you

Krishna Murti in dialogue with Dr. Alan W. Anderson.

Jay Krishna Murti was born in South India and educated in England.
For the past 40 years he has been speaking in the United States, Europe, India,
Australia and other parts of the world.
From the outset of his life's work he repudiated all connections with organized
religions and ideologies
and said that his only concern was to set men absolutely unconditionally free.
He is the author of many books, among them the Awakening of Intelligence, The
Urgency of Change,
Freedom from the Known and The Flight of the Eagle.
This is one of a series of dialogues between Krishna Murti and Dr. Alan W.
Anderson, who is professor of religious studies at San Diego State University
where he teaches Indian and Chinese scriptures and the oracular tradition.
Dr. Anderson, a published poet, received his degree from Columbia University and
the Union Theological Seminary.
He has been honored with a Distinguished Teaching Award from the California State
Universities.
Mr. Krishna Murti, in our previous conversation, I was extremely delighted for
myself at least
that we had made the distinction in terms of the relation between knowledge and
self-transformation
between, on the one hand, the relationship that I sustained to the world, as the
world is me and I am the world,
and on the other hand, this dysfunctional condition, which indicates in your
phrase,
that a person is involved in thinking that the description is the described.
It would appear then that something must be done to bring about a change in the
individual
and, going back to our use of the word individual, we could say, and you used the
word earlier,
that we are dealing with an observer.
So if the individual is not to make the mistake of taking the description for the
described,
then he must as an observer relate to the observed in a particular way that is
totally different
from the way he has been in his confusion.
I thought perhaps in this particular conversation, if we pursued that, it would be
a link directly
with what we had said prior.
What we said previously was, wasn't it, that there must be a quality of freedom
from the known.
Otherwise it would be the known is merely the repetitive of the past, the
tradition, the image and so on.
The past, surely, sir, is the observer.
Past is the accumulated knowledge as the me and the we, the and the us, is the
observer
put together by thought as the past.
Thought is the past.
Thought is never free.
Thought is never new, because thought is the response of the past as knowledge, as
experience, as memory.
Yes, I follow that.
And the observer, when he observes, is observing with the memories, experiences,
knowledge,
words, despairs, hope, all that, with all that background, he looks at the
observed.
So the observer then becomes separate from the observed.
Is the observer different from the observed, which we will go into presently later
on,
that leads to all kinds of other things.
So when we are talking of freedom from the known, we are talking about the freedom
from the observer.
The observer, yes.
And the observer is the tradition, the past, the conditioned mind that looks at
things,
looks at itself, looks at the word, looks at me and so on.
So the observer is always dividing.
The observer is the past, and therefore it cannot observe wholly.
If a person uses the first person pronoun, I, while he is taking the description
for the described,
this is the observer, he refers to when he says, I, yes, yes, please go on.
This is the past.
I is the whole structure of what has been, the remembrances, the memories, the
hurts,
the various demands, all that is put together in the word the I, who is the
observer.
And therefore division, the observer and the observer, the observer who thinks is a
Christian
and observes a non-Christian or a communist, this division, this attitude of mind
which
observes with a conditioned responses, with memories and so on.
So that is the no.
I think that is logically so.
Oh no, it follows precisely from what you said.
So we are asking, can the mind or the whole structure, can the mind be free from
their
nose?
Otherwise the repetitious action, repetitious attitudes, repetitious ideologies
will go
through a modified change but it is in the same direction.
So...
No, it took ahead, I was just going to say something but I think I will let it wait
until you finish
what you said.
So what is this freedom from the nose?
I think that is very important to understand because any creative action, I am
using the
word creative in its original sense, not in the sense creative writing, creative...
No, no, no.
..delcary, creative essay, creative pictures.
I am not talking in the sense.
In the deeper sense of that word, creative means something totally new being born.
And it is not creative, it is merely repetitive, modified, changed, not the past.
So unless there is a freedom from the nose, there is no creative action at all.
Which is, freedom implies not the negation of the nose but the understanding of the
nose and that understanding brings about an intelligence which is the very essence
of freedom.
Right.
I would like to make sure that I have understood your use of this word creative.
Yes, that is why...
It seems to me very, very important.
Yes.
People who use the word creative in the sense that you describe it, creative this,
that,
the other.
That is a horrible way of using that word.
Because what the issue is of their activity is something merely novel.
Novel, novel, novel.
Not radically new, but novel.
Creative writing, teaching creative writing.
It is so absurd.
Exactly.
Yes.
Now I do, I think, grasp precisely the distinction that you have made.
And I must say I fully agree with that.
Unless you feel new, you can't create anything.
New.
That's right.
And the person who imagines that he is creative in this other sense that we pointed
to is a
person whose reference for his activity is this observer that we mentioned, that is
tied to the past.
Yes, that's right.
So even if something does appear that is really extraordinarily novel, merely
novel,
they are kidding themselves.
The novel is not the creative.
Exactly.
The novel is just the novel.
Right.
And today, especially it seems to me in our culture, we have become hysterical
about this.
Because in order to be creative, one simply must rack his brains in order to
produce something which in itself is bizarre enough to get attention.
That's all.
Attention success?
Yes.
It has to be novel to the degree that I feel knocked on the head by it.
Yes, eccentric and all the rest.
Exactly.
But if that tension is increased, then with each succeeding generation the person
is put to tremendous stress, not to repeat the past, which he can't help repeating.
Repeat in question.
That's why I say it.
Exactly.
Freedom is one thing and create and knowledge is another.
We must relate the two and see whether the mind can be free from knowledge.
We won't go into it.
Now this is real meditation, for me.
You follow?
Yes, I do.
Because when we talk about meditation we will go into it.
But you see, whether the brain can record and be free not to record, brain to
record and operate when necessary, in the recording, in memory, in knowledge, and
be free to observe without the observer.
Oh yes, yes, I see.
That distinction seems to me absolutely necessary, otherwise it wouldn't be
intelligible.
No.
No, yes.
So knowledge means, is necessary to act in the sense by going home from here to the
place I did.
I must have knowledge.
I must have knowledge to speak English.
I must have knowledge to write a letter and so on, everything.
The knowledge as function is mechanical, function is necessary.
Now if I use that knowledge in my relationship with you, another human being,
I am bringing about a barrier, a division between you and me, who is the observer.
I am making myself clear.
And I am the observer in that context.
That is, knowledge in relationship, in human relationship, is destructive.
That is, knowledge which is the tradition, the memory, the image, which the mind
has built
about you when we are related together, that knowledge is separated and therefore
creates
conflict in that relationship.
As we said earlier, where there is division, there must be conflict.
Division between India and Pakistan, Pakistan, India and America, Russia and all
that,
this divisive activity, politically, religiously, economically, socially, in every
way, must
inevitably bring conflict and therefore violence.
That is obvious.
Exactly.
Now, when in relationship, in human relationship, knowledge comes between,
then in that relationship there must be conflict.
Between a husband and wife, boy and girl, wherever there is, the operation of as
the
observer who is the past, who is knowledge, in that activity there is division and
therefore
conflict in relationship.
So now the question that comes up next is the one of freedom from being subject to
this
repetitive round.
That's right.
Good.
It's an immense question because human beings live in relationship.
There is no life without relationship.
Life means to be related.
Exactly.
People who retire into a monastery and all that, they are still related.
They might like to think they are alone, they are actually related, related to the
past.
Oh yes, very much so.
To their saviour, to their cries, to their Buddha, to their – you follow?
All that, they are related to the past.
And their rule.
And the rules, they live in the past.
And therefore they are the most destructive people.
Because they are not creative in the deeper sense of that word.
No, and they also, in so far as they are involved in this confusion that you have
been talking
about, are not even producing anything novel.
Not that that means anything.
Perhaps that would rather radically...
The novel would be for a man who is talkative, to enter monously where they don't
talk.
That is a novel to him and he said, that is a miracle.
Right.
So our problem then is, what place has knowledge in human relationship?
Yes.
That is the problem.
That is one problem.
Yes.
Because relationship with human beings is the highest importance, obviously.
Because out of that relationship we create the society in which we live.
Out of that relationship all our existence comes.
This would take us back again to the earlier statement,
I am the world and the world is me.
That is a statement about relationship.
It is a statement about many other things too.
That is a statement about relationship.
The statement, the description is not the described, is the statement of the
rupture of the relationship.
That's right.
In terms of everyday activity.
So, everyday activity is my life, is everything.
Yes, precisely.
Whether I go to the office factory or drive a bus or whatever it is, it is life,
living.
It is interesting, isn't it, that even when that rupture is undergone at a very
destructive level,
what we call thought in the context of our description of it and image becomes
itself.
Even distorted.
Of course.
So that the distortion that we've been calling knowledge in terms of its
application,
not what you described as I need to know how to get from here to there.
No, of course.
Can itself suffer an even worse condition than we are presently related to?
And we have tomes upon tomes about that pathology in itself, don't we?
Yes.
Please, please do go on.
So, knowledge and freedom.
They must both exist together.
Not freedom and knowledge.
It's the harmony between the two.
The two operating all the time in relationship.
The knowledge and freedom.
In harmony.
In harmony, it's like there can never be divorced.
If I want to live with you in great harmony, which is love, which we will discuss
that later on,
there must be this absolute sense of freedom from you,
not dependency and so on, so on, so on, this absolute sense of freedom,
and operating at the same time in the field of knowledge.
Exactly.
So, somehow, this knowledge, if I may use a theological word here without
prejudice in what we're talking about,
if in correct relationship with this freedom is somehow continuously redeemed,
it is somehow operating no longer destructively but in coordination with the
freedom in which I may live,
because we haven't got to that freedom yet, just positive to the freedom.
We have somewhat analysed or discussed or opened the question of knowledge.
And we haven't gone into question of freedom, what it means.
But we have established something I think that this conversation so far has
revealed,
which is terribly important, at least I'd say for my students in terms of helping
them
not to misunderstand what you're saying.
I have the feeling that many persons, because they're not sufficiently attentive to
what you say,
simply dismiss many statements you say out of hand as either impossible or if they
like the aesthetics of it,
it still doesn't apply to them.
It's a lovely thing out there, that wouldn't it be great, because somehow we could
do this.
But you see, you haven't said that, you haven't said what they think you've said.
You've said something about knowledge with respect to pathology,
and you've said something about knowledge in which knowledge itself is no longer
destructive.
So we're not saying that knowledge as such is the bad guy and something else is the
good guy.
No, I think it's terribly important that that scene.
I wouldn't mind it being repeated over and over again, because I do heartily feel
that it's easy to misunderstand.
That's very important because religion, at least the meaning of that word is to
gather together to be attentive.
That is the true meaning of that word, religion. I've looked up where it is.
Oh, yes, I agree.
Gathering together all energy to be attentive.
To be attentive. Otherwise it's not religion.
And religion is all the things. So, when we'll discuss that when we come to it.
Freedom means this sense of complete austerity and sense of total negation of the
observer.
Exactly.
Out of that comes austerity, everything else. We'll go into that later on.
But austerity in itself doesn't produce it. We've turned that upside down.
Right. Austria means really. The word itself means ash.
Dry, brittle.
But the austerity of which we were talking about is something entirely different.
It is the freedom that brings about this austerity, inwardly.
There's a beautiful biblical phrase that points to this.
Just three words, beauty for ashes. When a transformation takes place.
And in English we have the phrase ashes in the mouth.
When the whole thing has come to the ashes in the mouth.
But there's the change from ashes to beauty.
So, freedom in action, in the field of knowledge.
And in that field of human relationship.
Because that is the highest importance of human relationship.
Oh yes. Oh yes, particularly if I am the world and the world is me.
Obviously.
So, what place has knowledge in human relationship?
Knowledge in the sense, past experience, tradition, image?
Yes.
What has the observer, who is the observer, all that is the observer,
what place has the observer in human relationship?
What place has knowledge? On the one hand, what place has the observer?
Observer is the knowledge.
Is the knowledge. But there's the possibility of seeing knowledge,
not simply, negatively, but in coordination, in true creative relationships.
I'll say that. That is, I am related to you.
To make it very simple. I am related to you.
You are my brother, or whatever it is, husband, wife, whatever it is.
And what place has knowledge as the observer, which is the past,
and knowledge is the past, what place has that in our relationship?
If our relationship is creative in the sense...
It is not. Now, not if. We must take it actually as it is.
I am related to you, I am married to you, I am your wife or husband, whatever it
is.
Now, what is the actuality in that relationship, the actuality,
not theoretical actuality, but the actuality?
That I am separate from you.
The actuality must be that we are not divided.
We are. I may call you my husband, my wife, but I am concerned with my success,
I am concerned with my money, I am concerned with my ambitions, my envy, I am full
of me.
Yes, I see that, but I want to make sure now that we haven't reached a confusion
here.
When I say that the actuality is, that we are not separate, I don't mean to say
that at the phenomenal level,
that a dysfunction is occurring, I am fully aware of that.
But if we are going to say that the world is me and I am the world...
I say it theoretically, we don't feel it.
Precisely. But if that is the case, that the world is me and I am the world...
This is actual. This is actual.
This is actual only when I have no division in myself.
Exactly. But I have a division.
If I have a division...
Then there is no relationship between one and the other.
Therefore one accepts the idea that the world is me and the world is me, the world.
That is just an idea.
Look, sir...
Yes, I understand. But if and when it happens...
No, wait, just see what takes place in my mind, what takes mind.
I make a statement of that kind. The world is you and you are the world.
The mind then translates it into an idea...
Into a concept and tries to live according to that concept.
Exactly.
It has abstracted from reality.
This is knowledge in the destructive sense.
That is what I won't call it destructive or positive.
This is what is going on.
Let's say the issue from it is hell.
Yes, yes. So in my relationship with you,
what place has knowledge, the past, the image, which is the observer,
all that is the observer, what place has the observer in our relationship?
Actually, the observer is the factor of division.
Right.
And therefore conflict between you and me.
This is what is going on in the world, every day.
Then one would have to say, it seems to me, following the conversation point by
point,
that the place of this observer understood, as you have pointed it out,
is the point of this relationship.
Is the point where there is really actually no relationship at all?
I may sleep with my wife, or you may sleep, and so on, so on, but actually there is
no relationship.
Because I have my own pursuits, my own ambitions, my own...
all the idiosyncrasies and so on, and she has hers, so we are always separate.
And therefore all we are in battle with each other.
Which means the observer as the past is the factor of division.
Yes. I was just wanting to be sure that the phrase is the place
of what is the place of the observer, was understood in the context of what we are
saying.
We have made the statement that there is such a thing.
Well, it is place as such, which seemed to me not to be what we usually mean by it
is occupying a place.
We are talking rather about an activity here that is profoundly disordered.
As long as there is the observer, there must be conflict in relationship.
Yes, I follow that.
Wait, wait.
No, see what happens. I make a statement of that kind.
Someone will translate into an idea, into a concept, and say, how am I to live with
that concept?
The fact is he doesn't observe himself as the observer.
That's right. That's right. He is the observer, looking out there,
making a distinction between himself, making a division.
Now, so has the observer any place at all in relationship?
I say no. The moment he comes into existence, into relationship, there is no
relationship.
The relationship is not. It's not something that is in this relationship.
Yes, that's right.
We are talking about something that in fact does not even exist.
Exist. Therefore we have to go into the question,
why human beings in their relationship with other human beings are so violent,
because that is spreading throughout the world.
I was told the other day in India, a mother came to see me,
a very grammatical family and very cultured and all the rest of it.
Her son, who is sick, when she asked him to do something,
he took up a stick and began to hit her.
A thing unknown. You follow, sir?
I mean, the idea that you should hit your mother
is traditionally something incredible, and this boy did it.
And I said, see what is the fact. We went into it, she understood so on.
So to understand violence, one has to understand division.
The division was already there, otherwise he would not have picked up the stick.
Division between nations, you follow, sir?
This race from armaments is one of the factors of violence,
which is, I am calling himself American,
and others calling himself Russian or Hindu or whatever it is,
this division is the factor of real violence and hatred.
If a mind, not a human, when a mind sees that, he cuts away all division in
himself.
He is no longer a Hindu, American, Russian, he is a human being,
with his problems, which is then he is trying to solve,
not in terms of India or in America or Russia.
So we come to the point, can the mind be free in relationship,
which means orderly, not chaotic.
It has to be, otherwise I can use the word relation.
So can the mind be free of that, free of the observer?
If not, there is no hope. That is the whole point.
We have had it. And all the escapes in going off into other religions,
doing all kinds of tricks, no meaning.
Now this demands a great deal of perception, insight,
into the fact of your life, how one lives once again.
After all, philosophy means the love of truth,
the love of wisdom, not the love of some abstraction.
Oh no, oh no no, no. Wisdom is supremely practical.
Therefore here it is.
That is, can a human being live in relationship, in freedom,
and yet operate in the field of knowledge?
And yet operate in the field of knowledge.
And be absolutely orderly.
Otherwise it is not freedom, because order means virtue.
Yes. Yes sir.
Which doesn't exist in the world at the present time.
There is no sense of virtue in anything.
There is a repeat.
Virtue is a creativity, is a living thing, is a moving thing.
I'm thinking, as you're saying this, about virtue,
which is really power, which is really the ability to act.
And if I'm following you correctly, what you're really saying,
and please correct me if I'm way off here,
what you're really saying is that the ability to act
in the strict sense, which must be creative,
otherwise it's not an action, but it is simply a reaction.
A repetition.
That the ability to act or virtue, as you put it,
bears with it, necessarily, the implication of order.
It must. It seems to me no way out of that.
Yes. I just wanted to recover that step at a time.
So can I come back?
In human relationship as it exists now,
we are looking at that, what actually is.
In that human relationship there is conflict,
sexual violence and so on, so on, so on,
every kind of violence.
Now, can man live a total peace, otherwise it's not creative?
In human relationship, because that is the basis of all life.
I'm very taken with the way you have pursued this.
I noticed that when we ask this question, is it possible that?
The reference for it is always a totality.
The reference over here is a fragment or a fragmentation or a division.
Never once have you said that the passage from one to the other
is a movement that even exists.
No context.
Absolutely.
I think, Mr Krishnamurti, that nothing is so difficult to grasp,
as this statement that you've made.
Yes.
There is nothing that we are taught from childhood honor
to render such a possibility, a matter for taking seriously.
Well, of course, one doesn't like to make sweeping statements
about the way everybody's been educated, but I'm thinking of myself
from a child upward, all the way through graduate school,
accumulating a lot of this knowledge that you've been talking about.
I don't remember anybody saying to me, or even pointing me to a literature,
that so categorically makes this distinction between one and the other
as in terms of each other, not accessible to each other through passage.
No, no, no.
Right, correct. Now, I'm correct in understanding you.
Right, right.
Right.
Maybe I could just say this as an aside.
The fragment cannot become the whole.
No, the fragment cannot become the whole, in the knob itself.
But the fragment is always trying to become the whole.
Exactly. Exactly.
Now, of course, in the years of very serious and devoted contemplation
and exploration of this, which quite clearly you have undertaken with great
passion,
I suppose it must have occurred to you that the first sight of this,
while one is in a condition of the observer, must be very frightening
in the condition of the observer, the thought that there is no passage.
No, but you say, I never looked at it that way.
But please tell me how you looked at it. Please.
From childhood, I never thought I was a Hindu.
I see.
I never thought when I was educated in England and all the rest of it,
that I was European. I never was caught in that trap.
I don't know how it happened. I was never caught in the trap.
When you were quite little then, and your playmate said to you,
well, now, look, you're a Hindu, what did you say?
I probably put on Hinduism, all the trappings of Brahman tradition.
But it never penetrated deeply.
As we say in the vernacular, it never got to you.
You never got to me, that's right.
I see. That's very remarkable. That is extraordinary.
The vast number of people in the world seem to have been got to with respect to
this.
That's why I think you see, propaganda has become the means of change.
Yes.
Propaganda is not true. The repetition is not true.
It's a form of violence.
That just...
Yes.
So, a mind that says that merely observes,
doesn't react to what it observes according to its conditioning,
which means there is no observer at any time. Therefore no division.
It happened to me, I don't know how it happened, but it has happened.
And in observing all this, I see in every human relationship,
every kind of human relationship, there is this division, and therefore violence.
And to me, the very essence of non-relationship is the factor of me and you.
I was just trying to go back in my own personal history and think of when I was a
child.
I did, while accepting that I was different. I did believe that.
I did come to accept that. There was something else, however, that always
held me very, very hard to center in terms of making an ultimate issue of that.
And that was an experience I had when I was rowing a boat.
I spent some time in Scandinavia as a child, and I used to take the boat out on the
fjord every day.
And when I would row, I was profoundly moved by the action of the water
when I moved the ore, because I lifted the ore out of the water,
and there was a separation in substance between the water and the ore.
But the water, which was necessary for support and for purchase so that I could
propel myself,
never lost touch with itself. It always turned into itself without ever having left
itself in the beginning.
And once in a while I would laugh at myself and say, if anyone catches you looking
at this water any longer than you're doing,
they'll think that you're clear out of your mind. This is the observer talking to
himself, of course.
But that made such a profound impression on me, that I think it was what you might
call a little salvation for me.
And I never lost that. So maybe there's some relationship between that
apprehension, which I think changed my being.
And what it is that you're talking about as one who never, ever suffered this sense
of separation at all.
Please go ahead.
So that brings us to the point, sir, doesn't it?
Can the human mind which has evolved in separation?
Yes. In fragmentation.
This is where evolution is. Yes.
Can such a mind transform, undergo a regeneration which is not produced by
influence, by propaganda, by threat and punishment?
If it changes because it's going to get a reward, it hasn't changed.
It hasn't changed.
So that is one of the fundamental things which one has to ask and answer it in
action, not in words.
In action.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Please.
My mind, the human mind, has evolved in contradiction, in duality, the me and the
not me.
Has evolved in this traditional cleavage, division, fragmentation.
Now can that mind observe this fact, observe, without the observer?
And only then there is a regeneration.
As long as there is an observer observing this, then there is a conflict.
I don't know if I may say it.
Yes, you do. You make yourself very clear on two levels.
On the level of discourse alone, which I know is not your major concern.
On the level of discourse alone, it necessarily follows that it must be the case
that this possibility exists.
Otherwise we would be talking nonsense.
But then the agony of the situation at large that we have been describing is simply
that whether this can be done or no,
never occurs to a person, and in the absence of it even occurring, the repetition
is going to continue indefinitely,
and things are going to get worse and worse.
Sir, the difficulty is most people won't even listen.
I am sighing, I know that.
Won't listen. If they do listen, they listen with their conclusions.
If I am a communist, I will listen to you up to your point.
After that I won't listen to you.
And if I am slightly demented, I will listen to you and translate what I hear
according to my...
– I am sure. – Exactly.
So, one has to be extraordinarily serious to listen, serious in the sense,
put aside my peculiar prejudices and idiosyncrasies, and listen to what you are
saying.
Because the listening is the miracle.
Not what shall I do with what you have said.
Not what shall I listen to.
But the act of listening...
The act of listening itself.
So we are back to ING, where the listening itself...
That requires... I mean, you are good enough to listen to me, because you want to
find out.
But what are you talking about?
I want to go and enjoy myself, so go and talk to somebody else.
So, to create an atmosphere, to create an ambiance, a feeling...
Look, the life is dreadfully serious, my friend.
Do listen. It is your life. Don't waste it.
Do listen. To bring about a human being that will listen is the greatest
importance,
because we don't want to listen, because it is too disturbing.
I understand. I have tried, sometimes in class, to make this very point.
And sometimes I suggest that we should watch the animal, especially the wild
animal.
Because if it is not listening, it is likely dead.
Dead, yes sir.
There is this extraordinary attention that it makes.
And every instant of its life is a crisis.
Absolutely.
You see, but...
And you know what happens? The eyes out there show in the main,
that they are thinking, I am talking about animal psychology.
I am not talking about psychology at all.
I am talking about what is the case, which is either or, and there isn't any way to
get from either to or.
That is what I mean. So, I think I understand you.
You see, sir, in America what is happening is now, as I observe it, and may be
mistaken,
they are not serious.
They are playing with new things, something entertaining,
go from one thing to the other. And they think this is searching,
searching.
Searching, asking, but they get trapped in each one of them.
And by the end of it they have nothing but errors.
So it is becoming more and more difficult for human beings to be serious,
to listen, to see what they are, not what they should be.
Now, what is the case? Exactly.
That means you please do listen for five minutes.
In this conversation you are listening, because you are interested, you won't find
out.
But the vast majority of people, they say, for God's sake, give me a load.
I am my little house, my wife, my car, my yacht, or whatever it is.
For God's sake, don't change anything as long as I live.
You know, going back to what I do know, something about, namely the academy,
because I am situated there in terms of day-to-day activity,
I have often remarked to myself in attending conferences where papers are read,
so that nobody is listening.
It is one long monologue.
And after a while you get the feeling that it really is a shocking waste of time.
And then even to sit down and have coffee, the discussion between classes usually
runs on the basis of a babble.
We are just talking about things that we are not genuinely interested in in order
to fill up space.
This, however, is far more serious, a matter than simply a description of what is
going on.
Is a matter of the real life, is a matter of life and death.
Exactly.
If the house is burning, I have got to do something.
Right.
It isn't, I am going to discuss who burnt the house.
No.
What colour of his hair was, whether it was black or white or purple,
I want to put that fire out.
Or if such and such had not happened, the house would not be burnt.
I mean, that's all.
Right. I know, I know.
And I feel it is so urgent, because I see it in India, I see in Europe and America,
everywhere I go to this sense of slackness, sense of, you know,
despair and sense of hopeless activity that is going on.
So to come back to what we are saying,
relationship is the highest importance.
When in that relationship there is conflict, we produce a society
which will further that conflict
through education, through national sovereignty, through all the rest of it,
that is going on in the world.
So a serious man, a serious in the sense who is really concerned, committed,
must be, must give his total attention to this question of relationship,
freedom and knowledge.
If I have heard you correctly, and I don't mean by that words that have passed
between us,
but if I have truly heard you, I have heard something very terrifying,
that this disorder that in part we have described
has a built-in necessity in it.
As long as it persists, it can never change.
It can never change.
Any modification of it is more of the same.
I have the feeling, and I hope I have understood you correctly,
that there is a relationship between the starkness of this necessity
and the fact that there cannot be a gradual progress
or as a philosopher would put it, something like essential progress.
But nevertheless there is some demonic progress that takes place within this
disorder
and there is not so much a progress as it is a proliferation of the same.
And necessarily so.
It is not what you have been saying, necessarily so.
You know that word, progress, I was told the other day,
meant entering into enemies' country fully armed.
Really?
Oh, I know.
Next time we converse, the next time, I would like very much,
if you would be good enough to pursue precisely what we have just come to,
namely this necessity, and I would like to say that this necessity is not a
necessity.
And the necessity that produced that statement is cry.