How Are You Listening?

First let’s set the stage for starting a dialog on this topic.  Do we seem to be blocking ourselves. Some say that what you are writing, is not possible. It can never be applied in daily life. “I have sought answers for twenty, thirty, forty years and nothing has happened, I am just the same as before.” That is a block that prevents the person who says this from investigating himself further. He has blocked himself by saying, “It is not possible.” That is obvious.  (2,550 words)

Then there are those who say, “I understand partially, but I want to understand the whole before I can do something about it.” I am not ready. Again, that is a block. Again, that prevents your own investigation of yourself, you are blocking yourself.

And there are those who say, “What you are writing is totally impractical, why don’t you stop talking and live in a monastery?” Such people not only prevent their own investigation of themselves, but also because that one person can’t do it, he condemns the rest of the world— “If I can’t do it, you can’t do it either.”

One finds innumerable excuses; every form of avoidance for looking into one’s own hindrances, to observe them closely, understanding them, and possibly to put them aside.  Those “hinderances” are identified as the “me”.

We don’t listen, we don’t really try to find out what the other person is attempting to communicate. And listening requires a certain attention, a care, and an affection. If I want to understand what you are saying, I must listen to you, not block myself all the way, and all the time. I must care for what you are saying, I must have respect, I must have affection, otherwise we can’t communicate certain things which are really very, very serious and require a great deal of inquiry.

We prefer to assert our own points of view, we want to exercise our own opinions and dominate others by our judgments, our preformed conclusions, by our asserting that we have sought for so long, and asserting that we haven’t changed.

To listen with respect, which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be critical, which doesn’t mean that we should accept everything that is said. Neither does it mean that we agree or disagree. You listen, listen with care, with affection, with a sense of communication with each other. And for that one must actually have love, be in touch with some compassion. And probably that is what is missing. We are all too terribly intellectual, or too romantic, or too sentimental. All that denies love. Do we merely play with words, remain superficial, antagonistic, assertive, dogmatic? It remains merely verbal; it has no depth, no quality, no perfume.

Pressure Does Not Change Us 

Have you read the newspaper—I don’t generally read newspapers, I look at the headlines—that the world every year is spending four hundred billion dollars on armaments, (in 1978). That is four hundred thousand million dollars. I don’t know what that sum means, but that is what is being spent on trying to kill each other. I wonder, after reading such a statement, what will make human beings change?

What will make a human being change very deeply? This has been a great problem for people concerned with the transformation of man. What makes us change? If you put that question to yourself seriously, and ask it with all the depth of your being, what will make you change? Will an external event bring about a crisis in your life, and will that force you to do some radical thinking, and change? A death in the family, an incident or an event, or a happening that is devastating, psychologically as well as physically—will that bring about deep change? Must you go through great pain, great sorrow, great agony, brought about by external events, that forces you, forces a human being, to alter his course, his drive, his direction, his selfishness, his limited, brutal thinking? We have had several world wars, and many of us perhaps have lived through wars, in those two devastating wars, many millions have been killed in a most brutal way. Even today, 2025, thousands are killed in war every single day. Think of the misery, the confusion, and enormous sorrow of those people who have had great losses, not only material losses but also their sons destroyed. And outer events, however great they are, don’t apparently seem to bring about a freedom so that we can say, “This cannot happen again.”

I am asking you—will external events change human beings? That is one problem. Such events have apparently NOT changed man—change in the sense of a real deep transformation of this selfish drive, identified with groups, with nations, with beliefs, dogmas, with separate religions, and all the rest of divisiveness. And apparently some outward event, like the death of one’s husband, wife, children, could (?) through great pain and sorrow bring a certain change in oneself. Does that mean we must depend on external events—death, war, somebody leaving you, and so on—external devastating events, will that change you? Which means that you must depend on outward things, which will then put you through great agony and suffering and out of that you perhaps emerge, bringing about perhaps a deep (or not so deep) mutation.

It seems to us that this is the most appalling thing, even to say it, that we must go through suffering to bring about change. That is inconceivable, but yet apparently that is what happens. Is it possible to be intelligent before the event? By “intelligence” meaning not to become more-clever in this instinctual survival of selfishness, of that drive of desire, and so on, but intelligence that is born of the perception that outward events do not fundamentally change man, but that change must come totally inwardly, without any pressure, without any incident or event. To perceive that is part of intelligence. To perceive the truth that if I depend on outward pressure, outward events which put me through a great deal of sorrow and anxiety, I will either become cynical and bitter or escape into some form of entertainment. In that there is no deep change. To see that, is part of intelligence.

The collapse of the dollar, or the collapse of one or more nations WILL NOT CHANGE MAN’S MENTALITY.  It will reinforce it as it is.

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Then there is this statement made by gurus and teachers in the East, and Christianity in the West, that if you surrender yourself to our savior, then all your problems are solved. You again surrender to something outside, or surrender to something that you have created. As we said, an external, devastating event, which brings about sorrow has changed nothing?  Realizing that these religious—can I use the word “exploiters”?—these religious exploiters—(with your consent I am using that word)—they say, give yourself over, surrender. You understand the implications of it? Surrender of course to the guru, to the man who says, “Surrender,” to the priests, but inwardly do you eliminate this drive, this self-centeredness??? Again, it is the same phenomenon, which is pressure, and now you are exerting inward pressure to submit to somebody else.

How do you listen to all this—that outward pressure is not going to change you and inward giving yourself over to a presence, a reality, to God, to this or to that figure, it is still your same desire driving you to forget yourself, but the SELF is the motivating desire.  It is still there even stronger, only covered up by subterfuge. So do you listen to these statements? Or they don’t mean a thing?  Perhaps the root of the matter lies there: intellectually, verbally you see reasonably, logically, the very clear statements we have made just now, (unless you want to change the words), but the essential point is the outward pressure through sorrow, and the inward drive to escape from yourself, which again is another form of pressure, do nothing. Do you see the truth: that whether it is pressure from outside or from inside there is no change? To see that, to hear that, and see that fact, is intelligence. Therefore, that intelligence is the denial of both the outer and the inner, and therefore moving away from where you are.

That intelligence acts before the event, so that one does not need to go through sorrow. If you discover that it is something—can you follow—it is a great, enormous gift because when one realizes that a catastrophic, devastating event that brings sorrow, or any outward or inner pressure will not change one, when one sees that, the truth of it, before the event or pressure takes place, then that intelligence is operating wherever it is, whether in your daily life, whether it is in an office, it is operating all the time.

The Negation of “What-Is”

Some of us are not quite sure that we want to change, for we enjoy this violence and excitement. For some of us it is even profitable. And for others, all they desire is to remain in their entrenched positions. There are still others who through change seek some form of super excitement, overrated emotional expression. Most of us want power in some form or another. The power over oneself, the power over another, the power that comes with new and brilliant ideas, the power of leadership, fame, and so on. Political power is as evil as religious power. The power of the world and the power of an ideology do not change man. Nor does the personal volition to change, the will to transform oneself, doesn’t bring about change.

What we’re saying appears very negative; there is in it no directive, no positive way of life proposed. What is negative and what is positive? Most of us are used to being told what to do. The giving and following of directions are considered to be positive teaching. To be led appears to be positive, constructive, to those who are conditioned to follow. Truth is the negation of the false, not the opposite of the false. Truth is entirely different from the positive and the negative, and a mind which thinks in terms of the opposites can never be aware of it.

The deep urge to be guided springs from the desire to be secure, a father figure, to be protected, and also from the desire to be successful. In our urge to be secure, not only as individuals, but as groups, nations and races, we have built a world in which war, within and outside of a particular society, has become the major concern.

Peace is a state of mind; it is the freedom from all desire to be secure. The mind-heart that seeks security must always be in the shadow of fear. (Tomorrow a calamity might happen.) Our desire is not only for material security, but much more for inner, psychological security, and it is this desire to be inwardly secure through virtue, through belief, through a nation, that creates limiting and so conflicting groups and ideas. This desire to be secure, to reach a coveted end, breeds the acceptance of direction, the following of example, the worship of success, the authority of leaders, saviors, Masters, gurus, all of which is called a positive teaching; but it is really thoughtlessness and imitation.

The urge is the impulse of fear. Instead of understanding what fear is, we run away from it, and the very running away is more fear. One takes flight into the known, the known being beliefs, rituals, patriotism, the comforting formulas of religious teachers, the reassurances of priests, and so on. Experience is always strengthening the past. These in turn bring conflict between man and man, so the problem is kept going from one generation to another.

To most of us, thinking is extraordinarily important; but is it? It has a certain importance, but thought cannot find that which is not the product of thought. Thought is the result of the known, therefore it cannot fathom the unknown, the new, the unknowable. Is not thought just desire, the desire for material necessities, OR for the highest spiritual goal? We are not talking, about the thought of a scientist at work in the laboratory, or 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.

Can the center which breeds antagonism, hate, be radically transformed through knowledge? Love is not the opposite of hate; if through knowledge hate is changed to love, then it is not love. This change brought about by thought, by will, is not love, but merely another self-protective convenience.

Only the complete negation of “what-is can make a change.” We do not see the great force that is in negation. If you reject the whole structure of principle-and-formula, and hence the power derived from it, the authority; that very rejection gives you the force necessary to reject all other structures of conditioned thought—and so you have the energy and impetus to change! The rejection is that energy.

When you positively leave a belief and enter into another belief, your positive action ceases to be positive action at all, because you have abandoned one power structure for another, which you will again have to leave. This constant repetition, which appears to be a positive action, is really inaction.

But if you reject the desire and reject the search for all inward security, then it is a total negation which is a most positive action. It is only this action which transforms man. If you reject hate and envy, in every form, you are rejecting the whole structure of what man has created in himself and outside himself. It is very simple. One problem is related to every other problem.

This seeing reveals the whole structure and nature of the problem. The “seeing” is not the analyzing of the problem; it is not the revealing of the cause and the effect. It is all there, laid out, as if it were on a map. It is there for you to see, and you can see it only if you’re using no previous stand from which to look. But we are committed, and inwardly it gives us great pleasure to “belong.” When we belong, then it is not possible to see; when we belong, we become irrational, violent, when backed into a corner. And then we want to end violence by belonging to something else. And so, we are caught in a vicious circle. And this is what man has done for a million years, and he vaguely calls this “evolution.” Love is not at the end of time. Either love is now, or it isn’t. And hell is when love is not, and the reformation of hell is only the redecoration of the same hell.

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