K: Then what is the question? How are these recording instruments with their
own capacity, their own movements, to switch off and enter a different
dimension, even for a short period? You cannot go back to the Upaniṣads. In that
is authority.
A: We come to the point where the intellect realizes that whatever it does is
within the field. What follows from that?
K: You see, the dead-end man says that, and then stops there. But another dead-
end man says: I must have something more; and so the ātman comes in.
A: The Buddhists said: There is no soul; that which putrefies will end; it will
terminate. Do not get attached. That is all that you can do. The position leads to
the void, or śūnyatā.
R: The Vedāntins also said the same thing.
A: They invented māyā (illusion) which absorbed the whole of their reasoning.
K: The distinction between the two is non-existent. The intellect itself says that
its own movement is within this field. Is there any other movement? It does not
say that there is or that there is not. It cannot rationalize, because if it says that
there is, it is back in the same field—the positive or the negative.
The question then is: Is there a movement other than this movement?—For
otherwise there is no freedom. A thing that functions from a centre, within its
own radius—however wide—is never free. (pause) What is freedom?
A: When it is the intellect which asks the question whether there is another
movement, I cannot know if there is.
K: I know this is a prison; I do not know what freedom is.
A: You have taken away one confusion, namely, that all is māyā (illusion).
Tradition has made that a conclusion.
K: My question is: Is there freedom at all? Tradition would say: Yes, there is
mokṣa (liberation). It is all so immature.
A: Faced with this question, I have absolutely no instrument now to deal with it.
K: No, you have the instrument of rationalization, which is the intellect. I am
asking whether there is any validity in this inquiry. If there is no freedom within
the field, then what is freedom?
A: The intellect can never know.