Inward Revolution Bringing About Radical Change in the World

Then your mind becomes twisted, tortured, and a mind that is twisted cannot
possibly see what truth is.
So you see now that thought gives continuity and nourishment to fear and that
thought sustains and gives duration to pleasure. It is a simple fact. Then one asks,
What is the function of thought? Thought breeds fear and sustains pleasure, in
which there is invariably pain. Pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin,
and the division brought about between pleasure and pain is the function of
thought. Thought divides pleasure and pain. Thought says, “I must have this and
avoid that.”
So knowing that fear and pleasure are two sides of the same coin, we have to
ask what the function of thought is. You cannot possibly get rid of pleasure,
because the moment you see a lovely thing, there is pleasure. You see a beautiful
child, a beautiful woman, a beautiful line in the sky, the bird on the wing, a
lovely thought, a subtlety, and all that is immense delight, like joy. Joy is not
pleasure, but having experienced joy, thought reduces it to pleasure, because it
says, “I must have more of it.”
So what is the function of thought? What is thinking—not as you are used to
thinking according to a pattern, according to some authority, but what is
thinking? Surely thinking is the response of your collective experience, which is
knowledge. Isn’t it? If you had no knowledge at all, you couldn’t think. If you
had no knowledge of your name, of your house, of language, you couldn’t speak;
it would be a state of amnesia. So thinking is the response of collected memory,
both in the particular human being and in the collective human beings. Every
thought is a response from memory, tradition, accumulated knowledge, the
collective memory.
Then what is the function of thinking or thought? You must have scientific
and psychological knowledge. That is the accumulated experience of humankind,
the accumulated experience of science, the accumulated experience of using
words, how to play a piano and so on. You must have complete, rational, sane
knowledge; you cannot do without it. You also see what knowledge has done.
You have accumulated knowledge as the experiences of yesterday, and you want
that experience repeated. And it may not happen; therefore there is pain. So
knowledge is necessary in one direction, and knowledge breeds fear and pain.
Perhaps you are not used to all this, to think clearly for yourself and not
according to anybody; to observe for yourself the beauty of a tree; to observe
Venus in the morning; to observe the beauty of a child; to observe your wife and
the beauty of your wife or the ugliness of your wife or the ugliness or the beauty
of your husband. When you had the experience of sunset yesterday, it was new,
fresh, full of joy, something incredible. The light, the texture of it, the feel of it
has been recorded. That has become knowledge; therefore it’s already old.
Therefore the old says, “I must have a new experience,” and the new experience
is translated in terms of pleasure.
So thought is the response of memory. Memory is accumulated knowledge,
experience. You must have technological knowledge, but you also see that the
knowledge of yesterday not only breeds pleasure and fear, but gives continuity to
pleasure and fear. So you see that thought must function logically, sanely,