Bohm & Krishnamurti
Part 1: INTRODUCTION BY DAVID BOHM
Part 2: BOHM INTERVIEWED BY EVELYN BLAU
Part 3: BOHM & K BY M. CADOGAN AND M. LUTYENS
Part 4: CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN K & DAVID BOHM
1: Introduction
Written by DAVID BOHM
8-minute read
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE with Krishnamurti’s work was in 1959 when I read his book The First and Last Freedom. What particularly aroused my interest was his deep insight into the question of the observer and the observed. This question had long been close to the centre of my own work, as a theoretical physicist, who was primarily interested in the meaning of the quantum theory. In this theory, for the first time in the development of physics, the notion that these two cannot be separated has been put forth as necessary for the understanding of the fundamental laws of matter in general. Because of this, as well as because the book contained many other deep insights I felt that it was urgent for me to talk with Krishnamurti directly and personally as soon as possible. And when I first met him on one of his visits to London, I was struck by the great ease of communication with him, which was made possible by the intense energy with which he listened and by the freedom from self-protective reservations and barriers with which he responded to what I had to say.
As a person who works in science I felt completely at home with this sort of response, because it was in essence of the same quality as that which I had met in these contacts with other scientists with whom there had been a very close meeting of minds. And here I think especially of Einstein who showed a similar intensity and absence of barrier in a number of discussions that took place between him and me. After this, I began to meet Krishnamurti regularly and to discuss with him whenever he came to London.
Einstein showed a similar intensity and absence of barrier.
We began an association which became closer as I became interested in the schools, which were set up through his initiative. In our discussions, we went quite deeply into many questions which concerned me in my scientific work. We probed into the nature of space and time, and of the universal, both with regard to external nature and with regard to mind. But then we went on to consider the general disorder and confusion that pervades the consciousness of mankind. It is here that I encountered what I feel to be Krishnamurti’s major discovery. What he was seriously proposing is that all this disorder, which is the root cause of such widespread sorrow and misery, and which prevents human beings from properly working together, has its root in the fact that we are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought. Or to put it differently it may be said that we do not see what is actually happening, when we are engaged in the activity of thinking. Through close attention to and observation of this activity of thought, Krishnamurti feels that he directly perceives that thought is a material process, which is going on inside of the human being in the brain and nervous system as a whole.
Ordinarily, we tend to be aware mainly of the content of this thought rather than of how it actually takes place. One can illustrate this point by considering what happens when one is reading a book. Usually, one is attentive almost entirely to the meaning of what is being read. However, one can also be aware of the book itself, of its constitution as made up out of pages that can be turned, of the printed words and of the ink, of the fabric of the paper, etc. Similarly, we may be aware of the actual structure and function of the process of thought and not merely of its content.
We are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought.
How can such as awareness come about? Krishnamurti proposes that this requires what he calls meditation. Now the word meditation has been given a wide range of different and even contradictory meanings, many of them involving rather superficial kinds of mysticism. Krishnamurti has in mind a definite and clear notion when he uses this word. One can obtain a valuable indication of this meaning by considering the derivation of the word. The roots of words, in conjunction with their present generally accepted meanings often yield surprising insight into their deeper meanings. The English word meditation is based on the Latin root med which is to measure. The present meaning of this word is to reflect, to ponder (i.e. to weigh or measure) and to give close attention. Similarly the Sanskrit word for meditation, dhyana, is closely related to dhyati meaning to reflect. So at this rate to meditate would be to ponder, to reflect, while giving close attention to what is actually going on as one does so.
This is perhaps what Krishnamurti means by the beginning of meditation. That is to say, one gives close attention to all that is happening in conjunction with the actual activity of thought, which is the underlying source of the general disorder. One does this without choice, without criticism, without acceptance or rejection of what is going on. And all of this takes place along with reflections on the meaning of what one is learning about the activity of thought. It is perhaps rather like reading a book in which the pages have been scrambled up, and being intensely aware of this disorder, rather than just “trying to make sense” of the confused content that arises when one just accepts the pages as they happen to come.
Krishnamurti has observed that the very act of meditation will, in itself, bring order to the activity of thought without the intervention of will, choice, decision, or any other action of the thinker. As such order comes, the noise and chaos which are the usual background of our consciousness die out and the mind becomes generally silent. Thought arises only when needed for some genuinely valid purpose, and then stops, until needed again.
In this silence, Krishnamurti says that something new and creative happens, something that cannot be conveyed in words, but that is of extraordinary significance for the whole of life. So he does not attempt to communicate this verbally, but rather he asks of those who are interested that they explore the question of meditation directly for themselves, through actual attention to the nature of thought.
In silence something new and creative happens.
Without attempting to probe into this deeper meaning of meditation, one can however say that meditation, in Krishnamurti’s sense of the word, can bring order to our overall mental activity, and this may be a key factor in bringing about an end to the sorrow, the misery, the chaos and confusion, that have over the ages been the lot of mankind and that are still generally continuing without visible prospect of fundamental change.
Krishnamurti’s work is permeated by what may be called the essence of the scientific approach, when this is considered in its very highest and purest form. Thus he begins from a fact, this fact about the nature of our thought processes. This fact is established through close attention, involving careful listening to the process of consciousness, and observing it assiduously. In this, one is constantly learning, and out of this learning comes insight, into the overall or general nature of the process of thought. This insight is then tested. First one sees whether it holds together in a rational order. And then one sees whether it leads to order and coherence, on what flows out of it in life as a whole.
Krishnamurti constantly emphasized that he is in no sense an authority. He has made certain discoveries and he is simply doing his best to make these discoveries accessible to all those who are able to listen. His work does not contain a body of doctrine, nor does he offer techniques or methods for obtaining a silent mind. He is not aiming to set up any new system of religious belief. Rather it is up to each human being to see if he can discover for himself that to which Krishnamurti is calling attention, and to go on from there to make new discoveries on his own.
It is clear then that an introduction, such as this, can at best show how Krishnamurti’s work has been seen by a particular person, a scientist, such as myself. To see in full what Krishnamurti means, it is necessary, of course, to go on and to read what he actually says, with that quality of attention to the totality of one’s responses, inward and outward, which we have been discussing here.
WRITTEN BY DAVID BOHM
CONTINUE TO PART 2
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2: Bohm Interviewed by Evelyn Blau
From the Book KRISHNAMURTI: 100 YEARS
26-minute read
AS THE FIRE of interest and enthusiasm for Krishnamurti’s work took hold in England, a new relationship was formed, one which was of importance to physicist David Bohm as well as Krishnamurti himself.
Bohm was a man of vast intellect, capable of exploring questions in depth, yet with a scientist’s tentativeness. During the war years he worked on the ‘scattering of nuclear particles’ under the supervision of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He became assistant professor at Princeton University in 1946, where he began discussions with Einstein. He left the US to work in Brazil and Israel, and later settled in London as professor of theoretical physics at Birkbeck College.
The meetings with Krishnamurti became legendary and gave renewed urgency to the term ‘dialogue’ as a fundamental of Krishnamurtian teaching. ‘Exploring together, like two friends sitting under a tree,’ or ‘thinking together’ is the way this process has been described. However one would characterize it, dialogue is an old yet new way at looking at and questioning the human condition.
EVELYN BLAU: Dr. Bohm, could you say how you first came into contact with Krishnamurti or his teaching?
DAVID BOHM: The background is that in my work in physics I was always interested in the general philosophical questions as they related to physics, and more generally, universally as it might relate to the whole constitution of nature and of man. One of the points arising in physics which is somewhat related to what Krishnaji is doing, is in quantum theory, where you have the fact that energy is found to be existent as discrete units which are not divisible.
EB: Could you clarify the word discrete in that context?
DB: One view is that matter is continuous, flowing, and the other view is it is made of atoms, which are discrete, but there are so many atoms that it appears to be continuous. Like grains in an hourglass, they flow as if they were water. But obviously they are made of discrete units. So the notion of the atomicity or discreteness of matter had already been common for many centuries, but in the early 20th-century there arose a discovery that energy is discrete as well. Energy comes in units, though they are very tiny; therefore, we don’t easily see them, and the number is so great that they appear to be continuous. Now this has important consequences because it means that things cannot be divided from each other. If two things interact by means of an energy that cannot be divided, that link is indivisible. Therefore, fundamentally, the entire universe is indivisible, and in particular, it means that the thing observed and the apparatus which observes it cannot be really separated.
We already had this point that the observer cannot be separated from the observed. In fact, whenever you observe, the thing observed is changed because it cannot by this interaction be reduced below a certain level. Therefore, you have the transformation of the object observed in the act of observation. I had already noted the similarity to consciousness: that if you try to observe your thought in any detail, the whole train of thought changes. That is clear. So therefore you cannot have the separation of the observer and the observed in consciousness. The observer changes the observed, and the observed changes the observer, therefore, there was a mysterious quality which was not really understood in physics.
EB: Was this part of your observation, scientifically, as well as philosophically, when you first came in contact with Krishnamurti?
DB: That’s right, let me add one more point. My interest in physics… I had always had a tendency to say that what I was thinking about in physics should be taking place within me. I felt that there was a parallel between what is in consciousness and what is in matter in general, and I felt movement was also a question, that the movement that you see outside, you feel inside. In general therefore, I felt that we directly apprehended the nature of reality in our own being.
EB: Had you pursued this through contacts with other teachers, or philosophers, or was this a purely scientific matter and your own self-observation?
DB: At that point, it was probably mostly my own. The question of the observer and the observed was obviously looked at in quantum mechanics as to its implications, especially by Nils Bohr, who in fact was influenced by the philosopher William James. He had developed an idea of the stream of consciousness, along the lines I have been saying. But as a matter of fact, that idea occurred to me independently as soon as I read about quantum theory. There was an analogy between this stream of consciousness and the behaviour of matter. That was the background of my interest in science. I was also trying to understand the universal nature of matter. Questions like causality and time and space, and totality, to grasp it all.
If you try to observe your thought in any detail, the whole train of thought changes.
EB: Is this something that is shared by other scientists, are there similar observations?
DB: Those who are inclined that way do, but most do not. Most scientists are very pragmatically oriented, and mainly want to get results. They would like to make a theory that would predict matter accurately and control it, but a few are interested in this question. Say Einstein. I should say that I had some discussions with Einstein on the quantum theory when I was in Princeton. Most physicists know the quantum theory cannot be understood, they take it as a calculus, as a way of getting results, predicting. They say, ‘That is all that really matters, and that a deeper understanding might be nice, but it is not really essential.’
EB: So with the background of this kind of interest, you came to reading a book by Krishnamurti?
DB: Yes. As I said, scientists have an interest in cosmology, many of them are trying to get a grasp of the totality of the cosmos. Einstein particularly wanted to understand it as one whole. What happened in regard to Krishnamurti was that my wife and I were in Bristol, UK. We used to go to the public library where I got interested in philosophical or even mystic or religious books, such as those of Ouspensky and Gurdjieff because I was somewhat dissatisfied with what could be done in the ordinary sphere. My wife Saral and I came across The First and Last Freedom. She saw a phrase there, the observer and the observed, so she thought it might have something to do with quantum theory, and she pointed it out to me. When I read the book, I was very interested in it. I felt it was a very significant one, and it had a tremendous effect on me, that the questions of the observer and the observed were brought to the psychological level of existence, and I had the hope that one could tie up physics and psychological matters. I also read the Commentaries on Living. They were the only other books in the library. I wrote to the publisher in America, and asked whether one could get more books, or whether Krishnamurti was around. Somebody sent me a letter suggesting that I get in touch with the people in England. I wrote to them and they sent me a list of books.
EB: Do you remember what year that was?
DB: It could have been about 1958, or 1959. Then somewhere around 1960, he came back to England and gave talks. It could have been 1960. In my letter ordering books, I asked if Krishnamurti ever came to England, and they said he was coming and there would be a limited number of people who could come to hear him. I came with Saral and, while I was here I wrote a letter asking if I could talk with Krishnamurti, and then I got a phone call arranging to make an appointment. They were renting a house in Wimbledon, and I waited for him with Saral. Then he came in, and there was a long silence, but then we began discussing. I told him all about my ideas in physics, which he probably couldn’t have understood in detail, but he got the spirit of it. I used words like totality, and when I used this word totality, he grabbed me by the arm, and said, ‘That’s it, that’s it!’
EB: You had read books by Krishnamurti. What was your initial impression as you first met this man?
DB: I don’t usually form those impressions, I usually just go ahead. But the impression I got was that when we… you see we remained silent, which was not usual, but it didn’t seem odd to me at the time, and there was no tension in it. Then we began to talk. In talking I got the feeling of close communication, instant communication, of a kind which I sometimes get in science with people who are vividly interested in the same thing. He had this intense energy, openness, and clarity, and a sense of no tension. I can’t remember the details but he couldn’t understand very much of what I said, except the general drift of it.
EB: You were speaking on a more scientific level?
DB: I was speaking about the questions I was talking of earlier, like quantum theory and relativity, and then raising the question of whether the totality can be grasped. I should also say that my interests had turned toward understanding thought. I gradually began to see that it was necessary to understand our thought. In going into philosophy, and going into causality and questions like that, it was a matter of how we are thinking. I had earlier been influenced by people who were interested in dialectical materialism and I talked to a man who had read a lot of Hegel and raised the question of the very nature of our thought. Not merely what we are thinking about, but the structure of how our thought works, and that it works through opposites. Our thought inevitably unites the two opposite characteristics of necessity and contingency. Another man I met said I should pay attention to my thought, how it is actually working. So I had become very interested in how thought proceeds, considering thought as a process in itself, not its content but its actual nature and structure.
EB: So you found similarities between what Krishnamurti was saying, and someone like Hegel.
DB: There is some similarity, yes. I found a relationship, and that was the reason I was fascinated by Krishnamurti. He was going very deeply into thought, much deeper than Hegel, in the sense that he also went into feeling and into your whole life. He didn’t stop at abstract thought.
I had become very interested in how thought proceeds, considering thought as a process in itself, not its content but its actual nature and structure.
EB: So over a period of years you became deeply acquainted with Krishnamurti’s thought. In the course of that how did you look at the source of Krishnamurti’s teaching?
DB: I didn’t raise the question for a while. What happened was that we began to meet every time he came to London and had one or two discussions. In the first year I wanted to discuss the question of the universal and the particular with him, and we raised the question, ‘Is mind universal?’ and he said yes. We had quite a good discussion on that. When we left I had the feeling that the state of mind had changed, I could see that there was no feeling, but clarity.
EB: When you say the state of mind had changed, do you mean both of your states of mind?
DB: I don’t know, I assume that he was similar since we were in close communication. I said that I had no feeling, and he said, ‘Yes, that’s right,’ which surprised me, because I had previously thought that anything intense must have a lot of feeling. And then when I went out I had a sense of some presence in the sky, but I generally discount such things saying that it’s my imagination.
EB: Was that a physical sense?
DB: Yes.
EB:You actually could see some…
DB: Feel. Not see anything there but feel something there, something universal.
EB: Had you ever felt anything of that nature before?
DB: I had hints of that, but my whole background was such as to say, I didn’t tell my parents or anybody, they would have said, ‘You’re just imagining that.’
EB: Did you feel that there was any relationship between the intensity of your discussion and what was happening?
DB: Yes, I probably felt that they were related. In fact I might have explained it by saying I was projecting the universality into the sky, as I might have done as a child.
EB: When was your next meeting?
DB: I didn’t see a lot of him but we had discussions every year in London when he came in June, and when I went to Saanen. We began to have discussions in which at least for a while I could feel that was some change of consciousness, but by the time I got back to England it went away. When you go back into ordinary life.
EB: What would you say are the salient characteristics or qualities of his teaching that differentiate it from that of others?
DB: First of all the total concern with all phases of life and consciousness, and secondly the question of something beyond consciousness, which began to emerge in our discussions in Saanen.
EB: Did Krishnamurti ever describe any particular influence on his teaching? He says that he doesn’t read books of a religious or philosophic nature, but in his earlier years he may have come into contact with that.
DB: He didn’t describe it to me, but I have heard people say that he read The Cloud of Unknowing, which was influential, and probably other books. My feeling is that he must also have been familiar with what the Theosophists were saying. The other things he’s read or heard may have awakened him to some extent.
EB: Did you ever feel that he was drawing you away from your scientific interests?
DB: No, because I was going on with my scientific interests. At that time I wanted to understand this whole question of the observer and observed scientifically, and the question of dealing with the universe as a totality. So it didn’t really draw me away from the scientific work. I became more and more interested in the question of the nature of thought, which is crucial in everything, including science, since it was the only instrument you had. When I was in London with Krishnaji, I did discuss what to do about scientific research, and I remember he said, ‘Begin from the unknown. Try beginning from the unknown.’ I could see that the question of getting free of the known was the crucial question in science, as well as in everything. For example, scientific discoveries. You may have heard of Archimedes and his discoveries. He was given the problem of measuring the volume of a crown of irregular size in order to see whether it was gold or not by weighing it, and it was too irregular to be measured and he was very puzzled, and then suddenly when he was in his bath he saw the water displaced by his body, and he realized that no matter what the shape, the water displaced is equal to the volume of the body. And therefore he could measure the volume of the crown. He went out shouting ‘Eureka!’ Now, consider the nature of what went on. The basic barrier to seeing was that people thought of things in different compartments, one was volume by measurement, and two, water being displaced would have nothing to do with that. To allow those to be connected, the mind would have to dissolve those rigid compartments. Once the connection was made, anybody using ordinary reasoning could have done the rest, any schoolboy of reasonable intelligence. The same happened with Newton. Obviously Archimedes as well as Newton and Einstein were in states of intense energy when they were working, and what happens is that the moment of insight is the dissolving of the barrier in thought. It is insight into the nature of thought, not into the problem. All insight is the same. It is always insight into thought. Not its content but its actual physical nature, which makes the barrier. And that is what I think Krishnamurti was saying, that insight transforms the whole structure of thought and makes the consciousness different. For scientists that may happen for a moment, and then they get interested in the result, working it out, but Krishnamurti is emphasizing insight as the essence of life itself. Without coming to a conclusion. Don’t worry too much about the results, however important they may be. Insight, fresh insight is continually needed. That insight is continually dissolving the rigid compartments of thought. And that is the transformation of consciousness. Our consciousness is now rigid and brittle because it’s held in fixed patterns of thought due to our conditioning about ourselves, and we get attached to those thoughts, they feel more comfortable.
Krishnamurti is emphasizing insight as the essence of life itself.
EB: Krishnamurti always seems to be able to make the distinction between using thought as a tool and then putting it aside when the tool was no longer needed for a specific reason. Putting it aside leaves space for further inquiry.
DB: Yes, one could feel this space was present in our discussion.
EB: What would you say are the most characteristic features of Krishnamurti’s teaching?
DB: I think there are several features you could say are characteristic. The emphasis on thought as the source of our trouble. Krishnamurti says that thought is a material process. He’s always said that. Most people tend to regard it as other than that, and I don’t see that emphasized anywhere. It’s very important to see that thought is a material process, in other words, thought can be observed as any matter can be observed. When we are observing inwardly we are observing not the content of thought, not the idea, not the feeling, but the material process itself. If something is wrong with thought it’s because erroneous things have been controlled in memory which then control you, and the memory has to be changed physically. With a tape you could wipe out the memory with a magnet, but you would wipe out the necessary memories along with the unnecessary ones.
EB: Krishnamurti seems to indicate that a certain tabula rasa can be achieved through clear perception.
DB: That’s right, but it’s necessarily happening intelligently, so that you do not wipe out the necessary memories but you’ll wipe out the memories which give rise to the importance of the self. He says that there is an energy beyond matter, which is truth, and that truth acts with the force of necessity. It actually works on the material basis of thought and consciousness and changes that into an orderly form. So it ceases to create disorder. Then thought will only work where it is needed and leaves the mind empty for something deeper.
EB: People often raise the point that they lack sufficient energy to continue this investigation in their daily lives. How would you respond to that?
DB: That’s probably because there is not an understanding of the nature of energy. Let’s connect it with another objection people raise. They see it at certain times, but it goes away.
EB: That’s a frequent complaint.
DB: You have to see what is essential and universal, and that will transform the mind. The universal belongs to everybody, as well as covering everything, every possible form. It is the general consciousness of mankind. We come now to energy, this whole process of the ego is continually wasting energy, getting you low and confusing you.
EB: In other words, the individual’s perception of themselves as a separate being, is a waste of energy.
Thought can be observed as any matter can be observed.
DB: Yes, because if you see yourself as a particular being you will continually try to protect that being. Your energies will be dissipated.
EB: Earlier you were saying that since thought is a material process, it is necessary to observe the process of thought rather than its contents. How is one to do that? How is one to make that shift and observe the material process when it appears as if the only thing that consciousness is aware of is content?
DB: Before we get to that, another important difference of Krishnamurti is his emphasis on actual life, on being aware of everything, and also his refusal to accept authority, which is really extremely important. There are Buddhists who say that Krishnamurti is saying much the same as the Buddhists, but he says why begin with the Buddha, why not begin with what is here now? That was very important, he refuses to take seriously the comparison with what other people have said. Now to come back to what you were saying, about observation of the material process. You have to see what can be observed about thought aside from the pictures and feelings and its meaning. Whatever you think appears in consciousness as a show. That is the way thought works to display its content, as a show of imagination. Therefore if you think the observer is separate from the observed, it is going to appear in consciousness as two different entities. The point is that the words will seem to be coming from the observer who knows, who sees, and therefore they are the truth, they are a description of the truth. That is the illusion. The way a magician works is exactly the same. Every magician’s work depends on distracting your attention so that you do not see how things are connected. Suddenly something appears out of nothing but you do not see how it depends on what he actually did.
EB:: You miss that missing link.
DB: By missing the link you change the meaning completely.
EB: So what appears to be magic is actually not realizing the connection of all of these links.
DB: Yes, and that kind of magic takes place in consciousness, the observer and the observed see things appear and the observer appears to be unlinked to the observed. Therefore it comes out as if from nothing. And if it came from nothing it would be truth. Something that suddenly appears in consciousness out of nothing is taken as real and true. If you see the link to thought then you see it as not all that deep.
There is an energy beyond matter, which is truth, and that truth acts with the force of necessity.
EB: You’re saying then that thought is more shallow than we believe it to be.
DB: Yes, in fact it is extremely shallow. Most of our consciousness is very, very shallow.
EB: And what we see as our most profound insights are really rather superficial observations.
DB: Yes, or not even observations. Many of them are just delusions, a great deal of what we think about ourselves is just an illusion. The analogy that is often made in Indian literature is if you have a rope that you think is a snake, your heart’s beating, your mind is confused, and the minute you see that it is not a snake everything changes. The mere perception is enough to change the state of mind, and the perception that, for example, the observer and the observed are not independent, will mean that the things which the observer is thinking are not regarded as truth anymore. They lose that power. Now if you see the whole… you could say the whole energy of the brain is aroused and directed by the show which thought makes of its content, it is like a map. There is a show in which this whole content is regarded as truth, as necessary. Then the entire brain is going to restart up around this show. Everything is going to be arranged to try to make a better show. Now the minute you see it is only a show, this all stops. Now the brain quiets down and it is in another state. It is no longer trapped and therefore it can do something entirely different. But to do that it is necessary not merely to say so but to see it in the way we have been suggesting.
I thought of another case where you can see the power of perception. It was this case of Helen Keller – you may have heard of her, she was blind, deaf, and dumb. When she couldn’t communicate she was rather like a wild animal. They found this teacher, Ann Sullivan who played a game, as it were, to put the child’s hand in contact with something, that was her only sense, and scratch the word on her hand. First it was clearly nothing but a game – she didn’t understand what was going on. Then Helen Keller recalls that one morning she was exposed to water in a glass and the name was scratched, and in the afternoon to water in a pump, and the name was scratched, and suddenly she had an insight, a shattering insight, and it was that everything has a name. If water was one thing in all its different forms, this one name, water, could be communicated to the other person who used the same name. From there on she began to use language and in a few days she learned words. In a few days she was making sentences and her whole life was transformed. She was no longer this violent wild person but entirely different. So you can see that this perception transformed everything. Once she had the perception there was no turning back. It was not to say she had the perception and then forgot about it and had to have it again. And I think Krishnamurti is implying that to see that the observer is the observed would be a perception enormously beyond what she had. It would have a far more revolutionary effect.
EB: You feel then that the concept of the observer and the observed is a key one in Krishnamurti’s teachings.
DB: Yes, in fact they are identical.
EB: I wonder if you would recapitulate some of the other key factors in his teaching.
DB: The question of time, psychological time being merely produced by thought. Time is just the same thing as the observer and the observed. The ending of the observer and the observed is identical with the ending of psychological time and therefore a timeless state comes.
EB: And with the perception of the observer and the observed as one, all of the phenomena of suffering, the human difficulties that we all go through are ended.
DB: That’s right, because they all originate in ignorance of the true nature of this question. Then the emphasis on compassion arises. Passion for all, not merely passion for those who are suffering. That is part of the passion which goes beyond suffering.
EB: Authority is certainly another major factor in his teaching.
The observer and the observed are not independent.
DB: Yes, you can see now why authority is so important. One of the points you have to add is the enormous power of the mind to deceive itself, which he recognized. Authority is one of the major forms of self-deception. There is authority in the mind, not authority in other matters, they are not necessarily self-deception. If somebody comes out as an authority on truth, the danger is that you say that you had begun to doubt certain things yourself, but now you take what he says as true. Because you want it to be so. It is basically that truth must be for me what I need it to be. I feel uneasy, frightened, worried, and so on, and so the authority, the religious authority, comes along and says that God will take care of you as long as you are good and you believe, and so on. Therefore I want to believe and therefore I say that that’s the truth. I was on the point of having to question all this and along comes the authority who makes it unnecessary. You have to ask why you accept authority. The authority gives you no proof whatsoever, so why do you accept it? Because you want to, you need to. I must have comfort, consolation and safety. And here comes this impressive figure, very nice looking, perhaps clothed in certain ways with certain ceremonies, and very nice music and consoling thoughts and a good manner, and says, ‘You’re alright, everything is going to be all right. You just have to believe.’
EB: One of the major characteristics of authority is that it has great power, and that power displays itself, as you said, in ritual and ceremony. Just as a worldly power, a king, would show himself through his trappings through his crown, etc.
DB: That’s right. But you see, it is an empty show. The whole point is that authority builds an empty show of power around itself. A display, as you called it. There is nothing behind it whatsoever, except our belief that it is there.
EB: Have you been able to observe in Krishnamurti’s writings any breaking point where his teaching deviated or went in a completely different direction?
DB: No, I can’t see any fundamental change.
EB: Even as a young man, this teaching was implicit within everything he said.
DB: Yes, yes.
EB: And there was no learning from other models?
DB: No. I think it comes from a source beyond the brain which is, in principle, open to everybody.
From the Book KRISHNAMURTI: 100 YEARS
CONTINUE TO PART 3
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3: David Bohm and Krishnamurti
By MARY CADOGAN and MARY LUTYENS
12-minute read
1: Mary Cadogan
DAVID BOHM THROUGHOUT his deeply inquiring life became associated with many distinguished people from widely different backgrounds. His relationship with Krishnamurti, which spanned more than two decades, has been described by David Peat as ‘the most significant encounter of Bohm’s life.’ It was seen by many, to put it crudely, as an association of a man of God with a man of science. Certainly it was an inspiring friendship between a leading spiritual teacher and a pre-eminent physicist. It was a mutual exploration which took them both to the edge of the known and, fortunately, gave us verbal explanations of what generally cannot be put into words.
In the Krishnamurti Foundation’s archives at Brockwood Park, there are more than 100 recordings (some audio and some video) of Krishnamurti and Bohm (sometimes with others) in dialogues and conversations. Some of these have been published in book form, notably The Ending of Time, The Future of Humanity and The Limits of Thought. Later on I’ll say more about how each affected the other’s language and discoveries but first I would like to mention a few things gleaned in my own relationship with Krishnamurti and with Dave and Saral Bohm.
I knew Krishnamurti (Krishnaji) from the early 1950s and worked for his organizations from 1957. Dave’s advent into what we might call the Krishnamurti world in the early 1960s was a joyous business. His eagerness for truth and his friendly accessibility to everyone were much remarked and appreciated. My husband Alex and I soon numbered Dave and Saral amongst our close friends and, despite Dave’s seriousness and shyness, he was easy to be with. We shared a lot of laughter as well as earnest explorations into what lies beyond thought.
In dialogues with Bohm, Krishnamurti found different and more precise ways of expression.
Dave always showed great warmth and generosity of spirit. As an example of this I should mention my then small daughter, Teresa, who at the time had difficulty with mathematics. My husband was frequently called upon to help her with maths homework, but I suddenly realised that for a week or two this had not been happening. When I asked her why she wasn’t consulting Alex she said very happily, ‘Oh I don’t need to bother Dad. I’ve been phoning David Bohm and he’s helped me. He’s really good at maths, you know!’ I think this is a delightful instance of Dave’s kindness, accessibility and patience. Nothing was too much trouble for him, even clarifying the mysteries of algebra and geometry for an 8 year-old.
In 1961 Dave’s reading of Krishnamurti’s The First and Last Freedom had opened for him a gateway to what lies beyond thought. Dave said that what especially sparked off his intention to meet Krishnaji was K’s deep insight into the question of the observer and the observed, something that had for some time been close to the centre of his own work as a theoretical physicist. He had felt that to go much further in science he needed not only a new language but a new maths and an entire new order in physics. Contact with Krishnaji gave him a new language which allowed his work to broaden and deepen.
At Krishnamurti’s large public talks, questions were invited but most of his listeners seemed unable to ask what Krishnaji regarded as “the right questions”, so the discussion or dialogue element was often disappointing. Of course Krishnaji would allow no compromises or retreats into escapes, clichés and safe responses. In the 1960s it appeared that no one in the West, and very few in the East, could initiate and sustain a dialogue with Krishnamurti. Dave did so, on many occasions and over several years, and Krishnaji relished their meetings and discussions. Some were held privately, and others with an audience.
Krishnamurti’s meditation had ‘reached the source of all energy’.
David Bohm’s and Krishnaji’s impact on one another was strong, particularly on the language each used. Dave felt that contact with Krishnaji had given him a new language, and there is no doubt that in dialogues with Dave, Krishnaji too found different and more precise ways of expression, particularly in areas where definitions are usually very difficult, some might say impossible. In their dialogues Krishnamurti conveyed a direct awareness of the universal ground (the beyond thought source of all energy). Dave not only nudged Krishnaji to clarify his teachings but was able at times, as David Peat puts it, ‘to enter into and remain with the “untalkable”.’
In particular, the 1980 series of dialogues between them, published in 1984 as The Ending of Time, probes the implications of the inward journey to the source of creation. These dialogues took place soon after Krishnaji’s meditation had, in his words ‘reached the source of all energy’ and he had the perception that there was nothing beyond this: it was ‘the ultimate, the beginning and ending and the absolute’. In the dialogues between Krishnaji and Dave it is referred to as “the ground”. Many people throughout the world then and since have found this exploration tremendously meaningful.
From a Talk in London, 2009, at the Conference ‘Infinite Potential: The Legacy of David Bohm’
2: Mary Lutyens
IT IS AS A RESULT of his conversations with David Bohm, which have been going on at intervals for over ten years, that Krishnamurti has come to talk more and more about the ending of thought. He has been excited and stimulated by his discussions with Bohm in which he feels that a bridge has been opened between the scientific and religious minds. It is a new approach to his teaching, what might be called an intellectual rather than an intuitive approach, and as such it appeals to many who have studied Krishnamurti for years as well as to those who come new to him. There is a good deal of semantic play from Bohm in these conversations and of giving dictionary derivations of words. To know that the word communicate is based on the Latin commun meaning common and the suffix ic which is similar to fic, meaning to make or to do, i.e. to make something common, though interesting in itself, does not necessarily help us to communicate or receive communication, any more than to know the derivation of the word intelligence awakens intelligence.
Since Krishnamurti has been talking to Professor Bohm he has changed his meaning of one important word (though not invariably) and this may lead to confusion. The word is reality. To give an example, in a Saanen talk of 1971 Krishnamurti had said:
If one really wants to find out about God, what God is, whether there is such a thing, something which is not nameable… if that is the main interest of your life, that very interest does bring order. This means that to find that reality one must live differently, deeply differently. There must be austerity without hardness, there must be tremendous love. And love cannot exist if there is fear, or if the mind is pursuing pleasure. So to find that Reality one must understand oneself.
Now, in talking to David Bohm, reality has become antithetic to, instead of synonymic with, the unknown, with God, with ‘something which is not nameable’: ‘Anything that thought thinks about, whether unreasonably or reasonably, is a reality. Reality, I say, has nothing to do with truth.’ Reality is the chair we sit on, the pen we hold, the clothes we wear, the pain we feel as well as ‘part of the conditioned mind’. Bohm has told Krishnamurti that reality comes from res, a thing, a fact. This of course is the correct meaning. Children ask, ‘Is it real?’ meaning ‘Can it happen to me?’, but for years Krishnamurti has used the word in its other sense, and he still slips into using it sometimes as he did formerly, to mean ultimate truth.
How far this kind of intellectual semantic discourse helps to bring about the object of Krishnamurti’s teaching, a complete transformation of the human psyche, must be a matter of temperament. One has to have the mental equipment to grasp it and be thrilled and enlivened by it. It would certainly attract those who are not inspired by Krishnamurti’s poetic mysticism. Others may find their receptiveness more readily quickened by reading as a prelude to his teaching one of his simple descriptions of nature such as the following:
The evening sun was on the new grass and there was splendour in every blade. The spring leaves were just overhead, so delicate that when you touched them you did not feel them … It was a beautiful evening, full of that strange glory which is the heart of spring. You stood there without a thought, feeling every tree and every blade of grass, and hearing that bus, loaded with people, passing by.
One of the many remarkable things about Krishnamurti is the equal ease with which he talks to a Swami or a Western scientist, an industrial millionaire or a Prime Minister. He has discoursed on meditation with the Dalai Lama and would have no apprehension in conversing with any of the world’s great philosophers, yet he is undoubtedly a shy, diffident man who shuns ordinary conversation, has read very little, and that little forgotten, and who has no intellectual pretensions. The answer to this anomaly is, I think, that he perceives some truth as clearly as he can see his own hand. No counter-argument can disturb such a clear vision. While others discuss and argue about the theory of X, Krishnamurti actually holds X like an apple in his hand.
From Mary Lutyens’ Book THE YEARS OF FULFILMENT
IN 1980, DAVID BOHM went to stay at Ojai with his wife and started holding discussions with him. His latest book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, published in the summer of 1980, propounding a revolutionary theory of physics in accordance with Krishnamurti’s teaching of the wholeness of life, was to be widely recognised for its scientific discoveries. He had attended nearly all Krishnamurti’s talks in Europe and California since 1961 and they had already had many discussions together, but during this 1980 visit eight dialogues took place between them in April. These, together with five others which took place at Brockwood Park in June, were published under the title The Ending of Time. This has proved to be one of Krishnamurti’s most successful publications. To some people this book reads like a thriller; others find it hard going. It is a conversation with quick questions and responses and does not therefore lend itself to quotation. It deals with the ending of thought as well as the ending of time, that is, psychological time and thought which are the past. All that we have learnt, all that we are, the whole content of our consciousness, is the past stored in our memory as thought, and the cluttering up of the brain with the past means that there is no true insight because everything is seen through a cloud of thought which must always be limited by the self. The past as thought, memory, must go for the new to be. ‘That emptying of the past, which is anger, jealousy, beliefs, dogmas, attachments, etc. must be done,’ Krishnamurti says. ‘If that is not emptied, if any part of that exists, it will inevitably lead to illusion brought by desire, by hope, by wanting security.’
‘Is it really possible’, Krishnamurti asks, ‘for time to end, the whole idea of time as the past, chronologically, so that there is no tomorrow at all? There is the feeling, the actual reality, psychologically, of having no tomorrow. I think that is the healthiest way of living, which doesn’t mean that I become irresponsible. That would be too childish.’ In going into this question, Krishnamurti and David Bohm speak of the ground of all being, which is the beginning and ending of everything, and of the necessity for mankind to touch this ground if life is to have real significance.
If the brain remains in self-created darkness it wears itself out with the resulting conflict. Can such a brain ever renew itself? Can the deterioration of the brain cells and senility be prevented? Krishnamurti suggests that through insight it is possible for the brain to change physically and act in an orderly way which leads to a healing of the damage caused by all the years of wrong-functioning.
In the Foreword to a booklet of two dialogues between Krishnamurti and David Bohm of a later date, Bohm illuminates this:
It is worth remarking that modern research into the brain and nervous system actually gives considerable support to Krishnamurti’s statement that insight may change the brain cells. Thus, for example, it is now well known that there are important substances in the body, the hormones and the neurotransmitters, that fundamentally affect the entire functioning of the brain and the nervous system. These substances respond, from moment to moment, to what a person knows, to what he thinks, and to what all this means to him. It is by now fairly well established that in this way the brain cells and their functioning are profoundly affected by knowledge and passions. It is thus quite plausible that insight, which must arise in a state of mental energy and passion, could change the brain cells in an even more profound way.
From Mary Lutyens’ Book THE OPEN DOOR
CONTINUE TO PART 4
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4: Audio and Video Conversations
Curated by THE FOUNDATION STAFF
Audio & Video: The Complete Collection
Fortunately, most of the conversations and dialogues between Krishnamurti were recorded, either on audio or video. We have compiled these on our official YouTube channel.
Audio & Video: Series Highlights
THE TRANSFORMATION OF MAN: This video series from 1976 is one of the most popular series of Krishnamurti discussions. Bohm and Krishnamurti were joined by psychiatrist David Shainberg and together they inquired into topics such as awareness of being fragmented, the disorderly mechanical way of living, whether we can change at the very root of our being, aloneness and complete security, images and relationships, and the sacredness of life. WATCH
THE ENDING OF TIME: These dialogues between J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm took place in America and in England between April and September 1980. They start by addressing the origin of human conflict. Both men agree in attributing this to the separative and time-bound nature of the self and the way that it conditions us to rely wrongly on thought, which is based on inevitably limited past experience. The possibility of insight that will end this flawed mentality was discussed in depth. The focus then shifts to an inquiry into the significance of death, and to a discussion probing the “ground” of being and the place of consciousness in the universe. The final dialogues reviewed the profound linkage that Krishnamurti and Bohm saw between these ultimate questions and everyday life, and what we can do about the barriers that stand in the way. WATCH/LISTEN
THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT: A series of penetrating dialogues between Krishnamurti and David Bohm. The starting point of their engaging exchanges is the question: if truth is something totally different from reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? We see Krishnamurti and Bohm exploring the nature of consciousness and the condition of humanity. These enlightening dialogues address issues of truth, desire, awareness, tradition and love. WATCH
THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY: David Bohm: ‘These two dialogues took place three years after a series of similar dialogues between Krishnamurti and myself, which appeared in the book The Ending of Time. Therefore they were inevitably profoundly affected by what had been done in these earlier dialogues. In a certain sense, therefore, both sets of dialogues deal with closely related questions. Of course, The Ending of Time can, because of its much greater length, go into these questions in a more thorough and extensive way. Nevertheless, these two dialogues stand by themselves; they approach the problems of human life in their own way and provide important additional insights into these problems. Moreover, I feel they are easier to follow and may therefore usefully serve as an introduction to The Ending of Time.
The starting point for our discussions was the question “What is the future of humanity?” This question is by now of vital concern to everyone, because modern science and technology are clearly seen to have opened up immense possibilities of destruction. It soon became clear as we talked together that the ultimate origin of this situation is in the generally confused mentality of mankind, which has not changed basically in this respect throughout the whole of recorded history and probably for much longer than this. Evidently, it was essential to inquire deeply into the root of this difficulty if there is ever to be a possibility that humanity will be diverted from its present very dangerous course.’ WATCH
THE NATURE OF THE MIND: In April 1982 the first of four hour-long discussions took place on ‘The Nature of the Mind’ between Krishnamurti, David Bohm, John Ridley, a psychiatrist in private practice in Ojai, and Rupert Sheldrake who was at this time a consultant to the International Crops Institute in Hyderabad. The first discussion was on the roots of psychological disorder; the second on psychological suffering; the third on the need for security; the fourth on what is a healthy mind?. These discussions, video-recorded in colour, had been sponsored by the Robert E. Simon Foundation, a private body giving substantial grants towards the furthering of mental health. There were immediate requests for these tapes from various university and training centres throughout the country who could either buy or borrow them to show. They were also shown on several Cable TV stations, including New York. WATCH
EARLY DISCUSSIONS – THOUGHT, STILLNESS AND TIME: Apart from private meetings which were not recorded, the earliest recorded interactions between Krishnamurti and David Bohm were at the public meetings in London in 1961 and 1963. However, in 1965 Bohm was invited to attend small group discussions in Gstaad, in which he features prominently. The title of the series is Thought, stillness and time. Subjects discussed include ‘Is thought detrimental?’ ‘Am I aware of the process of thinking?’ ‘What will make me see that thought breeds frustration?’ ‘From where do attachment and detachment come?’ ‘Complete stillness’, and ‘When the mind is completely quiet, how can there be time?’ WATCH
Books
TRUTH AND ACTUALITY: The book opens with three discussions taken from a longer series with well-known physicist David Bohm. In the main part of the book, Krishnamurti considers how man’s consciousness has misconceptions about the “me”, or the ego. Krishnamurti says, ‘You cannot go through reality to come to truth; you must understand the limitation of reality, which is the whole process of thought.’ Truth and Actuality consists of both talks and dialogues by Krishnamurti. The dialogues deal with the problem of truth, the actuality in which we live as perceived by the senses, reality as appears to our consciousness, and the relationship between them. PURCHASE
THE ENDING OF TIME: This classic book is a series of important and enlightening dialogues in which Krishnamurti and David Bohm – men from vastly different backgrounds – discuss profound existential questions that illuminate the fundamental nature of existence, probing topics such as insight, illusion, awakening, transcendence, renewal, morality, the temporal and the spiritual. Along the way, Krishnamurti and Bohm, who held conversations over many years, culminating in this book, explore one’s relationship to society and offer new insights on thought, death, awakening, self-realisation, the problem of the fragmented mind, the purity of compassion, love and an intelligence that originates beyond thought and time. This book clarifies in great depth many of the themes in Krishnamurti’s teachings. PURCHASE
THE LIMITS OF THOUGHT: This book is made up of a series of penetrating dialogues between the two men. Their conversations shed further light on their challenging explorations into the nature of consciousness and the condition of humanity. The starting point of their engaging exchanges is the question: if truth is something totally different from reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? These enlightening dialogues address issues of thought, desire, awareness, tradition and love. This is an important book by two respected figures. Anyone interested in seeing how Krishnamurti and Bohm probe some of the most essential questions of our very existence will be drawn to this work. PURCHASE
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