Krishnamurti Subtitles home


SA65D1 - What is the state of mind that learns?
Saanen, Switzerland - 4 August 1965
Public Discussion 1



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s first public discussion in Saanen, 1965.
0:11 Krishnamurti: Before we begin to ask questions, I think we should find out what these meetings are for.
0:42 One can examine argumentatively or dialectically, that is, discover the truth of opinions, or we can talk things over, not to be instructed, not to be taught, but to learn.
1:26 I wonder what is the state of the mind that learns.
1:40 If we could go into that a little and then talk things over, then perhaps we shall be able to find out for ourselves the act of learning.
2:12 What is the state of the mind - not theoretically, not in any abstract sense, but actually, what is the state of the mind that learns?
2:32 Because that’s what we are going to do during these seven or eight morning… so-called discussions, we’re going to find out, if I may point out, the mind that is actually in a state of constant learning.
3:09 There is, to that verb, to learn, the active present and having learned which becomes the past, which becomes knowledge; or ‘I will learn’ – that is the future.
3:35 There is the past learnt, learning and will learn.
3:45 We are trying to find out what is the actual state of the mind that is learning.
3:57 Because having learned becomes knowledge; what I have learned from the experiences of yesterday, from the opinions I have gathered, selected, all that becomes the past, the storehouse of knowledge, and will that help me or bring about a mind that is actually learning?
4:41 I think we should be rather advisedly watchful about this thing because most of us function or think or act from a mind which has learned, which has accumulated, and that may be an hindrance to the active present of learning.
5:28 So… and also when we are learning a technique, a language and so on, there one must accumulate or you accumulate as you are learning.
5:59 That is, if I don’t know a certain job and it’s… and as I am doing it I begin to learn, therefore as I am doing it, learning is not automatic.
6:20 It is I have to be very much alive to do the job I don’t know and in the doing I’m learning.
6:34 So the doing is the learning, not having learned and the doing.
6:47 So that’s what we are going to do. We are going to do and in the doing, learning.
6:57 And that becomes extraordinarily interesting and much more vitalising.
7:07 But before we do that, the doing and the learning, shouldn’t we find out what is the state of the mind - actually, not theoretically, not what it should - what is the state of the mind that is doing and learning?
7:32 In the doing, learning.
7:46 Please don’t wait for me to tell you. We’re going to discover this.
7:59 You come this morning from your rooms, house, chalet, hotel rooms and so on, and you have come here in a haste and met here in the tent, talking, saying ‘Good morning’ to each other and say, ‘How are you?’ and the rest of it, so you are… your mind is agitated.
8:33 And you may sit quietly and listen quietly, but the mind is still agitated.
8:43 So one must find out, mustn’t one, what is the state of the mind that is doing and learning at the same time.
8:57 And when a mind is agitated, when the brain is reacting very quickly and very sharply, critically, is it in a state of doing and learning, or a different… totally a different state is necessary to do and to learn?
9:28 I don’t know if I am making myself clear. Questioner: Sir, I have gathered from your talks mainly that, if I may use the word advocate, you advocate becoming aware of all conditions, all things, all states, all actions, all feelings, etc.
10:29 Now, can you say something on the apparent fact that, having once heard what you say and learned that fact of becoming awareness, that has passed into the realm of knowledge, and from there I act and try to become aware of all that is going on.
10:53 Is there in that fact any conflict between what I have learned and what now becomes knowledge from which I act?
10:55 K: That’s right, sir. We’re going to find that out. You’ve all heard that question so I don’t have to repeat it.
11:06 As the gentleman said, we have been talking about awareness, accumulation which becomes knowledge, and that is stored up, and from that knowledge or with that knowledge I act.
11:27 And between the acting, which is the present, and the accumulated awareness, accumulated knowledge, is there a conflict?
11:44 Before we enter into that, we must find out, mustn’t we, what is learning.
11:56 I’m sorry if many of you have understood it; if I labour the point, please forgive me.
12:06 Because to me it’s one of the most important things in life this act of learning.
12:20 Because one wakes up on a morning like this, clouded sky, the beauty of the hills and the trees and the river and the flowers, and one looks at it, not with a freshness, not with an elan, not with a fury or with passion, but with something that has happened yesterday - comparing, judging, evaluating.
12:56 And when I do that, all learning has stopped. So I say to myself, what is learning, and what is the state of the mind that learns?
13:12 Not accumulates – we know that; that’s fairly simple, but the actual mind and the actual fact of learning.
13:23 As I said, we come here rather agitated – you know?
13:31 - coming from your rooms and all the rest of it, and sit there and try to listen to the speaker.
13:43 Before you listen, mustn’t you find out for yourself what is actually taking place in the mind which is listening or which is going to listen?
13:59 You…? If you are going to listen with an agitated mind, with… full of talk and…I don’t know, whatever one does, then you have no space in which to learn.
14:19 Right? But if you come… - I’m not advocating anything; I’m just pointing out - if you come and are… sit there quietly, absolutely quiet, say all your good mornings, ‘How are you?’, ‘You look very nice this morning’, ‘That’s a nice dress; that’s a nice hat; oh, I love that dress’ - you know? - all that stuff, if you leave all that outside the tent and come in and sit very quietly, not forced, not say, ‘I must,’ but do it naturally so your mind becomes extraordinarily silent, quiet.
15:11 So one discovers that is the state of the mind that learns, that there must be a great silence, great quietness, not forced, not premeditated, really quiet, and then when you listen, that very listening is learning and doing.
15:48 So if we can, not only this morning but every morning that we come here, come and sit with that alert silence - not blank silence - then perhaps our talking things over will be an extraordinary event, because...
16:38 - I won’t go very long; we’ll ask questions and talk things over - you see, if you…
17:02 if one has… if one listens with this complete quietness and stillness, then you begin to find out the nature and the quality of the silence, whether that silence, that quality of a still mind is a positive activity or a negative sense of not letting anything pour into it.
17:50 I’m… if I can… Words are so difficult. I’ll… we’ll explain as we go along.
18:00 Q: (Inaudible).
18:03 K: Ah, no… Sir, just a minute, sir, sorry. I haven’t yet finished. I know you have got questions to ask me, but moment you get up and ask me, your mind is not quiet; you’re not doing what we are talking about.
18:29 Sir, look, you must have seen those trees, coming this morning, very still, with a light on it, against the blue sky, against the river.
18:53 And did we look at all?
19:04 And if we do look, how do we look at it?
19:12 Because the… our minds are so heavy, so dull, so petty, so narrow, limited, and that is what… how the mind looks is far more important than what it looks at.
19:36 So now, during this hour we’re going to learn how the mind works rather than what the question is or what the answer to that question is.
20:05 I do not know if you have ever experimented to… before you do anything, it doesn’t matter what it is - cooking, washing dishes, making the bed or talking to somebody and so on and so and so on, to have a few seconds, a few minutes of silence, inward quietness.
20:54 And when there is that natural, spontaneous, energetic silence, then efficiency has a totally different meaning; then efficiency is not mechanical; then efficiency is a movement.
21:56 I won’t go more into it; we’ll leave it there. Now, sir, what were you going to ask?
21:59 Q: (Inaudible)… relatively brief, and they are separated by periods… (inaudible) and I wonder, I wonder because of this… (inaudible) I wonder… (inaudible) it would be possible, not for you or for anybody else but for me, to live every moment that’s given to me in this other dimension with this openness, this newness.
24:08 Would you say something about it?
24:09 K: Yes sir. If I may suggest, the questions that are going to be asked must naturally be brief because I have to hear it and I have to repeat it because others can’t hear it, so you’ll have to make the questions fairly brief.
24:39 How shall we, with so many of us, how shall we approach this problem?
24:56 I’m sure many want to ask questions.
25:06 Shall we answer each question separately, or shall we take one subject, one question, and go through with it to the very end?
25:29 Q: (Inaudible).
25:38 K: You see, we have got seven mornings or eight mornings, and if we could put several questions together and out of that one question and go right to the end of it, then it may be more worthwhile than asking, answering, and asking and answering, or talking things over one question after another.
26:24 Would that be…?
26:31 What do you say?
26:32 Q: (Inaudible).
26:33 K: So, all right, if you all agree, if you all think that would be right, or that would be more suitable, then what question – not your question – then what question shall we take up and go right through with it to the end?
26:57 One question is, as that gentleman put it, asked: How can I, having experience, having known, having tasted, having smelled that dimension, how can I live in that all the time in spite of my daily difficulties?
27:26 Right, sir?
27:33 So let us… many of us ask questions, we’ll all put it… one together and then go into it.
27:40 Q: (Inaudible).
27:43 Q: Is there a difference between being aware of the object of thought and being aware of thinking.
28:06 K: Is there a difference between the object of thought and thinking.
28:15 Ah?
28:18 Q: The act of thinking.
28:23 K: The act. Same thing.
28:26 Q: (Inaudible)… what he’s saying was that most of us are philosophers.
28:32 K: I’m sorry (laughs). (Laughter) Q: (Inaudible)… that you said also… (inaudible) that we were to listen and to be attentive, not neurotically.
28:43 Do you think, or do you mean that being neurotical will prevent us to be attentive… (inaudible)?
29:28 (Laughter) Q: Krishnaji, all day long we’re busy knowing our environment and we know it in ways that involve the thinker. So perhaps if we could find out how we can be knowing our environment in ways that do not involve the thinker.
29:39 Q: When I have no purpose I feel a certain… that certain silence, but the moment I start to act, to have a purpose, there comes the tenseness in the muscle of my brain and I cannot relax that, and the silence is gone.
30:34 Q: Is searching only an accumulative process or is it life itself?
30:37 K: Is searching an accumulative process or life itself. Now, that’s enough. (Laughter) K: (Laughs) What would be, after hearing all those questions, four or five, the central question which would answer all of them?
31:00 Please, we are working together; you’re not just…
31:17 I am not the speaker alone; I’m not the only speaker.
31:25 What would answer all those questions?
31:26 Q: You said love, sorrow and death go together and from them comes… (inaudible)…
31:38 K: Ah, madame, I said that’s enough, not add another question.
31:47 We’ll take that question tomorrow or another day.
31:55 Q: (Inaudible).
31:59 K: Now, just a minute, please.
32:12 We want to find out a central issue that will answer all those questions.
32:22 I may be mistaken, but I think the central issue in all that is the division between the thinker and thought: the thinker who is trying to be aware and the thought which wanders off or is shaped by circumstances, by influence, by environment.
32:57 I’m just inquiring; I’m not stating yet.
33:04 If we could… if we can discuss this question whether… why the division - not whether - why this division exists between the thinker and the thought… – please do… – then perhaps awareness will have a different meaning; and the effort to be aware and, having been aware, trying to maintain that awareness.
33:42 You are…? Would this help? No? Many: Yes.
33:52 K: No, no, somebody disagrees; more important to find out who disagrees and why.
34:01 You see, sir, there are several problems which have been raised, apart from the neurotic.
34:19 (Laughter) K: One wants to live, as that gentleman pointed out, at a different dimension.
34:35 One has perhaps felt during these talks or when you’re walking by yourself in a wood a certain quality, or when you’re in a relationship with a person and a certain quality, and you say, ‘If I could only maintain that and not slip back.’ So there is a contradiction: the experience, the state of that feeling of a different dimension and the actuality.
35:19 And there is a contradiction. If we can wipe away the contradiction then we shall be… not a moment, a feeling of a dimension and trying to reach it all the time.
35:39 I… If we approach these questions and try to find out whether it is possible to eliminate this contradiction altogether then perhaps we shall be living and not comparing.
36:12 Right? So would… shall I… shall we go into that?
36:24 Shall we go into that? Many: Yes.
36:28 K: Now, we’ll go into it the whole of that… this morning into that one question. Don’t say afterwards, ‘I wanted to ask you this morning because I’m going away and I wanted to ask you and you prevented me.’ Please, we are going to discuss one issue, which is, whether it is possible in the human mind to eliminate totally, both at the conscious as well as the unconscious level, this contradiction which brings about an effort, a pain and all the rest of it.
37:11 Now, how is one aware of this contradiction, if one is at all aware, sensitive?
37:26 What tells you that you’re in a state of contradiction?
37:36 Right?
37:44 Do you become aware of that state of contradiction because somebody tells you, or because it brings pain, or you want to pursue a pleasure and in the very pursuit of that pleasure there is a contradiction and therefore you become aware of it?
38:10 You follow? One must find out how you and I become aware, become…
38:21 How do we know that we are in a state of contradiction? If you say, ‘I know it because of suffering,’ or ‘I know it because somebody has told me,’ or you…
38:40 ‘I want to pursue one thing and my activity, my daily life is pulling me away from that.’ So how do we become conscious of this contradiction?
39:00 Please, we are going to this step by step.
39:07 We’re not going to come to any conclusion because, as I said, we’re going to learn; we’re going to learn as we are watching, as we are examining, and therefore there is no conclusion at the end.
39:32 Because if someone were to tell me that I’m in a state of contradiction, that has totally different effect.
39:46 Right? I wonder if you are… Is that clear? Look, I have an ideal – not I – one has an ideal of peace, an image of peace - it’s very interesting; go into this - an image of peace.
40:16 And I am violent; I get angry, irritable, furious. I am in a state of contradiction. Right? There is the established ideal and… which… and I do something which contradicts that ideal, then I say I’m in a state of contradiction.
40:46 Or somebody points it out to me, which is very little importance but it still has significance.
41:03 So how do I become aware of my contradiction?
41:11 Q: (Inaudible).
41:19 K: I’m sorry, I can’t hear.
41:33 Somebody who has heard must repeat it.
41:35 Q: If I look at myself…
41:38 K: Is that… you are repeating…?
41:39 Q: Yes. If I look at myself I can see contradiction going on within me.
41:47 Q: I can see… (inaudible) contradiction but I see what is in… (inaudible) this desire, the next moment a different one and I just see it… (inaudible).
42:23 K: I am sorry, I can’t hear; it’s the fault of the tent. What…?
42:25 Q: (Inaudible).
42:26 K: Madame, ecoutez, madame…
42:27 Q: No… (inaudible) repeat what I have understood.
42:28 K: Not what you have understood; but what is her question? (Laughs) God…
42:32 Q: Yes, I have… (inaudible) another desire at another moment… (inaudible).
42:40 K: No, madame. Look, I asked quite a different question. Oh, for the… I asked something entirely different. I said: how are you aware that you are in a state of contradiction?
42:57 Q: (Inaudible).
43:03 K: Either I am aware because of an ideal of peace, and I am violent; so I… this… there is a contradiction; or one desire pulls another desire in opposite directions and there is a conflict.
43:32 Listen, listen. Please do listen. Or someone tells me or life points out to me that I’m in a state of contradiction.
43:48 So how do I become aware of this contradiction? Either through pain… - right? You’re following? – pain, or making an adjustment between the fact and the ideal and so on.
44:11 So I become aware of this contradiction through an effort, through a pain, through something.
44:27 Right? Are you…? Right? That’s one state. Or there may be an awareness of this contradiction without any stimulus. Right? You are…? Am I making this point clear? An incident tells me I’m in a state of contradiction, an incident, an experience and so on, or without incident there is a state of contradiction.
45:07 I don’t… Right? Now, which is it for most of us? Is it an incident that awakens the mind to its contradictoriness, or without incident the mind is aware of its own contradiction?
45:39 Right? So let’s deal with the first and we’ll come to the second afterwards.
45:49 The first is, we know contradiction through an incident, either pleasure or painful.
46:03 I have an image, an ideal, a way of settled pattern of conduct, and something or… another incident takes place which contradicts that.
46:17 Then I’m in pain, nervously and different ways, and I say, ‘I’m in the state of contradiction.’ Then we try to get over that contradiction, either making the fact, which is my violence, adjust itself to the ideal or I wipe away the ideal – you follow?
46:57 – I’ve only the fact. Ah, you’re following all this?
47:07 May I go on? You… we see this point? Through established formula of conduct or my own habits there is an image of what I should do, what I must be, and then an incident outside that image takes place which contradicts that image.
47:39 I either adjust the fact, the incident to the image because I want to get rid of contradictoriness because that creates pain and - you know? - all the rest of it, so I want to get rid of it; that is the motive why I either make the fact adjust itself to the image or I remove the image altogether; there is no censor at all.
48:10 Right? Now, who is the entity that says, ‘I must adjust the fact to the ideal,’ or says, ‘I must wipe away the ideal’?
48:28 You are following all this? So I have three things involved: the fact, the ideal, and the entity says, ‘I must wipe away the contradiction, either wipe away the ideal or merely accept the fact.’ Now, I must find out who that entity is.
48:54 Right? As long as that entity exists there must be contradiction. You’re following?
48:59 Q: You said that the contradiction is not connected at an instant.
49:04 K: What, sir?
49:07 Q: Contradiction is not connected at one instant.
49:16 Contradiction exists in itself.
49:19 K: Ah, we’re coming to that presently. Un instant, je vous en prie. We’ll come to that plus tard (49:40). Right? First let’s be clear, sir, on this point.
49:37 There is the image, the ‘what I should be’, the ideal, and there is the fact that I am violent.
49:55 I either wipe away that ideal which I have created and therefore deal only with facts.
50:05 Then who is the entity that says, ‘I must wipe away and deal only with the fact’?
50:15 And if I don’t understand the entity, the centre which dictates, that centre will always be in a state of contradiction – right? - or create contradiction.
50:30 Right, sir? Now, who is that centre?
50:41 What is that centre?
50:44 Q: Isn’t that the part in ourself which always… (inaudible)?
50:50 K: Yes, madame. What is yourself? What is that?
50:56 Q: Well, I thought about the thinking part which can stand in the way to overcome that.
51:08 K: No, no. Please. Look, look, just please do listen to me for two minutes. You’re… we are asking ourselves: what is that centre which says, ‘I must not be in a state of contradiction’?
51:26 And that centre says, ‘I’ll wipe it away, the ideal, in order not to be and therefore accept the fact,’ but yet the centre is still there.
51:39 And we are asking what that centre is, what is the structure of that centre, the nature of that centre.
51:49 Now, we are going to find out, learn about it afresh. Right? That’s the only way to learn. Right? You may have thought about it, you may have come to conclusions about it, but that you… but if you have, you have stopped learning. So we are now going to learn about that centre which creates contradiction, whether you wipe away the ideal or neglect the fact.
52:27 Now, we are going to learn about that centre.
52:34 What is the state of the mind that is going to learn about that?
52:48 You’re…?
52:59 I really don’t know what that centre is. I may have known it yesterday but if I come with that knowledge of yesterday, I shan’t be able to discover what it is actually today.
53:17 It might have moved; it might have changed; it might have transformed itself; it might not exist at all.
53:26 So to learn about that centre today I must be free of yesterday – right?
53:36 - free of the conclusions of yesterday, therefore my mind must be silent, completely silent, still, with that question.
53:52 You’re following all this? Then I shall be able to learn about it. Not I – there’ll be learning about it. Is that clear? Now, what is the… that centre which is always creating contradiction?
54:25 Which is, the censor who says, ‘This is right; this is wrong; this I must do; this should be; I am not love; I must love; I am unhappy; I must live in a different dimension; I have listened but I’ve not got’?
54:54 You follow? What is that movement?
55:01 Q: It’s the movement of knowing.
55:12 K: The lady says it’s the movement of knowing. You haven’t given it… You see, the… Please, look, it’s a very difficult question we are asking.
55:26 The ancients have said it is the soul, it is the atman, it is God, it is goodness, it is the original sin.
55:40 And do you mean to say you’re going to quickly brush all that aside and say it is this?
55:51 So first you must not only know what others have said about it – right? - and discover whether there is any truth in that, or it is merely a tradition which you’re repeating, therefore throw it out and… or investigate and come to a certain point.
56:19 Or you come to it completely not knowing, silent.
56:32 If you say what the theologians, the so-called people who believe in God, in truth, in the soul, in the atman, in the permanent, then you’ll get nowhere.
56:48 I’m not interested in the repetition of some authority. I want to learn about it, and to learn I see a complete quietness is necessary before I can look.
57:10 Right? Can you be silent, not forced, not driven silence, but actually be silent to find out what that is?
57:29 Q: Sir, I think knowledge becomes the centre.
57:52 K: The gentleman says knowledge becomes the centre. Ah, ah, ah… I’m sorry. I see; all right. Look, sir, do… Madame?
58:04 Q: (Inaudible)… why have discussions at all? (Inaudible).
58:12 K: Ah, the lady says why talk… have a discussion at all; it becomes useless; that’s what she says.
58:30 Q: I think without principle of harmony… (inaudible).
58:45 K: The… It is said it’s the principle of harmony. (French 59:10)) But I’m afraid you’re not… we’re not going into this.
59:04 You are merely stating what you feel, what you think.
59:09 Q: But, sir… (inaudible) is that we are learning what is this centre… (inaudible) of the conflict between… (inaudible).
59:26 K: Bien; that’s right.
59:27 Q: But who is saying and investigating who is the centre? My mind. And perhaps my mind is not itself this centre… (inaudible) contradiction.
59:32 K: Yes sir. You are saying the mind is the centre of contradiction, the mind which has accumulated knowledge, the mind which has created images, the mind which has established the saviour and the world, the mind that thinks there is the permanent and the impermanent.
59:52 So you say the mind itself is the… is in a state of contradiction.
1:00:04 Right? I think that’s what we’re all saying – right? - in different words. Now, wait a minute. You have stated that. What have you learned about it?
1:00:26 You have analysed it, felt your way to it and say, ‘It is the mind,’ and you verbalise it and made a statement.
1:00:36 What have you learned? Right? Have you learned anything?
1:00:49 Look what you have… do look what one has done.
1:00:53 Q: You need a… (inaudible).
1:00:59 K: Look… we’re going to find out in a minute. What… look what Mr Ortelani has done. I’m not taking you personally, sir. He says it’s the mind that is in a state of contradiction, the mind which has acquired knowledge, the mind which believes, the mind which is the Catholic, which is the Protestant, which is the communist, which is the non-believer, believer, which creates the image - the mind; the mind.
1:01:42 Is that an actual fact or an idea?
1:02:00 Q: Is it unconscious desire for freedom?
1:02:15 K: Unconscious desire for freedom. No, madame. No. we’re not… We are… There is a statement made that it is the mind - mind including knowledge and all the rest of it, the mind.
1:02:32 What makes you say it is the mind?
1:02:35 Q: (Inaudible).
1:02:40 K: No, no.
1:02:47 What makes you say it is the mind?
1:02:50 Q: (Inaudible).
1:02:52 K: Do please…
1:02:53 Q: I have to ask you, when you say, ‘Please investigate…’ K: You have investigated.
1:03:00 Q: To whom you are… (inaudible)?
1:03:03 K: I’m asking you, Ortelani. I’m asking you. One mind is asking another mind. Do… How do you know that it is the mind?
1:03:22 What makes you say it is the mind?
1:03:24 Q: We have been told.
1:03:28 K: You have been told?
1:03:32 Q: (Inaudible).
1:03:34 K: (Inaudible). (Laughter) K: I have been also told that there is a marvellous world when I die, but I have to live in this world.
1:03:47 Now, sir, do please… When we say the mind, either you have realised the fact – right?
1:04:07 - realised it as you realise hunger, and therefore you say it’s the mind.
1:04:17 Then it has validity. Or you’re merely speculating and say, ‘Yes, it’s the mind.’ Then you’re not learning.
1:04:37 So before you or any of us answer – because I know what you’re going to answer; it’s fairly simple: the mind, the image, the conditioning, the pattern which I have been established as a Catholic, as the Protestant, as the communist and so on, that is going to be… etc. - we know all that.
1:04:56 That’s so obvious we don’t have to even to go into that. But I want… we have… there… it… I must learn about it. You understand, sir? Learn, not mere make a statement. So I say before I learn about this particular issue, what is the mind that’s going to learn about this?
1:05:23 You…? Look, sir, my son, my sister, my mother, my grandmother, whatever it is, is not well, unhappy, not doing properly and all the rest of it, and I’m disturbed, and from that disturbance I want to do something – right?
1:05:48 - help her, hold her hand – from disturbance. But if I’m not disturbed, then I can deal with the fact as fact, unemotionally, unsentimentally, unstupidly.
1:06:09 You follow? So it matters very much, when this question is put to you, how you are listening to that question.
1:06:23 Either you listen with a conclusion, or with an idea which you already have what that centre is, or you say, ‘I really don’t know… let’s go into it.’ Right?
1:06:38 You really don’t know.
1:06:47 So you say to learn about this question, come to it with a freshness – right?
1:06:57 - not with a jaded mind which already has speculated, which is already conditioned and says...
1:07:06 So… I must go on, otherwise we’ll have… So what is much more interesting than the issue, which is contradiction, is my… the state of the mind that looks at it.
1:07:33 What is much more important is the state of the mind that looks at the tree, not the tree itself.
1:07:41 That’s a different… Tree itself has a meaning, but how I look at it. So what is the state of the mind when confronted with this question?
1:07:59 Q: That’s where the difficulty is because it seems very plain that the mind has to be silent and I...
1:08:09 K: Be silent. Be silent. (Laughter) Q: I would be delighted to be.
1:08:13 K: Be…
1:08:13 Q: (Inaudible).
1:08:14 K: Don’t… You see, you’re all… You talk; you don’t do. Be silent.
1:08:29 Q: (Inaudible)… ignorance.
1:08:33 K: The lady says it’s ignorance. You see…?
1:08:37 Q: When you say ‘Be silent’… (inaudible) that is impressed on us, it’s imposed.
1:08:43 K: I’m not impressing it on you. I’m not telling you…
1:08:47 Q: You said be silent.
1:08:55 K: Look, I don’t know Russian or Chinese - better be Chinese.
1:09:03 (Laughter) K: (Laughs) I don’t know Chinese. What do I do? My mind is empty. I don’t know. I begin to learn as I go along. But you’re not doing that.
1:09:20 Q: I think that if you watch your mind, in that same moment you get silence that is…
1:09:31 (inaudible).
1:09:32 K: Madame, be silent, not you get silent.
1:09:35 Q: No, be silent… (inaudible).
1:09:38 K: Madam, ecoutez, non. Well, I must go on otherwise we’ll spend a whole morning about a very trivial thing.
1:09:47 (French 60:01). Look, the issue is contradiction, why human beings live in contradiction.
1:10:08 We said either there is a permanent image established, a formula, and the daily fact which contradicts that formula.
1:10:20 And if a mind wants to learn how to live without contradiction - learn, not say, ‘Well…’ some explanation, but actually live without contradiction, then I must learn about it.
1:10:38 And to learn about it, as we explained right from the beginning of these… this morning, it must approach with hesitancy, with silence, with quietness.
1:10:51 And when it does, as we are… as I’m doing it now – as I am doing it; you may not – I see the problem, which is, there is the problem and the mind that’s completely quiet, not knowing about the problem.
1:11:07 And we are… I say, ‘What is this strange quietness’ – right? – ‘this strange stillness which is looking at the problem?’ Is it induced - you follow? - because it wants to get out of that problem, live in a state of harmony without contradiction, therefore it has induced that silence in order to get rid of it, or is that silence natural?
1:11:39 You’re following? If it is natural - not induced, not made to be natural, then is there a centre?
1:12:07 Please, don’t answer this.
1:12:16 Is there a centre which is in a… which brings about…? The centre inherently is contradiction, and if there is only silence which looks at that problem then the question arises: Is the silence induced because it wants to live in a state of harmony, or is that silence a natural state?
1:12:55 And if it is unnatural, then how am I to get it?
1:13:04 And begins again the contradiction. You’re following all this?
1:13:23 So can the mind approach any problem - life, the tree, your wife, husband - completely with silence?
1:13:38 You follow?
1:13:45 You understand? We’re asking one of the most difficult things to do.
1:14:00 One sees if… any other approach must breed contradiction, so one has to go into – we will perhaps tomorrow – what is negation?
1:14:26 You’re following? We have approached the issue always through positiveness: it is knowledge, it is the image, it is this, it is that, it’s the mind and so on and so on.
1:14:40 But we’ve gone a little further. We’ve said silence. Therefore I say to myself, what is negation? Is silence the negation of noise, negation of the rumour, the rejection of this, that, that, in order to be silent?
1:15:02 So I must find out what is this sense of negation which is not positive, directive, but which must exist in life.
1:15:22 You know, a really good mind is both positive and the negative; it must be both the woman and the man, not just the man or just the woman.
1:15:58 The Greeks had a word for it and there are images; so have the Hindus.
1:16:05 They have symbolised this and therefore lost it. The moment you put it into words, into an image, it’s gone.
1:16:21 But if you begin to learn – you follow? - and therefore learning, learning, learning, you can put it into words, it’ll never die.
1:16:37 So we’re going to understand a silence which is not the opposite of noise, not the opposite of this perpetual battle, and to understand that, one must understand the whole structure of negation.
1:17:08 Right, sirs, that’s enough.