BIOLOGICAL SURVIVAL AND INTELLIGENCE
Dialogue 29P: There was something which Krishnaji said in his talk yesterday; I do not know
whether it will bear discussion. The question he posed was whether the brain
cells could strip themselves of everything except the movement of survival, the
pure biological necessity which alone makes the organism exist. It was a very
startling statement. Krishnaji seemed to suggest that before any movement in the
new dimension could take place, this total stripping to the bare bedrock was
essential. In a sense he was back to a totally materialistic position.
D: If you have survival as the dimension of existence, there is no other
dimension. Can this bear investigation? Is such stripping of every element of
consciousness, as we have understood it, possible? We have always claimed that
the human being is more than the urge for survival.
F: Are the brain cells not the repository of culture?
P: If you strip man of every psychological element except the urge for physical
survival, how is he different from the animal?
K: We know both biological and psychological survival. But the factors for
psychological survival, like nationalism, make biological survival almost
impossible. Psychological fragmentation is destroying the beauty of survival.
Can one strip man of the psychological factors?
P: Apart from the biological and psychological, is there anything else? You
spoke of stripping yourself of all factors. I am asking you if there is any other
element apart from the biological and the psychological.
K: As far as we know these are the only two factors that operate in man.
F: Is there not, apart from the physiological factor, such a thing as psychological
survival?
K: Which means the survival of the psyche. The psyche is the result of the
environment and of heritage. Last evening when we used the word
‘consciousness’, we said that the whole of consciousness is its content. The
content of consciousness is conflict, pain; the whole of that is consciousness.
D: You said also that intelligence is more than consciousness.
K: Wait. We said that understanding the fact of consciousness and going beyond
it is intelligence. You cannot come to that intelligence if this consciousness is in