K: Tradition says that knowledge is essential to freedom, to enlightenment. Why
has this been maintained?—for there must have been people who questioned this.
Why did not the gurus, the Gītā, question knowledge? Why did they not see that
knowledge means the past, and that the past cannot possibly bring
enlightenment? Why did the traditionalists not see that discipline, sādhanā,
comes from knowledge?
J: Is it because they felt that memory must be maintained?
K: Why did the professionals not see that knowledge is the self, when they talked
everlastingly of wiping away the self?
A: So long as the communication is verbal, you cannot wipe away the self.
K: Do you mean to say that according to the professionals you can never look at
anything without the word?
A: The word is compulsive, non-volitional.
K: You hit me; there is pain. I see that. Why should that be built up as memory?
You are not answering my question. Why did the professionals not see the fact
that accumulated knowledge can never lead to freedom?
A: Some of them did.
K: Why did they not act? The professionals are you—which means, you have not
dropped tradition. Why cannot you therefore drop it? Personally, I see a very
simple fact: You hit me: there is pain. That is all.
A: What about pleasure?
K: The same thing.
A: There is effort involved in dropping pleasure.
K: Then you enter the same circus—naming, which strengthens the knowledge
that you hit me. You hit me. That is a fact. My son is dead. That is a fact. To
become cynical, bitter, to say: I loved him and he is gone—all that is
verbalization.
A: So long as the mind continues to chatter—
K: Let it chatter. Look. The fact is one thing and the description of the fact is
another. We are caught in descriptions, in explanations; we are not concerned
with the facts. Why does this take place at all?