tradition and knowledge

Tradition and Revolition(J. Krishnamurti KFI) 중에서







TRADITION AND KNOWLEDGE

Dialogue 13



A: I belonged to the self-preparation group of the Theosophical
Society in 1923 and 1924. In that group of the Theosophical for
understanding which followed the traditional approach--of viveka
(discrimination), or vairagya (detachment) and love. A change
came about when you said: Let us break away from all organi-
zations, from all disciplines.

In the book At the Feet of the Master, sama is translated as
'control of the mind' and dama as 'control of the body'. Tradi-
tionally sama seems to have been neglected; less attention is paid
to it than too dama, control of the body. And yet the word santi,
which s a one-word symbol for inner peace, is derive from sama
as the past participle. By implication, if sama is not understood,
sana is also not understood.

K: What does the word sadhana mean to you?

J: To practice sadhana is to acquire discipliine.

A: You neglect sama, the process whereby the rising impulse of the
mind subsdes.

K: What do you mean by 'process'? A process implies a movement
--from here to there; a process involves time.

A: The process o observing the ways of the mind involves time.

K: Time is involved in a process, in a discipline, and is also
necessary in order for one to arrive. Time and aslo space are
implied in all that. From here to there implies space, and that
space is coovered through time.

J: Ramana says that it is pathless, free of 'process'. free of time.

A: Even when we realize that it is not good to suppress the arising
and ending of desire, that realization is still a process; and the
process is in time.


page 73



K: What do we mean when we say that we live in time? What does
'living in time' mean?

A: The mind is geared to yesterday, today and tomorrow.

K: The mind also lives within chronological time--I come here at
such and such a time. Is there any other time?

A: There is psychological time which is created by the mind.

K: What do you mean by 'time as created by the mind'?

A: The mind has a way of prolonging pleasure. My movement in
chronological time is influenced by my mind.

K: What is this mind?

A: Memory.

K: What is memory? You were in Bangalore yesterday and today
you are in Madras. You remember Bangalore. Remebrance of a
past experience is memory. The experience has left a mark,
painful or pleasurable--that is irrelevant. Why has experience left
a mark? And what is the substance on which it leaves a mark?

A: On the censor.

K: What do you mean by the 'censor'? Yesterday's experience has
left a mark. On what has it left a mark?

J: On the mind, which is consciousness.

K: Which consciousness? The content of consciousness is con-
sciousness; without a content there is no consciousness--the two
are not separete. find out on what memory leaves a mark.

A: On that part of the mind/brain which carries the residue.

K: Marks are left on the brain cells. See what happens--un-
finished experience leaves a mark on the brain cells which hold
memory. Memory is matter--the brain cells are matter. So every
incomplete experience leaves a mark which becomes knowledge.
The brain as accumulated knowledge has received information,
and information is knowlege. Its weight makes the mind dull.

A: How does one cope with a challenge?

K: What is coping with a challenge? If you respond according to



page 74


past information, you do not know how to deal with the new
problem. Experience leaves a residue as memory on the brain
cells, which become the storehouse of knowledge. Knowledge is
the past. So the brain, put together thtough time which is the past,
acts, responds, functions, according to the residue of the past. And
so a mind crowded with knowledge is not a free mind.

J: Because its respoonses arise oout of the known.

A: At a certain level knowledge is essential.

K: Of course, half our lives are that. We see that the brain, which
is put together through millennia, lives with the experience of the
present and the past--the racial past, the familial past and the
personal past are all weighted down there. We call this progress.
We know technological progress--from the bullock cart to the jet.
The brain says that it can only function within its memories; and
thought says that it wants to get out of the prison of memories. So
thought moves into the future which is enlightenment. So enlight-
enment is also a movement of thought. See what we are doing.

A: We apply the principle of the bullock cart and the jet--that the
mind through acquired knowledge, throough discipline, through
control of desires, can move to freedom.

K: I do not think we are clear yet. We accumulate knowledge,
which is experience, memory, and through knowledge we try to
find a way out.

A: Yes.

K: The traditional approach to freedom is through knowledge. But
can knowledge bring about freedom? If it can, discipline, control,
sublimation, suppression are all necessary. Because that is all we
know. That is tradition. 'Tradition' means 'to carry over'.

A: I clearly see that it is not pssible. Then why do we not stop?

K: I clearly see that knowledge which is the accumulation of
centuries is a prison. I see clearly that this is a fact; it is not an
assumption or a theory. And yet the mind cannot drop it.

A: My understanding is verbal; it is based on words.

K: Is it based on words? You hit me. I have physical pain. The
remembrance of the pain is in the form of words, but the pain is


page 75



not verbal. Why has the mind translated the pain into words?
Watch it, sir.

A: For the sake of commumunication.

K: Watch it. You hit me; I am in pain. That is a physical fact. Then
I remeber it. The remembrance is in the form of words. Why has
the fact been translated into words?

J: To give continuity.

K: Is it to give continuity to the pain, or to give continuity to the
man who has inflicted pain?

A: He has to reap the consequences.

J: It gives continutity to the man who receives the pain.

K: Look. You hit me. There is physical pain. That is all. Why do I
not end it there? Why does the brain translate the pain into words
and say: He has hit me? Why?--Because it wants to hit back. If it
did not want to do that, it could say: He has hit me--full stp. But
the brain remembers not only the physical pain, but also the man
who cause the hurt, which becomes the psychological mark.

R: Who remembers?

K: The brain cells.

A: The 'I' process.

J: What is being recorded in the cells is the image of the man who
hit me.

K: Why should I remmber the man?

J: Even if I forgive him, it is the same.

K: What happens is this. The moment you hit me, I translate the
fact into words. The 'I' says: He has hit me, how could he? What
have I done?--All these are waves of words.

The traditional approach to enlightenment is also through
knowledge: you must have knowledge to arrive, to achieve
freedom. And I ask whether that is so. The experience of being hit
is knowledge. Now, what is the traditional approach to the
problem of pain, of suffering, of being hurt? Why has tradition
maintained that knowlege is necessary as a means of enlight-
enment?


page 76


A: That is an over-simplification. The verbalzation of pain is only
one part of knowlege, there is a larger field of knowlege which is
racial. The word is the essence of knowledge.

K: Is it?

J: No, it not so.

K: So we have to see what knowledge is, what it means to know. Is
knowlege in the active present or, is it in the past?

A: Knowledge presupposes the past--what has been known.

K: Tradition says that knowledge is essential to freedom, to
enlightenment. Why has this been maintained?--for there must
have been people who uestioned this. Why did not the gurus, the
Gita, question knowledge? Why did they not see that knowledge
means the past, and that the past cannot possibly bring enlight-
enment? Why did the traditionalists not see that discipline, sadhana,
comes form knowlege?

J: Is it because they felt that memory must be maintained?

K: Why did the professionals not see that knowledge is the self,
when they talked everlastingly of wiping away the self?

A: So long as the communication is verbal, you cannot wipe away
the self.

K: Do you means to say that according to the professionals you can
never look at anything without the word?

A: The word is compulsive, non-volitional.

K: You hit me; there is pain. I see that. Why should that be built
up as momory? You are not answering my question. Why did the
professionals not see the fact that accumulateted knowledge can
never lead to freedom?

A: Some of them did.

K: Why did they not act? The professionals are you--which
means, you have not dropped tradition. Why cannot you therefore
drop it? Personally, I see a very simple fact: You hit me: there is
pain. That is all.

A: What about pleasure?



page 77



K: The same thing.

A: There is effort involved in dropping pleasure.

K: Then you enter the same circus--naming, which strengthens
the knowledge that you hit me. You hit me. That is a fact. My son
is dead. That is a fact. To become cynical, bitter, to say: I loved
him and he is gone--all that is verbalization.

A: So long as the mind continues to chatter--

K: Let it chatter. Look. The fact is one thing and the description of
the fact is another. We are caught in descriptions, in explanations;
we are not concerned with the facts. Why does this take place at
all?

When the house is on fire I act, as I must. What is the action
when you have hit me? There is only complete ination, which
means no verbalization.

A: This happened to me when my brother died.

K: Then what takes place? Why do we get caught in knowledge
and make it so extraodinarily important? Why has the capacity to
reason, to argue, become so extrardinarily important? The
computers are taking over that funtion. Why have the profes-
sionals been caught in this trap?

So, can the brain cells, which are put together through time as
knowledge, function with knowledge when necessary, and yet be
completely free of knowledge?

A: When I have pleasure, I say: How wonderful! i do not drop
pleasure.

K: I have had an affair which gave me pleasure. Then thought
comes along and says: I would like to repeat it. So it begins--affair,
memory, reaction to memory as thought, thought building images,
demanding images. All this is part of tradition, the carrying over of
yesterday into tomorrow.

A: There is also joy.

K: The moment you reduce joy to pleasure, it is gone.

A: Is there more to knowlwedge than pleasure and pain?

K: We cannot answer that unless we understand pleasure, pain


page 78


and knowledge. The professionals have been blind, and they have
made millions of people blind. The monstrosity of it! This country,
the Christain world--they are all the same.

The questions which next arise are: Can the brain function at
one level with complete objectivity,, with knowledge which is sane,
without bringing in the pleasure principle?--pleasure through
prestige, status and all that. And can the brain also realize that
freedom is not in knowledge? That realization is freedom. How
does this happen?

J: One point here: When thought craves to die, it continues.

K: What would the professional's answer be to this uestion? Why
does thought cling?

J: I stay in samadhi and come back.

K: There is no meaning in that. Do the brain cells see themselves
as a repository of knowledge? Do they see for themselves--and
not as a superimposed realization--that when the principle of
pleasure acts, mischief begins? Then there is fear, violence,
aggression--everything follows.

A: When the field of knowledge is distorted by pleasure and pain,
the mischief starts.

K: Why did the traditionalists, the professionals, the scriptures,
the spiritual leaders, not see this? Was it because for them
authority was tremendously important?--the authority of the Gita,
of the scriptures. Because man is a result of all this. So you have
the man who says: I have read the Gita, I am the authority. An
authority oon what?--On somebody else's words, on somebody
else's knowledge?

A: We can know various traditions without becoming involved
with them. Knowing the tradition does bring you a certain clarity.
We know how the professionals worked and how you work. You
say that knowledge is entirely of the past.

K: Obviously. If I am tethered to a post, I cannot move.

A: Then why did the professionals not see this?

K: They were after power.

A: You do not understand. You say that they wanted power, but
that is not so.


page 79



K: Look at what is taking place in each person. We see something
very clearly for a moment; this perception is translated into
experience as knowledge. There it is. I have seen it. It is finished. I
do not have to carry it with me. The next minute I am watching.

J: Why is there a watcher?

K: Look. Why does the brain insist on a continuity in knowledge?
Why does the brain continue in the multiplicity of knowledge?
Why does it keep on adding, multiplying: She was so kind; I did
this yesterday. Why is this going on?

Look. sir, the brain cannot function in a healthy way, sanely, if
it is not completely secure. Security means order. Without order
the brain cannot function; it becomes neurotic. Like a child, it
needs complete security. When a child is secure, when it feels at
home, it is not frightened. Then it will grow up into a marvellous
human being. So the brain needs security, and it has found security
in knowledge. That is the only thing it can be secure in: experience
as knowledge, which acts as the future guide. So the brain,
needing security, finds it in knowlege, in belief, in the family.

A: The traditionalists provide that security through knowledge.

K: The mind wants security. If the professional said: I really do not
know, he would not be a professional.

A: And yet security at a certain level is essential.

K: One has to negate the Gita, the Bible, the guru--the whole
thing. One has to negate all the construction that thought has put
'ogether. One has to say: I will not say a thing I do not
know; I will not repeat a thing somebody else has said. Then you
begin.



Madras
4 January, 1970



LIST OF PARTICIPANTS

K: J. Krishnamurti
A: Achyut Patwardhan




Philosophy/Religion
-----------------------------------------------------------------
ISBN 81-87326-07-7 Price Rs 125/-