Questioner: Marriage is a necessary part of any organized society,  but you seem to be against the institution of marriage.  What do you  say?  Please also explain the problem of sex.  Why has it become,  next to war, the most urgent problem of our day?

Krishnamurti: To ask a question is easy, but the difficulty is to  look very carefully into the problem itself, which contains the  answer. To understand this problem, we must see its enormous  implications.  That is difficult, because our time is very limited  and I shall have to be brief; and if you don't follow very closely,  you may not be able to understand.  Let us investigate the problem,  not the answer, because the answer is in the problem, not away from  it.  The more I understand the problem, the clearer I see the answer.  If you merely look for an answer, you will not find one, because you  will be seeking an answer away from the problem.  Let us look at  marriage, but not theoretically or as an ideal, which is rather  absurd; don't let us idealize marriage, let us look at it as it is,  for then we can do something about it.  If you make it rosy, then you  can't act; but if you look at it and see it exactly as it is, then  perhaps you will be able to act.

Now, what actually takes place?  When one is young, the  biological, sexual urge is very strong, and in order to set a limit  to it you have the institution called marriage.  There is the  biological urge on both sides, so you marry and have children.  You  tie yourself to a man or to a woman for the rest of your life, and in  doing so you have a permanent source of pleasure, a guaranteed  security, with the result that you begin to disintegrate; you live in  a cycle of habit, and habit is disintegration.  To understand this  biological, this sexual urge, requires a great deal of intelligence,  but we are not educated to be intelligent.  We merely get on with a  man or a woman with whom we have to live.  I marry at 20 or 25, and I  have to live for the rest of my life with a woman whom I have not   known.  I have-not known a thing about her, and yet you ask me to  live with her for the rest of my life.  Do you call that marriage?

As I grow and observe, I find her to be completely different from me,  her interests are different from mine; she is interested in clubs, I  am interested in being very serious, or vice versa.  And yet we have  children - that is the most extraordinary thing.  Sirs, don't look at  the ladies and smile; it is your problem.  So, I have established a  relationship the significance of which I do not know, I have neither  discovered it nor understood it.

It is only for the very, very few who love that the married  relationship has significance, and then it is unbreakable, then it is  not mere habit or convenience, nor is it based on biological, sexual  need.  In that love which is unconditional the identities are fused,  and in such a relationship there is a remedy, there is hope.  But for most of you, the married relationship is not fused.  To  fuse the separate identities, you have to know yourself, and she has  to know herself.  That means to love.  But there is no love - which  is am obvious fact.  Love is fresh, new, not mere gratification, not   mere habit.  It is unconditional.  You don't treat your husband or  wife that way, do you?  You live in your isolation, and she lives in  her isolation, and you have established your habits of assured sexual  pleasure.  What happens to a man who has an assured income?  Surely,  he deteriorates.  Have you not noticed it?  Watch a man who has an  assured income and you will soon see how rapidly his mind is  withering away.  He may have a big position, a reputation for  cunning, but the full joy of life is gone out of him.

Similarly, you have a marriage in which you have a permanent  source of pleasure, a habit without understanding, without love, and  you are forced to live in that state.  I am not saying what you  should do; but look at the problem first.  Do you think that is  right?  It does not mean that you must throw off your wife and pursue  somebody else.  What does this relationship mean?  Surely, to love is  to be in communion with somebody; but are you in communion with your  wife, except physically?  Do you know her, except physically?  Does  she know you?  Are you not both isolated, each pursuing his or her  own interests, ambitions and needs, each seeking from the other  gratification, economic or psychological security?  Such a  relationship is not a relationship at all: it is a mutually  self-enclosing process of psychological, biological and economic   necessity, and the obvious result is conflict, misery, nagging,  possessive fear, jealousy, and so on.  Do you think such a  relationship is productive of anything except ugly babies and an ugly  civilization?  Therefore, the important thing is to see the whole  process, not as something ugly, but as an actual fact which is taking  place under your very nose; and realizing that, what are you going to  do?  You cannot just leave it at that; but because you do not want to  look into it, you take to drink, to politics, to a lady around the  corner, to anything that takes you away from the house and from that  nagging wife or husband - and you think you have solved the problem.

That is your life, is it not?  Therefore, you have to do something about it, which means you have to face it, and that means, if  necessary, breaking up; because, when a father and mother are  constantly nagging and quarrelling with each other, do you think that  has not an effect on the children?  And we have already considered,  in the previous question, the education of children.

So, marriage as a habit, as a cultivation of habitual pleasure,  is a deteriorating factor, because there is no love in habit.  Love  is not habitual; love is something joyous, creative, new.  Therefore,  habit is the contrary of love; but you are caught in habit, and  naturally your habitual relationship with another is dead.  So, we     come back again to the fundamental issue, which is that the reformation of society depends on you, not on legislation. Legislation can only make for further habit or conformity. Therefore, you as a responsible individual in relationship have to do something, you have to act, and you can act only when there is an awakening of your mind and heart.  I see some of you nodding your heads in agreement with me, but the obvious fact is that you don't want to take the responsibility for transformation, for change; you  don't want to face the upheaval of finding out how to live rightly.  And so the problem continues, you quarrel and carry on, and finally  you die; and when you die somebody weeps, not for the other fellow,  but for his or her own loneliness.  You carry on unchanged and you think you are human beings capable of legislation, of occupying high positions, talking about God, finding a way to stop  wars, and so on.  None of these things mean anything, because you have not solved any of the fundamental issues.

Then, the other part of the problem is sex, and why sex has become so important.  Why has this urge taken such a hold on you?   Have you ever thought it out?  You have not thought it out, because you have just indulged; you have not searched out why there is this problem.  Sirs, why is there this problem?  And what happens when you deal with it by suppressing it completely - you know, the ideal of  Brahmacharya, and so on?  What happens?  It is still there.  You resent anybody who talks about a woman, and you think that you can  succeed in completely suppressing the sexual urge in yourself and  solve your problem that way; but you are haunted by it.  It is like living in a house and putting all your ugly things in one room; but they are still there.  So, discipline is not going to solve this  problem - discipline being sublimation, suppression, substitution - , because you have tried it, and that is not the way out.  So, what is the way out?  The way out is to understand the problem, and to understand is not to condemn or justify.  Let us look at it, then, in that way.

Why has sex become so important a problem in your life?  Is not the sexual act, the feeling, a way of self-forgetfulness?  Do you understand what I mean?  In that act there is complete fusion; at that moment there is complete cessation of all conflict, you feel  supremely happy because you no longer feel the need as a separate entity and you are not consumed with fear.  That is, for a moment   there is an ending of self-consciousness, and you feel the clarity of  self-forgetfulness, the joy of self abnegation.  So, sex has become  important because in every other direction you are living a life of  conflict, of self-aggrandizement and frustration.  Sirs, look at your  lives, political, social, religious: you are striving to become  something.  Politically, you want to be somebody, powerful, to have  position, prestige.  Don't look at somebody else, don't look at the  ministers.  If you were given all that, you would do the same thing.  So, politically, you are striving to become somebody, you are  expanding yourself, are you not?  Therefore, you are creating  conflict, there is no denial, there is no abnegation of the `me'.  On the contrary, there is accentuation of the `me'.  The same  process goes on in your relationship with things, which is ownership  of property, and again in the religion that you follow.  There is no  meaning in what you are doing, in your religious practices.  You just  believe, you cling to labels, words.  If you observe, you will see  that there too there is no freedom from the consciousness of the  `me' as the centre.  Though your religion says, `Forget yourself',  your very process is the assertion of yourself, you are still the  important entity.  You may read the Gita or the Bible, but you are  still the minister, you are still the exploiter, sucking the people  and building temples.

So, in every field, in every activity, you are indulging and emphasizing yourself, your importance, your prestige, your security. Therefore, there is only one source of self-forgetfulness, which is sex, and that is why the woman or the man becomes all-important to you, and why you must possess.  So, you build a society which enforces that possession, guarantees you that possession; and naturally sex becomes the all-important problem when everywhere else the self is the important thing.  And do you think, Sirs, that one can live in that state without contradiction, without misery, without frustration?  But when there is honestly and sincerely no self-emphasis, whether in religion or in social activity, then sex has very little meaning. It is because you are afraid to be as nothing, politically, socially, religiously, that sex becomes a problem; but if in all these things you allowed yourself to diminish, to be the less, you would see that sex becomes no problem at all.

There is chastity only when there is love.  When there is love, the problem of sex ceases; and without love, to pursue the ideal of     Brahmacharya is an absurdity, because the ideal is unreal.  The real    is that which you are; and if you don't understand your own mind, the    workings of your own mind, you will not understand sex, because sex    is a thing of the mind.  The problem is not simple.  It needs, not    mere habit-forming practices, but tremendous thought and enquiry into    your relationship with people, with property and with ideas.  Sir, it    means you have to undergo strenuous searching of your heart and mind,    thereby bringing a transformation within yourself.  Love is chaste;    and when there is love, and not the mere idea of chastity created by    the mind, then sex has lost its problem and has quite a different    meaning.