Public Talk 4, Paris, 12 September 1961

Krishnamurti: If we may, let’s continue with what we were talking about the other day, which was desire and conflict that arises from desire. I would like to talk about it, not only that but also about need, and perhaps, if there is time, I’d like to go into the question of passion and love. I think they’re all related. And perhaps it might be worthwhile to go into it deeply, and perhaps we shall be able to understand the whole significance of desire if we could approach it fundamentally, not merely superficially.

Before we can understand what is desire and all the conflicts and the tortures of desire, I think we ought to understand the question of need. We do need superficial things, outward things: clothes, shelter, food. Those are absolutely essential for all existence. I wonder if we need any other thing at all. We do need some form of food, some physical comfort, the certainty of shelter. Those outward things are essential, and I wonder if we need anything other than those. Is there any psychological need at all – the need for sex, the need for fame, the compulsive urge of ambition, envy, the everlasting demand of more and more inwardly?

What do we psychologically need? We say we do need a great many things, and from which arises dependence and the sorrow of dependence, but if we really go into it deeply and inquire, is there essential need at all, psychologically, inwardly? I think it would be worthwhile if we could, each one of us, ask ourselves what are our psychological needs and why we depend upon them, why those needs have such urgency, such compulsive demand. I think it would be worthwhile if each one of us seriously could inquire within himself urgently to find out what his psychological needs are — the need to depend on another psychologically, the need in relationship, the need to be in communion with another, the need to commit oneself to some form of thought and activity, the need to fulfil, to become famous. We all know such needs, and we are committed to those needs. We are everlastingly yielding to those needs, and I think it would be significant if we could, each one of us, try to find out what actually are our needs, and if we do depend upon them, because without understanding need, we shall not be able to understand desire, nor shall we be able to understand passion, and therefore love. They’re all related. But I think it is first essential to understand and find out whether there are many or few psychological needs, and why they have become needs.

I do need food, clothes, and shelter. I can make them limited, small, or expansive, but that one can easily understand and that one needs without any question, whether the rich man or the poor man, but beyond that, is there any need at all? And if we have needs, why have they become such importance, such compelling, driving force? Or psychological needs merely escape from something else, much deeper? There are certain obviously physical needs, food and so on, but when we have accepted our needs and they have become all‑important psychologically, inwardly, within the skin, as it were, should we not ask why they have become important? And if they have become important, as with most of us they have, an extraordinary importance, why have they become important? Are they the escape from something much more deep, much more significant than mere inward, psychological needs?

I’m not… we are not talking in terms of analysis. To me, introspective analysis has no value. What we are trying to do is to face the fact, to see exactly *what is*, and that doesn’t need any form of analysis, that doesn’t need any psychology, any roundabout way, cunning explanation. You don’t have to read the latest book on psychology or go to the latest analyst. What we are trying to do is actually see for ourselves what our psychological needs are, not to explain them away, not to rationalize them, not to say, ‘What shall I do without them? I must have them.’ All such explanations and assertions and answers doesn’t open the door to further inquiry; they block; either acceptance or not acceptance, agreement or disagreement shuts the door to further inquiry. And obviously the door is closed tight when it’s merely verbal or intellectual or emotional. The door is open when we really want to face the fact and see what actually is. That doesn’t need a great intellect. To understand a very complex problem you need really a very clear, simple mind, but simplicity, clarity is denied when you have a lot of theories and try to avoid facing the issue.

So when that is very clear, that we are not approaching the problem, the issue, at all intellectually or verbally, romantically, mythically or sentimentally, but wanting to see what the fact is, which is rather a destructive process requiring a lot of energy to avoid all these pitfalls, then I think we can find out exactly what our psychological needs are and why they have assumed such importance in our life, why we have such driving need to fulfil, why we are so ruthlessly ambitious, why sex plays such an extraordinary importance in our life. If we can face it and go into it, I think we will see that need – not the quality or the number of needs, not at what level you will place your needs, and how many needs you’ll have, the minimum or the maximum, but to find out why the need has become all‑important, why this tremendous drive to fulfil, either in a family, in a name, in a position and so on, with all its anxiety, frustration and misery, which society encourages and the church blesses. Why this need as ambition, success?

Now, when you examine it, push the mere superficial responses aside, that ‘What would happen if I didn’t succeed’ and so on and so on, I think we’ll find behind that a much deeper issue. I think the deeper issue is the fear of not being, the fear of complete isolation, the fear of isolation, of emptiness, loneliness. It is there, deeply hidden, the sense of tremendous anxiety, of loneliness, of isolation, of being cut off. And that’s why we cling to all forms of relationship; that’s why there is the need to belong to something – belong to a cult, belong to a society, belong to certain activity, to belief, because through that we escape from that reality, from that actuality, which is there, deep within. And that may be, and I think it is, that forces the mind, the brain, the whole being to commit itself to some form of belief, some form of necessity, some form of need.

I do not know if you have gone that far, not verbally but actually. To find out for oneself and face the fact that one is completely nothing, that one is empty as a shell inwardly, covered with a lot of jewels and knowledge and experience on top, but inwardly there’s nothing except words, words, words and explanations. Now, to face that without despair, without saying how terrible it is, to be with it, is necessary to understand need. Then need will have very little significance, then it won’t have such sway over our minds and our heart, then from there… Let’s leave it for the moment there because we’ll come back to it a little later.

Then there is desire, desire which contradicts itself, desire which is tortured, which pulls in different directions, the pain and the turmoil and the anxiety of desire; the disciplining, the controlling, the everlasting battle with it. And in controlling and disciplining we try to put it out of all shape and recognition, but it is there, constantly watching, waiting, pushing. And we know, if one is at all aware, awake to all these problems of existence, one knows, do what you will, sublimate it, escape from it, deny it, accept it, give it full rein, it’s always there. And the religious teachers and others have said, ‘Be desire-less, be detached, be free from desire’, which I think is absurd, because desire has to be understood. And if you destroy desire, you may destroy all life itself. If you pervert desire, shape it, control it, dominate it, suppress it, you may be destroying something extraordinarily beautiful. Which doesn’t mean that we must give full rein to desire; we have to understand it. And it’s very difficult to understand something that is so vital, so demanding, so urgent, because in the very fulfilment of the desire there is passion engendered, the pleasure and the pain of it.

And if one is to understand desire, obviously there must be no choice in desire. You can’t say, ‘I’ll keep this desire and deny that desire,’ or judge desire as being good, bad, ignoble and noble — all that obviously must be set aside to find out what is the whole problem, the beauty, or the ugliness, or whatever it is, of desire. And it’s very curious when outwardly you’ve every form of fulfilling desire: cars, luxury, prosperity, health, good looks, capable of reading books, knowledge, accumulating various types of experiences. Outwardly the West, the Occident, is much more alive, and their desires are fulfilled, most of them; and you go to the East, they’re still wanting food, clothes and shelter; and the misery and the degradation of poverty, but here as well as in the East this thing is burning, all the time, deep down and outwardly in every direction. If it is denied in one way, it pops up in another. If you give up the world, your desire is to pursue God, like the hermit. He’s as crippled with his desires as the man with prosperity. So it is there, burning, contra­dicting, creating a turmoil, an anxiety, a sense of guilt and despair.

Now, if we don’t condemn it at all or judge it as being good, what happens to desire? I do not know if you have ever experimented with it, neither to accept nor to deny but to be aware of it. Do we know what it means to be aware, to be aware of something? You know, most of us are not aware because we have learned the art of condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing.

Choice obviously prevents awareness. If I choose, the choice is out of conflict, and so there is no awareness. To be aware when you enter a room, to see all the furniture, the carpet or the lack of carpet, whatever it is, just to see it, just to be aware of it without any sense of judgment, is very difficult. To look at a person, to look at a flower, to look at an idea, to look at an emotion, just to be aware of it without any direction, without any choice, without any judgment. And if one does the same thing with desire – to live with it, not denying it, not saying that it must have fulfilment, ‘What shall I do with this desire which is so rampant, so ugly, so violent?’, but to live with it, without giving it a name, without giving it a word, a symbol, then is it any longer the cause of turmoil? Is then desire something to be put away, to be destroyed? We want to destroy it because it creates conflict, misery, contradiction – one desire tears against another and we want to escape from desire because of this everlasting war within. But if one could be aware of the totality of desire. What I mean by totality is not one desire or many desires but the total quality of desire. And one can be aware of the totality of desire only when there is no opinion, no word, no judgment, no choice. To be aware of every desire as it arises, not to identify with it or condemn it, then is it desire? Then it may be a flame, a passion that is necessary.

That word *passion* is generally kept for one thing, which is sex, but to me passion isn’t sex. You must have passion, intensity, to live with anything, to live a life, to look at a mountain, to look at a tree, to look at a human being, to live with anything you must have passion, intensity. But that passion is denied, that flame is denied when you’re hedged about by various urges, demands, contradictions, fears. How can a flame survive when there is a lot of smoke? Our life is but smoke, and we’re looking for the flame and denying the flame by denying, controlling, shaping the thing that we call desire. And without passion how can there be beauty? I don’t mean beauty of pictures, buildings, women painted up, and all the rest of it; they have their own form of beauty but we’re not talking of that superficial beauty. A thing put together by man is beautiful or may not be beautiful, like a cathedral, a temple, a picture, a poem, a statue, but there is a beauty, I think, which is beyond feeling and thought — beyond feeling and thought — but that beauty is not understood or realised or known if there is not passion.

Don’t misunderstand the word *passion*; it isn’t an ugly word; it isn’t a thing that you buy in the market or throw about romantically; it has nothing whatever to do with emotion, feeling. It’s a flame that destroys. It isn’t a respectable thing. That flame destroys anything that’s false, and so we’re always afraid to let that flame devour the things that we hold dear, the things that we call important. So our life, based on needs, desire and the ways of denying desire, makes us more shallow and empty than ever. We may be very learned, able to talk very cleverly. The machines are doing that, the electronic machines are much more capable than any of us, swift in their calculations.

So we come back to the same thing, which is our life, as it is lived is so superficial, narrow, limited, because deep down we are so empty, alone… lonely, always trying to cover that up, trying to fill that up, and therefore the need and desire become a terrible thing. And when that loneliness, when that sense of deep void which nothing can fill — nothing, no gods, no saviours, no knowledge, no book, no relationship, no children, no husband, no wife, nothing can fill it, then if the brain, the whole of your being can look at it, live with it, then you will see that psychologically, inwardly there is no need for anything. That is true freedom, but that requires very deep insight, deep inquiry, ceaseless watching, and out of that perhaps we shall know what love is.

How can there be love when there is attachment, when there is jealousy, envy, ambition, and all the pretence round love? Then, if we have gone through that emptiness, which is an actuality, which is not a myth or an idea, then we shall find out that love and desire and passion are the same thing. If you destroy one, you destroy the other; if you corrupt one, you corrupt beauty. But perhaps to go into all this requires not a dedicated mind, not a religious mind, but a mind that is inquiring, a mind that is never satisfied, that’s always looking, watching, observing; observing itself, knowing itself. And without love you will never find out what truth is.

(Pause)

*Est-ce qu’il y a des questions?* [Are there any questions ?]

Questioner: How can one find out which is his main problem?

Krishnamurti: How can one find out, the lady asks, which is one’s main problem. Is there… are there minor problems and major problem? Isn’t everything a problem? Why make them little problems and big problems, or most essential and unessential? You see, there we are again. I think if we could understand one problem, go into it very deeply, however small it is, you’ll uncover all problems. This is not a rhetorical answer. Take any problem: anger, jealousy, envy, any problem which most of us have – anger, hate. We do know that very well; it’s not a major or minor problem, it’s a problem. Now. if you go into anger, go into it very deeply, not just brush it aside and say, ‘Oh, well, one can get rid of it very quickly,’ but go into it, what’s involved. Why is one angry? Because you’re hurt; somebody says unkind thing, as somebody says a flattering thing, you’re pleased. Why are you hurt? It’s not a bourgeois feeling at all. Go into it and you find out. Why? Self‑importance. Why is there importance?

You see, I… please, I’m explaining, and words are not the thing. The word, the explanation is not the actuality. But if you merely remain at the verbal level, you won’t go beyond, you won’t find out the whole process of anger. And to go beyond the words requires a persistent inquiry. So one has an idea, a symbol of oneself, an image of oneself, what one should be, or what one is, or one should not be. Why does one create ideas about oneself? Why? Because one has never studied what one is; one has never looked at oneself, what one actually is, because we think we should be that, the ideal, the hero, the… etc., etc. So what awakens anger when the ideal is attacked because that’s our escape from the fact. And when you are observing the fact, nobody can hurt you, it is so. If one is a liar, to be told that you’re a liar doesn’t mean that you’re hurt, it is a fact, but when you’re pretending that you’re not a liar and told that you are, then you get angry, violent. So we’re always living in an ideational world, in a world of myth, idea, symbol, and never in the world of actuality, the actual *what is*. And to observe what is, to see it, actually be familiar with it, there must be no judgment, evaluation, no opinion, no fear. See what one has learnt by a simple thing: anger. Learning… may I go on about it, or have I answered the question?

Q: (Inaudible)

Q: Please go on.

Q: *Je vais la poser en* *français.* [I am going to ask in French]

K: *Je vous en prie.* [Please go ahead]

Q: *Peut-on se* *libérer* *en continuant* *à* *pratiquer sa* *propre* *religion ?* [Can we liberate ourselves while practising a religion ?]

K: *Comment ? Je n’ai pas entendu madame*. [Sorry ? I did not hear, madame.]

Q: *Peut-on se libérer tout en continuant* *à* *suivre une religion ?* *Et* *est-ce que vous ne pensez pas* *que les religions ont leur utilité ?* [Can we liberate ourselves while following a religion ? And don’t you think that religions are somewhat useful?]

K: The lady asks can one liberate oneself by following a particular religion? Right? *C’est ça, n’est pas? Bien.* [It is correct, isn’t it? Good].

Q: We can reach freedom.

K: Yes. Can one attain freedom by following a particular religion. Certainly not.

Q: (Inaudible).

K: *Un instant,* [*je *vous* *en prie*;*](https://www.google.ie/search?q=french+to+english&oq=french+&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l5.4164j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) *un instant.* [A moment, please; a moment.] You know, two thousand years or five thousand years of propaganda, which makes you believe in a certain thing, is not religion, it’s propaganda. You’ve been told for centuries that you’re a Frenchman, or that you’re a Catholic, or a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, and you repeat endlessly those words. And do you mean to say a mind that is so conditioned, so influenced, a mind which has been a slave to propaganda, ceremony, and the show of religion, can ever liberate you?

Q: No.

K: No, don’t agree with me, please, it’s not… *qu’est-ce que je m’en fiche*. [I do not care].

Q: May I ask you (inaudible) a rather irrelevant question: Do you believe in God?

K: The lady asks do I believe in God. We will talk about it another day, the whole question of religion and God, but to answer your question briefly: Do you think by believing in God you’re going to find God?

Q: How else could you? I mean, you’ve got to start somewhere.

K: Non, madame. What makes you believe? Fear.

Q: What about revelation?

K: What about revelation. Sirs, what are you people…? Why do you want things to be revealed when you don’t know your own self? Your own self has been revealed to you: the way you think, the way you act, your motives, your ambitions, your urges, your incessant battle with yourself — you don’t know anything about that – your theories, your visions. And if you don’t know what is immediate, near, how can you know, be revealed something which is immense? So much better begin with that which is very close, which is yourself. And when all deception and illusion have been wiped away, then you will find out what is the real. Then you don’t have to believe in God, then you don’t have a doctrine. It is there, something sublime, unnameable, it is there. You don’t have to look for it. *Bien. Un instant, je vous en prie*. [Good. One moment, please.]

Q: A lady wishes me to ask this question for her: Why does fear come upon us when we become conscious of our own emptiness?

K: *Comme vous parlez* *français, traduisez* *je vous en prie.* [As you are speaking French, please translate.] (Laughter)

Q: *Pourquoi* *avons-nous* *peur quand nous percevons notre* *propre* *vide?* [Why are we afraid when we perceive our own emptiness?]

K: I suppose everyone has heard the question. Yes?

Q: Yes.

K: *Bien*. Sir, what is fear? I would like to talk about it another evening because there is very little time left. The thing that we call fear, what is it? Does it come into being only when you are escaping from the thing which is, and trying to avoid it, trying to push it away? When the thing is actually there, when you are confronted with it, are you afraid? Or you have never faced it and are always trying to escape from it? Escaping from the fact, moving away from the fact is the cause of fear and… I mean… there is a great deal involved in it. Surely, fear is the process of thought, and thought is time, and without understanding the whole process of thought and time, obviously you will not understand fear. And to look at something without avoidance — and there is avoidance when you condemn, when you say, ‘How terrible this loneliness is’ — then perhaps there is no fear. But we’ll discuss it, if I may, another evening, give a whole evening to the problem of fear, which we’ll do. Yes sir, what…?

Q: What are you meaning when you say that sex belongs to the world of desires and not to the world of essential needs?

K: Ah, I did not say that, sir.

Q: (Inaudible).

K: *Pardon. J’ai dit ça?* [I said that?]

Q: *Oui vous l’avez dit.* [Yes, you said that.]

K: If I did, I did not quite mean that.

Q: You said that our essential needs were food…

K: … clothes and shelter.

Q: … (inaudible) where is sex belong to the world of psychological desires.

K: *J’ai dit ça, ça c’est juste,* [I said that that is correct] but I didn’t say the other thing, before. *Avanti*; I’ll tell you.

Q: *La* *libération* *est-elle*… [Is liberation…]

Many: Oh no… (Inaudible).

K: I am sure this is a question everybody’s waiting to find out. Sir, what is sex? Is it the act, or the image, the pleasurable images, the thought, all the thing round it? Please don’t agree or disagree; we are examining, we are being factual. What is desire in sex? Is it the picture, the image, the thought, the memory, or the fact? And is there the memory, the picture, the excitement, the need when — if I may use the word without spoiling it — when there is love? I think one has to understand the physical, biological fact; that’s one thing. Then all the romanticism, the excitement, the companionship, the feeling that one has given oneself over to another, the identification of oneself with another in that relationship, and the sense of continuity, the satisfaction — all that is another.

So when we are concerned with desire, with need, how deeply does sex play a part? Is it a psychological need, as it is a biological need? And it is very difficult, it requires a very clear, sharp mind, brain, to differentiate between the need, a physical need and a psychological need. Many things are involved in sex, not just the act. There is self… the desire to forget oneself in another, the relationship, the continuity of that relationship, children, and trying to find immortality through the children, through the wife, through the husband, and the sense of giving oneself over to another. And having given oneself over to another, identified oneself with another, then begins all the problem of jealousy, attachment, fear, agony. Is all that love? And as I said at the beginning, if there is no understanding of need, basically, deep down, completely, in the dark recesses of one’s own consciousness, then sex, love, desire play havoc in our life.

Q: *La* *libération* *peut* *être* *réalisé* *par tous ou…* (inaudible)? [Can liberation be achieved by anyone or… (inaudible)?)]

K: I’m afraid this is the last question, we must stop. Is liberation realised by everyone. Surely it is not for… given to the few. I’m afraid liberation is not snobbishness. It is there for anyone who will go… who will inquire, into it. It is there with a widening, deepening beauty and strength when there is self‑knowing. And anyone can begin to find out about himself by watching himself, as you watch yourself in a mirror. The mirror doesn’t tell you a lie; it shows exactly what your face looks like. In the same way to look at yourself without distortion. Then you begin to find out about yourself, knowing yourself, learning about yourself. And learning is an extraordinary thing — learning, to learn. I haven’t time to go into that, we’ll go into it another day. So when you can go… The door to reality, to the immensity is not through a church door, not through any book but through yourself.