Krishnamurti and Bohm

David Bohm is nuclear physicist and the author of the influential book "The Implicate Order". Krishnamurti is an iconoclastic writer on what may loosely be termed "spirituality".  So it may be interesting to see what would happen when two such leading minds encounter each other. This forms the subject matter of an interview on 2nd April 1980, first appearing in The Ending of Time 2nd April, 1980, the last chapter of Krishnamurti's book "On God."

Krishnamurti starts by asking whether Bohm, as a scientist who has examined the atom, finds there is something beyond it. Bohm replies: " You can always feel that there is more beyond that, but it doesn't tell you what it is. It is clear that whatever one knows is limited...And there must be more beyond." Krishnamurti then asks whether one can grasp it or whether our mind can go beyond theories and whether there is anything beyond emptiness or silence or whether silence is part of emptiness and whether if it is not silence, whether we could say it is something absolute, something totally independent on anything else and Bohm suggests that it may be the old Aristotelian notion of the absolute which is the self-active and a cause of itself or something which has no cause. But Krishnamurti prefers to define that something negatively by saying what it is not. He says, "You see, the moment you said Aristotle--it is not that...there is something beyond all this. Probably it can never be put into words. But it must be put into words", rather like what LaoTzu said about the Tao. Bohm then suggests, "Any attempt to put it into words makes it relative...we have a long history of danger with the absolute. People have put it into words and it has become very oppressive."

They try to define what is that something beyond. Krishnamurti says "Beyond all that...All that is something, part of an immensity", the emptiness, the silence, the energy etc. Bohm suggests " Silence, energy, whatever, ...even if you were to say there is something beyond that, still you logically leave room for going agian beyond that."  But Krishnamurti disagrees: "There is nothing beyond it. I stick to that. Not dogmatically or obstinately. I feel that that is the beginning and the ending of everything. The ending and the beginning are the same, right?". Bohm suggests: " If we take the ground from which it comes, it must be the ground which it falls" to which Krishnamurti replies" energy, emptiness, silence, all that is. All that. Not ground." because "There is nothing beyond it. No cause. If you have cause then you have ground." Bohm tries to understand "It comes from the ground, goes to the ground, but it does not begin or end."  But Krishnamurti replies: "There is no beginning and no ending...Is that death--not death in the sense I will die, but the complete ending of everything...Death of everything the mind has cultivated. This emptiness is not the product of the mind, of the particular mind...that emptiness can only exist when there is death--total death--of the particular.". Bohm asks, "So we are saying the ending of the particular, the death of the particular, is the emptiness, which is universal. Now you are saying that the universal also dies." to which Krishnamurti replies in the positive. Bohm does not understand. "Well, I think it becomes almost inexpressible if you say the universal is gone, because expression is the universal...what would it mean to talk of the ending of the universal? What would it mean to have the ending of the universal?" Then Krishnamurti explains" "Nothing. Why should it have a meaning if it is happening? What has that got to do with man?" Bohm asks for the ordinary person: " Let's say that man feels he must have some contact with the ultimate ground in his life, otherwise, there is no meaning." to which Krishnamurti replies: " But it hasn't. That ground hasn't any relationship with man...you have talked marvellously of sunsets, but what has that got to do with me? Will that or your talk help me to get over my ugliness? My quarrels with my wife or whatever it is?"

Bohm asks for us again. " we went into this logically starting from the suffering of mankind, showing it originates in a wrong turning, that leads inevitably..." and is interrupted by Krishnamurti: " Yes but man asks, help me get past the wrong turn. Put me on the right path. and to that, one says: please don't become anything....He won't listen" and the barrier is the "I"  or "more deeply, all your thoughts, deep attachments--all that is in your way. If you can't leave these, then you will have no relationship with that. But man doesn't want to leave these...What he wants is some comfortable, easy way of living without any trouble, and he can't have that....There is no meaning." Bohm replies" "And then people invent meaning...Even going back, the ancient religions have said similar things, that God is ground, so they seek God, you know." But Krishnamurti says, "Ah no, this isn't God...Give them hope, give them faith,...Make life a little more comfortable to live." Bohm then asks, "how is this to be conveyed to the ordinary man?..And what will we do in this world?" . Krishnamurti's punch line is "Live....And then if you have no conflict, no "I", there is something else operating." Bohm replies, "Yes it is important to say that, because the Christian idea of perfection may seem rather boring because there is nothing to do!" Bohm wants man to create meaning for himself through his own ability to create but Krishnamurti says that that must be left for another occasion. 

If this conversation proves anything, it proves how difficult it is for us to get out from our previous thoughts, our previous concepts, our past, personal or cultural. Yet that appears to be what Krishnamurti is trying to advocate: we must die to our past, our previous knowledge and learn to live everyday as if we were a new born baby, without being burdened by our past and everything we have learned. But I don't think that that path is for every one. Even if they are willing to do so, they may not be capable of doing so because the force of habit is simply too great especially when our habits operate at the unconscious level, without our being even aware that they are operating behind the scene, beneath the level of our awareness. .