24 November

1. Krishnamurti In India: The Last Decade: 1976 – 1986

Fourth Public Talk at Madras : 1978/79

7 First, let us be aware, as human beings who have got such extraordinary capacities, look what they have done technologically – immense things they have done. And as human beings who are so extraordinarily capable, who have thought out almost every form of concept, principles, ideas, religious projections, invented rituals that have religiously… most beautiful some of them but have no meaning at all. And the human mind – I don’t know if you have gone into your own minds. If you have you can observe it – what great quality it has. Thank God! And to challenge such a mind, to demand that it shall operate at its highest excellence. Will you do it as we are talking so that your mind, your mind being not only the various forms of sensory activities, your mind being the emotions, affection, love, care, attention, the intellectual capacity, and that sense of great love – all that is the mind, the wholeness of the mind. To challenge that – do you understand what I am saying? – that it shall operate at its highest, at its greatest excellence. Because if you don’t challenge it, we live in disorder. You are following all this?

8 So, we are inquiring into what constitutes, why human beings centuries upon centuries have accepted to live in disorder politically, religiously, economically, socially, and in our relationship with each other. Your understand? Why? Why have we accepted to live this way? From whom do you expect the answer? Do you understand? A challenge implies that you respond, that you respond with your highest capacity and not wait for the speaker to respond and show how to respond. You follow? You understand what I am saying? I have challenged your mind. The speaker has said exercise your highest capacity, exercise all your energy to find out whether it is possible to live in a world that is degenerating, corrupt, immoral, whether you can live a sane, a life that is completely whole – that is your challenge. You understand? What is your response to it? Whole, the word ‘whole’ means first healthy. Both physically, psychologically, with all the capacities of your mind, and therefore with sanity. And the word ‘whole’ also means holy, sacred; that is the whole of life. So we are asking whether you as a human being are aware the total disorder and degeneration out in the world around you and in yourself the degenerating process going on? Are you aware of it? Aware in the sense observe what is actually taking place, not imagine what is taking place nor idea of what is taking place but the actual happening: the political, the religious, the social, the moral degeneration of man. And no institution, no guru, no higher principles are going to stop this degradation. Are we aware of it? If we are, then what shall we do? Right? Right sir? What shall we do? What is your action – not in some future date – what is your immediate action? Will you join some sect, will you follow some guru or will you go back to your old tradition, repeating something or other, rituals, to escape from the actual fact of the brain that is going to, that is getting old, degenerating. Or will you, together – you and I – investigate, explore why human beings have become like this? It is happening the world over, it isn’t just the speciality of this spiritual land. Sorry to use the word ‘spiritual’, because you are so proud of your own culture. It is like a politician saying we are very old, our culture is ancient. Then that gives him a certain sense of dignity, but in his heart he is – you know what it is, I don’t have to tell you. So, what shall we do?