Ley de Equilibrio Ecológico y Protección al Ambiente para el Estado de Oaxaca

Is Endless.”

While Krishnaji was in Bombay, a small group of people consisting of Rao Sahib, Achyut, Maurice Friedman, the Honorable Mrs. Lucille Frost (an Englishwoman and a long-time student of Jung who had met Krishnaji while in Sri Lanka and accompanied him to India), Nandini, and I soon gathered to hold discussions with Krishnaji. From these discussions were to emerge the first of the series of Krishnaji’s great Indian dialogues. A new dimension was being added to his teaching, a movement which in its momentum was to free the mind from its old grooves.

We had been discussing the mind and memory, and Krishnaji raised a question. He had awoken in the night at about three o’clock, feeling a surge of joy that exploded within him. It seemed to spring from the heart of silence. He lay in bed with it, and then consciousness arose and the experience had been named. The mind-consciousness remembered. How did the mind, which was absent in the experiencing of that state, remember?

It was suggested that the superior mind had experienced the joy and the silence. Krishnaji said, “Any postulation of a superior mind is but another projection of the mind. The suggestion is hardly adequate. Either that state of silence was false—a projection of the mind—or it was real.” He paused. “How did the mind remember? The mind is cause and effect, it is caught in time, it has a beginning and an end. Mind can never experience that which is without cause, the timeless, that which has no beginning and no end. The state this morning was without cause. How did the mind, which is both cause and effect, limited, remember the causeless—the limitless?”

Someone suggested that what the mind remembered was not the experience, but the waking from it. Krishnaji said, “In silence what is there to experience? Silence can only experience silence. Can silence leave an imprint?”

Perhaps, then, what the mind felt was the glow of being dipped in the silence. Krishnaji said, “There is an experience of silence and the mind remembers the feel, the perfume, the essence; how does the mind remember? Consciousness is the thought of the moment before, or the moment after. Thought is always of the moment or many moments before. Thought is the result of a stimulus.” He let his words sink in, let the mind of his listeners ponder, move with him.

“We live in cause and effect, constantly rearranging them. We reject our background, our past of yesterday and of thousands of years, without being even aware that the past we reject is an aspect that lies deep within. And so the background remains undiscovered and is always in conflict, in contradiction.

“Do we see that consciousness is never in ‘the now’, that it is always a projection, a backward or forward movement? That it is never in the present.”

He was asked, “How does man understand this?” “Understanding of the ‘now’ can never be through thought, through consciousness,” Krishnaji replied. He looked at Rao Sahib. “What is the state of the mind when it sees this?”

“The mind refuses to accept it as a fact,” said Rao.

“But it is a fact. The mind cannot understand the ‘now’ which is the new. It is a fact, like a wall is a fact. What do you do when you are faced with a wall? You do not say you cannot accept it as a fact. What happens when you see as a fact that the mind cannot understand the ‘now?’ What is the state of your mind?”

“It is silent—thought has ceased,” I offered.

“Go into it. What happens when the mind sees the fact that thought has ceased and yet there is movement, a freedom?”

“I see it and thought has ceased, and yet I hear your voice, a sensory perception continues.”

“I see you. I hear your voice. Mind as thought is not there and yet sensory perception continues, is present. Only identification has ceased,” said Krishnaji.

The next morning we again discussed consciousness.

First comes the layer of everyday activity—eating, going to the office, drinking, meeting people, the conditioned habits that operate automatically. It is obviously a static state that conforms to a pattern.

When one’s routine is disturbed, this surface layer ceases for an instant and what is below reveals itself. For convenience we will call this the second layer (of course, since consciousness is nonspatial, it cannot be accurate to use terms indicating layer or level). The thinking that emerges from this layer is still conditioned memory, but it is not as automatic as the surface layer. It is more active, more elastic; it has more nuances. Here thought need not conform so completely to pattern, it has more vitality. The next layer is conditioned by like, dislike, choosing, judging, identifying. Here there is the sense of the ego established and in focus.

At this point Krishnaji stopped and said, “How have you been listening? How do you enquire? How does the mind function?”

“I have been dramatizing it,” said Rao. “I have been watching my responses,” I said.

Krishnaji’s response was immediate. “No, you are wrong.”

“Surely, what else can you do?” queried Rao. And then one grew aware of the intensity of Krishnaji’s awareness, how he listened to every response; Krishnaji’s mind sensed that our watching was another repetition, another memory. He simply knew whether the state one spoke of was born of insight or was another repetition.

Krishnaji said, “I have not been thinking about it. There has been no delving into the past, into memory to find the next response. The responses have arisen by the very perception of the fact.” He pushed further.

“Next come the unconscious memories of the individual and the collective, the tendencies, the forces, the urges, the racial instincts; this is the whole network

of desire, the matrix of desire. There is an extraordinary movement here. The ego is still functioning—ego as desire moving in its patterns of cause and effect. The ego as desire that continues. The ego with its unconscious tendencies that reincarnate. Let us push still further.” He paused and pondered. “Can we push further? Is there anything further? Is it that the known dimension has ended? Is this the bedrock of the ego? Is this the structure of consciousness, of the mind and its content?”

Someone asked, “What sustains it?”

Krishnaji was silent. After a few moments, he said, “Its own movement, its own functioning. What lies below? How can one proceed, go beyond the matrix?”

“Shut off the mind,” said Rao.

“Who shuts off the mind? He who is the mind?” Krishnaji responded swiftly. “Then what is the way? Seeing the fact of consciousness—not the word, not the theory, but the fact of it—is ending not possible? Again, whatever I do to move toward the other is of effort and so destroys it. I cannot desire it. I can do nothing except be indifferent to it. And concern myself with the ego, with what I am, and my problems.”

One morning Krishnaji said, “Can we go into consciousness again? Yesterday we had gone into it from the point on the periphery to the center. It was like going down a funnel. Could we today go from the center to the point on the periphery? Could we move from the inward out? Could we approach consciousness from the center?”

“Is there a center?” asked Rao.

“The center is only when there is focusing of attention. The center is formed when periphery is agitated. The center is formed as a point on the periphery. These peripheral points are one’s name, one’s property, one’s wife, fame. These points are constantly being strengthened. There is movement all the time at the peripheral points. There is a constant fear of the breaking of these points.”

“Can I live without the formation of centers?” asked Rao.

“If I start from the center, to investigate, where is the center from which to start? There is no center, but only the field. Except for the periphery there is no center. The fences to the field create the center. I only know the center because of the fence, the periphery. The fences are the points of attention, the limits that create the center. Remove these fences. Where is the center?”

“Can one remove the fences?” I queried.

“If you move in the field, in the non-center, there is no memory. See what happens as you move from field towards fence. As you approach the fence, memory begins.

“So far we have been thinking from the periphery to the center. The thinking from this (non-center) must be totally different. I have to get used to the movement from within towards the periphery.”

“What happens to the points?” I asked.

“It is like slipping under and through fences. The fences no longer matter. To see the point at the periphery is to see no point at all. What we do, however, is to

jump immediately into the periphery, into the habitual. I cannot form a habit of that which has no center.

“To go from the periphery to the center is to stick in the center. When attention becomes identified it becomes the point. Thinking in habit is the movement of the periphery. There is no point from which I can recognize point. To know the center it must be related to point. I can only know it if I approach it from the periphery.

“The more I stay in the field, I see there is no center.”

The next morning the discussion continued. We asked Krishnaji, “What is the periphery? How is it formed? How are fences made? Are they different material from the pointless center?”

“Why do you stay at periphery? Why cannot you stay in the field, seeing its flora and fauna, its perfume? Why are you concerned with the fence?” he responded.

“I have been torturing myself to find out. The whole thing seems un- understandable. Achyut told me that I should take it playfully,” said Mrs. Frost.

“You are taking time, effort, why?” asked Krishnaji. “Because my mind is like a stone wall.”

“Why? What is wrong? Listen to what is wrong,” said Krishnaji. “My thoughts,” Mrs. Frost responded.

“Which means you have a pattern in which you want it explained. Your words are hindering you. The stone wall of ideas, words to which you are accustomed. Why don’t you let go?”

“I don’t know how,” Mrs. Frost protested.

“Why? To you, thinking is important. You are lost when you cannot think along your grooves. Forget all that, play with it. See if we can start, not from the stone wall but from the non-center. What is the difficulty?”

“I am perfectly aware we have not got to that stage.” Mrs. Frost was agitated. “There is no stage. Why do you hold on to the periphery and then want to go to the center? Wipe out the state. It is too full at the periphery. Let it go. Begin as if you were entering a new room. You see periphery and want to proceed to create center. You call it God and approach it. But there is no center without periphery. You cannot think apart from the thinking habit. You can never think anew. Difficulty lies not in the field, but with the periphery. It is the simple mind that sees this.”

“From the periphery it is like seeing through a telescope. Being in the field is fluidity,” commented Nandini.

“What is the point? Identified attention? What is the fence? What is the fence when you approach it from the pointless point? It is stoppage of movement. If there is the flowing field, is not the field of the same quality as movement arrested, as the fence? The stoppages of movement are points along the fence. I am still inside the field.

“Yesterday after the discussion I slept. As I was beginning to wake up, there was a coming from afar to a point of elaborate design. I lay watching design—it took me a long time to watch it. Then it disappeared and I came to. Movement

when arrested forms design, becomes point from which I act. Sorrow is the result of stoppage of movement and the movement away from it. If I see that the point is of the same substance as the field, there is no struggle. If there is a living in the pointless center, the stoppage is the point. It is in fighting point with point that we strengthen it,” said Krishnaji.

“What creates point? Is it that the same fluid crystalizes?” I asked. “Is it subject to pressure—to a counterforce?” asked Rao.

“Is not your flow and my flow the same?” said Krishnaji.

Friedman asked, “Why does the impediment arise? Is it unreal, false?”

“Why does it happen? Twenty things are happening around me. Sometimes there is extensive seeing; sometimes it is limited,” said Rao.

“No center meets impediment, nervous responses of the body. Why not? These may be just body reactions. You ask me a question and I answer you according to my conditioning—which arrests the flow. This conditioning is the result of the environment acting on the body and its responses. If the flow is arrested—I accept arrestation—life is like that,” said Krishnaji.

“What is arrestation?” asked Rao.

“It is attention focusing. The river suddenly comes between two banks and the flow narrows down.

“The field has no point, no limit; it is vast and limitless. Focused attention is the narrowing down. Why do we stay there at the point? That is the question. The moment you ask me something, a point must form. But why do we allow it to crystalize?” He was silent and then spoke slowly, telling us to contact his mind.

“The vast field has no positive state. In solidity there is the positive. The non- center state is negation. This negation is challenged and there is positive action. This positive state creates its opposite.”

“Has the positive state its own momentum?” asked Rao.

“The real solution lies in a field of negation. If we move away from this field we are lost. If we enter the point to examine it, we are lost. Look at it from the field of negation. Why does crystalization take place?” He paused, questioning himself. “Is this a wrong question? Crystalization is inevitable, a fact. My difficulty is, why does the mind stay in crystalization? When I see the negative approach I am free of crystalization, free of the point. I accept friction as inevitable and move on.”

“Is it because we see our flow as separate that the trouble starts?” Rao asked. “If negation was there it would have an answer. My problem is, why don’t I stay in a state of negation? The danger is I am constantly weighing this with that. The fools enter the kingdom, not the cautious,” said Krishnaji.

Krishnaji said, “What is the energy of the field? What place has energy in this we call consciousness? We know the activity of narrowing down. We know fear, want, sublimation, we know the various reasons and causes for identification.

“What is this energy? Obviously this energy has no enclosed space, no fence, no opposites. The field is energy.”

“When we attempt to examine this energy the examiner becomes the point,” said Rao.

“What is silence? Let us approach this energy differently. What is silence? Are you being silent? How do you find out what silence is? Are you being noisy? How do you know you are silent?”

“Silence is the pointless flow of the field,” said Rao.

“Don’t define it. Do I see silence? Do I experience it? Can I say as an observer, ‘This is silence’?” asked Krishnaji.

“There is silence when I am not focused,” said Rao.

“What do you mean by focused? Don’t verbalize it. Just see what silence is and how you see it, how you experience it.” Krishnaji was holding Rao’s hand, moving with him into the pathless field.

“What is silence? How do you experience it? Don’t do anything, just listen. Are you experiencing it or is there a state of silence which you are trying to describe?” He paused. “You see the difference? See what silence is.”

“I am saying it is not a state to be got, so leave getting,” said Achyut.

“You first make a picture, then fit things to the picture. Find out what silence is.” Krishnaji was pushing.

“I can recollect times when there has been a state of silence,” said Mrs. Frost. “That is not silence. What is silence? I was asked what is energy, and I said there is a different approach to the problem. I say let us go into silence. That is the challenge. Now, what is silence? Do I have an image of it, or do I see it is there and because you ask me, I will communicate it to you?”

“Don’t try to see or not see, just let go.” Rao had touched the flow for an instant, was one with it.

“Leave your ideas and see what silence is,” said Krishnaji. “Either I am imagining it or the state is there. I am not experiencing it. With you the mechanism operates immediately. Be simple, leave your mechanism. Why does it operate before silence?”

“The mind is so clever,” said Achyut.

“That is no answer. Why does the mechanism come first? The moment I ask what is silence, your mechanism answers. How do you find silence? Surely not through the noise of the mechanism. So what do you do?”

“The fence begins with the mechanism,” said Rao.

“Silence is there without end. I want to find out what energy is. It may be possible for it to function endlessly. But idea comes first and covers and frames silence. But silence has no end; things exist in it; they are part of it; they are not contradictory to silence. That child’s crying is silence. When noise is within it, it is silence. If silence is extensive, noise is part of silence.

“Anything with its own mechanism contradictory to silence is not in silence. The mechanism as the observer looking at silence is contradictory to silence, is not silence. The idea of silence as exclusive is not silence. Anything separate may have its own energy, but is not part of expansive silence. By its movement separateness can create its own action and energy. The two energies are entirely different. The movement of a separate mechanism experiencing silence and noise