9 p. WHY DOESN’T MAN CHANGE? #two

With earnest inquiry we might envision some basic human mechanisms that keep us locked into an old pattern. If we become aware of this process maybe it will lose its mystique, and drop away by itself.

Why do I write about these things? Librarian liked the last one, so let’s expand upon it. Do I have an expertise to teach? Not-Really. I write for myself to confirm a new understanding, a new discovery. With attempted expression it becomes clearer in my own mind. (2,200 words)

To most of us, thinking is extraordinarily important. Is that our only tool, and is it liberating or is it binding? It has a certain importance, but thought cannot find that which is not the product of thought. Technologically we move along, but that is being verified with experiments. Thought is the result of the known, gathered from previous experience, and therefore it cannot fathom the unknown, anything new, or the unknowable. Is not thought just desire, desire for material necessities, for continued security, OR even just a mundane desire, (self-aggrandizement), but for the highest of spiritual goals?

[We are not talking, about the thought of the scientist at work in the laboratory, nor the thought of an absorbed mathematician, and so on, but about thought as it operates in our daily life, in our everyday contacts and responses.]

We know what the world has become outwardly, more and more fragmented, more and more violent, more insane, one group fighting another group; where we cannot share all the energy and resources of the world for all its people—you know what is happening. And what is our relationship to that, the world, and to oneself? Are we separate from all that, standing aside to judge and manipulate it? Perhaps we are good at hiding these impulses within ourselves. We may live in a privileged nation, and in a gated community so we deny world turmoil is within us, or affects us. I question if we are so very radically different from the world about us. With all the competing religions, the contradictory, opposing ideas, ideologies and the competing gurus, and wise men, what shall we do together to change ourselves? Why do we lead our lives as we do, with our petty little ideals, vanities, and all the stupidities that we have accumulated, why is it that we go on in this way? We’re a tinderbox, ready to explode.

Let’s dispense with the obvious canards right away.

First is the definition that mankind will never change. The only thing to do is to hunker down, find a tiny protected enclave and pretend that you are happy. I say “pretend” because I think people are really empathetic, but hide and deny it. So looking at the world is a tragedy for them.

Then there are those that choose to hold onto “clean thoughts”, that is, thinking that has no bad feelings attached to it. Things appear in the real world that are not how I wish to live, so I reject them and avoid them, and deny the “negative”. If someone calls attention to it, “You have bad energy”, I don’t listen to those sorts of things. Those are my no-go-zones. You spend your whole life dodging and darting from the world situation and inventing the opposites, concepts like non-violence that you give all your attention to, for developing in some future time.

Next, most people define progress as evolution. So give us more time, and it all will work out. We have had the time of all of recorded history, (5,000 years) and psychologically nothing has changed.

We also might claim that it takes suffering to bring about change. (That’s pretty gruesome.) Man has proven tremendously adaptable to hell, and has suffered untold atrocity, torture and inquisition, to no effect.

Insecurity, fear, and desire we’ll talk about below.

✓Is it desire then? Is desire the root of this self-centered activity? Isn’t it the separate “me” that is the author of desire? I want to aggrandize and protect myself (from you). You all desire so many things: there is desire for security, desire for happiness, desire for good looks, desire for what else?—a world that will be peaceful?—desire to fulfill and avoid frustration? Even a desire for enlightenment. Desire by which all 8 billion human beings are driven. We are asking, is that one of the root causes of this self-centered existence, with all its confusion and misery?

All of life on earth has two basic challenges, that of sustenance and safety. With sustenance, your stomach gets full, so maybe that has been handled for the time-being. But tomorrow might bring a calamity (in my imagination). So security can never be satisfied. It is an ever-going quest.

When you analyze what is desire, you are using thought as a means of analysis. That is, going into the past. And so you are using the old instrument, which is your limited thought, and looking into the past, step by step, which is the whole psychoanalytical process. But to examine desire you must see the actuality of it right now, not move it back to check its history. You must be very clear on this point. The psychoanalytical, introspective self-examination process is going backwards, and thereby hoping to find a cause. To do that you employ thought, right? And thought is the limited old instrument, (there’s a lot to say about it). But it regenerates its same defective parameters in perpetuity.

Now we are saying something entirely different. We are saying analysis by oneself, or by the professional, doesn’t lead you anywhere. We are saying: observe the nature of desire in the now. Don’t analyze it in the past, just observe it. You understand the difference? You don’t jump to it and say, “Yes, I have got it.” All that you keep saying is, “Explain, and I will get it, explain the whole movement of desire, employ the correct words, describe it precisely and I’ll get it.” What you get is the clarity of an explanation, clarity of words, but that doesn’t give you the total observation of the movement of desire.

Can you stop analyzing and just observe? Most of us are satisfied with the verbal explanations. We don’t say, “I’ll go, and find out for myself.”

Desire can be for things, that I see and compare. Perception starts with sensation. I see a house. Then thought comes in and says oh, that is your house. Then I see another house and thought says that is my house. At that stage perception is neutral. With comparison and judgement, I conclude your house is better. Even that is neutral. But then something in my thought creates an image of me living in your house, and desire is born. I will take it, or I will buy it, or I will build one just like it. It is only when thought creates the image that desire comes into being. Otherwise, it does not.

You have had a pleasant experience, sexual or whatever. And it has created an image, a picture, and you pursue it. One is a form of pleasure, the other is the movement of contradictory desires, You desire that thing—or desire great success. Can you observe this, that the moment when thought creates the image, that then desire is born? Do you see it as it happens? How thought creates through its imagination the desire to pursue to the very end?

The question arises then: Can thought not create the image? That is the whole point. We have come to the point when you yourself observe the springing up of desire. Perception, seeing, contact, sensation. Up to then there is no desire. It is just reaction. But the moment thought creates the image the whole cycle begins. If you see it clearly, then the question arises: Why does thought always create this image? There is instantly like and dislike, which means thought brings in its previous experiences. Can one observe without the inflaming desire coming into being? If so, you will see it.

That is the new instrument, which is to observe.

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✓Then there is desire for security—it is the same thing as with objects, security in terms of a big house, little house, bank account, (which may be necessary), and also security that desire has created about oneself, the image that you have about yourself, and the fulfillment of that image in action. In that is involved many kinds of frustration, and in spite of the frustrations, in spite of conflicts, in spite of misery, desire goes on pursuing, because thought is always creating the image where there is sensation.

✓Is desire responsible for the fear? We have sought security through desire and the fulfillment of that desire, psychologically, perhaps security in believing in God—and unconsciously, deeply one may be also aware that the things in which you have invested, which desire has invested, have limited value, if at all. And having no value, you are frightened. That is the stupid old game. We are observing the actual fact of fear. And as it arises, to observe, to ask: What is the root of it? Not discover this by analysis, but in the very observation of it you discover the root.

✓The human being has accepted and lives with fear. Outwardly with the fear of violence, fear of getting hurt physically, and so on. And inwardly, psychologically, with the fear of not conforming to a pattern, fear of public opinion, of not achieving, not fulfilling, and so on. We are asking, can you observe that fact—without the analytical mind operating on the fact—and observe the whole movement of fear, as it exists?

You would see it is possible to be absolutely free of fear psychologically. Don’t accept my word for it, it is your life, not mine, you have to find this out yourself.

So you have to ask: What is fear? Are its roots in desire? Desire being what we have said: thought creating the image and then pursuing that image which it might fulfill and might not. You follow? If it fulfills there is no fear, or at least there are other calamities involved in it. But when there is no fulfillment there is frustration and the fear of not being able to fulfill—Is fear the product of desire? Desire being the image formation and the fulfillment of that image in a future action.

Or is fear—please follow this carefully—✓part of this time, part of the future? You understand? Is fear the movement of time? Are desire and time responsible for fear?

Desire is the movement of thought with its imagery. That is, the movement of thought creating the image, and the movement of that image, which is time. Not chronological time, but psychological time. And we are asking: Is time also responsible for fear? The future is where fear is located. The time of fulfilling desire, (or not being able to fulfill it)—It’s the time which desire automatically creates, and the thought which has created the desire; and thought being also time, so thought and desire and time are responsible for fear. Say I am afraid of what you might do to me, (in the future). I am afraid you might hurt me psychologically. I am afraid that dog will bite me. But at the moment of biting, time has come to an end. It has happened, there is no more fear. Now I am just ministering my wounds. Fear is only that the dog might bite me. I have created the image, thought has created the image of that dog biting, which is located in time, in the future. So desire has its future and time is naturally future. I have created the psychological past, present, and future.

So the question is: Can thought realize its own movement in creating fear? You understand? Thought realizing its own fearful nature. When it realizes its own nature, as the active principle in fear, what actually takes place? Then there is only what is actually happening. Thought tries to manipulate what-is into what-should-be. The “thinker” is the self-appointed improvement society.

Thought cannot operate on a fact. Thought can only operate on something that is a non-fact. The fact already IS. There is nothing to manipulate.

You can understand the movement of fear, and realizing the nature of desire, and the nature of limited thought creating time, (which is fear). If you realize it, the thing is over. There are no gurus, no gods, no religions, no seeking, none of that nonsense. Fear is finished.

It is not a question of thought stopping. Does thought itself realize what it is doing? That it has created a desire, and the fulfillment of that desire is in the loop of time. And in that future, there must be involved fear. And also thought has created the fantasy of what might happen. There has been pain; I hope there won’t be pain again, which is in the future. So thought has created the future. And the future is the very nature of fear.

If I die instantly there is no fear. If I have an immediate heart attack—phut, gone—there is no fear. But if my heart is weak, I might die, - which is the future. The future is the movement of fear. I see the truth of this process, not my conclusion. Not your saying, “Yes, I see it,” but really seeing the truth of it.

Then that very truth operates. You don’t have to do a thing. If you see that truth, and that truth being the fact, then thought says, “All right, I have finished.”

So after having read this verbiage, have you realized the nature of fear? Seen the truth of it? If you really see the truth of it, fear has gone. It is not that you must control or suppress thought. Because you are the thought. Your “thinker” is made of the same thoughts as your contradictions. You understand? It is one of our peculiar conditionings that there is some “you” which is different from thought, and therefore you say, “I” will control thought. But when you realize that the thought itself is the “me,” and that same thought has created this future, which is fear, and see the truth of it—not intellectually, you can’t see truth intellectually, you CAN see intellectually a clear, verbal explanation, but that is not the truth. The truth is the fact that the future, the whole movement of the future, is giving birth to fear.

So what comes from fear, (of insecurity)? The first impulse is to create separation. All those others are at the root of my insecurity. I have enemies. After separation, I create hostility, struggle and conflict. THAT IS THE WORLD SITUATION, FROM WHICH WE ARE SAYING; MAN DOES NOT CHANGE. This is the exact same fear that is moving us toward World War three.

Now you have listened to this, perhaps in different ways, and to different explanations on different occasions, and you are gathered here again, and you have listened this morning to a very clear explanation, which is not an analysis; and are you free of fear? That is the test. If you are still carrying on, and saying, “I am afraid of... blah blah”—you know, all the rest of that business, then you have no intention to really listen.

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