Then yesterday has ended. The man who has ended the past is really beginning
again. He has therefore to be austere. I really do not know—what a marvelous
thing that is. I do not know if I will die tomorrow; therefore there are no
conclusions, at any time; which means never to have any burdens. The burden is
the knowing.
A: Can one come to this point and stay there?
K: You do not have to stay anywhere.
A: The mind has a way of switching back; words take you only to a point.
K: Go slowly. Do not put it that way. You see the man who speaks of
detachment and the man who invents the ātman. I come along and say: Look,
both are wrong. In this field there is no freedom. Then you ask: Is there freedom
at all? I say: I really do not know. It does not mean that I have forgotten the past.
In the I-do-not-know there is no inclusion of the past, or the discarding of the
past, or a utilization of the past. All that it says is: In the past there is no freedom;
the past is knowledge; the past is accumulation; the past is the intellect—there is
no freedom in all that. When a man says: I really do not know, to the question: Is
there freedom at all?—that man is free of the known.
R: But the structure of the brain cells remains.
K: They become extraordinarily flexible. Being flexible they can reject, accept;
there is movement.
A: We can never reject activity. The normal day-to-day activity must go on.
K: Are you asking what action is to a man who does not know? The man who
knows acts from knowledge, so his action is within that prison which is the field
of the known. He projects that field into the future. Now, what is action to the
other man who does not know? He does not even ask, because he is acting. He
will have his meal in the afternoon; he will go for an evening walk—apart from
that, all other action is total inaction to such a man.
You are missing something, which is, not to know whether there is a
tomorrow. You see, the activist is committed, he is involved; his action is always
mischievous. Action-in-relationship in the field of the known, is attachment-
detachment, dominance-subservience. And life is relationship. Have the
professionals talked about relationship?
R: No.
K: To them relationship meant attachment and, therefore, they said: Be detached.
That may be the reason why the Indian belief in detachment has made the mind