Krishnaji returned from the West in the autumn of 1960, having sensed the volcanic energies being released in the new scientific and technological mind. With the eye of prophesy, Krishnaji looked into the years that lay ahead. He perceived the accelerated pace of change that was to come about with the unlocking of the mysteries of nature, and the invention of tools and systems that would transform society and environment and generate enormous pressures on humankind. He also appeared aware of a rapid trend toward chaos and violence.
Madhavachari had come to meet him in New Delhi and was staying with me. In the evenings we took Krishnaji to the Buddha Jayanti Park, which he loved, and we walked amongst the rocks, trees, and bushes. One evening he began to speak of the nature of creation, of negation being the source of creation.
“Creation can only be when the mind is completely empty; whatever is born of that emptiness is negative thinking. It has no root, no source.” He was to enquire into a state in which the frontiers of the mind broke down. So that in such a state there was no self, no center, and no circumference. “Most of us have never wandered into ourselves.” He said, “Never look without calculations,” and spoke of intelligence as the tool of enquiry: “The probing is with nothing into endless being.”
In January 1961 Krishnaji was in Bombay, where he gave ten talks and held small group dialogues. Like the churning of the oceans of mind in the archaic myth of creation, jewels of insight were arising. With immense passion, Krishnaji said, “The world is becoming something totally new. Space is being conquered, machines are taking over, tyranny is spreading.” Sensing the limitations of the minds that listened to his words, and their incapacity to comprehend the enormity of the winds of change, the growing inhumanity and callousness, Krishnaji sought to convey the urgency he felt.
“Something new is going on of which we are not aware... You are not aware of the movement, the significance, the flow, the dynamic quality of this change. We think we have time... There is no time,... the house is burning.”1
“Wandering about the land [in India],” he observed an appalling dearth of human integrity. He spoke with passion of the demand for a new mind, “a good mind which held pity, affection, compassion. The old mind could no longer deal with the challenges that were so intricate, so subtle, so diffused.” A new enquiry was needed. “Can one wipe out everything? And start anew?”
“How do you enquire?” asked Krishnaji. For him, there were three ways; “It is possible, it is not possible, it may be possible.” The first two responses were an ending of enquiry, for they were limited by their certainties and so were held in time. It was only in a tentative delving into “the may be possible” that true enquiry was revealed. At his talks, in discussions, at the breakfast and lunch table, he spoke again and again of the need for a new mind; a mind that could only arise “out of the void, out of complete negation, in a state of revolution, when the mind is completely alone.”
He spoke of exploration as a negative awareness in which there was perception without recording; a state of pure seeing without opinion, judgment, or conclusion. Moving away from the step-by-step observation and enquiry of the 1950s, he explored the new mind with its capacity to comprehend the whole; this was only possible “when the mind is not concerned with the particular; then comprehending the whole, it can play with the particular.
“One has to see inwardly and outwardly. That seeing brings an extraordinary energy. In that seeing, there is an awareness that there is no outer and inner, they are really one continuous movement. It is the tide going out and the tide coming in.” Seeing that his listeners were perplexed, he said, “Time prevents perception. A mind that thinks of distance as space from here to there, as becoming, as achievement, such a mind cannot see a thing totally.”
He was probing into “mind,” discovering insights of the “new” as he observed. “The quality of going beyond itself belongs to the new mind, which is free of time; time as an inner psychological process. The time of the psyche brings about fear and so limits the flow. To understand the enormous pervasive nature of fear, to see the complexities in which mind is entangled, you must understand time. Fear and time go together.” Perceiving the shadows on the faces of his listeners, Krishnaji said, “Fear is the destructive energy in man, it withers the mind.”
Speaking to small groups, he had gone deep into the nature of the challenges facing humankind. He said that the crisis was of a different dimension to that faced earlier. In these talks in Bombay, Krishnaji was penetrating deeply into the nature of the scientific mind and the religious mind; the only two minds that could survive in the future. He asked himself, “Can the scientific mind with its logic, its investigation into matter, energy, enter into the religious mind?” and answered, “When the scientific mind breaks through the limitations of the known —then perhaps it approaches the religious mind.”
He probed further. “The scientific mind with its logic, its precision, its enquiry, investigates the outer world of nature, but this does not lead to an inward comprehension of things; but an inward comprehension brings about an understanding of the outer. We are the result of the influences of the outer. The scientific mind is precise and clear in its investigation. It is not a compassionate mind, for it has not understood itself.
“What is the true religious spirit?” he asked. “Obviously, not the man who believes—who goes to temples and churches. Nor is the reaction to that the religious spirit. It is only when one denies all belief or nonbelief, when there is a seeing of the fact and the falseness of belonging and reaction, that the mind is in
a state of negation, which means the mind is alone, it has no authority, no goal; therefore, it is not in a state of fear, which is reaction.
“The religious mind is not ritualistic. It is capable of thinking precisely, not in terms of the negative and positive; therefore, that mind has within it the scientific mind. But the scientific mind does not contain the religious mind, because it is based on time, knowledge; it is rooted in success and achievement.
“How does the religious mind enter the unknown?” He was questioning himself aloud. “It cannot come to the unknown except by ‘jumping.’ It cannot calculate and enter the unknown.
“The religious mind is the real revolutionary mind. It is not a reaction to what has been. The religious mind is explosive—creative... It is in a state of creation.2
“The religious mind is the only mind that can respond totally to the present challenge and to all challenges, at all times.” He paused for a long time to permit the words to sink deep. “Can this mind be so solitary, solid in its aloneness, like fire?”
Again he questioned himself. “How can radical transformation from the roots of one’s being come about? How can one recognize a religious mind? How does one recognize a saint? What does the word ‘recognize’ mean? To see again? Can one explode the pattern we have of a saint? You must explode the pattern to find the religious mind. Then there is no saint. He may be around the corner, unrecognized.”
His questioning continued. “Can one observe without reaction? To observe without the center is the negative process. The mind is a slave to words. Can it be free of them?” Seeing the strained look on the faces of listeners, striving to reach the essence of his questions, he smiled, drawing the audience close to him. “Can you play with this a little?”
“To find out whether there is God or no God, or if there is something more than thought, you must shatter the whole background, must you not? Seeing the truth that any conditioning is destructive to perception, can the mind break through without reaction? That breaking through opens the whole field of self- knowing.”
In a public meeting he was asked, “How did the first mind come about?” His answer denied all theoretical speculation. “The fact is we are here. To investigate origins, you have to investigate what you are now. Is there a beginning and an ending? Do not ask what is the beginning. We started the discussion with time and the timeless, that brings us to existence, to living, to what we are. Can we be ruthless in our investigation of what we are? Can we understand what is the present? Then we will touch the beginning and ending of all things. To question rightly is to see that there is no beginning, no ending. To understand this extraordinary sense of timelessness, you have to understand the mind in the present. The human mind, as it is now, is the result of environment. The mind has to extricate itself from all influences to find the ‘timeless.’
“To understand time, not put it aside, not create a theory about it, you have to investigate your own mind, grow aware of the extraordinary impact of influence. Time is the influence of a thousand yesterdays. There is not only chronological time, time by the watch, but there is time as memory, stretching backwards and
forwards. This memory is unconscious, buried, hidden deep in the vast recesses of one’s mind. There is time, from place to place, from here to there, and there is time as becoming. I am this and I shall be that. This reaching into the future to become introduces the permanent and the transient.
“There is time when you sow—time when you reap.” He probed into inward time as memory, with its extraordinary complexity and subtlety. “Can we investigate into the self like the scientist?” he asked.
On another evening he explored the nature of the observer and the observed. The distance between the observer and the observed creates duality. “It is only when the mind observes itself as being conditioned that there is no observer. Can the mind observe itself as the observer? It is not a rare thing. When you are angry, passionate—in that state there is no observer, nor the observed as thought.”
Speaking of the unknown, the void, from which alone the new mind could emerge, he said, “The mind cannot come to it; the mind that measures itself in time must wipe itself away and enter into that, without knowing that. You cannot know it. It has no color, no space, no shape. You cannot make a statement about it. All you can do is to jump out of the old, then you won’t even know, for you are part of that extraordinary state.”
He was holding the problem of the scientific mind and the religious mind in consciousness, his mind awake, listening to the intimations of the “new mind.”
He was to discuss the question again and again. “What is needed is a new mind that functions wholly. The scientific mind is directive; the religious mind explodes without direction. Self-knowing is essential; because it is only a mind in self-knowing, because it is understanding itself, that it withers away, for the new mind to be.
“What is demanded is a fertile mind. Fertile in the sense of rich, in which a seed can grow, be nurtured, carefully watched over, a mind that is deeply enquiring, searching, looking, watching. Only that mind, exquisitely pliant, not tethered to anything, is sensitive. The fertile mind is empty, like the womb before it conceives. Can you take one thing? Take envy—understand it and go through it ruthlessly. Put your teeth into it and strip the mind of envy. Take stock of yourself, day after day, minute after minute, to ruthlessly penetrate this appalling thing—envy.”
Like a shaft of fire, penetrating, his words dispelled shadows in the within. “The mind is a vast thing. It is not a spot in the universe. It is the universe. To investigate the universe demands an astonishing energy. It is energy greater than all rockets, because it is self-perpetuating, because it has no center. This is only possible when there is an enquiry into the inner and outer movement of the mind. The inner, the racial unconscious, in which are the urges, compulsions, the hidden dark fears, is the story of man. How do you observe? How do you listen? If the observation, the listening, is direct, then you are observing negatively. Then the mind has no conclusions, no opposites, no directives. In that looking it can see what is near and what is far away. In that there is an ending. Such a mind
is the new mind. It has exploded without direction. Such a mind is the religious mind.”
Then he opened up the nature of such a mind, a mind for which there has to be hard, arduous work. “But,” he said, “you cannot watch from morning till night. You cannot be vigilant, never blinking for the whole day. So play with it. Play with it lightly. To question ‘how am I to be aware’ is to create conflict. But as you are playing, you learn.
“The mind that explodes without direction is compassionate, and what the world needs is compassion, not schemes.
“The new mind is not within the field of knowledge. It is that state of creation which is exploding. For that, all knowledge has to come to an end.
“The new mind cannot come into being with authority, with masters, with gurus. With a burnt-out mind, you cannot come to the new mind. You need a fresh, eager, live mind.” He then held out the key. “What releases energy is direct perception. The greater part of the brain is the residuary animal and the remaining part undefined. We live our life in the very small part. We never investigate. Sensitivity arises when you watch a tree, bird, animal, ant. Watch how you walk, bathe, dress; watch yourself being important. If you so watch, if you so observe thought and every emotion, flowering, then the brain is very sensitive; out of that, the flowering of the mind begins. That is mutation.
“To watch, to observe everything, is to be aware of totality, never to limit any thought, to let everything flower. A mind that is completely quiet, without any reaction, is only an instrument of observation. It is alive, sensitive.
“Mutation is only possible when you have brought this about through awareness, without effort. The challenge of the present time and of every instant, if you are awake, is to respond totally to something that is new.
CHAPTER 22
“Be Awake.”
Krishnaji left India for Rome in the middle of March 1961. A few days before his departure Nandini had been talking to him in his room at Himmat Nivas in Bombay. Krishnaji was sitting cross-legged on his bed, Nandini on the mat- covered floor close by. Suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, he stopped speaking; his straight back became still, his eyes closed, and like a swift moving tide, she felt it, pouring in through the doors and windows—rivers of silence that bathed her body, entering the pores of her skin, saturating her. She too became totally still and died to the world. She does not know how long it lasted. Suddenly, she heard the voice of Krishnaji and grew aware of her surroundings. She had felt the strength needed to hold this silent roaring wind, and commented on it.
For some time after that Krishnaji was far away. Krishnaji’s long periods of rest and the silences of Ranikhet and Kashmir had triggered the awakening of these immense rivers of energy. Insights awakened and converged that were to flower in the “notebooks” Krishnaji was to start writing in the spring of 1961.
From the plane on his way to Rome on March 25, Krishnaji wrote to Nandini:
Half an hour out of Bombay, at 35,000 ft., the sky was blue, so blue, so intense, so pale, so soft that it brought tears to one’s eyes, at one time the blue was almost black; we were so high, the plane so steady and the sea so far below, there was a strange sense of peace and incomprehensible vastness from horizon to horizon, there was this cloudless dome of intense blue; at the horizon, the blue was almost tender green. It was a marvelous sight, something incredibly beautiful. In the cabin it was freshly cool, almost cold, which revived one after the heat. It took some time to come back to oneself and I am sorry if I made a nuisance of myself before leaving. It was bright and warm when we arrived but it has become cold and rainy.
Writing to Nandini from Rome, he said:
Resting and doing nothing must have pushed the body to the limit and now it is flat. Hope you are well. Don’t please do these exercises with any strain; if there’s a strain, the exercises are not being done properly. Give complete attention and things will come right. Don’t settle down; keep the flame alive. It has been altogether strange and don’t get lost in trivialities; don’t let yourself be drowned; keep awake; be in a state of complete attention.
Signora Vanda Scaravelli, an old friend of Krishnaji’s, was a remarkable woman, with the fire, eccentricity, quickness of mind and body of the fine-bred Italian. She met Krishnaji in Rome, and after a few days was to travel with him to Il Leccio, near Florence. Later, in Zurich, he underwent a complete medical checkup at the Bercher Brenner Clinic.
In May, Krishnaji was in London. Miss Doris Pratt, the representative of K. W. I. in England had arranged for his stay in a house near Wimbledon Common.
She was there to look after him. He held meetings with and gave talks to a small group of specially invited people. In the evenings he went for long walks alone on Wimbledon Common. On May 12 he wrote to Nandini:
The wheels1 of Ooty are working, unknown to any, and other things are taking place. It is so