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MA61T7 - Death is not separate from life
Madras (Chennai), India - 13 December 1961
Public Talk 7



0:00 This J. Krishnamurti’s seventh public talk in Madras, 1961.
0:10 Krishnamurti: I would like this evening to talk about death, if I may. But before we go into that, I think we should approach it, not in the usual accepted traditional way but perhaps we can come to understand it by directly experiencing it.
1:05 But before we enter into it, we ought to understand, I think, fear – fear as old age, disease, and fear of loneliness, fear of the unknown.
1:46 And before we explore those, we ought to understand also, I think, the question of effort.
2:00 All our life we make effort of every kind – effort to arrive, effort to lose, effort to gain, effort to put aside, effort to become, and effort to deny. Everything that we do is a process of effort, a struggle.
2:30 And it seems to me, that effort in any form perverts direct perception.
2:47 And is it possible to live in this acquisitive world, in a world where everything is geared to struggle, where every form of competition, every form of achievement, success, arriving, is encouraged? Is it possible to live in this world without struggle at all, without effort?
3:34 And why do we make effort? And if we do not make effort, what would happen?
3:48 From childhood we are trained to make effort, to compete consciously as well as unconsciously, to acquire, to gain.
4:05 Why do we make effort? If we do not make effort, shall we stagnate?
4:14 Is there not a way of living without effort?
4:22 I think we should be able to understand this because what we are going to discuss a little later this evening will not be fully understood if we don’t go into this question of effort.
4:45 Is it possible to see something directly, to see something true, and let that operate rather than we operate on it?
5:02 There is such thing as loneliness. We are all very lonely. We may have many companions, friends, a family, we may go to the temple, church, occupy ourselves with innumerable things, our brains crowded with belief and dogma and the perpetual routine of office, and yet, beyond all these, there is a sense of loneliness, and we try to escape from it in various forms, if you’re at all aware of it. If we are not, then it is there waiting and on occasions it catches you up, and then you turn to the radio or go to the temple or talk or do something to run away from this extraordinary feeling of isolation.
6:20 We all know it, and the more you become aware of your surroundings, more inwardly searching, you must invariably come upon it.
6:39 And that’s a fact, and that makes us do all kinds of stupid and clever things to run away from it. Please, if I may, stop here for a minute and not continue with that particular thing and point out that this is not a talk which you casually hear of an evening and go away to discuss the ideas, whether they are right or wrong, and they are workable or not, whether they are practical or theoretical.
7:29 I believe you are here, and I think you are for that reason here to not merely to follow what the speaker is saying but also, as you are listening, to uncover in yourself what is being said, to find out for yourself, actually experience as we go along, that which is being said. And to experience something directly one must neither reject or accept.
8:10 You can’t accept a challenge or reject a challenge, it is there whether you like it or not.
8:17 You can respond inadequately to it and thereby increase suffering, confusion and misery, or you can respond to it totally and thereby wipe away the causes of misery.
8:37 So if you are listening with that attentive inquiry and not merely listening to a lot of words – and there are no end to words – and merely are here to be entertained of an evening, then I think it will be utterly a waste of your time, but whereas if you could seriously, attentively go into the matter of what is being said, but really inquire, question, demand, then perhaps you will find out for yourself not only what this loneliness is but also perhaps be able to go beyond it.
9:40 I think one must, because loneliness distorts; loneliness makes us attached; loneliness makes us compete, acquire, depend on others, which you call relationship.
10:09 And so it is important actually to go into this matter and see if we cannot wipe away this thing called loneliness, this isolation.
10:26 And you can only do that if you can go into it step by step, factually not theoretically. And when you do that, you’ll find you are aware that there is loneliness but also there is a great deal of fear with it.
10:53 Now, fear is not what is actually...
11:00 is not concerned with what actually is there but what might be there.
11:13 Fear is the process of time. Fear is the way of thought. We know that there is a certain thing as loneliness, we are afraid of it. We have already made up our minds or come to a conclusion that we cannot understand it, that we do not know or have the capacity to understand it, therefore we are afraid. We are not afraid if we are directly in contact with something.
11:49 There is maybe a temporary, instantaneous reaction, but there is immediate attention to that which causes fear; you don’t run away.
12:09 So, similarly, we are lonely, and to look at it, to go into it, to understand it completely, because if you don’t understand it completely, you escape from it. And all the temples are filled with these gods and goddesses, which have no meaning at all. All the Gitas, the rituals, the family, all relationship is of no avail if we do not understand this loneliness. And to understand it, first we must understand the word, the word called lonely.
13:09 The word is not the thing, the fact. So we must be aware of the word and not let the word frighten the approach, like the word ‘hate’, like the word ‘fear’, like the word ‘communist’, ‘God’ – they are just words.
13:46 And to understand what is behind the word, one must be free of the word.
13:54 The word mustn’t engender, breed fear.
14:03 So if one wishes to understand what this loneliness is, one must first put aside the word, and I hope you are doing that; and it’s quite a difficult thing to do, to put away the word ‘Gita’, the ‘Bible’, because the Gita and the Bible have such immense authority, such significance, such tradition, which weighs you down, and that is the final authority: you can’t question it, and if you question it, you are irreligious.
14:59 But to find out, you must tear down the Gita, the Bible, the word, every authority, and you can only do that if your intent is to find out what is true, what is false not just merely waddle in a lot of words which have no meaning.
15:34 So if we can put away the word and look at that thing called loneliness, there is no fear, because then you are faced with the fact and not the word which denotes the fact.
16:03 Please do this, experiment within yourself as you are listening, and you’ll find how we are slave to words.
16:21 And a mind that is slave to words cannot go very far; like the word ‘atman’ or ‘Vedanta’ or any of those words, words, words, which have no meaning at all, you just repeat.
16:37 And you have to absolutely tear everything down to find out, and you have to tear down everything to find out what death is.
16:50 We’re just beginning to find out how to tear down.
17:03 So when thought is free of the word, then you can look.
17:14 You can see what loneliness is: caused by many isolating, self-centred activity.
17:31 You may be married, have children, a family, and yet you’re lonely, therefore your relationship with your family, with your neighbour, with your boss, and all the rest of it, is self-centred, and because it is self-centred, there is always this fear of isolating.
18:06 And the actual process of isolating yourself takes place, which ultimately results in this feeling of extraordinary sense of loneliness.
18:19 Now, if one can stay with the fact, actually live with the fact that you are lonely, and you have cut off all avenues of escape – no more chatting, no drink, no radio, put away all the ugly gods that man has created, the saviours, the masters, the gurus, put them all away and then you are confronted with it, then you will be able to understand what it is and then go through it.
19:07 Then as you go through it, you come to quite a different thing, which is to be alone.
19:16 You must be alone, because it’s only the mind that is free from all influence, from all tradition, from the various masks, it has imposed upon itself through life and has put away all those, then it is alone. And it must be alone, completely naked, stripped of all idea, of all ideals, beliefs, gods, commitments; then you can take the journey into the unknown.
20:15 So it is necessary to lay the foundation to inquire, for inquiring into death.
20:30 And also, why do we make effort? Why can’t we see things directly as things are?
20:42 If I am stupid, dull-witted, heavy, as most of us are, insensitive, to see, to be aware of that fact.
20:57 Because, you see, a dull mind doesn’t become any brighter, sharper, cleaner, useful, by making an effort, because a dull, petty mind making effort will still be dull, petty.
21:18 But when the mind, when the dull mind is aware, aware of the fact that it is dull – not the word, not because somebody has told you’re dull, but aware of the fact that your mind is asleep, insensitive, then you will see that without effort, without struggle trying to become clever, sharp, sensitive, the very perception of the fact that the mind is dull, that very awareness begins to bring about a sensitivity without you making effort.
22:17 Do please listen to this, because all your life is a dreadful struggle: from morning till night you are fighting with somebody; all your relationships are resistance, a battle, coming and going, and there is so little real life, so little joy, everything is a grief, a misery, a battle.
22:59 And a mind that is in constant battle wears itself out; it is old before it has begun to look around; it’s already beginning to wither. So do consider what is being said, that one can live in this world without effort, which is to look at fact every minute of the day – at fact, not what you think about the fact, because what you think is merely tradition, your information, your knowledge, which you’re trying to impose on the fact.
23:53 The fact is never conditioned, but your mind is conditioned.
24:05 Your mind is conditioned as Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, God knows what else. All the stupidities that we are caught in as a civilized people – not that the villager is not caught in it, he is too, poor chap.
24:28 And so with this conditioned mind, with this mind that has imbibed tradition, that lives according to propaganda, either the propaganda of the Gita or the Bible or the newspaper or of the commissar, our mind is conditioned, and with that conditioning you try to understand the fact and therefore create a problem out of the fact. When you observe the fact, the fact doesn’t create a problem.
25:13 It is there. And so, a mind that is capable of observing fact every minute, all the time, has no problem and therefore no effort.
25:42 There is no right effort and wrong effort. All effort prevents the understanding of the fact.
25:55 So that’s another thing.
26:02 So there is an inquiry into death; we’re going to inquire.
26:20 Now, to inquire into death, to question, as I pointed out the other day, you can question trying to find an answer, and such questioning is based on reaction, because you want some kind of favourable, happy answer, so you’ve al ready... your fear has already dictated what... how you should seek an answer, so your questioning is reaction, your questioning is born out of reaction and therefore it’s not questioning at all. There is a questioning without reaction, which is merely to question, not trying to find an answer because the very questioning opens the door through which you can find out, look, observe, see, listen.
27:26 So we’re going to do that, not to find out what lies after death – who cares?
27:36 Do you care to continue your life as you are now? The misery, the squalor, the quarrels, ambitions, the frustrations, the enormous iniquities called morality, and you want to continue that? So we are going to inquire, to find out, and so to inquire into a thing, you must never be satisfied, never seek a shelter; obviously; the moment you find some satisfactory answer to your questioning, you’re finished, you’re no longer pursuing the inquiry; you have been side-tracked into a happy pool of contentment where you can decay happily.
28:49 But to inquire means tearing down, tearing down your family, tearing down your ideas, tearing everything down to find out.
29:13 And we’re going to do that. I will do it but you won’t, because you have your family, because you have your ideas so embedded that no bomb will break it up, because if there is a bomb, you’ll take a shelter and come back alive to the same pattern of existence.
29:53 So we’re going to inquire, not seeking an answer, because there is beauty in not seeking answer, because then every minute you are living to find out, find out what is actual, not what you think should be.
30:20 So in inquiring, we must look into time because death is time – time. I do not know if you have not thought about it at all.
30:49 Time from here to there, the distance that needs time, the time to arrive, the time to gain, the time to cultivate, the thing called virtue which we try to cultivate every day after day, by repetition, doing something over and over again, a habit which we call good, and that needs time.
31:32 And is habit virtue? The thing that you have cultivated day after day according to a pattern, projected by your thought, by your race, or by your family, or by your guru, or by the society, is that virtue, or is virtue something entirely different?
32:02 totally unrelated to time, something you see immediately and does not require cultivation or gradation or gradual process of coming to be good, getting to be noble, like the vain man struggling to have humility.
32:27 A vain man can never have humility, do what he will; all that he can do is to die to vanity.
32:43 So time is the time by the watch, the chronological time of yesterday, today, and tomorrow, next year, and so on – time. But there is another time as psychological time, the ‘I will be. I am going to become the big man.
33:19 I am going to have a big car, a big house. I am going eventually to be non-violent’?
33:29 All that implies time, psychological, inward time, which is from here to there, inwardly, the distance of ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’.
33:46 Please go with me. I’m not your authority or your guru, but just listen.
33:57 And, is that time fact at all or is it an invention of a clever mind or a stupid mind, the idea that I will eventually reach God?
34:17 Therefore many lives, therefore many days, many experiences, cultivate slowly the various virtues till I’m made perfect, which all indicates the employment of time as a means of postponing ‘what is’, the understanding of ‘what is’, the fact.
34:46 When you understand the fact that you’re angry, and the very understanding of the fact dissolves you from time.
34:55 Do inquire into this and you will see how extraordinarily... really simple this is and therefore of immense significance.
35:16 So the idea of employing time as a means of gaining, as a means of fulfilling is erroneous, is a folly.
35:39 But there is a time; you have to have time to get here, from here to go to your home. You need to have time to learn a language, to become an expert in some technique. There is mechanical time, acquiring knowledge, becoming proficient as a doctor, learning more electronic techniques, and so on. Those are mechanical processes which need time, and there is no other time. If you see the fact of that actually there is no time in the psychological, inward sense of that word, then your whole outlook has gone a tremendous mutation; then you’re not thinking in terms of arriving, achieving, becoming.
36:59 Psychologically you have wiped away the whole sense of becoming, which is caught in sorrow, in misery, in confusion, all the travail of every human being.
37:25 And we create time psychologically by giving soil to the problem.
37:51 Psychologically we have time because we do not know how to die to a problem; to die to a problem, not to continue it and carry it over to tomorrow.
38:22 A problem, as I said, exists only when you’re not capable of looking at the fact.
38:34 When you look at the fact there is no problem because you are dealing with something directly and therefore you eliminate time and the problem which involves in, which there in time.
38:59 Now...
39:07 so in inquiring, in questioning what is death, you have to inquire, surely, not what happens after but what is death.
39:25 You know very well you can’t argue with death; there is no argument; there you can’t reason; it is an absolute finality.
39:38 You may invent all kinds of things, that you will continue, there is the atman, that there is the higher self, gods will protect you, and invent a lot of theories, which may or may not be facts, but there... it is absolutely final that you will die, whether you are young or old, and therefore there is no question of arguing with it.
40:07 You don’t argue when death knocks at your door and say, ‘Please give me a couple of days more. I have to see my family.
40:16 I haven’t made my will. I have to settle my quarrel with my wife’.
40:23 There is no argument; but we argue with life, we cheat life, we play with life, we double-cross, we double-think, we do everything to cover up life.
40:44 We can argue, we can choose, we can play around. We don’t treat life as final as death, and if we do, then you have to deal with it every minute precisely, with decision, not postponement.
41:12 So we have learnt the trick of playing, choosing, arguing, covering up, running away from life, and so we approach death with that same attitude, and death you can’t play with. You can play with life but you can’t play with death – it is there and you’re gone.
41:49 So, not that there is a life hereafter, that becomes so unimportant.
42:05 And besides, those of you who believe in life hereafter, you don’t really mean it at all.
42:13 If you meant it, you would on the instant change everything of your life, because you believe in karma, you say you will pay for it, what you sow you will reap.
42:28 You don’t believe any of that nonsense because if you really felt it, if you really were aware of that fact, you wouldn’t tolerate one minute the ugliness of your own mind and hearts, and the envies, the cruelties, the brutality.
42:51 You would change, you would mutate immediately. So your belief has no value at all.
43:04 So we have to deal with death, and as I said, there is no argument, you can’t argue with love, can you?
43:18 Perhaps you do, which is, to be jealous.
43:31 Perhaps you don’t love at all; you don’t know what that means. I doubt it, because if you loved, you know what would happen?
43:44 You’d have a different world; your children would be different; they wouldn’t pursue the pattern that you have set for them, the pattern of money, position, capacity, earning more and more and more, and becoming monstrously ugly, stupid.
44:17 That’s all you are interested in, aren’t you really, when you talk about love: sex and children and family.
44:30 In the family you seek security for your old age, and out of your loneliness you cling to the family, your son, your daughters, and you call that love, don’t you?
44:54 When you are concerned with yourself, you’re frightened, and so you have no love, but you’re lonely and therefore there is fear of death.
45:14 Now, to face death actually, not theoretically, you have to understand certain things, obviously. There is the death of the body...
45:26 that you can’t help unless some scientists, doctors invent a new drug which will make you last for another fifty years.
45:35 And those fifty years to continue the same misery, the same shallow, narrow, stupid existence, going to the office perpetually and breeding more children and educating them in the same old pattern to carry on the filth of the civilization.
46:10 So the body will die – you have to accept that.
46:20 And there is the fear of old age – you know? – getting old, going gaga, forgetting, becoming blind, deaf, having to have somebody to lean on.
46:47 So you cling to the family, to the wife, to the husband, which you call love, which you call responsibility, duty, noble morality.
47:07 Please follow this; not my words but your own life.
47:18 So the body will die. Now, can’t we also psychologically die to everything that we have known, because that means death, doesn’t it – you understand? – to everything that you have known, to die to your family, which is very difficult for people to do because the family is such an extraordinary thing for most people.
48:02 It is their death, the family.
48:11 And so gradually we are afraid of death, afraid of death, the unknown, because you don’t know anything about death. You have never met it, except you have met the bodies being carried to the burning ghat or to the grave, but you have never met death.
48:38 And you can meet death, and that is to die psychologically to your family, to your gods, to everything that you have gathered, to die every minute to every experience that comes, and to live it, die to it, which means to live at a tremendous height, living not knowing what is going to happen the next minute because you’re wiping away, dying to everything that you have gathered. You’re no longer a Hindu, you’re no longer a lawyer with a bank account, you’re no longer related to anything, least of all to your family, because when you cling to your family, you want them to be conditioned as you are conditioned; you don’t want them to change, you want them to have a good job, good position, children and carry on that pattern.
50:09 So to die psychologically, inwardly, to everything, every minute of the day, then you will see that you can enter the house of death without fear.
50:27 Then you know while living what death is, not when the last minute, when you are almost unconscious, diseased, broken, unwilling, but to live now and therefore die now, in full vigour, clarity, which means really tearing down everything what one has built up in oneself – you understand? – to have no tradition, no experience, no capacity, and that’s what you’re going to have when you die – you have no capacity; you’re left completely empty, though you may invent, though your thought may carry on. And thought is just words that have no meaning, a conclusion that may continue because you accept certain action, certain vibration, certain... force into of being. But even to that you have to die.
51:53 You have to die to your ideas, to your gurus, to your masters, to everything.
52:03 You’re afraid not of death but of the known, of leaving the known, leaving your family, your son, your experiences, your bank account, the country which you are used to, the things that you have gathered as knowledge, and leaving those behind, that’s what frightens you, not the unknown, because how can you be frightened of the unknown?
52:39 You don’t know anything about it to be frightened.
52:49 So, but one has to die to the known and that’s quite an enormous task, and you can only do that when you’re facing fact and not introducing opinions, judgments, evaluations, tradition, what you like and what you don’t like, but putting all that aside, tearing all this and facing, facing the fact of what you are.
53:28 You know, that means destroying. Nobody wants to destroy.
53:38 The revolutionaries, the economic revolutionaries, the social revolution wants to destroy buildings or the structure as a reaction, and the revolutionary produces another set of reactions modified in the same old pattern. But we are talking of death, not revolution; a complete ending everything that one has known.
54:09 And then only, being free from the known, then you can enter into the unknown.
54:16 You don’t have to enter then, it comes to you. Your mind then, being free of the known, will understand the unknowable.
54:33 But you can’t come to it, because you don’t know what the unknowable is.
54:41 You only know what your Gita tells you, or your Bible or your guru or the thousand-year propagandas have told you.
54:52 But that doesn’t mean you know the unknown. So you have to die to all that. And don’t say, ‘It is not for me. It’s only a few who can do’. Don’t say that. That means you don’t know what love is. You want love, you want sympathy; you want to understand this extraordinary thing called life and death, and to understand it, to understand life which is death, and death which is life, you have to tear down every psychological structure that you have built round yourself, round your family, round your security, round your hopes, desires and purposes.
55:55 When the mind is completely empty of the things put together by the mind, by the brain, when there is freedom from that, then there is the unknowable, which is death, which is love, which is creation.
56:13 They are not separate things. Death isn’t separate from life. Life is death because there is life only when you are dying, not when you continue the same old pattern of a stupid existence.
56:32 There is creation only when you destroy totally, right from the beginning to the end, destroy – your masters, your societies, your commitments, all the attachments you have to your family, to your ideas – completely wipe it away and stand alone.
56:55 You have to; that is death and therefore it is also life. And where life is, there is creation which is destruction, which is love.