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Preface by Pupul Jayakar and Sunanda Patwardhan - New Delhi - 11th May 1972

Preface by Pupul Jayakar and Sunanda Patwardhan - New Delhi - 11th May 1972

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Tradition and Revolution

Since 1947 J. Krishnamurti, while in India, has been regularly meeting and holding dialogues with a group of people drawn from a variety of cultural backgrounds and disciplines - intellectuals, politicians, artists, sannyasis. During these years, the methodology of investigation has richened and taken shape. What is revealed in these dialogues, as if through a microscope, is the extraordinarily fluid, vast and subtle mind of Krishnamurti and the operational process of perception. These dialogues are, however, not questions and answers. They are an investigation into the structure and nature of consciousness, an exploration of the mind, its movements, its frontiers and that which lies beyond. It is also an approach to the way of mutation.

There has been in these dialogues a coming together of several totally varied and conditioned minds. There has been a deep challenging of the mind of Krishnamurti, a relentless questioning that has opened up the depths of man's psyche. One is a witness not only to the expanding and deepening of the "limitless" but also to its impact on the limited mind. This very enquiry leaves the mind flexible, freeing it from the immediate past and from the grooves of centuries of conditioning.

In these dialogues Krishnamurti starts questioning from a totally tentative position, from a state of "not-knowing", and in a sense, therefore, he starts at the same level as the participants. During the discussion, various analytical enquiries are made; tentative and exploratory. There is a questioning without seeking immediate solution: a step by step observation of the processes of thought and its unfoldment - a movement of penetration and withdrawal, every movement plunging attention deeper and deeper into the recesses of the mind. A delicate wordless communication takes place; an exposure of the movement of negation as it meets the positive movement of thought. There is the "seeing" of fact, of "what is", and the mutation of "what is". This is again perceived from various directions to examine its validity.

The nature of duality and non-duality are revealed in simple language. In that state of questioning, a state when the questioner, the experiencer has ceased, in a flash, "truth" is revealed. It is a state of total non-thought.

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 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."

The revelation of the instant of mutation, of "what is", provides a totally new dimension to the whole field of intellectual and religious enquiry.

There may be repetitions in the dialogues but they have not been eliminated, because to do so would have inhibited the understanding of the nature of consciousness and the method of enquiry.

We feel that these discussions will be of major significance and of assistance to those seeking a clue to the understanding of the self and of life.