Q2: What is an example of sensitivity?
UG: There is no sensitivity other than the sensitive nervous system responding to stimuli. So, if you are concerned or preoccupied with the sensitivity of anything else, you are blurring the sensory activity. The eyes cannot see, but the moment you see, the translation of sensory perceptions comes into operation. There is always a space between perception and memory. Memory is like sound. Sound is very slow, whereas light travels faster. All these sensory activities or perceptions are like light. They are very fast. But for some reason we have lost the capacity to kick that [memory] into the background and allow these things to move as fast as they occur in nature. Thought comes, captures it [the sensory perception], and says that it is this or that. That is what you call recognition, or naming, or whatever you want to call it. The moment you recognize this as the tape recorder, the name `tape recorder' also is there. So recognition and naming are not two different things. We would like to create a space between them and believe that these two are different things. As I said earlier, the physical eye by itself has no way of translating the physical perception into the framework of your knowledge.
Q2: Can this naming be postponed for sometime?
UG: What do you want to postpone it for? What do you want to achieve by that? I am describing the functioning of sensory perception. Physiologists talk about this as a response to a stimulus. But the fact that this particular response is for that particular stimulus is something which cannot be experienced by you. It is one unitary movement. Response cannot be separated from the stimulus. It is because they are inseparable that we can do nothing to prevent the possibility of the knowledge about past experiences coming into operation before the sensory perceptions move from one thing to another.
Q2: Why do you use a vague word like `mind'? All that we are referring to is the brain like any other organ of the body. Why should we create another word?
UG: Because it has become a bugbear for many people — "peace of mind," "control of mind," etc.
Q2: You first create the mind and then start pouring it out. UG: We invent what is called a thoughtless state or an effortless state, I don't know for what reason. Why one should be in an effortless state is beyond me. But to be in an effortless state or to act effortlessly we use effort. That's absurd. We don't seem to have any way of putting ourselves into a thoughtless state except through thought.
Q1: Do you mean to say that the word is the thing.
UG: It makes no difference. I don't want to indulge in this frivolity that the word is not the thing. If the word is not the thing what the hell is it? Without the word you have no way of experiencing anything at all. Without the word you are not separate from whatever you are looking at or what is going on inside of you. The word is the knowledge. Without that knowledge you don't even know whether it is pain or pleasure that you experience, whether it is happiness or unhappiness, whether it is boredom or its opposite. We really don't know what is going on there. Using the expression, "What is going on there" itself implies that you already have captured that within the framework of your experiencing structure and distorted it.
Q2: Sir, is not the word a superimposition on the comprehension of a thing?
UG: Is there any comprehension?
Q2: Suppose I comprehend, and then there is a word — `U.G. Krishnamurti'. First I comprehend and then there is a superimposition through a word?
UG: What do you mean? You have to explain. That is too difficult a word for me — `comprehend'. You can produce a simpler word for me. I am not with you.
Q2: If my eyes take you in comprehending ....
UG: Then, what you are saying is something which cannot be experienced by you.
Q2: No. it is not for the purpose of being liberated or controlled. It just happens.
UG: You can't even assert that it just happens. There are no two things there. As far as the eye is concerned it does not even know that it is looking.
Q2: I cannot decide what I am going to see.
UG: You are not the one that is operating the camera. The thoughts which we are talking about don't originate there. No action of yours is self-generated. The problem is really with the language. We can manage with three hundred basic words.
Q2: Even less....
UG: Even less. Children can express all emotions. If they can't use words, they are able to express their emotions so beautifully, in simple ways. Their whole bodies express their joy, each in a different way. But we are proud of the words we use because for us they are instruments of power. For us knowledge is power. "I know, and you don't know." That gives you power. There is no such thing as knowledge for knowledge's sake. It is good to write an essay on knowledge for knowledge's sake or art for the sake of art. Is there beauty? What is beauty? Only when it is framed, you call it beauty. It is thought that frames something, the nature of which we really don't know. To use your word, there is no way of comprehending. We don't even know what is going on there.
Q2: Or when the experience is over ....
UG: No, no. That line I am very familiar with [Laughs]: "While you are experiencing the thing you are not aware of it." That is a copybook maxim. But that's not true.
Q2: You know when you use the phrase `not true'....
UG: What do you want me to say?
Q2: There has to be something on the basis of which you judge that this is not true. That is where the difficulty starts....
UG: It is not a value judgment. `Nice', `horrible', `detestable' — we have plenty of these words. There is no need for any adjectives and adverbs. There is no need even for a verb. It is the verb that creates a problem. For purposes of communication we have to rely upon words. But when I say, "He is a nasty fellow," it is not a value judgment but a descriptive sentence. That is the way you describe or fit the actions of that individual into the framework of nastiness. I have to use that word, but it is not a value judgment in my case. Not that I am placing myself on a higher or superior level. "What is the good man good for?" — I don't know. Maybe for society a good man is a useful citizen, and for a bad man a good man is good because he can exploit him. But as far as I am concerned what a good man is good for I wouldn't know. The problem with language is, no matter how we try to express ourselves, we are caught up in the structure of words. There is no point in creating a new language, new lingo to express anything. There is nothing there to be expressed except to free yourself from the stranglehold of thought. And there is nothing that you can do to free yourself either through any volition of yours or through any effort of yours.
Q: But we have to understand.
UG: What is there to understand? To understand anything we have to use the same instrument that is used to understand this mechanical computer that is there before me. Its workings can be understood through repeatedly trying to learn or operate it. You try again and again. If it doesn't work, there is someone who can tell you how to operate it, take it apart and put it together. You yourself will learn through a repetitive process — how to change this, improve this, modify this, and so on and so forth. This instrument [thought] which we have been using to understand has not helped us to understand anything except that every time you are using it you are sharpening it. Someone asked me, "What is philosophy? How does it help me to live in this day-to-day existence?" It doesn't help you in any way except that it sharpens the instrument of the intellect. It doesn't in any way help you to understand life. If that [thought] is not the instrument, and if there is no other instrument, then is there anything to understand?