"Things of the Mind"

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Some Excerpts:

K:"If we see actually, not theoretically, that thought is limited,

thought is the most dangerous instrument that man has. Sorry!"

PP:"I have no problem dealing with that. I agree with it."

K:"Then what shall we do? Let's think for a minute. What shall we do?"

PP:"Then, we must look inside ourselves beyond thought."

K:"What do you do?"

PP:"Why not stop it?"

K:"No, don't come to any conclusions. What do we do? If both of us

see, or some of us see, that thought has created such chaos in the

world, such violence, such brutality, such agony in the world, then

what shall we do? How shall we go beyond thought? Not stop it, for

thought is necessary to communicate."

PP:"I was thinking of stopping in the sense that you said, 'Quiet your

mind and listen to yourself.' "

K:"No, let's go slowly. What shall we do? I see thought as basically

the most dangerous instrument I have."

PP:"I'm not sure. I'm here to learn, so I'll listen to you."

K:"No, don't listen to me."

EM:"I would think that you would immediately begin to feel the need to

either control or reorient thought."

K:"Who is the controller?"

EM:"The consciousness."

K: "Consciousness is put together by thought."

ET: "It's the same thing. You can't."

EL: "You can't control it with more thought."

RW: "It's perpetuating itself."

EM: "But we're not saying that they are inseparable."

K:"No. We're saying that thought creates the thinker; the thinker

separates himself from thought, then the thinker tries to control

thought. But thought is the thinker."

PP:"I think, therefore, I am?"

K:"That's good."

EM:"The eternal paradox, sir."

K:"No, I wouldn't call it a paradox. There is no thinker without the

thought."

EL:"If you can stop thought ..."

K:"Who is to stop it?"

RW:"The thinker."

K:"Who is the thinker?"

RW:"It just goes around and around ..."

(...)

K:"We act this way: experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action.

That is the chain in which we are caught. And we feel that's perfectly

all right. It's respectable, accepted, traditional, normal, healthy;

but see the danger of it. So, seeing what happens, you stop there,

don't you?"

EM:"Becoming aware of the danger of memory, of this... of this cycle, we

must stop."

K:"Let's stop there."

PP:"At what point do you stop?"

K:"There."

PP:"Just there?"

K:"Just a minute. I'm quite sure you have been to museums, and you

have seen a painting by Michelangelo or someone, and you look at it.

If you begin to compare that picture with the other pictures, you are

not actually seeing the picture. If it is a really good museum, you

see only one painting on a wall. You sit there and look at it. You get

the whole feeling of the picture. The painting, the shadow, the light,

color, the beauty and so on. You look at it. We are doing the same now

with regard to thought. We don't say, 'I'm going to move somewhere

else.' "

RW:"Is looking at thought stopping it..."

K:"Looking at the whole painting of thought, the whole map of thought,

all movement of thought, just looking at it. We're not trying to

understand, not trying to go beyond it, suppress it, and all the rest

of it. Just looking at it."

(...)

EM:"So, what you're addressing is, then, that we need to be concerned

with complete analysis of our inward selves, so that we don't find

ourselves in a position of going through this eternal cycle."

K:"Yes, sir. But not through analysis."

RW:"Analysis is thought."

EM:"That's thought. Yes, I see. We've passed that."

K:"Just observe...What you observe is not to be reduced to an

abstraction called an idea."

EM:"I see. We're really at a point where thought is not being used as

a process."

K:"Right, sir."

EM:"I see."

K:"Only observation."

EM:"Only observation."

K:"Like a good scientist who just observes the thing he is observing;

that is, it is telling a story."

EM:"The difficulty I have is that one day we may be sitting around

discussing this to the level that we have gotten. The next day, I find

myself in the artificial society of competition where I have this

eternal thought process."

K:"Don't enter into that."

EM:"You don't enter into it? Well, the obvious question then is, how

can we survive?"

K:"I think that if we don't make survival the most important thing, we

survive."

(J. Krishnamurti, Things of the mind, presented by Brij B. Khare, p.

61-67)