San Diego, 1974

K: So, death becomes a living when the content of consciousness, which makes its own frontier, its own limitation, comes to an end. And this is not a theory, not a speculative, intellectual grasp, but the actual perception of attachment. I am taking that as an example, being attached to something - property, man, woman, the book I have written, or the knowledge I have acquired. The attachment. And the battle to be detached. Because attachment brings pain. Therefore I say to myself, I must be detached. And the battle begins. And the whole content of my consciousness is this - the battle which we described previously. Now can that content be emptied - empty itself? Not emptied by an act of perception - you understand? - empty itself. Which means can this whole content be observed, with its unconscious content? You follow, sir?

A: Yes, I do. I'm thinking.

K: I can be consciously aware of the content of my consciousness - my house, my property, my wife, my children, my job, the things I have acquired, the things I have learned. I can be consciously aware of all that. But also there is a deeper content in the very recesses of my mind which is racial, collective, acquired, the things that unconsciously I have gathered, the influences, the pressures, the strains of living in a world that is corrupt. All that has seeped in, all that has gathered in there.