Flame of attention. Chapter 5.
Justice begins only when the mind is very clear and when there is compassion.
It is not the individual that holds this consciousness. We are deeply conditioned to think that we are separate individuals; but it is not your brain or mine
But is it possible to look at life as a whole, the suffering, the pleasure, the pain, the tremendous anxiety, loneliness, going to the office, having a house, sex, having children, as though they were not separate activities, but as a holistic movement, a unitary action? Is that possible at all?
And if one is aware, does one then ask: how am I to bring all this together to make a whole? And who is the entity, the `I’, who is to bring all these various parts together and integrate them? That entity, is he not also a fragment?
Thought can never bring about a holistic observation of life
When one functions within the realm of that time one is bringing about a contradiction and hence conflict. Psychological time is conflict.
It is really a great discovery if one realizes the truth that one is the past, the present and the future; which is time as psychological knowledge.
You know all the tricks you play to escape from your own consciousness, from your own state of mind. And this is what is called living.
One never sees that the word is not the thing, that the symbol is never the reality.
Ending is extraordinarily important in life to understand the depth and the beauty of negating something which is not truth
Death is an ending and has extraordinary importance in life
Flame of attention. Chapter 6.
Observation is not analysis. Observation, without distortion, is seeing clearly, not from any personal or ideological point of view; it is to observe so that we see things as they are, see both outwardly and inwardly,
You are the world and the world is you.
Consciousness is the activity of thought and thought has become so immensely important in our lives.
We have to observe what thinking is, that has brought about such extraordinary confusion in the world
But when you are asked a very deep question and you reply, `I do not know’, there is an end to thought
The accumulation of experience stored up in the brain as memory is knowledge and the reaction to that memory is thought.
Thought, however sublime or however trivial, is always fragmentary, is always divisive, because it is derived from memory
All our actions are based on thought, therefore all action is limited, fragmentary, divisive, incomplete it can never be holistic
So, like two parallel lines, they never meet, and therefore there is the battle, the struggle, the pain of having no actual relationship.
So long as one has an image about her and she has about oneself, there must be conflict, because the cultivation of images destroys relationship.
If one were to be totally free of all images, then there would be no hurt, no flattery.
. If one goes into it very deeply, one finds that one can live in this monstrous world and not have a single image about oneself; then one’s relationships have a totally different meaning there is no conflict whatsoever.
If your
wife or your friend, says something ugly and if at that moment you pay complete attention, then in that attention there is no creation of images. Then life has a totally different meaning.
One of the reasons for fear is comparison, comparing oneself with another. Or comparing oneself with what one has been and what one would like to be.
**The movement of comparison is conformity, imitation, adjustment; it is one of the sources of fear. **
When one does not compare then one is not becoming.
Religiously or socially one is always to become something. In this wanting, in this desire to become, there is comparison. To live without comparison is the extraordinary thing that takes place when one has no measure.
As long as one measures psychologically there must be fear, because one is always striving and one may not achieve
Observation must be free, without a direction, without a motive, in order to understand the movement of desire.
When you observe with all your senses, then there is no centre from which you are observing.
But if one is totally attentive then thought does not enter into the movement of sensation. That requires great inward attention with its discipline.
The ‘what is’ has no time. To understand `what is’, requires no time, but only complete observation.
NEW DELHI 1ST, TALK 31ST OCTOBER, 1981
I am not at all sure that you are interested in all this. Whether you are concerned with what is happening in the world. Or are you merely concerned with your own private salvation?
That is, we are human beings whether we live in America, here or anywhere.
what is thinking?
because intellect they think will solve our problems
our consciousness is what we are. What you think, what you feel, your fears, your pleasures, your anxieties, insecurity, your unhappiness, depressions, love, pain, sorrow and the ultimate fear of death. That is the content of our consciousness, which you are.
out what is right action we must understand the content of our consciousness.
I do not know if you have noticed we are always seeking outward order
We feel it has gone out of our hands, out of our control
Why has thought, which is the intellect, the capacity to invent, to write, to think, to do, thought, why has it become important? Why has not affection, care, sympathy, love, why have those not become extraordinarily more important than thought?
If I don’t understand myself, that is, my consciousness, why I think this way, why I behave that way, my fears, my hurts, my anxieties, my various attitudes and convictions, if I don’t comprehend all that whatever I do will bring more confusion
We have set up this government according to our thinking, we have wars because of our thinking - all the cannons, the aeroplanes, the shells, the bombs, everything is put there by thought.
Thinking is first, experience, knowledge, knowledge stored up in the brain as memory, from memory the reaction is thought and action.
Experience, knowledge, memory, stored in the brain, in the cells of the brain, then thought and action
Now the content of our consciousness is all the things which thought has put in it.
So what is it that is hurt? When you say. ‘I am hurt’ - not physically but inwardly, psychologically, the psyche, what is it that is hurt?
thought has identified or created that image
is it possible not to have an image about yourself at all?
? See what happens when you have an image about yourself: you create a division between each other
It is important to understand relationship because we are interrelated to the world.
So is thought love? Is desire love? Is pleasure love?
**The world outside is interrelated, you are not separate from the rest of the world. You are the rest of the world.**
it is very important to look at our relationship, not only my intimate relationship but also my relationship with the rest of the world
The rest of the world is like you, modified, educated differently, superficial manners, perhaps affluent or not but the same reactions, the same pains, the same anxieties, the same fears. That is why, please give your mind, your heart to find out what your relationship is with the world, with your neighbour and with yourself, with your wife or husband
And the content of your consciousness is the hurt which you have not resolved, which has not been completely wiped away, it has left scars and from those scars you have various forms of fears which ultimately leads to isolation, because each one of us is isolated, through tradition, religious traditions, through education, through this idea that you must always succeed, succeed, succeed, become something.
Keep doing, so experience(anything reading)—> action follows
So the world is you
and you are the world.
The speaker is saying that you are the rest of mankind deeply, you may be dark, you may be short, you may put on saris, but those are all superficial educated traditions, but inwardly the common, the flow, whether I am an American, a Russian or Indian, the flow is the same
So we are the world and the world is you very profoundly.
how do you observe? How do you look at things? How do you look at your wife? Or your husband, or your Prime Minister? How do you look at a tree? You understand? Because the art of observation has to be learnt.
**Have you looked at anybody freely, openly, without any word, without any image?**
So can we learn together how to observe? You cannot observe, not only visually, optically, if your mind is occupied. Right?
As most of our minds are occupied: the article I have to write next day, I am occupied with my cooking, I am occupied with my job, I am occupied about sex, I am occupied about how to meditate, I am occupied about what other people might say. So my mind is occupied, from morning until night. Now can such a mind, being occupied, observe anything?
If I am occupied with becoming a marvellous carpenter, not a politician, not a guru - just a carpenter, a master carpenter, not one of your amateur carpenters who is not really an artist - if I want to be a first-class carpenter I have to know the texture of the wood, I have to know the instruments, how to use the instruments, I have to study how to put joints together without a nail and so on and so on. So my mind is occupied. Or if I am neurotic my mind is occupied with sex, or becoming a success. So how can I, being occupied, observe? Right?
So is it possible not to be occupied all the time? I am occupied when I have to talk, when I have to write something or other, but the rest of the time why should I be occupied? You understand this?
So we are saying our brains are occupied, never still.
So to learn how to observe your wife, your neighbour, your government, the poverty, the brutality of poverty, the beastliness of wars, **there must be freedom to observe.**
That means never to have an image about yourself. And have you
seen the importance, the urgency of understanding the relationship and having a mind that is not occupied.
When it is not occupied it is extraordinarily free, it sees great beauty.
But the shoddy little mind, the secondhand little mind is always occupied, about knowledge, about becoming something or other, enquiring, discussing, arguing, never
a quiet, free, unoccupied mind. When there is such a mind, out of that freedom comes supreme intelligence, not out of thought.
share together what is discipline. Because most in the world are not disciplined in the sense that they are not learning
The word ‘discipline’ comes from the word disciple, the disciple who learns, whose mind is learning, not from a particular person, a guru, or from a preacher, or teacher, or from books, he is learning through the observation of his own mind, of his own heart, learning from his own actions. And that learning requires certain discipline, not conformity as most disciplines are understood
And in learning we discover so much more because we are after all, every human being throughout the world, in him is the story of mankind; the mankind is his anxiety, his fears, his loneliness, his despairs, his sorrows, pain, this tremendous complex history is in us, If you know how to read that book then you don’t have to read a single book except books on technology.
**But we are negligent, we are not diligent in learning from ourselves, from our actions. And so we are not responsible for our actions, we are not responsible for what is happening throughout the world and what is happening in this unfortunate country. **
And also we ought to share together the question of beauty. You might ask what has beauty to do with a religious mind?
Have you ever noticed when you give a toy to a child who has
been chattering, naughty, playing around, shouting, when you give a child a complicated toy he is totally absorbed in it, he is very quiet, enjoying the mechanics of it. There the toy has absorbed the child
he becomes completely concentrated, completely involved with that toy. And we grown-up people, we have toys of belief, we have toys of ideals, we have toys of every kind, which absorb us. And when we are so absorbed, as the child is absorbed in a toy, we become extraordinarily quiet, gentle.
And when you see a marvellous mountain, snowcapped against the blue hills, blue sky and the deep shadow in the valleys, that great grandeur, majesty of a mountain absorbs you completely, for a moment you are completely silent because the majesty of that mountain takes you over,
So surely beauty is where you are not.
? The essence of beauty is the absence of the self.
Meditation is the release of creative energy, which we will go into.
‘Why do you use that word religion?’ Etymologically the root meaning of that word is not very clear. Originally it meant to bind, to bind with that which is noble, with that which is great, and to be bounded to that which is great you had to live a very diligent, scrupulous honest life. All that is gone. We have lost our integrity. So what is religion?
And it is the religious mind that doesn’t belong to any organization, to any group, to any sect, it has the quality of a global mind
, but if you have no beauty
in your heart, in your mind, which is the essence of love, one has wasted one’s life.
But you are not separate from envy, you are envy.
So please listen: can you live a life without a single control, which doesn’t mean indulging in whatever you want
Please put this question to yourself: whether you can live a life, which is already so disastrous, so mechanical,
so repetitive, whether you can live without a single sense of
control ?
That can only happen when you perceive clearly every action. When you give your attention to every thought that arises, not just indulge in it, every reaction. When you give complete attention to all that then you will find out that you can live a life without a single conflict
To concentrate implies bringing all your energy to focus on a certain point, and thought wanders away, so you have a perpetual battle between the desire to concentrate, to give all your energy to look at a page, but your mind is wandering, and you try to control it.
Whereas attention has no control, no concentration. It is complete attending, which means giving all your energy, your nerves, your capacity of the energy of the brain, your heart, everything, giving attention to something
You know when you attend so completely there is no recording.
! When you are attending the brain doesn’t record.
. Whereas when you are concentrating, making effort, the brain is recording and therefore you are always acting from memory, like a gramophone record repeating. You understand all this?
It is necessary to record various activities of life. But not to record psychologically, inwardly, either the insult, the flattery, all that, nothing to record inwardly.
the word is never the thing, the symbol is never the actual - so the mind must be free from all that
And it is only the silent mind, the mind that is free, that can find out, can come upon what which is beyond time.
So one must enquire into what is silence? Have you noticed, if you have observed yourself that your mind is eternally chattering, eternally occupied with something or other
So our minds are all the time occupied. An occupied mind has no empty space.
And space is necessary.
Space implies an emptiness. And that which is empty has
immense energy
You can make your mind silent through a drug, by some chemical pill, you can make your thought slow down by some chemical intake so the thought becomes quieter and quieter. Those are all experimental ways of making the mind quiet, silent. But that silence is concerned with sound. Are you all interested in all this?
Have you ever enquired what it is to have a mind that is absolutely silent without a movement, a mind that is not recording except those things that are necessary?
So where there is silence there is space, Where there is silence there is no point but only silence. And that silence has that extraordinary energy of the universe.
you may find the cause through analysis but you never are free from the causation.
So to understand order of the universe, which is without cause, is it possible to live a daily life without any cause?
And that is
supreme order. Then out of that order you have creative energy.
So we have to enquire what is this creative energy, because we have lost it. We have lost it completely
There is complete security in compassionate intelligence. Total security. But we want security in ideas, in beliefs, in concepts, in ideals, we hold on to them, that is our security. However false, however irrational it is. So where there is compassion there is supreme intelligence, there is security
When you are compassionate, when there is that intelligence, there is no question of security.
So there is an origin, the original ground from which all things
start, and that original ground is not the word. The word is never
the thing. And meditation is to come upon that ground, which is the origin of all things, and which is free from all time.
Done.
So we must also enquire when we meditate, when you do, if you do, this whole problem of control. Most of us control our responses, our reactions, we try to suppress, control desires, we try to shape our desires.
Controller is the controlled.
But you are not separate from envy, you are envy. Envy is not separate from you. Right?
ANS: That can only happen when you perceive clearly every action. When you give your attention to every thought that arises, not just indulge in it, every reaction. When you give complete attention to all that then you will find out that you can live a life without a single conflict. Space implies an emptiness. And that which is empty has immense energy.
attention has no control, no concentration. It is complete attending, which means giving all your energy, your nerves, your capacity of the energy of the brain, your heart, everything, giving attention to something
the word is never the thing, the symbol is never the actual - so the mind must be free from all that.
And it is only the silent mind, the mind that is free,
So one must enquire into what is silence? , eternally occupied with something or other.So our minds are all the time occupied. An occupied mind has no space. And space is necessary. So let’s find out what space is. Space implies an emptiness. And that which is empty has immense energy