The more one studies
attempted solutions to problems in politics and economics, in art, philosophy,
and religion, the more one has the impression of extremely gifted people wearing
out their ingenuity at the impossible and futile task of trying to get the water
of life into neat and permanent packages.
Religious ideas are like words--of little use, and often misleading, unless you
know the concrete realities to which they refer. The word "water" is a
useful means of communication amongst those who know water. The same is true of
the word and the idea called "God"...The reality which corresponds to
"God" and "eternal life" is honest, above-board, plain, and
open for all to see. But the seeing requires a correction of mind, just as clear
vision sometimes requires a correction of the eyes.
Belief clings, but faith lets go...Our minds have been prepared for it by this
very collapse of the beliefs in which we have sought security. From a point of
view strictly, if strangely, in accord with certain religious traditions, this
disappearance of the old rocks and absolutes is no calamity, but rather a
blessing. It almost compels us to face reality with open minds, and you can only
know God through an open mind just as you can only see the sky through a clear
window.
To discover the ultimate Reality of life--the Absolute, the eternal, God--you
must cease to try to grasp it in the forms of idols. These idols are not just
crude images, such as the mental picture of God as an old gentleman on a golden
throne. They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which
block the unreserved opening of the mind and heart to reality. The legitimate
use of images is to express the truth, not to possess it.
"Unless a grain of corn fall into the ground and die, it remains alone. But
if it dies, it brings forth much fruit"...What religion calls the vision of
God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God. By the same law of
reversed effort, we discover the "infinite" and the
"absolute," not by straining to escape from the finite and relative
world, but by the most complete acceptance of its limitations. Paradox as it may
seem, we likewise find life meaningful only when we have seen that it is without
purpose, and know the "mystery of the universe" only when we are
convinced that we know nothing about it at all.
Because consciousness must involve both pleasure and pain, to strive for
pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of
consciousness...The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent
those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.
Music is a delight because of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you arrest the
flow and prolong a note or chord beyond its time, the rhythm is destroyed.
Because life is likewise a flowing process, change and death are its necessary
parts. To work for their exclusion is to work against life.
For change is not merely a force of destruction. Every form is really a pattern
of movement, and every living thing is like the river, which, if it did not flow
out, would never have been able to flow in. Life and death are not two opposed
forces; they are simply two ways of looking at the same force, for the movement
of change is as much the builder as the destroyer.
In thinking of ourselves as divided into "I" and "me," we
easily forget that consciousness also lives because it is moving. It is as much
a part and product of the stream of change as the body and the whole natural
world. If you look at it carefully, you will see that consciousness--the thing
you call "I"--is really a stream of experiences, of sensations,
thoughts, and feelings in constant motion. But because these experiences include
memories, we have the impression that "I" is something solid and
still, like a tablet upon which life is writing a record.
The root of the difficulty is that we have developed the power of thinking so
rapidly and one-sidedly that we have forgotten the proper relation between
thoughts and events, words and things. Conscious thinking has gone ahead and
created its own world, and, when this is found to conflict with the real world,
we have the sense of a profound discord between the "I," the conscious
thinker, and nature.
What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and
that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously...Thoughts, ideas, and words
are "coins" for real things. They are not those things, and
though they represent them, there are many ways in which they do not correspond
at all. As with money and wealth, so with thoughts and things: ideas and words
are more or less fixed, whereas real things change.
To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to understand. More
important still, words have enabled man to define himself--to label a certain
part of his experience "I."
Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are
just as vital parts of my existence as my heart.
Now these are useful words, so long as we treat them as conventions and use them
like the imaginary lines of latitude and longitude which are drawn upon maps,
but are not actually found upon the face of the earth. But in practice we are
all bewitched by words. We confuse them with the real world, and try to live in
the real world as if it were the world of words. As a consequence, we are
dismayed and dumbfounded when they do not fit. The more we try to live in the
world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and
liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security.
The scope and purpose of science are woefully misunderstood when the universe
which it describes is confused with the universe in which man lives...It is just
this reality of the present, this moving, vital now which eludes all the
definitions and descriptions. Here is the mysterious real world which words and
ideas can never pin down.
The miracles of technology cause us to live in a hectic, clockwork world that
does violence to human biology, enabling us to do nothing but pursue the future
faster and faster. Deliberate thought finds itself unable to control the upsurge
of the beast in man--a beast more "beastly" than any creature of the
wild, maddened and exasperated by the pursuit of illusions. Specialization in
verbiage, classification, and mechanized thinking has put man out of touch with
many of the marvelous powers of "instinct" which govern his body. It
has, furthermore, made him feel utterly separate from the universe and his own
"me."
If you ask me to show you God, I will point to the sun, or a tree, or a worm.
But if you say, "You mean, then, that God is the sun, the tree, the worm,
and all other things?"--I shall have to say that you have missed the point
entirely.
Indeed, the special disease of civilized man might be described as a block or
schism between his brain (specifically, the cortex) and the rest of his body.
This corresponds to the split between "I" and "me," man and
nature, and to the confusion of Ouroboros, the mixed-up snake, who does not know
that his tail belongs with his head.
Since what we know of the future is made up of purely abstract and logical
elements--inferences, guesses, deductions--it cannot be eaten, felt, smelled,
seen, heard, or otherwise enjoyed. To pursue it is to pursue a constantly
retreating phantom, and the faster you chase it, the faster it runs ahead. This
is why all the affairs of civilization are rushed, why hardly anyone enjoys what
he has, and is forever seeking more and more.
Thus the "brainy" economy...is a fantastic vicious circle which must
either manufacture more and more pleasures or collapse--providing a constant
titillation of the ears, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost
inescapable noise and visual distractions. The perfect "subject" for
the aims of this economy is the person who continuously itches his ears with the
radio, preferably using the portable kind which can go with him at all hours and
in all places. His eyes flit without rest from television screen, to newspaper,
to magazine, keeping him in a sort of orgasm-without-release through a series of
teasing glimpses of shiny automobiles, shiny female bodies, and other sensuous
surfaces, interspersed with such restorers of sensitivity--shock treatments--as
"human interest" shots of criminals, mangled bodies, wrecked
airplanes, prize fights, and burning buildings. The literature or discourse that
goes along with this is similarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to
replace every partial gratification with a new desire.
Generally speaking, the civilized man does not know what he wants. He works for
success, fame, a happy marriage, fun, to help other people, or to be a
"real person." but these are not real wants because they are not
actual things. They are the byproducts, the flavors and atmospheres of real
things--shadows which have no existence apart from some substance. Money is the
perfect symbol of all such desires, being a mere symbol of real wealth, and to
make it one's goal is the most blatant example of confusing measurements with
reality.
As in eating his "eyes are bigger than his stomach," so in love he
judges woman by standards that are largely visual and cerebral rather than
sexual and visceral. He is attracted to his partner by the surface gloss, by the
film on the skin rather than the real body. He wants something with a bone
structure like a boy's which is supposed to support the exterior curves and
smooth undulations of femininity--not a woman but an inflated rubber dream.
A less brainy culture would learn to synchronize its body rhythms rather than
its clocks...In other words, the interests and goals of rationality are not
those of man as a whole organism. If we are to continue to live for the future,
and to make the chief work of the mind prediction and calculation, man must
eventually become a parasitic appendage to a mass of clockwork.
There are few grounds for hoping that, in any immediate future, there will be
any recovery of social sanity. It would seem that the vicious circle must become
yet more intolerable, more blatantly and desperately circular before any large
numbers of human beings awaken to the tragic trick which they are playing on
themselves. But for those who see clearly that it is a circle and why it is a
circle, there is no alternative but to stop circling. For as soon as you see the
whole circle, the illusion that the head is separate from the tail disappears.
The question "What shall we do about it?" is only asked by those who
do not understand the problem. If a problem can be solved at all, to understand
it and to know what to do about it are the same thing...You have to see and feel
what you are experiencing as it is, and not as it is named. This very
simple "opening of the eyes" brings about the most extraordinary
transformation of understanding and living, and shows that many of our most
baffling problems are pure illusion. This may sound like an over-simplification
because most people imagine themselves to be fully enough aware of the present
already, but we shall see that this is far from true.
We can hardly begin to consider this problem unless it is clear that the craving
for security is itself a pain and a contradiction, and that the more we pursue
it, the more painful it becomes. This is true in whatever form security may be
conceived.
Herein lies the crux of the matter. To stand face to face with insecurity is
still not to understand it. To understand it, you must not face it but be it.
Understanding comes through awareness. Can we, then, approach our
experience--our sensations, feelings, and thoughts--quite simply, as if we had
never known them before, and, without prejudice, look at what is going on? You
may ask, "Which experiences, which sensations and feelings, shall we look
at?" I will answer, "Which ones can you look at?" The
answer is that you must look at the ones you have now.
We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point
of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about
it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here,
since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying,
always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same
time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that
complete unknown which we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you
breathless.
While you are watching this present experience, are you aware of someone
watching it? Can you find, in addition to the experience itself, an experiencer?
Can you, at the same time, read this sentence and think about yourself
reading it? You will find that, to think about yourself reading it, you must for
a brief second stop reading. The first experience is reading. The second
experience is the thought, "I am reading." ...Never at any time were
you able to separate yourself from your present thought, or your present
experience. The first present experience was reading. When you tried to think
about yourself reading, the experience changed, and the next present experience
was the thought, "I am reading." You could not separate yourself from
this experience without passing on to another...You were never able to separate
the thinker from the thought, the knower from the known. All you ever found was
a new thought, a new experience.
To be aware, then, is to be aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, desires,
and all other forms of experience. Never at any time are you aware of anything
which is not experience, not a thought or feeling, but instead an
experiencer, thinker, or feeling. If this is so, then what makes us think that
any such thing exists?
The notion of a separate thinker, of an "I" distinct from experience,
comes from memory and from the rapidity with which thought changes. It is like
whirling a burning stick to give the illusion of a continuous circle of
fire...When you see clearly that memory is a form of present experience, it will
be obvious that trying to separate yourself from this experience is as
impossible as trying to make your teeth bite themselves. There is simply
experience. There is not something or someone experiencing experience! You do
not feel feelings, think thoughts, or sense sensations any more than you hear
hearing, see sight, or smell smelling.
We are not trying to have an "intellectual discussion." We are being
aware of the fact that any separate "I" who thinks thoughts and
experiences experience is an illusion. To understand this is to realize that
life is entirely momentary, that there is neither permanence nor security, and
that there is no "I" which can be protected.
The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is
not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of
the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and
whirl, trying to get the "I" out of the experience. We pretend that we
are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity,
wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that
man and his present experience are one, and that no separate "I" or
mind can be found.
While the notion that I am separate from my experience remains, there is
confusion and turmoil. Because of this, there is neither awareness nor
understanding of experience, and thus no real possibility of assimilating it. To
understand this moment I must not try to be divided from it; I must be aware of
it with my whole being...To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long
as you are thinking, "I am listening to this music," you are
not listening. To understand joy or fear, you must be wholly and undividedly
aware of it. So long as you are calling it names and saying, "I am
happy," or "I am afraid," you are not being aware of it.
Even in our most apparently self-conscious moments, the "self" of
which we are conscious is always some particular feeling or sensation--of
muscular tensions, of warmth or cold, of pain or irritation, of breath or of
pulsing blood. There is never a sensation of what senses sensations, just as
there is no meaning or possibility in the notion of smelling one's nose or
kissing one's own lips.
...With the arrival of pain, whether physical or emotional, whether actual or
anticipated, the split begins and the circle goes round and round. As soon as it
becomes clear that "I" cannot possibly escape from the reality of the
present, since "I" is nothing other than what I know now, this inner
turmoil must stop. No possibility remains but to be aware of pain, fear,
boredom, or grief in the same complete way that one is aware of pleasure. The
human organism has the most wonderful powers of adaptation to both physical and
psychological pain. But these can only come into full play when the pain is not
being constantly restimulated by this inner effort to get away from it, to
separate the "I" from the feeling. The effort creates a state of
tension in which the pain thrives. But when the tension ceases, mind and body
begin to absorb the pain as water reacts to a blow or cut.
If...you are aware of fear, you realize that, because this feeling is now
yourself, escape is impossible. You see that calling it "fear" tells
you little or nothing about it, for the comparison and the naming is based, not
on past experience, but on memory. You have then no choice but to be aware of it
with your whole being as an entirely new experience. Indeed, every
experience is in this sense new, and at every moment of our lives we are in the
midst of the new and unknown.
Sometimes, when resistance ceases, the pain simply goes away or dwindles to an
easily tolerable ache. At other times it remains, but the absence of any
resistance brings about a way of feeling pain so unfamiliar as to be hard to
describe. The pain is no longer problematic. I feel it, but there is no
urge to get rid of it, for I have discovered that pain and the effort to be
separate from it are the same thing. wanting to get out of pain is the
pain; it is not the "reaction" of an "I" distinct from the
pain. When you discover this, the desire to escape "merges" into the
pain itself and vanishes.
...You will cease to feel isolated when you recognize, for example, that you do
not have a sensation of the sky: you are that sensation...Man has
to discover that everything which he beholds in nature--the clammy
foreign-feeling world of the ocean's depths, the wastes of ice, the reptiles of
the swamp, the spiders and scorpions, the deserts of lifeless planets--has its
counterpart within himself.
One can only attempt a rational, descriptive philosophy of the universe on the
assumption that one is totally separate from it. But if you and your thoughts
are part of this universe, you cannot stand outside them to describe them...As
the philosopher tries to stand outside himself and his thought, so, as we have
seen, the ordinary man tries to stand outside himself and his emotions and
sensations, his feelings and desires. The result is a fantastic confusion and
misdirection of conduct which discovery of the mind's unity must bring to an
end.
...What is the difference between "me" and "mental
mechanisms" whether conscious or unconscious? Who is being moved by
these processes? The notion that anyone is being motivated comes from the
persisting illusion of "I." The real man, the
organism-in-relation-to-the-universe, is this unconscious motivation.
It is easy to see that most of the acts which, in conventional morals, are
called evil can be traced to the divided mind. By far the greater part of these
acts come from exaggerated desires, desires for things which are not even
remotely necessary for the health of mind and body, granting that
"health" is a relative term. Such outlandish and insatiable desires
come into being because man is exploiting his appetites to give the
"I" a sense of security.
So long as there is the motive to become something, so long as the mind believes
in the possibility of escape from what it is at this moment, there can be no
freedom. Virtue will be pursued for exactly the same reason as vice, and good
and evil will alternate as the opposite poles of a single circle.
Of course it sounds as if it were the most abject fatalism to have to
admit that I am what I am, and that no escape or division is possible. It seems
that if I am afraid, then I am "stuck" with fear. But in fact I
am chained to the fear only so long as I am trying to get away from it. On the
other hand, when I do not try to get away I discover that there is nothing
"stuck" or fixed about the reality of the moment. When I am aware of
this feeling without naming it, without calling it "fear,"
"bad," "negative," etc., it changes instantly into something
else, and life moves freely ahead.
Love is the organizing and unifying principle which makes the world a universe
and the disintegrated mass a community. It is the very essence and character of
mind, and becomes manifest in action when the mind is whole.
Nothing is really more inhuman than human relations based on morals. When a man
gives bread in order to be charitable, lives with a woman in order to be
faithful, eats with a Negro in order to be unprejudiced, and refuses to kill in
order to be peaceful, he is as cold as a clam. He does not actually see the
other person. Only a little less chilly is the benevolence springing from pity,
which acts to remove suffering because it finds the sight of it disgusting. But
there is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love.
...Now it should be clear that eternal life is the realization that the present
is the only reality, and that past and future can be distinguished from it in a
conventional sense alone. The moment is the "door of heaven," the
"straight and narrow way that leadeth unto life," because there is no
room in it for the separate "I"...Eternal life is realized when the
last trace of difference between "I" and "now" has
vanished--when there is just this "now" and nothing else.
The timid mind shuts this window with a bang, and is silent and thoughtless
about what it does not know in order to chatter the more about what it thinks it
knows. It fills up the uncharted spaces with mere repetition of what has already
been explored. But the open mind knows that the most minutely explored
territories have not really been known at all, but only marked and measured a
thousand times over. And the fascinating mystery of what it is that we
mark and measure must in the end "tease us out of thought" until the
mind forgets to circle and to pursue its own processes, and becomes aware that
to be at this moment is pure miracle.