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What’s all this talk about thought?
In June 1979, in Brockwood Park, there was a lengthy discussion with biographer
Mary Lutyens (Mary Zimbalist was also present and took notes from which
Lutyens quoted) on the question she had earlier put to him: “Who made the
teachings?” [As was his wont, during this conversation he reverted to
referring to himself in the third person.]
K “Let us be clear. If I deliberately sat down to write it [the talks] I doubt if I
could produce it.… There is a sense of vacuity and then something comes.
But if I sat down to do it I might not be able to. Schopenhauer, Lenin,
Bertrand Russell etc. had all read tremendously. Here there is the phenomenon
of this chap who isn’t trained, who has had no [academic] discipline. How did
he get all this? … If it were only K - he is uneducated, gentle - so where does it
come from? This person hasn’t thought out the teaching.”
ML: He hasn’t come to it through thought?
K: It is like - what - what is the biblical term? - revelation. It happens all the time
when I’m talking.”
{Mary Lutyens, Vol 2: Years of Fulfilment, Chapter 20:
Who or What is Krishnamurti?, page 230}
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“Thought has no place whatsoever in the silent mind.”
{Mary Lutyens, Volume 2: Years of Fulfilment, page 176)
“Thought is necessary to accumulate knowledge to function skillfully,
otherwise thought has no place whatsoever.”
{The Transformation of Man: The Wholeness of Life, Chapter XVIII, page 213}
Remarkable statements. Thought has created our entire civilization, it dominates all our days and our entire life, from sentient being to death. It is at the very centre of all our self-identity, goals, ambitions, occupation, social status and relationships. It has created all of science, technology, architecture, philosophy, religions, languages and the myriad iconic images of god. Yet, these statements are flatly stating that psychological thought is simply not required to live our daily lives. Period.
Obviously thought per se is required to live practically, to make short or long range plans, to function technologically, to manage our affairs and ensure we have the necessities of food, clothing and shelter. Beyond that, no. Psychological thought has created a centre, the self, which perverts, distorts and prejudices all the necessary objective, logical and impersonal thought required for right and responsible living.
Can the brain function in full harmony with the bodily senses?
The mind, as we know it, encompasses the brain, all feelings, and all the body senses. But it is the brain that is the seat of thought, which is conditioning. It’s quite clear concerning its essential structure: the brain is a recorder and, not so strangely as it turns out, functions very much like a computer, which is its very own creation. A computer in a very real sense mimics the actual structure of the brain: both are run entirely on fragmented memory, and there is a remarkable symmetry between DNA code and computer programming binary code (Scientist Creates Life - Almost, Time Magazine, January 24, 2008). The brain is much more subtle and clever than we think.
This brain recording process demands physical security in order to function. This security is in nature and the technological realm - the absolute essentials mentioned above: food, clothing, shelter, all needed for simple survival. Once the brain had historically gained that security and realized it would survive, it then used the energy that is behind its creation to advance the intellect (thought) to gain the same security psychologically. This security (which is certainty) became a form of permanence in time, both psychologically while living, and also after death, with the concepts of god, reincarnation, resurrection and karma, which all represent the continuity of itself through the creation of false ideas.
The intellect dominates the structure of the brain and has become hard-wired into its neurological structure. The intellect however is but one of the bodily senses, and feeling is also one of the senses. Due to the pervasive influence of the intellect, the brain and therefore the whole body is unbalanced by one of its own body-senses (this may be the final origin of diseases such as cancer). Thus the organism does not function in harmony with all its feelings and its other senses. Furthermore, the intellect, as we know it, is completely self-centred; it is not objective, logical and clear. It is perverted and corrupted by this self-interest, by its very own centre, its very own creation, the self.
What is thought?
“Can thought ever be new, fresh? Every human problem - not the mechanical and scientific problem -
but every human problem is always new and thought tries to understand it, tries to alter it, tries to
translate it, tries to do something about it.”
{The Impossible Question, page 43}
One must understand the whole structure and process of thought. One must see how thought divides, how it is never an integrated process. You can see when you look into the mind that there is a me and a you. On a worldwide scale this is nationalism. All that thought knows is fragmentation (division). Thought does not consider the unity of mankind, it is always narrow and self-interested.
Something you can observe over time is that the nature and content of your thought doesn’t change. You may have supposedly ‘new’ thoughts (‘new ideas’, which are only recycled from other people’s ideas) and a resultant change in lifestyle, which is essentially superficial, but the fundamental content of thought remains the same. Self-interested, self-absorbed, obsessing over particular repetitive memories, always in fear, superficial, looking always to the future, looking for security, looking for direction, looking for distraction.
This is one of the deep statements that lies at the base of the talks. Thought, unlike all the rest of nature, simply doesn’t evolve.
Thought is memory, which is the past (which is conditioning). If one had no memory one would have no thought. As memory is a neurochemical response of the brain cells, so thought is matter. This explains among other things why drugs have such a strong influence on our thinking, overt or subtle. And why brain damage affects thinking. If thinking were immaterial it would remain unaffected by neuro-physiological changes.
Thought is itself the result of registration of events and sensory experiences of the brain. The issue becomes one of what needs to be registered to live and what is only psychological registration in the defense and support of the self. Thought creates images as an intrinsic part of its creation of this self. If thought ceases movement then this image-making ceases. Then thought of a different nature has its place to enable one to live in the physical world; it comes into operation only when needed and then completely subsides, it does not carryover as memory. It then does not operate as a continuous movement, caught in time.
Why has thought constructed an illusory self?
Thought, realizing its own transitory nature and impermanence, has created the grand idea (image) of a permanent and ongoing self (a super image) - which ensures security through identity and gives a permanency to everyday living, which then would also survive death. This self (the center, the me, the ego, the I, the psyche), having continuity, would thus be a source of continual comfort, psychologically speaking. It became a state of achieving and a means of progressively becoming something greater, over time. And, over time, this idea of a permanent self became so ingrained and automatic that the mind could no longer conceive of a mental state where the self did not exist. It dominates the mind: one can clearly see in oneself that all of one’s thoughts are essentially self-centred, founded on self-interest and ultimate gain.
The self has become an intrinsic part of one’s nature. The brain came to believe that the self was as natural as living itself, part of the natural order and state of things. Yet it is only a fragment (though the predominant one) of the entire process of thought (consciousness, as we know it); one central image among many images held in the mind. Fragmentation is division - thought constantly divides itself into images, it can never be an integrated whole. These images, driven by desire in its myriad forms, compete with each other and create conflict (contradiction), as well as dissipating the vital energy that is behind the movement of all thought in the first place.
The essence of the self is arrogance: the belief that “I know’, which by extension means others don’t. The self is the antithesis of humility, which it shuns as socially inept behavior. This constant game it plays of one-upmanship is the primary cause of anger, friction and violence in all our relationships; this conceit must be seen for what it is. To learn, to understand, the mind must be in a state of not knowing: that is, to cease seeing through the screen of firmly held conclusions. What is seen through the past, through ideas, is not new. The self itself, as an independent entity apart from thought, is only an idea, and all ideas are abstractions, not the actual. Is it not that ideas (conclusions, opinions, intellectualism) are the major barriers to self-understanding?
The self is thought’s masterpiece of identification. From the attachment to personal identity to the broader attachment to ideas and possessions, it has constructed its own ‘secure’ and illusory world. The action of the self is desire, to accumulate: outwardly, this is represented in money and possessions, inwardly as experiences and/or knowledge (memories). These accumulations burden the mind with the past and produce the desire for more: more money, more experiences, more pleasures, more knowledge.
There is never any final satisfaction, the self always craves more, over time. It knows no other action; it is incapable of just being in the present. Although it is an illusory thing by itself, as the central part of thought's creation it is an actuality and must be understood in its entirety. That is, after all, what self-knowledge is all about.
“The ‘me’ is brought about through thought; it has no reality by itself. …”
{The Impossible Question, Chapter 4: Fragmentation, 23 July 1970, page 46)
[Emphasis in the original]
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Are the talks all about the ending of thought?
"The brain is the source of thought. The brain is matter and thought is matter.
Can the brain - with all its reactions and its immediate responses to every challenge and demand - can the brain be very still?
It is not a question of ending thought, but of whether the brain can be completely still.
This stillness is not physical death. See what happens when the brain is completely still."
{The Urgency of Change, page 187}
There has been much discussion over whether the talks are positing the end of thought, per se. This is not so, the talks rather are addressing the possibility of the silent mind. This is a mind free of thought, but where thought itself has its place, as all the senses have their place (thought being only one of these senses, as already mentioned). Obviously one needs thought to live one’s daily life, so the ending of all thought is not up for discussion. Thought has its rightful place in the mind in order to live everyday in the physical and technical world, but that is all.
However, if the ending of thought itself is not the issue, then one thing clearly is. The talks are clearly concerned with the ending of the self. That is, all thought as a movement (time) of the “me” must come to an end. The end of the self is the end of all psychological memory. This is dying to each day. There is only the carrying of memory which is essential for everyday practical and technical living and the negation of all the rest, which effectively means the ending of all past experiences. These experiences are the false and must be discarded.
When the self has ended, our entire thought process will also end, as this process is all self-directed. What is left is the silent mind, from which thought then arises. As thought then has no motive and no end in view, it is entirely objective and logical - thus different in nature to our thought at present. The talks state what arises from silence is creative thinking.
What does this statement actually mean: The observer is the observed?
This is, of course, the perennial catchphrase that appears to have created a good deal of needless confusion as to its exact meaning. This may be the real issue, we have complicated it beyond all understanding. The statement is clear and simple, this is not complex abstract philosophy, advanced psychology, rocket science.
Put very simply, it means precisely the same as the phrase, “the thinker is the thought”. There is no separate independent thinker, it is all just thought. To put it another way: you are that which you are observing, you are not separate from it, observing it from another superior and removed vantage point, despite the strong, even apparently innate, sense that you feel you are.
What is called fragmentation is that movement of thought that has separated itself into two components. The self, which is time, which is the observer, which is the past, and the not self, which is everything that is observed by the self, including thought itself. But the observer is the same nature as that which it observes. In life itself, in all of nature, there simply is no division. If you observe all creatures you will see that they are entirely at one with their environment, they are not divided from or separate from it, they have no sense of a separate self-consciousness. (It is said that some of the other great apes have a rudimentary self-awareness, but they too do not separate themselves from their environment.) Man is the only creature on earth that has created a separate and apparently ‘independent observer’, that appears to be observing itself and the world around it.
The observer then, as we have seen, is a construction of thought, a fragment constructed by thought to create a permanent center from which to operate:
“The observer is the self.
The observer detaches itself from that which it observes in itself - the loneliness, emptiness etc.
This very detachment - division - is an escape from the actual.”
(The Impossible Question, page 119)
“So we come to a point where we can say, the observer is also the image, only he has separated himself and observes. This observer who has come into being through various other images thinks himself permanent and between himself and the images he has created there is a division, a time interval. This creates conflict between himself and the images he believes to be the cause of his troubles. So then he says, "I must get rid of this conflict", but the very desire to get rid of the conflict creates another image.
Awareness of all this, which is real meditation, has revealed that there is a central image put together by all the other images, and the central image, the observer, is the censor, the experiencer, the evaluator, the judge who wants to conquer or subjugate the other images or destroy them altogether. The other images are the result of judgments, opinions and conclusions by the observer, and the observer is the result of all the other images - therefore the observer is the observed.”
{Commentaries On Living, Series II, Chapter 50, 'Convictions--Dreams'}
So the observer is the observed actually is a phrase that is quite simple to understand; it is the analytical and abstract thought process that complicates it to something that can be endlessly analyzed, talked about and pondered over. This becomes a clever escape from facing up to the actual fact of it. We have an apparently innate suspicion of simplicity, which explains why society as a whole is utterly dependent upon myriad experts to solve all of its problems.
Can thought be aware of itself?
This is a crucial issue. Thought can be aware of itself, one can see this by observing the process of thought in the mind. Thought can also come to a realization. Moreover, it is stated that the realization of thought is essential for understanding and may be essential also for the quietness of the mind in which total awareness can occur:
“So there has been in my conversation with myself the discovery that loneliness is created by thought.
Thought has now realized of itself that it is limited and so cannot solve the problem of loneliness. …
Thought has created this sense of loneliness, this emptiness, because it is limited, fragmentary,
divided and when it realizes this, loneliness is not, therefore there is freedom from attachment.”
{Brockwood Park, 3rd Public Talk, 8th September 1973}
“Thought must be aware of its own ways, of its own cunning deceptions. All consciousness, surely, whether it is of the past, the present, or the future, is within the field of thought; and any change within that field, which sets the boundaries of the mind, is no real change. A radical change can take place only outside the field of thought, not within it, and the mind can leave the field only when it sees the confines, the boundaries of the field, and realizes that any change within the field is no change at all. This is real meditation.
In being aware of itself, without any desire to be or not to be, the mind comes to a state of inaction.
Inaction is not death; it is a passive watchfulness in which thought is wholly inactive. It is the highest state of sensitivity. When the mind is completely inactive at all its levels, only then is there action. All the activities of the mind are mere sensations, reactions to stimulation, to influence, and so not action at all. When the mind is without activity, there is action; this action is without cause, and only then is there bliss.”
{Commentaries on Living: Series I, Chapter 85, 'Sensation and Happiness'}
“To put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself. Some of you will nod your heads and say, “I agree,” and go outside and do exactly the same as you have been doing for the last ten or twenty years. Your agreement is merely verbal and has no significance, for the world’s miseries and wars are not going to be stopped by your casual assent. They will be stopped only when you realize the danger, when you realize your responsibility, when you do not leave it to somebody else.
If you realize the suffering, if you see the urgency of immediate action and do not postpone, then you will transform yourself. Peace will come only when you yourself are peaceful, when you yourself are at peace with your neighbor. Do not leave it to somebody else.”
{JKTI: The First and Last Freedom, page 185, September 28th 2007}
The actual nature of this realization - and the state or quality of mind in which this awareness takes place - appear to be the most difficult and clouded issues of all in the talks.
Have we ever realized anything? Realization is seeing something entirely new. Are we capable of it?
More Significant Quotations:
“Can thought be aware of its own movement? Can thought see itself, see what it is doing, both in the outer and the inner?
There is really no outer and inner: the inner creates the outer, and the outer then shapes the inner. This ebb and flow of action and reaction is the movement of thought, and thought is always trying to overcome the outer, and succeeds, bringing about many problems; in solving one problem other problems arise. Thought has also shaped the inner, molded it according to the outer demands. This seemingly endless process has created this society, ugly, cruel, immoral and violent. And having created it, the inner becomes a slave to it. The outer shapes the inner and the inner shapes the outer.
This process has been going on for thousands upon thousands of years and thought seems not to realize its own activity. So one asks: can thought ever be aware of itself - aware of what it is doing? There is no thinker apart from thought; thought has made the thinker, the experiencer, the analyser. The thinker, the one who is watching, the one who acts, is the past, with all the inheritance of man, genetically, biologically - the traditions, the habits and all accumulated knowledge. After all, the past is knowledge, and the thinker is not separate from the past. Thought has created the past, thought is the past; then thought divides the thinker and the thought, which the thinker must shape, control. But that is a fallacy; there is only thought. The self is the 'me', the past. Imagination may project the future but it is still the activity of thought.”
{Krishnamurti to Himself}
“A human being, throughout life, depends on thought and the things that thought has put together as being most essential, …
Someone comes along and says: ‘Now look, all that is the movement of the past.’
Having reasoned with him, logically, the other says: ‘Why not, what is wrong with holding on to thought
even though it is of the past?’; he acknowledges it, and says: “I’ll hold to it, what is wrong?’ Yet when the
human mind lives in the past and when it holds to the past, then it is incapable of living, or perceiving truth.”
{The Transformation of Man, page 161}
“Thought is necessary, yet we see that thought divides, as the ‘me’ and ‘not me’;
it tries to solve the problem of violence in isolation, unrelated to all other problems of existence. …
Can the mind be free of the ‘me’?”
{The Impossible Question, Chapter 4, Fragmentation, page 46, 23 July 1970)
“The mind must go through that small hole which it has put together, the self, to come upon this vast nothingness whose stability thought cannot measure. Thought desires to capture it, use it, cultivate it and put it on the market. It must be made acceptable and so respectable, to be worshipped. Thought cannot put it into any category and so it must be a delusion and a snare; or it must be for the few, for the select. And so thought goes about its own mischievous ways, frightened, cruel, vain and never stable, though its conceit asserts there is stability in its actions, in its exploration, in knowledge it has accumulated. The dream becomes a reality which it has nurtured. What thought has made real is not truth. Nothingness is not a reality but it is the truth. The small hole, the self, is the reality of thought, that skeleton on which it has built all its existence - the reality of its fragmentation, the pain, the sorrow and its love. The reality of its gods or its one god is the careful structure of thought, its prayer, its rituals, its romantic worship. In reality there is no stability or pure clarity.”
{Krishnamurti’s Journal, Malibu, 23 April 1975, Copyright KFT}
“To come upon this extraordinary beauty of truth… you must lay the foundations. The foundation is the understanding of thought, which breeds fear and sustains pleasure, and the understanding of order and therefore virtue; so that there is freedom from all conflict, aggression, brutality and violence.”
{The Impossible Question, page 79}
“Has it ever happened to you - I am sure it has - that you suddenly perceive something, and in that moment of perception you have no problems at all? The very moment you have perceived the problem, the problem has completely ceased. Do you understand, sirs? You have a problem, and you think about it, argue with it, worry over it; you exercise every means within the limits of your thought to understand it. Finally you say, "I can do no more." There is nobody to help you to understand, no guru, no book. You are left with the problem, and there is no way out.
Having inquired into the problem to the full extent of your capacity, you leave it alone. Your mind is no longer worried, no longer tearing at the problem, no longer saying, "I must find an answer"; so it becomes quiet, does it not? And in that quietness you find the answer. Hasn't that sometimes happened to you? It is not an enormous thing. It happens to great mathematicians, scientists, and people experience it occasionally in everyday life. Which means what? The mind has exercised fully its capacity to think, and has come to the edge of all thought without having found an answer; therefore it becomes quiet - not through weariness, not through fatigue, not by saying, "I will be quiet and thereby find the answer." Having already done everything possible to find the answer, the mind becomes spontaneously quiet. There is an awareness without choice, without any demand, an awareness in which there is no anxiety; and in that state of mind there is perception. It is this perception alone that will resolve all our problems.”
{Book of Life Daily Meditations, At the edge of all thought, October 9 2007}
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“What basis have I for thinking if I do not know myself?”
{JKTI: Revolution must begin with you and me, Collected Works: Vol.VI, page 38}
{JKTI: Revolution must begin with you and me, Collected Works: Vol.VI, page 38}
(Page last updated on May 3, 2008)
“One of the functions of thought is to be occupied, to be thinking about something all the time.”
{Collected Works, Bombay, 1st Public Talk, February 19 1967}
{Collected Works, Bombay, 1st Public Talk, February 19 1967}
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