Public Talk 4, London, 30 May 1970

Krishnamurti: This is the last talk; what shall we talk about?

Questioner: Meditation.

Q: Love.

K: Meditation? Shall we talk about that? Talking about something and doing it is quite a different thing. And if we are going to go into this very complex problem one has to not only understand the meaning of words, but also it seems to me one must go beyond the words.

There are several things involved in meditation. I don’t know how serious you are about it, because it is a very, very serious matter, and to really understand, not merely intellectually or verbally or theoretically, but to actually do it requires a peculiar kind of seriousness in which there must be a great deal of intelligence and humour.

First of all, one must enquire into what is the religious mind. Not what is religion but the quality of the mind and the heart that are religious. One can give a great many meanings to that word ‘religion’, depending on one’s conditioning, either accepting it emotionally, sentimentally or devotionally, or totally denying the whole question of religious attitude, religious way of life, as a great many people do. One is rather ashamed even to talk about religious matters. But the religious mind has nothing whatsoever to do with belief or belief in God — it has no theory, philosophy, a conclusion, because it has no fear — as we went into that question the other day — and therefore no need for belief. A religious mind — of course, it’s terribly difficult to describe it, but the description can never be the thing described — but we can, if one is fairly sensitive and aware and serious, one can feel one’s way into it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with emotions, emotional sentimentality, romanticism and all that kind of stuff. It’s a very serious affair.

First of all, obviously one cannot belong to any religion, organised religion. I think that is one of the most difficult things for most human beings. They want to cling to some kind of hope, belief, some kind of theory or conclusion, or an experience of their own, giving it a religious significance. And any kind of attachment and therefore dependence on one’s particular private, secret experience, or the accumulated experience of the so-called saints, the mystics, or your particular guru or teacher — one must completely and wholly set aside all that — and I hope you are doing it. Because a religious mind is not burdened with fear or seeking out any form of security and pleasure — that is absolutely necessary to find out what is meditation, a mind that is not burdened with experience or seeking experience, because that way lies illusion. And naturally not seeking any form of experience, and this is very difficult because most of our lives are so mechanical, so shallow, so superficial that we want deeper experiences because we are bored with life and the superficiality of life. So we want, or rather crave for, something that will have a meaning, a fullness, a depth, a beauty, a loveliness. You see, the mind is seeking, and what it seeks it will find. What it finds will not be the truth.

Are you accepting all this or rejecting it? Please don’t accept or deny. This is not a matter of your pleasure or my pleasure, because in this there is no authority whatsoever, neither that of the speaker or anybody else.

Q: [Inaudible]

K: Just a minute, madame. At the end of what I have to say then please ask questions, but just have a little patience now. Let me talk for a little while. Or, if you wish, we can ask questions right away. All right.

See, most of us want someone to lead, someone to guide, to help us, and we invest in that person or in that ideal or principle or an image, a faith, a trust, and therefore we depend on another, or on a book or on some philosophy, and so on. Like in India, they have their own religious books and in the whole of Christendom they have their own, and that becomes the central authority. A mind that is dependent on authority and therefore incapable of standing alone, incapable of understanding, incapable of looking directly, such a mind must inevitably have fear of going wrong, of not doing the right thing, of not reaching the ecstasy that is promised or that one hopes for. All such forms of authority must absolutely come to an end, which means no fear, no dependency on another; there is no guru. And a mind that is not seeking experience, because when one wants an experience it indicates, doesn’t it, that one wants a great deal of pleasure — call it what you like — ecstasy, enjoyment, seeking truth, finding enlightenment, all the rest of it. And also how does the seeker know what he has found and if what he has found is the truth? And can the mind that is seeking, searching out, find something that is alive, moving, that has no resting place?

So, a mind, the religious mind, doesn’t belong to any group, any sect, any belief, any church, any organised — what word? — circus, or any entertainment, therefore it is capable of looking at things directly and understanding things immediately. Such is the religious mind because it is a light to itself. Its light is not lighted by another. The candle that is lit by another can be put out very quickly. And most of our beliefs, dogmas, rituals are the result of propaganda which has nothing whatsoever to do with a religious life. And a religious mind is a mind that is completely a light to itself and therefore there is no punishment or reward. Meditation is the emptying of the mind, totally.

May I go on with all this? Would you think it’s terrible if I took my coat off? May I take my coat off?

Audience: Yes.

K: It’s terribly hot in here.

The mind is the result of time, what’s called evolution. It is the result of a thousand experiences, vast accumulated knowledge, memories. And a mind so burdened with the past — because all knowledge is the past, all experience is the past, and all memory is the accumulated result of thousand experiences, that is the known — and can the mind, which is both the conscious as well as the unconscious, can that mind empty itself completely of the past? That is the whole movement of meditation — the mind, being aware of itself, aware without any choice, seeing all the movement of itself, being aware, can that awareness totally empty the mind of the known? Because if there is any remnants, any past, the mind cannot be innocent. Innocency means a mind that is incapable of not only hurting others, but also incapable of being contaminated, being corrupt. And a mind that is burdened with yesterday’s experience cannot possible see what is truth. So meditation is the total emptying of the mind.

You know, there are so many things said about meditation, especially in the East. They have so many schools, so many disciplines, so many books written on how to meditate, what to do. And how do you know if what they are saying is true or false? How do you know if what the speaker, when he says meditation is the emptying of the mind completely, how do you know it is true? What tells you? Your personal prejudice, your particular idiosyncrasy, the like of the face of the man who speaks, or the reputation, or because he has got some empathy, a friendliness and all that kind of business? How do you know? Must you go thorough all the systems, all the schools, through all the teachers who teach you how to meditate before you find out what is meditation? Or can you find out what is meditation if you have none of these people to tell you what to do? So don’t — I am saying this most undogmatically — don’t listen to anybody, including the speaker — especially the speaker because you are very easily influenced, because you are all wanting something, craving for something, craving for enlightenment, for joy, for ecstasy, for heaven. And then you are caught very easily. So you have to find it out for yourself, completely by yourself, and therefore no need to go to India, to any Buddhist Zen monastery to meditate, or look to any teacher, because if you know how to look, everything is in you. And therefore you put aside completely all authority, all looking to anybody, because truth doesn’t belong to anybody; it is not a personal matter. Meditation isn’t a particular, private, personal pleasure, experience.

One can see that one needs a great harmony, harmony between the mind, the heart and the body — if we can so divide it. Psychosomatically, if you prefer it. There must be complete harmony, obviously, because if there is any contradiction, any division, then there is conflict. And conflict is the very essence, is the waste of energy. And you need tremendous energy to meditate. Therefore harmony is necessary so that the mind, the brain, the organism and the depth of the heart are whole, not broken up. That you can see for yourself; nobody need teach you that. Now, how to bring about that harmony is quite a different matter. Because you see this harmony completely is necessary, which means the mind must be extraordinarily sensitive, as well as the organism. Therefore one has to go into the whole question of diet, exercise, living properly and all that, naturally. And because we don’t want to think about it, look into it, we turn to somebody else to tell us what to do. And if we look to somebody else what to do, we limit our energy, because then we say whether it is possible or not possible. If it is impossible our energy becomes very limited. If it is possible in terms of what we already know, it also becomes very small, and so on and on. So when one realises the necessity of this complete harmony — because if there is any kind of discord there is distortion. Right? Can I go on? We are following?

Please, we are working together. Communication means that — working together, thinking together, experiencing together, creating together. That’s what communication means, not merely verbal understanding of words. So we are sharing this together, which means you are actually putting aside everything to find out what is meditation and what is a religious mind.

And there must be discipline. Discipline means order, not suppression, conformity to a principle or to an idea or to a conclusion or to a system or to a method — it means order. Order is not a design according to which you are living, a pattern. Order comes only when you understand the whole business of disorder. Again, going through what is the negative, come to the positive. Our life is disorder, which means contradiction — saying one thing, doing another, thinking something entirely different. It is a fragmentary existence, and in this fragmentation we try to find some kind of order. And we think this order comes about through discipline, control. A mind that is controlled, disciplined in the sense of conforming itself to a pattern, whether established by oneself or by the society, or by a particular culture, such a mind is not a free mind, it is a distorted mind. And therefore one has to enquire into this question of disorder. And in understanding what is disorder, how it comes about, out of that comes order, a living thing.

Now, what is the very essence of disorder? Please, don’t answer me, we are thinking out together. What do you think is the root of disorder? Because our lives are disorderly, we live in different compartments, our life is divided, we are not a whole, unbroken entity. So the essence of disorder is contradiction, and where there is contradiction in ourselves there must be effort and therefore disorder. Please, this is very simple — probably you don’t like simple things. One can make it very complex. One sees one’s own life, how disorderly it is, contradictions of desires, various desires, purposes, conclusions, intentions pulling at each other, tearing at each other — being violent, wanting to live peacefully; being ambitious, greedy, competitive, and saying that one loves; being self-centred, egotistic, limited, talking about universal feeling, brotherhood and all that, you know, foolishness. So we pretend, and thereby there is great hypocrisy.

So, order is necessary, and therefore the very understanding of disorder brings about its own discipline which is order, in which there is no suppression, conformity. I hope the speaker is making it clear, even verbally. Because discipline means to learn, not to accumulate mechanical knowledge — to learn about disorder, to learn about the life of disorder one leads, to learn about it, and therefore not to come to a conclusion at any moment. Because most of our action is based on conclusions or on ideals or the approximation of an ideal, therefore our actions are always contradictory and therefore disorderly. This one can see very easily. So there must be, if one is looking at it in oneself, there will naturally come about order, freedom from all authority and therefore freedom from fear. One can make a mistake, say, do these things, but correct it immediately.

Now, how can the mind be not caught in illusion? Because you can meditate endlessly, creating your own illusions. We met a man the other day who had meditated for 25 years — not casually, he had given up everything — good position, money, family, name, and all the rest of it, and for 25 years he practised meditation. And somebody unfortunately brought him to one of the talks, and the next day he came to see the speaker, and he said, ‘You know what you said about meditation last night is perfectly true — I’ve been hypnotising myself for 25 years, having my own visions, my own personal delight in those visions’ — those visions according to his conditioning — if he is a Christian, his visions of Christ, and all the rest of it — if he is a Hindu he has his own particular god and he is directly in that communication with him, which means according to his conditioning. So the question is: how can the mind be free of illusion? You understand the importance of it? Otherwise it’s not free. To have one’s own particular little god, and having your own particular experience has no meaning at all, or having an illusion which you might call enlightenment, and rejoicing in your particular illusion. So one has to ask this question very seriously and deeply: how can the mind be free of total illusion?

You know, a great many people listen to all kinds of yogis, teachers, telling them what to do, giving them some slogan, some mantra, some kind of word that will give them super, extraordinary experiences. You know what the speaker is talking about. Have you ever listened to music, a tone, to one sound so completely that every other sound dies away except that one sound? And if the mind pursues that sound, goes with it, you have extraordinary results. But that is not meditation. That is a kind of trick that one can play upon oneself, and that’s another form of illusion. And also taking drugs in order to have transcendental or super — oh, God knows what experiences. You can bring about certain results through chemistry, as you can if you fast a great deal, you have certain sensitivity and your mind then becomes much more alert, watchful, sharp, clear. Or if you go in for breathing properly and all that. All these are various forms of tricks, bringing about their own illusion. And the mind clings to those illusions because they are very satisfactory — your private, personal achievement. And when the world is suffering, going through agony, distortion, corruption, your particular little vision in a small little corner of the field has no value. So one can brush aside all that as being immature, childish. And besides they lead to stupor, make the mind dull.

Now, how is the mind to be free of all illusion? Because if there is any effort and contradiction, we said there must be illusion. So how can the mind which is in a state of contradiction, how can that confusion, distortion, various forms of corruption — social, religious, personal corruptions — how can all that, which induce various forms of delusions and illusions, how can that be completely wiped away? Please don’t go to sleep over this. This can only happen when the mind is completely still, because any movement of thought is a movement of the past — right? — because thought is the reaction of memory, accumulated experience, knowledge and so on — the past. And as long as that movement of the past exists in the whole structure of the mind, in which includes the brain, there must be distortion.

So the question is: can thought, which is so necessary, and yet be totally absent in meditation? You are following? Thought is necessary, the more it is logical, sane, healthy, objective, unemotional, impersonal, the more effective, efficient it is. And you must have thought to function in life. And yet the mind must be capable, must be free of complete… any sense of distortion to find out what is true, what is sacred. The harmony between the living functioning in thought and the freedom from thought. This is logical — you understand, sir? — this is not some cryptic, oriental, personal theory.

Q: I didn’t quit hear that last bit.

K: Just a minute, madame — attendez, attendez, attendez. Attendez, madame. Just a minute, please. You know, what we are talking about is quite difficult.

Q: I just didn’t hear the last thing you said was important.

Oh, I don’t know — I’ve forgotten it. [Laughter]

Q: [Inaudible]

K: Oh, I said — somebody reminds me — it’s not a personal theory, it’s not a personal prejudice or some conclusion the speaker has come to. But one can see, anything that is new to be discovered, something new to be discovered, new to be perceived, something that hasn’t been created or done before — mind must be free from the known, and yet one has to live in the known. The man who came upon the jet movement, must be free of the known, of the piston and all the internal combustion machinery. So the same way, for the mind to discover, for the mind to — not discover — to come upon something that is totally new there must be no illusion, there must be complete, total silence — not only the movement of thought but also the very activity of the brain cells themselves, with their memories. Now, that is quite a problem, isn’t it. You’re understanding all this? You understand? The way we live in formulas, in conclusions, in prejudices, we live mechanically — the routine, the routine of a livelihood, the routine of function, from which we try to derive a position, a prestige — our life is a series of conformities, either the conformity of fear or the conformity of pleasure. And such a mind cannot possibly come upon anything new. Therefore any teacher, any method, any system that says: do this and you will find it, is telling you a lie. Because anyone who says he knows, he doesn’t know. What he knows is the routine, the practice, the discipline, the conformity.

So the mind and the brain and the body, in complete harmony must be silent. Right? Silence, not induced, not by taking a tranquillising pill or repeating words, whether it be ‘Ave Maria’ or some Sanskrit word, or ‘Coca-Cola’ would do just as well — by repetition your mind can become dull. And such a mind which is in a stupor cannot possibly find what is true. And truth is something that is new all the time. The word ‘new’ is not right — it is really timeless. So: silence. And the silence is not the opposite of noise or the cessation of rumour, chattering. It is not the result of control, saying, ‘I will be silent,’ which again there is a contradiction. When you say, ‘I will,’ the determination to be silent, there must be an entity who determines to be silent, and therefore practising something which he calls silence, and therefore there is a division, a contradiction, a distortion. Right?

All this requires a great deal of energy, tremendous energy. Not a new quality of energy — energy. The new quality of energy comes when the mind is completely silent. But to understand all this you need a great deal of energy, therefore action. We dissipate energy through various forms or activities — prejudice — please do this as we’re talking — do it — just to wipe away all prejudice, all conclusion, this endless gossip and chatter about nothing, endless striving after goodness. Goodness doesn’t come through striving, through practise of virtue. The virtue of goodness is when there is no division — you don’t have to strive for goodness. It flowers in the mind and the heart when there is no division, no contradiction. And we waste a great deal of energy in accumulating knowledge. Knowledge has its own place — you must have knowledge, the more of it the better — but when it becomes mechanical, when it tells the knowledge, makes the mind feel nothing is more possible — you understand? — when we come to a conclusion it is not possible to change, then you have no energy. And all this idea of sexual control in order to have more energy to find God — you know, all the religious business of it. Think of all those poor saints and monks, what tortures they go through to find God. And God, if there is such a thing, doesn’t want a tortured mind, a mind that is torn apart, distorted, that is, has become stupid and dull and lives in a stupefaction.

So, silence of the mind comes naturally — please do listen to this — comes naturally, easily, without any effort, if you know how to observe, how to look. When you observe the cloud, to look at it without the word and therefore without thought, to look at it without the division as the observer. Therefore, an awareness, an attention in the very act of looking — not the determination to be attentive but to look with attention, even though that look lasts a second, a minute — that’s enough. Don’t be greedy, say, ‘I must have it for the whole day.’ We are so greedy. But to look, to look without the observer means without space between the observer and the thing observed. Which does not mean identifying itself with the thing that is looked at.

So, when one can look at a tree, at the cloud, at the light on the water, without the observer, and also if you can look at yourself, which is much more difficult, which needs a greater attention, without the image about yourself, without any conclusion about yourself, because the image, the conclusion, the opinion, the judgment, the goodness and the badness, is centred round the observer. So to look without the observer, then you will find that the mind, the brain becomes extraordinarily quiet. And this quietness is not a thing to be cultivated. It does happen if you are attentive, if you are capable of it all the time, watching — watching your gestures, your words, your feeling, the movements of your face and all the rest of it — watch. To correct it brings contradiction, but if you watch it there brings about alteration in itself. So silence comes about when there is profound attention, not only at the conscious level but also at the deeper levels of consciousness. Oh, Lord, we haven’t time to go into all that.

Because, you know, dreams and sleep are of great importance. And that is part of meditation — to be awake in sleep, to be aware, attentive while the mind is asleep, or the body, the organism is asleep. Shall I go into all that? Are you interested in it? Oh, for God’s sake — I don’t know why. [Laughter] You see, you are really interested in escapism. [Laughter] Now, what we are going to talk about is really quite important. All right, sir, I’ll be very brief and go into it quickly. Please, don’t accept anything the speaker says. The speaker is not your guru, your teacher, your authority. If you make of him your authority you are destroying yourself and the speaker.

We said meditation is the emptying of the mind — not only the conscious mind but also all the hidden layers of the mind, called the unconscious. The unconscious is as strong as the conscious and as trivial and absurd as the conscious. And during sleep there are various kinds of dreams, superficial, not even worth while to think about, dreams that have no meaning at all. I’m sure you know all about this, don’t you? Then there are dreams which have meaning and that meaning can be understood as it is being dreamt. Are you following this? And this is only possible when during the day you are attentive to every movement of your motive and of your thought and of your feeling. During the day, you are watching, listening to every movement of thought — right? — to what you are feeling, what your motives are, what your ambition — you know, all that — watching. Watching doesn’t tire you, exhaust you, if you don’t correct it, correct what you watch. Right? If you say it must not be or it must be then you get tired, get bored, but if you watch choicelessly, be aware without like or dislike, during the day, then when you dream — and those dreams have some significance — then at the very moment of dreaming, the movement of dreaming, which are… all dreams are active, always action is taking place of some kind or another — then that very action is understood as the dreamer is dreaming. Got it? So that you don’t have to go to any analyser of dreams, which becomes another nightmare. [Laughter] Now, when you’ve done all this the mind in sleep becomes extraordinarily awake. And that wakefulness of the mind sees something which the conscious mind can never see. I won’t go too much into all this because it’s too… You haven’t done any of these things, unfortunately, and that is why you are listening half-paralysed. [Laughter] If you have worked at this a little then you will be extraordinarily awake to go into it as the speaker goes into it.

So, sirs, silence is not a thing to be practiced. It comes when you have understood the whole structure and the beginning and the living of life. Because we have to alter the structure of our society, the injustice, the appalling morality it has, the divisions it has created between man and man, the wars, the utter lack of affection, love, that is destroying the world. And if your meditation is only a personal matter, a thing which you personally enjoy, then it is not meditation. Meditation implies a complete radical change of the mind and the heart. And this is only possible when there is this extraordinary sense of inward silence. And that alone brings about the religious mind, and therefore that mind knows what is sacred — not the things that thought has conjectured, has put together as being sacred — the symbol, the person, the idea — that is not sacred. The things of the temples and churches are not sacred because they are the result of calculated thought, and thought can breed pleasure as well as fear. So a mind that is religious lives entirely differently, because it has no conflict, it is not broken up, and it can use knowledge and not be corrupted by knowledge.

I can go on — that’s enough, sir, isn’t it?

Now would you like to ask questions?

Q: [Inaudible]

K: You want me to go into it, sir?

[Pause]

Sir, can knowledge bring about a total revolution? Can the past, which is knowledge, can it bring about a complete change in the mind, in the quality of the mind? Or must there be freedom from the past so that the mind is in constant revolution, constant movement of change? Now, the centre of knowledge, of experience, of memory, is in the observer, isn’t it? Please don’t accept this, just watch it for yourself. You are the censor — there is the censor, isn’t there, in each one, who says, this is right, this is wrong, this is good, this is bad, I must, I should not — there is the censor, isn’t there, the ego — no? Come on, sirs. Now, that censor is observing. He is the observer, and dividing himself from the thing he observes. Right? And the censor, the observer, is always the past. And the ‘what is’ is always changing, new. So as long as there is this division between the observer and the observed, no radical revolution is possible. There will always be corruption. You can see the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution, the physical revolution, what it has done — corruption comes in all the time. And as long as this division exists, goodness is not possible.

Then you’ll say, how is this division to come to an end? How can the observer, who is the accumulated past, knowledge, how can that come to an end? It cannot come to an end, because you need the observer when you are functioning mechanically, you need knowledge when you go to the office, when you… factory, when you are a scientist, when you — doesn’t matter — doctor, what you will — you need knowledge. But that knowledge, tied with the censor who is ambitious, greedy, all the rest of it, he becomes corrupt. So he uses knowledge for corruption. This is simple.

Now, when thought sees this, when there is a realisation of this, then the observer comes to an end. It is not a matter of time, gradually observer coming to an end, because again we are conditioned to this gradualness — gradually we’ll get rid of the observer, gradually we’ll become non-violent, but in the meantime we’ll sow the seeds of violence. So when you see this very clearly, how the observer distorts everything — the observer being the ego, the me, separates, distorts — when you see that, in that flash of perception, the observer is not.

Q: Is it possible for continuous harmony to exist in this life?

K: Is it possible for continuous harmony to exist in this life.

You see, those — ‘continuous harmony in this life’ are contradictions, aren’t they?

Q: Yes.

K: The idea that it must be continuous. Anything that continues has no… can never discover anything new. It is only in the ending there is a new beginning. So the desire to have continuous harmony is a contradiction. You are harmonious — full stop. You know, we are slaves to the word ‘to be’. When you say ‘continuous’ is a form of ‘to be’, to continue what you call harmony. Anything that has continuity, which you call harmony, is disharmony. I don’t know if you see this. Therefore, sir, don’t wish for anything continuous. Your relationship with your wife — not yours, sir, generally — that’s what we want, a continuous, happy, lovely — you know, all the romantic relationship — and it never does. Love isn’t something that is of time. So, sirs, don’t let’s be greedy. Harmony isn’t a thing that can continue. If it continues it becomes mechanical. But the mind that is harmonious is — not will be or has been — a mind that is harmonious — again, ‘is’ is the wrong word — the mind that is aware, that is harmonious, doesn’t ask this question, ‘Will I have it tomorrow?’

Q: [Inaudible] …how are things related to verbal content and mind?

K: How are things related to the verbal contents of the mind. How are things related to the verbal content of the mind. Oh, it’s very simple, isn’t it? [Laughter] Wait a minute, sir, this is not a pun. When we understand the word is not the thing, that the description is not the described, the explanation is not the explained, then the mind is free of the word. So when I… Look, it is quite — are you interested in this?

Q: Yes.

K: If one has an image about oneself, the image is being put together by word, by thought — thought is a word. Thinking of oneself as big or small, or clever or genius, or whatever you will — one has an image about oneself. That image can be described. That image is the result of description. And that image is the mind, the creation of thought, which is the mind. But is the description, is the image part of the mind? What relationship is the content of the mind to the mind itself? Is the content the mind itself? Is that the question, sir?

Q: Yes.

K: Yes, I thought so. [Laughter] Wait, wait, wait, please. Is the content of the mind… is the mind? Of course it is. If the content of the mind is furniture, books, what people say, your prejudices, your conditioning, your fears, that is the mind. The contents of the mind is the mind. Right? If the mind says there is a soul, there is God, there is hell, there is heaven, there is a devil, that is the mind, that is the content of the mind. And therefore the content of the mind is the mind. No? If the mind can empty itself of all that, the mind is something entirely different. Then the mind is something new, and therefore immortal. I won’t go into all that.

Q: What is the sign of a man who has begun to develop… [inaudible]?

K: What is the sign of the man who has begun to develop awareness.

[Laughs] I’m sorry. I want to be funny about it — sorry. He doesn’t carry a red flag, anyhow. [Laughter] Look, sir, need you have… First of all, as we said, it is not a matter of development, it is not a matter of slow culture, growth. Sir, look, to understand something, does it need time? What is the state of the mind that says, ‘I’ve understood’ — not verbally but totally? When does it say it? It says it when the mind really is completely attentive to the thing… about the thing it is looking at, being attentive. At that moment, it has understood completely — it is not a matter of time.

Q: Having compassion, seeing so much suffering, how can one be at peace?

K: Seeing there is so much suffering in the world, how can one be at peace? Do you think you are different from the world? Do you? Aren’t you the world — the world that you have made, the world with your ambition, with your greed, with your economic securities, with your wars — you’ve made it — the torture of animals for your food, the wars, the wastage of money on war, the lack of right education — you have built this world; it is part of you. So you are the world and the world is you. There is no division between you and the world. For God’s sake!

Q: [Inaudible]

K: Just a minute, madame.

So you say, how can you have peace when the world suffers. How can you have peace when you are suffering is the question, because you are the world. You can go all over the world, talk to any human being, whether they are very, very clever, famous, or the most illiterate, they are all going through a beastly time, like you. So the question is not how can you have peace when the world is suffering — you are suffering, and therefore the world suffers. Therefore put an end to your suffering, if you know how to end it. Suffering with its self-pity comes to an end only when there is self-knowing. And you’ll say, ‘What can one human being who has freed from his own sorrow, what value has that human being in the world?’ If you put that question, such a question has no value. You understand? If you have freed yourself from sorrow — and you know what that means — and having been free from sorrow, if you say, ‘What value has that individual in a suffering world?’ that is a wrong question.

Q: I was saying compassion…

K: Changing words doesn’t make much difference.

Yes, sir?

Q: What is madness?

K: What is madness. Oh, that is very clear. Most of us are neurotic, aren’t we? Most of us are slightly off balance. Most of us have peculiar ideas, peculiar beliefs.

Once, we were talking to a very devout Catholic and he said, ‘You know, you Hindus are the most superstitious and bigoted and neurotic people.’ [Laughter] He said, ‘You believe in so many abnormal things.’ And he was totally unaware of his own abnormality, his own beliefs, his own — you know — stupidities. Right? So who is balanced? Obviously the man who has no fear, who is whole. Whole means sane, healthy and holy. But we are not — we are broken up human beings, therefore we are imbalanced. There is only balance when we are completely whole. That means, healthy, a mind that is clear, unconfused, that has no prejudice, and that has goodness, and all that.

Well, sirs, isn’t that enough? We have talked for an hour and a half. And please don’t clap, don’t applaud. Your applause has no meaning to me. Please, I mean it. If you applaud because you have understood it, because you have seen it for yourself, then there is no need to applaud — it’s yours. And enlightenment doesn’t come through another, it comes through your own observation, your own understanding of yourself.