GS: I have several questions to ask here.
K: Go slowly. Living in time, when thought, which is put together, tries to
investigate something beyond time, it is still thought; living in time, there is
nothing new. So, as long as thought and time are within the field, it is a prison; I
can think it is freedom but it would be merely a conception, a formula. It is like a
man who is violent and pretends he is non-violent. The whole ideological
conception in this country of being non-violent and violent at the same time is a
pretension.
So, as far as thought functions, it must function within the field of time. There
is no escape from it at all. I can pretend that I am thinking outside time, but it is
still within time. Thought is old, whether it is about the ātman or about the super
ego; it is part of thought.
GS: Where is the way out of the paradox?
K: The intellect, thought functions there, and we are trying to find an answer
here—as physicists, biologists, mathematicians, as a bourgeois or as a sannyāsi.
GS: But there are laws in physics.
K: Of course there are. This is anyhow a madhouse, and we are trying to find an
answer within it. This is a fact. I have to accept it as it is. Then my question is: Is
there an action which is not of this? Here all action is fragmentary: you are a
religious man; I am a scientist. In this everything is in a state of fragmentation.
GS: Fragmentation carries laws.
K: Of course, but these laws have not solved human problems. Apart from being
a physicist, you are a human being. Take the problem as it is—that human beings
live in fragments, that society is broken up. Thought is responsible for this.
GS: Thought is also responsible for all other things.
K: Surely. It is responsible for the inventions, the discoveries, the gods, the
priests, the yogis—everything. So that is what actually is. The problem is how to
live here and find something else. You cannot. The question is not how to
integrate the various fragments, but how it is possible to live without
fragmentation.
GS: To the extent to which it is possible, you have no questions. At that point it
ceases to be physics; at that level I am no longer a physicist.
K: Of course. If you are first a human being, a non-fragmentary human being,
your action can then be non-fragmentary.