becoming, there is conflict, isn’t there? So conflict distorts the mind. Every form
of conflict must inevitably twist the mind. Can the mind function healthily,
sanely, with great expanse, with great beauty, with great intelligence, without any
effort?
Look, sirs—if I may point out, not critically, not in any way derogatorily—
your mind, if you watch it very carefully, is all the time thinking in terms of the
future, what it will become, or the past. In an office you think of becoming the
manager, climbing, climbing, climbing till you reach whatever you reach—some
kind of idiocy. You think in the same way that you will eventually become
perfect, eventually become nonviolent, eventually live in perfect peace. That is
your habit, that is your tradition, that is what you have been brought up on. And
you are being challenged now to think, to look at it entirely differently. You find
it very difficult, so you say to yourself, “How can I possibly live in this mad
world without effort? How can I live with myself without the least movement of
effort?” Don’t you ask that? Isn’t that your life—this constant battle not only
outwardly for security and all the rest of it, but also this battle going on inwardly
to become, to change, to achieve? And where there is any form of effort there
must be distortion, mustn’t there? It is like a machine that cannot run perfectly if
there is any kind of strain.
So we are going to find out whether it is possible for the mind to live without
effort at all and yet function, not vegetate. It’s your question, not mine. You are
putting this question to yourself; I am not putting it to you. All that you have
known is effort, resistance, suppression, or following somebody. That is all you
have known. And we are asking whether the mind that has accepted this system,
this tradition, this way of living, can cease to make effort at all. We are going to
examine it together; you are not learning from me. Please understand this. You
are not learning it from the speaker at all. You are learning through observation;
therefore, it’s yours, not mine. Is that clear?
Effort exists when there is duality. Duality means contradiction: “I am, but I
should be,” contradictory desires, contradictoty purposes, contradictory ideas.
Most human beings are violent; they are terrible animals. Now, we have the ideal
of not being violent, so there is a contradiction between the fact and the idea. The
fact is that human beings are violent, and the nonfact is the ideal of nonviolence.
If there were no ideal at all, then you would deal with the fact, wouldn’t you?
Can you put away the ideal altogether and face what is? Can you put away your
convictions, your formulas, your ideals, your hopes because they prevent you
from observing what is? What is is violence. We do not know what to do with
violence; therefore, we have ideals. Now, as we are speaking, have you put away
your ideals, your convictions? No, you haven’t. Which means you live on ideals,
on words. When someone says, “I am convinced of something,” he is really not
facing facts, he is not observing what is. He is caught in some conclusion, which
prevents him from observing what is.
If a person would change radically, he must observe what is and not what
should be. You see, having ideals is one of the reasons why you have no energy,
why you have no flame, because you are living in some vague abstraction. So
can the mind be free of the future, the future being what you will be? The future
michael s
(Michael S)
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