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SA61T8 - To die implies having no continuity of thought
Saanen, Switzerland - 10 August 1961
Public Talk 8



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti's eighth public talk in Saanen, 1961.
0:06 We were talking yesterday about the way of meditation, and how—not the method but if there is freedom—how the mind can go very deeply within itself.
0:43 And I would like this morning, if I may, to consider several things: first, fear, then time and death.
1:11 I think they are interrelated; and without understanding the one, we cannot possibly understand the others.
1:28 Without understanding the whole process of fear we shall not be able to comprehend what is time; and in the process of understanding what is time, we shall be able to go into this extraordinary question of death.
1:51 Death must be a very strange tract.
2:04 As life, with its abundance, with its richness, with its varieties, fullness, so must death be—death which must bring a newness, a freshness, an innocency.
2:28 But to comprehend that vast ground, the mind must obviously be free from fear.
2:48 Each one of us has many problems, not only outward problems but inward.
2:59 The inward problems outweigh the outer problems. If we understand the inner and go into it profoundly, then the outward problems become fairly simple and clear.
3:16 But the outward problem is not different from the inward problem—it is the same movement, as the tide in the ocean that goes out and comes in.
3:30 But if we merely follow the outward movement and remain there, we shall not be able to comprehend the inward movement of that tide, nor shall we understand the inward movement of that tide if we merely escape, abandoning the comprehension of the outer.
3:53 It is the same movement which we call the outer and the inner, it is the same tide.
4:07 But most of us are trained to look to the outward tide, that movement that goes outward, and there the problems increase more and more.
4:28 And without understanding those problems, the inward movement, the inward look is not possible.
4:42 And unfortunately we have problems both outer and inner: social, economic, political, religious, and all the rest of it; and also inward problems: what to do, how to behave, how to respond to the various challenges of life.
5:04 And it seems that whatever we touch, outwardly or inwardly, creates more problems, more miseries, more confusion.
5:20 I think that is fairly clear for most of us who are watching, observing, living—that whatever we touch, intellectually, with our hands, with our minds, with our hearts—problems increase: there is greater misery, greater confusion.
5:44 And I think all our problems can be understood when we understand fear.
5:56 I am using that word ‘understand’ not intellectually, not verbally; but that state of understanding comes into being when we perceive the fact, see the fact not only visually but inwardly.
6:24 Seeing the fact implies a state when there is no justification or condemnation: mere observance, the seeing of a thing without interpretation, for all interpretation distorts.
6:48 So, understanding is instantaneous when there is no justification, condemnation or interpretation—it is that word to understand.
7:16 For most of us it’s difficult because we think it’s a matter of time, it’s a matter of comparison, a matter of gathering more information, more knowledge.
7:32 But understanding does not demand any of these; understanding demands only one thing which is direct perception, direct seeing without any interpretation or comparison.
7:50 So, without understanding fear, our problems invariably increase.
8:10 Now, what is fear?
8:18 You may have one series of fears, and another [may have] another series.
8:27 I may be afraid of the dark, afraid of public opinion, afraid of death, afraid of frustration, not making a success of my life, not being able to fulfil, having no capacity, feeling myself inferior.
8:54 At every turn of the mind there is fear, at every gesture of thought breeds, consciously or unconsciously, the dreaded thing called fear.
9:13 Now, what is fear?
9:26 When one puts that question to oneself, is it in relation to something, or is fear isolated, by itself, unrelated?
9:37 Do you understand what I mean? We are not indulging in psychoanalysis.
10:00 What we are trying to find out [is] if it is possible to rid the mind totally of fear, not bit by bit, but totally, wholly, completely.
10:17 And to find that out, we must also inquire into what is fear, how it comes into being.
10:30 And to find that out, we must inquire into thought, not only conscious thinking, but also the unconscious, the deep layers of one’s own being.
10:49 And to inquire into the unconscious, surely, is not a process of analysis because when you analyze, or when another analyses, there is always the observer, the analyser who is analysing, there¬fore, there is a conflict, there is a division, there is a dissimilarity.
11:16 I want to find out how fear comes into being.
11:28 I don’t know if one is aware of one’s own fears and how you are aware of them.
11:45 Are we aware merely as a word or are we aware directly, in contact with the thing that causes fear?
12:03 Is the thing that causes fear fragmentary or a total thing that has different expressions of fear?
12:26 I may be afraid of death; you may be afraid of your neighbour and public opinion; I may be afraid of being dominated by my wife, husband—but the cause must be one, not several causes that produce several types of fear.
12:52 And, will the discovery of the cause of fear free the mind from fear?
13:03 I know I’m afraid of public opinion, let’s say—knowing the cause of fear will that rid me, rid the mind, of fear?
13:19 The discovery of the cause of fear is not the liberation from fear.
13:34 Do please understand this a little bit. I haven’t time to go a great deal into it because what we want to deal with this morning is such a large field which we must cover and, therefore, we can’t go into several details.
13:54 When I know the cause, will that empty the mind of fear, or some other element is needed to rid the mind of fear, not the mere discovery of the innumerable causes that breed fear?
14:17 So, in inquiring into what is fear, one has also not only to observe or be aware of outward reactions but also be aware of the unconscious.
14:47 I am using that word very easily, not philosophically or psychologically or analytically—the unconscious, that is, the hidden motives, the hidden thoughts, the secret desires, compulsions, urges, demands.
15:05 Now, how does one examine or observe the unconscious?
15:14 It is fairly simple to observe the conscious through its reactions of like dislike, of pain and pleasure; but how does one look, inquire into the unconscious without the help of another?
15:35 Because, if you have the help of another, the other may be prejudiced, limited—he interprets and therefore perverts.
15:55 How is one to look into this enormous thing called the hidden mind—without interpretation—to look, to absorb it, to comprehend it totally, not bit by bit?
16:20 Because, if you examine it fragmentarily, each fragment leaves its own mark, and with that mark you examine the next incident which distorts and, therefore, there is no clarity through analysis.
16:44 I wonder if you are getting what I’m talking about? Perhaps some of you will get it; the others may not, but it doesn’t matter.
17:03 We see, the cause—the discovering of the cause of fear—does not free the mind from fear, and analysis does not help to bring freedom from fear.
17:34 There must be a total understanding, a complete uncovering of the totality of the unconscious.
17:45 How does one do it? Do you understand the problem?
18:06 The unconscious, surely, cannot be looked at through the conscious mind.
18:19 The conscious mind cannot observe the unconscious. The conscious mind is a recent thing—recent in the sense: newly educated to adjust itself to the environment.
18:37 It has been conditioned newly through education to acquire certain techniques in order to live, in order to achieve a livelihood.
18:53 It learns techniques, cultivates memories, and superficially it is capable of living a superficial life in a society which is utterly rotten and stupid.
19:10 A conscious mind can adjust itself, and its function is to adjust itself.
19:17 When it is not capable of adjusting itself to the environment, there is a neurosis, contradiction, and all the rest of it.
19:25 But the educated, the recent mind cannot possibly inquire into the unconscious, which is old, which is the residue of time, of the race with all the experiences—it is the repository of infinite knowledge of things that have been.
20:12 How is the conscious mind to look at it? Or, if the conscious mind cannot look at it—as it cannot because it is so conditioned, it is so limited by recent knowledge, by recent incidents, experiences, lessons and ambitions and adjustments—such a conscious mind, educated, cannot possibly look into the unconscious.
20:49 I think that’s fairly simple. Please, this is not a matter of agreement or disagreement because then we’re lost.
21:02 If you say, “You’re right or you’re wrong,” then it has no meaning. But if one sees the significance of this immediately, there is no agreement or disagreement—one is inquiring.
21:18 Now, what is the capacity, what is necessary, to look into the unconscious, to bring [out] all the residue, to cleanse the unconscious totally, so that it’s made new, so that the unconscious doesn’t project contradiction or create contradiction which breeds conflict?
22:06 So, how is one to proceed to inquire into the unconscious, knowing that an educated mind is not capable of looking at it, nor the analyst because his thinking is fragmentary?
22:24 It doesn’t matter who it is—his perception is limited, is fragmentary, and his examination must be fragmentary and limited.
22:48 And how is this extraordinary mind, which has such vast treasures, experiences, the racial influences, the climate, the tradition, the constant impressions—how is one to look at it?
23:18 How is one to bring it all out? Now, do you bring it out fragmentarily or is it to be brought out totally?
23:37 I don’t know if you are understanding the problem; if you don’t understand the problem, what I’m inquiring into has no meaning.
23:56 If the unconscious is to be examined fragmentarily, then there is no end.
24:12 The very fact that you examine fragmentarily and interpret it fragmentarily strengthens the layers of the hidden mind.
24:25 Because the hidden mind is not going to be examined fragmentarily—it must be examined as a whole picture.
24:35 So, there must be the comprehension that nothing of the mind is to be understood fragmentarily.
24:49 I don’t know if...
24:57 Surely, love is not fragmentary.
25:04 Love is not to be broken up into this and into that, put into various categories of respectability.
25:14 Love is something total, complete; and a mind that dissects love and says this is divine, this is profane, this is right, this is wrong, this must be, this must not be—such a mind can never know what love is.
25:41 So, to feel, to understand what love is, there must be no fragmentary approach to it.
25:57 So, if that is really clear that the totality cannot be understood through fragmentation, then a change has taken place, has it not?
26:15 I don’t know if you’re meeting my point.
26:27 Now, the unconscious must be approached negatively because you don’t know what it is.
26:45 We know what other people have said about it; we know occasionally through intimations, through hints, what it is.
26:55 We don’t know all the twists and turns, the extraordinary quality of the unconscious, all the roots.
27:09 Therefore, to understand something which we don’t know, you must approach it negatively with a mind that is not seeking an answer.
27:32 We talked the other day about positive thinking and negative thinking. I said negative thinking is the highest form of thinking and all thinking, whether negative or positive, is limited.
27:44 But the positive thinking is never free; but the negative thinking can be free.
27:58 Therefore, negative mind that looks at the unconscious, which it doesn’t know, is in direct relationship with it.
28:19 Please, this is not something strange, or a new cult, a new way of thinking; nothing of that kind, that’s all immature and infantile.
28:41 When one has brushed all this aside, when one wants to find out what is fear, and to be totally rid of fear, not in fragments, to be completely free of fear, then one must inquire into the depths of one’s mind.
29:05 And that inquiry is not a positive process. There is no instrument which the superficial mind can create or manufacture in order...
29:19 with which to dig. The superficial mind can be quiet: quiet, independent of all its techniques, its knowledge, its capacities, its gifts, put it all aside voluntarily, easily.
29:46 And when it does that it is in a negative state.
29:56 To do that, one must understand thought. Is not thought—the totality of thought, not just one thought, two thoughts, but the totality of thinking—does it not breed fear?
30:21 If there was no tomorrow, or the next minute, would there be fear?
30:31 The dying to thought is the ending of fear. And all consciousness is thought.
30:43 We come, then, to the thing called time.
31:08 What is time? Is there time? There is time by the watch.
31:25 And we think there is time inwardly, psychologically. But is there time, apart from the chronological time?
31:39 It is thought that creates time because thought is a product of time, of many yesterdays: “I have been that, I am this, I shall be that.” To go to the moon requires time; many days, many months to put the rocket together.
32:19 And to acquire the knowledge of how to put the rocket together requires time, which is still mechanical, by the watch.
32:29 To go to the moon demands time because there’s a distance of many miles which is still within the field of hours, of days, months, which is still time.
32:48 But apart from that time, is there time at all?
32:56 Thought has created time—thought “I must be clever, I must become much more intelligent, I must learn how to compete, how to become a successful man, how to become respectable, how to subjugate my ambitions, my angers, my brutalities.” This constant process of thinking, which is the part of the mechanistic brain, does breed time.
33:42 But is there time? You are following my...
33:54 ? If thought ceases, would there be fear? I’m afraid of public opinion, let’s say: what the people say, what they think about me, I might lose my job—and that thinking about it breeds fear.
34:18 If there was no thought, I wouldn’t care two pins what public opinion thought of me and, therefore, no fear.
34:27 So I begin to discover thought breeds fear—thought, the result of time.
34:34 And thought—which is the result of many yesterdays, with all the experiences through the present, modified—creates the future which is thought.
34:52 So, the whole content of consciousness is a process of thought, therefore, it is bound within time.
35:10 You’re following all this?
35:17 Huh? Questioner: Continue, please. KRISHNAMURT

I: I’m doing it.
35:31 (Laughter) Now, can the mind be free of time?
35:40 Not the chronological time—that would be insane, mentally unbalanced.
35:49 I am talking of time as achievement, as success, as being something tomorrow, becoming, not becoming, fulfilling, frustration, getting over something and acquiring something else, which means, can thought—which is the totality of consciousness, thought which is revealed and not revealed—can that thought completely die, cease to be?
36:29 When it does, you have understood the totality of consciousness.
36:53 So, dying is dying to thought: thought that has pleasure, thought that suffers, thought that knew virtue, thought that knew relationship, thought that had become and expressed itself in various ways which are all within the field of time.
37:38 Surely, that is total death.
37:47 There is mechanical, the organic death, the bodily dying.
37:54 That you can’t... The doctors may invent some drug which will help to continue the mechanical, organic existence as the body, making it more and more healthy; perhaps live for a hundred years, or a hundred and fifty or two hundred —God knows for what, but it doesn’t matter, that’s irrelevant.
38:24 But the dying in which there is no fear.
38:32 Now, if the mind can die to everything it has known, which is the past—which is death.
38:51 After all, that’s what we’re all afraid about: suddenly ceasing, in which there is no argumentation with death.
39:02 You can’t argue with death, it is the ending.
39:14 And to cease, which is to die to thought, which means die to time.
39:23 I don’t know if you have ever experimented with this: to die to your pleasure—not to suffering, that’s fairly easy; everybody wants to die to suffering—but to die to pleasure, to the things that you have cherished, to the memories that give you stimulation, a feeling of well being, a youthfulness, of things that you have cherished of the past; to die to that... which is still... to die to all that which is in time.
40:16 If you have gone into it, if you have done it, then you will see that death has quite a different meaning than death as decay.
40:34 You know, we are in decay from moment to moment: decaying, corrupting—not dying—we are deteriorating, withering away.
40:55 To die implies to have no continuity of thought.
41:02 You may say, That’s very difficult to do.
41:14 And if one has done it, what’s the value of it? It is very difficult to do—not difficult—it requires enormous energy to go into it, it requires a mind that is young, fresh, unafraid, therefore rid of time.
41:56 What value has it? Perhaps not any utilitarian value.
42:06 To die to thought, therefore to time, means to discover creation which is destructive and creating everything anew every second.
42:26 In that there is no deterioration, there is no withering away.
42:34 It is only thought that withers.
42:43 And it is the thought that creates the centre as the me and the not me—that knows decay, that knows withering.
42:54 So, to die to everything that the mind has accumulated, gathered, experienced, to cease on the instant, is creation in which there is no continuity.
43:20 That which has continuity is always in decay. I do not know if you have not noticed this perpetual longing for continuity, which most of us want: the continuity of a particular relationship between the husband, wife, son, father, and all the rest of it; a continuity of a relationship.
43:43 When it is continual it is decayed, it is dead, it is worthless; but when one dies to continuity, there’s a newness, there’s a freshness.
44:16 So, one can directly, the mind can directly, experience what is death—which is quite extraordinary, because most of us don’t know what is living, therefore, we don’t know what is dying.
44:47 Do we know what living is? We know what struggling is, we know what envy is, and the brutality of existence, the vulgarity, all the rest of it: the hatreds, the ambitions, the corruptions, the conflicts—we know that.
45:07 We say, “That is our life”, and so we are afraid of death, because we don’t know that.
45:17 Perhaps if we knew what living was, then we should also know what dying is.
45:25 Living, surely, is a timeless movement in which the mind is no longer accumulating—living.
45:46 The moment you have accumulated, you are in a state of decay—whether the vast experience, or little experience—because around that you have security.
46:02 So, if one can know what living is—which is to die every minute to the things that one has acquired, not physical things but inward things: to inward pleasures, to inward pains, to die to it not in time, but to die to it as it arises—then you will find, if you have gone as far as that, that death is as life.
46:56 The living is not separate from the dying, and that has an extraordinary sense of beauty.
47:12 And beauty—that beauty—is beyond thought and feeling; it cannot be put together and used in painting, in writing a poem, or playing an instrument: those are all irrelevant.
47:36 There is a beauty that comes into being when life and death are the same, when living and dying are synonymous, because then life and death leaves the mind completely rich, total, whole.
48:05 Sorry. Can we discuss or ask questions about what we have been talking this morning?
48:33 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: Please.
48:49 I wonder if you listened to my talk? I wonder if you listened to the speaker, or were you forming your question? Do you understand? You were so ready with your question, weren’t you, which means, you were already forming your question, therefore not listening.
49:27 If you’re... I’m sorry, I hope I’m not being rude. I’m not, I’m just pointing it out. If one had listened to this talk of forty minutes or fifty minutes, your question would be answered.
49:46 What were you going to say, sir?
49:58 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: You are suggesting—Is that right, sir?
50:11 Please correct me because I can’t quite hear what is being said—if man is rid of fear, would there be greater disorder?
50:32 Questioner: (inaudible) KRISHNAMURT

I: The question is: Through exploration of fear will there not be increase of mental disorder?
50:48 Questioner: Danger. KRISHNAMURT

I: Danger of mental disorder. Could there be a greater danger to mental disorder than the mentality with which we live?
51:04 Aren’t we all—if you’ll forgive me, my pointing out—a little bit disorderly?
51:16 I’m not being rude; it’s not my business to judge. It is not my intention or my thought to judge you. But this extraordinary concern that there might be greater danger of mental illness.
51:36 Do you know what is making us ill? Not the inquiry into fear; war, Khrushchev, communism, religious bigotry, ambition, competition, snobbism—all indications of a mentally ill person.
52:11 But surely, inquiring into fear and being, ridding the mind, totally of fear surely is the highest sanity.
52:31 Which all indicates, does it not, sirs, that we think the present society is a marvellous thing.
52:42 Probably those of us who have a bank account and are well to do feel that—”Don’t disturb, don’t let me be disturbed.” But life is a very disturbing thing, very destructive thing, and that’s what we are afraid of—not of living, not of being free from fear, but to find a corner where we are secure and comfortable, and to be left alone to rot.
53:19 No, sirs, this is not rhetoric, this is our inward, secret desire.
53:29 We seek this in every relationship.
53:40 How we hate when the wife turns away from the husband, or the husband goes off to another—jealousy, envy, and the approval of society, and the benediction of the church—surely, that brings us deterioration, destruction of sanity.
54:15 Questioner: Sir, you have said that these things are not new.
54:41 They seem to be very good, but I think they are quite new to us, because we have not met them in any...
54:50 KRISHNAMURT

I: What’s the point, sir? What’s the question? Questioner: The question is that these are quite new things. KRISHNAMURT

I: Yes, sir, then what is the question? Questioner: And in this world... KRISHNAMURT

I: Yes, sir, what is the question? Questioner: That we have to continue now with these new things...
55:03 KRISHNAMURT

I: No, sir. The gentleman says, We must continue with these new things that you have been talking about. You can’t continue with them. If you continue with them, they are mere ideas, and ideas are not going to create anything new.
55:20 Sir, I have been talking about total destruction of the things that the mind has built inwardly.
55:32 You can’t continue with the destruction. If you continue with the destruction, it is construction, building up which must be destroyed.
55:49 We need a new mind, a fresh mind, a new heart, an innocent mind, a young, decisive mind; and to have such a mind there must be destruction, there must be a creation which is new.
56:07 Sorry, we must stop.