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SD72CA1 - Listening is a great miracle
San Diego, California - 16 February 1972
Conversation with A.W. Anderson 1



0:21 Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Dr. Allan W. Anderson J. Krishnamurti was born in South India and educated in England. For the past 40 years he has been speaking in the United States, Europe, India, Australia, and other parts of the world. From the outset of his life’s work he repudiated all connections with organised religions and ideologies and said that his only concern was to set man absolutely unconditionally free. He is the author of many books, among them The Awakening of Intelligence, The Urgency of Change, Freedom From the Known, and The Flight of the Eagle. In dialogue with Krishnamurti is Dr. Allan W. Anderson, professor of religious studies at San Diego State University where he teaches Indian and Chinese scriptures and the oracular tradition. Dr. Anderson, a published poet, acquired his degree from Columbia University and the Union Theological Seminary. He has been honoured with the distinguished Teaching Award from the California State University.
1:34 Anderson: Mr. Krishnamurti, one of the hazards among many of being a professor of religious studies is that people seem invariably to ask you: what is the teaching of so-and-so? And of course one is rather careful about how he answers that. He demurs and says he doesn’t want to speak for somebody else. So I’m delighted that I can ask the man himself: what is it that, as a renowned spiritual teacher, you would care to say you teach?
2:15 Krishnamurti: I think it is rather difficult to put in a few words, isn’t it? We want to cover, don’t we, the whole field of living – death, love, fear, living and the whole conflict of man and whether it is at all possible ever to be free from all this, and to come upon something which is not corruptible by thought. I think that would be more or less what one can say that one talks about.
3:08 A: I see. In what you said, it seems to me that perhaps you are pointing to something in one of the hexagrams in the I Ching, the hexagram called Innocence or The Unexpected, and it seems so, from my reading of your books that you do take very special care to advise us to place ourselves in a state of readiness of a sort to be able to expect what otherwise would be unexpected. Would you say that that is a beginning towards what you pointed to?
3:50 K: Not quite. You see, sir, when one looks at the whole phenomena of man, whether in the East or in the West, they seem to live in such utter chaos and tremendous sorrow consciously or unconsciously, and until you go beyond that, merely to wait in expectancy or to allow oneself to be in a state of innocency, if we can use that word, one can so easily deceive oneself. So one has to lay the foundation for righteous behaviour. From there we have to start. After laying that deeply, then one can begin to go further – not further – then see what happens. But without this sense of... Understanding what behaviour is, what conduct is and bringing order there, I don’t see merely to expect or wait or accept or be in a state of openness – they’re all rather deceptive or rather merely to illusion.
6:04 A: I’m interested in your word ‘righteousness’ here, especially in respect to Chinese thought which in the neo-Confucian tradition talks about seriousness and righteousness as not being different. That seriousness as ‘standing firm’ and righteousness as ‘walking’.

K: Walking, quite.
6:27 A: Now, I wonder whether we’re not getting closer now.
6:30 K: Yes, sir, that’s quite right. Seriousness obviously is necessary – to be serious. But one can be serious about things which one believes in or about a concept, about a dogma. We can be frightfully serious about it and accept it and live with it, but I wouldn’t consider that seriousness. Seriousness implies: to have the capacity to go, to examine very, very deeply and give your whole life to that examination. And in giving your whole life to that, dedicating your whole life to that, you walk in righteousness.
7:34 A: Would you care to say that righteousness would be an embodiment of seriousness?
7:39 K: Yes. Yes.
7:41 A: So then we would agree with the neo-Confucians when they say that righteousness squares the external life, and seriousness the internal life.
7:59 K: Ha, yes. You see, sir, there is a difficulty, isn’t there, when you divide the external and the internal? Isn’t it really one movement, in-flowing and out-flowing, out-flowing and in-flowing like a tide going in and out. There isn’t such clear, definite division between the outer and the inner.
8:28 A: No. I think that’s why they say they’re not different. But they don’t say they’re the same and that interests me, that they should say they’re not different and yet they don’t say that they are the same.
8:42 K: I wonder what we mean by ‘the same’.
8:47 A: Sometimes we mean identical.
8:48 K: When there is diversity and difference, a similarity, one must be careful that the similarity isn’t – it becomes deceptive. You know, the world outside, the world inside are similar and yet not similar. And to hold to the idea that it is similar and definitely alike, then it breaks down.
9:36 A: But there would also be a difficulty of collapsing one into the other too.
9:39 K: Yes, of course, of course.
9:41 A: Right. I take it then that I might have been reading what you’ve written somewhat correctly when you talk about seeing as not something done exclusive of one’s ordinary activities, but while one is doing what he ought to be doing, or while one is living righteously he is at the same time...
10:15 K: Seeing.

A: Seeing, right.
10:19 K: I wonder what we mean by the word ‘seeing’?
10:25 A: I was going to ask you that. I was thinking when I was driving down in the car, ‘Well, I want to ask Mr Krishnamurti what he thinks perhaps Jesus meant when he said as a judgment upon persons that he was speaking to: ‘Having eyes and seeing not; having ears and hearing not’.
10:49 K: Quite.
10:50 A: And I was going to ask you.
10:53 K: Sir, I feel the greatest and the most important thing in all this is the art of seeing or the art of hearing. I mean, to observe without division, without ‘the me’ with all its memories, with all its experiences interfering in the observation. Because ‘the me’, the ego, the self does bring division. And where there is division, there must be conflict. Like, when there are national divisions there are conflicts. So if there is, in observation there is the division between ‘what is’ and the observer, who is ‘the me’ with all the memories, concepts, theories, prejudices, when he looks through those prejudices, concepts, that must create a division, therefore he is not really seeing.
12:21 A: I was interested in how you emphasized ‘i-n-g’ when you said he is not really seeing. So that means that you’re telling me that it’s an on-going process.
12:35 K: Yes. It’s a constant process.
12:38 A: Yes. It’s not a series of blips or episodic.
12:42 K: Not episodic, no.
12:44 A: No, I’ve often wondered about that because sometimes people talk about – and one of our words today comes to mind, ‘high’, being high, having a high, and clearly, if I understand correctly what’s meant by that, it’s not something to be sustained. It’s rather something that is episodic. But now you’re talking about something that’s on-going, that is not episodic.
13:13 K: Sir, that’s why I think we should discuss, talk about a little more what it is to observe. What is implied in seeing or hearing? When I pay attention to what you say, in that attention there is the verbal communication, because we both speak English or French or whatever it is and also in that there is no interpretation of what you are saying, that interpretation according to my framework of reference. So I’m listening to you without interpretation, without translation, without any form of judgment. I’m absolutely listening.
14:22 A: So this is an act of pure intuition, unmediated. Is that what you say?
14:28 K: I wouldn’t call it ‘intuition’. I attend. When I attend, there is no interference of thought.
14:41 A: Well, thought would not stand between your seeing and what is seen.
14:47 K: Yes. ‘What is’ can only be observed totally or read totally, understood totally, when there is no interpretation and no translation, there is no giving a nuance according to my prejudices, inclinations and all the rest of it. So that in this attention the ‘what is’ undergoes a radical change.
15:18 A: Yes. Yes.
15:21 K: And after all, if I am envious, – take that, for the moment – and I attend to it completely, not say, not even use the word, ‘I’m envious’, be totally aware of that feeling, then in that observation there is no division. I am not different from the envy. There is only envy. In that attention, that feeling undergoes a radical change. There is no longer envy left. Whereas there was a division between ‘what is’, which is envy, and saying, ‘I must get over it, conquer it, I must not be envious’, then there is conflict because there is a division.
16:36 A: I suppose many persons must have asked you when you said this that they feel in their heart that what you’re saying is the case and then don’t they often say, ‘How do I do this?’
16:53 K: Ah, yes. Sir, I don’t think there is any ‘how’. The ‘how’ implies a method, a system, a practice and in the ‘how’ there is the implication that you must get over it, you must conquer. When there is this feeling of conquering, then everything must be re-conquered again. When I conquer something it must be re-conquered so I keep this thing going all the time. Whereas if I realize there is no ‘how’ but only the act of attention.
17:47 A: So one must not, I take it, make it a goal that lies beyond the activity.
17:55 K: That’s just it, you see, because we want a goal. The human being wants an end to achieve, a goal to conquer. That gives him a sense of vitality, a sense of well-being, sense of success.
18:13 A: Well, this helps me a great deal to understand the statement that you make in one of your books which falls rather harshly on the ordinary ear, that ‘ideals are idiotic’. We can see that. And you say to yourself, well, I’d better read that again. Maybe I put something there that wasn’t there and you read it again – no, that’s what he says, ‘ideals are idiotic’. But if one understands it in terms of the distinction you’ve made then perhaps we could keep the word ‘ideal’ if we understood it, not as something that lies outside the activity.
19:01 K: Sir, why do we want ideals at all?
19:11 K: I’m faced with ‘what is’ only. There is war. I’m faced with that. Why should I have an ideal about it? I’m faced with the conflict in relationship between two human beings. That is ‘what is’. Why should I have any ideal about it? If it’s only ideals coming into being when I do not know how to deal with these, ‘what is’, but if I know what to do with ‘what is’, when there’s comprehension or understanding ‘what is’, ideals become absolutely meaningless whether the ideal out there or in here. Because ideal implies, doesn’t it, sir, going towards the end, reaching a certain level of perfection, a certain level of fulfillment and so on, and therefore there is always this idea of becoming; never being with ‘what is’.
20:40 A: Perhaps we could think of the word ‘ideal’ simply in terms of referring to going well rather than ill; not in the sense of trying to become well, as a sick man would desire health, but rather that the healthy man is embodying that health, as a finite being he must change.
21:15 K: A healthy man doesn’t know he’s healthy. It’s only the sick man that knows he’s sick.
21:27 A: Yes, I really think I’m beginning to understand your distinction. Much of the difficulty with language about this perhaps arises because of the distinction we make between being and knowing.
21:41 K: Yes. Yes. Yes. Then can we go into that a little bit too, that is, knowing and being in the sense being with ‘what is’. What is knowing? I say I know you. Do I know you? I only know you since I met you the day before yesterday. And in the meantime you might have changed completely. But I have the image of you established in my mind according to that image I say I know you. If I have no image of you, then I’m always seeing you anew, fresh.
22:46 A: Yes. Yes. So we know each other from Monday. We’re seeing each other now. Does one keep the ‘seeing’ with him from the time when he saw before? Or does it become knowledge?
23:17 K: Knowledge, when we talk about knowledge, it’s also the formation of images, isn’t it?
23:26 A: We represent knowledge to ourselves through images, yes.
23:30 K: And that image becomes extraordinarily important in relationship I’ve lived with you, say, ten days, or a month or whatever it is, and from that I gather, I build up a whole series of images and then I say I know you, which is, I know you according to my image and you know me according to your image of me. So our relationship is actually between these two images – the images being the past, the images being the knowledge of each other. You have talked to me harshly, friendly, all the rest of it, and that builds an image and I keep that image, the mind holds to that image. Can the mind meet and yet not let the images interfere?
24:54 A: And then the student looks at you and says, ‘How do I start?’ Do you think that a person hearing that correctly
25:18 K: Yes, that’s right. That’s why seeing and hearing is so important. If I really hear you make that statement, really hear you without any sense of twisting it, without any sense of direction, I listen completely to say, look, love is not pleasure. I listen to that and in the very act of listening I see the truth of it, and that perception does something instantly, that hearing. But when you say love is pleasure or love is not pleasure and I pay casual attention to it, it means nothing. But if I give my heart, my mind, my whole being to that act of listening, to what you say, then there is no division between the verbal statement and the fact.
26:46 A: Do you think this is what little children do when they attend, as they seem to, with such intensity – the span of attention, isn’t very long – but when they do attend, they seem to bring forward the sort of intensity that we see in the animal.
27:08 K: In that case, the children – I’ve taught a few children – they attend completely, absorbed by something, by a toy. The toy absorbs them, and then when the toy – they’re fed up with the toy or break it up, their absorption goes off. The toy is the instrument of their absorption. It isn’t they’re absorbed.
27:46 A: No, I follow, you, yes. Please go on, yes.
27:54 K: I think that’s what takes place, sir. When an image, a statue, a sentence is so strong, it absorbs people in that. People are absorbed by that, taken over by that, overwhelmed by that, and they think that’s marvelous, you know, forget themselves, they say Christ, Jesus or Buddha has completely absorbed them. Which means they have allowed themselves to be enticed by the image which they have created, and that absorption is a very shallow business. It may last a year or ten years but it’s still very shallow, like a child being enticed by a toy. So, I don’t know if you have observed, sir, the people who are terribly devoted, they are devotees, the thing to which they are devoted is the most important thing. Take that thing away, they get lost, they get frightened, they get annoyed, they get violent. So what we are talking about is this form of attention, of listening so completely, I’m not absorbed by what you’re saying, I’m actually totally listening so that I want to see if what you say is false or true. I must be able to discern, see the falseness in the truth or the truth in falseness. I can’t if I am in any way inclined towards a concept which I hold on to. So I think listening is a great miracle. If I listen that way, I never will ask ‘how’.
30:33 A: One doesn’t, then, prepare himself to receive this miracle?
30:38 K: No, one can’t prepare, then that means again the whole practice.
30:45 A: It does seem to me extraordinary that that very miracle that you’ve mentioned, it sounds a little silly to talk about an extraordinary miracle because a miracle is, of course, out of the ordinary. But would you let me try to repeat what you seem to say to me in answer to the question about this thing because I want to be sure I’ve understood this. If a person is genuinely listening, he has already begun this activity which releases him from the mournful round of pleasure which is consummated and therefore is lost, and now he has a sustained joy. It really does abide.

K: Yes.
32:03 A: That’s what we meant by saying it wasn’t episodic,
32:09 K: No, no.
32:10 A: It wasn’t a series of highs.

K: No.
32:15 A: So if when you’re speaking, say, to a large group of persons, a crowd, or speaking to a small number, it’s possible that somebody will listen regardless of whether we do have huge audience
32:46 K: Sir, it’s really quite a thing, sir. If I am talking superficially, casually and rather hypocritically, and if somebody listens very, very seriously, he’ll spot him immediately, that he’s talking with his tongue in his cheek.
33:11 A: People always say at that point, ‘He’s talking my language’. I know what you mean.
33:19 K: I think, you see, attention in this way goes beyond the verbal communication. I’m not caught by the words you’re using. They don’t trip me over and say, well, he means this, he means that, I don’t mean – you follow? – all that thing that goes on. But if I listen, the images the words create don’t take place. I just listen. I know it sounds rather odd and rather arduous, but it isn’t really.
34:05 A: No, not the activity, no. I’m wondering again about this imposition that a person is in who comes to hear a discussion concerning seeing and hearing, having eyes that really see, having ears that really hear, and they’re not seeing and they’re not hearing, but they say they want to and they think that they’re really serious about wanting to. Is it the case that one like yourself who addresses them, exerts an attractive power upon their attention so that in a sense in spite of themselves they might suddenly start?
35:06 K: Sir, that brings a point which is: whether you’re talking to the conscious mind or to the unconscious.
35:18 A: Yes, yes.
35:20 K: Now which is it that goes on? If you are talking to the conscious mind, then the conscious mind can argue, can say ‘No, he’s right, he’s wrong, he should say this’ – you follow? You’re all the time comparing with what you know, with what is being said, translating, all that’s going on in the conscious mind. But if you’re talking something which is real, not phony, not wanting to exercise your authority, your influence, your personality, all that nonsense, but actually talking so that you want to convey something to that person totally so that deep down, then you’re touching the very deep, the unconscious, and in that it may say, ‘Well, I reject the whole thing because this is too dangerous. I don’t like this because it will deprive me of my nationality or my belief’. He gets frightened at such thought. Or he’s also, because he’s not familiar with all the contents of the unconscious, there may be a space in which what is being said enters without his knowing. After all, all the subliminal advertising, advertisements are this kind of tricks, so one has to be careful – not careful – one has really to be totally indifferent to the audience. I don’t know if you get this?
37:23 A: Yes, that reminds me of a saying of Jesus which when I was a child disturbed me very much because it sounded impossibly unfair when he said, ‘I speak to them in parables that hearing they might not hear and seeing they might not see’. Now, I take it, if we look at it from the perspective that you brought forward, that he might have been saying: I’m speaking to them in parables, but hearing they won’t hear simply with their argumentative mind.
37:56 K: Argumentative quite, quite.
37:58 A: And that seeing they won’t see as though to discern holes in what I’m saying. but you see that’s the difficulty. You see, our consciousness has so many things in it what Jesus said, what Plato said, what Buddha said, what somebody said, and our own experiences, our own incidents, happenings, misfortunes, sorrow, it’s such a vast content. And the content is our consciousness. You can’t separate the two. Now, and in listening, are you adding to the content, making another object to hold on, or in listening, you’re emptying the content? So, when you empty the content, your consciousness as ‘the me’ is not, and therefore you’re listening with quite a different élan, with quite a different dimension, if I can use that word without being misunderstood. So that’s very interesting. I don’t know if you want to go into it. Whether you’re adding to the content and therefore making the content more heavy, having more problems, or, in listening the content is fading away – even what you’re saying is fading away so that your mind is completely, delicately empty, new.
40:19 A: Yes, I was thinking that we would, of course, immediately think there’s something wrong with anyone who had such a notion, but the idea of a train came to mind – someone thinking that the nature of a train was merely adding on freight cars and he just never takes a ride. He just never realizes that the train is ordered to journey and consequently nothing starts.
40:48 K: It’s like a man plowing, plowing, plowing, never sowing. You see, and all these swamis, yogis, all the teachers that come over, they’re all adding, adding, adding to the content. And the analyst comes along and says, ‘Let us add some more to it or analyze more the content’; never saying, ‘Look, empty the content and see what happens’ – which is total freedom.
41:35 A: And he isn’t supposed to ask how he’s going to start emptying.
41:38 K: This is it, sir. Not ‘how’, but the art of listening, the art of seeing very clearly.
41:50 A: Do you think that we ask ‘how’ in relation to ‘art’ because ‘art’ is usually thought of as a skill and a skill is regarded as a ‘how to’.
42:03 K: Yes, technical skill.
42:07 A: But, of course, art does have the other meaning of joining together.
42:13 K: Yes, fitting. Art means to fit.

A: To fit. The Latin has that notion of bringing together. I have a feeling that ancient man, as different from modern man, really thought that’s what ‘knowing’ meant.
42:33 K: Putting everything in place.
42:36 A: Yes. Seeing the thing in terms of what it is, is to know.
42:46 K: Obviously.

A: But later we got away from that.
42:52 K: Don’t you think, sir, we have made knowledge as the most extraordinarily important thing?
43:04 A: Accumulating information.

K: Accumulating information.
43:08 A: Yes I know. Yes, I have a rather dramatic time with my classes about that because I tell them that there won’t be any memory work to speak of in this course because there’s no sense in trying to memorize all this stuff if we haven’t got to the heart of the matter yet.
43:25 K: Quite. Quite.
43:26 A: And invariably, after about a week or two, someone comes up and says to me, ‘But, I really don’t know what’s going on!’. And of course the reason that they don’t know what’s going on is because they have bought this concept, thought, and they hang onto it, like the man hanging onto a precipice, if he lets go, he thinks he’s killed.
43:55 K: Do you remember that story of a teacher who had a disciple, and the disciple stayed with him for fifteen years and at the end of fifteen years, he says, ‘Master, I haven’t learned. I am nowhere. Where am I? I’m just what I was and I’m sorry I have to leave you because you have taught me nothing’. He goes away and comes back ten years later. He says, ‘Master, I’ve got it!’ He says, ‘What have you got?’ ‘You see that river over there, I can walk across it. I’ve taken fifteen years to learn that’. And the teacher says, ‘Don’t you know there’s a boat round the corner’.
44:52 A: Acquiring a power. There’s a marvelous story too about St. Anthony and his disciples that I’ve always cherished very much. When the disciple came running to him and said, ‘St. Anthony, the Lord vouchsafed me a vision. He did, a vision’. And the old Saint said, ‘Did he now? Well, go back and pray a little more and it’ll go away’. What a shock! He thought he had it made. Well, I’m very much taken with this point that while on the one hand, seeing, and hearing, as you brought it forward, are not transferable, and on that account, since you said they were miracles, that they couldn’t be, and yet somehow or other it starts. I take it that one does nothing about that. One simply waits.
46:15 K: I think that is really, sir, to hear, and then that act of hearing is a seed that’s operating without your knowing it. It’s like that robber who was dying and he gathered all his four sons, he said, ‘The Lord blessed us. We’ve gathered and robbed so well, nobody has caught us, and we have accumulated a great deal of money. We must bless the Lord’. And he dies. And the four sons take him to the burning ground and come back. And in the square there’s a man talking about goodness, being good, righteous, and the three other sons don’t hear before they see what it is and close their ears. And the fourth son closes his ears like them, but he treads on a thorn and he has to move his hands. Then he hears the preacher saying, ‘Be good. Be kind. Don’t hurt anybody’. And that hearing, from that day he ceased to be a robber. You follow?

A: Yes, I do.
47:43 K: It is that sense of acute hearing
47:50 A: It makes it as though it’s undertaken obliquely.
47:54 K: Yes. It does. You can’t invite the thing. If you could invite it, then it’s finished, like these people who say, ‘Invite God, will of God’, all that, it’s this desire to invite something immeasurable into your petty little mind.
48:26 A: It’s interesting that he stepped on a thorn. He was shocked and he suffered.

K: Who, sir?
48:34 A: This robber who, in stepping on the thorn, came to hear, but it was attended by a shock.

K: Yes.
48:46 A: And by suffering.
48:48 K: Yes, if you like to put it that way.
48:52 A: Not that he went out and tried to suffer in order to hear.
48:56 K: No, no.
48:57 A: Or that he went around looking for thorns to step on, because the thorn would give him the feeling. No, no, but it is interesting that in the story there was a shock.
49:07 K: No, sir, I mean this question of sorrow and shock, must one go through life with sorrow? Must one have sorrow in order that sorrow opens the door. Must one go through that?
49:35 A: That one does, doesn’t mean one must.
49:37 K: One does, but is it essential? Is it right? Is it true? Sorrow of any kind, sir. My son dies. It’s a tremendous shock because I’ve invested all kinds of things in him and it’s a tremendous shock and great sorrow. Either in that sorrow I withdraw, become hard, cynical, bitter, enclosed, or, that sorrow forces me to seek comfort in a theory, in an idea, in a conclusion, or, that sorrow has no answer. Only that sorrow exists and not to move away from it, just ‘what is’. Remain with ‘what is’.
50:56 A: See it.
50:57 K: See, hear it, listen to it, find out. You follow? Listen completely to it. Then it throws you right out. So there are these three categories of human beings who – I don’t know if anybody does remain complete with sorrow, not get embittered, hopeless, dispirited – you know all that – but to remain with it as you remain with a lovely flower. And you’re looking at it. You’re seeing it.
51:33 A: You’re not looking at it in order to get rid of it.
51:35 K: No.
51:36 A: That’s not what you mean. Yes, I understand that. That seems to be a terribly important thing to stress because perhaps persons do have the notion, at least they seem to me oftentimes in conversation with students I get the feeling that they will undertake to try to find out what seeing and hearing is in the hope that when they’re found they won’t have to be unhappy anymore. They won’t have to be sorrowful anymore, and that’s plainly incorrect.
52:11 K: No. You see, sir, take Christianity: the whole of sorrow is given over to one man and they worship sorrow. And the whole Asiatic world says sorrow is bad karma – karma being what you did in past life is you’re paying for it this life and bear with it, go on with it, suffer over it and later on, in next life, you’ll get rid of it. It’s the same, you follow?

A: Oh, yes. Yes.
52:53 K: They never say, look, let’s find, let’s end it, not give it over to somebody or to some theory, but let’s find out if there is a way of living in which sorrow doesn’t exist. I think that’s tremendously important because sorrow does dreadful things to human beings.
53:21 A: It is a fact that many Christians have that idea. And it is especially strange because Jesus patently said that it was a joy that he came to give.
53:33 K: No, but you know what I mean.
53:35 A: Yes. I know exactly what you mean. I didn’t mean by saying that to contradict what you said.
53:41 K: No, no, sir.
53:49 K: I think it is, you know, the ancient literature of India, Rig Veda, in that, I’ve been told, there is no mention of God at all, only the love of beauty, nature, love of light – you follow? – the sun and all that. And it was so simple the priests came along and said, ‘Look, this is too simple. Let’s make it a little complicated’ and began. I think that’s what happens with all these things.
54:27 A: Of course there is a way of reading the Rig Veda in which one does walk around in this wonderland where these gods are not seen as over against one, but rather the energies that inform one so that he is able to undertake seriousness and righteousness. But then we’re back again. One can’t really communicate that in the sense of transfer that relation to this text.

K: Oh, no. You see that opens up this whole question of personal experience. I mean, we want reality as a personal experience. And so many people say, ‘I have experienced truth. I have become enlightened, self-realized’, all that business, which is all personal achievement. I think this is so totally wrong because truth isn’t yours or mine. It’s there.
55:48 A: If one sees and hears the way you’ve been pointing out the case, then self-actualization takes care of itself. You don’t have to work at it.

K: That’s it, Yes.
55:58 A: I see what you mean. Now we certainly do have the notion that self-actualization is something to screw ourselves up into all sorts of muscular effort to attain to.
56:11 K: I think it’s the same thing as when you have a weak muscle, you practise, you do things to strengthen it. That same idea is carried over psychologically and you thereby say, ‘Well, I must practise, I must gain’ – you follow? All that comes in, whereas the psychological strengthening is the ending of the conflict, not the practising of overcoming conflict.
56:42 A: We run by running.

K: Yes.
56:45 A: Right. Yes, no, I think I understand.
56:49 K: I think we’ll have to stop.