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SA61T5 - Self-knowing is the beginning of meditation
Saanen, Switzerland - 3 August 1961
Public Talk 5



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti's fifth public talk in Saanen, 1961.
0:09 I would like this morning, if I may, to talk over with you rather a complex subject; but before I begin to do that, I think, as I said previously during these gatherings, that a certain amount of seriousness is necessary, not the seriousness of a long face or eccentricity, but that urge and that compulsive insistence to go to the very end, not deviating, not compromising in the sense yielding where it is necessary but continuing.
1:39 Because I want to deal this morning with something which demands all your seriousness and attention.
2:01 It is a subject which the Orient calls meditation, and I’m not at all sure that the Occident understands fully what the Orient means by that word.
2:32 Each one of us translates it, interprets it in his own way; and as we are not talking [for] or representing the Orient or the Occident, we are trying to find out what it is to meditate because to me that’s very important.
3:05 It encompasses the whole of life, not a fragment of it.
3:12 It deals with the totality of the mind and not a fragment of it.
3:30 And as most of us, unfortunately, cultivate the fragment and become very efficient in that fragment, to go into the whole process of unravelling, cultivating, destroying and revealing the dark recesses of one’s own mind, exploring without an object, not seeking an end, and the total comprehension of the whole of the mind and perhaps going beyond, is to me what is meditation.
4:48 And I would like to go into it rather hesitantly because each step reveals something; and I hope we will not, all of us, merely remain at the verbal level or at the intellectual analysis, or merely gather up some emotional, sentimental titbits, but being somewhat serious [so that] perhaps we can go to the very end of it.
5:47 And it may be necessary in doing that to deal with the same thing another day, on Tuesday.
5:58 We are all seeking something; and we are seeking not only at the physical level, but the intellectual level, at the deeper levels of one’s own consciousness.
6:31 We are always seeking: seeking happiness, seeking comfort, seeking security, seeking prosperity, seeking certain dogmas, beliefs, in which the mind can settle down and be comfortable.
6:50 If you observe your own mind, your own brain, it is always doing this: seeking, seeking, seeking, never being satisfied; or, seeking to be satisfied permanently, everlastingly.
7:09 We are seeking physical comforts, physical well-being, and if we are satisfied with that, we remain there.
7:30 And most of us, unfortunately, are satisfied to remain with physical comforts, with a little prosperity, with a little knowledge, with mediocre relationships, and so on and on and on.
7:55 If we are dissatisfied, as perhaps some are, with the physical, then we seek psychological, inward comforts, securities; and if we are dissatisfied with that, we want more intellectual, more knowledge, more—we search, seek, inquire.
8:25 And this seeking is exploited by all religions throughout the world: Christianity does it in one way, the Hindus do it in another, and the Buddhists, and so on.
8:59 They offer gods, beliefs, securities, which the mind accepts, and is conditioned thereby and seeks no further.
9:17 Or, it seeks only to fulfil what the churches throughout the world have offered.
9:38 And so our seeking is canalized and exploited.
9:45 If we are thoroughly miserable, dissatisfied with the world, with ourselves, with our capacities, and if we are dissatisfied with our capacities to do this and to do that, then we turn to something much greater, identify ourselves with something much vaster, seeking always.
10:25 And unfortunately, we are always finding what we are seeking, again to be shaken and further search.
10:41 This process of discontent—and always holding until we are shaken loose from it—does breed, does it not, the sense of following, the sense of creating authority: the authority of the church, the authority of the various priests, saints, sanctions, and so on and on and on throughout the world.
11:28 Now, a mind that is crippled with authority—whether it be the authority of the religion, the authority of capacity, the authority of experience, or the authority of knowledge—can never be free to find out.
11:57 The mind must be, surely, free, be free to discover.
12:07 And one of our immense problems is to free the mind from all authority, not the authority of the policeman and the law, I don’t mean that.
12:33 If you do, you’ll find yourself in jail, or whatever it is that happens. Going on the wrong side of the road obviously will bring accidents.
12:45 I am not talking of shunning authority at that level—that would be too silly and absurd—not to pay taxes, and so on.
13:00 But I am talking of an authority that is self created or imposed in our desire to find, in our desire to seek, by society, by religion, by books.
13:22 And it seems to me one of the essential things, an absolute necessity, to free, for the mind to free itself from all sense of authority.
13:47 And it’s very, very, very difficult because each word, each experience, each image, each symbol leaves its knowledge which becomes our authority.
14:11 You may shun the authority, outer authority, but each one of us has his own secret authority—the authority of experience, the authority of saying “I know.” And I think it is this freedom from all authority, inward authority, following a pattern, breeds fragmentary action.
15:11 One may be very good at music, or at some other thing, but that is still fragmentary action.
15:28 We are talking of a total action in which the fragment is included.
15:38 But to find the total action, the action that covers the whole of life—the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the action that comes into being when one has gone deeply into the unconscious and uncovered all the dark secrets of one’s own mind—when the mind comes out of that cleansed, it is that total action which is meditation.
16:38 So it requires a great deal of arduous work, an inward looking, to discover all the by paths, lanes, that we have established through centuries, in which we are constantly wandering, which is the authority.
17:23 And I’m sure, it is one of the most difficult things to be free, to forget everything that one has known inwardly of yesterday, to die to every experience inwardly that one has had, pleasurable or painful, because then the mind is free to live, to act totally.
18:15 But to do this, it requires an awareness without choice, a passive awareness in which state all the secret longings, urges, compulsions and wishes and desires are shown; where the mind doesn’t choose but merely observes.
18:48 Because the moment you choose, you have established subtly authority and, therefore, the mind is no longer free.
19:08 To be aware inwardly of every movement of thought, the implication of every word, the significance of every desire, wish, and not to deny or accept but to pursue, to watch choicelessly, does free the mind from authority.
19:43 And it is only when the mind is free, then it can discover what is true and what is false, not before.
19:57 But this freedom is not at the end but at the beginning.
20:06 Therefore, meditation is not a process of disciplining the mind, of controlling the mind, or shaping the mind by desire, by knowledge.
20:29 I hope you are following all this.
20:39 Probably some of this is new to you, and you may reject it.
20:52 You know, to accept or to reject shows the incapacity to follow what another is saying to the very end; and since you have taken the trouble to come here all the way from wherever you have come, it would be absurd just to say, “Well, he is wrong, or, he is right.” And so I think it is sufficiently important, if you take the trouble, to listen—to listen to find out what is true, not what you think; to find out if what the speaker is saying [is] something false or true, and to see the false in the truth, and to see the truth as truth, as factual.
22:10 And that is denied if you are comparing, if you have read some book on some meditation, on psychological books, books on psychology, and to compare; then you’re off, you’re not listening.
22:37 But if you listen, not with effort, to listen—because you want to find out.
22:44 There is a certain joy in listening, and I feel that very act of listening to what is true is the key.
23:00 You have to do nothing but to actually participate in listening, not identify, because in meditation there is no identification, no imagination.
23:26 So, when one begins to, when the mind begins to understand the whole process of its own thinking, then you will find thought becomes authority: thought based on memory, knowledge, experience, the thinker which guides thought.
24:06 So the mind has to be aware of its own thoughts, the motives from where thoughts have arisen, the cause of them.
24:36 And you will find, as you inquire very, very deeply, the authority of thought ceases altogether.
24:52 So, one must lay the right foundation upon which to build the house of meditation.
25:23 Obviously, every form of envy, which is essentially comparison: you have something I haven’t got; you’re clever, I’m not; you have a gift, I haven’t; you’re beautiful, I’m not—this comparative existence, comparing all our life: he is a big man, a well known man, I am not; I must share his greatness, or identify myself with him.
26:24 Envy, the envy of possession, jealousy.
26:38 The mind that’s envious cannot go very far, it may succeed in this world with things, with prosperity, having more cars, more pleasures, but a mind that’s envious is obviously incapable to go very far, and a mind that’s ambitious too.
27:29 You see, a mind that’s ambitious is always seeking,, wanting to be successful, comparing, fulfilling.
27:57 And most of us are ambitious, not only in this world, but inwardly; not only outside the skin, but inside the skin.
28:14 We want to make a success, and a mature mind has no success or failure.
28:32 So, envy, ambition: the mind must be totally free, not just casually free, not in fragments, but wholly.
28:57 And that too is very arduous: to cleanse the mind that has been educated for centuries, not to compete, not to succeed—which doesn’t mean that you must fail—not to be envious and, therefore, there is no question of success or failure.
29:33 You know, to be free of envy is not a matter of time, it is not a matter of gradually getting rid of envy, or creating its opposite and living with the opposite, or identifying yourself with the opposite, or trying to unify, or trying to bring about an integration with the opposite, which all implies a gradual process.
30:17 You are ambitious, the ideal is non ambition, or non envy.
30:25 To cover the distance you must have time to achieve the ideal.
30:36 To me, all that process is utterly immature.
30:46 If you see something clearly, it drops. If you see envy totally, with all the implications in it—and to see the implications of envy is not very difficult—it doesn’t take time.
31:06 If you look, if you are aware, it opens itself rapidly; and the seeing of it is the dropping of it.
31:39 And, obviously, a mind that’s envious, ambitious, self centred, cannot see what is beautiful, cannot know what love is.
32:08 It may be married, it may have children, it may have houses, perpetuating its name, but a mind that’s envious, ambitious does not know love.
32:24 It knows sentiment, emotionalism, attachment.
32:31 Attachment is not love.
32:44 And, if you’ve gone that far, not merely intellectually or verbally, you will find there’s a flame of passion.
33:26 Passion is necessary: to see passionately the mountain, the misery, the appalling divisions man has created in his urge for security, to feel intensely, not self centredly.
34:06 So this is the foundation, and having laid the foundation, the mind is free.
34:21 Then the mind can proceed. Perhaps there is no procedure further. So, unless this is totally, completely established in the mind, all seeking, all meditation of whatever book you read, whoever has said it, leads to illusion, to false visions.
35:01 A mind conditioned in Christianity, as Jesus being the only saviour, obviously has visions of Jesus perpetually, and such a mind only lives in illusion, it’s based on authority, and such a mind is a very limited, narrow mind.
35:51 So, if one has gone that far inwardly, not day after tomorrow, or next month, or eventually, but actually at this present moment to go inwardly, because what I am talking about is merely expressing in words.
36:24 Words are not the thing, and if you’re merely caught in the words, you’re not inwardly following—not the speaker, inwardly following yourself.
36:50 So, meditation is essential—not sitting cross legged, breathing in a certain way, repeating certain phrases, following a formula, which are all tricks, they’re leading nowhere.
37:31 Except, if you follow a system, what it promises, you will get, but what you get is a fragment and useless.
37:44 And besides, if you follow a system, a method, it’s based on authority—whether it is the authority of the Buddha, or of Christ, or of the modern writers.
38:10 You can’t discipline the mind from the beginning and at the end be free.
38:19 But if one understands this whole process of discipline, inward discipline, which is conformity born of fear: not wanting to do the wrong thing which might lead to misery; conform, imitate, follow, suppress, in order to achieve some unknown thing which the writer or the person who has experienced [it] promises.
39:07 Surely, all that must be put it aside, dropped on the instant, because one understands it immediately.
39:29 The immediacy of understanding is prevented when the mind is lazy.
39:45 And most of us are lazy—that’s why we want methods, systems, to be told what to do.
39:56 You know, there is a certain form of laziness which is passivity which is very good—to be passive.
40:21 Then only you see things very clearly, sharply.
40:32 But to be physically, mentally lazy makes the mind and the body dull; and that is incapable then of looking, seeing.
41:02 8o, the mind having laid the foundation—which is not virtue, which is not a state of respectable morality—it is actually denying society and the morality of society with its respectability.
41:41 You know, virtue is a marvellous thing, it is a lovely thing, it is a pure thing, it cannot be cultivated.
42:10 You cannot cultivate humility. Only the vain man cultivates humility.
42:24 But making effort to be humble is the most stupid thing to do.
42:37 But one comes upon humility easily, darkly, hesitantly, when the mind begins to understand itself, when there is a self knowing—knowing oneself, all the dark, unexplored corners of one’s consciousness.
43:17 Then you come upon humility, and then such humility is the ground, is the eyes, is the breath through which you see and tell and communicate.
43:47 So, without self knowing—and you cannot know yourself if you condemn, judge, evaluate, but to know, to watch, to see what is without distortion, just to observe as you would observe that flower without tearing it to pieces or accepting it, without identifying yourself with it, just to look what is taking place: the self knowing—so, without self knowing, all thought leads to perversion and to delusion.
45:00 So, meditation is self knowing, not discovering eternal values, or what is beyond the mountain, or if there is a God or not.
45:28 But in self knowing one begins to lay the foundation of true virtue which is not recognisable by society or by another.
45:52 The moment society or another recognizes it, you are in their pattern, and therefore your virtue is the virtue of respectability, and therefore no longer virtue.
46:12 So, self knowing is the beginning of meditation.
46:25 There is a great deal more to be said about meditation.
46:49 Perhaps we shall go into it on Tuesday.
46:59 But this is only an introduction, as it were, it’s only the first chapter, and the book never ends.
47:26 There is no finishing, no attaining.
47:33 And the marvel of all this is really—and the beauty of it is—when the mind, in which is included the brain, everything, when the mind has seen and exhausted itself of all the discoveries it has made, when it is entirely empty of the known: empty, not made empty by desire, by success, by... emptying itself without any motive of every thing it has known inwardly, then the unknowable, then the thing that cannot be measured, may perhaps come into being.
48:58 I’m afraid I’ve talked rather too long this morning, I didn’t realize it.
49:17 I think we have about five or six minutes left during which we can ask questions and talk things over.
49:42 Questioner: I don’t quite understand that freedom must be at the beginning and not at the end, because at the beginning there is the task in detecting... (inaudible)... and not freedom.
49:57 KRISHNAMURT

I: The gentleman says he doesn’t quite understand that freedom is at the beginning and not at the end because at the beginning all action is conditioned, therefore, how can one be free at the beginning?
50:24 But will you be free at the end?
50:40 Sir, you see, that involves the question of time.
50:51 Will you be free after many days or many centuries? Please, this is not a question of arguing or accepting what I am saying.
51:08 I am conditioned as a Hindu, as a Christian, as a communist, or what you will; I am held by society, my mind is shaped by events, by influences.
51:22 Everything I’ve eaten, the clothes I put on, has conditioned my mind.
51:29 Is the un-conditioning a matter of time? Do please think it over; let’s go into it a little bit.
51:43 Perhaps we’ll not have time today, we’ll do it another day. But is it a matter of time? If you say it’s a matter of time, in the meantime, you know, you’re adding more conditions, not less.
52:09 Sir, look.
52:18 Every cause has an effect, but the cause and the effect are not static.
52:33 What was the effect becomes the cause, and what was the cause becomes the effect—it’s a chain.
52:44 It’s not a clear thing to say, “This is the cause and this is the effect,” because there are influences, time, it’s maturing, everything is changing.
53:08 I am conditioned —if I am—as a Hindu, let’s suppose, or a Christian. Let’s take something very, very near, much nearer.
53:20 You’re conditioned as an Englishman, as a Jew, as a Swiss, aren’t you, aren’t we?
53:35 Do you mean to say it takes time to see the absurdity of it, and seeing the absurdity of it, to drop it completely?
53:53 You may have reactions, but those are unimportant. But to drop it, no longer [to] think in terms of a Hindu, that is, to see at the beginning right off, right away, the poison of being a Hindu.
54:19 But you see, we don’t want to see the pernicious nature of it because we like it, we have been brought up on it.
54:38 The flag means something, we derive benefits.
54:46 To say, “I’m no longer a Swiss,” you might lose a job, society might throw you out, you might not be able to marry off your son, your daughter respectably—so we cling.
55:10 And that is what prevents us from seeing immediately and dropping the thing.
55:20 Sir, look: if I’ve been working all my life to achieve, to become a famous man, to be the best something, something or other, do you think I’m going to drop it?
55:35 Because all that he’s done has brought him profit, a name, a position, a prestige—he’s known; and to see the absurdity of all that, the brutality, the ruthlessness of it all, in which there is no affection, no love, but self calculated action.
56:06 Do you think such a person wants to drop it immediately?
56:14 And he can drop it immediately, if he sees it, but he doesn’t want to see it, therefore he invents.
56:25 “We’ll do it eventually, not now. For God’s sake don’t disturb me. We’ll do it eventually when it’s not so painful, when I’ve sucked the juice out of everything I have done with the urge to succeed, then I will talk about it.” That’s what most of us are doing, not only the gifted—us who are ordinary, mediocre, all the time doing this.
57:04 And to cut the string doesn’t take time.
57:16 What it needs is immediate perception, as you see immediately a precipice or a snake.
57:37 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: What, sir?
57:50 I can’t hear.
57:57 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: The gentleman asks, you have said, he says, that the mind includes the brain.
58:14 Doesn’t it? The mind includes everything, doesn’t it? Perhaps we have not the time to go into it this morning, we can do it another time. But doesn’t the mind, the totality, include every part?
58:48 Sir, the wheel is not the spoke, nor the many spokes.
59:04 You may put the spokes together, but you’ll not make the wheel.
59:17 But if there is the wheel, the feeling of the wheel, then the parts have a meaning.
59:24 We’ll discuss it another time. There is no time to go into it now, perhaps we’ll do it on Tuesday.
59:46 Yes, please. Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: Mustn’t you have an innocent mind, not [of] a new born baby, but mustn’t you have an innocent mind to see anything clearly?
1:00:20 Every experience does shape the mind, every experience adds to the conditioning of the mind, and through that we see, through that conditioning.
1:00:40 And if we want to see something new—I am not saying that there is something new, that’s not the point—if the mind wishes to see something new totally, something that is creation, surely it must have an innocent mind, a young mind, a fresh mind.
1:01:07 I’m not saying we must forget every experience; obviously you cannot forget every experience.
1:01:15 But the additive process of experience makes the mind mechanical, and a mechanical mind is not a creative mind.
1:01:33 Sorry, we’ll have to stop. We’ll continue on Tuesday.