Banaras 1949
Banaras 5th Public Talk 20th February 1949
As this is the last talk, I would like, if I may, to make a brief
resume of what we have been discussing during the last five weeks. It is
the lack of capacity to understand that creates problems. The
incapacity to understand a problem brings about conflict; and if we have
the capacity to understand a problem, then the problem itself ceases to
exist. It is the incapacity to understand a challenge that brings about
a problem.
Life is, and must be, a series of challenges and responses. The
challenge is not according to our likes and dislikes, nor according to
our particular desires, but assumes different forms at different times.
And if we have the capacity to meet that challenge adequately, fully,
directly, then there is no problem. But because we do not meet that
challenge fully, adequately, a problem arises. How is it possible to
have that capacity? Life's challenge is not at any one particular level
of existence. Life is not at one level only, neither the economic nor
the spiritual. Life is, as we discussed, a relationship at different
levels; it is all the time in flux, all the time expressing itself in
different ways; and he is a happy man who is able to meet life
completely and fully at different levels all the time.
So, the man who regards life as being merely the conditioning by
environment, either economic or intellectual, and who meets life only
from that point of view, is obviously an unintegrated person; and his
conflicts are innumerable, because surely, life isn't at one level of
existence. Life is relationship with things, people, and ideas; and if
we do not meet these relationships rightly, fully, then conflicts arise
from the impact of the challenge.
So, our problem is, is it not?, how to bring about, how to cultivate
deliberately - if one can deliberately cultivate - , that capacity to
meet the challenge all the time. Because, there is not a moment when
there is no challenge; and if there is not a response, there is death,
there is decay. It is only when we know how to meet the challenge all
the time, continuously, freely, fully, that there is life, that there is
depth, the height of thought and feeling.
Now, how is one to have that capacity, how does one come by it?
Surely, no information can give it. Though you may study all the books
written about how to meet life, that very factual understanding is
really an impediment; because, having the facts, you try to meet the
challenge with that framework of information. And, obviously, facts do
not create or bring about that capacity. Without the capacity to meet
life fully, life becomes a constant source of pain. So, it is not facts,
it is not knowledge - you may read the Bhagavad Gita, you may read all
the sacred books, listen to the talks given by all the saints, practise
innumerable disciplines - , that will help you to have that capacity
with which to meet life.
So, if it is not facts, if it is not knowledge, what is it that is
required? Before we can find that out, we have to discover, have we
not?, what is life itself, what is living. If we can understand that,
per- haps we shall have the capacity to meet the challenge, which is
life itself. Life is, is it not?, both challenge and response. It is not
challenge alone nor response alone. Life is experience, experience in
relationship. One cannot live in isolation; so, life is relationship,
and relationship is action. And how can one have that capacity for
understanding relationship, which is life? Does not relationship mean,
not only communion with people, but intimacy with things and ideas? Life
is relationship, which is expressed through contact with things, with
people, and with ideas. In understanding relationship, we shall have
capacity to meet life fully, adequately. So, our problem is not capacity
- for capacity is not independent of relationship - , but rather the
understanding of relationship, which will naturally produce the capacity
for quick pliability, for quick adjustment, for quick response,
Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself.
Without relationship you are not; to be, is to be related; to be related
is existence. And you exist only in relationship; otherwise, you do not
exist, existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are,
that you come into existence. You exist because you are related; and it
is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.
Now, there is no understanding of relationship because we use
relationship merely as a means of furthering achievement, furthering
transformation, furthering becoming. But, relationship is a means of
self-discovery, because relationship is to be, it is existence. Without
relationship, I am not. To understand myself, I must understand
relationship. So, relationship is a mirror in which I can see myself.
That mirror can either be distorted, or it can be `as is', reflecting
that which is. But most of us see in relationship, in that mirror,
things we would rather see; we do not see what is. We would rather
idealize, escape, we would rather live in the future than understand
that relationship in the immediate present.
So, the present is merely used by the past as a passage to the
future. And so, relationship, which is always in the present, and not in
the future or in the past, has no meaning, and therefore conflict
arises. Conflict arises because we use the present as a passage to the
future or to the past. The mind is the result of the past; without the
past, there is no thought. Without the background, with out the
conditioning, there is no thought. But thought, which is the result of
the past, cannot understand the present, as it only uses the present as a
passage to the future. The future is always a becoming, so, the
present, in which alone there can be understanding, is never grasped.
While there is a becoming, there is conflict; and the becoming is always
the past using the present, to be, to achieve. In the process of that
becoming, thought is caught in the net of time. And time is not a
solution to our problems. You understand only in the immediate, not
tomorrow or yesterday; always in the now, though that now may be
tomorrow. So, under standing is timeless. You cannot under stand next
life or next year.
So, that capacity to understand life comes into being only when one
under stands relationship. Relationship is a mirror. It must reflect,
not as one wishes oneself to be, ideally or romantically, but what one
actually is, and it is very difficult to perceive oneself as one
actually is, because one is so accustomed to escaping from what is; it
is arduous to perceive, to observe silently what is, because one is so
used to condemning, justifying, comparing, identifying. And in that
process of justification, condemnation, that which is, is not
understood. Only in the understanding of what is, is there freedom from
what is.
So, life has problems and conflicts and miseries, only when you use
relationship as a means of becoming, that is, when you gratify yourself
through relationship. When I use another, or when I use property or an
idea, as a means of self-expansion, which is the perpetuation of
gratification, then life becomes a series of ceaseless conflicts and
miseries. It is only when I understand relationship - which is the
beginning of self-knowledge - that self-knowledge brings about right
thinking with regard to what is; and it is right thinking that dissolves
our problems - not the gurus, not the heroes, not the Mahatmas, not the
literature, but the capacity to see what is and not escape from what
is.
To acknowledge what is, is to understand what is. But to acknowledge
what is, is most difficult, as the mind refuses to see, to observe, to
accept what is. To see what is, to observe what is, demands action; and
an ideal, the process of becoming, is an escape from action, is the
avoidance of action. Since we surround ourselves with inaction, with
escape, with ideals, we are running away from what is, which is
relationship; but it is only in that relationship that we see ourselves
clearly as we are. The more you go into what is, the more you see the
deeper layers of consciousness, that is, life at different levels. In
that there is freedom - not of discipline, not of cultivated, enclosed
thought, but the freedom that truth, as virtue, brings; for without
virtue there is no freedom. But the man who is becoming virtuous is not
free. Virtue is only in the present, not in the future. So, we see that
the whole significance of existence is not the avoidance of the present,
but the comprehension of the present in relationship; and there is no
relationship except in the present, and therein is the beauty of
relationship.
After all, that is love, is it not; Love is not in the tomorrow. You
cannot say that you will love tomorrow. Either you love now, or never.
And that tremendous thing, that significance and beauty of love, can be
understood only in relationship; but the mere cultivation of love,
through discipline, is the denial of love. Then love is merely
intellection. A man who loves with the mind, is empty of heart. Mind can
adjust itself, thought can adjust itself, but love never `adjusts'. It
is a state of being. What is pure, is pure always, though it be divided.
And it is that love, it is that truth which liberates.
Question: You say the mind, memory and the thought process, have to
cease before there can be understanding, and yet you are communicating
to us. Is what you say the experience of some thing in the past, or are
you experiencing as you communicate?
Krishnamurti: When do you communicate? When do you tell another your
experience? When you have had the experience, not in the moment of
experiencing. It is only an after result, this communication. You must
have memory, words, gestures, to communicate an experience which you
have had. So your communication is the expression of an experience which
is over.
Now, when do you understand, when is there understanding? I do not
know if you have noticed that there is under standing when the mind is
very quiet, even for a second; there is the flash of understanding when
the verbalization of thought is not. just experiment with it and you
will see for yourself that you have the flash of understanding, that
extraordinary rapidity of insight, when the mind is very still, when
thought is absent, when the mind is not burdened with its own noise. So,
the understanding of anything - of a modern picture, of a child, of
your wife, of your neighbor - , or the understanding of truth which is
in all things, can only come when the mind is very still. But such
stillness cannot be cultivated, because if you cultivate a still mind,
it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind.
It is essential to have a still mind, a quiet mind, in order to
understand, which is fairly obvious to those who have experimented with
all this. The more you are interested in something, the more your
intention to understand, the more simple, clear, free the mind is. Then
verbalization ceases. After all, thought is word, and it is the word
that interferes. It is the screen of words, which is memory, that
intervenes between the challenge and the response. It is the word that
is responding to the challenge, which we call intellection. So, the mind
that is chattering, that is verbalizing, cannot understand truth -
truth in relationship, not an abstract truth. There is no ab- stract
truth. But truth is very subtle. It is the subtlety that is difficult to
follow. It is not abstract. It comes so swiftly, so darkly, it cannot
be held by the mind. Like a thief in the night, it comes darkly, not
when you are prepared to receive it. Your reception is merely an
invitation of greed. So, a mind that is caught in the net of words,
cannot understand truth.
The next question is: Is it not possible to communicate as one is
experiencing? For communication there must be factual memory. As I am
talking to you, I use words, which you and I understand. Memory is a
result of the cultivation of the faculty of learning, of storing words.
The questioner wants to know how to have a mind which does not merely
express or communicate after the event, after the experience, but a mind
that is experiencing and at the same time communicating. That is, a new
mind, a fresh mind, a mind that is experiencing without the
interference of memory, the memory of the past. So, first let us see the
difficulty in this.
As I said, most of us communicate after the experience; therefore
communication becomes a hindrance to further experience; because
communication, the verbalization of an experience, merely strengthens
the memory of that experience. And strengthening the memory of one
experience prevents the free experiencing of the next. We communicate
either to strengthen an experience, or to hold onto it. We verbalize it
in order to fix it as memory, or to communicate it. The very fixing,
through verbalization, of an experience is the strengthening of an
experience that is over. Therefore, you are strengthening memory; and so
it is memory that is meeting the challenge. In that state, when the
response to challenge is merely verbal, experience of the past becomes a
hindrance. So, our difficulty is to be experiencing and, in
communicating it, not to make verbalization a hindrance to further
experience.
In all these discussions and talks, if I merely repeated the
experience of the past, it would not only be extremely boring to you and
to me, but it would also strengthen the past and therefore prevent
experiencing in the present. What is actually taking place is that the
experience is going on, and at the same time there is communication. The
communication is not verbalization, it is not clothing the experience.
If we clothe the experience, give it a garment, shape it, the perfume
and depth of that experiencing will be lost. So, there can be a fresh
mind, a new mind, only when experiencing is not clothed by words. And,
in expressing it verbally, there is the danger of clothing it, giving it
a shape, a form, and therefore burdening the mind with the image, with
the symbol. It is possible to have a new mind, a fresh mind, only when
it is not the word which is important, but the experiencing. That
experiencing is from moment to moment. There cannot be experiencing if
it becomes accumulative, for then it is accumulation that experiences,
and there is no experiencing. There is experiencing from moment to
moment only when there is no accumulation. Verbalization is
accumulation. It is extremely difficult and arduous to express, and
still not be caught in the net of words.
Mind is, after all, the result of the past, of yesterday. And that
which is not of time cannot be followed by time. The mind cannot follow
that which is exceedingly swift, not of space, not of time; but in that
state of the mind which is experiencing, which is not becoming
everything is new. It is the word that makes what is, old. It is the
memory of yesterday that clothes the present. And to understand the
present, there must be experiencing; but experiencing is prevented when
the word becomes all-important. So, there is a new mind, the mind that
is experiencing continuously without shaping or being shaped by the
experience, only when the word, the past, is not used as a means of
becoming.
Question: Is marriage compatible with chastity?
Krishnamurti: Let us together explore this question. Many things are
involved in it. Chastity is not the product of the mind. Chastity
doesn't come through discipline. Chastity is not an ideal to be
achieved. That which is the product of the mind, which is created by the
mind, is not chaste; because the mind, when it creates the ideal of
chastity, is escaping from what is; and a mind which is attempting to
become chaste, is unchaste. That is one thing. We will explore it
presently.
Then, in this question there is involved the problem of our sexual
appetites, the whole problem of sex. Let us find out why for most of us
sex has become a problem. And also, how is it possible to meet the
sexual demand intelligently and not turn it into a problem?
Now, what do we mean by sex? The purely physical act, or the thought
that excites, stimulates, furthers that act? Surely, sex is of the mind;
and because it is of the mind, it must seek fulfillment, or there is
frustration. Do not be nervous about the subject. You have all become
very tense, I see. Let us talk it over as though it were any other
subject. Don't look so grave and lost! Let us deal with this subject
very simply and directly. The more complex a subject is. the more it
demands clear thinking, the more must it be approached simply and
directly.
Why is it that sex has become such a problem in our lives? Let us go
into it, not with constraint, not with anxiety, fear, condemnation. Why
has it become a problem? Surely, for most of you it is a problem. Why?
Probably, you have never asked yourself why it is a problem. Let us find
out.
Sex is a problem because it would seem that in that act there is
complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy, because
there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the me; and desiring
more of it, more of the abnegation of the self in which there is
complete happiness - without the past or the future demanding that
complete happiness through full fusion, integration - ,naturally it
becomes all-important. Isn't that so? Because it is something that gives
me unadulterated joy, complete self forgetfulness, I want more and more
of it. Now, why do I want more of it? Because, everywhere else I am in
conflict, everywhere else, at all the different levels of existence,
there is the strengthening of the self. Economically, socially,
religiously, there is the constant thickening of self-consciousness,
which is conflict. After all, you are self-conscious only when there is
conflict. Self-consciousness is in its very nature the result of
conflict. So, everywhere else, we are in conflict. In all our
relationships with property, with people, with ideas, there is conflict,
pain, struggle, misery; but in this one act there is complete cessation
of all that. Naturally you want more of it, because it gives you
happiness, while all the rest leads you to misery, turmoil, conflict,
confusion, antagonism, worry, destruction, therefore the sexual act
becomes all significant, all-important.
So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self.
You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only
for a few seconds, if only for a day, or what you will; and where the
self is, there is conflict, there is misery, there is strife. So, there
is the constant longing for more of that self-free state. But the
central problem is the conflict at different levels, and how to abnegate
the self. You are seeking happiness, that state in which the self, with
all its conflicts, is not, which you find momentarily in that act. Or,
you discipline yourself, you struggle, you control, you even destroy
yourself through suppression; which means, you are seeking to be free of
conflict, because with the cessation of conflict there is joy. If there
can be freedom from conflict, then there is happiness, at all the
different levels of existence.
What makes for conflict? How does this conflict arise, in your work,
in your relationships, in teaching, in everything? Even when you write a
poem, even when you sing, when you paint, there is conflict.
How does this conflict come into being? Does it not come into being
through the desire to become? You paint, you want to express yourself
through colour, you want to be the best painter. You study, worry, hope
that the world will acclaim your painting. But, wherever there is the
desire to become the more, there must be conflict. It is the
psychological urge that demands the more. The need for more is
psychological, the urge for the more exists when the psyche, the mind,
is becoming, seeking, pursuing an end, a result. When you want to be a
Mahatma, when you want to be a saint, when you want to understand, when
you are practising virtue, when you are class-conscious as a `superior'
entity, when you subserve function to heighten yourself - all these are
indications, obviously, of a mind that is becoming. The more, therefore,
is conflict. A mind which is seeking the more, is never conscious of
what is, because it is always living in the more - in what it would like
to be, never in what is. Until you resolve the whole content of that
conflict, this one release of the self, through sex, will remain a
hideous problem.
Sirs, the self is not an objective entity that can be studied under
the microscope, or learned through books, or understood through
quotations, however weighty those quotations may be. It can be
understood only in relationship. After all, conflict is in relationship,
whether with property, with an idea, with your wife, or with your
neighbour; and without solving that fundamental conflict, merely to hold
onto that one release through sex, is obviously to be unbalanced. And
that is exactly what we are. We are unbalanced, because we have made sex
the one avenue of escape; and society, so-called modern culture, helps
us to do it. Look at the advertisements, the cinemas, the suggestive
gestures, postures, appearances.
Most of you married when you were quite young, when the biological
urge was very strong. You took a wife or a husband, and with that wife
or husband you jolly well have to live for the rest of your life. Your
relationship is merely physical, and everything else has to be adjusted
to that. So what happens? You are intellectual, perhaps, and she is very
emotional. Where is your communion with her? Or she is very practical,
and you are dreamy, vague, rather indifferent. Where is the contact
between you and her? You are over-sexed, and she is not; but you use her
because you have rights. How can there be communion be tween you and
her when you use her? Our marriages are now based on that idea, on that
urge; but more and more there are contradictions and great conflicts in
marriage, and so divorces.
So, this problem requires intelligent handling, which means that we
have to alter the whole basis of our education, and that demands
understanding not only the facts of life, but also our every day
existence; not only knowing and understanding the biological urge, the
sexual urge, but also seeing how to deal with it intelligently. But now,
we don't do that, do we? It is a hushed subject, it is a secret thing,
only talked about behind walls. When the urge is very strong,
irrespective of anything else, we get mated for the rest of our life.
See what one has done to oneself and to another.
How can the intellectual meet, commune, with the sentimental, the
dull, or with the one who is not educated? And what communion is there
then, except the sexual? The difficulty in all this is, is it not?, that
the fulfillment of the sexual urge, the biological urge, necessitates
certain social regulations; therefore you have marriage laws. You have
all the ways of possessing that which gives you pleasure, security,
comfort; but that which gives constant pleasure, dulls the mind. As
constant pain dulls the mind, so constant pleasure withers the mind and
heart.
And how can you have love? Surely, love is not a thing of the mind,
is it? Love is not merely the sexual act, is it? Love is something which
the mind can not possibly conceive. Love is something which cannot be
formulated. And with out love, you become related; without love, you
marry. Then, in that marriage, you `adjust yourselves' to each other.
Lovely phrase! You adjust yourselves to each other, which is again an
intellectual process, is it not? She has married you, but you are an
ugly lump of flesh, carried away by your passions. She has got to live
with you. She does not like the house, the surroundings, the hideousness
of it, your brutality. But she says "Yes, I am married, I have got to
put up with it." So, as a means of self-protection, she yields, she
presently begins to say: "I love you." You know, when, through the
desire for security, we put up with something ugly, that ugly thing
seems to become beautiful, because it is a form of self-protection;
otherwise we might be hurt, we might be utterly destroyed. So we see
that which was ugly, hideous, has become gradually beautiful.
This adjustment is obviously a mental process. All adjustments are.
But, surely, love is incapable of adjustment. You know, Sirs, don't
you?, that if you love another, there is no `adjustment'. There is only
complete fusion. Only when there is no love, do we begin to adjust. And
this adjustment is called marriage. Hence, marriage fails, because it is
the very source of conflict, a battle between two people. It is an
extraordinarily complex problem, like all problems, but more so because
the appetites, the urges, are so strong.
So, a mind which is merely adjusting itself, can never be chaste. A
mind which is seeking happiness through sex can never be chaste. Though
you may momentarily have, in that act, self-abnegation,
self-forgetfulness, the very pursuit of that happiness, which is of the
mind, makes the mind unchaste. Chastity comes into being only where
there is love. Without love, there is no chastity. And love is not a
thing to be cultivated. There is love only when there is complete
self-forgetfulness; and to have the blessing of that love, one must be
free through understanding relationship. Then, when there is love, the
sexual act has quite a different significance. Then that act is not an
escape, is not habit. Love is not an ideal; love is a state of being.
Love cannot be where there is becoming. Only where love is, is there
chastity, purity; but a mind that is becoming, or attempting to become
chaste, has no love.
Question: We have been told that thought must be controlled to bring
about that state of tranquillity necessary to understand reality. Could
you please tell us how to control thought?
Krishnamurti: First, Sir, don't follow any authority. Authority is
evil. Authority destroys, authority perverts, authority corrupts; and a
man who follows authority, is destroying himself, and destroying also
that which he has placed in a position of authority. The follower
destroys the master, as the master destroys the follower. The guru
destroys the pupil, as the pupil destroys the guru. Through authority
you will never find anything. You must be free of authority to find
reality. It is one of the most difficult things to be free of authority,
both the outer and the inner. Inner authority is the consciousness of
experience, consciousness of knowledge. And out ward authority is the
State, the party, the group, the community. A man who would find reality
must shun all authority, external and inward. So, don't be told what to
think. That is the curse of reading: the word of another becomes
all-important.
The questioner begins by saying: "We have been told." Who is there to
tell you? Sir, don't you see that leaders and saints and great teachers
have failed, be cause you are what you are? So leave them alone. You
have made them failures because you are not seeking truth, you want
gratification. Don't follow anyone, including myself; don't make of
another your authority. You yourself have to be the master and the
pupil. The moment you acknowledge another as a master and yourself as a
pupil, you are denying truth. There is no master, no pupil, in the
search for truth. The search for Truth is important, not you or the
master who is going to help you to find the truth. You see, modern
education, and also the previous education, have taught you what to
think, not how to think. They have put you within a frame, and that
frame has destroyed you; because you seek out a guru, a teacher, a
leader, political or other, only when you are confused. Otherwise you
never follow anybody. If you are very clear, if you are inwardly a light
unto yourself, you will never follow anyone. But because you are not,
you follow, you follow out of your confusion; and what you follow must
also be confused. Your elders, as well as yourself, are confused,
politically and religiously. Therefore, first clear up your own
confusion, become a light unto yourself, and then the problem will
cease. The division between the master and the pupil is unspiritual.
Now, the questioner wants to know how to control thought. First of
all, to control it, you must know what thought is and who is the
controller. Are they two separate processes, or a joint phenomenon? You
must first understand what thought is, must you not?, before you say, "I
will control thought; and also you must know what the controller is. Is
there a controller without thought? If you have no thoughts, is there a
thinker? The thinker is the thought, the thought is not separate from
the thinker, they form a single process.
So, you have only thoughts left, not the thinker. Though you use the
words `I think', it is only a form of communication; there is actually
only a state in which thought is. And thought creates the thinker, who
then communicates his thought. The thinker is merely the verbalization
of the thought.
So, we have to find out what is thought. Then we shall know whether
it is possible to control it or not, and why you want to control it.
There may be quite a different approach to putting an end to the thought
process, but it is not by control. Because, the moment you exert
control, making an effort through an act of will, you do not understand
thought. You are then merely condemning one thought and justifying
another. That which you have justified, you want to hold onto. That
which you condemn you want to push aside. So, let us find out what we
mean by thought.
What is thought? Without memory there is no thought, is there?
Thought is the result of accumulated experience, is it not?, which is
the past. Without the past, there can be no thought in the present, can
there? So thought is a response of the past to the present challenge.
That is, thought surely, is the reaction of memory. But, what is memory?
Memory, the continuance of remembering, is the verbalization of
experience, isn't it? There is challenge, response, which is experience -
, and that experience is verbalized. That verbalization creates memory;
and the response of memory to challenge, is thought. So thought is
verbalization, isn't it?
I do not know if you have ever tried to think without words. The
moment you think, you must use words. I am not saying that there is not a
state in which there is no verbalization. We are not discussing that.
The thought is the word. Without verbalization, without the word,
thought - the thought that we know - is not. So, if you see that the
word - the verbalization - is the thought process, then it is not a
question of con trolling thought, but of the cessation of thinking as
verbalization. Where there is verbalization of an experience, there must
be thought. To think is to verbalize. So, our problem is not how to
control thought, but whether it is possible not to verbalize, not to put
everything in to words? Why do we put our responses, our reactions,
into words? Why do we do that? For one obvious reason: to communicate,
to tell another our feeling. Also, we verbalize in order to strengthen
that feeling, don't we?, in order to fix it, in order to look at it, in
order to recapture that feeling which is gone. The word has taken the
place of the feeling which has gone. So the word becomes all-important,
and not the feeling, not the response, not the experience. The word has
taken the place of experiencing. So, the word becomes the thought, which
prevents experiencing.
Our problem, then, is this: is it possible not to verbalize, not to
name, not to give a term? Obviously it is possible. You do this often,
only unconsciously. When you are faced with a crisis, with a sudden
challenge, there is no verbalization. You meet it fully. So, it is
possible, but only when the word is not im- portant, which means, when
thought is not important, when the idea is not important. When an idea
assumes importance, then the pattern becomes important, the ideology
becomes important, and the revolution based on an idea becomes
important; but a revolution based on an idea is not a revolution, it is
merely the continuation, the modified continuity, of an old idea, an
idea of yesterday.
So, the word becomes important only when experiencing is not
important, when there is not the state of experiencing, which is to meet
the challenge without verbalization, without the screen of words. You
give life to the word, which is memory, when it is that memory which
meets the challenge; because memory has no life in itself, has it? The
word has no meaning in itself. It gains vitality, strength, impetus,
fullness, only when the past, the memory, meets the challenge.
Therefore, out of the living, the dead comes to life. And as it gains
more life from that which in itself is dead, then thought becomes
all-important. Thought by itself has no meaning except in relation to
the past, which is verbal. And it is not a question of controlling
thought. On the contrary, a controlled mind is incapable of receiving
truth. A controlled mind is an anxious mind, a mind that is resisting,
suppressing, substituting, and such a mind is afraid; and how can a mind
that is anxious, be still? How can a mind that is afraid, be tranquil?
There can be tranquillity only when the mind is no longer caught in the
net of words. When the mind is no longer verbalizing every experience,
then naturally it is in a state of experiencing.
Where there is experiencing there is neither the experiencer nor the
experienced. In that state of experiencing, which is always new, which
is always being - though one can communicate that being by using words -
, one knows that the word is not the experience, the word is not the
thing, the word has no content; only the experience itself is full of
content. Then, experiencing is not verbalization. Experiencing is the
highest form of understanding, because it is the negation of thinking.
Negative form of thinking is the highest form of comprehension; and
there can be no negative thinking when there is verbalization of
thought. So, it is not a question of con trolling thought at all, but of
being free from thought. It is only when the mind is free from thought
that there is a perception of that which is, of that which is eternal,
which is truth.
Question: What do you mean by transformation?
Krishnamurti: Obviously, there must be a radical revolution. The
world crisis demands it. Our lives demand it. Our everyday incidents,
pursuits, anxieties, demand it. Our problems demand it. There must be a
fundamental, radical revolution, because everything about us has
collapsed. Though seemingly there is order, in fact there is slow decay,
destruction: the wave of destruction is constantly overtaking the wave
of life. So there must be a revolution - but not a revolution based on
an idea. Such a revolution is merely the continuation of the idea, not a
radical transformation. And a revolution based on an idea brings
bloodshed, disruption, chaos. Out of chaos you cannot create order; you
cannot deliberately bring about chaos, and hope to create order out of
that chaos. You are not the God-chosen who are to create order out of
confusion. That is such a false way of thinking on the part of those
people who wish to create more and more confusion in order to bring
about order. Because for the moment they have power, they assume they
know all the ways of producing order. But seeing the whole of this
catastrophe - the constant repetition of wars, the ceaseless conflict
between classes, between peoples, the awful economic and social
inequality, the inequality of capacity and gifts, the gulf between those
who are extraordinarily happy, unruffled, and those who are caught in
hate, conflict, and misery - , seeing all this, there must be a
revolution, there must be complete trans formation, must there not? Now,
is this transformation, is this radical revolution, an ultimate thing,
or is it from moment to moment? I know we would like it to be the
ultimate thing, because it is so much easier to think in terms of far
away. Ultimately we shall be transformed, ultimately we shall be happy,
ultimately live shall find truth, but in the meantime, let us carry on.
Surely, such a mind, thinking in terms of the future, is incapable of
acting in the present; and therefore such a mind is not seeking
transformation, it is merely avoiding transformation. And what do we
mean by transformation?
Transformation is not in the future, can never be in the future. It
can only be now, from moment to moment. So, what do we mean by
transformation? Surely, it is very simple: seeing the false as the
false, and the true as the true. Seeing the truth in the false, and
seeing the false in that which has been accepted as the truth. Seeing
the false as the false, and the true as the true, is transformation.
Because when you see something very clearly as the truth, that truth
liberates. When you see that something is false, that false thing drops
away. Sir, when you see that ceremonies are mere vain repetitions, when
you see the truth of it, and do not justify it, there is transformation,
is there not?, because another bondage is gone. When you see that class
distinction is false, that it creates conflict, creates misery,
division between people - when you see the truth of it, that very truth
liberates. The very perception of that truth is transformation, is it
not? And as we are surrounded by so much that is false, perceiving the
falseness from moment to moment is transformation. Truth is not
cumulative. It is from moment to moment. That which is cumulative,
accumulated, is memory, and through memory you can never find truth; for
memory is of time - time being the past, the present, and the future.
Time, which is continuity, can never find that which is eternal;
eternity is not continuity. That which endures is not eternal. Eternity
is in the moment. Eternity is in the now. The now is not the reflection
of the past, nor the continuance of the past, through the present, to
the future.
A mind which is desirous of a future transformation, or looks to
transformation as an ultimate end, can never find truth. For truth is a
thing that must come from moment to moment, must be discovered anew;
and, surely, there can be no discovery through accumulation. How can you
discover the new if you have the burden of the old? It is only with the
cessation of that burden that you discover the new. So, to discover the
new, the eternal, in the present, from moment to moment, one needs an
extra ordinarily alert mind, a mind that is not seeking a result, a mind
that is not be coming. A mind that is becoming can never know the full
bliss of contentment; not the contentment of smug satisfaction, not the
contentment of an achieved result, but the contentment that comes when
the mind sees the truth in what is and the false in what is. The
perception of that truth is from moment to moment; and that perception
is delayed through verbalization of the moment.
So, transformation is not an end result. Transformation is not a
result. Result implies residue, a cause and an effect. Where there is
causation, there is bound to be effect. The effect is merely the result
of your desire to be transformed, When you desire to be transformed, you
are still thinking in terms of becoming; and that which is becoming can
never know that which is being. Truth is being from moment to moment;
and happiness that continues, is not happiness. Happiness is that state
of being which is time less. That timeless state can come only when
there is a tremendous discontent - not the discontent that has found a
channel through which it escapes, but the discontent that has no outlet,
that has no escape, that is no longer seeking fulfillment. Only then,
in that state of supreme discontent, can reality come into being. That
reality is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be
caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile,
in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thoughts, in the
fullness of love. For love is not different from truth. Love is that
state in which thought process as time has completely ceased. And where
love is, there is transformation. Without love, revolution has no
meaning; for then revolution is merely destruction, decay, a greater and
greater, evermounting misery. Where there is love, there is revolution,
because love is transformation from moment to moment.
February 20, 1949
