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krishnamurti_discussions

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Because I have a conclusion about myself. I don't know if you follow this. I am frightened to see myself as I am because I have come to a conclusion I am a marvellous man.

Or I am a very ugly man. So the conclusion, the ideal, breeds fear, not the fact. I don't know if you are meeting all this.

Right? So, I am learning about myself, not adding more conclusions. So I have learnt something, which is, I am afraid.

I am afraid because I have an image about myself. Now why have I an image about myself? Haven't you an image about yourself?

Why? (In French) So you blame the image on the society? Is it?

Or am I also building an image about myself all the time? Society says you must be a great success. And also to be successful gives me great pleasure.

So it is a combination of both. No? So I have built, I am building an image about myself all the time, based on pleasure and pain.

(Laughs) I don't know if you are following all this. Right? No?

So I have come back. I have started in examining pleasure and pain, and I have found myself that all my life is based on this principle. Right, sirs?

So where am I now? I only want pleasure, and avoid pain. I study myself in order to attain greater pleasure.

No? Which is called enlightenment, god - (laughs) you follow? - all the rest of it.

So - may I go a little further? Now I see that anything I attempt to learn about - about something - must be either to resist it or to derive pleasure. Right?

So, what is there to learn? What is learning then? If my whole structure is based on this principle of pleasure and pain - past, present and the future - what is there to learn?

I don't think you are meeting this. I have learnt everything about myself. No?

Right, sir? No - are you meeting... (In French) Sir, we started with pleasure and pain, desire, thought, learning a formula which will stop. Then I am frightened to look at myself because I have an image about myself.

The image says, 'Don't look because you may find ugly things in you', and so be afraid of it, so don't look. The not looking is dictated by pleasure, not by fear. (In French) No, no.

No, no. No, sir. Just follow it, sir.

If you have followed this inwardly you will see it. So I started out with pain and pleasure, and I find I am learning about myself. Right?

And what is there to learn about myself? I have learnt. There has been a tremendous learning, which is, the mind very subtly wants pleasure and wanting to avoid pain - in different forms, in different circumstances, different ambience and so on.

That's what it wants. Superior, inferior, god, hell - you know. And I say, 'By Jove, I will observe only, not learn'.

You don't understand. Have I learnt everything about myself when I have seen that this pleasure, that pleasure and pain are the... (inaudible) Yes, sir. You can add more details to it.

Doesn't this rather simplify it, sir? No, I simplified it, of course, purposefully because I can't go too much into it, but I am showing you something else, which is, learning in order to have pleasure and avoid pain, which is what we are doing all the time, and that is not learning. So you say observe.

Observe. Who is the observer? That's just it.

Wait. Go into a little bit. Who is the observer?

It's the 'me'. Who is the me? The one seeking pleasure.

Who is the me? My thoughts. My thoughts.

My memories. Yes. My image.

Image. Thought, which is memory, image which is memory - the 'me' is a bundle of memories. Right?

Memories are dead things. So the 'me' is a dead thing. No?

So the 'me' is looking at everything alive. I look at you who is alive, or the flowers, with a dead me inside looking. No?

I love you. Look at it, what has taken place there. The 'me' says, 'I love you'.

The 'me' with all the memories, the 'me' with all its thoughts, which are dead, and love is a living thing, otherwise... Love is not a memory. I don't know if you are following all this. So when I say, 'I love you', a dead thing is saying to a living thing, and can a dead thing speak to a living thing?

So can I... can the mind and the heart look, not with dead conclusions, memories, ideas, images, but look with something which is living, which is love. No? Don't agree, sir.

You know, this is real meditation, you know? Can it look at life, at my wife, husband, the neighbour, the world, with those eyes? If it doesn't look then it constipates.

Then it is not looking, it is participating. Then something else is taking place. If I look at you with my image about you, I am not looking at you.

Right? My image about you is looking. Look at it, sir, the strange phenomena is going on.

I have not only an image of you but I have an image about myself. So there are two images in me, and many more, but for the moment two. The 'you' and the 'me'.

So I am looking with two images at you. And this looking is called relationship. Right?

When I say, 'I love you', it means that - my image about myself and the image which I have built about you. And the images are obviously dead, adding to it or subtract, but they are dead. So can I... can the mind and the heart look without dead... without being dead?

And then possibly, only, one can say, 'I love you'. Now, I have learnt - learnt, not just speculated. By investigating, looking - desire, all that, I have learnt something enormous.

Right? I have learnt, the mind has learnt to put away everything dead. Which means tradition, image - you follow?

- wipe it clean. (In French) Why does one build these images. That's fairly simple too.

I come to you and say, 'Oh, how very intelligent you are'. Look, immediately you have built an image about it, haven't you? You like being flattered and you have an image, you are my friend.

I say to you - I won't, not to you, sir - I say somebody is stupid. At that moment you have created an image. But if you are really attentive at that moment you won't have an image.

I wonder if you... So the mind is... when the mind is attentive there is freedom, when the mind is inattentive then there is image... You follow? Then you will say, how am I to be attentive all the time?

Right? Right? (In French) Are you asking that question?

Aren't you very greedy? When you say, 'How can I be attentive all the time? ', aren't you being greedy?

And why are you asking it? Watch it, sir. Why are you asking it?

Because you expect pleasure from this. Exactly. So, I spend most... one spends most of one's life inattentive.

Right? And occasionally attention. And I say, 'By Jove, if I could move this inattention to attention everything will be all right'.

Right? Now, can that be done? Can inattention become attentive?

You are following? It can't. You understand?

The two are entirely two different states - one is asleep, the other is awake. How can the sleepy state become the other? It can't.

Right? So what is to be done? Let there be attention in the sleepy state.

Let me be aware, attentive that I am asleep. Right? Then I am attentive.

I don't know if you are meeting. So I have learnt a great deal. By one question, pleasure and pain, the mind has learnt a tremendous lot, which is enlightenment.

To see things very clearly, with light, is enlightenment. But we won't go into that, that brings in quite a different problem. What problem does that bring in, sir?

What problem does enlightenment bring. Enlightenment doesn't bring. No, the question of enlightenment.

The question of enlightenment. What is enlightenment? I think he wants the word... (inaudible) You read books on Hindu religion?

Oh my lord! (Laughter) I haven't read them, so I am at a loss. You know, what is enlightenment, what does it mean?

To be light to oneself. Light. And that light cannot be lit by another.

Right? No, do see this, sir, please. So no authority, nobody can light the light.

In that light everything is seen very clearly - there is no illusion, there is no darkness, there is no shadow, there is no wish, there is no image. That's what it means to be enlightened human being. So, can the mind be free of all authority?

All authority, not one particular authority of the police, but all authority inwardly, of every kind. Which means also the authority of knowledge, the authority of memory, the authority of experience. You follow, sir?

The problem is tremendous, you have no... (Inaudible) He says, how can one escape the authority of oneself? How can one escape from the authority of oneself. The authority of oneself is knowledge, experience, isn't it.

I have experienced - what? - joy. That's the authority.

Look what has happened. I have experienced joy, which is in the past. The past then becomes the authority.

You don't say, in the state of experiencing, 'I have experienced'. I don't know if you are following all this. Are we meeting each other?

While we are looking at the sunset, the beauty of it, the colour of it, the joy of it, in that moment you say, 'I am experiencing great delight'. You don't say that. You only say it when it is over, and when you remembered it, and then tell somebody.

So the authority of one's own experience is the dead authority of yesterday, therefore valueless. Right? So to have no authority means to be free from yesterday - knowledge, experience - unless you go into this very, very deeply, this is all just words.

Quelle heure est il? (Inaudible) Isn't that enough? Sir, we came to the point where we saw that if you were learning with a motive then that's not learning at all.

And then you spoke about love and you spoke about other things; could we go back to that point... Which one, sir? The fact that if you were learning with a motive then you are not really learning at all.

Ah. Sir, there are two different kinds of learning, aren't there. The learning of a language, a technique - there, there is a certain motive.

I want to learn a technique in order to earn a livelihood, money, a job. Right? In learning about myself why should I have a motive?

Yes, that's it. Why should I have a motive? If I have a motive, that motive is based on pleasure and pain, however subtle.

So the moment I have pleasure and pain as the motive I am not learning. Is that... Then what is the other, sir, love? He said that instead of the motive there could be something else which is love, which makes it possible to learn.

Sir, don't let's use the word 'learn'. Then we have to go into this question of what love is. Right?

Is love pleasure? Is love desire? Is love jealousy?

Is love ambition, competition, hatred, nationality? Can a mind that is nationalistic, class-minded, that is acquisitive, possessive - you follow all this? - can such a mind love, or the heart love?

And we are all that. So is it possible for the mind not to have measure at all? Because I measure myself, compare myself with you who are clever, who are loving, kind, noble, etc., etc., etc., and I say, 'By Jove, I wish I could be like that'.

Which is part of envy. So can the mind be free of all measurement, comparison? Sir, I can go into all this you see; unless you do it, it is no fun at all.

(In French) Do you think it is possible to speak about love? No. (In French) I mean, what is not.

Hate is not love. Right? And we do hate, we create enmity, we do...

So can the mind never have hate at all? So I have forgotten the question of love. I am now interested to see if the mind can be free of hate, anger, jealousy, competition.

You follow? When this thing is not, the other is. Through negation the positive is.

But not in the pursuit of the positive - it doesn't come. Sir, we had better stop. I am sorry we have to stop because I have to go.

This is supposed to be a young people's meeting. And they are supposed to sit in front and the older people, like us, sit back. So what shall we - I am asking the younger people, not of my age but less, what they would like to talk about this morning, to talk over together.

Does complete awareness imply a total indifference to all the situations with which we are not confronted immediately, directly? Does complete awareness imply total indifference to all the things about us. No, to all the things with which we are not confronted immediately in time, directly in space.

Does total awareness mean a complete indifference to all other things except to that with which we are immediately confronted? Is that what you want to talk about? It doesn't matter, let's ask half a dozen questions and then we will see what comes out of it.

I think that a lot of us are concerned with social problems, not only the problem of starvation but there are lots of problems which are urgent, like people accumulating bombs to destroy the other ones, like the alienation of man towards business and industry. And all these problems need, I think, urgent solutions. Can we really wait until everybody has passed his personal revolution to make another kind of revolution?

There needs to be a great many social changes. People accumulating bombs to destroy others, the business world which is so corrupt and so on, social injustice, and the various problems of society, must they wait until the individual, you, are free himself from his own limitations, miseries, suffering. Any other questions?

Well, do totally different individuals, that is completely integrated individuals, perceive the same fact in the same way, or are they different? If each individual freed himself, would each individual be different from the other, or in his actions, different. Any other?

There is a problem which several of us are concerned what to do with our lives. Several of us are concerned with what to do with our lives. We are young, just beginning to be aware of all the difficulties, the corruption, the various struggles that are going on in the world.

What is one to do? Yes sir? You talk about closing the gap between us and the world so that we no longer have the distinction of the observer and the observed, or thought which by its nature divides.

And you have always talked in terms of vision, which I find to be the most distancing of the senses. You are much closer to something if you can touch it, or smell it, or taste it, than if you see it. And I am wondering if you can hope to close the gap, except in action when you are really working in the world rather than draw back in a way to look at it because looking always draws you back.

Correct me if I repeat your question wrong wrongly. Please correct it. To close the gap between the observer and the observed, does it not mean a certain amount of withdrawal from the world.

And it is much easier, more acute, definite when there is action which brings us face to face with this division. And one can observe, visually it is more difficult, but would it not be easier to bridge this gap between the observer and the observed when there is direct contact, direct touch, direct action. That's right, sir, isn't it.

Any other question? Can we discuss the nature of this inward change from the point of view of the nervous system, the body? I didn't quite catch it sir.

The nature of cessation of thought, etc., could you discuss it from the point of view of the body? Could you discuss the cessation of thought, and the activities of thought and so on in relation to the biological functioning, the actual physical existence. Right?

Sometimes when I feel I have awareness I find myself in a point where I see all human relationship is almost meaningless. And therefore non-partaking of them I still don't lose my quality of social interaction. I feel the only time something is valid is if I expand what I feel to be truth.