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BR80DSG2.0 - Thought is the beginning of desire
Brockwood Park, UK - 7 October 1980
Discussion with Small Group 2.0



0:21 Questioner: Mr Krishnamurti, yesterday we began talking about life in general and the problem of living. We begun unraveling the process which makes it possible for the mind, in our society, to develop until people are in their 20s or 30s – developing in a certain direction, but developing. After reaching a certain age, everyone has found a niche; the mind, it seems, gradually deteriorates. We saw yesterday that most people do not even question why things should be that way. Why should one accumulate conflicts, carry problems till they obstruct the mind, until it becomes smaller and smaller with very little space left? It is true that most people do not question the way these things are going.
1:35 K: So what is the problem?
1:38 Q: The problem is, when we do question, for example, because we have heard you asking why the mind should enclose itself gradually, it doesn’t seem that the mind flowers. So what prevents the mind from flowering, even when one earnestly questions?
2:09 K: Sir, I wonder why if they ask the question at all. It’s only very few people ask these questions. Il y en a très peu. [Very few.] And if they ask the question, why we live this way, there are dozens of people who give many, many explanations for this. So they get lost in many explanations. Right? So if a man… Say, for instance, suppose, I am caught in this narrow groove of existence. To whom am I to go to find out how to break through this? I can’t go to the psychologist, they are just like anybody else; I can’t go the priest, I can’t go to the intellectuals. To whom am I to go and ask: is it possible for me, as a human being, to break through this and flower, grow? To whom am I to go? You can’t go to any religious group, you can’t go to any professors, any careerist. So it becomes awfully difficult to find a person to whom you can go and ask serious questions. They have all got theories, they have all got answers, intellectual, verbal answers which they... but they themselves haven’t lived this. Vous comprenez tout ça?
4:22 Q: Maybe the first question we might ask is: how to flower, what does ‘to flower’ mean?
4:30 K: C’est ça. Sir, there must be freedom to flower. Right? That’s the first thing. But it's not... freedom is not a reaction, is not... Freedom isn’t from something or away from something. If it is, then it’s merely a reaction. So is it possible to have such freedom without any motive, without escaping from something – or freedom of choice, as we were talking about yesterday? So there must be freedom first. Freedom, first psychologically, not outwardly. Right?

Q: Oui.
5:46 K: Psychologically, we are slaves. Psychologically, we are bound. Inwardly, we have so many problems, we are attached to so many formulas, so many opinions, so many persons, ideas, beliefs, doctrines. If all these are bondages, one must be free of them. I think that is the essence of freedom: to be free from all the... from all those things which thought has put there, in the mind.
6:38 Q: So the first thing we have to do is to be aware of all these pressures…
6:45 K: Oui. To be aware of all that.
6:51 Q: So this means working on oneself, first of all.
6:54 K: But, sir, we are… each one of us is not, as we imagine, an individual; each one of us is the world, psychologically. Each one of us has this sense of anxiety, fear, and so on, all those things psychologically. So we are actually mankind. We are the rest of mankind. I think, that is the first thing to realise.
7:41 Q: That is very difficult to realise.
7:43 K: C’est ça.
7:44 Q: Very difficult, because the whole of education tends to shape the individual, isn’t it?
7:52 K: You see, but it doesn’t mean that we all become robots.
7:58 Q: Non.

K: Obviously not. So, can one be free of all this? Can one be free of a belief, of a faith or of any attachment? Because attachment or dependence in itself creates corruption. Right? Je sais pas si vous comprenez. [I don’t know if you understand.]
8:37 Q: Could you explain a little bit more, this is fairly difficult.
8:43 Q: The word ‘corruption’, in which sense should it be understood?
8:49 K: The word ‘corruption’ comes from the word ‘rompere’, to break.
8:56 Q: Yes, it is the etymological sense of the word.
9:00 K: Yes. That is, it is… attachment doesn’t bring about a wholeness. It brings about a frustration, fear, all kinds of anxieties in that. And therefore any form of attachment to a belief, to a dogma, to a theory, to a person must inevitably bring about this sense of breaking up, this sense of corruption. And is it possible for human beings to be so free? Because attachment brings a great sense of security, a great sense of stability, a feeling that you are... you belong.
10:09 Q: This term, attachment, I am attached to my wife, for instance; it is considered by most people as a quality.
10:18 K: Oui, oui, je sais. [I know.]
10:19 Q: They consider that attachment is love.
10:22 K: C’est ça. So, is love attachment?
10:27 Q: Well, that is the big question.
10:30 K: Where there is attachment, there is anxiety, n’est-ce pas?
10:36 Q: The fear of losing, yes.

K: Yes, there is fear, there is uncertainty, uncertainty in which there is always the desire to be certain. And is love fear? Is love a sense of uncertainty? Is love a sense of security? All those imply, don’t they, a sense of attachment to a person or to something, to an experience. It gives one a sense of safety, and it is that sense of security one clings to. Not to the person so much but to the feeling that you find security in that person. So security, the sense of being safe, is such a deep-rooted demand in human beings.
11:59 Q: I believe this is quite fundamental in human beings. The first religions go as far back as…
12:05 K: Oui, c’est ça, c’est ça.
12:06 Q: As soon as man had the capacity, he created a religion, or a god.
12:12 Q: As for love, I remember the way I used to think about it when I was younger. I don’t know if this concept of love has to do with my Catholic background, but the idea was that I was to meet a certain person and we would fall in love at first sight…
12:35 K: Coup de foudre! [Struck by lightning!]
12:37 Q: …and this thunderbolt would, from then on, constitute the ground of life. And I couldn’t help worrying, in my adolescent mind: but how am I going to meet her? Such things happen by chance – how am I to meet that one and only person?
13:00 K: Vous savez, ce coup de foudre… [You know, this thunderbolt…] is really a sexual, sensational thing, isn’t it? Sensory...
13:12 Q: I don’t know.

K: No?
13:14 Q: It’s mental.
13:15 K: Non seulement mental, mais c’est le corps... [No, not only mental: the body…] sensuality. And that sensuality is called coup de foudre. It sounds rather cynical, but it isn’t. We are actually facing the facts, not any kind of romanticism about it.
13:45 Q: And it’s a source of problems, because two persons may love each other with great enthusiasm and a few years later…

K: C’est fini! [Finished!]
13:59 Q: And, precisely, it is very difficult with our actual mentality to see love differently.
14:06 K: So, sir, one has to go into the question whether love is desire; whether desire, pleasure is love? Vous comprenez?
14:26 Q: One can’t say that love is completely absent from that. I mean, two beings who have felt…

K: Sir, look, sir. If I am married, if I fall in love with somebody, it is my whole physical response, first. Then there is a pleasure, then there is attachment, seeking companionship, and so on, so on, so on. And all that is called, generally, love in which there is fear, anxiety, jealousy, attachment, and gradually, I find her or him not quite suitable to my temperament, and so gradually there is divorce, there is escape from that.
15:31 Q: Yes, true, it is very often the case. But there is also the desire to appeal to somebody else…
15:38 K: Oui, oui. Oui, oui.
15:39 Q: …to bring to that person something.
15:41 K: Sir...
15:42 Q: Love is not completely absent, though. Or would you call that something else?
15:47 K: No, I would... if we could go into this question, whether love is pleasure.
16:02 Q: This is all I know… to get attached…
16:10 K: Mais je demande. [But I am asking.] I mean, I am asking you. Answer this question, sir: is love pleasure?
16:19 Q: I believe, to understand that, normally, it is part of love. Pleasure is part of love.
16:25 K: Do you believe so?

Q: No, not I, but in general.
16:28 K: En général, oui. [In general, yes.]
16:30 Q: And moreover, I think, it can be either the beginning and that it is something…
16:37 K: Is that…

Q: No, I am speaking in general.
16:40 K: En général, oui’. [In general, yes.]
16:42 Q: It’s like taking a path and maybe in the long run, one may find out what is the truth of that love… there is a different truth in love.
16:54 K: Sir, either...

Q: So that could be the beginning.
16:56 K: Either we try to find the truth of it, the meaning of the word ‘love’, the truth of it, the depth of it, the quality of it, or we are just playing with pleasure in various forms.
17:17 Q: If it is pleasure, then one can see that it is not very stable. Tastes change with time, etc. This pleasure is much too fragile to support a relationship.
17:33 Q: That doesn’t go very far. It is difficult to see what love is. It may be easier to see what it is not.
17:43 K: No, sir, no. I think one must go really into this question of pleasure – if one asks for oneself: is love pleasure?
18:02 Q: In that case, I believe, it is necessary to understand the whole content of the word ‘pleasure’, as you use it.
18:07 K: C’est ça.
18:08 Q: Because, I believe, it’s not exclusively ordinary physical pleasure, immediate, but wrapped into it is poetry and so many other things, flowers… So many elements are wrapped into it…
18:22 K: But, sir, in all that there is pleasure.
18:25 Q: In all that, oui.
18:27 K: You can’t get away from it. Either it is physical pleasure, or pleasure of possession...
18:37 Q: But also aesthetic pleasure…
18:39 K: Oui, oui. Artistic – call it what you like. Pleasure in attachment, pleasure in companionship, pleasure being together, both physically and non-physically – all that is the nature of pleasure. You can’t deny that.
19:03 Q: Then the question becomes: what is left in life without all these pleasures?
19:11 Q: One must know what one wants to do with his life.
19:17 K: Unless one has really understood the nature of pleasure, not denying it; understood it, gone into it, see the nature of pleasure and desire... These two are the factors in what we call love. C’est vrai, vous savez, c’est juste, non? [It is true, you know, it’s correct, no?]
19:47 Q: If one is very honest, if one goes to the very bottom of it, one can see that. But one must be very honest…

K: Yes.
19:52 Q: …not hide behind one’s own finger.
19:55 K: Yes, one must be terribly honest to go into this. You can’t play around with words. Unless these two factors are understood, not intellectually, verbally, but the nature of desire, the nature of pleasure, why man has been driven for millions and millions of years by desire and pleasure…
20:23 Q: And after that – disappointment.
20:29 K: Ah oui, tout ça. [Yes, all that.]
20:30 Q: Desire, of course, pleasure, then disappointment. Because if pleasure was continuous, why should we do without it?
20:41 K: Oui, but you... Sir, but... let’s find out why desire and pleasure are playing such a prominent part in life. Which means, what is desire and what is pleasure? To go into it, to see what actually desire is.
21:06 Q: In this field there are actually two desires. Physical desire…

K: Physique, oui.
21:12 Q: …well, that is biological…
21:13 K: Biologique, ça c’est normal. [Biological, this is normal.]
21:15 Q: …it exists in the species. And then there is the psychological desire.
21:21 K: Voilà. What is desire then? [Do you understand what I am asking?]
21:26 Q: Oui, oui.
21:29 K: What is desire?
21:36 Q: Desire is not a reaction we have in front either of an object or something that pleases us, that we think is…
21:47 K: The pleasure comes little later.

Q: Oui, c’est ça.
21:50 K: We are asking, what is the movement of desire, what is the origin of desire? How does desire spring?
22:03 Q: Does pleasure come afterwards? Because there is a lot of pleasure involved in wanting to possess an object that you see, for instance, in a shop window. And I’ve observed that once the object is yours, you don’t see it with such watchful, clear eyes. We don’t see its qualities so much.
22:24 K: No, but you are not answering my question, sir. I am asking you: how does desire arise? What is the nature of desire? What is the structure, the movement of desire?
22:44 Q: In its genesis, a perception comes first…
22:49 K: No, so how does it begin?
22:53 Q: The way I see it, it occurs when there is a perception. The mind is set in movement, it sees the object or the thing, likes it and then wants to possess it. Isn’t that it?
23:08 K: Sir, look, perception of an object – right?
23:15 Q: Oui.
23:18 K: Then contact with that object.
23:23 Q: Oui.
23:24 K: Then sensation.
23:26 Q: Visual contact or…

K: Oui, oui, tout. Perception, contact, sensation. That begins. Then where does desire begin? Vous avez compris ce que je vous demande?
23:46 Q: One imagines this object is going to improve one’s own image
23:56 Q: Yes, there is an image, and it corresponds, it fits.
24:00 K: No, you are not answering, sir.
24:01 Q: No, rather, the object is going to fill up some kind of want. I am empty, I feel I’m lacking in something.
24:12 K: No. Look, sir, perception, contact, that’s natural – right? – that’s what happens. I see that shirt, then I touch it, the material, then there is sensation, up to that point the whole movement is sensation. Right? Is sensation desire?
24:43 Q: No.

K: No. So when does desire begin?
24:48 Q: I think there is a process of identification involved.
24:51 K: No, sir. No, you are going too fast. Look at it carefully. Seeing, contact, sensation, is reaction. I see those trousers, nice colour, touch it, sensation. So, the seeing, the contact, the sensation is a movement. Now, where does desire begin? That’s not desire. Bien?
25:35 Q: Imagination comes in, I think…
25:37 K: Attendez, attendez. Wait, sir. What is imagination?
25:42 Q: The idea of something which…
25:45 Q: Thought?
25:47 K: Go, examine it, examine it.
25:50 Q: Thinking how well that object would suit us, how beautiful we would look in it, etc.
25:56 K: Yes, good, that’s it, like for a young lady. Yes, good. No, but you’re not answering my question. Where does desire begin, when?
26:15 Q: It begins very, very quickly…
26:17 K: Très vite. How? But you haven’t analysed... we haven’t looked at it, sir. Look, look...
26:23 Q: We are missing something.
26:25 Q: We have already said this.
26:27 Q: There may be an element of comparison involved…
26:31 K: All that comes a little later.
26:37 Q: I believe, it’s like something goes click in the twinkle of an eye…

K: Yes, sir, look...
26:41 Q: …which is a response…

K: Look, let’s begin. Perception, the colour of that trouser, then touching it, sensation. That is up to that point. Then thought says – thought – imagines me having that trouser. Thought creates the image and from that image desire arises. Vous avez compris?
27:19 Q: Yes, it is an unconscious process but very quick.
27:22 K: Oui, oui. But this is... if you break it up and look at it, it is that. Perception, contact, sensation, then thought makes the image of me in that car.
27:41 Q: And why that?
27:46 K: That’s what thought... That is desire.
27:50 Q: Yes, that’s it, at the beginning.
27:52 K: Pardon?
27:53 Q: He is asking, why should thought do that?
27:54 Q: Yes, why should thought do that? Why create that image? Why should it make a representation of myself in these trousers?
28:00 K: So, sir, look, we are understanding what is desire, what is the nature of desire, what is its movement. And you are asking: why does thought create the image? Are you?

Q: Yes. Oui.
28:16 Q: C’est ça, oui.
28:17 K: C’est ça?

Q: C’est ça, oui.
28:19 K: Why? The answer is very simple. The pleasure of...

Q: Ah, oui, oui.
28:33 K:...of possession.
28:34 Q: That’s it, that’s where the pleasure comes in. In other words, it is the seeking of pleasure which fuels desire.
28:43 K: No. Thought creating the image, and that image is my… the driving the car. N’est-ce pas?
28:58 Q: And then…
29:02 K: Sir, look, I see that car. I touch it, I look at it, I go over it, feeling the gears and all that, then thought creates the image: me sitting in that car, driving. That moment is the beginning of desire. This is irrefutable.
29:30 Q: It’s true, but this is only the mechanics of the thing.
29:33 K: That’s all. That’s all we are asking. C’est la mécanique de la chose. But we are saying... we are asking if that... that is the whole movement of desire. Then desire changes the objects: more pleasure, less pleasure, better possess a bigger house, and so on, so on, so on.
30:15 Q: That is showing…
30:16 K: So, thought is the beginning of desire. Thought with sensation is the beginning of the desire. Non?
30:31 Q: The amazing thing about thought and images is that they can give us sensations.
30:42 K: Yes, it’s the same movement.
30:46 Q: That’s where the trap lies: I can do very well without the sensations that this pair of pants, for instance, is giving me, while I can create through thought, within myself, sensations.
31:03 K: C’est ça. C’est ça. C’est ça.
31:06 Q: Like someone who is dreaming: I can create pleasurable bodily sensations, like warmth, pleasure, through images such as that of car, of a woman I desire, etc.
31:18 K: N’importe quoi. [Whatever.] So, sir, you see, then how to control… desire arises?
31:36 Q: You can’t stop thought in order to suspend desire.
31:39 K: Oui, c’est ça. I don’t know… I mean, you must know that most religions demand that you control desire.
31:54 Q: Yes, austerity, etc.

K: I mean, the whole monastic life.
32:00 Q: To crush it.
32:01 Q: Yes, but this doesn’t work.
32:07 K: But you can’t suppress desire, it is there, burning. So you identify that desire with an image – Jesus or Krishna or somebody or other – and hope by identifying with that symbol your desire will disappear. But you have merely pushed it further away. Right?
32:39 Q: Yes, one tries to sublimate desire.
32:42 K: Sublimer le désir, but it’s still desire.
32:46 Q: In literature, this goes under the name of platonic love.
32:51 K: Oui, oui. Oui, oui, tout ça.
32:53 Q: That doesn’t solve anything.
32:57 Q: Some religions resort to techniques such as mantras in order to silence thought by force...
33:07 K: Sir, no... Yes, that’s right. That’s right. But you see, can you do... no, you’re… by repetition, are you stopping desire?
33:25 Q: Thought may be suspended during the repetition, but after…
33:28 K: Of course. Repetition is the movement of thought.
33:34 Q: That is true.
33:42 Q: For such things as a pair of pants, it is fairly easy to deny desire, as one understands, one does not really either want or need them. But for deeper things…
33:51 K: C’est ça. Therefore one has really to go not only into desire, but why thought creates the image. Why is thought always creating images?
34:10 Q: And it wants to keep them…
34:12 K: No, go into it, sir, a little more. Thought creates the image of a woman, of a house, of God, of a symbol. It worships that symbol. What makes thought create images? Ça vous intéresse tout ça? [Are you interested in all this?]
34:42 Q: Well, I sense that through those images I can experiment; me, through thought, I can practically feel it in my body. I experiment either pleasure or the displeasure of a given situation. Thought serves to experiment by anticipation pleasures and inconveniences, it helps to foresee, to gain a few instants over time.
35:24 K: Sir, go into it much deeper than that. My question is: thought has created images – right? – not only images made by the hand, but images made by the mind. All the churches are filled with images made by the mind. Right? No?

Q: Oui, oui.
35:58 K: And why does thought create images? This is really a very good question if we could go into it.
36:07 Q: Don’t you think that thought creates images because more often than not it cannot face reality, and thus it takes refuge in an image? It is afraid of reality, cannot face it.
36:24 K: But can thought know what is reality?
36:35 Q: Thought can interpret reality.
36:37 K: Ah, therefore it is a... that interpretation is another form of image.
36:43 Q: Is it not again it’s search for security?
36:46 K: No, Daphne, go much more deeply into the whole movement of why thought is always creating images – you understand? – pictures? Both the pictures of the past, the ideas, the memories, of experiences, and so on, so on, and also projecting into the future images, ideals, conclusions. All those are movements of images. Right? Why?
37:31 Q: It can be fairly practical at times.
37:36 K: With regard to building a bridge, it’s practical. N’est-ce pas?

Q: Oui.
37:42 K: If I am an architect, I imagine, project. Thought projects how the building should be. There it’s practical.
37:53 Q: If it was not possible…
37:55 K: But psychologically, inwardly, why does thought create all these innumerable images?
38:04 Q: Isn’t it out of fear of having to confront something unforeseen?
38:09 K: That’s right. Go into it, Daphne, go much more deeply into it. Go on, don’t stop there, find out. Find out. To do that – look – to do that, you have to find out what thought is. Right? Thought creates the images, but what is thought? It’s very simple: thought is memory, response of memory, experience as knowledge stored up in the brain, and thought springs from that. That’s simple enough. But why does this movement from the past through the present to the future, all the time creating patterns, images, symbols, design?
39:06 Q: Thought is memory, but it has the extraordinary quality of being also sensation. Like when I happen to imagine falling into emptiness, the whole body is in a fright.
39:25 K: Bien. Sir, have you got any image?
39:31 Q: That image of falling…
39:32 K: No, I am asking you: do you have an image? Whatever it may be, of your wife, your children. Surely.

Q: Oui.
39:46 K: Pourquoi? [Why?]
39:51 Q: She is not under your eyes presently, so…
39:53 K: So… No, look, sir, you have said something. Which is, that without the image you have nothing.
40:06 Q: Yes, one is alone.
40:08 Q: That’s correct. Memory is crowded with images.
40:12 K: No. No, sir, no, sir. I have an image of my wife, if I have a wife, or a friend. In that image is great security. Not in the person. I have created an image of my wife, all the images after living with her for ten years, I have created a series of pictures, images, and those images are not alive, static, but she is alive. In her I don’t find security; in the image I do.
41:10 Q: Because it is static, that’s the point.
41:12 Q: We built it as we like… In other words…
41:17 K: Sir, in living things, there is no security.
41:22 Q: Because it changes all the time. In other words, therefore this image structure was built
41:33 K: …pour me donner… […to give me…]

Q: …to get security. Whatever the domain. That’s it, that is clear.

K: See what I have done: I take comfort, security in words, in illusion. Image is an illusion, no? Not in the person.
42:12 Q: In other words, one refuses to see reality.
42:16 K: Yes, sir. The refusal to see actually what my wife is, and she refuses to see what I am. So the battle goes on.
42:34 Q: This you can see with couples quite often. For instance, when both are working in different circles they end up having a life of their own. They live together yet have different contacts and their memories evolve differently. After a few years those two persons have evolved while their mutual images remained static…
43:00 K: C’est ça. And they are perpetually separate. And that’s called love. Right? We are not being cynical, we are just facing things as they are, not being romantic about all the…
43:31 Q: Yes, we have also built an image of love…
43:35 K: C’est ça, c’est ça.
43:36 Q: …and when we see it doesn’t work, then we say love is impossible.
43:40 K: But you change... go off with another woman or another man, hoping to find it there, but it is the same process goes on there. So, we have seen the nature of desire. And why has humanity always tried to control desire? Vous comprenez?
44:26 Q: Too much of it is destructive when…
44:29 K: Take all the religions of the world, they have said: control. And education is also helping us to control.
44:41 Q: Well, you know that if desire is given free rein in society, society soon disintegrates, because from desire conflict arises.
44:50 K: That’s what’s happening. Our society is going to pieces.
44:54 Q: Because if I alone desire that object, it’s all right, but if several of us strongly desire it, then we’ll end up fighting.
45:02 Q: Yes, in other words, today desire is let free, because the influence of religions, which have tried to repress desire, is much less.
45:13 K: Sir, desire for power. Take desire for power. Every human being wants power, over somebody. So, how do you, without controlling desire – controlling – how do you give it its right place? Vous comprenez ce que je veux dire? You understand my question, sir?
45:52 Q: I believe we generally separate ourselves from desire. We say there is desire, but there is a different thing which is me. So I will…
46:01 K: Attendez, attendez un instant. Is desire different from me?
46:10 Q: It is quite obvious, desire is part of us.
46:14 K: Oui, c’est moi!
46:15 Q: Yes, but we are not acting accordingly.
46:17 K: Le désir, c’est moi. [Desire is me.]
46:19 Q: It all goes so fast that the instant after desire there is this image of someone previously having a desire. There is a split…
46:29 K: No, sir, but look at it, sir. We have said: control desire. Right? But desire is me, it’s part of me.
46:46 Q: It needs very quick thinking, extreme attention to see this. What happens, rather, is that there are two successive images. First desire, then immediately after a part of thought seeing the other part desiring.
47:03 K: C’est ça. So what happens? You are missing...
47:08 Q: But normally, either one holds on to desire or one brushes it aside, suppresses it. There are two movements…

K: Deux mouvements…
47:18 Q: …two possibilities.

K: Bien. Either… or those two movements imply that there is a controller, there is an actor, different from desire. No? Is that so? Is the actor different from the actual desire itself? Of course not. So we are playing games.
48:01 Q: Yes, but that game is also very real.
48:05 K: Oui, oui. Oui. But that’s what has happened. The mind, thought, has separated itself from desire and says, ‘I must control desire’.
48:25 Q: Generally, I control desire because of a higher desire. For instance, the desire to be well considered, the desire to be good. Actually, a second desire makes me control the first desire.
48:39 K: Oui, oui.
48:40 Q: One desire against another desire.
48:42 Q: Seeing an object I wish to have, I think I will discredit myself in the eyes of its owner if I take it. The desire to be well considered wins over the desire of the object.
48:55 K: Sir, but if one realizes desire is not separate from me. Thought is the thinker. Right? Thinker is the thought. There is no thinker apart from thought.
49:21 Q: You mean that in fact there is only thought.
49:23 K: C’est ça.
49:29 Q: Why do we think there is a thinker then?
49:31 K: But that’s our education, our tradition, our whole way of living, that we have separated the thinker from thought, the experiencer from the experience, the observer from the observed. That’s our way of living, and therefore there is always conflict – right? – between the thinker and the thought. When you separate them there must be conflict. But if you see the thinker is the thought, the observer is the observed, psychologically, then you totally remove all conflict. Right? Yes, sir. This is where our difficulty lies. We are so caught up in our own division; we have been for millennia trained to think that the thinker is different from thought, the observer is different from the thing he observes. Of course, the observer is different from that microphone, but psychologically, inwardly, there is this division, which is totally illusory, it’s not a fact.
51:17 Q: Yes, but we also live a divided life, because very often we think one thing and do another, which also gives us the impression that there are several entities.
51:25 K: C’est ça, c’est ça.
51:28 Q: It’s easy to see when one gets angry. When one is truly angry, one is not conscious of it. One is so much into it, or simply it, that one realizes only after, how he could ever behave this way. Memory kind of backfires on that fit of anger, but we do realise for one moment we were totally that sensation.
51:56 K: No, sir. But it is tremendously important to find out this fact, why human beings live in duality – you understand? – the opposites.
52:14 Q: Yes, because very often, if not always, one part of us acts and the other part judges.
52:25 K: L’autre, oui. [The other, yes.]
52:26 Q: It is there, duality.
52:27 K: Yes. Why? Why this division?
52:30 Q: Basically, we are never spontaneous.
52:33 K: Yes, sir, but why? You are not answering my question.
52:38 Q: Because there again I think we are not – how shall I say – in the present moment. One always takes a step back. One can never be entirely oneself.
52:54 Q: It’s as if one was keeping under his arm the whole past thoughts and images, and we meet the new instant with all the things one is keeping there, not wanting to lose it. I think that it is all these images, and the memory, which dulls and prevents...
53:15 K: Sir, you are... you are all... you are going off describing, describing. I am asking you a question which you are not answering: why human beings have lived for thousands of years in this dual state, contradictory state. You understand my question?
53:39 Q: I think that’s part of the evolution of thought.
53:41 K: Oui, but why? Continuez, je vous prie. [Please continue.]
53:47 Q: Well, in ancient Greece there was a definite way to proceed towards truth which was through dialogue.
53:53 K: C’est un dialogue entre… en soi? [An inward dialogue?]
53:57 Q: No, normally this dialogue was between two persons. Through discussion some truth would come up. In its development, it took the form of dialectics…
54:11 K: Sir, look, sir...
54:12 Q: I have a point of view, you have a point of view, and finally we get to a certain something which…
54:17 K: No, you are not answering my question, sorry. I may be dull or I may not be listening to you, but are you answering my question: why human beings have always apparently lived in this contradictory state? I hate, I love. Right? Violence and no, don’t be violent. These two exist in us. Right? Why?
54:54 Q: Isn’t it because we have totally separated ourselves from what we truly are and that we are driven by the idea of how we would like to be?
55:01 K: Dites-moi, expliquez-moi. [Do tell me, explain to me.]
55:05 Q: Because we have an ideal of what we’d wish to be.
55:08 K: No, no. Why? Yes. I am violent and I have also at the same time the idea of non-violence. Why? You see all those ancient drawings, good fighting evil. You’ve seen it. Why this duality?
55:38 Q: Because I think that the human mind cannot think without comparing.
55:43 K: But is that…

Q: Creating the two opposites.
55:46 K: Now, wait, sir, wait. Five minutes we have got. Which is a fact? Which is the fact? Fact being that which is happening. Vous comprenez ce que je veux dire? That is a fact. Violence: I am violent. That’s a fact. But why has the mind created the non-fact?
56:24 Q: An image then.

K: Yes, the other, the opposite. Good and evil. Take those two. I want to be good and I am also...
56:37 Q: But this is the conflict between desire and reality.
56:39 K: No, sir. No, you are explaining, you are not going into it.
56:43 Q: We are trying to create some distant place where to go, a path, a movement. One thinks that by giving oneself the ideal of goodness one can move towards goodness.
57:01 K: You see, sir, between good and bad there is a distance in my mind. Right? Right? That means time. Distance means time. I hope through time to solve this problem. Right? I am violent; not to be violent; there is an interval. Right? In that interval, I hope to overcome the violence. So I create... thought creates the non-fact – right? – hoping the non-fact will resolve this, the fact. I wonder if am making myself clear. C’est bien, clair? So what happens? Why can’t the mind face the fact? Why has the mind… uses the non-fact to go… to act upon a fact.
58:41 Q: I think that the fact includes many elements, though.
58:44 K: C’est ça. Sir, the moment – this is a strange fact – the moment I allow the distance, time, other factors come in. I am living; I am afraid of death. So I put death far away, a distance from my... What happens in that distance, in that space? I am afraid, I want comfort, I know I am going to die, but if there was no distance, see what happens?
59:26 Q: I would die immediately.

K: No. That’s an extraordinary fact: we are always avoiding the what is, what is actually going on. So we create the duality, the opposite, and hope by time, by circumstances, this thing would be resolved. And it never is. Finito. We’ve stopped.