Transcription
We're in Brockwood Park in Hampshire, at the school and center founded by a figure who has been called a philosopher, a sage, a guru, a holy man, and who rejects all these titles. Yet, for more than half a century, he's been one of the world's most influential thinkers and teachers, bringing the timelessness of the East to the restlessness of the West. India, Krishnamurti, Krishnaji, what is the secret? What do you know that the rest of us don't know?
Oh, I don't know about that. But you must know something. In that, look at you, serene, realized, content, with no conflict. No, how have you managed it? What is it?
I've never had conflict in my life. No conflict at all.
Must be almost unique among human beings. Is that so?
It's not because of circumstances. It's not because I was protected, which is not because of any outside influence that kept me safe. But I think it was a realization that conflict destroys not only the mind but the whole sensitivity of awareness. So, I, I've never had conflict would seem quite natural to me. It wasn't an effort not to be in conflict.
Well, for most of us, it is an effort. So how can we conquer it?
I think it comes really when you have a direct perception of something that conflict does destroy human dignity, human sense of depth, and all the rest of it. And if you have a deep insight into it, it stops immediately.
For me, but what about for us?
Oh yes, for everybody. For everybody.
Then how do we attain that? It's almost like finding Nirvana, finding the ultimate goal, isn't it?
No, no. The ultimate goal, if you can breathe that way, to find that which is completely sacred, totally uncontaminated by thought.
Is thought the contaminant?
Then yes. See, that is a very strange concept for most people. It's not a concept. It's an actuality.
Where do you reduce to your concept?
Well, because that is one's way of our way of thinking. We learn to think that thought itself is the most important and strongest and most powerful means we have.
Of course. And is it that not saying, but thought is very limited?
Go on.
Why? Because it's born out of knowledge, born out of memory, experience. So knowledge is never complete about anything.
But what is more complete than that? You say born out of experience, memory, knowledge. Of course, it is. But what, how, how can we go beyond those?
I think that comes really when you give thought its right place. You need thought to come here. Yes, you need to have thought to have all these lights and cinnamon, all the rest of the cameras and so on. You also need thought to build the atom bomb, the cruise missile, and so on, so on. But thought, as it is limited, as it is conditioned by knowledge, which is never, never complete under any circumstances. So thought, when one realizes thought has its right place, then psychologically, you don't build an image about oneself, about anything. You see facts as they are.
We all like to think we do that all the time.
No, no. Say, for example, all the religions. Remember this, Christianity, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Islam, are based on thought. They've so thought. Whatever it has created is not sacred. All the rituals, all the things that go on in the name of God, in the name of all the rest of it, is not sacred.
But you're talking about the rituals, you say?
Yes. The, for that matter, the structure of the churches, the hierarchies, and the rest of it.
But what about the original teaching? You wouldn't say that about the teaching, say, of Christ or a Buddha, would you?
I would say yes. Yes, because they have been put in print, translated by man to, uh, to accommodate himself. They're called revelations. Some of in Christianity, and in Buddhism, there is definite handed down from the Buddha's disciples and so on, so on. But it's still not a direct perception, direct understanding, direct and vital, uh, insight into that which is eternal.
But how else can such teaching be transmitted? After all, you write books and appear on television.
Of course, yes. Yeah. I mean, this is the way these, these things are transmitted. How else can they be transferred?
No, but if we could see, for example, the word is not the thing, right? The word, the book, the whatever is printed is not the, the real thing. They're only a means of communication by people who have seen something and then want to communicate to others, surely. And during that communication, it gets twisted. And the person becomes so important, not what he said.
Well, that, I think, is what I said a moment ago about the churches. The churches institutionalized the great teacher, the great leader, the great seer, and distorted, as you say.
But that again doesn't affect the teaching. After all, let us take something we're all familiar with. The Sermon on the Mount. Well, Christ spoke those words. They have been written down, and now we read them for ourselves. Could we put it differently? The whole thing, one has to be light to oneself.
Go on.
And you cannot possibly depend on anyone. You cannot have light from another. It cannot be lit by whoever it is, God, or by saviors and Buddhas. It cannot be handed down to you to another. One has to be totally, completely a light oneself. It doesn't mean selfishly. It doesn't mean selfish, egocentric activity. On the contrary, to be light oneself means the understanding of oneself so completely that in that understanding, there is no distortion of what one is.
Well, do you mean then that none of us needs any of this teaching handed down to us? That we can all discover these things for ourselves?
And it is certain that every man is the story of mankind. Obviously. And if I know how, if one knows how to read oneself, the story of oneself, it's very complex, but she needs a great deal of attention, a mind that doesn't distort facts, what is actually. See that such an attention, attentive, sensitive awareness, if one, that's easy to cultivate, easy to have. Then we're going to read about oneself without any illusion.
But there's a fine line, I think, separating what you say about that attention from what we do most of the time, which is to concentrate on ourselves.
Oh, that's called. That is merely egocentric.
Actually, indeed. Of course, it is. But then we are egocentric. So, as we are egocentric, and that's creating havoc in the world, why don't we realize the mischief that may, that we are bringing?
Well, that's the question I should ask you. Why don't we realize it? Either we are totally indifferent to, to the world, what is happening, or we are so consumed by our own desires and pleasures, it doesn't matter what happens as long as we fulfill.
But must we not even seek happiness?
No, happiness is a side effect. It's not an end in itself.
No, but I mean, let's take happiness that does not depend upon anyone else's suffering. Let us, let's just say that no one else is harmed. Is it wrong then to seek happiness, condition of happiness for ourselves, or indeed for others, for our loved ones?
What do you mean by that word happiness?
Well, what, what the world means about it. It is an innocent pleasure, if you like, that's all. As long as one has pleasure, you call that happiness.
Is pleasure love? Difference is love, desire, pleasure?
Well, it's part of it, clearly.
I know. No, I mean, it is at the moment. It is as we say, as we use it, as we live. We accept that. Yes, we do. That's our human condition, right? We never break through it.
So what makes human beings throughout the world break, go, finish with all this?
But why should we? I'm afraid love is one of the most, if is it not, I mean, I, I want to, I want to know what you think about this. I'm not telling you. But is not love one of the most beneficial, it is aspects of matter? It is now identified with the desire, with pleasure, sex, fulfillment, a sense of fun, having fun in life. All that's called love. I think that's not love.
What is?
I think one can come to the realization of really about love and compassion, which is also with ego's intelligence. When we discover what it is not. It's certainly not ambition.
What about? I can see the selfish ambition, the ambition to exert power over people. But what about the ambition to do good, to help people?
You do good. You, you're not ambitious to do good. Then it becomes selfish. It's self-centered activity. You do good, finish.
But we live in a world which depends on these things. We live in a world that thought has created.
Yes.
Will you never live in a world where we have given tremendous importance to thought, and thought has created all these problems? The atom bomb, wars, instruments of war, national divisions, religious divisions.
But has it, has indeed created those things? But has it not also created the good things?
Surgery, medicine, art, art, all the other things.
Of course, it has. But the most destructive part of thought is under which we are living. Walls, eternal walls, and nobody seems to be able to stop it, and nobody wants to stop it. Commercialism, you know, all the rest of it. Don't have to go into all that.
Well, then how can we stop it? And we better start, I suppose, with ourselves.
Yes.
Sure. How do we do that? After all.
So human consciousness is the consciousness of mankind, right? It's not my consciousness, your consciousness. It's the consciousness of humanity. And the content of that consciousness is put there by thought, greed, re-ambition, all the conflicts, misery, suffering, extraordinary sense of isolation, loneliness, despair, anxiety. All that's there in our consciousness. Belief. I believe in God. I, I believe in this. So faith and belief. It brings about atrophy to, to the brain.
But do you, do you reject belief itself?
Oh, yes.
Do you completely? Because if you look, you don't leave much standing, do you, Krishna? You don't leave much standing.
That's what I said. One has to be free of all the illusions that thought has created to see something really sacred, which comes about through right meditation.
And how, right meditation?
Yeah. And what is right meditation?
You suggest that there is also a wrong meditation?
Oh, all the meditations that are being put forward now by the gurus and all the rest of it is nonsense. Why? Because first, you must put the house in order.
But isn't this the way to put that? You see, that's wrong. They think by meditating, you put the house in order.
Yes. No, not so. No. On the contrary, you must put the foul house in order, which is house. Yes. Housing order. Then from, otherwise, if you don't, it becomes an escape.
But we need, surely, to escape from the, from the ego, from the self, from these desires, these demands in ourselves, surely. The silence of meditation is a valuable path to that, isn't it?
You see, please, the question made it even very complex. Unless one puts the house in order, which is no fear, the understanding of pleasure, the ending of sorrow. From that arises love, compassion, intelligence. And the, the process to that, we call the process for the moment, is part of meditation. And then, whether to find out whether thought can never stop, which is time, has has to have a stop. And then, when then out of that comes the great silence. It's in that silence, around that, one confined that which is sacred.
Well, but to stop thought is, as far as I'm concerned, I'm sure this is true of most people, the most difficult thing in life is to turn off, switch off the mind.
I don't. This is again rather complex. Who is it that switches off the mind? I suppose what I have to say is it's the mind itself switching itself off, which I suppose is impossible. When one realizes the observer is the observed, the controller is the controlled, the experience says the experience. When one actually realizes it, not intellectually, verbally, but profoundly, that very perception stops it. It's like seeing danger. If you see danger, you move away from it. Yes. So to see the danger cooks. If you see the danger of conflict, for example, the danger, the psychological danger of a human being who is perpetually in conflict, he may meditate, he may do all kinds of things, conflict will go on. But when he sees the danger of it, like a poison, then he stops it. There's an end of it.
But see, from what you say, it seems to me that there is no path to this.
Oh, no.
Well, how do we get there? I mean, to get somewhere where there is no path seems to be a very difficult idea indeed.
Look, these paths have been laid down by thought, right? There is the whole Hindu ideology of, you know, the Buddhist, the Christian. The truth is not a fixed point, so you can't have a pulse to it.
But there must be a path, or that, I hope there's a path to the ending of conflict, which we're speaking.
There is not a path. There is an ending of conflict, sorrow, and all that. When one realizes, no, let's put it that way. When there is actual sensitive awareness of what one is, without any distortion, awareness of it without any choice. Out of that, there's the ending of it. All this mess.
But then that sounds, when you say there's only this awareness of what one is, the full awareness without choice, without illusion, it sounds though we all have to sit around waiting for instant revelation.
Men who can sit around for a million years. Exactly as we have done. Indeed, we have. I don't think then we have going to find out.
What is action? Is there an action which doesn't create conflict, in which there is no regret, which under all circumstances, whether when we live in a poor society or an affluent society, it has action that is must be always correct?
To find that out, one has to go into the question of what his actual action is. Now, is either idealistic action, future, or action based on past memories, which is knowledge? Or is there an action independent of the future, of time? That's the whole point.
Didn't they? Well, we can't stop time. It rolls on. Time, by the watch, by day, it goes on. But is there a psychological time, inward time?
Not there isn't. We have created that cycle.
So it seems then that whatever the thing is, it is complete and instantaneous.
Yes. It is not something you can build up layer by layer. Illumination is not a gradual process then.
It is. It is not an illusion. It is not enlightenment because you allow time, gradual becoming something. You know, in this context, I would like to ask you this. You have a school here. What do you teach the children? What do you teach the children if you can't build this up for them, for any of us, old or young, I presume?
What do you teach? The academic subjects. Yes. But, but in these, in this, these areas, of course, how? And also point out all this. How to live correctly? What it means?
Well, you see, philosophers throughout the ages have discussed that very point. How to live correctly? What is correct living? Right living? The Socrates.
And can you teach that?
You can point out. You can say, don't be a slave to society. Don't be this and that. But you have to show it. Point out. It's up to them.
But can we live in the real world that we do live in, in which we have to catch trains and go to offices and buy bread in them? Okay. How can we combine all the pressures of the mundane around us?
I wouldn't do anything under pressure.
You wouldn't?
I wish I refused. No, I both intellectually and sacrifice refused to be under pressure. I don't mind. I don't mind starving. I don't mind having no job. But I refuse to have we put in that position.
But you see, this is really what I meant when I said, what is the secret? Because you say you will never be put under pressure. And indeed, I can see and understand that when it needs to look at you or read you or listen to you to know that. But what about the rest of us? How do we, if we all say we won't be under pressure, we all are under pressure. How can we refuse it? I mean, how can we live in the real world? The job is waiting for us. We're going to be late. We've got an appointment.
That brings up whether society can be changed. But cannot society be jailed? No. Whether society can be changed? Yes. The communist tried. The socialists are trying it. Various systems are trying to change society. Yes. Now, what is society? Is an abstraction of our personal relationship. Now, if our personal relationship changes radically, society changes. But we are not willing to change. We admit wars. We follow. We accept all this terrible state of existence. Yes, we do. We do.
How do we stop it?
No revolt against state. But they're not revolting. Their sins become a communist or all that kind of stuff. That's psychologically revolt against it. But that presumably must be each individual. This is not something can be done collectively.
Yeah. Well, again, what do you mean by individual?
Well, we're all independent, separate personalities, are we?
Well, aren't we?
I doubt it.
Go on.
We are not individuals. We are the result of million years of collective experiences, memories, and all that. We think we are individuals. We think we are free. We are not. Towards freedom means choice. Choice means confusion. You don't choose if you are clear.
You said once, one of your most striking phrases, I remember that your purpose was to set man free.
Yes.
It's that's the most important thing in the world, after all. But how do you go about that? How do we set ourselves free? Because presumably, we have to set ourselves free. Is what you meant?
How to show us how we set ourselves. How do we set ourselves free?
To be aware of our conditioning.
But our condition may be terrible.
No, wretched. No. What is our conditioning? That varies from individual to individuals.
No, no. We are. We are conditioned by fear. Yes. Which is common all mankind. We are conditioned by our pleasure, which is common to all mankind. We are conditioned by our anxieties, by loneliness, about desperate, uh, uncertainty. All these are the factors that condition the mind.
And can we simply put them aside?
No. Who is that you put a wrong question there? That if one sees there is consequences of all this conditionings, consequences, the pain, you know, all the rest of it, naturally is your story. It stops you. There is no entity which says, I must stop it. That is intelligence.
And then we are free.
What do you mean by free?
Well, what I mean by it is to be rid of these fears, these anxieties, these impossible desires. That is right.
Now, that is freedom. It certainly seems so to me. Unless there is that freedom, you cannot be lied to yourself. Unless that is that freedom, meditation means meaningless.
You see, everybody thinks it's the other way around. And you put it. You, you reverse this. That is affair. You see, we think of the, of the systems, the beliefs, the faith, the work as a, as a means to getting to this state of freedom. You start with the state of freedom. Belief brings attributes of the brain. If you keep on repeating, repeating, repeating, as they do, it's your brain is at faith.
Then can we just do it by one great leap into freedom?
Yes. That is to have insight into all this instantaneously. Yes. And any of us can do it. Anybody who is attentive, who is inquiring, exploring, trying to understand this terrible confusion of life, at any age.
No, no. You're putting. No. Of course, a baby can do. No. A child can do. But we don't have to spend a lifetime in practice.
Forgotten. Of course not. Then death is waiting for you. It's waiting for all of us. For all of us.
Thank you very much.