The Talks on Freedom - The Major Barriers to Transformation

                   Most people have simply stopped listening. Listening is uncomfortable. The mind has settled for a set of
                conclusions, operating in a groove in which it is stuck. To openly listen is to threaten the comforting ideas in
                which it has invested so much faith. So, even though there may be reading of the talks here and there, there is
              no actual open listening. No-one has understood the talks because they have not gone to the end of the book,
                                                                nor has this writer. This is the central issue.

                                                   “Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one's own desires through which one listens.
                                                                       Can one put aside all these screens through which we listen, and really listen?”
                                                                                                                        {Book of Life Daily Meditations, Putting aside screens, Jan 2 2008}

                                    ~~~~~&~~~~~

        * We consciously or unconsciously selectively read the talks, picking out those bits we are comfortable with, can
             live with, can offer opinions on, and carefully stream out or ignore the rest of the words and their implications…

                               “K considers the so-called teachings to be common-sense, orderly, and they demand a great deal of attention,
                                       subtlety and a sense of continuing to the very end of the book. And apparently, in different parts of the world,
                                       this is being slightly neglected. I use the world 'slightly' politely. I'd like to use much stronger language.
                                      This is happening. We meet every year. We have done it in Saanen for nearly twenty-five years, and we don't seem
                                       to be able to come together, understand the common, ordinary things of life and all the implications of K's teaching.
                                                                                                    We never seem to go to the end of the book."
                                                                                                             (The Link #19: Saanen, Switzerland, 13th July 1984)

              Many seem to regard the actual reading of the books nowadays as passé, something you don't actually do as that makes you merely a repeater of words, an imitator. Nor is it encouraged for one to quote passages of the talks, for the same reasons. What is encouraged nowadays is for one to pontificate upon their limited understanding of the talks, to propound opinions according to their particular idea of what it is about. Much of this is a knee-jerk reaction to what others have stated about their ideas (one can observe this phenomenon in many of the online forums today that 'study' the talks). There is no real investigation of the talks in their totality.

Another clever escape is to resort to pure intellectualization (you often see examples of this in The Link), covering up one's lack of understanding by employing complex and abstract terms. This demonstrates a complete unawareness of the fact that the intellect cannot solve man's basic human problems, a statement that can be verified by simply looking at history.

The fact is that we don’t actually read the talks, line by line. (It is held in these discussions there are very few people who have actually carefully read these talks.) We always read the words through a screen of conclusions and ideas. We are always seeking gain, in one form or another, and we know there is nothing to be gained in transformation, gain in the accepted sense of money, success, social prestige and self-fulfilment. To act without an end in view is not only completely unacceptable, it is incomprehensible - for what then is the point of it if there is no gain in the end?

This reflects the hold of conditioning and the search for ‘success’; the self and our imbedded idea of reward. We don’t do things for and of themselves, as we consider this is futile and personally non-rewarding.


      * We are afraid of change…
                          "Do you want a revolution that shatters all your concepts, your values, your morality, your respectability, your knowledge
                            - shatters you so that you are reduced to absolute nothingness, so that you no longer have any character, so that you no
                            longer are the seeker, the man who judges, who is aggressive or perhaps non-aggressive, so that you are completely empty
                            of everything that is you? ... That is what breakthrough means and is that what you are after?"   - {Meeting Life}
Change means uncertainty, insecurity, the unknown, and loss of all the mental comforts we have assiduously built up over our entire lives. Change means we are no longer the same as other people; and being like everybody else, like the mass of society, is one of the most ‘secure’ things we can and do have. We fear change because it will take away the psychological security of belonging in a personal relationship, and to a group, whether that be as banal as a football club, or, more especially, our national identity.

Is this the greatest fear among all the immumerable fears that we have: to stand alone, without any support from others, and to lose the 'permanency' of the self, of our self-identity?

What we really want is to be safe, certain and secure. To change is to openly invite what we perceive to be as insecurity, uncertainty. We will resist this at all costs and keep to what we know. This is a conclusion we have drawn and with which we have settled - and can live with. People read passages such as the above and below and convince themselves that change is not for them - change is only for the select few.

                            “Understanding is now or never; it is a destructive flash, not a tame affair; it is this shattering that one is afraid of
                               and so one avoids it, knowingly or unknowingly. Understanding may alter the course of one’s life… it may be
                                                                               pleasant or not but understanding is a danger to all relationship.”
                                                                                                          {Krishnamurti’s Notebook, page 125}

“Change, revolution, is something from the known to the unknown in which there is no authority, in which there may be total failure. But if you are assured that you will achieve, you will succeed, you will be happy, you will have everlasting life, then there is no problem. Then you pursue the well-known course of action, which is, yourself being always at the center of things.”
                                                                                    {Book of Life Daily Meditations, Real change, October 28 2007}

“If you really used your intelligence in business, that is, if your emotions and your thought were acting harmoniously, your business might fail. It probably would. And you will probably let it fail when you really feel the absurdity, the cruelty and the exploitation that is involved in this way of living. Until you really approach all of life with your intelligence, instead of merely with your intellect, no system in the world will save man from the ceaseless toil for bread.”
                                                             {Krishnamurti’s Book of Life Daily Meditations, Intellect vs. intelligence, May 42007}

         * We are not serious…
We are really only playing around with it, as we have actually stopped listening to the talks and carefully reading the books; we only read and listen to that which affirms our own prejudices and ideas. We know this, deep down, but we don’t want to commit ourselves to seriousness, to self-knowledge; we want to keep all our options open, in case something else, something better (a technique, for example) comes along. Or a personal guru who can protect us while we go through change. If we were really serious we may then have the energy for “pure observation” (passive awareness). We have come to certain conclusions about it all. These conclusions form a barrier between what we then read and listen to; it is this barrier that prevents further understanding. Along with fear, conclusions are the greatest barrier to understanding the talks.

Our seriousness is a mask that conceals secret desires. We are actually pursuing pleasure rather than self-knowledge. We all have our own particular pleasures that we will not give up. Voluntarily and freely relinquishing our pleasures is a sign of actual seriousness, but to give up something without reward is simply asking too much.


         * We have come to a firm conclusion, a belief, that change is in fact impossible, as the talks take all support away and
              give nothing back in return…
The thinking pattern we fall into goes as follows: no-one, except some ‘unique’ or ‘freak’ human being, who was born with the inherent capacity, can actually live in this world the way it is and be “nothing”; no-one can really function in a society such as this, with all its financial and relationship pressures, without a self. One cannot go into something believing at the outset that it is impossible, such an approach is futile, yet this in fact is the thinking pattern many of us have fallen in to.


         * We cannot, or will not, accept the statement: “The future is now”, or that the present contains all that there is…
The future is hope, possibility, our only chance to succeed, to arrive progressively at the truth. We cannot live entirely in the present, for that implies giving up all hope in a psychological future, as well as giving up our carefully nurtured image of ourselves. The mere notion of the ending of time, much less the actuality, is abhorrent to our very identity and all our desires and ambitions for ourselves for the future.

         * We are afraid of that condition called “an empty mind”…
We don’t know how we can function in the world with a silent or empty mind; that is, to be nothing in the sense of having no self-identification and thus no importance. The very term implies stagnation, a vacuum, a possibility of suddenly becoming socially inept and isolated. This is of course not so - we cannot know in advance what the unknown is, what our state of mind would be and what our new relationship to others would be. These are                conclusions that bring in anticipated fear and prevent open enquiry and understanding.

         * We don’t feel we have the capacity for passive awareness, for not naming what we see, for not reacting to what we
              observe in ourselves, for observing without the observer…

“Is it possible not to name a feeling? Because, by calling a particular feeling `anger', `fear', `jealousy', we have given it strength, have we not? We have fixed it. The very naming is a process of confirming that feeling, giving it strength, and therefore enclosing it in memory.   Observe it and you will see.   It is possible to be free fundamentally only when the process of naming is understood - naming being terming, symbolizing, which is the action of memory; because memory is the `you'. Without your memory, without your experiences, the `you' is not; and the mind clings to those experiences as essential in order to be secure.

So, we cultivate memory, which is experience, knowledge, and through that process we hope to control the reactions and feelings which we call distortions.   If we would be free of any particular quality, we must understand the whole process of the thinker and the thought, we must see the truth that the thinker is not separate from thought, but that they are a single, unitary process. If you actually realize that, you will see what an extraordinary revolution takes place in your life. By revolution I do not mean economic revolution, which is no revolution at all, but merely a modified continuity of what is. But when the thinker realizes that he is not different from thought, then you will see that radically, deeply, there is an extraordinary transformation; because, then there is only the fact of thought, and not the translation of that fact to suit the thinker.”
                                                                            {Collected Works, Volume 6, New York, 1st Public Talk, 4th June 1950}

“I feel guilt, why do I name it? I name it instantly. The naming of it is the recognition of it, therefore I have had that feeling before. Right? And having had it before I recognize it now. Through recognition I strengthen what has happened before. Right? You are following this? No?

I have strengthened the memory of the previous guilt by saying, "I feel guilty". So see what has happened. Every form of recognition strengthens the past. And recognition takes place through naming. So by and through recognition I strengthen the past. Why does the mind do this? Don't answer me please. Why does the mind do this, why does it always strengthen the past by saying, "I have been guilty, I am guilty, it is terrible to be guilty, how am I                            to get rid of this guilt" - why does it do it?

Does it do it because the mind needs to be occupied with something? You understand? It needs to be occupied, whether with god, with smoke, with sex, with something, it has to be occupied, therefore it is afraid not to be occupied. Right? And in occupation with the feeling of guilt, in that feeling there is certain security. At least I have got that thing, I have nothing else but at least I have got that feeling of being guilty.

So what is happening? Through recognition, which is the naming, the mind is strengthening a past feeling, which has happened before, and so the mind is constantly occupied with that feeling of guilt. That gives it a certain occupation, a certain sense of security, a certain action from that which becomes neurotic. So what takes place? Can I, when the feeling arises, observe it without naming it? So I find when I do not name, the thing no longer exists.”
                                                                                                               {Reflections on the Self}

           * We hold a conscious or unconscious hostility towards the speaker and/or aspects of his life and cannot listen
                objectively to what we read…
This subtle and often unrecognized hostility comes out in our search for a supposed contradiction in his life, against what he said. This contradiction justifies our inability to grasp what has been pointed out - 'If he couldn’t live it, how on earth can we?' There is also the blame factor, whereby we feel we have been shown a glimpse of enlightenment but haven’t achieved it. We therefore blame the person who has presented all this to us for not actually showing us the way, or being deliberately and frustratingly vague and not giving us a clear and certain method or technique by which to achieve it.

            * We are waiting (consciously or unconsciously) for someone else to ‘do it’…

"The questioner begins by saying: "We have been told." Who is there to tell you? Sir, don't you see that leaders and saints and great teachers have failed, because you are what you are? So leave them alone. You have made them failures because you are not seeking truth, you want gratification. Don't follow anyone, including myself; don't make of another your authority. You yourself have to be the master and the pupil. The moment you acknowledge another as a master and yourself as a pupil, you are denying truth.”
                                                               {The Collected Works, Vol. VI, Banares, 5th Public Talk, 20th February 1949}
                                   ~~~~~&~~~~~