Krishnamurti - The First Step is the Last Step

The First Step is the Last Step is a re-edited version of the talks first published in 1971 under the title Krishnamurti in India 1970-71.

Copyright 1973, 2004 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust Ltd.

The First Step

is the

Last Step

J. Krishnamurti

K RISHNAMURTI F OUNDATION I NDIA

Contents

If a man would change radically, he must observe what is and not what should be. You see, having ideals is one of the reasons why you have no energy, why you have no flame.

Philosophy means the love of truth, not the love of theories, not the love of speculations, not the love of belief, but the love of truth.

Die to the memory of your pleasure. Take one pleasure that you have had and drop it instantly. That is what death is going to do. You are not going to argue with death.

Is truth something that is permanent, that is there for you to capture; or is it something that is living and therefore has no path to it and therefore demands a constant observation, perception, of everything that is happening inwardly and outwardly?

Is it possible for the mind to be completely empty and quiet, not continuously but each second? That is the first perceptionthat the mind must be completely quiet. The perception of the truth of it, the seeing the truth of it, is the first and last step.

An innocent mind is a mind that has never been hurt. That means a mind that never carries the hurt over to the next day. So there is no forgiveness or remembrance.

What significance has one individual, one human being, transforming himself when around him there is so much chaos, so much misery, such confusion, such madness? I think that question is wrong.

Awareness is not a matter of accumulation, but of learning, being aware from moment to moment. When you are not aware, dont bother. Begin again so that your mind is always fresh.

All our motives are based on these two fundamental principles: pleasure and fear. When you say that you are seeking truth, what you are seeking is the permanent establishment of the thing you call pleasure.

To observe your life actually, you must look at it afresh, that is, look at it without any condemnation, without any ideal, without any desire to suppress it or change it.

The question What to do? is not important at all. What is important is how you observe these facts, how you look at these facts, not what to do about these facts.

A man who is seeking truth lives a life of hypocrisy because his truth is the projection of his memory, of his desires, of his intention to find something other than what is.

You cannot go away into isolation and try to dissolve all your troubles. They can be solved only in relationship because it is only in relationship that you discover all your troubles.

In all this there are various powers like clairvoyance, reading somebodys thought... You call them siddhis, dont you? Do you know that all these things are like candles in the sun?

Foreword

The First Step is the Last Step is a re-edited version of the book, Krishnamurti in India 1970-71, consisting of the talks Krishnamurti gave in New Delhi, Madras, Bangalore, and Bombay between December 1970 and February 1971. The title is a summing up of many of Krishnamurtis statements that form the common theme of these series of talks. Running like a thread through these fourteen talks is his original insight that learning about life is not a matter of continuous and deliberate gathering of knowledge about ourselves.

The normal conditioning of the human mind is to accumulate, for instance, memories of pleasurable or painful moments, rather than to drop them immediately after the events. We are generally taught to store up knowledge about our individual traits and temperaments, and we are advised not to forget the bitter lessons that life has taught us. Krishnamurti negates this approach. His emphasis is on our not giving a continuity to any moment in our lives so that we are able to meet every challenge of life afresh, with a mind that is free from the burden of memories about the past and imaginations about the future.

Krishnamurti explains lucidly how thought, by remembering and dwelling on past incidents, creates both pleasure and fear, and states that it is only with the cessation of these memories that there is freedom: If you have the most extraordinary, happy incident, see it, perceive it, and completely end it, and not carry it over; then there is no continuity as the past which thought has built. Therefore every step is the last step.

Krishnamurti shows how important it is to do this in relation to every aspect of human life he deals withwhether it is psychological hurt or pleasure or fear or sorrow, or the act of learning or paying attention or meditating. He says: The first step is the last step. The first step is to perceiveperceive what you are thinking, perceive your ambition, perceive your anxiety, your loneliness, your despair, this extraordinary sense of sorrow. Perceive it without any condemnation, justification, without wishing it to be different, just perceive it as it is. When you perceive it as it is, then there is a totally different kind of action taking place, and that action is the final action. That is, when you perceive something as being false or as being true, that perception is the final action, which is the final step.

According to Krishnamurti, what brings about freedom from memory is the act of attention. But this attention is not the end-product of practising various traditional techniques of meditation, or the struggle with oneself in order to remain attentive. Be attentive and then forget it. Begin again, pick it up each time so that this attention is fresh each time, he says.

For those who have gone seriously into Krishnamurtis teachings, these talks offer strikingly new perspectives on mans ancient quest for self-knowledge.

K.K.

F IRST T ALK IN N EW D ELHI 1970

If a man would change radically, he must observe what is and not what should be. You see, having ideals is one of the reasons why you have no energy, why you have no flame.

One of the most difficult things is to learn about communication. The word implies that we share together a common factor, think together about a problem, not merely receive but share together, create together. The word implies all thattaking a common factor that all of us have and examining it closely in communication, which means sharing together. So we are going to talk over together, which means you are sharing the problem, not merely receiving, not merely arguing, agreeing or disagreeing, but examining together. Therefore it is as much your responsibility as that of the speaker. You have to share in what we are talking about because it is a problem that touches all human beings, whether they live here or in America or in Russia or where you will. The problem is the question of change.

Everywhere one sees, as one travels around the world, one common thingthat there must be a tremendous revolution. Not the physical revolution of throwing bombs, shedding blood, or revolt, because every physical revolution inevitably ends in a bureaucratic dictatorship or the tyranny of the few. This is a historical fact, and we dont even have to discuss that. But what we have to talk about together is this question of inward revolution. We cannot possibly go on as we are psychologically. There must be vast, profound changes, not only in the outward structure of society, but also inwardly, because the society in which we live, the culture in which we have been brought up are part of us. The social structure, the culture, is what we have created. So we are the culture and the culture is us. We are the world and the world is us. If you are born in a particular culture, you represent that culture. You are a part of it, and to change the structure of that culture you have to change yourself.