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Jiddu Krishnamurti on Killing Psychos and Tyrants

Questioner: If there is someone, say a madman, loose and killing people, and it is within one's power to stop him by killing him, what should one do?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : So let us kill all the Presidents, all the rulers, all the tyrants, all the neighbours, and yourself! (Laughter) No, no, do not laugh. We are part of all this. We have contributed by our own violence to the state the world is in. We don't see this clearly.

We think that by getting rid of a few people by pushing aside the establishment, we are going to solve the whole problem. Every physical revolution has been based on this, the French, the Communist and so on and they have ended up in bureaucracy or tyranny.

So my friends, to bring about a different way of living is to bring it about not for others but for oneself; because the `other' is oneself, there is no `we' and `they', there is only ourselves. If one really sees this, not verbally, not intellectually, but with one's heart, then one will see there can be a total action having a completely different kind of result, so there will be a new social structure, not the throwing out of one establishment and the creating of another.

One must have patience to enquire; young people do not have patience, they want instant results - instant coffee, instant tea, instant meditation - which means that they have never understood the whole process of living. If one understands the totality of living there is an action which is instantaneous, which is quite different from the instant action of impatience.

Look, see what is going on in America, the racial riots, the poverty, the ghettos, the utter meaninglessness of education as it is - look at the division in Europe, and how long it takes to bring about a Federated Europe. And look at what is happening in India, Asia, Russia and China.

When one looks at all that and the various divisions of religion, there is only one answer, one action, a total action, not a partial or fragmentary action. That total action is not to kill another but to see the divisions that have brought about this destruction of man. When one really seriously and sensitively sees that, there will be quite a different action.

Questioner: For someone who is born in a country where there is complete tyranny so that he is totally suppressed, having no opportunity of doing anything himself - I feel most people here cannot imagine it - he is born in this situation and so were his parents, what has he done to create the chaos in this world?

Jiddu Krishnamurti : Probably he has not done anything. What has the poor man done who lives in the wilds of India, or in a small village in Africa, or in some happy little valley, not knowing anything that is happening in the rest of the world? In what ways has he contributed to this monstrous structure? Probably he has not done anything, poor fellow, what can he do?

Questioner: What does it mean to be serious? I have the feeling that I am not serious.

Jiddu Krishnamurti : Let us find out together. What does it mean to be serious - so that you are completely dedicated to something, to some vocation, that you want to go right to the end of it. I am not defining it, do not accept any definition. One wants to find out how to live quite a different kind of life, a life in which there is no violence, in which there is complete inward freedom; one wants to find out and intends giving time, energy, thought, everything, to that. I would call such a person a serious person.

He is not easily put off - he may amuse himself, but his course is set. This does not mean that he is dogmatic or obstinate, that he does not adjust. He will listen to others, consider, examine, observe. He may in his seriousness become self-centred; that very self-centredness will prevent him from examining; but, he has got to listen to others, he has got to examine, to question constantly; which means that he has to be highly sensitive.

He has to find out how and to whom he listens. So he is all the time listening, pursuing, enquiring; he is discovering and with a sensitive brain, a sensitive mind, a sensitive heart they are not separate things - he is enquiring with the totality and the sensitivity of all that. Find out if the body is sensitive; be aware of its gestures, its peculiar habits.

You cannot be sensitive physically if you overeat, nor can you become sensitive through starvation or fasting. One has to have regard for what one eats. One has to have a brain that is sensitive; that means a brain that is not functioning in habits, pursuing its own particular little pleasure, sexual or otherwise.

Source: Jiddu Krishnamurti 1st Public Talk Saanen 16th July 1970