Krishnamurti - A different way of living

Krishnamurti Subtitles

SD74CA13 - A different way of living
San Diego, California - 26 February 1974
Conversation with A.W. Anderson 13

0:38	Krishnamurti in Dialogue with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
0:43	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. This is one of a series of dialogues between Krishnamurti and Dr. Allan W. Anderson, who is 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, received his degree from Columbia University and the Union Theological Seminary. He has been honoured with the distinguished Teaching Award from the California State University.
1:51	A: Mr. Krishnamurti, at the end of our last conversation, if I remember correctly, we were looking into the relationships among living, and love, and death. That is we had just begun to when we had to bring our discussion to an end. I was hoping today that we might pursue this in terms of our continuing concern for the transformation of man.
2:26	K: As usual, sir, this is such a complex question, this living, what it means and what it actually is, and love, which we talked about the other day fairly in detail and rather closely, and also this enormous problem of death. Every religion has offered a comforting belief, comforting ideas, hoping there would be a solution for the fear, sorrow, and all the things that are involved in it. So I think, perhaps we should begin with what is living and then go from there to love and death. A: Good.
3:38	K: Shouldn't we actually look at what we call living now, what is taking place. A: Yes.
3:51	K: What actually is going on, which we call existence, living, those two words to cover this whole field of man's endeavour to better himself, not only in the technological world, but also psychologically, he wants to be different, he wants to be more than what he is, and so on. So when we look at it in whatever country, and whatever race, or whatever religion they belong to, it is a matter of constant struggle from the moment you are born to the moment you die, it is one battle. Not only in relationship with other human beings, - intimate or not intimate - but also economically, socially, morally, it is a vast battle. I think everyone agrees to that. And that's obvious. The conflict, the struggle, the suffering, the pain, the frustrations, the agony, the despairs, the violence, the brutality, killing each other - all that is what is actually going on. Spending 40, 50 years in an office, in a factory, occasional holidays for a month, and a wild kind of holidays, because the holidays are a reaction to their monotonous life.
5:48	A: Time out. K: Time out, or whatever it is called. You see them all over Europe, America, going from museum to museum, looking at this, that, rushing about, and that is an escape from the monotony of their daily routine. And they go off to India, and there are, I believe, about 15,000 so-called hippies in various dresses, and various monasteries, and various cities, doing the most fantastic things, selling drugs - some of them - and putting on Indian clothes, dressing up as monks, and all that. It is a kind of vast romantic sentimental escape from their daily monotonous routine life. That is what we call living: the battle in relationship, the battle in business, in economic environment. It is a constant struggle.
7:08	A: What you've said seems to be ingrained into the grasp of this living itself. We have a saying: life is a battle. We interpret it in terms of what you have said.
7:27	K: And nobody seems to say, why should it be that way? And we have all accepted it. We say, yes, it is part of our existence. If we don't struggle, we are destroyed. It is a part of our natural inheritance. From the animal, we see how it struggles, so we are part of the animal, part of the ape, and we must go on struggling, struggling, struggling. We have never said, is this right? Is this the way to live? Is this the way to behave, to appreciate the beauty of living?
8:21	A: The usual question turns on how to engage the battle more effectively.
8:26	K: Effectively, successfully, with least harm, with least strain, with least heart failure, and so on. But the ground is prepared for struggle. The monks do it - you follow, sir? - the religious people do it, the business, the artist, the painter, every human being, however compartmentalised he is, he is in battle. And that we call living. And a man looks at it - an intelligent man, he says, for God's sake, that's not the way to live. Let's find out if there is a different way of living. And nobody asks. I have talked to a great many politicians all over the world, and to a great many gurus. We will come to that, it's very interesting that word, what it means. We'll go into that. And I've talked to artists, to businessmen, to artisans, to labourers, very, very poor people: it is one constant battle. The rich, the poor, the middle class, the scientist - you follow, sir?
10:03	A: Oh yes, I'm following.
10:04	K: And nobody says: this is wrong! This isn't living, It's bleeding!
10:15	A: I was thinking about the literatures of the world of a visionary nature that tend to be divided into three basic statements in terms of their form and content. On the one hand, we have epics that deal precisely with the representation of the battle of life.
10:42	K: We have got the Odyssey, we have got the Mahabharata, we have got so many other books, all praising this thing.
10:50	A: And then others deal with what we call the journey of life, the Odyssey would be specifically related to that; there are many battles concerned within it in terms of confrontations between individuals. And then there's the notion of life as a fulfilment. But we hardly ever get to the question of the fulfilment. And when these are studied, they are studied in terms of a literary form, and the question that you've raised, - which, it seems to me, would be a question that should be presented to the student in general...
11:30	K: And it is an authentic question, it's a question that must be put.
11:38	A: I was reflecting as you were speaking that in the class room itself it's taken for granted that this battle is what it is. It is to be related to with fortitude, and so forth, but the question concerning it doesn't arise.
11:55	K: No, to some young people it has arisen, but they go off at a tangent.
12:02	A: Exactly. K: Either a commune, or become a Hindu - you follow? - go off to some ancient country and just disintegrate, do nothing, think nothing, just live.
12:19	A: Which is really a lateral movement.
12:21	K: Lateral. A: Not a vertical one. K: That's right.
12:24	A: Into the question. Yes.
12:25	K: So it is a valid question, and it must have a valid answer, not theoretical, but say, well, I will live that way. I will live without conflict. See what it means. I may be smothered. I question whether you will be wiped out by society, if you don't struggle. I've never struggled personally. I have never thought of battling with myself or with somebody else. So, I think, a question of that kind must not only be put verbally, but in the expression of that word one must see if it is possible for each one of us to live that way, to live without a single conflict. That means without division. Conflict means division. Conflict means the battle of the opposites. Conflict means you and me, we and they, Americans, Russians, you know, division, division, division. Fragmentation not only inwardly, but outwardly. Where there is fragmentation there must be battle. One fragment assuming the power and dominating the other fragments. So, an intelligent man - if there is such a person - has to find out a way of living which is not going to sleep, which is not just vegetating, which is not just escaping to some fanciful mystical visions, and all that stuff, but a way of living in daily life, in which conflict of any kind has come to an end. It is possible. I have watched it all around me, for the last 50 years, the battle going on around me, spiritually, economically, socially, one class battling the other class, and the dictatorships, the fascists, the communists, the Nazis - you follow, sir? A: Yes, I do.
15:16	K: All of them have their roots in this: encouraging obedience, discouraging obedience, imitating, conforming, obeying - all battle. So life has become a battle. And to me personally, to live that way is the most destructive, uncreative way of living. I won't live that way. I would rather disappear!
15:59	A: I think, perhaps - and I wonder if you would agree - that some sort of confusion has arisen here in our minds, when we identify ourselves with this battle in terms of your description of it. When we begin to think about the question: 'ought this to continue', and we have the image of battle before us, we tend to imagine to ourselves that what we're really talking about is the human equivalent of what is called 'nature red in tooth and claw'.
16:45	K: Quite.
16:46	A: But, if I am following you correctly, this is a cardinal mistake, because in our previous conversations you have, at least for me, very clearly indicated that we must distinguish between fear and danger; and the animals, in their own environment, act with clean and immediate dispatch in the presence of danger, whereas it seems we are making a mistake, if we attempt to study what we call human conflict on the level of this analogy, because analogy, if I have understood you correctly, simply doesn't apply.
17:32	K: Doesn't, no.
17:33	A: But don't you agree that this tends to be done?
17:36	K: Oh rather, sir. We study the animal, or the birds, in order to understand man. A: Right.
17:43	K: Whereas you can study man, which is yourself. You don't have to go to the animal to know man. So, that is, sir, really a very important question, because I have, if I may talk a little about myself, I've watched it all. A: Please do.
18:05	K: I've watched it in India. The sannyasis, the monks, the gurus, the disciples, the politicians all over the world. I've happened to have, somehow I have met them all - the writers, the famous people, the painters who are very well-known, most of them have come to see me. And it is a sense of deep anxiety, that if they don't struggle they will be nothing. They will be failures, that is, that way of living is the only and righteous way of living.
18:55	A: To drive oneself to be what is called productive.
18:58	K: Productive, progressive. A: Progressive.
19:01	K: And we are taught this from childhood.
19:05	A: Oh yes. K: Our education is that. To battle not only with yourself - with your neighbour, and yet love the neighbour, you follow? It becomes too ridiculous. So, having stated that, is there a way of living without conflict? I say, there is, obviously. Which is to understand the division, to understand the conflict, to see how fragmented we are, not try to integrate the fragments, which is impossible, but out of that perception the action is entirely different from integration. Seeing the fragmentations which bring about conflict, which bring about division, which bring about this constant battle, anxiety, strain, heart failure. You follow, sir? That is what is happening. To see it, to perceive it, and that very perception brings an action, which is totally different from the action of conflict. Because the action of conflict has its own energy, brings its own energy, which is divisive, which is destructive, violent. But the energy of perception and acting is entirely different. And that energy is the energy of creation. Anything that is created cannot be in conflict. An artist who is in conflict with his colours, he is not a creative human being. He may have perfect craft, perfect technique, a gift for painting, but that's...
21:21	A: It interests me very much that you've used the word 'energy' here in relation to both activities. K: Both activities, yes.
21:30	A: You haven't said that the energy at root is different. K: No, no.
21:36	A: The phenomenon is different. K: Yes.
21:39	A: It would appear that when one makes success, prosperity, victory, the object of his activity, and engages this conflict, - which he interprets as engaging him, he always tends to think that 'things are coming at me'. When he undertakes this, if I have understood you correctly, energy is released, but it is released in fragmentary patterns.
22:18	K: The other way, yes. A: Yes. Whereas the energy that's released with perception is the same energy, is always whole. K: Is whole. Yes, sir, that's right.
22:30	A: Isn't that what you are... K: Yes, sir. That's right. Therefore sane, therefore healthy, therefore holy - h,o,l,y. A: Yes. I have the feeling that this release of energy which shatters out into patterns of energy as fragmentation, is really what we mean by the word 'demonic'.
22:59	K: Demonic, that's right.
23:01	A: That's giving it a hard name. K: But it is a good name. It's an excellent name. A: But you are really saying this, aren't you? I am saying this.
23:08	K: But I agree, I totally see that with you. I see it is demonic. It is the very destructive thing.
23:18	A: Exactly.
23:20	K: And that's what our society is, our culture is.
23:27	A: What we've done to that word 'demonic'! I was just thinking about Socrates, who refers to his 'daimon' meaning the energy that operates in wholeness.
23:43	K: That's right, sir.
23:44	A: And we have taken that word from the Greek clear out of the context of the apology and turned it upside down, and now it means...
23:54	K: The devil. A: Right. And the same thing happened with the use of the word 'the asuras'. Originally in the Veda, this was not a reference to the demonic, there was no radical polarisation. K: No, no, no, quite.
24:16	A: And finally we end up with the gods and the demons.
24:20	K: Quite.
24:21	A: Which, I take it you are suggesting, is nothing other than the sheerest projection of our own demonic behaviour which we have generated ourselves. K: That's right.
24:32	A: This makes tremendous sense to me. Please go on.
24:35	K: So, the way we live is the most impractical, insane way of living. And we want the insane way of living made more practical.
24:55	A: Yes, and there isn't a prayer for it.
25:00	K: But that is what we are demanding all the time. We never say, let's find a way of living which is whole, - and therefore healthy, sane, and holy. And through that, through perceiving, acting is the release of total energy, which is non-fragmentary, which isn't the artist, the business man, the politician, the priest, the layman - all that doesn't exist at all. Now, to bring about such a mind, such a way of living, one has to observe what actually is taking place outside and inside, in us, inside and outside. And look at it, not try to change it, not try to transform it, not try to bring about different adjustment, see actually what it is. I look at a mountain, I can't change it. Even with a bulldozer I can't change it. But we want to change what we see. The observer is the observed, you understand, sir? Therefore, there is no change in that. Whereas in perception there is no observer. There is only seeing, and therefore acting.
26:44	A: This holds a mirror up to an earlier conversation we had when you referred to beauty, passion, suffering.
26:55	K: Yes, suffering and action, yes.
26:58	A: And I remember asking you the question: in order to recover the correct relationship among them we must begin with the suffering which, if perceived as it ought to be perceived, generates passion.
27:15	K: That's right. A: One doesn't have to work it out. It happens. And behold, upon the same instant beauty breaks out, and love. So the passion in itself is compassion. The 'com' comes in exactly with the passion. K: With passion, that's right. A: Yes.
27:40	K: Now, sir, if you could, as a professor, or as a teacher, or as a parent, point this out, the impracticality of the way we are living, the destructiveness of it, the utter indifference to the earth. We are destroying everything we touch. And to point out a way of living in which there is no conflict. That, seems to me, is the function of the highest form of education.
28:24	A: Yes, it has a requirement in it, though, that seems to me very clear, namely, the teacher himself must be without conflict. This is a very, very different point of departure from what occurs in our general educational structure, particularly in professional educational activities, where one gets a degree in professional education rather than in an academic subject as such. We are taught, for instance... and I am speaking about this somewhat as an outsider, because I don't have a degree in education, but in an academic subject as such, but I have observed in what goes on with my colleagues in education, that tremendous emphasis is placed on techniques of teaching. K: Of course, of course.
29:20	A: And the question of the individual teacher as having undergone a transformation of the sort that you have been discussing is not a factor of radical concern. What is, of course, in an altruistic sense a matter of concern is that the teacher have the interests of the students at heart, and that sort of thing, which, of course, is laudable in itself, but it's after the fact, it's after the fact of this first transformation.
29:54	K: Yes, sir, but you see, first I must transform myself, so I can teach. A: Precisely, precisely.
30:04	K: Wait, see that there is a little bit... something in it that is not quite accurate. That means I have to wait till I change. Why can't I change, if I am an educator, in the very act of teaching? The boys, the students, live in conflict. The educator lives in conflict. Now, if I was an educator with a lot of students, I would begin with that and say, 'I am in conflict, and you are in conflict, let us see in discussing, in becoming aware of our relationship, in teaching, if it is not possible for me and for you to dissolve this conflict'. Then it has action. But if I have to wait till I'm free of all conflict, I can wait till doomsday.
31:10	A: I see now exactly what you are saying. What you are saying is literally this: the teacher, who is presently in conflict, simply just acknowledges this. Walks into the classroom... K: That's right, sir.
31:27	A: ...not as somebody who is free from conflict.
31:31	K: That's right. A: No, but he walks into the classroom - and here it is, we are facing it. And he looks at his students and he lays it out.
31:41	K: That's the first thing I would discuss, not the technical subjects. Because that's living. And then I discuss. And also, in the very teaching of a technical subject I would say, all right, let us see how we approach, you know? I can learn from that, so that both the student and the educator know their conflicts and are interested in dissolving the conflict, and therefore they are tremendously concerned. That produces an extraordinary relationship. Because I have watched it. I go to several schools in India and in England, and it takes place.
32:31	A: In this taking place love breaks out.
32:36	K: Of course, of course. That is the very essence of it. Because I care, I feel responsible.
32:46	A: May I go into this just a little bit? One of the things that has concerned me in this series of our dialogues is that someone should have perhaps not seen as clearly as I think you have pointed out for me, that in our discussions of thought and of knowledge what we have been saying is that there is some dysfunction in thought and in knowledge, which relates to its own nature, the nature of thought, and the nature of knowledge, which could very well give the impression that thought is a disease or that knowledge is a disease, rather than giving the impression - as I have understood from you - that thought and knowledge have their proper uses.
33:48	K: Of course.
33:49	A: Their natures are not corrupt as such.
33:52	K: Obviously not. A: Exactly.
33:53	K: It is the usage of it. Quite. A: Right. Therefore it becomes of utmost importance, I think, in understanding what you are saying, to be aware of the corrective that we bring to bear, when together we examine the uses of thought and the uses of knowledge. While at the same time, not assuming that the principle of thought, the principle of knowledge is in its own nature corrupt.
34:22	K: No. Quite right. A: So that in a classroom we could study a text, in which an assertion is made, a positive statement is made, without thinking that name and form are in themselves...
34:38	K: Corrupt. A: ...corrupt.
34:39	K: Obviously not. A microphone is a microphone. There is nothing corrupt about it.
34:45	A: Exactly, but, you know, the thing comes home to me with tremendous force, that one must begin in his relationship to his students with doing this. I must tell a little story on myself here. Years ago I went to hear a lecture of yours and I listened, I thought, very, very carefully. And, of course, one lecture is not in itself, perhaps at least for someone like me, it was not enough. Or another way to put it, perhaps more honestly would be, I was not enough at the time for the lecture, because it seems, as I recall it now, that the principles that we have been discussing you stated very, very clearly. I went away from that lecture with the impression that there was a very close relationship between what you are saying and Buddhism, and I was thinking about this whole label thing as scholars are wont to do - you know how we divide the world up into species. And in our series of conversations now I've come to see that I was profoundly mistaken. Profoundly mistaken. And I pinch myself to think, you know, I might have gone on thinking what I thought before, which had nothing to do with anything that you were concerned in. It is a revelation to face it that one doesn't have to have a credential to start with, before he walks into the room. He just has to start looking at the very thing that he believes is going to bring him into a hostile relationship with his class in order... because we believe that there are things that we must avoid talking about, because they create dissension, disruption and put us off. And therefore let's not talk about conflict. Or if we are going to talk about it, let's talk about it in terms of our being the ones who have the light over against these others who don't, and we have to take the good news to them.
37:22	K: It's like a guru.
37:24	A: Right, but simply to come into the room and say, let's have a look without any presuppositions, without my thinking that I have this in hand and you don't, or you have it and I don't. We're going to just hold it together.
37:42	K: Right, sir. Share together.
37:44	A: Share it together, and behold... Am I following you? K: Perfectly.
37:50	A: Oh, that's wonderful. I'm going to do this, after our conversation comes to an end, I will walk into that room. Do go on.
38:12	K: So sir, the energy that is created through conflict is destructive. The energy that is created through conflict, struggle, battle produces violence, hysteria, neurotic actions, and so on. Whereas the action of perception is total, non-fragmentary, and therefore it is healthy, sane and brings about such intense care and responsibility. Now, that is the way to live: seeing-acting, seeing-acting all the time. I cannot see, if there is an observer different from the observed. The observer is the observed.
39:17	A: This does a very marvellous thing to what we call our confrontation with death. K: We'll come to that, yes.
39:25	A: Yes, I see I have made a...
39:27	K: ...jump. No, no, sir, that's right. So you see, our whole content of consciousness is the battle, is the battleground, and this battle we call living. And in that battle, how can love exist? If I am hitting you, if I am competing with you, if I am trying to go beyond you, successful, ruthless, where does the flame of love, or compassion, tenderness, gentleness come into all that? It doesn't. And that's why our society as it is now has no sense of moral responsibility with regard to action or with regard to love. It doesn't exist.
40:35	A: I'm going back into the context of my own experience, in the classroom again. It has always seemed to me that the first stanza of the Gita, the first stanza, the first chapter of the Gita, which begins: dharmaksettre Kuruksettre - in the field of Dharma, in the Kuru field - that 'in the Kuru field' is a statement in apposition and that the field is one. I have walked into class when we started to do the Gita, and I've tried to show both linguistically, as it seemed to me was capable from the text, and in terms of the spirit of the whole, that this was really what was being said, that it's one field, it's not two fields, though we have one army over here, and the other over here, but they don't occupy two fields. Somehow it is one field. K: It is our earth.
41:36	A: Right. It's the whole. K: Yes, sir.
41:40	A: But, you see, I think I would have done better now that I've listened to you, if I had gone into class and instead of making that statement, and inviting them to look carefully at the text, and to bear that in mind as we proceed through the teaching, and watch for any misinterpretations of that that will have occurred in commentary after commentary, it would have been better if I had started the other way. It would have been better, if I had started by saying, let's have a look and see together whether it is one field or whether it's a field with conflict. We are not going to read the book at all at this point, we are just going to start here. This is the field. The classroom is the field. Now, let's take a look. That would have been the better way.
42:38	K: If you have understood that, sir, the classroom is the field, and if you understand that, you have understood the whole thing.
42:45	A: Exactly. But I went in with the notion that, though I had grasped that, so I thought it was enough simply to show that verbally. But it's patently not. And this is terrifying. Because even though if you say in the classroom what ostensibly passes for what we call the right thing, it still will not prevail in terms of this act that we've been talking about. K: Act. Quite right. Can we go, sir, from there. We've discussed life, living, in which love does not exist at all. Love can only exist when the perceiver is the perceived and acts, as we said. Then that flame, that compassion, that sense of holding the earth in your arms as it were, if that is understood, and from that - behaviour, because that is the foundation; if there is no behaviour, in the sense of non-conflicting behaviour, then after establishing that in ourselves or in observing it, we can proceed next to the question of death. Because the question of death is an immense thing. To me living, love, and death are not separate. They are one movement. It isn't death over there, which I am going to meet in twenty years or the next day. It is there. It is there with love and with living. It is a continuous movement, non-divisive. This is the way I live, think, feel. That's my life. I mean this. These are not just words to me. So, before we enter into the question of death we have to go into the question of what is consciousness? Because if one doesn't understand what is consciousness, not the explanation, not the description, not the word, but the reality of consciousness. Am I, as a human, ever conscious? And what is to be conscious? What is it to be aware? Am I aware totally, or just occasionally I am aware when a crisis arises, otherwise I am dormant. So that's why it becomes very important to find out what is consciousness. Right, sir? A: Yes. What you have just said seems to me to indicate that we are making a distinction between consciousness, which is a continuing movement, utterly situated in act as over against these blips, these eruptions virtually, within the sleepy course of nature.
47:11	K: That's right. A: Yes. I see that. Yes, yes. Please go ahead.
47:15	K: So, what is consciousness? Consciousness is its content. - I am putting it very simply. I prefer to talk about these things very simply, not elaborate, linguistic descriptions and theories, and suppositions, and all the rest of it. That has no meaning to me personally.
47:40	A: If it is true, it will be simple. K: Simple.
47:43	A: Yes, of course.
47:46	K: Consciousness is its content. The content is consciousness. The two are not separate. That is, the thoughts, the anxieties, the identifications, the conflicts, the attachments, detachments, the fears, the pleasures, the agony, the suffering, the beliefs, the neurotic actions - all that is my consciousness. Because that is the content.
48:27	A: This is an equivalent statement to 'The world is me and I am the world'. So there's a continuity there. K: Yes, that's right. So, the content which says: that is my furniture, that's my God, that's my belief, - with all its nuances and subtleties - is part of my consciousness, is part of the consciousness which says: I am. I am that, I am the furniture. When I identify myself saying: that's my furniture, I must keep it - you follow? - when I am attached to it, I am that. I am that knowledge, which says, I have acquired knowledge, I have grown in it, I have been successful in it, it has given me great comfort, it has given me a house, a position, power. That house is me. The battle which I have been through - suffering, agony - that's me, that's my consciousness. So consciousness is its content, therefore there is no division as consciousness separate from its content. I can extend or widen the consciousness, horizontally or vertically, but it is still within that field. I can extend it saying, God is immense. That's my belief. And I've extended my consciousness by imagining that it is extended. Whatever thought has created in the world and inside me is the content. The whole world, especially in the West, is based on thought. Its activities, its explorations, its achievements, its religions, and so on, is fundamentally the result of thought with its images, and so on, so on, so on. So that is the content of consciousness. Right? A: Right.
51:16	K: Now, from that arises, what is death? Is death the ending of consciousness - with its content - or is death a continuity of that consciousness? Your consciousness is not different from mine. It may have little variations, little modifications, little more expansion, little contraction, and so on, but essentially consciousness is yours as well as mine, because I am attached to my house, so are you. I am attached to my knowledge, I am attached to my family, I am in despair whether I live in India, or in England, or in America, wherever it is. So that consciousness is common. It is irrefutable. You follow, sir? A: Oh, yes. I do follow closely.
52:27	K: So, see what happens. I never have examined this content. I have never looked at it closely and I am frightened, frightened of something which I call death, the unknown. Let us call it for the moment the unknown. So, I'm frightened. There is no answer to it. Somebody comes along and says, yes, my friend, there is life after death. I have proof for it. I know it exists because I have met my brother, my son - we will go into that presently. So I, frightened, anxious, fearful, diseased - you follow? - I accept that tremendously, instantly say, yes, there is reincarnation. I am going to be born next life. And that life is related to karma. The word 'karma' means to act. A: Yes.
53:47	K: Not all the rigmarole involved in it, just to act. See what is involved. That is, if I believe in reincarnation, that is, this consciousness with its content, which is the 'me' - my ego, my self, my activities, my hopes, pleasures, all that is my consciousness - that consciousness is going to be born next life, which is the common consciousness of you and me, and him, and her. That's going to be born next life. And they say, if you behave properly now, you'll be rewarded next life. That's part of the causation.
54:40	A: That's part of the content of consciousness.
54:42	K: Causation and the effect. A: Yes.
54:46	K: So behave, because you are going to be punished next life. You will be rewarded next life. The whole of the Eastern world is based on it, believes in reincarnation. So what happens? I have taken comfort in a belief, but actually I don't carry it out: which says, behave now, be good now, don't hurt another now.
55:24	A: Actually the idea is that I should behave now, - we've been through this 'ought' stuff - I should this, I should that, I should the other because of what will take place later. But then I take comfort in the thought that it's an endless process, and it's somehow built into it that I'll get another chance. So I can sort of stall, I can stall.
55:50	K: I can stall. I can postpone, I can misbehave.
55:53	A: Yes. Because we are all destined to make it in the end.
55:57	K: Eventually.
55:59	A: Yes. Which shows that there's no grasp of what throughout these conversations you've been talking about, the immediacy and urgency of act. K: Act. That's right.
56:09	A: Yes, yes, I follow. K: So, you see, the Hindus probably were the originators of this idea: cause, effect. The effect will be modified by next causation. So there is this endless chain. And they say, it's endless, we'll break it sometime. Therefore doesn't matter what you do now. Belief gives you great comfort in believing that you will continue, you will be with your brother, wife, husband, whatever it is. But in the meantime don't bother too seriously, don't take life too seriously. A: Exactly, yes, yes.
57:01	K: Have a good time, in fact. Enjoy yourself. Or do whatever you want to do, pay a little next life, but carry on.
57:09	A: I was speaking to a well-known Hindu teacher about this and I made this very remark that you have just stated, and I thought it would have some force. And I said, you see, there's no hope of stopping repeating, if an act is not made immediately with respect to this, therefore in terms of the content of the consciousness of a whole people that bask in this notion, there can be nothing but an endless repetition and no true concern.
57:45	K: What did he say? A: All he did was laugh, as though I had somehow perceived something which most people apparently are not really bothering their heads to look at. But the extraordinary thing to me was that he showed no concern for what he discerned intellectually.
58:07	K: Sir, that's what they are, hypocrites - you follow, sir? They are hypocrites, when they believe that and do something quite contrary.
58:16	A: Precisely, I understand what you mean. What you are saying, there is the usage of the Biblical notion of hypocrite in that strict sense.
58:24	K: Sir, in the strict sense, of course. A: Yes, in the very strict sense. In our next conversation could we continue with this, because...
58:32	K: Oh, there is a great deal involved in this.
58:33	A: Splendid. I do look forward to that.
58:36	K: Yes. We'll go into it.