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SA68D6 - True action
Saanen, Switzerland - 5 August 1968
Public Discussion 6



0:01 This is J Krishnamurti’s sixth public discussion in Saanen, 1968.
0:31 Krishnamurti: What shall we talk over together this morning?
0:59 Intensity of…? Questioner: Passion.

K: Intensity of passion that has no motive.
1:41 Sir, what is the question?

Q: Is it possible to get rid of any image?
1:48 K: Ah – is it possible to get rid of any image that one has built for oneself or about others or about society, and so on.
2:07 Space and emptiness.
2:18 Speak about action.
2:30 How can we have energy to tackle all our problems.
3:00 No more?

Q: About time.
3:06 K: About silence.

Q: Time.

K: Science. I beg your pardon.

Q: Time. Time. Tempo.
3:16 K: Time, tempo. Bene.
3:41 Is there any incentive to action. Mustn’t one have an incentive to action.
4:12 Yesterday, we were talking about search and what one is seeking, and I thought we came upon rather an interesting question – and I am sure all the other questions which you have asked just now might be included in that – I don’t say they are, but might be – there is this whole field of life – politics, economy, social relationship, social behaviour and individual behaviour, communal aggression and individual aggression, the ideology of the various political parties which more or less strikingly are becoming similar, and there are these religious groups at variance with one another, and individuals, that is, human beings – there is this whole field of existence, broken up, fragmented, each fragment in opposition to the other, various desires opposing each other, contradiction, and so on – this is the field in which we live.
6:21 And we said too, this field, this structure is brought about by oneself, by our own, each individual egotistic activity, and so on.
6:38 I think that was fairly clear. Now, what is one to do? What action can one take so that one acts not in fragments – be a conservative, communist – and communists are becoming rather old-fashioned now – and the conservative, the nationalist, and so on – and yet talk about freedom, love, joy, beauty. There is this contradiction, and the individual aspirations and motives and struggles.
7:34 Seeing all that, what is the right action, so that it covers the whole field, not just one segment of it?
7:46 I think when we ask that question, what is action, I think that is included in that.
7:58 And an action that must be a timeless action, not conforming with the necessities of the immediate, with the behaviour of a society and so an individual behaviour; an action which must be whole, complete, total and naturally therefore timeless.
8:39 That includes time, the question.
8:49 And is there such action? Or is man everlastingly condemned to function in fragments and therefore always in conflict?
9:08 And one sees the limitation of human behaviour, human understanding, and knowing the limitation, being aware of this limitation, the line, one may not know where the limitations is.
9:34 So shall we talk over together this morning what action should come into being when we see all this?
9:49 Right? Would that be worthwhile?

Q: Yes.
9:57 K: What do you all say?

Q: Yes.

K: Right, sir. That is one of the questions that has arisen out of all this, out of this morning’s questions.
10:13 How are we going to find out if there is such action that is not, in its very activity, brings about its own contradiction?
10:35 You see what is happening in that particular country. They are talking about freedom, resisting a system imposed upon them, and they are demanding freedom, a form of democratic government – if there is such thing as democratic government – and so they are fighting.
11:06 And there are those religious people – Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, each conditioned to a particular form of belief, dogma, ritual and contending with others.
11:28 There is the whole communal, social relationship between man and man.
11:35 Again, in that, when one observers, there is fragmentation. And in one’s own life, as a human being, there is this battle going on, of contradiction, opposing desires – all that.
11:54 Seeing all that, being aware of this, aware in the sense observing this, what action should one do? What should one do?
12:09 Is there an action that will always answer, always act totally under all circumstances?
12:26 It is really quite an interesting problem if you put it to yourself.
12:33 Must we always act conceptually, that is, ideologically and therefore fragmentarily?
13:00 And is there an action that covers all this field, all the problems?
13:20 Would that be an extravagant question? Has it any validity to each one of us?
13:34 What do you say? Please, sirs.

Q: Yes, it would.

K: Do find out, don’t just say yes causally, find out if one is really serious to find out such an action.
14:00 One has built an image about oneself. One can see how that image has come into being – we won’t go into the cause of it, or the many causes of it, which we did previously. There is the image that man has created in his relationship with others, which is the social image.
14:37 There is the image of the utopia, the perfect society, which the communists at the beginning did, and they have now other kinds of images imposed and accepted.
14:56 Then there are these innumerable religious images: what one should be, there is God, there is no God, one saviour no saviour, and so on, so on, so on. So there they are – images, patterns of behaviour contradicting each other, and activities indulged in by each one of us, which contradicts the social environment.
15:41 And there is the image that one wants peace, happiness, a formula that one has put together in order to find out of all this contradiction, mess, confusion, a supreme image of reality, of hope, of bliss, and so on.
16:12 So that is in front of us, which we have created.
16:22 And is there an action that will be true under all circumstances and not bring about confusion, destruction, enmity?
16:50 Is this fairly clear? Now, if that question is fairly clear, how would you set about to find out? How would you explore?
17:36 No?
17:55 Ah – the difficulty is to approach the problem correctly.
18:15 Action is only relative. Therefore, being relative, it is progressive, getting better and better and better, more…
18:39 more ripe, more convenient, more comfortable, and so on.
19:00 Q: What kind of intelligence can you use?

K: I don’t know what kind of intelligence one can use.
19:08 I really don’t know. I have put the problem to you because you raised some of these questions this morning – action, image, time, and whether one can go beyond all the images that one has built up.
19:55 Can one get rid of the memories? Can one put aside all the accumulated memories and act differently – is that it? I don’t know. I am asking you.
20:12 Here is a problem, please do give a little attention to it. Here is a problem put to you. It is a challenge to you.
20:22 You can’t say, ‘Well, I am sorry, I am not intelligent. It should be that way, it is not that way. I wish I could get rid of my memories and begin all over…’ That’s no answer.
21:07 Yes, sir, I understand that. He says there is a precipice between us and that problem, and is it possible to reach over it, go over the chasm.
21:21 Look, don’t ask me. First, see the problem very clearly, don’t create another image and say, ‘Well, if I could do this, this would happen’.
21:42 This is the fact. We live in a world of fragments, each one antagonistically opposing the other, each one has his own peculiar form of aggression, each one has his own fear, each one is trying to carry out an image given by some professional writer what society should be, what individuals must be.
22:26 And as human beings are so limited in their understanding, that understanding has invented a super-entity who is going to save us all. Which is another image. Right?
22:42 Now, you see this problem. If you don’t see it, then we can discuss the issue. But if one sees the problem, one must naturally put a question, it seems to me, say: is there an action which is not fragmentary, which is not…
23:19 which doesn’t breed more confusion, more misery for oneself and for the neighbour?
23:33 Q: This would be the action of real love.

K: Action of real love – but I don’t know what that real love is!
23:40 You see, how do you answer this challenge?
23:59 Q: By asking yourself the question.

K: Ask yourself that question.
24:04 Q: Then try to live with the question.

K: Live with that question. Now, take time, take two minutes.
24:12 Find out how you will answer this, knowing all the professionals – political, economic, religious – always thinking in terms of fragments. They may talk about love, universal brotherhood, and so on and on, but actually they are just formulas but not a reality in their life, so you cannot depend upon them. So here is a challenge which you have to answer.
25:07 Q: Sir, if you really look without an observer, the images will fall away and proper action will be indicated.
25:15 K: Madame, that’s not an answer, is it? If the image goes away, the right action will come – but the image doesn’t go!
25:31 You see… What am I to do, confronted with this issue?
25:44 Right? May I help in it a little bit? May I?

Q: First, we have to see very clear, the question.
25:58 K: I have to see this question very clearly – don’t we?
26:06 All right, sir. Look what is happening: there is Japan, second largest industrial country after America, competing with the rest of the world; there is that whole communist world – I don’t know if you have read, Russian scientist written an essay, an article which has been published in an American paper, in which he says Stalin killed ten or twelve million people for ideas.
27:02 And then there is the whole religious world of Catholicism with their innumerable images, with their wars, saying that they are the only true religion, and everyone else – and so on, so on – there is the business world, there is the world of armaments, war, the army, and so on.
27:30 And there is you and I, living amongst this mad, confusing world, being drafted, resisting war, and so on, so on, so on – what am I to do?
27:58 Go and join the army? Burn the draft cards?
28:06 Become a pacifist? Run away from all this and join a monastery?
28:15 Or lose myself in some – I don’t know what – reading books, publishing, anything not to face the issue – that is what we are doing in the world.
28:32 And when you are faced with it, you are forced with it, driven into a corner to answer it, you say, ‘Well…’ – you have no answer. You say, ‘Well, if you do this, that will happen’.
28:46 Right? The problem is clear, isn’t it? Must it be repeated ten different ways? No? The problem is clear, isn’t it? Now, what am I to do?
29:10 Deny.
29:17 To deny – what does that mean? I deny all this, but I have created all this!
29:35 Madame, I have created it. As a human being, I have produced this chaos in the world.
29:45 You don’t look at it!
30:25 Here is a problem. I really don’t know what to do.
30:33 I can talk about it, I can invent ‘ifs’ and ‘possible’, ‘I wish it were different’ – which is all immature, childish.
30:41 When the house is burning, you don’t talk about the colour of the person who set the fire, what kind of hose you are going to use, what kind of water it is.
30:59 That’s what you are doing. So, may I go into it a little bit?
31:12 You know, here is a problem to me. It is an actual not a superficial – a vital, urgent problem, as vital as my demand for sex, for hunger, to get rid of pain.
31:35 I have no theories how to get rid of pain; I go somebody, ask. Go to a doctor and he will give me some pill or other. But there is no doctor, there is no system, no philosopher who is going to answer us. So I have to find out. Right?
31:55 Can we start there? Now, how am I going to find out?
32:03 I must find out – you understand? It isn’t just a vague hope.
32:11 So I say to myself, all…
32:24 It’s that truck, sir. Lorry.
32:48 I am going to explore. That is the first thing I have to do, explore – not the problem – there is the problem – obviously that’s the problem. I have understood the intricacies of that problem, the complexity of it, the various shades of communism, Catholicism, the Labour, this, that and…
33:19 I’ve seen it, read about it, come into contact with people who talk about it, who are involved in it, and people who are committed to communism or socialism, battling with each other, ready to kill each other.
33:38 So that problem is very clear.
33:45 And now I am going to explore how to answer that problem.
33:55 Right?
34:08 First of all, I must have a mind that is not prejudiced, that is not committed to left or right.
34:25 Right? You understand? Neither believe in God, or believe in a particular formula of the communist, capitalist, and so on.
34:48 Know I am involved, but not committed. I don’t know if you see the difference. Do we?
34:57 I am involved as a human being with all this, but I refuse to be committed to any of it.
35:07 Right? Would that be logical?
35:15 If I am committed to a particular party, I always will look at the world with those ideas, with those formulas; it may be reasonable or unreasonable, but I am committed to it.
35:30 Therefore the first thing I am going to find, whether I am – though I am involved, not to be committed to any left or right.
35:46 Am I?
35:56 Are you?
36:03 Committed – you understand? A conservative who is terribly frightened of what took place in Paris – that revolution, that revolt. I am horrified because I am frightened.
36:23 So, having fear, I can’t find what is the right action. I don’t know if you are following all this.
36:40 Are you committed? Are you? I hope you see the difference between being committed and being involved.
36:51 This must be verbally very clear. Sir, otherwise we lose communication with each other.
37:00 If I am committed to a particular formula, religious or philosophical or economic or social, committed, given my life, my thought, my study, my energy to it, I have distorted my mind so that it is incapable of looking at anything else. Right?
37:32 I say to myself only politics is going to answer all these questions – politics along the right system. And therefore there is the opposite who says, ‘I am also the right system’.
37:49 So, I am not going to be committed. I am involved in human struggle, involved in this colossal, intricate, complex problem.
38:05 And so I say to myself, am I involved? Obviously that is the most sane thing to enquire. I am not.
38:12 Either you are or you are not. If you are, you get out of it, or remain in it.
38:20 Then, am I committed to any other form, conceptual forms of life, ideologies?
38:34 Political ideologies one can fairly understand and throw it out, but inwardly has one any ideology?
38:45 ‘I must be’, ‘I should be’, ‘society is this’, ‘society must not’, ‘this is moral, this is not moral’, ‘this is right behaviour, this is wrong behaviour’, ‘this is God, this is no God’. You follow?
39:04 Am I? Are you? One must be terribly honest in all this, otherwise it leads to hypocrisy.
39:25 It is for you, each one of us to answer that question. The speaker has none, that is obvious. He has been at it for forty five years, shouting about it. Right.
39:46 And am I frightened of giving up the old, loving the new?
40:04 New ideas, new ways of life, new buildings – new. Loving the new, and stabilizing the new which becomes the old, and living in it.
40:16 I don’t know if you are following this. And then, going a step further, saying, ‘The new is marvellous, I am going to accept it’, which then becomes the old. Right? That is what is called progress.
40:36 So am I doing that too? Now, watch, please, what is taking place.
40:46 This is actual meditation – if I may use that word, if you don’t object to that word – because we are really penetrating into the whole structure and nature of our thinking, feeling, our activity.
41:16 Again, I am taking facts, not what should be; I am just looking at it.
41:24 I don’t condemn it, I don’t judge it, I am just observing this phenomena that is going on outwardly and inwardly.
41:36 And I see there is no morality at all in society; it is an immoral society.
41:48 And I don’t know what morality is. All the morality I know is immorality, which I have told, which I have accepted, which I live in, and yet against morality I am rebelling.
42:14 The social morality is respectability, kill your neighbour – neighbour being maybe ten thousand miles away, but kill him for some ideology, kill your neighbour in business because you want to succeed, be aggressive, possessive, hold on, be competitive, seek a place, status, position, power – and that’s all become very highly respectable, highly moral.
42:57 Right? I see that, and I can’t be moral along those lines.
43:08 Therefore there may be a different kind of morality. To find out a different kind of morality I must completely deny the social morality.
43:24 Right? Are you doing it?
43:37 You understand? Each one of us wants to be somebody, with the little knowledge that we have. I may dominate in the home my wife, there I want to be somebody; in the office I want to be somebody. I want to sit next to God, at his right hand specially, and I want to do this, that, ten different things.
44:08 I want to be somebody. I am very proud.
44:16 So can I deny all that, not verbally, but actually, the whole structure of pride?
44:42 So that my mind, the mind is very clear.
44:49 Right?
44:56 It has no personal axe to grind, in the name of God, in the name of society, in the name of – you follow?
45:18 So I am learning about myself and that learning must be immediate. I can’t say, ‘Well, I will take time to learn little by little by little’. You understand? I must see… learn all this immediately.
45:46 I don’t know if you see the point of it. When the house is burning you can’t say, ‘Well, I will lay a pipe from the neighbour…’ – you know.
45:56 I must find water immediately and act.
46:03 And our house is burning.
46:11 So can I see all this, the truth of all this instantly and therefore act instantly? I don’t know if you are meeting this.
46:28 Do I see all this, not as an idea or a conceptual perception, but actually seeing all this, the dangers of all this, the poisonous nature of this world we live in, which we have created?
47:12 Right? Am I doing it?
47:19 Not as an abstraction but actually in my life, am I doing this?
47:28 To have no enmity, no grudge, no temptation, no aggression, and therefore a life of a mind that is highly sensitive and intelligent.
48:02 Right? And it is this intelligence that is going to act, not there is one standard of action, but this intelligence which has freed its… which in the very freeing itself from all these contradictory fragments has become highly intelligent.
48:37 And it is this intelligence that is going to act. No?
48:50 Intelligence is something different from intellectual capacity.
49:07 You can’t go to college to learn this intelligence by passing a few degrees and writing a few papers.
49:19 That intelligence comes into being not through time but through direct perception, observation, seeing actually ‘what is’ – both outwardly and inwardly; the inward creating the outer.
49:47 Which is fairly obvious, how the inward creates the outer – the inward ideology of a communist has created the communist world – an ideology. Ideology being the word, the form of the word, the content of the word, and communicating it to others through various propaganda, through oppression, through killing, through torture, through all that horror that one goes through.
50:30 That is, conceptual thought and action is not intelligence.
50:39 I don’t know if you meet all this.
50:46 We have made this world – the world – society, human relationship, ‘what should be’, what is the right government, what… right god – all that is a formula, a conceptual thinking, and verbalizing that conceptual thinking in action. I don’t know if you are following this.
51:21 So intelligence is not conceptual thinking and that expressed through words.
51:33 But intelligence is this awareness of seeing what actually is, and my relationship to that, the world which I have created, and I as a human being seeing my relationship to it, seeing actually in my life what it is – my activity, my thought, my conservativeness, my fears, my love of the new, which becomes acceptance, and so on, so on, so on – that is my daily life. Observing the facts of that life and watching, looking at it. And out of this silent observation the mind becomes highly intelligent, and it is this intelligence that is going to answer non-fragmentarily, an action which will be right under all circumstances. It is intelligence that is going to act, not a formula of what action should be. I don’t know if – right?
53:16 Are we communicating with each other?

Q: Yes.

K: I wonder.
53:24 Or am I off by myself?
53:35 Have we communicated with each other? No, madame, don’t say yes. I am not at all sure.
53:44 Q: Sir, there is a practical problem involved: while we listen to you, we are listening to you with our minds, and occasionally we are watching what happens, but for some reason or other the mind tends to cut in…
54:19 K: Ah, no, madame. I understand. The question is very simple. I see for a moment very clearly and at that moment I may act, but what happens is the old habits, the old traditions come back and I’m lost.
54:45 Are you lost when you see something dangerous?
54:52 When you see very clearly a bottle marked ‘poison’?
54:59 Even in the dark you are very careful, aren’t you?
55:08 So it is not how the wave of the past can be resisted, but rather seeing very clearly ‘what is’, and your relationship to it.
55:27 It is when we don’t see very clearly then the past comes into being and smothers us.
55:37 Q: Yes, but this is the problem itself.

K: Ah! It is not a problem.
55:44 Listen, it is not a problem. Don’t make a problem. Madame, we have got so many problems, don’t add another one to it.
55:56 Look, I see something very clearly and act, and the past comes as a tremendous wave and smothers. Right?
56:15 I can see why the past acts so imperiously, so directly, because there is habit, inheritance, the laziness of my mind, traditional acceptance of things as they are because I am frightened, and so on – that is fairly easy to find out, why the past is so powerful.
56:46 Leave the past alone for the time being. What is important is to see clearly – right? – to see the past very clearly, which means to have eyes that are always looking to find out.
57:18 Q: Sir, is it a question that the eyes are there already or is it a question that…
57:28 K: The eyes that perceive clearly, are they there already, or they are to be developed – right? What do you think?
57:41 Q: I think…

K: Don’t answer, take time, take time. Take a minute.
57:51 Are the eyes there already to be seen very clearly, or are those eyes that can see very clearly to be cultivated?
58:13 What do you think?
58:21 Q: Or are they are blindfolded?

K: The same thing – how will you find out?
58:34 That is, gradually evolve so that you see very clearly.
58:48 Is there time to evolve? With the atom bomb, with the exploding population, with the threats of war, the hatred, the jealousies, the personal ambitions – you know all that – is there time?
59:18 Would you say when the house is burning: ‘I must cultivate through time the technique of putting the fire out’?
59:31 Do you?
59:43 Q: Sir, when one acts from intelligence, when one’s actions spring from intelligence, does the word ‘action’ imply a force of conduct? Or is each step in such action entirely independent of every previous step?

K: Sir, what is the question? Sir, I couldn’t quite…
1:00:05 Q: Is each step when one acting from intelligence independent of prior steps?
1:00:13 K: Ah – is this intelligence separate from the past activity, from the past limitation, from the past confusion.
1:00:41 No, sir, you will answer this question when we grapple with this problem, which is: is there time?
1:00:54 Not only now, now with the population exploding, and therefore more aggression. I don’t know if you' realize that – the more crowded the cities, the country, there is going to be more aggression, more destruction, more revolts, and there is all the threat of war – each country, specially the two dominant, powerful countries, preparing instruments of destruction incalculable, against the other.
1:01:42 And the house is burning – there is confusion, there is misery, sorrow in our heart – is there time to say, ‘I will take a few days to cultivate the capacity to see’?
1:02:17 What kind of people are we? When the house is burning, we say, ‘Let it burn; I’ll take time’.
1:02:36 No, sir, I took that as an example. After all, don’t run ‘the motive’ to death. It is very clear, sir, what we have said just now: is there time?
1:02:53 Or do you see things instantly and act instantly what you see?
1:03:00 I wish you would go into it.
1:03:06 Q: To answer you now will take…

K: To answer now will take a little time.
1:03:18 Sir, look, please do listen.
1:03:26 We say, ‘I can’t see very clearly, the past is much too powerful, my conditioning is this, that.
1:03:38 Therefore I must break it down slowly’, and so you have time – time – through which to cultivate perception.
1:03:53 Do you see anything through time? Do you see clearly through the process of cultivation?
1:04:14 Or do you see things instantly?
1:04:50 Has each one to be clear in this world – is that it?
1:05:00 One make people to see. Will propaganda help you to see clearly?
1:05:17 Oh, lovely, lovely – can we help other people to see clearly.
1:05:28 Back to the good old world!
1:05:35 When I don’t see clearly myself, I want to help my neighbour to see clearly.
1:06:01 That’s just it.
1:06:21 Yes, I understand, I understand – does this energy which you talk about come into being when the energy which comes through contradiction ceases – is that it? You know, we have energy through contradiction, through self-aggrandisement, through egotistic activities – there is tremendous energy in that. And we are talking of an energy which is not of that kind, which is of a different dimension – how does one come to it?
1:07:23 Only when I see – isn’t it? – how this contradictory activity, which creates its own energy, is making a perfect mess of the world, outwardly and inwardly.
1:07:42 I see that, and the very seeing of the wastage of that energy is the other energy.
1:07:51 Right? I think we’d better stop, don’t you?