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
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.