Wholly Different Way of Living
6th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
20th February 1974
Fear
A: Mr Krishnamurti, if I recall correctly I think, we had begun
to talk together last time, just at the point where the question
of fear arose, and I think we both, perhaps, could explore that
together a little.
K: Yes, I think so. I wonder how we can approach this problem,
because it is a common problem in the world. Everyone, or I can
say, almost everyone is frightened of something. It may be the
fear of death, fear of loneliness, fear of not being loved, fear
of not becoming famous, successful and also fear of not having
physical security, and fear of not having psychological
security. There are so many multiple forms of fears. Now to go
into this problem really very deeply, can the mind, which
includes the brain, really fundamentally be free of fear?
Because fear, as I have observed, is a dreadful thing.
A: Oh yes.
K: It darkens the world, it destroys everything. And I don't
think we can discuss fear, which is one of the principles in
life, without also discussing, or going into the pursuit of
pleasure. The two sides of the same coin.
A: Fear and pleasure, two sides of the same coin.
K: So as we are first going to take fear there is conscious as
well as unconscious fears. Fears that are observable, that can
be remedied and fears that are deep rooted, deep in the recesses
of one's mind.
A: At the unconsious level.
K: At the deeper levels. Now, we must be concerned with both,
not only the obvious external fears, but also the deep seated
undiscovered fears. The fears that have been handed down,
traditional fears.
A: Being told what to fear.
K: And also fears that the mind itself has produced, has
cultivated.
A: In one's personal life.
K: Personal. And also in relation to others; fears of physical
insecurity, losing a job, losing a position, losing something,
and all the positive, not having something, and so on and on.
So, if we are going to talk about this question how should we,
you and I, approach this? First take the outer, the obvious
physical fears, and then from there move to the inner, and so
cover the whole field, not just one little fear of an old lady,
an old man, or a young man, take the whole problem of fear.
A: Good.
K: Not just take one leaf of fear, or one branch of it but the
whole movement of fear.
A: We are back to that word movement again.
K: Movement.
A: Good,good. The whole movement of fear.
K: Now, outwardly, physically it is becoming obvious that we
must have security, physical security. That is, food, clothes,
and shelter are absolutely necessary. Not only for the Americans
but for the whole humanity.
A: Of course.
K: It's no good saying, "We are secure and to hell with the rest
of the world." The world is you. And you are the world. You
can't isolate yourself and say, I am going to be secure and not
bother about the others.
A: Secure myself against them.
K: It becomes a division, conflict, war, all that it produces.
So that physical security is necessary for the brain. The brain
can only function, as I have observed in myself, in others, not
that I am an expert on brain, or neurology and all that but I
have observed it. The brain can function only in complete
security. Then it functions efficiently, healthily, not
neurotically. And its actions won't be lopsided. The brain needs
security, as a child needs security. That security is denied
when we separate ourselves - the Americans, the Russians, the
Indians, the Chinese. National division has destroyed that
security, because wars.
A: Because that is a physical barrier.
K: Physical fact. And yet we don't see that. Sovereign
governments, with their armies, their navies and all the rest of
it, are destroying security.
A: In the name of...
K: So, you see what we are trying to get at is how stupid the
mind is. It wants security. And it must have security, and yet
it is doing everything to destroy security.
A: Oh yes, yes. I see that.
K: So that's one factor. And the factor of security is in jobs.
Either in a factory, in a business, or as a priest in his job.
So occupation becomes very important.
A: Indeed it does, yes.
K: So, see what is involved. If I lose my job I am frightened,
and that job depends on the environment, on the production,
business, factory, all that commercialism, consumerism, and
therefore competition with other countries. France isolating
itself because it wants to, which is happening. So we need
physical security and we are doing everything to destroy it. If
we all of us said, look let's all get together, not with plans,
not with my plan, your plan, or the communist plan or Mao plan,
let's as human beings sit together and solve this problem. They
could do it. Science has the means of feeding people. But they
won't because they are conditioned to function so as to destroy
security which they are seeking. So that's one of the major
factors in physical security. Then there is the fear of physical
pain. Is physical pain in the sense, one has had pain, let's say
last week. The mind is afraid that it should happen again. So
there is that kind of fear.
A: That's very interesting with respect to the phenomenon of
physical pain, because what is remembered is not the
neurological reaction but the emotion that attends what
occurred.
K: Yes, that's it. So there is that fear.
A: Right, right.
K: Then there is the fear of outward opinion, what people say,
public opinion.
A: Reputation.
K: Reputation. You see, sir, all this is born out of disorder. I
don't know if I'm?
A: Oh yes, yes.
K: Which we discussed.
A: Which we looked into previously.
K: So, can the mind bring about security, physical security,
which means food, clothes and shelter for everybody. Not as a
communist, as a capitalist, as a socialist, or as a Mao, but
meet together as human beings to resolve this problem. It can be
done. But nobody wants to do it, because they don't feel
responsible for it. I don't know if you have been to India; if
you have gone from town to town, village to village as I have
done, you see the appalling poverty, the degradation of poverty,
the sense of hopelessness.
A: Yes, I have been to India and it was the first time in my
life that I sensed poverty, not as a privation, but it seemed to
have a positive character about it. It was so stark.
K: I know sir. Personally we have been through all that. So,
physical survival is only possible when human beings get
together. Not as communists, socialists, all the rest, as human
beings who say, look this is our problem, for god's sake let's
solve it. But they won't because they are burdened with problem,
with planning. How to solve that. I don't know if I am?
A: Yes, yes, you are.
K: You have your plan, I have my plan, he has his plan, so
planning becomes most important, plans become most important
rather than the starvation. And we fight each other. And common
sense, affection, care, love can change all this. Sir, I won't
go into that. Then the fear of public opinion. Do you understand
it? What my neighbour will say.
A: My image, the national image, yes.
K: And I depend on my neighbour.
A: Oh yes, necessarily.
K: If I am a Catholic living in Italy, I have to depend on my
neighbour because I would lose my job if I were a Protestant
there. So I accept it. I will go and salute the pope or
whatever, it has no meaning. So I am afraid of public opinion.
See what a human mind has reduced itself to. I don't mind about
public opinion, because that's stupid. They are conditioned,
they are frightened as much as I am. So there is that fear. And
there is the fear, physical fear of death, which is an immense
fear. That fear one has to tackle differently when we come to
it, when we talk about death and all that.
A: Yes.
K: So there is the outward form of fear; fear of darkness, fear
of public opinion, fear of losing a job, fear of survival, not
being able to survive. Sir, I have lived with people with one
meal a day and that's not enough even. I have walked behind a
woman with a girl, and the girl said, in India, "Mother, I'm
hungry." And the mother says, "You have already eaten for the
day." So there is all that, those physical fears, pain, and the
fear of recurring pain, and that. And the other fears are much
more complicated, fears of dependency, inwardly, I depend on my
wife, I depend on my guru, I depend on the priest, I depend on
the - so many dependents. And I am afraid to lose them, to be
left alone.
A: To be rejected.
K: To be rejected. If that woman turns away from me I'm lost. I
get angry, brutal, violent, jealous, because I have depended on
her. So dependency is one of the factors of fear. And inwardly I
am afraid. I am afraid of loneliness. The other day I saw on the
television a woman saying, the only fear I have in life is my
loneliness. And therefore being afraid of loneliness I do all
kinds of neurotic activities. Being lonely I attach myself to
you or to a belief, or to a saviour, or to a guru. And I protect
the guru, the saviour, the belief and that soon becomes
neurotic.
A: Yes. I fill up the hole with this...
K: With this rubbish. There is that fear. And then there is the
fear of not being able to arrive, succeed, succeed in this world
of disorder, and succeed in the so-called spiritual world.
That's what they are all doing now.
A: Spiritual achievement.
K: Achievement, which they call enlightenment.
A: Expanding consciousness. I know what you mean. It's very
interesting that you just got through describing fear of being
left behind. Now we are fearing that we'll never arrive.
K: Arrive.
A: Please go on.
K: Same thing. Then there is the fear of not being, which
translates itself in identification with. I must identify
myself.
A: In order to be.
K: To be. Identify myself with my country, and I say to myself,
that's too stupid. Then I say, I must identify myself with god,
which I have invented. God has not made man in his image, man
has made god in his image. You follow this?
A: Oh, I follow you.
K: So, not being, not achieving, not arriving, brings about
tremendous sense of uncertainty, tremendous sense of not being
able to fulfil, not being able to be with, and the cry, "I must
be myself."
A: Do my own thing.
K: Your own thing. Which is rubbish. So there are all these
fears, both logical fears, irrational fears, neurotic fears, and
fears of survival, physical survival. So now how do you deal
with all these fears and, many more fears which we can't go
into, which we will presently - how do you deal with them all?
One by one?
A: Well you just be in the mournful round of fragmentation if
you do that.
K: And also there are the hidden fears, which are much more
active.
A: The continual bubbling from below.
K: Bubbling up, when I'm not conscious they take over.
A: That's right.
K: So, how am I to deal first with the obvious fears which we
have described? Shall I deal with it one by one, to secure
myself? You follow?
A: Yes.
K: Or, take loneliness and tackle that, come to grips with it,
go beyond it and so on. Or is there a way of dealing with fear,
not with the branches of it but with the root of it? Because if
I take each leaf, each branch it will take all my lifetime. And
if I begin to analyze my fears, analyse, then that very analysis
becomes a paralysis.
A: Yes. And then I even fear that I might not have analyzed
correctly.
K: Correctly. And I am caught in it over and over again. So how
shall I deal with this problem, as a whole, not just parts of
it, fragments of it?
A: Isn't there a hint about how it might be dealt with. Of
course, when I say hint here, I mean terribly, terribly slight.
I don't think I would call it a pointer, but fear, no matter how
many varieties one imagines he knows, fear does have a common
taste, you might say, there is something there
K: Yes, sir, but what shall I do with it?
A. Oh, yes, of course, I quite understand. But it interested me
while you were speaking, to observe that already when we think
of many fears we haven't even paid attention to how we feel when
we fear. Yes, I was interested to have that flash because it
seems to be altogether consonant with what you are talking
about. And I said to myself, now in our conversations we've been
pointing to movement. The movement of fear is one.
K: Yes, a tremendous one.
A: And it is a unified field of destruction.
K: It is the common factor of everything.
A: The whole field, yes, exactly.
K: Whether I live, a man lives in Moscow or India, or in any
place, it is the common thing of this fear, and how shall we
deal with it? Because unless the mind is free of fear, really,
not verbally or ideologically, absolutely be free of fear. And
it is possible to be free, completely of fear, and I'm not
saying this as a theory, but I know it, I've gone into it.
A: Actual.
K: Actual. Now how shall I deal with this? So I ask myself, what
is fear? Not the objects of fear, or the expressions of fear.
A: Nor the instant reaction to danger, no.
K: What is fear?
A: It's an idea in my mind in part.
K: What is fear, sir?
A: If we had said it's an abiding...
K: No, no. Behind the words, behind the descriptions, the
explanations, the way out and the way in, and all the rest of
it, what is fear? How does it come?
A: If I have followed you through our conversations up until
now, I'd be inclined to say that it is another expression of the
observer's disordered relation to the observed.
K: What does that mean? What is what you say. Look, the problem
is this - I am only making the problem clearer. We have, man has
tried to lop off or prune one fear after the other, through
analysis, through escape, through identifying himself with
something which he calls courage. Or saying, well I don't care,
I rationalize my fears and remain in a state of rationalizing,
intellectual, verbal explanation. But the thing is boiling. So
what shall I do? What is fear? Unless I find this out, not
because you tell me, unless I find it out for myself as I find
from myself that I am hungry, nobody has to tell me I am hungry,
I have to find this out.
A: Yes, now there is a difference here in terms of what you have
just said. And in so saying pointing to something, and my
earlier reply when you asked me what is fear, I did the usual
academic thing - if I have followed you up until now then it
seems clear that... Whereas let's forget about the following,
let's zero in on it right now and then I must say, not I might
say, but I must say that I can't tell anybody else what fear is
with respect to what it is I am going to discover in me as such.
And all my continual descriptions about it are simply a
deflection from my immediate issue which is here.
K: Yes. So, I'm not escaping.
A: No.
K: I'm not rationalizing. I am not analyzing, because analysis
is real paralysis.
A: Yes indeed.
K: When you are confronted with a problem like this merely
spinning or analysing, and the fear of not being able to analyze
perfectly and therefore go to a professional, who needs also an
analysis. So I'm caught. So I will not analyze because I see the
absurdity of it. You follow sir.
A: Yes I do.
K: I won't run.
A: No backing off.
K: Backing off.
A: Flight.
K: No explanations, no rationalizations, no analysis. I am faced
with this thing. And what is fear? Wait, wait. Leave that. Then
there are the unconscious fears of which don't know. They
express themselves occasionally when I am alert, when I see the
thing coming out of me.
A: When I am alert.
K: Alert. When I am watching. Or when I'm looking at something
this comes up, uninvited. Now, it is important for the mind to
be completely free of fear. It's essential, as food is
essential. It's essential for the mind to be free of fear. So I
see outwardly what we have discussed. Now I say, what is this,
what are the hidden fears, can I consciously invite them come to
the surface? You follow?
A: Yes I do.
K: Or, the conscious cannot touch that. You follow?
A: Yes, yes, yes I do.
K: Conscious can only deal with the things it knows. But it
cannot observe the things it doesn't know.
A: Or have access to.
K: So, what am I to do? Dreams? Dreams are merely continuation
of what has happened during the day, they continue in a
different form, and so on. We won't go into that for the moment.
So how is all that to be awakened and exposed? The racial fears,
the fears that society has taught me, the fears that the family
has imposed, the neighbour, all those crawling, ugly, brutal
things that are hidden, how shall they all come up naturally,
and be exposed so that the mind sees them completely? You
understand?
A: Yes, I do. I was just thinking about what we are doing in
relation to what you are saying. Here we are in a university
situation where hardly any listening goes on at all, if any.
Why? Well, if we were to relate to each other in terms of my
sitting back here saying to myself, every time you make a
statement, well what do I have to say back, even if my reaction
were benign and I say to myself as a professor, I'd say, now
that's an interesting concept. Perhaps we could clear that up a
little bit, you know. That nonsense - nonsense in terms of what
is immediate here. That's what I mean.
K: I understand.
A: I don't mean demonstrating something on the board. We should
never have begun to be together, never started, and yet we might
have given ourselves the idea that we were trying very hard to
be sincere. Yes I understand.
K: I know, I know.
A: But fear is at the base of that too, because the professor is
thinking to himself...
K: ...his position, his...
A: He's got his reputation at stake here. He better not keep
quiet too long, because someone might get the idea that, either
he doesn't understand a thing that is going on, or he doesn't
have anything to contribute to what's going on. All of which has
nothing to do with anything.
K: Absolutely. Please sir, Look, sir, what I have found: the
conscious mind, conscious thought cannot invite and expose the
hidden fears. It cannot analyse it, because analysis, we said,
is inaction, and if there is no escape, I shan't run off to a
church, or Jesus, or Buddha, or somebody, or identify myself
with some other thing. I have pushed all those aside because
I've understood their use, their futility. So I am left with
this. This is my baby. So, what shall I do? Some action has to
take place. I can't just say, well I've pushed all that aside,
I'll just sit. Now just see what happens sir, because I've
pushed all this aside through observation, not through
resistance, not through violence, because I have negated all
those, escape, analysis, running off to something, and all the
rest of all that, I have energy, haven't I. The mind has energy
now.
A: Now it has, yes. Yes it floods up.
K: Because I have pushed away all the things that are
dissipating energy.
A: Energy leaks.
K: Therefore I am now this thing. I am confronted with that,
confronted with fear. Now, what can I do. Listen to this, sir,
what can I do? I can't do anything, because it is I who have
created the fear, public opinion,
A: Yes, yes.
K: Right, so I cannot do a thing about fear.
A: Precisely.
K: But there is the energy which has been gathered, which has
come into being when all dissipation of energy has ended energy.
There's energy.
A: Yes. Exactly, virtue, right, right, manifested.
K: Energy, energy. Now, what happens? This is not some
hocus-pocus, some kind of mystical experience. There is actual
fear and I have tremendous energy which has come because there
is no dissipation of energy. So what takes place? So, wait,
wait,
A: Oh, I'm waiting, I'm waiting. There was something going
through my mind.
K: What takes place? So I say, so what has created fear? What
has brought it about? Because if I have the energy, you follow,
sir, to put that question and find the answer for that question.
I've got energy now. I don't know if you are following?
A: Yes.
K: So, what has brought it about? You, my neighbour, my country,
my culture?
A: Myself.
K: Hm? What has brought it about?
A: I've done it.
K: Who is I?
A: I don't mean 'I' as the fragmented observer off from me. I am
thinking what you said earlier about the mind as disordered,
which requires to empty itself of the disorder, does it require
another mind to do it, yes.
K: I'm asking, what has brought this fear into me, into my
consciousness? I won't use that word because we'll have to go
into that in a different way. What has brought this fear? And I
won't leave it till I find it. You understand, sir? Because I've
got the energy to do it. I don't depend on anybody, on any book,
on any philosopher, nobody.
A: Would it be the case that once that energy begins to flood,
that the question itself disappears.
K: And I'll begin to find the answer.
A: Yes.
K: I don't put the question.
A: No, no
K: And I find the answer.
A: Right, right.
K: Now, what is the answer?
A: The answer couldn't be academic, a description of something.
K: No, no, no.
A: A change has occurred in the being.
K: What is the answer to this fact of fear which has been
sustained, which has been nourished, which has carried on from
generation to generation? So, can the mind observe this fear,
the movement of it...
A: The movement of it.
K: ...not just a piece of fear.
A: Or a succession of fears...
K: But the movement of this.
A: The movement of fear itself.
K: Yes, observe it without the thought that has created the
observer. I don't know if you follow?
A: Oh yes, yes.
K: So, can there be observation of this fact, which I've called
fear because I have recognized it, the mind has recognized it,
because it has had fear before. So through recognition and
association it says, this is fear.
A: Yes, that never stops. Yes.
K: So, can the mind observe without the observer, who is the
thinker, observe this fact only? Because the observer, which is
thought, the observer as thought has produced this. I don't know
-
A: Yes, yes.
K: So thought has produced this, right?
A: Yes, yes.
K: I am afraid of my neighbour, what he may say because I want
to be respectable. That is part of the thought. Thought has
divided the world into America, Russia, India, China and all the
rest of it, and that destroys security. That is the result of
thought. I am lonely and therefore I act neurotically, which is
also the factor of thought. So I see very clearly that thought
is responsible for that. Right, right, sir?
A: Yes.
K: So, what will happen with thought? Thought is responsible for
this. It has nourished it, has sustained it, it has encouraged
it, it has done everything to sustain it. I am afraid of the
pain that I had yesterday happening again tomorrow. Which is the
movement of thought. So can thought, which can only function
within the field of knowledge, that's its ground, and fear is
something new each time. Fear isn't old.
A: No, no.
K: It is made old when I recognize it.
A: Yes, yes.
K: But when the process of recognition, which is the association
of words and so on, can the mind observe that without the
interference of thought? If it does fear is not.
A: Right. The thing that was hitting me while I was sitting here
intently, the thing that was hitting me was that the moment that
occurs, the thought and the fear immediately disappear.
K: So, fear then can be put away completely. If I was living as
a human being in Russia and they threaten me to be put into
prison I would probably be afraid. It is natural self
preservation. That's a natural fear like a bus coming rushing
towards you, you step aside, you run away from a dangerous
animal, that's a natural self protective reaction. But that's
not fear. It's a response of intelligence operating saying, for
god's sake move away from the rushing bus. But the other factors
are factors of thought.
A: Exactly.
K: So, can thought understand itself and know its place and not
project itself? Not control, which is an abomination. If you
control thought, who is the controller? Another fragment of
thought.
A: Of thought.
K: It is a circle, a vicious game you are playing with yourself.
So can the mind observe without a movement of thought? It will
only do that when you have understood the whole movement of
fear. Understood that, not analysed, looking at it. It is a
living thing, therefore you have to look at it. It is only a
dead thing you can dissect and analyse, kick it around. But a
living thing you have to watch.
A: This is very shocking because in our last conversation, just
towards the end we came to the place where we raised the
question of someone saying to himself, I think I understand what
I have heard, now I am going to try that. And then fear holds up
a mirror to itself.
K: Of course.
A: And one is suddenly ringed about by a world of mirrors.
K: You don't say, sir, when you see a dangerous animal, I will
think about it. You move. You act. Because there is tremendous
destruction waiting there. That is a self protective reaction
which is intelligence says, get out. Here we are not using
intelligence. And intelligence operates when we have looked at
all these fears, the movements of it, the inwardness of it, the
subtlety of it, the whole movement. Then out of that comes
intelligence and says, I have understood it.
A: It's marvelous. Yes, that's very beautiful, very beautiful.
We were going to say something about pleasure.
K: Ah, that must be dealt with.
A: Right, exactly.
K: So, sir, look, we said there is the physical fears, and
psychological fears, both are interrelated, we can't say, that's
one and this is the other. They are all interrelated. And the
interrelationship and the understanding of that relationship
brings this intelligence which will operate physically. It will
say, let's then work together, co-operate together to feed man.
You follow, sir?
A: Yes.
K: Let's not be national, religious, sectarian. What is
important is to feed man, to clothe him, to make him live
happily. But you see unfortunately we are so disorderly in our
ways of life that we have no time for anything else. Our
disorder is consuming us.
A: It's interesting in relation to tradition, I don't mean to
start an entirely new conversation now, but just to see what is
immediately suggested, among many other things that would be,
but just this one. What we could say about the misuses of
tradition would be that we are actually taught what to fear. In
our language we have an expression, don't we, that expresses
part of this, old wives tales we say, an accumulation of
warnings about things that, that are simply imaginary. Not in
the creative sense of imagination, and I'm using the word
creative there very loosely, very loosely, but fantasia,
phantasmagoria, from the little ones' earliest years, gets this
stuff with the bottle. And then when we get into adolescence we
reflect on these things we have learned and if things go wrong
we feel that perhaps it's because we haven't sufficiently
grasped what we have been told. And then some young people will
say at that point, I'm going to junk the whole thing. But then
immediately the loneliness question arises. Yes, yes.
K: They can't, sir, it is life, this is life, you can't reject
one part and accept the other part.
A: Exactly.
K: Life means all this. Freedom, order, disorder, communication,
relationship, it's the whole thing is living. If we don't
understand, sir, I don't want to have anything to do with, then
you are not living. You are dying.
A: Yes, of course. I wonder how much, I wonder - I keep saying I
wonder, and the reason I wonder is because what we have been
saying about this movement, as a unified field, is when stated,
taken by thought and, you might say put in the refrigerator,
and, that's the reality to the person.
K: Quite, sir.
A: And when we want to look at it, it's one of the ice cubes we
break out and have a look.
K: That's right, sir. What place has knowledge in the
regeneration of man? Look, our knowledge is: you must be
separate. You are an American, I am an Hindu, that's our
knowledge. Our knowledge is you must rely on your neighbour
because he knows, he is respectable. Society is respectability,
society is moral, so you accept that. So knowledge has brought
about all these factors. And you are telling me suddenly, asking
me, what place has that, what place has tradition, what place
has the accumulated knowledge of millennia? The accumulated
knowledge of science, mathematics, that is essential. But what
place has knowledge which I have gathered through experience,
through generation after generation of human endeavour, what
place has it in the transformation of fear? None, whatsoever.
A: None. Clear, clear.
K: You see.
A: Because of what we reached before that upon the instant that
this is grasped, the thought that was operating as a fragment
and the fear vanish; and it isn't that something takes its place
in succession.
K: No nothing takes its place.
A: No, nothing takes its place. Nothing takes its place.
K: It doesn't mean there is emptiness.
A: Oh, no, no, no. But you see it's right there when you start
thinking about that as a thought, you get scared.
K: That's why it's very important to find out, or to understand
the function of knowledge and where knowledge becomes ignorance.
We mix the two together. Knowledge is essential, to speak
English, driving, and a dozen things, knowledge is essential.
But when that knowledge becomes ignorance, when we are trying to
understand actually 'what is', the 'what is' is this fear, this
disorder, this irresponsibility. To understand it you don't have
to have knowledge. All you have to do, is to look. Look outside
you, look inside you. And then you see clearly that knowledge is
absolutely unnecessary, it has no value in the transformation or
the regeneration of man. Because freedom is not born of
knowledge; freedom is when all the burdens are not. You don't
have to search for freedom. It comes when the other is not.
A: It isn't something in place of the horror that was there
before.
K: Of course not. I think that is enough.
A: Yes, yes, I quite follow you. Maybe next time we could carry
on into this with pleasure as such, the opposite side of that
coin.
7th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
21st February 1974
Desire
A: Mr Krishnamurti, last time we were speaking you made the
remark that fear and pleasure are opposite sides of the same
coin. And, as I remember, when we concluded our last
conversation we were still talking about fear. And I was
thinking perhaps we could move from fear into the discussion of
pleasure. But perhaps there is something more about fear that we
need still to look into, to explore.
K: Sir, I think for most of us, fear has created such misery, so
many activities are born of fear, ideologies and gods, that we
never seem to be free completely from fear. That's what we were
saying.
A: That's what we were saying.
K: And so freedom from. and freedom, are two different things.
Aren't they.
A: Yes.
K: Freedom from fear, and the feeling of being completely free.
A: Would you say that the notion even of freedom for is also a
suggestion of conflict.
K: Yes.
A: Yes, yes, do go ahead.
K: Yes. Freedom for, and freedom from, has this contradiction
and therefore conflict and therefore battle, violence, struggle.
When one understands that rather deeply then one can see the
meaning of what it means to be free. Not from or for, but
intrinsically, deeply, by itself. Probably it's a nonverbal, non
ideational happening. A feeling that all the burden has fallen
away from you. Not that you are struggling to throw them away.
The burdens don't exist. Conflicts don't exist. As we were
saying the other day, relationship then is in total freedom.
A: Your word intrinsic interested me. Sometimes I think in our
tongue we will use the adverbial preposition 'in'. Would it be
possible to say freedom in, or would you not even want to have
'in'.
K: Not 'in', no.
A: You don't want 'in'.
K: For, in, from.
A: They are all out. I see, yes, yes, go on.
K: So these two principles, pleasure and fear seem to be deeply
rooted in us - these two principles of pleasure and fear. I
don't think we can understand pleasure without understanding
fear.
A: I see. I see.
K: You can't separate them, really. But for investigating one
has to separate.
A: Yes, were it not for fear do you think we should ever have
thought of pleasure?
K: We would never have thought of pleasure.
A: We would never have got the notion.
K: No.
A: I understand. I understand.
K: It's like punishment and reward. If there was no punishment
at all nobody would talk about reward.
A: Yes, yes I see.
K: And when we are talking about pleasure I think we think we
ought to be clear that we are not condemning pleasure. We are
not trying to become puritanical or permissive. We are trying to
investigate or examine, explore the whole structure and nature
of pleasure, as we did fear.
A: As we did fear.
K: And to do that properly and deeply the attitude of
condemnation or acceptance of pleasure must be set aside. You
see, naturally. I mean if I want to investigate something I must
be free from my inclinations, prejudices.
A: The 'looking forward to' is, I see, beginning to emerge from
what you are saying.
K: Yes.
A: We say we look forward to pleasure, we even ask a person,
what is your pleasure. We get nervous in thinking perhaps we
won't meet it, Now I take it that what your saying suggests the
anticipation of gratification here. Would that be right?
K: That's right. Gratification, satisfaction and sense of
fulfillment. We will go into all that when we talk about
pleasure. But we must be clear from the beginning, I think, that
we are not condemning it. The priests throughout the world have
condemned it.
A: Yes, the notion of freedom is associated with many religious
approaches to this. One is free from desire.
K: Yes. Sir, one has to bear in mind that we are not justifying
it, or sustaining it or condemning it but observing it. To
really go into the question of pleasure I think one has to look
into desire, first. The more commercial and the usage of things,
the more desire grows. You can see it's commercialism, and
consumerism. Through propaganda desire is, you know, sustained,
is pushed forward, is - what is the word I am looking for - is
nourished, expanded.
A: Nurtured.
K: Nurtured. Inflamed, that's the word, inflamed.
A: Inflamed, yes.
K: And you see this happening right through the world, now. In
India, for example, not that I know India much better than I do
America because I've not lived there very long, I go there every
year, this desire and this instant fulfillment is beginning to
take place. Before in the Brahmanical sense, there was a certain
restraint, a certain traditional discipline which says, don't be
concerned with the world and things. They are not important.
What is important is the discovery of truth, of Brahman, of
reality and so on. But now, all that's gone, now desire is being
inflamed, buy more. Don't be satisfied with two trousers but
have a dozen trousers. This feeling of excitement in possession
is stimulated through commercialism, consumerism, and
propaganda.
A: There's a lot of terror, isn't there, associated with
commercialism on the part of those who are purveyors in this,
because the pleasure fades off and this requires a stronger
stimulus next time.
K: That's what the couturiers are doing, every year there is a
new fashion, or every six months, or every month or whatever it
is. Look, there is this stimulation of desire. It is really
quite frightening in a sense, how people are using, are
stimulating desire to acquire money, possession, the whole
circle of a life that is utterly sophisticated, a life in which
there is instant fulfillment of one's desire, and the feeling if
you don't fulfil, if you don't act, there is frustration. So all
that's involved.
A: Would you say, then that the approach to this on the part of
what you have described, is on the basis of frustration.
Frustration itself is regarded as the proper incentive.
K: Yes.
A: Yes, I see. Yes. And since frustration itself is a nullity we
are trying to suggest that nullity is in itself interested in
being filled. Whereas it couldn't be by its nature.
K: Like children - don't frustrate them. Let them do what they
like.
A: Yes. Yes, that reminds me of something years ago in graduate
school. I was brought up as a child in England, and in a rather
strict way compared with the permissiveness of today. And one of
my graduate colleagues told me that he had been brought up by
his parents in a totally permissive way. This was at Columbia
University. And he looked at me, and he said, I think you were
better off, because at least you had some intelligible reference
against which to find out who you are, even if what you found
out wasn't right, there was something to find out. Whereas I had
to do it entirely on my own and I still haven't done it. And he
talked about himself as being constantly in the world trying to
hide the fact that he was a nervous wreck. We had a long
conversation over dinner.
K: Sir, I think that before we enter into the complicated field
of pleasure, we ought to go into this question of desire.
A: Yes, yes. I'd like to do that.
K: Desire seems to be a very active and demanding instinct,
demanding activity that is going on in us all the time. Sir,
what is desire?
A: I wonder if I could ask you to relate it to appetite as over
against what one would call hunger that is natural. Sometimes I
have found a confusion that seems to be a confusion to me, and
that's why I am asking you. Someone will get the idea in class,
talking about the question of appetite and desire, that if we
look to nature, the lion desires to kill the antelope to satisfy
his appetite. Whereas it has seemed to me the correct reply to
that is, no that's not the case. The lion wants to incorporate
the antelope into his own substance. He's not chasing his
appetite.
K: I think they are both related, appetite and desire.
A: Yes.
K: Appetite, physical appetite and there is psychological
appetite.
A: Yes, yes.
K: Which is much more complex. Sexual appetite, and the
intellectual appetite, a sense of curiosity.
A: Even more furious.
K: More furious, that's right. So I think both desire and
appetite are stimulated by commercialism, by consumerism which
is the present civilization actively operating in the world at
the present time - both in Russia, everywhere, this consumerism
has to be fulfilled.
A: Right. We talk about planned obsolescence.
K: Planned obsolescence. Quite.
A: You have that in mind, yes I see.
K: So, what is appetite and what is desire? I have an appetite
because I am hungry. It's a natural appetite. I see a car and I
have read a great deal about it and I would like to possess it,
drive it feel the power of it, going fast, the excitement of all
that. That is another form of appetite.
A: Yes.
K: Appetite, intellectual appetite of discussing with a clever
intelligent, observing man or woman, to discuss, to stimulate
each other in discussion.
A: Yes.
K: And comparing each other's knowledge, a kind of subtle fight.
A: Making points.
K: That's right. And that is very stimulating.
A: Oh yes, oh yes it is.
K: And there is the appetite, sexual appetite, the sexual
appetite of constantly thinking about it, chewing the cud. All
that, both psychological, and physical appetite, normal,
abnormal. The feeling of fulfillment and frustration. All that's
involved in appetite. And I'm not sure whether religions,
organized religions and beliefs, whether they will not stimulate
the peculiar appetite for rituals.
A: I have the notion they do. It seems to me that despite pious
protestations, there is a theatrical display that occurs in
this.
K: Go to a Roman Catholic Mass, and you see the beauty of it,
the beauty of colour, the beauty of the setting, the whole
structure is marvelously theatrical and beautiful.
A: And for the moment it appears that we have heaven on earth.
K: Tremendously stimulating.
A: But then we have to go out again.
K: Of course. And it's all stimulated through tradition, through
usage of words, chants, certain association of words, symbols,
images, flowers, incense, all that is very, very stimulating.
A: Yes.
K: And if one is used to that one misses it.
A: Oh yes. I was thinking as you were saying about, at least to
my ear how extraordinarily beautiful a language is Sanskrit, and
the chanting of the Gita, and the swaying back and forth and
then one sits down to study what the words say, and one says to
himself, now look, what on earth is going on when we are doing
this as over against what the word itself could disclose. But
the seduction that is available, of course its self seduction,
one can't blame the language for being beautiful, it's a self.
And all this is encouraged. And the notion I take it that you
are suggesting that we look at here, is that there's a
tremendously invested interest in keeping this up.
K: Of course. Commercially it is. And if it is not sustained by
the priests then the whole thing will collapse. So is this a
battle to hold the human being in his appetites - which is
really very frightening when you look at it. Frightening in the
sense, rather disgusting in one way, exploiting people and
intrinsically destructive to the human mind.
A: Yes. Yes. I've had this problem in teaching, in my classes,
in terms of my own discussion in class. Sometimes, it has seemed
that maybe the first stanza of a poem that I would have known by
heart would be appropriate. And so I'll begin to recite it and
when I get to the end of it the expectation has arisen, the ears
are there, the bodies are leaning forward and I have to stop,
you see, and I have to say, well you see we can't go on, because
you are not listening to what I am saying, you are listening to
how it is being said. And if I read it terribly you would no
more listen to what it is. Your disgust would dominate just as
the pleasure is dominating now. And the students have got after
me for not reciting more poetry. You see that you would be upset
with that is a perfect sign that you haven't started to do your
work in class yet. And then we are up against the problem that
they think I am being ascetical, and denying the goodies. That's
part of what you mean.
K: Yes, of course.
A: Good, good. I'm glad you cleared that for me.
K: And there is this desire, appetite, we have a little bit gone
into it, what is desire? Because I see something and immediately
I must have it, a gown, a coat, a tie, the feeling of
possession, the urge to acquire, the urge to experience, the
urge of an act that will give me tremendous satisfaction. The
satisfaction might be the acquisition, acquiring a tie, or a
coat, or sleeping with a woman, or acquiring. Now behind that,
isn't there, sir, this desire. I might desire a house and
another might desire a car, another might desire to have
intellectual knowledge. Another might desire god, or
enlightenment. They are all the same. The objects vary, but the
desire is the same. One I call the noble; the other I call the
ignoble, worldly, stupid. But the desire behind it. So what is
desire? How does it come about that this very strong desire is
born, is cultured? You follow? What is desire? How does it take
place in each one of us?
A: If I've understood you, you've made a distinction between on
the one hand appetite associated with natural hunger, that sort
of desire, and now we are talking about desire which sometimes
gets the name artificial. I don't know whether you would want to
call it that.
K: Desire. I might desire, but the objects vary, sir, don't
they.
A: Yes, the objects vary.
K: The objects of desire vary according to each individual, each
tendency and idiosyncracy or conditioning and so on. Desire for
that and that, and that. But I want to find out, what is desire?
How does it come about? I think it's fairly clear, that. You see
sir...
A: You mean a sense of absence?
K: No, no. I am asking what is desire? How does it come?
A: One would have to ask himself.
K: Yes, I'm asking, I'm asking you, how does it come about that
there is this strong desire for, or against desire itself. I
think it's clear: perception, visual perception, then there is
sensation, then there is contact, and desire comes out of it.
That's the process isn't it?
A: Oh, yes, I'm quite clear now what you are saying. I've been
listening very hard.
K: Perception, contact, sensation, desire.
A: And then if the desire is frustrated, anger.
K: All the rest of it, violence.
A: The whole thing goes down the line.
K: All the rest of it follows.
A: Follows, yes.
K: So desire. So the religious people, monks, throughout the
world said, be without desire. Control desire. ~Suppress desire.
Or if you cannot, transfer it to something that's worthwhile -
God, or enlightenment or truth or this or that.
A: But then that's just another form of desire, not to desire.
K: Of course.
A: So we never get out of that.
K: Yes, but you see they said, control.
A: Power is brought into play.
K: Control desire. Because you need energy to serve God and if
you are caught in desire you are caught in a tribulation, in
trouble, which will dissipate your energy. Therefore hold it,
control it, suppress it. You have seen it sir, I have seen it so
often in Rome, the priests are walking along with the Bible and
they aren't look at anything else, they keep on reading it
because they are attracted, it doesn't matter, to a woman, or a
nice house or a nice cloak, so keep looking at it, never expose
yourself to tribulation, to temptation. So hold it because you
need your energy to serve God. So desire comes about through
perceptions, visual perception, contact, sensation, desire.
That's the process of it.
A: Yes. And then there's the whole backlog of memory of that in
the past to reinforce it.
K: Of course, yes.
A: Yes. I was taken with what you just said. Here's this book,
that's already outside me, it's really no more than what they
put on horses when they are in a race.
K: Blinkers!
A: Blinkers.
K: The Bible becomes blinkers!
A: Yes, the blinking Bible. Yes, I follow that. But the thing
that caught me was, never, never quietly looking at it.
K: That's it sir.
A: The desire itself.
K: I walked once behind a group of monks, in India. And they
were very serious monks. The elderly monk, with his disciples
around him, they were walking up a hill and I followed them.
They never once looked at the beauty of the sky, the blue, the
extraordinary blue of the sky and the mountains, and the blue
light of the grass and the trees and the birds and the water -
never once looked around. They were concerned and they had bent
their head down and they were repeating something, which I
happen to know in Sanskrit, and going along totally unaware of
nature, totally unaware of the passers-by. Because their whole
life has been spent in controlling desire and concentrating on
what they thought is the way to reality. So desire there acted
as a suppressive limiting process.
A: Of course, of course.
K: Because they are frightened. If I look there might be a
woman, I might be tempted, and cut it. So we see what desire is
and we see what appetite is; they are similar.
A: Yes. Would you say appetite was a specific focus of desire?
K: Yes, put it that way if you want.
A: All right
K: But we are both go together.
A: Oh yes
K: They are two different words for the same thing. Now the
problem arises, need there be a control of desire at all? You
follow, sir?
A: Yes, I'm asking myself, because in our conversations I've
learned that every time you ask a question, if I take that
question and construe it in terms of a sylogistical relation to
things that have been stated as premises before, I am certainly
not going to come to the answer, that is not the right answer as
over against the wrong answer, I'm not going to come to the one
answer that is needful. So that every time you've asked me this
morning, I have asked myself inside. Yes, please go ahead.
K: Sir, you see, discipline is a form of suppression and control
of desire - religious, sectarian, nonsectarian, it's all based
on that, control. Control your appetite. Control your desires.
Control your thought. And this control gradually squeezes out
the flow of free energy.
A: Oh, yes. And yet, amazingly he Upanishads in particular have
been interpreted in terms of tapas, as encouraging this control.
K: I know, I know. In India it is something fantastic, the monks
who have come to see me, they are called sannyasis, they have
come to see me. They are incredible. I mean, if I can tell you a
monk who came to see me some years ago, quite a young man, he
left his house and home at the age of 15 to find God. And he had
renounced everything. Put on the robe. And as he began to grow
older at 18, 19, 20 sexual appetite was something burning. He
explained to me how it became intense. He had taken a vow of
celibacy, as sannyasis do, monks do. And he said, day after day
in my dreams, in my walk, in my going to a house and begging,
this thing was becoming so like a fire. You know what he did to
control it?
A: No, no what did he do?
K: He had it operated.
A: Oh for heaven's sake. Is that a fact?
K: Sir, his urge for God was so - you follow, sir? The idea, the
idea, not the reality.
A: Not the reality.
K: So he came to see me, he had heard several talks which I had
given in that place. He came to see me in tears. He said, what
have I done? You follow, sir?
A: Oh, I'm sure. Yes.
K: What have I done to myself? I cannot repair it. I cannot grow
a new organ. It is finished. That's the extreme. But all control
is in that direction. I don't know if I am?
A: Yes, his is terribly dramatic. The one who is sometimes
called the first Christian theologian, Origen, castrated himself
out of, as I understand it, misunderstanding the words of Jesus,
"If your hand offends you cut it off".
K: Sir, authority to me is criminal in this direction. It
doesn't matter who says it.
A: And like the monk that you just described, Origen came later
to repent of this in terms of seeing that it had nothing to do
anything. A terrible thing. Was this monk, if I may ask, also
saying to you in his tears, that he was absolutely no better off
in any way shape or form?
K: No, on the contrary, sir, he said, I've committed a sin. I've
committed an evil act.
A: Yes, yes, of course.
K: He realized what he had done. That through that way there is
nothing.
A: Nothing.
K: I've met so many, not such extreme forms of control and
denial, but others. They have tortured themselves for an idea.
You follow, sir? For a symbol, for a concept. And we have sat
with them and discussed with them, and they begin to see what
they have to themselves. I met a man who is high up in
bureaucracy and one morning he woke up and he said, I'm passing
judgment in court over others, punishment, and I seem to say to
them I know truth, you don't you are finished. So one morning he
woke up and he said, this is all wrong. I must find out what
truth is, so he resigned, left and went away for 25 years to
find out what truth is. Sir, these people are dreadfully
serious, you understand.
A: Oh yes.
K: They are not like cheap repeaters of some mantra, and such
rubbish. So somebody brought him to the talks I was giving. He
came to see me the next day. He said you are perfectly right. I
have been meditating on truth for 25 years. And it has been self
hypnosis, as you pointed out. I've been caught in my own verbal,
intellectual formula, structure. And I haven't been able to get
out of it. You understand, sir?
A: 25 years. That's a very moving story.
K: And to admit that he was wrong needs courage, needs
perception.
A: Exactly.
K: Not courage, perception. So, now seeing all this, sir, the
permissiveness on one side, the reaction to Victorian way of
life, the reaction to the world with all its absurdities,
trivialities and banality, all that absurdity and the reaction
to that is to renounce it. To say, well I won't touch it. But
desire is burning all the same, all the glands are working. You
can't cut out your glands. So therefore they say, control,
therefore they say, don't be attracted to a woman, don't look at
the sky, because the sky is so marvelously beautiful and beauty
then may become the beauty of a woman, the beauty of a house,
the beauty of a chair in which you can sit comfortably. So don't
look. Control it. You follow, sir?
A: I do.
K: The permissiveness, the reaction to restraint, control the
pursuit of an idea as God, and for that control desire. And I
met a man again he left his house at the age of 20. He was
really quite an extraordinary chap. He was 75 when he came to
see me. He had left home at the age of 20, renounced everything,
all that, and went from teacher to teacher to teacher. He went
to, I won't mention names because that wouldn't be right, and he
came to me, talked to me. He said, I went to all these people
asking if they could help me find God. I've spent from the age
of 20 till I'm 75, wandering all over India. I'm a very serious
man and not one of them has told me the truth. I've been to the
most famous, to the most socially active, the people who talk
endlessly about God. After all these years I returned to my
house and found nothing. And you come along, he said, you come
along you never talk about God. You never talk about the path to
God. You talk about perception. The seeing 'what is' and going
beyond it. The beyond is the real, not the 'what is'. You
understand. He was 75.
A: Yes, 55 years on the road.
K: They don't do that in Europe, on the road. He was literally
on the road.
A: Yes. I'm sure he was. Because you said he was in India.
K: Begging from village, to village to village. When he told me
I was so moved, tears almost - to spend a whole lifetime, as
they do in business world...
A: Yes
K: ...50 years to go day after day to the office and die at the
end of it. It is the same thing.
A: The same thing.
K: Fulfilling of desire, money, money, money, more things,
things, things; and the other, none of that but another
substitute for that.
A: Yes, just another form.
K: So looking at all this sir, it is dreadful what human beings
have done to themselves and to others, seeing all that one
inevitably asks the question, how to live with desire? You can't
help it, desire is there. The moment I see something, a
beautiful flower, the admiration, the love of it, the smell of
it, the beauty of the petal, the quality of the flower and so
on, the enjoyment, one asks, is it possible to live without any
control whatsoever?
A: The very question is terrifying in the context of these
disorders that you are speaking about. I am taking the part now
of the perspective that one is in, when out of frustration he
comes to you, let us say, like the man did after 55 years on the
road, the minute he walks in the door, he has come to get
something he doesn't already have.
K: Obviously.
A: And as soon as you make that statement, if the answer that is
coming up he starts 'if-ing' right now, if the answer is going
to be something that completely negates this whole investment of
55 years on the road, it seems that most persons are going to
freeze right there.
K: And it is a cruel thing too, sir. He has spent 55 years at
it, and suddenly realizes what he has done. The cruelty of
deception. You follow?
A: Oh, yes.
K: Self deception, deception of tradition, you follow, of all
the teachers who have said, control, control, control. And he
comes and you say to him, what place has control?
A: I think I am beginning to get a very keen sense of why you
say go into it. Because there is a place there like dropping a
stitch we might say. He doesn't get past that initial shock,
then he is not going to go into it.
K: So we talked, I spent hours, we discussed, we went into it.
Gradually he saw. He said, quite right. So, sir, unless we
understand the nature and the structure of appetite and desire,
which are more or less the same, we cannot understand very
deeply pleasure.
A: Yes, yes. I see why you have been good enough to lay this
foundation before we get to the opposite side of the coin.
K: Because pleasure and fear are the two principles that are
active in most human beings, all human beings. And it is reward
and punishment. Don't bring up a child through punishment but
reward him. You know the psychologists are advocating some of
this.
A: Oh yes. They are encouraged by the experiments on Pavlov's
dogs.
K: Dogs, or peoples or ducks, geese. Do this and don't do that.
So unless we understand fear, understand in the sense,
investigate, see the truth of it and if the mind is capable of
going beyond it, to be totally free of fear, as we discussed it
the other day; and also to understand the nature of pleasure.
Because pleasure is an extraordinary thing, and to see a
beautiful thing to enjoy it - what is wrong with it?
A: Nothing.
K: Nothing.
A: Nothing.
K: See what is involved in it.
A: Right. The mind plays a trick there. I say to myself, I can't
find anything wrong with it, therefore nothing is wrong with it.
I don't really believe that necessarily. And I was thinking a
little while ago when you were speaking about the attempts
through power to negate desire, through power.
K: Because search for power, negating desire is search for
power.
A: Would you be saying that one searches for power in order to
secure a pleasure that has not yet been realized?
K: Yes, yes.
A: I understood you well then?
K: Yes.
A: I see. It's a terrible thing.
K: But is a reality.
A: Oh, it's going on.
K: It's going on.
A: Oh, yes. But we are taught that from children.
K: That's just it, sir. So, pick up any magazine, the
advertisements, the half naked ladies, women and so on, and so
on. So pleasure is a very active principle in man as fear.
A: Oh yes.
K: And again society, which is immoral, has said, control. One
side, the religious side says, control and commercialism says,
don't control, enjoy, buy, sell. You follow? And the human mind,
says this is all right. My own instinct is to have pleasure I'll
go after it. But Saturday, or Sunday or Monday or whatever the
day it is I'll give it to God. You follow, sir?
A: Yes.
K: And this game goes on, forever it has been going on. So what
is pleasure? You follow sir? Why should pleasure be controlled;
why should, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, please let's be
very clear from the beginning that we are not condemning
pleasure. We are not saying you must give reign to it, let it
run. Or that it must be suppressed, or justified. We are trying
to understand why pleasure has become of such extraordinary
importance in life. Pleasure of enlightenment. You follow, sir?
Pleasure of sex. Pleasure of possession. Pleasure of knowledge.
Pleasure of power.
A: Heaven which is regarded as the ultimate pleasure...
K: The ultimate, of course.
A: ...is usually spoken of theologically as the future state.
K: Yes.
A: This is to me very interesting in terms of what you have been
saying and even at the level of gospel songs we hear, "When the
Roll is called up Yonder I'll be there". When it's called up
yonder, which means at the end of the line. And then there's the
terror that I won't be good enough when...
K: When.
A: Yes, so I'm tightening up my belt to pay my heavenly
insurance policy on Saturday and Sunday, the two days of the
weekend that you mentioned. What if you got caught from Monday
through Friday. Yes.
K: So pleasure, enjoyment and joy. Follow, sir? There are three
things involved.
A: Three things.
K: Pleasure.
A: Pleasure
K: Enjoyment and joy.
A: Joy.
K: Happiness. You see joy is happiness, ecstasy, the delight,
the sense of tremendous enjoyment. And what is the relationship
of pleasure to enjoyment and to joy and happiness?
A: Yes, we have been moving a long way from fear.
K: Fear, that's right.
A: Yes, but I don't mean moving away...
K: No, no.
A: ...by turning our back on it.
K: No, we have gone into it, we see the movement from that to
this, it's not away from it, pleasure. There is a delight in
seeing something very beautiful. Delight. If you are at all
sensitive, if you are at all observant, if there is a feeling of
relationship to nature, which very few people unfortunately
have, they stimulate it, but the actual relationship to nature,
that is when you see something really marvelously beautiful,
like a mountain with all its shadows valleys and the line and,
you know it's something, a tremendous delight. Now see what
happens: at that moment there is nothing but that. That is,
beauty of the mountain, lake or the single tree on a hill, that
beauty has knocked everything out of me.
A: Oh yes.
K: And at that moment there is no division between me and that.
There is sense of great purity and enjoyment.
A: Exactly.
K: See what takes place.
A: I see we've reached a point where we are going to take a new
step, I feel it coming on. It's amazing how this thing has moved
so inevitably but not unjoyfully. Not unjoyfully. In our next
conversation I would just love to pursue this.
8th Conversation with Dr. Allan W. Anderson
San Diego, California
21st February 1974
Pleasure
A: Mr Krishnamurti, I was wonderfully overjoyed in our last
conversation, for myself, just as one who was trying and
listening to you to learn something of this inwardness, to
follow along the passage that we had made from fear through the
points as we moved, until we came to pleasure. And as we left
off we were still talking of pleasure and I hope we can begin
now to move along.
K: Yes, sir, we were saying, weren't we, pleasure, enjoyment,
delight and joy and happiness, and what relationship has
pleasure with enjoyment, and with joy and with happiness? Is
pleasure joy. Is pleasure happiness? Is pleasure enjoyment. Or
is pleasure something entirely different from those two?
A: In English we think we make a distinction between pleasure,
and joy without necessarily knowing what we mean. But in our
use, in our employment of the words we will discriminate
sometimes, we think it odd to use the word pleasure rather than
joy when we think that joy is appropriate. The relation between
the word please and pleasure interests me very much. We will say
to a person, please sit down. And usually that will be thought
of as...
K: Have the pleasure to sit down.
A: Yes. It's not a request.
K: Please yourself to sit down.
A: It's an invitation, not a request.
K: Not a request.
A: Be pleased to sit down.
K: Be pleased to sit down.
A: It's, be pleased to be seated.
K: Yes. In Italian, French, so on.
A: Right. So within pleasure itself, the word pleasure, there's
the intimation of joy, intimation of it that is not strictly
reduced to the word.
K: I would like to question whether pleasure has any
relationship with joy.
A: Not in itself, I take it you mean.
K: Or even beyond the word. Is there a line or continuity of
pleasure to joy? Is there a connecting link? Because what is
pleasure? I take pleasure in eating, I take pleasure in walking.
I take pleasure in accumulating money. I take pleasure in - I
don't know a dozen things, sex, hurting people, sadistic
instincts, violence. They are all forms of pleasure. I enjoy - I
won't use the word enjoy - I take pleasure in and pursue that
pleasure. One wants to hurt people. And that gives great
pleasure. One wants to have power. It whether doesn't matter
over the cook or over the wife, or a thousand people, it is the
same. The pleasure in something which is sustained, nourished,
kept going. And this pleasure, when it is distorted becomes
violence, anger, jealousy, fury, wanting to break, all kinds of
neurotic activities and so on, so on, so on. So what is pleasure
and what is it that keeps it going? What is the pursuit of it,
the constant direction of it?
A: I think something in our first or second conversation, I
think it was the first, is intimated here when we talked about
the built in necessity that one observes in a progress that is
never consummated. It's just nothing but a termination and then
a new start. But no consummation at all, no totality, no
fulfillment - feeling full is what I mean by that.
K: Yes, I understand, sir. But what is it that's called
pleasure. I see something, something which I enjoy and I want
it. Pleasure. Pleasure in possession. Take that simple thing
which the child, the grown up man, and the priest, they all have
this feeling of pleasure in possession. A toy or a house or
possessing knowledge or possessing the idea of God, or the
pleasure the dictators have, the totalitarian brutalities. The
pleasure. What is that pleasure. To make it very, very simple:
what is that pleasure? Look, sir what happens: there is a single
tree on the hill, green meadow, deer and there is the single
tree standing on the hill. You see that and you say, how
marvellous. Not verbally, you merely say, how marvellous, to
communicate to somebody. But when you are by yourself and see
that it is really astonishingly beautiful. The whole movement of
the earth, the flowers, the deer, the meadows and the water and
the single tree, the shadow. You see that. And it's almost
breathtaking. And you turn away and go away. Then thought says,
how extraordinary it was.
A: Compared with what now is.
K: How extraordinary.
A: Extraordinary.
K: I must have it again. I must get that same feeling which I
had then, for two seconds or five minutes. So thought - see what
has taken place - there was immediate response to that beauty,
non-verbal, non-emotional, non-sentimental, non-romantic, then
thought comes along and says, how extraordinary, what a delight
that was. And then the melody of it, the repetition, the demand,
the desire for the repetition.
A: When we go to performances this is what happens, we call it
the encore, don't we.
K: Of course.
A: And with encores there's a creeping embarrassment. Because
with the first reappearance this is a sign of adulation praise
and everybody is happy. But then, of course, there's the problem
of how many more encores can be made, maybe the last encore is a
signal that we are fed up now. We don't need, we don't want any
more.
K: Quite, quite.
A: Yes, yes, I understand. I think I am following you.
K: So thought gives nourishment, sustains it and gives a
direction to pleasure. There was no pleasure at the moment of
perception, of that tree, the hill, the shadows, the deer, the
water, the meadow. The whole thing was real non-verbal,
non-romantic, and so on, perception. It has nothing to do with
me or you, it was there. Then thought comes around and says
memory of it, the continuing of that memory tomorrow and the
demand for that, and the pursuit of that. And when I come back
to it tomorrow it is not the same. I feel a little bit shocked.
I say, I was inspired, I must find a means of getting again
inspired therefore I take a drink, women, this or that. You
follow?
A: Yes, yes. Do you think, in the history of culture, the
establishment of festivals would be related to what you say?
K: Of course of course. It's the whole thing, sir.
A: We live for, well in English we have this saying, to live it
up. The rest of the time we are living it down.
K: Down, yes, Mardi Gras, the whole business of it. So there it
is. I see that. See what takes place, sir. Pleasure is sustained
by thought - sexual pleasure, the image, the thinking of it, all
that, and the repetition of it. And the pleasure of it and so
on, keep on, keep on, routine. Now, in relationship, what is the
place of pleasure, or relationship to the delight of the moment,
not even the delight, it is something inexpressible. So is there
any relationship between pleasure and enjoyment? Enjoyment
becomes pleasure when thought says, I have enjoyed it, I must
have more of it.
A: It's actually a falling out of joy.
K: Yes. That's it, you see, sir. So pleasure has no relationship
to ecstasy, to delight, to enjoyment, or to joy and happiness.
Because pleasure is the movement of thought in a direction. It
doesn't matter what direction but in a direction. The others
have no direction. Pleasure, enjoyment, you enjoy. Joy is
something you cannot invite. Happiness you cannot invite. It
happens and you do not know if you are happy at that moment. It
is only the next moment you say, how happy, how marvellous that
was. So see what takes place, can the mind, the brain register
the beauty of that hill, the tree, the water the meadows and end
it? Not say, I want it again.
A: Yes. This would take us back to what you just said now, it
would take us back to that word negation that we spoke of
before, because there has to be a moment when we are about to
fall out, we are about to fall out and what you are saying is
the moment 'that about to fall out' appears something must be
done.
K: You will see it in a minute, sir, you will see what an
extraordinary thing takes place. I see pleasure, enjoyment, joy
and happiness, see pleasure as not related to any of that, the
other two, joy and enjoyment. So thought gives direction and
sustains pleasure. Right? Now I ask myself, the mind asks can
there be non-interference of thought, non-interference of
thought in pleasure? I enjoy. Why should thought come into it at
all?
A: There's no reason at all.
K: But it does.
A: It does, it does.
K: Therefore the question arises how is the mind, the brain to
stop thought entering into that enjoyment? You follow?
A: Yes.
K: Not to interfere. Therefore they said, the ancients, and the
religious, control thought. You follow? Don't let it creep in.
Therefore control it.
A: The minute it raises its ugly head, whack it off. It's like a
hydra.
K: It keeps on growing. Now, is it possible to enjoy, to take a
delight in that lovely scene, and not let thought creep in? Is
this possible? I'll show you, it is possible, completely
possible if you are attentive at that moment, completely
attentive. You follow sir?
A: Which has nothing to do with screwing oneself up with
muscular effort to focus in there.
K: Right. Just be wholly there. When you see the sunset, see it
completely. When you see a beautiful line of a car, see it. And
don't let this thought begin. That means at that moment be
supremely attentive, completely, with your mind, with your body,
with your nerves, with your eyes, ears, everything attentive.
Then thought doesn't come into it at all. So pleasure is related
to thought and thought in itself brings about fragmentation,
pleasure and not pleasure. Therefore I haven't pleasure, I must
pursue pleasure.
A: It makes a judgment.
K: Judgment.
A: A judgment.
K: Judgment. And the feeling of frustration, anger, violence -
you follow, all that come into it. There is the denial of
pleasure, which is what the religious people have done. They are
very violent people. They have said no pleasure.
A: The irony of this is overwhelming. In classical thought you
have that marvellous monument, the works of St. Thomas Aquinas
who never tires of saying in his examination of thought, and the
recognition of the judgment that one must distinguish in order
to unite. His motive was very different from what seems to have
been read. Because we have managed to distinguish, but we never
see the thing whole and get to the uniting, so the uniting just
vanishes.
K: That's the whole point, sir. So unless I understand, unless
the mind understands the nature of thinking, really very, very
deeply, mere control means nothing. Personally I have never
controlled a thing. This may sound rather absurd. But it is a
fact.
A: Marvellous.
K: Never. But I've watched it. The watching is its own
discipline and its own action. Discipline in the sense, not
conformity, not suppression, not adjusting yourself to a pattern
but the sense of correctness, the sense of excellence. When you
see something why should you control? Why should you control
when you see a poisonous bottle on the shelf? You don't control.
You say, that's quite right, you don't drink. You don't touch
it. It's only when I don't read the sign properly, when I see it
and when I think it is a sweet then I take it. But if I read the
label, if I know what it is I won't touch it. There's no
control.
A: Of course not. It's self evident. I'm thinking of that
wonderful story in the Gospel about Peter who in the storm gets
out to walk on the water because he sees his lord coming on the
water and he's invited to walk on the water. And he actually
makes it a few steps and then it says he loses faith. But it
seems to me that one could see that in terms of what you are
saying, at the point where thought took over he started going
down. That was the time when he started going down. But he was
actually walking. The reason that I am referring to that is
because I sense in what you are saying that there is something
that supports, there is a support that's not a support that's
fragmented from something else but there is an abiding something
which must be sustaining the person.
K: I wouldn't put it that way, sir. That is, that leaves a door
open, that opens a door to the idea in you there is God.
A: Yes, yes I see the trap.
K: In you there is the higher self, in you there is the Atman,
the permanent.
A: Maybe we shouldn't say anything about that.
K: That's it. No, but we can say this though: to see - look what
we have done this morning - to see appetite, desire, to see the
implications, the structure of pleasure, and there is no
relation to enjoyment, and to joy, to see all that, to see it,
not verbally but actually, through observation, through
attention, through care, through very careful seeing, that
brings an extraordinary quality of intelligence. After all
intelligence is sensitivity. To be utterly sensitive in seeing
it - if you call that intelligence, the higher self, or
whatever, it has no meaning. You follow?
A: It's as though you are saying at that instant it's released.
K: Yes. That intelligence comes in observation.
A: Yes.
K: And that intelligence is operating all the time if you allow
it - not if you allow it. If you are seeing. And I see, I have
seen all my life, people who have controlled, people who have
denied, people who have negated, and who have sacrificed, who
have controlled, suppressed, furiously, disciplined themselves,
tortured themselves. And I say, for what? For God? For truth? A
mind that has been tortured, crooked, brutalized, can such a
mind see truth? Certainly not. You need a completely healthy
mind, a mind that is whole, a mind that is holy in itself.
Otherwise go and see something holy, unless the mind is sacred,
you cannot see what is sacred. So, I say, sorry, I won't touch
any of that. It has no meaning. So, I don't know how this
happened that I never for a second control myself. I don't know
what it means.
A: And yet, amazingly you know what it is in others.
K: Oh, obviously, you can see it.
A: So this is something that you are able to see without
having...
K:...gone through it.
A: Without having gone through it. Now this to me is profoundly
mysterious. I don't mean in the sense of mystification.
K: No, no.
A: But I mean it's miraculous.
K: No, not necessarily, sir. I'll show you something, sir. Must
I get drunk in order to find out what it is to be sober?
A: Oh no, no, no.
K: Because I see a man who is drunk, I say, for god's sake, see
the whole movement of drunkenness, what lies behind it, what he
goes through, see it, finished.
A: But it seems to me that in my listening to you that you are
doing more than just observing that someone over there has
fallen on his face therefore...
K: No, no.
A: Right, there's something that is very deep here.
K: Of course.
A: At least to me, that you've said. Control, in the very, very
deep sense is an activity, not a product, and something that you
haven't experienced that we would call normally intangible is
nevertheless acutely present to you.
K: Yes, yes.
A: And I take it that what you've said that intelligence reveals
that. Intelligence, if intelligence is allowed to reveal it.
K: I think, sir, not allowed. That's a danger, to allow
intelligence to operate. Which means you have intelligence then
you allow it.
A: Yes, I see the trap of that construction. Yes, yes, I see
what you mean. Yes, because now we've got an observer who's got
a new gimmick. Yes, I see what you mean. Please go on, please.
K: So, you see that's why discipline has a different meaning.
When you understand pleasure, when you understand its
relationship to enjoyment and to the joy and happiness and the
beauty of happiness, beauty of joy and so on, then you
understand the utter necessity of a different kind of discipline
that comes naturally. After all, sir, look at the word
discipline in itself means to learn. To learn, not to conform,
not to say, I must discipline myself to be like that, or not to
be like that. The word discipline, as we both see, is to learn.
To learn means I must be capable of hearing, of seeing, which
means the capacity which is not cultivable. You can cultivate a
capacity, but that is not the same as the act of listening. I
don't know if I'm...
A: Oh, you are. Yes I follow, very clearly.
K: The capacity to learn demands a certain discipline. I must
concentrate, I must give my time to it. I must set aside my
efforts in a certain direction and all that. That is, developing
a certain capacity needs time.
A: Yes.
K: But perception is nothing to do with time. You see it, and
act, as you do when you see a danger. You act instantly. You act
instantly because you are so conditioned to danger.
A: Exactly.
K: That conditioning is not intelligence. You are just
conditioned. You see a snake and you recoil. You run away. You
see a dangerous animal and you run. That's all self protective
conditioned responses. That's very simple. But perception and
action is not conditioned.
A: You know, we have in the history of the English language
turned that word fear upside down in terms of its derivation
because, if I remember correctly, it, fear comes from the
Anglosaxon word that means danger. That means danger.
K: Danger, of course.
A: And now we've psychologized that word and now a fear means
rather my emotional response to that danger.
K: Of course, of course.
A: And not what I want to be doing.
K: Yes, not aware of the danger of fear, you follow?
A: Yes.
K: That means sir look: ordinary human beings are conditioned
now as they are to, by the culture, by the civilization they are
living in. They accept nationalism, say for instance, I am
taking that for example, they accept nationalism, the flag, and
all the rest of it, nationalism is one of the causes of war.
A: Oh yes, yes, indubitably.
K: As patriotism and all the rest of it. Now we don't see the
danger of nationalism because we are conditioned to nationalism
as being secure, security.
A: But we do see our fear of the enemy.
K: Of course,
A: Yes, right. And contemplating that fear of the enemy dulls
our capacity to deal with the danger.
K: Danger. So, fear, pleasure, and discipline, you follow sir.
Discipline means to learn; I am learning about pleasure. The
mind is learning about pleasure. Learning brings its own order.
A: Its own.
K: It's own order.
A: Yes. That's what l've been calling miracle. It just asks you
to jolly well leave it alone.
K: It brings its own order, and that order says, don't be silly,
control is out, finished. I talked to a monk once. He came to
see me. He had a great many followers. And he was very well
known. He is still very well known. And he said, I have taught
my disciples, and he was very proud of having thousands of
disciples, you follow? And it seemed rather absurd for a guru,
to be proud.
A: He was a success.
K: Success. And success means Cadillacs or Rolls Royces,
European, American followers, you follow, all that circus that
goes on.
A: His gimmick works.
K: And he was saying, I have arrived because I have learned to
control my senses, my body, my thoughts, my desires. I've held
them as the Gita says: hold something, you are reigning, you are
riding horse, you know, holding. He went on about it for some
length, I said sir, what at the end of it? You have controlled.
Where are you at the end of it: He said, what are you asking, I
have arrived. Arrived at what? I have achieved enlightenment.
Just listen to it. Follow, follow the sequence of a human being
who has a direction, which he calls truth. And to achieve that
there are the traditional steps, the traditional path, the
traditional approach. And he has done it. And therefore he says,
I have got it. I have got it in my hand. I know what it is. I
said, all right sir. He began to be very excited about it
because he wanted to convince me about being a big man and all
that. So I suggested we sat, I sat very quietly and listened to
him and he quietened down. And then I said to him, we were
sitting by the sea, and I said to him, you see that sea, sir. He
said, of course. Can you hold that water in your hand? When you
hold that water in you hand it's no longer the sea.
A: Right.
K: He couldn't make out. I said, all right. And the wind was
blowing from the north, slight breeze, cool. And he said, there
is a breeze. Can you hold all that? No. Can you hold the earth?
No. So what are you holding? Words? You know sir, he was so
angry he said I won't listen to you any more. You are an evil
man. And walked off.
A: I was thinking of the absurd irony of that. All the time he
thought he was holding on to himself and he just let go as he
got up and walked away.
K: So you sir, that's what I am saying. So learning about
pleasure about fear, really frees you from the tortures of fear
and the pursuit of pleasure. So there is a sense of real
enjoyment in life. Everything then becomes a great joy, you
follow, sir. It isn't just a monotonous routine, going to the
office, sex and money.
A: I've always thought it's a great misfortune that in that
splendid rhetoric of our Declaration of Independence, we have
that phrase, the pursuit of pleasure.
K: Pursuit of pleasure.
A: Because the child, the bright child is reared on that.
K: Oh, rather, sir.
A: And when you are very young you are not about to turn around
and say, everybody's daft.
K: I know, I know. So from this you see, discipline in the
orthodox sense has no place in a mind that's really wanting to
learn about truth - not philosophize about truth, not theorize
about truth, as you say, tie ribbons round it, but learn about
it. Learn about pleasure. It is really out of that learning
comes the extraordinary sense of order which we were talking of
the other day. The order which comes with the observation in
oneself of pleasure. The order. And there is pleasure - there is
enjoyment. A marvellous sense of ending each enjoyment as you
live each moment. You don't carry over the past enjoyment. Then
that becomes pleasure. Then it has no meaning. Repetition of
pleasure is monotony, is boredom. And they are bored in this
country, and other countries. They are fed up with pleasure. But
they want other pleasures in other directions. And that is why
there is the proliferation of gurus in this country. Because
they all want, you know, the circus kept going. So discipline is
order. And discipline means to learn about pleasure, enjoyment,
joy and the beauty of joy. When you learn, it is always new.
A: I've just thought - well thought is not the right word -
something flashed in the communication of what you have been
pointing to, if you don't mind I'd rather say that you've been
pointing to than to use the phrase that, you've been saying, I
hope I've understood you correctly here because in terms of the
communication problem it seems that there's been a profound
confusion between perception and practice.
K: Yes. Oh yes.
A: I have grasped that. It's as though we had the idea that
perception is perfected at the end of practice.
K: That is a routine, isn't it?
A: We do have that idea.
K: I know.
A: Yes.
K: You see, sir, they always say freedom is at the end. Not at
the beginning. On the contrary, sir, the beginning is the first
step that counts, not the last step. So if we understand this
whole question of fear and pleasure, joy, the understanding can
only come in freedom to observe. And in the observation learning
and the acting. They all have the same meaning, at the same
moment, not learn then act. It is the doing, the seeing all
taking place at the same time. That is whole.
A: All these marvellous participles that being in the infinite
mood in themselves. In themselves. Yes, a little while back it
occurred to me that if we paid attention to our language as well
as to the flowers and the mountains and the clouds...
K: Oh yes,
A:...the language not only in terms of individual words, but
words in context so that we would refer then to what we call
usage, would through perception, intelligence disclose
themselves completely.
K: Quite.
A: We say don't we, that one is pleased, one is joyed, but if we
ask somebody, if we ask somebody: what have you been doing, and
he said to us, I've been pleasing myself, we'd think that was a
little odd. We wouldn't think it strange at all if he said,
well, I have been enjoying myself. We don't mind that.
K: That's right.
A: But we don't pay attention to what we say.
K: That's right, sir. I came back after lunch, and somebody said
have you enjoyed your meal? And there was a man there who said,
we are not pigs to enjoy.
A: Oh good lord.
K: Seriously.
A: Yes. Exactly. I suppose he must feel very righteous. What he
denied himself during the meal.
K: It is a question of attention, isn't it, whether you are
eating, whether you are observing pleasure. Attention, that's
the thing we have to go into very, very deeply. I don't know if
there is time now, what it means to attend. Whether we attend to
anything at all, or is it only a superficial listening, hearing,
seeing which we call attending; or the expression of knowledge
in doing. Attention, I feel, has nothing to do with knowledge,
or with action. In the very attending is action. And one has to
go into this question again of what is action. Perhaps we can do
it another day.
A: Yes, I see a relation between what you've just said about
action and what a few conversations ago we came to with the word
movement.
K: Yes.
A: On-goingness. And when you were talking about standing and
looking at the tree on the mountain, I remembered when I was
staying at one of the ashramas, actually the Vedanta Forest
Academy, and when I got to my quarters a monkey and sat on the
window sill with her little baby, and she looked full into my
face, and I looked full into her's, but I think she looked
fuller into mine; I had that strange feeling that I was actually
a human being being...
K: Investigated.
A:...investigated, or as the students say today, being psyched
out by this monkey. And it was a profound shock to me.
K: Talking of monkeys, sir, I was in Benares at the place I go
to usually, I was doing yoga, exercises, half naked, and a big
monkey, with black face and long tail, came and sat on the
veranda. I closed my eyes. I looked and there was this big
monkey. She looked at me and I looked at her. A big monkey, sir.
They are powerful things. And it stretched out its hand, so I
walked up and held her hand, like that, held it.
A: Held it.
K: And it was wrought but very, very supple, extraordinarily
supple. But rough. And we looked at each other. And it said it
wanted to come into the room. I said, look, I am doing
exercises, I have little time, would you come another day. I
kind of talked to it. Come another day. So it looked at me and I
withdrew, went back. She stayed there for two or three minutes
and gradually went away.
A: Marvellous, just marvellous. Complete act of attention
between you.
K: There was no sense of fear. It wasn't afraid. I wasn't
afraid. A sense of, you know...
A: This reminds me of a story I read about Ramana Maharishi, how
when he was a young man he went and lived in a tiger's cave. And
it was occupied by the tiger. And the tiger would come back
after the hunt in the early hours of the morning and sleep with
him. To read that within the environs of our culture well it
starts, well you feel undone when you read that if you think for
a moment you could allow yourself to believe it. But in the
context of what we have been saying about the monkeys, and this
marvellous story you told me, I wish I could have shaken hands
with that little mother with her baby. I wasn't ready to.
K: No, it was really - I don't know, there must have been a
communication, there must have been a sense of friendship, you
know, without any antagonism, without any fear of it. It looked
at me, you know. And I think attention is not something to be
practised, not to be cultivated, go to a school to learn how to
be attentive. That's what they do in, in this country and in
other places, say, I don't know what attention is, I'm going to
learn from somebody who will tell me how to get it. Then it's
not attention.
A: Speed reading, it's called.
K: Speed reading, yes.
A: A thousand words a minute.
K: Sir, that's why I see there is a great sense of care and
affection in being attentive, which means diligently watching.
That word diligent comes from legere, you know, of course, to
read. To read exactly what it is, what is there. Not interpret,
not translate it, not contrive to do something with it, but to
read what is there. There is an infinite lot to see. There is
tremendous lot to see in pleasure, as we said. And to read it.
And to read it, you must be watchful, attentive, diligent,
careful. We are negligent. What's wrong with pleasure?
A: There's a colloquial remark in our tongue when somebody
wishes to secure attention, they will say, do you read me? That,
of course, has been taken over in technology into a different
aspect, but quite apart from what someone would be saying with
ear phones on in a plane, just common ordinary practice,
sometimes a person will say that.
K: So that what we have done is really read this whole map.
A: Yes.
K: From the beginning of responsibility, relationship, fear,
pleasure. All that. Just to observe the extraordinary map of our
life.
A: And the beauty of it is, we've been moving within the concern
for the question of the transformation of man which is not
dependent on knowledge or time without getting worried about
whether we are getting off the track. It is happening naturally.
That I take it is not a surprise to you, of course, but I'm sure
it's shocking in terms...
K: And that's why, also, sir, it is right to live with the
company of the wise. Live with a man who is really wise. Not
with people who are faking it, not in books, not attending
classes where you are taught wisdom. Wisdom is something that
comes with self knowing.
A: It reminds me of a hymn in the Veda that talks about the
goddess of speech who never appears except among friends.
K: Yes.
A: Marvellous. Actually that means that unless there is the
care, the affection that you mentioned, that is continuous
concurrent with attention, there can be nothing but babble.
K: Of course.
A: There can be, verbal babble.
K: Which the modern world is encouraging, you see.
A: Yes.
K: Again which means the superficial pleasures, not enjoyment.
You follow? Superficial pleasures become the curse. And to go
behind that is one of the most difficult things for people to
do.
A: Because it goes faster and faster.
K: That's just it.
A: It goes faster and faster.
K: That's what is destroying the earth, the air. Everything they
are destroying. There is a place I go to every year in India,
where there is a school: the hills the oldest hills in the
world.
A: What a beautiful thing.
K: Nothing has been changed, no bulldozers, no houses, it's an
old place, with the old hills and in amongst there is a school
with which I am connected and so on. And you feel the enormity
of time, the feeling of absolute non-movement. Which is,
civilization, which is all this circus that is going on. And
when you go there you feel this, utter quietness, in which time
has not touched it. And when you leave it and come to
civilization you feel rather lost, a sense of what is all this
about? Why is there so much noise about nothing? That's why it
is so odd, and rather inviting, a great delight to see
everything as is, including myself. To see what I am, not
through the eyes of a professor, a psychologist, a guru, a book,
just to see what I am and to read what I am. Because all history
is in me. You follow?
A: Of course. There is something immensely beautiful about what
you have said. Do you think in the next conversation we have we
could talk about the relation of beauty to what you have said.
Thank you so much.