the findings of the physicists, the biologists. How can we ignore all that? If we
only take the ‘I’ and see the source of it, it is not enough. What is this process by
which experience is syphoned into me? The movement of the ‘I’ as thought is
something that is constantly being fed and renewed by that. Unless I see this
process, I will not understand.
K: We said, sir, that the field of consciousness is a movement of contraction and
expansion, a movement of information, knowledge. All that is happening in the
environment, the political changes and so on, is a part of me; I am the
environment and the environment is me. In that whole field there is the
movement of the self as: I like the Arabs; I do not like the Jews.
A: I question that. One need not even takes sides. There are the liberated tribes in
Africa which are caught up in militarism.
K: See what happens. Colonialism, freedom from colonialism, the tribe, then the
identification with the tribe as the ‘me’ who belongs to the tribe.
A: On this wide canvas, we see thought narrowing into this focus, which we call
consciousness.
K: All that is consciousness. Consciousness creates the mischief by saying: I like
and I do not like. I am witness to this ‘I-like-and-I-don’t-like’ because it is part of
something over which I have no control at all.
A: That may be so, but that is not the problem. The problem is the identification
which gives weight to the ‘I-like-and-I-don’t-like’.
K: Here I am, born in India with all its environment—the superstitions, the riches
and poverty, the sky, the hills, the economic and the social conditions. The whole
of that is me.
A: And there is also the entire historical and the prehistorical past. If you include
all that, then choice disappears.
K: Yes sir, I am all that—the past and the present and the projected future. I was
born in India with its five thousand year old culture. That is my consciousness.
Choice arises when you say that you are a Hindu and I am a Muslim; when there
is focalization through identification, there is choice.
P: Let us come back to what you have been saying—that it is legitimate for
thought to operate in fields where knowledge is necessary, and that when it
operates in other fields it brings sorrow, pain, duality. The question is: Is this
other state of which you talk also consciousness?