Tradition and Revolution

Krishnamurti: When you use the word ``essence'', it is the essence of all the flowers that makes the perfume and the quality. In perceiving the whole movement of thought as consciousness - consciousness with its content which is consciousness - and in observing that, in that very observation is the external refinement which is the essence. Right? In the same way there is the perception of the whole movement of the body, love, joy. When you perceive all that, there is the essence and in that there are no two essences.

Krishnamurti: Just look. I have watched what we have been doing during these discussions. We have observed the movement of thought as consciousness; the whole of it and the content of the movement is consciousness. There is perception of that. The perception is the distillation of that and that we call essence which is pure intelligence. It is not my intelligence or your intelligence but it is intelligence, it is essence. And when we observe the movement of love, hate, pleasure, fear, which are all emotive, there is perception and, as you perceive, the essence comes out of that. There are no two essences.

If there is complete cessation of thinking which is movement, is there a movement which is an emotive movement as love, devotion, tenderness, care? Is there a movement separate from thought; thought being verbal meaning, explanation, description, etc? Or when the movement of thought comes to an end without any compulsion, is there not a totally different movement which is not that or this?

Krishnamurti: Desire, hate, love, we say, are emotive and mental movements. Therefore there are these two movements. You ask, are they parallel and therefore separate or is it all one movement? I am not saying it is or it is not so.

A: Though one may not have personal hate or anger, when I read about Bengal, certain emotions come and they are social responses. I do not do a thing about it, whereas to have love, affection is a definite quality of enrichment; a sustenance; which the mind cannot give you.

Krishnamurti: We said just now that compassion, love, tenderness, care, consideration and politeness are one movement. The opposite movement is contrary to that - it is violence and all that. So there is the movement of the mind, the movement of affection, love and compassion; and the movement of violence. So there are now three movements. Then there is another movement which says this must be or this must not be; has the assertion that this must be or this must not be, anything whatsoever to do with the mental movement?

Krishnamurti: So you are separating the two. There is the movement of the mind and the movement of the heart: let us question whether they are separate? And if they are not separate, then when the mind is empty of consciousness in the sense in which we have used that word, what is the quality of the mind that is compassion - that is love, empathy? Let us begin by asking whether the movement of the heart is separate. Is any movement separate?

P: Any kind of emotional response which we call love, affection, goodwill, compassion, seems to ripple, to move from a focal point which we identify as the region of the heart. These ripples affect the heart, make it physically beat faster.

Krishnamurti: There is duality only when there is the operation of motive, measurement, comparison. In the observation of a lovely sunset, in seeing the light, the shadow, there is no duality. The word ``beautiful'' may be dualistic in terms of the ugly, but I am using the word without comparison. The moment I say I wish I had it again, begins the dualistic process. That is all.

What am I doing? I love nature. I commit myself to the world of nature, to the family and to an idea that we must all work together, for an end. What is happening, what am I doing in all this?

R: love of the place....

Krishnamurti: No, love. Not love of the place. You see what we are missing. Goals divide people; a goal being a formula, a goal being an ideal.

Krishnamurti: No. When two people come together out of affection, love, joy, then what is action which is not divisible, which does not divide? I love you, you love me and what is action out of that love? Not a goal? What is action between two people who love?

SW: In the Upanishads, it is one of love and compassion. The Upanishads maintain that compassion is the contact between the guru and the disciple.

SW: It is difficult to say. The two approaches must have existed for a long time. In one tradition, the guru is taken as a friend, as a person the disciple loves; in that the guru is not authoritarian at all. The other tradition exploits. It wants authority, followers.

Krishnamurti: No. The question is what is relationship? Be related to everything. Relationship means care; care means attention; attention means love. That is why relationship is the basis of everything. If you miss that, you miss the whole thing. Yes, Sir, this is the prison. To know is the prison and to live in the knowing is also the prison.

So, what is action? We have separated action from relationships: as social action, political action, you follow? We have not solved this problem of relationship. We discard it because it is too deadly to discuss relationship, because I know I have a wife and something may happen. So I do not want to discuss it. All that I say is I must be detached. If you accept all living is relationship, then what is action? There is one kind of action of technology, of mechanical action, but every other action is non-mechanical. Otherwise I reduce relationship into turning the wheel. That is why we have denied love.

When I enter the room, one object catches my eye. The lovely bedspread, and I casually look at other things. I say that is rather beautiful, the colouring, the design and it gives great pleasure.

I hate somebody and I love somebody. Both are energy - fragmentary energy acting in opposite directions - which breed conflict. Suffering is a form of energy; a fragment which we call suffering. So all our ways of 1iving are fragmented. Each is fighting the other. If there is a harmonious whole, that energy is passion. So that energy is this, is the mind that is free, sensitive, in which the ``me'' as the past is completely dissolved and, therefore, such a mind is full of energy and passion, and therefore that is beauty.

Krishnamurti: Thought is knowledge, which has accumulated through knowledge, through culture which says beauty is this. Thought is the response of memory which has created the object. I have discarded all that, the idea of beauty as truth, goodness, love. Perception of that is action and the action is the putting away, not ``I am putting away'', but the putting away. So the mind is now free. Freedom implies not freedom from something, but freedom. It is highly sensitive. Then what takes place? The mind is free, highly sensitive, is no longer burdened by the past; which means in that mind there is no observer at all; which means there is no ``me'' observing, because the ``me'' observing is a very, very limited affair. The ``me'', the past, is the observer, the ``me'' is the past. See what we have done. There is object, knowledge and perception; through knowledge we recognize the object; and we are asking the question, is there perception without knowledge, without the observer? So we discard the two: object and knowledge. In perceiving there is the action of discarding.

Krishnamurti: The seeing of goodness, beauty, love, truth, put all that aside.

Krishnamurti: It is like saying that I love my wife partially.

So our problem is how to meet, to come together at the same time, at the same level, with the same intensity. That is the real question. We do that when there is sex which we call love. Otherwise you battle for yourself and I battle for myself. This is the problem. Can I, who am in sorrow, say, ``Let us come together, let us talk it over'', and not talk of what Nagarjuna, Sankara and others say.

Krishnamurti: To me communication means sharing together, thinking together, creating together, understanding. When are we together? Surely, not on the verbal level alone. We are together to share the problem, when we are tremendously vital, passionate, at the same level with the same intensity. When does this happen? It happens when you love something. When you love, it is finished. I kiss you, and I hold your hand, it is finished. When we lack that thing, we spin around with words. I am sure all the professionals miss that.

Krishnamurti: Then you enter the same circus - naming, the word, which means to strengthen the knowledge that you hit me. I do not stop there. You hit me that is a fact. My son is dead. That is a fact. To become cynical, bitter, to say ``I loved him and he is gone'' - all that is verbalization.

S: This statement is at variance with my experience. I have experienced timeless moments. I loved it. I have a memory of it.

Questioner A: I was in the self-preparation group of the Theosophical Society in 1923-24. In that group, there was a preparation for understanding - viveka, vairagya and love. It was a traditional approach. A change came about when you said let us break away from organizations, from all disciplines. In the work At the Feet of the Master, shama is translated as control of the mind and dama as control of the body. In the traditional approach, shama seems to have been neglected. Less attention seems to have been given to the meaning and implication of shama and more than due stress laid on dama. Shanti has become a one word symbol of inner peace and it is the past-passive participle of the verb shama. So if shama is not understood, shanti is also not understood.

May I put it this way? Because I do not know what love is, I want you to love me. I know what love is and, therefore, I can communicate with you. I do not want anything.

When you and I have a common interest, and intensity at the same level and at the same time, then communion is possible non-verbally. I do not have to tell you ``I love you''.

Krishnamurti: But he will not understand you. That is simple. Take Chardin. He may have travelled extensively, covered a wide canvas, but he was fixed as a Catholic. You cannot share with a man who is fixed. Sharing implies love. Can a man who is fixed in a certain attitude, can he love?

There is so little of love, of sharing, but of the other there is plenty. (Pause)

Krishnamurti: Which is understanding. But ideas are not understanding. On the contrary, formulas about understanding prevent understanding. Sir, when you share together, what takes place? Both of us have the same intensity, at the same time, at the same level. That is love. Otherwise there is no sharing. After all, Sir, to understand something together, I must forget all my experiences, prejudices, and so must you. Otherwise we cannot share.

What relationship has all this with love? What is the relationship between me, you and the artist? I think that is the core of relationship. love has been reduced to sex and all the morality round it. If love is not there, fragmentation will go on. You will be a physicist, I will be something and we will communicate, discuss, but they are mere words.

Krishnamurti: Do you mean the feeling of love?

P: The word ``love'' is a loaded term. If you are still, there is a strange feeling; a movement takes place from this region of the heart. What is this? Is this necessary or is it a hindrance?

Krishnamurti: You are asking what is beauty, what is the expression of beauty, and how does the individual fulfil himself through beauty? What is beauty? If you started as though you knew nothing about it, what would your reaction be? This is a universal problem with the Greeks, the Romans and with modern people. So what is beauty? Does it lie in the sunset, in a lovely morning, in human relationship, in the mother and the child, husband and wife, man and woman? Does it lie in the beauty of an extraordinarily subtle movement of thought and the beauty of clear perception? Is that what you call beauty?

So deny knowing - see what takes place. In that there is real beauty, real love, the real thing takes place.

Krishnamurti: I see beauty, the sky, a lovely child. I also see conflict with my child, with my neighbours; life is a movement in conflict and pleasure.

Krishnamurti: The wave can only end when both of us see it at the same level at the same time with the same intensity. This means love. Otherwise you cannot end it.

P: Let us say I fall passionately in love. I am torn, ravaged by that desire. Can I see that person without desire operating?

Krishnamurti: Like a glove taken inside out? Are you saying that thought looking at itself, or swallowing itself, is the backward flowing movement?

There is only one thing, which is the fact and my movement away from the fact, from ``what is''. It is this that breeds bitterness, callousness, lack of love, indifference, which are all the product of thinking. The fact is my son is gone.

P: Because I loved him.

Krishnamurti: Look what has already happened unconsciously. I loved him. He has gone. The pain is the remembrance of my love for him. And he is no more. But the absolute fact is he is gone. Remain with that fact. There is pain only when I say he is no more, which is when the thinker comes into being and says, ``my son is no longer there, he was my companion,'' and all the rest of it.

Can the mind, listening to this, wipe it away? The very listening is the wiping away. Then you have it. Then there is attention, love; everything is there. You see, logically, this holds whereas the other does not. The exercise of the brain is to find the truth and the false; to see the false as the false. You see when the boy Krishnamurti saw the truth, it was over. He gave up all organizations, etc. He had no training ``to see''.

So is there a way of living without will? The moment I resist, evil must be on one side, and the good on the other and there is relationship between the two. When there is no resistance, there is no relationship between the two. And love then is an open space, without any words, without any resistance. love is action out of emptiness. As we had been discussing yesterday, when the male elements deliberately become assertive, demanding, possessive, dominating, man invites evil. And the female, yielding, yielding, yielding and deliberately yielding in order to dominate, also invites evil.

Krishnamurti: You are saying it is independent. So, is evil something that is in itself unrelated to the beautiful, to love? Against evil, man has always sought protection, as he would against an animal. There is this hidden dark danger. Man is aware of it, he is frightened and seeks through incantations, rituals, prayers and so on to put it away and be guarded. The bush that is so full of thorns protects itself against the animal and the animal would call that evil as it cannot get at the leaves. Is there such a force, such an embodiment of evil which is totally apart from the good, the beautiful? There is this whole idea that evil is fighting good. This evil is seen as embodied in people and evil is always fighting the good and the gentle. I am asking, is evil totally independent of the good? You must be very careful not to become superstitious.

P: In that sense, is that state of sorrow any different from the state of love? Sorrow is pain. You say when in that pain there is no resistance, no movement away from pain, the flame of passion emerges. Strangely in the ancient texts, kama (love), agni (fire), and yama (death) are said to be the same; they are placed on the same level; they are all identical; they create, purify and destroy to create again. There has to be an ending.

Krishnamurti: I asked what is the relationship between sorrow and love? Can there be love if there is sorrow - sorrow being all the things that we have talked about?

Krishnamurti: In sorrow, there is a factor of separation, of fragmentation. Is there not a great deal of self-pity in sorrow? What is the relationship of all this to love? Has love dependency? Has love the quality of the ``me'' and the ``you''?

Krishnamurti: When there is no movement of escape from sorrow then love is. Passion is the flame of sorrow and that flame can only be awakened when there is no escape, no resistance. Which means what? - Which means, sorrow has in it no quality of division.

P: We know pleasure is not love. Pleasure may be one manifestation of love but it is not love. Both sorrow and love emerge from the same source.

Krishnamurti: I am asking you what is the relationship between sorrow and love.

Krishnamurti: What is love and what is sorrow?

Krishnamurti: Is love pleasure? Would you say joy and pleasure are the same? Without understanding the nature of pleasure, there is no depth to joy. You cannot invite joy. Joy happens. The happening can be turned into pleasure.

Krishnamurti: As we said, joy is not a thing to be invited. It happens. Pleasure I can invite, pleasure I can pursue. If pleasure is love, then love can be cultivated.

P: While you have been speaking, the movement of sorrow has been operating within me. There is no immediate cause for this sorrow but it seems like a shadow, always with man. He lives, he loves, he forms attachments and everything ends. Whatever the truth of what you say, in this there is such an infinitude of sorrow. How is it to end? There appears to be no answer. The other day you said in sorrow is the whole movement of passion. What does it mean?

Krishnamurti: There is personal sorrow, the sorrow that comes with the loss of someone you love, the loneliness, the separation, the anxiety for the other. With death there is also the feeling that the other has ceased to be, and there was so much that he wanted to do. All this is personal sorrow. Then there is that man, ill-clad, dirty, with his head down; he is ignorant, ignorant not merely of book knowledge, but deeply, really ignorant. The feeling that one has for the man is not self-pity, nor is there an identification with that man; it is not that you are placed in a better position than he is and so you feel pity for him, but there is within one the sense of the timeless weight of sorrow in man. This sorrow has nothing personal about it. It exists.