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And it requires energy, doesn't it? to go through envy, to watch it in operation outside of us and inside the skin, to watch the expression of envy, the fulfilment of envy and the frustration of envy which include ambition, jealousy, hatred, and to take that and go right through it not only semantically verbally, logically, precisely in thinking but also actually strip the mind of all envy so that it does not think in terms of competition of reaching, gaining. I am sure you have not done it - not only people who have come here for the first time but also the people who have heard me for thirty years.
They have not done this, they skirt round it, explain, play. But to take stock of themselves, day after day, every minute, ruthlessly, to penetrate into this appalling thing called envy - that requires energy. That energy is not commitment to non-envy, you understand?
When one is concerned with the understanding of envy, there is no duality as non-envy to which one is committed, as violence and non-violence. The desire to become non-violent is a directional commitment, and that directional commitment gives you energy. Don't you know that when you are committed to some form of activity - saving the Tibetan children, saving the Indian nationality, or something else - , it gives you an extraordinary vitality.
The people who have fought for this unfortunate country, who have been in prisons - they have had extraordinary energy to do all that, because they were committed to something. This commitment is self-forgetfulness in something; it is a substitution and the self is in identification with that something, and that gives energy. But to enquire into envy which is non-directive, requires a totally different form of energy, because you are not committed to non-envy, you are not committed to a state when you have no envy.
In the search to go into envy you need an astonishing, potent, vital, energy which has no relation to any form of commitment. Do please understand because you are enquiring ruthlessly into yourself, never letting a single thought go by which has the quality of envy, that energy comes which is non-directional, which does not come through commitment. That energy comes only when you begin to understand yourself, when the mind is stripping itself of all the contradictory processes which mean conflict.
The mind in conflict has no energy. Rather than have conflict, it is much better for it to live in a state of non-conflict whatever it be - ambitious, sluggish, lazy, indolent, idolatrous. There, you are wherever you are; you are stupid, that is all.
But a mind which is stupid saying, "I must become clever, spiritual" and all the rest of it - such a mind is in conflict. And a mind in conflict can never have understanding it has not the energy to understand. Please do see a tortured mind, a mind caught in this duality has not the energy to understand; it is wasting itself in conflict.
But the mind that is enquiring into itself, seeking out the corners, the recesses, the deep hidden regions of the mind in which the mind lurks, looking, looking, looking - in that, there is no conflict because it moves from fact to fact; it does not deny the fact or accept the fact, it is so; and that engenders an extraordinary energy without motive. Do experiment with this, Sirs, see it. Take as I said one thing like envy or ambition or what you will and work it right through.
Not to strip the mind of envy - which you can't do-; then it becomes conflict, a duality, and your conflict takes away the energy; it is like a man who is violent trying to become non-violent. All the saints, the Mahatmas and the great ones of the land have been battling in themselves all day long, and that battle creates an energy which is not the energy of purification. But to have the energy of purification, you have to go into one thing, to observe, to understand, to see whether you can find out.
The mind is a vast thing, it is not just a little spot in the universe, it is the whole universe; and to investigate the whole universe the mind requires an astonishing energy. That energy is greater than all the rockets because it is self-perpetuating, because it has no centre from which to move. And you cannot come by this energy unless there is real enquiry into the movement of the mind as the outer and the inner, the inner with its division as the unconscious which is the storehouse of all the racial inheritance of the family, the name, the motives, the urges, the compulsions; and that enquiry is not a process of analysis.
You cannot enquire into something that is nebulous, that is unknown, that is not predictable; you can theorize about it, you can speculate about it, you can read about it, but that is not the comprehension of the unconscious. Or you can look at it through Jungism, Freudism, or with the help of the latest analyst or psychologist; or you can go back to the eternal books like the Gita or the Upanishads - that does not give you the understanding of the unconscious of which you are a part. What brings about the understanding of the unconscious?
We are not trying to understand the unconscious. We are understanding more or less the conscious mind, its everyday activity. But the unconscious thing that is hidden, dark, from which all urges, compulsions cleavages, the intuitive, compulsive fears come in - how do you understand that?
We dream either at night or during the day; the dreams are the hints of that unconscious, the intimations of the things which are hidden, taking new forms, symbols, images, visions and all the rest of it; and merely interpreting these visions, symbols, pictures is not the solution. I do not know if you are following all this. Until the mind understands the unconscious as well as the superficial mind, there is no understanding of oneself.
You understand the issue, Sir, of what I am saying? The mind is the conscious as well as the unconscious, the hidden. The conscious mind has recently acquired education as an engineer or as a physicist or a biologist or a professor or a lawyer; it is being imposed upon by the necessity of circumstances, it acquires a certain level of capacity.
But behind the depth of the unconscious, there is the storehouse of experiences, of the culture, of the story of man; the story of man is there. So you are the story of man, and how do you go into that? Can the conscious mind go into it?
Obviously not. The conscious mind cannot enter into something of which it is not aware. The conscious mind functions on the top, it may receive the intimations, the hints through dreams, from below, from the unconscious, from the hidden; but that conscious, open, surface-mind cannot enter into the deep recesses of the unconscious.
And yet, the mind has to understand the totality of itself. You follow the issue? Understand the question, first - not what the answer is.
If you put the question to yourself, the question is put because you already know the answer. Otherwise you won't put the question. Do please see the importance of this.
An engineer or a scientist puts a question because he has a problem and that problem is the outcome of his knowledge; and the problem exists only in the exploration of that knowledge and because of that knowledge he has the answer. For example, because of the scientific knowledge about the jet engine and all its implications, the problem how to cover the distance from the Earth and go to the Moon. If we had not the knowledge we would not have the problem.
The problem arises because of the knowledge, and the answer is already there because of the knowledge. Enquiry into the knowledge, how to find it out - that is the problem. So I am putting to you the same question differently.
The mind is both the conscious and the unconscious. We all know the conscious. The unconscious has deep, hidden recesses containing hidden desires, hidden wants, hidden longings.
How can the superficial mind enter into that, uncover it, and wipe it all away and be refreshingly innocent, fresh, youthful, innocent, new? That is the quality of the new mind. Having put the question, you already know the answer, otherwise you would not have put the question.
I can analyse the unconscious by taking one experience at a time and analysing it very carefully, but this analysis does not solve the problem; because, the unconscious is a vast treasure-house and it will take a lifetime to go into one experience after another, and also it requires an extraordinary mind to analyse as the problem gets more complicated if I miss the true analysis. Yet it is imperative to cleanse the unconscious - whether it is possible or not, it is irrelevant now. The unconscious is the story of man, the historical story, the cultural story, the accumulative story, the inherited story, the story that has been adjusting, that has adjusted itself to contradictory urges, demands, purposes; it is the story of "you".
You perhaps know yourself on the top very superficially; you may say, "I am a lawyer", or "I am a judge", on the surface. But there is the whole mind and the whole story; and the whole entity has to be cleansed. How will you do it?
If it is a problem to you and you say, "I have got to find this out", then you will find tremendous energy to find it out. How do you look at anything? How do you observe anything?
How do you observe me? You are sitting there and seeing me, and how do you see me? Do you see me as I am?
Or, do you see me verbally, theoretically, traditionally as an entity who has a certain reputation as the Messiah and all the rest of it? Bc clear yourselves how you observe the speaker who is sitting here. Obviously, you are looking with various eyes and various opinions, with various hopes, fears, experiences - all that is between you and the speaker and therefore you are not observing the speaker.
That is, the speaker says one thing and what is heard is interpreted in terms of your knowledge of the Gita or the Upanishads or your infinite hopes, and fears; therefore you are not listening. You follow this? So, can the mind strip itself of its conclusions, of what it has heard, of what it has known, of what it has experienced, and see the speaker and listen to him directly without any interpretation?
What is actually happening to you directly, now, as you are listening? Now if you are listening, if you are observing, stripping the mind of all the stupid conclusions and all the rest of it, then you are listening directly, seeing the speaker directly. So your mind is capable of observing negatively - negatively, in the sense that the mind has no conclusions, has no opposites, has no directive; it looks; in that observation it will see not only what is near but also what is far away.
You understand? Some of you have driven a car, haven't you? If you are a very good driver, you see three hundred to four hundred yards ahead and in that seeing you take in not only the near - the lorry, the passenger, the pedestrian, the car that is going by - but you also see what is far ahead, what is coming.
But if you keep your eyes very close to the front mudguard, you are lost - that is what the beginners do. The mind can look far as well as very near, it sees much more than the eye, when you are driving. The mind cannot observe, see what is near as well as what is far away if there is a conclusion, if there is a prejudice, if there is a motive, if there is fear, if there is ambition?
Now, that state of mind which observes is the negative mind, because it has no positive and the reaction to the positive. It just watches, it is just in a state of observation without recollection, without association, without saying, "this is what I have seen, and this is what I have not seen", it is in a state of complete negation and therefore there is complete attention of observation. So your mind, when you observe, is in a state of negation.
It is simply aware, not only of the thing very far but of the very near - not the ideal, there is no ideal in observation; when you have an ideal you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. In that state of negation in which there is no reaction as the opposite of the positive, in that state of awareness, in that state of observation there is no association, you merely observe. And in that state of observation there is no observer and the observed.
This is important to understand - understand in the sense of experiencing it, not verbally seeing the reason and the logic of it - because the experience of the observation in which there is no observer and the observed is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. Sir, can you observe that way?
You can't because you have never gone into yourself, never played with your mind, and the mind is never being aware of itself as thinking, watching, hoping, looking, searching; if you have not done that, obviously you can't come to this. Don't ask how to do this, don't ask for an answer. It requires hard, logical, steady work which very few of us are willing to do, to bring about a mind which is in a state of negation, which has stripped the totality of itself, both the conscious and the unconscious, of the story.
All that is important the mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. It cannot see because of all its foolish conclusions, theories. But as it is interested in observing, it wipes out all these with one stroke.
The wiping away of the totality of the mind, the conscious and the unconscious, is not an act of discipline, sacrifice. In that state of mind there is neither the conscious nor the unconscious. It is the unconscious that prevents you from seeing, observing, looking, because the moment you look, fear comes in - you may lose your job, or ten other different things which the unconscious is aware of, but the conscious is not aware of; because of fear, the mind says, "I won't look,I won't see".
But when there is an intense urge, an intense interest to see, to observe, there is no longer the interference of all the stories of man, all the stories have been wiped away; then the mind is in the negative state when it can see, observe directly. Such a mind is the new mind. Such a mind has no direction and therefore it is not the political mind, it is not the Indian mind, it is not the economic, the scientific, the engineering mind, because it has exploded without direction, it has broken through everywhere, not merely in a particular direction.
So, that is the religious mind. The religious mind does not touch politics the religious mind does not touch the economic problems, the religious mind does not talk of, is not concerned of divorce, of non-divorce the temporary reforms, pacifying this part or that part because it is concerned with the totality and not with the part. So when the mind is functioning in particular directions saying, "I must be peaceful, I must not be angry, I must observe, I must be more kind", those partial directive activities do not result in a new mind.
The new mind comes into being without a direction and explodes. And that is hard, arduous work; it requires constant watching. You can't watch yourself from morning till night, vigilant, never blinking; you can't.
So you have to play with it. When you play with something, you can carry on for a long time. If you do not know how to play with this sense of awareness lightly, you get lost; there again begins the how am I to be aware, what is the method, what is the system?
As you are playing, you learn. So learning is not a matter of accumulation; the moment you accumulate you have ceased to learn. The mind which is full of knowledge can only add to itself further knowledge, further information.
But we are talking of something in a totally different dimension, and you have to learn about it, and therefore it is not a problem; if it is a problem it has. come from your knowledge, and therefore it has the answer in the knowledge. But the state of the new mind is not within the field of knowledge, it is something entirely different.
It is that state of creation which is exploding all the time. You do not know a thing about it, you cannot say that it is a problem to you, because it is a problem to you only when you know about and you do not know anything about it. Therefore to understand a thing knowledge has to come to an end.
They are coming to that in the West, they are beginning to understand that knowledge is not at all enough; they know most things of life. but that is not leading them anywhere; they know about the universe, how it came into being, they know about the stars, they know the depth of the earth, the depth of human relations, the physical organism they know, they have added to the knowledge. They say we must not hate, we must be kind, we must be brotherly; but it has not led them very far.
So the new mind cannot come into being with authority, with the Masters, with gurus. You have to wipe off all that and start with a clean slate. And knowledge is not the way to clean the slate, knowledge is an impediment; knowledge is useful at a certain level, but not in the new mind.
So the mind has to divest itself, of its own fears, its depths of sorrow and despair, to understand, to observe and to be aware of itself, to know itself and then see the futility of knowing itself. If you have once seen the absurdity of spiritual organizations - even of one organization, just one, whether you are a little group or a world organization as the Church or as something else - , when once you have seen it, it is over; when you have understood once, you have wiped the whole thing off completely. So you never belong to anything; therefore, there is no need to follow anybody.
So, you may be one of the happy few who say, "I have seen it", and who, in the breath of understanding, enter into the mind that is the Unknown. One can do it and from there reason logically, discuss. But most of you are unfortunate, you cannot do that because you have not the energy.
Look at your lives, Sirs! You spend forty to fifty years working in an office with its routine, boredom, anxieties,fear, the mechanical nature of it; and at the end you say you must look into this. You are burnt out and you want to turn to something which is alive; you cannot though you may walk to the Himalayas or up and down the land - because you have not a fresh, eager, live mind.
This does not mean that the bureaucrat, the office-worker has not got it, but he is destroying himself. He can get it there or anywhere, but it requires extraordinary energy. The yogis and the saints tell you, "you must be bachelors", "you must not smoke", "you must not get married", "you must not do this or that", and you follow them; but such following does not give that energy, that creates only conflict and misery.
What releases that energy is direct perception, and that brings about the new mind. It is only the mind that explodes without any direction that is compassionate - and what the world needs is compassion, not schemes. And compassion is the very nature of the new mind.
Because the new mind is the unknown mind, it is not to be measured by the known; and one who has entered into it knows what it is to be in a state of bliss, to be in that state of benediction. March , How shall we proceed with a gathering like this? Shall we discuss?
Or would you like to ask questions? Or would you like me to talk a little while, and then discuss? I really feel, after having been practically all over the world, that a tremendous inward revolution in every human being must take place, and not just an ideological revolution, or a mere intellectual change of concepts and formulas.
I feel we are coming to an impasse, intellectually, emotionally, sentimentally. There is no future in that direction at all. Intellectually one sees the utter hopelessness of the useless life that one leads, a life that has no meaning whatsoever; and sentimentally, emotionally, it is very shallow.
There is no significance at all in becoming sentimental, devotional, or in accepting religious concepts, gods and images, worship and ritual - all this has utterly no meaning. So what is one to do? Most thoughtful people have put aside religious beliefs, dogmas, gods, rituals - all the circus that goes on in the name of religion.
And when one does put aside those things, one feels tremendously empty, lonely and in despair. One is ready to commit suicide, or join some mystical association on or create something within oneself. If one does deny literally everything, as one must - one's own concepts, formulas, projections, ideas, fears, hopes, and all the rest of those things which we hang on to in our daily life - and if it is possible to reject all that intelligently not as a reaction, and not commit oneself to any particular political or religious party, or idea, or action, then where is one?
I don't know if you feel that way at all. And if you do, if one does, without throwing oneself into the lake, is there anything more? After all, that is what we are trying to find out, isn't it?
Not accepting any authority, any personal salvation and all that - that is too immature. When one does arrive at that position, is there anything more which is not self-projected, which is not an imagination, a vision, a heightened sensitivity? All of these are fairly simple to explain, to understand, and to bring about.
If one is at all serious, how does one proceed further? That I would like to discuss. I don't know if you want to discuss that.
The fairly obvious things, I think, one can grapple with - like wars, the terrible starvation in the East, poverty, the enormous technological revolution that's going on, the electronic brain and automation, giving enormous leisure to man. Not immediately, but perhaps inyears, oryears, man is going to have a great deal of leisure. He is going to be freed from labour, from incessant toil.
And what is going to happen then ? If one is at all serious, what does one do? I mean by that word, not a determined seriousness which is brought about by will, but a seriousness that comes naturally.
When one observes all the superficial tendencies of man, what's going on in the world and in ourselves, one inevitably comes, I think, to a certain quality of seriousness. And if one is serious in that sense - and one must be after all these years of discussion, talking, listening, struggling with life - one must naturally, I think, have come to certain rejections, certain denials of the things which have been imposed on man by his own ambition, greed and so on, and by the society which he has created. When one rejects all that, one does become rather; serious.
By seriousness I do not mean going to various groups of meditation and schools of yoga, all that stuff. If one is at all serious, what actually takes place? I think it would perhaps be worthwhile to discuss, to go into that in these six meetings.
Because we can go on ploughing everlastingly, and never sowing; and most of us, I'm afraid, do keep on ploughing, not knowing how to sow, not having the capacity to proceed intelligently after ploughing. Krishnamurti, you talk about preparing and sowing. The point is, we don't know what to sow.
We get to the point where we don't know what to do. The lady says we don't know what to do. We think we have ploughed, but after that we don't know how to sow, or what to do.
It is very easy to do things, but it is not so easy just to be able to be. The lady says it is a matter of being, not ploughing or sowing; but we don't know how to be. What do you mean by "sowing", Krishnaji?
That's only a simile, sir. Don't run the simile to death. To me, sowing, ploughing is really like going within oneself.
And the very ploughing, if one goes within oneself very deeply, is the sowing. It is not that they are two different things. So we can't carry on with that simile.
After all these years of struggle, sorrow, searching, joining this group and that group, seeking the Masters, seeking something mysterious, trying to find something permanent, some hope, something called the eternal, the out of time, and so on and so on, we must find out whether we can throw them aside. We have played with all these things, searched for them, struggled for them, gone after them, joined the Communist party, the Socialist party, or led a very, very simple life, as they do in India with a loincloth and one meal a day, thinking that is the religious life, and sitting on a river-bank, meditating endlessly. We have played with all this.
You may not have directly done these things, but you have observed them; and if one has observed them intelligently, without reaction, one rejects them. There are the various schools where they teach you how to be aware, to practise; And you see through that too. You see where Communism has led.
And if one is at all aware of all this, one wants peace, one wants a certain quality of mind, without deceiving oneself endlessly. I am sure you have done all this. If not, one has to start all over again from the beginning, about unconditioning the mind, how to uncondition the mind, whether it is possible to uncondition the mind, whether it is at all possible to be free from fear, despair, anxiety, greed, envy, the seeking of power, position, prestige - all those things.
There are many young people today who have travelled throughout the world and who feel they have reached something. They have not settled in any society. What about them?
Leave the others alone. If one has done all this joined the Communist party gone out of it; become a religious person, gone out of it; gone to a monastery for a month or two and seen the whole business of it, left it; read all the clever books, and so on and so on and so on; if one has done some of that, or at least felt one's way through all that, not necessarily joined them, then what? Do we look to another to tell us what to do?
Obviously not. Obviously, if you have gone through all this, you throw all authority aside, authority in the sense of law. Then what do you have to do?
You can't look to another; you can't put your faith in another; you have no trust in another. You have yourself yourself in relation to society. Or rather, you are society, because you are a human being - a human being who has lived for two million years, creating this appalling world.
You are that, you are society, which you have created. Realizing that, what is one to do? There is no authority outside oneself to tell one what to do Any hope, any despair is part of oneself.
Either one creates in hope great things, great images and Utopias and gods, and all the rest of it; or, being in despair, joins some footling little society, or jumps in the lake. If one does not do any of those things, it is very difficult, perhaps one has not reached a point where one has completely rejected everything, without cynicism, without bitterness, without despair. That may be the real crux with all of us, the real issue.
It may not be possible to reach such a point, without any distortion, without any reaction. That demands tremendous discipline in oneself, tremendous attention, alertness, and one may not want all that. So, if one has come to that point where there is no distortion, if it is at all possible, where the mind can function very clearly, not in departments but as a whole - if one can come to that with energy, with vitality, with freedom, is there anything more?
And is it possible to come to that point? Knowing what society is, the influence of society, one's own background, tradition, influences and conditioning, and how cunning and subtle the mind is to slip through, is it humanly possible? Most of us have to function within society simply to earn our daily bread.
That's what I mean. Living in society, and being out of it in another sense, can one come to that point? Because living is action.
Living is relationship. Living is a movement not business and living. Taking the thing as a whole, is it possible to live in this world and come to that point - not escaping into monasteries, and all that stuff, which has no meaning, or identifying oneself with a particular nation or group, working for Communism or some other Cause?
Can one, living in this world, come to that point? If one can't, then one must make the best of this world, and therefore there is no significance in this appalling boredom and monotony of life. Going to an office foryears to earn a livelihood, and that's the end of it.
Seeing that, one revolts; one becomes a beatnik and all the rest of it, or one becomes extraordinarily superficial, wanting to be entertained endlessly. You must also have seen and read and heard or been told, as I have, that automation and the computer are going to give man tremendous leisure. What is he going to do with that leisure?
They are already talking about a -hour week. You just have a reach that point, and then remain there. That's what I mean.
And find out what it is for yourself. Yes. How do we come to that point?
You follow, sir? Most of us are groping in the dark. We read so much.
So many religious people, all the clever writers, the existentialists and all the others have said so many things. From what you're saying, then, there is no answer in words. Let's think about it; don't let us come to any finality, any decision yet.
I feel it is very important how we come to that point. Do we come to it, or is it that we are never really out of it? We are always in it.
We are not aware of it. Ah, that's right, sir. We are always in it, but we are not aware of it.
But we are aware of our misery, of our despair, of our endless conflict with ourselves, and when we are free of these, perhaps we are that, whatever that may be. I think we are trying to come to this position, but we always see that it is a reaction; we are not coming to it spontaneously or freely. It is always an attempt through reacting to something else.
Yes, sir. Here is years, oryears, oryears, one has lived. Where is one?
Still in the same cage? Or, as a reaction, gone out of it, created another cage; or, not finding an answer to life, just drifting? So would it be right to ask oneself where one is, not as a reaction, just as a challenge?
It would be very interesting to find out one's response to that challenge. You don't mean the place where one is, you mean the state of mind. Yes, sir.
Not at Wimbledon! (Laughter). Sir, the whole problem is, one arrives at a point where on; suddenly "I am here, out of everything", and suddenly one is afraid of this void.
This void naturally remains a concept; one doesn't get a chance to analyse it. Before it actually comes upon you, you think it is going to swallow you up, and then you set off another reaction all over again, which creates fear, and off you go all over again. So, if you asked yourself, that would be your response.
One probably can't remain continuously in that state. No Sir no. It is not continuously remaining in a certain state.
You see, one comes to it; one doesn't give it a chance. One comes to something unknown, and just as one is going to approach it, one "Let me look back". I understand.
Quite. The thing that one thinks one wants with one hand, the other hand is fighting against. All that implies conflict, doesn't it?
Exactly. And conflict is contradiction - contradiction, conflict and effort. That's our circle.
It's important to have this concept about an ideal. No, no, no concept at all. Sir, look; we live with love and hate, with anger and pleasure, don't we?