The Limits of Thought is a series of penetrating dialogues between the great spiritual leader, J. Krishnamurti and the renowned physicist, David Bohm.
The starting point of their engaging exchange is the question: If truth is something different than reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? We see Bohm and Krishnamurti explore the nature of consciousness and the condition of humanity. These enlightening dialogues address issues of truth, desire awareness, tradition, and love.
Limits of Thought is an important book by two very respected and important thinkers. Anyone interested to see how Krishnamurti and Bohm probe some of the most essential questions of our very existence will be drawn to this great work.

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Yes, you can access The Limits of Thought by David Bohm, J. Krishnamurti, Ray McCoy in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophie & Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher

Routledge

Year

2002

ISBN

9781134650262

Edition

Topic

Philosophie

Subtopic

Geschichte & Theorie der Philosophie

Part I Against the pressures of tradition

1 Living in truth

KRISHNAMURTI: Where shall we start, sir?

DAVID BOHM: Do you have any ideas?

KRISHNAMURTI: Lots of them. If truth is something totally different from reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? Can we talk about that?

DAVID BOHM: Yes.

KRISHNAMURTI: One would like to or one should or one has to act in truth. The action of reality is entirely different from the action of truth. Now, what is the action of truth? Is that action unrelated to the past, unrelated to an idea, an ideal? And therefore out of time? Is there ever an action out of time, or are actions always involved in time?

DAVID BOHM: Can you say that the truth acts in reality? That is, although reality may have no effect on truth, truth has some effect on reality?

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. But one would like to find out if one lives in truth, not in the truth of reality, but in that truth which is not related to reality. Reality is a process of thought, of thinking about something that is real or reflected upon, or distorted, such as illusion.
So what is action in truth? If it is not related to reality, if it is not an action in the movement of time, what is action then? Is there such action? Can my mind dissociate itself from the past and from the idea of ‘I shall be’, or ‘I will be’, or ‘I must be’ or ‘I should be’, which are projections of my own desires? Is there an action that is totally separate from all that?

DAVID BOHM: Perhaps we are going very fast. I think ordinarily the action is related to the fact.

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes, we said fact is that which is being made or that which is being done now.

DAVID BOHM: There is another meaning—that which is actually proceeding or that which is actually established by perception or by experience.

KRISHNAMURTI: Which is now.

DAVID BOHM: Yes.

KRISHNAMURTI: The seeing is the doing. Perceiving is the acting in the present. And is the present a continuous movement of the past through the present to the future, or is the present a thing that is whole, that is complete, that is sane, healthy, holy—everything conveyed by that word ‘whole’?
I think this is rather important to find out, because if a man wants to live in truth, this is his first question: what is action in relation to truth? I know action in relation to reality, which is based on memory, on environment, on circumstances, on adaptation, or which is an action to do something in the future.

DAVID BOHM: Is there a separation between truth and action?

KRISHNAMURTI: That’s it.

DAVID BOHM: Is there a relationship, or is it the truth which acts?

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. That’s right. Is truth action or does truth act unrelated to time?

DAVID BOHM: It acts unrelated to time, but it is action itself.

KRISHNAMURTI: That’s as we have said, perceiving is the doing.

DAVID BOHM: Yes, truth is what establishes the fact.

KRISHNAMURTI: And the fact is not only what is being done, what is being made, but the actuality of the moment.

DAVID BOHM: Yes. It is the actual act of perception which establishes the fact.

KRISHNAMURTI: That’s right. So is perception a movement of time, a thing that comes from the past to the present and the future? Or is perception unrelated to that?

DAVID BOHM: I’d say it is unrelated.

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. So are we saying that perception is action, and action is truth, and that truth is the perception of the actual, the what is, the moment?

DAVID BOHM: There is a peculiar history of that, because the pragmatists have said either that the truth is that which works or that the truth works. The working is not the same as the truth.

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. Quite.

DAVID BOHM: There is a moment of time between the truth and how it works, in that view.

KRISHNAMURTI: That’s wrong. The moment you have a gap, you…

DAVID BOHM: Yes, so the truth is action itself.

KRISHNAMURTI: Can a human being let truth operate?

DAVID BOHM: Would you say that the action, the operation of truth in reality, is intelligence?

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. It must be, of course.

DAVID BOHM: Because in some sense intelligence is an action of truth.

KRISHNAMURTI: It is not cultivable.

DAVID BOHM: It is very difficult. We have discussed intelligence before, and in some way we seem to be discussing truth in the role that we were previously giving intelligence. It is very hard to make these words clear.

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. What is the root meaning of that word ‘truth’?

DAVID BOHM: We discussed it last time we met. I looked it up carefully since then. The English word ‘true’ has the root meaning ‘honest’, ‘faithful’. And the Latin word ‘verus’ means ‘that which is’. I think both meanings are rather significant.

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes.

DAVID BOHM: I am saying that reality must be honest and faithful; that is, like the machine that runs true. The word ‘true’ in English does not have quite the same meaning as ‘verus’ in Latin, or it has other shades of meaning.

KRISHNAMURTI: Verus—that which is—of course. Sir, what I am trying to get at is whether a human being can live only in the present—in the sense that we are talking of the present. That is, to live with what is all the time, and not with what should be or what will be or what has been.

DAVID BOHM: I think the principal question is whether one can be clear on that which is not, but which appears to be that which is.

KRISHNAMURTI: Quite. Therefore we should go back, sir, to what perception is. If I can perceive reality clearly—all the illusions and the actual, the reasonableness and the unreasonableness of reality—if I see that clearly, then can there be a perception of what is, which we say is truth? That very perception is an action in which there is no operation of thought. Is that what we are trying to say?

DAVID BOHM: Yes. When we say perception of what is, then that is separation again.

KRISHNAMURTI: It is not; there is no observer and the observed, there is only perception.

DAVID BOHM: It is very hard in the language to avoid this, because, as I see it, the perception, or the fact, is what is. The act is what is.

KRISHNAMURTI: Yes. Are you saying, sir, that the what is has its own action?

DAVID BOHM: Yes, or it is its action.

KRISHNAMURTI: That is it. It is its own action. Yes.

DAVID BOHM: We have to be careful because the language continually tends to put in separation. We tend to think things are real and have some substance; that is, that they exist in themselves. We tend to think that what is is reality and that truth would only be correct knowledge about reality. But what we are proposing here is to turn it around to say that truth is what is, and reality as a whole is nothing but appearances. Reality is a kind of appearance that may be a correct appearance or that may be incorrect, may be an illusion. There is a tremendous habit to say that reality is what is.

KRISHNAMURTI: We have said that reality is a projection of thought, of what we think about, reflect upon. And anything that thought creates, makes, is a reality either as a distortion or as an actuality. We accept that. And we were trying to find out the relationship between truth and reality. Is there a connection between the two?
That’s one point. And the other is: is there an action that is different from the action of reality, that is the action of truth—no, not action of truth but truth acting? Whereas there is a division in reality.

DR PARCHURE: A division of what?

KRISHNAMURTI: Between the observer and the observed.

DAVID BOHM: Yes, the observer is one reality observing the other reality. But truth is indivisible.

KRISHNAMURTI: So is there an action in one’s life which is indivisible? If the mind cannot find that indivisible action, it must always be in time, in conflict, in sorrow, and in all that follows from that.

DAVID BOHM: One could think that reality is a field which contains all the things that might be there. It contains thought, and thought is real, and all these things react to each other and reflect on each other.

KRISHNAMURTI: They are interrelated.

DAVID BOHM: They interrelate by reaction and reflection. So my thought is not different from all the interrelations.

KRISHNAMURTI: If thought has created them, they are all interrelated.

DAVID BOHM: Now, if we look at nature, one view of nature says it’s real, but something beyond that seems to be implied.

KRISHNAMURTI: No, that tree is, therefore it is truth; but I can distort it.

DAVID BOHM: That’s the point I want to get at. If we say that the tree is that which is and is truth, we are in a way saying truth is a substance.

KRISHNAMURTI: I see.

DAVID BOHM: We are seeking a substance, something, that stands under the appearances. We seek it in reality. It has been the age-long habit to look for some solid, permanent reality that underlies all the changes and explains them so that we understand. But it may be that the whole of reality is no substance. Perhaps it does not have an independent existence, is a field, and what stands under this reality is truth. Would that make sense to you?

KRISHNAMURTI: But that would lead us to a great danger.

DAVID BOHM: There’s a danger in that. Is there any way of making this point clear?

KRISHNAMURTI...

Cover Page
Half Title page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Foreword
Preface: An introduction to Krishnamurti's work
Part I Against the pressures of tradition
Part II Seeing the illusions ofsecurity
Index