Mind Without Measure

We must understand what is perception, how to look. Is the observer who looks at all this - the poverty, the loneliness, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the suffering - different from all that or is the observer all that? I will explain this. We have separated the `me', who is the observer, from that which he is observing. I say I am suffering and I say to myself that suffering must end, and to end it, I must suppress it, I must escape from it, I must follow a certain system. So, I am different from fear, from pleasure, from pain, sorrow. Are you different from all that? Or you may think that there is something in you which is totally different from all that. If you think that, it is part of your thought, and therefore there is nothing sacred there. So, is the observer different from the observed? When you are angry, envious, brutal, violent, are you not all that? The meditator is the meditation. Please sir, think about it. The observer is the observed. See the importance of this. Before, we have divided the observer from the observed. That means there is a division between that and the other. So, there was conflict. You could then control it, suppress it, fight it, but if you are that, if you are sorrow, if you are fear, if you are pleasure, you are the conglomeration of all this. To realize that fact is a tremendous reality; therefore, there is no division, and therefore there is no conflict; the observer is the observed.

Now, can you observe your wife, your friend or the speaker without his reputation, look at him without any image? Can you look at your wife, at a tree, at a flower, without the movement of thought? The movement of thought is time. Thought divides as time divides. When you look, you are looking as the observer, who is the past, who is the word, who is the memory. The past divides, the past is time. It is in the mirror of relationship that you look at yourself as you would look in the mirror to look at your face. There you can perceive every movement of thought, every movement of reaction. So, the perceiver is the perceived, the analyser is the analysed. I want to experience something extraordinary. I am bored with all the experience I have had - sex and pleasure. I want to experience something ultra, something beyond all thought, and the experiencer is the experienced. A mind that does not demand experience is totally different. Therefore, we have to learn how to listen, how to observe, not accumulate how to listen, but just listen, just observe, without all the memory. Then you will see that which you observe, which is violence, and that there is no division between the observer and the observed. The observer is the violence. I wonder if you see that! When you are so alert, watching, observing, it is like putting great light on the thing which you observe. Then it disappears totally, never to return.

So, what is desire? We live by sensation. The reaction of our sensory responses is the activity of sensation. I see you well dressed, clean, healthy, beautiful, or whatever you are. I see it. The seeing is the beginning of sensory responses. The seeing, observing, contact and sensation are the responses of the senses. Right? Then what happens? I see a beautiful house, a lovely chalet in the mountains, beautifully built, strong. I see it, contact, touch it actually, and the sensation from it. Then what happens? This is really important to understand. I see a beautiful woman or a beautiful man. The very seeing of that beauty is a sensation, is it not? Then, what is the next step that takes place? You see a beautiful something, a statue which has been created by love and skill and matter. As you see it, sensation arises. You touch it, then what happens? Please find out for yourself. Then thought comes in and says, `How beautiful; I wish I had that statue in my room, I wish I was in that car, I wish I had that house.' At that moment when thought takes charge of sensation, at that precise moment, desire is born. Do you understand this, sir? Sensation is normal, healthy, vital; otherwise you are dead. To suppress sensation means you are dead, and probably that is what has happened here in this country. You read the Gita and Upanishads and all the sacred books and you follow guru after guru, discipline your desire, control it, suppress it, escape, and so on. Whereas, we are saving something entirely different. Can you follow the sensation, the immediate association of thought with the object, then thought saying, `How nice it would be if I sat in that beautiful car which has tremendous power behind it'? - then begins desire. Now, is it possible for thought not to intervene, not immediately, thought saying `I will see myself in the car'? Is there an interval between sensation and thought, so that thought does not immediately take charge, so that there is a gap? If there is a gap, what happens? That requires extraordinary skill and attention, to see where sensations are important, because, if your senses are not alive, you cannot see the beauty of the earth, the movement of the sea. So sensations, the sensory responses, are essential for life, but when thought controls, shapes, gives identity to sensation, then at that precise moment desire is born.

Time is memory - the past as the observer, observer observing what is happening, translating what is happening to his own conditioning, to his own experience, and so on. Time essentially means division. So outwardly to change, we imagine time is necessary; that eventually man who is divided, who has divided himself into nationalities, will become international and gradually drop all nationalistic tendencies and have a global relationship. We think all that requires time. Time is fundamentally a process of division. Outwardly, physically, time is necessary - like the seed growing into a great tree, that requires time, years. There is a tree in California which is over 5,000 years old. To come to that age, there have been many, many rains and storms and fires and lightning - which is all growth in time. We see that outwardly, physically, we need time; to acquire knowledge, the accumulating process of learning mathematics, physics or how to fly one of these jets, requires time. One cannot possibly escape from that time or try to find a stop to that kind of time. That will be utterly meaningless and foolish.

So, a mind that is enquiring into something requires great sensitivity, freedom; that demands a brain that is stable, not wobbly, sloppy. I do not know if you have noticed how our minds are sloppy. We go from one guru to another, specially in this country. We tolerate anything - the dirt, the squalor, the corruption, the tradition that is dead, and all the temple buildings which are absolutely meaningless, spreading all over the world. You watch all this and you observe all this, and a mind, a brain, that is enquiring must be extraordinarily free, have great sensitivity. I don't know if you have not noticed how limited our senses are; senses, which is, the observing optically, visually, hearing - to hear another so completely that you understand immediately what is being said, to have sympathy, empathy, the feeling of cooperation, feeling of affection, feeling of love. We have not got it here. But you love god, you love going to a temple, putting on ashes, belonging to some tribal god, because you are frightened, and where there is fear, there is no freedom of enquiry.

You see a beautiful tree, which man has not created. Man has created the cathedral, the mosque, the temple, and all the things therein; but he has not created the tree. He has not created nature, but man is destroying nature. Now, you look at a beautiful tree. You wish it were in your garden. And you see it. There is the sensation of the dignity, the shadows, the light on the leaf, the movement of the tree. Then sensation arises. And then thought says, `How nice it would be if I had that tree in my garden. When thought creates the image of that tree in your garden, at that second desire is born. Right? The fact is, it is natural to be sensitive, to have sensations. Otherwise you are paralysed. You must have sensation, you must have sensitivity in your fingers, in your eyes, in your hearing and looking, and you are sensitive to watch, to look - out of that looking, watching, observing, sensation inevitably arises. It must arise; otherwise you are blind, deaf. When there is sensation, then thought creates an image, and at that moment desire is born. Have you found it to be so? Or are you going to repeat just what the speaker has said or go back to your tradition and say we must suppress desire or say what you are talking is nonsense? If you really go into this question of desire, which is so important in life, then you will find out for yourself the origin, the beginning, of desire. Now, the question is to look at a car, at the shirt, at a woman, at a picture; there is arising of sensation. Find out whether thought can be in abeyance, not immediately create a picture, an image of you in that shirt, or in that car, and so on. Can there be a gap between sensation and thought impinging upon that sensation? Find out. It will make your mind, brain, alert, watchful.

Man has lived in conflict from time immemorial. If you see the rock engravings or those caves in France and in certain parts of the world, you will see that there has always been this battle between the good and the bad, the good against the evil. This has been the history of man - conflict. We are asking if this conflict can end. If it ends, then he is a human being who is vital, creative, and he has something extraordinary. When there is this realization that you are violent, not that you are separate and violence is separate, but you are that, what takes place? You are brown, you have certain characteristics, you have troubles, you are a professor or a scientist - all that is not separate from you. So what takes place when this fact, this truth, is realized, not intellectually, not verbally, but deep down as fact, as truth? Have you not eliminated altogether the opposite? There is only this, and so live with that like a precious jewel that you have discovered; you are watching it, seeing the beauty of that jewel, the light, the many aspects of it as you are watching, which is part of yourself. Therefore, watching, observing, is extraordinarily important so that there is no division whatsoever between the watcher and that which is watched. Then you realize that nothing can be done about it. You are brown, you cannot change it. The fact is, when there is such observation, it is not the word, it is not the memory, it is something totally new. You are facing this new reaction, which you call violence, anew. That means, have you observed anything anew? Have you seen the moon, the new moon that is coming up, as though for the first time in your life? Have you looked at your wife or husband as though for the first time? Or do you just say she is my wife, he is my husband - just a mechanical observation? To observe requires great enquiry, energy, vitality, to see actually `what is'.

The observer says, I am different from that, I am different from violence. We have to enquire who is the observer. The observer is the past, who has known what violence is. It is the past, it is knowledge, it is experience, it is all the stored-up memories. Those memories, those various forms of knowledge, and the movement of all that, is the past. Thought has divided itself as the past, the present, and the future. It has divided itself as the observer and the observed. Thought has said, `I am not violent, violence is not part of me.' But when you look at it closely, you are violent, you are angry, you are greedy, envious, competitive, depressed, you are all that. Right? The observer is not different from that which he is observing. Please understand this. This is very important because, if you really understand this with all your heart and your mind, with all your brain, conflict comes to an end; there is no duality at all. Forget all your books, the Vedanta and all the rest of it. The fact is, there is no opposite except physically. Psychologically, inwardly, there is only the fact. The fact is, one is violent and jealous, and so on.

What is observation? Now, when you observe the full moon, do you observe it, do you see the beauty of that light, see the extraordinary quality of that light, or do you say it is a full moon and do something else? What do you mean by observing? Do you ever observe the snow clad mountain with all that grandeur, the beauty, the deep valleys full of dark shadows, the extraordinary majesty of that mountain? When you observe for a single moment, all your problems have gone, because the majesty of that mountain has driven away all your problems for a second. Have you noticed it? But your problems come back immediately. So we are going to talk over together what it means to observe.

We must go into this very carefully because we are trying to understand why human beings live perpetually in conflict, why there is a contradiction - I am, I should be; I am violent, I must become non-violent. The non-violence is an idea, is a concept, is not an actuality, because I am violent. This is a fact, an actuality. The other is non-fact, but we think the pursuit of non-violence will help us to become non-violent, that we will be free from violence. Let us understand the content of that word. What does violence mean? There is physical violence. You shoot with a gun, or you hit, or you throw a bomb, you slap, you injure. That is physical violence. What is psychological violence? - the inward anger, hatred, wanting to dominate people, not only physical domination, but the domination of ideas. I know, you don't know; I will tell you, and you will obey. That is domination. The gurus are violent because they are dominating people with their ideas, with their systems of meditation and all that. Please understand this. We are not attacking gurus. I am just pointing out that psychological dependence, imitation, conformity, domination, all that is inward violence. That is a fact. Can we deal with the fact and not with the idea of the opposite? There is no opposite. Right? There is an opposite as darkness and light, woman and man, tall and short, dark and white, and so on. Inwardly, is there a duality at all? Actually we are asking, `Is there a duality or only `what is''?' There is only `what is', that is, I am violent. Now, is it possible to be free of violence, not to become non-violent? Is this clear? This country has propagated this idea of non-violence. Being violent, they are propagating something which they are not. That means I am gradually, day by day, practising to become that, not to understand violence, but become something which I have called non-violence. Do you see the difference? Hence there is conflict. When I am observing, learning, enquiring into the fact, there is no conflict in my mind. But if my mind is all the time saying, `l must achieve non-violence', then there is conflict. But if I say I am violent, what is the root of violence, what is the nature of violence? I don't condemn it, I observe it.