Brot úr viðtali við Krishnamurti - Death is waiting for you

 

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BL: You don’t leave much standing do you, Krishnaji!

K: Of course not, that’s why I said one has to be free of all the illusions thatthought has created to see something really sacred which comes about through right meditation.

BL: And what is right meditation? You are suggesting that there is also a wrong meditation.

K: Oh, all the meditations and all the rest of it being put forward now by the gurus (laughing) are nonsense.

BL:Why ?

K: Because first you must put the house in order.
BL: But isn’t this the way to put it in order?
K: Ah, you see, that’s wrong. They think that by meditating you put the house inorder. 

BL: And that is not so?

K: No, on the contrary you must put the house in order first, otherwise if you don’t it becomes an escape.

BL: But we need surely to escape from the ego, from the self, from these desires, these demands in ourselves, and surely the silence of meditation is a valid path to that, isn’t it?

K: You see, this question is very complex. Putting the house in order means no fear, the understanding of pleasure, the ending of sorrow. From that arise compassion, intelligence, and the process of that—we’ll call it process for the moment—is part of meditation and then to find out whether thought can ever stop, which means time has to have a stop. And then out of that comes the great silence, and it is in that silence that one can find that which is sacred.

BL: Well, as far as I’m concerned, and I’m sure this is true of most people, to stop thought, to switch off the mind is the most difficult thing in life.

K: You see it is again rather complex. Who is it that switches off the mind?

BL: I suppose what I have to say is, it is the mind itself.
K:Itself.
BL: Which I suppose is impossible.
K: No, when one realizes that the observer is the observed, the controller is the controlled, the experiencer is the experience, when one realizes it not intellectually, verbally, but actually, profoundly, then that very perception stops it. It’s like seeing danger. If you see danger you move away from it. For example, a human being who is perpetually in conflict may ‘meditate’, he may do all kinds of things but the conflict still goes on; but when he sees the psychological danger, the poison of conflict, then he’ll stop it, there’s an end of it.

BL: But from what you say, it seems to me that there is no path to this.
K: Oh, no.
BL: Well, how do we get there? I mean to get somewhere where there is no pathseems to be a very difficult idea indeed.

K: Look, these paths have been laid down by thought, there’s the whole Hindu idea of progression, the Buddhist, the Christian way, but truth is not a fixed point. So you can’t have a path to it.

 BL: But there must be a path, or I hope there’s a path, to the ending of conflict.

 K: There is no path, but there is an ending of conflict, sorrow and all that when one realizes—no, let’s put it this way, when there’s actual sensitive awareness of what one is without any distortion, awareness of it without any choice, out of that there’s the ending of all this mess.

BL: Well, when you say that there is only this awareness of what one is, full awareness without choice, without illusion, it sounds as though we all have to sit around waiting for instant revelation.

K: Oh, then you can sit around for a million years!
BL:Exactly.K: As we have done.
BL: Indeed we have.
K: You see, then we have to find out what action is. Is there an action thatdoesn’t create conflict, in which there is no regret, which under all circumstances, whether we live in a poor or an affluent society, is and must always be correct? To find that out one has to go into the question of what our action is now. It is either idealistic action concerned with the future or it is action based on past memories, which is knowledge. Now, is there an action independent of the future, of time? That’s the whole point, isn’t it?  

BL: We can’t stop time in its tracks, it rolls on.

K: Time by the watch, by the day, goes on, but is there psychological, inward time? There isn’t, we have created that set-up.

BL: So it seems then that whatever the thing is, it is complete and instantaneous, it is not something you build up layer by layer.

K: Absolutely not. There is not a gradual process; then it is not enlightenment, because you allow time into it to gradually become something.

BL: You know, in this context I would like to ask you something. You have a school here, what do you teach the children? If you cannot build this up for them, for any of us, old or young I presume—what do you teach?

 K: The academic subjects.
BL: Yes, but in these areas...
K: Of course, and also point out all this. How to live correctly, what it means.
BL: Philosophers throughout the ages have discussed that very point, how to livecorrectly—right living, as Socrates called it. K: Yes, right living.
BL: Can you teach that?
K: You can point out. You can say don’t be a slave to society, don’t be this orthat, but you have to show it, to point out, then it’s up to them.

BL: But can we live in the real world that we do live in where we have to catch trains and go to offices and buy bread in the shop...?

K: Yes, I’ve done all those.
BL: How can we combine all the pressures of the mundane around us?
K: I wouldn’t do anything under pressure.

BL: You wouldn’t—I wish I didn’t!

K: No, I refuse to be under pressure, either intellectually or psychologically. I don’t mind starving, I don’t mind having no job, but I refuse to be put in that position.

BL: You see this is what I really meant when I asked what is the secret, because you say you will never be put under pressure, and indeed I can see and understand that, one has only to look at you or read or listen to you to know that, but what about the rest of us? How do we get out from under the burden? 

K: If we all say we won’t be under pressure...
BL: We all are under pressure all the time.
K: No, we won’t be.
BL: How can we refuse it? How can we live in the real world, the job is waitingfor us, we’re going to be late, we’ve got an appointment.

K: Just a minute, that brings up the issue whether society can be changed. The communists and the socialists have tried it, various systems are trying to change society. Now, what is society? It’s an abstraction from our personal relationship. If our personal relationship changes radically, society changes. But we’re not willing to change, we admit wars, we accept all this terrible state of existence.  

BL: Yes, we do. How do we stop it?

 K: Revolt against it. Not revolt by becoming a communist or that kind of stuff but revolt psychologically against it.

BL: But that presumably must be done by each individual. This is not something that can be done collectively.

K: Again, what do you mean by ‘individual’?

BL: Well, we’re all independent, separate personalities.
K: Are we?
BL: Well, aren’t we?
K: I doubt it. We’re not individuals, we are the result of a million years ofcollective experiences, memories, all that. We think we are individuals, we think we are free, we are not. To us freedom means choice. Choice means confusion, you don’t choose if you are clear.

 BL: You said once, one of your most striking phrases as I remember, that your purpose was to set man free.

K: Yes, it sounds... (laughs) 

BL: It’s the most important thing in the world after all, but how do you go about that? How do we set ourselves free, because presumablywe have to set ourselves free is what you meant. How do we set ourselves free?

K: To be aware of our conditioning. What is our conditioning?
BL: Well, that surely varies from individual to individual.
K: I doubt it. We are conditioned by fear, conditioned by pleasure, which arecommon to all mankind. We are conditioned by our anxieties, our loneliness, our desperate uncertainty, all these are the factors that condition the mind.

BL: And can we simply put them aside?

K: No, you put a wrong question there; if one sees the consequences, the pain, everything this conditioning entails, it stops naturally. That is intelligence, there is no entity which says I must stop it.

BL: And then we are free?
K: What do you mean by ‘free’?
BL: Well, what I mean by it is to be rid of these fears, anxieties, these impossibledesires, vain yearnings. K: Yes, that is freedomBL: It certainly seems so to me.
K: Unless there is that freedom you cannot be a light to yourself, unless there isthat freedom, meditation is meaningless.

BL: You see, everybody thinks it is the other way round. You have reversed this, haven’t you?

K: That is a fact.

BL: We think of the systems, the beliefs, the faith, the work as a means to getting to this state of freedom, but you start with a state of freedom.

K: Belief atrophies the brain. If you keep on repeating, repeating, as they do, your brain atrophies.

BL: Then can we just do it by one great leap into freedom?
K: Yes, that is by insight into all this.
BL: Instantaneously? And any of us can do it?
K: Yes, anybody who is attentive, inquiring, exploring, who is trying tounderstand this terrible confusion of life.

BL: At any age?
K: No, of course not, a baby, a child, can’t do it!
BL: But we don’t have to spend a lifetime in practising it?
K: Of course not. Death is waiting for you.
BL: It is waiting for all of us.
K: For all of us.
BL: Thank you very much, Krishnamurti.

 

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