Urgency of Change
Beauty and The Artist
Questioner: I wonder what an artist is? There on the banks of
the Ganges, in a dark little room, a man sits weaving a most
beautiful sari in silk and gold, and in Paris in his atelier
another man is painting a picture which he hopes will bring him
fame. Somewhere there is a writer cunningly spinning out stories
stating the old, old problem of man and woman; then there is the
scientist in his laboratory and the technician putting together
a million parts so that a rocket may go to the moon. And in
India a musician is living a life of great austerity in order to
transmit faithfully the distilled beauty of his music. There is
the housewife preparing a meal, and the poet walking alone in
the woods. Aren't these all artists in their own way? I feel
that beauty is in the hands of everybody, but they don't know
it. The man who makes beautiful clothes or excellent shoes, the
woman who arranged those flowers on your table, all of them seem
to work with beauty. I often wonder why it is that the painter,
the sculptor, the composer, the writer - the so-called creative
artists - have such extraordinary importance in this world and
not the shoemaker or the cook. Aren't they creative too? When
you consider all the varieties of expression which people
consider beautiful, then what place has a true artist in life,
and who is the true artist? It is said that beauty is the very
essence of all life. Is that building over there, which is
considered to be so beautiful, the expression of that essence? I
should greatly appreciate it if you would go into this whole
question of beauty and the artist.
Krishnamurti: Surely the artist is one who is skilled in action?
This action is in life and not outside of life. Therefore if it
is living skilfully that truly makes an artist. This skill can
operate for a few hours in the day when he is playing an
instrument, writing poems or painting pictures, or it can
operate a bit more if he is skilled in many such fragments -
like those great men of the Renaissance who worked in several
different media. But the few hours of music or writing may
contradict the rest of his living which is in disorder and
confusion. So is such a man an artist at all? The man who plays
the violin with artistry and keeps his eye on his fame isn't
interested in the violin, he is only exploiting it to be famous,
the "me" is far more important than the music, and so it is with
the writer or the painter with an eye on fame. The musician
identifies his "me" with what he considers to be beautiful
music, and the religious man identifies his "me" with what he
considers to be the sublime. All these are skilled in their
particular little fields but the rest of the vast field of life
is disregarded. So we have to find out what is skill in action,
in living, not only in painting or in writing or in technology,
but how one can live the whole of life with skill and beauty.
Are skill and beauty the same? Can a human being - whether he be
an artist or not - live the whole of his life with skill and
beauty? Living is action and when that action breeds sorrow it
ceases to be skilful. So can a man live without sorrow, without
friction, without jealousy and greed, without conflict of any
kind? The issue is not who is an artist and who is not an artist
but whether a human being, you or another, can live without
torture and distortion. Of course it is profane to belittle
great music, great sculpture, great poetry or dancing, or to
sneer at it; that is to be unskilled in one's own life. But the
artistry and beauty which is skill in action should operate
throughout the day, not just during a few hours of the day. This
is the real challenge, not just playing the piano beautifully.
You must play it beautifully if you touch it at all, but that is
not enough. It is like cultivating a small corner of a huge
field. We are concerned with the whole field and that field is
life. What we always do is to neglect the whole field and
concentrate on fragments, our own or other people's. Artistry is
to be completely awake and therefore to be skilful in action in
the whole of life, and this is beauty.
Questioner: What about the factory worker or the office
employee? Is he an artist? Doesn't his work preclude skill in
action and so deaden him that he has no skill in anything else
either? Is he not conditioned by his work?
Krishnamurti: Of course he is. But if he wakes up he will either
leave his work or so transform it that it becomes artistry. What
is important is not the work but the waking up to the work. What
is important is not the conditioning of the work but to wake up.
Questioner: What do you mean, wake up?
Krishnamurti: Are you awakened only by circumstances, by
challenges, by some disaster or joy? Or is there a state of
being awake without any cause? If you are awakened by an event,
a cause, then you depend on it, and when you, any dependence is
the end of skill, the end of artistry.
Questioner: What is this other awakened state that has no cause?
You are talking about a state in which there is neither a cause
nor an effect. Can there be a state of mind that is not the
result of some cause? I don't understand that because surely
everything we think and everything we are is the result of a
cause? There is the endless chain of cause and effect.
Krishnamurti: This chain of cause and effect is endless because
the effect becomes the cause and the cause begets further
effects, and so on.
Questioner: Then what action is there outside this chain?
Krishnamurti: All we know is action with a cause, a motive,
action which is a result. All action is in relationship. If
relationship is based on cause it is cunning adaptation, and
therefore inevitably leads to another form of dullness. Love is
the only thing that is causeless, that is free; it is beauty, it
is skill, it is art. Without love there is no art. When the
artist is playing beautifully there is no "me; there is love and
beauty, and this is art. This is skill in action. Skill in
action is the absence of the "me". Art is the absence of the
"me". But when you neglect the whole field of life and
concentrate only on a little part - however much the "me" may
then be absent, you are still living unskilfully and therefore
you are not an artist of life. The absence of "me" in living is
love and beauty, which brings its own skill. This is the
greatest art: living skilfully in the whole field of Life.
Questioner: Oh Lord! How am I to do that? I see it and feel it
in my heart but how can I maintain it?
Krishnamurti: There is no way to maintain it, there is no way to
nourish it, there is no practising of it; there is only the
seeing of it. Seeing is the greatest of all skills.
Dependence
Questioner: I should like to understand the nature of
dependence. I have found myself depending on so many things - on
women, on different kinds of amusement, on good wine, on my wife
and children, on my friends, on what people say. Fortunately I
no longer depend on religious entertainment, but I depend on the
books I read to stimulate me and on good conversation. I see
that the young are also dependent, perhaps not so much as I am,
but they have their own particular forms of dependence. I have
been to the East and have seen how there they depend on the guru
and the family. Tradition there has greater importance and is
more deeply rooted than it is here in Europe, and, of course,
very much more so than in America. But we all seem to depend on
something to sustain us, not only physically but, much more,
inwardly. So I am wondering whether it is at all possible to be
really free of dependence, and should one be free of it?
Krishnamurti: I take it you are concerned with the psychological
inward attachments. The more one is attached the greater the
dependence. The attachment is not only to persons but to ideas
and to things. One is attached to a particular environment, to a
particular country and so on. And from this springs dependence
and therefore resistance.
Questioner: Why resistance?
Krishnamurti: The object of my attachment is my territorial or
my sexual domain. This I protect, resisting any form of
encroachment on it from others. I also limit the freedom of the
person to whom I am attached and limit my own freedom. So
attachment is resistance. I am attached to something or
somebody. That attachment is possessiveness; possessiveness is
resistance, so attachment is resistance.
Questioner: Yes, I see that.
Krishnamurti: Any form of encroachment on my possessions leads
to violence, legally or psychologically. So attachment is
violence, resistance, imprisonment - the imprisonment of oneself
and of the object of attachment. Attachment means this is mine
and not yours; keep off! So this relationship is resistance
against others. The whole world is divided into mine and yours:
my opinion, my judgement, my advice, my God, my country - an
infinity of such nonsense. Seeing all this taking place, not in
abstraction but actually in our daily life, we can ask why there
is this attachment to people, things and ideas. Why does one
depend? All being is relationship and all relationship is in
this dependence with its violence, resistance and domination. We
have made the whole world into this. Where one possesses one
must dominate. We meet beauty, love springs up, and immediately
it turns to attachment and all this misery begins and the love
has gone out of the window. Then we ask, "What has happened to
our great love?" This is actually what is happening in our daily
life. And, seeing all this, we can now ask: why is man
invariably attached, not only to that which is lovely, but also
to every form of illusion and to so many idiotic fancies?
Freedom is not a state of non-dependence; it is a positive state
in which there isn't any dependence. But it is not a result, it
has no cause. This must be understood very clearly before we can
go into the question of why man depends or falls into the trap
of attachment with all its miseries. Being attached we try to
cultivate a state of independence - which is another form of
resistance.
Questioner: So what is freedom? You say it is not the negation
of dependence or the ending of dependence; you say it is not
freedom from something, but just freedom. So what is it? Is it
an abstraction or an actuality?
Krishnamurti: It is not an abstraction. It is the state of mind
in which there is no form of resistance whatsoever. It is not
like a river accommodating itself to boulders here and there,
going round or over them. In this freedom there are no boulders
at all, only the movement of the water.
Questioner: But the boulder of attachment is there, in this
river of life. You can't just speak about another river in which
there are no boulders.
Krishnamurti: We are not avoiding the boulder or saying it
doesn't exist. We must first understand freedom. It is not the
same river as the one in which there are the boulders.
Questioner: I have still got my river with its boulders, and
that's what I came to ask about, not about some other unknown
river without boulders. That's no good to me.
Krishnamurti: Quite right. But you must understand what freedom
is in order to understand your boulders. But don't let us flog
this simile to death. We must consider both freedom and
attachment.
Questioner: What has my attachment to do with freedom or freedom
with my attachment?
Krishnamurti: In your attachment there is pain. You want to be
rid of this pain, so you cultivate detachment which is another
form of resistance. In the opposite there is no freedom. These
two opposites are identical and mutually strengthen each other.
What you are concerned with is how to have the pleasures of
attachment without its miseries. You cannot. That is why it is
important to understand that freedom does not lie in detachment.
In the process of understanding attachment there is freedom, not
in running away from attachment. So our question now is, why are
human beings attached, dependent?
Being nothing, being a desert in oneself, one hopes through
another to find water. Being empty, poor, wretched,
insufficient, devoid of interest or importance, one hopes
through another to be enriched. Through the love of another one
hopes to forget oneself. Through the beauty of another one hopes
to acquire beauty. Through the family, through the nation,
through the lover, through some fantastic belief, one hopes to
cover this desert with flowers. And God is the ultimate lover.
So one puts hooks into all these things. In this there is pain
and uncertainty, and the desert seems more arid than ever
before. Of course it is neither more nor less arid; it is what
it was, only one has avoided looking at it while escaping
through some form of attachment with its pain, and then escaping
from that pain into detachment. But one remains arid and empty
as before. So instead of trying to escape, either through
attachment or through detachment, can we not become aware of
this fact, of this deep inward poverty and inadequacy, this
dull, hollow isolation? That is the only thing that matters, not
attachment or detachment. Can you look at it without any sense
of condemnation or evaluation? When you do,are you looking at it
as an observer who looks at the observed, or without the
observer?
Questioner: What do you mean, the observer?
Krishnamurti: Are you looking at it from a centre with all its
conclusions of like and dislike, opinion, judgement, the desire
to be free of this emptiness and so on - are you looking at this
aridness with the eyes of conclusion - or are you looking with
eyes that are completely free? When you look at it with
completely free eyes there is no observer. If there is no
observer, is there the thing observed as loneliness, emptiness,
wretchedness?
Questioner: Do you mean to say that that tree doesn't exist if I
look at it without conclusions, without a centre which is the
observer?
Krishnamurti: Of course the tree exists.
Questioner: Why does loneliness disappear but not the tree when
I look without the observer?
Krishnamurti: Because the tree is not created by the centre, by
the mind of the "me". But the mind of the "me', in all its
self-centred activity has created this emptiness, this
isolation. And when that mind, without the centre, looks, the
self-centred activity ends. So the loneliness is not. Then the
mind functions in freedom. Looking at the whole structure of
attachment and detachment, and the movement of pain and
pleasure, we see how the mind of the "me" builds its own desert
and its own escapes. When the mind of the "me" is still, then
there is no desert and there is no escape.
Belief
Questioner: I am one of those people who really believe in God.
In India I followed one of the great modern saints who, because
he believed in God, brought about great political changes there.
In India the whole country throbs to the beat of God. I have
heard you talk against belief so probably you don't believe in
God. But you are a religious person and therefore there must be
in you some kind of feeling of the Supreme. I have been all over
India and through many parts of Europe, visiting monasteries,
churches and mosques, and everywhere I have found this very
strong, compelling belief in God whom one hopes shapes one's
life. Now since you don't believe in God, although you are a
religious person, what exactly is your position with regard to
this question? Why don't you believe? Are you an atheist? As you
know, in Hinduism you can be an atheist or a theist and yet be
equally well a Hindu. Of course it's different with the
Christians. If you don't believe in God you can't be a
Christian. But that's beside the point. The point is that I have
come to ask you to explain your position and demonstrate to me
its validity. People follow you and therefore you have a
responsibility, and therefore I am challenging you in this way.
Krishnamurti: Let us first of all clear up this last point.
There are no followers, and I have no responsibility to you or
to the people who listen to my talks. Also I am not a Hindu or
anything else, for I don't belong to any group, religious or
otherwise. Each one must be a light to himself. Therefore there
is no teacher, no disciple. This must be clearly understood from
the very beginning otherwise one is influenced; one becomes a
slave to propaganda and persuasions. Therefore anything that is
being said now is not dogma or creed or persuasion: we either
meet together in understanding or we don't. Now, you said most
emphatically that you believe in God and you probably want
through that belief to experience what one might call the
godhead. Belief involves many things. There is belief in facts
that you may not have seen but can verify, like the existence of
New York or the Eiffel Tower. Then you may believe that your
wife is faithful though you don't actually know it. She might be
unfaithful in thought yet you believe she is faithful because
you don't actually see her going off with someone else; she may
deceive you in daily thought, and you most certainly have done
the same too. You believe in reincarnation, don't you, though
there is no certainty that there is any such thing? However,
that belief has no validity in your life, has it? All Christians
believe that they must love but they do not love - like everyone
else they go about killing, physically or psychologically. There
are those who do not believe in God and yet do good. There are
those who believe in God and kill for that belief; those who
prepare for war because they claim they want peace, and so on.
So one has to ask oneself what need there is to believe at all
in anything, though this doesn't deny the extraordinary mystery
of life. But belief is one thing and "what is" is another.
Belief is a word, a thought, and this is not the thing, any more
than your name is actually you.
Through experience you hope to touch the truth of your belief,
to prove it to yourself, but this belief conditions your
experience. It isn't that the experience comes to prove the
belief, but rather that the belief begets the experience. Your
belief in God will give you the experience of what you call God.
You will always experience what you believe and nothing else.
And this invalidates your experience. The Christian will see
virgins, angels and Christ, and the Hindu will see similar
deities in extravagant plurality. The Muslim, the Buddhist, the
Jew and the Communist are the same. Belief conditions its own
supposed proof. What is important is not what you believe but
only why you believe at all. Why do you believe? And what
difference does it make to what actually is whether you believe
one thing or another? Facts are not influenced by belief or
disbelief. So one has to ask why one believes at all in
anything; what is the basis of belief? Is it fear, is it the
uncertainty of life - the fear of the unknown the lack of
security in this ever-changing world? Is it the insecurity of
relationship, or is it that faced with the immensity of life,
and not understanding it, one encloses oneself in the refuge of
belief? So, if I may ask you, if you had no fear at all, would
you have any belief?
Questioner: I am not at all sure that I am afraid, but I love
God, and it is this love that makes me believe in Him.
Krishnamurti: Do you mean to say you are devoid of fear? And
therefore know what love is?
Questioner: I have replaced fear with love and so to me fear is
non-existent, and therefore my belief is not based on fear.
Krishnamurti: Can you substitute love for fear? Is that not an
act of thought which is afraid and therefore covers up the fear
with the word called love, again a belief? You have covered up
that fear with a word and you cling to the word, hoping to
dissipate fear.
Questioner: What you are saying disturbs me greatly. I am not at
all sure I want to go on with this, because my belief and my
love have sustained me and helped me to lead a decent life. This
questioning of my belief brings about a sense of disorder of
which, quite frankly, I am afraid.
Krishnamurti: So there is fear, which you are beginning to
discover for yourself. This disturbs you. Belief comes from fear
and is the most destructive thing. One must be free of fear and
of belief. Belief divides people, makes them hard, makes them
hate each other and cultivate war. In a roundabout way,
unwillingly, you are admitting that fear begets belief. Freedom
from belief is necessary to face the fact of fear. Belief like
any other ideal is an escape from "what is". When there is no
fear then the mind is in quite a different dimension. Only then
can you ask the question whether there is a God or not. A mind
clouded by fear or belief is incapable of any kind of
understanding, any realization of what truth is. Such a mind
lives in illusion and can obviously not come upon that which is
Supreme. The Supreme has nothing to do with your or anybody
else's belief, opinion or conclusion.
Not knowing, you believe, but to know is not to know. To know is
within the tiny field of time and the mind that says, "I know"
is bound by time and so cannot possibly understand that which
is. After all, when you say, "I know my wife and my friend", you
know only the image or the memory, and this is the past.
Therefore you can never actually know anybody or anything. You
cannot know a living thing, only a dead thing. When you see this
you will no longer think of relationship in terms of knowing. So
one can never say, "There is no God", or "I know God". Both
these are a blasphemy. To understand that which is there must be
freedom, not only from the known but also from the fear of the
known and from the fear of the unknown.
Questioner: You speak of understanding that which "is" and yet
you deny the validity of knowing. What is this understanding if
it is not knowing?
Krishnamurti: The two are quite different. Knowing is always
related to the past and therefore it binds you to the past.
Unlike knowing understanding is not a conclusion, not
accumulation. If you have listened you have understood.
Understanding is attention. When you attend completely you
understand. So the understanding of fear is the ending of fear.
Your belief can therefore no longer be the predominant factor;
the understanding of fear is predominant. When there is no fear
there is freedom. It is only then that one can find what is
true. When that which "is" is not distorted by fear then that
which "is" is true. It is not the word. You cannot measure truth
with words. Love is not a word nor a belief nor something that
you can capture and say, "It is mine". Without love and beauty,
that which you call God is nothing at all.
Dreams
Questioner: I have been told by professionals that dreaming is
as vital as daytime thinking and activity, and that I would find
my daily living under great stress and strain if I did not
dream. They insist, and here I'm using not their jargon but my
own words, that during certain periods of sleep the movement of
the eyelids indicates refreshing dreams and that these bring a
certain clarity to the brain. I am wondering whether the
stillness of the mind which you have often spoken about might
not bring greater harmony to living than the equilibrium brought
about by patterns of dreams. I should also like to ask why the
language of dreams is one of symbols.
Krishnamurti: Language itself is a symbol, and we are used to
symbols: we see the tree through the image which is the symbol
of the tree, we see our neighbour through the image we have
about him. Apparently it is one of the most difficult things for
a human being to look at anything directly, not through images,
opinions, conclusions, which are all symbols. And so in dreams
symbols play a large part and in this there is great deception
and danger. The meaning of a dream is not always clear to us,
although we realize it is in symbols and try to decipher them.
When we see something, we speak of it so spontaneously that we
do not recognise that words are also symbols. All this
indicates, doesn't it, that there is direct communication in
technical matters but seldom in human relationships and
understanding? You don't need symbols when somebody hits you.
That is a direct communication. This is a very interesting
point: the mind refuses to see things directly, to be aware of
itself without the word and the symbol. You say the sky is blue.
The listener then deciphers this according to his own reference
of blueness and transmits it to you in his own cipher. So we
live in symbols, and dreams are a part of this symbolic process.
We are incapable of direct and immediate perception without the
symbols, the words, the prejudices and conclusions. The reason
for this is also quite apparent: it is part of the self-centred
activity with its defences, resistances, escapes and fears.
There is a ciphered response in the activity of the brain, and
dreams must naturally be symbolic because during the waking
hours we are incapable of direct response or perception.
Questioner: It seems to me that this then is an inherent
function of the brain.
Krishnamurti: Inherent means something permanent, inevitable and
lasting. Surely any psychological state can be changed. Only the
deep, constant demand of the brain for the physical security of
the organism is inherent. Symbols are a device of the brain to
protect the psyche; this is the whole process of thought. The
"me" is a symbol, not an actuality. Having created the symbol of
the "me", thought identifies itself with its conclusion, with
the formula, and then defends it: all misery and sorrow come
from this.
Questioner: Then how do I get around it?
Krishnamurti: When you ask how to get around it, you are still
holding on to the symbol of the "me", which is fictitious; you
become something separate from what you see, and so duality
arises.
Questioner: May I come back another day to continue this?
* * *
Questioner: You were good enough to let me come back, and I
should like to continue where we left off. We were talking about
symbols in dreams and you pointed out that we live by symbols,
deciphering them according to our gratification. We do this not
only in dreams but in everyday life; it is our usual behaviour.
Most of our actions are based on the interpretation of the
symbols or images that we have. Strangely, after having talked
with you the other day, my dreams have taken a peculiar turn. I
have had very disturbing dreams and the interpretation of those
dreams took place as they were happening within the dreams. It
was a simultaneous process; the dream was being interpreted by
the dreamer. This has never happened to me before.
Krishnamurti: During our waking hours, there is always the
observer, different from the observed, the actor, separate from
his action. In the same way there is the dreamer separate from
his dream. He thinks it is separate from himself and therefore
in need of interpretation. But is the dream separate from the
dreamer, and is there any need to interpret it? When the
observer is the observed what need is there to interpret, to
judge, to evaluate? This need would exist only if the observer
were different from the thing observed. This is very important
to understand. We have separated the thing observed from the
observer and from this arises not only the problem of
interpretation but also conflict, and the many problems
connected with it. This division is an illusion. This division
between groups, races, nationalities, is fictitious. We are
beings, undivided by names, by labels. When the labels become
all important, division takes place, and then wars and all other
struggles come into being.
Questioner: How then do I understand the content of the dream?
It must have significance. Is it an accident that I dream of
some particular event or person?
Krishnamurti: We should really look at this quite differently.
Is there anything to understand? When the observer thinks he is
different from the thing observed there is an attempt to
understand that which is outside himself. The same process goes
on within him. There is the observer wishing to understand the
thing he observes, which is himself. But when the observer is
the observed, there is no question of understanding; there is
only observation. You say that there is something to understand
in the dream, otherwise there would be no dream, you say that
the dream is a hint of something unresolved that one should
understand. You use the word "understand", and in that very word
is the dualistic process. You think there is an "I", and a thing
to be understood, whereas in reality these two entities are one
and the same. Therefore your search for a meaning in the dream
is the action of conflict.
Questioner: Would you say the dream is an expression of
something in the mind?
Krishnamurti: Obviously it is.
Questioner: I do not understand how it is possible to regard a
dream in the way you are describing it. If it has no
significance, why does it exist?
Krishnamurti: The "I" is the dreamer, and the dreamer wants to
see significance in the dream which he has invented or
projected, so both are dreams, both are unreal. This unreality
has become real to the dreamer, to the observer who thinks of
himself as separate. The whole problem of dream interpretation
arises out of this separation, this division between the actor
and the action.
Questioner: I am getting more and more confused, so may we go
over it again differently? I can see that a dream is the product
of my mind and not separate from it, but dreams seem to come
from levels of the mind which have not been explored, and so
they seem to be intimations of something alive in the mind.
Krishnamurti: It is not your particular mind in which there are
hidden things. Your mind is the mind of man; your consciousness
is the whole of man. But when you particularize it as your mind,
you limit its activity, and because of this limitation, dreams
arise. During waking hours observe without the observer, who is
the expression of limitation. Any division is a limitation.
Having divided itself into a "me" and a "not me", the "me", the
observer, the dreamer, has many problems - among them dreams and
the interpretation of dreams. In any case, you will see the
significance or the value of a dream only in a limited way
because the observer is always limited. The dreamer perpetuates
his own limitation, therefore the dream is always the expression
of the incomplete, never of the whole.
Questioner: Pieces are brought back from the moon in order to
understand the composition of the moon. In the same way we try
to understand human thinking by bringing back pieces from our
dreams, and examining what they express.
Krishnamurti: The expressions of the mind are the fragments of
the mind. Each fragment expresses itself in its own way and
contradicts other fragments. A dream may contradict another
dream, one action another action, one desire another desire. The
mind lives in this confusion. A part of the mind says it must
understand another part, such as a dream, an action or a desire.
So each fragment has its own observer, its own activity; then a
super-observer tries to bring them all into harmony. The
super-observer is also a fragment of the mind. It is these
contradictions, these divisions, that breed dreams.
So the real question is not the interpretation or the
understanding of a particular dream; it is the perception that
these many fragments are contained in the whole. Then you see
yourself as a whole and not as a fragment of a whole.
Questioner: Are you saying, sir, that one should be aware during
the day of the whole movement of life, not just one's family
life, or business life, or any other individual aspect of life?
Krishnamurti: Consciousness is the whole of man and does not
belong to a particular man. When there is the consciousness of
one particular man there is the complex problem of
fragmentation, contradiction and war. When there is awareness of
the total movement of life in a human being during the waking
hours, what need is there for dreams at all? This total
awareness, this attention, puts an end to fragmentation and to
division. When there is no conflict whatsoever the mind has no
need for dreams.
Questioner: This certainly opens a door through which I see many
things.
Tradition
Questioner: Can one really be free of tradition? Can one be free
of anything at all? Or is it a matter of sidestepping it and not
being concerned with any of it? You talk a great deal about the
past and its conditioning - but can I be really free of this
whole background of my life? Or can I merely modify the
background according to the various outward demands and
challenges, adjust myself to it rather than become free of it?
It seems to me that this is one of the most important things,
and I'd like to understand it because I always feel that I am
carrying a burden, the weight of the past. I would like to put
it down and walk away from it, never come back to it. Is that
possible?
Krishnamurti: Doesn't tradition mean carrying the past over to
the present? The past is not only one's particular set of
inheritances but also the weight of all the collective thought
of a particular group of people who have lived in a particular
culture and tradition. One carries the accumulated knowledge and
experience of the race and the family. All this is the past -
the carrying over from the known to the present - which shapes
the future. Is not the teaching of all history a form of
tradition? You are asking if one can be free of all this. First
of all, why does one want to be free? Why does one want to put
down this burden? Why?
Questioner: I think it's fairly simple. I don't want to be the
past - I want to be myself; I want to be cleansed of this whole
tradition so that I can be a new human being. I think in most of
us there is this feeling of wanting to be born anew.
Krishnamurti: You cannot possibly be the new just by wishing for
it. Or by struggling to be new. You have not only to understand
the past but also you have to find out who you are. Are you not
the past? Are you not the continuation of what has been,
modified by the present?
Questioner: My actions and my thoughts are, but my existence
isn't.
Krishnamurti: Can you separate the two, action and thought, from
existence? Are not thought, action, existence, living and
relationship all one? This fragmentation into "me" and "not-me"
is part of this tradition.
Questioner: Do you mean that when I am not thinking, when the
past is not operating, I am obliterated, that I have ceased to
exist?
Krishnamurti: Don't let us ask too many questions, but consider
what we began with. Can one be free of the past - not only the
recent but the immemorial, the collective, the racial, the
human, the animal? You are all that, you are not separate from
that. And you are asking whether you can put all that aside and
be born anew. The "you" is that, and when you wish to be reborn
as a new entity, the new entity you imagine is a projection of
the old, covered over with the word "new". But underneath, you
are the past. So the question is, can the past be put aside or
does a modified form of tradition continue for ever, changing,
accumulating, discarding, but always the past in different
combinations? The past is the cause and the present is the
effect, and today, which is the effect of yesterday, becomes the
cause of tomorrow. This chain is the way of thought, for thought
is the past. You are asking whether one can stop this movement
of yesterday into today. Can one look at the past to examine it,
or is that not possible at all? To look at it the observer must
be outside it - and he isn't. So here arises another issue. If
the observer himself is the past then how can the past be
isolated for observation?
Questioner: I can look at something objectively....
Krishnamurti: But you, who are the observer, are the past trying
to look at itself. You can objectify yourself only as an image
which you have put together through the years in every form of
relationship, and so the "you" which you objectify is memory and
imagination, the past. You are trying to look at yourself as
though you were a different entity from the one who is looking,
but you are the past, with its old judgements, evaluations and
so on. The action of the past is looking at the memory of the
past. Therefore there is never relief from the past. The
continuous examination of the past by the past perpetuates the
past; this is the very action of the past, and this is the very
essence of tradition.
Questioner: Then what action is possible? If I am the past - and
I can see that I am - then whatever I do to chisel away the past
is adding to it. So I am left helpless! What can I do? I can't
pray because the invention of a god is again the action of the
past. I can't look to another, for the other is also the
creation of my despair. I can't run away from it all because at
the end of it I am still there with my past. I can't identify
myself with some image which is not of the past because that
image is my own projection too. Seeing all this, I am really
left helpless, and in despair.
Krishnamurti: Why do you call it helplessness and despair?
Aren't you translating what you see as the past into an
emotional anxiety because you cannot achieve a certain result?
In so doing you are again making the past act. Now, can you look
at all this movement of the past, with all its traditions,
without wanting to be free of it, change it, modify it or run
away from it - simply observe it without any reaction?
Questioner: But as we have been saying all through this
conversation, how can I observe the past if I am the past? I
can't look at it at all!
Krishnamurti: Can you look at yourself, who are the past,
without any movement of thought, which is the past? If you can
look without thinking, evaluating, liking, disliking, judging,
then there is a looking with eyes that are not touched by the
past. It is to look in silence, without the noise of thought. In
this silence there is neither the observer nor the thing which
he is looking at as the past.
Questioner: Are you saying that when you look without evaluation
or judgement the past has disappeared? But it hasn't - there are
still the thousands of thoughts and actions and all the
pettiness which were rampant only a moment ago. I look at them
and they are still there. How can you say that the past has
disappeared? It may momentarily have stopped acting....
Krishnamurti: When the mind is silent that silence is a new
dimension, and when there is any rampant pettiness it is
instantly dissolved, because the mind has now a different
quality of energy which is not the energy engendered by the
past. This is what matters: to have that energy that dispels the
carrying over of the past. The carrying over of the past is a
different kind of energy. The silence wipes the other out, the
greater absorbs the lesser and remains untouched. It is like the
sea, receiving the dirty river and remaining pure. This is what
matters. It is only this energy that can wipe away the past.
Either there is silence or the noise of the past. In this
silence the noise ceases and the new is this silence. It is not
that you are made new. This silence is infinite and the past is
limited. The conditioning of the past breaks down in the
fullness of silence.
Conditioning
Questioner: You have talked a great deal about conditioning and
have said that one must be free of this bondage, otherwise one
remains imprisoned always. A statement of this kind seems so
outrageous and unacceptable! Most of us are very deeply
conditioned and we hear this statement and throw up our hands
and run away from such extravagant expression, but I have taken
you seriously - for, after all, you have more or less given your
life to this kind of thing, not as a hobby but with deep
seriousness - and therefore I should like to discuss it with you
to see how far the human being can uncondition himself. Is it
really possible, and if so, what does it mean? Is it possible
for me, having lived in a world of habits, traditions and the
acceptance of orthodox notions in so many matters - is it
possible for me really to throw off this deep-rooted
conditioning? What exactly do you mean by conditioning, and what
do you mean by freedom from conditioning?
Krishnamurti: Let us take the first question first. We are
conditioned - physically, nervously, mentally - by the climate
we live in and the food we eat, by the culture in which we live,
by the whole of our social, religious and economic environment,
by our experience, by education and by family pressures and
influences. All these are the factors which condition us. Our
conscious and unconscious responses to all the challenges of our
environment - intellectual, emotional, outward and inward - all
these are the action of conditioning. Language is conditioning;
all thought is the action, the response of conditioning.
Knowing that we are conditioned we invent a divine agency which
we piously hope will get us out of this mechanical state. We
either postulate its existence outside or inside ourselves - as
the atman, the soul, the Kingdom of Heaven which is within, and
who knows what else! To these beliefs we cling desperately, not
seeing that they themselves are part of the conditioning factor
which they are supposed to destroy or redeem. So not being able
to uncondition ourselves in this world, and not even seeing that
conditioning is the problem, we think that freedom is in Heaven,
in Moksha, in Nirvana. In the Christian myth of original sin and
in the whole eastern doctrine of Samsara, one sees that the
factor of conditioning has been felt, though rather obscurely.
If it had been clearly seen, naturally these doctrines and myths
would not have arisen. Nowadays the psychologists also try to
get to grips with this problem, and in doing so condition us
still further. Thus the religious specialists have conditioned
us, the social order has conditioned us, the family which is
part of it has conditioned us. All this is the past which makes
up the open as well as the hidden layers of the mind. En passant
it is interesting to note that the so-called individual doesn't
exist at all, for his mind draws on the common reservoir of
conditioning which he shares with everybody else, so the
division between the community and the individual is false:
there is only conditioning. This conditioning is action in all
relationships - to things, people and ideas.
Questioner: Then what am I to do to free myself from it all? To
live in this mechanical state is not living at all, and yet all
action, all will, all judgements are conditioned - so there is
apparently nothing I can do about conditioning which isn't
conditioned! I am tied hand and foot.
Krishnamurti: The very factor of conditioning in the past, in
the present and in the future, is the "me" which thinks in terms
of time, the "me" which exerts itself; and now it exerts itself
in the demand to be free; so the root of all conditioning is the
thought which is the "me". The "me" is the very essence of the
past, the "me" is time, the "me" is sorrow - the "me" endeavours
to free itself from itself, the "me" makes efforts, struggles to
achieve, to deny, to become. This struggle to become is time in
which there is confusion and the greed for the more and the
better. The "me" seeks security and not finding it transfers the
search to heaven; the very "me" that identifies itself with
something greater in which it hopes to lose itself - whether
that be the nation, the ideal or some god - is the factor of
conditioning.
Questioner: You have taken everything away from me. What am I
without this "me"?
Krishnamurti: If there is no "me" you are unconditioned, which
means you are nothing.
Questioner: Can the "me" end without the effort of the "me"?
Krishnamurti: The effort to become something is the response,
the action, of conditioning.
Questioner: How can the action of the "me" stop?
Krishnamurti: It can stop only if you see this whole thing, the
whole business of it. If you see it in action, which is in
relationship, the seeing is the ending of the "me". Not only is
this seeing an action which is not conditioned but also it acts
upon conditioning.
Questioner: Do you mean to say that the brain - which is the
result of vast evolution with its infinite conditioning - can
free itself?
Krishnamurti: The brain is the result of time; it is conditioned
to protect itself physically, but when it tries to protect
itself psychologically then the "me" begins, and all our misery
starts. It is this effort to protect itself psychologically that
is the affirmation of the "me". The brain can learn, can acquire
knowledge technologically, but when it acquires knowledge
psychologically then that knowledge asserts itself in
relationship as the "me" with its experiences, its will and its
violence. This is what brings division, conflict and sorrow to
relationship.
Questioner: Can this brain be still and only operate when it has
to work technologically - only operate when knowledge is
demanded in action, as for example in learning a language,
driving a car or building a house?
Krishnamurti: The danger in this is the dividing of the brain
into the psychological and the technological. This again becomes
a contradiction, a conditioning, a theory. The real question is
whether the brain, the whole of it, can be still, quiet, and
respond efficiently only when it has to in technology or in
living. So we are not concerned with the psychological or the
technological; we ask only, can this whole mind be completely
still and function only when it has to? We say it can and this
is the understanding of what meditation is.
* * *
Questioner: If I may I should like to continue where we left off
yesterday. You may remember that I asked two questions: I asked
what is conditioning and what is freedom from conditioning, and
you said let us take the first question first. We hadn't time to
go into the second question, so I should like to ask today, what
is the state of the mind that is free from all its conditioning?
After talking with you yesterday it became very clear to me how
deeply and strongly I am conditioned, and I saw - at least I
think I saw - an opening, a crack in this structure of
conditioning. I talked the matter over with a friend and in
taking certain factual instances of conditioning I saw very
clearly how deeply and venomously one's actions are affected by
it. As you said at the end, meditation is the emptying of the
mind of all conditioning so that there is no distortion or
illusion. How is one to be free of all distortion, all illusion?
What is illusion?
Krishnamurti: It is so easy to deceive oneself, so easy to
convince oneself of anything at all. The feeling that one must
be something is the beginning of deception, and, of course, this
idealistic attitude leads to various forms of hypocrisy. What
makes illusion? Well, one of the factors is this constant
comparison between what is and what should be, or what might be,
this measurement between the good and the bad - thought trying
to improve itself, the memory of pleasure, trying to get more
pleasure, and so on. It is this desire for more, this
dissatisfaction, which makes one accept or have faith in
something, and this must inevitably lead to every form of
deception and illusion. It is desire and fear, hope and despair,
that project the goal, the conclusion to be experienced.
Therefore this experience has no reality. All so-called
religious experiences follow this pattern. The very desire for
enlightenment must also breed the acceptance of authority, and
this is the opposite of enlightenment. Desire, dissatisfaction,
fear, pleasure, wanting more, wanting to change, all of which is
measurement - this is the way of illusion.
Questioner: Do you really have no illusion at all about
anything?
Krishnamurti: I am not all the time measuring myself or others.
This freedom from measurement comes about when you are really
living with what is - neither wishing to change it nor judging
it in terms of good and bad. Living with something is not the
acceptance of it: it is there whether you accept it or not.
Living with something is not identifying yourself with it
either.
Questioner: Can we go back to the question of what this freedom
is that one really wants? This desire for freedom expresses
itself in everybody, sometimes in the stupidest ways, but I
think one can say that in the human heart there is always this
deep longing for freedom which is never realized; there is this
incessant struggle to be free. I know I am not free; I am caught
in so many wants. How am I to be free, and what does it mean to
be really honestly free?
Krishnamurti: Perhaps this may help us to understand it: total
negation is that freedom. To negate everything we consider to be
positive, to negate the total social morality, to negate all
inward acceptance of authority, to negate everything one has
said or concluded about reality, to negate all tradition, all
teaching, all knowledge except technological knowledge, to
negate all experience, to negate all the drives which stem from
remembered or forgotten pleasures, to negate all fulfilment, to
negate all commitments to act in a particular way, to negate all
ideas, all principles, all theories. Such negation is the most
positive action, therefore it is freedom.
Questioner: If I chisel away at this, bit by bit, I shall go on
for ever and that itself will be my bondage. Can it all all
wither away in a flash, can I negate the whole human deception,
all the values and aspiration and standards, immediately? Is it
really possible? Doesn't it require enormous capacity, which I
lack, enormous understanding, to see all this in a flash and
leave it exposed to the light, to that intelligence you have
talked about? I wonder, sir, if you know what this entails. To
ask me, an ordinary man with an ordinary education, to plunge
into something which seems like an incredible nothingness....
Can I do it? I don't even know what it means to jump into it!
It's like asking me to become all of a sudden the most
beautiful, innocent, lovely human being. You see I am really
frightened now, not the way I was frightened before, I am faced
now with something which I know is true, and yet my utter
incapacity to do it binds me. I see the beauty of this thing, to
be really completely nothing, but....
Krishnamurti: You know, it is only when there is emptiness in
oneself, not the emptiness of a shallow mind but the emptiness
that comes with the total negation of everything one has been
and should be and will be - it is only in this emptiness that
there is creation; it is only in this emptiness that something
new can take place. Fear is the thought of the unknown, so you
are really frightened of leaving the known, the attachments, the
satisfactions, the pleasurable memories, the continuity and
security which give comfort. Thought is comparing this with what
it thinks is emptiness. This imagination of emptiness is fear,
so fear is thought. To come back to your question - can the mind
negate everything it has known, the total content of its own
conscious and unconscious self, which is the very essence of
yourself? Can you negate yourself completely? If not, there is
no freedom. Freedom is not freedom from something - that is only
a reaction; freedom comes in total denial.
Questioner: But what is the good of having such freedom? You are
asking me to die, aren't you?
Krishnamurti: Of course! I wonder how you are using the word
"good" when you say what is the good of this freedom? Good in
terms of what? The known? Freedom is the absolute good and its
action is the beauty of everyday life. In this freedom alone
there is living, and without it how can there be love?
Everything exists and has its being in this freedom. It is
everywhere and nowhere. It has no frontiers. Can you die now to
everything you know and not wait for tomorrow to die? This
freedom is eternity and ecstasy and love.
Happiness
Questioner: What is happiness? I have always tried to find it
but somehow it hasn't come my way. I see people enjoying
themselves in so many different ways and many of the things they
do seem so immature and childish. I suppose they are happy in
their own way, but I want a different kind of happiness. I have
had rare intimations that it might be possible to get it, but
somehow it has always eluded me. I wonder what I can do to feel
really completely happy?
Krishnamurti: Do you think happiness is an end in itself? Or
does it come as a secondary thing in living intelligently?
Questioner: I think it is an end in itself because if there is
happiness then whatever you do will be harmonious; then you will
do things effortlessly, easily, without any friction. I am sure
that whatever you do out of this happiness will be right.
Krishnamurti: But is this so? Is happiness an end in itself?
Virtue is not an end in itself. If it is, then it becomes a very
small affair. Can you seek happiness? If you do then probably
you will find an imitation of it in all sorts of distractions
and indulgences. This is pleasure. What is the relationship
between pleasure and happiness?
Questioner: I have never asked myself.
Krishnamurti: Pleasure which we pursue is mistakenly called
happiness, but can you pursue happiness, as you pursue pleasure?
Surely we must be very clear as to whether pleasure is
happiness. Pleasure is gratification, satisfaction, indulgence,
entertainment, stimulation. Most of us think pleasure is
happiness, and the greatest pleasure we consider to be the
greatest happiness. And is happiness the opposite of
unhappiness? Are you trying to be happy because you are unhappy
and dissatisfied? Has happiness got an opposite at all? Has love
got an opposite? Is your question about happiness the result of
being unhappy?
Questioner: I am unhappy like the rest of the world and
naturally I don't want to be, and that is what is driving me to
seek happiness.
Krishnamurti: So happiness to you is the opposite of
unhappiness. If you were happy you wouldn't seek it. So what is
important is not happiness but whether unhappiness can end. That
is the real problem, isn't it? You are asking about happiness
because you are unhappy and you ask this question without
finding out whether happiness is the opposite of unhappiness.
Questioner: If you put it that way, I accept it. So my concern
is how to be free from the misery I am in.
Krishnamurti: Which is more important - to understand
unhappiness or to pursue happiness? If you pursue happiness it
becomes an escape from unhappiness and therefore it will always
remain, covered over perhaps, hidden, but always there,
festering inside. So what is your question now?
Questioner: My question now is why am I miserable? You have very
neatly pointed out to me my real state, rather than given me the
answer I want, so now I am faced with this question, how am I to
get rid of the misery I am in?
Krishnamurti: Can an outside agency help you to get rid of your
own misery, whether that outside agency be God, a master, a drug
or a saviour? Or can one have the intelligence to understand the
nature of unhappiness and deal with it immediately?
Questioner: I have come to you because I thought you might help
me, so you could call yourself an outside agency. I want help
and I don't care who gives it to me.
Krishnamurti: In accepting or giving help several things are
involved. If you accept it blindly you will be caught in the
trap of one authority or another, which brings with it various
other problems, such as obedience and fear. So if you start off
wanting help, not only do you not get help - because nobody can
help you anyway - but in addition you get a whole series of new
problems; you are deeper in the mire than ever before.
Questioner: I think I understand and accept that. I have never
thought it out clearly before. How then can I develop the
intelligence to deal with unhappiness on my own, and
immediately? If I had this intelligence surely I wouldn't be
here now, I wouldn't be asking you to help me. So my question
now is, can I get this intelligence in order to solve the
problem of unhappiness and thereby attain happiness?
Krishnamurti: You are saying that this intelligence is separate
from its action. The action of this intelligence is the seeing
and the understanding of the problem itself. The two are not
separate and successive; you don't first get intelligence and
then use it on the problem like a tool. It is one of the
sicknesses of thinking to say that one should have the capacity
first and then use it, the idea or the principle first and then
apply it. This itself is the very absence of intelligence and
the origin of problems. This is fragmentation. We live this way
and so we speak of happiness and unhappiness, hate and love, and
so on.
Questioner: Perhaps this is inherent in the structure of
language.
Krishnamurti: Perhaps it is but let's not make too much fuss
about it here and wander away from the issue. We are saying that
intelligence, and the action of that intelligence - which is
seeing the problem of unhappiness - are one indivisibly. Also
that this is not separate from ending unhappiness or getting
happiness.
Questioner: How am I to get that intelligence?
Krishnamurti: Have you understood what we have been saying?
Questioner: Yes.
Krishnamurti: But if you have understood you have seen that this
seeing is intelligence. The only thing you can do is to see; you
cannot cultivate intelligence in order to see. Seeing is not the
cultivation of intelligence. Seeing is more important than
intelligence, or happiness, or unhappiness. There is only seeing
or not seeing. All the rest - happiness, unhappiness and
intelligence - are just words.
Questioner: What is it, then, to see?
Krishnamurti: To see means to understand how thought creates the
opposites. What thought creates is not real. To see means to
understand the nature of thought, memory, conflict, ideas; to
see all this as a total process is to understand. This is
intelligence; seeing totally is intelligence; seeing
fragmentarily is the lack of intelligence.
Questioner: I am a bit bewildered. I think I understand, but it
is rather tenuous; I must go slowly. What you are saying is, see
and listen completely. You say this attention is intelligence
and you say that it must be immediate. One can only see now. I
wonder if I really see now, or am I going home to think over
what you have said, hoping to see later?
Krishnamurti: Then you will never see; in thinking about it you
will never see it because thinking prevents seeing. Both of us
have understood what it means to see. This seeing is not an
essence or an abstraction or an idea. You cannot see if there is
nothing to see. Now you have a problem of unhappiness. See it
completely, including your wanting to be happy and how thought
creates the opposite. See the search for happiness and the
seeking help in order to get happiness. See disappointment,
hope, fear. All of this must be seen completely, as a whole, not
separately. See all this now, give your whole attention to it.
Questioner: I am still bewildered. I don't know whether I have
got the essence of it, the whole point. I want to close my eyes
and go into myself to see if I have really understood this
thing. If I have then I have solved my problem.
Learning
Questioner: You have often talked about learning. I don't quite
know what you mean by it. We are taught to learn at school and
at the University, and life also teaches us many things - to
adjust ourselves to environment and to our neighbours, to our
wife or husband, to our children. We seem to learn from almost
everything, but I am sure that when you speak about learning
this isn't quite what you mean because you also seem to deny
experience as a teacher. But when you deny experience aren't you
denying all learning? After all, through experience, both in
technology and in human everyday living, we learn everything we
know. So could we go into this question?
Krishnamurti: Learning through experience is one thing - it is
the accumulation of conditioning - and learning all the time,
not only about objective things but also about oneself, is
something quite different. There is the accumulation which
brings about conditioning - this we know - and there is the
learning which we speak about. This learning is observation - to
observe without accumulation, to observe in freedom. This
observation is not directed from the past. Let us keep those two
things clear.
What do we learn from experience? We learn things like
languages, agriculture, manners, going to the moon, medicine,
mathematics. But have we learnt about war through making war? We
have learnt to make war more deadly, more efficient, but we
haven't learnt not to make war. Our experience in warfare
endangers the survival of the human race. Is this learning? You
may build a better house, but has experience taught you how to
live more nobly inside it? We have learnt through experience
that fire burns and that has become our conditioning but we have
also learnt through our conditioning that nationalism is good.
Yet experience should also teach us that nationalism is deadly.
All the evidence is there. The religious experience, as based on
our conditioning, has separated man from man. Experience has
taught us to have better food, clothes and shelter, but it has
not taught us that social injustice prevents the right
relationship between man and man. So experience conditions and
strengthens our prejudices, our peculiar tendencies and our
particular dogmas and beliefs. We do not learn what stupid
nonsense all this is; we do not learn to live in the right
relationship with other men. This right relationship is love.
Experience teaches me to strengthen the family as a unit opposed
to society and to other families. This brings about strife and
division, which makes it ever more important to strengthen the
family protectively, and so the vicious circle continues. We
accumulate, and call this "learning through experience", but
more and more this learning brings about fragmentation,
narrowness and specialization.
Questioner: Are you making out a case against technological
learning and experience, against science and all accumulated
knowledge? If we turn our backs on that we shall go back to
savagery.
Krishnamurti: No, I am not making out such a case at all. I
think we are misunderstanding each other. We said that there are
two kinds of learning: accumulation through experience, and
acting from that accumulation, which is the past, and which is
absolutely necessary wherever the action of knowledge is
necessary. We are not against this; that would be too absurd!
Questioner: Gandhi tried to keep the machine out of life and
started all that business which they call "Home industries" or
"Cottage industries" in India. Yet he used modern mechanized
transport. This shows the inconsistency and hypocrisy of his
position.
Krishnamurti: Let's leave other people out of this. We are
saying that there are two kinds of learning - one, acting
through the accumulation of knowledge and experience, and the
other, learning without accumulation, but learning all the time
in the very act of living. The former is absolutely necessary in
all technical matters, but relationship, behaviour, are not
technical matters, they are living things and you have to learn
about them all the time. If you act from what you have learnt
about behaviour, then it becomes mechanical and therefore
relationship becomes routine.
Then there is another very important point: in all the learning
which is accumulation and experience, profit is the criterion
that determines the efficiency of the learning. And when the
motive of profit operates in human relationships then it
destroys those relationships because it brings about isolation
and division. When the learning of experience and accumulation
enters the domain of human behaviour, the psychological domain,
then it must inevitably destroy. Enlightened self-interest on
the one hand is advancement, but on the other hand it is the
very seat of mischief, misery and confusion. Relationship cannot
flower where there is self-interest of any kind, and that is why
relationship cannot flower where it is guided by experience or
memory.
Questioner: I see this, but isn't religious experience something
different? I am talking about the experience gathered and passed
on in religious matters - the experiences of the saints and
gurus, the experience of the philosophers. Isn't this kind of
experience beneficial to us in our ignorance?
Krishnamurti: Not at all! The saint must be recognised by
society and always conforms to society's notions of sainthood -
otherwise he wouldn't be called a saint. Equally the guru must
be recognised as such by his followers who are conditioned by
tradition. So both the guru and the disciple are part of the
cultural and religious conditioning of the particular society in
which they live. When they assert that they have come into
contact with reality, that they know, then you may be quite sure
that what they know is not reality. What they know is their own
projection from the past. So the man who says he knows, does not
know. in all these so-called religious experiences a cognitive
process of recognition is inherent. You can only recognise
something you have known before, therefore it is of the past,
therefore it is time-binding and not timeless. So-called
religious experience does not bring benefit but merely
conditions you according to your particular tradition,
inclination, tendency and desire, and therefore encourages every
form of illusion and isolation.
Questioner: Do you mean to say that you cannot experience
reality?
Krishnamurti: To experience implies that there must be an
experiencer and the experiencer is the essence of all
conditioning. What he experiences is the already-known.
Questioner: What do you mean when you talk about the
experiencer? If there is no experiencer do you mean you
disappear?
Krishnamurti: Of course. The "you" is the past and as long as
the "you" remains or the "me" remains, that which is immense
cannot be. The "me" with his shallow little mind, experience and
knowledge, with his heart burdened with jealousies and anxieties
- how can such an entity understand that which has no beginning
and no ending, that which is ecstasy? So the beginning of wisdom
is to understand yourself. Begin understanding yourself.
Questioner: Is the experiencer different from that which he
experiences, is the challenge different from the reaction to the
challenge?
Krishnamurti: The experiencer is the experienced, otherwise he
could not recognise the experience and would not call it an
experience; the experience is already in him before he
recognises it. So the past is always operating and recognising
itself; the new becomes swallowed up by the old. Similarly it is
the reaction which determines the challenge; the challenge is
the reaction, the two are not separate; without a reaction there
would be no challenge. So the experience of an experiencer, or
the reaction to a challenge which comes from the experiencer,
are old, for they are determined by the experiencer. If you come
to think of it, the word "experience" means to go through
something and finish with it and not store it up, but when we
talk about experience we actually mean the opposite. Every time
you speak of experience you speak of something stored from which
action takes place, you speak of something which you have
enjoyed and demand to have again, or have disliked and fear to
have repeated.
So really to live is to learn without the cumulative process.
Self-Expression
Questioner: Expression seems to me so important. I must express
myself as an artist otherwise I feel stifled and deeply
frustrated. Expression is part of one's existence. As an artist
it is as natural that I should give myself to it as that a man
should express his love for a woman in words and gestures. But
through all this expression there is a sort of pain which I
don't quite understand. I think most artists would agree with me
that there is deep conflict in expressing one's deepest feelings
on canvas, or in any other medium. I wonder if one can ever be
free of this pain, or does expression always bring pain?
Krishnamurti: What is the need of expression, and where does the
suffering come into all this? Isn't one always trying to express
more and more deeply, extravagantly, fully, and is one ever
satisfied with what one has expressed? The deep feeling and the
expression of it are not the same thing; there is a vast
difference between the two, and there is always frustration when
the expression doesn't correspond to the strong feeling.
Probably this is one of the causes of pain, this discontent with
the inadequacy of the utterance which the artist gives to his
feeling. In this there is conflict and the conflict is a waste
of energy. An artist has a strong feeling which is fairly
authentic; he expresses it on canvas. This expression pleases
some people and they buy his work; he gets money and reputation.
His expression has been noticed and becomes fashionable. He
refines it, pursues it, develops it, and is all the time
imitating himself. This expression becomes habitual and
stylized; the expression becomes more and more important and
finally more important than the feeling; the feeling eventually
evaporates. The artist is not left with the social consequences
of being a successful painter: the market place of the salon and
the gallery, the connoisseur, the critics; he is enslaved by the
society for which he paints. The feeling has long since
disappeared, the expression is an empty shell remaining.
Consequently even this expression eventually loses its
attraction because it had nothing to express; it is a gesture, a
word without a meaning. This is part of the destructive process
of society. This is the destruction of the good.
Questioner: Can't the feeling remain, without getting lost in
expression?
Krishnamurti: When expression becomes all-important because it
is pleasurable, satisfying or profitable, then there is a
cleavage between expression and feeling. When the feeling is the
expression then the conflict doesn't arise, and in this there is
no contradiction and hence no conflict. But when profit and
thought intervene, then this feeling is lost through greed. The
passion of feeling is entirely different from the passion of
expression, and most people are caught in the passion of
expression. So there is always this division between the good
and the pleasurable.
Questioner: Can I live without being caught in this current of
greed?
Krishnamurti: If it is the feeling which is important you will
never ask about expression. Either you have got the feeling or
you haven't. If you ask about the expression, you are not asking
about artistry but about profit. Artistry is that which is never
taken into account: it is the living.
Questioner: So what is it, to live? What is it to be, and to
have that feeling which is complete in itself? I have now
understood that expression is beside the point.
Krishnamurti: It is living without conflict.