And therefore each fragment is against the other fragment. And these
fragmentary energies are wasting our total energy.
Now is it possible to look at the whole field of this complex existence, the
economic side, the social side, the family side, the personal, the communal, the
whole of it, as one, perceiving it totally? To perceive it totally, you must have a
mind that is non-fragmented. Now, can a mind that is fragmented throw away all
the fragments and have a perception that is total? I cannot see the whole complex
existence through a little hole that I call the intellect, because the intellect is a
part and you cannot use the part to understand the whole. That’s a simple, logical
fact. There must be a different kind of perception, and that quality of perception
exists only when the observer is absent. When you can look at the tree without
the image, when you can look at your wife and your husband without any image
whatsoever, then you can look at anyone without the image.
It is these images that are the reason for conflict. These images are produced
by the observer. The observer is the tradition, the conditioned being, the censor.
If you see the truth, not the logical sequence but the fact, not as an idea but
actually, that conflict exists as long as there is an observer, then you will observe
without the observer, then you will see the totality of existence. A mind that sees
this has tremendous energy, because energy then is not dissipated.
We dissipate energy through control. Have you ever watched, talked to
someone who has taken vows of celibacy, poverty? What tortures he goes
through because he has the image that truth or whatever that sublime thing is, can
be found only if he is celibate. That’s a waste of sexual energy. You must have
complete energy to find reality, but in himself he is in battle. He has an image
that he should be a celibate, and the image creates a division between himself and
what is actually. If you can actually observe what is without a censor, there is a
transformation of what is. I’ll show it to you.
I am violent. It’s apparently a normal human factor to be violent. At the
moment of violence there is no observer. Then a few seconds later the observer
comes into being. He says, “I should not be violent.” He has an image of
nonviolence, an ideal of nonviolence, which prevents him from observing
violence. So he says to himself, “I will be every day less and less violent. I will
ultimately reach a state of nonviolence.” Now what is implied in that simple fact?
That is, I am violent and one day I will be nonviolent. What is implied in that?
First, there is the observer and the observed. Second, he is sowing the seeds of
violence in the meantime, before he arrives at the state of nonviolence. Then
there is the factor of time before he can be completely nonviolent, that is, the
space between violence and nonviolence. In that space several other factors
happen. So he is never free of violence. You can see this; people who talk
endlessly about nonviolence are really extraordinarily violent people, because
they are always pretending that eventually they are going to come to
nonviolence. In the meantime they are violent. So the fact is violence. The what
is, is violence. And I can observe it—there is an observation—only when the
mind isn’t pursuing the ideal of nonviolence. It can then observe what is.
Now how do you observe what is? Do you observe it with your conditioned
mind saying, “I must not be violent,” with the image that you have about
michael s
(Michael S)
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