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SA65T8 - Love and death are something unknown
Saanen, Switzerland - 27 July 1965
Public Talk 8



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s eight public talk in Saanen, 1965.
0:10 Krishnamurti: I would like this morning, if I may, go into the question of what I think is most important in life – and probably is most important also in the life of most us – which is love and death.
0:40 But, before we go into that, I would like to make certain things clear.
1:00 Communication is comparatively easy when we both know the same language and give the same meaning to the same word.
1:26 And if we both of us have a referent which is constant, then communication becomes fairly easy, as it is seen from the Mariner, which was, oh, up near Mars, and sent photographs and messages to the Earth.
1:52 As long as verbal communication is necessary, we must both be very clear in the understanding and the usage of words.
2:10 But what is much more difficult is communion.
2:18 There we are not sharing, though that word communion implies – according to the dictionary, the meaning – sharing, partaking.
2:39 I think sharing is not possible, except with regard to things, experiences, ideas; but if you go beyond that, sharing becomes almost impossible.
3:02 You can’t share, you and I, the beauty of those mountains; there they are.
3:12 We can talk about them, we can write books about them, put words together to make a poem, but you and I can’t share that extraordinary beauty of that mountain; it is there for you and me to watch it, to look at it, to delight in it, but we are not sharing that beauty.
3:46 Beauty cannot ever be shared, because beauty is not a stimulus.
3:58 And if we understand the meaning of that word sharing, then one sees very clearly that sharing implies the one who has experienced or knows or has knowledge and is willing to partake it with you – that is generally what is called sharing – and when there is that sharing, in that there goes the whole hierarchical system of division.
4:53 Sharing implies, does it not: ‘You know and I don’t know.’ You give me, you share with me what I do not know, what I have not experienced, what I have never felt.
5:14 You are good enough, you are willing enough, you are generous enough to share something with me.
5:23 But truth, beauty cannot be shared.
5:30 You can’t have it and I can’t have it. It isn’t a personal property; it isn’t a thing that you and I possess, to be shared with another.
5:43 It is there, like the sunset, like the mountain, like the flow of a river and the quietude of an evening.
5:57 Because it is there, you can look at it and delight in it, but you can’t share that beauty with another.
6:10 The other must be equally sensitive, deeply aware, intelligent.
6:17 Then the beauty is not to be shared but to be looked at, to be enjoyed, to be revelled in, taken delight in.
6:37 So when we use the word share, there is generally implied in it: the one who possesses and the one who does not; the one who has something and the other has not.
6:57 And, in that attitude, in that feeling, in that sharing, there is this hierarchical approach to life; that is, the top brass and the common soldier, the Pope and the ordinary clergyman, the ordinary priest and the lowly monk; there is the cardinal in his magnificent robes and the poor monk in his black cloth; and the one who knows and the one who does not know; and that breeds infinite sorrow, great pain, struggle, ambition and authority.
7:57 Please listen to all this, because we are going into something which demands no sharing, therefore there is no partaking.
8:14 And you must really understand, if you will, this dreadful – if I may use the word – evil of hierarchical division of life, as the one who knows and one who does not know.
8:40 Truth cannot possibly be divided as the one who knows and the one who does not know, therefore there is no authority, no hierarchical approach.
8:59 The approach of authority of the division as the hierarchical outlook on life is an evil thing, is a poisonous, dreadful thing.
9:20 And what we are going to do this morning is not share; we both of us are going to inquire, are going to move, flow into something which we don’t know.
9:44 So please do not wait for me to tell you, or for me to share something which you have not, or for me to give you enlightenment or freedom.
10:02 No-one can give it, nor can anyone share it.
10:14 And as most of us are used to this attitude in life of someone giving and you receiving, creates a division which brings about authority and all the evil things that come with it.
10:39 So there is no follower and the one who leads, there is no teacher and the taught, and that’s a marvellous thing if you realise it; because in that there is great beauty, in that there is freedom, in that there is the ending of sorrow because one has to work, inquire, break through and destroy to find out for oneself.
11:18 And what we are going to do, if we may, this morning, is to inquire into these things, which is… seems to me and seems to most of us so important in life: love, and the thing called death.
11:46 To inquire there must be first freedom; not freedom at the end, freedom right from the beginning, to inquire, to find out, to discover; otherwise you can’t look, you can’t inquire, you can’t move.
12:18 So a mind that is inquiring, even in the most complicated, scientific field, even in the most complex structure of a human mind, there must be freedom.
12:35 You can’t come to it, say… with your knowledge, with your prejudices, with your anxieties, fears; then you can’t inquire.
12:43 They will guide, they will shape, they will push you in different directions; and therefore all inquiry ceases when there is no freedom.
12:59 I mean by that, when we are trying to see what this extraordinary thing in life means – this thing that we call love – you must come to it, not with your personal or… prejudices, not with your conclusions, not with your concepts that, ‘It must be this way,’ or, ‘It must not be that way,’ that it must be expressed in the family, between the husband and wife, with the… or, ‘Love is profane,’ and, ‘Love is spiritual.’ The thing… all that prevents from really going into it most profoundly, easily and with a breathless pursuit.
13:57 And to inquire so, you must need freedom; therefore one must be aware, from the very beginning of this inquiry, how we are conditioned, how we are prejudiced, how we look at life through the… through pleasure, and therefore we prevent ourselves from looking what actually is.
14:47 And then perhaps we can go, when we are free, to inquire into this extraordinary thing called love.
15:05 We live in this world in relationship: relationship between man and woman, between friends, between ideas, property and so on.
15:26 All life is a relationship, and relationship cannot exist when the mind is isolating itself in all its activities.
15:45 Please watch this in yourselves. When there is this self-centred activity, there is no relationship.
15:58 Whether you sleep in the same bed or whether you are going in a bus or when you are looking at a mountain, as long as there is the self-centred activity, obviously it can only lead to isolation and therefore there is no relationship.
16:33 And from this self-centred activity we begin to inquire into what love is, and again that prevents real inquiry, because the self-centred activity is based on pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
16:59 So our inquiry, if we are seeking from a centre which exists for itself as pleasure and avoiding pain, then our inquiry will be useless and vain.
17:23 So to really inquire, there must be freedom from this self-centred activity; and that is extremely difficult.
17:42 It requires great intelligence, great understanding, great insight, and therefore one has to have a very good mind; a mind that is not sentimental, not emotional, not carried away, not enthusiastic, but a mind that is very clear, aware, sensitive all round.
18:22 It’s only such a mind then can begin to inquire into what we call love.
18:34 Now, what is love for most of us? Actually, not what we would like it to be. What we would like it to be has no reality; it’s an idea, it’s a concept, it’s a formula, and therefore it has no validity at all.
19:01 We must start with what is and not with what should be.
19:08 We must start with the fact and not with opinions, with conclusions; because conclusions, opinions, formulas are so misleading, they are so destructive.
19:29 A marvellous utopia conceived or formulated by a few, clever, cunning minds can twist and destroy and kill thousands and millions because of that one idea.
19:49 And we do the same with ourselves. We have a formula, a feeling that love should be something, and therefore we torture our lives; our lives are agony; we are trying to approximate the fact with an illusion which is merely an invention of the mind, which has no reality.
20:22 So we are going to inquire, not from what should be but from what is.
20:37 What is actually our love? There is pleasure in it, pain, anxiety, jealousy, attachment, possessiveness, domination, and the fear of losing that which we have possessed.
21:10 There is the love of relationship between people and there is the love of an idea, of a formula, as the nation, as God, as an utopia; so when we talk of love, we are only talking about actual relationship, not the poisonous thing called ‘love for your country’ or that nationalistic patriotism which is exploited by the clever politician and the priest.
21:56 We are talking actually of the fact that love between human beings, that exists actually.
22:11 In that love, there is pain; there is the torture of uncertainty which is jealousy; the fear of loneliness and therefore the demand, therefore the urge to possess, to dominate, to hold – these are facts – and therefore, the legal marriage, which society has established for the sake of the children.
23:03 But in that family, as a unit, as a unit is opposed to every other unit.
23:12 These are all facts. ‘My family,’ as opposed to the rest of the family of the world.
23:25 And in that family there is this battle going on, incessantly: to possess, to dominate, the fear, jealousy, anxiety whether you are loved or not loved, and so on and on and on.
23:48 That’s what we call love.
23:57 And we try various ways of escaping from this torture of the family – though one must have a family – by social activity, by becoming terribly religious, which is to join some ugly little organisation, believing in some formula about God or Jesus or the Buddha or whatever you will.
24:40 Or treat the whole of relationship as something very, very superficial, just a passing thing with which you have to put up, grit your teeth and carry on.
25:02 So that is what we call love. And being dissatisfied with that kind of love, we have the love of God or the love of humanity or the love of your neighbour.
25:20 We don’t know what love is but we love God, we love our neighbour – at least, we must – and in the love of the neighbour, we’re destroying the neighbour, because through our competition, ruthlessness, through our business, through our cunning, through all the thing of the inventions of modern society.
25:46 So all that’s what we call love: the love of the parent for his children – you know?
25:58 – the whole structure and the game and the torture of it all.
26:10 And one knows all this; one is intimately and terribly, painfully aware of all this, if you’re at all sensitive, watching, feeling, looking.
26:33 Then one asks: is it possible to live in a family, to live with a wife and a husband without this torture?
26:56 And perhaps then one begins to find out what may be love. Because love demands – doesn’t it, really?
27:10 – not as an idea, seeing the actuality of our daily life, the everyday incidents of the family, in the house, in the office, in the bus, in the car, on the road; the disrespect for people.
27:36 Knowing the torture of all that, is it possible to let all that go – actually, not theoretically – actually not be attached, actually not be possessive, not dominating; and if your wife wants or your husband wants to leave, not to feel jealous, hate, antagonism?
28:24 Then only there is a possibility of something unknown coming into being.
28:36 Because the love that we have is the known, with all the misery, the confusion, the torture, the jealousy, the ugliness of the violence, of pleasure in sex and pain – you know, all that – and that’s what we know.
29:11 We are unwilling to face that fact: the fact of what we know.
29:19 Please, just listen to me, for two minutes now. You know, you can live with beauty – the mountain – and get very used to it; after a week or ten days, you won’t even pay attention to it.
29:44 Like these villagers who don’t even look at that mountain for a second; they are used to it.
29:55 We get used to beauty as well as to ugliness. What is important is not the beauty or the ugliness but getting used to anything.
30:10 We get used to our lives, our tortures, our miseries, our petty little houses and minds and all the ugliness of our life.
30:30 We don’t want to look beyond; we don’t want to tear through all this to find out, and so we get used to it.
30:40 And when one gets used to anything – it does not matter what it is, whether it is beautiful or torture or anxiety or an ugly thing – the mind becomes dull, insensitive, unaware; and being unaware, insensitive, it occupies itself with all kinds of things; occupies itself with God, with religions, with entertainment, with social work, with gossip, with reading and accumulating knowledge and looking at television.
31:37 So to be aware of this fact of our life, of the tortures, the possessiveness, the domination, the interference, the correction, the criticism, the constant demand; now, to live with that and not get used to it; to be aware of all that and not accept it.
32:22 When we are talking about acceptance, I do not mean put up with it, to embrace it, but to look at it, not avoid it, not escape from it, not give reasons why this should be and that should not be, but to look at the fact of our daily relationship; and to look at that fact demands great energy, and you have that energy if you’re not escaping from it – escaping from it either through words, through explanations, through trying to find out the cause of whatever it is – but to live being totally aware of it and knowing all the intricacies, subtleties of it.
33:43 Therefore, being entirely, totally familiar with the known, then perhaps one can be free of the known.
33:58 And if we do not know what love is, then we shall never know what death is.
34:21 Because we have got used to death.
34:29 There are thousands being killed in Vietnam; we’ve had two terrible world wars; thousands, millions killed in Russia for ideas; and we’ve got used to it: the starvation, the poverty and the degradation in Asia, and we get used to the prosperity of Europe or America.
35:10 So we have got used to this thing called death; we accept it. We say, ‘That is the inevitable end of man: old age, disease and the grave,’ or the crematorium, whichever you like.
35:36 And if you don’t get used to it, if you don’t accept it, in the sense, not revolt against it – because you can’t; it is there, it’s coming; every day we are growing older.
35:58 We are misuse the organism so badly, there is disease.
36:08 You can die young or die old, but there is disease, pain, torture and the demand for good health; and even you may live a thousand... hundred and fifty, two hundred years, there is always that thing at the end of it.
36:42 And one has to understand it. You know, most of us are aware or know that death is inevitable and so we have faith in reincarnation, in resurrection, in some form of continuity after death, because that’s all we want.
37:13 So again belief, formula, hope plays an extraordinarily important part in our life.
37:30 Not the fact; not the fact of death but, ‘Will I…?
37:37 Is there life after? What is the point of struggling, struggling, cultivating virtue, becoming good...’ – you know, all this silly stuff that one does – ‘...to end in death?
37:55 And therefore there must be something after.’ What is the something that we want to continue?
38:07 You understand? All the religions throughout the world promise this thing, in different words, in different spheres, in different types of hopes and so on; but when you put away all that, what is it that we want to continue?
38:40 You understand? What is it? Our daily life, isn’t it? The life that we know: the life of companionship, the life of daily torture, daily uncertainty, daily pleasure, the agony of loneliness, the quarrels, the wars, the going to the office day-after-day for thirty, forty years; the petty little minds that we have, the conditioned life, and the pleasures of travelling, seeing something new; the disease, the pain, the utter empty boredom of life, the loneliness — that’s all we know.
39:53 And now we also know how to go to Mars and take photographs. We’ll know more and more of external knowledge, things known; and the things are known is outside, in the space where the stars, the universe is.
40:25 So what is the thing that we so desperately cling to?
40:35 The memory of things that have been; that’s a terrible thing to realise that we cling to something that is dead, past, gone, finished – isn’t it? – that’s all that we know, and to that we cling.
41:07 We cling to something that is known: the character, the books, or not the books, the paintings that one has done; the experiences, the pleasures, the anxieties, the guilt — all that is the past; that’s what we are clinging to; that’s what we know, and so we want that continued afterwards.
41:48 If I have lost my husband, wife, I want to meet him on the other side. I don’t inquire the kind of husband and the wife I have known: the husband, the wife who has quarrelled, been ugly, ill-tempered, nagging – you know? – all the rest of it.
42:21 So what we are afraid of is losing the known, which is the past; the past, through the present, which creates the future; and that’s what we are clinging to: time as the known.
42:50 Please do listen to this. I am not doing a propaganda for something; I am just pointing out the facts.
43:07 And when you cling to something of the past, your mind, your heart, your whole being is dead already.
43:21 It doesn’t matter if it is a deep delight, a deep pleasure, as long as the mind holds to it, the mind becomes an ugly little thing that cannot live.
43:40 So that is our life; and being afraid of that so-called life ending, we invent or we hope.
43:53 Now, when you are aware of all that, not escaping but looking, observing, listening, being aware choiceless of everything that’s going on inside you, then you are faced with a question, which is: death is actually the unknown.
44:35 You don’t know it; you have ideas about it. You have ideas of fears or anxieties; this tremendous sense of being alone, in solitude, in loneliness.
44:54 And when you are aware of all that, then one asks oneself, ‘Can one die to everything known?’ That is, can one die to the past, not bit-by-bit, not keeping the pleasurable past and rejecting the unpleasant past; dying to pleasure as well as to pain, which is the past; end it without argument?
45:31 You know, when death comes you don’t argue; you don’t say to it, ‘Give me a few more days.’ It’s there; you’re gone.
45:45 In the same way, to empty the mind of all the past.
46:01 Then perhaps, emptying the mind willingly, naturally, effortlessly, then perhaps there is the freedom from the known and therefore there is an understanding of the unknown.
46:29 You understand? We don’t know what love is. We know the pain and the pleasure of love, but we don’t know the... – know in the sense, see the fact of it, as you see the fact of a mountain.
46:55 So love is something unknown, as death; and when the mind is free of the known, then there is that which is not knowable through words, through experience, through visions, through any form of expression.
47:27 And without knowing that love and knowing the extraordinary fullness, richness of death, we shall never know what it is to live; live without torture, without anxiety, without the pain of everyday travail.
48:32 Shall we discuss or ask questions of what we have talked about this morning?
48:41 Questioner: Sir, may I ask, what do you think is the origin of the urge to give continuity to anything?
49:09 I mean, the pleasure, things like that.
49:11 K: What is the origin of continuity. It’s fairly simple, isn’t it? You have… one… I’ve had a pleasure; I want it to continue.
49:31 And thought gives it the nourishment to continue.
49:42 If thought didn’t interfere with that pleasure, it would have no continuity, endurance.
49:51 Do see; it’s so simple, it is.
50:00 I have… you have written a book and you put your name to it and that gives you a pleasure, because you’ve become known, praised, criticised, publicised and all the rest of that nonsense, and you like that, and thought thinks about it.
50:18 You meet your friends, say, ‘What a marvellous book that was,’ or, ‘What a rotten book that was,’ and you delight in all that, and that gives continuity.
50:30 It is really very simple. To be aware of this total process; therefore you can put your name to it and it has no meaning.
50:44 Or not put your name to it; then you function as a human being, anonymously; and anything that is great must be anonymous.
51:02 I would like to ask a question, since you are not asking questions.
51:12 It must have struck you, and you must be asking yourself, if you are asking yourself, ‘How is one to die to anything?’ You understand?
51:28 How is one to die to a pleasure that I’ve had? How is one to die to the insult that I have received?
51:42 Do...? How does one die? How does one put away, easily, happily, without the least effort, to a remembrance of something that has given you tremendous pleasure?
52:08 It is easy to put away something that has given pain – that very quickly one forgets; the pain that you had a week ago when your tooth was bothering you, you’ve forgotten it.
52:30 You’ve forgotten the baby that gave you such intense pain when it was born; you’ve forgotten it already; but the pleasure of that baby, the delight of seeing it grow…
52:51 you know, all that business. How is one to die to all the known and yet live in this world and function reasonably, efficiently, going to the office and all the rest of it?
53:10 Don’t you want to know?
53:12 Q: Yes.
53:14 K: Why don’t you ask? (Laughter) Is it that you accept all this?
53:30 You see, that’s why there is great sorrow in not asking and finding out.
53:38 Not from me; finding out for yourself; not asking fundamental questions and going through to the very end of it, to find out, irrespective of your family, society and all the paraphernalia that surrounds one.
54:01 How does one totally reject?
54:08 Which is, after all, dying.
54:15 You know, forgiveness is a dreadful thing.
54:23 Right? No? All right, I’ll explain.
54:35 (Laughter) First you accumulate the insults, the angers and all… accumulate, and then, after accumulating, you forgive.
54:49 No? But if you never accumulated, there’s nothing to forgive.
55:00 Right? So never to accumulate the past. That’s the first thing. First to find out if it is at all possible never to accumulate, and then die to it.
55:29 If you don’t accumulate, there is no dying to it. In the same way, if you don’t accumulate the pain, the insults, the angers, then there is nothing to forgive.
55:44 A mind that’s forgiving is a cruel mind, is a…
55:52 Well, I... So that is one problem; that is, not to accumulate; and having accumulated – as most of us do – to die, to reject it totally.
56:09 Not bit-by-bit; that is the greatest sorrow of man: to use time as a means of dying, rejecting.
56:28 Because one can do it totally a different way. I’m going to… we are going into that. Please, I’m not answering you. Don’t say, ‘I’ve learnt it and I’m going to apply it.’ If you have learned what I have been said, then it’s like the man who forgives; then you will be more tortured, because you have learned some formula and you’re going to apply it, therefore you’re back again in the same old torture and conflict and effort.
57:16 Now, how am I, who have accumulated essentially pleasure, different forms of it, different aspects, different nuances, subtleties, remembrances of pleasure?
57:44 We know how to get rid of pain because somehow, strangely, the mind also gets rid of it quickly, because it’s pursuing pleasure.
57:55 I don’t know if you’re following this. Its main concern is pleasure, and all its evaluations are pleasure, and therefore it can reject very quickly anything that’s not pleasurable; almost unconsciously.
58:24 So the pleasure, with all its subtleties and the values, how am I, who have accumulated that, die to it, reject it, not piecemeal-by-piecemeal, but totally?
58:49 Ah? Do you understand my question?
58:56 Q: By letting go.
58:59 K: By letting go. Who am I to let go? Who is it that is letting go?
59:06 Q: The habit of accumulation.
59:08 K: Who is the maker of that habit?
59:15 It is still the pleasure. Oh, you…
59:19 Q: If the centre goes.
59:23 K: Ah? You don’t listen, you see. You don’t listen to yourself as you’re saying things; you don’t learn from what you’re saying.
59:42 You say, ‘Let go.’ Who is it that is letting go?
59:50 The image? That is, the centre of that image, who says… the pleasure, the image that is the essence of pleasure says, ‘I’ll let that go, because I want greater pleasure, which is the understanding of the unknown.’ Before it was the house, the toy, the house, the wife, the sex, the family, the nation; now, because you’re a little bit older and a little bit senile and... fed up with the whole damn thing and you say, ‘Well, the unknown.’ (Laughter) No sirs, you’re not learning.
1:00:37 Not learning from your own observation.
1:00:40 Q: (Inaudible) K: No; please, just listen to me.
1:00:48 I know all the questions: think about it, look at… Please, would you quietly – I have talked for an hour; I’m sorry; I don’t want to be the only person that talks – but just please listen.
1:01:06 How am I, who have gathered so much pleasure and therefore so much pain – you understand?
1:01:19 – so much pain, not merely pleasure; how am I who have sought and searched out pleasure and therefore invited pain, how am I to die to all that, drop away?
1:01:42 First of all, why should I drop everything away? Why should I drop my pleasure? Because you tell me that pleasure breeds pain?
1:01:59 Or do I see the significance, the nature, the structure of pleasure?
1:02:10 Because I see it; if I see it, not verbally, not as an idea – which again becomes organised pleasure – but if I see the nature of pleasure – you understand? – you know, like seeing the nature of a tree, how it grows, seeing it, actually living with it; not accepting, not denying, not thinking about it, not pushing it away, not doing anything; no positive action taking place but merely looking at it.
1:02:57 Therefore looking at the memory of pleasure, completely quietly, without any movement of the mind.
1:03:10 You understand? Look sirs, when you look at that mountain, if you look at it very quietly it tells you lots of things.
1:03:28 You look more deeply; you feel more the nature of it; you see the curve, the beauty, the line, the skyline… you see everything much more.
1:03:44 But if your mind is chattering, asking, demanding, pushing – you know, all that one does – then you’re not looking.
1:03:59 So to understand and therefore be free of the past, you must know the nature, the structure, the meaning of the whole pleasure.
1:04:18 And to watch it, be aware of it; not to say, ‘I’ll keep this pleasure and throw away that pleasure,’ just to watch the whole structure of pleasure; then you will see that it has no longer significance, and that you have to remember certain things and not that which gives pleasure; and therefore you die to things that have given pleasure and to things like technical knowledge, you have to have, and you have to add more to it, but technical knowledge doesn’t give you pleasure but you can use technical knowledge to derive pleasure.
1:05:20 So a mind that is very aware of itself, that is, the mind that is aware of its own activities; that is, self-knowing is the beginning of wisdom; self-knowing brings freedom.
1:05:52 And when there is freedom from the known – which is the very image of pleasure – then the mind enters into quite a different field, into quite a different dimension.