am asking: Is the mind deceiving itself by saying that it has no formulas when it
is entrenched in formulas? By formulas I mean thought, which is consciousness.
Or, is there a perception which has nothing whatsoever to do with thought? I only
know that all consciousness is within the field of time, and that thought is
consciousness.
Therefore, I am inquiring; I do not want to deceive myself; I do not want to
pretend that I have got something which I have not got. I see that whenever
thought comes into being, it must create a formula, and that the formula is within
the field of time; the whole of consciousness is time. I hear you say this. Now, is
it a formula which I have accepted or, is there the fact of the perception of the
total movement of thought?
P: What is meant by these words which you use—‘the total movement of
thought’? You ask whether we have accepted it as a formula. I have neither
accepted it as a formula nor is it a fact for me; it is neither of these.
K: But by listening, by examining, by investigating, you say that this is so. It is
not a question of accepting. Now, move a step further. Is that ‘it-is-so’ an
acceptance of an idea? Is it intellectual and, therefore, still within the field of
time?
P: I will never answer that question to you or to myself.
K: I am asking it.
P: What do I answer?
K: You are not asking that question. You know nothing about it. I want to find
out whether the mind, that is the result of time, on hearing that statement, accepts
it as a statement, as a formula and, therefore, remains in time, or whether it sees
the truth, the fact.
Then what takes place? It is a fact. Nothing more can be said when thought
does not arise. I see the room, but the moment thought says that it has proportion,
colour, beauty, time enters—you follow? In the same way, this whole field of
time exists only when thought operates.
Now, am I pretending that thought is completely absent or is it a fact—of
which we can be aware? Then what takes place?—I am aware of this room
without any interference of time.
P: At this moment what are you aware of?
K: The mind which is the result of time, hearing what you are saying, accepts
that as a formula and says yes. The acceptance is a conclusion—which is the
operation of thought. Therefore, I see that time is still operating in that sense. So
is there an operation of perception without thought? What takes place then?