Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti

by J. Krishnamurti

So my problem is not to inquire into reality, but to find out whether, living in this world, I can be free of envy. Envy is not mere jealousy, though jealousy is part of it, nor is it merely being concerned because someone else has more than I. Envy is the state of a mind which is demanding more and more all the time—more power, more position, more money, more experience, more knowledge. And demanding the “more” is the activity of a mind which is self-centered.

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.

The one vocation for man is to find out what is real.

A mind that accumulates is already in decay. But the mind that allows memories to go by and is firm in the way of experiencing—such a mind is always fresh, it is always seeing things anew.

You think about yourself in relation to another with like and dislike; and you think about yourself, identifying yourself with another. I think about the person I have just left, or the person I think I like, or the person with whom I have quarreled, or the person whom I love. I have identified myself with all those people, haven’t I?

Most human beings throughout the world want to be safe, secure, comfortable, lead a life of indulgence, a life in which they do not have too much opposition, where they conform superficially, but revolt against conforming, become superficially respectable but are inwardly rebellious, have a job, get married, have children and responsibility. But because the mind wants something much more than that, they are discontented, running from one thing to another.

Wait, I am not at all sure. I face all this tremendous uproar that is going on, the shouting, the pushing, and I find there is an easy way out—I become a monk. That is what is happening in certain parts of the world, because people don’t trust politicians, scientists, technicians, preachers, anymore. They say, “I am going to withdraw from all this and become a solitary monk with a begging bowl”; they are doing it in India. Or not knowing what to do, you drift, carrying on from day to day, not bothering. Or if you must find a way out you force yourself, or you join a group that thinks it is tremendously advanced. Is that what you are all going to do?

So I would say to a daughter or son, “Look, listen to all this, listen to all the noise that is going on in the world. Don’t take sides, don’t jump to any conclusions, but just listen. Don’t say one noise is better than another noise; they are all noises, so just listen first. And listen also to your own noise, your chattering, your wishes—‘I want to be this and I don’t want to be that’—and find out what it means to listen. Find out, don’t be told. Discuss it with me and find out what it means first. Find out what it means to think, why you think, what is the background of your thinking. Watch yourself, but don’t become self-centered in that watching. Be tremendously concerned, in watching, about further enlargement of yourself.” If you watch yourself, there is a tremendous danger of self-centeredness.

You see, when people feel that they want to give up desire then there is a danger of giving up this demand as well. K: How can we put this? Let’s find a good word for it. Would the word passion be suitable? There is passion for this, passion for excellence. Q: Does it imply that this passion has no object? K: You see how you immediately form a conclusion. Burning passion, not for something. The communists are passionate about their ideas. That passion is very, very petty and limited. The Christians have passion for missionary work; that passion is born of the love of Jesus. That again is not passion, it is very narrow. Putting all that aside, I say, “Passion!” Q: As you were just saying, people have had some vision, or a dream of something, and that has developed a great energy. But you are saying it is not a dream, it is not a vision, but it is nevertheless some perception of this excellence. K: All those passions feed the ego, feed the “me,” make “me” important, consciously or unconsciously. We are cutting out all that. There is a young boy who has a passion to grow up into an extraordinary human being, into something original. Q: He sees that it is possible. K: Yes. Q: And, therefore, he has the passion. K: Yes, that’s right. It is possible. Is that what is missing in most human beings? Not passion, but the welling up of … I don’t know how to put it. There is this passion in a human being who demands the supreme excellence, not in what he writes in his books, but the fe...

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.

THE CORE OF KRISHNAMURTI’S TEACHING 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 ...

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 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.

There are so many things we are attached to. Why? And then, knowing that possessions in any form are one of the major corrupting factors in life we say, “Do not possess, have a few clothes that are necessary, but do not possess, take a vow of nonpossession.” In that there is a lot of travail: “I want that; I must give it up, I have taken a vow.” Possessions corrupt, and we say we must be detached from possessions, so then there is all the conflict involved in that. Understanding attachment is much more important than detachment.

Power is another form of corruption—political power, religious power, power in the business world, power in the exercise of a certain talent that one has. When you dominate somebody, your cook or your servant, your wife or your husband, there is tremendous pleasure. That is another factor of corruption. That energy, which is so necessary to bring about a transformation in the content of consciousness, is dissipated in all these ways. Can you see all this as fact, as a dangerous fact? Not a relative danger, but a total danger for human beings.

Meditation means the emptying of consciousness of its content and that happens only when you observe your consciousness and its content without the observer. Can you look at your wife, your husband, your girl, your boy, or the mountain, without the observer? The observer is the past. As long as there is the observer, he will inevitably translate everything he observes in terms of the past; therefore, he is the maker of time. He divides the observed and the observer. In that there is conflict. When there is observation without the observer, there is no conflict, no past; there is only the fact and you have the energy to go beyond it. Do it and you will find out.

But here there is neither a disciple nor a master but only the act of learning, all the time. And that requires a great deal of attention, a great deal of energy, so that you are watching and thus, you create no illusions. It is so easy to create illusions; they come when you are pursuing, demanding, wanting, an experience. Desire creates illusions.

Religion means accumulating all your energy to investigate truth; to find out, to come upon that state of mind or consciousness in which there is truth that is not invented by thought.

If you can look without any judgment, without any choice, just observe, in that observation there is no observer. The moment the observer comes in prejudice begins, the like and the dislike, “I prefer this, I don’t prefer that,” division takes place. So there is attention only when there is no entity who says, “I am attending.” Please, it is important to understand this. Because if there is attention, when there is an awareness in which there is no choice, no judgment, merely observation, then you will see you will never be hurt again, and the past hurts are wiped away. But the moment the observer comes in then the observer gets hurt.

To find that out one must go very deeply into the question of fear, the very complex problem of pleasure, and the question of sorrow and whether sorrow can ever end. Man has lived with sorrow for millennia upon millennia. He hasn’t been able to end it. And one must also go into the question of what is death and love. Because all that is the matrix of the me. So this is a very, very serious affair, it is not just a thing to be played with. One must give one’s whole life to understand this. To live in this world completely, sanely, without the psyche; not escape, not go off into some monastery or commune, but to live here, in this mad, insane, and murderous world where there is so much corruption, where politics are divorced from ethics. To live in this world sanely, without the psyche, the “me,” is a tremendous challenge. That requires a mind that can think meticulously, correctly, objectively, having all the senses fully awakened, not drugged by alcohol, speed, and all the rest of it. You must have a very healthy mind, and when it is drugged or smoking, drinking, you do not have a healthy mind; all that destroys the mind, makes the mind dull.

One realizes in observing that fear is not different from the observer. When the observer is the observed there is fundamental change in that which is observed. When there is division between the observer and the observed, in that division there is conflict. I say I must get rid of it, I must control it, or ask why should I not have fear, why should I not have neurotic actions out of those fears. There is always contradiction, division, and, therefore, conflict—which is a wastage of energy. It is a wastage of energy when there is conflict, trying to control, running away, going to somebody to tell me how to get rid of fear. All those are factors of wasting energy. If you don’t waste energy—and that only takes place when the observer is the observed—then you have that immense energy to transform what is. The very observation is the energy which transforms “that which is.” Get this, and then you will see that you are completely free from psychological fears. If you have listened with all your heart and your mind, then when you get up you are free of fear. That means you have listened. That means it is your problem and it is absolutely necessary to solve it, not tomorrow, but instantly. That is, when you perceive something, then you act instantly, and that perception is only possible when the perceiver is the perceived, because there you have total energy. Total observation is only possible when there is no observer—the observer being the past. When there is that total attent...

So that is our life, a way of living, that is constantly repetitive, constantly going over something that was, that is already dead, making it live through thought and pursuing that as pleasure. You can look at something beautiful, the trees and the clouds and the light. But when thought comes in and says, “That was a most lovely thing,” it is already finished. So can you watch the beauty of nature, the beauty of this world, with all your senses and not let thought come in?

There is sorrow when someone dies whom you “love.” You feel utterly lonely when you have lost someone upon whom you have depended. When you feel that you cannot climb the ladder of success, when someone whom you think you love does not return it, when your beliefs, in which you have false security, are shattered; when your mother or father dies, or son or brother dies, there is sorrow. What actually takes place when you suffer? Not biologically, physiologically, but psychologically, which is much more penetrating, much deeper, much more excruciating. You may shed tears, escape from it, never look at it, but it is always there. Sorrow is the lot of human beings, everyone knows it. We escape from it, rationalize it, justify it, or say that every human being suffers so I must suffer. Or if you are prejudiced religiously, you say it is the work of God. Now all those are ways and means of escaping from the fact of what is. which is sorrow. Now if you don’t escape, that is, if there is no rationalizing, no avoiding, no justifying, just remaining with that totality of suffering, without the movement of thought, then you have all that energy to comprehend the thing that you call sorrow. If you remain without a single movement of thought, with that which you have called sorrow, there comes a transformation in that which you have called sorrow. That becomes passion. The root meaning of sorrow is passion. When you escape from it, you lose that quality which comes from sorrow, which i...

when you look at the trees, the mountains, the face of a human being, the endless movement of the sea, with all your senses, all your eyes and ears and nerves, can you look at it completely and not allow thought to come in, to interfere with it? Then your perception is whole, whereas when thought interferes with that perception, it becomes fragmentary. So desire is fragmentary.

If we want to understand the nature of confusion and the ending of confusion—completely, not relatively—are we aware of this fact? If we are aware, then the question arises: What shall I do? I know I am divided, now how am I to put away this division? Is the fact of this division different from the observer who is observing the fact? I will explain a little. I observe greed. I am greedy. Is that greed which I observe different from me, from the observer who says, “I am greedy”? Or greed is the observer? Right? So there is no division between the observer who says, “I am greedy” and who acts upon greed, saying, “I must not be greedy. I must control it. I must suppress it. I must go beyond it.” So there is a division, and that division is conflict and, therefore disorder. But the fact is, that the observer who says “I am greedy,’ that observer is greed himself. Have you gone that far? If you have gone that far, then I am asking: Is this confusion, this division, different from the observer who is me observing it? Or is this confusion, this division, me? My whole being is that, right? I wonder if you come to that point, otherwise you can’t go much further. Please come! This is really important if you can really understand this once and for all as a fact. If you understand it, it will make life totally different, because in that there is no conflict. I will point it out. Suppose I am attached to a person. In that attachment and in the consequences of that attachment are innume...

It is up to you. You see, as long as we try to overcome, the very overcoming has to be overcome. But if you say, “Yes, it is a fact and I won’t move from that,” then the thing dissolves—completely, not relatively, not gone one day and then the next day is full of fears. It is gone when you have given complete attention to it.

Sorrow means grief, pain, anxiety, desperate loneliness, the meaninglessness of this existence. All that and more is contained in that word. Can you look at it wholly, as you would hold a precious jewel, a marvelous piece of sculpture? Hold it, remain with it, and not in any way allow thought to come and interfere with that actuality. If you can so remain with that, then that very word, the significance of that word, is totally ended. But we never stay with anything. We always want to find an end, and so we are always moving away from that very jewel that would give us great vitality, great strength, great passion.

My consciousness accepts this old way of life and hopes that perhaps next life it will have a better chance. But is that consciousness, which I have said is “mine,” my consciousness at all? That consciousness is the consciousness of humanity. Each one of us shares this consciousness, so it is not mine. Please, you must question whether your consciousness is your individual consciousness or is shared by all humanity. All humanity goes through what you are going through, in a different environment, in a different ambiance. So you are not actually an individual. You may have a different body from another, you may have a better bank account. One may be lame, one may be healthy, but inwardly your being is shared by all the rest of humanity. Therefore, you are humanity. So as long as you think you are an individual, you are living in illusion, because your consciousness, your life, is shared by everybody on this earth. So when you die, your consciousness, which is shared by all humanity, will continue. And that consciousness manifests itself, through someone, and then he says. “It is mine,” “I am an individual,” “Atman,” “soul,” and so on.

Meditation can only be actual, truthful, honest, when there is no fear, no hurt, no anxiety, no sorrow. Meditation can only take place when there is no conscious effort made to meditate. I am afraid it goes against everything you believe.

Each one is concerned with himself. He lives in a separate world all to himself. And, therefore, there is division between you and another, between you and your religion, between you and your god, between you and your ideologies. So is it possible to understand, not intellectually but deeply, that you are the rest of mankind? Whatever you do, good or bad, affects the rest of mankind because you are mankind.

Is sorrow merely an intellectual affair to be rationalized, explained away? Or can one live with it without any desire for comfort? That is, to live with sorrow, not escape from it, not rationalize it, not find some exclusive comfort, some religious or illusory romantic escape, but to live with something that has tremendous significance. Sorrow is not only a physical shock; when one loses one’s son or husband, wife or girl, that is a tremendous biological shock; one is almost paralyzed with it. Can we look at sorrow as it actually is in us, and remain with it, hold it, and not move away from it? Sorrow is not different from the one who suffers. The person who suffers wants to run away, escape, do all kinds of things. But to look at it as you look at a beautiful child, to hold it, never escape from it, then you will see for yourself, if you really look deeply, that there is an end to sorrow. And when there is an end to sorrow, there is passion. Not lust, not sensory stimulation, but passion. Very few have this passion, because we are so consumed with our own griefs, with our own pains, with our own pity and vanity. We have tremendous energy, but we dissipate it by conflict, through fear, through endless chattering about nothing. And passion has tremendous energy. That passion is not stimulated. It doesn’t seek stimulation; it is there, like a burning fire. It only comes when there is the end of sorrow. When you have the ending of this sorrow, it is not personal, because you...

Through negation of what is not love you come to that which is immensely true, which is love. Love is not hate, that is obvious. Love is not vanity, arrogance. Love is not in the hand of power: wanting power, whether over a small child or over a group of people or a nation, surely is not love. Love is not pleasure. Love is not desire. Love is certainly not thought. When you are ambitious, aggressive—as you are all brought up to be successful, to be famous, to be known, which is all so utterly childish—how can there be love? So love is something that cannot be invited or cultivated. It comes about naturally, easily, when the other things are not. And in learning about oneself, one comes upon this. Where there is love, there is compassion; and compassion has its own intelligence. That is the supreme form of intelligence, not the intelligence of thought, of cunning and deception. It is only when there is complete love and compassion that there is that excellence of intelligence that is not mechanical.

Is there a meditation which is not determined, practiced? There is, but that requires enormous attention. That attention is a flame and that attention is not something that you come to; it is attention now to everything, every word, every gesture, every thought; it is to pay complete attention, not partial. If you are listening partially now, you are not giving complete attention. When you are completely attentive there is no self, there is no limitation. The brain now is full of information, cluttered up, there is no space in it, and one must have space. Space means energy. When there is no space, your energy is very limited. The brain is now so heavily laden with knowledge, with theories, with power, position, so everlastingly in conflict and cluttered up, that it has no space. And freedom, complete freedom, is to have that limitless space. The brain is extraordinarily capable, has infinite capacity, but we have made it small and petty. When there is that space and emptiness and, therefore, immense energy—energy is passion, love and compassion and intelligence—then there is that truth which is most holy, most sacred, that which man has sought from time immemorial. That truth does not lie in any temple, in any mosque, in any church. And it has no path to it except through one’s own understanding of oneself, inquiring, studying, learning. Then there is that which is eternal.