Public Talk 10, Ojai, California, 29 June 1934

Tenth Talk at the Oak Grove

Ojai, California

June 29, 1934

My talking, by the questions that have been put to me, seem to have created a great deal of confusion. I think one merely looks at the words and does not go more deeply into the meaning of words, or use the words as a means of comprehension.

Now to me there is a reality, an immense living truth, and to comprehend that, there must be utter simplicity of thought, because what is simple is infinitely subtle, and what is simple is therefore greatly very delicate. There is a great possibility of subtlety, infinite possibility of subtlety and delicacy, and if you merely use words as a means of getting to that delicacy, to that simplicity of thought, then I am afraid you will not comprehend what I want to convey, but whereas if you merely use the words as a significance, as a measure, as a bridge to cross, then words will not be an illusion in which the mind can be caught.

Now I say there is this living reality, call it God, truth, or anything you like, and it cannot be found or realized through search. Where there is the implication of search, there must be

Page 2 contrast and duality; wherever mind is seeking, it must inevitably imply a division, a distinction, a contrast, and which does not mean that mind must be contented, that mind must be stagnation. There is that delicate poise, which is neither contentment, nor this ceaseless effort born out of search, out of this desire to attain, to reach, and in that delicacy of poise lies simplicity, not the simplicity of having a few clothes or having few possessions, I am not talking of such simplicity, which is a very crude form, but the simplicity born out of this delicacy in which delicacy of thought, in which there is neither search nor contentment. As I said, search implies duality, contrast.

Now where there is contrast, duality, there must be identification with one of the opposites, and from this there arises compulsion. When we say we search for something, our mind is putting away and seeking something that will satisfy it and thereby creating duality, and from this there arises compulsion; that is the choice of the one is the overcoming of the other, isn’t it? When we say we seek out, cultivate a new value, it is but the overcoming of that in which the mind is caught up, which is its opposite, and this choice is based on attraction of fear of the other, and this attraction, and so the

Page 3 clinging to that attraction or the rejection through fear creates influence by/or the mind. Influence then is the negation of understanding, and again only where there is division, the division of psychological division from which there arises all distinction, all class, nationality, religion, sex and so on. That is, when the mind is trying to overcome, then it must create duality, and that very duality negates understanding, and that duality creates distinction, which we call class, religion, sex, and so on, and that duality influences the mind, and hence such a mind cannot understand the significance of environment or the significance of the cause of conflict, but the psychological influences are merely reactions to environment, and from that centre of “I-consciousness” of like and dislike and antithesis, and naturally where there are antitheses, in which there is no comprehension, wherever there are opposites, there cannot be comprehension, and from this distinction, classification, there arises the beneficial and evil influences. So as long as mind is influenced, which is born out of attraction, opposites, antitheses, there must be domination or compulsion of love, of intellect, and

Page 4 class, and this hindrance must be — and this influence must be a hindrance to that understanding which is beauty, truth and love itself. Now if one can become aware of this influence, then you can discern the cause of that influence.

Now most people seem to be aware superficially, not at its greatest depth. It is only when there is awareness in its greatest depth in consciousness, in that then you can discern the division which is created through influence, which negates understanding.

Question: After listening to your talk about memory, I have completely lost mine, and I find I cannot remember my huge debts. I feel blissful. Is this liberation?

Krishnamurti: I shall ask the person to whom you owed the money. I am afraid there is some slight confusion with regard to what I have been trying to say concerning memory. If you merely rely on memory as a means of conduct, as a means of behaviour, as a means of activity in life, then that memory must impede your action, your conduct, your

Page 5 behaviour, because then that behaviour, that action, or that conduct is merely born out of calculation, and therefore there is no spontaneity, no richness, no fullness in life. It does not mean that you must forget your debts. You cannot forget the past. You cannot blot it out of year mind. It is an impossibility. Subconsciously it may exist, but if that subconscious memory, dormant, is influencing you unconsciously, is moulding your action, your conduct, your whole outlook on life, then that influence must ever be creating further limitations, imposing further burdens on the functioning of intelligence. Say, for example, I have come from India; I have been to Australia, New Zealand, met various people and had many, many ideas and sights. I can’t forget it, though the memory of them is fading. But the reaction to the past impedes my full comprehension or that intelligent functioning if my mind is reacting to the past. That is, if my experiences, remembrances of the past is impinging in the present through their reaction, then I cannot comprehend or live fully, intensely, in the present. One does react to the past because the present has lost its significance or you want to avoid the present, and you go back and have that emotional thrill, emotional reaction,

Page 6 sentimental upbringing, surging to a past memory, because the present has little value. So when you say, I have completely lost my memory, I am afraid you are fit for only one place. You cannot lost memory, but you can, by living so completely in the present, and I assure you, you do it, so completely in the moment, that the whole subconscious entanglements of memory, dormant habits and longings surge forward and prevent you from functioning intelligently in the present, and if you are aware of that, and if you are aware of that prevention, aware of its fullest depth, not superficially, then all the dormant subconscious memories, which are but lack of understanding and incompleteness of living, disappear, and therefore you meet each movement of environment, each significance of thought anew.

Question: You say that the complete understanding of the outer and inner environment of the individual releases him from bondage and sorrow. Now, even in that state, can one free himself from the indescribable sorrow which in the nature of things is caused by the death of someone he really loves?

Krishnamurti: What is the cause of suffering in this case? And what

Page 7 is it that we call suffering? Isn’t suffering merely a shock to the mind to awaken it to its own insufficiency, and the recognition of that insufficiency brings about what we call sorrow? That is, suppose that you have been relying on your son or your husband, or your wife to fulfil that insufficiency, that incompleteness, and by the loss of that person whom you love, there is created — there is the full consciousness of that emptiness, of that void, and out of that consciousness comes sorrow, and we say, I have lost somebody. So there is, first of all, through death, the full consciousness of emptiness, which you have been carefully putting away. So where there is dependency, there must be the indication of emptiness, shallowness, insufficiency, and out of that there must be sorrow and pain. We don’t want to recognize that; we don’t see that is the fundamental cause. Then we begin to say, first, I miss my friend, my husband, my wife, my child. How am I to overcome it? How am I to overcome this sorrow? Now all overcoming is but substitution. In that there is no understanding and therefore further sorrow, though momentarily you may find

Page 8 a substitution that will completely put the mind to sleep. If you don’t seek an overcoming, then you turn to séances, mediums, or take shelter in the scientific proof that life continues after death. So you begin to discover various means of escapes, substitutions, which momentarily relieve you from suffering, but whereas, if there was the cessation of all this desire to overcome, and if there were really the desire to understand, to find out, fundamentally, what causes pain, sorrow, then you will discover that so long as there is loneliness, shallowness, emptiness, insufficiency, which in its outward expression is dependency, then there must be pain, and you cannot fill that insufficiency by overcoming obstacles, or by substitutions, or by running away, or by accumulation, which is but merely the cunningness of the mind, which is lost in pursuit of gain.

Now suffering is merely that high, intense clarity of thought and emotion which forces yea to recognize things as they are, and the mind that is incapable of recognition suffers, which does not mean acceptance, resignation, and when you see things as they are in the mirror of truth, which is intelligence, and in that there is a joy; there is an ecstasy; there is no duality, as missing someone, division, and

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I assure you this is not theoretical. If you connect what I am saying with the answer to my first question with regard to memory, you will see how memory creates greater and greater dependency, this continual looking back to an event emotionally and getting a great reaction and therefore preventing that full expression of intelligence in the present.

Question: What suggestion or advice would you give to one who is hindered by strong sexual desire?

Krishnamurti: After all, when there is no creative expression in life, we give undue importance to those things which become an acute problem. So the question is not, what advice or suggestion would you give to overcome this passion, desire, sexual desire, but how to release that creative living, not tackle one part of that, which is sex, but to understand the wholeness, the completeness of life. That is, through modern education, through circumstances and environment, you are doing something which you are — which you hate. You are repelled, but you are forced to do it on account of your lack of proper equipment, intelligently and vocationally. So in your work you are being prevented by circumstances, by conditions, from expressing

Page 10 fundamentally, creatively, and naturally there must be an outlet; it may be a sex problem or a drink or some idiotic, insane amusement. So all those become a problem. You are inclined artistically. There are very few artists, but you may be inclined, and that inclination is being perverted, twisted, put away, thwarted, and you have no means of expression, and again there is the undue importance given to either sex or to some religious mania, or your ambitions are thwarted, curtailed, so again there is an undue measure of importance given to those things that are normal; so, until you understand comprehensively your religious, political, economic, social desires, and their hindrances, then the natural functions of life take an immense importance and the first place in your life. Hence all the innumerable problems of greed, of possessiveness, of sex, of social distinction, of racial distinctions — now their false measure and their value. But if you were to deal with life, not in departments, but as a whole, comprehensively, creatively, with intelligence, then you will see that these problems, which are enervating the mind, destroying it and creative living, disappear, and then intelligence functions normally and in that there is an ecstasy.

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Question: I have been under the impression that I have been putting your ideas into action; but I have no joy in life, no enthusiasm for any pursuit. My attempts at awareness have not cleared my confusion, nor have they brought any change or vitality into my life. My living has no more meaning for me now than it had when I started to listen to you seven years ago. What is wrong with me?

Krishnamurti: First of all, I wonder if the questioner has understood what I have been saying, to put my ideas into action, and why should he put my ideas into action, and what are my ideas? I am not giving a mould or code by which you can live or a system which you can follow. All that I am saying is, to live creatively, enthusiastically, intelligently, vitally, intelligence must function. Now that intelligence is perverted, hindered, by what one calls memory, and I have explained what I mean by that, so I won’t go into it. And so long as there is this constant pull to achieve, so long as mind is influenced, there must be duality, and hence pain, struggle, and our search for truth or for reality is but an escape from that pain, and so I say, become aware that your effort, your struggle, your

Page 12 impinging memories are destroying your intelligence. To become aware is to be not superficially conscious, but to be, to go to the full depth of consciousness without any level, so as not to leave one unconscious reaction. All this demands thought; all this demands an alertness of mind and heart, not a mind that is cluttered up with beliefs, creeds and ideals. Now as most minds are burdened with these and with the desire to follow, as their burden, as they become conscious of this burden — don’t say you mustn’t have ideals; you must not have creeds, and the rest of it. The very must creates another doctrine, another creed, but merely become conscious, and in the intensity of that consciousness, in the intensity of awareness, in that flame you will create such crisis, such conflict, and that very conflict itself will dissolve the hindrance.

You know, I know some people come here year after year and I try to explain it in a different way every year, but I am afraid there is very little thought among those people who say, I have been listening to you for seven years. I mean by thought, not mere intellectual reasoning, which are but ashes, but that poise between emotion and reason, between affection and thought, and that poise is not influenced,

Page 13 is not pulled over by one side or the other, but if there is neither the capacity to think clearly, or intensity of feeling, how can you awaken; how can there be poise; how can there be this alertness, this awareness, and hence life becomes very futile, inane, worthless. So the very first thing to do is, if I may suggest, is to find out why you are thinking a certain way, and why you are feeling a certain manner. Don’t try to alter it; don’t try to analyze your thoughts and your emotions, but become conscious why you are thinking in a particular groove, from what motive an action has taken place, and to discover the motive, you cannot find out through analysis. Though you may find out through analysis, it will not be real; it will be real only when you are intensely aware at the moment of your thought functioning, and then you will see the extraordinary subtlety, the fine delicacy of thought and emotion. So long as you have a must, in this compulsion then you will never discover that swift wandering of thought and emotion, and I am sure you have been brought up in the school of must and must [not?], and hence you have destroyed thought and feeling. It has been done by systems, methods, by your teachers. So leave all those musts and must nots, which does not mean

Page 14 there must be licentiousness, but to become aware of a mind that is saying, I must, and I must not, and then as the flower blossoms forth in the morning, so intelligence happens, creating comprehension through function.

Question: The artist is sometimes mentioned as one who has this understanding of which you speak, at least while working creatively. But if someone disturbs or crosses him, he may react violently, excusing his reaction as a manifestation of temperament. Obviously he is not living completely at the moment. Does one really understand if he so easily slips back into self-consciousness?

Krishnamurti: Who is the person that you call an artist, a man who is momentarily creative? That is what is ordinarily understood as an artist. To me he is not an artist. The man who merely at rare moments has this creative impulse and expresses that creativeness through perfection of technique, surely you would not call him an artist. To me, the true artist is one who lives completely, harmoniously, who does not divide his art from living, whose very life is that expression, whether it is in a picture, music, in his behaviour, conduct, who has not divorced his expression on a canvas or in music or in stone apart from his daily conduct, daily living, and that demands the highest

Page 15 intelligence, highest harmony, and the true artist is to me the man who has that harmony. He may express it in canvas, or he may talk, or he may paint, or he may not express it at all; he may feel it, but all this demands that exquisite poise, that intensity of awareness, and therefore his expression is not divorced from the daily continuous living.