A: Will you examine the inbuilt incapacity of the brain to see and its tendency to
distort the new?
K: Wait, sir. Unless the danger of seeking security in the past is understood, the
brain cells will not see anything new. If they see something new, they will
translate it in terms of the old. Therefore, the brain cells have themselves to see
the immense danger of looking for security in the past.
A: Which means a total change.
K: I do not know a thing. I only see sensory images, conclusions, and safety in
conclusions. It may be a new conclusion, a disorderly conclusion, but there is
safety there; however neurotic it is, in that neuroticism there is safety.
See the beauty of it. This is the truth, and that is why it is beautiful. How is
the brain, which is insistently demanding security, to see that in the past there is
no security, but that security is always in the new? The brain cells are seeking
security, both in disorder and in order. If you offer a system, a methodological
order, the brain accepts it. That is the whole biological process and the whole
traditional process: security in the past, never in the future, never in the present—
the absolute security of the past. And that is knowledge: biological knowledge,
technological knowledge and the knowledge which has been gathered through
experience. In knowledge there is security, and knowledge is the past. So what is
the next question?
SW: There is a modified continuity in this process. This creates a feeling of
progress.
K: Knowledge can be continued, modified; but that is still within the field of
knowledge—the whole thing is there. What is wrong with this?
SW: All that you say is a fact. However, there is another factor; this is not the
whole thing. There is something radically wanting in this.
K: What is wanting in this? Go step by step. This is the structure. What is the
something which is not quite right? Find out. I will show it to you.
SW: There is no permanency.
K: What are you saying? Knowledge is the most permanent thing. I see that
knowledge is necessary, and also that knowledge is the past; thought is the
response of the past; and so the mind is always living in the past. So the mind is a
prisoner. (pause)
What does a prisoner talk about? Freedom? Why did you not see it? Being in
prison, he talks about freedom, mokṣa, nirvāṇa. He knows his prison is not
freedom, but he wants freedom, because in freedom there is joy, there is beauty.
Because his present life is a repetitive, mechanical continuity, he has to invent an