Krishnamurti: The Talks on Freedom - "What Is"

                                          “Why are we so frightened of what is? What is the good of running away if whatever we are is always there?
                                                             We may succeed in escaping, but what we are is still there, breeding conflict and misery.

                                    Why are we so frightened of our loneliness, of our emptiness? Any activity away from what is is bound to bring sorrow
                                      and antagonism. Conflict is the denial of what is or the running away from what is; there is no conflict other than that.
                                                         Our conflict becomes more and more complex and insoluble because we do not face what is.
                                                                        There is no complexity in what is, but only in the many escapes that we seek.”
                                                                                               {Commentaries on Living: Series 1, 'Ambition'}

         Why can’t we face facts?

The essence of what is meant by "what is" is the fact, is it not? We live lives of conflict because we are living with 'what should be', which is an escape from what is. For instance, envy is a fact in us, but as envy is not a socially acceptable thought/feeling, we are continually avoiding this fact in ourselves. The feeling of fear, part of the whole structure of time-thought, is also what is. A fact is a reality which is not distorted by the choice and bias of the observer.

We spend our entire lives escaping from - or denying, or suppressing - the fact of what we are. Logically, this avoidance can never overcome the problem, be it loneliness, violence, fear or desire. As in all other aspects of life, including the technological world, running away from a problem does not make that problem go away. We can see this truth in the practical world, but we do not see it - or do not want to see it - in the psychological world.

The mind runs away from the fact of what it is because it is always seeking the idea of security, comfort, safety. Security in the form of a gratifying and permanent idea, belief or conclusion. The more firmly held the idea, the greater the security. The greatest security is an idea held by the greatest number of people, such as nationalism or an organized system of religious belief, which constitutes a group mentality in which there is, supposedly, great safety. But this security is actually an illusion and events transpire in life to show us this fact (such as inevitable wars, and now, the ongoing defence against terrorism).

The mind seeks security because the mind is dominated by thought. Thought, which sees its transience and the insecurity of physical existence, realizes at the same time that it is not whole; it therefore tries to create wholeness and permanence through security, which it does by creating a fictitious ‘permanent’ entity called the self, which in turn creates further ideas. So it is constantly seeking something; it is incessantly becoming something over psychological time, which induces the notion that it is itself permanent. All this is an escape from what is.

                    “Is it possible to live without any pattern, without any goal, without any idea of the future, a life without conflict?
                    It is only possible when one lives completely with ‘what is’. “With ‘what is’ means with that which is actually taking place. …
If you are envious, or greedy, jealous … live with them without any movement of thought that wants to move away from them. Which means what? One is not wasting one’s energy in control, in suppression, , in conflict, in resistance, in escape. All that energy was being wasted; now one has gathered it up. Because one sees the absurdity of it, the falseness of it … one has now the energy to live with ‘what is’; one has that
                                                                           energy to observe without any movement of thought.”
                                                                                          {The Transformation of Man, page 148}

     Why does thought always escape from the fact?

Thought is always concerned with what should be rather than what is, which is the movement in time. If there were no time the mind would only be left with the fact in the present, in the now. This movement in time is comparison, which is measurement - a central activity of thought. One compares or measures one’s life with an image of what one’s life should be, or what has been, and then pursues a created image of what one wants to be, over time. The most dominant images are those held by the mass of people - such as success, money and power - for in the mass is the greatest possibility of security, based on the illusory assumption the the ‘majority can never be wrong’. Thus develops a society full of conformists who do not want to step away from the crowd. To step away from this cocoon of security is to invite insecurity, fear.

The 'what is' is not something to be sought after. The what is is not pleasant, comforting, pleasurable, gratifying, which is why we are everlastingly escaping from it. It is also not permanent, as the fact of what we are changes in nature over chronological time. If you realize that, stripped of your created self image, you are violent, lonely and empty then one’s thought process will of course avoid this by pursuing a gratifying and desired image of oneself. Role models (heroes, idols, gurus) in society are all based on this desired image-making; so is all advertising, in one form or another. Self-projected ideals are what we live by.

It is this division between what is and what should be (what we really should be, or what we want to be) that is behind the whole problem of living. It also extends to the past, where we compare what our past was with what we are now. All this is a contradiction and contradictions create mental conflict, which saps all our critical energy.

“Contradiction exits when there is comparison; not only with something, but also comparison with what I was yesterday. And hence conflict arises between what has been and what is. There is only what is when there is no comparison at all - and to live completely with `what is', is to be peaceful. Because then you can give your whole attention to `what is' without any distraction to what is within oneself, whatever it be - despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and live with, what is, completely.   Then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict.

The understanding that comes only through observation of what is, is peace; which doesn't mean that you accept what is, on the contrary, one can't possibly accept this monstrous, corrupt society in which one lives, yet it is what is. But observe it, all its psychological structure, which is me, observe that me without any judgment, any evaluation - to see actually what is and as one observes the `what is', be changed completely.
Therefore one can live at peace with one's wife or husband, with one's neighbor, with society, because one is oneself, daily, living a life of peace.”
                                                                                  {Collected Works, Volume 8, Talks in Europe, 1967}

      What can we do about what is, what we actually are?

The answer is devastatingly simple (which may in itself be the issue). You can’t do anything about it as the entity doing something about it is the same entity that has created the problem in the first place. All you can do is just observe:

Q:   “... Why does one run away? What is one escaping from?"

A: “From your own loneliness, your own emptiness, from what you are. If you run away without seeing what is, you obviously cannot understand it; so first you have to stop running, escaping and only then can you watch yourself as you are. But you cannot observe what is if you are always criticizing it, if you like or dislike it. You call it loneliness and run away from it; and the very running away from what is is fear. You are afraid of this loneliness, of this emptiness, and dependence is the covering of it.

So fear is constant; it is constant as long as you are running away from what is. …

Q:   Then my fear arises from my own hollowness, my insufficiency. I see that all right, and it is true; but what am I to do about it?

A: “You cannot do anything about it. Whatever you do is an activity of escape. That is the most essential thing to realize. …”
                                                                           {Commentaries on Living, Series I, Chapter 75, 'Fear and Escape}
                                                                                                       * [See below for the full quotation]

Is this where the whole talks lose us? Is this where we reach a point of refusing to listen any further?

We have a resolute idea, an absolute conviction born of long conditioning and personal experience, that we have to take action - some action, any action - on what we observe in ourselves, even if this action is an avoidance of it. Moreover, action in one form or another is not action at all - it is a reaction. The very naming of what we see is a reaction and so an avoidance of it! All these reactions, because they stem from a mind that has set up all the escapes in the first place, only reinforce all the problems.

The talks are clear: all action can only take place from a mind that is quiet (silent), that is no longer escaping. This action is born of “intelligence”, which is compassion. But the true nature of both this action and intelligence cannot be known as our minds are not quiet. All discussion on the exact nature of this action and intelligence is thus purely speculative, has no meaning and will not be touched on in these discussions. Is all intellectual discussion on this unknown 'intelligence' an escape from the real issues of our lives?

This issue of complete non-action, of total passivity to what we observe in ourselves is so foreign to everything to us that we will resist it to the bitter end. It is beyond all our thinking and tradition and is essentially counter-intuitive. We have a deep-seated fear that if we take no action then we will be condemned forever to be in that very state which we observe, that we will stagnate in it. This is actually not the case, it is pointed out in the talks. When we come face to face for the first time with the actuality then that fact, whatever it is, will be transformed. The problem is, amazingly, that we have never actually come into direct contact with the fact.

      The seeing is the doing.

The very observation is enough, it has its own action. As has been pointed out, all our action is the reaction of the self, of thought; beyond that there is only action, but to speculate on the nature of this action has no meaning. The seeing that brings this action is only when there is no desire to judge or change that which is seen:

                                                                       "The ‘what is’ can only be observed when there is no me."
                                                                                          (The Transformation of Man, page 218}

“To transform, I must look at what is; and I am not looking at it as long as I have an ideal. If I see that, I set aside the ideal, which is non-violence, and look at violence, and then I am fully aware that I am violent; and the very fact that I am directly conscious of it brings about transformation. Experiment with it and you will see.

This refusal to see what is - that is the problem with all of us. I never want to look at what is, I never want to acknowledge that I am ugly - I always give reasons for my ugliness; but if I look at my ugliness as it is, without explanation or excuse, then there is a possibility of transformation.”
                                                                     {Collected Works, Volume 5, Poona India, 7th Public Talk, 10th October 1948}

So this, then, is the central point. The whole point of seeing 'what is' comes down to the fact of observing it directly, without any reaction whatsoever and without any attempt whatsoever to do anything about it. This is seeing without the observer.

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* Full Quotation (see above):
Q:   “...Why does one run away? What is one escaping from?

A: From your own loneliness, your own emptiness, from what you are. If you run away without seeing what is, you obviously cannot understand it; so first you have to stop running, escaping and only then can you watch yourself as you are. But you cannot observe what is if you are always criticizing it, if you like or dislike it. You call it loneliness and run away from it; and the very running away from what is is fear. You are afraid of this loneliness, of this emptiness, and dependence is the covering of it.

So fear is constant; it is constant as long as you are running away from what is. To be completely identified with something, with a person or an idea, is not a guarantee of final escape, for this fear is always in the background. It comes through dreams, when there is a break in identification; and there is always a break in identification, unless one is unbalanced.

Q: Then my fear arises from my own hollowness, my insufficiency. I see that all right, and it is true; but what am I to do about it?

A: “You cannot do anything about it. Whatever you do is an activity of escape. That is the most essential thing to realize.

Then you will see that you are not different or separate from that hollowness. You are that insufficiency. The observer is the observed emptiness. Then if you proceed further, there is no longer calling it loneliness; the terming of it has ceased. If you proceed still further, which is rather arduous, the thing known as loneliness is not; there is a complete cessation of loneliness, emptiness, of the thinker as the thought. This alone puts an end to fear.”
{Commentaries on Living, Series I, Chapter 75, 'Fear and Escape}

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