‘Order’

Questioner: In your teaching there are a thousand details. in my living I must be able to resolve them all into one action, now, which permeates all I do, because in my living I have only the one moment right before me in which to act. What is that one action in daily living which will bring all the details of your teaching to one point, like a pyramid inverted on its point?

Krishnamurti: ...dangerously!

Questioner: Or, to put it differently, what is the one action which will bring the total intelligence of living into focus in one instant in the present?

Krishnamurti: I think the question to ask is how to live a really intelligent, balanced, active life, in harmonious relationship with other human beings, without confusion, adjustment and misery. What is the one act that will summon this intelligence to operate in whatever you are doing? There is so much misery, poverty and sorrow in the world. What are you, as a human being, to do facing all these human problems? If you use the opportunity to help others for your own fulfilment, then it is exploitation and mischief. So we can put that aside from the beginning. The question really is, how are we to live a highly intelligent, orderly life without any kind of effort? It seems that we always approach this problem from the outside, asking ourselves, “What am I to do, confronted with all the many problems of mankind – economic, social, human?” We want to work this out in terms of the outer.

Questioner: No, I am not asking you how I can tackle or solve the problems of the world, economic, social or political. That would be too absurd! All I want to know is how to live righteously in this world exactly as it is, because it is as it is now, right here before me, and I can’t will it into any other shape. I must live now in this world as it is, and in these circumstances solve all the problems of living. I am asking how to make this living a life of Dharma, which is that virtue that is not imposed from without, that does not conform to any precept, is not cultivated by any thought.

Krishnamurti: Do you mean you want to find yourself immediately, suddenly, in a state of grace which is great intelligence, innocency, love – to find yourself in this state without having a past or a future, and to act from this state?

Questioner: Yes! That is it exactly.

Krishnamurti: This has nothing to do with achievement, success or failure. There must surely be only one way to live: what is it?

Questioner: That is my question.

Krishnamurti: To have inside you that light that has no beginning and no ending, that is not lit by your desire, that is not yours or someone else’s. When there is this inward light, whatever you do will always be right and true.

Questioner: How do you get that light, now, without all the struggle, the search, the longing, the questioning?

Krishnamurti: It is only possible when you really die to the past completely, and this can be done only when there is complete order in the brain. The brain cannot stand disorder. If there is disorder all its activities will be contradictory, confused, miserable and it will bring about mischief in itself and around itself. This order is not the design of thought, the design of obedience to a principle, to authority, or to some form of imagined goodness. It is disorder in the brain that brings about conflict; then all the various resistances cultivated by thought to escape from this disorder arise – religious and otherwise.

Questioner: How can this order be brought about to a brain that is disorderly, contradictory, in itself?

Krishnamurti: It can be done by watchfulness throughout the day, and then, before sleeping, by putting everything that has been done during the day in order. In that way the brain does not go to sleep in disorder. This does not mean that the brain hypnotizes itself into a state of order when there is really disorder in and about it. There must be order during the day, and the summing up of this order before sleeping is the harmonious ending of the day. It is like a man who keeps accounts and balances them properly every evening so that he starts afresh the next day, so that when he goes to sleep his mind is quiet, empty, not worried, confused, anxious or fearful. When he wakes up there is this light which is not the product of thought or of pleasure. This light is intelligence and love. It is the negation of the disorder of the morality in which we have been brought up.

Questioner: Can I have this light immediately? That is the question I asked right at the beginning, only I put it differently.

Krishnamurti: You can have it immediately when the “me” is not. The “me” comes to an end when it sees for itself that it must end; the seeing is the light of understanding.