K: See the truth of it, not the logic of it. You can supply the logic later. What you
thought was the door is not the door. You will not move towards it once you see
this. But you do not see.
R: What is the difference between perception and recognition? For us perception
has the form of recognition.
K: Because you recognize through association; recognition is part of the habit of
association. And I am saying that you cannot examine, explore with a mind
which is caught in habit. Therefore, discover the mechanism of habit. Don’t
concern yourself with exploration.
A: Habits are grooves.
K: How have habits been formed? That is the door; I am going through that door.
Now, why does the mind fall into habit? Is it because that is the easiest way to
function? Is it because in habit there is no friction?—I do not have to think about
it. I get up at six, and go to bed at nine.
A: I look at a tree. I do not think about it, and yet the mind says that it is a tree.
K: It is a habit. The mind falls into habit because that is the easiest way to live; it
is easy to live mechanically. Sexually and in every other way it is easy to live
that way. I can live life without effort, without change, because in habit I find
complete security. In habit there is no examination, no searching, no asking.
R: I live within the field of habit.
K: So habit can only function within a very small field, like a professor who is an
expert in his speciality, but functions in a very small field. Like a monk who
operates within a small cell and lives in a pattern, the mind wanting security lives
in a pattern, without change. All this is partial examination; it does not free the
mind from pattern. So what shall I do?
A: Having seen this, knowing that partial understanding is no understanding,
how does the mind totally free itself from habit?
K: I am going to show you.
A: We have examined habit, but the mind does not get out of it.
K: You will never go back to the analysis of habit; you are no longer going to
examine the causes of habit. So the mind is free of the burden of analysis, which
is part of habit. So you have got rid of it. Habit is not only symptomatic of
something, it is psychosomatic. When we have examined it in the way we have,
it is over.