00:39

Krishnamurti

Sir, surely—is belief necessary at all? Why do we have beliefs? Probably because mostly you believe in something because you don’t actually see what is. If you saw actually what is—what is, in the sense, actually going on, both outwardly in the outward phenomenon and inwardly—then what is the necessity for a belief at all? You don’t believe the sun is rising—it is there and you have seen it. It is.

Therefore, the whole problem of belief seems to me so utterly erroneous. It has no place in a person who is actually observing the whole structure and the nature of thinking, living, suffering, the agony of existence, the sorrow, and all the rest of it. Belief appears as a means of escape from the reality of what is.

So to understand actually what is, one has to be rid of all these extraneous beliefs and fears and hopes, and be able to look actually—not theoretically, not abstractly—but actually look what is taking place: in the world outside with all the racial conflicts, with wars, the division between religions; the Catholic, the Protestant, the Hindu, Muslim, all the divisions, they have created such havoc in the world. And by observing all that, one sees actually how this has come about.

Because in oneself one is conditioned by society, by the culture one lives in. If you live in India you become a Hindu or Muslim, or if you live in Europe you are a Catholic or a Protestant. It’s the environment that conditions; the culture that shapes the mind—the culture being the knowledge, the tradition, the various beliefs. And surely a mind that is conditioned—as a communist, as a Catholic or as a Hindu, what you will—surely is incapable of being free to observe. To observe the extraordinary complex structure of society, and also, still more complex, the psychological structure of oneself. Because oneself is the world. We have created it. And the world is me and you—we cannot separate the two.

And so to understand the world one has to understand oneself. To change the social structure—which obviously needs colossal change—one has to change oneself, because one is part of this society. So the change must begin with the human being, not with this outward structure. Because the human being is confused. The human being is conditioned. He believes, and therefore there is a contradiction in himself, and therefore he is really deeply confused. And if he wants to change the social structure, the change from confusion only breeds more confusion. Whereas if he could bring about clarity within himself, and from that clarity act, then such an action is really a deep psychological revolution. That revolution is absolutely necessary.

05:41

Krishnamurti

Obviously. Education now, as it is, it is really a cultivation of a corner of a vast field. We are concerned with that little corner—which is technological knowledge, conditioned by a mind with knowledge, with information—and neglecting the whole field. And therefore there is an imbalance. Technologically one has gone very far, and psychologically one is very, very primitive. One is still at the stage of tribal conflict, with their beliefs, with their gods, with their separate nationalities, and armies, and all the rest of it—which is really a continuation of the tribal existence. And apparently we don’t see in education that it is immensely important to cultivate, to understand, the whole field and not just one corner of it.

07:06

Krishnamurti

You know, sir, the word “individuality,” the individual, means “indivisible.” An entity who is in himself indivisible (which means non-contradictory) in himself. But the individual human being is contradictory in himself! He is not an individual. He is broken up. He is fragmented in himself. And so, being contradictory, being divided in himself, his activity, his social structure, his morality is obviously fragmentary; contradictory. Therefore he becomes a hypocrite.

So the problem is not how to change the individual, but: can the human being—who is part of this vast structure which he himself has created—can that human being radically psychologically change? Not the society—the society is the relationship between individuals. And can the human mind, which is so conditioned after so many centuries, can it un-condition itself completely? Be free from being a Catholic, a Hindu, a Communist, a Socialist, and see that he is part of this human structure, part of the world, and not the Catholic world or the Communist world?

09:05

Krishnamurti

That is the problem. How can he, see? First of all, one has to be aware of what is going on, both outwardly and inwardly. Aware—not theoretically, not intellectually, or aware according to some philosopher or psychologist. Then he is aware according to their ideas, to their conditioning. Whereas to be aware of what he is, actually—his problems, his miseries, his suffering, his extraordinary sense of brutality, violence—to be aware of all that. And from that awareness comes clarity. And that means he must be tremendously interested in life! Not in some awful, absurd theory, whether it be the theory of the Catholics or the Hindus.

10:24

Krishnamurti

I don’t think you can get people. If they are interested, they will be. But if you force them to be interested through propaganda, then propaganda becomes all-important, not the people. After all, all religions have been that: they are instruments of propaganda. Christianity—with their belief, with their saviors, with their virginity, all the rest of it, with their saints—is the result of two thousand years of propaganda, dinning into people every day, “Believe! Believe! Believe!” “You are saved!” You are this, you are that.

The other day, when I was in Rome—I speak Italian and so on—the priest was absolutely mesmerizing the people by repeating, repeating, repeating. It went on for a whole half an hour. Naturally, the people, they are mesmerized to believe. So all that has to be set aside—which means facing the fear: fear to stand alone, fear to discard all this absurdity, all this (if I may use the word) circus which has become a religion.

So to discard all that implies that man must be aware, and so become very sensitive and very alert, and therefore intelligent. It is that intelligence that is going to change society. Not: he is throwing a bomb at it. The response to a challenge as violence is the most primitive form of response. Therefore, the question really is whether the human mind, as it is, living in this world with wars, with the economic inequalities, with the immorality of society—and society is immoral—whether he can be totally good. Good in the sense of: be free of violence, free of aggression. And violence is a form, is an outward expression, of fear. I don’t know if you have noticed that, when whole cities are crowded as they are now, overpopulated, the lack of space makes people violent. The very lack of survival is making everything violent.

So I think one has to really go into all this, not as an idea, not as a belief, but one has to search, understand all this in oneself. One must have tremendous passion to find out all this. Because self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. And wisdom you can’t write in a book, or from another.

14:18

Krishnamurti

I think—from what one has observed, both in America and Europe and India—this sense of a revolt, which most young people have, is a revolt because: what has society to offer them, actually? Except going to business, or join the army, or go to the moon, or where you will? But actually, what has society, the culture, to offer them? Nothing—if you look at it. And therefore the more intelligent, the more sensitive, the more alert, they say: “This is all wrong. We must change the very fabric of education.” And the vested interest won’t have it. The vested interest says: “We must go slowly.” You know, the good old business. And therefore there is this conflict.

Because, after all, the human mind does seek more than bread and butter. It wants something beyond all this which has meaning, which has significance, which has depth and passion and interest. But just when society, the culture says, “You are going to become a businessman,” or become a professor, or become a soldier—I mean, my God! And therefore the revolt, all through the world—they may not express it in so many ways at such depth, but there are indications of that. But unfortunately they want to change society by throwing bombs and violence. Any physical revolution one has observed must lead inevitably to tyranny, to dictatorship—either of the few or of the bureaucracy.

So this psychological revolution of which we are talking about is the most important thing. That will bring about a change in the world.

17:00

Krishnamurti

Sir, I mean, what is religion? Actually, what is religion? First of all, to find out what is religion we must negate what it is not. I don’t know if you—what is not, then it is. It’s like: what is not love? Love is not hate, love is not jealousy, love is not ambition, love is not the violence. So when you negate all that, the other is, which is compassion. In the same way, if you negate what is not religion, then you find out what is true religion—that is: what is the truly religious mind?

First of all, therefore, belief is not religion. And the authority which the churches, the organized religions, assume is not religion. That is, in that there is all the sense of obedience, conformity, acceptance, the hierarchical approach to life, the division between the Protestant, the Catholic, the Hindu, the Muslim, and all that—that’s not religion.

So when you negate all that—which means you are no longer a Hindu, no longer a Catholic, no longer belonging to any sectarian outlook—then your mind questions, asks: what is, then, truly religion? This is not with their rituals, with their masters, with their saviors—that’s not religion! Therefore, when the mind discards that intelligently, because it has seen it is not, then what is religion?

Religion is the—is; not what I think, but religion is this—is the sense of comprehension of the totality of existence in which there is no division between you and me. Then, if there is that quality of goodness—which is virtue; real virtue, not this phony virtue of society; real virtue—then the mind can go beyond and find out. Through meditation, through deep, quiet silence, it can find out if there is such a thing as reality. And therefore, a religious mind is a mind that is constantly aware, sensitive, attentive, so that it goes beyond itself into a dimension where there is no time at all.

20:26

Krishnamurti

Obviously not, sir. The power of the outside agency is self-created. “I can’t do, I can’t live properly in this world, and I hope somebody outside is going to help me.” But I have created (as a human being) the social structure, the misery, the confusion, the enormous suffering. We have created this! Unless we change it, outside agency is not going to change it—either the Communist outside agency, the Politburo, or the Hindu center, or the Catholic center. So one has to have the clarity to observe all this.

21:20

Krishnamurti

Sir, that is an immense question, you see. Again—you see, we have made life into a hideous thing; living. Life has become a battle—which is an obvious fact: constant fight, fight, fight. And we have divorced that living from death. We separate death as something horrible, something to be frightened about. And to us this living—which is misery— we accept. If we didn’t accept this existence as misery, then life and death are the same movement. Like love, death, and living, or what? One must totally die to find what love is.

And to go into this question of: what is death, what lies beyond death, whether there is reincarnation, whether there is a resurrection—all that becomes rather meaningless if you don’t know how to live. If the human being knows how to live in this world without conflict, then death has quite a different meaning.

Now, to understand death really, one has to go into the question of: what is it that dies? The physical organism, obviously, is going to end, because we have misused it. We have really destroyed the intelligence of the organism itself. And, to us, death is something to be avoided. And, as it exists, we believe: we believe in something beyond. There is something beyond far greater than any of our belief. There is something tremendously great—which the mind cannot possibly grasp; a mind which is in such chaos, which is in such contradiction.

25:34

Krishnamurti

I think that’s true. I mean, human beings—whether they live in India or America or in the West—are really unhappy beings. They are frustrated. They feel life has little meaning. The more intellectual you are, the more of—you say it has no meaning at all. And therefore they begin to invent meanings. Whereas if you really understood oneself—oneself which is so conditioned, oneself which is so small, petty, bourgeois—then out of that understanding flowers, goodness.

26:36

Krishnamurti

No, no, no! On the contrary. I say: be your own teacher. Be your own light. Don’t look to somebody else.

26:51

Krishnamurti

Only when a mind is completely—a life, not only a mind, a life that’s completely harmonious, not contradictory. It’s only such a mind which is religious that can find truth, that can observe truth. Truth isn’t something abstract. It’s there when you look!