Jayachandran

ALPINO, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 1ST JULY, 1933

Friends, I should like you to make a living discovery, not a discovery induced by the description of others. If someone, for instance, had told you about the scenery here, you would come with your minds prepared by that description, and then perhaps you would be disappointed by the reality. No one can describe reality. You must experience it, see it, feel the whole atmosphere of it. When you see its beauty and loveliness, you experience a renewing, a quickening of joy.
Most people who think that they are seeking truth have already prepared their minds for its reception by studying descriptions of what they are seeking. When you examine religions and philosophies, you find that they have all tried to describe reality; they have tried to describe truth for your guidance.
Now I am not going to try to describe what to me is truth, for that would be an impossible attempt. One cannot describe or give to another the fullness of an experience. Each one must live it for himself.
Like most people, you have read, listened and imitated; you have tried to find out what others have said concerning truth and God, concerning life and immortality. So you have a picture in your mind, and now you want to compare that picture with what I am going to say. That is, your mind is seeking merely descriptions; you do not try to find out anew, but only try to compare. But since I shall not try to describe truth, for it cannot be described, naturally there will be confusion in your mind.
When you hold before yourself a picture that you are trying to copy, an ideal that you are trying to follow, you can never face an experience fully; you are never frank, never truthful as regards yourself and your own actions; you are always protecting yourself with an ideal. If you really probe into your own mind and heart, you will discover that you come here to get something new; a new idea, a new sensation, a new explanation of life, in order that you may mould your own life according to that. Therefore you are really searching for a satisfactory explanation. You have not come with an attitude of freshness, so that by your own perception, your own intensity, you may discover the joy of natural and spontaneous action. Most of you are merely seeking a descriptive explanation of truth, thinking that if you can find out what truth is, you can then mould your lives according to that eternal light.
If that be the motive of your search, then it is not a search for truth. It is rather for consolation, for comfort; it is but an attempt to escape the innumerable conflicts and struggles that you must face every day.
Out of suffering is born the urge to seek truth; in suffering lies the cause of the insistent inquiry, the search for truth. Yet when you suffer – as every one does suffer – you seek an immediate remedy and comfort. When you feel momentary physical pain, you obtain a palliative at the nearest drug store to lessen your suffering. So also, when you experience momentary mental or emotional anguish, you seek consolation, and you imagine that trying to find relief from pain is the search for truth. In that way you are continually seeking a compensation for your pains, a compensation for the effort you are thus forced to make. You evade the main cause of suffering and thereby live an illusory life.
So those people who are always proclaiming that they are searching for truth are in reality missing it. They have found their lives to be insufficient, incomplete, lacking in love, and think that by trying to seek truth they will find satisfaction and comfort. If you frankly say to yourself that you are seeking only consolation and compensation for the difficulties of life, you will be able to grapple with the problem intelligently. But as long as you pretend to yourself that you are seeking something more than mere compensation, you cannot see the matter clearly. The first thing to find out, then, is whether you are really seeking, fundamentally seeking truth.
A man who is seeking truth is not a disciple of truth. Suppose that you say to me, “I have had no love in my life; it has been a poor life, a life of continuous pain; therefore, in order to gain comfort, I seek truth.” Then I must point out that your search for comfort is an utter delusion. There is no such thing in life as comfort and security. The first thing to understand is that you must be absolutely frank.
But you yourself are not certain what you really want: you want comfort, consolation, compensation, and yet, at the same time, you want something that is infinitely greater than compensation and comfort. You are so confused in your own mind that one moment you look to an authority who offers you compensation and comfort, and the next moment you turn to another who denies you comfort. So your life becomes a refined hypocritical existence, a life of confusion. Try to find out what you really think; do not pretend to think what you believe you ought to think; then, if you are conscious, fully alive in what you are doing, you will know for yourself, without self-analysis, what you really desire. If you are fully responsible in your acts, you will then know without self-analysis what you are really seeking. This process of finding out does not necessitate great will power, great strength, but only the interest to discover what you think, to discover whether you are really honest or living in illusion.
In talking to groups of listeners all over the world, I find that more and more people seem not to understand what I am saying, because they come with fixed ideas; they listen with their biased attitude, without trying to find out what I have to say, but only expecting to find what they secretly desire. It is vain to say, “Here is a new ideal after which I must mould myself.” Rather find out what you really feel and think.
How can you find out what you really feel and think? From my point of view, you can do that only by being aware of your whole life. Then you will discover to what extent you are a slave to your ideals, and by discovering that, you will see that you have created ideals merely for your consolation.
Where there is duality, where there are opposites, there must be the consciousness of incompleteness. The mind is caught up in opposites, such as punishment and reward, good and bad, past and future, gain and loss. Thought is caught up in this duality, and therefore there is incompleteness in action. This incompleteness creates suffering, the conflict of choice, effort and authority, and the escape from the unessential to the essential.
When you feel that you are incomplete, you feel empty, and from that feeling of emptiness arises suffering; out of that incompleteness you create standards, ideals, to sustain you in your emptiness, and you establish these standards and ideals as your external authority. What is the inner cause of the external authority that you create for yourself? First, you feel incomplete, and you suffer from that incompleteness. As long as you do not understand the cause of authority, you are but an imitative machine, and where there is imitation there cannot be the rich fulfillment of life. To understand the cause of authority you must follow the mental and emotional process which creates it. First of all, you feel empty, and in order to get rid of that feeling you make an effort; by that effort you only create opposites; you create a duality which but increases the incompleteness and the emptiness. You are responsible for such external authorities as religion, politics, morality, for such authorities as economic and social standards. Out of your emptiness, out of your incompleteness, you have created these external standards from which you now try to free yourself. By evolving, by developing, by growing away from them you want to create an inner law for yourself. As you come to understand external standards, you want to liberate yourself from them, and to develop your own inner standard. This inner standard, which you call “spiritual reality”, you identify with a cosmic law, which means that you create but another division, another duality.
So you first create an external law, and then you seek to outgrow it by developing an inner law, which you identify with the universe, with the whole. That is what is happening. You are still conscious of your limited egotism, which you now identify with a great illusion, calling it cosmic. So when you say, “I am obeying my inner law”, you are but using an expression to cover your desire to escape. To me, the man who is bound either by an external or an inner law is confined in a prison; he is held by an illusion. Therefore such a man cannot understand spontaneous, natural, healthy action.
Now why do you create inner laws for yourself? Is it not because the struggle in everyday life is so great, so inharmonious, that you want to escape from it and to create an inner law which shall become your comfort? And you become a slave to that inner authority, that inner standard, because you have rejected only the outward picture, and have created in its place an inner picture to which you are a slave.
By this method you will not attain true discernment, and discernment is quite other than choice. Choice must exist where there is duality. When the mind is incomplete and is conscious of that incompleteness, it tries to escape from it and therefore creates an opposite to that incompleteness. That opposite can be either an external or an inner standard, and when one has established such a standard, he judges every action, every experience by that standard, and therefore lives in a continual state of choice. Choice is born only of resistance. If there is discernment, there is no effort.
So to me this whole conception of making an effort toward truth, toward reality, this idea of making a sustained endeavour, is utterly false. As long as you are incomplete you will experience suffering, and hence you will be engaged in choice, in effort, in the ceaseless struggle for what you call”spiritual attainment.” So I say, when mind is caught up in authority, it cannot have true understanding, true thought. And since the minds of most of you are caught up in authority – which is but an escape from understanding, from discernment – you cannot face the experience of life completely. Therefore you live a dual life, a life of pretence, of hypocrisy, a life in which there is no moment of completeness.

STRESA, ITALY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 2ND JULY, 1933

Friends, In my talks I am not going to weave an intellectual theory. I am going to speak of my own experience which is not born of intellectual ideas, but which is real. Please do not think of me as a philosopher expounding a new set of ideas with which your intellect can juggle. That is not what I want to offer you. Rather, I should like to explain that truth, the life of fullness and richness, cannot be realized through any person, through imitation, or through any form of authority.
Most of us feel occasionally that there is a true life, an eternal something, but the moments in which we feel that are so rare that this eternal something recedes more and more into the background and seems to us less and less a reality.
Now to me there is reality; there is an eternal living reality – call it God, immortality, eternity, or what you will. There is something living, creative, which cannot be described, because reality eludes all description. No description of truth can be lasting, for it can only be an illusion of words. You cannot know of love through the description of another; to know love, you yourself must have experienced it. You cannot know the taste of salt until you have tasted salt for yourself. Yet we spend our time looking for a description of truth instead of trying to find out the manner of its realization. I say that I cannot describe, I cannot put into words, that living reality which is beyond all idea of progress, all idea of growth. Beware of the man who tries to describe that living reality, for it cannot be described; it must be experienced, lived.
This realization of truth, of the eternal, is not in the movement of time, which is but a habit of the mind. When you say that you will realize it in course of time, that is, in some future, then you are only postponing that comprehension which must ever be in the present. But if the mind understands the completeness of life, and is free from the division of time into the past, present, and future, then there comes the realization of that living eternal reality.
But since all minds are caught up in the division of time, since they think of time as past, present, and future, there arises conflict. Again, because we have divided action into the past, present, and future, because to us action is not complete in itself, but is rather something propelled by motives, by fear, by guides, by reward or punishment, our minds are incapable of understanding the continuous whole. Only when mind is free of the division of time can true action result. When action is born of completeness, not in the division of time, then that action is harmonious and is freed from the trammels of society, classes, races, religions and acquisitiveness.
To put it differently, action must become truly individual. Now I am not using that word “individual” in the sense of placing the individual against the many. By individual action I mean action that is born of complete comprehension, complete understanding by the individual, understanding not imposed by others. Where that understanding exists, there is true individuality, true aloneness – not the aloneness of escape into solitude, but the aloneness that is born of the full comprehension of the experiences of life. For the completeness of action, mind must be free of this idea of time as yesterday, today, and tomorrow. If mind is not liberated from that division, then conflict arises and leads to suffering and to the search for escapes from that suffering.
I say that there is a living reality, an immortality, an eternity that cannot be described; it can be understood only in the fullness of your own individual action, not as a part of a structure, not as a part of a social, political, or religious machine. Therefore you must experience true individuality before you can understand what is true. As long as you do not act from that eternal source, there must be conflict; there must be division and continual strife.
Now each of us knows conflict, struggle, sorrow, lack of harmony. These are the elements that largely make up our lives, and from them we try, consciously or unconsciously, to escape. But few know for themselves the cause of conflict. Intellectually they may know the cause, but that knowledge is merely superficial. To know the cause is to be aware of it with both mind and heart.
Since few are aware of the deep cause of their suffering, they feel the desire to escape from that suffering, and this desire for escape has created and vitalized our moral, social, and religious systems. Here I have not time to go into details, but if you will think the matter over, you will see that our religious systems throughout the world are based on this idea of postponement and evasion, this searching for mediators and comforters. Because we are not responsible for our own acts, because we are seeking escape from our suffering, we create systems and authorities which will give us comfort and shelter.
What, then, is the cause of conflict? Why does one suffer? Why does one have to struggle ceaselessly? To me, conflict is the impeded flow of spontaneous action, of harmonious thought and feeling. When thought and emotion are inharmonious, there is conflict in action; that is, when mind and heart are in a state of discord, they create an impediment to the expression of harmonious action, and hence conflict. Such impediment to harmonious action is caused by the desire to escape, by the continual avoidance of facing life wholly, by meeting life always with the weight of tradition – be it religious, political, or social. This incapacity to face experience in its completeness creates conflict, and the desire to escape from it.
If you consider your thoughts and the acts springing from them, you will see that where there is the desire to escape there must be the search for security; because you find conflict in life with all its actions, its affections, its thoughts, you want to escape from that conflict to a satisfactory security, to a permanency. So your whole action is based on this desire for security. But actually, there is no security in life – neither physical nor intellectual, neither emotional nor spiritual. If you feel you are secure, you can never find that living reality; yet most of you are seeking security.
Some of you are seeking physical security through wealth, comfort, and the power over others that wealth gives you; you are interested in social differences and social privileges that assure you of a position from which you derive satisfaction. Physical security is a crude form of security, but since it has been impossible for the majority of mankind to attain that security, man has turned to the subtle form of security which he calls spiritual or religious. Because of the desire to escape from conflict, you seek and establish security – physical or spiritual. The longing for physical security shows itself in the desire to have a substantial bank account, a good position, the desire to be considered somebody in the town, the striving for degrees and titles and all such meaningless stupidities.
Then some of you become dissatisfied with physical security and turn to security of a more subtle form. It is security still, but merely a little less obvious, and you call it spiritual. But I see no real difference between the two. When you are satiated with physical security or when you cannot attain it, you turn to what you call spiritual security. And when you turn to that, you establish and vitalize those things which you call religion and organized spiritual beliefs. Because you seek security you establish a form of religion, a system of philosophical thought in which you are caught, to which you become a slave. Therefore, from my point of view, religions with all their intermediaries, their ceremonies, their priests, destroy creative understanding and pervert judgment.
One form of religious security is the belief in reincarnation, the belief in future lives, with all that that belief implies. I say that when a man is caught up in any belief he cannot know the fullness of life. A man who lives fully is acting from that source in which there is no reaction, but only action; but the man who is seeking security, escape, must hold to a belief because from that he derives continual support, encouragement for his lack of comprehension.
Then there is the security created by man in the idea of God. Many people ask me whether I believe in God, whether there is a God. You cannot discuss it. Most of our conceptions of God, of reality, of truth, are merely speculative imitations. Therefore they are utterly false, and all our religions are based on such falsities. A man who has lived all his life in a prison can only speculate about freedom; a man who has never experienced the ecstasy of freedom cannot know freedom. So it is of little avail to discuss God, truth; but if you have the intelligence, the intensity to destroy the barriers around you, then you will know for yourself the fulfillment of life. You will then no longer be a slave in a social or religious system.
Again, there is the security through service. That is, you like to lose yourself in the bog of activity, in work. Through this activity, this security, you seek to escape from facing your own incessant struggles.
So security is but escape. And since most people are trying to escape, they have made themselves into machines of habit in order to avoid conflict. They create religious beliefs, ideas; they worship the image of an imitation which they call God; they try to forget their inability to face the struggle by losing themselves in work. All these are ways of escape.
Now in order to safeguard security, you create authority. Isn’t that so? To receive comfort, you must have someone or some system to give you comfort. To have security, there must be a person, an idea, a belief, a tradition, that gives you the assurance of security. So in our attempt to find security, we set up an authority and become slaves to that authority. In our search for security we set up religious ideals that we, in our fear, have created; we seek security through priests or spiritual guides whom we call teachers or masters. Or, again, we seek our authority in the power of tradition – social, economic, or political.
We ourselves, individually, have established these authorities. They did not come into being spontaneously. Through centuries we have been establishing them, and our minds have become crippled, perverted through their influence.
Or, suppose that we have discarded external authorities; then we have developed an inner authority which we call intuitional, spiritual authority – but which, to me, differs little from the external. That is, when mind is caught up in authority – whether external or inner – it cannot be free, and therefore it cannot know true discernment. Hence, where there is authority born of the search for security, in that authority are the roots of egotism.
Now what have we done? Out of our weakness, our desire for power, our search for security, we have established spiritual authorities. And in this security, which we call immortality, we want to dwell eternally. If you look at that desire calmly, discerningly, you will see that it is nothing but a refined form of egotism. Where there is a division of thought, where there is the idea of “I”, the idea of “mine” and “yours”, there cannot be completeness in action, and therefore there cannot be the understanding of living reality.
But – and I hope you understand this – that living reality, that totality, expresses itself in the action of individuality. I have explained what I mean by individuality: the state in which action takes place through understanding, liberated from all standards – social, economic, or spiritual. That is what I call true individuality, because it is action born of the fullness of understanding, whereas egotism has its roots in security, in tradition, in belief. Therefore action induced by egotism is ever incomplete, is ever bound up with ceaseless struggle, with suffering and pain.
These are a few of the impediments and hindrances that prevent man from realizing that supreme reality. That living reality you can understand only when you have freed yourself from these hindrances. The freedom of completeness is not in the escape from bondage, but in the understanding of action, which is the harmony of mind and heart. Let me explain this more clearly. Most thinking people are intellectually aware of many hindrances. For instance, if you consider such securities as wealth, which you accumulate as a protection, or spiritual ideas in which you try to take shelter, you will see their utter futility.
Now if you examine these securities, you may intellectually see their falseness; but to me, that intellectual consciousness of impediment is not full awareness at all. It is merely an intellectual conception, not a full consciousness. Full consciousness exists only when you are aware, both emotionally and mentally, of these hindrances. If you are thinking of these hindrances now, you are probably considering them only intellectually, and you say, “Tell me a way by which I can get rid of these impediments.” That is, you are merely trying to conquer impediments, and thereby you are creating another set of resistances. I hope I have made this clear. I can tell you that security is futile, that it has no significance, and you may intellectually admit this; but as you have been accustomed to struggle for security, when you go from here you will merely continue that struggle, but now, against security; thereby you merely seek a new way, a new method, a new technique, which is but a renewed desire for security in another form.
To me there is no such thing as a technique for living, a technique for the realization of truth. If there were such a technique for you to learn, you would merely be enslaved by another system.
The realization of truth comes only when there is completeness of action without effort. And the cessation of effort comes through the awareness of hindrances – not when you try to conquer them. That is, when you are fully conscious, fully aware in your heart and mind, when you are aware with your whole being, then through that awareness you will be free from hindrances. Experiment and you will see. Everything that you have conquered has enslaved you. Only when you have understood an impediment with your whole being, only when you have really understood the illusion of security, you will no longer struggle against it. But if you are only intellectually conscious of hindrances, then you will continue to struggle against them.
Your conception of life is based on this principle. Your striving for spiritual achievement, spiritual growth, is the outcome of your desire for further securities, further aggrandizement, further glory, and hence this continual and ceaseless struggle.
So I say, do not seek a way, a method. There is no method, no way to truth. Do not seek a way, but become aware of the impediment. Awareness is not merely intellectual; it is both mental and emotional; it is completeness of action. Then, in that flame of awareness, all these impediments fall away because you penetrate them. Then you can perceive directly, without choice, that which is true. Your action will then be born out of completeness, not out of the incompleteness of security; and in that completeness, in that harmony of mind and heart, is the realization of the eternal.

ALPINO, ITALY 2ND PUBLIC TALK 4TH JULY, 1933

Friends, Today I am going to talk about what is called evolution. It is a subject difficult to discuss, and you may misunderstand what I am going to say. If you don’t quite understand me, please ask me questions afterwards.
To most of us the idea of evolution implies a series of achievements, that is, achievements born of continual choice between what we call the unessential and the essential. It implies leaving the unessential and moving towards the essential. This series of continual achievements resulting from choice we call evolution. Our whole structure of thought is based on this idea of advancement and spiritual attainment, on the idea of growing more and more into the essential, as the result of continual choice. So then, we think of action as merely a series of achievements, don’t we?
Now when we consider growth or evolution as a series of achievements, naturally our actions are never complete; they are always growing from the lower to the higher, always climbing, advancing. Therefore, if we live under that conception, our action enslaves us; our action is a constant, ceaseless, infinite effort, and that effort is always turned toward a security. Naturally, when there is this search for security, there is fear, and this fear creates the continual consciousness of what we call the “I”. Isn’t that so? The minds of most of us are caught up in this idea of achievement, attainment, climbing higher and higher, that is, in the idea of choosing between the essential and the unessential. And since this choice, this advancement which we call action, is but a ceaseless struggle, a continual effort, our lives are also a ceaseless effort and not a free, spontaneous flow of action.
I want to differentiate between action and achievement or attainment. Achievement is a finality, whereas action, to me, is infinite. You will understand that distinction as I continue. But first, let us understand that this is what we mean by evolution: A continual movement through choice, towards what we call the essential, ever pursuing greater and greater achievement.
The highest bliss – and to me this is not a mere theory – is to live without effort. Now I am going to explain what I mean by effort. For most of you, effort is but choice. You live by choice; you have to choose. But why do you choose? Why is there a necessity that urges you, impels you, forces you to choose? I say that this necessity for choice exists as long as one is conscious of emptiness or loneliness within oneself; that incompleteness forces you to choose, to make an effort.
Now the question is not how to fill that emptiness, but rather, what is the cause of that emptiness. To me, emptiness is action born of choice, in search of gain. Emptiness results when action is born of choice. And when there is emptiness, the question arises, “How can I fill that void? How can I get rid of that loneliness, that feeling of incompleteness?” To me, it is not a question of filling the void, for you can never fill it. Yet that is what most people are trying to do. Through sensation, excitement, or pleasure, through tenderness or forgetfulness, they are trying to fill that void, to lessen that feeling of emptiness. But they will never fill that emptiness, because they are trying to fill it with action born of choice.
Emptiness exists as long as action is based on choice, on like and dislike, attraction and repulsion. You choose because you don’t like this and you like that; you are not satisfied with this but you want to satisfy yourself with that. Or you are afraid of something and run away from it. For most people action is based on attraction and repulsion, and therefore on fear.
Now what happens when you discard this and choose that? You are basing your action merely on attraction or repulsion, and thereby you are creating an opposite. Hence there is this continual choice which implies effort. As long as you make a choice, as long as choice exists, there must be duality. You may think that you have chosen the essential; but because your choice is born out of attraction and repulsion, want and fear, it merely creates another unessential.
That is what your life is. One day you want this – you choose it because you like it and want it because it gives you joy and satisfaction. The next day you are surfeited with it; it means nothing more to you, and you discard it in order to choose something else. So your choice is based on continuous sensation; you choose through the consciousness of duality, and this choice merely perpetuates the opposites.
As long as you choose between opposites, there is no discernment, and hence there must be effort, ceaseless effort, continually opposites and duality. Your choice, therefore, is ceaseless, and your effort is continuous. Your action is always finite, always in terms of achievement, and hence that emptiness which you feel will always exist. But if the mind is free of choice, if it has the capacity to discern, then action is infinite.
I shall explain this again. As I have said, if you say, “I want this thing”, in that choosing you have created an opposite. Again, after that choice you create another opposite, and so you go on from one opposite to another through a process of continual effort. That process is your life, and in that there is ceaseless struggle and pain, conflict and suffering. If you realize that, if you really feel with your whole being – that is, emotionally as well as mentally – the futility of choice, then you no longer choose; then there is discernment; then there is intuitive response which is free from choice, and that is awareness.
If you are aware that your choice born of opposites but creates another opposite, then you perceive what is true. But most of you have not the intensity of desire nor the awareness, because you want the opposite, because you want sensation. Therefore you never attain discernment; you never attain that rich, full awareness that liberates the mind from opposites. In that freedom from opposites, action is no longer an achievement, but a fulfillment; it is born of discernment which is infinite. Then action springs from your own fullness, and in such action there is no choice and hence no effort.
To know such fullness, such reality, you must be in a state of intense awareness, which you can attain only when you are faced by a crisis. Most of you are faced by some kind of crisis, with regard to money, or people, or love, or death; and when you are caught up in such a crisis you have to choose, to decide. How do you decide? Your decision springs from fear, want, sensation. So you are merely postponing; you are choosing what is convenient, what is pleasant, and therefore you are merely creating another shadow through which you have to pass. Only when you feel the absurdity of your present existence, feel it not just intellectually, but with your whole heart and mind – when you really feel the absurdity of this continual choice – then out of that awareness is born discernment. Then you do not choose: you act. It is easy to give examples, but I shall give none, for they are often confusing.
So to me, awareness does not result from the struggle to be aware; it comes of its own accord when you are conscious with your whole being, when you realize the futility of choice. At present you choose between two things, two courses of action; you make a choice between this and that; one you understand, the other you do not. With the result of such choice, you hope to fill your life. You act according to your wants, your desires. Naturally, when that desire is fulfilled, action has come to an end. Then, since you are still lonely, you look for another action, another fulfillment. Each one of you is faced with a duality in action, a choice between doing this or that; but when you are aware of the futility of choice, when you are aware with your whole being, without effort, then you will truly discern.
You can test this only when you are really in a crisis; you cannot test it intellectually, when sitting at your ease and imagining a mental conflict. You can learn its truth only when you are face to face with an insistent demand for choice, when you have to make a decision, when your whole being demands action. If in that moment you realize with your whole being, if in that moment you are aware of the futility of choice, then out of that comes the flower of intuition, the flower of discernment. Action born of that is infinite; then action is life itself. Then there is no division between action and actor; all is continuous. There is no temporary fulfillment which is soon over.

Question: Please explain what you mean by saying that self-discipline is useless. What do you mean by self-discipline?
Krishnamurti: If you have understood what I have been saying, you will see the futility of self-discipline. But I shall explain this again, and try to make it clear.
Why do you think that you must discipline yourself? To what do you want to discipline yourself? When you say, “I must discipline myself”, you hold before you a standard to which you think you must conform. Self-discipline exists as long as you want to fill the emptiness within you; it exists as long as you hold a certain description of what God is, what truth is, as long as you cherish certain sets of moral standards which you force yourself to accept as guides. That is, your action is regulated, con- trolled, by the desire to conform. But if action is born of discernment, then there is no discipline.
Please understand what I mean by discernment. Don’t say, “I have learnt to play the piano. Doesn’t that involve discipline?” Or, “I have studied mathematics. Is not that discipline?” I am not talking about the study of technique, which cannot be called discipline. I am talking about conduct in life. Have I made that clear? I am afraid most of you have not understood this, for to be free of the idea of self-discipline is most difficult, since from childhood we have been slaves of discipline, of control. To get rid of the idea of discipline does not mean that you must go to the opposite, that you must be chaotic. What I say is that when there is discernment, there need be no self-discipline; then there is no self-discipline.
Most of you are caught up in the habit of discipline. First of all, you hold a mental picture of what is right, of what is true, of what good character should be. To this mental picture you try to fit your actions. You act merely according to a mental picture that you hold. As long as you have a preconceived idea of what is true – and most of you have this idea – you must act according to that. Most of you are unconscious that you are acting according to a pattern, but when you become aware that you are acting thus, then you no longer copy or imitate: then your own action reveals what is true.
You know, our physical training, our religious and moral training, tend to mould us after a pattern. From childhood, most of us have been trained to fit into a pattern – social, religious, economic – and most of us are unconscious of this. Discipline has become a habit, and you are unconscious of that habit. Only when you become aware that you are disciplining yourself to a pattern, will your action be born of discernment.
So first of all, you must realize why you discipline yourself, not why you should or should not discipline. What has happened to man through all the centuries of self-discipline? He has become more of a machine and less of a human being; he has merely attained greater skill in imitation, in being a machine. Self-discipline, that is, conforming to a mental picture established either by you yourself or by someone else, does not bring about harmony; it only creates chaos.
What happens when you attempt to discipline yourself? Your action is ever creating emptiness within you because you are trying to fit your actions to a pattern. But if you become aware that you are acting according to a pattern – a pattern of your own or some one else’s making – then you will perceive the falseness of imitation and your action then will be born of discernment, that is, from the harmony of your mind and heart.
Now, mentally you want to act in a certain way, but emotionally you do not desire the same end, and hence conflict results. In order to conquer that conflict you seek security in authority, and that authority becomes your pattern. Hence, you do not act what you really feel and think; your action is motivated by fear, by desire for security, and from such action is born self-discipline. Do you understand?
You know, understanding with the whole intensity of your being is a very different thing from understanding merely intellectually. When people say, “I understand”, they usually understand only intellectually. But intellectual analysis will not free you from this habit of self-discipline. When you are acting, do not say, “I must see if this act is born of self-discipline, if it is according to a pattern.” Such an attempt only prevents true action. But if, in your acting, you are aware of the imitation, then your action will be spontaneous.
As I have said, if you examine every act to determine whether it is born of self-discipline, of imitation, your action becomes more and more limited; then there is hindrance, resistance. You do not truly act at all. But if you become aware, with your whole being, of the futility of imitation, the futility of conformity, then your action will not be imitative, hampered, bound. The more you analyze your action, the less you act. Isn’t that so? To me, analysis of action does not free the mind of imitation, which is conformity, self-discipline; what frees the mind of imitation is being aware with your whole being in your action.
To me, self-analysis frustrates action, it destroys complete living. Perhaps you do not agree with this, but please listen to what I have to say before you decide whether or not you agree. I say that this continuous process of self-analysis, which is self-discipline, constantly puts a limitation on the free flow of life, which is action. For self-discipline is based on the idea of achievement, not on the idea of the completeness of action. Do you see the distinction? In the one there is a series of achievements and therefore always a finality; whereas in the other, action is born of discernment, and such action is harmonious and therefore infinite. Have I made this clear? Watch yourself the next time you say, “I must not.” Self-discipline, the “I must”, the “I must not”, is based on the idea of achievement. When you realize the futility of achievement – when you realize this with your whole being, emotionally as well as intellectually – then there is no longer an “I must” and an “I must not.”
Now you are caught up in this attempt to conform to a picture in your mind, you have the habit of thinking “I must” or “I must not.” Therefore, the next time you say this, become aware of yourself, and in that awareness you will discern what is true, and free yourself from the hindrance of “I must” and “I must not.”

Question: You say that nobody can help any one else. Why then are you going around the world addressing people?
Krishnamurti: Need that be answered? It implies a great deal if you understand it. You know, most of us want to acquire wisdom or truth through another, through some outside agency. No one else can make you into an artist; only you yourself can do that. That is what I want to say: I can give you paint, brushes, and canvas, but you yourself have to become the artist, the painter. I cannot make you into one. Now in your attempts to become spiritual, most of you seek teachers, saviours, but I say that no one in the world can free you from the conflict of sorrow. Some one can give you the materials, the tools, but no one can give you that flame of creative living.
You know, we think in terms of technique, but technique does not come first. You must first have the flame of desire, and then technique follows. “But, ” you say, “let me learn. If I am taught the technique of painting, then I shall be able to paint.” There are many books that describe the technique of painting, but merely learning technique will never make you a creative artist. Only when you stand entirely alone, without technique, without masters, only then can you find truth.
Let us understand this first of all. Now you are basing your ideas on conformity. You think that there is a standard, a way, by which you can find truth; but if you examine, you will discover that there is no path that leads to truth. In order to be led to truth, you must know what truth is, and your leader must know what it is. Isn’t that so? I say that a man who teaches truth may have it, but if he offers to lead you to truth and you are led, then both are in illusion. How can you know truth if you are still held by illusion? If truth is there, it expresses itself. A great poet has the desire, the flame for creative writing, and he writes. If you have the desire, you learn the technique.
I feel that no one can lead another to truth, because truth is infinite; it is a pathless land, and no one can tell you how to find it. No one can teach you to be an artist; another can only give you the brushes and canvas and show you the colours to use. Nobody taught me, I assure you, nor have I learnt what I am saying from books. But I have watched, I have struggled, and I have tried to find out. It is only when you are absolutely naked, free from all techniques, free from all teachers, that you find out.

ALPINO, ITALY 3RD PUBLIC TALK 6TH JULY, 1933

Friends, In these talks I have been trying to show that where action involves effort, self-control – and I have explained what I mean by these terms – there must be diminution and limitation of life, but where action is effortless, spontaneous, there is completeness of life. What I say, however, concerns the fullness of life itself, not the chaos of misunderstood liberation. I shall again explain what I mean by effortless action.
When you are conscious of incompleteness, you have the desire to find a goal or an end which will be your authority, and thereby you hope to fill that emptiness, that incompleteness. Most of us are continually seeking a goal, an end, an image, an ideal for our comfort. We are ceaselessly working towards that goal because we are conscious of the struggle which arises from incompleteness. But if we understood incompleteness itself, then we would no longer seek a goal, which is but substitution.
To understand incompleteness and its cause you must find out why you seek a goal. Why do you work towards a goal? Why do you want to discipline yourself according to a pattern? Because the incompleteness, of which you are more or less conscious, gives rise to continued effort, continued struggle, from which mind tries to escape by establishing the authority of a comforting ideal which it hopes will serve as a guide. Thereby action in itself has no significance; it becomes merely a steppingstone towards an end, a goal. In your search for truth you use action merely as a means towards an end, and the significance of action is lost. You make great effort to attain a goal, and the importance of your action lies in the end which it achieves – not in the action itself.
Most people are caught up in the search for reward, in the attempt to escape punishment. They are working for results; they are urged forward by a motive, and therefore their action cannot be complete. Most of you are caught in this prison of incompleteness, and therefore you have to become conscious of that prison.
If you don’t understand what I mean, please interrupt me, and I shall explain again.
I say that you must become conscious that you are a prisoner; you must become aware that you are continually trying to escape from incompleteness and that your search for truth is but an escape. What you call the search for truth, for God, through self-discipline and achievement, is but an escape from incompleteness.
The cause of incompleteness is in the very search for attainment, but you are continually escaping from this cause. Action born of self-discipline, action born of fear or of the desire for achievement, is the cause of incompleteness. Now when you become aware that such action is itself the cause of incompleteness, you are freed of that incompleteness. The moment you become aware of poison, the poison ceases to be a problem to you. It is a problem only as long as you are unaware of its action in your life.
But most people do not know the cause of their incompleteness, and from this ignorance arises ceaseless effort. When they become aware of the cause – which is the search for achievement – then in that awareness there is completeness, completeness that demands no effort. In your action then there is no effort, no self-analysis, no discipline.
From incompleteness arises the search for comfort, for authority, and the attempt to reach this goal deprives action of its intrinsic significance. But when you become fully aware with your mind and your heart of the cause of incompleteness, then incompleteness ceases. Out of this awareness comes action that is infinite because it has significance in itself.
To put it differently, as long as mind and heart are caught up in want, in desire, there must be emptiness. You want things, ideas, persons, only when you are conscious of your own emptiness, and that wanting creates a choice. When there is craving there must be choice, and choice precipitates you into the conflict of experiences. You have the capacity to choose, and thereby you limit yourself by your choice. Only when mind is free from choice is there liberation.
All want, all craving, is blinding, and your choice is born of fear, of the desire for consolation, comfort, reward, or as the result of cunning calculation. Because of the emptiness within you, there is want. Since your choice is always based on the idea of gain, there can be no true discernment, no true perception; there is only want. When you choose, as you do choose, your choice merely creates another set of circumstances which result in further conflict and choice. Your choice, which is born of limitation, sets up a further series of limitations, and these limitations create the consciousness which is the “I”, the ego. The multiplication of choice you call experiences. You look to these experiences to deliver you from bondage, but they can never deliver you from bondage because you think of experiences as a continual movement of acquisition.
Let me illustrate this by an example, which will perhaps convey my thought. Suppose that you lose by death some one whom you love very much. That death is a fact. Now at once you experience a sense of loss, a craving to be again near that person. You want your friend back, and since you cannot have him again, your mind creates or accepts an idea to satisfy that emotional craving.
The person whom you love has been taken from you. Then, because you suffer, because you are aware of an intense emptiness, a loneliness, you want to have your friend again. That is, you want to end your suffering, or put it aside, or forget it; you want to deaden the consciousness of that emptiness, which is hidden when you are with the friend whom you love. Your want arises from the desire for comfort; but since you cannot have the comfort of his presence, you think of some idea that may satisfy you – reincarnation, life after death, the unity of all life. In such ideas – I do not say that they are right or wrong, we will discuss them another time – in such ideas, I say, you take comfort. Because you cannot have the person whom you love, you take mental consolation in such ideas. That is, without true discernment, you accept any idea, any principle, that seems for the moment to satisfy you, to put aside that consciousness of emptiness which causes suffering.
So your action is based on the idea of consolation, on the idea of multiplication of experiences; your action is determined by choice which has its roots in want. But the moment you become aware with your mind and heart, with your whole being, of the futility of want, then emptiness ceases. Now you are only partly conscious of this emptiness, so you try to get satisfaction by reading novels, by losing yourself in the diversions that man has created in the name of civilization; and this search for sensation you call experience.
You must realize with your heart as well as with your mind that the cause of emptiness is craving, which results in choice, and prevents true discernment. When you become aware of this, there is then cessation of want.
As I have said, when one feels an emptiness, a want, one accepts without true discernment. And most of the actions that make up our lives are based on this feeling of want. We may think that our choices are based on reason, on discernment; we may think that we weigh possibilities and calculate chances before making a choice. Yet because there is in us a longing, a want, a craving, we cannot know true perception or discernment. When you realize this, when you become aware of it with your whole being, emotionally as well as with the mind, when you realize the futility of want, then want ceases; then you are freed from that feeling of emptiness. In that flame of awareness there is no discipline, no effort.
But we do not perceive this fully; we do not become aware, because we experience a pleasure in want, because we are continually hoping that the pleasure in want shall dominate the pain. We strive to attain the pleasure even though we know it is not free from pain. If you become fully aware of the whole significance of this, you have wrought a miracle for yourself; then you will experience freedom from want, and therefore liberation from choice; then you will no longer be that limited consciousness, the “I”.
Where there is dependency or the looking to another for support, for encouragement, where there is reliance on another, there is loneliness. In your looking to another for fulfillment, for happiness or well-being, in your looking to another for consolation, in your dependence on any person or idea as an authority in matters of religion – in all this there is utter loneliness. Because you are thus dependent and hence lonely, you seek comfort, or a way of escape; you seek authority and support from another to give you consolation. But when you become aware of the falseness of all this, when you become aware with your heart as well as with your mind, then there is cessation of loneliness, for then you no longer rely on another for your happiness.
So where there is choice there can be no discernment, for discernment is choiceless. Where there is choice and the capacity to choose, there is only limitation. Only when choice ceases is there liberation, fullness, richness of action, which is life itself. Creation is choiceless, as life is choiceless, as understanding is choiceless. Likewise is truth; it is a continuous action, an everbecoming, in which there is no choice. It is pure discernment.

Question: How can we get rid of incompleteness without form- ing some ideal of completeness? After the realization of completeness there may be no need for an ideal, but before the realization of completeness some ideal seems inevitable, although it will have to be provisional and will change according to the growth of understanding.
Krishnamurti: Your very saying that you need an ideal in order to overcome incompleteness shows that you are merely trying to superimpose that ideal on incompleteness. That is what most of you are trying to do. It is only when you find out the cause of incompleteness and are aware of that cause that you become complete. But you do not find out that cause. You do not understand what I am saying, or rather, you understand only with your minds, only intellectually. Anyone can do that, but really to understand demands action.
Now you feel incompleteness, and therefore you seek an ideal, the ideal of completeness. That is, you are seeking an opposite to incompleteness, and in wanting that opposite you merely create another opposite. This may sound puzzling, but it is not. You are continually seeking what seems to you the essential. One day you think this essential; you choose it, strive for it, and possess it, but meanwhile it has already become the unessential. Now if mind is free from all sense of duality, free from the idea of essential and nonessential, then you are not confronted by the problem of choice; then you act from the fullness of discernment, and you no longer seek the image of completeness.
Why do you cling to the ideal of freedom when you are in a prison? You create or invent that ideal of freedom because you cannot escape from your prison. So also with your ideals, your gods, your religions: they are the creation of the desire for escape into comfort. You yourself have made the world into a prison, a prison of suffering and conflict; and because the world is such a prison, you create an ideal god, an ideal freedom, an ideal truth.
And these ideals, these opposites, are but attempts at emotional and mental escape. Your ideals are means of escape from the prison in which you are confined. But if you become conscious of that prison, if you become aware of the fact that you are trying to escape, then that awareness destroys the prison; then, instead of pursuing freedom, you will know freedom.
Freedom does not come to him who seeks freedom. Truth is not found by him who searches for truth. Only when you realize with your whole mind and heart the condition of the prison in which you live, when you realize the significance of that prison, only then are you free, naturally and without effort. This realization can come only when you are in a great crisis, but most of you try to avoid crises. Or, when you are confronted by a crisis, you at once seek comfort in the idea of religion, the idea of God, the idea of evolution; you turn to priests, to spiritual guides, for consolation; you seek diversion in amusements. All of these are but escapes from conflict. But if you really confront the crisis before you, if you realize the futility, the falseness of escape as a mere means of postponement of action, then in that awareness is born the flower of discernment.
So you must become aware in action, which will reveal the hidden pursuits of craving. But this awareness does not result from analysis. Analysis merely limits action. Have I answered that question?

Question: You have enumerated the successive steps of the process of creating authorities. Will you enumerate the steps of the inverse process, the process of liberating oneself from all authority.
Krishnamurti: I am afraid the question is wrongly stated. You do not ask what creates authority, but how to free yourself from authority. Please, let me say this again: Once you are aware of the cause of authority, you are free from that authority. The cause of the creation of authority is the important thing – not the steps leading to authority or the steps leading to the overthrow of authority.
Why do you create authority? What is the cause of your creating authority? It is, as I have said, the search for security, and I shall have to say this so often that it will become almost a formula for you. Now you are searching for a security in which you think you will need to make no effort, where you will not need to struggle with your neighbour. But you will not attain this state of security by searching for it. There is a state which is fulfillment, which is the assurance of bliss, a state in which you act from life; but that state you attain only when you no longer seek security. Only when you realize with your whole being that there is no such thing as security in life, only when you are free from this constant search, can there be fulfillment. So you create authority in the shape of ideals, in the shape of religious, social, economic systems, all based on the search for individual security. And you yourself are therefore responsible for the creation of authority, to which you have become a slave. Authority does not exist by itself. It has no existence apart from him who creates it. You have created it, and until you are aware with your whole being of the cause of its creation, you will be a slave to it. And you can become aware of that cause only when you are acting, not through self-analysis or intellectual discussion.

Question: I do not want a set of rules for being “aware”, but I should very much like to understand awareness. Must not great effort be made to be aware of each thought as it arises, before one arrives at the state of effortlessness?
Krishnamurti: Why do you want to be aware? What is the need of being aware? If you are perfectly satisfied as you are, continue in that way. When you say, “I must be aware”, you are merely making awareness another end to be attained, and by that means you will never become aware. You have disposed of one set of rules, and now you are creating another set, instead of trying to be aware when you are in a great crisis, when you are suffering.
As long as you seek comfort and security, as long as you are at your ease, you merely consider the matter intellectually, and say, “I must be aware.” But when in the midst of suffering you try to find out the significance of suffering, when you do not try to escape from it, when in a crisis you arrive at a decision – not born of choice, but of action itself – then you really become aware. But when you are trying to escape, your attempt to be aware is futile. You don’t really want to be aware, you don’t want to discover the cause of suffering; your whole concern is with escape.
You come here and listen to my telling you that to escape from conflict is futile. Yet you desire to escape. So you really mean, “How can we do both?” Surreptitiously, cunningly, in the back of your minds you want the religions, the gods, the means of escape that you have cleverly invented and built up through the centuries. Yet you listen to me when I say that you will never find truth through the guidance of another, through escape, through the search for security, which results only in eternal loneliness. Then you ask, “How are we to attain both? How are we to compromise between escape and awareness?” You have confused the two and you seek a compromise; therefore you ask, “How am I to become aware?” But if, instead of this, you frankly say to yourself, “I want to escape, I want comfort”, then you will find exploiters to give you want you want. You yourself have created exploiters because of your desire to escape. Find out what you want, become aware of what you crave; then the question of awareness will not arise. Because you are lonely you want consolation. But if you seek consolation, be honest, be frank, be aware of what you want and conscious that you are seeking it. Then we can understand the matter.
I can tell you that from dependence on another, from the search for comfort, results eternal loneliness. I can make this plain to you, and you, in turn, may agree or disagree. I can show you that in want there is eternal emptiness and nothingness. But you derive satisfaction from sensation, from pleasure, from passing joys that fill your wants, your desires. Then, when I show you the falsity of want, you do not know how to act. So, as a compromise, you begin to discipline yourself, and this attempt to discipline destroys your creative living. When you really perceive the absurdity, the emptiness of want, then that want falls away from you without your effort. But as long as you are enslaved to the idea of choice, you have to make an effort, and from this arises as an opposite the desire for awareness, the problem of living without effort.

Question: You speak to man, but man has first been a child. How can we educate a child without discipline?
Krishnamurti: Do you agree that discipline is futile? Do you feel the futility of discipline?
Comment from the audience: But you start from the point at which man is already man. I want to begin with the child as a child.
Krishnamurti: We are all children; all of us have to begin, not with others, but with ourselves. When we do this, then we shall find out the right way with children. You cannot begin with children because you are the parents of children, you must begin with yourselves. Say that you have a child. You believe in authority and train him according to that belief; but if you understood the futility of authority, you would liberate him from it. So first of all, you yourselves have to find out the significance of authority in your life.
What I say is very simple. I say that authority is created when the mind seeks comfort in security. Therefore, begin with yourselves. Begin with your own garden, not with someone else’s. You want to create a new system of thought, a new system of ideas, a new system of behaviour; but you cannot create something new by reforming something old. You must break away from the old in order to begin the new; but you can break away from the old only when you understand the cause of the old.

STRESA, ITALY 2ND PUBLIC TALK 8TH JULY, 1933

Question: It has been said that you are really enchaining the individual, not liberating him. Is this true?
Krishnamurti: After I have answered this question, you yourself can find out whether I am liberating the individual or enchaining him.
Let us take the individual as he is. What do we mean by the individual? A person who is controlled and dominated by his fears, his disappointments, his cravings, which create a certain set of circumstances that enslave him and force him to fit into a social structure. That is what we mean by an individual. Through our fears, our superstitions, our vanities and our cravings, we have created a certain set of circumstances to which we have become slaves. We have almost lost our individuality, our uniqueness. When you examine your action in daily life, you will see that it is but a reaction to a set of standards, a series of ideas.
Please follow what I am saying, and do not say that I urge man to free himself so that he can do what he likes – so that he can bring about ruin and disaster.
First of all I want to make it clear that we are but reactions to a set of standards and ideas which we have created through our suffering and fear, through our ignorance, our desire for possession. This reaction we call individual action, but to me, it is not action at all. It is a constant reaction in which there is no positive action.
I shall put it differently. At present, man is but the emptiness of reaction, nothing more. He does not act from the fullness of his nature, from his completeness, from his wisdom; he acts merely from a reaction. I maintain that chaos, utter destruction, is taking place in the world because we are not acting from our fullness, but from our fear, from the lack of understanding. Once we become aware of the fact that what we call individuality is but a series of reactions in which there is no fullness of action; once we understand that, that individuality is but a series of reactions in which there is a continual emptiness, a void, then we will act harmoniously. How are you going to find out the value of a certain standard that you hold? You will not find out by acting in opposition to that standard, but by weighing and balancing what you really think and feel against what that standard demands. You will find that the standard demands certain actions, while your own instinctive action tends in another direction. Then what are you going to do? If you do what your instinct demands, your action will lead to chaos, because our instincts have been perverted through centuries of what we call education – education that is entirely false. Your own instinct demands one type of action, but society, which we, individually, have created through centuries, society to which we have become slaves, demands another kind of action. And when you act in accordance with the set of standards demanded by society you are not acting through the fullness of comprehension.
By really pondering over the demands of your instincts and the demands of society, you will find out how you can act in wisdom. That action liberates the individual; it does not enchain him. But the liberation of the individual demands great earnestness, great searching into the depth of action; it is not the result of action born of a momentary impulse.
So you have to recognize what you now are. However well educated you may be, you are only partly a true individual; the greater part of you is determined by the reaction to society, which you have created. You are but a cog in a tremendous machine which you call society, religion, politics, and as long as you are such a cog, your action is born of limitation; it leads only to disharmony and conflict. It is your action that has resulted in our present chaos. But if you acted out of your own fullness you would discover the true worth of society and the instinct causing your action; then your action would be harmonious, not a compromise.
First of all, then, you must become conscious of the false values which have been established through the centuries and to which you have become a slave; you must become conscious of values, to find out whether they are false or true, and this you must do for yourself. No one can do it for you – and herein lies the greatness and glory of man. Thus, by discovering the right value of standards, you liberate the mind from the false standards handed down through ages. But such liberation does not mean impetuous, instinctive action leading to chaos; it means action born of the full harmony of mind and heart. Question: You have never lived the life of a poor man; you have always had the invisible security of your rich friends. You speak of the absolute giving up of every kind of security in life, but millions of people live without such security. You say that one cannot realize that which one has not experienced; consequently, you cannot know what poverty and physical insecurity really are.
Krishnamurti: This is a question frequently asked me; I have often answered it before, but I shall answer it again.
First of all, when I speak of security I mean the security that the mind establishes for its own comfort. Physical security, some degree of physical comfort, man must have in order to exist. So do not confuse the two. Now each one of you is seeking not only a physical but also a mental security, and in that search you are establishing authority. When you understand the falsity of the security which you seek, then that security ceases to have any value; then you realize that although there must be a minimum of physical security, even that security can have but little value. Then you no longer concentrate your whole mind and heart on the constant acquisition of physical security.
I shall put it differently, and I hope it will be clear; but whatever one says can be easily misunderstood. One has to pass through the illusion of words in order to discover the thought that another wishes to convey. I hope you will try to do that during this talk.
I say that your pursuit of virtue, which is merely the opposite of that which you call vice, is but a search for security. Because you have a set of standards in your mind, you pursue virtue for the satisfaction that you get from it; for to you virtue is merely a means of acquisitive security. You do not try to acquire virtue for its own intrinsic value, but for what it gives you in return. Your actions, therefore, are concerned merely with the pursuit of virtue; in themselves they are valueless. Your mind is constantly seeking virtue in order to obtain through it something else, and thus your action is always a steppingstone to some further acquisition.
Perhaps most of you here are seeking a spiritual rather than a physical security. You seek spiritual security either because you already possess physical security – a large bank account, a secure position, a high place in society – or because you cannot attain physical security and therefore turn to spiritual security as a substitute. But to me there is no such thing as security, a shelter in which your mind and emotion can take comfort. When you realize this, when your mind is free from the idea of comfort, then you will not cling to security as you do now.
You ask me how I can understand poverty when I have not experienced it. The answer is simple. Since I am seeking neither physical nor mental security, it matters nothing to me whether I am given food by my friends, or work for it. It is of very little importance to me whether I travel or do not travel. If I am asked, I come; if I am not asked, it makes little difference to me. Because I am rich in myself (and I do not say this with conceit), because I do not seek security, I have few physical needs. But if I were seeking physical comfort, I would emphasize the physical needs, I would emphasize poverty.
Let us look at this differently. Most of our quarrels throughout the world concern possession and non-possession; they are concerned with the acquisition of this and the protection of that. Now why do we lay such emphasis on possession? We do it because possession gives us power, pleasure, satisfaction; it gives us a certain assurance of individuality and affords us scope for our action, our ambition. We lay emphasis on possession because of what we derive from it.
But if we become rich in ourselves, then life will flow through us harmoniously; then possession or poverty will no longer be of great importance to us. Because we lay emphasis on possession, we lose the richness of life; whereas, if we were complete in ourselves, we should find out the intrinsic value of all things and live in the harmony of mind and heart.

Question: It has been said that you are the manifestation of the Christ in our times. What have you to say to this? If it is true, why do you not talk of love and compassion?
Krishnamurti: My friends, why do you ask such a question? Why do you ask whether I am the manifestation of Christ? You ask because you want me to assure you that I am, or that I am not the Christ, so that you can judge what I say according to the standard that you have. There are two reasons why you ask this question: You think that you know what the Christ is, and therefore you say, “I will act accordingly; or, if I say that I am the Christ, then you think that what I say must be true. I am not evading the question, but I am not going to tell you who I am. That is of very little importance, and, moreover, how can you know what or who I am even if I tell you? Such speculation is of very little importance. So let us not be concerned about who I am, but let us look at the reason for your asking this question.
You want to know who I am because you are uncertain about yourselves. I am not saying whether I am or whether I am not the Christ. I am not giving you a categorical answer, because to me the question is not important. What is important is whether what I am saying is true, and this does not depend on what I am. It is something that you can find out only by freeing yourselves from your prejudices and standards. You cannot attain real freedom from prejudice by looking towards an authority, by working towards an end, yet that is what you are doing; surreptitiously, sedulously, you are searching for an authority, and in that search you are but making yourselves into imitative machines.
You ask why I do not speak of love, of compassion. Does the flower talk about its perfume? It simply is. I have spoken about love; but to me the important thing is not to discuss what love is or what compassion is, but to free the mind from all the limitations that prevent the natural flow of what we call love and compassion. What love is, what compassion is, you yourself will know when your mind and heart are free from the limitation which we call egotism, self-consciousness; then you will know without asking, without discussion. You question me now because you think that then you can act according to what you discover from me, that then you will have an authority for your action.
So I say again, the real question is not why I do not talk about love and compassion, but rather, what prevents the natural harmonious living of man, the fullness of action which is love. I have talked about the many barriers that prevent our natural living, and I have explained that such living does not mean instinctive, chaotic action, but rich, full living. Rich, natural living has been prevented through centuries of conformity, through centuries of what we call education, which has been but a process of turning out so many human machines. But when you understand the cause of these hindrances and barriers which you have created for yourself through fear in your search for security, then you free yourself from them; then there is love. But this is a realization that cannot be discussed. We do not discuss the sunshine. It is there; we feel its warmth and perceive its penetrating beauty. Only when the sun is hidden do we discuss the sunshine. And so with love and compassion.

Question: You have never given us a clear conception of the mystery of death and of the life after death, yet you constantly speak of immortality. Surely you believe in life after death?
Krishnamurti: You want to know categorically whether there is or is not annihilation after death: that is the wrong approach to the problem. I hope you will follow what I say, for otherwise my answer will not be clear to you, and you will think that I have not answered your question. Please interrupt me if you do not understand.
What do you mean when you speak of death? Your sorrow for the death of another, and the fear of your own death. Sorrow is awakened by the death of another. When your friend dies, you become conscious of loneliness because you have relied on him, because you and he have complemented each other, because you have understood each other, supported and encouraged each other. So when your friend is gone, you are conscious of emptiness; you want that person back to fill the part in your life that he filled before.
You want your friend again, but since you cannot have him, you turn to various intellectual ideas, to various emotional concepts, which you think will give you satisfaction. You look to such ideas for consolation, for comfort, instead of finding out the cause of your suffering and freeing yourself eternally from the idea of death. You turn to a series of consolations and satisfactions which gradually diminish your intense suffering; yet, when death returns, you experience the same suffering over again.
Death comes and causes you intense sorrow. One whom you greatly love has gone, and his absence accentuates your loneliness. But instead of seeking the cause of that loneliness, you try to escape from it through mental and emotional satisfactions. What is the cause of that loneliness? Reliance on another, the incompleteness of your own life, the continual attempt to avoid life. You do not want to discover the true value of facts; instead, you attribute a value to that which is but an intellectual concept. Thus, the loss of a friend causes you suffering because that loss makes you fully conscious of your loneliness. Then there is the fear of one’s own death. I want to know if I shall live after my death, if I shall reincarnate, if there is a continuance for me in some form. I am concerned with these hopes and fears because I have known no rich moment during my life; I have known no single day without conflict, no single day in which I have felt complete, as a flower. Therefore I have this intense desire for fulfillment, a desire that involves the idea of time.
What do we mean when we talk about the “I”? You are conscious of the “I” only when you are caught in the conflict of choice, in the conflict of duality. In this conflict you become conscious of yourself, and you identify yourself with the one or the other, and from this continual identification results the idea of “I”. Please consider this with your heart and mind, for it is not a philosophical idea which can be simply accepted or rejected.
I say that through the conflict of choice, mind has established memory, many layers of memory; it has become identified with these layers, and it calls itself the “I”, the ego. And hence arises the question, “What will happen to me when I die? Shall I have an opportunity to live again? Is there a future fulfillment?” To me, these questions are born of craving and confusion. What is important is the freeing of the mind from this conflict of choice, for only when you have thus freed yourself can there be immortality.
For most people the idea of immortality is the continuance of the “I”, without end, through time. But I say such a concept is false. “Then, ” you answer, “there must be total annihilation.” I say that is not true either. Your belief that total annihilation must follow the cessation of the limited consciousness we call the “I”, is false. You cannot understand immortality that way, for your mind is caught up in opposites. Immortality is free from all opposites; it is harmonious action in which the mind is utterly freed from conflict of the “I”.
I say there is immortality, immortality which transcends all our conceptions, theories and beliefs. Only when you have full individual comprehension of opposites, will you be free from opposites. As long as mind creates conflict through choice, there must be consciousness as memory which is the “I”, and it is the “I” which fears death and longs for its own continuance. Hence there is not the capacity to understand the fullness of action in the present, which is immortality.
A certain brahmin, according to an old Indian legend, decided to give away some of his possessions in the performance of a religious sacrifice. Now this brahmin had a little son who watched his father and plied him with many questions until the father became annoyed. At last the son asked, “To whom are you going to give me?” And the father replied in anger, “I shall give you to Death.” Now it was held in ancient times that whatever was said had to be carried out; so the brahmin had to send his son to Death, in accordance with his rashly spoken words. As the boy made his way to the house of Death, he listened to what many teachers had to say about death and life after death. When he arrived at the house of Death, he found that Death was absent; so he waited for three days without food, in accordance with the ancient custom which forbade eating in the absence of the host. When at last Death arrived, he apologized humbly for having kept a brahmin waiting, and as a token of regret he granted the boy any three wishes that he might desire.
For his first wish the boy asked to be returned to his father; for his second, he requested that he be instructed in certain ceremonial rites. But the boy’s third wish was not a request but a question: “Tell me, Death”, he asked, “the truth about annihilation. Of the teachers to whom I have listened on my way here, some say that there is annihilation; others say that there is continuity. Tell me, O Death, what is true.” “Do not ask me that question”, replied Death. But the boy insisted. So in answer to that question Death taught the boy the meaning of immortality. Death did not tell him whether there is continuity, whether there is life after death, or whether there is annihilation; Death taught him rather the meaning of immortality.
You want to know whether there is continuity. Some scientists are now proving that there is. Religions affirm it, many people believe it, and you may believe it if you choose. But to me, it is of little importance. There will always be conflict between life and death. Only when you know immortality is there neither beginning nor end; only then does action imply fulfillment, and only then is it infinite. So I say again, the idea of reincarnation is of little importance. In the “I” there is nothing lasting; the “I” is composed of a series of memories involving conflict. You cannot make that “I” immortal. Your whole basis of thought is a series of achievements and therefore a continuous effort, a continuous limitation of consciousness. Yet you hope in that way to realize immortality, to feel the ecstasy of the infinite. I say that immortality is reality. You cannot discuss it; you can know it in your action, action born of the fullness, the richness, of wisdom; but that fullness, that richness, you cannot attain by listening to a spiritual guide or by reading a book of instruction. Wisdom comes only when there is fullness of action, when there is complete awareness of your whole being in action; then you will see that all the books and teachers that pretend to guide you to wisdom can teach you nothing. You can know that which is immortal, everlasting, only when your mind is free from all sense of individuality which is created by the limited consciousness, which is the “I”.

Question: What are the causes of the misunderstanding which makes us ask you questions instead of acting and living?
Krishnamurti: It is good to question, but how do you receive the answers? You ask a question, and receive a reply. But what do you do with that reply? You have asked me what there is after death, and I have given you my answer. Now what will you do with that answer? Will you store it in some corner of your brain and let it remain there? You have intellectual granaries in which you collect ideas that you do not understand, but which you hope will serve you in trouble and sorrow. But if you understand, if you give yourself heart and mind to what I say, then you will act; then action will be born of your own fullness.
Now there are two ways of asking a question: You may ask a question when you are in the intensity of suffering, or you may ask a question intellectually, when you are bored and at your ease. One day you want to know intellectually; another day you ask because you suffer and want to know the reason for the suffering. You can really know only when you question in the intensity of suffering, when you do not desire to escape from suffering, when you meet it face to face; only then will you know the value of my answer, its human value for man.
Question: Exactly what do you mean by action without aim? If it is the immediate response of our whole being in which aim and action are one, how can all the action of our daily life be without aim? Krishnamurti: You yourself have given the answer to the question, but you have given it without understanding. What will you do in your daily life without an aim? In your daily life you may have a plan. But when you experience intense suffering, when you are caught in a great crisis that demands immediate decision, then you act without aim; then there is no motive in your action, because you are trying to find out the cause of suffering with your whole being. But most of you are not inclined to act fully. You are constantly trying to escape from suffering, you try to avoid suffering; you do not want to confront it.
I shall explain what I mean in another way. If you are a Christian, you look at life from a particular point of view; if you are a Hindu, you look at it from another angle. In other words, the background to your mind colours your view of life, and all that you perceive is seen only through that coloured view. Thus you never see life as it really is; you look at it only through a screen of prejudice, and therefore your action must ever be incomplete, it must ever have a motive. But if your mind is free from all prejudice, then you meet life as it is; then you meet life fully, without the search for a reward or the attempt to escape from punishment.

Question: What is the relationship between technique and life, and why do most of us mistake the one for the other?
Krishnamurti: Life, truth, is to be lived; but expression demands a technique. Now in order to paint, you need to learn a technique; but a great artist, if he felt the flame of creative impulse, would not be a slave to technique. If you are rich within yourself, your life is simple. But you want to arrive at that complete richness through such external means as the simplicity of dress, the simplicity of dwelling, through asceticism and self-discipline. In other words, the simplicity that results from inner richness you want to obtain by means of technique. There is no technique that will guide you to simplicity; there is no path that will lead you to the land of truth. When you understand that with your whole being, then technique will take its proper place in your life.

ALPINO, ITALY 4TH PUBLIC TALK 9TH JULY, 1933

Friends, Before answering some of the questions that have been asked me, I shall give a brief talk concerning memory and time.
When you meet an experience wholly, completely, without bias or prejudice, it leaves no scar of memory. Every one of you goes through experiences, and if you meet them completely, with your whole being, then the mind is not caught up in the wave of memory. When your action is incomplete, when you do not meet an experience fully, but through the barriers of tradition, prejudice, or fear, then that action is followed by the gnawing of memory.
As long as there is this scar of memory, there must be the division of time as past, present and future. As long as mind is tethered to the idea that action must be divided into the past, present, and future, there is identification through time and therefore a continuity from which arises the fear of death, the fear of the loss of love. To understand timeless reality, timeless life, action must be complete. But you cannot become aware of this timeless reality by searching for it; you cannot acquire it by asking, “How can I obtain this consciousness?”
Now what is it that causes memory? What is it that prevents your acting completely, harmoniously, richly in every experience of life? Incomplete action arises when mind and heart are limited by hindrances, by barriers. If mind and heart are free, then you will meet every experience fully. But most of you are surrounded by barriers – the barriers of security, authority, fear, postponement. And since you have these barriers, you naturally act within them, and therefore you are unable to act completely. But when you become aware of these barriers, when you become aware with your heart and mind in the midst of a crisis, that awareness frees your mind without effort from the barriers that have been preventing your complete action,
Thus, as long as there is conflict, there is memory. That is, when your action is born of incompleteness, then the memory of that action conditions the present. Such memory produces conflict in the present and creates the idea of consistency. You admire the man who is consistent, the man who has established a principle and acts in accordance with that principle. You attach the idea of nobility and virtue to a person who is consistent. Now consistency results from memory. That is, because you have not acted completely, because you have not understood the whole significance of experience in the present, you establish artificially a principle according to which you resolve to live tomorrow. Therefore your mind is being guided, trained, controlled by the lack of understanding, which you call consistency.
Now please don’t go to the other extreme, to the opposite, and think that you must be utterly inconsistent. I am not urging you to be inconsistent; I am talking of your freeing yourself from the fetish of consistency which you have set up, freeing yourself from the idea that you must fit into a pattern. You have established the principle of consistency because you have not understood; from your lack of understanding you evolve the idea that you must be consistent, and you measure any experience that confronts you by the idea that you have established, by the idea or principle that is born only through the lack of understanding.
So consistency, living according to a pattern, exists as long as your life lacks richness, as long as your action is not complete. If you observe your own mind in action, you will see that you are continually trying to be consistent. You say, “I must”, or “I must not.”
I hope that you have understood what I have said in my former talks; otherwise what I say today will have little meaning for you.
I repeat that this idea of consistency is born when you do not meet life wholly, completely, when you meet life through a memory; and when you constantly follow a pattern, you are but increasing the consistency of that memory. You have created the idea of consistency by your refusal to meet freely, openly, and without prejudice, every experience of life. That is, you are always meeting experiences partially, and out of that arises conflict.
To overcome that conflict you say that you must have a principle; you establish a principle, an ideal, and strive to condition your action by it. That is, you are constantly trying to imitate; you are trying to control your daily experience, the actions of your everyday life, through the idea of consistency. But when you really understand this, when you understand it with your heart and mind, with your complete being, then you will see the falsity of imitation and of being consistent. When you are aware of this, you begin to free your mind without effort from this long- established habit of consistency, though this does not mean that you must become inconsistent.
To me, then, consistency is the sign of memory, memory that results from lack of true comprehension of experience. And that memory creates the idea of time; it creates the idea of the present, past, and future, on which all our actions are based. We consider what we were yesterday, what we shall be tomorrow. Such an idea of time will exist as long as mind and heart are divided. As long as action is not born of completeness, there must be the division of time. Time is but an illusion, it is but the incompleteness of action.
A mind that is trying to mould itself after an ideal, to be consistent to a principle, naturally creates conflict, because it constantly limits itself in action. In that there is no freedom; in that there is no comprehension of experience. In meeting life in that way you are meeting it only partially; you are choosing, and in that choosing you lose the full significance of experience. You live incompletely, and hence you seek comfort in the idea of reincarnation; hence your question, “What happens to me when I die?” Since you do not live fully in your daily life, you say, “I must have a future, more time in which to live completely.”
Do not seek to remedy that incompleteness, but become aware of the cause that prevents you from living completely. You will find that this cause is imitation, conformity, consistency, the search for security which gives birth to authority. All these keep you from the completeness of action because, under their limitation, action becomes but a series of achievements leading to an end, and hence to continued conflict and suffering.
Only when you meet experiences without barriers will you find continual joy; then you will no longer be burdened by the weight of memory that prevents action. Then you will live in the completeness of time. That to me is immortality.

Question: Meditation and the discipline of mind have greatly helped me in life. Now by listening to your teaching I am greatly confused, because it discards all self-discipline. Has meditation likewise no meaning to you? Or have you a new way of meditation to offer us?
Krishnamurti: As I have already explained, where there is choice there must be conflict, because choice is based on want. Where there is want there is no discernment, and therefore your choice merely creates a further obstacle. When you suffer, you want happiness, comfort, you want to escape from suffering; but since want prevents discernment, you blindly accept any idea, any belief that you think will give you relief from conflict. You may think that you reason in making your choice, but you do not.
In this way you have set up ideas which you call noble, worthy, admirable, and you force your mind to conform to these ideas; or you concentrate on a particular picture or image, and thereby you create a division in your action. You try to control your action through meditation, through choice. If you do not understand what I am saying, please interrupt me, so that we can discuss it.
As I have said, when you experience sorrow, you immediately begin to search for the opposite. You want to be comforted, and in your search you accept any comfort, any palliative, that will give you momentary satisfaction. You may think that you reason before you accept such comfort, such relief, but in reality you accept it blindly, without reason, for where there is want there cannot be true discernment.
Now meditation, for most people, is based on the idea of choice. In India, the idea is carried to its extreme. There the man who can sit still for a long period of time, dwelling continuously on one idea, is considered spiritual. But, actually, what has he done? He has discarded all ideas except the one that he has deliberately chosen, and his choice gives him satisfaction. He has trained his mind to concentrate on this one idea, this one picture; he controls and thereby limits his mind and hopes to overcome conflict.
Now to me, this idea of meditation – of course I have not described it in detail – is utterly absurd. It is not really meditation; it is a clever escape from conflict, an intellectual feat that has nothing whatever to do with true living. You have trained your mind to conform to a certain rule according to which you hope to meet life. But you will never meet life as long as you are held in a mould. Life will pass you by because you have already limited your mind by your own choice.
Why do you feel that you must meditate? Do you mean by meditation, concentration? If you are really interested, then you do not struggle, force yourself to concentrate. Only when you are not interested do you have to force yourself brutally and violently. But in forcing yourself, you destroy your mind, and then your mind is no longer free, nor is your emotion. Both are crippled. I say that there is a joy, a peace, in meditation without effort, and that can come only when your mind is freed from all choice, when your mind is no longer creating a division in action.
We have tried to train the mind and heart to follow a tradition, a way of life, but through such training we have not understood, we have merely created opposites. Now I am not saying that action must be impetuous, chaotic. What I say is that when the mind is caught up in division, that division will continue to exist even though you strive to suppress it by means of consistency. to a principle, even though you try to dominate and overcome it by establishing an ideal. What you call the spiritual life is a continual effort, a ceaseless striving, by which the mind tries to cling to one idea, one image; it is a life, therefore, which is not full, complete.
After listening to this talk you may say: “I have been told that I should live fully, completely; that I must not be bound by an ideal, a principle; that I must not be consistent – therefore I shall do what I like.” Now that is not the idea that I wish to leave with you in this last talk. I am not talking about action that is merely impetuous, impulsive, thoughtless: I am talking about action that is complete, which is ecstasy. And I say that you cannot act fully by forcing your mind, by strenuously moulding your mind, by living in conformity with an idea, a principle, or a goal.
Have you ever considered the person who meditates? He is a person who chooses. He chooses that which he likes, that which will give him what he calls help. So what he is really seeking is something that will give him comfort, satisfaction – a kind of dead peace, a stagnation. And yet, the man who is able to meditate we call a great man, a spiritual man.
Our whole effort is concerned with this superimposition of what we call right ideas on what we consider wrong ideas, and by this attempt we continually create a division in action. We do not free the mind from division; we do not understand that that continuous choice born of want, of emptiness, of craving, is the cause of this division. When we experience a feeling of emptiness, we want to fill that emptiness, that void; when we experience incompleteness, we want to escape that incompleteness which causes suffering. For this purpose we invent an intellectual satisfaction which we call meditation.
Now you will say that I have given you no constructive or positive instruction. Beware of the man who offers you positive methods, for he is giving you merely his pattern, his mould. If you really live, if you try to free the mind and heart from all limitation – not through self-analysis and introspection, but through awareness in action – then the obstacles that now hinder you from the completeness of life will fall away. This awareness is the joy of meditation – meditation that is not the effort of an hour, but which is action, which is life itself.
You ask me: “Have you a new way of meditation to offer us?” Now you meditate in order to achieve a result. You meditate with the idea of gain, just as you live with the idea of reaching a spiritual height, a spiritual altitude. You may strive for that spiritual height; but I assure you that, though you may appear to attain it, you will still experience the feeling of emptiness. Your meditation has no value in itself, as your action has no value in itself, because you are constantly looking for a culmination, a reward. Only when mind and heart are free of this idea of achievement, this idea born of effort, choice, and gain – only when you are free of that idea, I say, is there an eternal life which is not a finality, but an everbecoming, an everrenewing.

Question: I recognize a conflict within me, yet that conflict does not create a crisis, a consuming flame within me, urging me to resolve that conflict and realize truth. How would you act in my place?
Krishnamurti: The questioner says that he recognizes the conflict within him, but that that conflict causes no crisis and therefore no action. I feel that is the case with the majority of people. You ask what you should do. Whatever you try to do, you do intellectually, and therefore falsely. It is only when you are really willing to face your conflict and understand it fully, that you will experience a crisis. But because such a crisis demands action, most of you are unwilling to face it.
I cannot push you into the crisis. Conflict exists in you, but you want to escape that conflict; you want to find a means whereby you can avoid it, postpone it. So when you say, “I cannot resolve my conflict into a crisis”, your words merely show that your mind is trying to avoid the conflict – and the freedom that results from facing it completely. As long as your mind is carefully, surreptitiously avoiding conflict, as long as it is searching for comfort through escape, no one can help you to complete action, no one can push you into a crisis that will resolve your conflict. When you once realize this – not see it merely intellectually, but also feel the truth of it – then your conflict will create the flame which will consume it.

Question: This is what I have gathered from listening to you: One becomes aware only in a crisis; a crisis involves suffering. So if one is to be aware all the time, one must live continually in a state of crisis, that is, a state of mental suffering and agony. This is a doctrine of pessimism, not of the happiness and ecstasy of which you speak.
Krishnamurti: I am afraid you haven’t listened to what I have been saying. You know, there are two ways of listening: there is the mere listening to words, as you listen when you are not really interested, when you are not trying to fathom the depths of a problem; and there is the listening which catches the real significance of what is being said, the listening that requires a keen, alert mind. I think that you have not really listened to what I have been saying.
First of all, if there is no conflict, if your life has in it no crises and you are perfectly happy, then why bother about conflicts and crises? If you are not suffering, then I am very glad! Our whole system of life is arranged so that you may escape from suffering. But the man who faces the cause of suffering, and is thereby freed from that suffering, you call a pessimist.
I shall again explain briefly what I have been saying, so that you will understand. Each one of you is conscious of a great void, an emptiness within you, and being conscious of that emptiness, you either try to fill it or to run away from it; and both acts amount to the same thing. You choose what will fill that emptiness, and this choosing you call progress or experience. But your choice is based on sensation, on craving, and hence involves neither discernment, nor intelligence, nor wisdom. You choose today that which gives you a greater satisfaction, a greater sensation than you received from yesterday’s choice. So what you call choice is merely your way of running away from the emptiness within you, and hence you are merely postponing the understanding of the cause of suffering.
Thus, the movement from sorrow to sorrow, from sensation to sensation, you call evolution, growth. One day you choose a hat that gives you satisfaction; the next day you tire of that satisfaction, and want another – a car, a house, or you want what you call love. Later on, as you become tired of these, you want the idea or the image of a god. So you progress from the wanting of a hat to the wanting of a god, and therein you think you have made admirable spiritual advancement. Yet all these choices are based merely on sensation, and all that you have done is to change your objects of choice.
Where there is choice there must be conflict, because choice is based on craving, on the desire to complete the emptiness within you or to escape from that emptiness. Instead of trying to understand the cause of suffering, you are constantly trying to conquer that suffering or to escape from it, which is the same thing. But I say, find out the cause of your suffering. That cause, you will discover, is continual want, continual craving that blinds discernment. If you understand that – if you understand it not just intellectually, but with your whole being – then your action will be free from the limitation of choice; then you are really living, living naturally, harmoniously, not individualistically, in utter chaos, as now. If you live fully, your life does not result in discord, because your action is born of richness and not of poverty.

Question: How can I know action and the illusion from which it springs if I do not probe action and examine it? How can we hope to know and recognize our barriers if we do not examine them? Then why not analyze action?
Krishnamurti: Please, since my time is limited, this is the last question that I shall be able to answer.
Have you tried to analyze your action? Then, when you were analyzing it, that action was already dead. If you try to analyze your movement when you are dancing, you put an end to that movement; but if your movement is born of full awareness, full consciousness, then you know what your movement is in the very action of that movement; you know without attempting to analyze. Have I made that clear?
I say that if you analyze action, you will never act; your action will become slowly restricted and will finally result in the death of action. The same thing applies to your mind, your thought, your emotion. When you begin to analyze, you put an end to movement; when you try to dissect an intense feeling, that feeling dies. But if you are aware with your heart and mind, if you are fully conscious of your action, then you will know the source from which action springs. When we act, we are acting partially, we are not acting with our whole being. Hence, in our attempt to balance the mind against the heart, in our attempt to dominate the one by the other, we think that we must analyze our action.
Now what I am trying to explain requires an understanding that cannot be given to you through words. Only in the moment of true awareness can you become conscious of this struggle for domination; then, if you are interested in acting harmoniously, completely, you become aware that your action has been influenced by your fear of public opinion, by the standards of a social system, by the concepts of civilization. Then you become aware of your fears and prejudices without analyzing them; and the moment you become aware in action, these fears and prejudices disappear.
When you are aware with your mind and heart of the necessity for complete action, you act harmoniously. Then all your fears, your barriers, your desire for power, for attainment – all these reveal themselves, and the shadows of disharmony fade away.