Talks and Dialogues Sydney 1970

Interviewer: And where do you find truth?

Krishnamurti: Only when a mind, and not only a mind, a life is completely harmonious, not contradictory. It's only such a mind which is religious that can find truth, can observe truth. truth isn't something abstract, it's there.

Interviewer: Krishnamurti, way back in 1919, that's forty odd years ago now, you dissolved the Order of the Star of the East and I would like to read the words, some of the words, you said at that time. You said, `I maintain that truth is a pathless land and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. I do not want followers' you said, `I mean this. If there are only five people who will listen, who will live, who have their faces turned towards eternity it will be sufficient. Or what use is it to have thousands who do not understand, who are fully embalmed in prejudice, who do not want the new but would rather translate the new to suit their own sterile, stagnant souls?' You said, `I desire those who seek to understand me to be free, not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect, but rather they should be free from all fears, from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself

Krishnamurti: What do you mean by impulsive? You mean spontaneous? Are we ever spontaneous or are we always responding to our conditioning, though we may call it spontaneity? The other day I met somebody who came to see me, and that person said: I am free at last, I have gone into this question of freedom greatly, studied it, and I am free, and therefore I have become a Catholic. (Laughter) No. You may laugh, but that person was very serious and he is spreading what he thinks is truth. He thinks that it is spontaneous because he is free. So to understand what is freedom, and therefore action in freedom, one has to go into this question of the conditioning of the mind, the whole conditioned mind, how the mind is conditioned by propaganda of ten thousand years: the religious, the political, the propaganda of the family. we are slaves to propaganda. Can the mind observe all this propaganda and be free of it? Then only, can you talk about freedom in action.

Questioner: Does this mean then that the search for truth equates with a constant review of the images? Krishnamurti: Obviously.

Krishnamurti: What is it that we watch, examine, to find out the truth of that word `self'? Is that it? We can look that word up in the dictionary and there is a definition. We know the word is not the thing, the description is not the described. To find out what the self is one has to watch its activity, actually its action, in relationship, otherwise you cannot examine it. Living is relationship, otherwise there is no living. You can live in isolation but that isolation brings about constant conflict in relationship. One can find out what the self is only in relationship. We are doing it together, its no fun if I do all the work and you just listen. So, what is relationship? What does it mean to be related?

Questioner: I would like to talk about education, not education only for the young but for the old as well; and, about religion, not my religion or their religion but religion, God, the truth, and about the dignity of man, to be one with life, all life.

Krishnamurti: You can try. Have you ever given attention completely, totally to something? Are you giving attention completely now, to what is being said? Are you? Obviously not. To give attention means to give your mind, your heart, your whole being to find out, not from books and somebody else, but to find out for yourself. Because you see, unless this takes place, unless the mind is completely free of all distortion which is all form of effort, what is truth can never be found out. And a man who lives superficially cannot possibly live fully. When one is aware there is this duality one asks why this duality exists. This duality exists because we have ideals, we have formulas, principles, according to which we live and therefore we never observe actually what is. Then what takes place? Am I explaining myself? Personally I have no ideals - they are too silly no beliefs, no conclusions, only actually what is. That way you avoid all hypocrisy. Then what takes place? I see actually I am angry. Then what takes place? You see one of the difficulties is, we think that it is not possible to change human beings. We have come to the conclusion that it is not possible, human beings cannot be changed I cannot change myself. You understand? Don't you say that? Is it possible to change what is? I've come to the point when I see actually that I'm not moving away from what is, neither verbally nor intellectually nor in any ideological sense. I remain actually with what is. Then what takes place?

There are the Zen systems - you know Zen? Do you know about all this? What a waste of time, isn't it? Because they all offer systems and when once you have seen the truth of a system you'll never touch it - it doesn't matter who offers it. Then there is, again, a recent fashion of so-called transcendental meditation, which is absolute nonsense because - need I go into all this? You know, a dull mind repeating a certain word, hoping it will achieve some extraordinary state, will still remain a dull mind. No? You know, there is this whole system in India, and I assure you when I go to India I have to battle with all these stupidities - there is a system in India called Mantra Yoga which is the repetition of a secret word given unto the disciple and he repeats that word 10,000 times a day, or whatever it is. Through that repetitive word he hopes to achieve a tremendous experience. Now that has been brought to this country - and elsewhere, and one of the odd things about it is that you pay for it. The more secret it is the more expensive it is. Don't laugh, please. See, the church has done this too. We are so eager to be exploited.

Meditation is a word that has been used recently in the West and has become rather fashionable, unfortunately. There are various exponents of what meditation is and each exponent offers a system, a system that will lead to enlightenment. One has to find out the significance of system, not of any particular system or method, but system. They say by practising a certain system day after day you will come to that state of mind that will receive, whatever it will receive. System implies repetition, repeating over and over and over that which somebody has said is the system, and you follow it, hoping to achieve. This means the mind becomes repetitive, mechanical. How can a mechanical mind see something which is non-mechanical, which is something extraordinarily alive, which is constantly in movement? If you see the truth of this fact, that any system, whether in the scientific or in the technological world or in the world of meditation, must make the mind dull, must make the mind so insensitive, so, if I may use the word - stupid - (it's only the stupid mind that accepts systems) - if you see the truth of that, then your mind is no longer pursuing a practice but becomes constantly aware, constantly alive, non-mechanical.

We depend on challenge. That's what is happening in the world, everybody is questioning the value, the truth of Catholicism, Protestantism, the social structure, the immorality of the social order, questioning everything. But, this challenge has to be answered with a mind that is new, not a mind that is steeped, living in the past. Searching implies challenge also, so can a mind be totally awake without challenge? We will go into that. We'll come to it presently if we have time.

Then, there is the question of search, seeking, seeking truth. Search implies: searching `for' something that you can find. What you can find is what is recognizable. You set out to find out what truth is and you seek, you ask, you enquire into the various structures and organizations which believe in religion and so on. You are seeking. Seeking implies that you will find and what you find must be known, must be recognizable; that is so. If you can recognise something it is already known. Therefore it is not new. Therefore it's not true.

Because we are shallow, rather empty, lead a rather sordid life, we want to seek something more. The more is what we call the truth and when you seek and you hope to find, what you hope to find must already have been experienced, otherwise you can't recognise it. Therefore, a mind that seeks will never find truth.

A man who would really go into the question of what actually, religion is, to find out deeply, not according to his temperament or his idiosyncrasy or his culture, his conditioning, but actually to find out if there is such a thing as God, as truth, such a man must set aside all belief, obviously, and all rituals, because they are merely repetitive, meaningless stimuli, as any other stimuli. He must set aside, also, all the authoritarian hierarchical outlook. To find out, all this must be totally, completely set aside, because the mind must be free. Freedom is absolutely necessary. Without a free mind, a mind that's not distorted, that's not crippled by the cultural conditioning, without such a mind which is free, one cannot possibly perceive what is truth.

We were going to talk about religion and if there is such a thing as God - if there is or if there is not; to find out the truth, which doesn't depend on any organized belief. Obviously, no religion as it exists, right throughout the world, can honestly and truly claim to understand what truth is. This morning, if we may, we will go into this whole question, rather deeply, and find out through perception, through seeing, what is and what is not truth.

I'm sure I haven't answered your question. We want comfort and therefore we want the solace that we find in the companion who has gone. Therefore the mind can do all kinds of tricks, caught in all kinds of illusion; and that doesn't lead to clarity, to truth. The mind must be free of every form of deception.

We're going to find out, together, what death means. What is it that dies? This is a complex question. People have written volumes about it. One has to put aside everything other people have said. That's the first truth. One has to find out for oneself, absolutely, otherwise you live always in the shadow of fear. The organism grows old, grows unnecessarily decrepit, senile, has many diseases, because we have abused the organism. The organism is mechanical, is a machine and we have misused it. And, naturally, it dies. We know that. That isn't what is causing deep fear, there is something else. We are afraid not only of the unknown, but also afraid of letting go the known. Letting go your furniture, you know, actually your furniture which you have cherished, which you have polished every day. You have bought it and given so much attention to the beastly thing, however beautiful it is, and you're part of that furniture. You are the furniture. Do observe it, you're part of that house, which you have bought through so much difficulty. You've identified yourself with a particular community, with a particular family; so, you are the community, you are the family, you are the book, whether that book is the red book of China or the black book or the red book of some other country. You are what you have identified yourself with, whether it is the image that you have identified yourself with, or the image which you have built about yourself. You're that, and you're also this terrible confusion, mess, misery, torture of living. You're all that. All that is the word and the memory of association, association which has its memories.

We have divorced from this living what is called death, put it away as far as possible. Knowing that it is inevitable we begin to speculate on what is beyond death, or accept as truth what others say lies beyond. So, we believe. Belief implies accepting as true what we don't know. You never believe in the rising sun, it is there. Our belief is the acceptance of something being true.

Krishnamurti: I have been talking about it the whole evening. Can you observe without effort? Now, can you observe with effort? (audience - no...) Don't yell sir, find out, can you observe anything with effort? If I want to see you, must I make an effort to see you? Can't I see you because I am interested in seeing you? We have made everything into an effort. To get up is an effort, to go to bed is an effort, everything has become an effort. Why? Why is it we can't do anything simply, easily, happily, why? Why has all of life, the way we live, become a constant struggle, conflict and effort? First, let us look at it very simply. You make effort because you are comparing. You are comparing yourself with another, yourself with an idea, yourself as you think you should be. You are comparing. In education when you are a little boy the teacher compares you with the other boy who is still more clever. The mother compares herself with another woman, so, where there is measurement, comparison, there must be effort. Can you live without comparing? Never to compare, that means never to have an ideal, never to have a hero, by which you measure yourself with another. When you see a man riding in a big car, you look at it and you compare. You compare yourself with a man who is clever, bright, and you say, `I am dull'. Therefore, recognising through comparison you are dull, you make an effort to be bright. Please see this, the truth of it, that when you compare yourself with another or identify yourself with another, which is a form of comparison, there must be conflict. Can you live without comparison at all, which means seeing what is, and never comparing what is with what should be? You have understood? Never to compare, which means when you don't compare, you have to observe yourself and therefore through observation you become a light to yourself. Light doesn't compare itself with anything, it is light. When you are tremendously joyous, there is no comparison; but when you are comparing, when there is comparison you say, I had pleasure yesterday and I want more of it. To wipe out in our vocabulary in our thinking, the `better', the `more'. The better is the enemy of the good. If there is conformity there must be effort, if you are conforming to the social pattern, to what people say, conforming to an ideal, conforming to the past image of yourself or the future image of yourself, there is constant comparison, constant conformity. You train the child to conform. That is what the Stalins, Hitlers and all the tyrannical rulers of the world have done; conform. All the religious people have conformed and that's why there are saints. Can the mind not compare, not conform? That you can only find out by being aware, every day, seeing how you are comparing, how you are conforming, deeply, not at a superficial level, putting on these trousers or some other trousers, but deeply, inwardly conforming, comparing.

The next question is, how can one not think about this? It was so beautiful yesterday, so marvellous, and there is the thinking about it. It was so painful and that pain is over, but, thought thinks about it. So one asks, is there a possibility for thought not to think about it at all, not to think about the pain or the pleasure? How is this to be done? Joy is not pleasure. You can't think about joy, you can think about it and reduce it to pleasure, but the thing that is called joy, ecstasy, is not the product of thought. Haven't you noticed when there is a great burst of joy you can't think about it the next day; and, if you do, it has already become pleasure? So, fear and pleasure are sustained by thought, given continuity by thought. How is one to look at great beauty, the beauty of a cloudless sky, the beauty of a sunset, the beauty of a face, the beauty of truth; to look at it and end it, and not think about it? Are you following? How is this to be done? Do you understand my question? If it is not clear, it must be made clear because one can see that fear continues by thinking about it, as you do with pleasure. Pleasure we want, the more of it the better, therefore we think about it; but we don't want fear, yet thought thinks about it, what might happen.

An incident took place yesterday which gave me pain; it is finished; it's over but thought goes on, thinking, thinking, thinking about it, and so sustains the fear. Watch it a minute. Let's examine what is pleasure. What is pleasure, on which all our social morality is based, all our search, all our activity? All this demand, the searching for truth and all that nonsense is based on pleasure. Your gods are based on pleasure, your virtue is based on pleasure, your morality is based on pleasure; so what is pleasure, which every human being demands? What is pleasure? Again, there was an incident yesterday which was a great delight. It filled your whole mind, your whole heart; you looked at the cloud, the water, at the sailing ships, it was a great delight. But thought comes in and says, I would like that to be repeated it was so pleasurable I must have it. Right? There is the pleasure of sex. Thought builds the image, all the stimuli are sustained by thought, and the fulfilment of it tomorrow. So, thought sustains fear and gives continuity to pleasure. You don't finish with that incident of yesterday whether it is pleasurable or painful. It is finished; but thought goes on living with it. Right?

We are saying that if you would understand the deep content of the mind, the deep layers of the me, the self, with all its fears, anxieties, troubles and agonies, you can observe it only when the mind, the superficial mind, is extremely quiet; not make the mind quiet; but see the truth of it; and when you see the truth of it, it happens. You are getting all this? Are we following each other?

When you look with that quality of mind that is very quiet, there is no verbalization, there is no comparison, there is no justification or condemnation, just watching. To watch, the mind, the daily activity of the mind must completely end. To understand anything, the mind must be completely still, especially when you are observing yourself, when you are observing your own fears, anxieties, loneliness, despair, demands for pleasure and all the rest of it; to observe that completely, really at great depth, the superficial mind must be completely still. You have to see the reason of it. It's fairly simple, a chattering mind can't see, can't listen, can't observe, can't do anything. See actually for yourself, the truth: that to observe yourself and the content of yourself, the superficial mind must be still.

I DON'T KNOW why you clap. What we are talking about is not something that needs your approval. What it demands is that you listen to what the speaker has to say and find out for yourself the truth of the matter; not your opinion, not your conclusion, not your information but rather to consider what the speaker has to say and see for yourself whether it corresponds with what you yourself actually feel and think.

I think that is clear when one observes what is going on in the world. A serious man, who is really deeply concerned with the human existence with all the travail, the misery, the conflict, the despair, the utter sense of hopelessness has to take life as a whole. That is what we are going to do, if we can, during these talks: not be committed to any particular section or involved in a particular corner of the field but being completely and totally involved in the whole problem of existence which includes religion, death, love, daily existence, relationship, meditation and trying to find out for ourselves if there is such a thing as reality - such a thing that is beyond thought, which man through centuries has been seeking. We are involved in all of that, not in one particular expression of it, so let us be clear from the beginning that we are not talking about a particular panacea, a particular solution, a particular philosophy. Philosophy means the love of truth; not the theory of truth, not the speculation about what truth is, which any intellectual person can spin endlessly. It means to discover for ourselves what truth is actually in our life, in our daily living - the beauty of it, a quality of timelessness. All this involves that the mind must look at life non-fragmentarily, not be wholly absorbed in sex or in amusement, or in a particular form of belief, or completely lost in nationalism.

What we are saying is our human problems are so complex, yet so extraordinarily simple if we know how to look at them, if we know how to look at the problem, whether there is God or not, whether there is truth or not, to understand the problem of death, the problem of life, love, to be able to look without the image - which means to look without fear. We can go into this question of fear later because most human minds, consciously as well as unconsciously, are frightened. We are frightened human beings. Out of that fear we do the most extraordinary things, cruel, brutal, aggressive things.