Krishnamurti: We started out discussing the place of knowledge in religious life. Let us start from here again and move around. We said knowledge is destroying the world without this religious mind. Then we started asking what is a religious mind. Now, what is a religious mind?
P.J.: The first question that arises out of that is, what is the instrument I have?
K: First of all, I use intellect, reason, logic. I do not accept any authority.
P.J.: And the senses?
K: Of course, that’s implied. Logic, reason, all that is implied, sanity without any illusion, without a belief dictating my inquiry. That means a mind that is free to look.
P.J.: The difficulty is in your very statement of what you have said; you have annihilated the whole premise.
K: Which is what?
P.J.: Which is the structure of human consciousness.
K: So, what is human consciousness?
P.J.: The structure of human consciousness is thought, belief, movement, becoming, identity.
K: And dogma. So, consciousness is the whole movement of thought with its content. I am a Hindu, I believe in puja, I worship, I pray, I am anxious, I am afraid – all that is this whole spectrum of movement.
P.J.: What place has the word ‘sanity’ which you use in this totality?
K: One’s consciousness is an insane consciousness.
G.N.: Do you imply that sanity is not caught in make-believe?
K: Sanity means sane, healthy, no make-believe. I don’t pretend I am healthy; I don’t pretend that I do puja and that it will lead me to some heaven. I say that is nonsense. So, sanity means a healthy mind, a healthy body, a healthy inwardness.
G.N.: If one is not sane, can one inquire?
K: How can I be sane when I am a businessman and go off to do puja? It is insanity.
P.J.: Are you saying that this consciousness which has all these elements can never inquire?
K: That is what I am saying. So, my consciousness is a bundle of contradictions, a bundle of hopes, illusions, fears, pleasures, anxiety, sorrow and all that. Can that consciousness find a religious way of life? Obviously it cannot.
S.P.: You say sanity is necessary for the mind to start inquiry, but this consciousness which is inquiring is full of contradictions.
K: Such a mind cannot even understand or even be capable of inquiry. So, I’ll drop the inquiry into a religious life, and inquire into consciousness. Then my inquiry is sane, logical.
P.J.: In all the traditional ways of approaching this whole content of consciousness, it is symbolized by one word ‘I’, and the inquiry is into the nature and the dissolution of the ‘I’.
K: All right. Let us work at it. We say in religious life there is a total absence of the self. Then my inquiry is whether the self can be dissolved. So I say: What is my consciousness? I begin from there and see if it is possible to empty totally that consciousness.
P.J.: What is the nature of that emptying?
K: I am doing it now. Can I be free from my attachment? Can I be free from my absurd daily puja? Can I be free from my nationalism? Can I be free from following some authority? I go on, and my consciousness is totally stripped of its contradictions. I hope that silences you.
Let us start inquiring whether it is possible to be aware totally, holistically, of our consciousness. If it is not possible, let us take fragment by fragment – but will that bring about comprehension of the total perception of consciousness?
P.K.S.: Will you not be open to the charge of being intellectual in your inquiry?
K: No. I put my heart into it. With my whole being I am inquiring. My heart, my affection, my nerves, my senses, my intellect, my thought, everything is involved in this inquiry.
R.R.: Sir, will you state the conditions of this inquiry?
K: You are a scientist. You observe and that very observation changes that which is being observed. Why can’t you do that with yourself?
R.R.: Because my attention wanders.
K: Which means what? When you are looking, in spite of your acquiring knowledge, you put that aside when you are watching. The very watching is the transformation of that which is being observed.
R.R.: Sir, maybe I am not expressing it rightly. If I observe myself, I think it is a fact for me that my attention wanders.
K: Let us begin step by step. I am watching myself. I can only watch myself; ‘myself is a bundle of reactions. I begin with things which are very near to me, such as puja. I see it, I look at it, I watch it, and I don’t say, ‘Well, it pleases me because I am used to it.’ I see it is absurd and put it away for ever.
R.R.: It does not seem to work like that.
K: Is it because of your habit?
R.R.: Yes, that is right.
K: So go into habit. Why do you have habit? Why do you have a mind functioning in habit which means a mechanical mind? Why is it mechanical? Is it because it is very safe to be mechanical, secure? And has this repetition of puja which gives you security, any real security in it or have you invested security in it?
R.R.: I give it security.
K: Therefore, wipe it away.
R.R.: This is where the difficulty is. I can see my mind is mechanical or caught in habit, but that does not seem to lead to what you seem to suggest, of cutting away.
K: Because your mind is still functioning in habit. Do you have a habit? Are there good habits or bad habits, or are there only habits? And why are you caught in them?
So let us come back. We are saying, consciousness that is in turmoil, in contradiction, wanders from one thing to another. There is a battle that is going on. So long as that consciousness is there, you can never pure perceiving. Is it possible to bring about in consciousness a total absence of this movement of contradiction?
S.P.: I can see the truth of repetitiveness, the mechanical action of puja, and it is out of my system. Speaking of other things, many fragments, the truth of them can be seen and negated. Even then the problem remains, which is the ending of the content of consciousness. There can be an ending of a fragment but the problem is that of ending the totality of consciousness.
K: Are you saying that sequentially you see fragment by fragment? Then you can never come to the end of the fragmentation.
S.P.: That is what we see after ten, fifteen years of observing.
K.: You can’t. Therefore, you must say, is there an observation which is total? I hear the statement that through fragmentation, through examining the fragmentation in my consciousness which is endless, it cannot be resolved that way. Have I listened to it? Have I understood it deeply in my heart, in my blood, in my whole being, that examining fragmentation will never solve it? I have understood that; therefore, I won’t touch it. I won’t go near a guru. All that is out because they all deal with fragments – the communists, the socialists, the gurus, the religious people, everything is fragmented, including human beings.
S.P.: Have I to see all the implications at this point or have I to work it out?
K: No, no. Working out is a fragmentation. I can’t see the whole because my whole being, thinking, living, is fragmented. What is the root of this fragmentation? Why has one divided the world into nations, religions? Why?
S.P.: The mind says it is the ‘I-ness’ which acts.
K: No, that is intellectual. I said to you, listen. How do you listen to that statement? Listening with the intellect is fragmentation. Hearing with the ear is fragmentation. Do you listen with your whole, entire being, or do you just say ‘Yes, it is a good idea’?
G.S.: I feel very stagnant, checkered by this attack on knowledge. It is not knowledge which is causing fragmentation but its function. So, let me go back to the question: What is a religious life? It is cessation of the contradiction between causality and spontaneity. Most of the world around is causal: That is, this being so this happens, if this has happened, it must have been because of such and so. All this is comparison, copying. If you can’t copy a system, then you cannot talk about a law or the system, and, therefore, there is much of the world which is of our experience, which we talk about in terms of causality. On the other hand, fortunately, we are also subject to the experience of spontaneity, experiences of movement with no cause, without time, in which there is only functioning. Much of the problem of life is, in fact, reconciling these two things because, somehow or the other, one feels these two are both real experiences and one would like to resolve the contradiction.
As far as I have observed, it appears to me that when you are in the spontaneous mode of functioning, there is in fact no possibility of it being broken down. When you are happy, you are happy; then there is no question of anxiety about it. If at any time you feel that you would like to continue this mode, then, of course, the mode has already ceased. When you want to maintain an experience which you already have in time, corruption has set in, and it is only a matter of time before it will come to an end. Therefore, the whole question of how to end fragmentation is wrong. We cannot logically conceive it, we cannot dictate the rules, we cannot legislate it, we cannot write a manual about it. Therefore, in a certain sense, when it comes, it comes by itself. That is, in fact, the only true mode of existence.
K: So, what do we do? Say I am fragmented and carry on?
G.S.: It is not a question of ‘I am fragmented and let us carry on’. In the fragmented mode you try to perceive.
K: Being fragmented, I live a fragmented life and recognise it, and so leave it?
G.S.: Would you tell me how to end fragmentation, the process?
K: I will tell you, sir.
G.N.: No, not ending fragmentation by process, because once you say process, it can become mechanical.
K: Quite right.
S.P.: What Krishnaji is talking about is the ending of time as a factor to end fragmentation.
D.S.: One of the things that is emerging clearly for me is that something about the very framework of thought conditions and limits and fragments it.
K: Right sir, thought is fragmentary.
D.S.: And that framework?
K: Thought is not in that framework. Thought is always fragmentary. So, what is the root of fragmentation? Can thought stop?
G.S.: Just stop?
K: Not periodically, occasionally, spontaneously. To me all that implies a movement in time.
G.S.: As long as you are thinking, that is movement.
K: I said so. Thought is the root of fragmentation. Thought is a movement and so time is a movement. So, can time stop?
G.S.: May I make a slight distinction? You say thought is the cause of fragmentation. I ask, where did that thought arise – in the unfragmented state or the fragmented?
K: In the fragmented state. We answer always from a fragmented mind.
G.S.: No.
K: I said, generally. And is there a speaking which comes of a non-fragmented mind?
G.S.: I am not sure I am following your terminology.
K: We said thought is fragmented, that it is the cause of fragmentation.
G.S.: What I am saying is that we see fragmentation and thought together. To say that one is the cause of the other is not true.
K: Cause and effect are the same.
G.S.: So, they are aspects of the same entity?
K: Thought and fragment are the same movement, which is part of time. It is the same thing, whether it is one or the other. So, I can ask, can time stop? Can psychological time, inward time, stop? Can the whole movement stop completely? There is a cessation of time. Time is not. I don’t become time or my being is not in time. There is nothing, which means, love is not of time.