Part II - Chapter 7 - 1st Public Talk, Ojai, California - 2nd April 1977 - ‘Intelligence, in which there is complete security.’

Wherever one goes in the world, India, Europe and America, one sees great sorrow, violence, wars, terrorism, killing, drugs – every kind of stupidity. One accepts these as though inevitable and easily puts up with them, or one revolts against them; but revolt is a reaction, as Communism is a reaction to Capitalism or Fascism.

So, without revolting, without going against everything and forming one’s own little group, or without following a guru from India or from elsewhere, without accepting any kind of authority – because in spiritual matters there is no authority – can we investigate these problems that human beings have had, centuries upon centuries, generation after generation, these conflicts, uncertainties, travails, all the things that human beings go through during life only to end in death, without understanding what it is all about?

Psychologically, inwardly, every human being, whoever he is, is the world. The world is represented in oneself and oneself is the world. That is a psychological, absolute fact; though one may have a white skin and another a brown or black skin, be affluent or very poor, yet inwardly, deep down, we are all the same; we suffer loneliness, sorrow, conflict, misery, confusion; we depend on someone to tell us what to do, how to think, what to think; we are slaves to propaganda from the various political parties and religions, and so on. That is what is happening all over the world inwardly; deep down, we are slaves to the propaganda of the experts, of the governments and so on, we are conditioned human beings, whether we live in India, Europe or America.

So, one is actually, psychologically, the world and the world is oneself. Once one realizes this fact, not verbally, not ideologically or as an escape from fact, but actually, deeply feel the fact, realize the fact, that one is not different from the other – however far away he is – inwardly he suffers greatly and is terribly frightened, uncertain, insecure, then one is not concerned with one’s little self, one is concerned with the total human being. One is concerned with the total human being – not with Mr X or Y or somebody else – but with the total psychological entity as a human being, wherever he lives. He is conditioned in a particular way; he may be a Catholic, a Protestant, or he may be conditioned by thousands of years of certain kinds of beliefs, superstitions, ideas and gods, as in India, but below that conditioning, in the depth of his mind, when alone, he is facing the same life of sorrow, pain, grief and anxiety. When one sees this as an actual, irrevocable fact, then one begins to think entirely differently and one begins to observe, not as an individual person having troubles and anxieties, but whole, entire. It gives one an extraordinary strength and vitality; one is not alone, one is the entire history of mankind – if one knows how to read that history which is enshrined in one. This is not rhetoric but a serious factor one is deeply concerned with, a fact which one denies, because one thinks one is so individualistic. One is so concerned with oneself, with one’s petty problems, with one’s little guru, with one’s little beliefs; but when one realizes this extraordinary fact, then it gives one tremendous strength and a great urgency to investigate and transform oneself, because one is mankind. When there is such transformation, one affects the whole consciousness of man because one is the entire humanity; when one changes fundamentally, deeply, when there is this psychological revolution in one, then naturally, as one is part of the total consciousness of the human being, which is the rest of humanity, its consciousness is affected. So, one is concerned to penetrate the layers of one’s consciousness and to investigate whether it is possible to transform the content of that consciousness so that out of that transformation a different dimension of energy and clarity may come into being.

A human being, who is representative of the world, who is the world, psychologically, what is his innermost demand? In one part of his consciousness it is to find both biological and psychological security; he must have food, clothes and shelter – that is an absolute necessity. But also he demands, craves, and searches for psychological security – to have psychological certainty about everything. The whole struggle in the world, both physiologically and psychologically, is to find security.

Security means physical permanency, physically to be well, to continue, advance, grow, and also it means psychological permanency. Everything, psychologically, if one observes very carefully, is very impermanent; one’s relationships, psychologically, are most uncertain. One may be temporarily secure in one’s relationship with another, man or woman, but it is only temporary. That very temporary security is the ground of complete insecurity.

So one asks: is there any security, psychologically, at all? One seeks psychological security in the family – the family being the wife, the children. There one tries to find a relationship that will be secure, lasting, permanent – all relative, because there is always death. And, not always finding it – there are divorces, quarrels and all the misery, jealousies, anger, hatred that goes on – one tries to find security in a community, with a group of people, large or small. One tries to find security in the nation – I’m an American, I’m a Hindu – that gives a tremendous sense of apparent security. But when one tries to find security, psychologically, in a nation, that nation is divided from another nation. Where there is division between nations – in one of which one has invested psychologically one’s security – there are wars, there are economic pressures. That is what is actually going on in the world.

If one seeks security in an ideology – the Communist ideology, the Capitalist ideology, the religious ideologies, with their dogmas, images – there is division; one believes in one set of ideals which one likes, which give one comfort, in which one seeks security with a group of people who believe the same thing, yet another group believes another thing and from them one is divided. Religions have divided people. The Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Muslims, divide; they are at each other, each believing something extraordinary, romantic, unrealistic, unreal, not factual.

Seeing all this – not as something to be avoided or to become supercilious or intellectual about – seeing all this very clearly, one asks, is there psychological security at all? And, if there is no psychological security, then does it become chaos? One loses one’s identity – one has been identified with a nation, America, or with Jesus, with Buddha and so on – when reason, logic, makes it clear how absurd all this is. Does one despair because one has observed the fallacy of these divisive processes, the unreality of these fictions, myths, fantasies which have no basis? The very perception of all this is intelligence – not the intelligence of a clever, cunning mind, not the intelligence of book knowledge, but the intelligence which comes out of clear observation. In that intelligence, brought about this clear observation, there is security; that very intelligence is secure.

But one will not let go, one is too afraid to let go lest one does not find security. One can let go of being a Catholic, Protestant, Communist, and so on, fairly easily. But when one does let go, when one cleanses oneself of all this, either one does it as a reaction, or one does it because one has observed intelligently, holistically, with great clarity, the absurdity of the fantasies and the make-belief. Because one observes without any distortion, because one is not out to get something from it, because one is not thinking in terms of punishment and reward, because one observes very clearly, then that very clarity of perception is intelligence. In that there is extraordinary security – not that you become secure, but intelligence is secure.

One has come to the absolute fact – not relative fact – the absolute fact that there is no psychological security in anything that man has invented; one sees that all our religions are inventions, put together by thought. When one sees that all our divisive endeavours, which come about when there are beliefs, dogmas, rituals, which are the whole substance of religion, when one sees all that very clearly, not as an idea, but as a fact, then that very fact reveals the extraordinary quality of intelligence in which there is complete, whole security.