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Jiddhu Krishnamurti (1895 - 1986)

Listening to yourself

Questioner: While I am here listening to you, I seem to understand, but when I am away from here, I don't understand, even though I try to apply what you have been saying.

.Krishnamurti: ...You are listening to yourself, and not to the speaker. If you are listening to the speaker, he becomes your leader, your way to understanding, which is a horror, an abomination, because you have then established the hierarchy of authority. So what you are doing here is listening to yourself. You are looking at the picture the speaker is painting, which is your own picture, not the speaker's. If that much is clear, that you are looking at yourself, then you can say, "Well, I see myself as I am, and I don't want to do anything about it"- and that is the end of it. But if you say, "I see myself as I am, and there must be a change," then you begin to work out of your own understanding- which is entirely different from applying what the speaker is saying.

...But if, as the speaker is speaking, you are listening to yourself, then out of that listening there is clarity, there is sensitivity; out of that listening the mind becomes healthy, strong. Neither obeying nor resisting, it becomes alive, intense and it is only such a human being who can create a new generation, a new world.