1983

New Delhi 1983

New Delhi 2nd Public Talk 7th November, 1983

May we continue with what we were talking about yesterday evening? We were saying, weren't we, that we all have images not only psychological images but images outside of us. And these images separate man from man - the national images, the religious images and so on. They have been one of the causes, perhaps the major cause of war. Ideals have divided man, ideologies, the Left, the extreme Left, the extreme Right and the centre, they are all ideologies and they have separated man. Ideas. The original meaning of that word `idea', from the Greek, meant to observe, not to make an abstraction of what one observes. Ideas, ideals, beliefs, faith, a particular devotion to a particular ideal, image and so on, throughout the world for the last millennia, they have divided man against man. And we still carry those ideals, those images, conclusions. And we seem to be never free from any of those things. One asks why, if one is at all aware of what is happening in the world, what is happening in ourselves, psychologically, inwardly, inside the skin, as it were, why do men, intelligent, who have studied history, why do such people carry ideals? Why do you, if I may ask, if one may ask most politely, why do you have ideals? Are you aware, if you have them, that they separate people and therefore bring about conflict? Is it because in those ideals, conclusions, opinions we find security, however fleeting, however transient they be, we find a certain sense of protection, a certain sense of achievement, trying to achieve something. And that gives us a great deal of energy. I do not know if you have not observed deeply committed idealists, how dangerous they are.

And if one is aware that these images created by the hand or by the mind, by thought, have been again a great contributory factor to war. That is, to kill man by another man, inhumanity, bestiality, that has been the lot of man for thousands upon thousands of years. And we are still going on with it, though we are supposed to be more advanced, more progressive, but we are really, inwardly, psychologically quite primitive, quite barbarous, barbarians. I hope, one hopes, you do not mind the speaker using all these words. They apply.

And as we were saying yesterday, in relationship, however intimate, however casual, however passing, in that relationship we create images about each other. You certainly have an image about the speaker, otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here. And so the image becomes far more important than what is being said. What is being said becomes irrelevant when the image, the reputation, all that nonsense, intervenes, acts as a block, so that you do not actually listen to what the speaker is saying. So, could we, this evening, put aside our opinions, our images and look, because where there are images there is no humility. The essence of humility is to be free of all images. You cannot cultivate humility, because we are arrogant people, proud in our knowledge, in our achievements, in our thinking. And so knowledge prevents us from being extraordinarily aware of the depth and the beauty of humility. It is only when there is such humility one begins to learn about oneself, about the world and ask if there is something far beyond the measure of thought.

And as we were saying yesterday, we have lived with conflict all the days of our life. Until we die everything has become a conflict. And one of the causes of conflict, as we said, is the formation and the cultivation and the nourishing of these images. And, as we said yesterday too, you are not hearing a lecture, a sermon, but together, as two friends who are concerned seriously with the world, the appalling state it is in and our own confusions, our own anxiety, fear, our own sorrow, which is our daily life. To understand that daily life, hypothesis is not necessary, no theory, no conclusions, because those conclusions, theories, hypotheses, suppositions, all are unreal. What is real is our daily life. And if our daily life is confused, is in disorder, our society, our environment becomes also disorderly, confused. We have said all this yesterday.

We also said that our brains which evolved through millennia upon millennia, our brains which is the centre of all our thinking, which is a centre of all our reactions and actions, it is the centre also for all our consciousness. That brain which has extraordinary capacity in one direction, the direction of war, science, medicine, surgery, hygiene, transportation and so on. It has got extraordinary capacity, far more perhaps than the computer, though they are trying to find out the ultimate mechanical intelligence which is the computer. I don't know if you have gone into that question, or even talked to people about it. They are trying to bring about a computer that can think, act, invent gods and all that the human beings do much more rapidly, instantly, though perhaps it cannot look at the beauty of the sky, the evening light, or the solemn stillness of the evening. So our brains in one direction materially, technologically have been capable of doing the most astonishing things. And in the other direction psychologically, inwardly the brain has remained more or less what it has been for thousands of years, primitive, brutal, violent and so on. And we are concerned not with the technological aspect of the brain and its capacity in that direction but with the condition of man, of human beings who have lived for so long upon this beautiful earth and are still very violent, without any sense of compassion, without any love and so on. Whether that brain, that is, your brain, can be freed from its own condition. That is, to understand the whole content of its activity, the whole content of its consciousness with its reactions, its inventions of gods and so on, the whole content. Content is what you are, what every human being in the world is, his fame, his belief, his anxiety, his guilt, his remorse, his fears and the pleasure pursuit and the burden of infinite sorrow and the search for permanent security. This is our consciousness. Nobody can deny that. You may add to it, or take away something, but it is still consciousness with all its reactions and responses, all the things that man throughout his existence has collected through experience, through knowledge, through thought. That is our consciousness. That is what we are.

I hope, one hopes, that you and the speaker are sharing this thing together, not merely listening to what he is saying, which is also important, but far more important that we look at the thing together. Not the speaker looks and then conveys it to you, either to accept or deny, but rather together intelligently, sanely, with a sense of affection, look, look what we are, not what we should be. What `we should be' is unreal. It has no meaning, whether you are going to be a great man next life or a saint, all that stuff, it is unreal, it has no validity, it has no stability. And if we lay our foundation on something unreal, a world of make-belief, then we are escaping, running away from reality of our daily life.

And we are thinking together, please this is important, not that I think and then convey it to you, but rather that you and the speaker are treading the same road, taking the same journey however slowly, however carefully, observing every detail, not skipping anything, avoiding anything. Then we can communicate with each other. Then there is no resistance, it isn't the speaker knows and you don't know, but together to understand this extraordinary complex society which human beings have created and their own life, their own house which is in such disorder, if we see it together, then you don't want a leader, either politically, religiously or in any other direction. If you see it for yourself, the fact, not translate the fact according to your tradition, your desire, but to look at the fact without any reaction. Then by looking at the fact very carefully, then the fact then reveals its whole content. So please be good enough to think together.

Our concern is whether the human brain which is so conditioned, whether that brain which has such immense capacity and which has been held by condition, and as long as that condition exists it has no holistic energy. Do you understand the word `holistic', a scientific word which means the whole. And to find out for oneself by careful observation, not analysis. When you analyse, who is the analyser? Right? Is the analyser different from the analysed? You may analyse a tree, or the seas, the waves, the dolphins - one does not know if you have seen the beauty of a dolphin. I won't go into all that for the moment. Those you can analyse by careful study something outside of us. So when you analyse yourself who is it that is analysing? Do you understand that question? Is the analyser different from the analysed? Why does one have to explain a very simple thing? One does not have to explain the beauty of the sky, the beauty of an evening star, the love a person, you don't analyse, you love. You see, if you begin to analyse love and find out you love somebody because it gives you comfort, gives you a sense of security, then that is not love. So please find out for yourself the significance of analysis. Apart from the professional psychiatrists, psychologists, apart from them, you have to learn, understand your whole structure of yourself. If you depend on a therapist, a psychotherapist, a psychiatrist and so on, then you are always depending on someone. But if you can discover for oneself the truth of all this, then there is no dependence on anything. That gives you tremendous energy, vitality and clarity.

So it is not a question of analysis. We are not analysing the content of consciousness. We are observing. If you observe as though it was something outside of you, then there is a gap between you and that which you observe. What you observe, is it not yourself? You cannot separate yourself from what you are. You may analyse, but that separation is still the analyser who is also being analysed. Do you follow all this? So analysis is totally irrelevant. What is relevant is observation, how you observe yourself. If the observer is examining what he sees, or translates what he sees, then the observer separates himself from the thing which he is observing. Are you getting nearer to what I am trying to explain? That is, when you are angry, is that anger different from you? When you are jealous, as most people are, is that jealousy different from you? You are that jealousy, at that moment, you are full of it, that feeling, which includes hate, antagonism, violence, at that moment, at that second you are that. Then a few seconds, or minutes later, you say, I have been jealous. Then you begin to analyse jealousy. You follow? You have separated yourself from the fact. So the observer is the past. Right? The past accumulating knowledge about jealousy. And that accumulated knowledge is the observer who says, I am different from that feeling which I have had some time before. So, can you observe, is there an observation without the observer? Do you understand all this? I don't know what I have got to explain all this.

When you look at your friend, or your wife, or your husband, or your girl friend, can you look, observe, without a single thought? You can't. To observe your wife and so on, it is not possible because of all the knowledge you have acquired, gathered about her and she about you. That knowledge prevents you from looking. Right? That is simple. If I have met you before I have a certain image of you and the next time I meet you I project that image. Therefore I do not meet you at all. Whereas to observe without knowledge - if I want to understand you, I can't say, he is a Hindu, he is a Sikh, he is German, British, that prevents me from understanding. My opinions about you prevents me from understanding you. Therefore, if I want to understand you with all my heart and mind, I put all that aside. Then I observe. Are you doing that? Are you doing that now as we are talking, or you are going to do that some time later? The `later, some time' becomes an impediment. What is to be done is to be done now, not tomorrow. So if that is at least slightly clear, and I hope, one hopes, that is more clear than your faces show, we can proceed.

We can proceed to examine, to observe - I won't use the word `examine'-to observe the content of our consciousness which is what we are, what each one of us is. This consciousness is shared by all humanity. You go to the far west, California, there the human beings like you with a different affluent world, they are like you, angry, jealous, violent, insecure, uncertain about themselves, just like you. Right? You come nearer, Europe, German, British, Czechoslovakian or Yugoslavian and so on or the amusing Italian, they are all like you. They worship their own particular god, and you worship your own particular god out of fear. If you are free of fear you don't have gods. We will go into that later.

So this consciousness, which you think is yours, is shared by all humanity. Right? That is a fact. You don't need to have to have proof, you talk to an Englishman, he may be proud, reserved and so on, but then you get behind it he is just like the rest of mankind. He is unemployed, he goes to church, hoping somebody will help him, somebody will give him a sense of sense of security. Right? Just like you, the rest of the world is. Right? You have to see that fact. It is not the speaker's invention. It is a fact. So if your consciousness, which you have thought is yours, you find that it is shared by all humanity then you are no longer an individual. Right? It is a shock, you are no longer an individual. And humanity throughout the ages, has thought each person is separate, is a separate soul, separate atman. You know all that stuff. And the whole sociological structure is based on that, you and me. You have power, and I have no power, but when you realize the fact, the reality, the truth that all human beings share the same consciousness, because all human beings go through great travail, great trouble, great confusion, they hate, they quarrel, they are jealous, they are sexual and so on and so on. So you are no longer an individual. Do you understand that? You may like to think you are an individual, individual freedom, individual success, individual god, my own path different from yours. Do you understand? To realize that fact that you are no longer individual means a tremendous psychological change. It is not mere verbal description, but it is a fundamental, radical revolution in the psyche that you are the entire humanity. When one realizes that, you will never kill another human being. It is like, it is our earth, it is not Indian earth, it is not European earth, or the Russian earth, or the American, it is our earth, and we are the rest of humanity. Do you understand what that means? This needs a great sense of compassion, a great sense of responsibility.

So let's proceed. To observe, not as you observe a fish in an aquarium, but to observe what we are. First of all, to observe we must understand the nature of thought,which we went into briefly yesterday, and also the nature of time. This becomes serious, please. Not that what we have said a few minutes ago was not serious, it still is, but this requires a great deal of attention, a great deal of, not concentration - concentration is deadly to attention. It requires attention for you to look, to give your energy, the whole of your being, to find out. We said, thought is limited, yesterday, because thought is based on knowledge and knowledge is based on experience. You see in the scientific world, through constant experience, one hypothesis after another, one theory after another, breaking it down, trying to prove it, accumulating more and more knowledge. No scientist worth his salt will ever say, knowledge is complete. No book, no religious book can ever be complete, it is written down by thought. The words used are the symbol of thought.

So please observe for yourself that your knowledge, your experience is always, everlastingly conditioned, limited. That is a fact. So your thinking is also limited. And any action born of thought which is limited must inevitably create conflict between you and another. Right? Because the very nature of thought is divisive, because it is limited. You follow, not what the speaker is saying, but you yourself are observing, seeing the fact, the truth for yourself that thought will always be limited, because it is based on knowledge, based on experience. And as thought itself is a fragment, because it is limited, therefore, the solution for all our problems is not through thought.

What is a problem, the meaning of that word, not the problem itself, but what you say, problem - what does that word mean? The root meaning of that word is something thrown at you, something that acts as a challenge to you. Right? That is the meaning of that word, from Latin and Green and so on, I won't go into it - something that is actually thrown at you. That's a problem. And our brains from childhood have been trained, educated to solve problems. Right? A child goes to school and he has to learn mathematics, which is a problem to the child, then geography, history, biology, physics, everything becomes a problem. So his brain, which is your brain, is conditioned to solve problems. Right? So you never solve problems. Do you understand? If my brain is conditioned to solve problems I look at life as a problem, so we are always trying to solve problems. As the politicians are doing throughout the world, they are trying to solve problems, and so increasing problems. And they have never solved any problems because their brains - are there any politicians here? Forgive me! - so their brains are trained, educated from childhood to solve problems. And therefore they have never solved any problems. On the contrary they have increased problems. Don't laugh at the politicians. You are also a politician. The politician is not different from you.

So please understand this very important fact that as long as your brain is trained to solve problems, as the brain itself has become a problem, it can never solve it. Do you understand? So is it possible to have a brain that has no problem? Then only it can solve problems. Do you understand this? Please capture this, please understand this as depth, not superficially. To live a life without a single problem, that means to be free, the brain being free of its education to solve problems, so that it can look at problems, because it is only when there is freedom you can observe. You know that word `freedom', implies, affection, love. A mind burdened with problems can never love.

I do not know if you understand all this, at least some of you do, I hope. Understand not intellectually, but actually and then put it in life.

So our consciousness is not separate from the rest of humanity. That is a tremendous revelation, greater than any other revelations in any other books, because it then brings about a tremendous, radical change. You are humanity. Do you understand this? So if you are, if your house is not in order, the rest of humanity is not in order. So let us together examine, let us together observe the content of our consciousness, of ourselves. One of the factors is thought and time. Thought has become the major factor. It is the only factor because it has accumulated the whole content of our consciousness. Thought, as we said, is born of experience, knowledge, stored in the brain as memory and from memory thought exists. This whole process is instantaneous. And that thought is limited. Right? This is clear, simple.

Then you must look at time, because for us time is extraordinarily important: the tomorrow with its hope, with its danger, with its sense of achievement, the tomorrow - that tomorrow may be a hundred tomorrows, but it is still tomorrow. That tomorrow is the time of yesterdays. Right? Do you understand this? Yesterday, when you say, yesterday, it is already the past and therefore it is part of time, when you say, it's twelve o'clock, it is past eleven o'clock. So yesterday and many thousand yesterdays are the result of a continuous movement of time. Right? Do you understand? Time, not only physical time, but psychological time: I will be, I am not, but I will be. That is time. I am not good - will any of you say that? You won't! - but I will be good. I am ignorant, but I will be learned. This life has been unsatisfactory, miserable, perhaps next life. The next life is what you are now. Right? If you don't change now you will be what you are tomorrow. Only we postpone to the next life - if there is a next life. But we won't go into that for the moment. Time to achieve, to learn, to become, to become a success, to find enlightenment, to meditate, takes time, both chronologically as well as psychologically is tremendously important. Right? Because your whole life is based on time. Your business, your learning about technology, learning about computer, learning a new language, learning how to drive a car, how to play a violin, or this or that, that requires time. Please listen to this carefully. To learn a language requires time. To learn about any technology requires time. That same, requiring time, is extended to the psychological field. Do you understand?

I need time to learn how to drive a car. So I also need time to learn about myself. It is the same movement. Are you following this? So we must understand the nature of time. There is time outwardly, the sun rises, sun sets. The sun rises at a certain time in the winter and sets at a certain time. The sun rises at mid summer at a certain time, sets at a certain time, and so on. All that is external time. But also we have an internal time which is based on becoming. Right? I have an ideal of non-violence, which you are so fond of, and in the meantime I am violent and one day I am going to get there. Right? In the meantime you are violent. So non-violence is a fallacy. It sounds good. All your saints have preached it, even the recent ones. And you like that, but the fact is that you are violent. That is fact and non-violence is a non-fact. Face it. If you are pursuing non-violence you are really avoiding the actual fact of your being violent. And to face that is more important than the pursuit of non-violence. However much you may talk about non-violence you are actually terribly violent.

So there are these two factors in our lives, major factors: thought and time. You cannot deny that. It is a fact. Are they separate? Is not thought time? Right? You are following all this? Please, I am not teaching you. I am only pointing out - not even pointing out, we are thinking together. We are both of us sharing the food, sharing the food that has been put before us. It is the food that matters, and the food, if it is properly balanced food, nourishes. And this food is thought and time which you must share with the speaker. That means you must understand the nature of time, which is also very complex, as thought is. We are pointing out, both our movements. Thought is a movement and time is a movement. So they are one; it is not thought is separate, time is separate. Thought has created time. Right? I am this and I will be that. That movement is brought about by thought. I will be, I will achieve my ideal. That is a movement of thought including in time. When you say, I will achieve, achievement means time. Right? I hope you see all this together.

So these are the major factors of life, time plus thought. And to look, to observe the content of our consciousness which is shared by all humanity, and therefore you and the rest are humanity. that's a marvellous thing if you understand it. That you are the rest of mankind, that you are not separate from the rest of mankind. So we can examine, so we can observe the content, which is shared by all living things. Do you understand? Then that thing is sacred, that is the holiest of things, because then there is no separation, there is no division. Then your wife is you and you are the wife.

The thing we worship is not love. Your scriptures, your books, your gurus, temples, in there, there is no truth. Truth is to be found in the understanding of your whole being. And is it very near. You don't have to go very far to find truth. You don't have to go to Kashi, to Mecca, to Rome. It is there where you are. Forgive the speaker for his passion.

So let us observe one of the contents of our consciousness. From childhood we are psychologically being hurt. That is a fact. The parents hurt, society hurts, the school with their examinations, with their marks, with their comparison, hurt the child. This is a fact. And we carry this hurt throughout life. And that hurt makes us build a wall round ourselves, so as not to be hurt any more. Have you not noticed this? Have you not been hurt from childhood, all of us? Of course, obviously. It shows from your face. And what is it that is hurt? You say, I am hurt - what is `you' that is hurt? The image that you have built about yourself. Right? That is hurt and you have identified yourself with that image. If you had no image you would never be hurt. Right? Which means you have no identification with anything. Where there is identification, with a family, with an ideal, you are always going to be bruised, shaken, hurt, frightened.

So can you live - please, this is a very serious question - can you live without a single image? Otherwise you will always be hurt and also you will never have the beauty of humility. So to become aware of your image that is hurt and in that awareness be intensely aware without any choice-don't choose, you can't choose in awareness. If you are aware now, as you are sitting under a tent, if you are aware of all the colour as you come in, the shape of the tent, the person sitting next to you, the clothes he is wearing - just to observe, not say, I don't like that colour, or the man I am sitting next to he smells, or he is not clean, or his shirt not what I like. So awareness is limited. But if you are aware without any choice, without any direction, then that awareness reveals everything.

So to be aware of the image that you have about yourself, about another, that image of nationality, identified with a nation and so on, that image, as long as you have it, you are going to have grief, pain, it gets hurt. So the question is: can you live without any image? One can. If you understand, if you see the fact, the fact that as long as you have an image and identify with that image you are going to have great problems. And your brain is trained to solve problems, therefore you are caught in problems. But if you see the fact, not as a problem, that as long as you have an image it must be shattered by somebody, therefore you get hurt. Which means one of the contents of our consciousness is fear. Shall I go into it now?

It is a very complex problem because we have lived with fear all the days of our lives. It is a dark shadow, it is something humanity has borne, carried for millions of years. Each one, we know what fear is, fear of the past, the remorse, the guilt, the things that have been done and should not have, the regrets. Fear is very complex. And to understand fear, not verbally, not merely intellectually, but to face the fact that each one of us is scared, frightened. And we have never been able to solve that problem. We carry it with us as our shadow. Fear means to be alone, finding oneself lonely, unloved and seeking love, fear of what might happen, lose my job, I will be one of the unemployed. There are people in the world who do not know what work is. For the rest of their lives they will never work, not because they are crippled, but because society, governments are so limited, so narrow, so brutal, thousands upon thousands, in England nearly four million people are unemployed, and in this country, god knows how many - those people are afraid. You may have a good job, you may have security, but there is always this fear of tomorrow; not only the fear of tomorrow, but the fear of death, fear of never being whole, complete. So fear is an extraordinarily complex problem, not to be dealt with in a few minutes. It is a vast area of our life and in that area you must tread very slowly, carefully, tentatively. It is not how to end fear, but in the very understanding the depth of it, the quality of it, there is an end to fear completely, that can never return, a freedom absolute, psychological freedom from fear. Then no god, no prayer, no scriptures exist. It is only the fearful mind, fearful brain that seeks security in things illusory.

So, as it is now quarter past seven we have to stop. We will go into all this next Saturday and Sunday.

1983

New Delhi 1983

New Delhi 2nd Public Talk 7th November, 1983

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