Public Talk 1, Madras, 5 December 1954

Public Talk by Krishnaji at Vasanta Vihar, Adyar

5-12-1954

I think it would be a good thing if we could go into the question of listening. It seems to me to be very important to find out what it is to listen to somebody, not only to a speaker but also to anything that is of importance. How to listen to the birds, to the sound of the seas, to the human voice, to everything about us and so on? If we could find out how to listen, perhaps all our problems would be solved, especially now, in an unprecedented crisis. It seems to me it has become extraordinarily important for each one of us to find out what is true and what is false, irrespective of all the books that are being published and have been published, sacred and other works, the innumerable teachers here and in the West; for each one of us to listen to all of them and not to be converted to any particular point of view, any particular philosophy or ideas, to find out beyond the words, beyond the similes, beyond the intricate thoughts what is true and what is false. It is extraordinarily important to discover for oneself, whether it is couched in Western philosophy or Eastern thought, to find out exactly for oneself what is true among all this verbiage, the philosophy of the contending systems and gurus.

Can we for a moment find out for ourselves how to listen? First of all, do we ever listen to anything? Are we capable of listening? When you do listen to something, if you observe you will see how difficult it is to listen because you have already preconceived ideas, you have already formed opinions, you have already a judgment, your own tradition, your experience, cultural influences and so on. These intercede. They are like screens between you and that which you are trying to hear. So there is no listening at all. There is merely a translation of what you hear in terms of your own conditioning.

Do observe and you will find an extraordinary fact that is actually taking place when you are listening to what is being said. You are really not listening. You have an opinion already about what is going to be said. Watch, if I may suggest, your own minds. How you have already conclusions, formulations, definite ideas; how the knowledge of your experience, which you have already gathered, is already corrupting your mind. So, your mind is never quiet. Your mind is never still for finding out what is true. Is it not extremely difficult for anyone who wants to find out for himself what is true. Is it not the first essential thing to put aside all the things he has gathered, all the knowledge of the interpretations, conclusions, his own experience, so that the mind can perceive directly what is true without being helped by interpretations, without being told by another what is true. From childhood we have been trained what to think, and what to think is not how to listen, but what to listen to. Now what we must endeavour to do is to listen to find out what is true, which mean really how to think anew of all he problems of life, not to interpret it according to our particular conditioning, our particular conclusions, racial or otherwise — to look at things very clearly, without any prejudice of race, any particular culture so as to find out what is true. Because, as I said, we are in an extraordinary crisis, both historically and culturally. In a fortunate way, there are no leaders any more. You do not trust any leaders. You do, unfortunately, when you want to get something from them, spiritually or politically. But if you are intelligent, you observe and are aware the whole process of leadership does not bring about a revolution. The revolution of a leader is merely continuity of the old in a different form. Mere change of one pattern into another pattern is not change at all. It is merely a modified continuity. But to bring about an inward revolution, not according to any particular pattern, a revolution of the whole, total process of our thinking, the ways of our behaviour, needs on the part of each one us, putting aside all our preconceived ideas, freeing ourselves from every form of pattern of thought and trying to find out what is true. And that is the only thing you and I have in common relationship. Because what I am saying is not Eastern or Western, because our problems are too huge, colossal to be divided into East and West, or Russian or American. These divisions are political and are absurd. We have an enormous problem which is not to be solved by any political, sectarian, religious point of view, because we are dealing with human beings, human beings being you and I and another, whether we live here or there. So what is our problem? Do you understand? To discover, first of all, what is problem, we cannot think in terms of Orient or the Occident, or as Hindu, Muslim or Christian. If we do, then we create from the major problem innumerable secondary problems which have no significance at all. Please understand that one simple thing. Listen to it and see the truth of that. We are not thinking in terms of the Hindu culture, the Christian culture or the Islamic culture or any other religion because the problem is much too vast, much too big to be dealt with in a particular pattern of philosophy, religious dogma. That is obvious. Is it not? But can your mind actually, not merely verbally, put aside all that? Theoretically, obviously you will spin words to discuss but actually you are caught in the web of your own traditions, your own conditioning. Therefore it is impossible to look at a problem which is comprehensive and not secular, which is secondary. So, what is the problem? Would you translate the problem, whatever it be, which we shall discover presently, in terms of your particular individual, racial, national, cultural problem? You understand the issue? Perhaps I am not making myself clear. What is happening in the world at the present time? Perhaps it always has happened before. Actually, what is taking place? There are the various political leaders wanting to form the world in a particular way and to keep neutrality or push it to the left or to the right; innumerable religious leaders, all of them telling that there is a definite God, a definite end, that a particular path will lead; and then the economic gurus offering a particular utopia in the future, that if you work hard, if you transform yourself, if you conform to the authority of the book, that will offer the utopia; and there are various patterns of thought, the struggle of each one of us, the reformers, the historians, each one pointing differently, each one saying that this is the right thing — the greater the authority the more the followers. So, looking at all that is happening in the world and in ourselves, the world is a projection of ourselves because we are confused; we want to have political, physical, safety, security and at the same time we want inward peace without conflict, without this constant battle between the opposites, to be “what is” and “what should be,” this constant strife within ourselves. We want peace from that, haven from this sorrow, conflict, pain; seeing all that, what is the problem? Don’t you ask what is it all about? It may be a very childish question. Great philosophers have not answered it. But you never found out, have you? Not according to Shankara and Buddha, X, Y and Z. They all may be false. What they have said may be utterly inadequate, but what you find as the truth will be adequate if you can understand the problem and look at it, and listen to tie problem without any conditioning. So, don’t you ask what all this is about? Why we strive, why we go to office every day to get a few rupees, why you add your name after your examination, why all the struggle between the rich and the poor. What is it all about? Must not you find out for yourself and not rely on anybody, on any book? Should you not? It is not a question of capacity. It is a question of interest and drive. The moment you are interested, you find you have enthusiasm, passion to find out and therefore you are willing to listen to anything that will tell you the truth. So, our problem is not the solution of any problem but how we approach the problem, because what has happened is that most of us, practically all of us, have lost the creative search, the creative exploration to discover what is true and that exploration cannot exist if there is any form of acceptance. Please listen to this. Do not accept what I am telling because I am telling you nothing, literally nothing, because wisdom cannot be conveyed through words. You have to discover it for yourself and to discover it your mind must be capable and it can have the capacity to discover only when it is free. But your mind is not free. Your mind is hedged about by every form of fear, tradition, hope and anxiety, which is an obvious fact. So, can your mind free itself from tradition, from the accumulated knowledge of a thousand years? Can you put aside all the religious teachers, gurus, Shankaras, Buddhas, Mohemeds, Christs and look for yourself? That is the real problem. Is it not? Because civilisations and cultures do not bring about religions. They exist for religions. They exist in order to help man to find out what is true, what is God. But you cannot find it if you are not free inwardly. Freedom does not mean cultivation of any particular practice, because the moment you practise you are already caught in it the “how.” A man who meditates according to a system can never find what is true. But when the mind meditates on how to free itself from the practice, from the habit which the mind is caught in and is creating perpetual habit, such a mind is in meditation. So, really it means a complete, inward revolution which we are not willing to undergo because most of us want to be respectable. I do not mean respectability of Mylapore — that is absurd — but the respectability of being considered we are progressing, to know we are safe, we are moral, that we are advancing spiritually, which indicates really the absorption in oneself, refined, modified, but still self-concerned. So, our problem is, not only here but throughout the world, can the mind free itself from the past, from all the accumulated knowledge, knowledge not of machine, not of technology, but the knowledge of what we should be, the theories, the dogmas, the beliefs? — and with that freedom consider the whole issue of existence. When the mind is free from dogma, belief, fear, will there be any problem, because after all what is our mind? What is your mind? The mind which you have? What is your answer when you are asked this question? Please experiment with what I am saying, just for the fun of it. When you are asked such a question, what is your answer? Or rather, watch how your mind operates. What is your mind? The instinctive response to such a question is to look for an answer, either what Shankara has said, what the modern psychologists have said, or the scientists have said, or your favourite gurus have said, or the newspaper. Is it not? You are looking for an answer, searching among the various records which you have collected. But you do not observe your own process of thinking. Only in watching the process of your own thinking, do you find out what the mind is, not according to somebody, but seeing what the truth of what the mind is. Is that not meditation — to find what the mind is. If the mind can understand the complete, total process of its own existence, then perhaps it can go beyond itself, because reason, logic is not passionate. That is why the mind must understand itself and go beyond reason and logic, so as to be passionate to find out what is true. It is only the passionate mind — not the mind that is logical, reasoning, traditional, fearful; such a mind cannot be passionate, enthusiastic, vital. A mind that is enthusiastic in terms of an acceptance of a dogma or a creed or a political formula, such a mind is merely enthusiastic in terms of reform and action, but that is not passionate, because the mind that is free to find out what is true, a mind that knows the whole process of reasoning and its illusions and falseness, then such a mind is indestructibly passionate. Do experiment with this, because after all why are you listening to me? Is that not odd? If you are listening to me to find out what is true, you will never find it. If you are listening to me to find out how to meditate, you will never know meditation. Please listen to this. If you are trying, through words from me, to find out what God is, you will never know it — not through any book, not through any philosophy, not through any of the meditations you do, because that thing can only be from moment to moment, and a mind that has a continuity cannot find out. You understand what I am talking? Because our mind is the result of time, of many yesterdays , both in experience and in the accumulation of knowledge. Mind as it is and as we know it can only function in time, as it is in continuity, which is memory. With that continuity, we approach, we try to find out what is true and we can only find out what is true in terms of our own continuity, in terms of our own habit, in terms of our own conclusions, which means we give to something a continuity. And we cannot be free of that continuity as long as I do not understand the whole process of the mind which is working. The mind is not separate from the “I.” The “I” is the self, whether it is high or low, whether you call it soul, Atman, Paramatman, higher and higher, it is still the mind that is capable of thinking. Please listen to this. As long as your God Paramatman and all the rest of it is within the field of [thought, it](../../projects/kft/data/transcripts-input/thought.it) is still in time and therefore it is not true and therefore you have no enthusiasm, you are not free, there is no passion to search out, to discover, to understand — because it is still within the field of thought and therefore there is nothing new. That is why it is very important to understand the whole process of the mind, not only the superficial mind, the conscious everyday mind, but all the unconscious content of the mind, which is the whole total mind. As long as, with the mind, we are trying to discover what is true, we shall never find out because what is true can only be from moment to moment and not a continuity. And the mind which wants to discover what is true — because it is the product of time — can only function in time and therefore is incapable of finding what is true. So, to know the mind, for the mind to know itself, not the “I” to know the mind, there is no “I” apart from the mind. There are no qualities apart from the mind, like the qualities of the diamond cannot be separated from the diamond itself. So, that is why it is very important to understand the whole process of the mind, not to interpret the mind according to somebody else’s idea but to know how your own total mind works. And when you know the whole of it, how it reasons, its desires, motives, pursuits, ambitions, envy, greed, fears, when you know the whole content of it, then the mind can go beyond itself. When it does, then it can discover something new, totally new. That quality of newness gives that extraordinary passion, that tremendous enthusiasm which brings about a deep inward fundamental inward revolution which alone can transform the world, and not any political, economic system. And if you really listen to what has been said, listen, not interpret, actually listen to it, obviously that very listening is the process of revolution. Because after all, what is being said is nothing new, no positive direction, but saying the obvious thing, obvious logical, reasonable things, which if we do not understand, is going to create wars, miseries, growing confusion in the world. But if we listen rightly, there is an instantaneous revolution. I assure you of that fact, not that you must accept it, because it is your life, you will find it out for yourself; not because you think there is a revolution will your life change, but if you listen rightly then there will be an astonishing revolution, because then you will have discovered the truth and that will bring about its own creative enthusiasm, its own creative discovery, its own creative action from moment to moment. Without that, which is the highest form of religion, for which all civilisations exist, for which every man strives after, without that we are going to create an appalling world, we are going to destroy each other with the H/Bomb or the Super H/Bomb. If wars do not take place we will destroy each other through belief, through dogmas, destruction being separatist, through false Gods such as nationalism, or religions that have no longer any meaning, but merely superstition. So, the problem is to free the mind to discover what is true because truth cannot be handed to you; you can’t read it in books. It is no theory, it is not born of speculation, it is not born of experience or the translation of experience. It comes into being only when the mind is utterly quiet, utterly still, not hedged about by fear, by hope, by dogmas, by any form of ritual or belief. Mind is still only when it is free, but that freedom cannot come into being when the total process of its existence is not understood by each one of us.

There are seven questions to answer. What is the point of putting a question? Is it to solve the problem or to explore the problem? You see the difference? Which is it? With what are we mostly concerned when you put the question? Are we not concerned mostly with the answer, because then if I answer it in one way you can go to another and so on and use your judgment, your evaluations and your judgment and evaluations depending on your conditioning, your desires, your hopes. So, you are really, even there, wanting the problem, the question, to be translated to suit you. And so, you have theories with so many paths all leading to same kind of God but if the question is put in order to explore together, in order to find out what is true, our relationships change entirely. Then there is no lecturer, speaker and listener, Guru, Sishya and all that nonsense. Then you and I are exploring together, two human beings confronted with a problem, capable, unafraid to find out what is true. Then that enquiry gives tremendous enthusiasm, does it not? Then the enquiry is not yours or mine, neither Hindu, Mussalman nor Christian nor Buddhist. There is only the mind that is enquiring to find what is true. Please, sirs, you listen to this very casually and therefore it has very little significance. But if you listen to it with your whole heart, with your whole being, as though your life depended on it, then it has a totally different meaning.

Q: Religious ascetics give up worldly things. Political sannyasins are dedicated to work of various kinds for bettering society. Others work in their own way to change conditions in the educational, social and political fields. People who are associated with you, though not belonging to any organisation, and are apparently dedicated to your work. Is there any difference between all these persons?

A: I hope there are none who are dedicated to my work and that is very important to understand first. For what is my work? Please listen. What is my work, to publish a few books? Surely not. So, what is my work and how can you be dedicated to it? — the few. It is their work, that is, the exploration, the freedom, the enquiry to find out what is true. They cannot be dedicated to another’s work. Surely this is your own work. It is not my work, because it is your life, your everyday life, whether you live here in Mylapore or in a village, or in New York, London or Moscow — it is your existence, your life, your concern, your sorrow, your misery. And if you do not understand it as an individual and therefore bring about a revolution in the collective will, which is called civilisation, if you cannot alter, which is your work, if you cannot bring about the fundamental, radical revolution in yourself, which is your work, then how can you be dedicated to someone else’s work? So, what is it that we are trying to do? The political reformers, those who are dedicated to various kinds of [dans]{.underline}, what is it we are trying to do? Those who serve the various masters, belonging to society, meditate, struggle, quarrel and then be peaceful. You know the different type of people around you? What is it trying to do? Have you ever questioned it? Have you ever asked what it is you are trying to do? — the political reformer, sannyasins of various modern and ancient kinds, the social reformer, the worshipper. What is it? What does it all mean? This is part of civilisation, is it not? The reformer — religious, political and social — all that is called civilisation. Is it not? And what is civilisation? The collections of will. Are they not? The product of the action of will. Is it not? You understand? That is fairly clear. Civilisation comes into being through the action of will, collective will, and that civilisation, which is the action of will, either rises and goes beyond the secular to discover what is ultimately true, or it declines and goes down. And there can be a radical revolution only when there is change in the collective action of will, and the collective action of will cannot take place if you and I, the individual will, does not undergo a radical change in itself. So, each one of us discover what is true, and therefore not merely act as a collective, but discover what is true for ourselves, and you cannot discover what is true by yourself unless you are free of the collective, which is the tradition, the hopes, fears, superstitions, and anxieties. That, we do not want to do. All that we want to do is to carry on in the traditional way, hoping by some miracle there will be a revolution that will bring us a happy peace, and we will enjoy human, peaceful existence. You see? Each one of these social, political reformers, yogis, swamis, sannyasins, are all struggling in their own different ways to bring about some kind of collective, individual change. But change without an understanding of the total process of the mind can only lead to further misery. Please listen. Those reformers, political, social and religious, will cause further misery, further sorrow for man, unless man understands the total process of the workings of his own mind. Because in the understanding of the total process of the mind is there a fundamental radical revolution, and from that revolution springs action of true cooperation, not cooperation with a pattern, not cooperation with authority, not cooperation with somebody who knows, but the spirit of cooperation I am talking of. When you know how to cooperate because there is the inward revolution, then you will also know when not to cooperate, which is really very important; perhaps more important. Now we cooperate with any person who offers a reform, a change. But if we knew what it is to have the spirit of cooperation, not with authority, not with any pattern, not with any blueprint, economic, social or religious but that cooperation that comes into being with the understanding of the total process of the mind in which there is freedom from the self, then there is a possibility of creating a new world, a totally different world, a world in which there is no acquisitiveness, no envy, no comparison; which is not a utopia but an actual state of mind that is constantly enquiring and pursuing that which is true and blessed.