We have talked of understanding our actions, of our behaviour and the content of consciousness. Unless we understand the nature and the structure of this consciousness in which we act, through which all our behaviour and all our thinking takes place, it seems to me we shall always be floundering, confused, always living in constant battle within ourselves and outside. We shall never be able to find peace, a sense of deep inward tranquillity. In a world that is getting madder and madder every day, where there is so much brutality, violence, deception, and chicanery, it is so necessary that all of us should understand this immense problem of living.
We are going to concern ourselves now with what is called materialism. Materialism means evaluating life as matter, matter in its movement and modification, also matter as consciousness and will. We have to go into it to find out if there is anything more than matter and if we can go beyond it. This is not merely an intellectual amusement and investigation but rather a deep inquiry as to whether our minds and our whole social, economic, and religious life is entirely material. Is all existence, including consciousness and will, the movement and modification of matter?
We are ruled by our senses—taste, smell, touch, and so on; they play a great part in our life. The brain, if you examine it, if you are rather aware of its activities, holds in its cells memory as experience and knowledge. What these cells hold is material; so thought, the capacity to think, is matter. And you can imagine, or construct through thought, as thought, ‘otherness’; that is to say, other than matter—but it is still matter as imagination. We know that we live in a material world, based on our sensations, desires, and emotions, and we construct a content of consciousness that is essentially the product of thought. We know that, if we do not just romanticize but go into it very deeply and seriously; yet, knowing that, we say there must be ‘otherness,’ something beyond that. So thought begins to investigate ‘the other.’ But when thought investigates ‘the other,’ it is still material. It is important to understand this because we are all so romantically minded; all our religions are sentimental and romantic. Living in this very small field of materialism, we want to have something much greater beyond. That is a natural desire. So thought constructs a verbal or nonverbal structure of God, otherness, immensity, timelessness, and so on. But it is still the product of thought, so it is still material.
So thought creates the form outside, thinking that that form, that image, that prototype, is not material. But that form is the product of thought; the ideal is still the product of thought, so it is still material. If you go to India or elsewhere in the East, they will tell you they accept that, but they say there is a higher self, there is a superconsciousness, which dominates the material, or encloses the material—as in the West you have the soul. They call it by a Sanskrit word, Atman. But the Atman, the superconsciousness, the soul, is still the product of thought. Thought is matter; whatever its movements, inside, outside, in trying to go beyond itself, it is still material.
So the question arises: Is the mind mechanical? That is, in your mind, are your thoughts, your feelings, your reactions, your responsibilities, your relationships, your ways, your opinions, and so on, merely mechanical; that is, responding according to conditioning, according to environmental influence? If that is the totality of the mind, then we live in a tremendous, inescapable prison.
This has been the problem of man right through the ages. He knows he lives by the senses, by his desires, by touch, by appetites—sexual, intellectual, and otherwise—and he questions: ‘Is that all?’ Then he begins to invent the gods, the supergods, superconsciousness, and so on and so on. Having invented and projected a form, he pursues it, thinking he is tremendously idealistic or tremendously religious. But his pursuit of what he calls ‘God’ or truth is still the pursuit of the product of thought, which is material. See what he has been doing. See what his churches, temples, and the mosques have done to him, to each one of us. Sense this great deception on which he has been fed, which he thinks is extraordinarily idealistic. When one realizes that, in seriousness, it is rather a shock, because one is stripped of all illusion.
If one has gone that far, one then begins to ask if there is a movement other than the movement of thought. How does one find out? If one is trying to find out if there is something beyond the material, then one must examine what is the cause of one’s search. Is the cause of one’s search an escape from this? Cause means motive. Is all one’s inquiry motivated? Because if it is, the root of that is either the seeking of pleasure or the escape from fear. Or, if it is from total dissatisfaction with what is, then it projects its own answer. Therefore, to inquire into ‘the other,’ my mind must be without cause.
We said, and we are saying again, that there must be a transformation in the mind, not peripheral reformation but a revolution deep in the mind, to solve the problems that thought has created, whether they are religious, economic, social, or moral. If one is really serious, not flippant, not merely amused by intellectual theories or philosophies that are invented by thought, then one must be concerned and totally committed to this question of transforming the content of consciousness. For it is the content that makes up consciousness, as we said. And we asked who the entity is that is to change it. We said that the observer is the observed and that when there is a division between the observer and the observed, the ‘me’ and the ‘not me,’ then there is conflict. That conflict is essentially a waste of energy. And when you look into it and find that the observer is the observed, you remove conflict altogether and you have enormous energy because it is no longer wasted in conflict.
Now this energy is either in the field of thought or it is an energy totally different from thought. For a mind that is burdened, conditioned, and shaped by materialistic thought, is there a movement other than that of thought? To find that out, we must look into the cause of this search. Where there is a cause there is time. The cause produces an effect and that effect again becomes a cause. It is not really difficult because this is our life; it becomes difficult when you treat it, or look at it, as something apart from our daily life.
Put it differently. What is virtue, morality? Is morality transient? Is morality relative? Or is it absolute? For us, in the modern world, morality is relative, and that relativism is nearly destroying us. So one asks: What is virtue? Is there an absolute virtue, a sense of no hate under any circumstances? Is there a complete peace, an absolute peace, which can never be disturbed? Can one live without any sense of violence? Or is violence relative, hate modified, and so on? So what is virtue? If you hit me and I hit you back and apologize for it later, that becomes relative. If I have a cause for hating you, or disliking you, or being violent, that cause makes my action not complete and, therefore, relative. Is there a way of living which has no cause? Because the moment you have a cause, living becomes relative. If I have cause to love you—because you give me comfort, psychologically, physically, sexually, morally—it is not love. So where there is a cause, action must be relative. But when there is no cause, action will be absolute.
See what takes place in your life, not in the explanation I am giving. If I depend on you, if I am attached to you, that dependence and attachment have a cause. It is because I am lonely, or I am unhappy, or I want companionship; I want your love, your affection, your care, and so I am attached to you. From that attachment there is great sorrow, there is pain. Because you do not love me, or you only tolerate me, or give me a little of your affection and turn to somebody else, there is jealousy, antagonism, hate, and all the rest that follows. Where there is a cause, then action, morality, must be relative.
Can the mind be free of form, free of the ideal, of form as a cause, so that the mind is capable of going beyond itself? It is very simple really; words make it so difficult. Words are necessary in order to communicate, but if you merely live at the verbal level they are absolutely useless. It is like ploughing, ploughing, ploughing—and you destroy the earth by merely ploughing.
We have this problem, which man right from the beginning has sought to solve, which is: Is all life mechanical? Is all life material? Is all existence, including mind and consciousness and will, matter? Is your whole life that? You may pretend it is not, but actually it is that. Being enclosed in that, thought creates a form, the ideal of the supreme, the highest form of excellence, great nobility, the gods, as well as all the other things that thought has put together in the world, the immense technological movement. It is all matter. And living on this shore as we are, with our wars, our hatreds, our appalling politics—living on this side of the river, which is matter, the mind says, ‘I want to go across; there must be something there because this life is too stupid.’ And it is stupid: just to go to the office, to earn money, to take responsibility, to struggle, compete, worry, to despair, to have anxieties, immense sorrows, and then die. We say that is not good enough. We may put it more philosophically, in more extravagant or romantic language, but we see it is stupid and we want something more.
Then we say: ‘How are we to cross this river to the other shore?’ We ask, ‘Who will take us across?’ When we ask that question, there is the priest, the guru, the man who knows, and he says, ‘Follow me’—and then we are done, because he is exactly like us, because he still functions within the field of thought. He has created the gods, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna. He has created the form and that form is as materialistic as your sensations; it is the product of thought. Now, if that is absolutely clear and there is no romantic escape, no ideological washing of the hands, no seeking comfort and all the other things that lead to illusions, if it is absolutely clear that any modification within the field of consciousness is merely moving from one object to another within the field of thought, then what is the mind to do? Or not to do?
First, such a mind must be in total order, material order, because if it is in disorder it cannot go away from itself. Thought is matter and all its activity within consciousness has created extraordinary confusion and disorder. Politically, religiously, socially, morally, in relationships, in every direction it has created disorder. And that is your life. Unless there is absolute order—and I am using the word absolute not relative—unless there is absolute order within that area, any cause to move away from that area is still the product of disorder. So there must be order.
Now, how does this order come about politically, religiously, intellectually, morally, physically, in relationships—an absolute order, not a convenient order, not a relative order? How is the mind, which has been trained, educated, conditioned, to live in disorder and to accept disorder, to bring order in itself? Bear in mind, that if you say there is an outside agency which will bring order, then that outside agency is the product of thought and, therefore, it will create contradiction—and, therefore, disorder. If you say the action of will brings about order, then what is will? ‘I will do that’—look at it, find out. When you are aggressive, when you say, ‘I must do that,’ what is that will that is in action? Is it not desire, a projected end to be achieved, the achieving of an end projected by thought as an ideal, as a form, as an original pattern? Can thought bring order? That is the way the politicians and the priests and all the so-called reformers are trying to achieve it. Thought has created disorder. So what is one to do?
Can the mind, your mind, observe, see, this disorder? One is in disorder. One sees that the exercise of will, the following of another, having desire to overcome disorder, is still within the field of disorder. So one says to oneself, ‘What am I to do; what is the mind to do?’ First of all, does one know disorder? Does the mind see disorder, or does it know only the description of disorder? You describe to me a mountain, its beauty, its snow, its lines against the blue sky, the depth of shadows in the forest, the running waters, the murmur of trees, the beauty of it all. You describe it to me and the description catches my mind and I live with that description. But the description is not that which is described. So one asks oneself, ‘Am I caught in the description, or am I actually seeing disorder?’ One is intellectual, the other is factual. Now, is the mind observing its disorder, which means no word, not being caught in the description, but merely observing this enormous disorder? Can the mind so observe? And in observing its own disorder, is there an ‘observer’ looking at it, or is there no observer at all, but merely the observing?
I observe you, I see you. I met you last year; you were pleasant or unpleasant to me; you flattered or insulted me, or neglected me. The memory of that remains. This year I meet you and the memory responds. That memory is the past and also that memory is the observer. Of course. Can the mind observe all the disorder, social and moral and so on, which is created by thought, in which I am, which is part of me? Can it observe this disorder without the observer? If the observer is there looking at disorder, then there is a division between the observer and the observed. In that division, conflict takes place: ‘I must control it, I must change it, I must suppress it, I must overcome it,’ and so on. Now when the observer is not, and there is only observation, then there is no conflict, there is merely observing. Then there is energy to go beyond disorder.
Where there is division, there must be disorder. The observer, rooted in the past, is essentially the factor of division. Now can the mind see the truth of that and observe the actual disorder of your life, not the description? Can it observe your disorder, your confusion, your anxieties, your contradictions, your selfish demands, all that? Observe. And if it observes without the observer there is then the going beyond it, which means total order, not relative order but mathematical order that is essential before you can go any further. Without order in the material world, in the world of matter, in the world of thought, the mind has no basis, no foundation on which to move.
Therefore, there must be observation of behaviour. Do I behave according to a motive, according to circumstances? Is my behaviour pragmatic, or is it under all circumstances the same? Not the same in the sense of copying a pattern; is it a behaviour that is never relative, that is not based on reward and punishment? Inquire into it, observe it and you will find how terrible your behaviour is, how you look to a superior and inferior and all the other things you do. There is never a constant movement free of the motive of reward and punishment.
Then also you have to inquire into relationship in the material world. Relationship is of the highest importance, because life is relationship. What is your relationship? Have you any relationship? Relationship means to respond adequately to any challenge. As I inquire into relationship, is my relationship with another personal and intimate, or not so intimate? Is it based on my opinions, my memories, my hurts, my demands, my sexual appetites? If my relationship to you is relative, it changes: I am moody one day, not moody the next day, the next day I am affectionate, and the third day I hate you, and the fourth day I love you, and so on, and so on. If that relationship is not satisfactory, I will go to somebody else. This is the game that we have been playing for centuries. Now it is more open, more extravagant, more vulgar, that is all.
So my mind has to find out what its relationships actually are. Unless there is complete harmony in the material world in which I live, which is part of me, in me, which is my consciousness, the mind cannot possibly go beyond itself. That is why your meditations, your postures, your breathing exercises, your going to India and searching, are so utterly meaningless.
So, is my relationship relative? Is all relationship relative? Or is there no relationship at all except when the division as the ‘me’ and the ‘you’ does not exist? I am related to you because I love you, because you give me food, clothes, shelter, you give me sex, you give me companionship. I have built a marvellous image about you; we may get annoyed with each other, irritated, but that is trivial. And I hold on to you; I am attached to you, and in that attachment there is great pain, there is great sorrow, suffering, torture, jealousy, antagonism. And then I say to myself, ‘I must be free of that.’ And in freeing myself from that I attach myself to somebody else. And the game begins again. So I say to myself, ‘What is this relationship? Is there a relationship? Can there ever be a relationship?’ There is the ‘me’ that is pursuing my appetites, my ambitions, my greed, my fears, my wanting to have more prestige, greater position, and so on; and there is the other also pursuing his or her own demands. Is there any relationship possible at all between two human beings, each functioning with and pursuing his own exclusive, selfish, demands?
There may be no relationship in that direction, but there may be relationship when there is no ‘me’ at all. When the ‘me,’ as thought, is non-existent, I am related; then I am related to you, the trees, the mountains, to the rivers, to human beings. That means love—does it not?—which has no cause.
Consciousness, with its content, is within the field of matter. The mind cannot possibly go beyond that unless it has complete order within itself and conflict in relationship has come totally to an end—which means a relationship in which there is no ‘me.’ This is not just a verbal explanation: the speaker is telling you what he lives, not what he talks about; if he does not live it, it is hypocrisy, a dirty thing to do.
When the mind has order and the sense of total relationship, then what takes place? Then the mind is not seeking at all, it is not capable of any kind of illusion. That is absolutely necessary, because thought can invent any experience, any kind of vision, any kind of superconsciousness and all the rest of it. There is no ideal, there is no form, there is only behaviour, which is order and the sense of relationship for the whole of man. There you have the foundation.
Now another question arises from this: Is the brain totally conditioned? This brain of mankind has had thousands and thousands of experiences; it is educated with a great deal of accumulated knowledge from books and elsewhere, and that is there in the brain. And thought operates only within that field of the known. It can invent a field that says, ‘Apart from knowing, ‘I’ am there,’ but that is too silly. So my mind is asking: Is the whole brain conditioned by the economic, social, environmental, religious, culture it has lived in? Is the mind, in which is included the brain, totally conditioned within the borders of time? Is the mind a complete slave?
Do not say yes or no, for then you have settled it, then there is nothing more into which to inquire. But a mind that is asking, groping, looking, without any motive, without any direction, says, ‘Is the mind totally conditioned and, therefore, mechanical?’ And you see that it is mechanical when it is functioning in the field of knowledge, whether scientific, technological, or the priestly tradition. It is mechanical; there is repetition, repetition, repetition. That is what is going on—the repetition of desire, sexual or otherwise, repeating, repeating, repeating. Therefore, the mind asks itself, ‘Is the totality of this thing mechanical, or is there, in this field of the mind, an area that is not mechanical?’ Can the mind be free of causation, for where there is causation, all movement as thought must be mechanical.