But I can’t see how the two can come together.” Now we are going to share this
question together.
How do you observe a tree? Just a tree. How do you observe it? Do you see it
through an image, the image being your knowledge of a particular tree, that it is a
mango tree or whatever it is?
Do you look at the tree with an image that you have about it, which is the
knowledge that you have? Do you look at your neighbor or your wife or husband
with the knowledge that you have, with the image that you have? You do, don’t
you? When you look at a communist, you have an idea, an image of what a
communist is. Or you look at a Protestant with Catholic eyes or a Muslim with
Hindu eyes. That is, you look through an image, right? So the image divides. If I
am married and I have lived with my wife or a friend for twenty years, naturally I
have built up an image about that person. Nagging, friendship, companionship,
sex, pleasure, all that is involved, and that becomes the image through which I
look. That is simple, isn’t it? So the image divides.
Now take the observer and the observed. The observer is the image, is the
knowledge of the past. And he looks with that image at the thing he is observing.
Therefore there is a division. Now, can the mind be free of images? Of all
images? Can the mind, which is in the habit of building images, be free of image-
building? That is, can the machinery that builds the image come to an end? Now,
what is that machinery? Please, we are sharing the problem together; I am not
instructing you. We are asking each other what this image is and how this image
is produced and what it is that sustains this image.
Now, the machinery that builds the image is inattention, right? You insult me
or flatter me. When you insult me, I react, and that reaction builds the image. The
reaction comes about when there is no attention, when I am not attending
completely to your insult, when I don’t pay complete attention. Therefore
inattention, not having attention, breeds the image. When you call me an idiot, I
react. That is, I am not fully attentive to what you are saying, and therefore the
image is formed. But when I am completely attentive to what you are saying,
there is no image-forming. When you flatter me and I listen completely, with
complete attention, which is to attend without any choice, to be aware without
any choice, then there is no image-forming at all. After all, image-forming is a
way of not getting hurt. We won’t go into that because that leads us somewhere
else. So when somebody flatters or insults, give complete attention at that
moment; then you will see there is no image. And having no image, there is no
division between the observer and the observed.
Q: You have already said what I wanted to say. The moment I call something
anger, I have already separated myself.
K: That’s right, sir.
Q: And if and when I am in anger, I can’t observe; there is no question of...