Talks in Calcutta - 2nd Public Talk - 21st November, 1982 - ‘The Movement of Becoming’

As one observes the world outside, there is greater and greater chaos in every country. And in this country it is fairly obvious; it is blatant, it is palpable. Where there is uncertainty, disturbance, lack of political credulity, knowing that politicians all over the world are making things far worse, knowing that religions throughout the world have lost all their meaning, seeing all this, there are those who have called themselves the fundamentalists; they go back to the Bible or to the Koran or to the various so-called religious scriptures, thinking that if they follow those books, there will be less chaos. This is what is happening the world over; going back to the past, holding on to certain beliefs, tradition. Most of us are doing this in some way or other. In a world that is very, very chaotic, disturbing, dangerous and preparing for war, one naturally wants some kind of security, outside of us or inside. There isn’t much security in the outward world. You may be very rich, you may be very powerful politically, or you might find security in some dogma, in some belief, but in none of these there is absolute security. Man wants security. We must all have security – security in the sense of food, clothes and shelter. Also we want security inwardly, something that will give us assurance, stability, a sense of strength. But there is no security in any belief, in any dogma, in any ideal. Not finding security in any of these, man turns to the past and hopes thereby to find some hope, some kind of words, to hold on to.

I do not know if you have not noticed that the more you cling to some kind of conclusion, reasonable conclusion, logical conclusion or the conclusions of certain authorities, there is less energy. Where there is conclusion, there must be lack of energy because, when you come to a conclusion – which means, after discussing, arguing, come to a point which you think is right – then you shut the door to further enquiry, and that is what is happening in the world. We all want conclusions, whether there is god, whether there is going to be any peace, and so on. Lacking security inwardly and outwardly, lacking something on which we can totally rely, on which we can depend, which will give us comfort, a sense of well-being, we cling to some traditional conclusions and thereby lose that creative energy of enquiry. Enquiry means to penetrate, to investigate, to explore, to open the door, to find out further. But most of us have not that energy, and so we fall back upon something which we call tradition or some book or other.

It seems to the speaker that we are not releasing creative energy to bring about a new culture, a new way of life, because the old Brahmanical culture of this country has completely disappeared – a culture which we are not saying is good or bad; a culture that has existed perhaps three to five thousand years has completely gone overnight, disappeared altogether. And one questions, asks, why human beings who have lived with a particular culture for so long, why that culture has disappeared. Perhaps it was not a culture at all. It was only a series of words, traditions without any life behind them. So, in exploring together the condition of our mind and our heart, in investigating the nature of our brain which is the centre of all our actions, of all our feelings, of every thought, we see whether it is possible to release that creative energy. And we are going to go into this very carefully.

There is an art of listening and there is an art of learning. Most of our learning is the accumulation of knowledge; not knowing mathematics, or biology, or physics, gradually we accumulate a great deal of information about physics and store it up in the brain, which becomes our knowledge about physics, mathematics or what you will. That is what we do, and that is what we call learning – accumulating a lot of knowledge about various subjects – as an engineer, as an astronomer, as a politician. We accumulate knowledge in order to act skilfully in the world as a carpenter, as a mason, as a doctor, knowledge is accumulated, from which we act either skilfully or not skilfully, efficiently or inefficiently. So we must enquire together into what is knowledge, what place knowledge has in our relationship with each other. Perhaps we have never questioned what is the place of knowledge in life apart from having an occupation, becoming a good scientist, doctor, engineer, and so on. We are asking a very serious question, which is, ‘What place has knowledge in human relationship?’ Knowledge is always in the past. There is no future knowledge. Knowledge implies the process of time as the past. And this knowledge, both in the scientific world and human existence, is based on experience. This experience is gathered for millions of years or for the last 30 years. And that knowledge is used to accumulate further knowledge, further exploration, but knowledge is always in the past. There is no question about that. And knowledge is never complete about anything. That is a fact. So, our knowledge is stored in the brain as memory, and the response of that memory is thought. That is, experience either inherited or accumulated in the present becomes knowledge. Then that knowledge is memory, which is the past, and from that memory the reaction is thought. Is this clear?

So thought is always limited. One has accumulated, say for example, scientific knowledge. That knowledge is being added to all the time, more and more. So scientific knowledge is never complete. Thought, whatever it does, is limited. We are saying categorically and definitely that knowledge is limited. Because there is no complete knowledge about anything, knowledge always goes with a shadow of ignorance. And any thought born of knowledge must inevitably be fragmentary, limited, finite; thought can invent something immeasurable, something beyond, infinite, but it is still the movement of thought. A person can invent god because he feels god is necessary for his comfort, for his security, but that god is the product of thought which is limited. We must be very clear on this point; you must see for yourself the fact, the truth, that thought, under all circumstances, whatever the thought, whether of the scientist or of the great philosopher, is always bound, narrow, limited. Thought has invented nationalities and, having created them, brings about division between people – the Muslim and the Hindu, the Jew and the Arab, the communist, the socialist, the capitalist, and so on. Thought has invented all this. All rituals are the product of thought. And thought has created problems like war, like conflict, and so on. Then thought tries to solve these problems.

We see that thought, politically, religiously, and between human beings, has created innumerable problems. And thought says, ‘I will solve it.’ In that solution, you are producing more problems. So life is becoming more and more complex, full of problems, because we think that thought is the only instrument and that thought is limited. Is this clear? We can then ask, is there a new instrument? What is the nature of thought? Thought is a material process because it is held in the very brain cells themselves. Whatever thought thinks about or invents, is the result of a material process. When thought creates god, it is still a material process. Thought is not sacred. if this is very clear, not verbally but deeply, profoundly, then we can ask, is there a new instrument? – not higher consciousness or lower consciousness; that is another invention of thought.

We are going to find out together if there is a new instrument totally different from thought, which thought has not touched at all, because whatever thought touches must be limited and, being limited, it must inevitably create conflict, bring about fragmentation, as it has done in the world – religious fragmentation, political fragmentation, and so on. Is this clear? Can we go on from there? If you are at all serious, deeply concerned, if you have a great affection for humanity, you must have the energy to enquire; the drive, the passion, to find out. A new instrument is so absolutely necessary in this world which is degenerating day by day, destroying itself. By questioning the nature of thought, doubting, asking, probing, we are going to find out for ourselves that thought, at whatever level, is fragmentary, limited, finite, and this limitation has conditioned the brain. The brain has got extraordinary capacity as can be seen from what is happening in the technological world, but the capacity has been developed in one direction only and that is in the technological world – the doctor, the surgeon, the mathematician, the computer expert, and so on. But the human problems, which is our conflict with each other, our sorrow, pain, grief and endless conflict, the technological world can never solve. No politician, no system, no method, is concerned with all that. As ordinary human beings, we are going to find out for ourselves if there is or if there is not a new instrument which is not touched by thought, which is not the result of time, which is not caught in the process of evolution which is thought.

We are going into this step by step, if you are willing, if you are serious. You must have great alertness, attention, capacity, sensitivity; you cannot be committed to any group, to any belief, to any dogma. You have to have a mind that is really global, not a petty little mind concerned with one’s own little problems. In the greater, the lesser disappears. In the greater humanity, the few little human problems dissolve. Without understanding the vast complexity of the human brain and mind and head, you will never solve any problem. So please give your attention, care to find out for yourself, not repeat what the speaker says. The speaker has no value. He is just a telephone, but what he says perhaps may have importance. So find out.

Have you ever tried to observe yourself, your wife, the tree across the road and that animal that goes by, without the word? Have you ever tried to look at a tree without naming it, without bringing all the past pictures about a tree, just to observe the tree without the word, to look at it? Have you ever done it? Have you ever looked at your wife or your husband or your politicians? Have you ever looked at them without the symbol? Can you look at the speaker without the word, without all the rubbish and all that reputation, look at him without the image that you have built about him? Perhaps, it will be easier to look at the speaker that way because he does not know you and you don’t know him. But to look at your wife, at your husband, is much more difficult. Can you look at the animal without the picture, the image, the word? First, be aware whether you can see, observe, look, without a single word the picture, because then you will awaken your sensitiveness. You are not sensitive to the dust, to the squalor, to the misery, to the poverty; you have just accepted it. The poverty of this country can never be solved, is not ever going to be solved, unless you drop your nationalism completely. It will be solved only when you have understood the global relationship of man to man. Then there will be no frontiers. That you have probably not understood. So, I say that the first essential quality in investigation, in enquiry, in that one has to be extraordinarily sensitive. All religions have said: suppress your senses, suppress your feelings, so that you have gradually lost the sensitivity of the senses. The speaker is saying quite the contrary. The speaker is saying, ‘Awaken all your senses to their highest degree so that you look at the world with all your senses.’ To look at the world with that immense feeling when all the senses are fully awakened, in that there is great, extraordinary sense of energy, beauty. In the investigation of another instrument, we see that the first thing is, man has become dull through repetition, through tradition, through the oppression of the environment; the environment is not merely nature; the environment is the politician, the guru and all that is going on around you. You have gradually lost all sensitivity, all energy to create, but we are talking of creation in the sense of bringing about something totally new, and to have that capacity, the drive, the beauty, one must have great sensitivity. You cannot have great sensitivity if every sense is not fully functioning, fully aware.

Now, why have we destroyed ourselves? Religions have said, the scriptures of this country and the religious leaders have said, the

Christian world has said, ‘Suppress desire, suppress your feelings, don’t look at a woman, torture yourself; then only you find god or nirvana or moksha or whatever you want; only then you will be illumined; which is utter nonsense. How can you destroy the most extraordinary instrument that you have – the body, with all its senses, the beauty? It is an extraordinary instrument. These people say, ‘Suppress desire, don’t yield to desire.’ So we must understand the nature of desire. It is very important, in the investigation of a new instrument, to realize just that the old instrument, which is thought, is not solving any human problems. In the investigation of all that, we have now come upon this thing called desire. What is desire? Why have people said, suppress it, deny it? If you cannot identify it with something greater, it is always a problem of struggle. We are not advocating suppression, avoidance, escape, and all that. We are investigating together the nature of desire, how desire arises, why we are caught in it, why it has become so extraordinarily powerful.

What is desire? You see a pleasant object, a beautiful object, a beautiful woman or a man. You desire him or her or that object. That is so. You see a nice car, polished, good lights, powerful, and you touch it, get inside, feel the pleasure of owning it if you can afford it. Then the desire is there. First, the object creates the desire, or desire exists apart from the object; which is, the object, car, creates the desire, or desire exists and the objects may vary. We are not discussing the objects of desire – to be a powerful minister or prime minister, governor, an executive or a talented violinist – but we are enquiring into the very structure and nature of desire. If we understand that, not verbally but factually, then there is never a question of suppressing it, never a question of controlling it. We have controlled, never understanding who is the controller. We have controlled desire, we have controlled our sex, we are brought up to control. And where there is desire, we are trying to understand it, explore it, probe into it, not control it. If this is clear, then we can go together into the understanding of the truth of desire, what place it has in life, or has it no place at all. So we cannot possibly start with any conclusion; that is, suppress desire or let desire run rampant. But we are slowly, hesitantly, carefully, probing into this which becomes an extraordinary factor in life and a torture too.

What is the origin, the source, of desire? Go into it very, very deeply to capture the whole movement of desire, the implication of it, the depth of it, the reality of it. If you had no senses, there will be no sensation. Sensation arises when you see something in the window of a shop, a shirt, a radio, or what you will. You see it – visual perception. Then you go inside that shop, touch the material, and from the touching of it, there is a sensation. This is very simple. You see the car, you touch it, you look at the lights, the polish – not the beauty of Indian cars, but some of the European cars are extraordinarily beautiful. Like an aeroplane, it is extraordinarily beautiful – and you touch it, you touch that shirt you see in the window, blue shirt, and by the very touch there is sensation. Then what happens? Then, if you observe very closely, thought says, ‘How nice it would be if I had that shirt on me, if I stepped into that car.’ So, at that moment when thought creates the image out of the sensation, is the origin of desire.

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.

Also, we ought to talk over together, in the investigation of a new instrument, whether man can ever be free from fear. We are frightened of something, either of the past or of the future or of the living present, uncertain of the living activity, uncertain of the process of the present. We always have this fear. Man has never solved the problem; he has escaped from it. He has various means of suppressing it, denying it, escaping from it, but he has never solved this problem. When there is fear, dreadful activities take place, all kinds of wrong actions take place. Your whole body, your whole mind, shrinks when there is real danger of fear. This is a problem we must solve, not theoretically, but actually, and be completely free of fear. Is that possible?

What is the cause of fear? Where there is a cause, there is always an end to that cause. This is logic, this is natural. I may have pain, the cause may be cancer. If I discover the cause, the pain will end, or it will be terminal. We investigate the cause through the symptom. We are looking together, not at the symptoms of fear – frightened of the dark, frightened of your parents or grandparents, frightened of your husband or wife, frightened of the politician, and so on. Those are all symptoms, the objects of fear, but we are asking what is the root of it. It is like cutting down a tree, it is like going to the very root of things. We are going to look at it.

First, we are asking, is the cause of fear time? Look at it carefully. Is time a major cause of fear? That is, time being tomorrow, what might happen tomorrow, or what has happened yesterday or many thousand yesterdays, or what might happen now? You understand my question? Is time one of the factors of fear? I may have done something wrong last week, and what I have done has caused pain, and I hope it will not recur again. That is, the word ‘hope’ implies the future. Are you following this? There is time by the watch, time by the sunrise and sunset, time as yesterday, today and tomorrow, time as yesterday’s memories, experiences, modifying itself in the present and proceeding into the future. All that is time. Physical time – to cover a distance from here to there, from one point to another point, from this place to go to your home, that requires time. There is the so-called psychological time, the inward time. That is, ‘I hope I will get a better job at the end of the year, I hope I will be better, nobler or whatever it is, sometime later; I hope I will meet a nice man tomorrow.’ So the word ‘hope’ implies time. And another is the idea of better: I am this, but I will be better; I am violent but I will become non-violent. This process of ‘what is’ and transforming ‘whit is’ to something else is a process of time. Is this clear? So, time is a factor of fear. I am living, I have got full energy, but something, an accident, might kill me. I am warned that there is always death. So there is this sense of time, an interval. That interval is translated as the better, as hope, as self-improvement, and so on. I want to fulfil, I may not be able to fulfil. I apply for a job, I may not have the capacity for the job. So there is fear. Time is one of the factors of fear.

We are not saying how to wipe away time. We are enquiring into the nature of fear. Then, is not thought, is not the process of thinking, another factor of fear? Look at it. I think I may die. I think that god exists, but you come along and threaten my belief, and I am frightened. So, thinking of the past incident, hoping that pain will not recur again, thinking about it and wishing that it will not happen again, is the movement of thought. So thought and time are the very root of fear. The physical time – to go from here to your house, that requires time – you cannot stop that. To learn a language, to learn any technique, requires time. We see that time is one of the factors of fear as well as thought. So thought is a movement. Is it not? Time is a movement. Is there actually, factually, psychological time at all? You understand my question? The problem of time is very important as the problem of thought. We live by time. All our knowledge is based on time – the struggle to become less violent, the struggle to become something, which is all measure. I an unhappy, violent, lonely, depressed, anxious. That is ‘what is’. That is a fact. Then comes the idea, ‘I must become something else from “what is.” That becoming is time, as becoming from a clerk to a manager requires time. That same process of thinking we have brought over into the field of the psyche, into the field of thinking. That is, ‘I am violent, I will become non-violent’, which is, you are allowing time to come, interfere. But when you say, ‘I am violent, I am going to understand it, look at it, watch it, go into it very quickly, deeply’, there is no time. But if you are trying to become something else, there is time.

It is the becoming, which is measure, that demands time. Say, for instance, if you compare yourself with somebody more intelligent, more bright, comparison is measurement. If you don’t compare at all with anybody, including your great gods and saints and gurus and all the rest of it, then what happens? You are what you are.

From there you start, but when you are comparing, trying to become something else, you never understand yourself, what you are. So time is a becoming, a becoming which is non-fact. That is, ‘I am violent, I must become non-violent.’ The non-violence is not a fact, has no reality. Though you talk a great deal about it in this country, it does not exist. What exists is violence. If you forget the non-violence, then you can tackle violence, go into it. The understanding of violence can be long or very quick. Either your investigation of violence can take time because you are lazy, or you may say, ‘I will investigate it tomorrow, it is not important’, and so on. But a man who is concerned with violence which is spreading all over the world, destroying humanity, wants to understand the depth of violence, he will understand it instantly. Where there is a becoming, you must have psychological time. That becoming is illusory. The fact is what exists, what you are at the moment – your anger, your reactions, your fears. Look at it. Time is a major factor of fear and also thought. You cannot stop physical time, but when you begin to understand the nature of time inwardly, the becoming and the non-becoming, and understand the whole movement of thought, not suppress it, deny it, say how am I to control thought, then who is the controller? The controller is another part of thought.

If you are really, deeply, concerned with the nature of fear and the total ending of psychological fear, one has to go into the question of time in depth and also the nature and structure of thought. But if you say, ‘Please tell me a method to get rid of fear,’ then you are asking a terribly wrong question because, the very question implies that you have not understood yourself, you have not looked at yourself. Death, conflict, pain, sorrow, pleasure, fear, meditation, all that is our life, and to understand it one must have vitality, strength and you will not have that energy if you are merely repeating words, if you cling to some belief, to some conclusions; that destroys all energy. Energy implies freedom; not what you like to do, but freedom. Only then you have extraordinary energy.