ELIMINATE THE THINKER !!
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We said last time when we met that we would discuss the question of intelligence, and I think if we could go through it as deeply as possible and as fully, perhaps it might be very beneficial to see whether the mind has the capacity of fully comprehending problems and thereby discovering what it is to be really intelligent. To go into it very deeply, it seems to me, first we must understand what is a problem; then how the mind comprehends or is aware of the problem, how it understands the problem—which leads, does it not, to the understanding of self-knowledge. Knowledge is always in the past. Self-knowing is an active process of the present; it is an active present. And in understanding a problem, one discovers, doesn’t one, the active process of knowing the instrument—that is, thinking, not theoretically, not academically, but actually—one experiences the process of knowing. We will go into that, and perhaps we will be able to discover what it is to be intelligent.

I don’t see how we can discuss in a serious manner what is intelligence if we do not understand how we think. A mere definition of intelligence has no significance. The dictionary has a meaning, and you and I can give definitions, conclusions. But it seems to me that the very definition and giving a conclusion indicates a lack of intelligence rather than intelligence. So, if you think it is worthwhile also, we could go into this problem of intelligence rather widely and extensively, rather with fun, with a sense of gaiety—with a desirable seriousness which has also its own humor. So if you would let me talk a little bit, then you can pick up the threads, and afterwards we can discuss together.

I feel a mind that has a problem is incapable of really being free. A mind that is ridden with problems can never be really intelligent. I will go into all that. We will discuss all that presently. A mind that is increasing problems, that is the soil of problems, that starts to think from a problem, is no longer capable of intelligently approaching the problem. And a problem surely implies a thing that the mind does not understand, it finds hard to understand, cannot grapple with, cannot penetrate through to a solution. That is what we call a problem. It may be a problem with my wife, with children, with society, individually or collectively; the problem implies a sense of not being able to find a solution, an answer, and therefore that which we cannot find an answer or a solution for, we call that a problem. A mechanic who understands a piston engine knows all the things connected with a piston engine—to him it is not a problem because he knows; there is no problem to him. And also knowledge creates problems. I don’t know if we could discuss that a little bit.

The Collected Works
of J. Krishnamurti
Volume XII 1961
There Is No Thinker,
Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Comment: From my background. Thinking is the most natural process.

KRISHNAMURTI: I ask you, “Where do you live?” And your response is immediate. Isn’t it? Because where you live is very familiar to you, without a thought you reply quickly. Isn’t that so, sir? And I ask you a further complex question. There is a time lag between the reply and the challenge. In that interval one is thinking. The thinking is looking into the recesses of memory. Isn’t it?

I ask you, “What is the distance between here and Madras?” You say, “I know it, but let me look it up.” Then you say the distance is so many miles. So you have taken an interval of a minute; during that minute, the process of thinking was going on—which is looking into the memory and the memory replying. Isn’t that so, sir? Then if I ask you a still more complex question, the time interval is greater. And if I ask a question the answer to which you don’t know, you say, “I don’t know,” because you have not been able to discover the reply in your memory. However, you are waiting to check, you ask a specialist, or go back home and look into a book and tell. This is the process of your thinking, isn’t it?—waiting for an answer. And if we proceed a little further, if we ask a question of which you don’t know the answer at all, for which memory has no response, there is no waiting, there is no expectation. Then the mind says, “I really do not know, I cannot answer it.”

Now can the mind ever be in such a state when it says, “I really do not know”?—which is not a negation, which isn’t still saying, “I am waiting for an answer.” I ask you what truth is, what God is, what is, and you will reply according to your tradition. But if you push it further and if you deny the tradition because mere repetition is not discovery of God, or reality, or what you will, a mind that says “I don’t know” is entirely different from a mind which is merely searching for an answer. And isn’t it necessary that a mind should be in such a state when it says, “I really do not know”? Must it not be in that state to discover something, for something new to enter into it?

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti -Volume XII 1961: There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti

I wonder if I am conveying anything at all? You see, we are considering the liberation of the mind so that the mind can be in that state of creation which is not concerned with expression, though expression may come from it. A creative mind is never concerned with expression; it is not concerned with action, with reform. Creation is a timeless movement—a movement which is never concerned with the immediate, and only the immediate is concerned with reform.

I do not know if, while walking alone in the woods or along a street, you have ever noticed a moment when everything in you is silent, completely still. There is an unexpected, uninvited moment in which the mind, with all its anxieties, with all its worries and pursuits and compulsions, has completely come to an end. In that unexpected, spontaneous moment, time has totally ceased. And if you happen to be gifted as a painter, as a writer, or as a housewife, you may express that moment in action; but the action is not that moment. The action of painting may give you fame, money, position, prestige; and man, seeking these things, goes after the technique and loses the other. That moment must have happened to most of us at sometime or other in our lives, and then we wish to capture, to hold, to continue in that moment. So, the experience of that moment darkens the mind with its knowledge of that moment and thereby prevents further experiencing. That is why experience as knowledge is destructive to the new.

Please, this is not just my special way of looking at life. These are facts. The more experience you have, the more the mind is made dull; there is no innocency of the mind; there is never a moment when the mind is not caught in knowledge, which is essentially of time. So, if you observe, you will see that knowledge—to know, to practice, to hold—darkens the mind; and the mind, being darkened, seeks greater, wider stimulation, so it turns to religions, to philosophies, theologies, speculations, or to the latest drugs.

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti – Volume XI 1958-1960: Crisis in Consciousness
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Question: We are happy with our beliefs and traditions based on the doctrines of Jesus; whereas, in your country, India, there are millions who are far from being happy. All that you are telling us, the Christ taught two thousand years ago. What is the use of your preaching to us instead of to your own countrymen?

KRISHNAMURTI: Thought does not belong to any nation or to any race. (Applause) Reality is not conditioned by religious or racial distinctions; and because the questioner has divided the world into Christian and Hindu, into India and Argentina, he has helped to create misery and suffering in the world. (Applause) When I talk in India about nationalism, they say to me, Go to England and tell the people there that nationalism is stupid, because England is pre venting us from living. (Laughter) And when I come here you tell me, Go somewhere else and leave us with our own belief and religion. Do not disturb us. (Laughter)

If your own beliefs and traditions satisfy you, then you will not listen to what I say, because your traditions and your beliefs are shelters under which you take cover in time of trouble. You dont want to face life, therefore you say, I am satisfied; don disturb me. If you would really understand truth, if you would know love, you must be free from beliefs and organized religions. There cannot be your religion and the religion of another, your beliefs and doctrines as against another. The world will be happy when there need be no preacher, when each individual is really fulfilling; and as he is not, I feel I can help him in his fulfillment.

If you feel that I am disturbing, creating sorrow, then you will naturally remain in the religion to which you belong, with its exploitations and illusions; but life will not leave you alone. In that lies the beauty of life. However much you have protected and enclosed yourself within certainties, securities, and beliefs, the wave of life breaks down all your structure. But the man who has no support, no security, shall know the bliss of life.

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti – Volume II 1934-1935: What Is Right Action?
Jiddu Krishnamurti

However much progress we may make in this world, however far we may go into the skies—visit the moon, Venus, and all the rest of it—the lives of most of us are still very shallow, superficial; they are still outward. And it is much more difficult to go inward; there is no technique for it, no professor to teach it, no laboratory where you can learn to travel within. There is no teacher who can guide you—and please believe me—there is no authority of any kind that can help you to investigate this complex entity called the mind. You have to do it entirely by yourself, without depending on a thing. And as modern civilization is becoming more and more complex, more and more outward, progressive, there is a tendency for all of us to live still more superficially, is there not? We attend more concerts, we read more clever books, we go endlessly to the cinema, we gather together to discuss intellectually, we investigate ourselves psychologically with the help of analysts, and so on; or, because we live such superficial lives, we turn to churches and fill our minds with their dogmas, both unreasonable and reasonable, with beliefs that are almost absurd; or we escape into some form of mysticism. In other words, realizing that our everyday living is shallow, most of us try to run away from it. We engage our minds in speculative philosophies or in what we call meditation, contemplation, which is a form of self-hypnosis; or, if we are at all intellectual, we create a thought-world of our own in which we live satisfied, intellectually content.

Seeing this whole process, it seems to me that the problem is not what to do, or how to live, or what is the immediate action to be taken when we are confronted with war, with the catastrophes that are actually going on in the world, but rather how to inquire into freedom. Because without freedom, there is no creation. By freedom I do not mean the freedom to do what you like—to get into a car and zip along a road, or to think what you like, or to engage yourself in some particular activity. It seems to me that such forms of freedom are not really freedom at all. But is there a freedom of the mind? As most of us do not live in a creative state, I think it is imperative for any thoughtful, serious man to inquire very profoundly and very earnestly into this question.

The Collected Works of
J. Krishnamurti –
Volume XI 1958-1960:
Crisis in Consciousness
Jiddu Krishnamurti

A mind in contemplation is free of symbols; it has no visions because visions are projections of that background in which it has been conditioned. A mind in contemplation is no longer making effort, as effort is generally understood; therefore, there is no observer, there is no censor. A mind in contemplation, which is the state of meditation, is completely silent, and that silence is not induced. You can discipline your mind to be silent, but that is merely conformity to a pattern in the hope of getting what you desire; therefore, it is not silence. A mind in meditation is absolutely silent, and that silence is not projected, not wished for, not cultivated. That silence is from moment to moment, it has no continuity; therefore, it cannot be practiced, it cannot be developed any more than you can develop humility. Do you understand? If you cultivate, develop humility, you are no longer humble; you don’t know what humility means. Leave the cultivation of humility to the saints, to the leaders, who are full of vanity and therefore cultivate the opposite, hoping thereby to become still more respectable. The cultivation of virtue is effort in limitation, so this quality of silence is not something to be cultivated.

The mind in meditation is in a state where there is no movement of thought, and therefore no projection of the background in which it has lived. Only the mind which has understood all that we have been talking about—understood in the sense of having perceived the fact, not merely having accepted the words, the explanations, which are ashes—and is therefore completely silent with a silence that is not induced by breathing or any other trick—it is only such a mind that can know the immeasurable, the eternal, that which has no beginning and no end.

February 28, 1960.

The Collected Works of
J. Krishnamurti – Volume XI 1958-1960: Crisis in Consciousness
Jiddu Krishnamurti

So thought creates the thinker, the censor, the observer. And is it possible to think without the censor? Do you understand? Is it possible to observe without the observer? Don’t agree or disagree, sirs. Please, you have to find out. One direct experience of your own is worth more than all the books put together. If you can find out for yourself what is true, you can burn all the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita, and the Bible; they are not worth looking at.

Now, you have to find out directly for yourself whether it is possible to be in that state of thinking without the thinker, experiencing without the experiencer. Please, sirs, it is not complicated. In the moment of your intense anger, is there an observer? It is only after the emotional upheaval has taken place that you say, “By Jove, I was angry.” Then comes identification, and the condemnatory process begins; there is contradiction, conflict, an effort to conform to the pattern recognized by society as being respectable. Do you understand, sirs? The pattern is recognized as being respectable; otherwise, you would not try to conform to it. And respectability is a horror, an ugly thing because it opens the door to mediocrity.

So, our problem is to understand the state of the mind which is in meditation because meditation is essential—but not the meditation that most people practice sitting in a room and repeating a lot of words; that is not meditation. Repetition merely puts the mind to sleep, and you can do that very easily by taking a tranquilizer. I know you will dislike what is being said because you have found that your traditional repetition of certain words and names for ten minutes or so gradually makes your mind quiet, but it has only gone to sleep, and that is what you call meditation. You also call it meditation when you solicit, pray, beg for something for yourself, for your country, for your party, or for your family. You put forth the begging bowl of inward poverty and ask somebody to fill it. That is not meditation. Meditation is something entirely different, as you will see. The state of meditation is possible only when there is space in the mind for observation, and that space is denied to a mind which is suppressed, disciplined to conform to a pattern. A mind in the state of meditation, contemplation, is not striving to be anything.

Sirs, I am only trying to convey in different words what has been said previously. If you have not followed the talk for the last forty minutes or more, you won’t understand what is being said now.

The Collected Works of
J. Krishnamurti – Volume XI 1958-1960: Crisis in Consciousness
Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand this immensity, the timeless quality of life, surely you must approach it through negation. It is because you are committed to a particular course of action, to a certain pattern of existence, that you find it difficult to free yourself from all that and face a new way, a new approach. After all, death is the ultimate negation. It is only when one dies now, while living, which means the constant breaking up of all the habit patterns, the various attitudes, conclusions, ideas, beliefs that one has—it is only then that one can find out what life is. But most of us say, “I cannot break up the pattern, it is impossible; therefore, I must learn a way of breaking it; I must practice a certain system, a method of breaking it up” so we become slaves to the new pattern which we establish through practice. We have not broken the pattern but have only substituted a new pattern for the old.

Sirs, you nod your heads, you say this is so true, logical, clear—and you go right on with the pattern, old or new. It seems to me that the real problem is the sluggishness of the mind. Any fairly intelligent mind can see that inwardly we want security, a haven, a refuge where we shall not be disturbed, and that this urge to be secure creates a pattern of life which becomes a habit. But to break up that pattern requires a great deal of energy, thought, inquiry, and the mind refuses because it says, “If I break up my pattern of life, what will become of me? What will this school be if the old pattern is broken? It will be chaos”—as if it were not chaos now!

You see, we are always living in a state of contradiction from which we act, and therefore we create still more contradiction, more misery. We have made living a process of action versus being. The man who is very clever, who convinces others through his gift of the gab or his way of life, who puts on a loincloth and outwardly becomes a saint, may inwardly be acting from a state of contradiction; he may be a most disastrously torn entity, but because he has the outward paraphernalia of a saintly life, we all follow him blindly. Whereas, if we really go into and understand this problem of contradiction within and without, then I think we shall come upon an action which is not away from life. It is part of our daily existence. Such action does not spring from idea but from being. It is the comprehension of the whole of life.

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti – Volume XI 1958-1960: Crisis in Consciousness
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Question: Do you believe in reincarnation? Is it a fact? Can you give us proofs from your personal experience?

KRISHNAMURTI: The idea of reincarnation is as old as the hills—the idea that man, through many rebirths, going through innumerable experiences, will come at last to perfection, to truth, to God. Now what is it that is reborn, what is it that continues? To me, that thing which is supposed to continue is nothing but a series of layers of memory, of certain qualities, certain incomplete actions which have been conditioned, hindered by fear born of self-protection. Now, that incomplete consciousness is what we call the ego, the ‘I’. As I explained at the beginning in my brief introductory talk, individuality is the accumulation of the results of various actions which have been impeded, hindered by certain inherited and acquired values, limitations. I hope I am not making it very complicated and philosophical, I will try to make it simple.

When you talk of the ‘I’, you mean by that a name, a form, certain ideas, certain prejudices, certain class distinctions, qualities, religious prejudices, and so on, which have been developed through the desire for self-protection, security, comfort. So, to me, the ‘I’, based on an illusion, has no reality. Therefore the question is not whether there is reincarnation, whether there is a possibility of future growth, but whether the mind and heart can free themselves from this limitation of the ‴he ۮ o؉’, the ‘mine’.

You ask me whether I believe in reincarnation or not because you hope that through my assurance you can postpone understanding and action in the present, and that you will eventually come to realize the ecstasy of life or immortality. You want to know whether, being forced to live in a conditioned environment with limited opportunities, you will through this misery and conflict ever come to realize that ecstasy of life, immortality. As it is getting late I have to put it briefly, and I hope you will think it over.

Now, I say there is immortality, to me it is a personal experience; but it can be realized only when the mind is not looking to a future in which it shall live more perfectly, more completely, more richly. Immortality is the infinite present. To understand the present with its full, rich significance, mind must free itself from the habit of self-protective acquisition; when it is utterly naked, then only is there immortality.

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti – Volume II 1934-1935: What Is Right Action?
Jiddu Krishnamurti