22 March
Krishnamurti In India: The Last Decade
The Last Talks
Madras 1985 / 1986 – 1st Public Talk
14 So what has happened to us, to each one of us? That is, we have lived on this earth as human beings for a very, very long time, which is called evolution. And during that evolution of experience, knowledge, thinking, all the things that man has put together, including his superstitions, his gods, his various empires, and when you come down to the actual fact, what has happened to each one of us? Don’t you want to know? Or are we frightened to know? Which is it? Gosh, what’s the matter? Not a response.
15 Q: We want to inquire.
16 K: You want to enjoy yourself.
17 Q: Inquire.
18 K: I don’t understand what you are talking about. And you are the rest of the world; what you suffer, what you go through, daily boredom, the pettiness of one’s life: the struggle, the pain, the anxiety, the sorrow, the negligence, the carelessness, indifference. And this is shared by all humanity. Right? Everybody goes through this, your guru – if you have one, I hope you haven’t got any – your guru, if he is at all awake, if he is at all sane and rational, he goes through all this. The kings and the ministers go through all this. Pain, anxiety, uncertainty, sorrow, death, hoping for something in the future. This is what all human beings, wherever you go, however civilised one is, or not, every human being goes through this. Right? Are you doubting that fact? Do you doubt that, that every human being throughout the world goes through all this? And this makes up our consciousness. Right? Are we understanding each other? Are we working together? Are we investigating together? Or am I guiding you, helping you? I am not. Please be assured of one fact: I don’t want to help you, I am not your guide or your helper. Then you will ask, why am I sitting here. You are sitting here probably out of curiosity, out of what you have heard, or read a few lines in a book, or you have been told, go and listen to the chap, you will find out. So please be clear, the speaker is not guiding you, he is not helping you. He won’t help you because you have been helped. All through the ages you have been helped – saviours, gurus, mahatmas, you know the whole list of them. They are all too willing to help you, with their ashramas, with their foundations, including this. And you have been helped. If you have any trouble you trot off to a guru, or to a temple asking for help, which is called prayer. And you have been helped, you have been guided, politically, religiously, psychiatrically, and at the end of it all we are what we are.
19 So the speaker says – please take this seriously – he is not guiding you, he is not helping you. On the contrary, together we are walking the same path, together we are sharing, nourishing. I am using the word ‘nourishing’ both intellectually, psychologically – we can’t feed each other, there are too many people.