Public Talk 2, Bombay, 10 December 1969

It’s hot, isn’t it.

One wonders why we come to a meeting like this, a gathering of this kind. I wonder why you come here at all. Either you come out of curiosity or you are inclined to be religious or philosophical, which is more or less the same thing; and you want to be entertained with new formulas, new ideals or new comparative ideals and theories. Or you come with serious intent. If you come with serious intent — and we hope that you do — then we shall go into some problems which we think are very important, probably most important. To understand what is going to be said we must be very clear that you and the speaker have a relationship of responsibility. The speaker is not a teacher, and you are not a disciple, a follower. Here, there is no authority or the assumption of authority. Discipleship means to learn; disciple means to learn, and that’s what we are going to do — to learn together, not be taught. I think that must be very clear from the very beginning: there is no relationship of the teacher and the disciple but there is only one relationship of communication in learning. Therefore there is no question of being taught.

So we are going to learn together. And to learn requires certain energy, not resistance, not a comparative judgement or evaluation. That is, whatever you hear, if we say, ‘I have read about it,’ and compare what you have already known or have heard or have learnt with what is being said, then you are not really learning at all. You are merely evaluating, comparatively. But learning requires great curiosity to find out, to explore, and therefore freedom to explore. Without freedom you cannot possibly learn. So it is essential to have freedom to learn — freedom from comparative evaluations, comparing what is being said with what already you know. What you know is what you have been told, either by a book, by a guru or by your own potty little experience. So when you compare you cease to learn; and to learn there must be freedom, freedom from any form of conclusion. Which means don’t conclude but observe, because if you conclude then you have acquired knowledge and that knowledge prevents you from further learning. I am going to go into that; you will see it presently. Freedom from every form of prejudice so that a mind that is free can explore, look, observe, learn. So freedom is essential to learn and there is no freedom if there is any kind of authority, specially in matters of the psyche, in matters that are considered spiritual. So we are in a totally different kind of relationship, you and I, you and the speaker. There is not the division between you and the speaker, the speaker being the teacher and you the disciple, or you to learn from him. Therefore our relationship is one of learning together. I hope that’s very clear.

To learn, as we said, requires not only curiosity but also a great deal of energy, and that demands that you give attention, that you are watching yourself, not only what the speaker is saying but also your reactions to what is being said. For, after all, the speaker is merely acting as a mirror in which you are looking at yourself. And if you are not looking attentively you inevitably distort, twist, according to your particular like or dislike, according to your conditioning, according to your pleasure or displeasure. So to do, to learn, requires not only freedom but also a great deal of energy, a fresh energy; and that fresh energy is destroyed when you are merely learning by heart or repeating what others have said or comparing with what is said, with what already has been said.

So there is only one movement in life, which is learning. And this learning comes to an end when we break up the whole, total movement of life into fragments. Please do follow this a little bit. Life, the living, is a total movement. Not from one point to another point through a central point, but a total movement of life all the time in which there is no division at all. For when there is a division there is conflict; and we have divided life — life as a scientist, as a philosopher, as a religious man, as a business man, as a family man, as the one who has given up the world and is seeking truth or god or whatever he likes to call it. So we have divided it, made a life into many, many, many fragments; and these fragments are opposing each other, contradicting each other. And one fragment, of all the many fragments, says to itself, I will control, I will direct, I will manipulate these many fragments. Or it says, I will integrate all these fragments. But the integrator is part of that fragment. Right?

Don’t you divide life — into the Atman and the daily existence, the soul, the god, good and bad, the moral and the immoral, the family as a unit opposed to the rest of the community, or the community which absorbs the whole individual? So, if you observe in yourself, as I hope you are doing now, that you will see for yourself that you have divided your life. Right? You have divided it into nationalities, into various forms of tribal divisions, and all divisions are really… nationalistic divisions are really quite tribal. And you have divided life into death and life, into sex and non-sex, god and so on and on and on and on. That’s a fact. You cannot deny it, because we are learning about it. You are not agreeing intellectually that we have divided it, and just remain at that place, but we are going to learn why we divide it. Right? Why the human mind divides life, which is the whole of this living, into fragments. We are going to learn why the mind, the heart, the whole being divides, divides, divides — the division as the fact, and the fact or ‘what should be’, the ideal. So, our whole of existence, from the moment we are born till we die, we live in fragments opposing each other, contradicting each other, and therefore in that contradiction there is conflict, and conflict is the very essence of disorder. And that disorder is waste of energy. I think that’s fairly clear.

So our next question is, why we divide at all. Why can’t we live a life which is a constant movement, a harmonious whole, without contradiction, without effort? Why this sorrow and happiness, this joy and pleasure, the fear and the end of fear, the agony, the ache, the loneliness, the extraordinary sense of isolation; why this constant division as the ‘me’ and the ‘not me’, the division as ‘we’ and ‘they’? We are going to learn together about it. You are not going to be told by me why the division exists. If you merely accept why the division exists from the speaker, you have ceased to learn. But you will repeat it and that will have no value whatsoever, whereas if you learn it, if you see it, if you have an insight into it then it will be yours. Then you are a free man, not dependent on anybody.

So, the act of learning is the act of living. It isn’t that you are going to learn one fragment then the next fragment, or another fragment; learning about each fragment. You cannot learn about each fragment. There is the feeling of learning only, not about fragments. Right? Learning, not about something. The quality of the mind that learns is far more important than what it learns about something. And what we are concerned this evening is the quality of the mind that learns, first, and then we are going to enquire together why this division exists at all in life. When you find out why it exists, not intellectually, verbally or theoretically, but actually learn about it with your heart and with your mind, then it will be the act of living. And that learning will reveal, show the… why the mind divides.

Why does the mind divide? Here in this country, you have been brought up, like in other countries, that you have… there is the Atman and then there is the body. So the higher self and the lower self always everlastingly in battle. The higher self wanting to express through the body and the body resisting, and so on and on. I won’t go further into the descriptions of this division, because it’s… we have understood it. So our question is, why do we divide? Why does the mind, which is capable of such extraordinary things — like going to the moon, and so on, inventing new machines that are really quite extraordinary — the electronic brains, the computers, the war machines that are really appalling — a mind that is so capable, why does it allow itself to live in this contradiction, conflict, misery? So we have to ask: why does the mind divide? Mind being the brain, the nerves, the organism, the total thing — why does it divide, why does the brain divide, which is thought? Right? You are asking the question; I am not asking it. You are asking that question for yourself and you are learning by asking that question, not waiting for the speaker to tell you. So you have to exercise your capacity, your intelligence, your mind, your brain. You are not going to be told what to think, but the capacity to think clearly.

What does the brain demand in life? We are not making it very difficult; we’ll make it as simple as possible. The brain is the reservoir of all the past. You can observe it in yourself — we are not quoting from any book or having learnt from any book or from any professor, from any philosophy — we have observed it ourselves as you can observe it in yourself if you are giving thought, awareness, attention to what’s going on in your mind. The brain is the storehouse of the past — whether the past be ten thousand or millions of years old or yesterday — is the storehouse of knowledge, experience, and that brain demands, if you observe it very closely, that it have order and security. Because if it is at all injured there is no security. If there is no perfect order there is no security. And when there is no security then the brain cells themselves become the source of conflict. So the brain is seeking constantly security. It finds security in an idea, it finds the security in the family, it finds security in an ideal, in an illusion or in a state of its own neurotic condition. Right? Are you following all this? Are you learning? Are we learning together? That means, are you observing… observing your own demand for security, your own brain demanding security in your belief, in your family, in a name, in a nation, in the tradition, in the god, in the non-god, in atheism or in theism, in some political party — you follow? — it is always seeking security because otherwise it cannot exist. That’s a very simple fact.

And also you must have noticed — if you are noticing it now, learning — it also demands harmony. Without harmony there is no security. Harmony means order. And it lives, and it has lived for thousands of years in disorder, which means contradiction. Therefore in conflict, not only within but outwardly. And in this conflict both inward and outward it has found some kind of security. It accepts conflict as a way of life. Right? It has accepted conflict as a way of life and in that it has found security. Though it brings great disorder, though it brings destructiveness to itself — this chaos, this confusion, this misery — it has accepted all this as a security because it doesn’t know what to do. Right? You are learning, please bear in mind you are learning. You are not merely listening to the speaker, hearing a lot of words. We are learning together the operation of the mind, of the brain, how it works, what it wants, because that is the source of all the conflict. And that brain which has been conditioned for millions of years to accept values that are really… that bring really disaster to itself, it is conditioned that way and it accepts that conditioning and lives in that conditioning as security.

Look, you have accepted nationality, haven’t you — the Hindu, the India, with its absurd flag and all the rest of it — the world has accepted nationalities. In that it seeks, it has found security. Right? But if you observe, that security brings war — my country and your country, my government and your government, my army and your army. When you accept nationalism — and you accept it because you have found security in it — and that security is completely destroyed, because nationalism invariably divides. And where there is a division there must be conflict. Anything that is separate must inevitably bring about struggle, conflict, battle. So your nationalism, in which you have… the brain has found security, is brining about its own destruction. You see what we are doing? We want security and we find security in god, your god and my god, and we are at each other’s throat — my book is better than your book, my guru is far more enlightened than yours — and so this goes on. And this division — please watch it, learn about it, not with your brain, not with your silly little thing, with your heart find out the truth of this, because we will go into it. You will see how the brain which has been conditioned for millions of years can be completely changed, can bring about its own mutation so that the brain becomes extraordinarily fresh, young and innocent.

So we say, in seeking security — which it must have otherwise it cannot possibly exist — in seeking security it is creating its own insecurity, its own destruction. As we pointed out, when it finds security in nationalism, it is inviting war. When it is finds security in a belief, it brings about a division as your belief and my belief. And in that division there is conflict and therefore the disharmony, therefore lack of order. Right? You are following all this, learning about all this?

So the first demand of the brain is to have complete order within itself. And as it has not got order, it wants security and order in something which inevitably brings about division and its own destruction. You have understood this? Are you… are we meeting each other? Do tell me. Or am I talking about something which you haven’t grasped at all? What do you say? Are you all asleep?

Questioner: (Inaudible)

Krishnamurti: No, sir. Sir, sir, sir, sir, please, sir, wait a minute, wait a minute. Sir, we are learning, we are not asking questions. We’ll do that at the end of the talk.

See, what we are saying, sirs, is simply this: our brain, the brain cells have themselves been conditioned for thousands and millions of years, and if there is no breakthrough this conditioning there will always be disaster, there will always be sorrow, there will always be confusion and no order at all and harmony. And the world is afire; the house is burning and you have to respond to it with a fresh mind, not according to your own conditioning — it has no value any more, and it never had. Therefore the question is: can the brain, can this whole human structure undergo a tremendous revolution, great mutation, so that it is fresh mind, not a mind that is torn, distorted, ugly, petty, narrow, stupid, dividing itself, and therefore living in disharmony, in disorder, in confusion and in misery.

So we are saying that as long as the mind, the brain cells, want security and must have security at any price — security means order, harmony, but you haven’t got it. You have found security in things that are not secure: your gods, your books, your family, your relationships — none of them are secure, but you have found in them, which is, you have created an idea that in them there is security, and therefore there is conflict. So when you learn this, you will see the truth, or rather the brain will see the truth that there is only security, complete security in the truth of insecurity. The truth, not your invention that there is… that the mind has no security. I wonder if you understand this.

Q: It’s not very clear.

K: It’s not very clear. Look, sir — wait a minute. You find security in family, don’t you — be honest, you know — in the family. Watch it very carefully — your family, my family, or somebody else’s family — in that enclosed circle which divides another family, in that closed wall of what is called a family, divisions are going on, are they not? You and your wife, you and your children or you and your nephew, and all the rest of the family business; and you with your ambitions, with your personal pursuits, with your peculiar idiosyncrasies, your desire for better position, more power, more prestige; you enclosed within the family, and the wife enclosed within her own walls, each living within the separated walls of ideas, images — all that you call family. Right? I am not criticising it — watch it, learn about it. In the family there is division and therefore there is conflict — in the family, between the man and the woman. And the family is opposed to the community, so therefore there is division there, there is conflict there. And the brain wants security in the family — you understand? — in the name. So there is conflict. So wanting security in the family, it is bringing about its own… it is bringing separation in the family and therefore conflict, and therefore deterioration of the brain cells themselves. You’ve understood this? Clear? You don’t want another example, do you? Do you? I’m afraid you do.

Look, you have taken the ideal of non-violence — I don’t know why, but you have. It is one of those extraordinary tricks you have played on yourself, and all the teachers and the mahatmas have talked endlessly about this stuff. Now, you watch it, go into it, learn about it, put your heart and mind into it; you will see it. You want security, that is the very basis of the brain; it needs security. So you said you have security in an idea or an ideal of non-violence. So there is a division between violence and the ideal, which is again a division and therefore contradiction, therefore hypocrisy, therefore disorder, a pretension. When real thing is violence, you are pretending there is non-violence. So the brain cells seeks out of this incapacity to deal with violence, an ideal and therefore a division and therefore contradiction and conflict. You have got it? I can’t take anymore. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand. It’s up to you. (Laughter) No, no, you are learning, you are not laughing. Don’t laugh it away — you are learning. Your life; it’s not the speaker’s life.

So you have sought security in things that bring about insecurity, destruction. So you have learnt that wherever there is division there must be conflict and therefore disorder. So you ask, you are learning, you are asking: is there any security at all; safety, protection? You have found no security, no protection in your Gita, in your Bible, in your Koran, in your temples, in your mosques, in your churches, in the guru, in the family, nowhere have you found it. And yet the brain cells demand that it live in complete order, and so it says is there security at all? Not in the bank, not in your insurance — I’m not talking of that — psychologically, because that’s the only thing that matters. Then out of that clarity you can live like a human being.

So you see that there is security only in the truth that life has no security but a constant movement. That is the truth, and in that truth there is security. You’ve got it? In the truth that there is no security, in the truth that life is a constant movement, in the truth of that is the completest of securities. You understand? You have learnt? So, in that learning about that truth, the whole structure, the whole response of the brain cells have undergone a tremendous change, because it lives in a totally different dimension of movement, a whole movement not a fragmentary movement. And order, which is harmony, has no blueprint. Order comes, which is harmony, only when there is freedom from disorder. Right? Order comes only when there is the understanding, the learning about disorder.

Now, what is disorder? Do look at this, please. What is disorder? Is your life orderly? Would you answer please? Harmonious, without contradiction, without — your life, not my life — is your life in complete order, so that there is not a moment of contradiction? If you are honest with yourself and put away all pretension and pride, you will say, ‘My life is in disorder.’ Wouldn’t you? And can… and the learning about this disorder — the learning, not how to bring order into disorder, which you can never do, but learning about disorder. You understand? Learning about it, your life. Then out of that learning naturally comes order. That is, you have to, the mind, the brain cells have to watch this disorder. Now, we come to something else. When we use the word ‘watch’, ‘observe’, ‘learn’, is the observer, the one that learns, is he different from the thing he is observing or learning from? Please be… don’t be caught by words. See what it implied. Are you getting tired at the end of the day? Can you go on with the speaker? Learn together, not merely listen.

The greatest division is in the fact that there is always the observer and the observed, the division that in essence that division is disorder. Right? As long as there is the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, the one who says, ‘I am learning,’ and divides himself from the observed, the experienced and the thing from which he is learning; as long as there is this division it will invariably bring about conflict, as all divisions do, and therefore confusion and therefore disorder. Right? So, how do you observe — please listen to this — how do you observe, watch or see the disordered life which you lead? How do you observe it? As an outsider looking in? Or there is no observer at all — you are disorder. You understand the question? If you are the observer watching the disorder in yourself and round about you, you are separate from the disorder, and therefore you who are watching want to bring order and therefore you are bringing about disorder because there is separation. You get it? Don’t translate the observer into the Atman, for goodness sake.

Look, sir, if you observe your wife or your mother or your boy or girl, how do you observe the other? How do you observe? Learn about it. Don’t you observe the wife or the husband, the boy or the girl, through the memories that you have? Don’t you — memories based on pleasure, sexual or otherwise, memories of insults, nagging and all the rest of it that goes on with the family — you have all this image, and that image is the observer. Right? And she has the image of you and therefore she observes through that image, and that image is the observer. Right? So there is a division between the observer and the observed. Right? And as long as there is division there must be conflict, as if there is a division between you as a Hindu and I as a Muslim, there must be conflict.

So, how you look at disorder matters enormously. Either you look at it from the outside as though you are independent of it, as though you are nothing to do with it or as though you are going to bring order to it; and the ‘you’ is the fragment of other fragments. Therefore when you look at your disorder, how you look at it matters immensely. So, can you… Now, is the ‘you’ who is looking at disorder different from disorder? You are part of the disorder, otherwise you wouldn’t know it, otherwise you wouldn’t recognise disorder. You are part of that disorder. You, the observer, is the creator of that disorder. But you have learnt this trick, which is, you have found security in the observer — watch it, watch it — who separates himself and I say… and he has become now the centre of security and is going to guide disorder, cleanse disorder, but he is part and the parcel of disorder.

So the observer of disorder is disorder. Wait, wait, wait, learn about it. Please do learn about it. And he has found in this disorder, security. Right? He says, ‘Yes, that is inevitable, life is conflict, life is disorder, life is chaos, life is misery, life is hell, but next life I’ll be happy, but there is heaven, there is god.’ So you escape from disorder by the division of a god, belief, and therefore bring more disaster, more misery. Got it? Have you understood, have you learnt? Have you seen the truth of this? Therefore if you see the truth of it you are free, because it is only the truth, which has nothing to do with your pleasure or pain, that seeing the… learning and seeing the truth of that frees the brain, frees the brain cells from its conditioning. Therefore the brain then is a new brain. Such a brain is an innocent brain. And one of the factors of this division is the brain says, ‘I mustn’t be hurt.’ As you don’t want to be bruised physically, hurt physically, the brain also says, ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ Therefore in order not to be hurt, it resists, and in the very resistance it’s going to get hurt; because it finds in resistance a kind of security, and therefore divides, and therefore it gets hurt. Right? You see all the… the beauty of this? Do you see the beauty of this?

You know, to see the beauty of a palm leaf in a clear sky, to see it not as an observer with all his peculiar knowledge and the impotency, but to look at it without the observer, just to see the extraordinary movement of that palm leaf. In the same way, to look, to learn, and in the learning is the total movement of life in which there is no fragmentation and therefore a life of great harmony; and harmony means love. And we will go into that question of what love is in the next meeting.

Do you want to ask…

Q: (Inaudible)

K: Wait, I haven’t finished, sir.

Q: (Inaudible)

K: Just a minute, sir. Don’t you want to take a breather before you ask questions? Don’t you want to go on with your learning quietly? Not only now but when you go home, when you look at your wife and your husband and your child; to learn what education means, not this rotten stuff called education but what it means. And before you ask questions, and we must ask questions, not only of the speaker but ask questions of yourself, questions of… question everything in your life — your gods, your priests, your politicians — question. For out of questioning you learn. And don’t accept, be doubtful, sceptical. Be very sceptical, including this — doubt — don’t accept what the speaker says, especially, because you are so easily influenced. But by questioning, doubting, being sceptical you learn. And also you learn when not to be sceptical. It’s like a dog on a leash, you must let it go; you can’t keep it always on the leash.

So, if you ask a question, and I hope you will, ask to learn, not from the speaker but ask to learn from yourself, for in yourself — please do listen — is all the storehouse of knowledge. You don’t have to turn a single page of any book, except technological books. It’s all there because you are the past, you are the entire human being that has ever lived. You are that. And if you only knew how to look. There is no method, no system — that is mechanical stuff, that’s dead. But if you looked you would see, you would learn your own fears, you would observe your own miseries and sorrows and aching loneliness. And the gods that you have invented are not gods at all, they are the result of your fear and thought. And to find that reality you must go beyond all this, and for that reality doesn’t belong to anybody; it is not a Hindu or Christian or Muslim or any other sect.

Now, sir, what is your question?

Q: Sir, please explain ‘filling the heart with the things of the mind.’ Yesterday you have talked… (inaudible) …our hearts with the things of the mind.

K: Right. Please explain what you mean by the statement that you fill your heart with the things of the mind. Does it need an explanation? Don’t you do this? Haven’t you filled your heart with the things of the mind? The things of the mind, which is thought, the images that you have, the prejudices — haven’t you filled your heart with jealousy, with envy, with ambition? Haven’t you? Do be honest — haven’t you? God, how dishonest we are! And with that dishonesty you want to approach reality. Therefore we said empty the heart of the things of the mind, and empty the mind of the things that it has invented for itself to be capable of resisting, therefore dividing, therefore living in sorrow. So empty the mind and the heart; and not with the observer (laughs). Don’t say, ‘I will empty it.’ Then the observer empties it and fills it with his own observations.

Q: Sir… (inaudible)

K: Wait, wait, wait, wait. The gentleman is quoting Shankara. I am out! (Laughter) He has — listen, sirs, do listen.

Q: (Inaudible)

K: Do listen, please. Just listen — I haven’t finished. We have talked an hour. I said, don’t accept authority, learn, don’t compare, give your heart to understanding life, not somebody else’s life, not what Shankara, somebody else said. Your life; learn. At the end of the hour you get up and say, ‘Shankara said…’ How sad it is! You live by what other people have said. You don’t know how to live, what to do, therefore you are living by other words and you are imitating. You are second-hand people — don’t laugh — and with your second-hand knowledge you want to go, come to the beauty of truth.

You know, I was told the other day that ‘Vedanta’ means the end of knowledge. And those people who are talking about Vedanta full of knowledge, they never see the beauty of the end of knowledge.

Q: (Inaudible)

K: Sir, sir, sir, don’t, don’t. I have been through all this before.

Any more?

Q: Sir…

K: Wait a minute, sir, there is somebody… Yes, sir? No, I won’t answer the question, sir. Right. Ask me. Yes, sir?

Q: Are you free, sir? Are you free?

K: The gentleman asks, are you free. Why do you want to know, sir? (Laughter) No, please, don’t laugh. What kind of laugh? He asks, are you free, the speaker. What does it matter to you, sir? Just a minute, sir, I am not arguing. If I were to say, ‘I am free,’ which is a terrible thing to say because the moment you have stated that you are free, you are not free. If I were foolish enough to say, ‘I am free,’ where are you? Then you will say… you will begin to criticise, judge, evaluate, and your evaluation and criticism is based on your conditioning. Therefore what matters is not who is free but to enquire and learn and love freedom.

Q: Sir?

K: Yes, sir.

Q: I am not able to see directly to anything. Howsoever I may try, I am not able to see directly.

K: I am not able to see directly. What does that mean, to see directly? Do you see anything directly? Do please listen to what is being said. Do you see anything directly, or do you see through the screen — (sound of P.A. system) He is going to win! Do you see anything directly or do you see always through the screen of your own imagination, your own desire and pleasure, or the image and the values that you have? Now, just look. Look, you are there and the speaker is here — can you see him directly? Can you see your wife directly? In the sense not have the space as the observer and the observed, then only you see directly.

You know — oh, I suppose one hasn’t the time to go into it now, but we will touch upon it briefly — you know, people have taken drugs — LSD and other forms of drugs — when they take it, for a … takes place a chemical change in the organism, and at that moment the space between the observer and the observed somewhat changes. We have never taken it but we are talking about it. Now, to observe directly means the time interval, the space which is time, must completely disappear, and that time is the image, the screen, the memory, the experience, the recognition. All that must disappear. Then you are directly in contact. Do you know what happens when you are directly in contact with the tree, with the cloud, with that sunset on that calm sea? As you came along, you must have seen the sun setting — the red ball and its marvellous golden path on the calm sea. When you see it directly, what takes place? There is no time, no memory, and therefore direct contact. Then when there is such contact, then everything is seen very clearly, most intensely; every colour, every shape, every movement becomes fantastically beautiful.

Don’t learn this from me, from the speaker. Learn, do it, not through drugs, because if you take drugs then you will be taking drugs everlastingly, like a man taking a drink to become uninhibited, then he will depend on the bottle, as you depend on ceremonies or on your gods and beliefs. So to look directly, the eyes must be clear with the freedom of the past, of time. And if you know… if the mind and the heart are clear, then you know what love is.