K: Experience is possible only when there is the experiencer. You say something
which I do not like, and that hurts me. That is an experience, then that experience
becomes knowledge. Will that knowledge end conflict?
C: No.
K: Then what will end conflict? Do they say that it is that entity which realizes
the experiencer and that has gathered this knowledge which will end conflict? If
so, then there is a superior entity.
C: There is a principle through which all these disparate experiences of the
individual are made possible. How do I know I am the experiencer?
K: Because I have experienced before. I know I am the experiencer because you
have hurt me before. The previous knowledge makes the experiencer.
B: I see the sun rise. I feel that my experience of having seen the sun—
K: Having seen the sun rise once and seeing it day after day, the accumulation of
that knowledge makes the experiencer.
C: They postulate an entity which does not experience.
K: The postulated entity is another opinion which I have acquired from
somebody else. It is fairly simple and clear. First, I am aware, I get to know I am
in conflict. I analyse it. Through analysis I acquire the knowledge that I am
jealous. All that is simple. Analysis, observation, watching, have given me
information as to why I am jealous. That information is knowledge. And that
knowledge apparently cannot get rid of jealousy. Then what will get rid of it? Do
not invent another superior self. I know nothing about it. I know only conflict,
analysis, knowledge; and I see that knowledge does not get rid of conflict.
B: What is the substratum of all experience? What is that out of which all
experiences arise? What is the matrix?
K: Is it an accumulation of experience? The matrix is things put together; the
matrix of experience is experience; the matrix of the carpet is the warp and the
woof. Are you asking, sir, what is the thread that makes experience, or are you
asking what the matter is upon which the experience leaves a pattern?
C: Traditionalists consider that knowledge as the gathering of experience,
memory, belongs to the realm of the manas and buddhi, and that this is made
possible by the ātman (higher self), which sheds light; without the ātman, the
manas cannot function.