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Only in becoming aware of the cause of ignorance, in understanding the process of craving and its dual and opposing values, is there freedom from suffering. This discerning awareness must begin in our life of relationship with things, people, and ideas, with our own hidden thoughts and daily action. The way we think makes our life either complete or contradictory and unbalanced.
Through awareness of craving, with its complex process, there comes an understanding; which brings detachment and serenity. Detachment or serenity is not an end in itself. In this world of frenzied buying and selling, whose economy is based on craving, unless thought is persistently aware, greed and envy bring the confusing and conflicting problems of possessions, attachment, and competition.
Our private thoughts and motives can bring either harmony in our relationship or disturbance and pain. It depends on each one what he makes of relationship with another or with society. There can never be self-isolation, however much one may crave for it; relationship is ever continuous; to be is to be related.
The trembling and wavering thought is difficult to steady; mere control does not lead to understanding. Interest alone creates natural, spontaneous adjustment and control. If thought becomes aware of itself, it will perceive that it goes from one superficial interest to another, and merely to withdraw from one and try to concentrate on another does not lead to understanding and love.
Thought must become aware of the causes of its various interests, and by understanding them there comes a natural concentrated interest in that which is most intelligent and true. Thought moves from certainty to certainty, from the known to the known, from one substitution to another, and thus it is never still, it is ever pursuing, ever wandering; this chattering of the mind destroys creative understanding and love, but these cannot be craved for. They come into being when thought becomes aware of its own process, of its cravings, fears, substitutions, justifications, and illusions.
Through constant, discerning awareness, thought naturally becomes creative and still. In that stillness there is immeasurable bliss. We have all many and peculiar problems of our own; our craving to solve them only hinders the comprehension of the problems.
We must have that rare disinterested awareness which alone brings understanding. When death causes us great sorrow, in our eagerness to overcome that sorrow, we accept theories, beliefs, in the hope of finding comfort which only becomes a bondage. This comfort, though satisfying for a passing moment, does not free thought from sorrow, it is only covered up and its cause continues.
Likewise when one feels frustrated, instead of craving for fulfilment, one must understand what it is that feels itself frustrated. There will be frustration as long as there is craving; instead of understanding what is deeply implied in craving, we struggle anxiously to fulfil ourselves, and so the ache of frustration continues. These discussions are not meant to be for intellectual amusement.
We have discussed together in order to clear our thought so as to be able to apply ourselves more acutely and disinterestedly to the problems of our everyday life. It is only through disinterested application, through strenuous and discerning awareness, and not through following this or that belief, ideology, leader or group, that thought can liberate itself from those self-imposed bondages and influences. Being incomplete, one craves for completeness, which is only a substitution, but if one understood the causes of incompleteness, then there comes a freedom through that understanding, the ecstasy of which is not to be described or compared.
We must begin low to climb high, we must begin now to go far. We all have to live in this world; we cannot escape from it. We must understand it and not run away from it into illusory comforts, hopeful theories, and fascinating dreams.
We are the world and we must intelligently and creatively understand it. We have created this world of devastating hate, this world that is torn apart by beliefs and ideologies, by religions and gnawing cults, by leaders and their followers, by economic barriers and nationalities. We have created this world through our individual craving and fear, through our ambition and ignorance.
We ourselves must change radically, free ourselves of these bondages, so that we can help to create a truly sane and happy world. Then let us live happily without attachment and envy; let us love without possessiveness and be without ill will towards anyone; do not let us separate ourselves into narrow and conflicting groups. Thus though our own strenuous and constant awareness, will our thought be transformed from the limited into the complete.
Though this is not a small group we will try to have a free and serious discussion instead of turning these gatherings into question and answer meetings. Some no doubt would prefer uninterrupted talks but it seems to me to be more advantageous for all of us to join in a purposeful discussion which requires earnestness and sustained interest. For what are we striving?
What is it that each one is seeking? Till we are aware of our separate pursuits it is not possible to establish right relationship between us. One might be seeking fulfillment and success, another wealth and power, another fame and popularity; some may wish to accumulate and some to renounce; there might be some who are earnestly seeking to dissolve the ego while others may wish merely to talk about it.
Is it not important for us to find out what it is we are seeking? To extricate ourselves from the confusion and misery in and about us we must be aware of our instinctive and cultivated desires and tendencies. We think and feel in terms of achievement, of gain and loss, and so there is constant strife; but there is a way of living, a state of being, in which conflict and sorrow have no place.
So to make these discussions fruitful it is necessary, is it not, first to understand our own intentions? When we observe what is taking place in our lives and in the world we perceive that most of us, in subtle or crude ways, are occupied with the expansion of the self. We crave self-expansion now or in the future; for us life is a process of the continuous expansion of the ego through power, wealth, asceticism or the cultivation of virtue and so on.
Not only for the individual but for the group, for the nation this process signifies fulfilling, becoming, growing and has ever led to great disasters and miseries. We are ever striving within the framework of the self, however much it may be enlarged and glorified. If this be your aim and mine wholly different then we will have no relationship though we may meet; then our discussions will be purposeless and confused.
So first we must be very clear in our intention. We must be clear and definite as to what we are seeking. Are we craving self-expansion, the constant nourishment of the ego, the me and the mine, or are we seeking to understand and so transcend the process of the self?
Will self-expansion bring about understanding, enlightenment; or is there illumination, liberation only when the process of self-expansion has ceased? Can we reveal ourselves sufficiently to discern in which direction our interest lies? You must have come here with serious intent; therefore we will discuss in order to clarify that intent, and consider if our daily life indicates what our pursuits are and whether we are nourishing the ego or not.
So these discussions can be a means of self-exposure to each one of us. In this self-exposure we will discover the true significance of life. Must we not first have freedom to discover?
There can be no freedom if our action is ever enclosing. Is not the action of the ego, the sense of the me and the mine, ever a process of limitation? We are trying to find out, are we not, if the process of self-expansion leads to Reality or if Reality comes into being only when the self ceases?
Must one not go through the self-expansive process in order to realize the Immeasurable? May I put the same question differently? Must one go through drunkenness to know sobriety?
Must one go through the various states of craving only to renounce them? Can one do anything with regard to this self-expansive process? May I elaborate this question?
We are, are we not, positively encouraging through many actions the expansion of the ego? Our tradition, our education, our social conditioning sustain positively the activities of the ego. This positive activity may take a negative form - not to be something.
So our action is still a positive or negative activity of the self. Through centuries of tradition and education thought accepts as natural and inevitable the self-expansive life, positively or negatively. How can thought free itself from this conditioning?
How can it be tranquil, silent? If there is that stillness, that is, if it is not caught in self-expansive processes, then there is Reality. If I rightly understand, surely you are reaching way out into the abstract, are you not?
You are speaking about reincarnation, I presume? I am not, sir, nor am I reaching out into the abstract. Our social and religious structure is based on the urge to become something, positively or negatively.
Such a process is the very nourishment of the ego, through name, family, achievement, through identification of the me and mine which is ever causing conflict and sorrow. We perceive the results of this way of strife, confusion and antagonism, ever spreading, ever engulfing. How is one to transcend strife and sorrow?
This is what we are attempting to understand during these discussions. Is not craving the very root of the self? How is thought which has become the means of self-expansion to act without giving sustenance to the ego, the cause of conflict and sorrow?
Is this not an important question? Do not let me make it important to you. Is this not a vital question to each one?
If it is, must we not find the true answer? We are nourishing the ego in many ways and before we condemn or encourage we must understand its significance, must we not? We use religion and philosophy as a means of self-expansion; our social structure is based on the aggrandizement of the self; the clerk will become the manager and later the owner, the pupil will become the Master and so on.
In this process there is ever conflict, antagonism, sorrow. Is this an intelligent and inevitable process? We can discover Truth for ourselves only when we do not depend on another; no specialist can give us the right answer.
Each one has to find the right answer directly for himself. For this reason it is important to be earnest. We vary in our earnestness according to circumstances, our moods and fancies.
Earnestness must be independent of circumstances and moods, of persuasion and hope. We often think that perhaps through shock we shall be made earnest but dependence is never productive of earnestness. Earnestness comes into being with inquiring awareness and are we so alertly aware?
If you are aware you will realize that your mind is constantly engaged in the activities of the ego and its identification; if you pursue this activity further you will find the deep seated self-interest. These thoughts of self-interest arise from the needs of daily life, things you do from moment to moment, your role in society and so on, all of which build up the structure of the ego. This seems so strangely inevitable but before we accept this inevitability must we not be aware of our purposive intention, whether we desire to nourish the ego or not?
For according to our hidden intentions we will act. We know how the self is built up and strengthened through the pleasure and pain principle, through memory, through identification and so on. This process is the cause of conflict and sorrow.
Do we earnestly seek to put an end to the cause of sorrow? How do we know our intention is right before we understand the truth of the matter? If we do not first comprehend truth then we shall go off the beam, founding communities, forming groups, having half baked ideas.
Is it not necessary, as you have suggested, to know oneself first? I have tried to write down my thoughts-feelings as has been suggested but I find myself blocked and unable to follow my thoughts right through. Through being choicelessly aware of your intentions the truth of the matter is known.
We are often blocked because unconsciously we are afraid to take action which might lead to further trouble and suffering. But no clear and definite action can take place if we have not uncovered our deep and hidden intention with regard to nourishing and maintaining the self. Is not this fear which hinders understanding the result of projection, speculation?
You imagine that freedom from self-expansion is a state of nothingness, an emptiness and this creates fear, thus preventing any actual experience. Through speculation, through imagination you prevent the discovery of what is. As the self is in constant flux we seek, through identification, permanency.
Identification brings about the illusion of permanency and it is the loss of this which causes fear. We recognize that the self is in constant flux yet we cling to something which we call the permanent in the self, an enduring self which we fabricate out of the impermanent self. If we deeply experienced and understood that the self is ever impermanent then there would be no identification with any particular form of craving, with any particular country, nation or with any organized system of thought or religion, for with identification comes the horror of war, the ruthlessness of so-called civilization.
Is the fact of this constant flux not enough to make us identify? It seems to me that we cling to something called the me, the self, for it is a pleasant habit of sound. We know a river even when it is dry; similarly we cling to something that is me, even though we know its impermanency.
The me is shallow or deep, in full flood or dry, but it is always the me to be encouraged, nourished, maintained at any cost. Why must the I process be eliminated? Now why do you ask this question?
If the process is pleasurable you will continue in it and not ask such a question; when it is disagreeable, painful, then only will you desire to put an end to it. According to pleasure and pain thought is shaped, controlled, guided and upon such a weak, changing foundation we make an attempt to understand Truth! Whether the self should be maintained or not is a very vital issue for on it depends the whole course of our action, and so how we approach this problem is all important.
On our approach depends the answer. If we are not earnest then the answer will be according to our prejudices and passing fancies. So the approach matters more than the problem itself.
Upon the seeker depends what he finds; if he is prejudiced, limited, then he will find according to his conditioning. What then is important is for the seeker first to understand himself. How do we know if there is an abstract truth?
Surely, sir, we are not considering now an abstract truth. We are attempting to discover the true and lasting answer to our problem of sorrow, for on that depends the whole course of life. Can the conditioned mind observe its conditioning?
Is it not possible to be aware of our prejudices? Cannot we know when we are dishonest, when we are intolerant, when we are greedy? Is not the nourishment of the body equally wrong?
We are considering the psychological nourishment, the expansion of the self, which causes such strife and misery. One can accept the activity of the self as inevitable and follow that course or there may be another way of life. If it is an intense problem to each one of us then we shall find the right answer.
Shall we not know the true answer when the desire for it is greater than for any other thing? Is the ego always harmful? Is selfishness ever beneficial?
Self-centred attention and activity, positively or negatively, is the cause of strife and pain. How seriously is each one considering this problem? How earnest are we about discovering the truth of the nature and activity of the ego, the self?
Our meditation and spiritual discipline have no meaning if first we are not clear upon this point. True meditation is not self-expansion in any form. So till we can have a common understanding of our purpose there will be confusion, and right relationship between us will not be possible.
Is there not a way straight to the problem, to find out the truth? There is, but this demands utter stillness, open receptivity. This requires right understanding; otherwise effort to be open, to be tranquil becomes another means of self-expansion.
I am saying that there is a different way of life, a way that is not of self-expansion, in which there is ecstasy, but it has no validity if you merely accept my statement; such acceptance will become another form of egotistic activity. You must know for yourself, directly, the truth of yourself and you cannot realize it through another, however great. There is no authority that can reveal it.
Truth can be uncovered only through your own understanding and understanding comes only through self-knowledge. We have a common problem to which we are trying to find the right answer. Writing a book could be a self-expansive action, could it not?
Should we not establish a purpose in our lives? The ego can choose a noble purpose and so utilize it as a means for its own expansion. If there is no self-expansion is there a purpose, as we know it now?
A man who is asleep dreams that he has a purpose or must choose a purpose but does he who is awake have a purpose? He is simply awake. Our frames of reference, our purposes are a means, negatively or positively, of measuring the growth of the self.
Is fulfillment self-expansion? If fulfillment is prevented is there not the pain of frustration of the self? Questions of similar kind will find their answer in discovering the truth concerning the self-expansive process; this depends on earnestness and on the open receptivity of the mind-heart.
Must we not know what is the other way of life before we can relinquish self-aggrandizement? How can we know or be aware of another way of life till we can perceive the falseness, the futility of acquisition and self-expansion? In understanding the ways of self-aggrandizement we shall become aware.
To speculate about the way becomes a hindrance to the very understanding of that life which is not one of self-perpetuation. So must we not discover the truth concerning the habitual activities of the self? It is knowledge of the hindrance that is the liberating factor, not the attempt to be free from the hindrance.
Effort made to be free without the liberating action of Truth is still within the enclosing walls of the self. You can discover Truth only if you are willing to give your whole mind and heart to it, not a few moments of your easily spared time. If we are earnest we will find Truth; but this earnestness cannot depend on stimulation of any kind.
We must give our full and deep attention to the discovery of the truth of our problem, not for a few grudging moments but constantly. It is Truth alone that liberates thought from its own enclosing process. In the last three talks we have been considering that intelligence which is developed through the activities and habits of the self; that desire which is constantly accumulating and with which thought identifies itself as the me and the mine.
This accumulative, identifying habit is called intelligence; the aggressive and self-expanding desire ever seeking security, certainty, is called intelligence. This enchaining habit-memory binds thought and so intelligence is imprisoned in the self. How can this intelligence, this mind that is petty, narrow, cruel, nationalistic, envious, comprehend the Real?
How can thought which is the outcome of time, of self-protective activity comprehend that which is not of time? We sometimes experience a state of tranquillity, of extraordinary clarity and joy, when the mind is serene and still. These moments come unexpectedly, without invitation.
Such experiencing is not the result of calculated, disciplined thought. It occurs when thought is self-forgetful; when thought has ceased to become, when the mind is not in the conflict of its own self-created problems. So our problem is not how such a creative, joyous moment shall come and be maintained but how to bring about the cessation of self-expansive thought, which does not imply self-immolation but the transcending of the activities of the self.
When a machine is revolving very fast, as a fan with several blades, the separate parts are not visible but appear as one. So the self, the me, seems to be a unified entity but if its activities can be slowed down then we shall perceive that it is not a unified entity but made up of many separate and contending desires and pursuits. These separate wants and hopes, fears and joys make up the self.
The self is a term to cover craving in its different forms. To understand the self there must be an awareness of craving in its multiple aspects. The passive awareness, the choiceless discernment reveal the ways of the self, bringing freedom from bondage.
Thus when the mind is tranquil and free of its own activity and chatter, there is supreme wisdom. Our problem then is how to free thought from its accumulated experiences, memories. How can this self cease to be?
Deep and true experience takes place only when the activity of this intelligence ceases. We see that unless there is an experience of truth none of our problems can be solved whether sociological, religious or personal. Conflict cannot come to an end by merely rearranging frontiers or reorganizing economic values or imposing a new ideology; throughout the centuries we have tried these many ways but conflict and sorrow have continued.
Till there is a comprehension of the Real, merely pruning the branches of our self-expansive activity is of little use, for the central problem remains unsolved. Till we discover Truth there is no way out of our sorrows and problems. The solution is the direct experience of Truth when the mind is still, in the tranquillity of awareness, in the openness of receptivity.
Would you please explain again what you mean? We often have religious experiences sometimes vague, sometimes definite; experiences of intense devotion or joy, of being deeply vulnerable, of fleeting unity with all things; we try to utilize these experiences in meeting our difficulties and sorrows. These experiences are numerous but our thought, caught in time, turmoil and pain, tries to use them as stimulants to overcome our conflicts.
So we say God or Truth will help us in our difficulties, but these experiences do not actually resolve our sorrow and confusion. Such moments of deep experience come when thought is not active in its self-protective memories; these experiences are independent of our striving and when we try to use them as stimulants for strength in our struggles, they only further the expansion of the self and its peculiar intelligence. So we come back to our how can this intelligence so sedulously cultivated cease?
It can cease only through passive awareness. Awareness is from moment to moment, it is not the cumulative effect of self-protective memories. Awareness is not determination nor is it the action of will.
Awareness is the complete and unconditional surrender to what is, without rationalization, without the division of the observer and the observed. As awareness is non-accumulative, non-residual, it does not build up the self, positively or negatively. Awareness is ever in the present and so, non-identifying and non-repetitive; nor does it create habit.
Take, for instance, the habit of smoking and experiment with it in awareness. Be aware of smoking, do not condemn, rationalize or accept, simply be aware. If you are so aware there is the cessation of the habit; if you are so aware there will be no recurrence of it but if you are not aware the habit will persist.
This awareness is not the determination to cease or to indulge. Be aware; there is a fundamental difference between being and becoming. To become aware you make effort and effort implies resistance and time, and leads to conflict.
If you are aware in the moment there is no effort, no continuance of the self-protective intelligence. You are aware or you are not; the desire to be aware is only the activity of the sleeper, the dreamer. Awareness reveals the problem completely, fully, without denial or acceptance, justification or identification, and it is freedom which quickens understanding.
Awareness is a unitary process of the observer and the observed. Can open, still receptivity of the mind come with the action of will or desire? You may succeed in forcibly stilling the mind but what is the outcome of such effort?
Death, is it not? You may succeed in silencing the mind but thought still remains petty, envious, contradictory, does it not? Through exertion, through an act of will we think an effortless state can be achieved in which we may experience the ecstasy of the Real.
The experience of inexplicable joy or intense devotion or profound understanding comes only when there is effortless being. Are there not two kinds of intelligence, the one with which we function daily and the other which is higher, which guides, controls and is beneficial? Does not the self for the sake of its own permanency divide itself into the high and the low, the controller and the controlled?
Does not this division arise from the desire for continued self-expansion? However cunningly it might divide itself, the self is still the result of craving, it is still seeking different objectives through which to fulfil itself. A petty mind cannot possibly formulate something which is not also petty.
The mind is essentially limited and whatever it creates is of itself. Its gods, its values, its objectives and activities are narrow and measurable and so it cannot understand that which is not of itself, the Immeasurable. Can a petty thought go beyond itself?
How can it? Greed is still greed even if it reaches for heaven. Only when it is aware of its own limitation does the limited thought cease.
The limited thought cannot become the free; when limitation ceases there is freedom. If you will experiment with awareness you will discover the truth of this. It is the petty mind that creates problems for itself and through awareness of the cause of problems, the self, they are dissolved.
To be aware of narrowness and its many results implies deep understanding of it on all the different levels of consciousness; pettiness in things, in relationship, in ideas. When we are conscious of being petty or violent or envious we make an effort not to be; we condemn it for we desire to be something else. This condemnatory attitude puts an end to the understanding of what is and its process.
The desire to put an end to greed is another form of self-assertion and so is the cause of continued conflict and pain. What is wrong with purposeful thinking if it is logical? If the thinker is unaware of himself though he may be purposeful, his logic will inevitably lead him to misery; if he is in authority, in a position of power, he brings misery and destruction upon others.
That is what is happening in the world, is it not? Without self-knowledge thought is not based on Reality, it is ever in contradiction and its activities are mischievous and harmful. To come back to our through awareness only can there be cessation of the cause of conflict.
Be aware of any habit of thought or action; then you will recognize the rationalizing, condemnatory process which is preventing understanding. Through awareness - the reading of the book of habit page by page - comes self-knowledge. It is truth that frees, not your effort to be free.
Awareness is the solution of our problems; we must experiment with it and discover its truth. It would be folly merely to accept; to accept is not to understand. Acceptance or non-acceptance is a positive act which hinders experimentation and understanding.
Understanding that comes through experiment and self-knowledge brings confidence. This confidence may be called faith. It is not the faith of the foolish; it is not faith in something.
Ignorance may have faith in wisdom, darkness in light, cruelty in love, but such faith is still ignorance. This confidence or faith of which I am speaking comes through experimentation in self-knowledge, not through acceptance and hope. The self-confidence that many have is the outcome of ignorance, of achievement, of self-glory or of capacity.
The confidence of which I speak is understanding, not the understand, but understanding without self-identification. The confidence or faith in something, however noble, breeds only obstinacy and obstinacy is another term for credulity. The clever ones have destroyed blind faith but when they themselves are in serious conflict or sorrow they accept faith or become cynical.
To believe is not to be religious; to have faith in something which is created by the mind is not to be open to the Real. Confidence comes into being, it cannot be manufactured by the mind; confidence comes with experiment and discovery; not the experiment with belief, theory or memory but experimentation with self-knowledge. This confidence or faith is not self-imposed nor is it identified with belief, formulation, hope.
It is not the outcome of self-expanding desire. In experimenting with awareness there is a discovery which is freeing in its understanding. This self-knowledge through passive awareness is from moment to moment, without accumulation; it is endless, truly creative.
Through awareness there comes vulnerability to Truth. To be open, vulnerable to the Real, thought must cease to be accumulative. It is not that thought-feeling must become non-greedy, which is still accumulative, a negative form of self-expansion, but it must be non-greedy.
A greedy mind is a conflicting mind; a greedy mind is ever fearful, envious in its self-growth and fulfillment. Such a mind is ever changing the objects of its desire and this changing is considered growth; a greedy mind which renounces the world in order to seek Reality, God, is still greedy; greed is ever restless, ever seeking growth, fulfillment, and this restless activity creates self-assertive intelligence but is not capable of understanding the Real. Greed is a complex problem!
To live in the world of greed without greed needs deep understanding; to live simply, earning a right livelihood in a world organized on economic aggression and expansion is possible only for those who are discovering inward riches. In the very act of coming here are we not seeking some spark to enlighten us? What is it that you are seeking?
Wisdom and knowledge. Why do you seek? We are seeking to fill the deep, hidden inner void.
We are then seeking something to fill our emptiness; this filler we call knowledge, wisdom, truth and so on. So we are not seeking truth, wisdom, but something to fill our aching loneliness. If we can find that which can enrich our inward poverty we think our search will end.
Now can anything fill this void? Some are painfully conscious of it and others are not; some have sought to escape through activity, through stimulation, through mysterious rituals, through ideologies and so on; others are conscious of this void but have not found a way of covering it up. Most of us know this fear, this panic of nothingness.