Krishnamurti

From Public Talk 1, Saanen, 10 July 1966

You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn’t react immediately, when there is an interval between what is being said and your reaction. In that interval is a quietness, a silence in which alone there is a comprehension that is not intellectual understanding. If there is a gap between what is said and your reaction to what is said, in that interval – whether a long period or for a few seconds – if you observe, there comes clarity. It is the interval that is the new brain. The immediate reaction is the old brain. The old brain functions in its own traditional, accepted, reactionary, animalistic sense. When there is an abeyance of that, when there is a quietness of that reaction, when there is an interval, then you will find the new brain acts. It is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain.