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SA62T2 - An intensely awake mind does not need experience
Saanen, Switzerland - 24 July 1962
Public Talk 2



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s second public talk in Saanen, 1962.
0:20 Krishnamurti: It is such an enchanting day, and perhaps it’s part of that enchantment to talk about serious things.
0:47 I would like to talk about this morning about several things: how very superficial most of us are and behind the superficiality of existence, of everyday routine, of marriage, children, sex, behind this there is a sense of deep despair and anguish.
1:33 I think most of us are aware, though we may have houses, position, prestige and a little property, behind all this superficiality there is, for most of us, a sense of deep anxiety.
2:02 Not caused by anything, but there it is, deeply penetrating widely into our thoughts and feelings when we are not busily occupied with superficiality of life.
2:23 And that despair and that sense of anxiety is not only restricted to those who are growing old but also with those, I think, who are young, who still have to make their way in life, who may be concerned with their future, with making a success of their life, concerned with their marriage, sex and house and housekeeping.
3:16 There is this underlying sense of utter hopelessness, ‘What is the use of it all?’ Especially now when the world is torn by this sense of impending catastrophe.
3:41 And I would like to talk about this because being very superficial we turn to various forms of escapes or we try to find a ways and means of deepening the significance of life.
4:18 And can life, which is both the outer and the inner, can this life be deepened?
4:33 I don’t mean by going to churches, believing in gods or no gods, doing social work or be interested in pictures, paintings and music, which to me are still very superficial.
4:53 Is it possible for a mind, which is by its very nature, by its own conditioning, by its education, by the influences of society, can such a mind really go very deeply within itself?
5:18 I don’t know if you have asked yourself such a question and whether... and what has been your reply to yourself.
5:36 We think going very deeply within oneself is an extraordinarily difficult problem and probably not worth it.
5:47 And if we do go very deeply, being utterly dissatisfied with the superficiality of existence, we haven’t got the technique, the way, the modus operandi to enter into that extraordinary world, which is not merely of words, of symbols, of ideas, of intellection, which is not merely emotional, imaginative, but something much more vast, much more imminent.
6:29 And I think even though it’s such a pleasant, clear, sparkling day, I think we ought to examine what brings about this depth, this clarity in which there is no confusion, in which there is no strife, an existence which is not an escape from life.
7:07 And as I said, I would like to talk about it because it seems to me that in this modern world where there is a widening of knowledge, a gathering of more information, more technology, where everything is being done mechanically, when the computers can paint, write poems, translate, when they can add extraordinary mathematical problems, when knowledge has become such extraordinarily important thing, is not knowledge itself the source of despair?
8:06 Please, I am going to expand it, but don’t reject or accept; just listen to it.
8:20 Because I was thinking how the clever people in the world with their capacity to write, to express themselves are influencing people, making them more and more dependent on external things, more and more giving significance to information and to knowledge; and whether knowledge in itself, though it may useful at certain levels of existence, whether knowledge itself is not the source of anxiety, the source of guilt, the source of despair; whether the mind which has been trained in knowledge, whether such a mind can free itself and be innocent.
9:43 It is only the innocent mind, however much it has been through trouble, through experience, through various influences, to be free of all that and be innocent.
10:06 And it’s only the innocent mind that has no despair, no anxiety, no fear.
10:18 But in the modern world we are much more enclosed in fear, in despair, in the vast sense of uncertainty.
10:36 You know, knowledge is essential, otherwise we couldn’t function at all.
10:51 From the very small things to the very big… the most complicated things like flying a jet, from the small thing of knowing where you live, we must have knowledge: knowledge of going to the moon, mathematics, biology and the extraordinary complicated technological knowledge.
11:29 But knowledge also interferes, impedes clarity of perception.
11:44 It’s only when the mind is free from what it has known, it’s only then that there is a creative moment, whether you are a musician, an artist, a writer, it’s only in that interval.
12:17 And that interval may be very small or vast and extensive. It’s only in that moment when there is no knowing - if I can use that word - when there is no impingement of the past as knowledge, of all the things that one has learned, of all the mistakes, of all the failures, of all the hopes and despairs, it’s only in that moment there is a sense of the new.
12:58 And then that sense of the new can then be expressed, if you’re a musician in composing, if you’re an artist in painting and so on.
13:10 And I think it is very important to understand this because for most of us experience is the way of life.
13:31 The more experienced we are, the wiser we think we are. But I question that wisdom because, you see, experience is really a response to challenge, whether it is a very deep challenge and a very deep response, it is that interaction between the response and the challenge which is experience; and that experience is conditioned response.
14:25 Please follow this a little bit. And I’m not a schoolteacher; I’m just stating some things which you can either follow or need not follow.
14:47 Since you have taken such trouble to come here, perhaps spending a great deal of money or a little money and great deal of trouble, perhaps you should also take a journey into this extraordinarily complex problem of experience and knowledge.
15:09 Because what we are talking about is not philosophy, not a system of ideas, complicated , subtle, but we are talking about the way of life, the way of living every day, the day that is full of routine and habit, the day that you have to go to the office, the day that you are… that you spend with your wife, with your children in a relationship of conflict and pleasure.
15:42 And what we are discussing, what we’re talking about, is related to everyday existence, not to some theory, not to any verbal structure of philosophy or of ideas.
16:10 So we are dealing directly, deeply, with life itself, with everyday existence, with our acts, with our thinking, with our feeling, with our fears, boredom and all the rest of it.
16:33 To us experience is a part of life and the more we have been through experiences the more we want.
16:52 Or we want an ultimate experience, an experience that will give us a deeper, wider significance, an experience of something which is not measureable.
17:18 We want more and more experiences; to us there is no end to experience.
17:28 And when one looks at experience, one sees that experience is the response of our conditioning.
17:45 Whether you’re a mathematician or a housewife, whatever one is, the response of the past as knowledge is the experience and that experience only strengthens the past, which is knowledge, which is accumulative.
18:15 So we have this extraordinary weight of experience of the past, individual, collective.
18:27 In whatever particular society we live in it is there. It’s our background; it’s our story; it’s our culture.
18:45 And that is always dictating our experiences, shaping our thoughts, and so there is no ending to experience.
19:09 If there is an ending, we say to ourselves, ‘What is life without experience?’ But experience breeds also fear, anxiety, the sense of despair, not arriving, not achieving, always the sense of incompleteness, insufficiency, and so we look to knowledge as a means of giving us a greater depth.
19:53 To me, knowledge, which is experience - if you will not misunderstand what I’m saying - has come to an end.
20:18 If one is to inquire into the whole question of despair, experience has to come to an end.
20:36 We have various forms of despair: not being able to fulfil, not achieving, not being somebody in this world, or the despair of loneliness, or the despair of this never-ending confusion, the despair of not knowing what to do and so looking to somebody to tell us what to do, and knowing the utter empty futility of being told what to do, whether it is the political leader or a religious leader or a scientific leader.
21:30 We know this sense of uncertainty.
21:38 And so, being uncertain, being in despair, we pile up experience as knowledge.
21:47 And knowledge doesn’t dispel despair; experience doesn’t wipe away this sense of anxiety in life.
22:01 So one begins to question, if one has gone into it at all, what is the significance of experience?
22:18 Not the little experiences of everyday existence, but also the deep experiences.
22:26 I mean, like a Christian who has been brought up in orthodoxy, in belief, in dogma, in symbols, his experience of seeing Christ is an astonishing thing to him.
22:47 But it’s fairly psychologically obvious it’s a projection of his own background, his own conditioning.
22:58 As the Hindu sees his gods, so the Christian sees his gods and his ideas.
23:05 Now is it possible – please follow this a little bit – is it possible to live without experience?
23:19 To me, knowledge, experience and the desire for more experiences is the source of despair because there is no innocency in this demand for experience.
23:48 And it’s only the innocent mind, the fresh mind, that has no despair.
24:00 So for most of us, if there is no outward challenge, if you haven’t to earn a livelihood, if you haven’t got to struggle - either compete with your neighbour, with your boss, with your… the demands of propaganda, the magazines that tell you you must make success, and what… how you, a bootblack, become a king or a president or whatever it is - if there is not the outward challenge, most of us would go to sleep; most of us would become… would have a stagnant, dull, stupid life.
24:55 Not that we haven’t got it - it is there - but this constant pressure from the outside keeps us going.
25:12 And if one sees that, one rejects it, this outward pressures, this outward challenge.
25:27 And that’s a very difficult thing to do – I’m going into it – not to respond to the stupidities of propaganda and challenge of social structure of life, the social psychological structure.
25:49 If one has put that aside, then one creates one’s own challenges and responses.
25:59 I don’t know if you haven’t… not observed it. You’re all the time questioning, asking, demanding, which becomes your own challenge, which is much more strict, much more vital than the outward demands, outward challenges.
26:23 And you also begin to see that this constant questioning, this constant inquiry, tearing things to pieces, doubting, asking, is still the outcome of discontent, is still the outcome of the desire to know, the desire to find out what is the purpose of life, if there is this and if there is that.
27:24 So one is still a slave to experience; one is still a slave to challenge and response, though one has rejected the outward challenges.
27:42 And that keeps us also alive, much more alive, in a state of conflict.
27:49 Please, I’m not saying anything outrageous. This is what takes place with all of us. The more intellectual, the more subtle one is, you reject the propaganda of religions and churches and politicians, the books and all that, and you have your own challenges, your own demands, your own standards, your own vitality to find out.
28:29 Which indicates, doesn’t it, that one is still dependent on this movement of question and answer, of demanding and answering.
28:51 All this, both the inward challenge and the outward challenge and the response to the inner and to the outer, surely indicates a conditioning of a mind that is still seeking, that’s still wanting, that’s still groping to find out, and therefore still within the field of guilt, within the field of despair.
29:27 Now if one has… inwardly has gone as far as that and then one rejects both the outer and the inner challenge – I hope you are following this, or rather, I’m making myself clear – if one has done that then experience has very little meaning because such a mind is intensely awake and a mind that is intensely awake does not need experience.
30:14 It’s only the dull mind that depends, and being dull and depending on challenge, it becomes more dull.
30:30 It’s caught in its own conflicts, confusion, and therefore depends on knowledge.
30:44 You see, I’m not advocating ignorance.
31:00 To me, ignorance is not the lack of book knowledge. It doesn’t mean that you’re an ignorant person because you haven’t read all the latest novels and philosophies and the dialectical materialism and all the rest of it; that doesn’t mean that you’re ignorant because you haven’t read it.
31:20 To me, ignorance is the state of unawareness of the operations of one’s own mind, the lack of self-knowledge.
31:32 That is the essence of ignorance. And as I said, I’m not advocating that we must all become ignorant.
31:48 You can’t. But I’m pointing out that a mind that is awake does not need challenge and response, does not need any challenge, because it’s awake.
32:17 It is not demanding any experience. It’s a light to itself.
32:31 And such a mind can surely live in this world without guilt, without anxiety and without despair.
32:44 Every other form of mind is in a state of conflict and despair.
32:53 Now, if you have listened to this, not say, ‘How am I to get it?’ You can’t get it.
33:05 It isn’t a thing you buy; it isn’t a thing that you practise in order to be... to have such a mind that is completely alive, every corner of its being awake.
33:28 You can’t get it; you can’t buy it; you can’t seek it out. There is no method; there is no system that you can practise and that’ll give it to you.
33:41 But if you have listened - that’s why I’ve been laying stress on listening: just to listen without wanting, without seeking.
34:02 That listening is that state of mind when there is no knowledge, when there is no thought, in which there is… in that state of mind in which there is creation, which is understanding.
34:32 If you have listened really, in that sense of that word, the meaning to which… the meaning I give to it, then you will be out of this conflict, despair and pain.
34:59 And there is a miracle in listening. That is the real miracle. Because, you see, we’re all of us are growing old; even the young are growing old; and the older we get the more set we are, the more our conditioning becomes heavier and our habits of thought, our days of routine become more strong.
35:48 And anything that threatens that routine, those habits, those conditionings, breed fear, anxiety.
36:08 And inevitably, at the end of it all, there is death, which becomes another tremendous horror.
36:28 So an innocent mind - not the clever mind, not the informed mind, not the mind that has become philosophical, rationalising everything away in order not to be disturbed, it is that innocent mind that can only understand or be of that extraordinary thing called the nameless, the immeasurable.
37:28 And I think one can live in this world with that innocency, living with a family, reading the newspapers or not reading the ugly newspapers, or listening to innumerable concerts, with a family, going to the office… you can live a full life with that innocency, much greater.
38:01 And I talked about it this morning because for most of us life, obviously, is varying degrees of shallowness.
38:25 And the question is really how to make the mind which is shallow, deep; whether it is possible to make the mind deep by effort.
38:40 I don’t think it is possible because the shallow mind trying to be deep is making an effort to dig in itself, is still a shallow mind.
38:57 But if one understands this whole process of experience, challenge, response, the outer and the inner, the whole structure, then one is immediately out of it.
39:19 Then one’s mind is young, though one’s… perhaps one may have an old body.
39:28 The thing is… the mind is clear, sharp, young.
39:37 And it’s only in that state of innocency that the real can be.
39:51 Shall we discuss this, what we talked about this morning?
40:12 Questioner: Sir, is there a possibility of experience, of a story, unless there is a sense of time, past and present and future?
40:32 K: Is there… I’m sure you’ve all heard it, haven’t you? Many: No.
40:35 K: No? Sorry, sir, I’ll repeat it; if I repeat it wrongly, please correct me.
40:41 Q: Yes sir.
40:44 K: Is there a sense of experience if there is no time, past and future - is that right, sir?
40:55 Q: Yes sir.
40:57 K: I think that’s what I was talking about.
41:04 The past is knowledge, isn’t it? What you were yesterday, your aspirations, your demands, your jealousies, your vanities, your…
41:16 That is the past; that is time, chronological as well as psychological.
41:32 And without time, without yesterday - in that psychological sense, not in the chronological sense - is there a tomorrow?
41:43 If I deny all yesterdays, die to it, cut it… surgically operate - which is absolutely essential - can I have a tomorrow?
42:02 And thereby can there be an experience? A man who is living completely – and you can’t live completely if you have one…
42:15 a thought going back to the past and another thought going to the future. You are looking backwards and forwards; you can’t live completely.
42:30 And when there is this sense of complete awareness, a sense of living totally, is there an experience?
42:44 Now, please, this is not a rhetorical question or an ideological question, but factually.
42:58 If I don’t care – and I mean actually don’t care - what happens… what has happened yesterday, whether I’m hurt, whether I’m jealous, whether I’ve been insulted, whether I’m this or… and I cut it away completely then is there a sense of time?
43:27 Is there a sense of future, a distance?
43:36 You see, that question involves, surely, the whole problem of time.
43:51 I don’t know if it is the occasion now to discuss it. You see, time is experience: the pleasure, the pain that we have had, the memories and the demand to fulfil, to be, to become, to be somebody – and, of course, when you want to be somebody it implies that you must be recognised by somebody.
44:33 And when you are in that state there is time and that time means experience.
44:46 You see, but this is really a very complex question because for most of us time is very important.
45:03 I’m not talking of chronological time, time by the watch; I’m not talking of that.
45:10 I’m talking of the structure, of time built by the psyche, by thought, and that implies this whole question of cultivating memory.
45:45 And perhaps this is not the time; we’ll go into it another time. But that gentleman’s question reveals that there must be time as long as there is a centre from which you are experiencing.
46:17 You see, as long as there is a centre from which all experience and challenges respond…
46:26 I mean - sorry - as long as there is a centre which responds to every challenge, conscious or unconscious, where there is that centre there is no moment in which a creation take place.
46:59 I do not know if you have not observed in yourself something new takes place, whether you’re a musician or a painter or whatever, a scientist or a chemist, whatever it is, or just an ordinary person like you and me, if there is not… if you have not observed when all your mind, all your thought, all the past, everything is quiet.
47:33 And out of that sense of quietness, that sense of not going, coming, future, past, in that moment there is… you don’t see something totally new.
47:48 But that newness is not a recognised… is not to be recognised as the new.
47:55 I don’t know if you… The moment you recognise something as new it is the old; it’s no longer the new.
48:04 But to remain… - not ‘remain’, that again is a wrong word - but to be in that movement of not going back or forward, of not having time.
48:30 You try it sometime - not ‘try it’, that you can’t. That’s another peculiar word we have, to try, which indicates ‘in the meantime,’ which is all absurd to try.
48:48 You can’t try; there is no ‘in the meantime.’ Either it is there or not.
48:56 And it is there with an extraordinary vitality, with an extraordinary potency if you understand this whole problem of experience, knowledge, seeking.
49:10 I hope you are working as hard as I am.
49:22 (Laughter)

K: Yes sir?
49:26 Q: Is not this vitality you speak of very much limited by our physical health?
49:41 K: Is not the vitality that you speak of limited by our physical health.
49:48 Somewhat, but not entirely. Un instant, I haven’t answered that gentleman’s question.
49:58 Un instant; wait a minute, please. You see, may I say something? That gentleman asked a question, which is: Is not this vitality dependent on physical health?
50:16 We don’t listen to that question. We have… we are occupied with our own questions, with our own problems.
50:25 But if we listen to that question perhaps we shall… our problems will also be explained.
50:36 The question was, or is: Is not this vitality dependent on physical health?
50:47 I said somewhat, but not entirely. You need good physical health, obviously. If you have constant agonising pain - you know? - all our energy is dissipated by that.
51:06 But if one has had pain, one knows how to dissociate oneself from pain; not by escaping from it, from pain, but being completely with pain.
51:28 Not saying to ourselves, ‘I wish the pain was over. When will it be over? Will it be…? It’ll…’ - you know? - thought operating on pain increases pain and sustains pain; but to be completely with pain.
51:47 I know what I’m talking about, so don’t kind of look, ‘Oh, you don’t know pain.’ We all have pains, and to live with it completely and not disassociate oneself from it and thereby create resistance, then you will see in spite of the pain, however deep that pain is – unless, of course, you become unconscious; that’s quite a different matter – but if you have pain and don’t resist it and be completely aware of it, then you have a different sense of vitality.
52:30 Again, you see, that’s the problem of time: pain is a problem of time because you are comparing.
52:47 You know, to live with that… with the noise of that stream, to listen to it as I’ve been listening to it all the morning while I was talking, and not resist it, not put it away, then that stream and your talking, that stream and its noise and its sense of beauty and the rhythm is part of that awareness of which we are talking about.
53:31 Madame?
53:32 Q: What about our mistakes and responsibilities of yesterday?
53:46 K: What about our mistakes and responsibilities of yesterday.
53:59 I should think one carries on, doesn’t one? We have certain responsibilities and there are the mistakes of yesterday, but why do we carry it over, the mistakes, to today?
54:19 And what do we mean by responsibility? I made a mistake; we all do.
54:30 Q: (Inaudible).
54:32 K: Comment?
54:34 Q: (Inaudible).
54:35 K: No, madame, let me finish this.
54:41 Q: (Inaudible).
54:43 K: No, wait a minute, please. Just a minute. I said that we make a mistake, and responsibility; that is the question: what to do with the mistakes and responsibilities which you have made from yesterday?
55:03 We make mistakes. And why do we carry it over to today? That’s one point. Then there is the other: responsibility. What do we mean by responsibility? The moment you feel responsible, it is an ugly thing to feel responsible.
55:33 Please don’t misunderstand me by saying that you must become irresponsible; I’m not talking of irresponsibility – that’s a cheap way out of things.
55:48 Do you feel responsible if you love somebody? Ah?
55:55 Q: (Inaudible).
55:59 K: Ah, don’t say, ‘No’, please.
56:12 Q: If you have children you feel responsible for them.
56:17 K: You see, first of all, we are trying to understand what responsibility is, before you say, ‘What shall I do with my child?’ That’s such a futile way of discussing.
56:29 We have children, we have husbands, we have families, houses, property, jobs, grandmothers, everything, and mother-in-laws…
56:40 (Laughter)

K: …but what do we mean by that word responsibility?
56:50 I wish you would go into it a little bit. The soldier says, ‘I’m responsible for maintaining peace’ - what nonsense.
57:09 And the priest says, ‘I am responsible for the conduct of another.’ It’s all… So we must examine what that word – not the word, but the meaning, the significance, the depth of that word.
57:28 When I love somebody is there responsibility?
57:36 Which means… What do I mean by love? Is love… You see, that’s it. When I am attached to somebody I feel responsible to somebody and I call that attachment love.
58:04 Please, this is a very difficult issue. Don’t agree or… Let’s look - you know? - go into that word responsibility.
58:22 I think we use that word and duty and responsibility when we have no longer love.
58:34 You’re silent?
58:45 Q: When you try to understand the other, there’s a kind of responsibility.
58:57 K: No; you’re not trying to understand me and therefore create responsibility. You’re not understanding me. What I’m saying is not at all worth it. What I’m saying is look at yourself; go into yourself, and all this is revealed.
59:17 No, sir.
59:27 You see, please, remain with that word responsibility, because we are all weighed down by that word: ‘I have got to go to the office every day because I have to maintain a family and it’s my responsibility to earn money’; ‘It’s my responsibility to educate my children’; ‘It’s my responsibility to be a good citizen’; ‘My responsibility to become a soldier,’ and so on and so on and so on.
1:00:18 When do we feel responsible? When is that word used?
1:00:27 Q: We don’t like to use it.
1:00:33 K: It is not a question of like or dislike; we use that word all the time.
1:00:43 When is that word used?
1:00:47 Q: When we give importance to the self.
1:00:56 K: No, no, please. The lady says when we give importance to the self. You see, you’re not… What, sir?
1:01:08 Q: (Inaudible).
1:01:11 Q: (Inaudible).
1:01:13 K: No, sir, look at yourself, sir, if I may suggest.
1:01:20 When do you use that word responsible?
1:01:23 Q: When you feel an obligation to somebody or something.
1:01:31 K: Yes, sir, obligation. When you feel that you’re obliged, that you’ve got to do something.
1:01:40 You mightn’t like it, but you’ve got to do it because you have…
1:01:44 Q: (Inaudible)…if you are entrusted by yourself or somebody else to do something whether you like it or not.
1:02:02 K: That’s right, sir. That’s what that gentleman says. You see, please don’t let this become a debating society… (Laughter)

K: …of agreement or disagreement, but go behind the word.
1:02:15 Look at it as a father, as a mother, as a husband, wife, as a job… look at that feeling.
1:02:30 It is when you have to do something, it’s your duty, your responsibility, it is… that depends upon you and so on and so on and so on.
1:02:47 Now, can one live in this world without responsibility, without the feeling that it is a burden?
1:03:02 Look, I came this morning to talk. I didn’t feel it as a burden, as a responsibility, ‘I must go because so many people have come.’ I wouldn’t do it.
1:03:14 Then it would be terribly boring to me. It’s not my duty.
1:03:27 And I never use that word to myself, ‘I am responsible’ – it’s too hideous.
1:03:37 But what I am doing I love to do, not because I’m… I get a satisfaction talking or fulfil myself in talking, which is all too immature and childish.
1:03:59 If… It is because one loves, and then the word disappears of responsibility altogether.
1:04:13 And then if one loves there is no country, there is no priests and no gods, no soldiers, no war.
1:04:23 Q: Sir, we call it a normal way of living… (inaudible) responsibility.
1:04:34 K: Sir, this is… we are talking of not theology, not philosophy, but we’re saying, look…
1:04:46 don’t… that word and the word duty comes into being when there is… the other thing is missing.
1:04:55 Q: What is love?
1:05:00 K: What is love. The gentleman wants to know what is love. It’s five minutes past twelve. (Laughter)

K: Perhaps we’ll go on to the matter another time. Isn’t that enough for this morning?