Give it a thumb 
subscribe Tell a friend SAN DIEGO - 25TH FEBRUARY 1974
12TH CONVERSATION WITH DR. ALLAN W. ANDERSON
LOVE AND PLEASURE
K: Sir, when you use the word explore, are we using that word intellectually, exploring with the intellect, or exploring in relation to the word and seeing in that word the mirror which will reveal ourselves in that mirror?
A: I hope the latter.
K: That is, the word is the mirror in which I, as a human being, observe. So the word explored really means observing myself in the mirror of the word that you have used. SO the word then becomes the thing. Not just a word by itself.
A: Right.
K: And therefore it's not intellectual exploration, a theoretical exploration.
A: It could be the beginning of a meditation.
K: That's what I want to make quite clear.
A: Yes. That is where I would want to be in relationship to the subject.
K: And exploring also means the mind must also be very serious. Not caught up in the mere desire to achieve something - to know how to love. I mean, how to acquire the neighbour's love. You follow, sir?
A: Yes. Become a successful lover.
K: Successful lover, yes. So I think when we explore that word and meaning and the significance of it one has to very, very serious about this matter because they are using this word so loosely, it has become so corrupt - love of God, love of my wife, love of my property, love of my country, I love to read, I love to go to the cinema. And one of our difficulties is, modern education is not making us serious. We are becoming specialists. I mean first class doctor, first class surgeon, first class physician and so on, so on. But the specialist becomes a menace that way.
A: A learned ignoramus.
K: Education as we were saying previously is to encourage, to see that the human mind is serious. Serious to find out what it is to live, not just become a specialist. So if that is all understood, and much more, what is love? Is love pleasure? Is love the expression of desire? Is love sexual appetite fulfilled? Is love the pursuit of a desired end? The identification with a family, with a woman, with a man? Is love a thing that can be cultivated? That can be made to grow when I have no love, when I think about it, I do all kinds of things to it so that I will know how to love my neighbour?
A: We sometimes hear the admonition that one has to work at it. Yes. In terms of our conversations up to now, that would be a denial of it.
K: So, is love pleasure? And apparently it is, now.
A: It seems to have been debased to that.
K: Actually it is, that is what we call love. Love of God. I don't know what god is, and yet I am supposed to love him. And therefore I transfer my pleasures of the world, of things, of sex, to a higher level which I call God. It is still pleasure. So what is pleasure in relation to love? What is enjoyment in relation to love? What is joy, the unconscious feeing of joy? The moment I recognize joy it is gone. And what is the relationship of joy, enjoyment and pleasure to love, with love? Unless we understand that we shan't understand what love is.
A: Yes, yes I have followed you.
K: And take what is happening. Love has been identified with sex, love-making, love sexually, you follow, sir?
A: The very construction love making, making love.
K: It's a horrible thing. It gives me a shock, love-making as though that were love. You see, sir, I think it is very important, the western civilization has put this over the whole of the earth, through cinemas, through books, through pornography, through every kind of advertisements, stories, this sense of love is identification with sex, which is pleasure, basically.
A: The whole glamour industry is based on that.
K: On that.
A: On that
K: The whole thing. So can the mind, again we must come back to the point, can the mind understand the nature of pleasure and its relationship to love, can the mind that is pursuing pleasure, an ambitious mind, a competitive mind, a mind that says, I must get something out of life, I must reward myself and others, I must compete. Can such a mind love? It can love sexually. But is love of sex, is that the only thing? And why have we made sex such an enormous affair? Volumes are written on it. Unless really one goes into this very, very deeply, the other thing is not possible even to understand. We can talk endlessly about what love is, what love is not theoretically. But if we use the word love as a mirror to see what is happening inwardly, then I must inevitably ask the question whether it is pleasure in its multiple forms? Can a man who is top executive, got to that position through drive, through aggression, through deception through ruthlessness, can he know what love is? Can the priest who talks everlastingly of God, he is ambitious to become a bishop, archbishop or whatever his ambitions are - to sit next to Jesus.
A: Who will sit on the right hand.
K: Right hand. So can that priest who talks about it know what love means?
A: No, he thinks he can in reference to something called a higher love which is based on a denial of a lower one.
K: I mean that's just words.
A: In that conflict there can be no love.
K: So, then our whole social, moral structure is immoral.
A: Oh, yes.
K: I mean, sir, this is a thing that is appalling. And nobody wants to change that. On the contrary, they say, yes, let's carry on, put on a lot of coating on it, different colours, more pleasant and let's carry on. So, if a man is really concerned to come upon this thing called love he must negate this whole thing, which means he must understand the place of pleasure, whether intellectual pleasure, acquisition of knowledge as pleasure, acquisition of a position as power, you follow? The whole thing. And how is a mind that has been trained, conditioned, sustained in this rotten social conditioning, how can it free itself before it talks about love? It must first free itself of that. Otherwise your talk of love, it's just another word which has no meaning.
A: We do seem, in western culture particularly, to be very sex-bound. On the one hand we are threatened with unhappiness if we don't succeed sexually. Yet on the other hand the whole history of clinical psychology focuses precisely on the pathology os sexuality.
K: Of course.
A: As somehow able in itself as a study to free us. The interrelationship between those two activities, the desire to succeed on the one hand and the necessity to study what's the matter with the drive on the other, brings about a paralysis.
K: Yes, so you see this thing, sex, has become, I don't know, of such enormous importance right through the world now. In Asia they cover it up. They don't talk about it there. If you talk about sex it is something wrong. Here you talk endlessly about it. But there you don't, certain things you don't talk about. You can talk about it in the bedroom, or perhaps not even in the bedroom. It's not done. And when I talk in India, I bring it out. They are a little bit shocked because a religious man is not supposed to deal with all that kind of stuff.
A: He is supposed to be beyond that.
K: He is supposed to be, but he mustn't talk about it. That's one of the things, why has sex become so important? You see, love is, after all a sense of total absence of the 'me', total absence of the me - my ego, my ambitions, my greed, all that, which is me, total negation of all that. Negation, not brutal denial or surgical operation but the understanding of all that. When the 'me' is not, the other is. Obviously. It's so simple. You know, sir, the Christian sign, the cross, I was told is a very, very ancient symbol, previous to Christian acceptance of that symbol. It meant, wipe out the i.
A: I had never heard of that.
K: Wipe out the I. The I, wipe it out. You understand, sir?
A: Yes, in a noncanonical statement of Jesus, it's written that he remarked that unless you make your up down, and your down up, your right left, your left right, the complete total turning of something upside down that one has been accustomed to do, a hundred and eighty degree turn, then one doesn't come to the kingdom of heaven which is of course in his language, not over here to be expected. He said precisely it doesn't come by observations, it's not here, it's not there, it's within one. Or in the Greek it doesn't mean in, as a locus but it's a presence.
K: It's a presence, yes. So when we are enquiring into this question of love we must enquire into pleasure; pleasure in all its varieties, and its relationship to love, enjoyment to love, real joy, this thing which can never be invited, and its relation to love. So we had better begin with pleasure. That is, the world has made sex into an immense thing. And the priests right through the world, have denied it. They won't look at a woman, though they are burning inside, with lust and all kinds of things. They shut their eyes. And they say, only a man who is a celibate can go to God. Think of the absurdity of such a statement. So anybody who has sex is damned for ever.
A: Then you have to invent some story as to how it was we so-called fell into it.
K: Fell into it, or, the Virgin Mary, you follow, the whole idea.
A: Yes, the whole thing.
K: Which is a farce. So why have we made it such a fantastic, romantic, sentimental affair, sex? Is it because intellectually we are crippled? We are secondhand people. You follow, sir? I repeat what Plato, Aristotle, Buddha, somebody said, and therefore my mind intellectually is third rate. So it is never free. So intellectually I am a slave. Emotionally I become romantic. I become sentimental. And the only escape is sex, where I am free, if the woman or the man agrees, if they are compatible and all the rest of it then it is the only road, only door through which I say, for god's sake, at least I am free here. In the office I am bullied, you follow, sir. In the factory I just turn the wheels. So it is the only escape for me. The peasant in India, the poor villager in villages, look at them, that is the only thing they have. And religion is something else: I agree we should be celibate, we should be all the rest of it but for god's sake leave us alone with our pleasures, with our sex. So if that is so, and it looks like that, that we are intellectually, morally, spiritually crippled human beings, degenerate, and it is the only thing that gives us some release, some freedom.
In other fields I have no freedom. I have to go to the office everyday. I have to go to the factory every day. I have to, you follow, cinema once, three times a week, or whatever it is you do, you've got, and here at last I am a man, woman. So I have made this thing into an enormous affair. And if I am not sexual I have to find out why I am not sexual. I spend years to find out. You follow, sir? Books are written. It has become a nauseating thing, a stupid thing. And we have to also in relation to that to find out what is celibacy. Because they have all talked about it. Every religion has talked about it: that you must be celibate. And they say, Christians say the Virgin, Jesus was born immaculate. You follow? And the Buddhists, I don't know if you ever heard of the story where the Buddha - the mother conceived because she - not out of human relationship, but out of - the same thing. They don't want sex to be associated with a religion. And yet every priest is burning with it. And they say you must be celibate. And they take a vow of celibacy. I told you the story of that monk.
A: Oh, yes, yes. A deeply moving story.
K: And what is celibacy? Is it in there, in your heart and your mind? Or just the act?
A: If I have been following you correctly, it seems to me that you pointed to sex here as undergone in a utilitarian way. It's a means to and therefore, since...
K: A routine, an insistence, encouragement, you follow?
A: Yes. Always a goal that lies outside the activity. Therefore it can never be caught up to.
K: Quite right. Therefore conflict.
A: Therefore conflict and repetition.
K: And therefore what is celibacy? Is it the act or the mind that is chaste? You follow, sir?
A: It must be the mind.
K: The chaste mind. Which means a tremendously austere mind. Not the austerity of severity and ruthless acceptance of a principle and all the rest of it.
A: This goes back to the earlier conversation when we were talking about hurt.
K: That's right.
A: The chaste mind would never be hurt.
K: Never. And therefore an innocent mind. Which has no picture of the woman or the man or the act. None of that imagination.
A: This is very fundamental. I know in our conversations that I keep bringing up things that I've read and studied because that has largely been the occupation of my life. And the thing that moves me so deeply in listening to you is that so many of the things that have been said over the centuries, and written over the centuries, ought to have been understood in the way in which you've been presenting them. We even have a tradition in Christian theology that what is called the fall of man began at the point of imagination. And yet that hasn't been properly understood, it seems to me. Otherwise had it been properly understood we would not be in this immense conflict that we are in.
K. Christians have first invented the sin and all the rest of it.
A: It has been the cart before the horse. Yes, I do see what you are saying.
K: So, can the mind be chaste? Not can the mind take a vow of celibacy and remain, and have burning desires, you follow? And we talked the other day, about desire. We are burning with desire. All our glands are full of it. So chastity means a mind that has no hurt, no image, no sense of pictures of itself, its appetites, all that. Can such a mind exist in this world? Otherwise love is not. I can talk endlessly about love of Jesus, love of this, love of that, but it becomes so shoddy.
A: Because it's love of.
K: Yes.
A: Love as an activity is not the same as love undertaken as a means.
K: Yes, sir. So is love pleasure? I can only answer it is not, when I have understood pleasure. And understand not verbally, but deeply, inwardly, see the nature of it, the brutality of it, the divisive process of it. Because pleasure is always divisive. Enjoyment is never divisive. Joy is never dividing. It is only pleasure that is dividing. When you listen to an Arab about the oil, the energy, it is his pride, his - you follow? You see it in him. And you see it in the ministers, in the politicians, this whole sense of arrogance, of power. And at the same time they talk about love.
A: But it's always love of.
K: Of course, love of, or love, I don t know what they mean anyhow. It has no meaning. They say love of my country, and my love is going to kill you.
A: Yes, yes.
K: So, you see sir, we have to understand this killing too. The western civilization has made killing a perfect art. The war, science of war. They have taught the whole world this. And probably the Christians are the greatest killers. After Muslims, and I believe the real religious, original Buddhists were really non-killers.
A: Yes.
K: They said don't kill. I must tell you this lovely story. I was several years ago in Ceylon and a Buddhist couple came to see me. They said we have got one major problem. We are Buddhist by practice. And they said, we don't kill, but we eat meat. I said what do you mean? He said we change our butchers. We change our butchers, therefore we are not responsible. And we like meat. I said, is that the problem? He said, no not at all. Our problem is, should we eat a fertilized egg because that contains life?
A: Oh dear me.
K: So, sir, when we talk about love, we must also talk about violence and killing. We kill, we have destroyed the earth, polluted the earth. We have wiped away species of animals and birds, we are killing baby seals, you've seen them on television?
A: Oh, I have.
K: How a human being can do such as thing...
A: It's deeply shocking.
K: ...for some woman to put on that fur. And he will go back and say, I love my wife. So. And we are trained to kill. All the Generals, they are preparing endlessly means of killing others. That's our civilization, you follow, sir? So, can a man who is ambitious, love?
A: No.
K: No. Therefore finish with ambition. They wont, they want both. That means, don't kill under any circumstances, don't kill an animal to eat. I have never eaten meat in my life, never. I don't know what it tastes like. Not that I am proud or anything, but I couldn't do it. And killing has become an industry, killing animals to feed human beings. You follow, sir?
A: Yes. It has, right. I was thinking as you were speaking, about chastity and it came to me that the chaste mind would have to be an undivided mind.
K: Yes sir. Killing and loving.
A: And trying to get them together. And then taking all manner of means to palliate my obvious failure to get them together.
K: Of course.
A: The enormity of what you have brought out is truly staggering, and this I would like to stay with,if you don't mind. I've been listening very intently. It's that your radical counsel to make this stop in oneself is so radical that it requires a kind of seriousness that is not a quantitative relationship to seriousness in fact we don't really understand what it means. The relationship between seriousness and love has been coming into my awareness here.
K: Yes, sir, if I am serious then I will never kill, and love then has become something, it is really compassion. Passion for all, compassion means, compassion for all.
A: When you say one will never kill if he loves, you mean within the context of this image-making activity where one kills by design.
K: Sir, suppose, sir, my sister - I have no sister - but my sister were attacked, a man comes to rape her. I will act at that moment.
A: Precisely.
K: My intelligence, because I love, have compassion, that compassion creates that intelligence, that intelligence will operate at that moment. If you tell me, what will you do if your sister is attacked, I will say, I don't know. I will know then.
A: Yes, I quite follow that. But we have made an industry of designing.
K: Designed killing.
A: At all levels, not only ourselves.
K: I don't know. I saw the other day on the television in the Red Square there was an enormous intercontinental missile, shot off to kill god knows, blind killing. And the Americans have it, the Indians have it, the French have it, you follow?
A: Have to have it.
K: Quite. Of course, one must exist.
A: Yes.
K: So can the mind be free of this urge to kill? Which means can the mind be free of being hurt? So, when there is hurt it does all kinds of neurotic things. Is pleasure love? Is desire love? But we have made pleasure, desire into love. I desire god. You follow, sir? I must learn about god. You know the whole thing. God is my invention, my image, out of my thought I have made that image, and so go around in circles. So I must know what enjoyment is. Is enjoyment pleasure? When I enjoy a good meal, or a good sunset, or see a beautiful tree or woman or whatever it is, at that moment if it doesn't end it becomes pleasure. If the mind, thought carries over that enjoyment and wants it to be repeated the next day it has become pleasure, it is no longer enjoyment. I enjoy and that's the end of it.
A: William Blake has very, very beautifully, it seems to me, pointed to this. And, of course, he was regarded as a madman, as you know. I might not remember the words precisely but I think part of his little stanza goes: he who kisses a joy as it flies, lives to see eternity's sunrise. It's the joy that he kisses as it flies, not the pleasure. And it's, as it flies. And what you have said is, that if you won't let it fly, holds it, then we have fallen out of the act of joy into this...
K: ...pursuit of pleasure.
A: ...endless, repetitive in the end mournfully boring thing.
K: And I think, sir, that is what is happening in this country, as well as in Europe and in India, primarily in this country, the desire to fulfil instantly - the pleasure seeking principle. Be entertained, football, be entertained.
A: This goes back to what you were pointing out earlier in the last conversation we had, here somebody is, feels empty, needs to be filled.
K: Yes.
A: Lonely, filled, looking for what we call fulfillment, filling up full.
K: Quite, filling up full.
A: Filling up full. And yet if one undertakes to make this act of attention that you referred to in our discussion about religion, in order to fill up the whole, then we've had it. We're not going to do that. There has been an endless history of that attempt in the name of control of thought.
K: Of course.
A: It would seem that if one doesn't begin in love he will not make this act of attention in a non-utilitarian way. He simply will make it in a utilitarian way, if he doesn't begin in love.
K: It is not in the market place, quite.
A: And that's why in one of the very early conversations we had I take it, you said that the start is the end.
K: Yes. The beginning is the end
A: The beginning is the end.
K: The first step is the last step.
A: The first step is the last step. Quite. What I've been thinking about all through our conversations so far is, what is involved in - the word involved I don't like - what must one do - well that's no good either - There is something. We are speaking about an act that is a radical end to all this nonsense that's been going on which is terrifyingly destructive nonsense.
K: I know, sir.
A: There is the doing of something.
K: That is the seeing of all this.
A: And you have said, the seeing is the doing, is the act.
K: As I see danger, I act. I see the danger of the continuity of thought in terms of pleasure, I see the danger of it, therefore end it instantly. If I don't see the danger I carry on. If I don't see the danger of nationality, I'm taking that as a very simple example, I carry on, murdering, dividing, seeking my own safety; but if I see the danger it is finished.
A: May we relate here just for a moment, love to education?
K: Yes.
A: As a teacher I'm immensely concerned in this.
K: Sir, what we have been discussing in our dialogue this last week and now is part of education.
A: Of course it is.
K: It isn't education is there, it is educating the mind to a different thing.
A: I'm thinking of the student who sometimes comes to the teacher and says, I simply must change my way of life. That is, once in a while you will find the student who is up to here, he has really had it, as we say. The first question they will usually put to you is, what must I do. Now, of course, that's a trap. I've been following you, I've come to see that with much greater clarity than I observed it for myself before. Simply because they are looking for a means when they say that.
K: What must I do?
A: We are not talking about a means.
K: Means is the end. Quite.
A: I am thinking of the history of Christianity in this. You've got the question, what must I do to be saved. The answer is believe on.
K: On, yes.
A: And then the poor person is stuck with what this means and ends up in believing in belief.
K: Yes, believing, quite.
A: And that of course is abortive. The student comes and says, what must I do? Now in our earlier conversation together we reached the point where the teacher and the student were talking together.
K: We are doing that now.
A: We are doing this now.
K: I am not your teacher, but we are doing that now.
A: Well, no, I understand in our conversations that is not your role, but I must confess that it has been working out in this order because I have learned immensely. There are two things here that I want to get clear and I need your help. On the one hand to make this pure act of attention, I need only myself. Is that correct?
K: No, not quite, sir.
A: Not quite.
K: Not quite. Sir, let's put the question first. The question is, what am I to do in this world?
A: Yes.
K: What is my place in this world? First of all, the world is me. I am the world. That is an absolute fact. And what am I to do? The world is this, corrupt, immoral, killing, no lack of it, there is no love. There is superstition, idol worship, of the mind and the hand. There is war. That is the world. What is my relationship to it? My relationship to it only is if I am that. If I am not that I have no relationship to it.
A: I understand that in terms of act.
K: That's it.
A: In terms of act. Not a notion that I have.
K: For me the world is corrupt, is geared to kill. And I won't kill. What is my relationship to the man who goes and kills a baby seal? I say, my god, how can you do such a thing. You follow, sir? I want to cry about it. I do. How can you educate that man, or a society which allows such a thing to happen?
A: Then perhaps I should rephrase the question and say, well when I do whatever is done in making this pure act of attention, I am not separated from the world in which I am, and the world is not separate from me.
K: I look at it from a different angle altogether.
A: Exactly.
K: I come to it, sir, because there is something different in me operating. Compassion, love, intelligence, all that is operating in me.
A: But it seems that two possibilities are here. On the one hand, making this pure act of attention doesn't require that I be in the physical presence of another human being, but of course, I am always in relation whether I am there or not.
K: Of course.
A: Yes, I fully grasp that. But then the second possibility is that within conversation, as we are enjoying it together now, something occurs, something takes place. It's not that we must be together for it to take place. And it's not that we must be alone for it to take place. Therefore what we have established is that something occurs which is quite beyond all these distinctions of inner and outer, you over there, I'm over here.
K: See what takes place, see what takes place. First of all we are serious, really serious. Second, the killing, the corruption we will cut it. We have finished with it. So we stand alone, alone, not isolated. Because when the mind is not that, it is alone. It hasn't withdrawn. It hasn't cut itself off, it hasn't built an ivory tower for itself, it isn't living in illusion. It says, that is false, that is corrupt, I won't touch it, psychologically. I may put on trousers, etc., etc., but I won't touch inwardly, psychologically, that. Therefore it is completely alone.
A: And it is saying this amidst all this mournful round.
K: Therefore, being alone it is pure.
A: Chaste.
K: Therefore purity can be cut into a million pieces and still remain pure. It is not my purity, or your purity, it is pure. Like pure water remains pure water.
A: Entirely full, too. Wholly full.
K: Wholly.
A: That takes us back to that Sanskrit: this is full, that is full. Fullness is issued forth from fullness. It's a pity that the English doesn't carry this, the melody that the Sanskrit does.
K: So you see sir, that's very interesting from this conversation what has come out. The thing is, we are frightened of being alone. Which is, we are frightened of being isolated. But every act a human being does is isolating himself. That is, his ambition is isolating himself. When he is nationalistic he is isolating himself. When he says, it is my family, he is isolating himself. I want to fulfil, isolating himself. When you negate all, that not violently, but see the stupidity of all that then you are alone. And that has tremendous beauty in it. And therefore that beauty, you can spread it everywhere, but it still remains alone. So the quality of compassion is that. But compassion isn't a word. It happens, it comes with intelligence. This intelligence will dictate if my sister is attacked, at that moment. But it is not intelligence if you say, what will you do if - such a question and an answer to that is unintelligent. I don't know if you see.
A. Oh yes, I am following you precisely.
K: But it is unintelligence, to say, I am going to prepare to kill all those people who are my enemies, which is the army, the navy, the whole sovereign governments. So love is something, sir, that is really chaste. Chastity is the quality of aloneness and therefore never hurt.
A: It's interesting that in this one act one neither hurts himself, nor another. It's a total abstention from hurt.
K: Sir, wait a minute. I have given you all my money because I trust you. And you won't give it to me; I say, please, give me a little of it. You won't. What shall I do? What is the act of intelligence? You follow, sir? Act of affection, act of compassion that says, what will I do? You follow my question? A friend of mine, during the second world war, he had found himself in Switzerland. He had quantities of money, plenty of money. And he had a great friend from childhood. And to that friend he said, he had to leave the next minute because the war took place and he had to leave the country and all the rest of it. So he took all the money and he said, here my friend keep it for me. I'll come back. I'll come back when the war is over. He comes back and says, please. He says, what money?
A: Goodness me.
K: You follow, sir? So, what should he do? Not theoretically. You are put in that position. You give me something. You entrust me with something. And I say, yes, quite right, you have given me, now whistle for it. What is your responsibility? Just walk away?
A: No. If there were a means to recover it then that would be done upon the instant.
K: Intelligence.
A: Intelligence would take over.
K: Therefore, that's what I am saying. Love is not forgiveness - you follow - I forgive and walk away. Love is intelligence. And intelligence means sensitivity, to be sensitive to the situation. And the situation, if you are sensitive will tell you what to do. But if you are insensitive, if you are already determined what to do, if you are hurt by what you have done, then insensitive action takes place. I don't know?
A: Yes, yes, of course. yes of course. This raises very, very interesting questions about what we mean about conscience.
K: Yes.
A: And the word conscience, it seems to me has invited an astonishing amount of...
K: ...rubbish.
A: ...miscomprehension of what's going on.
K: Therefore, sir, one has to investigate what is consciousness.
A: Yes.
K: I don't know if there is time now, but that requires - we'll do it tomorrow, another day: what is consciousness and what is conscience, and what is the thing that tells you to do or not to do?
A: Consciousness in its relation to relationship is something that when we have a chance, I should like to explore with you. I remember years ago in graduate school being very arrested by coming across the statement that was made by an American thinker, I think Montague was his name, when he said, consciousness has been very badly understood because it has been thought that there has been something called 'ciousness'. But there is such thing as 'ciousness'. We've got to get the 'con' in there, the together, the relationship. And without that we have had it. I do hope that next time when we have the opportunity in our next conversation we could explore that.
K: We have to discuss this question, living, love and this enormous thing called death. Are they interrelated or are they separate - living, existing, is it different from love?