Krishnamurti - What is a religious mind?

Krishnamurti Subtitles

MA79DSG1.2 - What is a religious mind?
Madras (Chennai), India - 3 January 1979
Discussion with Small Group 1.2

0:18	Krishnamurti: Shall we start? Sunanda Patwardhan: Yes, sir.
0:23	K: Sir, you were not here yesterday, and you too, sir. I think you ought to be informed what we discussed, more or less. We said that knowledge as it is now advancing and many of the scientists are saying, like Bronowski and others, that there is ascent of man only through knowledge.
0:50	And Achyutji pointed out yesterday that knowledge is destroying the world without the religious spirit, without a religious mind.
1:02	And we were inquiring into this question of what is a religious mind.
1:09	Pupul Jayakar: Sir, I think the microphone is not working.
1:12	K: All right? Oh Lord!
1:25	That’s where more or less where we left off yesterday. I think we ought to go to it much more in detail. What would you consider a religious mind?
1:55	Nearer?
2:00	PJ:...why don’t you sit there, near Achyutji.
2:02	K: Good.
2:04	PJ: Come closer.
2:05	K: Come nearer, sir, we shan’t bite each other. David Shainberg: You won’t bite me anyway.
2:11	K: I certainly won’t bite you, I’m a vegetarian.
2:32	PJ: Can we have this fan…?
2:40	K: Let’s get on with it, doesn’t matter. Ravi Ravindra: Sir, I felt that the place where you left it yesterday was quite a fruitful place.
2:52	So if I may just use the sentence, at least as I understood it, that the very activity of seeing the right place of knowledge in life, is religious life, is living a religious life, which I found to be a very fruitful place, if I understood this rightly.
3:19	So can we start it from there?
3:21	K: Yes, sir, start it wherever you like. Achyut Patwardhan: Sir, the trouble is that with the advancement of technology, knowledge has become diversified, specialized, with each person having to know a very special kind of know-how and skill.
3:54	Under such condition the mind tends to lose the sense of wholeness. It doesn’t need it for the act of survival, for the act of prospering in the world, with the result that this fragmented mind of man is the source of mischief.
4:12	In the old days, in the Middle ages, a university was supposed to impart a universalist outlook, whether it came through religion or it came through academic discipline, mind was supposed to imbibe through knowledge, a universalist… RR: Perception.
4:35	AP: Today it is the other way. Today you know the part and you don’t see the whole. So knowledge is preventing you from seeing the whole. So I said, is it possible for us to understand the process by which we can regain or call it.
4:58	I don’t even want to use the word ‘regain’ because that was traditional and what we need is totally non-traditional, whether it is possible for us to glimpse the religious mind.
5:18	K: Sir, you said just now that knowledge is preventing a holistic outlook, holistic in the sense, an outlook that’s whole.
5:31	I wonder if that is so, or, intellect has become so supremely important that it has brought about a deep fragmentation.
5:56	The worship of the intellect with all its activities, has that not brought about a sense of breaking it up, breaking up the whole nature of man.
6:19	I am just putting that forward to be discussed, not as a theory, because to me theories are an abomination, it gets nowhere.
6:31	So would you accept that? Because intellect implies the whole movement of thought, the cognition through thought, the understanding – when we use that word, the implication is, thought has understood what has been said.
7:04	So thought, which is the instrument of intellect and so on, thought essentially being limited, has brought about this cleavage, this fragmentation of man.
7:22	Thought is not a movement of a religious mind.
7:31	DS: You mean – that’s not clear, in the sense that thought, you say thought is not the movement of a religious mind. Certainly the religious mind thinks.
7:41	K: No, just let me explain that. Thought, I said, cannot contain the religious mind.
7:55	Thought in itself being a fragment, whatever it does will bring about fragmentation, and a religious mind is non-fragmentary.
8:08	That’s all I am saying. Proceed from there. Kick it around. P. K. Sundaram: Sir, knowledge is essentially transitive. Knowledge in so far as it is mediated by a mind, must be essentially considered as transitive – it always wants an object.
8:31	It is intentional; it must go forth from itself to find an object for itself.
8:38	And when it does so, naturally it dissects to murder. Thought always dwells on dualities without which it cannot even live.
8:47	K: That’s fragmented, that’s limited. PKS: So religious mind must transcend this duality, or dualism between thought and object.
8:59	K: Sir, do you want to go into all this?
9:01	Q: Shall I pose it slightly differently?
9:04	K: What, sir?
9:05	Q: Shall I pose it slightly differently, as I understand it? K, Yes sir, put it, sir, I’m not the chairman, sir. We’re all chairmen.
9:12	Q: For me the problem is that of being, not being religious or anything, being, the problem of being, the very being is the problem.
9:20	And when once you come into being it’s the question of your being and of non-being.
9:29	Shall we be, and be a battle of ideas?
9:32	K: Sir, what do you mean by being?
9:35	Q: Being.
9:36	K: I don’t know what that means.
9:38	Q: My own being. K: I know.
9:41	Q: Not being something. I am being.
9:46	K: Sir, what do you mean you are me?
9:50	Q: That is all that I can communicate.
9:52	K: That doesn’t… Rajesh Dalal: Sir, could we discuss this, carrying it from where we left it yesterday, where you said: can one stay with sorrow?
10:01	I’ll bring it, I’ll connect it. Now, when you say this, can one stay with sorrow, one and sorrow, I and sorrow, seem to be separate to us.
10:12	And I have to be in sorrow. We do not seem to perceive I am sorrow, I am fear.
10:21	If I am already separate from fear then I do not think we can ever be with it.
10:30	This separation of I from what I perceive.
10:34	K: Yes, sir, therefore that implies, as the gentleman, professor was pointing out – duality.
10:42	Now I am questioning whether there is duality at all.
10:48	PJ: Sir, what do you mean when you question the fact of duality?
10:56	K: I have questioned the very fact whether duality exists.
11:00	PJ: No, therefore you are questioning the fact of duality.
11:03	SP: We are living in duality, it’s something...
11:06	K: No, because duality – the opposite may be an illusion.
11:11	SP: But as the mind, the thinking process, it is functioning in duality.
11:15	PJ: You see, sir, once you say that, that statement of yours is to me an illusion.
11:24	K: No, no, I would like to expand this, if I may, little more, which is, has fact an opposite?
11:38	PJ: No, but…
11:39	K: Just let me push it out a bit.
11:44	SP: Sir, will you say thought is a fact?
11:47	K: Thought is a fact. And thought, what thought has invented – apart from technology and all that knowledge: illusion.
11:58	Gods, rituals and all the business that we consider as religious mind is an illusion.
12:07	PJ: No, but, sir…
12:08	K: Illusion being – let me finish – illusion being, the perception through senses with a certain direction, a prejudice, a fixation.
12:20	That I would call – let me finish, just, please. So, I am saying, we are saying that a fact, that is, anger, envy, has no opposite.
12:43	PJ: Now, sir, I’ll pose another question to you. I and you, which is the very core of duality.
12:57	SP: I am angry is duality.
12:59	PJ: Leave out anger for the moment. I and you.
13:03	K: I don’t understand that.
13:04	PJ: I and Achyutji, Pupul and Achyutji.
13:08	K: Yes.
13:09	PJ: The separation between us is duality. Now… K: Man, woman is a reality. You are short, Achyutji is tall, white and black and all that – opposite.
13:24	PJ: No, no, sir, I am not talking of that. The movement in my consciousness of the I and the you – is that factual or is that illusion?
13:38	K: Beat it around. I will come little later.
13:44	PJ: I read that question as whole business of duality and fact.
13:51	We use the word ‘illusion’, because you introduced it into this.
13:55	K: I used the word ‘illusion’ in the sense which I am using – sensory perception of external object, which is coloured, which is distorted by belief, by prejudice, by opinion, by a conclusion.
14:14	I would call that an illusion.
14:16	PJ: Sir, I will use a phrase you have used in another context. An object, my face is observable in the mirror. Achyutji’s face is also observable in the mirror. I divide my face with Achyutji’s face, they are two.
14:39	That two is part of consciousness within me.
14:47	How can you say that the two which is within me is an illusion?
14:54	The separation which divides us – separation of different names, separation of different personalities, separation – all this.
15:10	They have an existence.
15:11	K: Go on, discuss it, sir. Join in the battle.
15:17	PJ: And it is this separation which brings into being this problem of becoming which moves away from the being which was mentioned, that this movement of becoming in which all the other process of comparison, opposite, want, not want, more, less…
15:42	K: What are you...
15:44	AP: Pupulji, my difficulty with which I started the question is that the same intellect that makes me see that you and I are two entities, also makes me understand that our survival is indivisible, that our well-being is indivisible.
16:08	This also I can arrive at intellectually.
16:11	PJ: Agreed.
16:12	AP: But the more knowledge I have, the more I seem to move away from this fact which is perceptible to the intellect, but my whole life is a life led away from that.
16:27	And I say, is it possible for me to devise some form of cognition by which I can hark to that essential, indivisible, inseparable oneness?
16:52	This is what I call the religious mind.
16:55	PJ: The only problem which I would find in what you are saying is: is the seed of corruption which is inherent in this, the fact of growing knowledge, or is it inherent in the very processes of the mind itself?
17:21	K: No, may I interrupt here? How do you perceive Achyutji?
17:32	How do you see him? How do you observe him? How do you look at him?
17:38	PJ: You see, Krishnaji, when you ask that question, from all the thirty years of my hearing you the response comes.
17:48	K: No, no. PJ: I am telling you.
17:50	K: May I request, just a minute. Put away all the thirty years repetition, throw it out of the window, and how do you now observe Achyutji?
18:06	What is the process of observation? If that observation is pure – in the sense I am going to explain what I mean when I use the word ‘pure’: without any kind of motive, distortion, without any prejudice, nothing between your perception and the object which you perceive.
18:32	When there is that pure perception, that very perception denies duality.
18:41	Swallow that pill.
18:46	SP: Then there is nothing to be said, sir, because…
18:50	K: I’m glad.
18:54	RR: But, sir, the difficulty seems to be that, am I just being perverse in saying that I don’t have this pure perception.
19:04	K: Now that is the problem. Then let’s discuss that…
19:08	SP: It is not perverse, it is a fact.
19:09	K: …not that there is duality. The whole question to me, there is only fact. A fact has no opposite – if we can examine that.
19:22	I may be wrong, I may be corrected, I am willing to be corrected – you follow? – and all the rest of it. But could we begin from there? But we accept duality – I am angry, I mustn’t be angry.
19:40	RR: But in my perception, whatever – pure or impure – whatever it is, I see Achyutji separate and different…
19:50	K: Which means what? You are conditioned, your perception is conditioned – obviously. RR: Yes.
19:57	K: So can that conditioning be put aside and observed?
20:05	SP: Would you then say that so long as there is conditioning there is duality? Would you not say that? K: I would.
20:11	SP: So, duality is it not a fact? K: No. It is the conditioning that decides there is duality.
20:18	SP: It decides? K: It says there is duality.
20:22	DS: Can we go into what pure perception is, what is this state?
20:25	PJ: He has used a phrase, ‘put aside’. Now what is implied in put aside? K: I’ll tell you. Do you want to go into all that? Q: Yes.
20:34	PJ: That is the core of the whole thing.
20:35	K: Putting aside implies there is no you to put aside.
20:44	Right?
20:47	RR: So putting aside is an illusion. K: No. Don’t let me use that word ‘put aside’.
21:03	I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. I’m not dumb yet.
21:15	Sir, as we discussed yesterday, the perception of what is, sorrow we talked about, that perception and the moving away from that perception is the continuation of sorrow. That we said yesterday.
21:41	And out of that continuation which is memory, which is remembrance of an incident which was sorrow, that creates duality.
21:52	I don’t know if you follow what I am saying. The professor looks rather uncertain.
21:59	Q: No, sir.
22:01	K: And can the observation be so complete that there is no observer and the thing observed – only observation.
22:24	And putting away – I mean by that, being aware of this whole movement of moving away from the fact which creates duality, and be aware of this movement, and that very intense awareness wipes away this movement, and there is only pure observation in which there is no duality.
22:57	I made it my statement.
22:59	DS: Krishnaji, are you saying that in the act of seeing Achyutji that there is an awareness of the very act of making the separateness? K: Yes.
23:10	DS: In other words there is the awareness of not only of that, but of that. K: That’s right, sir. That means your awareness is conditioned by the past and tradition and all that, and therefore there is this duality.
23:23	DS: But there is awareness of that whole movement.
23:25	K: Yes.
23:33	RR: What you have just said, sir, does that not imply that for me what you have just said is a theoretical idea.
23:46	K: Now, just a minute, sir. Why is it a theoretical idea?
23:49	RR: Because it is not my perception.
23:52	K: No. How would you get that perception? – not my perception, perception. You understand what I am saying? RR: Yes.
24:02	K: It is not my perception which you are trying to understand, but what it is to perceive.
24:11	If we could examine that, then perhaps we could go into the question of non-movement of perception.
24:30	RR: Non-movement of perception? You mean the perception that does not move?
24:36	K: Yes. I don’t have to explain, it’s very clear.
24:39	RR: I am trying to understand…
24:41	K: Don’t put it into your own words. I am telling you a story, and listen to the story. If you understand the story completely, then you can repeat it in your own words. Right? So let’s finish the end of the chapter, or end of the book.
25:03	We are saying that when there is perception without the observer, then there is no duality.
25:18	Duality occurs when there is the observer and the observed.
25:28	The observer is the past, and so through the eyes of the past, the observation takes place and that creates a duality.
25:44	PJ: The only point in question then is, how is – when do you resolve. K: What?
25:54	PJ: You said when there is, when there is.
26:00	K: What when… I can’t…
26:02	PJ: Then you go on: when there is perception without the observer. You used the word when. K: Yes. No, because he says to me that’s a theory.
26:12	PJ: No. That’s why I ask: How is this I – I am not talking of someone else – how is a person come to a state when the when has ceased, when there is perception.
26:29	K: Come on, go on.
26:32	Q: I see perception, I am observing, and I find my observation is interrupted.
26:40	K: Is interrupted. Q: Yes. And I also know that it is interrupted because I don’t have the energy to go on.
26:54	K: I don’t quite follow this.
26:56	Q: I don’t have the energy to be in that state of observation.
27:02	K: Is that the question?
27:10	Then proceed. Why don’t you have that energy? Perception doesn’t need energy. You just perceive. Go on, let’s toss it around.
27:26	DS: Well, I was wondering whether there’s something there in what she was saying that I think we could go into further.
27:34	There seems to be a movement where as you’re aware of perception she says she loses the energy, but is it losing the energy or is there a kind of subtle commitment that as I look at Achyutji, I am attached in some way to creating the duality?
27:53	In other words, I want him to be there so that in some way or the other I can go on relating to him as a separate entity?
28:00	You know what I mean? K: Yes, yes.
28:01	DS: And that seems to me where the energy gets dissipated, because I am attached to creating him as an object, to something I need, just the mere presence of him is a duality, is somehow or other a drug that satisfies me.
28:15	And that is where my energy gets diluted.
28:21	K: Please, sir, go on.
28:22	Q: But, sir, in pure observation there could be no need as such.
28:26	DS: Exactly, but I’m talking about what it is that she says that she loses energy. And I think the energy is in loss in part because there is a commitment to duality.
28:39	K: Or rather, not commitment, it is you’re brought up, your tradition, your conditioning, your whole outlook is that.
28:46	DS: Well, it’s much easier for me in some sense to create the duality because then I know, it’s like I know what I’m dealing with.
28:56	K: Yes, yes. Yes.
29:02	PJ: Still we have not come to… G. Narayanan: I think there is that memory-functioning. We are trained in memory-functioning and memory-functioning always is something in some way associated with knowledge and when you have memory-functioning and knowledge, duality occurs.
29:24	Now the difficulty is, as Achyutji has been saying, if we have been trained in memory-functioning and knowledge, even though it maybe a factual skill, it somehow penetrates into a perception where probably there is no duality.
29:42	PJ: There is no need for knowledge.
29:44	GN: Because the memory-functioning and the knowledge associated with this is our actual fact, and we are so trained in this that the other thing which may be a path for being, we’re strangers to that, because all the time knowledge is impinging on us and we are functioning with memory.
30:07	I think that is the problem of the human being who has lot of knowledge.
30:14	Krishnan Kutty: May I say something?
30:18	K: Sir, sir.
30:20	KK: Why is it that all these are becoming problems to us? We are all the time converting facts into problems. Achyutji is there, Krishnaji is there, perception is there, energy is there, and all that we are asking, how to preserve energy, how to have continuous perception.
30:40	Maybe most of us are putting the question how to be like Krishnaji. All the time, you know, we are caught up in the world of ideas. We want, we are living in the world of wants. This is happening because some fact is being converted into problems and this conversion of fact into problem takes place because we are living in the world of ideas.
31:04	Q: May I ask...?
31:05	KK: Yes, whatever it is, the whole thing, our mind is functioning in the world of ideas. All the time haunted by ideas. I want to be like Krishnaji, or I want to have continuous perception. This is haunting us all the time. So with the result that everything becomes a problem. We can’t see facts as facts. This is immediately converted into a problem. And the problem itself becomes a problem – how to get rid of the problem. So we never remain with anything. We are all the time in the world of duality because we are haunted all the time, haunted by ideas, various ideas, and may be one of the greatest dangers we are facing is probably Krishnaji is becoming a tremendous ideal for all of us.
31:49	It’s quite possible. We are haunted by Krishnaji. We are, in the sense that the whole thing becomes a problem we can’t also, we can’t become Krishnaji. And Krishnaji may come in the way of our communing with our people too, quite possibly because we are haunted by that ideal we can’t look at another human being.
32:11	For me it is quite simple because I see we somehow can’t remain with the fact because we are haunted by these ideals.
32:20	GN: Do you mean by idea knowledge?
32:23	KK: Yes, sir, the whole functioning...
32:26	GN: The difficulty is, we are acquiring knowledge all the time, and knowledge is being converted into memory, and so what I am suggesting is, in this process there is duality creeping in.
32:39	It may be a problem, it may not be a problem. I am not saying that duality is a problem, we are separate in the now. It is not a problem to me.
32:46	KK: …that’s all about this. GN: Yes.
32:47	KK: That’s all I wanted to know.
32:48	GN: No, no, there is something more than that.
32:52	KK: Because we convert it again into… I don’t know why we can’t remain with this.
32:56	AP: You see…
32:57	KK: Achyutji is there, Mr Narayan is there, we are all here, so why should all this become a problem?
33:02	GN: It is not.
33:04	KK: Well, if it is not, then the problem ceases.
33:06	AP: No, Krishna, I object to your statement…
33:11	KK: Yes, sir.
33:12	AP: …that I am making the problem. K K: Yes, sir.
33:15	AP: My submission is, that placed as I am, I see the indivisibility of human well-being.
33:32	I see that man can survive only as an indivisible whole, but the weight of my knowledge and the requirements of my daily living are stressing separateness.
33:49	And separateness is becoming so overpowering that it seems to eclipse my perception that man’s well-being is indivisible.
34:05	KK: May I say something, sir?
34:06	AP: Now, I want to ask you a question. Do you think I am making a problem because I am merely stating to you…
34:14	KK: No, sir, when you use the words like ‘indivisibility of man’ or ‘the wholeness of being’ or…
34:20	AP: No, excuse me, indivisibility of your survival with mine is a fact to me.
34:31	I know that if you die I die in this world. That is to say the entire survival of the human race is the entire well-being of man. My intellect tells me that it is suicidal for man to fragment the problem of well-being, the problem of survival.
34:54	My intellect tells me, it is an absolute fact to me. At the same time the needs of daily living are stressing fragmentation and the entire process of acquisition of knowledge equips me with fragmentation, and now I find myself caught in the vise of this contradiction which is created by the manner in which I am placed in relation to my knowledge.
35:29	K: I think, sir, if I may interpret or understand what Krishnan Kutty is saying, I think if I understand it rightly, he said, why do we make everything into a problem.
35:44	That’s all he’s saying. AP: Yes, sir. What I am trying to submit to him is, that the problem is not my creation. The problem is implicit in the human situation…
35:55	K: No, I question…
35:56	AP: …and to refuse to see this problem, to say there is no problem. This is kind of…
36:01	K: No, you are repeating. Sir, he is saying, why do we reduce everything into a problem.
36:11	Right, sir? K K: Yes sir, precisely.
36:15	K: What is a problem, sir, the meaning of that word?
36:22	AP: A contradiction.
36:25	K: No, the meaning. A problem, as something that we have not resolved, not contradiction, as something that you haven’t worked out, something that is bothering you, that’s worrying you that goes on day after day, day after day, for many years.
36:44	A problem is something that is not resolved. Right? He is asking: Why don’t we resolve something that arises quote as a problem, immediately, and not carry on and on and on and on.
37:07	KK: Exactly the same. This is…
37:10	PJ: Sir, I would just say something in this connection.
37:18	What he said is unacceptable, I would say.
37:22	K: I don’t know. PJ: I will say it’s unacceptable.
37:25	K: This is...
37:27	PJ: But there are many other issues involved in it. And the issues are this, that it does not need Krishnaji to tell you that there is a source of energy, perception, which I have not touched…
37:57	K: So, all right.
37:59	PJ: …and that without touching that, this partial solution of the problem as it keeps on existing…
38:07	K: All right.
38:07	PJ: …keeps me within the framework of time for eternity. I will be able to solve, I mean I have given up thirty years again. I can solve the problems. I have no problems in that sense. But I also know, irrespective of Krishnaji, I think, that there must, the very imperatives of the human situation demand that there must be a source of energy which once touched will physically transform our ways of thinking.
38:51	KK: Will that become an ideal?
38:53	PJ: No I am not talking of an ideal. And while Krishnaji is here, I think it is my function, my dharma, to probe into this consciousness, to inquire, to investigate, to try and contact, to somehow come face to face with this.
39:11	DS: But if I might play the devil’s advocate for a moment, the fact is, it is an idea. That’s the fact.
39:22	You’ve presented it, it is definitely in fact an idea.
39:25	K: What do you call an idea, sir?
39:27	DS: I mean in other words it’s a… K: No, no, stick to one. What is an idea?
39:36	DS: My sense of an idea is a thought that displays, or so to speak presents a constructive perception.
39:49	In other words, it presents or shows the way or ordering of a perception.
40:01	PJ: Frankly I don’t see it.
40:02	AP: Then why don’t we go back to my original question?
40:06	K: Sir, just let me finish this one thing.
40:08	PJ: I don’t see it as an idea. K: No. Just let me. When you use – forgive me, sir – when you use the word ‘idea’, the word, I am not talking the whole movement of ideas and so on.
40:25	The meaning of that word.
40:29	DS: The meaning of the word ‘idea’ is that I have a…
40:34	K: Ah, you’re going off. The very root meaning of that word.
40:42	DS: The root meaning of the word has to do with display, with show.
40:45	K: No, no, the root meaning – Greek and Latin and all the rest of it – means to observe.
40:56	Forgive me. Look up in a dictionary, you will see it means that. To perceive.
41:04	DS: Okay. K: Which means what? To perceive that flower, that thing there, and not make an idea of it.
41:16	DS: That’s etymological double talk!
41:17	K: No, no, no, it’s not etymological double talk. Observe only, not make an abstraction of what is observed.
41:33	RR: That’s not the sense in which we nowadays use this word, sir.
41:36	K: Well, nowadays it’s misused.
41:41	DS: But still…
41:44	K: No, no, no. I’m going to stick to this point because it is so.
41:48	PJ: But even if you take its present usage, idea is something which I move towards.
41:57	K: I hear a statement from you or from Dr Shainberg, why should I make an idea of it?
42:14	Answer me that question.
42:16	GN: I think it is a part of our memory functioning. That’s what…
42:20	K: Yes, Narayan, but you haven’t answered. Why can’t I see something – that fly, no, that thing that is there, and only observe?
42:32	Why idea? PKS: Without seeing it as a fly, I don’t see the fly at all.
42:40	K: Oh, that thing that’s moving there, sir, I may not call it a fly, I may call it a something, but that thing.
42:49	DS: But the whole act, Krishnaji, of perception in the nervous system is an organization of that form.
42:59	K: Organization, not of that form.
43:04	DS: In the case of this.
43:06	K: But I name it as a fly.
43:09	DS: No, first you must have seen it as a form in order to name it as a fly.
43:14	K: I see, sir, look, let’s go into it a little more.
43:17	SP: Are you saying you can see the form without naming it?
43:21	K: Why can’t you?
43:22	DS: That’s okay, but that doesn’t matter because…
43:25	K: Don’t say okay, that’s what... Where are we? What are we all talking about?
43:32	RR: Nature of this perception. SP: Nature of this perception.
43:38	Q: Pure observation as you call it. K: Yes. PKS: Sir, is not perception of the form on the same level as the perception of the form as the fly?
43:50	K: I don’t know, sir.
43:52	Q: Because I identify that form as a form. It’s not nothing.
43:56	K: Can I observe you, sir, or you observe me without forming a conclusion, without forming an idea about me?
44:08	Q: That’s possible. K: Will you do it?
44:15	DS: I question that.
44:21	K: You see, sir, this leads us to – we started out discussing what is the place of knowledge in a religious life.
44:33	Let’s start from there again, and move along. We said knowledge is destroying the world without this religious mind.
44:44	Then we started asking what is a religious mind. Let’s keep to that, and forget perception and all that. Drop all that. Now, what is a religious mind?
45:02	Q: I don’t know. K: You don’t know. Then how will you investigate something you don’t know.
45:12	If you want to find out what is a religious life because it’s – go into it.
45:20	Culture is disappearing, old culture.
45:27	And a religious mind can bring about a different culture, only a religious mind.
45:34	Now, and we say, I don’t know what that religious mind is. How will you inquire into something that you don’t know? Right? Will you accept that? PKS: Sir, we inquire only in the matter where we don’t have knowledge. Where we don’t know we inquire.
45:56	K: That’s what we’re doing. Q: Yes.
45:59	K: He says I don’t know what a religious life is, let’s inquire.
46:05	PJ: The first query which arises out of that – with what instruments do you inquire.
46:13	K: First of all, I use the intellect, reason, logic, sanity, not accepting any authority.
46:22	PJ: And the senses. K: Of course, that’s implied. Senses, logic, reason, which means all that implies sanity, without any illusion, without a make-belief, without a belief dictating my inquiry.
46:41	That means a mind that is free to look, right? Would you…? Now let us proceed from there.
46:51	PJ: But, sir, the difficulty is, in the very statement of that you have annihilated the whole premise.
46:59	K: What?
47:00	DS: You’ve annihilated the whole premise.
47:03	K: Which is what?
47:04	PJ: Which is the structure of human consciousness.
47:09	K: All right, all right, so, what is human consciousness?
47:15	PJ: Structure of human consciousness is thought, belief, movement, becoming, I can keep on-duality... K: And being, asserting, dogmas, the whole...
47:29	No, put it in a very small, a few words: the whole movement of thought.
47:38	Right? Right, sir? Would you agree to that? Q: I’ll agree.
47:44	K: So, consciousness is the whole movement of thought with its content: I believe I am a Hindu, I believe in puja, I believe you’re my guru, I worship, I pray, I am anxious, I am afraid – all that is the movement of thought.
48:06	And the content of my consciousness is this whole spectrum of movement.
48:14	PJ: I ask, what place has the word ‘sanity’ which you use in this totality of consciousness? K: Yes.
48:29	My consciousness, one’s consciousness is an insane consciousness.
48:40	GN: I think you imply something more than that when you say ‘sanity’. Do you imply that sanity is not caught in make-belief?
48:47	K: Yes. GN: I think that is the…
48:49	K: Sanity means sane, a healthy body.
48:54	GN: No make-beliefs. K: No make-belief. I don’t pretend I am healthy when I am ill; I don’t pretend that I do puja and that will lead me to some heaven.
49:06	I say that’s nonsense. So, sanity means a healthy mind, a healthy body, a healthy inwardness, without – sanity, a healthy – clear health.
49:24	GN: Because you use these words frequently. You say logical, reasonable, sane. K: Yes, the same.
49:30	GN: When you say sane, it’s much more than being reasonable or logical. K: Of course, of course, that’s why we use it at the end.
49:37	PJ: That’s why I asked, what is the state of consciousness, because…
49:44	GN: If one is not sane, can one inquire without sanity?
49:47	K: How can I be sane when I am a business lawyer and go off and do puja?
49:55	I mean it is insanity.
49:57	SP: In other words no contradiction.
50:01	PJ: No, no, in other words this consciousness which has all these elements can never inquire.
50:09	GN: That’s right. SP: These are contradictions.
50:11	K: I agree. That’s what I am saying!
50:13	GN: So one has to establish sanity first.
50:16	K: I am saying that, I am saying that. How can I do puja ceremonial, and hold onto that with grim death and inquire into something which I don’t know.
50:29	GN: What I am trying to suggest is...
50:30	K: It’s silly.
50:33	GN: There is something, it’s a little more subtle than that. Knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge with all the memory functioning, there is some kind of intelligence.
50:44	K: I agree. GN: Yes. It is not that I am a lawyer at one side and do puja, I don’t do, but still in spite of not doing this, in the very human situation – acquisition of knowledge…
50:56	K: I mean, it doesn’t mean I am saying because I don’t do puja.
51:00	GN: Yes. SP: That’s it.
51:02	K: I may be insane because I’m a lawyer.
51:06	GN: That’s right, yes. K: So, it doesn’t mean...
51:08	PJ: I’m insane because I’m jealous or envious…
51:10	K: So one’s human consciousness is a bundle of contradictions, bundle of hopes, illusions, fears, pleasures, anxiety and sorrow and all that.
51:26	PJ: You see… K: I mean, wait! Can that consciousness find a religious way of life?
51:36	Obviously it can’t.
51:38	SP: No, you say sanity is a necessary premise, one of the necessary premises to start right inquiry.
51:46	But this consciousness which is inquiring is full of contradictions.
51:50	K: So I stop inquiring into what is a religious life, I inquire into my consciousness.
51:58	I drop the religious life because a contradiction, a fearful, puja-worshipping, seeking power, seeking money – such a mind cannot understand the other, or even capable of inquiring.
52:14	So I say all right, I’ll drop religious inquiry, into a religious life, and I say what is my consciousness, and I go back into that.
52:22	That’s my inquiry.
52:26	PJ: You see, Krishnaji…
52:27	K: That’s sane, logical sanity.
52:29	PJ: In all the traditional ways of approach to this, this whole content of consciousness is symbolized by the I, and the inquiry is into the nature and dissolution of the I.
52:46	K: All right. Let’s stick to that. Let’s work at it. We say in religious life there is a total absence of the self.
53:02	Wait. Then my inquiry is whether the self can be dissolved, not into my religious life, because that’s stupid, and I can’t inquire when I’m blind, when I’m caught up in my particular passion or my particular puja, I worship some blinking guru. It’s stupid!
53:31	So I say, what’s my consciousness? I begin from there and see if it is possible to empty totally that consciousness.
53:45	PJ: What is the nature of that inquiry?
53:47	K: I am doing it now. So can I be free from attachment? Can I be free from my daily little, absurd puja? Can I be free from my nationalism? Can I be free from following some authority? I go on, so that my consciousness is totally devoid of its contradictions and all the rest of it.
54:23	I hope that silences you.
54:33	Let us start – I was only joking, sir, sorry. Let us start inquiring whether it is possible to be aware totally, holistically, of our consciousness.
54:51	If it is not possible, let us take fragment by fragment, and will that bring about a comprehension of the total perception of consciousness?
55:04	You understand what I mean? Now, so you open, you go on, sir, I’ve talked enough.
55:12	Q: Sir, will you not be open to the charge of being intellectual in your inquiry?
55:17	K: No. I put my heart into it. I don’t just inquire up here. It is my whole being as he used that word, it’s my whole being inquiring my heart, my affection, my nerves, my senses, my intellect, my thought, everything is involved in this inquiry.
55:49	RR: Sir, you have just set the condition of this inquiry. Now…
55:56	K: You are a scientist, sir. Can you inquire into something with certain... You observe. And that very observation changes that which is being observed. Right? So, why can’t you do that with yourself?
56:14	RR: Because my attention wanders. K: Ah, no, it won’t. When you are scientist, you are looking, your attention isn’t gone away.
56:25	RR: But that is actually… K: No, why? Why there your attention is completely involved. You understand? Your thought doesn’t wander away. Your whole being is involved in your observation. Right?
56:43	RR: No, this is not quite right in a scientific observation.
56:46	K: Which means what?
56:49	RR: Because there are additional supports from, for example from colleagues.
56:55	K: Yes, yes, yes, but when you are looking, in spite of your acquiring knowledge, colleagues, your previous knowledge, you put all that aside, you are watching.
57:08	That’s all I’m saying. The very watching is the transformation of that which is being observed.
57:15	DS: Yes, but one thing gets in the way right there, is that the origin of the action of the watching has in it a desire to be different.
57:25	K: No, no.
57:26	DS: That’s the hook. K: No, I know that’s the hook. Modern world.
57:34	RR: But, sir, I want to return to this question. Maybe I am not expressing it rightly, that if I observe myself...
57:45	K: Yes, sir, now we’re talking – look, all right.
57:51	RR: I think it is a fact for me that my attention wanders after…
57:55	K: Wait, wait, wait. Let us begin step by step. I am watching myself. I can only watch my – myself is a bundle of reactions, right?
58:09	I begin with things which are very near to me, which is puja. I watch it, I look at it, and I don’t say well, it pleases me because I am used to it, follow?
58:22	I say it is absurd, I put it away forever. I never touch rituals. Right?
58:30	RR: Krishnaji, it doesn’t seem to work like that.
58:31	K: Ah, because your habit of…
58:34	RR: Yes, that’s right. K: Wait. So go into habit. Why you have habit, a mind that functions in habit, which means a mind that’s mechanical.
58:46	Why is it mechanical? Because it is very safe to be mechanical.
58:51	RR: Security. K: Security. And this repetition of a puja which gives you security, has it any real security in it, or you have invested security in it?
59:05	RR: Yes, I follow this.
59:06	K: Therefore, wipe it away. Gone.
59:09	RR: No. This is where the difficulty is. I can see my mechanicalness or being caught in habit, but that does not seem to lead to what you seem to suggest, of cutting away.
59:21	K: No, because your mind is still functioning in habit. You haven’t tackled the habit. I am not talking about puja. RRS: No, no, habit.
59:35	K: Habit, why do you have a habit? Is there a good habit and bad habit, or only habit?
59:45	The habit of wanting money, the habit of wanting power, position, status – it’s a habit, a tradition.
59:56	Right? So, why are you caught in it? I’m not saying you. I mean… RR: No, it applies to me.
1:00:03	K: Oh, good, good. Why are you caught in it?
1:00:11	So let’s come back. We are saying, a consciousness that is in a turmoil, in contradiction, wandering from one thing – you know? – the battle that’s going on.
1:00:27	As long as that consciousness is there, you can never perceive purely.
1:00:35	Obvious. Right? So is it possible to bring about in consciousness a total absence of this movement – of contradiction and all the rest of it.
1:00:58	SP: I will say something else.
1:01:00	K: Sorry I occupied so long, now you all carry on. I’ll shut up.
1:01:05	SP: You see, sir, one can see the truth of the repetitiveness, the mechanical action of puja and really it’s out of my system.
1:01:17	Or seeking certain other things fragment by fragment, one has seen several fragments, the truth of it, and left.
1:01:24	Even then as you are saying the totality of consciousness, perceiving and ending totally is the problem, not to end one fragment.
1:01:37	And Krishnaji, are you saying that sequentially we see fragment by fragment?
1:01:43	K: You can never come to the end of fragmentation.
1:01:46	SP: That is what we see after ten years, fifteen years.
1:01:48	K: You can’t. Therefore you must say, now is there an observation which is a total observation of the thing?
1:01:56	SP: That’s the only question which remains.
1:01:57	K: I am asking you. Total observation of the whole structure of our society – the governments, the rottenness of it all, the communists, the socialists, the Karl Marx, the whole of it.
1:02:20	One year I’m pro Marxism, next year I’m something else, third year I’ve dropped all that and I go back to my old tradition, you know, and all the rest of it.
1:02:31	To have a perception of this whole thing.
1:02:38	AP: Sir, we are back again to my original question.
1:02:40	K: Yes, sir.
1:02:42	AP: That through our universities, through all our present processes of education, what happens is our fragmentedness gets emphasized and our intellect is able to show us the rational, sane, inevitable necessity for perceiving that man’s existence cannot be divided.
1:03:12	We see this, but our whole way of knowledge is like this.
1:03:17	K: No, no…
1:03:18	SP: …perception is fragmented, Achyutji. We see this. You start from there no more externalizing the situation.
1:03:25	K: Achyutji, I hear this statement, that through fragmentation, examining the fragments in my consciousness is endless, and it can never be resolved that way.
1:03:42	Now, just a minute. A statement of that kind is made. Have I listened to it? Have I understood deeply in my heart, in my blood, in my whole being that examining fragmentation will never solve it?
1:04:04	So, I have understood that, therefore I won’t touch it.
1:04:14	I won’t go near a guru, I won’t – out. Because they are all dealing with fragments – the communists, the socialists, the gurus, the religions, everything is fragmented, including a human being.
1:04:31	SP: Can I see all the implications at this point?
1:04:34	K: Yes.
1:04:37	SP: Or have I to work it out? K: No, no. Working out is a fragmentation.
1:04:52	SP: Seeing all the things is not enumeration but it is something else, when you see that all the implications are not one of enumeration.
1:04:59	K: Which means, what brings about fragmentation?
1:05:10	I can’t see the whole because my whole nature and thinking and living is fragmented.
1:05:19	So I say what is the root of this fragmentation? Why? Why have I divided into nations and religions and – you follow? – the whole thing, why?
1:05:40	Go on, sir.
1:05:41	SP: I say, if the mind says it is the I-ness…
1:05:47	K: Ah…
1:05:48	SP: It is no answer, the mind sees… K: That is intellectual answer.
1:05:51	SP: It’s an intellectual – yes, it is seeing…
1:05:53	K: So you’ve already – No, I said to you, please listen. I said, there is a statement like that. How do you listen to that statement? Listening with the intellect is a fragmentation; hearing with the ear is a fragmentation.
1:06:14	Do you listen with your whole, entire being, or it’s just, yes, quite right, it is a good idea, just listening.
1:06:31	George Sudarshan: I wanted to say a few things...
1:06:35	K: Don’t address me, sir, there is the whole public.
1:06:40	GS: First of all, I am very staggered by this attack on knowledge. Either it is a wrong definition or it is a hang-up. It is not the knowledge which is doing the thing, but it is in the functioning of it. So let me then, therefore, go back to the question that you had discussed yesterday and which you have so courteously told me this morning – what is a religious life?
1:07:04	I don’t know what is a religious life, but I do have a definition of sanctified life. Everyone has their own favourite definition and I want to steer clear of religions.
1:07:16	Sanctified life I see it in the following fashion: It is the cessation of the contradiction between causality and spontaneity.
1:07:26	Most of the world around us is causal – that is, this being so, this happens; if this has happened it must have been because of such and such thing; why did this happen, how shall I do it?
1:07:39	All this contain comparisons, all this contain copies, if you cannot copy a system, then you cannot talk about a law of the system.
1:07:48	And therefore, there is much of the world, which of our experience, which we talk about in terms of causality.
1:07:56	On the other hand, fortunately, we are also subject to experience of spontaneity, experience of movement with no cause, movement without any purpose, movement without either beginning or end, movement without time, one in which there is only functioning without a purpose, without a cause, without an antecedent, without a condition.
1:08:18	And much of life, the problem of life, is in fact reconciling these two things because somehow or the other, one feels that these two are both real experiences, and one has memory of both these things and one would like to resolve it.
1:08:34	Now, as far as I have observed, it appears to me, that when you are in the spontaneous mode of functioning, there is in fact no possibility of it being broken down.
1:08:45	When you are happy, when you are, when you are then there is no question of anxiety about something.
1:08:53	If at any time you feel that I would like to continue this mode, then of course that mode has already ceased because you are limited.
1:09:00	You have a string, if you have come to the end of the string to find out how long the string is, you have come to the end. You no longer have the string.
1:09:08	Any time when you want to maintain an experience which you already have, in time, already the corruption has set in, and it is only a matter of time before it will come to an end.
1:09:19	Therefore the whole question of how to end fragmentation, why does the fragmentation come in, are all questions which are functioning within the fragmented being.
1:09:28	And within the fragmented being it is sort of like trying to wash off mud standing in mud, any time you wash off one thing, you have to stand on the other leg, then again you get back.
1:09:39	You can of course be relatively clean, but you can never be completely clean. So the only way out of this particular system is in fact to transcend this particular system, of in fact not being in fragmentation.
1:09:52	Again, observation, it is not by any particular method by means of which you do it, but in fact some things seem to help with regard to this.
1:10:01	That there are two modes of functioning, one mode of functioning in which one is fragmented, and another mode in which one is not fragmented.
1:10:09	If you do have memories of both these things, it seems to me that the easiest way is not to be particularly anxious about not being fragmented.
1:10:19	We have no method of bringing about an end to fragmentation by any process. We cannot logically conceive it, we cannot dictate the rule, we cannot legislate it, we cannot write a manual about it.
1:10:30	Therefore in a certain sense when it comes, it comes by itself. If you are anxious that that is in fact the only true mode of existence, when you are in the fragmented mode, you are just going to be just more and more anxious about it.
1:10:43	K: So what do you do?
1:10:45	GS: So what I do is in a sense to be humble about the whole thing and then say, ‘Now I am fragmented, it’s not very nice’ and leave it at that.
1:10:54	Don’t work very hard about anything, don’t even try to end fragmentation because this is another mode.
1:10:59	K: So you go on with your puja, you go on with your gurus, you go on with your business, you go on with your this and that, and carry on.
1:11:08	Is that it?
1:11:11	GS: I don’t know.
1:11:11	K: It is ‘I am fragmented, let’s carry on’.
1:11:14	GS: It is not a case of ‘I am fragmented and let us carry on’. In the fragmented mode you try to perceive.
1:11:20	K: No, wait, sir, you said I carry on, as being fragmented I live a fragmented life and recognize it, and so leave it.
1:11:33	GS: Krishnaji, if you could tell me how to end fragmentation by a process.
1:11:37	K: I will tell you. I will tell you.
1:11:40	GS: If you could tell me how to end fragmentation by a process...
1:11:43	K: I will tell you, sir.
1:11:44	GS:...you become a part of this whole system which you are decrying.
1:11:49	GN: No, not as a process, not ending fragmentation with a process, because once you say it’s a process, it can become mechanistic or a system.
1:11:58	K: Quite right.
1:11:59	SP: What Krishnaji is saying is different from all other previous approaches together is time as a factor to end fragmentation.
1:12:07	GN: Pardon me?
1:12:08	SP: Time as a factor to end fragmentation.
1:12:10	PJ: Denial. SP: Denial, denial of time.
1:12:14	DS: It seems to me Krishnaji, one of the things that’s emerging here, really clearly, is that there’s something about the very framework of thought that conditions and limits that very perception in fragmentation.
1:12:31	K: Right, sir, right. DS: That framework.
1:12:33	K: Thought is fragmentary. DS: In that framework.
1:12:37	K: Thought is not in that framework. Thought is always fragmentary, right?
1:12:46	So that is the root of fragmentation. Can thought stop? Right? Ask it. Can it stop?
1:13:01	GS: Just stop?
1:13:03	K: Not periodically, occasionally, spontaneously. To me all that implies a movement in time.
1:13:14	GS: As long as you are thinking. K: That’s what I said so. Thought is the root of fragmentation. So thought being a movement and so time is a movement, can time stop?
1:13:31	GS: May I make a slight distinction? K: Anything, sir, this is not...
1:13:34	GS: Free for all. K: Play, throw the ball.
1:13:39	GS: You say thought is the cause of fragmentation. I ask a question: where did the thought arise in the unfragmented state to fragment it? Where did the thought arise in the unfragmented state to fragment it?
1:13:53	K: No, no, I am not interested whether it is unfragmented or fragmented.
1:13:56	GS: I am afraid you cannot answer that question.
1:13:57	K: I will. I will. You see, you are all...
1:14:00	DS: His question is something else: Given a non-fragmented condition...
1:14:04	K: There isn’t such a thing. DS: Ah, that’s what.
1:14:09	PJ: He asked a statement of yours ‘a non-fragmented state’, where did that statement arise – in the fragmented state, or in the non-fragmented state?
1:14:22	K: Ah, that’s quite another story. Non-fragmented state.
1:14:35	GS: Please continue.
1:14:36	K:This is not laughing matter, this is serious for me. You may say you’re cuckoo, buzz off, I’ll accept that too.
1:14:44	GS: No, I won’t say that.
1:14:53	K: I mean this is really quite important if you want to go into it. We answer always from a fragmented mind. Right, sir? GS: No.
1:15:05	K: I said, generally. GS: Generally, yes.
1:15:14	K: And is there a speaking which comes of non-fragmented mind?
1:15:32	That’s why I am asking.
1:15:35	GS: Speaking?
1:15:38	K: Speaking means thinking, saying – you follow? Be careful here.
1:15:45	GS: I am not sure I follow your terminology.
1:15:47	K: Ah, I may not – I am using bad terminology probably. I am trying to answer it very quickly. We said thought is fragmented, is the cause of fragmentation.
1:15:59	GS: No, you said that I temporarily accepted it, so that we can discuss.
1:16:02	K: Ah, ah, don’t temporarily accept it.
1:16:05	GS: No. What I am saying is that if I was actually going to raise the question that we see fragmentation and thought together.
1:16:12	K: That’s all.
1:16:13	GS: To say one is the cause of the other one involves…
1:16:16	K: Cause and effect are the same here.
1:16:22	GS: So they co-exist, they are aspects of the same entity?
1:16:25	K: Yes. GS: Ok, good.
1:16:27	K: We are both clever. I am not clever, sir, I am not. I don’t enter…
1:16:35	GS: I think you are clever, cleverer than me.
1:16:37	K: No, no, I am not. I hope I am not clever. I mean it, I’m not. I am talking from a depth which is non-fragmented. Full stop. You may believe it, you may not believe it. I don’t care, I am not trying to impress you. Throw me out. But I say thought and fragment are the same movement.
1:17:11	It is the same thing, sir, whether one or the other, it’s the same thing. And which is part of time, so I ask, can time stop – psychological time, inwardly, the whole movement stop completely.
1:17:36	Which is, no movement of thought at all.
1:17:51	You are stuck. I say – I am not asking you to believe it, or not believe it. Question me, tear it to pieces – there is a cessation of time.
1:18:13	Which is not, I don’t become time or my being is in time – there is nothing.
1:18:26	Which means, sir, is love time?
1:18:37	Go on, sir. GS: I am completely with you.
1:18:39	K: Ah, not argument. Have you that love? It’s no good arguing, sir, you can go back and forth, we can discuss this everlastingly. But love is not of time.
1:19:05	PJ: Sir, eleven o’clock. K: Eleven o’clock. Right, we better stop. We’ll continue one more day, sir. GS: I won’t be here, sir.
1:19:17	K: You won’t be here? What shall I do?