J Krishnamurti on The Mind

We need to understand what we mean by mind. How do we respond to this question? Observe your thoughts. What is the mind? How do you respond, and what is responding? How do you observe anything? Do you just glance at the surface, or do you see the whole thing, like a tree’s trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits? Observing totally means seeing everything. When we ask what the mind is, how do you respond? From what background do you observe? To observe something completely and newly, what do you do?

What do we mean by understanding? Let’s explore this together without just using different words. What do we mean by observing, seeing, and perceiving? When I say I see something clearly, it means I see beyond the physical thing and the words. For example, I see that nationalism is a senseless emotion. I see its falseness and explain how it separates people and causes harm without needing reasoning or deduction. This perception is immediate, just like I see organized religion as corrupt and destructive.

What is this ability to see? Do I see the whole mind, not just its parts like intellect, emotions, or ambition? Do I see everything or wait for someone to tell me?

Let’s understand what seeing means. Just like hunger, it’s a direct experience. Can we directly experience the mind as a whole? When you experience something fully, is there a center from which it’s experienced?

You want to experience the whole mind and life. But how do you know the totality of the mind if you have never experienced it? Recognize that experience is always based on the known. 

When you fly high and see the earth below, you see it as one beautiful, undivided whole despite the man-made boundaries. To feel this totality, it’s not about what you already know but experiencing something beyond recognition.

Let’s ask again: What is the mind? The mind recognizes and stores knowledge as memory. It’s shaped by centuries of human effort, conflict, and experiences. It designs, communicates, feels, and thinks rationally or irrationally. The mind can be gentle, quiet, serene, and also brutal, ruthless, superior, arrogant, and contradictory. It identifies as different nationalities and holds collective unconscious and learned behaviors. The mind seeks security, lives on hope, but also knows frustration and despair. It remembers, thinks sharply, loves, and desires to be loved.

All these aspects form the total mind. This is the mind we all have. Then there’s the mind wanting to go beyond this to experience something timeless and immeasurable. So, the mind encompasses everything. We know parts of it when we feel jealousy, anger, hatred, or when we experience self-contradiction and dreams from the past. The mind says, I am the soul, the Atman, the higher self, the lower self, and so on. It’s trapped within time and is a slave to words, just like people are attached to certain words and concepts, whether it’s the English with the Queen or the Christ, or the Indian with their own set of words, and so on. Knowing all this, how do we proceed? What is the mind, really? Let’s approach this differently. There must be a change, but a planned change isn’t real change. Change to achieve a result through practice, discipline, control, or domination is just the same thing in disguise. Progressive, evolutionary change isn’t enough either. Only radical, immediate change matters. How can the mind achieve this change, wiping away conditioning, brutality, stupidity, fear, guilt, and anxiety to become new? I believe it’s possible, not through analysis or examination, but instantly, in one stroke. Don’t see this as God’s grace or something possible for others but not for yourself. We need clear, precise thinking and a relentless inquiry.

Question: This instant change – there can’t be any thought in it, right?

Krishnamurti: But how is it done? What’s the action? You know what’s happening in the world, probably better than I do since I don’t read newspapers. I travel, see people, both important and not, and listen. There must be a tremendous inner revolution to meet this chaotic world. I believe it’s possible, and I want to explore this without stopping your discussion. Isn’t a radical change your problem, regardless of age? So, how do we tackle it?

Question: We try to grasp it but can’t.

Krishnamurti: When we try to grasp it, we translate it into old terms. We need to be clear if this is our problem. If it’s imposed, there will be a contradiction. I’m only stating the problem. If you don’t see it, let’s discuss it. If you do, then it’s your problem, not mine. Then we can find an answer together. If it’s not your problem, why isn’t it? Look at what’s happening: external things are becoming more important, like going to the moon. If this is our problem, how do we answer it?

Question: We can only say we don’t know.

Krishnamurti: When we say I don’t know, what do we mean?

Let me explain. There are different states of knowing and not-knowing. If asked a familiar question, you’d answer immediately. For a complicated question, you’d take time, and that thinking process is searching memory for the answer.

This is not a complicated idea; it’s very simple. If someone asks you a difficult question, and you don’t know the answer right away, you might say, I don’t know. But what does that really mean? Usually, it means you’re waiting—either to remember the answer or for someone else to tell you. So, when you say, I don’t know, it often means you’re expecting something.  

But now think about this: can you honestly say, I don’t know, without waiting, without expecting an answer, and without looking into your memory? This state of truly “not knowing” is different. It doesn’t involve waiting for someone to explain or trying to remember. It’s about being completely open, with no expectations, and maybe that is the key to understanding something new.  

Let’s take a step back. It’s important to understand what it means to truly observe or see something. How do we really look at or understand something?  

Question: Can we only understand things through words?  

Answer: We use words to communicate so we can talk and share ideas. But are we aware of how much we depend on words? Words like love, God, or nation carry so much meaning, but are we prisoners to those words? Being trapped by words limits us. Can we fully understand something as vast and deep as love if we’re stuck on what the word love represents?  

The problem is, we’re often so tied to words that we can’t go beyond them. But when we free ourselves from words, we can see things more clearly and deeply. Breaking free from this reliance on words gives us energy, clarity, and a new way of looking at things.  

Does it take time to free yourself from words? Do you feel you need to think about it, practice it, or read books to understand? Or can you directly see that being trapped by words stops you from truly observing, feeling, and understanding? When we see this clearly, the very act of understanding it can free us.  

Question: Sometimes, we see the truth for a moment, but then our old thoughts come back.  

Answer: Yes, this happens. For example, you might see clearly for a moment that nationalism is harmful. But then you might fall back into old habits and beliefs.  

We need to realize how much power words have over us. A Communist might be tied to words like Marx or Stalin, while a Christian might be tied to symbols like the cross. These words and symbols can trap us. To truly understand and observe the world, we must break free from this slavery to words.  Go to California, or anywhere in the world, and you’ll see that everything seems to revolve around words.  

We might even be slaves to the word mind. We admire the mind so much, and most of our education focuses on developing it. But isn’t what we are truly looking for something beyond words? Something deeper—a feeling that connects to the whole of life without being limited by words.