J Krishnamurti Santa Monica 1
In the first of four meetings in Santa Monica, J. Krishnamurti begins by pointing out that these meanings are not a form of entertainment but a journey of exploration on which he and his audience are about to embark together. Although most of like to be entertained, informed, told a certain theory or dogma, he intends to avoid all this. On the contrary, he says that together they will, ‘share the many problems, such as love, death, and the utter madness that is going on in the world – we are going to understand these problems together, sharing, and therefore it is very important from the very beginning that we should understand each other, and what it means to observe the problems into which we are going – to observe, to listen.’ The problem with this prefernce for being entertained and informed is that it engenders a certain form of listening – in J. Krishnamurti’s view, the wrong one. The problem as he sees it is that we listen according to our fancy, comparing what is being said with what we already know and then translating and interpreting, This prevents us from truly listening. With this in mind J. Krishnamurti proposes that the first of their enquiries together should be into, ‘what it means to listen, to observe, whether it is at all possible to observe actually ‘what is’ without any interpretation, without any categorising, putting it into a certain groove, into a certain path, but to merely observe.’ This, as he admits, is a difficult concept to grasp – as are many others in this intriguing journey into the human psyche and all its ramifications.
