Krishnamurti - Is there a movement totally apart from time?

Krishnamurti Subtitles

MA82S1 - Is there a movement totally apart from time?
Madras (Chennai), India - 5 January 1982
Seminar 1

0:25	Pupul Jayakar: For many years, for 30 years, really, Krishnaji has been speaking of the breakthrough in the human mind, of an ending to this linear stream of consciousness. The emergence of a capacity of perception which, containing and acting simultaneously with all the senses together, can lead to a perception which, breaking through the limitations of the human mind, can make it possible for it to hold the demands of the future before us. I was told by a great physicist the other day that the next few years are going to be years of new discoveries of time. There will be discoveries in every field of physics. Krishnaji has started the movement for new discoveries of the process of time and man as the creator of time within the mind. I thought that I would put it before you, maybe there is some better problem we could discuss. But could we discuss mind and time and human consciousness, the nature of time, as it is created by the mind, and whether it is possible to end this and so be free? I’m just stating it, perhaps there may be a better subject for discussion.
2:55	K: Won’t you begin, sir?
2:57	Dr P. K. Sundaram: Sir, are we discussing the subjective perception of time in the psychological sense or also discussing objective time, mathematically calculated by a clock? These two times are obviously different from one another, time measured in physics, or measured in the psychological states of mind. Are we going to keep apart these two senses of time, or concentrate only on the psychological measurement of time, if there could be such a measurement?
3:41	Achyut Patwardhan: When we took this subject of the future of man, we had in mind our normal concept of a continuum, that the past creates the present, and the present modifies and creates the future. So, we are really in a circle which is a closed circle created by the mind itself, because the past creates the present and the present creates the future. In this fashion, time is the factor which seems to imprison us in a circuit of our own making. When Pupulji suggested that we take up time, the idea was – she also mentioned a breakthrough – is it possible for us to perceive actually that we are making time, that we, the people, each one of us is making time.
5:06	PJ: If I may add, obviously you can’t keep the two fields absolutely apart. Time in the sense of the thought, and any understanding of that, needs much more than a discussion of this nature. The only thing a discussion of this nature can bring us to is time as manifested in the process of becoming, If I may bring it down further. That element of the human mind which is caught in becoming, creates the future and the past and slides over the present.
6:12	Rupert Sheldrake: Surely, it’s not just the human mind caught in the process of becoming, but the whole natural world as well. Animals and plants are equally caught in the process of becoming, They may not be aware that they are but it seems clear that they are.
6:30	PJ: How would you define ‘becoming’? How would you open up that word?
6:40	RS: Mostly in the natural world, things are moving towards a goal. The goal of animals and plants is usually growing from the egg towards a mature form and reproducing themselves, and so there’s usually a process of development towards a goal, which is usually a repetition of something which happened before. This process of becoming, developing from one stage towards another which is usually based on past goals – the way a hen’s egg develops into a chicken, or a seed develops into a tree or a plant these are processes of becoming which are natural processes, and whether we can interpret them by the mind. I don’t believe that they’re merely mind constructions.
7:39	Questioner: One thing that Dr Sudarshan commented on I think might bring these two things together. Are psychological time and objective time different or is there some connection? If there’s going to be a revolution in physics regarding time, I feel it involves both psychological and objective time.
8:07	Dr George Sudarshan: Could I have five minutes to catch my breath? Let the discussion go on a little bit more.
8:18	PJ: Taking up what you said about the process of becoming, as the seed becoming the tree, or the egg becoming the chicken, surely there is a difference between the baby becoming the man and that which says, ‘I will be’, ‘I will become’, ‘I am this’, and ‘I will be that’? Surely, there is a difference – one is a biological state, the other has no reality at all.
9:02	RS: I think that psychological states are based on biological states, it seems that they’re extensions and developments of them. It seems to me that the becoming of the tree from seed is not so different from psychological desires to achieve particular goals, one involves more awareness than the other, perhaps.
9:38	PJ: I don’t quite... It’s difficult to accept that, isn’t it?
9:45	RS: I find it difficult to question. It seems so obvious to me that the process of becoming, whereby organisms achieve particular goals and are strongly motivated towards them, if you prevent dogs from seeking food, looking for mates, and all that, they strive towards these goals, and so do plants, if you prevent them from growing up, they break through the ground, the roots thrust downwards. There’s this purposive activity in living things, based on going towards goals, which we see also in the psychological world.
10:27	Ravi Kapur: I wonder if we could look at it this way, whatever is objective also becomes real through our subjective. For each individual self the objective becomes real through perception, his own subjective reaction, understanding and involvement. If we could expand our subjective time, by expanding our awareness, from the minimal moment we catch now, because of very limited consciousness, then that expansion would also be seen as overtaking the objective existence. And what has been seen as serially developing might then be observed as being existent, at the same time. I have to use the word ‘time’ because I have no alternative.
11:41	GS: Progression in physical sciences has been from static configurations to dynamic cycles, dynamic processes. Initially, you see things as they are, but really as they are not, because you see only static things. It takes time to take movement itself as part of the functioning, as one of the qualities of the universe. Then you realise that you haven’t been seeing things until you see them moving. Newtonian physics has recognised that motion with constant speed, constant velocity, was not to be explained. It’s a quality of the system and only departures from them had to be. Space of motion of a single particle instead of a three-dimensional space, it really became a six-dimensional space because you had to specify both the initial position and the initial velocity. At each point, you had to have the point itself, and the flow, also. It’s more like the streaming of a fluid, than static objects remaining. As time passes, you begin to see more. We do this in everyday things. You look outside and say, ‘I see a tremendous wind’, you don’t see the wind, you see the effects of the wind in terms of motion, then you say, ‘I see it is very stormy out there’. So, by and large, the progression is from substance to process, that process itself becomes one of the constituents of our physical world, and quantum theory has taught us that this joining is not an adornment but that substance itself is in the nature of process. There are only processes, or only operators, not quantities, they are not ordinary numbers. Consequently, we have revised our understanding of the nature of the world, but process or movement is a part of the physical world as you see it.
13:55	PJ: How do you relate this to that inner time contained in jealousy, greed, envy, etc.? The fact of energy, greed, jealousy, and the non-fact of wanting to be free of it, take this simple thing, in which the whole process of becoming is contained. How do you relate what you are saying now to the very instant of existence in which this is contained?
14:40	GS: That’s a tall order to fulfil, but I’ll try to see part of the thing. Physics and chemistry, as normally understood, contain two kinds of times, one is clockwork time, the time by which the celestial bodies move, in which there is an unfolding or re-expression, a paraphrasing of the initial condition going on. But nothing has been gained or lost. Given the present configuration, you can conceive of a situation in which the motions are reversed, and every one of the previous configurations are retraced. It’s like a movie run backwards. And, for the celestial bodies, nobody knows the difference, because they look about the same. There’s a second kind of time in physical sciences which is relevant for the second law of thermodynamics, in which things do take place and the future and the past are different. If you ran a film of those processes backwards, you’d know something was amiss – a glass falling and smashing, ice melting in a glass of water – these processes are directed times, rather than non-directed times. Contemporary physical science appears to be lacking in another kind of time which is running in the opposite direction. This is the time of insight of understanding, of total comprehension of the time, or the processes describing victory over the second law of thermodynamics, which says that things run downhill, that what has happened can never unhappen, and therefore, by definition, one yearns for the earlier time. If you believe contemporary physicists, you’d say, ‘That’s all that happens, there is no way of mending things, the past was better than the future, because the past had dynamics from which the future could be obtained but the future does not have the potential to go back into the past’. In the earlier one, the past and future were co-extensive, there was really nothing taking place, but the dynamics of insight, the dynamics of love, the dynamics of coherence, of things coming together, that which is two becoming one, is not part of physical science knowledge, there is no way in which physical science knows how to talk about something which was not known, being known. If that stream is also introduced – part of our everyday experience – then we have three different kinds of time which are all running. I don’t really know what I would identify as psychological time because the psyche seems to be involved in both the running down as well as the running up, as well as the unification, the disintegration and the fragmentation on the one hand and becoming or being made whole, on the other.
17:57	AP: To keep the dialogue on track, before you arrived two questions were raised in response to Pupulji’s introduction. Our learned professor said that the becoming process begins with the animal world, with the plant world and that time applies as much to the plant world and animal world, probably to the world of the earth, the geological world etc., because it is all a process of change and change is time. That is, as far as I understood it. If I’m wrong, please correct me. Professor Sundaram said that there are two parallel processes. One is the process of materiality, of which you have spoken, and the other is the psychological process, and the two never meet. They are independent of each other. We must be very clear if there is any interrelation between the two, or if the two must always move parallel, never meeting. I hope I am not misinterpreting you, sir.
19:20	Radha Burnier: Is change time or is time the consciousness of change and motivating that change in a particular direction? Is change, by itself, time?
19:37	PKS: That depends upon the definition which we offer. According to Dr Sudarshan, the processes of motion thought of in physical terms, themselves constitute change. I would rather deny that there is a thing which changes, or thing which holds the changes together or even gives it a direction. The changes themselves constitute the time process. Change is a process, process is a time. There is no other way in which you can measure time, except in terms of the processes.
20:10	RB: Speaking about psychological time, when there is a process which means there is a change, does that amount to psychological time or is time in the psychological sense, the consciousness of the process and the directing of it, or the motivating of it?
20:33	PKS: When we talked about psychological time, we wanted to distinguish between biological, physical processes of time and psychological processes of time on the other hand. When we talk about the latter, we’re talking about the mental functions, functions of consciousness, for example. Then we come across a peculiar factor added on to the dimension of time, namely, even memory. Activities involve memory. Thought processes can never be understood except in terms of memory, therefore, it has got a history which can go back and forth. In a sense, it is reversible, which is not possible in physical time except in very exceptional circumstances. In the second law of thermodynamics, probably there is a going back to the original condition, but as for psychological time, it seems we have a process, and at the same time we have got a substantive permanence about it, both these going on together, in which case alone you can speak of a direction and dimension given to this process.
21:39	PJ: May I ask one question? I would imagine that in a discussion of this nature, we are only concerned with time in relation to the human condition, to the problem of sorrow, this deep ache which is within us which we cannot answer. None of the solutions of the physicist, or biologist, will end this anguish within. I want to talk about that time, which is this anguish, and the quenching of that time. Frankly, I don’t think anything else we may bring it in to explain, but isn’t that the central predicament? Prof. Ramchandra Gandhi: We do a great injustice to objective time, it’s not all chronological time, or biological, purposive time either. There is something altogether mysterious about the time of an occasion like this, of an age, of an hour, of a year. It’s much more, other than chronology, other than growth, even. There is a timelessness to time. This is true of what’s out there. For instance, the subjective time of memory and nostalgia is as reprehensible as exclusive concentration on the chronology of outer time. One has to be liberated from both. One tends to give more marks to subjective time and poor marks to objective time, but I think this is a mistake. The one unified time of our experience is other than both, but of course includes both, and is deeper than both. It is a very sorrowing thing, but it is also a joyous thing because that’s where creativity comes in, not only of the arts but of living and of being. If I may borrow a recurrent theme of Krishnaji’s, the absence of greed makes perception of this unified time possible. I do wish to suggest that subjective time need not be worshipped, there should not be an idolatry of subjective time, or a knocking down of objective time, but perhaps a celebration of what is both and neither.
24:32	PJ: Perhaps, Krishnaji, you would...?
24:34	K: May I come into this? I would like to say I am the past, the present and the future, both biological, as well as psychological. I am the result of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I’m the creator of time, both outwardly and inwardly. And I’m stuck in that place. You follow? I’m caught in this time. That time includes my greed, my envy, my ambition, all the agony, pain, wounds, and sorrow. I am all that. My question then is, is time going to dissolve all that, or is there totally a different factor which will dissolve it, instantly? Will memory absolve my conditioning, or is a new factor necessary, that will wipe away the past? Have I stated...?
26:14	PJ: Would you go into it a little more, because leaving it there, you leave us... K: No, I don’t leave. I want to discuss this. You may not agree with this. I am the result... I am the result of time, both outward and inward time, biological and psychological. And time is thought, time is movement. My whole consciousness is the product of time and the content of my consciousness is time. Greed, envy and all the rest of it, it is put together by thought. Thought has created the future, ‘I hope to be. I’m not, but I hope to be’. I have no other answer, except this eternal time movement. I think there is a totally different approach to this, which is, can there be an end to thought which is time? Otherwise, I go from experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action. From action I learn more, and keep in this cycle. That’s how we have lived and we’ll continue in that way. Therefore, there is no escape. One is a slave to time. Is there a movement totally apart from time? Otherwise, I am doomed – not I – human beings are doomed if we keep on this cycle of experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action, and from there, begin again. Is it possible to move away from that, altogether? I think that is creation, not this eternal cycle. In that, you can invent, you can produce a new jet or a new computer or a new cruise missile, but you will always be in that circle of knowledge, action. Right, sir? Would you agree to that?
29:30	GS: I completely agree with you, which is a shocking thing. I did want to say, partially in response to what Pupulji said, only the human condition in relation to perception is relevant. What I would like to urge on you, however, is that when we talk about the external world, that external world is the world of our perception. Occasionally, we might depute somebody else to perceive for us but we perceive them perceiving. It is only in relation to what we see. Secondly, there is some common thing between greed, envy, jealousy, anger, hurt and time, because time always requires parts. A system without parts has no time. If you look at the watch or any other mechanism of measurement of time, it’s comparison of configurations, which require parts. It also requires not only the present configuration but also the reference configuration. You have to have two different conditions which are continually contrasted with each other. How do envy, hurt and anger occur? They always involve what is and your idea of what should have been, what should be, what was, what you thought was, and kept in your mind as what was the past.
31:01	K:...not what should be. What should be is nonreal. What is, is real.
31:10	GS: I agree. Therefore to the extent that one has only one perception there is no time. This is not to say that there is no movement, because, as Dr Kapur said, perception of the world contains movement. Movement by itself is not time. Time becomes associated with movement when you break up motion and see it is a succession of events.
31:38	K: Towards something, always. But I am just asking, if I may, there is no duality, there is only what is. As I do not know how to absolve, dissolve, or transcend what is, I invent the ‘what should be’. My invention then becomes a contradiction to what I am, what is, and there is a battle between these two. That’s my life. That’s the life of every human being, practically. Could we only observe what is and not what should be?
32:24	RB: Sir, it is not correct for us that there is only what is. There is what is and what we think there is.
32:33	K: Of course, the idea and the fact. The idea is an abstraction of what is.
32:45	RB: Yes.
32:45	K: I don’t make an abstraction, I just observe what is. In that observation, there is no time. That’s the whole point. Which means the observer is absent. The observer is the past. Is that at all possible? To me, that’s possible. I’m putting that forward for discussion.
33:17	PJ: Sir, if I may just say one little thing, and that is, I observe the microscope. In the same way as I observe the microscope, do I ever observe the factor or the movement of greed, jealousy? Do I observe it? I think, first of all, you have to start from the duality of that. You cannot jump, or leap into a state... So I say, it is not possible to jump into your statement.
33:59	RS: Is there not a difference between looking at a microscope and at envy? On the one hand, you are looking at something objective which doesn’t change while you look, whereas envy is part of you, ...envy changes as you look.
34:14	PJ: No, but envy changes as you look. But do you look?
34:19	RS: But it’s envy looking at envy, so it’s a difficult situation.
34:22	PJ: But it then reveals something. The very fact of looking at envy reveals something.
34:34	RK: Could I make a point here? In any mental experience, two processes are going on all the time. One is observation and the second is reflection on the observation and it is possible to cut down the reflective element. We keep on cutting it down finer and finer, what remains is observation, then there is no time. Time is the reflection of reflection, and the more you are able to still those mental faculties which create this reflection, the more infinite and expanded the time becomes. And when it really expands to its ultimate extent, there is no time.
35:21	K: Sir, I am greedy, that’s a fact. Right? I am greedy, violent. I am violent. The nonviolence doesn’t exist, only the fact that I am violent. How do I observe that fact? Is it reflective observation or pure observation in which there is no remembrance, no past entering to correct or direct the observation?
36:01	RK: I haven’t had the experience of it but I can believe it is possible to reach that pure observation. And when we reach that, violence disappears.
36:16	K: That’s right. R K: Yes.
36:19	PJ: Moment you say this, then I will ask you, ‘How?’. You can’t make a statement like that without the ‘how’ coming in.
36:30	K: But I think the question ‘how’ is a mistake. The ‘how’ implies a system, a method, a practice – that’s time. The ‘how’ to me is a distraction away from observation. So, for me – if I may talk a little bit about my own self – there is no distraction or explanation or trying to analyse ‘what is’. Only to observe and when that observation is very clear, nonpersonal, the past doesn’t direct my observation, observation itself – in which there is no observer and observed, only pure observation– dissolves that which is.
37:42	RG: The word ‘observation’ can be poorly understood. Acknowledgment of what is, not even with the desire to be rid of it. I know the sense in which you use the word ‘observe’, but I’m trying to explain to myself that there might be another way of putting the matter. Do we observe greed in the same way? I’m afraid we do, and this is why we don’t get rid of it. We observe it in the way we observe that, as an item to be welcomed or to be rejected, but we don’t acknowledge it with the most ruthless honesty.
38:22	PJ: No, but when you say I observe it in the same way as I observe that, could we explore that a little? RG: That is what one does, which is why one doesn’t get rid of it. One notices it as another feature of my time history.
38:40	PJ: One notices it in its outer manifestation as thought.
38:46	RG: Even in its inner presence. I’m not an idolator of the inner. I’m very sceptical.
38:52	PJ: I’m just trying to get to something a little subtle. With what instruments does one observe that?
39:02	RG: In so far as one observes it with any instrument at all, I would be suspicious of both the observed and the observation. Only when we acknowledge quite non-instrumentally – call it instinctively, call it suddenly, call it anything, but it must be without the mediation of any instrument, any objective. It doesn’t mean that everything comes to a stop then, but I think the right modes of alteration and preservation suggest and fulfil themselves. It’s a very simple fact, where there is an absolutely, ruthlessly honest acknowledgment of whatever, without the desire to alter it or sustain it, the mysterious alchemy of change or preservation comes in. If you observe it in the manner of strained attention, common to some systems of yoga, we achieve something, but we lose something else. We lose the quality of suddenness and instantaneousness, which Krishnaji talks about – you used a very fine phrase, beginning with the word ‘instant’.
40:20	PJ: I asked with what instrument does one perceive it. One has to come to one understanding. Is it an interior thing? Is it an interior thing?
40:36	K: What? PJ: Jealousy and greed. Is it an interior thing? Or is it an exterior thing? Because we divide the world into the exterior and interior.
40:48	RG: But these are metaphors.
40:50	PJ: They are, but in order to really come face to face, one has to go through this process of seeing as we think we see. We divide it into the outer and the inner. Greed appears on the screen of the interior.
41:14	K: I question whether it is outside or inside or it is a going out and coming in, like a tide.
41:25	PJ: Sir, how do we see it? You must first see how do we see it.
41:30	K: I don’t know how you see it... PJ: How do we see it? It’s something very, very... real to look. How do we see it?
41:42	K: First, do we see, if I may ask most politely, are outer and inner two different things, or are they interrelated like the tide going out and the tide coming in? It’s a constant movement, in and out, in and out, and thought has captured it, separated itself and made it a sterile thing, not dynamic, and kept this division – the outer and the inner. You are asking how do I see it.
42:29	PJ: You are making that statement. No, let me put it to you. You are saying that thing.
42:36	K: If that disturbs you, I withdraw it.
42:37	PJ: No, I’m not saying it disturbs me.
42:41	K: Yes, I have put it. PJ: Now, I look at myself and I say, ‘How do I see it?’, because in order to come to a tactile feel of it, I have to hold it, I have to come, see it, receive it, I have to embrace it, I have to watch it open up. How does that – again, I’ll remove the ‘how’. First of all, let me examine what actually takes place. What actually takes place? K: I am the result of the outer, environment, education, the family, the tradition, the useless nationality and so on.
43:27	PJ: I see that these things which I try to avoid, suppress, discipline myself against, are a movement which takes place within myself, which then expresses itself in action.
43:41	K: I don’t discipline myself. Sorry. PJ: You don’t. All of us feel if we are greedy that we don’t want to be greedy. You don’t. But I’m talking about the actuality of it as it operates. Do we see it as a tide, where the centre from which this is directed, has ceased to be? Because if there is a tide, then the centre has ceased.
44:11	K: No, I said too that this tide has been captured by thought, because the idea that it’s a constant movement is frightening. It brings you a sense of instability, insecurity. Therefore, this extraordinary movement of out and in, like a marvellous tide, thought makes it into an idea, and captures it, and it becomes the self, the ‘me’, which is separate from the outer.
44:54	RK: Theoretically at least, if we could still that thinking process, then this interior and exterior would disappear, and with that greed would disappear. It sounds very simple... K: That’s very complex.
45:11	RK: It’s very complex but the idea of it sounds quite clear that that’s what the aim should be. It’s the answer to the ‘how’.
45:22	PJ: But I would ask, are we prepared for it?
45:26	GS: Are we prepared to do it?
45:27	PJ: End it? R K: There is no choice.
45:31	PJ: Because if you say you are prepared to end it, you are prepared to end totally the sense of division.
45:43	RK: Yes.
45:45	PJ: That’s a very big statement to make.
45:48	RK: Indeed it is. But if there is no choice to that statement, it’s the only statement one can make.
45:56	RG: We do in humble ways, when we love without selfishness, we acknowledge the out-there-ness of that which is inner, and the in-here-ness of that which is outer, in a very simple way. But we lose this, so it might be worth reminding ourselves not only as a result of very deep...
46:19	K: I beg your pardon, I thought you’d finished, sir.
46:21	RG: I have only a few words to add. It must not be imagined that human beings are without the resource for this. I know you are not, we are all thinking aloud.
46:34	PJ: I’m not questioning that. I’m saying that the statement is one thing...
46:41	GS: Doing it is another.
46:43	K: Also, I would like to ask, why do you use the word ‘choice’? Choice between what? PJ: He said there is no choice.
46:54	RK: There is no choice. We create choices by making comparisons.
46:59	K: You’re saying there is no choice. R K: I am saying there is no choice.
47:07	RG: But ‘stilling’ is still a temporal metaphor, perhaps Dr Kapur would help me out. Any question of stilling or doing something is still to be within the matrix of happening. This is altogether mysterious, it can only be totally, absolutely suddenly and wholly – to use only some metaphors. I’m not sure I’ve understood it, but the language of yoga is a language of manipulation, however subtle. It may be only a feature of the language, not reality, so I do not wish to be unjust to the yogis. The idea that a whole ongoing thing has to be stopped, seems to be open to distrust to someone like me, who wouldn’t want brakes to be applied to that, but I may have got it wrong.
48:08	RK: I think it’s more a problem of the language than the problem of the reality. In terms of experiences, if we can convert this word ‘stillness’ I would say, when my emotions are running fast, there is a greater consciousness of your separation from the outer. We all experience this. The more the emotions run, the more you are separated. The more the emotions adopt a quality of sameness, the greater is the proximity of inner and outer. If we took it to its ultimate end – I can’t experience it fully yet, I’ve experienced it at times – one would imagine that inner and outer can disappear. You’ve given the example of an extreme degree of love situation. I would add an extreme degree of fear situation, or an extreme degree of anger situation. Any of these emotions, when they are allowed the continuity for a ‘time’; when allowed to be, the inner and outer disappear.
49:32	PJ: One of the major differences between what Krishnaji says and what has been usually understood as yoga, is the place of the senses. I think it is the crucial element in his approach. I think if we could explore a little into that, it may make... As I have understood you, there is a tendency to regard it as a hindrance to the ending of the causation – let’s use that word – the ending of the cause/effect chain, that the senses, if they operate, continue this cause/effect causation, and to bring about a state where the cause/effect chain is broken, the senses have to be put in their place – not suppressed, but put in their place. Krishnaji has always said that that moment of total being, or total seeing, or holistic seeing, or ending of everything, takes place when there is a simultaneity of all the senses operating at their highest level. Perhaps if we could explore, there may lie the real answer. The answer may not be to try and find an intuitive point... but to see how the senses operate, and whether it is possible for a human being, placed in the condition we are, to change the way of operating of his senses.
51:41	RK: I hope Krishnaji refreshes us with what he has said before. I don’t think we’re discussing suppression of the senses or what I am asking you to do. I am saying if the comparison on which the senses are based, there is no sensation without comparison. If that comparison is cut down, whether the senses then dwindle away or all reach the same level, means the same thing. I have no difficulty emotionally totally accepting what Krishnaji has said.
52:25	PJ: What do you mean by ‘cut away’?
52:29	RK: The world ‘cut’ – I wish I could say it without words – not let it happen. And that is only possible by not letting ‘me’ happen.
52:41	K: Which means the absence of the self.
52:43	RK: It’s the absence of the ‘I’, not the absence of the ‘self’. Again, the words bother us.
52:48	K: Don’t let’s quarrel about words.
52:52	RK: Absence of the ‘I-ness’. K: We’ll stick to the ‘I-ness’. Now, I am full of that I-ness. Suppose I am full of this self-centred observation of life, and you are giving me a lot of explanations, analysis, and I’m still where I am at the end of it. How do you bring about a disappearance of the I-ness in me?
53:31	RK: First of all, by cutting out the ‘how’, as you said earlier. You are asking ‘how?’. K: I’m not, no.
53:37	RK: No, I’m saying that. K: I’m not silly. I’m not asking how. I’ve this problem in front of me, a tremendous problem. The I-ness is so extraordinarily important, controls, shapes, directs everything, my relationship with another and so on, so on. You have explained the causation of this I-ness, I accept the explanation, I accept the analysis, I accept all the rational explanations, at the end of it...
54:18	RK: If we really wanted to do it, Krishnaji...
54:21	K: Ah, don’t say ‘if’.
54:24	RK: We want to do it, to be without this ‘I’.
54:28	K: Why? Why? R K: Because...
54:31	K: Ah, the moment you say ‘because’, you have a causation.
54:34	RK: Yes, you’re right. Ultimately, if we wanted to really feel it, there will be no dialogue here.
54:43	K: No, sir, I didn’t mean it that way.
54:46	RK: But in the process of reaching that stage the ‘I’ would be removed by a reverent acceptance of ‘what is’.
55:00	AP: At the risk of appearing irrelevant, I have to pose a difficulty, which I don’t think receives its due attention. And that is that we function at different levels of attention. We function at different levels of attention. Now, the whole dialogue, as we are carrying it out, is carried out with a tension. It is the tension of attention. It is not the tension of struggle, but it is the tension of attention. Now, unfortunately, most of us in our daily living are not living at this level of attention, with the result that we are not aware of the fact that attention is playing tricks with us and we get tied up in all manner of complications, because the dialogue within ourselves does not move half as smoothly as it has moved for the past 20 minutes. Is this a real difficulty or am I imagining it? Can we probe it a bit, or would it be a diversion?
56:27	K: Would I be right asking the question, I am faced with this problem, a very complex, destructive, enchanting and embarrassing, and in that there is vanity. I am faced with this problem, that is, the I-ness, which separates you from me and the whole mess begins. That is the problem I am faced with. How do I approach the problem? That is more important than the problem itself. How do I approach the problem? Not ‘how’ in the sense a system, in what manner do I receive the problem, what is my condition that receives the challenge of this problem, what is my state of mind that says, ‘You have to answer this question’? So, what is my approach to it?
57:40	RK: Could I respond to that? I am just a beginner in this process. The first level would be to see really that there is a problem, to agree with yourself that the problem exists...
58:00	K: Of course it exists. R K:...and exists all the time and to feel sufficiently miserable about the problem.
58:05	K: No, I don’t have to be miserable, unhappy, it is a problem, it is hitting me in the face!
58:13	RK: You are asking to discuss what are the steps.
58:17	K: No, not steps.
58:20	RK: I’m suggesting an approach which may be right or wrong. Most of us cannot solve this problem because we only partially accept it, at other times we try to overlook it. The first approach would be to accept this problem exists and feel sufficiently miserable because of it, then to develop sufficient amount of desire to get rid of the problem.
58:45	K: That means involving time.
58:48	RK: At the beginning, yes, and having reached that stage, one goes further.
58:52	K: I question all that. Forgive me for being rude or anything... I question. I want to find out what is my approach because I feel the approach is more important than the problem. So, what is my approach? It’s either to escape from it, or rationalise it. That is my approach, obviously. I try to resolve it somehow, analysis, psychiatric treatment, whatever it is. Can I approach the problem free from all this conditioning? Because my conditioning is going to find the answer or direct the answer to the problem. If I’m free from my conditioning, then I can approach it freely and dissolve it immediately. I don’t know if I’m talking in the air...
1:00:06	PJ: This is the terrible paradox, because if you are free of the conditioning...
1:00:14	K: There is no problem. That’s what I am saying.
1:00:21	GS: It seems to me that, in all this discussion, there are two bad habits of language which come out. One is the habit of using bad physics. We all do this, when we talk about a process which is sequential but not temporal, we talk about ‘when’. When we are talking about a higher state of awareness, a more complete or inclusive state of awareness, we talk about it being bigger. So, we make metaphors, which are taken from everyday mechanistic phenomenon. The other bad habit is one everybody is aware of, when we talk about the timeless, we say, ‘when the timeless happens’. It’s such a paradoxical statement. But a more serious problem is that we act as if there is only one time and only one set of happenings and everything must be set in that time. The question is, as I understand it, nobody who is completely free can ever tell how he was ever bound. Therefore, the person who is completely free is not qualified to talk about how he or she is bound. The unfree person isn’t qualified to say how he or she is not bound, so that nobody can talk about it, unless one has the understanding that in fact we are translating between different conventions, between different systems. From my own experience, I’d say that it is not a sequential process, it is not as if you have sat for a school final examination, you have passed it and you no longer have to do it. Is a continual situation because every now and then you are there, some other time you are not there, and sometimes there is time, and sometimes there is no time, sometimes you are angry and you don’t care about it, you simply deal with the thing, but other times you worry about it. So it seems to be a continual process and time is not one-dimensional but a many-splendored thing – to say ‘switching back and forth’ seems to give it a greater reality, and I know you are allergic to references to the Upanishads. But there are times which are interwoven with each other and it is not possible to talk about a process. It’s not that it is unprofitable to talk about process but any talk about the process is essentially incomplete. It could not ever be explained that what one did not know, you know now, or if you have known, how could you drop off from it. The problem reappears in miniscule but well-defined forms in other branches of knowledge, in everyday limited experience.
1:03:26	K: Sir, if I may. I am violent, not off and on, but there is in me this sense of violence, deeply rooted. Sometimes it bursts, sometimes it’s less, but it is there. My whole question, my problem is can it ever end completely, or is it a process of time, and gradually, eventually ends?
1:04:02	GS: I’d have to answer, ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, at the same time because the question is, do you have a recollection of a situation, do you have the image of a situation when you were free of it? It is an image but it is there.
1:04:19	K: You can’t have an image when you are free of it. Then you are not free of it.
1:04:23	GS: But if you are in it, then there is no discussion, one does not even ask the question. K: No, I want to... Suppose I am violent, I must find an answer non-analytically, why it exists, whether it is possible to be totally free from it, not having remembered and the remembrance continuing, even the remembrance, ended.
1:05:00	RG: Krishnaji, would you accept the following response? It’s not an answer to your question. One can be totally rid of a thing, only if it is fundamentally unreal.
1:05:13	K: Unreal. RG: In some fundamental sense. I don’t mean that it’s not there now, it’ll be there some other time. If it isn’t – let me complete – I don’t wish to talk about this in a traditional way, but if, in some fundamental sense, unfreedom of violence, if these are not unreal, then they may go now to come back later, if not in me, somewhere else. I’m not proposing an escapist attitude towards these things, but I would be very grateful for a response from you to this thought which so many people down the centuries have had, that something like bondage can really be totally got rid of, if its essential unreality is perceived, not otherwise. It has been said by greater authorities than myself, that if it isn’t, it’s gone today, back tomorrow. Whereas a shattered illusion is shattered forever, a banished thief.
1:06:24	K: I don’t accept there is something fundamentally free.
1:06:28	RG: I didn’t say fundamentally free, fundamentally unreal.
1:06:32	K: Ah, no. I only know the fact that I’m violent.
1:06:39	RG: You asked whether it is possible to be rid of it in some radical way.
1:06:47	K: I said it is possible to be completely free of it.
1:06:52	RG: Apropos that, I’ve asked the question if it’s ever possible to be completely free of something of that kind, which is, in its essential nature, unreal.
1:07:04	K: Even to state it, sir, is not... If I said one is completely free of it, it wouldn’t be true.
1:07:14	RG: But you did use those words, sir.
1:07:16	K: I know, I know, sir. Take this question of suffering which Mrs Jayakar raised earlier. Man has suffered, in spite of every religion, analysis and so on, he has suffered. There seems to be no end to suffering – right? – not only the global suffering, human suffering, personal suffering, this immense suffering of man. What is my relationship, not only to the global, but to my own suffering? Or is my suffering just a series of remembrances that makes me suffer, a series of incidents which I remembered, which gave me happiness and therefore I suffer, a continuous recollection of what has been? Now I’m left lonely, miserable and therefore, I suffer. I can find a dozen explanations for all this suffering, but at the end of that explanation, I’m left with the thing in the basket with all the eggs in it.
1:08:59	RG: Would you permit I follow-up? If at the back of that suffering, say, is attachment, if I do not realise that this attachment is made of the stuff that dreams are made of, it will never go.
1:09:19	K: All right. Can I end my attachments?
1:09:22	RG: I’m only stating what seems to be one necessary condition, by no means sufficient, perhaps it might even be sufficient.
1:09:29	PJ: Something very interesting, Krishnaji, if I may add to that. Is this river of sorrow an existence in itself, or is the base of it an illusion? Basically it is that, which may arise from attachment or... has it, in itself, an existence of its own, or is every manifestation of it rooted in some aspect which is basically illusion?
1:10:15	K: You say that. Wait a minute. You say the basis is an illusion.
1:10:22	PJ: No, I am asking. No one said... The statement, as I have understood it, is it an actuality?
1:10:33	K: Is the actuality an illusion? That’s what you are asking.
1:10:38	Q: No, no, no, no, no. K: That’s what he is saying.
1:10:42	AP: He makes a difference between actuality and reality.
1:10:51	G. Narayan: Unless I see the essential unreality of something, it always comes back. The crucial thing is the perception that something is essentially unreal.
1:11:10	RG: Not without cause, but without foundation.
1:11:16	GN: Supposing I say something is essentially unreal, it can go to the theoretical realm and I create illusion. But actually something which is happening is real. So, again, there is a split.
1:11:36	RG: Why should I not acknowledge its actuality in denying its reality? I don’t deprive it of its actuality, here and now. I am suffering. This is not without cause but it’s without foundation.
1:11:52	PJ: This is a very interesting thing that he has said.
1:11:56	K: What is it? I haven’t caught it, sorry.
1:12:01	PJ: Sorrow is actual.
1:12:03	K: I have lost my son. Go on.
1:12:06	PJ: You can say what you like, there is actuality of sorrow. Then the question arises, he has asked the question. Has this sorrow a reality, not an actuality but a reality? If it is based on or arises out of an illusion in itself, then it can be completely ended, but if it is of the essence of reality, it will rise up again. There is a difference between actuality and reality.
1:12:50	K: Semantics back again.
1:12:51	RG: No, it’s not really semantics, it’s a matter of daily experience, like your poignant example of somebody having lost a son. The sorrow is something that was mine has gone away. If I regard that as something that was mine, it may go away today, tomorrow it’ll come back, but if I don’t ever get rid of this illusion that the son was ever mine. My son, in the sense, that it was recorded in the register...
1:13:21	K: That is the problem. I am attached to my son.
1:13:26	RG: But the attachment is rooted in the belief.
1:13:29	K: Ah, no, I am attached, it’s a fact, I have lost him.
1:13:33	RG: Yes, but supposing it is only of the nature of pain that...
1:13:38	K: Ah, not ‘if’. The fact is, I loved my son. Quotes ‘love’, whatever that may mean. And I’ve been attached to him, desperately. I won’t go into the reasons of attachment. I am attached to him, and suddenly he’s gone. And I am in sorrow. You can’t call that an illusion, or ask if it has any basis in reality. I say, ‘I’m sorry, these are all just words to me’.
1:14:22	RG: I don’t say it is an illusion. The sorrowing, or even the sorrow, are not illusions but, in so far as they are of the nature of fundamental complaint against the universe...
1:14:33	K: Maybe. I don’t know.
1:14:35	RG: Then I think it would never be possible to be rid of it.
1:14:38	PJ: No, sir. You see, sir...
1:14:41	K: I’ve got it.
1:14:47	PJ: If you say that it does not arise out of an illusion which is attachment then it can never end. How can you end existence? K: Would you explain? I can’t capture it.
1:15:02	GS: I don’t want to get into semantics but I just want to add to the discussion. It’s very much like asking when are you truly in love. It is said, the first time you fall in love, you are sure it is the last time you fall in love. And the last time you fall in love, you realise that that was truly the first time you fell in love. The question of recognising something to be unreal, etc., is a statement in retrospect. Until I see that particular thing, I do not know, it is a formally undecidable proposition. If it is seen, then it is gone.
1:15:45	K: Of course, if I see, it’s finished.
1:15:47	RG: But what do you see? Do you not see, in your effort to be rid of it forever and ever, although not in the sense which implies greed, as you pointed out, but if you wish to really be rid of it, if you haven’t seen its foundationless-ness, I think it would be of short duration. Even if it is of a fairly long duration, it would be private to you and unsharable, in some universal way.
1:16:19	PJ: What if we can...
1:16:28	K: Pin it down. PJ: Pin you down. I don’t like to say it but... You would you say sorrow can end, totally. In the very nature of that statement is that sorrow is something which is not existence.
1:16:55	K: Which has not existence?
1:16:57	PJ: Which is not of the nature of existence.
1:17:01	K: Oh, yes, it is the nature of existence. My existence is sorrow.
1:17:09	PJ: Can you end existence?
1:17:16	K: The existence that we know of, ends. Yes. My existence is attachment, jealousy, greed, all the stuff. That’s what my life is. That’s my consciousness. If I end all that, my existence as I have known it, is not.
1:17:43	RG: It’s a very important point, but there’s a price that must be paid for the permanent ending of these things and that must be the permanent ending of this little ‘me’. If we don’t want to pay that price, it will never end.
1:17:57	RK: Quite right, sir.
1:17:58	K: I didn’t quite follow.
1:18:00	Sunanda Patwardhan: He says the price of ending all this greed, fear etc., is the ending of the ‘I’...
1:18:07	K: Of course.
1:18:09	GS: I enter a minor dissenting opinion because the impression is created that once it is accomplished then you could go round and say, ‘Look, I have graduated’. So, it is not an ending, because each time the situation arises, you have another ‘me’ which has to be destroyed, or given up. And it is not a case of my giving myself up but when that happens. So one should not talk about it as if it is a purposive action, a causal of action. It’s a calibration, a way of testing, making sure that things have ended. In fact, you don’t even have to make sure because when it happens, that particular ‘I’, that particular sorrow, that particular greed, that particular anger and the desire to end that anger, all of them have disappeared because it looks very much like trying to correct something which happened in a film.
1:19:10	PJ: But, George, I have a feeling that you can never – I’m using it in quotes – attack the ‘I’ frontally. Most of us are trying to attack the ‘I’ frontally. You are just boxing with a shadow, that there is only the fragment which manifests itself, the ending of that and the ending of that.
1:19:47	RG: The dream thief can’t be got rid of by inventing a dream policeman. We have to wake up.
1:19:55	K: Sir, how are you – not ‘how’ – what will make me wake up?
1:20:01	RG: Waking up. K: Yes, what... That is an answer, but it’s not an answer to me. I am asleep, I am drugged.
1:20:12	RG: You can’t really be unless we are all asleep at the same time.
1:20:16	K: Please, not at times. I am drugged. I go to the office from morning till night, I am exhausted, I’m bored, lonely, I have sex, I have got so many problems, of money, rent, the whole of that, and you are talking to me about something which I don’t understand. This is my existence, my miserable, confused, absurd existence. I’m asking you – if I’m silly enough – help me to get out of this. All you’re giving me is some other thing which I don’t want.
1:21:08	RG: I think if a sick personality, goes to somebody with a tremendous problem and he is told that this has no foundation, that it’s of the nature of unreality, that might be of some help. Even that is not without its help, but I see the difficulty you raise. If I don’t love you, in a simple, not glamorous sense...
1:21:34	K: Ah, wait. If you love me... Now, wait, not ‘if’. We are all going off to ‘if’s, ‘when’...
1:21:42	GS: You can’t use ‘when’ either. One must use Pidgin English.
1:21:51	RG: When you addressed me, you said you’ll come to me... Everyone realises this conversation has a sense of unreality about it because either... can be going to a distant place. But I love you and I listen without interrupting or intervening with some neat, nice solution, and I take your question as I’ve heard it. You come to me, you have this runaway problem of misery, or of this runaway I-ness, you come to me and say, ‘Help me’. And I love you and the first manifestation, and it may be perfectly adequate, is simply to listen. Listen with absolute attention, which is what love is. I think that is itself the cure.
1:22:57	Dr Singh: Your state of existence, what you have decided to be, is taken out of your own freedom – to be miserable, to suffer, to love, to die, whatever is, because the process of becoming which is taking shape in time, and existence which is a part of becoming and the embodiment of attributed existence is becoming. Out of your freedom and becoming you have taken this choice of suffering, this choice of love, this... any situational condition. And out of your freedom, you can get out of this situation.
1:23:44	K: Are you saying, sir, we are free?
1:23:48	Dr S: Yes. I mean, mentally free. We can grasp the situation...
1:23:54	K: Are we free? I’m educated. You follow? The whole process of education is to condition me. Whole life around me puts on such tremendous pressure which is making me what I am. I am not free. I don’t start with freedom.
1:24:21	Dr S: But we can always feel the freedom, alternatives are there. When you see the alternatives, when you see the choiceless choice, or many choices, then you feel that you are free because you can select any one of them.
1:24:38	K: I won’t enter into the word ‘choice’. I don’t think choice exists.
1:24:43	Dr S: There is a choice to suffer or not to suffer.
1:24:45	K: It’s only when I’m blind that I have choice.
1:24:52	Dr S: I feel we have got choice, out of choice we suffer, out of choice we enjoy and being a situational being.
1:25:06	K: We are all becoming something, sir, aren’t we? That is the root of all this misery. Is there a state or whatever, which is not becoming?
1:25:19	Dr S: You mean becoming is a misery?
1:25:21	K: Of course, it is.
1:25:26	Dr S: We cannot stop becoming. Becoming is time itself.
1:25:31	K: Therefore, I’m saying that time itself has made my life miserable. I want to be the governor. I can never be the governor. I can never be as clever as you are. I want to be as clever as you are, and I am striving as hard as hell to be as clever as all of you. This becoming is becoming a torture, which is a fact.
1:26:04	Dr S: Then being itself becomes a torture and there is no change at all.
1:26:10	K: Sir, if you end the becoming, something else starts, not you be. If there is an ending to my becoming, the whole idea of becoming something, that is, ‘I should be’, ‘I must be’, ‘I’ll reach nirvana’, ‘I’ll be more clever’, ‘I’ll be free one day’ – this is my whole educative, traditional process – ‘I must be something’. And if I end that becoming, – and it is possible – then I’m not ‘I am’. I am not, then. There is something totally new taking place. When there is an ending, something totally new takes place, obviously.
1:27:05	Dr S: The ending of becoming? K: Yes.
1:27:09	Dr S: You mean you can stop the process of becoming?
1:27:12	K: Oh, yes, fairly easy. Why should I be like some clever man? Why should I compare myself with you or with somebody? Not that I’m vain, or proud. I don’t want to compare. I don’t want to become a rich man or a sannyasi, or this or that. I don’t.
1:27:40	Dr S: I agree with you that we have got a limited choice.
1:27:46	K: I have no choice. I don’t want all that. There is no choice.
1:27:57	Dr S: What is the choiceless becoming? What is the choiceless being?
1:28:02	K: Ah, no. Then we have to find out why you as a human being are becoming. When you end that, you will find out. Of course. Otherwise, you are playing with words.
1:28:24	RG: But that ceasing to become would be an awakening, would it not, not another point in time.
1:28:32	Dr S: But that awakening itself is in time.
1:28:36	RG: No, because you will realise that you were always really awake.
1:28:41	Dr S: The degree of awakening might be less or more, but always in time.
1:28:46	RG: Yes, but retrospectively you will abolish the process.
1:28:54	K: I’m not asking you personally, have we ever ended anything without any motive, without any cause, just say, ‘Over’? I’m attached to my wife – attached. All the implications of attachment, fear, loneliness, jealousy, anxiety, agony if she disappears, all that, to end that without any cause. Then something totally new takes place.
1:29:31	RG: Would you accept, in humble ways, in addition to the major ways, when we quite without greed wake up or go to sleep for that matter...
1:29:44	K: Ah, don’t bring in sleep, sir, be careful.
1:29:47	RG: I want to do justice even to sleep, it is the dreaming that I am close to, not sleep. But when we call it a day, without pushing the programme of dream, I’ll fall asleep, or a child does, or anybody who is a child, really, we do what you have so beautifully suggested, put an end to this very glittering thing, being awake. Also, when we wake up...
1:30:18	K: When we wake up, we begin again.
1:30:20	RK: Yes, but there is a promise of what could also be attained. You’re right, this is lost, but it is some small comfort to be reminded of the humble ways in which we hold the promise of that.
1:30:37	RK: The sleep is giving up after exhaustion, exhaustion from the day’s greed, it’s not a conscious giving up.
1:30:44	RG: Not necessarily always. Think of a child, if you started playing a game with him, he will play.
1:30:51	RK: No, I’m limiting myself to sleep from greed.
1:30:56	RG: I was trying to remind myself of the pervasive recurrence, the significance of which we are not taught. Likewise, when we give a gift without anything. We part with it, that’s putting an end to its being in my hand, the bouquet of flowers, I give it.
1:31:15	K: We are educated from childhood to be something. Right, sir? B.As, M.As, PhDs, doctors, scientists, surgeons, something, something all the time. We are conditioned to that. I don’t want to be like you. You may be God Almighty, or the incarnation of divinity, or the greatest genius scientist, I don’t want to be like you. I don’t compare myself with you, not that I’m vain, I don’t. I say, ‘Why should I be like him?’ I have no desire to be like anybody else, nor the desire to be myself. I don’t know myself. RG: You’ve no desire at all.
1:32:09	K: I’ve no desire to be myself. I don’t know what I am. So I begin to investigate what I am, not what I should be.
1:32:21	Dr S: Do you think what I am is so different from what situation I’m in?
1:32:27	K: Of course, not. I said, sir, we are the past, the present and the future. It is all centred in me.
1:32:39	Dr S: Then how can we delete duality of ‘I’ and...?
1:32:43	K: There is duality night and day, duality between man and woman, duality between short, tall, but in myself I have no duality. I am what I am. I’ve no duality. I am that. This becomes quite difficult.
1:33:01	RG: Difference, not duality. The point you made the other day. There is difference, but not duality.
1:33:17	Q: Would it be worth thinking a bit about world suffering, other people’s suffering, does that relate to personal suffering? The suffering of others, of the world.
1:33:30	K: I said that.
1:33:31	Q: But does this also disappear if personal suffering ceases?
1:33:39	K: Like those saints, or social workers, they devote their life to social work. You know what is happening.
1:33:50	SP: He’s asking, when personal suffering ends does the world’s suffering end? When your suffering ends, what is your relationship to the suffering of human beings? Is that right, sir? Q: Yes.
1:34:14	K: Am I different from other human beings? You may be tall, or fair-skinned, I’m very dark black-skinned, or I may be this or that, but in our consciousness, are we very different from the other man? Because my consciousness... I’m greedy, I believe, this and that, I’m lonely I’m desperate, I’m depressed, I’m ambitious, I’m suffering. This is the ground on which all human beings stand. It is not my sorrow and the world’s sorrow, it is sorrow. I don’t know if I am... This may be too...
1:35:04	PJ: You have never answered this question, sir, if I may put it.
1:35:15	K: It is sorrow, not my sorrow or your sorrow.
1:35:19	PJ: There’s an ending of sorrow.
1:35:29	PJ: Compassion is for the sorrow of mankind. You can’t... K: No, no. Please... Compassion is only possible when there is the ending of sorrow. If you end sorrow, the feeling of this extraordinary weight, the depth of it, the great beauty of it, also, when that is ended, then the ending is the passion of compassion. It’s not my ending and then I’m compassionate, it is compassion, that compassion has its own intelligence, and that intelligence acts.
1:36:21	RG: Would you say it is not personal sorrow that ends but the sorrow of personality and that is surely very good news. It is not a temporary, ad hoc ending of sorrow, but supposing one person achieves this radical ending of sorrow, that would not be the ending of personal sorrow but the sorrow of personality. Therefore, in its own way, I’m sure... also, in which this victory affects, as we know from the past and present...
1:36:51	K: Sir, our intelligence is the intelligence of thought. Our intelligence is the intelligence of thought. It is not compassion which has its own intelligence.
1:37:14	PJ: I think you’ll have to end, sir. K: Is it time to stop? Tomorrow at nine o’clock. Nine thirty. That is, if you all want to come.