Talks at Adyar, India

 

IV

Question: It has been suggested that you are at present concerned with one aspect of truth. What you say about discipleship is more to awaken within us the desire for preparation rather than to give us the impression that you are against the method. Also when you have completed this phase of work you may begin to give us the eternal verities, which you have not denied but have merely put away at present. Are you certain you will not stress in future the importance of the Masters in the scheme of evolution?

Krishnamurti:   There are two ways of approaching this question. One is to know intuitively, and the other is to reason; and both intuition and reason may be false.  So one has to be very careful, alert and unbiassed.

To me, truth has no aspect.  It is you who create duality; and in cultivating your individual temperament and your particular concepts, you attribute to truth dif­ferentiation, aspects. Truth is the completeness of feeling and thought in action, the intensity of harmonious living. not in some distant future, but in the present. Truth has no aspects because it is in itself complete. You cannot ap­proach truth through paths and systems; these are merely the results of your particular idiosyncrasies, fancies, hopes and fears.

To live intensely and fully in the present, which to me is to know eternity, infinity, mind must be free of the past and the future. All incompleteness of action in the pres­ent is caused by attachment, which creates the past and the future.

The conception of discipleship for the realization of truth is born of ignorance. What you call human progress--I am not referring to technical progress----is, to me, an emptiness, because it is based on the idea of achievement and of ceaseless differentiation in power and values. You think that by climbing higher and higher the successive peaks of achievement in the pursuit of power, in which there is continual differentiation, you will ultimately come to the realization of truth, God or life. Hence you look to success and to the accumulation of experience to give you wisdom and understanding.  In this pursuit of progress, based on successive achievements, each achievement but turns to dust, because in this there is no completeness of living in the present.

Consider the working of your own mind and heart and you will see that in the pursuit of achievement and prog­ress you are living in the past and in the future and never fully in the present. Your action is ever incomplete, and thus you create time. That is, if your action in the present is always conditioned by a future--and the future is inevitable in the idea of the acquirement of virtues and qualities, of power and success, which are all born of craving--then such conditioned action in the present cannot yield to you the full significance of any experience in life. If the mind is occupied with success, with achievement, and with the gathering in of virtue, naturally the understand­ing of action must be limited, hence perverted.

I say wisdom cannot be acquired from another. A fisher-man who is struggling with his jealousies, with his loves, his angers and his suffering, is much more alive, intense, than the man who has intellectualized his problems and is pursuing power, because this man is consumed in his own egotism.  Wisdom is born of the intensity of living, not of intellectual theories, whether they be true or false; and there is intensity of living only when action is complete in the present, with the richness of thought and feeling.

The approach to truth by a path, whether it be the path of discipleship or the path of self-mortification and con­formity, is utterly false.  Where there is the idea of a Master and a pupil, there can be no understanding of truth. Where there is love, tenderness, there is no sense of duality. Only when you cease to love do you create the word "tol­erance.”   It is only when you cease to live that you seek power.

Look at your own life:  You may be a disciple, but is there not an incessant struggle in your mind, a lack of affection in your heart?  You are continually pursuing progress, struggling after achievement and success, ever urged on by the fear lest you should fail, lest you should lose opportunities;  thereby you create the exploiter and the exploited.  What is the value of a future reward or gain when you cannot live in the fullness of the present, when you have no depth of feeling, when your thought is circumscribed and suffocated by an idea? As long as you do not feel the utter falseness of this idea of progress, which is but self-glorification in the future, you are creating prisons for yourself and for others.  This is not dogmatism; examine it and come to your own conclusions with your heart and mind, and then action will follow.

As a fog hides a toiling city, so you hide your conflicts, your sorrows, your struggles, in the illusion of disciple­ship and progress.  You hope that, through discipleship and conformity to a system of conduct, you will under­stand the conflict, and so conquer the misery, the toil and the suffering.  You are only escaping from conflict when you pursue these illusions, in which there can never be understanding.  In the pursuit of achievement and prog­ress you create the essential and the unessential, whereas understanding lies in the discovery of the true significance of every incident of life, freed from the illusion of the opposites.

To understand life, that is, your own conflicts, struggles and sorrows, no system, no Master, is necessary. It is only when you intellectualize life, when you seek an escape from your own conflicts, that you create a system, a method, which is but a barrier to the understanding of truth.

It is of little value whether there are Masters, whether you are a disciple, because truth, that living reality, can­not be understood through the worship of another or through the pursuit of an opposite.  Truth is in action itself, which is unimpeded, complete, in the present. Not by seeking an escape from your sorrows, struggles, jealous­ies, spites and vanities, but by confronting them, do you discover their cause, and thereby become freed from them. Then you need not fight them, because such effort only creates the opposite.

A flower does not seek: it lives, there is no toil. There is a naturalness, a spontaneity of being, which is action itself.  It has no being apart from action; it is action as well as being. which is true living.

In the pursuit of the future, which is created by the incompleteness of action in the present, there cannot be understanding, and he that is without understanding is as a withered thing, though he be a disciple or a Master.

Question: Are you not unjust to those who sincerely live in order to help others in suffering, when you call them exploiters and destroyers? Are you able to look into their hearts that you can say this of them?

Krisbnamurti: Beware of the man who talks constantly of helping others, because probably he merely wants to express his own individual idiosyncrasy or fancy.  Does a flower in giving its scent think about helping everyone? Does the light in shining think that it is helping man, or that it is there to destroy darkness? Only the man who is self-conscious, who is filled with egotism, talks about helping another.  Whereas in living nightly, fully, completely, you will be spontaneous, natural in your actions.

In your heart you are seeking power, satisfaction and comfort.  Hence, through your ideas, you want either to exploit another, or, because you like certain ideas, you want to be exploited, to be helped by another. And I say wisdom, spontaneous living, cannot be realized through the help of another.  No one can release you from your petty reactions except you yourself; no one can free you from the loneliness of heart and the pursuit of empty vani­ties except you yourself.

I am talking about human struggles, not about your intellectual theories.  I am talking about distinctions in affection, in thought, which you express towards one an­other.  As long as these distinctions exist, there must be struggle and sorrow, human spites, vanities and unkindli­ness.  When you free yourself from all these, you will know that wisdom which is spontaneous, which is the fullness of life.

It is you who create the exploiter; the priests the world over are but exploiters created by you.  I am not saying this out of harshness. Because you want to be encouraged and helped to escape from your conflicts, to cover up your struggles, you try to find the mediator between you and your understanding, and thereby you create the exploiter. Where there is the sense of possession or acquisition there will always be the exploiter and the exploited.

You ask me, "How can you look into my heart to say that I am an exploiter?"  I will tell you: If you did not exploit, you would have understood for yourself that liv­ing reality, you would be living naturally like a flower, with an ecstasy. Because you are possessive, grasping, you create a system, a method, an organization for exploitation.

So I say that you as an individual are the cause of the confusion in your life, because you are obsessed by this idea of gain, whether of virtues or of material advantages. If you are consciously pursuing power, in which there is no gentleness, tenderness or affection, if you are consciously asserting your egotism, and imagine yourself to be spir­itual, I have nothing to say to you. If you are convinced that your pursuit of power will lead you to the godhead of understanding, that you are not escaping from your own conflicts, then I cannot contend with you.  But to me, these pursuits have nothing whatever to do with spirituality.  Most of you are concerned with the pursuit of power in all its subtle forms, which have their roots in egotism, in self-consciousness, in craving; whereas I say that it is only in the cessation of craving, which creates struggle, conflict, toil and suffering, that there is the realiza­tion of eternal living.  That, to me, is spirituality, the very essence of wisdom.

Not out of conceit do I say that I have realized that understanding, but only to show you that it is possible for all.  What is futile, vain, is this pursuit of power, because it is an illusion and endless, but that which is endless is not the infinite. In this illusion there is struggle. suffering, the continual swing between the essential and the unessential.  In living fully and completely in the present, in which there is no time, there is not this con­flict of choice between the essential and the unessential.

Question: One can grasp a problem or a situation in life, its cause and effect, clearly enough by the exercise of the intellect and sometimes equally so emotionally. But how does one do this mentally and emotionally at the same time? Please explain more fully how to bring about this poise of the mind and the heart.

Krishnamurti: To realize this poise and not merely theorize over it, you must first understand its vital im­portance.  Through this understanding you will become aware of your disharmonious and conflicting actions.  In that awareness there is instantaneous discernment, which is poise.

Let me take an example:  You feel emotionally, ot perceive intellectually, the cruelty of child-marriage. You feel the horror of it, with all its brutality and bestiality; yet your intellect or your emotion may yield to public opinion, or to the compulsion of your parents or nearest relatives. So although your feelings or your intellect may be strongly against child-marriage, yet you will permit it, because you will not resist public opinion, relations, tradi­tion and custom. Thus in you there is disharmony. But if you carry your thought and your feeling completely through into action, then there is harmony in yourself even though you create disharmony about you. If you were cruel unconsciously, then you would be like an animal, and there would be no struggle or conflict; but to know that you are being cruel and yet yield to cruelty, creates this terrible turmoil and chaos in your mind and heart, which none but you yourself can allay.  To do this, you must be con­stantly aware, that is, constantly complete every thought, every feeling that you have, in action.  Think and feel it through, and you will see how your mind and heart are bound by public opinion, tradition, system, personal vani­ties and fears. In facing these hindrances you discover the cause, and thereby that which prevents the harmony of thought and feeling withers away.

Let me take another example, that of smoking. If you have the habit of smoking and someone comes to you and tells you how unhealthy, how unspiritual it is to smoke, intellectually you may be convinced, but sensationally you still want to smoke. There you have created in yourself a conflict, so what do you do next? You try to control your desire, you exert your will-power, and this but strengthens the conflict. But if really you feel that you must smoke, then smoke, no matter what another may say; and if you really feel convinced with your mind and heart about the stupidity of smoking, then give it up. Do not merely play with the idea because you like to castigate your mind and heart. There is a sensation in this which you like, and you think that through this conflict and through your self-control you will achieve progress and become spiritual. The exquisite reality of living exists in the completeness of thought and feeling carried into action. Thoughts and feelings without action rot in the mind and heart, and create conflict.

If you really feel that ceremonies, Masters, systems and paths are necessary for you, then seek them; but if in your heart you feel their futility, that they cannot give you the understanding of life, then do not remain in your illusions, Do not play with ideas, like a friend who said to me, "I do not believe in the Masters, in the astral plane, in cere­monies, but I cling to them because-who knows?-they may be real when one is dead."

You are neither hot nor cold, you are lukewarm, indif­ferent.  You have intellectualized your life and have lost the capacity to live, and hence your intellect and your -theories have become your destroyers, You consider your­self tolerant, because you can intellectualize what I say and destroy it, so that you may continue to cling to your vani­ties, and pursue power and your many illusions.  Either you must be against the pursuit of power or for it. Because you play with life, you think that there are innumerable facets to truth and glorify tolerance.

You have lost the capacity to think and to feel; otherwise this cruel system of exploitation, economical and spiritual, could not exist.  I cannot force you to be dif­ferent.  You have to see this for yourself and create the change in yourself. Systems cannot change fundamentally the human mind and heart. You have experimented with these for many centuries, and what is the result?  You have become so hypocritical that you have lost all sense of the true, the normal, the simple. You fight over the sanctity of temples and the rights of the untouchables, but you do not see that the very idea of a temple itself is false and cruel.

Many of you may think and feel within yourselves that you cannot discover truth through paths, mediators and systems, and yet you seek them.  I say to you: Be either hot or cold, and then you will understand and will awaken yourself from your stagnation of indifference.  You are afraid to be either the one or the other, because you are afraid to lose an opportunity there and an opportunity here.  You are not living, you have lost the perfume of understanding, there is no depth in your feeling; and I say that where there is the profundity of thought and feeling, there alone can be the exquisite reality of the full­ness of life.

 

December 31st, 1932.

 

 

 

 

V

 

Question: Do you believe that reincarnation is an actual law in nature, or do you think that it is only a plausible hypothesis of clever and subtle thinkers or theorists? If you know it to be a fact in nature, why do you not say so plainly, instead of evading the issue as you have always done in answering this question? If it is a fact, does it not throw a searchlight on many of life's puzzling problems?

Krishnamurti: I am afraid you will think that I am again evading the question when I say that I am not going to assert that it is or that it is not a fact. Whether there is continuity of individuality after death or not is from my point of view of no great importance.  I am talking of immortality, eternity, which is ever in the present, not of the continuance of the personal limited consciousness. Most of you cling to the idea of the self continuing through time, because you want to have endless opportunities to gather the understanding of life, or because you want to come again into contact with those who are dead, or you want to live in the continued satisfaction of your limited indi­viduality.

A person who is constantly occupied with the thought of death is himself half dead.  A person who constantly asks what lies beyond, has himself already a foot in the grave. Only in the plenitude of living in the now do you find immortality. So the question is not what lies beyond death, but how to live without the burden of time and become liberated from the center of conflict and reaction.

What is the "I" to which your thoughts cling? To me, the "I" is not a reality at all; it is an illusion. If you can find out what creates this illusion, then, when the mind frees itself from that cause, there will be the realization of the fullness of life.

You are conscious of self only when in conflict and suffering; so the "I," the ego, is born of resistance, hindrance, conflict, frustration, suffering and toil, and in the cessation of conflict this illusion of the "I" does not exist. Now what causes the struggle, the frustration, toil and suffering?  It is craving born of the sensation of the opposites, causing the idea of distinction, "mine" and "yours," the idea of the "I," the ego, the separative self.

Out of that arise the many layers of memory, which maintain the idea of the "I." You want to continue with that memory through time, thinking that you can thus perfect resistance, that you can purify selfishness, that with this illusion you can pierce through all illusions.  What creates memory-not the recollection of incidents, but the memory to which you cling in attachment? I say it is an incomplete act, that is, an act in which thought and emo­tion are not harmonious.  You do not feel and think through into action, and are hindered, frustrated, by tradi­tion, custom, habit, systems of discipline, and by society; that is, by fear. So the self, the "I," is nothing but a series of memories of incomplete living.

Now your days are burdened by these incomplete acts. You feel or think intensely, but circumstances, traditions, gurus, fears, prevent you from completing in action the thought or feeling, and therefore you yield and allow your­self to be exploited; whereas, if you complete thought and feeling in action harmoniously, you free yourself from resistance, and hence there is no clinging or attachment, which is memory.  A complete act is born of the rich harmony of thought and feeling, and creates no attachment as memory; an incomplete act is born of disharmony, in which there is ever resistance.

Each thought, each emotion, then, completed in action, will liberate your mind and heart from the hindrances and limitations.  This does not demand time-time implies continuity-but it demands intense awareness, alert watch­fulness, not the watchful care which leads to the constric­tion of action, but the watchfulness which brings about the completeness of thought. This is not self-analysis or introspection.

So, as I said, I am not going to give you a categorical reply as to whether there is continuity or not. What mat­ters is that you realize the ecstasy of immortality in the present. I say that there is a living reality in the present, an ever-changing, ever-renewing reality which is God, truth, or howsoever you may name it.  As. you are con­tinually conforming, controlling, suppressing, you create incomplete acts, from which is born attachment as memory, and hence the desire to continue as an individual through time. What matters is not the consideration of the here­after, but living in the present, completely and fully.  In that living there is the depth of thought and feeling free of fear.

Now what do you seek? You seek God, in whom you hope to find the cessation of inequality, in whom you think all are one-another maya, another intellectual conception. But there is a different realization, which is not that all are one, but that there is only one.  Hence there is cessation of distinction, not the equalization of all things.  You cling in devotion, in attachment, to the one, but you tread on the many and exploit them.  Through sensation and craving you create distinctions in your mind and in your feelings, and then you invent the idea of the one and seek it as an escape from these distinctions.  You think that your hope in reincarnation will remove the cruelty of dis­tinction and inequality.

Question: In knocking down the systems of security that exist in the world for men, you are perhaps un­wittingly creating another form of security which you call truth. You may implore us to free ourselves from the desire for security, but in reality we are only shifting our­selves because of you from the past shelters into your own. Even if you disclaim any responsibility for such a calamity, what is the true cause of this result?

Krishnamurti: I am not giving you a security. If you make of truth a security, then it is no longer truth; and as you have turned your Gods, your ideals, your goals, into shelters for your security, they cannot be real. They are born of your prejudices, of your desire for comfort, and hence they are your illusions.

You seek to be guided. You say: "I cannot think for myself, I am afraid. Spiritually I am a child, I must have toys and be coaxed to become spiritual.  As I do not understand the beginnings of wisdom, I must seek a teacher who will take me to it step by step."  So you create the teacher, the guru, who but becomes your exploiter, and you become the exploited. Wisdom is not realized through guidance, but through intense living.  You have created innumerable cages of illusions, born of fear, and not know­ing how to get out of these, you ask another to guide you out of them. If I were to tell you how to get out of your cages, you would make of me your exploiter, though you may call me your guide and worship me.  To be free of the systems and conformity in which you are now held, you yourself must break away from them through your own intelligence, through your own awareness.

I am not offering you a remedy.  I am not giving you a system or a discipline as a way to end your conflict.  I know, you are too willing, too eager, to follow someone, anyone.  I have been asked again and again: "Tell us definitely what to do--at what time should we arise, what clothes should we wear, what should be our diet, how should we meditate?" Think of being told how to medi­tate, how to live!

So you are continually seeking security, because you are afraid of loneliness.  I assure you, there is understanding only when you stand absolutely alone, which is not to escape from conflict into solitude. I mean the utter alone­ness of mind and heart which makes you free from imita­tion. And in that intensity of aloneness there is a joy and a creative breath of life.

Why do you seek security, spiritual and material? You want to remain at ease, you want to escape from the struggle and conflict within yourself; so you -- are merely seeking in life consolation, not understanding.  And you will find consolation, there are people who will give you consolation, there are systems which will supply your demand.

Through this desire for fleeting happiness you are creat­ing innumerable securities which blind you, suffocate the mind and destroy the heart.  Once you realize this for yourself, that you are but escaping from conflict through consolation, then you cease to create the exploiter and your shelters of illusion, and hence you come to the realization of the great aloneness of understanding.

Light is alone in darkness, but it is light, it dispels darkness. It is of that aloneness I speak. If you begin to live completely, fully, intensely, then in that completeness-and intensity of thought and emotion in the present, there is the ecstasy of living reality.

 

January 1st, 1933.

 

VI

 

Question:  We have been told that at least once you have been used by the dark powers and that even now you are an instrument in their hands for the destruction of the Theosophical Society. Is it your purpose to destroy that which has greatly helped us?

Krishnamurti: I do not know who has told you this; it is utterly childish, it is absurd to put this question to me. In olden days, if you disagreed with orthodoxy and authority, you were burnt alive or thrown into a dungeon. Now-a-days religious authorities and spiritual exploiters have refined their methods of condemnation and punish­ment.

From my point of view, where there is understanding there can be no authority, nor can there be mediators for the realization of truth.

Through centuries the mind has been accustomed to obey authority. If you watch yourself in action, you will see that most of your acts are poisoned by authority. In the centers of pilgrimage throughout the world the priest exploits his self-given authority and creates fear in the masses.  He will, for a certain amount of money, declare that your dead relatives are all safely in heaven.  You, who consider yourself to be educated, superiorly laugh at this, but you too have your own secret fears which are cleverly exploited by those who direct your lives. I do not see the difference between the two. Both are exploiters--the priest with his crude powers, and the man of subtle inventions.

These things make me weep in sadness.  "He is being used by the dark powers"-and with this phrase you con­demn him and self-righteously struggle with him.  I say these are the inventions of a deluded mind. To me, there is only ignorance, illusion, and the freedom from ignorance which is truth.

This form of tyranny exists throughout the world, the tyranny of condemnation without understanding.

Question (from the audience): Who put this question?

Krishnamurti: I am concerned with the question, not with the questioner.  I am talking of the viciousness of this whole idea, not of what another may say about me. A thousand people may say that I am used by the black powers, whatever that absurd phrase may mean, but it does not interest me in the least. I know that of which I speak. You like to be helped because you are seeking security, consolation>, and therefore you worship authority, in which there is no understanding.

"Is it your purpose to destroy that which has greatly helped us?"

That which truly helps, no one can destroy, because it is born of your own intelligence.  It is only those who desire to build a cage and to hold you captive within their creation, that are afraid.  If anything deserves to be destroyed, it should be destroyed.  If what I say is destructive to any particular organization or society, then either that society is false or what I say is false; and it is for you to consider, to judge and to act without compro­mise.

Question:  Will you please tell us your ideas about medi­tation?

Krishnamurti: What do you mean by meditation and why do you meditate?  If you mean by it concentration, it is quite different from meditation, although true medi­tation requires concentration. So let us first consider concentration,

When you concentrate, you fix your mind on an image or an idea which appeals to you, and you try to force your mind to dwell upon it.  While you are thus trying to concentrate, other ideas, other pictures, intrude themselves on your mind, and you try to brush them aside and bring your mind back to the particular idea you have chosen. This process of intrusion and conflict continues while you try to concentrate. You are forcing your mind to fix itself on an idea which is not born of innate and vital interest, because if it were, there would be no conflict, you would concentrate spontaneously and without effort.

This forcing of the mind which you call meditation does not give understanding; you are merely training your mind to fix itself on a particular idea in which you are not truly interested.  Your concentration is but effort based on prejudice and artificial choice, and so it leads to stagnation of thought. You are in reality seeking an escape from con­flict through what you call meditation. You thus contract your mind into sterility and your feelings become rigid. This concentration does not lead to the freedom of thought; it is not vital, creative.

Concentration becomes spontaneous in the discovery of true values.  Do not separate your concentration, your meditation, from action in your daily life. At present you limit your mind and heart by self-discipline, self-control; whereas, by completing thought and emotion in action you will become aware of the restrictions placed upon you by society and by tradition, by fear and by conformity. Through this awareness you will come to the discovery of the true value of your actions, and in this discovery is spontaneous concentration, the joy of meditation.

In this natural and spontaneous concentration, which is meditation or true contemplation, there is no effort to direct the mind or to train or guide it; this meditation is the fullness of life throughout the day. It is action unhindered in the completeness of thought and feeling.

Only when the mind is free from the limitation of ideas is there the understanding of the eternal.  This is the joy of meditation-not the adoration of a picture, nor the repeating of words, nor the deep oblivion of self in the pursuit of a system, which is but the utter destruction of mind and heart. The joy of meditation is in spontaneous living, in the summation of intelligence.

Question: You must have some criterion, some test by which you are able to say of yourself that you are free of illusion while others are not. What is this criterion?

Krishnamurti: Why judge another?

When you understand the cause of illusion you will know for yourself that you are free of that cause. No one can be your judge, no one can give you freedom from your own illusions.  I say that it is the craving for power, security and consolation, the desire to imitate, to conform, which creates conflict born of illusion. There will be craving as long as mind and heart are held in the limitation of false values, which arise from attachment and the conflict of the opposites. Where there is effort caused by craving, there must be illusion; but with the cessation of craving comes the discernment of true values and therefore right living.

 

January 2nd, 1933.

 

VII

 

Question:  The German philosopher Keyserling, in re­viewing a book concerning you written by Carlo Suares, has gained an impression that your ideas are a form of Russian atheism. We feel you have nothing in common with such a negative conception. Could you kindly tell us something of your realization of the mystery called God?

Krishnamurti: Man has created God out of his own image, out of the ideas he has gathered from sacred books, from philosophers and mystics, out of his own imagination sustained by his prejudices, his suffering, his search for comfort, his longings, hopes and anticipations.

I cannot describe to you God or life; were I to describe that living reality, it would not be true.  That which is ever-living, ever-moving, ever-renewing itself, which is timeless, cannot be molded by words. It has to be realized, it must be felt, understood, lived.  All definition, all description, cannot contain it.

I say that there is an eternal, living reality, call it by what name you will, God, truth, life, love or action. But it cannot be described, it cannot be measured by words.

You seek to know through words what God is, what truth is-that exquisite, untranslatable, inexpressible reality-so that you can escape from your own conflict in life.  Because you seek God as a means of escape, your conception of him is naturally unreal, as it must conform to your prejudices.  What is preconceived by the mind, limited by bias, must essentially be false. How can you, while in conflict, in struggle, in sorrow, understand that reality, the realization of which is possible only with the cessation of the cause of conflict?  Now you merely seek the experience of another and try to live in it.  He who tries to describe that living reality can but limit and per­vert his own realization.  I say through understanding alone will come the cessation of conflict and the realization of truth.

Question: In reply to the question about the dark pow­ers, you said you did not know who had made the state­ment. We were shown a message in a lantern lecture during the T.S. Convention, in which the impression was clearly given that an attempt to use you had been frus­trated. Also it has been said that you are out to destroy our Society. Will you tell us emphatically what you have to say with regard to this?

Krishnamurti: When there is fear in your heart, then you find the exploiter who gives you what you demand. When you are uncertain for yourself, then you establish someone who will make things certain for you, and you call him a guru, a teacher; and you will naturally always choose those who will give you satisfaction, whether it be true or false, and so you are exploited through your own craving born of fear.

Now that is the cause of the invention of this idea of black or white powers influencing us.  The black powers do not use you or those who exploit you, but only me, because I say quite distinctly that to me your authority, your priestcraft, your systems, are utterly false, vicious. Naturally you must find an explanation for my words, and a very convenient explanation exists:  He is used by the blacks! I have heard this often. You say it of your enemy in war time.  God is on your side, the enemy has no God on his side. There was much of this puerile talk in the last war.  The Germans were said to be Godless, and the Allies were Godly!  Such patriotism, such nar­rowness and bestiality destroys affection, and is responsible for the invention of a God who exploits you, who gives you false courage to destroy your enemy.

I know what some of your leaders have said concerning me, but it does not affect me in the least. That of which I speak is true in itself, inherently; but it will not be under­stood by a mind that is prejudiced by the idea that I am used by the black or by the white powers.

It is the priests who invent heaven and hell to hold man in bondage, and this is but another form of tyranny.  It is what you yourself think that matters, not what another says.  In olden days you were burnt alive if you went against the church; that used to be the pet remedy in Europe.  Now you do not burn those who differ from you; you theorize, you intellectualize, you invent explana­tions and say, "He is used by the blacks!"

A few years ago, many of you had my picture hung up on your walls, and you offered flowers and candles to "the Expected One." Now when that picture comes to life and begins to speak, you remove it; the flowers and the candles disappear, and you invent the words "his way" and "my way, "his path" and "our path." You say, "Truth has many aspects."

As long as the picture is silent it is divine, you can wor­ship it.  Your adoration of the Masters, your obedience to gurus, your work and your systems spring from the security of this assured silence. Let the image in the pic­ture come to life, as I have stepped out of your picture, and you will see how quickly you will destroy it; how quickly, with your subtle and deceitful minds, you will invent words: "black" and "white," "We are the sole workers," Your path is different from my path," "You have a certain work to do and ours is a different work." How utterly false, hypocritical.

I say that these are but the tricks of a cunning mind. You are merely seeking satisfaction, consolation, not understanding; so you create a picture, you find an ex­ploiter, and you bend your knee to that exploiter; and so you continue in your delusions. I am not cynical, nor am I disappointed; I am just stating facts to show you the habits of your minds.

I take the very definite attitude-- contrary to yours--in which there is no exploitation, and you resent it. You take down the picture and invent new words, new phrases in place of the old: "He is not the Expected One, there is someone else coming to reconstruct the world." You know how the mind works when it wants to escape from con­flict and decision. You do not face realities, because this means a decision in action.  And so you continue to live in a hypocritical world, and in your life there is no under­standing, there is no tenderness and no affection.  Please do not come and worship me, because I do not want wor­ship.  I would much rather you never even saluted me because of false respect from the past. For in your saluta­tion, in your devotion, there is no richness, no depth of feeling, no understanding, because it is born of fear.

So friends, there can b~ true action born of understand­ing, only when there is the harmony of mind and heart. At present your mind says one thing and your heart an­other.  Because you are afraid, you salute me with great respect, but you go and act the opposite of that of which I speak. Why do you not show the same respect to the man who sweeps your streets, to your servants, your wives, your children and your neighbor? You salute me because you are afraid.  And so you go on living a life of utter hypocrisy from morning till night, a deceitful life, a counterfeit life. If you were different in your thoughts and feelings, and therefore in your actions, this would be a different world, with less sorrow and less physical suffer­ing, and there would be more affection, more considera­tion. Now each one is out for himself, seeking his own security, financial and spiritual. And you ask me whether I am used by the "blacks" or by the "whites' '-what color prejudice! How absurd man becomes in his deceitfulness, These distinctions born of prejudice will exist as long as you are afraid; and because you are afraid, you will seek exploiters who will exploit you, who will invent cages that hold you, that bind your mind and heart, and create sorrow.

Question: You have been speaking a great deal about human sorrow and conflict; and although you speak con­stantly of the necessity of removing the many hindrances which produce the conflict and sorrow, you say nothing at all about what takes the place of the void created by this continual denudation. It seems to me natural and even inevitable that this process, if continued, must leave a succession of gaps each time a hindrance is removed, and finally end in a perfectly empty void. Is this what, accord­ing to you, ultimately amounts to the ecstasy of life?  

Krishnamurti: I say nothing of that ecstasy, that living reality, because no one can describe it who has truly ex­perienced it. You must realize it for yourself; you cannot know it through imitation or through the picture of words. Beware of the person who tries to describe it. That reality which is ever-living, ever-renewing, cannot be put into words, and if described, it becomes empty, unreal.

You want to know what you will get in return for something you give up. In other words, you want to have a guarantee, a security in return for your renunciation, your sacrifice. I do not speak of sacrifice at all, for that is but another form of illusion.  Where there is understanding, there is no renunciation, because then that which has no intrinsic value withers and falls away of its own accord; there is no longer the effort of sacrifice, of denudation. Now you give up in order to acquire more.  You say, "To possess wealth is unspiritual, therefore I must renounce wealth," wealth implying power, position, authority, pleasure, and so on.  So you become sanyasis, ascetics. This is but the opposite extreme of that craving, and there­fore contains the same acquisitive quality.  You want someone to create a pattern for you to imitate, and that pattern which you believe to be essential becomes for you your spiritual guide.  You merely want to conform and lose yourself in that conformity, whether it be work, or the service of others, or an escape from your own conflict. Such conformity to a system, which inevitably shapes your mind and heart, demands that you give up, that you re­nounce and sacrifice. In that there is no intelligence; it is the destruction of intelligence, of true creativeness; yet all your religious and ethical systems are based on conformity and sacrifice. I say that there can never be understanding as long as there is conformity to any system, spiritual or ethical. As long as the mind is a 'slave to acquisitiveness there cannot be understanding of right values, and as most minds are held in conformity, in the pursuit of acquisition, I say, Become aware that your mind and heart are thus held in bondage.  When you become fully aware with both your mind and heart that you are conforming, then you begin to cease to conform, because you then question your conformity, your patterns; you do not accept anyone as your authority, because you are then continually ques­tioning, and thereby making your mind pliable, alert; and through that alertness, that pliability of the mind, there comes true creative intelligence, a living harmony, in which there is the understanding of right values and hence the cessation of conflict.

Now this intelligence is quite different from denudation without understanding, which is the idea of renunciation with which most people are burdened.  In renunciation there is no understanding, but an emptiness, a void, which but creates conflict.

I tell you, for example, that ceremonies are unessential. To me they are unessential; worse, they are unrighteous, for where there is unrighteousness there spring up cere­monies. Suppose you give them up-please, I am not ask­ing you to give up anything-then in renouncing them, naturally there will be an emptiness, a void, a nothingness to the mind and heart trained to conform, to worship authority and pursue reward.  Whereas when you begin to question the intrinsic worth of all human activity and not just accept the standards of authority, then you begin to find ou~for yourself the significance of ceremonies, or of the hereafter, or of the conflict of acquisition.  As your mind and heart have been trained for centuries to con­form, to pursue acquisition, there is not the understanding of true values.

Therefore I say: Become aware, become fully conscious that you are thus conforming, that your pursuit of

spirituality is but the search for a reward, an escape from your own conflicts; then you will truly question and con­front every problem and try to discover its intrinsic value.

 

January 3rd, 1933.  

 

VIII

 

YOU try to seek the ultimate reality, which you call God, or truth, or life, though the mist of your own cravings, struggles and illusions; and with preconceived ideas concerning this reality, you attempt to live all your days in the shadow of that image. Now, to me, this way of life is false, because where there is conflict, struggle and suffering, there cannot be the understanding of truth.  It is only with the utter cessation of struggle, effort, sorrow, that there comes the understanding of that living reality. I say that there is this eternal reality which cannot be con­ceived of, which cannot be caught up in words; it cannot be realized through any system of thought, nor through any path.  When you follow a system, you are but imi­tating, conforming; there is no pliability of mind and heart, and hence no intelligence.  It is only when there is intelligence, that harmony of mind and heart, that con­stant awareness which is discernment of the intrinsic value of things, freed from the traditions of the past and the hopes of the future, that there comes the realization of eternity.

Wisdom, which is the living reality, cannot be under­stood or realized through the superficial acquisition of the ideas and theories of others, or through mere knowledge gathered from books. It can be realized only through the understanding of the conflicts and sorrows, the happenings and reactions of everyday existence.

Where there is craving for acquisition of any kind, ma­terial or spiritual-that is, acquisition of power, wealth, or of beliefs, virtues-there must be ignorance; and this craving hinders the realization of truth.

All spiritual organizations, religions and cults, teach the necessity of effort and continual struggle for the discovery of truth.  But to me, that which is found after struggle is not truth, because what you discover is only the secret prompting of your own craving which gives you satisfac­tion. The very idea of the pursuit of truth is an illusion, for while your mind and heart are occupied with this struggle and search after the ultimate reality of existence, your life is but mere conformity to established ideas. Thereby you create a gulf between your life and truth. You regard your daily existence as only a means, a way towards that ultimate reality, and, therefore, your human experiences and sorrows lose their significance.  In other words, because living is a terrible conflict, an incessant battle, a weary problem, you seek a solution which you call truth  This search is but an escape from your conflict, and you call it truth.

It is only when there is the cessation of conflict, through the awakening of intelligence, when you no longer make of life a problem to be solved, that there is the realization of the living reality.

You are caught up in the net of suffering; there is the struggle to exist and the struggle to conform; yow have

created the problem of exploitation, economic and spiritual, and you are sedulously seeking an escape. Whereas in con­fronting a problem with the intensity of your whole being, with the fullness of your mind and heart, you become aware of the cause of the many conflicts, and thereby be­come freed from it.

Take an example: Suppose someone dies whom you greatly love. There is an intensity of suffering. What is your immediate longing?  You want to be happy, find something that will give you satisfaction, peace, forgetful­ness of your great sorrow. So either you lose yourself in chasing after pleasure, or in the search of a comforting system or theory.  Thereby you are merely seeking an escape from the central struggle of sorrow, and in that escape you create new problems which have no intrinsic significance.

Whereas, if you live intensely and contact every experi­ence fully, every incident of life with your whole being, you will no longer seek an escape; thus you will discover for yourself the true significance of each experience, each incident in life. So in the depth of your own intelligence you discover the cause of suffering.

The. cause of suffering is the incompleteness of mind and heart in action.  Now your mind is burdened with memory, with fear leading to conformity, with the empti­ness of incomplete action.  You do not live fully in an experience, because your mind and heart are crippled by tradition and by the hope of a future.  Take any action in your life now, and observe what happens to your think­ing and feeling.  Ybu are either conforming to a future through ideals, or you are limited by a past tradition, belief, or memory: and naturally, in this bondage, you cannot understand the significance of the present with its reactions and the impact of its experiences. You can live in that reality which is ever in the present, only when mind and heart are free of the past and the future.

To free the mind of the past, become fully aware that you are a prisoner, and in that continual awareness you will no longer try to escape, you will no longer seek a solution, a way out. Thus you will begin to destroy the walls of the many illusions that hold you, the false values that cripple your mind and heart.

Through this awareness your past memories and past hindrances will come into activity without your analyzing the sub-conscious, without your delving into the past; and through the completeness of your action in the present you will dissolve them.

So as long as mind and heart are crippled by the incompleteness ­of action, which creates the past and the future, and the sense of the "I," there cannot be the true understanding of life, nor the fullness of living in the present, which alone is eternity.

One must first become fully aware of the hindrances, and out of this awareness there is born true intelligence which no longer seeks an escape; then there is harmony, the true spontaneity of action.  But now you are trying merely to accumulate knowledge or experience, and you hope through this to come to the full realization of truth.

 

January 4th, 1933.

(Concluded)

 

 

 

Talks in the Oak Grove, Ojai

 

VIII

 

Some people maintain that the truth of which I speak can be realized only through renunciation and soli­tude, through utter abandonment of the world and with­drawal into the seclusion of a monastery or the quietness of a forest. It happens still in India that some men fre­quently withdraw into the jungles, away from the con­flicts, the turmoil, the competition of the world, and there try to lose themselves in meditation.

You need not withdraw into a monastery, you need not go into a forest to find truth; I say that wherever you are, whatever your work, there, through your adaptability. through your understanding, through your struggle, you will come to the realization of that which is eternal. To understand life, truth, or any other name you would like to give that living reality, you cannot escape responsibili­ties; you must understand them in a new way, so that they no longer bind you. Through this understanding you will come to discern the true. The constant discernment with­out motive, without molding yourself to an ideal, with­out the desire for escape, makes the mind alert and pliable.

If you have not a mind that is serene in the discernment of the true, then you cannot understand that which is beyond time. You imagine that through perfecting talent or technique you will eventually arrive at that realization, that oneness of life in which there is no death.  By the gradual expansion of your own consciousness, your own individuality, ego, which is but the growth of capacity, you think that you will arrive at perfection of mind.

I say that the perfecting of the mind does not depend on the accumulation of experience, nor does the careful collection of many virtues lead to truth. However beauti­ful selfishness may become, however glorious, inclusive, it will always remain imperfect.  Therefore you cannot realize truth, that loveliness of life, through accumulation, through growth, through the expansion of self-conscious­ness.  By seeking the understanding of experience in the present, you not only change your environment, but you step out, as it were, from this false idea of progress.

Capacity is time. Through time you learn how to de­velop a particular capacity.  That capacity, however fine, however clear, however dynamic, will not bring about the realization of truth.

If you are really interested in this living reality, you will not be concerned with time. Most people in the world are troubled by the problem of death and the hereafter; but I say that a man who is seeking the understanding of life cannot be concerned with death. If you regard death, either with aversion or with the desire to escape from the present~ you are painting death on the canvas of life, and therefore you create the illusion of time.  Only through understanding, only through freedom from the bondage of ideals, longings and consolations can you come to be aware of the true significance of the present; and to me this understanding of the present is the infinite.

Infinity is not time prolonged. There is only the now, the present.  If you can understand the present, you are free of time altogether, and thus there is life everlasting

in which the illusion of individuality has ceased.  Indi­viduality is the very root of time, the creator of time.

So, from my point of view, the idea of progress as the acquisition of understanding through time is utterly false. What gives you understanding is your intense desire for it. If your desire is to seek understanding, then you will not be bound by any theory, by any idea, by any institution, by any religion, or by any person; your mind will con­stantly be alert and pliable, and out of that continued alertness and pliability will come illumination.  For that realization I do not give you any system to follow. When you follow a system, your mind becomes limited.  To a man in search of truth, every day, every incident, brings a new understanding.

Many people think that through following a system, a path, they will come to this realization of the sublime, they will know the ecstasy of life.  From my point of view, you can never come to that ultimate reality through a system, which is merely the experience of another trans­lated into words. What can be explained is not truth.

Mind can be made perfect only by intelligence. Intelli­gence is thought freed from the limitation of individuality. Intelligence is intensified by continual action freed from the center of selfishness, The mind becomes perfect when it is no longer occupied with the idea of itself; then there is tranquillity, that peace which is the eternal renewing of life itself.

Now most people suffer; most people are caught up in sorrow, and are slaves to transient pleasures. Sorrow make~ you think, it urges you towards thoughtfulness; but that search to which you are driven by sorrow is not for understanding, but for consolation, and hence you are satisfied with explanations.  Your search is concerned with the subtlety of explanations; you do not want the real under­standing of life, because that requires great thought. Through explanation, through analysis, you imagine that you will conquer your sorrow.  On the contrary, you thereby merely cover over your sorrow as the waters of the lake are covered over by green scum. Your explanations and religious ideas stultify the desire for understanding. Because you are afraid to stand utterly alone, you want a complicated theory to which your mind can cling, and which will give you hope and encouragement.

Take, for example, what happens to many people when they -are caught up in the sorrow of death. Someone whom you love dies, and you are told or you read that there is life after death, that the person you love continues to live in another world, and that y6u will be united with that person in the future. Your eager desire to understand is caught up, satisfied, by that explanation; but if you really think, you will see that you have not solved the problem of death, but merely postponed it.  Where there is this idea of identification, unity, there is death. Death is but consciousness of your own solitude, your own emptiness, your own loneliness; and only when you are utterly free of yourself, of your own consciousness, individuality, is there no longer death, because then there is neither unity nor separation.

When the mind is occupied with explanations instead of with search, it may feel complacent, but its tranquillity will not endure. The mind can be rich, serene, complete in itself, only when there is understanding; and understanding can never come through explanations, but only through your own comprehension of every incident, of every reaction of the day.  Then you have a mind that is no longer agitated, but pliable, delicate, exquisite in its search.

What generally agitates the mind?  Your innumerable desires, cravings; and to restrain those cravings you have ethics.  Now I say, if you will not misunderstand, that you must be utterly free of ethics.  That is, your mind niust no longer be occupied with qualities and virtues, di­visions and distinctions. To have a mind that is tranquil, that is ever renewing itself, complete, which cannot be dis­turbed by hate, envy, greed, possessiveness, you must no longer be a slave to your own cravings.  In that tran­quillity of the mind there comes an impersonal, objective outlook on life which is not indifference.  You are then able to give your whole concentration to the understand­ing of every movement of thought and feeling.

I have not talked of emotion, because love is its own completeness.  Everyone knows what it means to love; but mind intrudes itself and corrupts that love, and that is why I am talking at length of mind.

When there is understanding, then mind is complete, full; it nb longer makes an effort, and there is the joy of utter stillness, solitude.  Understanding can come only through search and continual discernment, and in that search your desire is no longer confined, limited, satisfied with consolati6ns and explanations.  Therefore your de­sire makes its own way, and hence destroys all systems, all              traditions, including the tradition of Krishnamurti which you have created.  You may have left societies and re­ligions, but if you make what I say into another system, you are not seeking truth; your effort is but futile and transient.

Question: Are Christian Scientists and devotees of New Thought correct in their assumption that health and pros­perity can be demonstrated provided the belief in health and prosperity is continually maintained? Is there a defi­nite law in the universe working to that end?

Krishnamurti: If your mind is continually occupied with prosperity and health, naturally you will have them. There is no mysterious law about it; what you want you will get. There are wars in this world because people are bent upon prosperity, upon having many things. You are so patriotic that you are willing to kill anyone who stands in the way of your prosperity, and so there are wars and the limitations of frontiers.

If your whole interest in life is to be prosperous. com­fortable, to be rich and well-covered with flesh, then your mind will constantly seek these things.  I am not crying against them; it is your affair. But I say they will not lead you to understanding. Prosperity implies selfishness, the distinctions of classes and riches, and so it cannot give you that eternal comprehension. Merely by seeking health, by the desire to have plenty, you cannot come to understand that which is everlasting.  Health and prosperity are transient. You must have health, that is understood; but health is not the main consideration. When a man is in deep sorrow, he is not' considering health and prosperity. You may give him wealth, you may give him health; but when the mind and the heart are disturbed, restless, seeking, all these seem vain to him. They do not hold the poten­tial richness of life; and my desire is to help you to discern the essential. In the pursuit of the essential you have peace. and from that peace there follows a prosperity which is not at the expense of the many.

Question: How can one permanently rid the mind of complex and disturbing thoughts, often caused by a shock in childhood? The psychoanalytic method is helpful in tracing the mental disturbance back to its source, but it generally does not remove it. Why should the annoying thoughts persist when one is no longer afraid of them?

Krishnamuiti: Most people live in their memories. That is, yesterday has great significance today, and the in­complete understanding of today creates tomorrow. This is not a cryptic saying.  If you think about it, you will see that it is true.  Memory is but incomplete thought. The experience not understood in the present remains as memory, and you can be free of memory only when your experience is complete in understanding. If you are living fully, intensely, in the present. with great pliability of mind, then there is no memory of yesterday, no complex, no searching backwards for the incidents of yesterday; but if you live incompletely today, you are creating the com­plexes of tomorrow.  You are curtailing the ardency of life in the present. and you want to know how to be free of the complexes arising from that lack of constant adjust­ment. I say, Do ~ot look to the past, but live with the joy of ecstasy in the present. The intensity of your living in the present wipes out all the complexes, the idiosyn­crasies and the crookedness of the past.

 

March 6th, 1932.

(To be continued)

 

 

Krishnamurti and an Indian Family

  Extracts from an article in the Birmingham Post, Birmingham England.

 

THERE were flowers everywhere--great masses of chrysanthemums and hollyhocks; new covers on the chairs and cushions; and white curtains, looped up in the middle, looking rather like the tight-waisted English ladies of the 'nineties. On the hallstand hung a heavy gar­land of flowers, brilliant with silver tinsel.

Krishnamurti, whom Dr. Annie Besant had prophesied to be the Messiah and on whose education in Europe she had spent a colossal amount of money, was paying a week's visit to this Indian household.  He arrived, dressed in a simple white dhoti. Krishnamurti has a magnificent head, fine features, and perfect manners that would put to shame the average modern Englishman.  What one particularly noticed about him was his complete absence of desire to impress. Anything in the nature of praise seemed even to embarrass him.

Removing their sandals at the door, the whole family entered the dining-room (in reality a stone-floored gran­ary used for the purpose).  We sat on very low square stools, painted in blue and gold, with slightly higher stools in front of us for our plates and glasses. Everyone sat cross-legged in the easy manner that Europeans find difficult to emulate. Next to me was a poetic-looking man

with a beautiful face. He told me something of Krishnamurti's teaching.  "All our troubles come from man's possessive instinct," he told me.  "Man is continually craving to possess.  Money, honors, lovers-it is all the same.  Were he complete in himself he would not need to strive for these other things in hope of finding a panacea for his incompleteness."

Next morning gay rugs of scarlet, blue and purple were placed in a shady part of the compound, and under a great champar tree was a cushioned seat, rather thronelike in appearance.  At nine o'clock a number of relations and family friends collected here; also the more important pro­fessors of the neighboring college. Krishnamurti sat down rather shyly on the throne, pushing the cushions on one side before doing so.  Personal comforts did not interest him. "This is not to be a lecture; it is a discussion," he said, pleasantly.  "I am here to answer your questions."

For an hour he answered questions on the art of living, on happiness, on ideals, on the solution of conflicts within man's self.  If any one appeared dissatisfied with the answer, he would immediately blame himself.  "Sir-please-I do not make myself clear."  And with never a trace of impatience with his sometimes truculent question­ers he would begin over again.

After lunch we would gather on the verandah, and a circle, composed mainly of the admiring children of the house, would crowd round him and fire questions at him. "What do you eat?"  "What exercise do you take?" "Is it wrong to drink?" "Do you believe in marriage?" "Do you think one ought not to love people?"

"Love should be for all alike.  The goal for the emo­tions is affectionate detachment. To be able to love and not to be attached (which is to be possessive) is the abso­lute perfection of emotion.  Attachment brings no free­dom; only suffering sooner or later."

Did he believe in the after-life? we asked.

"What does it matter?" he replied easily.  "The com­plete man does not think of the future nor live in the past. Infinity is now.  Man is so hidebound by his slavery to systems9 by his fear of authority, of conventions, of society, that in trying to live he forgets life."

At six each evening Krishnamurti would lecture for an hour to an immense audience, entirely Indian.  Most of them sat on the ground-it was in the open air- but some Parsi ladies (more Western in their habits) and I sat on chairs.  Krishnamurti spoke from a kind of stage, gaudily hung with bright pink garlands.  An amplifier made his words clearly heard.

"Do not follow another.  That is the bane, the curse of life.  Be yourself.  The goal for the mind is the de­velopment of individual uniqueness. Do not judge others. You only judge if you are a slave of a system.  Why desire a will?  Will is but the effort born of resistance, when there is division between thought and feeling. Why be consistent? To say 'I do this because I ought' is worth nothing. Action should be full, free, spontaneous."

He did not preach the negation of desire, he said. "De­sire is the motive power behind all action. If you would fulfil life you must have great desire.  This leads to ex­perience.  Invite every experience in order that you may conquer every experience."

The last day of the visit there was no lecture; only informal family discussions.  In the evening one of the children danced for "Krishnaji."  A crimson carpet was spread on the lawn, two braziers stood behind it, where incense sticks sent faint clouds of smoke into the air. In front was a long border of marigolds, and among these a small lamp was hidden.  In this faint light the girl twirled her red skirts to the sound of weird music. Krishnamurti has a great appreciation of art in all its forms.

His only other diversion while with us was a motor ride to the Maidan (a grassy, well-wooded plain). Here the car stuck in the sand; and although Krishnamurti dis­likes dust, dislikes heat, he would not stay in the car, but insisted on helping the driver to move it, toiling until he was perspiring and hot. Class distinctions do not exist for him, and his manners towards the servants were as courteous as towards his hosts. When he left he bowed to each one of them, and he would allow none to carry his bag but himself. "Never before have we so deeply felt the departure of one from this house," they said afterwards.

 

A News Letter

  LEAVING Bombay on the 11th May, after a short visit to Adyar to see Dr. Besant, Krishnamurti reached Egypt on the 18th, and left for Greece from Alexandria on the 27th.  This interval in Egypt enabled him to have a week's rest in the neighborhood of the great Pyramids-a rest that was much needed after his recent illness in Benares, which cut short his visit to Darjeeling.

On the 29th May he reached Athens.  A Gathering was arranged at Kastri, a beautiful suburb of Athens, from the 1st to the 6th June. About 30 people came to reside at the hotel in Kastri for the period of the Gathering, but in addition there were several who came each day, from Kephissia and Athens, for Krishnamurti's talks, and the attendance on the last two days exceeded 300.

Judging by the number of those who attended the talks, the Gathering was small, but far from this being a detracting feature, it was a happy one, particularly on account of the difficulty of the language, which necessi­tated a running translation into Greek in the course of the talks themselves. But thanks to the general eagerness, which largely compensated for the difficulty of the lan­guage, Krishnamurti was able to elucidate some of his ideas with great clarity and force.

The talks were given in a secluded pine wood each morning at 11 o'clock.  Krishnamurti was very intense and, as in India, he discussed many questions with the audience, which made the talks extremely informal. Each day a discussion followed the talk.  As everywhere, he gave a number of interviews.

The daily audiences were more varied than at any other Gathering in Europe or America, and great intensity of interest was shown.  The audiences included, in addition to those of the middle class and the educated, hotel servants, gens d'armes, farm laborers and workmen. The following conversation between two workmen, brief and to the point, was overheard after one of the talks:  "Did you follow what he was saying?"  "Yes.  He said we were not human." "Do you agree?" "Can you deny it? Are we so very different from animals?"

On the evening of the 7th June, Krishnamurti gave a public lecture at the Palace Theater in Athens to a most attentive audience.  His visit has evoked a great deal of appreciative publicity in the newspapers.

Krishnamurti left Greece for Italy on the 12th June. A Gathering is arranged at a little town called Alpino Fiorente, near Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, from the 28th June to the 10th July. The Ommen Camp will be from the 26th July to the 14th August, following which there will be a Gathering* at Oslo, Norway, from the 1st to the 10th September.

Krishnamurti will leave Europe for India early in October, and will there visit a few places not previously covered. He is planning to leave India about the middle of January, 1934, and will visit Burma, Java, Australia and New Zealand, reaching California in time for the Ojai Camp in June, 1934

*For information relative to the Gathering in Norway, all communications should be addressed to Dr. Lilly Heber, P 0.box 34, Blommenholm, Norway.