Asit [Chandmal] and I have been talking about the nature of computers. I have also met several experts from America and India and as far as I understand, computers can perform some of the same functions as thought. They can learn, they can correct themselves, they can beat chess masters, they have their own artificial intelligence. They can be programmed and the more astute, clever and informed the programmer, the greater the capacity of the computer. It can also solve problems quicker than the human brain. Thought creates its own intelligence and computer intelligence is perhaps equal to that of the intelligence that thought has created. And just as the computer is programmed, so are we programmed, to a certain extent, to be Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Buddhists and so on.
Now, what is true intelligence? There is the artificial intelligence of the computer and perhaps the intelligence created by thought is also artificial. So what is intelligence that doesn’t belong to either? If the computer can do almost all the things that thought can do then what happens to man? Man has lived by thought, has created this world of thought, not nature, but the economic, social, religious world and the problems which thought has created, thought cannot solve. It may solve economic problems, it may solve our social problems, but I question whether it can ever solve the psychological problems. So if the computer takes over the activities of thought, and it can diagnose, correct itself, learn and so become more and more and more informed and function on its knowledge, as human beings do, what then is man? That’s the real question. Man has lived on memory, on experience, on knowledge, all of which the computer can have because it can learn, correct itself and increase its knowledge, and perhaps discover new things. So what is going to happen to man? You carry on from there.
David Bohm: Perhaps we should first discuss whether this is true. Because not everyone who works with computers accepts all this. For example, it doesn’t look likely that computers will solve economic or political problems because these are connected with psychological problems. I think there is no doubt the computer can do a great many things which thought is doing, and can do many more, but whether it can do the whole of what thought is doing is not clear. You see, it is in the nature of thought itself that in order to carry out a logical train of thought it is necessary to make certain assumptions and categories and axioms, or whatever you want to call them, and the mathematician Goedel has shown that it is not possible to get a closed set of assumptions. If you say the assumptions are complete they will be inconsistent. In order to be consistent they must be incomplete, so there are more and more of them. The system is open rather than closed. The problem is this: a certain set of assumptions may be consistent in a certain context but if you want the computer to go outside that context, to run everything, then it is necessary to change the assumptions as you go along.
Asit Chandmal: Goedel’s theory is a limitation on computers, and my contention is that the same limitation applies to the human brain.
DB: Well, in the human brain we can change the assumptions when we find they are not working.
AC: I’ll explain what I mean. I am not saying that computers will ever become omniscient or omnipotent or become God and solve all problems. I am saying that whatever human thought can do computers can do. And human thought itself has tremendous limitations. Goedel’s theorem, quite rightly, is a limitation on any logical system.
So two questions arise: one is, does the human brain also operate in the same way, making assumptions, extrapolations, using deductive, inductive logic and therefore having the same limitations as those imposed on the computer by Goedel’s theorem? That’s the first question. The second is: at what point do these limitations start applying to these very large computer systems? Do they, before these limitations start applying, get to a point where they are already performing much better than human brains? And the third point is that essentially, I think, what Goedel says is that a system on its own cannot be consistent and complete, there is no finite system. But if the system is unable to tackle a certain set of problems because you run into contradiction or incompleteness, you could have other computer systems tackling those problems.
DB: But they will run into the same problems.
AC: Yes, they will. But this is the way human beings function at the moment. The human brain has a limitation. Say I don’t know much about medicine, I can go to a human brain who knows a great deal about medicine and together we try and solve my medical problems. But his brain also has limitations. So what I am saying is that computers do have limitations but so do human brains.
DB: Well, I question that. You see, I think people may actually happen to work that way but it is not necessary that they should. People may work in terms of fixed assumptions but there is no reason why they should do so, except out of habit or tradition. When you see an assumption is not working, then you can see the contradiction. Whether a computer can see contradiction I don’t know.
AC: I think that could be done. You could programme a computer and show that there are no self-contradictory assumptions within it. But you would still have the other problem, incompleteness, but the consistency problem could be dealt with.
DB: Well, no, because you see there would always be new situations where any set of assumptions would fail to be consistent. You see, any set of assumptions is consistent in some limited context, but in some new context it may fail.
AC: Are you saying that the human brain doesn’t operate that way?
DB: No, I think that the computer is a sort of tremendous simplification of the human brain, but I think the human brain is infinite, while the computer is finite.
AC: I am not clear on that. The human brain is programmed.
DB: Partly.
K: Yes, programmed.
AC: You are born with a set of programmes, right? The inherited programmes, for example, your heart starts functioning. The child is obviously programmed to learn—a six-month-old baby can’t speak English or can’t play chess; twenty years later it can, so obviously some programming process takes place.
DB: Well, it is not certain that any programme has made it learn. You see that is an assumption. It is very hard to prove a thing like that.
K: You said just now that the human brain is infinite, and personally I think it is. But just a minute. For that infinite to move, work, live, thought must come to an end.
DB: Well, we have to look at that and say what thought is. You may say there is a certain kind of thought that is programmed but there may be a more open kind of thought that is not.
AC: Is there such a thing? I would question that.
DB: Well, how could you show that there is or there isn’t?
K: I think what he is saying is, since the brain is infinite…
AC: Which is also an assumption, we don’t know.
K: No, I wouldn’t call it an assumption. I think we can prove it.
AC: Let’s keep it open, as an assumption.
K: For the moment let’s call it an assumption; and you are saying there may be a different kind of thought that is not born of knowledge.
DB: Also, not limited by knowledge.
K: And that also.
AC: If one says there may be a different kind of thought not limited by knowledge, one would need to define thought. Or there might be a different kind of operation of the brain that is not limited by thought.
K: I would like to introduce another word, ‘insight’. Right, sir? Insight is not the result of thought.
AC: Before we come to insight—let me put it this way: would you be comfortable with the use of the word ‘thought’ in another form? Thought is knowledge, memory. I am uncomfortable with any other sense and therefore we have chosen the word ‘insight’. I think this is an important issue.
K: It is an important issue.
AC: The issue being that thought can never act except out of knowledge and memory. Because if that is so then the implication is that the computer can do this, and do it much better. And then what happens to human beings? Then it becomes very important to find the other thing.
K: Yes, now wait a minute. Thought is really the reaction or response to or the outcome of memory, knowledge, experience. It is a material process. We agree to that. So let’s go into the question of intelligence first and then come back. From what Asit and others have said, the computer, by being programmed, and learning and discovering for itself new axioms and so on, has its own artificial intelligence.
DB: I wonder if it has intelligence in that sense.
K: They say it has.
AC: In the sense of the computer having done several things that five years ago nobody would have imagined it doing. There are examples which for most people would mean that it has discovered or invented new things or is capable of thinking. It has certainly demonstrated that it can find novel proofs for various theorems which nobody has thought of before. And the process of discovery can be defined as something that you have not been taught, nobody else has thought of, and you think of it. That is a reasonably good definition.
Then there is the Turing test—a human being in one room with a computer terminal and a computer in another room. And you converse on the terminal and don’t know whether it is the computer responding or a human being. If you can’t make out who is responding, then Turing argued, and most people accept it, that this is a valid test showing that the computer can think. There is the example of a grandmaster playing chess with a computer and not knowing whether he was playing against a computer or a human being, and as far as he was concerned it had passed the Turing test. There are other examples like this. This was some years ago and the rate of growth in the technology is so phenomenal that by now there must be many other examples. Inevitably by the end of the century you will have a computer capable of carrying on conversations on virtually everything and nobody will know the difference.
So if this is so, and computers are much faster and have more infallible memories than human beings, then two things could happen. One is that one might abdicate more and more the thinking functions to the computer, just as children do with calculators and forget how to multiply. Now will that atrophy the mind? One doesn’t know. If it does, then the consequence is very dangerous. However, even if it doesn’t atrophy the human mind, what is left of it if computers can outperform it, is there anything left at all? Are we in fact an endangered species, which so far has survived by using and improving the brain, but now something else is going to be much better than it, so will the species die out?
DB: I think there are two issues: one, that the computer will take over all these more mechanical functions of thought. I think that formal logic is mechanical, and I am not surprised that a computer can do it better than a man, because any form of logic consists of making certain assumptions and coming out with whatever that implies. As long as the assumptions are fixed, then the computer should eventually, even now perhaps, do it better than any human being.
AC: Yes, you agree that the computer can probably even now do a much more rigorous logical analysis of a situation given certain assumptions. So the question arises: is it only in the irrational area that the brain might be better than a computer? If I may put it that way!
DB: Well, only when the assumptions are not fixed. You see, as long as you can fix the assumptions the computer will work out all the consequences, but when you come to an area where the assumptions can’t be fixed then I am not convinced that the computer can handle that.
AC: How do you mean by the assumptions not being fixed? When do human beings change assumptions? For example—let me try and give an example if I have understood you correctly. I try to run from here to Los Angeles and I find I can’t do it, so I make the assumption that I can’t run from here to Los Angeles and I try and catch a bus. Is that an example of an assumption? Can we give a better example?
DB: You see, I think there has been a tendency in modern mathematics to treat mathematics as nothing but formal logic. I think that is a very backward step, which is mechanical, and it is not surprising that eventually the computer will do this better. I think mathematics is more of an art form than a form of logic.
Basically in mathematics you have an equation, you say A equals B, but it is only interesting when A is not equal to B. You assert the equality of things that are different. What that means is that it becomes interesting just when logic has broken down, when this indicates a new implicit structure which you perceive. So I think the interesting point about mathematics is not logic or proof, which is never perfect anyway because you can’t be certain of it. But as you have pointed out, what mathematicians do regularly, and what a lot of people do, is mechanical, and I am very ready to agree to that.
AC: What do human beings do with the human brain that is not mechanical?
DB: Well, what I just said, when the logic breaks down and you discover some new implications that no computer could discover unless it was told that was the sort of thing it should look for.
K: I would say, Asit, that insight is not mechanical.
AC: Insight being the ability or the process of seeing instantly through a problem. So no process of thought or logic is used.
K: Yes.
AC: It is not intuition, it is insight.
K: No, it is insight. That is not based on knowledge, not based on experience, remembrance, it is not involved in time. It is an insight, immediate perception, action. That’s not mechanical.
AC: Are you also saying that in order for that to take place the mechanical must come to an end?
K: Obviously.
DB: Well, you can’t be dominated by the mechanical. You see, the computer is controlled entirely by the mechanical, although you may make it more and more subtle.
AC: But the key point Krishnaji is making is that there is such a thing as insight that has nothing to do with knowledge, memory, experience and thought.
DB: I wouldn’t say nothing, I would say that it is not based on assumptions made by thought.
K: That’s right.
AC: Now in order for insight to take place, my question is: does this process have to come to an end?
DB: I think the mechanical, logical process must come to an end.
AC: It must come to an end. Now, if that is true intelligence, why do we continue in this mechanical process, why doesn’t it come to an end?
K: That’s a different question altogether.
AC: It is a different question. But this is why I have got so interested in computers. We only function in this, it doesn’t come to an end.
DB: Unless you pull out the plug!
AC: Let me make my point clear. We are caught in this process, we are not coming out of it into insight. We only know this.
K: Yes, we are programmed to that.
AC: And the computer will be able to do this much better. So what is left of us?
K: That is what we are asking, the same thing.
DB: The more mechanical features of thought really can be done by a computer.
K: That’s all.
DB: And many of these features which people thought were not mechanical are; a lot of mathematics is mechanical. You see, I think proofs are mechanical, they are merely worked out from the assumptions to the conclusions.
AC: Would you say Einstein’s theory of relativity was something different from a child proving a theorem for the first time?
DB: It wasn’t a proof, you see, there is no way to prove it. The perception, the insight of a need for relativity was a flash of perception, and from there on he began to work it out. And a lot of that was mechanical.
K: Insight is and working it out is mechanical.
DB: Well, relatively so anyway. You may need a bit more insight as you work it out.
K: Quite.
AC: So you are saying that the concept of relativity comes about through insight, a Beethoven symphony comes about through insight. And actually writing it out and playing it is mechanical. But there is this process of insight.
K: What are you trying to say, Asit?
AC: My point is that this obviously happens extremely rarely. How many Einsteins or Beethovens are there? Because almost all of us are caught in a process that the computer can do much better.
DB: I think the rarity is irrelevant. You see, it just happens that people tend to be caught in the mechanical. But the fact that it is rare doesn’t make it less significant.
AC: No, but what I am saying is that for most people in this world, the only thing they have which makes them really function is their brains. That is the reason they have dominated this earth as opposed to any animal species. And if there is going to be another species that has a better brain in this sense…
DB: Well, I am not sure that it will.
K: That is an assumption. Asit, let’s get something that is clear and simple. As far as I can make out—correct me, please—as we now use it thought is mechanical, based on experience, knowledge, memory.
DB: And logic.
K: And logic. From that there is action. From that action you learn, which is the same process going on. That is mechanical. And the machine can do that far better than us.
AC: Yes.
DB: There is a limit to that in the sense that any mechanical system being limited, and reality being unlimited, there must be some check by a human being who is beyond the mechanical, because at some stage the computer may do something disastrous…
AC: Well, so do human beings!
K: Of course.
DB: That’s because human beings are imitating computers!
AC: What I am saying is—I am repeating myself: the computer is not going to be perfect but neither are human beings. But in the case of Einstein and Beethoven, I wouldn’t say they have insight, they have partial insight. Look at their lives!
K: Of course, that’s understood. So we are saying, thought is mechanical because of what it is based on. And is there thought which is not mechanical?
DB: Perhaps there is.
K: There is, that’s what we are inquiring into.
DB: Perhaps thought has become mechanical because it is being used wrongly.
K: Even if you used it rightly it is still not the other.
DB: No, but if you hold the assumption that it is absolutely fixed that is what makes it mechanical. Then it is like a machine. People have made assumptions about everything and say they are absolutely true, they are absolutely fixed. That makes thought mechanical. Now, intelligence does not make such fixed assumptions, but reads between the lines. So intelligence will gather information from all over without putting it into fixed categories. Thought is being mechanical because it puts information into predetermined, absolutely fixed, categories. That is what the computer does. In order to classify your information, it has to be gathered and put into categories, like here and there, now and then, before and after, inside and outside. Now if that is absolutely fixed the computer can…
K: …do it better.
DB: …do it better. But you see what happened, it seems to me, is that man became a computer…
K: Became a computer!
DB: …and then he made another computer which…
K: You follow what he is saying?
AC: What he is saying is that human beings have become badly programmed by slow computers.
K: Therefore he has created a computer which will etc, etc…
AC: But are you also saying that a computer couldn’t work in an unstructured situation?
DB: Unless there was some predetermined structure how could it work?
AC: That’s what I am not sure about.
DB: I mean what could it do? It must be given some instructions.
K: It can learn.
DB: But only if it is given instructions before, it cannot learn from nothing.
AC: But is that different from human beings?
DB: Well, I think human beings have insight that can remove wrong structures, dissolve them and alter them. Of course, if you could make a computer with insight!
K: You see, the human being may have the capacity for insight. The computer has not that capacity because it is essentially programmed by a human mind that is itself limited.
DB: And also in the mechanical structure itself there is a limit to what it can do.
AC: Because it is a mechanical process, it is limited. In other words the question is: can you programme insight? Let us assume for the moment you can’t. Come back to the human being. He is functioning as a computer, programmed as a computer. Now we are saying that he also has the capacity for insight.
K: The capacity. Yes, he may have the potential.
AC: If he doesn’t have it he is doomed—would you agree?
K: Yes, of course.
AC: So it becomes very important to find this capacity.
K: That’s right.
AC: How does it happen?
K: Now we are into quite a different question.
AC: Yes, but that is ultimately the question we keep coming to. It becomes vitally important to find that capacity. Especially because the computer is being developed so fast. Perhaps there was nothing so important two hundred years ago.
DB: It is hard to say. One doesn’t know, every development rises up and reaches a curve and falls. I think there are no linear developments that go on for ever. The computer will go a long way but then it will probably reach a limit.
AC: At the moment it’s kind of exponential…
DB: …on its way up but some day it is going to turn down.
AC: But leaving the timeframe out of it, it becomes vitally important to find this other capacity, if it exists.
K: Yes, sir. So what do we do?
AC: Now you are addressing a programmed slow computer to find the process of insight!
K: Yes, put it to the computer.
AC: You are telling me, find the process.
DB: You can’t accept that that is all you are in the sense that you don’t have a potential.
AC: I have the potential but how do I find, express that potential? Do you see the problem?
K: I see the problem.
AC: You are in fact asking a computer…
DB: It is not the same because if you asked a mechanical computer to have insight, that would be impossible.
AC: Yes, because it doesn’t have the potential.
DB: It is limited.
AC: But you are asking a programmed system…
K: No, I am asking, as he pointed out at the beginning, whether there is that which is not programmed.
AC: There may be a process which is not programmed.
K: And that may be insight. And you are asking, as that insight is so important, how does it come about?
AC: How can it come about in a system that is operating in this manner?
K: Obviously, it cannot. If my mind, my brain, is programmed to function in a certain pattern, in a certain category and so on, all that has to stop. That is where the Hindus and meditation began. I am pretty sure of that. To stop the whole process of thought.
AC: May I ask you a question? You know me extremely well.
K: I hope so, I think so!
AC: Have you ever seen anything in the way that my mind operates which is different from a programmed, conditioned mind?
K: Yes.
AC: You have? I am asking this very seriously, sir. Because, all right, let me put it in another way: people operate only in this mode of the programmed, conditioned mind.
K: No, I am putting it differently. When you are not hearing with the sensory ear, but hearing inwardly, completely, in that state we are absolutely silent. When absolutely silent, then insight may take place. Perception in which there is no division as the ‘me’, the perceiver and the perceived—right? So the whole mechanical process of thinking, with its conflict, comes to an end.
DB: Well, as an interesting question, would you think that a computer has a division as the thinker and the thought?
K: Of course not. It can be programmed to say the observer is the observed!
DB: Well, I think the programmer is really the observer, isn’t he?
K: Yes.
AC: I would like to say something about this. If a computer passes the Turing test, what is there to say that it doesn’t have consciousness? What I am saying is that if there was a computer in the other room and a human being, and I am interacting from here, and I told nobody it was a human being answering on the computer, it would be fairly certain that the computer is at least thinking as well as that human being is.
K: Yes, mechanically.
DB: You see, you would have to have a much more subtle communication with it to determine whether the computer had insight.
AC: But how would you find out if I had insight or not?
DB: Well, that’s a question.
AC: You see!
K: Oh, yes, you can.
AC: How, sir? If you could find out if I have insight…
K: Ah, not if you have insight. You may have the potentiality of it.
AC: Could you find that out by talking to me?
K: Oh, yes. AC: Suppose you are talking to a computer.
K: I know what you are getting at.
AC: You might feel the computer has a potential, for instance. What I am saying is: what is consciousness? Why would you think that a computer doesn’t have consciousness? If it prints out, ‘I am conscious’, why would you say it isn’t? Why are we assuming—why should I assume, not you, that anything else exists?
K: No, I don’t assume, because I have an insight and act on it.
AC: But I find that I don’t have these insights.
K: Why?
AC: You must accept that.
K: No, why should I accept it?
AC: Because you see the way I live, sir.
K: No, you may have a partial insight.
AC: That’s not insight.
DB: Why do you say it is not? I mean there would be a difference, the computer would not have a partial insight.
AC: What I am saying is this: if the computer passed the Turing test and says, ‘I am conscious’, what reason do you have to say it is not? In what way would it be different from a human being if it passed the Turing test?
DB: Suppose you were having a discussion of this kind with the computer…
K: Is it taking it all in?
DB: …the question is, what answers will the computer come up with?
AC: I am assuming that the computer has passed the Turing test.
DB: But the Turing test is not good enough because we could say that the full test for a human being is: does he have insight?
AC: But actually that is my question. How would you assume, how would you define insight?
K: I wouldn’t ask a human being whether he has insight. That, I think, would be a wrong question. But I would ask: does the mechanical process of thinking ever stop? Or is the brain perpetually occupied?
AC: For most human beings it is perpetually occupied. Now, supposing a human being were to say, yes, it stops? What then?
K: Wait a minute. It may stop because it is very tired, or for various reasons, lack of oxygen and so on. That is not insight.
AC: The computer can do that.
K: Of course it can.
AC: So how would you find out if I have insight, sir?
K: But are you putting the right question?
AC: My question is: how do you know a human being has insight? How will you find out?
K: Both of you have said that Beethoven and Einstein had partial insight.
AC: Yes, but what I would argue is that what they did nobody had done before, what they did was extremely rare. There are, I think, four billion people on earth today, and there have been a lot in the past, and something happened to Einstein and Beethoven—that’s all I am willing to say. I am not even willing to say that they had partial insight, I don’t know what happened. How can one know?
K: I think one can observe it in oneself.
AC: Sir, may I ask you another question? If you understand something can you teach it to another human being?
K: If the other human being is willing to listen. To listen.
AC: In other words if the process by which Beethoven composed his symphonies and Einstein had his flashes of perception had been understood by them they could have explained it to another?
K: I think so.
AC: They obviously couldn’t and didn’t.
K: Insight can’t be something totally disharmonious, a lack of harmony, it must be your whole way of life, your behaviour, everything must be as a whole. When that wholeness takes place there is immediate insight. I think that is how it operates. Would you agree to that?
DB: Yes, everything has to be together.
K: The decks have to be cleared!
AC: You are saying it is an integral process, it is not fragmented. Now I am asking you, and let us assume that you have this insight…
K: That’s a different matter.
AC: If you understand the process…
K: Ah, not the process!
AC: I think we’ll get it clear if I find the right word. If you find the conditions under which insight can come into being.
DB: There are no conditions.
AC: OK.
K: You see, you can answer it yourself, old boy.
AC: So I’ll try to clarify it. Are you saying it just happens?
K: No, it is not by chance, not by calculation.
AC: Not by calculation, not by conscious effort. As you said in your books, it comes uninvited.
K: Uninvited in the sense that you see the problem, if there is a problem, and you don’t analyse it, you see it as a whole.
AC: Now I am saying to you, sir, that I am unable to see it as a whole, help me. What would you do?
DB: Could I ask you a question here: is the computer talking?
AC: It is, you see. (laughs) I am asking you literally to programme me to have insight; I am!
DB: But the computer can’t do this.
K: I don’t know, perhaps it will, when it reaches its peak. (laughs)
AC: I agree that the computer can’t do it, I am willing to accept that. I am saying that a human being can’t do it either!
K: I am not sure, sir.
DB: But if the computer is saying this, it could just be the programme, couldn’t it?
AC: I accept that the computer can’t do it.
DB: No, but I am putting another question, on this very statement. You see we are doing, as it were, the Turing test now. You have said that you are a computer. So it’s up to us to talk with the computer to see if it can answer the question.
AC: OK, I am willing to state that I am not a computer, I am the potential. I will have a completely open mind on this because I want insight, I really do. And I am saying, can you help me, can you teach me, can you show me? Is there any way you can do this? That’s what I am saying.
K: Let us say that you have got quick insight into many things—I come to you and say, look, I would like to have that capacity. I may have the potentiality but I would like it to flower. What would be my question? That I would like to have it? When I ask that question it becomes mechanical. I don’t know if you follow what I mean?
AC: I follow that.
K: So don’t ask the question. When you ask that question, you are asking for a system, for a method—wait, wait—for some kind of information that you can manipulate, that you can organize, that you can categorize, and all the rest of it. Now if you asked a question without any of that; would you ask it?
AC: Yes.
K: No, wait!
AC: Sir, my question is very simple, give me an insight into insight for a moment. That is all. I don’t want a system just to be able to repeat it.
K: I understand your question.
DB: You see, I think you are approaching it in the way a computer would. If the computer wanted an insight it would ask how and what to do to get it. It is just the question the computer would ask!
K: You follow what he is saying?
AC: I follow completely. In fact, sir, it is confirming what I am saying, that I can operate only like a computer. That is what I am saying.
K: Therefore don’t operate like a computer. (laughter)
AC: Then my next question is, show me. This is the only thing I know, sir!
K: David, can you teach me—seriously, can you teach me a thing that you have grasped immediately, something whole? Can you inform me about it, teach me so that I can learn it?
DB: Not through a series of steps.
K: Can you convey that to me? That you have seen something as a whole and therefore acted as a total human being without any conflict, etc, etc. You act from there. And I come to you as your disciple, as whatever, and I say, please, inform me about it, tell me—whatever words you use—I want to capture the feeling of that, something instantly taking place. Right? That’s what you are asking.
Now, wait a minute, we are going to inquire into this. What is the state of my mind that is asking this question? It is wanting something, it is grasping for something, it says, if I could have that my problems would be solved.
AC: That’s one state. But I am not in that state right now. Shall I tell you the state I am in? Here is a man whom I have seen in daily life for many years and he has been talking about it for so long and obviously he has something and I want a glimpse of it, not so that my problems will be solved but I am really deeply interested, curious, deeply serious. He has been talking of it for so long, he is living it, he is doing it, what is it, why is it escaping me? That’s the state I am in, not that I want to solve my problems.
K: No, again, what is the state of your mind when asking this question? What is the state of my mind when I go to David—I am going to call you David, for a long time I haven’t—I go to David and say, look, you have this insight, you see things as a whole, I can’t. I am not asking to have an insight in order to solve my problems, I am not interested in that. But I want to learn or comprehend or feel the quality of a mind that is whole. Do you see what has happened? I have reached a certain point in myself to ask that question. I don’t know if I am making it clear?
AC: OK.
K: It is not mechanical. I have dropped the mechanical. Right? I have dropped it because I am much more interested in this, the mechanical is in abeyance.
AC: Yes, I think that is it. I might not have dropped it, but…
K: …it’s in abeyance, it’s down in the basement. Right?
AC: I am not sure about that.
K: You are getting what I am talking about? Is your mind free, not functioning mechanically, when you are asking the question?
AC: I am not sure.
K: Are you asking this question mechanically…
AC: No.
K: …or non-mechanically? Wait, stay. I go to him and I say, sir, I am quite sure I am not asking this question mechanically.
AC: I can’t make that statement. I really don’t know whether I am asking it mechanically, I really don’t know.
K: Because I want to capture that.
AC: That I want to do.
K: I want to understand what that thing is, so my mind is absolutely not knowing.
AC: Yes.
K: Ah—not knowing, not expecting, not wanting!
AC: How can you say not wanting, not expecting?
K: Of course. Not expecting something from him. I come to him and say, sir, I want to understand this insight that may transform everything, etc.
AC: Isn’t that expecting, wanting?
K: No, I want to understand it, to feel it, the contours of it, the smell of it.
DB: I think we should make it clear that there is a difference between expecting and what you are saying. You see, expecting would be to already have some feeling about what it is, right?
K: Of course, I am not expecting something.
AC: OK, in that sense I am not.
K: I don’t know what it is.
AC: I don’t know, I really don’t.
K: So, therefore I am not waiting, as he says, not expecting.
AC: I am not, when I come to you.
K: Are you coming mechanically or non-mechanically?
AC: I don’t know, sir.
K: Well, find out, sir. Is your question born out of mechanical response?
AC: No.
K: No, therefore I go to David—I am very clear on this—I see he has got this quality of insight, very strongly. He takes decisions, he does things without the operation of thought entering into his decisions, right? When he sees something it is not thought out, he sees non-mechanically but works it out mechanically.
AC: It can be supported by thought.
K: Supported by thought. So I am asking the question, knowing all this, I say, what is this insight? I am already in communication with it. You understand, sir?
DB: Why do you say you are already in communication with it?
K: Because my mind is free of the mechanical.
DB: Yes, well, that is the essence of insight. You are saying that insight is natural if the mind is not mechanical.
K: It is not mechanical, it is not born out of knowledge, it is not of time, it is immediate perception. And the computer can’t do this. My brain is mechanical, has been mechanical for a million years, and David tells me, your brain is infinite. I see that immediately. David said that just now. When he said that I said, ‘by Jove, it is so’.
AC: That was insight.
K: Nothing to do with logic.
AC: Yes, you saw it.
K: Not saw it. The infinite…
AC: It happened absolutely instantaneously.
K: Yes.
AC: My reaction is: I don’t know, why do you say that? Prove it.
K: Which is mechanical.
AC: Yes, absolutely.
K: Which means what? You are listening with the sensory ear, which is mechanical.
AC: Yes.
DB: The sensory ear.
AC: I am saying that, sir, I am saying that I am doing that. And I see somebody else having insight and so I say…
K: Wait. You see, if David tells me, meditate, if he says make the mind quiet, if he says it is necessary to have an absolutely quiet brain in order for insight, which is non-mechanical, to take place, all those are time-binding. I don’t know if you follow?
AC: Yes.
K: I dispense with all that. Then he said ‘infinite’. Right?
AC: Yes, I saw your eyes light up. But you say you dispense with all that. That is certainly the process of insight.
K: When he said ‘infinite’, why didn’t you jump?
AC: I explained why. My reaction is still like that; if you tell me the mind is infinite, I will still ask: why do you say that, could you prove it? I don’t see that it is infinite.
K: Which means what? The mechanical brain is tremendously active.
AC: Yes.
K: Argument, logic, reason, opposing opinions, and so on. It is moving, moving. You are functioning with that programme.
AC: Yes.
K: Pull the plug out!
AC: You are right, we are back to that point.
K: Of course we are back to that point. David tells me one thing, which is, the brain is infinite. Because it is infinite it is not personal.
AC: I gather that intellectually. You have an insight that the brain is infinite. Somebody says the brain is infinite, you have an insight. And then you move from that, from insight to insight. Your process—please let me call it process—is moving from insight to insight.
K: Yes, sir.
AC: My process is moving from logic, it may be bad logic or good logic, observation, all that. Now I am saying that this stream and that stream…
K: …can’t go together. Absolutely.
AC: And I can see that this stream creates a lot of problems. And so obviously most of the time when I want this insight it is to be free of problems. You are telling me, you are in this stream, jump out of it.
K: You can’t. No, you can’t jump out of it.
AC: End it.
K: Ah!
AC: That’s what you are saying.
K: Pull the plug out!
AC: I am saying deeply, subconsciously as well as consciously, that I can’t do it. It is the only thing I know. It would be almost tantamount to committing suicide.
K: Of course, of course, of course.
AC: You are saying drop the only thing you know: and I am saying that I would like to do it but I can’t.
K: No, we must go back. David is telling me, as the brain is infinite, it’s not personal, it’s not your brain or my brain, that is very clear. It is not your brain, it is not my brain, right?
AC: Yes.
K: Therefore it is nothing to do with persons.
AC: Yes.
K: Do you see that very clearly? Wait, see it immediately!
AC: No, sir, the difference is—please let me explain this. I start by saying if the brain is infinite the rest of what you say follows. Whereas you are saying it is obvious that the brain is infinite, this is obvious.
K: Ah! Because when he said that I was listening to him, I wasn’t arguing about it. I can argue afterwards. When he made that statement I was on top of it.
AC: I know.
K: Why? Analyse it. Why? I was listening, my mind was listening, inquiring, looking and David drops a stone in that and…! You are not listening, you are arguing, is this so, and so on.
AC: When you say you were listening, did you examine that statement at all?
K: No, I didn’t examine it, it is so. From that immediately the brain is not personal. Because it is infinite, the brain can never be personal. Mechanical thought says, it is my brain.
AC: I follow that, sir. What you are saying is: insight is perception or listening without any examination, any analytical process at all.
K: Of course.
AC: But then how do you know it is so?
K: Because from that insight you can argue logically.
AC: If you couldn’t argue it logically wouldn’t it still be there?
K: There would be nothing there.
AC: It wouldn’t be there?
K: No.
AC: So you are saying you see something and you can support it with logic?
K: Yes.
AC: So why isn’t it called logic?
DB: If you start with logic, you are starting with your past assumptions that are wrong. You see the difficulty. When you start from insight, you start from something new, a new perception, from there you can go on to reason with that new perception. But if you start from logic, you must start from what you already know, which is always wrong, fundamentally.
K: Yes, of course.
AC: I won’t accept this so easily.
K: This is simple.
DB: Well, it’s bound to be wrong.
K: You said just now that thought is limited, thought is mechanical, logic is mechanical, right?
AC: Yes.
K: So with logic you can’t come to the other. Once you have that insight, thought can operate logically.
AC: My point is: you are at the top of a mountain, you can climb down it, I am at the bottom. Now, either there are parallel paths and there is no meeting point at all, or if you can come down logically to this point I could climb up logically to that point.
K: It’s nothing to do with logic, insight has nothing to do with logic.
AC: But you say you can support it by logic.
DB: I think you could say it could be unfolded logically to communicate. It’s not really identical with the insight. Logical expression is a way of communicating about insight.
K: Yes, that’s right.
AC: I am saying—please correct me if I am wrong—you cannot communicate it logically.
K: Logically you cannot communicate it, because logic is thought.
DB: You see, I think that insight changes the basis on which you reason. One begins by reasoning on a false basis, that’s the normal basis; that is, from where you are you can’t get anywhere. There is no way to get from where we are to anything else, but if you have an insight then that is no longer so, and your reasoning is coming from insight, not from what you already know.
AC: In fact if you have insight there is no need to reason it out, you have it. The reasoning process would be there only when you were trying to communicate something about it.
DB: Also to apply it. If you want to apply your insight to make a computer, for instance. From your insight, say, into gravitation, then you might use reason for something.
K: So we started out by saying that thought is mechanical. The computer is mechanical. What thought can do the computer can do, up to a certain point. But thought, being mechanical, can never capture that which is non-mechanical. And insight is non-mechanical, totally non-mechanical. Now listen to that, don’t argue. You have argued enough now to say thought is mechanical, computers are mechanical; whatever thought can do, up to a certain point the computer can do, it can learn, relearn, adjust, it can do all the kinds of thing that thought can do, based on knowledge and so on. We both agreed to that. David tells me it is perfectly right up to that point. But that doesn’t bring about insight, he tells me. So I say, all right. I don’t say, what am I to do? The moment I say, what am I to do, you are back in the cycle. Right? He tells me that. He says, see that very clearly and don’t move away from that. We have argued about this mechanical process sufficiently. We can go into much more detail and so on but we have got the principle of it. Right? That’s all. Don’t move from there. Don’t say, what is insight? If you don’t move, it’s there. I don’t know if I’ve conveyed this. AC: Now I am beginning to see what you are saying. Are you saying, see the mechanical process of your mind and just see it, that’s all, and don’t move from it, see it? K: See it, see it completely. You can add little bits here and there, but you see thought is mechanical. The moment you move away from that it becomes mechanical. If you see that, stop there. AC: Yes, any movement away from it is… K: You see, movement is time, we have discussed this. Movement is time. If there is no movement of knowledge—after all, the ancient Hindus had this idea of Vedanta. Vedanta means to end knowledge. But we say, how am I to end it, and I’ll practise this and do this and do that, which is still the same wheel going round and round.
(Pause)
I think this is exactly what happened when the brother died, there was absolutely no moving from that.
AC: From that sorrow?
K: From that sorrow, that shock, that feeling. Which means K didn’t go after comfort, didn’t go after reincarnation, didn’t go after masters. I don’t know if you follow?
AC: Yes, sir.
K: There is no other fact except that.
AC: The mind stayed with that fact.
K: Yes, you see what happens if you stay with the fact, its vitality.