Public Talk 8, Saanen, 23 July 1963

Krishnamurti: You may have observed that during all these talks, seven talks that we have had, we have not dealt with theory at all, nor belief, nor ideals; because to a religious man there are no theories at all, nor are there any kind of belief or ideals. He’s always — as I pointed out the other day, the day before yesterday — he’s living in the active present, totally, completely. And to such a mind, any form of dependence on an idea, a conformity to a pattern, an adjustment to a theory is utterly foreign; completely to be denied by a mind that is seeking what is true.

And this morning I would like to talk about something which may have very little meaning for you, verbally. Because, for most of us, words are weighted — like *death,* like *sorrow,* like *conflict*; they have extraordinarily significant meaning — and we are burdened with these words; these words shape our lives and we conform, we imitate, discipline ourselves to a certain pattern in our daily life. And we are dealing with our daily activities of our everyday thought, everyday emotions, watching their reactions, being totally aware of the whole significance of existence. And so I’m going to use a word which to many of you may be rather foreign, may have an extraordinary meaning; for probably many of you have read something about meditation. The word *meditation,* for most people, is something exotic, something foreign, something Asiatic, something they have to do, to find… do this and do that.

And I’m going to talk about that. Because, to me, a life without meditation is a wasted life; to me, without knowing the extraordinary meaning and the significance of meditation, life — which is everyday living — becomes extraordinarily superficial without much meaning; and to understand this word and the content of that word and to go beyond that word requires a very clear thinking and a very active brain. So I’m going to go… discuss that.

But before we go into it, one has to be very clear what we mean by *discipline*, by *control*, and also we have to be very clear what we mean by that word *aware*. For most of us, discipline implies control, shaping our activity to a certain pattern, to a certain idea, which is conforming, adjusting, suppressing, following, imitating — all that is implied in the word *discipline.* Please do follow this very carefully because, as I’m going… go into it, it’s going to become very, very difficult, arduous; you have to exercise your mind, your brain tremendously to follow all this, otherwise you will be completely lost. This requires your complete energy to pursue what the speaker is going to talk about.

And as most of our brains are conditioned through discipline, shaped by every influence, thought, experience, action, discipline becomes almost natural; that is, you begin at school and carry on throughout life, disciplining to society, adjusting to the various influences, conforming to the pattern of established social, moral ideas and to spiritual sanctions. So we are conditioned in discipline; discipline being suppression. Through fear, conforming to what you think is right, to what public opinion, to the social, psychological structure of society. Our brain is so conditioned to seek security through discipline. And we say through discipline you can have peace, you can have freedom; through discipline, that is, through conformity, through imitation, through adjustment to a pattern, whether it is a moral pattern, social, ethical, religious, the demand that you shall conform has so shaped our brain that it’s almost impossible to be free of this idea. And one must be free of this imposed or self-imposed discipline in order to find out what is true.

In the discovery of what is true, when there is freedom from conformity through fear, then there is a discipline of quite a different nature. It is no longer a discipline, it’s no longer an adjustment; it’s a movement and therefore there is never a suppression, an imitation to something you are afraid of. So that must be clearly understood, that every form of discipline indicates the desire to conform, and behind that desire there is fear of being insecure, of not getting what you want or not finding out the ultimate truth, and so on, so on, so on.

And to find out how conditioned we are by society, by the innumerable experience that we have had, we must be totally aware of the whole of consciousness, not just a certain parts of consciousness. I mean by that word *aware,* to observe through space, to observe so that you have space in your mind. Because contemplation implies observation through space. If there is no space between you and what you observe, you cannot observe; and most of us have no space, because we have already come to the thing which we observe with a conclusion, with an idea, with an opinion, with a judgment, evaluation, either condemning, approving, or justifying, or identifying with the thing you observe, so there is no space at all to observe.

Please, as I said, don’t make this into a theory, a something that you have to practice, which is a terrible thing, to practice; it becomes a habit and most of us live in dreadful habits — whether pleasant or unpleasant; habit — which is destructive. You can pursue… you can follow what I am saying by observing yourself.

You know… you know what is learning? Learning is not additive; you don’t add, and then from what you have gathered, look, experience, and add some more. Then you are not learning, you are merely gathering and adding to that which you have already known, so there is never freedom to observe. You understand what…? *Tant mieux*. If you don’t understand, we’ll discuss it.

I mean by *awareness* the sense of watchfulness in which there is no choice, but observing *what is.* You cannot observe *what is* if you have an idea or an opinion or say that it’s good or bad or verbalise what you see, what you observe. So to be aware of the movement of your own thought, of your own feeling, of your own activities, both of the conscious as well as the unconscious, totally, that gives extraordinary activity to the brain. Because most of our brains are dull, half-asleep, only parts of it are active, the specialised parts, the parts which we automatically function like a machine, through association, through memory; so our brains are asleep, dull, heavy and not extraordinarily sensitive, active. And it cannot be active, sensitive, if you have no space, if you have no… if you look at things merely with what you already know. So meditation is to bring tremendous activity and sensitivity to the brain — that’s part of it. You are following? To be aware, so that you watch your bodily activity, your movements of your hands, the words you use, the thoughts, the emotions, all the reactions; to be so aware the unconscious, with all its traditions, accumulated knowledge, the immense sorrow it has accumulated, not only the personal but the sorrow of man — to be aware of all that. And you can’t be aware if you are merely judging, evaluating, saying, ‘This is pleasant; this is bad; this is no good; this I will keep,’ then you’re making the brain dull, insensitive.

So from that comes attention. Attention which flows from awareness, when the… in that awareness there is no choice, there is no personal choosing, no experiencing — which I will go into presently — but merely observing, and to observe, you must have great space; and a brain that is reacting, caught in ambition, greed, envy, self-fulfilment, sorrow, pain, despair, anguish, enjoy — such a brain has no space; it’s merely going round and round and round in its own backwaters of reaction. So from this flows attention. To attend. You cannot attend if you’re not sensitive, if the brain is not sensitive, highly sharpened, reasonable, logic, sane, healthy, has no neurotic background, has not explored every corner of itself, that there is no spot untrodden — because if there is a dark corner of which one is afraid, which one has not explored, from there springs illusion, visions; like the Christian who has been so conditioned for centuries upon centuries, he sees Christ in his meditation, in his contemplation; he thinks he has achieved something extraordinary, which is merely the reaction of his own conditioning; as the Hindu, sitting on the banks of a river, go into ecstatic visions, because he has been conditioned for millennia. And what he sees is not religious experience at all, it’s merely his own conditioning which is reacting, and therefore has no… and so has no meaning at all.

So through awareness, a choiceless observation in which there is space, every form of conditioning is dissolved — he is no longer a Hindu or a Buddhist, a Christian, all the ideas, beliefs, hopes, fears are completely gone — and from that comes attention. Not attention upon something; it is a state of attention. Sorry.

If you observe attention, if you have gone through all this and have understood at least part of it, you will see that in attention there is no experiencer and therefore no experience. And this is tremendously important to understand for a man who is really seeking what is truth, what is religion, what is God, what is this thing beyond the things put together by the brain. Because in attention there is no reaction: you’re merely attending. The brain, which has understood what it is to be aware, explored within itself all the recesses, all the unconscious motives, demands, fulfilments, urges, sorrows, pains — it has understood. And in attention there is emptiness; there is no experiencer experiencing something.

Perhaps this is a little bit more complicated than you want; perhaps this is a little bit more than… to that which you are accustomed; because I’m talking of meditation which is something beyond all words, so the mind is empty and therefore not projecting, not seeking, not wanting, not hoping. There is nothing left, because it has understood all the reactions, the responses, its depths, its shallowness. And attention can only be when there is no division between the observer and the thing observed; because if there is a division between the observer and the observed, then there is conflict. You watch yourself. When you think and the thing you think about are two different things, and in the gap… the gap is the conflict. And we have gone into that, how important it is to be completely free from conflict.

Now, so in attention there is neither the observer nor the observed, only a state of attention. It’s like light. It is only in that state one can be a light to oneself, and therefore from that state every action of our daily life — every action, whether you do your job, whether you cook, whether you go for a walk, whether you mend your cloth — everything springs from that. Otherwise religion has no meaning whatsoever; it becomes a superstition exploited by the church.

Now, when there is this extraordinary activity of the brain, not a hypnotised… self-hypnotised activity; because for most of us who know what that word means — the word *meditate* — for most people who do it, it is a form of self-hypnosis. They sit cross-legged — you know — go through all the tricks: breathe most regularly and take lessons about meditation, how to breathe, how to control, how to shape your thought and so on, so on, so on. There are dozens of schools. And if you go… if you see one of them, you have understood the whole lot of all their systems because they are only concerned with controlling, hypnotising oneself, conditioned through that system to receive or to experience something which they think is marvellous. That form of meditation is utterly juvenile; it has no meaning. You can sit ten thousand years, cross-legged, breathing most regularly, contemplating, and you will never find out. What you will find out is merely your own reactions and your own experience projected as God, as truth, as visions and all the rest of it — they have no meaning at all.

But what we are talking about is something entirely different: freeing the brain through intense activity of all its reactions, and so making the… so bringing about, without control, without deliberate will, bring about a quietness to the brain. Because it’s only the very intense brain, highly sensitive that can be quiet, not a dead brain, not a brain paralysed by fear, by sorrow, by joy, by every form of sociological and psychological compulsions and demands.

So then meditation — which you must do, absolutely, because that’s the highest form of intelligence; not sitting in a corner, shutting your eyes, cross-legged or standing on your head or whatever you do, but as you walk, as you go to your office, when you’re in your office, when you’re in the kitchen, whatever you’re doing, to be so completely aware: the words, the gestures, the manner of your talk, the manner of your eating, how you push around people, to be aware of everything about you; to be aware of the political, sociological, economic and the propaganda that goes on ceaselessly; to be aware of all the influences. You can’t be aware of all of them; to be aware and you will see how quickly you will understand every influence as you come into contact with it.

And you will find, if you have gone that far — and very few people go that far because they are so conditioned by their tradition. If you live in India, they have got an extraordinary meaning to this word; you must absolutely do certain things — control your body completely and so control your thought completely — and out of that, they hope to reach whatever they want to reach, which they never will reach; they will reach their own hypnotised results. And if you come to the Christian world, they contemplate, they wait for the grace of God and so on and on and on. But what we are talking about is something wholly different; it requires the highest form of intelligence; and a brain that is shaped by experience is not intelligent.

You look at the word and the significance of that word *experience*, and find out what it means: to experience; what is implied. First, to experience anything you must recognise it and to recognise implies association, which means with the past. You cannot possibly experience something new — new, totally new — you can only experience something which you have already had, which you have already tasted, which you already know. If you don’t know it, you have no means of experiencing, which means you have no means of recognition. And if you observe, most of us want experience, because we are so tired of the normal, everyday challenge and response which creates the experience. We know all that, so we wait, hoping, through some mysterious means, meditation, or going to a church, every form, wanting more and more experience. You observe yourself. And a mind that is in a state of experiencing, wanting experience, is not innocent. Do follow all this. Therefore, there are no religious experiences at all. The thing that is light to itself has no experience; it doesn’t want experience, it doesn’t need experience. It’s only the mind that is seeking, searching, groping, afraid, anxious, in despair — that such a mind demands experience.

And a highly sensitive brain is, as I said, a light to itself and therefore there are no experiences at all, and therefore it is in a state of innocency. And it’s only such a brain, highly sensitive — not shaped by every fear, every demand, every compulsion, hope, despair — it is only such a brain that can be quiet, completely quiet; because every part of it is alive, sensitive. And when the brain is quiet, then it is in a state of meditation; from then you can proceed. Until that state takes place, every form of attempt to find out what truth, what God, what is something beyond, is utterly a waste of time, only leads to illusion; it has no meaning whatsoever. And this demands extraordinary energy. And you have no energy if you are in conflict, if you have problems. And that’s why — as we discussed from the very beginning — every conflict, every demand, every hope and despair… all that must be understood and therefore dissolved, gone away. Therefore, there it has no illusion nor does it make illusion; it has no power to create illusion. And that’s the first thing to realise: a brain that is caught in problems, in fear, in despair, in the desire to fulfil this or that, it is always creating illusion and therefore in a state of neurosis. So the brain that is highly sensitive and out of that sensitiveness there is intelligence, and only then can the brain — which is the result of time, of a thousand years — can be quiet, naturally, voluntarily, easily quiet. Then, when that state is… when the brain is completely quiet, then such is the beginning of meditation.

Before then there is an awareness, choicelessly observing, watching words… or watching everything that you do; and out of that an attention, attention that has no frontier, but that attention can concentrate; out of that emptiness it can pay… concentrate. And from that attention, there is quietness of the brain. It is highly developed; it is not a dull, a primitive or sophisticated brain or learned. There are the encyclopaedias, they can have those books; you can look at them, but the brain need not become encyclopaedic; but such a brain is not sensitive. So when the brain is quiet, without any illusion, therefore without… in a state of non-hypnotised condition, then you can… then there is something which the brain has never put together.

You see, now comes the difficulty: to express something in words which is inexpressible; and that’s what we are seeking. We all want to find out something beyond this world of agony, of tyranny, of domination, of authority, of subjugation — you know, what the world is — the brutality, the callousness, the indifference, the wars that go on, the diplomacy, the lies, the horrors of war; you know all that, going on in the world, all the time. So we want peace; we want somewhere where we can find a quietness, a bliss, so we invent. We invent a God, we invent a saviour, another world which will offer peace to you if you do all these various things. So that’s what we all want, peace, but a conditioned mind wanting peace is its own destruction — that’s what is going on in the world. All the politicians throughout the world — whether the right or the left — use that word *peace,* and they don’t mean it at all. We are talking of something far beyond all that.

So meditation is the emptying of the brain of all the things which the… emptying of the mind of all the things which the brain has put into it. And that is the space. And if you have… if you go… if you have done all these things — perhaps you won’t, but it doesn’t matter, just listen to it — then you will find that there is an extraordinary space in the brain… in the mind, and that space is freedom. So you must demand freedom from the very beginning, not at the end; demand, work, search out what is freedom, in our relationship, in our society, in everything that we do. And you will find that meditation is creation.

*Creation* is a word that we all use so glibly, so easily. A painter talks about his creation, putting on a canvas a few colours and calling it a creation; getting tremendously excited about it. It is his fulfilment, it is his market through which he expresses himself, either to gain money, a reputation, and he calls that creation. Every writer… and there are schools of creative writing, but all that is not creation at all; those are all conditioned responses of a particular society in which the brain lives. But we are talking of c reation of something entirely different: a mind that is in a state of creation. It may not express, it may express; expression has very little value. That creation has no cause, and therefore every moment that creation is dying and living and loving and being. The whole of this is meditation.

(Pause)

Do you want to talk about this?

Questioner: Sir, I have listened to you, and when you said last time I’ve worked, and I hope you’ll work with me, I’ve got a feeling, this feeling of awareness and the attention that comes with awareness. Attention generally is very brief, is attracted, goes where it’s called… (inaudible) …interested it becomes… even concentration is poor. Attention in the sense that is necessary, as I understand it, is something that has to be complete and impartial… (inaudible)

K: Sir…

Q: But my main question, if I may ask it, I feel… (inaudible) …and particularly while I’m here… (inaudible) …but how this activation that is demanded can be maintained, is my question.

K: Yes sir, I understand. The gentleman wants to know, ‘How can this awareness and this attention, this attention which flows from awareness, how can this be maintained?’ You see, hasn’t… if I may point most respectfully, haven’t you have asked rather a wrong question?

Q: My… (inaudible)

K: Just a minute, sir. I’ll just show it to you in a minute; I’m just asking myself. Why should we desire to maintain? What is implied behind that word? I want to maintain a particular relationship with you — as a husband or a wife or as a friend — maintain it, keep it going; to keep it at a certain level, at such a tension, to be… to love you at the same… to love you so that both of us respond at the same level at the same time completely; to maintain that. To maintain a certain feeling. What is behind that word *maintain*? And how will you maintain? Either you maintain it by volition, by saying, ‘I’m going to keep it’ — you follow? — by will. What happens when you maintain anything by will? It becomes brittle and is destroyed. Can you maintain love through volition, through will? So there is a different approach to the question.

That is, I see in a flash or in a second what it means to be aware. I see it fully, non-verbally; actually I have understood it; and I have caught myself being aware without choice, just to look — right sir? — just to observe. Please don’t pay attention to him; pay attention to what is being said. Because most of us want to maintain something. For a second I’m aware — I see the extraordinary freedom, the beauty and the joy in it — then I say, ‘I must maintain it.’ The moment you maintain that, it has become a memory. What you are maintaining is not the fact but the thing which you have remembered and therefore it is a dead thing. Please see this.

I remember the death of my brother, son, wife, husband, and I live in that memory and I maintain that memory, with all its pleasures, despairs… — you know, all the thing that one goes through — but I haven’t found out what it means when someone dies and to be aware of it and all the significance of it. So one has to be aware and not make it into a memory. You understand, sir? Not to make it a memory and therefore don’t ever say, ‘I want to maintain it; I want it to continue.’ It may die; it doesn’t matter. Be alive to the present, every minute, and you will see.

Have I conveyed something? You see, you know, truth has no continuity because it’s out of time, and what has continuity is not truth. Truth must be seen instantly and forgotten — if I can use that word *forgotten*; forgotten in the sense not carry the thing that has been seen as memory — so your mind is uncluttered by memory, therefore at the next minute or the next day, sometime later, the thing will come again.

So truth has no continuity and therefore it must be seen only when the mind, when the whole brain is free from this idea of maintaining, sustaining, remembering and recognising. That demands extraordinary attention — you follow? — because the other is very easy to slip into; to slip into, say, ‘Well, I saw it yesterday or some time ago, and I’m going to live with it.’ Of course you’re going to live with it, with a dead thing which has no meaning; which is going to prevent you from seeing anew, fresh. So to see truth or the beauty of that mountain, your brain must be extraordinarily sensitive and therefore not made dull by the memory of things that have been; and that requires — you know, if you watch yourself — that requires acute attention. Therefore, you can’t have your body dull; you have to have a body that’s highly alert, sensitive, because the body does influence the brain, and the brain influences your thought and so on, so on, so on. Psychosomatically, one has to be aware.

So you see, memory, which is mechanical, has its place — which is fairly obvious — otherwise you wouldn’t know where you lived, you wouldn’t know what book to read, how to read. That’s mechanical, all that. But memory, which is the past, interferes with observation; and when you have understood that, you have space. Then in that space, for a split second, perhaps, or ten minutes, an hour — it doesn’t matter the time period — there is a perception. And if you make that perception into memory, you will never again see.

And for us, we live on memories: the pleasant time I had when I was young, the memories of sex, the despairs — all memory; we live in the past — so our brain is dull, dead; that is our technological training to make us automatons. What we are talking about is something entirely different: to make the brain astonishingly active and so very sensitive, by being aware of everything that you do and don’t do. And if you do, you will find out for yourself what an extraordinary thing the brain is then.

Q: I can understand it is attention… (inaudible) …but also, being here it is sharpened… (inaudible) …something happens which is not… (inaudible) Far away, when I’m alone, the problem is so much more difficult.

K: The question is: ‘When I’m listening to what is being said, I feel very sensitive, very alive, but when I go away by myself, in my house alone, everything becomes again the old thing.’ If you are made… if you are sensitive, alive now, you are being influenced; that has no value whatsoever. That’s merely propaganda and therefore should be shunned, put away, destroyed; that way you build Masters, teachers, authorities. But if you have listened as we have talked, gone into yourself, observed, aware, what your reactions are every minute as we went along — we have spoken for nearly over an hour — if you have been aware, not to what is being said, but aware into yourself, listening, watching, and when you leave the tent or go away by yourself, you will know your own state of mind; you will never be caught in it again.

Q: Sir, do you not think that the desire to free oneself from conditioning might be a consequence of conditioning?

K: Of course, sir. Desire to free oneself from conditioning only furthers conditioning. But if one understands the whole process of desire — not destroy desire but to understand desire — and in the understanding of desire the freedom from conditioning comes; it’s not a direct result. You understand? If I set about deliberately to free myself from my conditioning, that desire creates its own conditioning. I may destroy this conditioning, but I’m caught in another conditioning. But if there is an understanding of desire — why should one be free… you know, desire — then that very understanding destroys conditioning, which is not… which is a by-product — unconditioning is a by-product — it is not important; but it is important to understand what creates conditioning.

I think we’d better stop, don’t you?