11. "It Ends"

The future of humanity was an apt topic to end the long series of dialogues. Although there are seven recordings in the archives titled 'Ojai small group table talks' with K and Bohm in Ojai in 1984, from 24th February to 3rd March, they have remained unpublished.

Mary Cadogan, who was the secretary of the Krishnamurti Foundation for three decades and edited the book The Ending of Time, suggested to both that one more session of dialogue be arranged. Bohm agreed, but Krishnamurti refused, referring strangely to Bohm's health.

There are various speculations and gossip about what happened, but no way to find out the truth. Krishnamurti briefly explained to Cadogan the reason for his refusal: "You know what happened at Ojai."

"Yes, David was ill", she answered. The topic was never again raised.

In Bohm's biography, David Peat writes that in spring 1984 Bohm flew to Ojai to meet Krishnamurti and attended seven table talks with several others, but felt weak and stressed.

So that was it. No more dialogues.

Yet I find it very difficult to imagine that there could be anything they had not covered in their dialogues. That is what Krishnamurti seems to have felt, too.

The memoirs of Mary Zimbalist offer a robust documentation of friendship and deep respect between Krishnamurti and Bohm. Zimbalist spent two decades closer to K than anybody. She tells how much K appreciated the chance to talk about topics he loved with someone who could share his passion.

Most people near Krishnamurti recognised Bohm's significance, but not all. To some, his pedantry was intellectual nitpicking that did not help in the transformation.

Some people near Bohm thought that a talented scientist wasted his time with this Asian mystic.

The two men came from totally different worlds and their lives were almost opposites. Their paths crossed, leaving a legacy with monumental significance for all who have grasped that our old roads lead to a dead end and disaster.

Professor Renée Weber met both men many times. In her book Dialogues with Scientists and Sages, Weber recounts these meetings.

One of four discussions with David Bohm gives an enlightening insight into meaning as a bridge between mind and matter. We react to the meanings we give to things, not to what they actually are.

Matter as such has no meaning, but observing it makes it important or insignificant. So basically, it is the context that matters. If we see that matter and meaning are part of the same system and are indissolubly connected, then there is no separation between them, and either everything is full of meaning, or nothing has any meaning. So the meaning is not in the object but in the observation.

The real meaning of everything is in the connection we have to it. This brings us back to the insight from which the dialogues started: the observer is the observed.

Some months later, Weber met Krishnamurti in Switzerland. It was June 1985, and the last year of Saanen gatherings. Weber describes that Krishnamurti looked 'remarkably well although he has just passed his 90th birthday, his face – once famous for its almost preternatural beauty – shows age, but is compelling still, intelligent eyes, silky silver hair and sculptured head'.

After hearing the theme and content of Weber's book project, Krishnamurti politely but firmly refused to give an interview or answer Weber's questions.

Instead, he spent over two hours passionately describing the sorrow that every human being lives with. He evoked the vision of a species bending its talents to probe its stellar origins in the remote past while its very continuity in the present and future lies in doubt.

In this struggle, humanity is together but feels separate. Krishnamurti regards scientists as responsible for 'fuelling the war-machine' and cooperating with corrupt governments. He uses the analogy of cancer to describe the human distress.

"If my son or brother has just died, I am not going to want to discuss the Big Bang with you. I am in pain and interested in this, not that."

That is why Krishnamurti has no interest in discussing science or knowledge. They are trapped in the past, but truth lies in the living present, in this moment, in the eternal now.

Krishnamurti gave over a thousand talks around the world. His last public talk took place in Madras in January 1986, six weeks before his passing. Over 60 years of public speaking ended with two words that had no self-centred sentimentality: "It ends."

Krishnamurti died in California 17th February 1986 at the age of 90.

David Bohm retired in 1987 but continued working at the university despite severe health problems. His book with F. David Peat, Science, Order and Creativity, was published in the same year, and, posthumously, with Professor Basil Hiley, a book called The Undivided Universe.

He also held eleven so-called Bohm seminars in Ojai during 1986-1992. The seminar of 1991 had to be cancelled due to his health. They were weekend seminars with about 50 participants. The content of the 1990 seminar was published as a seminal book called Thought as a System.

Worth mentioning is also the book Unfolding Meaning, an edited transcript of a dialogue weekend in Cotswold Hills in England with a group of 44 people of various backgrounds. To me, a book with photographer Mark Edwards, Changing Consciousness, witnesses the sheer brilliance of Bohm's view.

On October 27th 1992, Bohm phoned his wife from his study, telling her he would take a taxi home. After a heart attack, he died in the taxi near home.

It is not known what he talked about with the taxi driver, but the last words to his wife were: "I feel I´m on the edge of something."

Death is also the topic in the last dictation of the book Krishnamurti to Himself. After seeing a dead leaf, he wonders on March 30th 1984, why we human beings can't die as beautifully as that leaf.

"As one looked at that dead leaf with all its beauty and colour, maybe one would very deeply comprehend, be aware of, what one's own death must be, not at the very end but at the very beginning.

Death isn't some horrific thing, something to be avoided, something to be postponed, but something to be with day in and day out. And out of that comes an extraordinary sense of immensity.

We consider death the end of our mundane life, but it can also be an opening to the immensity of life. Seeing the sorrow of mankind and feeling the urgent need to act rightly, we have two alternatives: to react or to act.

Reacting means that the terror of thought continues. Acting means that the movement of ego stops and the mind is free to live and love without limits of thought. The energy of reaction is partial. It has a centre that is in endless conflict with other centres, whereas the energy of action is holistic.

Right action is not a matter of choice between two possibilities. We either see the world as it is or as we think it is.

When we actually see, we are factually free.