Talks in Europe 1967

You know, to be free of all influence, which means to be free of all interference, is one of the greatest things. It is when one is free from all influence that there is love, and that love perhaps will answer the wretchedness, the sorrow of another. 1st October 1967

Questioner: I find myself incapable of observing wretchedness in others without a feeling that I should interfere. Am I capable of love in the true sense?

Krishnamurti: I see in others sorrow, misery, conflict, and naturally I can't interfere. And do I have love when I observe without interference? You know, that word interfere is rather a difficult word - we are always interfering with others. The whole of education is interference with others. The whole propaganda of the Church is interference with others. All the propagandists, the missionaries throughout the world - whether they are Christian missionaries or the missionaries of

Therefore, the demand that it must continue creates its own opposite and hence the conflict of not having it. So desire is normal, healthy, but it becomes unhealthy, ugly, when thought turns it into pleasure and then pleasure breeds antagonism, hatred, and in antagonism and hatred there is no love.

Krishnamurti: Why do we want to compromise and what do we mean by compromise? We say society is monstrous and are we compromising when we put on a suit made by that society, when we eat the food cultivated by that society? There is a total separation from society - that society which I psychologically have built - when I am psychologically totally free from all the things that belong to society, like greed, envy, belief, which is superstition, its Gods, its immoralities. Then there is freedom from that society; in that there is no compromise whatsoever. Society says you must fight, you must kill another, destroy other human beings for your country, for your God, for your ideals. And when one has affection, this quality of love, will you kill another? Can you compromise and say, `Well, my friend I'm going to kill you for your own good, for my freedom'? Is there a compromise at all when you see things very clearly? Is there compromise when you see a poisonous animal, a snake or a deep precipice? You see very clearly there is no compromise - you walk away. There is compromise only when there is confusion. And as most of us unfortunately are very confused about everything, we are everlastingly compromising. But when you have clarity there is enlightenment. To see things as they are, not in your own terms, not according to your own tendency and inclination, to see things actually as they are is to be free of them, and in that there is no compromise, for then there is no confusion whatsoever.

Thought, which is a response of memory, knowledge, experience, is always old. Thought is never free. Thought is always conditioned by past experience and knowledge. So thought can never under any circumstances understand, come upon that thing called love. The observer is essentially thought, the observer is essentially the old, so the observer is never the new. The new can never contain the observer. The observer cannot hold the new, but when one understands the whole process, then one comes upon this thing called love - which is never old, which is always in the active present, which has no image, because that which has an image, or is represented by a symbol, is always the old created by thought.

So when you worship God you are really worshipping your own image which you have projected - and therefore it is not love. It is only your fear and the opposite. So to understand this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly, through sacrifice, through worship, through pain, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasure and pain, is only possible when thought - which is an extraordinary thing in itself - comes to understand itself and comes to an end naturally.

Then love has no opposite. Then love has no conflict. And without that love, do what you will, there will be no end to problems. You may belong to all the latest groups, or know all the psychologists, all the quacks or all the people who teach meditation and all the rest of it; it's only when there is that love, that there is peace. And then there is a benediction.

Questioner: Is love not desire, in your opinion?

Krishnamurti: Are we discussing opinions? You know, there is no end to opinions, or the truth in opinion, a dialectical approach to life, which is opinion. You have your opinion, and I have my opinion, Marx, and the capitalist opinion. We are not dealing with opinions. We are dealing with facts as they are and to understand the facts, no opinion is necessary whatsoever; neither the opinion of the Catholic, nor of the Protestant, nor of the Hindu, nor of the Communist. One has to observe the fact; and the fact is, most of us have intense desires, which is natural. When one sees a beautiful car, a beautiful person, a lovely face, it is natural to respond, as you do to a beautiful sky, to a tree that is turning in the autumn; one must respond and respond totally, completely. But in that response thought comes in and says `that was a great delight, I must continue with that delight'.

And out of this desire and pleasure arise sexual problems. I wonder why the whole world is tortured by this problem. All the newspapers, magazines, television, radio, talk about this. It has become an extraordinary problem in the world. Why? Partly religions have sustained the problem, because they have said it is wrong; to find God you must be celibate, you mustn't marry, the whole Catholic Church is supporting this view. To serve God you must be a bachelor, for sex is an abomination to all religions. And also it has become a problem for most people in the world, because intellectually they have no escape, intellectually they are slaves, they are not free human beings; intellectually you obey, follow, you read innumerable books - what to think and what to do and what not to do, so intellectually all that energy is bottled up. If one can observe it in oneself, intellectually no one is a revolutionary. Very few are. And emotionally because we are acquisitive, greedy, jealous, fearful, anxious, guilty, there is only one pleasure left which is free. That is sex. When your intellectual energy is cut off, emotionally you are not alive. To become emotionally alive you go to concerts, museums, read books. So you have only this outlet - sex. And only in that there is pleasure, and the everlasting chewing it over. Sex then becomes an extraordinarily important thing in life because love, or what one calls love, is based on desire and pleasure, which is the process of thinking; thinking about the pleasure that you have had, because intellectually you have no pleasure in the deep sense of the word. We read dozens of books, are up-to-date, but having read the latest book to be able to criticize it, we are still in the pattern of the old, repeated. In that there is no pleasure, because pleasure implies freedom. And emotionally you have so many fears. So thought inevitably makes sex into an immense thing and then it becomes a problem. Because then love is merely desire and pleasure and naturally with it goes so-called responsibility, the responsibility for the family, and the family is inevitably against the whole structure of society. I and my family first, and so the world is divided into families, nationalities, groups and all the rest of it.

So thought, thinking about that from which it has gained pleasure, gives duration to pleasure. I had pleasure yesterday looking at that sunset, or that tree, or that extraordinary light of the evening on the water. Thinking about it has brought pleasure - not when I observed it; when I observed it there was no pleasure, there was a great sense of beauty, quietness of the evening, but the more I think about that quietness, that beauty, the more I derive pleasure from it and I want the repetition of that pleasure. It's the same with sex, with any form of pleasure. So, sex has it's own place; we are not discussing what is the right place. But one will discover what is it's right place when one understands love, which is not desire and pleasure. love is not the opposite of pleasure and desire. Because if one only knows desire and pleasure, and wants to come upon this thing called love, to understand what love is, one must understand the structure of thought.

Most of us hate violence. We are jealous, acquisitive, dominating and with many inhibitions, and yet we say, `I love you'. Find out the nature of that love in which there is no conflict whatsoever, and the love which is total contact in all relationships, because only a total contact is total relationship. But if I only touch you at different points, sexually, seeking comfort, domination, then is that love, is that relationship? So to find out, or rather to come upon it, one has to first find out what relationship means. Not only relationship to things, to houses, to furniture, but also to people and ideas. That which we possess, we are. If you possess a house, the furniture, the family, an idea, you are that - obviously. So is possession in any form love? Does not possession breed anxiety, envy, jealousy, domination, fear? And when there is fear, domination, is that love? And in that relationship between man and man, man and woman, and so on, if in that relationship there is a self-centred activity - whether it is the self-centred activity of the wife or the husband - does that not separate the two human beings? Though they say we love each other, each is pursuing his own particular path, his particular intention, and can there be love when there is aggression, when there is competition? Obviously hate and jealousy are not love. But for us love contains jealousy, for in that love there is possession. To us, then, love is desire and pleasure.

We talk a great deal about love. The love of one's country, the love of the family, the love of God, the love of man. `I love this book'. So to find out what love is, to come upon it as one comes upon a perfume that one has never smelt before one must unburden this word, cleanse it of all the things that we have given to that word. And one has to find out for oneself what the thing is that one calls love. Perhaps that may be the ultimate solution to all man's difficulties, problems and travails. Because when the husband says `I love you', and the wife says `I love you', is it love? Or is there in it sensuous pleasure, possession, domination, comfort, gratification? And all that we call love, and it may be, as man has sustained this thing called love through the family. So to find out what love is, not theoretically, not in abstraction, but actually, one has to understand whether love has any opposite.

There is hatred and one sees the necessity that hatred must cease and that there must be affection, love, kindliness. Is love the opposite of hate and can love be pursued and thereby hate denied? So one must understand, it seems to me, the nature of the opposite, that is, the nature of duality. Because when we talk about change, we are always thinking in those terms - of what is and what should be.

To understand that, or to come upon it, one must first investigate this whole question of experience. Because most of us want experiences, our daily life is so shallow, empty and dull. With all the sensations, the sexual experiences, the delights of a morning, a cloudless morning and the tint and the colour of the leaves - with all that we want deeper, wider experiences; and drugs seem to satisfy, to give that experience, to expand the mind as they call it. Taking certain drugs, thought is in abeyance and there is a feeling that there are paths through all - take a trip and experience something tremendous! Most of us want deep fundamental lasting experience: an experience that will be completely satisfying, an experience that will never be destroyed by thought. So it seems to me that one has to go into this question of experience and what is involved in it. Unless one understands this, the exploration into the discovery of something that is real, true, will become impossible as long as you are merely seeking an experience which will be completely gratifying, completely satisfying - for that is all we want, don't we? We want an experience that will completely give us a sense of fullness; an experience that will gratify totality. Behind this demand for experience there is the desire for satisfaction. We want to be satisfied and nothing satisfies us - sex, so-called love, so-called daily existence which is very shallow - we want something very deep and very satisfying and so there is our demand for great, wide, deep experience. So the demand for satisfaction dictates the experience; and we have not only to understand this whole business of satisfaction but also the thing that is experienced. To have great satisfaction is a great pleasure; the more lasting, deep and wide that experience the more the pleasure. So pleasure dictates the form of experience that we demand, we want; pleasure is the measure by which we measure the experience.

Krishnamurti: Sorrow is the result of a crisis, and what does one learn out of sorrow? Wait a minute Madam - we'll find out what causes it. But do you learn anything from sorrow, and when you do learn, what have you learnt? Either not to have any more sorrow, how to defend yourself, how to resist sorrow, or how to avoid sorrow - but actually what has one learnt? And what is sorrow? The sorrow of loneliness, the sorrow of not being loved, or loving, the other person not responding, the sorrow of ignorance about oneself, the sorrow of death in which there is a great deal of self-pity.

Questioner: Krishnaji, is dying to everything every day the gateway to love.

Krishnamurti: I am afraid it's not, that's just an idea. I do not know why we give such extraordinary importance to ideas. We want love, we don't know what it is, but we want it. And to get that, one searches, seeks, one invents various gateways, paths, still in the realm of ideas, and one knows very well that an idea can never open the door to love - never, because idea is organized thought and thought can only give pleasure, can only breed further satisfaction. After all, there is the relationship of people who are married, the deep satisfaction that one derives, which one calls love. To find out what it is that man has sought and called love, you can't seek it, you can't go after it. Oh, it's so simple, isn't it, really?

After all, when one is talking about peace one also has to understand what love is, Because I do not see how there can be peace without love. love is not an abstraction, not an idea. love is not desire and pleasure. And to understand the nature of love, one has to go into this question of conflict. Essentially, conflict arises when there is a contradiction. That contradiction is engendered by the observer, by a centre which has continuity as memory.

But as we said, love is not desire nor pleasure. Pleasure is the continuity of a desire which thought has thought about constantly. yesterday one has had sexual pleasure and thought is thinking about it, chewing; it and giving it continuity. And this thought about desire, which becomes pleasure, is obviously not love because thought cannot engender love; it can engender sensuality, pleasure, further strengthen desire. Desire is normal - when you look at a beautiful tree, a flower, a nice face and so on, the reaction is normal, healthy, but when thought interferes with it, giving it continuity as pleasure by thinking about it, then that pleasure is obviously not that thing one calls love; and thought cannot possibly cultivate love. Is it possible for thought to be completely absent when there is a desire? To look at a beautiful car: seeing, sensation, desire, and then thought comes in saying `I wish I had it'. And thought, thinking about it, cultivates pleasure. Is it possible to look at that car without any interference - if one can call it so - of thought?

Like love, beauty is not the cultivation of thought. A thing of beauty is not beauty. Beauty is not in the thing, in the building, in the person; but there is that beauty which is not the result of conditioning, in which thought in no way interferes. And observing all this within oneself, if one has gone sufficiently deeply, if you have done it with me, with the speaker this morning, one finds that one can live without any conflict, any contradiction. Contradiction exits when there is comparison; not only with something, but also comparison with what I was yesterday. And hence conflict arises between what has been and what is. There is only what is when there is no comparison at all - and to live completely with `what is', is to be peaceful. Because then you can give your whole attention to `what is' without any distraction to what is within oneself, whatever it be - despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and live with, what is, completely. Then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict.

Do you mean to say that you can discipline yourself to love? Exercise will to love? And when you do exercise will, discipline to love, love goes out by the window, doesn't it? So love has nothing whatsoever to do with discipline. But when there is that state of attention which is care, affection, that in itself is discipline. I can't attend if I don't give my whole being to listen. But if I make an effort to listen I'm not listening, there is a battle going on inside me and hence will in itself is a contradiction. It is that which creates duality. There's no time to go into it now, but one can observe it in oneself.

I think that way of looking, asking, is a waste of time. You know, when you love something, you're not thinking about the rest of the world, because in that love the whole world is included. In the same way, when we begin to understand the nature of violence and are actually free of it, we'll never ask that question. But when you do ask the question, you become a missionary, a propagandist; the moment you become a propagandist, a missionary, you have come to the end of everything: you create more misery.

Krishnamurti: Do you need will or discipline to listen? When you don't want to listen and are forced to listen because it's profitable, it's worthwhile, it brings you this or that, then you discipline yourself to listen. But when you want to understand something, when you want to understand sorrow (which we'll perhaps go into another time), physical sorrow, the pain, the sorrow which man goes through, when you want to understand it, where is the place of will? But in the very process of understanding suffering here is discipline; the very process is discipline. Sir, look, what does discipline imply - generally, as it is accepted? I believe the root of that word is `to learn', not `conform'. It's excellent in the army, when you are drilled - there you don't have to understand a thing except the mechanical process of killing somebody. To understand suffering, to look at it, to find out all about it, does it need discipline? - discipline in the sense of conforming to a pattern, imitating, obeying a certain rule, formula. But to understand something you have to pay attention, you have to love and when you love something, that very nature of love is discipline.

To really commune with one another words are not necessary at all. But to commune implies to be at the same level at the same moment with the same intensity, otherwise communion is not possible. And when we are talking about fear (as we were the other day), to commune about it, each one of us, it seems to me, must be at that level of heightened intelligent awareness at the same time, with the same quality of attention, urgency and intensity. Our intensity may be of short duration (it generally is, because we are so occupied with so many other things), but to be intensely aware and to sustain it, that needs a certain affection, certain care, a certain quality of love.

I am afraid about something, there is no fear as an abstraction; it is in relation to something. I am afraid of something - the past, what people say, death, lack of love, the fear of the wife or the husband, and so on. Now, how do I look at that fear? Please, let's go slowly, step by step into it. I say, I am observing that fear, I know that I am afraid and I know the reactions to that fear, and now I'm trying not to escape from it, not to suppress it nor even to analyse it, because analysis is a waste of energy. Please understand this: when you look at something very closely, with complete attention, you don't have to analyse, it is all there. It is only when you are inattentive that you have time to analyse. But when the thing is immediate, demanding your complete attention, then you will see the whole thing without any form of analytical process.

Krishnamurti: Yes, I understand the question. When you look at a flower it's fairly easy to identify yourself with the flower, but when you look at violence, something which you call evil, by merely dissipating the space between the observer and the observed, will that evil disappear? Isn't that the question? When you look at a flower and identify yourself with that flower, are you the flower? Obviously you're not the flower. I can identify myself with this country, but I am not this country. I'm a human being, I'm not an ideal. So I can identify myself with ideas, with images, but not with `what is'. I can look at a tree and identify myself with the tree, but I never become the tree. (I hope not!) (Laughter) But what is important, is not identification at all; that we have done - identifying ourselves with a country, with an idea, with a church, with God, and so on - which has led to such appalling misery. But to look at a tree without any identification with it - to look at it, to watch it - as one watches it one finds out how to watch. As you watch, perhaps you begin to love it. And the space between yourself and the tree is not. That doesn't mean you become the tree. It's the same if one watches that which one calls evil. You see, we want to identify ourselves with the good and not identify ourselves with the evil. But can you identify yourself with the good? Goodness can only flower when there is no conflict; but there will be conflict as long as you are identifying yourself with something, with what you call good and denying, resisting that which you call evil. In both, in identifying with the evil, in that there is conflict. Whereas if you observe what is the good and the evil - watch it - then perhaps you can go beyond both. 16th September 1967

Krishnamurti: Have you ever observed out of silence Please, just listen. Have you ever observed anything out (silence? Please don't answer me, I'm just asking you. You have listened for an hour to the speaker. Have you listen out of silence, or with the noise of opinion, judgement, evaluation, accepting or denying? Have you listened out of silence. Then if you have listened out of silence you have understand the totality of life. If you have not, then you will always be asking, how am I to do this, or to do that. just watch please - once. Just watch out of silence a bird, a tree, a movement of clouds. And when you have watched the movement of clouds out of silence, then watch your husband or wife out of silence and you will see how immeasurably, how extraordinarily difficult it is to watch - specially your husband or your wife, because you have images about them. It is only in silence that there is relationship, because in silence and out of silence there is love.

Krishnamurti: No Madame. When you say it is not possible you have already blocked yourself. It is like a man saying It is possible. He has also blocked himself, prevented himself from observing. Surely one can observe one's thoughts. Have you ever observed your own anger? Not after it is over, but actually in the state of anger. Have you observed it? - in the state of annoyance, in the state of violence. That means, to observe that, you must be extraordinarily attentive. But most of us are inattentive, because that is the easiest way t live, and the dullest way to live, to be inattentive. And that has become a habit. Then we ask, how am I to break out of that habit. By observing the whole machinery of habit, because all of us live in habits. The mind lives in habit, because it is the easiest way. just to be aware of it - not to condemn it, not to say, it is right or wrong, but just to watch it! and you can watch it only when you care and you have affection. love is not habit.

Krishnamurti: Madam, I haven't finished. Wait a minute Sir! Because meditation is one of the greatest arts of life - perhaps the greatest arts. Because in the understanding of meditation there is love, and love is not the product of systems, of habits, of following a method. love cannot be cultivated by thought. love can perhaps come in to being when there is complete silence. And the mind can only be silent when it understands the nature of its own movement, as thought and feeling. And to understanding that, there can be no condemnation in observing thought and feeling. To so observe is discipline. Hence that kind of discipline is fluid, free, not the discipline of conformity. So meditation can take place when you are sitting in a `bus, or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, of listening to the singing birds, or looking at the face of your wife or husband'. Meditation is not something apart; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation of life has ceased. And also there is contemplation, to contemplate life, not from a centre, not from your particular idiosyncrasy, tendency, or inclination, but to contemplate the whole movement of life: the misery, the conflict, the confusion, the sorrow, the endless travail of man - to watch that as a total movement. You cannot watch it if there is any form condemnation. Such contemplation is meditation. And you cannot contemplate or meditate if there is no silence.

Look Sirs, I'll put it round the other way. If you deny hate, envy (deny it, not build resistance against it, not escape from it, nor accept it) when you deny hate or violence, which breeds so much animosity, - and you can only deny it when you understand the nature of it, see what is implied in it, not intellectually, but actually - then when you deny that, in that very denial is the positive which is love in which there is no hate. love is not the opposite of hate. So, when we deny every form of belief, belief in God, belief in saying `there is no God', when you deny both - which is to understand why human beings want to believe (because in that there is a hope, and one projects hope because one is frightened, one is insecure, anxious, in despair) then when you deny all that, negate it, in that very negation is a positive in which there is no conflict whatsoever.

THIS IS THE last talk. We have been considering many problems of life and I think we should also enquire into the problem of what is a religious mind. We have talked about fear, death, and also we went into the question of what love is. I think we should this evening consider the state of mind that is able to perceive what is truth. Because man, not only in the West but also in the East has been searching, groping endlessly to find out what truth is, and what God is: if there is a God, if there is such a thing as truth. Every culture, every civilization, every human being throughout the world has been asking this question. And it seems to me that we should not only ask the question seriously, but also find out for ourselves, not theoretically, not as a vague belief in a concept, in an idea, but find out the fact whether there is God or not. There is a whole group of people who deny the very idea of God, because to them it smells too much, it stinks. They throw it out, because in the name of religion so many crimes have been committed; there have been so many wars - in the name of God, in the name of peace there has been such torture - as the Inquisition. And there are those who firmly assert that there is. And to belong to either camp, to the believer or non-believer, seems to me so utterly immature; because both are conditioned to believe. From childhood one is brought up to believe that there is God, that there is a truth, that it must be attained, that only a certain saviour can show the way, or help one. And there is the whole Communist world which doesn't believe it at all, from childhood they are conditioned not to believe.

To come upon this one has to enquire into what is awareness. And one also has to find out what it is to be attentive. To be aware of the lights, of the shape of the hall, the roof, the carpet, the colour, just to be aware of it without any choice, without any comparison, without any condemnation - just to observe. I do not know if you have ever tried it. If you have, and if you are aware, then you will see how you judge, condemn, approve: `I like', `I don't like', `this is ugly', `this is beautiful', `this particular colour I don't like at all, it is repulsive', `that colour is very attractive'. Such statements prevent that awareness, which is to be aware without any choice; then only are you watching, then only do you see. You know, when you are completely attentive, in that state you see; it's only love that sees and nothing else, not thought, not the mind, not the intellect. So one has to learn how to look, how to hear. As we said the other day, learning is not accumulating, learning is always the active present, It is not that having learnt you observe; you see only in the instant present. And when you are so aware, then you begin to discover for yourself, without any preacher, any teacher, any book, any philosophy, theologian, priest, or psychologist, you begin to discover the nature and the structure of your own self: how you look, how you feel, what you think, what your motives are; you are aware of yourself instantly. And from that awareness there comes the state of attention. You know most of us are inattentive, that is our habit. We are never attentive. Attention means complete attention, not intellectual, emotional attention, but the total attention which one gives when one is completely in front of a danger, or in face of a crisis. That attention is virtue. It is only in that attention virtue can flower. And when there is that attention, then you will find that out of it comes complete aloneness. I do not know if you have ever experienced what loneliness is. I think one has. To be lonely, that is to feel oneself isolated, having no relationship with anything; in that sense of loneliness there is despair - there are moods, one is familiar with that sense of loneliness - and one runs away from it by turning on the radio, by reading a book, by sex and ten different activities. That loneliness is the very essence of self-consciousness. And when one goes beyond that, there is this state of attention in which there is complete aloneness, which is not isolation, which is not separation, which is not a withdrawal. Because it is only this aloneness, when the mind is no longer a plaything of thought, when thought has been understood totally - then out of that comes this sense of aloneness. it is that which is innocence, and it is that innocence which is beyond all mortality. It is only that innocence which can come upon the new, that which is always new, which is timeless. This whole process man has sought through meditation. Perhaps you do not know that word. The whole of Asia knows the meaning of that word. Here you may use a different word. Man has tried through meditation, through control, through following a system, a method, to come upon this innocence, this freshness, this reality, which is not of time. One can only come upon it when one has understood what it means to experience, what pleasure and desire mean, and also the nature of awareness and attention. Then out of that total comprehension comes the solitude and aloneness which opens the door. And no one - no drug, no priest, no God, no religion - will ever give the energy to open that door.

Please watch what is taking place. You experience; thought experiencing is the present, which is looking at a car; there is direct perception, then thought comes, thought being the old, and gives continuity to that desire by thinking about it, which is pleasure. All this, as we said, is instantaneous. And is it possible for thought not to interfere at all? Because one cannot shut one's eyes, or ears. You see, you hear, you taste, you look at a beautiful sunset, a tree, a lovely landscape with lakes and mountains, you can't shut your eyes to it all. Then thought comes in giving to the new (which is direct seeing) a continuity which becomes the memory. There was a lovely sunrise this morning, one looked at it, it was a beautiful thing, thought captured it and wants that pleasure repeated tomorrow. The old has captured the instant beauty of a sunset sunrise, and so thought can never find the new, thought can never experience the new. And how is it possible, without control, without subjugation, without denial, for thought not to allow itself to interfere? You understand the question I hope the problem is clear. Because we have lived so long a human beings, over two million years, accumulated so much so many thousand experiences, and our innocency is not There is nothing new and man, if he is at all alert and awake, is always demanding the new. And the entity that is seeking the new is always thought. And thought is always the old, because it is the response of accumulated memories, of experienced knowledge. And is it possible for thought not to interfere at all?

Now we are going to find this out, find out for ourselves if it is at all possible. But if you say it is not possible you have already blocked it. Or, if you say it is possible you have also blocked it. Either agreement or disagreement with that statement prevents you from going further, which may be what you want. But if you want to go into it very deeply there must be neither acceptance nor denial, but examination. And to examine there must be freedom, freedom from opinion, from conclusion. That is to say, thought, which is always old, always conditioned, never free-though it may talk endlessly about freedom, peace and love - thought can never find the new. All our life is based on thought, from the moment we wake up in the morning until we go to sleep, thought is in operation, cunning, desperate, hopeful, in despair, seeking pleasure, denying sorrow, and so on and on endlessly. Therefore we are living always in the past, always. So when we ask this question, whether thought can have a stop, whether thought which is in time can come to an end, we are asking a most fundamental question. A fundamental question cannot be answered by somebody else. When you ask a fundamental question all authority has gone. Therefore when all authority, of every kind, is put aside, denied, then you can find out for yourself. We are asking a question that demands attention. We are asking whether thought can come to a stop (though thought is necessary at certain levels) whether thought can come to an end and not interfere. When you look at the sunset, at a tree, at a bird on the wing, when you see a face with which you have lived, to look at it as though for the first time! Though you walk in the same path, the same road, to look at the whole thing as though it had never happened before! - that is important, because from that there is a discovery of something entirely different. So is it possible for thought to stop? You know, man has tried this in different ways, through drugs, through control, through meditation, through the demand for that state when you can receive grace. Or by identifying, to lose oneself entirely in something, in the country (which is an idea), in patriotism (which is again an idea), in a projection which one calls God (which is again a concept, an image, a symbol). Man has tried so many ways, by control, by suppression, by identifying himself with something which he calls greater, to forget himself totally; through sex, through a particular activity to which he is committed - like the Communist who is committed to a particular ideology and having identified himself with it he works endlessly for that ideology; but it is still identifying himself with an idea, he is working for himself, calling it for the collective, and so on. So is it possible for a mind to become totally empty, totally fresh, completely innocent, although it has lived a thousand years?

We were saying that responsibility is part of the respectability which we worship. And is seems to me where there respectability there is no order, we are only concerned with being a perfect bourgeois. Please Sir just listen; does love have responsibility and will it use that word? When you say I am responsible to God, whatever that may mean, that God is the projection of your own imagination, it is a projection of yourself, identified, clothed in certain forms of respectability, of what you consider to be holy. But it is still your projection. And you are responsible to that God, that is, responsible to yourself, to what you have projected. And in that respectability, in that responsibility, is there any affection? When you do something out of duty is there any love in it? When a soldier is sent abroad to kill because of his responsibility for his country, is there any love? So order can only come about when there is love, when there is real affection, when there is compassion.

Krishnamurti: The feeling that one has of responsibility, is that part of the order we have been speaking about at this meeting? Can it be? I wonder what we mean by that word responsible. To me that is a very ugly word. But what do we mean by that word responsible? Responsible for my husband, for my children, responsible to the country, responsible to the Government, responsible to the God that man has invented. I wonder why we use that word at all. Are you responsible when you love? Or are you only responsible when you have duty and you cease to love? When do we use that word? Do investigate the meaning of that word. I am responsible to my wife, my husband, to my country; take those three. What does that word mean when I say I am responsible?

And is there a moment when death is no longer a fear, when life is no longer a battle? Is there ever such a moment when time has stopped, when thought is totally in abeyance There is such a moment and that moment is love. And with, out love, do what you will, build marvellous buildings, go to the moon, wipe out poverty, do away with wars because they are not profitable - do what you will - without that love there can be no order. But we don't want order. We have lived in such disorder for so many centuries we are afraid of order. If we want order, which is peace, we will live peacefully. That means no nationality, no belief, no dogma, no competition, no division of people; but we don't want all those things because we are so used to live a life of battle. And we say, if there is no strife we shan't make progress, we shan't be active. We would rather cling to the thing known though it breeds disorder, chaos and misery, than bring about order and peace.

So one sees that order within the skin, within the mind, being, can never be the product of thought. Thought can create habits, conformity, obedience, and that, as one observes, only leads to greater disorder, to greater confusion and misery. And order, which is virtue, is quite a different thing. It is necessary to understand this whole process of thought, how one thinks, why one thinks, just to observe it. If you give your attention to it completely, not merely intellectually or emotionally, but totally, in that totality of attention here is immediate comprehension, and therefore immediate action. And when one sees what the nature of thought is, then one begins to find out what love is. love is not desire or pleasure. But for us, for most people, love is pleasure and desire. So what is the truth of love? What does it mean? Obviously the word is not the thing. The word microphone is not the microphone. But we are caught in the word, in the symbol, in the imagination of what we think or what we are told that love is. So one must be free of the word, of the symbol, to find out the nature of that extraordinary thing which we call love. Since love is not desire nor pleasure, how does one come upon it? Obviously one cannot cultivate it, that is too immature: to identify oneself with an image which is said to be love, as the Christians do, or as they do in the Orient in their own way. So how does one come upon that thing? To come upon it one has to find out what beauty is.

What is beauty? Does beauty lie in the object, in the architecture, in the tree, in the face of a beautiful person, the light on the water? Does it lie outside, or is it something that is not dependant on the observer and the observed? And how does that take place in which there is neither the observer nor the observed? I do not know if you have ever looked at a mountain, or a tree in Spring, or water flowing by. You must have observed it and you say how beautiful it is and we think we have understood beauty. Surely beauty is something when there is total abandonment of oneself; when there is no observer at all; when you completely abandon your own ideas, your own feelings, die to everything that you have known. That is, total self-abandonment takes place; say for example, when you observe a mountain, with its snow, light, depth, beauty and majesty, that very thing drives away all thought for a moment, a second, you are stunned by that sight and then the mind becomes completely quiet. In that state you feel something which cannot be put into words but which is the nature of beauty. There the mountain, the river or the flower by the wayside, drives away for a second all your thoughts, all your worries, all your impressions. And can one die to everything that one has thought of oneself, all one's pleasures, one's worries, on the instant, which is the total abandonment of oneself? That demands great austerity. Not the austerity of the priest, nor of the monk, nor of the saint; their austerity is very harsh, it is meaningless, it is an ugly thing. We are not talking of such austerity. Austerity comes only when the mind understands the nature of that interval between the observer and the observed, and is no longer sustaining the observer through thought. That brings about an extraordinary quality of sensitivity. And a mind that is not sensitive, alert, can never know what love is.

To find out what thinking is, not according to some philosopher, not according to the ancients, but actuality to find it for oneself, one has to observe how thought arises. This, please, is important to understand because we are going to go into the question not only of time, love and beauty, but also we are going to find out the truth about death. It is a very complex thing that we are attempting to do this evening.

In understanding thought perhaps we shall understand the nature of time, and we may come upon that sense of love and beauty. For without love and beauty there is no truth. But to understand what love is, and what beauty is, we must go into this question of thought. What is thinking? When one asks that question - `what is thinking?' - what actually takes place. Either one responds to it immediately, giving an answer; or there is an interval between the question and the answer. In that interval one is looking for an answer, looking in the storehouse of knowledge trying to find out what is the answer. So between the question and the answer there is an interval of time, and in that interval we are searching, asking, examining, hoping to find it. When you are asked a question which is familiar the response is immediate.

For us thought, the whole mechanism of thought, is very important. And perhaps the very act of thinking may be the cause of deterioration, the cause of a mind losing its capacity to see very clearly, to act directly, and perhaps be able to understand the nature of love. So before we begin to go into this question of what is the central factor of the deterioration of the mind (which may be the whole mechanism of thought), we should consider not only the nature of the mind but also the brain. And whether it is possible for the very brain cells themselves to function not self-protectively, not in self- centred action, but face much wider, deeper issues.

Question: If you love your own child, your attention to your child is fairly complete, but if you are a teacher you cannot give attention to all the children.

Krishnamurti: You can watch your own child, the questioner says, with great affection, but if you are a teacher you cannot do that. So the problem is, how to watch when you want to be a good teacher, isn't it? Now, what is a teacher? In a school you know more than the child and you are imparting, giving him information. You want him to learn, you want him to acquire knowledge, you want him to know the ways of the world, not only technologically, outwardly, but also you want to help him to understand his inward structure. You are teaching him, so you are the instructor, the leader, the teacher helping him. And you say that in that state it is not possible to love. Is that right?

Krishnamurti: When you are a teacher you are limited in your activities because of the parents, because of society. You may love your child, and you may be a good teacher and love many children, but you say your helping the child is conditioned by the society and by the parents. So, what is one to do? You cannot scrap the parents! That is obvious. (Laughter). And you cannot break down the society. I wish you could, but you can't. So what is one to do? Which means, what? That you not only have to educate the parents but also educate the educator. Right? You have to educate the parents and you have to educate the teacher himself. It is not just a one-sided affair. Again it is the total phenomenon of the society in which we are living. The parents throughout the world are only concerned that the child shall make a good living, a good marriage, be secure, fit into the established order, that he must not revolt. That is what is happening in Russia - the child, the student must not criticize, he must accept the social structure of Communism. And the same thing happens here in a slightly different way. Every parent wants his child to have a safe job, a good home, and goodbye. In that state there is no affection at all. love is something totally different. If the parents loved there would be no wars. (Do you mean to say that the Americans love their children who are being shot to pieces in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese being shot to pieces also? Do you think if they had loved this would have arisen, this phenomenon?) We educate our children wrongly, which means that we are only concerned with giving them a technological efficiency. We are not concerned with their inward structure and their inward being, because we do not want a revolution, inwardly, because that means that our whole social structure may be destroyed. And we do not want any kind of disturbance. Nobody wants to be disturbed. The Communists when they get into power do not want disturbance, nor the particular Democratic Party when it gets into power, they do not want any disturbance either. As human beings we do not want to be disturbed, and so we create a society in which we hope there will be no disturbance.

I do not know if you have ever tried - as we were hinting yesterday - to look at a tree. Holland is full of lovely trees, lovely meadows, and there is a marvellous light because here the sky is very low to the earth and the light is entirely different. And if you have ever noticed it, if you have ever observed it, when you look at a tree do you really look at or at the image which you have of that tree? When you look at your wife or your husband, do you look at him or her through the image?

As we said yesterday, fear is always in relation to something; it does not exist by itself. It is not an isolated phenomenon; in life there is no isolated phenomenon at all, everything is interrelated. Fear we know at the conscious level. We know the fear of losing the job, not having enough food to eat, not fulfilling, not achieving, not becoming a success, and so on. The outward fear we can fairly intelligently spot without too much analysis. And perhaps we can deal with these outward phenomena of fear fairly intelligently - if the mind is not totally self-centred in its activities. But we are going to enquire into fear at the deeper levels of consciousness - because there it has its roots; there we find the fear of death, the fear of not being, the fear of not having love, the fear of not fulfilling, the many, many fears that human beings have. And before we begin to enquire into the unconscious, which we have so easily accepted, we are questioning whether there is an unconscious at all. What is consciousness? I hope this is not all too serious, is it? If it is, I am sorry, because one has to be serious. Only to the serious life is, not to the fanciful, not to the man who is seeking amusement, not to the man who lives in books. It is only the earnest that know what life is; and one has to be serious. The world demands it, not only the world outwardly but the world inwardly, it demands that man be serious - not according to a particular pattern of belief, or in a particular technological way, but serious totally. Only to such a man is there life - the depth and the fullness and the beauty of it. So, we are asking: what is the unconscious, and is there such a thing as the unconscious?

All ideologies, however noble sounding, are idiotic because they have no validity. What has validity is what is. The what is is that we are all human beings throughout the world and whatever our particular culture is, we are violent. When you have an ideal of non-violence, which is only an idea, if you are acting according to that ideology then you are evading the central issue, which is violence. You can understand violence only when you give your total comprehension to violence - not when your mind is divided by the ideal of non-violence. Please follow this. Understanding is only possible when all ideologies have totally come to an end. Then you can face the fact that you are violent, because then you can give your total attention to it. Attention is not then divided into what is and what should be. So ideologist are mischief makers because they are dealing with un-realities. You know, religions have done this, organized religions. They have said that you must love your neighbour. Throughout the world they have said this; it is not just a Christian doctrine. But society is so constructed that you destroy your neighbour. The fact is that you are destroying the neighbour by your greed, your envy, your acquisitiveness, by your desire for position, power and prestige. Instead of tackling that central problem of violence, we escape into ideations.

Unless one understands this, what we are going to discuss presently will have very little meaning - because we are going to go into the question of fear. We are going into fear, which is not only at the conscious level but also at the very deep-rooted layers of the total consciousness. Surely, understanding takes place only when the mind is completely quiet. It takes place when there is no effort, when there is no interference of ideas, when there is no response of the background. Then you can say `I have understood it!' - and there is immediate action. You can see this in your own life. If you want to understand your child - and I hope you do - then you observe that child without any sense of consideration, without any sense of comparison with the brother, the other children. You watch him at play, when he is crying, when he is being naughty; you are merely watching - in which there is no valuation whatsoever. Therefore the mind is extremely quiet, quiet in the very action of watching. This really means that the mind, being silent, is in a state of great affection. I do not know if you have observed that love does not chatter. love is not pleasure, nor desire. love is silent; it has nothing to do with the interference of ideation. So, understanding is only possible when the mind is completely quiet - not blank, not in a state of abstraction nor in a state of identification, but a silence that is completely active. It is only then that you can say. `I have understood' and it is only then that there is complete action. Hence, there is no conflict involved.

We are talking about fear. What do we mean by that word? Please, as we said just now, don't merely listen to words, because that will have no meaning, but through the word, examine yourself. Look at yourself and see what you are afraid of, actually what you are afraid of - darkness, you wife, your husband, your neighbour, or your debts, or no having success, not being loved. Whatever it is: fear of authority, fear of brutality, fear of being dominated. We are afraid and do you know what that means? Have you ever been in contact with fear? Or are you in contact with the image you have about fear? The two things are different, aren't they? I have an image about you, and you have an image about me and our contact is between these two images, and therefore there is no contact at all; there is no relationship at all, there is merely relationship of ideas, memories.

Is freedom a thing to be achieved through a gradual process of time, through discipline, control, suppression? Or is freedom at the beginning, not at the end? That is, to examine there must be freedom. To actuality look at this microphone, or look at your neighbour, to look at a tree, or a bird, or the light on a canal, to actually see them, there must be freedom. And this freedom doesn't lie at the end of one's miserable life, but it lies at the beginning. And there is freedom when you realize for yourself that to see, to examine, to explore this whole sociological structure, to question the psyche is to understand by that very questioning that there must be freedom. When one demands it the urgency is there because one wants to understand immediately. Then with that urgency comes attention, care, and therefore that attention and care are beauty and love, and that is freedom, it is not a concept.

Most of us hardly listen; we hear a great many words, we hear and translate what we hear into our own opinions, opposing and accepting. But I mean, really to listen without translation, without interpretation, without opinion; actually to listen without any sense of condemnation - which doesn't necessarily mean acceptance. On the contrary, when we so listen attentively, and with care, it is really with a sense of affection and love - because without attention and care it is not possible to listen to anything. If you listen to music or to anything you believe in, you must give attention, and also you must care, care enormously, to actually listen to the breeze among the leaves. In the same way, to listen to what the speaker is going to say needs a great deal of attention; and there is no possibility of attention when the mind is occupied with judgment, opinion, comparison, condemnation or justification. But to actually listen! Condemnation or comparison merely act as distractions, and therefore there is no listening. First one has to understand the words. What is said in words is not the fact; the word is never the fact; the thing. We must go beyond the word in order to understand, in order to communicate; and that is going to be our problem (amongst many others: not only how to listen, but also to go beyond the word. To go beyond the word is necessary because we have so many problems in life, not only physical, but also the deeper psychological problems. We have enormous problems, not only the individual problem but the collective, social problem. The individual is part of the social structure, and this structure has been created by individuals throughout the world. The social structure outwardly is the inward, psychological structure of our human relationships.

One observes throughout the world there are two fundamental issues, violence and sorrow. That violence and sorrow is not limited to the Orient nor the Occident, to the West nor the East; it is part of the human psychological structure. Violence we have accepted as a way of life - in wars, in our business, in our outward social structure; competition and all the things we know of - how we dislike, hate, get angry, violent. We are familiar with that and have accepted it as a way of life. That is, though we talk endlessly about love and loving our neighbour, when we are actually in the office, in business, we cut his throat. There is war going on - there have been thousands of wars and we have accepted war, conflict, violence, as a way of life. We have also accepted sorrow; the sorrow of everyday life, everyday misery, everyday quarrels, conflict, unfulfilment; the sorrow of loneliness, despair, the sorrow of not having loved, the sorrow of death, and the endless complexities of our psyche. And having accepted that, not knowing how to resolve it totally, we worship sorrow as the Christians do: put a cross and figure on it; and we think by worshipping it we have solved it. In the Orient they think differently. They say, well perhaps the next life will be better.

Krishnamurti: `Expression without a motive' - most people pretend that expression is without motive, and are at the same time cunning enough to realize that expression without motive is a rather questionable thing. But we are asking something entirely different. Is there an expression without the self-activity which expresses itself And what is there to be expressed? When you love, you don't talk of self-expression. But if love is tinged with desire, pleasure, then you want it expressed, sexually or in books; it needs to be expressed. But if there is no self-centred activity in expression then it may not express at all - you will live and living itself is expression. 30th April 1967

You know the word `passion; that word so often signifies suffering; the Christians have used that word to symbolize certain forms of suffering. We are not using that word `passion' in that sense at all. In this complete state of negation is the highest form of passion; that passion implies total self-abandonment. For such complete self-abandonment there must be tremendous austerity; austerity that is not the harshness of the priest agonizing people, of saints who have tortured themselves, who have become austere because they have brutalized their mind. Austerity is really an extraordinary simplicity; not in clothes, not in food - but inwardly. This austerity, this passion, is the highest form of total negation. And then perhaps if you are lucky - (if you are lucky!) - there is no luck there - the thing comes uninvited. Then the mind is no longer capable of striving. Then you do what you will, because then there will be love.

As we said, space and silence are necessary. It is only in silence that there is beauty. As we are we only know beauty in the object - in a poem, music, a picture, and so on - but is there beauty without the object? - for if there is no beauty without the object then there is not beauty at all. And to find this quality of beauty, is really to find - if I may use that word - love. This quality of beauty can only exist in silence.

love cannot possibly be cultivated; it cannot be put together by thought. Thought is always old and love can never be old. All our relationship is based on thought; thought has created images which come between people, and it is these images that have relationships; so love doesn't exist. love is always new - yet neither new nor old, something entirely different.

If you are really serious, to find out the implications of death, then you have to come into contact with that fact of death, actually come into contact with it - not theoretically, not as something which you have got to face, therefore let's face it, but rather by coming directly into contact with it, by dying. Dying - I mean by that word, coming to the end of all the things that you have known psychologically, your experiences, your pleasures, to die - every day. Otherwise, you will never know what death is; for it is only in the dying that there is something new, not in continuing the old. Most of us are so weighed down by the known, by the yesterday, by the memories, by the `me', the `self', which is but a bundle of memories accumulated yesterday, having no actual existence in itself. Die to those memories; actually die to a pleasure without any argument. If you know what it means to die to a pleasure, to something that you have taken great pleasure in - without argument, without postponement, without any sense of resentment, bitterness - that is what is going to happen when you do die. And to die every day, to everything that you have gathered psychologically, is to be totally reborn. If you do not die in that way, then you have the continual problem of this memory that you have accumulated as the `me' and the self-centred activity that we indulge in - the thought of `my' house, `my' family, `my' book, `my' fame, `my' loneliness - you know, that little entity that moves around incessantly within itself, with its own limited pattern of existence. Will that continue? - you understand? - that is the problem we have. Either one knows how to die every day, and dying actually, the mind is fresh, instant, eager, tremendously alive, or, there is this bundle of memories, of self-centred activity, with all its thoughts, searching for fulfilment, wanting to be somebody, imitating, copying. That whole network of thought - will that continue? - yet that is what we want to continue. We say, at the least, if I haven't fulfilled in this life, perhaps I will in the next. All the desire to fulfil tomorrow, is the next life - I do not know if you understand that - thought centres round the `me' and it will obviously continue in some form or another; but that way of living is so stupid, it is like a machine that goes on endlessly, well-oiled, with little friction. And this continues to take place when - as we have done - we divide living from dying, for living is dying, (that is the fundamental fact of that word which we are using) you cannot live if you do not die every minute to every instance of psychological knowledge, information, gathering, pleasure - it is only then, perhaps, that we shall understand what love is. For us, as we are, love is something terrible, something which is an agony, hedged about by jealousy, envy and uncertainty in all relationships. All our intimate relationship is based on love as pleasure and desire; in this love we know possession, domination, fear, the agony of not being loved, of not knowing how to love - you know all that we go through. Never knowing what it means and we die. love has no sorrow; sorrow and love cannot go together; but in the Christian world suffering is idealized, it is put on a cross and worshipped - implying that you can never escape from suffering except through one particular door, all of which is the central dogma of an exploiting religious society. What we know as love is only hate, jealousy, antagonism, brutality and war. And love is not the opposite of hate, any more than humility is the opposite of vanity. A vain person can never be humble - he can struggle and achieve a form of humility, but it is hypocrisy. Being rid of vanity in every form - psychologically, inwardly, deeply, without the searching for humility - then there is humility and there is love. You know, the word `love' is so spoilt; every newspaper, every magazine and soap advertisement, talks about love - like the word `God' - and we are trying to use that same word yet give it an entirely different content.

One can see very simply how desire arises and how that desire is sustained, given vitality, given a continuity. Surely, desire begins with seeing, or feeling, or tasting, and the sensation from that contact; then thought comes in and says that is very pleasurable, or not pleasurable - it must continue, or it must not continue. So thought gives to sensation a continuity and strengthens desire. You can observe it very simply; it is not, I think, a very complex problem. There is a beautiful face, a car, a lovely mountain and a sunset, a sheet of water glistening in the sun, you look at it, and there is great pleasure, enjoyment; seeing - sensation. Then thought comes in and says I must keep it, I must treasure it, I must think about it. That is what takes place in sex and in every other form of pleasure. So thought gives a continuity to pleasure, which is desire.

One has to understand this thing called death, of which most of us are so terribly frightened. I feel that a human being who does not understand what living, or dying, or that which we call love, is, is not really a human being at all, he is a frightened entity, like an animal. And the more outwardly we are sophisticated - going to the moon or living under the sea, having marvellous instruments of destruction, or construction - the more inwardly our lives become superficial. And that very superficiality leads to great misery, to greater conflict - perhaps not in the battlefield, but inwardly.

To understand these three fundamental issues - life, love and death one needs not only energy but also a very sharp mind; not a dull, mechanical mind, not a mind that is tremendously informed and knowledgeable - such a mind may be necessary at certain levels but not at the level of enquiry in this region.

I hope you are listening not merely to words but to the actual state of your own mind, to your own particular form of fear, despair, agony, loneliness, the lack of love, and so on, just giving your total and complete attention to it. In doing this you will discover for yourself how inattentive you are - this inattention is a waste of energy. Know when you are inattentive and be inattentive; not, try to become attentive when you are inattentive, that is a waste of energy. Be conscious, aware, know that you are inattentive, and be inattentive. And when you are attentive, give your whole being to attention - it doesn't matter if it lasts two seconds. With that attention, look; you will see that the thing that we have called life becomes transformed. There is then no `observer' separate from the thing observed, and therefore there is no conflict. The thing observed without the `observer' undergoes a tremendous transformation.

One, as a human being, has enormous complex problems, which one alone must solve; for somebody else's solution is of no significance, has no value at all. One has to solve them, and one needs the energy which one dissipates in so many useless, vain, unprofitable activities; that energy is necessary to solve the problems of love, living and death.

It seems to me that unless we solve these three fundamental issues of life, love, living and death, we are not really human beings at all, not really civilized, cultured. We may have a great deal of knowledge about pictures and music, we may write about the past, explain this or that, but we have not solved the problems which are of greatest significance in our lives - love, what is living, and what it means to die. And, if I may, I would like to go into this matter this morning; but not as idea, not as explanation, but rather as an investigation, a process of enquiry, so as to discover for oneself. For most of us are second-hand people; we have lived on what we have been told, guided by our inclinations or tendencies, and we have been compelled, urged or forced by circumstance, by environment, to accept a conditioned way of life. There is nothing original, pristine, clear. Being the result of all kinds of influences there is nothing new in us, there is nothing that we have discovered for ourselves. Discovery is a constant living process; you cannot discover, store up what you have discovered and then live according to that.

One has really to enquire into this question of what is evil and what is good, what is beauty and what is ugliness. When you get angry, violent, envious, greedy, jealous, would you call that evil? When you hurt another by a word, by a gesture, or by throwing a bomb, would you call that evil? But you are doing that all day. And what is it, to be good, to be kind, to be generous and not to create enmity? This dual thing exists in every human being - the good and the bad - the battle is there. That is our battlefield, we want to be peaceful and quiet, affectionate, yet there is the other in us, violent, wanting to hurt. Is it possible completely to be free of this duality? It is only possible to be free of this duality when you are completely in contact with the actual fact, with what actually is. That is to say, when you are violent, not to have its opposite as idea, as ideal, but to be completely aware of the total significance of violence. Then you will find, if you are totally aware of what actually is - whether you call it good or bad - then you will find that there is no duality at all. After all, if beauty is merely the opposite of ugliness, or if love is the opposite of hate, then there is neither beauty nor love. But, with us, love is the opposite of hate; therefore we are always caught in love, jealousy and hate. But when you completely face the fact - be it jealousy, envy, anger, brutality - not creating the opposite as a means of escape from the fact, then you will transcend both the good and the bad and go beyond. 20th April 1967

So there it is. One has discarded totally all outside authority - if one has - and one finds that authority is one of the causes of disorder. One sees one has followed a so-called teacher, philosopher, or saviour, out of fear - not out of love. If one had love, one wouldn't follow anybody; love doesn't obey, love has no duty, no responsibility. One follows, accepts, obeys, essentially because there is fear - fear of not arriving, of going wrong, and so on, a dozen forms of fear. Inwardly, to discard authority totally - the authority of another and also the authority of your own concepts, of your own experience of the past - is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do. It is fairly easy to deny the authority of society - the monks have done it in various ways, and the modern younger generation is doing it in a different way - but to discard the authority of one's own conditioning - of one's own experiences, the authority of the past in oneself, of which one is and which becomes the supreme authority - is much more difficult. And to discard that is much more important, much more essential, because that is what breeds outward authority, and also breeds fear, because one wants to be certain, sure, secure.

Krishnamurti: Fear - have you ever come into direct contact with fear? Have you ever been directly in contact with anything, a tree, with a flower, with a human being - directly, not through the image? You know, when you look at a tree in the park, there is always the observer and the observed - there is you watching the tree - there is a space between the observer and the observed. And to be in direct contact - you can touch the tree but that is not contact, nor is identifying yourself with the tree, I don't mean that, that is another form of mental gymnastics - but to be in direct contact is quite a different thing, it is to have no space at all. This is what takes place when various forms of drugs are taken - L.S.D. and so on - space disappears; that is quite a different experience. But that space recurs again so they take more drugs and so on, deteriorating, getting more and more weary of the drugs, and less and less result. But when one can observe without the observer - that is, the background, the ideological concepts, the memory - then space disappears altogether between people, and perhaps in that state there is no fear, there is only something called - verbally we can use that word - `love', but it is not the thing that is usually called love. We shall have to discuss fear another time.

You see wholly when the problem is sufficiently urgent, not only urgent for yourself but also for the world. There is war outwardly and war inwardly within each one of us, is it possible to end it immediately, psychologically turning your back on it? Nobody can answer that question except yourself except yourself when you answer it, not depending on any authority, on any intellectual or emotional concepts or formulas or ideologies. But as we said, this demands a great deal of inward seriousness, a great deal of earnest observation - observing when you are sitting in a bus the things about you, without choice, observing the thing within oneself that is moving, changing, observing without any motive, just everything as it is. What `is', is much more important than what `should' be. Out of this care and attention, perhaps, we will know what it is to love.

One has to understand the nature of pleasure; violence and pleasure are intimately related. Because again, as one observes oneself, one will see that our whole psychology is based on pleasure - apart from what the psychologists and the analysts talk about, one does not have to read a lot of books to see this - not only the sensory pleasures, as sex, but also the pleasure of achievement, the pleasure of success, of fulfilment, of achieving position, prestige, power. Again, all this exists in the animal. In a farmyard, where there are poultry, you see this same phenomenon taking place. There is pleasure, in the sense of taking delight, or of insulting. To achieve enjoyment, to achieve position, prestige, to be somebody famous, is a form of violence - you have to be aggressive. If one is not aggressive in this world, one is just downtrodden, pushed aside; so that one may well ask the question, `Can I live without aggression, and yet live in this society?' Probably not, why should one live in society? - in the psychological structure of society, I mean. One has to live in the outward structure of society - having a job, a few clothes, a house, and so on - but why should one live in its psychological structure? Why should one accept the norm of society which requires that one must become a successful writer, must be a famous man, must have...oh, you know, all the rest of it? All that is part of the pleasure principle which translates itself in violence. In church you say, love your neighbour - and in business you cut his throat; the norm of society has no meaning. The whole structure of the army, any structure based on the hierarchic principle, on authority, is again domination and pleasure, which is again part of violence, basic violence. To understand all this demands a great deal of observation - it is not a matter of capacity - you begin to understand, the more you observe. The very seeing is the acting.

Observe the fact of violence in the Orient, in India they have been talking endlessly about non-violence, preaching practicing - all nonsense - the moment there is any for of challenge it disappears and they become violent. Here also they talk endlessly about peace, in all the churches, of love, goodness, loving your neighbour - yet you have had the most terrible wars, fifteen thousand of them, within the last five thousand years. And one has to observe how deep-rooted this violence is within oneself, in the demand for fulfilment, in competing and always comparing oneself with somebody else, in imitating, in obedience and in the following of somebody, conforming to a pattern - all that is a form of violence. To be free of that violence, demands extraordinary attention and care; otherwise I don't see how there can be peace in the world. There may be so-called peace, between two wars, between two conflicts, but that is not real peace, deep within, untouched by any ideology, or by any thought, not put together by some meaningless little philosophy. If one hasn't that peace, how can one have love, affection, care; or how, if there is no peace, can one create anything? One may draw pictures, write poems, write books about the past, and all the rest, but it all leads to conflict, to darkness. But to have this freedom from violence, - totally, not just partially, fragmentarily - one has to go into the problem very deeply.