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J.Krishnamurti Banaras 5th Public Talk 20th February 1949

J.Krishnamurti Banaras 5th Public Talk 20th February 1949

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As this is the last talk, I would like, if I may, to make a brief resume of what we have been discussing during the last five weeks. It is the lack of capacity to understand that creates problems. The incapacity to understand a problem brings about conflict; and if we have the capacity to understand a problem, then the problem itself ceases to exist. It is the incapacity to understand a challenge that brings about a problem.

Life is, and must be, a series of challenges and responses. The challenge is not according to our likes and dislikes, nor according to our particular desires, but assumes different forms at different times. And if we have the capacity to meet that challenge adequately, fully, directly, then there is no problem. But because we do not meet that challenge fully, adequately, a problem arises. How is it possible to have that capacity? Life's challenge is not at any one particular level of existence. Life is not at one level only, neither the economic nor the spiritual. Life is, as we discussed, a relationship at different levels; it is all the time in flux, all the time expressing itself in different ways; and he is a happy man who is able to meet life completely and fully at different levels all the time.

So, the man who regards life as being merely the conditioning by environment, either economic or intellectual, and who meets life only from that point of view, is obviously an unintegrated person; and his conflicts are innumerable, because surely, life isn't at one level of existence. Life is relationship with things, people, and ideas; and if we do not meet these relationships rightly, fully, then conflicts arise from the impact of the challenge.

So, our problem is, is it not?, how to bring about, how to cultivate deliberately - if one can deliberately cultivate - , that capacity to meet the challenge all the time. Because, there is not a moment when there is no challenge; and if there is not a response, there is death, there is decay. It is only when we know how to meet the challenge all the time, continuously, freely, fully, that there is life, that there is depth, the height of thought and feeling.

Now, how is one to have that capacity, how does one come by it? Surely, no information can give it. Though you may study all the books written about how to meet life, that very factual understanding is really an impediment; because, having the facts, you try to meet the challenge with that framework of information. And, obviously, facts do not create or bring about that capacity. Without the capacity to meet life fully, life becomes a constant source of pain. So, it is not facts, it is not knowledge - you may read the Bhagavad Gita, you may read all the sacred books, listen to the talks given by all the saints, practise innumerable disciplines - , that will help you to have that capacity with which to meet life.

So, if it is not facts, if it is not knowledge, what is it that is required? Before we can find that out, we have to discover, have we not?, what is life itself, what is living. If we can understand that, perhaps we shall have the capacity to meet the challenge, which is life itself. Life is, is it not?, both challenge and response. It is not challenge alone nor response alone. Life is experience, experience in relationship. One cannot live in isolation; so, life is relationship, and relationship is action. And how can one have that capacity for understanding relationship, which is life? Does not relationship mean, not only communion with people, but intimacy with things and ideas? Life is relationship, which is expressed through contact with things, with people, and with ideas. In understanding relationship, we shall have capacity to meet life fully, adequately. So, our problem is not capacity - for capacity is not independent of relationship - , but rather the understanding of relationship, which will naturally produce the capacity for quick pliability, for quick adjustment, for quick response,

Relationship, surely, is the mirror in which you discover yourself. Without relationship you are not; to be, is to be related; to be related is existence. And you exist only in relationship; otherwise, you do not exist, existence has no meaning. It is not because you think you are, that you come into existence. You exist because you are related; and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict.

Now, there is no understanding of relationship because we use relationship merely as a means of furthering achievement, furthering transformation, furthering becoming. But, relationship is a means of self-discovery, because relationship is to be, it is existence. Without relationship, I am not. To understand myself, I must understand relationship. So, relationship is a mirror in which I can see myself. That mirror can either be distorted, or it can be `as is', reflecting that which is. But most of us see in relationship, in that mirror, things we would rather see; we do not see what is. We would rather idealize, escape, we would rather live in the future than understand that relationship in the immediate present.

So, the present is merely used by the past as a passage to the future. And so, relationship, which is always in the present, and not in the future or in the past, has no meaning, and therefore conflict arises. Conflict arises because we use the present as a passage to the future or to the past. The mind is the result of the past; without the past, there is no thought. Without the background, with out the conditioning, there is no thought. But thought, which is the result of the past, cannot understand the present, as it only uses the present as a passage to the future. The future is always a becoming, so, the present, in which alone there can be understanding, is never grasped. While there is a becoming, there is conflict; and the becoming is always the past using the present, to be, to achieve. In the process of that becoming, thought is caught in the net of time. And time is not a solution to our problems. You understand only in the immediate, not tomorrow or yesterday; always in the now, though that now may be tomorrow. So, under standing is timeless. You cannot under stand next life or next year.

So, that capacity to understand life comes into being only when one under stands relationship. Relationship is a mirror. It must reflect, not as one wishes oneself to be, ideally or romantically, but what one actually is, and it is very difficult to perceive oneself as one actually is, because one is so accustomed to escaping from what is; it is arduous to perceive, to observe silently what is, because one is so used to condemning, justifying, comparing, identifying. And in that process of justification, condemnation, that which is, is not understood. Only in the understanding of what is, is there freedom from what is.

So, life has problems and conflicts and miseries, only when you use relationship as a means of becoming, that is, when you gratify yourself through relationship. When I use another, or when I use property or an idea, as a means of self-expansion, which is the perpetuation of gratification, then life becomes a series of ceaseless conflicts and miseries. It is only when I understand relationship - which is the beginning of self-knowledge - that self-knowledge brings about right thinking with regard to what is; and it is right thinking that dissolves our problems - not the gurus, not the heroes, not the Mahatmas, not the literature, but the capacity to see what is and not escape from what is.

To acknowledge what is, is to understand what is. But to acknowledge what is, is most difficult, as the mind refuses to see, to observe, to accept what is. To see what is, to observe what is, demands action; and an ideal, the process of becoming, is an escape from action, is the avoidance of action. Since we surround ourselves with inaction, with escape, with ideals, we are running away from what is, which is relationship; but it is only in that relationship that we see ourselves clearly as we are. The more you go into what is, the more you see the deeper layers of consciousness, that is, life at different levels. In that there is freedom - not of discipline, not of cultivated, enclosed thought, but the freedom that truth, as virtue, brings; for without virtue there is no freedom. But the man who is becoming virtuous is not free. Virtue is only in the present, not in the future. So, we see that the whole significance of existence is not the avoidance of the present, but the comprehension of the present in relationship; and there is no relationship except in the present, and therein is the beauty of relationship.

After all, that is love, is it not; Love is not in the tomorrow. You cannot say that you will love tomorrow. Either you love now, or never. And that tremendous thing, that significance and beauty of love, can be understood only in relationship; but the mere cultivation of love, through discipline, is the denial of love. Then love is merely intellection. A man who loves with the mind, is empty of heart. Mind can adjust itself, thought can adjust itself, but love never `adjusts'. It is a state of being. What is pure, is pure always, though it be divided. And it is that love, it is that truth which liberates.

Question: You say the mind, memory and the thought process, have to cease before there can be understanding, and yet you are communicating to us. Is what you say the experience of some thing in the past, or are you experiencing as you communicate?

Krishnamurti: When do you communicate? When do you tell another your experience? When you have had the experience, not in the moment of experiencing. It is only an after result, this communication. You must have memory, words, gestures, to communicate an experience which you have had. So your communication is the expression of an experience which is over.

Now, when do you understand, when is there understanding? I do not know if you have noticed that there is under standing when the mind is very quiet, even for a second; there is the flash of understanding when the verbalization of thought is not. just experiment with it and you will see for yourself that you have the flash of understanding, that extraordinary rapidity of insight, when the mind is very still, when thought is absent, when the mind is not burdened with its own noise. So, the understanding of anything - of a modern picture, of a child, of your wife, of your neighbor - , or the understanding of truth which is in all things, can only come when the mind is very still. But such stillness cannot be cultivated, because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind.

It is essential to have a still mind, a quiet mind, in order to understand, which is fairly obvious to those who have experimented with all this. The more you are interested in something, the more your intention to understand, the more simple, clear, free the mind is. Then verbalization ceases. After all, thought is word, and it is the word that interferes. It is the screen of words, which is memory, that intervenes between the challenge and the response. It is the word that is responding to the challenge, which we call intellection. So, the mind that is chattering, that is verbalizing, cannot understand truth - truth in relationship, not an abstract truth. There is no abstract truth. But truth is very subtle. It is the subtlety that is difficult to follow. It is not abstract. It comes so swiftly, so darkly, it cannot be held by the mind. Like a thief in the night, it comes darkly, not when you are prepared to receive it. Your reception is merely an invitation of greed. So, a mind that is caught in the net of words, cannot understand truth.

The next question is: Is it not possible to communicate as one is experiencing? For communication there must be factual memory. As I am talking to you, I use words, which you and I understand. Memory is a result of the cultivation of the faculty of learning, of storing words. The questioner wants to know how to have a mind which does not merely express or communicate after the event, after the experience, but a mind that is experiencing and at the same time communicating. That is, a new mind, a fresh mind, a mind that is experiencing without the interference of memory, the memory of the past. So, first let us see the difficulty in this.

As I said, most of us communicate after the experience; therefore communication becomes a hindrance to further experience; because communication, the verbalization of an experience, merely strengthens the memory of that experience. And strengthening the memory of one experience prevents the free experiencing of the next. We communicate either to strengthen an experience, or to hold onto it. We verbalize it in order to fix it as memory, or to communicate it. The very fixing, through verbalization, of an experience is the strengthening of an experience that is over. Therefore, you are strengthening memory; and so it is memory that is meeting the challenge. In that state, when the response to challenge is merely verbal, experience of the past becomes a hindrance. So, our difficulty is to be experiencing and, in communicating it, not to make verbalization a hindrance to further experience.

In all these discussions and talks, if I merely repeated the experience of the past, it would not only be extremely boring to you and to me, but it would also strengthen the past and therefore prevent experiencing in the present. What is actually taking place is that the experience is going on, and at the same time there is communication. The communication is not verbalization, it is not clothing the experience. If we clothe the experience, give it a garment, shape it, the perfume and depth of that experiencing will be lost. So, there can be a fresh mind, a new mind, only when experiencing is not clothed by words. And, in expressing it verbally, there is the danger of clothing it, giving it a shape, a form, and therefore burdening the mind with the image, with the symbol. It is possible to have a new mind, a fresh mind, only when it is not the word which is important, but the experiencing. That experiencing is from moment to moment. There cannot be experiencing if it becomes accumulative, for then it is accumulation that experiences, and there is no experiencing. There is experiencing from moment to moment only when there is no accumulation. Verbalization is accumulation. It is extremely difficult and arduous to express, and still not be caught in the net of words.

Mind is, after all, the result of the past, of yesterday. And that which is not of time cannot be followed by time. The mind cannot follow that which is exceedingly swift, not of space, not of time; but in that state of the mind which is experiencing, which is not becoming everything is new. It is the word that makes what is, old. It is the memory of yesterday that clothes the present. And to understand the present, there must be experiencing; but experiencing is prevented when the word becomes all-important. So, there is a new mind, the mind that is experiencing continuously without shaping or being shaped by the experience, only when the word, the past, is not used as a means of becoming.

Question: Is marriage compatible with chastity?

Krishnamurti: Let us together explore this question. Many things are involved in it. Chastity is not the product of the mind. Chastity doesn't come through discipline. Chastity is not an ideal to be achieved. That which is the product of the mind, which is created by the mind, is not chaste; because the mind, when it creates the ideal of chastity, is escaping from what is; and a mind which is attempting to become chaste, is unchaste. That is one thing. We will explore it presently.

Then, in this question there is involved the problem of our sexual appetites, the whole problem of sex. Let us find out why for most of us sex has become a problem. And also, how is it possible to meet the sexual demand intelligently and not turn it into a problem?

Now, what do we mean by sex? The purely physical act, or the thought that excites, stimulates, furthers that act? Surely, sex is of the mind; and because it is of the mind, it must seek fulfillment, or there is frustration. Do not be nervous about the subject. You have all become very tense, I see. Let us talk it over as though it were any other subject. Don't look so grave and lost! Let us deal with this subject very simply and directly. The more complex a subject is. the more it demands clear thinking, the more must it be approached simply and directly.

Why is it that sex has become such a problem in our lives? Let us go into it, not with constraint, not with anxiety, fear, condemnation. Why has it become a problem? Surely, for most of you it is a problem. Why? Probably, you have never asked yourself why it is a problem. Let us find out.

Sex is a problem because it would seem that in that act there is complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy, because there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the me; and desiring more of it, more of the abnegation of the self in which there is complete happiness - without the past or the future demanding that complete happiness through full fusion, integration - ,naturally it becomes all-important. Isn't that so? Because it is something that gives me unadulterated joy, complete self forgetfulness, I want more and more of it. Now, why do I want more of it? Because, everywhere else I am in conflict, everywhere else, at all the different levels of existence, there is the strengthening of the self. Economically, socially, religiously, there is the constant thickening of self-consciousness, which is conflict. After all, you are self-conscious only when there is conflict. Self-consciousness is in its very nature the result of conflict. So, everywhere else, we are in conflict. In all our relationships with property, with people, with ideas, there is conflict, pain, struggle, misery; but in this one act there is complete cessation of all that. Naturally you want more of it, because it gives you happiness, while all the rest leads you to misery, turmoil, conflict, confusion, antagonism, worry, destruction, therefore the sexual act becomes all significant, all-important.

So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self. You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only for a few seconds, if only for a day, or what you will; and where the self is, there is conflict, there is misery, there is strife. So, there is the constant longing for more of that self-free state. But the central problem is the conflict at different levels, and how to abnegate the self. You are seeking happiness, that state in which the self, with all its conflicts, is not, which you find momentarily in that act. Or, you discipline yourself, you struggle, you control, you even destroy yourself through suppression; which means, you are seeking to be free of conflict, because with the cessation of conflict there is joy. If there can be freedom from conflict, then there is happiness, at all the different levels of existence.

What makes for conflict? How does this conflict arise, in your work, in your relationships, in teaching, in everything? Even when you write a poem, even when you sing, when you paint, there is conflict.

How does this conflict come into being? Does it not come into being through the desire to become? You paint, you want to express yourself through colour, you want to be the best painter. You study, worry, hope that the world will acclaim your painting. But, wherever there is the desire to become the more, there must be conflict. It is the psychological urge that demands the more. The need for more is psychological, the urge for the more exists when the psyche, the mind, is becoming, seeking, pursuing an end, a result. When you want to be a Mahatma, when you want to be a saint, when you want to understand, when you are practising virtue, when you are class-conscious as a `superior' entity, when you subserve function to heighten yourself - all these are indications, obviously, of a mind that is becoming. The more, therefore, is conflict. A mind which is seeking the more, is never conscious of what is, because it is always living in the more - in what it would like to be, never in what is. Until you resolve the whole content of that conflict, this one release of the self, through sex, will remain a hideous problem.

Sirs, the self is not an objective entity that can be studied under the microscope, or learned through books, or understood through quotations, however weighty those quotations may be. It can be understood only in relationship. After all, conflict is in relationship, whether with property, with an idea, with your wife, or with your neighbour; and without solving that fundamental conflict, merely to hold onto that one release through sex, is obviously to be unbalanced. And that is exactly what we are. We are unbalanced, because we have made sex the one avenue of escape; and society, so-called modern culture, helps us to do it. Look at the advertisements, the cinemas, the suggestive gestures, postures, appearances.

Most of you married when you were quite young, when the biological urge was very strong. You took a wife or a husband, and with that wife or husband you jolly well have to live for the rest of your life. Your relationship is merely physical, and everything else has to be adjusted to that. So what happens? You are intellectual, perhaps, and she is very emotional. Where is your communion with her? Or she is very practical, and you are dreamy, vague, rather indifferent. Where is the contact between you and her? You are over-sexed, and she is not; but you use her because you have rights. How can there be communion be tween you and her when you use her? Our marriages are now based on that idea, on that urge; but more and more there are contradictions and great conflicts in marriage, and so divorces.

So, this problem requires intelligent handling, which means that we have to alter the whole basis of our education, and that demands understanding not only the facts of life, but also our every day existence; not only knowing and understanding the biological urge, the sexual urge, but also seeing how to deal with it intelligently. But now, we don't do that, do we? It is a hushed subject, it is a secret thing, only talked about behind walls. When the urge is very strong, irrespective of anything else, we get mated for the rest of our life. See what one has done to oneself and to another.

How can the intellectual meet, commune, with the sentimental, the dull, or with the one who is not educated? And what communion is there then, except the sexual? The difficulty in all this is, is it not?, that the fulfillment of the sexual urge, the biological urge, necessitates certain social regulations; therefore you have marriage laws. You have all the ways of possessing that which gives you pleasure, security, comfort; but that which gives constant pleasure, dulls the mind. As constant pain dulls the mind, so constant pleasure withers the mind and heart.

And how can you have love? Surely, love is not a thing of the mind, is it? Love is not merely the sexual act, is it? Love is something which the mind can not possibly conceive. Love is something which cannot be formulated. And with out love, you become related; without love, you marry. Then, in that marriage, you `adjust yourselves' to each other. Lovely phrase! You adjust yourselves to each other, which is again an intellectual process, is it not? She has married you, but you are an ugly lump of flesh, carried away by your passions. She has got to live with you. She does not like the house, the surroundings, the hideousness of it, your brutality. But she says "Yes, I am married, I have got to put up with it." So, as a means of self-protection, she yields, she presently begins to say: "I love you." You know, when, through the desire for security, we put up with something ugly, that ugly thing seems to become beautiful, because it is a form of self-protection; otherwise we might be hurt, we might be utterly destroyed. So we see that which was ugly, hideous, has become gradually beautiful.

This adjustment is obviously a mental process. All adjustments are. But, surely, love is incapable of adjustment. You know, Sirs, don't you?, that if you love another, there is no `adjustment'. There is only complete fusion. Only when there is no love, do we begin to adjust. And this adjustment is called marriage. Hence, marriage fails, because it is the very source of conflict, a battle between two people. It is an extraordinarily complex problem, like all problems, but more so because the appetites, the urges, are so strong.

So, a mind which is merely adjusting itself, can never be chaste. A mind which is seeking happiness through sex can never be chaste. Though you may momentarily have, in that act, self-abnegation, self-forgetfulness, the very pursuit of that happiness, which is of the mind, makes the mind unchaste. Chastity comes into being only where there is love. Without love, there is no chastity. And love is not a thing to be cultivated. There is love only when there is complete self-forgetfulness; and to have the blessing of that love, one must be free through understanding relationship. Then, when there is love, the sexual act has quite a different significance. Then that act is not an escape, is not habit. Love is not an ideal; love is a state of being. Love cannot be where there is becoming. Only where love is, is there chastity, purity; but a mind that is becoming, or attempting to become chaste, has no love.

Question: We have been told that thought must be controlled to bring about that state of tranquillity necessary to understand reality. Could you please tell us how to control thought?

Krishnamurti: First, Sir, don't follow any authority. Authority is evil. Authority destroys, authority perverts, authority corrupts; and a man who follows authority, is destroying himself, and destroying also that which he has placed in a position of authority. The follower destroys the master, as the master destroys the follower. The guru destroys the pupil, as the pupil destroys the guru. Through authority you will never find anything. You must be free of authority to find reality. It is one of the most difficult things to be free of authority, both the outer and the inner. Inner authority is the consciousness of experience, consciousness of knowledge. And out ward authority is the State, the party, the group, the community. A man who would find reality must shun all authority, external and inward. So, don't be told what to think. That is the curse of reading: the word of another becomes all-important.

The questioner begins by saying: "We have been told." Who is there to tell you? Sir, don't you see that leaders and saints and great teachers have failed, be cause you are what you are? So leave them alone. You have made them failures because you are not seeking truth, you want gratification. Don't follow anyone, including myself; don't make of another your authority. You yourself have to be the master and the pupil. The moment you acknowledge another as a master and yourself as a pupil, you are denying truth. There is no master, no pupil, in the search for truth. The search for Truth is important, not you or the master who is going to help you to find the truth. You see, modern education, and also the previous education, have taught you what to think, not how to think. They have put you within a frame, and that frame has destroyed you; because you seek out a guru, a teacher, a leader, political or other, only when you are confused. Otherwise you never follow anybody. If you are very clear, if you are inwardly a light unto yourself, you will never follow anyone. But because you are not, you follow, you follow out of your confusion; and what you follow must also be confused. Your elders, as well as yourself, are confused, politically and religiously. Therefore, first clear up your own confusion, become a light unto yourself, and then the problem will cease. The division between the master and the pupil is unspiritual.

Now, the questioner wants to know how to control thought. First of all, to control it, you must know what thought is and who is the controller. Are they two separate processes, or a joint phenomenon? You must first understand what thought is, must you not?, before you say, "I will control thought; and also you must know what the controller is. Is there a controller without thought? If you have no thoughts, is there a thinker? The thinker is the thought, the thought is not separate from the thinker, they form a single process.

So, you have only thoughts left, not the thinker. Though you use the words `I think', it is only a form of communication; there is actually only a state in which thought is. And thought creates the thinker, who then communicates his thought. The thinker is merely the verbalization of the thought.

So, we have to find out what is thought. Then we shall know whether it is possible to control it or not, and why you want to control it. There may be quite a different approach to putting an end to the thought process, but it is not by control. Because, the moment you exert control, making an effort through an act of will, you do not understand thought. You are then merely condemning one thought and justifying another. That which you have justified, you want to hold onto. That which you condemn you want to push aside. So, let us find out what we mean by thought.

What is thought? Without memory there is no thought, is there? Thought is the result of accumulated experience, is it not?, which is the past. Without the past, there can be no thought in the present, can there? So thought is a response of the past to the present challenge. That is, thought surely, is the reaction of memory. But, what is memory? Memory, the continuance of remembering, is the verbalization of experience, isn't it? There is challenge, response, which is experience - , and that experience is verbalized. That verbalization creates memory; and the response of memory to challenge, is thought. So thought is verbalization, isn't it?

I do not know if you have ever tried to think without words. The moment you think, you must use words. I am not saying that there is not a state in which there is no verbalization. We are not discussing that. The thought is the word. Without verbalization, without the word, thought - the thought that we know - is not. So, if you see that the word - the verbalization - is the thought process, then it is not a question of con trolling thought, but of the cessation of thinking as verbalization. Where there is verbalization of an experience, there must be thought. To think is to verbalize. So, our problem is not how to control thought, but whether it is possible not to verbalize, not to put everything in to words? Why do we put our responses, our reactions, into words? Why do we do that? For one obvious reason: to communicate, to tell another our feeling. Also, we verbalize in order to strengthen that feeling, don't we?, in order to fix it, in order to look at it, in order to recapture that feeling which is gone. The word has taken the place of the feeling which has gone. So the word becomes all-important, and not the feeling, not the response, not the experience. The word has taken the place of experiencing. So, the word becomes the thought, which prevents experiencing.

Our problem, then, is this: is it possible not to verbalize, not to name, not to give a term? Obviously it is possible. You do this often, only unconsciously. When you are faced with a crisis, with a sudden challenge, there is no verbalization. You meet it fully. So, it is possible, but only when the word is not important, which means, when thought is not important, when the idea is not important. When an idea assumes importance, then the pattern becomes important, the ideology becomes important, and the revolution based on an idea becomes important; but a revolution based on an idea is not a revolution, it is merely the continuation, the modified continuity, of an old idea, an idea of yesterday.

So, the word becomes important only when experiencing is not important, when there is not the state of experiencing, which is to meet the challenge without verbalization, without the screen of words. You give life to the word, which is memory, when it is that memory which meets the challenge; because memory has no life in itself, has it? The word has no meaning in itself. It gains vitality, strength, impetus, fullness, only when the past, the memory, meets the challenge. Therefore, out of the living, the dead comes to life. And as it gains more life from that which in itself is dead, then thought becomes all-important. Thought by itself has no meaning except in relation to the past, which is verbal. And it is not a question of controlling thought. On the contrary, a controlled mind is incapable of receiving truth. A controlled mind is an anxious mind, a mind that is resisting, suppressing, substituting, and such a mind is afraid; and how can a mind that is anxious, be still? How can a mind that is afraid, be tranquil? There can be tranquillity only when the mind is no longer caught in the net of words. When the mind is no longer verbalizing every experience, then naturally it is in a state of experiencing.

Where there is experiencing there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. In that state of experiencing, which is always new, which is always being - though one can communicate that being by using words - , one knows that the word is not the experience, the word is not the thing, the word has no content; only the experience itself is full of content. Then, experiencing is not verbalization. Experiencing is the highest form of understanding, because it is the negation of thinking. Negative form of thinking is the highest form of comprehension; and there can be no negative thinking when there is verbalization of thought. So, it is not a question of con trolling thought at all, but of being free from thought. It is only when the mind is free from thought that there is a perception of that which is, of that which is eternal, which is truth.

Question: What do you mean by transformation?

Krishnamurti: 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. And 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. But 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 trans formation, must there not?

Now, is this transformation, is this radical revolution, an ultimate thing, or is it from moment to moment? I know we would 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 live shall find truth, but in the meantime, let us carry on. Surely, such a mind, thinking in terms of the future, is incapable of acting in the present; and therefore such a mind is not seeking transformation, it is merely avoiding transformation. And 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. Sir, 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? And 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; and, surely, 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. So, to discover the new, the eternal, in the present, from moment to moment, one needs an extra ordinarily alert mind, a mind that is not seeking a result, a mind that is not be coming. 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.

So, transformation is not an end 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; and 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 time less. 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 fulfillment. 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.

For love is not different from truth. Love is that state in which thought process as time has completely ceased. And where love is, there is transformation. Without love, revolution has no meaning; for then revolution is merely destruction, decay, a greater and greater, evermounting misery. Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment.

February 20, 1949