C: Since it is not a process, they do not say how you come to it. They put it
negatively: You cannot come to it by studying, by listening to people, by ritual or
by sādhanā.
K: Is it a question of duality? Being in the world implies a duality; there is then a
glimpse of a non-dualistic state and again a getting back to the dualistic state.
C: They say that in reality there is no duality, but that the intellect creates a
duality. Once non-duality is realized, there is no question of worldliness creeping
in.
K: Living as they do in duality, will the negation of ritual get human beings to a
state of non-duality? Does the tradition claim that there is a level in which there
is no duality at all; and that a mind which is caught in a dualistic state will come
to ‘the other’ by negating beliefs, rituals and so on?
Shall we approach this problem in a simple way? Human beings live in a state
of duality in which there is sorrow, there is pain, there is conflict, and all that.
And man asks how he can get out of it. The non-dualistic state is merely a theory,
second-hand information, which he might have read about but does not know.
Therefore it has no value. Disregard what others have said. I know only the state
in which there is sorrow and pain. That is a fact, and that is from where I start.
C: Some people have conflict and misery and realize that the dualistic state is the
cause of the trouble. So they want to get rid of it. Some do not start from this, but
they feel discontented and read and, having read, they start imagining the non-
dual state.
K: It is a theory. The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another. We
are not concerned with the man who supplies a conclusion derived from a
specialist. We are only discussing the man who is in conflict and who is
discontented with that conflict. How does he get out of it?
C: The traditional way is to explore through books. Man attains by negating and
resolves by knowledge.
K: Proceed step by step. I am in conflict. Now, how do I resolve it? You say by
knowledge. What is knowledge?
C: The realization of conflict is knowledge.
K: I do not have to realize it; I am in conflict. I know I am in conflict, in pain, in
sorrow. What do you mean by ‘knowledge’, and what do you mean by ‘conflict’?
To know that I am in conflict—is that knowledge? Or, do you call knowledge
knowing what I should do about that conflict? When you use the word
‘knowledge’, what do you mean by that? What is the Sanskrit equivalent of that
word?