Public Discussion 6, Saanen, 9 August 1964
Krishnamurti: If you will allow me, let me talk for a few minutes and then we can begin to discuss.
I do not know, it must have struck you also, that most of us lead an abnormally superficial and contradictory lives. And we’re always trying to find out something which is not contradictory, which is something in itself right and true. And the religious concept, if I may use that word *religion* in modern age when religion has very little meaning or hardly ever talked about at all, man has always endeavoured to find something permanent, something that is not within the bondage of time, and to find that, he has tortured himself in so many ways. All the religions the world over have insisted on this torture: self-denial, abstemiousness, control, suppression, and every form of psychological amputation.
And surely, whatever there is to be found, you must have a mind that is un-tortured, un-mutilated, very simple, very clear, without having any particular direction, a quality of mind that is really innocent, though it may have lived a thousand experience, to find anything that is not the result of its own tortured, despairing life. You must have a certain quality of open, fresh innocency. And that seems to me an absolute necessity, even in daily life, not only when one is aware of something extraordinary beyond the measure of time, you must have that quality of mind, untrammelled, free, very awake, highly sensitive and therefore highly intelligent, without the mind ever being touched by the tortures of any religion.
I wonder how one comes to it, how one… how the mind can, without the least effort – because all effort, as we discussed the other day, is a form of torture — how can one come to it, come… or rather how can one have that quality of mind? Shall we discuss that this morning? Would that be of interest to you?
Many: Yes.
K: Am I… is the speaker, putting the problem to you or are you thinking of the problem yourself? Again, we must be very careful here. If it is your own inquiry, because you are aware of all the implications of the religious tortures and psychological suppressions, you will inevitably have come to that question naturally, easily, but if you are… but if the speaker is imposing that question on to you it is quite a different thing. I don’t know… Am I making my question clear? Is it your own or is it the speaker’s?
Questioner: You are answering our needs.
K: Lady suggests that I’m answering our needs; am I?
Q: What difference do you make between conflict and discontentment?
K: Ahah. What’s the difference between conflict and discontent. Perhaps we’ll come to that, sir, a little later. You see, let me put the issue differently. In this specialized world, where the specialists are in demand, as the scientist, mathematician, lawyer, doctor, technician, labourer, and so on and so on, every specialization, though it may create a certain type of intelligence, it is not the intelligence of the whole process of living. It is only a fragmentary type of intelligence, the person who specializes. But life is not a specialization. It’s a total thing in which is involved sorrow, pain, desire, conflict, discontent, despair, affection, jealousy, greedy ambition, death… whole of it. One has to understand this whole of it, not just one part of it. And to understand this whole of it, with all its astonishing variety, nuances, subtleties and extraordinary beauty, one must have a total intelligence, not a specialized intelligence — if specialized intelligence can ever be called intelligence. Now, how does one come to it? I’m only putting the question differently. (Pause) I think it would be worthwhile to go into this, don’t you?
Q: Yes.
K: Now, there is a problem in front of… — how would you tackle it? What would be your response to it? It must be… if it is a total response, it cannot be a partial… a fragmentary reaction to a particular issue. I… Ah? Now, how am I to comprehend the totality of this and act from that total comprehension? And if that is your problem also, how would you approach it? After all, true religious intelligence is this total approach to life. Not in a monastery, not the monk who renounces the world, or the man who is so caught up in worldly affairs. They’re both the same: the monk and the man who is caught up in the worldly affairs are exactly the same — the artist, the lawyer. How can one tear through all these divisions and come to that total intelligence which operates wherever it is? How would you – if the problem was yours, and I hope it is yours and not mine which you are accepting – if it is your problem, how would you approach it and resolve it? (Pause)
Q: (Inaudible) …negative thinking.
K: The gentleman suggests negative thinking. I’m asking how you would do it.
Q: I see I am confused… (inaudible).
K: Yes sir. The gentleman says he sees he is confused, he is in conflict. Yes sir, most people are, some form of discontent, conflict, and so on and so on. Let us leave that for the moment, all that aside, and look at this problem, sir. You know, life is a vast field, isn’t it? The known, the unknown, the experiences, the theories, the hypotheses, the suppositions, the beliefs, the dogmas, the rituals, the butcheries, the wars — it’s a vast field and extraordinarily complex. And do we approach this vast field with an equally vast mind, with a mind that takes the whole thing in, or we know a particular corner of this vast field and from that little corner try to understand this whole immensity of life?
Q: That’s what we do.
K: That’s what you do. All right, if we do that, then what will you do?
Q: I see I can’t take time over it because if I do, I’m only looking… (inaudible).
K: The lady says she can’t time over it, because if she does it’s like moving from one part to the other and never covering the whole. You’re not telling me. I’m asking you how you… it’s your problem, what you will do with it.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: *Comment*, madam?
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Ah, I don’t know… What will you do?
Q: As long as you’re doing something you’re still acting from the centre so you can’t… (inaudible).
K: Please, it’s no good waiting for me to answer you. As we said, this is our problem. We’ll have to talk it over together. It’s no value just to make a statement.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Beg your pardon? I couldn’t hear.
Q: Did you not say that it took a logical mind… (inaudible)?
K: Ah, did I not say it took a logical mind.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Of course one must have a logical, healthy, sane mind. But that’s not good enough. Many people, lots of people have logical, sane, healthy mind. To build a rocket to go the moon you must have an extraordinary logical, sane, healthy mind to put the million pieces together.
Q: Krishnaji, you put the question, but I’m not listening right now. When you say listen with your heart and feel your way into the problem, I don’t know what you mean because the question doesn’t really have penetration.
K: It is said, ‘Your question has really no meaning to me at all because I really don’t know how to listen to that question. I don’t actually… I haven’t actually listened to it at all, because it’s much too big a problem.’ It’s like being presented with a very complex machinery and you say, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about it.’ So it is not your problem then, is it? I made that very clear at the beginning. I am not imposing a problem onto you. Either you see the issue for yourself or you don’t see it. If you see it, what will do with it?
Q: All knowledge must… (inaudible).
K: Ah?
Q: (Inaudible)… that all knowledge… (inaudible).
K: All knowledge must cease?
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Again, that’s just… *Voyons.*
Q: I leave it alone.
K: ‘I leave it alone’, the gentleman says. Most people do. Because they don’t know what to do with it, they just leave it alone. I think you mean, sir, leave it alone in a different sense. You can’t leave it alone till you have completely comprehended or understood or know the nature of that issue, nature of that problem.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: I could put it ten different ways. Look, sir, a scientist — the real one, not the mere inventor — the scientist is very concerned, not only about matter, but what is beyond all this, what is… through all this a state of creation, this expanding universe, bursting away from each other, and I… and a… a real one, wants to find out the nature of it, the extraordinary quality, the beauty, the intensity, the energy, not through a test-tube but to feel it, to be actually in relation to it. Would you say that, sir?
Q: I say you can get little by little this whole understanding from… (inaudible) by constant observing all that happens around us within us… (inaudible).
K: The gentleman says by constantly observing within and without.
Q: You have told us.
K: Ah, no, no. I haven’t told you anything. I’m not your authority. Sir, look, the scientist has several keys, four or five or six keys to open and look through the door. And when he observes, that is a horizontal process; it is not a vertical burst. And our daily life, going to the office, coming back home, little sex, quarrels, anxiety, competition, it is… our daily life is rather superficial, empty; we are discontented and out of this discontent we escape or do things to get contented. So our life is a very superficial, light affair. We can carry on like this till we die, and most people do, accumulating a little property, a car or two, and so on and so on. And when you see that you say, ‘It’s all right, but it isn’t good enough.’ The music, the pictures, the mountains, the rivers, the trees, and the squalor and the splendour of the sky and so on, say, ‘Yes, it’s all right’, up to a certain point. And don’t you as a human being want — want, in the sense I’m using the word, not as a desire — don’t you feel that you want to open a door that will give a new freshness, a new vitality, a new energy, a new beauty, a tremendous thing to the whole of existence?
Q: Sir, the question is that we want… (inaudible) our properties and the other little things… (inaudible).
K: The gentleman says we want that tremendous thing and also we want to hold on to our little properties. All right, have your little properties, for God’s sake.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Be completely bourgeois or be communistically bourgeois or whatever you like.
Q: (Inaudible)… the problem is not still completely… (inaudible).
K: No, no…
Q: Sometime we want this, sometime…
K: Yes. No, but… The gentleman says sometimes we want this and sometimes we want the other.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: But in spite of all this, sir, in spite of your wanting and having your little property, your little wife, husband, children and God knows… — you know? – all the business of life, don’t… at the same time isn’t there an inquiry, a pushing… looking? Or are you just say, ‘Well, I just want my little property. I’m struggling for that, I’ll have it and also occasionally I’ll try to look for the other’? Are you…? It is such a stupid existence, this way. Not… I’m not telling you that you’re still leading a stupid life, but doesn’t your mind inquire into this? Or do you say just, ‘I will live three score and ten years or whatever it is and there is inevitably death and what happens afterwards and… I really don’t mind. I’m satisfied with the pains or the pleasures of the day and that’s good enough’? But doesn’t your mind push beyond itself?
Q: (Inaudible).
K: It is not a… I don’t think… The lady says that we are afraid to question ourselves. Look, sir, let me put the question differently. Most of our minds are petty. A petty mind inquiring about itself is still petty. A petty mind worshipping at an altar is still petty. And a petty mind that suffers because of loss of house, property or death, it is still seeking from its pettiness and its answers will always be petty, as its gods, its characters, its mythology, its endeavours, its neuroticism and all that will still be within the field of pettiness, shallowness. So how to break that pettiness? You follow what I mean?
Q: If you are interested… (inaudible).
K: The lady says, ‘If I am intensely interested in everything…’
Q: …everything, everything that… (inaudible).
K: If we are interested intensely in everything that crosses our path, our life. All right. If you do that, what happens? How will you be intensely interested in everything? You haven’t time. If you are intensely interested in the rocket…
Q: Yes.
K: Yes.
Q: (Inaudible)
K: You haven’t time to study it, to go into it. Surely you are… I know a man who was a big official in the government and one morning he woke up and said to himself, ‘I must find out what is truth, what is real judgment’, and after a week he left his family, his job, and went away to meditate, to find out. And for twenty-five years he meditated to find out what truth is. And when he came to talk things over, he found that he was completely caught in his own petty visions of life which he has protected… projected, and protected. And that’s what we most of us do.
Surely, that’s fairly clear and simple, but we’re not asking that question at all. We are asking something much more immediate. How would you, knowing the problem, how do you answer it? How do you approach it? If you really said you don’t know — you understand? — if you really said, ‘I don’t know’, that would be a real answer, wouldn’t it? But you don’t. You have got explanations: ‘We must do this; if I did that; I must be more intense.’ If you really said, ‘I really don’t know,’ not put… not pretend, not answer, not say, ‘Well, I must do this, I must do that,’ which are all false responses, surely.
Do you know what is humility? I’m not preaching at the altar, so… I’m using the word *humility* in its real sense of the word, not the achievement of a vain man who calls himself humble. To be… actually have that quality of humility; to shed all our pretences and say, ‘I really don’t know how to answer this question. I really never have even thought about it.’ From there we could proceed. But if you throw up a lot of barriers of words, explanations, concepts, what must be, what must not be, what you should do, ifs and don’ts, then you don’t… you’re just warding off, you’re not really inquiring. Isn’t that so? Or am I insulting you? So, shall we begin again?
One sees the vast expanse of life, not your little… my little house, my little wife, husband, children only, but the extraordinary complex society we live in: the complexity of relationship, the tensions of war, the shallow responses, the pettiness of politicians all over the world and so on and so on. One sees this whole thing and every action creating… every action that springs from a particular narrow little part of this vast field only creates more complexities, more contradictions, more confusion. Again this is so. Look at what the politicians are doing. They’re thinking about their own little country. They’re not thinking about the whole world as human beings. And look at all the religious people what they are doing, with their secularities, with their rituals, with their dogmas, with their saviours, and so on and so on and so on — each one approaching the whole ocean of life from a little point of view, from opinions, dogmas, from authority and so on and so on.
Now, I… we see the contradiction that must arise, that does arise from a particularised action when the whole is not taken into consideration. So is it possible for me or you to go beyond this little particular activity and see the whole thing, comprehend this whole process of life? Because they’re not separate, they are interrelated; and understanding the whole of it, act from that wholeness. I can’t put it in different ways, good God. Have you got it, sir, at least the question? If you’ve got the question, please wait before you answer it. If you have understood the question; and it’s not difficult to understand the question, even verbally. If you have heard the question, if you have verbally understood it, not merely verbally… verbal… analytically understood it, but understand the nature of the question, what is your response? (Pause)
Q: We don’t know what to do.
K: You really don’t know what to do?
Q: Thinking. Thinking it over.
K: One says we don’t know what to do; another, we are thinking it over. Is there much to think about it?
Q: I fear my aloneness.
K: The gentleman says he fears his loneliness.
Q: Is it beyond thinking?
K: Is it beyond thinking. Ah, it’s no good you’re asking me. First, sir, look, a problem of this kind… I won’t… put it in different words, you know what my question is, more or less. You are confronted with this issue and there is nobody to tell you what to do, because there are no books written about it. Even if you read the books you would interpret it in your way and apply it. Here is an issue put before you. You have to answer it. You can’t just say, ‘Well, I don’t care.’ If you don’t care, all right, don’t care, but if you’re at all awake to the world and to all the world conflict, miseries, and the tortures that human beings are going through, you must… you, who are aware, at least cognizant of this question, how do you answer it?
Q: Sir, I don’t answer it, but I feel the fragility, the tenderness, the expanse of something, that the slightest touch might… (inaudible).
K: The lady says, ‘I don’t answer it, but I have a great sense of tenderness, sympathy — perhaps that will answer it.’
Q: (Inaudible).
K: *Attendez; un instant*. I mean, wait a minute. You see, you are… I am not your authority; I am not your touchstone. You are telling me something – I said don’t tell me anything. What will you do? That’s the question, not say ‘if’, and ‘I must think it over, I must’, etc., etc., all the questions that have been put forward.
Q: I have to find out.
Q: (Inaudible). I have to find out… (inaudible).
K: It is said, ‘I have to find out if it is possible or not.’ What is possible or not?
Q: Well, personally, I have a feeling that I… (inaudible).
K: Ah… The lady says, ‘I have not the capacity to answer that question.’ Right? Then how will you have the capacity? Capacity implies gradual process in time, doesn’t it? Sharpening…
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Beg your pardon?
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Yes. You have not that quality. How will you get that quality?
Q: Krishnaji, I see that nobody has prevented me from seeing, you know, the whole complex of my life; it’s right there, and I don’t see why I don’t do it. Nobody’s stopping me.
K: The gentleman says that he sees the whole quality of his life, ‘I don’t change it, and I don’t know why.’ Right, sir? That’s what you said, didn’t you?
Q: No, I said, it’s all there…
K: It’s all there…
Q: …and nobody is stopping me from seeing it, so why don’t I see it?
K: Ah, don’t ask me.
Q: Well, I ask myself… (inaudible).
K: Ask it. You see, what I feel in this, if I may point out, I don’t think you are facing the issue at all. It’s right there in front of us, whether we live in Saanen or in London, New York or wherever you live, it is there, and we’re not looking at it, we’re not facing it, we haven’t come to grips with it. And I wonder if you come to grips with anything in life, or is it all a fancy, a pretence, a pose, a verbal covering up and so on and so on, so we never are in contact with something real, unless it is terribly painful or some great pleasure we demand. So here is a question which must be tremendously of interest, factual to you, and you’re dodging with it, you’re not facing it.
Q: Can we ever face this problem with the mind that we have got?
K: Ah, can we ever face this problem with the mind that we have. You can’t. All right.
Q: Doesn’t the mind grow with the problem?
K: Doesn’t the mind grow with the problem. That’s a very nice idea, but does it? Here is a problem, does it grow with… you grow with it? Or you can only grow with it and cover it, absorb it, do something when you are… when you face it. But are you? I mean, don’t invent, sir. Are you facing it? Please, I’m not being impatient or anything of that kind, but you keep on adding words, words, words. I said do you face it?
Q: (Inaudible).
K: It is said, ‘What am I doing about pettiness’ — and…?
Q: No, I said is… (inaudible) or what I am doing about it, which is continuing in it.
K: Yes, sir, what are you doing about it?
Q: Continuing… (inaudible).
K: Very interesting, isn’t it?
Q: As we are engulfed in the tremendous problem… (inaudible) is it not possible to see the structure inside that, the relationship of our thinking and actions in that gives a kind of skeleton to it, that we can, perhaps, perceive… (inaudible)?
K: It is said that we don’t see the structure of it and therefore we don’t see the inward nature of it. Is that it? And therefore cannot cope with it. Is that right?
Q: If we could do that.
K: Ah, not ‘if’.
Q: Then we are engulfed by the endlessness of it… (inaudible) and we can see within… (inaudible).
K: I understand all that, madame, but I’m just asking.
Q: Sir, surely if we see, we act, as you pointed out so often, if we’re hungry, we eat, we’re thirsty, we drink.
K: Right, madame, but apparently you’re not thirsty or you’re not hungry.
Q: Sir, is it that nobody here gives a damn?
K: Ah, no, no.
Q: If the atomic bomb drops they don’t know… (inaudible).
K: No, no; no, no. We’re not talking…
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Sir… The gentleman says, ‘Apparently we don’t care a damn.’ That’s not my question.
Q: If I see that…
K: Not ‘if.’
Q: (Inaudible).
K: There is no… House is burning. You don’t say if I am… if there is something to do I will do. Look, sir, let me… I see you just… Sir, what, if you observe your own mind and your own heart, if you observe it then, what takes place when you are confronted with an immense problem? When you’re actually confronted, not theoretically, not verbally, not intellectually, but actually it is there, right in front of you.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Wait, wait, madame, *excusez-moi*. You’re so quick to answer, aren’t you? What takes place in your mind when you’re confronted with a tremendous crisis? What actually takes place?
Q: We become quiet.
K: We become quiet. Do you?
Q: (Inaudible)… reaction.
K: Madame, just listen. (Inaudible). Here is an immense problem. You understand? Man has tried to solve this problem for two million years. It is an immense problem and it… you are confronted with it, you are pushed into a corner and you are facing it.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Wait.
Q: (Inaudible).
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Would you mind, sirs, listening to me for two minutes or five minutes, for an hour? Would you kindly listen? The speaker has pushed you into a corner and in that corner he has put to you an immense problem. You can’t back out. He has stopped you all verbalizing, inventing new ideas, new ways of thinking, answering. He said, ‘Don’t. Look at it.’ And if you are looking at it, not pretending to look but actually looking at it, what takes place in your mind? Because that is an immense problem.
Q: Sir, the problem is so intense that I become it.
K: Madame… Lady says she becomes that immense problem. I said would you kindly listen till I’ve finished. You have your chance afterwards. Let me… give me also a chance. What actually happens to a mind when it is confronted with an issue which is not ordinary, which is not the everyday happening? The issue that happens every day, the ordinary, you respond to it normally, habitually, according to your conditioning, according to your background. But here, you have been put an intolerably difficult, complex, and a very subtle question, and the speaker says when you are… when you face it, what takes place in your mind? Don’t, please, answer me. What actually is going on in your own mind? Are you paralysed? Are you shocked? Or are you trying, because you have heard that only a silent mind can understand the problem and therefore trying to force you… to be silent? What actually takes place? Do you look around to see who are your friends, what they are doing, as some of these gentleman are doing?
Q: (Inaudible)… I see I have no solution. I cannot say anything, but I… (inaudible) …it doesn’t find anything, it doesn’t do anything, but it… (inaudible) it is… (inaudible).
Q: I don’t think I could even face this problem because I… (inaudible). I mean, I don’t want to be face this problem… (inaudible) I don’t want to be put in the corner.
K: All right, don’t be put in a corner.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: I don’t know what you’re all doing. Sorry, I’m lost.
Q: I see that if I don’t know… (inaudible)…
K: Ah, wait. You say you don’t know. Why don’t you stay there?
Q: (Inaudible)… because I can’t… (inaudible).
K: But…
Q: (Inaudible)… continuing to watch… (inaudible).
K: Look, sir, Mr Richardson, do listen. Do you ever say you don’t know? Does it ever occur to you to say to yourself, ‘Really, I don’t know about this,’ and remain there? You follow? ‘I don’t know.’ Not try to find an answer. And if, to find an answer, it can only be verbal, can’t it? Somebody tells you what to do and you say, ‘Well, that may be.’ It’s still verbal. It’s not yours. So I’m… Why can’t we be very simple about this matter, which is, ‘I really don’t know.’ Ah? Can you say that honestly that you don’t know? Ah? Right?
Many: (Inaudible).
K: Delighted. At last. Ah?
Q: Well, I’m not satisfied to say this.
K: But then you have the answer, then you know what to do.
Q: No. I know that I have to try various things before I… (inaudible).
K: Oh, come off it. You have tried ten different things. Meditated, chased gurus, read books and sat on your head, or whatever you do, you’ve done it.
Q: (Inaudible).
K: Not you, sir, I’m not talking… (inaudible) personally. If you say you don’t know you can begin then to learn, can’t you? Ah? Right? But you don’t say you don’t know.
Q: The difficulty seems to be to remain in the state… facing the problem and not… (inaudible).
K: That’s right, sir. The gentleman says the difficulty is to face that issue, not knowing what to do about it. If you knew what to do about it, it wouldn’t be an issue, would it? Ah? So you don’t know what to do. Why not say, ‘I really don’t know,’ and wait… and have patience? Then we can begin to inquire into the mind that says ‘I don’t know.’ You understand? A mind that says ‘I don’t know’ is either waiting for an answer, waiting for some explanation how to approach this problem, therefore it is in a state of expectancy. Right? Ah? Now, if it is in a state of expectancy, it is already in a state to receive the answer, and therefore it is in a state of not knowing. If you say, ‘I don’t know,’ you actually don’t know and thereby you’re not waiting for somebody or for something to tell you, and the two states are different, aren’t they?
Q: Yes.
K: The mind that says, ‘I don’t know,’ and is waiting for an answer, expecting, and a mind that says, ‘I don’t know,’ and… because there is no answer, therefore it is in a state of non-expectancy, observing. Not even observing; it is quiet, silent, saying, ‘I really don’t know.’ Isn’t that the only state in which you can learn? (Pause)
Q: The mind says there has to be an answer… (inaudible).
K: The mind says there has to be an answer. How do you know there is an answer? If it… Look what is involved. When you say there must be an answer, then the mind is capable of recognising the answer.
Q: Capable of finding the answer.
K: Capable of finding the answer. How is it capable when it is not quiet? Because you don’t know.
Q: There has to be… (inaudible) you say here is a great problem and I’m not just going to give up… (inaudible).
K: But you have done it. Sirs, look, sir, I’ll go step by step, may I? I won’t jump. Here is an immense problem. My petty mind has never confronted that problem. Right? My petty mind tries to find an answer which is not only recognisable by the petty mind, but it must satisfy the petty mind in its answer. And the problem is too vast for the petty mind. Whatever it tries to answer will be a response according to its pettiness. So it says, ‘Look, I am petty, this is too big.’ Either it says it’s too big and leaves it alone or it says, ‘I must stop being petty. My pettiness must go.’ The problem is not important now, but the pettiness. Right? So any movement in any direction, at any level of the petty mind remains petty. Right? So it says… it sees that. If you don’t see that then you go and jump in the lake and have a good swim. But if you see that then the petty mind says ‘I won’t do a thing. Any movement from my centre of pettiness will still be petty, whether towards God or towards anything.’ So it realises that and is quiet. That’s all. Begin with that.
Right, sirs.