K: You have this problem; the baby is left in your lap. What are you going to do?
You must answer. What is it that prevents total perception?
A: Intellectually, I realize that I cannot see the whole thing.
K: Leave it there. What is it that prevents the total perception of this vast,
complex field of existence? Have you an answer? Find out. (pause) Look, when I
enter a room, one object, a lovely bedspread, catches my eye. I look only
casually at the other things in the room. I say that the colours and the design of
the bedspread are beautiful; they give me great pleasure. What has happened?
The eye catches one thing in this whole field. What is it that prevents my seeing
other things? What is it that makes them shadowy and distant? Just listen.
R: The observer.
K: Go slowly. That one thing is beautiful, but my observation of everything else
is vague; I catch one thing, the rest recedes. Why is it that one thing becomes
important? Or, why has perception focussed merely on it? Why is the eye
attracted to this only?
R: Because it is pleasant.
K: What does this element of pleasure mean—that in this whole field only one
thing attracts me? It means that I translate the field into pleasure. In this vast field
of existence, the one thing I seek is the maintenance of pleasure.
A: For most people life is painful.
K: It is painful because we think in terms of pleasure. The principle of pleasure
is the central factor which prevents me from seeing the whole; I see the whole
field of life, with all its complexities, in terms of pleasure or in terms of wanting
pleasure. Doesn’t that prevent total perception?
A: Śaṅkara says that the fear of pain is the thorn in the bush.
R: It is very complex. Here is the fragment. Our attention is on it. What is giving
attention is a fragment, and what is wanting pleasure out of it is also a fragment.
K: We have said all this.
R: So, pleasure is a fragment.
K: No, no. I want pleasure through everything: through money, sex, position,
through prestige, god, virtue and ideas; I want pleasure throughout my life. And I
do not see that pleasure is the thorn. I do not see that. My drive is pleasure;
therefore I create a society which will bring me pleasure. And that society has its