Wholly Different Way of Living
15th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
27th February 1974
Religion and Authority - 1
A: Mr Krishnamurti, we were talking last time together about
death in the context of living, and love. And as I remember just
as we came to the close of what we were discussing we thought it
would be good to pursue this in terms of a further enquiry into
education, what really goes on between teacher and student when
they begin looking together. And what are the traps that
immediately appear, and shock? You mentioned the terror of
death, not simply externally, but internally in relation to
thought. And it seemed to me perhaps it would be a splendid
thing if we just continued that and went deeper into it.
K: Sir, I would like to ask why we are educated at all? What is
the meaning of this education that people receive? Apparently
they don't understand a thing of life, they don't understand
fear, pleasure, the whole thing that we have discussed, and the
ultimate fear of death and the terror of not being. Is it that
we have become so utterly materialistic that we are only
concerned with good jobs, money, pleasure and superficial
amusements, entertainments, whether they be religious or
football. Is it that our whole nature and structure has become
so utterly meaningless? And when we are educated for that, and
to suddenly face something real is terrifying.
And as we were saying yesterday, we are not educated to look at
ourselves, we are not educated to understand the whole business
of living, we are not educated to look and see what happens if
we face death. So I was wondering as we came along this morning,
religion, which we were going to discuss anyhow, has become
merely not only a divisive process but also utterly meaningless.
Maybe 2,000 years as Christianity, or 3,000, 5,000 as Hinduism,
Buddhism and so on, it has lost its substance. And we never
enquire into what is religion, what is education, what is
living, what is dying, you know, the whole business of it. We
never ask, what is it all about. And when we do ask we say,
well, life has very little meaning. And it has very little
meaning, and it has very little meaning as we live it, and so we
escape into all kinds of fantastic, romantic nonsense, which has
no reason, which we can't discuss, or logically enquire, but it
is mere escape from this utter emptiness of the life that one
leads. I don't know if you saw the other day, a group of people
adoring a human being, and they were doing the most fantastic
things, and that's what they call religion, that's what they
call God. They seem to have lost all reason. Reason apparently
has no meaning any more, either.
A: I did see a documentary that was actually put on by this
station, in which the whole meeting operation was being
portrayed between the public and this individual in this young
15 year old guru, Maharaji. It was extraordinary.
K: Disgusting.
A: Amazing. It was in many respects revolting.
K: And that's what they call religion. So shall we begin with
the religion and go on?
A: Yes, I think that would be a splendid thing to do.
K: All right, sir. You know man has always wanted and tried to
find out something beyond the everyday living, everyday routine,
everyday pleasures, every activity of thought, he wanted
something much more. I don't know whether you have been to
India, I do not know if you have been to villages. They put a
little stone under a tree, put some marking on it, the next day
they have flowers, and of course to the people that are there it
has become divinity, it has become something religious. That
same principle is continued in the cathedrals. Exactly the same
thing when you have mass and all the rituals in India, all that,
it begins there: the desire for a human being to find something
more than what thought has put together. Not being able to find
it they romanticize it, they create symbols, or somebody who has
got a little bit of this, they worship. And round that they do
all kinds of rituals, Indian puja, you know all that business
that goes on. And that is called religion. Which has absolutely
nothing to do with behaviour, with our daily life.
So seeing all this, both in the west and the east, in the world
of Islam, in the world of Buddhism and all this, it is the same
principle going on: worshipping an image which they have
created, whether it is the Buddha, Jesus or Christ, it is the
human mind that has created the image.
A: Oh yes, certainly.
K: And they worship the image which is their own. In other words
they are worshipping themselves.
A: And the division, the split, grows wider.
K: Wider. So religion, when one asks what is religion, obviously
one must negate in the sense not brutally cut off, understand
all this. And so negate all religions: negate the religion of
India and the multiple gods and goddesses; and here the religion
of Christianity, which is an image which they have created,
which is idolatry. They might not like to call it idolatry but
it is. It is an idolatry of the mind. The mind has created the
ideal, and the mind through the hand created the statue, the
cross and so on and so on. So if one really puts all that aside,
the belief, the superstition, the worship of the person, the
worship of an idea, and the rituals and the tradition, all that,
if one can do it, and one must do it to find out.
A: Exactly. There is a point of terror here that is many, many
faceted it seems to me, it has so many different mirrors that it
holds up to one's own dysfunction. To reach the place where one
is willing to begin at the point where he makes this negation in
order to find out, he thinks very often that he is being
required to assume something in advance in order to make the
negation.
K: Of course.
A: Therefore he balks at that, and he won't do it.
K: No, because sir the brain needs security, otherwise it can't
function.
A: That's right.
K: So it finds security in a belief, in an image, in rituals, in
the propaganda of 2,000 or 5,000 years. And there, there is a
sense of safety, comfort, security, well-being, somebody is
looking after you, the image of somebody greater than me who is
looking after me, inwardly he is responsible. All that. When you
are asking a human being to negate all that, he is faced with an
immense sense of danger, an immense sense - he becomes panicked.
A: Exactly.
K: So to see all that, to see the absurdity of all the present
religions, the utter meaninglessness of it all, and to face
being totally insecure, and not be frightened.
A: I sense a trick that one can play on himself right here.
Again I am very grateful to you that we are exploring together
pathology in its various facets. One can begin with the notion
that he is going to make this negation in order to attain to
something better.
K: Oh no, that's not negation.
A: And that's not negation at all.
K: No. Negation is to deny what is false not knowing what is
truth. To see the false in the false and to see the truth in the
false, and it is the truth that denies the false. You don't deny
the false, but you see what is false, and the very seeing of
what is false is the truth. I don't know?
A: Yes, of course.
K: And that denies, that sweeps away all this. I don't know if I
am making myself clear.
A: Well I had a very interesting experience in class yesterday.
I had given the class an assignment. I think I mentioned this in
a conversation we had yesterday, that I had given the class an
assignment to go and look at the tree. So in fact I am making a
report as to what happened after they came back. Well one young
woman described what happened to her; and she described it in
such a way that the class was convinced, and I was convinced
that there was no blockage of her looking between herself and
this tree. She was calmly ecstatic in her report. That sounds
like a curious juxtaposition of words, but it seems to me to be
correct. But then I asked her a question. And I said, now were
you thinking of yourself as looking at this tree? And she
hesitated - mind you she had already gone through this whole
statement, which very beautifully undertaken - and I had come
along playing the role of the serpent in the garden and I said,
well now might it not have been the case that at any time during
that you thought of yourself. And with this hesitation she began
to fall more and more out of her own act. Well we had a look at
that, she and I and the class, we all had a look at what she was
doing. Finally she turned around and said, the reason that I
stopped was not because of what went on between me and the tree
- I am very clear about that - because I am in class now and I
am thinking that I ought to say the right thing, and so I have
gone and ruined the whole thing. It was a revelation not only to
her but you could see with respect to the faces all around the
room that we are all involved in this nonsense.
K: Yes, sir.
A: And her shock that she could so betray this relationship that
she had had in doing her exercise in just a couple of words, was
almost...
K: Revealing.
A: Yes, extremely revealing, but at the same time desperately
hard to believe that anybody would do such a thing to himself.
K: Quite. Negation can only take place when the mind sees the
false, the very perception of the false is the negation of the
false. And when you see the religions based on miracles, based
on personal worship, based on fear that you, your own life is so
shoddy, empty, meaningless, and that you are so transient, you
will be gone in a few years, and then the mind creates the image
which is eternal, which is marvelous, which is the beautiful,
the heaven, and identifies with it and worships it. Because it
needs a sense of security, deeply, and it has created all this
superficial nonsense, a circus - it is a circus.
A: Oh, yes.
K: So can the mind observe this phenomenon, and see its own
demand for security, comfort, safety, permanency, and deny all
that? Deny in the sense see how the brain, thought, creates the
sense of permanency, the eternality, or whatever you like to
call it. And to see all that. Therefore one has to go much more
deeply, I think, into the question of thought because both in
the west and the east thought has become the most important
movement in life. Right?
A: Oh yes, oh yes.
K: Thought, which has created this marvelous world of
technology, marvelous world of science, and all that, and
thought which has created the religions, all the marvelous
chants, both the Gregorian and the Sanskrit chants, thought
which has built beautiful cathedrals, thought which has made
images of the saviours, the masters, the gurus, the father
image. Unless one really understands thought, what is thinking,
we will still play the same game in a different field.
A: Exactly.
K: Look what is happening in this country. These gurus come from
India, they shave their head, put on the Indian dress, a little
tuft of hair hanging down, and repeat endlessly what somebody
has said. A new guru. They have had old gurus, the priests.
A: Oh yes.
K: The Catholic, the Protestant, and they have denied them but
accept the others! You follow?
A: Yes.
K: The others are as dead as the old ones because they are just
repeating tradition: traditionally repeating how to sit, how to
shake, how to meditate, how to hold your head, breathe. Finally
you obey what the old gurus says, or the young guru says. Which
is exactly what took place in the Catholic world, in the
Protestant world. You follow? They deny that and yet accept the
other. Because they want security, they want somebody to tell
them what to do, what to think, never how to think.
A: No. This raises the question that I hope we can explore
together, that concerns the word 'experience'. It's amazing how
often in these times this word crops up to represent something
that I desperately need, which somehow lies outside myself. I
need the experience of an awakening. It isn't an awakening that
I need, apparently, it's an experience of this awakening. The
whole idea of religion as experience seems to me to need very,
very careful thought, very, very careful penetration.
K: Quite, quite. So, if I may ask, why do we demand experience?
Why is there this craving for experience? We have sexual
experience, experiences of every kind, don't we?
A: Yes.
K: As we live: insults, flattery, happenings, incidents,
influences, what people say, don't say, we read a book, and so
on and so on. We have experiences all the time. We are bored
with that. And we say we will go to somebody who will give me
the experience of god.
A: Yes, that's precisely what is claimed.
K: Now what is involved in that? What is involved in the demand
of our experience, and the experiencing of that demand? I
experience what that guru or master, or somebody tells me, how
do I know it is real? And I say, I recognize it. Look, I
experience something, and I can only know that I have
experienced it only when I have recognized it. Right?
A: Right.
K: Recognition implies I have already known.
A: Recognize.
K: Recognize.
A: Yes.
K: So I am experiencing what I have already known, therefore it
is nothing new. I don't know if I am making it clear.
A: Yes, you are making yourself very, very clear.
K: All they are doing is a self deception.
A: It is actually lusted after.
K: Oh, lord, yes.
A: Yes, the drive for it is extraordinary. I have seen it in
many, many students, who will go to extraordinary austerities.
K: I know all this.
A: We sometimes think that young people today are very loose in
their behaviour, well some are, but what is so new about that,
that has been going on since time out of mind. I think what is
rarely seen is that many young persons today are extremely
serious about acquiring something that someone possesses that
they don't have, and if someone claims to have it, naively they
are on their way. They go through any number of cart wheels,
stand on their head indefinitely for that.
K: Oh, yes, I have seen all that.
A: Which is called an experience, as such.
K: That's why one has to be very careful, as you pointed out,
sir, to explore this word. And to see why the mind, why a human
being demands more experience, when his whole life is a vast
experience with which he is so bored. He thinks this is a new
experience, but to experience the new how can the mind recognize
it as the new, unless it has already known it? I don't know if
I'm...
A: Yes. And there is something very remarkable here in terms of
what you said earlier in other previous conversations that we
have had: in the recognition of what is called the new, the
linkage with old thought, old image establishes the notion that
there is something gradual in the transition. That there really
is some kind of genuine link here with where I am now, and where
I was before. Now I become the next guru who goes out and
teaches the person how gradually to undertake this discipline.
K: Yes, sir, yes, sir.
A: And it never stops. No, no, I do see that. It's amazing, it's
amazing. Driving down in the car this morning I was thinking
about the whole business of chant, that you mentioned, the
beauty of it all, and since this is related to experience as
such, I thought maybe we could examine the aesthetics in terms
of where this self trapping lies in it. And of course I thought
of Sanskrit, that beautiful invocation that is chanted in the
Isa Upanishad (chant in Sanskrit) and it goes on. And I said to
myself, if one would attend to those words there is the echo of
the abiding through the whole thing, through the whole glorious
cadence, and within it there's the radical occasion to fall into
a euphoria.
K: Yes, sir.
A: And somnolence takes over. But it is within the very same.
And I said to myself, well maybe Mr Krishnamurti would say a
word about the relation of beauty to this in terms of one's own
relation to the beautiful, when that relation is not seen for
what it is. Since there is a narcosis present that I can
generate. It isn't in those words. And yet we think that the
language must be at fault, there must be something demonically
hypnotic about this that we do. And then religious groups will
separate themselves totally from all this. We had a period in
Europe when Protestants, Calvinists, wouldn't allow an organ, no
music, because music is seductive. I am not the self seducer, it
is the music's fault!
K: That's just it, sir.
A: Let's look at it.
K: As we were saying the other day, sir, beauty can only be when
there is the total abandonment of the self. Complete emptying
the consciousness of its content, which is the 'me'. Then there
is a beauty which is something entirely different from the
pictures, chants, all that. And probably most of these young
people, and also the older people, seek beauty in that sense
through the trappings of the church, through chants, through
reading the Old Testament with all its beautiful words and
images, and all that, and that gives them a sense of deep
satisfaction. In other words, sir, what they are seeking is
really gratification through beauty - beauty of words, beauty of
chant, beauty of all the robes and the incense, and the light
coming through those marvelous pieces of colour. You have seen
it all in cathedrals, Notre Dame and Chatres, marvelous. And it
gives them a sense of sacredness, sense of feeling happy,
relieved, at last here is a place where I can go and meditate,
be quiet, get into contact with something. And then you come
along and say, look, that's all rubbish, it has no meaning. What
has meaning is how you live in your daily life.
A: Yes.
K: Then they throw a brick at you.
A: It is like taking food away from a starving dog.
K: Exactly. So this is the whole point, sir: experience is a
trap, and all the people want this strange experience which the
gurus think they have.
A: Which is always called the knowledge. Interesting.
K: Very.
A: Isn't it? It is always called the knowledge. Yes. Of course I
was thinking about previous conversations, about this self
transformation that is not dependent on knowledge.
K: Of course not.
A: Not dependent on time. And eminently requires responsibility.
K: And also, sir, we don't want to work. We work very
strenuously in earning a livelihood. Look what we do, year after
year, after year, day after day, the brutality, the ugliness of
all that. But here, inwardly, psychologically, we don't want to
work. We are too lazy. Let the other fellow work, perhaps he has
worked, and perhaps he will give me something. But I don't say I
am going to find out, deny the whole thing and find out.
A: No, the assumption is that the priest's business is to have
worked in order to know so that I am relieved of that task; or
if I didn't come into the world with enough marbles then all I
need do is simply follow his instructions and it's his fault if
he gets it messed up.
K: We never ask the man who says, "I know, I have experienced",
what do you know?
A: Exactly.
K: What have you experienced? What do you know? When you say, I
know, you only know something that is dead, which is gone, which
is finished, which is the past. You can't know something that is
living. You follow sir?
A: Yes.
K: A living thing you can never know, it's moving. It is never
the same. And so I can never say, I know my wife, or my husband,
children, because they are living human beings. But these
fellows come along, from India specially, and they say, look, I
know, I have experienced, I have knowledge, I will give it to
you. And I say, what impudence. You follow sir?
A: Yes.
K: What callous indifference that you know and I don't know. And
what do you know?
A: It's amazing what has been going on in terms of the relation
between men on the one hand, and women on the other, or man and
woman in respect to this, because a whole mythology has grown up
about this. For instance we say, our sex says, woman is
mysterious, and never is this understood in terms of the
freshness of life, which includes everything not just woman. Now
we have an idea that woman is mysterious. So we are talking
about something in terms of an essence, which has nothing to be
with existence. Isn't that so?
K: Exactly.
A: Goodness me! And as you said earlier we are actually taught
this, this is all in books, this is all in the conversations
that go on in class rooms.
K: So that why, sir, I feel education is destroying people - as
it is now. It has become a tragedy. If I had a son - which I
haven't got, thank god - I would say, where am I to educate him?
What am I to do with him? Make him like the rest of the group?
Like the rest of the community? Taught, memories, accept, obey.
You follow, sir, all the things that are going on. And when you
are faced with that, as many people are now, they are faced with
this problem.
A: Oh, they are, yes, yes. There's no question about that.
K: So we say, look, let's start a school, which we have in
India, which I am going to do in California, at Ojai. We are
going to do that. Let's start a school where we think totally
differently, where we are taught differently. Not just the
routine, routine, routine, to accept, or to deny, react, you
know, the whole thing.
From that arises, sir, another question: why does the mind obey?
I obey the laws of the country, I obey keeping to the left side
of the road, or the right side of the road. I obey what the
doctor tells me - I would be careful what he tells me,
personally I don't go near doctors but I am very careful what
they have to say, I am watchful. I don't accept immediately this
or that. But politically in a so-called democratic world they
won't accept a tyrant.
A: No.
K: They say no authority, freedom. But spiritually, inwardly,
they accept every Tom, Dick and Harry - specially when they come
from India.
A: Oh yes.
K: The other day I turned on the London BBC and there was a man
interviewing a certain group of people. And the boy and the girl
said, "We obey entirely what our guru says." And the interviewer
said, "Will he tell you to marry?" "If he tells me I will marry.
If he tells me I must starve, I will starve". Just a slave. You
understand sir? And yet the very same person will object to
political tyranny.
A: Absurd. Yes.
K: There he will accept the tyranny of a petty little guru, with
his fanciful ideas, and he will reject politically a tyranny or
a dictatorship. So why does the mind divide life into accepting
authority in one way, in one direction, and deny it in another?
And what is the importance of authority? That is, sir, the word
authority, as you know, means the one who originates.
A: The author.
K: And these priests, gurus, leaders, spiritual preachers, what
have they originated? They are repeating tradition, aren't they?
A: Oh, yes, precisely.
K: And tradition, whether it is from the Zen tradition, the
Chinese tradition, or Hindu, is a dead thing. And these people
are perpetuating the dead thing. The other day I saw a man, he
was explaining how to meditate - put your hands here, close your
eyes.
A: Yes, that's the one I saw.
K: And do this, that and the other.
A: Appalling.
K: And people accept it.
A: And on the same thing there was this woman who had run out of
money and every blessed thing, and she had nowhere to go to
sleep and so forth, and hysterically she was saying, "I'm in
line, I've got all these people ahead of me, but I'm must have
this knowledge." The hysteria of it, the desperation of it.
K: That's why, sir, what is behind this acceptance of authority?
You understand? The authority of law, the authority of the
policeman, the authority of the priests, the authority of these
gurus, what is behind the acceptance of authority? Is it fear?
Fear of going wrong spiritually, of not doing the right thing in
order to gain enlightenment, knowledge, and the super
consciousness, whatever it is, is it fear? Or is it a sense of
despair? A sense of utter loneliness, utter ignorance? I am
using the word ignorance in the deeper sense.
A: Yes, yes, I follow.
K: Which makes me say, well, there is a man who says he knows,
I'll accept him. I don't reason. You follow, sir? I don't say,
what do you know? What do you bring to one, give to me, your own
tradition from India? Who cares? You are bringing something
dead, nothing original, nothing real, but repeat, repeat, repeat
what others have done - which in India they themselves are
throwing out.
A: Yes. I was just thinking of Tennyson's lines appropo of this,
although in a different context when he wrote it: "There's not
to reason why, but to do and die".
K: That's what the gurus say. So what is behind this acceptance
of authority?
A: It is interesting that the word authority is radically
related to the self - autos, the self. There is this sensed
gaping void, through the division.
K: Sir, that's just it.
A: Through the division. And that immediately opens up a hunger,
doesn't it? And my projection of my meal, I run madly to.
K: When you see this, you want to cry. You follow sir?
A: Yes.
K: All these young people going to these gurus, shaving their
head, dressing in Indian dress, dancing in the streets.
Fantastic things they are doing. All on a tradition which is
dead. All tradition is dead. You follow? And when you see that
you say, my god, what has happened? So I go back and ask, why do
we accept? Why are we influenced by these people? Why are we
influenced when there is a constant repetition in a commercial,
'buy this, buy this'? It is the same as that. You follow sir?
A: Yes.
K: Why do we accept? The child accepts, I can understand that.
Poor thing, he doesn't know anything, it needs security, it
needs a mother, it needs care, it needs protection, it needs to
sit on your lap and affection, kindness, gentle. It needs that.
Is it they think the guru gives him all this? Through their
words, through their rituals, through their repetition, through
their absurd disciplines. You follow? A sense of acceptance as I
accept my mother when a child, I accept that in order to be
comfortable, in order to feel at last something, somebody is
looking after me.
A: This relates to what you said in a previous conversation, we
looked into fear, the reaction of the infant is a reaction with
no intermediary of any kind, of his own contrivance. He simply
recognizes that he has a need, and this is not an imagined want,
it is a radical need. He needs to feed, he needs to be
affectionately held.
K: Of course, sir.
A: The transition from that to the point where as he gets older
he begins to think about the source of the meeting of that need.
He emerges as the image that is interposed as between the sense
of danger and the immediate action. So if I am understanding you
correctly, there is a deflection here from the radical purity of
act.
K: That's right.
A: And I've done that myself. I have done that myself. It isn't
because of anything I was told that actually coerced me to do
it, even though what you say is true, we are continually
invited, it's a kind of siren like call that comes to us
throughout our entire culture, in all cultures to start that
stuff.
K: You see sir, that's what I want to get at. Why is it that we
accept authority? In a democratic world, politically, we shun
any dictator. But yet religiously they are all dictators. And
why do we accept it? Why do I accept the priest as an
intermediary to something which he says he knows? And so it
shows, sir, we stop reasoning. Politically we reason, we see how
important it is to be free, free speech, everything free, as
much as possible. We never think freedom is necessary here.
Spiritually we don't feel the necessity of freedom. And
therefore we accept it - any Tom, Dick and Harry. It is
horrifying. I've seen intellectuals, professors, scientists,
falling for all this trash. Because they have reasoned in their
scientific world, and they are weary of reasoning, and they say,
at last I can sit back and not reason, be told, be comfortable,
be happy, I'll do all the work for you, you don't have to do
anything, I'll take you over the river. You follow?
A: Oh, yes.
K: And I'm delighted. So we accept where there is ignorance,
where reason doesn't function, where intelligence is in
abeyance, and you need all that: freedom, intelligence,
reasoning, with regard to real spiritual matters. Otherwise
what? Some guru comes along and tells you what to do, and you
repeat what he does. You follow sir how destructive it is?
A: Oh yes.
K: How degenerate it is. That is what is happening. I don't
think these gurus realize what they are doing. They are
encouraging degeneracy.
A: Well they represent a chain of the same.
K: Exactly. So can we - sir, this brings up a very important
question - can there be an education in which there is no
authority whatsoever?
A: I must say, yes, to that in terms of the experience that I
had in class yesterday. It was a tremendous shock to the
students when they suspended their disbelief for a moment, just
to see whether I meant it when I said, now we must do this
together, not your doing what I say to do.
K: You have to walk together.
A: We will do this together.
K: Share it together.
A: Right. You will question, and I will question, we will try to
grasp as we go along - without trying. And I went into the
business, about let's not have this shoddy little thing trying.
That took a little while. That increased the shock because the
students who have been to their own great satisfaction what you
would call devoted, those who do their work, who make effort,
are suddenly finding out that this man has come into the room
and he is giving 'trying' a bad press. This does seem to turn
the thing completely upside down. But they showed courage in the
sense that they gave it a little attention before beginning the
true act of attention. That's why I was using courage there
because it is a preliminary to that. I've quite followed you
when you have raised the question of the relation of courage to
the pure act of attention. It seems to me that is not where it
belongs.
K: No.
A: But they did get it up for this preliminary step. Then we ran
into this what I think I called in an earlier conversation,
dropping a stitch - where they really saw this abyss, they were
alert enough to stand over the precipice. And that caused them
to freeze. And it's that moment that seems to me absolutely
decisive. It is almost like one sees in terms of events,
objective events. I remember reading the Spanish philosopher,
Ortega who spoke of events that trembled back and forth before
the thing actually tumbles into itself. That was happening in
the room. It was like water that moved up to the lip of the cup
and couldn't quite spill over. I have spoken about this at some
length because I wanted to describe to you a real situation,
what was actually happening.
K: I was going to say, sir, I have been connected with many
school, for forty years, and more, and when one talks to the
students about freedom and authority and acceptance, they are
completely lost.
A: Yes.
K: They want to be slaves. My father says this, I must do this.
Or, my father says, I won't do that. It is the same.
A: Exactly. Do you think in our next conversation we could look
at that moment of hesitation?
K: Yes, sir.
A: It seems to me so terribly critical for education itself.
Wonderful.
16th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
27th February 1974
Religion and Authority - 2
A: Mr Krishnamurti in our series of conversations we have
reached, it seems to me, an especially critical place. In our
last discussion together we touched on the question of
authority, not only in relation to what is out there, that we
project, and what is out there that faces us, literally, but
also the question at the deeper level of my relationship within
that. And a point where in the enquiry, in going deeply into
myself, in self examination, there is a point of boggling, when
one boggles, one is hesitant, and trembles, there is a real fear
and trembling that occurs at the birth of that enquiry. And I
think you, at the conclusion of our former conversation, were
moving toward a discussion of that in terms of its role in the
religious life.
K: That's right.
A: Yes.
K: Sir, why do we hesitate? That's what it comes to, what you
are saying. Why do we not take the plunge? That's what you are
asking?
A: That's what I'm asking, yes.
K: Why is it always coming to the brink and withdrawing, running
away? Why don't we see the thing as is and act? Is it, sir, part
of our education, that has cultivated function, enormous
function, we give tremendous importance to function - as an
engineer, as a professor as a doctor, and so on so on -
functioning in a particular technique. And we have never
cultivated, or encouraged or enquired into what is intelligence.
Where there is intelligence there won't be this hesitation.
There is action. When one is very sensitive, you act. That
sensitivity is intelligence. Now, in education, as I have
observed it both here and in India and other parts of the world,
education is merely training the mind to function to the
dictates of society. So many engineers are wanted, so many
doctors are wanted. If you get into a profession where there are
few you might make more money.
A: You have to watch out for the glut.
K: Glut, yes. Don't become a scientist, there are enough
scientists, or whatever it is.
A: Oh dear, dear, yes.
K: So we are encouraged and trained to function in the field of
activity as functions, careers. Now we hesitate to enter or
plunge into something that demands all your attention, not
fragmentary, all your attention because we don't know the
measure. We know how to measure function. Here we have no
measure. Therefore I depend. Therefore I won't reason here
because I don't know how to reason. I don't say to a man who
says 'I know,' what? I say, 'What do you know? You only know
something that's gone, finished, dead. You can't say I know
something that's living. And so gradually, as I see it, the mind
becomes dull, restless. Its curiosity is only in the direction
of functioning. And it has no capacity to enquire. To enquire
you must have freedom first. I can't enquire otherwise. If I
come to enquire to something which I have to enquire about, if I
have prejudices I can't enquire. If I have conclusions about
that I can't enquire. Therefore there must be freedom to
enquire. And that is denied, because I've laid, society and
culture laid tremendous importance on function. And function has
its own status.
A: Oh, yes, yes. It's exalted ultimately into process.
K: Yes. Into a status.
A: Right.
K: So status matters much more than function.
A: Yes.
K: And so I live in that field, live in that structure and if I
want to enquire into religion, what is religion, what is God,
what is immortality, what is beauty - I can't do it. I depend on
an authority. And I have no basis for reasoning - you follow,
sir - in this vast field of religion. So it is partly the fault
of our education, partly our incapacity to look at anything
objectively. Our incapacity to look at a tree without all the
rigmarole, knowledge, screen, blocks, that prevents me from
looking at the tree. I never look at my wife, if I have a wife,
or a girl, or whatever, I never look. I look at her or him
through the image I have about her, or him. So the image is the
dead, dead thing. So I never look at a living thing. I never
look at nature, with all the marvel of it, the beauty of it, the
shape, the loveliness of it. But I am always translating it,
trying to paint it, write about it or enjoy it, or - you follow?
A: Yes.
K: So from that arises the question, why do I, why do human
beings accept authority? Obey? Is it because they have been
trained in the field of function where you must obey to learn,
you follow, you can't do anything else.
A: Oh yes. No, it has its own laws built in.
K: Laws. It has its own disciplines. It has its own laws, its
own ways. Because I have been trained that way I bring that over
here into the field of religion, into the field of something
that demands freedom. Freedom not at the end, right from the
beginning. The mind must be free from authority, from the
beginning. If I want to find out what is God, not I believe in
God, that has no meaning, if there is God, if there is no God, I
really want to find out. I am terribly serious. And if I am
really serious, I am really concerned to the understanding,
learning about God, if there is God, I must push aside
completely all the beliefs, all the structure, all the churches,
all the priests, all the books, all the things that thought has
put together about religion. You follow?
A: Yes, I do. I've been thinking very hard about your word
'intelligence' and the word 'truth' in relation to what you have
been saying. And the passage from the gospel came to my mind
which would end up, I think. with a very different exegesis in
terms of what you've been saying, if one applied what you've
been pointing to, to this text. "When he, the spirit of truth is
come he will guide you into all truth and the truth shall make
you free." The truth is called a spirit here. And in the very
same St.John's gospel, God is also called spirit. a radical act,
not this spirit over there, out there somewhere that I have
projected. If one takes seriously, the terrible thing is that it
hasn't been taken seriously.
K: Because we are not allowed to be serious, sir.
A: We can't even be serious about the thing that is claimed we
must be the most serious about.
K: Serious about. That's just it.
A: Yes, I know. I know what you mean.
K: And, look, we are not serious about our children. We don't
feel responsible for them, right through life. Only till they
are four, five, six, we are responsible, you know. After that
they can do what they want. So freedom and authority cannot
possibly exist. Freedom and intelligence go together. And
intelligence has its own innate, natural, easy discipline,
discipline in the sense of, not of suppression, control,
imitation and all that, but discipline which is the act of
learning all the time.
A: In attention.
K: Yes, in attention.
A: In attention. This intelligence that you speak of is
associated with splendour, isn't it?
K: Yes.
A: Its advent is immediate, not gradual.
K: No, of course not. The perception is intelligence.
A: The perception is intelligence.
K: And therefore acting.
A: And perception is the act.
K: Of course.
A: So the act, intelligence, beauty...
K: All these.
A: ...love, truth, freedom...
K: Death, all those are one.
A: ...order, they form a complete, total, integral movement in
act.
K: That's right.
A: That in itself looked at positively is even, once it's
translated into a concept...
K: Oh, there is no longer that.
A: ...becomes in itself an occasion for terror again.
K: Of course.
A: Because it seems that it runs away too fast from you.
K: Yes.
A: As soon as you say, yes I see. Isn't that marvelous. It's as
though these that you've mentioned, beauty, intelligence, love,
freedom...
K: ...and death.
A: ...have so to speak, secured themselves against all
tom-foolery.
K: Absolutely. Quite right.
A: They are so radically pure, any foolery.
K: So, sir, that means can the mind put aside totally all the
structure of thought with regard to religion? It can't put away
the function of thought in the field of knowledge. That we have
understood. That's very clear. But here there is something, I
don't know, we don't know - you follow, sir. We pretend we know.
When a man says, Jesus is Saviour or whatever, it is a
pretension. It is saying, "I know and you don't know." What do
you know, in the name of heaven, you know nothing, you just
repeat what you have learned from somebody else. So can the
mind, in the field of religion, because religion is, as we said
at the beginning, the gathering of all energy in that quality of
attention. And it is that quality of attention that regenerates
man, that brings about real transformation in man with regard to
his conduct, his behaviour, his whole way of relationship,
religion is that factor. Not all of this foolery that is going
on. Now, to enquire, the mind must put aside all the structure
of thought built around that word. You follow, sir?
A: Yes I do.
K: Can one do it? If not, we are pretending, talking about god,
no god, yes a god. You follow? All that nonsense that is going
on. So that is the first question. Can the mind be free of the
authority of another, however great, however sublime, however
divine or no divine, you follow?
A: And because an act is required in order to answer this
question...
K: Absolutely.
A: ...the individual must do this on his own.
K: Otherwise he merely lives in a routine of function, which he
has, which he is still doing and therefore he escapes into all
these circuses which he calls religion.
A: This came home to me with great dramatic force yesterday in
class. On the one hand we have textbooks; textbooks which have
survived the centuries because of their classical value in that
sense. And the usual way in which this material is taught, is
that one learns, let us say something about the Chinese vision
of life. Then we have the Hindu vision of life and so we
accumulate over a long period of time through school, clear
through graduate school, if you hang in there long enough, if
you can stand it, you come into possession of...
K: ...what other people have said.
A: ...what other people have said.
K: But you know nothing about it.
A: Exactly. You acquire certain skills in the order of function,
as you have mentioned. Now the teacher has a problem. I am
thinking of these schools that you have referred to in India and
the one that will be in Ojai. There is a body of material here,
clearly the teacher must be in possession of knowledge in the
order of functional operation, procedural techniques and so
forth. He simply has to know. The child is going to read books.
K: Of course.
A: In these schools that you mentioned he is going...
K: Oh they do, they do.
A: ...to read. They read books. Books. And all of them haven't
been written necessarily by somebody who is undertaking to do
the thing that goes on between the students and the teachers in
these schools. Now the teacher must handle this written material
in books in a way to indicate to the child, the younger student,
the older student that it is possible to read this material
without being self divided in doing it.
K: And also what would you do if there was no book?
A: You'd be in the same position.
K: No, if there was no book, nobody saying tradition, you have
to find out for yourself.
A: But that's what we are asking him to do with his book, aren't
we?
K: Are we?
A: No, no. Not in general. But in this new approach.
K: Of course, of course.
A: In this new approach we must somehow...
K: ...bring the book and the other.
A: ...bring the book and the other to freedom.
K: ...and the freedom. Book and freedom.
A: Yes. This is what hit me with such a shock yesterday in
class. And I immediately felt radically responsible for doing
this, in so far as I could. And I was surprised to see that
though the students were extremely hesitant, there was a lot of
anxiety there, real fear and trembling. What of health they
possessed did assert itself and there was tremendous interest in
the possibility. But then there was the hesitation that somehow
wasn't passed.
K: Passed, quite.
A: The hesitation is there. I have this feeling that this has
happened through the centuries with persons who have seriously
studied scripture - since we were talking about religion.
Sometimes you can detect it in their very commentaries, in their
very writing. They come right up to it...
K: And miss it.
A: ...and then they can't...
K: ...make it.
A: ...push it over. They can't go...
K: I understand.
A: ...beyond the point.
K: Yes, sir. It has been my fortune or misfortune to talk a
great deal. And everybody comes to that point. They say, please
what am I to, I've reached that point I can't go beyond it. Sir,
look at it this way, if I may suggest. If I had a class, I
wouldn't talk about the book first. I'd say freedom. You're
secondhand people. Don't pretend you're not. You're secondhand,
sloppy, shoddy people. And you are trying to find something that
is original - god is, the reality is original. It's not coloured
by all the priests in the world. It's original. Therefore you
must have an original mind. Which means a free mind. Not
original in painting a new picture, or a new this, that's all
tommy rot. But a free mind. A free mind that can function in the
field of knowledge, and a free mind that can look, observe,
learn. Now, how do you help another, or is it not possible, to
be free? You understand? Look, I never belonged to anything. I
have no church, or no belief, all that. A man who really wants
to find out if there is eternal, the nameless, something beyond
all thought, he must naturally set aside everything based on
thought: the saviour, the masters, the gurus, the knowledge, all
that. Are there people to do that? You follow? Will anybody
undertake that journey? Or will they say, you tell me all about
it, old boy. I'll sit comfortably, and then you tell me.
A: Yes, yes that's what goes on.
K: I say, I won't describe that. I won't tell you a thing about
it. That to put it into words is to destroy it. So, let us see
if you cannot be free. What are you frightened about? Frightened
of authority? Frightened of going wrong? But you are completely
wrong the way you live, completely stupid the way you are
carrying on, it has no meaning. You follow, sir? Deny the
spiritual authority of every kind. What are you frightened of?
Going wrong spiritually? They are wrong. Not you are wrong
because you are just learning. They are the established in
unrighteousness.
A: That's beautiful. Yes.
K: And so, why do you follow them? Why do you accept them? They
are degenerate. And can you be free from all that, so that your
mind through meditation, which we will discuss, perhaps another
time, what it means to be free, what it means to wipe away all
the things that people have put on you. You understand? So that
you are innocent. Your mind is never hurt, is incapable of being
hurt. That is what innocence means. And from that enquire, let's
take a journey from there. You follow, sir? From this sense of
negation, of everything that thought has put together. Because
thought is time, thought is matter. And if you are living in the
field of thought, there will be never freedom. You are living in
the past. You may think you are living in the present, but
actually you are living in the past when thought is in
operation, because thought is memory, response of memory,
knowledge, experience stored up in the brain. And that
knowledge, experience is the expression of thought. Unless you
understand that and know the limitation of thought you can't
enter into the field of that which you call religion. You
follow, sir? Unless this is told, repeated, shown to them, they
can talk endlessly about books. This comes first. Then you can
read the books.
A: Yes.
K: Sir, the Buddha never read a book. He listened, watched,
looked, observed, fasted; said, all that's rubbish, and threw it
out.
A: I just thought of something you said, one must keep on
repeating this again.
K: In different ways.
A: In different ways, and again. I'm speaking now about
teaching. This point of hesitation is the point where something
will or will not get born.
K: That's right.
A: That beautiful expression in earlier conversation about it
that you used, incarnate now.
K: Now, yes.
A: So we're on the brink. We're, in the words of Ortega I
mentioned earlier, rocking back and forth on the brink of a new
event. And we're not over the line. There is nothing that any of
us can do at that point with respect to the terror of the one
who hears this, including my own, I'm not dividing myself from
this doing together with the student, since I'm a student in
this activity. So here we are, student among students. And there
is this boggling, this fear and trembling, and nothing can be
done other than simply encourage.
K: And tell them, wait, stay there.
A: Hold.
K: Hold. It doesn't matter if you wobble, but keep on wobbling.
A: Don't bolt.
K: Don't run away.
A: And so this is said in different ways over and over again.
Now I understand what you meant by saying, now let's start the
class ten minutes...
K: ...with this.
A: ...with this. We don't open the book.
K: That's right, sir.
A: We don't open the book, we start with this. And then when the
book is opened perhaps the word, for a change, will disclose
itself.
K: That's right.
A: Because intelligence has broken out.
K: That's right.
A: And behold it's all splendid. Yes, yes, yes I, please, I
didn't mean to interrupt you. I just wanted to make sure that I
have - it's terribly important that I understand this.
K: Because, you see, sir, students rush from one class to the
other, because the period is short, run, from mathematics to
geography, from geography to history, chemistry, biology, run,
run. And if I was one of the professors, teachers I would say,
"Look, sit down. Be quiet for five minutes. Be quiet. Look out
of the window if you want to. See the beauty of light on water
or the leaf and look at this and that, but be quiet."
A: We teach in classes that don't have windows now.
K: Of course, naturally.
A: Yes, I was just being facetious.
K: Of course, sir.
A: But not only facetious. It's a horror.
K: Horror. You are trained to be functional. You follow, sir?
A: I know.
K: Don't look at anything else but be monkeys. And my child is
brought up that way.
A: Yes.
K: It is appalling.
A: The classroom is a tomb. Yes.
K: So, I say, 'sit quietly.' Then after sitting quietly I talk
about this first. I have done this in schools. Talk about this,
freedom, authority, beauty, love, you know, all that we have
been discussing. Then pick up your book. But you have learned
much more here than in the book.
A: Oh, yes. Oh, sure.
K: Therefore the book shows what you're - you follow?
A: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. The book is seen...
K: Book becomes a secondhand thing.
A: Yes. It's seen with a clean eye.
K: That's why, sir, I personally have never read a single book
of all this, neither the Gita, the Upanishads, all that, what
the Buddha has said. It somehow bored me. It meant nothing to
me. What has meant anything was to observe: observe the very
poor in India; observe the rich, the dictators, the Mussolinis,
the Hitlers, the Krushchevs, Brezhnevs, all that. I have watched
them, and the politician. And you learn an awful lot. Because
the real book is you. Do you understand, sir? If you can read
your book which is yourself you have learned everything, except
the functional knowledge. So when there is self knowing,
authority has no meaning. I won't accept. Why should I accept
these people who bring truth from India? That's not truth they
are bringing. They are bringing a tradition, what they believe.
So, can the mind put away everything that man has taught or
invented, imagined about religion, God, this and that? That
means, can this mind, which is the mind of the world, which is
the mind of common consciousness, can that consciousness empty
itself of all the things that man has said about reality?
Otherwise I can't - you follow, sir?
A: Can't begin.
K: Not only begin, what do I discover? What other people have
said? What Buddha, Christ, why should I accept that?
A: Well, the terrible thing is, I'm not in a position to grasp
whatever they said that was worthwhile until this occurs.
K: So freedom, sir, is an absolute necessity.
A: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
K: But none of them say this. On the contrary they say, freedom
will come to you much later. Be in the prison for the rest of
your life. When you die you'll have freedom. That's what they
are preaching, essentially. So, can the mind, the heart, and all
the storehouse in the brain be free of the things that man has
said about reality? Sir, that's a marvellous question. You
understand, sir?
A: Oh I do, I do. One of the things that seems to me of
remarkable cogency in our discussions, in our conversations, has
been how continually you have returned to a question.
K: Yes.
A: Return to the question. And the notion of return in its
depth, has it seems, if I've followed you correctly, been quite
erroneously presented. The return has been presented as a
movement to an answer.
K: Quite, quite.
A: But that is not a return.
K: No, of course, not.
A: No. Because the turn is toward that original that you
mentioned. Therefore it is to the question, not to the answer at
all.
K: Quite, quite. Quite right, sir. You know I was staying once
in Kashmir right among the hills, mountains. And a group of
monks came to see me, freshly bathed and everything, done all
the ceremony, and all that. They had come to see me. And they
told me, they said they had just come from a group of unworldly
people, super monks, who were very high up in the mountains. And
they said they were totally unworldly. I said, "What do you mean
by that word, sirs?" They said, "They had just left the world.
They are no longer tempted by the world. They have this great
knowledge of the world." And, I said, "When they have left the
world, have they left the memory of the world?" The memory, the
knowledge which the world has made. You follow? Which the gurus
have put together to teach us. He said, "That's wisdom. How can
you leave wisdom?" I said, "You mean wisdom is bought through a
book, a teacher, from another, through sacrifice, torture,
renunciation?" You follow, sir, their idea. That is, wisdom is
something you can buy from somebody else.
A: They went up the mountain with all this baggage.
K: Baggage, that's right. That's exactly what I said. All the
baggage which you have put away, the world, but they carry their
baggage. You follow, sir?
A: Oh goodness me.
K: So that is really an important thing if a mind is really very
serious to find out what religion means. Not all this rubbish. I
keep on repeating because seems to be mounting, you know
growing. But to free the mind from all the growth, accretions,
and therefore which means see the accretions, see all the
absurdities.
A: This throws a very, very different cast on our word worldly.
K: Yes, That's just it.
A: They are going up the mountain in order to leave the world.
But they are taking immense pains to take it with them.
K: That's right, sir. That's what they are doing when they go
into the monastery.
A: Of course, of course, of course. Goodness. Accretions,
incrustations.
K: So now, come back: can the mind be completely alone? Not
isolated, not withdrawn, not build a wall around itself, say,
and then I'm alone. But alone in the sense, that aloneness that
comes when you put away all this, all the things of thought. You
understand, sir? Because thought is so clever, cunning. It can
build a marvellous structure and call that reality. But thought
is the response of the past, so it is of time. Thought being of
time, it cannot create something which has no time. Thought can
function in that field of knowledge. It is necessary, but not in
the other. And this doesn't need bravery. It doesn't need
sacrifice. It doesn't need torture. Just perception of the
false. To see the false is to see the truth in the false.
A: To see the false is to see the truth in the false.
K: Of course.
A: I must repeat that again. To see the false is to see the
truth in the false.
K: And see what is considered truth as the false.
A: Yes, yes.
K: So my eyes are stripped of all the false, so that there is no
inward deception whatsoever, because there is no desire to see
something, to achieve something. Because the moment there is a
desire to experience, to achieve, to arrive at enlightenment all
that, there is going to be illusion, something desire has
created. Therefore the mind must be free of this pursuit of
desire and its fulfillment, which we discussed previously.
Understand what the structure of desire is. We talked a great
deal about that. So it comes to this point, can the mind be free
and free of all the things which are born of fear, and desire
and pleasure? That means one has to understand oneself at great
depth.
A: The thing that keeps popping up is that one can repeat those
questions...
K: Yes, sir.
A: ...and start to think that he has grasped them.
K: You grasp the words.
A: Exactly. There is something you have to come out the other
side of.
K: Quite right.
A: But the repetition of the question does have a functional
value.
K: I know.
A: It seems to me.
K: Yes, sir, it does. That is if the person is willing to
listen.
A: If he is willing to listen, because thought is incredibly
deceitful.
K: Very.
A: As you have pointed out. Goodness. I was just thinking of
poor old Jeremiah's words: the heart is desperately wicked and
deceitful above all things. Surely he must have...
K: ...tasted something.
A: Yes, and of course. But I was asking myself this question
concerning why I went on to continue my formal education. And in
following this deeply, it seems to me to go back to something
that is going to sound very absurd, but it has something to do
with everything you've said, you've been talking about. When I
was very small, growing up in England, I was put to school
rather earlier than many American children were put to school,
and I always read a great deal of poetry. I don't know what has
happened to us in this country, but poetry doesn't really exist
for the populace at all.
K: No, sir, I know.
A: But, thank God, I was brought up on it daily.
K: Yes, in England of course everybody reads poetry, Latin, you
know.
A: And I was always read poetry by the young woman employed by
my parents to look after me and my little sister. I never went
to sleep without hearing it. One day when I was very small, at
school, the teacher read "The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea
in a beautiful pea green boat", that mad thing, marvelously mad
thing, Edward Lear wrote.
K: Edward Lear.
A: Yes, and you know I was never the same again. And I know now
why, it sounds absolutely absurd, I came to experience in
language a splendour that I never lost touch with, despite all
the struggles I had with my teachers, I had a bad time in school
to get to the end of formal education, I have to say that, I had
a pretty grim time. And one of the reasons for the grim time was
my refusal to give this up, this...
K: Quite, the Pussy Cat in the boat.
A: The fact that there's a bird and a cat in the same boat. And
the man is describing what you called act, movement in which
truth and beauty and so on move along. Oh, goodness.
K: Sir, I think we ought to, after coming to this point, we
ought to go very deeply again into the question of meditation.
A: Yes.
K: Because religion, in the sense we are talking about, and
meditation go together. That means religion isn't just an idea
but is actual conduct in daily life. Your thoughts, your speech,
your behaviour is the very essence of religion. You understand,
sir? If that doesn't exist religion can't exist.
A: Exactly.
K: It's just words, you go around spinning a lot of words, go to
various circus tents. But that's not religion. So after
establishing that deeply in oneself, and the understanding of
religion, inward, then the next thing is: what is meditation?
That is of tremendous importance, because meditation is
something, that is really, if it is understood properly, is the
most extraordinary thing that man can have. Meditation is not
divorced from daily life.
A: What was running through my mind was, not mistaken, that the
root relation to the word 'medeo'.
K: 'Medeo' is to think, to ponder, to go into.
A: In Homer, it actually carries the idea to provide for in the
sense of to care for. It is very beautiful. It brings up the
question that you raised earlier of true care.
K: Yes, sir.
A: That one is not meditating unless he is...
K: ...careful.
A: ...careful and caring.
K: Caring rather than careful.
A: Yes. It's all there in the word, but we don't look, won't
have a look. Yes, yes please go on please.
K: You see when we have divorced conduct from religion, which we
have, divorced relationship from religion, which we have,
divorced death from religion, which we have, divorced love from
religion, when we have made love into something sensuous,
something that is pleasurable, then religion, which is the
factor of regeneration, disappears in man. And that's why we are
so degenerate. And unless you have this quality of a mind that
is really religious, degeneracy is inevitable. You follow, sir?
Look at the politicians who are supposed to be the rulers, the
guides, the helpers of the people: they are degenerate. You see
what is happening in this country and everywhere. They are so
corrupt. And they want to bring order. They are so irreligious.
They may go to church, Baptists or whatever they are, and yet
they are really irreligious, because they don't behave. And so
man is becoming more and more degenerate. You can see it, sir.
Because religion is the factor that brings a new quality of
energy. It is the same old energy but it has become a new
quality. So the brain doesn't regenerate. As we get older we
tend to degenerate. But it doesn't because it is the freedom
from every kind of security of the me has no place.
A: I noticed this in class yesterday with this business about
energy that you are just talking about. There was a
quickening...
K: Yes, sir.
A: ...that took place. There was at the end of the class, and it
was strenuous, because of this terrible hesitation. But even so
there was a release of energy which has nothing to do with
entertainment at all, people running to get their minds off
themselves, as they say, which, of course, is nonsense. They are
just grinding themselves into themselves some more with it. But
in this particular case there was empirical demonstration of
what you are saying. Something that is out there. It's to be
seen. It's observable.
K: That's right, sir.
A: And behold it sprung up like a green bay tree. Yes, please,
please go on.
K: You see, sir, that's why the priests throughout the world
have made religion into something profitable, both the
worshipper and the intermediary. It has become a business
affair, intellectually business, or it has become really
commercial, not only physically but inwardly, deeply: do this
and you will reach that.
A: Utilitarian to the core.
K: Which is commercial.
A: Yes.
K: And so, unless this is put an end to we are going to
degenerate more and more and more. And that's why I feel so
immensely responsible, personally. Tremendously responsible to
the audience that I talk to, when I talk, when I go to the
various schools in India, I feel I am responsible for those
children. You follow, sir?
A: Yes, of course. I do. I certainly do.
K: I say, "For god's sake, be different. Don't grow up like
that. Look." I go into it very, very, you know, talk a great
deal. And they begin to see. But the world is too strong for
them. They have to earn a livelihood. They have to resist their
parents who want them to settle down and have a good job, and
marry, a house. You know, all that business.
A: Well, surely.
K: And the public opinion, and overpopulation, is much too
strong.
A: The tremendous weight of that tradition of the four stages of
life.
K: Yes.
A: Of course.
K: So I say, let us find out if a few elite - quote the word
elite, if I may use that word without any snobbery - let's
create a few, who really are concerned, a few teachers, few
students. Even that becomes very difficult because most teachers
are not good at this or that and therefore become teachers.
A: Yes. Oh dear, dear, dear, yes.
K: So everything, sir, is against you. Everything. The gurus are
against you. The priests are against you. Business people, the
teachers, the politicians, everybody is against you. Take that
for granted. They won't help you an inch. They want you to go
their way. They've got their vested interest and all that.
A: Yes, I do see that. I do see that with clarity. In our next
conversation do you think we could explore the activity of
meditation within the context of all this horror...
K: Oh yes, sir, we will.
A: ...that we have described. Oh that's wonderful, yes.
17th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
28th February 1974
Meditation - 1
A: Mr Krishnamurti, in our last conversation we came almost up
to the point where we were about to begin another, on the
subject of meditation. And I was hoping that today we could
share that together.
K: Right, sir. Sir, I don't know if you are aware of the many
schools of meditation - in India, in Japan, in China, the Zen,
and the various Christian contemplative orders, those who pray
endlessly, keep going day after day; and those who wait to
receive the grace of God - or whatever they call it. I think, if
I may suggest, we should begin, not with what is the right kind
of meditation, but what is meditation.
A: Yes. Yes.
K: Then we can proceed and investigate together, and therefore
share together this question of what is meditation, the word
means ponder, hold together, embrace, consider very, very
deeply. The meaning of all that is involved in that one word
meditation. If we could start with saying that we really do not
know what meditation is.
A: Very well.
K: If we accept the orthodox, traditional Christian or Hindu or
Buddhist meditation, and there is, of course, the meditation
among the Muslims as the Sufis. If we accept that then it's all
based on tradition.
A: Yes.
K: What some others have experienced. And they lay down the
method or the system to practise what they have achieved. And so
there are probably thousands of schools of meditation. And they
are proliferating in this country: meditate three times a day;
think on a word, a slogan, a mantra. And for that you pay $35 or
$100 and then you get some Sanskrit word or some other Greek
word and you repeat, repeat, repeat. Then there are all those
people who practise various forms of breathing. And the practise
of Zen. And all that is a form of establishing a routine and a
practice that will essentially make the mind dull. Because if
you practise, practise, practise, you will become a mechanical
mind. So, I have never done any of those things because
personally, if I may talk a little about myself...
A: Please do.
K: ...I have watched, attended, went into certain groups of
various types, just to look. And I said, "This isn't it." I
discarded it instantly. So if we could discard all that: discard
the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Christian, and the various
importations of meditation by the gurus from India, and the
contemplative, all that as a continuance of a tradition, which
is the carrying over of what others have said, and other's
experiences, other's illuminations, other's enlightenment, and
so on. If we could totally discard all of that, their methods,
their systems, their practices, their disciplines. Because they
are all saying, truth, or God, or whatever they like to call it,
is something over there. You practise in order to get there.
That is a fixed thing - according to them. Of course, it must be
fixed. If I keep practising in order to get there, that must be
static.
A: Yes, of course.
K: Therefore truth isn't static. It isn't a dead thing.
A: No, no, I quite see that.
K: So, if we could honestly put away all that and ask what is
meditation.
A: Good.
K: Not how to meditate. In asking that question, what is
meditation, we'll begin to find out, we'll begin to meditate
ourselves. I don't know if I-?
A: Yes, you do. You make yourself very clear. We're back again
to, to the distinction between an activity, the goal of which
lies outside the activity, in contrast to the activity...
K: ...itself.
A: ...the end of which is intrinsic to itself.
K: Yes, sir.
A: Yes.
K: So, could we start with saying I do not know what meditation
is?
A: Yes, yes. I'm willing to start there.
K: It's really marvelous if you start from there.
A: It certainly is.
K: It brings a great sense of humility.
A: Also one intuits even from afar a freedom.
K: Yes. Yes that's right. I don't know. That is a tremendous
acknowledgment of a freedom from the established known, the
established traditions, the established methods, the established
schools and practices.
A: Exactly.
K: I start with something I don't know. That has, for me that
has great beauty. Then I am free to move.
A: Exactly.
K: I'm free to flow, or swim with, in the enquiry. So, I don't
know. Now then, from that we can start. First of all, is
meditation divorced from daily living? The daily conduct, the
daily desires of fulfillment, ambition, greed, envy, the daily
competitive, imitative, conforming spirit, the daily appetites,
sensual, sexual, other forms, intellectual and so on. Is
meditation divorced from all that? Or does meditation flow
through all that, covers all that, includes all that? Otherwise
meditation has no meaning. You follow?
A: Yes, I do. This raises an interesting question I'd like to
ask you. Perhaps you'd be good enough to help me clarify this.
Now, I've never personally undertaken meditation with respect to
its ritual character in some traditions or its...
K: ...monastic.
A: ...its monastic and radically methodical approach. I've read
rather deeply in the literatures that have emanated from those
practices. And I'm thinking for instance of what I've understood
from my study of, what is called the hesychast tradition, where,
what is called the Jesus prayer is uttered by the monks,
particularly on Mount Athos, "Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy
upon me a sinner." This is repeated over and over with, as I
understand it, the hope that someday it will become so automatic
that, perhaps as a modern day depth psychologist would put it,
the unconscious comes into possession of it, so that what I am
doing, whatever that may be, is itself focused entirely on that
prayer. The claim being that when this is achieved, when I no
longer have to utter the prayer, in that sense, the prayer is
uttering itself in me.
K: The same thing, sir, is expressed in India in a different
way, which is mantra. You know that?
A: Yes.
K: Repetition of a sentence or a word. And the repeating loudly
first, then silently. Then it has entered into your being and
the very sound of it is going on.
A: Yes.
K: And from that sound you act, you live. But it's all
self-imposed in order to arrive at a certain point. I, say for
instance when you said the prayer which you just now repeated,
sin - I don't accept sin. I don't know what sin is.
A: I can just imagine the horror on the faces of those whose
ears catch those words.
K: That means they are conditioned accessing to a belief, that
there is a Jesus, that there is a sin, that they must be
forgiving - all that. It just carrying on a tradition.
A: This speaks to me very personally. The basis for the decision
that I made years ago not to do one of these things was embodied
in your statement a little earlier, namely that it is expected
that out of this word, or out of these words...
K: ...out of breathing, all that.
A: ...will come somehow this permeation of my total being. And
the question that arose for me at the time was, and I'd like you
to clarify whether you think this question was correct, what
arose in my mind was, that statement itself whether the mantram
or the Jesus prayer is itself a finite expression.
K: Absolutely.
A: Therefore, aren't I doing something strange here.
K: Yes.
A: And if I somehow attain to anything that's worth attaining to
it would probably be in spite of that rather than because of it.
That perhaps was thinking about thought. But I didn't feel it at
the time. I thought that I was making an intuitive response to
it.
K: Quite.
A: And therefore I simply wouldn't go ahead.
K: You wouldn't go ahead.
A: Yes. Please go on.
K: Quite, quite right sir. So you see, all that implies that
there is a path to truth - the Christian path, the Hindu path,
the Zen, the various gurus and systems, there is a path to that
enlightenment or to that truth or to that immeasurable something
or other. And it is there, all you have to do is keep on, keep
on walking, walking, walking toward a saint. That means that
thing is established, fixed, static, is not moving, is not
living.
A: It flashed into my mind the Biblical text in which God is
described as the lamp unto my feet, and the light unto my path.
It doesn't say he is the path. But rather he's the lamp...
K: ...to the path, quite.
A: Right. As a lamp to the feet, and a light to the path. But it
doesn't say that God is the path. That's very interesting.
K: Very.
A: But maybe nobody really looks at those words closely enough.
K: You see, sir, how you are looking at it already. You see the
truth of that statement. The feeling of it.
A: Yes, yes.
K: So, that's one thing. Does meditation cover the whole field
of existence? Or is it something totally apart from life? Like
being in business, politics, sex, pleasure, ambition, greed,
envy, the anxiety, death, fear, all that is my life, life,
living. Is meditation apart from that or does it embrace all
that? If it doesn't embrace all that meditation has no meaning.
A: Something just came to me that I'm sure would be regarded as
incredibly heretical. But you know that the words of Jesus
himself, "I am the way, the truth, and the life", when
understood in the context of what has been revealed through
these discussions we've had, takes on, in relation to something
else he said an incredibly different meaning from what we've
been taught. For instance, when he asks Peter who he is, that
is, "Who am I, Jesus?", and Peter says, "Thou art the Christ,
the son of the living God", he immediately turns to him and
says, "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you." Nothing to
do with flesh and blood, "But my father which is in heaven",
which he says elsewhere, is one with him. And he's one with the
father. And then he prays in his prayer that the disciples be
one with him as he and his father are one. That they all may be
one. So if you look at that, I'm almost stuttering over myself
because this, what I'm about to say, I'm aware of, theologically
speaking would be, looked on as fantastical, when he says, "I am
the way, the truth and the life", if it's seen in the context of
that one as act, as act, then the whole business utterly is
transformed. Isn't it?
K: Quite, quite.
A: I'm going to be swallowing hard about that for a long time.
Please go on.
K: So if it is divorced from life then meditation has no
meaning. It's just an escape from life, escape from all our
travails and miseries, sorrows, confusions. And therefore it's
not worth even touching.
A: Yes. Right.
K: If it is not, and it is not for me, then what is meditation?
You follow? Is it an achievement, an attainment of a goal? Or is
it a perfume, a beauty that pervades all my activities,
therefore it has tremendous significance? Meditation has
tremendous significance.
Then the next question is: is it the result of a search? Joining
Zen group, then another group, one after the after, one after
the other, practise this, practise that, don't practise, take a
vow of celibacy, poverty, or don't speak at all, fast, in order
to get there. For me all those are totally unnecessary. Because
what is important is the seeing, as we said yesterday, the
false, not I judge the false as true or false, but the very
perception reveals the truth or the falseness of it. I must look
at it. My eyes must look at it without any prejudices, without
any reactions. Then I can say this is false, I won't touch it.
That's what happens. I won't. People have come to me and said,
"Oh, you have no idea of all the things", they have said "You
must", I have said, "Nothing doing." To me this is false because
it doesn't include your life.
A: Yes.
K: You haven't changed. You may say, "I'm full of love. I'm full
of truth. I'm full of knowledge. I'm full of wisdom." I say,
"That's all nonsense. Do you behave? Are you free of fear? Are
you free of ambition, greed, envy and the desire to achieve
success in every field? If not, you are just playing a game. You
are not serious." So, from that we can proceed.
A: Yes.
K: That meditation includes the whole field of existence,
whether in the artistic field, or the business field. Because,
to me, the division as the artist, business, the politician, the
priest, the scholar, and the scientist, you know, how we have
fragmented all these as careers, to me, as human beings are
fragmented, the expression of this fragmentation is this,
business, scientist, the scholar, the artist. You follow?
A: Yes, yes, yes. I'm thinking of what goes on in the academy
with respect to this. We are always saying to each other as
academicians, "For heaven's sake let's, let's find an ordering
principle by which to bring all this into some kind of
integration, so the student can really feel that he's doing
something meaningful. And not just adding another freight car to
the long train of what he hasn't even seen."
K: Quite, quite.
A: Yes.
K: And meditation must be, or is, when you deny all this -
systems, methods, gurus, authorities - a religious question.
A: Yes, profoundly religious.
K: Profoundly religious.
A: Oh, yes.
K: Now, what place has an artist in not only the social
structure, in its expression of the religious? You understand?
What is an artist, sir? Is he something apart from our daily
living? The beauty of living. The quality of the mind that is
really religious. You follow? Is he part of that? Or is he a
freak, outside that? Because he has certain talents? And the
expression of that talent becomes extraordinarily important to
him and to the people.
A: In our culture it often seems that the expression of that
talent brings him into conflict with certain conventions.
K: And also expressing that conflict in himself.
A: Of course. Yes, we have a long tradition in western
civilization of the artist as an outsider, don't we.
K: Yes. Something outside. But he is much more sensitive, much
more alert to beauty, to nature, but apart from that he is just
an ordinary man.
A: Yes, of course. Yes.
K: To me, that is a contradiction. First be a total human being.
And then whatever you create, whatever you do will be beautiful.
A: Of course.
K: Whether you paint, or whatever you do. Don't, let's divide
the artist into something extraordinary. Or the business man
into something ugly. Let's call it just living in the world of
the intellect, or the scientist in the world of physics, and so
on, so on. But first there must be human being. You follow, sir?
Human being in the sense, the total understanding of life,
death, love, beauty, relationship, responsibility, not to kill.
All that's implied in living. Therefore it establishes a
relationship with nature. And the expression of that
relationship, if it is whole, healthy is creative.
A: This is very, very different from what many artists conceive
of as their task. Especially in modern times artists have this
notion that they are in some sense reflectors of the
fragmentation of their times.
K: Absolutely.
A: And so they make a statement which holds up the fragmentation
as a mirror to us, and what has this got to do with anything
else but reinforcing the fragmentation.
K: Absolutely.
A: Yes. Yes I quite understand what you are saying.
K: You see that, sir. Meditation covers the whole field of
existence. Meditation implies freedom from the method, the
system, because I don't know what meditation is. I start from
that.
A: Yes.
K: Therefore I start with freedom. Not with their burden.
A: That's marvelous. Start with freedom and not with their
burden. This business of holding up fragmentation to us from
that perspective is really nothing more than a species of
journalism.
K: Journalism, absolutely.
A: Isn't it. Yes, yes.
K: Propaganda.
A: Of course, yes.
K: Therefore, lie. So I discard all that. So I have no burden.
Therefore the mind is free to enquire what is meditation?
A: Marvelous.
K. I have done this. You follow, sir? It is not verbal
expressions. I don't say anything which I haven't lived.
A: Oh that's very, very obvious to me as one sitting here
conversing with you. Yes.
K: I won't. That is hypocrisy. I am not interested in all that.
I'm really interested in seeing what is meditation. So I start -
one starts with this freedom. And freedom means freeing the
mind, emptying itself of the burdens of others, their methods,
their systems, their acceptance of authority, their beliefs,
their hope, because its part of me, all that. Therefore I
discard all that. And, now I start by saying, I don't know what
meditation is. I start. That means the mind is free, has this
sense of great humility. Not knowing I'm not asking. Then
somebody will fill it.
A: Exactly.
K: Some book, some scholar, some professor, some psychologist
comes along and says, "You don't know. Here, I know. I'll give
it to you." I say, "Please don't." I know nothing. You know
nothing either. Because you are repeating what others have said.
So I discard all that. Now I begin to enquire. I'm in a position
to enquire. Not to achieve a result, not to arrive at what they
call enlightenment. Nothing. I don't know if there is
enlightenment or not. I start with this feeling of great
humility, not knowing, therefore my mind, the mind is capable of
real enquiry. So I enquire. First of all I look at my life,
because I said in the beginning meditation implies covering the
whole field of my life, of one's life. My life, our life, is
first the daily conscious living. I've examined it. I have
looked at it. There is contradiction and so on, as we've been
taking about. And also there is the question of sleep. I go to
sleep, eight, nine, ten hours. What is sleep? I start not
knowing. Not what others have said. You follow, sir?
A: Yes, I do.
K: I'm enquiring in relation to meditation which is the real
spirit of religion. That is, gathering all the energy to move
from one dimension to a totally different dimension. Which
doesn't mean divorce from this dimension.
A: No, it's not like those monks going up the hill, no.
K: I've been up those hills.
A: Yes.
K: So, what is sleep? And what is waking? Am I awake? Or, I am
only awake when there is a crisis, when there is a shock, when
there is a challenge, when there ia an incident, death, discard,
failure. You follow? Or am I awake all the time, in waking
during the daytime. So what is it to be awake? You follow, me
sir?
A: Yes, I am, I am. Since you are saying that meditation must
permeate, obviously, to be awake cannot be episodic.
K: That's it. Cannot be episodic. Cannot be something
stimulating.
A: Can't be described as peak experiences.
K: No, no. Any form of stimulation, external or internal only
implies that you are asleep and you need a stimulant, whether it
is coffee, sex, or a tranquilizer. All keep you awake.
A: Have a shot to go to sleep and have a shock to wake up.
K: So, in my enquiry I am asking, am I awake? What does it mean
to be awake? Not awake to what is happening politically,
economically, socially, that is obvious. But awake. What does it
mean? I am not awake if I have any burden. You follow, sir?
There is no sense of being awake when there is any kind of fear.
If I live with an illusion, if my actions are neurotic, there is
no state of being awake. So I'm enquiring and I can only enquire
by becoming very sensitive to what is happening in me, outside
me. So is the mind aware during the day completely to what is
happening inside, outside of me.
A: Upon every instant.
K: That's it. Otherwise I am not awake.
A: I was just thinking about something that has always given me
a great sense of wonder. At home we have some birds and, of all
things, a cat too.
K: Of course.
A: But they love one another. That is to say, the birds don't
run around in the room with the cat, but the cat supervises the
birds. When the birds are put to bed in the evening the cat goes
into that room and stays with them, maybe an hour or two,
watches. Just seems to have the feeling that it must look after
the birds. And in the day time, I've often watched the cat sit
and look at the birds with an immense intensity, and the
ordinary reaction is, "Well for heaven's sake, haven't you seen
them before?" What is this everlasting intensity, but she's
looking.
K: That's right, sir.
A: And her eyes are always with that jewel-like...
K: ...clarity.
A: ...intensity and clarity. Cleaner than flame. And it never
stops. And when she sleeps, she really - yes. When you asked me
what is sleep, there must be a relation between the wonder that
we feel for the cat's ability completely to sleep. And when she
awakes she's completely awake.
K. That's right, sir. So in asking and enquiring what is sleep,
I must also ask what is to be awake.
A: Of course.
K: Of course. Am I awake? Or is the past so alive that it is
dictating my life in the present? Therefore I am asleep.
A: Would you say that again? It's very important.
K: I don't know how, I'll put it differently. Am I awake. Is my
mind burdened with the past? And therefore bearing a burden I'm
not awake to the present.
A: Not awake in the present, exactly.
K: Not awake as I am talking.
A: That's right.
K: Because I'm talking from the background of my past, of my
experience, of my failures, my hurts, my depressions, therefore
the past is dominating and putting me to sleep now.
A: To sleep. It's a narcotic.
K: Narcotic. Therefore what am I to do with the past? You
follow, sir?
A: Yes, I do. Yes, yes, yes.
K: Past ia necessary.
A: Of course, yes, the whole field of knowledge.
K: Knowledge. Past is necessary. But when the past covers the
present, then I am asleep. So is it possible to know what the
past is and not let it overflow into the present? That question
and the reality of it brings its own discipline. Therefore I
say, yes, I know what it means. I can live, I can keep awake
totally and widely and yet operate in the field of knowledge. So
there is no contradiction. I don't know if I am conveying it ?
A: Oh you are. You are, you are.
K: So both are moving in harmony. One doesn't lag behind the
other. One doesn't contradict the other. There's balance.
A: Well, what I am seeing here, if I am following correctly is,
on the one hand we have knowledge and the grasp of its necessity
with respect to know how in practical affairs.
K: Of course.
A: On the other hand we have seeing, understanding. And the act
of meditation is the nexus...
K: That's right, sir.
A: ...between them so that there is no interruption of flow in
the activity...
K: That's right.
A: ...of understanding and knowing.
K: That is part of meditation.
A: Of course.
K: You follow?
A: Yes.
K: See what is taking place. Then what is sleep? I have
understood now what is means to be awake. That means I am
watching. I am aware. I am aware without any choice, choiceless
awareness, watching, looking, observing, hearing, what is going
on and what is going outside, what people tell me, whether they
flatter me, or they insult me. I am watching. So I am very
aware. Now, what is sleep? I know what is sleep: resting,
shutting your eyes, going to bed at 9 or 10 or later. What is
sleep? And in sleep, dreams. What are dreams? I don't know what
the others say. I am not interested in what the others say. You
follow, sir? Because my enquiry is to find out whether
meditation covers the whole field of life, not just one segment.
A: My enquiry is from the point where I say, I don't know.
K: I don't know. That is right. So I'll proceed. I dream. There
are dreams. What are dreams? Why should I dream? So I have to
find out why I dream. What are dreams? Dreams are the
continuation of my daily sleep. Which is, I haven't understood -
see what is taking place, sir - I have not understood my daily
life. I watch my daily life. My daily life is in disorder; so I
go to sleep and the disorder continues. And the brain says, I
must have order otherwise I can't function. So if the mind
doesn't put order during the day, the brain tries to bring order
during the night.
A: Through the dream.
K: Through the dreams, through intimations. When I awake I say,
yes I have a certain feeling this must be done. So, see what
takes place. When the mind is awake during the day it has order,
it establishes order, in the sense we have discussed previously.
A: Yes. In that sense of order.
K: Order which comes out of the understanding of disorder. The
negation of disorder is order, not the following of a blueprint.
A: No.
K: Or a pattern, all that's disorder. So during the day, the
mind, the brain has established order. So when I sleep the brain
isn't working out how to establish order in itself in order to
be secure. Therefore the brain becomes rested.
A: I see.
K: Therefore the brain becomes quiet, sleeps without dreams. It
may have superficial dreams when you eat wrongly, you know, all
that kind of thing. That I am not talking about. So, sleep means
regeneration of the brain. I don't know if you follow?
A: Yes, I do. I wonder if I could ask you a question about
dreams here, that might introduce a distinction between dreams
in terms of their nature. Sometimes we report that we've had a
dream which points to future event.
K: That's another thing.
A: That's entirely different from what you are talking about.
K: Yes, yes.
A: So we could say that...
K: Sir, that, I think we can understand that very simply. You
know the other day we were walking high up in the hills in India
and there was a river flowing down below. And two boats were
coming in the opposite direction and you knew where they were
going to meet.
A: Of course.
K: When you go high enough you see the boats coming together at
a precise point.
A: But that's very objective. That has nothing to do with my
subjective unfinished business.
K: No.
A: Which is the other thing you were talking about.
K: That's right.
A: Yes, I quite see, I quite see. Right. What an amazing thing
it would be to have all your business done and go to sleep. And
if order should present you with...
K: Yes, sir.
A: ...an understanding.
K: Of course.
A: Then the understanding never stops from waking through
sleeping.
K: That's right.
A: Yes. Of course. Of course. Marvelous. Marvelous
K: So you see, that way the brain is regenerated, keeps young.
No conflict. Conflict wears out the brain.
A: Yes.
K: So, sleep means not only order, rejuvenation, innocence, but
also in sleep there are states in which there is absolutely
freedom to enquire, to see into something which you have never
seen with your eyes, physical eyes.
A: Yes.
K: Of course.
A: Yes
K: So we have described sufficiently into that. I see that. So
do I - does the mind live that kind of life during the day?
A: That would be rare.
K: Otherwise it is not meditation.
A: Otherwise it is not meditation, of course, of course, of
course.
K: And I don't want to play a game, a hypocritical game, because
I am deceiving nobody. I am deceiving myself and I don't want to
deceive myself. I don't see the point of deceiving myself
because I don't want to be a great man, little man, big man,
success. That's all too infantile. So I say, am I living that?
If not, what is happening? And it gives me energy to live that
way because I have no burden of the others. I don't know?
A: This is very remarkable. It reminds me of a story that is
told about a swordsman and his three sons. And he was an old,
old swordsman in old Japan and he wanted to pass on the
responsibility for his art to his sons. And he asked the sons
each to come into his room and he would speak to them and he
would decide.
K: Quite, quite.
A: He was a man of knowledge in terms of the sword, but he also
was a man of understanding. And unbeknown to them he put a ball
on top of the lintel and as they passed in, they, of course,
were quite unaware of that. The youngest was called in first,
and when the youngest walked in his father had arranged for this
ball to drop, you see, and the ball dropped and the son, in a
flash, cut it in two with his sword when it fell down. And his
father said, "Please wait in the other room." The second son
came in, ball fell on his head but precisely as it touched his
head he reached up and he took it in his hands and the father
said, "Please wait in the other room." Eldest son came in. He
opened the door, and as he opened the door he reached up and he
took the ball. And the father called them in and he read out the
youngest son and he said, "Very brilliant. You've mastered the
technique. You don't understand anything." He said to the second
one, "Well, you're almost there. Just, just keep on, keep on."
And he said to the eldest son, "Well, now you can begin." And it
seemed to me that's just exactly - imagine! It's like the word
'prajna' which means 'pra' - ahead, 'jna' to, to know, to know
beforehand, in the sense, not of some work of prediction that we
do based on the study of rats in the lab or something but
understanding is...
K: Yes, sir,
A: ...ahead and behind in the total movement of that one act.
K: Yes, sir.
A: Oh yes of course.
K: So I see this, because I do not separate meditation from
daily living. Otherwise it has no meaning. So I see the
importance of order during the waking hours. And therefore
freeing the mind - the brain from conflict, all that, during
sleep, so there is total rest to the brain. That's one thing.
Then, what is control? Why should I control? They have all said
control. All religions have said control. Control. Be without
desire. Don't think about yourself. You follow? All that. I say
to myself - this is what they say - can I live without control?
You follow, sir?
A: Oh yes, yes. One has to start that question too at the very
beginning.
K: I am doing it. That's what we are doing.
A: Yes. My statement is a reflection. Just a mirror to that,
yes.
K: Yes.
A: Yes.
K: Is it possible to live without control? Because what is the
control? And who is controller? The controller is the
controlled. When I say I must control my thought, the controller
is the creation of thought. And thought controls thought. It has
no meaning. One fragment controls another fragment, and yet
therefore remain fragments. So I say, is there a way of living
without control? Therefore no conflict. Therefore no opposites.
Not one desire against another desire. One thought opposed to
another thought. One achievement opposed to another achievement.
So, no control. Is that possible? Because I must find out. You
follow, sir? It's not just ask a question, just leaving it
alone. I've got energy now because I am not carrying their
burden anymore. Nor am I carrying my own burden. Because their
burden is my burden. When I have discarded that I have discarded
this. So I have got energy when I say is it possible to live
without control. And so it is a tremendous thing. I must find
out. Because the people who have control, they have said through
control you arrive at Nirvana, heaven - to me that's wrong,
totally absurd. So I say, can I live a life of meditation in
which there is no control?
A: When intelligence breaks out, as we looked at before, then
with it comes order and that order...
K: Intelligence is order.
A: And intelligence is that order. The seeing is the doing.
K: The doing, yes.
A: Therefore there is no conflict at all.
K: You see, therefore do I live a life, not only is it possible,
do I live it? I've got desires: I see a car, a woman, a house, a
lovely garden, beautiful clothes, or whatever it is, instantly
all the desires arise. And not to have a conflict. And yet not
yield. If I have money I go and buy it. Which is obvious. That's
no answer. If I have no money I say, "Well, I'm so sorry. I have
no money. And I will get sometime, someday. Then I'll come back
and buy it." It's the same problem. But the desire is aroused.
The seeing, contact, sensation and desire. Now that desire is
there, and to cut it off is to suppress it. To control it is to
suppress it. To yield to it is another form of fragmenting life
into getting and losing. I don't know if I?
A: Yes, yes, yes.
K: So to allow for the flowering of desire without control. You
understand, sir?
A: Yes, I do.
K: So the very flowering is the very ending of that desire. But
if you chop it off it'll come back again. I don't know?
A: Yes, yes. It's the difference between a terminus and a
consummation.
K: Quite, yes. So I let the desire come, flower, watch it. Watch
it, not yield or resist. Just let it flower. And be fully aware
of what is happening. Then there is no control.
A: And no disorder.
K: No, of course. The moment you control there is disorder.
Because you are suppressing or accepting - you know, all the
rest of it. So that is disorder. But when you allow the thing to
flower and watch it, watch it in the sense be totally aware of
it - the petals, the subtle forms of desire to possess, not to
possess, to possess is a pleasure, not to possess is a pleasure,
you follow? - the whole of that movement of desire.
A: Exactly.
K: And that you to be very sensitive, watchful, very sensitive,
choiceless watching.
A: This image that you have referred to metaphorically with the
plant itself, could we pursue that in our next conversation
through the continuation of concern to look further into
meditation.
K: We have not finished meditation.
A: We haven't, no
K: There's lots more involved.
A: Good, good.