I feel experience is something that’s already finished,
over, it’s gone,
and we want experience of truth. That is the real thing.
Right?
And it cannot be experienced
because then there must be the experiencer,
recognition that is the truth, there must be the fact...
– all kinds of things are involved.
You are bringing to truth something
you have accumulated through thought.
Somebody is saying truth has no path,
it cannot be experienced.
If anybody says, ‘I’m illumined’, you ought to give him a kick.
It’s nonsense.
There is no experiencer to experience illumination.
Q: You’re also saying that there’s no experiencing of anything new.
K: No, of course not.
What you are experiencing is the old, in a different form,
a different style, in a different mould, in a different pattern.
Q: You also seem to be implying,
because the consciousness of mankind is immersed in knowledge
that this truth has nothing to do with that consciousness.
K: Of course, not.
Q: Which leaves us very little relation to it at all.
K: Our difficulty is we all think we are separate, individual souls,
individual atmans, to use a Sanskrit word,
individual accumulated tendency, all that,
heredity, genetics – we’re all separate little cells
fighting, fighting, fighting,
having our own pleasures, sorrows – all within ourselves.
I question that, that’s all.
Sir, the real problem is, if I can go a little further,
is it possible to be free from knowledge?
And why should one be free from knowledge?
There are two problems. Are you interested in it?
Q: By being free from knowledge, do you mean
keeping knowledge in its proper place without it intruding?
K: Perhaps, it may mean both.
May – we’ll inquire into it.
Because I may be a first-class engineer.
There must be freedom from that, in order to find something new.
Even in the engineering field,
if I’m merely repeating what I’ve known...
Q: There’s no room. K: I can’t build a new bridge,
the San Francisco Golden Bridge or in New York,
those marvellous bridges.
Though I have the technological knowledge of a particular subject,
there must be a certain freedom from it to discover something new.
Q: It’s obvious.
K: If it is obvious,
I also must be free from this accumulated knowledge,
psychological knowledge, which is me.
Knowledge is me. Knowledge is memory, which is me.
There must be a freedom from that, to find something else.
Q: This psychological knowledge is a hindrance
when we carry out our jobs.
K: I don’t quite follow.
Q: The accumulated psychological knowledge
seems to be a hindrance in the care with which we carry out our jobs.
K: Yes, but either we do it or it becomes a terrible theory.
It’s so useless to have theories about all these matters.
Q: Sir, you’re saying
we must be free of the consciousness of mankind.
Is that correct?
K: Not ‘we must be free’.
Q: There must be freedom. K: Yes.
Q: I think that needs some explanation, sir.
K: Sir, if one realises – just a minute, let me finish –
that I am actually the rest of humanity,
which means I’ve experienced everything on earth.
My consciousness, the consciousness of humanity,
has experienced every guru, every experience,
every so-called illumination – it’s all within there.
And when I say, ‘I must have more’, I’m still...
I don’t know if you follow all this.