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LO65D4 - Is it possible to live in this world without experiencing?
London - 3 May 1965
Public Discussion 4



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s fourth public discussion in London, 1965.
0:09 Krishnamurti: Shall we continue with what we were talking the other day, about time?
0:19 We were saying that time, apart from the physical time by the watch, creates disorder, and to be sane, factual, unemotional, which is non-sentimental, one has to understand the whole structure of time.
1:13 We went into that, somewhat, and I think perhaps this evening we can approach it from a different angle.
1:40 Conflict in any form is the illusion of time, and we are all in conflict of different kinds at different levels of our being, and we accept conflict as inevitable, the conflict of life, and we adjust ourselves to that conflict.
2:33 And one can see that conflict in any form distorts, perverts thought, and therefore thought becomes the breeder of illusion, which is time.
3:04 Now, as we said the other day, we are not talking about something; we’re not talking about an idea.
3:23 It’s like somebody else painting a picture and you looking at it and saying, ‘I like it,’ or ‘Don’t like it,’ wondering who has painted it, if it has any monetary value and so on and on and on.
3:40 We’re not doing that. You’re not looking at a verbal picture.
3:50 We are actually living the thing that is being said, and the thing that is being said is not foreign, is not something strange, and that’s why it’s very important, I think, to listen so attentively, not only to the speaker but to everything in life, listen without any distortion, listen without time, and then perhaps we shall find out for ourselves whether it is possible to live in this world, earning a livelihood, having a family, a life of continuous movement in relationship, whether it’s at all possible to live without effort and therefore without time.
5:23 Time also implies space.
5:36 We only know space from a centre, which is the observer, and therefore our space is always... has a limit, a boundary, a frontier.
6:15 We only know space because of the house, the four walls, not as a theory, but actually.
6:32 And within ourselves, when we look at ourselves and consider what space is, there is always a centre from which we are looking and therefore space is limited, and this limitation is bred by the observer.
7:09 And in the modern world, where space is going less and less, physically, unless you go to the moon and other planets.
7:32 One has to have space. After all, space without the centre, space without a boundary is freedom, and that freedom is not possible when there is time which creates the illusion of the observer who limits space by his thought.
8:11 And the observer divides himself from the thing which he has observed, and therefore there is a space between the observed and the observer, which is still of time.
8:31 I hope you’re following all this, but it doesn’t matter. Because it’s very interesting, if you go into it for yourselves, to find out what space is, whether you can have space, not only outwardly, but inwardly, without going cuckoo.
8:56 It’s only in space there is no influence, there is no pressure, there is no the civilised entity as the observer, the centre who discriminates, who exercises will to achieve or not to achieve.
9:26 So, in understanding time - not the physical time - we have also to understand this question of space, whether there is a space without the observer and the thing observed.
9:55 Because the observer and the thing observed, if they are separate, there is conflict, and to understand conflict, and so to be free of conflict, neither the observer nor the observed must exist.
10:27 Does it mean anything to anybody, all this? Because I know... we know space only because of the house, the four walls, the chair that creates space round it, the space as distance in time.
10:59 And, the struggle, the conflict, the drive to achieve from the centre to that which is projected by thought as the end.
11:29 And we know space because we exist as a human being, with all its turmoil, conflicts, miseries, sorrows, and that centre becomes the experiencer, the observer, and from that centre he knows space, but he doesn’t know space without that centre, and therefore, without discovering that space without the centre, he’s always slave to time, and hence the constant strain, conflict of duality, the observer and the observed.
12:38 Is this all Greek, or Chinese, which is it?
13:00 And the observer, which is the me, the thought – you know? - the centre, creates a space around himself either to ward off, to push away, to resist, or through identification, he establishes another centre, and so the experiencer and the observer cannot exist without creating another centre.
14:02 He may reject his centre because his centre is the result of time and experience and knowledge, and when he rejects or understands that, in the sense, he hasn’t completely... he’s not free of that centre, he invariably creates another outside of himself, as an idea, as a utopia, as a symbol, as God, as what you will, and proceeds to identify himself with that, and so he still creates space as time, and time to achieve.
15:12 So if one would understand this question of a life without effort, which is really quite extraordinary, demanding great sensitivity, great attention, not just saying, ‘How can I live without effort in the modern world?’ - just brushing it off, or trying to make that into an idea and live according to that idea, which then becomes an effort.
15:51 Because, to be really spontaneous, and not instinctive, not impetuous, but to be really spontaneous, and therefore an action which is always spontaneous, not limited by time, one has to understand this question of time and space.
16:48 You know, if the mind is crowded and has no space, you cannot look, you cannot really observe.
17:23 And to observe totally demands a look, a seeing, a hearing in which distance is not, therefore space is not, the space created by the centre.
18:02 If I would see you and you see me, if your mind is crowded with problems, with every kind of questioning, doubt, misery, then there is no space in which to look.
18:33 And most of us don’t want space because space means fear.
18:53 And so is it possible to live in this world, not escaping from it, without experiencing?
19:33 Because the moment there is an experiencing, there is the experiencer who creates or prevents space from being.
19:53 Am I talking...?
20:00 This is not as crazy as it sounds. Because it’s only in space anything new can take place, but as long as I’m experiencing everything, and therefore translating the new in terms of the old, which is experience, the space created by the experiencer is always limited, is in the field of time.
20:58 So how am I, who have accumulated great deal of information, knowledge, experience, and that experience creating a space around itself, and therefore limiting space in which I live with my identification with all the things which I’ve experienced, with all the memories, with the past, how can I be free of it?
21:53 How can I so completely reject it that very rejection is an explosion?
22:08 When we ask the how, the how is disorder because it’s of time.
22:27 I don’t know...
22:37 The fact is each human being, who is really not an individual at all, is held in time as the experiencer projecting his own space round himself.
23:05 That centre is the observer, and whatever he looks at is still the observed, and therefore there is no relationship between the observer and the observed; that is, no real communion.
23:33 Communion exists only when the centre is not, and that takes place when there is, if I may use that word without distorting it, when there is love.
23:50 And love is not of time, it’s not of remembrance, it’s not of the past.
24:01 How am I, as a human being who has lived a life of experience, accumulating knowledge, whose centre creates the space of time and its bondage, is it possible for me to cease and therefore for space to exist?
24:50 You see, death must be something extraordinary, and nobody wants to know what it is.
25:29 Nobody wants to find out the enormous significance of something I don’t know.
25:51 I know there is death, and I see others going to their grave, myself becoming old, losing my capacity, not only physical but mental, emotional, my... the lessening of the sensitivity, and the quickening of deterioration.
26:30 And anything I experience as the unknown, which is death, is still in the field of time if I experience it.
26:53 But to find out what death is, there must not only be the end of fear, which is fairly obvious, but also one has to really understand this complex thing called time and the space which I cannot experience as an observer or an experiencer.
27:47 After all, I know nothing about peace, you don’t know what peace is.
27:57 We talk about it, the politicians everlastingly play with that word. We don’t know what it means, actually. Not the verbal meaning, but that state of peace where there is tremendous activity without conflict, without time.
28:34 To find out, what does one do? You understand my...? No, don’t please put yourself the question, ‘How am I to do it?
28:50 How am I to achieve it?’ The moment when you put that question, ‘How?’ you’re already bringing in disorder because you’re introducing time as a means to achieve peace, and that which is achieved through time is no longer peace, it’s only a disorder, a confusion.
29:23 So it’s something I don’t know. You don’t know what it means to be really peaceful, which means no violence at all.
29:38 Not only killing the animal to eat, killing each other, wars, nationalities, the ambition, greed, envy, and the discipline of society which becomes immoral, and this disciplining of oneself, trying to conform, imitate a pattern, an idea, pursue a symbol, which is all in the structure of violence, and so we don’t know what this extraordinary thing called peace is.
30:25 We think ban the bomb and we’ll have peace - certainly not - or try to control anger, or get rid of this or that.
30:43 That doesn’t bring about peace. So we don’t know what it is, as we don’t know what love is, or death is.
30:52 We know love as jealousy, as pleasure, and the conflict of jealousy, and the sexual relationships of pleasure, which is all of time, and therefore we don’t know actually - know, in the sense, not as an experiencer, because that’s too immature, if I may use that word, too limited, but to be aware of this extraordinary thing called love, or to be aware of peace or of death.
31:50 So there is this thing called death.
31:59 I’m not talking about it because I’m getting old, or you avoid it because you can’t understand it, or have theories about reincarnation or resurrection, or all the rest of it, or try to brush it away and lock it up.
32:23 It is something unknown, like love and peace, a life which is without effort.
32:38 We don’t know it, and we cannot approach it through time as experience, and therefore we cannot approach it through disorder.
32:54 I don’t know... We must have order to be free from experience.
33:15 It’s only the disordered mind that seeks experience, or wants more experience.
33:30 I do not know if you have gone into this question of experience at all.
33:39 Am I talking too much, or would you like to ask questions?
33:48 Many: (Inaudible).
33:49 K: There is the danger of your merely listening and my going on.
33:58 Questioner: When you say experience, do you mean conditioning?
34:15 K: No, don’t... don’t... We’re asking if one has gone into and explored this question of experience.
34:33 Experience is reaction to a challenge, adequate or inadequate.
34:51 Experience is to go through something - anger, jealousy, what you will, sex, what you will – go through, and going through as an experiencer, and that’s all we call that experience.
35:18 We say, ‘I’ve had a marvellous experience yesterday when I was out walking.
35:25 The beauty of the clouds, the light in them was something extraordinary.’ I’ve experienced, it has become a memory.
35:39 There was that beautiful sunset and I’ve responded.
35:50 We have to respond, otherwise one is dead. If a needle is put into me, I must react, otherwise I’m paralysed.
36:09 But when the experiencer draws from that pinprick or from that sunset a memory of pleasure or pain, then we have set the pattern of experience going.
36:47 And it is this pleasure and pain that translate every reaction as experience, and if there is no experience, or if one is surfeit of experience, one wants a greater experience, a wider, a more significant, meaningful experience.
37:21 Because this life is terribly boring, to see the same wife or the husband, same office year after year, in a crowded little, tight little island, very bourgeois.
37:39 One gets very tired of all that.
37:46 One either becomes a beatnik, a Beatle... (Laughter) K: ...or one takes to drugs because what we want is more experience.
38:06 And the more experience is always the demand for the same in terms of the new.
38:15 Therefore, when you go into experience, if we had no experience at all most of us would go to sleep.
38:32 If there were no challenging of the state, of your neighbour, of the computer, the automation, we’d all go to sleep.
38:50 And we depend on experience to keep us awake in that sense.
38:57 Now, if one has gone beyond that a little bit, not in time, understands it, then you create your own challenge, therefore the challenge is much more acute, much more vital than the challenge which is given to you from outside.
39:30 So that challenge which you have posed yourself is still within the field of time because you as the experiencer are responding to that.
39:45 So... you’re following all what I’m talking about?
39:49 Q: Yes.
39:50 K: So there is the outward challenge or inward challenge to that outward response, and there is... then one can put aside the outward challenge because that has very little meaning for a really serious man.
40:11 And one has one’s own challenge, which becomes much more acute, much more vital, and when one understands that too, then is there a need for challenge at all?
40:34 Because every experience is still the experiencer and the thing experienced in time, therefore creating illusion and creating a space which is time bound.
40:53 I don’t know if you’re following all this. So to see, to observe without the experiencer is to create order, which is really virtue.
41:20 We won’t go into that at the moment. Oh, it’s marvellous, you don’t know what…
41:40 So the mind, which is the... the brain, the nerves, everything that I know and I experience, I think, feel, and strive after, is from a centre of experience or the experienced or the experiencing, and with that I try to discover something which...
42:12 I try to find out the unknown as death, as love, as peace, therefore the very attempt to find out is disorder.
42:26 I wonder if you’re... And this is, at least seems to me this is terribly important to understand this.
42:44 Order is peace, but not the social order; that, of course, you must have.
43:09 Not the order of relationship between husband and wife; that also is necessary.
43:16 But the order which we want to establish in the world is based on time, and therefore it’s everlastingly producing disorder.
43:30 Look at all the politicians, the lawyers, the... look at them.
43:42 They want order on their terms, which is disorder.
43:56 But to have order, which is really an extraordinary structure of understanding, and that understanding is not of time, and you cannot grasp this understanding as an experience.
44:34 So there is, like death, something new, the unknown.
44:53 I cannot possibly approach that thing with the known, as the known.
45:05 So you see the problem: How am I, who is a bundle of the known to experience...
45:24 – ah, sorry; withdraw. (Laughter) K: ... to...
45:33 Q: (Inaudible).
45:36 K: Much better; sorry; quite right.
45:46 How am I, who is the known, to end it, without introducing time, without experiencing the dying of the known?
46:14 You...?
46:21 I cannot possibly conceive, formulate the unknown.
46:30 No symbol, no word can be that. The word is not that.
46:43 So is it possible to die to the known, the known as the memory of my wife and my children, the pleasures which we’ve had together, the problem, to die without experiencing the death, and without effort, and therefore without time?
47:49 (Pause) You know - let’s look at it differently - life is a movement, as action in relationship, and it’s a movement without a beginning or without an end, movement.
48:50 But all our actions spring from the known as an idea, and carrying out that idea in action.
49:10 Is this getting too complicated?
49:22 When one says to oneself, ‘I will do this tomorrow,’ you have already projected the tomorrow and the idea, and the action that is going to follow from that idea; not only physical action - of course that must be, so we won’t bring that in, because that’ll confuse it more; there must be that - but the psychological, the action involving time.
50:03 That’s what we do. I have an idea about myself.
50:16 I think I am that, or I have symbolized my concept of myself in words or in an image, and that idea I want to alter, I want to change, and the change of that idea is still another idea.
50:50 Idea being organized thought, and thought is of time. I don’t know...
50:57 Q: (Inaudible).
50:58 K: And so, thought in time, as time, creates disorder.
51:08 So I see all my activities - trying to be great, trying to become a saint, trying to be successful, trying to be famous, trying to be... – you know?
51:23 - change, do this and do that. There is a division between the concept and act.
51:37 There is the division between the experiencer who is acting, and that’s our life, ‘I am going to be, I will give up, I must be.’ This same thing is carried out politically, as they do in the communist world, the utopia.
52:13 So our action is always divided, and conforming to the pattern of an idea – I don’t know if you’re... – and therefore conflict, and therefore total disorder.
52:46 There is disorder the moment will operates as pleasure in time, as time.
52:59 So I see all this, not somebody has told me or I read a book about it, which is too silly.
53:15 I see all this. I observe it all round me, in myself wherever I go, this is the nature of conflict.
53:28 The very essence of conflict is this observer and the thing observed, and hence the disorder of time, and the bondage of space to time.
54:02 The problem then arises: How does one see?
54:10 I see this, I say I understand this, perhaps intellectually, verbally I understand it.
54:21 I see what you mean. And then the question arises: How am I to put it into action?
54:35 I see it. It seems so terribly sane, rational and logical, structurally as well as verbally.
54:47 How am I to put it... give it the action that is not of me?
55:00 So I have to find out what it means to see, what it means to listen, and what it means to learn, because learning, listening, and seeing are the same.
55:28 They are not three separate things. When I listen, I’m learning, and therefore I’m seeing, therefore seeing is acting, not I see first and then act later.
55:52 Seeing and acting is the interval of time, and therefore the seeing and acting is disorder.
56:01 I don’t know if you get all this.
56:05 Q: (Inaudible).
56:12 K: You follow?
56:23 There is no ‘how’, there is no machinery of how am I going to do it.
56:32 That must be completely wiped out.
56:39 Because one can see why. The moment you say, ‘How am I to do it?’, you’ve already created the division between the experiencer and the thing experienced, and therefore you have already caught in time as practice.
57:03 I am trying to do that; there is this habit and I am going to break that habit, which is a division.
57:22 So, seeing a habit, whatever it be, is the ending of the habit.
57:34 So it is very important to find out for oneself what it is to see.
58:02 Seeing is not only visual, but seeing is also much more of the mind.
58:12 You know, when you’re driving a car, your mind sees much more than your eye.
58:29 It’s already aware of the car coming round the corner before the eye sees it.
58:41 And if the mind isn’t very sensitive, and also the brain, very sensitive, there is no seeing.
58:57 And it cannot be sensitive if the body is not sensitive, the nerves, so one has to have the body and the nerves highly sensitive, not sodden with drink, food – you know?
59:29 - all the rest of it, therefore, right food - I’m not advising you, please.
59:42 (Laughter) K: Then... so the body, the nerves, the brain, the total entity which is the mind, the total thing, which is the conscious as well as the unconscious – I’m... those are all very superficial - there must be great sensitivity, and to activate every part of your body, your brain and your nerves, is to be aware, aware of... – you understand?
1:00:43 - being aware, not whether you like it or not. Aware. Aware of your like and dislikes, how you walk, how you talk, how you listen, so that your...
1:01:02 the unconscious is activated. And... Am I talking too much?
1:01:19 You haven’t asked any questions.
1:01:21 Q: (Inaudible).
1:01:22 K: I’ll stop presently, in two minutes.
1:01:34 So seeing, listening, learning is total attention, in which there is no experiencer, therefore there is no question: ‘How am I to be aware?
1:01:58 How am I to be attentive?’ The ‘how’ is the most disorderly demand.
1:02:15 Either you see or don’t see. If you don’t see, leave it alone; don’t beat yourself in order to see.
1:02:34 So the structure of our being is based on the known, and that known cannot know the unknowable, the unknown, and yet that’s what we are trying to do all the time.
1:03:13 And... We’ll go into it some other time, this question of emptiness and space.
1:03:30 Do you want to ask...?
1:03:31 Q: What is silence?
1:03:32 K: The gentleman asks what is silence.
1:04:07 Silence is that what has been going on while there was talking. (Laughter) K: I’m not saying something absurd.
1:04:29 You know...
1:04:40 Don’t you know what silence is?
1:04:49 Not created by the brain, not put together by discipline, by this absurd artificial practice of meditation, which we’ll go into it another time.
1:05:14 Is there silence, not the entity who experiences silence?
1:05:32 I don’t see how you can separate silence from peace, from death, from beauty, from love.
1:05:45 If you have touched… if there is one thing, the other is.
1:06:01 The astronauts say there is extraordinary silence, don’t they?
1:06:22 Some of them at least.
1:06:30 Probably not, really.
1:06:35 Q: Could we describe silence as equilibrium?
1:06:45 K: I’m afraid you can’t describe it.
1:06:55 How can you describe something which you don’t know, and if you knew it, you’d not describe it.
1:07:09 You know, for most of us, expression becomes extraordinarily important.
1:07:26 The painter insists on expression, otherwise he says, ‘What’s the good of living?’ But to express, there must be creation, and creation is something which may not demand expression at all.
1:08:03 Again, we have... probably this is not the occasion to go into all that.
1:08:05 Q: Krishnaji, to come back to time.
1:08:17 Is it not possible that it is physical time that pulls us into this whole mess?
1:08:33 K: We’ve gone into that, sir. We said physical time is necessary.
1:08:39 Q: But it pulls us into it.
1:08:41 K: Wait. Physical time is necessary. Does it pull us back? No. Physical time is necessary. Then what’s the problem?
1:09:00 Q: The problem is that physical time demands that we think.
1:09:04 K: All right, physical time demands, the gentleman says, that you think.
1:09:05 Q: And when we think, we create psychological time.
1:09:10 K: Ah, do we? We do at present, it’s not necessary, is it? Somebody puts a pin into me. I react, which is normal, healthy and sane.
1:09:26 But why do I build psychologically the whole process of time, which is, I dislike you because you have hurt me, verbally or in other ways.
1:09:42 So the physical time is the pin, and I must react to it.
1:09:52 The reaction is normal - when you hit me, I withdraw. That’s normal. But the disorder comes in when the mind begins to create the experiencer who... etc., etc., etc.
1:10:12 This is fairly simple, isn’t it? Must I explain it? Got it?
1:10:16 Q: (Inaudible).
1:10:17 K: All right, all right, all right. Let’s go into it. You hit me, you flatter me.
1:10:34 Physically you harm me, put a pin into me. I react. That’s physical time, that’s physical response. That’s normal... Right. Why don’t I stop there? I’ll be very careful next time that I don’t come too close to you so that you have...
1:11:03 no put pin in me. But... Wait, wait, wait, wait; listen. But I’ve nothing against you. I don’t say, ‘Well, last time he hit me, and I’m jolly well going... I’m going to hit...’, all that... I stop with the pain, full stop. I don’t build. The building up is the coming into time.
1:11:46 I don’t know if you’re following all this. Many: (Inaudible).
1:11:48 K: I want to say something, I say it to you, but I say it because I’m vain, I want you to flatter – you follow? - the whole circus begins.
1:11:57 So the question is, or rather the thing is, the demand for pleasure, or the avoidance of pain is the continuance of pleasure is time and time is disorder, and I can live in this world without creating disorder, which is pleasure and time.
1:12:37 Well, sir, this is... No?
1:12:39 Q: It’s simple to see.
1:12:40 K: Ah, no. If it is simple to see, it is simple to act.
1:12:50 Q: I mean, it’s so simple and natural that the (inaudible) the pull of physical time that goes on pulls your mind into planning and avoiding.
1:13:02 K: No. If you see... - that’s what I said – if you see that. You’re not attracted to an abyss unless you are something mentally unbalanced.
1:13:14 You’re not attracted to some poison because you see it, you understand it, it’s finished.
1:13:25 So our difficulty is not being attracted or not being attracted, but seeing the fact of pleasure and pain, that’s all.
1:13:38 And the pleasure giving continuance to time and illusion. If I see that, I can look at a beautiful tree, or a woman, or a man, or a child, and, ‘How beautiful,’ and there it is.
1:13:56 But if I begin to... if I can’t leave it there and say, ‘Well, I wish I had that tree in my garden,’ I have begun on the whole business.
1:14:17 Therefore, this demands extraordinary attention to facts only, not your emotions and your pleasures and all the rest of it.
1:14:36 But... – well, I won’t go into it - but there is a time in which there is a different kind of joy, which is not pleasure.
1:14:46 I can’t go into it now; it’s not the occasion.
1:14:56 Q: But it seems to me that physical time is the villain in the piece. (Inaudible).
1:15:02 K: No...the gentleman says the physical time is the villain in the play.
1:15:11 Is it, sir? Look. I’m ill, I’m going to fall ill, I’ll die. That’s a physical fact. Why...? All right.
1:15:32 But I won’t stop there. I say, ‘I’m afraid. I wonder if I shall live. What’s going to happen to my family, to my husband, to my wife, to my children? What’s going to... my property, my estate, and is there is a life after, if there is a God who is going to be kind.
1:15:53 I am lonely.’ You follow?
1:16:02 You see, the fact is we are afraid of facts, the fact that I’m old, the fact I’m stupid.
1:16:18 We’re afraid to face that because we cannot look at anything except in terms of pleasure and pain.
1:16:35 This is so obvious. No, you’re not asking the right question, you see, that you...
1:16:48 that’s why you keep on going round in a circle, if I may kindly point it out.
1:16:58 What is the question?
1:17:05 Not the physical time draws you in, puts you in a net; physical time doesn’t.
1:17:12 It is the psychological time that creates the net. I have to go next week to Paris. I go. But, ‘I don’t like to go to Paris because this...’ and so on and so on.
1:17:51 Q: Is that the way to stop making karma all the time, Mr Krishnamurti?
1:18:05 K: Ah, karma. You know the word, I’ve been told by Sanskrit scholars, the word karma means action, cause-effect, which is action.
1:18:23 Can you stop action?
1:18:33 Obviously one can’t stop action.
1:18:40 Physical or... you can’t stop it. But action as an idea, or imitating an idea, a formula is of time, and therefore creating disorder all our life.
1:19:03 Oh, this is all so clear.
1:19:10 You know, I don’t know if you have observed something.
1:19:24 The acorn will always produce an oak tree. It can’t produce a pear. There is a definite cause, and there is a definite result, fixed.
1:19:43 But we aren’t like that, thank God.
1:19:50 What was the cause, which is, I did something yesterday and today there is a time interval in which other factors have entered into it, and therefore the effect is entirely different, and that effect becomes the cause for the next action.
1:20:13 So there is never a definite cause-effect, except in nature. Even then, there is all kinds of things going on. So what becomes very important is not the avoidance of cause and effect, or the cessation of an act which has done harm to somebody or to myself, that’s... that is not...
1:20:54 What is important is to understand the whole structure of action in relation to time, time as an idea.
1:21:09 If one sees that very clearly, then one is acting without all this inward structure of the past which shapes that action.
1:21:35 You know, sirs? Isn’t that enough for the evening?
1:21:39 Q: Yes.