Scientists Seminar 2, Ojai, California, 19 March 1976
David Bohm: Is everybody here now? George… oh.
(Break in audio)
…we should start the afternoon session. Do you want to say something, or…?
Krishnamurti: I don’t know, sir. We were talking this morning about fear, pleasure and suffering, and all thought leads to suffering — that’s where we left off, more or less. I do not know if you want to continue with that.
DB: Does anybody want to discuss what was said this morning, or at least that part of it? Yes?
Q: Can we get back once more to our little disagreement? You said that we arrive at the moment of pure sensation when we see the room and the proportions and the colours without making judgments, without preference. Now, there are two questions I want to ask about this. The first is: do we ever arrive at that point actually? You say, ‘Yes,’ I understand. Your claim is that we do arrive at such a point.
K: Not I claim, but one does arrive at that point.
(Laughter)
Q: All right; all right. The other question is: if we see the proportions and the colours, does this mean that thought has ceased? It seems to me that, in one sense, if we see the proportions and see the colours, if we see the room as it is, then we have knowledge of the room and, in a sense, this is thought. So it’s a matter of saying… when you talk about the importance of getting rid of thought and the relation of thought to suffering, I haven’t quite understood just what thought is and what it isn’t.
K: Sir, what… May I…? Does anybody want to answer him, please? I’m just…
Sunanda Patwardhan: I would ask the question: what is seeing without thought? What is seeing? Seeing the picture, seeing this — is there thought involved in seeing?
Q: I say, ‘Yes,’ especially if you see — as Krishnamurti says — especially if in the seeing you see the proportions, you see that this is longer than this, and you see that this is blue and that this is red or pink.
Q: Well, I think there was a misunderstanding of some sort, you know.
Q: There must be.
Q: You see the redness but if you see it as redness then, of course, that’s thought. You see the proportions but if you see them as proportions then that’s thought.
Q: I don’t understand that. This seems to me to be word-magic.
Q: (Laughs) …well…
Gordon Globus: Perhaps it’s because you equate talking about things with perception.
Q: No, I don’t. No, I don’t. No, I don’t.
GG: Because it’s a manner…
Q: T his can be entirely non-verbal. It seems to me that some thought is non-verbal, that you don’t have to have words.
SP: ‘Some thought is non-verbal’ — what does it mean?
Q: It could be images, but if I see it as an image then that’s thought too and I’m not really seeing it. I’m seeing it through the screen of my image.
K: Sir, would it help you to… (inaudible) …or go into the question of what is awareness?
Q: Yes, I’d like very much to do that.
SP: Also sir, what is perception?
K: We’ll come to that. We’ll come to that. But if we talked about what it is to be aware. One level of awareness is the process of thought. Obviously. No? The judgment-value as red, blue, white, pink, tall, short, wide room, long room. And is there an awareness without any choice?
SP: Choice or vocalisation?
K: Yes. I’m asking you: is there any kind of awareness in which there is no process of choosing?
DB: Would you say that thought and choosing are the same? Would you say that thought is defined by choice? In other words, that thought is the same as choice.
K: Yes.
DB: And then…
K: I want to go step by step, lead into it.
DB: Yes.
K: We know there is an awareness where thought is in operation. Right sir?
Q: When thought is choosing.
K: Is in operation, saying, ‘It is tall, short, pink, blue.’
Q: Is this choosing?
K: No, I say that’s one level of awareness.
Q: All right.
K: Then there is the whole… in that awareness I choose: ‘I prefer this and I don’t prefer that’; ‘I like this,’ or, ‘I don’t like that.’ Then is there an awareness in which there is no thought, no measurement, no process of time, and choice? Is there an awareness in which all this doesn’t exist?
SP: Before we come to come to position two, if I enter the room and my eye is caught by that particular picture, is there unconscious choice in it?
K: Our unconscious recognition of it, as a picture.
SP: So cognition is thought?
K: Yes. So cognition is… — we said all that.
SP: So even when there is no conscious choice, there is…
K: No, let’s be clear that we are both talking of the same thing. That is, we said in awareness, there is the process of the movement of thought, as measure, as time. You can translate it ten different ways. Then is there an awareness in which the movement of thought doesn’t exist at all, as time, measure? And is that not direct perception?
DB: In this awareness, you say there is no proportion, for example.
K: That’s right, sir — measure, proportion, comparison. This does take place when you are totally attentive. There is no centre from which you are attending. I mean, you can see… Do it oneself, one can see this. Concentration is from a centre; attention is not.
Q: Is it not true though, that even assuming that conscious awareness can take place, that the moment you verbalise it you’ve used a thought process?
K: Yes sir.
Q: Therefore, no matter what it is, it remains — when it’s conscious-less awareness — only within your cerebrum, and the moment you try to translate that to anybody you’ve verbalised and therefore thought.
K: So is the mind, is thought a process of verbalisation? Or is there a thinking without the word?
Q: Let me… again, I’ll concede that you can have a thought process without consciousness.
K: Just a minute, sir. I don’t… Then we…
Q: I’ll concede that only for the purpose of the discussion.
K: Ah, no, no. What do you mean ‘without consciousness’, sir? I don’t understand.
Q: Well, let’s take your words *choiceless awareness*.
K: We said that this morning.
Q: I will concede that that can exist, in one’s own cerebrum, but the moment you vocalise or verbalise or try to tell anybody, you’ve translated it and transformed it from what it was.
K: You are saying, ‘The description is not the described.’
Q: I’m saying more than that. I say that we can’t… you cannot…
K: Yes sir. I know; much more.
Q: Go ahead. I’m…
K: No sir, quite right. You go ahead, sir — please.
Q: There is no way of proving or disproving choiceless awareness, once we concede that verbalisation translates it.
K: Verbalisation…?
Q: Translates it. Just as you said: ‘The described is not the described.’
K: That’s all.
Q: Right?
K: Right.
Q: But therefore choiceless awareness can be used in positing a philosophy, but is itself un-provable.
K: What do you mean *philosophy*, sir?
Q: You could prove or disprove anything.
K: Philosophy…
Q: An abstract thought.
K: No. Philosophy means the love of life, love of truth, not abstract thought. That’s just… That is the speculation of philosophers.
Q: I’ll go to your words. I’ll use *choiceless awareness*.
K: No, wait.
DB: I think the question is: how can you communicate this choiceless awareness? If I can put it like this: that the minute you communicate it, it becomes thought. Now, is it possible… Now, when you communicate choiceless awareness is there choice?
K: Sir, first of all, I see very clearly the word is not the thing.
DB: Yes.
K: That’s very clear. Then I want to tell you something.
DB: Right.
K: I say listen to the word but the word is not the thing.
DB: Yes. So you’re not using the word in the usual way.
K: Obviously. When I describe the mountain, the mountain is not the description. So I say there are these various states of awareness: awareness as a process of thought, an awareness which is a total attention, in which there is no centre from which you are attending. I mean, one can see this in one’s own life.
DB: Well, many people may feel they haven’t seen it. You see, this…
Q: No, worse than that is you may see in your own life but if you attempt to express it to anybody…
K: I want to tell you a story, sir. I want to tell you something. So I have to use words.
Q: I understand.
K: So I say, don’t be caught by words. Words are merely to communicate. And slip through the words and see the truth of it.
David Shainberg: I wonder if we could explore — now or at some point — what is the different way of using words that they don’t… words that refer to this sort of event beyond such use of words that would lock you into such knowing? In other words, really the use of metaphor, or the use of words that… I mean, you’ve talked in the past about negative thinking, for instance: the denial of a certain thing, which in a way creates the possibility for this event. So I wonder what could you say about the different kinds of use of language that provides this kind of event, to understand this event?
K: Sir…
DS: I mean, this man was talking about *proving*. Certainly we don’t mean that kind of language.
K: No, Dr Muses will tell you the structure of language, the nature of language, the usage of language, how language came into being and all the rest of it. But is one’s mind slave to words? That’s what I want… You follow? Are we always going round in words? And what is behind the word?
DS: Or what…? I don’t know if I would say that — ‘What’s behind the word?’ — I would say what… yes, what is behind the words, but it’s almost as if we can go both ways. What is behind the words, but how do the words help us go behind what we were behind?
K: Sir, what is the difference between *communication* and *communion*? In communion there is no verbalisation. I want to commune with you about something, I don’t have to talk about it. Which means you and I must be at the same level, at the same time, with the same intensity, otherwise there is no communion.
DS: Are you saying that that’s always without words?
K: No. Communication is with words.
DS: And communion is never with words.
K: It may come through words.
DS: That’s what I want to get at. That’s just what I want to get at: what is the nature of words in relationship to communion?
K: After all, if I sat still, I didn’t speak and I want to commune with you about something, you wouldn’t understand me. So I have to use words and establish the meaning of the words which we both have — the same meaning — and then go beyond it.
DS: Yes. Well, what kind of words do we use to go beyond the words?
K: Ah, no sir. No. After all, I tell you something — just a minute — I tell you, we tell you, that all thought at any level — all thought — breeds suffering. A verbal statement. Right? Now, do you — we are talking impersonally, not… — do you see the truth of it instantly?
DS: Now…
K: Or do you analyse it, go through all the process of deduction, weighing and judging and… or do you see instantly the truth of such a statement? The perception, the seeing of the truth of it, is communion, which is non-verbal. I don’t know…
DS: Yes. At the risk of being paradoxical, though, we’ve taken a verbal means to get to a non-verbal communion.
K: I said that, sir.
DS: Right.
K: I said we must both of us agree to the meaning of certain words, according to the dictionary, which is the common… and the root meaning of that word, and both of us see that it has… verbally we understand each other, and we say… you make a statement. Do I make an abstraction of the statement, or see instantly the truth of it?
Q: But once you see that can happen without words, then it’s clear that it isn’t the use of the words that allows you to arrive at it. We were talking about whether there’s a verbal technique for arriving at this state. There can’t be, primarily because you can arrive at that state without a verbal technique. So it isn’t the technique, it’s the state. And there isn’t…
DS: So we’re saying in a way that words there are not being used as words.
K: I don’t quite understand the difficulty of this, sir.
DS: Well, I’m trying to bring out here or to get clearer about the fact of the words being really the way we got to this. You and I have now communed about this state. There’s a communion there.
K: That is, we both of us understand the verbal meaning, first.
DS: Right. We’ve both got the verbal meaning.
K: Then do you see it instantly — the truth of it — or do you take time, analysis, weighing… all the rest of it?
DS: No, it’s instant.
K: Ah! If it is instant, then it must apply in life. It is not an abstract perception. It is a non-verbal perception in daily life.
DS: Right.
K: And then what is the relationship of thought to action in daily life? And so on, so on, so on.
DS: Right. That’s the question.
(Pause)
K: I’m afraid Dr Maxwell… Beg your pardon, sir.
George Sudarshan: I was going to say, perhaps it should be pointed that Krishnaji is deliberately using words in a technical sense. You are endowing certain words with certain profound meanings for purposes of discussion, and unless those meanings are treated as a dictionary, in a sense two people could disagree.
K: Yes sir.
GS: For example, when Mr. Gold and you were exchanging, having the dialogue, it was clear that initially there was a disagreement with regard to the words.
K: Yes, that’s all.
GS: But once one has shared some experiences in common and those experiences are used as a sort of… like a boatman throwing a rope on to the shore, when those are exchanged and there is a point of communication, that channel can be strengthened to enlarge the communication. But if one keeps disagreeing about the meaning of words…
K: Oh, then we’re…
GS: …then there is no possibility. So there is a possibility of words also being used as a means of avoiding understanding.
Q: It’s usually the way they are used.
GS: Very often.
Charles Muses: There’s the question of meanings. Words, really, in the sense that… in the positive sense I think that we’re talking about now — you and Krishnamurti — are used to evoke the kind of meanings that will lead us beyond them. And that isn’t really paradoxical, any more than a first-stage rocket is used to get the second stage beyond itself.
K: Yes sir. That’s right, sir. Perfectly right.
(Pause)
So Dr Sunanda asked just now: what is perception? Right? Didn’t you ask that?
SP: Yes sir. Again sir, in the new definition of the word *awareness*, you seem to be making a distinction between awareness and attention.
K: Yes.
SP: In awareness, there is non-dualistic…
K: Don’t use (laughs) Indian philosophical words. You know, there’s the Advaita and Vedanta and non-Advaita and all the rest of it. Don’t…
SP: No, in awareness there is the entity which is aware.
K: That’s part of it, part of it — that’s better. There is an entity or a centre from which you are aware. The centre may be conditioned, is the conditioned or the prejudice, the knowledge and so on. From that conditioned mind, there is a certain awareness. That’s obvious. Then is there an awareness in which there is no conditioning at all? I’m putting it differently.
Q: Are we saying awareness and thought are the same?
K: Not for the moment, sir. Don’t…
Q: What’s the distinction then between *awareness* and *thought*? I’m not clear on that.
SP: What is awareness?
Q: I’m trying to find out how we’re using it here.
SP: The feel of it.
Q: Well, it seems to me offhand — just thinking about it or not thinking about it, whatever it is one does — that there are two kinds: one is awareness without thought, and one is awareness with thought.
K: Sir, let’s put it this way. I want to know myself: what I am, what my… I want to know myself completely. Now, how am I to know? By the process of thought? A nalysis?
Q: Well, you won’t get very far, yes.
K: Or am I aware of the whole movement of myself? *Aware*, in the sense watching, in which the watcher is the watched. Not the watcher is different from that which he’s watching. I don’t know…
DB: Yes. Is there any difference between *awareness* and *perception* then? You see, there’s watching… Isn’t watching perception?
K: That’s right, sir.
SP: No, no. There is also some other factor in this. Aware of myself — who is the self? The multiplicity of selves are there. What do you mean by ‘aware of myself totally’? At different times I am different…
K: I am coming… You’ve jumped too… Look, Sunandaji — Dr… would you?
SP: No, no.
K: Sunandaji.
(Laughter)
It’s important that I know myself. Ancient Greeks have said it, Hindus have said it, but we don’t seem to penetrate into oneself. I want to know my whole nature and structure of being and all that. How am I to watch myself? Right? Is the watcher different from the watched? It’s not a theoretical question, because it’s very important for me to answer that question. If the watcher is different from the watched, then there is conflict. Then there is struggle, there is effort, there is all the business of suppression, conformity — all that arises. But if the watcher is the watched, then my perception is entirely different. I don’t know if… Isn’t that so, sir? Don’t… Somebody…
Q: Well, I was confused because, a little while ago when you were talking about awareness, you were talking about awareness from a centre. Now, awareness from a centre seems to me to be thought.
K: No…
Q: Awareness with no centre — what you’re talking about now — seems to be a different animal.
K: Yes. I want, sir… You are an analyst, you’re a psychologist, you are whatever you are.
Q: Well…
K: You want to know yourself — how do you set about it? What other people tell you?
Q: No.
K: What psychologists tell you?
DS: Well, if you observe, I think this question comes up — I have observed more often than not —
K: No, that’s a…
DS: …that when people say, ‘to know yourself,’ what they do is they say they know themselves and then they find out what’s wrong with that. They say something is wrong with what they know.
K: Sir…
DS: ‘I know myself.’ Then I say, ‘I know this about myself,’ and I say, ‘Well, that’s wrong.’
K: Can you ever say you know yourself?
DS: No.
K: No, don’t… Go into it, sir.
DS: Yes, I am.
K: M oment you say, ‘I know,’ it’s already in the past, and with that past you judge the present and examine what I am. So I’m asking: can you know yourself or be…? If you want to understand yourself, what do you do? Analyse? Speculate? Follow what other people have said what you are? So if you discard all that — intelligently, because you see it doesn’t lead anywhere — then you have to ask: can I observe myself without any distortion? Which means no prejudice, no goal, no purpose, no causation either. I don’t know if you follow all this. So can I observe myself with an awareness in which this judgment evaluation doesn’t exist?
GG: It seems to me that we’re trying to unravel what are the properties of awareness. And the question is, are there two kinds of awareness: an awareness with thought and an awareness without thought? And it seems to me that the awareness with thought is an awareness with distinctions, and an awareness without thought is an awareness which contains no distinctions of any kind.
K: That’s right sir.
GG: And it’s not a provable…
K: I don’t want to prove anything.
GG: Right. I want to say that I think some people would like to have the proof that there is an awareness without distinctions. But it is not a provable thing because we’re talking about the properties of awareness, which is our fundamental given. It’s our primitive. It’s not a question about which proof can be asked, it’s a fact of achievement, to achieve this awareness.
CM: Well, there’s a kind of a proof — like the taste of a pudding is in the eating of it.
K: Quite right, sir. Quite right.
Q: Exactly.
Q: That’s only to the individual. It’s only to himself.
CM: Well, that’s all any proof is. That’s all any proof is.
Q: Not any proof. To himself.
CM: ‘A man convinced against his will…’
K: What sir?
Q: The proofs they are talking about — the proof is in the eating and so forth — that’s to the individual. He satisfies…
K: No sir. I don’t…
Q: No, I don’t…
(K laughs)
I’m only talking about what they indicate as a proof.
K: No, I don’t want to prove to myself or to anybody how one has to look at oneself. That’s all. If you want to play… If you want to do it, do it; if you don’t, don’t. It is totally irrelevant.
Renee Weber: May I ask something? Why is it true that if one experiences that the watcher is the watched — to use your words — why is it true that then the conflict state disappears?
K: Yes, I said that.
RW: How does that work? What makes that happen?
K: Ah! Do you see? You see, Dr. Sudarshan? What makes it happen? You want a way, don’t you?
RW: No, I’m not asking a question about a method. I’m not using ‘how’ in that way. I’m asking, what in that relationship to oneself requires no further step, which is what you’ve said?
K: No, wait. Wait madame. Look at it this way: when I look at myself, there is a contradiction, isn’t there? One desire says, ‘You must be that,’ another desire says, ‘No, don’t be that.’ Or one conclusion opposed to another conclusion. Right? So there is this dualistic, opposing element in me, in one. And I say, why does it exist? Does it exist because of the division between the thinker and the thought, between the observer and observed, the experiencer and the experienced — all that? If this dualistic attitude and opposing way of living is the result of this — that is, observer is different from the observed — then our life must be endless conflict. Right? So I want to find out if conflict can end — outwardly and inwardly. And therefore I say the observer is the observed. That’s a fact. You follow? That’s a truth. Do you see it instantly or will you take time over it to think about it?
(Pause)
If you take time over it, what… why do you take time over it?
RW: Because it would almost seem to me — now, to bring this back to language — that in that state there would be no… language would not be possible at all, that we’d have to learn to live without language.
K: Look madame, could we put it this way? When there is contradiction, there is a wastage of energy. Right? When the observer and the observed are different, then there is wastage of energy — no? — because of conflict. Are we meeting each other or am I…? And when the observer is the observed there is no wastage of energy. And it is only when there is that great energy then there is a perception of what is truth. I’ll shut up after that.
RW: No, but — excuse me — then is it as if you’re saying that the observed is consciousness?
K: Madame, what is the observer? Who is the observer?
RW: No, not the observer, the observed.
K: No, both. Who is the observer? When I say to myself, ‘I mustn’t be angry,’ who is the observer? ‘I mustn’t be greedy,’ — or whatever it is — who is that observer? Go on, sir, you’re all…
Q: Could we take a simple example?
K: Yes sir.
Q: Suppose I have a red expanse in front of me and that’s all that I can see, and I look at it and I’m aware of it. The past… I’m observing it without… I’m aware of it without conditioning, so in a sense time stops. Now, what am I observing? I’m observing the red expanse, unconditioned — I am the red expanse. The observer is the observed at that moment. Does this make sense at all?
K: I don’t quite follow it, sir.
Q: No? Okay. The observer is the observed.
K: But it’s not a… it is an actuality.
Q: That’s right.
K: Observer is the observed. That brings about a state of mind in which there is no conflict…
Q: That’s right.
K: …no contradiction. That’s all.
SP: Sir, but — it’s true, it is a state of actuality — but the problem is one of reversibility. It is not…
K: What? Slowly. What?
SP: The problem is constantly you are… sometimes the state is, most of the time there is the thinker and thought. So it is a reverse… in consciousness, there is the state of reversibility.
K: I question that.
SP: Then…
K: Wait, wait! First, take my… I question it. When you see something very clearly there’s no reversibility.
SP: Not at that moment.
K: No, never.
SP: You are saying…
K: If I see — wait a minute — if I see, very clearly, that all spiritual organisations bring division between man and man — if I see that very clearly — it’s finished once and for all.
SP: That is understandable.
K: Wait — that’s all. Take… step by step, go into it. If I see it is absolutely necessary to be totally free of fear… once and for all.
SP: It’s more difficult, because you don’t know the totality of fear.
K: Wait. I’m going to find out. I don’t say ‘more difficult’ — I don’t know. You start with assumptions. You postulate and then work towards it. I don’t know. I do not know whether human beings can ever be free of fear. I want to find out if I as a human being, part of this world, mess and all the rest of it, if my mind psychologically can ever be free of fear. Not partially one day…
Q: Isn’t that a jump?
SP: I can come upon the question, but how I come upon that question and how I face it may be partial. It may not be total at all.
K: What? What? What is wrong?
SP: Fear. Sometimes… Today I may feel that I am out of the fear, but tomorrow some other new form of fear may come.
K: So I’m going to find out. I am going to find out whether fear is created by environment or fear has a different source or they are both the same. I must go into it. That means I must have energy. And I cannot waste energy in this inquiry. Therefore I must be first very clear that the observer is the observed.
CM: When you repudiate religious institutions, for instance, we have to get to another, I think, meaning of the word *is* because then you don’t feel at all one with these things you repudiate.
K: Yes sir.
(Pause)
CM: It’s obvious that when we do fear, we are not… we feel a terrific separation with whatever we observe at that moment.
K: That’s right.
CM: But the word *is* has a lot of meanings.
K: Only truth can say, ‘I am’ or, ‘I is’.
CM: ‘I is’ is…
K: (Laughs) — nobody else can.
CM: So it comes back to that individual proof, that each man or woman must finally make for themselves, we were talking about. That’s where the final… the liberty lies. Maybe two people have a shared reality of that, then the verbalism of course can establish that and that can become communion.
Q: You’ll never establish the sharing.
CM: That can become communion.
Q: You’ll never established the sharing.
CM: Well, you maybe have not had that experience of sharing with anybody — a shared reality — but only when that reality is shared, can communication be said to have turned into its true end, otherwise there’s separation.
Q: You’re in a circle: the moment you tell me what your experience is, you’ve lost it.
CM: Not necessarily. P oets are pretty good at doing this, at conveying.
K: Could we put it this way, sir? Could we start without any assumption, without any formula, without any conclusion? Start that way and see what happens. Because we seek security in conclusions, because that gives me a modus of… a way of living and I’m conditioned to that. So I’m asking, can my mind, can my life function without any formula?
(Pause)
And am I aware that I’m full of formulas, full of conclusions and, ‘This is right, that’s wrong’; ‘This is God, this is not God’; ‘State is the only thing…’ — full of these things?
DS: In line with that, I wonder if I could bring up the issue: how does it arrive then that we even ask the question, ‘Can I be free of fear?’?
K: Because I see fear around me and in me.
DS: Period.
K: First… yes. I see it.
DS: But that’s all you see. You don’t see freedom from it.
K: I’m going to find out.
DS: Wait a second, you’re still making a jump there. All you see is fear.
K: Yes sir. Now, wait a minute. All I see is fear.
DS: Period.
K: No, wait, wait. All I see is fear. Is man going to live forever in fear?
DS: I don’t know.
K: So I’m going to find out.
DS: Right — all I’ve got is fear right now.
K: Wait! But I’m going to find out.
DS: Right.
K: I can only find out if my mind is free from any conclusions, from any desire to be free. All this requires tremendous inward alertness.
DS: But I am afraid right now in the examination of fear.
K: Why?
DS: Well, that’s the fear. I feel afraid of… It’s that sense of being in fear.
Q: You’re afraid you won’t be able to get out of it.
DS: I’m afraid I won’t be able to get out of it.
K: Or are you afraid what would happen if you had no fear?
SP: That is so.
DS: Okay — yes.
K: Not, ‘Okay.’ (Laughs)
DS: No, no, no, no. I feel that. I mean, there’s something to that.
K: It isn’t an agreement.
GS: I think it is, mostly the question is, that I am afraid that there is no way out of fear.
K: That’s it, sir. That’s really it.
GS: Now, what do we do?
K: I’m going to show you the way out. (Laughs)
( Laughter)
CM: Well, then you have to have another ingredient: you have to have hope from the… (inaudible).
K: No, I don’t… I have no hope.
Q: One must have…
K: That’s a conclusion.
CM: …if you’re going to show you the way out. You have hope which is… (inaudible).
K: We’ll go into it, sir. We’ll go into, have a dialogue, search it out.
CM: The energy to go into it presupposes a latent hope.
K: Ah…!
DS: I don’t believe you can help me.
(Laughter)
K: What sir?
DS: I don’t believe you can show me. You can’t show me a way out.
K: No, we will have a dialogue about it. We’ll investigate it together. We will… That is, you and I must listen to it, capable of listening. Not prejudice and, you know, all the rest of it. So will you listen in the dialogue we are going to have about fear? Both the unconscious, deep-rooted fears and the superficial fears. Is this everlasting fear going to remain with man? And if there is… if I am going to live everlastingly with fear, I’m going to destroy everything around me because fear is the… one of the roots of violence and so on, so on, so on. So I must find out how to look at fear in myself, in human beings. You understand, sir? Do I look at it with the desire to escape from it, or with the fear that… what would happen if I have no fear?
DS: Well, you snuck that in. You said that if I don’t get rid of this fear I’m going to destroy everything. So in a way you’ve made me afraid…
K: Ah, no!
DS: …that if I don’t get rid of it, I’m going to ruin everything.
K: No, no, I am looking at all this. I am looking at the map. There is the… I am looking at the map of fear. Do I look — please, sir — do I look at it as a whole or partially? Go on, sir, this is for you to… Do I look at the map entirely with one glance — you follow? — or I go from one town after the other, one village, one river… and then collect, gathering the little bits and say, ‘Now, I have understood fear.’ Which do we do?
Q: David, are you asking in a state of fear? Can you ask about fear if you’re afraid? Obviously you can’t.. any conclusion you come to…
Q: …anything you see will be confused, distorted by fear.
DS: Yes. But I think there’s the issue — I think David sort of snuck it in before — which was: if I’m afraid and I’m observing fear and we’re observing together, now, what am I getting from you as I’m talking about it? I’m observing fear in a state of fear.
K: Observe… Don’t…
DS: Now, who’s observing?
K: Wait! Don’t move away from it. Don’t rationalise. Don’t make an abstraction of it.
(Pause)
So can…
DB: You’re trying to straighten out the logical tangle first, you know, before actually observing. In other words, you’re trying to get all the logic and the words straight, first. You see what I mean? But that can’t be done, you know, right?
GG: I think there’s a confusion there, David. When one is in a state of fear, one isn’t observing fear, it is a way of observing. And to observe fear is to no longer have that way of observing. By virtue of observing fear one is no longer afraid.
K: Yes sir!
GG: I think that’s…
DS: But how do I get to that state? In other words, from here to observe it.
GG: By becoming interested in fear — the interest and attention and willing to co-reflect about fear — fear disappears at that point.
Q: But that’s…
SP: No, but the question will remain: total fear or one particular fear? Isn’t it? Looking at fear totally, forever it’s over — how do you know? These are different states.
DS: My daughter tells me, ‘I’m scared to death of being in an aeroplane. I’m frightened of being in an aeroplane,’ and I say to her, ‘Look at it, see it, observe it,’ and then… but she says, ‘I’m afraid. I can’t look at it.’
Q: But she has to look at it, observe it while she’s in an aeroplane.
DS: Right. Well, this is when — I’m giving you an actual example — in an aeroplane.
Q: Okay. And if she really looks at that, then she’s really looking at it.
DS: But she can’t! That’s what I’m trying to get at. What is the action of the person in fear who then can observe that fear?
K: Sir, sir, may we take…?
Q: Isn’t it a question that when you… I’m sorry.
K: Sir, go ahead, please.
Q: I was just going to say that it seems to me that, as you said, if you ask the question, ‘What is fear?’ that you automatically get interested in it — because if you’re really asking it… — and then when you’re interested in it, you’re out of it, that’s the end of it.
GG: It doesn’t seem to me as difficult as you’re making it. I say to patients — and I suspect you do the same kind of thing — ‘Be as interested in your fear as you’re interested in the sunset. Direct your interest to this and observe it.’
DS: Yes, but I think that what I’m trying to bring out here is that there’s a jump there. There is a jump into this whole — like Krishnaji says — the observance of the whole fear, not a specific fear.
K: I’m going to… I’ll show you, sir. Give me a chance.
DS: Yes.
K: You have a fear, haven’t you? Can you evoke it now?
DS: Sort of, yes. Yes.
K: Now, how do you look at that?
DS: Well, you…
K: Just… be simple, sir. Don’t complicate it.
DS: Okay. It’s experienced as…
K: How do you look at that…?
DS: ….a quick movement.
K: No sir, you’re not answering my question. I have a fear — suppose I have a fear — I can evoke it. I can say, ‘Yes, I’m afraid of that.’ Now, how do I look at that fear? You understand what I mean? With what eyes, with what capacity, with what energy, with what background, with what intention, with what intensity? How do I look at it? Could you tell me?
DS: There’s a feel of it…
K: Ah, no! Just… (laughs).
DS: You look at it as it is, in some way. You see it clearly in its movement.
K: Is it a fear of something?
DS: No.
K: Or is it total fear?
DS: Well, it’s the…
K: Wait. Do look at it, sir. Is it fear of a particular things or multiple, particular things or is it fear as totality?
DS: That’s the difficulty.
K: No, no, I’m just asking — don’t make it difficult.
(Pause)
That’s why I asked — if I may — how you look at that fear. Do you say, ‘My God, there’s not only that fear, I’ve got multiple fears, and I’ll get rid of one fear… one by one’? Or do you see the fear as a total thing? Which means, has one ever looked at anything totally, wholly?
(Pause)
Please, I don’t want to usurp all the talk, please.
GS: I wanted to add a couple of remarks. One is that the possibility of liberation from fear is the recognition that the world is a matter of convention, that the world that I experience is not inevitable, that there is always a little more to it. There is the fable of Vishwamitra, who at a certain point did not like the predicament in which he found himself. He was a king and he was simply unable to deal with the monk who was in the forest. And he decided that therefore his kingship was not worth it, and he decided then and there to change the world, and he therefore started modifying the world. And we all do the same thing. The possibility of being able to get out of the fear is that the world, as I see it, I do not like. I ask, what aspect of the world is the thing which I have forgotten? So I say, I have not so far seen the possibility of not seeing the world through fear, but seeing the fear. That is a new component of the world.
K: Yes sir.
GS: The moment I see this one, I am already out of this particular situation. I’m in a different situation, but seeing the fear is not completely ending it. But then I have the beginning of something. Any time when a person finds the fear to be completely consuming him, he finds that there is no way out and — like a man who is suffocating under water — would use every possible means to get out of that situation. If you found that your entire world is consumed under the particular context of the fear, you would break open from that situation. If it is only something slightly inconvenient then it continues to nag you, but you don’t really care: ‘I’m afraid I will miss my plane tomorrow’ — I’m really not that concerned about it, and therefore I don’t do anything very much about it. But if I’m afraid that I’m going to fall off the cliff when I’m taking a walk, I’m not going to then say, ‘Well, this would be sort of inconvenient.’ One would then make use of all things at your disposal, and then you see that, if you are willing to fall into the thorns, you could sort of jump, move towards one end, and there this particular situation can be overcome. So it seems to me that the possibility of freedom from fear comes from the recognition that no view of the world is complete. Any time you see the world, there is always a little more that can be seen by squinting your eyes a little bit.
K: Sir, quite right. There’s much more to the freedom of fear — much more — not just being free. Because being liberated from fear involves the understanding of the unconscious, the deep-rooted fears, whether in the deep recesses of one’s mind… and to go into all that. It’s not just, ‘I want to get rid of fear.’ You can take a drug or some kind of narcotic and say, ‘I’m free of fear.’ But we are talking of this whole problem of fear.
DS: Yes, I mean, I think not only are we talking about that but we’re talking about the fact that in a way how do I deal with the fact that my very interest in observing fear is a function of my fear?
K: Yes, I understand that, sir.
DS: That seems to me a crucial question.
GG: David, it seems to me that the issue isn’t any particular fear. It’s the form of fear. And that to examine any particular fear isn’t what we want to do. We want to understand the form of fear, our ways of becoming fearful, and what’s entailed in the observation is not the particular fear but how we make ourselves fearful — through thought, through desire, through attachment, through all of these things.
DS: But I think Krishnaji is suggesting something much deeper in the sense that, in a way, the very observation of the form of fear is, in a way, part of the fear, and to observe that thoroughly is extremely difficult. And, like George said, even the assumption that I can observe the form of fear is already, in a way, a form.
K: Ah, no sir. That’s why I said I must learn the art of looking.
DS: Exactly. But really…
K: The art of looking, the art of observation.
DS: Yes.
DB: And, you see, it seems to me that your description of the state of affairs is getting in the way, you see. You know, you say, ‘I can’t do it’ — you know, you said before — that before observing, you engage in a description which interferes.
DS: No, I was saying really that the intentionality of observing is an aspect of the process itself.
K: No sir, please. I want to learn how to look. Right? Will you teach me? I come to your class, you’re my professor, and I want to learn from you what it is to look. The art of it — not visual perception, all the… — the art of looking at something. Will you teach me? Can we have a dialogue on it? How to look — what is involved? What is involved is care, great affection, compassion — whatever you like to call it — and to look without prejudice, without anxiety — to look. Can you do it?
And it is absolutely necessary to look that way — somebody tells you — that’s the only way to live a life. And it is life and death — you follow? — it’s deadly serious. Not to be played with, sir. And I want to learn it. So I become aware whether I am prejudiced — you follow, sir? — whether I look at things with a conclusion, with a premise, and so on and so on. So I forget how to look. I don’t… My first duty, responsibility, is to be free of my prejudice — I’ll tackle fear later — but my first responsibility is to see that I have no conclusions of any kind. Is that possible? Or we have been educated to have conclusions, to live with conclusions, either Marx or Jesus or the Pope or the guru. So can I live a life without conclusions?
CM: That’s immortality: without conclusions.
( Laughter)
K: Yes sir. That’s right, sir.
Q: And we’re afraid not to have conclusions.
K: Because conclusions give us great security.
Q: So you seem to be saying that to find out whether the mind can be free from fear, you have to look…
K: I want to learn…
Q: …with a mind that’s not distorted by fear.
K: No, I want… I’m not touching even fear. I want to learn how to look, the art of something, sir. You know what *art* means: it means to put everything in its proper place, where it belongs — not what I think where it belongs — where it actually belongs, which is justice and all the rest of it. I won’t go into all that. Well, Mr… Dr Sudarshan, what do you say?
DB: What? I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.
K: I’m asking Dr Sudarshan what he says to all this.
GS: I was going to say that — as I keep listening to you — I’m tempted to say for one thing many of the sentences that you say are coherent but many other sentences are contrary to the thing, if I were to take literal statements that you make. That one has to appeal to — at the danger of talking where there is an expert — one has to appeal to the deep structure of language, that the statement ‘putting everything in its proper place’ in fact is a contradiction in terms, because in a sense there are no separate things when you have put things in the proper place.
K: Sir, I’ve only explained what the meaning of that word.
GS: No, I realise that. I’m with you. I’m just… since you asked me to speak. As Gordy said earlier — Professor Globus — said earlier, when total experience then no structure, there is no proper place. In fact, the idea that there is justice, harmony, equality, regularity, order, all these things are in a sense speaking from outside. When you’re a member of the household, when you are right in it, there are no proper places. In fact, you recognise that you have no fears and no anxieties, no conflicts, by recognising in a sense time has ceased to be. And time ceases whenever there is no two. Time always involves comparison of configurations: two objects must be there to have a configuration; two configurations must be there to compare them, and without that there is no time, there is no serial order. And when there is no serial order and when there is no comparison, there can be no question of things not going the way you want…
K: Quite right, sir. Quite right.
GS: …because the movement itself becomes an instantaneous or a timeless thing that you happen to have. So it is not a case of one practising the art of — with apologies to you; I’m just restating the thing — it’s not a case of practising the art of seeing, it is a case of knowing that you have arrived, by recognising that you don’t need to learn it any longer. When you have learned to blow bubbles with your lips or smoke-rings with your mouth, you know that you have learned it when you know that you don’t have to learn it any further. In the same sense, you know that you are perceiving without comparisons when there is nothing to compare with.
The only puzzle I have is that why you do not accept Sunanda’s hesitant suggestion that, perhaps after having seen it once, there are times when you don’t see it, and then you see it again.
K: I tell you — …
GS: Now, I am even aware of what you’re going to say in this comment.
( Laughter)
Because you will say, ‘You do not see it again, you see it.’
K: Yes, that’s right, sir.
GS: Because there is no recognition — because recognition already means time, comparison and so on —
K: That’s right. That’s right.
GS: …but it is also true that when you are not in that recognition…
K: Of course, of course. Of course.
GS: …and when you’re outside it, you see that I am not in that particular place. Therefore I don’t understand when you say, once you have understood fear, or when you have… — what are the words? — I mean, somehow or other that you have understood the secret of the thing, then there is no more fear. I had… at least, my own experience, there have been many times when I understood the root of fear and there was no more fear, but that I’m not there now. I’m afraid you are going to contradict me.
( Laughter)
SP: You are not afraid.
GS: I’m not afraid at all.
(Laughter)
K: No sir, when you see some danger you never again… it’s danger always. Isn’t it?
GS: Yes.
K: That’s all. When I see the implications, the nature and all that, of fear, gone into it — psychologically, outwardly, inwardly — I understand it, I have gone into it. And I see — you follow? — and that’s the end of it.
SP: Sir, in it is implied forever.
K: I am telling…
SP: You say as doing some mutation — it is forever, you will never come back to the same state.
K: Of course.
SP: That is where the…
K: I know. That’s where the pill is. You can’t swallow it. Because we come back to it. And I say because you have not really, completely gone into fear.
GS: That would be a truism, because one could always… It’s sort of like statements about the whole thing.
K: Yes sir.
GS: One says that the first time you fall in love, you feel that it’s for the last time. And the last time you fall in love, you’ll think that that is the true first time you have fallen in love. It is an unverifiable statement, b ecause every time you can say, ‘Well, last time had not seen fear in its entirety — now I see it.’
K: Ah, no. I want to see it now in its entirety, not tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I want to see the whole nature of fear in me. I am a human being like the rest of the world, if I have understood it, I will… You follow?
DB: What you’re saying is that it has a limited nature. You see, you are implying that fear has some limited nature that actually can be seen in its totality…
K: Yes sir. Yes sir.
DB: …whereas the other argument is that its nature is not limited but it may be something that unfolds. Do you see?
GG: I think there’s a distinction between the flash of fear — which I suspect, even if one understands fear totally, one will still have the flash of fear — and making that flash persist over time through thought. And one may never be free in one’s life from a flash of fear, a flash of anger, a flash of misery, but to make those things persist through thought, attachment, whatever, that’s where the total understanding helps.
SP: Because a definitive statement is made like that, this arises, you see: the flashes of fear, flashes of irritation, flashes of things occur and pass…
K: You see…
SP: …they don’t take deep root.
GG: Yes.
DB: By the way, it’s now quarter to five. I don’t know how long you want to go on.
K: No, but I want to, sir, I want to understand my fears. Right sir? Suppose I have many, many fears, I want to understand them. How am I to look at them? How am I to understand them? Analyse them? And who is the analyser? It’s part of the analysed. So I won’t analyse — you follow? — that’s finished. I don’t know… You’re all silent, sorry.
DS: But again, in some way or other, the very act of saying, the… I mean, you’ve sort of made a jump there: that the analyser and analysing is part of fear. And then you say…
K: No, no! I am saying: how am I to understand this deep-rooted fear in human beings?
DS: Yes, but I think that one of the problems there is the fact that part of fear — just take the deep root of fear and the action of the deep root of fear — is analysing.
K: No, I’m saying, sir — just a minute — does liberation from fear come through analysis? And if it does, I want to investigate it. The analyser is the analysed, therefore the process of analysis to be liberated from here is no value. So I won’t analyse. You understand? Please sir, see my… just… Because analysis won’t solve this.
DS: Yes. I go with you, but where I… I’m just seeing something here what you’re saying, which is that there’s another part, which is, we say that fear is analysing.
K: If you take it… All right, don’t… So will you drop analysis?
DS: Well, then I’m dropping fear.
K: No! Go step by step. Will you…? You have drawn a conclusion — I have not. I am afraid and will that fear end through analysis? Don’t translate it: ‘The analyser is fear itself,’ and all the rest of it. I’m asking a question: will analysis free me, a human being, from fear?
DS: No, I can see that. No.
K: So you won’t analyse.
DS: No, I didn’t say that.
( Laughter)
K: Ah…!
DS: I say I’m still afraid.
K: Ah no! That’s not the point, sir. If a problem cannot be solved though analysis, you must drop analysis.
DS: No. Because, look: I’m still afraid and I’m analysing and…
K: I’m not talking of fear. I’m talking of a problem.
DS: You’re breaking it up then.
K: No, not… A problem.
Q: Any problem.
K: Any problem. If any problem cannot be solved through analysis, then will you drop analysis?
DS: Okay. Yes. I can see that.
K: Drop it! Cut its throat, whatever it is. Finish with it.
DS: Okay. Now…
K: Ah, no, no. Not, ‘Okay.’ You…
(Laughter)
Q: You’ve got to drop the drop.
DS: Yes.
(Laughter)
K: So analysis is not going to solve the problem of fear. Control is not going to solve the problem of fear. Suppression is not going to solve the problem of fear. I discard them. Not verbally, but actually, I’m not going to analyse, I am not going to control. I’m not going to suppress. I’m not… — all these are escapes. So I have this question now: can I look at fear without any of these impediments — sorry to use layman’s language — or do I deceive myself by saying, ‘I have no analysis; I won’t suppress’? Those are all theoretical — you know? — unrealities; to me analysis is not going to solve it, therefore I won’t look through that window — finished; it’s closed. I won’t suppress it. I won’t control it. So what have I left?
Q: Just experience.
K: No, no. What? What are you experiencing?
Q: My fear.
K: No. Who is the experiencer?
Q: The one observing the experience.
K: The experiencer is the experience.
Q: All right.
K: So then you’re not experiencing fear, there is only fear.
Q: All right.
K: No, not…
Q: No, well, all right.
K: (Chirping of bird) That bird agrees with me.
( Laughter)
Q: That’s a conclusion.
K: So there is only fear. (Chirping of bird) The morning dove. There is only fear. Is it superficial fear or deep-rooted fear? *Deep-rooted* in the sense, in the so-called unconscious. And if it is deep, unconscious fears, how am I going to find out? Through analysis?
CM: We already agreed to drop that.
K: Therefore what happens? Then what is my motive to get rid of fear? Have I a motive? If I have a motive, it’ll create further fear. Right? I don’t know if you see that.
(Pause)
If I have a cause to get rid of fear then that cause is a mechanical process, therefore fear will go on. I won’t go into all that. So is my mind free of all these things, so that it’s capable of looking at fear?
(Pause)
Because all these are a wastage of energy. Right sir? Analysis is a wastage of energy; suppression is a wastage of energy; control is a wastage of energy. So now, if I don’t waste energy, I’ve got tremendous energy. And when there is energy, I can look at it totally. It’s only when I have no energy, I partially look, partially play with it. That’s enough of this. Right sir? Have I said something appalling?
CM: I don’t think it goes far enough.
K: What?
CM: Just to reduce it to energy, that makes getting rid of fear a problem of the will.
K: No, there is no will. Which is…
CM: What do you mean by *energy*?
K: I mean by energy… Can we discuss this? Thought creates its own energy, through conflict, friction. Any kind of friction brings its own energy. No? No?
GS: Krishnaji, I want to go on but occurred as finding out that the words are here being used in a non-physical sense.
K: Yes sir.
( Laughter)
GS: And that energy — in the context of physics or thermodynamics or chemistry — is a material thing. It’s as much an entity as a piece of rock.
K: Yes sir.
GS: Energy has no options. Energy is a property of movement as seen from outside. It is only for dead matter; living matter makes use of it, but it is the option that is the life.
CM: That wasn’t my problem at all. I mean…
GS: No, no. I realise that. No, no. It’s my problem.
CM: I was thinking of another kind of energy, an energy…
GS: I’m just saying that the word *energy*, when it is used, must be very carefully understood not to have any physical connotation. It is used as a metaphor which… I mean, when you say, ‘Thought creates energy,’ being a physicist, it completely jars against my view, sir, of what one thinks of.
K: I know, I know, I know.
GS: Therefore, I say, well, Krishnaji does not mean the physics notion of energy, or the philosopher’s notion of thought, he is talking about, using evocative terms, to talk about something else.
CM: Well, fear has energy which is depriving you of energy and has an energy of its own, which is also non-physical. What I was thinking of is the love energy. In another words, if we take a plank and put it on the floor, everybody can walk over it. If we put it between two twenty-storey buildings, very few people can walk over it.
K: Yes.
CM: However, if a mother had a child in danger on the other side of that plank, even a mother animal…
K: Breaks through it.
CM: …who would normally not do it, the fear would go.
K: Yes sir.
CM: And that was the kind of energy I was thinking of.
K: I’m thinking of the same, exactly the same. To me… Not… So when I… I’m pointing out the psychological wastage of energy, of force or — what? — vitality. You waste all that vitality — if I can use now a different word — all that vitality in suppression, analysis, control, will. When that is not, you have that great vitality to look. Then when you look so completely with that vitality, fear is not.
(Pause)
You see, sir, the problem is, also, we accept fear and love together at the same time. So I ask myself: can fear exist where there is love? Or is love fear? We have made love into fear.
(Pause)
So we have to go into all these questions. We’ve got plenty of days, so *hasta* *manana*.
(Laughter)
I don’t want, sir, Mr Chairman, usurp all the whole afternoon by talking, so there are all these people, please.
DB: It’s already… We have done twenty-five minutes over the scheduled time, so…
K: Oh, my Lord.
DB: …I think perhaps we should finish now and start up again tomorrow morning at ten-thirty.