K: The other day, after one of the talks in England
a man came up to me and said, 'Sir, you are a beautiful old man,
but you are stuck in a rut'.
I said, 'Well, sir, perhaps, sir,
I don't know, we'll go into it'.
So I went up to my room and said, 'Am I?'
Because I don't want to be stuck in a rut. I may be.
So, I went into it very, very carefully, step by step, and found
what does a rut mean - to stick in a groove along a particular line.
Maybe, so I watch it.
So, observation of a fact is entirely different
from the escaping or the suppression of it.
H: So, he says you are stuck in a rut,
and you observe it, you don't compare.
K: I don't. Am I in a rut? I look. I may be stuck in a rut,
because I speak English.
I speak Italian and French.
All right. And that's not…
Am I psychologically, inwardly, caught in a groove, like a tram car?
H: Just motivated by something and not understanding it.
K: No, am I? I don't know, I am going to find out. I am going to watch.
I am going to be terribly attentive, sensitive, alert.
H: Now, this requires that you are not reacting in the first place by saying
'No, that's horrible, I couldn't possibly be stuck in a rut'.
K: I wouldn't. You may be telling the truth.
H: To not have that reaction you can't have that self there
that says, 'I am not the type of person that is stuck in ruts'.
K: I don't know.
Sir, is there a learning
about oneself, which is not...
- this leads to something else, I mustn't go into it -
which is not constant accumulation about myself?
I don't know if I am making myself clear.
H: Yes.
K: I observe myself. H: Yes.
K: And I have learnt from that observation something.
And that something is being accumulated
all the time by watching.
I think that is not learning about yourself.
H: Yes. It's being concerned with what you think about yourself.
K: Yes, what you think about yourself,
what you have gathered about yourself.
H: Yes.
K: Like a river that is flowing, you have to follow it.
That leads somewhere else. Let's get back.
H: Maybe this is part of the question we are asking,
because we start with
how does this disorder occur. K: Yes, sir, let's stick to that.
H: It occurs because I have the image of myself of someone who knows
he is not stuck in a rut. I don't like to think
that I am stuck in a rut, and somebody says, 'Yes, you are.'
K: But you may be.
H: Yes. I have to be open to looking, to see.
K: Yes, to observe.
S: But then what about this approach:
somebody says I am stuck in a rut,
I look at myself and think, 'Yes, I am stuck in a rut'
and then I can respond by thinking, what's wrong with that?
Everyone is stuck in a rut. K: Sir, that's just blind.
S: No, you accept the fact, but then you think,
'Why should I do anything about it?'
What's wrong with that as an approach?
K: Like a man stuck as a Hindu, he is stuck.
He is then contributing to war.
S: I may say, well, I am stuck in a rut, but so is everybody,
it is the nature of humanity to be stuck in ruts.
K: You see, that's it, you go off, that is the nature of humanity.
But I question that.
If you say that is the nature of humanity,
let's change it, for god's sake!
S: But you may believe it is unchangeable.
What reason have I for believing that we can change it?
I may think that I am stuck in a rut,
so are you, so is everybody else.
And anyone who thinks they are not is deceiving themselves.
K: It's cheating themselves. I may cheat, so I begin to enquire
- am I cheating myself? I want to be very honest about it.
I don't want to cheat, I don't want to be a hypocrite.
S: You may not be a hypocrite, you may think, 'I am stuck in a rut',
and you may be a pessimist.
The alternative to being a hypocrite is a pessimist.
K: No, I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist.
I say, 'Look, am I stuck in a rut?'
I watch all day.
S: And you perhaps conclude, 'Yes'. But then you can take
the pessimistic cause and say, 'Yes, I am, but so what?'
K: If you prefer that way of living, go ahead.
But I don't want to live that way.
H: Well, the person who comes into therapy
usually comes with both sides going on at the same time.
He says that I have this problem which I want to be free of,
I don't want to be stuck in a rut; on the other hand,
when it gets down to really looking at that, he doesn't want
to look at it either, because it becomes uncomfortable.
K: Of course. So, to come back to your original question,
the world is in disorder, human beings are in disorder,
and we described what is disorder.
And is there a possibility to live free from disorder?
That is the real basic question.