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A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms . . . If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach. It is not a dialectical investigation of opinions, ideas, but rather exploration by two or many serious, good brains.

There must be absloute freedom from orthodox or traditional movements; but rather there must be total freedom, absolute freedom from all sense of nationalities, racial prejudices, religious beliefs and faiths. If one is not capable of doing this with honesty and integrity, he had better keep away from this place. Essentially one has the insight to see that knowledge is the enemy of man. This is not a place for romanticists, sentamentalists, or for emotion. This requires a good brain, which does not mean a brain that is intellectual, but rather a brain that is objective, fundamentally honest to itself and has integrity in word and deed.

The Study will be a place for all serious people who have left behind them their nationality, their sectarian beliefs and all other things that divide human beings.

J. Krishnamurti, 1984
As dictated to a Trustee of the KFI
Vasanta Vihar Newsletter No. 2, November 1995
Krishnamurti Foundation of India

K: I come from Seattle and there you are, a group of you at The Centre. I am fairly intelligent; don't treat me like an immature businessman, or an immature traveller, seeking, shopping. I've come and I want to discuss with you. ...What will you do?

Q: We have been very dependent on you

K: That's just it. And he's dead, K is dead. I want to meet you all. I want to spend three weeks at Ojai and during those three weeks I want to end fear. I don't want to go home at the end of it, fearful. I want to end it. I come there after reading the books, seeing the tapes and I want to have a dialogue because I want to end fear. You are responsible. You are responsible to help me end fear.

I would want quiet, first, to feel that around me everything is quiet, that people are not fighting, and there is no jealousy, and all that. I would want a place where I can go into the garden and sit under a tree. But when I meet you all to discuss, I want tension, you follow? So that you drive me to understand it. You drive me, help me, put me in the corner, create a crisis in my life, so that I'll be free of fear. How will you deal with it? If you say, "I am sorry, I can't help you to end fear, but we can have a dialogue about it, because I have not ended my fear and therefore let us go into it together, each feeling the urgency of ending fear, so we'll help each other to end fear." Will you say that? So there is no authority. I have not ended my fear; you have not ended fear. By coming together, sitting quietly, having a dialogue every day, or every other day, we may help each other to dissolve it. Then you have something, you follow? Then I know I am dealing with honest people, not a phoney crowd. And I come here. And at the end of theree weeks, I must be out of it, so my urgency will make you urgent also. It will create an urgency in you.

And also much more complex problems. I want to understand death, meditation. I have tried Zen; I'm a fairly serious man, therefore I don't try TM and all that business. I have studed a little bit of Zen meditation and Hindu meditation. And K is saying something totally different, so I've come here. Will you help me to understand that meditation. I can't go on like this. Please! Otherwise the Centre becomes rather silly. It is not worth it.

J. Krishnamurti, 1977
Ojai, California
© Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd

Q: I want to put a simple question: for this glimpse of the complete comprehension, can there not be the work of preparation?

K: Of course not.

Q: Say you read something, you read some sayings of K; you need your intellectual process to read, don't you?

K: Of course, sir, wait a minute, wait a bit, careful. I read; am I really reading or am I reading behind the word?

Q: Well that is the question I wanted to ask.

K: Wait, wait. Listen, listen. I can read a really good detective story, I mean a good one, quickly; it is all boy, girl, traitors, you know, the good old game, a lot of sex to skip. But here I am reading what lies behind the word; I am also listening to the sound of the word; and to my own brain translating what is being said to suit myself. So I say; "Look what you are doing. You are not listening, you are not learning, but accomodating, adjusting to what is being said." I stop immediately. I wont read. So I penetrate that. I stop reading: I go and watch and say: "What am I doing? I am translating something which I have read according to what suits me." So I am back to myself. Self-interest is in operation. So I say, "Look what I am doing." I never stop watching.

J. Krishnamurti, 1985
Schonreid, Switzerland
© Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd

Q: ...It is this question of the teachings somehow going into the blood.

K: We will get at it sir, I am sure we will get at it. As long as we are talking together like this and keep at it.

Q: But, Krishnaji, I also feel that it has to be something that doesn't depend on you.

K: It depends on the teachings.

Q: An on how I relate to the teachings. But from my own relationship with the teachings there are some other things I want to ask about, because there is something else I feel is important.

K: What is that, briefly?

Q: Sometimes studying the teachings for me means even just reading one phrase.

K: Quite right. That's up to you.

Q: But now wait. This is it Krishnaji. That one phrase- somehow holding it during the day - in action and in relationship, holding it.

K. Quite right. You are carrying a jewel with you. You are watching all the time or it will get lost.

Q: Now I want to talk to you about that holding, because to me there is a secret in that holding, there is something very special about that holding that most people don't know and I often forget.

K: Yes sir. Listen carefully. Someone gives me a marvellous watch. A marvellous watch, superb. And it is a most precious thing - I watch it all day.

Q: Yes

K: The thing - I don't have to hold it, it is there in my hand. I watch it. I live with it.

Q: Yes. If I can come back to this, Krishnaji. It is there in your hands. Now to continue the metaphor, let's say: 'look, would you please do the dishes, here are two gloves'. You are not going to keep the watch in your hand, you are going to put it in your pocket, or you are going to do something else with it.

K: But the watch is still ticking away.

Q: Exactly. So, in this Centre somehow I feel we want to set up some activities that help people hold this thing all day long.

K: Be careful. Don't do that. No activity is holding it. No outside help.

Q: No outside help. So perhaps we should not give people so many things to do.

K: Yes. You do all the things you have to do. You must allow for yourself four or five hours, or two hours, whatever you want. Say, look, I shut my door after two o'clock or some other time. Then nothing disturbs me. You must have time to study, to listen, to absorb - absorb so that it is your blood.

From a group discussion on The Centre with J.Krishnamurti
The Krishnamurti Centre, Brockwood Park, England
© Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, Ltd

So the first requirement for understanding is affection for the thing concerned – not for the person who represents the idea, but for the idea itself. I know that most people kindly like me, and so on; but that is neither here nor there. Fundamentally that has no value. Whereas if you examine, analyze, criticize, with affection, then that idea will become practical and can be translated into daily action. When there is affection for the central idea, then there is friendship for all who are approaching that idea. At present, you are all seeking that idea separately, individually, as separate entities, each elbowing each other out. There is a contradictory spirit, an antagonism between individuals who are all approaching the same idea, all trying to realize it, to understand it. But to understand, to approach, and to realize, you must come with affection – not in the sense of possession, not in the spirit of rivalry as to who understands more and who understands less …'