SW: How is there safety in the past? Am I really safe?
K: Do not question it yet. Look at it. Without memory you would not know your
name, you would not know how to go to Bangalore, or recognize your husband
or your wife. There is the feeling of complete safety because in tradition, in
knowledge and in conclusions there is nothing new, therefore nothing disturbing.
SW: There is nothing to disturb.
K: Anything new is disturbing and, as the brain cells need order, they find order
in the past.
A: But to come back to your question, what is wrong with that?
K: There is nothing wrong in that. I am inquiring into the nature of sensory
perception, into the operations of the brain, the mechanism of thought, and how
the mind operates. There is safety in sensory perception, image, conclusion, the
past. All that is tradition. In tradition there is safety. In the past there is complete
security.
SW: Security implies struggle.
K: Security implies the sense of not wanting to be disturbed. I do not know if
you have noticed that the brain needs order. It may establish order in disorder—
which is neurosis. It needs order and, therefore, it will find order in disorder, and
become neurotic. Do you see this? The brain demands order because in order
there is security.
SW: That is perfectly clear.
K: In tradition there is order. In continuity there is order. The brain, seeking
order, creates security, a harbour where it feels safe. And K comes along with
revolutionary ideas and tells you: This is not order. And so there is conflict
between you and him. You reduce the new into terms of the old, and there find
safety, security. Why does the mind do this? The Russian Revolution and the
French Revolution upset the whole established structure, but soon the brain
created order out of disorder, and there was an end to revolution.
A: We have discovered something—that the moment I see something new which
creates a disturbance, perception is the instrument by which I convert the new
into the old.
K: That is the biological process of the brain. It is a biological necessity for the
brain, because in that it finds the most efficient way of working.