CONVERSATIONS

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CONVERSATIONS

PREFACE

The material in the two conversations that follow is varied, yet complementary. The first conversation, "Self, Society, and Proprioception" is basically concerned with Dr. Bohm's analysis of what we call the "self", the "ego", or the "me". It is suggested that this self, though compelling in its demands and projections, is essentially an image-structure, with no substantial reality independent of the projections themselves. Further, these projections, though experienced as quite unique and personal, derive from the larger societal pool, and are therefore generic in essence. Particular combinations do indeed have a certain novelty, but Dr. Bohm raises serious questions as to whether any person's "private mixture" (the root meaning of idiosyncrasy) really constitutes a self as we normally think of it.

Dr. Bohm then proceeds to lead the reader toward the possibility of having a direct experience of the mirage-like nature of the self. He points out that through basic common sense we can see the difficulties created by the self. But this very observation, and any action proceeding from it, is usually rooted in the apparent creation of a second self, who is watching, and acting upon, the first self. This is the problem of the observer and the observed, a cognitive structure which is appropriate and effective in some domains, but riddled with contradictions when applied psychologically.

Unfortunately, according to Bohm, this "self watching self' activity is deeply reflexive, and reinforced by the society at large. What to do? Here Bohm introduces the notion of proprioception. By this he means a quality of awareness, attention, or observation that is something other than one projected self observing another projected self. What, then, is this awareness, and how might one encounter it? These are the issues explored in the first conversation.

SELF, SOCIETY AND PROPRIOCEPTION

November 1989 Ojai, California

Lee Nichol: It is not unusual for people to spend an entire lifetime carefully scrutinizing their personal inclinations and motivations, their whole psychological make-up. But, somehow, even if one spends that much time and that much energy, the mind seems to maintain its basic patterns, without any fundamental change. The question is, is it possible that after years of study and work in this area that a person could continue to make fundamental mistakes with regard to observation?

David Bohm: Yes. You see the whole field is very deceptive. Things are not what they appear to be. The structures are a lot different from what they seem. For example, one of the basic assumptions that we make is that one can look at the mind as if one were a separate observer, looking at something different, as I, for example, can look at the chair and see that my thought is one thing and the chair is another. The chair is independent of my thought, and my thought can move independently of the chair. We may make a similar assumption as we look at our own internal processes, but this is not true. Our thought profoundly affects the emotion and the whole state of the body, which in turn profoundly affects thought in a cycle, a feedback loop that tends to build up. This is one of the basic mistakes. If you thus start with a false assumption, your whole enquiry may make things worse, and add more complications to those already there. There are many such false assumptions that are operating within our sociocultural context.

LN: If we make this assumption that we can look at the mind as separate from the looker, and then add to that some approach aimed at bringing about order or solving problems, it seems that, as you say, this only compounds it.

DB: Yes, you see, if the assumption of separation of observer

and observed were correct (which it isn't), it would make sense to project, to find out what is the problem and try to bring about some desired result as a goal. In such an approach, which is suitable, for example, in practical affairs, you may change your goal through further insight, but the basic idea of having some kind of a goal to direct you is always there. On the other hand, within the mind, this approach may be totally out of place because there is no separation of the kind that has been assumed, the goal you project is therefore fantasy, with arbitrary features of certain ideas that you are simply trying to impose on top of the confusion that's already there, about which you're actually doing nothing.

LN: Would it be fair to say that until this particular issue is

quite thoroughly cleared up, any activity in the realm of self-investigation could only lead to further confusion?

DB: Well it's very likely to. Maybe it could be helpful on a

certain level for people who are extremely disturbed. We can probably get them past some of their disturbing fantasies with such investigation and treatment (subject/object approach). But it cannot really get to the root of the problem. In the long run it will add to it. This, I think, is one of the key points that Krishnamurti made in all of his talking.

LN: So coming to terms with the dynamics of assuming an internal separation is fundamental to real investigation. Now, it seems that part of the difficulty is that we may read this or hear it, and in some way, it seems quite clear. Then we assume !hat this is not really the issue; that there is another more important issue or a series of more important issues, and so we proceed to observe these other issues; but once again, without having really cleared up this apparently simple and basic question of how we look at ourselves.

DB: Yes, it's not so easy to clear it up, you see, because we're caught up in it. One can say that one of the problems is, that we may have insight into this issue on a certain level, but that then there is still the problem of distraction. In this connection, I have a friend who was studying young children. There has been a belief, based on the work of Piaget, that children learn certain concepts, such as conservation of water at a certain age. But my friend has shown that such learning has to do with the function of distracting factors. If you can reduce the distracting factors, they can learn it much earlier. And if you increase the distracting factors, there may be delays. Or to put it differently, attention is required to learn, and distracting factors may draw the attention elsewhere. Similarly, at an intellectual level, you may see fairly clearly, that the problem that we are talking about here is that of the observer and the observed, but when the time comes to look in another context, there are a lot of distracting factors. One of these is the ability of the mind to create very powerful, vivid, convincing images that are experienced as real, especially when they move very fast. Thus, if we take a television set and there is a telephone bell ringing, when we look into the image and see a telephone, we experience that telephone ringing in the image though there is no telephone, nothing there except spots of light. But on the other hand, if it doesn't look consistent, for example, if nobody answers it, we may think it's the telephone in the next room and experience it that way. So the way we experience depends on attribution.

A basic property of thought is to attribute a quality or a property to something. And then it's experienced as intrinsic to that thing, right? So I suggest that once you have the assumption of the observer and the observed, the mind can create an image of an observer looking at the observed, as you could have in the television set. You could have some man looking at something and you could say there's the observer, and there's the observed -- but nothing is going on at all of that nature. And similarly, in the mind, there will seem to be the observer and the

observed, and various little things indicating that combination. Thought attributes the whole of the process to the observer who is looking at the observed, and who says that thought comes out of the thinker. What actually happens however is that thought creates the image of the thinker, and then it attributes its origin to that image. Thought then behaves as if it were being produced by a thinker, but in fact, thought is producing an image which it calls the thinker and attributes itself to that. The thinker and the thought, and the observed and the observer are just different phases of one thing, one process. And therefore, as a person is thinking, very often tacitly and implicitly without knowing that he's thinking, all of this is attributed to a thinker, which gives it great authority.

LN: You're suggesting that this separation is actually hidden.

DB: What is covered up is the true nature of the whole

process. Actually there is no real separation, but the assumed separation is attributed to an image, and the resulting experience is regarded as proof that there is a real separation. That is to say, the image is experienced as if it were real, and that is taken as proof that the assumption is correct. This is part of the way in which the real nature of the process is covered up.

LN: But all of this that you're describing is generally an

unconscious process.

DB: Yes. We'll call it unconscious, implicit, tacit. The thought

behind it is implicit.

LN: If, by definition, this other process is implicit or

unconscious, it seems that it would take something more than conscious thinking to reveal the actual dynamics. Perhaps that's the starting point.

DB: Yes. You may say consciously and rationally and

logically this is what's the case, but if your whole feeling and whole experience and sensation are telling you otherwise, you really can't be deeply convinced by it, right?

LN: So there are two things going on. An intellectual

recognition that something may be operating in one way, but at the same time, a deeper set of sensations and experiences apparently indicating something very different.

DB: We wouldn't necessarily say deeper, but different. It is a

set of experiences that don't agree with your intellectual conclusions, even though your intellectual conclusions are probably right; you've probably had a real intellectual insight at that level. So we mustn't decry the intellect or say it is never of any value in this context.

LN: Instead of viewing that contradiction that you've just

described as a further difficulty, is it possible that that contradiction, properly attended to, could actually lead to a deeper understanding of the whole process?

DB: Yes. You have to give attention to this contradiction ---

that's quite right. And the question, then, is how. For this whole process of covering up and deception is going on. There's a constant "show" being put on, implying that all this is real, and that the intellectual stuff is not real. For example, the person may well say, ''I'm not an intellectual, that's just a lot of ideas. My real gut feeling is that it's the other way." And, "I don't go in for this intellectualism", so I ignore all that you say, right? What I wanted to say is that this gut feeling is what is deceptive. There are true deep feelings, you know, you may get all sorts of responses if somebody dies that you're close to, or if you look at nature, seeing the beauty and so on. But then I say there are also feelings which appear to be deep feelings, but are not, because they are produced by thought.

LN: But they have all the attributes of such feelings.

DB: They don't have all or else we could never get out of it. But they have enough attributes to get by, to be accepted by us as real. The point is, now, to be able to see that this is what's going on. That we are producing feelings out of thought. Everybody knows you can whip up feelings by certain shouts and cries and clamors and marches and songs, political rallies, etc. It's well known that feelings can in this way be whipped up, essentially by actions directed by thought, so that such a response need not be a surprise. What about this sort of feeling as compared with deep feelings? At the moment that it is happening a person might not be able to tell the difference. You have a crowd shouting and screaming and a great leader in front of them shouting and screaming and driving and urging them on, and so on. So that establishes the principle that feelings can be produced artificially. But what I was talking about is much more common than this. It doesn't require a demagogue or some unusual set of shouts, screams, and cries to do it. Rather, one simply has to notice that the meaning of a thought tends to be carried out in terms of feelings all over the body.

In order to demonstrate this, you may take the case of getting angry. This is a feeling that is not as difficult to look at as say fear or pleasure -- deceptive feelings of pleasure -- which you know too can be produced by thought, a seductive thought. You see, a person may first get an outburst of anger and then cool down -- it simmers down, but it's still there. You may put it in abeyance because something more important comes up, but it's still there ready to come up. My suggestion is to call it up on purpose by trying to find the words that express the reason for being angry. Thus, you may say, "I'm angry, and I have good reason because he did this and that and that." You will find that you are getting still angrier. Usually you'll say, "I shouldn't get angry, so I'd better stop this." But now we're going to use this on purpose, not for the sake of getting angry, because we're

going to suspend the angry feelings, neither by stopping them, nor letting them come out. Is that clear what I mean?

LN: Yes, but there are some difficulties with suspending.

DB: Well you see, it's not being done right in the heat of your original outburst of anger, but still, you're not calling it up to get rid of the angry feelings. Your first impulse might be to try and go out and insult the person and do something, and in earlier times you might even have hit the person. And now you say don't do any of those things, but let the feelings come up and watch what's going on. We're regarding it as a sort of test display of the process, you understand? So then you'll see these angry feelings which will produce tension in the solar plexus and the belly and the chest, and affect your breathing, and heartbeat, and all sorts of things. You'll be able to see a sort of movement of responses all over the body, such as a tension of the jaw, in the neck.

LN: Now let me raise one of the difficulties that commonly occurs here. Even if one waits a bit beyond the heat of the moment, there still comes up a very strong resistance to acknowledging that one is actually in this state.

DB: Yes, that's part of our sociocultural conditioning, which says that you shouldn't be angry, and not only that, you yourself have seen by clear thought that it's leading you astray. You see, both reason, and society and everything is telling you, you shouldn't be angry. Now there's a serious mistake in there. Of course, it's right that you shouldn't be angry, if only because it is very destructive to your deeper interests. But the attempt to say you just shouldn't be angry is simply not affecting the anger, it's just trying to impose another pattern on top of the anger. This will come out as we go along, but the first point is to realize that such resistance is false and that this falseness will come out as we go through this process and pay attention to it.

LN: The falseness of the sociocultural as well as the personal

judgment.

DB: Yes. This is very tricky, because in some ways the

judgment appears to be right. But there's a fundamental, deeper falseness in it. So we also have to give attention to our tendency to say, "I shouldn't be angry, I must stop being angry", and we will see that this too, has to be suspended. In this process one will begin to get certain feelings, at first perhaps very faintly because of all the resistance, and later more strongly -- you'll see the play of these feelings over the body, because the action is being suspended. If you actually did something, you would no longer notice the feelings ... if you went out and hit somebody or punched him in the nose, or insulted him, or otherwise tried to get redress for your anger. You might momentarily feel a lot better, because the tension would go (until the other person retaliated in a similar way). But now, when action is suspended, you can see that the words are calling up the feelings, and you'll be able to get a sense that there's some sort of mechanical connection between the words and the feelings.

For example, you may find that the words may be, "He shouldn't have done this; he shouldn't treat me that way; he hasn't due regard for me, he's always doing that; he's never taking my rights into account. It's not the first time." So you may notice the feelings coming up rather mechanically, and that those feelings are producing mechanical pressure, making it very hard to look at those thoughts and see whether they're right or not.

LN: Let's go very slowly here. You say they produce

mechanical responses and mechanical feelings. Now it seems to be a very thin line, because when you do what you suggest, if it's really activating these responses you're talking about, they don't feel mechanical.

DB: No, but you can see a certain mechanical quality in the sense that the word is followed by the feeling. And you'll see there is a little something also in that pressure of the feeling to avoid examining the meaning of the words, to avoid seeing whether you really have a good reason to be angry.

LN: A resistance to seeing the connection.

DB: Yes, that's right. You see, if it were really a

straightforward process, there would be no resistance to examining it. Now you can begin to suspect that it looks a little mechanical. Here you can use a certain amount of knowledge which has come from biofeedback. You have a device that, I forget what they call it, in the so-called lie detector, you attach an electrode to your finger, and you see, this measures the activity of the autonomic nervous system.

LN: The polygraph.

DB: The polygraph, yes. When the autonomic nervous system

is aroused, you'll get the solar plexus and heartbeat and the adrenaline and all those things acting. When somebody says something disturbing, or you think something disturbing, that arouses you in this way, then roughly three seconds later, the needle jerks. If it's not very disturbing, you may be hardly aware that anything has happened, yet the needle jerks. So it does look very mechanical when you look at it that way.

It takes three seconds. We could say that your thought is in the pipeline for three seconds, but you don't pay attention to this. Then suddenly the emotional response appears. It suddenly appears in this way as if it were spontaneous. However, there's been another thought in the background all the time saying that everything which appears suddenly like that is deep gut feeling, so that it's really very important. That produces more thought which goes into the pipeline, and three seconds later there comes

another jerk, and the whole process thus builds up. The thought that this is a deep gut feeling is now taken as further proof that you have good reason to be angry. See, the original proof was that he's always doing this, right? Now you have an additional proof -- the deep gut feeling -- saying I have a deep feeling which is instinctive. I've been badly treated.

In the case of fear, that's even more clear. You can similarly produce a response of fear by thinking of danger, and a short time later, you have this sinking sensation in the solar plexus. You now say I have an instinctive feeling of danger. The animal would get just that feeling as the first sense of danger, right? Or you yourself might be in a very dangerous situation and get it. So that could be a real warning of danger. But the assumption is that it's always a warning of danger. This ignores the fact that it could be an entirely false warning arranged by thought mechanically.

LN: Why do you think that there is a resistance to looking at

the mechanical nature of this process?

DB: Because it has gotten tied up with the self/world image.

One feels uneasy about saying that one's deep gut feelings mal have no meaning because it begins to threaten the notion of the self-identity. For you identify yourself, among other things, with those deep gut feelings. So if you begin to think these deep gut feelings may have no meaning, and you have depended on them for the foundation of a lot of your life, you begin to worry about your whole self, right? There's a thought behind it that's ready to defend the self by not allowing this to be seen. It's really defending the self-image. We don't know what the self is, nobody has ever managed to look at the self, but what we have is a kind of an image of a self with an image of a world in which it lives. This image creates a wide range of neurophysiological effects, implying that this is all a reality of very great significance. We have already discussed some of these

effects. And if this image is altered, the whole neurophysiological system goes into chaos so that there's a response from the body and from the brain to do something to restore equilibrium. The most immediate way to do that would be to produce thoughts which would change those responses toward equilibrium. But then that would be a mechanical way of thinking, which is false. So you get mechanical feelings and mechanical thoughts working on each other.

LN: Just to put this into perspective from where we started, it seems that this apparently simple notion of observation, pursued in the way that you've described it, will actually lead one into difficulty and not necessarily clarity. For the act of looking at the connections in the way that you've indicated will eventually lead to this very point of questioning the meaning of one's deepest feelings.

DB: Yes, and also one's deepest thoughts.

LN: And one's deepest thoughts. This is not a particularly

comfortable position to find oneself in. Is it possible that this is one reason that observation never penetrates beyond a certain point?

DB: Yes, I think that there's a kind of defense which is based on the assumption that whenever this whole system starts getting too disturbed, it's best to keep away from whatever is disturbing it. The whole body reacts instinctively that way to pain, moving away from the pain, and then that same reaction is carried up into the higher functions of the brain by some movement of thought, away from the issue which is disturbing it. It moves in such a way as to ease the system. And that's not an intelligent way for thought to operate.

LN: Now, let's say that a person comes to the point that you're describing. The deeper feelings and thoughts which

constitute the sense of self for that individual begin to be exposed.

DB: Yes, as mechanical, and therefore having little value.

LN: Isn't it particularly important at this level to have

developed a certain skill? That skill being the ability to suspend judgment regarding the fact that one holds these beliefs or feelings or ideas. Because once you penetrate to a particularly deep and sensitive level, if you again begin to judge, it seems that it can be very destructive, and that this mechanism to protect might be appropriate.

DB: Well yes, you might say you could easily become very depressed or something.

LN: Yes, that's the issue I'm trying to point to -- how to avoid becoming deeply depressed at this point n so depressed at least, that it inhibits pursuing the question.

DB: I think the idea is not to push it too hard in the sense,

don't push it to the point where it would carry you into depression. You have to find a certain skill of pushing it to the point where you can observe and not to push too much, because that's really more mechanical action again. You need insight, you see, and the whole point of suspension is merely to get insight, not to produce predetermined results. Only the insight can change you. The insight that this process is mechanical will change you. It will decrease the importance of the process in your mind, and therefore, the whole thing will change.

But there's always a danger that you haven't gone far enough in doing this, because there's more to the process. There's all sorts of deeper things you haven't touched yet, and you are beginning to shake them, too. But all I'm saying is: Don't go too fast. Start with anger, where people generally realize that the thing is

destructive, so that you are able to work on it. It doesn't shake you too much to discover these things about anger. You might then work on fear, because fear has a similar structure. And so does desire and pleasure. They all have a similar structure. In fact, desire comes from projecting in the imagination, the thing you want, and anticipating the satisfaction of pleasure, or whatever. And fear is the same thing except you anticipate all the trouble and pain that's coming. So between desire and fear, there's very little difference; it's just that you anticipate something nice or something bad.

LN: Both rooted in anticipation.

DB: Yes. Anticipation is a function you need, but here it's begun to go wrong. Because you're anticipating the internal state of the mind and not realizing it's just an image.

LN: Okay, so a person is observing patiently and not pushing

the process too hard, and at the same time, not becoming complacent. There's some skillful balance and willingness to continue.

DB: That's right, and he'll find that as certain issues come up

in relationship, that they're distracting. In this way, he loses sight of the insight because of powerful distractions. Then he needs to get insight into that distraction in a similar way. What Krishnamurti once said was "there is no distraction" - every distraction is just a part of the process, which helps to reveal the process. We call it distraction, and the assumption that it is a distraction makes it a distraction.

LN: Which decreases one's energy.

DB: Not only that, it misleads you. If it's a distraction you're going to say, "Well, my job is to get back on line;" but your job is not to get back on line. You see, the line is the distraction.

Your job is to look at the distraction, not to say, "I was looking at fear before, and now I'm looking at something else. I'd better get back to fear." But rather, "I'd better get on to the fact that I'm distracted by such and such, finding out the thoughts that are distracting. "

LN: In that respect, potentially, everything is a basis for observation.

DB: Yes, and everything that happens is part of the process.

There really is no genuine distraction in this process. Every one of those distractions is just part of the cover-up, you see. If there were no cover up, the process couldn't exist, right? I mean, it's too absurd to go on with if it's not covered up and given a false interpretation.

LN: This is like an improvised dance. Because you cannot

predict what apparent distraction is going to come at any moment. But if you are. willing and able to reorient your attention each time there is a distraction, then perhaps the notion of "no distraction" could become a reality. But it is so common for us to have this sense, "Well, I don't really want to look at that. I'm looking at this now. Don't bother me with that."

DB: That might make sense in another context, a practical

context, "I have this job to do and I can't be bothered with all this other stuff you're bringing in." But it's not true here because what you're dealing with here is just the way the mind is working, and this so-called distraction is an essential part of the phenomenon. It's not a distraction - it's actually the same process you're looking at, just taking a somewhat different form.

LN: To the point that we've discussed this, have we come to the picture of self and world?

DB: Yes, we're sort of getting into it because all this anger

and fear and pleasure and desire is a part of the constitution of the self and its relation to the world. These are part of the values which move you. Value has the same root as valor and valiant. It means strength. And values, or things of high value, give great strength to what we do, and give it high priority. Now we have a vast set of values which thus moves us. Some respond to one situation and some to another. We are moved by the values

much faster than we can think.

LN: These values are like the branches of a tree, right?

DB: Yes.

LN: Are we getting closer to the generating source, to the root?

DB: Yes, we're moving that way. You see, if somebody is prejudiced, for example, he's got a value judgment which he may not be conscious of -- for example, that people of a certain group are bad. Now he experiences this not as a thought, but rather as an apparent perception of the badness which is projected into a particular person who is being perceived, at a given moment, the same as the telephone in the television set.

LN: So it has the full appearance of reality.

DB: Yes. All sorts of value judgments of that kind affect your perception and your intentions at the same time. You see, people have the notion of freedom of choice and freedom of will but these values operate very fast and people think they have chosen, but they haven't.

LN : Yes, well that's the question I would like to look at. What do all these values have to do with the self?

DB: The self is determined by the values with which it's

identified, for example the supreme value of your religion or your country or your money or fame or power or ambition or your family or whatever it is. Or your body, your security, your comfort. Whatever has highest value will override the other values. And this generally leads to contradiction, you see. Thus you may have the value of honesty and truth, and so on; but if your value is also comfort and security of the self, or if your country comes first no matter what else is at stake, then when the time comes, such values may take over. And though you profess the right values of honesty and truth, they're not really the dominant values. So the self is determined, in a way, by the whole set of values which are as much sociocultural as individual.

LN: Is this all there is to the self?

DB: Well, it is a dominant feature. If the values were not

there, the self would collapse, would have no energy. It would be like something which is inflated. When someone removes the air, it collapses.

LN: When you say a dominant feature, do you mean, as well,

an essential feature?

DB: Yes, it's a moving essential power. There may be some

other assumptions, perhaps, behind it, but these values are the moving essential power without which the self would have no power. It would be just an image. You may ask, "How could an image ever get power?" Thus the telephone in the television set never does anything except produce a pattern of light. Why should the image of the self have such power? Because there are tremendous values which are attributed to it. Whatever has value, the whole system must try to act on it. That is an absolute necessity and the way it works.

LN: Yes. So we can suspend these values ...

DB: Well, not so easily. They come very fast, you see. We

have value judgments, such as in prejudice (or prejudgment). Suppose you're very prejudiced against a certain group of people and you immediately react against a particular member of this group. The way it goes is like this. There is a thought in the background, an implicit thought, which you don't know about: all people of this group are inferior. You may never have thought it, because you picked it up nonverbally, implicitly, by the way people behaved toward that group. Now you come along and say that this is a person of that group, therefore, he's inferior. As I've already pointed out, you don't actually think that, it just comes out immediately as a perception of inferiority, apparently. Our immediate experience of that person is of inferiority, seen as inhering in that person. So that's a value judgment. The value judgment operates implicitly. The implicit is more active that the explicit. With an explicit thought, it's going to take time before you act on it. Therefore you can examine it. But you can't really examine an implicit thought.

LN: Last night on television I saw a brief story about a man

who has apparently been wrongly accused of a murder -- a black man. He's been in prison for some number of years now. And in the prison, he has a very good record and very good relations with the inmates and with the staff of the prison and so on, and there was a short interview with one of the other prisoners. His name is Bull Dog; he is white. He was in fact the leader of a white racist group within the prison. And he explained how through meeting the fellow accused of murder, he finally began to see this black man as a man, with no qualifications, just a man. That was quite something for him. Quite an important insight on his part. He and the accused were good friends. At the same time, he still led the white racist group in prison. Well, they didn't pursue it any further, but I think this is analogous to our own experience in many respects. Thus we may see the limit

of nationalism, for instance; we may see the implications and danger in nationalism in a fairly thorough way and put all this aside, but that seems not to have gone to the source of what's generating the desire, or demand is a better word, for holding these values at all.

DB: Yes. Well you see that in a way these values maintain

themselves. This happens in a process of entrainment in which one value that has very high priority will tend to stabilize others and prevent them from changing. The value, for example, of fitting into the peer group of the fellow prisoners might take priority over other values, right? The prisoner that we were talking about might feel he would lose too much by giving up this prejudice because he would then be isolated from all the people with whom he was connected, and perhaps as their leader, having all sorts of satisfactions.

Now, you see the implicit thought is organized in the sense that there is in it a certain kind of order. The order is that one entrains the other, and that sometimes these lines of entrainment meet and entangle, forming a kind of web. Each person is caught in that web. The web is as much sociocultural as it is individual, if not more. Thus, the prisoner in question was used to a style of life in which he got certain advantages out of going along with the prejudice of the community. Moreover, there are further assumptions behind it; for example, he can't do without that, right? In addition these assumptions are implicit, so he doesn't know he's got them, and if he does, only faintly so. Whenever an occasion comes up implying,” I need the support of the fellow prisoners," these implicit assumptions just work.

Say an occasion comes up where the fellow prisoners are against a black person. It follows he must go along with them in order to get their support. He just feels the need to do this. The intention is produced before he can choose, including the disposition of mind and body. So that takes precedence over the

correct perception that he had before, right? That's a higher priority and a stronger value. Because he is identified more with being the leader of the fellow prisoners than with being a person who sees truly what another man is. And behind that there are probably further assumptions, going back to his childhood, as to why he needs that, right?

LN : Yes, could we look further into that? This obviously is

not just a prisoner in a prison, this is each of us. The deeper assumptions of why we need that, this seems to be part of the glue that binds the world picture together.

DB: There are implicit assumptions further back. For example,

as a child, almost everybody may feel weak or isolated or not properly supported by his parents or his environment, and he also feels that he can only gain their love by fitting in with their assumptions. So one of his basic assumptions may be that whatever they assume, I must assume too, or else I'll be out. He doesn't have the feeling that he can stand being rejected in this way. If he had felt, for some reason, very strong within himself, then he could have said, "Okay, I'm out." He may, for example, have felt that at least at home he will be all right so that he can have the strength not to accept the assumptions that are false from the other children or the rest of society. But in the home, it's the same. He must accept their assumptions or else he'll be in terrible trouble. So wherever he looks, that's the way it is. But he may finally say, "Well, in my gang I can really have a good relationship, and it becomes particularly important in my peer group to accept their assumptions", especially if he finds that he enjoys being a leader. For he can only be a leader by accepting the assumptions of those whom he leads. Otherwise they won't follow him.

LN: It seems that if one took every singular value, every

singular feeling and tried to deduce from that a root cause, that may not work.

DB: That may not work, and yet it may be useful to get

familiar with that structure. You're not trying to deduce the cause, but just as with anger, to see how the structure works. Can we suspend the activity of the structure sufficiently to see it working? This will be far more convincing to the system than just talking about it.

LN: The entire value structure.

DB: Yes, how it works non-verbally as well as verbally, as we

saw anger working. The value system works in a rather similar way. The difficulty is that it is based on implicit assumptions. Actually the anger was basically implicit, too, but it's just a little bit easier to get at. Thus you say, "I have good reason to be angry" -- that was a value judgment, because the word "good" means a value judgment. What was the "goodness" of the good reason, for example, "He's always doing this"? There are implicit assumptions that somebody always treats me in such and such a way -- that is a good reason to be angry. This person is doing that and therefore I have a good reason to be angry at him. And that works immediately. So a value judgment is involved in getting angry or in becoming frightened. It is similar when we say, "I have good reason to be afraid or good reason to be pleased." The point of this is that we didn't really get to the bottom of the anger when we saw the process of anger going between the head and the gut feelings. For we didn't see the value judgment that fuels the whole process. As soon as the "goodness" of the good reason is gone, the process collapses.

There are all sorts of implicit assumptions of this nature. The thing is to go further and just experiment with trying to verbalize, in order to make explicit the implicit assumptions and see how they affect the process. You'll see for example that a certain assumption already implicitly contains anger and all the other reactions. Moreover it contains the assumption that there is me, who is experiencing whatever is going on, and it attributes

all of the activity to me, right? Now if you suspend that whole process and keep repeating the verbal expression of the value judgment for a awhile, that begins to be more visible as a non-verbal process, which involves both thoughts and feelings.

LN: It seems that the common feature in each of these experiments, whether it is with anger, whether it is with fear, whether it is pleasure, is the picture of "me ".

DB: Yes, the image of "me", divides into the observer and the observed. Or you could say "I" and "me." "I" am the subject, the active subject who has the intention and the perception and "me" is that same entity considered as the object. There was a fellow I knew who believed in solipsism and he argued for it. His basic statement was that "I" become "me ". You understand what that means? Whatever was in the subject which he regarded as sort of a creative source crystallizes into the "me". So the assumption was that the subject is the unlimited creative source, and that this created the "me" as the object. The implication was that you could always do this in any way whatsoever, but actually you can't. The actual fact is that the "me" will be found to control the "I". Thus, if you have created anger, in the next step you are compelled to justify it. You're then no longer free to say, "Okay, I'm not going to be angry." In this way the "me" constricts the "I", and the whole process goes in a cycle.

LN: But what you're suggesting here is the "me" is in fact nothing more than a picture.

DB: Yes, and the "I" too. I'm not saying that there's nothing left; I'm saying what you experience as the "me" and the "I" is a picture. Perhaps there's some sort of "me" or some sort of true being which we don't actually perceive.

LN: But what we normally think of as "me", you're suggesting is nothing more than the sum total of a certain number of values.

DB: Values and assumptions along with a general picture that goes with them, a picture of something having supreme value as the "me." You see, the "me" and the "I" are taken as of essentially unlimited value. Therefore they will tend to override all other values. The "me" may be identified with money or power, or the country or the religion, but it's still the same process. And whatever is attributed to the "me" takes unlimited value. It's mine, you see. Suppose you're looking at some land. You may first say it's land, but then suppose you suddenly say, "It's mine ". It then takes on a tremendous value and the meaning is totally different. Or if you say it's his but it ought to be mine, still again, its different. Notice the tremendous power in that judgment, in which a very special kind of value is given the land when it is sensed as mine or yours or his.

LN: Well, the difficulty seems to be in coming to terms with whether or not this notion of the "me" is true. That is to say, is the "me" something substantial, tangible, that lives and breathes here and now and possibly whose soul will continue after death and so on, or is the "me" not of that nature?

DB: That's the question.

LN: Is the "me" essentially of a different nature?

DB: Perhaps a human being is of the nature of the me as we

know it, or he or she may have another nature. If a true self does exist, it's surely hidden by, or made inactive by, this me process that seems to fill the whole system. It's like the lights of the city which shine brighter than the stars, so that you don't see the universe. That holds also, for the world image as well as the

self image. Is the world just as we experience it or is reality something different? That we don't know.

LN: Are you suggesting that the self, and the world that we experience, are not different?

DB: I am suggesting that they are not different. It's one

image. You see, it's the image of the self, and of the world in which the self lives. No self could exist without a world in which to live, and therefore, the image of the world is arranged according to the needs of the self. And thereafter, the self has to try to adjust somehow to this world.

LN: So this notion of absolute value, perhaps, is tied to the notion of a solid, fixed self.

DB: Yes, it's identified. Identity means being always the

same. The self is assumed to have an identity. Certain features are thought to remain essentially the same, though it may change in other features that are superficial. But there's an essence that remains always the same. And we would like it to go on forever, after death. Moreover, it is implied that it has always gone on. Thus people think of reincarnation, and so on. And it would be hard to understand what it could mean for the self suddenly to emerge into existence at birth. How could you say exactly when? Indeed, a common concept of the self is that it is eternal in its essence, though its superficial features change. This implies that it is unlimited in its value. And you see, for all we know there could be such a self, but what we are now experiencing as the self is an image. We won't say anything about whether that notion of the self is right or wrong since we have no knowledge of what the real self would be, but we can see that what we are now experiencing as the self is an image mistaken for reality. And the activity of the organism guided by that image gives it an apparent power in reality. Just as the telephone bell coming out of the image makes the image seem very active.

LN: You are suggesting that the self as we experience it, the "me" is in fact an image. It has no substantial reality.

DB: Well, it has a kind of substantial reality in the sense that because the image has been established, the whole nervous system is affected. This involves a certain kind of reality, but no reality independent of the image.

LN: No reality independent of the image. This suggestion must be tested. It would obviously be incorrect to merely assume that this is true. That would lead nowhere.

DB: That's why I suggested these experiments of watching anger and watching the value judgment originate and trying to produce these results by thinking the thought again, and by making it explicit. You see, in order to test this, you've got to see the connection between thought and the rest of the activity. That's the key task. But if thought is implicit, you don't see it or else even when you see it, you don't see the connection to the rest. And then you're going to make this mistake again and again. So even in the attempt to test it, you'll make the same mistake.

LN: Which may in fact be necessary -- to make the same mistake again and again.

DB: Yes. You keep at it, you sustain the work. What you are really aiming for is an analogue to what is called proprioception in the body. The word proprioception has two parts. "Proprio" means "self' in Latin and "ception" is like perception. So it means self-perception. Now that's a technical term used by people discussing the body, physiology, to describe the fact then the body knows immediately its own being, its own movement; so it can tell right away its movement without thinking, and can distinguish it from movements that originate independently. That

is necessary for survival. Now the mind doesn't seem to have it. Thus, we can think something and suddenly there appears a gut feeling but we don't see that the thought produced the gut feeling. If your hand suddenly moved, and you didn't know you moved it, you would be in a bad way. For example you might hit somebody in the nose and say 'I didn't know I did it, it happened by itself."

LN: But all of these experiments that you have detailed are rooted in a proper kind of observation. If one proceeds into these experiments with the wrong kind of observation, most likely they would be fruitless.

DB: Yes. What would be the wrong kind?

LN: Observing with the intention of modifying.

DB: Yes, the right intention is to reveal that which is, rather than to modify it. Thus, if you said, "I am angry", then you're implicitly separating yourself that way from the anger. It will then follow immediately, that it makes sense to want to change the anger, by saying for example: "I shouldn't be angry." This is a contradiction, because you also have another implicit thought which is, "I have good reason to be angry." So if you superimpose the two thoughts, "I have good reason to be angry," and the other, "I don't want to be angry," or "I shouldn't be angry", that's crazy. We must make it very clear why we shouldn't want to modify anger because in many other contexts modification is a perfectly rational activity. But here it is not rational because you have the implicit thought, "I have good reason to be as I am." And at the same time you say, "I want to change." Evidently that doesn't make sense. But the trouble is, that the thought that I have good reason to be as I am is basically implicit, you don't see you've got it. So it seems to make sense to say, ''I'm going to modify all this" because you see the whole result coming out without seeing the implicit

thought that is constantly maintaining the present state of affairs. All this is a result of the lack of proprioception. Thus, once you know that you moved your hand, you can stop moving it if it's doing the wrong thing. But if your hand moved without your knowing it, say because the nerves telling that your hand is moving are gone, you could not initiate an intelligent action by trying to control your hand.

LN: So patiently allowing this contradiction to expose itself seems to be necessary.

DB: Yes.

LN: If there's not a sense of patience, there could be panic which would lead to considerably more confusion, and an unwillingness to look further.

DB: Yes. There could be panic because,"I must hold onto

what I am", would be one implicit thought, and another thought would be, "I must change it." This could create a great fear. I might think that if I don't hold on to what I am, I'll go to pieces, and this would be one implicit thought. The other thought would be "I must change what I am." Then you have the thought, "I may go to pieces." These thoughts make it impossible to take any meaningful action.

LN: So both thoughts, "I must stay the way that I am", and, "I must change the way that I am", lead to further confusion.

DB: Yes. Especially because both are there together and they are both conflicting with each other. You may not know it, but you already have the opposing implicit thought. When you say, "I must change", ... you would never even have that thought, except you've also got the implicit thought, "I must not change. I have good reason to remain as I am." So it's urgent to find these implicit thoughts. It's very important to make them

explicit, to find out what your thoughts are by putting them in words and seeing how they work. If the thoughts are not put into words, you generally won't know you've got them. Maybe eventually you'll get so subtle you won't need the words. But in the beginning, the mind is not able to do that. To put the same point again in order to emphasize it, you have a thought and you don't know you've got it because it's implicit. So it apparently makes sense to put in another thought saying, "I should change," because you don't know you've got the thought, "I have good reason to remain as I am. It's absolutely necessary to remain as I am."

Therefore you don't realize the contradiction because one of the thoughts, at least, and very often both, are implicit. That's the lack of proprioception. The implicit thought does not appear in consciousness at all. Only by its effect does it show itself, unless you make it conscious by expressing it somehow explicitly to yourself or to others.

LN: The important thing at that point would be to inquire into the implication of the contradiction that you just described.

DB: Yes. The point is that you've got to see it there and

express it, but not for the purpose of doing anything about it, because that would be just the same mistake again. Thus another implicit thought would be, "I can avoid this contradiction." But rather than resolving in this way to keep this contradictory thought out, I need simply to be aware of the thought and all of its effects, all through the body and so on. However, the only way I can see to be aware of it is first to make it explicit. There may come a time when there is another way, but I am trying to say this is a way to begin to loosen up the mind. And the word is thus being used, neither for analysis, nor for its content, but simply to make the process visible. Not that you believe or disbelieve the word. The meaning of the word is not really at stake. It's not of any basic importance, it's really what the word

is doing that's interesting in this context. The word is part of a non-verbal process. Fundamentally, the actual activity of the word is non-verbal. It's a real activity based on all sorts of nervous processes, sounds, etc. As for the meaning, we want to see what the meaning does, not so much what the meaning is.

LN: The word, itself, is just the tip of the iceberg.

DB: Yes. But the point is, at least to have a tip. You see, if

somebody could chop off all the tips of icebergs, then ships would be sinking all the time.

LN: But this is what we try to do.

DB: Yes, we try to get rid of the problem by chopping off the

tip, and it's all there beneath; then we collide with it.

* * *

LN: Do you feel that it is possible for thought to function creatively?

DB: Well, I think that we could say that as long as thought is

caught up in this process, it's not going to be creative. It'll be mechanical. The whole consciousness could be creative only if this process were to come to order. Now the question is how that will come about, and I think that this will depend upon insight. Thought can participate in the creative processes as part of the development and expression of the latter. Just as, for example, a piano can take part in a creative expression of the music if it's finely tuned. But if it's notes are in a muddle it won't do it. So the mechanical aspects of thought can take part in the creative process. There may also be a kind of thought that goes with creative imagination, rather than just fantasy. But that depends on getting this cleared up.

LN: When you say it depends on getting this cleared up ...

DB: You see, in some sense, we could say that we have been

using thought to begin to look at how thought is actually working, and that this is at least more creative than the usual way of using thought in which one gets caught up in it. We also need something beyond thought, some sort of awareness, attention. But you see, thought is something that has to be looked at, something that requires attention. Then we can put what we have thus observed into thought just as in looking at anything else. That is, thought can be both looked at and thought about. This is what we have been trying to do.

I think thought gets into trouble because it tries, through identification with the self-image, to treat itself as unlimited. The self-image essentially would be thought of as unlimited, right? Thus, the very young child might feel that it is unlimited, and society is constantly trying to teach that child that it is limited (for example, by saying: "You're not so great"). So there is a kind of contradiction between the limited and unlimited self, which I expressed as the "me" and the "I". I don't know if we have time to go into it, but I would say that thought cannot grasp the unlimited. Krishnamurti put it the other way -- thought is always limited. This is the same as to say, it cannot grasp the unlimited. Now I think you could show it would be a contradiction to say that everything is limited -- that there is no unlimited. However, that would take us some time to develop. But suppose we were to accept that the unlimited is. Now thought may think, first of all, that it can handle everything, so that it could be the unlimited. Even if we give that up, thought implicitly continues to hold to this assumption by making the self-image, and saying that that's unlimited. But if we consider that this self-image is actually a form of thought, a construction of thought, then thought has surreptitiously come back to the assumption that it is unlimited, by setting up a creation of its own and calling that the unlimited. In this way it is therefore

implicitly calling itself the unlimited. It is the creator of what it calls the unlimited, and therefore it is implied that it is itself unlimited. So thought gets into a wrong area by treating itself as capable of unlimited power.

Of course the limits of thought can constantly be extended. There is no particular point at which they come to a final end. No matter how far you go, however, they don't grasp the unlimited totality of all that is. When thought moves into the area of surreptitiously and tacitly and implicitly claiming to

grasp the unlimited, then it goes wrong because it indirectly gives itself supreme priority over reality and over truth. And evidently, thought cannot be rational and healthy if it gives supreme priority to its own productions. It has to give such priority to something beyond thought; the first priority is to deal with reality, truth, or whatever you call it. That, we say, is ultimately the unlimited, and the limited which thought defines is sort of suspended in the unlimited. So whatever we grasp with thought is limited, but beyond it is the unlimited. And therefore, the limited cannot be totally independent.

Now thought trying to move into that area of the unlimited, (which it can never really do, but which it can imagine it's doing) is what makes thought destructive and makes it go wrong. It makes all priorities wrong. Essentially, it's the same as to say that thought is God. And in fact, whenever people made idols, they were really the product of thought. Eventually they came to worship such idols and to give them supreme value, forgetting that thought had made them. But we have this even more powerful image inside that we've been going on with and worshipping for ages.

LN: What you're suggesting raises a number of questions. It suggests that at some point, thought must be involved in, at once an act of surrender, and an act of faith. Not in the religious

sense, but in the sense that it deeply recognizes something beyond itself.

DB: Yes. And at the same time, it has to be deeply aware of the traps by which it can implicitly call itself something beyond itself through an image. Thus, even when thought says there's something beyond me and I'm going to give that the highest value, then it invents an image and says, "That's what is beyond me." But that is really still thought. In this way, it manages as I have said earlier, to worship itself, and it does this in the very act in which it says there's something beyond itself. Therefore, this whole approach has to be coupled with a real awareness of the traps that thought can make for itself.

LN: At that point, there is necessarily something of the nature of uncertainty. Thought, being certain within certain realms, its nature being to define and predict and control...

DB: And to make limits ...

LN: ... and to make limits. Acknowledging something other than itself, with all the qualifications you suggested, would imply a certain level of uncertainty.

DB: But it must acknowledge something. I would rather say beyond itself because that beyond might include its true being. You see, everything has its ground in that beyond because even thought is part of reality and must have its ground beyond thought. But thought in its content has to acknowledge something beyond that content. Whatever thought means, its content is the meaning. And whatever meaning thought has, it has to acknowledge that there is that which is beyond what can be grasped within thought. I think Krishnamurti made a key point when he said that this would imply that thought itself must stop its movement when it faces such a question. And this means the whole of consciousness, at least of consciousness as we

know it. There may be a kind of consciousness that we don't know, but the whole of consciousness as we know it would have to suspend itself.

LN: This is what I meant by surrender.

DB: No, it's not giving up anything, you see, because there's nothing to give up. It's to realize that thought cannot handle that and therefore has to suspend its action.

LN: It is giving up a belief.

DB: It gives up a belief, but the belief is an illusion, so in a sense, it's giving up nothing, right? Indeed, the realization that there's nothing to give up is crucial. Because otherwise it could be taken as an exchange that I surrender this to God and God will recompense me and reward me. I surrender my soul to God and he will give me something wonderful. But it's just a matter of saying that this is the way it is, at least as far as we can see. Now it would require a lot of work to become really clear that this is the way it is. There might be always some uncertainty for all we know. But we're saying that it certainly gives a much better understanding than the other way. The other ways are really visibly full of contradictions. We have not yet seen any contradictions in this way. And that's about as far as thought could go, to say that we propose something that we have explored at great length and in which we can find no contradiction. Then at some stage thought may say that the right attitude is to suspend itself, to allow the brain, the nervous system and the mind to move perhaps with the energy of the unlimited, or perhaps to enter into the unlimited.

LN: This point seems to me to require something, a certain confidence, or willingness, or trust..

DB: Well, a kind of confidence, as you say. You test it very

thoroughly, not only logically, but also by observation -- the kind I discussed, and also others that you may work out by yourself. You keep on working and testing it. I think that the confidence would arise as you could see that it stands up to your tests. Thus, if you're going to ride a bicycle, at first you're not very confident, then you find that it stands up to your tests, and holds. You fall occasionally, but you know that it's basically Okay. I think you can see that in any other area you would say that's a reasonable way to live, but here because such large issues are involved, there may be a fear. Nevertheless the suggestion is that the same approach that holds in other areas of life would hold here. We need to have enough confidence to let go, for thought to suspend itself.

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