The Talks on Freedom - The Familiar Catchphrases

                                           “The Observer is the Observed”

                                                                                                      “The observer is the past.”
                                                             {Lutyens, Volume 2: Years of Fulfilment, page 176}

                         “It is this separation of the observer from the observed that makes the observer want more experience,
                        more sensations, and so he is everlastingly pursuing, seeking. It has to be completely and totally understood that
                           as long as there is an observer, the one that is seeking experience, the censor, the entity that evaluates, judges,
                                                                              condemns, there is no immediate contact with what is.”
                                                                    {Book of Life Daily Meditations, Immediate action, August 21 2007}

This familiar statement in the talks obviously does not apply to the physical world. When you observe a tree, it is patently apparent that you are not the tree. Like all the content of the talks, this is referring only to the psychological realm of the mind.

There is a common misconception that this phrase is equivalent to, and a restatement of, the old aphorism: 'I am That'. This is incorrect. 'I am That' actually is a statement of the self about itself - 'I am that which I think I am', which is a conception of thought, a self-projection (Commentaries on Living: First Series, page 170). Later, this was to be reworked by René Descartes into the renowned Latin saying cogito ergo sum: 'I think, therefore I am', which is a complete validation of the existence of the self, as well as the division between thought and the thinker. The 'I am' also implies the 'I will be', something which I will achieve over both psychological and physical time.

Whereas the above statement, which is a predominant theme throughout the talks, could be rendered as: 'There is only That'. It is the very antithesis of anything about 'I am', as it concerns the end of the self, the complete cessation of all psychological division, thought conceptions and self-projection. In essence, the phrase is equivalent to "The thinker is the thought". Thought has separated itself into a thinker and that which the thinker then observes (thus: subject and object). The thinker then tries to act upon that which it observes, never realizing that it is the very same thing it is trying to change. The thinker is a fictitious entity entirely created by thought. All true awareness, then, can only take place when this thinker, this observer, ceases.

When thought fully realizes that the thinker doesn't exist in actuality, the observer ends. Only then can one come into direct contact with the actuality of oneself - a direct perception which changes that actuality.

                              “Pleasure and fear are two sides of the same coin”

The coin is thought: pleasure and fear are the two predominant sides of the thought process. It really is quite simple (it is the actual seeing of it that is difficult). The predominant focus of thought is in becoming, gaining greater pleasure - through fulfilment, power, ambition, success, money, etc. - and avoiding all psychic pain, as far as possible. In essence, the movement of all thought is an escape from psychological pain. Yet it is this very escape into pleasure that brings with it its opposite: pain, which is fear. Thus thought brings on the very thing it seeks to avoid. It is because we don’t see thought’s relentless pursuit of pleasure, and its concomitant escape mechanism from fear, that we can’t fully understand why fear is intrinsic to it.

Understand thought fully - all the thoughts one has in a day - and thought will come to a stop. This is because one only continues to think because one’s thoughts one have not fully flowered, that is, become complete. When thoughts complete themselves they don’t reoccur. So, when thought has come to a stop, when the mind and brain are silent, both pleasure and fear cease. This is because thought is time and when time ceases so does fear and pleasure. One must understand that both fear and pleasure only exist in time, in a psychological past and an anticipated future. Pleasure is a carryover of a past event that was pleasurable, which thought then seeks to endlessly repeat. Fear exists based on the past and in anticipation of some future event, of a projection into the future of what might happen, not what is happening in the now. You can see all this when you closely observe your thinking process.

                               “So thought is the instrument of pleasure, and thought is the instrument of pain, fear - consciously or unconsciously.”
                                                                          {Public talk, Rome, Italy, 1971}

“And all the identification with something greater or something which is convenient, satisfying, doesn't give you too much discomfort, that brings us a great deal of pleasure.

And pleasure goes with fear. I don't know if you have watched it. It's the other side of the coin. But we don't want to look at the other side. But we say to ourselves, pleasure is the most important thing, either through drugs, which is now becoming more and more in this country - opium, cocaine, alcohol. You know all that, what is happening in the world, especially in this country, which breeds certain irresponsibility, gives you for the moment certain elan, energy, quietens the brain probably and dulls the brain, and ultimately destroys human beings. You have seen all this on television. If you haven't seen all this, you know of somebody and so on.

We start with pleasure, and end up in ruination. And pleasure of possessing something, the woman or the man; pleasure of power - you understand - over somebody, maybe over your, if have domestic help, over that person, or your wife or husband or something or other, we want power. Right?

Let's be quite honest about all this. We admire power, we extol power, we idolize power. Right? Whether it is spiritual power of the religious hierarchy, or the power of a politician, power of money. To the speaker power is evil. That's why followers are those who want power through knowledge, through enlightenment, you know all that rot they talk about. Not that there is not enlightenment, but not the stupid nonsense that they talk about.”
                                                                                              {Ojai, 3rd Public Talk, 18th May 1985}

                                                   “The word is not the thing”

This is a fundamental principle behind the entire talks. We are caught in words and we think the word is more important than the actual fact. The entire intellect revolves around words and the intellect dominates everything in our lives. The self also is merely a creation of words. But there is another way of living: a silent mind free from words which exists entirely on feeling (sensitivity). The word then only comes in useful in a purely functional (technical) sense, as and when required. But such a mind deals only with the actual fact of life and no longer escapes through the word.

“... When one asks oneself, one may ask verbally; for most people, naturally, it must be verbal. And one has to realize that the word is not the thing - like the word tree' is not the tree, is not the actual fact. The actual fact is when one touches it, not through the word but when one actually comes into contact with it. Then it is an actuality - which means the word has lost its power to mesmerize people. ...”
                                                                     {Book of Life Daily Meditations, Extraordinary seeing, May 19^th, 2007}

                                       “The first step is the last step”

When you perceive something which is true, die to it. Any carryover stores it as memory, as knowledge, and therefore it becomes an impediment to further seeing. Moreover, thought moves in on it and demands that it have this perception on a continual basis, as it was pleasurable - forcing an experience in the past onto the present. The first step then is the seeing; the last step is the ending of that seeing, immediately. There is no time in this movement, either chronological or psychological - it is a movement where the mind has seen something new, without carrying it over. This is simply what this means. Again, the difficulty lies firstly in having the direct perception, and secondly, dying to it, without registering it as memory. This can only happen when the mind is not seeking anything, not attempting to achieve anything through experience; that is, when the self has ended.

                                               “Consciousness is its content”

The content of conciousness is thought, so consciousness is the whole process of thought. When you have no thought, you are not conscious, in the sense of being self-conscious. You are aware and you may or may not be registering events that are going on around you, but you are not conscious; there is a distinction between the two. To be just fully aware of the present without the thought process interfering is "right action". To be conscious is for thought to be conscious of its own activity.

It is implied in the talks that a different state of consciousness comes into being when thought ends. That is, the word consciousness as used in the talks is consciousness, as we know it.

”So the nature, the inmost nature of the self, when you have gone through all the layers of the self, the essence is nothing. You are nothing.   Right? On that nothingness thought has imposed the super structure of consciousness. Consciousness being the content, without the content there is no consciousness - the content being you are a Hindu, Buddhist, your religion, your particular god, your puja, your anxiety, your sorrow, your pain, your hate, your love, all that is the content of your consciousness. Obviously. And the idea that you are super atman, or super, super consciousness is part of that content.

You understand what thought has done. We are absolutely nothing.   All this super structure has been built by thought. And thought is the response of registration. Of course. You understand registration, like a tape. See what thought has done.”
                                                                        {The Text Collection, Madras, 5th Public Talk, 7th January 1978}

                                                        “You are the world”

“In investigating suffering we are investigating the suffering of all mankind, because each one of us is of the essence of all humanity;
each one of us is, psychologically, inwardly, deeply, like the rest of mankind. They suffer, they go through great anxiety, uncertainty, confusion, violence, through great sense of grief, loss, loneliness, as each one of us does. There is no division, psychologically, between us all. We are the world, psychologically, and the world is us.”
                                                                                             {The Transformation of Man, page 183}

“… But man has divided the earth, hoping thereby that in the particular he is going to find happiness, security, a sense of abiding comfort.   Until a radical change takes place and we wipe out all nationalities, all ideologies, all religious divisions, and establish a global relationship - psychologically first, inwardly before organizing the outer - we shall go on with wars. If you harm others, if you kill others, whether in anger or by organized murder which is called war, you, who are the rest of humanity, not a separate human being fighting the rest of mankind, are destroying yourself.

This is the real issue, the basic issue, which you must understand and resolve. Until you are committed, dedicated, to eradicating this national, economic, religious division, you are perpetuating war, you are responsible for all wars whether nuclear or traditional.”
                                                                                                     {Krishnamurti to Himself}

                                                                  “The inner is the outer”

What we think, we are. What we are, how we behave, is how society is. The inner is the mind dominated by the movement of thought and all its self-interest, deviousness and self-deception. This becomes society, for society is not different to what we are. You can see this by conducting a simple mind experiment: try a rigorous condemning of a particular aspect of society, it could be anything, say corruption in high places. If you observe very closely you discover that something happens to show you, in a brief observation, that this corruption is also in you and the way you think and behave. You have to be alert to see it, but it is there.

You are all the things in society that you condemn, or criticize, or despise. You have to be completely honest with yourself to see it. This is the very basis behind the old biblical aphorism: ‘For those without sin, let them cast the first stone’. This is why anger and blame and condemnation of the situation of society is a pointless exercise, for you have the same traits as that which you are spurning or condemning. What the state of the inner is, becomes the outer society, the external social environment, to which you then react.

                                                     “You are nothing”

“Strip yourself of your name, title, money, position, your little capacity to write a book and be flattered-and what are you? So why not realize and be that? You see, we have an image of what it is to be nothing, and we don’t like that image; but the actual fact of being nothing, when you have no image, may be entirely different. And it is entirely different. It is not a state that can be realized in terms of being nothing or of being something. It is entirely different when there is no image of yourself. And to have no image of yourself demands tremendous attention, tremendous seriousness. It is only the attentive, the serious, that live, not the people who have images of themselves.”
                                                             {JKTI: Are you anything in yourself?, The Collected Works, Vol. XV, Page 196}

“You are nothing. You may have your name and title, your property and bank account, you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these safeguards, you are as nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness, this nothingness, or you may simply not want to be aware of it; but it is there, do what you will to avoid it. You may try to escape from it in devious ways, through personal or collective violence, through individual or collective worship, through knowledge or amusement; but whether you are asleep or awake, it is always there.

You can come upon your relationship to this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of the escapes. You are not related to it as a separate, individual entity; you are not the observer watching it; without you, the thinker, the observer, it is not. You and nothingness are one; you and nothingness are a joint phenomenon, not two separate processes. If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and approach it as something contrary and opposed to you, then any action you may take towards it must inevitably lead to illusion and so to further conflict and misery.

When there is the discovery, the experiencing of that nothingness as you, then fear - which exists only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to establish a relationship with them - completely drops away.”
                                                {Book of Life Daily Meditations, You and nothingness are one, August 13 2007}

"Why do we store up flattery and insult, hurt and affection? Without this accumulation of experiences and their responses, we are not; we are nothing if we have no name, no attachment, no belief. It is the fear of being nothing that compels us to accumulate; and it is this very fear, whether conscious or unconscious, that, in spite of our accumulative activities, brings about our disintegration and destruction. If we can be aware of the truth of this fear, then it is the truth that liberates us from it, and not our purposeful determination to be free. You are nothing. You may have your name and title, your property and bank account, you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these safeguards, you are as nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness, this nothingness, or you may simply not want to be aware of it; but it is there, do what you will to avoid it.

You may try to escape from it in devious ways, through personal or collective violence, through individual or collective worship, through knowledge or amusement; but whether you are asleep or awake, it is always there. You can come upon your relationship to this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of the escapes. You are not related to it as a separate, individual entity; you are not the observer watching it; without you, the thinker, the observer, it is not.

You and nothingness are one; you and nothingness are a joint phenomenon, not two separate processes. If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and approach it as something contrary and opposed to you, then any action you may take towards it must inevitably lead to illusion and so to further conflict and misery. When there is the discovery, the experiencing of that nothingness as you, then fear - which exists only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to establish a relationship with them - completely drops away. Only then is it possible for the mind to be still; and in this tranquillity, truth comes into being."
                                                                                  {Commentaries on Living: Series I, 'Self-Defence'}

This is a fundamental issue. If you end the self you end all the accumulated experiences (memories) and then you are nothing. But this nothing is not in the sense in which we use it. It is everything. As the separate self has ended, there is no separation of the human being to everything else in the universe. You are one with everything. There is no division. What has ended is all separateness and all one's problems, for all problems are created by the self that is endlessly seeking something or other.

                                         “Negation is the essence of the positive”

Q: “…How am I to be free, and what does it mean to be really, honestly free?

K: Perhaps this may help us to understand it: total negation is that freedom. To negate everything we consider to be positive, to negate the total social morality, to negate all inward acceptance of authority, to negate everything one has said or concluded about reality, to negate all tradition, all teaching, all knowledge except technological nowledge, to negate all experience, to negate all the drives which stem from remembered or forgotten pleasures, to negate all fulfillment, to negate all commitments to act in a particular way, to negate all ideas, all principles, all theories. Such negation is the most positive action, therefore, it is freedom.”
                                                                                                        {To Be Human, page 153}

“Now, how do we go about it [discover that which can solve all our problems]? I feel there is only one way, that is: through negation to come to the positive; through understanding what it is not, to find out what it is. To see what one actually is and go beyond that.”
                                                                       (The Impossible Question, page 15)

K: …“So we come back to the basic question of whether it is possible in daily life to live in a state which, for the moment, let us call
      enlightenment?

Q:   I still don't know what you mean by enlightenment ...

A: A state of negation. Negation is the most positive action, not positive assertion. This is a very important thing to understand.

Most of us so easily accept positive dogma, a positive creed, because we want to be secure, to belong, to be attached, to depend. The positive attitude divides and brings about duality. The conflict then begins between this attitude and others. But the negation of all values, of all morality, of all beliefs, having no frontiers, cannot be in opposition to anything. A positive statement in its very definition separates, and separation is resistance. To this we are accustomed, this is our conditioning. To deny all this is not immoral; on the contrary to deny all division and resistance is the highest morality. To negate everything that man has invented, to negate all his values, ethics and gods, is to be in a state of mind in which there is no duality, therefore no resistance or conflict between opposites.   In this state there are no opposites, and this state is not the opposite of something else.

Q:   Then how do you know what is good and what is bad? Or is there no good and bad? What is to prevent me from crime or even murder? If I have no standards what is to prevent me from God knows what aberrations?

A: To deny all this is to deny oneself, and oneself is the conditioned entity who continually pursues a conditioned good. To most of us negation appears as a vacuum because we know activity only in the prison of our conditioning, fear and misery. From that we look at negation and imagine it to be some terrible state of oblivion or emptiness. To the man who has negated all the assertions of society, religion, culture and morality, the man who is still in the prison of social conformity is a man of sorrow.

Negation is the state of enlightenment which functions in all the activities of a man who is free of the past. It is the past, with its tradition and its authority, that has to be negated. Negation is freedom, and it is the free man who lives, loves, and knows what it means to die.”
                                                                      {Freedom, Love and Action, Eight Conversations, Second conversation}
~~~
Teacher: "Do you mean to say that the right question should be 'When I see the destructive nature of this energy'. ...

K: See the falseness of this energy which is destructive, that in itself is the answer. You cannot go beyond the destructive nature of this energy and say what the other is. Can you cease to revolve in creating destructive energy? You will not then ask what the other is. All you can ask is, "Is it possible to stop this self-created destructive energy?"

You cannot enquire positively into energy, it must be a negative approach - the comprehending of the fact negatively, not positively, in order to get to the other - because you do not know the other. So your approach must be negative in the sense that you see the factual nature of this energy which is self-destructive.

Can I comprehend negatively? Can I learn a technique, and can the mind liberate itself from the technique without recompense? Then the mind is open to a different pattern of energy.

The entire world is in a vast mess, in confusion. To have a total response to that, you must have energy of a different quality from the usual energy which you apply to a problem. The usual approach to a problem is in terms of hope, fear, success, fulfilment and so on, with its accompanying despair. This is obvious. These are all psychological facts. Here we have a world issue and you have to approach it not with the energy of despair but with an energy which is not contaminated by despair. To come upon that energy which is not destructive, the mind must be free from the energy of despair.

This is a world problem, how do you answer it? Do you answer it idealistically with the intention, the desire and the feeling, "This is the right thing to do"? If you do, you answer it with the energy of despair. Or do you look at it with a different energy altogether? If you look at the total problem with that new kind of energy, you will have the right answer."
                                                                            {Kinfonet Daily Quote, September 26, 2007, unsourced}