Can the mind be free of this centre—with its terribly limited yardage of space—which can be measured and expanded and contracted and all the rest of it? Can it? Man has said it can’t, and therefore God has become another centre. So my real concern is this: whether the centre can be completely empty? That centre is consciousness. That centre is the content of consciousness, the content is consciousness; there is no consciousness if there is no content. You must work this out . . .
Needleman: Certainly what we ordinarily mean by it, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: There is no house if there are no walls and no roof. The content is consciousness but we like to separate them, theorise about it, measure the yardage of our consciousness. Whereas the centre is consciousness, the content of consciousness, and the content is consciousness. Without the content, where is consciousness? And that is the space.
Needleman: I follow a little bit of what you say. I find myself wanting to say: well, what do you value here? What is the important thing here?
KRISHNAMURTI: I’ll put that question after I have found out whether the mind can be empty of the content.
Needleman: All right.
KRISHNAMURTI: Then there is something else that will operate, which will function within the field of the known. But without finding that merely to say . . .
Needleman: No, no, this is so.
KRISHNAMURTI: Let’s proceed. Space is between two thoughts, between two factors of time, two periods of time, because thought is time. Yes?
Needleman: All right, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: You can have a dozen periods of time but it is still thought, there is that space. Then there is the space round the centre, and the space beyond the self, beyond the barbed-wire, beyond the wall of the centre. The space between the observer and the observed is the space which thought has created as the image of my wife and the image which she has about me. You follow, Sir?
Needleman: Yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: All that is manufactured by the centre. To speculate about what is beyond all that has no meaning to me personally, it’s the philosopher’s amusement.
Needleman: The philosopher’s amusement . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: I am not interested.
Needleman: I agree. I am not interested sometimes, at my better moments, but nevertheless . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: I am sorry, because you are a philosopher!
Needleman: No, no, why should you remember that, please.
KRISHNAMURTI: So my question is: “Can the centre be still, or can the centre fade away?” Because if it doesn’t fade away, or lie very quiet, then the content of consciousness is going to create space within consciousness and call it the vast space. In that there lies deception and I don’t want to deceive myself. I don’t say I am not brown when I am brown. So can that centre be absorbed? Which means, can there be no image, because it is the image that separates?
Needleman: Yes, that is the space.
KRISHNAMURTI: That image talks about love, but the love of the image is not love. Therefore I must find out whether the centre can be completely absorbed, dissolved, or lie as a vague fragment in the distance. If there is no possibility of that, then I must accept prison.
Needleman: I agree.
KRISHNAMURTI: I must accept there is no freedom. Then I can decorate my prison for ever.
Needleman: But now this possibility that you are speaking about, without searching for it consciously . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: No, don’t search for it!
Needleman: I say, without searching for it consciously, life or something suddenly shows me it is possible.
KRISHNAMURTI: It is there! Life hasn’t shown me. It has shown me, when I look at that mountain, that there is an image in me; when I look at my wife I see that there is an image in me. That is a fact. It isn’t that I have to wait for ten years to find out about the image! I know it is there, therefore I say: “Is it possible to look without the image?” The image is the centre, the observer, the thinker and all the rest of it.
Needleman: I am beginning to see the answer to my question. I begin to see—I am speaking to myself—I am beginning to see that there is no distinction between humanism and sacred teachings. There is just truth, or non-truth.
KRISHNAMURTI: That’s all. False and true.
Needleman: So much for that. (Laughter)
KRISHNAMURTI: We are asking: “Can the consciousness empty itself of its content?” Not somebody else do it.
Needleman: That is the question, yes.
KRISHNAMURTI: Not divine grace, the super-self, some fictitious outside agency. Can the consciousness empty itself of all this content? First see the beauty of it, Sir.
Needleman: I see it.
KRISHNAMURTI: Because it must empty itself without an effort. The moment there is an effort, there is the observer who is making the effort to change the content, which is part of consciousness. I don’t know if you see that?
Needleman: I follow. This emptying has to be effortless, instantaneous.
KRISHNAMURTI: It must be without an agent who is operating on it, whether an outside agent, or an inner agent. Now can this be done without any effort, any directive—which says, “I will change the content” ? This means the emptying of consciousness of all will, “to be” or “not to be”. Sir, look what takes place.
Needleman: I am watching.
KRISHNAMURTI: I have put that question to myself. Nobody has put it to me. Because it is a problem of life, a problem of existence in this world. It is a problem which my mind has to solve. Can the mind, with all its content, empty itself and yet remain mind—not just float about?
Needleman: It is not suicide.
KRISHNAMURTI: No.
Needleman: There is some kind of subtle . . .
KRISHNAMURTI: No, Sir, that is too immature. I have put the question. My answer is: I really don’t know.
Needleman: That is the truth.
KRISHNAMURTI: I really don’t know. But I am going to find out, in the sense of not waiting to find out. The content of my consciousness is my unhappiness, my misery, my struggles, my sorrows, the images which I have collected through life, my gods, the frustrations, the pleasures, the fears, the agonies, the hatreds—that is my consciousness. Can all that be completely emptied? Not only at the superficial level but right through?—the so-called unconscious. If it is not possible, then I must live a life of misery, I must live in endless, unending sorrow. There is neither hope, nor despair, I am in prison. So the mind must find out how to empty itself of all the content of itself, and yet live in this world, not become a moron, but have a brain that functions efficiently. Now how is this to be done? Can it ever be done? Or is there no escape for man?
Needleman: I follow.
KRISHNAMURTI: Because I don’t see how to get beyond this I invent all the gods, temples, philosophies, rituals—you understand?
Needleman: I understand.
KRISHNAMURTI: This is meditation, real meditation, not all the phoney stuff. To see whether the mind—with the brain which has evolved through time, which is the result of thousands of experiences, the brain that functions efficiently only in complete security—whether the mind can empty itself and yet have a brain that functions as a marvellous machine. Also,