Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

Now, each one tries to immortalize the product of environment; that thing which is the result of the environment we try to make eternal. That is, the various fears, hopes, longings, prejudices, likes, and personal views which we glorify as our temperament are, after all, the result, the product, of environment; and this bundle of memories, which is the result of environment, the product of the reactions to environment, becomes that consciousness which we call the “I.” Is that not so? The whole struggle is between the result of environment, with which mind identifies itself and becomes the “I,” between that and environment. After all, the “I,” the consciousness with which the mind identifies itself, is the result of environment. The struggle takes place between that “I” and the constantly changing environment.

So where there is a search for substitution, there must be authority, the following of leadership, and hence the individual becomes but a cog in the social and religious machinery of life. If you look closely you will see that your search is nothing but a search for comfort and security and escape; not a search for understanding, not a search for truth, but rather a search for an evasion and, therefore, a search for the conquering of all obstacles; after all, all conquering is but substitution, and in substitution there is no understanding.

Each one has to find out for what he is searching; if he is not searching, then there is satisfaction and decay. If there is conflict, there is the desire to overcome that conflict, to escape from that conflict, to dominate it. And as I have said, conflict can exist only between two false things, between that supposed reality which you call the “I,” which to me is nothing else but the result of environment, and the environment itself. If your mind is merely concerned with the overcoming of that struggle, then you are perpetuating falseness and hence, there is more conflict, more sorrow. But if you understand the significance of environment, that is, wealth, poverty, exploitation, oppression, nationalities, religions, and all the inanities of social life in modern existence, not trying to overcome them but seeing their significance, then there must be individual action, and complete revolution of ideas and thought. Then there is no longer a struggle, but rather light dispelling darkness. There is no conflict between light and darkness. There is no conflict between truth and that which is false. There is only conflict where there are opposites.

Conflict then can exist only between environment—environment being economic and social conditions, political domination, neighbors—between that environment, and the result of environment, which is the “I.” Conflict can exist only so long as there is reaction to that environment which produces the “I,” the self. The majority of people are unconscious of this conflict—the conflict between one’s self, which is but the result of the environment, and the environment itself; very few are conscious of this continuous battle. One becomes conscious of that conflict, that disharmony, that struggle between the false creation of the environment, which is the “I,” and the environment itself, only through suffering. Isn’t that so? It is only through acuteness of suffering, acuteness of pain, acuteness of disharmony, that you become conscious of the conflict.

So what one has to do is to find out if one is dealing with the fundamental, or merely with the superficial. And to me the superficial will exist so long as you are merely concerned with the alteration of environment so as to alleviate conflict. That is, you still want to cling to the “I” consciousness as “mine,” but yet desire to alter the circumstances so that they will not create conflict in that “I.” I call that superficial thought, and from that there naturally is superficial action, whereas if you think fundamentally, that is, question the very result of the environment, which is the “I” and, therefore, question the environment itself, then you are acting fundamentally and, therefore, lastingly. And in that there is an ecstasy, in that there is a joy of which now you do not know because you are afraid to act fundamentally.

I think we give the rather false excuse that we must not hurt our families and our friends. You know when you want to do something vital, you do it, irrespective of your family and friends, don’t you? Then you don’t consider that you are going to hurt them. It is beyond your control; you feel so intensely, you think so completely that it carries you beyond the limitation of family circles, classified bondages. But you begin to consider family, friends, ideals, beliefs, traditions, the established order of things, only when you are still clinging to a particular safety, when there is not that inward richness, but merely the dependence on external stimulation for that inward richness. So if there is that full consciousness of suffering, brought about by conflict, then you are not held in the bondage of any particular orthodoxy, friends, or family. You want to find out the cause of that suffering, you want to find out the significance of the environment which creates that conflict; then in that there is no personality, no limited thought of the “I.” But it is only when you cling to that limited thought of the “I” that you have to consider how far you shall wander and how far you shall not wander. Surely truth, or that Godhead of understanding, is not to be found by clinging either to family or tradition or habit. It is to be found only when you are completely naked, stripped of your longings, hopes, securities; and in that direct simplicity is the richness of life.

As I said, search implies duality, contrast. Now where there is contrast, duality, there must be identification with one of the opposites, and from this there arises compulsion. When we say we search, our mind is rejecting something and seeking a substitute that will satisfy it, and thereby it creates duality, and from this there arises compulsion. That is, the choice of the one is the overcoming of the other, isn’t it? When we say we seek out or cultivate a new value, it is but the overcoming of that in which the mind is already caught up, which is its opposite. This choice is based on attraction to one or fear of the other, and this clinging through attraction, or rejection through fear, creates influence over the mind. Influence then is the negation of understanding and can exist only where there is division, the psychological division from which there arise distinctions such as class, national, religious, sex. That is, when the mind is trying to overcome, it must create duality, and that very duality negates understanding and creates the distinctions. That duality influences the mind, and hence a mind influenced by duality cannot understand the significance of environment or the significance of the cause of conflict. These psychological influences are merely reactions to environment from that center of “I” consciousness, of like and dislike, or antitheses, and naturally where there are antitheses, opposites, there can be no comprehension. From this distinction there ar...

What is the cause of suffering in this case? And what is it that we call suffering? Isn’t suffering merely a shock to the mind to awaken it to its own insufficiency? The recognition of that insufficiency creates what we call sorrow. Suppose that you have been relying on your son or your husband or your wife to satisfy that insufficiency, that incompleteness; by the loss of that person whom you love, there is created the full consciousness of that emptiness, of that void, and out of that consciousness comes sorrow, and you say, “I have lost somebody.” So through death there is, first of all, the full consciousness of emptiness, which you have been carefully evading. Hence, where there is dependence there must be emptiness, shallowness, insufficiency and, therefore, sorrow and pain. We don’t want to recognize that; we don’t see that that is the fundamental cause. So we begin to say, “I miss my friend, my husband, my wife, my child. How am I to overcome this loss? How am I to overcome this sorrow?”

Suffering is merely that high, intense clarity of thought and emotion which forces you to recognize things as they are.

Again, creative thinking is free of division, which creates conflict between thought, emotion, and action. And division exists only when there is the search for a goal, when there is adjustment and the complacency of certainty. Action is this movement which is itself thought and emotion, as I explained. This action is the relationship between the individual and society. It is conduct, work, cooperation, which we call fulfillment. That is, when mind is functioning without seeking a culmination, a goal, and, therefore, thinking creatively, that thinking is action, which is the relationship between the individual and society. Now if this movement of thought is clear, simple, direct, spontaneous, profound, then there is no conflict in the individual against society, for action then is the very expression of this living, creative movement.

That is what is happening. When you are seeking an attainment, a result, an overcoming of the turmoil, and not considering the “you,” the “I” consciousness, and the end which you are ceaselessly and consciously, or unconsciously, pursuing, naturally you must create exploiters, either of the past or the present; and you are caught up in their pettinesses, their jealousies, their disciplines, their disharmonies, and their divisions. So the mere desire to go through this turmoil ever creates further problems, for there is no consideration of the actor or the manner of his action, but merely the consideration of the scene of turmoil as a means to get to an end. Now to me, the turmoil, the end, and the “you” are the same; there is no division. This division is artificial, and it is created by the desire to gain, by the pursuit of acquisitive accumulation, which is born of insufficiency. In becoming conscious of emptiness, of shallowness, one begins to realize the utter insufficiency of one’s own thinking and feeling, and so in one’s thought there arises the idea of accumulation, and from that is born this division between “you,” the self-consciousness, and the end. To me, as I said, there can be no such distinction, because the moment you fulfill there can no longer be the actor and the act, but only that creative movement of thought which does not seek a result, and so there is a continual living, which is immortality.

So the mere search for the solution of your problems is not going to free the mind from creating further problems. As long as this center of self-protectiveness, born of insufficiency, exists, there must be disturbances, tremendous sorrow, and pain; and you cannot free the mind of sorrow by disciplining it not to be insufficient. That is, you cannot discipline yourself, or be influenced by conditions and environment, in order not to be shallow. You say to yourself, “I am shallow; I recognize the fact, and how am I going to get rid of it?” I say, do not seek to get rid of it, which is merely a process of substitution, but become conscious, become aware of what is causing this insufficiency. You cannot compel it; you cannot force it; it cannot be influenced by an ideal, by a fear, by the pursuit of enjoyment and powers. You can find out the cause of insufficiency only through awareness. That is, by looking into environment and piercing into its significance there will be revealed the cunning subtleties of self-protection. After all, self-protection is the result of insufficiency, and as the mind has been trained, caught up in its bondage for centuries, you cannot discipline it, you cannot overcome it. If you do, you lose the significance of the deceits and subtleties of thought and emotion behind which mind has taken shelter; and to discover these subtleties you must become conscious, aware. Now to be aware is not to alter. Our mind is accustomed to alteration which is merel...

Is it not possible, then, to be aware of everything as it is? Starting from there, surely, there can be an understanding. To acknowledge, to be aware of, to get at that which is, puts an end to struggle. If I know that I am a liar, and it is a fact which I recognize, then the struggle is over. To acknowledge, to be aware of what one is, is already the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of understanding, which releases you from time. To bring in the quality of time—time, not in the chronological sense, but as the medium, as the psychological process, the process of the mind—is destructive, and creates confusion. So, we can have understanding of what is when we recognize it without condemnation, without justification, without identification. To know that one is in a certain condition, in a certain state, is already a process of liberation; but a man who is not aware of his condition, of his struggle, tries to be something other than he is, which brings about habit. So, then, let us keep in mind that we want to examine what is, to observe and be aware of exactly what is the actual, without giving it any slant, without giving it an interpretation. It takes an extraordinarily astute mind, an extraordinarily pliable heart, to be aware of and to follow what is: because what is is constantly moving, constantly undergoing a transformation, and if the mind is tethered to belief, to knowledge, it ceases to pursue, it ceases to follow the swift movement of what is. What is is not stat...

Why are we ambitious? “I would be bored if I were not occupied in striving to achieve some kind of result. I used to be ambitious for my husband, and I suppose you would say it was for myself through my husband; and now I am ambitious for myself through an idea. I have never thought about ambition, I have just been ambitious.” Why are we clever and ambitious? Is not ambition an urge to avoid what is? Is not this cleverness really stupid, which is what we are? Why are we so frightened of what is? What is the good of running away if whatever we are is always there? We may succeed in escaping, but what we are is still there, breeding conflict and misery. Why are we so frightened of our loneliness, of our emptiness? Any activity away from what is is bound to bring sorrow and antagonism. Conflict is the denial of what is or the running away from what is; there is no conflict other than that. Our conflict becomes more and more complex and insoluble because we do not face what is. There is no complexity in what is, but only in the many escapes that we seek.

“This requires careful and detailed thought, but I think I am beginning to understand it. You lay emphasis on the individual, but not as a separate and antagonistic force within society. Now the second point. I have always worked for an ideal, and I don’t understand your denial of it. Would you mind going into this problem?” Our present morality is based on the past or the future, on the traditional, or the what ought to be. The what ought to be is the ideal in opposition to what has been, the future in conflict with the past. Nonviolence is the ideal, the what should be; and the what has been is violence. The what has been projects the what should be; the ideal is homemade, it is projected by its own opposite, the actual. The antithesis is an extension of the thesis; the opposite contains the element of its own opposite. Being violent, the mind projects its opposite, the ideal of nonviolence. It is said that the ideal helps to overcome its own opposite; but does it? Is not the ideal an avoidance, an escape from the what has been, or from what is? The conflict between the actual and the ideal is obviously a means of postponing the understanding of the actual, and this conflict only introduces another problem which helps to cover up the immediate problem. The ideal is a marvelous and respectable escape from the actual. The ideal of nonviolence, like the collective utopia, is fictitious; the ideal, the what should be, helps us to cover up and avoid what is. The pursuit of th...

“Then my fear arises from my own hollowness, my insufficiency. I see that all right, and it is true; but what am I to do about it?” You cannot do anything about it. Whatever you do is an activity of escape. That is the most essential thing to realize. Then you will see that you are not different or separate from that hollowness. You are that insufficiency. The observer is the observed emptiness. Then if you proceed further, there is no longer calling it loneliness; the terming of it has ceased. If you proceed still further, which is rather arduous, the thing known as loneliness is not; there is a complete cessation of loneliness, emptiness, of the thinker as the thought. This alone puts an end to fear. “Then what is love?” Love is not identification; it is not thought about the loved. You do not think about love when it is there; you think about it only when it is absent, when there is distance between you and the object of your love. When there is direct communion, there is no thought, no image, no revival of memory; it is when the communion breaks, at any level, that the process of thought, of imagination, begins. Love is not of the mind. The mind makes the smoke of envy, of holding, of missing, of recalling the past, of longing for tomorrow, of sorrow and worry; and this effectively smothers the flame. When the smoke is not, the flame is. The two cannot exist together; the thought that they exist together is merely a wish. A wish is a projection of thought, and thought ...

“May I just ask just one question?” put in one of the others. “In what manner should one live one’s daily life?” As though one were living for that single day, for that single hour. “How?” If you had only one hour to live, what would you do? “I really don’t know,” he replied anxiously. Would you not arrange what is necessary outwardly, your affairs, your will, and so on? Would you not call your family and friends together and ask their forgiveness for the harm that you might have done to them, and forgive them for whatever harm they might have done to you? Would you not die completely to the things of the mind, to desires, and to the world? And if it can be done for an hour then it can also be done for the days and years that may remain. “Is such a thing really possible, sir?” Try it and you will find out.

To bring about right education, we must obviously understand the meaning of life as a whole, and for that we have to be able to think, not consistently, but directly and truly. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. We cannot understand existence abstractly or theoretically. To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education. Education is not merely acquiring knowledge, gathering and correlating facts; it is to see the significance of life as a whole. But the whole cannot be approached through the part, which is what governments, organized religions, and authoritarian parties are attempting to do. The function of education is to create human beings who are integrated and, therefore, intelligent. We may take degrees and be mechanically efficient without being intelligent. Intelligence is not mere information; it is not derived from books, nor does it consist of clever self-defensive responses and aggressive assertions. One who has not studied may be more intelligent than the learned. We have made examinations and degrees the criterion of intelligence and have developed cunning minds that avoid vital human issues. Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education. Education should help us to discover lasting values so that we do not merely cling to formula...

Such a transformation can be brought about only through right education and the total development of the human being. It is a revolution that must take place in the whole of the mind and not merely in thought. Thought, after all, is only a result and not the source. There must be radical transformation of the source and not mere modification of the result. At present we are tinkering with results, with symptoms. We are not bringing about a vital change, uprooting the old ways of thought, freeing the mind from traditions and habits. It is with this vital change we are concerned and only right education can bring it into being.

Authority, as “the one who knows,” has no place in learning. The educator and the student are both learning through their special relationship with each other, but this does not mean that the educator disregards the orderliness of thought. Orderliness of thought is not brought about by discipline in the form of assertive statements of knowledge; but it comes into being naturally when the educator understands that in cultivating intelligence there must be a sense of freedom.

A disciplined mind is never a free mind, nor can a mind that has suppressed desire ever be free. It is only through understanding the whole process of desire that the mind can be free. Discipline always limits the mind to a movement within the framework of a particular system of thought or belief, does it not? And such a mind is never free to be intelligent. Discipline brings about submission to authority. It gives the capacity to function within the pattern of a society which demands functional ability, but it does not awaken the intelligence which has its own capacity. The mind that has cultivated nothing but capacity through memory is like the modern electronic computer which, though it functions with astonishing ability and accuracy, is still only a machine. Authority can persuade the mind to think in a particular direction. But being guided to think along certain lines, or in terms of a foregone conclusion, is not to think at all; it is merely to function like a human machine, which breeds thoughtless discontent, bringing with it frustration and other miseries.

There is a vast difference between the conceptual and the factual. The conceptual may bring us together temporarily, but there will again be separation if our working together is only a matter of conviction. If the truth is seen by each one of us, there may be disagreement in detail but there will be no urge to separate. It is the foolish who break away over some detail. When the truth is seen by all, the detail can never become an issue over which there is dissension.

Also in order to understand ourselves we need a great deal of humility. If you start by saying, “I know myself,” you have already stopped learning about yourself; or if you say, “There is nothing much to learn about myself because I am just a bundle of memories, ideas, experiences, and traditions,” then you have also stopped learning about yourself. The moment you have achieved anything you cease to have that quality of innocence and humility; the moment you have a conclusion or start examining from knowledge, you are finished, for then you are translating every living thing in terms of the old, whereas if you have no foothold, if there is no certainty, no achievement, there is freedom—to look, to achieve. And when you look with freedom it is always new. A confident man is a dead human being.

Most of us walk through life inattentively, reacting unthinkingly according to the environment in which we have been brought up, and such reactions create only further bondage, further conditioning, but the moment you give your total attention to your conditioning you will see that you are free from the past completely, that it falls away from you naturally.

It is the same with sexual desire or any other form of desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. To react is perfectly normal. If you stick a pin in me I shall react unless I am paralyzed. But then thought steps in and chews over the delight and turns it into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, the more strength thought gives to pleasure. So thought creates and sustains pleasure through desire, and gives it continuity; and, therefore, the natural reaction of desire to any beautiful thing is perverted by thought. Thought turns it into a memory and memory is then nourished by thinking about it over and over again. Of course, memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function at all without it. In its own field it must be efficient, but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom.

So if you understand that where there is a search for pleasure there must be pain, live that way if you want to, but don’t just slip into it. If you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure, not cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, never looking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitality of their understanding—but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. Then you will have tremendous joy in life. You cannot think about joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.

When you lose someone you love you shed tears; are your tears for yourself or for the one who is dead? Are you crying for yourself or for another? Have you ever cried for another? Have you ever cried for your son who was killed on the battlefield? You have cried, but do those tears come out of self-pity or have you cried because a human being has been killed? If you cry out of self-pity your tears have no meaning because you are concerned about yourself. If you are crying because you are bereft of one in whom you have invested a great deal of affection, it was not really affection. When you cry for your brother who dies, cry for him. It is very easy to cry for yourself because he is gone. Apparently you are crying because your heart is touched, but it is not touched for him, it is only touched by self-pity and self-pity makes you hard, encloses you, makes you dull and stupid. When you cry for yourself, is it love? Crying because you are lonely, because you have been left, because you are no longer powerful—complaining of your lot, your environment—always you in tears? If you understand this, which means to come in contact with it as directly as you would touch a tree or a pillar or a hand, then you will see that sorrow is self-created, sorrow is created by thought, sorrow is the outcome of time. I had my brother three years ago, now he is dead, now I am lonely, aching, there is no one to whom I can look for comfort or companionship, and it brings tears to my eyes.

The understanding of the nature of what you are, without any distortions, without any bias, without any reactions to what you discover you are, is the beginning of austerity. The watching, the awareness, of every thought, every feeling, not to restrain it, not to control it, but to watch it, like watching a bird in flight, without any of your own prejudices and distortions—that watching brings about an extraordinary sense of austerity that goes beyond all restraint, all the fooling around with oneself and all this idea of self-improvement, self-fulfillment. That is all rather childish. In this watching there is great freedom and in that freedom there is the sense of the dignity of austerity. But if you said all this to a modern group of students or children, they would probably look out of the window in boredom because this world is bent on its own pursuit of pleasure.

“If I may suggest, never under any circumstances ask ‘how.’ When you use the word how you really want someone to tell you what to do, some guide, some system, somebody to lead you by the hand so that you lose your freedom, your capacity to observe, your own activities, your own thoughts, your own way of life. When you ask ‘how’ you really become a secondhand human being; you lose integrity and also the innate honesty to look at yourself, to be what you are and to go beyond and above what you are. Never, never ask the question ‘how.’ We are talking psychologically, of course. You have to ask ‘how’ when you want to put a motor together or build a computer. You have to learn something about it from somebody. But to be psychologically free and original can only come about when you are aware of your own inward activities, watch what you are thinking and never let one thought escape without observing the nature of it, the source of it. Observing, watching. One learns about oneself much more by watching than from books or from some psychologist or complicated, clever, erudite scholar or professor.

The space that thought creates is measurable and so is limited; cultures and religions are its product. But the mind is filled with thought and is made up of thought; its consciousness is the structure of thought, having little space within it. But this space is the movement of time, from here to there, from its center toward its outer lines of consciousness, narrow or expanding. The space which the center makes for itself is its own prison. Its relationships are from this narrow space but there must be space to live; that of the mind denies living. Living within the narrow confines of the center is strife, pain, and sorrow and that is not living. The space, the distance between you and the tree, is the word, knowledge, which is time. Time is the observer who makes the distance between himself and the trees, between himself and what is. Without the observer, distance ceases. Identification with the trees, with another or with a formula, is the action of thought in its desire for protection, security. Distance is from one point to another and to reach that point time is necessary; distance only exists where there is direction, inward or outward. The observer makes a separation, a distance between himself and what is; from this grows conflict and sorrow. The transformation of what is takes place only when there is no separation, no time, between the seer and the seen. Love has no distance.

The good is not the opposite of the evil. It has never been touched by that which is evil, though it is surrounded by it. Evil cannot hurt the good but the good may appear to do harm and so evil gets more cunning, more mischievous. It can be cultivated, sharpened, expansively violent; it is born within the movement of time, nurtured and skillfully used. But goodness is not of time; it can in no way be cultivated or nurtured by thought; its action is not visible; it has no cause and so no effect. Evil cannot become good, for that which is good is not the product of thought; it lies beyond thought, like beauty. The thing that thought produces thought can undo, but it is not the good; as it is not of time, the good has no abiding place. Where the good is, there is order, not the order of authority, punishment, and reward; this order is essential, for otherwise society destroys itself and man becomes evil, murderous, corrupt, and degenerate. For man is society; they are inseparable. The law of the good is everlasting, unchanging and timeless. Stability is its nature and so it is utterly secure. There is no other security.

Each of these extracts conveys Krishnamurti’s eagerness to explore significant themes with openness, and his refusal to speak as an authority. We are reminded that the answers are in the penetration of the questions themselves.

Tentative or permanent, a conclusion is already a bondage, is it not? Do, please, think with me a little. If one wants to find out whether there is such a thing as God, what generally happens? By reading certain books or listening to the arguments of some learned person, one is persuaded that there is God, or one becomes a communist and is persuaded that there isn’t. But if one wants to find out the truth of the matter, can one belong to either side? Must not one’s mind be free from all speculation, from all knowledge, all belief? Now, how is the mind to be free? Will the mind ever be free if it follows a method to be free? Can any method, any practice, any system, however noble, however new or tried out for centuries, make the mind free? Or does the method merely condition the mind in a particular way, which we then call freedom? The method will produce its own results, will it not? And when the mind seeks a result through a method, the result being freedom, will such a mind be free? Look, suppose one has a particular belief, a belief in God, or what you will. Must one not find out how that belief has come into being? This does not mean that you must not believe, but why do you believe? Why does the mind say, “This is so”? And can the mind discover how beliefs came into being? You see insecurity in everything about you, and you believe in a Master, in reincarnation, because that belief gives you hope, a sense of security, does it not? And can a mind that is seeking securi...

You see, when the mind is totally aware of its conditioning, there is only the mind: there is no “you” separate from the mind. But when the mind is only partially aware of its conditioning, it divides itself, it dislikes its conditioning or says it is a good thing; and as long as there is condemnation, judgment, or comparison, there is incomplete understanding of conditioning and, therefore, the perpetuation of that conditioning, whereas, if the mind is aware of its conditioning without condemning or judging, but merely watching it, then there is a total perception, and you will find, if you so perceive it, that the mind frees itself from that conditioning. This is what I mean by being serious. Experiment with this, not just casually, but seriously watch your mind in action all the time—when you are at the dinner table, when you are talking, when you are walking—so that your mind becomes entirely aware of all its activities. Then only can there be freedom from conditioning and, therefore, the total stillness of the mind in which alone it is possible to find out what is truth. If there is not that stillness, which is the outcome of a total understanding of conditioning, your search for truth has no meaning at all, it is merely a trap.

Taking that whole picture into consideration and knowing all the significance of it, is it possible for the mind to be aware of its conditioning and liberate itself? Because it is only in freedom that there can be creativeness, but freedom is not a reaction to something. Freedom is not a reaction to the prison in which the mind is caught; it is not the opposite of slavery. Freedom is not a motive. Surely, the mind that is seeking truth, God, or whatever name you like to give it, has no motive in itself. Most of us have a motive because all our life, in our education and in everything that we do, our action is based on a motive, the motive either of self-expansion or self-destruction. And can the mind be aware of and liberate itself from all those bondages which it has imposed upon itself in order to be secure, to be satisfied, in order to achieve a personal or a national result? I think the revolution of which I am talking is possible only when the mind is very quiet, very still. But that quietness of the mind does not come through any effort—it comes naturally, easily, when the mind understands its own process of action, which is to understand the whole significance of thinking. So the beginning of freedom is self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is not in the withdrawal from life but is to be discovered in the relationships of our everyday existence. Relationship is the mirror in which we can see ourselves factually, without any distortion, and it is only through self-knowl...

I also see that my problem is not to find God because I do not know what that means. I may have read innumerable books on the subject, but such books are merely explanations, words, theories which have no actuality for a person who has not experienced that which is beyond the mind. And the interpreter is always a traitor, it does not matter who that interpreter is.

So, is it possible for me to have the capacity to inquire into and be totally free from envy? How does that capacity arise? Does it arise through any method or practice? Do I become an artist by practicing a particular technique day after day? Obviously not. The desire to have that capacity is a selfish movement of the mind, whereas if I do not try to cultivate it, but begin to inquire into the whole process of envy, then the means of totally dissolving envy is already there. Now, in what manner do I inquire into the process of envy? What is the motive behind that inquiry? Do I want to be free of envy in order to be a great man, in order to be like Buddha, Christ, and so on? If I inquire with that intention, with that motive, such inquiry projects its own answer, all of which will only perpetuate the monstrous world which we have now. But if I begin to inquire with humility, that is, not with a desire to achieve success, then an entirely different process is taking place. I realize that I have not got the capacity to be free of envy, so I say, “I shall find out,” which means that there is humility from the very beginning. And the moment one is humble, one has the capacity to be free of envy. But the man who says, “I must have that capacity, and I am going to get it through these methods, through this system”—such a man is lost, and it is such people who have created this ugly, treacherous world.

So your problem is not the world of newspapers, ideas, and politicians, it is the world within yourself—but you have to realize, to feel the truth of this, and not merely agree because the Gita or some bearded gentleman says it is so. If you are aware of that inner world and are watching yourself without condemnation or justification from day to day, from moment to moment, then in that awareness you will find there is a tremendous vitality. The mind that is accumulating is frightened to die, and such a mind can never discover what is truth. But to a mind that is dying every minute to everything that it has experienced, there comes an astonishing vitality because every moment is new; and only then is the mind capable of discovery.

Is there not a difference between the flowering mind and the becoming mind? The becoming mind is a mind that is always growing, becoming, enlarging, gathering experience as knowledge. We know that process full well in our daily life, with all its results, with all its conflicts, its miseries and strife, but we do not know the life of flowering. And is there not a difference between the two which we have to discover—not by trying to demarcate, to separate, but to discover—in the process of our living? When we discover this, we may perhaps be able to set aside this ambition, the way of choice, and discover a flowering, which is the way of life, which may be true action. So if we merely say that we must not be ambitious without the discovery of the flowering way of life, the mere killing of ambition destroys the mind also because it is an action of the will, which is the action of choice. So is it not essential for each one of us to find out in our lives the truth of ambition? We are all encouraged to be ambitious; our society is based on the strength of the drive toward a result. And in that ambition there are inequalities which legislation tries to level out, to alter. Perhaps that way, that approach to life, is essentially wrong, and there might be another approach, which is the flowering of life, which could express itself without accumulation. After all, we know when we are conscious of striving after something, of becoming something; that is ambition, the seeking of a r...

By the repetition of experience, the experiences are gathered and stored away and, like a machine, I repeat from that experience, from that storehouse. Here again, there is repetition, which is again the memory functioning. So you are asking if it is possible, while I am speaking, that I am really experiencing, not answering from experience? Surely there is a difference between the repetition of experience and the freedom of experiencing, which is being expressed through memory, which is the verbalization. Please listen. This is not difficult to understand. I want to find out what ambition means, all that it implies. Do I really, now as I am speaking, investigate afresh the whole process of ambition? Or do I repeat the investigation which I have made yesterday about ambition, which is merely repetition? Is it not possible to investigate, to experience anew all the time, and not merely rely on a record, on memory, on the experience of yesterday? Is it not possible to flower, to be, all the time, now as I am speaking, without the repetitious experience of yesterday, though I use words to communicate? Your question is: What is functioning when I am speaking? If I am repeating merely what I have said ten days ago, then it is of very little value. But if I am experiencing as I am talking, not an imaginative feeling, but actually, then what is functioning? The flowering is functioning, not through self-expression, not the “me” functioning, which is memory. So it is very importan...

With what should the mind be occupied? I want to meditate. Would you please tell me on what I should meditate?

K: That is perfectly right. I have learned a lot. Have you? A man comes from Seattle or Sheffield or Birmingham and is told, “I have found that what he says is the truth because I have had a perception and that perception stands logically.” It is not outside of reason. And in that perception I see that where I walk is full of pitfalls, of danger. Therefore, I have to be tremendously aware. Danger exists when there is no security. And the gurus, the priests, all offer security. Seeing the illogic of it I accept this illogic too.

There is also a possible danger that one has a genuine perception, an insight, and is not fooling oneself, and that out of that comes a certain action. But then one could fall into making whatever that action was into a formula and stop having the insight. Let’s say that out of an insight which was real a certain action came. One then thinks that is the way things should be. K: That is what generally happens. Q: But isn’t that a corruption of the perception, just making a pattern out of the action instead of continuing to look? It is like being able to really look at something; for instance, looking out of the window and seeing something. But then you don’t look out again and you think everything is the way it was. It may have totally changed. The perception starts out being genuine, but you don’t continue to look, have insight.

K: It is a tremendous thing! One has to look at it very, very carefully. Look, the world is me and I am the world. When I say “me,” “you” exist; both of us are there. The “you” and the “I” are the results of man’s misery, of selfishness, and so on; it is a result. When one looks into the result, goes into it very, very deeply, the insight brings about a quality in which “you” and “I”—who are the result—don’t exist. This is easy to agree to verbally, but when you see it deeply there is no “you” and no “me.” Therefore, there is no result; which means compassion. The person upon whom that compassion acts wants a result. We say, “Sorry, there is no result.” But the man who suffers says, “Help me to get out of this,” or, “Help me to bring back my son, my wife.” He is demanding a result. This thing has no result. The result is the world. Q: Does compassion affect the consciousness of man? K: Yes. It affects the deep layers of consciousness. The “I” is the result of the world; the “you” is the result of the world. And to the man who sees this deeply, with a profound insight, there is no “you” or “I.” Therefore, that profound insight is compassion, which is intelligence. And the intelligence says, if you want a result I can’t give it to you, I am not the product of a result. Compassion says, this state is not a result; therefore, there is no cause. Q: Does that mean there is no time either? K: No cause, no result, no time.

The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said “Truth is a pathless land.” Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest, or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a sense of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man’s thinking, relationships, and daily life. These are the causes of our problems, for they divide man from man in every relationship. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is this consciousness. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form, and superficial culture he acquires from his environment. The uniqueness of the individual does not lie in the superficial but in the total freedom from the content of consciousness. Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretense that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man, but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of f...

So this is the first thing to understand when you look at your consciousness: the division between the thinker and the thought, between the observer and the observed, between the experiencer and the experienced is false, for they are one. There is no thinker if you do not think. Thought has created the thinker. That is the first thing to understand, to have an insight into the truth of, the fact of, as palpable as you sitting there, so that there is no conflict between the observer and the observed. So, what is the content of your consciousness, the hidden as well as the open? Can you look at it—and not make an effort? You can find this out, not just sitting there, but in your relationships. That is the mirror in which you will see, not by closing your eyes, or by going off into the woods and thinking up some dreams. In the actual fact of your relationship with man, woman, your neighbor, your politician, your gods, your gurus, you will observe your reactions, your attitudes, your prejudices, your images, your constant groping. The content is in that. What you are doing now is merely ploughing, and you can only sow when you observe your relationships and see what actually is taking place. You can look as much as you like and begin to distinguish various qualities and tendencies, but if you look as an observer different from the observed then you are bound to create conflict and, therefore, further suffering. When you have an insight, see the truth that the observer is the o...

Now, those are facts as to what is going on about us. The facts as to what is going on inside us are very much the same. We are trying to find an answer to the major problems of our human life through the operation of thought—thought which the Greeks imposed upon the West, with their political philosophy, with their mathematics, and so on. Thought has not found an answer and it never will. So we must go then into the whole structure of thought and the content that it has created as consciousness. We must observe the operation of thought in relationship, in our daily life. That observation implies having an insight as to whether it is a fact that the observer is different from the observed, for if there is a difference there must inevitably be conflict, just as there is between two ideologies. Ideologies are the inventions of thought, conditioned by the culture in which they have developed. Now, can you, in your daily life, observe this? In such observation you will find out what your behavior is, whether it is based on the principle of reward and punishment—as most of our behavior is, however polished and refined. From that observation one begins to learn what real intelligence is. Not the intelligence that is obtained from a book, or out of experience; that is not intelligence at all. Intelligence has nothing whatsoever to do with thought. Intelligence operates when the mind sees the whole, the endless whole—not my country, my problems, my little gods, my meditations. It ...

Can the mind, your mind, be free of the traditional approach of analysis, introspectively trying to improve? Because you see the truth of being free of authority; therefore, there is no guru, no savior, there are no steps through meditation to come upon something extraordinary. There is something extraordinary, but not through this way. Can the mind put away all this, deny all this, without any resistance? To do that you must look. You must look outwardly and inwardly; hear the music of the world and the discord of the world and the music inwardly and the discord outwardly, because both are the same. We are an intrinsic part of the world. To do this we require energy and this energy is not brought about by concepts, by words. This energy comes when you have insight into the disorder of a mind that functions mechanically in the movement of thought. So, no belief, no idea, no concept, no ideal, no commitment of any kind in that field. Then, through negation of what is false—not through resistance or reaction to the false—through choiceless rejection of what is false, you have a different kind of energy.

Understanding attachment is much more important than detachment.

Now, if you see that as real danger, as you would see the danger of a falling rock, you move away from it instantly and you are free of it. To observe this, you need a certain sensitivity, physical as well as psychological, and you cannot have this sensitivity if you are indulging in all kinds of things—drink, sex, overworking. So, if you are at all serious, if you give your attention, your care, your affection to this, then you will see for yourself that out of this freedom from the division that thought has created, there is another kind of energy, which is intelligence. That intelligence is not put together by thought. It is not the cunning intelligence of a politician or a priest or a businessman. It comes out of the freedom that is perceiving the falseness, the unreality of all that. Can your mind see it totally? It cannot see it totally if it has any direction at all. An intelligent mind acts in the field of thought intelligently, sanely, without resistance. It is free from the structure and implications of attachment, from the action of attachment, from the pursuit of power with all its complications, the ruthlessness of it. It sees the dividing process of thought, and seeing that clearly, totally, it has energy. That energy is intelligence. Having that energy, that intelligence, it can operate in the field of thought, not the other way round. One can see that there is no division between the outside and the inside, it is an interrelationship. One sees that, and one...