Hindu Vedic Philosophy (The Paramardha Tattwam): Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Flame of Attention

Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Flame of Attention - 4

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The Flame of Attention

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Flame of Attention

NEW DELHI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 31ST

OCTOBER, 1981

If one may I would like to point out that we are not doing any kind

of propaganda for any belief, for any ideal, for any organization.

We are together considering what is taking place in the world

outside of us. We are looking at it not from an Indian point of

view, or from a European or American, or from any conclusion, or

any particular national interest, but together we are going to

observe what actually is going on in the world.

We are thinking together but not having one mind. There is a

difference between having one mind and thinking together. Having

one mind implies that we have come to some conclusion, that we

have come to certain beliefs, certain concepts. That is implied,

more or less, in having one mind. But thinking together is quite

different. Thinking together implies that you and the speaker have

a responsibility to look objectively, non-personally, at what is

going on. So we are thinking together. The speaker though he is

sitting on a platform for convenience has no authority. Please we

must be very clear on this point. He is not trying to convince you

of anything. He is not asking you to follow him. He is not your

guru, thank god! He is not advocating a particular system,

particular philosophy, but to observe together, as two friends who

have known each other for some time, who are concerned not

about their private life, which we will discuss later on, but together

they are looking at this world which seems to have gone mad. The

world that is preparing for war, where each nation is piling up

armaments, spending millions and millions and millions of dollars,

or rupees, or whatever it is. There is the atom bomb, the nuclear

bomb, and also the computer. There are these two problems which

we have to face together. That means you and the speaker, nonpersonally,

not attached to any particular belief, to any nation, but

to observe clearly, objectively, what is happening.

The whole world is arming, spending incredible amounts of

money to destroy human beings, whether they live in America,

Europe, or Russia, or here. They are taking a disastrous course

which cannot possibly be solved by politicians. The politicians

throughout the world are making a mess of things. So we cannot

possibly rely on them, nor on the scientists. They are helping to

build up the military technology, armaments; competing one

country against another. Nor can we rely on so-called religions,

they have lost all their meaning. They have become merely verbal,

repetitive, absolutely without any meaning. It has become a

superstition, following mere tradition, whether it be five thousand

years or two thousand years. So you cannot rely on politicians who

are throughout the world seeking to maintain their position, their

power, there status. Nor can we rely on scientists because they are

inventing each year, or perhaps each week, new forms of

destruction. Nor can we look to any religion to solve this human

chaos. I hope we understand that.

And what is a human being like us to do? Is the crisis

intellectual, economic; or national, with all the poverty, confusion,

anarchy, lawlessness, terrorism, always the threat of a bomb in the

street? Realizing all that, observing all that, what is our

responsibility?

I am not at all sure that you are interested in all this. Whether

you are concerned with what is happening in the world. Or are you

merely concerned with your own private salvation? Please do

consider all this very seriously. To think together, that is you and

the speaker observe objectively what is taking place not only

outwardly, but also in our consciousness, in our thinking, in the

way we live, in our action. If we are not at all concerned with the

world but only with our personal salvation, following certain

beliefs and superstitions, following gurus, then I am afraid it will

be impossible for you and the speaker to communicate with each

other. We must be clear on this point. We are not concerned at all

with private personal salvation, but we are concerned earnestly,

seriously, with what the human mind has become, what humanity

is facing, that is human beings, human beings who are not Indians,

or Russians, or Americans, human beings who are not labelled as

Indians and so on. We are concerned in looking at this world and

what part a human being living in this world has to do, what is his

role?

I do not know if you are aware, though you may read a great

deal in the newspapers, and every morning in the newspapers there

is some kind of murder, bomb, destruction, terrorism, kidnapping,

and you read it every day and you pay little attention to it. But if it

happens to you personally then you are all in a state of confusion,

misery and asking somebody else, the government or the

policeman to save you, to protect you. Right? And in this country

when you look, as the speaker has been here for the last sixty years

watching all this phenomena that is going on in this unfortune

country, poverty, which never seems to be solved, over population,

the linguistic differences, one community wanting to break away

from the rest of the community, the religious differences, the gurus

who are becoming enormously rich, private aeroplanes; and you

are following all this blindly, accepting it, not being capable to do

anything about all this. These are facts. And we are not dealing

with ideas, we are dealing with facts, what is actually taking place.

And, if we are to think together, look together, observe, we

must be free of our nationalism. We are interrelated. That is, we

are human beings whether we live in America, here or anywhere.

Please realize this, how serious, urgent it all is. And has this

country become lethargic, totally indifferent to what is going on,

utterly careless, only concerned about their own little salvation,

little happiness? So in order to observe and so discover what to do,

we must think together.

The question then is: what is thinking? You understand? What

is the operation, or the process, or the content of thinking? Because

we live by thought. All the temples are put there by thought. The

inside of the temples, the images, all the puja, all the ceremonies,

are the result of thinking. All the sacred books that you have -

Upanishads, Gita and so on - are the result of thought, the

expression of thought into words, to convey what somebody else

has experienced or thought about. So the word is not sacred. No

book in the world is sacred because it is the result of thinking, of

thought. Right? That is clear. And we worship the intellect. Those

who are intellectual are apart from you and me who are not

intellectual. Their ideas, their concepts, the way they write, we

respect their intellect. And they either become bitter, angry, or

attacking, because intellect they think will solve our problems, but

it is not possible because it is like developing one arm out of

proportion to the rest of the body. So neither the intellect, nor

emotions, nor romantic sentimentality is going to help us. We have

to face things as they are, to look at it very closely and the urgency

of it, we have to do something immediately, not leave it to any

scientist, politician and so on.

So are we, you and the speaker, thinking together, not agreeing

together, not having the same opinion, or judgement, but looking at

this world that human beings, you, your grandparents, we all have

contributed to this? Right?

So first of all let us look at what the human consciousness has

become, because our consciousness is what we are. What you

think, what you feel, your fears, your pleasures, your anxieties,

insecurity, your unhappiness, depressions, love, pain, sorrow and

the ultimate fear of death. That is the content of our consciousness,

which you are. Right? Your content of your consciousness makes

the human being. Unless we understand the content of that and go

beyond it, if it is possible, we shall not be able to act seriously,

fundamentally, basically, to bring about a transformation, a

mutation in this consciousness.

I hope we are communicating with each other because I am not

talking to myself. If I want to talk to myself I can do it in my room.

But please for god's sake please let's both of us look at all this and

find out for ourselves what to do, what is our responsibility in this

chaos. To find out what is right action we must understand the

content of our consciousness. That is clear.

If my consciousness is confused, uncertain, pressurized, driven

from one corner to the other, from one state to another, I become

more and more confused, uncertain, insecure, and from that

confusion I cannot act. So I depend on somebody else, which we

have done for millions of years. I do not know if you have noticed

that as long as you are under somebody's thumb you behave. You

were under the thumb of the British at one time, you behaved

extraordinarily well because there was fear behind that. When you

remove the thumb, we have anarchy, confusion, everybody doing

what he likes. An engine driver arrives two hours late - nobody

cares. So our thinking is based on reward and punishment. If you

are rewarded you behave properly, or if you are punished you

behave properly. Right? This is the traditional conduct of a human

being right throughout the world; it is not only in this country but

everywhere. But here it is worse, nobody seems to care.

And to bring about order, not only in ourselves, which is the

primary importance because from that order there will be outward

order. I do not know if you have noticed we are always seeking

outward order. We want order in the world established through

dictatorships, or strong governments, or through totalitarianism

dictatorship. We all want to be pressurized to behave rightly.

Remove that pressure and we become rather what we are in the

present India.

So please this is a serious talk, it is not a lecture as it is

commonly understood. This is a talk of two friends, or several

friends sitting together amicably, with affection, with care, with

their hearts and minds looking, trying to find out what they have to

do in this world, the world that has gone mad, insane, a country

like this which is so appallingly poor. You are buying four hundred

thousand million dollars worth of aeroplanes from France. You

know all this. You read it in all your papers every morning and you

feel irresponsible. We feel it has gone out of our hands, out of our

control. So it becomes more and more serious on the part of the socalled

intellectuals, on those who are serious, who are facing a

terrible crisis, it becomes more and more urgent, necessary, that we

find out for ourselves, not from books, not from your gurus, or

from your ancient books, but to find out what our consciousness is

and to be able to free the content of that consciousness so that we

become truly religious people. We are not religious people, we are

becoming more and more materialistic.

So together, and the speaker means together, we are going to

examine, investigate, the content of our consciousness. That

content makes you what you are. And without understanding the

content of that you cannot possibly bring about right action, not

possibly able to face the crisis that is in front of us. Please

understand this. The speaker is not trying to convince you of

anything. This is a terribly serious matter.

So what is the content of your consciousness? What are you?

We are going to learn together what we are. The speaker is not

going to tell you what you are, but together, you and the speaker,

are going to examine what we are. Whether it is possible to

radically transform what we are. So we are going to observe first

the content of our consciousness. Right? Are you following all

this? Or are you tired at the end of the day? You know you are

under pressure all day long, all the week long: pressure at home,

pressure in your jobs, economic pressure, religious pressure,

government pressure, the gurus who impose their beliefs, their

idiocy on you. We are under pressure. And here we are not under

pressure. Please realize this. We are two friends talking over

together our sorrows, our hurts, our anxieties, our uncertainty,

insecurity, and how to find security, how to be free of fear, whether

our sorrows can ever end. We are concerned about that. Because if

you don't understand that, look at it very clearly, we will bring

about more confusion in the world, more destruction. Perhaps all of

us will be vaporized by an atom bomb. So we have to act urgently,

seriously, with all our hearts and mind. This is really very, very

important, we are facing a tremendous crisis. So together let us

look.

We have looked at the world, the world which we have created,

which thought has brought about. We must understand something

too: we have not created nature - the trees, the birds, the waters, the

rivers, the beautiful skies and the running streams, the tiger, the

marvellous tree, we have not created them. Who created it is a

different matter - don't say god created it. How it has come about is

a different matter, it is not for the moment under view, but we have

created everything else. We have destroyed the forests, we are

destroying animals, the wild animals, millions and millions of them

we are killing every year. Certain species are disappearing. So we

have not created nature: the deer, the wolf, but thought has created

everything else. Thought has created the marvellous cathedrals, the

ancient temples and mosques and the things that are in them. And

thought having created the image in the temple, in the cathedral, in

the churches, and the inscription in the mosques, then that very

thought worships that which it has created. Do you understand all

this? You are following all this? Well, it is up to you.

So is the content of our consciousness brought about by

thought? You understand my question? Why has thought become

all important in our lives? Why has thought, which is the intellect,

the capacity to invent, to write, to think, to do, thought, why has it

become important? Why has not affection, care, sympathy, love,

why have those not become extraordinarily more important than

thought? We are going to find out.

So first let us examine together what is thinking, because our

structure, both the psyche as well as outwardly is based on thought,

thinking. Please, right? So we have to examine what is thinking,

what is thought. Right? Don't go to sleep. I may put it into words

but you are observing it, seeing it for yourself, not the speaker

indicates and then you see, it but in talking over together you see it

for yourself. Right? You all understand English, don't you? I am

afraid I don't speak any other language, any other Indian language.

I speak several European languages but no Indian languages. So

what is thinking? Unless we understand what is thinking very

carefully we shall not be able to understand, or observe, or have an

insight into the whole content of our consciousness, of which we

are. If I don't understand myself, that is, my consciousness, why I

think this way, why I behave that way, my fears, my hurts, my

anxieties, my various attitudes and convictions, if I don't

comprehend all that whatever I do will bring more confusion.

Right? That is clear.

So first I have to understand what is thinking. How do you

answer it? What is thinking to you? When I ask you that question,

somebody challenges you with that question, what is your

response, what is thinking? Why do you think? You know most of

us have become secondhand people because we read an awful lot,

go to university if you are lucky, accumulate a great deal of

knowledge, information, what other people think, what other

people have said, and you quote them. You compare what is being

said with what you have already learnt. There is nothing original

but repeat, repeat, repeat. Right? So when one asks: what is

thought, what is thinking, you are incapable of answering.

Questioner: But sir, there is the problem...

K: Yes, sir, yes sir, we will go into problems presently. This is a

tremendous problem: what is thinking? And we live, act, behave

according to our thinking. We have set up this government

according to our thinking, we have wars because of our thinking -

all the cannons, the aeroplanes, the shells, the bombs, everything is

put there by thought. Thought has created the marvellous surgeons,

the extraordinary technicians, marvellous carpenters, plumbers,

thought has brought about these experts, but we have never

investigated what is thinking. So we are going to do it together. I

am not the expert, I am not your guru. I am sitting here, a little

higher up for convenience. I am not your authority or your guru.

But we are thinking together, investigating together.

So thinking is a process born out of knowledge, experience.

Listen to it quietly, first listen to me and then see if that is not true,

actual, then you discover it for yourself as though the speaker is

acting as a mirror in which you see for yourself exactly what is,

without distortion, then you can throw the mirror away or break it

up. You understand? Thinking is first, experience, knowledge,

knowledge stored up in the brain as memory, from memory the

reaction is thought and action. Experience, knowledge, memory,

stored in the brain, in the cells of the brain, then thought and

action. Right? No, please see this for yourself, not repeat what I

say. This is an actual fact: experience, knowledge, memory,

thought, action; from that action you learn more. So you are caught

in this cycle. Right? You are following this? Experience,

knowledge, memory, thought, action, and from that action learning

more, so we are caught in this cycle. That is our chain. Right?

Questioner: That is reaction, not action.

K: Sir. I beg your pardon.

Questioner: That is reaction, not action.

K: It doesn't matter. Call it reaction, action, it doesn't matter.

This is the way we live. And we have never moved away from this

field. You may call it action, reaction, whatever you like but we

have never moved away from this field. We have always lived

within the field of the known. That's a fact. Now the content of our

consciousness is all the things which thought has put in it. I may

think - oh, so many ugly things - I may think there is god in me,

which is again the product of thought. I may think that whatever

you think is there. So I am going to take one by one the content of

our consciousness and look at it. Most of us from childhood are

hurt, wounded, not only at home but at school, college, university

and later in life we are all wounded, hurt. And when you are hurt

you build a wall round yourself. Are you following all this? And

the consequences of that hurt are to become more and more

isolated, more and more disturbed, frightened, not to be hurt

further, and your actions from that hurt are obviously neurotic. So

that is one of the contents of your consciousness.

So what is it that is hurt? When you say, 'I am hurt' - not

physically but inwardly, psychologically, the psyche, what is it that

is hurt?

Questioner: I have built an image of myself and that is hurt.

K: How do you know? Are you repeating?

Questioner: No. Because I have such an image.

K: All right. Now I mustn't enter into discussion because there

are too many people. Right sir. If you and I were alone then we can

discuss, have a dialogue, but you cannot possibly have a dialogue

with so many people, so I hope you do not mind if I do not answer

your particular question.

We are asking: what is it that is hurt? The image that you have,

or the picture that you have about yourself. All of us have images

about ourselves. Right? Either you are a great man, or a very

humble man, or you are a great politician, you follow, the pride,

the vanity, the power, the position, etc., that creates an image of

you. Or if you are a PhD, you have a certain image; if you are a

housewife you have a certain image about yourself. Everybody has

an image about himself. Right? That is an indisputable fact. And

that image gets hurt and thought has identified or created that

image. Right? And that image gets hurt. You are following all this?

So is it possible - please listen - is it possible not to have an image

about yourself at all? See what happens when you have an image

about yourself: you create a division between each other. Look at it

carefully. I will go into it.

What is your relationship with your wife? Have you any

relationship with your wife, with your neighbour, with your rulers?

When you ask what is relationship - suppose I am married - thank

god I am not - but suppose I am married - please listen, this is

important. Don't laugh it away, for god's sake look at it carefully, it

is your life. We are wasting our lives, we are destroying our lives.

It is important to understand relationship because we are

interrelated to the world. You are not only related to your wife, to

your neighbour, to your children but you are related to the whole

human species. One has to understand very deeply what is

relationship. Is it merely sensory, sexual relationship? Or is it

merely romantic, convenient companionship? You cook and I go to

the office. You bear children and I work from morning until night

for the next fifty years, until I retire, in a beastly little office. And

that is called living. So I must find out very clearly, carefully, what

is relationship. Because if my relationship is based on hurt then I

am using the lady or the man to escape from that hurt. Right? I

wonder if you see all this. So I must look at relationship. If I am

married, what is my relationship to my wife? Is it based on mutual

images? You understand? I have created an image about her and

she has created an image about me, and the relationship is between

these two images which thought has put together. Right? Do you

understand all this? So is thought love? Is desire love? Is pleasure

love? You may say, no, no, you shake your head but actually you

never find out, never investigate, go into it.

So together we will discover what is relationship, and in that

relationship can there be no conflict at all? You understand my

question? We live in conflict from morning until night, why? Is

that part of our nature, part of our tradition, part of our religion? Or

each one has an image about himself: my wife has an image about

herself, and I have an image about myself, she has not only an

image about herself, she has other images: her ambition, the desire

to be something or other. And also I have my ambitions, my

competitiveness. You follow? So we are running parallel, like two

railway lines running parallel, never meeting, except perhaps in

bed but never meeting at any other level. You are understanding all

this? What a tragedy it has become. For god's sake wake up.

Questioner: (Inaudible)

K: Oh, golly, how eager you are to ask questions. You don't

even listen. You are ready to ask. You don't look at yourself. You

don't want to find out what your relationship is. What your

relationship to the world is.

Questioner: (Inaudible)

K: Sir, please forgive me, we cannot possibly answer your

question, or this gentleman's question, remarks, if I do then we

enter into something quite different. We are two friends, talking

over together. So please it is important to understand this question

of relationship. The world outside is interrelated, you are not

separate from the rest of the world. You are the rest of the world.

They are suffering, they have great anxieties, fears, they are

threatened by war, as you are threatened by war. They are

accumulating vast armaments to destroy each other and we never

realize how interrelated we are. I may be a Muslim and you may be

a Hindu, but my tradition says, 'I am a Muslim' - which is I have

been programmed like a computer to repeat 'I am a Muslim' and

you repeat 'I am a Hindu'. You understand what thought has done?

So it is very important to look at our relationship, not only my

intimate relationship but also my relationship with the rest of the

world. The rest of the world is like you, modified, educated

differently, superficial manners, perhaps affluent or not but the

same reactions, the same pains, the same anxieties, the same fears.

That is why, please give your mind, your heart to find out what

your relationship is with the world, with your neighbour and with

yourself, with your wife or husband. If it is based on images,

pictures, remembrances then there will be inevitably conflict with

your wife, with your husband, with your neighbour, with the

Muslim, with Pakistan, with Russia. You follow? You don't see the

urgency of all this. And the content of your consciousness is the

hurt which you have not resolved, which has not been completely

wiped away, it has left scars and from those scars you have various

forms of fears which ultimately leads to isolation, because each

one of us is isolated, through tradition, religious traditions, through

education, through this idea that you must always succeed,

succeed, succeed, become something. And also in our relationship

with each other, intimate or otherwise, whether you live here or

live in America or Russia, we are interrelated. So the world is you

and you are the world. You may have a different name, different

form, different kind of education, different position, but inwardly

we all suffer, we all go through great agonies, shed tears,

frightened of death, great sense of insecurity, without any love,

compassion.

So how do you observe, or listen to this fact? You understand?

That is, how do you listen to what is being said? The speaker is

saying that you are the rest of mankind deeply, you may be dark,

you may be short, you may put on saris, but those are all

superficial educated traditions, but inwardly the common, the flow,

whether I am an American, a Russian or Indian, the flow is the

same. The movement of human beings is similar. Right? So we are

the world and the world is you very profoundly. And one has to

realize this relationship. You understand I am using the word

'realize' in the sense that you must be able to observe it and see the

actual fact of it.

So from that arises the question: how do you observe? How do

you look at things? How do you look at your wife? Or your

husband, or your Prime Minister? How do you look at a tree? You

understand? Because the art of observation has to be learnt. Oh

god, there is so much to talk about. All right. How do you observe

me? You are sitting there, how do you look at me? What is your

reaction? Do you look at me, at the speaker because he has got a

reputation? What is your reaction when you see a man like me? Or

are you merely satisfied by looking at the reputation he has, which

may be nonsensical, it generally is, how he has come to this point

to address so many people, whether he is important and what you

can get out him. He can't give you any government jobs, he can't

give you money because he has no money. He can't give you any

honours, any status, any position, or guide you, tell you what to do.

How do you look at him? Have you looked at anybody freely,

openly, without any word, without any image?

Questioner: Probably never.

K: Never. Have you looked at a tree, the beauty of a tree, the

flutter of the leaves? So can we learn together how to observe?

You cannot observe, not only visually, optically, if your mind is

occupied. Right? As most of our minds are occupied: the article I

have to write next day, I am occupied with my cooking, I am

occupied with my job, I am occupied about sex, I am occupied

about how to meditate, I am occupied about what other people

might say. So my mind is occupied, from morning until night. Now

can such a mind, being occupied, observe anything? You are

following? If I am occupied with becoming a marvellous carpenter,

not a politician, not a guru - just a carpenter, a master carpenter,

not one of your amateur carpenters who is not really an artist - if I

want to be a first-class carpenter I have to know the texture of the

wood, I have to know the instruments, how to use the instruments,

I have to study how to put joints together without a nail and so on

and so on. So my mind is occupied. Or if I am neurotic my mind is

occupied with sex, or becoming a success. So how can I, being

occupied, observe? Right? So is it possible not to be occupied all

the time? I am occupied when I have to talk, when I have to write

something or other, but the rest of the time why should I be

occupied? You understand this?

This leads to a very important question, which is - you know

something about computers, you have heard of them? The

computers can be programmed as we human beings are

programmed, the computers can be programmed. Take for

instance, it can learn, think faster, more accurately than man. It can

play with a grand chess master. After being defeated four times,

the master beats the computer four times, on the fifth time or sixth

time the computer beats the master. The computer can do

extraordinary things. I won't go into all that. It has been

programmed. You understand? It can invent, create new machines

which will be better programmed than the first programme. A

machine that will be ultimately intelligent, not created by man. The

machine will itself create the ultimate intelligent machine. You

don't know anything. Please, the speaker has been talking,

discussing with a great many computer experts in California and

other places, and what is going to happen to man. You understand?

What is going to happen to man, or to woman, when the computer

takes the whole thing over? The Encyclopaedia Britannica can be

put in a little chip and it contains all that knowledge. So what place

has knowledge in a human life?

So we are saying our brains are occupied, never still. So to learn

how to observe your wife, your neighbour, your government, the

poverty, the brutality of poverty, the beastliness of wars, there must

be freedom to observe. You see we object to being free because we

are frightened to be free, to stand alone. So that is one of the things

in our consciousness: hurt, relationship, this immense occupation.

Now you have listened to the speaker for nearly an hour and a

quarter. Right? What have you heard? Or what have you gathered?

Words, ideas, which ultimately have no meaning? Right? But what

have you gathered? Have you seen for yourself, never to be hurt?

That means never to have an image about yourself. And have you

seen the importance, the urgency of understanding the relationship

and having a mind that is not occupied? You understand? When it

is not occupied it is extraordinarily free, it sees great beauty. But

the shoddy little mind, the secondhand little mind is always

occupied, about knowledge, about becoming something or other,

enquiring, discussing, arguing, never a quiet, free, unoccupied

mind. When there is such a mind, out of that freedom comes

supreme intelligence, not out of thought.

So tomorrow we will continue with the content of our

consciousness.

NEW DELHI 4TH PUBLIC TALK 8TH

NOVEMBER, 1981

This is the last talk. We were going to talk over together the

question of meditation. Before we go into that question, the last

three talks have been, if you have followed them earnestly and

seriously, bringing about order in our house. The order in which

we do not live, we live in disorder, as we talked about it yesterday;

and we went into the question of desire, freedom from fear, and the

nature of pleasure, and also we talked yesterday about the ending

of sorrow, and from that ending passion, not lust, passion, love and

compassion arise, with the ending of sorrow. And that compassion

has its own immense energy, great intelligence. That is what we

talked about yesterday evening.

We ought to discuss or share together, perhaps that is the right

word, share together what is discipline. Because most in the world

are not disciplined in the sense that they are not learning. The word

'discipline' comes from the word disciple, the disciple who learns,

whose mind is learning, not from a particular person, a guru, or

from a preacher, or teacher, or from books, he is learning through

the observation of his own mind, of his own heart, learning from

his own actions. And that learning requires certain discipline, not

conformity as most disciplines are understood. Conformity,

obedience and imitation, so that you are never in the act of

learning, you are merely following. Whereas the word discipline is

to learn, learn from the very complex mind one has, from life of

daily existence, learn about relationship with each other so the

mind is always pliable, active. So we ought to understand when we

are going to share together what meditation is, we must understand

this question of discipline.

Ordinary discipline implies conflict: conforming to a pattern,

like a soldier, conforming to an ideal, conforming to a certain

statement in the sacred books and so on and so on. Where there is

conflict there must be friction, there must be wastage of energy. I

hope we are sharing all this together. It is not a question of

agreeing or disagreeing with what is being said. But together we

are sharing in this question of discipline and responsibility. And in

understanding conflict, a mind, or your heart, if it is in conflict it

can never possibly meditate. We will go into that. It is not a mere

statement which you accept or deny, but we are enquiring together

into this question.

We have lived for millennia upon millennia in conflict,

conforming, obeying, imitating, repeating, so that our minds have

become extraordinarily dull. We have become secondhand people

because we are always quoting somebody else, what somebody

said or did not say. So we have lost the capacity, the energy to

learn from our own actions, for which we are utterly responsible,

not society or environment, or politicians, we are responsible

entirely for that, and from there learn. And in learning we discover

so much more because we are after all, every human being

throughout the world, in him is the story of mankind; the mankind

is his anxiety, his fears, his loneliness, his despairs, his sorrows,

pain, this tremendous complex history is in us, If you know how to

read that book then you don't have to read a single book except

books on technology. But we are negligent, we are not diligent in

learning from ourselves, from our actions. And so we are not

responsible for our actions, we are not responsible for what is

happening throughout the world and what is happening in this

unfortunate country. So if we share together this question of

discipline then we can go to the next problem, the next question.

As we said, we must put our house in order and nobody on

earth, or in heaven, is going to put our house in order, neither your

gurus, nor your vows, nor your devotion because our house is in

disorder: the way we live, the way we think, the way we act.

Unless that house is in order, which is to understand disorder,

which we went into yesterday, how can a mind that is in disorder

perceive that which is total order, as the universe is in total

complete order?

And also we ought to share together the question of beauty. You

might ask what has beauty to do with a religious mind? You might

ask all our tradition, our rituals and so on have never talked about

beauty. So meditation is part of the understanding of beauty, not

the beauty of a woman or a man, but what is beauty? We must

understand this very deeply because it doesn't exist except in

tradition, in ancient sculpture in this country. We only too willingly

destroy trees, birds, flowers. So we must enquire together, share

together, this question of what is beauty. We are not talking about

the beauty of a person, a face, it has its own beauty, but what is

actually the essence of beauty? Because most monks and sannyasis

and those religiously inclined minds totally disregard this. They

become hardened towards their environment. Once it happened

that we were staying in the Himalayas with some friends and there

were a group of sannyasis in front of us, going down the path,

chanting; they never looked at the trees, never looked at the beauty

of the earth, the beauty of the blue sky, the birds, the flowers, the

running waters, but were totally concerned with their own

salvation, with their own entertainment. And that custom, that

tradition, has been going on for a thousand years. A man who is

supposed to be religious must shun, put aside all beauty; and our

lives become dull, without any aesthetic sense because beauty is

one of the delights of truth.

So what is beauty? I hope you have the energy this evening to

sit quietly to go into it even though we may speak an hour and a

half because we have to deal with a great many things this evening.

Have you ever noticed when you give a toy to a child who has

been chattering, naughty, playing around, shouting, when you give

a child a complicated toy he is totally absorbed in it, he is very

quiet, enjoying the mechanics of it. There the toy has absorbed the

child. Follow all this please, step by step, if you will, because we

are sharing this thing together. The toy has absorbed the mischief

of the playing of the child, he becomes completely concentrated,

completely involved with that toy. And we grown-up people, we

have toys of belief, we have toys of ideals, we have toys of every

kind, which absorb us. If you worship some image, and all images

are created by the hand or the mind, there is no image on earth

which is sacred because they are all made by your hand and by

your mind, by your thought. And when we are so absorbed, as the

child is absorbed in a toy, we become extraordinarily quiet, gentle.

And when you see a marvellous mountain, snowcapped against the

blue hills, blue sky and the deep shadow in the valleys, that great

grandeur, majesty of a mountain absorbs you completely, for a

moment you are completely silent because the majesty of that

mountain takes you over, you forget yourself by the beauty of that

line against the blue sky.

So surely beauty is where you are not. You understand what has

been said? The essence of beauty is the absence of the self. And the

question of meditation is having put the house in order to meditate,

that is the word to ponder over, to think over, to enquire into the

abnegation of the self.

And also we ought to share together the energy, the energy that

is required in meditation. You need tremendous energy to meditate.

So we ought to go into that question of energy. Friction is not

energy. When we are in our daily life there is a great deal of

friction, conflict between people, the work which we don't like to

do, there is a wastage of energy. Please we are sharing together,

this is not a lecture. This is a conversation between us, a

conversation between two friends who are enquiring into this

complex problem of meditation and what is religion? And to

enquire really most profoundly, not superficially, not verbally, but

go very deeply into oneself, into one's mind, why we live as we do,

wasting immense energy.

Meditation is the release of creative energy, which we will go

into. So first let us look at what we call religion. Religion has

played an immense part in history. From the beginning of time man

has struggled to find out what truth is. And the accepted religion of

the modern world is no religion at all, it is merely vain repetition of

phrases, gibberish nonsense, it is a form of personal entertainment

without much meaning. All the rituals, all the gods, specially in

this country where there are I don't know how many thousands of

gods, all the gods are invented by thought, all the rituals are put

together by thought. And what thought creates is not sacred, but we

attribute what thought has created in the image the qualities that we

like that image to have. So we are worshipping unconsciously

ourselves. You understand this? What thought has created in the

temples, in the rituals, in the pujas, and all that business, and what

thought has invented in the Christian churches, is all put together

by thought, invented by thought. And that which thought has

created we then worship it. Just see the irony, the deception, the

dishonesty of this!

So the religions of the world have completely lost their

meaning. All the intellectuals - forgive me using that word - all the

intellectuals in the world shun it, run away from it. And when you

use the words the 'religious mind', which the speaker uses very

often, they say, 'Why do you use that word religion?'

Etymologically the root meaning of that word is not very clear.

Originally it meant to bind, to bind with that which is noble, with

that which is great, and to be bounded to that which is great you

had to live a very diligent, scrupulous honest life. All that is gone.

We have lost our integrity. So what is religion? If you discard all

the present existing religious traditions and their images, their

symbols, then what is religion? To find out what is a religious

mind, your mind to have the sense of religiosity, one must find out

what truth is. Truth has no path to it. There is no path. You have to

find out. Your mind with compassion, with its intelligence, will

come upon that which is eternally true. But there is no direction,

there is no captain to tell you in this ocean of life, or give you

direction. You, as a human being, have to discover this. So you

cannot belong to any cult, to any group, whether they are Hindus,

Muslims, Sikhs, or whatever they are, you have to abandon all that

if you want to come upon truth. And it is the religious mind that

doesn't belong to any organization, to any group, to any sect, it has

the quality of a global mind.

So religion, a religious mind is a mind that is utterly free from

all attachment, from all conclusions, concepts, it is dealing only

with what actually is, not, what should be, what must be. It is

dealing everyday of one's life with what actually is happening both

outwardly and definitely inwardly, to understand the whole

complex problem of living. So the mind must be free from

prejudice, from tradition, from all the sense of direction too,

because to come upon truth you need a clarity of mind, not a

confused mind.

So we have talked about discipline, we have talked about

beauty, which doesn't exist in our hearts or in our minds. How can

one live without this quality of beauty, which is love. You may

accumulate all the pictures in the world, go to all the museums, see

the latest painter, or read the latest poem, but if you have no beauty

in your heart, in your mind, which is the essence of love, one has

wasted one's life.

So having put order in our life, let's then examine, share

together, what is meditation? Not how to meditate, that is an

absurd question. When you ask how, you want a system, a method,

a design carefully laid out. See what happens - please do pay

attention to all this - see what happens when you are following a

method, a system. Why do you want a system, a method? It is the

easiest way isn't it, to follow somebody who says, 'I will tell you

how to meditate'. When anybody tells you how to meditate he

doesn't know what meditation is. The man who says, 'I know',

doesn't know. But in enquiring into this really very, very complex

question of meditation we must first of all see how destructive a

system of meditation is, whether it is Zen meditation, or the dozen

forms of meditation that apparently you have invented, or in the

West they are all concerned with the form of meditation - how you

should sit, how you should breathe, how you should do this, that

and the other. And we poor fools follow them. Because if you

observe that when you practise something repeatedly over and over

again your mind becomes mechanical, which already is mechanical

and you add more mechanical routine to it. So gradually your mind

atrophies. Please do pay attention to what the speaker is saying. It

is like a pianist practising the wrong note. So if you see the truth

that no system, no method, no practice, will ever lead to truth, then

you abandon all these as fallacious, unnecessary.

So we must also enquire when we meditate, when you do, if

you do, this whole problem of control. Most of us control our

responses, our reactions, we try to suppress, control desires, we try

to shape our desires. There is always the controller and the

controlled. We never ask: who is the controller, and what is that

that we are controlling in so-called meditation? Who is the

controller, who tries to control his thought, his ways of thinking

and so on? Who is the controller? The controller surely is that

entity which has determined to practise, to control, the entity. Now

who is that entity? That entity is put there by the past, by thought,

by reward and punishment. So the controller is the past. Right? Are

you following all this? That controller is trying to control his

thoughts but the controller is the controlled. Do you see this? Look:

this is all so childish really. When you are envious, jealous, violent,

when you are envious you have separated envy from yourself.

Then you say, 'I must control envy, I must suppress it' - or

rationalize and so on. But you are not separate from envy, you are

envy. Envy is not separate from you. Right? That is so obvious.

And yet we play this trick, that we try to control envy as though it

was something separate from us. So please listen: can you live a

life without a single control, which doesn't mean indulging in

whatever you want. Please put this question to yourself: whether

you can live a life, which is already so disastrous, so mechanical,

so repetitive, whether you can live without a single sense of

control. That can only happen when you perceive clearly every

action. When you give your attention to every thought that arises,

not just indulge in it, every reaction. When you give complete

attention to all that then you will find out that you can live a life

without a single conflict. Do you know what that means to a mind

that has never had conflict, or understood conflict and lives without

a single shadow of conflict? It means complete freedom. And one

must have that total freedom to enquire or come upon that which is

eternally true.

And also we should talk over, share together, the qualitative

difference between concentration and attention. Most of us know

concentration. We learn it at school, in college, in university, to

concentrate. The boy looks out of the window in the school and the

teacher says, 'Concentrate on your book.' And so we know what it

means. To concentrate implies bringing all your energy to focus on

a certain point, and thought wanders away, so you have a perpetual

battle between the desire to concentrate, to give all your energy to

look at a page, but your mind is wandering, and you try to control

it. Whereas attention has no control, no concentration. It is

complete attending, which means giving all your energy, your

nerves, your capacity of the energy of the brain, your heart,

everything, giving attention to something. Probably you have never

done it. Probably you have never so completely attended. You

know when you attend so completely there is no recording. You

understand my statement? For god's sake! When you are attending

the brain doesn't record. Whereas when you are concentrating,

making effort, the brain is recording and therefore you are always

acting from memory, like a gramophone record repeating. You

understand all this?

Whereas if you know, if you understand the nature of a brain

that needs no recording except what is necessary. It is necessary to

record where I live. It is necessary to record various activities of

life. But not to record psychologically, inwardly, either the insult,

the flattery, all that, nothing to record inwardly. Have you ever

done it? Have you ever tried it? It is all so new to you. So that the

brain and the mind is entirely free, entirely free from all

conditioning, because our brains, our minds are conditioned

through education, through culture, through environmental

influences, by the food, by the clothes, by the climate, our minds

are conditioned. We are Hindus, or Muslims, or Sikhs, or some rot

like that.

So we are all slaves to tradition and we think we are all so

totally different from each other. We are not. We all go through

great miseries, unhappiness, shed tears, we are all human beings.

not Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Russians and all the rest of it - those

are all labels without meaning.

So the mind must be totally free. That means one has to stand

completely alone. And to stand alone we are frightened.

And meditation apparently is a lot of repetition of mantras,

prayers, and all that. You mean to say by repeating some words, a

mantra, you are going to achieve something? What happens when

you constantly repeat, repeat, repeat? You might just as well repeat

Coco Cola, only you pay for them more than for the Coco Cola, or

Pepsi Cola, or whatever it is. No, please see what your mind has

become, for god's sake look at it. So none of those, whatever the

mantra, whatever the word - the word is never the thing, the

symbol is never the actual - so the mind must be free from all that.

Then we can proceed. Then the mind becomes utterly still, not

controlled. And meditation then is a mind which is completely

religious, not this phoney religion, but a mind that is not only free

but enquiring into the nature of truth. There is no guide to truth, no

path to truth. And it is only the silent mind, the mind that is free,

that can find out, can come upon what which is beyond time.

There are different forms of silence: the silence between two

noises, the silence between two notes, the silence between two

thoughts, the silence that you desire, that you cultivate, by practice,

by control, those are all artificial, cultivated silences of thought and

desire. So one must enquire into what is silence? Have you noticed,

if you have observed yourself that your mind is eternally

chattering, eternally occupied with something or other. If you are a

Sannyasi your mind is occupied with god, with prayers, with this,

with that. If you are a housewife, it is occupied with the next meal,

what you are going to have, how to utilize this and that, it is

occupied. If you are a businessman, you know what that is. And if

you are a politician, then you also know exactly what they are.

(Laughter) Don't laugh please, it is not a matter of laughing. You

are not observing your own life. And the priest is occupied with his

own nonsense. So our minds are all the time occupied. An

occupied mind has no space. And space is necessary.

So let's find out what space is. Space is from one point to

another point, which is from here to there, space also implies time.

Right? Space implies an emptiness. And that which is empty has

immense energy. So we have to enquire, share together, the nature

of silence. You can make your mind silent through a drug, by some

chemical pill, you can make your thought slow down by some

chemical intake so the thought becomes quieter and quieter. Those

are all experimental ways of making the mind quiet, silent. But that

silence is concerned with sound. Are you all interested in all this?

Does it means anything to you, all this? Or am I just prattling to

myself? Have you ever enquired what it is to have a mind that is

absolutely silent without a movement, a mind that is not recording

except those things that are necessary? So that your psyche, your

inward nature becomes absolutely still. Have you enquired into all

that? Or are you merely caught in the stream of tradition, in the

stream of work, labour, and worrying about tomorrow?

So where there is silence there is space, not from one point to

another point. Where there is silence there is no point but only

silence. And that silence has that extraordinary energy of the

universe. Just a minute, I will go into it.

The universe - you know what the word universe is - it has no

cause, it exists. This is a scientific fact. No cause. But we human

beings have causes. And through analysis you can discover the

cause of poverty in this country, or in other countries, you can find

out the cause of over population, the lack of birth control, you can

find out the cause why human beings have divided themselves into

Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, and all the rest of it. You can find out the

cause of your anxiety, you can find out the cause for your

loneliness. But you may find the cause through analysis but you

never are free from the causation. You are following? All our

action is based on reward or punishment, however finely subtle,

however deeply flattering. That is, our actions are based on that,

which is a causation, a cause.

So to understand order of the universe, which is without cause,

is it possible to live a daily life without any cause? And that is

supreme order. Then out of that order you have creative energy.

The technicians, the inventors, the scientists have certain limited

energy of creation. Have you ever noticed the scientists of this

world? They are specialized, they know their subject extraordinary

well, and in that area, in that field they live. They may have wives

and children and all the rest of it, but that is all secondhand, that is

all part of a necessary life but the mind is occupied, inventive,

theorizing, a hypothesis, testing it, moving it further. And we are

talking about creative energy, not the scientific inventive energy.

Meditation is to release that creative energy, not through some

kind of awakening of Kundalini, and all that kind of stuff, those

who talk about Kundalini don't know what it is. You don't talk

about those things.

So we have to enquire what is this creative energy, because we

have lost it. We have lost it completely. Have you ever noticed that

those who go out of this country, some of them, the Indians, are

doing extraordinarily well: they are great scientists, great

businessmen away from this country. Haven't you noticed it? There

are a great many writers now, outside. I do not call those creative

energy. Creative energy is necessary for a religion, because

religion transforms social order, historically it is so. Every culture

is born anew out of a new religion, not in the old repetition of dead

tradition. So it is immensely important to know, to understand the

depth and the beauty of meditation.

And man has always been asking, from timeless time, whether

there is something beyond all thought, beyond all romantic

inventions, beyond all time? He has always been asking is there

something beyond all this suffering, beyond all this chaos, beyond

the wars, beyond the battle between human beings, is there

something that is immovable, sacred, utterly pure, untouched by

any thought, by any experience? This has been the enquiry of

serious religious people, from the ancient of days. To find that out,

to come upon it, meditation is necessary. Not the repetitive

meditation, that is utterly meaningless. There is a creative energy

which is truly religious energy, when the mind is free from all

conflict, from all the travail of thought. Thought has its place - I

couldn't go from here to the house if I didn't think. Thought is

necessary, as knowledge is necessary at a certain level. But in the

enquiry into the origin of all things, the beginning of all things, we

say, 'Yes, God' - that is an easy word but god is the invention of

man, the invention of thought, you have created god, god hasn't

created you. If god created you to lead a miserable life, god is not

worth it. You understand? Apparently god wants you to live a

rotten life, but god is the invention of thought. We have attributed

to it all our noble sentiments. But to find out beyond god, to come

upon that which has no beginning, no end, that is the real depth of

meditation and the beauty of it. That requires freedom from all

conditioning.

So what is the origin of all this? What is the origin of all our

sorrows, what is the origin of all our suffering, aching, anxiety,

seeking security? There is complete security in compassionate

intelligence. Total security. But we want security in ideas, in

beliefs, in concepts, in ideals, we hold on to them, that is our

security. However false, however irrational it is. So where there is

compassion there is supreme intelligence, there is security, if one is

seeking security. When you are compassionate, when there is that

intelligence, there is no question of security.

So there is an origin, the original ground from which all things

start, and that original ground is not the word. The word is never

the thing. And meditation is to come upon that ground, which is the

origin of all things, and which is free from all time. This is the way

of meditation. And blessed is he who finds it.

MADRAS 2ND PUBLIC TALK 27TH DECEMBER

1981

May we continue with what we were talking about yesterday

evening? I am afraid that noise has been going on all day, you will

have to put up with it. Appropo of that so-called music, you have

had Muslim rule over seven hundred years in this country. They

didn't make any dent on the Hindu mind. Then you have had one

hundred and fifty years of British rule. Perhaps they made a little

dent on the Hindu mind. Since you have had freedom for the last

nearly forty years you have torn everything to pieces. You have

had five to three thousand years of so-called culture, and the

moment you have had freedom, whatever that word may mean to

most of you, you have torn that cloth that was woven during those

three thousand, five thousand years, torn it all to pieces, and you

are living in a state of chaos, without any kind of culture, without

any kind of responsibility, without any integrity. And that is the

result: worshipping local gods, tribal superstitions, even the socalled

fairly educated people.

So after having said that with regard to that noise, which is

called music, let's proceed with what we were talking about

yesterday. I hope that is all right. Unfortunately the wind is

blowing from that direction.

We were talking yesterday about conflict. We were asking

whether human beings who have lived on this beautiful earth, with

all the vast treasures of this earth, with their mountains, rivers and

lakes, during all these millennia human beings have lived in

perpetual conflict. Not only outwardly with the environment, with

nature, but also with each other, and inwardly, so-called spiritually,

we have been in constant conflict, from the moment we are born

until we die we are in conflict. And we put up with it; we have

become accustomed to it; we tolerate it. We find many reasons

why we should live in conflict, because we think conflict, struggle,

ever striving means progress: outward progress, or inward

achievement towards the highest goal. There are various forms of

conflict: the man who is struggling to achieve some result, the man

who is in conflict, struggles with nature, trying to conquer it.

(Noise of music) I am so sorry - what you have reduced this

country to, such a beautiful country, India is: lovely hills,

marvellous mountains, tremendous rivers. Three thousand to five

thousand years of human suffering, human struggle, obeying,

accepting, destroying each other, and this is what we have reduced

it to: a wilderness of wild thoughtless human beings, who do not

care for the earth, nor for the lovely things of the earth, nor the

beauty of a lake, a pond, of the swift running river, none of us

seem to care. All that we are concerned with is our own little

selves, our own little problem. And this, after three to five

thousand years of so-called culture. I wonder if you realize what

you as human beings have done in this country. It is most

unfortunate that all this has to be said. One wants to cry with what

we are doing in this country; what other countries are doing,

perhaps more or less the same - the other countries also have loud

music, nonsensical entertainments, but when we are concerned

with this country we shouldn't compare with other countries. That

is a political escape, not facing facts.

And we are going to face facts this afternoon. Because life has

become extraordinarily dangerous, insecure, utterly without any

meaning. You may invent a lot of meanings, significance, but

actual daily life - it may be lived for thirty, forty, hundred years it

has lost all meaning except to gather money, to be somebody, to be

powerful and so on. I am afraid this has to be said.

As we were saying yesterday, no politicians, or any politics,

whether it is left, right or centre, is going to solve any of our

problems. Politicians are not interested in solving problems. They

are only concerned with themselves and keeping their position.

And the gurus and religions have betrayed man. You have

followed the Upanishads, read them rather, the Upanishads, the

Brahmasutras and Bhagvad Gita, and it's the guru's game to read

them aloud to an audience that are supposed to be enlightened,

intelligent. So you cannot possibly rely on the politicians, that is,

government; nor upon the religious scriptures, not upon any guru

whatsoever because they have made this country what it is now. If

one seeks further leadership they will also lead you up the wrong

path. That is what we were saying yesterday afternoon. And as no

one can help us, no one, we have to be responsible for ourselves

totally, completely: responsible for our conduct, for our behaviour,

for our actions and all that.

And we are going to talk about conflict this afternoon: whether

it is possible to live in a world that is becoming more and more

chaotic, more and more insecure and dangerous, whether we can be

free of conflict both outwardly and inwardly. Please, as we said

yesterday, this is not a lecture but rather that we are together,

perhaps with my little help, we are together investigating,

exploring whether we can live without a single conflict in our life.

And it is necessary and important to find out if we can so live.

(More loud noise of music) I think the wind will die down!

One must ask after all this millennia, why human beings have

not solved the problem of struggle, conflict amongst themselves,

with each other, in themselves? This is a very important question to

ask: why we admit to and succumb to conflict? You know what

conflict is? The struggle to become something, or not to become

something, the struggle to achieve a result, personal advancement,

personal success, try to fulfil something of your desires; the

conflict of war, the preparations for war, of which you may not be

aware. They are inventing dreadful machines to kill each other, kill

us, and the competition involved in our desires to succeed. The

conflict between man and woman, sexually in their daily

relationship. Apparently this conflict is not only conscious, if one

is at all aware but also deep down in the very recesses of our mind:

conflict of pretension, trying to be something when you are not,

conflict that exists in trying to achieve heaven, god, or whatever

you like to call that thing that you adore, worship, conflict in

meditation, struggle to meditate, struggle against lethargy,

indolence. So our life is from the very beginning, from the time we

are born until we die, it is a perpetual conflict. We are in conflict

with that. (Noise of music) And they don't care whether other

human beings suffer from their music, to their noise. It is not

music.

So we must find out together why man, you as a human being,

representing all the world - we went into that a little yesterday, you

are the rest of the world - why we human beings have tolerated, put

up with, become habituated to conflict? Please don't go to sleep.

We are thinking over together most seriously whether it is possible

to completely be free of all conflict; because conflict, consciously

or unconsciously will inevitably bring about a society that is

ourselves extended. Society is not an abstraction, it is not an idea,

society is relationship between man and man. If that relationship is

in conflict, painful, depressing, anxious, painful, then we create a

society which represents us. It is a fact. Please look at it carefully.

Society isn't something out there. Society, the idea of society, the

idea is not actual society; society is what we are with each other.

And we are asking whether this conflict can ever end?

What is conflict? When conflict is, when we do not accept what

actually is, and escape to something called an ideal, the opposite of

'what is', then conflict is inevitable. Are we meeting each other?

That is, when I am incapable of looking actually and observing

what actually I am doing, thinking, acting, this is 'what is; and I

project an ideal, so there is conflict between 'what is' and 'what

should be'. You are following all this? I hope so. Sir, I am not

talking for my pleasure. I am not trying to fulfil myself in talking,

or build up a kind of reputation. I don't believe in any of those

things. We are talking to convey, if we are serious, that there is a

way of living in which there is not a spot of conflict. If you are

interested in it, if you are concerned about it, if you want to find

out a way of living that is without that sense of vain effort, then

please do listen carefully, not to what I am saying, not to what the

speaker is saying, but listen to the fact, the truth of what is being

said, which is your own observation because we are together

investigating. It is not what the speaker is pointing out but together

we are looking. Please do pay attention to this. It is no fun for the

speaker just to talk to blank faces, or people who are bored. Since

you have taken the trouble to come and sit here under the beautiful

trees, it is nice, but we are here to talk over together serious

matters.

So we were saying conflict exists when we disregard what is

actually taking place and translate what is taking place in terms of

an ideal, in terms of 'what should be', in a concept which we have

accepted, or which we ourselves have created. So when there is a

division between 'what is' and 'what should be' there must

inevitably be conflict. This is a law. Not the speaker's law but it is

the law; like an apple or a fruit falls from the tree, that is a law; so

similarly this is a law. So we are going to investigate why human

beings have never faced 'what is' and are always trying to escape

from that.

This country has always talked about non-violence. That is

right, isn't it? (Noise of birds) Even the birds agree! This has been

preached over and over again, politically, religiously, by all the

various leaders that you have had - non-violence: which is not a

fact, just an idea, a theory, a set of words, but the actual fact is that

you are violent. That is the fact. That's what is. And we are not

capable of understanding 'what is' and that is why we create this

nonsense called non-violence. Right? So that becomes a conflict

between 'what is' and 'what should be'. And while you are pursuing

non-violence you are sowing the seeds of violence all the time.

That is again so obvious. So can we together look at 'what is'

without any escape, without any ideals, without suppressing or

escaping from 'what is'? We are by inheritance from the animal,

from the ape and so on, we are violent. Violence takes many forms,

not merely brutal action, hitting each other; violence is a very

complicated issue. Violence is imitation, conformity, obedience;

violence is when you are not and pretend what you are supposed to

be; that is a form of violence. Please see the reason of all this, the

logic of all this. It is not just that we are making statements for you

to accept or deny. We are walking down a path, in a forest, in the

lovely woods, together and investigating, talking over together like

two friends, about violence. And so we are talking about it

amicably, without any persuasion, without any sense of resolution

of the problem. We are talking together, we are observing together.

We are walking along the same path, not your path or my path but

the path of investigation into these problems.

We are violent. That is a fact. We get angry, we conform, we

imitate, we follow, we are aggressive and aggression takes many

forms - a polite, gentle aggressiveness, with a kid glove,

persuading you through affection. That is a form of violence.

Compelling you to think along a particular line, that is violence.

Violence is the acceptance of something that you are not. So please

understand violence isn't just getting angry or beating up each

other, that is nothing, that is a very shallow form of violence.

Violence is very, very complex and to understand it, to go into the

very depths of it, one must see the fact first and not, "We should be

non-violent". I hope this is very clear. We are communicating with

each other, therefore if there is no understanding in our

communication we must stop and go back. Communication means

understanding together of a particular problem, using the words, as

we are talking in English, that we both understand.

There is only 'what is', which is violence, and not non-violence,

that is non-fact, not a reality, it is a projection of thought to escape,

or to accept violence and pretend that we are becoming nonviolent.

This country has played that game for centuries. So can we

look at violence freed from all that: from escape, from ideals, from

suppression, but actually observe what violence is.

So we have to learn together how to observe. We are not

teaching you, you are not the speaker's followers, he is not your

guru, thank god; but we are merely walking together, investigating,

there is no superior or inferior in this investigation. There is no

authority in this investigation, but when your mind is crippled with

authority, as you are, it is very difficult to be free of all that and

look at violence. So it is important to understand how to observe.

To observe what is happening in the world: the misery, the

confusion, the hypocrisy, the lack of integrity, the brutal actions

that are going on in the world, the terrorists, the people who are

taking hostages and the gurus who have their own particular

concentration camps. Please, don't laugh, you are part of all that. It

is all violence. How can anyone say, "I know, follow me"? That is

a scandalous statement. So we are together observing what

violence is. So we are asking: what is it to observe? What is it to

observe the environment around you; the trees, that pond in the

corner there, made beautiful within this year, the stars, the new

moon, the solitary Venus alone, the evening star by itself, the glory

of a sunset, how do you watch it, if you have ever watched at all?

You cannot watch, observe if you are occupied with yourself, with

your own problems, with your own ideas, with your own complex

thinking, you cannot observe. Right? You cannot observe if you

have prejudice, or if there is any kind of conclusion which you

hold on to, or your particular experience that you cling to, then it is

impossible to observe. So how do you observe a tree, this

marvellous thing called a tree, the beauty of it, how do you look at

it? How do you look at it now as you are sitting there surrounded

by these trees? Have you ever watched them? Have you seen their

leaves, fluttering in the wind, the beauty of the light on the leaf,

have you ever watched it? So can you watch a tree, or the new

moon, or the single star in the heavens, without the word, the

moon, the star, the sky, without the word? Because the word is not

the actual star, the actual moon. So can you put aside the word and

look? Right? That is outwardly.

Can you look at your wife without the word? Without all the

remembrance of your relationship however intimate it has been,

without all that builtup memory of ten days, or ten years, or fifty

years, can you look at your wife, or your husband, without the

memory of the past? Have you ever done it? Of course not. So will

you please let us learn together how to look, how to observe a

flower. If you know how to look at a flower, that contains eternity.

Don't be carried away by my words. If you know how to look at a

star, a dense forest, then you see in that observation there is space,

timeless eternity. So we must together find out how to observe: to

observe your wife or your husband without the image you have

created about her or about him. You must begin very close - you

understand - you must begin very close in order to go very far. But

if you don't begin very close you can never go very far. If you want

to climb the mountain or go to the next village on your feet, the

first steps matter, how you walk, with what grace, with what ease,

with what felicity. So we are saying that to go very, very far, which

is eternity, you must begin very close, which is your relationship

with your wife and husband. Can you look, observe with clear eyes

your wife or your husband, without the words 'My wife', or 'my

husband', 'My nephew', or 'My son', without the word, without all

the accumulated hurts with all the remembrance of things past, can

you look? Do it now as you are sitting there, observe. And when

you are capable of observing without the past, that is all the images

you have built about yourself and about her, then there is right

relationship between you and her.

Now, as we have not observed each other, it is like two railway

lines never meeting. That's our relationship. I wonder if you are

aware of all this? If you are aware what actually our relationship is.

We are together learning how to observe that tree, sitting next to

your neighbour, the colour of the shirt, the colour of the sari, the

type of the face, observe without criticism, without like or dislike,

just to observe. Now when such observation takes place can you

look at your violence; violence being anger, irritation, conformity,

acceptance, getting used to some noise, some dirt, the squalor

around your houses, can you look at all that? So when you so look

you bring all your energy, you bring all your energy to observe,

and when you so observe your violence you will find, if you have

gone into it, if you do it, that violence because you have brought all

your energy to observe, that violence totally disappears. Don't

repeat, if I may most respectfully request, don't repeat what you

have heard. By repeating what the speaker has said you become

secondhand human beings. By repeating the Upanishads, the

Brahmasutras and all the printed books, you have made yourself

secondhand human beings. You don't seem to mind, do you? You

are not even ashamed of it, you just accept it. That acceptance is

part of this complex problem of violence.

So we are saying that it is possible to live without conflict,

when there is no duality. There is no duality now, not when you

reach a certain state of consciousness. There is no actual duality,

there is only 'what is'. You understand? Duality only exists when

you deny, or try to escape from 'what is' into 'what is not'. Is this

clear? Are we all together in this matter? I know your philosophy,

Vedanta and all that stuff, I don't know anything about it, but

people have talked to me a great deal about all these matters,

pundits, scholars and ordinary people, they live in duality. Right?

Not physical duality, there is man, woman, tall, short, light skin,

dark skin, you know all that, that is not duality. But the idea that

conflict is necessary because we live in duality and therefore those

who are free from the opposite are the enlightened people. You

invent a philosophy around that. And you read about it, accept it,

read all the commentaries and you are stuck where you are.

Whereas the speaker is saying there is no duality actually; not

when you reach spiritual heights, you will never reach spiritual

heights if you have dualities now, not in some future incarnation or

at the end of your life. The speaker is saying there is only 'what is',

there is nothing else. 'What is' is the only fact. Its opposite is nonfact,

it has no reality. I hope this is very clear, even logically, with

reason. If you are exercising your reason, your capacity to think

logically, 'what is' is more important to understand than 'what

should be'. And 'what should be' we cling to because we don't

know how to deal with 'what is'. We use the opposites as a lever to

free ourselves from 'what is'. You are following all this? I hope you

are.

So there is only 'what is' and therefore there is no duality, there

is no opposite: there is only greed and not non-greed. When you

understand the depth of violence without escaping from it, running

away to some idiotic ideals, as non-violence, when you look at it,

when you observe it very closely, which is to bring all the energy

which you have wasted in pursuing the opposite, which is a

wastage of energy, when you try to suppress it, it is a wastage of

energy which is conflict. But when you observe 'what is' there is no

conflict. Please understand this.

Suppose I am envious, envious of you who are very clever,

bright, intelligent, sensitive, see the beauty of the earth and the

glory of the sky, and I don't see it. And you enjoy this lovely earth

and to me it means nothing. Then I want to be like you. So I begin

to imitate you, the way you walk, the way you look, the way you

smile, the way you look at the heavens. I am greedy. Right? But I

have been educated from childhood not to be greedy. The 'not' is

the opposite of what I am. I have been educated, conditioned, all

the books have said there is duality, or some books - that is not

important, the books have said it. And I have accepted it. And it is

very difficult for me to break that conditioning, so I begin to

discuss with you, cleverly; there is duality, books have said it, my

guru has told me. So my conditioning from childhood prevents the

understanding of this very simple fact, which is, there is only 'what

is'. Goodness is not the opposite of the bad. If good is born out of

the bad then goodness contains the bad. You understand? Think it

out sirs, work at it. Let's exercise our brains. So to always live with

'what is', with what actually is going on outwardly and inwardly.

When I am envious, I live with that fact, I observe it. Again envy is

a very complex process, part of competition, the desire for

advancement, politically, religiously, business. And I have been

brought up in that; to break that tradition in which I have been

brought up demands a great deal of observation, not run away to

the opposite of tradition. Just to observe what tradition is. You

understand all this? I hope the speaker is making it all very clear.

You are all traditional people. That is, you are repeating

psychologically, even intellectually what you have been told. Your

whole religion is based on that. And there they are.

So when once you see the fact, that there is only 'what is', and to

observe with all the energy that you have, that fact, then you will

see that fact has no value or importance, it is totally non existent.

You are following this?

Look sirs: one has been told from childhood to be good. The

word 'good' is an old fashioned word, but it is really a beautiful

word. Good means to be correct; correct in your speech, correct in

your behaviour, not according to an idea of what is correct. Correct

means to be precise, accurate, not pretentious. I am not good -

suppose I am not. And my parents, my teacher, my educator says,

"Be good" - so I have created a conflict between I am and what I

should be. I don't understand the meaning of that word, because

that word again is very, very subtle, it demands a great deal of

investigation into that word. Good means also to be completely

honest, to have great integrity, which means one behaves not

according to some tradition, fashion, but behaving with the sense

of integrity, which has its own intelligence.

And also goodness means to be holistic, to be whole, not

fragmented. I am all that, fragmented - suppose I am - fragmented,

traditional, brought up in this chaotic tradition. What is important

is not what is goodness, why my brain is caught in tradition - that

is more important than being good. You understand? So I have to

understand why the brain, which is again very, very subtle, has

great depth to it in itself, why such a brain has followed tradition. It

has followed because it is safe, there is security because I am

following what my parents have said and so on, that gives one a

sense of safety, protection - a false protection: I think it is safe but

it is unreal, it is illusory, and I won't listen to you because I am

frightened to be without tradition. Which means to live with all

your attention.

So it is possible, if you go into it very carefully, to live a life

without a shadow of conflict. Because those of you who believe in

god, I am sure you all do, don't you, if god created you he must

have meant that you must have a rotten life - right? But you have

created god; that is a fact. God is your ultimate security and you

believe in that. See what thought has done: created an image of god

and then you worship that god which is self worship. You

understand? Oh, you people don't. Then you begin to ask who

created the earth, who created the heavens, the universe and so on.

So your tradition begins to destroy the human mind. It is a

repetition, it becomes mechanical, it has no vitality, except to earn

money, go to the office every morning for the rest of your life and

then die at the end of it.

So it is important to find out whether you, as a human being,

who is the rest of humanity - we went into that the other day, your

consciousness is the consciousness of the rest of man because

every man throughout the world suffers, is anxious, depressed,

lonely, uncertain, confused like you; your consciousness is like any

other consciousness. And so when you live without a single

conflict but only living everyday with 'what is' and observing 'what

is', not only out there but inwardly, then you will create a society

that will be without conflict. Right sirs.

OJAI 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1ST MAY 1982

I would like to point out, if I may, this is not a weekend

entertainment. We are going to deal with the whole of life, with all

its complex problems, and not a particular subject. This is not a

lecture; that is, to talk about a particular subject in view of giving

information.

I think it would be good if we could, from the very beginning of

these talks - and there will be, I believe, six of them and four

question and answer meetings - if we could from the very

beginning understand that we are not instructing anybody anything;

we are not bringing up some kind of ideas or beliefs or some

conclusions to convince you of anything. This is not a propaganda;

but rather, if we could, during all these talks, think over together,

observe together, listen to the whole movement of one life, whether

it is in South Africa, South America, Europe or America or Asia.

We are dealing with a very, very complex problem that needs to be

studied very carefully, hesitantly, without any direction, without

any motive, to observe, if we can, the whole outward happening of

our life. Because if we don't understand what is happening outside

of us, which is the measure by which we will be able to understand

ourselves, if we do not understand what is actually going on in the

world, the external world, outside the skin as it were, outside the

psychological field, we will have no measure by which to observe

ourselves.

So first, if we may, let us together observe. I mean by that word

to look carefully without any bias, as an America or Argentine or

British, or French or Russian, to observe - or Asia, forgot, sorry -

to observe without any motive; which is rather difficult. To see

clearly, if we can, what is going on. As one observes and travels

around the world, there is a great deal of dissension, discord,

disagreement, disorder; a great deal of confusion, uncertainty; there

are the demonstrations against one particular form of war. There is

terrorism; the preparation for wars; spending untold money on

armaments. There are the national divisions: one nation against

another preparing for eventual war. And there are the religious

sectarian divisions: the Catholic, the Protestant, the Hindu, the

Islamic world, the Buddhist. And there is this constant division in

the world. Where there is division there must be dissension,

conflict. We see this all over the world.

And there is the national honour, for which one is proud and

willing to kill others. There are the various sects, gurus, with their

particular following. There is the spiritual authority: the Catholic

world, the Protestant world, not so much in the Buddhist and the

Hindu world, but there is the authority of the book in the Islam. So

wherever there is this dissension, disorder, there is not only

conflict, destruction of each other, and the attachment to a

particular nationality, hoping thereby to find some kind of security,

physical outward security. This is the phenomenon that is taking

place in the world, of which one is sure that we all observe the

same thing: one group against another group. And so there is

isolation taking place, not only for each human being, but the

isolation of groups. Which is, bound by a belief, by a faith, by

some ideological conclusion, as in the totalitarian states and in the

so-called democratic world with their ideals; so the ideals, beliefs,

dogmas, rituals are separating mankind.

This is actually what is going on in the world. The external

world is the result of our own psychological world. This outward

world is created by each one of us. Because we are isolated human

beings. We have our own particular profession, our own particular

belief, our conclusions and experiences, to which we cling, and so

gradually each one is isolating himself. There is self-centred

activity, which is expressed outwardly as the nation, belonging to

some religious group, whether that group has 700 million people as

the Catholic world has, each one of us is isolating himself. And so

we are producing or creating a world externally through

nationalism, which is a glorified form of tribalism; and each tribe is

willing to kill another tribe for their belief, for their land, for their

economic trade and so on, and so on, and so on.

We all know this; at least, those of us who are aware; who listen

to all the radios, television, newspapers and so on. And there are

those who say, this cannot be changed at all, there is no possibility

of human conditioning being transformed. The world has been

going on like this for thousands and thousands of years and this

world is created by the human condition and that condition can

never possibly be transformed, bring about a mutation in itself.

They assert that there can be modification, slight change, but man

will ever be what he is; in conflict with each other, murdering each

other; and bringing about a division in himself and in the world.

And there are those who have tried social reform of various

kinds all over the world; but they too have not brought about deep

fundamental mutation in the human consciousness. This is the state

of the world. And how do we look at it? What is our response to it,

as human beings? Not to the technological world; the computers,

and all those extraordinary things the human brain is inventing; but

what is actually our relationship, not only with each other but with

this external world; what is our responsibility? Do we leave it to

the politicians? Do we seek new leaders? Please, this is a very

serious problem which we are discussing, talking over together.

New saviours, or go back to the old tradition, because human

beings, unable to solve this problem, return to the old habitual

tradition of the past? Which is also what is happening. The more

there is confusion in the world, the more desire and urge to return

to some past illusions, past tradition, past leaders, past so-called

saviours.

So if one is aware of all this, as one must; what is our response

to all this? Not a partial but total response to the whole phenomena

that is going on, taking place in the world. Do we only consider our

own personal lives? How to live a quiet, serene, undisturbed life in

some corner; or are we concerned with the total human existence,

with the total humanity? If we are only concerned with our own

particular life, however troublesome it is, however limited it is,

however much it is sorrowful and painful, then one does not realize

the part is the whole. So one has to look at life, not the American

life or the Asiatic life, but life as a whole; holistic observation. The

observation that is not a particular observation; it's not my

observation or your particular observation, but the observation that

comprehends the totality, the holistic view of life. Each one of us

has been concerned with his own particular problems: problems of

more money, no job, seeking one's own fulfillment, seeking

everlastingly pleasure; frightened, isolated, lonely, depressed,

suffering, and creating, being personal, a saviour outside who will

transform or bring about a salvation for ourselves, for each one of

us. This tradition has been going on in the Western world for two

thousand years: and the Asiatic world, which is probably the

explosion from India or the East, has also maintained the same

thing in different words, different symbols, different pictures,

different conclusions: but it is the same individual's search for his

own salvation, for his own particular happiness, to resolve his

many complex problems. That what each one of us is trying to do.

If we cannot solve our particular problem, there are the

specialists of various kinds, psychological specialists to whom one

goes to resolve our problems. They too have not succeeded. Nor

the scientists. On the contrary. Technologically the scientists have

helped enormously - less disease, better communication, sanitation

and so on and so on. And also the scientists are maintaining the

war. Scientists are responsible for all the gadgets of war. They are

responsible for murdering millions and millions of people at one

blow. So scientists are not going to save mankind, nor the

politicians, whether in the East or West, or in the middle part of the

world. They seek power, position, and they play all kinds of tricks

on human thought. You know all this. And in the Western world

we elect them - god knows how we elect them. And in the Russian

world you don't, they are a totalitarian dictatorship, complete

prison. And it is exactly the same thing in the religious world, socalled

religious world. The authority of the hierarchy, the authority

of the pope, the bishops, the archbishop and the local priest in the

name of some image which thought has created. And we, as human

beings separated, isolated, we haven't been able to solve our

problems. We are highly educated, cunning, self-centred, capable

of extraordinary things outwardly. But inwardly we are more or

less what we have been for a million years: we hate, we compete,

we destroy each other; which is what is going on actually at the

present moment. You have heard the experts talking about the

recent war, they are not talking about human beings being killed,

but destroying airfields, blowing up this or that. So there is this

total confusion in the world, of which one is quite sure we are all

aware of.

And from that arises the question: what shall we do? As a friend

once some time ago told the speaker, you can't do anything. You

are beating your head against a wall. It will go on like this for the

next million years; fight, kill, destroy each other, competition,

caught in various forms of illusion. This will go on. Don't waste

your life and time. This tragedy, the terrifying events that may

happen by some crazy person pressing a button; or the computer

taking over man's capacities, thinking much quicker, more

accurately; and the computer too may destroy the human being, the

human mind, the human brain; because the computer, the robot can

do all kinds of things as they are doing in Japan. So what is going

to happen to human beings? So this is the vast problem which we

are facing.

(Continued ...)

(My humble salutations to the lotus feet of Sri Jiddu Krishnamurti and

gratitude to the great philosophers and followers of him.)

Category: Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Flame of Attention - 4

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Hindu Vedic Philosophy (The Paramardha Tattwam)

Jiddu Krishnamurti - The Flame of Attention - 4

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