Krishnamurti - The immeasurable, non-verbal communication, love, Krishnamurti’s youth

Krishnamurti Subtitles

BR74S9 - The immeasurable, non-verbal communication, love, Krishnamurti’s youth
Brockwood Park, UK - 18 October 1974
Seminar 9

0:01	This is J. Krishnamurti’s 9th seminar with scientists at Brockwood Park, 1974.
0:08	David Bohm: Well, if we’re ready then... Is everybody ready? Well, this morning, as suggested yesterday, I’ll begin by saying something and we’ll see how it goes from there.
0:24	The plan is that eventually Krishnamurti will start – you know, either this morning or in the afternoon – he will start to give his talk and we’ll go on throughout Saturday, as long as we find it necessary.
0:41	And... Now, Sunday morning, the plan is that we won’t have our regular meeting but rather there will be a talk at 11:30, I believe, out here in the Hall, to the whole school.
0:53	Krishnamurti will give... will talk in one of his usual talks to the school; everyone here is, of course, invited.
1:02	Now... And on Sunday afternoon, for those who are left, Alan Rowlands will have another piano recital to continue the one he gave last Sunday.
1:18	Now, last Sunday evening, just before our first meeting, Maurice Wilkins ‘phoned me up and he suggested, you know, that we should all discuss something about out own relation to this... to science or to the whole question rather than merely give a paper or something on our particular interests; and I thought, as you know, this was a good suggestion, we have incorporated it.
1:45	So I’ll start that way. In fact, the... See, where I first became interested – well, strongly interested – in science was when I was in the fourth grade or ten years old, we... they were given an astronomy book in which one saw the tremendous scale of the sun and the earth and the stars and the tremendous order with which these things were moving and, you know, interrelated; a vast, immense order, which made a very strong impression on me, in contrast to the usual sort of life that people lived, you see.
2:28	That is, the usual life seemed very petty, you know, very contradictory and confused. You see, for example, among the boys from the working class who surrounded me, probably the highest virtue was to be able to beat up the other fellow (laughs) and in the middle class the highest virtue was to make a good impression and eventually to make money.
2:53	Now, the entire tenure of society seemed to be of that sort and, while I never put it in words, I felt immediately this immense contrast.
3:05	Then, perhaps, when I went on a bit later, in the library I found books on Chemistry and Physics and the atomic theory.
3:17	Now, this made also a very deep impression because the atomic theory implied that the entire, vast universe was one, that the same atoms from here to the most distant imaginable star, the same laws.
3:32	And also, another thing that made a deep impression on me was atomic power, the notion that in these atoms were stored immense energy, far beyond anything that anybody had dreamed of.
3:44	And I, of course, formed the hope, the ambition of helping to release this energy.
3:51	Now, I won’t go into all the details of my scientific development but, say, the third key stage was when I became a graduate student and I learned the quantum theory, and there I learned about the inseparability of the observer and observed; that is, the observing instrument... according to the quantum theory every process, every physical process takes place in terms of indivisible quantum jumps – not continuous, divisible – and therefore, the connection between the observing apparatus and the thing observed had to be indivisible, unanalysable, and that implied that the entire universe was one and indivisible.
4:40	It went on, more or less carried forward what I had learned about the quantum theory and what I had learned from astronomy.
4:48	And perhaps we could say the next stage in this was when, considerably later, I – actually Saral – picked up the book from the library of Krishnamurti’s, The First and Last Freedom, and I read in there about the oneness of the observer and observed, about the observed is the observed, and I felt that was the key to the thing, you see, to the whole thing.
5:19	I mean, the... Perhaps we’ll return to that a bit, later. Now... So that in a sense what I have been seeking or working with, looking for in science is this oneness, this wholeness, this totality.
5:40	Now, but let me also say, you know, that when I went in for science, although, I mean, I had early the ambition of making a lot of money, it was for the sake of being free of all the ordinary restrictions of life, so that I could devote myself to scientific work.
6:05	I think that in all my scientific work, I should say that in my scientific work, I’ve, generally at least, done it with, I would say, with love, you see, with passion and it was not just a job, you see, or not just to get ahead.
6:23	Now, but along with this there was another passion, as it were, which arose when I contemplated our society and I saw the tremendous injustice and suffering and confusion, and so I felt that, you know, something has to be done about this; we can’t go on with it.
6:53	And I became interested in politics which, at a certain stage, was my second passion. I think Maurice knew me at that time. Now, at first I felt that... no, when I...
7:11	I felt that freedom, you know, democracy was the key thing, that there was the top dog and the underdog – my sympathies were wholly with the underdog – and that through democracy the power would go to the underdog and everything would be set right.
7:29	(Laughs) Now... So I felt that... And also, in school I had been taught that America was a democracy and that it was the land of freedom, in contrast to the older countries where there was... who were bound by autocracy and by tradition, America was a new country, that it would be free, you see?
7:51	And also, that the slaves had been liberated in America, in the Civil War. You see, I felt when I heard about slavery that this was the worst possible thing that could ever happen, you see; that in other words, it was a complete degradation and corruption of human beings to have slavery, and that for thousands of years there had been slavery and both the slaves and those who’d do the enslaving were really corrupt.
8:18	Now... the thing was really an intolerable evil. Now... and that in fact what replaced slavery was not a lot better. So... Well, then the... but as... then came the Depression and the discovery that America couldn’t respond to the challenge, you see; that here, with tremendous productive capacity, there was poverty, there was a depression, they were unable to use it, and it was chaos, you see, stagnation.
8:55	Well, then along with this came the growth of fascism and Nazism, you see, and I felt that Nazism was an evil, even greater, perhaps, than slavery.
9:05	It was a thing of complete corruption of... in other words, truth, everything was thrown away, just... and I saw the Western democracies just selling out to the Nazis, step-by-step.
9:18	And finally they threw away Spain, they threw away Czechoslovakia and finally there came the time when France was over-run, which I felt a complete sense of sinking sensation that not much stood between them and the whole world because I felt deeply that America was already semi-fascist in its way of thinking, that only England and Russia stood between Nazism and complete domination of the world.
9:49	Now, the... Well... So before that time I had been against the Communists because I felt that they were... they did not value freedom, you see, but I felt that they were the only ones who were seriously resisting the Nazis.
10:08	Now... and I became favourable to Communism and I studied Marx’s ideas. When I got to Berkley, California, there were a lot of Marxists there and I listened to them, and I had the hope that Socialism and Communism would be the way to stop this tide of destruction, you see; I felt democracy couldn’t stop it, it was too weak.
10:35	And I thought maybe something really strong like Communism might do it. But then – just to cut a long story short – after the war came the study revealing what Communism really was and there came the 20th Congress of the Soviet Union where it became clear that Stalin was a monster second only to Hitler (laughs) and that there must be millions of little Stalins in Russia by now, having been influenced by that whole situation.
11:08	So... and that really was a tremendous shock to me. But it was a little... a few years after that really that I first heard of Krishnamurti, his work.
11:26	But I should also consider one other point, you see, there was... throughout all this period I felt, you know, that science was really good, you see, that it would... it was true and that it would really... that there was what Maurice called, ‘The Brotherhood of Scientists,’ at least potentially.
11:54	Now... But then, toward the middle of the Sixties, I mean, it was becoming clear to me that science was involved in the corruption of the world, like everything else, that most scientists were doing their work, you know, just to make a living or to become known or get ahead or whatever reason it may have been.
12:18	Now... See, I remember once the thing sort of came to a head. I had hoped that some of the newer universities would not be bound by the traditions of the older ones, so I once remember giving a talk at one of the newer universities, which I won’t mention (laughs).
12:38	And I talked to a man who was teaching a relativity course there – you see, I’d written a book on relativity, where I tried to explain the thing in an imaginative and clear way – and he said he wasn’t going to use the book because he felt the main point was to teach these people to carry out calculations to run high energy machines (laughs).
12:56	And so I felt that was the breaking point, that this whole theory of relativity which Einstein had developed in such a revolutionary way, had sort of degenerated into some device for running these machines, these petty little projects.
13:11	And then, at that moment, I suddenly noticed that the laboratory was sort of an antiseptic, stainless steel and plastic (laughs) and that the buildings were very mediocre and so on, these new buildings, and I thought, you know, it sort of all added up to a perception that the whole thing was not going anywhere.
13:34	The... So... Well... So you could say that the two passions, science and politics, somehow had reached this impasse.
13:53	Now... But I think that, you see, I perceived anyway that what Krishnamurti was saying was true, that the basic trouble of mankind was not lack of knowledge or lack of political organisation, you know, but that it was thought, and thought which is being wrongly used and has become confused and so on.
14:23	And this goes very deep, in other words, that this is really what requires our attention.
14:32	Now, you see, I should say just to add that... in other words, I would like to add, to say that, therefore I felt that in order for anybody to do anything new in science or in any other field that there must be this love or passion or strong feeling and that it cannot be separated from compassion, which is just the same thing with the word com added, which means passion together or feeling together, right?
15:04	I find it inconceivable that one could have one without the other. Now, the... Well, then I’ll just say, since thought I said was, I felt – I mean, after listening to Krishnamurti – thought was the key and thought is the problem.
15:30	I won’t say much about thought now but, I mean, since that time I’ve given a great deal of attention to thought; it has become perhaps my principal interest.
15:40	(Laughs) And... Although I still do science, because I think that it has value, in its context.
15:54	Now, I’ll just say a few words – I mean, endless things can be said about thought but...
16:03	– that a point which I think is relevant for scientific knowledge or knowledge in general.
16:11	There’s a certain distinction, the way of thinking between East and West that I would like to discuss, about the attitude to measure.
16:21	Now, in the West, measurement has been a very primary thing in our thought. It goes back to the ancient Greeks, probably before, and it shows in the language, which carries a kind of archaeology of our thought process, if we look at the derivations of words.
16:41	Now, the word measure is very deeply involved in our thought. If we... There are three words which are related: one is the word for medicine which comes from medere, meaning to cure, which really shows that people thought that a healthy body was one in the right measure.
16:58	Remember the ancient Greek idea everything must be in the right measure – this was their... – and going out of the measure was tragedy.
17:06	Now, measure didn’t mean to them just the number of degrees or something like that, it meant the limits of the quality.
17:14	See, if we use the language in their way, we would say the measure of water is 0-100 degrees, water exists properly in that measure, not beyond it.
17:23	Similarly, there was the measure of right behaviour, see, the measure of right action and so on. So they could say medicine was to bring the body into its right measure. Now, then there’s the word moderation meaning measure; modesty the same thing.
17:44	It means to... you act in the right measure. Behaviour is measure, in the right measure; behaviour going beyond the right measure is immoderate, you see, and immoderation leads to destruction — that was the view.
17:58	Then comes the word meditation meaning measure, and they therefore probably felt that in some sense the mind too must be kept in the right measure, all in the right measure, you see?
18:10	There was a whole philosophy of life there, which is really our philosophy because we are the inheritors of the ancient Greeks.
18:22	And especially if you take... See, a great deal comes from Plato who said, for example, although he was an artist himself with use of words, he felt artists could not be trusted.
18:35	He said they produced all sorts of illusory images and lead the people astray. That really what you must have to be sober and serious is measure; things have to be measured and reckoned with, calculated, computed and so on.
18:49	That really is a great deal of our attitude of modern science, that what you can really trust is measurement and computation (laughs) and not the artistic attitude which leads you astray, you know, leads you to illusion.
19:04	Well, now, in contrast to this there’s the East. Of course, the East engages in measure too – I mean, we’re not saying that both sides don’t use measure – but at least in their attitude or their philosophical view, there’s a difference, as I see it, because there what is given primary emphasis is the immeasurable, that which is immense, beyond any way of being, not really measured numerically, but also put within limits of any kind, qualitative or quantitative.
19:36	And the... Now, there is a Sanskrit word maya which I have been told means a form of measure and there’s a...
19:47	What? Krishnamurti: Ma is to measure, isn’t it, sir? George Sudarshan: Yes.
19:50	DB: To measure.
19:51	K: Ma means measure, to measure.
19:52	DB: Yes, it’s the same root as the Greek root metron. There’s a Sanskrit word matra meaning measure as well, apparently. And the Indo-European languages, you know, have certain basic common roots and key words.
20:05	Now, the... So apparently, for some reason, perhaps because the same people who carried this Indo-European language, some went to Europe and Greece and so on and some came down to India where they met the Southern Indians who had a different philosophy, and they eventually adopted the philosophy of the people they conquered, as far as I can tell.
20:35	Now, the... So... And this, of course, then we say... They have gone so far as to say, ‘Measure is illusion’ – you see? – which perhaps is too far because measure is a form of reality, is my view.
20:48	It’s a certain limited form. We must have measurement in order to survive, in order to establish an orderly life, technically and so on.
21:02	But perhaps originally they said, ‘Measure is illusion when it is taken as the primary reality,’ but other people simplified it to say, ‘Measure is illusion.’ (Laughs) Now, the...
21:16	But of course you can raise the question, no doubt there were wise men there who really lived that way – at least, I believe so – and the... but on the whole, of course, most people have fallen into much the same attitude to measure as there is in the West.
21:36	You know, for example, people may say there is a technique or a method to achieve the immeasurable, but every method is measure. You see, we even use the word in English measure, taking measures, is the same as method. And the... On the other... So we could ask whether the immeasurable is a concept or, you know, an idea or is it actually there?
22:03	I feel sure that in the East there were men for whom it was actually there, as also in the West.
22:10	But this I think is a key question, you know, very much related to the observer and the observed, that the observer perhaps establishes measure, and when there’s no observed then measure cannot be the primary form of... primary reality.
22:34	Well, I think that was more or less what I wanted to say this morning, so [we] could begin by opening up for discussion.
22:43	GS: I wanted to make two remarks. I would like to submit that instead of saying, ‘There were people who lived that way,’ I would like to submit that there are people who live that way.
22:56	DB: Well, I...
22:58	GS: Second, there are two verses from Ramayana which are very reminiscent of your words.
23:05	I mean, it has other literal meanings also. It says, ‘He who is in measure, let him know that the father-son or cause-effect relationship is there but he who is beyond, who has transcended measure, he knows time to be a vehicle,’ so that in the... the notion of measurement is not... the essential nature of the immeasurable is not so much that you should not measure, but when you are measuring you are functioning in a mode which contains cause and effect and all the relationship that you have.
23:52	When you cease, when you have transcended that particular level, you are functioning in a different mode. In that mode, time is simply a chariot and therefore you have no longer the limitation of time. You live in the eternal present.
24:05	DB: Yes, well, I’m glad to hear that we have... the wisdom still continues.
24:13	I mean, of course, that is just what I wanted to say.
24:21	K: Sir, would you – may I ask? – would you say the immeasurable and the measurable, in the terms you have used it, run parallel together?
24:42	Not that one comes from one to the other or goes from one to the other, but they are all...
24:50	both are harmonious for a man who has realised the significance of measurement.
24:57	May I ask?
24:58	DB: Who are you asking?
25:00	K: I’m asking... (laughs) DB: Oh. Well, I mean, I think that is so, that... But also, I feel that there must be some ground, something deeper, in which they are one.
25:20	K: Yes. But when Dr Sudarshan was saying, ‘You go from one to the other’...
25:25	DB: Yes.
25:26	K: I’m...
25:27	DB: Oh, you’re raising that question.
25:28	K: I am questioning whether that is so, or they are all the time together to a man who has understood the whole significance of measurement.
25:40	GS: To go back to the verses that I quoted, they do not say go from one to the other one, in fact they simply say, ‘In measurement is cause-effect relationship.
25:53	Transcend measurement and time is but a chariot.’ So it’s not... it could be interpreted either as: going from one state to the other one, or to say that: the measurement is the mode in which you find causality.
26:06	K: You see, sir, either we discuss this problem as a theory or as a speculative interpretation of somebody else saying it, or we can directly experience – I don’t like to use the word experience, if you don’t mind – directly realise it.
26:29	Which is it we are doing? Either we are interpreting, translating or quoting others, or we are... we have lived it, we have worked it, we have looked at it and are speaking from our heart and mind, not from somebody else’s.
26:55	GS: There is no point in speaking unless the presence of one, the experience of one influences the other one.
27:05	You, sir, do not admit this possibility.
27:08	K: We are discussing...
27:10	GS: Ah. No, what I’m saying is this particular statement is not so much that somebody has said it before but it is simply a crystallisation of the state of affairs as I understand it.
27:23	And it sounded to me very close to what he was saying: that when you have to function, if you have to function that is, if you are in the world...
27:30	K: You have to function. Of course.
27:32	GS: ...then there are measurements, then there is another one, when I see another one, I see another one. But then there is cause-effect relationship and then I have to measure, I have to... When I see that I have to walk, I have to decide how far I have to walk. When I see a...
27:46	K: Understood, sir.
27:47	GS: ...break and I have to jump over a puddle...
27:48	K: Of course.
27:49	GS: ...but if I did it instantaneously, without thinking about it, I would not measure and then do the thing, I would do it by itself.
27:56	Therefore, there are two modes of functioning: one when I am in the world, when I am aware of all the variety, then I must function in the cause-effect mode.
28:04	K: Of course, sir.
28:05	GS: When I’m not in that particular mode...
28:06	K: Ah, you see! That’s what I...
28:08	DB: That’s the question.
28:09	K: That is what I question: whether you move from one to the other.
28:13	DB: Or are they not both together?
28:15	K: Are they not both together? That’s what I want to...
28:19	GS: You would not like me to quote but state as my experience. My statement is that when you are in the cause-effect mode, you have to move from there; when you are in the other mode there is no other, therefore there is no question of having moved to that place.
28:33	K: No. You are repeating the same thing, sir. You are now repeating the same thing. David Shainberg: That’s the same question as effort.
28:37	K: No. Yes, no, no; not quite, not quite. Somebody wants...?
28:43	DB: No, I think he wants to say something. Julian Melzack: I would like to ask you a question. I was interested in how you crystallised it and I want... I’d like you to expand more, if you may, about what you mean when you say, ‘Time is just a chariot.’ I mean, I’m not quite certain what is meant by that.
28:56	GS: It is that when you are in harmony, when you are no longer affected by causes and effects, when you do not distinguish one particular cause and then its effect and then what would happen, then what would happen, things follow in their natural rhythm and you know what is happening and you don’t particularly care to influence it one way or the other.
29:15	And therefore the time is simply the unfolding; it is not one cause, then – you know? – having a series of relays which are operating one after another one. You don’t consider the case, ‘What is the cause, what is the effect?’ things are flowing and then time is a chariot because it is the natural unfolding of a system.
29:31	JM: Does it mean...? I mean, is there a distinction in what you’ve just said between, if you want, the epistemology of being governed by causality and all the other laws?
29:44	In other words, is it just that we reach a stage where we’re not aware of being governed by a set of laws, or is it really that... is it more of an ontological statement that you’re making, that in fact we are not governed?
29:58	GS: I am making an ontological statement. And then there is no question of...
30:04	DB: (Inaudible) ...that goes a little too far.
30:05	K: What does that mean, sir?
30:06	GS: I think I would, with a logician person right there, not speak. (Laughter) But it is not that you are unmindful, you are absent-minded, and therefore you do not see cause-effect but in fact as, at that time – I don’t know how exactly it is stated without tripping myself – at that time, the reality is what you know at that time.
30:28	It is not a case of your being unaware of something. Is... this is a layman’s way of...?
30:34	JM: Yes. Yes, that’s clear.
30:36	K: You see, we are again repeating the same thing in different words, that you are... there are these two streams, as it were, you function in this stream of measurement: time, cause-effect and all that, and move to the other.
30:58	I question that.
31:00	GS: I’d state it slightly differently. In one case you see two streams: when I see variety, I also see the possibility of not variety.
31:11	K: I understand all that.
31:12	GS: When I see non-variety, when I am in harmony... – I don’t even know, without using technical words, how to say it – but in the other mode, I do not see this mode.
31:24	I do not see my having come from some place. I do not see time as a... I do not see effort. I do not see action.
31:31	K: Would you say, sir, the immeasurable is when the self is not?
31:42	Wait...
31:44	GS: This would be not a definition, but a condition. It would be an indicator as to what is happening.
31:53	K: Yes.
31:54	JM: When the self is not?
31:55	GS: When the self is not. But it is not a case of your searching around: ‘Is the self there?’ It is a case of...
32:00	K: Ah, no, no, no, no. That’s all too childish.
32:04	GS: And it is immeasurable...
32:05	K: And can you add – in the world of time, measure and so on – without the self?
32:13	You see, that is the whole point. Right sir? May I...?
32:21	GS: I would say, ‘No,’ for a very technical reason because, when you are functioning without self, it is not in the world of time and cause and effect because you do not fragment things to do things.
32:36	K: And can you not work, do, act, live in this world: cause-effect, time, without the self?
32:43	GS: Others who see me would say that I am in this world and functioning, without self...
32:49	K: I’m not concerned with – please! – what others say. Can I...? (Laughs) You see...? You’re... We are both Indians. (Laughter) I’m not asking that. We both said, ‘When the self is not, the immeasurable is.’ Can the self not be in this cause-effect-time world?
33:20	That is the self, which is the me, my greed, my envy – you know? – all that business.
33:28	Of course it can.
33:29	GS: Yes, but...
33:31	K: Ah! No, no; not ‘But.’ Not, ‘But.’ GS: ...but one does not measure in this world.
33:35	K: Ah, no. We’re not talking measure. You see, you are... (Laughs) You see, we are... Sorry to smile, because when I have discussed in India with pundits and scholars, they go through... we go through this every time.
33:56	DB: I was going to ask a question of Sudarshan. You see, if you say, ‘When I am this way...’ you know, ‘When I am in the world of causality...’ and then, ‘When I am otherwise, I am in the other world,’ it seems to me that brings in time — you’re going from one to the other.
34:16	K: Exactly.
34:17	GS: No, that is because of the fact that I made the mistake of translating it.
34:20	DB: Oh.
34:21	GS: Because the statement contained no word of time.
34:23	DB: Well, how would you put it? Can you, sort of, rephrase it?
34:28	GS: Yes, I literally translate: ‘Maya transcend time chariot no.’ Next line says, ‘Measurement in no cause-effect relation.’ It does not say, ‘You are there’…
34:53	DB: Yes. But could you, sort of, put it in some more... your own words, more generally, so as to avoid this implication of time?
35:00	K: That’s just it, sir. You see, movement...
35:07	GS: Because almost all English words require... even the word functioning or existing, somehow or other contains some notion of -ing, of... except the word being which occasionally is taken out of time.
35:23	Being whole, being without comparison, being without measurement, non-measurement being, time is not; time is put away.
35:42	K: Time is not when the being is there.
35:45	GS: Being is there.
35:46	K: That’s all. Now...
35:49	GS: When... make – no, not make comparison – comparative world... comparative world implies or... world comparison engender cause-effect relation.
36:06	DB: Comparison is measurement.
36:09	DS: It seems to me that the thing that happens there is that the attraction or the pleasure or the stickiness of the time, immediately...
36:21	Suppose, I mean, if you start from... If you are in the state of the immeasurable and then, let’s say, you’re in the other stream too, you get the...
36:32	K: Sir, you cannot discuss this unless it is so.
36:39	Then it becomes merely verbal exchange, verbal... This is a non-verbal communication.
36:50	Must be.
36:51	DS: But then... but when you’re in the state of causality, you’re in a... I mean, when you’re in causal, you’re verbal.
36:56	DB: Just a moment.
36:57	K: Of course. We are... I am communicating with you through words. And also, it is possible to communicate non-verbally.
37:04	DS: In a verbal way?
37:07	K: Uh?
37:08	DS: We are communicating verbally...
37:11	K: Now we are communicating verbally, and also it is possible to communicate non-verbally, which means you and I must both be interested, at the same time, at the same level, with regard to the same thing.
37:26	Not... Otherwise there is no... Verbal communication is very superficial. But to have non-verbal communication, we must not only go through the verbal communication, so as to come together; and non-verbal communication implies that you and I are terribly serious, at the same time, at the same level, with the same intensity, otherwise there is no non-verbal communication.
37:58	Love... You and I love at the same time — love is that! (Pause) I don’t know... I mustn’t go into all this.
38:08	DB: I think Julian...
38:11	JM: I’d like to ask you a question, David. Do you...? I mean, is this other realm – for want of a better word – do you... is it essentially non-verbal?
38:22	DB: Yes...
38:23	JM: Essentially?
38:24	DB: Essentially. In essence, yes.
38:26	JM: What I mean is that, is it then... is it fruitless to, not formalise what’s going on, but is it fruitless, utterly fruitless, to even think in some structured way about what’s supposed to be going on here when you say, ‘Time is a chariot,’ etc., or are we just to let it...?
38:45	DB: Well, you see, if you were to think of what’s going on, you see, that would bring it into the space-time causal relation once again.
38:54	Now, I would say partly that our language, I think, and – you know? – our general modes of expression have evolved to very heavily emphasise this measurement or space-time causal action, and when you try to formalise it you inevitably get caught in that.
39:13	JM: Yes, but I mean, we’ve all experienced certain things that are very difficult to verbalise in a precise way but we could attempt to do so by, as it were, skirting around it, by using words which are, we all know, misleading but which, eventually, by piling up one such misleading description on top of another, suddenly what we’re trying to get at is, so to speak, disclosed.
39:38	I mean, someone talking about this kind of realm actually called it, ‘The logic of disclosure.’ Now, he wasn’t talking about a very precise linear kind of logic, it was... well, the model he gave was this: he said, ‘If you superimpose triangles on top of each other, slightly off-centre each time, eventually what will be disclosed will be a circle.’ So in other words, the circle itself is not really capable of being precisely verbalised but we can sort of grasp at what we’re trying to get at, by skirting around it, by superimposing our equilateral triangles.
40:19	K: May I answer that? That can be answered by saying the immeasurable is negating what it’s not.
40:30	It’s not time, it’s not thought, it’s not the word, it’s not the description, it is not this and it’s not that.
40:40	(Pause) JM: It just... I mean, I... Well, this will probably... I mean, it manifests my lack of what is trying to be got at here but, I mean, it seems to me a depressing thought that you’re trying to, as it were, hone in on an area or pinpoint something which is essentially...
41:03	DB: What?
41:05	JM: ...non-verbal, incommunicable. I mean, we just can’t...
41:09	DB: Well, it’s not incommunicable. I mean, you see...
41:12	K: No.
41:13	JM: All right. In a... In any way, I mean, why can’t we use the conceptual scheme, poor as it is, that we have to...
41:18	DB: Well...
41:19	JM: ...in some indirect way disclose what...
41:20	DB: Because, I think – if I could put it – I feel that the very use of that conceptual scheme sets in motion the machinery which is the denial of what we’re talking about.
41:29	K: Quite.
41:30	DB: And we have to stop that machinery, you see?
41:33	JM: But that’s not... I mean, we can use things that are the denial of what we’re talking about and...
41:38	DB: No, no. That’s not so, you see. You see, I think Krishnamurti was trying to say we’re not merely talking about something, but that that thing must actually be as we talk, and then when we talk it will communicate, you see.
41:51	JM: I understand, but there’s all sorts of analogies. I mean, for example...
41:54	DB: No, but the analogy is the non-being of what we want.
41:56	DS: Or the analogising process is the non-being.
42:00	DB: Yes.
42:01	JM: But why can’t – I mean, as Wittgenstein once... – I mean, why can’t we use a ladder to climb up to a certain shelf and then kick the ladder over?
42:08	DB: I don’t think the analogy is right, you see, that’s... In other words, it’s misleading.
42:12	JM: Well...
42:13	GS: Could I make just a...
42:14	DB: Yes, you want to...?
42:15	GS: ...small comment? That... I sympathise with you because I too like to talk – I mean, not in the structured form – and it is essential for a person whose primary mode of functioning is in terms of analytic thought and argumentation and disputation to go through these steps, and the person or the condition under which you function well or the moment of grace when you... you’re...
42:43	the thought processes or analysis processes ceases and then gives way to the next, I mean, the rightful owner, so to say, at that particular time.
42:52	But it is necessary; as long as this is conquering you, I mean, wrapping you up, you cannot proceed, so it is necessary to go through the steps.
42:59	JM: Right.
43:00	GS: If I were to follow this triangle analogy, I mean, in a sense, dictionary definitions, dictionary meanings, after a certain time if you have looked up a dictionary sufficiently long, you will come back to the same point.
43:11	At that point, you suddenly realise that the dictionary is something else and at that moment you have left the dictionary and moved on to... So it is necessary to talk about it for a person whose functioning mode is talking.
43:23	JM: You see, I... Could I just... – sorry, because it’s following on with this – I mean, it’s what you said in your talk. I mean, I think you, in a sense, were unfair to Plato when you juxtaposed him to the Eastern way of thinking because, I mean, there’s a passage in a not very frequently read part of Plato, it’s the 7th Epistle to the Romans...
43:45	DB: Yes.
43:46	JM: ...where he’s talking about what he calls supra rational knowledge – s-u-p-r-a – and he tries in that epistle to lay down the conditions for what he wants to call supra rational knowledge.
43:58	And he says, ‘Well, first of all, one must have a good grounding and a good knowledge of a subject’ – what you just talked about – the second condition is that the person whose doing the struggle, undergoing the struggle, has a propensity to do it – and he explains that – and the third most important one, he says when these two conditions as it were blend – and then this is a quote – he says, ‘Suddenly in a flash the mind becomes flooded with light.’ But, you see, it’s a precondition of the mind becoming flooded with light that one undergo this analytical process.
44:28	Now...
44:29	GS: For some; not everyone.
44:31	JM: Right.
44:32	DB: For those who have that disposition, yes.
44:33	JM: Yes, but now, David is saying that it’s not... it’s incompatible, that it’s fruitless to go along this...
44:38	DB: Well, no. Yes, I think... Well, let me say that I agree that we may need this – you know? – preliminary analysis to straighten our thoughts out – you know? – or to see that they can’t be straightened out.
44:49	Now, you may have to go through it according to your disposition or propensity. But we were... I was only intending to discuss the essence of the thing, not the procedure by which you might get there.
45:01	Q: I wonder... You’ve actually talked about a deeper reality from which the two streams can, in some sense, be made intelligible or understood, and this seems to imply that there is a way of approaching the immeasurable condition, that it does have a certain structure and therefore there is a kind of science, some form of science that would be applicable to it.
45:37	And I wonder what your intuitions are about the type of structure, the type of, let’s say, mathematical model that is possible to use in description of this structure or whether that is, in fact, itself a fruitless enterprise.
45:56	DB: Well, you see, well, first of all, you know, the word science, the root of that, is the same as the root scissors or schism: to cut, you see.
46:07	In other words, knowledge is, basically, was conceived that way to analyse and to synthesise.
46:14	Now, I think that the first question is really, as we were saying, to be there – I don’t know how to put it – that we are there together; then we may develop a different language, a different science, you know, we may look at the world differently... but... and make the whole thing more easily communicable.
46:48	But I think the essence of the thing is that knowledge is limited, you see, and there is some movement or – I don’t know what to call it – being, which is the ground of knowledge which is much... you know, I have no...
47:09	I mean, I’m trying to do what you say: to use words in a rough way. I would just say that not... that there is something which I say is the universal ground – if I may use those words – which, you know, we cannot put into words.
47:27	But the important point is that when we talk about it this way, we have in mind some sort of universal ground that we imagine and ourselves looking at it (laughs), you see?
47:38	But that is where the trouble is, that what we are discussing is that there is no observer, and therefore that it is a different way in which perception is going.
47:55	K: May I...?
47:56	DB: Yes, do you want to say...?
47:59	K: Sir, may I say something? I want to tell you something. I want to tell you something which to me is dreadfully serious.
48:12	I want to tell you, and I want you to listen, not your arguments, your capacity for logic and all the rest... just find out what the poor chap has to say.
48:27	Don’t block it by argument, by words... I want to tell you I love you. How do you listen to it? I mean I love you – you follow? – it’s not just put on, a momentary... a fanciful amusement to convince you of something.
48:54	I say I profoundly love you. Will you listen to it, beyond the verbal communication?
49:06	JM: Sure. I mean, I...
49:11	K: Wait! Will you listen to it? Then, is there a communication between you and me?
49:22	Non-verbal. Because to you also love is very important.
49:27	JM: Sure. Yes, there is, but...
49:32	K: Now, what Dr Bohm and I am trying to say is the same thing: just listen to something perhaps you have not heard before, which you may totally say, ‘How loony it is’ – afterwards – ‘How absurd it is,’ but the man wants to tell you out of his heart something.
49:57	(Pause) JM: I mean, I’ve... I’m trying to take it that way, but I still...
50:06	K: Ah! There is no, ‘But.’ When a man says, ‘I love you,’ you don’t say, ‘But, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.’ JM: No.
50:14	But... Well, there is something essentially different from – this is how I am forced to think, you know, due to whatever reasons – there is something essentially different between taking your remark and taking it deeply and sincerely and genuinely and, well, trying to understand a view being put forward.
50:33	K: But it doesn’t need understanding.
50:34	JM: You mean it’s not a view? Is that what you’re saying? Do you mean it’s not a view? You mean David could just as well have been saying...
50:41	K: Ah no, sir.
50:42	JM: ...something else?
50:43	K: No sir. No. He is saying... No, I am telling you, sir, I am saying I want to tell you something very sacred, profound to me.
50:53	Don’t despise it, don’t kick it around, don’t spit on it, by words, by...
51:03	And I want to tell you, it’s as important to you as to me — I think so. Wait. I think it is as important to you as to me and I come out of tremendous feeling out of it, and I say, ‘Please, for God’s sake, do this.’ You listen, because you are... it is as important to you as to me.
51:26	Morally, ethically, in the sense of beauty, action, everything is involved in that.
51:36	And there is no, ‘But’ — you listen. You are... It’s like seeing a marvellous tree. There is no, ‘But’ about it.
51:50	(Pause) JM: When someone loves somebody else and those two people are in the presence with each other, there is no need to say it.
52:01	I understand that and that... to me, that is what non-verbal communication means. You’re in the presence of another and suddenly, if you want, one feels something, whatever that may be, indescribable, but there is no need to say it.
52:16	Right. Now, that’s an important... that’s a very important fact for me: that there is no need to say it.
52:22	DB: Well, no, but somebody in that situation may say, ‘I still have something to tell you which I think is important,’ you see. ‘Will you listen?’ JM: Well, of course one listens. But the minute one...
52:33	DB: Well, what... (laughs) K: (Laughs) JM: Of course. But the verbal mode is being used.
52:37	DB: It doesn’t matter. You see, the verbal is the non-verbal. You see, I’m trying to say that there’s no... that they run parallel as we were saying; that the word after all is not the word, you see, the word is the whole process.
52:48	It’s the body, it’s the – you know? – everything. And the question is whether we focus on the word exclusively or whether the word is just going parallel with everything else. Now, see, so I’m saying that in that state somebody says to you, you know, ‘I have something important to tell you’ – you know?
53:09	– I mean, ‘Please listen.’ You know, I listen. (Pause) JM: Well, and one listens.
53:18	DB: Yes.
53:19	JM: Okay? One listens...
53:21	K: Which means what, sir? You are listening. Which means you are not projecting your opinions, your judgments, your conclusions, your prejudices. You are saying, ‘I want... I am listening.’ That’s all. That’s all. I’m not asking anymore. That’s all. (Laughs) JM: But... Well... No, okay, I know I used...
53:46	K: (Laughs) No, my darling sir, there is no, ‘But.’ JM: One can listen very, very hard and...
53:51	DB: No.
53:52	JM: What, ‘No’?
53:53	DB: No. I mean, not quite...
53:55	GS: He said, ‘Don’t listen hard. Let go. And listen.’ KP: Just listen.
54:00	DB: Yes. Just let me finish this. I think Bryan wants to say something. Bryan Goodwin: There is a kind of metaphor that I find useful in this and that is that, as we all know, words are symbols for something beyond the word.
54:16	In the same way, objects – objects as we call them objects – are symbols for that which is beyond the object.
54:27	And in the same way that one transcends language by listening to the meaning behind the word to which it connotes, you can suspend the sense of the being of an object by transcending it and getting to the meaning behind the object which is the symbol of that meaning, and so we go on in the exploration of the world as... well, in the experience of the world, I should say.
54:57	(Pause) K: Does the word give you experience?
55:01	BG: No.
55:02	K: No.
55:03	BG: No, it’s the symbol of that which is denoted by the word and is behind the word.
55:11	K: Sir, I describe something, something very beautiful, but the description, the feeling I put into it, my sense of appreciation of that beauty, the feeling of that beauty, I convey to you, describe it to you, but the description is not that thing.
55:37	That’s all I am... That’s all.
55:42	BG: Yes.
55:44	DB: Yes.
55:46	MW: When Krishnamurti says, ‘Sir, do you listen to say, ‘I love you’?’ I mean, is what you’re getting at is the only way of listening is to love back?
55:57	K: What sir?
55:59	MW: I mean, how do you listen to somebody saying they love you? Do you mean that the only way to listen is to love them?
56:11	K: No. I just say to you, I just say to him, ‘Please, I want to tell you something very serious. I want to tell you and I’m going to tell you but first listen to what I have to say.
56:28	Don’t be prejudiced against me. Don’t have your conclusions, your opinions, put all that aside; just listen to what I have to say.’ And I say to you, then, ‘I really love you,’ which is a non-verbal communication, though I’ve used words.
56:50	MW: Yes, I think what I’m getting at is surely you cannot listen if you don’t love as well.
56:57	K: That’s all, sir. That’s all, sir. The very act of listening is that. When I tell my wife, my love, I say, ‘I love you,’ it means – you know? – non-verbal. She also loves me and therefore is willing to listen to me. If she hates me, she says, ‘Go to hell! I’m not listening to you.’ (Pause) DS: There’s a tremendous vulnerability in that too; the feeling of... out of that can come tremendous energy...
57:35	K: Surely, sir. That...
57:37	DS: ...which gives in to it.
57:43	MW: It seems to me that Julian recognises very clearly the existence of non-verbal communication.
57:54	JM: Oh, yes.
57:56	MW: And I think the... what’s very difficult somehow... somehow these two things have got to go together.
58:07	K: Sir, understanding non-verbal communication is one thing but actually be in communion – I’m using that word communion – at the moment you’re saying something.
58:26	Theoretically, yes, I understand non-verbal communication and it become a theory, a verbal description, but to be actually in that state of listening which is non-verbal requires – you follow? – it requires a great feeling, great attention.
58:48	JM: No, I think Maurice was mirroring, I mean, what I feel about non-verbal communication.
58:56	I mean, I have experienced it too, we all have.
58:59	K: You... Now, now! Not, ‘We have.’ (Laughs) ‘I have loved,’ it doesn’t mean a thing. I want you to do it now.
59:10	JM: First, it’s not something one could... Oh, sorry, I won’t... No, it’s...
59:14	DB: Go ahead. Finish what you... Were you going to say something?
59:18	JM: It doesn’t... I’ll say it later. It’s not important. Gordon Globus: I don’t... I think I see the point not so much as the non-verbal communication because that can be very much like words, one can see behaviour in the way that one sees words.
59:35	To me, the important point is to somehow get into the head of the other person, into their perspective, into their description of the world, to see the world as they’re seeing it, so you listen from their point of view, not as a momentary device...
59:53	K: Quite right, sir.
59:54	GG: ...and then to snap back to your own point of view, but to stay in that mode and to stay in it for a period of time, until you really understand it and are able to integrate it.
1:00:03	If you go into it just while the person is speaking and then snap back and say, ‘But...’ you’ve never really understood where the other person is coming from.
1:00:11	JM: But getting into their head...
1:00:13	GG: ‘But...’ JM: Getting into their head... Well, all right. I mean...
1:00:17	GG: My feeling... my feeling is that you didn’t really get into my head for any longer until I stopped speaking and then you went back into yours.
1:00:25	JM: No, I was simply trying to understand...
1:00:27	GG: I feel you don’t love me. (Laughter) JM: (Laughs) Well...
1:00:33	GS: You are not married to him, so...
1:00:34	K: (Laughs) JM: That’s not... David Peat: Can I say something? I don’t think it’s fair to keep laughing because it’s a problem we all have.
1:00:38	K: No, it’s... Yes, of course, sir...
1:00:40	DP: We all have this problem. It’s not just his, it’s mine and everybody else’s.
1:00:42	JM: Look, look, getting into his head. Now, okay, that’s a locution that is more popular in the States. It’s a good locution. You know, I mean, I could see the connotations of that. It’s like when the Americans invented the word dig — such a lot was packed into it.
1:00:57	GG: It’s not a locution.
1:00:58	JM: Well, it is.
1:00:59	GG: It’s not words. It’s something that one does.
1:01:01	JM: Well, okay, then am I not entitled to ask you what sort of thing would count as me getting into your head?
1:01:08	I mean, if you want, in a simple, mechanical... how does one do it? What steps does one take in order to start doing it?
1:01:15	DS: I think one...
1:01:16	JM: I mean, that’s really what I’ve been asking David and Krishnaji.
1:01:17	DS: Yes, I think... You have. But I think one thing that happens and I think Krishnaji was talking about it and I was sort of hinting at it when I said a tremendous vulnerability and energy comes, namely that I think that at the moment that one is really in tune, so to speak, attuned, then that moment evolves a whole new perspective.
1:01:42	In other words, what... rather than coming at it with all the old perspectives, it itself somehow or other gives birth to a totally spontaneous new kind of order.
1:01:53	And it wouldn’t... it definitely wouldn’t be – I mean, I think one of the things Gordon was saying is – it wouldn’t be, ‘But...’ it would be...
1:02:00	And it wouldn’t be your old logic. It might be something totally new and different in its ordering. So it... because once you come from the other person’s perspective that means that you really are into a whole new form of being.
1:02:14	It’s got to be brand new because you’ve never been there before.
1:02:18	JM: I know. Again, though, you used the word in tune – now, that’s a good... it’s for me useful – but when one speaks of being in tune, I mean, I could take steps of being in tune.
1:02:32	You know, if you speak of tuning a musical instrument, there are procedures that one does, one goes through. Now, are you saying that it makes no sense to speak or think of procedures?
1:02:42	K: No sir. Look sir, I’m going to talk presently in few minutes. I want you to listen to it.
1:02:48	JM: I intend to listen to it.
1:02:49	K: Wait. Wait. No! I’m going to tell you how to listen. (Laughs) JM: Oh. Okay.
1:02:56	K: I want you to listen to it. I want you to listen without your prejudices. I’m a stranger and I want to tell you some marvellous thing.
1:03:12	And I am... you must give your heart to find out what he’s talking about, not just up here. That’s all he’s saying. Just listen to the very end of it. Look at what he’s saying, then reject it, then throw it out, then say, ‘This is all tommyrot.
1:03:32	Get out!’ But give... I mean, it’s like... Open your heart to somebody who says, ‘I want to tell you something.’ You don’t say, ‘But wait, Old Boy, I want to tell you...
1:03:42	I must have my beer first.’ JM: Well then, let’s take this discussion as a sort of prolegomenon to your talk.
1:03:49	In other words, let’s take it as a preparatory session, so that some of us, me included, could get in the right tune or whatever.
1:04:00	All right, that’s all...
1:04:01	K: Ah no! (Laughs) JM: I mean...
1:04:04	K: It is not, sir... It is some... Sir, when a house is burning, there is no argument.
1:04:11	JM: One could take steps to stop the fire.
1:04:15	K: You put... You say, ‘Let’s put it out!’ JM: Right.
1:04:19	K: You find the hydrant, ring the... you do it together.
1:04:20	JM: That’s right.
1:04:21	K: You don’t say, ‘No, wait, wait, wait! What colour of his hair? What...?’ etc, etc, etc. You say, ‘Let’s do it together.’ JM: Well, this is what I’m doing now.
1:04:34	I’m doing the equivalent of calling the fire department. I don’t like the analogy but if you want to pursue the analogy, then... (Laughter) DB: Could I say something? What does listening mean? You see, that... You see, you can listen to the words but say you’re listening to a stream, now, you see, you don’t listen to the particular little splashes and, you know, this and that and try to put them in some order, you see.
1:05:05	Do you know what I mean? You are listening, you see, and you don’t say, ‘But...’ or you don’t analyse it, and the thing is that out of that listening something new may emerge.
1:05:17	JM: Suddenly in a flash my mind becomes flooded with light.
1:05:19	DB: No, I don’t... a flash or not a flash, I don’t know but...
1:05:21	JM: All right. Look, let me ask you, this will help clarify it in my mind, maybe in other people’s minds too. In a paper you wrote, the one that you gave Liz, I forget the title of it now. You...
1:05:33	EF: Fragmentation...
1:05:34	JM: Is it? Yes, Fragmentation and Wholeness.
1:05:36	DB: Yes.
1:05:38	JM: In the beginning, you talked about theories and the way we look on the world and the necessity of the way we look at the world necessarily having to be filtered through some theory or other.
1:05:54	Right?
1:05:55	DB: Well, I don’t know if I meant necessarily but I meant to say it has been.
1:06:00	JM: Oh, right. Now, in that context, my question: is what is being talked about now – this alternative mode if you want – is it the sort of thing where no theory at all...
1:06:14	K: Yes sir!
1:06:15	JM: ...that is no filter at all stands in the... That means you’re presupposing that there is some reality over and above or under and beyond the various theories which we construct.
1:06:25	DB: Well, that’s the way of putting it, you know, in words, but...
1:06:29	JM: Well, what other way...? (Laughs) DB: No, but I meant to say that’s the... no, that’s analysing, you see. But I think that what Krishnamurti is emphasising is that it’s not merely we’re going to talk about this reality or analyse it but rather that it is... or it has to be there.
1:06:48	K: Sir, is it my time to talk?
1:06:50	DB: Yes. I think... Wait, just wait one minute. (Laughter) And we’ll get the microphone... You must hold on... The microphone has to be moved over to your side.
1:06:59	K: Oh, don’t bother.
1:07:02	JM: Well... You see, there are meta questions that one could ask, even at this point.
1:07:13	I mean, what if one holds a view that states that there is no reality above and beyond the various posits that we...
1:07:21	DB: That’s the weakness of trying to analyse it. You see, that is your friend is trying to tell you, ‘Listen,’ and don’t judge that right away, but just listen; absorb the whole thing, understand it and then make all those comparisons.
1:07:32	JM: But look, when we talk to a microphone we push the microphone in this... we make it directional, just as now, Krishnaji’s about to talk, so the microphone’s being moved.
1:07:42	DB: Yes.
1:07:43	JM: Now, okay, silly analogy perhaps but what... I mean, what I’m asking, maybe on behalf of other people as well as myself...
1:07:51	K: (aside) Ted! Ted! Push that down. Ted!
1:07:55	JM: There are... I mean, if we’re the microphones then, you know, we have the right to be asked to be... or shoved in the right direction before the talk begins...
1:08:07	K: (aside) Put the leg down. Put that leg down. That’s right.
1:08:15	JM: ...you know, before whatever’s going to happen happens. Now...
1:08:19	DB: If you’re going to use analogies... (inaudible) ...there are microphones that are not directional at all.
1:08:27	GG: If you’ve been asking how to do it, you’re asking to be moved. Seems to me you’ve invited this kind of instruction.
1:08:33	JM: No, I’m asking... I don’t want to be moved by anyone in the room, I want to move myself, but I want some guidance as to what would count as the right movement.
1:08:45	That’s a good way of... To me, it sounds like a good way of putting it.
1:08:47	K: Sir, you listen to music, don’t you?
1:08:48	JM: A lot. I love music.
1:08:50	K: That’s all!
1:08:51	JM: Oh! All right. All right.
1:08:54	K: (Laughs) FC: This is not related to Julianji’s question... (Laughter) it’s a different point. When you were talking in the beginning about the right measure, that in the West there has been this preoccupation with the right measure.
1:09:10	Now, I think this is present in the East also – as I understand the Eastern teachings – they also talk a lot about the right measure but the difference seems to be to me that they understand the right measure in a dynamic sense and not in a static sense.
1:09:30	This is... it’s very clear I think in Chinese philosophy when they say, ‘The Tao has to be the perfect harmony between the yin and the yang,’ which is everything has to be in the right measure but it’s a dynamic state of balance.
1:09:48	DB: Yes.
1:09:49	FC: And I think – our Indian expert will maybe tell us – in Indian philosophy it’s also. I’ve come across this concept of rita which seems to be very similar to the concept of Tao, which is a dynamic balance.
1:10:03	It’s even very much what we call a type of field, a dynamic field, in physics; and on the whole I’ve found that modern physics, the concepts in modern physics are very much along this line, that there is no static measure.
1:10:19	When you talk about particles or atoms, there’s nothing static you can measure; it’s always a dynamic balance, a dynamic measure.
1:10:26	DB: Yes. Do you want to...?
1:10:29	FC: Would you agree with that?
1:10:30	DB: Well, I agree the question you asked me. I agree that the measure is basically dynamic. And I would add further that this, the measure, will be right only when measure and the immeasurable are going in parallel, in some sense.
1:10:41	Do you want to comment?
1:10:45	GS: Yes. I was going to say that, I mean, yes, there is a notion of dynamic balance and, I mean, even with regard to health yesterday Krishnaji brought this matter up about the thing, but all these harmonies are, in a sense, things which you do not try to achieve but which happen to... when...
1:11:01	FC: Yes. Yes.
1:11:04	K: Right sir?
1:11:06	DB: Yes.
1:11:07	K: Do you want an autobiography?
1:11:09	DB: Well, perhaps you should give one too, then everyone will have given one.
1:11:11	K: What sir?
1:11:13	DB: I think it would complete the whole account if you gave some brief account. Many: Yes.
1:11:18	DB: Then we would all be doing the same thing.
1:11:21	K: Oh, Lord. I’m going to talk to you, sir.
1:11:32	(Pause) My brother and I were found by Dr Besant.
1:11:43	We were Brahman boys – you know what Brahmans were; about a hundred years ago, they were very traditional, very orthodox, tremendously religious in the orthodox sense – and Dr Besant and others said, ‘That boy who is the older’ – which was myself – they said, ‘That boy is going to be a great world teacher,’ at that age.
1:12:12	They were nine, I was, probably. And they formed a tremendous organisation around me — I was the head of it.
1:12:23	Members all over the world, hundreds of thousands, with a great deal of property, money.
1:12:33	And in 1925 I said, ‘This is all wrong. It’ll be another racket’ (laughs) and I dissolved it, returned the property, returned the money, everything.
1:12:52	And I’ve never read any philosophy, any Indian Vedas, nor even their literature.
1:13:02	I’ve only read the Bible, a little bit – as a language, not for the content of it, not the New Testament because it was too sentimental for me – and I use to read a great deal of poetry and so on, so on.
1:13:21	Otherwise, no philosophy, no biology, nothing; I’m an ignorant man, in the orthodox sense of that word.
1:13:35	And I’ve been talking for the last fifty years and more about something which to me is dreadfully serious.
1:13:44	I mean, not... I mean serious in the sense it’s my life; I don’t talk about one thing and do something else.
1:13:58	I never say something which I don’t mean, which I haven’t lived, which I do not live – you follow? – it is a direct living not a theoretical living.
1:14:08	Right? Is that enough? About myself?
1:14:13	GS: We can ask questions later on, isn’t it, about your life also?
1:14:23	K: Oh! (Laughs) I have met prominent people, eminent people, all over the world.
1:14:40	And I’ve acted upon things. When I see something, I act. There’s no theory. When I dissolved this organisation, I saw it was wrong and I dissolved it, immediately.
1:15:00	You understand, sir? There was not a hiatus between perception and action. The hiatus between perception and action is time.
1:15:17	It’s there, in that gap, all problems arise; whether I should, should not, regret — all that.
1:15:25	When you see something very clearly, as you see some danger, you act instantly.
1:15:35	In the same way, all my life I’ve done that. And I see thought – now we enter into something – thought has created this awful mess in the world; apart from all the goodness, other things it has done, it has brought about division between people, between nations.
1:15:59	All our religions are based on thought – organised religions – all the churches, the priests, etc., based on thought.
1:16:10	And thought is the response of memory, knowledge, knowledge stored up in the brain and memory and so on.
1:16:21	And as I felt – I still feel – tremendous responsibility to bring about a change.
1:16:36	Not only there, out of me, but also inside; a transformation of my... of not being, of being completely non-self, without effort, because the maker of effort is still selfishness.
1:17:09	So to me that was tremendously important because I saw around me everything self-centred, pride, arrogance, conflict, bitterness, violence and so on, so on – every human being – and society based on that, essentially.
1:17:37	And thought cannot change that, the social structure; if it does it becomes Communism or the antithesis to Communism and a synthesis and so on, but still within the area of knowledge, within the area of time, within the area of thought; and thought cannot possibly change radically the social structure, the economic structure.
1:18:11	And what is the factor that will change man? Because man is society, man has created this society, and man unless he changes radically, society may be modified, slightly altered, it’ll be along the same old lines.
1:18:36	So man has to change radically. Whether knowledge can change him – knowledge which is experience, memory, thought – whether the known can bring about this change.
1:19:00	Now, religious people have said, ‘Thought cannot do it but God will do it,’ and their God was still thought.
1:19:15	You are following, sir? Still... Thought is Jesus, thought is Christ, thought is all the things man has called religion, and that hasn’t produced tremendous change in man.
1:19:35	He believes in all kinds of fantastic... the Catholics do, Virgin Mary going... you know, all the rest of it.
1:19:45	Nobody laughs at it; accepts it. The intellectuals laugh at it but not the ordinary, living Italians and the Europeans and all people who accept all this.
1:19:57	So I see religions separate man, nationalities separate man, races separate man, economic conditions separate man, the rich and the poor, as Dr Sudarshan was pointing out yesterday, America has... the secretary, typist gets a fantastic sum compared to an Indian intellectual bureaucrat or whatever it is.
1:20:28	It is unequal distribution of wealth, consumerism — one has observed all this.
1:20:36	When I was a boy, small boy, there was hunger, we went through that, you know, starvation, all the rest of it.
1:20:46	So I say to myself, there must be another element, that can only transform man, not an intellectual concept which is still part of thought, nor a belief in God; so belief is not... is still part of thought and therefore belief again divides people: your belief, my belief, Christian, you know, all the rest of it.
1:21:24	So what is the factor that will change man? And change man not as an evolutionary process but within a very short period, because the house is burning, and my responsibility is to see that the fire is put out.
1:21:49	And the more people who are involved in this, the better.
1:21:57	And thought is fragmentary.
1:22:05	So I must... Life is whole, that means there must be an understanding of death.
1:22:13	Nobody talked here about death. I was very surprised. Nobody talked about love, which is really compassion. They talked about it. Nobody talked about a way of living which is non-selfish, in this world.
1:22:37	We have talked about career, specialisation, individualities. Individual means really, in the dictionary, means a human being who is indivisible, who is whole.
1:22:54	We are not whole, we are fragments: businessman, artist, scientist, and so on, so on — broken up.
1:23:03	So there must be an understanding of the whole of this: death, love and daily living, as a unitary movement.
1:23:16	So I must understand what is living. Is living a constant battle – daily living, not a theoretical living – is it a battle between myself, in myself with another, in my relationship with another?
1:23:33	Is it possible to live without battle in relationship? And it is possible when there is no image of myself, or a form or a mould of myself, or about her or him.
1:23:51	Is that possible? It is possible when I give my whole attention in that relationship.
1:24:03	Not... I cannot give whole attention, complete attention in that relationship when I am ambitious, when I’m greedy, when I’m seeking power, position, prestige, money, all that.
1:24:22	Then images are formed, then the relationship becomes a battle. Can I... can a human being live in this world without that?
1:24:34	I say it is possible, and I am saying this not verbally because I do it.
1:24:41	I don’t want to talk about myself, it sounds silly, but it can be done. Then behaviour, behaviour is absolutely necessary.
1:24:55	That means I must... there be an understanding of disorder, disorder in which one lives, contradiction: say one thing, do another, sloppy in one direction and very alert, orderly in another direction.
1:25:19	And out of the understanding of this order, which is instantaneous, which if I look at that disorder and I understand... and because I know how to look at it: to see it means to see without the observer.
1:25:37	The observer is the factor of disorder, because he divides.
1:25:45	So out of that observation, order comes. Order is virtue. Order is the very essence of beauty and so on, so on, so on, which I won’t enlarge because it will take too long.
1:26:04	Then I must understand what love is – not understand – what is love? Is it pleasure? Is it desire? We have made it into a pleasure, or a sacrifice or a duty or a responsibility.
1:26:26	We are still... when we talk about love, it is either sex or divine (laughs) in the ordinary...
1:26:39	or something that you cultivate and hold and give it out. So one has to go into that question: what is pleasure?
1:26:52	And these two principles operate: pleasure and fear, in our life. Can the mind, psychologically, completely be free of fear?
1:27:07	Is that possible? Even the fears that are deep-rooted in the very recesses of one’s mind: the racial fears, personal fears, collective fears.
1:27:24	The fear of not being, not succeeding, not becoming. Can the mind completely wipe it away? Can there be freedom from that? If you want to, I can go into all that. And, if there is fear, if there is the constant pursuit of pleasure, then there is no love.
1:27:52	And we have divided living and dying as two separate things.
1:28:00	We are frightened of dying. We say, ‘Well, I’ve collected so many qualities or so many virtues, I’m a specialist, I’m a scientist, I’ve gathered so much and, My God, give me four more years...’ You follow?
1:28:15	There is all this division between the living and the dying. So I have to understand dying, what it means to die.
1:28:28	What it means to die, psychologically, first; that is the central factor of dying.
1:28:36	The organism dies, naturally wears out, but it can be prolonged by right diet, care, attention, giving the body its own intelligence, not imposing upon it my... the taste and so on, so on, so on.
1:28:52	So what is psychologically dying?
1:28:59	Is it possible to die so that there is no tomorrow, psychologically? Because that’s what it means, death.
1:29:13	That means ending every day everything that the mind and heart have accumulated, gathered, attached; ending every problem every minute so that the next day the mind is fresh, young.
1:29:33	So to die every day to everything that one is attached to, all that, is the whole problem of life.
1:29:43	And is it possible to transform man? And it is only when the mind is completely silent, the other... the immeasurable takes place.
1:29:53	I’ve said it, briefly.
1:30:02	(Pause) MW: I felt – you may not have intended it – but your remark about religion...
1:30:26	I mean, there have been, I thought some religious people said, ‘God is Love.’ I mean, what is the difference in that from your own position?
1:30:39	K: Sir, that becomes...
1:30:47	I don’t know God. God is an idea. There may be a God, I don’t know God. Therefore I have no belief. I start to find out if there is a God. And to find that out, if God means the immeasurable, love and all, I must find out. There must be – not find out – the soil must be prepared.
1:31:21	I don’t assume God is love, I don’t know a thing about it. So in my daily life, there must be love.
1:31:34	And out of that comes the love of the immeasurable... love which is the immeasurable, not love is God.
1:31:44	The immeasurable is love. And it’s not a belief, it’s like seeing the sunshine. I don’t believe in sunshine, it is there.
1:32:01	MW: Yes. But, I mean, if in some religious people, I mean, God is love then it seems to me there’s no difference; I mean, this is only verbalising.
1:32:11	K: Ah yes, but whether it is a belief or whether it is a conditioning, whether it is a daily living thing, not just a projection of their hope.
1:32:22	MW: Yes, it must be. I quite agree.
1:32:26	K: I would... I’m not judging them, I don’t know.
1:32:32	MW: I think what I’m suggesting is that your fundamental position, that very important aspects of it, are an expression of profound truths which have been expressed in slightly different manners before.
1:32:55	K: Sir, I’m... Maybe, sir. I’m not... The Hindus, the ancient Hindus have expressed it. The ancient Egyptians must have expressed it.
1:33:16	But I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about our daily life, our daily living, our daily relationship, our daily quarrels, our daily impossible society we live in.
1:33:34	MW: I mean, I wasn’t in any way suggesting you were like the scientist who was claiming priority.
1:33:41	(Laughs) (Laughter) I mean, all I’m saying is that we may find some reassurance in the feeling that we can trace the appreciation of these truths back in time.
1:33:52	K: Oh, I’m... Sir, that means comparing, that means time and all the rest of it. I’m...
1:33:57	FC: May I ask you, when you say that you never... in a certain situation you never think of what to do, you just act immediately without thought.
1:34:11	K: Thought didn’t come into operation.
1:34:14	FC: Yes. Right. Now, could you specify for us a little, maybe with some examples, when you do that because I think in practical matters you must also be in situations where you think before acting.
1:34:28	Let me give an example. If you want to speak to the students in the school here, it might happen that you plan to speak at 4 o’clock but then you see – well, this might be in the morning – the rain has just stopped then you think, ‘They work in the garden.
1:34:41	They’ll probably work a little longer, taking advantage of the weather, so it would be better to speak at 5 o’clock.’ K: Yes, surely.
1:34:45	FC: Then you act; then you go and announce your lecture for 5.
1:34:50	K: Surely, surely.
1:34:51	FC: So in many situations you also think...
1:34:53	K: Obviously. Obviously. Obviously.
1:34:56	FC: ...obviously, and then you act. Now, could you specify for us what are the criteria for situations when you do not think because it would be harmful, and when is it good to think?
1:35:04	K: Not harmful.
1:35:06	FC: Or inappropriate, or...?
1:35:13	(Pause) K: There was – as I was pointing out, sir – I was the head of an organisation.
1:35:30	And I saw truth cannot be approached through organised belief.
1:35:37	Direct perception. There was no thinking; I saw it.
1:35:45	JM: Can I ask you just a bit about that particular example?
1:35:54	K: I...
1:35:55	JM: Sure.
1:35:57	K: Or...
1:35:58	FC: This would be a very important decision. This was one of the major decisions in your life.
1:36:03	K: Perhaps.
1:36:04	FC: Or an important one, anyway.
1:36:05	K: One of the important ones, yes.
1:36:06	FC: So you would think it’s more appropriate not to think when there’s an important decision. Is that a criterion?
1:36:12	K: No, I... It is not, ‘I mustn’t think,’ the important... There is no thinking process taking place. Sir, look, the thinking process implies the observer. Right? There is something to be observed – to be seen, rather, let’s put it that way – something is seen without the observer and therefore action takes place.
1:36:42	FC: I understand the reason and I understand when you say that all our misery comes from this separation but what I am asking is that, as you do think very often before taking action, can you give us a criterion?
1:36:59	Can you distinguish between the occasions where this harm and misery and so on arises from thought and where it doesn’t?
1:37:06	K: Sir, I’m going to Rome, I’m going to Rome next week and then after a fortnight I’m going to India, so I have to plan it.
1:37:14	There I have to think, go to the... and buy a ticket and all the rest of it, but otherwise why should I think about any other problem except the ordinary problems – not problems – ordinary activities when thought is demanded.
1:37:34	I don’t know if I’m conveying anything at all.
1:37:39	FC: Yes, maybe it’s philosophical thought that you really don’t want to...
1:37:43	K: Uh?
1:37:44	FC: If you can call it philosophical thought.
1:37:46	K: No!
1:37:47	FC: You do not want philosophical thought. You want practical thought, that’s all right but...
1:37:50	K: That’s all. There is nothing... no other thought.
1:37:53	FC: That’s all, yes.
1:37:54	K: For instance, I go for a walk and there is no thinking going on. I’m not day dreaming.
1:38:05	JM: Can I ask you some... a bit more about this big organisation which you eventually disbanded?
1:38:18	How long, how many years was it as a big organisation?
1:38:21	K: Oh, from 1910 till... fifteen years, twenty years.
1:38:27	JM: And was there any things that happened during that time, connected with your organisation, that got you angry or irritated?
1:38:40	K: Oh, no! I was worshipped.
1:38:42	JM: No, no. Yes, but did you not disapprove of some of the activities that your...?
1:38:46	K: No, no, no. Sir, I was part of the whole circus.
1:38:52	JM: Right. Yes. And there was never... you never sort of said, ‘They’re being a bit too lavish about it’?
1:39:03	K: Ah no! No, on the...
1:39:05	JM: Nothing. So really, you suddenly woke up one morning and said...
1:39:07	K: I had been talking against organisations, spiritual organisations, spiritual authority. I said, ‘Don’t follow anybody, spiritually. Go to a doctor – that’s a different matter – if you have to go to unfortunately a doctor – forgive me – that’s a different matter, but otherwise don’t follow anybody, including me.’ So when the occasion, or in... when I saw the thing was getting larger and larger and – you follow? – the whole circus was becoming an enormous affair – enormous, you’ve no idea – properties in Australia, in India, five thousand acres in Holland.
1:39:52	JM: The point that I think maybe Fritjof was getting at – I’d like to try to put it into better words – you saw... is this a right reflection of your thought: did you suddenly see that there was an inconsistency in...?
1:40:09	K: Not even that, not even that. (Laughs) They said to me, ‘You say one thing about organised... why are you holding on?’ JM: Yes.
1:40:24	Well that, the realisation that there was an inconsistency there...
1:40:28	K: It didn’t... That was not the factor.
1:40:30	JM: Yes.
1:40:31	BG: Could it be that it’s not a matter of making a choice, saying, ‘There’s this choice, this choice and...’?
1:40:39	K: That’s it! There was no choice.
1:40:42	BG: No sort of... no, sort of, muddling around to...
1:40:43	K: Because – I’ll tell you – one group said, ‘For God sake!’ – including Lansbury, you know about Lansbury? He was the Labour ILP man. He was the Cabinet minister under Ramsay MacDonald and all that. He said, ‘Don’t do anything. You have got this property with a castle on it, keep it so as to help people.’ Others said, ‘You are contradicting.’ So I said, ‘All right,’ I listened.
1:41:14	And there was no choice, because choice implies uncertainty. ‘My God! Should I do this, should I not do this?’ You follow?
1:41:29	JM: But when you say you listened to these two groups of people...
1:41:31	K: I listened – you know? – like I’m listening to you here. (Laughs) RM: Would I be right in drawing the conclusion that knowledge cannot transform man?
1:41:45	K: Yes sir!
1:41:46	RM: And therefore the theme of this conference has been somewhat misstated. What we should be seeking for is how not knowing can transform man.
1:41:57	K: No. As the... what we started with, ‘What is the place of knowledge in the transformation of man and society?’ What is its place?
1:42:07	It has its place but psychologically it cannot transform man.
1:42:13	RM: What is its place then?
1:42:15	K: Organising a better society, better... then all the rest of it.
1:42:24	BG: If I can continue with a point about the closing of your society.
1:42:33	I feel that only a small number of problems come within this kind of, ‘Yes,’ or, ‘No’ area.
1:42:45	In most problems, there’s far more doubt and uncertainty. If, for instance, I...
1:42:51	K: I don’t quite understand your question.
1:42:53	BG: Well, one could say another problem is whether or not to develop nuclear energy – let’s just take that kind of problem – and the answer isn’t at all clear.
1:43:07	K: Who will answer that question? I’m not a nuclear scientist or any kind of scientist. (Laughs) I can’t answer for somebody else.
1:43:22	BG: Well, whichever person...
1:43:24	K: I don’t know.
1:43:25	BG: ...whichever person is going to answer that question, he will have to hedge his bets, he won’t be certain that what he’s doing is the right thing.
1:43:33	K: Sir, that means one has to go into the question of choice. Why do we...? We think that, having the capacity to choose, we are free.
1:43:52	I question that. On the contrary, choice arises when there is uncertainty, when there is not clear seeing.
1:44:04	When I see something clearly, there is no choice, the doing is there: in the very seeing is the doing.
1:44:16	If I am a nuclear physicist – thank God I’m not – if I am, I would have to choose what is going to happen to the world – you follow? – by my action.
1:44:29	I have to go into it very, very deeply, whether I’m really helping man or destroying man.
1:44:41	We have nearly destroyed nature, we have nearly destroyed the whale, we’re destroying, killing everything, we are.
1:44:52	BG: But still he has this problem.
1:44:56	K: Yes sir. You have the problem, not I.
1:45:02	BG: Could it...?
1:45:05	K: And, if I love you, I say, ‘Let’s talk about it. Let’s discuss it. Let’s have a good, intimate dialogue so that we both think together, create together, look at it together.’ After all, when you have a wife or a father whom you love, you talk it over.
1:45:33	But you cannot talk it over if I am bent on my scientific arrogance and, you know, all the rest of it, I can’t talk with you.
1:45:47	So to talk over together a problem, we must both of us be interested and we must have this quality of affection between us.
1:45:59	(Pause) MW: When I talk to science students, I try to make clear to them that the analytical thought is one way to approach problems and then I try to emphasise that most very important things in their lives cannot be approached in this way and I quote the example that one doesn’t choose a wife by making a list of personal attributes.
1:46:38	K: Yes sir! Yes. (Laughs) MW: Although, in practise, I think we probably all do a little of that. But I think this may bring it home. But on the matter of choice and nuclear energy, we now have a problem and I’m on a committee about the genetic engineering and I think that, you see, the scientists they have to make assessments.
1:47:12	They agree that the assessments cannot be measured; it is not in an area of careful prediction and quantification.
1:47:21	But I think that what they... I don’t know, I think ultimately, of course a decision has to be made and this will be made arbitrarily, in a sense.
1:47:37	It cannot be made on any intellectual thought basis although, of course, a great deal of thinking will have gone into turning the matter over on that level.
1:47:54	JM: Can I ask Maurice a question? Why must it be that way? I mean, why can’t the chairman of your committee carefully listen to all the arguments pro and con and put it on some sort of decision matrix and see what happens?
1:48:12	In other words, why this, you know...?
1:48:14	K: He will give it to the computer?
1:48:16	JM: No, not... well, yes, the computer could do the decision matrix; he’s not going to be doing the reasoning, that’s important. I mean, the arguments might be ‘compassionate’ quote, quote, I mean, you know, etc., etc., but the weighing-up of the pros and the cons and therefore the ultimate decision of your committee, it seems to me you’re being... you’re describing their work in too arbitrary a way.
1:48:40	No...
1:48:41	MW: Well, I think ultimately somebody has to make a... carry the can for a decision. The decision may be based on an active participation of all sections of the community in the ideal situation.
1:48:53	K: Sir, all that doesn’t... all that involves... what are we educated for?
1:49:02	What should I go to college, university, school? What for? The ultimate question, not... of course, I must know how to read and all the rest of it, but what for?
1:49:17	MW: Well, basically, to become more open-minded.
1:49:22	K: Have we? Do we?
1:49:25	MW: No.
1:49:28	K: (Laughs) We become glorified clerks, glorified this or that and what...?
1:49:39	What does it all mean? Sir, that’s why I think these questions like: what should I do, given certain situations, like a scientist who has developed atomic bomb and all that, what is his relationship to society?
1:50:03	What is his relationship to the whole of mankind? Or is he only concerned in producing that marvellous, lovely bomb?
1:50:17	(Laughs) BG: Have you experienced that a collective, non-verbal dialogue is a method of arriving at some kind of spontaneous solution to a problem?
1:50:36	K: Sir, that’s rather dangerous. I’ve tried it once or twice but that’s very dangerous, because everybody thinks they have got it and interprets it their own way and goes off.
1:50:47	Say, for instance – as Mr Capra was asking me just now – I haven’t entered the various schools of meditation: Zen, the various Hindu forms of meditation, the repetition of mantras, you know, they are doing that in America, Maharishi Yogi or somebody is practising it and Transcendental Meditation, I have done none of those things, because I saw immediately – perception – that’s all based on control or on an authority or on a system which becomes mechanical.
1:51:30	You…? So I say, ‘That’s finished’ — because I saw it, I’ve never entered it.
1:51:40	And therefore I have to find out what is meditation. So first of all, can the mind, without control, without a direction – which means will – can the mind be completely still without chattering?
1:52:05	(Pause) Not gimmicks, tricks and pretensions and illusions.
1:52:14	I don’t care if there is God or no God or the immeasurable; I don’t want to... the mind mustn’t deceive itself, which means doesn’t want a single experience: a desire for enlightenment, desire for truth, nothing.
1:52:36	Yes sir!
1:52:38	BG: But in reaching a group consensus, your experience is that it’s best to engage in verbal dialogue…
1:52:50	K: First. Go into it, a great deal, say, ‘Please listen.’ There are three arts: the art of listening, the art of seeing, the art of learning.
1:53:06	Learning means together; I’m not your teacher, I’m not your boss, I’m not your authority.
1:53:15	Together investigate, together think together, together we create. And listening means listen without any conclusion, without interpretation, without your prejudice, just listen.
1:53:30	And seeing means see without the observer. All the rest of it.
1:53:35	Q: And then the decision will arise, collectively or individually?
1:53:41	K: Ah, no. How...? What? When we bought this house we talked it over, a few of us: ‘Is it possible? Where is it? How is the money going to come?’ And we said, ‘Let’s get it,’ I said, ‘Let’s get it,’ and money came.
1:54:02	Q: You said, ‘Let’s get it’?
1:54:10	Everybody said, ‘Let’s get it’?
1:54:11	K: What sir?
1:54:12	Q: Everybody was agreed?
1:54:13	K: Oh absolutely, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t do it. What, I would say, ‘Yes, buy it,’ and then they all say, ‘Where is the money?’ and struggle for it? (Laughs) We all wanted it.
1:54:27	GS: Going back to the time when you dissolved the organisation, did you consult with anybody, I mean was there a consensus?
1:54:35	Did everybody say, ‘Let us dissolve it.’ K: Not everybody. I explained, sir; some said, ‘Keep it. What will you do if you don’t have a following? What will you do without money? What will you do if you give away everything, where are you going to live? For God’s sake, you’re not a person that will earn money. You haven’t got the capacity for that.’ (Laughter) Or some said, ‘You’re too beautiful.
1:55:02	For God’s sake remain with beauty of nature.’ (Laughs) And so on. Others said, ‘You are contradicting when you said, ‘Organised religions are destructive, separative,’ you are starting another.
1:55:16	You have one, why do you hold onto it?’ This went on, sir, for some time.
1:55:25	GS: But you did not feel any division? You saw and you did.
1:55:32	K: Yes.
1:55:33	GS: The others had to make their own bed.
1:55:35	JM: What was the point, then, of listening to the other...?
1:55:38	K: Ah! They were my friends, for God’s sake!
1:55:41	JM: Yes, I know, but I mean it had no... it wasn’t relevant to your decision... to the instant of the perception...
1:55:47	K: No, no. But they were my friends. I want... I mean, after all somebody... Dr Sudarshan says to me, ‘Look, what is going to happen to you? I’ve looked after you for 40 years,’ like Dr Besant and others said, ‘What’s going to happen to you?’ And I said to myself, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen; doesn’t matter.’ And everyone said that, they said, ‘This has got to be done, it’ll be done.’ And I’m still living, because I have no money still, so it’s all right.
1:56:23	Right sir?
1:56:24	GS: Yes, I was, if you permit me, I wanted to ask another question.
1:56:27	K: Delighted.
1:56:28	GS: If you think it is not appropriate, don’t answer it. I have read one of your earlier writings and that sounds more like how I speak now than how you speak.
1:56:40	You know, the very early booklet that you had written?
1:56:44	K: Yes.
1:56:45	GS: Do you now depart from it, do you think it was incorrect, or...?
1:56:48	K: Which one, sir? At the Feet of the…?
1:56:51	GS: At the Feet of the Master.
1:56:52	K: Little bit; oh yes.
1:56:54	GS: Because it sounds just like I would like... (Laughter) K: Because there, they was discrimination, discrimination means choice: what is essential, what is not essential, what is true, what is false?
1:57:17	Choice to me indicates a confused mind and out of a confused mind any choice must be still confused.
1:57:26	So I say, ‘See...’ You follow, sir? Seeing is the doing. Not discriminating.
1:57:36	GS: But if I may pursue the semantics of the thing, there are two ways of, it seems to me, of looking at a certain decision: one is to decide and then say, ‘I have decided.
1:57:51	This is it.’ Not look back and then say, ‘I could have chosen...’ K: ‘I regret.’ GS: So, in other words, it’s not a compromise, not like the...
1:57:56	K: No.
1:57:57	GS: ...American form of government or not like the British form of government. You chose and you have done it. It no longer has...
1:58:04	K: I don’t choose — no, no.
1:58:05	GS: No, I mean...
1:58:06	JM: You perceive... (inaudible) GS: You perceive two paths and then you find that, in fact, there are not two paths, but only one...
1:58:11	K: There is... yes...
1:58:12	GS: ...and you choose that.
1:58:14	K: ...perception.
1:58:15	GS: And there is no sort of compromise. There is no statement that there was another alternative, because 25% was...
1:58:22	K: Ah! No, no, no.
1:58:24	GS: Now, in the idiom that I’m used to, one says that you forsake the doership, the ego is the doership, retention of the doership.
1:58:36	You abandon the doership and then you have no problems.
1:58:39	K: That’s right.
1:58:40	GS: What was is no longer relevant because you were not there; that person who did it was gone with that particular action.
1:58:47	K: Yes. When I dissolved the organisation, from that day to now, I’ve never regretted it. I never said, ‘My God! What a lovely place that was. Five thousand acres, an old 17th century castle with a moat round it and the beauty and the camp...’ I never even thought about it, the moment I left it.
1:59:10	GS: So the discrimination, in a sense, in your view is – you know?
1:59:18	– unsatisfactory because it still talks, smacks of sort of a memory file which contains this alternative endeavour.
1:59:26	K: Yes. Yes. Do you remember, sir, that fable or that story of two monks? They were going from village to village. And one morning they woke up, washed and they were walking from that village to the next village.
1:59:44	They came to a river and they saw a girl, nice looking girl, weeping.
1:59:51	One of the monks goes up to her and says, ‘Sister, what’s wrong? Why are you weeping? Can we do something?’ And she says, ‘This morning I came, walked across, this was shallow, now it has swollen up, the river has gone up, I can’t walk across it.
2:00:11	My family is waiting there. I don’t know what to do, there is no boat.’ So the monk says, ‘It’s nothing.’ He picks her up, carries her across and leaves her.
2:00:24	And they go on walking. Two hours later, the other monk says to him, ‘Brother, we took a vow never to touch a woman.
2:00:36	Didn’t you feel very strange when you picked her up, didn’t you get excited? Didn’t you feel all your senses aroused? He said, ‘Brother, I left her two hours ago, but you are still carrying her, are you?’ Right sir?
2:00:56	GS: So I even see why you don’t feel that you should go back and, in a sense, state that that is not your view now, because that is done and that is finished.
2:01:07	Could I still ask you, what is the symbol that you refer to as the Master there? You talk about the Master’s work.
2:01:13	K: Yes sir. I think it was, in the Theosophical days, that must have been written in 1914, 15, something like that.
2:01:27	I was quite young. And in those days I was – if I may use the word – vacant. You follow? I used to go to school, they used to... the teacher used to beat me everyday, literally – because I’ve been told that – everyday, and put on the veranda crying.
2:01:52	And you would be there, standing all day, until the teacher says, ‘It’s time to go home, go.’ (Laughs) So during those days, I must have been impressed by the whole Theosophical concept of Masters – I don’t know if the others are interested – and probably that meant that.
2:02:18	Guru, in their sense.
2:02:22	GS: Except that there was no... On the one hand, you say that the work that we must do is the Masters’ work... (inaudible) K: Of course, of course.
2:02:30	GS: On the other hand, there was no particular person, entity, constellation of ideas which I or anybody else could research and find out as pointing to the Master.
2:02:41	It was not Dr Besant. It was not...
2:02:44	K: Sir – no, no – you know the Theosophical idea? Or they may not be interested in it; it’s not...
2:02:49	GS: I have Theosophical friends. I don’t know... I mean, most of them appear to me slightly off the mark.
2:02:57	K: Slightly... or demented, politely. (Laughs) Do you want to go into it?
2:03:03	GS: I would like to hear but I don’t know whether it’s... Many: Yes.
2:03:11	K: (Laughs) Sir, please, this is serious for people who have dedicated their life to it, therefore I’m not laughing at it.
2:03:25	I am not cynical about it. I’m not angry with them. It is their belief. You understand, sir? It’s like the Catholics, their extraordinary beliefs, I don’t say, ‘How absurd you are!’ It’s their belief.
2:03:41	Their idea was, sir, that there are perfected men who lived in the Himalayas, hierarchical men.
2:03:59	And one of the Masters – there were two of them, I don’t want to go into all this – who... one of them was supposed to be the Master who taught me.
2:04:16	And at a certain time – in 1911 or I’ve forgotten, it doesn’t matter – there were certain initiations and all that kind of thing going on with this boy.
2:04:32	And after those initiations, the boy remembered all these and put it down.
2:04:38	GS: But then this must be like the invocation of the Holy Ghost at the time of consecration of the Eucharist.
2:04:46	In the sense that the persons who were officiating, I mean, the legal entities who were officiating there, were not the Master. The Master was an invisible form...
2:04:52	K: Ah! No, no, you must take it quite differently. You are interested still in all this?
2:05:00	Q: Yes sir.
2:05:01	DB: There’s five more minutes. It’s five to one.
2:05:04	K: What sir?
2:05:05	DB: It’s five minutes to one.
2:05:07	K: We can continue afterwards if you want to. It’s quite a long affair, sir, do you want to go now or after lunch?
2:05:15	DB: It’ll take a little more time, we should stop it now.
2:05:18	K: What sir?
2:05:19	DB: I think we should defer it because it’s getting close to lunch.
2:05:24	K: All right. We’ll do it after.
2:05:26	Q: I’d like to hear it.
2:05:27	Q: Yes, so would I.
2:05:28	DB: We mustn’t forget it, then.
2:05:29	K: Ah! Sir, aren’t you interested in meditation? (Laughs) But you don’t ask that.
2:05:33	BG: Yes, I think meditation’s more important.
2:05:36	K: Uh?
2:05:37	DP: This is a story, isn’t it?
2:05:40	K: We’ll talk about it afterwards.
2:05:44	DP: Yes.