6

The Art of Living

A truly religious mind is a mind much more than an

ordinary scientific mind. It is a deeply scientific mind that is
constantly enquiring and discovering. It is a mind that is
not ensnared by established theories, formulae, dogmas or
beliefs, whether they are scientific or theological in nature.
It is a mind that is extraordinarily passionate, constantly
questioning. It is a mind that can go beyond thought and
discover the truth and after discovering, it moves on to
discover more. Such a mind is a truly religious mind. It is a
free and passionate mind.
Only a free mind can be a scientific mind and such a
mind is also a religious mind. It is free and being free it is
incapable of accumulating knowledge and beliefs. It refuses
to accumulate knowledge because knowledge belongs to
the past and the past is a calcification of the truth and no
longer the truth. A calcified truth becomes a belief and
therefore false. Truth can only be the living present and this
is what many of us fail to see.
How can we develop such a mind? How can we
develop a type of mind that is forever young and learning?
How can we develop a mind that never cares for beliefs
and is able to discover itself anew every moment? What are
the teachings for developing such a mind?
372 THE GREAT COMING

The Flame of Understanding covered teachings that

take us beyond faith and belief. It told us about the hurdles
and barriers that prevent us from developing a truly
religious mind. The Art of Living covers those teachings,
which according to me can teach the art to overcome
hurdles and develop a truly religious mind. Here too, I
repeat, K would have never put them into compartments,
in the way I am presenting them here. Compartments can
only contain stagnated air. K’s teachings are never stagnant.
Let us begin with thinking and thought.
Thoughts play an important role in our lives. We are
governed by what we think and how we think. Our actions
are a result of our thought. Knowledge and experience is
also a result of our thought and an accumulation of
inferences drawn from our thoughts. Beliefs are created by
thought too and they occupy our minds. Living has a lot to
do with thinking. To learn the art of living we need to
understand the nature of thought and how it influences the
mind.
THINKING
K has dealt extensively with the nature and quality of
the human mind and thought. There are two things about
thought and thinking we can learn from K. First, the mind
is always occupied with thought. Second, thought is
constantly wearing away our minds. Do we know this?
Thought is the response of the past in conjunction
with the present; that is, thought is experience
responding to challenge, which is reaction. There
is no thought if there is no reaction. Response is
the past background – you respond as a Buddhist,
a Christian, according to the left or to the right.
That is the background and that is the constant
 THE ART OF LIVING 373

response to challenge – and that response of the

past to the present is called thinking. There is
never a moment when thought is not. Have you
noticed that your mind is incessantly occupied
with something ... It is constantly occupied; and
what happens to your mind, what happens to any
machinery that is in constant use? It wears away.
...1
The mind is never idle. It is always preoccupied with
some thought and the thought keeps changing. We must
have observed that.
What may perhaps come as a surprise is that thought
wears away the mind. Is the mind really like machinery
which wears out in constant use? Will it not rust if left idle?
Is it not that thinking helps in keeping the mind active and
sharp?
Thinking is different from thought. We must think
when needed and not act thoughtlessly. But there are
thoughts even when there is nothing to think about, when
there is no need to think. There are stray thoughts, random
thoughts, and they are there all the time. Is this what K
meant when he said thought wears away the mind?
Are thoughts stray and unwelcome visitors? How can
we end thought? How can we stop these stray visitors? If
they do wear away the mind, is there something we can do
about it?
Now, you will see that in the process of thinking
there is always an interval, a gap, between two
thoughts. As you are listening to me, what exactly
is happening in your mind? You are listening,
perhaps experiencing what we are talking about,
waiting for information, the experience of the next
moment. You are watchful, so there is passive
374 THE GREAT COMING

watching, alert awareness. There is no response;

there is a state of passiveness in which the mind is
strongly aware, yet there is no thought – that is,
you are really experiencing what I am talking
about. Such passive watchfulness is the interval
between two thoughts.2
The moments, the gaps! There are so many of them.
They pass away so very quickly. Are they precious? Is the
mind really alert and watchful? Why do we miss them? Are
these the moments when the mind rejuvenates itself?
Would the silence stay if we were alert and passively
watchful?
Perhaps!
Perhaps the mind rejuvenates itself in the silence
between the thoughts.
NEGATIVE THINKING
Can one live without wearing away the mind? Must
we abandon thinking? Wouldn’t that be dreadful?
There are two types of thoughts, practical thoughts and
psychological thoughts. Practical thoughts deal with the
physical aspects of life or practical work-related thoughts
like repairing a car, solving a mathematical problem and so
on. Perhaps it is psychological thought that K has talked
about. Psychological thoughts create beliefs, convictions and
prejudices. They burden the mind, wearing it away. As
thinking is needed for human existence, is there a form of
thinking that K might say is right?
There is a surety in negative rather than positive
thinking-feeling. We have assumed in a positive
manner what we are or we have cultivated
positively our ideas on other people’s or on our
 THE ART OF LIVING 375

own formulations. And hence we depend on

authority, on circumstances, hoping thereby to
establish a series of positive ideas and actions.
Whereas if you examine you will see there is
agreement in negation; there is surety in negative
thinking, which is the highest form of thinking.
When once you have found true negation and
agreement in negation, then you can build further
in positiveness.3
The right art of thinking is perhaps negative thinking.
He does not mean negative, self-defeating thoughts; rather
he has used the term ‘negative’ to describe an approach in
thinking, a type of thinking where one can find certainty.
He has pointed out that negative thinking is born out of
creative understanding. This, according to K, is the highest
form of thinking.
... creative understanding is negative thinking, and
negative thinking is the highest form of
meditation. To understand what is creative
thinking, we must approach the problem
negatively. A positive approach to a problem is
imitative and therefore disintegrating. For,
understanding comes not through any positive
system, or positive formula, or conclusion, but
through negative understanding.4
Positive thinking, as K points out, is not very different
from analysis. By positive thinking one cannot go into the
unconscious, K says. In the unconscious, is the treasure
house of the collective consciousness of humanity, as K has
explained in a public talk at Saanen in 1962.
The unconscious is the hidden storehouse of the
past, both individual and collective. It is the
repository of centuries of propaganda, of all the
experience and knowledge, the traditions and
376 THE GREAT COMING

complexities of the race. However clever you or

the analyst may be, the conscious mind cannot
approach the unconscious by way of analysis.
Through analysis you can only scratch on the
surface of the unconscious, you cannot go into it
very deeply – as I think most analysts and
psychologists would now agree. The conscious
mind has been educated, trained in a particular
direction, it has acquired technical knowledge
along certain lines so that one may gain a
livelihood, which is called the positive approach to
life; but such an approach to the unconscious is
not possible.5
In negative thinking, the mind is not tethered to any
formula. It can therefore discover for itself independently.
Every inquiry, K suggests, should be based on negative
thinking and not on positive thinking. Negative thinking,
according to him, is a supreme form of thinking.
...our inquiry must surely be based on negative
thinking, which is the supreme form of thinking.
We cannot inquire if our minds are tethered to any
positive direction or formula. If we accept or
assume anything, then all inquiry is useless. We can
inquire, search, only when there is negative
thinking, not thinking along any positive line. Most
of us are convinced that positive thinking is
necessary in order to find out what is true. By
positive thinking I mean accepting the experiences
of others, or of oneself, without understanding the
conditioned mind which thinks. After all, all our
thinking is at present based on the background, on
tradition, on experience, on the knowledge which
we have accumulated ... Knowledge gives a
positive direction to our thinking and in pursuing
this positive direction, we hope to find that which
 THE ART OF LIVING 377

is truth, God, or what you will; but what we

actually find is based on experience and the
process of recognition.
Surely, that which is new cannot be recognised.
Recognition can only take place from memory, the
accumulated experience which we call knowledge.
If we recognise something, it is not new and as
long as our search is based on recognition,
whatever we find has already been experienced;
therefore, it comes from the background of
memory. I recognize you because I have met you
before. Something totally new cannot be
recognised. God, truth, or whatever it is that
results from the total integration of one’s whole
consciousness is not recognisable; it must be
something totally new and the very search for that
state implies a process of recognition, does it not?
....When we go from guru to guru, when we
practise various disciplines, when we sacrifice,
meditate or train the mind in some way, the
impetus behind all this effort is the urge to find
something and what is found must be
recognisable; otherwise it cannot be found. So
what the mind finds can only be the outcome of
its own background, of its own conditioning; and
if once the mind understands this fact, then search
may not have its meaning at all; it may have a
totally different significance. The mind may then
stop seeking altogether – which does not mean
that it accepts its conditioning, its travails, its
misery. ...
...You must have observed how millions of people
are seeking, each one following a particular guru or
practising a particular system of meditation; or else
they go from teacher to teacher, joining one
378 THE GREAT COMING

society, dropping it and going to another,

everlastingly seeking, seeking, seeking, which of
course can also become a game. So perhaps you
have asked yourself what it all means. You read
the Upanishads or the Gita or listen to a talk in
which certain explanations are given, certain states
described and they all say, “Do this, abandon that
and you will discover the eternal.” ...Can we very
simply and directly ask ourselves, each one of us,
whether we are seeking and if we are seeking, what
is the drive behind the search?6
In reply to a question at Stockholm in 1956, K went
deep into the process of thinking. He started by explaining
the psychological process of thinking and then he
emphasised the importance of coming to a point of not
knowing. This, he says, is the highest form of thinking.
Before we inquire into the problem of positive and
negative thinking, let us ask ourselves, what is
thinking? When I put you a question with which
you are familiar, the response is immediate; you do
not have to think. For example, if I ask you where
you live, you reply without having to think. But
when a more complicated question is asked, there
is hesitation, which indicates that you are looking
for an answer; the mind is then seeking for an
answer in the cupboard of memory. That is what
we call thinking. I do not know, but I am trying to
find an answer in all the memories, the knowledge
that I have accumulated, and finding it, I verbally
respond. This response, which is a reaction of
memory, is what we call positive thinking, is it
not? We are always thinking from our background
of knowledge and experience, so our thinking is
very limited, and such thinking can never be free.
In that process there is no freedom of thought, in
 THE ART OF LIVING 379

the fundamental sense of the word. You may

change your opinions, your conclusions, but so
long as you draw upon knowledge, which is what
we are accustomed to doing, you are not really
thinking at all. In that there is no freedom of
thought because memory and knowledge have
already conditioned your thinking. Negative
thinking may be, and probably is, freedom from
knowledge as conclusions. After all, everything we
know is of the past. The moment we say, “I
know,” knowledge has already moved away from
the present and established itself in memory, in the
past.
So, can the mind be in a state of not-knowing?
Because only then, can the mind inquire, not when
it says, “I know.” Only the mind which is capable
of being in a state of not-knowing – not merely as
a verbal assertion but as an actual fact – is free to
discover reality. But to be in that state is difficult,
for we are ashamed of not knowing. Knowledge
gives us strength, importance, a centre around
which the ego can be active. The mind which is
not calling upon knowledge, which is not living in
memory, which is totally emptying itself of the
past, dying to every form of accumulation from
moment to moment – it is such a mind that can be
in a state of not-knowing, which is the highest
form of thinking and then thinking has a different
meaning altogether. It may not be thinking at all,
as we know it but a state of being, which is not
merely the opposite of not-being.7
This is logical. If one were to deal with only known
things, how can one discover what is not known – the
unknown? Positive thinking can only rediscover what is
already known but never the new.
380 THE GREAT COMING

In another talk K explains the same thing a little

differently:
As I was saying, negative thinking is the highest
form of thinking. We never think negatively; we
think only positively. That is, we think from a
conclusion to a conclusion, from a pattern to a
pattern, from a system to a system. That I must be
this, I must acquire some virtue, follow this or that
path, do certain disciplines. The positive thinking
is always in the grooves of our own conditioned
thinking. I hope you are watching your own mind,
your own thought and that way only, leads to
further limitation of the mind, to narrowness of
the mind, to pettiness of action; it always
strengthens the self-centred activity. Negative
thinking is something entirely different but it is
not the opposite of positive thinking. If I can
understand the limitations of positive thinking,
which invariably leads to self-centred activity, if I
can understand not only verbally, intellectually but
as the whole process of human thinking, then
there is a new awakening in negative thinking.8
K has emphasised that if one is really concerned
about a total change in consciousness, a total change in the
quality of mind, one must think negatively. This is the only
way for a radical transformation to happen.
... If we are concerned with a total change of
consciousness, of the quality of the mind, then I
think we must think negatively because negative
thinking is the highest form of thinking, not the
so-called positive thinking. The positive is merely
the pursuit of a formula, a conclusion and all such
thinking is limited, conditioned... So the negative
way of thinking is the maintenance, the sustenance
of the quality that is discontent – discontent in
 THE ART OF LIVING 381

itself, not with something. Please do not get

caught at the verbal level but see the significance
of this. But we must understand that positive
thinking is conditioned thinking and that there is
no change in that; there is modification but no
radical transformation. Radical transformation is
only in the negative thinking, as we saw in relation
to attachment and to discontent.9
It is encouraging to learn that all our practical work,
our day-to-day living and everything else can also be done
in a negative state. He has asked his listeners to try it out
for themselves and see the results.
I wonder if you have ever walked along a crowded
street or a lonely road and just looked at things
without thought? There is a state of observation
without the interference of thought. Though you
are aware of everything about you and you
recognize the person, the mountain, the tree, or
the oncoming car, yet the mind is not functioning
in the usual pattern of act thought. I don’t know if
this has ever happened to you. Do try it sometime
when you are driving or walking. Just look without
thought; observe without reaction which breeds
thought. Though you recognize colour and form,
though you see the stream, the car, the goat, the
bus, there is no reaction but mere negative
observation; and that very state of so-called
negative observation is action. Such a mind can
utilize knowledge in carrying out what it has to do
but it is free of thought in the sense that it is not
functioning in terms of reaction. With such a mind
– a mind that is attentive without reaction – you
can go to office and all the rest of it.10
Not only has K stressed on the importance of
negative thinking, he has also emphasised on alert passivity.
382 THE GREAT COMING

In the state of alert passivity, K says, the residue of thought

is dissolved and the mind comes to a state of great energy.
G. Narayan recounts:
...Krishnamurti said that there is a state of mind
where there are no problems at all, not even the
existence of a problem... Then Krishnamurti
asked, “What happens to a man in alert passivity?”
We were silent. He answered, “The residue of
thought is dissolved and the mind is silent in a
state of great energy.”11

THOUGHT, POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE, IS ALWAYS LIMITED

While K says that negative thinking is the highest
form of thinking, he adds that thinking in any form,
whether positive or negative, is always limited.
We talked the other day about positive thinking
and negative thinking. I said that negative thinking
is the highest form of thinking and that all
thinking whether positive or negative, is limited.
Positive thinking is never free. Therefore, the
negative mind, looking at the unconscious which it
does not know, is in direct relationship with it.12
K had never been a thinker. He neither thought
positively nor even negatively. Whatever he spoke and all
his actions, were based on observation and instant
perception. That is why it would be incorrect to brand him
as a thinker or philosopher.
Thinking and philosophising were not his nature. That
was not necessary for him. He could comprehend the
entirety without needing to think over it. His actions were
a natural response of his intelligence.
Thinking, according to Theosophy, happens in the
 THE ART OF LIVING 383

mental world. It is a response of consciousness in the

mental world. If negative thinking is the highest form of
thinking, it must mean a response in the highest sub-plane
of the mental world.
Why does K say that thinking is always limited? Is it
because thoughts belong to the mental world and not to,
still higher worlds of nature? Perhaps that may be a reason.
Thoughts can never capture the unlimited.
LOGIC
If everyone in the world stops thinking, wouldn’t the
world become insane and come to a stop? If thoughts are
always limited, is logic and thinking futile? Thinking is
surely needed to live a rational life.
While pointing out the futility of thought, K has also
harped upon the importance of reasoning and logic,
pointing out that logic is needed to go beyond logic.
From childhood we are trained, educated to live
with problems. And therefore being centred in
problems, it can never solve any problem
completely. It’s only the free brain that is not
conditioned to problems, that can solve problems.
Vous avez compris?a You understand this or not?
Sir, it’s one of our constant burdens to have all the
time, problems, and therefore our brain is never
quiet, free to observe, to look. So we’re asking, is it
possible not to have a single problem but to face
problems? Because you’re going to have plenty of
problems. But to understand those problems and
to totally resolve them, the brain must be free.
Right? See the logic of it, because logic is

a
Meaning – ‘have you understood’