K: Experience involves remembrance,
time, which is the past.
Therefore the experiencer is the experienced.
If I seek illumination,
enlightenment, or whatever you might like to call it,
I am then trying to do all kinds of things to achieve that.
But I don't know what illumination is. I don't know.
Not because you said it, or Buddha said it, or somebody else said it,
I don't know. But I am going to find out.
Which means the mind must be totally free - from prejudice,
from fear, all the rest of that messy business.
So, my concern is not illumination, but whether
the content of my consciousness
can be cleansed - whatever word you use.
That's my concern - not concern, that's my enquiry.
And as long as I am separate from my consciousness
I can experience it, I can analyse it,
I can tear it to pieces, act upon it,
which means perpetual conflict between me and my consciousness.
I wonder why we accept all this.
Why do I accept that I am a Hindu?
Why do I accept that I am a Catholic?
You follow? S: Yes.
K: Why do we accept what other people say?
H: We say it ourselves.
K: Yes. No, not only we say it ourselves,
but it's encouraged, sustained,
nourished by people outside.
Why? Why do we accept?
He is a professor and he is teaching me, I accept that.
Because he knows biology much more than I do, I go to his class,
and I am being informed by what he says.
But he's not my guru, he's not my behaviour guide.
He is giving me information about biology, and I am interested in it.
I want to study it, I want to go out into the field
and do all kinds of stuff.
But why do we accept authority,
psychological authority,
spiritual - quote spiritual - authority?
Again, we come back to security.
I don't know what to do, but you know better than I do;
you are my guru.
I refuse that position.
S: But don't we arrive at the same set of problems,
if we start not from authority but from responsibility;
say, I'm a father, I have this child,
we've agreed some time ago...
K: You have to instruct it, of course.
S: You have to look after this baby. K: Of course, of course.
S: Fine. But now, in order to feed the baby you become preoccupied
with security, job, tenure, you know, house...
K: Of course, of course. S: ...protecting the house
against marauders, and so on. K: Of course, of course.
S: Then you get into the same lot of things about preoccupation
with security, starting not from authority but from responsibility
for others, for children, for example.
K: Of course.
S: So, then what is the answer to that?
It's easy to say you should reject responsibility.
K: Of course, I have money, if I earn money, job, so on,
I have to look after myself. If I have servants,
I have to look after servants, my children,
perhaps their children too.
I am responsible for all that. S: Yes.
K: Physically I am responsible. To give them food,
to give them the right amount of money,
allow their children go to a proper school, like my children
- I am responsible for all that.