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Krishnamurti
Inner Space
Conversation between Jiddu Krishnamurti
& Professor Jacob Needleman
...continued from part two
Excerpt from The Awakening of Intelligence
Krishnamurti: So I won't accept anything that anybody says about what is sacred. Tradition! As a Brahmin one was brought up in a tradition which would beat anybody's tradition, I assure you!
What I am saying is: I want to find out what is holy, not man-made holiness. I can only find out when the mind has immense space. And it cannot have that immense space if there is a center. When the center is not in operation, then there is a vast space. In that space, which is part of meditation and all that, there is something really sacred, not invented by my foolish little center. There is something immeasurably sacred, which you can never find out if there is a center. And to imagine that sacredness is folly - you follow what I mean?
So, can the mind be free of this center, with its terribly limited space of yardage, which can be measured and expanded and contracted and all the rest of it? Can it? Man has said it can't, and therefore God has become another center. So my real concern is this: whether that center can be completely empty? That center is consciousness. That center is the content of consciousness, the content is consciousness; there is no consciousness if there is no content. You must work this out.
Needleman: Certainly what we ordinarily mean by it, yes.
Krishnamurti: There is no house if there are no walls and a roof. The content is consciousness and we like to separate them, theorize about it, measure the yardage of our consciousness. Whereas the center is consciousness, the content of consciousness, and the content is consciousness. Without the content, where is consciousness? And that is the space.
Needleman: I follow a little bit of what you say. I find myself wanting to say: well, what do you value here? What is the important thing here?
Krishnamurti: I'll put that question after I have found out whether the mind can be empty of the content.
Needleman: All right.
Krishnamurti: Then there is something else that will operate, which will function within the field of the known. But without finding that merely to say...
Needleman: No, no, this is very clear, sir. What you said, that's clear.
Krishnamurti: Sir may I proceed a little bit? Let's begin. Space is between two thoughts, obviously, between two factors of time, two periods of time, because thought is time. Yes?
Needleman: All right, yes.
Krishnamurti: You can have a dozen periods of time but it is still thought, there is that space. Then there is the space round the center, and the space beyond the self, beyond the barbed-wire, the wall of the center. The space between the observer and the observed is the space which thought has created as the image of my wife and the image which she has about me. You follow, sir?
Needleman: Yes.
Krishnamurti: All that is manufactured by the center. And to speculate what is beyond all that - at least I can't do it, it has no meaning to me personally, that's the philosopher's amusement.
Needleman: The philosopher's amusement, I agree.
Krishnamurti: I am not interested.
Needleman: I agree. I am not interested sometimes, at my better moments, but nevertheless...
Krishnamurti: I am sorry, because you are a philosopher!
Needleman: No, no, why should you remember that, please.
Krishnamurti: So my question is: "Can the center be still, or can the center fade away?" Because if it doesn't fade away, or lie very quiet, then the content of consciousness is going to create space within consciousness and call it "Ah, the vast space". In that there lies deception and I don't want to deceive myself. I won't say I am not brown when I am brown. You follow what I mean? Looks silly! So can that center be absorbed? Which means, can there be no image, because it is the image that separates?
Needleman: Yes, that is the space.
Krishnamurti: That image talks about love, but the love of the image is not love. Therefore I must find out whether the center can be completely absorbed, dissolved, or lie as a vague fragment in the distance. If there is no possibility of that, then I accept prison.
Needleman: I agree.
Krishnamurti: I must accept that there is no freedom. Then I can decorate my bathroom forever.
Needleman: But now this possibility that you are speaking about, without searching for it consciously...
Krishnamurti: No, don't search for it!
Needleman: I say, without searching for it consciously, life or something suddenly shows me it is possible.
Krishnamurti: It is there! Life hasn't to show me, it has shown me now! It has shown me, now when I look at that mountain, that there is an image in me; when I look at my wife I see that there is an image in me. That is a fact. It isn't that I have to wait till ten years later to find out about the image! I know it is there, therefore I say: "Is it possible to look without the image?" The image is the center, the observer, the thinker and all the rest of it.
Needleman: I am beginning to see the answer to my question. I begin to see - I am speaking to myself - I am beginning to see that there is no distinction between humanism and sacred teachings. There is just truth, or not truth.
Krishnamurti: That's all. False and true.
Needleman: So much for that. (Laughter)
...Excerpt from The Awakening of Intelligence
Continue to next part...
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