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SA72T6 - Pleasure, joy and death
Saanen, Switzerland - 27 July 1972
Public Talk 6



0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s sixth public talk in Saanen, 1972.
0:09 What shall we talk about?
0:32 We have been talking over together the whole nature of thought.
0:47 And we ought to talk over together this morning and try to discover for ourselves, what is the state of mind that is not afraid, that is not pursuing the demands of pleasure, that can enjoy without making joy into a pleasure; and what is the quality of a mind that can understand, have an insight into the question of death; what it means to live completely totally; and perhaps also come upon the question of what is love.
2:36 We have been talking in fair detail how our brain and our mind works, how important it is to have complete security; it is only then that the brain can function normally, sanely and healthily.
3:11 We said that the brain tries to find out if there is a security in belief, in dogmas, in conclusions and hopes to find it in them, and so becomes terribly attached to them – attached to a belief, dogma, conclusion, to opinions.
3:44 And discovering, if it is at all awake, that security, certainty, the quality of assurance, doesn’t lie in any of these, then it tries to invent an illusion, an illusion that will be both intellectually, emotionally satisfactory.
4:27 I don’t know if you have not observed this process that is going on all the time in our life: trying to find in relationship security, certainty and not finding it in them, then it comes to a conclusion and it becomes attached to that conclusion and when that conclusion is questioned, disturbed, then it runs away from it to another series of conclusions, and gradually the mind begins to attach itself to things.That is, property, houses, furniture.
5:34 So there is attachment to property, to people or to ideas.
5:57 And as we grow older there is this question of death.
6:09 And I think we shall understand the deep meaning of that word if we could go into this question of attachment.
6:25 Why the human mind, our mind, your mind, is attached to property, to people, to ideas – ideas being conclusions, opinions, traditions, a formula, which are all put together by thought, either in the form of an image, symbol which is the word, or a nebulous visionary illusion.
7:10 Why is the mind attached to all these things?
7:24 If you are not attached to an illusion or to a person then you are attached to property – property whether it is a house, a piece of land or accumulated furniture – you know all that kind of stuff – why?
7:49 What makes the mind, the thought, cling to something like property, money?
7:58 When we use the word ‘property’ it includes all that – why? Because as we said the other day, mere enquiry into the causation doesn’t free the mind from the cause.
8:23 Intellectually you can break down by analysis why the mind is attached to property, but at the end of it there is still attachment.
8:47 That attachment comes to an end if we have an insight into the whole structure of attachment.
9:00 Because to have an insight into something, to see the truth of something brings its own freedom, brings its own intelligence.
9:20 Now why does the mind attach itself to property? We will investigate why it is attached to people and to conclusions, ideas, symbols, visions and all the rest of it.
9:38 Why? You understand, property is not only things but also the attachment to one’s own body, which is also a thing.
10:13 You see we get attached to a property and then safeguard it and when we realise that it is not worth it then we try to cultivate detachment – attachment then detachment, and the conflict.
10:40 Please, as we have been saying during all these talks, we are sharing this thing together.
10:54 You are not merely listening to a series of words, ideas, conclusions, but we are sharing the thing which we are talking about.
11:08 Sharing implies listening and enjoying the thing that we are examining, because when you enjoy something you learn much quicker, I do not know if you have not noticed it, but if you make a problem of it you won’t learn.
11:42 To me it is very enjoyable, if I may use that word, to find out why my mind is attached to property.
11:57 I want to learn about it and therefore I am not going to make a problem of it.
12:05 If I make a problem of it then I want to go beyond it, then the mind creates the idea of detachment.
12:18 Then in that there is conflict between attachment and detachment. And the mind that is in conflict can never learn. It can learn the results of that conflict but not the root cause of attachment.
12:39 I do not know if you have gone into this question of enjoyment.
12:57 There is a vast difference between pleasure and enjoyment.
13:06 Pleasure has a motive. The pursuit of pleasure is the memory of a previous pleasure, and enjoyment is from moment to moment.
13:31 You can’t cultivate enjoyment, but you can cultivate pleasure.
13:45 And when there is enjoyment then the brain relaxes.
13:56 You watch it. But when it is pursuing pleasure then it becomes tense, it becomes purposeful, thought then cultivates determination, will.
14:17 Whereas if there is enjoyment the whole brain-cells relax.
14:32 I was told the other day by somebody who seemed to know something about this, that recently scientists have discovered that when there is an enjoyment a new gland, a gland at the very centre of the back of the head, functions and brings more activity to the brain, which is not the activity of strain.
15:06 Are you getting it? So to learn there must be enjoyment.
15:19 One must enjoy that which one is learning. And you cannot enjoy, be happy in the act of learning when you are comparing, judging, evaluating; or when what you are learning you are storing up in order to enjoy more.
15:41 Right? Please watch your own brain cells in operation (laughs) which is really a part of meditation; it is to observe completely without the act of will.
16:13 When there is the act of will then there is conflict.
16:25 And what we are trying to do this morning – not ‘trying’, sorry – what we are doing – I don’t like the word ‘try’ – when you try it means an effort.
16:41 If you do it actually, it is going on. What we are trying to...
16:53 (Laughter) What we are doing is, to observe happily why the mind is attached to property, because unless the brain-cells understand, the mind understands why there is this attachment death becomes then a terror.
17:33 Right? Why is the mind attached to so many things? Is it because there is nothing so permanent as property?
17:54 There is the house, there is the furniture, the carpet, (laughs) the picture, they are solid, and in that solidity the mind can take rest and be attached to it.
18:33 Look at it, go into it fairly deeply and you will see it for yourself.
18:45 Human relationship is uncertain, in that there is conflict, in that there is every form of struggle, jealousy, anxiety, fear, pleasure, sexual or otherwise, companionship and so on and so on, so on, and that is an uncertain quantity; and ideas too are rather uncertain, unclear, and property is the only thing that is solid, that I can see.
19:38 Questioner: It is bombed so many times it is not solid, not solid at all.
19:44 K: Of course not sir, wait a minute, sir. It has been bombed so often, destroyed so often, but human beings go back to it.
19:56 You and I intellectually may say, ‘Well, property doesn’t matter’, but if we look into it very carefully, property, it doesn’t matter what it is – a pair of shoes, one gets terribly attached.
20:18 Perhaps those poor people in Vietnam may say that property doesn’t matter, but it does matter because otherwise they would have nothing.
20:31 So is that the reason, is that why mind gets attached to property that is mine or yours, or property of an institution with which it identifies itself as my property?
20:59 And also is it because mind needs to be occupied?
21:11 The mind is never in a state of not being occupied.
21:25 Please watch all this in yourself. And occupation becomes extraordinarily important. A man who goes to an office for forty, fifty, sixty years, when that occupation comes to an end, he also comes to an end.
21:53 So occupation becomes extraordinarily important and the mind can be occupied with property, looking after it – you know all the business of owning something.
22:12 Now if one has an insight into it that the mind needs to be occupied, it demands occupation whether it is occupied with furniture, with social work, with a book or with an idea of god, it is exactly the same, because it demands occupation.
22:47 And is it because, also, the mind in itself seems to have no existence apart from the thing to which it is attached?
23:10 All right?
23:18 What is the content of my mind, of my consciousness, or your consciousness, the content?
23:28 The property, the idea, the images that I have built about another or about myself.
23:37 So the mind in itself has no existence apart from its content, and one of the contents is the furniture.
23:53 You are following all this? And so it is not a question of being attached – furniture is the mind.
24:10 And when the mind has no quality of itself then attachment becomes extraordinarily important.
24:23 Please observe this in yourself. So the material existence of property, and being occupied with that property, the mind being lonely must have occupation, and so property takes a great deal of time with which one can be occupied, and the loneliness and so on, and the mind having no existence of its own finds existence in the content, in the attachment, in the idea.
25:24 Right? And why are we attached so much to people – this is much more interesting.
25:40 Why are you attached to a person?
26:01 Are you really attached to the person, or to the idea, to the image of that person?
26:13 I am attached to you for various reasons, which is: my attachment to you gives a quality, an existence to the mind, and my attachment to you is its existence.
26:50 Now I am attached to you because I love you.
27:01 You give me pleasure, sexual or otherwise, you give me something to which I can cling, a companionship, an existence with you gives more certainty to the mind and without you I am lost.
27:41 And being lost I have to find another companion, another attachment.
27:49 Or if there is trouble between you and me, which is between the image I have of you and the image you have of me, which is called relationship, if there is in that relationship conflict, I try to break it up and establish another form of relationship, which is another image.
28:13 I do not know if you are …You are following all this?
28:22 So again I see the mind, having no quality, vitality, existence, energy of its own, it tries to find in relationship all that.
29:05 Please watch this in yourself, not what the speaker is saying but actually what is going on in your mind when you are attached to a person, as obviously you must be attached, which you call love, with all its responsibility, with all its neurotic behaviour and so on and so on, so on.
29:33 Then there is this whole gamut of ideation, mentation.
29:46 That is, the images that thought has created and put together as an idea.
30:00 An idea is the reasoned out, verbal assertion of a thought.
30:09 Right? It’s all right, can I go on? You are following all this? And we live on a formula, on conclusions, which are put together by thought, thought being memory and the past.
30:39 So we are living in the past, which may be projected into the future but has its roots in the past, so our attachment is to the past.
31:06 Now why does the mind live, act, behave upon a series of conclusions which thought has come to – why?
31:23 I don’t know if you have not noticed this in yourself.
31:31 You have an experience, doesn’t matter what it is, however trivial, however great, you have an experience and that experience becomes the memory and that memory with its knowledge is the process of thought, which comes to a conclusion, and according to that conclusion you live.
32:01 The conclusion is non-physical, non-existent, as the furniture, it is still an idea.
32:21 And the mind having no vitality of its own has to depend on ideas, formulas, beliefs, doctrines and all the rest of it, and therefore there is constant division between the conclusion and the act.
32:47 Are we all asleep?
32:57 I want to be quite sure.
33:06 So I see the mind is its content.
33:18 The mind is not without its content.
33:29 And it is afraid to let go its content otherwise it has no existence.
33:44 And so it has got to occupy itself with its content – furniture, the people, the person or the idea, idea being, god, you know all the rest of it.
34:02 You see how extraordinarily interesting it is, because meditation, what they call meditation, is the cultivation of an occupation with an idea, and the practising of that idea, which is not at all meditation – we’ll discuss it perhaps on Sunday – but see how the whole thing hangs together like a marvellous structure.
34:45 Now one has explained all this: the attachment to property, attachment to people, to conclusions, to your images, symbols, ideas.
35:16 To have an insight into that, into the whole of it, is the liberation from attachment, not at some future date, instantly.
35:33 This is really important to understand.
35:42 When you listen to this do you say, ‘I will think about this a little later.
35:52 When I go out of this tent I will go into this much more. Because here there are too many ideas, too many being poured out, I must take it up and think about it later’ – which prevents you from having an insight now.
36:41 And if you are sharing this thing together there is no time for you to think about it later.
36:56 We are sharing the food together because you are hungry, and the speaker is also hungry, we are sharing the food together, eating together.
37:08 You don’t say when you are eating together, or when you are hungry, ‘I will eat later’ – you are sharing it, actively eating.
37:22 And if you have no insight into what has been said, why?
37:33 Are you frightened of not being attached, not being occupied, not finding out what happens to a mind that has no attachment – and therefore fear.
37:55 Because the mind is incessantly occupied, whether with the house, with sex, with god, with drink or with your politics, with your guru, what the guru … – occupied.
38:14 And that gives it a vitality, a certain quality of energy.
38:24 And one is afraid if there is no occupation at all what is going to take place.
38:34 Therefore when there is that fear you will not share.
38:45 That fear will prevent you. Therefore you have to have an insight into that fear, which is far more important than to have an insight into attachment.
39:08 So there is constant insight. And when you have such an insight attachment altogether is gone and a different quality comes into being, the quality which the mind itself has, if it has understood, is aware, has an insight into the whole process of attachment.
39:43 That is love. You understand? How can I love you, or you love me, if I am attached to you?
39:58 My attachment is based on my pursuit of pleasure, which you give me, your images and so on.
40:11 I am attached to that image of you and you are attached to the image of me.
40:23 And the image is the past, is the response of experience, knowledge.
40:38 So is love the past?
40:45 Is love experience? Is love memory? Is love the reaction to that memory as pleasure?
41:01 Follow all this.
41:10 So one discovers, or one comes upon, the mind comes upon that where there is attachment of any kind there is no love.
41:29 It is not a statement, an idea, but an actual fact which the mind has discovered, which the mind, having an insight into attachment, sees the truth of it.
41:49 And seeing the truth of it, it is not occupied with the person, or with the furniture, or with the idea, and therefore it has its own energy.
42:00 I wonder if you are meeting all this. It is that quality of energy which is love.
42:15 Right?
42:23 And therefore love can never be hurt – oh, you don’t see all this, do you? – can never be jealous, never lonely, never asks to be loved – what a horror that is!
42:50 And one observes what one’s life is.
43:05 What is our life? What is our existence? Look at it please. Your existence, not mine. Which is: what is the existence of the ‘me’ in the field of knowledge?
43:43 What is my living in the field of experience?
43:52 What is my actual activity with the whole structure of memory which is the past?
44:07 Is my life based on the past – the past being yesterday, or ten thousand yesterdays?
44:26 Please look at it. I want to learn about myself and I have learned happily what my attachments do to the mind, and I want to find out also what my actual life is, not the imagined life, not the life I would like to have, not the life that depends on environment, on stimuli but actually what is my daily existence based on?
45:20 You are following all this? Am I living in the past, is my life the past?
45:39 Operating, reacting to the present based upon the past and therefore projecting that to the future.
45:55 You are following? I want to find out, please listen to this carefully – I want to find out.
46:06 I want to find out whether the temperament and the idiosyncrasy are my life; or is my life my conditioned state; or, the temperament, idiosyncrasy and the conditioning is my whole life?
46:45 Am I making this complex?
47:03 What is temperament, what is idiosyncrasy? You understand? You have certain temperaments – haven’t you? – you have certain idiosyncrasies – no?
47:29 Temperament is, according to the dictionary meaning, as far as you can make out, based on experience; idiosyncrasy is something that is put together.
47:58 We all have various kinds of idiosyncrasies and their idiosyncratic activity and temperamental activity, but basically we are conditioned, though the temperament and idiosyncrasy may vary from person to person.
48:22 You are following all this? You and I are basically conditioned according to the culture, to the past, all that, deeply, conditioned consciously or unconsciously, conditioned deeply through inheritance, heredity, through culture, through a thousand years of man’s struggle.
48:54 That is our basic conditioning, add to it more, tradition and so on and so on.
49:05 From that according to time, climate, culture, which varies the expression of idiosyncrasy and temperament.
49:20 Because, that is, you are different in temperament from me.
49:29 You have your idiosyncrasies different from mine. And we try to balance these idiosyncrasies and temperament and try to bring harmony between us, which can never be done; whereas harmony between us exists, can come only when the mind has an insight into the total conditioning.
49:57 Right? Am I going on too much?
50:08 Shall we take a breath here for a minute?
50:16 Because this is really quite important and rather interesting if you go into it.
50:26 You see we are trying to bring harmony in relationships between temperaments and idiosyncrasies, outwardly.
50:38 But inwardly, deeply we are conditioned, and we try somehow to live together with our absurd idiosyncrasies and temperaments, and in that there is always a battle, a strife – I am trying to adjust myself to your temperament and you are trying to adjust to my idiosyncrasies – aren’t you?
51:09 This is what is going on in life. And there is this constant effort, battle, and I say to myself, ‘That is totally wrong somehow, it has no value’.
51:26 Because your temperament and idiosyncrasies can vary, change, that has no value. Therefore no character. So character has no value. Are you getting this? But what has significance, is to find out, have an insight into this whole conditioning.
51:51 Then if the mind is free from the conditioning, which is its content, then our relationship is entirely different, then there is no conflict between you and me because it is not based on pleasure and all the rest of it.
52:10 You are getting it? Now can I, can the mind see this whole business of conditioning, temperament, idiosyncrasy, how the mind is the result of the past, which is evolution, can it have an insight into that?
52:59 Not tomorrow, now, but now, instantly to have insight into ourselves and therefore that insight brings its own energy to transform ‘what is’.
53:19 Insight has its own energy, which is not dependent on any stimuli, and therefore that insight which has its tremendous energy, transforms what is observed, which is attachment.
53:51 Have you got that insight, and therefore that tremendous energy to change actually your attachment totally?
54:03 So the mind doesn’t derive its energy in attachment, in conflict and all that but it has it own vital energy, independent of environment, of culture, of people.
54:23 Come on, sir!
54:33 Therefore living has quite a different meaning than the living which we do now, which is conflict.
54:48 Then we have to enquire into this whole question of what is death.
54:59 Do you mind it, enquiring into that? Because a lot of people are young people, you may live very long, and there are a lot of old people here too, including myself.
55:18 We are the people who are going and you are the people who are coming. But our going and your coming is also … you have to face death.
55:32 So we are going to enquire into it, which is, we are going to have an insight into it.
55:48 And you cannot have an insight into it if there is any kind of fear, and fear comes only when you are attached to the things known, which is, the things known are your images, your knowledge, your attachments, your furniture, your opinions, judgements, your culture, your shyness, your politeness – you follow? – all that is the field of the known.
56:24 And if you are afraid you will never have an insight into this, into this whole problem of death.
56:47 I want to find out, as you must, what is death.
56:56 Why am I frightened of death?
57:05 Why am I so scared of old age and suddenly coming to an end?
57:14 It is really a very complex business, the whole understanding of what is death, very complex.
57:36 And the very complexity of it makes one frightened because it is like a very complex machinery, you daren’t touch it, because you know nothing about it.
58:01 But if you approach it very simply, which means really you are really trying to learn about it, therefore you are enjoying it – not the idea of death but enjoying the investigation, the approach, the enquiry, therefore you are learning, and you cannot learn if you are not happy.
58:36 Therefore you cannot have fear. That is a basic thing. So if you really want to go into this you have to be very clear that your mind, which means your thought, doesn’t create fear – fear of what it considers coming to an end, what it considers entering into something it doesn’t know.
59:13 I don’t know where to begin this.
59:27 Now first of all I have to find out, because I am not frightened – you understand?
59:40 – I am not interested in fear at all, I want to find out if there is anything permanent as the ‘me’.
59:53 You understand? Permanent that is, which has a continuity. I can leave my furniture to my brother, son, or whatever and therefore it can remain in the family, or sold in an antique shop and somebody else buys it, and I want to find out if there is anything substantial, continuous, permanent as ‘me’ who is frightened of death.
1:00:46 Is there anything permanent in me, in you?
1:00:53 – permanent in the sense a continuity in time, a duration in space as the ‘me’.
1:01:08 The ‘me’ is the name.
1:01:16 Right? Has that name any permanency? Or thought gives permanency to the name.
1:01:32 In itself it has no permanency, but thought, identifying itself with the body, with the image, with the knowledge, with all the experiences, sorrows, pleasures, agonies, all identifying itself with that, that gives it a quality of permanency.
1:02:03 Right? Otherwise is there anything permanent? A thing that has a continuity in spite of the non-existence of the body?
1:02:28 Are you interested in all this?
1:02:35 You are going to face this, whether you like it or not.
1:02:43 Either you are going to face it accidentally, or through disease, or the decay, the natural decay, the decay of the organism.
1:03:01 It is inevitable. You can avoid it by living longer, healthier, taking more pills and all the rest of it – you know, carry on.
1:03:10 But at the end there is this fact.
1:03:19 Unless I find out for myself if there is something permanent beyond death – permanent which means timeless, which cannot be corrupted through civilisation, through culture, something that in spite of all experience, knowledge, stimuli, reactions, it has its own existence, and goes on as the ‘me’.
1:04:08 So man has said, ‘There is not the ‘me’ but there is god’ – follow all this carefully.
1:04:22 In India, in Asia they put it differently, it is still the act of thought which says, ‘There is the soul’.
1:04:34 It is an act of thought when it says, there is Brahman, as they say in India it is still the act of thought, thought which is frightened of the unknown, because thought is the known, thought is time, thought is the old, thought is never free: because thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge, therefore it is always old, never free, and being of time it is uncertain of the timeless, that is, beyond time.
1:05:24 So it says, ‘I am not important, ‘me’ is transient, has been put together by culture, by time, by accident, by the family, by tradition, by the culture in which it has been put together, it has developed certain tendencies, idiosyncrasies, it has its conditioning but beyond all that there is the soul, there is something immense in me which is the permanent.’ You follow?
1:06:07 All that is the process of thought.
1:06:18 And thought confronted with the inevitable, which is death, the ending, says, ‘I can’t tolerate this’, therefore it says, ‘There must be a future life’, or it says, ‘I believe there is a future life’, or ‘There is heaven and I’ll sit next to god’ – it wants comfort, faced with something completely unknown.
1:06:52 And there are thousands of people who will give you comfort.
1:07:07 All the organised churches offer that, and you want that, and therefore they exist.
1:07:22 Now if you say ‘how’, it is still the action of thought and therefore based on fear, on imagination, on the past, that is, the field of the known, which is: ‘I am attached to the field of the known, with all its varieties, changes, its activities’, and what I demand is comfort, because I have found comfort in the past, I have lived within the field of the known, that is my territory, I know its borders, the frontiers – the frontiers are my consciousness which is its content.
1:08:42 I am completely familiar with all that and death is something I don’t know, I don’t want it.
1:09:00 So I ask myself, my life has been the past, I live in the past, I act in the past, that is my life – listen to this.
1:09:39 My life living in the past is a dead life. You understand? My mind which lives in the past is a dead mind.
1:10:00 And thought says, ‘That is not death, the future is the death.’ So I see this as a fact – you follow?
1:10:20 I see this as something enormously real, therefore the mind realising that actually dies to the past.
1:10:41 It will use the past but it has lost its grip, the past has lost its values, grip, its vitality.
1:10:56 So the mind has its own energy which is not derived from the past.
1:11:07 Therefore living is dying. You understand? Therefore living is love which is dying.
1:11:23 Because if there is no attachment, then there is love.
1:11:34 If there is no attachment to the past, the past has its value which can be used, which must be used as knowledge, then my living is a constant renewal, is a constant movement in the field of the unknown, in which there is learning, moving, therefore death is the ultimate aloneness.
1:12:05 And therefore there is a totally different kind of life.
1:12:14 Sorry, I’ve talked so long.
1:12:21 Now, there was the gentleman who had questions.
1:12:28 Yes, sir.
1:12:30 Q: (Inaudible) K: Ah, I didn’t use the words ‘giving up’ or ‘surrendering’.
1:12:42 I said the mind, consciousness is its content. Right sir? Its contents are the books, the televisions, the amusements, furniture and so on – all the contents which civilisations, cultures, have put into it.
1:13:07 And if you say you must be unattached then it is an act of will by thought, and therefore there is no freedom in that.
1:13:20 But if you have an insight into this then it is total.
1:13:31 Yes sir?
1:13:38 Q: Is it not blind faith to accept that there is a different quality of mind?
1:13:44 K: The questioner asks: is it not a blind faith to accept that there is a different quality of mind?
1:13:52 Isn’t that it? How can you accept what another says? How can you have faith in what somebody else says? He may be mistaken, he may be trying to convert you to some idiocy, and all conversion is an idiocy.
1:14:16 But he says to you: look at it for yourself, learn about it for yourself, have an insight into this whole process for yourself, therefore there is no authority.
1:14:34 You don’t have to have faith in something, in a belief, or in a person.
1:14:42 Q: (Inaudible) K: How do images have real feelings though I know they are dead?
1:14:59 Isn’t that it sir? Look: I have images which are put together by thought, put together through experience, through reactions, through various crises.
1:15:27 Those images are real because I accept them intellectually as being real.
1:15:43 The intellect, which is part of thought, lives with those images and derives energy from those images and therefore they have a life of their own.
1:16:01 They give you vitality, they give you feeling, they maintain you, nourish you, but that nourishment, that maintenance, that stimuli – (noise of aeroplane) – I can’t compete with that!
1:16:25 – intellect may say they are false, they are unreal, but unless you have deep awareness of the machinery that makes the images and are aware of it, have an insight into it, these images will go on giving you neurotic reactions.
1:16:53 And they are all neurotic, every form of image that you have is bound to create a neurotic action and neurotic feelings.
1:17:08 Q: Sir, during sleep without dream there is no image.
1:17:51 I would like to know if fragmentation and images are necessary in order to have an insight into them.
1:18:06 K: Sleep without dreams is a state of mind in which there are no images, no conditioning, no time.
1:18:19 Now are you telling me that or have you heard somebody else tell you that?
1:18:29 Q: I think it is obvious.
1:18:32 K: The gentleman says, ‘I think it is obvious’. Sir, the mountain is obvious, the beauty of it is obvious, the majesty, the depth of it is obvious, but I have to climb it, I have to live with it, I have to move with it.
1:19:02 What is obvious is not necessarily real.
1:19:09 What is real is to see if I have images, to see if the mind derives energy from those images, and to see in my daily life, not in some …daily, everyday life whether these images play a part in my relationship.
1:19:40 And what my day is, my night is.
1:19:52 The movement of my daily life is the continuation in dreams when I sleep.
1:19:59 To have no dreams at all – you understand? – that is one of the most important things because when the mind sleeps, when it is absolutely in a state of quietness then it rejuvenates itself.
1:20:29 But if it is a continuity of the day then it is struggling, and the struggle is to bring order.
1:20:37 I don’t know if you have not noticed it. The brain can only function normally, healthily, non-neurotically when it has no image, when it is not in conflict, when it has complete order.
1:21:06 But if during the day you have no order then it tries to establish order during the night, which is part of the dream.
1:21:19 So if during the day being aware, you know learning, insight, enjoying the insight, trying to find out, learn, then during the night then the mind which has established order during the day, then it can sleep completely without a dream and therefore it has quite a different movement, quite a different vitality.
1:21:57 Q: I have a problem.
1:22:25 Sometimes in life it seems to me that you have to be egotistic to go this way that you are talking about right now, because you have to change yourself in relationships and sometimes people hurt you, sometimes you hurt them very much. What is the answer?
1:22:29 K: Sometimes in life, the questioner says, you have to be selfish. You may hurt others in that selfishness and they may hurt you.
1:22:42 What is the answer? Is that right sir? Is that the question?
1:22:50 Q: You have to be egotistic to go the way of freedom.
1:22:58 K: You have to be egotistic to be free. You have to be egotistic to be free. I think we are misusing, or misunderstanding each other in the use of that word ‘egotistic’.
1:23:18 I see something which is true, not because of my temperament or my idiosyncrasy or my conditioning, I see something to be real, to be factual.
1:23:33 Now wait a minute, I’ll show it to you. I see that to belong to any group, psychologically, that to hold any belief is destructive and I don’t belong to any group, to any organisation.
1:24:00 You will call me very selfish, won’t you? Because you think I am having my own way, I am following my idiosyncrasy, my particular character, and so you call me selfish.
1:24:22 Am I, because I see something to be true?
1:24:29 You don’t see, take for instance, nationalism to be a poison.
1:24:36 I see it to be a poison. I say, I don’t belong to any nation, and you say to me, ‘You are very selfish in following your particular opinion’, because you live in opinion and you think that I am also acting according to opinion.
1:25:00 I am not. I see that it is a danger, like I see a snake to be a danger.
1:25:11 If you don’t see it as danger and I see it, why call me egotistic? I am not. So mind must be very clear that it is not acting on idiosyncrasy, temperament, experience – you follow? – but being aware, having an insight – which has nothing whatsoever to do with the past, with my egotism.
1:25:58 Q: Can you go into the question of words and concepts and the problems they cause in communication inside and outside oneself?
1:26:17 K: Can you stand any more of this? We have talked for nearly an hour and a half, can your brains go on receiving any more?
1:26:32 No, don’t say, yes. Well, this will be the last question.
1:26:48 Words are necessary, aren’t they?
1:26:56 Words are necessary to communicate, aren’t they? There are other forms of communication but we will take up with words first.
1:27:08 I want to tell you something, I must use words or a gesture, or a look.
1:27:18 So words become important in communication, that is if we both speak the same language.
1:27:28 And words become important if we both give to that word the same meaning.
1:27:38 If I call that an elephant when it is really a microphone, it has no meaning.
1:27:46 So words have a meaning because they have a common reference between you and me.
1:27:54 And words are also a danger because words are used to convey thoughts – I am thinking one thing, I put it into words and convey it to you.
1:28:19 And if my thought is crooked, not clear, I use the words which are clear to you but therefore bring deception.
1:28:36 I want to deceive you, consciously or unconsciously.
1:28:43 Words are put together by thought and are necessary, and is there other means of communication which are not words?
1:28:59 Can you read my thought without that thought being put into words?
1:29:12 That can be done, obviously it is done. When two people are fairly friendly, fairly sympathetic, fairly interested in the same thing, they can convey very quickly without words.
1:29:28 And is there other means of communication beyond the word and thought?
1:29:38 You understand? I can convey to you that those bells are ringing and it is 12.00 o’clock, I am using words because you are also listening to that bell.
1:30:00 And also I can communicate with you through a gesture, through a look.
1:30:10 And must thought always be expressed in words, and is there thought without the word?
1:30:29 Then what am I communicating with you – you understand?
1:30:39 Look sir: is love a word?
1:30:50 Is love a thought? Is love a sentiment?
1:31:02 If the word is not the thing then how do I communicate the thing to you without the word, without the gesture, without holding your hand and so on?
1:31:19 You follow? How do I communicate that love which is not the word to you when you are used to the word, when to you the word has become tremendously important?
1:31:36 I must keep on telling you, ‘I love you’, ‘I love you’, ‘I love you’.
1:31:43 And if I don’t use the word and I have that thing called love, then how is it communicated?
1:31:53 It can only be communicated to you if you are at the same time, at the same level, at the same intensity, then there is communication without the word.
1:32:08 But to us word is very important, naturally.
1:32:19 And that word can be misunderstood and so on and so on, so on. But there are qualities, there are states, there are certain facts which are incommunicable through words.