K: When I have all these accumulated—conscious and unconscious—images,
my mind is loaded. Where is the place for sensitivity?
A: Perception is not a passive act of memory. There is something new with every
new perception, with every new response. And degrees of sensitivity are inherent
in all these responses. I do not understand why there are these degrees and from
where they come, because ignorance is imponderable.
B: Even the seeing here is like a camera which sees its shutters, not the object.
A: If I look through ideas there is really no seeing.
K: The mind is crowded with impressions and information about the object it
sees; it is never empty. It looks through this burden of associations, with pleasure
and pain, with jealousy. What is wrong with that?
R: I am never face to face with all this. There is sensory perception, then the
images, then my likes and my dislikes. My likes and dislikes are also facts, but
they are facts which I do not realize.
K: They are facts; they are as much facts as it is a fact that you are sitting here.
Which means that I see you each time through a screen. What is wrong with that?
Isn’t it a natural process?
SW: In that state I do not see at all.
K: First I want to be clear about all this. There are thousands of impressions,
thousands of perceptions, thousands of conclusions. Let us cover all that with the
word ‘conclusion’. I look at the world through these conclusions; each sensory
perception thickens my conclusions; they never disappear. This is the process
which is going on all the time, all through my life.
Image-making and conclusions are of the past. Sensory perception is
immediate and the conclusion becomes the past. I am looking at you through the
eyes of the past. That is what we are doing; it is a fact. Now what is wrong with
that? Why shouldn’t I look at you that way? What started with perception is not
perception at all. But do not condemn it yet. That is what we are doing all the
time. I want to be sure before we proceed any further.
Go slowly. Everything perceived is translated in terms of conclusions. That is
a fact we all know. That is tradition; it is experience. Experience, knowledge,
tradition are implied by the word ‘past’ and by the word ‘conclusion’. The brain
cells retain the memory of the past. And so, experience, knowledge, tradition
determine the structure and nature of the brain cells. The brain cells are the past.
They retain the memory of the past because in that there is safety. There is safety
in the retaining of biological processes as well as in the retaining of
psychological accumulations. In all that there is tremendous safety.