Krishnamurti on Analysis

Episode Notes

‘Analysis implies a division between the analyser and the analysed, and in that division there is already the root of conflict.’

This week’s podcast has three sections. The first extract (2:24) is from Krishnamurti’s third talk in Saanen 1970, titled ‘The division between the analyser and the analysed’.

The second extract (31:42) is from the fifth talk in Saanen 1970, titled ‘Can analysis end fear?’

The final extract this week (39:02) is from Krishnamurti’s fifth talk in Madras 1978, titled ‘Analysis is paralysis’.

Part 1

The Division Between the Analyser and the Analysed

What is the root cause of the conflict and contradiction? Please do ask this question of yourself. Don’t try, if I may explain, to put it into words, give it an explanation, but merely inquire non-verbally if you can into what the basis is of this contradiction, this division, this strife, this conflict. Either you inquire analytically, or you perceive immediately the root of it. Either analytically you unravel bit by bit and come upon the nature and the structure and the cause, and therefore the effect of this strife between ourselves, between you and the state, between you and the community, between they and us – either you analytically examine or you perceive the cause of it instantly. I don’t know how you are going to discover the cause of it. Now we are going to examine both: the analytical process and the immediate perception. That is, we want to find out, not only verbally but factually, the root, the basis, the cause of all this contradiction, this conflict, this division. That is what we are going to inquire into. And either that inquiry is intellectual, which is analytical, or we perceive the truth of it instantly.

Now let us find out what it means to analyse, and thereby perhaps intellectually, which is verbally, discover what the cause is of this conflict. Because once you understand this whole analytical process and see the truth of it or the falseness of it, then you will completely be free of it forever, so that your eyes, your mind and your heart can immediately perceive the truth of it.

We are used to or have been conditioned to the analytical process, not only in the recent philosophical and psychological research of various specialists and psychologists. The analytical process has become a habit, and we are conditioned to live and try to understand this whole complex process of living analytically, intellectually – which doesn’t mean that we must become its opposite: sentimental, emotional, gushing and all the rest of it. But if one understands very clearly the nature and the structure of the analytical process and sees the validity or the falseness of it, then we shall have quite a different outlook. Then we shall be able to give the energy that we have given to the analysis, that same energy can be directed in a totally different direction.

What does analysis mean? In that very statement, analysis implies a division. There is the analyser and the thing to be analysed, whether you analyse it yourself or it is done by a professional. In that very structure of analysis, there is division and therefore there is already the beginning of conflict. Please, you must put your teeth into this because we can do tremendous things only when there is great passion. The inward revolution doesn’t come about through analysis, the inward revolution demands great passion, energy, and it is only this passion that can create, bring about a totally different kind of life in ourselves and in the world. That is why it is very important to understand this analysis in which the human mind for centuries has been caught.

Analysis implies a division between the analyser and the analysed, and in that division there is already the root of conflict. The thing that is to be analysed, which is a fragment of the many other fragments of which we are, one of those fragments assumes the authority of analysis, as the analyser.

Please, will you do this as we go along, not just merely listen? As we are explaining, please do it, see what is involved in analysis. As we said, analysis implies division between the analyser and analysed. The analyser is one of the fragments of the many fragments which make up the whole structure of a human being. That analyser, who is a fragment of the many fragments, assumes the authority to analyse. He becomes the censor, he becomes the accumulated knowledge with which he evaluates the good and the bad, what is right and what is wrong, what should be suppressed or what should not be suppressed, and so on – he has assumed the authority of the censor.

The second thing is, the analyser, when he analyses every analysis, must be totally complete, otherwise his evaluation will be partial, and therefore his conclusion will also be partial. Then the analyser must examine every thought, everything which he thinks should be analysed, and that will take time. You may spend, as they do, a whole lifetime analysing, if you have the money, if you have the inclination, if you can find an analyst with whom you are in love, and all the rest of it – you can spend your days analysing. At the end of it, you are where you were but with more things to be analysed. So, in analysis there is the division between the analyser and the analysed. The analyser must analyse so accurately, so completely, otherwise his conclusion will impede the next analysis. And the analytical process takes infinite time, and during the interval of that time, many other things happen. So, when you see the whole structure of analysis then you see it is an actual denial, negation of action. Analysis, the whole nature of analysing is the negation of action.

Now, when you see the whole structure of this analytical process, see what is involved in it, the negation of all action, there is complete action, isn’t there? Are you doubting that?

Questioner: I don’t understand what you mean by action?

Krishnamurti: All right sir. What does action mean? Action according to an idea, action according to an ideology, action according to one’s experience or knowledge. So there is a division between action and idea, action and ideology, action and knowledge. So action is always approximating itself to the ideal, to the prototype. So action is never complete. And analysis is the negation of action, of total action. So if you see the truth or the falseness of this whole process of analysis, you will never again analyse. When the mind has seen the futility, the meaninglessness of analysis with all the problems involved, then you will never touch it; the mind will never seek to understand through analysis. That is obvious, isn’t it?

So what has happened to the mind that has looked into the process of analysis? It has become very sharp, hasn’t it, alive, sensitive, because it has rejected that which we have considered as the way and the means of understanding anything.

You know what communication means? Sharing together, investigating together – together – moving together, creating together. Are we doing that, or are you merely listening, hearing a few sets of words or conclusions and agreeing or disagreeing? Which is it, what you are doing? If you very clearly see for yourself, not direct it, not forced or compelled by argument, the reason of another, but actually see for yourself the falseness or the truth of analysis, then your mind is free to look in another direction. You have energy to look somewhere else. But if you are looking in the direction of analysis, you will not be able to look in another direction. Is that clear?

So what is the other direction? That is to perceive immediately. Therefore the immediacy of perception is total action. Now we are going to examine that, go into that. As we said, the analyser and the thing analysed, in that there is division. And we said that any form of division at any level brings about a contradiction and therefore conflict. When I separate myself as a Hindu, and you separate yourself as a Catholic, or a Buddhist or a communist or whatever it is, this very division breeds conflict. So the division between the observer and thing observed is the root cause of conflict. Let’s go into it.

When you observe, you are always observing from a centre, from a background, from experience, from knowledge – the ‘me’ observing. ‘Me’ the Catholic, the Protestant, the Hindu, the communist, the educated, the specialist and so on, he is observing. So there is a division between himself and the thing observed. You can see this; it doesn’t require a great deal of understanding, it is an obvious fact. When you look at a tree, there is this division. When you look at your husband, wife, your girlfriend or boyfriend, there is this division. There is this division between yourself and the community, between yourself and the society. So there is this observer and the thing observed. When there is that division there will inevitably be conflict. That is the root of all conflict, of all strife, of all contradiction.

Now, can you observe without division? If that is the root cause of conflict, then the next question is: can you observe without the censor, without the ‘me’, without all the experiences, the miseries, the conflicts, the brutalities, the vanities, the pride, the despair, which is the ‘you’ – can you observe without all that? Which means, can you observe without the past? The past memories, remembrances, conclusions, hopes, all the background, can you observe without that background, because that background divides as the observer and the observed. So the question then is: can you observe without the background? Have you ever done it? Do it now, please. Play with it. To look at the tree or the mountain outwardly, objectively, outward things, the colours, listen to the noise of the river, look at the lines of the mountains, the beauty of it, the clarity of it. That is fairly easy to do without the past, without the ‘me’ observing. But can you look at yourself inwardly, without the observer? Do it, please. Look at yourself, your conditioning, your education, your way of thinking, your conclusions, your prejudices, to look at it, or to look at them without any kind of condemnation or explanation or justification – just to observe. When you so observe, there is no observer and therefore no conflict.

That way of living is entirely, totally different from the other. It is not the opposite of the other, it is not the reaction of the other, but entirely different. And in this, there is tremendous freedom and therefore there is an abundance of energy and passion. And this total observation, which is not partial, is complete action. It is like looking at a map, the total map, not where you want to go, but first observing the total movement of the map. And when you have completely understood the map, looked at it completely, then your action will always be clear.

So one finds out for oneself as a human being that it is completely possible to live without any kind of conflict. You know, this implies an enormous revolution in oneself. And that is the only revolution. Every form of physical revolution, political, economic, social, outward revolution, always ends up in dictatorship, either the dictatorship of the bureaucrats or the dictatorship of the idealists, the utopia people, or some conqueror. Whereas when you have this inward, complete, total revolution, which is the outcome of understanding all conflict, which is the understanding of division between the observer and the observed, then there is a totally different kind of living.

Part 2

Can Analysis End Fear?

We are asking whether thought, with all its activities, which breeds fear and sustains fear, conscious or unconscious, whether that can come naturally to an end without effort.

There are conscious fears as well as unconscious fears of which you are not aware. The fears of which one is not aware play a much greater part in one’s life than the fears that you are aware of. Now how are you going to uncover the unconscious fears? How are you going to expose them to the light of whatever it is – how? By analysis? Who is then to analyse? You say, through analysis I will expose them. We have gone into the question of analysis the other day but we will briefly go into it now. If you say, I will analyse my fears, who is the analyser? Part of the fragment of fear. Therefore his analysis of his own fears has no value at all. Or if you go to an analyst to have your fears analysed, the analyst is also like you, conditioned by the specialist, by Freud, Jung, Adler or X Y Z. He analyses according to his conditioning, therefore doesn’t help you to be free of fear. As we said, all analysis is a negation of action.

So how are you going to uncover the unconscious fears, knowing analysis has no value? If you say, I will look into my dreams, I will examine my dreams, again the same problem arises: who is the entity who is going to examine the dreams? One of the fragments of the many fragments. So you ask a question quite differently, which is, why do you dream at all?

Dreams are merely the continuation of your daily activity. I do not know if you have not noticed in your dreams there is always action going on of some kind or another – jumping over the cliff, hitting somebody, or a dozen forms of daily activity repeated while you are asleep. Now can that activity be understood and come to an end? That is, can the mind during the daytime be so alertly watching all its motivations, all its urges, all its complexities, its pride, its ambitions – you know the things that are going on during the day – the frustrations, the demand to fulfil, the urge to be somebody? You know. The movement of thought during the day, can those be watched without the observer? If there is the observer who is watching, the observer then is part of thought which has separated itself from the rest of the thoughts and has assumed the authority to observe.

So can you observe during the day the whole movement of your activities, thoughts, feelings without interpretation? Watching. Then you will see dreams have very little meaning; you will hardly ever dream. Therefore during the daytime if you are awake, not half asleep, if you are not caught by your beliefs, by your prejudices, by your absurd little vanities and pride, and your petty little knowledge, but merely observe the whole movement of your conscious mind and unconscious mind in action during the day, you will see there will not only be the end to dreams but also thought begins to subside, no longer seeking or sustaining pleasure or avoiding fear.

Part 3

Analysis Is Paralysis

Let’s begin differently. Don’t you want to know about yourself? If you don’t know about yourself, actually what you are, you have no basis for any action which will be true, not fragmentary, not miserable, regretting, and so on. Don’t you want to know what you are? No? To know yourself. Now how do you begin to find out about yourself? You can only know yourself either through observation in relationship or through analysis. I can know myself. I talk about myself. I can know myself watching my relationship with others, with my wife, if I am married, or with my girlfriend, or with friends. In that observation, I see myself reacting as a Hindu, as a Buddhist, as a Christian, as a non-Christian, or I imagine that I love people – you know, I find out. Or through analysis, analysing myself.

To me, analysis is paralysis. And the Hindus are very good at it, and therefore they are totally paralysed because they don’t act. They analyse, analyse, analyse, therefore gradually this analysis leads them to paralysis. You watch them as they walk down the street. So either you analyse or you observe in relationship – observe yourself, what you are, how you think, how you react, what your responses are, what the centre is from which you are moving – always a fixed point and from there move. Therefore the movement is very limited. So we are going to find out.

In the process of analysis who, is the analyser? The analyser thinks he is different from that which he is analysing, but is that so? The therapeutic analysis by a professional, probably they have never questioned this: who is the analyser? Is the analyser different from the analysed? Am I different from my anger, from my greed, from my anxiety, from my ugliness, brutality, cruelty, hate – am I different from that? If that is different from me then I can analyse it. And each analysis, if I am good at it, must be complete, otherwise the remembrance of that analysis is going to interfere with the next analysis.

So is the analyser different from the analysed, or are they both the same. The analyser is the analysed. When you go through the process of introspection, analysis, and all that, what is happening when you analyse? You are taking time, aren’t you? Time. You investigate in the morning and go off to your job, and come back and again investigate yourself. Or you investigate very, very carefully, slowly, minutely. All that implies time. And who is the analyser? Is he something different from that which he is analysing? Is anger different from you? Is jealousy different from you? Your cruelty, your hate, different from you? Or you are that? You have divided this thing: you are different from that, therefore you think you can analyse that. But when you observe very closely you will find that you are anger. At the moment of jealousy, anxiety, you are that. Only a second later you say, ‘I have been angry.’ Which is the movement of thought dividing anger from you.

So the analyser is the analysed. And if you realise that, you will drop totally, completely all analysis. But when you talk to psychotherapists they won’t drop it because they have got Cadillac cars and all the rest of it; their life depends on it. And probably it is the same with you, because you are so conditioned that you refuse to see this simple fact. If you drop analysis completely then how will you investigate the self? How am I to investigate, look, observe, understand this very, very complex thing called me if I don’t analyse? I see it is stupid to analyse. It will lead nowhere. Therefore I reject it completely, entirely. Are you in that position or you have got one foot there and – you understand my question?

So I can only find out about myself by observing my reactions in my relationship. So relationship becomes tremendously important because it is going to reveal to me what I am. Whether I think I am divine or there is some part of me that is divine, I am going to discover it in relationship. If there is some part of me which is divine then that part must act. So we have invented a very clever thing, which is, there is something very divine but it is clouded over, so I have to peel off, like an onion, then I will find myself. Self-realisation – I don’t know what that means. They use that a great deal in this country, and I am sure they don’t know what it means either.

So I realise I can only understand myself in relationship. Therefore I observe. Do I observe with the memory of previous observation? I have observed myself in my relationship yesterday, with my wife, with my friend, with my boss, and I remember that. Then with that remembrance observe myself next day. So what is happening? I am not observing myself at all. The memory is operating, remembrance is operating, therefore there is never penetration into the very structure and nature of the self.

So is it possible to observe myself each moment as though it was fresh? Not having remembered my observation, and let that remembrance operate. Do you see the difference? To let the remembrance operate, or observe from moment to moment afresh each response. See what it does to you. Then that response becomes extraordinarily important because it is fresh. But the moment you name it, it has already become the old. So you have to have an alertness to watch that you do not name it, that it is not an operation of remembrance. Therefore you are observing with a clarity that is penetrating, that has an insight. So which is it you are doing, actually now? Please, I am asking you. This is very important for you to find out, to learn, not memorise, learn from listening to find out. Which is it that you are doing? If you are analysing, then you are going to end up being paralysed completely and become neurotic, if you are not already. If analysis is completely out because you see the futility of it, not because I tell you, but you yourself have an insight into the whole structure of analysis, you can drop it. Then to observe yourself in relationship, to observe without the gathered knowledge of previous observation. If you do that then you are merely repetitive, therefore you are not learning, watching yourself in operation.

Now, put it round the other way a little bit. Have you observed anything – your wife, your girlfriend, the tree or the movement of water – with all your senses, with the totality of your senses, your smell, your hearing, your taste, all your senses heightened and observing? Have you ever done that? If you have done it, there is no centre from which you are looking because then thought is part of that observation, then your senses are part of that observation. Therefore thought is not separate from the senses, therefore there is no division as the ‘me’, the observer, and the thing, you, the observed.

So the nature, the inmost nature of the self, when you have gone through all the layers of the self, the essence is nothing. You are nothing. On that nothingness, thought has imposed the superstructure of consciousness. Consciousness being the content. Without the content there is no consciousness – the content being you are a Hindu, Buddhist, your religion, your particular god, your puja, your anxiety, your sorrow, your pain, your hate, your love – all that is the content of your consciousness, obviously. And the idea that you are super atman, or super, super-consciousness is part of that content. You understand what thought has done. We are absolutely nothing.