C: Recognition means seeing a thing without the process of thought.
K: I recognize you because I have met you yesterday. If I did not, I would not
know you.
C: That is not the process by which you recognize brahman.
K: Be simple. Let us talk logically. What is the process of recognizing something
new? To recognize a flower, a yellow one say, I must have already known it
before. So recognition implies knowledge. In order to recognize the ātman, I
must already have known it. It is, therefore, within the field of experience. So
when they say that you cannot ‘experience’ the ātman, what do they mean?
The fact is that I suffer; and I say: I want to end suffering. So, why do I bring
in the ātman? It has no value at all. It is like describing food to a man who is
really hungry.
C: I agree that whatever they have said does not help.
K: On the contrary, they have destroyed the mind by introducing a factor which
does not help.
C: Is this possible?
K: See it. Say: I will never talk about the ātman; it does not mean a thing. So,
how do I face this? How can the mind resolve the factor of sorrow?—not through
the ātman; that is too childish. It can only resolve it, not through knowledge, but
by looking at it without knowledge.
C: Is this possible?
K: Do not introduce the ātman. Try it. Test it out. The other you cannot test. Put
it away completely. Then what happens? Then how do I look at suffering—with
knowledge or without knowledge? Do I look at it with eyes which are filled with
the past and, therefore, translate everything in terms of the past?
B: We cannot use the past as a means to free ourselves from suffering.
K: When you say that you see what suffering is, you are directly in relationship
with suffering—not the observer observing suffering. I look at suffering without
the image. The image is the past. The image from the past may be the ātman. Of
course it is. Test it. Test the image as you would test it in the laboratory. In the
same way, test this. The ātman which I see is part of thought. There is no testing
there at all; here there is testing. I am looking at this sorrow with past experience:
my past experience divides the past from the present; there is duality. The present
is sorrow and I am looking at the present through the past, and translating it in
terms of the past. If the mind could look at it without the past, there would be a