Our relationship with the World (Part IV): Relationship to Oneself

8/14/2019 Our relationship with the World (Part IV): Relationship to Oneself

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`myself' which exists, whether I like it or not ?

We have seen so far that the right relationship to anything whether it is nature,

society, even ideas, is one in which we approach it like a friend or like a student

who wants to understand it. As soon as we shift from that position to one of a

person who wants to manipulate it - whether nature or society or ideas or our

fellow man -- we create an entity which is the exploiter, which is the `me'. which

is the center, which then takes over and uses everything for its own purpose, turns

that innocent activity of observation and learning into a self-centered activity,

motivated and purposeful. That, in a sense, seems to be the corrupting factor in

life. Whether it is the ecological disasters that are facing humanity, or the national

divisions and the wars, or the family problems in our relationships, if you tracethem objectively and go to their source, you find that the source lies in this centre,

the `me', which is created by us in imagination. So, as Krishnaji pointed out, the

crisis out there is created by the crisis in our consciousness.

So, what is my relationship with this entity, with this private computer that has

been handed down to me at birth ? Can I approach it also like a friend ? Can I be

also a friend to myself ? Because if the other man is myself, and it is right to be a

friend to the other man, I must ask whether it may not also be the right

relationship with myself just to be a friend--not an owner, not a manipulator, not

an oppressor, not an exploiter, but just a friend. What does it means to be a friend

to oneself ? After all, if somebody gives a computer to me, I begin to play with it,

learn about it, use it where it is useful and put it aside when it is not useful. Can it

be that that is the right way to deal with this computer also ? We may have only

complicated matters by identifying with this computer and saying, "This is me",

not treating it merely as something we have and discovering what is the right use

of it. In that computer is included all the genetic programming and all thereactions. I don't distinguish between the reactions which come from the present

memory and those that come from thousands of years of memory -- it is all stored

there and I can not wish it away, I can not do away with that memory. It exists as

my constant companion right through life. So if one had a friend who was going to

be there all the time and one did not have the option not to live with him one

would need to understand him and get to know him ? Obviously, I do not want to

sit on judgment on him, I don't want to get attached to him, nor do I want to

ignore him-- he is my friend ! What do we do when we have a child ? You can not

run away from the child, it is your child, you are responsible for him, and you don

't really know him. You may have produced him but you don't really understand

him. You may have produced him but you don't really understand him. You watch

him, how he plays, what he likes, what he doesn't like , what illusions he has in his

mind, his imaginations, his joys, his sorrows -- you try to understand your child.

Why don't we approach ourselves that way, like a friend, like someone we truly

love ?

We must of course be clear what we mean by friendship. Friendship doesn't mean

support, friendship doesn't mean loyalty, friendship doesn't mean "I agree with

you", Friendship means sharing -- sharing life, sharing concerns, sharing affection.

Kahlil Gibran describes it beautifully, in his own inimitable words, in "The

Prophet". I don't remember the words exactly, but I will tell you approximately,

some part of it, because I think he uses words which are far more beautiful than

what I can express. He says " Let there be no purpose in friendship, save the

deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks ought but the disclosure of its own

mystery is not love, but a net that is cast forth, and only the unprofitable is caught

! Seek your friend, not with hours to kill, but with hours to live, for it is his to fill

your need but not your emptiness. And in friendship, let there be eating and

drinking, and dancing for it is in the dew of little things that the heart finds its

morning and is refreshed. " It is this quality of love and friendship that I am

talking about, when I say, " Can we be a friend to ourselves, can we love

ourselves the way we love someone else" ?

If a scientist wants to understand how a fish lives, he watches it. He closely

studies how it sleeps, how it reproduces, how it moves, how it eats --- he watches

everything about that fish. He doesn't say " It must do this, it must not do that. I

wish it was a bigger fish ....." If he says all these things, he is not a scientist, he is

not just studying that phenomenon, then he is trying to manipulate, he is trying to

project his wishes into the phenomenon. Can I watch myself in that way, as the

scientist watches and examines the fish ? You may ask me : " Why do you want

to watch yourself ?" If you can answer that question, you are not watching rightly

! Because if there is a motive, if there is a purpose in watching then you are not

looking with love. Then that purpose will corrupt the very enquiry and the

looking. Therefore it is a wrong question and wrong questions have no answers.

There is no purpose in friendship there is no purpose to love, and there is no

purpose to enquiry. If there is an enquiry with a motive it already includes the ego

elationship with the World (Part IV) : Relationship to Oneself http://www.pkrishna.org/Our-Relationshi

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and if you begin with the ego, you can never get out of it. That is why all our

processes based on will and decision only make minor changes in life. We may

think they make major changes, but when we examine it carefully, there is really

no fundamental change in consciousness when you try to change things through

effort, through will.

A businessman, trying to build a factory and make a success of himself and his

mission, can get frustrated, give it all up, renounce his wealth and join a church,

put on the yellow robe and then start a religious pursuit. We think it is a

tremendous change, because outwardly he was earlier working with money, he

was putting on good clothes and going in a Mercedes, and now he puts on this

yellow robe and he lives with few things and is thinking about God instead ofthinking about money -- but it is sill an outer change, a peripheral change. We

said earlier that the real change occurs in the consciousness of man. If he was

ambitiously working in his business and he is now ambitiously working at this

religious aim, he is still ambitious. Inwardly, in his consciousness, he is still

approaching it as an achievement, so the me is still continuing, it has only changed

its object of interest. Instead of having one desire it now has another desire, but

desire is still operating. Therefore there is no fundamental change in the

consciousness when you change things externally. That is why efforts at the

periphery will never take you to the centre. But if the change occurs in the centre

it will affect the whole of the periphery, because it affects the entire way in which

I look at society and at other human beings and also the way I look at myself.

Then there is an actual transformation, not when I change things only outwardly.

It appears to be a big change because we look at it superficially, we do not look at

the consciousness. So if that is clear then I don't look with any motive. I don't look

at myself in order to change, because I know that when I decide to change and

then make it happen, it is the operation of will. It is the same confused mind,which is not clear, which does not understand itself, which is first positing what it

wants to be and then trying to be that and this whole process is still part of the

confusion. The `me' is sustained by this very effort. So this enquiry can also be

part of the `me', or it may not be. That is not only true of this enquiry, it is true of

any action. You can love your wife because of this, that and the other or you can

just love for no reason. You can care for your house and live in it without any

attachment or you can be terribly attached to that house and therefore care for it.

Outwardly the action is the same. A scientist can be working very hard in his

laboratory, spending sixteen hours a day observing some phenomenon because

that is his passion, that is what he wants to discover and find out and he loves to

do that. Or he can put in all that effort in the laboratory because he wants

recognition, because he wants to get the Nobel Prize, because he wants all the

honour and respectability that go with success. The action is the same but the

inner state of consciousness is totally different. The work then is only a means to

achieve an end.

So we cannot define right and wrong in terms of action. The same action may be

right or wrong depending on what state of mind it emanates from -- the motive or

the purpose behind it. And nobody else knows the motive or the purpose other

than yourself. Only I can watch my motives, nobody else knows my motives, so

nobody else can judge that. We can speculate, we can attribute motives to the

actions of others and say "This is why he is doing it", and so on but we are only

guessing, we can never be sure. In the Gita, Arjuna asks Krishna. "What is this

kind of man, the liberated man ? How does he live, how does he work ? What

does he eat ? How do you know him ? " And Krishna says : "You can not know

him by looking at his actions. He does the same things which the ordinary man

does, but it is totally different because he does not do them for the same reason."

So there is no problem in the action itself. The problem is not whether we read the

Bible or not, but in the way we approach the Bible. The way I approach the Bible

determines whether that reading is meaningful or not. The problem is not whether

I go to a church or not, but how do I approach the church ? Do I create a lot of

illusions out of it, do I feel that if I go to that church and stand there I am

becoming more virtuous, more religious ? Then you have to examine whether that

is an illusion or whether that is a fact. The problem is not in the action of going to

the church. The Hindus have a belief or a superstition that if they bathe in the

Ganges their sins are washed away ! The act of bathing in the Ganges may be as

truly religious as bathing in any river early in the morning, if you approach it with

a religious mind. It is the illusion associated with it that corrupts. If I had to

express what I have just been trying to point out in one sentence. I would say : "

Illusion is the only sin". No action in itself is a sin. But when my mind associates

illusions with it, or when that action is born out of illusion, it is a sin. It is a sin

because it creates disorder, it brings in division, it makes one irreligious. To be

irreligious is to be divided and there is division when there is illusion. The self is

the source of all illusion. If there is no illusion there is no self.


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My mind creates illusion and I know that. I have read Krishnamurti I have read

other people, I have read the Buddha and I know that the human mind creates

illusion. I also know that we all share the same mind, that every human being has

this capacity to create illusions. Does that mean that I have to do away with the

faculty of imagination ? Of course not. No faculty which has been put there by

nature, which is part of the order of nature, is without value. But I do not know

what its right use is. To find that out I must uncover the entire mechanism of the

`me'. What is this computer called me' ? Sometimes I feel desire, sometimes I feel

fear. The Buddhists say "Desire is the cause of all grief and sorrow", so they want

to eliminate desire. In the process of eliminating desire they say "If you look at a

woman, it creates desire, therefore don't look at a woman". If you look atsomething beautiful, you will get the desire to possess it, therefore do not look at

something beautiful. Does that mean I have to make myself insensitive and avoid

all that is beautiful ? It is like killing life, so I don't accept that. At the same time I

really don't understand what to do with this faculty of imagination.

If I notice that I have desire, what is the point of saying "It should arise, it should

not arise --- it is a right desire, it is a wrong desire"? I am a student, I want to

study it. Desire may also be a part of the order of nature --- I don't know. So I

have to understand my relationship with desire. Does desire become a problem

because I identify with it ? Then it turns into 'my' desire and the purpose and aim

of life becomes the fulfillment of that desire. Is the problem with the desire or is

the problem with my identifying with that desire and calling it 'mine', thereby

making it the mission of my life to fulfill that desire ? Desire itself may be a

natural thing. It may be a reaction that is put there into that computer by nature. I

may be complicating it through my imagination, building it up, like turning sexual

desire into lust. So there may be a component that is natural and there may be acomponent from the 'me', the self. I build it up, therefore it becomes terribly

important to fulfill it. So how do I discover how far desire is natural, a part of the

cosmic order, and when does it become an obsession, an addiction ? Which guru,

which friend is going to tell me the limits ? Who is going to give me the formula

which tells me how far it is all right and when it turns dangerous ? Nobody.

Nobody can tell us how much desire is all right and when it is not alright. You

can't measure it, you can't draw lines, it is not like mathematics. So there is no

formula, there is no path. When there is no formula there is no set way. When it

cannot be communicated as knowledge there is no path; yet I can play with it and

discover what is the right place of desire.

Similarly, there is fear in my consciousness. Is fear evil or is fear good ? Or is that

a wrong question --- trying to put things into categories ? It is too simplistic. The

question may be born out of my own desire to classify things. Life may not be

classifiable. Why do I impose categories on life, if I am a student ? For

communication, for convenience of talking we have to do it, but fundamentally,why impose categories ? If you do not impose categories, you can examine

yourself in relationship to that fear.

How much of that fear is normal, healthy, a part of the cosmic order and when

does it turn neurotic, create conflict involve the 'me' ? When do I build it up

beyond what is normal, healthy, orderly ? So there may be a certain amount of

fear which is normal, healthy, put there by nature as a part of biological order. If I

had no fear of falling off a precipice, I might walk off and kill myself. If I had no

fear of an accident with an oncoming truck, I might just sit on the road and get

killed. So how can we say that all fear is evil ? That kind of fear is natural, it may

be there as part of the body's intelligence. So when is fear part of intelligence, and

when is fear neurotic ? Who is going to tell me that ? How am I going to learn that

from another ? So self-knowledge is not something which can be transmitted from

one human being to another. Krishnamurti cannot give it to us. He may have had

it, he may have been able to see very clearly but he can't give us that clarity. That

clarity, I must discover for myself. He can give me this question, " When is fear

alright and when is it not alright ?" but he cannot give us the answer.

We must investigate that for ourselves. It is like the home-work which the teacher

gives you in school, you have to do it. When nobody can give you the solution

you have to struggle with it and find it out which means you have to examine it,

live with that fear, play with it, make mistakes, learn through your own

observation. And that may be the right relationship with ourselves -- not

condemning, not saying "This is right that is wrong; it should be here, it should not

be there". Who is judging ? This confused mind, which has so little understanding

? This brain which was born in Madras brought up in Indore, taught a little physics

brought up with all that Indian culture, is that confused, limited brain going to

answer this question ? It is not capable of answering this question ! Why do I have

to identify with it ? It is just one particular programme out of millions of


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programmes in this world ! What is the significance of the response of one

particular computer programme unless it conforms with actuality ? How am I to

find out whether what comes up in this computer, called my brain, is the actuality

or not, except through observation ? So can you study this computer like your

little pet, like your child -- not get angry with it, not condemn it, not go into all

that business of guilt and shame and so on ? Those are just other problems which

we create for ourselves. The only problem is to understand the working of this

computer. And my computer is not terribly different from yours. Therefore if I

understand my computer, I understand all the human computers. The object of my

fear may be different --- I may be afraid of darkness, you may be afraid of death,

a third person may be afraid of losing his property --- but fear is common to all of

us What does it matter what it is in relation to ? That is only the specific problemof one particular individual, but fear is a problem common to all of us and that is

what we are wanting to understand.

That may be what Krishnamurti meant, when he said "Put your house in order" --

the inner house. Which means to find out the right place of everything - thought,

imagination, desire, sex, money, work. Without discovering the right place, to

accept a formula given by somebody is trivial. It is just a path shown by

somebody else which doesn't do anything to our consciousness. The path which

my mind accepts becomes the particular programme in my brain. To a mind which

is in quest of truth, all these programmes have very little value -- whether they are

in your head or in my head makes little difference.

Now, how to judge what is the right place ? I don't know it and I won't accept

what somebody else said either because that is just accepting on authority and I

will still not know. We may not know what the right place is but we have a way of

knowing when things are in the wrong place. When it is in the wrong place, it willcreate division, it will create conflict, whether with another or within yourself. "I

am this, I should be that" -- that is a conflict between what you are and what you

want to be. When there is conflict we are looking at life wrongly, it is disorder. So

I have a way of detecting disorder. But I have no way of knowing what is order.

The order lies in the unknown and that is what I am trying to discover. But if I

have a way of knowing what is disorder then I can examine every disorder, learn

from it, and eliminate it. All disorder originates from illusion -- illusion being

something which I have given a false place in my mind. It is not really so, but I

have built it up in imagination and I think it is so. There may be subtle illusions

and there may be crude illusions like beliefs. Then there may be still cruder

illusions like superstitions. So some illusions may go away even through

knowledge, through intellectual enquiry. Through the study of science

superstitions may drop away, but there are in our mind much subtler illusions.

Finally, I am not even sure whether it is not an illusion that I am a separate 'me'. I

am questioning all that and studying this 'me', and I can study it because it

operates within me. I can look at it as I am all the time with it. In everyrelationship it is revealing itself. But do I study it, do I want to learn about it ? Or

is it my master, dictating what I should be doing ? Then I am caught in

self-centred activity and everything I am doing is in subtle ways governed by this

'me', governed by what it is saying : "Do this, this is profitable, that is not." Then

we are not studying it, we are following it. Then it becomes our master and we the

slave.

You can study about the self by reading books in psychology, which scientists

have written. They will tell you how the various complexes arise. Because a

human being is afraid of being lonely he creates relationships in order to escape

from loneliness. Because a human being is afraid of being nobody, he wants

importance, he wants position, he wants to be somebody. Because he feels

insecure about his future, he wants to accumulate wealth, property, house, in

order to feel secure. You can read all that in psychology books. Knowledge can

tell us all that but does that free us ? We know all the causes and we know all the

effects. But the knowledge of cause and effect doesn't free you. You still have all

the fears, you have the insecurity, you have the loneliness. So knowledge may be

necessary, but it is not sufficient. And it becomes dangerous if you have the

illusion that knowledge is sufficient. That is an illusion because it is really not

sufficient. Knowledge is only the answer in words --- the explanation. It won't

change anything from within. That is why the religious enquiry is so important --

to go beyond knowledge, beyond the words, to actually see for oneself. Not

through thoughts, not through ideas, not through logic, but through direct

perception --- as you perceive that fire burns your finger. Can we know in that

way that the self divides, that it is irreligious, that it corrupts ? "My whole life is

corrupted by this !" When one sees it that way, then there is an intelligence in our

system which tells it not to touch poison. It will not touch poison. If a bottle is

marked 'poison', you will get no desire to taste it. You don't get a desire to put

your finger in the fire, because it is absolutely clear that it is damaging. If it is


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equally clear that the self is damaging the whole of your life, you will jump out of

it ! So, it is clarity that is important, not knowledge. And knowledge in itself can

give you the questions, but it will not give you the clarity. We have to come upon

that clarity, or that intelligence or that insight or that direct perception --- call it

what you will, but it is beyond words. To discover the actual thing and not just the

explanations -- that may be the true purpose of our consciousness. May be this

consciousness was given to us, not to fulfill all the desires and ambitions, and live

by all the reactions of the 'me', but to study and examine all this, and to jump out

of ourselves -- not gradually, not slowly, because you cannot accumulate clarity.

You cannot jump through will -- we have already seen the falseness of using the

will, of using the ego. The 'me' is never going to jump out of itself ! So who jumps

out ? I don't know. The only way to know is to let it happen !


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Our relationship with the World (Part IV): Relationship to Oneself