30 November

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

Fifth Public Talk at Madras : 1978/79

6 First of all, in understanding this problem – what is a truly religious mind? – we must grasp the significance of the word, the meaning of the word, and realise that the word is not the thing. The word ‘tree’ is not the actual thing that is there, nor the description of what is a religious mind, which we are going to explore today and tomorrow. The description of it, the verbal explanation of it is not the described, is not the actual fact. But words are necessary to communicate. And we all perhaps understand English. We are using words without any slogans or jargons, but ordinary words with which one is quite familiar.

7 So we are talking over together, examining together, investigating together, not that I investigate and you listen, and agree or disagree with the investigation, which would be absurd. Whereas if we could go together and explore this extraordinary question, which has haunted man throughout the ages: what is religion, what is a mind that can hold, or understand, or comprehend the beauty of a profoundly religious mind? Because every form of political organisation has failed, they have not solved the problems, human problems. The politicians are seeking power, position, not at all concerned, though they pretend with us, with other human beings. Nor religious organisations have ended man’s suffering, his agonies, the wars, the appalling chaos that is spreading throughout the world, semi-anarchy. On the contrary religions have separated man with their beliefs, dogmas, rituals and all that nonsense. When I use the word ‘nonsense’ it means no sense.

8 And I believe historically a new culture can only come about with a different religion – rather a new culture can only be born out of a religious mind. And cultures throughout the world are degenerating, disappearing. So religion, which we are going to examine the word and the whole sequence of it, religion becomes extraordinarily important.

9 And again scientists have not solved any of our human anxieties, human relationships. So when one observes all the things that the intellect has brought about, it has only brought greater misery, greater confusion. Which is again obviously taking place.

10 So we are together going to examine not only this afternoon but tomorrow afternoon: what is a religious mind? I am not going to do all the work, you are going to join me. You have to work too. That is, we are challenging, demanding, asking, challenging the brain, the mind, the whole nature of our mind: what is a religious person?

11 The word ‘religion’ – one has looked up various dictionaries, and they more or less say, originally, etymologically, the meaning, Latin, Greek and so on, the meaning was to ‘bind’. But many of the etymologists have denied that. Now they are saying religion implies, the meaning implies gathering all your energy to discover – they don’t say what. Gathering all your energy. And we are saying, gathering all your energy to discover what truth is, if there is anything sacred in life – not the temples, churches, mosques, they are not sacred, they are illusions created by thought. But there must be freedom, complete psychological freedom to find out, or to come upon that thing that is wholly, completely, irrevocably sacred, not invented by thought, by man. So that is the meaning of the word ‘religion’.

12 And the word ‘mind’ includes not only the sensory activities, all the emotional reactions, the images – I hope you are following all this – the images, the beliefs, the anxieties, the intellectual capacity to reason logically, reasonably, or unreasonably, to be caught in illusion and to see that one is caught in an illusion and to be free of that illusion – all that is the mind. Right? Right sir? When we talk of the mind it includes the brain, which is very, very, very old, ancient, beyond memory, and the brain which has been conditioned upon millennia upon millennia – the genetic conditioning and the cultural conditioning, the social, religious conditioning. That is the brain, which contains all the genetic memories, the experiences, the knowledge of man’s existence on this earth. Which again is an obvious fact.

13 And the tradition, the values, the beliefs, the dogmas, the concepts, handed down from generation to generation is part of that brain, is part of that mind. All the knowledge which you have acquired recently, or throughout the immemorial past, all that is part of the mind. So we are using the word ‘mind’ to convey a holistic, a whole process of the past, with its tradition, with its culture, with its rituals, with all the things man has collected.

1 thought on “30 November”

  1. ” . . . when one observes all the things that the intellect has brought about, it has only brought greater misery, greater confusion . . .”
    And we are only sharpening the intellect -all the education is doing that!
    Why?

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