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MA84DYP2 - What is the relationship between highly educated, specialised people and the rest of the world?
Madras (Chennai), India - 18 January 1984
Discussion with Young People 2



0:18 Introduction: Dear Krishnaji and friends, at the outset I would like to welcome Krishnaji to our campus and all the guests from this city who have graciously responded to our public invitation.
0:32 Our Director, Professor Indiresan has remarked that IITs have none other rival in imparting state of the art technological training to our students but has not been so successful in making them want to use that knowledge to solve problems around them.
0:51 We have not been able to make them sensitive to their environment. Today we have an opportunity to listen to a person who places great importance on true education.
1:04 Education should flower the individual. It would be superfluous for me to introduce a person who emphatically refuses to be even called a guru or even be considered as a good example.
1:18 His speech will be the best introduction to him.
1:25 Now Krishnaji will speak to us on what is real education.
1:41 Krishnamurti: I really don't know why I am here.
1:53 I am going to talk for about forty minutes, and you will be good enough to ask questions and see if the speaker is accurate or just imaginative person.
2:15 One wonders what is the relationship between a highly educated, specialised people, what is their relationship with the rest of the world.
2:39 Here, you are all learning special disciplines, in your own special fields, and there is the outside world.
2:57 The outside world is preparing for war, general disintegration, immorality, corruption, and all the mess that's going on in the world.
3:18 What is the relationship between the technological students and teachers and their activity to the rest of mankind?
3:38 If I may point out, this is not a lecture.
3:46 Lecture is generally understood to mean to inform or to instruct.
3:55 So this is not a lecture. What we are going to do this afternoon, is to have a conversation together to find out, according to the subject we have been given, what is right education.
4:21 Right education by itself includes not only the academic disciplines, but also the whole vast unexplored psychological world.
4:40 Professors, psychologists, and others have explored to some extent this whole psychological world which is very, very complex.
4:55 And, mankind has advanced immensely in the technological world - great instruments of war, telecommunication, surgery and the developing computers.
5:23 And we are being educated to have jobs, mug up certain subjects, and pass examinations, and fit into the present society.
5:46 The present society is pretty rotten, corrupt, immoral, and throughout the world there is disintegration going on, morally, psychologically.
6:11 Of course there are exceptions. But the exceptions are not the everyday facts of life.
6:21 So, one asks: why are we being educated?
6:32 You are the future generation.
6:42 You are going to leave this world of security, knowledge, and technologically highly disciplined, and you have to face the rest of the world.
7:01 The world is very disturbed.
7:09 Politicians have no answer to this great turmoil that's going on, nor the scientists, nor the technicians.
7:24 Religions have failed; science has not, apart from certain areas, has not helped man to live with peace, with some order, with some sense of moral rectitude.
7:50 And so one asks, not only where the world is going, but also why we are being educated - for what?
8:06 To fit into the old pattern? As the scientists are saying - some of them at least, that the left side of the brain is active every day, and the right side of the brain is still moving, not completely conditioned.
8:31 But we ought to also ask whether the whole brain can function without any fragmentation.
8:48 It seems to me, to the speaker, that merely being highly educated technologically is not going to answer all our problems.
9:05 You mug up your particular subjects, get a degree, get a job - if you are lucky, if your parents and others don't pull wires, and settle down for the rest of your life, complete with a particular discipline of knowledge.
9:36 And, there is the whole field, the so-called the inner psychological field, which most of us disregard, which has no particular value in modern civilization.
10:05 So again, why are we all being educated? What place has knowledge where human beings are concerned?
10:26 What place has knowledge with regard to love?
10:33 Is knowledge the enemy of love?
10:40 We must ask all these questions to find out for ourselves what is right education.
10:50 Not only must we have academic training, certain forms of discipline, but also we ought to enquire a great deal, not merely being told by professors and psychologists and others, what we are.
11:18 All the scriptures of the world have really not altered human behaviour.
11:29 There have been wars for the last five to six thousand years, and we are still going on with wars - preparing, saying peace and preparing war.
11:51 You may not be interested in all this. Well, one must be concerned with our own struggles, with our own particular forms of misery, with our efforts.
12:10 We are more or less self-centred. And all our activities come from that self-centred movement.
12:22 So the world - as we see it actually, not theoretically - the world of society, society in which we live, is the product of each one of us.
12:43 Socialists, Marxists, and right and the left politically, have tried to change the structure of society with all its complexities, conflicts and wars.
13:08 And we must ask also: who created this society?
13:19 Surely, each one of us is responsible for this.
13:27 Each one of us is greedy, aggressive, violent, brutal, holding on to our own particular tribalism, which is called glorified nationalism, which are all producing wars.
13:46 Economically we are separate, and so on, so on. We all know this. So, who is to alter the society which is so corrupt, immoral, there is no justice, there is no equality, there can never be.
14:14 There is no justice and there can never be justice, because you are clever and the other is not; you have money, position, status, the other is nobody.
14:36 So where is justice? Where is equality?
14:44 And where is freedom for man? Human beings are conditioned. Their brains have been conditioned for thousands of years, as Hindus, Muslims and Christians, as the British, Russian, American and Hindus and so on.
15:13 The whole world is fragmented - geographically, nationally, and religiously.
15:23 These are all facts. And where there is division there must be conflict.
15:34 And we are sustaining this system, this nationalism, economic division.
15:47 And we are being educated, it appears, to fit into this system, and we accept it.
16:06 And so there have been revolutions - the Communist, according to Das Capital, Marx, French Revolution, and that has not changed the human being, the whole centre of the psyche.
16:31 We have tried every means to change the outward structure of society - new laws, tyranny, dictatorship, democracy and so on.
16:50 We have been through a long period of time, from the ape till now, we have more or less remained, psychologically, as we have been: concerned with ourselves, with our own problems, with our own misery, pain, sorrow, and all that.
17:22 And, we are being educated to acquire knowledge.
17:31 What place has knowledge in human relationship?
17:44 You understand, we're having a conversation, and the speaker is not telling you what to do or what to think or to convince you of anything.
18:02 So, in this conversation together, we are trying to find out what is right education.
18:14 Surely right education is the total development or cultivation of man, not just one part of him.
18:27 And that's what is called education now. We're all becoming terribly clever, very scholarly, read great many books, but inwardly, psychologically, we are still very primitive.
18:52 This is obvious fact. The primitive always overcomes the superficial structure of any given society.
19:12 So, who is to change the society, as each one of us is responsible for this present state of the world - with wars, great deal of insecurity, overpopulation.
19:41 Religions have no meaning at all anymore; they are vast structure of superstition.
19:53 And realising all this, what are we to do?
20:02 Don't leave it to somebody else.
20:09 What is each one of us to do? What place have we, not only in the structure of society as it exists, but also in the future?
20:31 The future is what we are now.
20:39 The now is the future. And the past is also the now - all the memories, all the experience, of not only of each person, but the experience and knowledge of thousands of human beings, all stored in the brain - either conscious or deeply hidden.
21:14 And with this knowledge that we are acquiring, what has that knowledge to do with our primitive life, way of living, our behaviour?
21:33 I wonder if any of us even asks these questions.
21:42 And what place has knowledge in human relationship?
21:54 Please, as we said, this is not a lecture by the speaker.
22:02 We are together investigating, exploring what place has knowledge, and what place has it in relationship with each other.
22:22 What place has knowledge in your relationship, whether the future relationship or the past relationship, or the present?
22:40 Is knowledge love? Does all this interest you? Or is it an awful bore?
22:57 You've been good enough to ask the speaker to come here.
23:04 And, you have to listen to what he is saying, not interpret what he is saying, but rather, together, you and the speaker, look at this whole problem of existence, of human endeavour, in the scientific world, in the world of every kind of activity that is going on.
23:41 Can we look at all this totally objectively, not romantically, not sentimentally or from any particular point of view - Marxist or Trotskyites, or Mao, and so on.
24:04 Can we look at it, the whole problem, not academic problems, nor scientific, and sociological and so on, but the whole of human existence.
24:26 But unfortunately we have divided the whole of life into departments - scientists, biologists, sociologists and so on.
24:42 And we are being disciplined in those particular subjects.
24:49 But we don't regard, take into account, the whole of human endeavour, not in a particular field, but human existence: the way we live, the way we suffer, the anxieties, the uncertainties, the utter sense of insecurity, deeply.
25:18 That's part of our life. And we seem to disregard all that. So, surely, right education is the cultivation, not only along technological lines, but also to understand the very complex structure of oneself.
25:53 Are we individuals at all? because we share suffering with the rest of humanity.
26:08 The rest of humanity is lonely, anguished.
26:15 Their consciousness is shared by all human beings - consciousness, whether they are American, Russian or Chinese or Indian.
26:28 Because all human beings go through great deal of anxiety, uncertainty, sorrow, pain, jealousy, occasional happiness and so on.
26:46 We share the whole consciousness of mankind, which is an obvious fact if you look at it carefully.
27:01 So we are not, psychologically, individuals.
27:09 I know this is rather difficult to accept this because we've all been so conditioned for the last hundred thousand years, actually forty five thousand years, to think that we are separate individuals, with separate souls, atma, and all the rest of it.
27:32 But when we look at our consciousness, the content of that consciousness is the content of all human beings in the world, more or less modified, with different cultures, different religions, different economic conditions.
27:56 But below all that, our consciousness is shared by all of us.
28:06 So, one begins to question whether we are individuals at all.
28:17 And therefore, if we are not individuals - psychologically I am talking. You are different: one is short, one is tall, one is a woman and a man, but psychologically, inwardly, there is a great similarity between us all.
28:43 And this concept, this conditioning, that we, each one of us has to make tremendous effort to save himself both psychologically and externally.
29:00 So we have sought security in the family, security in a group, in a community, and also in a nation.
29:13 And that division has brought about one of the causes of war.
29:26 So, to have peace in the world requires a great deal of intelligence.
29:36 That is, to have security for all human beings, which means no nationalities, no divisions, no racial, separative activity, which is an obvious fact.
29:57 Arab and the Jew, both Semitic people, divided by their religion, and so in Lebanon they are destroying each other.
30:11 This has been going on from recorded history.
30:23 And we are being educated not to face the whole human problem which is tremendously complex, but we are being conditioned by our particular discipline in some technological world, and so our brains which should be extraordinarily free and active, are functioning in a very, very small area.
31:16 The other day we were talking in New York with great many scientists there, and one of our, in our discussions, one of them asked: Is it possible to change the cells in the brain, fundamentally?
31:45 The biological structure - the brain with its cells carry the past memories, which is time, and that knowledge, which is actually preventing human relationship.
32:14 That is, do we know our wives or husband?
32:25 Do we actually know them or do we know the images which we have built about each other?
32:32 And the images are the knowledge. And that knowledge is actually preventing complete relationship with another, not merely sexually, but the relationship, actual relationship.
32:54 And the scientists are asking whether it is possible for the brain cells themselves to undergo a deep mutation.
33:07 Otherwise, if it's not possible, we are going to continue as we are for the rest of future generations, because we are the past, the present and the future.
33:27 And who is going to change us? Gurus have failed; religions have failed; great political systems have not changed man.
33:47 So who is going to change man, change you and me?
33:57 We have suffered enough, we have cried, we've laughed, we are lonely, anxious, uncertain, confused.
34:17 Who is going to change all that - governments, new form of governments, new economic condition, new disciplines of your particular subjects?
34:40 All those have failed. Man is what he is now. So right education surely, is the total cultivation of the human mind, not one small part of it.
35:04 And also, right education is to give knowledge its right place, because knowledge is not love.
35:15 You may dislike that word 'love', may make you feel rather sentimental, romantic, rather ashamed to use that word.
35:32 But that word plays an immense part in our lives.
35:44 And where there is love, there is no knowledge. Knowledge is the enemy of love. Right, I've said what I have to say. Please, now, you can bombard the speaker with lot of questions - if you are interested in it.
36:08 If you are not, it's all right.
36:12 Q: Shall I ask - In the existing educational pattern, there is an over-emphasis on certain educational deeds, certain aspects only.
36:29 Would it not be better, if the general education is given higher importance so that we do not become inverted cripples?
36:41 K: I am afraid I don't quite understand your question, sir. Somebody has to translate it. Or if you put it into... Sit down, sir.
36:53 Q: In the existing educational pattern, certain fields...

K: Say it louder, sir.
36:59 Q: In the existing educational pattern, certain aspects are over-emphasised. Would it not be better to give a general education, so that we do not become inverted cripples.
37:13 K: Inverted...?
37:16 Q: Right? Did I translate...
37:22 K: Inverted, what?
37:23 Q: Cripples.

K: Cripples. How will you change the system of present modern education? Who is going to change it? Will the professors change it?
37:44 Well, sir? Who is going to change the present system?
37:57 Students have revolted against the professors, teachers - you've seen all this.
38:06 So, what shall we do? Will you demand of your professors, your teachers, your parents, that there should be a different kind of education?
38:21 Will you work for it, will you stand for it? Or are you too frightened? As you said, sir, the present education helps us to be cripples.
38:42 Don't be a cripple then. It's in your hands.
38:49 You see, unfortunately, we want everything settled by others.
39:00 A new system invented by others, and then we easily fit into it.
39:12 You have stated certain fact - our education, modern education makes us cripples.
39:19 And after stating that fact, what do we do, actually?
39:28 Go on, sir. If you ask me, the speaker, what will you do, that will be a different question.
39:42 But you don't ask that. But you do ask that we are cripples, and waiting for somebody to make us healthy. Right?
39:59 And there is nobody in the world that is going to make you healthy, if you don't want to be healthy.
40:20 Q: (Inaudible) Q: What does one mean when one says that one shares the sorrows or happiness of the rest of humanity.
40:47 K: Don't you share the unhappiness with another?
40:54 Or is your sorrow, your pain, your grief, your loneliness yours?
41:06 An American, an Englishman, a Frenchman and an Indian, they all have this common factor of sorrow - they all suffer.
41:25 And we become so egotistical - that's my sorrow, my pain.
41:37 But if we realise that all human beings - whether they're black, white, purple or whatever their colour, race, we all share the same misery, same turmoil, perhaps modified by certain cultures, but still sorrow is sorrow.
42:06 So, when one realises that, that we are entire humanity, psychologically, the whole way of looking at life changes.
42:23 Q: Sir, Victor Hugo has said that all of modern technology just gives man better means to go backwards.
42:30 This means that all the technology that we have is not really of any use. Do you subscribe to the same view?
42:40 K: I didn't say that, sir. I didn't say technology is nonsense, it's no use. We can't go back, turn the clock backwards. I know. Technology has made us more healthy, greater sanitation, better communication, but also technology has invented terrible machines of killing human beings: neutron bombs and other types of bombs can destroy, I don't know if you have read something of all this.
43:34 If a bomb, atom bomb fell on New York, ten million people will be evaporated at one blow - you understand? - vaporised.
43:50 And hundred million from around it, their ice will melt and so on - horrible things!
44:00 It has all been written about, both in America and in Russia. But they are preparing, because they all want peace.
44:18 And this is where technology has led us, in certain directions. And also technology has been extraordinarily useful for man.
44:30 There is the new technology of computers.
44:38 And both Japan and America are pouring billions of dollars into bringing about ultra-intelligent machine.
44:53 And that computer is going to do most of the things that human beings do.
45:02 They'll invent Gods. And what's going to happen to the human brain when all that is taken over by computers, most of it?
45:22 Either the vast entertaining industry is going to take over the human brain: football, cinema, books, you know, the vast industry, which is already taking place.
45:48 If one is aware of it now, it's there. And either you're going to be entertained for the rest of your life including the entertainment of religions, and, either you go along that way or turn to the vast unexplored area of the psyche, deeply.
46:27 So man is facing a crisis. Perhaps not in Madras, not in this special institution, but man throughout the world is facing this crisis - not only physical crisis, crisis in consciousness.
46:55 Q: Sir, you said knowledge is the enemy of love. Could you go into that a little more? This whole institution stands for knowledge.
47:10 K: What is knowledge? Why has knowledge become so extraordinarily important in our lives?
47:19 Without knowledge, you will say, we can't live, or get a job - right? Without knowledge, we couldn't possibly write a letter.
47:32 Without knowledge, you and I wouldn't be sitting here.
47:39 All the books, whether they are sacred or not sacred, are all the results of somebody's experiences - knowledge.
47:54 And knowledge between two human beings, man and woman, in that knowledge there is always contention between the two, man and woman: sexual, other forms of possessiveness, intimidation, so on, so on, so on.
48:24 So knowledge has, in relationship, no place at all.
48:31 Because that denies totally love.
48:38 Q: Is it possible to change the cell pattern of the brain through meditation or through love?
48:44 Q: Is it possible to change the cell pattern of the brain through meditation or through love.
48:54 K: I don't know what you mean by meditation.
49:03 Sir, there are different types of meditation - the Zen meditation, the Tibetan form of meditation, the Christian contemplation, the Hindus with their own particular form of meditation.
49:23 What do you mean by that word 'meditation', the word, the etymological meaning of that word?
49:34 Etymological meaning of that word is to 'ponder over', 'to think over'.
49:44 And also, the etymological meaning of the word 'meditation' is 'measure', 'to measure'.
49:58 Now, what is meditation? Sitting quietly, and repeating certain words, or trying to control your thoughts, or trying to imagine an extraordinary state, and hoping to reach it through meditation?
50:30 I wonder if you actually meditate at all. It'd be rather interesting to find out.
50:36 Q: Withdrawing one's own...
50:37 K: Just a minute, sir. I haven't finished, if you don't mind.
50:44 Q: Withdrawing one's own mind to oneself may be meditation. Drawing one's own mind to oneself may be meditation.
50:54 K: Going...

Q: Drawing...
50:56 K: Drawing...?
50:57 Q: One's own mind to oneself may be meditation.
51:02 K: What does that mean?
51:05 Q: Getting your mind totally into yourself and then trying to concentrate on and trying to find out what exactly you are yourself.
51:14 Q: Probably, he means - may I translate? - probably he means introspection, or drawing into oneself, looking at one's mind.
51:25 Is that it?
51:29 K: Who is it that is looking at the mind?
51:36 Is anger different from you?
51:44 Is jealousy different from you? Or you are jealous. You are jealous, not jealousy is different from me.
51:59 Right? So, would you accept, or look, or consider that the observer is the observed.
52:12 There is no experience without the experiencer.
52:20 There is no thinker separate from thought.
52:27 But we have been conditioned through long history of religion and other factors, to separate that 'I' am different from my anger, from my jealousy, from my loneliness and sorrow, which is not a fact.
52:53 That's just a division, as there's a division between the Muslim and the Hindu, the Arab and the Jew - we have divided this.
53:04 I am different from all the things of my own anxieties.
53:17 So, meditation is something entirely different, for the speaker.
53:25 It's none of these things. Don't have to accept what the speaker is saying, but look at the facts as they are.
53:37 Probably in this country, people have meditated for a very, very long time.
53:47 And are they very different in their daily life? Would you kindly consider that? What's the point of meditation if you don't change your own life?
54:03 Or, meditation is the way of living.
54:10 That is, having no measurement at all because measurement means comparison.
54:28 The whole world, the Greeks, the ancient Greeks exploded over the West.
54:39 They are the originators of measurement. And with measurement all the technological world has gone. Without measurement, there could be no technology. The ancient Hindus said, measurement is illusion. So they followed illusion. You understand?
55:07 And meditation is to be free of all measurement, which means to be free of all becoming, psychologically.
55:25 Q: Sir, do you think self-knowledge is also the enemy of love?
55:32 Q: Is self-knowledge also the enemy of love?
55:36 K: Absolutely.
55:41 Q: Etymologically you said, meditation means 'to measure'. And, 'to meditate' means there should be no measurement.
55:49 Q: Etymologically, meditation means to measure. And yet you say, meditation means no measure. How do you reconcile?
55:59 K: Sir, I said, we said, part of meditation as we understand it, generally practised - think of practising meditation - you understand the meaning of 'practising meditation', what it does if you practise?
56:20 Day after day, day after day, day after day, your brain becomes mechanical.
56:28 Right? That's probably what's happened to all of us. We have become mechanical. But, measurement, as we explained, is to become.
56:46 I am a clerk but I will one day be the chief of the business; I am a professor, but I will be Professor of a particular department, Dean, and so on.
57:03 There is a becoming in the world like a seed becomes a tree, but that same activity, the same is extended to the psychological world.
57:17 I am this, but I will be that. I am violent, I will be non-violent, which is nonsense anyhow.
57:31 No?
57:33 Q: What does love mean to millions of people who don't get enough to eat? How can they love if...
57:38 K: What's that?
57:41 Q: What does love mean to millions of people who don't get enough to eat. I didn't get the second part of it.
57:48 Q: How can you love when your stomach is full and you know that you can't...
57:51 K: Of course, sir, I agree. I agree. I quite agree with you, sir. Love has no meaning for millions of people who have only one meal a day.
58:05 We've been through all that. The speaker has been through all that, one meal a day, poor, and all that - he is still.
58:13 How will you, who put the question, how will you help the poor, starving?
58:23 Whose responsibility it is? Government's? Your particular government, local government, Chief Minister? Who is responsible for this enormous poverty in this country?
58:42 Answer that, sir. Is the government responsible?
58:55 Or poverty, starvation, lack of food is a world problem. There are poor people in America, starving, in Russia poor.
59:11 So poverty is not to be solved by local governments or by central government.
59:19 They only function in power, position, prestige. They're not concerned about helping mankind to be free from starvation.
59:32 It's a problem of all, of the world, not for divided countries.
59:43 Q: Sir, you've told us what's wrong with our government and our society. We all know what the problem is. What do you suggest we should do about it?
59:55 Q: You have told us what is wrong with our government and our society. What do you suggest we ought to do about it?
1:00:04 K: I don't suggest anything. If I may point out - serious, I am a serious person, I can laugh too.
1:00:17 But, as we pointed out, just observe what is happening, and if you are serious, you do something about it.
1:00:29 Sir, our difficulty is, we say one thing and do entirely the opposite.
1:00:37 Specially this country is filled with theories, principles.
1:00:47 All your scriptures are full of theories. So, we actually say one thing and do another. I do not know if you have not noticed it. We say we must live a noble life and we lead ignoble lives.
1:01:10 We say we must not be violent, we are pursuing non-violence, and we are violent.
1:01:19 So gradually we become hypocritical. Sorry, if you don't like what I am saying, throw me out.
1:01:30 Q: Excuse me, sir. When absolute knowledge is bliss, how is it an enemy to love?
1:01:39 Q: When absolute knowledge is bliss, how is it an enemy to love.
1:01:46 K: Who says this peculiar phenomenon? Who says this?
1:01:51 Q: Shankara himself, he has realised wholeness through knowledge, he had shown the other path from yoga.
1:01:58 That is absolute knowledge is bliss. Part knowledge, material knowledge leads to suffer. That is agreed. When it is absolute knowledge, then you know that you are the projection of the object that is existing there, is it not a bliss, is not a love?
1:02:18 Is it not the love that is the Supreme Being?
1:02:21 K: What's he saying?
1:02:22 Q: I believe Shankara has said...
1:02:24 K: Oh! There we are! There we are, back to our quotation, aren't we? That's just what I mean. Shankara says this, Buddha says that, or your pet guru says that, and you lead a totally different kind of life.
1:02:49 So why do you have gurus, Shankaras?

Q: But it's not like that. Monism, awareness of the subject belongs to - you are yourself the projection of the object that is created. In that thing, knowledge, true knowledge, knowledge about the absolute, supreme being is the love...
1:03:05 K: What is, if I may...
1:03:07 Q:...that there'll be no guru or Shankara, or anything. This is my idealism, how it could be defined. How is it different from love? Love as knowledge is enemy to love. Perfect knowledge is about the Supreme Being which leads...
1:03:22 K: What is, sir, what is true knowledge and what is false knowledge?
1:03:30 Q: True knowledge is awareness of yourself.
1:03:34 Q: He says, true knowledge is awareness of yourself.
1:03:38 K: What is yourself and what is awareness?
1:03:47 To be aware, what does it mean, sir? Forgive me if I am - I am not facetious, I am not quibbling over words.
1:03:59 What do you mean by being aware, actually aware, not theoretically?
1:04:06 To be aware of your environment, to be aware, where you are sitting, of your neighbour.
1:04:14 To be aware, aware of this hall, the proportions of this hall, the colour of the carpet, and the person next to you - are you aware?
1:04:28 Are we aware? Or we are only aware of our own little problems? And what do we mean by true knowledge? Self, yes, aware of the self. What is the self, the me? Go on, sir, you used these words. And forgive me if I look into the actual meaning of the self. What is the self? What are you? Your name, your form, what you think, what you feel, what you eat, your culture, your tradition, all that is you.
1:05:18 Your education is part of you.
1:05:25 No? And that self says, I am separate from everybody else.
1:05:39 Right? And everybody says, I am separate from you. So where there is this separation, there must be conflict.
1:05:59 Self is knowledge. Right? Without the knowledge, there is no self.
1:06:12 But we cherish knowledge. To us knowledge is extraordinarily important, because in knowledge we take security.
1:06:30 Q: Krishnaji, looking at the problems and the miseries of the world, we have to be serious and we have to look at the structure of the whole world, whole of human problem.
1:06:44 And you say we have to do something. Whatever we do, it becomes a method, it becomes something. So what is the way out, actually? Whatever we do, looking at the problem, miseries and all, we have to do something. There is some, something has to be done. That something becomes a traditional method, we can't help it. So, what's the way out?

K: What is this?
1:07:06 Q: Looking at all problems, of the world, we feel we ought to do something. But, if we try to do something, it becomes a method or a tradition. So what is the way out?
1:07:24 K: What is the way out, is the question. What is the way? Out of what?
1:07:36 Out of what, sir? Out of this confusion, out of this terrible series of efforts we make from the moment we are born till we die?
1:07:48 Effort, effort, effort, struggle, struggle. What is the way out of it? You are asking? Is that right, sir?
1:08:01 Q: We have to be serious about this and we do something towards the poverty to meet the poverty and something.
1:08:08 That something which we do, everyone does, originally. It becomes method. Automatically some others will follow it. But you said that becomes tradition and that originality is lost. But it is impossible to be, everyone to be original unless he gets some inspiration or some this thing from others.
1:08:29 Or else what?
1:08:31 Q: It is impossible for everyone to be original unless he gets some kind of inspiration from others.
1:08:41 K: Why do you want to be original?
1:08:48 You cannot be original because you are full of knowledge. You are full of tradition: what Shankara said, what somebody said.
1:09:02 You can have, there is only - I won't use originality - there is freedom, and therefore there is something new taking place, if you are free of all this, free of authority, especially religious authority.
1:09:26 But you see, we don't want to be free. We are happy with our possessions; we want power, money, status.
1:09:42 I do not know if you have ever considered what place has power in our life.
1:09:51 Power - political power, religious power, the power of the guru, the power of your scriptures, the power of your professors - sorry - the power of the husband over the wife and the wife over the husband: power.
1:10:19 Power, absolute power is absolute evil. Any form of power is against love.
1:10:33 Can you live a life without seeking power.
1:10:43 You see, I can state all this but it has no meaning to you.
1:10:47 Q: No, in the name of freedom, if everybody does whatever they like, won't it lead to chaos?
1:10:52 K: Aren't you doing that now?
1:10:58 Q: That means more chaos.
1:11:00 K: Aren't you doing exactly what you want to do, now?
1:11:07 You want to become somebody; you want power, position; you are doing exactly what you want to do now.
1:11:17 I know you are prevented sometimes.
1:11:25 Sometimes you are...
1:11:28 K: What, sir?

Q: Is right education love?
1:11:32 Q: Is right education love?
1:11:35 K: I don't know, sir. I explained, sir, what right education is: the cultivation, not only of a part of the brain, which is really very, very small - memorising, that's what you are doing, swotting up, mugging up.
1:11:59 And that's not intelligence, just mugging up.
1:12:07 Q: What was the speaker's answer for the question put by the scientist...
1:12:12 K: What?
1:12:13 Q: What was the speaker's answer to the question put by the scientist in New York?
1:12:28 K: Sir, keep it very simple and perhaps we'll see its...
1:12:35 Suppose one has been going north all one's life, and one gets used to that, going north.
1:12:48 And somebody comes along and says, going north has no meaning at all; perhaps, if you try going east or south or west, you might have a different activity, a different way of living.
1:13:07 And if you listen to the man who says try south or east, and you do actually move away from the north direction, your brain cells themselves change, because you have broken the pattern.
1:13:30 Sir, do you understand what I - or just words, is it? Do you understand what I say, sir? I see, for example, personally, that to be a Hindu creates division and therefore war.
1:13:55 So, I am no longer a Hindu. Sorry, I've... you don't mind? Of course you don't mind because it makes no difference to you.
1:14:12 And I see what religions have done in the world - divided.
1:14:20 So, religions are based on belief, faith, rituals, and the authority of somebody telling you what to do.
1:14:36 So, I don't belong, the speaker doesn't belong to any religion. But that doesn't mean he is not a religious man. On the contrary. To belong to any of these organisations is not to be religious. Just to follow lot of superstition and nonsense. But to lead a religious life means something entirely different - not taking vows and all that stuff.
1:15:11 To live a life... I won't go into it. To live a life without conflict. Yes, sir! To live a life without a single problem. It's time to go.
1:15:28 Q:...just a last question.
1:15:31 Q: When you recognise that your brain is conditioned, you see that the brain is conditioned, you also see that consciousness is one.
1:15:40 Still, how come you remain conditioned?
1:15:42 K: You see your brain is limited, you also see that your consciousness is shared by all - what do you mean, 'seeing'?
1:15:53 Q: Ah, I suppose it is intellectually seeing, not actually. Is that right?

K: Yes. You see the idea but not the fact. The fact is, we share it. You suffer, I suffer, every human being in the world suffers - through war, through pain, through death.
1:16:16 Every human being goes through this. Either you see, you perceive the actuality with your blood, with your heart or it becomes just an idea.
1:16:27 And ideas have no value at all.

Q: Exactly. So how do you actually see. I mean you know it's true that it's conditioned. How do you break free of the conditioning?
1:16:36 K: Sir, what is conditioning?
1:16:39 Q: Throughout the years your brains have been conditioned.
1:16:41 K: No, it's very complex problem. Sir, don't just say, brush it off...
1:16:45 Q: No, I am not trying to brush it off.
1:16:47 K: Conditioning is time - time; time is movement - from here, there, point to point.
1:17:01 And also, time is thought.

Q: Exactly.
1:17:06 K: So thought is based on knowledge and knowledge can never be complete.
1:17:14 Therefore thought is limited. No, see, sir, don't agree. See the truth of it.
1:17:20 Q: I see it.
1:17:21 K: Therefore, anything that thought works out must be limited.
1:17:28 All the religions are limited. Therefore they are destructive.
1:17:35 Right? Now, is there - this is very complex question, so don't agree or disagree - is there a different way of living, knowing that thought is necessary in certain areas, and thought has no place in other areas at all?
1:17:57 Thought has no place in the psychological world. Because psychological world is built by thought. This is quite...
1:18:13 Q: Sir, one very complicated question.
1:18:25 Religion is limited. But actually, religion begins and ends with love. That is to love one another, so it should not be limited.

K: That's what the books say. That's what the books say. Do you love?
1:18:36 Q: Yes, we tend to love. Otherwise we can't be... You don't feel otherwise...
1:18:40 K: Therefore why talk about it?
1:18:45 Q: Sir, how do you classify your knowledge? Your knowledge, how do you classify it?
1:18:50 K: What?
1:18:53 Q: Your knowledge, how do you classify it.
1:18:56 Q: How do you classify your knowledge? Probably, how do you explain the fact that you have knowledge when you say knowledge is the enemy of love?
1:19:07 Q: Does it have any connection with love?
1:19:10 Q: Does your knowledge have any connection with love?
1:19:20 K: Sorry, sir. I don't quite understand your question.
1:19:23 Q: Sir, you said that wherever there is knowledge, there is no love.

K: I said, sir, just, sir, I said, very carefully, knowledge is necessary to go from here to your home.
1:19:35 Knowledge is necessary to write a letter. Knowledge is necessary if you want to be a carpenter, an engineer it is necessary.
1:19:47 That's the way society is arranged at present. Knowledge is necessary. But we are saying, asking, is knowledge necessary at all in the psychological world - right?
1:20:02 Psychological world is filled by thought the temples are filled by thought - the images, the puja and all the rest of it, all Christian churches and Muslim, are filled by thought.
1:20:23 Right? And the gods - thought has made them out of fear and so on. So where is knowledge? Of what kind of knowledge are you talking? I am talking about knowledge in the ordinary sense of that word.
1:20:43 That is, to know in order to act. Act - which is again another complex question. Action - to know how to write a letter. We know, you know English and the speaker knows English. So, we can communicate. That accumulation of words, syntax and the verbs and the structure of English is part of memory, knowledge.
1:21:14 But that has nothing whatever to do with the other. That requires enormous exploration, and you know, all that, not just accepting from what people say.
1:21:28 That has absolutely no meaning.
1:21:33 Q: Absolutely last question: Moral standards, do they rely on the scriptures or the law of the nation?
1:21:44 K: What?

Q: It is a very conflicting problem.
1:21:52 Q: For moral standards, should we rely on the scriptures or on the laws of the nation?
1:22:00 It's a very conflicting situation.
1:22:03 K: What's it, sir?
1:22:05 Q: For my moral standards, should I look up to the scriptures or should I look up to the laws of the nation?
1:22:12 And if there is a conflict between the two, which should I follow?
1:22:18 K: Follow moral - what the scriptures say, or follow what the laws of the government or particular government.
1:22:30 Why do you want to follow? I am not being facetious or impudent, but I am just asking, why do you want to follow somebody, your scriptures or the laws of government?
1:22:48 What do you mean by following?

Q: I would answer that question.
1:22:54 Q: He said he would answer that question. He said he would answer the question.
1:22:58 K: Who? Sir, look. This is really a very serious question. Scriptures, what do you mean by the scriptures? Why do you make the scriptures so important? Christian scriptures, the Bible, the Koran and you've got dozens of religious books, here in this country.
1:23:34 Have you ever examined religions based on books or a particular book is much more dangerous than religion based on many books?
1:23:51 You understand what I am saying? You understand, sir, what I am saying? The Koran is one book and see what it is doing, Bigoted - I am sorry, I am not insulting the Muslims.
1:24:09 Bigoted, narrow. That is the authority. And the Bible also - there are the fundamentalists there and so on, so on. In this country, you have so many religious books. You can follow any of them. It's just much more fun. And that you are not religious, you just follow. Whereas the gentlemen asked the question: why do we follow anybody, scriptures or the government?
1:24:45 Or, do you want to find out for oneself - oneself, not according to somebody, what is right action?
1:24:57 Right action that is right under all circumstances, whether you are here or in America or in Russia or anywhere else.
1:25:10 What is right behaviour? What is right way of living?
1:25:17 That's much more important to find out than to follow somebody. You have followed dozens of people, and where has it led you?
1:25:30 So isn't it important to find out for oneself, not selfishly, to find out what is right action.
1:25:45 Right action doesn't depend on ideals, does it?
1:25:54 An ideal is something which is not. Agree to that?
1:26:01 I've an ideal of non-violence, but I am violent. What's the point of having non-violence as an ideal? What is important is to face the fact that I am violent. Right? So, please listen, if you want to listen. If you don't, it's all right too. To find out what is right action, there cannot be any ideals.
1:26:32 Ideals are created away from 'what is'. You understand? What is. I am angry, deal with anger, not 'I should not be angry'.
1:26:51 The cause of anger - has many causes. And where there is a cause there is an end. So, right behaviour, right action, means the freedom from ideals.
1:27:14 I know you won't, you don't like this because we are full of ideals, which is nonsense.
1:27:22 Because ideals help you to escape from actuality.
1:27:29 So, right action also means that you are both the past, the present and the future.
1:27:46 And time - which is a very complex, I won't go into all that - time, to understand the nature of time, not only the time by the sunrise, sunset, by the chronometer, but time that thought has invented.
1:28:09 And also it means, right action is not dependent on intellectual activity.
1:28:19 You may be very clever, terribly intelligent, in a cunning way as most of us are, which is not intelligence.
1:28:32 So one has to have freedom to be intelligent, and so on, when you go into finding out what is right action.
1:28:44 Right action is freedom from the past, and freedom from all sense of fear and so on.
1:28:57 Q: Sir, as you say for poverty government is not to be blamed.
1:29:08 What is your suggestion for them. It's a vital question.
1:29:11 K: Sir, I explained, I explained very carefully, I explained very carefully, poverty exists throughout the world. Right?
1:29:24 Q: Yes.
1:29:26 K: And a separate government, nationalist government cannot solve this problem.
1:29:34 Therefore it's a problem for the rest of mankind, not for a particular government.
1:29:42 Q: For example...
1:29:44 K: I know, sir. I know, for example, many of them. Sorry, we'll have to stop. Vote of thanks: On behalf of the students, faculty members and staff of IIT Madras, I thank Mr J Krishnamurti for an interesting talk.
1:30:00 We are really grateful to him for being with us today even in this (inaudible). I thank Dr Narayan Das for arranging this lecture and giving us this opportunity to listen to him...
1:30:17 And once again, thank you, Mr Krishnamurti, for being with us today.