Conditioning: socially-sanctioned child abuse

Question 1:

YES, he is enlightened, but something is missing in his enlightenment. It is like when you arrive after a long journey at an airport. You have arrived but then suddenly you find your luggage is missing. With J. Krishnamurti something more serious has happened: the luggage has arrived but he is missing!

It is a little bit complex but it is not unusual. It has happened many times before but for different reasons. The reason with Krishnamurti is certainly novel, but the situation is not. There have been people who were enlightened but they still remained Christians, Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists. To me it is unbelievable. Once you are enlightened you are finished with all the conditionings of the mind.

Then how can you still be a Christian?

What was your Christianity? It was a coincidence that you were born in a certain family and those people conditioned your mind in a certain way. They gave you a certain ideology, gave you a certain religious outlook, gave you a certain theological jargon; and you learned it like a parrot.

I know a child cannot do anything against it, he is helpless; he has to learn whatsoever is being taught to him. Even without being taught he picks up things from the environment, parents, friends, neighborhood. He goes with his parents to the church, to the synagogue, to the temple, and he is continually imbibing influences. Whether you are directly teaching him or not, he is being conditioned indirectly.

But parents and teachers don't take any chances; they don't leave it just to indirect influences.

They make every effort, directly, to convert the innocent child who comes into the world absolutely unconditioned - a pure mirror capable of reflecting anything. But the society, the culture, the religion - they start painting on the mirror.

They can paint a Krishna, they can paint a Christ, they can paint a Moses, they can paint anything.

They can paint Karl Marx, they can paint Christianity, communism, fascism - anything. And the child is so helplessly dependent he cannot say no. He really has no idea of no.

The child believes and trusts the people who are giving him everything, helping him, supporting him:

the mother, the father, the family... the warmth, the coziness. They are providing all the opportunities for his growth; they are not to be distrusted. The question does not arise in the mind of the child, and it is natural that it does not arise.

But because of this natural situation all the religions have committed the greatest crime in the history of man; and that is, making the child a Christian, a Mohammedan, a Jew, a Hindu, a communist - without the child's acceptance, without the child's readiness, willingness. Of course the child has not said no, but he has not said yes either. If people are sensitive they will wait for the child's yes.

If they are really loving they will wait till the child asks them, "What is this church all about?" They should make every effort to see that he is not being influenced indirectly; the question of direct influence should not even arise. He should be left clean, pure, as he is born, till the time when he picks up some intelligence.

Growth takes a little time.

Just a little patience is needed.

He will ask questions, because everybody is born with a potential for search, enquiry. He will come up with questions; then too, if you are alert, loving, compassionate towards this young fellow traveler.... He is not your possession, he has just come through you. You have been only a passage - never forget that. He does not belong to you, he belongs to the whole existence. You have been just a path for him to come into this body.

Don't destroy the child's natural potentialities.

Don't divert the child according to your vested interests.

Don't be political, at least with your own child.

But all over the earth, all the parents, all the teachers, have no idea of what they are doing.

In the name of religion they are committing a sin.

Ordinarily I don't use that word. To me in life there may be mistakes, errors - not sin - because man is fallible. Man is not born omniscient, knowing all. He is not a born pope - infallible. He will fall many times, and he will get up again. This is the way he will learn how to walk; this is the way he will learn how to see, how to enquire.

Yes, many times he will go on a wrong path. Nothing is wrong in that. In going on a wrong path, you are learning that it is wrong, because when you are moving in a wrong direction you cannot feel comfortable: that is a natural indication. You will feel uneasy, your stomach cramped; you will feel tense - because wherever you are going is not the natural way for you. All these are indications to change the route and know forever that this is not right for you.

But about religion I cannot use very ordinary words like mistake, error - no. Something really heavy is needed.

So I say the so-called religion is the only sin in the world because it commits a crime against somebody who is absolutely helpless and in your hands. And it is a crime of tremendous proportions.

So if you become a Hindu, if you become a Christian, if you become a Buddhist, that is understandable. But when a man becomes enlightened what does it mean? It means really the undoing of what society, culture, religion, the state, the education system, the parents - all together in conspiracy against the small child - have done. To undo it is to be enlightened: to regain your childhood, to regain that freshness, that mirror-like quality of simply reflecting with no judgment.

The mirror simply reflects. When you stand before the mirror, the mirror is not making any judgment about you - good, bad, beautiful, ugly - no judgment at all. The mirror simply reflects. It does not get involved in any way.

I remember my own childhood. The moment I became aware of what was happening - it must have been nearabout the age of four or five - that I was being driven in a certain direction that I had not chosen, I asked my father, "Do you think that just by being born a son to you I will have to follow your religion, your politics; that I will have to become a member of the Lion's club, that I will have to do your business? Does it mean that because unfortunately I am born to you, I will have to do all these things?"

He said, "Who said to you that you have to become a member of the Lion's club or that you have to become a member of the political party of which I am a member? Who said this to you?"

I said, "There is no need for anybody to say it, for five years continually you have been doing it. Why have you been taking me to the Jaina temple? Who are you to decide about it? Why have you been telling me to bow down before Mahavira's statue, before certain scriptures I know nothing about?"

I was not even able to read at that time. The scriptures were just books like any other books, but everybody was bowing down to them.

I said, "You were bowing down and you were encouraging me to bow down, and it looked awkward for me to stand there when everybody else was showing so much respect. But you had not asked me; it was not with my consent that you took me to the temple. Just by the side there is a mosque - my friend is being taken there. Why don't you take me there? Why don't my friend's parents take him to the Jaina temple?

"What else is politics but this? You are giving me certain ideas, filling me with certain attitudes. And you started so early that I was not even aware of what was happening." I said, "From now onwards, stop it; leave me alone. Now I am capable of saying no. And remember, unless I am capable of saying no, how can I be capable of saying yes? The capacity to say the one is also the capacity to say the other; they both come together.

"So don't be offended by my no. I will say yes, but you will have to wait. Perhaps I may not say yes to this temple, but to some other temple; not to this book, but to some other book. Nothing can be predicted right now; I am not a thing, predictable. Tomorrow the chair will still remain a chair, the table will still remain a table; they are predictable. What to say about the child of a man? - I am not predictable."

One drunkard, completely drunk, went to a sweet shop. He gave the shopkeeper one rupee, purchased sweets for half a rupee and asked for the remaining change. The shopkeeper said, "I don't have any change right now. Tomorrow morning, when you pass by, pick it up. Or you can take your rupee, and tomorrow morning you can give me haU a rupee - whatever pleases you."

The drunkard said, "Okay, tomorrow morning I will pick up the change." But he thought, What if the shopkeeper changes his address? - the world is so cunning.... I should make some arrangement so that he cannot change his address without my knowing. So he looked around and he saw a bull sitting in front of the shop. He said, "That's good. The shopkeeper may not be even aware that bull is sitting there in front of the shop."

The next morning all that the drunkard remembered was that there was a bull sitting in front of the shop, and that he had to collect half a rupee from there. He went in search of the bull, obviously, because that was the only proof that he had. But a bull is not a static thing: the bull was sitting in front of a barber's shop.

The drunkard went in, dutched the man by his neck and said, "You son-of-a-bitch! Just for half a rupee you change your profession, you change your caste; and just overnight the sweet shop has disappeared and you have become a barber!"

The man said, "What are you talking about? Yesterday my shop was closed."

The drunkard said, "Great! You can't deceive me. Look at the bull. Even though I am drunk, I am not that foolish. I knew there would be some trouble so I made a point of remembering the bull; the whole night I had to remember it again and again. And the bull is still sitting in exactly the same position, in front of your shop."

The barber said, "Now I understand what the trouble is, because I also saw the bull sitting in front of the sweet shop last night. You please go there. A bull is not something that remains in one position, he moves; he has moved! What can I do about it?"

But people go on thinking that the child will remain the same as they are making him. Yes, most people remain the same because it is comfortable, convenient. Why bother? When all the answers have been given to you, why be skeptical?

Skepticism is condemned by all the religions.

In reality, skepticism is the beginning of a really religious man.

Skepticism means enquiry.

Skepticism means: whatsoever you have told me I cannot accept unless I experience it.

But it is inconvenient. You will have to travel a long way, and you never know whether you will reach to the point where you find the answer on your own.

Most people, the greater mass, want convenience, comfort, ready-made things, ready-made answers. It is understandable. It is an ugly fact about human beings, that even for truth they are not ready to take a little trouble.

Even truth people want cheap.

And because you want truth cheap, there are peddlars who are selling it cheap.

Not only cheap, they are selling it without taking anything from you. Not only that, they are rewarding you: if you purchase their truth they are going to reward you. The Christians will call you a saint, the Hindus will call you a mahatma, a sage. Without any effort, without paying anything you gain so much respectability. All that you have to do is to pretend, to be a hypocrite.

The whole human society is pretending.

What do you know about Christ's experience?

Without having some taste of it, you are a Christian?

If this is not hypocrisy, then what is hypocrisy?

Knowing nothing about God, you believe in God.

If this is not dishonesty....

Then what else can dishonesty be?

You are not even honest towards God.

An honest, sincere person will start from skepticism. He will enquire. He will put a question mark on every aspect of conditioning that his parents and his society have burdened him with.

But it is understandable about the general masses; they can be forgiven. But how to forgive a man who has attained enlightenment? His enlightenment means he has done away with all the conditions, conditionings, all the programs. He is a deprogrammed man, he is a dehypnotized man. But for an enlightened man to still say that he is Christian is unforgivable, yet this has been happening all through history.

Only very rarely have a few people simply declared their aloneness.

They have taken a small footpath of their own and they have left the super-highway where everybody is moving - of course comfortably. And when you leave the super-highway you will have to create a path just by walking. There is no path ready-made, available to you.

That's why I say truth is costly.

You will have to pay for it.

When you walk without there being any path, your feet will bleed. Your mind will try to persuade you to go back to the highway where everybody else is moving, and say, "Don't be a fool! Here you can get lost. There you were with the crowd; it was warmer. And when there were so many people, it was certain that we were moving in the right direction - so many people cannot be wrong.

"Alone, what guarantee is there that you are going in the right direction? - you don't have any evidence. On the highway there are millions of people ahead, millions of people behind, millions of people with you. What more proof do you need?"

I can understand that the common man would prefer the super-highway. Whether it is Christian, Hindu, Jaina or Mohammedan doesn't matter - he has to be with a big crowd. As far as you can see there are only crowds and more crowds, and that gives you a deep conviction that you must be on the right path.

I can forgive you. But how can I forgive Saint Francis? He is enlightened and yet he is a Christian and goes to the Vatican, to the pope to touch his feet! Now, this is sickening: The pope! - who is not enlightened, who is just an elected person.... Anybody who is cunning enough, clever enough to campaign for himself can become the pope.

But why did Saint Francis go there? Because all over the whole country people had started respecting Francis, loving him, accepting what he was saying and that news, coming continually to the pope, was shocking. A man who has not been sanctified by the pope as a saint is already being accepted by the people as a saint! The pope was simply bypassed - that could not be tolerated. This man was sabotaging the whole Catholic system, and no bureaucracy can tolerate such sabotage.

So according to the church, if he has become enlightened, first he should come to the pope, and if the pope gives him a certificate that says yes, he is enlightened - if he gives him the sanction of enlightenment.... That's the Christian meaning of a saint - sanctioned by the pope.

Become anything else - but never become a Christian saint. A Christian saint simply means, "sanctioned by the pope." And particularly now, don't become a Christian saint, whatsoever the price you have to pay. Sanctioned by a polack pope! What kind of saint will you be?

But Saint Francis, seeing that the pope was getting angrier, and that messages were coming saying, "You have to come first to the pope," went, touched the pope's feet and prayed with folded hands:

"Bless me, and tell me how I can serve Christ, his church, Christianity and you." And the pope was perfectly happy: Francis was sanctioned as a saint.

I can understand the pope and his stupidity because nobody expects anything else from a pope.

But what is Saint Francis doing? Something is missing in his enlightenment. He is enlightened but is still imprisoned in the old conditioning.

Although now he knows, "I am not the conditioning," he is not brave enough to jump out of his prison.

On the contrary, he decides to use the prison itself, the conditioning itself, the language given by the conditioning itself, to bring his message to the people. This is cowardly. And this is why so many saints in the past in all the religions have lost my respect.

I know that they had come to understand, but their understanding was not fiery enough, it was very lukewarm. It was not revolutionary, it was orthodox. Perhaps they were common men, and the fears of the common man were still lingering somewhere back in the shadows and influencing their actions. Their language, their behavior, their actions, give indications that they were enlightened, but they also show that they were not able to overthrow their whole conditioning. Perhaps they thought if they overthrew it they would not be able to communicate with the people, because the people had the same conditioning.

To think in this way is right for a business man, but it is not right for an enlightened person. Who cares whether people understand or not? If they understand, it is good for them; if they don't understand, "Go to hell!" - that is their business. But why should I go on carrying unnecessary luggage, which I know is just crap, for your sake?

In this way many enlightened people of the past have lost my respect. I cannot deny that they were in that space where I would like you all to be: they were in that space, but they remained like buds, they never opened up like flowers. They were so afraid that they remained buds. They were afraid to open.

Opening is always risky.

Who knows what is going to happen when you open up?

One thing is certain, your fragrance will be released.

And that can create trouble for you.

An enlightened person's fragrance is revolution, is rebellion....

Perhaps it is better to remain a closed bud like these people who were not brave enough - enlightenment was in the wrong hands.

With J. Krishnamurti the situation is totally new. He is enlightened, and he is not orthodox - but he has gone to the other extreme: he is anti-orthodox. Anti should be underlined.

When I was a student in my final post-graduate year there were two girls in my class. We three were the only students of religion. You can understand that the man who was the professor was a religious man; and as you should expect from a religious man, he was very much infatuated with one of the girls. He was a celibate. He had really been following the Hindu tradition because he wanted to become a monk one day, and he was preparing: practicing yoga, concentration and visualization exercises, and continually repeating, chanting mantras. But all these things are on one side; biology is on the other side, and that is far weightier.

Put all your scriptures on the weighing scale - all the scriptures of all your religions - and put biology on the other side. The biology side will touch the earth and all your scriptures may go to heaven.

They don't have any weight. They need idiots to function as paperweights, to keep them down on the earth.

Now this man was in great trouble. One girl was homely; you would not bother about her. In fact she was a little more than homely. She had a little mustache that she had to shave - what else could she do? She was a Punjabi, and it happens in Punjab.... Punjabi women are strong, hard workers, and work almost like men in the fields. I think with so much work and exertion and strength, that perhaps a mustache and beard start growing - because I again saw it in Shri Aurobindo's ashram.

In Aurobindo's ashram everybody had to do certain, very arduous exercises. Most of the population in his ashrams were young girls sent by their parents - who were followers of Aurobindo - to be trained there for a spiritual life. But I was surprised that almost all of them were growing little mustaches. Strange! I said, "If it happens in an ashrama, then all ashramas should be destroyed." I enquired about it from the man who was in charge.

He said, "I also feel a little awkward because everybody asks that, and I don't know what is happening."

I said, "Three-hour morning exercises, three-hour evening exercises - these exercises must be doing it." And those exercises were almost like in the army! It has something to do with that. Too much exertion and too much exercise perhaps changes some hormones in the body and the girls start growing beards and mustaches - because I knew that one girl and she was a little more than homely. In fact if you just passed by her, you wouldn't even look at her, and I don't think anybody ever looked back again.

But the other girl was a rare beauty. She was from Kashmir, and Kashmir produces perhaps the most beautiful women on the earth. My celibate professor was wavering and bobbling. And the greatest trouble for him was that the girl was interested in me, not in him. So he was very angry with me, because he would try in every possible way to make the girl interested in him, but she was simply taking no notice of him.

I was not interested in the girl, but the girl was certainly interested in me. She used to come to ask this, to ask that, to take this book.... And when she came to me it was natural that whatever she wanted I arranged for her. And that man was burning up!

It came to a climax one day because the girl invited me to her house - she lived in the city - for dinner, and this celibate, religious professor heard that I had been invited by the girl to her house.

She was the daughter of the collector of the city and she wanted me to be introduced to her parents, her father and mother. Only she knew her purpose; I was completely out of it.

I told her also, "I am not interested in any kind of relationship, so you should take note of that first; don't unnecessarily waste a dinner. And if you are trying some conspiracy with your parents, I am unaware of it and I am not part of it at all. I can come for dinner - you are inviting me, I will not refuse it - but that's all."

She was shocked. I said, "You can take your invitation back, there is no problem - I will not be hurt.

In fact I am hurting you." But this is not the thing that I wanted to emphasize. When the professor heard about the dinner, and that the girl was going to introduce me to her father and her mother and family, he cornered me in the library.

I had my own corner. It was a small room which I had chosen inside the library, allotted to me by special permission from the vice-chancellor so that I need not sit with so many people coming and going but could have my own place. I wanted to be alone so I used to keep it locked from inside.

My interest in books has been immense. I have read perhaps more than anybody else in the whole world, because I was not doing anything else except reading. I used to have three or four hours of sleep, that was all; otherwise I was continually reading.

Somebody knocked on the door. It never used to happen, because I had told all my professors that even if the university was burning down I was not concerned; they were not to bother me. I had told the librarian, "If you want to close the library you can - I will remain here the whole night - but don't ever knock on my door. I don't like that kind of familiarity, not at all."

Somebody knocked; it was the first time. I thought, "Who can it be?" I opened the door. The celibate, red with anger, closed the door behind him and asked me, "Do you love this girl?"

I said, "I don't even hate her."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "Exactly what I say to you: I don't even hate her; the question of love does not arise. There is not even a hate relationship between me and her - you are unnecessarily getting red and hot.

You just get out of the room. And as far as the dinner is concerned I have canceled it, so don't be worried. But if you want dinner in the house, I can manage it."

He said, "No, no, I don't want any dinner, and particularly not managed by you." Again he asked, "But what do you mean: 'I don't even hate her'?"

I said, "It is so simple - and you are a professor of religion: can't you understand a simple thing?

Because love is a relationship, hate is a relationship. Love can become hate any day, and it does - not any day, every day. Vice versa also is true: hate can become love. It is a little rare but it happens, because love and hate are just the same energy arranged in a different way. You have the same sofa, the same chairs, the same table, but you can arrange them in a thousand ways. And people go on doing that. So I simply said, to cut the whole problem from the very root, 'I don't even hate her,"

so be completely at ease."

Why did I remember it? I remembered it because of J. Krishnamurti. He hates orthodoxy, he hates all that has passed in the name of religion. Remember the difference: I criticize it but I don't hate it.

I don't even hate it! Krishnamurti has a relationship with it - I don't have any relationship with it - and that is where he has missed.

He was brought up in a very strange situation - by Theosophists - to be declared a world teacher.

Now, you cannot manufacture a world teacher. World teachers are born, not forced. And world teachers need not declare themselves world teachers: they are. It is not a question of declaration, it is a question of recognition on the part of the world; it is none of his business.

Whenever there is a man who has the capacity to attract people from all around the world - intelligent people, people who are seekers, enquirers, people who are ready to risk and gamble - there is no need for him to declare, "I am the world teacher." The whole world will laugh at such a man. The world teacher has nothing to do with it; it is for the world to decide.

But what Theosophists were doing was just the opposite: they were trying to create a world teacher.

So of course they were disciplining J. Krishnamurti from the age of nine - now he is ninety. He was picked up by the Theosophists while he was bathing naked in a river which flows through Adyar in India - where the headquarters, the world headquarters of the Theosophical movement is. At that time it was a great movement: thousands of people were interested in it. All that was missing was a world teacher.

There were very clever people like Leadbeater, Annie Besant, Colonel Olcott, but none of them had the charisma. To be a Master, one thing is absolutely essential: the person should have some magical quality, some charisma. Not only his words, but his very being should be capable of pulling you like a magnet. That was not there.

Annie Besant was a nice lady, but what to do with a nice lady? - there are millions of nice ladies.

Leadbeater was a great writer, but no world teacher has ever been a writer. Not a single world teacher worth the name has ever written, because the spoken word has a magic about it which the written word cannot have. The written word can be written by anybody.

Do you think it will make any difference whether Jesus writes it or you write it? Perhaps your handwriting may be better. But just because Jesus writes it, it won't have charismatic impact. But as far as the spoken word is concerned... the word that Jesus speaks has a certain impact. You can speak the same word but it is not going to have the same impact.

All the Christian missionaries are continually repeating the same words. Jesus has not left much; in fact a single sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, contains his whole teaching. And he was not an educated man so he could not use very sophisticated language: it is simple, raw, rough. From a carpenter's son, what else can you expect? But its impact must have been tremendous. People are not crucified for nothing.

If the Jews and the Romans both agreed to crucify this man, you can take it for granted that this man had something in him which made King Herod tremble on his throne. The high priest of the Jews, who had all the religious powers in his hands, listening to Jesus immediately understood that no scholarship could defeat this man.

It is not what he is saying, it is the way he is saying it - or even better - it is his presence, the space from which he is speaking that brings a certain fragrance with it, a certain quality of penetration that just goes into your heart. And there is no way to prevent it. Later on, perhaps you may find a thousand and one arguments against it, but in the presence of the man - whether he is right or wrong - his impact is absolute. In his presence you cannot doubt him.

Now, you cannot create such a person by giving him lessons in oratory, by teaching him better ways of speaking, expression, language, by making him in every way proficient. But the Theosophists worked hard on J. Krishnamurti until he was twenty-five, and then they thought, "Now is the time to make our declaration - he is ready." But they had really picked a great man.

They had picked a few other boys also because it was just chance who turned out to be the right one. So they were training at least half a dozen boys, but Krishnamurti proved, to them, the best.

And of course he was the best - but not for their purposes. For their purposes, from those other five, anybody would have done.

One of them, Raj Gopal, is still alive. He had been, his whole life, personal secretary to J.

Krishnamurti, but just a few years ago he betrayed him, and really betrayed him badly. Everything - all powers of attorney, all royalties, all books' copyrights - everything was in the name of Raj Gopal so that Krishnamurti need not bother about it.

When Krishnamurti was eighty - ten years ago - Raj Gopal simply took possession of everything:

millions of dollars, all future royalties, books and all the donations that had come during this fifty-year period. It was a big fortune. He simply denied Krishnamurti, saying, "I am no longer your secretary.

And you forget about all these things - or if you want to go to the court, you can."

This man, Raj Gopal would have proved far better for the Theosophical movement and their purpose.

He proved extremely clever, cunning, and of immense patience, really a man of strong will. He waited long enough to betray Krishnamurti: he must have been carrying the idea for fifty years but nobody could detect it in him. Even Krishnamurti was completely unsuspicious. How can you believe that a person who has been serving you for fifty years will suddenly one day cut off your head? - someone who has not even raised a single question, a single doubt, about you. Raj Gopal would have been far better for the Theosophists.

J. Krishnamurti certainly was the best, but not for their purposes. That was proved immediately, because the day he was going to declare himself the world teacher.... They had prepared every word of his speech, listened to it again and again so that he could repeat it exactly, because it was going to be a document of historical importance; nobody had done such a thing before.

Six thousand representatives from all over the world had gathered in Holland. One old lady of the royal family had donated her castle and five thousand acres of land so that it could become Krishnamurti's world headquarters. Everything was prepared on a grand scale.

Krishnamurti stood up, and he said, "I am nobody's Master and nobody is my disciple. The only declaration I have to make is that I abandon the movement that has been created around me. I dissolve the organization called the Star of the East which has been especially made for my work, and I return the castle and the money, the donations, the land, to their owners."

Annie Besant was crying; she could not believe her eyes. It was such a shock: "What has happened?

We have come from all over the world, and the man simply says he is not anybody's Master and there is no need for one." But for anybody who could understand how human psychology functions it was very much expected.

The Theosophists were forcing it on him, and this was the first chance that he had to stand up and speak in public - he did not want to lose it. Up to then he had been kept in secrecy, and all over the world rumors were being created that he was being initiated into higher and higher degrees of spirituality. "Now he has passed the three-star degree, now he has passed the five-star degree, now seven stars; now he has attained all nine stars and the time has come." That's why the organization specially created for the world teacher was called the Star of the East, because he was the first man who attained to the highest peak of consciousness: nine stars.

It seems like a five-star hotel! - a nine-star hotel!

And of course when you fall from a nine-star hotel.... The whole movement was crushed. Not only was the Star of the East organization dissolved, the shock was so much that Theosophy started falling apart and withering. Now it is just history.

The problem with Krishnamurti is that now sixtyfive years have passed and still he goes on telling people: "Die to the past; live in the moment" - continually. It is an obsession. My understanding is that he has not been able to die to his past - his past: those years of discipline, and training, and hypocrisy. Those people who were almost torturing him with yoga discipline - wake up in the morning at three o'clock, take a cold bath, do all the exercises, repeat all the mantras - they have left scars in him.

He says to you, "Die to the past," but he has not been able to forgive those people who are all dead.

And he has not been able to forget those early years of torture in the name of training, discipline.

It is a strange coincidence that just for the first time today I have seen J. Krishnamurti on the television screen. One time it happened, I was in Bombay, he was in Bombay, and he wanted to meet me. One of his chief disciples in India came to me and asked me - he knew me and he used to listen to me - "J. Krishnamurti wants to see you."

I said, "I have no problem - bring him."

But he said, "That is not the Indian way."

I said, "Krishnamurti does not believe in Indian or European or American ways."

He said, "He may not believe in them but everybody else does."

I said, "I am not going to meet everybody else. You say J. Krishnamurti wants to meet me: bring him. If I wanted to meet him, I would go to him, but I don't see the need."

But again and again his emphasis was: "He is older, you are younger" - I must have been only forty at the time, and Krishnamurti was almost double my age.

I said, "That's perfectly true, but I don't see any need to meet him. What am I going to say to him? I have no questions to ask, I have only answers to give. It will look very awkward if I start answering him when he has not asked anything. He will be expecting a question from me. That is impossible - I have never asked. I have only answers, so what can I do?

"And of course he is enlightened, so what is the need? - at the most we can sit silently together.

So why unnecessarily take me ten or twelve miles?" And in Bombay ten or twelve miles sometimes means two hours, sometimes three hours. The roads are continuously blocked with all kinds of vehicles. Bombay is perhaps the only city which must have all models of cars. The ancientmost, that God used to drive Adam and Eve out of paradise - that too will be in Bombay. There is no other possibility; it cannot be anywhere else.

I said, "I am not interested in taking three hours, unnecessarily bothering.... And I have had such experiences before: it is absolutely futile. You go and ask him; if he wants to ask me something perhaps I may think about coming just because of his old age. But I have nothing to ask. If he just wants to see me, then he should take the trouble of coming here." Of course Krishnamurti was very angry when he heard it. He gets angry easily. That anger is due to his past; he is angry with the past.

Just today I saw a B.B.C. interview with Krishnamurti - that was my first acquaintance with how he looks - and I was simply shattered! Again, it was the same story I was telling you yesterday - the same story. He has no charisma at all, no impact. I was sorry to see the interview. I know he is enlightened, but it would have been better if I had not seen his face, his gestures, his eyes, because you cannot find in anything even a shadow of enlightenment. The luggage has reached - the passenger has got lost somewhere on the way.

I still say he is enlightened because I have read thousands of enlightened people's words - Krishnamurti's words are far more accurate in describing the experience. And the way he revolted is perfectly in tune with enlightenment. But there is a difference between revolt and rebellion, a very delicate difference.

Revolt is a reaction.

Rebellion is not a reaction, it is an action.

Please try to see the difference: reaction is bound to remain concerned with the situation it was the reaction to. That's what keeps dragging him backwards. He cannot drop those shadows - which are nothing but shadows - but he is surrounded by them and he is still reacting to them. While he is speaking to you, it is not you that he is speaking to: you are just an excuse to condemn those dead people who have done something wrong to him.

I think he would have become enlightened anyway, if not in this life then in another life. But if he had been on his own then there would have been a totally different quality to it. Then it would have been an action, not a reaction. Then it would have been a rebellion.

I am not reacting to anything. Whatever I am saying, I am saying not as a reaction to something but as my experience. If it goes against something, that is a separate matter; that is a side effect.

For Krishnamurti, what he is saying is the side effect; his original concern remains to destroy those people and what they did to him. He is ninety years old but those shadows are around him; and because of those shadows he has not been able to flower into a charismatic being. That's what I saw today: he has no charisma at all.

Ninety years is a long life. And beginning his career at nine - since the age of nine he has been in the spiritual world for eighty-one years continually. Perhaps nobody ever before has been in the spiritual world that long. But eighty-one years... and that magnet is still missing.

He has been speaking all around the world; he must be one of the most prominent speakers in the whole history of man. Jesus was confined to Judea, Buddha was confined to Bihar, but Krishnamurti has been roaming around the world for all these years. He has only special places where he speaks, for example in India: New Delhi, Bombay, Varanasi and Adyar.

I know about his Bombay meetings because I lived for four years in Bombay, and my sannyasins were going to his meetings and reporting to me. One thing: not more than three thousand people listen to him in Bombay. In Bombay he has been speaking for his whole life, and he comes only one time a year, for two or three weeks. In a week he speaks only twice, or at the most thrice; still there are only three thousand people. And the strangest thing is that you will find almost the same people, most of them very old because for forty years they have been listening to him - the same old fogeys.

Strange: for forty years you have been listening to this man, and neither he seems to get anywhere nor you seem to get anywhere. It has become just a habit: it seems that he has to come to Bombay and you have to listen to him, every year. By and by old people go on dying and a few new people replace them, but the number has never gone beyond three thousand. The same is the situation in New Delhi; the same is the situation in Varanasi... because I have been speaking at his school in Varanasi.

At his school there I asked, "How many people come here?"

They said, "Fifteen hundred at the most, but they are always the same people."

What impact! And this man has made an arduous effort. Jesus, in three years, created the whole of Christianity - almost the biggest religion in the world, rightly or wrongly. But the day Krishnamurti dies, soon after - except from your Krishnamurti Lake - his name will disappear. I could see the reason why, today.

He is not a man who goes within you, bypassing your intellect, so that your intellect may be struggling but he has already captured your heart - and that is where you are. Intellect may try a little fight, doubt this and that, but if the heart is captured, the intellect is poor.

The intellect has to follow the heart. Yes, if before something reaches your heart the inte]lect catches hold of it, then it can spoil the whole thing.

A charismatic personality means a person who can reach directly to your heart without your intellect being even aware of what is happening, what is transpiring.

By the time the intellect comes to know that the heart is throbbing with some new joy, it is too late.

Intellect cannot undo anything in the heart, that is impossible.

Intellect cannot move backwards. Just as you cannot move backwards in time, intellect cannot move backwards towards the heart: it is just at the gate.

The charismatic personality somehow enters the gate while the watchman is either away or asleep or is lost in some thoughts.

The moment it hears bells ringing in the heart then the watchman wakes up; but it is too late, somebody has gone in.

And the watchman cannot go in, there is no way - movement backwards for the intellect is not in the nature of things. Yes, if intellect can catch you at the gate, then the heart will never come to know.

And it is the heart that transforms you, connects you, creates a golden bridge.

Intellect is a very superficial thing.

Today, seeing Krishnamurti's interview I could just feel sad for the man. His whole life he has been working, taking immense trouble, but the result is nil. The reason is not hard to find: he has no charismatic vibe, he has no aura. He is surrounded by past shadows, he is overshadowed by them.

He is anti-orthodox, anti-tradition, anti-convention; but his whole energy has become involved in this hatred.

It is a hate relationship with the past, but it is a relationship all the same. He has not been able to cut himself totally from the past. Perhaps that would have released his energy; it would have opened his charismatic qualities, but that has not been the case.

The people who become interested in him are mere intellectuals remember, I say mere intellectuals - who don't know they have a heart too. These intellectuals become interested in him, but these intellectuals are not the people who are going to be transformed. They are just sophists, arguers; and Krishnamurti is unnecessarily wasting his time with these intellectual people of the world.

Remember, I am not saying intelligent people of the world - that is a different category. I am saying mere intellectuals who love to play with words, logic... it is a kind of gymnastics. And Krishnamurti just goes on feeding their intellect.

He thinks that he is destroying their orthodoxy, that he is destroying their tradition, that he is destroying their personality and helping them to discover their individuality. He is wrong, he is not destroying anything. He is just fulfilling their doubts, supporting their skepticism, making them more articulate - they can argue against anything. You may be able to argue against everything in the world, but is your heart for anything, just one single thing?

You can be against everything - that won't change you.

Are you for something too?

That something is not coming from him.

He just goes on arguing.

And the trouble is - this is why I feel sorry for him - that what he is doing could have been of tremendous help, but it has not helped anybody. I have not come across a single person - and I have met thousands of Krishnamurti-ites, but not a single one of them is transformed. Yes, they are very vocal. You cannot argue with them, you cannot defeat them as far as argument is concerned. Krishnamurti has sharpened their intellect for years and now they are just parrots repeating Krishnamurti.

This is the paradox of Krishnamurti's whole life. He wanted them to be individuals on their own, and what has he succeeded in doing? They are just parrots, intellectual parrots.

This man, Raosaheb Patvardhan, who wanted me to see Krishnamurti, was one of his old colleagues. He came to know me just in 1965 when I spoke in Poona; he lived in Poona. He is no longer alive. I asked Raosaheb Patvardhan - he was a very respected man - "You have been so close to Krishnamurti all your life, but what is the gain? I don't want to hear that tradition is bad, conditioning is bad, and it has to be dropped - I know all that. Put that all aside and just tell me:

what have you gained?"

And that old man, who died just six or seven months afterwards, told me, "As far as gaining is concerned, I have never thought about it and nobody ever asked about it."

But I said, "Then what is the point? Whether you are for tradition or you are against tradition, either way you are tethered to tradition. When are you going to open your wings and fly? Somebody is sitting on a tree because he loves the tree; somebody else is sitting on the same tree because he hates the tree, and he will not leave the tree unless he destroys it. One goes on watering it, the other goes on destroying it, but both are confined, tethered, chained to the tree."

I asked him, "When are you going to open your wings and fly? The sky is there. You have both forgotten the sky. And what has the tree to do with it anyway?"

That's why I remembered the incident of my celibate professor and my saying: "I don't even hate her."

I don't hate any religion.

I simply state the fact:

Religions are nothing but crimes against humanity.

But I am not saying it with any hate in me. I have no love for them, I have no hate for them: I simply state whatsoever is the fact.

So you will find much similarity between what I am saying and what J. Krishnamurti is saying, but there is a tremendous difference. And the difference is that while I am talking to your intellect, I am working somewhere else... hence the gaps. Hence the discourse becomes too long! Any idiot can repeat my discourse in one hour - not me, because I have to do something else too.

So while you are waiting for my words, that is the right time:

You are engaged in your head, waiting.

And I am stealing your heart.

I am a thief!