ER: You’ve already mentioned your rejection of organised religion,
but can you explain to us
why you are so positively against those things?
K: How can you organise a human being according to a pattern?
Whether it is a religious pattern
– faith, belief, dogma, rituals –
how can you shape man, who is extraordinarily alive,
to a particular mode,
like the communists are trying to do?
The totalitarians are trying to force man
to a certain way of thinking,
which is so contrary to freedom.
Freedom…
I mean, man has always sought throughout history to be free.
That was one of his urgent, constant demands
– not only from poverty, environmental ugliness, and so on,
but to be free from the sorrow,
pain and anxiety, and so on, those things.
And how can any structured religious attitude give him freedom?
ER: So if you’ve rejected religion and you’ve rejected faith,
what’s your alternative?
K: It’s rather complex.
To put it simply,
human beings have been always self-centred,
always selfish – to put it very brutally, simply –
and various religions have tried to help him not to be so self-centred,
and identify yourself with something greater.
But ‘the greater’ is still part of selfishness.
And so I think one should really begin with self-knowledge.
The ancient Hindus, long before the Greeks,
have said ‘know thyself first’,
because if you don’t understand yourself, basically, fundamentally,
whatever you do will still be the activity of illusions.
So, know thyself –
not according to some philosopher or some psychologist
but know yourself in your relationship with the world;
not only the external world of nature
– I’m saying this, not the ancient... –
not only your relationship with nature
but also your intimate relationship with whom you live.
Relationship is like a mirror
in which you see yourself directly as you are:
no pretensions, watch your reactions,
understand your reactions and go beyond them.
And it’s much more complex
– human structure, the human brain, human behaviour, and so on –
so begin with yourself.
ER: Is your system rooted in any religion? Is your method…
K: Ah, a method and a system is again a pattern.
ER: You don’t have a method, you don’t have a system?
K: Ah, of course not.
Because after all, that’s what human beings have sought,
and lived with patterns:
obedience to the pattern, obedience to a certain ideal.
All that has led to such enormous conflict.
Look what is happening now:
the ideals of the communist and the ideals of the democratic world,
they are in conflict.
So really one has to ask a much more serious question:
what place have ideals in life at all?
They may have no place at all.
What is important is to begin with what is, actual.
We are having a conversation now, a dialogue,
in which both of us are sharing.
We talk freely – I hope – inquire, investigate,
therefore there is no system in that;
both of us are seriously concerned about something
and we begin to have a dialogue about it:
why human beings throughout the world live in conflict.
Why should I have a system about that?
And whether we can live without conflict.
Because conflict is destroying the world,
not only in personal relationship
but with nature, with other human beings.
So is it possible to live without conflict?
Is it possible to live a life of great
– if I can use that word which has been so spoiled – love?
And be free of suffering.
This is… why should we have a system of inquiry into that?
But in inquiring we discover a great many things.
If we are both attentive, watchful,
we discover the most fantastic and real things.
And the perception of that brings us together;
there is no ‘you’ and ‘me’: perception.