BR74S5 - Transformation, feeling responsible, being attached home
Brockwood Park, UK - 15 October 1974
Seminar 5

Text-only version

0:00 This is J. Krishnamurti’s 5th seminar with scientists at Brockwood Park, 1974.
0:10 George Sudarshan: (speaks some Hindi first) Everybody said what his profession is, what his grouping is and what his name is and this summarises the thing. It says that, ‘I belong to the group of Kashurba and student of Rig, the branch of Vedas. And my name is Sudarshan and I greet you.’ I am a physicist contemplating the architecture of the world, at the level of the very small and the very general. I have pursued personal, intimate experience and I have diligently tried casting my experience into a unified, aesthetic pattern and thus stop the world. 0:56 I have succeeded in this endeavour to the extent that I find no bifurcation between scientific and spiritual knowledge. One is with the left eye and the other with the right eye, but both seem to be needed for perspective. Science is a model and the assertion that the model is a fair representation of the world is a hypothesis. To keep the models to size we delimit the model, thus the rôle of approximation. But sometimes we extrapolate: does the world really have a relativistic, I mean... (inaudible) structure? The assertion that it has is part of the limitation that we have. 1:36 It is part of the approximation. As far as I can make out, knowledge acts on the individual in many ways. First, it renders the world lawful and hence comprehensible in terms of a few laws plus certain initial conditions. Second, it enables one to see behind a variety in a unification. We see the abstract concretised when we see a variety of phenomenon. Knowledge enables one to see oneself as an object. It enables one to be creative, both in perspective and in communicable knowledge, and thus it brings about transformation: when you know who you are, you are not that person. 2:25 This transformation is a face change, a cataclysmic change, which does not change the constituents but rather the organisation and the mode of functioning. The laws of nature bend to accommodate the altered existence. And the standard Indian analogy is the lotus leaf. If you are a leaf in a pond, there is very little that you can do about not being in the pond but, on the other hand, you can be like the lotus leaf: you can arrange for the water not to wet your surface. The transformation that I talk about, then, is primarily for oneself. 3:05 It is a new perspective; it therefore creates a new world. One can chose to be outside the cause/effect chain; one is no longer bound. One lives like a warrior – to borrow Castaneda’s phrase – absolute freedom, with no need for exercising the freedom at all. No choice, because all choices are equally possible. Yet one exists at many levels. One retains options and in options live alternatives and choice. It is at this voluntarily accepted option level that compassion operates: one sees another and loves another; one lives like the compassionate one. 3:49 But for this it is necessary that you see more than one. Beyond one’s transformation is the transformation of those that are close to you, by the flower chains of love and affection. Your student, your friend, your son, your enemy — they can be transformed, but only to the extent that you are them; to the extent that the flower chain holds. The transformation of mankind as a whole may or may not take place. The cruelty and violence of a Hiroshima seemed to be surgically clean when compared with the indifference or the covert condonement of a Biafra or a Bangladesh. 4:30 What is the nobility or justification for the liberalism of a professional liberal who agitates for a minimum wage within the country and pursues policies that starve out countless many in other nations? If that is harmony and peace and do-gooding, we better be without it. Better the dependent tax gatherer, rather than the smug Pharisee. Corruption in high places, breakdown of integrity amongst academic intellectuals is the kind of unaesthetic misogynation that we must be aware of in bringing about a transformation of mankind. 5:07 But where does one start? Perhaps at open-hearted meetings like this, or could they be the beginning of a new force? To me, the transformation of the other is a by-product – a plus and bonus – but the essence of existence is in seeing, being a rishi, being a seer. For when I see clearly, I see no other but one that is not different from myself. Then I have no neighbour, no-one to transform and no-one to be compassionate to. And from direct experience I find that when I see, even others around me seem to feel the premonitions of a transformation. 5:49 Yet to be a seer is to be alone, without being lonely. The route to transformation, then, seems to be many and yet really... (inaudible) ...is only one: when I can lose myself in the contemplation of an idea, or the solution to a problem; when I can listen to another or read another’s work without being aware of that person’s personality; when I am in an altered state of consciousness, induced by meditation or by chemical stimuli; when I am lost in contemplation of my favourite deity; when I am in the presence of my master — all these are egoless trips and all these seem to me to bring about my transformation. 6:34 I do not have models of why or how these transformations take place, but I tell you that there is a demonstrable and hence falsifiable sequence of events, which do bring it about. I am puzzled why these radically different routes all trigger the same transformation; perhaps sincerity is important. As Charlie Brown says, ‘The great pumpkin will definitely come on Halloween day to the most sincere pumpkin patch.’ Transformation then, as I see it, is not increasing good and reducing evil. It is going beyond good and evil and it is said that, along the way, one enhances good. That’s all I wanted to say.
7:18 DB: Sure. Does somebody want to start by commenting on it?
7:26 David Shainberg: What is a sincere pumpkin patch?
7:32 GS: Well, Charlie Brown, every Halloween, sits in the pumpkin patch and Lucy keeps telling him that, ‘You are stupid, Charlie Brown,’ but Charlie Brown says, ‘No.’ I mean, ‘It is said that the great pumpkin would come to the most sincere pumpkin patch.’ Poor fellow is always disappointed. But the point is that in sitting in the pumpkin patch, he has more fun than all the other people; certainly more than Lucy, who knows that it will not produce a new result.
7:59 DB: I think Harsha’s next.
8:01 Harsha Tankha: You spoke about transformations occurring in the presence of your deity and with LSD sometimes or drugs or whatever.
8:11 GS: Chemical stimuli.
8:13 HT: Chemical stimuli. (Laughter) I named it. But it seems like you’re saying that they occur again and again, like you grasp something for a while and then you lose it. And then again, maybe, you look to your deity or your master or take another pill and there you are again. And, to me, this doesn’t seem like a real transformation, if it really brings you back into... it feels to me that a transformation – that we are looking for and trying to see – is one that is no longer seen like that. And in fact all these things: deities and masters and pills are hindrances because they make you believe that you have actually seen this transformation, when it wasn’t really the kind of transformation that is necessary.
9:24 GS: Shall I respond?
9:29 DB: Yes.
9:30 GS: I made an empirical assertion that, in my case, if I do certain things, certain things do happen. It happens again and again. It is... I mean, I’m willing to go into more details about what is the altered state, what is the transformed state. Now, you say that if it is a transformation which has to happen again and again, it is not the true transformation, so you have some idea about what the true transformation is. All I say is that I know that this happens. I do not know whether there are any other true transformations, from which I do not dissent. 10:05 I suspect if such a transformation took place, people will definitely lock me up; that if I am not able to come back to the ordinary causal world, with recognising things more or less as they are. It is possible – and this has happened to me at various times – that you could exist, in a sense, at two levels at exactly the same time; you function at two levels simultaneously, that you go about doing whatever you have to do – because if you are driving a car, you don’t say, ‘Well, I am Brahman, this is Brahman and the road is Brahman and therefore let me go and crash into somebody else’ – but you function those things. 10:42 If you have to teach, you teach; if you have to pay your bills, then you do those. But at the same time... and if you have to fight somebody, you fight them also but at the same time you find that all these things are not very important things, that they go on. They go on mechanically; you don’t worry about it, you don’t plan about it, they just happen. Now, my suspicion is that that the only transformation that I am likely to go through, maybe in the foreseeable future, is one in which this super-position of the two states continues over an indefinite period of time, that I do not have to stimulate it by one action or other. 11:22 By the way, even though I mentioned all these things, I mentioned them partly because there are doctors here who might be in a better position to talk about why or how there is a commonality between these. But very often the mood is there without your having to resort to one thing or the other one, but these are circumstances which I identify as things which I could appeal to, in case I felt that – you know? – the battery was running down. Now, I do not know what you mean by, ‘If you have to do it again and again, you would not do it.’ 12:02 I mean, I have to take a bath every day and I don’t say, ‘Well, I won’t take it if I...’ So it seems to me that this is an altered condition, but I don’t particularly have any desire to be in the altered condition alone. I would much rather be in both at the same time.
12:18 Julian Melzack: Yes, sorry. I agree with what you said just at the end. I mean, there seems to... in some of us, there’s a sort of tension. On the one hand, we have the ordinary causal world that science is perfectly able and capable of coping with and then we have this other transformed state, which is somehow ‘better’, in quotes – I mean, very loosely thinking now – which science can’t touch. And there’s been, I mean, people alluding to the idea that science somehow isn’t wide enough in scope to cope with whatever this transformed state is. 12:58 And then there are others of us who feel either perhaps we don’t know what this transformed state is, that in principle cannot be covered by the umbrella of science, or else it’s just a false statement that science can’t cover that included. And I think perhaps the scope and limits of science really ought to be discussed later on, because I think there’s a huge fundamental disagreement amongst us about just what the scope of science is and what it ought to be, whether it ought to cover this so-called transformed state, whether it’s capable of it. 13:31 I mean, I think some of us have as a sort of, well, Karl said a faith, and I think that’s true. I have it; we have a faith that science is going to be wide enough in scope to cover this state, whatever it may be. Others have, I think, just as strong a faith that it, in principle, is not going to be able to cover whatever this other altered state may be. And I think that might be really the most fundamental disagreement that we share in this room.
13:56 DB: Does somebody want to say something to that?
14:01 Q: Well, I agree it’s worthwhile a long discussion, some day.
14:06 DB: You want to have...?
14:07 Q: No, but I think we should reserve some time later in the week to discuss this question.
14:11 DB: Well, I think the question may come up again at some other stage.
14:18 K: Could I ask...?
14:20 DB: Yes.
14:22 K: I would like to ask Dr Sudarshan. Is that transformed state, does it run in harmony with the driving the car, or it’s always there and you drive the car? You know what I mean?
14:49 GS: No, I’m afraid I didn’t follow.
14:51 K: I drive the car. There I have to exercise all my capacity and so on, knowledge and all the rest of it. And that state – which you say is transformation – does it exist at the same time? It’s there, only you’re driving the car.
15:12 GS: Sometimes. That is, if one is in the altered state, that altered state does not prevent me from functioning as an ordinary human being.
15:25 K: Of course.
15:26 GS: Including driving a car. I mentioned that as a case in which if you make a misjudgment you could cause harm to other people. That you could do that, you could go and teach your classes, you could go about transacting your normal duties.
15:39 Gordon Globus: Do you drive the car with love? I think that’s...
15:42 K: What sir?
15:44 GG: Do you drive the car with love?
15:48 K: (Inaudible)
15:50 GS: I don’t know about the car, but it appears in harmony; it appears just right. You know, it’s...
16:01 K: So you are never out of that state. So it is always moving together.
16:07 GS: It’s always moving together.
16:09 K: Like two streams.
16:11 GS: Right. There are other times when I still drive the car, and hopefully reasonable well, but...
16:18 K: Ah, but that...
16:19 GS: But there are tensions and then say, ‘I don’t really want to read Dr Shainberg’s paper because – you know? – he was really not very nice to me. And I’m not really interested in him. I’m reading his paper but I can’t read his paper without thinking of this.’ If there is that tension, or to say that, ‘Well, he writes this paper but I have better ideas than he has and so why should I read his paper?’ There are times when you feel this one even if you have no particular... I have nothing against him. Even if you have no particular resistance against the person, if you are aware of your personality and then say that, ‘This is his and that is mine’...
16:55 K: Then you have lost it.
16:57 GS: Then you have lost it.
16:58 K: Yes, so...
16:59 GS: You can still function as... (inaudible) but...
17:00 K: Yes, of course. So to sustain or maintain or to keep it flowing, you have to have – I’m just asking – you have to have a great deal of self-knowledge, a great deal of understanding your own nature, your own... be aware of yourself and all your tricks and all your fancies, your deceptions and so on, so on, so that one doesn’t really cut out the other.
17:32 GS: I wouldn’t want to put it that way, because I don’t think I have that much knowledge about my ability to deceive myself. Like everybody else, I am quite good at deceiving myself. But those times when I get outside myself, when I feel that everything is right...
17:51 K: Then they run together.
17:52 GS: Then they run together and I don’t have to worry about, ‘Now I must watch out for myself not deceiving myself.’ So it seems to me that the way around a Gordian knot is to cut it. And the cutting is usually done by, in a sense, being there rather than going through step-by-step.
18:08 K: Would you say, sir, it’s like a tree having its roots deep in the earth and putting out its arms to heavens? But first you must have your roots deep in the earth. That means there must be freedom from yourself, freedom from your own anxieties, fears and troubles and all that. That is...
18:39 GS: I don’t know whether...
18:41 K: ...really established in righteousness – if I can use that word without being misunderstood – and that very righteousness being established there, pushes the tree into heavens. You understand what I’m...?
18:58 GS: Yes, I understand. I’m not sure I would like to either agree or disagree with you, but simply say that I don’t want to use a model in which there is a time sequence.
19:07 K: No, I understand. Yes.
19:09 GS: It is... If I want to think in terms of what is necessary for bringing this about, perhaps I would say it is necessary that this be logically antecedent; that I should know about myself. I should be genuine, I should be authentic before I could function in this mode. But it seems to me that usually I know about this mode of existence by being there, not by climbing the steps but sort of without knowing about it, I am delivered there.
19:38 K: But sir, if I am, say, frightened by... I’m frightened of my wife or.. frightened, I can’t have the other. I can’t have... the two can’t run harmoniously. So obviously there must be freedom from fear. I may occasionally be afraid, but I am afraid and I put it away. But the feeling that the two cannot exist where the fear is. Would I be right?
20:17 GS: When... Let me rephrase the thing and then agree with what I rephrase. (Laughter) (Laughs) That when I have fear, I am not in it.
20:27 K: Yes.
20:28 GS: When I am in it, I do not have fear.
20:30 K: But... but... but with fear can you have the other?
20:35 GS: No, not with... but with the other, I cannot have fear also.
20:38 K: Ah no, no. No, I am putting... If I am afraid – afraid of many things – the other thing is not possible. Agree? But the other thing cannot happen if I have fear.
20:57 GS: Yes.
20:59 K: So my concern is not the other, the other stream, but the understanding of fear; the moving away from fear. That’s... My concern is not the transformation or entering into a different consciousness or a different stream, but the elimination of fear. Then the other thing takes place. Like...
21:24 GS: Well, normally – I am again talking about myself because it’s the only laboratory I have in this case – normally, it seems to me it is not fear that comes in but tension, of personality interfering.
21:41 K: Yes, I’m using the word...
21:44 GS: The only case that I remember recently where fear was a primary thing was a couple of years ago when I had to enter hospital for some neurosurgery, and when I was dropped at the hospital and I took my suitcase in and checked myself in, I really felt afraid. I wanted to get out and run away, because I knew I could certainly be alive for another two weeks without any problem. And here, by entering voluntarily, I mean, I was signing myself away. 22:12 But the day of the surgery, I mean, they came and said, ‘You have to be ready within the next ten minutes.’ It was... there was no problem. So it seemed to me that I didn’t eliminate the fear because, if I worried about the fear, probably I would have never have been able to eliminate it; I would have really run out of the place.
22:32 K: Quite; I understand.
22:33 GS: But I didn’t worry about it and then I found that I was no longer afraid and therefore there was no problem. So it’s... I mean, I’m only talking about myself. It seems to me that the transformation comes in not by saying that, ‘I must transform myself from this state to something else.’
22:47 K: Ah no, no; of course not. I am only saying as long as there is fear, the other cannot be — the other stream or whatever you’d like to call it. And my chief concern then is not the other but the elimination of fear.
23:07 GS: I would say that that elimination is in fact the transformation.
23:12 K: Ah... I don’t know what... The elimination of fear is my concern. My greed, my ambition, my competitiveness, my anxiety, my jealousy, my feeling that I am better than someone — it’s all... all that’s included in that word, for the moment.
23:29 GS: Then, in a sense, the transformation is searching for the ways of eliminating this...
23:35 K: Ah no, I am not concerned with the transformation. I’m only concerned...
23:39 GS: With the removal of this.
23:40 K: With that.
23:41 JM: Yes, but you’re saying they’re the same.
23:43 GS: Yes, I’m saying that, as far as I’m concerned, they are the same. Only thing is, I don’t go about removing it; I...
23:49 K: Ah no. I’ll go into it much more; I’m just using a quick word to...
23:53 Karl Pribram: I think this is what I meant earlier when I said we have to have a scientific understanding of these things. I think I understand what you’re talking about after many years of thinking about the problem, because in a way you’re constantly talking paradoxically. You’re saying the way to transform is not to transform.
24:18 K: Quite.
24:19 KP: The way to eliminate fear is to be afraid and then it will go away. I mean, you’re constantly dealing in paradox and there is a paradoxical logic. We haven’t used it in science up to now – or at least very rarely – and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t understand how to get along in paradox. And once we have that clear, so that... I think we’d all have an easier time following you, because you’re constantly saying, you see, ‘No, that’s not... we’re not emphasising transformation. We don’t want to talk about transformation — that is the way to transform.’ But you want to get rid of fear, so the next statement, I’m convinced, would be, ‘Well, you pay attention to your fear....
25:08 K: Yes, yes, yes.
25:09 KP: ...you recognise your fear.’ And then you tell us, ‘Well, you’ve got to get away from yourself. You don’t want to...’ How do you do this? ‘By being sure you know yourself.’ It’s constantly a paradox; there are paradoxical statements coming out all the time and once you understand – deeply understand – how to deal with paradoxes of this sort, then I think these things become easy.
25:32 K: And also, I’d like to ask Dr, aren’t you concerned about others, sir?
25:41 GS: Only to the extent that I see them.
25:44 K: Here I am. You see me. I am not transformed, or I’m just an average man. Aren’t you concerned about me?
25:56 GS: To be quite honest, no.
25:59 K: No. Why?
26:01 GS: There is no question of, ‘Why?’ because when I am in the mood, when my personality – or what you refer to as fear – is not interfering, then the things that I do, the things that I am caused... I mean, that I am involved in, the activities that I’m involved in, all are not only appearing harmonious but are harmonious. So I do the right thing without worrying about the fact that, ‘Am I now going to do good? Am I...?’
26:31 K: Ah! No, I don’t mean that way. I don’t mean that way. You have compassion for me.
26:36 GS: Yes. But that compassion is in a certain sense a spontaneous compassion. It’s not something I do.
26:42 K: Oh, I understand. But you’re concerned about me?
26:44 GS: The concern is a non-anxious concern.
26:46 K: No, quite; all the rest. You are concerned about me, that means you want me to transform.
26:51 GS: I want you to be with me.
26:54 K: Yes, I mean...
26:55 GS: If I see something...
26:56 K: No. You want me to transform. You want me to get rid of my fear. You want me to have these two streams running together harmoniously.
27:05 GS: Right.
27:06 K: That means you are concerned.
27:08 GS: If you mean concerned in the non-anxious, loving kind of concerned...
27:14 K: Of course. I’ve said that.
27:16 GS: ...yes, I am concerned.
27:17 K: And how do you... how does that show to me?
27:20 GS: I hope you feel a certain force of affection.
27:24 K: No, I’m just a dull... not an egg-head, but I’m just a... (Laughter)
27:29 GS: (Laughs) I think you will feel it in my presence; in my presence you will feel that there is a tendency to be transformed.
27:37 K: Is that all you want? Is that all that you can do to me? You see, what I want to get at, sir, is something which is – perhaps you will bear with me, a minute – if your consciousness is transformed, that transformation will affect the whole of the consciousness of man. (Pause) I don’t...
28:05 GS: I hope so.
28:07 K: Ah, it is so. Look, Lenin – whether you agree with him or not, that’s not the point – it has affected tremendously the world. So if you transform yourself, it is bound to affect my consciousness: by your talk, by your presence, by your moving about.
28:33 GS: Yes.
28:35 K: So you are deeply concerned about me, as a human being.
28:42 GS: Yes.
28:43 K: So it’s not your personal experience.
28:48 GS: I don’t really know how to state this, so that it is both correct and short. It seems to me that that kind of concern, that kind of transformation, that too is my personal experience; that if you are close to me and if my freedom from fear is enabling you to be free from fear, that too is part of my experience.
29:19 K: But...
29:20 GS: But I do not see an urge within me to go out and transform all the people out there.
29:25 K: No, no, but it’s your responsibility. You have a school like this; we have a school like this. It’s my responsibility to see that the thing happens. It’s my concern, my affection, my care, my attention, my love — all that. That’s your concern with me; therefore it’s your responsibility. Therefore it means your relationship with me; not according to your personal moods or... You are responsible.
29:58 GS: I am myself not sure whether I would either lead a nation or even found a school.
30:05 K: Ah! I’m not...
30:07 GS: It seems to me the transformation that comes about is in terms of those people to whom I come in close contact. They may be only just my children, maybe only my students, only the people whom I see on the street.
30:20 K: That means you are responsible for man.
30:22 GS: Yes, but it seems to me it is a by-product, a spontaneous by-product.
30:27 K: Ah no, you are responsible.
30:29 GS: Yes, to the extent it happens.
30:33 K: That’s all. Therefore you are concerned about me.
30:36 GS: Yes.
30:38 K: Yes.
30:39 PS: Yes, to that…
30:41 K: Not intellectually, but concerned.
30:43 GS: No, no. I mean, I agree. That when I... I mean, the point I really wanted to bring forth is that the doing good, helping another person, the Christian virtue, is in a sense a by-product. It is not the aim. The aim is in sense being a seer.
31:02 K: I don’t want to do good to me, I would horror... have a horror of you doing good to me, or helping me. But I want you to be responsible to me.
31:17 GS: I wouldn’t want to put it that way but the way you say it, I don’t see any point where I could disagree with you.
31:24 K: Good. (Laughs) (Laughter)
31:27 DB: Melzack.
31:28 JM: Well, I don’t see why you gave in, because... (Laughter) I mean, there must be thousands of people who have claimed to have undergone this transformation – whatever it may be – and they may have undergone it in a different number of variety of ways. They may have gone to India and got a guru, they may have taken pills, they may have done anything – okay? – and they... Now, why should someone who has undergone this transformation feel in any way responsible for anyone else? Now, I may…
31:59 KP: Response-able. The word again means two different things. You mean by responsibility the perverted sense that, you know, we have to take care of them.
32:09 JM: No. And even in the -able way.
32:11 KP: Yes, just responsible…
32:12 JM: Yes. Why shouldn’t I say, ‘Look, I don’t give... What this state has done has elevated me so much – or brought me down some, whatever – that I don’t give a damn for anybody. But I’m happy and this... I’m really... I’m grooving on my state. I’m sitting here and I’m really liking it. I’m digging it and I don’t care about anybody else.’ Now, what’s...
32:31 K: Why not, sir?
32:32 JM: Why not? But… there’s no answer to that, but why? You don’t have an answer to why.
32:35 K: What? What do you mean, why?
32:37 JM: Why should I feel response-able?
32:38 K: I feel responsible.
32:40 JM: No, but I don’t, say – all right? – I don’t. Now, why should I feel responsible?
32:44 KP: You’re missing so much.
32:45 K: Uh?
32:46 KP: I was just saying he’s missing so much then. I’m not saying you, you know?
32:51 JM: Yes, sure. No, no.
32:53 KP: If you don’t... aren’t able to respond, you miss so much.
32:56 K: Sir, as he... as Dr pointed out just now, there’s Biafra, there’s Bangladesh, there is the destruction of Jews and Arabs and so on. Don’t you feel responsible? Don’t you feel, ‘My...’?
33:09 KP: No. May I interrupt here a minute, because I think...?
33:12 JM: You see, now he’s using the word in my sense now.
33:15 KP: Yes, he’s not... Now, I’d like to bring up an issue here, because there are two issues involved. I do not feel response-able to the situation in Bangladesh, for instance. I don’t know how to respond...
33:30 K: No. I said feeling of responsibility, not... I can’t respond. I, personally.
33:35 KP: You either – you see? – and that leaves me...
33:38 K: What can I do?
33:39 KP: That’s right.
33:40 K: Bangladesh? I can’t go and feed them. I can’t go from here over there and be a nuisance to them and all the rest of it. But the feeling of responsible.
33:50 KP: Yes, that I understand. I understand.
33:57 JM: Well, but I want to know. Well... Look, I can…
34:00 KP: I know what you’re saying, I mean...
34:02 JM: I mean, I could read about Bangladesh, or about…
34:03 K: Of course.
34:04 JM: ...and feel... well, even concern might be too strong. I mean, I feel angry that it’s happened.
34:12 KP: I feel angry that I can’t do anything about it.
34:15 JM: Yes, yes, I feel that too. But I don’t feel responsible or response-able. I mean…
34:20 KP: No, I don’t feel response-able.
34:21 JM: No. In other words, I’m not spurred into any kind of action whatever.
34:23 K: No, I...
34:24 JM: Because I feel that there’s nothing I can do to…
34:27 KP: He’s not talking about action.
34:28 JM: Well, then…
34:29 K: No. I… The word responsible, sir, doesn’t it mean to respond adequately?
34:36 KP: Ah! It does not mean...
34:40 K: Doesn’t it mean that? To respond adequately to a challenge. To respond either inadequately, adequately or totally. For me, that is responsible; not able to respond in action. That may follow.
35:12 KP: If the circumstances are right.
35:13 K: I mean, if the circumstances... all the rest of it.
35:16 KP: Okay. I understand.
35:18 Q: Could we come back to the question of, in the state of transformation, whether one should feel responsible? I wonder whether it is that in this state there is no me and there is a sense of oneness with everything, everyone; and in that state one cannot help but be responsible for everything, in relationship to everything. And so if something happens to someone else it’s bound to be a part of the movement of one’s consciousness.
35:56 GS: I don’t know whether I respond or wait for you to make an aggravating statement?
36:05 Q: That’s all I have to say.
36:07 GS: No. You know, I copied Dr Shainberg’s bad example of reading from the thing and in the process I seem to have, you know, gone awfully fast. I made a number of rather provocative statements. I said that, as far as I’m concerned, it is possible to stop the world; that I have succeeded in stopping the world, and seen it.
36:31 K: Stopping the...?
36:33 GS: World. Stopping the world. That is, of in a sense prevent the flux of the world from putting you into a flutter, of recognising the thing and seeing precisely where everything is going and therefore nothing is going anywhere; that you see the things as they are.
36:48 K: Quite right.
36:49 GS: Now, this it seems to me is something that is debatable. You could ask, I mean, ‘You don’t look like you have seen such a thing.’ (Laughs) I have asserted that it seems to me that science is a model and therefore since everything about the world is a model that I don’t see any difference between science and what may be vaguely called spiritual or mystical or any other kind of knowledge, that in fact I see a continuity. That when Dr Pribram talks about, ‘Everything would be included within science,’ and somebody else might object and then say, ‘No, we think something could not be put in science: science and other things.’ 37:30 It seems to me that I am making a very definite, partial statement, saying that, ‘Look, I think that... I see no distinction between the two, that it is simply a method of going about doing things.’ And even with regard to the thing, one is going about empirically; you observe yourself even when you are in this most harmonious state. You observe when you are not in that harmonious state. You ask the question, ‘What did I do? What did I have for breakfast before I got into this state? 37:59 What are the conditions? What are my responses to things when I… before I get into this particular condition?’ I said about transformation. The transformation is in fact this unpleasant sounding word, holistic view of harmony without... harmony and compassion or connection, without being, you know, doped out, without being unable to do anything; that you function as a normal individual and yet, I mean, you see distinctions in the fact that you can drive your car through busy traffic, but you do not see distinctions in the sense that there is a you and a me, which are separated. 38:44 And that when such an existence is possible that is the transformation; the transformation is in the possibility that you are able to function at a level where you can have compassion without, at the same time, making it impossible for you to live. And I personally do not feel that transforming other people is part of my job but it appears that when I am transformed, that when I feel harmony, that those around me get an inkling of the thing and perhaps they too are transformed to a certain extent; that if there are several who are being in this mood at the same time, then it looks as if the trip is more worthwhile. 39:27 And that there are certain conditions, certain sequence of events like doing... giving a very good lecture, listening to somebody who is expounding something, discovering something, coming across a very aesthetic moment, of being in the presence of someone who is so obviously at tune with the world at large, that some of it rubs off on you. In contemplation of something in which you are not involved, you do things. I mean, the phrase that Dr Shainberg used about, ‘Running is sacred.’ 40:03 There are sacred activities that one engages in, which are precise, done as a ritual, but which are aesthetic and in which... from which no… nothing is expected in return. It is in the action itself that everything is complete. And, it’s… I did say something about Biafra and other things, only to say that to me the state of the world as a whole – I mean, as newspapers would describe it – seems not to move me as much as the plight of myself, of those who are close to me. The problems of lack of integrity in high places, these things bother me very much more than the population problem or the fact that in India there is going to be starvation. 40:47 And to me, the creation of the bomb is really much less important than the fact that we could callously ignore somebody being stabbed in a New York apartment house area, or people could starve and we know that they are starving and not feel concerned that something is wrong with the policy which brings this about. So I thought I had kept myself so completely open on all sides, but nobody seems to attack me — except Krishnaji.
41:21 DB: Maurice
41:22 Q: Maybe nobody feels up to it.
41:25 MW: Well, maybe this is a little attack, but I’ll attack myself too. Reverting to the very important matter of fear, you raised the question of having some feeling of resentment about... on a matter of scientific priority. Now, isn’t the basis for that resentment, I mean, really fear? I mean, I certainly have had these feelings too, which I think nearly all of us in science at some time have experienced these distressing feelings about recognition or priority, irrespective of how much recognition we ever get. 42:10 We... and I think the basis is fear, that one is afraid that other people will not approve of one; one is afraid that they will find out how stupid you are, and one is afraid that... Well, one can go on with a long list. But why should one worry about such matters, really? One always tries not to; one always does.
42:36 GS: I’ll give an example. A few days ago, in an American supermarket, I saw a book by Daniken, something about gods, I mean, Chariot of God... not Chariot of Gods, one of the later gods. And the book does say that, you know, I mean, the transport of people from other planets or other civilisations is now not only possible but feasible, and said that, well, physicists have now started talking about possibility of propagation faster than light. And I don’t particularly think Von Daniken is a very good critic of physics or a person who should award credits, but I found that the person who is referred to there, as having initiated this hypothesis, was a man who simply plagiarised my work six years after it was published in an American journal. 43:31 Now, I don’t really expect that somebody is going to disapprove of me if this is not there, but it took all the pleasure out of me. I’ve spent $1. 25 to buy this book and it took all the pleasure out of me, and I did not read the book further, beyond that particular point. I hope to read it when I have more strength, maybe after this conference.
43:48 MW: But it was a compliment.
43:50 GS: It was a compliment but it was... it made me unhappy. Now, I don’t really see why I should feel unhappy, because it is well-known in our circles that this was a case of sheer robbery but why should I now be concerned about the thing, because my job is secure, my reputation hopefully is secure and the people who read it probably wouldn’t know about my having done it but they’re not the ones who are going to take care of me.
44:17 DB: Well, how do you account for it then?
44:19 GS: I don’t know. I don’t know. I am ashamed of having to admit it, but these are psychiatrists, so it’s all right. I mean… (Laughter)
44:27 DB: (Inaudible)
44:28 JM: Isn’t this like...? This is very... I find this interesting. I mean, isn’t it like coming home, say, after this conference and finding your house or your flat has been robbed – you know? – and you say, ‘Oh, I’m feeling upset. It’s terrible,’ and then saying – as we’re suggesting – ‘Well, why should we feel upset? I mean, after all, they’re only belongings’? Well, damn it all, we’re justified in feeling upset, just as I think you’re justified in feeling upset if suddenly you find an idea of yours plagiarised and used to add to someone else’s gain. 44:56 And I think there’s some kind of – well, it starts off as intuitive, but perhaps, you know, if one thinks about it, we could be a little bit more systematic about it – there’s an intuitive sense of justice which we feel is being violated when these sorts of things happen.
45:12 KP: I don’t think that’s quite it – excuse me, here, for butting in – but it comes back to the fear and I’ve been trying to think of what it is that we’re afraid of. And since most of us are males – at least, I’m not sure this applies to the female – it has to do with a sense of territoriality: ‘This is mine.’ You see, you just said...
45:29 JM: Professor Sudarshan, you weren’t afraid, were you, when you saw it? You were angry.
45:32 GS: Oh yes, yes.
45:33 KP: Oh, but there’s a different meaning to territoriality, I’m sure. I think males especially can’t handle, at least easily handle – and this is true of sub or non-human primates – can’t handle a lot of disharmony or information or whatever word you want to put, novelty, simultaneous... so we put boundaries around. We say, ‘This is mine,’ and we organise and order everything within a certain perimeter, and then we sort of can feel comfortable. 46:05 And I think one of the things that happens when you come home, which means to you territory, which means that orderliness within which you can feel comfortable and exist almost, has been disrupted. And so it is a fear that you’re going to go to pieces and I think it’s a much deeper fear than just of prestige or this or that; it’s a deep fear of disruption, because you need orderliness around you in order to function.
46:35 JM: You feel that justice or injustice has nothing to do with it?
46:38 KP: Well, those are, I think, ways of talking about something that has to do with this orderliness. A theory... I mean, the brain theories that I talk about, the reason I have to have them, in a sense, is the facts come at me in such rapidity and such disarray that unless I can organise them some way, I have trouble. And so I organise them, knowing full well that the map that I use is incomplete and so on, and then I live with it.
47:15 DB: Could we have…?
47:16 Q: Oh, well...
47:17 KP: It must be order in the universe that you’re talking about.
47:20 K: Are you coming to...?
47:23 KP: Yes.
47:24 Q: Well, I don’t think the major problem here is one of injustice or territoriality – although, perhaps both play a part in connection with Dr Sudarshan’s honest statement about the way he feels concerning this plagiarism – it seems to me that he’s touching on a basic aspect of all human existence, which is that our own existence is defined by other people and in a basic sense we’re absolutely nothing by ourselves and our identity is defined by the meaning that we have for other people. 48:08 And if that is shut off, it’s a threat. Even... and the threat here was symbolic because this was shutting off some potential area where your own identity could have been defined – and should have been defined – by a broader range of readers of this particular book, who would have appreciated you as a person. And you should be appreciated for the efforts you do.
48:37 DB: Anybody else want to…?
48:41 K: Sir, do you say that one is aware of one’s transformation? Or...?
48:51 GS: Some rare cases, you are even aware of the fact that something is happening to you.
48:58 K: Yes. But I’m just asking, can you...? Say, for instance, if one is vain [and] you cultivate humility, it’s not humility. But the disappearance of vanity brings quite a different state, of which you cannot say, ‘I am humble.’ So in the same way, is transformation recognisable? Which means – just a minute, sir – which means you have had it already before and therefore you recognise it; therefore it’s in the time sequence and all the rest of it. Therefore it’s not transformation. I don’t know if I’m...
49:47 GS: I am glad you mentioned this because it’s something I should have mentioned, that the remarkable thing about the transformation is that when you find yourself in these extraordinary states they are not unfamiliar. They are extraordinary but they are not unfamiliar.
50:04 K: That means you already had it.
50:06 GS: If one has to think in terms of memory, yes.
50:10 K: Of course; therefore it’s not new.
50:13 GS: Perhaps it was there all the time.
50:15 K: Ah no, that... We go back to the old theory: ‘God is within. It’s all...’ – you know, all that – but I’m just trying to find out…
50:22 GS: No, I don’t… What I’m saying is that it is not unfamiliar, not because I am remembering, ‘Yes, I had this before.’ It is not unfamiliar. It is... I don’t know how exactly to say it. There are certain conditions in which you enter a new field or look at a certain problem, or talk to a new person, you have never met them before, but in no time at all you suddenly realise that it’s as if you had known them all your life. 50:50 Now, if... Barring reincarnation and various other things, it seems to me that the best thing to say is simply to state it without asking, ‘Why is it that I know?’ There are theories I have heard about why is it that you know: namely, because you are... you have always been that and you didn’t know it and now you know.
51:09 K: Yes, I know. But wouldn’t it be right to say, ‘I don’t know’? Not... No, I will put it differently. It is not describable.
51:20 GS: Yes. I agree, completely.
51:23 K: It is not… it cannot be put into words. Because words are not the thing, the description is not the described, so it cannot be put into words. All that can be put into words is, ‘My fear’ – quote – ‘My fear, my…’ — all that. And nothing... the other is not measurable in terms of thought.
51:46 GS: Yes. (Pause)
51:50 K: So it cannot be achieved.
51:55 GS: It cannot be achieved, but…
51:58 K: Wait, wait, sir. Go... Through a pill, through a guru, through a company, through satsang and all the rest of it — it cannot be achieved. Practice, deity. Because the moment you achieve, you already know. And therefore what is known is still within the part of the area of thought.
52:28 GS: That, I think, is where I would definitely disagree with you. Because that premise I simply do not accept: that which is known need not be within the realm of thought. I cannot describe it, I cannot even…
52:43 K: Therefore, I cannot describe it. I cannot put it into words. It cannot be...
52:49 KP: And yet, you so beautifully do so all the time.
52:53 K: No. Therefore, it is something not recognisable. It is… because it’s fresh all the time. It’s new all the time. I’m using quick words to convey something. It’s like, ‘God – ‘God’ quote – ‘God being with you when you know it not.’ But when you know it, it’s not God. I’m... Sir...
53:32 GS: I am afraid I don’t agree with your choice of words.
53:36 K: Please, I agree; I am them using very quickly to convey something.
53:41 GS: I would like to say it is not unfamiliar, but I do not want to make it correspond to re-cog-nisable. I agree that it is something which was not different from you, because in a sense you are not unfamiliar with it. I don’t want to say that it is... can be stated in words, described in words or communicated to another person through normal means. I do not want to say it cannot be communicated at all. I do not want to say that it cannot be thought of – though I suspect that it cannot be put into thought form either – but it is familiar, you… not recognise, not identify, you are with it; and when you are with it, you know you are with it.
54:29 K: Ah! I am not with it. That’s my whole point. I don’t exist when the other is.
54:38 GS: Yes, I… There, I agree. And therefore, there is no question of putting it into thought — there is nobody to put it into thought.
54:46 K: That’s the whole point. If I may go into it a little bit. I have noticed – I may be a cuckoo, I may be a nut, or anything you like – meditation, if we go into that a little bit, must be new each time. New, in the sense, the happening there is totally new each time. At least, I have found it. New in the sense, it hasn’t happened before. And therefore I can’t say I’m familiar with it.
55:25 GS: Could you say you are unfamiliar with it?
55:31 K: No, I wouldn’t say either. Because I… it’s some… it’s… I am not there, that’s my point. Otherwise it can’t take place.
55:43 GS: Yes, but then how do you justify saying, ‘Every time it is new’? How would you know, if you are not there?
55:52 K: That’s the whole problem.
55:56 GS: I submit that we are probably using different words but saying roughly the same. You say you would not say it is unfamiliar, so I say it is not unfamiliar.
56:07 K: No, I would say it’s not familiar.
56:11 GS: Even I am willing to say that. It is not unfamiliar but maybe I would strengthen it and then say it is not familiar also. It is fresh, it is always new and yet it is not unfamiliar.
56:27 K: It’s very difficult, this thing. First of all, sir, words cannot describe it. Knowing for myself the word is not the thing. So the mind is not slave to words. I’m conveying it as quickly as possible; perhaps using wrong words, but you’ll capture what I’m trying to… And what says it is new? That’s the whole point. What is the quality of the mind says, ‘This I have not seen before’? Not I seeing it anew, the thing is new. 57:29 How is that newness registered? (Pause) Isn’t it? All that I know is what I have experienced before, or seen before. That’s all I can say. In terms of what I have seen before – which is my knowledge of experience and so on, so on – the new... it happens and I say, ‘By Jove, it’s so...’ I’m suddenly aware that something has happened totally different from anything that has happened before. (Pause)
58:18 KP: May I try to...?
58:20 K: Yes sir, please...
58:22 KP: ...again bring this into scientific...
58:25 K: Focus. (Laughs)
58:27 KP: Well, just... It isn’t exactly the same thing, but it approaches it. Yesterday, David Bohm said this business of first quantisation and second quantisation. In terms of first quantisation being a holographic representation and second quantisation being some... taking the intensity at every point and doing the hologram on that, and that’s the second quantisation. Now, that was totally new to me. 59:02 I’d never begun to think in these terms and yet immediately I recognised, in a sense – and again, the word has to be used carefully here – that it was right. It fitted data that I was very familiar with, it was totally new and yet extremely familiar. It was the simplicity of it: ‘Well, of course.’ And it wasn’t even in my field, and yet I had a certainty about it that it really is.
59:36 K: I understand.
59:38 KP: So it happens, I think, in our scientific... in the production of science we have very similar issues. How is it that when we write something, which we ourselves are producing, for instance...
59:49 K: But could I...?
59:50 KP: ...we say ‘It isn’t right’? Until...
59:53 K: No, sorry.
59:54 KP: Sorry. So somewhere there must be that pre-recognition or pre-cognition...
59:57 K: Could I say, ‘I don’t know’? I don’t know. Not that I expect you to tell me, or give me the answer, or I’m waiting to find out, I really don’t know — full stop. I don’t move any further.
1:00:25 KP: Well, we do say that in science, too.
1:00:29 K: Wait, wait. Inwardly, I know nothing. And only in that state – not state – in that not knowing, something new can happen. But if I keep on recognising, being familiar, saying, ‘Yes, I’ve had this before. It is...’ – etc., etc. – I mean, it’s the continuity of the old thing, in a different form.
1:01:03 KP: Yes, again, you take it to the extreme, whereas I think our experience is in limited form. We say we can understand something up to a certain point, at which point we say we really don’t know and, once having accepted that, yet we seem to recognise something totally new as being the right solution to the not knowing, as if we had known all along that something about it... Well...
1:01:32 K: May I just finish what...?
1:01:34 KP: Yes sir.
1:01:35 K: I mean, people have said, ‘There is God.’ Catholics have said it, Hindus have said it, in different ways. And you... I say, ‘I reject all that,’ and I say, ‘I don’t know.’ And I mean, ‘I don’t know,’ not, ‘I’m waiting for you to tell me,’ or, ‘I’m going to find it,’ or, ‘I’ll experience’ — I don’t know. Blank. Blank sheet of paper. Then, in that sheet can be written something; not my conditioning or your conditioning or the propaganda of the Catholics or the Hindus. It is abnegation of the entire thing. Because I’m not afraid; I don’t care if God exists or doesn’t exist. But the mind that says, ‘I really don’t know’...
1:02:34 KP: It happens in science, too... (inaudible)
1:02:35 DB: Yes, I mean, I think that if you were to... want to use your idea that this entire cognitive structure doesn’t work – you see? – that it really... if you really mean that you don’t know (laughs) that, you know, then what you were talking about. But now, you were next, weren’t you?
1:02:59 Q: Well, I think I wanted to say very similar things what you just said but in a sort of different way, because I’ve made the experience in doing research in science, that you come across experiences which are in some way similar to meditative experiences, when you have a new insight. Now, if you, Dr Pribram, if you say that, ‘Why is it that something is familiar...’ – no, how did you say it? – ‘Why is it something is completely new to me and yet I know it fits?’ 1:03:32 I think it’s simply that what is new to you is just a certain combination of patterns or inputs or elements, but you know the elements because you know what an amplitude is and you know what a hologram is. It’s just the way David Bohm put them together for you in that conversation, that was new. And this is, I think, typically what happens when you do research in science, that you take everything in, all the information, and then you have to have that moment, that intuitive moment, where the mind – not the rational mind but the intuitive mind – makes some new connection. 1:04:09 And we all, we who do science, we all know that this typically happens, not when you work on your desk but when you take a shower, when you walk in the woods and so on, then you make this connection. And in that moment, this is a sort of a meditative, direct, immediate insight. However, I think what Krishnamurti is talking about is different because, in the sense that in that case the mind is empty in the first place, not filled with concepts. 1:04:35 And so, although there is a certain similarity, there is a difference. And this, I think, is the reason why the scientific meditative insight is always limited to very short instances, whereas the true meditation can go for longer periods because the mind is empty.
1:04:53 JM: What do you mean, short instances? You mean in the simple sense of in time, shortly, two seconds?
1:04:59 Q: Yes, yes, even shorter than that: fractions of a second.
1:05:00 DB: Yes, did you want to...?
1:05:02 K: Sir, hasn’t it happened to you, at the end of the day, you recollect what has happened during the day and at the end of the day, as you sleep, wipe out the slate? So that when you go to sleep the mind is – etc. – has order, creates its own order and all the rest of it. We won’t discuss that. So when you... when the mind really doesn’t know – not pretending, not waiting for an answer, not hoping to experience and so on, so on – absolutely blank, which is meditation: to empty the mind of all its problems. 1:05:57 That’s real meditation, at least... And that cannot be achieved through drugs, through masters, through incense, through recitation, through repetition of mantras and so on — I mean, that’s out. Then, in that complete not knowing, what happens is written on the page. Then the eyes can read it. Then I say, ‘By Jove, that’s new.’ You follow, sir? Not that I recognise it as new but I’ve never read that sentence before. Because it’s... the sheet has been blank and something has written on it.
1:06:44 GS: But to be able to say that, ‘I have never read it before,’ the memory should be operating at this point.
1:06:50 K: Ah no. It is blank. And I wake up and see something is written on it.
1:07:00 GS: But when you wake up and read it and you say, ‘I had not seen it before’...
1:07:05 K: Because my mind was empty.
1:07:08 GS: Yes. I’m afraid I don’t agree with you, or I don’t follow you. Or probably both.
1:07:17 K: I hope we don’t follow me.
1:07:19 GS: Because in terms of scientific creativity, this happens all the time, that you abandon a particular project, you no longer keep it in mind and then, when you least expect it, something happens.
1:07:34 K: Ah, that’s...
1:07:35 GS: And, like pulling a root out, a plant out and then it turns out that there’s long, long roots, you gradually raise it up and, like pulling in the line and...
1:07:45 K: And kill the plant.
1:07:46 GS: Kill the plant, because it’s a weed. I mean, you find that, in fact, in this particular fashion, you are able to unearth a whole lot of things which could not have been contained within.
1:07:55 K: Quite, quite.
1:07:56 GS: But this is possible because you still function as a scientist. You have not forgotten differential equations; you have not forgotten what was the problem that you were worried about.
1:08:05 K: No sir, I’m approaching it, if I may point... as a human problem. I’ve got problems: my wife, I have to earn money, I have to quarrel, I have this and I have... I’m a... – you follow? – I’m talking about that field, not the scientific field.
1:08:17 KP: I think it’s similar. I think what we’re arguing about is that we’re saying in a limited sense, not as completely as you...
1:08:25 K: I understand.
1:08:26 KP: ...but the process seems to be, at least in our experience, somewhat similar.
1:08:30 K: It’s somewhat similar. I understand that, sir, but as a...
1:08:33 KP: The problems are... (inaudible) Right. Right.
1:08:35 K: …a human being. That’s my problem.
1:08:37 KP: Yes.
1:08:38 K: We are burdened with problems.
1:08:41 KP: Right.
1:08:42 K: And to end them each day; not superficially, deceptively or cunningly — end them. So that my mind said, ‘I don’t know. I’m finished.’ It’s empty each time.
1:09:00 KP: Right, right.
1:09:01 DB: Yes, I think...
1:09:02 K: Cup is useful only when it’s empty. Sorry, I’m... (inaudible).
1:09:06 DB: Could I make one... ask one… raise one point? See, the question which might be in many people’s minds is how one knows what it means to say, ‘It’s new,’ when we don’t recognise, we don’t compare with the past. You see, there’s something very crucial here.
1:09:20 K: Yes sir.
1:09:21 DB: That in some sense the quality of newness, it seems to me, is perceived without comparison to the past. But there is a direct quality of newness.
1:09:33 K: That’s right.
1:09:34 GS: In which case you are using language quite differently. Instead of newness, one is talking about freshness.
1:09:40 DB: The same word.
1:09:42 GS: No, but what I am saying is that it is not that you know that it was not there before; it is a quality in itself.
1:09:49 DB: That’s what it seems to be.
1:09:50 GS: You take milk and then say, ‘This is good milk.’ You don’t say that, ‘This is not the milk that I didn’t drink before,’ you say that, ‘This is fresh. It is not gone stale.’
1:09:59 K: Sudarshan sir, it isn’t like that — I have emptied my mind.
1:10:06 GS: On this problem.
1:10:09 K: No.
1:10:10 GS: You see, I guess I speak for almost everybody here. We empty our mind about one set of problem, maybe a complex of problems. I mean…
1:10:21 K: I’m talking of human problem.
1:10:22 PS: I mean, Dr Shainberg insults me and I forget about it the next day, almost immediately. But I still don’t forget the fact that I have to go to London if I want to take a plane.
1:10:30 K: Oh no, no, no, that’s understood. I have finished... emptied my mind of pleasure, which is... we’ve just gone into a great deal: fear, identity with myself or with my family, with my house, ‘It is mine; it is not mine.’ It’s completely gone down the sewer. Sorry.
1:10:53 KP: It’s again the paradoxical use of words. New is also...
1:11:04 K: I am not sure, sir, it’s paradoxical.
1:11:07 Q: No, I don’t think so.
1:11:10 DB: I think that we have to learn to use words in a different way.
1:11:15 K: I can only use... I’m a layman; I use ordinary words.
1:11:18 KP: Yes, but new, as David Bohm has just said, in ordinary, sort of...
1:11:22 K: Phraseology.
1:11:23 KP: ...linear kind of talk...
1:11:25 K: Linear, yes.
1:11:26 KP: ...something can’t be new if we don’t recognise the old.
1:11:30 K: Quite; I understand.
1:11:31 KP: And you have just said to us...
1:11:32 K: I know that, sir.
1:11:33 KP: ...‘It is really fresh and new...
1:11:34 K: Yes.
1:11:35 KP: and yet we don’t... it isn’t...’
1:11:36 K: I understand.
1:11:37 KP: And that’s the paradox.
1:11:38 GG: I wonder if one way of trying to resolve it, and hopefully not confuse it more. I think what is familiar is the context, the way that we are as a state when we know this new thing, which is a content that we are aware of. What’s familiar is the way that we are in knowing, but what we know is always new. We’re in a special state of organisation. We are... I can’t say it any more clearly that that.
1:12:22 KP: We should have it televised.
1:12:25 Q: Can one relate this to the question that came up in the morning about making images? If I look at a glass of milk and if I don’t have any image of milk in my mind, then this glass of milk, this milk has a certain freshness. But if I have my image of milk there, I won’t even look at it. I will say ‘Well, okay, that’s a glass of milk. I know it anyway.’ And there is a difference.
1:12:52 K: That implies – may I? – that implies, doesn’t it, sir, I am attached to my belief, I’m attached to my conclusions, I’m attached to my ideals, prejudices and so on, so on — I’m attached. And therefore there is nothing fresh. I won’t use the word new. As he said just now, I go home and my things are stolen. It’s a nuisance. If I have money I get more, but it doesn’t destroy me. (Pause) The attachment is the problem: to my image, to my desires... You know all this, sir.
1:13:50 Rupert Sheldrake: Well, I... it was actually a bit along those lines too, that I felt that what Krishnaji is pushing at is something... a more profound wiping clear than that in science, or even... because it involves this wiping clear of one’s own attachments and... I mean, a scientist being attached to his work or to one’s belongings, it’s something deeper than just a scientific kind of... Maybe there are parallels, but...
1:14:21 KP: It’s deeper, but it is on the same dimension.
1:14:26 RS: I don’t know. I mean, I...
1:14:30 K: Sir, I don’t... I like cars, motor cars (laughs). But I look at them; I’m not attached. I don’t even want to buy... I mean, I’ll drive a lovely car; I like to go fast. But attachment... You see, that’s where I want to find out: where desire becomes attachment. Therefore I have to go into the question of sensation. Contact, sensation, desire. Can the mind stop there, and not go further — ‘I must have it’? That requires tremendous inward attention or discipline or whatever you like to use, so that you’re always seeing and not getting attached. Phew! Sorry.
1:15:32 DB: Well, no, could I say... we should... it’s about ten minutes to five now, if we could finish up in few more minutes, right?
1:15:42 MW: Could I just say, I think the trouble with scientists is, of course, they are attached to their ideas. I mean...
1:15:48 K: That’s just it, sir.
1:15:49 DB: That’s one... yes.
1:15:51 MW: Yes.
1:15:52 KP: And the freshness comes when one loses the attachment – not the commitment necessarily – but the attachment, not the responsibility.
1:16:03 K: But can I – yes sir – can I live in this world without attachment?
1:16:08 KP: In the pejorative sense that you’ve used it, yes.
1:16:12 K: I mean, every day, not in a special field; every day of my relationship with my wife, if I’m married to her, my money, with my job — completely not attached. That is the philosophy of life, which is love of truth, which is to be detached.
1:16:37 JM: How could you be detached and responsible at the same time? You said before...
1:16:44 K: Detachment... I mean, you are detached, you are totally responsible.
1:16:47 JM: Totally responsible?
1:16:50 KP: Yes.
1:16:51 K: Yes.
1:16:53 KP: I understand, but we’re here again (laughs) because once you get into these paradoxical...
1:16:56 K: No, on the contrary, sir, when you are detached means that you really love and therefore you are responsible. You care, you... all the rest.
1:17:06 David Peat: Yes. I see. What is this self which is detached from things?
1:17:11 K: Self is my furniture, my prejudices, my opinions, my gods, my nations, my family, my house, my polished furniture which is 16th century, which has... – you follow? – and I... That is me.
1:17:28 DP: You speak of being detached, but what is detached?
1:17:29 K: No, that is me.
1:17:32 DP: That is you. Yes. You detach that...?
1:17:36 K: That is me. When I say, ‘I possess that,’ that is me; the furniture is me.
1:17:40 DP: So the detachment is removal of the self, of you?
1:17:45 K: Yes.
1:17:46 KP: Well...
1:17:47 DB: Yes.
1:17:48 KP: …there’s one very practical thing. What seems to happen in human behaviour – or animal behaviour for that matter – is what’s called the means-ends reversal; that initially there is... something is undertaken in order to achieve something – like eating or what have you – but as the skill becomes more and more – and this can be a perceptual skill or a thought skill, as well as an action skill – as that develops it becomes easier and easier to achieve the end, and the means begins to take on more and more of the activity.
1:18:34 K: Sir, you’re still, if I may say...
1:18:36 KP: Yes.
1:18:37 K: ...you’re still thinking in terms of achievement, with gradually.
1:18:39 KP: Yes. Oh yes, I’m simply saying what takes place, and then the end becomes the means.
1:18:49 K: No. I am trying to say, sir...
1:18:53 KP: Yes.
1:18:55 K: ...is freedom from attachment a gradual process, or instant?
1:19:00 KP: Well, I wasn’t thinking so much of the freedom from attachments as how the attachment takes place. I was...
1:19:09 K: Oh, but that’s fairly simple. I’m attached because I’m empty. Without my furniture, I’m lost. Without my house, I’m lost. Without my wife, I feel lonely and so on, so on. I fill myself with all this, and all that is me. Then I am attached. And is that attachment... freedom from it, a gradual process? Or instant?
1:19:38 JM: I’m afraid I really don’t understand most of this. I mean, maybe I’m stupid, but I don’t... I mean, you’re not your furniture; you’re you and your furniture is the furniture, and I can individuate the furniture from you.
1:19:51 K: No, but when I am attached to it...
1:19:53 JM: Of course... Yes, but you said in reply to Peat’s question that you are your furniture, etc.
1:19:59 K: No. When I am attached to my belief, to my conclusion, to my furniture, to my prejudices, to my nation, I am all that.
1:20:12 JM: You could hold a set of beliefs and attitudes, etc., about various things, you could also have possessions, but those beliefs, attitudes, possessions, etc., are precisely those; they’re not you.
1:20:27 K: Who is you, then?
1:20:28 JM: Ah well, that’s... I mean, I’d love to talk for hours about what I think the self is, but that... I mean... Well, whatever I am, whatever we are, whatever the self is, it’s not those sorts of things which we accumulate, be they ideas...
1:20:40 K: What are you, sir, otherwise? Words, opinions, conclusions...
1:20:45 JM: Those are things we hold. They are not us.
1:20:48 K: The content makes consciousness. Without the content, where is consciousness?
1:20:55 JM: I’m just… Look, my... I’m only claiming that, I mean, in simple, Aristotelian logic, for example, we have the distinction between a subject and a predicate. And the subject is that which possesses predicates. But it’s not the predicate itself. I mean, it’s not the subject itself. There are... Now, if what... – I mean, trying to translate what you’re saying, to understand – I mean, surely you’re not saying that the subject, in Aristotelian logic, is nothing but an agglomeration of predicates? You can’t say that because, I mean, that’s just...
1:21:28 K: Sir, I would like to... if I may, may I? Without my country, without my prejudices, my superstitions, fears, pleasures, all that, what am I?
1:21:40 JM: Well, on one level, I could say you are a bundle of neural fibres, etc., etc. I can give that sort of description.
1:21:49 K: Yes, all right. Is that all? That’s all. If I am just the response of nerves and so on, that’s very simple. But I am not... you don’t limit the me into that.
1:22:01 JM: But, you see, if I say that that which, as it were, underlies and possesses all those things which you mentioned, I am not thereby identifying the supporting thing with all the possessions. We are not identical — that’s my... And if you’re claiming that they’re identical, then I don’t understand.
1:22:20 KP: Only when you’re attached, then they become identical. And I was trying to give the means-ends reversal, as the... What happens when people become attached, they initially start out toward an end, the means take over and they become the means, as it were, the means sort of occupies so much of their consciousness – or whatever word we want to use – that it becomes them.
1:22:52 JM: But it seems... if you want to...
1:22:55 KP: And people will commit suicide if... I mean...
1:22:57 K: Exactly.
1:22:58 KP: ...people take out patents and somebody steals the patent…
1:23:01 JM: I understand. Yes.
1:23:03 KP: ...or something, and they’ll slice their throats because they have been destroyed.
1:23:06 JM: But that... But look, you could... I mean, we say – and everyone understands – that, ‘X possesses a patent’ – okay – ‘which he holds dearly.’ But then if we shift from that sort of talk to the sort of talk which says that, ‘X was or is his patent,’ we’re just talking metaphor. We don’t really mean X is his patent.
1:23:25 KP: Oh, but the point... Yes, but you see, you’re using... That’s my whole point about understanding Krishnamurti here. I think that if you use Aristotelian logic you will only hear his words and not what he is saying, which is always formulated with a different kind of logic, a paradox... I am my possessions, but I am not. And I... You see, it’s this continual, almost... The formal way I’ve learned to talk about it is in terms of paradoxical logic, that everything is framed in terms of a paradox.
1:24:04 K: Sir, am I the form, the body, the mind? The mind which is all the prejudice, conditioning...
1:24:11 KP: My answer is, ‘Yes and no.’
1:24:14 K: All right, if you... Take away all that from me, which is death...
1:24:19 KP: Right.
1:24:20 K: I am nothing.
1:24:21 KP: Yes and no.
1:24:23 K: Wait. Death...
1:24:25 KP: What about all those students? (Laughter)
1:24:27 K: Ah no, that’s...
1:24:28 KP: You see? So the answer cannot be, ‘Yes,’ or, ‘No’; it has to be, ‘Yes and no.’
1:24:33 K: No sir, this... No, I...
1:24:36 JM: Look, I can understand that you’re trying to, as it were, order these statements in terms of a paradoxical logic: yes and no, and therefore violating all sorts of basic and primitive laws, etc. But my concern is not just with understanding this paradoxical logic, because one could say, ‘Yes and no.’ I mean, does Krishnamurti possess a table? Yes and no. In other words, the paradox could apply both to what I understand but also to what I don’t understand. 1:25:05 What I don’t understand is the movement from saying – generalising – ‘X possesses X, Y, Z’ to, ‘X is X, Y, Z.’ That, to me – perhaps because I don’t understand – is an invalid form of argument, and therefore because it’s not... I mean, it’s so obviously invalid that I must not be able to... I must not be comprehending what’s...
1:25:26 DB: Well...
1:25:27 KP: Except that it leads to suicide, which is incomprehensible also.
1:25:29 JM: Oh no, I understand. I mean...
1:25:31 DB: Could we say that we’re... that this argument is based on different ways of using words and thinking – you know? – and using language and... You see, there is a presupposition in our culture that this particular logic is the only possible way of thinking, which has been so conditioned into us. Now... So in order to be able to resolve this thing, you see, one has to be able to listen to another way of looking at it, which is not the customary way that we accept in our culture, commonly. And in this other way of looking at it, in some sense, the self – I think Krishnamurti is saying – in some sense, what we call the self, not just the body but its soul or its psychological essence, is actually this set of qualities and if this set of qualities is gone, there would be no self. 1:26:24 This is the way I understand it. He is implying that. Now, whether you agree with it or not is, at the moment, not the point. You see, that the first point is just simply that we listen and try to understand each other.
1:26:46 JM: Oh, I listened, but I don’t understand.
1:26:47 DB: Yes, well, that’s the first point, you see.
1:26:51 DP: Could I make a suggestion, that... – I mean, it’s a technical thing, which is maybe not appropriate at this time. I think when quantum mechanics came along, people were prepared to make a revision in the way they thought about the world and to say that maybe Aristotelian logic wasn’t the only way of thinking about things having properties and...
1:26:58 JM: Yes, but then...
1:26:59 DP: ...rather maybe we should be prepared to make the same... (inaudible)
1:27:00 JM: Of course, of course. But the onus was then on the quantum theoreticians to give us a logic which transcended the old logic. Now...
1:27:09 DP: But wasn’t it really on experience...?
1:27:10 JM: Oh no, I mean, there were certain basic axioms, informal, that were dropped; you know, that they purposely have to drop... Well, we... But, you know, so in other words, they did; now, there’s a formalised quantum logic.
1:27:22 KP: Well, that was my idea. But maybe if we could make some real contribution scientifically here, in understanding in real – you know? – in some way of altering our Western way of talking, thinking about these problems, that would make you understand, as I feel I do – you know, I may be misunderstanding but I feel I understand what Krishnamurti was saying – that if we could formalise those properties, so that you could, as a logician, could understand them, then I think we would have...
1:28:01 K: Quite.
1:28:02 KP: ...reached something...
1:28:03 DB: Yes.
1:28:04 KP: ...that is very valuable.
1:28:06 JM: Look, my remarks were made because, you know, I was asking, as it were, for help towards, as it were, formalising those sorts of remarks to give them sense. Because…
1:28:16 DB: Yes, well, I think that... perhaps that could best done in some other context because it’s difficult to do that here. But I’d just add one point, that I... in my view, even to understand the quantum mechanics one will have to give up the kind of logic you were discussing and to look at things in a rather similar way to what Krishnamurti was talking. Now, but as... perhaps we’ll leave this aside, and I think Pritchard wants to say something now.
1:28:40 Q: Can I just say I was... I’m very interested in this question of paradox in physics and I compare it to the paradoxes in Eastern philosophy, especially in Zen Buddhism and I talk about quantum koans, which I... because I compare the koans in Zen to the koans the founders of the quantum theory had. But in this particular case I don’t see any paradox. This is not one case which I would quote as an example. And I think you cannot always, when you don’t understand things, just say, ‘Well, this is paradox and we have to modify our logic.’ 1:29:18 We have to be a little careful, I think, when we evoke these paradoxes. I think the paradoxical nature is very characteristic of, if you want to call it mystical experience and it is also very characteristic of modern physics, but you cannot always invoke it. For instance, this example of the self being associated with all the feelings, thoughts, ideas and so on, I don’t have any trouble in understanding it. I had trouble in the past, but I don’t have any trouble now and I don’t think it’s paradoxical at all.
1:29:49 JM: Associated with, but not identical to. Or are these the same sort of relation?
1:29:53 Q: Well, once you’re free from all that, then you don’t have any self any longer. It’s just gone. So it is identical.
1:30:02 DB: Well, I think, if we could defer this discussion; perhaps, it would be best take place informally. And there was one more person had a… Was that you? No? Then I think maybe we’ll call this meeting to a close and start tomorrow morning at the usual time.
1:30:17 Q: Tomorrow we go to Stonehenge, okay.
1:30:18 DB: Tomorrow afternoon we go to Stonehenge.
🢁