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The motive is still fear. Though you have taken the cloak of bravery, there is still fear. The intention in becoming brave is still fear.
Therefore, bravery, as the opposite of fear, has the seed of fear. Similarly about anger. We are not discussing how to get rid of anger.
First, we must know what we are doing before we get rid of anger. You are angry and what is your response? You said to another something sharp and you regret; and you say 'I wish I did not get angry'.
Again, you are angry and again you say "Awful, what is the matter?" and you create the opposite which is non-anger, because anger is very disturbing. If you can understand the conflict of the opposites, you may be able to deal with anger quite differently.
You are in a state which is very disturbing and you do not like that state. You like the state which is quite peaceful and more profitable. Therefore, you are moving from 'what you are' to 'what you want to be' as the opposite of 'what you are', with a motive for profit.
The opposite is created on account of your desire for profit or benefit, for a result; it is non-existent. Therefore, the fight between the so-called opposites is between 'what is' and 'what is not'. How can there be a fight between one which is existent and something which in non-existent apart from it?
It is only on the verbal level. Therefore, the fight is an illusion, a stupid and thoughtless action. Conflict between the opposites - whether it is the left or the right, between capital and labour, between God and Devil, is non- because, there is only one thing, 'what is' and any movement away from 'what is' is stupidity.
Therefore, the conflict has no significance. To understand the disturbing state in which you find yourself, you must first stop the fighting with the opposite which is non-existent, i.e. you must give up the struggle to become the opposite.
Do not condemn that state nor identify yourself with it. Then, watch it with your whole being and be aware of it. Whenever we have a feeling, we generally name it so that we may recognise it and also communicate it, if necessary, to others.
Investigation into and understanding of the feeling itself, which is changing and in movement, demands freedom from terminology, as the term is not the thing that it is supposed to denote. If a feeling is investigated through a term, the term becomes important and not the feeling. When communicated to another, that other interprets the term or the word according to his own feeling.
Thus, the term influences, modifies, and shapes the feeling. For the same reasons, the word 'God' is not 'God' and yet it has become an extraordinarily important word. We shall discuss further this question of terminology in relation to feelings, at our next meeting.
.. Before we begin with our discussion where we left off, it is very important to bear in mind why we meet as, otherwise, these discussions will deteriorate into mere intellection without any significance. I think one should distinguish between hearing inside oneself and listening. Listening is surely something outside.
Hearing is much more subjective. Let us hear each other rather than listen to each other. These discussions are really meant to reveal the way of our own thinking, feeling and acting.
Right thinking begins only in discovering what is exactly taking place in each one of us - the illusions, the vicious motives, the intentions; being aware of all these leads to right thinking - i.e., through self-knowledge only can right thinking come into being and not through any book, not through any listening to a talk but by being aware of every movement of thought and feeling in ourselves. We were discussing, when we last met, about the problem of duality, whether this conflict was inevitable - this conflict between ignorance and knowledge, between arrogance and humility, anger and peace, capitalism and communism, the left and the right, and so on. This conflict between the opposites has apparently been accepted by us as an inevitable fact in our life.
Is life meant to be a series of conflicts in the corridor of opposites or is our approach to the problem of the opposites wrong? If the opposites are inevitable, then the end of life is also a battle because an opposite always creates its opposite. I am something and I want to become something else.
I am arrogant and I strive to become humble; I am violent, and I want to become non-violent; I am greedy and I strive to become non-greedy. That is what we have been doing in our meditations and in our daily existence. Now, is the opposite a fact?
Does the opposite exist apart from its opposite, as humility, as non-greed, as non-violence and so on? Is not every opposite a reaction to and result of its own opposite? As humility is a result of arrogance, humility contains the germ of arrogance.
You find arrogance is not profitable and is a disturbing factor; and you have been told that arrogance is taboo socially, morally, and religiously; and therefore you strive to become humble which is more profitable. So your motive is still the desire to gain, the desire to become something. So humility contains the seed of arrogance.
Now, the fact is that arrogance is existent, but the 'being non-arrogant or humble' is not a fact. Humility is existent only in theory but actually is not. The 'A' being arrogance creates 'B' which is humility; but the 'B' in itself is non-existent apart from 'A'.
'B' cannot exist apart from 'A'. So the conflict to become 'B' is illusory and fallacious. If you recognise the conflict to be non-essential and false, then the conflict ceases.
If good is the opposite of bad, goodness contains the bad because goodness is the result of its opposite, the bad. I am bad and I want to become good. The becoming good is the outcome of being bad.
Therefore, it is still bad though I call it good. I accept this becoming good as long as it is profitable, as long as there is no suffering in it. The moment I suffer and the moment I realise that being bad is forbidden socially and religiously, then I try to become good.
So, behind that becoming there is still the motive to gain a more profitable quality. Therefore, the good, which is the opposite of bad, is no longer good. If love is the opposite of hate, surely it is not love.
If peace is the opposite of violence, then it is no longer peace because my trying to become peaceful is due to my finding that violence does not pay any more; the motive is still the same. If love is the opposite of hate, then it is the result of hate. Therefore, the conflict between the opposites is really a fallacious conflict; though we indulge in that, it does not lead us anywhere.
If this is realised and understood, the conflict ceases. Why do we name any quality? Perhaps, if we do not name it or term it, it may have a different significance.
A quality arises in me, which I term as arrogance; and I either approve of it or condemn it. If I do not term it and if I do not specify the quality, what would happen? Is the feeling different from the term, or does the term give significance to the feeling?
That is, is the feeling apart from the term, or do I look at the feeling through the term? The word is not the thing. the word 'God' is not God, and therefore the term is independent of God though you may call it God.
The term has nothing to do with Reality. If the feeling and the term are two separate things, then in observing the term and understanding the process of how the term comes into being, perhaps we shall not confuse it with the feeling; then the feeling will have a different meaning, a different significance. You have accepted the term God as God through temples, priests and sacred books; and so they have become important to you.
If somebody says that what you have accepted for years as God is not God, it gives you a shock, the shock being the nervous response, a sense of nervous apprehension. But when you see that the term is not the thing, you are free of the shock. If you understand and realise that the term God is not God it has an extraordinary nervous and verbal response in you; you are free of all the implications of the word God being accepted as God.
Then the temples will have no meaning, whether we go to it or do not go, because the term is not the God; therefore we are at once free from all priests, temples, churches and so on. There is no conflict of any going and worshipping in a temple, because the image is not the Real and if you really worship, the image disappears. This can have action only when the response is nervous as well as verbal.
But, unfortunately, your understanding is only verbal because if you say the word is not the thing and carry it out, you will have to go into conflict with your family and with society. The term is not the feeling though it is made to represent the feeling. Why is a quality or feeling named?
The naming is done with a view (i) to convey or communicate the quality to others and (ii) to pin down or to evaluate the quality. In pinning down the new quality, the quality is recognised and evaluated in terms of the old frame of references based on memory. As the feeling itself is in the present and therefore new, whereas the references into which it is fitted by naming it relate to the past,the new is interpreted and modified in terms of the old, thus strengthening memory, i.e.
the 'me'. The quality or feeling is thus absorbed into the 'me' and is given continuance in time as memory. Without memory, there cannot be evaluation.
The frame of references is the result of evaluation which is based on memory; so, it is the old. The feeling, when it arises, is new and in the present; when that feeling is termed, it is translated or modified so as to fit it into the old framework of references, memory, thus strengthening memory. So, in giving a term to the feeling, the 'me' is strengthened; and the person concerned feels stronger psychologically; when he says "this is my property", he feels already more powerful.
What would happen to a feeling if you did not judge it by the frame of reference - i.e. if you do not name verbally that feeling or quality? When there is response to a challenge, if you name the response, you give it continuance because it is absorbed into the frame of references.
Consciousness in all its different layers is memory, whether it is the memory of the Paramatman or of anything else; and all such memory is the result of your parents and grandparents and so on, or the result of books; consciousness is still in the field of memory, you cannot think of Paramatman without memory. Now, suppose a reaction arises and you do not name it. Then, you do not absorb it into consciousness, but you are merely aware of it; the feeling and the response or reactions would cease after running their course; the feeling is not judged or evaluated and it is not absorbed into memory.
We are all accustomed to name every reaction and refer it to the frame of references, memory, almost instinctively. But if you experiment with it and refuse to name a feeling when it arises in you, you will see that there is a time-lag, between the feeling and the naming. For instance, if a man treads on your feet, you have the reaction of pain, which is inevitable and cannot be helped; but you do not hit back the man who has trodden on your feet.
When you refuse to name it, though the reaction is there, it is not put into the frame of references. The pain has now a different significance. Next time you will be more careful where you put your feet.
Thus, by understanding the reaction, you would be observant and alert and be aware of what is actually taking place without the framework of references. This is intelligence. We have now discovered that we are always fighting reactions without understanding their significance; and if we do not name them, i.e.
if we do not refer them to the framework of references, they wither away. This happens whether the qualities are pleasurable or painful. Generally you accept the pleasurable and deny the non-pleasurable.
When you deny the non-pleasurable, you are really strengthening yourself. The man who says he is seeking spiritual things, God, is also denying and pursuing the pleasurable. There is very little difference between him and the ordinary man who is seeking pleasure.
They are both seeking pleasure though in different planes of consciousness; the one seeks gratification through God and the other seeks pleasure through drink. At present there is an increase, all over the world, in sensate values - more theatres, more cinemas, more drinks, more clothes, more and more. The so-called spiritual man, seeing this, says 'I do not like it', and follows his ideation; that is, he denies the sensate and goes after the ideation, as the ideation gives him pleasure.
Thus, the spiritual man is also following the pleasurable, like the man of the sensate. The man who is pursuing sensate values is destroying the world; he is saying that there is nothing more than the sensate and therefore is indulging in the sensate in the most irresponsible manner regardless of the consequences on others. This has been shown over and over again by wars after wars.
We say that such a man is a stupid man, materialistic, communistic and so on; and we try to get rid of him and to pursue our ideations. The man of the sensate and the man of the ideational are meeting at the same point, both their values are based on the senses, though the man who says he is following the ideation may do less harm in society. Obviously the sensate man does harm to the society; and the man of ideation is also creating harm, only on a different level because he has confused the term with Reality and the term becomes very important - your God and my God, your ceremonies and my ceremonies, or I am Brahmin and you are an Untouchable, which are the results of ideation.
So, just as the sensate man creates havoc in the world, the man of ideation with a framework of references also creates mischief; in fact, the latter does more harm. We can deal with a sensate man, because he is pursuing his pleasure through things; most of such men are poor and have very little means. The man who is pursuing ideation is much more dangerous, as he is pursuing pleasure through his ideas and as ideas divide man more than things.
The Left and the Right are pursuing ideas and not things. If they were pursuing things, they would give us things. Because the ideational man is pursuing the idea, he creates division between belief and belief, man and man; if he really gives his concern to men and to things, he would organize society on a different basis; there would not be your belief as something superior to mine.
But he would not do that because his ideas are more important. The system becomes more important than distribution and there is wrangling. It is not the things that are dividing man, but ideas.
If that is understood, life would become very simple. There is scientific skill in the world to produce things for everybody. There is knowledge at the disposal of man to produce enough food, clothing and shelter; but the ideas of nationalities such as the Americans, the English, the Germans, the Russians and so on, are preventing man from making it effective.
Therefore there is this mess and misery in the world. If I say "I will begin to understand the sensate", I can proceed step by step into the deeper things. Then, I can find out whether there is Reality or not.
But to assume Reality is an idea which leads to illusion. Just as the word, 'God' is not God, so the term for a feeling is not the feeling. When we do not put a feeling in the framework of references, the feeling comes to an end, withers away.
When we do not term our feelings at all, both the painful feelings as well as the pleasurable feelings, the mind will be still and there would be no reference to the framework of memory and the feelings wither away. Thus, the conflict of duality exists only when there is the naming of the feelings, and if we do not term the feelings, there is freedom from the conflict. What is then important for you is to find out, in our daily life, the truth of this, and then you will be content with a more peaceful and serene and intelligent life.
When you come to that point you can find out the significance of life, what it really means to love, and not its dictionary meaning, not a philosophical meaning for you to follow. When we come to that point, we can talk of other subjects like dreams, whether the Communist is right or the Rightist is right, and so on. The understanding of Truth gives freedom and therefore happiness.
.. I wonder how far you have been experimenting with what we have been discussing, namely, the problem of conflict and effort which brings about duality, the opposite, and the problem of terming a feeling. I wonder what has been the result of it and whether it has any fundamental effect on your daily activities.
Do you translate into action anything that you hear or do you just let it pass by? Today, let us try and find out the meaning or the significance of 'not terming a feeling' in relationship, whether with your family, your boss, or your clerk - in your daily life. Can you live in relationship with another without naming a feeling?
Let us suppose that you are really serious in experimenting with this in your relationship, for instance, with your wife. What will this lead to? You are irritated with your wife when she says something which you do not like.
You retaliate. A few minutes later, you say to yourself, "Well, what about the discussions I had in regard to 'not naming a feeling'? I will not name the feeling in future."
Similar occasions arise again. Then, if you experiment with this earnestly, you will find that the time-interval between the instinctive responses and your thoughtful responses gradually gets less and less, and that, in the end, you do not instinctively respond, but you watch yourself and do not name the feeling that arises in you, with the result that you do not get cross with your wife. You are now calm and quiet whatever your wife may say or do.
Your wife will probably get more and more irritated with you on this account; she is not thinking along the same lines as yourself. At this stage you may turn away from sensate values, but your wife may be caught only in sensate values. She feels miserable; she feels thwarted because she does not get the things she wants.
She has children; yet she does find love in them and therefore seeks an expression of love in things - car, house and other things of life. You try to talk over matters with her but she refuses to listen to you and becomes firm in her stand for things. What do you do?
A friend advises you to effect a compromise with her by handing over your cheque-book to her. You try this method. She does not want your cheque-book because what she wants is your heart which you are not giving her.
You find that compromise is only an intellectual and verbal balance between two people who do not understand each other but who are tied by social conventions, and that, therefore, compromise is slow death. You get exasperated and begin to talk over the matter with her seriously. She retorts and says to you "I want a car, a house, and a few things of life, because I know you are slipping from me.
You have not given me your love. You are now slipping away from me into a realm which I cannot possibly understand and enter. I would like to follow you but I cannot.
I have a child to look after. I have no love, if I had love, it would have filled my heart. I have not got that love at all and the love of the child is very little; the child does not know of love and it only clings to me.
I have not the love which replenishes and fulfils my life. So, the child, the house and the car have become enormously important to me. I am quite different physically from you because I bear children.
I am therefore more conservative and I want security. Emotionally, I am not so concentrated as you are. We have not loved each other and so the child has become all important.
When I grow old and the children go away, what shall I be left with? An aching memory, a drudgery kitchen, an ailing husband who does not know what it means to love; and a frustrated life. I am even now feeling frustrated.
That is why I am irritable, nervous and anxious. You are going one way and I another way. Where do we meet?
We have never met except in bed; now, there is not even that. You sought pleasure with me to further your name, and I became your cook and bearer of children. You are now trying to educate me, which you never did before.
You are now more and more alert. So, I have become anxious. You now talk of love and all the rest of it but you have no love for me.
You do not understand me at all." Now, you realise the need for your wife and yourself to understand each other. When you sincerely begin to understand her, you will have consideration and affection for her.
You will try to find out all about her, her physical condition and her nervous responses. In understanding her, you will understand her desire for things. With mutual understanding there will be love; and the problem will then cease.
Thus you will find that, if you do not term the feelings, the implications are extraordinarily significant in relation to your wife or in relation to society, whether Communist, Capitalist, or something else. What is your relationship to property or things, if you do not name or give a term to a feeling, whether pleasant or unpleasant? You all own property.
You all have titles, B.A., M.A., Judge, Doctor, etc. What will happen to your feeling of ownership -'my' property, 'my' wife, 'my' son, 'my' title - if you adopt this suggestion of 'not naming the feeling' and relate it to daily actions in which there is the feeling of ownership of possession? If you are not naming a quality or terming a feeling, then the feeling dies away.
Similarly, if that quality which we call acquisitiveness is not termed, the acquisitiveness withers away. When you do not name the feeling, then life becomes very simple. Naming a feeling is giving it continuity whether it is pleasurable or painful.
How do you relate it to your property? If you change your name into "Swami something," it means only that name is more important. But, what happens when I drop my name, not literally, but when the content behind the name has completely gone out of it?
I am not lost if somebody calls me by another name, but you are; because round the name there is a feeling - the ancestral, Brahmanic, etc., the feeling of property which you are going to leave your son - which is the very thing which you deny verbally, theoretically, when you want not to name a feeling. But you are attached to your name because of the content behind the name or title. To name a feeling, whether it is pleasurable or painful, is to give it continuity, to give birth to itself repeatedly.
If you are serious in the search after Truth, you are bound to drop the naming with regard to property which is bank-account, cheque-book, the stored up money, etc. Generally you are concerned only with words and not with feelings. If I flatter you, you are pleased and if I insult you, you get annoyed.
Should not a wise man be indifferent to flattery and insult? If I am not a scoundrel and somebody calls me a scoundrel I want to find out, I want to discover whether he is correct. If I am a scoundrel and somebody calls me as such, and if I do not want to be discovered as one, I get annoyed.
In other words, this irritation is a process of self-protectiveness. The proper attitude is for me to know in what way you think me a scoundrel. Similarly, the use of titles is a form of exploitation.
Mrs. Smith, if she calls herself Lady Smith, gets better treatment. She finds others snobbish and she wants to exploit their snobbishness by using titles. How are you to deal with property?
Can you give up your property by saying that you are not going to name you property? You say that you will use your property only for your needs and that you will discourage acquisitiveness. It is a wrong question to ask where to draw the line between needs and acquisitiveness, because you will have always needs.
Acquisitiveness creates needs. You can find this out for yourself when you go to a shop. Then there is the use of property as a means of self-expansion, and the use of an organisation as a means of self-fulfilment.
You belong to a certain society, a certain group because that group of people have property, shelter or an idea which is extraordinarily useful to you. So, belonging to an organisation whether it is the Hindu or the Muslim and so on, is for self-expansion. If all these things drop away, you would be happy people; you would not be merely talking about brotherhood, but you would spread kindness and would love others.
Now your love is concentrated in property and, therefore, you have little love for persons. Naming the property, ie identifying and giving continuance to the feeling of acquisitiveness, is one of the problems which is creating terrible havoc in the world. The man who uses a title, who is acquisitive, can never be happy, never be brotherly, though he may talk about brotherhood and happiness.
Mere giving up of property or title, outwardly, will not solve the problem; you can give up the content of property or title only when you understand its whole significance. If you do not understand the whole significance, the remnants of acquisitiveness will still remain in the mind. This is really difficult because, psychologically, you are the property.
Without it, where are you? The moment you let it go, you feel lost. To let go name, title, and property requires an extraordinary inward richness; it means freedom from outward things; you can let them go only when you have something real in yourself.
You do not let them go for the simple reason that the property is you, the title is you, the name is you; this means the sensory things are you. The moment you do not identify your name, do not give a name to that feeling of being lost or being nobody, it comes to an end. Then the property will drop away and you will not care two pins.
So, the emphasis is not on property - which the Communist, the Socialist, or the Capitalist is emphasising - but it is on the significance property has for you. When you have inward riches, property does not matter; and there can only be inward riches when you do not name the feeling; through that door you find the imperishable. The man who is talking about the imperishable and is naming his feelings is a hypocrite.
It is only when you do not name your property, acquisitiveness will cease to be. Then, you will know the difference between the needs and acquisitiveness. You need food, clothing and shelter.
But, when you seek psychological satisfaction through property, name or title, they are no longer needs but become potent factors in making you more and more ruthless in acquisitiveness. From this, you will see that only when you would understand the whole significance of not naming feelings in relation to title, property and relationship with others, and when you do not name such feelings in your daily life, there will be a rich transformation within yourself whereby you will bring about a creative society. .. On the last occasion, we found that the conflict of the opposites is really fallacious, because the opposite is the non-existent, which has been created from 'what is'; and that the becoming into something other than 'what is' is the opposite; we also discussed the whole significance of terming a feeling, the reaction to a challenge, and that from that naming there are a series of reactions and in these reactions we get lost.
So, the becoming is the conflict. Then the naming of the feeling is perhaps wrong because the feeling is new but it is put in the framework of references, thereby interpreting the new feeling through the framework of old references and therefore misinterpreting the feeling. If I had not termed it perhaps I would have a different reaction to the feeling, and the feeling may then subside.
A feeling which is termed, whether unpleasant or pleasant, can come to an end if you do not name it, then you will see that it withers away. But, is love a feeling which, when not named, will come to an end? We have discussed further about terming a feeling and what effect it has in our daily life.
We also discussed about property and what happens if we do not name it. (Then the discussion went back to the question of belief, ceremonies, etc., which had already been discussed in detail, as these questions were brought up again by someone present.) .. You have suggested that, today, we should discuss together the practical steps to be taken by us in our daily life to give expression to the ideas we have hitherto considered, especially in relation to property.
Property implies continuity, acquisitiveness, possessiveness, domination, suppression, economic relation between man and man, ill-will, nationalism, war and peace and all the rest of it. We consider practical steps in order to achieve an ideal, to achieve something, to achieve a result. This suggestion implies that what we have been discussing is impractical and that, being only theoretical, they need translation in our daily life through a certain set of regulations or practical ideas.
It also implies that we do not understand the implications of that idea in regard to our daily activities now, and that by doing certain practices leading to a particular way of living, you will, in course of time, understand the implications. Let us take, for instance, nationalism. How can you be practical about nationalism?
If you understand it and its results in daily life, it drops away from you. You do not become international; you cease to be national and therefore you are a human being. How can you have a practical step to cease to be national?
Either we understand nationalism and its implications immediately and it drops away; or we do not understand and we think that, by doing certain actions, we will understand later. We know that nationalism causes separatism, exclusiveness, friction, ill-will and enmity. It acts as a barrier between people and prevents sane living.
If I have more than I need of property, names, titles, etc, then they will cause envy. Similarly, if I say I am an Indian, I am a Hindu, and my whole patriotism is given to India, I am exclusive. It is the process of exclusiveness which ultimately leads to war.
Or you say that you must go through separation, through nationalism, in order to become international. That is, you must first be a Hindu and yet become brotherly with other people who call themselves by different names. Is that possible?
If you call yourself a Hindu and I call myself a German, can we two meet as brothers? You keep your nationality and I keep my nationality; and can we two meet? Obviously we cannot, because we are more concerned with our names than with being really human.