Krishnamurti Subtitles
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OJ66T2 - Learning is in the active present
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| 0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s second public talk in Ojai, California, 1966. |
| 0:09 Krishnamurti: California has one of the most beautiful climates in the world, perhaps rather hot, especially in the South, and it seems to me it should produce a marvellous society, a society which is totally different from that which is now, a society that is highly disciplined – I’m using that word with great care, and we shall go into the meaning of that word presently – a society that’s not wholly materialistic, as it is now; a society that is not self-centred in its progressive acquisitiveness; a society that has deep inward life, not everlastingly seeking entertainment, amusement and various forms of thrills. |
| 1:57 And it seems to me – as I’ve been all over the world, except behind the red curtain and all the rest of that – the world is looking, more or less, copying to… America, trying to bring about prosperity. The world of cinema, the world of entertainment, football, and all the rest of those things are being imitated all over the world. And one asks oneself, if one is at all serious, as those who live in this climate must have asked themselves this real question: what is America producing – apart from cars, going to the moon, technological advancement, prosperity and great concerts and museums, and all the rest of that – what is it actually giving? 3:31 Apart from literature, which is a form of entertainment, apart from new sectarian dogmatism, or experimentation in the field of narcotics and LSD, and all the rest of those things, what actually is this country bringing about? Shouldn’t we know, shouldn’t we ask, shouldn’t we demand, not only of ourselves but also of those people who are attempting to create a different world, a different society, especially the politician. And the politician, obviously, will never create a new world, 4:42 nor the priests. So one has to ask oneself, it seems to me, and ask oneself not out of curiosity, out of some deep despair and anxiety, but ask oneself what is it all about, where human beings are going? We have asked this question of very… some prominent people, Americans, and unfortunately they’ve no answer; nor have they an answer in the East, either. They’ve got some speculative formula, a hope, but you cannot build a society on hope or on a formula. A society can only be built by a small group of people, a dedicated people who are not persuaded by ambition, greed, by the principle of pleasure. 6:23 And so when... as you are going to listen to these talks and discussions, unfortunately, I wonder what your own answer is? Not a speculative answer, not an answer based on hope, on some fantastic myth, but if you examine the world, not only in this country, in Europe, in Asia, and in Russia where also there are great changes taking place – becoming more and more… leaning more and more to the right; surely when you look at all this, one asks oneself where is the new seed taking place? 8:03 A new culture, a new society, a new mind; not fashioned in the mould of the old pattern, not belonging to any particular religion, group, class, sect or all that immature things that one does do. I do not know if one has asked that question, or one is maybe too occupied with one’s own problems or one is so caught up in the trap, going round and round, having no time, no leisure, no mind to investigate. Of course they cannot answer this question, but of those who have perhaps put this question to themselves seriously – specially in a climate like this, where there’s a great deal of leisure, where you can sit under a tree and look at the blue sky, where the climate is gentle, where there’s plenty of food, clothing, great prosperity – what is the outcome of this? Is it lost? 10:00 Is this country already on the decline, never having matured? And that’s a difficult word also – ‘maturity’. And who is going to answer this question? Some philosopher? Some scientist? Someone who has studied history deeply and has all the information: what this society should be, what it will become? Or turn to some clairvoyant, some visionary, some phoney individual with some ideas? Who is going to answer this? And it seems to me, we human beings right through the world have no faith in anything any more, neither in the gods that man has invented out of his fear, nor in the scientist, nor in the politicians, nor in the books and the theologians and the various conditioned thoughts. 11:49 As one cannot possibly put any faith in any of these people, and having no fundamental faith in oneself, because one is so uncertain, confused, torn by innumerable desires; as one cannot possibly allow oneself to be led by another or follow another, one has to find an answer for oneself as a human being. If you answer it as an individual – please do pay a little attention to this – if you answer it as an individual, then you are answering it from a personal point of view, from an inclination, from a temperament, from a conditioned, narrow little individual experience, narrow little hope, and your answer will invariably be rather infantile, immature, has no meaning at all. 13:36 Because the problem is much greater than the individual mind that can tackle it. The challenge is immense, and to meet that challenge one has to meet it with the understanding of the whole of the human world: the wars, the starvation, the underdeveloped countries, the overpopulation, the extravagance of the rich and the difference of the poor, class, and so on and so on – the world, what is going on in the world actually at the present time. If one can look at it totally – not partially as an individual or as an American, as a Catholic, as a Hindu or a Buddhist or communist, and all that, but to look at the whole phenomena totally, then I think we shall find the answer, which may not be, which may not be according to your like and dislike, what you want it to be, otherwise, if you… one doesn’t find a real, significant answer to this, our life becomes rather shallow, shoddy, meaningless. |
| 15:44 So to understand this thing… now, I mean by that word, ‘understand’, not an intellectual comprehension. That’s fairly easy, intellectually see where all the civilizations, cultures have ended, and from that study, come to a conclusion and say, ‘America should be this’ or ‘the world should be that’. That’s not understanding, that’s merely an intellectual analysis of what should be. Nor does understanding come into being with an emotional, sentimental, hopeful outlook. So understanding has nothing whatsoever to do either with the intellect or the emotion kept apart. And as most people are rather emotional, their response is being sentimental, rather cruel, thoughtless. |
| 17:36 So we are using that word, ‘understanding’, which takes place only when the crisis is great and you have no answer to it, and therefore your mind becomes completely silent, and in that silence there is an understanding. This must have happened to all of us, when you are faced with something that you cannot possibly find an answer. You try everything, you consult, you talk it over, you inquire, you go through all the analysis, and so on, and yet there is no answer. And suddenly, when you have put it aside, as it were, there’s an understanding, there’s clarity because the mind at certain moment has become extraordinarily quiet with regard to that problem. And it is only then that there is an understanding. |
| 18:59 But to answer this question, which is a tremendous challenge that’s going on right through the world, and as you have no answer… you can pretend you have an answer or answer according to the Catholic, the Protestant, the... then we are back again with the same old issue. But if you would understand this, this immense problem, then to bring about that complete quiescence of the mind, so that it can observe – not from a particular individualistic point of view – demands a great discipline. We are using that word, ‘discipline’, not in the military sense or in the religious orthodox sense. |
| 20:43 Generally, that word implies conformity, cultivating certain habits, suppressing, forcing, adjusting, and all that is implied in that word, ‘discipline’, generally. But we are using that word quite differently. Discipline means... the root meaning of that word is to learn, and you cannot possibly learn if you are merely conforming or suppressing or controlling. So one has to understand again the meaning of the word ‘learning’, because if there is no right discipline, the mind cannot possibly find an answer to this, the answer in which is implied the meaning, the structure of whole of life. |
| 23:07 So to understand, there must be discipline. Please follow this a little bit; give your attention. And understanding is not the outcome of the intellect or… emotion, of sentiment. As we said, understanding comes when the mind is really very, very quiet, has no movement at all in any direction. When you observe a tree, if you have ever done it, to look at a tree, your mind never observes the tree, it observes the image it has created about a tree, and that image is always moving, it’s never quiet; it’s being added to and taken away. It’s only when the mind is very quiet, really observant, without any movement, then it observes the actual fact of a tree. |
| 24:41 So understanding of any problem, especially this problem that is confronting, that is, the crisis in the whole of consciousness of man, can only be understood and therefore answered radically when that understanding is the outcome of discipline. And discipline we mean by not drill, not conformity, not enforcement, not adjustment through fear, through punishment, all that, but that discipline comes when there is learning; it comes naturally when there is learning. So one has to go into this question of what is learning. Learning, surely, is always in the active present. I am always learning, always in the present, active. That active present of learning ceases when it has become the past: ‘I have learnt’. |
| 26:42 Please do follow this, if you will, because we are going to go into something which will be rather difficult if you don’t understand this first thing. |
| 27:02 What we generally do is, having learnt, having accumulated knowledge, a technology, and so on, with that we act. Or in that acting after having learnt, we learn more and add more to what we have already known. Right? This is what we are doing all the time. I learn from an experience and store that experience as memory, as knowledge, and a further experience is translated according to what I have accumulated, and so I’m always adding, and therefore never learning. Learning is an active present, an action... a process always in the present, and therefore learning is action – not having learnt, act. |
| 28:33 Please... So then action has a totally different meaning: then you are always learning, therefore life is always new, therefore there is never a moment of having learnt and acting from that past, and therefore conflict with the present or with the future. |
| 29:18 So that demands great attention, great awareness. It’s very easy, as most of us… for most of us, having gathered information, knowledge, experience, storing that up, which we call knowledge, and from that knowledge, act – that’s mechanical. That doesn’t need great energy. That doesn’t need great attention, awareness, intensity. But if one understands the meaning of that word, ‘learning’, then it is an actual movement in the present all the time, and therefore never a moment of accumulated knowledge and acting from that. |
| 30:32 So, to learn is to be extraordinarily aware – not aware of what you already know, which becomes – please follow all this – which is the... so-called the unconscious. You’re following this? Is this all rather a puzzle? Bien. To me there is no unconscious. That’s one of the… unconscious is one of the fashionable things nowadays, to investigate it, to go into it, to analyze it, to examine it, examine your dreams – you know? – all that circus that goes on. There is only consciousness. It’s like a field – either you take the whole field into view, into observation, or you take one corner of it and call that unconscious, this conscious; this action, that something else. So... which we’ll go into. So the... |
| 32:28 so learning becomes extraordinarily vital, and it brings great energy, because in that there is no conflict. You follow? Because now our energy is dissipated, lost between what has been accumulated through learning, through experience, through information, and so on, and the action, and hence there is a contradiction: the action approximating itself to the knowledge, and hence a contradiction. Where there is a contradiction, there is a waste of energy. And our life is a contradiction and therefore it’s a constant dissipation of energy. 33:53 Please, I hope you’re not merely listening to the words but rather observing your own activity of your own mind, because it will be utterly meaningless to listen to these talks, just hearing the words, going away either appreciating it or saying, ‘Well, that’s old stuff’. But if you were aware, not only what the speaker is saying but also aware of yourself in relation to what is being said, then the act of listening has great significance; then you are discovering for yourself actually what is taking place. So it is great... it is important also to find out how to listen. 35:39 We hardly listen. Either we are too occupied with our own problems, with our own point of view, with our own amusements, with our… guarding ourselves, protecting ourselves – the ourselves being the image that we have built about ourselves, or when we do listen, we are interpreting, agreeing or disagreeing, coming to a conclusion or comparing with what already you know, so actually you never… you’re never in the act of listening. So if you are aware of all this, that very awareness is discipline. As we said, the word ‘discipline’ implies learning – never having learnt. 37:00 That’s what modern education is doing: having learnt, apply. But learning, as we said, demands great deal of awareness, awareness of the machinery of your own thought and feeling, awareness without choice, obviously. The moment you choose or say, ‘This I like; this I don’t like’, then you are introducing a factor of choice, whereas if you are merely aware of your own machinery of thought, feeling, pleasure, displeasure, experience, knowledge, and all the rest of it, just to be aware without any choice, then you are in a state of learning, and in that learning there is not a dissipation of energy. On the contrary. 38:28 Then your mind becomes astonishingly sensitive, alert, alive and therefore very sensitive, and such a mind that is alive, sensitive, learning, needs… and so energetic, needs no drug of any kind, no stimulation, because then learning is a challenge itself, and the response to that challenge is the act of learning. |
| 39:19 So a mind that would answer this question, the question, the challenge being: is there actual significance to living? Not an invented significance, either of the existentialists or the Catholics or of the drug fiends, and so on and so on – actual deep significance which you have found out for yourself. Then out of that one can… a society, different society can come into being. |
| 40:17 Our society as it is, is… has no meaning; three meals a day, house, comforts, and all the rest of it. And if you would go further into this, one has to understand this whole principle of pleasure. |
| 41:07 Would you like to ask questions or shall I go on? |
| 41:09 Questioner: Go on. |
| 41:12 K: Ah, no, just a minute, please. Just a minute, sir, just a minute. |
| 41:18 Q: More sound. |
| 41:22 Q: Louder. |
| 41:26 K: Louder, sir. 379 00:41:29,240 --> 00:41:18,880 |
| 41:29 Q: More sound, please, back here. It’s very easy for you to tell me to go on. All that you will do... just to hear, but if you were actually working, working together, going step by step into it, then you wouldn’t ask me to go on. Then you’d be asking questions to find out. You know, we are so used to being entertained – the football field, in the cinema, in the churches, in the magazines, and so on, entertained. That’s what you want. But to actually work hard, one has to be serious, and that’s why one has to go into this question of pleasure, which is… which cannot be discussed in ten minutes, which we’ll perhaps go into it on another occasion. 43:31 So without understanding pleasure, learning, discipline and the whole structure and the meaning of all this, we’ll never find out as a human being the real issues, the right response. So perhaps now we can ask questions bearing on what we have talked about this morning, and through questions go into the problems. Sir? You don’t have to get up, sir. |
| 44:22 Q: If it’s a question of the individual learning for himself, doing for himself by learning what the necessary thing is in the moment as it arises, if he’s busy occupied in that, how can he be going out to life to form a society? |
| 44:55 K: The gentleman asks, if the individual is occupied in the observation of learning, and therefore learning, how can he go out and form a society? Make it brief, sir, because... |
| 45:24 Q: Going after life. |
| 45:24 K: Going after life. |
| 45:24 Q: This is forming society. |
| 45:29 K: ‘And this’, he says, ‘is forming society’. Sir, life is learning, isn’t it? Life is a movement, an endless movement. It’s like a vast river of great depth, with a great volume of water, moving endlessly. And to learn about it is to observe it choicelessly, to be with it endlessly. And that movement, being with it, is the creation of a new society. You don’t have to learn, and then go out. You see, sirs, one does not actually – I’m not criticising you... as a personal criticism at all – but one does not actually observe what one is thinking, feeling, one’s motives. 46:59 When one is aware of all that, and aware... awareness is... if there is an awareness, and if it is a discriminative awareness, then it ceases to be awareness. Awareness is to be aware of everything – to be aware of the people sitting here, the colours, the tree, the light on the leaf, the noise; see the mountains, the movement of wind among the leaves. Awareness is not concentration. Again, we can’t go into all that now, but to separate life and the individual and to learn about the individual is to create such chasm of contradiction and misery. The individual, the human being is life, is you and me. 48:20 Unfortunately, that life has been divided into nationalities, into groups, into sects, into beliefs, into this and into that. So to learn about the whole movement of existence is to be aware of this vast field. So the question is not a division between life and action, learning and creating, but rather how to look at this whole field of life. You understand, sirs? I hope I… my question is clear. Just a minute, sir. Sir, please do... I know you’re full of questions and responses. Just... |
| 49:33 Q: It’s the same question. I wanted to word it differently because it’s not… |
| 49:39 K: I’m answering the same question, sir. You know, to look at the whole world, whether in Vietnam, in Russia, the Chinese brutality, and so on, to look at all this whole world as a whole, not as America, as an individual, as a Christian, as a Hindu, Buddhist, and so on, but to see this whole enormous movement, which is the human movement: the agony, the despair, the love, the jealousies, the… oh, all the travail of human anxiety, just to see the whole of that. That is the real problem. Is it possible to see the whole of it? Not intellectually. Then if you see the whole of it at one look, with one glance, then you’ll have the answer. Then you are no longer looking at the world as an individual. 51:24 Then you are no longer thinking of the world in terms of East and West, communist and not… and so on and so on. So the question is: Is it possible for us to look at this whole thing, this whole division, contradictions, this misery, this battle as a whole? If you are capable of looking at it as a whole, totally, then the answer will be total, not particular. And it’s only that answer that’s going to solve any problem, whether it’s individual problem or a political, economic problem. But to see the whole of it demands your complete attention. |
| 52:42 You know, when you are really very attentive – we mean by that word, when you are giving your mind, your heart, your nerves, your ears, your eyes, your brain, your mind, everything – in that attention there is no observer at all, and therefore the observer is the observed. There is only attention. Again, we’ll go into that on a different occasion. Yes, sir? Yes, sir? |
| 53:38 Q: Is it ever possible to change, to create a new society if you use force? Is not force the outcome of fear? |
| 53:49 K: The questioner asks, ‘Is it ever possible to create a new society out of force, out of compulsion, out of threat and punishment, for all that is based on fear?’ Obviously you can‘t create a new thing... It’s.... |
| 54:12 Q: I have burned my ego, so I would like to ask – I as a... I, not the small, but I the capital – and the question is: how do you make this world so desperate that they receive the transformation of the mind? The second question would be... |
| 54:38 K: Oh, sir, one question. The questioner asks, ‘How is it possible to bring about a total transformation of a society?’ |
| 55:02 Q: No. |
| 55:05 K: Ah. |
| 55:05 Q: Sir... |
| 55:08 K: Give it to me, sir. Give it to me, sir. Give it to me, sir. |
| 55:14 Q: Here. |
| 55:21 K: (Reading) ‘How do you make this world so desperate that they receive the transformation of the mind?’ Who is going to give this transformation? Ah? The priests have tried it, the theologians have tried it, for centuries upon centuries, as though you’re going to receive this transformation from an outside agency. This transformation, they have threatened with hell and heaven to bring it about. They haven’t succeeded. And nobody believes that somebody else is going to transform you. That’s all too immature; that’s gone, finished. One has to transform oneself. (Questioner leaves) |
| 56:53 Q: That’s very dramatic, my friend, but you’re walking out on yourself. |
| 57:00 K: Yes, sir? |
