“You have enough problems - wars, your neighbours, your husbands, wives, children, your ambitions. Do not add another. Either die completely, knowing the necessity, the importance, the urgency of it; or carry on. Do not create another contradiction, another problem.”
Public Talk 7 Paris, France | September 19, 1961
Was Krishnamurti being flippant when he said this to his audience, or did he know it was possible for the brain to “die completely” when one knows “the necessity, the importance, the urgency of it”?
If I take Krishnamurti seriously, I assume he wasn’t being flippant; that he knew it was possible for one to die now to everything one holds dear and meaningful. But because I can’t imagine being completely inconsolable, I can’t imagine “dying” to everything I know because if the conditioned brain can’t imagine it, it can’t do it.
I, the conditioned brain, does what it thinks it should do, and does not to do what it thinks it should not. I am conditioned to choose what to do, and that means I can’t choose to do what I can’t imagine doing.
So to die to everything I know is impossible until/unless “the necessity, the importance, the urgency” overwhelms the brain’s conditioning. Or to put it another way, doing what must be done is out of my hands because my hands can do only what they know or presume to know how to do.
Is the conditioned brain unable to “die completely” because it is impervious to the gravity of the situation? Or is it capable of addressing the situation honestly?