Krishnamurti: Oh, I don’t know about that!
BL: But you must know something. Look at you – serene, realized, content, with no conflict – how have you managed it? What is it?
K: I have never had conflict in my life.
BL: No conflict? You must be almost unique among human beings if that’s so.
K: It’s not because of circumstances, because I was protected, because of any outside influence that kept me safe. I think it was a realization that conflict destroys not only the mind but the whole sensitivity of awareness. So I’ve never had conflict; which seemed quite natural to me, it wasn’t an effort not to be in conflict.
BL: Well, for most of us it is an effort, so how can we conquer it?
K: I think it comes really when you have a direct perception that conflict destroys human dignity, a human sense of depth. If you have a deep insight into that, it stops immediately – for me.
BL: Ah, what about for us?
K: Oh yes, for everybody.
BL: For everybody? Then how do we obtain that? It’s almost like finding Nirvana, finding the ultimate goal, isn’t it?
K: No, the ultimate goal, if you can put it that way, is to find that which is completely sacred, totally uncontaminated by thought.
BL: Is thought the contaminant then?
K: Yes.
BL: You see, that is a very strange concept for most people.
K: It’s not a concept, it’s an actuality. Why do you reduce it to a concept?
BL: Well, because that is our way of thinking, we learn to think that thought itself is the most important, the strongest and most powerful means we have.
K: Of course.
BL: And is that not so?
K: But thought is very limited.
BL: Go on, why?
K: Because it’s born out of knowledge, out of memory, experience, so knowledge is never complete about anything.