K: Is it to give continuity to the pain, or to give continuity to the man who has
inflicted pain?
A: He has to reap the consequences.
J: It gives continuity to the man who receives the pain.
K: Look. You hit me. There is physical pain. That is all. Why do I not end it
there? Why does the brain translate the pain into words and say: He has hit me?
Why?—Because it wants to hit back. If it did not want to do that, it could say: He
has hit me—full stop. But the brain remembers not only the physical pain, but
also the man who causes the hurt, which becomes the psychological mark.
R: Who remembers?
K: The brain cells.
A: The ‘I’ process.
J: What is being recorded in the cells is the image of the man who hit me.
K: Why should I remember the man?
J: Even if I forgive him, it is the same.
K: What happens is this. The moment you hit me, I translate the fact into words.
The ‘I’ says: He has hit me, how could he? What have I done?—All these are
waves of words.
The traditional approach to enlightenment is also through knowledge: you
must have knowledge to arrive, to achieve freedom. And I ask whether that is so.
The experience of being hit is knowledge. Now, what is the traditional approach
to the problem of pain, of suffering, of being hurt? Why has tradition maintained
that knowledge is necessary as a means of enlightenment?
A: That is an oversimplification. The verbalization of pain is only one part of
knowledge, there is a larger field of knowledge which is racial. The word is the
essence of knowledge.
K: Is it?
J: No, it is not so.
K: So we have to see what knowledge is, what it means to know. Is knowing in
the active present or, is it in the past?
A: Knowledge presupposes the past—what has been known.