The Link #25 - David Bohm's First Meeting With K

The following was extracted from an interview of Saral Bohm by Javier Gómez Rodríguez in September 2004. It is essentially the same, though in a more conversational style, as Saral’s remembrance speech at the tribute for David held at The Krishnamurti Centre, Brockwood Park, in April 2005.

It was either in 1959 or the beginning of the 1960s that they first met. It was probably in the Spring of 1960. This is what happened.

David used to talk to me about his work, about the more philosophical ideas, because I, though not a scientist, was interested in that. He always made it understandable because he was such a good teacher. So I knew that in Quantum Theory, which was the main thing he was working on, there was this question that you can’t separate the observing instrument and that which is being observed. And one day we were in the public library in Bristol. (It’s so strange when you think about how things happen.) They had a very good philosophy section. There were all sorts of books, books by Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and other people like that; Dave was going through all these things. And I picked up a book off the shelf and it fell open to a page and I read the sentence “the observer is the observed”. So I passed it to Dave and said: “Well, Dave, this must be something to do with Quantum Theory.” And he just read the whole book through right there and then. He read very quickly; he could do speed reading. He couldn’t stand it that I took such a long time to read anything. He also had a sort of photographic mind; he saw wholes, he saw things as a whole. And he was absolutely fascinated by this book, The First and Last Freedom. Dave was very, very anxious to see if there were any more books. They had the three Commentaries on Living, so he took those home from the library. He said I should also read The First and Last Freedom, so he borrowed that as well.

He just felt that he had found what he had been looking for. And he wanted to get in touch with the people. We had never heard of Krishnamurti. We weren’t in that environment. We were more interested in science, philosophy and social questions. This man Krishnamurti was saying what David had been looking for in other fields and he wrote to the publisher, which at the time was Rajagopal, or KWINC, and asked whether the man was alive and did he ever come to England and were there any other books. They sent a book list and said that he had been ill, so he had not been to England for a while, but that he was coming that year. And they gave the address of the office here, which was run by Doris Pratt. They got in touch and we received this invitation to go to the talks. At the bottom of the invitation it said that, because Krishnaji had been ill, he wasn’t granting any interviews. So we went up to London for this first talk in Wimbledon. The place was only a sort of Scouts’ Hall; there were only about two hundred people there.

We stayed in a pretty awful little hotel in Cromwell Road because we didn’t have any money. And after that first talk Dave was ... I had never seen anything quite like that with him ... He was burning to talk to this man. So there we were, in this crummy old hotel and he said: “Oh, I really want to talk with him about what I’m doing in Physics.” But he remembered that they had said that he would not be seeing anyone because he wasn’t well. Dave was very shy, so I said: “You know what, Dave? You want this so much, write to them and maybe something will happen.” So he wrote on the note paper of this crummy hotel in Cromwell Road. He never signed his name as Professor Bohm, never ever; he just signed David Bohm and said he was a physicist and he would really like, if possible, to meet with Mr. Krishnamurti and tell him about what he was doing in Physics. The next day we got a telephone call from Doris to fix an appointment with Dave to come that day to meet with K. She also said that it would just be half an hour that he could give Dave. And Dave said to me: “You come, you come.” I said that I wasn’t invited, but he said: “Please come with me.” So we went. We got there a bit early, not to keep Krishnaji waiting.

I must say that when I read The First and Last Freedom I could see that much of what K was saying was true, but I didn’t want anything to do with it because I knew it was going to change everything for me. I thought I wanted what every woman wants, a home and a family, and I knew it wasn’t going to be that way. I just knew it. I had this very strong feeling. And it did: my life wasn’t what I had expected. So I wasn’t all that keen, but Dave wanted me to go.

When Doris opened the door, I said: “Do you think I could be with my husband?” She said: “Well, let’s see what Mr. Krishnamurti says.” She showed us into this room. K was very careful about time; he hated to be late and he came in exactly on time. We introduced ourselves and I then asked: “Would it be possible for me to stay?” He didn’t say yes or no; he turned to Dave and said: “Would you mind, sir?” This made such an impression on me that it changed the way I looked at it. Because by then I had met a lot of people, both through my own work and David’s, and they would have said either yes or no, and that he didn’t do that I found quite extraordinary.

They were sitting quite close to one another. They were just looking at each other. Nothing was said. I didn’t realize that there was a lot happening between them. But nothing was said and I was getting worried because I knew Dave wanted to talk about his work with him, they had only half an hour and the time was going. So I said: “You know, Mr. Krishnamurti, my husband would like to talk with you about his work.” So then he said: “Well, I am not a scientist, but please!” And then it was like turning on a tap; it just came pouring out from Dave. And when Dave started to speak, there was such a quality of listening, of absolute, total attention, which is very, very rare. Generally when we listen to something we are all the time trying to understand or interpret it. But here was someone who absolutely listened, and this affected me tremendously. Then, at one time, Dave used the word ‘totality’ and Krishnaji jumped up and embraced him and said: “That’s it, sir! That’s it!” He got very excited.

Then Doris came in and said that Krishnaji’s lunch was ready. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said but neither of the two men wanted to end the meeting. When she came in again, he said: “Well, they have prepared my lunch.” Anneke, from Holland, was the one who used to do the cooking then. But even then he walked part of the way down to the station with us. Then he said: “I must go because they have the lunch prepared.” And then every time he came to England – I think it was every time – we would be invited and the two men would just talk. Nothing was recorded. I was like the fly on the wall and can’t recall very much. It was more the quality of what went on rather than the actual words.

I remember Krishnaji saying at the end of one such meeting: “We’ve really learnt, sir; we’ve done something here; we’ve learnt something together.” And there was that feeling of learning together. It wasn’t a teacher-student relationship. They met as friends and discussed everything in an open and simple way. It was really that they were exploring and extraordinary things came out. In a way it was a pity that they were not recorded but, on the other hand, I don’t feel David would have done it if they had been recorded. Because once there was the tape recorder, it started to change. There was a new group of people around Krishnaji and he wanted them to be in the discussion. So it was different.

Inquiry was the most important thing. When we found that book in the library, that’s what Dave picked up. Because although for him Physics was important, it was the inquiry into these things that mattered to him. And that’s what K and Dave did together. They inquired together. This was a great joy to them both; they were happy and it showed. It was beautiful to watch this, just to see how the movement went. It was important for Dave that language should be used properly, because language is a very powerful tool that can be used to cover up or to open up and K was using a sort of poetic language. Those first meetings were quite extraordinary.

One day, it might have been after the first or the second meeting, we decided to walk up to Wimbledon Common, which wasn’t far from where Krishnaji was living. We were walking on the Common and I asked Dave what he was feeling. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said to me: “The sky is different, it’s bigger.”