Public Talk 6, Bombay, 3 March 1957

3rd March, ’57.

This is the last talk. I think it would be a waste of time and utterly futile if we merely listen to all these talks either to refute or to accept verbally or intellectually any statement that is made. But if we can directly be able to experience what is being said, that is, if you are able to follow our own operations of the mind, of one’s own mind, then I think these talks would really be worthwhile. Because, we are concerned, not with abstractions and idealisations but with ordinary living, daily living with all its sorrows, pain and pleasures; and until we bring about sanely, rationally a radical change in our daily existence, it seems to me whatever theories, whatever ideologies, and whatever intellectual assertions one may maintain, it would be utterly futile and will have no value at all in a world that demands on the part of each individual a direct responsible action. And to bring about a radical change in our daily living, it seems to me, that we must understand the whole process of becoming and being. All our thinking and our activity is based on becoming. I am using that word very simply, not philosophically, but in the ordinary sense — I want to become something either in this world or in the psychological, spiritual world. If I can understand this process of becoming, wanting to be something, then I think I shall have understood what sorrow is, because the becoming gives the soil to the mind in which sorrow can grow and as our lives mostly, with rare occasions, are filled with anguish, sorrow, pain, fear, every form of conscious or unconscious conflicts, I think it is important to understand this whole issue of becoming.

In becoming we give importance to secondary things like politics, like social reform, like ideologies and the various organised forms of religion which all give comfort to the process of becoming. After all, that is what we all want; we are all struggling to be or to become something either politically, socially, outwardly or inwardly. We have never a moment when there is no becoming but only Being, that being which is nothing. But that Being or which is nothing cannot possibly be understood if we do not fully grasp the significance of becoming. After all, all comparative thinking is a form of becoming. Envy, ambition, the various forms of fulfilment with their frustrations, are essentially a process of becoming, in which the sorrow takes root and we try to understand sorrow again the word sorrow is something common to all of us which we understand; it is not a philosophical term and one is not free of that sorrow unless we understand this process which is called becoming. After all, that is what we are, are we not? We are trying, all of us in different ways to be something, to be more noble, to be less greedy, to be less violent, to fulfil in work through identification of an idea, through God, through family, through property, through every form we are trying to become something, to be something, fulfil ourselves and I think in that lies the whole web of sorrow and being caught in that web, we say how am I, how are we to get rid of sorrow. We are only concerned with the riddance of sorrow but we do not understand the process of becoming. Why is it that all of us in different ways, through centuries have persisted in this path of becoming? You understand? Why, each one of us in different ways want to be something? If I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; if I am stupid, I want to be clever; if I am envious, I want to be free from envy. So there is a constant battle between what I am and what I should be. The should be is the aim of every person who wants to become and in that, there is infinite struggle, pain, fear, frustration. And how am I, seeing this process, how my mind is caught in the web of sorrow, how is such a mind to be free from sorrow?

And so putting that question to ourselves, to oneself, then we say we must discipline ourselves against it, against desire, against envy. Which is, we don’t see that through resistance, there is another form of becoming, that through resistance there is the giving importance to secondary issues. That is, being in sorrow, I want to be free from the pain of sorrow and I escape, try to escape from sorrow. The escaping is the giving of importance to secondary issues. The escape offers a means of fulfilment without eradicating sorrow. So I struggle through every form of escape from sorrow as a means of fulfilment away from sorrow.

After all, look what is happening in the world. Why is it that secondary issues are taking such predominance, become primary values in our life like politics, like reform or the identification of yourself with a particular reformatory movement? Why? Do they not offer to the individual a means of fulfilling himself through them? Which is, they offer a way in which I can become something, though I may create sorrow around me and in myself. The desire to become something is so strong, so vital, to expand, this egotistic desire to be something and to find ways and means is, it seems to me, the secondary issue which predominates our present day existence. Look at every morning- the newspapers are full of the secondary issues and the noise they make drown out the whisper of something which is totally different, which is the primary. After all, that is what is happening in the world all over. The primary is the understanding of the not-becoming, the Being which is nothing, that nothing in which the true, the Reality, God or what you will shows itself in its totality. But the mind that is seeking different ways to become, to fulfil, through memory, through identification with the family, with the country, with an ideology can never find the other. Without the other, all the ideologies, political activities, reformatory movements breed further sorrow, further confusion and we don’t seem to realise that. Because we are only concerned with the immediate satisfaction, with the immediate fulfilment of ourselves through sorrow.

And so, if one is aware of oneself, you will see how important certain movements in our life are, certain activities, certain ideologies and the economic pressures, but I think if we can understand these as secondary values and are essential in our daily existence but approach them with a different feeling — that is, I don’t become but rather understand the whole religious revolution which takes place in the individual when there is no becoming of any kind, when I see inwardly see the fact of what I am; the fact of what I am without any form of distortion, the fact that I am envious, the fact that I am angry, the fact that I an acquisitive, lack of humility; if I am aware of that fact and not approach the fact with an opinion, with a judgment, because opinion and judgment and evaluation are made with the intention of transforming the fact into becoming something. Then, you will see the fact and the approach of that fact without evaluation, which is essentially based on the idea of becoming, then you will see that fact itself brings about a transformation, in which there is no becoming at all. If I know that I am envious, the fact, and not condemn it at all, not judge it but know that I am envious and to be aware that I am envious is extraordinarily difficult. Because I have, the very word envy has a condemnatory significance and to free the mind from that condemnatory evaluation and to be aware of that feeling without the identifying process of the word with the feeling, then you will see then that feeling has no longer the quality of becoming something else. A feeling without the verbalisation, without evaluation has no quality of becoming and I think it is very important to understand and when there is that feeling, you will see also, that there is no desire for its fulfilment. There is a desire for a fulfilment of a feeling only when there is the identification of that feeling with a word, with an ideology, with a condemnatory sense and evaluation, which are all based on becoming.

So there is, in becoming giving soil to the root of sorrow, not in the field independent of becoming. This I think, you will find if you really think it out, go into it very deeply, if the mind is capable of doing it, you will find that you have eliminated sorrow altogether. The mind has freed itself from sorrow and it is only such a mind that is concerned with the primary and because it is concerned with the primary, which is Reality, then its action on the secondary will have its own significance. And the secondary will never lead to the primary. It is like putting a room in order, decorating the room, cleaning the room which are all essential but they don’t open the door to Reality. A virtue is essential because, it is like putting the mind in order. A mind that is not virtuous, virtuous which is austere, such a mind has put itself in order; like a room in order has no meaning but what comes into the room has a meaning, and in the same way, the mind must have order, must have clarity. But clarity, order, humility, austerity in themselves have no significance but the mind that has this is capable then of proceeding, not in becoming in which there is the experiencer trying to further experience, but in which there is no experiencer and therefore there is a Being which is, the mind is completely empty of all the ideas which are based on the experiencer, the thinker, the observer, watcher who is always becoming. And it is the emptying of the mind, of this idea of becoming in which there is a Being and that has its own movement unrelated to becoming and a man who is becoming, trying to seek that state, will never find it. So the man who is pursuing ambition, fulfilment, the desire to be something will never find Reality, God. He may read all the books, do all the pujas go to all the temples in the world, sorrow will be his shadow. And it seems to me it is very important to understand oneself, this process of becoming which is essentially self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the understanding of this becoming which is the me, and without that understanding of becoming, the mind can never be free, empty, to understand something totally different. And with the understanding of that which is real, then you will find our social activities, our political actions, our relationships, with each other, will be entirely different. Then it will not be the bed in which sorrow can grow and flourish.

So it is very important for a religious man to understand himself, the himself which is always pursuing the path of becoming and when through self-knowledge, there is the cessation of becoming, then there is a real religious revolution and that is the only revolution, none other, that can bring about a different world in every way — economic, political, in our relationship. And to understand that Reality, effort is not necessary. Effort exists only when there is a becoming, when I want to as a means of attainment of reaching happiness, which is all a becoming and hence a struggle, an effort, a process of discipline, a process of resistance in order to achieve, in order to fulfil. All that is the path of becoming and in that there is sorrow and a man who would understand Reality, must be free of this path of becoming, not verbally, not ideologically talk about the freedom from becoming but actually understand this whole problem through self- knowledge; then you will find such a mind freed from becoming, has an extraordinary activity of its own, an activity which cannot be verbalised, which cannot be told to another, which cannot be described and that activity is Reality, is a movement of Creation itself.

There are three questions this evening and as I have explained, I am not going to answer these questions, because there are no answers to life. Life is a thing to be lived and a man who is sitting on the bank, wanting to live, only asks the question in order to find an answer. He is not living. When we are living, you will find the answer at every step as you live and that is why it is very important to understand the problems and not seek an answer to the problem, a solution to the problem.

QUESTION: REALITY HAS BEEN DEFINED AS SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDARAM — TRUTH, GOODNESS AND BEAUTY. ALL RELIGIOUS TEACHERS HAVE STRESSED TRUTH AND GOODNESS. WHAT PLACE HAS BEAUTY IN THE EXPERIENCE OF REALITY?

KRISHNAMURTI:- Is there is a difference between goodness, truth and beauty? Are they three different things or really one thing which can be called by different names as goodness, as beauty, as truth? But to understand truth or goodness or beauty, we have tried to suppress desire, we have tried to discipline desire, to control, to find a substitution for desire we find that desire is a tremendously active, volcanic action which brings extraordinary sorrow, pain and joy. And so we say we must be free of desire in order to find truth, beauty and goodness. That is why all religions have maintained that you must be free of desire, which is to cut desire, not be caught in desire and we have proceeded for centuries to suppress desire and in the very suppression of desire, we have lost sensitivity, sensitivity to goodness, to truth and to beauty.

And what is beauty? It is really a very complex question– what is beauty. Books have been written but if you and I, simple people, not erudite, scholarly, want to find out beauty, how do we set about it. As I want to find out what goodness is, as I want to find out what truth is, and so I want to find out what beauty is, not verbally, theoretically but actually experience what that extraordinary thing called beauty, the feeling of it, not the mere thing that has been made which we call beauty or ugly. Surely we know only beauty, don’t we, through something that has been made or put together? So for most of us, it is a reaction, it is a response and I am asking myself, is there is a feeling which may be termed as beauty, as goodness, as truth which is not a response, which is not merely a reaction to ugliness or to beauty. Look, I see that tree. And I say how lovely that is. The tree is what has been created and I respond to that and I say it is beautiful and pass it by. And that building — I see it; it has been put together and I say how ugly that is. Again a response. And is beauty merely response, is beauty merely a reaction to something which has been created or is beauty something — that word and I am not thinking merely of the word and the significance the word brings to the mind — but is beauty merely a reaction or is there a state of mind which is not the result of a reaction? After all, our minds are reactions, result of reaction of challenge-response, inadequate response to the challenge and therefore struggle, therefore pain. On that our whole mind is based, extensively or very narrowly. And when I see a tree, a bird, nice looking person, a child, the dirt, the squalor, the poverty, the ugly buildings, one I say is beautiful and the other ugly depending on my reaction, the attention I give, and when I give my full attention to the tree, full attention to that building, in that attention, is there a reaction? Because is there an attention when there is an object? You understand sirs or is this too complex? No, I don’t think it is complex if you follow it carefully. If you don’t, then you will miss it.

As I said, attention with an object is no attention. Then the object takes you, absorbs you which you call attention. In the same way, if I give my full attention, the totality of my whole being, then is there a reaction? And in that state, is there what is called the beautiful and the ugly? After all, there is the ideological beauty, the ideal beauty laid down and there is the beauty of experience, the essence of experience. What I want to find out is, is there a mind, and I think it is a legitimate question — is there a mind which understands the reactions of the beauty as well as the ugly, understands it, is aware of it and is capable of giving total attention and therefore not call it beauty or ugly but that totality of attention in which there is the totality of experience. Now, I am asking myself if there is an entity which says I have experienced beauty or I experienced ugly or is there only a mind which is not the result of a cause-effect reaction?

After all, we were talking about beauty and we were saying beauty, goodness and truth, are they not the same and why have religions put aside beauty? Religions have not put aside beauty-religion in the sense right religion, revolutionary religion, but organised religions and human beings have put aside beauty because of the desire and the complications of desire, the pain of desire, the ugliness, the frustrations, the emptiness of desire, the contradictions which exist in desire itself. So can the mind without losing its sensitivity to the ugly and to the beautiful, the ugly and the beautiful which have been created by man who has experienced what he calls beauty either verbally, in a statue or in a building, can that experience of that totality of attention totality of that state of mind ever create, you understand, a mind that has created in that sense which is not merely the reaction, can that mind ever create or only the mind that is in conflict with its own desires, with its own fulfilments, with its own frustrations, a mind that is in conflict can create what is called beautiful and the ugly? Oh, sirs, this is rather a complex question as I said and to understand this really, not merely verbally, to understand what beauty is or goodness or truth, mind as I explained must be empty of the word and the reaction to that word. Then you will find that there is a totality of experience, not of the experiencer experiencing the totality. Then that state, will it ever create or is creation as we know it — building, architecture, poems, essays and so on, are merely the result of a contradictory mind is pain which must find a release? So watching all that, you will say, are you talking in order to find release, in order to fulfil. I don’t think so, because the truly religious man is not seeking fulfilment. As I explained, fulfilment is the soil in which sorrow grows.

QUESTION:- TO YOU LOVE IS THE SOLVENT OF ALL HUMAN PROBLEMS. I HAVE NO LOVE, AND YET I HAVE TO LIVE. BUT LOVE CAN NEVER BE CULTIVATED. DOES THAT MEAN THAT MY PROBLEMS CAN NEVER BE SOLVED?

KRISHNAMURTI:- We will come to the feeling of what love is if we understand how we live. We want either definition of what love is or we want That state which we call love which is Universal, Cosmic, Godly and all the rest of it without understanding our daily existence. Don’t we know in our daily live any kind of love — friendliness, kindliness, gentleness, being good, being good to another without motive, being compassionate, being generous, feeling or having a feeling of a sense of great humility, are they not the expressions of love? And when you love another, is there not also that total feeling in which the I is non-existent? After all, when we love some another, we lost ourselves in another, either sexually or by identifying ourselves with another, with a family, with a nation, with the party, with an ideology. That is, in identifying ourselves with another, with a movement, there is self-forgetfulness; there is an intensity of feeling of action, because the I is not present but in identifying ourselves with another, another movement, political activity, we have not really forgotten ourselves. We have, through identification expanded ourselves but the movement, the party, the ideology, the God, the church, whatever it be, with which you have identified yourself is still you and so a man who has identified himself consciously or unconsciously with a movement, with a party, with an ideology has no love, though he may talk of love and that is important to understand. When you talk about the love of the country, you don’t love the country. That means the people, the human beings; you love the idea of a country with which you have identified yourself for which you are willing to die, willing to kill.

So when the mind consciously or unconsciously identifies itself with a movement, with a party, with an ideology, with an activity, with a family, with a religion, with a guru, with an idea, such a mind is incapable of loving and I think it is very important to understand this. Because good people are lost through identification and they don’t see the false significance of that identification. Then what is love? If it is not, obviously it is not through identification which you call love, then what is love? Obviously the state of mind when the ‘Me’ has no importance, when the ‘me’, the self, has no significance. That is, love is surely is friendliness, to be friendly, you understand sirs? You have no enmity or cause enmity and you do cause enmity when you belong to religions, you do cause enmity when you belong to countries, political parties, when you have great deal of land and nobody has anything, when you have immense income and the other nothing; that causes enmity though you may go to temples or build temples -you have no friendliness when you are seeking positions, power, prestige. Yes, you will all shake your head and agree with me but you are going to pursue your ancient ways and the tragedy is not that you have no love, but you have no idea of the ways of your life, the way you are living actually. If you understood that, really felt it, then you would be generous. Surely, the generosity of the hand and mind is the beginning of friendliness and where there is friendliness, there is no need for justice as law. So there is friendliness. Then there is goodness, a compassion which is without motive. You have done it occasionally when you are not thinking about yourself or so concerned about your own country, your problems. Now, you go beyond all that and there comes something entirely different, which is to be compassionate and yet to be indifferent.

We know indifference, That is the result of a calculated act on the part of the mind, like detachment is a thought-out act of the mind in order to protect itself from pain. We also know the action of indifference which is the result of a mind which says I have been through great deal of pain, misery and I am going to be indifferent, which is an action of will but I am talking of an indifference which is something unrelated to the intellectual indifference created or brought about by a mind that wishes to resist pain. There is an indifference which is the outcome.

of compassion, to be compassionate and yet be indifferent. Have you ever felt that? — when you see something in pain, to help it and yet be indifferent in the very process of helping it? But what do we do? I feel compassionate and I see something and I am active, I want to change it, alter it, bring about reform, I am full of action, of love, because my mind is so active in producing a result, that I have lost the sense of compassion. So if you go, observe your own daily activities, you will find all these things exist in your own daily life, that you know moments of compassion, moments of love, generosity, but they are very rare; All our calculations, all our activities are based on this becoming something important and it is only the mind that is free from becoming knows that love which is the solvent of our problems.

QUESTION: — YOU HAVE SAID THAT GOD OR REALITY IS BEYOND THE MIND. HAS GOD THEN ANY RELATIONSHIP TO MY EVERYDAY LIFE?

KRISHNAMURTI:- Sir, what is our everyday life actually, not theoretically, ideologically or say what it should be but actually what is your life? — confused, miserable, stupid, ambitious envious, quoting lot of books of which you know nothing, experiences of others, repeating all that you have been taught, struggle, pain, suffering, occasional movement of joy which goes before you can capture, look at it, and have the feel, the depth of it. That is our life, is it not? Lying, cheating, vainly trying to become something important, trying to dominate, suppress, that is our life and do you think such a life has anything to do with Reality, with goodness, with beauty, with God, with something which is not man-made? And yet, we know what our daily life and we want to bring that Reality into it. So we pursue, we go to the temples, we read books, we talk about God or we say there is no God or we say there is only one God to look for salvation and so on. We want to bring that immensity, that measureless to the measurable And is it possible? Do you see how our own minds deceive ourselves ? Can you bring the immeasurable, the Unknown, that which cannot be experienced, can you bring that into the measured, into the conditioned, into the area where there is the boundary? Obviously it cannot. So seeing it cannot, don’t try it. Don’t try to find God, Truth. It has no meaning. All that you can do is to understand this mind, this area which is the conflict, misery, suffering, ambition, fulfilment, frustration. That the mind can understand, the borders of that can be broken but you are not interested in that. You want to capture God and put him in the cage of which you know. That is all you are interested and the cage you call the temple, the book, the guru, the system, and with that you are satisfied and that you think, and by that you are becoming very religious. You are not. You are just hypocrites, robbing, cheating, lying within the cage and a man who is aware of this, sees that he cannot.

So he is concerned not with Reality, which is the Immeasurable, the Unknowable, but he is concerned with the ending of envy, with the ending of sorrow, with the ending of this becoming. That you can do. You can do that every day, be alert to it, be watchful the way you talk, the way you show respect which is no respect, the way you accumulate, acquire, envious, the whole business of it. So through self knowledge of what you are actually, the mind can liberate itself from the limitations, from conditioning, The liberating itself from the conditioning is Meditation. Not meditation on Reality because you cannot. That is an impossibility. Meditation on God has no meaning. How can a mind which is conditioned, which is small, which is petty, envious, how can that meditate upon something Unknowable? All the mind can do is to free itself from the known, the known of everything that you have been taught, all the ambitions, your identifications, your greeds, free the mind from the memory of all this and the freeing of that is meditation. Then when the mind is free from that, you will see that there comes an extraordinary quietness, a stillness of the mind in which there is no experiencer and therefore as there is no experiencer who is always measuring, who is always remembering, who is always calculating and lying, desiring, when the mind is aware of something totally different, a state which is in itself a blessing, which has within itself a movement that has no centre and therefore no beginning and no ending, a mind that is capable of that extraordinary attention without the entity that is experiencing what is taking place, then you will find, then such a mind will find that there is a Reality, a goodness, a beauty, which is not a reaction, which is not the opposite, which is without a cause and therefore something which is in itself and that realisation of such an immensity cannot come about unless the mind is totally empty of the known.