The Urgency of Change Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti The Urgency Of Change Table of Content Awareness ..............................................................................................................3 Is there a god?......................................................................................................10 Fear ......................................................................................................................14 How To Live In This World....................................................................................19 Relationship ..........................................................................................................28 Conflict..................................................................................................................35 The Religious Life.................................................................................................39 Seeing The Whole ................................................................................................43 Morality .................................................................................................................47 Suicide ..................................................................................................................49 Discipline ..............................................................................................................59 What Is..................................................................................................................63 The Seeker ...........................................................................................................66 Organisation .........................................................................................................69 Love And Sex .......................................................................................................72 Perception.............................................................................................................76 Suffering ...............................................................................................................81 The Heart And The Mind ......................................................................................84 Beauty And The Artist...........................................................................................88 Dependence .........................................................................................................92 Belief.....................................................................................................................97 Dreams ...............................................................................................................101 Tradition..............................................................................................................106 Conditioning........................................................................................................110 Happiness...........................................................................................................117 Learning..............................................................................................................121 Self-Expression...................................................................................................126 Passion ...............................................................................................................128 Order...................................................................................................................131 The Individual And The Community ...................................................................134 Meditation And Energy .......................................................................................136 Ending Thought ..................................................................................................142 The New Human Being.......................................................................................145 2 Awareness Questioner: I should like to know what you mean by awareness because you have often said that awareness is really what your teaching is about. I've tried to understand it by listening to your talks and reading your books, but I don't seem to get very far. I know it is not a practice, and I understand why you so emphatically repudiate any kind of practice, drill, system, discipline or routine. I see the importance of that, for otherwise it becomes mechanical, and at the end of it the mind has become dull and stupid. I should like, if I may, to explore with you to the very end this question of what it means to be aware. You seem to give some extra, deeper meaning to this word, and yet it seems to me that we are aware of what's going on all the time. When I'm angry I know it, when I'm sad I know it and when I'm happy I know it. Krishnamurti: I wonder if we really are aware of anger, sadness, happiness? Or are we aware of these things only when they are all over? Let us begin as though we know nothing about it at all and start from scratch. Let us not make any assertions, dogmatic or subtle, but let us explore this question which, if one really went into it very deeply, would reveal an extraordinary state that the mind had probably never touched, a dimension not touched by superficial awareness. Let us start from the superficial and work through. We see with our eyes, we perceive with our senses the things about us - the colour of the flower, the humming bird over the flower the light of this Californian sun, the thousand sounds of different qualities and subtleties, the depth and the height, the shadow of the tree and the tree itself. We feel in the same way our own bodies, which are the instruments of these different kinds of superficial, sensory perceptions. If these perceptions remained at the superficial level there would be no confusion at all. That flower, that pansy, that rose, are there, and that's all there is to it. There is no preference, no comparison, no like and dislike, only the thing before us without any psychological involvement. Is all this superficial sensory perception or 3 awareness quite clear? It can be expanded to the stars, to the depth of the seas, and to the ultimate frontiers of scientific observation, using all the instruments of modern technology. Questioner: Yes, I think I understand that. Krishnamurti: So you see that the rose and all the universe and the people in it, your own wife if you have one, the stars, the seas, the mountains, the microbes, the atoms, the neutrons, this room, the door, really are there. Now, the next step; what you think about these things, or what you feel about them, is your psychological response to them. And this we call thought or emotion. So the superficial awareness is a very simple matter: the door is there. But the description of the door is not the door, and when you get emotionally involved in the description you don't see the door. This description might be a word or a scientific treatise or a strong emotional response; none of these is the door itself. This is very important to understand right from the beginning. If we don't understand this we shall get more and more confused. The description is never the described. Though we are describing something even now, and we have to, the thing we are describing is not our description of it, so please bear this in mind right through our talk. Never confuse the word with the thing it describes. The word is never the real, and we are easily carried away when we come to the next stage of awareness where it becomes personal and we get emotional through the word. So there is the superficial awareness of the tree, the bird, the door, and there is the response to that, which is thought, feeling, emotion. Now when we become aware of this response, we might call it a second depth of awareness. There is the awareness of the rose, and the awareness of the response to the rose. Often we are unaware of this response to the rose. In reality it is the same awareness which sees the rose and which sees the response. It is one movement and it is wrong to speak of the outer and inner awareness. When there is a visual 4 awareness of the tree without any psychological involvement there is no division in relationship. But when there is a psychological response to the tree, the response is a conditioned response, it is the response of past memory, past experiences, and the response is a division in relationship. This response is the birth of what we shall call the "me" in relationship and the "non-me". This is how you place yourself in relationship to the world. This is how you create the individual and the community. The world is seen not as it is, but in its various relationships to the "me" of memory. This division is the life and the flourishing of everything we call our psychological being, and from this arises all contradiction and division. Are you very clear that you perceive this? When there is the awareness of the tree there is no evaluation. But when there is a response to the tree, when the tree is judged with like and dislike, then a division takes place in this awareness as the "me" and the "non-me", the "me" who is different from the thing observed. This "me" is the response, in relationship, of past memory, past experiences. Now can there be an awareness, an observation of the tree, without any judgement, and can there be an observation of the response, the reactions, without any judgement? In this way we eradicate the principle of division, the principle of "me" and "non-me",

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