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Krishnamurti 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.J.: It is so. But the question is, how is this movement to end? K: How is this cycle of experience, knowledge, memory, thought, action - action again going back to knowledge, the circle in which you are caught - to end?

P.J.: It is really asking, how is the stream of causation to end? This process you have shown - challenge, sensation, action - does the learning of that action return and get stored?

K: Of course. Obviously. This is what we are doing.

J.U.: Does that which goes out return, or does something new return?

P.J.: It acts, and in between many causes have flowed into it. The whole thing comes back and is stored again.

G.N.: We have been saying the programme works this way - experience, knowledge, memory, action. Action further strengthens experience and this is repeated.

J.U.: In that process, what goes does not come back as it was, but something special is added to it. What is the special quality of what is added?

RMP.: In the whole thinking process, according to Upadhyayaji, there is this fixed point, which is the inner and outer. If we can discuss this, then perhaps it will be easier to understand.

G.N.: We are not denying the reality of the outer world, but there is nature, there are other human beings, there are things. Everything is real; war is real, nationality is real, the other person is real. But what we imply is: There is really no contact; only contact with our own image and this makes for no contact.

P.J.: It implies that at no point is there real freedom because, caught in this, there can be no freedom.

G.N.: This does not deny the existence of the outer world. Otherwise we go back to the me and society.

A.P.: You are not denying the outer world as things, you are denying the reality of the outer world as persons. P.J.: No, you are denying the reality of the images that your mind has made of the outer world.

 

 

J.U.: I have accepted this, that he who makes the images is responsible for this process. He has gone that far only through a process of causation. When he returns, he returns with new experience, desires and urges. What is this new factor; from where does it come?

P.J.: How has this accumulation of knowledge taken place? That which was green has turned yellow as in a leaf, as in a fruit.

K: Sir, all that I am saying is, knowledge as it exists now, psychological knowledge, is the corruption of the brain. We understand this process very well. You ask, how is that chain to be broken? I think the central issue is psychological knowledge which is corrupting the brain and, therefore, corrupting the world, corrupting the rivers, the skies, relationships, everything. How is this chain to be broken?

Now, why do you ask that question? Why do you want to break this chain? This is a logical question. Has the breaking of the chain a cause, a motive? If it has, then you are back in the same chain. If it is causing me pain and, therefore, I want to be out of it, then I am back in the chain. If it is causing me pleasure, I will say, please leave me alone. So I must be very clear in myself. I cannot persuade you to be clear, but in myself I must have no direction or motive.

Satyendra: It is a central question and people keep on asking, `How do I break the chain?' But the question I ask is, given the brain that I have, is it possible to end the chain?

I am conscious of myself. Can I ask the question in this way - is it basically a way of looking at things? Is it a matter of reason, logic?

K: No, it is not a matter of analysis, but of plain observation of what is going on.

Sat: Without the mind forming an image? K: The brain is the centre of all sensory responses. The sensory response has created experience, thought and action, and the brain being caught in that which is partial, is never

 complete. Therefore, it is polluting everything it does. If you admit that once, not as theory but as a fact, then that circle is broken.

P.J.: Practically every teaching which is concerned with the meditative processes has regarded the senses as an obstruction to the ending of this process. What role do you give to the senses in freeing the mind?

R.B.: I think what you are saying is not correct. All of them have never regarded the senses as obstruction because when they said `senses' they included the mind. They never separated the mind from the senses.

P.J.: After all, all austerities, all tapas, all yogic practices, were meant, as I have understood them, to see that the movement of the senses towards the object was destroyed.

K: I don't know what the ancients have said.

Kapila Vatsyayan: I think, at least in what is broadly called Hindu or ancient Indian thought, the senses are not to be denied. That is very crucial to the whole culture, and where it all began was with the Katha Upanishad, with sensory perception. The image they have is the chariot and horses. Yes, horses are primary; senses are primary and they are not to be destroyed. They are to be understood, controlled. They are the factors of the outer reality. They do not deny the outer.

P.J.: I am asking, what is the role of the senses,

K: The senses, as thought, create desire. Without the interference of thought they have very little importance.

P.J.: Senses have no importance?

K: Senses have their place. If I see a beautiful tree, it is beauty; the beauty of a tree is astonishing. Where does desire interfere with the senses? That is the whole point;not whether the senses are important or unimportant, but where desire begins. If one understands that, then why give such colossal importance to it?

R.B.: It sounds as if you are contradicting yourself.