Krishnamurti Subtitles home


SD72CES2 - Ending disorder is the ending of death
San Diego, California - 17 February 1972
Conversation with Eugene Shallert 2



0:03 Q: Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Father Eugene Schallert 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 the Rev. Eugene J. Schallert of the Society of Jesuits, the Director of the Center for Sociological Research at the University of San Francisco where Father Schallert is an Associate Professor of Sociology.
1:01 S: In order to achieve this seeing that we have been discussing, one must arrive at a state in which he is attentive and freely or choicelessly attentive to the other – perhaps we could use: he can give his undivided attention to the other.
1:25 K: Yes, yes.
1:26 S: And before we take the next step, could I say that we are really not looking for an answer to the question 'what is seeing?'. Are we not looking for seeing itself which is really not an answer?
1:41 K: Is there an answer, sir, when there is real perception – actually what is – is there an answer?
1:52 S: Perception is not an answer. I must insist with you that perception is not an answer.
1:59 K: But... there is perception of what is: what is in the world, what is in me – I am the world and the world is me. That perception, not a conceptual perception but actual perception, the world is me and I am the world. There's no division between me and the world. I am the world. There is perception. What takes place in that perception? That's what you're asking, sir?
2:37 S: I'm asking, yes, what takes place in that perception. It's difficult for us to use a word because, in a sense for so long we have taken each other, our dualities, our world, as a given, taken it for granted, and because of this predisposition to take things for granted, I think we have, in a sense made it impossible or difficult for us to simply perceive. But once we can control this and say we are really interested in is the simple perception that precedes all rational, logical knowledge, all of our biases and prejudices, and from which these biases do not come. Then we are ready to ask…

K: Or rather, wouldn't we put it there is no perception if there's a bias.
3:30 S: No perception if there's a bias. A bias is that which precisely makes perception impossible. It's when I do not want to perceive you...
3:39 K: Of course, I build a barrier.

S: I build a barrier.
3:42 K: Whether the barrier of religion, barrier of politics, barrier of whatever it is.
3:48 S: Now, if it is true that in the pursuit of seeing you… in the pursuit of the perception of you, what is needed within me is not me.
4:05 K: Yes, that's right.
4:07 S: And what is needed within you is not you. Then when we speak of such things as perception, are we not in some way or another speaking of oneness or truth?
4:18 K: I would not come to that yet. To me, it seems seeing the world is me and I am the world – or I am you and… I mean, seeing, psychologically, whether I'm a Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, we are the same – psychologically, inwardly, we are all in the state of confusion, battle, misery, sorrow, with appalling sense of loneliness, despair. That's the common ground of all humanity. There is that perception. Now, what takes place when there is that perception?
5:06 S: That is what we're trying to pursue and to explain – without explaining it.
5:11 K: We're going to share together in this. There is perception of sorrow. Let's take that. My son, my brother, my father dies. What takes place, generally, is: I escape from it because I can't face this sense of tremendous danger of loneliness, of despair. So I escape – escape in ideology, in concepts, in a dozen ways. Now, to perceive the escape just to perceive, not check it, not control it, not say, 'I mustn't perceive', just to be aware, choicelessly again, aware that you're escaping. Then the escape stops. The momentum of escape is a wastage of energy. You've stopped that energy – not you have stopped – perception has ended the wastage, therefore you have more energy, there is more energy. Then, when there's no escape, you're faced with the fact of what is. That is: you have lost somebody! Death, loneliness, despair. That is exactly what is. There, again, a perception of what is.
7:04 S: I think I see the direction you are taking. What you want to say is that when I perceive that you are sorrowful – I don't perceive sorrow, it doesn't exist by itself – so when I perceive that you are sorrowful, what I perceive is that you have been separated, and this is a source of sorrow because now your father is dead and you are separated. And in perceiving that sorrow is associated with separation…
7:37 K: Not quite, sir.

S: Or am I not perceiving that joy is associated with…
7:42 K: No, sir, not yet, no. The fact is I have lost somebody. That's a fact – burned, gone. And it is something gone finally! You can't... And I feel tremendously lonely – that's a fact – lonely, without any sense of relationship without a sense of any security. I'm completely at the end.
8:18 S: Many people speak of this as saying, 'I am empty now.'
8:24 K: Yes, empty. And there is an awareness of this emptiness of this loneliness, of this despair. I say when you don't escape you conserve the energy. Now there is this conservation of energy when I'm facing the fear of my loneliness. I meet it. You're aware of it. There is an awareness of this fear of loneliness.
9:01 S: But now, how can you give your undivided attention to someone whom you have lost, simply and finally?
9:13 K: I've lost him finally, but now we're examining the state of the mind that has lost.
9:22 S: Yes, we're trying to understand…
9:25 K: …the mind that says, 'I've lost everything. I'm really in desperate sorrow.' Right? And there is fear. See that fear, don't run away, don't escape, don't try to smother it by courage and all the rest of it – see that fear be choicelessly aware of that fear. In that awareness fear disappears. It does disappear! Then you have now greater energy.
10:03 S: Yes, and we have all experienced that, how seeing fear disarms fear.
10:10 K: Next, what is there? Why is there sorrow? What is sorrow? Self-pity?
10:20 S: When it's associated with anxiety or fear then we will have to call it self-pity.
10:26 K: Self-pity. What does that mean, self-pity? You see that means: me is more important than the person who is dead.
10:35 S: And so you didn't give your undivided attention to that person.
10:38 K: I never loved that man! My child, I never loved that child. I never loved my wife or husband, sister. In this state of awareness there is the discovery that love never existed.
10:59 S: Or, in the discovery of of a sorrow which is associated with grief or with separation or with fear, there is the discovery that love has been horribly limited, if it existed at all.
11:14 K: I didn't have it! I couldn't have it! Love means something entirely different. So, now there is tremendous energy – you follow, sir? – no escape, no fear, no sense of self-pity, concern about myself, my anxiety... Out of this sense of sorrow there is this bubbling energy which is really love.
11:48 S: Which is really love. So now we have discovered that when one gives his undivided attention to another…
11:56 K: No! I have not given my attention to the person who is dead, my father, my son, my brother. There has been attention to the state of my mind the mind which says, 'I suffer' !
12:12 S: Yes, but we have been trying to examine what 'I suffer' means in the context of what choiceless attention means.
12:22 K: Yes. So I find love is... a total attention.
12:32 S: Love is a total attention.
12:34 K: Without any division. I think this is really important because you see, sir, for us, love is pleasure – sexual, other ways – love is pleasure, and love is fear, love is jealousy, love is possessiveness, domination, aggression – you follow? We use that word to cover up all this: love of God, love of man, love of country, and so on. All that is the love of my concern about myself.
13:14 S: Yes, all of that is self-love.

K: Obviously.
13:16 S: But it's the me that is being loved not the self that is being loved.
13:20 K: That's no love. That's a tremendous discovery. That requires great honesty to say, 'By Jove, I've never really loved anybody.' I pretended, I've exploited, I have adjusted myself to somebody but the fact that I've never known what it means to love. That's a tremendous honesty, sir, to say that I thought I loved and I never found it. Now I've come upon something which is real! Which is, I've watched what is and moved from there. There is an awareness of what is and that awareness moves – it is a living thing – it doesn't come to a conclusion.
14:17 S: Now why is it that in our attempt to pursue the question of undivided attention, or choiceless attention, or simple seeing that we very naturally slipped into the question and it's not really logical, it's very naturally slipped into the question of simple loving, as opposed to fictitious or fraudulent loving or conditioned loving. There must be something about the loving and the seeing process which is so similar that we can slip from seeing to loving and really be discussing the same thing. And as we move well, move is not a good word

K: No, I understand, sir.
15:09 S: as we become aware of… as we develop this undivided attention, this choiceless awareness…
15:17 K: If I may suggest, don't use the word – I humbly suggest – 'develop'. That means time. Sir, be aware!
15:27 S: Be aware. We are struggling with words, because…
15:30 K: Be aware of the carpet – the colour, the shape, the form, be aware of that. Don't say, 'I like, don't like, this is good' just be aware of it, and then, from that, grows the flame of awareness, if one can so call it.
15:51 S: Haven't you said the same thing in different words by saying, 'Be aware of the other, of the carpet, of the tree, of the universe within which you live?' And then you translate into another level of perception and you say, 'Love the carpet, love the tree, love the universe.' And you don't feel that there's a difference between being aware or seeing undividedly and loving undividedly or unconditionally.
16:23 K: No, sir, when you are so aware, there is that quality of love. You don't have to say 'be or not be' – it is there. It is like a perfume in a flower – it is there!
16:33 S: The two are… they're not different sides of the same coin. They're the same coin.

K: It is the same thing, same coin.
16:39 S: With no sides at all. Yes. So that then to see in this undivided way, choiceless way, and to love in this choiceless way must be one and the same thing.
16:52 K: It is, sir, but the difficulty is we are so eager to get this thing that we lose the real thread of it, the beauty of it.
17:06 S: Now suppose that we were to move our discussion one more step or maybe another step because there's not more, and say that as far as we can perceive, to be aware and to love are one and the same thing. Could we move one step further and say to be is the same as to see and to love?
17:33 K: No, what do you mean by, if I may ask, the word 'to be'? Everybody says, 'I am.' The whole young generation at present says 'I want to be'. What does that mean?
17:46 S: I'm sure it means very little. I think it means be active or be possessive.
17:52 K: Yes, be possessive, be angry, be violent. I am – that is what I am.
17:56 S: So then the word 'to be' has a connotation about it, associated with activity, which can only follow from this inner energy which is what to be means.
18:05 K: So, sir, all this brings us to a question: whether man can change at all. That is the fundamental… It seems to me that's one of the major questions in the present world. The structure and the nature of human beings have to change.
18:30 S: Well, when you use words like 'structure' and 'nature' those mean categories to me.

K: No, the way he lives.
18:37 S: Can man's lifestyle change?
18:39 K: Yes. The way he lives, the appalling pettiness, the ugliness the violence, you know, what is going on.
18:48 S: I would say that there should be nothing but despair relative to the question of change, if the change we're dealing with was the creation of new categories to replace old categories.
19:01 K: No, no, I don't mean that.
19:03 S: If on the other hand we were dealing with the question of changing from the without to the within – can men do this? – from the 'to do' to the 'to be', from the pretence of love to love, from the perception of categories to seeing, can men change in that direction? I would have to ask – do men? And they do! You have done it. I have done it.
19:25 K: Sir, I mean…
19:27 S: Will men do it?
19:30 K: Because man has lived as he has lived, with such appalling brutality, such a deception, such lies, hypocrisy and all the rest of it. If I have a son, a brother, that's my concern, my responsibility. Not to change him but to see what it is. I don't want him to imitate me or conform to my pattern which is absurd, or my belief – I have none of that. So I say, 'Look, how is it possible for a human being to change?' Change not into a particular pattern, to bring about a total psychological revolution.
20:26 S: If I were to start some place, Krishnaji, I believe I would start with you. Not because I think you need changing because I don't, nor because I think you would want to change but because I think you want to teach, you want to share. You have received so much joy from understanding and from loving that this radiates from within you. Now, if you wanted to teach someone that there's more to be seen than is seen – and the more is not quantitative but in depth – maybe I would want to change you in this direction that when you speak of the world and its conflict and its tensions, and its violence, and its hypocrisy, that you may also address yourself to another question – which I'm sure you have done but don't speak of it – not only the endurance of inner conflict or exterior conflict but the endurance of inner joy and exterior joy.
21:38 K: Sir, now wait a minute.
21:40 S: These are always there when you talk but they are not expressed.
21:43 K: When does joy come? When I don't seek it. I mean, it happens! I don't have to cultivate it, the mind hasn't to pursue it.
22:02 S: Yes, the mind cannot pursue joy.
22:06 K: Therefore I have to understand… an understanding must take place of what is pleasure and what is joy. That's where we mix…
22:21 S: We mix our levels, yes.
22:24 K: To understand joy is more important than to understand pleasure sorry – to understand pleasure is far more important than to understand joy. Because we want pleasure, we pursue pleasure. Everything is our pleasure – the whole moral social structure is based on this enormous pleasure. And pleasure does breed fear, insecurity, and all the rest of it. Now, in the understanding of pleasure, the other thing comes. You don't have to talk about it. The other thing flows, like a fountain. You don't even call it joy, it's ecstasy, something…
23:14 S: Are you saying then that in the pursuit of fear through escape, or in the pursuit of…
23:22 K: …joy, I mean pleasure.
23:24 S: Or in the pursuit of pleasure – in both pursuits we find death and also a death to the dissipation of energy that keeps us from being joyous.

K: That's right, that's right.
23:35 S: And from being joyous, and seeing, and being loving, or simply being it's all the same thing.
23:44 K: You see, through negation the positive is.
23:50 S: Yes.
23:51 K: Not the positive. Assert the positive is to negate the real.
24:00 S: But as we have said before to negate the categories is really not what we are dealing with, nor are we dealing with the negation of seeing simply. We're dealing with the negation of all of those obstacles, like pleasure, to joy. Because unless you negate pleasure you will never be joyous. And when you're joyous you're also quite pleasurable.
24:24 K: You don't talk about it. The moment you're conscious that you're joyous, it goes. Like being happy, and you say, 'How happy I am!' It becomes nonsense when you say, 'How happy I am!'
24:38 S: Yes, because now you've rationalized it and put it in a category, now it becomes something to speculate about rather than do, to be. At the same time, since we are pursuing as deeply as we can… pursuing seeing and understanding and loving or this undivided attention, since we're pursuing that and we found that one cannot pursue it except by negating fear or negating pleasure…
25:07 K: Yes, sir. Understanding pleasure understanding the whole nature of pleasure.
25:13 S: Then we must ask ourselves, if these are not the avenues to seeing or loving or being – and I suppose we will ultimately get to the question of being, or being one, we may get to that question because we want to discover that you are one with the world and the world is one with you and you are one with myself and I am one with you: we want to discover that. And we've seen that seeing must take place, and loving must take place, an awareness of being must take place – we've seen what to do to get rid of what gets in the way of the most exhilarating of all experiences or realities, the reality of just being – I am, enough. I don't need these things to be – here I am. Then what would you think would be the next step – and we're not talking about process or method now – what would you perceive would be the next step?
26:11 K: Next step of what?

S: In the development…
26:15 K: From what?
26:17 S: From this undivided attention that we discussed earlier and from this loving which we found to be the same as attention choiceless attention, and from this being which we found to be the same as loving and seeing or understanding and now we're trying to pursue your…
26:39 K: What takes place next? What happens?
26:41 S: …experience of – I don't like to use the word 'oneness' because that gets us at the end before we go to the middle thing but what does one do next after one has seen, and has loved and has been?
26:56 K: One lives, sir.

S: One lives. So that to live is the same as to love and to see, in any real sense.
27:03 K: But it means, sir, the understanding of death.
27:10 S: The understanding of death.
27:12 K: Death. Because to love, one must die.
27:19 S: Unquestionably.
27:21 K: So there must be the investigation, the understanding the awareness, what it means to die. Without that there is no love.
27:34 S: But could not this be a fiction, because who is to tell us what it's like to die?

K: We're going to find out.
27:40 S: Find, good.

K: I don't want anybody to tell me, because that means authority.
27:46 S: Well, it means dead people, who can't speak.
27:48 K: Not only that. The whole Asiatic world believes in reincarnation, as you know, and, in the Christian world, the resurrection and so on. To find this out one must investigate if there is any permanent thing in me that reincarnates, that is reborn, resurrected, one must enquire into this question, if there is anything permanent. Permanent? Nothing is permanent! The carpets go, all the structure, the technological thing, all the things man has put together is... in a flux.
28:43 S: You are not suggesting that the measure is permanent. You are not suggesting that the measure is permanent.
28:49 K: Measure?

S: The measure. You were born and you have lived and you will die, and this will take you a certain number of years.
28:59 K: Seventy years, thirty years, twenty years, whatever it is.
29:01 S: Is the measure real or are you real?
29:03 K: No, no. I am not talking in terms of measure.
29:06 S: So then if the measure isn't real but something external to you then do we have a right to say that you end simply?
29:16 K: We are coming to that. You know, the whole Greek world thought in terms of measurement.
29:27 S: Yes.
29:28 K: And the whole Western world is based on measurement. And the Eastern world said, measure is illusion. And they went into other kind of…

S: …measures.
29:40 K: Yes, other kind of measure and they called it immeasurable. Now, I am saying, sir life, living, as we now live, is a conflict. What we call love is the pursuit of pleasure. What we call death is an avoidance, is fear, dread of it. And being afraid, so completely, of such an ending we have reincarnation theory, various other theories which give us great satisfaction, great comfort. And that is not an answer.
30:19 S: It keeps us from seeing the reality.
30:21 K: So, negate all that. So there must be the understanding of death. What is death? There is the physiological ending. We don't mind that. We all see death everywhere. But what human beings are concerned with is the psychological ending the 'me' ending – the me which says, 'I own this house' my property, my wife, my husband, my knowledge; I am going to lose all that, therefore I don't want to lose. The known is more attractive than the unknown. The known is the factor of fear.

S: In a rational world.
31:12 K: We are taking, looking at it.

S: Yes.
31:15 K: So I have to understand what does death mean? Does it mean that there is a permanent entity – call it the soul, the Hindus call it the atman, doesn't matter what name you give it – a permanent entity that never dies but evolves: resurrected, reincarnated, in time. Is there such thing as permanent entity? Not a theory not a speculative assertion, 'There is or there is not' but to find out for oneself if there is a permanent entity, the 'me' that says, 'I must survive.' Therefore I must have future lives, whether in heaven or doesn't matter. Is there such thing? Which is psychologically. Which thought has put together as the 'me'.
32:24 S: I cannot conceive of there being a permanent entity associated with what we call the me.
32:30 K: Obviously.

S: Obviously, yes.
32:32 K: Then is there a permanent me apart from that?
32:35 S: But then we can ask the question – is there something immeasurable about me, apart from that?
32:43 K: The moment you say, 'The me is the immeasurable' then I am back again.
32:47 S: You are back again, right. Apart from the self, the not me.
32:51 K: I am going to find out.

S: Yes. Now we must pursue that.
32:54 K: That's it. There must be discovery of whether there is the immeasurable or not. Not: 'there is' or 'there is not', one must come upon it, the mind must come upon it. So, there is no permanent self – higher, lower – no permanency. Therefore what is, then, death? Physically, biologically, there is death.
33:25 S: This we all understand. We see it all the time.
33:27 K: Everything goes. What one is afraid of is the psychological accumulation in relationship of every form of image, knowledge, function – that's what we are frightened of losing. That takes the form of the 'me' which is going to evolve, become more and more perfect till it reaches heaven or whatever. We see that is false. Then what is death?
34:04 S: You were suggesting that we can discover the meaning of the words 'to live' by looking for the meaning of the words 'to die.'
34:14 K: They are related.

S: They are related. Unquestionably they are related.

K: They are related.
34:18 S: And most religious writers in comparative religion have said, that in order to live one must die.
34:25 K: Sir, as I don't read these books or any of these things it is an actual fact. To live you must die. Which means, dying means dying every day to all the accumulations that you have gathered during the day, ending each day, dying, so that the mind is fresh every day, is new.
34:46 S: Yes. Now, in order to pursue the question of 'to live' by looking at the question of 'to die' and looking at it finally.
34:56 K: We do.
34:57 S: The ultimate death, the body has disintegrated in the grave.
35:01 K: The body is important, to look after it, care for it, and all the rest of it.

S: But bury it when it is dead.
35:07 K: Get rid of it. Bury it, burn it – it's simpler.
35:12 S: Yes. Now suppose that we want to see what happens when one dies in order to see what happens when one lives. That's what we're doing.

K: That's it. Therefore I must first understand what it means to live not what it means to die. One's life as it is is a turmoil – as it is. It is chaos, it is a mess, with all kinds of ideals, conclusions – it is a mess. Now, if there is no order in this mess I can't understand what death is. Because death is perfect order. I don't know if you see.
35:59 S: What do you mean, because order to me is something imposed from without.
36:02 K: Wait, sir, I'm coming to that. Death is perfect order because it is the ending of disorder.
36:08 S: All right. I understand. Yes.
36:14 K: So, there must be the ending of disorder in my living.
36:22 S: Yes.
36:23 K: And the ending of disorder is to be aware of what is disorder, choicelessly. What is disorder? My belief, my gods, my country, my saying, 'This is better' – you follow? – all this terrible violence. See it as it is. And when you see it as it is without separation you have energy – as we went into that. Then in perceiving disorder there is order, which is harmony. Now, having established that – established in the sense: see it, realize, be it – then death is not separate from order, they are together. Order means the ending of disorder.
37:20 S: Yes, and disorder or order, means a consciousness of my presence within you or your presence within me, or of our oneness. We must pursue the question of our becoming aware or giving this undivided attention or loving each other in which each other is eliminated. Now this is a duality.
37:50 K: There is only a state... Look, sir, there is no you and me.
37:53 S: Yes.

K: I am not you and you are not me. There is that quality of awareness, choiceless, that sense of attention, in which the me and the you ceases. You don't say: 'It's unity', unity implies division.
38:13 S: But you are using unity in the mathematical sense now. I am using unity... Oneness to me implies no, oneness to me means the same as undivided attention.

K: Yes.
38:28 S: It doesn't mean division. It doesn't presuppose division.
38:31 K: You see, sir, we are discussing what does it mean to live, to love and to die. That is, the ending of disorder is the ending of death. I don't know there's great beauty in this. In that state there is not you and me – there is no division. Then you can find out in that state what is the immeasurable. Only then you can find out not before, because then it becomes merely speculation, or somebody says, 'There is the immeasurable,there is no God or God' – that has no value. Only when there is this complete order, really mathematical order, born out of disorder, not a blueprint imposed on disorder, then you will find out, then the mind discovers whether there is an immeasurable or not. That, nobody can say, 'yes' or 'no'. If you don't see it, if there is no perception of the immeasurable then it merely becomes conceptual. And most religions live on conceptual.
40:05 S: Suppose we were to pursue this question of order as the next step and ask ourselves, when we say things like this, that peace harmony, like the harmony of my fingers working together or like the harmony of you and I in our dialogue, if we were to say that peace or harmony is the tranquillity that's associated with order, and wanted to say and what more do we mean by order than just orderliness?
40:38 K: Oh my! Orderliness every housewife has.
40:43 S: Yes, and can be in complete turmoil in the possession of orderliness.
40:46 K: Turmoil inside. We are talking not only outward order but deep, inward order.
40:51 S: Yes. Now, what does this deep, inward can I use the word 'ordination' rather than 'order'?
40:56 K: Ordination – I don't know quite what…
40:58 S: The ordination of one to another, then remove the divisions.
41:04 K: Ordination. If we understand by that word order in the sense no conflict, no friction, no sense of me being bigger than you, or no comparison, no sense of ambition, greed...
41:24 S: Possession
41:25 K: the real quality of mind which is not concerned with all this bilge with all this nonsense – then that is order.
41:35 S: Yes. So then order and peace and tranquillity, which is energy in its fullness rather than the lack of energy. It's not activity but it's the fullness of energy, so it's dynamic.
41:51 K: That is necessary, isn't it? When there is that complete order, the mind is no longer in conflict therefore has abundance of energy.
42:04 S: And what has been done, by you or by me, as we relate to each other in order to achieve this order that we are speaking about?
42:18 K: You can't achieve it. Out of being aware of disorder, choicelessly, order comes naturally.
42:27 S: But is it true that many people do not achieve order? And we were also asking the question: 'Can we change disorder into order or can we change death into life, can we change hate into love can we change blindness into seeing?' These are the questions we've been dealing with. and we haven't answered the question: can this change take place? Just there it is, you know. But if we wanted to deal with this…
42:54 K: I or you listen to what is being said. You give your whole attention not as a Catholic or this or that – you give your complete attention! In that state of attention there is a transformation. You are no longer a Hindu, Buddhist or whatever it is you have finished with all that. You are now a total human being. Then you go round talking about it – you follow? You are active, you are an outsider operating on the world. But you are not of the world but an outsider.
43:43 S: Would you say that in our conversation that the closer we get to the truth, the less conscious you become of the fact that I am a Catholic priest? Does it matter?
43:54 K: Not in the least.

S: Not in the least.
43:56 K: But it is up to you.
43:58 S: And it has not mattered to me whether you are a priest or not a priest. I haven't even thought of that because I am giving choiceless attention to you.
44:05 K: It makes a little difference. It makes a difference. Take, for instance, I have met in India and elsewhere... Several Hindus have come to me and said 'Why don't you put on sannyasis robes?' You know, sannyasis, the monks robe. I said, 'Why should I?' 'To show that you are not of the world.' I said, 'Look, I'm not wanting to show anything to anybody.' This is real to me, that's good enough. If you want to come and listen, listen. But don't go by my garb, by my gesture, by my face, that's not important. But to them it is important because they use that as a platform from which to attack or to distract or to take. But if you are not standing on any platform, if you don't belong to anything, why should I have any collar, no collar, no shirt… [laughs]
45:12 S: But I think as we pursue the question of what it means to live and to die, to be and to not be, to love and to hate as we pursue those things, we must also at the same time pursue the question: what does it mean to belong? Now, if you asked me, 'Do you belong to the Catholic Church?' I would say, 'Of course not' because I am not a thing which can be possessed by anyone.

K: Quite.
45:36 S: Nor is the Catholic Church something I possess. So we would not like to use the word 'belong' If we had a love relationship with each other could I say you are my friend?

K: Yes.
45:48 S: No I couldn't because that would connote belonging.
45:50 K: I see what you mean. Yes, yes.
45:52 S: I could not say you were my friend. We use the word all the time but the word 'my' distorts what we see when we...
45:58 K: Sir, I am questioning, why do we belong to anything at all?
46:03 S: I don't think we can. If we are free then we are not slaves and we don't belong to anything.

K: That is the main thing.
46:09 S: The possessive relationship is irrelevant.
46:12 K: Not to belong to any organized spiritual or religious group, or belong to a party, this or that. Because that encourages divisions.
46:23 S: Yes. If I am, or if I am free – those mean the same thing then I am not capable of being possessed by anyone. I don't belong. The word doesn't mean anything.
46:32 K: Not to belong means to stand alone.
46:40 S: But this is the contradiction of what we have been saying during the whole time. No, not to belong is the price one must pay for being and loving and seeing anything.
46:56 K: Yes, sir, but also it implies not to belong to any structure which human beings have put together.
47:10 S: Yes.
47:13 K: Which means that you have to stand alone, outside. Not belong to all this mess. Sir, when you have order you don't belong to disorder.
47:28 S: But now I think we are getting close to what we wanted to say that to die is to live.
47:38 K: Sir, is that a concept or a reality?
47:42 S: No, no, that's an experience, that's a reality.
47:45 K: If it is real it is something burning! It isn't just a… it burns everything false!
47:52 S: I see that, and of course we experience this all the time. What I'm saying is, if one can get over the fear of dying and one can understand and live with the fullness of this energy that we're talking about. I think by the same token, if one can get over the question of belonging, or having in any way, one can get to the question that being is. I wonder if this is loneliness, or being alone. I wonder if this is being…
48:28 K: The danger of being, one has to go into that. What is it to be? We can put it into various categories. The category is not being.
48:40 S: But when you suggested that, when we were discussing the question of what it is to be, and we pursued this through the question of dying and belonging, and you said – to be is to be alone. Is that what you want to say?
48:55 K: How can I, sir, if I die to my conditioning as a Hindu… how can I belong to… be a Hindu? It has no meaning.
49:04 S: Fine. But having died to being…
49:07 K: See what happens, sir. I discard, I throw away the garb of Hinduism, or Catholicism, whatever it is, and what takes place? I am an outsider. I am an outsider in the sense I may say, 'I love you' but I am still an outsider, because there is a state of disorder to which human beings belong and the man who is outside, he doesn't belong.
49:37 S: Unquestionably. Or may not have a sense of belonging or cannot use the word 'to belong'. I cannot use the word 'to belong'.
49:43 K: He is out! There is no relationship! Now, when there is no relationship between disorder and order – you follow, sir?

S: I follow.
49:56 K: Then, what is the state of the mind which is not that?
50:04 S: You are suggesting that the state of the mind is one of being alone.
50:09 K: Alone in the sense it is not contaminated, it is really innocent – innocence in the sense it cannot be hurt. After all, the word 'innocency', the root meaning is 'not to be hurt.'
50:28 S: Yes.
50:29 K: Nocere – you know. So, it is no longer though it may live in the world, it is not of the world.
50:39 S: Yes, in the sense of conflict and turmoil
50:41 K: All the messy stuff.

S: And all the messy stuff, yes.
50:44 K: Now, that is absolutely necessary to find out more. Not more in the sense of something more, but that state is absolutely essential to discover the immeasurable or not.
50:59 S: Yes. I think this is true. So that we do, in a sense, find seeing and loving and being, in being alone.
51:13 K: Yes, sir. You see…
51:18 S: If one disassociates himself from disorder, he's…
51:22 K: Not 'one mind.' In observing disorder, in being aware choicelessly of disorder, order comes. You don't belong to one or… there is order.
51:36 S: And as we pursue the question of the meaning of order, – or harmony, tranquillity or peace – we found ourselves with the same answer, but this is to be in the first place, this is to love in the first place, this is to see in the first place.
51:53 K: Order, sir, is one of the most extraordinary things because it's always new. It isn't order according to a pattern, it is a living thing. Virtue is a living thing. It isn't: 'I am virtuous'.
52:11 S: Yes.
52:12 K: You cannot ever say 'I am virtuous,' because if you say that you are not virtuous. But virtue is a living thing, moving, like a river flowing, alive. And therefore in that state something beyond measure takes place.
52:35 S: And it's at that moment that one discovers the immeasurable.
52:38 K: Yes.

S: Yes.
52:40 K: You see, not discovers – it is there. It is there!

S: Yes.
52:45 K: 'Discovery' and 'experience' are rather unfortunate words, because most human beings want to experience something great because their lives are shoddy, their lives are petty, their lives are full of anxiety. They say, 'For God's sake, give me greater experience, something more'. Therefore these meditations, these groups forming who meditate and all that they are searching for that. Whereas they have to bring order in their life first. And then what takes place is something quite beyond measure. I think that's enough.
53:32 S: So then if we are pursuing the question of the measurelessness… if we are pursuing…

K: You can't pursue it.
53:45 S: Well, and you can't discover it…

K: You can't pursue it.
53:48 S: This is good. You cannot pursue it, you cannot discover it and it's not good to use the word 'experience' about it. All of this we understand. When one comes upon it...
53:58 K: You leave the door open, sir.
54:00 S: You leave the door open.
54:01 K: Let the sun come in. If the sun comes in, it's all right, if it doesn't, it's all right.

S: Yes.
54:07 K: Because the moment you pursue it you close the door.
54:10 S: The very pursuit is the closing the door.
54:12 K: The very search for truth is the closing of truth, blocking truth.
54:16 S: Yes.

K: Right, that's enough.