March 25, 1975 (Hotel Huntington, San Francisco, California)

Krishnamurti: Good morning Dr. Gonzalez.

Ruben: Good morning.

Krishnamurti: I guess you have some questions, right?

Ruben: You told me two days ago that you’ll never die in an aircraft, what
is it that makes you feel protected?

Krishnamurti: That.

Ruben: O.K. Please, tell me about That (Or the Other).

Krishnamurti: You can see That in action, but you can’t talk about it.

*(long pause, in complete silence)*

Ruben: You already know that some of my friends disappeared in Argentina.
Sometimes I feel deep sorrow for Argentina and for the rest of the world. How
come so much horror?

Krishnamurti: You can be free of all conditioning and then you’ll be free of
sorrow. When you are not an Argentine anymore you’ll be able to do more for
mankind and even for Argentina. I was born in India. I had an English passport.
When India declared its independence from England I asked for an Indian
passport. Since then I have great problems to get visas when I travel around,
but I’m not English nor Hindu. I’m a human being.

Ruben: You are a very special human being. You are easy to love.

Krishnamurti: I admit I’m different, but the transformation that has
occurred in me can occur in any other human being. And nobody needs Krishnamurti
or Dr. Ruben for that radical transformation, which is so necessary, to occur.

Ruben: Maybe not, but a serious dialogue helps.

Krishnamurti: With no guru. Dialogue without gurus.

Ruben: Could we say that you are being my guru without us wanting it and
that I’m being your guru without it being my purpose?

Krishnamurti: Then there is a serious dialogue. You and I are seeing
together the same thing at the same time. The most repugnant thing is to
prostrate yourself to another human being and adore him or her.

*(long pause, in vibrant silence)*

Ruben: Someone told me you sometimes even faint out of sheer physical
pain… What is that?

Krishnamurti: I call it “the process” but I don’t understand it nor want to.
I leave all the explanations about “the process”, healing, and clairvoyance to
doctors like yourself (laughing).

Ruben: I’d like you to tell me how to heal. I mean healing in its pristine
and complete sense.

Krishnamurti: Again Dr. speaking *(long pause)* I prepared tea for you the
other day. You found it bitter and left it. I had to ask you to finish it. You
still have predilections, Dr. Gonzalez.

Ruben: So, to heal (with capital letters) you need to have no predilections.

Krishnamurti: No, no. It’s necessary not to have predilections. Period. If
you’re content for something you’re not content.

*(long pause)*

Ruben: Would you summarize the teaching in only one sentence?

Krishnamurti: Attempt without effort to live with death in futureless
silence.

Ruben: It sounds absurd.

Krishnamurti: Some time ago, in 1972, I spent a full morning with That
without leaving my bed. I was completely quiet, before doing my Hatha yoga (only
physical yoga, just to keep a flexible body)… that was like a flame in the
center of immensity. And the center of immensity was my brain. Do you
understand?

Ruben: Yes.

*(long pause)*

Krishnamurti: Then, what are you waiting for?

Ruben: What? Are you by any chance saying that That is ready for me right
now?

Krishnamurti: That’s right. But you are too sad. What a waste! Then, what
are you waiting for?

Ruben: I want to understand that sentence: “Die in silence without future”.
I think it would be better to say “attempt without effort to live in peace in
futureless silence”.

Krishnamurti: No. Death is the end of all you are afraid to loose: your
attachments, your memory, your disappeared friends, your prestige as a
children’s surgeon. All that is the content of your consciousness. Can you get
rid of it right now, now that you’re young and healthy and not wait for 50 years
for it to crumble by itself? It’s easy for me to die.

Ruben: Saint Paul said: “I die every day”.

Krishnamurti: Paul said “I die every day” and Dr. Gonzalez repeats what
Paul says and nothing at all happens.

Ruben: You’re more of a surgeon than I am.

Krishnamurti: Dr. Gonzalez, your brain has been as it is for the last
million years. For how long will it be like that? Will you go to bed tonight
with that brain of yours as it always has been? Habit, sorrow, anger, etc.?

Ruben: I wouldn’t be here if I wanted to go to bed with this brain as it
is. Nevertheless, I know I shouldn’t accept what you say just blindly. I have to
experience it. Would you be able to facilitate the experience of that which may
transform my brain and my life?

Krishnamurti: If I was so stupid as to facilitate it, then all I say would
become a theory or a technique, like so many others. You have to do it yourself,
Dr. Gonzalez. Climb to the summit and look, or do you prefer to go to bed and
beg me to describe it to you? Would you be satisfied with my description? Then
you have no substance, then you are a second- hand human being.

*(pause)*

Ruben: How does mediocrity end?

Krishnamurti: As you get rid of the contents of human consciousness, will
you get rid of all word?

Ruben: Without saying “Krishnamurti is talking to me”.

Krishnamurti: Or he who listens is a “respectable Dr.” You simply listen
totally in pure silence.

Ruben: Nevertheless, even with no words, I’ll be able to talk meaningfully
from deep silence.

Krishnamurti: For the first time, quite sir. The word God is not God.

Ruben: Will it help to stop sex with my wife? (*)

Krishnamurti: Dr. Gonzalez, if you love, you love your wife, then you do
what you will and there is beauty in what you do. Don’t worry about sex, do it
or don’t. Now, let’s be silent for a while because Mr. and Mrs. Lillifelt will
be here soon. We will have to talk, because you know well Dr. Gonzalez, that I
will not live forever. Perhaps ten years more and the chap will be gone.

-=Comments =-

(*) The relationship with my wife ended three years later when she left
our house, which I immediately got rid of. Ever since then I live in the desert
without securing my future.

The meeting followed the dialogue but I have already written about it.

Krishnamurti died almost exactly ten years later.