Talks in Europe 1968

We are talking about action (for life is action, all living is action, all relationship is action) and when one observes the movement of action within oneself, one sees there is this division between what should be - the ideal - and what the actual action is. Most of our action is the outcome of an idea, an ideal, a belief, a supposition, a formula and therefore there is a division and in this division there is the approximation, trying to come as close to the ideal as possible. In that there is conflict and this conflict is a waste of energy, it is the very source of wastage of energy. Action means doing, acting in the living present, and when there is action according to a pattern then action is not in the present, it is according to the past or according to the future; and therefore in that action there is confusion, there is conflict. Do please see this very simple fact, that in this there is a tremendous wastage of energy. That is the basic, fundamental, distortion of energy, which is to act according to a principle, to a belief, to an ideology.

In this present structure of society, in our relationship between man and man, the more we act, the less energy we have. For in that action there is contradiction, fragmentation, and so that action brings conflict and therefore wastes energy. One has to find the energy, which is sustaining, which is constant, which does not fade away. And I think there is such an action which brings about this vital quality which is necessary for a deep radical revolution in the mind. For most of us action, that is `to do', to be active, takes place according to an idea, a formula, or a concept; if you observe your own activities, your own daily movement in action, you will see that you have formulated an idea or an ideology and according to that you act. So there is a division between the idea of what you should do, or what you should be, or how you should act and actual action; you can see that in yourselves very clearly. So action is always approximation to the formula, to the concept, to the ideal. And there is a division, a separation, between what should be and what is, which causes duality and therefore there is conflict.

Thought has its place; technologically unless you know where you are going to you won't be able to get to your house; you have to know it. But if love is the product of thought, then there is in it pain, hate, envy, division. So really to love means to die, doesn't it? To die to everything that you have known as the `me'. And one doesn't want to die in that sense. We are all much too egotistical, much too self-centred, with our opinions and judgments, with our country, with our Gods and our beliefs. If one could completely set aside all that, not through will, not through determination, but merely see it very clearly with eyes that have never been touched by the past, so that you see it totally anew! That is to see the self, the `me', with eyes that are innocent. It is one of our problems that we are all very old, perhaps not in body, but we are old in tradition, deep down historically. Being very old we are not innocent - innocency is not of time, it is the ending of yesterday. And when yesterday ends then there is love in relationship. 18th May 1968

So thought has an immense importance in our life, in relationship. Thought breeds envy, comparison, jealousy, and when thought breeds these things, we are not related at all. When each human being lives in his own isolation, in his own self-centred activity - though he may be married, have children, sex, and all the rest of it, he is still isolated - how can there by any relationship?

So when one sees that actually - not theoretically - either you accept it as it is, cherish it, polish it, give a tremendous significance to it when it has none whatsoever, or you completely deny the whole structure of it, deny this whole tradition of relationship, which inevitably breeds such hatred, such jealousy, such antagonism. And then one also has to ask: why is there so much sorrow in this relationship? Why does the human heart carry this burden right through the world, from the most backward village to the most highly sophisticated town? Can sorrow ever end?

You can see very easily for yourself how this relationship, how this image is built. One hasn't got to go into it - the mechanism of it is fairly obvious: thought thinking over the insult, the pleasure, the sexual demands and appetites and their fulfilment and so on; thought has gradually built it up as pleasure and pain and that is the core of all our relationship, whether it be between man and woman; or between the individual and the community, or the community, the nation and the world. So when one is examining this question of relationship one naturally has to understand the whole process of thinking. Is there any relationship in love, in the sense that we have accepted it? What is the place of thought in love? Is there love when there is thought?

And what place has pleasure in relationship? - whether it be sexual pleasure or the pleasure of companionship, of being together, living together, and all the problems involved in that. Do please observe it in yourself, don't merely listen to me. Because if love is pleasure, when that pleasure is thwarted there is pain, there is jealousy, there is hatred, there is anger. And can jealousy exist when there is love? Yet that is what we have; we say, `I love you' and with it comes all the agony, the fear, the anxiety, the domination, possessing, being possessed, giving, in which there is pleasure. Possessing is also a form of pleasure. All this exists in what one calls love. If there is no love, then what is relationship? And we have no love, obviously. If there were love we would have a totally different kind of education, we wouldn't destroy our children. So one has to go into this question of pleasure, and in enquiring into the question of pleasure there is also the question of pain and fear. Pleasure is sustained and nourished by thought, which is fairly simple to see for oneself: remembrance of a pleasurable incident, thought giving it continuity today and looking forward to it tomorrow. In this process there is the fear of not having it tomorrow and wanting it guaranteed.

So do not, please, accept what the speaker is saying, but use him as a mirror in which you see yourself as you are. That may be rather frightening. But one has to see in order to find what is true - not according to some opinion, not according to the experience of another or the theory of another, but actually see yourself in that mirror. We are discussing this question of relationship, which is tremendously important, because all life is relationship; life ceases when you have no relationship, like a monk who withdraws into a solitary cave, or a room, or whatever it is - he is still related, though he may pretend not to be. He may be related to an idea, a concept, a formula but he is still related. And to be related means to be active in the present, otherwise there is no relationship. For most of us relationship means a remembrance of some pleasure or pain, accumulated in relationship with another, between the husband and the wife, between the children and so on. So all our relationship - if one observes - is based on an image. And the image is the past, adding to it or taking away from it, but always the core of it is the past.

You have an image about me, a symbol, an idea, and according to that image, idea, symbol, you act in this relationship with me. So you are acting according to a remembrance of things past - pleasurable or painful - and I am also doing the same; we are living in the past. An action springing from the past is what we generally call relationship.

So we are going to talk this over together very seriously, not casually, not listening or giving importance to a speaker, to a lot of words and ideas, which is all too absurd and infantile. But if we could this morning, go into the question of relationship, perhaps we should come upon that action which is always total whatever you are doing; whether you are going to the office, working in a factory, cooking, washing dishes or digging in a garden, milking a cow, holding the hand of another, or looking at a tree or a cloud, seeing the beauty of a bird; it is all one action, stemming from one source. So, in examining, enquiring into this question of relationship, one must also ask, what place has thought in relationship - thought being the response or the reaction to memory, knowledge, experience, which is the past. What place has the past in relationship? If the past controls all action in human relationship - as it does with most people - then is it relationship at all? relationship surely is the whole movement of life between people, a movement, not a static state which is remembered, and which acts from that remembrance.

Is all this too verbal? Let us put it differently, if we may. relationship means to be related, to be in contact, to touch, to feel, to see what the other human being is, to be intimately in contact with the other (the other may be a person, an idea, a propagandist ideology) - to be related implies that. That is, to be related is always in the present; otherwise you are not related. Unless you are in constant contact with the reality of a human being, with all his peculiarities and so on, unless you are completely in contact in the present, there is no relationship at all. If I am related to you according to an image which has been built by the remembrance of a thousand yesterdays, and according to which I act, is that relationship?

In asking what pleasure is, one also has to ask what love is. What is the place of pleasure in human relationship and is pleasure love? For most of us - unless we indulge in absurd ideologies and theories which have no meaning whatsoever - love is pleasure. And one has to go into this question fairly deeply to find out what place thought has in the relationship between human beings, and if relationship is based on pleasure, or if it is the outcome of love, affection. This is what we are going to talk over together, if we may; that is, we are going to commune together. Verbal explanation may bring about a certain quality of communication, one must use words to communicate, but words in themselves have no reality; they are a means of telling each other what we feel, what we think, what we understand, what we perceive. But perhaps we could establish a relationship not of words, so that we could commune with each other at a different level altogether, not at the verbal level, though words must be used. This communion in discussing a very complex problem like relationship and all the things involved in it, is not a mental process; it is not something you understand intellectually, gather a few ideas about and think that you have understood. On the contrary, to understand any complex human problem one must be completely in communion with it; that is, one must give one's mind and one's heart to the understanding of this question. Therefore one has to listen with a great deal of attention, care and affection; not merely live at an intellectual level - then all communication and communion comes to an end.

WE WERE CONSIDERING the question of thought, how it divides and brings about fragmentation in life. If I may, this morning I would like to go into the question of thought in relationship between man and man. What place has thought? As one observes, right through the world, we have brought about fragmentation in life. We regard business as something different from daily life. The religious people are different from the scientists. The socialist is different from the communist. The individual is opposed to the community, or the community is opposed to various forms of nationalities. As one observes, throughout the world there is this fragmentation going on, both outwardly and inwardly. And where there is fragmentation there must be opposition, resistance. One is aware of that. And seeing this fragmentation one wonders if it is all possible to bring about so-called integration, whether there is such a thing as integration at all. Or is that entirely a false idea?

And psychologically, inwardly, inside the skin, we have many problems of fear, from the most simple, like fear of darkness, to the most complex problem of human relationship, which is called love. And there is fear of death.

Take war. Historically for 5,000 years men has had 12,000 wars; that means two and a half wars every year! Thought has bred war, antagonism. Thought has built a way of life which must inevitably lead to war. One realizes that; then thought says, `there must be peace'. So it sets about inventing various plans, ways, methods, by strengthening itself on the one hand as a nationalist army, and yet on the other by striving for international peace and brotherhood - all this contradiction is brought about by thought. And as one observes in all human relationship, thought by seeking comfort, security, pleasure - sexual or otherwise - creates many problems. And so we resort to thought to resolve these very problems which thought has created. One can see how fear comes into being. There is the physical fear of pain, of disease, of old age and death, or of the pain that one had some time ago and which may come back. Thought remembers the past experience and remembering it, reacting to that remembrance, thought produces fear. One can see this clearly in one's life. One has a disease, physical pain, cancer, or some other disease and thought, which remembers a state of mind when there was no pain, no disease, gets frightened of it. Then thought says: what are the ways out of it, physically? When one has a disease, and most of us do have some kind of physical disorder and pain, why should thought interfere at all? - thought as a response of memory of when one had no pain at all. Why should such thought interfere - which only breeds further anxiety?

You know what fear does. When you are afraid of something you cannot think clearly - it becomes dark, like living in a chamber without light. I am sure most of us have experienced this fear. We have accepted it, that part of our existence which is not natural. That is the result of the society in which we live, each man seeking his own security, and so building a society which assures an outward security. This very assurance of outward security creates divisions. Those who are not secure and those who are secure, those who have and those who have not. So there is a battle, there is war and the very thing that you sought after - which is to be secure - is denied. When you have separate flags and all the confusion of different nationalities, governments, armies and the butchery that is going on, that is the result of the deep fear of human beings. We don't realize our individual human responsibility for the war that is going on in Vietnam. We are responsible for it, each one of us, not the Americans, not the Vietnamese, not the Communists, but each one of us, because our life is one of conflict, our life is a battlefield. We are Dutchmen, we are Catholics, we are Hindus, we are Muslims, we are God knows what else, living in a separate compartment, isolated, unapproachable. And naturally when there is division there must be conflict and that is what happens in human relationships, between husband and wife, between your neighbour and yourself; there is this division, this separation, this self-isolating self-interest. We all know this. And yet we accept it, we go on. We talk about non-violence and sow the seed of violence all the time. This is part of that fear.

So, a mind that is not free - which means freedom from fear - is utterly incapable of coming upon this reality - if there is such a reality. Because one must have tremendous scepticism, doubt. To doubt, to question, not to accept the whole social, economic, religious structure, the established order (which is essentially disorder) means that there must be no fear within oneself. To find out for oneself there must be freedom from fear. Most human beings have never gone into this question deeply within themselves. They have never asked whether it is at all possible to be completely free of fear at all levels of our existence; at the political, economic level and also inwardly in all relationships. To find out about this corroding fear there must be no escape. You know, it is one of the most difficult things not to escape, not to avoid. One is fully aware of one's own fears, and we have developed a network of escapes, from the most simple to the most complex. When one is afraid, one wants to get rid of this fear, one wants to put it aside. And you do it by turning on the radio, taking a drink or reading a novel, or by going to church or committing yourself to a particular course of action: anything rather than face that absolute reality of fear.

So let us take, if we may, the first essential question: man's relationship to reality, if there is such a reality. To assume that there is or is not a reality, to assume either is the same. To say it is impossible that such a reality should exist, or to say it is impossible for man to come upon that reality, to make either statement is to block oneself. If you say, `I doubt if there is a reality,' you've already hindered yourself from examining, from looking, from observing. Or if you say that `there is', you've also prevented yourself from looking, from examining, from coming upon that loveliness. So to accept or to deny is to block oneself. What is necessary is freedom from both - freedom from belief that there is a God, a reality, an immeasurable something, as some saints or teachers have asserted. The moment you say `there is', it is not. The moment you say `I know', you do not know. All you can do is to be free from `believing' and `not believing', so that the mind is capable of freedom, so that it can look, observe.

So this is an essential question that must be asked, whether you are a Communist or a Socialist or belong to some organized religious group. We are going to ask and not find an answer - all answers are merely verbal - but just examine it, be involved in it totally. Then we may come upon that reality and establish a total relationship with it. And the other question, equally essential, is what is man's relationship to man. Whether there is any such relationship or must we live in isolation within a self-centred activity, in separateness? And when there is separateness between man and man there must be conflict, war. Yet another question is - which again man has tried to understand for thousands of years - what is love and what is death?

Before we enter into the first question which is, what is man's relationship to reality and is there such a thing as reality, I think we must find out for ourselves what it is to listen? Because we feel overburdened with the whole complex problem of life with all its stresses and strains - with the extremely subtle, mechanical way of life bred by this complex process of analysis, the discovery of the cause and trying to overcome the cause - with the complex process of relationship, the greed, the envy, the brutality, the violence, the assertion of non-violence (which again breeds further aggression) the fears, the guilt, the whole human structure. Is it at all possible to put all that aside immediately so that the mind is completely new, untouched, so that it can look at the heavens, the skies, the stars, the trees, the light on the water, as though it were seeing the beauty of it for the first time? I think it comes - when one knows how to listen. Man has tried in so many ways to get rid of himself and his many problems. He has withdrawn into monasteries, he has committed himself to a particular course of action - political, religious, social or personal. He has tried to forget himself and identify himself with something greater as the nation - or in social work, doing good to others - or to identify himself with an idea, with an ideology, with a saviour, a master, a guru, so that he can forget this agonizing, immensely complex existence.

And is it at all possible for a human being to be entirely free from all problems so that he can flower in goodness, in beauty? Can a human being, living not as an European or an Asian (it does not matter in what part of the world), can he ever be free? If he is not free, he is everlastingly a slave to machinery, to society, to all the complex problems of existence. That is one of the major problems of life, whether it is at all possible for a human being (you and me as human beings living in this world) in a very complex society, to be completely free. So that our minds can look and have a different relationship, look with clarity, with a sense of otherness.

Can a human being establish for himself his relationship with reality? That is what man has been seeking for thousands of years - the reality which you may call God or give any other name to. Man has everlastingly been seeking that. And that is one of the essential questions man has to ask himself, otherwise life has no meaning whatsoever. To go to the office, to work in a factory, to see that all mankind has food, clothes and shelter - and then what? Is all life mechanical, a routine? Can we as human beings establish for ourselves an actual relationship with reality - not imaginary, fictitious, mythical, romantic - but actual? A relationship with reality: that is one of the basic questions we must ask. Because as one observes, the world is becoming more and more mechanical. The computer is taking charge of everything. And if we do not find out for ourselves with sanity, with reason, what is our relationship to that immense thing that man has sought, to that immeasurable reality, obviously our life is empty. Though you may get plenty of water from the tap, though life can be organized extensively to live comfortably, so that each one of us has food, clothes and shelter, unless one finds that, life becomes utterly meaningless, empty. And that's one of our basic essential questions. We must ask and find out for ourselves, not depending on anyone, on no priest, on no religion, on no belief, on no leader, no guru, no teacher. Because if we depend on another we're not free; dependence breeds fear, authority.

Without love there is no virtue, without love there is no peace, there is no relationship. That is the foundation - for the mind to go immeasurably into that dimension in which alone truth exists. 28th April 1968

J. Krishnamurti Talks in Europe 1968 Amsterdam 1st Public Talk 11th May 1 THERE ARE MANY problems both inward and outward. The outward problems are the economic, the whole world of computers, the mechanical relationship between man and the machine. Outwardly there are the political problems, and inwardly we have many psychological problems. Inside the skin as it were, there are the problems of man's relationship to man, not only his own relationship with himself but also with his fellow human beings. We have broken up these many problems as political, economic, social and psychological. We don't seem to be able to grapple with them all as a total unit, but only separately. We treat political problems on their own level, and religious problems as something entirely different and the economic problems as different again.

Thought is always seeking something lasting in all relationships. Thought in its search for security must seek pleasure and in pleasure there is always pain and hence there is always fear. Do observe this in yourselves and you will see how simple it is, how thought comes about and how fear is bred out of thought. And so we never meet fear. Do we know actually what fear is? Or do we know it only through the recognition of what was called fear, which happened yesterday? That is, do I know fear actually the moment it happens? Or do I know it only when it has gone and then I recognize it? We are talking of psychological fears for the moment. And to understand the nature of fear one has to look also at the structure of thought, because thought does create fear. Thought says: `I don't know what death is. I'll put it as far away as possible until the last minute. I don't have to look at it, I don't have to understand it.' Put it away, escape from it, build various beliefs, dogmas, comforting theories, as long as I don't have to face it and come directly into contact with it. So thought creates a division between the living and the thing called `death'. You are living - this is the `known' - and the thing `unknown' is death.

So we are going to investigate whether it is possible for a human mind that has sought security, both physical and psychological, that has been nourished on certainty (always wanting to be sure, certain, secure in everything it does, in its relationship, in its job, in its movement of thought, to be sure, certain and accurate), whether that mind which has not found security and is afraid of not finding it, can find any security at all. Psychologically, inwardly, is there such a thing as being secure, in knowledge, in belief, in experience, in possession? As you possess a house, you want to possess your wife, your husband, a relationship. But in that is there any security at all? Is there any permanency in life? Or is life a total movement in which there is no permanency whatsoever, no security whatsoever? Please do ask yourselves this question, not intellectually because that doesn't answer a thing; but find out for yourselves. That is, look at yourself, look at the state you are in, the mounting fear about everything - fear of death, fear of old age. And is there anything in life, psychologically, that is secure, that is permanent? Is your relationship with your wife, with your husband, with any- thing permanent? Or does thought give permanency to something that is impermanent?

There is this immense complex problem of existence, with all its fears, anxieties, hopes, fleeting happiness and joys, but analysis is not going to solve it. What will do so, is to take it all in swiftly, as a whole. You know you understand something only when you look (not with a prolonged trained look, the trained look of an artist, a scientist or the man who has practised `how to look'), but you see it if you look at it with complete attention, you see the whole thing in one glance. And then you will see you are out of it. Then you are out of time; time has a stop and sorrow therefore ends. A man that is in sorrow, or fear, is not related. How can a man who is pursuing power have relationship? He may have a family, sleep with his wife, but he is not related. A man who is competing with another has no relationship at all. And all our social structure with its un-morality is based on this. To be fundamentally, essentially, related means the ending of the `me' that breeds separation and sorrow. 25th April 1968

There is so much to do in the world, to wipe away poverty, to live happily, to live with delight instead of with agony and fear, to build a totally different kind of society, a morality which is above all morality. But this can only be when all the morality of present day society is totally denied. There is so much to do and it cannot be done if there is this constant isolating process going on. We speak of the `me' and the `mine', and the `other' - the other is beyond the wall, the me and mine is this side of the wall. So how can that essence of resistance, which is the me, how can that be completely `let go'? Because that is really the most fundamental question in all relationship, as one sees that the relationship between images is not relationship at all and that when that kind of relationship exists there must be conflict, that we must be at each other's throats.

When you put yourself that question, inevitably you'll say: `Must I live in a vacuum, in a state of emptiness?' I wonder if you have ever known what it is to have a mind that is completely empty. You have lived in space that is created by the `me' (which is a very small space). The space which the `I', the self-isolating process, has built between one person and another, that is all the space we know - the space between itself and the circumference - the frontier which thought has built. And in this space we live, in this space there is division. You say: `If I let myself go, or if I abandon the centre of `me', I will live in a vacuum'. But have you ever really let go the `me', actually, so that there is no `me' at all? Have you ever lived in this world, gone to the office in that spirit, lived with your wife or with your husband? If you have lived that way you will know that there is a state of relationship in which the `me' is not, which is not Utopia, which is not a thing dreamt about, or a mystical, nonsensical experience, but something that can be actually done - to live at a dimension where there is relationship with all human beings.

relationship can only exist when there is total abandonment of the self, the `me'. When the me is not, then you are related; in that there is no separation whatsoever. Probably one has not felt that, the total denial (not intellectually but actually) the total cessation of the `me'. And perhaps that's what most of us are seeking, sexually or through identification with something greater. But that again, that process of identification with something greater is the product of thought; and thought is old (like the me, the ego, the I, it is of yesterday) it is always old. The question then arises: how is it possible to let go this isolating process completely, this process which is centred in the `me'. How is this to be done? You understand the question? How am I (whose every activity of everyday life is of fear, anxiety, despair, sorrow, confusion and hope) how is the `me' which separates itself from another, through identification with God, with its conditioning, with its society, with its social and moral activity with the State and so on - how is that to die, to disappear so that the human being can be related? Because if we are not related, then we are going to live at war with each other. There may be no killing of each other because that is becoming too dangerous, except in far away countries. How can we live so that there is no separation, so that we really can co-operate?

If love is the product of thought, as it is with most people, then that love is hedged about, caught in the network of jealousy, of envy, the desire to dominate, to possess and be possessed, this longing to be loved and to love. In that, can there be love for the one and for the many? If I love one, do I destroy the love of the other? And as with most of us love is pleasure, companionship, comfort, the seclusion and the sense of being protected in the family, is there really any love? Can a man who is bound to his family love his neighbour? You may talk about love theoretically, go to church and love God (whatever that may mean) and the next day go to the office and destroy your neighbour - because you are competing with him and want his job, his possessions, and you want to better yourself, comparing yourself with him. So when all this activity is going on inside you, morning till night, even when you are asleep through your dreams, can you be related? Or is relationship something entirely different?

So, if thought is old (and it is always old and therefore never free) how can thought understand relationship? relationship is always in the present, in the living present, (not in the dead past of memory, of remembrances, of pleasure and pain) relationship is active, now, to be related means just that. When you look at somebody with eyes that are full of affection, love, there is immediate relationship. When you can look at a cloud with eyes that are seeing for the first time, then there is deep relationship. But if thought comes in, then that relationship belongs to the image. So then one asks: what is love? Is love pleasure? Is love desire? Is love a memory of the many things that have been built up, stored up, with regard to your wife, to your husband, to your neighbour, the society, the community, with your God - can that be said to be love?

In the world you can see how pleasure is becoming more and more demanding, insistent, because all pleasure, if you observe carefully, is a process of isolation; and one has to consider this question of pleasure in the context of relationship. Pleasure is the product of thought - isn't it? Pleasure was in the thing which you experienced yesterday, the beauty or the sensuous perception, or sexual sensuous excitement; you think about it, you build an image of that pleasure which you experienced yesterday. And so thought sustains, gives nourishment, to that thing which was called pleasurable yesterday. And so thought demands the continuity of that pleasure today. The more you think about that experience that you had, which gave you a delight at the moment, the more thought gives it a continuity as pleasure and desire. And what relationship has this to the fundamental question of human existence, which concerns how we are related? If our relationship is the outcome of sexual pleasure, or the pleasure of the family, of ownership, domination, control, the fear of not being protected, not having inward security and therefore always seeking pleasure - then what place has pleasure in relationship? The demand for pleasure does destroy all relationship, whether it be sexual or of any other kind. And if we observe clearly, all our so called moral values are based on pleasure, though we put it over with the righteous sounding morality of our respectable society.

So, when we ask ourselves, when we look at ourselves, deeply, we see this activity of self-isolation, the `me', the `I', the `ego', building resistance round itself and that very resistance is the `me'. That is isolation, that is what creates fragments, the fragmentary look of the thinker and the thought. So what place has pleasure, which is the outcome of a memory given sustenance and nourishment by thought (thought which is always old, which is never free) what has that thought, which has centred its existence in pleasure, to do with relationship? Do please ask yourselves this question, don't merely listen to the speaker - he is gone tomorrow and you have to live your own life; so the speaker is of no importance whatsoever. What is important is to ask these questions of yourself and to ask such questions you have to be terribly serious, you have to be completely dedicated to the search, because it is only when you are serious that you live, it's only when you are deeply, fundamentally, earnest that life opens, has meaning, has beauty. You have to ask this question: whether it is not a fact that you live in an image, in a formula, in an isolating fragment. Is it not out of that isolation that fear, with its pain and pleasure (the outcome of thought) has become aware of this isolation? That image then tries to identify itself with something permanent, God, truth, the nation, the flag and the rest of it.

So when you look at yourselves directly, don't you find that your daily activities (your thought, your ambitions, your demands, your aggressions, the constant longing to be loved and to love, the constant gnawing of fear, the agony of isolation) don't these all make for extraordinary separativeness and fundamental isolation? And when there is that deep isolation how can you be related to somebody else, to that other person who is also isolating himself, through his ambition, greed, avarice, demand for domination, possession, power and all the rest of it? So there are these two entities called human beings, living in their own isolation and breeding children and so on, but all this is isolation. And co-operation between these two isolated entities becomes mechanical; they must have some co-operation to live at all, to have a family, to go to the office or factory and work there, but they always remain isolated entities, with their beliefs and dogmas, their nationalities... you know all the screens that man has built around himself to separate himself from others. So that isolation is essentially the factor of not being related. And in that isolated (so-called) relationship, pleasure becomes most important.

I wonder if you ask these questions of yourself when you look at those chestnut trees with their blooms like white candles against the blue sky. What relationship exists between you and that, what relationship have you actually got (not emotionally nor sentimentally) what is your relationship with such things? And if you have lost the relationship with these things in nature, how can you be related to man? The more we live in towns, the less do we have any relation with nature. You go out for a walk on a Sunday and look at the trees and say `How lovely', and go back to your life of routine, living in a series of drawers, which are called houses, flats. You are losing relationship with nature. You can see this by the fact that you go to museums and you spend a whole morning looking at pictures, abstractions of what is, and this shows that you have really totally lost your contact, your relationship with nature; pictures, concerts, statues, have all become terribly important and you never look at the tree, the bird, the marvellous lighting of a cloud.

Now, what is relationship? Have we any relationship with another at all? Are we so enclosed, self-protected that our relationship has become merely superficial, sensual, pleasurable? Because after all, if we examine ourselves very deeply and very quietly (not according to Freud or Jung or some other expert, but actually look at ourselves as we are) then perhaps we can find out how we isolate ourselves daily, how we build around ourselves a wall of resistance, of fear. To `look' at ourselves is more important and much more fundamental than to look at ourselves according to specialists.

How does this image come into being? And if it is there, as it is with practically everybody, then how can there be any real relationship? relationship implies being in contact with each other deeply, profoundly. Out of that deep relationship there can be co-operation, working together, doing things together. But if there is an image - I have an image about you and you have an image about me - what relationship can exist, except the relationship of an idea, or a symbol, or a certain memory, which becomes the image. Do these images have relationships, and is that perhaps what relationship is? Can there be love in the real sense of that word (not according to the priests, or according to the theologians, or according to the Communist, or this or that person) but actually the quality of that feeling of love, when the relationship is merely conceptual, imaginative, not factual? There can only be a relationship between human beings when we accept what is, not what should be. We are always living in the world of formulas, concepts, which are the images of thought. So, can thought, can intellect, bring about right relationship? Can the mind, the brain, with all its self-protective instruments built up through millions of years - can that brain, which is the whole response of memory and thought, bring about right relationship between human beings? What place has the image, thought, in relationship? Has it any place at all?

This fragmentary, separative existence, inevitably leads to various forms of violence. So, if we could give our attention to this question of relationship, then we could perhaps solve the social inequalities, injustices, immorality and that terrifying thing `respectability' which man has cultivated; to be respectable is to be moral according to that which is really essentially immoral. So is there any relationship at all? relationship implies being in contact, in touch, deeply, fundamentally, with nature, with another human being - to be related, not in blood, or as part of the family, or as husband and wife as these are hardly relationships at all. To find out the nature of this question, we must look at another issue, which is this whole mechanism of building images, putting them together, creating an idea, a symbol, in which man lives. Most of us have images about ourselves - what we think we are, what we should be, the image of oneself and the image of another; we have these images in relationship. You have the image about the speaker, and as the speaker doesn't know you he has no image. But if you know somebody very intimately you have already built an image, that very intimacy implies the image that you have about that person - the wife has an image about the husband and the husband has an image about her. Then there is the image of society and the images that one has about God, about truth, about everything.

Perhaps this evening we may consider (not intellectually, but actually with our hearts, our minds, our whole being) we may succeed in giving complete attention to this question of man's relationship to man, and not only his relationship with another but also his relationship to nature, to the universe, to every living thing. But, as we saw, society is making us and we are making ourselves more and more mechanical, superficial, callous, indifferent - slaughter is going on in the Far East, and we are comparatively undisturbed. We have become very prosperous, but that very prosperity is destroying us, because we are becoming indifferent and lazy, because we are becoming mechanical, superficial and we are losing close relationship to all men, to all living things. And it seems to me that it is very important to ask this question: what is relationship, whether there is any relationship at all, and what place in that relationship love and thought and pleasure have?

As we said, we are going to consider this question, but not intellectually, because that means fragmentarily. We have broken up life into the intellect and the emotions, we have departmentalized our whole existence, with the specialist in the field of science, the artist, the writer, the priest and the ordinary laymen such as you and me! We are broken up into nationalities, into classes, divisions which grow wider and deeper. Let us consider this question of relationship, which is really extraordinarily important, because to live is to be related; and in considering this question of relationship we shall ask what it means to live. What is our life, which needs deep relationship with another, whether as wife, husband, children, family, community or any other unit? In considering it we cannot possibly deal with this question in fragments, because if we take one section, one part of the totality of existence and try to solve that one part, then there is no way out of it at all. But perhaps we shall be able to understand and live differently, if we can deal with this question of relationship totally, not in fragments (not as the individual and the community, and the individual opposing the community, the individual and society, the individual and religion and so on, as these are all fragmentations; they are all broken up). We are always trying to solve our problems by understanding a little fragment of this whole business of existence. So could we, at least for this evening (and I hope also for the rest of our lives) look at life not in fragments - as a Catholic, a Protestant, a specialist in Zen, or following a particular Guru, master, which is all so absurdly childish. We have got an immense problem, that is to understand existence, to understand how to live. And, as we said, living is relationship, there is no living if we are not related. And most of us, not being related in the deeper sense of that word, we try to identify ourselves with something - with the nation, with a particular system, or philosophy, or a particular dogma or belief. That's what is going on throughout the world, the identification of each individual with something - with the family, or with oneself. (And I don't know what it means to `identify with oneself').

To us intellect is enormously important, thought is essential - thought which can operate logically, sanely, intelligently. But I wonder if thought has any place in relationship at all? Because that is what we are going to talk over together this evening. We said we must ask fundamental questions, essential questions. The last three times that we met here, we faced that enormous question to which man has been seeking an answer: what is the relationship of man, who is caught in this turmoil, in this endless misery (with a fluttering of occasional happiness), what is his relationship to that immense reality - if a relationship does exist at all? We went into that.

A mind that is caught in the network of effort at any level of its being, brings about its own wastage of energy. After all, all our action, psychologically speaking, is self-centred action. Please do observe it in yourselves, see for yourself the whole pattern, the whole map, of your life; it is self-centred, its activities, however much they are expanding, are the outcome of that centre, with all its efforts to fulfil, to become, to change, to acquire power, position, prestige, to be somebody in a stupid world, everything spins round this self-centred movement. This self-centred activity is essentially a waste of energy. You know in that self-centred activity there is the operation of will. Will is the heightened form of acute desire, the strong urge of a certain reaction, of a certain demand for pleasure. All action of will is separative and when there is separation there must be conflict. Where there is duality in any form there must be a wastage of energy, in which conflict, pain, pleasure, suffering are involved. And all our activities, psychological murmurings, psychological demands and appetites, are centred round this `me', the `I', the `ego'. All its activity, if one observes, is a wastage of energy because this leads to isolation. Though you may be married and have a family, father, mother, husband and wife live their own lives, have their own separate life - they may meet in bed, but their life is separate. He in the office is ambitious, driving for a position, prestige and all the rest of it; and she has her own ambitions, her own envy. So relationship is denied by this self-centred activity.

And so the responsibility of journeying together is yours as well as the speaker's. You can either take that journey casually out of curiosity, or out of intellectual amusement; or you can be very earnest and pursue it without any deviation. You will then enquire profoundly, take every step fully aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it, and so become aware in that choiceless, clear, awareness, seeing exactly what is taking place. Then you may find or come upon, this truth that has no name, that is not measurable, and without which man has no meaning. Man can go to the moon and write extraordinarily clever books, perfect his technology, establish a moral relationship, but this is all mechanical, vain and has very little significance. So it is essential for each one of us, if we are at all earnest to pursue this essential enquiry; then we shall see that there are certain things one must, not only enquire into, but also be free of. And we must be earnest, not only because the times demand it, but because, unless we are serious, we are not alive. You know, our minds are very distorted, we can't see anything very clearly, or hear anything directly - we only hear what we want to hear and we see things that please us. We are incapable of looking at something directly, without hedging, trying to escape from what is.

WHEN WE MET here the other day, we were saying that it is essential to find out for ourselves what truth is, and not depend on others. We are so easily influenced, our minds are so eager to accept, we fear the loss of security psychologically and we are always eager to follow and to obey. And we are apt to create heroes out of those people who say they know, or they have experienced. I think there is a great danger in the relationship between the speaker and yourselves. The speaker is utterly unimportant - he is like any other instrument, like a telephone. One obviously doesn't make a hero out of a telephone, one is not influenced by the outward aspect of the speaker. So we are not in any way trying to do propaganda, influence, or shape your minds to think in a certain way. But one can see by observing the events of the world (and also the accidents within ourselves that take such deep root), one can observe the monumental chaos of the world, where technology has advanced so well with its computers and other devices. Human beings are becoming more and more mechanical, more and more superficial, filled with all the latest information, following the latest exhibitions, news, novels. And the more mechanical we are, the more superficial we become. But when we are together we are exploring a realm in which all influence, propaganda, obedience, and following, must completely cease. This implies that one has to stand completely alone. Because to find reality, all influence, all imitation, all obedience to a principle, or to an example, or to a guru, or to anyone else, has no value whatsoever. I think that must be made very clear between ourselves, that we are not laying down a law, a method, a system, but rather taking a journey together and in that journey we may come upon certain obvious facts for ourselves, which we have hitherto neglected.

Then we come again to this extraordinary question of the nature of death. That must be answered, neither with fear, nor by escaping from that absolute fact, nor by belief, nor hope. There is an answer, the right answer, but to find the right answer one has to put the right question. But you cannot possibly put the right question if you are merely seeking a way out of it, if the question is born of fear, of despair and of loneliness. Then if you do put the right question with regard to reality, with regard to man's relationship to man, and what that thing called love is, and also this immense question of death, then out of the right question will come the right answer. From that answer comes right action. Right action is in the answer itself. And we are responsible. Don't fool yourself by saying `What can I do? What can I, an individual, living a shoddy little life, with all its confusion and ignorance, what can I do?' Ignorance exists only when you don't know yourself. Self-knowing is wisdom. You may be ignorant of all the books in the world (and I hope you are), of all the latest theories, but that is not ignorance. Not knowing oneself deeply, profoundly, is ignorance; and you cannot know yourself if you cannot look at yourself, see yourself actually as you are, without any distortion, without any wish to change. Then what you see is transformed because the distance between the observer and the observed is removed and hence there is no conflict. 16th April 1968

Then there is the fundamental question of man's relationship to man. This relationship is society, the society which we have created through our envy, greed, hatred, brutality, competition and violence. Our chosen relationship to society, based on a life of battle, of wars, of conflict, of violence, of aggression, has gone on for thousands of years and has become our daily life, in the office, at home, in the factory, in churches. We have invented a morality out of this conflict, but it is no morality at all, it is a morality of respectability, which has no meaning whatsoever. You go to church and love your neighbour there and in the office you destroy him. When there are nationalistic differences based on ideas, opinions, prejudices, a society in which there is terrible injustice, inequality - we all know this, we are terribly aware of all this - aware of the war that is going on, of the action of the politicians and the economists trying to bring order out of disorder - we are aware of this. And we say, `What can we do?' We are aware that we have chosen a way of life that leads ultimately to the field of murder. We have probably asked this, if we are at all serious, a thousand times but we say `I, as a human being, can't do anything. What can I do faced with this colossal machine?'

There will be division as long as there is the image which engenders the whole structure of conflict. So one must learn the art of looking, not only at the clouds and the flowers, at the movement of a tree in the wind, but actually looking at ourselves as we are, not saying, `It is ugly', `It is beautiful, or `Is that all?' - all the verbal assertions that one has with regard to oneself. When we can look at ourselves clearly, without the image, then perhaps we shall be able to discover what is true for ourselves. And that truth is not in the realm of thought but of direct perception, in which there is no separation between the observer and the observed. One of the fundamental questions is man's relationship to the ultimate, to the nameless, to what is beyond all words.

One of the primary questions is: what is this thing called reality? Can you and I, living our daily lives (not retiring into a monastery, or becoming disciples of some guru, or running off to some strange academy in India) can we find this reality for ourselves? And we must - not through prayers, nor imitation, nor following somebody, but through becoming aware of our own conditioning, seeing it actually not theoretically, seeing as you would see a flower, a cloud and seeing without separation. I do not know if you have ever tried to look at anything, to look, for example, at your own wife or husband; to look without the image that you or he has built through a relationship of many years, of many irritations, pleasures, angers, to look at each other without the image. I do not know if you have ever tried this; but, if you have, you will have found how extraordinarily difficult it is to be free of images. It is these images which are expected to enter into relationship, not human beings. You have an image about me, and I have an image about you, and the relationship is between these two images with their symbols, associations and memories.

One of the fundamental questions consists in man's relationship to reality. That reality has been expressed in different ways: in the East in one way and in the West in another. If we do not discover for ourselves what that relationship is, independently of the theoreticians and the theologians and the priests, we are incapable of discovering what relationship with reality is. That reality may be named as God - and the name is really of very little importance - because the name the word, the symbol, is never the actual, and to be caught in symbols and words seems utterly foolish - and yet we are so caught, Christians in one way, Hindus, Muslims and others in other ways - and words and symbols have become extraordinarily significant. But the symbol, the word, is never the actual, the real thing. So in asking the question, as to what is the true relationship of man to reality, one must be free of the word with all its associations, with all its prejudices and conditions. If we do not find that relationship, then life has really very little meaning; then our confusion, our misery is bound to grow, and life will become more and more intolerable, superficial, meaningless. One must be extraordinarily serious to find out if there is such a reality, or if there is not, and what is man's relationship to it.

As we said the other day, surely love is not pleasure; pleasure is the product of thought, cultivated and constantly repeated, but love is something entirely different, and if you come upon it, then there must be freedom from anger, jealousy and violence. There must be freedom from that whole mechanical process of building an image in our relationships. You know, every relationship, whether it is with your wife, your husband, your friend, your boss or with anybody depends on the image which you have created. Obviously there is an image between you and your wife; she has an image of you and you have an image about her which has been built up through many years of pleasure and pain, anger and irritation. The self-centred activity of each one in this relationship has produced an image, and these two images have a relationship, but nothing else! Love then is not the product of pleasure or thought, so it cannot be cultivated; like virtue, it cannot be manufactured by thought.

I do not know if you have ever considered what humility is. Humility, like austerity, is not something you can work upon day after day and then say I have learnt to be humble; only the vain man pretends to be humble. Humility comes only when there is no seeking or achieving; that is, when you live completely in the present, which is the totality of time. If however you are acquiring power, seeking position, in the name of God, in the name of the Church, in the name of the government or trying to dominate in all your relationships, whether it be the intimate relationship of the family or the business relationship, then obviously there is no humility. Humility, like innocence, comes only when the mind is completely quiet, and order, which is absolutely essential, is only possible in freedom, which is love. You know one hardly dare use that word because everybody uses it; you hear it in church, on the radio, in the cinema and in the politician's speech. They talk of divine love and human love, of the love of the one and the love of the many, and therefore they have destroyed the beauty, the fullness, the depth and the meaning of that word.

We have all experienced sorrow, the death of someone, the ache of loneliness and the anxiety; we have known the enormous uncertainty of life while at the same time demanding that it may be secure, and life is never secure. Life is a movement in relationship, but in that relationship we want security and something permanent. So experience hasn't taught us anything; experience means to go through something, to go through and finish with it, and you cannot finish an experience if that experience leaves a mark, a shadow, an imprint on the mind. If it leaves an imprint then the next experience is translated according to the past experience; this is all fairly obvious and simple. So experience only strengthens the `what has been' and under no circumstances does it give freedom. And this is something we are not going to accept. A mind that has obeyed for so long, that has accepted authority, that has become immoral can have no quality of virtue; virtue can come into being only when there is no conflict and there is love, and as human beings we have no love. We have only jealousy, envy and hate.

Last time we met we were saying that the relationship of human beings is based on images; the husband has an image about the wife and the wife has an image about the husband. These two images - which are memories and have no reality whatsoever except as memories - are related, they have a relationship, but if one dies to all images then relationship has quite a different meaning, then there is a direct, living relationship which is constantly changing. It does not mean that I pursue another man or a woman. relationship means movement; it is not a static state as my wife, my husband, my family which is all based on an image. When the relationship is between two images then it becomes destructive and full of conflict. So we have an image about death; the thing known and the thing not known. We are really afraid of letting go of the known, not of facing the unknown; you cannot be afraid of the unknown because you don't know what it is. You can only know the unknown when there is freedom from the known, so you have to die to everything you have built up psychologically, inwardly, inside the skin as it were, this whole structure of experience to which the mind desperately clings. That is real death not the physical organism coming to an end, but to die psychologically to everything you have known. I wonder if you have ever tried it? Of course not. To die to a single pleasure, an enchanting remembrance, without argument, without a motive, just to drop it. Do it some time and you will see what is involved, how frightened you are to have a mind that is constantly renewing itself. What is this thing called life to which you cling so desperately? Look at it factually, not imaginatively or intellectually, this thing you call living!

And is there any other form of death? We shall see. You are brought up, as most of the world, to believe in a soul, in a spiritual entity which is constant; that is, you will be resurrected. And in Asia they believe in reincarnation; that is, the believer is born over and over again until in time he becomes perfect. And when he has reached perfection - through being born over and over again and passing through these thousands of experiences - he is at one with whatever it is. That's the whole concept of reincarnation; you also have a similar concept only you put it a different way. Now fear is at the bottom of these concepts otherwise how do you know that there is anything permanent, like a soul or the atman, as the Hindus call it, within you? How do you know there's anything permanent in you? Is there anything permanent? Do please examine it, forgetting your belief! Is your relationship with anybody permanent? Aren't your thoughts changing every day, either being modified or added to? And isn't your physical organism undergoing tremendous changes all the time? So one has to ask if there is anything permanent at all? And yet that's what the mind is seeking because it says: `If I die tomorrow what have I lived for? There must he something permanent, lasting, enduring!' But if you observe very deeply, psychologically you will find there is nothing permanent, nothing! Whatever it is - your thoughts, your relationships, your ideas and ideals, your gods - nothing is permanent. We know this very deeply and we are frightened of it, so we invent another god and say I cannot live without hope, but actually all we know is despair. Out of that despair we become cynical, bitter, hard, brutal and violent. Then one sees that the thing one imagined to be permanent is thought itself. It is thought which has said there is a permanent soul, a permanent entity that eventually will evolve, become more beautiful till it reaches perfection. So the soul, the atman is the result of thought but the fact is, there is nothing permanent. When you face it as a fact it doesn't create despair; on the contrary, it is only when you do not face the fact that there is hope, fear and despair. So thought creates the fear of death because you think the little property in your name is permanent. You are afraid to let go and die every day to your house, your home, your wife, your children, your relationship with your husband, everything that thought clings to as me and mine. And to die to all that every day is a total renewal.

Please, this is not a lecture given by a professor to which you casually listen, agreeing or disagreeing, accepting what you like and rejecting what you don't like. This is not that kind of a talk; here we are sharing the problems together as two human beings. We are trying to take a journey together into this enormously complex problem of living, so it's your responsibility how you listen and what you do with what you have listened to, because when you listen with full attention - and you can only listen that way if you are really serious - you will see the enormous danger, then you will become serious. But if you listen with your prejudices as a Catholic, as a Protestant, as a Hindu or as a Buddhist, whatever you are, then you are not listening at all. You can only listen when you are not translating what is being said into your own terminology, your own background. Listening is an act, an immediate act, which reveals the whole problem. It's like seeing. I do not know if you have ever tried to look at flower, a cloud or a tree. Are you looking at that flower, that cloud or that tree through the images you have about them? If you are, then you are not really looking at the flower, but at the image you have built about that flower. In the same way you look at another through the image, the wife looking at the husband with the image she has built throughout the years of marriage or non-marriage. And he has built an image about her, the image being the pleasure and the pain, the flattery and sexual gratification, the arguments and insults; you know how one builds in relationship. So neither do you look at the flower without the image nor at your husband, your wife or your neighbour - so you never look! You never look at a flower nor at a beautiful statue; you have an image, a symbol, you want to find out who made it, only then do you begin to admire. So when you are listening to this talk, please listen - don't have images! Then you will see that if you actually give your whole mind and heart to it, you will have nothing whatever to do, you will have done it. Therefore an enormous change takes place

So, during these talks, if you are at all serious, we are going to try to find out if it is at all possible for man - that is you and I - to change our whole way of thinking, our whole way of living, not verbally, not intellectually but actually because life is relationship; and without relationship there is no life. Even the monk in his monastery, which is really a mode of escape, even he is related. relationship means life, and when there is conflict in that relationship, whether it be within yourself, or with your husband, your wife, your neighbour or with anybody, then life becomes a battlefield. We have made of our life the daily living which ultimately ends in Vietnam; and we are all responsible for this, not just the Americans, but the Italians, the Russians, the Indians, everybody! Everybody is responsible for war because we are human beings and we have created wars; that's part of our life. And to say the Americans are dreadful people, violent people - so are you! You don't feel this responsibility at all!

So every human being is concerned with this primary issue, which is to live in this world, earning a livelihood, having great technological skill, and yet not to destroy one another. To live at peace because peace is necessary. I do not mean the politician's peace between two wars, but peace in our daily life in which there is no competition, no destructive ambition that separates the black from the white, the brown from the yellow. And is this possible? To live with a mind that is capable, highly intelligent and therefore sensitive, a mind that knows, in which there is no hatred, jealousy or envy. This has been the major problem throughout the ages - to find a right relationship between man and man, to live peacefully without hate. And man hasn't been able to do this; we have probably lived many millions of years and we haven't been able to solve this problem. Religion has offered an escape from the central issue because religions have always permitted wars as a way of life and we have come to accept this conflict and battle in relationship. These are all facts.

So ideologies have failed, education has failed. Education can give marvellous technological knowledge which will help man get to the moon, show him how to run a computer, or kill thousands of people from a great distance, but we haven't solved human problems, that is how to live together as human beings, how to co-operate with one another and find unity in relationship between man and man. And that's the only thing that matters - nothing else! Not belief in God, in the church with its rituals, dogmas and priests, but how to live together peacefully as human beings, with love, with generosity and without violence. That is the basic problem, otherwise we are going to destroy each other, as we are doing. We have all become so colossally selfish and self-centred because society is organized to function anarchistically, in chaos.