Krishnamurti
New York, 1968
The New School for Social Research
(8:30 total time)
Talks 1,2,4, and 5 in "Talks with American Students"

1968.10.01 Talk 1 (1:19)
We are enquiring together, as to whether you and I, on the instant, can completely change and enter into a totally different dimension - and that involves meditation. Meditation is something that demands a great deal of intelligence, a sensitivity and the capacity of love and beauty - not just the following of a system invented by some guru. So all this is involved in an enquiry into life and death. You enquire when you have freedom, otherwise you cannot enquire - obviously. One cannot have prejudices, set conclusions, opinions, judgments and evaluations; if you want to discover there must be freedom to look. To look at things as they actually are in ourselves without finding any excuse, without justifying, lying to ourselves or pretending - is one of the most difficult things. Observation and the seeing of ourselves is one of the major problems - to see. I think we have to go into that question: what is it, to see?

1968.10.02 Talk 2 (1:23)
Now, the question is: is there another kind of action that has nothing whatsoever to do with thought? - an action which is logical, consistent, true, complete and has the quality of death and love - knowing that thought is always old, that thought cannot possibly produce an action which is completely new, for it is the response of the past, it can never be new, it can never be free. Is this clear? If it is clear that thought has brought about this division between man and man throughout the world and that however cleverly organized the world is by thought, it cannot possibly bring about the unity of man, then we have to find if there is an action which is not the product of thought. We must understand this, for when we talk over together the question of fear - which was suggested the other day - we must understand the whole process of thinking - completely.

1968.10.05 Talk 3 (1:20)

1968.10.08 Talk 4 (1:20)
Now, can we live with `what is' and go beyond it, not inventing an opposite and thereby increasing the conflict, the misery, the struggle? One is violent, brutal, aggressive, ambitious, envious - that is the fact, that is `what is', that is the actuality - and all the opposites which man has invented have no reality whatsoever. Can the mind live with that - without the opposite - and understand `what is' and go beyond it? Because to understand the question of love and death - which is one of the most essential problems of life - one must naturally live with `what is' - actually. Can I look at myself, as I am, with my hates, anxieties, fears - all the innumerable tortures the human mind goes through - live with myself, understand myself and go beyond, without any effort? It is only possible when we eliminate altogether the opposites. Am I making myself clear?

So our question is: is there a way of living differently, not in this stupid corrupt way? Is there a way of living so that there is no sorrow at all - no loneliness, no frustration, no anxiety, despair - not as an idea, not as a concept, but actually to live in this world without comparison, without measure and therefore freely? Which means, really, one has to be so tremendously aware of one's own movement of thought, one's words and actions, that one's mind is never captured by the opposite; there fore it is always living In the present; it means understanding the past, and the movement of the past through the present to the future. It means dying every day to everything that one has accumulated psychologically. Try sometime - do, if you will - to die to your particular pleasure instantly, completely, and see what happens. It is only in dying that something new can come into being. That which has continuity - however modified by time, by pressure - is that which has been; in that there is nothing new. It is only when there is an ending that there is a new energy, a bliss, an ecstasy which is not pleasure.

1968.10.10 Talk 5 (1:23)

You are confronted with this problem, and you are alone with it. Have you ever been alone? - alone in the woods, alone by yourself in your room - or are you always crowded by a horde of others, by your companions, wife or husband, by crowding thoughts, by professional problems? - all that indicates that you are never alone; and then when you are alone you are frightened. But now you are alone with this immense problem. There is nobody that is going to give you the answer. You are confronted with this immense problem, and therefore alone; out of this aloneness comes understanding and whatever you do will be right because that aloneness is love. That state of mind, that is confronting this immense problem without any escape, facing all the daily facts of life, the daily ugliness, the daily brutality, the daily words of annoyance, of irritation, is alone; you begin to see the actual fact, to see actually `what is'. Then, only, is it possible to go beyond it; then you are a light to yourself. That mind is the religious mind - not the mind that goes to church, believes in gods, that is superstitious, frightened; such a mind is not a religious mind. The religious mind is that state in which there is freedom and great abiding love. And then you can go beyond, then the mind can go to a different dimension and there is truth

1968.10.11 Talk 6 (1:45) ( )