Beyond Violence by Krishnamurti

Author:Krishnamurti [Krishnamurti]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Krishnamurti Foundation India
Published: 2017-05-28T04:00:00+00:00

Questioner: What is quietness, what is silence? Is it the ending of noise?

KRISHNAMURTI: Sound is a strange thing. I do not know if you ever listen to sound—not to sounds which you like or do not like—but just to listen to a sound! Sound in space has an extraordinary effect. Have you ever listened to a jet plane that is passing overhead—have you, to the deep sound of it, without any resistance? Have you listened and moved with that sound? It has a certain resonance.

Now, what is silence? Is it the ‘space’ you produce, which you call silence, by control, by suppressing noise? The brain is all the time active, responding to stimuli with its own noise. So what is silence? You understand the question now? Is silence the cessation of that self-created noise? Is it the cessation of chattering, of verbalization, of every thought? Even when there is no more verbalization and thought seemingly comes to an end, the brain is still going on. Is not silence therefore not only the end of noise but the complete cessation of all movement? Observe it, go into it, see how your brain, which is the result of millions of years of conditioning, is responding to every stimulus instantly; see whether those brain cells, everlastingly active, chattering, responding, can be still.

Can the mind, the brain, the whole organism, this total psychosomatic thing, be completely still? Not forced, not compelled, not driven, not out of greed saying ‘I must be still in order to have the most marvellous experience.’ Go into it, find out and see whether your silence is a mere product, or whether it is perhaps because you have laid the foundation. If you have not laid the foundation, which is love, which is virtue, which is goodness, which is beauty, which is real compassion in the depth of your whole being, if you have not done that, your silence is only the ending of noise.

Then there is the whole problem of drugs. In India, in ancient times, there used to be a substance called ‘soma’. It was a kind of mushroom of which they drank the juice which produced either tranquillity or all kinds of hallucinatory experiences, those experiences being the result of conditioning. (All experiences are the result of conditioning; if you believe in God, obviously you have the experience of God; but that belief is based on fear and all the agony of conflict; your god is the result of your own fear. And so the most marvellous experience of God is nothing but your own projection.) But they lost the secret of that mushroom, that particular thing called soma. Since then, in India, as here, there are various drugs, hashish, L.S.D., marihuana—you know the multiplicity of them all—tobacco, drink, heroin. Also there is fasting. If you fast, certain chemical actions take place producing a certain clarity and there is delight in that.

If one can live a beautiful life without taking drugs, why take them? But those who

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