Kalampedia

One of the most interesting — and perhaps hardest to read — philosophers from the East was Jiddu Krishnamurti. He was an unusual philosopher. He didn’t preach or put forward his own ideas. Instead, he developed a conversational style in which he would lead his listener into a series of questions and explore the possible answers. This is quite similar to Socratic approach, except that the issues he generally tackled were much more complex in nature.

When Jiddu Krishnamurti spoke one listened. Focused on a thought, his intense eyes lost in another paradigm, Krishnamurti narrowed in on what he wanted to say. Therefore, it’s hardly a surprise that so many of his conversations can be read as meditative dialogues — which is what we are going to do in this series. In the first part, we bring you the conversation that took place between Jiddu Krishnamurti and Alain Naudé. Please read slowly and carefully, and pause and reflect as much as you want.

Let’s begin…

Naudé: Do good and evil really exist, or are they simply conditioned points of view? Is there such a thing as evil and if so what is it? Is there such a thing as sin? And is there such a thing as goodness? And what is it to be really and deeply good?

Krishnamurti: I was thinking this morning on the same theme as your questions imply, whether there is an absolute good and absolute evil: as the Christian idea of sin and the Asiatic idea of Karma — as action which breeds more misery and more sorrow and yet out of that conflict of sorrow and pain a goodness is born.

I was thinking about it the other day when I saw on the television some men killing baby seals. It is a terrible thing, I turned my head away quickly. Killing has always been wrong, not only human beings but animals. And religious people, not the people who believe in religion, but the really religious mind, has always shunned every form of killing.

Of course, when you eat a vegetable you are killing — a vegetable — but that is the least form of killing and the simplest form of survival: I wouldn’t call that killing. One has watched in India, in Europe, and in America the acceptance of killing in war, in organised murder, which war is.

Also “killing” people with words, with a gesture, with a look, with contempt: this form of killing has also been decried by religious people. But in spite of it all, killing has been going on — killing, violence, brutality, arrogance, aggressiveness — all ultimately leading, in action or in thought, to hurting, to brutalising others. One has seen those ancient caves in North Africa and in the South of France where man is shown fighting animals, where perhaps fighting evil is understood. Or is it fighting as a form of amusement, to kill something, to overcome?

So when one looks at all this, one asks if there is such a thing as evil in itself, totally devoid of the good; and what is the distance between evil and good. Is evil the diminution of good, slowly ending in evil? Or is good the diminution of evil, gradually becoming good? That is, through the time interval, moving from goodness to evil, and from evil to good?

Naudé: You mean they are two ends of the same stick?

Krishnamurti: Two ends of the same stick — or are they two wholly separate things? So what is evil and what is good? The Christian world, the Inquisition, used to burn people for heresy, considering that was good.

Naudé: The Communists do the same.

Krishnamurti: The Communists do it in their own way: for the good of the community, for the good of society, for the good of an economic well-being for the whole of man, and so on. In Asia too they have done all this kind of thing in various forms. But there has always been a group, until recently, where killing in any form was considered evil. Now all that is slowly disappearing, for economic and cultural reasons.

Naudé: You mean the group that avoid killing…

Krishnamurti: … is gradually disappearing. So there it is. Now is there such a thing as absolute good, and absolute evil? Or is it a gradation: relative goodness and relative evil.

Naudé: And do they exist as facts outside of conditioned points of view? For instance, for the Frenchman during the war the invading German was evil; and similarly for the German, the German soldier was good, he represented protection. Now is there a good and an evil, absolutely? Or is it simply the result of a conditioned point of view?

Krishnamurti: Is goodness dependent on the environment, on the culture, on economic conditions? And if it is, is it good? Can goodness flower as an environmental, cultural conditioning? And is evil also the result of environmental culture? Does it function within that frame, or does it function outside it? All these questions are implied when we ask: is there an absolute goodness and absolute evil?

Naudé: Right.

Krishnamurti: First of all, what is goodness? Isn’t the word “goodness” related to the word “God”? God being the highest form of the good, truth, excellence, and the capacity to express in relationship that quallity of godliness, which is goodness; and anything opposite that is considered evil. If goodness is related to God, then evil is related to devil. The devil being the ugly, the dark, the distorted, the purposefully directed harmful, such as the desire to hurt — all that is contrary to the good; that is, the idea of God being good and the devil being the evil — right? Now I think we have more or less indicated what is good and what is evil. So we are asking if there is such a thing as absolute good and absolute, irrevocable evil.

Naudé: Evil as a fact, as a thing.

Krishnamurti: Therefore let us first examine if there is absolutely good. Not in the sense of goodness being related to God, or approximating itself to the idea of God, because then that goodness becomes merely speculative. Because God to most people is really a presence of a belief in something — something excellent and noble. Now what is good? I feel goodness is total order. Not only outwardly, but especially inwardly. I think that order can be absolute, as in mathematics I believe there is complete order. And it is disorder that leads to chaos, destruction, anarchy, the so-called evil. Whereas total order in one’s being, order in the mind, order in one’s heart, order in one’s physical activities — the harmony between the three is goodness.

Naudé: The Greeks used to say that perfected man had attuned in total harmony his mind, his heart and his body.

Krishnamurti: Quite. So we shall say for the moment that goodness is absolute order. And as most human beings live in disorder they contribute to every form of mischief, which ultimately leads to destruction, to brutality, to violence, to various injuries, both psychic and physical. For all that one word may be used: “evil”.

But I don’t like that word “evil” because it is loaded with Christian meaning, with condemnation and prejudice. In India and in Asia the words “evil”, “sin”, are always loaded — as “goodness” is always loaded.

So could we brush away all the accumulations around these words and look at it as though anew? That is: is there absolute order in oneself? Can this absolute order be brought about in oneself and therefore in the outer world? Because the world is me, and I am the world; my consciousness is the consciousness of the world, and the consciousness of the world is me.

So when there is order within the human being then there is order in the world. Now can this order, right through, be absolute? Which means: order in the mind, in the heart and in the bodily activities? That is, complete harmony. How can this be brought about? That is one point.

The other point is: is order something to be copied according to a design? Is order pre-established by thought, by the intellect, and copied in action by the heart? Or in relationship? So is order a blueprint? How is this order to be brought about?

Naudé: Right.

Krishnamurti: Order is virtue. And disorder is non-virtue, is harmful, is destructive, is impure– if we can use that word. So is order something put together according to a design drawn by knowledge, thought? Or is order outside the field of thought and knowledge? One feels there is absolute goodness, not as an emotional concept, but one knows, if one has gone into oneself deeply, that there is such a thing: complete, absolute, irrevocable goodness, or order.

And this order is not a thing pit together by thought; if it is, then it is according to a blueprint, but if it imitated then the imitation leads to disorder, or to conformity. Conformity, imitation, and the denial of what is, is the beginning of disorder, leading ultimately to what may be called evil. So we are asking: is goodness, which is order and virtue, is it the product of thought? Which means can it be cultivated by thought? Can virtue ever be cultivated? To cultivate implies to bring slowly into being, which means time.

Naudé: Mental synthesis.

Krishnamurti: Yes. Now is virtue the result of time? And is order therefore a matter of evolution? And so is absolute order, absolute goodness, a matter of slow growth, cultivation, all involving time? As we said the other day, thought is the response of memory, knowledge and experience, which is the past, which is stored up in the brain. In the brain cells themselves the past is. So does virtue lie in the past and is it therefore cultivatable, to be pushed forward? Or is virtue, order, only in the now? The now is not related to the past.

Naudé: You are saying that goodness is order and that order is not the product of thought; but order, if it exists at all, must exist in behaviour in the world and in relationship. People always think that proper behaviour in relationship, in the world, must be planned, that order is always the result of planning. And quite often people get the idea, when they have listened to you, that awareness, the state of being you speak about in which there is no room for the action of thought, they get the feeling that this is a sort of disincarnate energy, which can have no action and no relationship to the world of men and events and behaviour. They think that therefore it has no real value, and not what you might call a temporal and historical significance.

Krishnamurti: Right, Sir.

Note: The full conversation can be found in Jiddu Krishnamurti’s collection titled The Awakening of Intelligence. You can also listen to our podcast on Jiddu Krishnamurti.