Urgency of Change • The Krishnamurti Podcast

Conversation with Alain Naude – Is there a permanent ego?

Alain Naude was Krishnamurti’s private secretary in the 1960s. He met Krishnamurti in 1963 whilst a music lecturer at Pretoria University and a professional concert pianist. He gave up his teaching and performing in 1964 to work with Krishnamurti. Fluent in several languages, he was very helpful at international gatherings and in attracting younger audiences to Krishnamurti’s talks at a time of cultural change in the West.

This conversation with Krishnamurti was recorded in Malibu, California in 1972 and begins by asking whether there is a permanent ‘me’?

Unless I am free from the vulgar, I will continue representing the whole vulgarity of humanity.

I lead the usual life, along the small river, following that current. I am that current and ‘the me’ is bound to continue in that stream, with millions of others. I am not different from those millions of others.

When you say, ‘My brother is dead,’ and ask whether he is still living, as a separate consciousness, I question whether he was ever separate from the stream.

If there was a permanent self, it would be of this stream. Realising that I am like the rest of the world, that there is no ‘me’ separate, I can incarnate only if I step out of the stream.

Change takes place away from the stream; in the stream there is no change.

What happens if you step out of the stream? The stepping out is the incarnation.

When one steps out of the stream, one has compassion.

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Interview by Eric Robson

Eric Robson is a broadcaster, author and documentary film maker, based in the UK where he also farms. For 25 years he chaired Gardner’s Question Time.

This 1984 conversation was part of a television series he hosted, called Revelations. Questions Robson asks Krishnamurti include: Did you ever believe, as the people who were sponsoring you believed, that you were some sort of messiah? Can you explain why you are so positively against organised religion? Is your system rooted in any religion? How do you strip away conditioning? Is there only one truth or are there many truths? When you approach the pathless land of truth, do you have to do anything with that truth? Is it possible for everyone to achieve truth? You said that the world can only change through personal transformation, and yet the world is sliding to the edge of a black abyss. Won’t personal transformation simply come too late?

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Ronald Eyre – Can fear be completely wiped away?

Ronald Eyre was a leading director for cinema, opera, television and the theatre. He was nominated for a Tony Award in 1975 as Best Director. He was also a television presenter and writer. His most well-known series was The Long Search, a survey of world religions.

Recorded at Brockwood in 1984, this conversation with Krishnamurti explores playfulness and distraction, the cycle of fear, and whether we do anything we love. Krishnamurti asks if we are afraid of life. What are love and death? Why is there such a tremendous craving inwardly? What is the root of fear? Why does thought enter into the realm of the psyche? What is creation that is not born out of knowledge?

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Pupul Jayakar 2 - Thought cannot comprehend the totality of consciousness

Pupul Jayakar was a trustee of Krishnamurti Foundation India, and for decades was a friend of Krishnamurti’s. She helped publish many of his books in India, along with writing a biography which was published soon after his death. Her other books include The Earth Mother, The Buddha and God is Not a Full-Stop.

This second conversation was recorded in the summer of 1978, at Brockwood. Krishnamurti asks: What does the word ‘conscious’ mean to you?, saying that thought can never be aware of the total content of consciousness. Can the mind perceive the totality? Is there a love or a quality which is not part of consciousness? Is it possible to observe with all one’s senses? Is there a totally different dimension to consciousness, not invented by thought? Can this be discovered? What quality is necessary to move out of the circle of consciousness? How can we know order when we live in total disorder? When thought is completely, absolutely still, there is an action.

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Pupul Jayakar 1 – Has there been a radical change in Krishnamurti’s teaching?

Pupul Jayakar, who died in 1997, was an Indian cultural activist and writer, best known for her work on the revival of traditional and village arts, handlooms, and handicrafts. She was a close friend of prime minister Indira Gandhi, and was her cultural advisor and biographer. Having been to a school established by Annie Basant, Pupul became involved with Krishnamurti’s work in the 1940s, becoming a trustee of the Indian foundation.

This first conversation was recorded in 1978, at Brockwood Park. Pupul asks: Has there been a radical change in your teaching, a movement away from observation, from the division between the thinker and the thought? They ask whether it’s possible to see the total content of consciousness and move out of it? Complete, total insight is only possible instantly, and that instant is not contained in time. The thinker and thought are not separate. Thinking is based on growth, becoming, evolving. Will the mind, being so heavily conditioned by the tradition of growth, listen?

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Krishnamurti in conversation with Keith Berwick 2

Keith Berwick is a four-time Emmy Award winning television broadcaster, and senior fellow of the Aspen Institute. His career also includes historian, educator, newspaper publisher and editor. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

This second interview was recorded in Los Angeles in 1983, two years after the first. Themes include: What is a human being? What is an individual? Clarity can only come into being when there is no confusion. One must have physical security, but it is being denied because we think in terms of tribalism. Disorder creates authority. Ambition, jealousy, desire and pleasure are not love. What is intelligence? What is thinking? Conscious meditation is determination, not meditation. To meditate you must understand relationship. What is the root of desire? Is there another instrument than thought? If thought has its right place, then you can look.

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Krishnamurti in conversation with Keith Berwick 1

Keith Berwick is a four-time Emmy Award winning television broadcaster, and senior fellow of the Aspen Institute. His career also includes historian, educator, newspaper publisher and editor. He lives in Santa Barbara, California.

This first interview was recorded in Los Angeles in 1981. Berwick begins by asking: Why, in 1929, Krishnamurti gave up being the head of The Order of the Star. Other themes include: What is the major theme of the teachings? The fundamental issue is whether the human condition, with all its misery, anxiety and sorrow can be changed. We don’t realise that our consciousness is the common ground on which we all stand; we thinks we are separate. There is nothing sacred in what thought has created. How does one achieve right action, right relationship? If you have no image you can never be hurt. Freedom is to be free from the image-building machinery, which is thought.

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Krishnamurti with Jacob Needleman 2 - Inner space

Jacob Needleman is Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University and former Director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including The Heart of Philosophy, Money and the Meaning of Life, Time and the Soul, and I Am Not I.

This second conversation with Krishnamurti was recorded in Malibu, California in 1971. Questions that come up in the conversation include: Is it possible to be free of the centre, so that the centre doesn’t create space around itself and build a wall? Can the centre be still? Can consciousness empty itself of its content? Is love within the field of consciousness? Are there environments which are conducive to liberation?

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Krishnamurti with Jacob Needleman 1 - The role of the teacher

Jacob Needleman is Professor of Philosophy at San Francisco State University and former Director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at Berkeley. He is the author of many books, including The Wisdom of Love, Time and the Soul, Why Can't We Be Good?, and Necessary Wisdom. He popularised the term 'new religious movements' and was honoured by the New York Open Center in 2006.

This first conversation with Krishnamurti was recorded in Malibu, California in 1971. It forms the opening chapter of the classic book, The Awakening of Intelligence. Subjects discussed include: the spiritual revolution among young people, hope of a new flowering for civilisation, and whether one can go into oneself at tremendous depths and find out everything, without asking for help. If there were no books or gurus, what we do? Is effort needed to reach God, enlightenment or truth? Why do we divide energy? The observer comes into being in wanting to change ‘what is’. The state of not-knowing is intelligence.

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Second conversation with Alain Naudé – On good and evil

Alain Naude was Krishnamurti’s private secretary in the 1960s. He met Krishnamurti in 1963 whilst a music lecturer at Pretoria University and a professional concert pianist. He gave up his teaching and performing in 1964 to work with Krishnamurti. Fluent in several languages, he was very helpful at international gatherings and in attracting younger audiences to Krishnamurti’s talks at a time of cultural change in the West. 

This second conversation between Naude and Krishnamurti opens with the question: Do good and evil really exist or are they simply conditioned points of view? The inquiry looks at goodness as total order, not only outwardly but inwardly especially. Is virtue the outcome of planning? You cannot will to do good. Either you are good or not good. Will is the concentration of thought as resistance. Are poisonous snakes, sharks and the cruel things in nature evil? The moment we assert that there is absolute evil, that assertion is the denial of the good. Goodness implies total abnegation of the self, because ‘the me’ is always separative. Order means behaviour in freedom. Freedom means love. When one sees all this very clearly there is a marvellous sense of absolute order. 

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