The whole set of 12 dialogues are more than “Truth and Actuality” and also are the subtitles on Youtube not conform the transcripts probably because some of them are automatically produced and not controlled.
“Is there a reason for withholding information?”
It is the same reason that people withhold money and power… it starts from the early ages around three . According to Sigmund Freud .
For those who want to read all 12 dialogues as a whole, herewith a link to them in e-book format:
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Very good. Thanks Wim.
What K meant with “transformation” here? Awakening? If that is the case, it seems to me that this could be one of the reasons why Mary Lutyens didn’t want to publish those dialogues. This is negating something she tried to show in her books: the gradual transformation of K into an “illuminated Master”. (Even the titles of her books indicate that: “The years of awakening”, “the years of fulfillment”).
What K is saying is that he was born unconditioned so there was no need for a transformation or awakening. But can we rely on him about this matter? He doesn’t seem to be a good witness of himself, he can’t give any evidence for that, he acknowledged that he didn’t know what had happened, so an external witness like Mary could be more reliable…
Even Mary Lutyens was not present she actually based her story on the report from his brother. So what is his description ?
Is the publication at full or edited?
Can we control the originality as it is in the archive?
Yes, of-course, we cannot be sure.
I was wondering what is the core of all that conversation with Bohm. If my memory is correct they are trying to distinguish between truth and reality. Truth being something wordless, while reality (all the things created by thought) is essentially a verbal understanding of a (supposed) truth. So all verbal explanations of a fact are not truth, are not true.
They examined the main (verbal) given explanations (in ML’s books) for his process, for his being unconditioned, etc., the Maitreya theory, the kundalini theory, and what K is saying is that those theories have no real value being just verbal explanations. That is: we have a fact (the peculiarity of K) and then we have a description or interpretation of that fact. He is rejecting the interpretations because he felt there was much more than that in the “fact”. Yet to an external eye those explanations seem to point to something “actual” beyond the words, like there is an actuality in the thing we call a tree, beyond our idea of the tree. In this sense what Mary thought could be “true”. The problem we have here is that nobody can prove there is a genuine link between those explanations and the fact.
Yet, thinking about the whole story of the Teosophical Society, Leadbeater was right when he “saw” the aura of K in the beach at Adyar, and K had absorbed all the “indoctrination” of TS, even if he rejected all that afterwards, so we can suppose that K underwent a “transformation” also thanks to that but threw away the boat once he had crossed the river. And this can also explain his example of crossing the Atlantic the way Columbus did and taking an aeroplane instead.
I would not go that far.
Although the explanations of truth are not truth, truth is in it.
Another thing is that an explanation of a fact can be true of false.
False is not the opposite of truth because truth has nô opposite.
Bohm and K agreed that it is better to speak of correct in stead of true descriptiôns to avoid misunderstandings.
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That was a simplification of mine, just to make it concise (and so not precise).
What K said is:
“1. What is Truth and what is Reality?”
KV: “I thought that reality – as one knows – comes from res, thing, and anything that thought operates on or fabricates or reflects about is reality.
-
DB: Yes.*
-
K: A distortion of reality, thought thinking in a distorted, conditioned manner is illusion, is deception, is distortion.”*
[…]
“DB: Now, we have… You see, I thought of a distinction that would be useful between that reality which is largely created by our own thought or by the thought of mankind, and that reality which you can regard as independent, existing independently of that thought. For example, would you say nature is real?
- K: It is, yes.”*
[…]
“DB: Now, therefore it occurred to me that one could say that even the false is real but not true.”
I didn’t want to discuss the definition of reality and truth (I don’t feel I’m ready for that) but only to tackle the problem of how much we can trust ML version of the facts or K’s one.
At a second reading I realized I had not understood what you were referring to here.
So I’m replying now to that (hoping I got it right now 
)
K didn’t give a description of what happened to him, in the dialogue which you have quoted (and I quoted again ) he stated that there was no “tranformation” (of himself), that means he is negating the kundalini theory because kundalini implies a tranformation, and same thing can be said of all the Masters business which implied a gradual achieving of higher spiritual states. But actually he didn’t rejected completely both the Masters or the Maitreya theory,
K: One of the theories. And another theory, reincarnation. Another theory is goodness personified in a person called Maitreya – if you accept that – and manifests, and so on. That’s one thing. Then there is this whole idea which exists in the East and has been written about and gone into, and several people have – serious people, not charlatans – been through it. That is the Hindu tradition and they say that** there is – what do they call it? – serpent fire.*
*** DB: Kundalini.***
** K: I didn’t want to call it kundalini.”**
“DB: Well, I mean it was referred to in the book as well.
- : Right – if it is referred to in the book I must take it up! (Laughter) That kundalini can be awakened and a different kind of energy comes into being. These are the two points. And transformation, I’m beginning to question whether there was any transformation at all.”
“K: (Laughs) You know, the Theosophical conception that Maitreya – whether you believe it or not that’s not the point – the Theosophical conception at that time, and probably still is, or the tradition in India and in Tibet, that there is a Maitreya, who is the essence of goodness – let’s talk… (inaudible) He, that goodness has to manifest in the world when the world is in a state of collapse – that’s what the tradition says – in the state of evil, in the state of destroying itself.”*
What he says, at one point, is that what the theosophists called “The Masters” was just a kind of Goodness out there which somehow influenced him (again my semplification). He said that the concept Leadbeater had of them being real persons living somewhere was too materialistic.
So, to sum it up: on one side we have the books of ML where those theories are credited and therefore the possibility of a transformation, on the other side we have K who negates tranformation and who suggest a kind of “correction” of those theories.
I hope I’ve made my point clear now.
And I took the text above from the document which you posted the link to and which to me seems the original, unedited transcription.
Also David Bohm could not find in the description from ML a moment of transformation.
But what can we learn from this.
We have to make up our own minds ! Whatever someone is describing.
Always take into account the colouring of it both by the describer and by yourself. ML’s love for K has influenced the objectivity of her story. A sudden event also affects the description. For example, after an accident it is seldom possible to say exactly what happened.
Taking that into account you can never take a description absolutely
Yes, that’s true.
That is the problem. In my view there is no way to understand what or who K was and how he happened to be unconditioned, unless we find ourselves in the same position. Both the traditional approach and K’s own version seem possible and yet both are mysterious affairs.
Perhaps K was really influenced by Bohm (as Mary feared), and being Bohm a scientist he was apt to reject all mystical explanations. When I read the chapter 6 of the dialogue the thing which struck me was the link between tackling this issue of what happened to K with what is truth and what is reality, and that involves also the understanding of who we are. The two questions are connected.
What I mean is: K could not be a freak, he was a “normal” human being like us. So there is for all of us too the possibility to dwell in truth and not only in reality. But that means we all can be the vehicle for Maitreya (or goodness)! As biological beings we are both truth and reality at the same time and it’s only because our minds are narrowed down to a centre, an ego, that we cannot dwell in truth and let goodness manifest in ourselves. Therefore the traditional approach is at the same time true and false, it’s just an infantile way of devising things and for practical purposes it’s useless even if it points to some truth.
What came into my mind yesterday is that even K’s version that no transformation had taken place could be true and false at the same time. He could have forgotten (as he forgot a lot of things about his life) what his previous state was once he “had crossed the river”. As I have said he was not a reliable witness of himself.
The value of K teachings and of his entire life is that he was a living example of what could be done. If he was a mere freak, if he was born already unconditioned, if no transformation took place (as he stated) then we are cut off from this possibility! Do you see my point?
When I first read ML books many years ago, I gathered from the whole story that he managed to find truth and free himself from all conditionings in a fresh and independent way from tradition in spite of all the pressure and indoctrination he received from the Theosophical Society, and that that was his major “achievement” and value. He showed that one could attain freedom not matter how strong the conditioning was.
Now this dialogue with Bohm changes completely the perspective and I cannot cope with it.
This is like the schrodinger cat story, a dilemma in the quantumtheory which Bohm came up with the connextion between relativity an quantum theory with his proposal for hidden reference variables and cost him 30 years of his cariere.
So one can say: “Truth comes with a cost”.
Still a human being, a man. He says it very clearly in some of his talks: “I´m a man” or “I´m a human being talking to human being”. He also stated that hadn´t any human being got out of the stream of thought there wouldn´t be any possibility of getting out of this stream for human beings but this is not the case, is this?
On the other hand, he made the task much easier. At the very moment it is seen that the observer is the observed, not a separated entity with own existence but also thought, there is only observing which is to be out of the stream already, is it not?
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No doubt about that. But the question is: what kind of human being he was?
They tried to find this out in the dilogues with Bohm, but up to now I haven’t grasped where they have arrived to. I’ll have to read the whole dialogues again…
What I see in this dialogue # 6, is a big contradiction: if he never transformed himself how could he say to us: you can do it? Don’t you see this contraddiction?
May I suggest to listen to the You-tube audio tapes while reading, there is a lot going on in the non-verbal aspect here.
Thanks for the hint. Yes, I’ll do it. Do you have the link at hand? I just made a search “Observing without the observer”, but hundreds of video came out and could not find that one.
Good point. If I am thinking about Krishnamurti and it is not seen that the ‘thinker is the thought”, then I am strengthening the ‘stream’.
A human being psychologically not fragmented or divided. For some reason that he couldn´t understand or find out, he wasn´t conditioned by the environment to believe that there was a separated entity with own existence inside his body, nevertheless, he found out what this believe is, what living according to it brings about and decided to make out of himself a mirror for others to be able of seeing by looking at it.
It´s not the same a person who is psychologically fragmented telling others, I´m not an individual, complete, whole, but you can be and I´ll show you, as someone who is complete, whole, telling others that they too can be that, just look, I´m showing you. In the first case, yes, I see contradiction but in the second one I see compassion,i.e., sharing.
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How else to possibly see the ‘cage’ that thought had created inside us than to bring it to light with an awareness of its movement. An awareness that had no judgement, no comparison but just watched the movement of thinking. Any other ‘way’ was just to continue the conflict of thought reacting to itself. Any other way was to remain in the ‘stream’.