What is thought? Where should thought function completely, totally,
rationally, sanely, and where should thought be completely quiet? Thought is the
response of memory. Memory, knowledge, experience is stored up in the brain,
and that responds as thought. The memory, the intelligence, the knowledge has
created the rocket that went to the moon, has created the most marvelous
technological things, the atom bomb, the airplane, extraordinary things. And yet
that very thought gives continuity to fear, and that very thought seeks pleasure,
and that very pleasure becomes fear. Do you see the difficulty? You need thought
to function rationally, objectively, sanely, reasonably, logically, and you also see
how thought continues to go on with fear. As one is experiencing something,
physical pain or psychological pain, why does thought come in and hold it?
Why? Are you asking the question too?
To speak English, I must have a great deal of knowledge, memory of
English—thought uses words in order to convey something. Thought uses
knowledge for that, and thought also uses knowledge that breeds fear. There is
knowledge of the pain of yesterday, and there is knowledge of the pleasure of
yesterday. Why does thought always avoid the one, which is fear, and hold on to
pleasure? That’s one question. Why does thought interfere when there is an
experience? I have an experience of a sunset and at that moment there is no
thinking at all; I am just looking at the beauty of the light. Then thought comes
along and says, “I want that repeated again tomorrow,” which is knowledge as
experience, which is pleasure, wanting it to be repeated again. I have had pain;
the remembrance of that pain is knowledge, and according to that knowledge or
depending on that knowledge, thought says, “I don’t want it.” Thought is doing
this all the time, functioning between pleasure and pain. And thought is
responsible for both.
Are you all getting tired of this? This is your life, my friends. In this there is
no love. Pleasure is not love. Pleasure, desire, is not love.
So knowledge is essential to find your way home, to speak a language, to
invent, and so on. Knowledge is essential; and knowledge of the pain of
yesterday breeds fear. So you have to find out for yourself, not be informed by
the speaker, what it is that acts when thought is absent. We said at the beginning
of the talk that we are going to look at our lives, look, observe, examine, and not
run away. You are forced into a corner to look at it, for a change. Sitting there,
listening, there is no escape. You are facing your life, and you discover these two
principles: fear and pleasure. You discover them. You are not told by the
speaker; you yourself have found it. And, as we are sharing the problem together,
you see the nature of fear and the nature of pleasure. You are not saying, “I
mustn’t have pleasure”; you are not saying, “I mustn’t have fear.” We are
investigating, understanding fear, understanding pleasure. We are not saying you
must be without desire or without fear. When you understand something you will
be free of it, and you can understand it only when you look at it, when you
investigate it, when you learn about it. And we are learning together about fear,
as we are learning together about pleasure.
If you have followed from the beginning, observed all this, your mind has
become very sensitive, very alert, aware of this whole problem. You can go into
michael s
(Michael S)
#1