Pupul Jayakar (PJ): Sir, I wondered whether we could discuss the nature and elements of consciousness. We have done it several times in the past, but we still do not seem to have got a comprehension of its relationship to the brain cells and the thymus, and I wondered whether we could take up the traditional, orthodox point of view on consciousness and investigate it.
Krishnamurti (K): What is the traditional point of view about consciousness?
P.Y. Deshpande (PYD): In Vedanta, according to their view of Advaita, or non-dualism, ignorance is defined as timeless or beginningless conditioned consciousness. And unless one is free from it, there is no perception of truth.
Achyut Patwardhan (AP): But what is their definition of consciousness? Can you translate that?
Questioner 1(Q1): In Vedanta, consciousness is the real self; that is, man is consciousness. Because of his memory, he has developed a mind, which is called chitta. And when he acts through the chitta, with the help of the mind, he acts in the material world and is dragged along. If he removes it he remains that consciousness and he finds the truth.
Maurice Frydman (MF): According to Buddhists, there is only a succession of states, and the blur that the succession creates is called consciousness. There is no such thing as consciousness; there are many conscious states, and they are momentary, and they just occur. A moment of consciousness arises, disappears, another moment arises, disappears. But they leave a memory, and that creates the blur, and you think there is a continuity in consciousness.
K: Can we forget for the moment the traditional approach, the conceptual approach to all these issues? What actually is consciousness?
Sunanda Patwardhan (SP): You have often said that the content of consciousness is consciousness.
K: Yes. You have understood that? The content of consciousness is consciousness.
SP: If we look at the content of consciousness, we are aware of consciousness always in the context of a certain situation. For instance, take the housewife’s consciousness; it is limited. If you take another person’s consciousness, his may be larger, extended, but it is only spatially extended but not qualitatively different. In the same way, in terms of time also, from the time of Attila to Stalin and Nixon, man’s consciousness does not seem to have changed…
K: …radically.
SP: …radically. So in spatial expression as well as time expression it seems as though consciousness is…
K: …static.
SP: Then there is another factor: that is, your waking consciousness is also a part of consciousness. You have a dream, and you say you had a dream. You recognize the dream, you remember the dream—that is also a part of consciousness which says, ‘I have dreamt.’ Then there is deep sleep where there is no disturbance. We come out of that sleep, and we say we had a good sleep. Now, what you remember of deep-sleep consciousness is also a part of consciousness. Then there is our modern, scientific Jungian approach—the conscious and the unconscious. All these seem to be the totality of consciousness. We find that any movement in any direction is still limited; however extended it may be, it is based in that consciousness. The Vedantins seem to postulate an unconditioned, untouched, uncontaminated consciousness inherent in man, and it is memory and emergence of thought which disturb that. If you are aware of thought emerging, it dissolves into this, and what then remains is only the consciousness that is untouched. We would like to know whether there is any quality different from this circle in which we are moving.
AP: The Vedantic or any other position cannot have any relevance to our personal experience, knowledge, comprehension. It becomes speculative, therefore we must rule it out.
SP: Don’t say we must rule it out.
AP: I rule it out. Anything that I don’t experience I rule out for the moment. I have to say I know nothing about it. I must be very firm and say I will not accept anything second-hand. Technology may have brought the housewife consciousness into the consciousness of the United Nations person who is dealing with crises, but then there is no qualitative difference. The content of all that still seems to be limited to the ego-process. Now, is there anything beyond this? That is the question, and we will ask only that.
SP: All these three states are contained in deep sleep too. Do you remember consciousness in sleep? They seem to postulate some entity which is beyond these three, which is untouched. Am I right?
AP: I will say we don’t see it.
MF: How can consciousness cognize something outside consciousness? We want to know something outside consciousness. How can it be known?
AP: I don’t know. I see this and ask, is that all?
SP: We must try to see the whole nature of consciousness.
MF: All this talk about beyond the mind, beyond consciousness…
K: No, sir. Scientists are saying—that’s what Sunanda is trying to say—there is the whole movement of consciousness: dreams, deep sleep, in the housewife, in the technological field—it is all within that consciousness, both horizontal and vertical. You can accumulate knowledge horizontally and so on. And scientists are asking—they have asked me before; this is not the first time—is there any mind which is unconditioned? Not that they postulate there is or there is not; they ask, is there? And that is the inquiry, right?
MF: That is a different question.
K: That is the question, sir. That is the only question. Let’s begin. What is duality? Does duality exist at all?
PYD: Of course it exists.
K: Wait, I want to question that. I know nothing—Vedanta or Advaita or science, nothing. We start with not knowing the assumptions of others, which are second-hand, thirdhand; wipe them all out. Is there duality? Of course there is woman-man, light-darkness, tall-short. Apart from the factual duality, is there any other duality? I want to find out if there is psychological duality. There is obvious duality outwardly: tall tree, short tree, different colours, different materials, and so on. There is only what is, and because we are not able to solve what is, we invent the what should be. So there is duality that way. From the idea, the fact, the what is, there is an abstraction of the ideal, the what should be, the Aristotelian idea of perfection, and so on. But there is only what is.
PYD: They say what is is dual.
K: I know only what is and not what should be.
PJ: What is, to me, is duality.
K: No. We are conditioned to duality, we are educated to duality, we function psychologically in duality.
SP: Even there the starting point is a dualistic position. It may be due to conditioning; it may be due to many factors.
K: That is a fact. That is what I want to investigate first— whether this dualistic attitude towards life has come into being because the mind hasn’t been able to actually solve what is.
SP: What is the nature of the what is you are talking about?
K: That’s what I want to get at. If I can understand what is, why should there be a duality at all?
SP: What is the instrument with which I understand what is?
K: That’s a wrong question.
S. Balasundaram (SB): Does the problem arise because there is no contact with what is?
K: That’s what I want to find out.
SB: Duality is postulated through very little contact with what is.
K: Let me put it the other way round. What is duality? Is duality a measurement?
PJ: Duality is the sense of the ‘I’ as separate from the ‘you’.
K: All right. The ‘I’ and the ‘not I’ is the basic cause of duality. Now, what is the ‘I’ that says, ‘You are different’? What is the ‘I’?
PJ: When you ask that question and I start observing the movements of the ‘I’, I find that it is not something as factual as the chair or the table or the body. In itself it has no existence.
K: May I say something which may sound absurd? There is no duality for me. There is woman-man, dark-light—we are not talking of that kind of duality. Duality exists only as the ‘I’ and the ‘not I’, the space between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’, the centre as the ‘I’ and the centre as the ‘you’. The centre as the ‘I’ looks at ‘you’, and there is a distance between the ‘I’ and the ‘you’. The distance can be expanded or narrowed down. This process is consciousness, right? I want to be clear, don’t agree to this.
PJ: This is the consciousness of everyday life.
K: Right.
SB: This distance encloses consciousness.
K: Yes. Distance is consciousness.
PYD: Distance is in consciousness.
K: No, no. There is physical distance between you and me sitting here. Then there is the distance the mind creates, which is the ‘I’ and the ‘you’. The ‘I’ and the ‘you’ and the distance is consciousness.
PYD: You distinguish between the physical and the psychological.
K: No. I don’t want to, for the moment.
SP: If you ask, ‘What is that “I”?’ it is not a concrete entity.
K: No, I am not inquiring into who is the ‘I’.
SP: We started with duality, the ‘I’ and the ‘not I’. And then he spoke of space between the ‘I’ as the centre and the other centre.
K: The space between this centre and that centre, the movement between this centre and that centre—vertical, horizontal, added, taken away—all that is consciousness.
PJ: Is that all?
K: I am just beginning.
AP: You have suggested two centres—this centre when it comes across another centre…
K: There is only this centre. The other centre is invented by this centre.
AP: I don’t say that. I say that even without the other centre, the distance comes.
K: If I have no centre, there is no other centre. Now, I want to question the whole structure of duality; I don’t accept it. We have accepted it; our philosophy, our judgement, everything is based on the ‘I’ and the ‘not I’ and all the complications arising out of it. The ‘I’ is the only centre; from there the ‘not I’ arises, and the relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘not I’, because they are divided, is inevitably conflict. So there is only this centre, from which arises the other centre, the ‘you’. I think that is fairly clear, at least for me. Don’t accept it.
MF: How does this centre arise?
K: Because I have this centre, I create the other.
MF: No. Your centre.
K: I am coming to that, I don’t want to answer that yet. Then there is the question of sleep. In the waking state, the centre creates the other centre. In that, the whole problem of relationship arises, and therefore duality arises, the conflict, the overcoming of duality, the battle, and so on. It is the centre that creates all this.
Questioner 2 (Q2): The centre is part of the self.
K: We are going to find out. Don’t yet begin to define what the centre is. So I see that because in the waking state there is a centre, its relationship will always be divided. Division is space, is time, and where there is time and space as a division, there must inevitably be conflict. That’s simple, clear, at least for me. I am not thrusting it upon you. So I see that during the waking time this goes on all the time— adjustment, comparison, violence, imitation, all that. And the centre goes to sleep, and the centre maintains this division even when it sleeps.
PJ: The centre is the division.
K: Therefore it is maintaining it.
S.W. Sundaram (SWS): What do you mean when you say that the centre goes to sleep?
K: I go to sleep physically, shut my eyes and go off.
SWS: Physically yes, but can it go to sleep psychologically?
K: We don’t know what that state is. We are going to investigate.
SP: In waking consciousness we see the person who is undergoing this experience.
K: The experiencer is the centre. The centre is memory, the centre is knowledge, the centre is always the past. It may project into the future, but it still has its roots in the past.
PYD: The centre feels it is the present. I don’t know the past or the future.
K: But it is the centre.
PYD: I’m a centre, I don’t know the past or the future.
K: No, no. You would never say you don’t know the past. You can never say you don’t know the past if you have a centre.
AP: You are the past as well as the present.
PYD: So far as my identity is concerned, the past and the future are only accretions; I have nothing to do with that. I am the present.
AP: You are the child of the past. You are the heir to everything that is your past.
PYD: That is a hypothesis.
AP: It is not a hypothesis.
PYD: No, it is a hypothesis. Why should I accept the past? I don’t know.
K: Sir, the language you are speaking now, English, is the result of the past.
PYD: That is a theory. I don’t know the past, I don’t know the future; that is my position.
K: Just a minute, sir. You speak English.
PYD: Yes.
K: That’s an accretion.
PYD: Yes.
K: What is the centre that accretes?
PYD: I call it the ‘I’, but I don’t know.
K: That’s all.
PYD: That centre I call the ‘I’.
K: So the centre which has accumulated is the ‘I’. Who is the centre that is accumulating? Is there a centre without accumulation?—language, knowledge, experience; having seen me yesterday, you will see me tomorrow if nothing happens. Is the centre different from the thing it has accumulated?
PYD: I can’t answer that.
MF: Is there consciousness without accumulation?
K: We said the content of consciousness is consciousness. There is no consciousness if there is no accumulation.
MF: You have not said it.
K: I have said it.
SP: We started with it.
K: We started with it.
MF: The content of consciousness is consciousness. That means when there is no content there is no consciousness.
K: That is what it means.
MF: So it means that there is a non-dual consciousness.
K: No, no. That is a speculation. Stick to what we started out with. Consciousness is its content. The content is consciousness. This is an absolute fact.
MF: All right, accepted.
AP: At any given time this ‘I’ is not able to command the whole field of consciousness as its purview of perception. I don’t see the whole field.
K: Because there is a centre. Where there is a centre, there is fragmentation.
PJ: So the ‘I’ is operational only through a process of thinking, which is fragmentary.
K: That is all.
AP: What I thought was that the content of consciousness has to be a part of my field of perception.
PJ: Why should it be? It is not so. If it were part of my perception that the whole content of consciousness is consciousness and that there is nothing else, then I would rest with my consciousness. The fact is I sit in front of you and say, ‘Show me the way.’ You may keep on saying that the moment we ask the way, we will never know the way, but still we ask you, ‘Show me the way.’
SP: Pupul, the first point you made was that if we respond to anything it is only a fragmentary response; it is not the total consciousness with which we respond. Now, that is what we are not clear about.
K: That’s what we are inquiring into, that’s what I am saying. As long as there is a centre, there must be fragmentation, and the fragmentation is the ‘me’ and the ‘you’ and the conflict in that relationship.
SP: Are this centre and consciousness equated or felt as a fragment of the total consciousness?
K: The centre is the content of consciousness.
SP: Any response from that is fragmented.
K: Of course. The content of consciousness is consciousness; that is irrefutable. The centre is the maker of fragments. The centre becomes aware of the fragments when the fragments are agitated or in action; otherwise it is not conscious of the other fragments. The centre is the observer of the fragments. The centre separates itself from the fragments. The centre doesn’t identify itself with the fragments. So there is always the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the experienced. So the centre is the maker of fragments, and the centre tries to gather the fragments together and go beyond. One of the fragments is sleep. And one of the fragments is keeping awake. In the state of keeping awake, there is disorder. Conflict is disorder. During sleep, the brain cells try to bring order because they can’t function effectively in disorder.
AP: This particular statement would have no validity in terms of our experience.
K: Naturally not. But I will show you in a minute how it operates. I am sure it operates with you. First see what I am saying. The centre is the source of fragmentation and therefore the source of disorder. During the waking hours, as we know in our relationships, there is contradiction, disorder, wrangles, the ‘you’ and the ‘not you’; all that takes place vertically, horizontally, etc. The brain demands order; that is a fact. Like with a child, it must have order. Order is security. You follow all this?
AP: Yes.
K: Then you go to sleep. The brain wants order, and so it takes stock. Before you sleep, you take stock of the movement of the day, don’t you? Or do you just drop off to sleep? You take stock: you say, ‘Well, I should have done this, I should have said that.’ You may not do it just before you sleep; you may do it during the day; which is, you try to establish order. So, during the waking hours, the centre creates disorder, and sleep is again the continuation of the disorder. This is obvious. No?
AP: We don’t know.
K: Wait, I will show it to you. If you had order, complete order during the day—order in the sense, not imposed order, not suppressed and all the rest of it—the brain would have a complete sense of security, because order is security. Right?
MF: Would there be no need for sleep then?
K: No, I am talking about dreams. What are dreams?
SP: When you say the brain tries to bring about order, is that a dualistic process? Is it a non-dualistic process? Who does it?
K: The brain cells demand order, otherwise they can’t function. There is no dualistic approach in this.
SP: So brain cells are different from the centre?
K: Quite right, quite right. During the day there is disorder because the centre is there. The centre is the cause of fragmentation. Fragmentation it knows only through the fragments. It is not conscious of the total fragments; therefore it has no order. And therefore it lives in disorder; it is disorder. Though it says, ‘I must experience order’, it is living in disorder, living in confusion. It can’t do anything else but create disorder because it functions only in fragmentation. Right?
AP: Yes, it is so.
K: Now, the brain cells need order, otherwise they become neurotic, destructive; that is a fact. The brain cells are always demanding order, and the centre is always creating fragmentation. See what is taking place.
Q1: You used the words brain cells. Is it a physical form?
K: Of course, the cells are physical.
Q1: Then the brain cell itself does not become neurotic.
K: I must go very, very slowly into this. See what has taken place in the physical organism. The brain cells need order; this order is denied when there is a centre because the centre is always creating division, conflict, destruction, and all the rest of it, which is a denial of security, denial of order. There is no duality. This process is going on, and the brain says, ‘Please, I must have order.’ That’s not a duality.
AP: They are two independent processes.
K: That is not a duality. No. I won’t even say ‘independent’.
PJ: I feel we are going off, moving away from the thing which is tangible to us.
K: This is very tangible.
PJ: It is not tangible.
K: What do you mean it is not tangible?
PJ: The brain cells seeking order is not tangible.
K: I will show it to you in a minute. Go slowly.
SP: The whole physical world, in spite of chaos, keeps an order. It is the very nature of the universe to maintain order. This may be of the nature of that.
PJ: Science has discovered a whole new sense of time, but it is not a real thing with us. The brain cells seeking order is not a real thing with us.
K: I am not sure when you say it is not seeking order.
PJ: It may be. Instead of going from fact to fact…
K: I am moving only from fact to fact. You have said it, and we both see the point: where there is a centre there must be conflict, there must be fragmentation, there must be every form of division between the ‘you’ and the ‘me’. The centre is creating this division. Right. How do you know?
PJ: Because I have observed it in me.
K: Verbally or factually?
PJ: Factually.
K: Now wait. The centre is the maker of fragments. The centre is the fragment. This whole field, we just now said, is disorder. How are you aware of this disorder?
PJ: Because I have seen it. One thought has come to dictate to another thought.
K: No. My question is different; you are not answering my question, forgive me. I am asking you, ‘How are you aware of this disorder?’ Is that awareness different from the disorder? If it is, then the centre is aware that it is disorder; therefore it is still disorder.
SP: Is there anything else?
K: Instead of asking, just see it. That’s all I’m saying.
SP: I see that.
K: You see that, which is, when the centre is aware that this is disorder, then it itself creates a duality as order and disorder. So how do you observe disorder—without the centre or with the centre? If it is an observation with the centre, there is division; if there is no observation of the centre, there is only disorder.
PJ: Only?
K: Disorder.
PJ: Or order?
K: Wait. When the centre is aware that this is disorder, then there is division, and this division is the very essence of disorder. When the centre is not there and aware, what takes place?
PJ: Then there is no centre or disorder.
K: Therefore what has taken place? There is no disorder; that’s a fact. Which is what the brain cells demand.
PJ: Now when you bring in that, you are taking it away. Let’s not bring it in.
K: All right. But it is very important.
PJ: It is not necessary for the moment. Let us leave it there.
K: Stop there. I have discovered something—that the centre creates space and time. Where there is space and time, there must be division in relationship and therefore disorder in relationship. Having disorder in relationship, the centre creates other disorders because of its very nature. There is disorder not only in relationship; there is disorder in thought, action, idea.
PJ: Which is the fact? The perception of order or…
K: You are aware only of disorder. Please just listen quietly. I am also feeling my way into it. I see that the centre is the source of disorder, wherever it moves—in relationship, in thought, in action, in perception. There is the perceiver and the perceived, right? So wherever the centre operates, moves, functions, has its momentum, there must be division, conflict, and all the rest of it. Where there is a centre, there is disorder. Disorder is the centre. How are you aware of it? Is the centre aware of the disorder, or is there only disorder? And if there is no centre to be aware of disorder, there is complete order. Then the fragments come to an end. Obviously, because there is no centre which is making the fragments.
PJ: In that sense, the moment the fragment exists, the reality is the fragment.
K: Of course, of course.
PJ: When the fragments end, the reality is a non-fact.
K: Put it any way you like.
PJ: So there is no division. You are back into the Vedantic…
K: I refuse to enter into that field.
PJ: I am putting it.
K: No, I think that is a theory.
AP: No, sir. When you state the other position, up to the point of saying that the ‘I’ is the source and centre of disorder or that the centre is disorder, that is a fact with me. Then you say that if there is no centre observing that disorder…
K: No. I asked, ‘Who is observing the disorder?’
AP: Yes, I see this.
K: So there is no consciousness of order.
AP: This is what I am saying. This is very important.
K: That’s what I am saying. And that is the beauty of order.
PJ: What does the word reality mean to you?
K: Nothing.
PJ: What do you mean by that word nothing? I would like to explore that word nothing.
K: When it is something, it is not reality.
AP: It comes to saying that the field of cognition is the field of unreality.
K: No, no, be careful. Leave that now. Let’s go into the question of dreams because that is apparently one of the fragments of our life. What are dreams? What is the matrix or the structure of dreams? How do they happen?
Radhika Herzberger (RH): They happen when desire is not fulfilled.
K: So you are saying that during the day I desire something, but it has not been fulfilled, it has not been carried out, it has not been worked out, so the desire continues.
RH: I see the desire fulfilled.
K: No. During the day I desire something. If that desire is fulfilled, it is finished. If it is not fulfilled, the desire goes on.
PJ: Why do we go beyond? As thought is an unending process from time without beginning, expelled from the brain cells, in the same way when the mind is totally asleep…
K: …very quiet.
PJ: …it is another form of the same propulsion.
K: Exactly the same. Which is, the movement of the day still goes on; that’s all. That centre is the factor of disorder and creates disorder during the day, and the movement still goes on. The movement becomes dreams, interpretation of symbols, and all the rest of it. It is the same movement.
MF: You keep on saying that the centre is the source of disorder.
K: Not the source—is disorder.
MF: Is disorder. As I see it, the sense of ‘I’ is a call from man longing for order.
K: No!
MF: Just wait, don’t say no yet. Disorder is a given factor if there is nobody to create it. And I live in this world begging for order, searching for order, and all the duality is a given duality, not a created duality.
K: Of course, no. Sorry, it is not. You can discuss it.
MF: I find it when I come into the world.
AP: Who creates that duality?
MF: I don’t know.
AP: If you observe it, you will see that you create it yourself.
K: Your parents have created it.
MF: No. My parents are apart from the duality. I don’t want duality. All my life is a constant search for non-duality, for being friendly, for being affectionate. The very search for…
K: The very search for non-duality is duality.
MF: I know that whatever I do is for the sake of order. The order may be illusory, temporary, a kind of petty little order, but still there is no gesture, no posture of the mind which doesn’t aim at order. The eating, the drinking, the sleeping are just restoring order, making life possible, because life without order is not possible. So chaos is something imposed on me. I am all the time being churned by it. And all the time I am just collecting myself, and the sleeping and the dreaming and the eating are a part of the attempt to restore balance, to restore order, but disorder is all the time forced on me. That is my observation. If you say it is not so, then my observation and your observation differ; that’s all.
AP: Let us observe our own personal lives. Observing our personal lives over the past sixty years, would you say that the factor of disorder is imposed on you, or would you say it is intrinsic?
MF: Imposed.
AP: Right from the beginning, every time you get into difficulties, every time you are in conflict, is it always somebody else responsible for it or you yourself?
MF: Not somebody else. It is chaos.
AP: Don’t you assume responsibility for everything?
MF: For nothing.
SB: We individuals try to bring about order in ourselves and outside with the centre, but basically we bring about disorder.
MF: The means are faulty, but we try to bring about order.
AP: Does this not land us in a position of self-righteousness?
MF: Doesn’t matter.
AP: No. Let us examine whether there is any self-illusion in that.
SB: Doesn’t this show that trying to bring order with the centre itself creates disorder?
MF: That is true, because they have selected the wrong means. But the need for order is primordial.
PJ: But that’s what Krishnaji says: the brain cells seek order.
AP: It is the nature of the self to create illusion, to deceive itself, to be self-righteous, and to involve itself in eternal problems.
MF: No.
AP: No?
MF: No.
Q1: Can we take a concrete example? I am born with the self-preservation instinct. That instinct is the centre which Krishnaji says is the source of disorder.
K: I don’t say it. No, sir, sorry. Self-preservation is a natural instinct of the body.
Q1: Not of the body.
K: Then what else is there?
Q1: The mind.
K: That is the centre.
Q1: Is it there in us, the centre?
K: Of course.
Q2: Doesn’t the instinct of self-preservation itself create the centre?
K: No. The body must preserve itself, otherwise there is nothing left.
PJ: We are going off.
K: I haven’t left it. So the movement of daily life continues in sleep. It is the same movement, and dreams are the expression of that movement. Now, when I wake up I say I had dreams. That is only a means of communication. Dreams are ‘me’, dreams are not separate from the centre which has created this movement of disorder.
SP: Consciousness has been conscious of this function, which it verbalizes.
K: Verbalizes. That’s all. The next factor is deep sleep. Are you aware that you are deeply asleep? You might say next morning, ‘I have had an awfully good, long sleep’, but you are not conscious of deep sleep.
SP: Who was aware to say, ‘I was asleep’?
K: No. You never say, ‘I’ve had a deep sleep.’
SP: I’ve had a good sleep.
K: No. You don’t say, ‘I have had a most extraordinarily deep sleep.’
PJ: You may say you had no dreams.
K: That’s all, that’s all you can say: ‘I have had no dreams last night, I had a peaceful night without kicking around.’
MF: I’ve come across people who say, ‘When I am deeply asleep, I am fully aware that I have no thoughts, I have no consciousness, but I am there.’
K: I don’t know whose words these are. We are talking just amongst ourselves. So all that one can say is, ‘I have had a very good sleep without dreams.’ How do you investigate that state which is without dreams, a state which you just now called deep sleep? With the conscious mind? Or bring a lot of theories, what psychologists, analysts have said about it?
SP: Not consciously.
K: Then how do you do it? How do you go into it?
SP: Deep sleep has to reveal itself; otherwise you can’t, from the wakeful consciousness, analyse it. How does one go into it?
K: Why do you want to go into it?
SP: Because I want to know whether it is the same state.
SWS: When there is sleep without dream, there is no centre. Then again the centre comes; it remembers that I had sleep without dream, and again the centre starts its operation.
SP: This is the Vedantic position: deep sleep is without a centre.
K: Why don’t we talk only about what is knowable?
PJ: You talked of investigating deep sleep. Is it possible to investigate deep sleep?
PYD: I see only one fact: in deep sleep there is no centre.
K: How do you know?
PYD: Because I know nothing about that.
MF: Deep sleep means very low intensity of consciousness; that’s all.
K: Very low intensity of consciousness. Right.
MF: But the centre is going on.
PJ: I asked a question, ‘Is it possible to investigate deep sleep?’
PYD: I think it is.
K: Careful, sir. What do you mean by investigating? Either I investigate, the centre investigates, or it is like watching a film moving. You watch the scene, picture, or cinema; you are not identified with it, you are not part of it; you are merely observing without any reaction.
SP: What is it that is observing without identification?
K: There is nothing to observe that; there is only observation.
SWS: There is no centre to observe. You don’t observe with the centre; there is observation.
K: That is what Pupul is asking: can that deep sleep be investigated? We understand what that word means. Not penetrating consciously into it; that is impossible. Can it be revealed, can it be exposed, is it observable? I say yes. Can I observe you without an image, without a symbol, without a name; just observe? Of course it is possible.
Q1: The observer is there; without the observer can you observe?
K: The observer is the centre, the observer is the past, the observer is the divider, the observer is the space between you and me. You can experiment with this: observe that line that is patterned on that lamp. You can observe it without naming it, without calling it something; just look. The moment you name it, it begins.
SWS: Then the observer comes. The investigation into deep sleep, as you said, is possible; one has made an attempt. But doesn’t it mean one is depleted the next day? Doesn’t it require a lot of energy?
PJ: First of all, you have to have the tools with which this is possible. I am using the word tools because words have to be used. But one has to have a state of awareness where this is possible. If that state of awareness is not, then this is not possible. It is only when there is the state of awareness, or jagriti…
K: You see, you immediately reduce all this to Sanskrit terminology.
PJ: No, I don’t want to.
K: I want to chuck the whole thing. I want to throw out the whole traditional approach. I know nothing about it. We repeat what others have said. I don’t want to repeat what others have said, including Shankara, Buddha, analysts, psychologists. We are just repeating what somebody else has said, and I say that is not truth. So is there an observation of this disorder without the centre becoming aware that there is disorder? If that can be solved, I have solved the whole momentum of it. Then what is order? And we said the centre can never be aware of order. Then what is that state? What is virtue of which there is no consciousness as being virtuous? What man traditionally accepts as virtue is a practice. Vanity practising humility is still vanity. So the centre which doesn’t practise humility, we could say, is something different. The centre which is aware that it is practising humility is still vanity. Then what is virtue? A state of not being aware of being virtuous. If the centre is aware that it has humility, it is not humility. Then virtue is a state of mind which it is not conscious that it is virtuous. Therefore this topples all practices, all sadhanas. I want to kick all that.
MF: The way you put it in some other talk was: to see that all desire to improve is disorder, is virtue.
K: I think it is. To see disorder not from a centre is order. That order you cannot be conscious of. If you are conscious of it, it is disorder. And therefore what is virtue which you are all practising, practising? It has no meaning! And if there is love, can you be conscious of love? Can the centre say, ‘I love’?