Transcription
We have a crisis in the world, tremendous crisis, and also crisis in our consciousness, in us. I see the urgency of change, radical revolution, mutation in the mind. I see it. It is necessary. It is complete quietness of the mind, and that which is silent has vast space. Only then that which is nameless comes into being. This is urgency of change, the Krishnamurti podcast.
How is the unconscious to be exposed without effort, without analysis, without the conscious mind which cannot examine it? Hello and welcome to episode 214 of Urgency of Change. Each episode of the Krishnamurti podcast features carefully selected extracts from the archives. The aim is to represent different aspects of Krishnamurti's radical approach to many of the issues and questions we all face in our lives. This week's theme is the unconscious. Upcoming themes are rationality, solitude, and opposites.
This is a podcast from Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, based at Brockwood Park in the UK, which is also home to the Krishnamurti Centre. The Centre offers a variety of group retreats from February to December, including for young adults. The atmosphere is one of openness and friendliness, with the sense of freedom to inquire with others and alone. Please visit krishnamurticentre.org for more information. You can also find our regular quotes and videos on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook at Krishnamurti Foundation Trust. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave a review or rating on your podcast app. This helps our visibility.
This week's episode on the unconscious has four sections. The first extract is from Krishnamurti's fifth talk in London, 1962, titled "Understanding the Unconscious."
I would like this evening, if I can, go very far. But to go very far, you must begin very near. And the nearest thing is yourself. And without understanding yourself totally, not partially, not in fragments, you cannot go very far. You may talk about God, you may be able to quote the Bible or some other sacred book, but you're not a religious person at all. You're merely a slave to your propaganda of a particular society in which you live. And to go very far, you need an extraordinary attention where you can see, listen without decision, without motive, without purpose, which is to be to listen, attend without choice.
And to know yourself is not an additive process. You see yourself being angry, jealous, or sexual, or envious. You merely observe. And that observation without analysis unfolds itself. You don't have to make an effort to uncover. The moment you make an effort to analyze, to see, to observe, you're distorting. You're bringing into being your conditioning as a Christian, as have this or that. So knowing oneself is not an accumulative process. The moment you accumulate knowledge about yourself, then that knowledge interferes with perception, with seeing. Then you are seeing from knowledge which you have acquired about yourself, and therefore there's a conflict in seeing yourself. I hope I'm making this clear because this is a very important point. Because most of us accumulate virtue, wealth, appetites, experiences, ideas, and so on. And with that accumulation, we further experience. And what you experience is conditioned by the knowledge or the experience which you have acquired already. And therefore, all experience has already been tasted, known. Therefore, there is nothing new.
And I was talking the other day about death. It is the dying to knowledge about yourself, not accumulating knowledge about yourself. Yourself is never static. It's always changing, not only physically, but psychologically. You're never what you were yesterday, though you would like to be what you were yesterday. There's already a change has been going on of which you may not be conscious. So to know about yourself, and you must know about yourself entirely, completely, right through. The accumulative process as knowledge about yourself must come to an end. And that comes to an end only when you cease to judge, evaluate, condemn, justify. It sounds very simple, but it's not. Because we are trained to condemn, we are trained to judge, to evaluate, to compare, to justify. That's our conditioning.
And to look without that conditioning is not a matter of time. It's a matter of immediate necessity to see things clearly as they are. And you cannot see what is actually the fact if you bring all your memory into it. Your opinion only distorts the knowing. If that's clear, not verbally, not intellectually, but factually, if that's clear, then we can proceed into the investigation of the unconscious. Because the unconscious, place of very great part in our life, and we don't know the unconscious except through dreams, an occasional hint, intimation of things that are concealed. I don't think it is necessary to dream at all. It's waste of energy. Because if one is awake, alive, aware, choicelessly, not adding to already that you have known, if you're watching every movement of thought about in you, and watching the things about you outwardly as well as inwardly, when you are awake watching, then you will see every form of dream ceases.
Those psychologists say, "You must dream. You can't help dreaming. May not remember it, but the dreaming process goes on." It's not a matter of dispute, argument. You can test it out for yourself. If you're awake and not have half asleep during the day, watching every inside you, every movement of thought, every feeling, every reaction, then you will say when you go to sleep, you do not dream. Because then the unconscious, which has been hidden, of which one is so little aware, that unconscious can be approached negatively, not positively. That's what I'm trying to indicate when I say you, it is no need to dream.
I do not know how far you have gone into all this. Probably it's too bothersome to talk about the unconscious, too Freudian or Jungian or whatever it is. But you must know about it because that guides most of our life. That shapes our thoughts, our feelings, that brings into all kinds of conflicts. And without knowing it, when you talk about God, prayer, war, peace, the atom bomb, has very little meaning. So the unconscious, which is the in, which is the not only the individual responses of every day, but also there is the collective in it. The collective race, the group you belong to, the culture in which you have been brought up, not the immediate culture of a few years, but the tremendous collection, the accumulation of man. It's all there. Either you go through step by step through analysis, investigating, uncovering the whole total unconscious. Unconscious, which is absolutely impossible. Because if you analyze one state wrongly or incorrectly, the next analysis will be equally wrong and more wrong. Either you see the futility of such analysis. And if you do see it, that analysis does not lead very far into the and beyond the unconscious, then you have to look at the unconscious negatively. That is totally. I'll explain what I mean. I hope all this is not too much. Not that I am patronizing or being very clever or superior, nothing of that kind. Because probably most of you have not thought about this matter at all. So to, to really logically, sanely pursue what is being said and not get confused and worried, you have just to listen. Perhaps you won't understand most of it, but you will if the seed falls into the soil which is prepared through listening.
I mean by negatively, that there is no thinker and thought in the process of examination, in the process of observation. You know this process, this conflict between the thinker and thought, between the observer and the observed, the entity which says "I must" and other part of you says "I must not." One desire pulling in one direction and the other in the opposite direction. We all know this. The duality, the censor which is always watching, judging, evaluating. Now, is there, in fact, a separation between the observer and the observed? Between the thinker and thought? We think there is. But is there? Because if there is no censor as the thinker, the center from which there is judgment, evaluation, then conflict ceases altogether. There's only a thought. Thought as machinery, as the response of accumulated memory. Thought has created the thinker as a permanent entity, the ego, the soul, the "me," which is the result of thought. Because you can be conditioned to think what you like, what you, what society wants you to think. The Communists do not believe in God at all, but you do. You have been brought up in it. It's a matter of propaganda.
And to understand this question negatively, watching the totality of unconsciousness. And you can only watch the unconscious negatively, not positively. And the positive watching is to bring about a division between the observer and be observed. I do not know if you have not noticed, when you are looking and you are seeing something without thought, there is no observer. You just watch. You see the cloud without the accumulated memory of that cloud or of clouds. You just watch. In the same way, one has to observe. And when you so observe negatively, is there the unconscious with all its content? Have you not wiped away the unconscious? You see, I have not much time to go into it, sorry, because I want to talk about meditation. Because this, we have one more talk here in this hall, which is next Tuesday. So I have to be rather concise. So there is an immediate perception of the totality of consciousness.
The second extract is from the fifth talk in San Simeon, 1974, titled "Unconscious Hurts."
We human beings are hurt greatly. We have deep wounds, unconscious and conscious wounds, either self-inflicted, inflicted, or caused by others. At school, at home, in the bus, in the office, in the factory, we are hurt. And that deep hurt, conscious or unconscious, makes us psychologically insensitive. D. Watch your own, if you can. A gesture, a word, a look is enough to hurt. And you hurt when you are, when you are compared with somebody else, when you're trying to imitate somebody else, when you are conforming to the pattern. You are hurt, whether that pattern is set by another or by yourself. So we are, we human beings are deeply wounded. And those wounds bring about neurotic activity. All beliefs are neurotic, anyhow. Ideals are neurotic. And is it again possible to understand these hurts and to be free of them and never to be hurt again, any circumstances? You understand my question? I am hurt from childhood for various incidents and accidents. A word, a gesture, a look, a slighting nod. There, there, there are these wounds. Can these wounds be wiped away without leaving a mark? Watch it, please. Don't look somewhere. Look at yourself. Look at you've got these wounds. Can these be wiped away and not leaving a mark? That's one problem. And the other problem is never to be hurt. If you, if there is any hurt, you're not sensitive. You'll never know what beauty is. You can go to all the museums in the world, compare Michelangelo, Picasso, whatever you like, be experts in the explanation, the study of these people and their painting, structure, and all the rest of it. But as long as a human mind is hurt, therefore insensitive, it will never know what it is, what is beauty. You, without knowing that quality of beauty, which is not in the thing, in the product which man has made only, but in the line of an architect of a building, the line of a mountain, the beautiful tree, and all the rest of it. If there is any kind of inward hurt, you will never know what beauty is. And therefore, without beauty, there is no love. So can your mind know it has been hurt and not react to those hurts at the conscious level, and also the unconscious level? No. This, be aware of it. It's fairly easy to be aware of the conscious hurts. Right? Can you know your unconscious hurts? Or must you go through all the idiotic process of analysis? You're following all this? Because analysis, I'll go into very quickly and get rid of analysis. Analysis implies the analyzer and the analyzed. Who is the analyzer? Is it different from the analyzed? If he is different, what? Why is he different? Who created the analyzer to be different from the analyzed? If he is different, how can you know what the thing is? You're following all this. So the analyzer is the analyzed. That's so obvious. And to analyze, each analysis must be totally complete. That means if there is any slight misunderstanding, the next analysis, you cannot analyze completely because of previous misunderstanding. You're following all this. Analysis implies time. You can go on endlessly for the rest of your life analyzing, and you still analyze. So how is the mind to uncover the unconscious deep wounds? The wounds which race has collected, understand? When the conqueror subjugates the, the victim has hurt, a racial hurt, you understand? When the imperialist, I'm using it in the ordinary sense, not the Communist sense, they are the imperialist, anyhow. When the imperialist, the maker of empires, to him everybody is beneath him, and he leaves a deep unconscious hurt on those whom he conquered. You understand all this? It is there. How is it? How is the mind to uncover all these hidden hurts deep in the recesses of one's consciousness? I see. One sees the fallacy of analysis, right? So there is no analysis. Please watch this. There is no analysis. And my, our tradition is to analyze, right? So I've put aside the tradition of analysis, right? Are you doing this? So what has happened to the mind when it has denied or put aside seeing the falseness of something, as falseness of analysis? It is free of that burden, right? Therefore, it becomes sensitive, is lighter, clearer, can observe more sharply. So it has, by putting aside the, a tradition which man has accepted, analysis, introspection, all the rest of it, the mind has become free, right? And by denying the tradition, you have denied the content of the unconscious. You? Yes, you got it. Have you got some of the in the unconscious? The unconscious is, is the tradition. Tradition of religion, tradition of marriage, tradition of, um, dozen things. And one of the traditions is to accept hurt and having accepted hurt, analyze it to get rid of it. Now, when you deny that, because as being false, you're following this, you have denied the content of unconsciousness. Therefore, you're free of hurt, of the unconscious hurt. You don't have to analyze or go through dreams and all the rest of it.
The third extract is from Krishnamurti's second talk at Brockwood Park in 1972, titled "Ending Unconscious Fears."
And one of our great problems is fear in our daily life, fear. And we try in every way to overcome it, or run away from it, or find a substitute as courage for it. Now, how does a mind learn about fear? Learn, have an insight, not memorize various formulas how to be rid of. There's the fear of death, fear of loneliness, fear of mechanical behavior, fear of being not being loved, fear of so many kinds. And in the resolution of fear, you have solved the whole problem. Now, how is that fear, conscious as well as unconscious, to be, to be completely set aside? Because if we do not, then we shall never find out what is meditation. We never find out if there is such a thing as the immeasurable. So it, it is absolutely essential. It behooves us to learn completely about fear, conscious as well as unconscious fears. Conscious fears, one can more or less deal with. If you have afraid of my neighbor, what he think about me, I can deal with it. It doesn't much. But unconscious fears are much more difficult. And most of us are unaware of it. And being unaware of it, it brings about neurotic actions. Violence is one of the factors of fear, as we said. Violence yesterday is brought about through ideologies, through lies, whether it's by the politicians, by the priests, by ourselves, by, doesn't matter. And fear, if it is not completely understood or learned about, plays havoc with our lives. I think that's clear. There are unconscious fears of which one is not aware. Now, what do you do about it? We are learning. I'm not telling you about it. We are walking together, communicating together, learning together to about fear. How am I, or you, who are unconscious of your fears, bring them to the surface and wipe them away completely? Not gradually. That means again, division, which is the product of thought. You're following all this. How am, how is the mind which has deep-rooted fears, of which it is not aware, how is, how are those fears to be exposed to the light of intelligence? Because intelligence is not measurement. Where there is intelligence, there is no fear. It's not yours or mine. There is intelligence. You know, meditation is the awakening of this intelligence, which we discuss when we come to meditation. So our question is, can the mind learn instantly all the content of the unconscious, in which there are deep secret fears? Will it, please listen to this carefully, will it learn through analysis? Analysis implies time. There must be analyzer and the analyzed. The division. The analyzer is the analyzed. And the analyzer, if he's not capable of complete analysis, takes over what he has not understood, and that, that will become the means of further examination, which is misunderstood. I don't know if you're following all this. So I see very clearly, analysis is not the way. I've learned about it because analysis implies time, implies division, whether it's a professional analysis or you do it yourself. And when you analyze, unless you analyze everything completely, in that incompleteness, you examine the next incident, and therefore knew the incompleteness all the time, right? You're following all this. For God's sake, follow. Learn about this. So one, one learns analysis is out, which is our conditioning. Confession, analysis, self-introspection are all the forms of analysis. Analysis, the very meaning of that word means to break up. And thought has broken it up. So as analysis implies time, a separate entity which is the thinker, which is essentially the past, who examines the thing he's going to analyze, and he doesn't recognize the analyzer is the analyzed, and that it takes infinite time. I can go, I die. So analysis is, doesn't teach anything. I hope you, we see this. Then will dreams teach? We are asking this question because we are trying to expose the unconscious, bring it all out, the content, because the content makes the consciousness, right? The house is what it contains. And it contains so much, so many contradictions, so much information, you know, it's a jumbo, and therefore utterly confused. Will dreams clear the basic fear of existence, basic fear of not being, not becoming, not fulfilling, not trying to achieve? And what dreams, one has to learn about all this, please, not from me. You dream. Why do you dream? Or unpleasant dreams, nightmares, and so why do you dream? Or the experts say, "You must dream because otherwise you'll go insane." Probably that's true, because dreams try to bring about order, indicate that there is disorder. Dreams indicate disorder. And during the day, you are unconscious of your disorders because you're caught up in so much activity, chattering, talking, you know, doing, going to the office, and quarreling, and bullying, and all the rest of that goes on during the day, caught in a routine which breeds disorder and is not aware of it. The night, when you sleep, dreams are the continuation of that disorder in which the mind is trying to bring order, right? I do not know if you have not noticed that if you bring order out of disorder, that is, understand disorder, not superimposed this order, what you think is order, but if you understand order, this order, out of that comes order. And the brain needs order, then it can function well. It is protected, and order gives it tremendous security, then it can function. Dreams, the arising order, but if during the day you have, you, you are aware of the disorder, and because you are aware, the order, then you will find that sleep becomes quite a thing. Then the mind is quiet, the brain is quiet, is not everlastingly working, working, working. You're following all this. Learn, please learn. So that the brain is quite refreshed, young, and therefore clear, and it can meet the day, are fresh, because it has established order out of disorder, right? So in understanding fear, fear exists only when there is disorder. When you see something very clearly, there is no fear. It's only the mind confused, un-disordered. Such a mind is caught in fear. So when you learn about the unconscious, that is the content of it, the content of consciousness is consciousness. Consciousness is not something separate from its content, right? You understood that? If I am a Hindu, with all its content, with all the superstitions, social rules, morality, and all that, that makes consciousness. And if there is no content in consciousness, then consciousness is something entirely different. And that is what meditation is. The empty of content. You don't, this, you don't learn from somebody else, for God's sake. So can the mind be free of fear? That is, the mind that has had physical pain last week is afraid that it might recur again next week. The fear of repetition of pain. If you have observed physical pain, when it is ended, whatever it is, there, it carries it, watching, waiting, fearful, hoping it won't happen again. So thought is creating fear. I don't know. There is measurement. Fear of pain last week, it mustn't happen again next week. Watching, waiting, hoping. There is measurement, which is thought. Similarly, psychologically, we have various forms of hurts. We have been hurt from childhood. It's a terrible thing, this being hurt, aren't we all hurt, being hurt? And against that being hurt, further, we build walls of resistance. That means isolation. And isolation means further fear. And to escape from that fear, we take to drugs, or go to church, or believe in something, or pick up a book, you know, the various forms of escapes. Now, when you are aware of this completely, you have an insight into the fear, then you will see psychologically, there is not a flash of fear. And when there is pain, you know how to deal with it. Will not carry it, right? We, and one of the fragments of our life is the pursuit of pleasure, opposed to fear, opposed to pain, something contradictory, away from all the misery, suffering, pain. And that's what we are doing, pursuing pleasure in the name of God, in the name of whatever it is. Again, thoughts, a tremendous part in it, doesn't it? We don't have to go into all that. That's fairly obvious. An incident giving a delight, thought pursues it, pursues it for the next day, and so on and on and on. So thought is responsible for the continuity and the nourishment of fear, and the pursuit of pleasure, which has pleasure has nothing to do with joy. With ease. When there is joy, there is no pleasure. Aware of it, but thought comes, present, says, "What a marvelous thing, what a lovely thing that was," and then pursues it. That becomes pleasure. So what we are learning together is a mind that has, that is aware of all this, aware of the significance of thought, and has learned the absolute necessity of thought as measurement coming totally to an end. See, pleasure is not love. If pleasure is love, then it is the product of thought. Then love is something separate. "I love you, but I hate everybody else." Or "I tolerate everybody else." So begins to learn that love is not pleasure. That's a marvelous thing to learn. There's great depth of beauty in that.
The final extract in this episode is from the third talk in New York, 1974, titled "Awareness of the Unconscious."
Now, what is the unconscious? The unconscious. If you observe yourself, not according to some philosopher, analyst, psychologist, and all the rest of those people, just observing yourself, your life, what is your unconscious? Can you, can the conscious mind, please do listen to this, can the conscious mind understand or look into the unconscious? Oh, can the conscious mind just be aware, attentive, and in that state of attention, the unconscious with all its content comes out, is exposed? You understood my question? Some of you understand what I'm saying. That is, one sees very clearly, a conscious mind cannot uncover the deep layers. It's hidden there, secret recesses, secret shadows in the unconscious. The unconscious is the racial prejudices, the collective opinions, the family residual, you know, all the past is there, deep down. Cannot be unearthed by the conscious, obvious. And the conscious mind goes to sleep. You, when it goes to sleep, when you go to sleep, the unconscious gives its intimation through dreams. Have you no some of it for yourself? You don't have to go to professors, the analysts. So your dreams are the continuation of your daily activities, conscious or unconscious, right? So in that state, the unconscious gives its intimations. It says through symbols and various forms. It says there are scenes taking place, and these dreams have to be interpreted. They can be interpreted as they are occurring. I don't know if you have gone through all this, rather interesting if you will. But, or you can go to somebody to interpret them, which is such a waste of time, money. So the unconscious with all its content is there below, and the conscious mind can't explore, pull it out. What is want to do? As we said the other day, analysis is paralysis. You cannot analyze this. You can go on. I have explained, we explained why analysis is so utterly with regard to sane, rational reasoning people, it may be useful for irrational, neurotic people, which most of us are. And now, how is the unconscious to be exposed without effort, without analysis, without the conscious mind which it cannot examine? That, you have understood my question? You have got your unconscious deep down, with all its secret motives, secret pursuits, the racial, the family, the collective demands, and all that is there, stored up. Probably that's hell. And how is all that to come out? And is it important for it to come out? You understood? We think it is terribly important. That's at least that's what you have been told by all the analysts and the psychologists and all the rest. Now, I ask myself, must it be explored? Because I know what it is. It is the racial conditioning, the conditioning born in a certain group, certain family, with all its traditions, with all its fears, with all its superstitions. It's all down there. And is it necessary for it to be exposed? Or when the mind is aware, attentive, the interference of the unconscious is immediately seen and put aside? You understand? So that there is no wastage of energy or time in investigating. That is, when the mind is conscious, aware, in that sense of awareness, any movement from the, from the layers of the consciousness hidden, it shows its head, and you can deal with it instantly. And you can deal with it instantly if you don't choose. That is, "Oh Lord," you know, we think we are free because we can choose between this and that, between various politicians which are corrupt, anyhow, and so on, so on. So between various gods, various, uh, images, and various rituals, and choose between your this and that. Why do you choose? Please find out where choice is necessary and where choice doesn't exist at all. Choice is necessary. I choose between two c, between two materials for a suit. So psychologically, why do I choose at all? What does choice mean there? In that area, choice exists only when there's confusion. When there is clarity, there is no choice. Right? So in that choiceless awareness, in that total attention, whatever hints, intimations the unconscious projects itself, can be dealt with instantly and end. So that the content of the unconscious is wiped away. You are no longer a Hindu, Buddhist, home, Christian, you know. Have you ever wondered how the Christians have killed more people than anybody else? How they have destroyed everything with their appetites, and the world is imitating them now. Wipe away all that. Wipe away. So that you are, you are free to act as a total, whole, sane, holy human being. And that can only take place when you know what love and death and living means.