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krishnamurti_discussions

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Obviously not. We give ourselves over to beauty and deny ugliness. That is, by the denial of vice, we become virtuous.
We deny the non-pleasurable and hold on to the pleasurable. This self-immolation is an identification with what we call the beautiful, that which is intensely gratifying. We call that devotional love.
Has that love any perfume or is it merely gratification? You would not seek God if you do not want security, an ultimate permanency. In yourself you are insecure, the world around you is catastrophic, and you want an assurance of continuity; and, therefore, you want to identify yourself with what you call God.
Therefore, you are not seeking God but only gratification. Gratification through God is just like gratification through drink though the one is a refined ideation, and the other a gross desire. Similar is the man who identifies himself with an ideal like beauty and pursues it.
As any ideal is only a creation of the mind, that too is impermanent, and that exists only as long as you find gratification in it and accept it. Thus, due to our inward poverty, we seek only gratification through things, relationship, and ideation such as God, ideal, etc; we do not seek God or an ideal as we drop them the moment we do not find pleasure in them. There are however certain rare moments when the state of non-relationship exists in contra-distinction to relationship which exists only on the basis of pleasure and pain.
But in that sense of complete self-immolation, there is no asking; in that state of non-relationship with another, when you love somebody, there is that quality of non-demand. At those moments, you are left silent; later on, further reactions come. It happens to someone, one in a million, and he is a happy man.
Once he knows what it is, it is like a scent that is perfuming his whole life. Why are we not awake to such moments much more often? Why do we not realise that our pursuit of drunkenness, God or an ideal is only the pursuit of our escape from facing the actual, and therefore reduces us to a state of dullness and insensitivity?
It is because of various hindrances like conclusions, beliefs, trying to avoid death, worship of God and non-existence of affection. By being aware of these hindrances, they can be dissolved. Is memory, psychological and not factual, a hindrance to understanding?
Let us think this out. What is memory? Let us begin with ourselves and enquire into it without involving ourselves in explanations.
Going back and looking into the past pleasures and pains, or going to the future with its hopes and ambitions, are forms of memory. Why does the mind go backwards and forwards like this? In our attempt to understand the problem of memory, we have now found that mind which is itself a result of the past and is the current of the past, the present and the future, has separated itself in the present from the current, as though it is a separate entity; it looks on itself as the thinker, the feeler, the perceiver, goes back to the past and says "I remember".
It also conceives of the future, thus giving rise to three entities - the thinker, the past, and the future - as through they are different from one another. The problem now is "Can the mind separate itself from the past?" The thinker cannot go back to the past unless he is the product of the past; therefore, he and the past are one and not separate.
So, when I say "I remember", I am making a false statement. Memory is ever continuing from the past, in the present, and into the future. The past includes my parents, my forefathers and also mankind with all their accumulations, traditions, superstitions, fears and conditions - social, economic, racial, religious, etc.
Thus when we enquire what memory is, we should know who the enquirer is. The enquirer is the mind which has separated itself from itself which is the past; and this division is a false action, because any product of the mind must, like the mind itself, be also a product of the past. The observer and the observed are the same; therefore, the observer is making a false statement when it says "I am looking at the stream and going back to the past".
We now see the absurdity of the whole process - the observer, though the same as the observed, imagines himself to be separate from, and superior to it, and attempts to examine the observed through memory; finally, he realises that he is not separate from the observed and the separation was false. In seeing the false as false, Truth is perceived. ..
The desire to listen and the action of listening are two quite different states. Most of us are concerned with the desire to learn, to teach, or to acquire something; and in this, effort is involved. If you are interested in what is said, you listen without any effort, and there is communion.
So let us listen as though we are really enjoying it, not merely putting up a resistance, or trying to contradict or trying to put your own ideas quicker than somebody else can. We are dealing with memory, an extraordinary and subtle subject. The majority of us have not thought about this; therefore it requires an extraordinarily attentive mind to follow the current, the movement, the swiftness of it, because each of us is projecting his interpretation of what he considers memory to be.
We have to understand the function of memory, either as a means to action, or as a means to understanding. I would suggest that you listen carefully and quietly rather than try to listen or concentrate on listening. To me authority is binding and blinding.
Where there is authority, you do not listen in the same manner as to someone who is talking with you in a friendly manner, and there is little communication. Therefore, do not look on me as an authority, but listen with affectionate and thoughtful attention. We saw that memory is continuity., The self, i.e., the 'I' or the 'me' is a bundle of memories or of qualities or tendencies accumulated through memory, the residual experience of the mind which is the desire, which is the 'me' moving in this continuity.
This stream of continuity which we call memory, is a time-process, the time-process being the past, the present and the future. The mind shuttles back and forward in this continuity, and it is not aware that it is still a part of the continuity, when it separates itself from the stream of continuity, and says 'I remember', 'I recollect', 'I hope', which is future action. When the mind says 'I remember', it considers itself to be separate from "continuity" and looks to the past or to the future, which are the same as 'continuity'.
We have to understand why the mind, which is the thinker, the observer, the experiencer, the same as the current of continuity, has separated itself from this constant stream of continuity. The mind is not merely the superficial layer of consciousness but also the unconscious with its many, many layers which is all 'memory'. The understanding of 'memory' is directly related to the understanding of 'Love', "Death', 'Reality'.
Why does the mind separate itself from the stream of continuity and say 'I remember'? The 'I' is non-existent if its qualities are removed. The 'I' is non-existent without memory, its tendencies, gifts and so on, i.e.
non-existent without continuity, the racial, the traditional, the past in conjunction with the now, the past flowing through the present to the future which is hope. If we cannot understand that, we cannot bring about a regeneration, a renewal, an ending. We discussed that what is continuous, the physiological as well as the psychological continuity, is binding, and that there is renewal only in death and not in continuity.
There can be death as a renewal only when the whole consciousness is completely empty. For this to happen, every action that you meet should leave no residue, and you should meet anew every experience as it comes. The whole of our existence is a form of continuity and our whole tendencies are to generate one habit or another.
The routine is a habit and habit is a form of continuity. Therefore, we have to discuss the action of memory on all our activities. Technique is learning so as to be able to act in a particular manner without conscious effort.
For instance, when you learn the violin, you learn the technique and the words of the song; but you do not learn the joy in the song, i.e. in learning how to play, you do not learn music. Similarly, when I am learning engineering, I am learning facts.
to be a creative engineer is different from the technique of engineering. Do you write a poem because you know the technique of writing it? We know factual memory, i.e.
dealing with facts, talents, expression of talents and so on. We translate them psychologically to suit ourselves whenever we make a response to any challenge we meet. It is a fact that our society has recognised caste divisions and has viewed its citizens as belonging to a particular category and that your responses are therefore trained to the category to which you belong.
Your whole attitude towards life is based on the division that you are this label. Though you are a human being like the rest, you function or respond only according to that label. You are thus conditioned by tradition to a series of memories that have been handed down by tradition.
What is implied in thinking a thought through? Here is a thought that we are aware of, that we have only factual memory of and nothing else. When I understand that as a false statement with all its implications, I am free from that false statement and therefore I see the truth.
The factual is the screen, is the 'me' in action with the residual, the unconscious 'me', which is hidden; therefore, there is always a conflict between the hidden and the factual. We are aware of the factual, the factual being the immediate, whether the immediate is two to three days, or two to three years. The conscious mind which is of the superficial layers of consciousness, is aware of the factual, because it is the product of facts learned at school or taught, the immediate response or immediate knowledge through books, through assertion, through techniques and so on.
That is, the superficial layers of consciousness are factual memories. Through these layers everything is being translated and accumulated. That accumulation and the unconscious, the hidden as well as the superficial layers, are the whole of 'me'.
The hidden layers are all residues of all humanity, as you are not one isolate human entity but the result of the whole of humanity. You are only conscious in the superficial layers, i.e., only, factually; and these conscious layers are always translating and therefore misrepresenting, misinterpreting experiences that are being met, and are strengthening the unconscious by adding to it more and more. As long as I have the screen of facts through which I translate every experience, the residue is falling below.
If I have no screen then it will be quite different. The problem is that I am only aware of factual memories and I am not aware of psychological memories. I am aware of facts, techniques and actions as memory.
I have learned how to play and I translate every song through my technique. I have learned how to write and I am translating the untranslatable. Therefore, as long as I have a technique, the vision of a poem is always limited.
As long as I have a technique, which is factual memory, I cannot find that which has no technique. As long as my brain is made up of facts, techniques, discipline, everyday routine, it cannot find the immeasurable. After all when I write a poem, it is to think of the immeasurable.
After writing it I think I am dissatisfied with it because I feel I have not captured the spirit; and in that very process I get lost; thus the process becomes much more important than the problem. With this mentality of the awareness of the factual, i.e., through the screen of the conscious, we are trying to understand that which is not factual, that which we call Love, God, Death, the Unknown. Consciousness comes into being when there is friction, when I meet a response, when there is disharmony.
Consciousness begins when there is interruption. When I am awake and look at the trees there is no friction, there is no response. I am only watching the tree.
The pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain is consciousness. I am conscious when I want or do not want something. Previous to want and non-want, am I conscious?
Are you conscious when there is no want and do you know that state? When I wake up, somebody comes and smiles and I like it. It is friction.
The fact is that I become conscious when there is struggle, either pleasurable or painful. There may be various degree of consciousness, friction, pleasurable or painful, and all the subtle variations of that friction. All that makes me conscious and from that I say existence is pleasurable or painful.
As long as there is effort there is self-consciousness, and yet you say I must make effort to free myself from greed. If effort is self-consciousness, then our whole process is effort; and therefore, we are merely strengthening the consciousness of the self. We are building walls and walls and how can such a consciousness free itself from effort?
What is memory? Why has the mind separated itself from the current of time? How do I set about trying to find the truth myself?
I must study the problem. I must not take sides about the problem. I must free myself from all prejudices.
I must not be biased, for or against the problem. That means I must free thought from my bias about the problem, and I must come to it anew. If memory is static or dynamic, the result must also be static or dynamic as the case may be.
Memory by itself is static; it is dead, and is given life when I recollect it either as pain or pleasure. Who is the entity that recalls it? That entity is the result of memory.
This has to be pursued and understood. .. It seems to me that, without self-knowledge, there will be no right thinking.
I mean by self-knowledge, not the mysterious, the hidden, the super-self, the higher self, the Atman or anything of that kind; I mean the self that thinks, feels and acts now, here, in our everyday existence. Without understanding the thoughts, the feelings, the actions that we go through every day almost automatically, without seeing their deep significance, there can be no right thinking. That is the self-knowledge I am talking about.
You must begin very near to go very far. It is no good beginning very far for coming near. Paramatman, the super-atman and all the rest of it are mere assumption based on belief and therefore utterly valueless to a really thoughtful man.
In discovering the process of our own thinking we shall find out - not through an authority, not through books, but for each one of us - whether there is such a thing as Reality or not. This idea that there is a super-self, is still part of thought and is therefore conditioned; therefore, the super-self cannot be superior to mind. Wisdom is not found in books, nor in repetition, nor in rituals.
Wisdom is found through right thinking and right thinking cannot possibly exist without self-knowledge. I wish to talk to you today about "belief", a thing which is very near and in which most of us are caught. You may say that we have gone over that subject ten different times.
Mind is constantly wrapping itself in belief, belief in ideation, belief in memory, etc. Essentially we believe in order to be secure, not to get lost in the wood, to have a lighthouse, to have a point towards which thought is culminating, progressing, focussing. This focal point helps us to guide ourselves.
A belief, whether physiological or psychological, is a necessity to him who is frightened. 'It is my experience and therefore I hold on to it as a guide, a conviction which helps me to progress in life.' Surely belief, a conclusion, a working hypothesis, a conviction, an experience which I hold on to as a guide, an ideal, a conviction which helps me to progress in life, are all merely a pattern, a mould in which the thought functions.
The ideal, the belief, is in the future, something projected or accepted by you as a pattern for you to be modified; and therefore it is in the net of time and therefore that does not lead you to the eternal, to happiness. The end is of the same nature as the means; if you use wrong means, you create wrong ends. Are we aware of the fact that we have belief?
Beauty is considered to be an ideal, a distant thing. The man who does not see the beauty around him keeps the ideal of beauty, and he has no beauty in him. There is beauty now, in the face that smiles, in the stars, in the leaves, and so on.
Because we do not see that beauty, we have recourse to the ideal of beauty. Some of you say that life would be impossible if we do not believe for example, in the existence of London. But several things are involved in this.
That is the question of verification. You can ask ten different people and they will tell you where London is; you can also go and see. That is verification.
But you all believe in reincarnation or in something else of that kind, which is incapable of verification. A million people tell me that they believe there is God or there is a Master. Does their belief prove to me that there is God?
Any belief that I hold, projects itself as an experience; and then I say it is true because I have experienced it. I believe in reincarnation because it gives me a future chance, a psychological hope; I project that hope, and experience it as an actual experience. How often you have heard people say "I know it, it has happened" as though there is no more to be said!
You can only verify when you do not believe. I do not care whether the Master exists or does not exist, because I want to find out whether he is important in life. I find out that he is not important, and therefore I am not concerned whether he exists or not.
Physical verification is one thing, and psychological verification is quite another thing. Millions of people can be made, by modern propaganda, to believe in anything - as it has been proved over and over again - in war, in nationalism, in butchery, in calling themselves Mohammedans or Hindus and killing each other. You believe in reincarnation.
But it does not affect your life at all. If it has affected your life a single second, you attitude would have been quite different. So belief has no importance whatsoever, it is just a marvellous escape.
Similarly, our belief in God is merely a matter of convenience to you; it does not make any vital difference in your life. Some one among you said that he believed in Communism because he saw its good effect. This means that you believe in what produces a good effect and you do not believe in what produces a bad effect.
If you are concerned with the effect only, you believe even if a good result is produced through a bad means. For instance, you believe that by butchering and by creating misery now, you will produce peace and plenty in the future. You believe in things that are gratifying.
Whether it is true or false, as long as it satisfies you, you believe in that. There is positive gratification and negative gratification. If I do not achieve gratification positively, I say 'no' and that denial also gives me pleasure.
You are doing ceremonies because it gratifies you. When you say it is helping others who are dead and gone, you are bringing in a different problem; which means you are doing it on authority because you books say so, your grandfather did so, or your religion says so. Your beliefs divide you into antagonistic groups.
Beliefs induce mere habits which make you dull and which make you do things without knowing why you do them. .. We do not want to be uncertain, to be in a state of confusion. So, we use belief as the most gratifying means to guide ourselves.
We are not discussing belief in an isolated manner, but as related to self-knowledge, the self which is in action every day - our feelings, our thoughts and actions from moment to moment - and to think out and understand the significance of every thought, every feeling as it arises, thus uncovering the process of our own thinking so that we perceive the state of our own mind, our own being. Without understanding the creator of the self, the 'me', there can be no right action; and to bring about right thinking we must examine every thought fully and completely. We shall take one subject, like belief, at a time and think it right through so that, at the end of it, those of you who are really earnest will be free of belief, because you will perceive the truth of belief.
You cannot find the truth if you are on the defensive, if you are guarding yourself. In belief is implied authority, an authority either imposed by a society, by a tradition, or the authority through experience in oneself, the authority of memory. You have an experience and you have learned something; and you use what you have learned to translate, interpret, further experience.
Therefore, that experience which you have added becomes your authority, which you call the 'voice'. But, essentially it is an experience which has left a residue of memory which has been used for translating further experiences. Belief also implies specialisation, i.e., if you have an ideal, an end, you specialise to achieve that.
What happens to specialists? They are fixed either in knowledge, surgery or money making, etc. They are static and frozen.
The man who specialises is immobile. He moves within the frame-work of his specialisation which is always fixed. A thing which is fixed is unpliable and therefore it is broken.
All specialised animals are becoming extinct. A man who is very firmly fixed in a belief is not pliable; and only that which is pliable, is enduring. I am not speaking of the pliability of a Hindu going to Europe and learning to smoke and learning to drink.
That is stupidity. Pliability implies a freedom from anchorages, from specialisation, from authority and so on. Mostly, the actions based on belief, like ceremonies and rituals, are done by you without knowing why you do them.
Therefore belief is binding and blinding and there is repetition of such acts without much significance. You want to know the difference between a conclusion and a conviction. A conclusion is that which is based on knowledge or that which is inherited from one's parents, from teachers, from society and through environmental influences or those which one has made.
After all, conclusions which one makes are the results of the past which is the conditioning of the environment and the tradition. A conviction is also based on the past. A man who has no past cannot have convictions.
A man who is without memories cannot live in convictions. The more convictions you have the more enclosed you are. Therefore, conclusions and convictions are more or less the same and they are all conditioned.
You cannot be free of them unless you recognise them as enclosures. You say you have given up ceremonies now. Why did you give up?
Did you give up ceremonies through understanding or through substitution? If you understand the true significance of ceremonies, they will fall off of their own accord. Otherwise, you will be merely substituting for them something else to which you will become a slave.
Most of you do ceremonies automatically, because your fathers and mothers have told you; it becomes a thoughtless action and, when you have children, they are also going to do so in the same way. If you have not belief in them but do them merely to please somebody, you are really indulging in a hypocritical action. You say that you do not do the ceremonies but feed the poor on those days.
Why are you feeding the poor? If you feed the poor because you love the poor irrespective of their class and caste, and not for capitalistic or communistic reasons, it is something. Someone said that as you want to live peacefully without creating any disturbance, you do the ceremonies; but life will not give you peace and it constantly challenges you.
When you do not like any particular ceremony, you seek a substitution and do it; thus, you have given up ceremonies and taken to "poor-feeding." I am not concerned with the giving up of ceremonies; but I want to know why I do the ceremonies. I heard someone of you say that you do the ceremonies because of an urge from within.
We know the biological urges, hunger, sex, etc., and we can trace them to their cause. But, psychological urges are much more difficult to trace, e.g. the urge to be angry, the drive of ambition to become somebody, the desire for power, position, prestige, money, a bigger house, etc.
If you have an urge, it is necessary to find out why you have it and not to indulge in it blindly. The unconscious and hidden urges and thoughts are understandable if we give our mind to them, i.e. if the superficial consciousness is free and therefore in a state fit to understand them.
If the urge on which you act, is a sane and balanced urge, it will tell you not to be greedy; but you do not follow that. You act only when the urge is pleasurable and not otherwise. That is why in this so-called spiritual country, the Brahmins who were once the highest expression of culture, have become degraded into shop-keepers and lawyers.
We must understand the implications of obeying, and what it means to overcome or to sublimate something. Physically, when uncertain, you obey a sign-board based on a physical fact. Psychologically you obey another because you are afraid.
You command or obey when there is anxiety, a sense of uncertainty. If you love there is no question of obeying or commanding; you simply love each other. If I want to get something from you, physiologically or psychologically, I am dominated by you and therefore there is no love.
So, you obey an authority either through fear or through a desire for a result based on your gratification. You obey a tradition or what society says only when it suits you, when it is gratifying to you; because if you do not, you will be in anxiety. Through obedience, you think you will sublimate yourself.
That is what all the religions have said 'Obey the Guru, obey the idea and you will sublimate'. You have done this for centuries, and you are none the better. To sublimate something you must understand it; the moment you understand something you are free of it.
You say that by prayer and by performing ceremonies, you can get God to intervene in your personal affairs. God is something extraordinary and immeasurable; and it is fantastic to say that He speaks through somebody or is interested in any particular person. People accept that He speaks through Churchill for England, and through Hitler for Germany.
We reverence such people instead of saying how ridiculous and how infantile they are. If God or a Master is really interested in me, He will tell me the whole thing and not little by little; He will also tell me to give up greed, not to hate, not to cheat and so on, which are much more important than ridiculous ceremonies or the renunciation of the world. An intelligent teacher or an intelligent doctor will surely ask you to get rid of the cause, instead of merely tinkering with a few symptoms.
It may be that what you call your inner voice is merely yourself talking in the guise of a voice. You say that you perform rituals because your deeper self says so. Why do you accept what the deeper layer of the mind says, without investigating it?
That voice or command may be false. Whenever you obey commands of 'deeper self' or God, you obey only in the most stupid things and not in the greatest things. You do not love your neighbour.
If you really love your neighbour, there will be kindness, mercy to the animals, to the fatherless, there will not be any harsh words about anybody. You are obeying only that which is extraordinarily gratifying, like ceremonies. Therefore you do not really obey, but you are merely gratifying yourself.
If you love your daughter and do not consider her as a thing to be 'married off', there will be much difference. You will not then be concerned in only one question, i.e., her marriage, but in bringing her up. You will tell her about life, you would take care of her, teach her what life is, educate her about the rotten state of society around you and so on.
All this is difficult, so you consider it your duty to marry her off anyhow as long as her misery is away from you. In other words, you are not really concerned with your daughter but only with yourself. You have not realised that nothing valuable can be had without trouble.
Even the most tender plant has to struggle. You just have babies and let them grow anyhow. You do not know them.
Most of you do not know your most intimate relatives with whom you live. You do not know yourself. That is why you have neglected your babies, your children and your youth.
You do not know how the Americans love their children and what trouble they take in regard to the care of children. If you love your children, you will be extremely watchful what they do, and what they think; you would question them why they do certain things, their notions, their actions, so that they become self-critical and observant; you would see what they eat, watch them go to bed, and be careful so that they have confidence in you; you will also discuss how to teach children and how to be brotherly. But, you do not do all this.
If you merely abide by the tradition of society you do not know what you think. Merely following the current of society is superstition. If you want to understand the current you must detach yourself from the current.
Perhaps our whole existence is thoughtless. This may be the result of the thoughtless past, which is the product of the group and therefore you must begin with the nearest thing that is yourself. Whether you affect the many or not, you are not concerned; because if you understand something, that itself is sufficient.