P: I wanted to ask you, Krishnaji, whether there was one question
that needed to be asked by an individual which would open the
door to reality. Could all questions be reduced be that one
question?
F: Is there such a thing as a door? We cannot ask a question about
that for which there can be no metaphor.
K: I think she means it in the sense of an opening or a break
through.
F: From your own experience, what would you say is breaking
through? There is no point of reference for us.
K: What is the question?
F: I would not put it that way. I come to you because in you there
is an imponderable quality, a tiny seed of something which makes
you entirely different. I do not look for differences in manifesta-
tion, but there is in you that 'elseness'. Now, is there a key to that?
Is there a question which opens that up?
B: If I may ask: What is it that prevents one from seeing? This is
our difficulty. Last evening when we heard Krishnaji's talk, we felt
that there was nothing which we would not be prepared to do if it
was in us to do it. Can all that you say be held in one question? To
you it is a very simple into a single thing. This convergence has not
taken place in us. Could there be some action which would make
all questions melt into one question?
P: I have a further question. During the past few days Krishnaji
has been saying that there is a region where thought is necessary
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and a region where thought has no place. What is the instrument,
the mechanism, which makes it possible for thought to operate
only where it is legitimate, and not impinge into areas where it
should not function, where it creates illusion?
K: Now, what is the question?
P: How does this happens? What is the instrument? We have
examined our minds under a microscope. Now we ask: Under
whose command do the brain cells function when thought ceases
to function, when there is no evaluation, no operation of will, no
doer, no one to direct or to command?
K: I thought K explained yesterday that it is intelligence.
D: It is the same thing. Intelligence is the instrument.
K: Let us keep to the word 'intelligende'. Intelligence is that
quality of the mind which can use the vast field of knowledge, but
which discards the use of knowledge in another field.
F: There is a difference between you and me. Is the difference the
degree of intelligence, or is there another factor operating in you?
K: P asked a question: What is the essential demand in life? And
she goes on futher to ask whether thought can operate sanely,
efficiently in the whole field of knowledge where it is necessary
and not operate in antoher field where it brings chaos, misery.
Now, what is it that can prevent thought from operating so that it
does not create misery?
Can we takle this question differently? Can the mind, the
totality of the mind, empty itself of everything--of knowledge and
non-knowledge? Can it free itself of the knowledge of science and
language, and also of the mechanism of thought that functions all
the time? Can the mind empty itself of all that? I do not know if I
am making myself clear. Can the mind empty itself not only at the
conscious level but also at the deeper secret chambers of the mind?
From that emptiness, can knowledge operate? And, also, can it
refrain from operating?
B: Is it then a question of empthness?
K: Let us see. Can the mind empty itself of its whole content as the
past, so that it has no motive? Can it empty itself? And can that
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emptiness use knowledge, pick it up, use it and then drop it--but
always remain empty?
Emptiness is the sense that the mind is nothing. Emptiness has
its own movement which is not measurable in terms of time. The
movement in emptiness, which is not the movement of time, can
operate in the field of knowledge--and there is no other opera-
tion. That movement can operate in the field of knowledge,
nowhere else.
P: Are there two movements?
K: There are no two movements. That is why I said that movement
can operate only in knowledge. Please follow. I am just inveati-
gating. You asked a question. K has spoken of knowledge and
freedom from knowledge: Knowledge operates in the field of
science,, where there must be a certain will, a certain direction, an
operative function, a design; knowledge does not operate where
there is no place for thought and, therefore, for will.
F: It seems that sometimes we operate intentionally and some-
times non-intenttionally. I can see that two operations: mental and
non-mental. The movement of the two is not separate.
K: Watch your mind F. You see thought operating always within
the field of knowledge: Knowledge helps man to live more
comfortably in the environment. Right? It also brings pain, misery
and confusion. That is a fact.
F: I object to your use of the word 'always'.
K: Wait. Then you and I ask: Is thought necessary? Why does
thought create misery> Is it possible for thought not to create
misery? That is all. Keep it as simple as this.
F: My answer is that the roots of our misery are not known to us. I
am not aware of the promptings which create misery.
K: We began with the superficial layers. We must now go into the
secret chambers of the mind.
P: Surely we are not positing a state of consciousness where
thought will operate only at the technological level and at the day-
to-day level of action, where it is necessary, and that it would be
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sufficient if by some trick or electric shock, all other consciousness
as thought could be wiped away? We are not postulating that,
surely?
K: Of course not.
P: But look sir, the moment you speak of a place where thought
can operate legitimately and place where thought has no legi-
timate place, you are postulating the 'other'-- a state which is
non-thought. If consciousness is only content, then what is the
'other'?
D: I can go into a state of constant euphoria through a lobotomy.
Is that enough?
K: Then you become a vegetable.
F: I question your statement that thought is cosciousness. Is
thought the entirety of consciousness? Can we say that there is no
consciousness beyond thought?
K: So we have to go into the question of consciousness.
B: We are retacting our steps. You used the word 'intelligence' in a
different way. That word is the key, if we know what it is.
P: But this is also a vaild question: If consciousness is the same as
its content, and the content of consciousness is thought, will the
cutting away of thought solve the problem?
K: No.
P: Then what is the 'other'?
F: Intelligence is different from consciousness. We must distin-
guish between the two. Intelligence is much vaster than con-
sciousness. We can have unconscious intelligence.
P: What is consciousness?
K: What is consciousness? there is a waking consciousness of the
superfical mind and there is a hidden consciousness, a total lack of
awareness of the deeper layers.
P: I would say, Krishnaji, that there is a consciousness in which
thought operates; then there is a consciousness where attention is
and where there is seeing; and a consciousness which is uncon-
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scious of thought. I see these three states as they operate in me.
K: Wait. Wait. Memory--the operation of memory as thought, as
action; then attention--a state where there is no thinker. So you
are saying that there is the operation of thought and memory--
having been and what will be. Then there is a state of attention and
a state in which there is neither attention nor thought, but a sense
of being half asleep.
P: Half awake, half asleep.
K: All this is what you would call consciousness. Right?
P: In all these states, either consciously or unconsciously, sensory
perceptions are in operation.
F: Do not bring in the unconscious. Do not call the unconscious a
form of consciousness.
D: I wanted to ask whether we could include dreams also in it; that
is the unconscious part.
F: Dreams are dreams because they become conscious.
P: In the state in which one spends a large part of the day, images
come and go; that is still consciousness.
F: My point is that consciousness is patchy; it is not a continuous
phenomenon.
K: Can we start this way? I am approaching it tentatively--there
is consciousness, wide or narrow, deep or shallow. As long as
there is a centre which is conscious of itself, that centre may
expand or contract. That centre says that it is either aware ir not
aware. That centre can attempt to go beyond the limitations which
it has placed around itself. That centre has its deep roots in the
cave and operates superfically. All that is consciousness. In all
that there must be a centre.
P: Consciousness is that which registers. It is the only thing which
distinguishes life from a state of death. As long as there is a
registering. there must be a centre.
K: Are we speculating? Look, let us begin very simply. When are
you actually conscious?
P: When I am awake, when I am aware.
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K: I would begin very simply. When am I conscious?
P: I am conscious of this discussion.
K: Let us keep it simple. When am I conscious? Either through
sensory reaction, or through s sensory shock, a sensory resistance,
a sensory danger, a conflict n which there is oain-pleasure--it is
only in those moments that I say that I am conscious. I am aware
of the design of that lamp; I perceive that there is a reaction, and I
say that it is either ugly or beautiful. Is not that the basis or all this?
I do not want to speculate. i ask myself: When am I conscious?
When I am challenged, when there is an impact of conflict, pain,
pleasure, then I am conscious. This whole phenomenon is going
on, whether there is a deliberate awareness or not; this thing is
operating all the time. That is what we call consciousness.
F: The response to impact.
P: You mean there is no photographic consciousness. I see a dust
bin--
K: But you are seeing it. The mind is registering it. That is, the
brain cells are reciving all these impacts.
F: And in that is there no classification as pain, pleasure?
K: Impact as pleasure, pain, conflict, sorrow, conscious or un-
conscious, is going on all the time. There may be an awareness of
all that at one moment, and at other moments there may not be.
But it is going on all the time.
P: This process itself is consciousness, and the centre that observes
is also part of consciouness.
K: What is the next question?
B: What is the nature of the unconscious?
K: It is still the same. Only it is the deeper layer.
B: Why are we unconscious of the deeper layer?
K: Because superficially we are very active all the time.
B: So the density of the superficial layer prevents our being
conscious of the deeper layers.
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K: I am making noises on the surface, which is like swimming on
the surface. So what is my next question?
B: Is it possible to integrate the various layers?
K: No.
P: What is the relationship of thought to consciousness?
K: I do not understand this question because thought is con-
sciousness.
P: Is there anything else but thought?
K: Why do you put that question?
P: Because you started by distinguishing the region where thought
has a legitimate place from a region where thought has no
legtimate place. And now you say that thought is consciousness.
K: Go slowly. Let us pause here. The first question was: Is thought
part of this whole thing? Consciousness is thought--pain, conflict,
memory. When the superficial mind is making a lot of noise, you
come and ask: What is the relationship between thought and all
that? Thought is all that.
P: You said just now that thought is a part of all that. Then what is
the rest?
A: All that is consciousness. Thought comes into operation when
the 'I' wants to localize.
K: That is right.
F: When the brain is cut off there is no thought.
K: That is, memory is held and paralyed. All that we have
described--memory and all that--is consciousness. Now thought
comes into operation when I am interested in a part of this. The
scientist is interested in material phenomena, the psychologist in
his area; they have limited the field of investigation. Thought is
used as a systematizer. P asks: What is the relationship between
thought and consciousness? I think that is a wrong question.
P: Why is it a wrong question?
K: There is no relationship between the two because there are no
two. Thought is not something separate from consciousness.
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P: Is thought part of it or is thought all of it?
K: Go slowly. I do not want to say something which is untrue.
P: Thought is co-extensive with consciousness. Let us not sub-
divide them.
K: P asked F a very simple question: What is the relationship
between thought and consciousness?
F: Which is the 'other'. She has no business to speak of the two as
separate.
P: In everything K says the 'other' is posited: Thought has a
legitimate place in the field of technology, but it has legitimate
place outside this field. And the point is not to perform an
operation to wipe out thought. Therefore the 'other' is posited.
A: So, is there in consciousness a space which is not covered by
thought?
P: Exactly.
K: I am not at all sure. I do not say that you are not right. So go on.
A: I say that there is a space in consciousness which is not thought
and which is part of the human heritage. It is there.
K: I do not think that there is any space in consciousness.
P: I want to put another question to you. When I listen there is no
movement of thought, but am I totally conscious?
K: Why do you call that being conscious? Wait, go slowly. A says
that there is space in consciousness. We have to respond to that.
P: Whenever a statement like that is made, you immediately say
that wherever there is space there is a boundary.
A: I may be using the wrong word here.
K: You have used the right word. But you do not see that space
cannot be contained in a frontier, in a boundary, in a circle.
A: In one sense space is held within the circle, the square, and
rectangle; but that is not the space we mean here.
K: Where there is a border there is no space.
D: According to the scientists, time and space are held together.
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K: But when we say that consciousness has space, then conscious-
ness has time. Space exists only when there is time. Time is
limitation. Do not call that space, in the sense in which we
use the word, does not eist in consciousness. That space is
something else. Leave that for the moment. Now what is the next
question?
P: If we can take it from this point, I again ask: what is the
relationship of thought to consciousness? Is thought contained in
consciousness?
K: Do not use the word 'relationship'. That implies the two.
Thought is consciousness. Do not put it in any other way.
P: Yes, thought is consciousness. listening is consciousness, learn-
ing is consciousness. If thought is consciousness, is thought not
related to seeing as consciousness?
K: Put the question this way: Is there a state of mind when there is
no learning at all? You see the question?
P: You have left us far behind now.
F: There are fields in which we operate without consciousness.
Most of our relationships are beyond reach of consciousness. I
operate unconsciously.
K: I want to go very slowly, please. Thought is consciousness,
listening is consciousness and learning is consciousness. Seeing,
learning, hearing, memorizing, reacting to the memory are all part
of consciousness.
P: So when any one of these parts is operating, and no other, what
you say is understandable. Then there is no duality. Now we take
the next step. When only one of these parts operates, is it
consciousness?
K: I would not use the word 'part'. When thought operates within
a specific field there is no duality. For instance, when I speak a few
words in Frence or Italian, it is just that. But in the focalizing of
consciousness, when thought compares that operation with
another, there is dualism. I see a sunset; it is recorded at that
moment as memory. And thought says: I wish it would it would happen
again. See what has been discovered--when there is the simple
functioning of thought without any motive, there is no duality.
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P: Let us not take an impersonal thing like the sunset as an
example. Let us take jealousy, the movement of thought as
jealously, my jealousy.
K: Jealousy is the factor of duality. My wife looks at another man,
and I feel jealous because she is my wife, and I possess her. But if,
from the begainning, I am aware that she is not mine, that she is as
free as I am, the factor of jealousy need not enter.
P: I understand that. But when thought arises in consciousness, in
itself there is no duality there.
K: There is duality only when there is a motive, measurement,
comparison. In the observation of a beautiful sunset, in seeing its
lights and shadow, there is no duality. The word 'beautiful' may be
dualistic in the sense of implying the ugly, but I am using the word
without the sense of comparison. The dualistic process begins the
moment I say that I want to experience it agin. That's all.
P: We have somehow moved away.
K: I will come back to where we left off. Consciousness is
perception. hearing, seeing, listening, learning, the memory of all
that and the responses of memory. All this is consciousness,
whether focussed or not. In that consciousness there is time; and
time creates space because it is enclosed, In it there is duality,
conflict between 'the must and the must not'. And because hat
consciousness has boundaries and frontiers, which are limitaions,
in it there is no real space at all. Let us stop here.
A: There is another factor which I would like to include here.
There are so many things being syphoned into my consciousness;
there are the perceptions of the various peoples of the world--of
the Africans, of the Latin Americans; there are the findings of the
physicists, the biologists. How can we ignore all that? If we only
take the 'I' and see the source of it, it is not enough. What is this
process by which experience is syphoned into me? The movement
of the 'I' as thought is something that is constantly being fed and
renewed by that. Unless I see this process, I will not understand.
K: We said, sir, that the field of conscousness is a movement of
contraction and expansion, a movement of information, know-
ledge. All that is happening in the environment, the political
changes and so on, is a part of me; I am the environment and the
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environment is me. In that whole field there is the movement of
the self as: I like the Arabs; I do not like the Jews.
A: I question that. One need not even takes sides. There are the
liberated tribes in Africa which are caught up in militarism.
K: See what happens. Colonialism, freedom from colonialism, the
tribe, then the identification with the tribe as the 'me' who belongs
to the tribe.
A: On this wide canvas, we see thought narrowing into this focus,
which we call consciousness.
K: All that is consciousness. Consciousness creates the mischief by
saying: I like and I do not like. I am witness to this 'I-like-and-I-
don't-like' because it is part of something over which I have no
control at all.
A: That may be so, but that is not the problem. The problem is the
identification which gives weight to the 'I-like-and-I-don't-like'.
K: Here I am, born in India with all its environment--the
superstitions, the riches and poverty, the sky, the hills, the
economic and the social conditions. The whole of that is me.
A: And there is also the entire historical and the pre-historical
past. If you include allt that, then choice disappears.
K: Yes sir, I am all that--the past and the present and the
projected future. I was born in India with its five thousand year old
culture. That is my consciousness. Choice arises when you say that
you are a Hindu and I am a Muslim; when there is focalization
through identification, there is choice.
P: Let us come back to what you have been saying--that it is
legitimate for thought to operate in fields where knowledge is
necessary, and that when it operates in other fields it brings
sorrow, pain, duality. The question is: Is this other state of which
you talk also consciousness?
K: Let us examine that. Let us stick to that question for the
moment. Thought has a legitimate field of operation. If it impinges
upon other fields it brings pain, suffering. What operated in this
area is still consciousness, as we know it, with all the things we
have put into it. The 'other' is not.
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P: The 'other' is not what?
K: It is not thought.
P: But is it consciousness? Let me open out the problem a little
more. Sensory perception continues to operate; there is seeing,
listening. So why do you say that it is not consciousness?
K: I am saying that it is not consciousness in the sense that there is
no conflict.
P: There is no conflict in consciousness. There is only conflict
when consciousness operates as thought in the field where it has no
legitimate place. Why should there be conflict in consciousness
when thought is not operating?
K: There is no conflict at all there. Let us go slowly.
P: Then what is it that operates there?
K: It is intelligence. Intelligence is not consciousness.
P: Now we come to a stage where we just listen.
K: My mind has follwed all this. It has seen, as A pointed out,
that the whole content of consciousness contains the Indian
tradition as well as the whole human heritage, and that I am all
that; consciousness is all that. Heritage is consciousness, and that
consciousness as we know it is conflict. My chief concern is to end
that conflict--conflict being sorrow. pain. In examining that,
there is a discovery that it is all a process of thought. There is
pleasure and pain. And from that the mind says that it must
operate in the field of knowledge and not here. It operates
legitimately in one field, but not here. What has happened to my
mind? It has become pliable, soft, alive. It sees, it hears. It does
not have the quality of conflict in it. And that is intelligence; that is
not consciousness. Intelligence is not heritage, whereas conscious-
ness is heritage. Do not translate intellugence as God.
Now that intelligence can use knowledge, it can use thought to
operate in the field of knowledge. Therefore its operation is never
dualistic.
D: The language of intelligence must be different from the
language of thought.
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K: Intelligence has no language, but it can use language. The
moment it has language, it is back again in the field. That
intelligence which has no language is not personal; it is not mine or
yours.
P: It may not be personal, but is it focalized?
K: No; it appears to focalize.
P: When it moves, does it focalize?
K: Of course, it must; but it is never in focalization.
P: It is never held?
K: It is like holding the sea in the fist--what you hold is part of the
sea, but is not the sea.