The Awakening of Intelligence. J. Krishnamurti
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think about it. Have you ever experimented to find out what it means to die psychologically, inwardly?—not how to find immortality, because eternity, that which is timeless, is now, not in some distant future. To enquire into that, one must understand the whole problem of time; not only chronological time, by the watch, but the time that thought has invented as a gradual process of change.
How does one find out about this strange thing that we all have to meet one day or another? Can you die psychologically today, die to everything that you have known? For instance: to die to your pleasure, to your attachment, your dependence, to end it without arguing, without rationalising, without trying to find ways and means of avoiding it. Do you know what it means to die, not physically, but psychologically, inwardly? Which means to put an end to that which has continuity; to put an end to your ambition, because that’s what’s going to happen when you die, isn’t it? You can’t carry it over and sit next to God! (Laughter) When you actually die, you have to end so many things without any argument. You can’t say to death, “Let me finish my job, let me finish my book, all the things I have not done, let me heal the hurts which I have given others”—you have no time.
So can you find out how to live a life now, today, in which there is always an ending to everything that you began? Not in your office of course, but inwardly to end all the knowledge that you have gathered—knowledge being your experiences, your memories, your hurts, the comparative way of living, comparing yourself always with somebody else. To end all that every day, so that the next day your mind is fresh and young. Such a mind can never be hurt, and that is innocence.
One has to find out for oneself what it means to die; then there is no fear, therefore every day is a new day—and I really mean this, one can do this—so that your mind and your eyes see life as something totally new. That is eternity. That is the quality of the mind that has come upon this timeless state, because it has known what it means to die every day to everything it has collected during the day. Surely, in that there is love. Love is something totally new every day, but pleasure is not, pleasure has continuity. Love is always new and therefore it is its own eternity.
Do you want to ask any questions?
Questioner: Supposing, Sir, that through complete, objective, self-observation I find that I am greedy, sensual, selfish and all that. Then how can I know whether this kind of living is good or bad, unless I have already some preconceptions of the good? If I have these preconceptions, they can only derive from self-observation.
KRISHNAMURTI: Quite, Sir.
Questioner: I also find another difficulty. You seem to believe in sharing, but at the same time you say that two lovers, or husband and wife, cannot base their love, shouldn’t base their love, on comforting each other. I don’t see anything wrong in comforting each other—that is sharing.
KRISHNAMURTI: The gentleman says, “One must have a concept of the good, otherwise, why should one give up all this ambition, greed, envy and all the rest of it?” You can have a formula or a concept of what is better, but can you have a concept of what is good?
Questioner: Yes, I think so.
KRISHNAMURTI: Can thought produce what is good?
Questioner: No, I meant the conception of such good.
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, Sir. The conception of good is the product of thought; otherwise how can you conceive what is good?
Questioner: The conceptions can only be derived from our self-observation.
KRISHNAMURTI: I’m just pointing that out, Sir. Why should you have a concept of the good at all?
Questioner: Otherwise how do I know whether my life is good or bad?
KRISHNAMURTI: Just listen to the question. Don’t we know what conflict is? Do I have to have a concept of non-conflict before I am aware of conflict? I know what conflict is—the struggle, the pain. Don’t I know that, without knowing a state when there is no conflict? When I formulate what is good, I will formulate it according to my conditioning, according to my way of thinking, feeling, my particular idiosyncrasy and all the rest of my cultural conditioning. Is the good to be projected by thought?—and will thought then tell me what is good and bad in my life? Or has goodness nothing whatsoever to do with thought, or with a formula? Where does goodness flower?—do tell me. In a concept? In some idea, in some ideal that lies in the future? A concept means a future, a tomorrow. It may be very far away, or very close, but it is still in time. And when you have a concept, projected by thought—thought being the response of memory, the response of accumulated knowledge depending on the culture in which you have lived—do you find that goodness in the future, created by thought? Or do you find it when you begin to understand conflict, pain and sorrow?
So in the understanding of “what is”—not by comparing “what is” with “what should be”—in that understanding flowers goodness. Surely, goodness has nothing whatsoever to do with thought—has it? Has love got anything to do with thought? Can you cultivate love by formulating it and saying, “My ideal of love is that”! Do you know what happens when you cultivate love? You are not loving. You think you will have love at some future date; in the meantime you are violent. So is goodness the product of thought? Is love the product of experience, of knowledge? What was the second question, Sir?
Questioner: The second question was about sharing.
KRISHNAMURTI: What do you share? What are we sharing now? We talked about death, we talked about love, about the necessity of total revolution, about complete psychological change, not to live in the old pattern of formulas, of struggle, pain, imitation, conformity and all the rest of those things man has lived for through millennia and has produced this marvellous, messy world! We have talked about death. How do we share that together?—share the understanding of it, not the verbal statement, not the description, not the explanations of it? What does sharing mean?—to share the understanding, to share the truth which comes with the understanding. And what does understanding mean? You tell me something which is serious, which is vital, which is relevant, important, and I listen to it completely, because it is vital to me. To listen vitally, my mind must be quiet, mustn’t it? If I am chattering, if I am looking somewhere else, if I am comparing what you are saying with what I know, my mind is not quiet. It is only when my mind is quiet and listens completely, that there is the understanding of the truth of the thing. That we share together, otherwise we can’t share; we can’t share the words—we can only share the truth of something. You and I can only see the truth of something when the mind is totally committed to the observation.
To see the beauty of a sunset, the lovely hills, the shadows and the moonlight—how do you share it with a friend? By telling him, “Do look at that marvellous hill”? You may say it, but is that sharing? When you actually share something with another, it means you must both have the same intensity, at the same time, at the same level. Otherwise you can’t share, can you? You must both have a common interest, at the same level, with the same passion—otherwise how can you share something? You can share a piece of bread—but that’s not what we are talking about.
To see together—which is sharing together—we must both of us see; not agree or disagree, but see together what actually is; not interpret it according to my conditioning or your conditioning, but see together what it is. And to see together one must be free to observe, one must be free to listen. That means to have no prejudice. Then only, with that quality of love, is there sharing.
Questioner: How can one quieten, or free the mind, from interruptions by the past?
KRISHNAMURTI: You cannot quieten the mind: full stop! Those are tricks. You can take a pill and make the mind quiet —you absolutely cannot make the mind quiet, because you are the mind. You can’t say, “I will make my mind quiet”. Therefore one has to understand what meditation is—actually, not what other people say it is. One has to find out whether the mind can ever be quiet; not: how to make the mind quiet. So one has to go into this whole question of knowledge, and whether the mind, the brain cells, which are loaded with all the past memories, can be absolutely quiet and come into function when necessary;