The State of not Knowing
AN EXTRACT FROM A DISCUSSION WITH STUDENTS ATHUIZEN, HOLLAND, JUNE 1967
Questioner: Is it not a fact that with intense awareness while you are awake, you
can have the experience of watching anger come and go within yourself without
it touching your consciousness?
KRISHNAMURTI: Oh, sir! Let us be a little careful about this. Is the conscious
self different from the anger? I am jealous, let us say. Is the ‘I’ different from the
jealousy? Is that jealousy different from the person who is watching the jealousy?
I am the experiencer and the thing I experience is jealousy. Is the experiencer
different from the experience?
It is quite interesting to discuss this from the point of view of what is
learning. I am jealous of you, I am envious of you, and I want to learn all about
it, because when I learn the whole content of it, it is finished; it no longer has the
bite. Now, how do I learn? What is learning? Apart from learning a language—
how to drive a car, and so on—what is learning? When do you learn? You learn
when you know nothing. I learn a language because I do not know it. Right? If I
already know a language I can’t learn it! Let us experiment with this. Are we
learning now—that is, in the active present—or are we only accumulating what
has been said, to be stored up and thought about later? Do you see the difference?
We have been talking about dreams. I want to learn about myself, the
‘myself’ that dreams. Now, do I approach it with the knowledge I have acquired
by reading Jung or Freud, or the theologians?
Questioner: From reading Freud you learn about Freud.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s it, sir. I learn about Freud: I do not learn about myself.
Therefore when I learn through Freud about myself I am not observing myself; I
am observing the image which Freud has created about me. So I have to get rid
of Freud. Now, please go slowly with this: as I look at myself I am learning
about myself. Do I accumulate the knowledge about myself and then, with that
knowledge, observe?—which is the same process as looking at myself through
Freud. Do you follow? So can I learn about myself—but without any
accumulation? That is the only way to learn, because the ‘myself’ is always
moving, all the time tremendously active, and I cannot learn about this activity
through something static, whether it be the knowledge I have accumulated about
myself or the knowledge from Freud. Therefore I have to be free, not only of
Freud but also free of the knowledge I have gathered about myself yesterday. It is
very complicated—and it is not just a trick.
Questioner: It seems you set aside knowledge and learn about facts?
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s it. That is, when you observe the fact without
knowledge, then you can learn. Otherwise you ‘know’, or think you know. So
learning then is creative; it is something new. All the time you are learning. So I
have to throw away not only Freud and Jung, but also the knowledge which I
have acquired about myself yesterday. Is that possible, first?
Questioner: You include yesterday, sir. And there are those millions of
yesterdays which we have forgotten consciously, but which are in our
subconscious. All that has to be got rid of too, has it not?
KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. Can you get rid of it?
Questioner: I think it can be got rid of...
KRISHNAMURTI: You think it can—therefore you don’t know. All you can say is that you do not know. Now, go slowly; listen quietly. Please inquire into the state of the mind that says: ‘I do not know.’
Questioner: It is quiet.
Questioner: It is open.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, no! Don’t just make statements. Just look. There are two
million years of inheritance, thousands and thousands of experiences,
impressions, conditions, knowledge. All that is my background, and I want to
learn about it, open it all up and be free of it, because those things are controlling
my present and shaping the future, and so I continue to live in a cage. So I say to
myself: ‘This is terrible. I must get rid of it.’ I do not know what to do. I do not
know. Then I ask myself: what is the state of my mind when I say I really do not
know? You and I are the result of two million years of conditioning. Right? In
that two million years there is not only the animal inheritance but the human
endeavour to grow, to become—hundreds of things. We are that. And all that is
operating in the present and the future. This is the rat race I have lived in. So I
look at this rat race, and I say: ‘I must get rid of it.’ I ask you about it, and you do
not know: I ask the Pope, dozens of people, and they do not know. They know
only according to their terminology; that is, if you believe in Jesus, if you believe
in God, you think you know according to that. So I am now in a position to find
out what is the state of my mind when I say: I really do not know. Do you ever
say that?
Questioner: It is a very fine experience, actually.
Questioner: It is a humbling experience.
KRISHNAMURTI: No, no! It is not an experience at all. I do not call it an
experience. It is not a sad or a great experience; it is a fact. I cannot say it is good
or bad. It is a fact—like this microphone. I have looked north, south, east and
west, up and down, and I really do not know. Then what happens?
Questioner: You keep seeking a way.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then you are no longer saying: I do not know.
Questioner: I do not know how.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then you are seeking the ‘how’. I am caught in a trap of two
million years. I cannot have faith in anybody—the saviours, the masters, the
teachers, the priests—because they have all led me into this trap, and I am part of
this trap. I do not know how to get out. When I say, ‘I do not know,’ do I really
mean that, or am I looking for a way out?
Questioner: I mean there is no answer in the catalogue.
KRISHNAMURTI: That is all. Your catalogue has no answer, and therefore you
want to find another catalogue that has an answer.
Questioner: You keep on trying to find a way.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then you are back in the trap. Sirs, we have said: ‘I do not
know.’ Our minds are confused, and out of that confusion we seek the priests, the
psychologists, the politicians. The confusion creates more confusion. Why don’t
I say: ‘All right, I am confused. I will not act.’ Of course I will go to the office,
continue with everyday activities, but over my psychological confusion I will not
do anything, because I see that if I do anything it will create more confusion.
Therefore, psychologically, I will not move at all. Any movement leads to the
trap. So can you psychologically do nothing about the trap?
Please listen carefully. If you do nothing about the trap you are free of it. It is
only the incessant activity of doing something about the trap that keeps you in
the trap. When you see that is so, you will stop, won’t you? You will cease all
activity. And what does that mean? It means that you are willing psychologically
to die. So when you do not know, and you really mean it, you are out of the trap,
because the past has come to an end. It is when you continually say, ‘I am
looking, I am asking, I must know,’ that the past keeps on repeating itself.
Questioner: But when you keep silent...
KRISHNAMURTI: Ah! It is not keeping silent. It is the most intense action.
Questioner: But when you know nothing at all...
KRISHNAMURTI: Then you have yourself.
Questioner: But that is so little.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is not so little. It is what has been for two million years. It is the most tremendously complex thing, and you have to learn about it. Either you can learn about it instantly, or it can carry on for another two million years. But let us take only fifty years. In that we have accumulated an immense amount:
there have been two dreadful wars—the butchery, the brutality, the quarrels, the
separations, the insults. It is all there. That is the trap. We are the trap, and so, is
it possible to be out of it immediately?
Questioner: In a moment?
KRISHNAMURTI: Of course it must be in a moment. And if you say you cannot, then it is finished. You have no problem. If you say, ‘It is possible,’ that has no meaning either. But if you say, ‘I really don’t know what to do,’ without despair, without bitterness, without anger, then in that state there is no movement at all—then the door opens.
From BULLETIN 18, 1973
https://www.simplypsychology.org/carl-jung.html
Comments
Post a Comment