Understanding Life and bringing harmony in a short time
All human beings including you and me live with many expectations and hopes, and with expectation to be complete. Perhaps there are a few of us living whose minds are not burdened with meaningless jargons which are but wearisome verbal repetitions. There may also be others who, having freed themselves from beliefs and superstitions, are eager to understand the significance of existence. Seeing the illusory nature of imitativeness, they can no longer seek patterns and moulds for their conduct. They come in the hope of awakening their innate creativeness, so that they may live profoundly in the movement of life. They are not seeking a new jargon or mode of conduct, smartness of ideas or emotional assertiveness but being complete from where they currently stand in their life.
Now, I am talking about those who desire to awaken to the reality of life and create for themselves a true way of thinking and living. By this I do not mean that my words are restricted to the few, or to some imaginary clique of self-chosen intellectuals.Some may pick them quick and some may pick it a little late. Some may connect now some at a later date.
What I say may not seem vital to those who are merely curious, for I have no empty phrases or bold assertions with which to excite them. The curious, who merely desire emotional stimulation, will not find satisfaction in my words.
Then there are those who come here to compare what I have to say with the many schools of thoughtlessness. (Laughter) No, please, this is not a smart remark with contempt but a reality that exists with many sects of humanity. From letters I have received and from people who have talked to me, I know there are many who think that by belonging to special schools of thought they will advance and be of service to the world. But what they call schools of thought are nothing but imitative jargons which merely create divisions and encourage exclusiveness and vanity of mind. These systems of thought have really no validity, being founded on illusion. Though their followers may become very erudite and defend themselves with their learning, they are in reality thoughtless.
Again, there are many whose minds have become complicated by the search for systems of human salvation. They seek, at times through economics, at times through religion, at times through science, to bring about order and true harmony in human life. Being exclusive will not work and being inclusive will work. Fanaticism becomes the impulse for many who try, through dogmatic assertions, to impose on others their own imaginings and illusions, which they choose to call truth or God.
So you have to find out for yourself why you are here, and under what impulse you came to read my ramblings. I hope we both are here to discover together whether we can live sanely, intelligently, and in the fullness of understanding. I feel that this should be the labour of both the writer and the audience. We are going to start on a journey of deep inquiry and individual experiment, not on a journey of dogmatic assertions, creating new sets of beliefs and ideals. To discover the reality of what exists, you must experiment with it add to it subtract from it and come to the point of no contradiction with anyone.
Most of us are held by the idea that by discovering some single cause for man’s suffering, conflict and confusion, we shall be able to solve the many problems of life. It has become the fashion to say: Cure the economic evils, then man’s happiness and fulfilment are assured. Or: Accept some religious or philosophical idea, then peace and happiness can be made universal. In search of single causes we not only encourage specialists but also develop experts who are ever ready to create and expound logical systems, in which the thoughtless man is entrapped. You see exclusive systems or ideas for the salvation of man taking form everywhere throughout the world. We are so easily entrapped in them, thinking that this seemingly logical simplicity of single causes will help us to remove misery and confusion.
A man who gives himself over to these specialists and to the single cause finds only greater confusion and misery. He becomes a tool in the hands of experts or a willing slave of those who can readily expound the logical simplicity of a single cause. Existence is coexistence and nothing can be excluded.
If you deeply examine man’s suffering and confusion, you will see without any doubt whatsoever that there are many causes, some complex, some simple, which we must understand thoroughly before we can free ourselves from conflict and suffering. If we desire to understand the many causes and their disturbances, we must treat life as a whole, not split it up into the mental and emotional, the economic and religious, or into heredity and environment. For this reason we cannot hand ourselves over to specialists, who naturally are trained to be exclusive and to be concentrated in their narrow divisions. It is essential not to do this; nevertheless, unconsciously we give ourselves over to another to be guided, to be told what to do, thinking that the religious or economic expert, because of his special knowledge and achievements, can direct our individual lives. Most specialists are so trained that they cannot take a comprehensive view of life; and because we adjust our lives, our actions, to the dictates of experts, we merely create greater confusion and sorrow. So, realizing that we cannot be slaves to experts, to teachers, to philosophers, to those people who say they have found God and who seemingly make life very simple, we should beware of them. We should seek simplicity, but in that very search we should be aware of the many illusions and delusions that are there surrounding us in form of culture tradition and dogmas.They are all conjectures which we can unravel one at a time as we trudge along the journey of life.
Being conscious of all this, what should we, as individuals, do? We have to realize profoundly, not casually or superficially, that no one particular person or system is wholly going to solve for us our agonizing problems and clarify our complex and subtle reactions. If we can realize that there is no one outside of ourselves who is going to clear up the chaos and confusion that exist within and without us, then we shall not be imitative, we shall not crave for identification. We shall then begin to release the creative power within us. This signifies that we are beginning to be conscious of individual uniqueness. Each individual is unique, different, not similar to another as a human being. It is very important to not become egoistic by being unique but humble as just another human being with same goals as everyone else to be resolved.
We must begin to be self-conscious, which most of us are not; in bringing the hidden into the open, into the light, we discover the various causes of disharmony, of suffering. This alone will help to bring about a life of fulfilment and intelligent happiness. Without this liberation from the hidden, the concealed, our efforts must lead us to these inbuilt delusions. Until we discover, through experiment, our subtle and deep limitations, with their reactions, and so free ourselves from them, we end up leading a life of confusion and strife. These limitations prevent the pliability of mind-emotion, making it incapable of true adjustment to the movement of life. This lack of pliability is the source of our egotistic competition, fear and the pursuit of security, leading to many comforting illusions.
Though we may think we have found truth, bliss, and objectify the abstract idea of God, yet, while we remain unconscious of the hidden springs of our whole being, there cannot be the realization of truth. The mouthing of such words as truth, God, perfection, can have no deep significance and import.
True search can begin only when we do not separate mind from emotion. As we have been trained to regard life, not as a complete whole, but as broken up into body, mind and spirit, we shall find it very difficult to orient ourselves to this new conception and reaction towards life. To educate ourselves to this way of regarding life, and not to slip back into the old habit of separative thought, requires persistence, constant alertness. When we begin to free ourselves, through experiment, from these false divisions with their special significances, pursuits and ideals, which have caused so much harm and falsely complicated our lives, then we shall release creative energy and discover the endless movement of life.
Can the mind-heart know and profoundly appreciate this state of wholeness, When the mindheart detaches itself from harmful and limiting reactions and begins to live intensely, with deep awareness, then only is there the possibility of knowing profoundly this whole existence. The awakening of this creative intelligence will alone bring about man’s humanity, his balance and deep fulfilment.
Until you become conscious both of your environment and of your past, and understand their significance — not as two contrasted elements, which would only produce false reactions, but as a co-ordinated whole — and until you are able to react to this whole, profoundly, there cannot be the perception of the coexistence of everything.
True search begins only when there is a release from those reactions which are the result of division. Without the understanding of life’s wholeness, the search for truth or happiness must lead to illusion. In pursuit of an illusion,we may seek solace in some limiting thoughts beliefs conjectures which are partially known .Comfort zone of being there may encourage you into this flight from existential reality. Breaking this shackles and freeing oneself is an easy task once the wholeness is in sight.
If these writings are to have any significance for you, you must begin to experiment with what I am drawing attention to, and live anew by becoming conscious of all your reactions. Be conscious of them, but do not at once discard some as being bad, and accept others as being good; for the mind, being limited, is unable to discern truly. What is important is to be aware of them. Then through that constant awareness, in which there is no sense of opposites, no division as mind and emotion, there comes the harmony of action which alone will bring about fulfilment.
