speak English, understand each other. Scientific knowledge, technological
knowledge, is absolutely necessary to function. We see that. If you would
communicate in Italian, you must learn Italian, study the meaning of words, the
verbs, how to put the sentences together, and accumulate knowledge of Italian. In
order to communicate in Italian, you must have knowledge, which is again the
product of thought cultivating memory of the language and then speaking that
language.
One sees also that thought has created divisions between people through their
religious absurdities, through their nationalism, and linguistically and culturally.
It has created division between you and another, between you and your wife,
between you and your children. Thought has divided, and yet thought has
produced extraordinary technological knowledge, which you must have. Do you
see the problem? Thought has brought about great contusion, misery, wars, and
thought also has produced extraordinary knowledge. So there is a contradiction
in the very functioning of thought; it divides, separates, psychologically as well
as outwardly. Thought has gathered extraordinary knowledge and thought uses
that knowledge to sustain the separateness of people.
The question is whether thought, though it must function within the field of
knowledge, can cease to create separation. Really, basically, fundamentally, that
is the problem. Thought is old because memory is of yesterday. Thought is never
free, because it can function only within the field of knowledge. Thought is the
response of memory, and that memory is within the very structure of the brain
cells. Is there a perception—not a way, or a system, or a method; those are all
mechanical and absurd and lead nowhere—in which the very seeing is the
acting?
Are we going together? Don’t agree too quickly because that is childish. You
see, you are not used to investigating, you are not used to observing yourself.
You are accustomed to reading what other people say and repeating it. You
know, it would be marvelous if you never said a word that is not your own
discovery. Never to say anything that you yourself don’t know means you put
away all your gurus, your sacred books, religious books, theories, what the
philosophers have said. Of course you will have to keep your scientific,
technological books, but that’s all. If you never say anything that you do not
understand, that you have not discovered yourself, you will see then that the
whole activity of your mind undergoes a tremendous change. Now we are
secondhand human beings or thirteenth-hand human beings, and we are trying to
find out a way of living that is really timeless.
Thought is time. Time means putting things together, a process. To get from
here to there requires time because you have to cover space. Thought thinks in
terms of time, thinks of life as a process, getting from here to there. Now, we are
asking for a way of living in which time does not exist at all except
chronologically. Because what we are concerned with is change, a revolution, a
total mutation of the very structure of the brain cells. Otherwise you cannot
produce a new culture, a new way of living, and live in a different dimension
altogether. So we are asking—the word how is not right—is there an action of
perception in which thought doesn’t enter except technologically?
michael s
(Michael S)
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