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krishnamurti_discussions

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A car is something quite objective; but subjectively, inwardly, it is much more. I see, I observe, I perceive, I understand the fact that desire is sustained and nourished by thought. It's not just thought.
It's thought in combination with the feeling of myself. Just begin little, sir. Begin with little things and then go into bigger things.
I know thought is the giver of nourishment to desire. I know desire can be pleasurable or painful. I know also that I would like to keep the pleasurable desires and throw away the desires that cause pain.
If I say, "I'll keep these and throw away those", I'm dealing with fragments. So I have now to find out why thought interferes. Because it isn't necessarily true; it doesn't necessarily relate to the object.
Isn't it because we feel insecure? Sir, look. I am asking you a question.
And I am trying to answer it. Why shouldn't it interfere? Now, sir, look.
I am asking you a question. Or rather, you are asking me a question. I know I can answer.
Ten different words wilt come out, but can I listen to you without answering, and try to find out what is the fact? If I answer immediately, I'll answer in the good old way. I'll bring it out from any habit, from my repertoire of words.
But if you have asked me and I don't know the answer, I listen and I am silent. I really don't know why thought interferes, or why it should not interfere. I know it interferes, and I say to myself, "why?".
Don't I wait to find out? Don't I feel around, make my mind be quiet, not always throwing up words? Don't I just find out for myself why thought interferes?
Actually, I've never thought about it. This iq the first time I have asked myself why thought interferes. I am waiting.
Is it a matter of time? No. I am not waiting to find the answer.
I really don't know. Does thought interfere? Yes, sir, it does Interfere.
So how do I find out what is the truth of the matter - infallible truth, not opinion; not according to Jung, Freud, the Mahatmas, the gurus? I just want to know why it does interfere. And not knowing, I become silent.
My-body, my nerves, my mind, my heart - everything is quiet, because I really don't know the answer. April , The other day we were saying how important it is to be serious, to be earnest in everything that we do, especially in matters that concern much deeper understandings and perceptions. I think one has not only to understand words and their significance, but also to go beyond mere words, explanations and ,intellectual concepts.
We live by formulas, and it is very difficult to free oneself from an ideation, a concept. If one would understand the whole of existence, one must not only understand the meaning of words, but also one must realize that the word is not the thing.-The word is never the thing, but for most of us the word is the thing, so communication becomes rather difficult. We were also saying that to live means to treat life as a whole, and not fragmentarily.
We do treat life in intellectually, emotionally, sensually or merely sensorially. There isn't a total approach to life. We mean by life not only earning money, satisfying some sexual appetites and.some superficial sensory desires, but something much deeper, much more vital, much more significant.
To live that way, one must approach life as a total thing. That is not possible when we live in departments, trying to solve problems fragmentarily, or as long as we approach the action of will. Will is the result of intense desire.
Desire arises naturally and inevitably when there is contact, sensation and perception. We asked what gives desire continuity and intensity. Someone suggested thought.
Desire has a continuity when thought interferes or identifies itself with it. Why does it identify, why does it interfere, and why shouldn't it interfere? That is what we were going to discuss today.
Living in this world, not in a monastery, not in an ivory tower. not in some region of isolation, but living in this world, carrying on with our daily activities, is it possible to live without effort? Effort implies will.
Will is the outcome of contradiction. Unless we understand this whole question of desire, not suppress it, not deny it or transcend it, or try to control it and drive it in a certain direction, it will not be possible to solve our problems totally. When you use the word "desire", I take it that you mean the feeling of "to want".
You say we see something; there is contact and then sensation. It is not a question of what I say, sir. This is what takes place, isn't it?
Well, no, I don't think so. How does desire arise? How does it come into being?
It is from the memory of sensation. Go on, sir. Proceed; dig deeper.
I don't really know the source of the original desire. All my desires apparently are; they have occurred previously. Almost everything we do is the result of effort.
We try, we struggle, we adjust, we compromise; and in that there is always effort. Is it possible to live without effort, spontaneously, and yet be intensely active - have all one's faculties heightened and live completely, but not vegetate? Effort involves dissipation of energy.
When all energy is concentrated, without effort, and there is no movement in any direction, then that energy explodes, and that explosion is creation. When one is interested in something, there is no effort involved. Then how is one to be totally interested?
I have no interest. How am I to arouse interest? That poses a problem, doesn't it?
Life is routine, a bore, filled with constant strife and struggle. All our relationships create tensions. We fall into mechanical and superficial habits, and simply carry on, consciously as well as unconsciously.
How is a human being to break away from this mechanical existence and make life a creative thing? To find that out, one surely must inquire into how one dissipates energy. Because one needs tremendous energy, energy without movement, for something new, for an explosion to take place.
So I must find out how the mind dissipates energy. The ancients have said that one dissipates energy by being worldly, by being sensual. Therefore, one leaves the world, treats it as illusory and goes into a monastery, where one is trained, controlled, subjugated and suppressed.
Or one accepts the world as it is and lives a very superficial life, with no interest in any of the wider and deeper things. The escape from life into a monastery, or into a religious concept, a religious dedication to an ideal, is still a waste of energy, because it breeds conflict. Conflict at any level, whether physical, emotional or intellectual, is the essence of wasted energy.
Is it possible to end all effort? Will cannot do it. If I exercise will to Stop it, again there is a battle.
That very exercise breeds conflict. An effortless life is the only creative life. To live that kind of a life, one has to understand the structure of desire, because desire breeds conflict of the opposites, duality, the want and the not-want, the pleasure and the non-pleasure.
One has to find out how desire arises, from the very beginning. One must understand the foundation and the whole structure of desire, neither suppressing it, transmuting it, trying to control it nor attempting to shape it. We see that thought gives desire shape, continuity and vitality.
Why does thought interfere with desire in this way? I see something a woman, a car, a house. Desire begins and thought gives it duration.
If thought did not interfere with it, there would be an end to desire. If you have experimented with it, you know. What we are afraid of is the ending of something, isn't it?
If desire ended, and there was no continuity to it, what would happen? Time is involved. Because we are afraid to come to an end of everything, we use time, not chronological time but psychological time, which is not a fact but is invented by the mind.
For us time has become extraordinarily important. If one were really confronted with the fact that psychologically there is no tomorrow, one would be horrified. Isn't it also that we use our thought to locate ourselves?
We are so uncertain as to where we are that by having our thought in past time we can locate ourselves there and feel more secure? This is the same, surely. We cling to time.
Thought, giving duration to desire, is the prolongation of oneself, of one's desire, one's future. The feeling that you are the same person you were a moment ago is so ingrained, and so automatic, that I don't see I how it can be broken through. Let's put the question differently.
One sees that one's daily life is mechanical, repetitive, with false desires, activities and habits. Is it possible for a human being to break away from that and be fresh each moment, each minute of the day? That is the real issue, isn't it?
How is that to come about? We have to see that we really do live mechanically. If we see that our life is mechanical, that our pleasures, our sorrows and our anxieties are a repetition, how can it all be ended?
It ends sometimes, but starts again. I don't think it ends sometimes, and starts again. If we continue to see every day, don't you think we begin to distance ourselves from the conditioned mind?
That means you are looking to time as a means of destroying the mechanical process. Yes. If one eventually comes to it by slow degrees, by being aware, by freeing oneself from conditioning, that implies time.
One looks to time as a means of ending this mechanical way of living. Except that I feel it puts one into another dimension of time. It isn't the dimension of time of the conditioned mind.
But I agree it is still time. I don't know what this other dimension of time is. I may invent it, I may speculate about it, I may hope for it; but the actual fact is that I don't know it.
I am not with it; it's not part of me. I have to find it, I have to come into it. I must not use time, because time implies effort and continuity.
The mechanical process goes on and on. Is it possible to live in such a way that there is no tomorrow? Inwardly, psychologically, the thing we really want is the continuity of pleasure, pleasure that has a tomorrow.
The subconscious conviction that it is you who will suffer or have pleasure the next moment is so strong. I don't know if it is possible to do as you say. It is not "Do what I say", but "See what happens", sir.
Sir, is the psychological freedom from tomorrow possible when one lives under natural law? That is, it is day and then it is night; there is light and then there is darkness. That goes very deep into one, surely, even deeper than the conditioned mind.
I don't quite follow, sir. How is it possible to be free of wanting,to be free of the waiting for tomorrow and continuity of time, since one lives under the natural laws of day and night, darkness and light? All that makes one aware of time Does the succession of night and day make one aware of time?
That only makes one aware ' of change, not time. I see that it need not make one aware of time. I look to tomorrow because I am going to enjoy tomorrow.
Thinking about tomorrow gives me pleasure. I am going to meet someone - the whole round of pleasure. But I might not be enjoying tomorrow.
I might think of something which I would be afraid of If I am afraid of tomorrow, it is the same thing. How is it possible to fear tomorrow if I do not know what tomorrow is? Surely you have some fear of tomorrow, fear of death, of not being, of losing a job, or of your wife running away.
Also, we all know very well the pleasure created by thoughts of tomorrow. Following what that gentleman said about this natural law, we are like a goldfish in a bowl. We are so surrounded by things which continually remind us of time that we have to consider it constantly.
Even our posture is a habit, and the w balance. It seems to be rather difficult to separate psychological time from actual time, clock time, and the natural living process of our own body. All right, sir, let's look at it again differently.
What is the act, the moment of learning? What is the act of seeing and of listening? When you are listening, are you listening in time?
Are you listening with concepts, with formulas, with ideas, or are you merely listening? There is that noise of traffic going on outside the room. How do you listen to it?
Do you listen with irritation, with memories, with distaste, or do you merely listen? When you see, do you see with time, or out of time? Do you see only with your eyes when you see your wife or your husband; or when you see yourself in the mirror?
Or do you also see in time, with distaste, despair, depression or some other reaction based on memory? You asked about the act of learning, but I don't think we do learn. We try to bring time into it.
We look into the mirror and we see more gray hairs. We compare them with how many were there yesterday, and find we're getting older. That is the way we learn, but I don't think it is real learning.
Then what is learning? I think it is seeing without time. Don t speculate about it!
What is learning? When do you learn? When you become aware of your conditioning.
When do you learn? Don't answer immediately, please. just look at it.
What is the act of learning? What is the state of the mind when it is learning? Do you mean learning apart from seeing?
For me, seeing and learning are the same. It is experiencing. To be open.
By concentrating. To be eager to find out. When do you learn?
Learning is different from knowing, isn't it? Accumulating knowledge is different from learning. The moment I have learned, it becomes knowledge.
After I have learned, I add more to it. This process of adding we call learning, but that's merely the accumulation of knowledge. I am not against the accumulation of knowledge, but we are trying to find out what the act of learning is.
The mind is really learning only when it is in a state of not knowing. When I do not know, I am learning. The moment I have learned, what I have learned takes its place in time; it becomes knowledge, and with that knowledge I function.
Can I function also in the act of learning? I think that sometimes one just says in words that one doesn't know, but it is not the real thing. I may say that I don't know, but it is something else to perceive that it is actually a fact.
There can be learning only when there is an actual ending. Why shouldn't it be the real thing? Sir, what are we trying to find out?
Aren't we trying to find out, not verbally or theoretically, but actually and factually, whether it is possible to live in this world at a different dimension in which there is no effort at all involved? This means living at a level where there is no problem; or, if a problem arises, it is met so completely that it is over the next minute. We can go on spinning a lot of theories, but that is too stupid and infantile.
To find out anything, there must be an end to the things I have known, or the things I have known must not be allowed to interfere. I must learn what it is to end, and to end, the ending must be in complete energy. Are you meaning something more than to forget?
Of course. To forget is very simple. Could you make it a little clearer what you mean by ending?
Look, sir, it is very simple. Have you ever experimented with ending a pleasure? Yes.
Without effort? Yes. Without any form of restriction, not knowing what will happen afterwards?
Yes. I have become bored. Oh, no, not bored!
Take your own particular pleasurable habit, whether it is sex, smoking, drinking, ambition or something else. End it without a struggle, without knowing what is going to happen next. Take the habit of smoking as an example.
End it immediately without rationalizing, without fear of the harm of smoking, without fear of the kind of cancer you are going to get if you continue smoking. End the habit. While you still enjoy it?
While you still enjoy it, of course. (Laughter). How does one come to the point where, in the full enjoyment of something, one ends it?
If one remains inactive when one would normally take some action to satisfy desire, and instead of taking that action, just watches the desire.... How do you watch? Please, don't theorize. The moment you theorize, you won't be able to proceed.
Take a particular pleasure which you are enjoying. You are having a good time with it. Why should you stop it?
Eventually this repetitive pleasure becomes mechanical. You get disgusted with it, and get hold of another pleasure which you enjoy until that, too, becomes distasteful. You wouldn't give it up unless you saw that it binds you.
I don't want to give up anything. I see life is so terribly mechanical; pleasure and pain, and boredom with pain and with pleasure. Being bored, I attempt to use as an escape the temple, the church, meditation, the Masters, or the pursuit of knowledge.
It is all an attempt to. escape from this mechanical process of living. I do not want to theorize.
I want to find out if one can really live in a different way which will not be mechanical. How is one to do it? The only way, as far as I see it now - I may change as I go further into it - is that there must be a cessation of every waste of energy.
because to end anything one needs tremendous energy. To listen one needs energy. To see without the interference of thought, without the interference of my conditioning, without prejudice, the very seeing is total energy.
To listen to that car going by, one needs attention in which there is no interference; and to attend completely demands great energy. Total attention demands energy, not only neurologically but also mentally. I am dissipating energy now.
How am I to stop this dissipation, without effort? The moment I make an effort to stop it, that breeds other forms of contradiction, other waste. The mind realizes that it has to stop the waste of energy.
How can it be done? I see that the mind by itself cannot. Unless I as a whole am convinced, know, see and understand that it has to be, I will not stop it.
The mind itself, which is the result of time, cannot stop it, because the mind is made up of prejudices, idiosyncrasies, temperaments and experiences. The mind itself, using time, is wasting itself; so it cannot operate, it cannot end the waste of energy. When you are listening, or seeing, or learning, are you using just the mind, or are you using your whole being - the mind, the intellect and the emotions?
Total awareness. Is a total awareness, a total attention, a total intensity in operation when one is listening? One never listens that way all the time obviously.
There are moments when one is completely attentive, completely aware, and there are gaps, long periods of time, in which one is not attentive, in which one is not so completely aware. What is one to do? One generally says, "How is one to be continuously aware?".
I think that is a wrong question, a wrong demand. What one has to do is to be attentive to inattention. Because it is the inattention that is breeding problems and conflict, not attention.
When there is no attention, who is there to be attentive? When there is no attention, who is there to be attentive to that inattention? That's the question.
When you are attentive, when you are listening, when you are learning, when you are seeing, is there an entity which is observing? As you listen to the speaker, find out. When you give your complete attention, with your body, with your mind, with your nerves, with your eyes, is there an observer, a censor?
No. It is only when you are inattentive that the thing comes in. This inattention breeds problems, and the solutions of the problems are still sought in inattention.