P: How does this happen? What is the instrument? We have examined our minds
under a microscope. Now we ask: Under whose command do the brain cells
function when thought ceases to function, when there is no evaluation, no
operation of will, no doer, no one to direct or to command?
K: I thought K explained yesterday that it is intelligence.
D: It is the same thing. Intelligence is the instrument.
K: Let us keep to the word ‘intelligence’. Intelligence is that quality of the mind
which can use the vast field of knowledge, but which discards the use of
knowledge in another field.
F: There is a difference between you and me. Is the difference the degree of
intelligence, or is there another factor operating in you?
K: P asked a question: What is the essential demand in life? And she goes on
further to ask whether thought can operate sanely, efficiently in the whole field
of knowledge where it is necessary and not operate in another field where it
brings chaos, misery. Now, what is it that can prevent thought from operating so
that it does not create misery?
Can we tackle this question differently? Can the mind, the totality of the
mind, empty itself of everything—of knowledge and non-knowledge? Can it free
itself of the knowledge of science and language, and also of the mechanism of
thought that functions all the time? Can the mind empty itself of all that? I do not
know if I am making myself clear. Can the mind empty itself not only at the
conscious level but also at the deeper secret chambers of the mind? From that
emptiness, can knowledge operate? And, also, can it refrain from operating?
B: Is it then a question of emptiness?
K: Let us see. Can the mind empty itself of its whole content as the past, so that
it has no motive? Can it empty itself? And can that emptiness use knowledge,
pick it up, use it and then drop it—but always remain empty?
Emptiness in the sense that the mind is nothing. Emptiness has its own
movement which is not measurable in terms of time. The movement in
emptiness, which is not the movement of time, can operate in the field of
knowledge—and there is no other operation. That movement can operate in the
field of knowledge, nowhere else.
P: Are there two movements?
K: There are no two movements. That is why I said that movement can operate
only in knowledge. Please follow. I am just investigating. You asked a question.
K has spoken of knowledge and freedom from knowledge: Knowledge operates
in the field of science, where there must be a certain will, a certain direction, an