Wholly Different Way of Living
9th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
22nd February 1974
Inward or True Beauty
A: Mr Krishnamurti, in our last conversation together we had
moved from speaking together concerning fear and the relation
between that and the transformation of the individual person
which is not dependent on knowledge or time, and from that we
went to pleasure and just as we reached the end of that
conversation the question of beauty arose. And if it's agreeable
with you I should like very much for us to explore that
together.
K: One often wonders why museums are so filled with pictures and
statues. Is it because man has lost touch with nature and
therefore has to go to museums to look at other people's
paintings, famous paintings and some of them are really
marvelously beautiful? Why do the museums exist at all? I'm just
asking. I'm not saying they should or should not. And I've been
to many museums all over the world, taken around by experts, and
I've always felt as though I was being shown around and looking
at things that were so, for me, artificial, other peoples'
expression, what they considered beauty. And I wondered what is
beauty. Because when you read a poem of Keats, or really a poem
that a man writes with his heart and with very deep feeling, he
wants to convey something to you of what he feels, what he
considers to be the most exquisite essence of beauty.
And I have looked at a great many cathedrals, as you must have,
over Europe and again this expression of their feelings, their
devotion, their reverence to, in masonry, in rocks, in
buildings, in marvelous cathedrals. And looking at all this, I'm
always surprised when people talk about beauty, or write about
beauty, whether it is something created by man or something that
you see in nature; or it has nothing to do with the stone or
with the paint or with the word, but something deeply inward.
And so often in discussing with so called professionals, having
a dialogue with them, it appears to me that it is always
somewhere out there, the modern painting, modern music, the pop
and so on, so on, it's always somehow so dreadfully artificial.
I may be wrong.
But what is beauty? Must it be expressed? That's one question.
Does it need the word, the stone, the colour, the paint? Or it
is something that cannot possibly be expressed in words, in a
building, in a statue? So if we could go into this question of
what is beauty. I think to really go into it very deeply one
must know what is suffering. Or understand what is suffering,
because without passion you can't have beauty - passion in the
sense, not lust, not the passion that comes when there is
immense suffering. And the remaining with that suffering, not
escaping from it, brings this passion. Passion means the
abandonment, the complete abandonment of the 'me', of the self,
the ego. And therefore a great austerity, not the austerity of -
the word means ash, severe, dry which the religious people have
made it into - but rather the austerity of great beauty.
A: Yes, yes I'm following you, I really am.
K: A great sense of dignity, beauty, that is, essentially,
austere. And to be austere, not verbally or ideologically, but
being austere means total abandonment, letting go of the 'me'.
And one cannot let that thing take place if one hasn't deeply
understood what suffering is. Because passion comes from the
word, sorrow. I don't know if you have gone into it, looked into
that word, the root meaning of that word passion is sorrow, from
suffering.
A: To feel.
K: To feel. You see, sir, people have escaped from suffering. I
think it is very deeply related to beauty, not that you must
suffer.
A: Not that you must suffer but - yes.
K: That is, no we must go a little more slowly. I am jumping too
quickly. First of all, we assume we know what beauty is. We see
a Picasso or a Rembrandt or a Michelangelo and we think how
marvelous. We think we know. We have read it in books, the
experts have written about it and so on. One reads it and say,
yes. We absorb it through others. But if one was really
enquiring into what is beauty there must be a great sense of
humility. Now, I don't know what beauty is actually. I can
imagine what beauty is. I've learned what beauty is. I have been
taught in schools, in colleges, in reading books and going on
tours, guided tours and all the rest, visiting thousands of
museums, but actually to find out the depth of beauty, the depth
of colour the depth of feeling, the mind must start with a great
sense of humility. I don't know. You see, as one really wonders
what meditation is. One thinks one knows. We will discuss
meditation when we come to it. So one must start as feeling if
one is enquiring into beauty with a great sense of humility, not
knowing. That very not knowing is beautiful.
A: Yes, Yes, I've been listening and I've been trying to open
myself to this relation that you are making between beauty and
passion.
K: You see, sir, let's start, right: man suffers, not only
personally, but there is immense suffering of man. It is a thing
that is pervading the universe. Man has suffered physically,
psychologically, spiritually, in every way for centuries upon
centuries. The mother cries because her son is killed, the
mother cries because her husband is mutilated in a war, or
accident - there is tremendous suffering in the world. And it is
really a tremendous thing to be aware of this suffering.
A: Yes.
K: I don't think people are aware, or even feel this immense
sorrow that is in the world. They are so concerned with their
own personal sorrow, they overlook the sorrow that a poor man in
a little village in India, or in China or in the Eastern world,
where they never possibly have a full meal, clean clothes,
comfortable bed. And there is this sorrow of thousands of people
being killed in war. Or in the totalitarian world, millions
being executed for ideologies, tyranny, the terror of all that.
So there is all this sorrow in the world. And there is also the
personal sorrow. And without really understanding it very, very
deeply and resolving it, passion won't come out of sorrow. And
without passion, how can you see beauty? You can intellectually
appreciate a painting, or a poem, or a statue, but you need this
great sense of inward bursting of passion, explosion of passion.
You know, that creates in itself the sensitivity that can see
beauty. So it is I think rather important to understand sorrow.
I think it is related, beauty, passion, sorrow.
A: I'm interested in the order of those words. Beauty, passion,
sorrow. If one is in relation to the transformation we have been
speaking about, to come to beauty I take it, it's a passage from
sorrow to passion to beauty.
K: That's right, sir.
A: Yes. Please do go on. I understand.
K: You see, in the Christian world, if I am not mistaken, sorrow
is delegated to a person, and through that person we somehow
escape from sorrow, that is, we hope we escape from sorrow. And
in the Eastern world sorrow is rationalized through the
statement of karma. You know the word karma means to do. And
they believe in karma. That is, what you have done in the past
life you pay for in the present or reward in the present, and so
on, and so on. So that there are these two categories of
escapes. And there are thousands of escapes - whiskey, drugs,
sex, going off to attend a mass and so on, and so on. Man has
never stayed with a thing. He has always either sought comfort
in a belief, in an action, in identification with something
greater than himself and so on, so on, but he has never said,
look, I must see what this is, I must penetrate it and not
delegate it to somebody else. I must go into it, I must face it.
I must look at it. I must know what it is. So, when the mind
doesn't escape from this sorrow, either personal or the sorrow
of man, if you don't escape, if you don't rationalize, if you
don't try to go beyond it, if you are not frightened of it, then
you remain with it. Because any movement from 'what is', or any
movement away from 'what is', is a dissipation of energy. It
prevents you actually understanding 'what is'. The 'what is', is
sorrow. And we have means and ways and cunning to escape. Now if
there is no escape whatsoever then you remain with it. I do not
know if you have ever done it. Because in everyone's life there
is an incident that brings you tremendous sorrow, an happening.
It might be an incident, a word, an accident, a shattering sense
of absolute loneliness, and so on. These things happen and with
that comes the sense of utter sorrow. Now when the mind can
remain with that, not move away from it, out of that comes
passion. Not the cultivated passion, not the artificial trying
to be passionate, but the movement of passion is born out of
this non-withdrawal from sorrow. It is the total completely
remaining with that.
A: I am thinking that we also say when we speak of someone in
sorrow that they are disconsolate.
K: Yes. Disconsolate.
A: Disconsolate and immediately we think that the antidote to
that is to get rid of the 'dis', not to stay with the 'dis'. And
in an earlier conversation we spoke about two things related to
each other in terms of opposite sides of the same coin, and
while you have been speaking I've been seeing the interrelation
in a pole sense between action and passion. Passion being able
to undergo, able to be changed. Whereas action is doing to
effect change. And this would be the movement from sorrow to
passion at the precise point, if I have understood you
correctly, where I become able to undergo what is there.
K: So, if, when there is no escape, when there is no desire to
seek comfort away from 'what is', then out of that absolute
inescapable reality comes this flame of passion. And without
that there is no beauty. You may write endless volumes about
beauty, or be a marvelous painter, but without that inward
quality of passion which is the outcome of great understanding
of sorrow, I don't see how beauty can exist. Also one observes
man has lost touch with nature.
A: Oh yes.
K: Completely, specially in big towns, and even in small
villages, and hamlets man is always outwardly going, outward,
pursued by his own thought, and so he has more or less lost
touch with nature. Nature means nothing to him. It is very nice,
very beautiful. Once I was standing with a few friends and my
brother many years ago at the Grand Canyon, looking at the
marvelous thing, incredible, the colours, the depth and the
shadows; and a group of people came and one lady says, yes isn't
it marvelous, and the next says, let's go and have tea. And off
they trotted. You follow? That is what is happening in the
world. We have lost touch completely with nature. We don't know
what it means. And also we kill. You follow me. We kill for
food, we kill for amusement, we kill for sport. I won't go into
all that. So there is this lack of intimate relationship with
nature.
A: I remember a shock, a profound shock that I had in my college
days, I was standing on the steps of the administration building
and watching a very, very beautiful sunset and one of my college
acquaintances asked me what I was doing, and I said, well, I am
not doing anything, I'm looking at the sunset. And you know what
he said to me? This so shocked me that it's one of those things
that you never forget. He just said, well there's nothing to
prevent it, is there.
K: Nothing?
A: Nothing to prevent it, is there? Yes, I know. I follow you.
K: So, sir, you see we are becoming more and more artificial,
more and more superficial, more and more verbal, a linear
direction, not vertical at all, but linear. And so naturally
artificial things become more important - theatres, cinemas, you
know the whole business of modern world. And very few have the
sense of beauty in themselves, beauty in conduct. You
understand, sir?
A: Oh yes.
K: Beauty in behaviour. Beauty in their usage of their language,
the voice, the manner of walking, the sense of humility. With
that humility everything becomes so gentle, quiet, full of
beauty. We have none of that. And yet we go to museums, we are
educated with museums, with pictures, and we have lost the
delicacy, the sensitivity, of the mind, the heart, the body, and
so when we have lost this sensitivity how can we know what
beauty is? And when we haven't got sensitivity we go off to some
place to learn to be sensitive. You know this.
A: Oh, I do.
K: Go to a college or some ashrama or some rotten hole and there
I am going to learn to be sensitive. Sensitive through touch,
through you know. It becomes disgusting. So now how can we, as
you are a professor and teacher, how can you, sir, educate, it
becomes very, very important, the students to have this quality?
Therefore one asks, what is it we are educating for? What are we
being educated for. Everybody is being educated. Ninety per cent
of the people probably in America, are being educated, know what
to read and write and all the rest of it, what for?
A: And yet, it's a fact, at least in my experience of teaching
class after class, year after year, that with all this
proliferation of publishing and so called educational
techniques, students are without as much care to the written
word and the spoken word as was the case that I can distinctly
remember years ago. Now perhaps other teachers have had a
different experience, but I have watched this in my classes, and
the usual answer that I get when I speak to my colleagues about
this is, well, the problem is in the high school. And then you
talk to a poor high school teacher, he then puts it on the poor
grade school. So we have poor grade school, poor high school,
poor college, poor university because we are always picking up
where we left off, which is a little lower next year that where
it was before.
K: Sir, that's why when I have talked at various universities
and so on, I've always felt what are we being educated for? To
just become glorified clerks?
A: That's what it turns out to be.
K: Of course it is. Glorified business men and god knows what
else. What for? I mean if I had a son that would be a tremendous
problem for me. Fortunately, I haven't got a son, but it would
be a burning question to me: what am I to do with the children
that I have? To send to all these schools, where they are taught
nothing but just how to read, and write a book, and how to
memorize, and forget the whole field of life? They are taught
about sex and reproduction and all that kind of stuff. But what?
So I feel, sir, I mean to me this is a tremendously important
question because I am concerned with seven schools in India and
in England there is one, and we are going to form one here in
California. It is a burning question: what is it that we are
doing with our children? Making them into robots or into other
clever, cunning clerks, great scientists who invent this or that
and then be ordinary, cheap, little human beings, with shoddy
minds. You follow, sir?
A: I am, I am.
K: So, when you talk about beauty, can we, can a human being
tell another, educate another to grow in beauty, grow in
goodness, to flower in great affection and care? Because if we
don't do that we are destroying the earth, as it is happening
now, polluting the air. We human beings are destroying
everything we touch. So this becomes a very, very serious thing
when we talk about beauty, when we talk about pleasure, fear,
relationship, order and so on, all that, none of these things
are being taught in any school.
A: No. I brought that up in my class yesterday and I asked them
directly, that's very question. And they were very ready to
agree that here we are, we are in an upper division course and
we had never heard about this.
K: Tragic, you follow, sir.
A: And furthermore we don't know whether we are really hearing
it for what it really is, because we haven't heard about it, we
have got to go through that yet to find out whether we are
really listening.
K: And whether the teacher or the man, who is a professor, is
honest enough to say, I don't know. I am going to learn about
all these things. So sir, that is why western civilization, I am
not condemning it, western civilization is mainly concerned with
commercialism, consumerism, and a society that is immoral. And
when we talk about the transformation of man, not in the field
of knowledge or the field of time, but beyond that, who is
interested in this? You follow, sir? Who really cares about it?
Because the mother goes off to her job, earns a livelihood, the
father goes off and the child is just an incident.
A: Now, as a matter of fact I know this will probably appear
like an astonishingly extravagant statement for me to make, but
I think it's getting to the place now where if anyone raises
this question at the level that you have been raising it, as a
young person who is growing up in his adolescent years, let's
say, and he won't let it go, he hangs in there with it, as we
say, the question is seriously raised whether he is normal.
K: Yes, quite, quite.
A: And it makes one think of Socrates, who was very clear that
he knew only one thing, that he didn't know, and he didn't have
to say that very often, but he said it even the few times enough
to get him killed, but at least they took him seriously enough
to kill him.
K: To kill him.
A: Today I think he would be put in some institution for study.
The whole thing would have to be checked out.
K: That's what is happening in Russia. They send them off to an
asylum...
A: That's right,
K: ...mental hospital and destroy him. Sir, here we neglect
everything for some superficial gain, money. Money means power,
position, authority, everything, money.
A: It goes back to this success thing that you mentioned before.
Always later, always later. On a horizontal axis. Yes. I want to
share with you as you were speaking about nature, something that
has a sort of wry humour about it in terms of the history of
scholarship: I thought of those marvelous Vedic hymns to Dawn.
K: Oh yes.
A: The way Dawn comes, rosy fingered, and scholars have
expressed surprise that the number of hymns to her are, by
comparison, few compared with some other gods, but the attention
is drawn in the study not to the quality of the hymn as
revealing how it is that there is such consummately beautiful
cadences associated with her, for which you would only need one,
wouldn't you, you wouldn't need 25. The important thing is,
isn't it remarkable that we have so few hymns and yet they are
so wonderfully beautiful. What has the number to do with it at
all, is the thing that I could never get answered for myself in
terms of the environment in which I studied Sanskrit and the
Veda. The important thing is to find out which god, in this case
Indra, is in the Rig Veda, is mentioned most often. Now, of
course, I'm not trying to suggest that quantity should be
overlooked, by no means, but if the question had been approached
the way you have been enquiring into it, deeper, deeper, deeper,
then, I think, scholarship would have had a very, very different
career. We should have been taught how to sit and let that hymn
disclose itself, and stop measuring it.
K: Yes sir.
A: Yes, yes, please do go on.
K: That's what I am going to say. You see when discussing beauty
and passion and sorrow we ought to go into the question also of
what is action? Because it is related to all that.
A: Yes, of course.
K: What is action? Because life is action. Living is action.
Speaking is action. Everything is action, sitting here is an
action. Talking, a dialogue, discussing, going into things, is a
series of actions, a movement in action. So what is action?
Action, obviously means, acting now. Not having acted or will
act. It is the active present of the word act, to act, which is
acting all the time. It is the movement in time and out of time.
We will go into that a little bit later. Now what is action that
does not bring sorrow? You follow? One has to put that question
because every action, as we do now, is either regret,
contradiction, a sense of meaningless movement, a repression,
conformity and so on. So that is action for most people, the
routine, the repetition, the remembrances of things past and act
according to that remembrance. So unless one understands very
deeply what is action, one will not be able to understand what
is sorrow. So action, sorrow, passion and beauty. They are all
together, not divorced, not something separate with beauty at
the end, action at the beginning. It isn't fragmented at all, it
is all one thing. But to look at it, what is action? As far as
one knows now, action is according to a formula, according to a
concept or according to an ideology. The communist ideology, the
capitalist ideology, or the socialist ideology, or the ideology
of a Christian, Jesus Christ, or the Hindu with his ideology. So
action is the approximation of an idea. I act according to my
concept. That concept is traditional, or put together by me, or
put together by an expert. Lenin, Marx have formulated, and they
conform according to what they think Lenin, Marx formulated. And
action is according to a pattern. You follow?
A: Yes I do. What's occurring to me is that under the tyranny of
that, one is literally driven.
K: Absolutely. Driven, conditioned, brutalized. You don't care
for anything, except for ideas, and carry out ideas. See what is
happening in China, you follow, in Russia.
A: Oh yes, yes, I do.
K: And here too, the same thing in a modified form. So action as
we know it now is conformity to a pattern, either in the future
or in the past, an idea which I carry out. A resolution, or a
decision which I fulfil in acting. The past is acting, so, it is
not action. I don't know if I am.?
A: Yes, yes, I'm aware of the fact that we suffer a radical
conviction that if we don't generate a pattern there will be no
order.
K: So you follow what is happening, sir? Order is in terms of a
pattern.
A: Yes, preconceived, yes.
K: Therefore it is disorder, against which an intelligent man
fights - fights in the sense revolts. So that's why it is very
important if we are to understand what beauty is we must
understand what action is. Can there be action without the idea?
Idea means, you must know this from Greek, means to see. See
what we have done, sir. The word is to see. That is seeing and
the doing. Not the seeing, draw a conclusion from that and then
act according to that conclusion. You see.
A: Oh yes, oh yes.
K: Perceiving, and from that perception draw a belief, an idea,
a formula, and act according to that belief, idea, formula. So
we are removed from perception. We are acting only according to
a formula, therefore mechanical. You see, sir, how our minds
have become mechanical.
A: Necessarily so.
K: Yes sir, obviously.
A: I just thought about Greek sculpture, and its different
character from Roman sculpture, the finest of ancient Greece.
K: The Periclean age and so on.
A: Sculpture is extremely contemplative. It has sometimes been
remarked that the Romans have a genius for portraiture in stone
and, of course...
K: Law and order and all that.
A: Yes, and of course one would see their remarkable attention
to personality. But what occurred to me while listening to this,
something that had never occurred to me before, that the Greek
statue with which one sometimes asks oneself, well the face
doesn't disclose a personality. Perhaps the quiet eye recognized
that you don't put onto the stone something that must come out
of the act itself.
K: Quite, quite.
A: Because you're doing something that you must wait to come to
pass. The Greeks were correct. It's an expression of that
relation to form which is an interior form. Marvelous grasp of
that. It's a grasp that allows for splendour to break out rather
than the notion we must represent it. Yes, I am following you,
aren't I?
K: You see sir, that's why one must ask this essential question:
what is action? Is it a repetition? Is it imitation? Is it an
adjustment between 'what is' and 'what should be' or 'what has
been'? Or is it a conformity to a pattern? Or to a belief, or to
a formula? If it is, then inevitably there must be conflict.
Because idea, action, there is an interval, a lag of time
between the two, and in that interval a great many things
happen. A division in which other incidents take place and
therefore there must be inevitably conflict. Therefore action is
never complete, action is never total, it is never ending.
Action means ending. You know, you used the word Vedanta the
other day. It means the ending of knowledge, I was told. Not the
continuation of knowledge, but the ending. So now, is there an
action which is not tied to the past as time or to the future or
to a formula, or to a belief or to an idea, but action? The
seeing is the doing.
A: Yes.
K: Now, the seeing is the doing becomes an extraordinary
movement in freedom. The other is not freedom. And therefore,
sir the communists say there is no such thing as freedom. That's
a bourgeois idea. Of course it is, a bourgeois idea, because
they live in ideas, concepts, not in action. They live according
to ideas and carry those ideas out in action, which is not
action, the doing. I don't know if -
A: Oh, yes, yes. I was just thinking.
K: This is what we do in the western world, the eastern world,
all over the world, acting according to a formula, idea, belief,
a concept, a conclusion, a decision; and never the seeing and
the doing.
A: I was thinking about the cat, the marvelous animal the cat.
K: Oh, yes, the cat.
A: Its face is almost all eyes.
K: Yes.
A: I don't mean that by measure with calipers, of course not.
And we don't train cats like we try to train dogs. I think we
have corrupted dogs. Cats won't be corrupted. They simply won't
be corrupted. And it seems to me great irony that in the middle
ages we should have burned cats along with witches.
K: The ancient Egyptians worshipped cats.
A: Yes. The great eye of the cat, I read sometime ago that the
cat's skeletal structure is among animals the most perfectly
adapted to its function.
K: Quite, quite.
A: And I think one of the most profound occasions for gratitude
in my life was the living with a cat, and she taught me how to
make an end. But I went through a lot of interior agony before I
came to understand what she was doing. It's as though one would
say of her that she was performing a mission, you might say,
without, of course, being a missionary in the ordinary sense of
that word.
K: Sir, you see one begins to see what freedom is in action.
A: That's right.
K: And it is the seeing in the doing is prevented by the
observer who is the past, the formula, the concept, the belief.
That observer comes in between perception and the doing. That
observer is the factor of division. The idea and the conclusion
in action. So can we act only when there is perception? We do
this, Sir, when we are at the edge of a precipice; the seeing
danger is instant action.
A: If I remember correctly the word alert comes from the Italian
which points to standing at the edge of a cliff.
K: Cliff, that's right.
A: That's pretty serious.
K: You see, but it's very interesting, we are conditioned to the
danger of a cliff, of a snake or a dangerous animal and so on,
we are conditioned. But we are conditioned also to this idea you
must act according to an idea, otherwise there is no action.
A: Yes, we are conditioned to that.
K: To that.
A: Oh, yes, terribly so.
K: Terribly. So we have this condition to danger. And
conditioned to the fact that you cannot act without a formula,
without a concept, belief and so on. So these two are the
factors of our conditioning. And now, someone comes along and
says, look, that's not action. That is merely a repetition of
what has been. modified, but it is not action. Action is when
you see and do.
A: And the reaction to that is, oh, I see he has a new
definition of action.
K: I'm not defining.
A: Yes, of course not.
K: And I've done this all my life. I see something and I do it.
A: Yes.
K: Say, for instance, as you may know, I am not being personal
or anything, there is a great big organization, spiritual
organization, thousand of followers with a great deal of land,
5000 acres, castles and money and so on were formed around me as
a boy. And in 1928 I said this is all wrong. I dissolved it,
returned the property and so on. I saw how wrong it was. The
seeing; not the conclusions, comparison, see how religions have
done it. I saw and acted. And therefore there has never been a
regret.
A: Marvelous.
K: Never say, oh, I have made a mistake because I shall have
nobody to lean on. You follow?
A: Yes, I do. Could we next time, in our next conversation
relate beauty to seeing.
K: I was going there.
A: Oh, splendid. Yes that's wonderful.
10th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
22nd February 1974
The Art of Listening
A: Mr Krishnamurti, last time we were speaking together, we were
going into beauty, and just as we came to the end of our
conversation the question of seeing and its relation to the
transformation of man which is not dependent on knowledge or
time, was something we promised ourselves we would take up next
time we could come together.
K: Sir, what is seeing, and what is listening, and what is
learning? I think the three are related to each other: learning,
hearing and seeing. What is seeing, perceiving? Do we actually
see, or do we see through a screen darkly? A screen of
prejudice, a screen of our idiosyncracies, experiences, our
wishes, pleasures, fears, and obviously our images about that
which we see and about ourselves? So we have this screen after
screen between us and the object of perception. So do we ever
see the thing at all? Or is it the seeing is coloured by our
knowledge, mechanical, experience, and so on and so on, or our
images which we have about that thing, or the beliefs in which
the mind is conditioned, and therefore prevents the seeing, or
the memories which the mind has cultivated prevents the seeing?
So seeing may not take place at all. And is it possible for the
mind not to have these images, conclusions, beliefs, memories,
prejudices, fears, and without having those screens just to
look? I think this becomes very important because when there is
a seeing of the thing which I am talking about, when there is a
seeing you can't help but acting. There is no question of
postponement.
A: Or succession.
K: Succession.
A: Or interval.
K: Because when action is based on a belief, a conclusion, an
idea, then that action is time-binding. And that action will
inevitably bring conflict and so on, regrets and all the rest of
it. So it becomes very important to find out what it is to see,
to perceive. What it is to hear. Do I ever hear? When one is
married, as a wife or a husband, or a girl or a boy, do I ever
hear her or him? Or I hear her, him, through the image I have
built about her or him? Through the screen of irritations,
screen of annoyance, domination, you know all that, the dreadful
things that come in relationship. So do I ever hear directly
what you say, without translating, without transforming it,
without twisting it? Do I ever hear a bird cry, or a child weep,
or a man crying in pain? You follow, sir? Do I ever hear
anything?
A: In a conversation we had about a year ago, I was very struck
by something you said which I regard, for myself, personally,
immensely valuable. You said that hearing was doing nothing to
stop, or interfere with seeing. Hearing is doing nothing to stop
seeing. That is very remarkable because in conversation the
notion of hearing is regarded an intimately associated with
command. We will say, won't we, now hear me, hear me out. And
the person thinks that they have to lean forward in the sense of
do something voluntarily.
K: Quite, quite.
A: It's as though they have to screw themselves up into some
sort of agonized twist here. Not only to please the one who is
insisting that they are not hearing, but to get up some hearing
on their own.
K: Quite. So does a human being, Y or X, listen at all? And what
takes place when I do listen? Listen in the sense without any
interference, without any interpretation, conclusion, like and
dislike, you know all that takes place, what happens when I
actually listen? Sir, look, we said just now, we cannot possibly
understand what beauty is if we don't understand suffering,
passion. You hear that statement, what does the mind do? It
draws a conclusion. It has formed an idea, verbal idea, hears
the words, draws a conclusion, and an idea. A statement of that
kind has become an idea. Then the man says, how am I to carry
out that idea? And that becomes a problem.
A: Yes, of course it does. Because the idea doesn't conform to
nature and other people have other ideas and they want to get
theirs embodied. Now we are up against a clash.
K: Yes. So can I listen to that, can the mind listen to that
statement without any forming an abstraction. Just listen. I
neither agree nor disagree, just actually listen completely to
that statement.
A: If I am following you, what you are saying is that were I to
listen adequately, or just let's say listen - because it's not a
question of more or less - I am absolutely listening or I am
absolutely not listening.
K: That's right, sir.
A: Yes. I would not have to contrive an answer.
K: No. You are in it.
A: Yes. So like the cat, the action and the seeing are one.
K: Yes.
A: They are one act.
K: That's right.
A: They are one act.
K: That's right. So can I listen to a statement and see the
truth of the statement or the falseness of the statement, not in
comparison but in the very statement that you are making. I
don't know if I am making myself clear.
A: Yes, you are making yourself very clear.
K: That is, I listen to the statement: beauty can never exist
without passion, and passion comes from sorrow. I listen to that
statement. I don't abstract an idea from it, or make an idea
from it. I just listen. What takes place? You may be telling the
truth, or you may be making a false statement. I don't know
because I am not going to compare.
A: No. You are going to see.
K: I just listen. Which means I am giving my total attention -
just listen to this, sir, you will see what is going to happen -
I give my total attention to what you are saying. Then it
doesn't matter what you say, or don't say. You see this thing?
A: Of course, of course.
K: What is important is my act of listening. And that act of
listening has brought about a miracle of complete freedom from
all your statements - whether true, false, real - my mind is
completely attentive. Attention means no border. The moment I
have a border I begin to fight you - agree, disagree. The moment
attention has a frontier then concepts arise. But if I listen to
you completely without a single interference of thought or
ideation or mentation, just listen to that, the miracle has
taken place. Which is my total attention absolves me, my mind,
from all the statement. Therefore my mind is extraordinarily
free to act.
A: This has happened for me on this series of our conversations.
With each one of these conversations, since this is being
video-taped, one begins when one is given the sign and we're
told when the time has elapsed; and one ordinarily, in terms of
activity of this sort, is thinking about the production as such.
K: Of course.
A: But one of the things that I have learned is in our
conversations, I've been listening very intensely, and yet I've
not had to divide my mind.
K: No, sir, that's the...
A: And yet this is, if I'm responding correctly to what you have
been teaching - well I know you don't like that word, but to
what you have been saying, and I understand why teaching was the
wrong word here - there is that very first encounter that the
mind engages itself in.
K: Yes.
A: How can I afford not to make the distinction between paying
attention to the aspects of the programme, on the production
aspect of it, and still engage our discussion?
K: Quite.
A: But the more intensely the discussion is engaged...
K: You can do it.
A: ...the more efficiently all the mechanism is accomplished.
K: Yes.
A: We don't believe that, in the sense that not only to start
with we will not believe but we won't even try it out. There is
no guarantee from anybody in advance. What we are told rather is
this, well you get used to it. And yet performers have stage
fright all their lives, so clearly they don't get used to it.
K: No, sir, it is because, sir, don't you think it is our minds
are so commercial, unless I get a reward from it I won't do a
thing. And my mind lives in the market place - one's mind: I
give you this, you give me that.
A: And there's an interval in between.
K: You follow?
A: Right.
K: We are so used to commercialism, both spiritually and
physically that we don't do anything without a reward, without
gaining something, without a purpose. It all must be exchange,
not a gift, but exchange: I give you this and you give me that;
I torture myself religiously and God must come to me. It's all a
matter of commerce.
A: Fundamentalists have a phrase that comes to mind with respect
to their devotional life. They say, I am claiming the promises
of God. And this phrase in the context of what you are saying
is, my goodness, what that couldn't lead to in the mind.
K: Oh yes. So you see when one goes very deeply into this: when
action is not based on an idea, formula, belief, then seeing is
the doing. Then what is seeing and hearing, which we went into?
Then the seeing is complete attention, and the doing is in that
attention. And the difficulty is people will ask, how will you
maintain that attention?
A: Yes, and they haven't even started.
K: No, how will you maintain it. Which means they are looking
for a reward.
A: Exactly.
K: I practise it, I will do everything to maintain that
attention in order to get something in return. Attention is not
a result, attention has no cause. What has cause has an effect
and the effect becomes the cause. It's a circle. But attention
isn't that. Attention doesn't give you a reward. Attention, on
the contrary, there is no reward or punishment because it has no
frontier.
A: Yes, this calls up an earlier conversation we had when you
mentioned the word virtue, and we explored it in relation to
power.
K: Yes, exactly.
A: And we are told what is difficult for a thinking child to
believe, given the way a child is brought up, but he's required
somehow to make his way through it, that virtue is its own
reward.
K: Oh, that.
A: And, of course, it is impossible to see what is sound about
that under...
K: Yes, quite.
A: ...under the conditioned situation in which he lives.
K: That's just an idea, sir.
A: So now we cut that back and then later when we need to remind
somebody that they are asking too much of a reward for something
good that they did, we tell them, have you forgotten that virtue
is its own reward. Yes, yes. It becomes a form of punishment.
K: Then, you see, seeing and hearing, then what is learning?
Because they are all interrelated: learning seeing, hearing, and
action, all that. It is all in one movement. They are not
separate chapters, it's one chapter.
A: Distinction is no division.
K: No. So what is learning? Is learning a process of
accumulation? And is learning non accumulative? We are putting
both together. Let's look at it.
A: Let's look at it, yes.
K: I learn - one learns a language - Italian, French, whatever
it is - and accumulate words and the irregular verbs and so on,
and then one is able to speak. There is learning a language and
being able to speak. Learning how to ride a bicycle, learning
how to drive a car, learning how to put together a machine,
electronics and so on. Those are all learning to acquire
knowledge in action. And I am asking, is there any other form of
learning? That we know, we are familiar with the acquisition of
knowledge. Now is there any other kind of learning, learning
which is not accumulated, and acting?
A: Yes, and when we have accumulated it all we haven't
understood anything on that account.
K: Yes. And I learn in order to gain a reward, or in order to
avoid punishment. I learn a particular job, or particular craft
in order to earn a livelihood. That is absolutely necessary
otherwise... Now I am asking, is there any other kind of
learning? That's routine, that's the cultivation of memory and
the memory, which is the result of experience and knowledge that
is stored in the brain, and that operates, when asked to ride a
bicycle, drive a car, and so on. Now is there any other kind of
learning? Or only that? When one says, I have learned from my
experience, it means I have learned, stored up from that
experience certain memories, and those memories either prevent,
reward, or punish. So all such forms of learning are mechanical.
And education is to train the brain to function in routine,
mechanically. Because in that there is great security. Then it
is safe. And so our mind becomes mechanical. My father did this,
I do it - you follow, the whole business is mechanical. Now, is
there a non mechanical brain at all? A non-utilitarian, in that
sense, learning which has neither future not past, therefore not
time-binding. I don't know if I am making it clear.
A: Don't we sometimes say, I have learned from experience, when
we wish to convey something that isn't well conveyed by that
expression. We wish to convey an insight that we don't feel can
be, in a strict sense, dated.
K: You see, sir, do we learn anything from experience? We have
had, since history began, written history, five thousand wars. I
read it somewhere. Five thousand wars. Killing, killing,
killing, maiming. And have we learned anything? Have we learned
anything from sorrow? Man has suffered, have we learned anything
from the experience of the agony of uncertainty and all the rest
of it? So when we say, we have learned, I question it. You
follow? It seems such a terrible thing to say, I have learned
from experience. You have learned nothing, except in the field
of knowledge.
A: Yes. May I say something here that just passed in recall. We
were talking about sorrow before, and I was thinking of a
statement of St Paul's in his letter to the Romans, where there
is a very unusual sequence of words where he says, we rejoice in
tribulations. Now some people have thought he must have been a
masochist, or something, in making such a statement; but that
certainly seems to me bizarre. We rejoice in tribulations. And
then he says, because tribulation works - and in the Greek this
means there is energy involved - works patience. Patience,
experience. Now that's a very unusual order because we usually
think that if we have enough experience we'll learn to be
patient. And he completely stands that on its head. And in the
context of what you are saying that order of his words makes
eminent sense. Please go on.
K: No, no.
A: Yes, that's really very remarkable.
K: You see, sir, that's why our education, our civilization, all
the things about us, has made our mind so mechanical, repetitive
reactions, repetitive demands, repetitive pursuits. The same
thing being repeated year after year, for thousands of years: my
country, your country, I kill you and you kill me. You follow,
sir, the whole thing is mechanical. Now that means the mind can
never be free. Thought is never free, thought is always old.
There's no new thought.
A: No. It is very curious in relation to a movement within the
field of religion which called itself: 'New Thought'. Yes, I was
laughing at the irony of it. Yes, goodness me. Some persons I
imagine would object to the notion that we don't learn from
experience in terms of the succession of wars, because wars tend
to happen sequentially, generation to generation, and you have
to grow up. But that is not true because more than one war will
happen very often in the same generation and there hasn't been
anything learned.
K: That is what we have been talking about, two wars.
A: There hasn't been anything learned at all. It's a terrifying
thing to hear someone just come out and say, nobody learns
anything from experience.
K: No, the word experience also means to go through.
A: Yes, yes.
K: But you never go through.
A: That's exactly right.
K: You always stop in the middle. Or you never begin.
A: Right. It means, if I'm remembering correctly, in terms of
its radical root it means to test, to put to the test, to, well
to put a thing to the test and behave correctly while that's
going on, you certainly have to see, you just have to look,
don't you.
K: Of course. So as our civilization, our culture, our education
has brought about a mind that is becoming more and more
mechanical, and therefore time-binding, and therefore never a
sense of freedom. Freedom then becomes an idea, you play around
philosophically, but it has not meaning. But a man who says, now
I want to find out, I want to really go into this and discover
if there is freedom. Then he has to understand the limits of
knowledge, where knowledge ends - or rather the ending of
knowledge and the beginning of something totally new. I don't
know if I am conveying anything?
A: You are. Oh yes, yes.
K: That is, sir, what is learning? If it is not mechanical then
what is learning? Is there a learning at all, learning about
what? I learn how to go to the moon, how to put up this, that
and drive and so on. In that field there is only learning. Is
there a learning in any other field, psychologically,
spiritually? Can I learn - can the mind learn about what they
call god?
A: If in learning, in the sense that you have asked this
question - no, I must rephrase that. Stop this 'ifing'. When one
does what I am about to say; when one learns about god, or going
to the moon, in terms of the question you have asked, he can't
be doing what you are pointing to if this is something added on
to the list.
K: Sir, it is so clear.
A: Yes, it is.
K: I learn a language, ride a bicycle, drive a car, put a
machine together. That's essential. Now I want to learn about
god. Just listen to this. The god is my making. God hasn't made
me in his image. I have made him in my image. Now I am going to
learn about him.
A: Yes, I am going to talk to myself.
K: Learn about the image which I have built about Christ,
Buddha, whatever it is. The image I have built. So I am learning
what?
A: To talk about talk. Yes.
K: Learning about the image which I have built.
A: That's right.
K: Therefore is there any other kind of learning except
mechanical learning? I don't know if you see? You understand my
question?
A: Yes, I do. Yes, I do, I certainly do.
K: So there is only learning the mechanical process of life.
There is no other learning. See what that means, sir.
A: It means freedom.
K: I can learn about myself. Myself is known. Known in the sense
I may not know it, but I can know by looking at myself, I can
know myself. So myself is the accumulated knowledge of the past.
The 'me' who says I am greedy, I am envious, I am successful, I
am frightened, I have betrayed, I have regret, all that is the
'me', including the soul which I have invented in the 'me' - or
the Brahman, the Atman, it's all me still. The 'me' has created
the image of god and I am going to learn about god. It has no
meaning. So if there is - when there is - now I am going to use
the word 'if', if there is no other learning what takes place?
You understand? The mind is used in the acquisition of knowledge
in matter. We'll put it differently. In mechanical things. And
when the mind is employed there, are there any other processes
of learning? Which means psychologically, inwardly - is there?
The inward is the invention of thought as opposed to the outer.
I don't know if you see. If I have understood the outer I have
understood the inner. Because the inner has created the outer.
The outer in the sense the structure of society, the religious
sanctions, all that is invented or put together by thought - the
Jesus's, the Christ, the Buddhas, all that. And what is there to
learn?
A: In listening to you...
K: See the beauty of what is coming out.
A: Oh yes, yes, it goes back to your remark about Vedanta as the
end of knowledge.
K: That's what I was told.
A: Yes. The interesting thing to me about the Sanskrit
construction is that unless I am mistaken, it doesn't mean the
end of it as a terminus, as a term because that would simply
start a new series. It is the consummation of it which is the
total end in the sense that a totally new beginning is made.
That very point.
K: That means, sir, I know - the mind knows the activity of the
known.
A: That's right, yes. That's the consummation of knowledge.
K: Of knowledge. Now what is the state of the mind that is free
from that, and yet functions in knowledge?
A: And yet functions in it.
K: You follow?
A: Yes, yes. It is seeing perfectly.
K: Do go into it, you will see very strange things take place.
Is this possible first? You understand? Because the brain
functions mechanically, it wants security, otherwise it can't
function. If we hadn't security we wouldn't be here sitting
together. Because we have security we can have a dialogue. The
brain can only function in complete security. Whether that
security is found in a neurotic belief - all beliefs and all
ideas are neurotic in that sense. So he finds it somewhere, in
accepting nationality as the highest form of good, success is
the highest virtue. He finds belief, security there. Now you are
asking the mind, the brain, which has become mechanical, trained
for centuries to see the other field which is not mechanical. Is
there another field?
A: No.
K: You follow the question?
A: Yes, I do. Yes, that's what so utterly devastating.
K: Is there - wait, wait - is there another field? Now unless
the brain and the mind understands the whole field - not field,
understands the movement of knowledge, it is a movement.
A: It is a movement, yes.
K: It is not just static, you are adding, taking away, and so
on. Unless it understands all that it cannot possibly ask that
other question.
A: Exactly. Exactly.
K: And when it does ask that question, what takes place? Sir,
this is real meditation, you know.
A: This is, yes, yes.
K: Which we will go into another time. So you see that's what it
means. One is always listening with knowledge, seeing with
knowledge.
A: This is the seeing through a glass darkly.
K: Darkly. Now is there a listening out of silence? And that is
attention. And that is not time-binding, because in that silence
I don't want anything. It isn't that I am going to learn about
myself. It isn't that I am going to be punished, rewarded. In
that absolute silence I listen.
A: The wonder of the whole thing is that it isn't something
which is done, this meditation, in succession.
K: Sir, when we talk about meditation we will have to go very
deeply into that because they have destroyed that word. These
shoddy little men coming from India or anywhere, they have
destroyed that thing.
A: I heard the other day about someone who was learning
transcendental meditation.
K: Oh, learning.
A: They had to do it at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
K: Pay 35 dollars or 100 dollars to learn that. It's so
sacrilegious.
A: That is, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon was judgement day. If
you didn't do it according to your schedule then the world has
obviously come to an end. But ostensibly you are doing it to get
free of that. Do go ahead.
K: So you see, sir, that's what takes place. We began this
morning about beauty, then passion, then suffering, then action.
Action based on idea is inaction. It sounds monstrous, but there
it is. And from that we said what is seeing, and what is
hearing. The seeing and the listening has become mechanical. We
never see anything new. Even the flower is never new which has
blossomed over night. We say, that's the rose, I have been
expecting it, it has come out now, beautiful. It's always from
the known to the known. A movement in time, and therefore
time-binding, and therefore never free. And yet we are talking
about freedom, you know philosophy, the lectures on freedom and
so on and so on. And the communists call it a bourgeois thing,
which it is, in the sense when you limit it to knowledge it is
foolish to talk about freedom. But there is a freedom when you
understand the whole movement of knowledge. So can you observe
out of silence, and observe and act in the field of knowledge,
so both together in harmony?
A: Seeing then is not scheduled. Yes, of course, of course. I
was just thinking about, I suppose you would say the classical
definition of freedom in terms of the career of knowledge would
be that it is a property of action, a property or quality of
action. For general uses either word would do, property or
quality. And it occurred to me in the context of what we have
been saying, what a horror that one could read that statement
and not let it disclose itself to you.
K: Quite.
A: If it disclosed itself to you, you would be up against it,
you'd have to be serious. If you were a philosophy student and
you read that and that thing began to operate in you, you'd say,
I've got to get this settled before I go on. Maybe I'll never
graduate, that's not important.
K: That's not important, quite right. And I was thinking, in the
West as well as in the East you have to go to the factory, or
the office, every day of your life. Get up at 8 o'clock, 6
o'clock, drive, walk, work, work, work for fifty years, routine,
and get kicked about, insulted, worship success. Again
repetition. And occasionally talk about god if it is convenient,
and so on and so on. That is a monstrous life. And that is what
we are educating our children for.
A: That's the real living death.
K: And nobody says, for god's sake let's look at all this anew.
Let's wipe our eyes clear of the past and look at what we are
doing, give attention, care what we are doing.
A: Now we have this question instead: what shall we do about it?
Yes, that's the question. And then that becomes the next thing
done that is added to the list.
K: It is a continuity of the past, in a different form.
A: And the chain is endlessly linked, linked, linked, linked.
K: The cause becoming the effect and the effect becoming the
cause. So it's a very serious thing when we talk about all this,
because life becomes dreadfully serious. And it's only this
serious person that lives. Not those people who seek
entertainment, religious or otherwise.
A: I had a very interesting occasion to understand what you are
saying in class yesterday. I was trying to assist the students
to see that the classical understanding of the four causes in
operation is that they are non-temporarily related. And I said
when the potter puts his hand to the clay, the hand touching the
clay is not responded to by the clay after the hand has touched
it. And one person who was visiting the class, this person was a
well educated person and a professor, and this struck him as
maybe not so, and I could tell by the expression on the face
that there was a little anguish here, so I said, well, my radar
says that there is some difficulty going on, what's the matter?
Well, it seems like there is a time interval. So I asked him to
pick something up that was on the desk. And I said, touch it
with your finger and tell me at the moment of the touching with
the finger whether the thing reacts to the finger after it is
touched. Now do it. Well, even to ask somebody to apply a
practical test like that with respect to a datum of knowledge
like the four causes are... is to interrupt the process of
education as we have known it. Because you teach a student about
the four causes and he thinks about them, he never goes out and
looks at things, or does anything about it. And so we were
picking stuff up in class, and we were doing this until finally
it seemed like a revelation that what has been said, in the
classical teaching of it, which of course in modern society is
rejected, happens to be the case. And I said, this has to be
seen, watch. This is what you mean.
K: Seeing, of course.
A: Of course, of course. But we are back to that step there: why
was that person and so many other students following suit,
anguished at the point where the practical issue arose? There
was a feeling, I suppose, that they were on the cliff.
K: Quite, quite.
A: That, and naturally alertness was required. But alertness
registers that we are on a cliff, so therefore the best thing to
do is to turn around and run back. Yes, yes.
K: Sir, I think, you see, we are so caught up in words. To me
the word is not the thing. The description is not the described.
To us the description is all that matters because we are slave
to words.
A: And to ritual.
K: Ritual and all the rest of it. So when you say, look, the
thing matters more than the word, and then they say, how am I to
get rid of the word, how am I to communicate if I have no word?
You see how they have gone off? They are not concerned with the
thing but with the word.
A: Yes.
K: And the door is not the word. So when we are caught up in
words the word door becomes extraordinarily important, and not
the door.
A: And I don't really need to come to terms with the door, I say
to myself, because I have the word. I have it all.
K: So education has done this. A great part of this education is
the acceptance of words as an abstraction from the fact, from
the 'what is'. All philosophies are based on that: theorize,
theorize, theorize, endlessly, how one should live. And the
philosopher himself doesn't live.
A: Yes, I know.
K: You see this all over.
A: Especially some philosophers that have seemed to me quite
bizarre in this respect. I have asked my colleagues from time to
time, if you believe that stuff why don't you do it? And they
look at me as though I am out of my mind, as thought nobody
would really seriously ask that question.
K: Quite, quite.
A: But if you can't ask that question, what question is worth
asking?
K: Quite right.
A: I was thinking about that marvelous story you told in
our previous conversation about the monkey, while you were
speaking about this, when she shook hands with you, nobody had
told her how to shake hands.
K: No, it stretched out.
A: Yes.
K: And I took it.
A: It wasn't something that she was taught how to do through a
verbal communication, it was the appropriate thing at the time.
K: At the time, yes.
A: Without anyone measuring its appropriateness.
K: Quite.
A: Isn't that something. Yes, I can't tell you how grateful I am
to have been able to share this with you. I have seen in respect
to my own activity as a teacher where I must perform therapy
even on my language.
K: Quite, quite.
A: So that I don't give the student an occasion for thinking
that I am simply adding to this endless chain, link after link
after link. There are two therapies here then: there's the
therapy that relates to words and that flows out naturally. It
is not a contrivance, it flows out naturally, if I've understood
you correctly, from the therapy within. Now this relates
directly, as you were saying earlier, to meditation. Are we
ready, do you think to...
K: I think that's too complicated.
A: I don't mean right now. But maybe in one of our next
conversations.
K: Oh yes, we must discuss several things yet, sir.
A: Yes.
K: What is love, what is death, what is meditation, what is the
whole movement of living. We've got a great deal to do.
A: Oh, I do look forward to that very much. Splendid. Right.
11th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
25th February 1974
The Nature of Hurt
A: Mr Krishnamurti, during our conversations one thing has
emerged for me with I'd say an arresting force. That is, on the
one had we have been talking about thought and knowledge in
terms of a dysfunctional relationship to it, but never once have
you said that we should get rid of thought, and you have never
said that knowledge, as such, in itself, has something
profoundly the matter with it. Therefore the relationship
between intelligence and thought arises, and the question of
what seems to be that which maintains a creative relationship
between intelligence and thought - perhaps some primordial
activity which abides. And in thinking on this I wondered
whether you would agree that perhaps in the history of human
existence the concept of god has been generated out of a
relationship to this abiding activity, which concept has been
very badly abused. And it raises the whole question of the
phenomenon of religion itself. I wondered if we might discuss
that today?
K: Yes. You know, a word like religion, love, or god, has almost
lost all its meaning. They have abused these words so
enormously, and religion has become a vast superstition, a great
propaganda, incredible beliefs and superstitions, worship of
images made by the hand or by the mind. So when we talk about
religion I would like, if I may, to be quite clear that we are
both of us using the word religion in the real sense of that
word, not either in the Christian, or the Hindu, or the Muslim,
or the Buddhist, or all the stupid things that are going on in
this country in the name of religion.
I think the word 'religion' means gathering together all energy,
at all levels, physically, moral, spiritual, at all levels,
gathering all this energy which will bring about a great
attention. And in that attention there is no frontier, and then
from there move. To me that is the meaning of that word: the
gathering of total energy to understand what thought cannot
possibly capture. Thought is never new, never free, and
therefore it is always conditioned and fragmentary, and so on,
which we discussed. So religion is not a thing put together by
thought, or by fear, or by the pursuit of satisfaction and
pleasure, but something totally beyond all this, which isn't
romanticism, speculative belief, or sentimentality. And I think
if we could keep to that, to the meaning of that word, putting
aside all the superstitious nonsense that is going on in the
world in the name of religion, which has become really quite a
circus, however beautiful it is. Then I think we could from
there start, if you will. If you agree to the meaning of that
word.
A: Yes. I have been thinking as you have been speaking that in
the biblical tradition there are actual statements from the
prophets which seem to point to what you are saying. Such things
come to mind as Isaiah, taking the part of the divine, when he
says, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your
ways, as high as the heavens are above the earth so are my
thoughts and your thoughts, so stop thinking about me in that
sense. And don't try to find a means to me that you have
contrived since my ways are higher than your ways. And then I
was thinking while you were speaking concerning this act of
attention, this gathering together of all energies of the whole
man; the very simple, be still and know that I am God. Be still.
It's amazing when one thinks of the history of religion, how
little attention has been paid to that as compared with ritual.
K: But I think when we lost touch with nature, with the
universe, with the clouds, lakes, birds, when we lost touch with
all that, then the priests came in. Then all the superstition,
fears, exploitation, all that began. The priests became the
mediator between the human and the so-called divine. And I
believe, if you have read the Rig Veda, I was told about it
because I don't read all this, that there, in the first Veda
there is no mention of God at all. There is only this worship of
something immense, expressed in nature and in the earth, in the
clouds, in the trees, in the beauty of vision. But that being,
very, very simple, the priests said, that is too simple.
A: Let's mix it up.
K: Let's mix it up, let's confuse it a little bit. And that
began. I believe this is traceable from the ancient Vedas to the
present time, where the priests became the interpreter, the
mediator, the explainer, the exploiter, the man who said, this
is right, this is wrong, you must believe this or you will go to
perdition, and so on and so on. He generated fear, not the
adoration of beauty, not the adoration of life lived totally
wholly without conflict, but something placed outside there
beyond and above what he considered to be God and made
propaganda for that.
So I feel if we could from the beginning use the word religion
in the simplest way. That is, the gathering of all energy so
that there is total attention, and in that quality of attention
the immeasurable comes into being. Because as we said the other
day, the measurable is the mechanical. Which the west has
cultivated, made marvelous, technologically, physically,
medicine, science, biology and so on and so on, which has made
the world so superficial, mechanical, worldly, materialistic.
And that is spreading all over the world. And in reaction to
that, this materialistic attitude, there are all these
superstitious, nonsensical unreasoned religions that are going
on. I don't know if you saw the other day the absurdity of these
gurus coming from India and teaching the west how to meditate,
how to hold breath, they say, "I am god, worship me" - it has
become so absurd, and childish, so utterly immature. All that
indicates the degradation of the word religion, and the human
mind that can accept this kind of circus and idiocy.
A: Yes. I was thinking of a remark of Sri Aurobindo's in a study
that he made on the Veda, where he traced its decline in the
sentence. He said it issues as language from sages, then it
falls to the priests, then after the priests it falls to the
scholars or the academicians. But in that study there was no
statement that I found as to how it ever fell to the priests.
K: I think it is fairly simple, sir.
A: Yes, please.
K: I think it is fairly simple, sir, how the priests got hold of
the whole business. Because man is so concerned with his own
petty little affairs, petty little desires, and ambitions,
superficiality, he wants something a little more: he wants a
little more romantic, a little more sentimental, something other
than the daily beastly routine of living. So he looks somewhere
and the priests say, come over here, I've got the goods. I think
it is very simple how the priests have come in. You see it in
India, you see it in the west. You see it everywhere where man
begins to be concerned with daily living, the daily operation of
bread and butter, house and all the rest of it, he demands
something more than that. He says, after all I'll die but there
must be something more.
A: So fundamentally it's a matter of securing for himself
some...
K: ...heavenly grace.
A: ...some heavenly grace that will preserve him against falling
into this mournful round of coming to be and passing away.
Thinking of the past, on the one had, anticipating the future on
the other, you're saying he falls out of the present now.
K: Yes, that's right.
A: I understand.
K: So, if we could keep to that meaning of that word religion
then from there the question arises, can the mind be so
attentive in the total sense that the unnameable comes into
being? You see, personally I have never read any of these
things, Veda, Gita, Upanishads, the Bible, all the rest of it,
or any philosophy. But I questioned everything.
A: Yes.
K: Not question only, but observe. And I - one sees the absolute
necessity of a mind that is completely quiet. Because it's only
out of quietness you perceive what is happening. If I am
chattering I won't listen to you. If my mind is constantly
rattling away, to what you are saying I won't pay attention. To
pay attention means to be quiet.
A: There have been some priests, apparently, who usually ended
up in a great deal of trouble for it, there have been some
priests who had, it seems, a grasp of this. I was thinking of
Meister Eckhardt's remark that whoever is able to read the book
of nature doesn't need any scriptures at all.
K: That's just it.
A: Of course, he ended up in very great trouble. Yes, he had a
bad time toward the ends of his life, and after he died the
church denounced him.
K: Of course, of course. Organized belief as church, and all the
rest of it, is too obvious. It isn't subtle, it hasn't got the
quality of real depth and real spirituality. You know what it
is.
A: Yes, I do.
K: So I'm asking, what is the quality of a mind, and therefore
heart and brain, what is the quality of a mind that can perceive
something beyond the measurement of thought? What is the quality
of a mind? Because that quality is the religious mind. That
quality of a mind that is capable, that has this feeling of
being sacred in itself, and therefore is capable of seeing
something immeasurably sacred.
A: The word devotion seems to imply this when it is grasped in
its proper sense. To use your earlier phrase, gathering together
toward a one pointed attentive...
K: Would you say attention is one pointed?
A: No, I didn't mean to imply focus when I said one pointed.
K: Yes, that's what I wondered.
A: I meant rather, integrated into itself as utterly quiet and
unconcerned about taking thought for what is ahead, or what is
behind. Simply being there. The word 'there' isn't good either
because it suggests that there is a 'where' and all the rest of
it. It is very difficult to find, it seems to me, language to do
justice to what you are saying, precisely because when we speak
utterance is in time and it is progressive, it has a quality,
doesn't it, more like music than we see in graphic art. You can
stand before a picture, whereas to hear music and grasp its
theme you virtually have to wait until you get to the end and
gather it all up. And with language you have the same
difficulty.
K: No, I think, sir don't you, when we are enquiring into this
problem, what is the nature, the structure of a mind, and
therefore the quality of a mind, that is not only sacred and
holy in itself, but is capable of seeing something immense? As
we were talking the other day about suffering, personal and the
sorrow of the world, it isn't that we must suffer, suffering is
there. Every human being has a dreadful time with it. And there
is the suffering of the world. And it isn't that one must go
through it, but as it is there one must understand it and go
beyond it. And that's one of the qualities of a religious mind,
in the sense we are using that word, that is incapable of
suffering. It has gone beyond it. Which doesn't mean that it
becomes callous. On the contrary it is a passionate mind.
A: One of the things that I have thought much about during our
conversations is language itself. On the one hand we say such a
mind as you have been describing is one that is present to
suffering. It does nothing to push it away, on the one hand; and
yet it is somehow able to contain it, not put it in a vase, or
barrel, contain it in that sense, and yet the very word itself,
to suffer, means to under-carry. And it seems close to
understand. Over and over again in our conversations I have been
thinking about the customary way in which we use language as a
use that deprives us of really seeing the glory of what the word
points to itself, in itself. I was thinking about the word
religion when we were speaking earlier. Scholars differ as to
where that came from: on the one hand some say it means to bind,
the church fathers spoke about that. And then others say, no,
no, it means the numinous or the splendour that cannot be
exhausted by thought. It seems to me that, wouldn't you say,
that there is another sense to bind that is not a negative one,
in the sense that if one is making this act of attention, one
isn't bound as with cords of rope. But one is there, or here.
K: Sir, now again let's be clear. When we use the word attention
there is a difference between concentration and attention.
Concentration is exclusion. I concentrate. That is, bring all my
thinking to a certain point, and therefore it is excluding,
building a barrier so that it can focus its whole concentration
on that. Whereas attention is something entirely different from
concentration. In that there is no exclusion. In that there is
no resistance. In that there is no effort. And therefore no
frontier, no limits.
A: How would you feel about the word receptive, in this respect?
K: Again, who is it who is to receive?
A: Already we have made a division.
K: A division.
A: With that word.
K: Yes. I think the word attention is really a very good word.
Because it not only understands concentration, not only sees
duality of reception, the receiver and the received, and also it
sees the nature of duality and the conflict of the opposites;
and attention means not only the brain giving its energy, but
also the mind, the heart, the nerves, the total entity, the
total human mind giving all its energy to perceive. I think that
is the meaning of that word for me at least, to be attentive,
attend. Not concentrate, attend. That means listen, see, give
your heart to it, give your mind to it, give your whole being to
attend, otherwise you can't attend. If I am thinking about
something else I can't attend. If I am hearing my own voice, I
can't attend.
A: There is a metaphorical use of the word waiting in scripture.
It's interesting that in English too we use the word attendant
in terms of one who waits on. I'm trying to penetrate the notion
of waiting, and patience in relation to this.
K: I think, sir, waiting again means one who is waiting for
something. Again there is a duality. And when you wait you are
expecting. Again a duality. One who is waiting about to receive.
So if we could for the moment hold ourselves to that word,
attention, then we should enquire what is the quality of a mind
that is so attentive that it has understood, lives, acts, in
relationship and responsibility as behaviour, and has no fear
psychologically in that, we talked about, and therefore
understands the movement of pleasure. Then we come to the point,
what is such a mind? I think it would be worthwhile if we could
discuss the nature of hurt.
A: Of hurt? Yes.
K: Why human beings are hurt. All people are hurt.
A: You mean both physically and psychologically?
K: Psychologically especially.
A: Especially the psychological one, yes.
K: Physically we can tolerate it. We can bear up with a pain and
say I won't let it interfere with my thinking. I won't let it
corrode my psychological quality of mind. The mind can watch
over that. But the psychological hurts are much more important
and difficult to grapple with and understand. I think it is
necessary because a mind that is hurt is not an innocent mind.
The very word innocent comes from innocere, not to hurt. A mind
that is incapable of being hurt. There is a great beauty in
that.
A: Yes, there is. It's a marvelous word. We have usually used it
to indicate a lack of something.
K: I know.
A: Yes, and there it's turned upside down again.
K: And the Christians have made such an absurd thing of it.
A: Yes, I understand that.
K: So I think we ought in discussing religion we ought to
enquire very, very deeply into the nature of hurt, because a
mind that is not hurt is an innocent mind. And you need this
quality of innocency to be so totally attentive.
A: If I have been following you correctly I think may be you
would say, wouldn't you, that man becomes hurt when he starts
thinking about thinking that he is hurt.
K: Look sir, it's much deeper than that, isn't' it? From
childhood the parents compare the child with another child.
A: That's when that thought arises.
K: There it is. When you compare you are hurting.
A: Yes.
K: No, but we do it.
A: Oh yes, of course we do it.
K: Therefore is it possible to educate a child without
comparison, without imitation? And therefore never get hurt in
that way. And one is hurt because one has built an image about
oneself. The image which one has built about oneself is a form
of resistance, a wall between you and me. And when you touch
that wall at its tender point I get hurt. So not to compare in
education, not to have an image about oneself. That's one of the
most important things in life, not to have an image about
oneself. If you have you are inevitably going to be hurt.
Suppose one has an image that one is very good, or that one
should be a great success, or that one has great capacities,
gifts, you know the images that one builds, inevitably you are
going to come and prick it. Inevitably accidents and incidents
happen that's going to break that, and one gets hurt.
A: Doesn't this raise the question of name.
K: Oh yes.
A: The use of name.
K: Name, form.
A: The child is given a name, the child identifies himself with
the name.
K: Yes, the child can identify itself but without the image,
just a name: Brown, Mr Brown. There is nothing to it. But the
moment he builds an image that Mr Brown is socially, morally
different, superior, or inferior, ancient or comes from a very
old family, belongs to a certain higher class, aristocracy. The
moment that begins, and when that is encouraged and sustained by
thought, snobbism, you know the whole lot of it, then you are
inevitably going to be hurt.
A: What you are saying, I take it, is that there is a radical
confusion here involved in the imagining oneself to be his name.
K: Yes. Identification with the name, with the body, with the
idea that you are socially different, that your parents, your
grandparents were lords, or this or that. You know the whole
snobbism of England, and all that, and the different kind of
snobbism in this country.
A: We speak in language of preserving the name.
K: Yes. And in India it is the Brahmin, the non Brahmin, the
whole business of that. So through education, through tradition,
through propaganda we have built an image about ourselves.
A: Is there a relation here in terms of religion, would you say,
for the refusal, for instance in the Hebraic tradition to
pronounce the name of God.
K: The word is not the thing anyhow. So you can pronounce it or
not pronounce it. If you know the word is never the thing, the
description is never the described, then it doesn't matter.
A: No. One of the reasons I've always been over the years deeply
drawn to the study of the roots of words is simply because for
the most part they point to something very concrete.
K: Very.
A: It's either a thing or it's a gesture, more often than not
it's some act.
K: Quite, quite.
A: Some act. When I use the phrase, thinking about thinking,
before, I should have been more careful of my words and referred
to mulling over the image, which would have been a much better
way to put it, wouldn't it?
K: Yes, yes. So can a child be educated never to get hurt? And I
have heard professors, scholars, say, a child must be hurt in
order to live in the world. And when I asked him, do you want
your child to be hurt, he kept absolutely quiet. He was just
talking theoretically. Now unfortunately through education,
through social structure and the nature of our society in which
we live, we have been hurt, we have images about ourselves which
are going to be hurt, and is it possible not to create images at
all? I don't know if I am making myself clear.
A: You are.
K: That is, suppose I have an image about myself - which I
haven't fortunately - if I have an image, is it possible to wipe
it away, to understand it and therefore dissolve it, and never
to create a new image about myself? You understand? Living in a
society, being educated, I have built an image inevitably. Now
can that image be wiped away?
A: Wouldn't it disappear with this complete act of attention?
K: That's what I'm coming to gradually. It would totally
disappear. But I must understand how this image is born. I can't
just say, well, I'll wipe it out.
A: Yes.
K: Use attention as a meant of wiping it out - it doesn't work
that way. In understanding the image, in understanding the
hurts, in understanding the education in which one has been
brought up in the family, the society, all that, in the
understanding of all that, out of the understanding comes
attention; not the attention first and then wipe it out. You
can't attend if you're hurt. If I am hurt how can I attend?
Because that hurt is going to keep me, consciously, or
unconsciously, from this total attention.
A: The amazing thing, if I'm understanding you correctly, is
that even in the study of the dysfunctional history, provided I
bring total attention to that, there's going to be a nontemporal
relationship between the act of attention and the healing that
takes place.
K: That's right.
A: While I am attending the thing is leaving.
K: The thing is leaving, yes, that's it.
A: We've got 'thinging' along here throughout. Yes, exactly.
K: So, there are two questions involved: can the hurts be healed
so that not a mark is left; and can future hurts be prevented
completely, without any resistance. You follow? Those are two
problems. And they can be understood only and resolved when I
give attention to the understanding of my hurts. When I look at
it, not translate it, not wish to wipe them away, just to look
at it - as we went into that question of perception. Just to see
my hurts. The hurts I have received, the insults, the
negligence, the casual words, the gesture, all those hurts. And
the language one uses, specially in this country.
A: Oh yes, yes. There seems to be a relationship between what
you are saying and one of the meanings of the word, salvation.
K: Salvare, to save.
A: To save.
K: To save.
A: To make whole.
K: To make whole. How can you be whole, sir, if you are hurt?
A: Impossible.
K: Therefore it is tremendously important to understand this
question.
A: Yes, it is. But I am thinking of a child who comes to school
who has already got a freight car filled with hurts.
K: Hurts.
A: We are not dealing with a little one in a crib now, we're
already...
K: We are already hurt.
A: Already hurt. And hurt because it is hurt. It multiplies
endlessly.
K: Of course. From that hurt he's violent. From that hurt he is
frightened and therefore withdrawing. From that hurt he will do
neurotic things. From that hurt he will accept anything that
gives him safety - god, his idea of god is a god who will never
hurt.
A: Sometimes a distinction is made between ourselves and animals
with respect to this problem. An animal, for instance, that has
been badly hurt will be disposed toward everyone in terms of
emergency and attack. But over a period of time, it might take
three or four years, if the animal is loved and...
K: So, sir, you see, you said, loved. We haven't got that thing.
A: No.
K: And parents haven't got love for their children. They may
talk about love. Because the moment they compare the younger to
the older they have hurt the child. Your father was so clever,
you are such a stupid boy. There you have begun. In school where
they give you marks it is a hurt, not marks, it is a deliberate
hurt. And that is stored, and from that there is violence, there
is every kind of aggression, you know all that takes place. So a
mind cannot be made whole, or is whole, unless this is
understood very, very deeply.
A: The question that I had in mind before regarding what we have
been saying is that this animal, if loved, will, provided we are
not dealing with brain damage or something, will in time love in
return. But the thought is that with the human person love
cannot be in that sense coerced. It isn't that one would coerce
the animal to love, but that the animal, because innocent, does
in time simply respond, accept.
K: Accept, of course.
A: But then a human person is doing something we don't think the
animal is.
K: No. The human being is being hurt and is hurting all the
time.
A: Exactly. Exactly. While he is mulling over his hurt then he
is likely to misinterpret the very act of generosity of love
that is made toward him. So we are involved in something very
frightful here: by the time the child comes into school, seven
years old...
K: He is already gone, finished, tortured. There is the tragedy
of it, sir, that is what I mean.
A: Yes, I know. And when you ask the question, as you have, is
there a way to educate the child so that the child...
K: ...is never hurt. That is part of education, that is part of
culture. Civilization is hurting. Sir, look, you see this
everywhere all over the world, this constant comparison,
constant imitation, constant saying, you are that, I must be
like you. I must be like Krishna, like Buddha, like Jesus, you
follow. That's a hurt. Religions have hurt people.
A: A child is born to a hurt parent, sent to a school where it
is taught by a hurt teacher. Now you are asking, is there a way
to educate this child so the child recovers.
K: I say it is possible, sir.
A: Yes, please.
K: That is, when the teacher realizes, when the educator
realizes he is hurt and the child is hurt, he is aware of his
hurt and he is aware also of the child's hurt then the
relationship changes. Then he will in the very act of teaching,
mathematics, whatever it is, he is not only freeing himself from
his hurt but also helping the child to be free of his hurt.
After all that is education: to see that I, who am the teacher,
I am hurt, I have gone through agonies of hurt, and I want to
help that child not to be hurt, and he has come to the school
being hurt. So I say, all right, we both are hurt my friend, let
us see, let's help each other to wipe it out. That is the act of
love.
A: Comparing the human organism with the animal, I return to the
question whether it is the case that this relationship to
another human being must bring about this healing.
K: Obviously, sir, if relationship exists, we said relationship
can only exist when there is no image between you and me.
A: Let us say there is a teacher who has come to grips with this
in himself, very, very deeply, has, as you put it, gone into the
question deeper, deeper and deeper, has come to a place where he
no longer is hurt-bound. The child that he meets or the young
student that he meets, or even a student his own age, because we
have adult education, is a person who is hurt-bound and will he
not...
K: Transmit that hurt to another?
A: No, will he not, because he is hurt-bound, be prone to
misinterpret the activity of the one who is not hurt-bound?
K: But there is no person who is not hurt-bound, except very,
very few. Look, sir, lots of things have happened to me
personally, I have never been hurt. I say this in all humility,
in the real sense, I don't know what it means to be hurt. Things
have happened to me, people have done every kind of thing,
praised me, flattered me, kicked me around, everything. It is
possible. And as a teacher, as an educator, to see the child,
and it is my responsibility as an educator to see he is never
hurt, not just teach some beastly subject. This is far more
important.
A: I think I have some grasp of what you are talking about. I
don't think I could ever in my wildest dreams say that I have
never been hurt. Though I do have difficulty, and have since a
child, I have even been taken to task for it, of dwelling on it.
I remember a colleague of mine once saying to me with some
testiness when we were discussing a situation in which there was
conflict in the faculty: 'Well the trouble with you is you can't
hate.' And it was looked upon as a disorder in terms of being
unable to make a focus towards the enemy in such a way as to
devote total attention to that.
K: Sanity is taken for insanity.
A: So my reply to him was simply, well that's right and we might
as well face it and I don't intend to do anything about it. But
it didn't help the situation in terms of the interrelationship.
K: So the question is then: in education can a teacher,
educator, observe his hurts, become aware of them, and in his
relationship with the student resolve his hurt and the
student's? That's one problem. It is possible if the teacher is
really, in the deep sense of the word, educated, that is,
cultivated. And the next question, sir, from that arises, is the
mind capable of not being hurt, knowing it has been hurt? Not
add more hurts. Right?
A: Yes.
K: I have these two problems: one, being hurt, that is the past;
and never to be hurt again. Which doesn't mean I build a wall of
resistance, that I withdraw, that I go off into a monastery, or
become a drug addict, or some silly thing like that, but no
hurt. Is that possible? You see the two questions? Now, what is
hurt? What is the thing that is hurt? You follow?
A: Yes.
K: We said the physical hurt is not the same as the
psychological.
A: No.
K: So we are dealing with psychological hurt. What is the thing
that is hurt? The psyche? The image which I have about myself?
A: It is an investment that I have in it.
K: Yes, it's my investment in myself.
A: Yes. I've divided myself off from myself.
K: Yes, in myself. That means, why should I invest in myself.
What is myself? You follow?
A: Yes, I do.
K: In which I have to invest something. What is myself? All the
words, the names, the qualities, the education, the bank
account, the furniture, the house, the hurts, all that is me.
A: In an attempt to answer the question, what is myself, I
immediately must resort to all this stuff.
K: Obviously.
A: There isn't any other way. And then I haven't got it. Then I
praise myself because I must be so marvelous as somehow to slip
out.
K: Quite, quite.
A: I see what you mean. I was thinking just a moment back when
you were saying it is possible for the teacher to come into
relationship with the student so that a work of healing, or an
act of healing happens.
K: See sir, this is what happens if I were in a class that's the
first thing I would begin with, not some subject. I would say,
look, you are hurt and I am hurt, we are both of us hurt. And
point out what hurt does, how it kills people, how it destroys
people; out of that there is violence, out of that there is
brutality, out of that I want to hurt people. You follow? All
that comes in. I would spend ten minutes talking about that,
every day, in different ways, till both of us see it. Then as an
educator I would use the right world and the student will use
the right word, there will be no gesture, we are both involved
in it. But we don't do that. The moment we come into class we
pick up a book and there it goes off. If I was an educator,
whether with the older people, or the younger people, I would
establish this relationship. That's my duty, that's my job,
that's my function, not just to transmit some information.
A: Yes, that's really very profound. I think one of the reasons
that what you have said is so difficult for an educator reared
within the whole academic...
K: Yes, because we are so vain.
A: Exactly. We want not only to hear that it is possible for
this transformation to take place, but we want it to be regarded
as demonstrably proved and therefore not merely possible but
predictably certain.
K: Certain, yes.
A: And then we are back into the whole thing.
K: Of course we are back into the old rotten stuff. Quite right.
A: Next time could we take up the relationship of love to this?
K: Yes.
A: I would very much enjoy that, and it would seem to me...
K: ...it would all come together.
A: Come together, in the gathering together.