Urgency of Change • The Krishnamurti Podcast

‘When you are interested to find out, that very interest is the flame that makes the mind, the brain, the body quiet.’

This week’s episode on Quiet has four sections.

The first extract (2:38) is from Krishnamurti’s second talk at Rajghat in 1967, titled: Can We Make the Mind Quiet?

The second extract (16:39) is from Krishnamurti’s sixth talk in New Delhi 1963, titled: The Conscious Mind Must Be Completely Quiet.

The third extract (23:25) is from the second discussion in Saanen 1971, titled: When the Brain Is Quiet.

The fourth and final extract in this episode (36:03) is from the seventh discussion in Saanen 1971, titled: What relationship has meditation to the quiet mind?

Each episode of the Krishnamurti podcast features carefully selected clips from our extensive archives. The aim is to represent different aspects of Krishnamurti’s radical approach to many of the issues and questions we all face in our lives.

Upcoming themes are Patterns and Formulas, Evil, and Escapes.

This is a podcast from Krishnamurti Foundation Trust, based at Brockwood Park in the UK, which is also home to the Krishnamurti Retreat Centre. Situated in the beautiful countryside of the South Downs National Park, The Krishnamurti Centre offers retreats individually and in groups. The focus is on inquiry in light of Krishnamurti’s teachings. Please visit krishnamurticentre.org.uk for more information, including the one night free special offer.

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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?

Find us online at kfoundation.org and on social media as Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

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.

Find us online at kfoundation.org and on social media as Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

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.

Find us online at kfoundation.org and on social media as Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

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?

Find us online at kfoundation.org and on social media as Krishnamurti Foundation Trust