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NEW DELHI - 21ST DECEMBER 1970
'ENERGY AND TRANSFORMATION'
B: Radiation brings deformity. There can be destructive mutation. A laser beam pierces steel and flesh. It has the power to destroy as well as to heal.
Krishnamurti: What would you say is human energy? What is energy in human beings? Let us keep it very simple.
P: Energy is that which makes movement possible.
B: Energy is at different levels. There is the energy at the physical level. Then the brain itself is a source of energy; it sends out electrical impulses.
Krishnamurti: All movement, radiation, any movement of thought, any action is energy. When does it become intense? When can it do the most astonishing things? When can it be directed to do incredible things?
P: When it is not dissipated. When it is brought into focus.
Krishnamurti: When does that happen? Does it happen in anger, hatred, violence? Does it happen when there is ambition, when there is tremendous desire? Or does it happen when a poet has the urge, the vitality, the energy to write?
P: Such energy crystallizes and becomes static.
Krishnamurti: We know this form of energy. But the energy we know does not bring about a change in the human mind. Why? This energy becomes intense when there is fulfilment in action. When does it move to a different dimension? An artist or a scientist, using his talent, intensifies energy and gives expression to it. But the quality of his mind, of his being, is not transformed by this energy.
P. We are missing something in all this.
Krishnamurti: You are asking whether there is a quality of energy which transforms the human mind? That is your question. Now, why does it not take place in the artist, in the musician, in the writer? P.: I think it is because their energy is one-dimensional.
Krishnamurti: The artist still remains ambitious, greedy, a bourgeois.
S: Why do you say that greed would come in the way of energy operating? Man may be ambitious but he is also good. These are the elements which structure his self.
Krishnamurti: We are asking why, when man has that energy, that energy does not bring about a radical change?
P: Man has energy to operate in his environment. But there are large areas of his being where there is no movement of energy.
Krishnamurti: Man uses energy, operates fully in one direction, and in the other he is dormant. Energy is dormant in one part of his existence, and in the other part it is active.
P: Even man's sensory instruments are utilized partially.
Krishnamurti: He is a fragmentary human being. Why does this division take place? One fragment is tremendously active, the other does not function at all. One fragment is ordinary, bourgeois, petty. When do these two fragments coalesce to become harmonious energy? An energy which is not fragmented? An energy which does not function fully at one level while at another level its voltage is low?,
P: When the sensory instruments operate fully.
Krishnamurti: When does this take place? Do they operate completely when there is a tremendous crisis?
P: Not always, Sir. The action of crisis can also be partial; you can jump when you see a snake but you can jump into a bush of thorns.
Krishnamurti: When does the fragment cease to be a fragment? Are we not thinking in terms of movement, in terms of action, in terms of change? We have accepted the movement to be, the movement of becoming. We have accepted fragmentation. The movement of becoming is always a movement in fragments. Is there a movement which does not belong to these categories? See what happens if there is no movement at all.
P: I have always found it difficult to understand this question of yours. The nature of the very question suggests the other, the opposite.
S: One really does not know the dormant movement.
Krishnamurti: At the beginning we said there was fragmentation. One fragment is very alive and the other is not alive.
B: The energy of the artist, the whole of his being, operates one-dimensionally. There is non-awareness.
Krishnamurti: I am not at all sure. One fragment is alive. You are saying the other fragment is not aware of itself at all.
P: The artist paints, he also has an affair with a woman. He does not see these actions as fragments.
Krishnamurti: We have gone beyond that. We see he is fragmented. He operates in fragments - one is active and the other is dormant. In that dor- mancy there is action going on. One is very active and the other is action in a minor key. We see this.
Now the question is, can this energy heighten to bring about a mutation in the brain cells?
P: Can it take the sluggish part along and alter its very structure so that there is a transformation in both?
Krishnamurti: I may be a great sculptor. A part of me is dormant. You ask, can there be a mutation not only in the dormant but also in that energy which goes into the making of the sculptor?
The question is, am I willing to accept that I may cease to be a sculptor? Because that may happen. When I go into this problem of a change in the very brain cells themselves, it is possible I may never be a sculptor. But it is very important for me to be a sculptor. I do not want to let that go.
P: Let us leave the sculptor. Here we are in front of you and you say, look, this change in the structure of the brain cells may be the ending of all the talent, of all significant action. We accept what you say.
Krishnamurti: That is right. If you are prepared to let go, then what takes place? Which means, you let go the talent, the fulfilment, the perpetuation of the "me". Now when does this mutation in the brain cells through energy take place?
You see, where energy is being dissipated through talent and through other channels, energy is not completely held. When this energy has no movement at all, then I think something happens, then it must explode.
I think then the quality of the brain-cell itself changes. That is why I asked why we are always thinking in terms of movement?
When there is no movement inwardly or outwardly, when there is no demand for experience, no awakening, no seeking, no movement of any kind, then energy is at its height. Which means, one must negate all movement. When that takes place, energy is completely quiet, which is silence.
As we said the other day, when there is silence, then the mind is transforming itself. When it is completely fallow, when nobody is cultivating it, then it is quiet like the womb.
The mind which is the vessel of movement, when that movement has no form, no "me", no vision, no image, it is completely quiet.
In it there is no memory. Then the brain cells undergo a change.
The brain cells are used to movement in time. They are the residue of time and time is movement; a movement within the space which it creates as it moves. When the mind sees this, when it sees the futility of all movement in the sense of time, then all movement ends.
So when the mind denies totally all movement, therefore all time, all thought, all memory, there is absolute quietness, not relative quietness.
Therefore, the question is not how to bring about mutation, but to enquire into the structure of the brain cells. The realization that any movement from the brain cells gives continuity to time itself, puts an end to all movement. Movement is always in the past or in the future - movement from the past through the present to the future. That is all we know and we want change in this movement. We want the movement, and yet we want change in this movement, and therefore the brain cells continue. (Pause)
It is amazingly simple. I do not know if you see this. We all want to complicate it. Any effort to stop movement is contradiction and therefore, time, and therefore no change at all. The seekers have all talked of a higher movement, the hierarchical movement. The question is, can the mind deny to itself all movement?
You see, as you watch your brain, there is the centre which is completely quiet and yet listening to everything that is going on - the bus, the birds. We want to stop the noise outside but keep on with the inner noise. We want to stop outer movement but carry on with the inner movement.
When there is no movement, there is tremendous focus of energy.
So mutation is the understanding of movement and the ending of movement in the brain cells themselves.