Collected Works 15 - The Dignity of Living by Jiddu Krishnamurti

Author:Jiddu Krishnamurti [Krishnamurti, Jiddu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

LONDON 5TH PUBLIC DIALOGUE 6TH MAY 1965

I would like this evening, if I may, to talk about change and about meditation. One must have asked oneself, I'm quite sure, whether one changes at all. I know that outward circumstances change; we marry, divorce, have children; there is death, a better job, the pressure of new inventions, and so on. Outwardly there is a tremendous revolution going on in cybernetics and automation. One must have asked oneself whether it is at all possible for one to change at all, not in relation to outward events, not a change that is a mere repetition or a modified continuity, but a radical revolution, a total mutation of the mind. When one realizes, as one must have noticed within oneself, that actually one doesn't change, one gets terribly depressed, or one escapes from oneself. So the inevitable question arises, can there be change at all? We go back to a period when we were young, and that comes back to us again. Is there change at all in human beings? Have you changed at all? Perhaps there has been a modification on the periphery. but deeply, radically, have you changed? Perhaps we do not want to change, because we are fairly comfortable. We have a government that looks after one, a welfare state, an assured job, old age pensions, and all the rest of it; so perhaps there is no motive to change. And when there is a motive to change, it is change within the field of the known.

I would like to have you find out for yourselves this evening whether it is at all possible for you to bring about a real revolution. I am not talking about change from house to house, from country to country, or going from one type of religious bigotry to another; that's no change at all. I am talking about a deep, psychological mutation, a transformation, a new mind, a totally different existence, which is not in the field of time. One must listen, not sentimentally, not aggressively, not doubting or questioning, but simply listen, in order to discover for oneself the art of learning about oneself. This act of listening will perhaps reveal that there is no change at all in our life. We go on as we are, a little bit discontented, depressed, lonely, miserable; going on to old age, full of sorrow, with unresolved problems; and that's our life. Most of us get used to all that; our minds get dull, heavy, stupid; we accept the inevitable and thereby get terribly bored with life, its routine and its apparently utter lack of significance. Or we invent a purpose, a significance, and according to that significance and that purpose we try to bring about a pattern of existence; but it is still, as one observes, no change at all.

So, do we change? Is there a change at all? And if we do change, is it a movement which is not in time? A change in space, in time, created by thought, or put together by thought, is no change at all.

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