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SA68D7 - Is it possible to see with love?
Saanen, Switzerland - 6 August 1968
Public Discussion 7



0:01 This is J Krishnamurti’s seventh public discussion in Saanen, 1968.
0:11 Krishnamurti: This is the last so-called discussion.
0:22 I suppose you must be rather glad it is over. Questioner: No.

K: I am!
0:37 I’ve sat here for seventeen times and that’s enough.
0:46 What shall we talk over together this morning?
1:10 Q: Could we talk about the quality of our looking and seeing?
1:15 K: Could we talk about the quality of our seeing.
1:27 Q: Could we discuss the religious mind?

K: What is the quality of the religious mind.
1:49 Q: What it is to die every day.

K: What is it to die every day to everything.
2:10 Q: Order and education, and the question of order.
2:23 K: What is order and education.
2:36 Q: Maybe we could discuss authority.

K: Maybe we could discuss authority.
2:51 Q: To be serious.

K: What is it to be serious – is it?
3:03 Q: Could we speak about discipline?
3:09 K: Could we discuss discipline.
3:18 Action – which we discussed yesterday, I thought.

Q: Can we discuss responsibility?
3:26 K: Can we discuss responsibility.

Q: What to do when we are back at home.
3:40 K: What to do when we are back at home. That’s a good question.
3:51 I think that’s about the right question.
4:11 A different approach from what we have gone into – is that it, sir?
4:20 I wonder if we took up this question: what is the quality of seeing, and perhaps in that we could bring in the question of authority, discipline, the religious mind, and what shall we do when you go back home.
4:59 Aren’t you at home here?
5:23 I wonder what you call home – the house, the children, the husband, the wife, the furniture, the little garden, if you have, or in the flat, the accustomed things, the usual worries, the habits, the little sexual satisfactions, the office, and the daily routine – is that what you call home?
6:20 That’s a rather interesting point that, isn’t it?
6:32 We’ll come to that too. What is the quality of seeing?
6:45 First, when we see with eyes, with visual perception, do we actually see, or the memory, the image, the conclusion that sees?
7:18 Do please find out. We are beginning to discuss what is discipline.
7:27 This is discipline; discipline being, as it is understood, the word itself, is to learn, not merely to conform, to adjust, to obey, to imitate. But when we ask this question, what is the quality of the mind that sees, do we merely see with the eyes or do we see the object which awakens innumerable associations, memories, incidents, pleasure and pain, and so on?
8:35 What is the actual seeing there?
8:54 To discover for ourselves what it is to see, one has to have a certain quality of discipline, hasn’t one?
9:10 To see what is actually taking place, whether you are seeing with the eyes only or seeing through the screen of words, the words that awaken the form, the content, and so on.
9:36 Now, to be aware of this, whether you are seeing only through the eyes or through many associations that object which you are looking at evokes, to be aware of that is to be... beginning of discipline, isn’t it?
10:04 I don’t know if you...
10:15 To look at this microphone – it is too close – I must pay attention to it, look at all the detail, the network, what the metal is, what the writing is. To look at it with attention, with slight attention, is already beginning of discipline, isn’t it?
10:44 The very interest to look at it brings about the necessary discipline to observe.
10:55 Right? So discipline is not something outside which you...
11:03 with which you conform or adjust yourself to. Right?
11:12 So we have disposed of this whole idea of discipline – I wonder if you are... – discipline in which there is authority, the pattern which becomes the authority – the knowledge, the experience which makes the mind imitative, however necessary, either suppressing it, conforming, and so on. So, when we look at something either we look with eyes that are very clear or we look with the image.
12:10 Right?
12:43 How do we look? How do you look at a tree, at a cloud, at the lovely morning light, or your neighbour, your wife or your husband, your children – how do you look at them? – the politician – how?
13:08 What takes place when you look?
13:33 Is it possible to look at yourself without an image?
13:53 Is it possible to look to the party or to an ideology to which you are committed?
14:14 Is it possible to look if I am biased?
14:24 Is it possible to see very clearly if there is any form of fear?
14:34 Or is there any clarity of perception when I am thinking conceptually?
15:02 Is it possible to look what another says, though you may not like it, though you may not see, you may not agree with what he says, or you may withhold your judgement, or you may consider he’s not being accurate, can you listen to what he is saying with any bias, for or against?
15:37 Now, to be aware of one’s bias, the image one has about oneself or about another, the commitment one has made to a political party, to an ideology, to observe one’s belief, dogma, conclusion, and realise that as long as one has those screens, those hindrances, those distractions, it is not possible to see very clearly.
16:39 If I like you, I can’t see you clearly, can I?
16:46 My prejudice, my pleasure of liking you forbids me to see what actually you are.
16:56 Or if I dislike you, equally I can’t see very clearly what you are. I won’t even listen to you. Either get angry or repulse, push you away.
17:17 Now, we’re asking, is it possible to see without the image?
17:32 And it’s one of the most, obviously, very complex issues, because we are storing up every experience, conscious or unconscious. Right?
17:58 No? Every experience is leaving a mark, a conclusion, a knowledge.
18:18 And with this conclusion, knowledge, which becomes the tradition, the inheritance, with that can I see anything new?
18:42 Or when I see something new, I twist it to suit my own particular idiosyncrasy, my own particular conditioning. I don’t know if you’re following all this.
18:57 Right? Are we communicating with each other?
19:06 Q: Yes.
19:14 K: So under these circumstances, which are facts, not as ideas or something abstract, is it possible to see anything very clearly?
19:34 Obviously it’s not. If I am a very conservative, and I happen to live in France or in Paris, I would, when the student revolt and all that came, I would be horrified, because my conservatism would rebel against all that.
20:08 So I am incapable of seeing very clearly what is taking place, what is justified, what is an excess, and so on.
20:23 My fear would prevent seeing the activity of those students very clearly.
20:33 Right? So, the question is really, is it possible to be free from these thousand experiences that are pouring in all the time?
20:58 Free in the sense that they don’t leave a mark.
21:17 If I, if one is a specialist, any kind of specialist, trained, can I, can that specialist see the whole existence of life, or only a specialised part of it?
22:02 If I say I know, won’t that assertion, with all its aggression, fear, prestige, sense of power, authority, won’t that prevent me from looking?
22:43 And can I, or can one know or be aware that experiences do leave a mark, a scratch, an accumulated knowledge, tradition, and in the very observing see that they don’t interfere?
23:23 Is this possible? Specially when I am emotionally attached to something.
23:56 If I am, if one is committed to the army, to the whole structure of armament and nationality and, you know, all that, obviously you can’t see very clearly what is implied in it.
24:14 And you will resist it, you’ll become the aggressor.
24:23 So seeing all this, one asks oneself what is the nature of seeing, the quality of seeing that is not clouded by the past?
24:57 Is this question clear? Can we go into it?
25:20 One has lived seventy, forty, thirty years, and one has happily or unhappily gathered lots of words, concepts.
25:47 One has many memories – of youth, the pleasures and the delights of sex; one has struggled, got a job, fought one’s way through it, through this culture; and there they are – the past, from the school days till now.
26:24 That is the past, that is the ‘me’.
26:32 The ‘me’, the ‘I’ is a word with great content within a framework which is always reshaping itself.
26:57 And through that frame I look and distort everything.
27:19 I have been hurt, not only physically but psychologically, inwardly. They have flattered me, they have respected me, they have insulted me.
27:38 And can I look at the movement of life without all those accumulations? Which is actually the ‘me’, the ‘I’, the ego, the self-centred entity.
27:57 Are you all going to sleep?
28:07 That is the question, isn’t it? Can I, can one die to yesterday and be new, fresh, innocent today?
28:31 And it is innocency that can see very clearly, isn’t it?
28:50 Not the rich man, not the poor man, not the clever, cunning theologian, nor the man of great accumulation of knowledge, but only the very innocent mind that sees very clearly.
29:13 And it’s innocent not because it is naive but it has understood what it means to look clearly and therefore to die to everything that it has known.
29:32 Right? Now, can one do that? Please, let’s talk it over together. Can one do that?
29:51 If one doesn’t do it, one is never free, one is doomed, one is caught in a rat trap, going round and round and – circles.
30:11 So can we do it? Can we discuss it?
30:26 Q: The mind is never quiet…
30:32 K: The mind is never quiet.
30:39 Now, sir, look, we have posed a problem, a question; it’s a challenge.
30:50 Before you can answer it there must be the interval between the question and the answer.
31:02 Either in that interval the mind is quiet to look or during that interval the mind is searching, groping, trying to find out the right answer, right word.
31:25 So what can one do? Be quiet, can’t one? This is a new question, a new challenge, and you don’t understand the whole implication of it, and you can’t immediately respond. You say, ‘Now, let me look’, – please, follow this – ‘let me look, let me listen to that question very quietly, very attentively’.
32:06 And to listen attentively you can’t wander off with your thoughts, with your – all the rest of it. You give your heart and mind to listen to that question.
32:30 And then you see: is it possible to die, to put aside everything that one knows?
32:55 And the knowledge that is necessary, as going home, the office business – I mean all the technological knowledge, the knowledge which is mechanical – that is necessary, you can’t die to that. A scientist can’t die to that vast accumulated knowledge.
33:18 But we’re talking of this knowledge that one has psychologically gathered, which becomes a form of security which prevents one from looking.
33:38 So can one die to all that?
33:46 Right? Is the question clear? Yes? All right.
34:08 Let’s approach it differently. What is love?
34:20 Is love memory, the remembrance of pleasurable things, and holding on to them?
34:43 Is love pleasure?
34:57 And if it is, anything that disturbs, takes away that pleasure, is a very dangerous thing.
35:10 I’m afraid of the person or an incident or an accident that might take away my pleasure. Therefore I am going to resist it; I become aggressive.
35:41 So is love an accumulated pleasure with its resentments, temptations, aggression, defence?
36:20 What do you say?
36:29 And is love part of jealousy, hate?
36:58 Hate – if you have gone into it in yourself – someone has done you harm and you hate that person – hate is memory, isn’t it?
37:27 He has done me harm. That was over five years or two days ago, I remembered that hurt, the wrong, and I keep on thinking about that.
37:54 Hate, then, is the past. Right?
38:05 And is love in the past?
38:18 Is love a thing of the intellect?
38:32 Don’t say, ‘Oh, no, it is not, it is of the heart’.
38:39 If it is of the heart, why is there hate, jealousy, envy, division, separation, and so on?
38:50 Which is the outcome of thought, conceptual thought, and the word with its form, content and design.
39:00 No? Lord!
39:11 So for most of us, love is pleasure accumulated by thought, given a continuity to that pleasure, which when thwarted, blocked, becomes jealous, hate, aggression, fear, and so on, which are all part of the structure and nature of thought.
39:47 And can I, can the mind, again die to all that?
39:59 You’ve insulted me or praised me. I look at it. I look at it. That is, I listen to what you say very closely, give attention.
40:16 It may be true or it may not be true. If it is true, I see immediately what you have said has some validity. Why should I get hurt?
40:30 If what you say is flattering, I also see there may be a motive behind that flattery.
40:37 And if I’m silly enough to swallow it – and I see the truth of that. So, can the mind be awake to all this?
40:56 And the mind cannot be awake to all this if it is put to sleep by the past.
41:14 So, can one let go the past, happily, easily, without any struggle? Just to let it go.
41:54 You know, like silence, and beauty and love, there is no touch of the past.
42:17 Has beauty the colouring of the past?
42:38 Am I talking to myself or are you all taking part in this conversation? I am afraid you’re not!
42:52 Or are you being thoroughly mesmerised?
43:11 Q: In the sense you’re using the word, love is the unknown.
43:19 K: In the sense you’re using, love is something unknown – is it? Don’t you love your wife and husband, your family?
43:42 Don’t you love your country? The country being the vested interests there, the bank account there, the accumulated knowledge, your house, your – all that there – don’t you love it?
44:13 Wait. One moment. He says all that is not love, it is contaminated. But we say we love.
44:27 You don’t say, ‘I like you, my wife’, do you?
44:40 Are we playing games with words?
44:55 You see, one of the difficulties is we don’t want to face, look at things as they are.
45:06 We are so frightened and we are... also we are proud. We have no humility to see what actually there is in our life.
45:39 There might be an element of the past in love but love is always there as a living thing – is that right, madame? That’s the question?
45:54 Ah – this... Someone who is dead, one loves in the present – right?
46:06 Now, just look at that whole – it’s very interesting, this question.
46:18 I once saw – no, a lady came to see me and her husband had died some years ago, twenty years ago, and she said, ‘I would like to meet that husband again’.
46:37 Please listen to it. I’m not being cruel. I said, ‘Which husband do you want to meet?
46:57 The one that slept with you? The one that dominated you?
47:06 The one that went to the office and cheated, or did what he was told?
47:14 The one that was frightened? Whom do you want to meet?’ You answer it, please. Now, the question is: someone is dead and I love him in the present, that person.
47:50 What is it you love that person in the present? Please, I am not being cruel – you understand? – I am just looking at facts.
48:06 Q: You love the memory.

K: Isn’t it? You love the memory.
48:47 Is that the real thing? That something – oh, Lord! – through all this perception something comes to us – that is the real thing, the questioner says. Maybe, sir. Do listen.
49:07 When we say, ‘I love’, is it the memory of the past?
49:18 I love my son, my husband, my wife, gone, dead, and that person I love in the present.
49:35 What is that person whom I love in the present?
49:44 It is my memory of that person – the attachment, the pain, the pleasure, the joy, the companionship, the tenderness, that quality that he brought or she brought into my life, a deep relationship – all that is the memory of that person.
50:26 And I love that person. And is love memory?
50:43 Q: It’s more a realisation of the future possibilities.
50:51 K: Isn’t it the realisation of the future and the possibility of the future.
50:59 Is it? Is love time?
51:06 That is, I love the memory of my husband, my wife, which is yesterday, which is of the past, and I love the utopia, the ideology of tomorrow – which is still a memory, a thought. And is love thought, a word, a formula?
51:44 I may love a formula but is that love? Sir, that’s why, please... So one asks, is love time? Do you understand now? Is the picture clear? The past and the future, with its memories, with its hopes – is that love?
52:18 Is love made up of time?
52:31 Q: Isn’t it possible to establish a creative relationship with someone who’s dead because you see them without the conflict of the living relationship…
52:43 K: Is it possible to have a creative relationship with the person who is dead, now.
52:59 Is it? I didn’t have it when he was living, or she was living.
53:10 Now I’m going to create, I’m going to bring about a creative relationship with him.
53:17 What does it mean? How sad it all is, isn’t it? No?
53:34 We live in ideas, concepts, formulas, and we don’t know what love is.
53:51 So we’re asking, is it possible – please, listen – is it possible to see with love? Right?
54:06 To listen – it is the same thing as seeing – is it possible to see and to listen with that quality of mind that is not burdened with the past, with that attention, which is love?
54:33 Is it?
54:40 If it is not possible, then there is no way out of our vicious, deadly circle.
54:54 Then we are caught.
55:04 And in the prison we may talk about freedom, God, love, truth, you know, all that stuff. It has no meaning.
55:16 Then it’s mere pretension and thereby we cultivate hypocrisy and pride.
55:30 And what has love to do with all this?
55:44 Q: It seems to me that unconsciously we consider as love a certain attachment to our past because we are afraid of the unknown. I love my country because I know what is there, what is invested in it. I love my family because it seems to me that I know my wife, my children and my friends, and so on. I am attached to my home because I know how much is in it, because I’m afraid of the future.

K: That’s right. You’re saying, ‘My love is attachment’.
56:22 Q: It seems to me very often...

K: Yes, sir, that’s what we all say. My love is attachment – to my family, to my home, to my memories, to my precious remembrances, because I’m afraid to let go, because in letting go I find I am lonely, and there is fear. And so the loneliness, the fear, prevents me from being free from attachment. I cultivate detachment, which is a clever trick.
57:14 Because I can’t let go attachment because I’m afraid of my loneliness, of my emptiness, my incapacity to look at anything with a quality of freshness.
57:29 So I cling to everything – to the money, to the job, to my beliefs, to my gods, to my experiences, to my family, to my country.
57:47 Oh, don’t you know all this?
57:53 Q: There is another question, sir. The things I cling to which I know, do I really know them or do I think I know them?
58:01 K: That’s right, sir. Do I really know when I cling to something?
58:09 That which I cling to, do I know? I cling to my house. Right? Listen to this. I cling, I’m attached to that house.
58:24 I am that house. Right? Right? No? Have you seen a man riding a horse?
58:43 Have you ever looked at it? And the horse is much more dignified, more beautiful, lovely, with a freshness, with a trot, with a… And the man there on top, he’s attached to the horse.
59:06 He is the horse but the horse is not the man. Really.
59:18 So when I am attached to my furniture – my God, just think of it – you are the furniture, you are the picture, you are the thing that you are attached to, and that is worthless.
59:40 So the problem is how to see clearly so that there is this flowering of love.
1:00:00 You know, without love and beauty there is no truth, there is no God.
1:00:11 There is only a morality which becomes immoral.
1:00:38 So you’re going back home.
1:00:48 So what are you going to do there?
1:01:05 You have to have a shelter, food and clothes.
1:01:19 Can you go back there with a fresh mind, a full heart?
1:01:43 You know what is happening in the world? Dreadful things are going on.
1:01:55 And we are all that; we have made that – the home, the nation, the army, the politician, the crooked thinking, the hypocrisy, and all the rest – we are responsible for it.
1:02:16 Not the Americans in Vietnam and the war there – you and I are responsible.
1:02:31 And can you leave all this absurdity, this chaos, and flower anew?
1:02:45 Right, sir, isn’t that enough? I hope we shall meet next year.