with all its conflict is the same as the inward division of the observer and the
observed.
If you don’t understand this, you can’t go much further, because a mind that
is in conflict cannot possibly ever understand what truth is. Because a mind in
conflict is a tortured mind, a twisted mind, a distorted mind; and how can such a
mind be free to observe the beauty of the earth or the beauty of the sky, a tree,
the beauty of a child or a beautiful woman or a man, and the beauty of extreme
sensitivity and all that is involved in it? Without understanding this basic
principle, not as an ideal but as a fact, you are inevitably going to have conflict.
In the same way, as long as there is an observer and the thing observed, there
must be conflict in you. And when there is conflict in you, you project that
conflict outwardly. Now, most of us realize this. And we do not know how to
observe without the observer, how to dissolve this conflict. And therefore we
resort to the various escapes, leaders, and ideals, and all that nonsense.
Now, we are going to find out for ourselves—not from the speaker—whether
it is possible to end this division as the observer and the observed. Please, this is
important if we are really to move any further because we are going to go into
the question of what love is, what death is, what is the beauty of truth, what
meditation is, and the mind that’s totally still. And to understand the highest, one
must begin with the ending of conflict, and this conflict exists wherever there is
the observer and the observed.
So, what is this observer who has separated himself from the observed?
Please, this is not a philosophy, an intellectual affair, a thing which you can
discuss, deny, agree or disagree about; this is something you have to see yourself,
and therefore it is yours, not the speaker’s. You see that when you are angry, at
the moment of anger, there is no observer. At the moment of experiencing
anything, there is no observer. Please look. When you look at a sunset, and that
sunset is something immense, at that moment there is no observer who says, “I
am seeing the sunset.” A second later comes the observer. You are angry. At the
moment of anger, there is no observer, no experiencer; there is only that state of
anger. A second later comes the observer who says, “I should not have been
angry,” or the observer says, “I was justified in being angry.” The second later,
not at the moment of anger, is the beginning of division.
So, how does this happen? At the moment of experience there is total absence
of the observer. How does it happen that a second later the observer comes into
being? You are putting the question, not I, not the speaker. Put it for yourself and
you’ll find the answer. You have to work because this is your life. But if you say,
“Well, I have learned something from the speaker,” then you have learned
absolutely nothing. You have just collected a few words, and those few words
put together become an idea. Ordered thought is idea, and we are not talking
about ideas, we are not talking about a new philosophy. Philosophy means the
love of truth in daily life, not the truth of some philosophical mind that invents.
So, how does this observer come into being? When you look at a flower, at
the moment you observe it closely there is no observer, there is only looking.
Then you begin to name that flower. Then you say, “I wish I had it in my garden
or in my house.” Then you have already begun to build an image about that
michael s
(Michael S)
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