is the word, the verb to be. So if you put away the future, you are then concerned
with what is. Then your mind is clear to look. Your mind is not clear to look
when you are looking somewhere in the future. So idealists are the most
hypocritical people in the world because they are avoiding what actually is. If I
want to change, I must face what is, not imagine what I should be. I mustn’t be
crippled with conclusions, convictions, formulas, systems. I must know what is
and how to deal with it. Isn’t that simple, logical, reasonable?
Now arises the question, How am I to observe what is? You see, what should
be becomes the authority. The mind that is free of what should be has no
authority. Therefore it is free from any kind of supposition which breeds
authority. Therefore the mind is free to observe actually what is. Now, how does
it observe? What is the relationship between the observer and the thing it
observes? The mind now is free from all ideals, from all conclusions, from all
authority. Authority exists when there is becoming, when the guru or the book
says that you will achieve if you follow a system: “Do this and you will get that.”
It is always in the future, avoiding the present, and therefore creating authority.
When the mind is free from authority, free from every kind of concept, then the
question arises, How is the mind to observe actually what is?
Now, what is is that human beings are violent. We can explain, find out the
causes for why human beings have become violent. That is fairly simple and one
can easily observe it. One sees it in the animal, and as we come from the animal
and so on, we are aggressive, we are violent, partly because of the culture in
which we live, for which we are responsible. So we are in fact violent. Now, how
does the mind observe this fact, which is violence? How do you observe it? You
are angry, you are jealous, you are envious, brutal. How do you observe that
fact? Do you observe it as an observer and the thing observed? That is division.
Is there an observer observing violence? How do you observe it? Or is your
observation a complete, unitary process in which there is no division between the
observer and the observed? Which is it? Do you observe the fact that you are
violent, greedy, envious, separating yourself from the fact so that the observer
says, “I am different from the thing observed”? Or do you see the anger,
jealousy, violence as part of the observer and therefore that the observer is the
observed? Do you see that? If you see that there is no division between the thing
observed by the observer—that anger, jealousy are part of the observer, that the
observer is jealous—conflict comes to an end.
Conflict exists as long as there is division: when you are a Hindu and another
is a Muslim; when you are a Catholic and another is a Protestant; when you are a
nationalist and somebody else is of another nationality. When there is division of
any kind between you and another, there must be conflict, and that division
outwardly goes inwardly also. There is the division between “me” and my
activity, the “me” that observes, the “me” that says “I will become.” So in that
division there is conflict. A mind in conflict is never free; a mind in conflict is
always distorted. Do you understand this? We use the word understand, not
intellectually—that has no value at all—but are you actually with it completely?
Now, this is part of meditation. This is meditation—not all the rubbish that
you are told—to discover a way of living in which there is no conflict. Not to
michael s
(Michael S)
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