Questioner: I am a student of chartered accountancy. Even though I could understand each and every word of JK, the message remains vague. What should I do to understand his message fully?

Krishnamurti: Don't understand his message! (Laughter) He is not bringing a message. He is pointing out your life, not his life, or his message, he is pointing out how you live, what's your daily life. And we are unwilling to face that. We are unwilling to go into our sorrow, our tortures of anxiety, loneliness, the depressions we go through, the desire to fulfil, to become something. You are unwilling to face all that, and wanting to be led by somebody, wanting to understand the message of the Gita, or some other nonsensical book, including the speaker. The speaker says over and over again, he acts as a mirror into which you can look, the activity of your own self. And to look very carefully you have to pay attention, you have to listen - if you are interested - listen and find out the art of listening, the art of seeing, the art of learning. It's all there as a book, which is yourself. The book of mankind is you. Please sir, believe, see all the truth of all this. And we are unwilling to read that book. We want somebody to tell us about the book, or help us to analyse the book, to understand the book. So we invent the priest, the swami, the yogi, the sannyasi, who will tell you all about it. And so we escape from ourselves. So can we read the book, which is so ancient, which contains all the history of mankind, which is you. Can we read that book carefully, word by word, not distorting it, not choosing one chapter and neglecting the other chapter, taking one sentence and meditating about it, but the whole book. Either you read the whole book chapter by chapter, page after page, it may take a long time, if you read page by page it will take all your life; or is there a way of reading it completely with one glance? You understand my question? How can one read this book, which is the 'me', which is the 'you', which is the mankind - all the experiences of miseries, suffering, confusion, lack of integrity, all that is in there - how can you read it at one glance? You understand? Not take month after month, that's impossible. When you do that, taking time over the book, time is going to destroy the book. The book is you, and if you take time to investigate, read the book, that very time is going to destroy because our brain functions in time. You understand all this? So one must have the capacity to listen to what the book, the entire book says. To see clearly, which means that the brain is so alert, so tremendously active, not active as a bureaucrat, or as an engineer, or a businessman, or as a desperate crook, but the total activity of the brain. Can you observe yourself in the mirror, that book, which is yourself, completely, instantly, because the book is nothing. I wonder if you understand it. You may read the book from the first page to the last page and you will find there is nothing in it. You understand what I am saying? That means, can you be nothing. Don't become something. You understand? The book is the becoming - you understand? - the history of becoming. Do you understand all this? Is all this...

Sir, when you have examined yourself, if you examine yourself, if you look into yourself, what are you? A physical appearance: short, tall, beard or no beard, man, woman, name, form, and all the educated capacity, the travail, the pursuit - it's all a movement in becoming something, isn't it? Becoming. Becoming what? - a business manager, achieving, getting more money, becoming a saint? When a man tries to become a saint, he is no longer a saint, just caught in the trap of tradition. So you can glance at the book and see it is absolutely nothing. And to live in this world with nothing. You understand, sir? No, you don't.

So sirs, and ladies, you hear all this, perhaps if you are going, following, travelling with the speaker you hear this at every talk, put in different words, different context, different sentences. But to bring about a complete understanding in oneself, that's far more important than anything else in life because we are destroying the world, ourselves, we have no love, no care - you follow? - all that.

So the speaker has no message. The message is you. I am not... the speaker is not - this is not a matter of cleverness - just pointing out this.