Teacher: I wonder whether we could go into the problem of how to ask the right question? We generally ask a question to find an answer, to arrive at a method, to discover the reason for things. We question to find out why one is jealous, why one is angry. Now, can the quality of questioning be engendered in oneself and in the child so that there is only enquiry without a method or without merely finding reasons? Is not the problem of right questioning of prime importance in our approach to the child?
     Krishnamurti: How do we question anything? When do we question ourselves or question authority or question the educational system? What does the word "question" mean? I wonder if a self-critical awareness is lacking in us. Are we aware of what we are doing, thinking, feeling? How do we awaken or question, so as to bring about this critical aware- ness? If we go into this it might help to arouse in the child a self-critical capacity, a critical awareness. How do we set about it? What makes me question? Do I ever question myself. Do I see how mediocre I am? Or do I question, find an explanation and move on? It is very depressing to discover one's mediocrity and therefore one does not question, and one never goes beyond.
     Let us put it differently. Very little of us is alive. A small part of us is throbbing, the rest is asleep. The little part that is throbbing, gradually grows dim, falls into a rut and is finished.
     Does one know what it means to be a full human being? The fact is, one is not alive. The question is to be totally alive, to be physically alive, to be in very good health, not to overeat, to be sensitive emotionally, to feel, to have a quality of sympathy, and to have a very good mind. Otherwise, one is dead.
     How would you awaken the mind as a whole? It is your problem. How would you see that you are completely alive inside, and outside; in your feelings, in your taste in everything? And how would you awaken in the student this feeling of non-fragmented living?
     There are only two ways of doing it: either there is something within you which is so urgent that it burns away all contradiction; or you have to find an approach which will watch all the time, which will deliberately set about investigating everything you are doing, an awareness which will ceaselessly ask the question to find out in yourself so that a new quality comes into being which keeps all the dirt out. Now, which is it that you are doing as a human being as well as a teacher?
     Teacher: Is one to question constantly, or is there a questioning which has its own momentum?
     Krishnamurti: If there is no momentum, then you have to start with little things, haven't you? Start with the little things, not the big things. Start observing how you dress, what you say, how you watch the road, without the operation of criticism. And, watching, listening, how are you going to get to the other, which will be the momentum, which carries all by itself?
     There is a momentum to which you do not have to pay attention, but you cannot come to it except by watching little things; and yet you have to see that you are not caught in this everlasting watching. To watch one's dress, the sky, and yet be out of it, so that your mind is not only watching little things but absorbing the wider issues, such as the good of the country, and the much wider issues also, such as authority, such as this perpetual desire to fulfil, this constant concern whether one is right or wrong, and fear. So, can the mind observe the little things and without being caught in the little things, can it move out so that it can record much greater issues?
     Teacher: What is the state of mind, the approach in which there is this everlasting watching, the understanding of little things, without being caught in the little things?
     Krishnamurti: Why are you caught in the little things? What is the thing that makes you a prisoner of the little?
     Teacher: My opinions. And yet I do not want to be caught in little things. Krishnamurti: But I have to pay attention to little things. Most people are caught in them the moment they pay attention. To pay attention and yet not to be prisoner to little things, is the issue. Now, what makes the mind or the brain a prisoner?
     Teacher: Concern with the immediate.
     Krishnamurti: What do you mean, sir? Do you mean not having a long vision? You are not looking at the problem.
     Teacher: My attachment to little things.
     Krishnamurti: Are you not a prisoner of little things?
     Teacher: I am. With me it is probably a deep unconscious sense, that I am preparing myself for something great, an illusion like that.
     Krishnamurti: Are you aware that you are a prisoner of little things? Examine why you are a prisoner. Take the fact that you are a prisoner of little things, and possibly of many little things, ask why, go into it, question it, find out. Do not give an explanation and run oR with the explanation which you did just now. You must actually take one thing and look at it. In tackling inwardly the frustration, the conflict, the resistance, you correct the outer. The psychological conflict within expresses itself outwardly in your becoming a prisoner of little things and then you try to correct them. Without understanding the inward conflict, the misery, life has no meaning. If you discover that you are frustrated, then go into it; and if you have gone deeply into it, it will correct the anger, the overeating, the over-dressing.
     The way you question frustration is important. How do you question? So that frustration unfolds, so that frustration flowers? It is only when thought flowers that it can naturally die. Like the flower in a garden, thought must blossom, it must come to fruition and then it dies. Thought must be given freedom to die. In the same way there must be freedom for frustration to flower and die. And the right question is whether can there be freedom for frustration to flower and to die?
     Teacher: What do you mean by flowering, sir?
     Krishnamurti: Look at the garden, the flowers in front over there! They come to bloom and after a few days they wither away because it is their nature. Now, frustration must be given freedom so that it blossoms. You have to understand the reason of frustration, but not in order to suppress it, not to say, "I must fulfil". Why should I fulfil? If I am a liar I can try to stop lying, which is what people generally do. But can I allow that lie to flower and die? Can I refuse to say it is right or wrong, good or bad? Can I see what is behind the lie? I can only find out spontaneously why I lie if there is freedom to find out. In the same way, in order not to be a prisoner of little things, can I find out why I am a prisoner? I want that fact to flower. I want it to grow and to expand, so that it withers and dies without my touching it. Then I am no longer a prisoner though I watch the little things.
     Your question was: "Is there a momentum which keeps moving, keeping itself clean, healthy?" That momentum, that flame which burns, can only be when there is freedom for everything to flower - the ugly, the beautiful, the evil, the good and the stupid - so that there is not a thing suppressed, so that there is not a thing which has not been brought up and examined and burnt out. And I cannot do that if through the little things I do not discover frustration, misery, sorrow, conflict, stupidity, dullness. If I only discover frustration through reasoning I do not know what frustration means. So, from little things I go to something, wider and in understanding the wider, the other things flower without intervention.
     Teacher: I seem to catch a glimpse of what you say, I am going to examine it.
     Krishnamurti: You are examining it while I am examining it. You are examining your own little things in which you are caught.
     Teacher: In the flowering of conflict, there should be freedom to flower and die. The little mind does not give itself that freedom. You are saying that the inward conflict should flower and die and again you said that this flowering and dying is happening as we are examining it now. There is one difficulty, which is, that I seem to project something into this floration and that itself is a hindrance.
     Krishnamurti: That is the real crux. You see, to you flowering is an idea. You do not see the fact, the symptom, the cause, and allow that cause to blossom right now. The little mind always deals with symptoms and never with the fact. It does not have the freedom to find out. It is doing the very thing which indicates the little mind, because it says, "It is a good idea, I will think about it," and so it is lost for it is then dealing with ideation, not with fact. It does not say, "Let it flower, and let us see what happens." Then it would discover. But, it says, "It is a good idea; I must investigate the idea".
     Now, we have discovered a great many things. First of all, we are unaware of the little things. Then, becoming aware of them, we are caught in them and we say, "I must do that, I must do this".
     Can I see the symptom, go into the cause, and let the cause flower? But I want it to flower in a certain direction, which I means I have an opinion on how it should flower. Now can I go after that? That becomes my major issue. And I see that I prevent the cause flowering because I am afraid I do not know what will happen if I allow frustration to flower. So I go after why I am afraid? What am I afraid of? I see, that so long as fear exists there can be no flowering. So I have to tackle fear, not through the idea, but tackle it, as a fact which means I will allow fear to blossom. I will let fear blossom, and see I what happens. All this requires a great deal of inward perception.
     Allow fear to blossom - do you know what that means? It may mean I may lose my job, be destroyed by my wife, my husband.
     Can I allow everything to blossom? It does not mean I am going to murder, rob somebody, but can I just allow "what is" to blossom.
     Teacher: Could we go into this, then allowing a thing to blossom?
     Krishnamurti: Do you really see the fact? What does it mean, to allow a thing to blossom, to allow jealousy to blossom? First of all, how unrespectable, how unspiritual. How do you allow jealousy to blossom, to achieve a full life? Can you do it so that you are not caught in it? Can you let that feeling have its full vitality, without obstruction? Which means you do not identify yourself with it, which means you do not say it is right or wrong, you do not have an opinion about it; these are all methods of destroying jealousy. But you do not want to destroy jealousy. You want it to blossom, to show all its colours, whatever they may be.
     Teacher: it is not very clear to me, sir.
     Krishnamurti: Have you grown a plant? How do you do it?
     Teacher: Prepare the ground, put in manure....
     Krishnamurti: Put in the right manure, use the right seed, put it in at the right time, look after it, prevent things from happening to it. You give it freedom. Why do you not do the same with jealousy?
     Teacher: The flowering here is not expressed outside like the plant.
     Krishnamurti: It is much more real than the plant you are planting outside in the field. Do you not know what jealousy is? At the moment of jealousy, do you say it is imagination? You are burning with it, are you not? You are angry, furious. Why do you not pursue it, not as an idea but actually, take it out and see that it flowers, so that each flowering is a destruction of itself and therefore, there is no "you" at the end of it who is observing the destruction. In that is real creation.
     Teacher: When the flower blossoms, it reveals itself. What exactly do you mean, sir, when you say that when jealousy blossoms it will destroy itself?
     Krishnamurti: Take a bud, an actual bud from a bush. If you nip it, it will never flower, it will die quickly. If you let it blossom, then it shows you the colour, the delicacy, the pollen, everything. It shows what it actually is without your being told it is red, it is blue, it has pollen. It is there for you to look at. In the same way, if you allow jealousy to flower, then it shows you everything it actually is - which is envy, attachment. So in allowing jealousy to blossom, it has shown you all its colours and it has revealed to you what is behind jealousy, which you will never discover if you do not allow it to blossom.
     To say that jealousy is the cause of attachment is mere verbalization. But in actually allowing jealousy to flower, the fact that you are attached to something becomes a fact, an emotional fact, not an intellectual, verbal idea and so each flowering reveals that which you have not been able to discover; and as each fact unveils itself, it flowers and you deal with it. You let the fact flower and it opens other doors, till there is no flowering at all of any kind and, therefore, no cause or motive of any kind.
     Teacher: Psychological analysis will help me to find out the causes of jealousy. Between analysis and the flowering in which a flower reveals itself, is there a vital difference?
     Krishnamurti: One is an intellectual process, the observer operating on the thing observed, which is analysis, which is correction, the altering and the adding. The other is the fact without the observer, it is what the fact is itself.
     Teacher: What you say is totally non-verbal. There is no relationship between the observer and the observed.
     Krishnamurti: Once you get the feeling that everything in you must blossom, which is a very dangerous state, if you understand this thing, that everything must flower in you, which is a marvellous thing, in that there is real freedom. And, as each thing flowers, there is neither observer nor the observed; therefore there is no contradiction. So all the things blossom in you and die.
     Teacher: Why should I allow it to blossom if I can nip it in the bud?
     Krishnamurti: What is going to happen to the flower if you kill the bud? If you kill the bud, it will not flower any more. In the same way, you say, "I must kill jealousy or fear" but i it is not possible to kill jealousy and fear. You can suppress them, alter them, offer them to some god, but they will always be there. But if you really understand the central fact, to allow everything to flower without interference, it will be a revolution.
     Teacher: Jealousy is a complex thing.
     Krishnamurti: Let it flower. Jealousy, in flowering, reveals its complexity. And in understanding the complexity, in watching the complexity, it reveals some other factor, and let i that blossom, so that everything is blossoming in you, nothing is denied, nothing is suppressed, nothing is controlled. It is a tremendous education, is it not?
     Teacher: There is great significance in what you are saying. But is it possible?
     Krishnamurti: It is possible, otherwise there is no point in saying it. If you see that, how will you help the student to flower? How will you help him to understand?
     Teacher: I would start with myself. By a certain psychological approach I can see the cause. What you are saying is that in flowering, the problem unfolds itself. There is a great deal of difference between the two. But even if I have a glimpse of it, to convey it to the student is difficult.
     Krishnamurti: It is a non-verbal communication which I have communicated to you verbally. How have I come to a flowering of thought which takes place in communication?
     Teacher: Before one can investigate into this floration or even into the space in which floration can take place, there is a quality of equilibrium which has to be established to allow anything to flower in me.
     Krishnamurti: I do not accept it. I do not believe you can do it that way. Take the idea of jealousy. I say make it flower. But you will not let it flower.
     Teacher: When I am dealing with a child, is not the first factor this awakening of the quality of perception, which is equilibrium?
     Krishnamurti: I will tell you what it is. If you listened, really listened, the flowering would actually take place. If you listened, observed, understood, immediately after the listening, it has taken place if that has taken place, then the other things are very simple to the child. You will find different ways to watch the child, to help the child, to communicate with the child at the verbal level. The very act of listening is the following.
     Teacher: Is that listening a quality, sir?
     Krishnamurti: You are listening. Why do you call it a quality? You have listened to what I have to say this morning: "Let everything flower."
     If you listen, it will take place. It is not a quality. A quality is a thing already established. This is a living thing, a burning thing, a furious thing. You cannot make it a quality, a practice. Can you practice seeing colour? You cannot. You can see the beauty and the glory of the flower only when there is a flowering.