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OJ79T3 - What is the root of fear?
Ojai, California - 14 April 1979
Public Talk 3



0:46 I feel a bit shy!
0:56 May we go on talking about what we were saying last Sunday and Saturday?
1:18 We were saying, if I remember correctly, that we must see things together, see together the confusion of the world around us, the extraordinary danger that is all over the world, to human life, how the religions throughout the world are breaking up the coming together of human beings.
2:18 And seeing this vast confusion, misery, starvation and affluence, and wars, every intelligent man who is at all aware of the present state of the world outside of us must be asking if it is possible for human beings, each one of us, to have this quality of goodness.
3:01 In the English language, especially in America, I think, they are using words which are now becoming utterly meaningless, like ‘security,’ like ‘sincerity,’ they have lost their meaning.
3:27 A man who wants to sell you something is very sincere, a man who is rather demented and does not know that he’s somewhat unbalanced, he’s very sincere.
3:49 And a man who believes very strongly in certain conclusions, in certain beliefs, in God and so on, he’s also very sincere.
4:05 And a word like ‘honesty’ has lost almost its meaning.
4:18 Because when we are living in a totalitarian state you cannot be honest, you have to tell lies, you have to be dishonest.
4:33 But if you spoke what you wanted to say openly, it would be dangerous of living.
4:41 So, one has to examine all these words and give a different meaning to all these: like the word ‘love,’ is heavily loaded with all kinds of sensuous, sentimental, romantic nonsense.
5:03 So one has to re-examine altogether these words.
5:13 We are using the word ‘goodness,’ in the sense that there cannot be a good society outside of us unless each human being is very honest.
5:30 I’m going to explain what I mean by ‘honest.’ There cannot be a good society if it is merely accepting a state which he disapproves of and yet outwardly accepts it, he cannot possible be good or honest.
5:59 The good family, the good earth, the good book, the good idea – we are talking about a goodness that is beyond all this, which we’ll go into as we go along during these three or four talks left to us.
6:22 We are now using the word ‘goodness’ in the sense that human beings, can they be totally honest, not only outwardly but especially inwardly so as not to be deceived, not to be caught in an illusion, not to hold on to some decayed belief?
6:56 Because all these prevent this quality of a deep, abiding sense of honesty.
7:07 We are using the word ‘honesty’ psychologically, in the sense, to have no illusion whatsoever, a make-belief, or accept a concept created by others or by yourself, and if you are living according to a concept, to an ideal, it is divorced from actuality and therefore you cannot be honest, therefore you cannot have this quality of goodness.
7:44 We are giving this word a totally different meaning. I think it is the right word, because throughout history – not that the speaker is a scholar, but he has observed a great deal – throughout history man has craved to have a society that’s peaceful that is orderly, safe, where everyone is employed, where the tyrant doesn’t rule and so on, so on, it has been the craving of man.
8:32 All the utopias are based on this, but they never come to fruition because man is so essentially dishonest, deeply, because he accepts, he lives in a state of illusion, a make-belief.
8:57 So we are saying, observing all this, this total chaos in the world, practical anarchy, where even the pope has to be protected when he leaves the Vatican, it is all becoming so silly and dangerous.
9:23 Seeing all this, what is the right action for each one of us?
9:32 Because we contribute to the chaos, there is no question about it, because we have created this society, we are responsible for this society.
9:46 And if we do not radically, basically, fundamentally bring about psychological revolution, there cannot be a good society.
10:05 So we are asking, what will make man fundamentally change?
10:17 You understand my question? Please give some attention to this.
10:28 The speaker is not giving a talk, we are sharing together the problem, not the way you see it or the speaker sees it, the problems actually as they are, not what you would want them to be, or what I want them to be, but the actual happening in the world, outside of us, and actually, what is happening inwardly, psychologically, inside our skin, as it were.
11:07 Otherwise, we cannot possibly communicate with each other.
11:17 Communication implies sharing, partaking the same thing together.
11:27 If the speaker wants to tell you something, and if you are not attentive or if you don’t care to listen, then there is no possibility of communication.
11:38 But since we are all human beings concerned with a world that’s degenerating, where there is so much danger, chaos, disorder, it’s our human problem to resolve it, not for the leaders because we elect the leaders.
12:00 If we are confused, our leaders will be confused. It’s so obvious, all this. So the fundamental question is, what will change human beings, their quality, their behaviour, their deep-rooted selfishness and so on, what will change each one?
12:35 Do we want more shocks, more disaster, more wars?
12:43 You understand, sir? Question all this. Let’s think it over together, let us observe it together, not I observe and tell you, or you observe and tell me, but together observe these facts.
13:00 And having observed these facts impersonally, objectively, not as an American, as a Hindu, objectively, the question then is, what will change man?
13:17 They have tried various systems, political, religious, economic – outside.
13:26 The communist revolution, the French revolution, various other forms of revolution, the revolutions that have been going on in the world have not changed man.
13:40 They have modified the environment, they have brought about certain conveniences, comforts, but basically man has remained as he was for the last million years or more.
14:02 So what shall we do? What is man to do? What is his responsibility, what is his action?
14:22 Most of our actions are based on our desire.
14:35 We went into that a little bit last Sunday.
14:42 We said desire is the seeing, the contact, the sensation.
14:56 Please follow this step by step, otherwise we shan’t be able to communicate with each other – seeing, contact, response of sensation, the senses responding to the contact and so on.
15:17 Then thought comes into action and says, ‘To have that house, that car, that garden,’ creates an image, and the pursuit of that image is the activity of will which is desire.
15:45 Are we going too fast? No, I can go very fast but are we meeting each other, not only verbally but actually?
16:00 Because one must find out together if even a small group, two or three who are serious find out together what is right action, living in this monstrous, insane world, what is right action?
16:21 To find out what is right action one has to find out what our activities spring from, our daily activities, and when you observe it, it is really our desire: ‘I wish to gain, I wish to achieve, I am ambitious, I am this...’ It’s all the activity of desire with its will.
16:53 Desire is contradictory. I desire one thing one year, later on another year there is opposing, contradictory desires.
17:09 So our actions are also contradictory, because most of our actions are based on desire with its will to succeed, to achieve, to fulfil, to have pleasure and so on.
17:29 So your desire opposes another person’s desire, so there is conflict between two people, between two desires.
17:43 This action born out of these contradictory desires, creates confusion.
17:50 Please, this is obvious – right? – can we go on? No, I can go on but will you follow all this, actually do it?
18:04 Observe it very carefully and find out for oneself what is right action.
18:12 We said, desire is the movement of sensation, having a good house, a big lovely garden, a nice car, a beautiful person and so on, it is the movement of sensation as desire.
18:34 Desire arises when thought creates the image and pursues that image.
18:50 Now, is there an action – please listen to it – which is not the action of desire, but the action of intelligence?
19:02 I’ll explain what I mean. Please follow. Are we meeting each other, or am I going ahead by myself?
19:18 All right, sir? Good.
19:25 As we said the other day, sensations, the movement of senses, with most of us it is a part of the senses.
19:48 There is no activity of the whole movement of the senses – as a whole, but only partial.
19:59 And desire equally is partial.
20:07 So we are asking, if you observe, contact – that is perception, contact, sensation, then thought comes creating the image and the pursuit of the image.
20:26 Now, when you see this, intelligence is born.
20:38 All right, sirs? Is this a little…? All right, I’ll make it a little more… Go into it.
20:58 We observe right throughout the world that every human being is driven by his desires – the politicians, the popes, the religious people, the economists, everybody is drive by desire.
21:22 This energy of desire is opposed to another series of desires – yours and another’s.
21:32 So this opposition creates contradiction, and therefore in action there must be conflict.
21:47 That’s clear. Now, we are asking, is there an action which is not born of desire?
22:01 Right? And we say, there is, if you observe it closely. Desire is the movement of the senses, which is the observation, contact, sensation, then thought taking over.
22:22 If you can see the consequences of thought taking over the sensations, and the consequences of it are conflict, contradiction, fulfilment, and not being able to fulfil, fear and all the rest of it follows.
22:46 So to see the sensation, the interference of thought, to see this whole movement is intelligence.
23:04 And the action of intelligence is not your intelligence or my intelligence, it is intelligence.
23:12 Therefore there is no contradiction in our action.
23:20 You follow? See, it is logical. First see logically, verbally even. Then perhaps, after seeing it logically then you can get the feeling of this quality of intelligence, which is not yours or mine, it is intelligence.
23:45 Therefore it is a common factor, and we are acting together from the common factor.
23:54 Do you get it? That is the essence of goodness, because there is no contradiction, there is no ‘my’ desire opposing ‘your’ desire.
24:19 Goodness, which basically has this quality of intelligence, goodness cannot exist as long as there is fear.
24:37 Do you understand? May I go on? Most of us have peculiar fears.
24:55 I don’t know if you are aware of your own fears.
25:02 If you are, what is the root of fear?
25:10 Not how to get rid of fear – for the moment, we’ll go into it – but what is the root of fear.
25:22 Most of us are concerned when we have fears, either to suppress it, control it, run away from it, or invent some rationalisation which gradually becomes neurotic.
25:51 Apparently throughout the ages man has not been able to be free of fear, both outward fears, dangers, accidents and so on, ultimately the fear of death, and we still live with innumerable fears, each one according to his temperament, character, idiosyncrasy, according to his peculiar experience, culture and so on.
26:34 He is frightened, and not being able to solve this fear he looks to an outside agency, to the analyst, to the professor, to the specialist, or to God.
26:57 God, of course, is the ultimate escape.
27:07 Now, we are asking not how to trim the various branches of fear, how to modify fear, or how to develop courage to meet fears – to develop courage is only a form of resistance to one’s own fear, it’s there, but you use the word ‘courage’ and develop a form of resistance, but one has not solved the nature of fear. Right?
27:49 So we are enquiring together. Please, I am not enquiring and you are listening, together we are investigating what is the nature, the structure of fear.
28:06 Can man, ordinary human being, be free of fear totally?
28:17 You understand my question?
28:27 Man has not been able to resolve it, so he wants to forget the fear in immolating himself to a certain principle, to a certain idea, utopia, which is, always escaping from the fact.
28:59 So we are asking, what is the root of fear?
29:07 If one can find out, discover for oneself what is the cause, the essence of fear then perhaps we can live a different kind of life altogether, which is the life of goodness, because goodness cannot contain fear.
29:35 To find out the root of fear one must investigate the whole movement of thought.
29:45 I’ll relate it, you will see it presently.
29:56 What is the movement of thought, how does thought arise, the origin of it, the beginning of it, and what is the nature of this whole structure of thought upon which all our civilisations, all our religions, all our economic life and our jobs, everything is based on thought?
30:27 Right? I wonder if we see that.
30:39 Thought has created the marvellous cathedrals, great architecture, great poems, literature and so on, those marvellous bridges across a vast expanse.
31:02 Thought has created all that. Thought has also created the technological world, the dynamo, the hydro-electricity and so on, so on.
31:22 And thought also has brought about division between man and man – my nation opposed to your nation, my god opposed to your god, my belief against yours, and so on, so on.
31:42 So one must, in enquiring into the root of fear one must also go into this question of what is thinking, because if there is no comprehension of the movement of thought and the nature of thought, fear may escape us altogether – the understanding of it and going beyond it.
32:13 So we are now enquiring into the nature of thought in relation to the question whether man can ever be free from fear.
32:26 I’ll show you. The two are related, they are not separate.
32:35 What is thought?
32:43 What is our thinking process?
32:50 – the very nature of thought, not what I think or don’t think, the very thinking of man.
33:03 Surely, it is the response of memory, the response of experience as knowledge.
33:19 You’re following? Man has accumulated vast knowledge, that accumulation has come into being through experience stored up in the brain as memory.
33:37 And the response of that memory is thought.
33:46 That’s clear, isn’t it?
33:55 If there was no memory there would be no thinking, it would be total amnesia.
34:06 Thinking based upon knowledge must always be partial, there can be no complete thinking because it is the outcome of knowledge which is stored up in the brain, and that knowledge is the past.
34:35 Right? This is simple. Thought is always limited because it is born from knowledge, and knowledge however extended, however deep, is limited.
34:56 Right? One cannot have total, whole knowledge of anything, of the universe – you can’t.
35:10 So thought is the response of memory, and memory is the outcome of knowledge which is the past, stored in the brain.
35:27 We won’t discuss the brain for the moment, because that’s very… We’ll go into it a little later. I’m not a brain specialist, but I have watched very carefully, and talked to some of the brain specialists.
35:46 So thought has created not only the marvellous things of the world: cathedrals, dynamos, electricity, going to the moon and so on, but also it has created wars, it has created divisions in religion, in relationship.
36:11 So thought, being limited, though it can imagine the limitless but it’s still limited because thought then thinks about the limitless and so the very thinking of the limitless is limited.
36:35 I wonder if you see that. Man has created God – God has not created man, man has created God.
36:48 Man has said He’s omnipotent, universal, ever-loving, merciful, giving attributes to this thing which he has created, but it’s still the movement of thought, whether it is the Hindu, the Islamic, or the Christian, or any form of religious organisation, is the movement of thought.
37:24 Not knowing how to solve the problem of fear I invent – thought invents – an entity which will help me to solve the problem: the outside agency, God, the authority, the specialist, – are there any psychoanalysts here? – the psychoanalysts, the priests and so on, so on.
37:58 If one understands the nature of thought, the nature, the movement, which is a fact, it’s not my invention.
38:10 It is the common fact, if one investigates into the nature of thought.
38:20 Thought is limited and never under any circumstances can it be free because it’s born out of the known.
38:31 The known is always the past and hence confined.
38:39 Now what is the relationship between thought and fear?
38:46 You understand? One is afraid of death – I won’t go into the question of death, that’s a very complex thing, we will go into it.
39:02 We’re asking what is the relationship between these two.
39:17 Fear is time.
39:28 I’ll have to explain. Gosh. Must one explain everything, can’t we jump into it?
39:38 Time is movement, isn’t it? Thought is movement. So thought is time.
39:49 No? Don’t agree with me, please, just see for yourself. To do something I have to think about it and then I act.
40:07 To go from here to there needs time. Time means the movement from here to there, and thought is a movement also: from the known, modified by the present, and moving forward.
40:25 It is the same movement, so it is time. So thought is time, and we are saying fear is essentially time.
40:45 One is afraid of tomorrow, what might happen, or one is afraid of something that has happened in the past and that might happen again in the future.
41:07 One has had physical pain last month, or last week, and it might happen again, tomorrow.
41:20 You are following all this? Are we communicating with each other? I must go on. So thought has seen...
41:35 there has been physical pain last week, it has been registered in the brain – please listen carefully to this – one has had pain last week, it has been registered, which is recorded as memory, then thought says, ‘I hope I’ll not have that pain again tomorrow.’ Right? You are following this?
42:08 This is a common, everyday occurrence. So the past incident, painful or pleasurable, is registered in the brain, then the memory says, ‘I hope I will not have that pain again tomorrow.’ Right?
42:36 The hoping not to have that pain is a form of fear. Right? And we are saying, thought and fear are closely related.
42:57 So the root of fear is the nature of thought.
43:09 Thought brings fear.
43:20 I’m sure you have certain fears, I’m sure of it.
43:27 What is the cause of it? Your thinking about it, the pain of yesterday, physically, thinking about not having it, or the psychological pain, inwardly, the fear of losing, the fear of not having security, inwardly, the fear of loneliness, fear of isolation, all that is brought about by thinking.
44:17 So the problem then is, if that is the root of fear, which is time as thought, then in what manner can thought end, or the brain not register an incident which is painful or pleasurable? You understand this point?
44:46 I wonder if you get this.
44:54 One has been to a dentist – I’m sure most of you have – and you have a great deal of pain.
45:04 That pain is registered, and thought says, ‘I hope it is all right, I hope I won’t have any more pain.’ There is always this apprehension behind that pain, the recurring of it.
45:32 Can you – please listen to this – can you go to the dentist and have the pain, and end the pain as you leave the office, not carry it over?
45:51 Have you ever tried this? You understand what I am saying, or you’re all…? More or less. I don’t… Are you following this? Because this is very important to understand.
46:11 Our consciousness is made up of its content: greed, envy, nationalism, your experience, your name, your form, your memories, your beliefs, your anxieties, your sorrows, your opinions, judgements, values, all that, and more, is your consciousness.
46:38 That consciousness is conditioned.
46:45 And acting from that consciousness – of course – must lead to confusion because the content is confused.
46:58 I wonder if you see all this.
47:07 May I go into something slightly different? I’ll come back to this. There is an art of listening.
47:21 That is, to listen not only with the hearing with the ear, but also to listen to the meaning of the word, and go much deeper than the significance of the word, to listen totally.
47:46 When you listen to music and your particular composer whom you like, and you completely listen, your whole brain is in movement, there’s no left brain and right brain – I mustn’t go into all this – there is a total attention.
48:20 In the same way to listen without creating an idea about what you’re listening, just the art of listening, as there is an art of seeing.
48:44 To see without the interference of all your memories, of all your prejudice, just to see the beauty of this morning.
48:59 And there is also the art of learning. Again, that’s rather complex, I’ll just leave that for a while. So there is the art of listening with all your attention, in which there is not an interference of your prejudices or opinion, just to listen what the other person is trying to convey, to listen to your wife, or to your girl, or to your husband, or boy, to listen – which we never do.
49:42 Then communication is not only verbal, it is total.
49:49 If I listen to what you have to tell me. If you tell me ‘I love you,’ I listen to you with all my heart, there is complete communion.
50:05 So, in the same way listen to what is being said, not as you listen make an abstraction of it into an idea and say, ‘Well, I’ll think about that idea, later when I get home,’ but in the meantime you’ve gone off.
50:30 Whereas if you listen completely, then you will see that time, which is thought, is the essence of fear.
50:47 Then the problem arises: what place has thought?
50:55 If thought is the root of fear – of course it is – because I’m afraid what might happen tomorrow, I am afraid of death, I am afraid of darkness, I am afraid of public opinion, I am afraid of my wife, I am afraid of somebody or other, which is, the movement of thought.
51:20 The moment of fear there is no thought.
51:27 At the moment of anger there is no saying ‘I have been angry,’ there is only the state of that response.
51:36 Then thought says, ‘I know what that response is, it has been registered in the past, and I call that ‘anger.’ So we are asking, what place has thought, if thought creates fear, then what place has thought in action?
52:03 Because if we act from fear, as most people do, then that action must create confusion because fear is a dreadful thing: because not only physically there is a withdrawing, shrinking, psychologically there is curling up, inwardly.
52:39 And when there is action from that it must inevitably bring confusion, conflict, misery.
52:49 So one must absolutely find out if fear can end, absolutely, not occasionally escape from fear, the total, absolute ending of psychological fears.
53:09 Because if psychologically there is freedom from fear then one can deal with the physical pain quite easily.
53:19 But when the psychological fear is strong and the physical pain also brings its own fear, then I am in total confusion.
53:35 So we are saying, what place has thought if fear is the result of thought?
53:47 You understand? Thought... You know, the word ‘art’ means not painting and all that, it really means to put everything in its right place.
54:12 So one has to find out what is the right place of thought.
54:22 Thought is necessary, otherwise you couldn’t talk to each other, or you couldn’t write a letter, you couldn’t go home, you couldn’t do anything.
54:30 So thought is necessary, but it must have its right place, otherwise, thought takes all the movement of life over, and creates extraordinary chaos, misery, confusion, division, because thought, in itself, is limited.
55:00 So can we find out, not arbitrarily, but absolutely, not relatively, completely, so as to find out what place thought has.
55:20 Has it any place in the psychological field?
55:28 Or it has a place only in the daily activities of life, not in the psychological realm at all.
55:44 I’ll show you something, please follow this. Physically one needs security – clothes, food and shelter, absolutely, for everybody, not for just the affluent people but every human being living on this earth must have food and clothes and shelter.
56:06 That’s prevented by our nationalities, religions, divisions, and so on – that’s a different matter.
56:15 Physically one needs security.
56:22 Does one need psychological security?
56:29 You follow what I am saying? Is there psychological security at all?
56:40 Or the physical security with its movement has entered into the psychological area and taken that over and says, there must be psychological security?
56:55 You follow what I am saying? Are you all tired? I’m surprised! So we are asking, is there psychological security?
57:19 Man says there must be, because it’s terrible to be utterly lonely, utterly empty, psychologically, utterly isolated, therefore one must have psychological security.
57:37 So he says, there is security in belief, security in some ritual, security in some concept – god, and there must be security in my relationship with another.
58:07 Follow all this. One needs physical security, and that movement may have entered into the psychological realm, and so has created the illusion that there it must have security, and so creates the illusory concepts and becomes attached to them.
58:31 You are following all this?
58:42 So we are trying to find out what place thought has.
58:49 It is necessary.
59:10 Thought has its place. And has it any place in the psychological field at all? You follow? That’s my question.
59:28 We have assumed that it has a place, which is, thought has assumed it has a place, therefore it creates all these assurances.
59:45 And are they illusory or actual? You understand my question? I rely on you as an audience to gratify myself.
1:00:03 Somebody has a larger audience and I feel jealous, and I feel anxious, and I am annoyed, and I thought I had security here but I have lost it.
1:00:21 I don’t know if you are following all this. Or one has thought one has security in one’s relationship with one’s wife, or husband, girl, boy.
1:00:36 Is there any security there? Not specially in America. Or anywhere else, as a matter of fact. But here, every three years or so, you change mates.
1:00:54 Or if that doesn’t satisfy you, you go to divorce and so on. So we are asking – please listen carefully – is there any security in relationship at all?
1:01:09 You want it, you crave for it, and so you use another for your satisfaction, to achieve your security, therefore you exploit another and this exploitation is called ‘love.’ Please, I am not being cynical, but this is a fact.
1:01:41 So what place has thought, and has thought any place in the psychological world?
1:01:53 Or the realisation – please listen – the realisation it has no place is intelligence.
1:02:04 You understand? One has relied on psychological security, depending on another, and when one finds there is no such security, either in belief, in God, in this or in that, the very perception of that is intelligence.
1:02:30 So intelligence then says, thought has its right place, which is daily necessity but has no place psychologically.
1:02:42 Therefore there is complete and absolute freedom from fear.
1:02:53 Don’t accept my word for this, please. I’m not your authority, I’m not your guru, I’m not your leader. Thank God! You have to find this out for yourself, because to live with fear is to create a monstrous world, and a monstrous relationship.
1:03:23 In enquiring into fear and the ending of fear, if you have gone into it very deeply, which you must, to bring about goodness in one’s life, so that there is no sense of anxiety, no sense of loneliness, no sense of dependency on another, except the postman and the plumber, and they are rather expensive!
1:04:00 To realise this, to see the actuality of it, is intelligence.
1:04:07 And that intelligence brings its right action, not your fear, not your desire.
1:04:17 Right? Also, in investigating fear one must go into this question of the enormous pursuit of man which is his pleasure.
1:04:39 What time is it, sir? Questioner: Half past twelve.
1:04:46 K: So I have time.
1:04:53 Is pleasure related to fear?
1:05:04 What is pleasure? We know, we have gone into this question of fear, anxiety, despair, depression, all that’s involved with fear.
1:05:22 Being depressed, or being elated, ecstasiate, all that.
1:05:33 We have gone into this, and we’ll have also to find out what is the relationship between fear, pleasure and thought.
1:05:46 Because man throughout the world, from the ancient times to the present day, is always seeking pleasure in different forms, under different guise, under different names.
1:06:05 He pursues God in the name of pleasure. Of course. He is dissatisfied, discontent, feeling hopeless, wanting something extraordinary, the mystic experience.
1:06:25 I was looking up that word ‘mysticism,’ the other day, It means mystery.
1:06:34 The moment you discover the mystery it is no longer a mystery. And lots of people write a lot of books about mysticism. We won’t go into that for the moment. But if you observe, we want to be entertained, we want to be amused, we want to be thrilled, we want to be goaded, encouraged, all this is a movement of pleasure.
1:07:15 Right? What is the relationship of that, this pursuit of pleasure – probably, that’s why you are here, you are all gathered here probably for that reason, deeply.
1:07:41 And if this doesn’t satisfy you, you go somewhere else, which might bring satisfaction.
1:07:53 Satisfaction being more pleasure, more amusement, avoidance of discontent and so on, so on.
1:08:06 So one has to enquire, if you will, together – together, I mean together – why man pursues this extraordinary thing called pleasure.
1:08:26 Not that one is against pleasure, we are investigating, therefore you can’t be against or for.
1:08:36 What is pleasure?
1:08:51 Is it the operation, or the movement of the senses?
1:09:00 Please, we are enquiring, go slowly into this, because this is a very important question.
1:09:08 Because man is always seeking happiness in some form or another. Which is, pleasure, be happy, and one has to understand this because it may be related to fear, and it may be the movement of thought that creates pleasure.
1:09:41 So we are asking, is it a particular part of the senses, one of the senses seeking pleasure?
1:10:02 Or is pleasure the whole movement of the senses?
1:10:11 You understand what I’m saying, or is that…? Sir, when you look at the mountain, or at these lovely trees, do you look only with your eyes, or do you look with all your senses in full movement? You understand?
1:10:40 First understand my question and then we can perhaps meet each other.
1:10:48 Do we function with one or two or three senses, or do we operate, function with all our senses together?
1:11:08 Or only partial response, not total response of the senses?
1:11:15 Please, carefully, go into this, if you will, because in the response of the total senses there is no movement as pleasure.
1:11:34 It’s only when the part, when one of the senses operates then you’ve pursued pleasure.
1:11:42 I’ll go into this carefully – if you will. Probably, you have never thought about all this, you are all much too educated, that’s why.
1:11:58 You have never gone into this question, how to observe the mountains, the trees, your wife, the girl, boy, how to observe not partially but totally, with all your senses in full flow.
1:12:30 Then there is no centre which is pursuing a particular sense.
1:12:48 Are you getting this?
1:12:55 Among certain types of monks in India, the sannyasis, when they beg for food they mix all the various types of food together in the bowl so as not to taste one particular type of food, one particular dish, because then that gives a sense of pleasure of a particular taste and the demand for it more.
1:13:34 You follow this? So they mix up everything.
1:13:44 See the intent of it: to avoid the encouragement of a particular taste.
1:13:58 If you encourage a particular state then you pursue it, thought pursues it, which then becomes pleasure.
1:14:08 Which then you say, ‘I must have more, more, more.’ Then that becomes a habit, as sex.
1:14:21 You are following all this? It is very curious, go into it. Whereas if you respond with all your senses then thought has no place to enter and say, ‘I must have that particular form of pleasure.’ Are you doing it as we are talking?
1:14:54 To look at those mountains, or those trees, or your girl or your wife or husband, observe with all your senses, which means with all your attention, care, affection, you know, to look.
1:15:24 Then you will see that there is no interference of a fragment which is thought, and that fragment says, ‘I must pursue that particular pleasure.’ I wonder if you get all this.
1:15:49 So we are asking, what is the place of pleasure?
1:15:58 What is the relationship of pleasure to thought, and thought to fear?
1:16:05 They are all the same movement. I wonder if you realise that. They are all the same movement.
1:16:17 If you pursue pleasure and are denied pleasure, then you feel frustrated.
1:16:25 Then feeling frustrated you are anxious: fear.
1:16:32 So they are the two sides of the same coin. Please realise this. They are two sides of the same human coin.
1:16:52 All religions have said, ‘Don’t pursue pleasure,’ which is sex, various types of pleasure.
1:17:09 I do not know if you have noticed, if you’ve been to Rome, these monks with their Bible, never looking at anything lovely, but always reading because they want to avoid every form of so-called distraction, which might be pleasurable, and therefore be attentive only to the service of God, which is to shut your eyes to everything else and burn inside.
1:17:42 You understand ‘burn inside’? Your demands, your sex, your pleasures, everything. So we are saying that thought is responsible for pleasure as for pain and fear.
1:18:09 So can you observe the beauty of a mountain, the beauty of a lovely tree in a solitary field, just to observe and not register?
1:18:29 The moment you register thought takes it over. I wonder if you are following all this? Can you look at that mountain with all your senses, and that is great delight, there’s great joy in looking at something, at some marvellous cathedral, marvellous architecture, a lovely tree, a person, or this limitless sky and the evening stars, to look at it, great delight. That’s enough.
1:19:11 But the moment thought takes it over, you’ve registered it and you say, ‘I must have more of it,’ and that becomes the pleasure.
1:19:21 Then you feel, when you don’t have it, you are frustrated.
1:19:32 Our consciousness is made up of all this – immense sense of isolation, loneliness, despair, depression, and exultation, aspirations, anxiety, fear, pleasure, and the enormous burden of sorrow.
1:20:07 This is our life, our consciousness, and out of that consciousness we act.
1:20:20 And therefore, as our consciousness is in confusion, is contradictory is always struggling, one against the other, all our actions must inevitably create confusion.
1:20:37 And that’s what we have created in the world around us. And if a group of us, a few of us, said, ‘Look, we’ll create a different world in ourselves,’ you’ll have a marvellous world.
1:20:53 But none of us are willing to go to that extreme extent. We are all compromising, with our desires, not with the world.
1:21:11 So unless you understand all this very clearly, meditation has no meaning, which we will go into.
1:21:26 We should also go into the question of sorrow and death. All this is merely to bring about order, not to invent order, not to say, ‘I will do this, I won’t do that, I will discipline, I won’t discipline, I’m a free agent, I’ll do what I like.’ All this investigation into the whole movement of goodness, the sense of greatness, this real sense of sacredness, all this is to bring order in our life, daily life, in our relationship, in our action.
1:22:18 Until we do – that is absolutely the foundation of our life.
1:22:25 From there we can move, because then it is solid, firm, it is absolutely indestructible, it’s like a tremendous rock in the middle of a vast stream.
1:22:51 And that thing is goodness, and from that, action springs.