tree. In the same way, when you have an image about your wife or husband or
your friend, you are not looking at the friend but looking through the image that
you have. So there is duality. This division between the observer and the
observed is the very essence of conflict.
When I am angry, at the moment of anger there is no observer. Please follow
this. I am going to go into it step by step. Follow it by observing yourself—not
what the speaker is pointing out because then you are outside, not inside.
Observe for yourself what takes place. When you are angry, at the moment of
experiencing that anger or any other experience, there is no observer. A second
later the observer comes and says, “I have been angry.” He has separated himself
from anger. He has named the feeling “anger.” He has named it to strengthen his
memory. His memory says, “You have been angry.” The memory is a censor.
The memory says, “You should not have been angry; be kind, don’t hit him back,
turn the other cheek.” The response of memory as thought becomes the observer
and so there is a division between the observer and the observed. When he says,
“I am angry; I am jealous; I am envious,” then the conflict begins, because he
wants to suppress envy or enlarge it, take delight in it. So where there is the
observer and the observed, there is the root of conflict.
So is there an observation of anger without the observer? That is the next
question. We are conditioned to the conflict that arises when there is an observer
different from the thing observed. That’s our tradition, that’s our conditioning,
that’s the result of our culture. And when we function from habit, it’s a waste of
energy. When we immediately respond, that is, when the observer immediately
responds to an emotion or a reaction, the response is always the old. It’s the old
brain responding. We are asking whether there is an observation without the
observer. Now, to end any habit, any tradition without conflict needs energy. I
am angry; at the moment of anger there is no observer as the “I” who says, “I am
angry.” A second later, the observer, who is the censor, comes into being, and
says, “I must not be angry.” The response of the observer is tradition, is habit, is
the old brain responding. That constant response of the old brain is a waste of
energy, and you need total energy to observe without the observer. Are you doing
this? Are we sharing together what we are talking about?
Let’s put the whole thing differently. What is our life? What is the daily life,
not the ideological life, not the life you would like to lead, not the life that you
hope to have in the future, but the actual daily what is? What’s your life? It’s a
battle, isn’t it, with occasional flashes of pleasure, whether they are sexual or
other forms of sensuous pleasure. Our life is a constant battle. Can that battle
end? Because what we are we make of the world. Now, to end that battle, you
must look at the whole field of existence, not partially but totally. Totally means
the sorrow, the physical pain, the insults, the fears, the hopes, the anxieties, the
ambitions, the regrets, the competitive, aggressive, brutal existence. See the
whole of it, not just parts of it. We are used to seeing parts of it, not taking the
whole field and looking. We are not capable as we are to observe this whole field
as one, because we have divided life into business, family life, religious life. You
know the divisions that go on. And each division has its own activity of energy.
michael s
(Michael S)
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