Public Talk 1, London, 5 June 1962

Krishnamurti: As we are only going to have four talks here, I’m afraid I won’t have time or the occasion to go in detail with regard to what I want to say. It’s always difficult to communicate, especially in matters that are not easily explainable. And one has to use words, and words can he twisted in so many ways. But if one leaves what one has to communicate to another to his inclination, to his temperament, to his prejudices, then there is no understanding.

What we are going to talk about this evening, and the other evenings, need a clear mind, a mind that is capable of direct perception, direct understanding. Understanding is not something very mysterious. It requires, I think, a mind that is capable of looking at things directly, without prejudices, without personal inclination, without opinion. Unfortunately, most of us are so heavily conditioned that we find it very difficult to understand directly, to see something, what is true, immediately. And as I want to talk about something which is not easily explainable, but one has to use words, and words are difficult things because the word is not the thing; word is never the thing itself; word is only a means. It’s like looking through the door. But if we merely stick to words, then we never can proceed further. And especially in matters which are not technical. There it’s very easy to explain certain technical ideas, use a certain set of technical words. But here we need a mind that is fairly free to examine, a mind that is capable of seeing things as they are, without all our conditioning.

And what I want to say this evening concerns an inward revolution, a psychological destruction of the society which we are. We are the psychological structure of society; society with its ambitions, envies, pursuits of success, all the psychological structure which we call society. Society isn’t merely the outward show of things. Society is much more inward, much more deeply embedded in each one of us. Society holds us. The psychological structure which we call society holds each one of us; it shapes our mind, our thought, our feelings. And without completely destroying that psychological structure, we cannot possibly be free or to discover what is true. And the destruction of that psychological structure of society, which is you and me, is not… does not come about through effort. And I think that’s one of the most difficult things to understand. I’m using the word *understand*, not in any mysterious sense.

You know, one understands things very easily when you are fairly relaxed, when you listen, when you give your mind to something totally, you understand it fairly easily, fairly quickly. But when I talk about effort, it’s very difficult to understand, to live a life without effort. And that’s what I’m going to talk about this evening. Because I feel that the social structure of which we are — what we think, what we feel, the envy, the ambition, the everlasting struggle of contradiction, conscious and unconscious, we are caught in that. And to break through, we think we need make a great deal of effort. Effort implies always conflict, doesn’t it? Conflict implies contradiction; and when there is no contradiction, there is no effort: you live. And this contradiction is brought about by the society in which we live, this conflict, this contradiction, this dual battle that’s going on within each one of us all the time, consciously or unconsciously. I feel unless that is completely understood and broken through, we cannot possibly live a full life, or understand something which is beyond the mind.

Because, you see, the world is becoming more and more superficial. There is greater and greater prosperity throughout the world: the welfare state, progress. And inwardly we are more or less static, pursuing the same patterns, same beliefs, altering our dogmas to suit circumstances, but we are more or less living all our lives very superficially. We’re always scratching on the surface and never going below, deep down. Until we alter completely, deep down, the psychological structure of our being, I don’t see how we can, however superficially we are clever, however much knowledge we may have, or information about so many things, how we can be free and so be creative.

So I would like to talk about, this evening, how to bring about that revolution, the psychological revolution, without effort. I am using the word *effort* in the sense of striving, in the sense of trying to become something, in the sense of a mind caught in contradiction, trying to overcome, trying to discipline, trying to conform, trying to adjust, trying to bring about a change within itself. I am using that word in that sense, to cover all that. Now, is it possible to bring about a radical revolution, not only consciously, but deep down, unconsciously, without effort? Because effort implies pressure, influence, a motive, a direction; and all our direction, all our motive is conditioned, and so when we make effort to bring about a psychological revolution within ourselves, it is brought about through a motive which is the result of conditioning.

You know, one can listen in many ways, but there is only one way of listening. You can listen, trying to interpret what another is saying. You can listen when you’re trying to compare what is said with what you already know. You are trying to listen when all the responses of your memory are acting. And there are so many other ways of listening. But there is only one way of listening, which is to listen without thought. I don’t know if you have ever tried to listen to something, pleasant or unpleasant, without projecting your own process of thinking; just to listen. And that’s quite an art; it’s quite difficult to do that, because we’re always comparing, judging, evaluating, condemning, comparing, but never listen. We never see anything, because we’re always saying it is beautiful or ugly, it is this colour or that colour. So we are never actually seeing anything, nor listening. And I think if we could, perhaps this evening, just listen, without projecting or agreeing, or disagreeing, projecting your own ideas, your own interpretations, or agreeing with what is being said, or disagreeing; just to listen; which doesn’t mean that you’re being mesmerized. On the contrary; to listen demands complete attention, and that’s very difficult to do, because we never attend.

Attention is not concentration, because when you concentrate naturally you focus, you exclude, and therefore this exclusion creates a barrier, and therefore you don’t listen. I’m not saying anything extraordinary. You can find this out for yourself very easily, that when you listen with ease, when you listen, not merely to the words. Words are merely a means to open the door through which you look at yourself. So if we could listen this evening, I feel that very act of listening brings about a deep, fundamental revolution – the very act of listening. Because in that act, in that attention, you have already broken through the conditioning. Because our conditioning as a human being is so deep, so heavy; you are either Christian, English, French, German, Indian, Russian, with all its dogmas; we belong to this or that church, to this or that race with all its history, with all its story, and so our minds are deeply, consciously and unconsciously, are conditioned.

Superficially our minds are educated. Conscious mind is educated in the society, in the culture we live in. That perhaps you can easily disentangle. One can easily put aside being an Englishman or an Indian or a Russian or whatever one is; or perhaps leave one particular form of church, or belonging to a particular religion. That’s fairly easy. But what is much more difficult is to uncondition the unconscious, because that plays a much greater part in our life than the conscious mind. Conscious mind is useful as a means of earning a livelihood, to do a certain function, which is mostly our education. We are trained to do certain things, to act in certain ways to function mechanically. That is our education. But inwardly, unconsciously, deep down, we are the result of many centuries, thousands of years of man’s endeavour, of his struggles, his hopes, his despairs, his everlasting search for something beyond. And that’s still going on with all of us. And to be aware of that and to be free of that demands a great deal of attention.

It is not a matter of analysis, because you can’t analyse the unconscious. I know the psychologists attempt to do that, the analysts do that but I don’t believe it is possible. I’ll show you why. The unconscious cannot be approached by the conscious. The unconscious gives various forms of hints through dreams, through various intimations. Those need interpretation, and the conscious mind interprets them, and interprets them according to its conditioning, to its peculiar idiosyncrasies, influences, so there is never complete contact, complete understanding of the unconscious. It is something that we don’t quite know its entirety; we don’t know it in its complete fullness, and yet, without being free of the unconscious, with all the history, with all the story that is involved in it, there will always be a contradiction, and therefore always a conflict, an effort, an adjustment, a battle raging within. Now, to understand that unconscious, as I said, is not the way of analysis, because analysis implies an observer, the analyser and the analysed, so there is a contradiction, there is a division, and where there is a division, there is no understanding.

So one of our difficulties, perhaps the major difficulty, is to be free of all the content of the unconscious, whether it is possible. I do not know if you ever tried to analyse yourself, just to analyse what you think, what you feel, what are the motives behind that analysis, what is the intention behind that thought and feeling. If you have analysed, you will… I’m sure you have found that it can’t go very deeply. It goes to a certain depth and there it is. But to go much deeper, one must end this process of the analyser analysing, which is, to listen, to see, to observe every thought and every feeling. To observe, to listen, to see without discerning, without discrimination, to say this is right, this is wrong, without condemnation, justification; just to observe. And when we do so observe, you will find that there is no contradiction and therefore there is no effort, and therefore there is an understanding of the thing immediately. But to go very deeply into oneself, one must obviously be free of ambition, of competition, of envy, greed. And that’s a very difficult thing to do, to be free of envy, greed and ambition because that is the social structure, the psychological structure on which you are built. We are that. To live in a world that is made up of acquisitiveness, ambition, competition, and be entirely free of it, and yet be not destroyed by the world. That is really the problem.

The more one observes, the more one is aware of the things that are going on in the world – there is greater and greater information, knowledge. You can go to the moon. Computers are taking over. We are more and more becoming almost automatic. We go to the office every day of our life, thoroughly bored with what we are doing, and so we seek various forms of escape from that boredom. And religion is a marvellous escape, or various forms of sensations, taking drugs to get more, to see more. All this is going on throughout the world. And inwardly we are in perpetual conflict, not only within ourselves, but with everybody. All our relationship is based on conflict, on possession, acquisitiveness, and on force. And I don’t see how, when the mind is caught in such conflict, such despair, such anxiety, as most of us are, how one can go very far. But one has to go very far; one has to destroy all the structure, psychological structure which society is in us – completely destroy it, and that is really the crux of the whole existence. Because we do lead a most superficial life, and we try to go very deeply by reading, by acquiring knowledge, by gaining more and more information, always on the surface. All knowledge, all information is on the surface.

So the question really is: how to live in this world without conflict, without those things that bring about conflict, not only outwardly but inwardly – especially inwardly, because the inward conflict dictates the outward conflicts. Only a mind that is really free from all conflict, which means from all psychological problems of any kind, it’s only such a mind that can be free to find out if there is something beyond, beyond all thought, beyond all feeling.

So our problem essentially, as far as one can see, not how to acquire more money, not how to stop the atom bomb, or to join the Common Market or not – those are not real, deep problems. Those will be shaped and controlled by historical events, by innumerable pressures of various sovereign governments and societies and religions. But if one is capable of abstracting oneself from all that – not withdrawing, not becoming a monk or a nun, but actually understanding its whole significance, and to find out for oneself if it is at all possible to be completely free from the psychological structure of society, to be free of ambition. And it’s a very difficult thing to be free from ambition. Ambition implies ‘the more’; ‘the more’ implies time; time means arriving, achieving. To deny time is to be free of ambition. Not the chronological time – that you can’t deny, then you will lose your bus — but the psychological time which we have created for ourselves in order to become something inwardly; to deny that; which means, really, to die to tomorrow without despair.

You know, the clever people, the intellectuals have examined all this, the outward processes; they have examined the churches, the beliefs, the dogmas, the saviours, and after examining, they are in despair; and out of despair they have a philosophy to accept the immediate, and to live as completely in the immediate as possible, in the now. I don’t mean that at all. That, any materialistic, any shallow person can do. That’s very easy, not to think about tomorrow, but to live completely today. That’s what most of us do, unfortunately. We don’t have to be very clever. We live for today. That today is extended into many tomorrows. I don’t mean that at all. I mean to die, to deny ambition totally, completely and immediately. That is, to die psychologically to the social structure so that your mind is never caught in time, in ambition to be something or not to be.

You know, death is a marvellous thing, and to understand death requires a great deal of insight, which we’ll discuss, perhaps, in one of these talks. But to die naturally to ambition, without effort; to deny envy; envy, which implies comparison, in which there is success, ‘the more’ – you have more and I have less. You have more knowledge, and I am ignorant. To end this comparison totally, completely. And one can only die totally to that kind of envy, ambition, competition, only when you are capable of looking at it completely, without any distortion. And there is distortion if there is motive. When you want to deny ambition in order to be something else, you’re still ambitious. That’s not denial at all. When you renounce with a motive, it is not renunciation. And most renunciations have behind them this motive to be, to achieve, to arrive, to find.

So it seems to me, we are becoming more and more clever, becoming more and more informative. Words, ideas, theories, knowledge fill our minds; we are brought up on them. And there is very little empty space from which something can be seen clearly. Because it’s only the empty mind, not the dull mind, not the mind that’s crammed with a lot of information and knowledge, not the mind that’s incessantly active, seeking, groping, asking, demanding, but a mind that is empty — it doesn’t mean blank — that’s an extraordinarily difficult thing to be, to have, to be aware of an empty mind. Because it’s only in that emptiness there is understanding; it’s only in that emptiness there is creation.

But to come to that, one has to deny the whole social structure, the psychological social structure of power, position, prestige, fame. It’s comparatively easy for older people, at least superficially, to deny power, position, or not to be ambitious, but still it’s very superficial, those denials. That’s why it’s very important to understand the unconscious; to understand it, not to examine it. You can’t examine with a positive mind, with an educated mind, with a mind that is analysing, something of which you don’t know, which is hidden. If you examine that which is hidden, the unconscious, by the conscious process of analysis, then you are bound to create conflict.

Do please understand this, it’s not very difficult. All our approach to any deep problem is a positive approach. That is, we want to get at it, we want to control it, we want to acquire it, we analyse it, or we pursue a particular system in order to understand it. You can’t understand something of which you don’t know with what you already know. You must approach it with empty hands, not dictate what it should be. And to have empty hands is one of the most difficult things, because our minds are so full of things that we have already known. We are so burdened with our memories, and every thought is a response of those memories. And with thought we approach that which is not positive, which is hidden, the unconscious.

Now, if you could merely listen to what is being said, not how to approach the unconscious with empty hands, but to approach… but if you could listen to what is being said without any idea, then you will see that you can approach the unconscious, which has such power, such extraordinary drive, compulsion, without creating contradiction, and therefore effort. That is, sirs, there must be – and there is; you don’t have to accept my word for it, and I hope you don’t; then I become your authority, which will be most ugly thing you can do — there is the unknowable, something far beyond all thought, all mind. There is. But you cannot possibly approach it with all the knowledge, with all the memory, the scratches of life, the experiences, the weight of fear, anxiety, guilt. And you cannot get rid of all that by any effort whatsoever. You can only be free of it by listening to every thought and to every feeling; listen, not trying to interpret what your thought is, what you’re listening to, what your feeling is; just to listen, just to observe, to be attentive out of emptiness. Then one can live in this world, with all its travail, with all its ugliness, with all its brutality and terrible things that are happening, untouched. You can function in this world without being caught in status. To function as a clerk, as a bus driver, bank manager, what you will, merely to function. But the moment you bring in all the psychological factors involved in that functioning, with its ambitions, with its authority, with its position, power, then you can’t live in this world without everlasting sorrow.

So most of us know all this, really; one doesn’t need to listen to a talk at all of this kind; we all know this, that it’s a terrible, brutal, ugly world, where everybody, every church, every religion is trying to shape thought; where the welfare states are making us more and more comfortable, dull, stupid, because we have used conflict as a means of becoming bright. We know all this, but inwardly we’re not changed at all; we are carrying on as we have been for centuries. Inwardly we are just the same: afraid, anxious, guilty, seeking power, seeking sex. Everything is what we are, animalistic things we’re still carrying on, which is, functioning psychologically in the structure of society.

The question is, how to break it totally, how to destroy it completely and be out of it, without becoming insane, without becoming a monk or a nun or a hermit. And that can only be done immediately; there is no time in which to do it in. You either do it immediately or never. I’m using the word *never*, not in the religious sense of hell; that if you can’t understand it now, that is, if you cannot pay complete attention now, will you be able to pay attention to it tomorrow? Even then, if you do pay attention to it tomorrow, you have still to pay attention then completely. So attention is not a matter of time. Understanding is not a matter of gradual growth till you arrive to understand… at understanding.

So that’s why it’s very important to know how to listen, or how to see things as they are; to see a fact without opinion, without judgment, without condemnation; just to see a fact. To see the fact that one is ambitious; not whether it’s right or wrong, what will happen to you if you are not ambitious, and so on and so on and so on. Just to see the fact. Then you will see that if you can so look at the fact without distorting the fact, you will find that very observation of that fact not only removes the observer and the observed, which creates conflict, but the seeing of the fact releases a great deal of energy. And you need energy. Not the energy derived through conflict; that is a destructive energy, but the energy that comes into being when you see something totally, completely; when you see a fact, that you are sexual, that you are ambitious, that you are envious, that you are afraid. Just to see that fact. And you cannot see the fact if you are caught in words. And words are ideas; ideas are thought. So to look at a fact, there must be that empty space in the mind that looks.

Please, don’t misunderstand the word *empty*. You know, our minds are never quiet; they’re always chattering, they’re always theorizing, building and destroying and picking up again. There’s never a moment when it’s quiet. And when it is quiet there is no space, there is no time. When the mind is very still, all time and space disappear; there is no tomorrow, or the next second. And that stillness of mind is total attention, and that attention is all virtue. That is real virtue; there is no other virtue or no other morality. Every other form of virtue and morality is the structure, is brought about by the mind, by psychological ambition, envy and all the rest of it.

So to see the fact as it is is the beginning and the ending of every problem. And it’s only when the mind is really completely empty of every problem – and it can be so empty – when it’s denied every problem, when the mind no longer gives soil to any problem, then you will find, if one has gone so deeply, that there is something far beyond, something which mind cannot measure, which no religion can capture. And it is essential, living in this world, in this chaotic, confused world, to have such mind that is capable of looking at everything clearly, sanely, seeing every fact as it is. And it’s only such a mind that is quiet, that is still. Only to such a mind the immense can come into being.

I’m afraid it’s seven o’clock; we’d better stop.

(Applause)