Krishnamurti on Sensitivity

We have a crisis in the world, tremendous crisis, and also crisis in our consciousness, in us. I see the urgency of change, radical. revolution, mutation in the mind. I see it. It is necessary. There is complete quietness of the mind and that which is silent has vast space. Only then that which is nameless comes into being. This is Urgency of Change, the Krishnamurti podcast.

Without sensitivity, there is no intelligence, and therefore no love. And where there is no love, there is no beauty. Hello and welcome to episode 271 of Urgency of Change. Each episode of the Krishnamurti podcast is based on a significant theme of his talks. Extracts have been carefully selected to represent Krishnamurti's different approaches to these universal and timeless topics. This week's theme is sensitivity. Upcoming themes are...

The Scientific and Religious Mind, Organisations and The Heart. This is a podcast from Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, based at Brockwood Park in Hampshire, UK. Brockwood is also home to Brockwood Park School, a unique international boarding school offering a personalized holistic education. It is deeply inspired by Krishnamurti's teaching which encourages academic excellence

self-understanding, creativity and integrity. Please visit brockwood.org.uk for more information. You can also find our regular Krishnamurti quotes and videos on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Krishnamurti Foundation Trust. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review or rating on your podcast app. This first extract is from Krishnamurti's second talk at Rajgat in 1967 and is titled, Most of Us Are Insensitive.

Most of us are rather careless, insensitive. Now, let's stick to that one thing and go work to the very end of it. We are not sensitive. And the highest form of sensitivity is intelligence. We are not sensitive to nature, to the birds, to trees, to the beauty of the earth. We do not watch. Be sensitive to a bird, to that crow that's calling. We don't hear it. We don't feel. We are not sensitive enough to be in communion with nature, which is, we are callous.

callous with regard to people. We are not sensitive to other people's reactions. what other people say, feel. We are not sensitive to the poverty, to the degradation of the poor, to the squalor. on the road, in the house, in ourselves, we are not sensitive. Which is to be callous. And also we are not sensitive to perceive a new way of looking at life.

Because we are traditionally bound, or we have our own peculiar little ideas, our own peculiar tendencies. our own conditioning, which prevents us from being sensitive. So we are not sensitive to ideas, to people or to nature. So we become callous. We are callous. And a mind that is callous, it can worship God upside down, stand on its head, breathe, do all kinds of tricks, it will never. obviously understand the beauty of truth. It can be most learned.

quote all the Shastras, the Gitas, the Bibles, or the latest prophets, or whatever, all that tummy rot. And such a mind is really, essentially, a stupid mind. One sees that. One sees how callous, brutal, insensitive one is. Because you can see the results of it in the world. If one was very sensitive, alert, intelligent, we would have a different world altogether.

Now, that is a fact, that human beings are so self-concerned about themselves, about their particular inclination, tendencies, they are so conditioned. by society, by the culture, by the climate, by the food they eat and so on and so on. They are that. How is one to become totally sensitive to the whole thing, not to the fragments? How is one to become so highly sensitive? Because it is only a very sensitive mind that is capable of love.

and therefore capable of beauty. Now, how is a mind that has become so brutalised, so twisted?

So small, petty, shoddy. How is such a mind on the instant to become... to be something entirely different, to be something totally other than what it is. Do you understand? A dull mind trying to become a sensitive mind takes time. Please follow this a little bit. I am down, my mind is down, I want to… I wish it were a bright, clear, sensitive, precise… mind with tremendous feeling, passion. And I say it will take time.

That is, I will polish it every day, I will feel more and more and more every day. That is, it will take many, many, many days, which is a time interval. You are following? So we think time is necessary to bring about radical change within the mind itself. We say, to learn a language or mathematics or any technological subject will take time, naturally. I don't know, let's say, Russian, and I will take lessons, read, it will take perhaps a year, year and a half.

That is, I have taken a year and a half to learn the language, to accumulate the words, how to use the verbs, the adjectives, how to put the sentences together and so on. So, we think that through time we are going to bring about change within ourselves. That is, through time I shall be sensitive. But time doesn't help us to be sensitive, on the contrary. Time only makes us more and more insensitive. I don't know if you see that.

Change can only take place instantly, not in the field of time. total mutation, revolution, psychologically, to take place out of time. And that's the only way that anything happens. Any fundamental change takes place only when the change is out of time.

Now, how is that change to take place? That is, this mind is insensitive. And it sees the fallacy of time. It sees the fallacy of using time as a means of becoming sensitive. But does it actually see the fallacy of that or does it merely intellectually suppose it is a fallacy? You understand the question? actually see the fallacy of using time as a means to bring about a mutation within itself. You see, man has invented.

time as a means of improvement. We say, well, at least next life, I'll be different. Give me another year. I'll work it myself. And by the end of the year, I'll be different.

We have used time as a means of accumulating knowledge through that knowledge which we hope to bring about change. Knowledge doesn't bring about change at all, on the contrary. We all know the terrible brutality of wars. Man has been through thousands and thousands of wars, and yet he has not changed. as a means to bring about a change, a psychological mutation, is an utter gross fallacy. What will make it change? And it must be immediate. I don't know if you see this.

When you see this, then what takes place? When you are no longer thinking in terms of time at all, time also being comparing. I am this and I will be that. I was that and I am different today. All sense of measurement is a process of time. Can the mind look at that insensitivity without measurement, without the time factor at all? These are not just ideas with which you agree or disagree. Unless you do it...

A mere collection of ideas is completely useless. Unless you see for yourself directly the fallacy of... time, then you cannot take the next step. Or rather, when you see the fallacy of time, that itself is the first step.

Then, the question then is, when the mind says, I am insensitive, how does it know it is insensitive? You understand? The mind has become callous by circumstances, by the culture, by the way it lives and so on. It has become insensitive, deeply, because it is so concerned with itself. And the mind sees the necessity of becoming completely sensitive, because without sensitivity there is no intelligence and therefore no love.

And where there is no love, there is no beauty. So how is this to take place?

Now, this is real meditation. This is not a trick I am playing. This is the real act of meditation. when you have seen for yourself the structure and the nature of time and discard it completely. Because time is thought. And thought cannot possibly change a mind which has become insensitive.

On the contrary, thought has made the mind insensitive. Thought is the outcome of the past. – the past being memories, experiences, knowledge – and thought has made the mind insensitive and thought cannot possibly make the mind sensitive. So, does one see this fact? Not the idea... that one is sensitive or not sensitive, but the actual fact.

Then you will see, if you do not bring the time element into it at all, or have understood the structure and the nature of thought, then the mind, having no longer measure, has become sensitive. The moment you have no matter, it is.

So, sir, look at it round, let's put it differently. Thought cannot possibly cultivate love, obviously. And without love you cannot be sensitive. Love is not emotionalism. Love is not sentimentalism. Love is not jealousy, obviously. It's a fact that you can no longer laugh. Like a man who is hating, angry with another, he cannot possibly laugh. and as thought cannot possibly cultivate love, then how is that state to come into being? Because it's only then...

When there is real, real affection, then you'll never be callous, never be indifferent. Now, how is that thing to happen to you? Only when you see for yourself hate, jealousy, anger, brutality, violence, competition, greed, the desire for position, power, and all that is completely discarded. Then there is the other. You don't have to search for it, you don't have to look for it. That thing then takes place. It's like leaving the window open. then the air comes in when it will.

The second extract is from the second talk at Brockwood Park in 1969 and is titled Extraordinary Sensitivity. Most of us live in the past. We are the past. What happened yesterday shapes the present, and so tomorrow. We are being reborn every day in the shadow of yesterday. And whether the mind, the brain can... be made fresh, and in that also there is the whole process of analysis involved.

to find out for oneself where memory and the action of memory is necessary, which is the past, and where it is totally unnecessary and dangerous. Because you have insulted me yesterday, why should I bear it today? Oh, you have flattered me. Why should I carry that burden to today? Why can't I finish it as you are insulting me, or flattering me, immediately finished? Which means I must be extraordinarily awake as you are talking, alert to your insult and flattery, sensitive.

And as most of us live in the past, we are the past. I mean the whole brain is there. result of the past, of time, of conditioning, and that is responding, reacting, all the time. That there is God, that there is no God, communism, socialism, belong to this set or that set, be a Catholic, non-Catholic. This is the past, modified is the present and the future.

for oneself with great watchfulness, which is to be greatly sensitive and therefore with great intelligence to watch where memory is essential. If you had no memory you wouldn't be able to go out of this tent. You wouldn't know where your house was or what your name was. You can't live in a state of amnesia. But also to know, to be aware of the dangers of memory.

discarded all these accepted traditions, norms, patterns of existence. That you must analyse, you must follow, you must obey, you must be ambitious, greedy, envious, be socially immoral, therefore immoral, and so on and on and on. When you reject all that… If you are capable of rejecting it, and if you don't reject it you are not free. And you can only reject it because you understand it. not just revolt against, that has no meaning.

to be aware of itself and its dangers. And being aware of the danger, what will it do? You follow? What will it do now, after putting aside analysis, the sense of time, suppression and all that? How will it deal with the thing that it is aware of? I hope I have made the problem clear.

What is the state of the mind when it has put aside all these things, like analysis, time, the understanding of memory, the futility of suppression or escape, the idiocy of ideologies. What is the state of the mind that has discovered all this? Surely it has become extraordinarily sensitive, hasn't it? not only to the outer, but also to the inner. Being highly sensitive and intelligent

How is it going to deal with the fact that it is jealous or angry or whatever it is? Not through analysis, all that's out. What will it do? How will it act? And the action must be tested. It must show in form as well as in essence, which means the form must change. Because the essence is also changing. So what is the state of the mind... that is aware of its own sorrow – let's use that word for the moment – how will it deal with it?

Can we proceed from there? Can we go on from there? Can there be sensitivity? If there is a space between the thing that is observed and the observer. Am I sensitive to my wife or to my neighbour or to the community if there is an isolation There is an isolating movement within me, a movement of resistance, of opinion. Right? There is no relationship, therefore there is no sensitivity.

I discard the fairly obvious things like analysis and so on, my mind has become extraordinarily sensitive. It is no longer divided in itself as the observer and the observed. Right? But it is always testing. When there is no separation between the observer and the observed, then there is no conflict. And therefore there is immediate action. The mind is aware that it is jealous, gossipy, stupid, envious.

Those are the reactions, responses. And being sensitive, therefore being intimately in contact with that feeling. With that reaction there is immediate action, which means there is no jealousy, which the mind is going to test it out. So the mind then is a constant movement, constant watchfulness, and therefore capable of immediate action when necessary.

The final extract in this episode is from Krishnamethi's eighth talk in Sanan, 1963, and is titled, The Highly Sensitive Brain. I mean by the sense of... watchfulness in which there is no choice but observing what is. You cannot observe what is if you... have an idea or an opinion or say that it's good or bad, or verbalise what you see, what you observe. So to be aware...

of the movement of your own thought, of your own feeling, of your own activities, both of the conscious as well as the unconscious. Totally.

That gives extraordinary activity to the brain because most of our brains are dumb, half asleep, only… parts of its erection, the specialized parts, the parts which we automatically function like a machine through association, through memory. So our brains are asleep, dull, heavy, and not extraordinarily sensitive, active.

And it cannot be active, sensitive, if you have no space, if you look at things merely with what you already know. So meditation is to bring tremendous activity and sensitivity to the brain. That's part of it.

You are following? To be aware so that you watch your bodily activity, your movements of your hands. the words he used, the thoughts, the emotions, all the reactions, to be so aware the unconscious. with all its traditions, accumulated knowledge, the immense sorrow it has accumulated, not only the personal but the... sorrow of man, to be aware of all that. And you can't be aware if you...

I am merely judging, evaluating, saying this is pleasant, this is bad, this is no good, this I will keep. Then you are making the brain dull, insensitive.

So from that comes attention. flows from awareness, when in that awareness there is no choice, there is no personal choosing, no experiencing. which I am going to presently, but merely observing. And to observe you must have great space.

and a brain that is reactive, caught in ambition, greed, envy, self-fulfillment, sorrow, pain, despair, anguish. Enjoy. Such a brain has no space, it's merely going round and round and round in its own backwaters of reaction.

So from this flows attention. To attend. You cannot attend if you are not sensing. if the brain is not sensitive, highly sharpened, reasonable, logical, sane, healthy, has no neurotic background.

It has not explored every corner of itself, that there is no spot untrodden. Because if there is a dark hole of which one is afraid, which one has not explored, from there springs illusion, visions.

Like a Christian who has been so conditioned for centuries upon centuries, he sees Christ in his meditation, in his contemplation, he thinks he has achieved something extraordinary. which is merely the reaction of his own condition, as the Hindu, sitting on the banks of wherever, go into ecstatic visions. Because he has been conditioned for millennia, and what he sees is not religious experience at all. It's merely his own conditioning which is reacting, and therefore has no...

And so has no meaning at all. So through awareness, a choiceless observation ends. in which there is space, every form of conditioning is dissolved. He is no longer a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Christian. All the ideas, beliefs, hopes, fears are completely gone. And from that comes attention. not attention upon something. It is a state of attention.

If you have gone through all this and have understood at least part of it, you will see that in attention there is no experience. and therefore no experience. And this is tremendously important to understand for a man who... is really seeking what is truth, what is religion, what is God, what is this thing beyond the thing put together by the brain.

Because in attention there is no reaction. were merely attending the brain which has understood what it is to be aware, explored, within itself, all the recesses, all the unconscious motives, demands, fulfilments, urges, sorrows, pains, it has understood. And in attention there is emptiness, so there is no experiencer experiencing something. Perhaps this is a little bit more complicated than you want. Perhaps this is a little bit more...

to that which you are accustomed to. Because I am talking of meditation which is something beyond all words. So the mind is empty, and therefore not projecting, not seeking, not wanting. not hoping, there is nothing left, because it has understood all the reactions, the responses, its depths, its shallowness.

And attention can only be when there is no division between the observer... and the thing observed, because if there is a division between the observer and the observed, then there is conflict. You watch yourself when you think, and the thing you think about are two different things. The gap is the conflict, and we have gone into that, how important it is to be completely free from conflict. Now, so in attention there is neither the observer nor the observed, only a state of attention.

It is like light. It is only in that state.

One can be a light to oneself and therefore from that state every action of our daily life... Whether you do your job, whether you cook, whether you go for a walk, whether you mend your cloth, everything springs from it. Religion has no meaning whatsoever. It becomes a superstition exploited by the church.

Now, when there is this extraordinary activity of the brain, not a hypnotised, self-hypnotised activity... Because for most of us who know what that word means, to word, meditate, for most people who do it... It is a form of self-hypnosis. They sit cross-legged, you know, go through all the tricks. breathe most regularly and take lessons about meditation, how to breathe, how to control, how to…

shape your thought and so on, so on, so on. There are dozens of schools. And if you go… if you see one of them, you have understood the whole lot of the… a whole lot of them, all their systems, because they're only concerned with controlling, hypnotising oneself, conditioned through that system to receive or to... experience something which they think is Mars. That form of meditation is utterly juvenile.

It has no meaning. You can sit ten thousand years, translate, breathing most regularly, contemplating, and you'll never find out. What you will find out is merely your own reactions and your own experience projected as God, as truth, as visions and all the rest of it. They have no meaning at all.

But what we are talking about is something entirely different. Freeing the brain through intense activity... of all its reactions, and so bringing about without control, without deliberate will. to bring about a quietness to the brain, because it is only the very intense brain, highly sensitive, that can be quiet, not a dead brain. not a brain paralysed by fear, by sorrow, by joy, by every form of sociological and psychological compulsions and demands.

So then meditation, which you must do, absolutely. That's because that's the highest form of intelligence, not sitting in a corner, shutting your eyes. cross-legged or standing in your head or whatever you do. But as you walk, as you go to your office, When you are in your office, when you are in the kitchen, whatever you are doing, to be so completely aware.

the words, the gestures, the manner of your talk, the manner of your eating, how you push around people to be aware of everything about you. to be aware of the political, sociological, economic and the propaganda that goes on ceaselessly, to be aware of all the influences. You can't be aware of all of them, to be aware. And you will see how quickly you will understand every influence as you come into contact with it.

You will find, if you have gone that far, and very few people go that far because they are so... conditioned by their tradition. If you live in India, they have got an extraordinary meaning to this word. You must absolutely do certain things, control your body completely, and so control your thought completely. And out of that they hope to reach whatever they want to be, which they never will reach. They'll reach their own hypnotised results.

And if you come to the Christian world, they contemplate, they wait for the grace of God and so on and on and on.

But what we are talking about is something wholly different. It requires the highest form of intelligence and a mind. And a brain that is shaped by experience is not intelligent. You look at the word and the significance of that word experience and find out what it means to experience. What is implied? First, to experience anything you must recognise it, and to recognise implies association, which means with the past. You cannot possibly experience something new.

New, totally new. You can only experience something which you have already had, which you have already tasted, which you already know. If you don't know it, you have no means of experience, which means you have no means of recognition.

Most of us want experience because we are so tired of the normal, everyday challenge and response which creates the experience. We have known all that. So we wait, hoping, through some mysterious means, meditation or going to church, everybody wanting more and more experience. You observe yourself, and a mind that is in a state of experiencing, wanting experiencing, experience is not innocent. Don't follow all these things.

There are no religious experiences at all. The thing that is like to itself has no experience. It doesn't want experience, it doesn't need experience. It's only the mind that is seeking, searching, groping, afraid. Anxious, in despair – such a mind demands experience.

And a highly sensitive brain is, as I said, a light to itself and therefore There are no experiences at all, and therefore it is in a state of innocence, and it's only such a brain. highly sensible, not shaped by every fear, every demand, every compulsion, hope, despair. It's only such a brain that can be quiet, completely quiet, because every part of it is alive, sensitive.

And when the brain is quiet, then it is in a state of meditation. From then you can proceed. Until that takes place, every form of attempt to find out what truth, what God, what is something beyond, is utterly waste of time.

Time only leads to illusion. It has no meaning whatsoever. And this demands extraordinarily energy. And you have no energy if you are in conflict, if you have problems. That's why, as we discussed from the very beginning... every conflict, every demand, every hope and despair, all that must be understood and therefore dissolved, gone away.

Therefore it has no illusion, nor does it make illusion. It has no power to create illusion. And that's the first thing to realise. that is caught in problems, in fear, in despair, in the desire to fulfil this or that, it is always creating illusion. and therefore in a state of neurosis.

a brain that is highly sensitive, and out of that sensitiveness there is intelligence, and only then can the brain, which is the result of time of a thousand years, can be quiet, naturally, voluntarily, easily quiet. Then, when that state is complete... when the brain is completely quiet, then... Such is the beginning of meditation. Before then there is an awareness choicelessly observing. watching, words, all watching, everything that you do, and out of that, an attention.

Attention that has no frontier. But that attention can concentrate. Out of that emptiness it can pay out, concentrate. There is quietness of the brain. It is highly developed. It is not a dull, a primitive. or sophisticated brain, or learn it.

There are the encyclopedias, they can have those books, you can look at them, but the brain does not become encyclopedic. But such a brain is not sensitive. So when the brain is quiet without any illusion, therefore in a state of non-hypnotised condition... Then there is something...

which the brain has never put together. You see, now comes the difficulty to express something in words... which is inexpressible. And that's what we are seeking. We all want to find out something beyond this world of agony, of tyranny, of domination, of authority, of... You know what the word is, the brutality, the callousness, the indifference. The wars that go on, the diplomacy, the lies, the horrors of war, you know, all that, going on in the world all the time.

So we want peace, we want somewhere where we can find a quietness, a bliss. So we invent. We invent a god, we invent a saviour, another world which will offer peace to you if you do all these things. So that's what we all want, peace. But a conditioned mind wanting peace... is its own destruction. That's what's going on in the world. All the politicians throughout the world, whether the right or the left one, use that word peace and they don't mean it at all.

We are talking of something far beyond all that. is the emptying of the brain of all the things which… the emptying of the mind of all the things which the brain has put into it. And that is the space. And if you have done all these things, perhaps you won't, but it doesn't matter. Just listen to it. then you'll find that there is an extraordinary space in the brain, in the mind, and that space is freedom. So you must demand freedom from the very beginning, not at the end. Demand. Work.

Search out what is freedom in our relationship, in our society, in everything that we do. And you will find that meditation is creation. Creation is a word that we all use so glibly, so easily. A painter talks about his creation. on a canvas, a few colours, and calling it creation, getting tremendously excited about it. It is his fulfilment. It is his market through which he expresses himself, either to gain money, reputation, and he calls that creation.

And there are schools of creative writing. But all that is not creation at all. conditioned responses of a particular society in which the brain lives. But we are talking of creation of something entirely different. a mind that is in a state of creation. It may not express, it may express. Expression has very little value. That creation has no cause and therefore every moment that creation is dying and living and loving and being. And all of this is meditative.