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SA68T10 - A religious life
Saanen, Switzerland - 28 July 1968
Public Talk 10



0:00 This is J Krishnamurti’s tenth public talk in Saanen, 1968.
0:09 Krishnamurti: This is the last talk, and there’ll be discussions on Tuesday, for a week.
0:30 It must have happened to many of us when we are walking alone in a wood, when the sun is just about to set, there comes a peculiar quietness.
0:54 There is no breath of air, the birds have stopped singing and there isn’t a leaf stirring, and your own sense of quietness, a sense of aloofness comes over you, and as you watch and as you listen to the beauty of the evening, to that extraordinary stillness when almost everything seems to be motionless, you are then in complete communion, in complete harmony with everything about you.
2:13 There is no thought, there is no judgment, evaluation; there is neither a word, nor a sense of separateness.
2:33 I’m sure you must have felt all of this, if you are walking alone, leaving all your burdens, worries and problems at home, and are following down a path along a river, which is always chattering, and your mind is very quiet and you feel totally at peace, and with an extraordinary sense of beauty and love and a feeling that no words can describe.
3:27 I am sure you have had such experiences often.
3:38 And, in telling, in putting into words that peculiar quietness of an evening, if you are listening to it with a motive in order to capture that quality, as you are sitting here, and not having experienced it, not having lived it, then you have a motive and that motive is going to prevent you from discovering it or listening to the speaker.
4:33 Because he is merely describing something; he has no motive.
4:41 And if you, with a motive, however subtle, however envious, however aggressive in order to possess that quality of an evening, that beauty, then communication between the speaker and yourself comes to an end, because you have a motive and the speaker has none.
5:14 He is just telling you. Not to amuse you, not to tell you what a wonderful thing he had, and so awakening envy in you, and so aggression.
5:40 Because you also want to have that kind of experience.
5:47 Then there is a misunderstanding between ourselves.
5:55 We live in a world of misunderstanding.
6:02 We say one thing and you interpret it in another way, according to your motives, to your background, to your desire, to your complex nature.
6:18 And so there is a misunderstanding. And this division, which is a fact, and how you interpret that fact creates a misunderstanding.
6:41 And what we are going to go into this morning is of necessity rather complex, and of necessity it must be expressed in words.
7:10 Words have a form to you and to the speaker, a content.
7:21 And if the word, the form, the content is not very clear between the speaker and yourself, there is a misunderstanding; you live in a world apart from that which is being said.
7:45 So we must be very clear in communicating with each other how we listen to the word, what that word creates, what kind of design that word creates, and the content of that word. I hope this becoming… We’ll go into it.
8:18 After all, one uses words to communicate, and if the word with its content, with its design, with its form, is not very clear to each other, then we live in a separate world, separate understanding, maybe misunderstanding, or may not be misunderstanding.
8:59 So words become extraordinarily dangerous unless we use them without any motive.
9:16 Merely telling you that the tree is green, it’s a lovely day, or when I say I have had the most marvellous experience of reality, the intention then is to awaken inside your envy.
9:46 I have had it, you haven’t got it. I have this most precious thing which you also must have.
9:56 Therefore, my motive is to awaken your envy, your aggression, and thereby perhaps follow me, put me on pedestal.
10:14 This is happening all the time around us. Someone says, ‘Oh, I have God realised’, or, ‘I have had the supreme experience’.
10:30 All that is said with a motive – obviously, otherwise you would not say it – to awaken this aggressive envy in you.
10:46 So, both the speaker, who says I have had the most marvellous experience, and you who are greedy to get it, both live in a world of misunderstanding.
11:00 And communication then is not possible.
11:07 That is fairly clear. And it is not possible because, as when you walk in the wood by yourself and your mind is very quiet, there is no word, there is no sentence, there is no observer with all the complex nature of his conditioning, his demands, his envy, his desire to oppress and exploit, and all that – he’s just there walking quietly, unaware of himself.
11:58 There is no observer, and hence he is totally in relationship with everything about you.
12:14 In that there is no separativeness, no division, no judgment – a complete unity which may perhaps be called love.
12:37 And if this is somewhat clear, how we invariably misunderstand, because every word has a different meaning to each one of us, not only the content of that word, but also the design, and the emotional quality that word awakens, stimulates, and if this doesn’t take place, then the exploratory nature is possible.
13:34 That is, it is possible only then to explore. And that is what we are going to do if we can this morning, so that each of us are aware the danger of the word, of any word we use, the design the mind is going to make out of that word with its content, which the speaker may not have at all, and therefore there will be misunderstanding between us.
14:13 You will go away with one impression, separate, each individual having a separate meaning, whereas the speaker may not have what you think he has. So we must be very careful, extraordinarily aware and intelligent when we are going to explore into the nature of what religion is.
14:51 When you hear that word ‘religion’, obviously, if you are very highly intellectual and lived in this modern, sophisticated world, you say, ‘What rot are you talking! Why do you bring that word in?
15:14 That word is merely a distraction, it is an invention of the capitalists, of the priests, and so on’. So that word ‘religion’ – we are talking a mere word – awakens in your mind a certain content, a certain form which you either accept or reject.
15:52 Whereas the speaker has none whatsoever. He uses the word which has been used by man for thousands of years – man who said, I live in this world of passing things, in this world of impermanency, in this world of chaos, disorder, aggression, violence, wars, oppression, and there is… everything dies, there must be something permanent.
16:42 So he seeks it. His motive is to find something permanent, something lasting, something that will give him hope.
16:59 Because in this world there is a despair, there is agony, a passing joy, and his motive is to find some kind of everlasting comfort.
17:21 So what he seeks, he is going to find, because he has already predetermined what he will find, what he wants to find. Right? That is fairly simple.
17:42 And to ask a question of exploration: what is religion?
17:57 To explore that the word, for you when you are using that word, must contain no design.
18:13 The word mustn’t have loaded content.
18:21 That is again fairly clear. So we are going to ask: what is religion, which man…
18:31 ‘the religion’ in the sense man wanting to find a reality.
18:44 What is it? First of all, there are two ways: negative and a positive way of looking at it.
19:05 That is, to deny completely what is not.
19:16 That is, what religion is not.
19:24 Now, if you don’t accept what it is not because you have already made up your mind, you are already conditioned, you have certain design because you feel utterly hopeless without having something to cling to intellectually, verbally, emotionally, then you cannot possibly explore.
19:56 And so you live in a world of misunderstanding which you have built, which you have created for yourself.
20:08 And if the speaker says, let us examine it, let’s go into it without any bias, and if you don’t do it, then you live in a world of misunderstanding and therefore go away with certain confusion, hoping to find out from somebody else what truth is.
20:40 That being clear, let’s go into it.
20:49 First of all, man from the ape up to the most civilised man has always asked if there is something other than this world; this world where there is work, trouble, misery, confusion, endless sorrow, conflict mounting, mounting, mounting, problems after problems, wars, one nation against the other, one group ideologically opposed to another ideological group.
21:52 So, seeing all this outwardly and also seeing his own inward confusion, misery, his utter loneliness, the occasional fleeting joy, and the boredom of life – just imagine a man spending forty years or more going to an office every day.
22:34 How utterly boring it must be to him, and it is also an extraordinary escape – escape from himself, escape from the family, from the struggle.
23:00 There he is enclosed, tight, in competition with others, which he enjoys.
23:11 And that’s his life. So, seeing all this, right from the beginning of time the ancient Egyptians, and so on, have always asked if there is something beyond, something more, something which can be called truth, or given a name to it.
23:51 He went out seeking, wanting to find out, and the clever ones came along – the priests, the theologians, and said yes, there is, or they had a saviour, a master who would tell them what there is.
24:20 And this energy which went into seeking, wanting to find out, was captured and organised, and an image was created which became the entity through which all…
24:53 which was the embodiment of reality, and so on and so on and so on.
25:02 So the energy which is necessary to find out was captured, put into a frame of organised belief called religion, with its rituals, with its priests, with its excitement, with its entertainment, with its images, became the means to find, means through which you had to go. Obviously, that’s not religion – right? – and to see that very clearly and to deny it completely, demands energy.
26:19 Can we do this, so that, as we said, what is false must be denied to find out what is true?
26:37 You cannot have one foot in the false and vaguely put out the other foot to find out what is true.
26:50 Because we can see very well fear has brought this about, the structure of what is called a religious life – the fear of this world and what’s going to happen after one dies, and the fear of insecurity.
27:23 Because life is insecure. Nothing is secure, nothing is permanent – the wife, the husband, the family, the nation.
27:43 Perhaps if you have a good bank account, then maybe as long as you live.
27:52 So, one realises there is absolutely nothing permanent, no relationship, nothing, and out of that there is fear.
28:12 Fear is a form of energy, and that energy is captured by those who promise – I know, you don’t know; I have experience, you haven’t; this is real, that is not real; follow this system, you’ll have that thing which you are seeking.
28:42 Now, when you see all that as being completely false – and to see it you must have energy, and this energy is dissipated when you haven’t understood fear.
29:02 Then there is one part of you that’s afraid, the other part says I must have something permanent, so there is a contradiction, which is waste of energy.
29:22 So can I or can you completely put aside every form of what is called religious organisation belief?
29:41 – which has become a form of entertainment, a distraction.
29:48 The communist world maintains a religious organisation because they say, ‘Well, it will distract people’.
30:00 For most of us, every religion organised is a form of distraction.
30:11 So when you see all of that clearly, can one completely put it aside?
30:21 So that you’re not exploited by anybody who promises or who says, ‘I have had this experience which is supreme, I am the saviour’, all that, so that you have the energy and a state of mind that is not afraid to find out, and therefore not accepting any authority, doesn’t matter who it is, including the speaker.
31:07 So in denying completely what is false, what is not religion, then we can proceed to find out, explore what it might be, what it is, not as an idea, what it is.
31:36 Not according to me or to you or to anybody else.
31:43 If it is according to the speaker, then he lives in a world of misunderstanding which he is trying to convey to you, and thereby create further misunderstanding.
32:04 Is this fairly clear or is it getting rather complicated?
32:13 You know, every form of conversation or communication is so very difficult, specially when we are dealing with something rather subtle, of dealing with psychological structure of human thought and feeling.
32:47 Unless you are aware of it in yourself as we are talking, listening, then what we are talking about becomes a meaningless verbiage.
33:06 We are talking about the whole content of life, not one segment.
33:16 We are talking this whole field of action, not a fragmented action.
33:28 So religion – please follow this a little bit – is an action which is complete, total, covers all life – not separated as the business life, sexual life, a scientific life and a religious life.
34:01 Because we live in a world of fragmented action, in contradiction with each other, and that is not a religious way of life because that breeds antagonism, contradiction, misery, confusion, sorrow.
34:28 So to explore and find out for oneself, not as an individual but as a human being, what this action is, so that that action is completely...
34:49 wherever it acts, whether in the family, in the business world or whatever it is, in painting, in talking – it is a complete total action without any contradiction in itself, and therefore an action that doesn’t breed misery.
35:16 That is a way of religious life.
35:23 That is now the positive: we have denied what is not; we are saying what it is.
35:36 Then, if there is such action, then there is a life of harmony, a life in which there is unity between man and man, not contradiction, not hate, not antagonism.
36:10 And as you observe, every religion has bred antagonism, though they talk of love, though they talk of peace.
36:30 So, religion is a way of life in which there is inward harmony, a feeling of complete unity.
36:55 As we said, when you walk in the wood silently, with the light of the setting sun on the top of a mountain or on a leaf, there is complete union between you and that.
37:20 There is no ‘you’ at all. There is no word. There is no observer with his word, the content of that word, the design of that word. There is no observer at all and therefore there is no contradiction.
37:55 Please don’t go off into some emotional, speculative state.
38:04 This means very hard work, to see very clearly the way we are living – fragmented, opposed, antagonistic to each other, awakening aggression, violence, hate.
38:39 In that state, there is no possibility of unity, and unity means love.
38:51 How can you love somebody whom you say, ‘Well, he is German, he is Russian, he is this, he is that, or he’s Catholic, protestant’?
39:14 So, a religious way of life is this total action in which there is no fragmentation at all.
39:29 And that fragmentation takes place as long as the observer, who is the word, the content of that word, the design, the memory, and all that.
39:43 As long as that entity exists, there must be contradictory action.
39:59 And it is not possible to end hate by its own opposite.
40:09 You understand? If I hate somebody and I say out of that hate, I must not hate I must love, the love is part of that hate.
40:27 It is the outcome of that hate, because every opposite has its root in its own opposite.
40:42 So.
40:54 And we live in a world, not only outwardly but inwardly, with things known.
41:10 That is, I know the past, my own activity, I know the past of my conditioning – I live in the known.
41:23 Which is an obvious fact, and it doesn’t need great exploration.
41:30 The intellectual, the scientific, the business world, the world of everyday life is within the field of the known.
41:48 And we are afraid to move out of that dimension, and we feel there is a different dimension which is not the known, and we are afraid of that – to let go the known, the past, the familiar, the habitual.
42:22 So. And we are afraid of the known… unknown.
42:33 Can one be free of fear and be with the unknown? Be.
42:49 Because if you are afraid of that which you don’t know, then you begin to create images of the unknown, both outwardly and inwardly, and then there is division – your image and my image, however subtle.
43:22 So can the mind remain, be, with the unknown?
43:30 Live with it. That is, unknown with the tomorrow. I hope you’re following all this. Because it is only then that there is a renewal of life, there is something new taking place. But if you always live in the known, as most of us do – the known projected into tomorrow and call that unknown.
44:14 It is not. It is still the known as an idea.
44:21 In that field of the known there is repetition, there is imitation, conformity and therefore there is always contradiction.
44:35 After all, the observer is the known.
44:42 When you look at a tree, you’re always looking at it with the image of that tree or that species which is known. You look at your wife or your husband or your neighbour with the image of the known. You never say, ‘I don’t know my wife’, or my husband.
45:16 And to remain in that state: I really don’t know.
45:24 Then see what takes place in that relationship.
45:31 Then you don’t accept or hint. You are sensitive, alert to all the things that are happening to you and to her. Then the relationship is entirely different, because in that there is no image which has been built through habit, through every form of experience, and so on, so on.
46:10 That is the known. And to live with another in a state of mind without the image, which is a state in which I don’t know. I don’t know you, you don’t know me.
46:35 Then the relationship becomes extraordinary creative.
46:42 In that there is no conflict. Then relationship is the…
46:49 awakens the highest form of sensitivity and intelligence.
47:04 So, a religious life is a life in daily existence of the unknown: I don’t know. I wonder if you ever said to yourself, I really don’t know about anything. I may know technological knowledge, I may know how to read, and so on, but inwardly, psychologically, to say, ‘I don’t know’, and mean it, without becoming neurotic about it.
47:57 If you have ever done it, not verbally but actually, then all conditioning disappears.
48:16 And it is to say to oneself, ‘I don’t know’, and live that state… demands immense energy because everybody around you functions in the known – your wife, your husband, your business, everything round you acts within the known, and when you say you do not know, you are always in danger, and therefore that demands a great deal of energy and intelligence to remain in that state. Therefore the mind is always learning.
48:58 And learning is not accumulation.
49:12 And to live a life of action, because life is action. To live means to act, not according to any particular pattern but to act in which there is no contradiction, an action which is not segmented, broken up, as business life, as social life, as a political life, as a religious life, family life, and so on and on, as a conservative or as liberal, and all that.
50:07 And to see this, that there is an action which is not fragmented, which is total, complete.
50:16 And to act that way, to live that way is the religious life, because you can only act that way when there is love.
50:28 To love. And love is not pleasure. Pleasure can be cultivated, sustained by thought.
50:41 Love is not a thing to be cultivated.
50:49 And it is only that love that brings about this total action.
50:59 And it is only love that can possibly bring about complete sense of unity.
51:25 And the unknown is not something extraordinary.
51:35 Because to live always within the known makes the unknown into the opposite, something contradictory.
51:57 But when you understand the nature of the known, the past experiences, the images that one has built up about the world, as nations, as races, the differentiation between various religious dogmatic beliefs – those are all the known. And if mind is caught in it, there can possibly be no love.
52:35 And do what you will, having numerable organisations to bring about peace in the world, there will be no peace.
52:52 Then one asks more, which is, can a human being – you and I, or another – can we come upon this life that has no death, a life that is really timeless?
53:23 Which means a life in which thought, which creates the psychological time with its fear, comes to an end.
53:41 Thought has importance, has its own importance, but psychologically it has no importance whatsoever, because thought is the mischief-maker.
54:00 Because thought is always seeking pleasure inwardly.
54:10 And as we said the other day, love is not pleasure. Love is bliss. It is something entirely different.
54:28 And when that is all seen very clearly, one lives that way, not verbally, not in a world of misunderstanding, but when all that is very clear, very simple, then perhaps there is a life that has no beginning and no end, which is a life of timelessness.