Observing the many fragments of life, the various activities opposing, contradicting each other and bringing about a great deal of confusion, one asks if there is an action which can cover totally all the divergent, contradictory, fragmentary activities. In our own lives we can observe how we are broken up with contradictory desires, with opposing political, religious, artistic, scientific, and business activities. Is there an action that can respond totally to every demand of life without being contradictory itself? I do not know if you have ever asked such a question.
Most of us live in our own particular little activity and try to make the best of it. If you are a politician--and I hope you aren't--then your world is very dependent on votes and all the nonsense that goes on in the name of politics. If you are a religious person, you will have a number of beliefs, a way of meditation contradicting everything in your daily life. If you are an artist, you live totally apart from all this, absorbed in your own particular fancy, in your own perception of beauty, and so on. And if you are a scientist, you live in your laboratory and are just a normal human being elsewhere, rather shoddy and competitive. So seeing all this, with which most of us must be quite familiar, what is an action that can respond totally to every demand and yet remain noncontradictory, whole?
Now, if you put that question to yourself, as we are doing now, what would be your answer? As we said the other day when we met, we are sharing together the problems of our life, not intellectually, but actually. We said that that is the meaning of communication--to consider together a common issue. Now the common issue is this question of whether there is an action, a way of living every day, whether you are an artist, a scientist, a businessman, so that your life can be whole, so that there is no fragmentation and therefore no contradictory action.
If the question is clear, then how shall we find such an action? By what method, by what system? If we are trying to find a method, a way of living by a system, according to a certain pattern, then that very pattern, that very system is contradictory. Please, do let's understand this very clearly. If I follow a particular system in order to bring about an action which will be whole, complete, full, rich and beautiful, the method, system becomes mechanical. My actions will be mechanical and therefore totally incomplete. Therefore I must set aside all ideas of following a mechanical, repetitive activity.
I must also find out whether thought can help to bring about such an action. You live a fragmentary life: you are different in the office and at home; you have private thoughts and public thoughts. You can see this wide gulf, this contradiction, this fragmentation. And one asks if thought can bridge all these various fragments, can bring about an integration among all these factors. Can it? We have to find out the nature and structure of thought before we say that thought can or cannot...K

To me there is only perception- which is to see something as false or true immediately.This immediate perception of what is false and what is true is the essential factor- not the intellect, with its reasoning based upon its cunning, its knowledge, its commitments. It must sometimes have happened to you that you have seen the truth of something immediately such as the truth that you cannot belong to anything. That is perception: seeing the truth of something immediately, without analysis, without reasoning, without all the things that the intellect creates in order to postpone perception. It is entirely different from intuition, which is a word that we use with glibness and ease.To me there is only this direct perception- not reasoning, not calculation, not analysis. You must have the capacity to analyze; you must have a good, sharp mind in order to reason; but a mind that is limited to reason and analysis is incapable of perceiving what is truth.If you commune with yourself, you will know why you belong, why you have committed yourself; and if you push further, you will see the slavery, the cutting down of freedom, the lack of human dignity which that commitment entails. When you perceive all this instantaneously, you are free; you don't have to make an effort to be free. That is why perception is essential. - J. Krishnamurti

The questioner asks: Is not the investigation into ourselves, into our problems, into our relationships, and into our very ideas, a movement of the intellect and, therefore, limited?—because whatever is from the intellect is limited. Therefore, is there a way, that is, another observation, another exploration, which is not born out of the intellect? That is what the question amounts to.
There is another way which is not the operation of the intellect. So far, this morning, we exercised our intellect, our thinking, and the very thinking pushed us step by step, deeper and wider; but it still was the movement of thought, the movement of time, of measure. The question is whether there is any enquiry which is not born out of remembrance and thought. I say that there is. Shall we go into it? There is an action which is not the action of memory, of thought, of the intellect, and that action is pure observation. You ask: What do we mean by ‘pure observation’? I am going to explain. The explanation is not the fact. The description is not the described. The word is not the thing. The word ‘microphone’ is not the microphone. The word ‘house’ is not the actual fact of the house. So, I am asking: Can we observe without the word? Can we observe our wives, our husbands, our daughters, or the tree, or the river, without the word?—for the word is not the thing. Can you observe me without the word ‘Krishnamurti’, and all the reputation that exists around that word? ‘To just observe’ means to observe not through the word, not through the description, but to be free of the word. Can we do it? Can we look without the word? The words ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ have so many associations. Can we put away all those associations, those words, and look? Can we observe that river without the word ‘Ganga’? Can we observe it without all the associations connected with that word ‘Ganga’? You see, we are discovering something. We are discovering that words, that is, language, shapes our thinking.K

I will tell you what a religious man is. 
First of all, a religious man is a man who is alone— not lonely, you understand, 
but alone— with no theories or dogmas, no opinion, no background. 
He is alone and loves it— free of conditioning and alone—and enjoying it. 
Second, a religious man must be both man and woman— I don'tmean sexually— 
but he must know the dual nature of everything; 
a religious man must feel and be both masculine and feminine. 
Third, to be a religious man, one must destroy everything— destroy the past, destroy one's convictions, interpretations, deceptions— destroy all selfhypnosis— destroy until there is no center; you understand, no center.K

What is the present? Do you know what it is? You say: ‘Live in the present’, as many intellectuals advocate—they advocate it because to them the future is bleak (Laughter), meaningless, therefore they say, ‘Live in the present, make the best of the present, be completely “with it”’. We must find out what the present is. What is ‘the now’? Do you know what ‘the now’ is, what the present is? Is there such a thing as the present? No, please, don’t speculate about it, observe it. Have you ever noticed what ‘the now’ is? Can you be aware of ‘the now’, know what it is? Or do you only know the past, the past which operates in the present, which creates the future? Are you following? When you say ‘live in the present’ you must find out what that present actually is. Is there such a thing? To understand if there is such a thing as the actual present, you must understand the past. And when you observe what you are as a human being, you see you are completely the result of the past. There is nothing new in you, you are second-hand. You are the past looking at the present, translating the present. The present being the challenge, the pain, the anxiety, a dozen things which are the result of the past, and you are looking at it getting very frightened and thinking about tomorrow, which again creates another pleasure—you are all that. To understand ‘the now’ is an immense problem of meditation—that is meditation. To understand the past totally, see where its importance lies, and to see its total unimportance, to realize the nature of time—all that is part of meditation. Perhaps we can go into it another evening. But, Sirs, before you can meditate there must be the foundation of righteousness, which means no fear. If there is any kind of fear, secret or obvious, then meditation is the most dangerous thing, because it offers a marvellous escape. To know what the meditative mind is, is one of the greatest things.K

From where shall we start to discover what is real, what is true,
in all this conflagration, confusion and misery ? Is it not important
to find out for ourselves how to think rightly about war and
peace, about economic and social conditions, about our relationship
to our fellowmen ? Surely there is a difference between right
thinking and right or conditioned thought. We may be able to
produce in ourselves imitatively right thought, but such thought is
not right thinking. Right or conditioned thought is uncreative.
But when we know how to think rightly for ourselves, which is to
be living, dynamic, then it is possible to bring about a new and
happier culture.K

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the teachings: The individual is you and you are the rest of mankind

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the teachings: The individual is you and you are the rest of mankind