Krishnamurti - Looking at oneself without words, images or pride

Krishnamurti Subtitles

SA68D2 - Looking at oneself without words, images or pride
Saanen, Switzerland - 1 August 1968
Public Discussion 2

0:00	This is J Krishnamurti’s second public discussion in Saanen, 1968.
0:11	Krishnamurti: If we may, we’ll go on with what we were talking over together yesterday.
0:32	We were saying how important it is to communicate with each other, not only here but throughout life, to know what proper communication means; because there is so much misunderstanding – we live in misunderstanding – and communication could probably clear up a great deal of this misunderstanding.
1:17	We said we communicate through word, through gesture.
1:25	The word with its content, with its frame or form or design must naturally awaken in each one of us a series of associations, and that becomes the block, the hindrance.
2:00	If each one of us has a series of associations, a content for every word, and each person carries that all along with him – whether he is a communist, socialist, whatever he be – then all communication becomes impossible.
2:31	I think that we should be very clear about.
2:39	When that is obvious and when there is no distortion in this communication, where both of us understand exactly what we mean – not twisted to mean something you like or I dislike – then we can proceed to another form of communication, which is what we call communion.
3:20	To commune is really a state of mind which is highly sensitive and therefore extremely alert and intelligent, awake, and capable of an intensity that is immediate, so that there is between you and the speaker an intensity of communion, at the same time, at the same level.
4:05	And this communion is only possible when the mind is very still, very quiet, when the mind with its brain cells doesn’t respond immediately, but there is a hesitation, an interval before response takes place.
4:35	For most of us, since we have evolved from the primates, from the apes, higher forms of apes, our brains naturally have grown to certain forms of conditioning – aggression, fear, violence, brutality, thinking about itself, its family, its community – its whole activity has centred around itself.
5:20	That is the old brain. And when there is an immediate response, it is the response of that brain, the conditioned brain.
5:39	And when there is that quick, immediate response according to the race, community, society, the culture in which that particular brain has lived, then the communion, an immediate comprehension doesn’t take place.
6:14	So one has to know for oneself the organic response, the physical response, and the whole structure and the psychological responses in which we live. That’s our life.
6:40	That is, to know ourselves. I know this has been said in Greece and before that in India, and so on and on and on, but apparently it is one of the most difficult things to do, to know oneself, as we are.
7:06	Unless we do that, unless there is this fundamental knowing of oneself – the causes of certain actions, behaviour, thought – then any purposive action becomes merely ideological.
7:33	Whatever the goal, the purpose be, which may be invented by the specialist or for oneself, becomes a contradiction to ‘what is’.
7:52	So, what we were discussing yesterday was how to look at ourselves with not the accustomed brain, not with the habitual responses of a brain that has been heavily conditioned, that is the outcome of the animal, of the apes, and so on, so on.
8:36	Is it possible to look at ourselves without that response?
8:44	That is, to look at ourselves without the observer who is the old accumulated thinker, the entity that has evolved through time, through environmental influences, and so on and on and on.
9:14	That is, can I look at myself in silence, with a mind that is not disturbed by the past?
9:27	Though the past is there and must exist and has its value, can I… can this… can I look at myself without the past responses so that I am learning about myself all the time?
9:51	That’s what we were, if I remember rightly, we were talking about yesterday.
9:58	Shall we go on with that? Questioner: Yes.
10:15	K: You understand the issue? We have looked at ourselves – if we have at all; and most of us have not because we are very proud – proud of achievement, capacity, opinion.
10:42	Please do follow this, observe it in yourself.
10:49	We are proud of our experiences, knowledge. We think we are some extraordinary entities, divine or – oh! – ideological, and so on and on and on.
11:06	Which is not a fact. That’s merely an invention, but we cling to it, and that’s one of our accumulated… pride, the sense of pride – not to give up an opinion if we have formed it, not to give up one’s accumulated knowledge, experience, tradition – we take pride in that.
11:54	And so pride prevents from observing ourselves.
12:01	That’s clear, isn’t it?
12:08	So only a mind that is really capable of looking at itself…
12:19	is possible when there is humility. That humility is not the opposite of pride.
12:30	Right? Can I give up my pride in my family, nation, opinion, judgments – pride in the things I have accumulated as knowledge?
13:04	And by dropping pride I can then look at myself with great humility.
13:18	Right? Can we do that? Can we discuss, talk over together about that now, before we go further?
13:33	Q: I fear, sir, that we cannot totally give up our images and the motives which creates the difference between the observer and the observed, because these images and motives are created by our conditioning.
14:01	We can lessen them or increase them – we can do that, but I fear that we cannot do that with total observation…
14:14	K: So we must, you are saying, we must keep a few images. We cannot drop all our images – those images in which we take pride, which give us pleasure.
14:32	We cannot, it is said, drop all these images and look at ourselves without an image of opinion, judgment, and so on.
15:04	Surely if I want to look at something clearly, I want to understand, look, you know, see what actually is going on in myself, why should I have any image?
15:23	From observation I shall go, but not come to it with a conclusion. I don’t know if you… After observing myself I am capable of doing that, I can then proceed, but if I come to it with an image, with an opinion, with a conclusion, with pride, obviously it is going to block me.
15:54	Please see the reason of it. Not your opinion or my opinion.
16:02	Then I can proceed, if I can look at myself without any image, what are the causes of my activity, why I think this way, why I behave that way, why I’m aggressive.
16:22	But if I look at myself saying, ‘I must not be aggressive’, that is merely ideological escape which has no value at all.
16:43	See how very important this is, because most of us take pride in free will, don’t we – ‘I am free to choose’.
16:57	Perhaps you are free to choose this colour or that colour, or the kind of hat you are going to wear, or choose – I mustn’t use the word ‘choose’ your husband! But is there such thing as free will?
17:17	Will being desire – to do or not to do, to choose or not to choose.
17:33	And is there a law which is…
17:42	in which there is no choice of will at all? I don’t know if you’re following all this.
17:57	I mean, if there is complete harmony within oneself – which is, please, this is one of the most difficult things, don’t think you are perfectly harmonious, we are not – we are broken up fragments. If one has this complete harmony, aware of it in oneself, then probably you are in harmony with the universal law.
18:33	And then you – not obey or follow – then there is only that.
18:42	We cannot go into that – sorry, I may have gone a little too far – we cannot go into that unless we can really look at ourselves anew, afresh, so that I see what I am.
19:12	You see, it’s pride that prevents me from looking at myself and it is the pride that is inventing the ideology which I should be.
19:23	Right? I don’t like what I am, and my pride says, ‘I must be that’.
19:35	The ‘that’ is the ideology, the ideological philosophy which man has invented, the formula, the ‘should be’.
19:51	So, pride creates this conflict between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’, and pride says to me, ‘By Jove, I must be that. This is ugly, this is stupid, this is unintelligent, this is unreasonable’.
20:13	So I put on a mask of what I should be, and hence there is a conflict, a kind of hypocritical activity going on.
20:27	So can I… is it possible to look at oneself without the image of pride?
20:38	Q: Yes.
20:48	K: I’m only putting in other words what we were talking about yesterday, because one has such extraordinary images of oneself.
21:08	Haven’t you? No? Q: Yes.
21:16	K: Why? I am a great writer, I am this, I am that, I am a Jew, a Christian, a Catholic, communist – you know, all the images that one has built about oneself. Why? Is it pride?
21:50	Or we have invested in these images, values other than the actual state of one’s own being.
22:15	One is aggressive and I am ashamed of that, for various reasons.
22:30	And I have, one has the ideology of non-aggression.
22:39	The ideology of non-aggression is invented by my pride, by one’s desire to be other than ‘what is’, and giving great value to ‘what should be’.
22:58	Please, see what we are doing.
23:08	We put on so many masks, depending whom we meet, with whom we talk, you know, the game we play with ourselves.
23:39	So can I, can one look at oneself without the images that man has created through fear and pride, and therefore without any image, and hence with great silence in which there is humility to observe?
24:46	So are you saying, sir, we are afraid to face ourselves?
24:55	So pride comes in. Now, can we go into that? Why is one afraid to look at one’s self?
25:19	Why are you afraid to see what you are?
25:26	Is it fear that has invented pride? Or you dislike what you see and therefore you say, ‘Well, I must be better, I must be different’.
25:47	If I am…
25:58	if I am afraid of what I see…
26:12	I won’t run away from it; I see it, why should I be afraid of it?
26:19	I am only afraid of it if I think I should be something else.
26:27	Right? And that is one of our conditioning, our ideological philosophy that has cultivated this sense of what should be the ideal.
26:48	If I see that, that I must face ‘what is’ – if I have cancer, I must face it.
27:04	Whatever there is in me – the aggression, the brutality, the violence, the cheating, the doubletalk – everything there is in me. I can look if there is no fear of wanting to change it or not being able to change it.
27:34	I can look and then find out what are the causes that have brought this about in me.
27:43	Surely that’s fairly simple, isn’t it? And apparently we don’t do it.
27:50	This is very logical, sane, but we don’t do it.
28:16	Ah, the question is… Make it short, sir, I have to repeat it.
28:36	Ah, yes, yes. We have talked a great deal, in different parts, in Amsterdam, here, and so on, about self-knowledge.
28:53	We want to go into it, and perhaps some of us have gone into it, but what prevents us going into it very much deeper and therefore acting differently is that we may hurt others.
29:15	Q: That’s not what I said. K: Ah, then what did you say, sir?
29:21	Q: I said… K: Make it brief, sir. Q: We want to change, we want to avoid aggressiveness…
29:28	K: Yes, yes, I said that.
29:35	Yes: we want to change and we don’t…
29:44	in that very change we want to avoid damaging others. Yes, sir, that’s what you said. No?
29:57	Q: You say we want to change out of… K: No, I didn’t… I am repeating what you are saying.
30:04	I am not… I am saying you say, sir, that I don’t change out of pride – I want to change but that may harm others.
30:40	What is it? Be brief, sir.
30:46	Q: You just mentioned that when we look at ourselves, and when we want to change, that we want to change... …we want to change to avoid harming others.
31:01	When we are aggressive we harm others and therefore we want to change. K: Ah, that’s very simple. That’s very simple.
31:08	We want to change because aggression hurts others. That’s all.
31:23	It isn’t that we want to change because we are proud, but we see that aggression might hurt others, therefore we want to change.
31:49	Sir, we are not talking about change. We are saying, why is it that we cannot look at ourselves? That’s the first thing. Then we’ll come to the change afterwards.
32:12	Q: Sir, is it possible that the child creates the images because…
32:19	K: I beg your pardon? Q: That we fear that we create images because we are afraid that we can’t be loved for what we are, for ‘what is’.
32:28	The fear is fear of not being loved or not being accepted.
32:34	Q: Does a child create an image of what he should be because he fears not to be loved as he is.
32:41	K: Yes, that may be one of the reasons. No, but you are not meeting my point. Why is it that you and I cannot face ourselves as we are?
33:04	Just face it, just look at it.
33:15	If I cannot look at myself as I am, there is no possibility of change at all.
33:31	Because by looking at myself as I am, I can find out the causes what has brought this about – the aggression, the brutality, the violence – all that.
33:44	Unless I discover the cause of all this subjectively, inwardly, it’s not possible to change. Change will be merely between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’, and therefore there is conflict, and therefore it’s a state of… another form of aggression.
34:10	This…
34:18	With my…? Q: …my brain. K: With my brain. Q: Identify myself with my brain.
34:27	K: Identify myself with…? Q: …my brain. K: My brain. Q: I think I am…
34:33	K: You think you are your brain. Of course you are… when you think, you are that.
34:42	This elaborate process of identification – you are that. Sir, please do… you see, do come to this essential point first.
34:53	Is it that it’s pride that is preventing us from looking at ourselves? – one. Is it fear?
35:06	Q: Perhaps that vision belongs to very few people, but when we do reach vision, then we don’t have to look at ourselves any more because we are part of those laws… K: We are part of…? Q: Perhaps that vision is granted to very few people and when vision has been reached then we become a part of those laws and harmony…
35:28	K: Ah – must we examine – yes, the questioner says, must we examine all this, be aware, see ourselves as we are.
35:40	Can’t we – if I may quickly put it – jump into another state?
35:50	You see, that is one of the most dangerous things that can lead to such illusion.
36:03	You see, if you will go with the speaker for a little, we’ll go into something which you yourself can understand, and have it, live it.
36:19	But you see, we refuse to begin at the lowest level, which is not really low, but at the most essential level.
36:36	Because we are probably afraid that if we have no ideals or purposes, we shall deteriorate.
37:02	[In French] – I beg your pardon. How can one put into words what is truth.
37:15	Madame, we are not talking about truth. We will come to that. I can only find out what truth is when there is no illusion.
37:32	And illusion must exist as long as there is any kind of conflict.
37:46	So, what is preventing us from looking at ourselves? So that I will know, I know all my ways, my peculiarities, I won’t jump to conclusions about others, I won’t impute motives to others.
38:13	This seems to me such common sense, to begin with ‘what is’.
38:24	Q: If we start really observing ourselves, what we see may be so ugly that it is natural not to want to look.
38:34	K: What we see may be so ugly – that’s why we don’t want to look at ourselves.
38:43	Why do you call what you see ugly?
38:54	It may be one is very sexual – why do you call it ugly?
39:03	Because you have the ideological approach, values, judgments according to some ideology.
39:15	If I am aggressive, why do I call it ugly? I am aggressive. If one hates, one hates people – why call it ugly?
39:37	So one is caught in words – listen to this please – one is caught in words, with all their content, prejudices.
39:52	So these words prevent us from looking at ourselves.
40:10	I see it’s becoming… we are coming to an impasse.
40:30	As long as I look at myself, in the very looking at myself there is the observer.
40:44	The observer, as we said, is the word, is the content of that word. Please follow it, sir.
40:59	That word, with all its associations has created a design, memories, knowledge, tradition – which is ‘me’, the ego.
41:16	The ego, the ‘me’, is a set of words. And with those words – those words are the content of the observer – the memories, and so on – with those contents we look.
41:37	I say that’s impossible. So can you look without the observer?
41:52	And you do – you do look without the observer when there is a tremendous crisis.
42:03	Hasn’t it happened to you? And there is a great shock. There, the very shock, the very crisis makes you silent.
42:19	That is, the observer with all the traditions, words, content, becomes utterly speechless – he is paralyzed.
42:34	And when you come out of that shock you begin to go through the old process again.
42:41	See what has happened. Follow this. That is, there is this observer functioning all the time – the ‘me’, mine, my family, my nation, my country, my belief, my opinion – me.
42:58	That is active all the time.
43:06	And you have a crisis – somebody… a tremendous shock takes place to you. And that observer naturally becomes silent, because it’s too big, it’s too immense for him to tackle.
43:21	That may last a minute or a day or perhaps a year. That is, you get paralyzed physically. But when you come out of it, the whole process goes on again.
43:41	Now, what has happened there? The intensity of the shock has driven out the observer.
43:58	And when that shock wears off the observer comes back. That is a simple phenomenon. And can the same thing take place without shock, without a crisis, so that I am looking, so that there is the looking without any observer.
44:38	And to look without the observer is silent; to look silently.
44:48	Now, may I go on a little more, if one has followed it so far?
45:00	You know, the mind is always chattering.
45:12	I hear that horse going by. I listen to the rhythm of those hooves on the hard road.
45:22	I like it or I don’t like it. I’m aware of this whole movement of that horse and I am chattering, chattering, chattering.
45:40	Either chattering by itself, or always talking outwardly, always indulging gossip, telling about somebody else, this, my opinion is that, why should he be that – you know, chatter, chatter, chatter.
46:03	Right? And this chattering indicates obviously a form of laziness.
46:15	Because you have nothing to do therefore you talk about somebody else. Or you want to express yourself, showing off how clever you are – all that. So the mind is never quiet.
46:36	Now, is that a fact or not? Right? Right? Is that a fact? Please – yes? Now, if it is a fact, can you look at it?
46:57	Just look at it that your mind is chattering. Don’t say, ‘Who is the looker?’ and all the rest of it. Know that fact that you spend hours talking about – you know, writing letters, saying your opinion, this is right, this is wrong, Kennedy should have done this and Johnson should – you know – or De Gaulle is going to have a very thin time in October – and so on and on and on.
47:37	Now, can one be aware of that? Not complicatedly aware – just to watch it.
47:47	Now, if you watch it, that’s a fact, isn’t it? Now, remain with the fact. Don’t say, ‘I mustn’t chatter, it’s wrong, it’s right, this should be, this is just…’ – just remain with that fact that you chatter.
48:08	You understand? Ah, no, no – watch it, watch it. To remain with it means to watch it without any interference of other thoughts coming into it.
48:24	I am very interested to see why I chatter, by myself or with somebody, offering my opinion about this or that.
48:40	I say, why? I’m interested to find out – right? – the cause of this chatter.
48:48	Now, how do I find out the cause of this chatter?
48:55	Please follow this step by step. It’s very interesting if you will. I want to find out why I chatter.
49:07	Now, shall I analyze it step by step by step and find out the ultimate cause why I chatter? Right? You are following this?
49:25	Or is there a way quicker way, so that I see the thing immediately?
49:36	Is this clear? One is analysis, to find out the cause.
49:45	That takes time. That takes perhaps a misjudgement – unless I analyse very, very, very carefully – it might mislead me. And so I say, ‘By Jove, is there a different way of doing this?’ – you follow? – which is to find the cause and be beyond the cause.
50:07	I wonder if you are meeting all this. You get it?
50:20	Look, all right, let’s keep to that thing. I chatter.
50:34	I am not going to say, ‘I must not chatter’ – that’s too absurd, which is an ideological approach.
50:41	Right? That’s obvious – I don’t say it. But I say, ‘I want to find out why I chatter’.
50:50	By finding out the cause of chatter, I might be able to stop it, because I say, ‘What’s the point of this endless chattering about nothing?’ So can I find out the cause by analysing?
51:10	I can. Which is, I may be lazy, therefore my mind wants to wander.
51:18	Right? And therefore the wandering is the chatter.
51:25	That’s one problem. I chatter because my mind says I must be occupied with something or other all the time.
51:33	Right? So it feels it must be occupied – with chatter, with books, with knowledge, with saying, ‘Why did so and so do this?’, ‘It should be done better’, ‘He is this, he is that’, ‘She is nice, she is not nice’, ‘She is very pleasant, I like to kiss her’.
51:59	You know, back and forth, back and forth, because I’m afraid not to be occupied.
52:14	Q: Is the occupation of the mind dependent upon use of words or language?
52:20	K: It may not be, sir. Does the occupation of the mind depend on language. I may not have any word at all, and yet I might be occupied.
52:33	You are following all this? I might be occupied without a word to find out what silence is, or what love is, or what form of government one should have, or occupied in observing my wife.
53:06	Just watch it. So, the brain, the mind says, ‘I must be occupied, therefore I chatter’ – follow this – that may be one of the causes.
53:18	One of the causes is, I may be lazy; the other is, I must be occupied.
53:25	And if I’m not occupied, what shall I do? Right? I’m frightened. You understand? Like the housewife, or the businessman who goes to the office every day for forty years, suddenly stops doing it. It’s going to upset his whole organism.
53:54	So it maybe I’m frightened not to be occupied, therefore I’m frightened of being alone. Right?
54:11	I might be frightened if I don’t chatter to find out what I am.
54:20	So I can go on multiplying the causes. Now, I know some of the causes but that doesn’t stop me from chattering. Right? I wonder if you’ve got all this.
54:35	So the examination and the discovery, or rather, the exploration and the discovery of the cause or causes of this chattering doesn’t stop the chattering.
54:50	Because that is an intellectual process. I don’t know if you follow this. Right? So it is a fragmentary process.
55:04	The fragment is looking at another fragment – right? and discovering the cause of a certain fragmentary issue.
55:19	Right? I wonder if you are following all this. So, mere analysis is not going to solve it.
55:29	What will stop it – if you want to – is quite a different approach; must be.
55:41	That is, I am aware that I am chattering.
55:51	What is the quality of this awareness? You understand what I mean? What is the nature, structure of this awareness?
56:09	When I say, ‘I am aware that I am chattering’, with words or without words.
56:24	In that awareness there is no condemnation, there is no sense of ‘I must not chatter’, or give reasons for chattering. I wonder if you’re following – right?
56:40	This quality of awareness, in this quality of awareness there is no judgment-value at all.
56:55	So, the moment I’m aware in that way, all values, judgment come to an end, doesn’t it?
57:08	Ah? I wonder if you… So I am looking… so there is a look out of quietness at chattering, and therefore it undergoes a complete change. I will talk when necessary, I will not talk when it’s not necessary; which means I have no… I don’t go about with my opinions, judgments, evaluations.
57:38	I don’t say Roosevelt should – not Roosevelt, what is it? – some politician, what he should do, what he should not do, or my neighbour, or the man sitting on the platform saying this, he should do this, he should do that.
57:59	All that is too immature.
58:08	So, by giving attention to chattering it has become something entirely different. Right? Please…
58:23	Now, will you chatter tomorrow?
58:31	As soon as you leave this tent or building, will you chatter? Of course you’re going to.
58:40	So look what happens: you hear a truth, you hear something that is real, and you go out and do something quite the opposite.
58:57	So there is conflict in you. Right? So you say, ‘By Jove, this is too serious’, and never come back. Or you say, ‘Why am I doing this? I hear this, which is so rational, sane, and yet I go on irrationally – why?’ It maybe because it has become a habit.
59:38	And the older you go the more that habit becomes tremendously strong.
59:50	I’ve lived one way, one kind of life; I’m going to live in that kind of life – DeGaulle, or no DeGaulle – right?
1:00:04	I have chattered all my life and suddenly to say…
1:00:11	I see the absurdity of it and not chatter is going to shatter you. You understand?
1:00:32	So, we come back: can I look at myself?
1:00:40	And that self is this entity who is endlessly chattering, evaluating, offering opinions, looking, searching endlessly.
1:01:00	So, can I look at myself without a word, without an image, without pride?
1:02:24	Q: There seems to be no value to self-expression of any sort unless it has to do with something functional or factual.
1:02:32	K: That’s all.
1:02:39	You know, as you sat very quietly just a few seconds ago, there was that peculiar quality of silence, not induced, not a state which is… in which you are hypnotized into.
1:03:06	You were really looking with great attention and quietness.
1:03:17	Right? You have got the key.
1:03:40	Right, sir, we’ll proceed tomorrow.