The Unburdened Mind, part 4

Are you working as hard as the speaker,
or are you merely listening to words?

To communicate means to build, to create together,
that is the beauty of communication.
And that ceases when the speaker becomes an authority
and you are listening merely, as students or disciples.
There is only learning.
What you have learnt is of the past and
acting from what has been accumulated is a process of acquisition,
whereas learning should be a movement, not an accumulation.

If you understood this with your heart and mind,
you would lead a different kind of life.
The test and the proof of learning is your life.
A mind which is facing the crisis
is always new, fresh and full of vitality.

But if you responding in terms of 'I am', in terms of the past,
then your response is going to create
more misery, more mischief, more wars.
So long as you are a Hindu, a Muslim,
so long as you assert that 'I am',
you are bringing about degeneration in yourself
and in the world.


What is the new quality of mind and the heart
that responds immediately,
not in terms of the past,
not in terms of the future?
The moment it repsonds in terms of the past,
it is still living in the framework of the term 'to be'.

Let me put it differently.
Our action is based on idea, knowledge, tradition;
it is memory. In the technological world that is necessary.
The whole scientific knowledge,
the development of technology,
is based on experience, accumulation and knowledge.
That is absolutely necessary.

But a mind that has a new quality,
a new dimension, a new way,
must act without the past
and also not in terms of the future --
which means freedom.

How is that freedom to act, to come about?
How is the mind to act without the past? --
the past being the conditioning as a Hindu,
the past being the result of influence, education, race?
If you act in these terms, then you are not meeting the crisis.
The question is: how is a mind that s free frim the past
free from the implication of 'to be',
how is it to act?

If you have understood the question,
then you will see that what is important is
perception, the seeing, observing.
If there is an interval between perception and action,
that interval is time.
When you see something which is danger,
which may cause harm physically,
your response to it is instant;
there is no thinking about it.
There is no interval between perception and action,
no gap, there is immediate response and action.

(...) Krishnamurti Foundation Bulletin 17, Spring 1973, p 13-14
A talk which K gave in New Delhi in November, 1969.