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SA61T2 - To see something totally, the brain must be quiet
Saanen, Switzerland - 27 July 1961
Public Talk 2



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti's second public talk in Saanen, 1961.
0:06 If we may, if you’re all right, we shall continue with what we were discussing when we met day before yesterday.
0:25 I think it is very important, especially during these discussions, to find out how to listen.
0:50 Because very few of us do listen: we hear.
1:03 We hear superficially, as we hear that noise in the street, and that hearing enters into the brain very little.
1:21 And we throw it off on the least provocation. But there is a different kind of listening where the brain is alert without effort, interested, serious, wanting to find out what is true and what is false, not putting forward any opinion, judgment, or translating what is being said, nor comparing what is being said.
2:05 For example, it’s the latest fashion now to be interested in Zen; that’s the craze.
2:22 And, what you hear during these talks you will inevitably try to compare what is being said with what you have read.
2:38 In that process you are not listening at all, are you? You’re merely comparing. And this comparison is a form of laziness. Whereas, if you listen, you are listening directly, without the intermediary of what you have learnt, or what you have heard, or what you have read: you are listening directly and responding directly without any prejudice.
3:13 You are seeing what is true in what is being said, and seeing the false in what is being said, or the falseness of what is being said.
3:29 That’s much more important and significant than merely comparing, evaluating and judging.
3:40 So, I hope you will, not mind if I keep repeating the statement that it is very difficult to learn the art of listening.
3:59 It is as difficult as seeing. They are both necessary, the seeing and the listening.
4:22 As we were saying the other day, there is a great deal of chaos in the world: poverty, starvation and corruption.
4:38 Not only politically, economically, but also inwardly there is a great deal of confusion, sorrow, poverty of being.
4:52 Though you may have plenty of possessions, houses, and a great deal of information and knowledge, there is a poverty of being.
5:08 There is contradiction in the world: the politicians declaring for peace and preparing for war, talking about unity of man and breaking it up.
5:30 And out of this disorder, chaos, we all want order.
5:39 We have a passion for order; we have passion to keep our rooms clean, orderly, so we have a passion to keep, to bring about in the world orderliness.
6:00 I wonder if we have at all thought deeply about that word, what it implies.
6:10 We want order inwardly, without contradiction, without struggle, without confusion, so that there is no sense of disorder, disharmony, a struggle.
6:37 And so we turn to spiritual leaders to give us order, or join groups, or follow a certain set of ideas, disciplines, hoping thereby to bring about a certain order within ourselves.
7:04 And so we set up authority: we want to be told what to do. I don’t know what to do, but you know; so I come to you, and you tell me what to do, and I follow, discipline, conform, imitate.
7:29 So, I try to bring about order through conformity and authority, which implies following—which is fairly obvious, I think, when one thinks about it.
7:44 So, we desire to have inward order, and also we want outward order in politics, in the world of business.
8:05 And so we have dictators, tyrants, totalitarian governments which promise total order, where you are not allowed to think at all.
8:19 You are told what to think, as you are told what to think when you belong to a church, when you belong to a particular group who believe in a certain set of ideas.
8:35 The tyranny of the church is as brutal as the tyranny of governments, but we like it, we want order at any price.
8:52 And we have order. War does bring about an extraordinary order in the state: everybody cooperates to destroy each other.
9:07 So, this obsession for order must be understood: whether such abnegation of one’s own confusion, and the confusion outward to authority, whether it does bring about order.
9:41 Do you understand the question? I am confused, I don’t know what to do.
9:54 My life is narrow, short, petty, confused, miserable: I’m in a state of contradiction, I don’t know what to do, so I go to a person, a teacher, a guru, a saint, a saviour—and some of you probably come here also with that intention.
10:20 And, being confused, invariably out of that confusion you choose your leader; and when you act out of confusion, what you choose and what you do does breed further confusion.
10:40 So, you have authority, and you give yourself over to authority, which means, you don’t want to think at all, which means you don’t want to investigate, you don’t want to inquire, you don’t want to find out for yourself what is true, what is false.
11:09 And to discover what is true and what is false is arduous work—you have to be on your toes, you have to be alert.
11:23 But as most of us are lazy, dull, not really, deeply serious, we would rather be told what to do, and so we have the saints, the saviours, the teachers for our conduct, inward conduct, and outwardly there are the governments, the tyrants, the generals, the politicians, the specialists.
12:09 And so gradually, we hope, by following all our troubles will be over and, thereby, we shall have order.
12:26 Surely the word ‘order’ implies all that, does it not, and whether such demand for order really brings about order.
12:52 Do please consider this, because I want to go into it. Because I think authority of any kind is destructive.
13:15 Power in any form—whether the power of a government, the power of a spiritual leader, church, the priest—power in any form is evil.
13:34 And yet, we are so eager to accept that evil because we don’t know, we are confused, we want to be told.
13:52 So I think from the very beginning of these talks we should be very clear about this matter: that the speaker has no authority of any kind, nor are you, who are listening, followers of what is being said.
14:19 We are trying together to investigate, to find out—together.
14:27 I am not telling you what you should do, and you are not either accepting or rejecting: we are together inquiring, together taking a journey into the whole process of thinking, of living.
14:49 And if you come with an idea that you will be told what to do, you’ll go away empty handed.
14:59 To me, what is important is to see that there is disorder in us, outwardly and inwardly; and the demand for order is merely the demand for security, to be safe, to be certain.
15:27 And unfortunately, there is no security either outwardly or inwardly: the banks may fail, there may be wars, there is death, the stock market will collapse—anything might happen, and it is happening.
16:00 So the demand for order is the demand for security, for safety, and that’s what we want, whether we are young or old: we want safety, we want security inwardly and outwardly.
16:22 We don’t care so much inwardly because we don’t know what to do about getting inward security, but at least we can have outward security: good banks, good governments, a tradition that will be continued.
16:51 So the mind gradually becomes satisfied, dull, safe, tradition bound, and such a mind obviously can never find out what is true or what is false, and such a mind is incapable of meeting the enormous challenge of existence.
17:30 I hope you’re all listening to this—not being mesmerized by my words—that you are listening so that you actually discover for yourselves whether there is such a thing as security or not.
17:47 And that’s an enormous problem: to live in a world where there is no security, to live in an inward world, a world in which there is no tradition, no yesterday or tomorrow.
18:18 Either one becomes totally insane because one discovers there is no certainty, or you become extraordinarily alive and sane.
18:38 It is not a matter of choice.
18:48 You cannot choose between security and insecurity, but when one sees the fact that there is no security inwardly, psychologically, inside the skin.
19:13 No relationship is secure—however much you may believe in certain doctrines, beliefs, with it goes always doubt, suspicion and, therefore, fear.
19:39 So, such inquiry is necessary when you demand, when there is, the passion for order.
19:52 Now, the opposite is not true either: that one must live in disorder, in chaos.
20:14 You know, if I may here go into it a little bit, rather...
20:22 perhaps for the first time rather a difficult thing. You know: we live, we act through reaction.
20:42 All our actions are reactions. I do not know if you have not noticed it: there is no action without reaction.
20:59 And, if we see that order is not possible, then invariably we think that there must be disorder, the opposite, the reaction to order.
21:25 But if one sees the truth that the demand for order implies all that I have just indicated, sees the truth of that, then out of that discovery of what is true, real order comes, not disorder.
21:46 Am I making myself clear on this point? Questioner: Not quite. KRISHNAMURT

I: : She said, not quite. I’ll put it differently.
22:10 Peace is, surely, not the state when there is no war.
22:24 Is it? Peace is something entirely different. It’s not the interval between two wars.
22:37 But to find out what is peace, one must be totally free of violence.
22:54 Now, to be free of violence demands a tremendous inquiry into violence—violence, in which is implied competition, ambition, the desire for success, being tremendously efficient, to discipline oneself to such a point that you merely function as a machine; and the following of a certain set of ideas, ideals.
23:45 All these imply violence. Obviously, forcing the mind to conform—whether the pattern is noble or ignoble is irrelevant, the insistency to conform implies conformity—implies violence.
24:03 And we say if we do not conform, there will be chaos.
24:15 Now, the statement that there will be chaos is a reaction.
24:22 But if one goes very deeply into the question of violence—which is not a superficial thing—it requires great deal of inquiry.
24:43 Anger, jealousy, hate, envy: all those are the expressions of violence.
24:59 And to be free of violence is to be in peace, not to be in a state of disorder.
25:11 And that’s why one has to have a great deal of self knowledge, the knowing of oneself, which is a very serious matter, not a thing to be casually looked at during one morning and forgotten for the rest of the week.
25:41 That’s why it is very arduous, what we’re discussing.
26:04 So, to understand order is much more important than to say, “If there is no order, will there not be chaos?”—as though we were living in a marvellous, beautiful, lovely world in which there is no chaos and misery.
26:36 One has only to look at ourselves, how poor inwardly we are: without affection, without sympathy, without love; how ugly, how easily persuaded we are, always seeking company, never being able to be alone.
27:07 So, it is important to see the totality of order, the total thing, not just take little bits of it which suits you or which doesn’t suit you—the totality of something—to see something totally, as you see the total tree.
27:56 And that’s very difficult, to see something totally. Now, I would like to—if I may this morning—discuss that with you.
28:12 What is seeing something totally?
28:23 We have discussed, or rather I have talked a little bit about, order, authority, conformity.
28:37 If one can see the totality of that—not partially—then you will see that the brain, that the mind is free from this demand for order and, therefore, free from following, whether you follow the national leader, hero, you know, the legend, and all that tommyrot, or whether you follow a particular teacher, guru and your saint and all the rest of it.
29:22 Now, what is seeing totally?
29:34 First of all, what is seeing? Is seeing merely the word?
29:50 Please follow this a little bit carefully, if you don’t mind. If you’re not too tired, if it isn’t too hot, please follow this a little bit, if I may ask you, attentively.
30:07 What is seeing?
30:17 When you say, “I see,” what do you mean? Don’t please answer me, just go with me—not that you’re following me because I’m not your authority and you’re not my followers.
30:35 I haven’t got any, thank God!
30:43 But we are together inquiring into this question of seeing because it’s very important, as you will discover for yourselves.
30:53 When you say, “I see,” is it the word— you understand?—the word seeing, or do you actually see?
31:15 Wait a minute. When you say, “I see that tree, that flower,” do you actually see, or are you merely satisfied with the word I see?
31:39 Do think about it, don’t... We have got several meetings, so we’ll take it slowly.
31:49 And when you are actually not caught by the words, do you actually see the tree?
31:58 See? Or do you say, “That’s an oak, that’s a pine, that’s an elm, this and that,” and pass it by?
32:13 Which again indicates that the word prevents you from seeing the tree and, therefore, you’re not free of the word—therefore you’re not seeing.
32:28 Am I making myself clear? Good. Because, please, what I’m talking about becomes a little more difficult presently, so let’s go slowly.
32:47 So, you can only see when the word is not important, when the word has been set aside, the symbol, the term, the name, and then you can look—when the name is not important at all, and the memory connected with the name, you follow, all the reminiscence, the remembrance associated with the word, then you can look.
33:44 And it is a very arduous thing to do—to look. You don’t look at me. You’ve got certain ideas about me. I’ve got a certain reputation: I am this, I am...
34:04 So that is preventing you from seeing.
34:12 If you can strip the mind of all that rubbish, then you can see: that seeing is entirely different from the seeing through words.
34:38 Now, can you look at your gods, at your favourite pleasures, fears, ambitions—look—and your feelings of nobility, of spirituality and all that business, can you look, stripped of the word?
35:13 And that requires, that is very arduous, and very few are willing to look.
35:26 And that seeing is total, because it is no longer associated with the word, and the memory of that word, and the feelings that word evokes.
35:48 So, seeing something totally implies that there is no division, that there is no reaction to what is being seen—merely seeing.
36:29 And that seeing is what is seen, not what your opinions, your reactions [are] about what is seen, but the seeing the fact—that itself brings about a series of actions which is disassociated from the word and memory and ideas.
36:53 You understand?
37:00 This is not an intellectual feat, though the description of it may sound intellectual, verbal or mental, but the actual experiencing of it is not intellectual.
37:18 And being intellectual is stupid anyhow, any more than being emotional is equally stupid.
37:31 So, seeing something totally, seeing the total fear, frees the mind from fear.
38:02 Now, we don’t see anything totally because we are always looking at things through our brain, ¬which doesn’t mean that the brain should not be used; on the contrary, we must use our brain to its highest capacity.
38:40 But it is the function of the brain to break up things.
38:50 It has been educated to observe, to learn in part, not totally, because to think is the function of the brain.
39:13 To think of the world, of the earth totally, implies no nationality, no tradition, no gods, no churches, not the division of fields and coloured maps, seeing human beings not as Europeans, and the Americans, or Russians, or Chinese, or as Indians—seeing man.
39:54 And the brain refuses to see the total thing, the total earth and man on it because the brain is conditioned through education, through tradition, through centuries of propaganda.
40:34 And so the brain, with all its mechanical habits, its animal instincts, its urge to remain in safety, in security, can never see anything totally and yet it is the brain which dominates us, it’s the brain that’s functioning all the time.
41:10 Please don’t jump to something else: that there must be a spirit which we must get into touch with and all that nonsense.
41:22 I am going step by step. Follow it, you will... if you want to follow it, you’ll follow it; if not, it’s all right.
41:33 So, the brain is conditioned through habit, through propaganda—which is influence—through education, and all the daily influences, all the pettiness of life, the everlasting chatter of the brain, and with that brain we look.
42:26 Do follow, please follow this. I’m not saying something abnormal, something extraordinary out of the East.
42:36 I’m not. So, that brain looks—looks at the tree, listens to what is being said, reads a poem, looks at a picture, listens to a concert—always partial, always in terms of I like and I don’t like, what is profitable, what is not profitable.
43:15 And, it’s the function of the brain to react, otherwise you’ll be destroyed overnight.
43:29 So, it is the brain with all its reactions, its memories, its urges, compulsions, conscious as well as the unconscious—it is that brain which looks and sees and listens and feels.
43:58 So the brain, being in itself partial, in itself the product of time and space, of all education, all that which I have described—it cannot see totally.
44:20 It can’t see the tree totally.
44:28 It says, “I don’t like that tree, it is too smelly; it is this, it is that, it is a dozen things,” always comparing, always judging, always evaluating.
44:41 But it’s the function of the brain to evaluate.
44:48 But to see things totally, the brain must be in abeyance, quiet.
45:00 I hope you have captured, you are understanding what I am talking about, or rather, that I am explaining myself clearly.
45:16 So, the seeing totally of something can only take place when the brain is highly sensitive and recognizes its own limitations, highly responsive to reason, to doubt, to question, and knows the limitations of reasoning, questioning, doubting, and therefore does not allow itself to interfere with what is being seen.
46:13 Then you will see, if the brain can go as far as that, and one has to, if you want to discover something other than the product of the brain, which is that immeasurable reality, which is something which cannot be put into words, the unnameable, the unknowable.
46:43 If one really wants to find out, the brain must go to its limit, questioning, arguing, discussing, wanting to find out, and knowing its own limited, partial existence; and that very experience of knowing the limitation, quietens the mind, the brain.
47:16 Then, there is a total seeing.
47:29 And when one can see the totality of order... ¬not that you must have disorder, and the fear of disorder, what is order, and all the rest of it, which we have more or less...
47:42 I don’t want to go too much into it because we are concerned for the moment [with] the experience of seeing something totally.
48:00 Then you will see that... Is it already twelve? Audience: A quarter to twelve. KRISHNAMURT

I: Sorry. Then you will see that out of total comprehension of order comes a wholly different kind of order.
48:30 Surely, the right order can only come when there is destruction, destruction of the mind that demands order, of a brain that says, “I must have everything in order, in order to be secure.” And when the brain has shattered its own creations, its own soil in which it breeds all kinds of fancies, illusions, desires, wishes, then out of that shattering there is an order, there is a love which creates its own order.
49:27 We’ve got a quarter of an hour in which to discuss.
49:34 I didn’t know I had talked so much, sorry, I must get a watch.
49:55 I’m afraid, you see, sirs, if you write out a question it takes too long to read it.
50:20 May I suggest, and I hope you will not mind—it is better, I think, that we ask questions directly and not write them down because then we are directly in communication with each other.
50:57 Even if you don’t speak English, say it in French, or in Italian, I’ll get it, or Spanish even.
51:12 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: Please, we must be very careful, if I may...
51:44 The lady says, creative activity in a classroom is what is being said exactly.
51:55 Now, I am not questioning the lady and what she says, but we must understand what we mean by creativity and activity.
52:09 What do you, what... You see, we use this word ‘creative’ so sloppily, so easily. A painter says he’s very creative, a poet, an inventor, a teacher in a classroom.
52:28 What do we mean by that word ‘creative’? Do you know when you’re creative?
52:40 And can you use creativity in a classroom? If you buy soap or paint a picture... a man who paints a picture, is he creative?
52:56 Or writes a poem, or composes a sonata, is he creative?
53:09 Please let us be very clear. Is expression of the thing which he feels as creative, is that creative?
53:21 Ah, this is too difficult.
53:29 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: You see, the lady says, the lack of consciousness at the moment of creation is creativity.
53:53 Is that right? Now, what do we mean by that word consciousness? You see, we go tumbling into one difficult word into another difficult word.
54:13 Look, a painter has a moment of lucidity, a moment in which he sees, he experiences, and then he puts it on the canvas or in a stone, or writes a poem.
54:40 Please follow this a little bit. And he loses that moment. He has expressed it on the canvas, but he has lost that moment.
54:59 And, so he goes after it through drink, women, entertainment, amusement, hoping to capture it.
55:11 And, when he has abandoned all that and is again walking quietly by the stream or in a lane, suddenly he has that same feeling again, which he expresses.
55:28 And the expression is sold, becomes a marketable thing; and he becomes ambitious, he wants to create, he wants to produce, he wants to do something with that in the schoolroom, writing a poem or painting a picture.
55:52 Now, an ambitious man, a man who wants popularity, fame, wants to put that into action in the world of schoolroom, or business world, or invention, is that creativeness?
56:12 Or the moment which—when he becomes ambitious, wants to utilize it, wants to help another, wants to do something with it—has not that moment destroyed all creativeness?
56:33 You see, we want to put God, or something you like, whatever that thing is, to use; we want to make profit out of it and, I’m afraid, it can’t be done.
56:55 You will have capacity, gift to do certain things: don’t call it creative action or creative thinking.
57:09 All thinking is not creative, no thinking is creative because thinking is merely a reaction, and how can creation be a reaction?
57:25 But we’ll go into that at another time.
57:33 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: The lady says, one can perhaps see the total tree, the total mountain, but it is very difficult to see totally cruelty when it is so immediate, so urgent, so strong.
58:08 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: I beg your pardon? Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: Yes. That is, your own pity, your own sympathy, your own suffering comes in between, therefore you do not see the totality of anything, obviously.
58:31 You see, please don’t take examples. I unfortunately... I am sorry I took the example of a tree. Don’t take examples because through examples we can’t think clearly.
58:46 Examples don’t help at all to see clearly.
58:54 I was trying to point out how important it is to see totally and the things that prevent seeing totally.
59:22 I explained, perhaps not too carefully or in too great a detail, what is seeing and what is the comprehension, total comprehension.
59:40 You see, we all want to do things immediately.
1:00:01 To us action is very important. And action is important, but seeing is far more important.
1:00:13 From seeing, action follows. Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: The lady asks, How can one see the totality of fear?
1:00:44 I’m afraid I can’t go into it this morning because we have to stop at twelve punctually for various reasons.
1:00:58 We shall take up that question of fear during the course of our talks, if you are here.
1:01:11 There is not only fear, there are so many things which we are going to deal with. You see, what is important is to understand what is to see totally, not the seeing totally of fear, of love, of hate, of this or that.
1:01:41 But the seeing totally is important, to understand what is implied in it, and not how to get rid of fear by seeing it totally.
1:02:04 That’s all you are concerned: you want to get rid of fear, therefore, you say, “How am I to see it totally?” Then you’re not concerned in the thing itself.
1:02:22 You want to use it in order to get rid of something or to gain something. Now, in order to get rid of something, or to gain something, prevents you from seeing totally.
1:02:38 You know, all this implies a great deal of self knowing, knowing oneself, everything about yourself, every corner of yourself: as you look at your face in the mirror—and you know it very well, every curve, every line, every hair—in the same way to know very deeply about oneself, not only the conscious self, but the deep layers of the unconscious of oneself.
1:03:54 I will go into all that in these talks.
1:04:02 All that I want to convey, if I may this morning, is only one thing: not ideas, not feeling, not some extraordinary spiritual thing, that kind of thing, but merely to convey how important it is to see and to see totally.
1:04:40 To see without judgment, without condemnation, without the word.
1:04:52 And, totally implies when the mind, when the brain is not reacting to what it sees, but merely observes, in which there is no thinker and the thing as being observed, which is enormously difficult.
1:05:21 Don’t just think you will get it by just playing with words.
1:05:31 And you can understand this when we begin to understand, go into, the question of contradiction because we are in a state of contradiction.
1:05:46 Perhaps we can discuss it on Sunday morning. I’m afraid we must stop now.