David Bohm

The following is a conversation between U. G. Krishnamurti and David Bohm, recorded in Saanen, Switzerland in 1968. Also present were Mrs. Bohm, David Barry and Valentine.

David Bohm: I heard that you had some unusual experiences. We couldn't get to see you last year. Perhaps we could start discussing on that line.

U.G. Krishnamurti: They were indeed very unusual for me. And instead of telling you how I got into that, it would perhaps be better for me to describe what actually I got into. I got into a new state of being, as it were. Something triggered the whole series of changes in me and it came about in quite an unexpected way. One day I was lying here on the sofa and suddenly I found my body missing. I opened my eyes and looked at myself; the body was intact. When I closed my eyes the body again went missing. The next day I told my friend the body is missing and hasn't come back to me yet (laughs)…

(Since the details of the events were fading, with some difficulty, UG narrates the physical changes that took place in him, how over seven days the senses were transformed, how the dormant glands were reactivated, and how he went through ‘clinical’ death to awaken into the natural state.)

…This bewilderment continued for several weeks. The words wouldn't come. Then I stopped asking questions. Why should I know what something is? Things are what they are.

I couldn't contain the force of this energy generating inside of me. The yoga teacher Desikachari was here at that time. I talked to him about the waves of energy bursting from my body. He said that this was supposed to be the state of being all the religious teachers had come into. ‘You have come on the reverse gear,’ he said. ‘We all struggle, work hard and go through the mill for years – I don't know what kind of blessed flower you are. Anyway, you have it and you must do something to moderate the escape of energy from your body.’ And he asked me to meet his father in India who was supposed to be an authority on yoga. But the waves of energy going out continued for three to four months more and I used to feel quite sick and lie down most of the time, watching what would be the outcome of all this.

Then I went to India and Desikachari suggested a forty-eight-day course of yoga and breathing exercises and bland diet. It was to moderate the effects of energy on the body. I did this, and, on his suggestion again, underwent another forty-eight-day course. It did help me to moderate the effects of these changes inside of me. I am still continuing the yoga lessons. And now it is something very natural to me. There is no bewilderment as in the earlier days. There is this awareness inside and awareness outside.

Suddenly, somehow the machination of the mind came to an end without any volition or effort on my part. And the body took over, the senses started functioning independently and in an extraordinary way. What I am left with is only the body. There is nothing inside, except the life throbbing. That is the story.

Bohm: But you use the word ‘I’!

UG: That is only as a mode of communication. The first person singular I have to use, not that there is the consciousness of the ‘I’ all the time. The whole structure has come to an end. There is no such thing as a centre in me at all. All the reactions are the bodily reactions to the environment, to things around.

Bohm: There is this expression: a rose is a rose is a rose – that there is no need to give a name.

UG: Let me describe the process. You look at that flower. It is not that I am looking at the flower; the flower is looking at me.

You see, as long as the eyes are open, they have to look at something or the other. If I close my eyes, the world disappears. So when you look at an object – the word ‘object’ doesn't convey what happens inside me…

Bohm: The object becomes you!

UG: No, no, the object doesn't become me nor do you become the object.

I see you. I see her. These are two different things. How do I know you two are different, a man and a woman; because the light falls on you and you look different in your shape, hair, clothes and all that, and you are sitting on the sofa. Actually and factually, to me, you are not different from the sofa (laughs). You see, there is nothing inside here. I am just looking at all things here. How do I distinguish a human being from a sofa or chair? Because you are all moving; obviously you are animate and the light is falling on you.

The retina is like a camera lens. If I turn this side, you don't exist for me. If I want to I’ll know his name and all that I know of him which is there in the background. But who decides the need. I don't, the situation decides when and how the information that is there inside has to be used.

Whatever I am looking at has an effect on me. Since there is nobody, no mental activity of any kind inside, whatever is there in the environment affects the body. Say I take a walk to Gstaad. There is a beautiful landscape (I don't call it beautiful), the eyes naturally get fixed on the landscape, the eyeballs don't move and I take a deep breath – perhaps that is the meaning of the expression, ‘breathtaking view’. This kind of breathing goes on, the oxygen enters every cell in the body and that has an effect inside of me.

I must mention here what the Hindus call the chakras. These chakras have started functioning. Thirty-four spots appeared all over my body. All these chakras – I would simply call them dormant glands – have suddenly become active. What triggered this process is very difficult to say. Once the stepping-out process takes place – the triggering device is already there inside, it is automatic – the triggering device perhaps has set these changes in motion. On the forehead, here, where the pineal gland is located, there was a swelling in the shape of a lotus.

When I breathe in, the air, the oxygen goes in and turns this way (demonstrates) and affects every cell in my body – I become aware of this process because there are sixty-four spots on my body where I feel the pulse, the throbbing of life. As a result of this kind of breathing in and out the whole body is heated up and it produces a large quantity of saliva. I swallow and it generates electricity inside the body and this goes on and on. I have no choice; whatever I look at or listen to can put you in that state.

Then there is this state of great silence. It is not the absence of sound or noise. Sounds are there, but there is no distinction made. Somebody is playing a piano there or there is some screaming noise or noise of utensils in the kitchen – they are all same and they come and hit you.

There is no hunger. You'll be surprised – I don't feel hunger at all. But the body needs food and so I take food at regular intervals to keep the body going, otherwise I would feel weak. What is left is the body – although hunger is not felt – and it has to be fed and maintained in a perfect condition. For the first time you feel this is the way to live.

It is not that you have arrived and found your destination. It is just that the conflict, the search has come to an end. And there are no questions inside. Even the deeper questions like ‘what is this life?’, ‘has it any meaning and purpose?’ or ‘how did this universe come into existence?’ – all these questions are not there. There are only the basic questions. If I have to go to the railway station, I'll ask somebody if I don't know the way. These are the questions of the day-to-day existence.

Up to a point you can trace what happened and then there is a leap. I don't know why or how it happened or what triggered the whole series of changes inside me. It is difficult to find the missing link. There is just living. And for the first time the living quality has an opportunity to express itself in an extraordinary way and taking in whatever is present there. There is only awareness and it is not what the psychologist say, or even JK says, when he talks of choiceless awareness – there is no choice here at all. There is only the body and this is a natural way of living. Perhaps this is what the Hindus called the sahaja samadhi or sahaja sthithi.

And then sometimes even this awareness disappears all of a sudden, it is like something descending on you, filling the whole being; the brain becomes dull and, for all practical purposes, the body becomes stiff and dead. Whether I keep my eyes open – they become bloodshot and I can't see anything – or closed, the world, everything disappears. There is nothing. This lasts for an hour or one-and-a-half hours.

Bohm: There are interesting researches done on the brain, the brain structure and how the brain can be affected by various chemicals…

UG: What has happened here is interesting. The brain we have in common with the animals has undergone a radical change. They say there are about ten billion cells in the brain and another 100 billion minor cells connecting them. These brain cells, including the cells inside the bones have undergone a radical mutation, if I may use that term.

When the sudden death of the ‘I’ or the self or the centre (or whatever you call it) takes place, this body has to undergo a transformation. Every gland, every cell in the body has to undergo a radical mutation. This process went on for several days and weeks.

The brainwaves are terrific and the electricity that goes out of my body is tremendous. Since there is no point, no centre inside me, there is no space for me at all.

When I close my eyes, there is light here (in the forehead). The whole thing is filled with light, there is no body consciousness. The light penetrates through the eyelids and there is a hole here (forehead, where ajna chakra, the pineal gland is located), the Hindus call it the third eye. I padded the spot with a thick cloth (you know, I'm quite a sceptical guy) and still there was light. Perhaps that is the reason why they called this state as enlightenment, as illumination.

The electricity (waves of energy) generated in this body expands and goes, as it were, to the end of the universe, affecting the whole thing.

And when I come out of this state, this whole body is filled with some kind of white substance and it shines like phosphorescence. Why this process should take place, I don't know.

One of these days, people working in the medical and biological field will find out with the help of technology the dormant glands inside the body, glands even inside the intestines. They don't know why they are there and what functions they perform.

So what I am left with is a pure and simple physical being. This is a different body and the consciousness that is operating here is pure consciousness.

I don't know if human evolution has any purpose at all; if it has any purpose, then it seems to be the end product of evolution. This mutation has changed the animalistic content of the brain. For the first time you have flowered into a real human being. The possibility of a human being flowering into a real human being is there. That is all I am going to stress.

•

UG: From quite a young age I had this question about religious people and religious experiences. What is there behind or beneath these religious beliefs and practices? And most of the guys I met were frauds, in the sense they didn't have this real thing in them. You see, I myself went through all kinds of experiences, all within the field of thought. These religious people and mystics didn't have the real touch of the ‘source’ or the ‘origin’ – except perhaps Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti.

Not that I have what he has. There is nothing there. But is it the same? Perhaps it can't be different. I don't know, the question doesn't interest me. However, this must be the base – the religious experience is not the thing – which is something beyond thought. The thought can never penetrate here. It is that state where the action takes place. But I have no way of knowing what is happening at that time. But there seems to be some kind of awareness – that is the difference between sleep and this state. Something is aware of something else. The Hindu religious thinkers say the immensity is aware of its own immensity, or that is aware of that. I would simply say life is aware of itself.

The body is in a state of quiet, of relaxation, which you can call bliss, truth, love, god or reality or anything you like, but it is not that, because there is nobody looking at it. I look at that (microphone) and I can bring out the word and say it is a microphone. But here, for this state of being, there is no word you can find to describe it. So the words bliss, love, god, truth, are all inadequate to express this state of being. Here there is no difference between life and death. The continuity (of the self) is gone once and for all.

Bohm: What do you say of time?

UG: There is no time, no space. When there is thought, there is time. Thought is time and thought is space.

As long as I am looking at something, there is space – but space of and by itself – because I have what you call Vistavision, I see much more. The eyes take in completely the hundred peer cent of what is there. They say the eye cuts off ninety-eight per cent and takes in only two per cent, but here, since there is no choice of any kind, the eyes take in the whole thing.

But the space that thought creates is different. The moment you say the Palace Hotel (in Gstaad), there is a space. When I close my eyes there is no space at all. Light is the part of the whole space, and the light inside has no frontiers. But to say that I am the space is not correct (laughs).

(To illustrate the point, UG picks up a visor.) This is the social consciousness, the mind, the world, this is the enclosure, this is the eye I have built through the years. Every human cell carries the knowledge built from thousands of years; rather, the whole fourteen million years of the past is embedded in the individual. So the human being is not different from the social consciousness. And what has happened in me is that this whole built-up consciousness somehow and by some process – not through any sadhana or effort or one's volition – has knocked itself off.

When the explosion takes place, the whole structure of thought collapses. This is not an ordinary thing. It is like a nuclear explosion and it affects the whole human consciousness. It is not just once, but a series of explosions and there is a fallout which affects the human consciousness. This seems to be the only way we can affect the world, by bringing about a structural change within oneself.

You can never look at thought. The thought splits itself into two, and one thought or image looks at the other. Only when you step out of the whole structure built over millions of years, you can look at thought, but it has no content. Thought has been a part of the human consciousness right from the beginning. There is this expression in the Bible: In the beginning was the word and word as the flesh. Actually it means matter. Thought is matter and at the same time it is sound and this has been in existence through centuries.

The thinker has no existence; he is an artificially created, built-up thing. He has taken possession of the body and has dominated for centuries… but somehow, here, he has been displaced. He is not there anymore. What you are left with are the body and thought. What is this thought? Here, they are only words, factual memory without psychological content. Only now, after you step out of the social and individual consciousness, there is a possibility of looking at thought. When thought comes, there is a disturbance in awareness and, once you look at it, this very awareness destroys it. There is no scope for the thought to take roots here and bring the thinker in. It is just there in the background for your use and when there is a need you use it and discard it. Sometimes the old memories come, but when you become aware of them, they disappear. The braid becomes tight and they cannot penetrate and take root.

Bohm: As thought comes in it disturbs the awareness, you say. Can we discuss the root of thought, but you say you don't know.

UG: You see, when you put the question, first I am in the state of not-knowing; I really don't know what mind is. If the exploration of the question should begin, the thinker has to come in and the thought process develops.

All right, let us take an example from the field of science. As long as we were caught up in the Newtonian physics nobody could break through. But Einstein, somehow and by some process, realized the inadequacy of Newtonian thought and that itself acted as a breakthrough. Now we connect them and we know that without Newtonian physics Einstein's theories would never have come into existence. And now we can see that the process (Newtonian thought) had come to an end, but not actually, rather it caught the experience and created another thought structure. This kind of revolution is within the structure of thought. It could be a mystical experience or a path-breaking discovery and this brings about the changes or conversions. However, all experiences in any field are within the field of thought. A mystical experience can change the individual consciousness. The whole way of looking at life changes and it'll be like wearing new glasses. Everything you look at, every activity is different, but still within the field of thought. Even bringing the mind to a quiet state is not the end of the mind. That could, at best, be the first loosening process of this whole structure. Every cell has a memory of its own. So the whole human body has to change for this to happen. This silence is of a different quality and kind. So, you see, it is difficult to answer the question.

Bohm: I also wanted to ask, ‘What is the origin of the continuity of thought?’

UG: There is no continuity.

Bohm: If the awareness doesn't wipe out thought…

UG: That means the ‘I’ is there and he carries on. But when the ‘I’, the thinker is absent, there is no continuity and thoughts just come and go and never take root and bring the thinker into operation.

Bohm: But you use thoughts in order to communicate, which it seems you want to.

UG: (Laughs) I may not even want to. But I am beginning to feel that even without communicating there is a possibility of being silent in some corner, no matter where, and these fallouts perhaps will affect in their own way. I don't know; but there is another difficulty for me. I have no way of expressing myself – the whole of my past is wiped out and that past included Krishnamurti. So the Krishnamurtian lingo (if I may use that word) is of no value at all. I can't use that language. I don't even know what he is talking now, except the few phrases which are fresh.

The easiest thing would be to fall back on such a lingo. All the religious teachers used the then available literature, they used words like god, beyond, immortal, heavenly and such expressions. In our times Ramana did the same. He read texts of Hinduism in order to understand what he had come into and that coloured his mode of expression and he fell back on the Hindu terminologies to explain things. It must be said to the credit of Krishnamurti that he has come out with this strikingly original approach and has developed a new mode of expression which is very vital. But then there are and were hundreds of Hindu scholars who have tried to strike a new path, use new words or terminologies. So where do all these take one? To me all that seems inadequate. Perhaps it helps others.

This is not a new discovery, not something that comes from outside. When the whole process comes to an end, the search comes to an end, not that you arrive at a point or a destination. The self, the seeker disappears and what is left is the body and the senses operating in an extraordinary way. So, how am I going to create new words to talk about this? I can't. I have to use the inadequate words we have.

Bohm: But the same words can function differently in different persons.

UG: It would be interesting to find out. But, you see, the person who comes here can bring me out. I can't come prepared. It depends upon the person I am talking to. And one of the difficulties I have is that most of the people who come here are all full of Krishnamurti's ideas. I am always confronted with this, or if I go to India, There they come with the Hindu terminologies. Anyway, they have to bring me out. Perhaps in this process something will come out.

•

UG: I don't think you see my difficulty. First, this is the problem I am facing every day. Actually, this is an artificial problem to me.

Bohm: Which problem?

UG: Whatever question an individual asks me. The second difficulty is to think out the problem with him. I must explain this. I am speaking the words. But there is nobody who is speaking. The words simply roll off the vocal cords in me. It is not a conscious effort on my part to use the words. There is a challenge and there is a response, not a reaction. Let's say somebody asks, ‘I am very sexual and what am I to do? Or, how do I solve the human problem?’

All right, in exploring this problem or question, the words that come out of me are from a different origin. It is not the thinker that is formulating these thoughts (I am not trying to make it mystical), it is only the vocal cords that are functioning and I do not know the origin of words. Then where do these words come from? I have explored this. They don't come in a formulated way. Words come. There is a need to describe the state of awareness; this awareness brings these words out of me.

The questioner may be discussing this from his logical premise, but here there is no such thing, though this awareness that brings out words has a logic of its own. But both are not the same thing. Words come spontaneously and in their own way they have their own relevance, logic, rationality and structure. It is like the newspaper rolling out from the machine in a press.

But every word I use he'll be abstracting it or projecting it on something in his own way. So every word I use I try to qualify. This is what you mean, but that is not what I mean. All these words – mind, consciousness, love, kindness – all these are mischievous words and have different connotations. That is the real difficulty in carrying on this kind of exploration, because we seem to be functioning on two different frequencies.

Bohm: Because we are using a structure of words which is thousands of years old.

UG: That is the difficulty…

Bohm: And there seemed to be no meeting point.

UG: The very word structure is the barrier. No meeting point because you are throwing words at each other. This process has to come to an end from both sides if there has to be a meeting ground.

(There is a long discussion between David Bohm, David Barry, Mrs Bohm and others and at some point UG invites Bohm to touch a part on his neck where there is some swelling. Over the years, many have seen and felt the swellings around his neck, which manifested themselves not only while he was listening, but also during new moon and half-moon days.)

You see the expansion of the ligaments here. This is listening without reacting, a physical response to that sound. There was no judgement, no interpretation, just listening. In fact, I didn't even know what you were all saying. Even the dictionary process was not there inside of me. I was listening with great interest as if swallowing every word. The whole body was responding. Yet, if there is any answer to be given to some question the memory supplies the words immediately.

All right, you were discussing the thought process. But how do you read your thought? For instance, how do you know that you are angry? Unless you use the word anger, you would never know that. The moment it hits you the language has come in there, otherwise it wouldn't have affected you at all. Here, it is a bodily response and it is disposed off, burnt, and that burning is a tremendous experience.

Bohm: One could say here that the description is the described. I am angry – I am anger, there is no separation. Anger, fool, kindness – all words produce a reaction based on memory, also the thought to control the reaction. But the more you try to control, the more twisted it gets. Anger is irrelevant, but since you are the anger, you are irrelevant and that is difficult to accept because you felt humiliated and so you don't let go of the feeling. That is the problem. It is very hard to say I am irrelevant!

UG: You see, you are tackling anger once it comes into being by discussing its relevance or irrelevance, or by naming or not naming it as anger – but what is the root of that? That is the most important question and that is what I am going to find out. There is no question of looking at anger; it is impossible. Once it comes into being you can't do anything at all. It is the listening apparatus that has created this problem. It is the very defective listening that has brought this ingredient which you call anger.

Bohm: This is one process. But it may be useful to split it into stages for the sake of communication.

UG: That is a technique, a mode, a method you are using by which you hope to understand and cross over the bridge. Do you see the difficulty?

Bohm: Perhaps we can…

UG: Perhaps, you say. I suggest that that may not be the way. So first I must see that this is not the way because it is not leading me anywhere. For years you may do this and turn it into a technique or a method, but how are you going to deal with this problem of anger, jealousy or pride? They are all one, but we break it into different bits and pieces.

This is dialectical thinking about thinking itself. It is not going to stop. Then why do you pursue this method. Because you have a hope that somehow, somewhere along the line, you can cross over the bridge, but that never happens. This is clarity of thought. You keep clarifying your thoughts to yourself and thereby sharpening the whole business and making it more and more difficult.

The Biology of Enlightenment: Unpublished Conversations of U.G. Krishnamurti after He Came into the Natural State (1967-71) by Mukunda Rao