Krishnamurti - Death is creation

Krishnamurti Subtitles

SA62T8 - Death is creation
Saanen, Switzerland - 7 August 1962
Public Talk 8

0:01	This is J. Krishnamurti’s eighth public talk in Saanen, 1962. Krishnamurti: We were talking day before yesterday about sorrow, and I would like to talk this morning about death.
0:38	As we have gone, sufficiently I think, perhaps not in too many details, with regard to fear, if we have not fully understood the nature of fear, and have… and are sufficiently free of fear, then we can go into the question of death quite differently.
1:28	But for most of us death is in the frame of fear and therefore we never understand the immense significance of death, because we are afraid of it, and fear invariably distorts perception and makes us escape from the fact of death.
2:13	And when we are so immersed in sorrow or in death, it is impossible to understand or go deeply into this whole problem of death.
2:39	And as we have discussed fear, sorrow, I think we should be able to consider wisely and deeply this question of death.
3:06	As I was saying the other day, love, sadness, sorrow and death go together; they are inseparable.
3:23	It is not a philosophy, that which we are talking about. If we have gone very deeply into it you will see that love cannot be separated from sorrow, and sorrow cannot be separated from death and all the three of them are one.
3:49	And the beauty and the immensity of death cannot possibly be understood if there is any vestige of fear or sadness.
4:06	And to understand death, we must, I think, go into the question of negative thinking and denial.
4:32	You know, please, as I am going to go very deeply into this question, please do not treat it as a philosophy, as something that cannot be realised, as something that cannot be put into practice, practical.
5:11	I think it is a lazy mind, an indolent state that reduces everything into a philosophy, or a system, or a pattern of activity, and puts the real essence, the deep significance outside by denying it, by saying it’s merely too intellectual, too philosophical, too something else.
5:42	So I would most earnestly request that you listen – I have sufficiently explained what I mean by listening: to listen with friendliness, without agreement or disagreement, without any motive; to listen to this immense problem of death without any motive, happily, easily, and then we will, perhaps, be able to capture the full significance of that thing which is always waiting for us.
6:43	First of all, I would like to consider what we call denial, what is renunciation.
6:58	You know, we never think negatively and negative thinking is the highest form of thinking.
7:16	That is, to see something false as false, to see what is true in the false, and to see what is true in the truth.
7:38	And we cannot see what is false if we merely consider the false as an opposite to the true.
7:51	You can only consider what is false if there is no contrast, comparison.
8:00	The contrast and comparison are positive thinking.
8:14	If I want to understand another, I must cease to compare; I must look at him or her as he is.
8:30	And if I consider that person in terms of my dislike or like, which are all the acceptance of a pattern established by tradition, by experience and so on, then all that leads to so-called positive thinking and positive action, whereas when there is no comparison, when there is no judgment, but merely the consideration of the fact, then such a perception, such a seeing is negative thinking, a negative state of mind which looks.
9:33	I would like to explain this a little more, because I think to understand the extraordinary beauty and the vitality and the immensity of death, one must understand the state of mind that is free from the known.
10:03	I am going to go into that. Please, do listen to me, not as a something… a philosophy being expounded, a system that you have to follow, but listen to find out for yourself; actually experience as you’re sitting here what is being said.
10:33	Don’t think about it afterwards; it has no meaning afterwards; you have to be with it now, actually in the present moment, and then you will see this... the quality of death, creation and serenity that go together.
11:05	I was talking about negative thinking, and I say it is the highest form of thinking.
11:17	Most of us are never in a state when we say ‘I do not know.’ There are two states, or two states of mind: the one that says ‘I do not know,’ and expects an answer, or waits for an answer, explores for an answer from the background of not-knowing.
12:06	I do not know what the distance between here… between the earth and the moon, and I say I do not know, and I look up books or ask somebody to find out - that’s one state of the mind that says ‘I do not know’, which is waiting for an answer, expecting to find out.
12:42	Then there is another state of mind which says, ‘I do not know,’ but it does not expect an answer; it is not looking, it is not seeking; it is in a state of not knowing.
13:03	The one that seeks an answer, the mind that says ‘I do not know’ and seeks an answer is waiting and translating according to its background, to its conditioning.
13:24	Please, listen and experiment with yourself and you’ll find out.
13:35	Then there is that state of mind that says ‘I do not know’ and that mind is not seeking, is not asking, is not waiting.
13:49	It is in a state of complete negation and it is only in that state of complete negation that you can find out.
14:06	The mind that is waiting for an answer, saying, ‘I do not know but I’ll find out,’ what it finds will be translated according to its background, according to its conditioning.
14:25	But the mind that says, ‘I do not know’ and does not seek an answer, does not wait, does not search.
14:34	Such a mind, being completely empty, it is only such a mind that can understand this extraordinary thing called creation.
14:52	I hope I have made the two things clear: the positive mind that says ‘I do not know’ and tries to find out and the mind that says ‘I do not know’ and is not seeking, which is extraordinarily difficult because most of us want an answer, most of us want to find out.
15:29	The one is free from the known completely; the other is still caught in the known.
15:39	And one has to understand this deeply to understand that which is not knowable, which is death.
15:56	So from that we can proceed to find out the denial of life.
16:29	For most of us, life is conflict, pain, a great many stresses and strains, incessant striving, a passing joy, an accumulated memory which responds to every challenge and therefore inadequate; a fulfilment and the sorrow of not fulfilling - that’s our life, actual life, with its greed, misery, envy, jealousy, anger, hatred, and so-called love, which is the flame within the smoke of jealousy, hate, envy.
17:29	That’s what we call life; life that goes to the office every day, and the boredom of it; the life of relationship, of strain, jealousy with another; the familiarity, the contempt, attachment; and the fear - that’s our life, and we want that life to continue, and the continuity of our life becomes a habit.
18:19	Please, I hope you’re not listening to me but are observing through my words, using me as a mirror to observe yourself.
18:40	I said that is our life, shallow, empty, and trying to fill that emptiness with so-called religious dogmas and beliefs, with saints, with saviours, with masters, with hope and despair.
19:02	That’s our life; that is what we know, with its sexual appetites, appetite for fame, appetite for comfort, power, position, prestige — that’s our life.
19:37	And when death comes, we are frightened to leave all the known, to leave all that life, because we are so used to that.
19:56	And so there is a conflict between living and dying.
20:04	The thing that we know, to which we cling to - the house, the family, the name, the experiences, the things that we have done, the things that we have not done, all that we know, and when death comes, we are frightened to leave all that.
20:33	And we want a continuity, continuity of what we have known – the family, the name, the character, the qualities and so on, all that petty business of the known; and to deny all that.
21:05	Now, to deny all that, without a motive, because when death comes, it’s the end.
21:19	You may have ideas, you may have theories, reincarnation, resurrection, and innumerable ideas and beliefs, and to which you may cling.
21:40	And to deny life - I mean by life the life of the known, the life of our pettiness, of our jealousies, ambitions, greed - to deny it totally; to cut it at the very root of it, without a motive, because the moment you have a motive, that motive gives a continuity.
22:32	And the denial of jealousy in what we call life, the living, the denial of it through a motive, through a purpose does not give you the extraordinary depth of death.
22:59	You know, most of us come to the end of all this, to the end of our tether, bitterly, with anxiety, with fear.
23:17	One goes through all this – jealousy, envy, churches, gods, worship of saints, money, everything one goes through, either actually or one observes it; one sees the whole pattern of life without being caught in it.
23:48	As I was saying, most of us come to the end of all this. Either we come to it happily, easily, gracefully or we are pushed by circumstances, by not being able to find an answer and being pushed, driven, we become bitter.
24:29	Our lot then is despair, and out of that, despair, we invent, if we are very clever, philosophy - philosophy of despair, or philosophy of hope, which most religious people have.
24:53	Now, to deny all this, to deny the life that we know, without a motive, because we understand, then you are in a state of mind that is beginning to free itself from the known.
25:30	That’s one of the things that must be understood if you are to understand the immensity and the creativeness of death.
25:51	Then the other question is of time.
26:02	There is psychological time and chronological time. We are not talking about the chronological time, the time by that church bell.
26:16	We are talking of the psychological time; we are talking of the ending of psychological time.
26:29	That is, when the mind psychologically is not seeking, is not getting, is not arriving; it has understood this whole process, and therefore there is no tomorrow as the result of the experience of yesterday.
26:53	So time, which is entirely different from the time of going to the office, keeping an appointment, catching the bus and so on, there is the other time, psychologically, that we build up through hope: ‘I have not known, I will know.
27:27	I am angry, I’ll be eventually in a state of peace. I am nationalistic, narrow, petty - time will gradually bring about depth, freedom from a particular state, nationality and all...’ So time is used psychologically as from here to there, and as long as that psychological time exists in each one of us, we shall not possibly understand what death is.
28:18	So the mind must free from fear completely.
28:27	Mind must be in a state when it says to itself, ‘I do not know’ which is the freedom from the known, and is no longer psychologically building itself up through time to become something.
29:00	Then you will see, if you have gone that far, that all the sense of continuity has come to an end.
29:14	And it is really very important to understand this, to die to every petty little anxiety, greed, envy, vanity, to die immediately.
29:37	And you will see, in that dying to the petty things, there is no sense of continuity.
29:50	And it’s only when there is an end to something, there is a beginning.
29:57	When there is an end to the past there is something new, when there is an end to all thinking.
30:14	Please, this is very difficult to go into, which is: thought.
30:25	To us, thought gives continuity, thought is the result of our conditioning, of our memory, of our experience, which is time.
30:40	From that background, every challenge, every question; from that background there is a response, and that response is thought in action; and that thought gives continuity to action and therefore there is never spontaneity, there is never a thing that is new.
31:17	And when there is an ending, the ending to my thought, to my greed, to my envy, to my ambitions, search for power and so on, all the psychological structure of society which is the me, when all that comes to an end without any motive, then the mind is in a state of not-knowing, the mind is completely empty.
32:02	Then is there death. That’s what actually takes place when you die, doesn’t it? You have to leave everything behind you; you can’t take anything with you.
32:23	You can’t argue with death, however many motives you may have for living… asking death, ‘Give me another month, another year because I have to do this and that.’ You can’t discuss with death; it is there, absolutely, finally.
32:53	And you may believe in reincarnation, resurrection, in the future, but all those are irrelevant when you are confronted with something factual.
33:16	Then you will see that death is creation.
33:29	Not the creation of the writer, the musician, the painter, the scientist; it is a creation in which there is no beginning and no end.
33:53	And that’s why, without understanding what is… - not understanding – without being in that state, which is creation, which is death, which is love, our life has very little meaning.
34:38	And if you do not treat all this as some rational or logical or irrational and super-logical philosophy, if you do not treat it that way but actually go through yourself, understand yourself completely and totally deny everything that you consider as life, which is greed, envy and all the rest of it, then you will see, out of this ending, which is timeless, there is a death which is creation, which, if we want to give a different name, is God, is immense, the nameless, the measureless, the unknown.
35:56	Can we talk about this or do you want to remain silent to think… - not to think - silent to go into yourself?
36:37	Questioner: Isn’t death entitled to a few moments on its own terms, and shouldn’t we wait a minute before discussing?
37:01	K: Wait, wait; let me repeat. The gentleman says shouldn’t we remain quiet for a few moments. Now, wait a minute. Weren’t you quiet when you were listening?
37:23	Weren’t you very attentive, watchful?
37:32	And when you are watchful, attentive, there is that peculiar quality of silence.
37:42	And though we have talked for forty minutes, one doesn’t use thought.
37:59	I’m going to explain what I mean.
38:10	The speaker was explaining something; the speaker was not thinking; the speaker was moving from fact to fact, but words were used to explain.
38:47	And if one merely moved, as it were, horizontally in the verbal level, then you can never go vertically, deeply into yourself.
39:14	Then your words, your thought will prevent you from going deeply within yourself.
39:23	So, at the end of this talk of the speaker you are quiet.
39:35	Was that quietness the state of attention, the state of real uncovering or merely made quiet, hypnotised by words, by the feeling of the speaker?
40:03	Q: Last time, you asked the question about understanding being permanent and you said that understanding comes in a flash and… (inaudible).
41:02	I understand from it that the experience would be outside the known… (inaudible) it’s not permanent either… (inaudible) what then?
41:04	K: I haven’t completely caught all the words and if I repeat your question wrongly, please correct me: ‘You said understanding is never permanent; it comes in a flash.
41:22	And can that flash, which is an experience, be constant, be permanent.’ Is that it?
41:36	Q: If it cannot be, what then?
41:41	K: Ah, I’ve got it. If understanding is not permanent, it’s only be caught in a flash, then what happens in between, in the interval?
41:58	You have understood the question?
42:05	Shall I repeat it again?
42:13	I said understanding comes in a flash, and those flashes are intermittent, those flashes cannot be continuous; and the questioner says, what happens in between the flashes.
42:42	Now, one has to understand this whole problem of experience; one has to understand the inward nature of experience.
43:07	For most of us, experience is a reaction; experience is the response of our memory to a challenge.
43:26	That memory may be very ancient or very modern, very superficial or very profound, mechanical or traditional.
43:44	And we experience according to the depth, to the things that we have known, and that experience is accumulated, gathered, stored up, and so strengthening the background.
44:09	Now, when there is a flash of understanding, it is not the response of the background.
44:26	The background is silent completely, because if it is not silent, there is no understanding, there is merely translating or interpreting what you see in terms of the old.
44:42	If that is clear, then what happens when there is not a flash, which is not continuous, which is not permanent?
44:53	Permanence is only the state of experience which is the knowledge responding.
45:02	What happens? Do you understand the question?
45:10	There is only a flash of understanding and when there is no flash, what is the state of the mind?
45:23	Is that the question? Right. What is the state of the mind?
45:38	What do you think is the state of the mind?
45:46	And how does this flash take place? This flash takes place not to a lazy mind, not to a distorted mind, not to a stupid mind, a dull mind; not to a traditional mind, a mind that is seeking power, prestige, position.
46:14	This flash occurs, takes place only to a mind that is very alert, and when there is no flash, the mind is still alert.
46:34	The mind is very awake, aware; and that is much more important, to be totally, choicelessly aware, observing every movement of thought, feeling, seeing everything that is going on, than to await the flash of understanding.
47:03	Have I answered…? Right.
47:06	Q: Sir, can you go further in the question of seeing the true in the false, please?
47:23	K: Can you go further seeing the true in the false.
47:32	Don’t you want to take a little rest between questions?
47:40	I am doing all the work.
47:51	I hope you are also doing it. The gentleman asked: Would you please explain seeing the truth in the false.
48:07	Does that need explanation? It’s so simple and clear, isn’t it?
48:17	Sir, to see the truth in the false; the false is nationalism - I’m taking that as one thing – can’t one see the truth in the false?
48:41	To see the fallacy of authority, the fallacy of authority, the fallacy of… (inaudible).
48:57	To see the falseness is to discover what is true.
49:10	To see the truth in jealousy, to see the truth in ambition, the search for power, position, prestige.
49:30	When you see the truth of it, not just the little bits of not being jealous, not being ambitious and so on, but see the totality of the whole falseness of ambition; and when you see the truth in that, then that perception frees the mind from the false.
50:11	Q: The denial you’re speaking about, isn’t there a danger of condemnation… (inaudible) isn’t there a danger… (inaudible) condemning it?
50:28	K: Oh. The gentleman asks is there not danger of condemning jealousy and envy. I don’t know if you have not heard all that has been said before.
50:41	Sir, to… if we condemn, obviously we don’t understand.
50:53	Condemnation is merely a resistance.
50:55	Q: Then it’s denial; that’s the trouble with resistance.
51:02	K: I said very… I explained very carefully about denial. Sir, suppose I am a Catholic or a communist, or whatever you will, and I want to find the truth of it, I go into it, look at it and I see the falseness of it and therefore I deny it.
51:33	It is not… that denial is not condemnation of the church. I see the... it has no meaning for a man who is really serious, who wants to find out what is true.
51:47	But merely denying it has no meaning; that’s a reaction. Yes, sir?
51:50	Q: At the moment of that which is stillness of the mind, what or who is it that experiences this which is silence, since it is not the mind but…?
52:24	K: When the mind is, the questioner asks, when the mind is perfectly still, silent, who is aware of that silence - is that right, sir?
52:40	Q: (Inaudible).
52:43	K: Have you ever noticed that when you are exceedingly happy, joyous, the moment you are aware that you are happy, joyous, you’re no longer happy?
53:00	Have you noticed it? No? The moment you identify yourself with that happiness, with that joy, that joy and that happiness ceases.
53:23	Then only there comes memory in operation.
53:32	Silence is not to be experienced. Perhaps we’ll go into that when I talk about meditation. We have got two more talks; that is, on Thursday and on Sunday; and perhaps on Thursday, that is, day after tomorrow, we’ll talk about meditation and perhaps then we’ll answer that question much more fully.
54:03	Is that all right, sir?
54:07	Q: Yes, sir.
54:10	K: Ah, oui. Make it very brief, sir.
54:14	Q: (Inaudible)… one of the greatest points of conflict (inaudible)… caused by consideration for others and what one feels is the right thing to do.
54:32	K: Right; right. What causes conflict with that gentleman is consideration of others and what is the right thing to do.
54:45	The right thing to do may, this questioner says, may create conflict between the right thing and the feeling of trying to help another.
55:00	Sir, what is compassion? I’m answering your question, sir. What is compassion?
55:16	Is it not a state of sympathy, pity, consideration?
55:35	And in that there is no sense of wanting to help another.
55:46	Please understand what I mean, wanting to help another. Now, am I helping you? Am I helping all of you who are listening to me?
56:05	Yes? I hope not. (Laughter) K: And I really mean it.
56:18	If I am helping you, then I consider myself as a person who knows more than you do, and then you are the receivers.
56:37	We are not talking about helping each other. We are trying to find out what is true, and to find out what is true you must need immense compassion.
56:58	And in that state of compassion there is no conflict; you may help another, you my give your sympathy, you may do this and that, but in that state of compassion there is no conflict within oneself.
57:15	Q: (Inaudible).
57:21	K: Sir, I have been through all those questions.
57:29	Yes, sir?
57:30	Q: I am ambitious; I just am; and you have said that there is falseness in ambition. I do not see this. It seems to me as though most of the people here have ambition to understand you and if I give up my maybe purely materialistic ambitions in order to reach your measureless… (inaudible) it seems to me it’s really a substitution of ambition… (inaudible) one has to have some sort of ambition if one wants to get somewhere in life… (inaudible).
58:19	K: The gentleman says he doesn’t quite agree with the speaker about ambition.
58:27	You must have ambition, the speaker says, to get anywhere in life and so he doesn’t see the falseness of ambition.
58:44	Sirs, there are so many things involved in ambition.
58:56	First of all, in that there is involved authority, the authority either set by oneself as a pattern which you much pursue, or the authority set by society.
59:17	Now, authority implies obedience; obedience to the psychological structure of society.
59:34	And the psychological structure of society demands of its citizens that they be competitive, ambitious, greedy, acquisitive, envy, seek power, all the rest of it.
59:49	Now, mustn’t one deny - in the sense I am using that word which I have tried to explain this morning - the psychological structure of society?
1:00:07	Because it is the psychological structure of society that makes us conform, that makes us dull, stupid, in the deep, psychological sense of that word.
1:00:23	And surely a religious man, a religious mind must be free from the psychological structure of society.
1:00:33	And when we say that we must have ambition to get anywhere in life, what do we mean by that?
1:00:50	To climb the heap, to get on to the top of this confused, messy structure of society - that’s what we call ‘get anywhere’.
1:01:09	Sir, the question really is: Is it possible to live in this world without ambition.
1:01:22	Right?
1:01:23	Q: Without a goal.
1:01:28	K: Is it possible to live in this world without ambition, without a goal?
1:01:36	Now, how do you establish a goal? Please go into it. How do you project or establish a goal? Either through what you know or project from the background of your own desire, or you follow an example, worship success set by that example.
1:02:08	So the goal is projected by each one of us according to the condition in which a particular society, culture has made us.
1:02:26	Right. So our projection of the goal is the result of our own reactions, noble or ignoble.
1:02:39	That’s one point. Now, why do you want a goal?
1:02:48	Which means that living, living from day to day, living completely each day is not in itself enough, but you must have a goal to get somewhere; which means the goal will give deeper significance to living.
1:03:14	You follow? We have no significance in living, in our life, in our daily activities so we project an ideal, a goal, which we think will give significance to our living, but it does not because that significance which we have projected is created out of ourselves.
1:03:45	So what is important is not the goal but to see if the daily existence has a meaning.
1:04:00	Sir, look… Is it time?
1:04:09	Q: (Inaudible).
1:04:13	K: I believe this tent can stand a gale of two hundred and fifty miles an hour.
1:04:23	(Laughter) K: Probably it’s too noisy, we’d better stop.
1:04:35	We’ll continue another day.