with you. It’s like a house burning and you watching it, not doing anything about
it.
Human beings throughout the world are in conflict, in battle with themselves,
with their neighbors, with the world, with the environment of which we are a
part. Until we understand this and find out for ourselves whether there is a
possibility of ending conflict totally, then we shall never be able to live at peace
with ourselves, and so with society. It’s only a mind that is completely
peaceful—not asleep, not mesmerized by itself into what it considers peace but
actually living at peace—that can find what truth is, what it means to live and
what it means to die and the depth and the width of love.
I don’t know if you are aware of how, within yourself, you are fragmented,
broken up, which is a fact. You are a businessman and you are a householder,
two opposites. You are an artist and at the same time, as a human being you are
greedy, envious, seeking power, position, prestige, fame. You are a scientist and
an ordinary rather shoddy little human being. As human beings we are
fragmented, broken up in ourselves. Unless we understand and end the conflict of
the various dualities in which we live—fragmented as God and soul and man,
virtue and non-virtue, hate and love—we are incapable of perception. It’s only a
mind that is not tortured, that is not distorted, that is very clear, that has no traces
of any kind of conflict, which can see what truth is and can live.
What is the root cause of this diversified conflict not only within oneself but
socially—having wars and demanding peace, the ways of the politicians and the
ways of the saints? Is it the fault of the environment, the education that one has,
the culture in which one lives? Is it the fault of the environment that humans,
you, are in constant battle not only during the day but also during the night when
you sleep, from the moment you are born till you die? To be aware intellectually
is merely to be aware of certain ideas, words, and that has no value at all. But if
you are actually aware, feel that in yourself you are fragmented, broken up,
contradictory, you must have asked why human beings, you, live in this. You
have created the environment, the society in which you live, the religions and the
gods that you accept. Your gods are your projections or your grandfather’s
projections, of which you are a part. So you are responsible for the conflict and
for the environment, the society in which you live, and all the absurdities of
religion, the beliefs, the dogmas, the rituals, the immaturity that goes into all this.
When you are intensely, passionately aware that you are the world and the world
is you, then why does this conflict exist in you?
I don’t know if you have asked this question of yourself. If you have, what is
your answer? Do you refer to what some authority has said? Is that what you do
when you ask yourself why there is this conflict in you, a human being who is
responsible for the whole structure of the environment in which you live and of
which you are a part? If anyone answers this question, it will be merely a
description, an explanation, but the explanation and the description are not the
explained nor the described. So you have to totally disregard authority. You have
to find out why you are in conflict, not according to somebody else. If you find
out according to someone else, then you will find the answer according to that
person, not according to yourself.
michael s
(Michael S)
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