Thought, stillness and time: Gstad small group Discussion 1965

1. Is thought detrimental? - 15 August 1965

Duration: 63 minutes

• Why does one seek pleasure?

• Can the mind only face facts and not thought?

• Why have I never said, ‘Thought is poison,’ to myself?

• Meeting something one doesn’t know, facing something which has no answer.

• Acting without knowing.

• What is a state of mind which is silent?

• Time is detrimental.

• Are we twisting everything to our core of pleasure?

2. Am I aware of the process of thinking? - 18 August 1965

Duration: 60 minutes

• Can I see that thought is destructive, except where it is essential?

• Why is it that we don’t see something immediately?

• Do you know when you are thinking?

• Is the thing that we call thinking, thinking at all?

• Do you think from the background noise when a problem arises?

• When the mind becomes totally aware of the background, is there thinking

when a problem arises?

• What happens when I am aware of this hum, this noise incessantly going on?

• Is the background noise different from the observer?

• How am I to live an everyday life with complete silence?

3. What will make me see that thought breeds frustration? - 21 August 1965

Duration: 78 minutes

• What is the function of thought?

• Can the mind see the fact that thought will always breed frustration?

• Function is necessary, but function with status, position and power must breed

frustration.

• Without frustration thought says to itself, ‘I am not seeking. I don’t want

anything.’

• If there is no thought, what happens?

• The very perception of the limitation of thought is the act of opening the door,

rather than thought opening the door.

• To function without prestige, without frustration, that itself is an extraordinary

state, meaning to function without self-centred activity.

4. From where do attachment and detachment come? - 24 August 1965

Duration: 65 minutes

• What is the relationship of the brain to the totality of the mind?

• Fear of not being, fear of isolation, fear of not having pleasure, fear of having

no relationship, is the soil from which the stem of contradiction grows.

• I want to be free of this stem to see what happens if there is no attachment, no

detachment, because I am not afraid.

• Is there a peace with no entity saying, ‘I am peaceful’?

5. A complete stillness - 25 August 1965

Duration: 65 minutes

• Is there a single movement that will completely transform my whole way of

life?

• The passion is there but the perfume doesn’t take place. What am I to do?

• Am I in a position of a man who for the first time is walking on a road by

himself and discovering?

• Does one know what a complete stillness means?

• It is only from a very still mind that a mutation takes place.

• Is there an ending to thought, therefore an ending to time?

• If I have no thought and therefore no time, and so no wasting of energy, there

is no movement, therefore there is complete stillness.

• Is it possible to look at everything without thought, therefore without time, J. KRISHNAMURTI

and so walk with silence?

6. When the mind is completely quiet, how can there be time? - 29 August 1965

Duration: 85 minutes

• What does time mean to you, as a human being?

• Is there such thing as existence?

• Quietness has come because I have understood the nature of time, function,

thought and pleasure.

• What takes place when there is great intensity?

• Thought has a movement in function. Here there is no movement which

thought can recognise, because thought is not coming into this at all.

• When time comes to an end, is there distance and space?

• If you look at the mountain without the layer of thought as function, as the

experiencer, what is space?

• When there is no experiencer, no thinker, in that stillness is there time?

• Time exists only when there is an observer.