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The moment you are aware of confusion, of exactly what is, you try to escape from it. Those sects which offer you a system for the solution of suffering, economic, social or religious, are the worst; because then system becomes important and not man—whether it be a religious system, or a system of the left or of the ri... |
Now what is the cause of this confusion, this misery? How did this misery come about, this suffering, not only inwardly but outwardly, this fear and expectation of war, the third world war that is breaking out? What is the cause of it ? |
Surely it indicates the collapse of all moral, spiritual values, and the glorification of all sensual values, of the value of things made by the hand or by the mind. What happens when we have no other values except the value of the things of the senses, the value of the products of the mind, of the hand or of the machi... |
Thus, giving more and more significance to the values of the senses brings about confusion; and, being in confusion, we try to escape from it through various forms, whether religious, economic or social, or through ambition, through power, through the search for reality. But thc real is near, you do not have to seek it... |
Whatever we do at present seems to lead to chaos, sccms to lead to sorrow and unhappiness. Look at your own life and you will see that our living is always on the border of sorrow. Our work, our social activity, our politics, the various gatherings of nations to stop war, all produce further war. Destruction follows in... |
Can we stop this misery at once, and not go on always being caught by the wave of confusion and sorrow? That is, great teachers, whether the Buddha or the Christ, have ( ome; they have accepted faith, making themselves, perhaps, Cree from confusion and sorrow. But they have never prevented sorrow, they have never stopp... |
Now is it possible to come to that state when you yourself perceive the truth instantaneously and thereföre put an cnd to confusion? I say that it is, and that it is the only possible way. I say it can be done and must be done, not based on supposition or belief. To bring about this extraordinary revolution which is no... |
to the ideas of the left. The left, after all, is the continuation of the right in a modified form. If the right is based on sensual values, the left is but a continuance of the same sensual values, different only in degree or expression. Therefore true revolution can take place only when you, the individual, become aw... |
Is it not, therefore, an obvious fact that what I am in my relationship to another creates society and that, without radically transforming myself, there can be no transformation of the essential function of society ? When we look to a system for the transforrnat.ion of society, we are merely evading thc question, beca... |
When you are interested in something, you do it instantaneously, there is immediate understanding, immediate transformation. If you do not change now, you will never change, because the change that takes place to-morrow is merely a modification, it is not transformation. Transformation can only take place immediately; ... |
When that happens, you are completely without a problem, for then the selfis not worried about itself; then you are beyond the wave of destruction. |
WHAT ARE WE SEEKING? |
wHAT IS IT THAT most of us arc seeking? What is it that each one of us wants? Especially in this restless world, where everybody is trying to find some kind of peace, some kind of happiness, a refuge, surely it is important to find out, isn't it ? , what it is that we are trying to seek, what it is that we are trying t... |
Now, is it that we are seeking happiness or is it that we are seeking gratification of some kind from which we hope to derive happiness? There is a difförence between happiness and gratification. Can you seek happiness? Perhaps you can find gratification but surcly you cannot find happiness. Happiness is derivative ; i... |
After all, if one is seeking peace one can find it very easily. Onc can devote oneself blindly to some kind of cause, to an idea, and take shelter •there. Surely that does not solve the problem. Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict. So we must find, must we not ? , what it is, inwardly, as... |
Do we not seek, through all this confusion, something permanent, something lasting, something which we call real, God, truth, what you like—the name doesn't matter, the word is not the thing, surely. So don't let us be caught in words. Leave that to the professional lecturers. There is a search for something permanent,... |
And what is it that we call permanent? What is it that we are seeking, which will, or which we hope will give us permanency? Are we not seeking lasting happiness, lasting gratification, lasting certainty? We want something that will endure everlastingly, which will gratify us. If we strip ourselves of all the words and... |
permanent gratification—which we call truth, God or what you will. |
Very well, we want pleasure. Perhaps that may be putting il very crudely, bul that is actually what we want—knowledge that will give us pleasure, experience that will give us pleasure, a gratification that will not wither away by tomorrow. And we have experimented with various gratifications, and they have all faded aw... |
Now, if you seek permanent gratification, calling it God, or truth, or what you will—the name does not matter surely you must understand, must you not? , the thing you are seeking. When you say, "I am seeking permanent happiness'?—God, or truth, or what you like must you not also understand the thing that is searching... |
So we have to come to the point when we ask ourselves, really earnestly and profoundly, if peace, happiness, reality, God, or what you will, can be given to us by someone else. Can this incessant search, this longing, give us that extraordinary sense of reality, that creative. being, which comes when we really understa... |
come through search, through following someone else, through belonging to any particular organization, through reading books, and so on? After all, that is the main issue, is it not ? , that so long as I do not understand myself, I have no basis for thought, and all my search will be in vain. I can escape into illusion... |
But that is the last thing we want: to know ourselves. Surely that is the only foundation on which we can build. But, before we can build, before we can transforrn, before we can condemn or destroy, we must know that which we are. To go out seeking, changing teachers, gurus, practising yoga, breathing, performing ritua... |
It seems to me that before we set out on a journey to find reality, to find God, before we can act, before we can have any relationship with another, which is society, it is essential that we begin to understand ourselves first. I consider the earnest person to be one who is completely concerned with this, first, and n... |
Now without knowing yourself, without knowing your own way of thinking and why you think certain things, |
without knowing the background of your conditioning and why you have certain beliefs about art and religion, about your country and your ncighbour and about yourself, how can you think truly about anything ? YVithout knowing your background, without knowing the substance of your thought and whence it comes—surely your ... |
Before we can find out what the end-purpose of life is, what it all means—wars, national antagonisms, conflicts, the whole mess wc must begin with ourselves, must we not ? It sounds so simple, but it is extremely difficult. To follow oneself, to see how one's thought operates, one has to bc extraordinarily alert, so th... |
The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. |
Self-knowledge has no end you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river. As one studies it, as one goes into it more and more, one finds peace. Only when the mind is tranquil through selfknowledge and not through imposed self-discipline—only then, in that tranquillity, in that... |
THE PROBLEM THAT confronts most of us is whether the individual is merely the instrument of society or the encl of society. Are you and I as individuals to be used, directed, educated, controlled, shaped to a certain pattern by society and government; or does society, the State, exist for the individual? Is the individ... |
How are you going to find this out ? It is a serious problem, isn't it? If the individual is merely an instrument of society, then society is much more important than the individual. If that is true, then we must give up individuality and work for society; our whole educational system must be entirely revolutionized an... |
How would you inquire into this problem? It is a vital problem, isn't it? It is not dependent on any ideology, either of the lefi or of the right; and if it is dependent on an ideology, then it is merely a matter of opinion. Ideas always breed enmity, confusion, conflict. If you depend on books of |
the left or of the right or on sacred books, then you depend on mere opinion, whether of Buddha, of Christ, of capitalism, communism or what you will. They are ideas, not truth. A fact can never be denied. Opinion about fact can be denied. If we can discover what the truth of the matter is, we shall be able to act inde... |
How is one to discover the truth of this? On that we will act. To find the truth of this, there must be freedom from all propaganda, which means you are capable of looking at the problem independently of opinione The whole task of education is to awaken the individual. To see the truth of this, you will have to be very... |
A mind that wishes to understand a problem must not only understand the problem completely, wholly, but must be able to follow it swiftly, because the problem is never static. Thc problem is always new, whether it is a problem of starvation, a psychological problem, or any problem. Any crisis is always new; thereföre, ... |
is no hope without this constant inward revolution, because, without it, outer action becomes repetitive, habitual. The action of relationship between you and another, between you and me, is society; and that society becomes static, it has no life-giving quality, so long as there is not this constant inward revolution,... |
What is the relationship between yourself and the misery, the confusion, in and around you ? Surely this confusion, this misery, did not come into being by itself. You and I have created it, not a capitalist nor a communist nor a fascist society, but you and I have created it in our relationship with each other. What y... |
What you are, the world is. So your problem is the world's problem. Surely, this is a simple and basic fact, is it not? In our relationship with the one or the many we seem somehow to overlook this point all the time. We want to bring about alteration through a system or through a revolution in ideas or values based on... |
existence, is it not? We are concerned with livelihood, getting jobs, earning money; we are concerned with the relationship with our family or with our neighbours, and we are concerned with ideas and with beliefs. Now, if you examine our occupation, it is fundamentally based on envy, it is not just a means of earning a... |
What is our relationship based on? The relationship between yourself and myself, between yourself and another —which is society—what is it based on ? Surely not on love, though we talk about it. It is not based on love, because if there were love there would be order, there would be peace, happiness between you and me.... |
Now as regards ideas which are part of our daily existence, beliefs and formulations, are they not distorting our minds ? For what is stupidity ? Stupidity is the, giving of wrong values to those things which the mind creates, or to those things W'hich the hands produce. Most of our thoughts spring from the self-protec... |
So our problem, is it not ? , is whcthcr thcrc can bc a society which is static, and at the same time an individual in whom this constant revolution is taking place. That is, revolution in society must begin with thc inner, psychological transformation of the individual. Most of us want to see a radical transformation ... |
I think it is important to understand this and not slur over it. Outward action, when accomplished, is over, is static; if the relationship between individuals, which is society, is not the outcome of inward revolution, then the social structure, being static, absorbs the individual and therefore makes him equally stat... |
Because you and I are not creative, we have reduced society to this chaos, so you and I have to be creative because the problem is urgent; you and I must be aware of the causes of the collapse of society and create a new structure based not on mere imitation but on our creative understanding. Now this implies, does it ... |
to understand what is creative thinking, we must approach the problem negatively, because a positive approach to the problem—which is that you and I must become creative in order to build a new structure of society will be imitative. To understand that which is crumbling, we must investigate it, examine it negatively n... |
Why is society crumbling, collapsing, as it surely is ? One of the fundamental reasons is that the individual, you, has ceased to be creative. I will explain what I mean. You and I have become imitative, we are copymg, outwardly and inwardly. Outwardly, when learning a technique, when communicating with each other on t... |
In order to understand the nature of disintegrating society is it not important to inquire whether you and I, the individual, can be creative ? We can see that when there is imitation there must be disintegration; when there is authority there must be copying. And since our whole mental, psychological make-up is based ... |
not noticed that in moments of creativeness, those rather happy moments of vital interest, there is no sense of repetition, no sense of copying? Such moments are always new, fresh, creative, happy. So we see that one of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authorit... |
THE PROBLEMS OF the world are so colossal, so very complex, that to understand and so to resolve them one must approach them iri a very simple and direct manner; and simplicity, directness, do not depend on outward circumstances nor on our particular prejudices and moods. As I was pointing out, the solution is not to b... |
So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. The world is not separate from us ; we are the world, and our problems are the world's problems. This cannot be repeated too often, because we are so sluggish in ou... |
must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transforrn themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine; because, however small may be the world we live in, if we can ... |
As I said, we are going to try and find out the process of understanding ourselves, which is not an isolating process. It is not withdrawal from the world, because you cannot live in isolation. To be is to be related, and there is no such thing as living in isolation. It is the lack of right relationship that brings ab... |
thereby we become mediocre, losing that drive, that intensity to find out the whole significance of existence. Therefore it is important to discover these things for ourselves, because self-knowledge cannot be given to us by another, it is not to be found through any book. We must discover, and to discover there must h... |
Thus the transformation of the world is brought about by the. transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself ... |
The understanding of what you are, whatever it be—ugly |
or beautiful, wicked or mischievous—the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives freedom. It is only in virtue that you can discover, that you can live—not in the cultivation of a virtue, which merely brings about respectability, not understanding ... |
To understand that process there must be the intention to know what is, to föllow every thought, feeling and action ; and to understand what is is extremely diflicult, because what is is never still, never static, it is always in movement. The what is is what you are, not what you would like to be; it is not the ideal,... |
resist it, then we shall not understand its movement. If I want to understand somebody, I cannot condemn him : I must observe, study him. I must love the very thing I am studying. If you want to understand a child, you must love and not condemn him. You must play with him, watch his movements, his idiosyncrasies, his w... |
To understand what is requires a state of mind in which there is no identification or condemnation, which means a mind that is alert and yet passive. We are in that state when we really desire to understand something; when the intensity of interest is there, tha.t. state of mind comes into being. VVhen one is intereste... |
The fundamental understanding of oneself does not come through knowledge or through the accumulation of experiences, which is merely the cultivation of memory. The understanding of oneself is from moment to moment; if we merely accumulate knowledge of the self, that very knowledge prevents fürther understanding, becaus... |
Now is there a means, a system, of knowing oneself? Any clever person, any philosopher, can invent a system, a |
method; but surely the following of a system will merely produce a result created by that system, will it not? If I follow a particular method of knowing myself, then I shall have the result which that system necessitates; but the result will obviously not be the understanding of myself. That is by following a method, ... |
Therefore there is no method for self-knowledge. Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result and that is what we all want. We follow authority—if not that of a person, then of a system, of an ideology because we want a result which will be satisfactory, which will give us security. We really d... |
Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and theref... |
secure, we are constantly seeking methods and means for this security, and thereby we create authority, the worship of another, which destroys comprehension, that spontaneous tranquillity of mind in which alone there can be a state of creativeness. |
Surely our diffculty is that most of us have lost this sense of creativeness. To be creative does not mean that we must paint pictures or write poems and become famous. That is not creativeness it is merely the capacity to express an idea, which the public applauds or disregards. Capacity and creativeness should not be... |
The understanding of oneself is not a result, a culmination ; it is seeing oneself from moment to moment in the mirror of relationship one's relationship to property, to things, to people and to ideas. But we find it difficult to be alert, to be aware, and we prefer to dull our minds by following a method, by accepting... |
recognition, and recognition is merely the process of the accumulation of experience. But we are all afraid to be nothing, because we all want to be something. The little man wants to be a big man, the unvirtuous wants to be virtuous, the weak and obscure crave power, position and authority. This is the incessant activ... |
In order to transform the world about us, with its misery, wars, unemployment, starvation, class divisions and utter confusion, there must be a transformation in ourselves. The revolution must begin within oneself—but not according to any belief or ideology, because revolution based on an idea, or in conformity to a pa... |
I SHOULD LIKE TO discuss the problem of action. This may be rather abstruse and difficult at the beginning but I hope that by thinking it over we shall be able to see the issue clearly, because our whole existence, our whole life, is a process of action. |
Most of us live in a series of actions, of seemingly unrelated, disjointed actions, leading to disintegration, to frustration. It is a problem that concerns each one of us, because we live by action and without action there is no life, there is no experience, there is no thinking. Thought is action; and merely to pursu... |
Our life is a series of actions or a process of action at different levels of consciousness. Consciousness is experiencing, naming and recording. That is consciousness is challenge and response, which is experiencing, then terming or naming, and then recording, which is memory. This process is action, is it not? Consci... |
Now action creates the actor. That is the actor comes into being when action has a result, an end in view. If there is no result in action, then there is no actor; but if there is an end or a result in view, then action brings about the actor. |
'I' this is an actor, action, and end or result, is a unitary process, a single process, which comes into being when action has an end in view. Action towards a result is will; otherwise there is no will, is there? The desire to achieve an end brings about will, which is the actor I want to achieve, I want to write a b... |
are familiar with these three states: the actor, the action, and the end. That is our daily existence. J am just explaining what is; but we will begin to understand how to transform what is only when we examine it clearly, so that there is no illusion or prejudice, no bias with regard to it. Now these three states whic... |
Therefore, then, the problem is: Is there not action without this becoming? Is there not action without this pain, without this constant battle? If there is no encl, there is no actor, because action with an end in view creates the actor. But can there be action without an end in view, and thereför•c no actor that is w... |
In the moment of experiencing, you are not aware of yourself as the cxpcricnccr apart from the experience; you are in a state of experiencing. Take a very simple example: you are angry. In that moment of anger there is neither the experiencer nor the experience; there is only experiencing. But the moment you cqme out o... |
If we can understand action in the fundamental sense of the word then that fundamental understanding will affect our superficial activities also; but first we must understand the fundamental nature of action. Now is action brought about by an idea? Do you have an idea first and act afterwards? Or does action come first... |
It is very important to discover which comes first. If the idea comes first, then action merely conforms to an idea, and therefore it is no longer action but imitation, compulsion according to an idea. It is very important to realize this; because, as our society is mostly constructed on the intellectual or verbal leve... |
Can ideas ever producc action, or do ideas mcrcly mould thought and therefore limit action? When action is compelled by an idea, action can never liberate man. It is extraordinarily important for us to understand this point. If an idea shapes action, then action can never bring about che solution to our miseries becaus... |
What do we mean by an idea ? How does an idea come into being? And can idea and action be brought together? Suppose I have an idea and I wish to carry it out. I seek a method of carrying out that idea, and we speculate, waste our time and energies in quarrelling over how the idea should be carried out. So, it is really... |
Now how do you get an idea—a very simple idea, it need not be philosophical, religious or economic ? Obviously it is a process of thought, is it not? Idea is the outcome of a thought process. Without a thought process, there can be no idea. So I have to understand the thought process itself before I can understand its ... |
Say, For example, I have the stored-up memories of nationalism, calling myself a Hindu. rI'lvat reservoir of memories of past responses, actions, implications, traditions, customs, responds to the challenge of a Mussulman, a Buddhist or a Christian, and thc response of mcrnory to the challenge inevitably brings about a... |
rFherefore there has to be quite a different approach. You have to find out for yourself, inwardly, whether you are acting on an idea, and if there can be action without ideation. Let us find out what that is: action which is not based on an idea. |
When do you act without ideation? When is there an action which is not the result of experience? An action based on experience is, as we said, limiting, and therefore a hindrance. Action which is not the outcome of an idea is spontaneous when the thought process, which is based on experience, is not controlling action;... |
process ? Can there be action without thought process ? That is I want to build a bridge, a house. I know the technique, and the technique tells me how to build it. We call that action. There is the action of writing a poem, of painting, of governmental responsibilities, of social, environmental responses. All are base... |
Surely there is such action when the idea ceases; and the idea ceases only when there is love. Love is not memory. Love is not experience. Love is not the thinking about the person that one loves, for then it is merely thought. You cannot think of love. You can think of the person you love or are devoted to your guru, ... |
When there is love there is action, is there not? , and is that action not liberating? It is not the result of mentation, and there is no gap between love and action, as there is between idea and action. Idea is always old, casting its shadow on the present and we are ever trying to build a bridge between action and id... |
One has to be aware of this total process, of how ideas come into being, how action springs from ideas, and how ideas control action and therefore limit action, depending on sensation. It doesn't Inatter whose ideas they are, whether from the left or from the extreme right. So long as we cling to ideas, we are in a sta... |
Ideas are not truth; and truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment. It is not an experience which you want—which is then merely sensation. Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas—which is the 'me', which is the mind, which has a partial or com* plete continuity—only when one ca... |
CHAPTER VI |
BELIEF |
BELIEF AND KNOWLEDGE are very intimately related to desire; and perhaps, if we can understand these two issues, we can see how desire works and understand its complexities. |
One of the things, it seems to me, that most of us eagerly accept and take för granted is the question of beliefs. I am not attacking beliefs. What 'vve are trying to do is to find out why we accept beliefs; and if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then perhaps we may be able not only to under... |
If you consider, you will see that one of the reasons for |
the desire to accept a belief is fear. If we had no belief, what would happen to us? Shouldn't we be very frightened of what might happen? If we had no pattern of action, based on a belief—either in God, or in communism, or in socialism, or in imperialism, or in some kind of rcligious formula, some dogma in which we ar... |
It is really a very interesting problem, this question of belief and knowledge. What an extraordinary part it plays in our life! How many beliefs we have! Surely the more intellectual, the more cultured, thc more spiritual, if I can use that word, a person is, the less is his capacity to understand. The savages have in... |
We see that where there is a process of desire at work there must be the process of isolation througb belief, because obviously you believe in order to be secure economically, spiritually, and also inwardly. 1 am not talking of those people who believe for economic reasons, because they are brought up to depend on thei... |
belief, can he? He sees his desire at work as a means to being sccure. Plcasc do not go to the other side and say that I am preaching non-religion. That is not my point at all. My point is that as long as we do not understand the process of desire in the form of belief, there must be contention, there must be conflict,... |
Can a mind, can a conscious mind, can a personality be free from this desire to be secure? We want to be secure and therefore need the aid of our estates, our property and our farnily. We want to be secure inwardly and also spiritually by erecting walls of belief, which are an indication of this craving to be certain. ... |
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