it is, a flower, a garden, lovely garden; there is the… obviously there is sensation; seeing, sensation, contact and desire. Right?
1:23:40	No, please, you’re not listening to me; this is a fact which you know for yourself.
1:23:49	This is so obvious. What is not obvious is what makes it flower, what gives it endurance, vitality, a tremendous drive behind it?
1:24:10	Q: Thinking about it. K: Ah? Right. Isn’t it?
1:24:18	Q: You can’t really have one’s attention... K: No, no; no, no, please; we are discussing…
1:24:26	we are trying to find out what gives strength, vitality, drive, the flowering of desire; what gives it the nourishment? Q: The feeling that we’d all be better off if we had something more...
1:24:41	K: What… which is what? As the lady said, thinking, thought.
1:24:48	Q: Imagination.
1:24:55	K: So, I can look at a car, see the desire arises; if I don’t think – quotes – then there is no nourishment…
1:25:04	there is no vitality behind it. But wait a minute. A car is something quite objective, but subjectively, inwardly, it’s much more.
1:25:21	So I see, I perceive, I understand, I observe the fact that desire is sustained and nourished by thought.
1:25:57	Q: It’s not just thought. It’s thought in combination with the feeling of myself. K: Just begin, sir, little.
1:26:04	Begin with the little things and we’ll go into bigger things.
1:26:13	And then I say to myself, if thought is the giver of nourishment to desire and I know desire is pleasurable and painful, and I know also that I would like to keep the pleasurable desires and throw away the desires that cause pain, again I’m dealing in fragments. Right? I don’t know… If I say, ‘I’ll keep these and I’ll throw away those’, I’m dealing with fragments.
1:27:02	So I have now to see whether thought can…
1:27:18	why does thought interfere?
1:27:33	I think we’d better stop, don’t we? It’s half past eight. Ah? Sorry; I didn’t realize it.
1:27:54	Why does thought interfere? Q: Because it isn’t necessarily true; it doesn’t necessarily relate to the object.
1:28:10	Q: Is it just habit? Q: Isn’t it because we feel insecure, we have a sense of insecurity, something which we’re afraid look at continuously where we...?
1:28:23	K: Sir, look, look, look. I’m asking you a question… Q: And I’m trying to answer it.
1:28:29	K: No, don’t answer it; don’t answer it yet. Q: Why shouldn’t it interfere?
1:28:38	K: Now, sir, look, I’m asking you a question, or rather you are asking me a question.
1:28:45	I know I can answer, ten different words will come out, but can I listen to you without answering and try to find out what is the fact?
1:29:12	I don’t know… Am I…? You know what I…? If I answer immediately, I answer the good old…
1:29:23	I bring it out from my habit, from my repertoire of words. But if I… you have asked me and I listen; I listen, and I’m silent.
1:29:42	I don’t know the answer. I really don’t know why thought interferes or why it should not interfere. Wait, sir; wait, sir; wait, wait, wait.
1:30:03	I know it interferes, and I say to myself, ‘Why?’ Don’t I wait to find out?
1:30:19	Don’t I feel around, make my mind be quiet, not always – you know? – throwing up words? Just find out for oneself why does thought interfere?
1:30:41	Actually, I’ve never thought about it. This is the first time I’m asking myself why does thought interfere.
1:30:51	I’m waiting. You follow? Q: Time? K: Wait, wait. No. In the sense, I really don’t know. Right? I am not waiting to find the answer. I really don’t know. Q: But we know it does interfere.
1:31:09	K: Oh… Yes, sir, it does interfere; it does interfere.
1:31:25	So how do I find out what is the truth of the matter?
1:31:34	Infallible truth, not opinion, not according to Jung, Freud and mahatmas and… all the rest of it. I just want to know why does it interfere.
1:32:00	And not knowing, I become silent, don’t I? Don’t you? I don’t know so… – wait, wait – so my body, my nerves, my mind, my heart, everything is quiet because I really don’t know the answer.
1:32:35	Shall we continue next time? Sorry, it’s half past eight, eight thirty-five; I think we’d better stop.