ELIMINATE THE THINKER !!
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We said last time when we met that we would discuss the question of intelligence, and I think if we could go through it as deeply as possible and as fully, perhaps it might be very beneficial to see whether the mind has the capacity of fully comprehending problems and thereby discovering what it is to be really intelligent. To go into it very deeply, it seems to me, first we must understand what is a problem; then how the mind comprehends or is aware of the problem, how it understands the problem—which leads, does it not, to the understanding of self-knowledge. Knowledge is always in the past. Self-knowing is an active process of the present; it is an active present. And in understanding a problem, one discovers, doesn’t one, the active process of knowing the instrument—that is, thinking, not theoretically, not academically, but actually—one experiences the process of knowing. We will go into that, and perhaps we will be able to discover what it is to be intelligent.

I don’t see how we can discuss in a serious manner what is intelligence if we do not understand how we think. A mere definition of intelligence has no significance. The dictionary has a meaning, and you and I can give definitions, conclusions. But it seems to me that the very definition and giving a conclusion indicates a lack of intelligence rather than intelligence. So, if you think it is worthwhile also, we could go into this problem of intelligence rather widely and extensively, rather with fun, with a sense of gaiety—with a desirable seriousness which has also its own humor. So if you would let me talk a little bit, then you can pick up the threads, and afterwards we can discuss together.

I feel a mind that has a problem is incapable of really being free. A mind that is ridden with problems can never be really intelligent. I will go into all that. We will discuss all that presently. A mind that is increasing problems, that is the soil of problems, that starts to think from a problem, is no longer capable of intelligently approaching the problem. And a problem surely implies a thing that the mind does not understand, it finds hard to understand, cannot grapple with, cannot penetrate through to a solution. That is what we call a problem. It may be a problem with my wife, with children, with society, individually or collectively; the problem implies a sense of not being able to find a solution, an answer, and therefore that which we cannot find an answer or a solution for, we call that a problem. A mechanic who understands a piston engine knows all the things connected with a piston engine—to him it is not a problem because he knows; there is no problem to him. And also knowledge creates problems. I don’t know if we could discuss that a little bit.

The Collected Works
of J. Krishnamurti
Volume XII 1961
There Is No Thinker,
Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Comment: From my background. Thinking is the most natural process.

KRISHNAMURTI: I ask you, “Where do you live?” And your response is immediate. Isn’t it? Because where you live is very familiar to you, without a thought you reply quickly. Isn’t that so, sir? And I ask you a further complex question. There is a time lag between the reply and the challenge. In that interval one is thinking. The thinking is looking into the recesses of memory. Isn’t it?

I ask you, “What is the distance between here and Madras?” You say, “I know it, but let me look it up.” Then you say the distance is so many miles. So you have taken an interval of a minute; during that minute, the process of thinking was going on—which is looking into the memory and the memory replying. Isn’t that so, sir? Then if I ask you a still more complex question, the time interval is greater. And if I ask a question the answer to which you don’t know, you say, “I don’t know,” because you have not been able to discover the reply in your memory. However, you are waiting to check, you ask a specialist, or go back home and look into a book and tell. This is the process of your thinking, isn’t it?—waiting for an answer. And if we proceed a little further, if we ask a question of which you don’t know the answer at all, for which memory has no response, there is no waiting, there is no expectation. Then the mind says, “I really do not know, I cannot answer it.”

Now can the mind ever be in such a state when it says, “I really do not know”?—which is not a negation, which isn’t still saying, “I am waiting for an answer.” I ask you what truth is, what God is, what is, and you will reply according to your tradition. But if you push it further and if you deny the tradition because mere repetition is not discovery of God, or reality, or what you will, a mind that says “I don’t know” is entirely different from a mind which is merely searching for an answer. And isn’t it necessary that a mind should be in such a state when it says, “I really do not know”? Must it not be in that state to discover something, for something new to enter into it?

The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti -Volume XII 1961: There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti