RELATIONSHIP

The cessation of violence, which we have just been considering, does not necessarily mean a state of mind which is at peace with itself and therefore at peace in all its relationships.

Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In all our relationships each one of us builds am image about the other, and these two images have relationships, not the human beings themselves. The wife has an image about the husband—perhaps not consciously, but nevertheless it is there—and the husband has an image about the wife. One has an image about one’s country and about oneself, and we are always strengthening these images by adding more and more to them. And it is these images which have relationship. The actual relationship between two human beings completely ends when there is the formation of images.

Relationship based on these images can obviously never bring about peace in the relationship because the images are fictitious, and one cannot live in an abstraction. And yet that is what we are all doing: living in ideas, in theories, in symbols, in images which we have created about ourselves and others and which are not realities at all. All our relationships, whether they be with property, ideas or people, are based essentially on this image-forming, and hence there is always conflict.

How it is possible then to be completely at peace within ourselves and in all our relationships with others? After all, life is a movement in relationship; otherwise there is no life at all, and if that life is based on an abstraction, an idea, or a speculative assumption, then such abstract living must inevitably bring about a relationship which becomes a battlefield. So is it at all possible for man to live a completely orderly inward life without any form of compulsion, imitation, suppression or sublimation? Can he bring about such order within himself that it is of ideas—an inward tranquillity which knows no disturbance at any moment—not in some fantastic mythical abstract world but in the daily life of the home and the office?

I think we should go into this question very carefully because there is not one spot in our consciousness untouched by conflict. In all our relationships, whether with the most intimate person or with a neighbour or with society, this conflict exists—conflict being contradiction, a state of division, separation, a duality. Observing ourselves and our relationships to society, we see that at all levels of our being there is conflict—minor or major conflict which brings about very superficial responses or devastating results.

Man has accepted conflict as an innate part of daily existence because he has accepted competition, jealousy, greed, acquisitiveness, and aggression as a natural way of life. When we accept such a way of life, we accept the structure of society as it is and live within the pattern of respectability. And that is what most of us are caught in because most of us want to be terribly respectable. When we examine our own minds and hearts, the way we think, the way we fell and how we act in our daily lives, we observe that as long as we conform to the pattern of society, life must be a battlefield. If we do not accept it—and no religious person can possibly accept such a society—then we will be completely free from the psychological structure of society.

Most of us are rich with the things of society. What society has created in us and what we have created in ourselves are greed, envy, anger, hate, jealousy, anxiety—and with all these we are very rich. The various religions throughout the world have preached poverty. The monk assumes a robe, changes his name, shaves his head, enters a cell and takes a vow of poverty and chastity; in the East he has one loincloth, one robe, one meal a day—and we all respect such poverty. But those men who have assumed the robe of poverty are still inwardly, psychologically, rich with the things of society because they are still seeking position and prestige; they belong to this order or that order, this religion or that religion, they still live in the divisions of a culture, a tradition. That is not poverty. Poverty is to be completely free of society, though one may have few more clothes, a few more meals—good God, who cares? But unfortunately in most people there is this urge for exhibitionism.

Poverty becomes a marvellously beautiful thing when the mind is free of society. One must become poor inwardly, for then there is no seeking, no desire, no—nothing! It is only this inward poverty that can see the truth of a life in which there is so conflict at all. Such a life is a benediction not to be found in any church or any temple.

How is it possible then to free ourselves from the psychological structure of society, which is to free ourselves from the essence of conflict? It is not difficult to trim and lop off certain branches of conflict, but we are asking ourselves whether it is possible to live in complete inward and therefore outward tranquillity. This does not mean that we shall vegetate or stagnate. On the contrary, we shall become dynamic, vital, full of energy.

To understand and to be free of any problem we need a great deal of passionate and sustained energy, not only physical and intellectual energy but energy that is not dependent on any motive, any psychological stimulus or drug. If we are dependent on any stimulus, that very stimulus makes the mind dull and insensitive. By taking some form of drug we may find enough energy temporarily to see things very clearly, but we revert to our former state and therefore become dependent on that drug more and more. So all stimulation, whether of the church or of alcohol or of drugs or of the written or spoken word, will inevitably bring about dependence, and that dependence prevents us from seeing clearly for ourselves and therefore from having vital energy.

We all unfortunately depend psychologically on something. Why do we depend? Why is there this urge to depend? We are taking this journey together; you are not waiting for me to tell you the cause of your dependence. If we inquire together that discovery will be your own, and hence, being yours, it will give you vitality.

I discover for myself that I depend on something—an audience, say, which will stimulate me. I derive from that audience, from addressing a large group of people, a kind of energy. And therefore I depend on that audience, on those people, whether they agree or disagree. The more they disagree the more vitality they give me. If they agree it becomes a very shallow, empty thing. So I discover that i need an audience because it is a very stimulating thing to address people. Now why? Why do I depend? Because in myself I am shallow, in myself I have nothing, in myself I have no source which is always full and rich, vital, moving, living. So I depend. I have discovered the cause.

GLOBAL WARMING AFFECTS HUMAN LIFE

The Confidence of Innocence

 WE HAVE BEEN discussing the question of revolt within the prison: how all reformers, idealists, and others who are incessantly active in producing certain results are always revolting within the walls of their own conditioning, within the walls of their own social structure, within the cultural pattern of civilization which is an expression of the collective will of the many. I think it would now be worthwhile if we could see what confidence is and how it comes about.

            Through initiative there comes about confidence, but initiative within the pattern only brings self-confidence, which is entirely differently from confidence without the self. Do you know what it means to have confidence? If you do something with your own hands, if you plant a tree and see it grow, if you paint a picture, or write a poem, or, when you are older, build a bridge or run some administrative job extremely well, it gives you confidence that you are able to do something. But, you see, confidence as we know it now is always within the prison, the prison which society—whether communist, Hindu, or Christian—has built around us. Initiative within the prison does create a certain confidence, because you feel you can do things: you can design a motor, be a very good doctor, an excellent scientist, and so on. But this feeling of confidence which comes with the capacity to succeed within the social structure, or to reform, to give more light, to decorate the interior of the prison is really self –confidence: you know you can do something, and you feel important in doing it. Whereas, when through investigating, through understanding, you break away from the social structure of which you are apart, there comes an entirely different kind of confidence which is without the sense of self-importance; and if we can understand the difference between these two—between self—confidence and confidence without the self—I think it will have great significance in our life.

            When you play a game very well, like badminton, cricket, or football, you have a certain sense of confidence, have you not? It gives you the feeling that you are pretty good at it. If you are quick at solving mathematical problems, that also breeds a sense of self-assurance. When confidence is born of action within the social structure, there always goes with it a strange arrogance, does there not? The confidence of a man who can do things, who is capable achieving result, is always colored by this arrogance of the self, the feeling, ‘It is I who do it.’ So, in the very act of achieving a result, of bringing about a social reform within the prison, there is the arrogance of the self, the feeling that I have done it, that my ideal is important, that my group has succeeded. This sense of the ‘me’ and the ‘mine’ always goes with the confidence that expresses itself within the social prison.

            Have you not noticed how arrogant idealists are? The political leaders who bring about certain results, who achieve great reforms — have you not, noticed that they are full of themselves, puffed up with their ideals and their achievements? In their own estimation they are very important. Read a few of the political speeches, watch some of these people who call themselves reformers,  and you will see that in the very process of reformation they are cultivating their own ego: their reforms, however extensive, are still within the prison; therefore they are destructive and ultimately bring more misery and conflict to man.

            Now, if you can see through this whole social structure, the cultural pattern og the collective will which we call civilization—if you can understand all that and break away from it, break through the prison walls of your particular society, whether Hindu, Communist, or Christian, then you will find that there comes a confidence which is not tainted with the sense of arrogance. It is the confidence of innocence. It like the confidence of a child who is so completely innocent he will try anything. It is this innocent confidence that will bring about a new civilization, but this innocent confidence cannot come into being as long as you remain within the social pattern.

            Please do listen to this carefully. The speaker is not in the least important, but it is very important for you to understand the truth of what being said. After all, that is education, is it not? The function of education is not to make you fit into the social pattern; on the contrary, it is to help you to understand completely, deeply, fully and thereby break away from the social pattern, so that you are an individual without that arrogance of the self, but you have confidence because you are really innocent.

            It is not a great tragedy that almost all of us are only concerned either with how to fit into society or how to reform it? Have you noticed that most of the questions you have asked reflect his attitude? You are saying, in effect, ‘How can I fit into society? What will my father and mother say, and what will happen to me if I don’t?’ Such an attitude destroys whatever confidence, whatever initiative you have. And you leave school and college like so many automations, highly efficient perhaps, but without creative flame. That is why it is so important to understand the society, the environment in which one lives and, in that very process of understanding, break away from it.

 

            You see, this is a problem allover the world. Man is seeking a new response, a new approach to life, because the old ways are decaying, whether in Europe, in Russia, or here. Life is a continual challenge, and merrily to try to bring about a better economic order is not a total response to that challenge, which is always new; and when cultures, peoples, civilizations are incapable of responding totally to the challenge of the new, they are destroyed.

            Unless you are properly educated, unless you have this extraordinarily confidence of the innocence, you are inevitably going to be absorbed by the collective and lost in mediocrity. You will put some letters after your name, you will be married, have children, and that will be the end of you.

            You see, most of us are frightened. Your parents are frightened, your educator are frightened, the Governments and religions are frightened of your becoming a total individual, because they all want you to remain safely within the prison of environmental and cultural influences. But it is only the individuals who break through the social pattern by understanding it, and who are therefore not bound by the conditioning of the own minds—it is only such people who can bring about a new civilization, not people who merrily conform, or who resists one particular pattern because they are shaped by another. The search for God or truth does not lie within the prison, but rather in understanding the prison and breaking through its walls—and this very movement towards freedom creates a new culture, a different world.

SEX AND MARRIAGE

LIKE other human problems, the problem of our passions and sexual urges is a complex and difficult one, and if the educator himself has not deeply probed into it and seen its many implications, how can he help those he is educating? If the parents or the teacher is himself caught up in the turmoils of sex, how can he guide the child? Can we help the children if we ourselves do not understand the significance of this whole problem? The manner in which the educator imparts an understanding of sex depends on the state of his own mind; it depends on whether he is gently dispassionate, or consumed by his own desires.

            Now, why is sex to most of us a problem, full of confusion and conflict? Why has it become a dominant factor in our lives? One of the main reasons is that we are not creative; and we are not creative because our whole social and moral cultures, as well as our educational methods, are based on development of the intellect. The solution to this problem of sex lies in understanding that creation does not occur the functioning of the intellect. On the contrary, there is creation only when the intellect is still.

            The intellect, the mind as such, can only repeat, recollect, it is constantly spinning new words and rearranging old ones; and as most of us feel and experience only through the brain, we live exclusively on words and mechanical repetitions. This is obviously not creation; and since we are uncreative, the only means of creativeness left to us in sex. Sex is of the mind, and that which is of the mind must fulfill itself or there is frustration.

             Our thoughts, our lives are narrow, arid, hollow, and empty; emotionally we are starved, religiously and intellectually we are repetitive, dull; socially, politically and economically we are regimented, controlled. We are not happy people, we are not vital, joyous; at home, in business, at church, at school, we never experience a creative state of being, there is no deep release in our daily thought and action. Caught and held from all sides, naturally sex becomes our only outlet, an experience to be sought again and again because it momentarily offers that state of happiness which comes when there is absence of self. It is not sex that constitutes a problem, but the desire to recapture the state of happiness, to gain and maintain pleasure, whether sexual or any other.

            What we are really searching for is this intense passion of self-forgetfulness, this identification with something in which we can lose ourselves completely. Because is the self is small, petty and a source of pain, consciously or unconsciously we want to lose ourselves in individual or collective excitement, in lofty thoughts, or in some gross form of sensation.

            When we seek to escape from the self, the means of escape are very important, and then they also become painful problems to us. Unless we investigate and understand the hindrances that prevent creative living, which is freedom from self, we shall not understand the problem of sex.

            One of the hindrances to creative living is fear, and respectability is a manifestation of that fear. The respectable, the morally bound, are not aware of the full and deep significance of life. They are enclosed between the walls of the own righteousness and cannot see beyond them. There stained-glass morality, based on ideals and religious beliefs. Has nothing to do with reality; and when they take shelter behind it, they are living in the world of their own illusions. In spite of there self-imposed and gratifying morality, the respectable also are in confusion, misery and conflict.

            Fear, which is the result of our desire to be secure, makes us confirm, imitate ands submit to domination, and therefore it prevents creative living. To live creatively is to live in freedom, which is to be without feat; and there can be state of creativeness only when the mind is not caught up in desire and the gratification of desire. It is only by watching our own hearts and minds with delicate attention that we can unravel the hidden ways of our desire. The more thoughtful and affectionate we are, the less desire dominates the mind. It is only when there is no love that sensation becomes a consuming problem.

            To understand this problem of sensation, we shall have to approach it, not from any one direction, that from every side, the educational, the religious, the social and the moral. Sensations have become almost exclusively important of us because we lay such overwhelming emphasis on sensate values.

            Through books, through advertisements, through the cinema, and many other ways, various aspects of sensation are constantly being stressed. The political and religious pageants, the theatre and other forms of amusement, all encourage us to seek stimulation at different levels of our being; and we delight in this encouragement. Sensuality is being developed in every possible way, and at the same time, the ideal of chastity is upheld. A contradiction is thus build up within us; and strangely enough, this very contradiction is stimulating.

            It is only when we understand the pursuit of sensation, which is one of the major activities of the mind that pleasure, excitement and violence cease to be a dominant feature in our life. It is because we do not love, that sex, we pursuit of sensation, has become a consuming problem. When there is love, there is chastity; but he who tries to be chased, is not. Virtue comes with freedom; it comes when there is an understanding of what is. 

            When we are young, we have strong sexual urges, and most of us try to deal with these desires by controlling and disciplining them, because we think that without some kind of restraint we shall become consumingly lustful. Organized religions are much concerned about our sexual morality; but they allow us perpetrate violence and murder in the name of patriotism, to indulge in envy and grafty ruthlessness, and to pursue power and success. Why should they be so concerned with this particular type of morality, and not attack exploitation, greed and war? Is it not because organized religions, being part of the environment which we have created, depend for their very existence on our fears and hopes, on our envy and separatism? So, in the religious field as in every other, the mind is held in the projections of its own desires.

            As long as there is no deep understanding of the whole process of desire, the institution of marriage as it now exists, whether in the East or in the West, cannot provide the answer to the sexual problem. Love is not induced by the singing of a contract, nor is it based on an exchange of gratification, nor on mutual security and comfort. All these things are of the mind, and that is why love occupies so small a place in our lives. Love is not of the mind, it is wholly independent of thought with its cunning calculations, its self-protective demands and reactions. When there is love, sex is never a problem—it is the lack of love that creates the problem.

            The hindrances and escapes of the mind constitute the problem, and not sex or any other specific issue; and that is why it is important to understand the mind’s process, its attractions and repulsions, its responses to beauty, to ugliness. We should observe ourselves, become aware of how we regard people, how we look at men and women. We should see that the family becomes a centre of separatism and of anti-social activities when it is used as a means of self-perpetuation, for the sake of one's self-importance. Family and property, when centered on the self with its ever-narrowing desires and pursuits, become the instruments of power and domination, a source of conflict between the individual and society.

            The difficulty in all these human questions is that we ourselves, the parents and teachers, have become so utterly weary and hopeless, altogether confused and without peace; life weighs heavily upon us, and we want to be comforted, we want to be loved. Being poor and insufficient within ourselves, how can we hope to give the right kind of education to the child?

            That is why the major problem is not the pupil, but the educator; our own hearts and minds must be cleanses if we are to be capable of educating others. If the educator himself is confused, crooked, lost in a maze of his own desires, how can he impart wisdom or help to make straight the way of another? But we are not machines to be understood and repaired by experts; we are the result of a long series of influences and accidents, and each one has to unravel and understand for himself the confusion of his own nature.

ON IMMEDIATE REALIZATION

Question: can we realize on the spot the truth you are speaking of, without any previous preparation?

EDITOR : What do you mean by truth? Do not let us use a word of which we do not know the meaning; we can use a simpler word, a more direct word. Can you understand, can you comprehend a problem directly? That is what is implied, is it not? Can you understand ‘what is’, immediately, now? In understand ‘what is’, you will understand the significance of truth; but to say that one must understand truth has very little meaning. Can you understand a problem directly, fully, and be free of it? That is what implied in this question, is it not? Can you understand a crisis, a challenge, immediately, see its whole significance and be free of it? What you understand leaves no mark; therefore understanding or truth is the liberator. Can you be liberated now from a problem, from a challenge? Life is, is it not?, a series of challenges and responses and if your response to a challenge is conditioned, limited, incomplete, then that challenge leaves its mark, its residue, which is further strengthened by another new challenge. So there is a constant residual memory, accumulations, scars, and with all these scars you try to meet the new and therefore you never meet the new. Therefore you never understand, there is never liberation from any challenge.

            The problem, the question is, whether I can understand a challenge completely, directly; sense all its significance, all its perfume, its depth, its beauty and its ugliness and so be free of it. A challenge is always new, is it not? The problem is always new, is it not? A problem which you had yesterday, for example, has undergone such modification that when you meet it today, it is already new. But you meet it with the old, because you meet it without transforming, merely modifying your own thoughts.

            Let me put it in a different way. I met you yesterday. In the meantime you have changed. You have undergone a modification but I still have yesterday’s picture of you. I meet you today with my picture of you and therefore I do not understand you—I understand only the picture of you which I acquired yesterday. If I want to understand you, who are modified, changed, I must remove, I must be free of the picture of yesterday. In other words to understand a challenge, which is always new, I must also meet it anew, there must be no residue of yesterday; so I must say adieu to yesterday.

            After all, what is life? It is something new all the time, is it not? It is something which is ever undergoing change, creating a new feeling. Today is never the same as yesterday and that is the beauty of life. Can you and I meet every problem anew? Can you, when you go home, meet your wife and your child anew, meet the challenge anew? You will not be able to do it if you are burdened with the memories of yesterday. Therefore, to understand the truth of a problem, of a relationship, you must come to it afresh—not with an ‘open mind’, for that has no meaning. You must come to it without the scars of yesterday’s memories—which means, as each challenge arises, be aware of yesterday’s residue, memories, you will find that they drop away without struggle and therefore your mind is fresh.

            Can one realize truth immediately, without preparation? I say yes—not out of some fancy of mine, not out of some illusion; but psychologically experiment with it and you will see. Take any challenge, any small incident—don’t wait for some great crisis—and see how you respond to it. Be aware of it, of your responses, of your intentions, of your attitudes and you will understand them, you will understand your background. I assure you, you can do it immediately if you give your whole attention to it. If you are seeking the full meaning of your background, it yields its significance and then you discover in one stroke the truth, the understanding of the problem. Understanding comes into being from the now, the present, which is always timeless. Though it may be tomorrow, it is still now; merely to postpone, to prepare to receive that which is tomorrow, is to prevent yourself from understanding ‘what is’ now. Surely you can understand directly ‘what is’ now, can’t you? To understand ‘what is’, you have to be undisturbed, undistracted, you have to give your mind and heart to it. It must be your sole interest at that moment, completely. Then ‘what is’ gives you its full depth, its full meaning, and thereby you are free of that problem.

            If you want to know the truth, the psychological significance of property, for instance, if you really want to understand it directly, now, how do you approach it? Surely you must feel akin to the problem, you must not be afraid of it, you must not have any creed, any answer, between yourself and the problem. Only when you are directly in relationship with the problem will you find the answer. If you introduce an answer, if you judge, have a psychological disinclination, then you will postpone, you will prepare to understand tomorrow what can only be understood in the ‘now’. Therefore you will never understand. To perceive truth needs no preparation; preparation implies time and time is not the means of understanding truth. Time is continuity and truth is timeless, non-continuous. Understanding is non-continuous; it is from moment to moment, unresidual.

            I am afraid I am making it all sound very difficult, am I not? But it is easy, simple to understand, if you will only experiment with it. If you go off into a dream, meditate over it, it becomes very difficult. When there is no barrier between you and me, I understand you. If I am open to you, I understand you directly—and to be open is not a matter of time.

            Will time make me open? Will preparation, system, discipline, make me open to you? No. what will make me open to you is my intention to understand. I want to be open because I have nothing to hide, I am not afraid; therefore I am open and there is immediate communion, there is truth. To receive truth, to know its beauty, to know its joy, there must be instant receptivity, unclouded by theories, fears and answers.

           

            

MEDITATION

If you have this extraordinary thing going

in your life, then it is everything; then

you become the teacher, the disciple, the

neighbour, the beauty of the cloud—you are

all that, and that is love.

WHAT IS MEDITATION? Before we go into that really quite complex and intricate problem we ought to be very cleat as to what it is that we are after. We are always seeking something, especially those who are religiously minded; even for the scientist, seeking has become quite an issue—seeking. This factor, of seeking, must be very clearly and definitely understood before we go into what meditation is and why one should meditate at all, what is its use and where does it get you.

            The word ‘seek’—to run after, to search out—implies, does it not, that we already know, more or less, what we are after. When we say we are seeking truth, or we are after. When we say we are seeking truth or we are seeking God—if we are religiously minded—or we are seeking a perfect life and so on, we must already have in our minds an image or an idea. To find something after seeking it, we must already have known what is contour is, its color, its substance and so on. Is there not implied in that word ‘seeking’ that we have lost something and we are going to find it and that when we find it we shall be able to recognize it—which means that we have already known it, that all we have to do is to go after it and search it out?

            In meditation the first thing we realize is that it is no use to seek; for what is sought is predetermined by what you wish; if you are unhappy, lonely, in despair, you will search out hope, companionship, something to sustain you, and you will find it, inevitably.

            In meditation, one must lay the foundation, the foundation of order, which is righteousness— not, respectability, the social morality which is no morality at all, but the order that comes of understanding disorder: quite a different thing. Disorder must exist as long as there is conflict, both outwardly and inwardly.

            Order, which comes of understanding disorder, is not according to a blueprint, according to some authority, or your own particular experience. Obviously this order must come about without effort, because effort distorts; it must come about without any form of control.

            We are talking about something very difficult in saying that we must bring about order without control. We must understand disorder, how it comes to being; it is the conflict which is in ourselves. In observing it, it is understood; it is not a matter of overcoming it, throttling it, suppressing it. To observe without any distortion, without any compulsive or directive impulse, is quite an arduous task.

            Control implies either suppression, rejection or exclusion; it implies a division between a controller and the thing controlled; it implies conflict. When one understands this, control and choice come to an end. All this may seem rather difficult and rather contradictory to everything you have thought about. You may say: how can there be order without control, without the action of will? But, as we have said, control implies division, between the one who controls and the thing that is to be controlled; in this division there is conflict, there is distortion. When you really understand this, then there is the ending of division between the controller and the controlled and therefore comprehension, understanding. When there is understanding of what actually is, then there is no need for control.

            So there are these two essential things that must be completely understood if we are go into the question of what meditation is: First, there is no use in seeking; Second, there must be that order which comes from the understanding of disorder which comes from control, with all the implications of the duality and the contradiction which arises between the observer and the observed.

            Order comes when the one who is angry and tries to get rid of anger sees that he is anger itself. Without this understanding you really cannot possibly know what meditation is. Do not fool yourself with all the books written about meditation, or with all the people who tell you how to meditate, or the groups that are formed in order to meditate. For if there is no order, which is virtue, the mind must live in the effort of contradiction. How can such a mind be aware of the whole implication of meditation?

            With one’s whole being one must come upon this strange thing called love, and therefore be without fear. We mean love that is touched by pleasure, by desire, by jealousy; love that knows no competition; that does not divide, as my love and your love. Then the mind, including with brain and the emotions, is incomplete harmony; and this must be, otherwise meditation becomes self-hypnosis.

            You must work very hard to find out the activities of your own mind, how it functions, with its self-centered activities, the “me” and the “not me”; you must be quite familiar wit yourself and all the tricks that the mind plays upon itself, the illusions and the delusions, the imagery and the in\imagining of all the romantic ideas the one has. A mind that is capable of sentimentality is incapable of love; sentiment breeds brutality, cruelty and violence, not love.

            Who established this deeply in yourself is quite arduous; it demands a tremendous discipline, to learn by observing what is going on in you. That observation is not possible if there is any form of prejudice, conclusion or formula, according to which you are observing. It you are observing according to what a psychologist had said to you, you really are not observing yourself; therefore there is no self-knowing.

            You need a mind that is able stand completely alone, not burdened by the propaganda are the experiences of others. Enlightenment does not come through a leader or through a teacher; it comes through the understanding of what is in you, not going away from yourself. The mind has to understand actually what is going on in its own psychological field; it must be aware of what is going on without distortion, without any choice, without any resentment, bitterness, explanation or justification. It must just be aware.

            This basis is laid happily, not compulsively, but with ease, with felicity, without any hope of reaching anything. If you have hope, you are moving away from despair; one has to understand despair, not search out hope. In the understanding of “what is” there is neither despair nor hope. Is all this asking too much of the human mind? Unless one asks what may appear to be impossible, one falls into the trap, the limitation, of what is thought to be possible. To fall into this trap is very easy. One has to ask the utmost of the mind and the heart, otherwise one will remain in the convenient and the comfortable possible.

            Now are we together still? Verbally, probably we are; but the word is not the thing; what we have done is to describe, and the description is not the described. If you are taking a journey with the speaker you are taking the journey actually, not theoretically, not as on idea that has something that you yourself are actually observing—not something you are experiencing; there is a difference between observation and experience.

There is a vast difference between observation and experience. In observation there is no observer at all, there is only observing; there is not the one who observes and is divided off from the thing observed. Observation is entirely different from the exploration in which analysis is involved. In analysis there is always the analyzer and the thing to be analyzed. In exploring there is always on entity who explores. In observation there is o continuous landing, not continuous accumulation. I hope you see the difference. Such learning is different from learning in order to accumulate so that from the accumulation one thinks and acts. An inquiry may be logical, sane and rational, but to observe without the observer is entirely different.   

Then there is the question of experience. Why do we want experience? Have you ever thought about it? We have experience all the time, of which we are either cognizant or ignorant. And we want deeper, wider, experiences: mystical, profound, transcendental, godly, spiritual. Why? Is it not because one’s life is so shoddy, so miserable, so small and petty? One wants to forget all that and move into another dimension altogether. How can a petty mid, worried, fearful, occupied with problem after problem, experience anything other than its own projection and activity? This demand for greater experience is the escaping from that which actually is; yet it is only through that actuality that the most mysterious thing in life is come upon. In experience is involved the process of recognition. When you recognize something, it means you have already known it. Experience, generally, is out of the past, there is nothing new in it. So there is a difference between observation and the craving for experience.

If all this, that is so extraordinarily subtle, demanding great inward attention, is clear, then we can come to our original question: What is meditation? So much has been said about meditation; so many volumes have been written; there are great (I do not know if they are great) yogis who come and teach you how to meditate. The whole of Asia talks about meditation; it is one of their habits, as it is a habit to believe in God or something else. They sit for ten minutes a day in a quiet room and ‘meditate’, concentrate; fix their mind on an image, an image created by themselves, or by somebody else who has offered that image through propaganda. During those ten minutes they try to control the mind; the mind wants to go back and forth and they battle with it. That game they play everlastingly; and that is what they call meditation.

If one does not know anything about meditation, then one has to find out what it is, actually—not according to anybody—and they may lead one to nothing or it may lead one to everything. One must inquire; ask the question, without any expectation.

To observe the mind—this mind that chatters, that projects ideas, that lives in contradiction, in constant conflict and comparison—I must obviously be very quiet. If I am to listen to what you are saying I must give attention, I cannot be chattering, I cannot be thinking about something else, I must not compare what you are saying with what I already know, I must listen to you completely; the mind must be attentive, must be silent, quiet.

It is imperative to see clearly the whole structure of violence. Looking at violence the mind becomes completely still; you do not have to ‘cultivate’ a still mind. To cultivate a still mind implies the one who cultivates, in the field of time, which he hopes to achieve. See the difficulty. Those who try to teach meditation say, ‘Control your mind absolutely quiet.’ You try to control it and everlastingly battle with it; you spent forty years controlling it. The mind that observes does not control and everlastingly battle.

The very act of seeing or listening is attention; this you do not have to practice at all; if you practice, you immediately become inattentive. You are attentive and your mind wanders off; let it wander off, but know that it is inattentive; that awareness of that inattention is attention. Do not battle with inattention; do not try, saying, ‘I must be attentive’—it is childish. Know that you are inattentive; be aware, choicelessly, that you are inattentive—what of it?—and at the moment, in that inattention, when there is action, be aware of that action. Do you understand this? It is so simple. If you do it, it becomes so clear, clear as the waters.

The silence of the mind is beauty in itself. To listen to a bird, to the voice of a human being, to the politician, to the priest, to all the noise of propaganda that goes on, to listen completely silently is to hear much more, to see much more. Such silence is not possible if your body is not also completely still. The organism, with all its nervous responses—the fidgeting, the ceaseless movement of fingers, the eyes—with all its general restlessness, must be completely still. Have you ever tried sitting completely still without a single movement of the body, including the eyes? Do it for two minutes. In those two minutes the whole thing is revealed—if you know how to look.

                                                                                                            Continues....