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.. We have been discussing belief in relation to self-knowledge which is not understanding or the awareness of something higher, but being aware of every thought, feeling and action. To climb high, one has to go through the valley, through the turmoils, through the everyday thoughts and struggles and understand them. We are really reluctant to understand what is in the valley, the valley being our everyday existence.
How can we go far unless we understand what is near, the near being our relationship with ourselves and our neighbour, with family, etc. That relationship is an extraordinary self-revealing process. Because we do not want to go through that, we are escaping through belief, through ceremonies, and all other absurd and infantile things, giving them fanciful names without much significance.
It is very important to free the mind where it is, in your daily life, and to be aware of the words you use, the gestures, the attitudes, the motives, and the intentions. After all, what does it matter whether you believe in a Master or not, or what kind of ceremonies you perform? What does matter is what you are thinking, what you are doing.
A man who came to see me, wanted peace of mind. When I asked him what he was doing in his daily life, he said "That does not matter, I am only speculating". He is a speculator, dealing in money, bullion.
How can such a man have peace of mind and how can he have God when he is hoarding, cheating, making people miserable by his actions? If at all he thinks he has peace, that will only be a deception, a self-deceit. To have peace, he must not speculate, he must not destroy others.
Similarly, those who wish to find Truth must free themselves from all bondages. A man who believes is extraordinarily credulous, and therefore he is obstinate and therefore unpliable. A tree that weathers the storm, through it has deep roots, is pliable; but a tree which is still and not pliable, is broken down.
In the same way, a man who is not pliable, who is credulous, who is obstinate, is broken down, and he is miserable. The central problem will be solved only when you understand the full significance of authority implied in a belief, i.e. why you want a guide, whether the guide is a Master or a priest, an experience, or a conviction and so on.
This is the real issue which you are unwilling to face. If you can understand this, then, the infantile things like ceremonies will drop away; the systems, the whole economic and social snobberies will also disappear. Then, we will be creative human beings; we will have joy because every day is new, every minute there is an ending and therefore there is renewal.
But to a man who is believing and seeks guidance, there is never a moment when there is an ending. It will be a marvellous world when there is no preacher and the preached, when there is no teacher and the disciple. Then each person will be creative, each person will know the highest and live without craving for direction.
After all, we seek guidance, either within or without, a Guru, an ideal, a memory - the memory being only the experience, the voice, the law, the Government, the Society, the Party, the Democratic or the Republican, the Socialist, the Communist, the desire to seek guidance from a book, the Marx's, the Bhagavad Gita and so on. I do not know if you see the extraordinary width of it, the vastness of this desire to find guidance, from the school-teacher in a little village to the autocratic and tyrannical boss of the State, from the man who has wealth to the petty little secretary of a small organisation. Someone says that as intelligence varies in individuals, the less intelligent require some guidance from those who are more intelligent than they.
One may be dull and not be so well educated and cunning as another. But, where do the dull and the clever meet so that they can come together and discuss? To have a meeting-ground, we say we will have a common guidance - God, or a common Guru, or a common idea.
Though the ideal may be common for both of us, what is our relationship between each other? Our conception of the common ideal is different, as one is dull of understanding and the other clever. Therefore, they do not meet.
Similarly, there is no meeting ground between you who are full of beliefs, ceremonies and rituals, and I who am without them. You say that you and I are both seeking God when you are anchored in your beliefs and therefore cannot go far? Any two people can meet when they love each other.
The man who loves another - his wife, his children, his friends, etc. - will not talk about ideals and beliefs. What has happened to all the recent revolutions?
They started out to establish the ideal of equality. This ideal was soon lost sight of. In the end, the man who is in authority has more power and more money than the man who is down below working in the factory, and therefore, they never meet.
The only place where they can meet is their hearts; but there is no love there. Love alone can establish equality between individuals. Let us try and understand what guidance means and why you seek guidance.
You are lost, you are confused, you are in turmoil, you do not know how to behave; you do not like that state and want to get out of it to clarity. Therefore, you approach somebody else for guidance, to seek direction. It is like a baby who seeks guidance from the mother or from the teacher because it does not know and it is curious to know the name of the bird or the name of the tree and so on.
You look to that somebody to show you the way on conduct - economic, social, spiritual, physiological, biological, etc. What is the relationship between you and me? You are aware that you are confused, confused in relationship, confused in ideas, confused in society which is already confused - religiously and psychologically everywhere you are confused, everything is on the decline.
So, you come and seek my guidance to get out from there, on all the different levels of consciousness. If this is correct, then, you have made me your guide. But, I refuse to be your guide; I say "Look at your confusion", which you refuse.
Therefore, there is no relationship between us. Guidance is a false relationship between any two, between God and yourself. To look at the confusion, you must free yourself from the idea of guidance.
Before you can find out the meaning of confusion you must find out why you seek guidance. Because I refuse to be your guide, you will go to somebody else; I am not in competition with the other Gurus, but I want you to be free. You seek guidance because you do not understand the confusion, the misery, the strife, the pain, etc; and you believe that somebody else will help you to understand; you go to him and expect him to resolve your confusion.
Therefore, he becomes your guide. He tells you want to do. Gradually, your mind is filled with his ideas, his gestures, his words, etc.
and he becomes all-important. Though you may say you have found the real Guru, the confusion is still there; only you have concentrated your attention on him, instead of on your confusion. Then, something happens and you feel lost again.
You now say that your Guru is not such a nice Guru as you thought, and you go to another Guru. This is what has been happening for centuries. Thus, in your everyday life, whenever you feel confused, you readily transfer your problem to another level - the Guru, the Book, the Leader, the Party, the System, the Idea.
But, the problem of confusion is still there. You are unwilling to face the problem and, being unwilling, you have sought an escape in somebody who will help you get out of the confusion. You have been practising for generations and generations to find a substitute to the problem.
If you take a pill for indigestion and go on doing that, you depend on the pills and the pills become very important. Thus, your guides, the pills, have become important and not the problem. You started to clear the confusion and ended with the pills, escapes from confusion.
So you have got now the confusion and the pill; and instead of dealing with one problem you have two problems now. So, you multiply the problems, instead of seeing the one problem, confusion. When you are confronted with the two problems, the pill and the confusion, what is your response?
the pill has become more important than the problem itself; and so, the problem remains and the pill remains! When you are confronted by this, when you understand how the pill is only an escape and does not help you in solving the problem, the pill gets away. You do not have to throw it away, or choose different kinds of pills.
There is no question of choosing. There will only be choice when you do not understand the significance of the pill. The moment you understand, the moment you see something as false, it drops away.
Then there is only the problem left, and there is no question of turning to the problem. In discussing this, you found that pills are distractions from the problem. You wander from one manufacturer to another, one Guru to another, and so your going from Guru to Guru has become important, not the problem.
You do not want to understand the problem, because you believe the pill is going to solve it. But the problem is still there. If you see the significance of of the pill, the pill is gone, and the problem remains.
Therefore, you must see the Truth in the false. The false are the pills, and the moment you see the truth of that, the false will drop away, and you do not have to see the latest pill. When you realise that your beliefs and your guides are really escapes from the problem of your confusion, which still remains to be understood and solved, and that therefore they have no significance to you in regard to the solving of the problem, your guides drop away; and the problem of confusion alone confronts you, and you look at it whether it is painful, disagreeable or otherwise.
In this state, your mind is not distracted at all but quiet and passively alert in observing the problem without any effort whatsoever, i.e., your mind is fresh because it has seen the false as false; it cannot therefore translate or interpret the problem but sees it as it is. Thus, the problem though old has become new, because it has not been faced before but only now. A new mind faces a new problem without any translation or interpretation according to a pattern, and it is eager to know all about it and, therefore, loves it.
Love transforms even the most ugly. Where there is love, there is instantaneous communication, confusion ceases, there is clarity; and the problem thus ceases to exist. .. Not only at the present time, but always, the fundamental truth is that man divides himself by beliefs, by systems.
As nationalism divides human beings, beliefs break up friendship and create animosity. At the present time, when the world is in such a frightful chaos when all the values have disintegrated, when the so-called democracies are also leading up to regimentation,surely those who have thought about the cause of the misery and the antagonism that exists, should attempt to bring about a new society and not merely the reconstruction of the old, because the old cannot be patched-up and even if it is patched-up it will remain still the old. As wisdom comes only with the knowledge of our everyday activities and feelings, we shall today take up the study of "evil" as a means of revealing the process of our own thinking.
'Evil' is a predominant factor in our daily life. All ideas are interrelated, and by examining one profoundly and following it through, you will see how extraordinarily interrelated they are. Various philosophers in Europe and in this country and various religions, have thought over this problem of evil.
Great men have given their life over to its study. But, you readily throw off explanations without any thinking. Let us enquire into this like mature people and understand its implications and its significance, so that we may be able to alter the conduct of our daily life.
It is no use thinking about 'evil' according to what is written about it in books or translating it according to our experience. Our experience is itself "accumulated memory" which is always translating through the screen of personal advantages and gains. To understand a problem of enormous significance, like evil, your mind must be in a receptive mood.
Just as the problem of labour cannot be understood if you approach it merely as a capitalist, or as a socialist, or a labourman, so also to understand the problem of evil, you must not approach it from any single point, such as a sense of guilt, personal experience, selfishness, etc. You say that whatever hinders progress, is evil. What is progress, what is evolution?
The cart-wheel has progressed to aeroplane; the germ has become the child. We have progressed from the age of the arrow to that of the atomic bomb. Now, we have more breaking up of people than ever, more armies, more national feeling, more fear and more starvation.
People have become more greedy and more cunning in a cunning society and more competitive in a competitive society. In spite of the havoc and misery caused by the two world wars, many persons consider that war is inevitable and, in the nature of things, is a means to peace. Is all this progress?
We have to consider progress as a means of human happiness, i.e., as progress towards human love, consideration, generosity and charity. Have we evolved psychologically towards freedom and happiness? There is more and more deterioration all round - tyranny, dictatorship, diseases, starvation, hatred, wars and confusion.
You say that God has a plan and anything that interferes with that plan is evil. This is the old idea of a fight between God and the Devil. Look about you, and see what is happening in nature.
One bird destroys another bird, one animal leaps on another, the snake lives by its poison and the strong live on the weak. There is continual strife to live by any means. The snake is the most extraordinary animal developing its own poison for its self-protection.
There is a kind of snake in Brazil which, to protect itself, becomes rigid like a bar of steel and cannot be bent. Perhaps a snake is not cruel or evil at all. We call a snake evil and kill it.
Among us, the strong live on the weak, the clever live on the stupid. The capitalist is hoarding money and property at the expense of others. The books have said that they are evil, and yet we are doing that.
Inwardly, there is a battle between the opposites, between what I want and what I do not want. I am brutal and greedy and I do not want to be brutal and greedy. We also want to survive physically as a person and also psychologically as the name, as an idea, etc.
Our everyday existence is confusion, ignorance, sorrow, pleasure, a constant battle, a constant strife. Has evil any relationship to this battle in us between the opposites or is it like Death, like God, like Truth, something apart from this everyday existence? Is 'evil' an idea which is used by the society to control man so that he does not go beyond the limits?
Organised religions have cultivated and controlled man by their laws through fear, through compulsion, through imitation, through fears of contradiction and has said 'You must be this'. When you go beyond those laws, they say it is evil. For instance, organised religion has never said that ambition is evil, but has always decried sex.
Don't you see the implications? Does evil mean to you a conquering of some temptation? Buddha is supposed to have fought with "Mara" and won.
Jesus is supposed to have been tempted by the devil and conquered it. Perhaps, we are thinking altogether wrongly, when we have the idea that there are evil forces in the world, the dark forces in opposition to the white forces. So, to understand this, you must begin with yourself.
You do something wrong and you have pain. There is a physiological suffering and a psychological suffering; they are not quite clear-cut. What is the cause of this suffering?
Is it easily dissolved? We need food, clothing and shelter. If I am satisfied with a few clothes, food and shelter, I will never come into conflict with another; but, if I use food, clothing and shelter as a means of psychological exploitation, I will come into conflict.
Some of you advocated suffering as a means to acquire intelligence. Is one to cultivate intelligence through suffering? Is not suffering an indication of ignorance?
I suffer when my son dies, because I do not understand the implications of death. Do I sit down and find out the cause of suffering, or do I run away to seek relief from pain with the aid of a priest? If I want to go into the whole significance of death I must have intelligence.
You say ignorance is a means of enlightenment; that is, suffer more and more, and you will become more and more intelligent. Do you become intelligent in that manner? Surely you will get intelligence only through understanding suffering, and not through mere suffering.
So, when you say suffering brings intelligence it is not a fact. Through ignorance there can be nothing but ignorance. Through wrong means you have only a wrong end.
As you have been constantly seeking escapes from suffering, you have become clever and intelligent in escapes; but you have not understood suffering. To understand suffering, you have to live with it. To find the cause of suffering, you must go into it and not reject suffering.
Understanding will come only when you give your whole being to understand the problem. Is evil the denial of good? By denying evil, do you understand evil?
To understand anything there must not be denial, nor condemnation, nor identification with it. Take, for example, God. I am not talking about what the books say or about the images in temples; that is not God.
God is an unknown thing and therefore you must go to it with a free mind, without any conclusions or condemnations. So also, evil is not the denial of good. Beauty is not the denial of the ugly.
Is "evil" or "vice" or "the bad" the opposite of the good? Is good the opposite of evil? Does not each opposite contain the germ of its own opposite?
Is fear the opposite of bravery? If I am a coward I want to become brave. In doing so, instead of understanding fear, I have tried to become brave.
Therefore, bravery has an element of fear in it. You say that a man in war is doing his duty; but you forget that he is stuffed with propaganda of all kinds; he is told that his country will suffer, and he is stuffed with rum before he fights. Is this doing his duty?
Even in the case of a mother loving her child, either she gives her life to it which is spontaneous, or it may be calculated, because, without the child, she is lost. When I am stupid I want to become clever. Is not "becoming clever" a part of stupidity?
There is conflict between what I am and the thing which I want to be. The thing which I want to be is part of my own projection of stupidity. If I understood stupidity, then the problem ceases.
The very awareness of the fact that I am stupid is the beginning of intelligence, and not trying to become clever. If I think in these terms, there is no opposite at all; the opposite may be a fabrication of the mind. Has not non-greed the element of greed?
When I am greedy positively in going after property, etc., I want to become non-greedy; I am still greedy negatively in going after non-greed. I find greed does not pay and, perhaps if I become non-greedy, it will pay - which is still greed in an uncreative form. You will never understand anything by thinking in terms of its opposite.
Similarly, if I am evil and I try to become good, the good has the seed of evil. Instead of pursuing and creating the opposite, if I say 'All right, I am greedy, it is a fact', then, something happens and I cease to be greedy. The moment I recognise it, it falls away.
.. We were talking about evil in relation to the problem of duality and the conflict of the opposites, i.e. about what is going on in the world - left against the right, the believer against the non-believer, the communist against the capitalist, labour against capital, arrogance against humility, good against evil, etc. Now, is there such a thing as the opposites?
Someone of you said that good is that which gives the greatest happiness to the largest number of people. Is this so? The fighting men are extraordinarily delighted and happy if there is war.
They are relieved of their responsibilities and they are told what to do. The greatest number of people like to believe in some kind of superstition, whether it is the superstition of nationality, or of race, superstition of a scientific man, or religious superstition. So, can we say good is what gives happiness to the most?
Obviously not, nor what is harmful to the most is evil. Is that the way of discovering the truth of anything, bringing in the utilitarian point of view? Is it not the correct way to view the thing as it is, and not be confused by its effect or action on the many or the one?
Can we not think directly instead of bringing in its action, whether it is beneficial for the many or for the few? After all, the State decides what is good for the people, whether the right or the left, passes certain regulations and laws and says that he who obeys them is the good, and the person who is disobeying it is the evil. Now, can you be called good when you are kind, merciful and generous spontaneously?
Why do we name it? If a good action is said to be an example for others to follow, is it good? It ceases to be mercy when somebody imitates mercy.
Why do we create these words, good and evil? Let us consider the left and the right. Is the left different from the right?
The left is the idea that sensory values are the only values worth cultivating, giving happiness to man; and that, therefore, man through the control of environment can be shaped according to the edicts of society and the State; in that control there should be no values except the sensory values. The Socialist, the Fascist and the Communist believe in that; to them the individual is not at all important, because he is merely the result of sensate values, to be controlled and shaped, or to be transformed and moulded, according to the desire of the State or what the State wants. Then, there is the so-called opposite to it, the right - the absolutest as opposed to the materialist - he has only an absolute value which is God, in which is involved the priest, the Church, the organisation.
The capitalists who believe in the absolute value of God are sacrificing the individuals through exploitation, ruthless murderous exploitation, corruption and competition; during a crisis, like a war, they too adopt the same attitude towards the individual as the communist. Similarly, the man who believes in the Church and who wants to spread religion as a means of salvation, believes in the good end and says "let us make this world as ruthlessly efficient as possible" and fights the man who is against the Church. But are they - the Communist and the Capitalist, or the Materialist and the Absolutist - the opposites?
Is there the dual, the sensory and the non-sensory, as two in opposite? This is a problem confronting the people all over the world, the religious person who wants to spread religion and the other wanting to spread his external, materialistic, dialectic conclusions. We are trying to find out whether the left is an opposite to the right, or is merely the extension of the right.
After all, without understanding the centre, the left or the right are the same. It is only when one understands the centre which is the individual from which the left and the right come into being, there can be true revolution, not revolution to the left or to the right. but, as long as you are thinking in terms of the left or the right, you cannot understand the centre.
The problem now is not whether the left is right or the right is wrong, but whether opposites exist, i.e. the problem of thesis and antithesis, "this" opposed to "that". Is there such a problem, the capitalist opposed to the communist, the communist opposed to the religious, that which is in contradiction to that which is not?
You are this and you want to be that; you are ignorant and you want to be enlightened; you are arrogant and you want to be humble. Or you are ambitious and ruthless, and you carry on. Thus your whole existence is a conflict of opposites.
All your religious books and edicts are based on 'You are this and you must become that.' Are you satisfied with this struggle of opposites? The clerk becoming the manager and the manager becoming the executive, is our whole everyday struggle.
Should you not question it to find out the reason for this conflict, this ceaseless battle till you die and to be still wanting to continue after death? The conflict of the opposites exists in all the different layers of our existence - social, economic, political, inward, psychological, spiritual and so on. This is a constant battle between 'what you are' and 'what you would like to become'.
As an example covering the whole of life - i.e. the Clerk becoming the Manager, the Priest becoming the Bishop, the Collector becoming the Governor, the ignorant becoming the enlightened, evil becoming the good and so on - let us consider 'arrogance'. I am arrogant and I spend my energy in becoming humble, adopting meditations, beliefs and ceremonies as helps to keep me on in this conflict of 'becoming' the opposite of 'what I am'.
I have accepted this process of 'becoming' as the way of life, thoughtlessly and without any investigation, thinking it to be inevitable because all the religious people have told me like that. Is that the way to live? In order to understand the truth about this, I should not accept any contradiction, though I am caught in contradiction; but I must put it aside.
Someone says that, in order to bring abut peace, you must go to war, if necessary, with the anti-social people. He believes, therefore, that war is a means to peace. In order to fight the communist or the capitalist, you must be as clever as he and should employ all his methods, his ways, his propaganda, and his ways of telling lies, i.e.
you have to become himself. England has fought for years for the freedom of labour and now directs it. Our whole existence is this, fighting evil by evil means, but saying, 'Well, I am not evil,' as though we are extraordinarily righteous.
Wrong means will surely produce a wrong end. In our everyday life, we have thoughtlessly accepted as inevitable this struggle of opposites - I am this and I want to become that - without knowing the whole significance of 'what I am'; so, the end also is bound to be thoughtless. It is thoughtless on the part of an arrogant man to struggle to become humble; he will never become humble.
What does 'to become' mean? 'I am this' and 'I want to become that.' 'I am arrogant' is a fact and I know it.
But 'humility' I do not know; it is an objective which I would like to be. Humility, therefore, is not the actual; but the ideal. That is one part of the problem.
The other part of the problem is the idea of becoming. Is there a becoming at all? I know the acorn becomes the oak; this is not a becoming; it is what it is all the time and it has its own becoming.
There is no becoming of an acorn into the rose or the pine tree. If you can understand the problem of becoming, then perhaps you will discover the truth about duality. You are 'A', and you want to become 'B'.
Now, what is 'B'? Is it not a negative response to what is 'A'? You are arrogant and the negative response is humility and you must become that.
That is, you are arrogant; and negatively you are going to become that which is humble. You find arrogance not so pleasurable as you thought it was, because there is pain involved and arrogance does not pay you; perhaps becoming humble will pay you. Thus, 'becoming' implies a profit motive.
You say that you, being arrogant, want to become humble because then only can you get to God. This means that you want a result which is more beneficial, less harmful, and happier than arrogance. The real motive for a 'becoming' is for a profit, not only physiologically, but psychologically.
You are 'arrogant,' the 'A'; and you want to get away from that. You begin to say that arrogance does not pay and therefore you create humility, the 'B'; you try to become that which is non-existent, as 'B' is non-existent but theoretical and ideological. You have created the opposite 'B' which is non-existent and yet you are trying to become that.
'A' alone, arrogance, is existent. Because it is not profitable you want to become the opposite which is humility. When you examine the opposite and you see what is involved in it, you see that you have created it as a negative response.
Therefore, in creating the opposite,the opposite has the seed of arrogance. 'B' has the seed of 'A' because 'B' has been brought into being through 'A'. It is only an ideological thing which is to be got and it is not existent apart from A.
So, you have found out that the conflict between 'A' and 'B' is fallacious and does not lead you anywhere. As another illustration of this conflict of opposites, let us take 'fear' and 'bravery'. You are afraid and you want to become brave, because fear does not pay in the world and everybody says you must be brave; which means, you want to become brave because you are afraid.