J. Krishnamurti & David Bohm - Gstaad 1975 - 7: If thought cannot achieve, why should it suffer?
K: It sounds too damn silly to say there is something the mind, thought cannot penetrate, but there is… the thing is there.
DB: Would you say then that somehow in this mystery there is an order which involves all that?
K: Yes.
DB: Which would imply a destiny that was common to mankind or something?
K: Yes.
DB: And there was that… Well, you feel that’s the case but you don’t feel it’s wise to inquire.
K: No.
DB: But of course, I mean, I’m not questioning it, but saying, many people have that feeling and they can be wrong, you know. In other words…
K: Oh, I’ve gone into it very carefully.
DB: Yes.
K: Many people have it – of course, good Lord! You see, sir, take that boy – ill, discovered, trained – trained in the sense to be clean, to… in India in those days, not having a mother the boys were trained to get up early, wash properly, all that – not psychologically trained – because they said, ‘He is the vehicle of the Lord, therefore we can’t interfere, psychologically.’ You follow, sir? Now, he never went through all the things he talks about.
DB: What do you mean?
K: I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll go into it. Jealousy.
DB: No.
K: Never attached to property, money – you follow? – all that. Never, never thought of a position, status, hierarchical outlook – except when I get into Mrs Simmons’ car, and then I can – you know, what is it? – Land Rover, I can look down – that’s all. Otherwise, I have no feeling of looking up or looking down. Now, how does this all happen? All without cultivating it or wanting it.
DB: Yes, well, you know, but I mean, that’s… this idea’s been common in mankind, that there is such a destiny, you see. In fact the Theosophists believed it themselves, I mean.
K: Oh, sir, what the Theosophists believed was too fantastic.
DB: Yes, but…
K: It may be called the nuthouse, but I mean that’s irrelevant. I’m saying Theosophists have got quite a different… No, I must be careful.
DB: They have a different idea of destiny, but…
K: No, not…
DB: You are trying to say that there’s… you know, that this whole thing didn’t happen by accident.
K: That’s it.
DB: That there’s a hidden order, you know, a mysterious order.
K: No, no, they would say there is the whole hierarchical principle in life.
DB: Yes.
K: And the highest principle, the Maitreya, etc., etc.
DB: He rules the lower, yes. I mean, let’s say you discard the idea that some principle is ruling…
K: Yes.
DB: …in that hierarchical sense. But let’s say, having discarded that, you are nevertheless proposing that there is still an order, that things don’t happen by accident, to this boy. I mean, they didn’t…
K: Yes, I’m trying to imply that, to be truthful. Truthful… (laughs)
DB: Yes.
K: …not… (laughs) Yes.
DB: And this order is in some sense a mystery.
K: Yes. I think, not a mystery in the sense of great mystery.
DB: Not secret or anything.
K: Not secret.
DB: But something which you cannot penetrate, is it? I mean, you couldn’t find the ultimate explanation of it, or it’s not worth trying, I mean.
K: Yes.
DB: But I mean, if you could, well, it would only lead to another mystery, I suppose, if you…
K: I don’t… it’s like… I can’t. Let me put it a little bit more simply. Neither I want to, or…
DB: …nor can you. But you see, that raises a question, because if you don’t want to, that would already be enough to be sure you couldn’t, you see.
K: Yes, of course.
DB: So it doesn’t prove it can’t be done, it merely proves that you can’t do it.
K: It proves I can’t do it, and I don’t want to.
DB: Because you don’t… Yes, but it’s maybe the other way round, you see, that you can’t… is it you can’t because you don’t want to, or is it you don’t want to because you can’t?
K: No, on the contrary. I think I can but I don’t want to.
DB: I see – that’s it. Yes, well, and you feel… there’s a feeling you can’t explain that.
K: No, I think it is something – that’s it – it’s something mysterious, in the sense we’re talking, which you cannot penetrate by thought.
DB: Yes. Well, then that also means that you also can’t. I mean… You cannot penetrate it by thought, but does that mean it could be penetrated in some other way?
K: Maybe.
DB: Maybe.
K: But I don’t think so.
DB: Probably not.
K: You know, after all, the church, Catholic Church said there is a mystery – thought cannot… you cannot understand it.
DB: Yes.
K: And the various religions have put it in different ways. But here we come to a point: here is a man who says… all that. And it’s like picking a flower, looking at a flower, and tearing it to pieces. And there is no flower at the end of it.
DB: I see, so you’re saying that the thing is not capable of analysis, what we’re talking about is not capable of analysis; it is a whole which is not analysable. And are you implying that thought must analyse then? You’re implying then thought can only analyse.
K: Thought can only analyse – of course.
DB: Yes. Yes, so that if you don’t analyse it then all that can be possible is to participate in it.
K: And also there’s a tremendous danger of deceiving oneself.
DB: Yes. Yes, because so many people have had similar ideas.
K: I’ve been through all that. (Laughs) I mean, I’ve no desire to be any – you follow? – that doesn’t enter into my being at all.
DB: Yes. I mean, you could argue that the fact that so many people have thought this way may… it doesn’t necessarily prove it’s wrong, it may only say that people get a glimpse of it and then they go astray.
K: They go astray.
DB: Because of desire to get hold of it, and so on.
K: Yes. No, but if they go astray, I question whether they see it.
DB: I didn’t say they see it – they got a glimpse there is some…
K: I don’t think they can get a glimpse of it.
DB: Well, then what happens? But people get an impression.
K: Because they think they have a glimpse of it.
DB: They think they have a glimpse of it. Well, let’s put it this way, that thought is not satisfied with the known…
K: That’s it, that’s it.
DB: …and therefore projects the mysterious.
K: That’s it.
K: That’s it.
DB: And at the same time, some people who perhaps have seen this and they also have said it – that becomes part of the tradition and suggests it, and so on.
K: You see, sir, that’s why, in a way I’m glad Mary has written that book, because while one is living one can correct it, a little bit, you know, answer these questions, that he wasn’t a neurotic, that he wasn’t a…
DB: …psychotic or something.
K: …epileptic…
DB: …epileptic or disturbed – you know, mentally disturbed…
K: …mentally disturbed, drugged – you know, all that kind of thing. But, the fact remains that there is something which cannot be explained.
DB: Yes, well, you see, let’s try to put it that the… if explanation will involve some kind of analysis, or at least some… and you’re saying this will escape analysis or even would be destroyed by analysis.
K: It cannot be destroyed.
DB: It cannot be destroyed – well, will escape it.
K: Analysis can’t touch it.
DB: It can’t touch it. It cannot be touched by analysis, so the flower analogy is not quite right.
K: Yes.
DB: Because the flower, you see, is destroyed, but all that is possible is to participate…
K: That’s all I’m… That’s all… I was going to say, if you have this thing, this mystery, this thing, I will participate when I listen to you completely – you follow? – when you… Say, for instance, you say truth is a pathless land. I capture… it is so, for me – therefore no guru – you follow? – the whole thing goes. The moment I hear it, it’s finished.
You see, I never discussed this thing… I’ve never gone into this as deeply as we have done.
Oh Lord, it’s raining.
DB: Raining a bit.
(Pause)
K: Or have I? I may have – I don’t know.
DB: Perhaps.
(Pause)
K: I never told you that incident. Probably I’ve told you – Seniora and Mrs Zimbalist. I was staying in Bombay, and I don’t speak any Indian language. There was a knock on the door and Mrs Jayakar, her servant opened the door, and there were three sannyasis, monks. And she asked them in and told Mrs Jayakar. Mrs Jayakar came forward and brought them into the room, and I was in my room, and she brought them and said, ‘There are three sannyasis here,they want to meet you.’ One was a very old man. He had lived by himself for eleven years in the Himalayas, and he was making a pilgrimage, going south, to the varioustemples. And he was so old, so I was… I felt, you know… and I held his hand, he began to cry – because probably nobody held his hand. And we sat around and he said – in Hindi to her – said, ‘We were passing by and we felt that there was a great man here and we wanted to meet him.’ Whether he had been told or whether it was a fact, I don’t know. (Laughs) I’m sceptical of all that kind of thing.
DB: Yes.
K: So he explained, he talked about various people in the room, telling them truths about themselves. Then he said, ‘May I wash my hands, please?’ So they brought him a basinand a jug of cold water out of the ice box, and washed his hands, and towel and wiped it. Then after cleaning his hands, from the same jug, he poured it into his hand and passed it round. That is the Indian tradition, that when a sannyasi offers his blessing, he does it that way – that you take the water, sip it, touch it with your tongue, and swallow it. It went round the first time. And he said again, ‘May I wash my hands?’ Again, he passed it around, and it came to me – I was sitting next to him – because I was the last. And I tasted it and it’s… the first water was plain water. Second water, second time, was… it tasted very sweet. I said, ‘Good Lord, is he playing a trick on us?’ I didn’t say anything. And he left presently. Oh yes, he said to Sunanda, ‘You have no children. You are married, you have no children. Do you want children? If you do, take this,’ out of his something,‘you’ll have children.’ He says… (inaudible) (laughs)
DB: She doesn’t want it.
K: I’d rather not! (Laughs) And to Balasundaram.
After he left, I asked several of them, ‘Did you taste that water?’ because it tasted like coconut water or some sweet water.’ And they all said yes. And, you know, this poor old man, he couldn’t put saccharine
in there, or some kind of sugar twisted in, or something that made the water sweet. You understand, sir? How did it happen? (Laughs) Probably he was unaware of it himself.
No, there are strange things in the world, sir.
DB: Yes.
K: When I was a boy I saw – not a boy – when I used to live in the Theosophical Society, because I was one of the heads of the affair, a man comes, there were several of us sitting in the room – a man comes, a sannyasi, a man, a so-called religious man comes, a monk, and talks to us and all kinds of things. And we’re all sitting like this, and he suddenly levitates, floats across, and sits over there. He had no springs, no rope pulling him. (Laughs)
DB: Yes, well, I mean, a lot of people are talking of strange things nowadays. Well, I think… well, one could say that our understanding of nature is very limited anyway, but I think there’s a distinction of two kinds of strange things, you see – that sort of thing might be mysterious in one sense, but it might still be…
K: I don’t think it’s mysterious.
DB: No, well, something unknown to us now.
K: Yes.
DB: But it might be understandable later.
K: No, they explain it.
DB: They explain it – by what?
K: By a special kind of life, discipline, breathing.
DB: But I meant that it violates what we know about the laws of nature.
K: Nature – yes, gravity and so on.
DB: Which may mean that the laws of nature could be different.
K: Yes.
DB: You see, that still need not be mysterious.
K: No, that’s what I mean – that’s not mysterious.
DB: Although it’s strange.
K: Yes. That’s why I want to differentiate the mystery from the strange.
DB: Yes.
K: And also I’ve seen, in front of… there were several of us, a man sitting over there and a rose bed in the middle. He asked for a newspaper, he said, ‘Put it down at your feet.’ We were sitting on steps and he was sitting right across, and he said, ‘Watch it.’ He said, ‘I’m not going to mesmerise you, because you’re a religious man, but watch it.’ And you saw the paper smaller and smaller and disappear. I don’t see the point of it, but I mean…
DB: No, but I mean that’s something strange which might be explained.
K: Oh, they explain it very simply.
DB: No, but I meant there are different kinds of explanations.
K: Yes, yes. I’m only saying this to show that strangeness is not the other.
DB: Yes. But you’re saying that what happened to this boy was not of that nature.
K: Yes, that’s all.
DB: That strange nature, but…
K: I don’t know what happened but that’s not of that nature.
DB: But is it your feeling that whatever happened, that there was behind it some sort of – for want of a better word – destiny or order which was aimed at some transformation of man?
K: Probably.
