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Saturday, April 21, 2012

Order: What Is Order In Freedom?

As one observes all over the world, there is such extraordinary disorder.

Jiddu Krishnamurti Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson San Diego, California 1974

Krishnamurti: The East, especially in India, they said measurement is an illusion, to find the immeasurable the measurement must come to an end. Reality is immeasurable. The measurement can never find, a mind that is measuring, a mind that is caught in measurement cannot find truth.

Krishnamurti begins discussing duality (for example: good/bad, right/wrong, poor/rich, smart/stupid), this as opposed to that, measurement, comparison, division, separation, disorder, and the fragmentation of thought starting at 0:17:00 of the video.


Excerpt from the video:

A Wholly Different Way of Living - Excerpt

J. Krishnamurti - Fifth Dialogue with Dr Allan W. Anderson in San Diego, California, February 1974

K: Can one educate a student to live a life of non comparison - bigger car, lesser car, you follow?

A: Yes.

K: Dull, you are clever, I am not clever. What happens if I don't compare at all? Will I become dull?

A: On the contrary.

K: I'm only dull, I know I'm dull only through comparison. If I don't compare, I don't know what I am. Then I begin from there.

A: Yes, yes. The world becomes infinitely accessible.

K: Oh, then the whole thing becomes extraordinarily different. There is no competition, there is no anxiety, there is no conflict with each other.

A: This is why you use the word total often, isn't it?

K: Yes.

A: In order to express that there's nothing drawn out from one condition to the other. There is no link there, there is no bridge there. Totally disordered. Totally order.

K: Absolutely.

A: Yes, and you use the word 'absolute' often, which terrifies many people today.

K: Sir, after all mathematics is order. The highest form of mathematical investigation, you must have a mind that is totally orderly.

A: The marvellous thing about maths too, is that whereas it's the study of quantity, you don't make passage from one integer to another by two getting larger. Two stops at two. Two and a half is no more two. Somehow that's the case.

K: Yes.

A: But a child when he is taught mathematics is never introduced to that - that I've ever heard of.

K: You see, sir, our teaching, our everything is so absurd. Is it possible, sir, to observe this movement of disorder, with a mind that is disorderly itself, and say, can this mind observe disorder, this mind which is already in a state of disorder. So disorder isn't out there but in here. Now can the mind observe that disorder without introducing a factor of an observer who is orderly?

A: Who will superimpose.

K: Yes. Therefore observe, perceive disorder without the perceiver. I don't know if I am making sense at all.

A: Yes, yes you are, yes you are making sense.

K: That is, sir, to understand disorder we think an orderly mind is necessary.

A: As over against the disorderly mind.

K: Disorderly mind. But the mind itself has created this disorder, which is thought and all the rest of it. So can the mind not look at disorder out there, but at the maker of disorder which is in here?

A: Which is itself the very mind as disorder.

K: Mind itself is disordered.

A: Yes. But as soon as that is stated conceptually...

K: No, no. Concepts are finished.

A: Yes. But we are using words.

K: We are using words to communicate.

A: Exactly. What I'm concerned with, just for a second, is what are we going to say when we hear the statement that it is the disordered mind that keeps proliferating disorder, but it is that disordered mind that must see, it must see.

K: I'm going to show you, you will see in a minute what takes place. Disorder is not outside of me, disorder is inside of me. That's a fact. Because the mind is disorderly all its activities must be disorderly. And the activities of disorder is proliferating or is moving in the world. Now can this mind observe itself without introducing the factor of an orderly mind, which is the opposite?

A: Yes it is. Of course it is the opposite.

K: So can it observe without the observer who is the opposite?

A: That's the question.

K: Now watch it, sir, if you are really interested in it.

A: I am. I am deeply interested in it.

K: If you will see. The observer is the observed. The observer who says, I am orderly, and I must put order in disorder. That is generally what takes place. But the observer is the factor of disorder. Because the observer is the past, is the factor of division. Where there is division there is not only conflict but disorder. You can see, sir, it is happening actually in the world. I mean all this problem of energy, all this problem of law, peace, and all the rest, can be solved absolutely when there are not separate governments, sovereign armies, and say, look let's solve this problem all together, for god's sake. We are human beings. This earth is meant for us to live on - not Arabs and Israelis, and America and Russia - it is our earth.

A: And it's round.

K: But we will never do this because our minds are so conditioned to live in disorder, to live in conflict.

A: And vocation is given a religious description in terms of the task of cleaning up the disorder with my idea of order.

K: Your idea of order is the fact that has produced disorder.

A: Exactly.

K: So, it brings up a question, sir, which is very interesting: can the mind observe itself without the observer? Because the observer is the observed. The observer who says, 'I will bring order in disorder', that observer itself is a fragment of disorder, therefore it can never bring about order. So can the mind be aware of itself as a movement of disorder, not trying to correct it, not trying to justify it, not trying to shape it, just to observe? I said previously to observe, sitting on the banks of a river and watch the waters go by. You see, then you see much more. But if you are in the middle of it swimming you will see nothing.

A: I've never forgotten that it was when I stopped questioning, when I stood before that droplet of dew on the leaf, that everything changed totally, totally. And what you say is true. Once something like that happens there isn't a regression from it.

K: Sir, it is not once, it is...

A: ...forever. Yes.

K: It's not an incident that took place. My life is not an incident, it is a movement.

A: Exactly.

K: And in that movement I observe this movement of disorder. And therefore the mind itself is disorderly and how can that disorderly, chaotic, contradictory, absurd little mind bring about order? It can't. Therefore a new factor is necessary. And the new factor is to observe, to perceive, to see without the perceiver.

A: To perceive without the perceiver. To perceive without the perceiver.

K: Because the perceiver is the perceived.

A: Yes.

K: If you once grasp that then you see everything without the perceiver. You don't bring in your personality, your ego, your selfishness. You say, 'Disorder is the factor which is in me, not out there'. The politicians are trying to bring about order when they are themselves so corrupt. You follow, sir? How can they bring order?

A: It's impossible. It's impossible. It's one long series of...

K: That's what's happening in the world. The politicians are ruling the world - from Moscow, from New Delhi, from Washington, wherever it is - it's the same pattern being repeated. Living a chaotic, corrupt life, you try to bring order in the world. It's childish. So that's why transformation of the mind is not your mind or my mind, it's the mind, the human mind.

A: Or the mind trying to order itself, even. Not even that.

K: Now how can it, it is like a blind man trying to bring about colour. And he says, well that's grey. It has no meaning. So can the mind observe this disorder in itself without the observer who has created disorder? Sir, this brings up a very simple thing. To look at a tree, at a woman, at a mountain, at a bird, or a sheet of water with the light on it, the beauty of it, to look without the see-er. Because the moment the see-er comes in, the observer comes in, he divides. And division is all right as long as it's descriptive. But when you are living, living, that division is destructive. I don't know if you know what I mean...

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