ENERGY AND FRAGMENTATION
Dialogue 18A: After listening to yesterday’s talk, I wonder what is meant by energy. In
observing all the fields of my activity, I see that I know only fragmented energy,
and I do not know what you are talking about.
K: There is physical energy, intellectual energy, emotional energy; there is the
energy of anger, of greed. All these are forms of energy. Traditionally it has been
said that sexual energy must be controlled.
A: Traditionalists hold that unless all dissipation of energy is halted, we cannot
know the ‘other’. It does not seem to be that way. There is no relationship
between suppression and the negation you talk about. But the truth is that I only
know fragmented energy.
K: The traditional approach may hold us to a particular pattern, to that energy
which is fragmentary.
A: It may be because every form of energy we know is destructive: our
intellectual energy creates systems and patterns; our emotional energy is a
reaction against other individuals.
K: Did the speaker not say yesterday that all energy springs from one source of
energy?
A: What you are saying comes from a different source. You say that the function
of the intellect is to see that the intellect itself is fragmentary and, therefore,
inadequate. When the intellect sees its inadequacy, that is the highest truth the
intellect can perceive. And it is only when you come to this that there is the
‘other’. All that we seem to know is fragmentary, and you are speaking of
something else.
K: What will you do? How will you stop the fragmentation of energy?
A: I would not say ‘how’, because that action is itself a part of the process of
becoming.
K: Then what will you do? How do the professionals, the traditionalists,
approach this problem—that various forms of energy, contradicting each other,
contend for power; that one form assumes the role of dictator and tries to control
or suppress the rest? Do they introduce the ātman as a way out of the problem?