ND81S1 - The crisis in consciousness home
New Delhi - 4 November 1981
Seminar 1

Text-only version

0:24 Achyut Patwardhan: There is a general feeling of a deepening crisis. This feeling is primarily a response to various factors in the environment, whether it is the armaments or the general ecological pollution or whether it is the economic crisis. Usually, our apprehension of the crisis mainly begins from the environment and we try to respond to it. Another aspect is that it is very obvious that this sense of crisis has a sharp regional edge in each country. In each country people seem to be overly concerned with the aspects of the crisis that are very pressing in that particular country. 1:40 And underlying all this is a deep feeling of a moral decline, particularly in a country like India, this feeling of a moral decline is quite overpowering. I thought that it would be valuable if we could understand, somehow, the integrating co-relationship between this inner moral crisis of man which is at all levels, and its outer manifestations which seem to be more urgent, more challenging, threatening even the survival of man. Having been with you for many years, I have a deep feeling that the source of all this is in the moral decline which has passed unnoticed over the decades. 2:51 But this feeling may not be shared by all the participants in this particular gathering, so I do not want to pinpoint any one, but I have laid bare both these. Could we collect our responses to this particular situation? Before we do that, I would ask you, sir, to say a few words to us, so that we may not go off at a tangent. It is very important to see that we keep our dialogue, discussion, focused on the main point, so that we are able to discover for ourselves the co-relationship of the crisis within man and the crisis outside.
4:05 Romesh Thapar: I just would like to add to what Achyutji has said. From my work as a person who has to keep on analysing problems, trying to present a perspective within a time-span of about 25, 30 years, when I look at the world, I see it shrinking. It is shrinking so rapidly that we are subject to the pressures of even a thing like fashion within days, all round the world, at least that world which is still open to the world. When I look at my problem in my country, I see that I have to texture a society for a billion people by the year 2000. 5:10 I know that the texturing of that society cannot be done in the way in which other societies have been textured. If I want to be honest to my people, the texturing has got to be of a special kind, the civilisational underpinning has to be of a special kind. But with the shrinking world and with communications playing their role, the value systems which I may grope towards to provide that structuring, are constantly under attack. They are collapsing within those elements that are modernising within my own society. 5:58 I ask myself, is it possible to work out some system of thought and practice, which will protect me from this horrendous scenario, for if I am unable to retexture my society on just principles and in isolation from the corruption taking place elsewhere, I will establish something very brutal and unjust in my own land.
6:51 T. N. Madan: I should like to seek a clarification regarding the very first question raised. I don’t know of any age, any time or any culture, or any country, when people may not have felt that it was a moral crisis. Therefore, the question is to first define the nature of our moral crisis. I think we live too much, too closely, too much within our immediate problems and surroundings, and think that ours is the worst of times, the best of times were times in the past, or we think of utopias. 7:46 So first, could we define the nature of the moral crisis? A clue to that might lie in what Mr Thapar was saying. We adhere to the values which we think were good, but perhaps they are no good at all now, because the world has shrunk. The values of the village community will not serve a world community, so that we seem to be caught in a kind of a split, represented by changes which are being forced upon us, and represented by value systems which we have inherited and which we seem naturally to think are precious. 8:37 How do we resolve the dilemma between a shrinking world which we have to accept and the world of values which we do not want to leave, which we do not want to get away from, from institutions to individuals, from collective consciousness to an individual moral judgment?
9:05 Pupul Jayakar: Dr Kothari, would you like to say something?
9:07 Rajni Kothari: Achyutji was saying that Krishnamurti would lay out some kind of a framework.
9:14 PJ: If we say a few things then perhaps he will come in.
9:24 RK: I would only add to what’s gone on, a feeling about a moral crisis or a crisis in the value system has from time to time arisen essentially when institutions are breaking down, essentially when the institutional fabric of a society or of the global structure is breaking down. There are many views about this. One is that we are moving through a period of such a rapid transformation that this is bound to happen, that we will restructure. 10:04 But I do not see the outlines of an alternative system of restructuring human activity or the human intellect. And as there is nothing taking the place of what is crumbling, the sense of moral crisis has come in. I think we will have to locate the sense of moral crisis within the time and space dimension of the present despite all our belief in or tendencies towards seeing things in a timeless way. That’s all I would say at the moment.
10:50 Participant: Frankly, I do not see much of a moral crisis. There is a moral crisis in people like us who represent the sector where moral crisis has been manifest for the last so many years. But I’m a great votary for the everyday man, the ordinary man. I don’t think he suffers from a moral crisis, but a crisis of survival.
11:33 P: One of the biggest differences that we face today compared to previous times is that we have some technological tools available and these will make a big impact on the future of man. I happen to be a computer scientist and I know some of the profound things that are taking place in the computer business. What I would very much like to gain from this seminar is to see how we can quantify and think about these value systems so that the electronic computers that are going to come down in the future, which will have the ability to think and to learn, will be able to make the kind of choices that should be made.
12:30 Sudhir Kakkar: I’d prefer to speak of the second part of the agenda which is the liberation from the inner fear, but maybe this will come later. It interests me greatly. The other thing is, I feel excited about so many things, the moral crisis is the last that I feel of what’s happening here. I look at the possibilities much more, but maybe that’s a Panglossian view. I’m more of a Panglossian, always. I also have doubts about the moral crisis or the pessimism part expressed in the wording of the statement.
13:12 PJ: May I just say one word? I wonder why we are using the word ‘moral’ to that extent. I think the question which needs to be considered is whether the crisis facing the human being is of the same nature as crises which have taken place in the past or because of the special set of circumstances, pressures generated not only by the action of human beings, but by the actions of the tools created by the human beings, the whole problem of micro-engineering or genetic-engineering, the whole problem of computers, as was mentioned, and the limitless possibilities which are posed to us about the possibility of the computer taking over the functions of the human mind. 14:15 If we bring all this into the word ‘crisis’, then the crisis is of a totally different nature. It is not only a moral crisis. We have had moral crises in the past and there have been ways of dealing with them or not dealing with them, but a crisis which strikes at the roots of the human mind is a very different thing from a moral crisis. I think it is time we brought into the dimension of this discussion this aspect that the crisis man faces today is the crisis of the survival of the human mind, because if, as continues to be postulated, with the growth of micro-technology, the growth of the computer technology, more and more advanced methods are going to be forthcoming to take over the functions of the human mind. 15:17 The possibility of the human mind itself atrophying, is something which we cannot disregard. And if this is at all possible, should not the human mind start thinking of the crisis today? A few years later, it may be beyond consideration. That is the real problem. If there is a threat to the very root of the human mind, to the survival of what is called human, then what is the action of man? And is such a threat taking place? Is it possible to meet? If it is possible to meet, with what tools, with what instruments of our own being will we meet it?
16:09 AP: May I explain what I had in mind when I said ‘a moral crisis’? I think it’s necessary to clarify. I can sum it up in one word. If we had before us a representative figure for the entire age, for what I mean by moral crisis, I would say it is Andrei Sakharov, a scientist, who under certain pressure of circumstances, was responsible for discovering the hydrogen bomb in his own country and later on discovered what a colossal threat to human well-being he was responsible for. Then seeking action, I say that this crisis may become more dramatic in the case of a scientist, but it exists as much for the farmer in the village as for the ordinary citizen in the town. It’s a challenge to his integrity, created by the pressure of the environment.
17:34 Jagannath Upadhyaya: (In Hindi).
20:59 K: I’m afraid I don’t understand Hindi.
21:09 Kapila Vatsyayan: I’ll try to translate. Or rather, not translate, but give a brief summary. His first point was that the political, scientific, social crisis, as well as the moral crisis, he begins by accepting that there is a crisis, therefore he asks himself what is the resolution to that crisis, and his rhetorical answer was that there is need for – ‘faith’ is not exactly the translation of ‘vishwas’ – but that there is need for that trust. ‘Trust’ is also not quite ‘vishwas’. Never mind. Thereupon he referred to Krishnaji’s writing and the resolutions that are suggested through Krishnaji’s thoughts and writings, which to him have given answers to problems and the questionings even in Vedanta and in Buddhism of which he has been both a scholar and a teacher and a student. 22:51 He believes that resolutions are possible and have also been indicated, throwing light on the crisis in the value systems and where perhaps something new could resolve them. However, his focus is on how do we take this that has been shown to different levels of ordinariness. That is how I would translate that ‘samaanya’. This is how he has posed the question, sir.
23:52 Jai Shankar: We have all talked about a moral crisis. The question is, does it exist for all people? I don’t think the moral crisis exists for the makers of computers and their software, I don’t think it exists for the makers of armaments and those who buy them, or for those wielding political power almost at any cost. And at the other end of the spectrum, as Ashish Nandi said, the poor don’t face a moral crisis, they face a crisis of survival. 24:29 So, what crisis are we talking about? In my opinion, and this can be discussed later on, the crisis is really not one of moral crisis per se, but of dissociating knowledge from morality. It is amoral knowledge which is what modern science is all about, which is what gives rise to electronics, microelectronics, the manipulation, instrumental rationality, social engineering, it’s not just mechanical engineering or electronic engineering, it is social engineering. 25:02 It’s a very purposive design for massive intervention in the historical process, completely amoral, and the dissociation of knowledge from morality, amoral knowledge, I think is the crisis. Those who wield power don’t feel that crisis at all. Some of us do, maybe, but then we have to think about why it is that we accept this amoral knowledge, why does it have such magic. It seems to have a magic that no other knowledge has had before.
25:39 KV: Pupul, I want to ask one small question. Nothing that in this amoral knowledge, then does fear play a part? And is it also liberated from fear? The moment you answer that it leads to other things.
26:14 JS: I don’t have any answers. That’s why I called it magic. I don’t think things about magic can be answered very explicitly. But fear plays a part, I think, in the minds of the people, or rather fear is used as an instrument, the rulers manipulate the fears of people over whom they want to rule. Whether it’s fear that gives rise to amoral knowledge, I really don’t know. I will have to think it through and may not come to an answer.
26:51 RT: On the question of fear, when you look at it in social perspectives, fear only arises in the mind of a person who thinks in a time perspective. The amoral structures to which Giri Jaishankar has referred are precisely those structures which have to be fought, which I felt create the value system which is destroying the prospect of thinking into the future, of a retexturing of a society. Those who are amoral in their posture, do not suffer from fear.
27:33 PJ: I think Shanta Gandhi wants to say something.
27:40 Shanta Gandhi: When you apply the term amoral to the consequences of any search for truth and scientific quest or technological work is basically search for what is, what we do not know yet and what we want to know. At that point of time, it is impossible to think about morality or amorality. The question comes, after the discovery is made, the consequences are felt, and it is the awareness of the result of those consequences which generates fears among the scientists themselves, also. 28:29 I’m afraid I disagree with our friend there who said that scientists have no fear or no morals. Young scientists in our country today are concerned. They are eager to make their work socially relevant. But that doesn’t mean that they cease to be a scientist. At every moment you are looking under a microscope, you think whether it is moral or not moral.
28:56 PJ: May I make one point? I don’t think anyone will question the premise that a tool is neither moral or immoral. It is only the application of the tool which is moral or not moral. Tool is not moral or immoral. We should that clear away and not go into the problem of the tool. And one man’s intelligence is here making tools, that kind of a society and education has come about, no single human being can stop tools being made and increase tools being made. But the way they’re used, are certainly within.. or whether there is an intelligence possible to use those tools so that they will not threaten the postulates of the human mind.
29:53 RK: I think what Giri Jaishankar was referring to is not the question that you are talking about. He’s referring to an integral part of the nature of modern science, whose motive, dynamic force, is manipulation, is conquest of nature, is the ordering of society, and it is not that there was no moral perspective behind modern science but it has led today to that kind of knowledge, the manipulative kind which turns out to be amoral. 30:33 I agree with you that some scientists – I think Achyut has already said in the case of Sakharov or Einstein. After what they have done, they find out and feel the pangs. I don’t think Jai Shankar is talking about that. He’s talking about something inherent in the nature of modern knowledge, which makes the science, technology profession, amoral. It’s not a question of just looking under. But let him explain for himself.
31:08 JS: I think you have said just about everything. I was only going to respond to science being a tool. When does a tool cease to be a tool and become a master? This is the question.
31:22 PJ: That is the crisis.
31:24 JS: You presume that at all times tools can be controlled. Sometimes, tools can have already overtaken you and control you, and then little freedom is left to you.
31:39 PJ: I agree.
32:37 Vijay:...it has become totally dissociated from responsibility?
32:49 PJ: Jagannath Upadhyaya, Panditji.
33:04 JU: (In Hindi).
36:31 KV: (In Hindi).
36:42 JU: (In Hindi).
37:47 RK: Will you translate for Mr Krishnamurti’s sake? Then I want to say something.
37:57 KV: His first question was, are we going to begin from fundamentals again and therefore, start from the alphabet. He felt that that was not necessary because we must not begin from the outside. It’s true that scientific developments and those in the social sciences and political systems, have affected human beings or human consciousness. He feels that if human consciousness, or that which is the centre of human consciousness, is strengthened, then it would always be possible for that human consciousness to be master of all the tools that it creates. 38:44 He goes back to the answer he gave earlier, the problem is how exactly to take that mastery or that awakening of human consciousness – I don’t want to say ‘to the people’ – to the ordinary. My question to him was, at what point do the tools become masters. Now, Dr Kothari wants to ask him a question.
39:18 RK: I wanted to supplement the clarification he gave on consciousness because he’s putting an interesting...
39:31 PJ: Dialectic. RK: Dialectic, exactly. He’s saying that the way of handling this crisis, created by modern knowledge, system, is for the consciousness to once again exercise its ‘purushartha’. But the second point he’s making is to take that to the ordinary people. Not ordinary people in a patronising sense, but to involve them. If you really look around the world – my comment about institutional breakdown was related to that – there is a fantastic stir of consciousness at the level of the ordinary person. The shrinkage that Romesh spoke of, is not only a shrinkage that telecommunication, technology and communication has brought, it’s also a shrinkage between the bottom and top of society. 40:27 The existing elite structures cannot handle this shrinkage, because it gives rise to forms of consciousness with which the kind of (vaartala) taking place here... I’m not sure how relevant it is. I have no answers on this, but the issue of consciousness is an extremely complicated process, and I’m not talking of levels of ordinarity or speciality, but that a process of consciousness is on, in such a radical and transformative manner, that it makes me pretty nervous. That’s all.
41:10 PJ: Sir, if you now spoke.
41:11 K: May I join in? RK: Yes, please.
41:15 KV: We have been waiting for this, sir.
41:18 K: If I may point out, sir, I don’t think the crisis is in morality or values, at all. Beg your pardon?
41:35 P: Can you repeat that?
41:37 K: I do not think the crisis is moral or in values, I think the crisis is in consciousness and knowledge. Unless human beings radically transform this consciousness, we are going to end up in bloody wars. Has knowledge transformed man at all, at any time? This is the real crisis, I feel. I may be wrong. I’m subject to your correction, and I mean that. Whether man, who has lived for 25,000 years, as modern discovery has shown, we have lived the same way, more or less, for 25 centuries. 42:36 We have not radically changed. We are anxious, frightened, we are depressed, unhappy, aggressive, lonely, all that. The crisis is there, and the crisis is in modern knowledge. What havoc knowledge has played with us. Has it any place at all in the transformation of man? That is the real crisis. To drive a car, rather fast, I must have knowledge. I must have knowledge to go from here to some other place.
43:21 PJ: Then what knowledge are you talking about when you ask what place has knowledge in the transformation of man? Should we not clarify those areas of knowledge?
43:33 K: If I may, I would like to ask, what is knowledge? Why do we give such tremendous respect to knowledge, in all the universities, in all the intellectual circles, why give such tremendous respect to this knowledge? When computers, as you know, can have the Britannica completely in a thumbnail, why should I have knowledge? What’s the point of going to school, or going to university? It’s become a real crisis.
44:23 RK: And also, responding to Pupulji’s point, – it’s a cynical way of saying it – but you could say that knowledge is just something which gives jobs to people. It’s really not terribly relevant to the issues and problems of man. We are living right now in a period, certainly in the last 20, 30 years, when there is an unprecedented accumulation, an explosion of knowledge, those who are in the universities can’t keep up with it. And yet, we also know that most of that knowledge is not relevant to the precise problems facing man. 45:14 That’s the crisis. That’s a lower level crisis than the crisis we were talking of earlier. In a way, you can say that part of this knowledge is leading us to the war system and all that, the fact that half of the available technical manpower is engaged in industries relevant to armaments, so that half of the knowledge is in a destructive direction. But if we talk of modern, scientific, technological knowledge the belief that an increase of knowledge will lead to enlightenment and this will lead to progress, is being questioned.
46:04 K: That’s what I’m questioning, sir.
46:09 RK: It’s being questioned even in the universities, although those who run them are not aware of it. In fact, they are knowledge-proof.
46:21 JS: Sir, you talked about knowledge without saying whether it is good knowledge or bad knowledge. Don’t you differentiate at all?
46:31 K: No, no.
46:34 TNM: We sure have a problem here in this group itself, of communicating with each other and understanding each other. I was trying to explain to myself what Krishnaji meant by his observations about knowledge, and I was suggesting that perhaps what you meant, perhaps what you were telling us is that the most important thing is the will to be human through experience, to convert knowledge into experience. This could be knowledge of any level. This could be knowledge of the scientists. 47:19 Let me play Devil’s advocate and say that the hubris of scientists is bad enough but moral righteousness can be worse, and we should remember that the scientists who produce computers are also speaking in the name of human freedom, of relieving human beings from burdens, for higher experience, so I think we need to try to communicate rather than accumulate a set of observations about whether it is the moral crisis or it is the nature of knowledge or the acquisition of knowledge.
48:02 PJ: Sir, may I say one thing? We are going round and round this factor of knowledge. You spoke of consciousness. Consciousness contains not knowledge alone about the machine and the computer, etc., etc., there are more potent things. There is fear, there is sorrow, there is envy, there is loneliness, there are those deep-rooted anguishes and greed, as my friend Ramesh Thapar said. These are not knowledge in the ordinary, recognised sense of the word, though you may consider them part of the process of knowledge because they arise out of experience. But these are the deep anguishes which distort everything man does. So, can we deal with that root? Otherwise, we will just go round in the circle, of the outer parameters of the problem.
49:28 Participant: Regarding what Prof. Madan has just said, that scientists are creating technology, advancing human knowledge to free human beings. Are they actually doing that? Or the fact that you manufacture a product and then the scientist or someone else advertises it. so that man has to buy it. So, he’s not really free. The scientists are creating more and more products and we have to buy those products, and to buy them, we have to work, we have to go to offices, etc.
50:03 RK: He’s saying that even there, ideology is freedom.
50:07 P: I’m saying they are actually not free. They might be saying that they’re doing it to free man, but are they actually freeing man or are they enslaving him more? That’s what I am asking.
50:19 KV: That’s exactly what the intellectuals are doing, so there’s no difference between scientists and anybody else. That anybody who is dealing in the field of the intellect is doing this, making products for sale in the name of freedom.
50:41 JU: (In Hindi).
53:19 KV: He says that all institutions whether educational institutions, universities, schools or social systems, have trained the human mind, and today the human mind is burdened with knowledge that has been given through the institutional framework, as has the accumulated knowledge over centuries. The only resolution that he suggests is back to the human consciousness, that must come from within and it has to be strengthened. I think at this point we must have you to speak to us.
54:00 K: Do I come in, sir?
54:03 KV: Yes, sir, please.
54:06 K: Sir, I would like to discuss what is consciousness and what is the nature of knowledge, these two factors, because, apparently, that is dominating the world, both the scientific, intuitional, introspective, the whole movement of thought. Thought is knowledge. Knowledge is experience – knowledge, memory, thought, action. Man has been caught in this cycle for 25,000 years. There’s no dispute about that. Would you agree to that?
55:11 RT: Where does wisdom come in?
55:14 K: Wait, wait, wait. It doesn’t at all, in this cycle. This cycle has been the process of accumulating knowledge, functioning from knowledge, skilfully or unskilfully, and stored in the brain as memory, and the memory responding is thought, action. This is the cycle in which man has been caught. Always within the field of the known. I think there is no... Agree? Agree, sir? Consciousness is all its content. Its content makes up consciousness. Born in India, all the superstitions, beliefs, the class divisions, the Brahmanic impressions, all that follows. 56:35 In that consciousness is the ideal, the belief, the idea of God, suffering, pain, anxiety, loneliness, despair, depression, uncertainty, insecurity, all that is human consciousness. It’s not my consciousness. It’s human consciousness, because wherever you go you meet this problem. In America, Russia, wherever you go, human beings have this enormous burden of so much complexity. Right? That’s consciousness. That consciousness contains all the things thought has put together. Right, sir? Can I go on from there?
57:46 RK: I would like some explanation of the last point that the content of the consciousness is all that thought has put together. Do you see the two as co-terminous?
57:59 K: We’ll come to that, presently. After all, when you examine your own consciousness, it is that. You are a doctor, a scientist, a philosopher, or a guru, your own anxieties, uncertainties, all the rest of it – all that’s your consciousness. That consciousness is the ground on which all humanity stands. Do you follow this? Am I...?
58:36 JS: Is it more than the sum of its parts? Is it just all this added up together which becomes consciousness, or is it more than the sum of its parts?
58:46 K: I don’t quite follow.
58:48 KV: Is it an aggregation, or more than the sum of its parts?
58:52 K: Of course, of course.
58:54 RK: If you admit that it is more than the sum of its parts...
58:58 K: I don’t quite follow this argument. That’s why I am waiting.
59:02 RK: The content of consciousness, if it is the sum of its parts, all the things that man has known, then there is nothing that is added through aggregation. The question is, is consciousness the sum of all its parts – knowledge, thought, all that is put together – or, is there something more to consciousness?
59:38 K: Is that the question, sir? RK: Yes, that is my question, but there was an argument which was following from that.
59:48 P: If you say that consciousness is the sum of all its contents, you go in one direction. But if you say there is something more, either because it is added or something exists independently from this, we go in a different direction. So, we need to clarify now what is consciousness in terms of the sum of its contents.
1:00:16 K: Go on, sir, answer.
1:00:18 P: Sir, may I? I have just one more question. The sum of consciousness, where through the thought process, the linkages have already taken place, whether consciously or unconsciously, does that also become part of consciousness? Totality?
1:00:36 K: Of course. The unconscious, as well as the conscious, is all consciousness. Freud and Western people have divided it. He is asking whether there is something beyond consciousness. Is that it, sir? RK: No. Whether there is something to consciousness which isn’t just an aggregation of the anxieties and fears and knowledge.
1:01:07 K: Or, what is the next question?
1:01:10 JS: Let me add one next one, he may have another. There has been talk in our tradition about pure consciousness as well, which is not an aggregate of the anxieties, the pains, the despairs, etc. That’s also yet another possibility. One is more than the sum of its parts, another is pure consciousness as a thing in itself.
1:01:39 K: But even to postulate there is something beyond pure consciousness is part of our consciousness.
1:01:48 JS: Well, it’s a linguistic problem.
1:01:54 K: Wait. No, no. No.
1:02:01 RT: I would like you to say something about wisdom. Where does wisdom come in?
1:02:10 K: Can we finish this first, sir?
1:02:14 RT: Consciousness.
1:02:18 K: Would you agree so far, sir, whatever thought has put together, as super-consciousness, ultimate consciousness, pure consciousness, it’s still part of our consciousness? It’s still part of thought. Thought is born of knowledge, and therefore, completely limited. All knowledge is limited. There is no complete knowledge about computers or about the atom bomb or about anything. It is always limited.
1:03:10 RK: I have a difficulty now. All these parts constitute consciousness and then you said that is what thought is...
1:03:23 K: Thought has built the whole structure.
1:03:26 RK: Structure of consciousness. From that, there is a kind of a regression, that thought is essentially out of knowledge. And what was the next one? I now see a jumbling up. I thought that you had crystallised the issue very well. We’re considering the relationship between knowledge and consciousness.
1:03:50 K: That’s right, sir.
1:03:51 RK: You may not mean this but the way you are putting it now, it looks like you are saying they are the same thing.
1:03:58 PJ: That’s what I’m asking. Sir, is consciousness a putting together of many fragments of different types or has it a holistic quality?
1:04:15 K: That’s it. The question (is) whether it has holistic quality it has not.
1:04:22 TNM: It has not? Consciousness must be integrated experience.
1:04:27 K: Which is limited. It is not holistic.
1:04:35 TNM: Knowledge is not holistic, but what about consciousness?
1:04:38 K: Consciousness is knowledge. TNM: Ah, that’s the issue.
1:04:59 P: You say thought is born of knowledge. Could you elaborate on that, so that I can understand it better?
1:05:10 K: Would you say, sir, our whole existence is experience. Through experience we acquire knowledge, – whether it is scientific, physical, emotional, sexual, and that knowledge is stored in the brain as memory – right? – memory’s response is thought. Put it any way you like, the process is that.
1:05:58 SK: From my tradition, thought is born of fear not of knowledge.
1:06:07 K: Fear is the product of thought, not the other way round.
1:06:12 SK: This is probably where the issue... In the beginning, the experience of separation of the little child, it’s a terrible thing, how does one deal with that experience? One creates images or thoughts of the mother, which help you deal with the fear. So, to me, thought is born of fear rather than the other way around. That all mental ideation, fear or anxiety is the starting point. It never happens, but if a child was completely satisfied there would be no ideation or thought.
1:06:49 K: The mother or the father scolds the baby, child. There begins the fear.
1:06:58 SK: Or goes away, and how to deal with the separation. Then one conjures up the mother in thought or an image which then helps in keeping the fear or anxiety down.
1:07:09 K: Sir, look, would you admit or discuss, thought arises from knowledge? Right? That knowledge can never be complete about anything. Therefore, thought is always limited, and all our action is limited – scientific, spiritual, religious, whatever you like to call it. So, the crisis is in knowledge, which is consciousness. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear.
1:08:07 PJ: This question is being raised. Is fear independent of thought? Does thought arise because of the factor of fear, as a reaction to fear? How does fear arise? What is the ground of fear? Sudhir says experience. Can there be experience without the place of thought?
1:08:37 K: No. What is the question? There are several involved.
1:08:43 PJ: Would you put the question again?
1:08:48 SK: You had said that thought arises out of knowledge...
1:08:53 K: Not I say so, it is a fact.
1:08:57 SK: I was suggesting a hypothesis, that there is an intermediate step that out of knowledge or experience, the fear comes first, and fear is the father of thought, rather than the other way round.
1:09:12 KV: It is a sequence – experience, fear, thought or experience, thought, fear.
1:09:18 K: To understand, we must go into the question of time. Right? What is time? We live by time. Time is necessary to acquire a language. Time is necessary to learn a skill, to become a politician. Anything requires time – outwardly and psychologically, inwardly. I question – which doesn’t mean I’m agreeing – whether psychological time is necessary at all.
1:10:16 P: There is a problem with the technology.
1:10:19 PJ: I’ll just repeat what Krishnaji said. He said he questions whether time has any place in psychological processes which are within. He says time has a place in many things, but he questions whether time has a place in the psychological process at all, and it is possibly that which is the cause of many of the problems.
1:11:01 TNM: May I just get a word in here? I think, as I said earlier, we have a real problem of communication. We all speak in English. But I don’t think we are participating in the same discourse. The essential, fundamental elements of the discourse are scattered. I think what Sudhir said a little while ago, his question to you and your answer to him just went past each other. A group like this has to face this problem. How do we establish a common idiom of conversation? I don’t think we are establishing it.
1:11:50 JS: I have a one-sentence question. Is enlightenment knowledge? And does it have a time element?
1:12:02 P: Is enlightenment knowledge and has it a time element?
1:12:06 K: Enlightenment has no time.
1:12:09 P: Is it knowledge?
1:12:12 K: Certainly not!
1:12:15 P: Could you spell it out?
1:12:25 JU: (In Hindi).
1:14:45 KV: Sir, he states that knowledge constructs itself through a process of destruction of knowledge, and conquest of knowledge by knowledge. He used a graphic image that knowledge rides on the shoulders of itself. That is how I would literally translate it. From this riding off itself it leaps, and that is the process of knowledge. My footnote question was, does that constitute consciousness or not? He said, ‘Yes’ and some of us said, ‘No’.
1:15:45 K: I don’t quite follow the argument in this, at all.
1:15:50 PJ: The argument is that we seem to be taking parallel courses. The words which we are using are not meeting.
1:16:02 K: I realise that.
1:16:06 PJ: They are not meeting because... perhaps, if you opened up the whole problem of knowledge, thought and consciousness, we may come to a meeting point, because we are talking in one stream and you are talking in another.
1:16:31 K: Running parallel, never meeting.
1:16:46 PJ: Yes, Ravi Mathai.
1:16:54 Ravi Mathai: If there is two streams or more than two streams of parallel thought, I don’t know whether I’ll add mud to both streams. I have a very good friend, sir, whom I respect greatly. He has taught me a great deal. He used to earn two rupees a day and was very concerned about where his next meal would come from. The concern that he expressed to me never sounded like fear. I couldn’t define these terms. It was a wonderment as to whether he would get a roti and some daal by next midday or not. 1:17:57 If he did not, he was quite content with the situation. I asked him what changes had taken place in his village. He does leather work, in a village called Sargana in Rajasthan. I asked what changes had taken place in his village over 50 years. He said that 50 years ago or 30 years ago, perhaps, if the sarpanch offered him a beedi, it would be offered like that. Today, the sarpanch will offer him a beedi like this. There is some change. We discussed whether he wanted to improve his leather technology. 1:19:07 His reaction was, ‘It is always useful to have this knowledge. But I will decide whether I am going to use it or not’. He was very keen to learn new leather technology. They were making leather products that required stitching. When I asked him whether he would be more productive if he had a sewing machine to do the stitching, his reaction was, ‘This will not settle now’. He had a very fine sense of the timing of things in relation to the development of his own capabilities and those with him. 1:20:07 He was very pleased when, after deciding to use this knowledge, they earned a little more money. His younger brother, Maniram, bought a new kurta and dhoti. Hazarimal was very taken with this and very proud of the fact that his younger brother was dressed so well. But he said, ‘This is going to produce problems for Maniram. Yesterday, he could do without the kurta and dhoti, today he will want more’. When I asked him why he didn’t want the sewing machine, ‘Why do you want to be behind the times? ’, 1:20:56 he was a bit bewildered, because he thought it was a stupid question. He said, ‘I will determine in which time I will live’. I don’t think Hazari had ever heard of a computer. A sewing machine for his sewing was not timely, he thought. As simple as that. He saw the progression of trying to satisfy wants is creating more wants. When he is asked, ‘Don’t you want those around you, your community, your group or friends to eat more? ’ ‘Yes, yes’, it’s all up to a point. 1:21:47 Is it just a question of judgment as to how much of the wants that I perceive today I am going to learn about to satisfy them? And do I understand the problems that are going to be created by my satisfaction of wants? The wisdom, if I can use that word – this is my own use of the word, I cannot define it – Hazari’s wisdom, to my mind, lay in his own control of his time and need.
1:22:33 K: I haven’t quite followed the argument.
1:22:39 RM: I said I would add mud to the two streams.
1:22:48 PJ: He said in the beginning that he’d add mud to the two streams. Krishnaji, if you opened it up a little, it might help.
1:23:22 K: Sir, what is reality? I’d like to explore it a bit. Nature, the tree, the tiger, the deer, is not created by thought. That is reality.
1:23:49 TNM: Our perception of it.
1:23:52 K: Yes, I don’t want to...
1:23:55 TNM: The snake and the rope.
1:23:57 K: Yes, yes. So, thought has created everything that I know. Right? All the temples, the churches and the mosques are created by thought and the things inside the mosques, the churches and the temples, are created by thought. So, there is nothing sacred about thought. The rituals, the mass, the wafers, all that is the invention of thought. Do we agree to that? Then, I am asking myself, what is thinking? If you ask me my name, I respond immediately because it is familiar, I’ve repeated it dozens of times. 1:25:07 But if you ask me something much more complex, it takes time to investigate, to answer. Right? I am looking into my memory and trying to find the answer, or consult books, talk to somebody, etc., etc. So, there is immediate response, there is a response of time, and the response which says, ‘I really don’t know’. Right? I don’t know if you follow this. We never say, ‘I don’t know’. We’re always responding from memory. Right? May I go on? That memory is in the cells of my brain – derived through tradition, education, through experience, through perception, hearing, and so on. 1:26:47 I am all that. Born in India, educated abroad, etc. The content of my consciousness is the result of all Indian culture, European culture, Italian culture and so on, so on. The content of my consciousness is the result of innumerable talks, discussions, with the scientists, with religious people, with phoneys. Right? I am all that. My consciousness is me. I am not different from my consciousness. So, the observer is the observed. Right? Before I’ve discovered that – I’m not talking about myself – before a human being discovers that there is no separation between the observer and the observed, psychologically, one lives in constant conflict. 1:28:09 That’s a fact. So, my consciousness is the consciousness of humanity. It’s not separate. This consciousness has known conflict, pain, all that, has invented God, God hasn’t invented me. Or you could say, God doesn’t want me to have a rotten life, but I have a rotten life. All that is my action, both scientific, religious, all that. Human beings have lived for 25,000 years in this misery, inventing technology, and using that to destroy each other. You know what is happening, I don’t have to go into all that. 1:29:42 Dividing man against man, which thought has done. Nationalities are the result of glorified tribalism, which is thought. Seeing all that, what am I to do? What I am is the rest of the world. I am the world. This isn’t an intellectual idea, but actually, factually, I am the rest. What am I to do? The politicians haven’t helped me. I am the ordinary man, not highly intellectual, up there, I’m an ordinary man. What am I to do? I have looked to the gurus, they haven’t helped me, politicians haven’t helped me, scientists haven’t helped me at all, on the contrary, they’re destroying me. 1:31:00 Apart from technological conveniences, communication and all that, they are destroying me. With their atom bombs and military technology, they are perpetually creating war. For the last historical 5,000 years, we have had wars every year. Again, that’s historical fact. I have relied on everybody to help me. So, now, I discard the whole of that. Right? I have discarded it. I see politicians, I see gurus, I see the scientists. So, I have to be completely responsible for myself. Myself is the society I live in. I have created it. 1:32:24 Right? My fathers, past generations, of which I am the result, we have created the rotten society we live in. Right? And with all this accumulation of tremendous knowledge, how am I to change all that? That is the real crisis. I don’t know if you agree with all that. How am I, the result of 25,000 years, living in the same cycle, repeating the same thing over and over again – I’ve been an intellectual, a romantic, a worshipper of the false, I have been a phoney, I am the ordinary man. What am I to do? 1:33:42 I feel the crisis is there, sir, not in the world of technology, or in the intellectual world or in the totalitarian world. The crisis is there. I’ve finished.
1:34:07 RK: Aren’t you ascribing a certain homogeneity to the entire process? Different civilisations, different religious systems, the system of modern science and the system that has created wars all over the place, you’re giving the same character to all of them?
1:34:32 K: Of course.
1:34:35 RK: I am asking...
1:34:39 K: I don’t see any difference. I lived in Italy. The Renaissance has produced certain – you know all that. The French revolution, the Russian revolution, revolutions before that, I am the result of all that. I don’t know if you agree or disagree. Because I am...
1:35:09 RK: That a human being is a result of all that, I’ve no difficulty with. But to give the same kind of character to all that, there is no differentiation.
1:35:26 K: There is.
1:35:27 RK: That’s what I am asking.
1:35:30 K: There is. Both physically – you are taller, I am shorter and all that, and psychologically, certain characteristic tendencies, depending on culture. I followed certain values, now I throw all those values out, they have no values at all. I have been very moral and nothing has happened. I won’t become immoral. At the end of all this, I am crying.
1:36:17 TNM: May I respond? At the level of what we have, we are different. But at the level of what we are, I think he has a point, whether you are living in a far off tribe in the Amazonian jungle, whether you’re living in New Delhi or Tokyo, at the level of what we are, there is a basic universality of the human predicament. But surely, in terms of what we have, whether we have the computer or sewing machine, there’s a difference.
1:37:00 RK: The issue is not about the differentiation of present existence, it is about the streams of consciousness and thought that have gone on in the past. He’s talking of 25,000 years. Whether the modern, scientific, homocentric view of knowledge and its impact on consciousness can be put at par with some of the ancient streams of consciousness, because he includes them, also. That is my question. Does experience and accumulation of experience offer choices to us at this moment of history, or are we doomed because all of them have made us weep? This is the question I’m asking.
1:37:57 TNM: My response would be that the elements are the same. The emphases have differed from time to time, but the elements are the same, whether we are going back in time or we are spreading out in space, 25,000 years in time or we are talking over space, the element of manipulation, as an essential element in the scientific, technological view of the world, the most primitive of peoples have used intervention. When you grow yams you’re intervening. When you’re not merely gathering food, when you practise the most primitive agriculture, you are intervening, using technology. 1:38:49 The issue is, when intervention is made into an ideology, rather than whether the elements that make up modern, scientific, technological civilisation, are totally different. I would say no section of mankind ever created, in space or time, has ever created absolutely, only collectively. That is where I entirely agree with your observation.
1:39:22 PJ: May I make one observation? I don’t think the problem is... Taking consciousness as is, as long as we continue within this consciousness as we know it, little better, little worse, a bit improved, good, bad, little more evil, maybe a little good, we’re still caught in this groove from which we don’t seem able to get out. If I may suggest, I think Krishnaji is speaking about – I’ll use a phrase, I may be wrong – a sort of quantum leap, and we are still caught within that structure. Perhaps, it would be... I don’t know whether there’s time today, it’s already nearly 11:30, but perhaps tomorrow, we could go more into the states of perception, the actual faculty of our senses, the instruments we have, with which we see the world, and see whether clarity can be brought into the situation, and we can somehow come to this point, from which we see. 1:41:00 Otherwise, we will go round and round and round, we can be better, more or less moral, less destructive, more destructive, but we are still caught within this framework. I think that’s the problem.
1:41:21 JS: May I make a short point? Sir, I understand your anguish. But I don’t understand the problématique. If this is the way we have been for the last 25,000 years, without change, then we can’t go back to a period or a state where things were more desirable than they are today. If this is the way we are, I don’t see how we can make a quantum jump. If we can disaggregate our consciousnesses and say there are some good things and some bad things, maybe we can concentrate on certain things. But if you make it the human condition, then I can only understand your anguish, not the problematique.
1:42:08 RK: That was exactly my point. I would see human experience providing choices for the leaps that one is talking about. But we will wait for the discussion on the leap tomorrow.
1:42:21 SG: Just one more thing. Or you feel that time has come when the process is starting when out of this human species some other species might come, but today it is a human condition, and there’s no question of weeping or otherwise. We have wept in the beginning, we are weeping now and we’ll go on.
1:42:44 K: I am not actually weeping, the air is upsetting my eyes. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. My question is, at the end of 25,000 years I am what I am, we all are. Hitler has impressed us, put his foot on us, the Buddha also, if Jesus ever lived, he also. We are the result of all that. I am conditioned that way. Is it possible to be totally unconditioned? I say, ‘Yes, so completely unconditioned’, so that you have a mind that is free, not just keep on repeating this trash.
1:44:02 RM: Apropos of the continuation tomorrow in terms of choices, if I might once again finally throw even more mud into the two streams. Personally, I used to think that freedom lay in the fact of choices, and the question was how to create situations where more choices existed – to throw that particular Hazarimal mud into the stream – Hazarimal was more concerned with the process of controlling choices, not the functions of choices. That is my problem, one of controlling choices.
1:44:59 PJ: Sir, shall we stop today? It’s 11:30.
1:45:03 K: All right. It’s up to you.
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