Wholly Different Way of Living
12th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
25th February 1974
Love and Pleasure
A: Mr Krishnamurti, in our last conversation we were talking
about religion as a phenomenon in relation to our concern for
enquiring into the transformation of each individual human
being, a transformation that is not dependent on knowledge or
time, and during our discussion of religion you were speaking
about what you regarded to be religion in the true sense, its
relation to the act of attention and how when the whole personal
history of hurt is a reference, this act of attention simply is
vitiated, it cannot come to pass. And through the discussion of
hurt that we had we touched. towards the end of the discussion,
on love, and if it's agreeable with you perhaps we could explore
this question of love now?
K: Sir, when you use the word explore, are we using that word
intellectually, exploring with the intellect, or exploring in
relation to the word and seeing in that word the mirror which
will reveal ourselves in that mirror?
A: I hope the latter.
K: That is, the word is the mirror in which I, as a human being,
observe. So the word explored really means observing myself in
the mirror of the word that you have used. So the word then
becomes the thing. Not just a word by itself.
A: Right.
K: And therefore it's not intellectual exploration, a
theoretical exploration.
A: It could be the beginning of a meditation.
K: That's what I want to make quite clear.
A: Yes. That is where I would want to be in relationship to the
subject.
K: And exploring also means the mind must also be very serious.
Not caught up in the mere desire to achieve something - to know
how to love. I mean, how to acquire the neighbour's love. You
follow, sir?
A: Yes. Become a successful lover.
K: Successful lover, yes. So I think when we explore that word
and meaning and the significance of it one has to very, very
serious about this matter because they are using this word so
loosely, it has become so corrupt - love of God, love of my
wife, love of my property, love of my country, I love to read, I
love to go to the cinema. And one of our difficulties is, modern
education is not making us serious. We are becoming specialists.
I mean first class doctor, first class surgeon, first class
physician and so on, so on. But the specialist becomes a menace
that way.
A: A learned ignoramus.
K: Education as we were saying previously is to encourage, to
see that the human mind is serious. Serious to find out what it
is to live, not just become a specialist. So if that is all
understood, and much more, what is love? Is love pleasure? Is
love the expression of desire? Is love sexual appetite
fulfilled? Is love the pursuit of a desired end? The
identification with a family, with a woman, with a man? Is love
a thing that can be cultivated? That can be made to grow when I
have no love, when I think about it, I do all kinds of things to
it so that I will know how to love my neighbour?
A: We sometimes hear the admonition that one has to work at it.
Yes. In terms of our conversations up to now, that would be a
denial of it.
K: So, is love pleasure? And apparently it is, now.
A: It seems to have been debased to that.
K: Actually it is, that is what we call love. Love of God. I
don't know what god is, and yet I am supposed to love him. And
therefore I transfer my pleasures of the world, of things, of
sex, to a higher level which I call God. It is still pleasure.
So what is pleasure in relation to love? What is enjoyment in
relation to love? What is joy, the unconscious feeling of joy?
The moment I recognize joy it is gone. And what is the
relationship of joy, enjoyment and pleasure to love, with love?
Unless we understand that we shan't understand what love is.
A: Yes, yes I have followed you.
K: And take what is happening. Love has been identified with
sex, love-making, love sexually, you follow, sir?
A: The very construction love making, making love.
K: It's a horrible thing. It gives me a shock, love-making as
though that were love. You see, sir, I think it is very
important, the western civilization has put this over the whole
of the earth, through cinemas, through books, through
pornography, through every kind of advertisements, stories, this
sense of love is identification with sex, which is pleasure,
basically.
A: The whole glamour industry is based on that.
K: On that.
A: On that
K: The whole thing. So can the mind, again we must come back to
the point, can the mind understand the nature of pleasure and
its relationship to love, can the mind that is pursuing
pleasure, an ambitious mind, a competitive mind, a mind that
says, I must get something out of life, I must reward myself and
others, I must compete. Can such a mind love? It can love
sexually. But is love of sex, is that the only thing? And why
have we made sex such an enormous affair? Volumes are written on
it. Unless really one goes into this very, very deeply, the
other thing is not possible even to understand. We can talk
endlessly about what love is, what love is not theoretically.
But if we use the word love as a mirror to see what is happening
inwardly, then I must inevitably ask the question whether it is
pleasure in its multiple forms? Can a man who is top executive,
got to that position through drive, through aggression, through
deception through ruthlessness, can he know what love is? Can
the priest who talks everlastingly of God, he is ambitious to
become a bishop, archbishop or whatever his ambitions are - to
sit next to Jesus.
A: Who will sit on the right hand.
K: Right hand. So can that priest who talks about it know what
love means?
A: No, he thinks he can in reference to something called a
higher love which is based on a denial of a lower one.
K: I mean that's just words.
A: In that conflict there can be no love.
K: So, then our whole social, moral structure is immoral.
A: Oh, yes.
K: I mean, sir, this is a thing that is appalling. And nobody
wants to change that. On the contrary, they say, yes, let's
carry on, put on a lot of coating on it, different colours, more
pleasant and let's carry on. So, if a man is really concerned to
come upon this thing called love he must negate this whole
thing, which means he must understand the place of pleasure,
whether intellectual pleasure, acquisition of knowledge as
pleasure, acquisition of a position as power, you follow? The
whole thing. And how is a mind that has been trained,
conditioned, sustained in this rotten social conditioning, how
can it free itself before it talks about love? It must first
free itself of that. Otherwise your talk of love, it's just
another word which has no meaning.
A: We do seem, in western culture particularly, to be very
sex-bound. On the one hand we are threatened with unhappiness if
we don't succeed sexually. Yet on the other hand the whole
history of clinical psychology focuses precisely on the
pathology of sexuality.
K: Of course.
A: As somehow able in itself as a study to free us. The
interrelationship between those two activities, the desire to
succeed on the one hand and the necessity to study what's the
matter with the drive on the other, brings about a paralysis.
K: Yes, so you see this thing, sex, has become, I don't know, of
such enormous importance right through the world now. In Asia
they cover it up. They don't talk about it there. If you talk
about sex it is something wrong. Here you talk endlessly about
it. But there you don't, certain things you don't talk about.
You can talk about it in the bedroom, or perhaps not even in the
bedroom. It's not done. And when I talk in India, I bring it
out. They are a little bit shocked because a religious man is
not supposed to deal with all that kind of stuff.
A: He is supposed to be beyond that.
K: He is supposed to be, but he mustn't talk about it. That's
one of the things, why has sex become so important? You see,
love is, after all a sense of total absence of the 'me', total
absence of the me - my ego, my ambitions, my greed, all that,
which is me, total negation of all that. Negation, not brutal
denial or surgical operation but the understanding of all that.
When the 'me' is not, the other is. Obviously. It's so simple.
You know, sir, the Christian sign, the cross, I was told is a
very, very ancient symbol, previous to Christian acceptance of
that symbol. It meant, wipe out the i.
A: I had never heard of that.
K: Wipe out the I. The I, wipe it out. You understand, sir?
A: Yes, in a noncanonical statement of Jesus, it's written that
he remarked that unless you make your up down, and your down up,
your right left, your left right, the complete total turning of
something upside down that one has been accustomed to do, a
hundred and eighty degree turn, then one doesn't come to the
kingdom of heaven which is of course in his language, not over
here to be expected. He said precisely it doesn't come by
observations, it's not here, it's not there, it's within one. Or
in the Greek it doesn't mean in, as a locus but it's a presence.
K: It's a presence, yes. So when we are enquiring into this
question of love we must enquire into pleasure; pleasure in all
its varieties, and its relationship to love, enjoyment to love,
real joy, this thing which can never be invited, and its
relation to love. So we had better begin with pleasure. That is,
the world has made sex into an immense thing. And the priests
right through the world, have denied it. They won't look at a
woman, though they are burning inside, with lust and all kinds
of things. They shut their eyes. And they say, only a man who is
a celibate can go to God. Think of the absurdity of such a
statement. So anybody who has sex is damned for ever.
A: Then you have to invent some story as to how it was we
so-called fell into it.
K: Fell into it, or, the Virgin Mary, you follow, the whole
idea.
A: Yes, the whole thing.
K: Which is a farce. So why have we made it such a fantastic,
romantic, sentimental affair, sex? Is it because intellectually
we are crippled? We are secondhand people. You follow, sir? I
repeat what Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, somebody said, and
therefore my mind intellectually is third rate. So it is never
free. So intellectually I am a slave. Emotionally I become
romantic. I become sentimental. And the only escape is sex,
where I am free, if the woman or the man agrees, if they are
compatible and all the rest of it then it is the only road, only
door through which I say, for god's sake, at least I am free
here. In the office I am bullied, you follow, sir. In the
factory I just turn the wheels. So it is the only escape for me.
The peasant in India, the poor villager in villages, look at
them, that is the only thing they have. And religion is
something else: I agree we should be celibate, we should be all
the rest of it but for god's sake leave us alone with our
pleasures, with our sex. So if that is so, and it looks like
that, that we are intellectually, morally, spiritually crippled
human beings, degenerate, and it is the only thing that gives us
some release, some freedom.
In other fields I have no freedom. I have to go to the office
everyday. I have to go to the factory every day. I have to, you
follow, cinema once, three times a week, or whatever it is you
do, you've got, and here at last I am a man, woman. So I have
made this thing into an enormous affair. And if I am not sexual
I have to find out why I am not sexual. I spend years to find
out. You follow, sir? Books are written. It has become a
nauseating thing, a stupid thing. And we have to also in
relation to that to find out what is celibacy. Because they have
all talked about it. Every religion has talked about it: that
you must be celibate. And they say, Christians say the Virgin,
Jesus was born immaculate. You follow? And the Buddhists, I
don't know if you ever heard of the story where the Buddha - the
mother conceived because she - not out of human relationship,
but out of - the same thing. They don't want sex to be
associated with a religion. And yet every priest is burning with
it. And they say you must be celibate. And they take a vow of
celibacy. I told you the story of that monk.
A: Oh, yes, yes. A deeply moving story.
K: And what is celibacy? Is it in there, in your heart and your
mind? Or just the act?
A: If I have been following you correctly, it seems to me that
you pointed to sex here as undergone in a utilitarian way. It's
a means to and therefore, since...
K: A routine, an insistence, encouragement, you follow?
A: Yes. Always a goal that lies outside the activity. Therefore
it can never be caught up to.
K: Quite right. Therefore conflict.
A: Therefore conflict and repetition.
K: And therefore what is celibacy? Is it the act or the mind
that is chaste? You follow, sir?
A: It must be the mind.
K: The chaste mind. Which means a tremendously austere mind. Not
the austerity of severity and ruthless acceptance of a principle
and all the rest of it.
A: This goes back to the earlier conversation when we were
talking about hurt.
K: That's right.
A: The chaste mind would never be hurt.
K: Never. And therefore an innocent mind. Which has no picture
of the woman or the man or the act. None of that imagination.
A: This is very fundamental. I know in our conversations that I
keep bringing up things that I've read and studied because that
has largely been the occupation of my life. And the thing that
moves me so deeply in listening to you is that so many of the
things that have been said over the centuries, and written over
the centuries, ought to have been understood in the way in which
you've been presenting them. We even have a tradition in
Christian theology that what is called the fall of man began at
the point of imagination. And yet that hasn't been properly
understood, it seems to me. Otherwise had it been properly
understood we would not be in this immense conflict that we are
in.
K. Christians have first invented the sin and all the rest of
it.
A: It has been the cart before the horse. Yes, I do see what you
are saying.
K: So, can the mind be chaste? Not can the mind take a vow of
celibacy and remain, and have burning desires, you follow? And
we talked the other day, about desire. We are burning with
desire. All our glands are full of it. So chastity means a mind
that has no hurt, no image, no sense of pictures of itself, its
appetites, all that. Can such a mind exist in this world?
Otherwise love is not. I can talk endlessly about love of Jesus,
love of this, love of that, but it becomes so shoddy.
A: Because it's love of.
K: Yes.
A: Love as an activity is not the same as love undertaken as a
means.
K: Yes, sir. So is love pleasure? I can only answer it is not,
when I have understood pleasure. And understand not verbally,
but deeply, inwardly, see the nature of it, the brutality of it,
the divisive process of it. Because pleasure is always divisive.
Enjoyment is never divisive. Joy is never dividing. It is only
pleasure that is dividing. When you listen to an Arab about the
oil, the energy, it is his pride, his - you follow? You see it
in him. And you see it in the ministers, in the politicians,
this whole sense of arrogance, of power. And at the same time
they talk about love.
A: But it's always love of.
K: Of course, love of, or love, I don t know what they mean
anyhow. It has no meaning. They say love of my country, and my
love is going to kill you.
A: Yes, yes.
K: So, you see sir, we have to understand this killing too. The
western civilization has made killing a perfect art. The war,
science of war. They have taught the whole world this. And
probably the Christians are the greatest killers. After Muslims,
and I believe the real religious, original Buddhists were really
non-killers.
A: Yes.
K: They said don't kill. I must tell you this lovely story. I
was several years ago in Ceylon and a Buddhist couple came to
see me. They said we have got one major problem. We are Buddhist
by practice. And they said, we don't kill, but we eat meat. I
said what do you mean? He said we change our butchers. We change
our butchers, therefore we are not responsible. And we like
meat. I said, is that the problem? He said, no not at all. Our
problem is, should we eat a fertilized egg because that contains
life?
A: Oh dear me.
K: So, sir, when we talk about love, we must also talk about
violence and killing. We kill, we have destroyed the earth,
polluted the earth. We have wiped away species of animals and
birds, we are killing baby seals, you've seen them on
television?
A: Oh, I have.
K: How a human being can do such as thing...
A: It's deeply shocking.
K: ...for some woman to put on that fur. And he will go back and
say, I love my wife. So. And we are trained to kill. All the
Generals, they are preparing endlessly means of killing others.
That's our civilization, you follow, sir? So, can a man who is
ambitious, love?
A: No.
K: No. Therefore finish with ambition. They wont, they want
both. That means, don't kill under any circumstances, don't kill
an animal to eat. I have never eaten meat in my life, never. I
don't know what it tastes like. Not that I am proud or anything,
but I couldn't do it. And killing has become an industry,
killing animals to feed human beings. You follow, sir?
A: Yes. It has, right. I was thinking as you were speaking,
about chastity and it came to me that the chaste mind would have
to be an undivided mind.
K: Yes sir. Killing and loving.
A: And trying to get them together. And then taking all manner
of means to palliate my obvious failure to get them together.
K: Of course.
A: The enormity of what you have brought out is truly
staggering, and this I would like to stay with, if you don't
mind. I've been listening very intently. It's that your radical
counsel to make this stop in oneself is so radical that it
requires a kind of seriousness that is not a quantitative
relationship to seriousness in fact we don't really understand
what it means. The relationship between seriousness and love has
been coming into my awareness here.
K: Yes, sir, if I am serious then I will never kill, and love
then has become something, it is really compassion. Passion for
all, compassion means, compassion for all.
A: When you say one will never kill if he loves, you mean within
the context of this image-making activity where one kills by
design.
K: Sir, suppose, sir, my sister - I have no sister - but my
sister were attacked, a man comes to rape her. I will act at
that moment.
A: Precisely.
K: My intelligence, because I love, have compassion, that
compassion creates that intelligence, that intelligence will
operate at that moment. If you tell me, what will you do if your
sister is attacked, I will say, I don't know. I will know then.
A: Yes, I quite follow that. But we have made an industry of
designing.
K: Designed killing.
A: At all levels, not only ourselves.
K: I don't know. I saw the other day on the television in the
Red Square there was an enormous intercontinental missile, shot
off to kill god knows, blind killing. And the Americans have it,
the Indians have it, the French have it, you follow?
A: Have to have it.
K: Quite. Of course, one must exist.
A: Yes.
K: So can the mind be free of this urge to kill? Which means can
the mind be free of being hurt? So, when there is hurt it does
all kinds of neurotic things. Is pleasure love? Is desire love?
But we have made pleasure, desire into love. I desire god. You
follow, sir? I must learn about god. You know the whole thing.
God is my invention, my image, out of my thought I have made
that image, and so go around in circles. So I must know what
enjoyment is. Is enjoyment pleasure? When I enjoy a good meal,
or a good sunset, or see a beautiful tree or woman or whatever
it is, at that moment if it doesn't end it becomes pleasure. If
the mind, thought carries over that enjoyment and wants it to be
repeated the next day it has become pleasure, it is no longer
enjoyment. I enjoy and that's the end of it.
A: William Blake has very, very beautifully, it seems to me,
pointed to this. And, of course, he was regarded as a madman, as
you know. I might not remember the words precisely but I think
part of his little stanza goes: he who kisses a joy as it flies,
lives to see eternity's sunrise. It's the joy that he kisses as
it flies, not the pleasure. And it's, as it flies. And what you
have said is, that if you won't let it fly, holds it, then we
have fallen out of the act of joy into this...
K: ...pursuit of pleasure.
A: ...endless, repetitive in the end mournfully boring thing.
K: And I think, sir, that is what is happening in this country,
as well as in Europe and in India, primarily in this country,
the desire to fulfil instantly - the pleasure seeking principle.
Be entertained, football, be entertained.
A: This goes back to what you were pointing out earlier in the
last conversation we had, here somebody is, feels empty, needs
to be filled.
K: Yes.
A: Lonely, filled, looking for what we call fulfillment, filling
up full.
K: Quite, filling up full.
A: Filling up full. And yet if one undertakes to make this act
of attention that you referred to in our discussion about
religion, in order to fill up the whole, then we've had it.
We're not going to do that. There has been an endless history of
that attempt in the name of control of thought.
K: Of course.
A: It would seem that if one doesn't begin in love he will not
make this act of attention in a non-utilitarian way. He simply
will make it in a utilitarian way, if he doesn't begin in love.
K: It is not in the market place, quite.
A: And that's why in one of the very early conversations we had
I take it, you said that the start is the end.
K: Yes. The beginning is the end
A: The beginning is the end.
K: The first step is the last step.
A: The first step is the last step. Quite. What I've been
thinking about all through our conversations so far is, what is
involved in - the word involved I don't like - what must one do
- well that's no good either - There is something. We are
speaking about an act that is a radical end to all this nonsense
that's been going on which is terrifyingly destructive nonsense.
K: I know, sir.
A: There is the doing of something.
K: That is the seeing of all this.
A: And you have said, the seeing is the doing, is the act.
K: As I see danger, I act. I see the danger of the continuity of
thought in terms of pleasure, I see the danger of it, therefore
end it instantly. If I don't see the danger I carry on. If I
don't see the danger of nationality, I'm taking that as a very
simple example, I carry on, murdering, dividing, seeking my own
safety; but if I see the danger it is finished.
A: May we relate here just for a moment, love to education?
K: Yes.
A: As a teacher I'm immensely concerned in this.
K: Sir, what we have been discussing in our dialogue this last
week and now is part of education.
A: Of course it is.
K: It isn't education is there, it is educating the mind to a
different thing.
A: I'm thinking of the student who sometimes comes to the
teacher and says, I simply must change my way of life. That is,
once in a while you will find the student who is up to here, he
has really had it, as we say. The first question they will
usually put to you is, what must I do. Now, of course, that's a
trap. I've been following you, I've come to see that with much
greater clarity than I observed it for myself before. Simply
because they are looking for a means when they say that.
K: What must I do?
A: We are not talking about a means.
K: Means is the end. Quite.
A: I am thinking of the history of Christianity in this. You've
got the question, what must I do to be saved. The answer is
believe on.
K: On, yes.
A: And then the poor person is stuck with what this means and
ends up in believing in belief.
K: Yes, believing, quite.
A: And that of course is abortive. The student comes and says,
what must I do? Now in our earlier conversation together we
reached the point where the teacher and the student were talking
together.
K: We are doing that now.
A: We are doing this now.
K: I am not your teacher, but we are doing that now.
A: Well, no, I understand in our conversations that is not your
role, but I must confess that it has been working out in this
order because I have learned immensely. There are two things
here that I want to get clear and I need your help. On the one
hand to make this pure act of attention, I need only myself. Is
that correct?
K: No, not quite, sir.
A: Not quite.
K: Not quite. Sir, let's put the question first. The question
is, what am I to do in this world?
A: Yes.
K: What is my place in this world? First of all, the world is
me. I am the world. That is an absolute fact. And what am I to
do? The world is this, corrupt, immoral, killing, no lack of it,
there is no love. There is superstition, idol worship, of the
mind and the hand. There is war. That is the world. What is my
relationship to it? My relationship to it only is if I am that.
If I am not that I have no relationship to it.
A: I understand that in terms of act.
K: That's it.
A: In terms of act. Not a notion that I have.
K: For me the world is corrupt, is geared to kill. And I won't
kill. What is my relationship to the man who goes and kills a
baby seal? I say, my god, how can you do such a thing. You
follow, sir? I want to cry about it. I do. How can you educate
that man, or a society which allows such a thing to happen?
A: Then perhaps I should rephrase the question and say, well
when I do whatever is done in making this pure act of attention,
I am not separated from the world in which I am, and the world
is not separate from me.
K: I look at it from a different angle altogether.
A: Exactly.
K: I come to it, sir, because there is something different in me
operating. Compassion, love, intelligence, all that is operating
in me.
A: But it seems that two possibilities are here. On the one
hand, making this pure act of attention doesn't require that I
be in the physical presence of another human being, but of
course, I am always in relation whether I am there or not.
K: Of course.
A: Yes, I fully grasp that. But then the second possibility is
that within conversation, as we are enjoying it together now,
something occurs, something takes place. It's not that we must
be together for it to take place. And it's not that we must be
alone for it to take place. Therefore what we have established
is that something occurs which is quite beyond all these
distinctions of inner and outer, you over there, I'm over here.
K: See what takes place, see what takes place. First of all we
are serious, really serious. Second, the killing, the corruption
we will cut it. We have finished with it. So we stand alone,
alone, not isolated. Because when the mind is not that, it is
alone. It hasn't withdrawn. It hasn't cut itself off, it hasn't
built an ivory tower for itself, it isn't living in illusion. It
says, that is false, that is corrupt, I won't touch it,
psychologically. I may put on trousers, etc., etc., but I won't
touch inwardly, psychologically, that. Therefore it is
completely alone.
A: And it is saying this amidst all this mournful round.
K: Therefore, being alone it is pure.
A: Chaste.
K: Therefore purity can be cut into a million pieces and still
remain pure. It is not my purity, or your purity, it is pure.
Like pure water remains pure water.
A: Entirely full, too. Wholly full.
K: Wholly.
A: That takes us back to that Sanskrit: this is full, that is
full. Fullness is issued forth from fullness. It's a pity that
the English doesn't carry this, the melody that the Sanskrit
does.
K: So you see sir, that's very interesting from this
conversation what has come out. The thing is, we are frightened
of being alone. Which is, we are frightened of being isolated.
But every act a human being does is isolating himself. That is,
his ambition is isolating himself. When he is nationalistic he
is isolating himself. When he says, it is my family, he is
isolating himself. I want to fulfil, isolating himself. When you
negate all that, not violently, but see the stupidity of all
that then you are alone. And that has tremendous beauty in it.
And therefore that beauty, you can spread it everywhere, but it
still remains alone. So the quality of compassion is that. But
compassion isn't a word. It happens, it comes with intelligence.
This intelligence will dictate if my sister is attacked, at that
moment. But it is not intelligence if you say, what will you do
if - such a question and an answer to that is unintelligent. I
don't know if you see.
A. Oh yes, I am following you precisely.
K: But it is unintelligence, to say, I am going to prepare to
kill all those people who are my enemies, which is the army, the
navy, the whole sovereign governments. So love is something,
sir, that is really chaste. Chastity is the quality of aloneness
and therefore never hurt.
A: It's interesting that in this one act one neither hurts
himself, nor another. It's a total abstention from hurt.
K: Sir, wait a minute. I have given you all my money because I
trust you. And you won't give it to me; I say, please, give me a
little of it. You won't. What shall I do? What is the act of
intelligence? You follow, sir? Act of affection, act of
compassion that says, what will I do? You follow my question? A
friend of mine, during the second world war, he had found
himself in Switzerland. He had quantities of money, plenty of
money. And he had a great friend from childhood. And to that
friend he said, he had to leave the next minute because the war
took place and he had to leave the country and all the rest of
it. So he took all the money and he said, here my friend keep it
for me. I'll come back. I'll come back when the war is over. He
comes back and says, please. He says, what money?
A: Goodness me.
K: You follow, sir? So, what should he do? Not theoretically.
You are put in that position. You give me something. You entrust
me with something. And I say, yes, quite right, you have given
me, now whistle for it. What is your responsibility? Just walk
away?
A: No. If there were a means to recover it then that would be
done upon the instant.
K: Intelligence.
A: Intelligence would take over.
K: Therefore, that's what I am saying. Love is not forgiveness -
you follow - I forgive and walk away. Love is intelligence. And
intelligence means sensitivity, to be sensitive to the
situation. And the situation, if you are sensitive will tell you
what to do. But if you are insensitive, if you are already
determined what to do, if you are hurt by what you have done,
then insensitive action takes place. I don't know?
A: Yes, yes, of course. Yes of course. This raises very, very
interesting questions about what we mean about conscience.
K: Yes.
A: And the word conscience, it seems to me has invited an
astonishing amount of...
K: ...rubbish.
A: ...miscomprehension of what's going on.
K: Therefore, sir, one has to investigate what is consciousness.
A: Yes.
K: I don't know if there is time now, but that requires - we'll
do it tomorrow, another day: what is consciousness and what is
conscience, and what is the thing that tells you to do or not to
do?
A: Consciousness in its relation to relationship is something
that when we have a chance, I should like to explore with you. I
remember years ago in graduate school being very arrested by
coming across the statement that was made by an American
thinker, I think Montague was his name, when he said,
consciousness has been very badly understood because it has been
thought that there has been something called 'ciousness'. But
there is such thing as 'ciousness'. We've got to get the 'con'
in there, the together, the relationship. And without that we
have had it. I do hope that next time when we have the
opportunity in our next conversation we could explore that.
K: We have to discuss this question, living, love and this
enormous thing called death. Are they interrelated or are they
separate - living, existing, is it different from love?
13th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
26th February 1974
A Different Way of Life
A: Mr Krishnamurti, at the end of our last conversation, if I
remember correctly, we were looking into the relationships among
living, and love and death. That is we had just begun to when we
had to bring our discussion to an end. I was hoping today that
we might pursue this in terms of our continuing concern for the
transformation of man.
K: As usual, sir, this is such a complex question, this living,
what it means and what it actually is; and love, which we talked
about the other day fairly in detail and rather closely; and
also this enormous problem of death. Every religion has offered
a comforting belief, comforting ideas, hoping they would be a
solution to the fear, sorrow and all the things that are
involved in it. So we ought, I think perhaps we should begin
with what is living and then go from there to love and death.
A: Good.
K: Shouldn't we actually look at what we call living now, what
is taking place.
A: Yes.
K: What actually is going on which we call existence, living,
those two words to cover this whole field of man's endeavour to
better himself, not only in the technological world but also
psychologically, he wants to be different, he wants to be more
than what he is, and so on. So when we look at it in whatever
country, whatever race, or whatever religion they belong to, it
is a matter of constant struggle from the moment you are born to
the moment you die, it is one battle. Not only in relationship
with other human beings, however intimate or not intimate, but
also economically, socially, morally, it is a vast battle. I
think everyone agrees to that. It's obvious. The conflict, the
struggle, the suffering, the pain, the frustrations, the agony,
the despair, the violence, the brutality, killing, all that is
what is actually going on. Spending 40, 50 years in an office,
in a factory, occasional holidays for a month, and wild kind of
holidays because the holidays are a reaction to their monotonous
life.
A: Time out.
K: Time out or whatever it is called. You see them all over
Europe, Americans, going from museum to museum, looking, at
this, that, rushing about and that is an escape from the
monotony of their daily routine. And they go off to India, and
there are I believe about 15,000 so called hippies in various
dresses and various monasteries, and various cities doing the
most fantastic things - selling drugs, some of them, and putting
on Indian clothes, dressing up as monks and all that. It is a
kind of vast romantic sentimental escape from their daily
monotonous routine life. That is what we call living: the battle
in relationship, the battle in business, in an economic
environment. It is a constant struggle.
A: But what you've said seems to be ingrained into the grasp of
this living itself. We have a saying, life is a battle, we
interpret it in terms of what you have said.
K: And nobody seems to say, why should it be that way? And we
have all accepted it. We say, yes, it is part of our existence.
If we don't struggle we are destroyed. It is a part of our
natural inheritance. From the animal, we see how it struggles so
we are part of the animal, part of the ape and so we must go on
struggling, struggling, struggling. We have never said, is this
right? Is this the way to live? Is this the way to behave, to
appreciate the beauty of living?
A: The usual question turns on how to engage the battle more
effectively.
K: Effectively, successfully, with least harm, with least
strain, with least heart failure and so on, so on, so on. But
the ground is prepared for struggle. The monks do it, you
follow, sir, the religious people do it, the business, the
artist, the painter, every human being, however
compartmentalized he is, he is in battle. And that we call
living. And the man who looks at it intelligently, might say,
for god's sake, that's not the way to live. Let's find out if
there is a different way of living. And nobody asks. I have
talked with a great many politicians all over the world and to a
great many gurus. We will come to that, it's very interesting,
that word, what it means. We'll go into that. And I've talked to
artists, to businessmen, to artisans, to labourers, very, very
poor people, it is one constant battle. The rich, the poor, the
middle class, the scientist, you follow, sir?
A: Oh yes, I'm following you.
K: And nobody says, this is wrong, this isn't living. It's
bleeding.
A: I was thinking about the literatures of the world of a
visionary nature that tend to be divided into three basic
statements in terms of their form and content. On the one hand
we have epics that deal precisely with the representation of the
battle of life.
K: We have got the Odyssey, we have got the Mahabharata, we have
got so many other books, all praising this.
A: And then others deal with what we call the journey of life,
the Odyssey would be specifically related to that, there are
many battles concerned within it, in terms of confrontation
between individuals. And then there's the notion of life as a
fulfillment. But we hardly ever get to the question of the
fulfillment. And when these are studied they are studied in
terms of a literary form and the question that you've raised,
which it seems to me would be a question that should be
presented to the student in general.
K: And it is an authentic question, it's a question that must be
put.
A: Exactly. I was reflecting as you were speaking that in the
class room itself it's taken for granted that this battle is
what it is. It is to be related to with fortitude, and so forth,
but the question concerning it doesn't arise.
K: No, to some young people it has arisen but they go off at a
tangent.
A: Exactly.
K: Either a commune, or become a Hindu, you follow, go off to
some ancient country and just disintegrate, do nothing, think
nothing, just live.
A: Which is just a lateral movement.
K: Yes, lateral.
A: Not a vertical one.
K: That's right.
A: Into the question. Yes.
K: So it is a valid question and it must have a valid answer,
not theoretical but say, well, I will live that way. I will live
without conflict. See what it means. I may be smothered. I
question whether you will be wiped out by society if you don't
struggle. I never struggled personally. I have never thought of
battling with myself or with somebody else. So I think a
question of that kind must not only be put verbally, but in the
expression of that word one must see if it is possible for each
one of us to live that way, to live without a single conflict.
That means without division. Conflict means division. Conflict
means the battle of the opposites. Conflict means you and me, we
and they, Americans, Russians, the division, division, division.
Fragmentation not only inwardly but outwardly. Where there is
fragmentation there must be battle. One fragment assuming the
power and dominating the other fragments. So, an intelligent
man, if there is such a person, has to find out a way of living
which is not going to sleep, which is not just vegetating, which
is not just escaping to some fanciful, mystical visions and all
that stuff, but a way of living in daily life, in which conflict
of any kind has come to an end. It is possible. I have watched
it all around me for the last 50 years, the battle going on
around me, spiritually, economically, socially, one class
battling the other class, and the dictatorships the fascists,
the communists, the nazis, you follow, sir?
A: Yes I do.
K: All of them have their roots in this: encouraging obedience,
discouraging obedience, imitating, conforming, obeying, all
battle. So life has become a battle. And to me personally, to
live that way is the most destructive, uncreative way of living.
I won't live that way. I would rather disappear.
A: I think perhaps, and I wonder if you would agree, that some
sort of confusion has arisen here in our minds when we identify
ourselves with this battle in terms of your description of it.
When we begin to think about the question, 'ought this to
continue' and we have the image of battle before us, we tend to
imagine to ourselves that what we are really talking about is
the human equivalent of what is called, nature red in tooth and
claw. But if I am following you correctly this is a cardinal
mistake because in our previous conversations you have, at least
for me, very, very clearly indicated that we must distinguish
between fear and danger; and the animals, in their own
environment, act with clean and immediate dispatch in the
presence of danger whereas it seems we are making a mistake if
we attempt to study what we call human conflict on the level of
this analogy because analogy, if I have understood you
correctly, simply doesn't apply.
K: Doesn't, no.
A: Don't you agree that this tends to be so.
K: Oh rather, sir, rather. We study the animal or the birds in
order to understand man.
A: Right.
K: Whereas you can study man, which is yourself. You don't have
to go to the animal to know man. So that is, sir, really a very
important question because I have, if I may talk a little about
myself, watched it all.
A: Please do.
K: I've watched it in India. The sannyasis, the monks, the
gurus, the disciples, the politicians all over the world. I
happen somehow to have met them all. The writers, the famous
people, the painters who are very well known, most of them have
come to see me. And it is a sense of deep anxiety that if they
don't struggle they will be nothing. They will be failures, that
is, that way of living is the only and the righteous way of
living.
A: To drive oneself to be what is called productive.
K: Productive, progressive.
A: Progressive.
K: And we are taught this from childhood.
A: Yes.
K: Our education is that. To battle, not only with yourself, but
with your neighbour, and yet love the neighbour, you follow? It
becomes too ridiculous. So, having stated that, is there a way
of living without conflict? I say there is, obviously. Which is
to understand the division, to understand the conflict, to see
how fragmented we are, not try to integrate the fragments, which
is impossible, but out of that perception the action is entirely
different from integration. Seeing the fragmentations which
bring about conflict, which bring about division, which bring
about this constant battle, anxiety, strain, heart failure. You
follow, sir? That is what is happening. To see it, to perceive
it, and that very perception brings an action which is totally
different from the action of conflict. Because the action of
conflict has its own energy, brings its own energy, which is
divisive, which is destructive, violent. But the energy of
perception and acting is entirely different. And that energy is
the energy of creation. Anything that is created cannot be in
conflict. An artist who is in conflict with his colours, he is
not a creative human being. He may have perfect craft, perfect
technique, a gift for painting, but...
A: It interests me very much that you used the word energy here
in relation to both activities.
K: Both, yes.
A: And you haven't said that the energy at root is different.
K: No, no.
A: The phenomenon is different.
K: Yes.
A: It would appear that when one makes success, prosperity,
victory, the object of his activity and engages this conflict,
which he interprets as engaging him, he always tends to think
that things are coming at me, when he undertakes this, if I have
understood you correctly, energy is released, but it is released
in fragmentary patterns.
K: The other way, yes.
A: Yes. Whereas the energy that's released with perception is
the same energy is always whole.
K: Is whole. Yes, sir, that's right.
A: Isn't that what you are...
K: Yes sir. Therefore same, therefore healthy, therefore holy.
A: Yes. I have the feeling that this release of energy which
shatters out into patterns of energy as fragmentation, is really
what we mean by the word demonic.
K: Demonic, that's right.
A: That's giving it a hard name.
K: A good name.
A: But, you are really saying this, aren't you.
K: It's an excellent name.
A: I am saying this.
K: But I am, I totally see that with you. I see it is demonic.
It is the very destructive thing.
A: Exactly.
K: And that's what our society is, our culture is.
A: What we've done to that word, demonic! I was just thinking
about Socrates, who refers to his demon, meaning the energy that
operates in wholeness.
K: That's right, sir.
A: And we have taken that word from the Greek clear out of the
context of the apology and turned it upside down and now it
means...
K: The devil.
A: Right. And the same thing happened with the use of the word,
the assurers. Originally in the Veda this was not a reference to
the demonic, there was no radical polarization. And finally we
end up with the gods and the demons.
K: Quite.
A: Which I take it you are suggesting is nothing other than the
sheerest projection of our own demonic behaviour which we have
generated ourselves.
K: That's right.
A: Sir, this makes tremendous sense to me. Yes, please go on.
K: Now, so, the way we live is the most impractical, insane way
of living. And we want the insane way of living made more
practical.
A: Yes and there isn't a prayer for it.
K: But that is what we are demanding all the time. We never say,
let's find a way of living which is whole, and therefore
healthy, sane and holy. And through that, through perceiving,
acting, is the release of total energy, which is nonfragmentary,
which isn't the artist, the business man, the politician, the
priest, the layman, all that doesn't exist at all. Now, to bring
about such a mind, such a way of living, one has to observe what
actually is taking place outside and inside, in us, inside and
outside. And look at it, not try to transform it, not try to
bring about different adjustments, see actually what it is. I
look at a mountain, I can't change it. Even with a bulldozer I
can't change it. But we want to change what we see. The observer
is the observed, you understand, sir? Therefore, there is no
change in that. Whereas in perception there is no observer.
There is only seeing, and therefore acting.
A: This holds a mirror up to an earlier conversation we had,
when you referred to beauty, passion, suffering.
K: Yes, certainly.
A: And action.
K: And action, yes.
A: I remember asking you the question in order to recover the
correct relationship among them we must begin with the suffering
which, if perceived as it ought to be perceived, generates
passion.
K: That's right.
A: One doesn't have to work it out. It happens. And behold, upon
the same instant beauty breaks out, and love. So the passion in
itself is compassion. The 'com' comes in exactly with the
passion.
K: With passion, that's right.
A: Yes.
K: Now, sir, if you could as a professor or as a teacher, or as
a parent point this out, the impracticality of the way we are
living, the destructiveness of it, the utter indifference to the
earth. We are destroying everything we touch. And to point out a
way of living in which there is no conflict. That seems to me is
the function of the highest form of education.
A: Yes, it has a requirement in it though that seems to me very
clear, namely the teacher himself must be without conflict. This
is a very different point of departure from what occurs in our
general educational structure, particularly in professional
educational activities where one gets a degree in professional
education rather than in an academic subject as such. We are
taught, for instance, and I am speaking about this somewhat as
an outsider because I don't have a degree in education but in an
academic subject as such, but I have observed in what goes on
with my colleagues in education that tremendous emphasis is
placed on techniques of education.
K: Of course.
A: And the question of the individual teacher as having
undergone a transformation of the sort that you have been
discussing is not a factor of radical concern. What is, of
course, in an altruistic sense a matter of concern is that the
teacher has the interests of the students at heart and that sort
of thing, which, of course, is laudable in itself, but it's
after the fact of this first transformation.
K: Sir, you see first I must transform myself so I can teach.
A: Precisely, precisely.
K: You see, there is a little bit, something in it that is not
quite accurate. That means I have to wait till I change. Why
can't I change, if I am an educator, in the very act of
teaching? The boys, the students live in conflict. The educator
lives in conflict. Now if I was an educator with a lot of
students, I would begin with that and say, I am in conflict, you
are in conflict, let us see in discussing, in becoming aware of
our relationship, in teaching, if it is not possible for me and
for you to resolve this conflict. Then it has action. But if I
have to wait till I'm free of all conflict I can wait until
dooms day.
A: I see now exactly what you are saying. What you are saying is
literally this: the teacher, who is presently in conflict,
simply acknowledges this. Walks into the classroom...
K: That's right, sir,
A:...not as somebody who is free from conflict.
K: That's right.
A: No. But he walks into the classroom and here it is, we are
facing it. And he looks at his students and he lays it out.
K: That's the first thing I would discuss, not the technical
subjects. Because that's living. And also in the very teaching
of a technical subject I would say, all right, let us see how we
approach, you know, I can learn from that so that both the
student and the educator know their conflicts and are interested
in dissolving the conflict and therefore they are tremendously
concerned. That produces an extraordinary relationship. Because
I have watched it. I go to several schools in India and in
England and it takes place.
A: In this taking place love breaks out.
K: Of course. That is the very essence of it. Because I care, I
feel responsible.
A: May I go into this just a little bit. One of the things that
has concerned me in this series of dialogues is that someone
should have perhaps not seen as clearly as I think as you have
pointed out for me, that in our discussions of thought and of
knowledge what we have been saying is that there is some
disfunction in thought and in knowledge which relates to its own
nature, the nature of thought and the nature of knowledge, which
could very well give the impression that thought is a disease or
that knowledge is a disease, rather than giving the impression,
as I have understood from you that thought and knowledge have
their proper uses.
K: Of course.
A: Their natures are not corrupt as such.
K: Certainly not. It is the usage of it. Quite.
A: Right. Therefore it becomes of utmost important, I think in
understanding what you are saying, to be aware of the corrective
that we bring to bear when together we examine the uses of
thought and the uses of knowledge. While at the same time, not
assuming that the principle of thought, the principle of
knowledge is in its own nature corrupt.
K: No.
A: So that in a classroom we could study a text in which an
assertion is made, a positive statement is made without thinking
that name and form are in themselves...
K: Corrupt.
A:...corrupt.
K: Obviously not. A microphone is a microphone. There is nothing
corrupt about it.
A: Exactly, but you know the thing comes home to me with
tremendous force that one must begin in his relationship to his
students with doing this. I must tell a little story on myself
here. Years ago I went to hear a lecture of yours, and I
listened, I thought, very, very carefully. And, of course, one
lecture is not in itself perhaps, at least for someone like me,
it was not enough. Or another way to put it more honestly, I was
not enough at the time for the lecture because it seems as I
recall it now, that the principles that we have been discussing
you stated very, very clearly. I went away from that lecture
with the impression that there was a very close relationship
between what you are saying and Buddhism, and I was thinking
about this whole label thing as scholars are wont to do, you
know how we divide the world up into species. And in our series
of conversations now I've come to see that I was profoundly
mistaken. Profoundly mistaken. And I pinch myself to think, you
know, I might have gone on thinking what I thought before, which
had nothing to do with anything that you were concerned in. It
is a revelation to face it that one doesn't have to have a
credential to start with before he walks into the room. He just
has to start looking at the very thing he believes is going to
bring him into a hostile relationship with his class in order,
because we believe that there are things that we must avoid
talking about because they create dissension, disruption and put
us off. And therefore let's not talk about conflict. Or if we
are going to talk about it let's talk about it in terms of our
being the ones who have the light over against these others who
don't, and we have to take the good news to them.
K: It's like a guru.
A: Right, but simply to come into the room and say, let's have a
look without any presuppositions that my thinking, that I have
this in hand and you don't, or you have it and I don't. We're
going to just hold it together.
K: Right, sir. Share together.
A: Share it together, and behold. Am I following you?
K: Perfectly.
A: Oh, that's wonderful. I'm going to do this, after our
conversation comes to an end, I will walk into that room. Do go
on.
K: So, sir, the energy that is created through conflict is
destructive. The energy that is created through conflict,
struggle, battle, produces violence, hysteria, neurotic actions,
and so on. Whereas the action of perception is total,
non-fragmented, and therefore it is healthy, sane and brings
about such intensive care and responsibility. Now that is the
way to live: seeing, acting, seeing, acting, all of the time. I
cannot see if there is an observer different from the observed.
The observer is the observed.
A: This does a very marvellous thing through what we call our
confrontation with death.
K: We'll come to that, yes.
A: I see I have made a jump.
K: No, no, sir, that's right. So you see, our whole content of
consciousness is the battle, is the ground of battle, is the
battleground, and this battle we call living. And, in that
battle how can love exist? If I am hitting you, if I am
competing with you, if I am trying to go beyond you, successful,
ruthless, where does the flame of love or compassion,
tenderness, gentleness, come into all that? It doesn't. And
that's why our society as it is now has no sense of moral
responsibility with regard to action or with regard to love. It
doesn't exist.
A: I'm going back into the context of my own experience in the
classroom again. It has always seemed to me that the first
stanza of the Gita, the first stanza, the first chapter of the
Gita, which begins dharmaksettre Kuruksettre - in the field of
Dharma, in the Kuru field, is a statement in apposition and that
the field is one. I have walked into class when we have started
to do the Gita and I've tried to show both linguistically, as it
seemed to me was capable from the text, and in terms of the
spirit of the whole that this was really what was being said,
that it's one field, not two fields, though we have one army
over here and the other over here but they don't occupy two
fields. Somehow it is one field.
K: It is our earth.
A: Right. It's the whole. But you see I think I would have done
better, now that I've listened to you, if I had gone into class
and instead of making that statement and inviting them to look
carefully at the text, and to bear that in mind as we proceed
through the teaching and watch for any misinterpretations of
that that would have occurred in commentary after commentary; it
would have been better if I had started the other way. It would
have been better if I had started by saying, let's have a look
and see together whether it is one field or whether it's a field
with conflict. We are not going to read the book at all at this
point, we are just going to start here. This is the field. The
classroom is the field. Now, let's take a look. That would have
been the better way.
K: If you have understood that, sir, the classroom is the field
and if you have understood that, you have understood the whole
thing.
A: Exactly. But I went in with the notion, that, though I had
grasped that, so I thought, it was enough, simply to show that
verbally. But it's patently not. And this is terrifying. Because
even though, if you say in the classroom what ostensibly passes
for what we call the right thing, it still will not prevail in
terms of this act...
K: Act, yes.
A:...that we've been talking about.
K: Quite right. Can we go sir, from there. We've discussed life,
living, in which love does not exist at all. Love can only exist
when the perceiver is the perceived and acts, as we said. Then
that flame, that compassion, that sense of holding the earth in
your arms, as it were, if that is understood and from that
behaviour, because that is the foundation, if there is no
behaviour in the sense of conflicting behaviour, then after
establishing that in ourselves, or in observing it we will
proceed next to the question of death. Because the question of
death is an immense thing. To me living, love and death are not
separate. They are one movement. It isn't death over there which
I am going to meet in twenty years or the next day. It is there.
It is there with love and with living. It is a continuous
movement, non-divisive. This is the way I live, think, feel.
That's my life. I mean this. These are not just words to me.
So, before we enter into the question of death we have to go
into the question of what is consciousness? Because if one
doesn't understand what is consciousness, not the explanation,
not the description, not the word, but the reality of
consciousness. Am I as a human ever conscious? And what is it to
be conscious? What is it to be aware? Am I aware totally, or
just occasionally I am aware when a crisis arises, otherwise I
am dormant. So that's why it becomes very important to find out
what is consciousness. Right sir?
A: Yes, what you have just said seems to me to indicate that we
are making a distinction between consciousness which is a
continuing movement, utterly situated in act as over against
these blips, these eruptions virtually, within the sleepy course
of nature.
K: That's right.
A: Yes, I see that. Please go ahead.
K: So what is consciousness? Consciousness is its content. I am
putting it very simply. I prefer to talk about these things very
simply, not elaborate, linguistic descriptions and theories and
suppositions, and all the rest of it. That has no meaning to me
personally.
A: If it is true it will be simple.
K: Simple.
A: Yes, of course.
K: Consciousness is its content. The content is consciousness.
The two are not separate. That is the thoughts, the anxieties,
the identifications, the conflicts, the anxiety, the
attachments, the detachments, the fears, the pleasures, the
agony, the suffering, the beliefs, the neurotic actions, all
that is my consciousness. Because that is the content.
A: This is an equivalent statement to, the world is me and I am
the world.
K: That's right.
A: So there's a continuity there.
K: Yes, so the content that says, that is my furniture, that's
my god, that's my belief, with all its nuances and subtleties,
and all that is part of my consciousness, is part of the
consciousness that says, I am. I am that, I am the furniture.
When I identify myself, saying, that's my furniture, then I am
attached to it. I am that. I am that knowledge that says, I have
acquired knowledge, I have grown with it, I have been successful
with it, it has given me great comfort, it has given me a house,
a position, power. That house is me. The battle which I have
been through, suffering, agony, that's me, that's my
consciousness. So the content of consciousness is its content,
therefore there is no division as consciousness separate from
its content. I can extend or widen the consciousness, laterally
or horizontally, horizontally or vertically, but it is still
within that field. I can extend it saying, God is immense.
That's my belief. And I've extended my consciousness by
imagining that it is extended. Whatever thought has created in
the world, inside me is the content. The whole world, especially
in the west, is based on thought. Its activities, its
explorations, its achievements, its religions and so on is
fundamentally the result of thought, with its images and so on,
so on, so on. So that is the content of consciousness. Right?
A: Right.
K: Now from that rises, what is death? Is death the ending of
consciousness, with its content? Or is death a continuity of
that consciousness? Your consciousness is no different from
mine. It may have little variations, little modifications,
little more expansion, little contraction, and so on but
essentially consciousness is yours as well as mine, because I am
attached to my house. So are you. I am attached to my knowledge,
I am attached to my family, I am in despair whether I live in
India or in England or in America, wherever it is. So that
consciousness is common. It is irrefutable. You follow?
A: Oh yes it is. I do follow closely.
K: So, see what happens. I never have examined this content. I
have never looked at it closely and I am frightened, frightened
of something which I call death, the unknown. Let us call it for
the moment, the unknown. So, I'm frightened. There is no answer
to it. Somebody comes along and says, yes my friend, there is
life after death. I have proof for it. I know it exists because
I have met my brother, my son - we will go into that presently.
So I, frightened, anxious, fearful, diseased, you follow, I
accept that tremendously, instantly say, yes there is
reincarnation. I am going to be born next life. And that life is
related to karma. The word karma means to act. Not all the
rigmarole involved in it, just to act. See what is involved.
That is, if I believe in reincarnation, that is this
consciousness, with its content, which is the 'me', my ego, my
self, my activities, my hopes, pleasures, all that is my
consciousness, that consciousness is going to be born next life,
which is the common consciousness of you and me, and him and
her. That's going to be born next life. And they say if you
behave properly now you'll be rewarded next life. That's part of
the causation.
A: That's part of the content of consciousness.
K: Causation and the effect.
A: Yes.
K: So behave because you are going to be punished next life. You
will be rewarded next life. That is, the whole of the Eastern
world is based on and believes in reincarnation. So what
happens? I have taken comfort in a belief but actually I don't
carry it out: which says behave now, be good now, don't hurt
another now.
A: Actually the idea is that I should behave now - we've been
through this 'ought' stuff. I should this, I should that, I
should the other because of what will take place later. But then
I take comfort in the thought that it's an endless process and
it's somehow built into it that I'll get another chance. So I
can sort of stall, I can stall.
K: I can stall. I can postpone, I can misbehave.
A: Yes. Because we are all destined to make it in the end.
K: Eventually. Yes.
A: Which shows that there's no grasp of what, throughout these
conversations, you've been talking about, the immediacy and
urgency of act.
K: That's right.
A: Yes. I follow.
K: So you see the Hindus probably were the originators of this
idea - cause, effect. The effect will be modified by next
causation. So there is this endless chain. And if it's endless
we'll break it sometime. Therefore it doesn't matter what you do
now. Belief gives you great comfort in believing that you will
continue, you will be with your brother, wife, husband, whatever
it is. But in the meantime don't bother too seriously, don't
take life too seriously.
A: Exactly, yes.
K: Have a good time in fact. Enjoy yourself. Or do whatever you
want to do, pay a little next life, but carry on.
A: I was speaking to a well known Hindu teacher about this and I
made this very remark that you have just stated, and I thought
it would have some force. And I said, you see there's no hope of
stopping, repeating, if an act is not made immediately with
respect to this, therefore in terms of the content of the
consciousness of a whole people that bask in this notion, there
can be nothing but an endless repetition and no true concern.
K: What did he say?
A: All he did was to laugh as though I had somehow perceived
something which most people apparently are not really bothering
their heads to look at. But the extraordinary thing to me was
that he showed no concern for what he discerned intellectually.
K. Sir, they are hypocrites, you follow, sir? They are
hypocrites when they believe that and do something quite
contrary.
A: Precisely, I understand what you mean. What you are saying
there is the usage of the Biblical notion of hypocrite in that
strict sense.
K: Sir, in the strict sense, of course.
A: Yes, in the very strict sense. In our next conversation could
we continue with this because it seems to me...
K: Oh, there is a great deal involved in this.
A: Splendid. I do so look forward to that.
K: We'll go into it.
14th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
26th February 1974
Death
A: Mr Krishnamurti in our last conversation we were beginning to
talk about consciousness and its relation to death in the
context of living as a total movement. And we even touched on
the word reincarnation toward the end when we had to draw our
conversation to its conclusion. I do hope we can begin to
continue there.
K: You see one of the factors in death is the mind is so
frightened. We are so frightened of that very word and nobody
talks about it. It isn't a daily conversation. It is something
to be avoided, something that is inevitable, for god's sake keep
it as far away as possible.
A: We even paint corpses to make them look as if they are not
dead.
K: That's the most absurd thing. Now what we are discussing,
sir, is, isn't it, the understanding of death, its relation to
living and this thing called love. One cannot possibly
understand the immensity, and it is immense, this thing called
death, unless there is a real freedom from fear. That's why we
talked sometime ago about the problem of fear. Without really
freeing the mind, unless the mind really frees itself from fear
there is no possibility of understanding the extraordinary
beauty, strength and the vitality of death.
A: That's a very, very, remarkable way to put it - the vitality
of death. And yet normally we regard it as the total negation of
life.
K: The negation of life. That's right. So if we are enquiring
into the question of death fear must be completely non-existent
in us. Then I can proceed. Then I can find out what death means.
We have touched a little bit on reincarnation, the belief that
is maintained from the East which has no reality in daily life.
It is like going to church every Sunday and being mischievous
for the rest of the six days. So, you follow, a person who is
really serious, really attentive, goes into this question of
death, he must understand what it means, the quality of it, not
the ending of it. That's what we will go into a little this
time.
The ancient Egyptians, the pharaohs and all that and so on, they
prepared for death. They said we will cross that river with all
our goods, with all with all our chariots, with all our
belongings, with all our property; and therefore their caves,
their tombs are filled with all the things of their daily life,
corn, you know all that. So living was only a means to an
ending, dying. That's one way of looking at it. The other is
reincarnation, which is the Indian, Asiatic outlook. And there
is this whole idea of resurrection, of the Christians. Reborn,
carried, the Gabriel Angel, and all that, to heaven and you will
be rewarded. Now, what is the fact? These are all theories,
suppositions, beliefs and non-facts. I mean, someone supposed to
be born Jesus comes out of the grave, resurrected physically.
That is just a belief. There were no cameras there, ten people
say, yes I saw it. It is only somebody imagined. We will go into
that a little bit later.
So there is this living and preparing for death as the ancient
Egyptians did. Then there is the reincarnation. Then there is
resurrection. Now, if one isn't frightened - you follow, sir -
deeply, then what is death? What is it that dies, apart from the
organism? The organism may continue if you look after it very
carefully for 80, 90, or 100 years. If you have no disease, if
you have no accidents, if there is a way of living sanely,
healthily, perhaps you will last 100 years or 110 years. And
then what? You follow, sir? You live 100 years, for what? For
this kind of life - fighting, quarrelling, bickering,
bitterness, anger, jealousy, futility, a meaningless existence.
It is a meaningless existence as we are living now.
A: And in terms of our previous remarks, this is all the content
of consciousness.
K: That's right. So what is it that dies? And what is it I am
frightened of, one is frightened of? You follow? What is it one
is frightened of in death? Losing the known? Losing my wife?
Losing my house? Losing all the things I have acquired? Losing
this content of consciousness? You follow? So, can the content
of consciousness be totally emptied? You follow, sir?
A: Yes I do.
K: Which is the living. The dying is the living, when the
content is totally emptied. That means no attachment. It isn't a
brutal cutting off, but the understanding of attachment, the
understanding of dependency, the understanding of acquisition,
power, position, anxiety, all that. The emptying of that is the
real death. And therefore the emptying of consciousness means
the consciousness which has created its own limitation, by its
content, comes to an end. I wonder, have you got it?
A: Yes, yes, yes. I was following you very carefully and it
occurred to me that there is a radical relation between birth
and death, that the two, when they are looked upon as moments in
a total cycle are not grasped at the depth level that you are
beginning to speak about.
K: Yes sir.
A: Am I correct?
K: Correct.
A: Good, please do go on.
K: So, death becomes a living when the content of consciousness,
which makes its own frontier, its own limitation, comes to an
end. And this is not a theory, not a speculative, intellectual
grasp, but the actual perception of attachment. I am taking that
as an example, being attached to something - property, man,
woman, the book I have written, or the knowledge I have
acquired. The attachment. And the battle to be detached. Because
attachment brings pain. Therefore I say to myself, I must be
detached. And the battle begins. And the whole content of my
consciousness is this, the battle which we described previously.
Now can that content be emptied - empty itself? Not emptied by
an act of perception, empty itself. Which means can this whole
content be observed, with its unconscious content? You follow,
sir?
A: Yes, I do. I'm thinking.
K: I can be consciously aware of the content of my consciousness
- my house, my property, my wife, my children, my job, the
things I have acquired, the things I have learned. I can be
consciously aware of all that. But also there is a deeper
content in the very recesses of my mind which is racial,
collective, acquired, the things that unconsciously I have
gathered, the influences, the pressures, the strains of living
in a world that is corrupt. All that has seeped in, all that has
gathered in there.
A: Both personal and impersonal.
K: Impersonal, yes.
A: This includes then what the depth psychologists are calling
collective unconscious.
K: I don't what they are calling it.
A: As well as the personal consciousness.
K: Collective as well. So there is that. Now can all that be
exposed. Because that is very important. Because if I really
want to go, if the mind really wants to understand and grasp the
full meaning of death, the vastness of it, the great quality of
a mind that says, yes that's ended - you follow, it gives a
tremendous vitality, energy. So, my question is: can the mind be
aware totally of all the content, hidden as well as the open,
the collective, the personal, the racial, the transitory? You
follow? The whole of that. Now, we say it is possible through
analysis.
A: Yes we do.
K: I said, analysis is paralysis. Because every analysis must be
perfect, complete. And you are frightened that it might not be
complete. And if you have not completed it you carry it over as
a memory which will then analyse the next incident. So each
analysis brings its own incompleteness.
A: Oh, certainly, yes.
K: Therefore it is a total paralysis.
A: In following what you are saying, I'm very taken with what we
usually regard as death which has a very clear relationship to
what you've said about the endless series of analytical acts.
K: Yes, sir.
A: We regard death as terminus in terms of a line.
K: Quite, because we think laterally.
A: We think laterally, exactly. But what you're saying is, on
the contrary, we must regard this vertically.
K: Yes.
A: And in the regarding of it vertically we no longer see,
please check me if I am off here, we no longer see death as
simply a moment of termination to certain trajectory repetition.
But there is a total qualitative change here which is not the
cessation of something that we have to regret as though we had
lost something valuable.
K: Yes, I am leaving my wife and children.
A: Right.
K: And my property, my blasted bank account.
A: Yes, yes.
K: You see, sir, if one can go very deeply into this: there is
this content, which is my consciousness, acquired, inherited
imposed, influenced, propaganda, attachment, detachment,
anxiety, fear, pleasure, all that, and also the hidden things.
I'm asking myself, since analysis is really paralysis, not an
intellectual supposition, but actually it is not a complete act,
analysis can never produce a complete act, the very word
analysis means to break up, you know, the breaking up.
A: Loosen up.
K: Loosen up, break it up. Therefore I reject that totally. I
won't analyse because I see the stupidity, the paralytic process
of it. Then what am I to do? Are you following? Because that's
the tradition, introspective, or analysis by myself or by a
professional, which is now the fad and so on, so on, so on. So
if the mind sees the truth of it, and therefore analysis falls
away, then what is the mind to do with the content?
A: Yes, I do see that.
K: We know what the content is. We don't have thoroughly
describe. Now, what is it to do? It has to be emptied. Otherwise
it is merely continuity.
A: No it is no use analyzing what is already there because that
will not change what is there in anyway shape or form. That
seems to be very, very plain. Perhaps you would for a moment
explain why we simply refuse to see that. We do believe that an
analytical enquiry is ordered to a revelation. We do believe
that.
K: No sir. You can see it in a minute. Analysis implies the
analyzer and the analysed.
A: Yes.
K: The analsyer is the analysed.
A: Yes, we are back to the observer and the observed.
K: I am analyzing my anger. Who is the analyzer? Part of the
fragment which is anger. So the analyzer pretends to be
different from the analysed. But when I see the truth that the
analyzer is the analysed then a totally different action takes
place. Then there is no conflict between the analyzer and the
analysed. There is instant action, a perception, which is the
ending and going beyond the 'what is'.
A: The reason I asked for the explanation was because of the
concern raised earlier about knowledge.
K: After all the observer is knowledge.
A: Yes, I was concerned that study, in its proper form was not
regarded in the context of our discussion as unprofitable as
such.
K: No.
A: We don't mean that.
K: We didn't even discuss it. That's so obvious.
A: Yes, well it is obvious in terms of our discussion, but the
thing that concerns me is that so ingrained is the notion that,
for instance, in the story I told about when I came to hear you
years ago, I began doing analysis while I was listening to your
words and consequently I could hardly end up with anything
qualitatively differently from what I came in with. But you see
I didn't see that at the time and in video-taping our
conversations here this will be listened to, and when we say,
yes, about knowledge, this is obvious, in the context of our
conversation it is. But then I'm thinking of...
K: Not only in the context of our conversation, it is so.
A: It is as such.
K: It is.
A: Exactly, I couldn't agree, but immediately I flashed back to
my own behaviour, and I know that I was not alone in that
because I listened to other conversations regarding it at the
time. But, yes, I see what you mean now about analysis as such.
It seems to me very clear.
K: Analysis implies, sir, the analyzer and the analysed.
A: Precisely.
K: The analyzer is the analysed. And also analysis implies time,
duration. I must take time to uncover, unearth, to uncover, and
it will take me rest of my life.
A: This is a confusion we have about death too with relation to
time.
K: That's right. I'm coming to that.
A: Yes, of course, please do, yes.
K: So, the mind perceiving discards analysis completely. Not
because it's not profitable, not because it doesn't get me where
I want, but I see the impossibility of emptying the
consciousness of its content, if I approach - if the mind
approaches through that channel: analyzer, time, and the utter
futility at the end of 40 years I am still analyzing.
A: And the content of my consciousness has not qualitatively
changed at all.
K: Changed at all.
A: No, it's become intensified in its corruption.
K: That's right. That's right. So. But the mind must see its
content, must be totally aware of it, not fragments of it. How
is that to be done? You follow, sir?
A: Yes I do.
K: Because that's very important in relation to death. Because
the content of my consciousness is consciousness. That
consciousness is me, my ego, my saying, I and you, we and they -
whether they be the communists, they the catholic, they the
protestant or they the Hindu. So it is very important to find
out whether it is possible to empty consciousness of its
content. Which means the dying to the me. You follow?
A: Yes I do.
K: Because that is the me.
A: This is where the terror starts.
K: That's where the terror starts.
A: Precisely. There's the intuition that if I do to the content
of this consciousness that I am wiped out.
K: Yes, so I, who have worked, who have lived a righteous life
or unrighteous life, who have done so much, mischief or good, I
have struggled to better myself, I've been so kind, so gentle,
so angry, so bitter, and when you say, empty your consciousness,
it means you are asking me to die to all that. So, you are
touching at the very root of fear.
A: Yes exactly.
K: At the root of terror of not being. Oh yes, that's it, sir.
And I want to immortalize that me. I do it through books,
writing a book and say, famous book. Or I paint. Or through
paint, through works, through good acts, through building this
or that, I immortalize myself.
A: This has very pernicious effects within the family, because
we must have a son in order to...
K: ...carry on
A: ...immortalize the name in time.
K: Therefore the family becomes a danger.
A: Exactly.
K: So, look what we have done, sir: the ancient Egyptians
immortalized themselves, made their life immortal by thinking of
carrying on.
A: Perpetuity.
K: Perpetuating. And the robbers come and tear it all to pieces.
Tutankhamen is merely a mask now, a golden mask with a mummy,
and so on. So man has sought immortality through works, through
every way to find that which is immortal, that is, beyond
mortality. Right?
A: It's a very remarkable thing that the very word immortal is a
negative.
K: Yes, not mortal.
A. Yes, it's not saying what it is.
K: We are going to find out what it is.
A: Good.
K: You follow, sir, this is a very, very serious thing. It isn't
a plaything between two people who are enjoying a discussion. It
is a tremendously important thing.
A: I was laughing at the irony of it. That inherent in the
structure of that word there is a warning, and we just go right
through the red light.
K: Right.
A: Yes, please do go on.
K: So, what is immortality? Not the book.
A: Oh no.
K: Not the painting which I have done, not going to the moon and
putting some idiotic flag up there. Not living a righteous life,
or not living a righteous life. So what is immortality? The
cathedrals are beautiful, marvelous cathedrals, an earthquake
comes, gone. You build, you carve out of marble a marvelous
thing of Michelangelo, an earthquake, fire, destroyed. Some
lunatic comes along with a hammer and breaks it up. So it is in
none of those. Tight?
A: Right.
K: Because that is capable of being destroyed. Every statue
becomes a dead thing, every poem, every painting. So then one
asks, what is immortality? It's not in the building, just see
it, sir. It's not in the cathedral. It's not in the Saviour
which you have invented, which thought has invented. Not in the
gods that man has created out of his own image. Then what is
immortality? Because that is related to consciousness and to
death. Unless I find that out, death is a terror.
A: Of course, of course.
K: I have tried to immortalize myself, become immortal by the
thought that there is a Brahman, there is a god, there is
eternality, there is a nameless one, and I will do everything to
approach him. Therefore I'll lead a righteous life. Therefore I
will pray, I will beg, I will obey, I will live a life of
poverty, chastity, and so on, so on, so on, in order to have
that immortal reality with me. But I know all that is born of
thought. Right, sir?
A: Yes, as soon as...
K: Wait a minute, sir, see what happens.
A: Yes.
K: So I see thought and its products are the children of barren
women.
A: Precisely.
K: See what takes place. Then what is immortality? The beauty in
the church - not I built the church - the beauty in the
cathedral, the beauty in the poem, the beauty in the sculpture,
the beauty, not the object of beauty.
A: The beauty itself.
K: Itself. That is immortal. And I cannot grasp that, the mind
cannot grasp it because beauty is not in the field of
consciousness.
A: Yes. You see what you have said again stands it all on its
head. We think when something dies that we have cherished, that
is beautiful, that beauty dies in some sense with that which has
passed away.
K: Passed away, yes.
A: Actually it's the feeling of being bereft of that beauty that
I regarded as my privilege to have personal access to. The
belief that that has perished, not simply been lost because what
is lost is by its nature predisposed to be found. But to perish
is to be wiped out utterly, isn't it? And so the belief is deep.
K: Oh, very, very.
A: Extremely deep with respect to what we mean by perish. In
fact the word isn't used very often, it's frightening, it's a
very frightening word. We are always frightened about losing
things, hardly ever do we say something perishes. Now back to
what I mentioned about standing it on its head. The image came
to my mind as a metaphor. I hope not one of those images we've
been talking about. That beauty, rather than being imprisoned,
and therefore taken down to the utter depths of nullity, when a
thing perishes, has simply let it go. In some sense beauty has
let this expression go. That is upside down from what is usually
thought.
K: I know, I know.
A: And it has probably let it go precisely on time.
K: That's right.
A: That's what's so marvelous, yes, yes.
K: So, immortality we have said is within the field of time.
A: In the one field.
K: Right.
A: Yes.
K: The field of time.
A: Yes.
K: And death is also then in the field of time. Because I have
created, through thought, the things of time. And death is the
ending or the beginning of a state that is timeless. Of that I
am frightened. So I want everything preserved in the field of
time. You follow, sir?
A: Yes, yes we think it could...
K: And that is what we call immortal - the statue, the poems,
the church, the cathedral, and I see also all that is
corruptible, destroyed by one accident, or by an earthquake,
everything is gone. So immortality is not within the field of
time. And time is thought.
A: Of course, yes that follows.
K: Of course. So anything that thought creates must be within
the field of time. And yet thought is trying to seek
immortality, which is immortality of itself, and the things it
has created.
A: Yes.
K: So, then the problem is, can the mind see all this, see it?
Not imagine that it is seeing it.
A: No, actually see it.
K: Actually see it.
A: Yes, the remark I made before when you began saying the field
of time, and I said, the one field, I didn't mean that the field
of time, as you've described it, is the one field, but that we
could be so appallingly...
K: ...blind.
A: ...mistaken and blind.
K: Ignorant.
A: The field of time is another fragment.
K: That's right.
A: It's the only field. And what really struck me was this
misuse of thought generates the most appalling avarice.
K: Yes, sir.
A: I'm walling myself up in stone. Yes, please.
K: So, the mind, perceiving all this, if it is alert, if it has
been watchful all the time we have been discussing, must
inevitably see the whole content exposed, without any effort.
It's like reading a map. You spread it out and look. But if you
want to go in a direction, then you don't look at the whole map.
Then you say, I want to go from here to there, the direction is
there, so many miles, and you do - you don't look at the rest.
What we are asking is, no direction but just look. Look at the
content of your consciousness without direction, without choice.
Be aware of it without any exertion of discernment. Be
choicelessly aware of this extraordinary map. Then that
choiceless awareness gives you that tremendous energy to go
beyond it. But you need energy to go beyond it.
A: This leads me to the notion of reincarnation that we began to
touch on a little earlier: that I see the demonic root in that.
K: Yes, sir. You see, sir: reincarnate next life. Nobody says,
incarnate now.
A: Yes, exactly.
K: You follow, sir?
A: Yes, I do, I do.
K: You can only incarnate now when you die to the content.
A: And there is...
K: You can be reborn, regenerated totally if you die to the
content.
A: Yes. Yes. Yes. And there is a terrible truth on the dark
side, the demonic side, to this doctrine of reincarnation,
because if that content of consciousness is not emptied out then
it must prevail.
K: So what happens?
A: Then it really does, yes.
K: It prevails. So what happens? I do not know, as a human
being, how to empty this thing. I'm not even interested. I'm
only frightened.
A: Only scared to death.
K: Scared to death. And I preserve something, and I die, am
burned or buried under ground. The content goes on. As we said,
the content of me is your content also, it's not so very
different.
A: No, no, no.
K: Slightly modified, slightly exaggerated, given certain
tendencies which depend on your conditioning of environments and
so on, so on, but it is essentially the same consciousness.
Unless a human being empties that consciousness, that
consciousness goes on like a river - collecting, accumulating,
all that's going on. And out of that river comes the expression,
or the manifestation of the one that is lost. When the mediums,
seances, all those say, your brother, your uncle, your wife is
here. What has happened is they have manifested themselves out
of that stream which is the continuous consciousness of
struggle, pain, unhappiness, all that. And a man who has
observed and has looked at the consciousness and empties it, he
doesn't belong to that stream at all. Then he is living each
moment anew because he is dying each moment. You understand,
sir?
A: Oh, yes I do, yes I do.
K: There is no accumulation of the me which has to be expressed.
He is dying every minute; living every minute, and dying every
minute. Therefore in that there is - what shall I say - there is
no content. You follow, sir?
A: Yes.
K: It is like a tremendous energy in action.
A: This gives a totally different understanding of what we mean
by the phrase, in the after life. On the one hand there is this
continuity in disordered content of consciousness...
K: It is totally disordered, that's right.
A: ...which is not radically affected qualitatively with respect
to its nature, simply because somebody has stopped breathing for
good. No. It's on its way.
K: On its way.
A: And therefore the attempt that is often made on the part of
persons to contact this stream of consciousness after the death
of a person, when made within the same quality of consciousness,
attains nothing but a reinforcement...
K: Yes, that's right.
A: ...within their own personal life.
K: That's right.
A: And it does a terrible thing to their content of
consciousness, which has gone on, since it also feeds that some
more.
K: That's right.
A: Yes, I do see that.
K: A person came to see me and his wife was dead. And he really
thought he loved her. So he said, I must see my wife again. Can
you help me? I said, which wife do you want to see? The one that
cooked? The one that bore the children? The one that gave you
sex? The one that quarrelled with you? The one that dominated
you, frightened you? He said, I don't want to meet any of those.
I want to meet the good of her. You follow, sir?
A: Yes, yes.
K: The image of the good he has built out of her. None of the
ugly things, or what he considered ugly things, but the idea of
the good which he had culled out of her, and that is the image
he wants to meet. I said, don't be infantile. You are so utterly
immature when you have slept with her, and got angry with her,
all that you don't want, you want just the image which you have
about her goodness, I said. And you know, sir, he began to cry,
really cry for the first time. He said, afterwards, I have cried
when she died, but the tears were of self pity, my loneliness,
my sense of, you follow, lack of things. Now I am crying, I cry
because I see what I have done. You understand, sir?
A: Yes, I do.
K: So to understand death there must be no fear. The fear exists
and the terror of it exists only when the content is not
understood. And the content is the 'me'. And the 'me' is the
chair, you follow, sir?
A: Yes.
K: The thing I am attached to. It is so stupid. And I am
frightened of that, the bank account, the family, you follow?
A: Ah, yes, yes I do.
K: So unless one is really, deeply serious in this matter, you
can't incarnate now, in the deep sense of that word; and
therefore immortality is in the book, in the statue, in the
cathedral, in the things I have put together, the things I have
put together by thought. That's all the field of time.
A: Right. It just occurred to me what a terrible thing we have
been doing so often over and over again to Plato by this
perennial attempt at academic analysis of the text, when he
plainly said that the business of the philosopher, by which he
didn't mean the analyzer in this mad way that we have been
observing that goes on - the business of the philosopher, namely
the one who is concerned with a radical change and rebirth,
which he associated with wisdom; the business of the philosopher
is to practice dying, to practice dying. I don't think he meant
routine, repetition, die, die, die, die. I think he puts it with
an 'ing', because he doesn't want to fall out of act. I know I
use this phrase all the time but it came to me early in our in
conversations and it seems to say, for me, what I want to say. I
have to say I learned it from you, though I don't want to put
the words in your mouth. But it's possible to fall out of act
into the terror and the demonic stream of time, but when one is
in act the whole thing is an ongoing move.
K: So, sir, time has a stop.
A: Precisely.
K: See the beauty of it, sir. And it is that beauty which is
immortal, not the things which thought has created.
A: Right.
K: So living is dying.
A: Right.
K: And love is essentially dying to the me. Not the things which
thought has said this is love - love-sex, love-pleasure. You
follow? All that.
A: Yes.
K: It is, dying to time is love. So living, love and death are
one thing, not divisive, not separated, not divorced, not in the
field of time but it is completely a living, moving thing,
indivisible. And that is immortal.
A: Yes.
K: So. Now, most of us are educated wrongly.
A: How true that is.
K: From childhood we are never taught to be serious. From
childhood we are taught the cultivation of thought, the
cultivation of thought and the expression and the marvels of
thought. All our philosophies, books, everything is based on
that. And when you say, die to all that, you really awaken the
terror of not knowing. This gives me security in knowing.
A: Yes.
K: Then knowledge becomes the field of my safety. And you ask
me, give all that up, die to all that. And I say, you are
insane. How can I die to that, that's part of me.
A: There's a very, very beautiful, Zen saying that seems to
relate to this when it's understood correctly. It speaks of
jumping off the cliff with hands free. Jumping off a cliff with
hands free. The hands...
K: ...that hold.
A: ...that hold, always grasping the past or reaching out
towards the future, and we never get off that horizontal track.
It's like a Lionel train, it forever goes on.
K: So then comes the question, what is living in the present?
Death is the future. And I've lived for 40 years, all the
accumulation. What is the present? The present is the death of
the content. You follow, sir?
A: Yes.
K: I don't know, it has immense beauty in that. Because that
means no conflict, you follow sir, no tomorrow. But if you tell
a man who loves, who is going to enjoy that man or woman
tomorrow, when you say, there is no tomorrow, he says, what are
you talking about?
A: Yes, I know. Sometimes you will say when you have said
something, it sounds absurd.
K: Of course.
A: And, of course, in relation to the way we have been taught to
do analysis it does sound absurd.
K: Therefore, sir, can we educate children, students, to live
totally differently? Live and understand and act with this sense
of understanding the content and the beauty of it all?
A: If I've understood you correctly there's only one answer to
that question: yes, yes. It sounds - I think the word here
wouldn't be, absurd - it would be something like, wild. Yes, I
see now what you mean about death and birth as non-temporally
related in terms of the question that we raised about their
relation earlier, because when you say there is this
incarnation...
K: ...now.
A: ...now, upon the instant...
K: Yes, sir.
A: ...then...
K: If you see the beauty of it, sir, the thing takes place.
A: Then it's happened.
K: It is not the result of mentation.
A: No.
K: It is not the result of man's thinking, thinking, thinking.
This is actual perception of 'what is'.
A: And the amazement that it is the same energy at root.
K: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.
A: It doesn't take something over here that's a different energy
called god.
K: No, that's an outside agency brought in here.
A: No.
K: It is the same wasted energy, dissipated energy which is no
longer dissipated.
A: Exactly.
K: Therefore, it is...
A: Exactly. This throws a totally - I'm beginning now to use the
words, absolutely and totally, which in the Academy, you know,
we're, advised to be very careful about.
K: I know.
A: But, I'm sorry about all that, the fact remains that it is
total. It is total.
K: Yes.
A: There is a total change. And the transformation of each
individual is a total one.
K: It is not within the field of time and knowledge.
A: Is not within the field of time and knowledge.
K: You see how they are related.
A: Yes, and then the profound seriousness of it that attends
when one sees the rest of that sentence of yours. It is the
responsibility of each. And if I may add just one other thing
here because it seems to me that it is coming together. That it
isn't the responsibility of one over against the other to do
something. It is to come with and to, as the other is coming to
and with, and we begin together...
K: Yes, sir. Share together.
A: ...to have a look.
K: Learn together.
A: Just quietly having a look. And in that activity, which is
not planned - one of the amazing things about this conversation
is that it, to use your beautiful word, flowers.
K: It flowers, yes.
A: It doesn't require an imposition without of a contrivance.
K: No.
A: Of a management.
K: Or management, quite.
A: Somehow it grows out of itself. It's this thing of growing
out of itself that relates to this thing that you've been
talking about in consciousness. By pointing to the head I don't
mean consciousness is here, but it's the 'out of itself', it's
like that water that turns in on itself.
K: But it remains water.
A: It remains water. Exactly. This has been a wonderful
revelation, the whole thing about death, living and love. I do
hope when we have our next conversation that we could begin to
pursue this in relation to education even further.
K: Further, yes, sir.