excerpts

One of the main causes of conflict is that there is a centre, an ego, the self, which is the residue of all memory, of all experience, of all knowledge. And that centre is always trying either to conform to the present, or to absorb the present into itself - the present being the today, every moment of living, in which is involved challenge and response.

It is forever translating whatever it meets into terms of what it has already known. What it has known are all the contents of the many thousand yesterdays, and with that residue it tries to meet the present. Therefore it modifies the present, and in the very process of modification it has changed the present, and so it creates the future. And in this process of the past, translating the present and so creating the future, the self, the 'me', the centre is caught. That is what we are.

So, the source of conflict is the experiencer, and the thing which he is experiencing. Is it not so? When you say, 'I love you', or 'I hate you', there is always this division between you and that which you love or hate. So long as there is a division between the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the thing experienced, the observer and the observed, there must be conflict. Division is contradiction. Now, can this division be bridged over so that what you see, you are; what you feel, you are? …

 

Editor’s note: The elimination of this “division” is also called a state of “no you and no me.” See much discussion of this principle as applied to true love in several articles, for example, this one.

 

And is it not possible when you hear something lovely - not just organized music, but the note of a bird in a forest - , to listen to it with all your being? And in the same way, can one not really perceive something? Because, if the mind is capable of actually perceiving, feeling, then there is only experiencing and not the experiencer; then you will find that conflict, with all its miseries, hopes, defences and so on, comes to an end.

When you see the whole truth of something; when you see the truth that conflict ceases only when there is no division between the observer and the observed; when you actually experience that state, without bringing all the forces of memory, all the yesterdays into it; then conflict ceases. Then you are following facts, and are not caught in the division which the mind makes between the observer and the fact…

You know, for most of us, to be alone is a dreadful thing. I am not now speaking of loneliness, which is a different thing. To walk alone: to be alone with somebody, or with the world: to be alone with a fact. Alone in the sense of a mind that is uninfluenced, a mind that is no longer caught in yesterday, a mind that has no future, a mind that is no longer seeking, no longer afraid - alone. A thing that is pure is alone; a mind that is alone knows love, because it is no longer caught in the problems of conflict, misery and fulfillment. It is only such a mind that is a new mind, a religious mind. And perhaps it is only such a mind that can heal the wounds of this chaotic world.

 

Editor’s note: See more discussion on the "aloneness" page.

 

Question: Would you tell us a little more of what love is?

Krishnamurti: There are two things involved in this, are there not? There is the verbal definition according to the dictionary, which is not love, obviously. The word `love' is not love any more than the word `tree' is the tree. That is one thing, and in that is included all the symbols, the words, the ideas about love. The other is, that you can find love only through negation, you can discover it only through negation.

And to discover, the mind must first be free from the slavery to words, ideas and symbols. That is, to discover, it must first wipe away everything it has known about love. Must you not wipe away everything of the known if you would discover the unknown? Must you not wipe away all your ideas, however lovely, all your traditions, however noble, to find out what God is, to find out if there is God? God, that Immensity, must be unknowable, not measurable by the mind. So the process of measurement, comparison, and the process of recognition must be completely cut away, if one would find out.

In the same way, to know, to experience, to feel what love is, the mind must be free to find out. The mind must be free to feel it, to be with it, without the division of the observer and the observed. The mind must break through the limitations of the word; it must see all the implication of the word - the sinful love and the Godly love; the love that is respectable and the love that is unholy; all the social edicts, the sanctions and the taboos which we have put around that word.

And to do that is a tremendously arduous work, is it not? - to love a Communist, to love death. And love is not the opposite of hate, because what is opposite is part of the opposite. To love, to understand the brutality that is going on in the world, the brutality of the rich and the powerful; to see a smile on a poor man's face as you go by on the road, and to be happy with that person - you try it sometime, and you will see. To love requires a mind that is always cleansing itself of the things it has known, experienced, collected, gathered, attached itself to. So there is no description of that word; there is only the feeling of it, the wholeness of it...

Question: Christ taught us how to love in his words, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself'.

Krishnamurti: Please, sir, I hope I can put it so that you will not misunderstand. To find out what is true, there can be no authority, no teacher, no follower. The authority of the book, the prophet, the saviour, the guru, must completely, totally come to an end if one would find out how to love the neighbour. There is no teaching; and if there is a teaching and you are following it, the teaching has ceased to be. What difference is there between the dictator and the priest who is full of power and authority?

Question: None.

Krishnamurti: It is no good just answering me, sir. That was not a rhetorical question. After all, we all have authorities: the authority of the professor who knows, the authority of the doctor, the authority of the policeman, the authority of the priest, or the authority of our own experience. To see where authority is evil requires an intelligent mind; and to eschew authority is quite arduous. It means to perceive the totality of authority, the whole of it, the evilness of power, whether in the politician, in the priest, in the book, or your own authority over the wife, the husband. And when you do see it, really feel it completely, then you are no longer a follower. It is only such a mind that is capable of discovering what is true, because a mind that is free can pursue the fact. To pursue the fact that you hate, you do not need authority; you need a mind that is free from fear, free from opinion, and that does not condemn. All this requires hard work. To live with something beautiful or something ugly, requires intense energy.

Have you noticed that the villager, the mountaineer, who lives with a magnificent mountain does not even see it; he has got used to it. But to live with something and never get used to it, one has to be so intense, to have such energy. And this energy comes when the mind is free, when there is no fear, no authority.

Question: Is the process of cleansing the mind a process of thought?

Krishnamurti: Can thought ever be clean? Is not all thought unclean? Because thought is born of memory, it is already contaminated. However logical, however rational it may be, it is contaminated, it is mechanical. Therefore there is no such thing as pure thought, or 'free' thought. Now to see the truth of that demands a going into the whole process of memory, which is to see that memory is mechanical, based on the many yesterdays. Thought can never make the mind pure; and seeing that fact is the purification of the mind. Please do not agree or disagree. Go into it, go after it as you go after money, position, authority and power. Put your teeth into it; and out of that comes a marvellous mind, a mind that is purged, innocent, fresh, a thing that is new, and so in a state of creation and therefore in revolution.

Question: At the moment of perception of 'what is', will you tell us what happens?

Krishnamurti: I can give you a description of it, but will that help? Let us look at it. The fact is, that we hate, we are jealous, envious. And you condemn it, saying, 'I must not'; so there is a division. Now what creates the division? First of all, the word. The word 'jealousy' is in itself separative, condemnatory. The word is the invention of the mind, caught in the knowledge centuries, and therefore made incapable of looking at the fact without the word. But when the mind does look at the fact without condemnation, which means without the word, then the feeling is not the same as the verbal description, it is not the word.

Take the word 'beauty'. You all seem to purr when that word is mentioned! To most of us beauty is a thing of the senses. It is again descriptive - 'He is a nice looking man', 'What an ugly building!' There is comparison, 'This is more beautiful than that'. Always the word is used to describe something we feel through the senses, the manifested, as the picture, the tree, the sky, a star, a person.

Now is there beauty without the word, beyond the word, beyond the senses? If you ask the artist he will say that without the expression, beauty is not; but is that so? To find out what beauty is, the immensity of it, the totalness of it, there must be the quickening of the senses, a going beyond the things we have labeled as beauty and ugliness. I do not know if you are following all this. Similarly to follow a fact like jealousy requires a mind that gives full attention to it. When one sees the fact, in the very perception of it, in the instant you see it, the jealousy is gone, gone totally. But we do not want the total disappearance of jealousy. We have been trained to like it, to live with it, and we think that if there is no jealousy there is no love.

So to follow a fact requires attention, watching. And what happens after? What happens as you are actually watching is much more important than the end result. You understand? The watching itself is much more significant than being free of the fact.

Question: Can there be thinking without memory?

Krishnamurti: In other words, is there thought without the word? You know, it is very interesting, if you go into it. Is the speaker using thought? Thought, as the word, is necessary for communication, is, it not? The speaker has to use words English words, to communicate with you who understand English. And the words come out of memory, obviously. But what is the source, what is behind the word? Let me put it differently.

There is a drum; it gives out a tone when the skin is tightly stretched and at the right tension, you strike it, and it gives out the right tone which you may recognize. The drum, which is empty in right tension, is as your own mind can be. When there is right attention and you ask the right question, then it gives the right answer. The answer may be in terms of the word, the recognizable; but that which comes out of that emptiness is, surely, creation.

The thing that is created out of knowledge, is mechanical; but the thing which comes out of emptiness, out of the unknown, that is the state of creation.