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Krishnamurti

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We ought to talk over together this evening why human beings who have lived for over four thousand years, are behaving as they are, what has happened to them, what has happened to each one of us that we don't lead an orderly, sane, balanced life. We have created this society which is immoral, unethical, corrupt, destructive. Each one of us has contributed to it, and if there is to be a radical change in the social structure, we have to begin with ourselves, not with politics, not with Marxism or some kind of retreat from the present. We have to put order in our house first. We are disorderly, violent, confused, lonely. So we are going to talk over this evening what is total order, if there is any kind of love, what is compassion, whether sorrow can ever end, the sorrow of human beings right throughout the world.

We are talking over together - you and the speaker - our problems amicably, without any resistance, not agreeing but exploring, investigating, seeing why we live such disorderly lives and why we accept things as they are. We are not advocating or talking about physical violence, physical revolution. On the contrary, such revolutions have never produced a good society. We are talking about human behaviour, why man is what he is. We cannot blame the environment, we cannot blame the politicians or the scientists. That is a very easy escape, but what we ought to be concerned with is why somewhat intelligent people, somewhat educated people, lead such disorderly lives. So our question is, what is disorder? A confused mind, a confused life, cannot find what is order. Could we together find out for ourselves what causes disorder in our lives, what brings about a society which is utterly disordered? What is disorder? What is the nature and the structure of disorder? There is disorder, isn't there? Where there is contradiction - saying one thing and doing something totally different - there is bound to be disorder. I wonder if one is aware of this. Then, there is conflict, disorder, when we are pursuing ideals - whether political ideals, religious ideals or our own projection of what we think we ought to be. That is, where there is division between actually what is happening in ourselves and neglecting that and pursuing an ideal, that is one of the causes of disorder. Another cause in the psychological, so-called inward life, is to pursue authority, the authority of a book, the authority of a guru, the authority of so-called spiritual people. We accept very easily authority in our inward life. Of course, you have to accept the authority of the scientists, of the technocrat, the doctor, the surgeon. But inwardly, psychologically, why do we accept authority at all? This is an important question to ask. We will come back to it.

We are asking what are the causes of disorder. We said pursuing an ideal is disorder, accepting authority of another in the world of the mind, the inward psychological state, is disorder. One of the other causes of disorder is the everlasting attempt to become something inwardly. So, perhaps these and other causes bring about disorder. We are going to investigate each one of them. Why do we have ideals at all? What is an ideal? Originally the root meaning of that word 'idea' was to observe, to look, to seek. But we have translated it as a projection of a particular concept brought about by thought, and that is the ideal and the ideal is far more important and the pursuit of that ideal becomes all-consuming when you totally neglect 'what is.' 'What is' is important. not the ideal. We are using the word, 'what is,' in the sense what is actually happening, both outwardly and inwardly. We are violent, as most human beings are. To have an ideal of non-violence has no reality, has no validity, but what has validity, reality, is the fact that we are violent, and to deal with that violence not in terms of ideals and patterns. Perhaps, in this country, the pursuit of non-violence which is an illusion has deprived us of our energy to look at actually what is going on.

We never look at 'what is'. We want to change what is taking place to something else. This has been the process of centuries upon centuries. The political ideal, the religious ideal, the ideal that one has created for oneself, an end, a goal - and the goal, the end, the ideal, becomes extraordinarily important and not what is actually happening. That is, the 'what is' is being transformed into 'what should be'. Then there is struggle, there is disorder. Whereas, if we give our attention to 'what is', and the 'what is' is violence, hatred, antagonism, brutality, we can deal with it. We are concerned to discover the causes of disorder. We are saying that one of the major factors of disorder in life is trying to transform or change 'what is' into 'what should be'. The 'what should be' is totally unreal, but 'what is' is all-important. If I am greedy, I have to enquire into the nature of greed, whether that greed can really have an end or it must continue and not have the ideal of non-greed. To see the illusory nature of 'what is', is the beginning of intelligence.

Then there is division in us, there is duality, the opposite. Is there an opposite at all? There is opposite as light and darkness, tall and short, and so on. Basically, is there an opposite at all? We say there is an opposite in the world of psyche, in the world of spirit. We say there is the good and the bad, the good and the evil. Is good the opposite of evil? If it is the opposite, then it has its root in its own opposite. If evil is the opposite of the good, then that evil has a relationship with the good. The opposite is put together by thought. Either the good is totally divorced from evil or it is the outcome, the opposite, the invention, of thought as the good. So what is the good? Let us enquire into that.

What is the good? According to the dictionary, the common usage of that word means good behaviour, good in the sense of being whole, not fragmented but having that sense or understanding of the nature of the wholeness of life, and in that there is no fragmentation as the evil. But if evil is the outcome of the good, then that evil has a relationship with the good. We are enquiring together if there is an opposite in our life, if there is hate and love. Can love have a relationship with hate, with jealousy? If hate has a relationship with love, then it is not love. Obviously. If I hate someone, and at the same time talk about love, it is incompatible. The two don't meet. We are questioning, is there an opposite at all? Where there is an opposite, there must be conflict. I hate, and also I think I love him. The opposite of hate is not love. The opposite of hate is still hate.

So, that is one of the factors of disorder in our life: the ideal, the opposite and the acceptance of so-called spiritual authority. There is the authority of law, the authority of government, the authority of a policeman, the authority of a good surgeon. But psychologically, inwardly, why do we accept authority - the authority of the priest, the authority of a book, the authority of a guru? When we follow somebody and be guided by somebody, guided what to believe and what not to believe, to accept his system of enlightenment and so on, what is happening to our own brain, to our own inward state? You are my guru. You tell me what to do, what to think, what to believe and the various steps I must take to attain enlightenment or whatever they call it, and I, rather gullible, want to escape from my life which is disorderly, corrupt, insecure. I trust the guru. I give him my life and say I surrender, I give part of my life in attaining that enlightenment. Why do I do that? Because I want some kind of security, some kind of assurance, that I will have some day some kind of happiness, some kind of release from my daily worries and misery. The guru gives you an assurance and you feel satisfied. But you never question the guru, you never doubt what he is saying, you never discuss with him; you accept. That has been the condition of human beings right throughout the world for millions of years. The interpreter between god and you, between that which is holy and you - and you, wanting comfort, security, will accept him without a single doubt.

Now, to question spiritual authority - whether it is Christian authority or the spiritual authority of Islam with their book, or your guru with his statement - to question, to doubt it, is to rely entirely on yourself, be a light to oneself, and that light cannot be lit by another. It requires your questioning, your demanding, of not only the outer, the spiritual authority, but of yourself - why you believe - so that your own mind becomes clear, strong, vital, so that there is energy for creative activity. But when you follow somebody, your brain becomes dull, routine, mechanical, which is the very destructive nature of the human mind, or human brain. So please see why this disorder exists in our life, and when you begin to investigate into this disorder, then out of that disorder comes order. When there is the dissipation of causes of disorder, there is order. Then you don't have to pursue what is order. Order is virtue, order means freedom.

We have to enquire also into what is freedom. We have said that where there is order in our life, total order, that order is virtue and that very order is freedom. The word 'freedom' is misused by everybody. There is freedom from something and there is freedom. Freedom from something is not freedom. We will go into that. I am a prisoner, prisoner of my own ideas, of my own theories, of my own conceptions, and my brain is a prisoner to that. Then freedom is, to be free from my prison to fall into another prison. I free myself from one particular conditioning and, unknowingly or unconsciously, fall into another conditioning. So freedom is from something; from anger, from jealousy; all that is not freedom at all. Freedom means free, not from something. This requires a great deal of enquiry, which is, our brain is conditioned like a computer, programmed to be a Hindu, programmed to be a Muslim, Christian, and so on. The computer is programmed; our brain has been programmed for thousands of years, which is our conditioning. Freedom is the ending of that conditioning. Where there is an end to conditioning, then only there is freedom. Without having that freedom, there must be disorder. So the ideal, the opposite, the pursuit of spiritual authority and accepting the conditioning that we are Hindus, Muslims and so on - all that brings disorder. When there is an end to that, there is order. You will say that it is impossible, impossible not to follow somebody because you are so uncertain, so insecure, and you are willing to follow somebody so easily, which means your brain is becoming dull, inactive. You may be active physically, but psychologically, inwardly, you cease to be active.

We ought to talk over together sorrow, whether there is an end to sorrow. When there is an end to sorrow, then only there is love, then only there is compassion. What is sorrow, grief, pain, a feeling of loneliness, the sense of isolation? What is the nature of sorrow? What is the cause of sorrow. which is pain, fear, a sense of desperate loneliness? Why have human beings, from time immemorial, suffered and are still suffering, not from physical pain, some fatal disease or a feeling of utter rejection, but from the nature of suffering inwardly - the pain, the fears and the escape from it? I wonder if we have realized that for the last thousand years there have been many wars, and how many people have cried, mothers have shed tears! The pain, the anxiety, the hope, all that constitute sorrow, and this sorrow exists in all the days of our life, and we never seem to be free of it, completely ending that sorrow.

We together will go into this because, there is an end to sorrow. Sorrow comes with the loss of somebody, with the death of somebody. My son - I have lost him; there is grief and tears and great sense of loneliness. Then, in that state of shock, in that state of pain, anxiety, loneliness, I seek comfort, I want to escape from this agony. I escape through every form of entertainment, whether it is the drug, the alcohol, the temple, mosque or the church. I begin to invent all kinds of fanciful concepts. I lost him, he is dead, gone, and there is that pain. Can one remain with that pain? Can I look at that pain, hold it, hold it as a precious jewel - not escape, not suppress, not rationalize it, not seek the cause of it, but hold it as a vessel holds water? Hold this thing called sorrow, the pain, that is, I have lost my son and I am lonely, not to escape from that loneliness, not to suppress it, not to intellectually rationalize it, but to look at that loneliness, understand the depth of it, the nature of it. Loneliness is total isolation which is brought about through our daily activity of selfish ambitions or ideological ambitions, competitions, each one out for himself. Those are the activities which bring about loneliness. But if you run away from it, you will never solve sorrow. The very word 'sorrow' etymologically means passion. Most of us have no passion. We may have lust, we may have ambition, we may want to become rich; we donate our energies to all that. But that does not bring about passion. Only with the ending of sorrow there is passion. That is total energy, not limited by thought. So it is important to understand the nature of suffering and the ending of it. The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain, too. Look at it. It is a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain and look at it, be with it, live with it, not get bitter, cynical, but to see the nature of sorrow. There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow.

We also have to talk over together what is love. What does that word mean to you? If you are asked in a drawing room what is the meaning of that word to you, what would you answer? What do you mean by that? I love playing golf, I love to read, I love my wife, I love god. Is that love? Do you love your wife? Do you love your husband? Do you love your friend? We are enquiring into what is love. This is very important to enquire because without love, life is empty. You may have all the riches of the earth, you may be a great banker, great scientist, mathematician, great technician, capable of great technology, but without love you are lost, an empty shell. Together we are going to find not what love is, but what is not love. That is, through negation come to the positive. Is jealousy love, jealousy in which there is attachment, anxiety? In jealousy there is hate. Is that love? You are attached to your family, you are attached to a person or an idea or a concept or a conclusion. What are the implications of your attachment? Suppose I am married, I am attached to my wife. What does it mean? Where there is attachment, there is fear. Where there is attachment, there is possessiveness. When there is attachment to an ideal, to a concept, to a belief, or to a person with all the consequences of jealousy, anger, hatred, suspicion, surely all that is not love. To understand the nature of love, is it possible to be totally free from attachment? Please ask this question of yourself.

You are all attached to something or the other. If I may suggest, most respectfully, become aware of the consequences of that attachment. If you are attached to an ideal, you are always on the defensive, or aggressive. If you come to a conclusion, to hold on to that conclusion is to end all further enquiry. Where there is attachment, there must be pain. I am attached to my wife and she may run away, she may look at another man, or she may die. In attachment, there is always fear, there is always anxiety, suspicion, watching. Surely, that is not love. So, can one be totally free of all attachment? It is up to you, but when you are attached, there is no love. Because, in that attachment there is fear. Fear is not love. And the ambitious man who wants to climb the ladder of success has no love because he is concerned with himself, with his achievements, which is the gathering of power, position, prestige. How can such a man love another? He may have a family, children, but in that man there is no love. When you say, 'I love god as the highest principle', is that also love? That god, that principle, the highest principle 'Brahman', is the result of thought. God is invented by man. I am sure you won't like this. But you are attached to that concept: god exists. Then you ask who is the creator of all this misery. God hasn't created all this, has he? If he has, he must be an odd god, he must be a sadist god. All the gods in the world are invented by thought, and to find out what love is, there must be an end to sorrow, end to attachment, end to everything we are committed to inwardly. Where the self, the ego, the me is, love is not. You hear all this, and you will walk away from here with the same attachment, with the same convictions, and never enquire further because the more you enquire about all this, the more life becomes dangerous. Because you may have to give up a lot of things naturally, easily, not as self-sacrifice. You have to understand the nature of attachment and be free from it. You have to realize that when you see the truth of something, you are standing completely alone, and that you may perceive that, and of that you are frightened. You may believe, see the truth inwardly of the nature of attachment, but as you don't want to quarrel with your wife, or husband, you accept. Gradually you become hypocrites.

Also we should discuss the nature of intelligence. Compassion has its own intelligence, love has its own intelligence. We are going to enquire into what is intelligence. Surely, it cannot be bought in books. Knowledge is not intelligence. Where there is love, compassion, it has the beauty of its own intelligence. Compassion cannot exist if you are a Hindu, or a Catholic, Protestant or a Buddhist, or a Marxist. Love is not the product of thought. In understanding the nature of love, compassion, which is to deny all that which is not, to see that which is false as false, is the beginning of intelligence. To see the truth in the false is the beginning of intelligence. To see the nature of disorder and end it, not carry on day after day but to end it - the ending is the immediate perception which is intelligence.

We are enquiring into what is intelligence. Cleverness is not intelligence. Having a great deal of knowledge about various subjects - mathematics, history, science, poetry, painting - that is not the activity of intelligence. The investigator into the atom may have an extraordinary capacity of concentration, imagination, probing, questioning, formulating hypothesis after hypothesis, theory, after theory, but all that is not intelligence. Intelligence is the activity of the wholeness of life, and that intelligence is not yours or mine. It does not belong to any country or to any people, like love is not Christian love or Hindu love, and so on. So, please enquire into all this because our life depends on all this. We are unfortunate miserable people, always in travail, always in conflict. We have accepted it as the way of life. But in enquiring into all this, there is awakening of that intelligence, and when that intelligence is in operation, in action, there is only right action.

I WONDER IF YOU ever ask yourself a fundamental question; a question that, in the very asking, indicates a depth of seriousness; a question the answering of which does not necessarily depend on another, or on any philosophy, or teacher and so on. I would like to ask, this morning, one of those serious and fundamental questions.

Is there right action which is right under all circumstances, or is there only action neither right nor wrong? Right action varies according to the individual and the different circumstances in which he is placed. The individual as opposed to the community, the individual as a soldier, he might ask, 'What is right action?' To him the right action obviously would be as he's in the front to kill. And the individual with his family enclosed within the four walls of the idea of mine, my family, my possessions to him there is also a right action. And the business man in the office, to him also there is right action. And so the right action breeds opposition; the individual action opposed to the collective action. Each maintains that his action is right; the religious man with his exclusive beliefs and dogmas pursues what he considers right action and this separates him from the non-believer, from those who think or feel the opposite of what he believes. There is the action of the specialist who is working according to certain specialized knowledge, he says 'This is the right action'. There are politicians with their right and wrong action the communists, the socialists, the capitalists, and so on. There is this whole stream of life, which includes the business life, the political life, the religious life, the life of the family and also the life in which there is beauty love, kindliness, generosity and so on.

One asks oneself in looking at all these fragmentary actions which breed their own opposites seeing all this, one asks 'What is right action in all circumstances?' Or there is only action, which is neither right nor wrong a very difficult statement even to make or to believe, because obviously it is wrong action to kill, obviously it is wrong action when one is held by a particular dogma and acts according to that.

There are those who, seeing all this, say 'We are activists, we are not concerned with philosophies, with theories, with various forms of speculative ideology, we are concerned with action, doing.' And, there are those who withdraw from 'doing' into monasteries, they retire into themselves and go some paradise of their own, or they spend years in meditation, thinking to find the truth and from there act.

So, serving these phenomena the opposing and fragmentary actions of those who say 'We are right', 'This is the right action'. This will solve the problems of the world' yet so creating, consciously or unconsciously, activities opposed to that and thus everlasting divisions and aggressive attitudes one asks 'What is one to do?'

What is one to do in a world that is really appalling, brutal in a world where there is such violence, such corruption, where money, money, money, matters enormously and where one is willing to sacrifice another in seeking power, position, prestige, fame; where each man is wanting, struggling to assert, to fulfil, to be somebody. What is one to do? what are you to do? I do not know if you have asked this question, 'What am I, living in this world, seeing all this before me, the misery, the enormous suffering man is inflicting upon man, the deep suffering that one goes through, the anxiety, the fear, the sense of guilt, the hope and the despair seeing all this, one must, if one is at all aware of all this, ask 'what am I, living in this world, to do?' How would you answer that question? If you put that question to yourself in all seriousness, if you put that question very, very seriously, it has an extraordinary intensity and immediacy. What is your answer to this challenge? One sees that the fragmentary action, the action that is 'right', does lead to contradiction, to opposition, to separateness; and man has pursued this, the 'right' action, calling it morality, pursuing a behaviour pattern, a system in which he is caught and by which he is conditioned; to him there is right action and wrong action, which in their turn produce other contradictions and oppositions. So one asks oneself, 'Is there an action which is neither right nor wrong only action?'

Please, do not just hear a lot of words and ideas with which you agree or disagree, which you accept or reject. It is a very, very serious problem that is involved in this; how to live life non-fragmentarily, a life which is not broken up into family, business, religion, politics, amusement, seriousness you know, broken up constantly.

How to live a life that is complete, whole? I hope you are asking the same question of yourself; if you are, then we can go further together, we can communicate and be in real communion with each other on this very, very fundamental, serious, question.

In the East they have their own pattern of behaviour; they say, 'We Brahmins, we are right, we are superior, we are this, we are that, we know', they assert their dogmas and beliefs, their conduct and morality, yet all in opposition, 'tolerating' each other and killing each other at a moment's notice. So we ask, 'Is there a life of action which is never fragmentary, never exclusive, never divided?'

How will we find out? Is it to be found out through verbal explanations is it to be found out by another telling you? Is it to be found out because you, having never acted completely, are so tired, exhausted, heartbroken that out of that weariness and despair you want to find the other? So one must be clear about the motive with which one asks this question. If one has a motive of any kind, one's answer will have no meaning whatsoever because the motive dictates the answer. One must ask this question without any motive, because it is then only that truth is to be found, the truth of anything. In putting this question one must discover one's motive. And if one has a motive because one wants to be happy, or because one wants peace in the world, or because one has struggled for so long, or if one's motive in searching for complete action is out of weariness, out of despair, out of various forms of longing, of escape, of fulfilment then one's answer will inevitably be very limited. So one must be really aware when one puts this question to oneself. But if you can put it without any motive at all then you are free look you understand? you are free to find out you are not tethered to a particular demand, to a particular urge. Can we go on from there? It is very difficult to be free of motive.

So what is action, which is not fragmentary, which is neither right nor wrong and which does not create opposition, action which is not dualistic please follow all this an action which does not breed conflict, contradictions? Having put that question to yourself in all seriousness, how are you going to find out? You have to find out. Nobody can give it to you, it would not be of your own finding, it would not be something which you have come upon because you have looked with clarity and therefore something which could never be taken away, destroyed by circumstance. In asking this question, the intellect, with all its cunning, can given all the data, all the circumstances, seeing that every contradictory action breeds conflict and therefore misery it can say 'I will do this' and make that into a principle, a pattern, a formula, according to which it will live; but then you will live according to that formula as you have done previously, then you are again breeding contradiction, then you are imitating, following, obeying. To live according to a formula, to an ideology, to a foreseeable conclusion, is to live a life of adjustment, imitation, conformity, therefore a life of opposition, duality, endless conflict and confusion. The intellect cannot answer this question, nor can thought. Thought if you have gone into it deeply with yourselves thought is always divided, thought can never bring about a unity of action; it may bring about integrated action, but any action that is the outcome of integration through thought will inevitably breed contradictory action.

One sees the danger of thought, thought which is the response of memory, experience, knowledge, conviction and so on; one sees that thought, which is the response from the past, can lay out a way of life and force itself to conform to the formula which it has created ideologically. And one sees that that means inward conflict, for in that there is right and wrong, that which is true, or false, that which should be and that which is not, that which might have been and so on and on. So, if the mind, in putting this question, can be clear of motive, be clear of the danger of the intellectual perception and the conformity to an ideology which it has invented, then it can ask this question and the answer will be entirely different.

Is it possible to live so completely, so wholly, so totally that there are no fragmentary actions? As one observes, life is action; whatever you do or think or feel, is action. Life is a movement, an endless movement, without a beginning and without an end; and we have broken it up into the past, present and the future, as living and dying, as well as breaking it up into love and hate, into nationalities. And we are asking: is there a way of life not ideologically, but actually, every minute of daily life in which there is no contradiction, no opposition, no fragmentation, in the very living of which is complete action? 14 Have you ever considered what love is? is it this torture? it may be beautiful at the beginning when you tell somebody 'I love you', but it soon deteriorates into every form of cunning, possessive, dominating relationship, with its hate and jealous anxiety, its fear. Such love is pleasure and desire, pleasure of sex and the urge of desire maintained by thought chewing over that particular pleasure day after day; that is what we call love. The love of Country, the love of God, the love of fellow man, all that means absolutely nothing, it is just ideas. When we talk about the love of the neighbour, in the church or in the temple, we do not really mean it; we are hypocrites for on Monday morning we destroy our neighbour in business, through competition, by wanting a better position, more power, and so on and on and on. Love of the particular, in the family and the love of man outside that circle as possessiveness, possessing my wife, my husband, my child, dominating them, or I let them go because I am too occupied, I have business, I have other interests, I have... God knows what else, so there is no home; yet when there is a home there is this constant battle of possessiveness, domination, fear, jealousy, of trying to fulfil oneself through the family, through sex all these phenomena we call love; I do not think we are exaggerating, we are merely stating the fact; we may not like it but it is there. In that love again is the right and wrong action, which again breeds various forms of conflict. Is all that love? that which we accept as love, that which has become part of our nature. We instinctively cover up this structure, but when you look at it objectively, very earnestly, with clear eyes is that love? obviously it is not. And being caught in the behaviour pattern set by ourselves and by society for centuries, we cannot break away, we do not know what to do and hence there is conflict between the 'right' love and the 'wrong' love, between what should be and what is. The 'morality' of this structure is really immoral; and knowing that, we create another ideology and therefore conflict in opposing the immorality. So, what is love? not your opinion, not your conclusion, not what you think about it who cares what is thought about it. You can only find out what it is when you completely get rid of the structure of jealousy, domination, hate, envy, the desire to possess the structure of pleasure.

Pleasure is something that has to be gone into. We are not saying that pleasure is wrong or right, which again would lead us to various conclusions and therefore oppositions. But for most of us, love is associated, is closely knit, with pleasure sexual and other forms of pleasure. And if love is pleasure then love is pain; and when there is pain, is there love? logically, there is not, yet we go on with it, day after day. Can one break away from the structure, the tradition, the thing in which we are caught and find out, or come upon, that state of love which is none of this? it is beyond, outside the tent, it is not within the tent, within ourselves.

Is a life possible in which the very living is the beauty of action and love? Without love there is always the right and wrong action, breeding conflict, contradiction and opposition. There is only one action that comes out of love; there is no other action which never contradicts, never breeds conflict. You know, love is both aggressive and non-aggressive do not misunderstand it love is not something pacifist, quiet, down somewhere in the cellar or up in heaven; when you love you have vitality, drive, intensity and the immediacy of action. So, is it possible for us human beings to be involved in this beauty of action, which is love?

It would quite extraordinary if all of us here, in this tent, could come upon this not as an idea, not something speculatively to be reached and actually from this day step out into a different dimension and live a life so whole, complete, so sacred; such a life is the religious life, there is no other life, no other religion. Such a life will answer every problem, because love is extraordinarily intelligent and practical, with the highest form of sensitivity and there is humility. That is the only thing that is important in life; one is either steeped in it, or one is not. If we could, all of us, come into this naturally, easily, without any conflict or effort, then we would live a different life, a life of great intelligence, sagacity, clarity; it is this clarity which is a light to itself, this clarity solves all problems.

Obviously, there must be a radical revolution. The world crisis demands it. Our lives demand it. Our everyday incidents, pursuits, anxieties, demand it. Our problems demand it. There must be a fundamental, radical revolution, because everything about us has collapsed. Though seemingly there is order, in fact there is slow decay, destruction: the wave of destruction is constantly overtaking the wave of life.

So there must be a revolution - but not a revolution based on an idea. Such a revolution is merely the continuation of the idea, not a radical transformation. A revolution based on an idea brings bloodshed, disruption, chaos. Out of chaos you cannot create order; you cannot deliberately bring about chaos and hope to create order out of that chaos. You are not the God-chosen who are to create order out of confusion That is such a false way of thinking on the part of those people who wish to create more and more confusion in order to bring about order. Because for the moment they have power, they assume they know all the ways of producing order. Seeing the whole of this catastrophe - the constant repetition of wars, the ceaseless conflict between classes, between peoples, the awful economic and social inequality, the inequality of capacity and gifts, the gulf between those who are extraordinarily happy, unruffled, and those who are caught in hate, conflict, and misery - seeing all this, there must be a revolution, there must be complete transformation, must there not?

Is this transformation, is this radical revolution, an ultimate thing or is it from moment to moment? I know we should like it to be the ultimate thing, because it is so much easier to think in terms of far away. Ultimately we shall be transformed, ultimately we shall be happy, ultimately we shall find truth; in the meantime, let us carry on. Surely such a mind, thinking in terms of the future, is incapable of acting in the present; therefore such a mind is not seeking transformation, it is merely avoiding transformation. What do we mean by transformation?

Transformation is not in the future, can never be in the future. It can only be now, from moment to moment. So what do we mean by transformation? Surely it is very simple: seeing the false as the false and the true as the true. Seeing the truth in the false and seeing the false in that which has been accepted as the truth. Seeing the false as the false and the true as the true is transformation, because when you see something very clearly as the truth, that truth liberates. When you see that something is false, that false thing drops away. When you see that ceremonies are mere vain repetitions, when you see the truth of it and do not justify it, there is transformation, is there not?, because another bondage is gone. When you see that class distinction is false, that it creates conflict, creates misery, division between people - when you see the truth of it, that very truth liberates. The very perception of that truth is transformation, is it not? As we are surrounded by so much that is false, perceiving the falseness from moment to moment is transformation. Truth is not cumulative. It is from moment to moment. That which is cumulative, accumulated, is memory, and through memory you can never find truth, for memory is of time - time being the past, the present and the future. Time, which is continuity, can never find that which is eternal; eternity is not continuity. That which endures is not eternal. Eternity is in the moment. Eternity is in the now. The now is not the reflection of the past nor the continuance of the past through the present to the future.

A mind which is desirous of a future transformation or looks to transformation as an ultimate end, can never find truth, for truth is a thing that must come from moment to moment, must be discovered anew; there can be no discovery through accumulation. How can you discover the new if you have the burden of the old? It is only with the cessation of that burden that you discover the new. To discover the new, the eternal, in the present, from moment to moment, one needs an extraordinarily alert mind, a mind that is not seeking a result, a mind that is not becoming. A mind that is becoming can never know the full bliss of contentment; not the contentment of smug satisfaction; not the contentment of an achieved result, but the contentment that comes when the mind sees the truth in what is and the false in what is. The perception of that truth is from moment to moment; and that perception is delayed through verbalization of the moment.

Transformation is not an end, a result. Transformation is not a result. Result implies residue, a cause and an effect. Where there is causation, there is bound to be effect. The effect is merely the result of your desire to be transformed. When you desire to be transformed, you are still thinking in terms of becoming; that which is becoming can never know that which is being. Truth is being from moment to moment and happiness that continues is not happiness. Happiness is that state of being which is timeless. That timeless state can come only when there is a tremendous discontent - not the discontent that has found a channel through which it escapes but the discontent that has no outlet, that has no escape, that is no longer seeking fulfilment. Only then, in that state of supreme discontent, can reality come into being. That reality is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thoughts, in the fullness of love.

Love is not different from truth. Love is that state in which the thought process, as time, has completely ceased.

Where love is, there is transformation. Without love, revolution has no meaning, for then revolution is merely destruction, decay, a greater and greater ever mounting misery. Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment.

Question: I have listened to all your talks and I have read all your books. Most earnestly I ask you, what can be the purpose of my life if, as you say, all thought has to cease, all knowledge to be suppressed, all memory lost? How do you relate that state of being, whatever it may be according to you, to the world in which we live? What relation has such a being to our sad and painful existence?

Krishnamurti: We want to know what this state is which can only be when all knowledge, when the recognizer, is not; we want to know what relationship this state has to our world of daily activity, daily pursuits. We know what our life is now - sad, painful, constantly fearful, nothing permanent; we know that very well. We want to know what relationship this other state has to that - and if we put aside knowledge, become free from our memories and so on, what is the purpose of existence.

What is the purpose of existence as we know it now? - not theoretically but actually? What is the purpose of our everyday existence? just to survive, isn't it? - with all its misery, with all its sorrow and confusion, wars, destruction and so on. We can invent theories, we can say: "This should not be, but something else should be." But those are all theories, they are not facts. What we know is confusion, pain, suffering, endless antagonisms. We know also, if we are at all aware, how these come about. The purpose of life, from moment to moment, every day, is to destroy each other, to exploit each other, either as individuals or as collective human beings. In our loneliness, in our misery, we try to use others, we try to escape from ourselves - through amusements, through gods, through knowledge, through every form of belief, through identification. That is our purpose, conscious or unconscious, as we now live. Is there a deeper, wider purpose beyond, a purpose that is not of confusion, of acquisition? Has that effortless state any relation to our daily life ?

Certainly that has no relation at all to our life. How can it have? If my mind is confused, agonized, lonely, how can that be related to something which is not of itself? How can truth be related to falsehood, to illusion? We do not want to admit that, because our hope, our confusion, makes us believe in something greater, nobler, which we say is related to us. In our despair we seek truth, hoping that in the discovery of it our despair will disappear.

So we can see that a confused mind, a mind ridden with sorrow, a mind that is aware of its own emptiness, loneliness, can never find that which is beyond itself. That which is beyond the mind can only come into being when the causes of confusion, misery, are dispelled or understood. All that I have been saying, talking about, is how to understand ourselves, for without self-knowledge the other is not, the other is only an illusion. If we can understand the total process of ourselves, from moment to moment, then we shall see that in clearing up our own confusion, the other comes into being. Then experiencing that will have a relation to this. But this will never have a relation to that. Being this side of the curtain, being in darkness, how can one have experience of light, of freedom? But when once there is the experience of truth, then you can relate it to this world in which we live.

If we have never known what love is, but only constant wrangles, misery, conflicts, how can we experience that love which is not of all this? But when once we have experienced that, then we do not have to bother to find out the relationship. Then love, intelligence, functions. But to experience that state, all knowledge, accumulated memories, self-identified activities, must cease, so that the mind is incapable of any projected sensations. Then, experiencing that, there is action in this world.

Surely that is the purpose of existence - to go beyond the self-centred activity of the mind. Having experienced that state, which is not measurable by the mind, then the very experiencing of that brings about an inward revolution. Then, if there is love, there is no social problem. There is no problem of any kind when there is love. 'Because we do not know how to love we have social problems and systems of philosophy on how to deal with our problems. I say these problems can never be solved by any system, either of the left or of the right or of the middle. They can be solved - our confusion, our misery, our self-destruction - only when we can experience that state which is not self-projected.

It is fairly obvious that most of us are confused intellectually. We see that the so-called leaders in all departments of life have no complete answer to our various questions and problems. The many conflicting political parties, whether of the left or of the right, seem not to have found the right solution for our national and international strife, and we also see that socially there is an utter destruction of moral values. Everything about us seems to be disintegrating; moral and ethical values have become merely a matter of tradition, without much significance. War, the conflict between the right and the left, seems to be a constantly recurring factor in our lives; everywhere there is destruction, everywhere there is confusion. In ourselves we are utterly confused, though we do not like to acknowledge it; we see confusion in all things, and we do not know exactly what to do. Most of us who recognize this confusion, this uncertainty, want to do something, and the more confused we are, the more anxious we are to act. So, for those people who have realized that there is confusion in themselves and about them, action becomes all-important. But when a person is confused, how can he act? Whatever he does, whatever his course of action may be, it is bound to be confused, and naturally such action will inevitably create greater confusion. To whatever party, institution, or organization he may belong, until he clears up his own sphere of confusion, obviously, whatever he does is bound to produce further chaos. So, what is he to do? What is a man to do who is earnest and desirous of clearing up the confusion about him and in himself? What is his first responsibility - to act, or to clear up the confusion in himself and therefore outside of himself? I think this is an important question that most of us are unwilling to face. We see so much social disorder which we feel needs immediate reform that action becomes an engulfing process. Being anxious to do something, we proceed to act, we try to bring about reforms, we join political parties, either of the left or of the right; but we soon find out that reforms need further reform, leaders need regrouping, organizations demand more organizing, and so on. Whenever we try to act, we find that the actor himself is the source of confusion; so what is he to do? Is he to act when he is confused, or remain inactive? That is really the problem most of us face.

Now, we are afraid to be inactive, and to withdraw for a period to consider the whole problem requires extraordinary intelligence. If you were to withdraw for a time to reconsider, to revaluate the problem, then your friends, your associates, would consider you an escapist. You would become a nonentity, socially you would be nowhere. If when there is flag - waving you do not wave a flag, if when everyone puts on a particular cap you do not have that cap, you feel left out; and as most of us do not like to remain in the background, we plunge into action. So, the problem of action and inaction is quite important to understand. Is it not necessary to be inactive to consider the whole issue? Obviously, we must carry on with our daily responsibility of earning bread; all the necessities must be carried on. But the political, religious, social organizations, the groups, committees, and so on - need we belong to them? If we are very serious about it, must we not reconsider, revalue the whole problem of existence? And to do that, must we not for the time being withdraw in order to consider, ponder, meditate? Is that withdrawal inaction? Is not that withdrawal really action? In that so-called inaction there is the extraordinary action of reconsidering the whole question, revaluing, thinking over the confusion in which one lives. Why are we so afraid to be inactive? Is it inaction to reconsider? Obviously not. Surely, the man who is avoiding action is he who is active without reconsidering the issue. He is the real escapist. He is confused, and in order to escape from his confusion, from his insufficiency, he plunges into action, he joins a society, a party, an organization. He is really escaping from the fundamental issue, which is confusion. So, we are misapplying words. The man who plunges into action without reconsidering the problem, thinking that he is reforming the world by joining a society or a party - it is he who is creating greater confusion and greater misery; whereas, the so-called inactive man who withdraws and is seriously considering the whole question - surely, such a man is much more active.

In these times especially, when the whole world is on the edge of a precipice and catastrophic events are taking place, is it not necessary for a few at least to be inactive, deliberately not to allow themselves to be caught in this machine, this atomic machine of action, which does not produce anything except further confusion, further chaos? Surely, those who are in earnest will withdraw, not from life, not from daily activities, but withdraw in order to discover, study, explore, investigate, the cause of confusion; and to find out, to discover, to explore, one need not go into the innumerable plans and blueprints of what a new society should or should not be. Obviously, such blueprints are utterly useless because a man who is confused and who is merely carrying out blueprints will bring about further confusion. Therefore, as I have repeatedly said, the important thing, if we are to understand the cause of confusion, is self-knowledge. Without understanding oneself there cannot be order in the world; without exploring the whole process of thought, feeling, and action in oneself, there cannot possibly be world peace, order, and security. Therefore, the study of oneself is of primary importance, and it is not a process of escape. This study of oneself is not mere inaction. On the contrary, it requires an extraordinary awareness in everything that one does, awareness in which there is no judgment, no condemnation, nor blame. This awareness of the total process of oneself as one lives in daily life is not narrowing but ever expanding, ever clarifying; and out of this awareness comes order, first in oneself, and then externally in one's relationships.

So, the problem is one of relationship. Without relationship, there is no existence; to be is to be related. If I merely use relationship without understanding myself, I increase the mess and contribute to further confusion. Most of us do not seem to realize this - that the world is my relationship with others, whether one or many. My problem is that of relationship. What I am, that I project; and obviously, if I do not understand myself, the whole of relationship is one of confusion in ever-widening circles. So, relationship becomes of extraordinary importance, not with the so-called mass, the crowd, but in the world of my family and friends, however small that may be - my relationship with my wife, my children, my neighbor. In a world of vast organizations, vast mobilizations of people, mass movements, we are afraid to act on a small scale; we are afraid to be little people clearing up our own patch. We say to ourselves, ''What can I personally do? I must join a mass movement in order to reform.'' On the contrary, real revolution takes place not through mass movements but through the inward revaluation of relationship - that alone is real reformation, a radical, continuous revolution. We are afraid to begin on a small scale. Because the problem is so vast, we think we must meet it with large numbers of people, with a great organization, with mass movements, Surely, we must begin to tackle the problem on a small scale, and the small scale is the 'me' and the 'you'. When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love. Do what you will, without the regenerating factor of love, whatever you do will produce further chaos. The action of the intellect is not going to produce a solution. Our problem is relationship, and not which system, which blueprint to follow, what kind of United Nations Organization to form; it is the utter lack of goodwill in relationship, not with humanity, whatever that may mean, but the utter lack of goodwill and love in the relationship between two people. Have you not found how extraordinarily difficult it is to work with another, to think out a problem together with two or three? If we cannot think out problems with two or three, how can we think them out with a mass of people? We can think out problems together only when there is that generosity, that kindliness, that warmth of love in relationship; but we deny love and try to find the solution in the and fields of the mind.

So, relationship is our problem; and without understanding relationship, merely to be active is to produce further confusion, further misery. Action is relationship; to be is to be related. Do what you will, withdraw to the mountains, sit in a forest, you cannot live in isolation. You can live only in relationship, and as long as relationship is not understood, there can be no right action. Right action comes in understanding relationship, which reveals the process of oneself. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, it is a field of affection, warmth, and love, therefore a field rich with flowers.

Questioner: The institution of marriage is one of the chief causes of social conflict. It creates a seeming order at the cost of terrible repression and suffering. Is there another way of solving the problem of sex?

Krishnamurti: Every human problem requires great consideration, and to understand the problem there must be no response, no rejection, no acceptance. That which you condemn, you do not understand. So, we must go into the problem of sex very closely, fully and carefully, step by step - which is what I propose to do. I am not going to lay down what should or should not be done, which is silly, which is immature thinking. You cannot lay down a pattern for life, you cannot put life into the framework of ideas; and because society inevitably puts life into the framework of moral order, society is always breeding disorder. So, to understand this problem, we must neither condemn nor justify, but we will have to think it out anew.

Now, what is the problem? Is sex a problem? Let us think it out together; do not wait for me to answer. If it is a problem, why is it a problem? Have we made hunger into a problem? Has starvation become a problem? The obvious causes of starvation are nationalism, class differences, economic frontiers, sovereign governments, the means of production in the hands of a few, separative religious factors, and so on. If we try to eliminate the symptoms without eradicating the causes, if instead of tackling the root we merely trim the branches because it is so much easier, the same old problem continues. Similarly, why has sex become a problem? To curb the sexual urge, to hold it within bounds, the institution of marriage has been created; and in marriage, behind the door, behind the wall, you can do anything you like and show a respectable front outside. By using her for your sexual gratification you can convert your wife into a prostitute, and it is perfectly respectable. Under the guise of marriage, you can be worse than an animal; and without marriage, without restraint, you know no bounds. So, in order to set a limit, society lays down certain moral laws which become tradition, and within that limit you can be as immoral, as ugly as you like; and that unrepressed indulgence, that habitual sexual action is considered perfectly normal, healthy, and moral. So, why is sex a problem? To a married couple, is sex a problem? Not at all. The woman and the man have an assured source of constant pleasure. When you have a source of constant pleasure, when you have a guaranteed income, what happens? You become dull, weary, empty, exhausted. Have you not noticed that people who before marriage were full of vital energy become dull the moment they are married? All the springs of life have gone out of them. Have you not noticed it in your own sons and daughters? Why has sex become a problem? Obviously, the more intellectual you are, the more sexual you are. Have you not noticed that? And the more there is of emotion, of kindliness, of affection, the less there is of sex. Because our whole social, moral, and educational culture is based on the cultivation of the intellect, sex has become a problem full of confusion and conflict. So, the solution of the problem of sex lies in understanding the cultivation of the intellect. The intellect is not the means of creation, and creation does not take place through the functioning of the intellect; on the contrary, there is creation when the intellect is silent. Only when there is creation does the functioning of intellect have a meaning; but without creation, without that creative affection, the mere functioning of the intellect obviously creates the problem of sex. As most of us live in the brain, as most of us live on words, and words are of the mind, most of us are not creative. We are caught in words, in spinning new words and rearranging old ones. Surely, that is not creation. Since we are not creative, the only expression of creativeness left to us is sex. In the sexual act there is forgetfulness, and in forgetfulness alone there is creation. The sexual act for a split second gives you freedom from that self which is of the mind, and therefore it has become a problem. Surely, creativeness comes into being only when there is absence of thought which is of the 'me', of the 'mine'. I do not know if you have noticed that in moments of great crisis, in moments of great joy, the consciousness of 'me' and 'mine' which is the product of the mind, disappears. In that moment of expansive appreciation of life, of intense joy, there is creativeness. To put it simply, when self is absent there is creation; and since all of us are caught in the and intellect, naturally there is no absence of self. On the contrary, in that field, in that striving to be, there is an exaggerated expansion of the self and therefore no creativeness. Therefore, sex is the only means of being creative, of experiencing the absence of the self - and since the mere sexual act becomes habitual, that too is wearisome and gives strength to the continuity of the self, so sex becomes a problem.

In order to solve the problem of sex, we will have to approach it, not on any one level of thought, but from every direction, from every side - the educational, religious, and moral. When we are young, we have a strong feeling of sex attraction, and we marry - or are married off by our parents, as happens here in the East. Parents are often concerned only with getting rid of their boys and girls, and the pair, the boy and the girl, have no knowledge of sexual matters. Within the sacred law of society, the man can suppress his wife, destroy her, give her children year after year - and it is perfectly all right. Under the guise of respectability, he can become a completely immoral person. One has to understand and educate the boy and the girl - and that requires extraordinary intelligence on the part of the educator. Unfortunately, our fathers, mothers, and teachers all need this same education; they are as dull as dishwater, they only know the do's, don'ts, and taboos, they have no intelligence for this problem. To help the boy and girl we will have to have a new teacher who is really educated. But through the cinema and the advertisements with their half-naked girls, their luscious women, and lavish houses, and through various other means, society is giving stimulation to sensate values, and what do you expect? If he is married, the man takes it out on his wife; if he is not married, he goes to someone under cover. It is a difficult problem to bring intelligence to the boy and the girl. On every side human beings are exploiting each other through sex, through property, through relationship; and religiously, there is no creativeness at all. On the contrary, the constant meditation, the rituals or pujas, the repetition of words are all merely mechanical acts with certain responses; but that is not creative thinking, creative living. Religiously, you are merely traditional therefore, there is no creative inquiry into the discovery of reality. Religiously, you are regimented, and where there is regimentation, whether it is in the military or the religious sense, obviously there cannot be creativeness; therefore, you seek creativeness through sex. Free the mind from orthodoxy, from ritual, from regimentation and dogmatism so that it can be creative, and then the problem of sex will not be so great or so dominant.

There is another side to this problem: in the sexual relationship between man and woman, there is no love. The woman is merely used as a means of sexual gratification. Surely, sirs, love is not the product of the mind; love is not the result of thought; love is not the outcome of a contract. Here in this country the boy and the girl hardly know each other, yet they are married and have sexual relations. The boy and girl accept each other and say, ''You give me this, and I give you that,'' or ''You give me your body, and I give you security, I give you my calculated affection.'' When the husband says, ''I love you,'' it is merely a response of the mind; because he gives his wife a certain protection, he expects of her and she gives him her favor. This relationship of calculation is called love. It is an obvious fact - you may not like me to put it so brutally, but it is the actual fact. Such marriage is said to be for love, but it is a mere matter of exchange; it is a bania marriage, it reveals the mentality of the market place. Surely, in such marriage there cannot be love, can there? Love is not of the mind, but since we have cultivated the mind, we use that word love to cover the field of the mind. Surely, love has nothing to do with the mind, it is not the product of the mind; love is entirely independent of calculation, of thought. When there is no love, then the framework of marriage as an institution becomes a necessity. When there is love, then sex is not a problem - it is the lack of love that makes it into a problem. Don't you know? When you love somebody really deeply - not with the love of the mind, but really from the heart - you share with him or her everything that you have, not your body only, but everything. In your trouble, you ask her help and she helps you. There is no division between man and woman when you love somebody, but there is a sexual problem when you do not know that love. We know only the love of the brain; thought has produced it, and a product of thought is still thought, it is not love.

So, this problem of sex is not simple and it cannot be solved on its own level. To try to solve it purely biologically is absurd; and to approach it through religion or to try to solve it as though it were a mere matter of physical adjustment, of glandular action, or to hedge it in with taboos and condemnations is all too immature, childish, and stupid. It requires intelligence of the highest order. To understand ourselves in our relationship with another requires intelligence far more swift and subtle than to understand nature. But we seek to understand without intelligence; we want immediate action, an immediate solution, and the problem becomes more and more important. Have you noticed a man whose heart is empty, how his face becomes ugly and how the children he produces are ugly and immature? And because they have had no affection, they remain immature for the rest of their lives. Look at your faces sometime in the mirror - how unformed, how undefined they are! You have brains to find out, and you are caught in the brain. Love is not mere thought; thoughts are only the external action of the brain. Love is much deeper, much more profound, and the profundity of life can be discovered only in love. Without love, life has no meaning - and that is the sad part of our existence. We grow old while still immature; our bodies become old, fat, and ugly, and we remain thoughtless. Though we read and talk about it, we have never known the perfume of life. Mere reading and verbalizing indicates an utter lack of the warmth of heart that enriches life; and without that quality of love, do what you will, join any society, bring about any law, you will not solve this problem. To love is to be chaste. Mere intellect is not chastity. The man who tries to be chaste in thought is unchaste because he has no love. Only the man who loves is chaste, pure, incorruptible.

Questioner: In the modern institution of society, it is impossible to live without organization. To shun all organizations as you seem to do is merely escapism. Do you call the postal system a nucleus of power? What should be the basis of organization in the new society?

Krishnamurti: Again, sir, it is a complex question. Surely, all organizations exist for efficiency. The post office is an organization for the efficiency of communication; but when the postmaster becomes a quasi-tyrant over his clerks, the post office becomes a means of power, does it not? The postmaster general is interested in the efficiency of communication, or he should be; his position is obviously not intended to be a means of power, authority, self-aggrandizement - which in fact it is. So, every institution or organization is used by human beings, not simply for efficiency of communication, distribution, and so on, but as a means of power - and that is what I am objecting to. Surely, the post office, the tramway, and various other public services are a necessity in modern society, and they must be organized. The power house which creates electricity needs careful organization; but when that organization is used for political purposes as a means of self-aggrandizement, as a means of exploitation, obviously the organization becomes the tool of extraordinary brutality.

Now, the religious organizations as Hinduism, as Catholicism, as Buddhism, and so on are not for efficiency and are wholly unnecessary. They become pernicious; the priest, the bishop, the church, the temple are an extraordinary means of exploiting men. They exploit you through fear, through tradition, through ceremony. Religion is obviously and truly the search for reality, and such organizations are unnecessary because the search for reality is not carried on through an organized group of people. On the contrary, an organized group of people becomes a hindrance to reality; therefore, Hinduism, Christianity, or any other organized belief is a hindrance to truth. Why do we need such organizations? They are not efficient because the search for truth lies in your own hands; it cannot be realized through an organization, not through a guru or his disciples when they are organized for power. We obviously need technical organizations, such as the post office, the tramway, and so on; but surely, when man is intelligent every other organization is unnecessary. Because we ourselves are not intelligent, we turn over to those people who call themselves intelligent the power to rule us. An intelligent man does not want to be ruled; he does not want any organization other than that which is necessary for the efficiency of existence.

The necessities of life cannot be truly organized when they are in the hands of a few, of a class, or a group; and when the few act as representing the many, surely there is the same problem of power. Exploitation arises when organizations are used as a means of power, whether by the individual, by the group, by the party, or the state. It is this self-expansion through organization that is pernicious, such as a state identifying itself as a sovereign government, with which goes nationalism and in which the individual is also involved. It is this expansive, aggressive, self-defending power that is objectionable. Surely, in order for me to come here, there must be an organization. I must write a letter, and that letter can reach you only if there is a properly organized system of postal distribution. All this is right organization. But when organizations are used by the clever, by the cunning, as a means of exploiting men, such organizations must be eradicated; and they can be eradicated only when you yourself, in your little circle, are not seeking power, dominance. As long as the search for power exists, there must be a hierarchical process from the government's minister to the clerk, from the bishop to the priest, from the general to the common soldier.

Surely, we can have a decent society only when individuals, you and I, are not seeking power in any direction, whether through wealth, through relationship, or through an idea. It is the search for power that is the cause of this disaster, this disintegration of society. Our existence at present is all power politics, dominance in the family by the man or by the woman, dominance through an idea. Action based on an idea is always separative, it can never be inclusive; and the search for power, whether by the individual or by the state, indicates the expansion, the cultivation of the intellect in which there is no love. When you love someone, you are very careful, you organize spontaneously, don't you? You are watchful, you are efficient in helping that one or this one. It is when there is no love that organization as a means of power comes into being. When you love others, when you are full of affection and generosity, then organizations have a different meaning; they are kept on their own level. But when the individual's position becomes all-important, when there is craving for power, then organizations are used as the means to that power - and power and love cannot exist together. Love is its own power, its own beauty, and it is because our hearts are empty that we fill them with the things of the mind; and the things of the mind are not things of the heart. Because our hearts are filled with the things of the mind, we look to organizations as a means of bringing order, of bringing peace to the world. It is not organizations, but only love that can bring order and peace to the world; it is not blueprints of any utopia, but only goodwill that can achieve conciliation between people. Because we have no warmth of love, we depend upon organizations; and the moment we have organizations without love, the clever and the cunning come to the top and use them. We start an organization for the welfare of man, and before we know where we are, somebody is using it for his own ends. We create revolutions, bloody, disastrous revolutions to bring about world order, and before we know it, the power is in the hands of a few maniacs after power, and they become a powerful new class, a new dominating group of commissars with their secret police, and love is driven out.

Sirs, how can man live without love? We can only exist, and existence without love is control, confusion, and pain - and that is what most of us are creating. We organize for existence and we accept conflict as inevitable because our existence is a ceaseless demand for power. Surely, when we love, organization has its own place, its right place; but without love, organization becomes a nightmare, merely mechanical and efficient, like the army. When there is love, there will be no army; but as modern society is based on mere efficiency, we have to have armies - and the purpose of an army is to create war. Even in so-called peace, the more intellectually efficient we are, the more ruthless, the more brutal, the more callous we become. That is why there is confusion in the world, why bureaucracy is more and more powerful, why more and more governments are becoming totalitarian. We submit to all this as being inevitable because we live in our brains and not in our hearts, and therefore love does not exist. Love is the most dangerous and uncertain element in life; and because we do not want to be uncertain, because we do not want to be in danger, we live in the mind. A man who loves is dangerous, and we do not want to live dangerously; we want to live efficiently, we want to live merely in the framework of organization because we think organizations are going to bring order and peace in the world. Organizations have never brought order and peace. Only love, only goodwill, only mercy can bring order and peace, ultimately and therefore now.

Questioner: Why is woman prone to permit herself to be dominated by man? Why do communities and nations permit themselves to be bossed by a leader or a Fuehrer?

Krishnamurti: Now, sir, why do you ask this question? Why don't you look into your own mind to find out why you want to be dominated, why you dominate, and why you seek a leader? Why do you dominate the woman or the man? And this domination is also called love, is it not? When the man dominates, the woman likes it and considers it as affection, and when a woman bosses the man, he also likes it. Why? It is an indication that the domination gives you a certain sense of closeness of relationship. If my wife dominates me, I feel very close to her, and if she does not dominate, I feel she is indifferent. You are afraid of indifference from your wife or your husband, from the woman or the man. You will accept anything as long as you do not feel someone is indifferent. You know how closely you want to keep to your guru; you will do anything - sacrifice your wife, honesty, everything - to be close to him because you want to feel that he is not indifferent to you. That is, we use relationship as a means of self-forgetfulness, and as long as relationship does not show us what we actually are, we are satisfied. That is why we accept the domination of another. When my wife or husband dominates me, it does not reveal what I am but is a source of gratification. If my wife does not dominate me, if she is indifferent and I discover what I really am, it is very disturbing. What am I? I am an empty, dour, sloppy being with certain appetites - and I am afraid to face all that emptiness. Therefore I accept the domination of my wife or husband because it makes me feel very close to him or to her, and I do not want to see myself as I am. And this domination gives a sense of relationship; this domination brings jealousy - the moment you do not dominate me, you are looking at somebody else. Therefore I am jealous because I have lost you, and I do not know how to get rid of jealousy, which is still on the plane of the brain. Sir, a man who loves is not jealous. Jealousy is of the brain, but love is not of the brain; and where there is love, there is no domination. When you love somebody, you are not dominating, you are a part of that person. There is no separation, but complete integration. It is the brain that separates and creates the problem of domination.

So, then, the problem is not the leader but how to eradicate confusion. Can another help you in removing confusion? If you look to another to remove your confusion, he can only help you to increase it because a confused mind can never choose that which is clear; since it is in confusion, it can only choose that which is confused. If you wish radically to get rid of confusion, you will set your own mind and heart in order, you will consider the causes that bring about confusion. Confusion arises only when there is no self-knowledge. When I do not know myself and do not know what to do or what to think, naturally I am caught in the whirlwind of confusion. But when I know myself, the whole total process of myself - which is extraordinarily simple if one has the intention to know oneself - then out of that understanding comes clarity, out of that understanding comes conduct and right behavior. So, it is of the highest importance not to follow a leader but to understand oneself. The understanding of oneself brings love, brings order. Chaos exists only in relationship to something, and as long as I do not understand that relationship, there must be confusion. To understand relationship is to understand myself, and to understand myself is to bring about that quality of love in which there is well-being. If I know how to love my wife, my children, or my neighbor, I know how to love everyone. Since I do not love the one, I am merely remaining on the intellectual or verbal level with humanity. The idealist is a bore - he loves humanity with his brain, he does not love with his heart. When you love, no leader is necessary. It is the empty of heart who seek a leader to fill that emptiness with words, with an ideology, with a utopia of the future. Love is only in the present, not in time, not in the future. For him who loves, eternity is now, for love is its own eternity.

So we should, if we could, begin with this question of pleasure, because that plays an important part in love and most religions have denied - call it original sin or what you like - altogether sex, because they said, man who is caught in sensory pleasures cannot possibly understand what truth is, what God is, what love is, what the supreme, immeasurable thing is. So in Christianity they had this extraordinary, fantastic idea of the Virgin Mary, son of God without man or woman relation sexually; and also that exists in India as well as in Buddhism and so on: this is a prevalent religious conditioning. Right? And we, when we are going to look into this question of what love is, we have to be aware of our traditional, inherited conditioning which brings about various forms of suppression, Victorian and modern, or permissive enjoyment of sex. So pleasure plays an extraordinary part in our life, and if you have talked to any of the so-called highly disciplined, intellectual, religious people - I wouldn't call them religious, but they are called religious - this is one of their immense problems, chastity. You may think all this is totally irrelevant, chastity has no place in the modern world, and brush it aside. I think that would be a pity because that is one of the problems: what is chastity? So one has to in going into this question of what love is, one has to have a wide, deep mind to find out, not just a verbal assertion.

So - I don't know where to begin - why does pleasure play such an important part in our lives? I'm not saying it is right or wrong - please - do you understand? We are now enquiring - there is no assertion - sex should be, should not be, pleasure should be, should not be and all that - we are just enquiring. Why does pleasure in every way, in every activity of our life, play such an immense role? And therefore why sex has such an important part in our life, though it is one of our primary urges, why has it assumed, I don't know, such fantastic magnitude, not only in the Western world where it is so blatant - you don't mind my using that word - where it is so vulgar, but also in the East and in Asia, it is one of our major problems - why? And the religions, so-called religion, the priests have decried it. If you would seek god, they said, you must take a vow of celibacy, you know all the rest of it. I know a monk in India, a very, very serious man, scholarly, intellectual - at the age of fifteen or sixteen he gave up the world and took a vow of celibacy. And as he grew older - I met him when he was about forty - he gave up those vows and married and he had a hell of a time - sorry to use that word. Because Indian culture says it is appalling for a man who has taken a vow to go back. He was ostracised, he went through really a very bad time. And that is our mentality, most people's mentality. And I am asking why it has assumed - sex - such fantastic importance?

And there is this whole problem of pornography, allowing every freedom, complete freedom to read, to print, to show anything you like, therefore emphasising or giving freedom from suppression. You know all that business going on in the world - and what has love to do with it? And what does it mean, all this - love, sex, pleasure and chastity? Because please don't forget that word or the meaning of that word for which man has given such great importance - to lead a life of chastity. So there it is. Let's find out why man throughout the ages has given sex such a prominent place in life? And all the resistance against it also. Right? I don't know how you are going to answer it.

Is it not one of the factors that in that, sexual activity, in that there is total freedom? No? Please, let me talk it over first. Intellectually we are imitative, intellectually we are not creative, intellectually we are second-hand or third-hand, we repeat, repeat what others have said, our little thoughts, you know. There we are not active, creative, alive, free. And emotionally we have no passion, we have no deep interests. We may be enthusiastic, but that soon fades, there isn't a sustained passion, and our life is more or less mechanical - the office, the daily routine. So a mechanical life, intellectually, technologically, and more or less emotionally repetitive reactions, which is all mechanical, which is our life, and therefore this one activity which becomes extraordinarily important - naturally. No? And if there were freedom intellectually and deeply one had passion, fire, then sex has its own place and becomes quite - you know - unimportant - one doesn't give such tremendous meaning to it, trying to find through sex Nirvana, thinking through sex you are going to have complete unity with mankind - you know all the things that we hope to find through something.

So can our mind find freedom? Can our mind be tremendously alive and clear, perceptive - not the perception which we have gathered from others, from the philosophers, psychologists and the so-called spiritual teachers, who are not spiritual at all? So when there is that quality of deep, passionate freedom, then sex has its own place. Then what is chastity, has chastity any place in our life at all? What is the meaning of that word, not the dictionary meaning only, 'chaste' but the deep meaning of it, what does it mean to have a mind that is completely chaste? I think we ought to enquire into that. Perhaps that is much more important.

If you have observed your mind, not as an observer and the thing observed - do you understand what I mean - in which there is no division as the observer watching the mind and therefore bringing about a conflict between the observer and the observed - if one is aware of the whole activity of the mind, doesn't one see in that the constant shaping of images, and remembrances of various pleasures, misfortunes and accidents, insults, and all the various impressions and influences, and pressures. And these crowd our mind. If there was a sexual act, thought thinks about it - pictures, imagines, sustains evocative emotions, gets excited. Such a mind is not a chaste mind. It is a mind that has no picture at all, no image, that is a chaste mind. Then the mind is always innocent. The word 'innocency' means a mind that does not hurt or receives hurts, is incapable of hurting and also incapable of being hurt, but yet be totally vulnerable. Such a mind is a chaste mind. But those people who have taken vows of chastity, they are not chaste at all, they are battling with themselves everlastingly. I know various monks, both here in the West and in the East, what tortures they have gone through, all to find god. Their minds are twisted, tortured.

So one has to enquire into what is pleasure, because all this is involved in pleasure, with pleasure. Where is pleasure in relationship with love - what is the relationship between the pursuit of pleasure and love? And apparently both seem to go together. Our virtues are based on pleasure, our morality is based on pleasure. You may come to it through sacrifice which gives you pleasure, resistance which might give you pleasure in order to achieve.

So where is the line, if there is such a thing, as between pleasure and love? Can the two go together, interwoven? Or are they always separate? Because man has said, ' 'Love god, and that love has nothing whatsoever to do with other profane love' '. You know this has been not just for centuries, historically, right from the beginning of time, this has been a problem. So where is the line that divides the two, or is there no line at all? One is not the other, and if we are pursuing pleasure, as most of us are in the name of god, in the name of peace, in the name of social reform, everything, then what place has love in this pursuit? So one has to go into the question: what is pleasure and what is enjoyment and what is joy? Is bliss related to pleasure? Don't please say, no or yes, let us find out. Look at a beautiful tree, a cloud, a light on the water or the beautiful face of a man or a woman or a child, the delight of seeing something really beautiful; in that there is great enjoyment, a real sense of appreciation of something extraordinary, noble, clear, lovely. When you see a sunset, a vast immense sky, and when you deny pleasure, you deny the whole perception of beauty. And religions have denied it. Because it is only quite recently, I've been told, that landscape painting came into religious paintings in the Western world, though in China and the East, painting of the landscape and the tree was considered noble and religious.

So, why does the mind pursue pleasure, not is it right or wrong - why? And what is the mechanism of this pleasure principle? Please find out, you understand, not repeat what the speaker is going to say, but find out in discussing, that's what we're doing. Because if you say, I agree with you, or disagree with you because I prefer some philosopher, or some other teacher, then we are lost, but if we actually together find out, as we are sitting here now, what is the principle, the mechanism of this whole movement of pleasure, then perhaps we shall understand what is real enjoyment, then what is joy and bliss, in which is involved ecstasy. Is ecstasy related to pleasure and can joy ever become pleasure?

So what is the mechanism of pleasure, why does the mind pursue it so constantly? You cannot prevent perception, seeing visually a beautiful house, the lovely green lawn and the sunshine on it, or the vast desert without a single blade of grass, and the expanse of the sky. You can't prevent seeing it, and the very seeing is pleasure, isn't it, is a delight. When you see a lovely face, not just a symmetrical face but depth in it, beauty, quality behind it, intelligence, vitality - to see such a face is a marvel and in that perception there is a delight. Now when does that delight become pleasure, do you follow? You see a lovely statue by Michelangelo - the Pieta - and you look at it, it is the most extraordinary thing - not the subject, I don't know about that, but the quality of that. And in the perception of it, there is great pleasure, great delight. You go away and the mind thinks about it, thought begins. You say, what a lovely thing that was. In seeing there was great feeling, a quality of perception, of something marvellous, then thought recollects it, remembers it, and the remembering and the pursuing of that pleasure that you had when you saw that statue. Thought then creates that pleasure, it gives vitality, continuity to that event which took place when you saw that statue. Right? So thought is responsible for the pursuing of pleasure. Right? Please, it is not my invention, you can watch it. You see a lovely sunset and you say, ''I wish I could go back there and see it again''. At the moment of seeing that sunset there was no pleasure, you saw something extraordinary, full of light and colour and depth. When you go away and go back to your shoddy little life, or active life, whatever it is, your mind says what a marvellous thing that was, I wish that I could have that repeated again. So thought perpetuates that thing as pleasure. Is that the mechanism? Then what takes place? You never again see the sunset, never, because the remembrance of that original sunset remains, and you always compare with that, and therefore you never again see something totally new.

So one asks: can you see that sunset, or the beautiful face, or your sexual experience, or whatever it be, see it and finish it, not carry it over, whether that thing was great beauty or great sorrow or great pain, physical, psychological, whatever it be. To see the beauty of it and finished, completely finished, not take it over for the next day, the next month, or the future, store it up. If you do store it up, then thought plays with it. Thought is the storing up of that incident or that pain or that suffering or that thing that gave delight. So how is one to - not prevent - to be aware of this whole process and not let thought come into operation at all? Have you understood my question, am I making myself clear, or am I just going on by myself?

I want to see the sunset, I want to look at the trees, full of the beauty of the earth. It is not my earth or your earth, it is ours - not the Englishman's earth or the Russian or the Indian, it is our earth to live in - without all the frontiers, without all the ugly, beastly wars, and mischief of man. I want to look at all this, the palm trees on a solitary hill - have you ever seen it, what a marvellous thing it is? Or a single tree in a field? I want to look at it, I want to enjoy it, but I don't want to reduce it into an ugly little pleasure, and thought will reduce it. So how can thought function when necessary and not function at all in other directions? You follow my question? And it is possible only when there is real awareness, awareness of the whole mechanism - mechanism of thought, the structure and the nature of thought, where it must function absolutely logically, healthily, not neurotically or personally, and where it has no place at all. So what is beauty and thought? Can the intellect ever perceive beauty? It may describe, it may imitate, it may copy, it may do all kinds of things but the description is not the described. We could go on and on into this infinitely.

So when one understands this nature of pleasure and the principle of pleasure, then what is love? Is love jealousy, is love possessiveness, is love domination, attachment - you know what one does in life - the woman dominates the man or the man dominates the woman, you know all that business that goes on. The man does something because he wants to do it, pursues it. He is ambitious, greedy, envious, he wants a position, prestige, and the wife says, ''For god's sake stop all that tummy-rot, lead a different kind of life,'' and so there is a division between the two. They may sleep together. So can there be love when there is ambition, when each one is pursuing his own particular private pleasures.

So what is love? Obviously it can only happen, when there are no longer all the things that are not love, like ambition, competition, wanting to be somebody, becoming somebody and that - you follow - that is our life; we want to be somebody famous, fulfil, you know, become, a writer, artist, bigger - all that is what we want. And can such a man or woman know what love is? Which means can there be love for a man who is working for himself, not only in a little way but in identifying himself with the State, with God, with social activity, with the country, with a series of beliefs? Obviously not. And yet that is the trap in which we are caught. And can we be aware of that trap, really aware, not because somebody describes it, be aware of the trap in which we are caught and break the trap? And that's where the revolution is, the real revolution, not the folly of revolution of bombs and social changes - though the social changes are necessary, not the bombs.

So one discovers or one comes upon unknowingly, without inviting it, this thing called love when the other thing is not. When we have really understood the nature of pleasure, how thought destroys the thing that was a great joy, because joy cannot possibly be made into pleasure, joy comes naturally, it happens, like happiness, it comes. But the moment you are aware, ''Oh I am very happy'', you are no longer happy.

Then what is love in human relationship? Do you understand all these questions? What is the place of such love in human relationship? Has it any place at all? And yet we have to live together, we have to co-operate together, we have to have children together, and the man who loves, can his son be sent to war? It is your problem, sirs - you have children, and your education is preparing the children for war, to kill. You find out. So what is that love, and what is its relationship in our human existence? I think that question can only be answered, not verbally or intellectually, it can only have the true answer when the whole principle of pleasure, and thought, and this becoming, is understood, then you will find it a totally different kind of relationship.

Now what has love to do with living, the daily living, and what has that to do with death? Right? We are introducing a lot of things - is that all right? And what is meditation in all this? You know yoga has become a fashion in the West, everybody is doing it and it is the thing to do because one says, through yoga we'll have a quiet mind, and through right pranayama - that is breathing - you'll make the mind very still. Any stupid ass can do that, make his mind very still. Right? By breathing, sitting very quietly but having a shoddy little mind, the size of a peanut, and in that and through that you hope to find god. Right? Do you know what that word 'yoga' means, the meaning of that word. I am not saying it is wrong - yoga - I do it every day for two hours. I have been doing it for forty years or more. Therefore, please don't do it! Do you know what the word 'yoga' means? The real meaning of that word is unitive perception - unitive, to see totally, to comprehend life as a whole, not just stand on your head for a couple of hours. And the history of yoga, I was told by a man who seemed to know a great deal about it, is that three thousand years ago in ancient India, the kings and the rulers and the prime ministers chewed a certain leaf from the Himalayas which kept their brains very alive, very active, clear, some kind of marijuana of those days - probably it wasn't marijuana but some kind of stuff. And that plant died, and so they had to invent a series of exercises which would keep the glands of the human system active, alive and functioning properly; and the various exercises in yoga used to keep the glands functioning healthily, that is all, to keep the body healthy, not to bring all kinds of racket. So I brought that in because meditation has nothing whatsoever to do with yoga, the yoga which is practised. We will go into, perhaps tomorrow, what meditation is.

So what is death and love and living? They must be interrelated, all of them - living, love and death. We can't separate them as we do, push death far away, hide it under lock and key, never think about it - something unfortunate, something one is afraid of, something to be avoided at any price, don't talk about it. So what is our living, the living of our daily life, what is it? As we know it actually, not pretending, our life is a struggle, a misery, a conflict, a sorrow, with flashes of joy, appreciation of great beauty and occasional sense of love which is not pleasure. Our life is a process, a series of events, interspersed with pain, sorrow, anxiety, guilt, agony, loneliness and the seeking of some reality which becomes such a fantastic myth and illusion. That is our life. No? A routine sexually - our virtues are a mere matter of practising, imposing, controlling, suppressing - that is our life which we try to cover up through drink, through drugs, through marijuana, - you know all the rest of it.

And we want to find through this chaotic, sorrowful life, god, truth. We can't find it, obviously, because to find something one must have a life that is completely orderly, a life that must be not mechanical virtue, but really virtuous, a life that has in the very living meaning, not give meaning to living, and that life we are afraid to let go. This life which is really quite intricately miserable and confusing and shoddy, this we are afraid to let go - let go all the things with which we have been identified - the house, the furniture, the books, the experiences, the quarrels, the images - you know, all that we are afraid to let go because that means death. No? So the brain says I can't change this living, therefore there must be a future life, in different forms, reincarnation, or incarnate in a different way, you know, dozens of ways of escaping from this inevitable thing called living which you can't solve apparently. So we are afraid of living, and we are afraid of dying because we have divided the whole thing - living, love, god, death. You follow?

So can living the life we do, can there be a radical revolution in that? Not a verbal revolution, not the revolution of some philosopher, or psychologist, or some bearded guru, but a revolution psychologically so that our human mind is totally different, so that there is no control - we went into all that - no decision, but a living in which there is no pain at all. There is, if one goes into it very, very deeply; which is to be totally attentive of all the content of consciousness. May I be a little bit difficult here? May I go into it a little bit?

The content of consciousness is consciousness. Without the content is there consciousness? This is not an intellectual, or philosophical or rhetorical question, but a genuine, a valid question. The content of consciousness, of me, is my furniture, my goods, my behaviour, my thoughts, my anxieties, my pursuits of sexual delights. You know? The content of my consciousness are all the things collected in it - verbal, non-verbal, ancient-tradition, the result of the race, the family - do you follow - the whole of that is my consciousness. I am not different from my consciousness because my consciousness, the 'me', is the content. Remove the content - there is no me. Remove my knowledge, the name, the thought, all the remembrances of the hurts, the anxieties, the sorrows of death and pleasure - empty all that, what is consciousness then? Is there me in that emptiness? No, please don't agree or disagree, you don't know what it means. Is there a 'me' which is my vanity, my jealousies, my extraordinary sense of loneliness, bitterness, cynicism, vanity, that is my consciousness, that is my life, living, my gods, my shoddy little beliefs and opinions; take away all that - and death means that, physically, you understand, death, the organism dies because it is used and misused, you know, driven and tortured - old age, disease, eating too much, you know how you eat - have you watched yourself? All that is me, that is the content of me. I am a Catholic, I am a Hindu, I'm a Buddhist, I'm a Communist, I am an atheist, I don't believe in anything - all that is mine, the consciousness. The content is consciousness.

Now that is my life, my daily life of going to the office, being insulted, trying to be superior, all that. And the ending of that is death and I am frightened. I who have worked for so many years, I want to finish that book, that painting, that experiment, that research, I have a responsibility for my children to send them to war, to educate them, to condition them, to destroy them by comparing them with somebody else. All that is me and I don't like to think that me is so small, so I invent a super-me, the higher me, the soul, the Atman - you know, the game that one plays. All that is still within the field of consciousness, and that is the content of consciousness. So when I realise that, do you follow, when the mind realises that, not just verbally, not accept a description, which is silly, or the explanation of the description, but sees that, the whole of it, non-fragmentarily but it is totally attentive of all that, then in that attention the mind is empty of all that and that is death. Therefore there is something totally new, of totally different dimension. But you can't come to it through prayer, through following some shoddy guru - you can't ever come to that. One can only come when you yourself are actively attentive totally, totally perceive the unitary movement of life, the living, the love, death, all the agonies, miseries that one goes through as a whole movement, unitive perception. Then the mind empties itself of all its content. It is not afraid to be anything or to be nothing, then it hasn't got to invent a future life, then it is incarnating each minute. Is that enough for this morning? You want to discuss any more? Right? We have finished

I should think one of our great problems must be to know what is freedom, and the need to understand this problem must be fairly immense and continuous since there is so much propaganda from so many specialists, so many and various forms of outward and inward compulsion, and all the chaotic, contradictory persuasions, influences, and impressions. I am sure we must have asked ourselves the question: What is freedom? As you and I know, everywhere in the world authoritarianism is spreading, not only at the political, social, and economic levels, but also at the so-called spiritual level. Everywhere there is a compelling environmental influence; newspapers tell us what to think, and there are so many five, ten, or fifteen-year plans. Then there are these specialists at the economic, scientific, and bureaucratic levels; there are all the traditions of everyday activity, what we must do and what we must not do; then there is the whole influence of the so-called sacred books; and there is the cinema, the radio, the newspaper - everything in the world is trying to tell us what to do, what to think, and what we must not think. I do not know if you have noticed how increasingly difficult it has become to think for oneself. We have become such experts in quoting what other people say or have said, and in the midst of this authoritarian welter, where is the freedom? And what do we mean by freedom? Is there such a thing? I am using that word freedom in its most simple sense in which is included liberation, the mind that is liberated, free. I want, if I may, to go into that this evening.

First, I think we must realize that our minds are really not free. Everything we see, every thought we have, shapes our mind; whatever you think now, whatever you have thought in the past and whatever you are going to think in the future - it all shapes the mind. You think what you have been told, either by the religious person or the politician, by the teacher in your school, or by books and newspapers. Everything about you influences what you think. What you eat, what you look at, what you listen to, your wife, your husband, your child, your neighbor - everything is shaping the mind. I think that is fairly obvious. Even when you think that there is a God or that there is no God, that also is the influence of tradition. So our mind is the field in which there are many contradictory influences which are in battle, one against the other.

Do please listen to all this because, as I have been saying, unless we directly experience for ourselves, your coming to a talk of this kind has no value at all. Please believe me that unless you experience what is being said, not merely follow the description but be aware, be cognizant, know the ways of your own thinking and thereby experience, these talks will have no meaning whatsoever. After all, I am only describing what is actually taking place in one's life, in one's environment, so that we can be aware of it and see if we can break through it, and what the implications of breaking through are. Because obviously we are now slaves, either the Hindu slave, the Catholic slave, the Russian slave, or slaves of one kind or another. We are all slaves to certain forms of thought, and in the midst of all this, we ask if we can be free and talk about the anatomy of freedom and authority, and so on. I think it must be fairly obvious to most of us that what we think is conditioned. Whatever your thought - however noble and wide, or however limited and petty - it is conditioned, and if you further that thought there can be no freedom of thought. Thought itself is conditioned because thought is the reaction of memory, and memory is the residue of all your experiences, which in turn are the result of your conditioning. So if one realizes that all thinking, at whatever level, is conditioned, then we will see that thinking is not the means of breaking through this limitation - which does not mean that we must go into some blank or speculative silence. Actually the fact is, is it not, that every thought, every feeling, every action is conformative, conditioned, influenced. For instance, a saint comes along and by his rhetoric, gestures, looks, by quoting this and that to you, influences you. And we want to be influenced and are afraid to move away from every form of influence and see if we can go deeply and discover if there is a state of being which is not the result of influence.

Why are we influenced? In politics, as you know, it is the job of the politician to influence us; and every book, every teacher, every guru - the more powerful, the more eloquent, the better we like it - imposes his thought, his way of life, his manner of conduct upon us. So life is a battle of ideas, a battle of influences, and your mind is the field of the battle. The politician wants your mind; the guru wants your mind; the saint says, ''Do this and not that,'' and he also wants your mind; and every tradition, every form of habit or custom, influences, shapes, guides, controls your mind. I think that is fairly obvious. It would be absurd to deny it. The fact is so.

You know, sirs, if I may deviate a little, I think it is essential to appreciate beauty. The beauty of the sky, the beauty of the sun upon the hill, the beauty of a smile, a face, a gesture, the beauty of the moonlight on the water, of the fading clouds, the song of the bird - it is essential to look at it, to feel it, to be with it, and I think this is the very first requirement for a man who would seek truth. Most of us are so unconcerned with this extraordinary universe about us; we never even see the waving of the leaf in the wind; we never watch a blade of grass, touch it with our hand and know the quality of its being. This is not just being poetic, so please do not go off into a speculative, emotional state. I say it is essential to have that deep feeling for life and not be caught in intellectual ramifications, discussions, passing examinations, quoting and brushing something new aside by saying it has already been said. Intellect is not the way. Intellect will not solve our problems; the intellect will not give us that nourishment which is imperishable. The intellect can reason, discuss, analyze, come to a conclusion from inferences, and so on, but intellect is limited, for intellect is the result of our conditioning. But sensitivity is not. Sensitivity has no conditioning; it takes you right out of the field of fears and anxieties. The mind that is not sensitive to everything about it - to the mountain, the telegraph pole, the lamp, the voice, the smile, everything - is incapable of finding what is true.

But we spend our days and years in cultivating the intellect, in arguing, discussing, fighting, struggling to be something, and so on. And yet this extraordinarily wonderful world, this earth that is so rich - not the Bombay earth, the Punjab earth, the Russian earth, or the American earth - this earth is ours, yours and mine, and that is not sentimental nonsense; it is a fact. But unfortunately we have divided it up through our pettiness, through our provincialism. And we know why we have done it - for our security, for better jobs, and more jobs. That is the political game that is being played throughout the world, and so we forget to be human beings, to live happily on this earth which is ours and to make something of it. And it is because we do not have that feeling for beauty which is not sentimental, which is not corrupting, which is not sexual, but a sense of caring; it is because we have lost that feeling - or perhaps we have never had it - that we are fighting, battling with each other over words and have no immediate understanding of anything. Look what you are doing in India - breaking up the land into sections, fighting and butchering - and this is happening the world over, and for what? To have better jobs, more jobs, more power? And so in this battle we lose that quality of mind which can see things freely, happily, and without envy. We do not know how to see somebody happy, driving a luxurious car, and to look at him and be happy with him; nor do we know how to sympathize with the very, very poor. We are envious of the man with the car, and we avoid the man who has nothing. So there is no love, and without that quality of love which is really the very essence of beauty, do what you will - go on all the pilgrimages in the world, go to every temple, cultivate all the virtues you can think of - you will get nowhere at all. Please believe me, you will not have it, that sense of beauty and love, even if you sit cross-legged for meditation, holding your breath for the next ten thousand years. You laugh, but you do not see the tragedy of it. We are not in that sensitive state of mind which receives, which sees immediately something which is true. You know a sensitive mind is a defenseless mind, it is a vulnerable mind, and the mind must be vulnerable for truth to enter - the truth that you have no sympathy, the truth that you are envious.

So it is essential to have this sense of beauty, for the feeling of beauty is the feeling of love. As I said, this is a slight digression, but I think it has significance in relation to what we are talking about. We are saying that a mind that is influenced, shaped, authority-bound, obviously can never be free, and whatever it thinks, however lofty its ideals, however subtle and deep, it is still conditioned. I think it is very important to understand that the mind, through time, through experience, through the many thousands of yesterdays, is shaped, conditioned, and that thought is not the way out. Which does not mean that you must be thoughtless; on the contrary, when you are capable of understanding very profoundly, very deeply, extensively, widely, subtly, then only will you fully recognize how petty thinking is, how small thought is. Then there is a breaking down of the wall of that conditioning.

So can we not see that fact - that all thought is conditioned? Whether it is the thought of the communist, capitalist, Hindu, Buddhist, or the person who is speaking, thinking is conditioned. And obviously the mind is the result of time, the result of the reactions of a thousand years and of yesterday, of a second ago, and ten years ago; the mind is the result of the period in which you have learned and suffered and of all the influences of the past and present. Now such a mind, obviously, cannot be free, and yet that is what we are seeking, is it not? You know even in Russia, in all the totalitarian countries where everything is controlled, there is this search for freedom. That search is there in the beginning for all of us when we are young, for then we are revolutionary, we are discontented, we want to know, we are curious, we are struggling; but soon that discontent is canalized into various channels, and there it dies slowly. So there is always within us the demand, the urge, to be free, and we never understand it, we never go into it, we have never searched out that deep instinctual demand. Being discontented when young, being dissatisfied with things as they are, with the stupidities of traditional values, we gradually, as we grow older, fall into the old patterns which society has established, and we get lost. It is very difficult to keep the pure discontent, the discontent which says, ''This is not enough; there must be something else.'' We all know that feeling, the feeling of otherness which we soon translate as God or nirvana, and we read a book about it and get lost. But this feeling of otherness, the search, the inquiry for it, that, I think, is the beginning of the real urge to be free from all these political, religious, and traditional influences, and to break through this wall. Let us inquire into it.

Surely there are several kinds of freedom. There is political freedom; there is the freedom which knowledge gives when you know how to do things, the know-how; the freedom of a wealthy man who can go round the world; the freedom of capacity, to be able to write, to express oneself, to think clearly. Then there is the freedom from something: freedom from oppression, freedom from envy, freedom from tradition, from ambition, and so on. And then there is the freedom which is gained, we hope, at the end - at the end of the discipline, at the end of acquiring virtue, at the end of effort - the ultimate freedom we hope to get through doing certain things. So, the freedom that capacity gives, the freedom from something and the freedom we are supposed to gain at the end of a virtuous life - those are types of freedom we all know. Now are not those various freedoms merely reactions? When you say, ''I want to be free from anger,'' that is merely a reaction; it is not freedom from anger. And the freedom which you think that you will get at the end of a virtuous life by struggle, by discipline - that is also a reaction to what has been. Please, sirs, follow this carefully because I am going to say something somewhat difficult in the sense that you are not accustomed to it. There is a sense of freedom which is not from anything, which has no cause, but which is a state of being free. You see, the freedom that we know is always brought about by will, is it not? I will be free, I will learn a technique, I will become a specialist, I will study, and that will give me freedom. So we use will as a means of achieving freedom, do we not? I do not want to be poor and therefore I exercise my capacity, my will, everything to get rich. Or, I am vain and I exercise will not to be vain. So we think we shall get freedom through the exercise of will. But will does not bring freedom, on the contrary, as I will show you.

What is will? I will be, I must be, I must not be, I am going to struggle to become something, I am going to learn - all these are forms of exercising will. Now what is this will and how is it formed? Obviously, through desire. Our many desires, with their frustrations, compulsions, and fulfillments form, as it were, the threads of a cord, a rope. That is will, is it not? Your many contradictory desires together become a very strong and powerful rope with which you try to climb to success, to freedom. Now will desire give freedom, or is the very desire for freedom the denial of it? Please watch yourselves, sirs, watch your own desires, your own ambition, your own will. And if one has no will and is merely being driven, that also is a part of will - being driven is also part of that will, the will to resist and go with it - all that is part of will. Through that weight of desire, through that rope, we hope to climb to God, to bliss, or whatever it is.

So I am asking you whether your will is a liberating factor. Is freedom come by through will? Or, is freedom something entirely different, which has nothing to do with reaction, which cannot be achieved through capacity, through thought, experience, discipline, or constant conformity? That is what all the books say, do they not? Conform to the pattern and you will be free in the end; do all these things, obey, and ultimately there will be freedom. To me all that is sheer nonsense because freedom is at the beginning, not at the end, as I will show you.

To see something true is possible, is it not? You can see that the sky is blue - thousands of people have said so - but you can see that it is so for yourself. You can see for yourself, if you are at all sensitive, the movement of a leaf. From the very beginning there is the capacity to perceive that which is true instinctively, not through any form of compulsion, adjustment, conformity. Now, sirs, I will show you another truth.