Jayachandran

OSLO, NORWAY TALK IN UNIVERSITY HALL 5TH SEPTEMBER, 1933

Friends, I have been given some questions which I shall answer after my talk.
Wherever you go throughout the world you find suffering. There seems to be no limit to suffering, no end to the innumerable problems that concern man, no way out of his continual conflict with himself and his neighbours. Suffering seems to be ever the common lot of man, and he tries to overcome that suffering through the search for comfort; he thinks that by searching for consolation, by seeking comfort, he will free himself from this continual battle, from his problems of conflict and suffering. And he sets out to discover what will give him the most satisfaction, what will give him the greatest consolation in this continual battle of suffering, and goes from one consolation to another, from one sensation to another, from one satisfaction to another. Thus, through the process of time, he gradually sets up innumerable securities, shelters, to which he runs when he experiences intense suffering.
Now there are many kinds of securities, many kinds of shelters. There are those that give temporary emotional satisfaction, such as drugs or drink; there are amusements and all that pertains to transient pleasure. Again, there are the innumerable beliefs in which man seeks shelter from his suffering; he clings to beliefs or ideals in the hope that they will shape his life and that by conformity he will gradually overcome suffering. Or he takes refuge in systems of thought which he calls philosophies, but which are merely theories handed down through the centuries, or theories that may have been true for those who brought them out, but are not necessarily true for others. Or again, man turns to religion, that is, to a system of thought that tries to shape him, to mould him to a particular pattern, to lead him toward an end; for religion, instead of giving man understanding, gives him merely consolation. There is no such thing as comfort in life, no such thing as security. But in his search for comfort, man has built up through the centuries the securities of religion, ideals, beliefs, and the idea of God.
To me there is God, a living, eternal reality. But this reality cannot be described; each one must realize it for himself. Any- one who tries to imagine what God is, what truth is, is but seeking an escape, a shelter from the daily routine of conflict.
When man has set up a security – the security of public opinion or of the happiness that he derives from possessions or from the practice of virtue, which is but an escape – he meets every incident of life, every one of the innumerable experiences of life, with the background of that security; that is, he never meets life as it really is. He comes to it with a prejudice, with a background already developed through fear; with his mind fully clothed, burdened with ideas, he approaches life.
To put it differently, man in general sees life only through the tradition of time which he bears in his mind and his heart; whereas to me life is fresh, renewing, moving, never static. Man’s mind and heart are burdened with the unquestioned desire for comfort, which must necessarily bring about authority. Through authority he meets life, and hence he is incapable of understanding the full significance of experience, which alone can release him from suffering. He consoles himself with the false values of life and becomes merely a machine, a cog in the social structure or the religious system.
One cannot find out what is true value as long as one’s mind is seeking consolation; and since most minds are seeking consolation, comfort, security, they cannot find out what truth is. Thus, most people are not individuals; they are merely cogs in a system. To me, an individual is a person who, through questioning, discovers right values; and one can truly question only when one is suffering. You know, when you suffer, your mind is made acute, alive; then you are not theoretical; and only in that state of mind can you question what is the true value of the standards that society, religion, and politics have set about us. Only in that state can we question, and when we question, when we discover true values, then we are true individuals. Not until then. That is, we are not individuals so long as we are unconscious of the values to which we have become accustomed through securities, through religions, through the pursuit of beliefs and ideals. We are merely machines, slaves to public opinion, slaves to the innumerable ideals that religions have placed about us, slaves to economic and political systems that we accept. And since everyone is a cog in this machine, we can never find out true values, lasting values, in which alone there is eternal happiness, eternal realization of truth.
The first thing to realize, then, is that we have these barriers, these values given to us. To find out their living significance we must question, and we can question only when our minds and hearts are burning with intense suffering. And everyone does suffer; suffering is not the gift of a few. But when we suffer we seek immediate consolation, comfort, and therefore there is no longer questioning; there is no longer doubt, but mere acceptance. Hence, where there is want, there cannot be the understanding of right values which alone sets man free, which alone gives him the capacity of existing as a complete human being. And as I was saying, when we meet life partially, with all this traditional background of unquestioned and dead values, naturally there is conflict with life, and this conflict creates in each one of us the idea of ego consciousness. That is, when our minds are prejudiced by an idea or by a belief or by unquestioned values, there is limitation, and that limitation creates the self-consciousness which in turn brings about suffering.
To put it differently, as long as mind and heart are caught up in the false values that religions and philosophies have set about us, as long as the mind has not discovered true, living values for itself, there is limitation of consciousness, limitation of understanding, which creates the idea of “I”. And from this idea of “I”, from the fact that consciousness knows the limitation of time as a beginning and an end, springs sorrow. Such consciousness, such a mind and heart are caught up in the fear of death, and hence the inquiry into the hereafter.
When you understand that truth, life, can be realized only when you discover for yourself, without any authority or imitation, the true significance of suffering, the living value of every action, then your mind frees itself from ego consciousness.
Since most of us are unconsciously seeking a shelter, a place of. safety in which we shall not be hurt, since most of us are seeking in false values an escape from continual conflict, therefore I say, become conscious that the whole process of thought, at the present time, is a continual search for shelter, for authority, for patterns. to conform to, for systems to follow, for methods to imitate. When you realize that there is no such thing as comfort, no such thing as security, either in possession of things or of ideas, then you face life as it is, not with the background of intense longing for comfort. Then you become aware, but without the constant struggle to become aware – a struggle that goes on as long as your mind and your heart are seeking a continual escape from life through ideals, through conformity, through imitation, through authority. When you realize that, you give up seeking an escape; you are then able to meet life completely, nakedly, wholly, and in that there is understanding, which alone gives you that ecstasy of life.
To put it in another way, since our minds and hearts have through ages been crippled by false values, we are incapable of meeting experience wholly. If you are a Christian you meet it in one way, as dictated by all your prejudices of Christianity and your religious training. If you are a Conservative or a Communist, you meet it in another way. If you hold any particular belief, you meet life in that particular way, and hope to understand its full significance through a prejudiced mind. Only when you realize that life, that free, eternal movement, cannot be met partially and with prejudice, only then are you free, without effort. Then you are unhampered by all the things you possess – by inherited tradition or acquired knowledge. I say knowledge, not wisdom, for wisdom does not enter here. Wisdom is natural, spontaneous; it comes only when one meets life openly and without any barrier. To meet life openly man must free himself of all knowledge; he must not seek an explanation of suffering, for when he seeks such an explanation he is being caught by fear.
So I repeat, there is a way of living without effort, without the constant strain of achievement and struggle for success, without the constant fear of loss or gain; I say there is an harmonious way of living life that comes when you meet every experience, every action completely, when your mind is not divided against itself, when your heart is not in conflict with your mind, when you do all things wholly, with complete unity of mind and heart. Then in that richness, in that plenitude, there is the ecstasy of life, and that to me is everlasting, that to me is eternal.

Question: You say that your teachings are for all, not for any select few. If that is so, why do we find it difficult to understand you?
Krishnamurti: It is not a question of understanding me. Why should you understand me? Truth is not mine, that you should understand me. You find my words difficult to understand be- cause your minds are suffocated with ideas. What I say is very simple. It is not for the select few; it is for anyone who is willing to try. I say that if you would free yourselves from ideas, from beliefs, from all the securities that people have built up through centuries, then you would understand life. You can free yourselves only by questioning, and you can question only when you are in revolt – not when you are stagnant with satisfying ideas. When your minds are suffocated with beliefs, when they are heavy with knowledge acquired from books, then it is impossible to understand life. So it is not a question of understanding me.
Please – and I am not saying this with any conceit – I have found a way; not a method that you can practise, a system that becomes a cage, a prison. I have realized truth, God, or whatever name you like to give it. I say there is that eternal living reality, but it cannot be realized while the mind and heart are burdened, crippled with the idea of “I”. As long as that self-consciousness, that limitation exists, there can be no realization of the whole, the totality of life. That “I” exists as long as there are false values – false values that we have inherited or that we have sedulously created in our search for security, or that we have established as our authority in our search for comfort. But right values, living values – these you can discover only when you really suffer, when you are greatly discontented. If you are willing to become free from the pursuit of gain, then you will find them. But most of us do not want to be free; we want to keep what we have gained, either in virtue or in knowledge or in possessions; we want to keep all these. Thus burdened we try to meet life, and hence the utter impossibility of understanding it completely.
So the difficulty lies not in understanding me, but in understanding life itself; and that difficulty will exist as long as your minds are burdened with this consciousness that we call “I”. I cannot give you right values. If I were to tell you, you would make of that a system and imitate it, thus setting up but another series of false values. But you can discover right values for yourself, when you become truly an individual, when you cease to be a machine. And you can free yourself from this murderous machine of false values only when you are in great revolt.

Question: It has been claimed by some that you are the Christ come again. We should like to know quite definitely what you have to say about this. Do you accept or reject the claim?
Krishnamurti: I do neither. It does not interest me. Of what value, my friends, is it to you to ask me this? I am asked this question wherever I go. People want to know if I am, or if I am not. If I say I am, they either take my words as authority or laugh at them; if I say I am not, they are delighted. I neither assert nor deny. To me the claim is of very little importance because I feel that what I have to say is inherently right in itself. It does not
depend on titles or degrees, revelation or authority. What is of importance is your understanding of it, your intelligence and your own awakened desire to find out, your own love of life – not the assertion that I am or that I am not the Christ.

Question: Is your realization of truth permanent and present all the time, or are there dark times when you again face the bondage of fear and despair?
Krishnamurti: The bondage of fear exists as long as there remains the limitation of consciousness that you call the “I”. When you become rich within yourself, then you will no longer feel want. It is in this continual battle of want, in this seeking of advantage from circumstances, that fear and darkness exist. I think I am free from that. How can you know it? You can’t. I might be deceiving you. So do not bother about it. But I have this to say: One can live effortlessly, in a way that cannot be arrived at through effort; one can live without this incessant struggle for spiritual achievement; one can live harmoniously, completely in action – not in theory, but in daily life, in daily contact with human beings. I say that there is a way to free the mind from all suffering, a way to live completely, wholly, eternally. But to do that, one must be completely open towards life; one must allow no shelter or reserve to remain in which mind can dwell, to which heart can withdraw in times of conflict.

Question: You say that truth is simple. To us, what you say seems very abstract. What is the practical relation, according to you, between truth and actual life?
Krishnamurti: What is it that we call actual life? Earning money, exploiting others and being exploited ourselves, marriage, children, seeking friends, experiencing jealousies, quarrels, fear of death, the inquiry into the hereafter, laying up money for old age – all these we call daily life. Now to me, truth or the eternal becoming of life cannot be found apart from these. In the transient lies the eternal – not apart from the transient. Please, why do we exploit, either in physical things or in spiritual things? Why are we exploited by religions that we have set up? Why are we exploited by priests to whom we look for comfort? Because we have thought of life as a series of achievements, not as a complete action. When we look to life as a means to acquisition, whether of things or of ideas, when we look to life as a school in which to learn, in which to grow, then we are dependent upon that self-consciousness, upon that limitation: we create the exploiter, and we become the exploited. But if we become utterly individual, completely self-sufficient, alone in our understanding, then we do not differentiate between actual living and truth, or God. You know, because we find life difficult, because we do not understand all the intricacies of daily action. because we want to escape from that confusion, we turn to the idea of an objective principle; and so we differentiate, we distinguish truth as being impractical, as having nothing to do with daily life. Thus truth, or God, becomes an escape to which we turn in days of conflict and trouble. But if, in our daily life, we would find out why we act, if we would meet the incidents, the experiences, the sufferings of life wholly, then we would not differentiate practical life from impractical truth. Because we do not meet experiences with our whole being, mentally and emotionally, because we are not capable of doing that, we separate daily life and practical action from the idea of truth.

Question: Don’t you think that the support from religions and religious teachers is a great help to man in his effort to free himself from all that binds him?
Krishnamurti: No teacher can give us right values. You may read all the books in the world, but you cannot gather wisdom from them. You may follow all the religious systems of the world and yet remain a slave to them. Only when you stand alone can you find wisdom and be wholly free, liberated. By aloneness I do not mean living apart from humanity. I mean that aloneness which comes from understanding, not from withdrawal. It exists, in other words, when one is utterly individual, not individualistic. You know, we think that by continually practicing the piano under the direction of an instructor we shall become great pianists, creative musicians; and similarly we look to religious teachers for guidance. We say to ourselves, “If I practise daily what they have laid down, I shall have the flame of creative understanding.” I say, you can practise it without end, and you will still not have that creative flame. I know many who daily practise certain ideals, but they become only more and more withered in their understanding, because they are merely imitating, they are merely living up to a standard. They have freed themselves from one teacher and have gone to another; they have merely transferred themselves from one cage to another. But if you do not seek comfort, if you continually question – and you can question only when you are in revolt – then you establish freedom from all teachers and all religions; then you are supremely human, belonging neither to a party nor to a religion nor to a cage.

Question: Do you mean to say that there is no help for men when life grows difficult? Are they left entirely to help themselves?
Krishnamurti: I think, if I am not mistaken – if I am, please correct me – I think the questioner wants to know if there is not a source, a person or an idea, to which one can turn in time of trouble, in time of grief, in time of suffering.
I say there is no permanent source that can give one understanding. You know, to me the glory of man is that no one can save him except himself. Please, as you look at man throughout the world, you see that he has always turned to another for help. In India we look to theories, to teachers, for help. Here also you do the same. All over the world man turns to somebody to lift him out of his own ignorance. I say no one can lift you out of your own ignorance. You have created it through fear, through imitation, through the search for security, and hence you have established authorities. You have created it for yourselves, this ignorance that holds each one of you, and no one can free you except you yourselves through your own understanding. Others may free you momentarily, but as long as the root cause of ignorance exists, you merely create another set of illusions.
To me, the root cause of ignorance is the consciousness of “I”, from which arise conflict and sorrow. As long as that “I” consciousness exists, there must be suffering from which no one can free you. In your devotion to a person or to an idea you may momentarily sever yourselves from that consciousness, but while that consciousness remains it is like a wound that is always festering. The mind can free itself from that ignorance only when it meets life wholly, when it experiences completely, without prejudice, without preconceived ideas, when it is no longer crippled by a belief or an idea. It is one of the illusions that we cherish, that someone else can save us, that we cannot lift ourselves out of this mire of suffering. For centuries we have looked for help from without, and we are still held by that belief.

Question: What is the real cause of the present chaos in the world, and how can this painful state of things be remedied?
Krishnamurti: First of all, I feel, by not looking to a system as a remedy. You know, through centuries we have built up a system, the possessive system based on security. We have built it up; each one of us is responsible for this system wherein acquisition, gain, power, authority, and imitation play the most important part. We have made laws to preserve that system, laws based on our selfishness, and we have become slaves to these laws. Now we want to introduce a new set of laws, to which we shall again become slaves, laws by which possession becomes a crime.
But if we understood the true function of individuality, then we would tackle the root cause of all this chaos in the world, this chaos that exists because we are not truly individual. Please understand what I mean by being individual; I do not mean individualistic. We have for centuries been individualistic, seeking security for ourselves, comfort for ourselves. We have looked to the physical things of life to give us inward shelter, happiness, spiritual ease. We have been dead and have not known it. Because we have imitated and followed, we have blindly exploited beliefs. And being spiritually dead, naturally we have tried to realize our creative powers in the world of acquisition – hence the present chaos wherein each man seeks only his own advantage. But if each one individually begins to free himself from all imitation, and thus begins to realize that creative life, that creative energy which is free, spiritual, then, I feel, he will not look for or give emphasis to either possession or non-possession. Isn’t that so?
Our entire lives are a process of imitation. Public opinion says this, so we must do it. I am not saying, please, that you must go against all convention, that you must impetuously do whatever you like: that would be equally stupid. What I am saying is this: Since we are merely machines, since we are ruthlessly individualistic in the world of acquisition, I say, free yourselves from all imitation, become individuals; question every standard, everything that is about you, not just intellectually, not when you feel at ease with life, but in the moment of suffering when your mind and heart are acute and awake. Then, in that realization which comes from the discovery of living values, you will not divide life into sections – economic, domestic, spiritual; you will meet it as a complete unit; you will meet it as a complete human being.
To put an end to the chaos in the world, the ruthless aggression and exploitation, you cannot look to any system. Only you yourselves can do it, when you become responsible, and you can be responsible only when you are really creating, when you are no longer imitating. In that freedom there will be true co-operation, not the individualism that now exists.

FROGNERSETEREN, NORWAY 1ST PUBLIC TALK 6TH SEPTEMBER, 1933

Friends, Our very search for the understanding of life, for the meaning of life, our struggle to comprehend the whole substance of life or to find out what truth is, destroys our understanding. In this talk I am going to try to explain that where there is a search to understand life, or to find out the significance of life, that very search perverts our judgment.
If we suffer, we want an explanation of that suffering; we feel that if we don’t search, if we don’t try to find out the meaning of existence, then we are not progressing or gaining wisdom. So we are constantly making an effort to understand, and in that search for understanding we consciously or unconsciously set up a goal towards which we are driven. We establish a goal, the ideal of a perfect life, and we try to be true to that goal, to that end.
As I have said, consciously or unconsciously we set up a goal, a purpose, a principle or belief, and having established that we try to be true to it; we try to be true to an experience which we have but partly understood. By that process we establish a duality. Because we do not understand the immediate with its problems, with its conventions, because we do not understand the present, we establish an idea, a goal, an end, towards which we try to advance. Because we are not prepared to be alert in meeting suffering wholly as it comes, because we have not the capacity to face experience, we try to establish a goal and be consistent. Thereby we develop a duality in action, in thought, and in feeling, and from this duality there arises a problem. In that development of duality lies the cause of the problem.
All ideals must ever be of the future. A mind that is divided, a mind that is striving after the future, cannot understand the present, and thus it develops a duality in action.
Now, having created a problem, having created a conflict, because we cannot meet the present wholly, we try to find a solution for the problem. That is what we are constantly doing, isn’t it? All of us have problems. Most of you are here because you think that I am going to help you solve your many problems, and you will be disappointed when I say that I cannot solve them. What I am going to do is try to show the cause of the problem, and then you, by understanding, can solve your problem for yourself. The problem exists as long as mind and heart are divided in action. That is, when we have established an idea in the future and are trying to be consistent, we are incapable of meeting the present fully; so, having created a problem, we try to seek a solution, which is but an escape.
We imagine that we find solutions for various problems, but in finding solutions we have not really solved, we have not understood the cause of the problem. The moment we have solved one problem, another arises, and so we continue to the end of our lives seeking solutions to an endless series of problems. In this talk I want to explain the cause of the problem and the manner of dissolving it.
As I have said, a problem exists as long as there is reaction – either a reaction to external standards, or a reaction to an inner standard, as when you say, “I must be true to this idea”, or, “I must be true to this belief.” Most educated, thoughtful people have discarded external standards, but they have developed inner standards. We discard an external standard because we have created an inner standard to which we are trying to be true, a standard which is continually guiding us and shaping us, a standard which creates duality in our action. As long as there are standards to which we are trying to be true, there will be problems, and hence the continual search for the solution of these problems.
These inner standards exist as long as we do not meet the experiences and incidents of life wholly. As long as there is a guiding principle in our lives to which we are trying to be true, there must be duality in action, and therefore a problem. That duality will exist as long as there is conflict, and conflict exists wherever there is the limitation of self-consciousness, the “I”. Though we have discarded external standards and have found for ourselves an inner principle, an inner law, to which we are trying to be true, there is still distinction in action, and hence an incompleteness in understanding. It is only when we understand, when we no longer search for understanding, that there is an effortless existence.
So when I say, do not seek a solution, do not search for an end, I do not mean that you must turn to the opposite and become stagnant. My point is: Why do you seek a solution? Why are you incapable of meeting life openly, nakedly, simply, fully? Be- cause you are continually trying to be consistent. Therefore there is the exertion of will to conquer the immediate obstacle; there is conflict, and you do not try to find out the cause of the conflict. To me this continual search for truth, for understanding, for the solution of various problems, is not progress; this going from one problem to another is not evolution. Only when the mind and heart meet every idea, every incident, every experience, every expression of life, fully – only then can there be a continual becoming which is not stagnation. But the search for a solution, which we mistakenly call progress, is merely stagnation.

Question: Do you mean to say that sooner or later all human beings will inevitably, in the course of existence, attain perfection, complete liberation from all that binds them? If so, why make any effort now?
Krishnamurti: You know, I am not talking of the mass. To me there is not this division of the individual and the mass. I am talking to you as individuals. After all, the mass is but yourself multiplied. If you understand, you will give understanding. Understanding is like the light that dispels darkness. But if you do not understand, if you apply what I am saying only to the other man, the man outside, then you are but increasing darkness.
So you want to know if you – not this imaginary man from the mass – if you will inevitably attain perfection. If that is so, you think, why make any effort in the present? I quite agree. If you think that you will inevitably realize the ecstasy of living, why trouble yourself? But nevertheless, because you are caught up in conflict, you are making an effort.
I will put it differently: It is like saying to a hungry man that he will inevitably find some means of satisfying his hunger. How does it help him today if you tell him that he will be fed ten days hence? By that time he may be dead. So the question is not, “Is there inevitably perfection for me as an individual?” Rather, it is, “Why do I make this ceaseless effort?”
To me, a man who is pursuing virtue is no longer virtuous. Yet that is what we are doing all the time. We are trying to be perfect; we are engaged in the incessant effort to be something. But if we make an effort because we are really suffering and because we want to be free from that suffering, then our chief concern is not perfection – we do not know what perfection is. We can only imagine it or read of it in books. Therefore, it must be illusory. Our chief concern is not with perfection, but with the question, “What creates this conflict that demands effort?”

Comment from audience: Is not the spiritual man always perfect?
Krishnamurti: A spiritual man may be, but we are not. That is, we have a sense of duality; we think of a higher man who is perfect and a lower man who is not, and we think of the higher man as trying to dominate the lower. Please try to follow this for a moment, whether you agree or disagree.
You can know only the present conflict; you cannot know perfection so long as you are in conflict. So you need not be concerned with what perfection is, with the question of whether or not man is perfect, whether or not spirit is perfect, whether or not soul is perfect; you are not concerned with that. But surely you are concerned with what causes suffering.
You know, a man confined in a prison is concerned with the destruction of that prison in order to be free; he is not concerned with freedom as an abstract idea. Now you are not concerned with what causes suffering, but you are concerned with the way of escaping from that suffering into perfection. So you want to know if you as an individual will ever realize perfection.
I say that that is not the point. The point is, are you conscious in the present, are you fully aware in the present, of the limitations that create suffering. If you know the cause of suffering, from that you will know what perfection is. But you cannot know perfection before you are free of suffering. That is the cause of limitation. So do not question whether you will ever attain perfection, whether the soul is perfect, or whether the God in you is perfect, but become fully conscious of the limitations of your mind and heart in action. And these limitations you can discover only when you act, when you are not trying to imitate an idea or a guiding principle.
You know, our minds are clogged with national and international standards, with standards that we have received from our parents and standards that we have evolved for ourselves. Guided by these standards we meet life. Therefore we are incapable of understanding. We can understand only when our minds are really fresh, simple, eager – not when they are burdened with ideas.
Now each of us has many limitations, limitations of which we are wholly unconscious. The very question, “Is there perfection?” implies the consciousness of limitation. But you cannot discover these limitations by analyzing the past. The attempt to analyze oneself is destructive, but that is what you are trying to do. You say, “I know that I have many limitations; so I shall examine, I shall search and discover what my barriers and limitations are, and then I shall be free.” When you do that you are but creating a new set of barriers, hindrances. To really discover the false standards and barriers of the past you must act with full awareness in the present, and in that activity you become aware of all the undiscovered hindrances. Experiment, and you will see. Begin to move with full awareness, with fully awakened consciousness in action, and you will see that you have innumerable barriers, beliefs, limitations, that prevent your acting freely.
Therefore I say, self-analysis, analysis to discover the cause in the past, is false. You can never find out from that which is dead, but only from that which is living; and what is living is ever in the present and not in the past. What you must do is to meet the present with full awareness.

Question: Who is the saviour of souls?
Krishnamurti: If one thinks about it for a moment, one sees that that phrase, “the saviour of souls”, has no meaning. What is it that we mean when we say a soul? An individual entity? Please correct me if I am wrong. What do we mean when we talk about a soul? We mean a limited consciousness. To me there is only that eternal life – contrasted with that limited consciousness which we call the “I”. When that “I” exists, there is duality – the soul and the saviour of souls, the lower and the higher. You can understand that complete unity of life only with the cessation of self-consciousness or “I”-ness which creates the duality. To me immortality, that eternal becoming, has nothing in common with individuality. If man can free himself of his many limitations, then that freedom is eternal life; then mind and heart know eternity. But man cannot discover eternity so long as there is limitation.
So the question, “Who is the saviour of souls?” ceases to have any meaning. It arises because we are looking at life from the point of view of self-limited consciousness which we call the “I”. Therefore we say, “Who will save me? Who will save my soul?” No one can save you. You have held that belief for centuries, and yet you are suffering; there is still utter chaos in the world. You yourself must understand; nothing can give you wisdom except your own action in the present, which must create harmony out of conflict. Only from that can wisdom arise.

Question: Some say that your teaching is only for the learned and the intellectual and not for the masses, who are doomed to constant struggle and suffering in daily life. Do you agree?
Krishnamurti: What do you say? Why should I agree or disagree? I have something to say, and I say it. I am afraid that it is not the learned who will understand. Perhaps this little story will make clear what I mean: Once a merchant, who had some time on his hands, went to an Indian sage and said, “I have an hour to spare; please tell me what truth is.” The sage replied, “You have read and studied many books. The first thing that you must do is to suppress all that you have learned.”
What I am saying is not only applicable to the leisured class, to the people who are supposed to be intelligent, well-educated – and I am purposely using the word “supposed” – but also to the so-called masses. Who are keeping the masses in daily toil? The intelligent, those who are supposedly learned; isn’t that so? But if they were really intelligent they would find a way to free the masses from daily toil. What I am saying is applicable not only to the learned, but to all human beings.
You have leisure to listen to me. Now you may say, “Well, I have understood a little, and therefore I am going to use that little understanding to change the world.” But you will never change or alter the world that way. You may listen for a while and you may think that you have understood something, and say to yourself, “I am going to use this knowledge to reform the world.” Such reform would be merely patchwork. But if you really understood what I am saying, you would create disturbance in the world – that emotional and mental disquiet from which there comes about the betterment of conditions. That is, if you understand you will try to create a state of discontent about you, and that you can do only if you change yourself; you cannot do this if you think that what I say is applicable to the learned only rather than to yourself. The man in the street is you. So the question is: Do you understand what I am saying?
If you are intensely caught up in conflict, you want to find out the cause of that conflict. Now if you are fully aware of that conflict, you will find that your mind is trying to escape, trying to avoid facing that conflict completely. It is not a question of whether or not you understand me, but whether you as an individual are completely aware, alive to confront life wholly. What prevents you from meeting life wholly? That is the point. What prevents you from meeting life wholly is the continual action of memory, of a standard from which arises fear.

Question: According to you, there appears to be no connection between intellect and intelligence. But you speak of awakened intelligence as one might of trained intellect. What is intelligence, and how can it be awakened?
Krishnamurti: Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Rather, intelligence comes into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally. There is a vast distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is merely thought functioning independently of emotion. When intellect, irrespective of emotion, is trained in any particular direction, one may have great intellect, but one does not have intelligence, because in intelligence there is the inherent capacity to feel as well as to reason; in intelligence both capacities are equally present, intensely and harmoniously.
Now modern education is developing the intellect, offering more and more explanations of life, more and more theories, without the harmonious quality of affection. Therefore we have developed cunning minds to escape from conflict; hence we are satisfied with explanations that scientists and philosophers give us. The mind – the intellect – is satisfied with these innumerable explanations, but intelligence is not, for to understand there must be complete unity of mind and heart in action. That is, now you have a business mind, a religious mind, a sentimental mind. Your passions have nothing to do with business; your daily earning mind has nothing to do with your emotions. And you say that this condition cannot be altered. If you bring your emotions into business, you say, business cannot be well managed or be honest. So you divide your mind into compartments: in one compartment you keep your religious interest, in another your emotions, in a third your business interest which has nothing to do with your intellectual and emotional life. Your business mind treats life merely as a means of getting money in order to live. So this chaotic existence, this division of your life continues.
If you really used your intelligence in business, that is, if your emotions and your thought were acting harmoniously, your business might fail. It probably would. And you will probably let it fail when you really feel the absurdity, the cruelty and the exploitation that is involved in this way of living. Until you really approach all of life with your intelligence, instead of merely with your intellect, no system in the world will save man from the ceaseless toil for bread.

Question: You often talk of the necessity of understanding our experiences. Will you please explain what you mean by understanding an experience in the right way?
Krishnamurti: To understand an experience fully you must come to it freshly each time it confronts you. To understand experience you must have an open, simple clarity of mind and heart. But we do not approach the experiences of life with that attitude. Memory prevents us from approaching experience openly, nakedly. Isn’t that so? Memory prevents us from meeting experience wholly, and therefore it prevents us from understanding experience completely.
Now what causes memory? To me, memory is but the sign of incomplete understanding. When you meet an experience wholly, when you live fully, that experience or that incident does not leave the scar of memory. Only when you live partially, when you do not meet experience wholly, there is memory; only in incompleteness is there memory. Isn’t that so? Take, for instance, your being consistent to a principle. Why are you consistent? You are consistent because you cannot meet life openly, freely; therefore you say, “I must have a principle that will guide me.” Hence the constant struggle to be consistent, and with that memory as a background you meet every incident of life. Thus there is incompleteness in your understanding because you approach experience with a mind that is already burdened. Only when you meet all things, whatever they are, with an unburdened mind, only then will you have true understanding.
“But”, you say, “what am I to do with all the memories that I have?” You cannot discard them. But what you can do is meet your next experience wholly; then you will see those past memories come into action, and then is the time to meet them and to dissolve them.
So what gives right understanding is not the residue of many experiences. You cannot meet new experiences wholly when the remainder of past experiences is burdening your mind. Yet that is how you are continually meeting them. That is, your mind has learned to be careful, to be cunning, to act as a signal, to give a warning; therefore, you cannot meet any incident fully. To free your mind of memory, to free it from this burden of experience, you must meet life fully; in that action your past memories come into activity, and in the flame of awareness they are dissolved. Try it and you will see.
As you go away from here you will meet friends; you will see the sunset, the long shadows. Be fully aware in these experiences, and you will find that all kinds of memories surge forward; in your acute awareness you will understand the falseness and the strength of these memories, and you will be able to dissolve them; You will then meet with full awareness every experience of life.

FROGNERSETEREN, NORWAY 2ND PUBLIC TALK 8TH SEPTEMBER, 1933

Friends, Today I want to explain that there is a way of living naturally, spontaneously, without the constant friction of self-discipline, the constant battle of adjustment. But to understand what I am going to say, please consider it not only intellectually, but also emotionally. You must feel it; for you can bring about fulfillment of life only when your emotions as well as your thoughts are acting harmoniously. When you live completely in the harmony of your mind and heart, then your action is natural, spontaneous, effortless.
Most minds are seeking security. We want to be sure. We set up in authority those who offer us that security, and we worship them as our authority because we ourselves are seeking a certainty to which the mind can cling, in which the mind can feel safe, secure.
If you consider the matter, you will find that most of you come to listen to me because you are seeking certainty – certainty of knowledge, certainty of an end, certainty of truth, certainty of an idea – in order that you may act with that certainty, choose through that certainty. Your minds and hearts desire to act with the background of that certainty. Your choice and your actions do not awaken true discernment or true perception, because you are constantly engaged in the gathering in of knowledge, in the accumulation of experiences, in searching out various kinds of gain, in seeking authorities that give you security and comfort, in striving for the development of character. Through all these attempts at accumulation you hope to have the assurance of certainty; certainty that takes away all doubt and anxiety; certainty that gives you – at least you hope that it will give you – surety of choice. With the thought of certainty, you choose in the hope of gaining further understanding. Thus, in the search for certainty there is born fear of gain and fear of loss.
So you make life into a school where you learn to be certain. Isn’t that what your life is? A school where you learn, not to live, but how to be sure. To you life is a process of accumulation, not a matter of living. Now I differentiate between living and accumulation. A man who is really living has no sense of accumulation. But the man who is seeking certainty and security, who is seeking a shelter from which he can act – the shelter of character, of virtue – that man thinks of life as accumulation, and hence to him life becomes a process of learning, of gain, of struggle.
Where there is the idea of accumulation and of gain, there must be a sense of time, and hence incompleteness in action. If we are constantly looking to a future gain, to a future from which we shall derive advantage, development, greater strength for acquisition, then our action in the present must be incomplete. If our minds and hearts are continually seeking gain, achievement, success, then our action, whatever it be, has no true significance; our eyes are fixed on the future, our minds are concerned only with the future. Hence, all action in the present creates incompleteness.
From this incompleteness there arises conflict, which we hope to overcome through self-discipline. We make a distinction in our minds between the things that we wish to gain, which we call the essential, and the things that we do not wish to acquire, which we call the unessential. Thus, there is a constant battle, a constant struggle; conflict and suffering result from this distinction.
I shall explain this point in another way, because unless you see and really understand it, you will not fully comprehend what I shall have to say later.
We have made life into a school of continual learning. But to me life is not a school; it is not a process of gathering in. Life is to be lived naturally, fully, without this constant battle of conflicts, this distinction between the essential and the unessential. From this idea of life as a school, there arises the constant desire for achievement, success, and therefore the search for an end, the desire to find the ultimate truth, God, the final perfection which will give us – at least, we hope it will give us – certainty, and hence our attempts at the continual adjustment to certain social conditions, to ethical and moral demands, to the development of character and the cultivation of virtues. These standards and demands, if you really think about them, are but shelters from which we act, shelters developed through resistance.
This is the life that most people are living – a life of constant search for gain, for accumulation, and therefore a life of incompleteness in action. The idea of gain, which divides action into past, present and future, is always in our minds; therefore there is never complete understanding in action itself. The mind is continually thinking of gain, and hence it finds no meaning in the action with which it is occupied.
So this is the state in which you are living. Now to me that state is utterly false. Life is not a process of gathering in, a school in which you must learn, in which you must discipline yourself, in which there is constant resistance and struggle. Where there is this constant gathering in, this desire for accumulation, there must exist incompleteness which creates want; if you do not want, you do not gather. And where there is want there is no discernment, even though you may go through the process of choice.
Now you say to me, “How am I to get rid of this want? How am I to free my mind from this process of gathering in? How am I to conquer these hindrances? You say that life is not a school In which to learn, but how am I to live naturally? Tell me the path on which I must walk, the method that I must practise every day to live fully.”
To me, this is not the way to look at the problem. The question is not how you are to live fully, but rather, what urges you to this constant accumulation; the question is not how you shall get rid of the idea of gathering, of accumulation, but rather, what creates in you this desire to accumulate. I hope you see the distinction.
Now you look at the problem from the point of view of getting rid of something, of acquiring non-acquisition, which is essentially the same thing as desiring to acquire something, since all opposites are the same. So, what prevents you from living naturally, harmoniously? I say that it is this process of gathering, this searching for certainty.
Then you want to know how to be free from the search for certainty. I say, do not approach the problem in this way. The futility of gain will have a meaning for you only when you are really in conflict, only when you are fully conscious of the disharmony of your actions. If you are not caught up in conflict, then continue in your present way; if you are absolutely unconscious of struggle and suffering, if you are unaware of your own disharmony, then go on living as you are. Then do not try to be spiritual, for you do not know what that signifies at all. The ecstasy of understanding comes only when there is great discontent, when all false values about you are destroyed. If you are not discontented, if you are not aware of intense disharmony in and about you, then what I tell you of the futility of accumulation can have no meaning to you.
But if there is this divine revolt in you, then you will understand when I say that life is not a school in which to learn; life is not a process of constant accumulation, a process in which there is continual want which is blinding. Then that very revolt in which you are caught up, that very suffering, gives you understanding, because it awakens in you the flame of awareness. And when you are fully aware that want is blinding, then you will see its full significance, which dissipates want. Then you will have freedom from want, from gathering in. But if you are unconscious of such a struggle, of such a revolt, you can but continue your life as you are living it, in a half-awakened state. When people suffer, when they are caught up in conflict, that very suffering and conflict should keep them intensely aware; but most of them only ask how to get rid of want. When you understand the full significance of not desiring to gain, to accumulate, then there is no longer the struggle to get rid of something.
To put it differently, why do you go through the process of self-discipline? You do it because of fear. Why are you afraid? Because you want surety, the surety that a social standard, a religious belief, or the idea of acquiring virtue gives you. So you set about disciplining yourself. That is, when the mind is enslaved by the idea of gain or conformity, there is self-discipline. That you are awakened to suffering is but the indication that mind is trying to free itself from all standards; but when you suffer you immediately try to quieten that suffering by drugging the mind with what you call comfort, security, certainty. So you continue this process of seeking certainty, which is but an opiate. But if you understand the illusion of certainty – and you can understand it only in the intensity of conflict from which alone all inquiry can truly begin – then want, which creates certainty, disappears.
So the question is not how to get rid of want; it is rather this: Are you fully aware when there is suffering? Are you fully conscious of conflict, of the disharmonious life about you and within you? If you are, then in that flame of awareness there is true perception, without this constant battle of adjustment, of self-discipline. However, seeing the falsity of self-discipline does not mean that one can indulge in rash, impetuous action. On the contrary, then action is born out of completeness.

Question: Can there be happiness when there is no longer any “I” consciousness? Is one able to feel anything at all if the “I” consciousness is extinguished?
Krishnamurti: First of all, what does one mean by the “I” consciousness? When are you aware of this “I”? When are you conscious of yourself? You are conscious of yourself as “I”, as an entity, when you are in pain, when you experience discomfiture, conflict, struggle.
You say, “If that ‘I’ does not exist, what is there?” I say you will find out only when your mind is free of that “I”, so do not inquire now. When your mind and heart are harmonious, when they are no longer caught up in conflict, then you will know. Then you will not ask what it is that feels, that thinks. As long as this “I” consciousness exists there must be the conflict of choice, from which arises the sensation of happiness and unhappiness. That is, this conflict gives you the sense of limited consciousness, the “I”, with which the mind becomes identified. I say that you will find out that life which is not identified with the “you” or the “me”, that life which is eternal, infinite, only when this limited consciousness dissolves itself. You do not dissolve that limited consciousness; it dissolves itself.

Question: The other day you spoke of memory as a hindrance to true understanding. I have recently had the misfortune of losing my brother. Should I try to forget that loss?
Krishnamurti: I explained the other day what I mean by memory. I shall try to explain it again.
After you have seen a beautiful sunset, you return to your home or office and begin again to live in that sunset, as your home or office is not as you would have it, it is not beautiful; so to escape from that ugliness you return in memory to that sunset. Thus you create in your mind a distinction between your home, which does not give you joy, and the thing that gives you great delight, the sunset. So, when you are confronted by circumstances which are not pleasant, you turn to the memory of that which is joyous. But if, instead of turning to a dead memory, you would try to alter the circumstances that are unpleasant, then you would be living intensely in the present and not in the dead past. So when one loses someone whom one loves greatly, why is there this constant looking back, this constant holding on to that which gave us pleasure, this longing to have that person back again? This is what everyone goes through when he experiences such a loss. He escapes from the sorrow of that loss by turning to the remembrance of the person who is gone, by living in a future, or by belief in the hereafter – which is also a kind of memory. It is because our minds are perverted through escape, because they are incapable of meeting suffering openly, freshly, that we have to revert to memory, and thus the past encroaches upon the present.
So the question is not whether you should or should not remember your brother or your husband, your wife or your children; rather, it is a matter of living completely, wholly, in the present, though that does not imply that you are indifferent to those who are about you. When you live completely, wholly, there is in that intensity, the flame of living, which is not the mere imprint of an incident.
How is one to live completely in the present, so that mind is not perverted with past memories and future longings – which are also memory? Again, the question is not how you should live completely, but what prevents you from living completely. For when you ask how, you are looking for a method, a means, and to me, a method destroys understanding. If you know what prevents you from living completely, then out of yourself, out of your own awareness and understanding, you will free yourself from that hindrance. What prevents you from freeing yourself is your search for certainty, your continual longing for gain, for accumulation, for achievement. But do not ask, “How am I to conquer these hindrances?” for all conquering is but a process of further gain, further accumulation. If this loss is really creating suffering in you, if it is really giving you intense – not superficial – sorrow, then you will not ask how; then you will see immediately the futility of looking back or forward for consolation.
When most people say that they suffer, their suffering is but superficial. They suffer, but at the same time they want other things: they want comfort, they are afraid, they search out ways and means of escape. Superficial sorrow is always accompanied by the desire for comfort. Superficial suffering is like shallow ploughing of the soil; it achieves nothing. Only when you till the soil deeply, to the full depth of the ploughshare, is there richness. In the state of complete suffering there is complete under- standing, in which hindrances as memories both of the present and of the future cease to exist. Then you are living in the eternal present.
You know, to understand a thought or an idea does not mean merely to agree with it intellectually.
There are various kinds of memories: there is the memory that forces itself upon you in the present, the memory to which you turn actively, and the memory of looking forward to the future. All these prevent your living completely. But do not begin to analyze your memories. Do not ask, “Which memory is preventing my complete living?” When you question in that way, you do not act; you merely examine memory intellectually, and such an examination has no value because it deals with a dead thing. From a dead thing there is no understanding. But if you are truly aware in the present, in the moment of action, then all these memories come into activity. Then you need not go through the process of analyzing them.

Question: Do you think it is right to bring up children with religious training?
Krishnamurti: I shall answer this question indirectly, for when you understand what I am going to say, you can answer it specifically for yourselves.
You know, we are influenced not only by external conditions, but also by an inner condition which we develop. In bringing up a child, parents subject him to many influences and limiting circumstances, one of which is religious training. Now, if they let the child grow up without such hindering, limiting influences, either from within or from without, then the child will begin to question as he grows older, and he will intelligently find out for himself. Then, if he wants religion, he will have it, whether you prohibit or encourage the religious attitude. In other words, if his mind and heart are not influenced, not hindered, either by external or by inner standards, then he will truly discover what is true. This requires great perception, great understanding.
Now parents want to influence the child one way or another. If you are very religious, you want to influence the child toward religion; if you are not, you try to turn him away from religion. Help the child to be intelligent, then he will find out for himself the true significance of life.

Question: You spoke of harmony of mind and heart in action. What is this action? Does this action imply physical movement, or can action take place when one is quite still and alone?
Krishnamurti: Does not action imply thought? Is not action thought itself? You cannot act without thinking. I know that most people do, but their action is not intelligent, not harmonious. Thought is action, which is also movement. Again, we think apart from our feeling, thus setting up another entity separate from our action. So we divide our lives into three distinct parts, thinking, feeling, acting. Therefore you ask, “Is action purely physical? Is action purely mental or emotional?”
To me the three are one: to think, to feel, to act, there is no distinction. Therefore you may be alone and quiet for a while, or you may be working, moving, acting: both states can be action. When you understand this, you will not make a separation between thinking, feeling and acting.
To most people, thinking is but a reaction. If it is merely a reaction, it is no longer thinking, for then it is uncreative. Most people who say that they think are but blindly following their reactions; they have certain standards, certain ideas, according to which they act. These they have memorized, and when they say that they think, they are but following these memories. Such imitation is not thinking; it is but a reaction, a reflection. True thinking exists only when you discover the true significance of these standards, these preconceptions, these securities.
To put it differently, what is mind? Mind is speech, thought, consideration, understanding; it is all these, and it is also feeling. You cannot separate feeling from thinking; the mind and heart are in themselves complete. But because we have created innumerable escapes through conflict, there arises the idea of thought as apart from feeling, as apart from action, and hence our life is broken up, incomplete.

Question: Among your listeners are people old and feeble in mind and body. Also, there may be those who are addicts to drugs, drink or smoking. What can they do to change themselves, when they find that they cannot change even when they long to?
Krishnamurti: Remain as you are. If you really long to change, you will change. You see, that is just it: intellectually you want to change, but emotionally you are still enticed by the pleasure of smoking or the comfort of a drug. So you ask, “What am I to do? I want to give this up, but at the same time I don’t want to give it up. Please tell me how I can do both.” That sounds amusing, but that is really what you are asking.
Now if you approach the problem wholly, not with the idea of wanting or non-wanting, giving up or not giving up, you will find out whether or not you really want to smoke. If you find that you do want to, then smoke. In that way you will find out the worth of that habit without constantly calling it futile and yet continuing it. If you approach the act completely, wholly, then you will not say, “Shall I give up smoking or not?” But now you want to smoke because it gives you a pleasant sensation, and at the same time you don’t want to because mentally you see the absurdity of it. So you begin to discipline yourself, saying, “I must sacrifice myself; I must give this up.”

Question: Do you not agree that man shall gain the kingdom of heaven through a life, like that of Jesus, wholly dedicated to service?
Krishnamurti: I hope you will not be shocked when I say that man will not gain the kingdom of heaven in this way.
Now see what you are saying: “Through service I shall obtain something that I want.” Your statement implies that you do not serve completely; you are looking for a reward through service. You say, “Through righteous behaviour I shall know God.” That is, you are really interested, not in righteous behaviour but in knowing God, thus divorcing righteousness from God. But neither through service, nor love, nor worship, nor prayer, but only in the very action of these, is there truth, God. Do you understand? When you ask, “Shall I gain the kingdom of heaven through service?” your service has no meaning because you are primarily interested in the kingdom of heaven; you are interested in getting something in return; it is a kind of barter, as much of your life is. So when you say, “Through righteousness, through love, I shall attain, I shall realize”, you are interested in the realization, which is but an escape, a form of imitation. Therefore your love or your righteous act has no meaning. If you are kind to me because I can give you something in return, what significance has your kindness?
That is the whole process of our life. We are afraid to live. Only when someone dangles a reward before our eyes do we act, and then we act not for the sake of action itself, but in order to obtain that reward. In other words, we act for what we can get out of action. It is the same in your prayers. That is, because for us action has no significance in itself, because we think that we need encouragement in order to act rightly, we have placed before us a reward, something we desire, and we hope that enticement, that toy, will give us satisfaction. But when we act with that hope of reward, then action itself has no significance.
That is why I say that you are caught up in this process of reward and gain, this hindrance born of fear, which results in conflict. When you see this, when you become aware of this, then you will understand that life, behaviour, service, everything, has significance in itself; then you do not go through life with the purpose of getting something else, because you know that action itself has intrinsic value. Then you are not merely a reformer; you are a human being; you know that life which is pliable and therefore eternal.

FROGNERSETEREN, NORWAY 3RD PUBLIC TALK 9TH SEPTEMBER, 1933

This morning I am going to answer questions only.

Question: Do you believe in the efficacy of prayer, and the value of prayer that is directed out of whole-hearted sympathy to the misfortune and suffering of others? Cannot prayer, in the right sense, ever bring about the freedom of which you speak?
Krishnamurti: When we use the word “prayer”, I think we use it with a very definite meaning. As it is generally understood, it means praying to someone outside of ourselves to give us strength, understanding, and so on. That is, we are looking for help from an external source. When you are suffering and you look to another to relieve you from that suffering, you are but creating in your mind, and therefore in your action, incompleteness, duality. So from my point of view, prayer, as it is commonly understood, has no value. You may forget your suffering in your prayer, but you have not understood the cause of suffering. You have merely lost yourself in prayer; you have suggested to yourself certain modes of living. So prayer in the ordinary sense of the word, that is, looking to another for relief from suffering, has to me no value.
But if I may use the word with a different meaning, I think there is prayer which is not a looking to another for help; it is a continued alertness of mind, an awakened state in which you understand for yourself. In that state of prayer you know the cause of suffering, the cause of confusion, the cause of a problem. Most of us, when we have a problem, immediately seek a solution. When we find a solution we think that we have solved the problem, but we have not. We have only escaped from it. Prayer, in the conventional meaning of the word, is thus an escape. But real prayer, I feel, is action with awakened interest in life.

Comment from the audience: Do you think that the prayer of a mother for her children may be good for them?
Krishnamurti: What do you think?

Comment: I hope it will be good for them.
Krishnamurti: What do you mean by its being good for them? Is there not something else one can do to help? What can one do for another when that person is suffering? One can give sympathy and affection. Suppose that I am suffering because I love someone who does not love me in return, and that I happen to be your son. Your prayer will not relieve my suffering. What happens? You discuss the matter with me, but the pain still remains because I want that love. What do you want to do when you see someone suffer whom you love? You want to help; you want to take away the suffering from him. But you cannot, because that suffering is his prison. It is the prison that he himself has created, a prison that you cannot take away – but that does not mean that your attitude should be one of indifference.
Now when one whom you love is suffering, and you can do nothing for him, you turn to prayer, hoping that some miracle will happen to alleviate his sorrow; but if you once understand that the suffering is caused by the ignorance created by that person himself, then you will realize that you can give him sympathy and affection, but you cannot remove his suffering.

Comment: But we want to relieve our own suffering.
Krishnamurti: That is different.

Question: You say, “Meet all experiences as they come.” What about such terrible misfortunes as being condemned to lifelong imprisonment, or being burnt alive for holding certain political or religious opinions – misfortunes that have actually been the lot of human beings? Would you ask such people to submit themselves to their misfortunes and not try to overcome them?
Krishnamurti: Suppose that I commit murder; then society puts me in prison because I have done something that is inherently wrong. Or suppose that some force from the outside impels me to do something of which you disapprove, and you in return do me harm. What am I to do? Suppose that some years hence you, in this country, decide that you do not want me here because of what I say. What can I do? I cannot come here. Now, isn’t it after all the mind that gives value to these terms “fortune” and “misfortune”?
If I hold a certain belief and am imprisoned for holding it, I do not consider that imprisonment as suffering, because the belief is really mine. Suppose I believe in something – something not external, something that is real to me; if I am punished for holding that belief, I will not consider that punishment as suffering, for the belief I am being punished for is to me not merely a belief, but a reality.

Question: You have spoken against the spirit of acquisition, both spiritual and material. Does not contemplation help us to understand and meet life completely?
Krishnamurti: Is not contemplation the very essence of action? In India there are people who withdraw from life, from daily contact with others, and retire into the woods to contemplate, to find God. Do you call that contemplation? I wouldn’t call it contemplation – it is but an escape from life. Out of meeting life fully comes contemplation. Contemplation is action.
Thought, when it is complete, is action. The man who, in order to think, withdraws from the daily contact with life, makes his life unnatural; for him life is confusion. Our very seeking for God or truth is an escape. We seek because we find that the life we live is ugly, monstrous. You say, “If I can understand who created this thing, I shall understand the creation; I shall withdraw from this and go to that.” But if, instead of withdrawing, you tried to understand the cause of confusion in the very confusion itself, then your finding out, your discovery, would destroy the thing that is false.
Unless you have experienced truth, you cannot know what it is. Not pages of description nor the clever wit of man can tell you what it is. You can only know truth for yourself, and you can know it only when you have freed your mind from illusion. If the mind is not free, you but create opposites, and these opposites become your ideals, as God or truth.
If I am caught in suffering, in pain, I create the idea of peace, the idea of tranquillity. I create the idea of truth according to my like and dislike, and therefore that idea cannot be true. Yet that is what we are constantly doing. When we contemplate as we generally do, we are merely trying to escape from confusion. “But”, you say, “when I am caught in confusion I cannot understand; I must escape from it in order to understand.” That is, you are trying to learn from suffering.
But as I see it, you can learn nothing from suffering, though you should not withdraw from it. The function of suffering is to give you a tremendous shock; the awakening caused by that shock gives you pain, and then you say, “Let me find out what I can learn from it.” Now if, instead of saying this, you keep awake during the shock of suffering, then that experience will yield understanding. Understanding lies in suffering itself, not away from it; suffering itself gives freedom from suffering.

Comment: You said the other day that self-analysis is destructive, but I think that analyzing the cause of suffering gives one wisdom.
Krishnamurti: Wisdom is not in analysis. You suffer, and by analysis you try to find the cause; that is, you are analyzing a dead event, the cause that is already in the past. What you must do is find the cause of suffering in the very moment of suffering. By analyzing suffering you do not find the cause; you analyze only the cause of a particular act. Then you say, “I have understood the cause of that suffering.” But in reality you have only learned to avoid the suffering; you have not freed your mind from it. This process of accumulation, of learning through the analysis of a particular act, does not give wisdom. Wisdom arises only when the “I” consciousness, which is the creator, the cause of suffering, is dissolved. Am I making this difficult?
What happens when we suffer? We want immediate relief, and so we take anything that is offered. We examine it superficially for the moment, and we say that we have learned. When that drug proves insufficient in providing relief, we take another, but the suffering continues. Isn’t that so? But when you suffer completely, wholly, not superficially, then something happens; when all the avenues of escape which the mind has invented have been understood and blocked, there remains only suffering, and then you will understand it. There is no cessation through an intellectual drug. As I said the other day, life to me is not a process of learning; yet we treat life as though it were merely a school for learning things, merely a suffering in order to learn; as though everything served only as a means to something else. You say that if you can learn to contemplate you will meet life fully, whereas I say that if your action is complete, that is, if your mind and heart are in full harmony, then that very action is contemplation, effortlessness.

Question: Can a minister who has freed himself from the doctrines still be a minister in the Lutheran Church?
Krishnamurti: I think that he will not remain in the ministry. What do you mean by a minister? One who gives you what you want spiritually, that is, comfort? Surely the question has been already answered. You are looking to mediators to help you. You are making me also into a minister – a minister without doctrines, but still you think of me as a minister. But I am afraid I am not. I can give you nothing. One of the conventionally accepted doctrines is that others can lead you to truth, that through the suffering of another you can understand it; but I say that no one can lead you to truth.

Question: Suppose that the minister is married and dependent upon his position for his living?
Krishnamurti: You say that if the minister gave up his work, his wife and children would suffer, which is real suffering for him, as well as for his wife and children. Should he give it up? Suppose that I am a minister; that I no longer believe in churches, and feel the necessity of freeing myself from them. Do I consider my wife and children? No. That decision needs great understanding.

Question: You have said that memory represents an experience that has not been understood. Does that mean that our experiences are of no value to us? And why does a fully understood experience leave no memory?
Krishnamurti: I am afraid that most of the experiences that one has are of no value. You are repeating the same thing over and over again, whereas to me an experience really understood frees the mind from all search for experience. You confront an incident from which you hope, to learn, from which you hope to profit, and you multiply experiences, one after another. With that idea of sensation, of learning, of gaining, you meet various experiences; you meet them with a prejudiced mind. Thus you are using the experiences that confront you merely as a means to get something else – to get rich emotionally or mentally, to enjoy. You think that these experiences have no inherent value; you look to them only to get something else through them.
Where there is want there must be memory, which creates time. And most minds, being caught in time, meet life with that limitation. That is, bound by this limitation they try to understand something that has no limit. Therefore there is conflict. In other words, the experiences from which we try to learn are born of reaction. There is no such thing as learning from experience or through experience.
The questioner wants to know why a fully understood experience leaves no memory. We are lonely, empty; being conscious of that emptiness, that loneliness, we turn to experience to fill it. We say, “I shall learn from experience; let me fill my mind with experience which destroys loneliness.” Experience does destroy loneliness, but it makes us very superficial. That is what we are always doing; but if we realize that this very want creates loneliness, then loneliness will disappear.

Question: I feel the entanglement and confusion of attachment in the thought and feeling that make up the richness and variety of my life. How can I learn to be detached from experience from which I seem unable to escape?
Krishnamurti: Why do you want to be detached? Because attachment gives you pain. Possession is a conflict in which there is jealousy, continual watchfulness, neverending struggle. Attachment gives you pain; therefore you say, “Let me be detached.” That is, your detachment is merely a running away from pain. You say, “Let me find a way, a means, by which I shall not suffer.” In attachment there is conflict which awakens you, stirs you, and in order not to be awakened you long for detachment. You go through life wanting the exact opposite of that which gives you pain, and that very wanting is but an escape from the thing in which you are caught.
It is not a matter of learning detachment, but of keeping awake. Attachment gives you pain. But if, instead of trying to escape, you try to keep awake, you will meet openly and understand every experience. If you are attached and are satisfied with your state, you experience no disturbance. Only in time of pain and suffering do you want the opposite, which you think will give you relief. If you are attached to a person, and there is peace and quiet, everything moves smoothly for a while; then something happens that gives you pain. Take, for example, a husband and wife; in their possession, in their love, there is complete blindness, happiness. Life goes smoothly until something happens – he may leave, or she may fall in love with another. Then there is pain. In such a situation you say to yourself, “I must learn detachment.” But if you love again you repeat the same thing. Again, when you experience pain in attachment, you desire the opposite. That is human nature; that is what every human being wants.
So it is not a matter of acquiring detachment. It is a matter of seeing the foolishness of attachment when you suffer in attachment; then you do not go to the opposite. Now, what happens? You want to be attached and at the same time you want to be detached, and in this conflict there is pain. If in pain itself you realize the finality of pain, if you do not try to escape to the opposite, then that very pain will free you from both attachment and detachment.

OSLO, NORWAY TALK IN THE COLOSSEUM 10TH SEPTEMBER, 1933

Friends, You know, we go from belief to belief, from experience to experience, hoping and searching for some permanent understanding that will give us enlightenment, wisdom; and thereby we also hope to discover for ourselves what truth is. So we begin to search for truth, God, or life. Now to me, this very search for truth is a denial of it, for that everlasting life, that truth, can be understood only when mind and heart are free from all ideas, from all doctrines, from all beliefs, and when we understand the true function of individuality.
I say that there is an everlasting life of which I know and of which I speak, but one cannot understand it by searching for it. What is our search now? It is but an escape from our daily sufferings, confusions, conflicts; an escape from our confusion of love in which there is a constant battle of possession, of jealousy; an escape from the continual striving for existence. So we say to ourselves, “If I can understand what truth is, if I can find out what God is, then I will understand and conquer the confusion, the struggle, the pain, the innumerable battles of choice. Let me therefore find out what is, and in understanding that, I shall understand the everyday life in which there is so much suffering.” To me, the understanding of truth lies not in the search for it; it lies in understanding the right significance of all things; the whole significance of truth is in the transient, and not apart from it.
So our search for truth is but an escape. Our search and our inquiry, our study of philosophies, our imitation of ethical systems and our continual groping for that reality which I say exists, are but ways of escape. To understand that reality is to understand the cause of our various conflicts, struggles, sufferings; but through the desire to escape from these conflicts, we have built up many subtle ways to avoid conflict, and in these we take shelter. Thus, truth becomes but another shelter in which mind and heart can take comfort.
Now that very idea of comfort is a hindrance; that very conception from which we derive consolation is but a flight from the conflict of everyday life. For centuries we have been building avenues of escape, such as authority; it may be the authority of social standards, or of public opinion, or of religious doctrines; may be an external standard, such as the more educated people today are discarding, or an inner standard, such as one creates after discarding the external. But a mind that has regard for authority, that is, a mind that accepts without question, a mind that imitates, cannot understand the freedom of life. So, though we have built up through past centuries this authority that gives us a momentary pacification, a momentary consolation, a transient comfort, that authority has but become our escape. Likewise, imitation – the imitation of standards, the imitation of a system or a method of living; to me, this also is a hindrance. And our searching for certainty is but a way of escape; we want to be sure, our minds desire to cling to certainties, so that from that background we can look at life, from that shelter we can go forth.
Now to me, all these are hindrances which prevent that natural, spontaneous action which alone frees the mind and heart so that man can live harmoniously, so that man can understand the true function of individuality.
When we suffer we seek certainty, we want to turn to values that will give us comfort – and that comfort is but memory. Then again we come into contact with life, and again we experience suffering. So we think that we learn from suffering, that we gather understanding from suffering. A belief or an idea or a theory gives us momentary satisfaction when we suffer, and from this satisfaction we think that we have understood or gathered understanding from that experience. Thus we go on from suffering to suffering, learning how to adjust ourselves to outward conditions. That is, we do not understand the real movement of suffering; we merely become more and more cunning and subtle in our dealings with suffering. This is the superficiality of modern civilization and culture: many theories, many explanations of our suffering are put forward, and in these explanations and theories we take shelter, going from experience to experience, suffering, learning, and hoping through all this to find wisdom.
I say that wisdom is not to be bought. Wisdom does not lie in the process of accumulation; it is not the result of innumerable experiences; it is not acquired through learning. Wisdom, life itself, can be understood only when the mind is free from this sense of search, this search for comfort, this imitation, for these are but the ways of escape that we have been cultivating for centuries. If you examine our structure of thought, of emotion, our whole civilization, you will see that it is but a process of escape, a process of conformity. When we suffer, our immediate reaction is a desire for relief, for consolation, and we accept the theories offered without finding out the cause of our suffering; that is, we are momentarily satisfied, we live superficially, and so we do not find out profoundly for ourselves what the cause of our suffering is.
Let me put this in another way: Though we have experiences, these experiences do not keep us awake, but rather put us to sleep, because our minds and hearts have been trained for generations merely to imitate, to conform. After all, when there is any kind of suffering, we should not look to that suffering to teach us, but rather to keep us fully awake, so that we can meet life with complete awareness – not in that semi-conscious state in which almost every human being meets life.
I shall explain this again, so as to make myself clear; for if you understand this you will naturally understand what I am going to say.
I say that life is not a process of learning, accumulating. Life is not a school in which you pass examinations in learning, in learning from experiences, learning from actions, from suffering. Life is meant to be lived, not to be learnt from. If you regard life as something from which you have to learn, you act but superficially. That is, if action, if daily living, is but a means towards a reward, towards an end, then action itself has no value. Now when you have experiences, you say that you must learn from them, understand them. Therefore experience itself has no value to you because you are looking for a gain through suffering, through action, through experience. But to understand action completely, which to me is the ecstasy of life, the ecstasy which is immortality, mind must be free of the idea of acquisition, the idea of learning through experience, through action. Now both mind and heart are caught in this idea of acquisition, this idea that life is a means to something else. But when you see the falseness of that conception, you will no longer treat suffering as a means to an end. Then you no longer take comfort in ideas, in beliefs; you no longer take shelter in standards of thought or feeling; you then begin to be fully aware, not for the purpose of seeing what you can gain from it, but in order intelligently to release action from imitation and from the search for a reward. That is, you see the significance of action, and not merely what profit it will bring you. Now most minds are caught in the idea of acquisition, the search for a reward. Suffering comes to awaken them to this illusion, to awaken them from their state of semi-consciousness, but not to teach them a lesson. When mind and heart act with a sense of duality, thus creating opposites, there must be conflict and suffering. What happens when you suffer? You seek immediate relief, whether it be in drink or in amusement or in the idea of God. To me, these are all the same, for they are merely avenues of escape that the subtle mind has devised, making of suffering a superficial thing. Therefore I say, become fully aware of your actions, whatever they may be; then you will perceive how your mind is continually finding an escape; you will see that you are not confronting experiences completely, with all your being, but only partially, semi-consciously.
We have built up many hindrances that have become shelters in which we take refuge in the moment of pain. These shelters are but escapes and therefore in themselves of no inherent worth. But to find out these shelters, these false values that we have created about us, which hold and imprison us, one must not try to analyze the actions which spring from these shelters. To me, analysis is the very negation of complete action. One cannot understand a hindrance by examining it. There is no understanding in the analysis of a past experience, for it is dead; there is understanding only in the living action of the present. Therefore self-analysis is destructive. But to discover the innumerable barriers that surround you is to become fully conscious, to become fully aware in whatever action is taking place about you, or in whatever you are doing. Then all the past hindrances, such as tradition, imitation, fear, defensive reactions, the desire for security, for certainty – all these come into activity; and only in that which is active is there understanding. In this flame of awareness, mind and heart free themselves from all hindrances, all false values; then there is liberation in action, and that liberation is the freedom of life which is immortality.

Question: Is it only from sorrow and suffering that one awakens to the reality of life?
Krishnamurti: Suffering is the thing with which we are most familiar, with which we are constantly living. We know love and its joy, but in their wake there follow many conflicts. Whatever gives us the greatest shock which we call suffering, will keep us awake to meet life fully, will help us to discard the many illusions which we have created about us. It is not only suffering or conflict that keeps us awake, but anything that gives us a shock, that makes us question all the false standards and values which we have created about us in our search for security. When you suffer greatly, you become wholly aware, and in that intensity of awareness you discover true values. This liberates the mind from creating further illusions.

Question: Why am I afraid of death? And what is beyond death?
Krishnamurti: I think that one is afraid of death because one feels that one has not lived. If you are an artist, you may be afraid that death will take you away before you have finished your work; you are afraid because you have not fulfilled. Or if you are a man in ordinary life, without special capacities, you are afraid because you also have not fulfilled. You say, “If I am cut off from my fulfillment, what is there? As I do not understand this confusion, this toil, this incessant choice and conflict, is there further opportunity for me?” You have a fear of death when you have not fulfilled in action; that is, you are afraid of death when you do not meet life wholly, completely, with a fullness of mind and heart. Therefore, the question is not why you are afraid of death, but rather, what prevents you from meeting life fully. Everything must die, must wear out. But if you have the understanding that enables you to meet life fully, then in that there is eternal life, immortality, neither beginning nor end, and there is no fear of death. Again, the question is not how to free the mind from the fear of death, but how to meet life fully, how to meet life so that there shall be fulfillment.
To meet life fully, one must be free of all defensive values. But our minds and hearts are suffocated with such values, which make our action incomplete, and hence there is fear of death. To find true value, to be free of this continual fear of death, and of the problem of the hereafter, you must know the true function of the individual, both in the creative as well as in the collective.
Now as to the second part of the question: What is beyond death? Is there a hereafter? Do you know why a person usually asks such questions, why he wants to know what is on the other side? He asks because he does not know how to live in the present; he is more dead than alive. He says, “Let me find out what comes after death”, because he has not the capacity to understand this eternal present. To me, the present is eternity; eternity lies in the present, not in the future. But to such a questioner life has been a whole series of experiences without fulfillment, without understanding, without wisdom. Therefore to him the hereafter is more enticing than the present, and hence the innumerable questions concerning what lies beyond. The man who inquires into the hereafter is already dead. If you live in the eternal present, the hereafter does not exist; then life is not divided into the past, present, and future. Then there is only completeness, and in that there is the ecstasy of life.

Question: Do you think that communication with the spirits of the dead is a help to the understanding of life in its totality?
Krishnamurti: Why should you think the dead more helpful than the living? Because the dead cannot contradict you, cannot oppose you, whereas the living can. In communication with the dead you can be fanciful; therefore you look to the dead rather than to the living to give you help. To me, the question is not whether there is a life beyond what we call death; it is not whether we can communicate with the spirits of the dead; to me, all that is irrelevant. Some people say that one can communicate with the spirits of the dead; others, that one cannot. To me, the discussion seems of very little value; for to understand life with its swift wanderings, with its wisdom, you cannot look to another to free you from the illusions that you have created. Neither the dead nor the living can free you from your illusions. Only in the awakened interest in life, in the constant alertness of mind and heart, is there harmonious living, is there fulfillment, the richness of life.

Question: What is your opinion regarding the problem of sex and of asceticism in the light of the present social crisis? Krishnamurti: Let us not look at this problem, if I may suggest, from the point of view of the present condition, because conditions are constantly changing. Let us rather consider the problem itself; for if you understand the problem, then the present crisis can also be understood.
The problem of sex, which seems to trouble so many people, has arisen because we have lost the flame of creativeness, that harmonious living. We have but become imitative machines; we have closed the doors to creative thought and emotion; we are constantly conforming; we are bound by authority, by public opinion, by fear, and thus we are confronted by this problem of sex. But if the mind and heart free themselves from the sense of imitation, from false values, from the exaggeration of the intellect, and so release their own creative function, then the problem does not exist. It has become great because we like to feel secure, because we think that happiness lies in the sense of possession. But if we understand the true significance of possession, and its illusory nature, then the mind and heart are freed from both possession and non-possession.
So also with regard to the second part of the question, which concerns asceticism. You know, we think that when confronted by a problem – in this case, the problem of possession – we can solve it and understand it by going to its opposite. I come from a country where asceticism is in our blood. The climate encourages the custom. India is hot, and there it is much better to have very few things, to sit in the shade of a tree and discuss philosophy, or to withdraw entirely from harrowing, conflicting life, to take oneself into the woods to meditate. The question of asceticism also arises when one is a slave to possession.
Asceticism has no inherent value. When you practise it, you are merely escaping from possession to its opposite, which is asceticism. It is like a man who seeks detachment because he experiences pain in attachment. “Let me be detached”, he says. Likewise, you say, “I will become an ascetic”, because possession creates suffering. What you are really doing is merely going from possession to non-possession, which is another form of possession. But in that move also there is conflict, because you do not understand the full significance of possession. That is, you look to possession for comfort; you think that happiness, security, the flattery of public opinion, lies in having many things, whether they be ideas, virtues, land, or titles. Because we think that security and happiness and power lie in possession, we accumulate, we strive to possess, we struggle and compete with each other, we stifle and exploit each other. That is what is happening throughout the world, and a cunning mind says: “Let us become ascetic; let us not possess; let us become slaves to asceticism; let us make laws so that man shall not possess.” In other words, you are but leaving one prison for another, merely calling the new one by a different name. But if you really understand the transient value of possession, then you become neither an ascetic nor a person burdened by the desire for possession; then you are truly a human being.

Question: I have received the impression that you have a certain disdain for acquiring knowledge. Do you mean that education or the study of books – for instance, the study of history or science – has no value? Do you mean that you yourself have learned nothing from your teachers?
Krishnamurti: I am talking of living a complete life, a human life, and no amount of explanation, whether of science or of history, will free the mind and heart from suffering. You may study, you may learn the encyclopaedia by heart, but you are a human being, active; your actions are voluntary, your mind is pliable, and you cannot suffocate it by knowledge. Knowledge is necessary, science is necessary. But if your mind is caught up in explanations, and the cause of suffering is intellectually explained away, then you lead a superficial life, a life without depth. And that is what is happening to us. Our education is making us more and more shallow; it is teaching us neither depth of feeling nor freedom of thought, and our lives are disharmonious.
The questioner wants to know if I have not learned from teachers. I am afraid that I have not, because there is nothing to learn. Someone can teach you how to play the piano, to work out problems in mathematics; you can be taught the principles of engineering or the technique of painting; but no one can teach you creative fulfillment, which is life itself. And yet you are constantly asking to be taught. You say, “Teach me the technique of living, and I shall know what life is.” I say that this very desire for a method, this very idea, destroys your freedom of action, which is the very freedom of life itself.

Question: You say that nobody can help us but ourselves. Do you not believe that the life of Christ was an atonement for our sins? Do you not believe in the grace of God?
Krishnamurti: These are words that I am afraid I do not understand. If you mean that another can save you, then I say that no one can save you. This idea that another can save you is a comfortable illusion. The greatness of man is that no one can help him or save him but man himself. You have the idea that an external God can show us the way through this conflicting labyrinth of life; that a teacher, a saviour of man, can show us the way, can take us out, can lead us away from the prisons that we have created for ourselves. If anyone gives you freedom, beware of that person, for you will but create other prisons through your own lack of understanding. But if you question, if you are awake, alert, constantly aware of your action, then your life is harmonious; then your action is complete, for it is born out of creative harmony, and this is true fulfillment.

Question: Whatever activity a person takes up, how can he do anything else but patchwork as long as he has not fully attained the realization of truth?
Krishnamurti: You think that work and assistance can help those who are suffering. To me such an attempt to do social good for the welfare of man is patchwork. I am not saying that it is wrong; it is undoubtedly necessary, because society is in a state which demands that there be those who work to bring about social change, those who work to better social conditions. But there must also be workers of the other type, those who work to prevent the new structures of society from being based on false ideas.
To put it differently, suppose that some of you are interested in education; you have listened to what I have been saying, and suppose you start a school or teach in a school. First of all, find out if you are interested merely in ameliorating conditions in education, or whether you are interested in sowing the seed of real understanding, in awakening people to a creative living; find out if you are interested merely in showing them a way out of troubles, in giving them consolation, panaceas, or if you are really eager to awaken them to an understanding of their own limitations, so that they can destroy the barriers which now hold them.

Question: Please explain what you mean by immortality. Is immortality as real to you as the ground on which you stand, or is it just a sublime idea?
Krishnamurti: What I am going to tell you about immortality will be difficult to understand, because to me immortality is not a belief: it is. This is a very different thing. There is immortality – and not that I know or believe in it. I hope that you see the distinction. The moment I say “I know”, immortality becomes an objective, static thing. But when there is no “I”, there is immortality. Beware of the person who says, “I know immortality”, because to him immortality is a static thing, which means that there is duality: there is the “I”, and there is that which is immortal, two different things. I say that there is immortality, and that it is because there is no”I” consciousness.
Now please don’t say that I don’t believe in immortality. To me belief has nothing to do with it. Immortality is not external. But where there is a belief in a thing there must be an object and a subject. For example, you don’t believe in sunshine: it is. Only a blind man who has never seen what sunshine is, has to believe in it.
To me there is an eternal life, an everbecoming life; it is everbecoming, not evergrowing, for that which grows is transient. Now to understand that immortality which I say exists, the mind must be free of this idea of continuity and non-continuity. When a person asks, “Is there immortality?” he wants to know if he, as an individual, will continue, or if he, as an individual, will be destroyed. That is, he thinks only in terms of opposites, in terms of duality: Either you exist or you do not. If you try to understand my answer from the point of view of duality, then you will utterly fail. I say that immortality is. But to realize that immortality, which is the ecstasy of life, mind and heart must be free from the identification with conflict from which arises the consciousness of the “I”, and free also from the idea of annihilation of the ego consciousness.
Let me put it in a different way. You know only opposites – courage and fear, possession and non-possession, detachment and attachment. Your whole life is divided into opposites – virtue and non-virtue, right and wrong – because you never meet life completely but always with this reaction, with this background of division. You have created this background; you have crippled your mind with these ideas, and then you ask: “Is there immortality?” I say there is, but to understand it, mind must be free from this division. That is, if you are afraid, do not seek courage, but let the mind free itself from fear; see the futility of what you call courage; understand that it is but an escape from fear, and that fear will exist as long as there is the idea of gain and loss. Instead of always reaching out for the opposite, instead of struggling to develop the opposite quality, let mind and heart free themselves from that in which they are caught. Do not try to develop its opposite. Then you will know for yourself, without anyone’s telling you or leading you, what immortality is; immortality which is neither the “I” nor the “you”, but which is life.

FROGNERSETEREN, NORWAY 4TH PUBLIC TALK 12TH SEPTEMBER, 1933

Friends, Today I am going to make a resume of what I have been saying here.
We have the idea that wisdom is a process of acquisition through constant multiplication of experience. We think that by multiplying experiences we shall learn, and that learning will give us wisdom, and through that wisdom in action we hope to find richness, self-sufficiency, happiness, truth. That is, to us experience is but a constant change of sensation, because we look to time to give us wisdom. When we think in this manner, that through time we shall acquire wisdom, we have the idea of getting somewhere. That is, we say that time will gradually reveal wisdom. But time does not reveal wisdom, because we use time only as a means of getting somewhere. When we have the idea of acquiring wisdom through the constant change of experience, we are looking for acquisition, and so there is no immediate perception which is wisdom.
Let us take an example; perhaps it will clarify what I mean. This change of desire, this change of sensation, this multiplication of experiences which that change of sensation brings about, we call progress. Suppose we see a hat in a shop, and we desire to possess it; having obtained that hat, we want something else – a car, and so on. Then we turn to emotional wants, and we think that in thus changing our desire from a hat to an emotional sensation we have grown. From emotional sensation we turn to intellectual sensations, to ideas, to God, to truth. That is, we think that we have progressed through constant change of experiences, from the state of wanting a hat to the state of wanting and searching for God. So we believe that through experiences, through choice, we have made progress.
Now to me that is not progress; it is merely change in sensation, sensation more and more subtle, more and more refined, but still sensation, and therefore superficial. We have merely changed the object of our desire; at first it was a hat, now it has become God, and therein we think we have made tremendous progress. That is, we think that through this gradual process of refining sensation we shall find out what truth, God, eternity is. I say you will never find truth through the gradual change of the object of desire. But if you understand that only through immediate perception, immediate discernment, lies the whole of wisdom, then this idea of the gradual change of desire will disappear.
Now what are we doing? We think: “I was different yesterday, I am different today, and I shall be different tomorrow; so we look to difference, to change – not to discernment. Take, for instance, the idea of detachment. We say to ourselves, “Two years ago I was very much attached, today I am less attached, and in a few years I shall be still less, eventually coming to a state in which I shall be quite detached.” So we think that we have grown from attachment to detachment through the constant shock of experience, which we call progress, development of character.
To me this is not progress. If you perceive with your entire being the whole significance of attachment, then you do not progress towards detachment. The mere pursuit of detachment does not reveal the shallowness of attachment, which can be understood only when the mind and heart are not escaping through the idea of detachment. This understanding is not brought about through time, but only in the realization that in attachment itself there is pain as well as transient joy. Then you ask me, “Won’t time help me to perceive that?” Time will not. What will make you perceive is either the transiency of joy or the intensity of pain in attachment. If you are fully aware of this, then you are no longer held by the idea of being different now from what you were a few years ago, and later on being different again. The idea of progressive time becomes illusory.
To put it differently, we think that through choice we shall advance, we shall learn, through choice we shall change. We choose mostly what we want. There is no satisfaction in comparative choice. That which does not satisfy us we call the unessential, and that which does, the essential. Thus we are constantly being caught in this conflict of choice from which we hope to learn. Choice, then, is merely opposites in action; it is calculation between the opposites, and not enduring discernment. Hence, we grow from what we call the unessential to what we call the essential, and that, in turn, becomes the unessential. That is, we grow from the desire for the hat, which we thought was the essential and which has now become the unessential, to what we think is the essential, only to discover that also to be the unessen- tial. So through choice we think that we shall come to the fullness of action, to the completeness of life.
As I have said, to me perception or discernment is timeless. Time does not give you discernment of experiences; it makes you only more clever, more cunning, in meeting experiences. But if you perceive and live completely in the very thing that you are experiencing, then this idea of change from the unessential to the essential disappears, and so mind frees itself from the idea of progressive time.
You look to time to change you. You say to yourself, “Through the multiplication of experiences, as in changing from the desire for the hat to the desire for God, I shall learn wisdom, I shall learn understanding.” In action born of choice there is no discernment, choice being calculation, a remembrance of incomplete action. That is, you now meet an experience partially, with a religious bias, with the prejudices of social or class distinctions, and this perverted mind, when it meets life, creates choice; it does not give you the fullness of understanding. But if you meet life with freedom, with openness, with simplicity, then choice disappears, for you live completely, without creating the conflict of opposites.

Question: What do you mean by living fully, openly, freely? Please give a practical example. Please also explain, with a practical example, how in the attempt to live fully, openly, and freely one becomes conscious of one’s hindrances which prevent freedom, and how by becoming fully conscious of them one can be liberated from them.
Krishnamurti: Suppose I am a snob and am unconscious that I am a snob; that is, I have class prejudice, and I meet life, unconscious of this prejudice. Naturally, having my mind distorted by this idea of class distinction, I cannot understand, I cannot meet life openly, freely, simply. Or again, if I have been brought up with strong religious doctrines or with some particular training, my thoughts and emotions are perverted; with this background of prejudice I go forth to meet life, and this prejudice naturally prevents my complete understanding of life. In such a background of tradition and false values, of class distinction and religious bias, of fear and prejudice, we are caught. With that background, with those established standards, either inner or outer, we go forth trying to meet life and trying to understand. From these prejudices there arises conflict, transient joys and suffering. But we are unconscious of this, unconscious that we are slaves to certain forms of tradition, to social and political environment, to false values.
Now to free yourself from this slavery, I say, do not try to analyze the past, the background of tradition to which you are a slave and of which you are unconscious. If you are a snob, do not try to find out after your action is over whether you are a snob. Be fully aware, and through what you say and through what you do, the snobbery that you are unconscious of will come into activity; then you can be free of it, for this flame of awareness creates an intense conflict, which dissolves snobbery.
As I said the other day, self-analysis is destructive, because the more you analyze yourself the less there is of action. Self-analysis takes place only when the incident is over, when it has passed away; then you return to that incident intellectually and try intellectually to dissect it, to understand it. There is no understanding in a dead thing. Rather if you are fully conscious in your action, not as a watcher who only observes, but as an actor who is wholly consumed in that action – if you are fully aware of it and not apart from it, then the process of self-analysis does not exist. It does not exist because you are then meeting life wholly, you are then not separate from experience, and in that flame of awareness you bring into activity all your prejudices, all the false standards that have crippled your mind; and by bringing them into your full consciousness you free yourself from them, because they create trouble and conflict, and through that very conflict you are liberated.
We hold to the idea that time will give us understanding. To me this is but a prejudice, a hindrance. Now suppose you think about this idea for a moment – not accept it, but think it over and desire to find out if it is true. You will find then that you can test it only in action, not by theorizing about it. Then you will not ask if what I say is true – you will test it action. I say that time does not bring you understanding; when you look to time as a gradual process of unfoldment you are creating a hindrance. You can test this only through action; only in experience can you perceive whether this idea has any value in itself. But you will miss its deep significance if you try to use it as a means to something else. The idea of time as a process of unfoldment is a cultivated method of postponement. You do not meet the thing that confronts you because you are afraid; you do not want to meet experience wholly, either because of your prejudices or because of the desire to postpone.
When you have a twisted ankle, you cannot gradually untwist it. This idea that we learn through many and increasing experiences, through the multiplication of joy and suffering, is one of our prejudices, one of our hindrances. To find out if this is true, you have to act; you will never find out merely by sitting down and discussing about it. You can find out only in the movement of action, by seeing how your mind and heart react, not by shaping them, pushing them towards a particular end; then you will see that they are reacting according to the prejudice of accumulation. You say, “Ten years ago I was different; today I am different, and ten years hence I shall be still more different”, but the meeting of experiences with the idea that you will be different, that you will gradually learn, prevents you from understanding them, from discerning instantaneously, fully.

Question: Would you also give a practical example of how self-analysis is destructive. Does your teaching at this point spring from your own experience?
Krishnamurti: First of all, I have not studied philosophies or the sacred books. I am giving you of my own experiences. I am often asked if I have studied the sacred books, philosophies, and other such writings. I have not. I am telling you what to me is truth, wisdom, and it is for you to find out, you who are learned. I think that in that very process of accumulation which we call learning lies our misfortune. When it is burdened with knowledge, with learning, mind is crippled – not that we must not read. But wisdom is not to be bought; it must be experienced in action. I think that answers the second part of the question.
I shall answer the question differently, and I hope that I shall explain it more clearly. Why do you think that you must analyze yourself? Because you have not lived fully in experiences, and that experience has created a disturbance in you. Therefore you say to yourself, “The next time I meet it I must be prepared, so let me look at that incident which is past, and I shall learn from it; then I shall meet the next experience fully, and it will not then trouble me.” So you begin to analyze, which is an intellectual process, and therefore not wholly true; as you have not understood it completely, you say: “I have learned something from that past experience; now, with that little knowledge, let me meet the next experience from which I shall learn a little more.” Thus you never live completely in the experience itself; this intellectual process of learning, accumulating, is always going on.
This is what you do every day, only unconsciously. You have not the desire to meet life harmoniously, completely; rather you think that you will learn to meet it harmoniously through analysis; that is, by adding little by little to the granary in the mind, you hope to become full, and to be able to meet life fully, wholly. But your mind will never become free through this process; full it may become – but never free, open, simple. And what prevents your being simple, open, is this constant process of analyzing an incident of the past, which must of necessity be incomplete. There can be complete understanding only in the very movement of experience itself. When you are in a great crisis, when there must be action, then you do not analyze, you do not calculate: you put all that aside, for in that moment your mind and heart are in creative harmony and there is true action.

Question: What is your view concerning religious, ceremonial, and occult practices – to mention only some activities that help mankind? Is your attitude to them merely one of complete indifference, or is it one of antagonism?
Krishnamurti: To take up such practices seems to me a waste of effort. When you say “practice”, you mean following a method, a discipline, which you hope will give you the understanding of truth. I have said a great deal about this, and I have not the time to go into it fully again. The whole idea of following a discipline makes the mind and heart rigid and consistent. Having already laid down a plan of conduct and desiring to be consistent, you say to yourself, “I must do this and I must not do that”, and your memory of that discipline is guiding you through life. That is, because of the fear of religious dogmas and the economic situation, you meet experiences partially, through the veil of these methods and disciplines. You meet life with fear, which creates prejudices; so there is incomplete understanding, and from this arise conflicts. And in order to overcome these conflicts you find a method, a discipline, according to which you judge, “I must” and “I must not.” So, having established a consistency, a standard, you discipline yourself according to it through constant memory, and this you call self-discipline, occult practices. I say that such self-discipline, practice, this continual adjustment to a pattern or not adjusting to a standard, does not free the mind. What liberates the mind is meeting life fully, being fully aware, which does not demand practice. You cannot say to yourself, “I must be aware, I must be aware.” Awareness comes in complete intensity of action. When you suffer greatly, when you enjoy greatly, at that moment you meet life with full awareness, and not with a divided consciousness; then you meet all things completely, and in this there is freedom.
With regard to religious ceremonies, the matter is very simple from my point of view. A ceremony is merely a glorified sensation. Some of you probably do not agree with this opinion. You know, it is with religious ceremonial as it is with worldly pomp: when a king holds court, the spectators are tremendously impressed and greatly exploited. The reason the majority of people go to church is to find comfort, to escape, to exploit and to be exploited; and if some of you have listened to what I have been saying during the last five or six days, you will have understood my attitude and action towards ceremonies.
“Is your attitude to them merely one of complete indifference, or is it one of antagonism?” My attitude is neither indifferent nor antagonistic. I say that they must ever hold the seed of exploitation, and therefore they are unintelligent and unrighteous.

Question: Since you do not seek followers, why then do you ask people to leave their religions and follow your advice? Are you prepared to take the consequences of such advice? Or do you mean that people need guidance? If not, why do you preach at all?
Krishnamurti: Sorry, I have never created such a thing as a follower. I have said to no one, “Leave your church and follow me.” That would be but asking you to come to another church, into another prison. I say that by following another you become but a slave, unintelligent; you become a machine, an imitative automaton. In following another you can never find out what life is, what eternity is. I say that all following of another is destructive, cruel, leading to exploitation. I am concerned with the sowing of the seed. I am not asking you to follow. I say that the very following of another is the destruction of that life, that eternal becoming.
To put it differently, by following another you destroy the possibility of discovering truth, eternity. Why do you follow? Because you want to be guided, you want to be helped. You think that you cannot understand; therefore you go to another and learn his technique, and to his method you become a slave. You become the exploiter and the exploited, and yet you hope that by continually practising that method you will release creative thinking. You can never release creative thinking by following. It is only when you begin to question the very idea of following, of setting up authorities and worshipping them, that you can find out what is true; and truth shall free your mind and heart.
“Do you mean that people need guidance?” I say that people do not need guidance; they need awakening. If you are guided to certain righteous actions, those actions are no longer righteous; they are merely imitative, compelled. But if you yourself, through questioning, through continual awareness, discover true values – and you can only do this for yourself and none other – then the whole question of following, guidance, loses its significance. Wisdom is not a thing that comes through guidance, through following, through the reading of books. You cannot learn wisdom second hand, yet that is what you are trying to do. So you say, “Guide me, help me, liberate me.” But I say, beware of the man who helps you, who liberates you.
“Why do you preach at all?” That is very simple: because I cannot help it, and also because there is so much suffering, so much joy that fades. For me there is an eternal becoming which is an ecstasy; and I want to show that this chaotic existence can be changed to orderly and intelligent co-operation in which the individual is not exploited. And this is not through an oriental philosophy, through sitting under a tree, drawing away from life, but quite the contrary; it is through the action which you find when you are fully awake, completely aware in great sorrow or joy. This flame of awareness consumes all the self-created hindrances that destroy and pervert the creative intelligence of man. But most people, when they experience suffering, seek immediate relief or try, through memory, to catch a fleeting joy. Thus their minds are constantly escaping. But I say, become aware, and you yourselves will free your minds from fear; and this freedom is the understanding of truth.

Question: Is your experience of reality something peculiar to this time? If not, why has it not been possible in the past?
Krishnamurti: Surely reality, eternity, cannot be conditioned by time. You mean to ask whether people have not searched and struggled after reality throughout the centuries. To me, that very struggle after truth has prevented them from understanding.

Question: You say that suffering cannot give us understanding, but can only awaken us. If that is so, why does not suffering cease when we have been fully awakened?
Krishnamurti: That is just it. We are not fully awakened through suffering. Suppose that someone dies. What happens? You want an immediate relief from that sorrow; so you accept an idea, a belief, or you seek amusements. Now what has happened? There has been true suffering, an awakened struggle, a shock, and to overcome that shock, that suffering, you have accepted an idea such as reincarnation, or faith in the hereafter, or belief in communication with the dead. These are all ways of escape. That is, when you are awakened there is conflict, struggle. which you call suffering; but immediately you want to put away that struggle, that awakening; you long for forgetfulness through an idea, a theory, or through an explanation, which is but a process of being put to sleep again.
So this is the everyday process of existence: you are awakened through the impact with life, experience, which causes suffering, and you want to be comforted; so you seek out people, ideas, explanations, to give you comfort, satisfaction, and this creates the exploiter and the exploited. But if in that state of acute questioning, which is suffering, if in that state of awakened interest, you meet experiences completely, then you will find out the true value and significance of all the human shelters and illusions which you have created; and the understanding of them alone will free you from suffering.

Question: What is the shortest way to get rid of our worries and troubles and our hard feelings and reach happiness and freedom?
Krishnamurti: There is no shortest way; but hard feelings, worries and troubles themselves liberate you if you are not trying to escape from them through the desire for freedom and happiness. You say that you want freedom and happiness, because hard feelings and troubles are difficult to bear. So you are merely running away from them, you don’t understand why they exist; you don’t understand why you have worries, why you have troubles, hard feelings, bitterness, suffering, and passing joy. And since you don’t understand, you want to know the shortest way out of the confusion. I say, beware of the man who shows you the shortest way out. There is no way out of suffering and trouble except through that suffering and trouble itself. This is not a hard saying; you will understand it if you think it over. The moment you stop trying to escape you will understand; you cannot but understand, for then you are no longer entangled in explanations. When all explanations have ceased, when they no longer have any meaning, then truth is. Now you are seeking explanations; you are seeking the shortest way, the quickest method; you are looking to practices, to ceremonials, to the newest theory of science. These are all escapes. But when you really understand the illusion of escape, when you are wholly confronting the thing that creates conflict within you, then that very thing will release you.
Now life creates great disturbance in you, problems of possession, sex, hatred. So you say, “Let me find a higher life, a divine life, a life of non-possession, a life of love.” But your very striving for such a life is but an escape from these disturbances. If you become aware of the falseness of escape, which you can understand only when there is conflict, then you will see how your mind is accustomed to escape. And when you have ceased to escape, when your mind is no longer seeking an explanation, which is but a drug, then that very thing from which you have been trying to escape reveals its full significance. This understanding frees the mind and heart from sorrow.

Question: Have you no faith whatever in the power of Divinity that shapes the destiny of man? If not, are you then an atheist?
Krishnamurti: The belief that there is a Divinity that can shape man is one of the hindrances of man; but when I say that, it does not mean that I am an atheist. I think the people who say they believe in God are atheists, not only those who do not believe in God, because both are slaves to a belief.
You cannot believe in God; you have to believe in God only when there is no understanding, and you cannot have understanding by searching for it. Rather, when your mind is really free from all values, which have become the very centre of ego consciousness, then there is God. We have an idea that some miracle will change us; we think that some divine or external influence will bring about changes in ourselves and in the world. We have lived in that hope for centuries, and that is what is the matter with the world – complete chaos, irresponsibility in action, because we think someone else is going to do everything for us. To discard this false idea does not mean that we must turn to its opposite. When we free the mind from opposites, when we see the falseness of the belief that someone else is looking after us, then a new intelligence is awakened in us.
You want to know what God is, what truth is, what eternal life is; so you ask me, “Are you an atheist or a theist? If you are a believer in God, then tell me what God is.” I say the man who describes what truth or God is, to him truth does not exist. When it is put in the cage of words, then truth is no longer a living reality. But if you understand the false values in which you are held, if you free yourself from them, then there is an everliving reality.

Question: When we know that our way of living will inevitably disgust others and produce complete misunderstanding in their minds, how should we act, if we are to respect their feelings and their points of view?
Krishnamurti: This question seems so simple that I do not see where the difficulty is. “How should we act in order not to trouble others?” Is that what you want to know? I am afraid then we should not be acting at all. If you live completely, your actions may cause trouble; but what is more important: finding out what is true, or not disturbing others? This seems so simple that it hardly needs to be answered. Why do you want to respect other people’s feelings and points of view? Are you afraid of having your own feelings hurt, your point of view being changed? If people have opinions that differ from yours, you can find out if they are true only by questioning them, by coming into active contact with them. And if you find that those opinions and feelings are not true, your discovery may cause disturbance to those who cherish them. Then what should you do? Should you comply with them, or compromise with them in order not to hurt your friends?

Question: Do you think that pure food has anything to do with the fulfillment of your ideas of life? Are you a vegetarian? (Laughter)
Krishnamurti: You know, humour is impersonal. I hope that the questioner is not hurt when people laugh. If I am a vegetarian, what of it? It is not what goes into your mouth that will free you, but the finding out of true values, from which arises complete action.

Question: Your message of disinterested remoteness, detachment, has been preached in all ages and in many faiths to a few chosen disciples. What makes you think that this message is now fit for everyone in a human society where there is of necessity interdependence in all social actions?
Krishnamurti: I am very sorry, but I have never said that one should be remotely disinterested, that one should be detached; quite the contrary. So first please understand what I say, and then see if it has any value.
Let us take the question of detachment. You know, for centuries we have been gathering, accumulating, making ourselves secure. Intellectually you may see the foolishness of possessiveness, and say to yourself, “Let me be detached.” Or rather, you don’t see the foolishness of it; so you begin to practise detachment, which is but another way of gathering in, laying up. For if you really perceive the foolishness of possessiveness, then you are free from both detachment and its opposite. The result is not a remote inactivity, but rather, complete action. You know, we are slaves to legislation. If a law were passed tomorrow decreeing that we should not possess property, we should be forced to comply with it, with a good deal of kicking. In that also there would be security, security in non-possession. So I say, do not be the plaything of legislation, but find out the very thing to which you are a slave – that is, acquisitiveness. Find out its true significance, without escaping into detachment; how it gives you social distinctions, power, leading to an empty, superficial life. If you relinquish possessions without understanding them, you will have the same emptiness in non-possession – the sensation of security in asceticism, in detachment, which will become the shelter to which you will withdraw in times of conflict. As long as there is fear there must be the pursuit of opposites; but if the mind frees itself from the very cause of fear, which is self-consciousness, the “I”, the limited consciousness, then there is fulfillment, completeness of action.