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.You have your Master, and another has his particular guide; youhave your saviour, and another has his.Out of such division ofthought and belief grows the contradiction and conflict of themerits of various systems.These disputes set man against man; butsince we have intellectualized life, we no longer openly fight: wetry to be tolerant.Please think about what I am saying.Don'tmerely accept or reject my words.To examine impartially,critically, you must put aside your prejudices and idiosyncrasies,and approach the whole question openly.Throughout the world, religions have kept men apart.Individually each one is seeking his own little security and isconcerned about his own progress; individually each one desires togrow, to expand, to succeed, to achieve, and so he accepts anyteacher who offers to help him towards his advancement andgrowth.As a result of this attitude of acceptance, criticism and trueinquiry have ceased.Stagnation has set in.Though you move alonga narrow groove of thought and of life, there is no longer truethinking, no longer full living, but only a defensive reaction.Aslong as religion keeps men apart there can be no brotherhood, anymore than there can be brotherhood as long as there is nationality,which must ever cause conflict among men.Religion with its beliefs, its disciplines, its enticements, itshopes, its punishments, forces you towards righteous behaviour,towards brotherliness, towards love.And since you are compelled,you either obey the external authority which it sets up, or - whichamounts to the same thing - you begin to develop your own innerauthority as a reaction against the outer, and follow that.Wherethere is belief, where there is a following of an ideal, there cannotbe complete living.Belief indicates the incapacity to understandthe present.Now don't look to the opposite and say, "Must we have nobeliefs? Must we have no ideals at all?" I am simply showing youthe cause and the nature of belief.Because you cannot understandthe swift movement of life, because you cannot gather thesignificance of its swift flow, you think that belief is necessary.Inyour dependence on tradition, on ideals, on beliefs or on Masters,you are not living in the present, which is the eternal.Many of you may think that what I am saying is very negative.It is not, for when you really see the false, then you understand thetrue.All that I am trying to do is to show you the false, that youmay find the true.This is not negation.On the contrary, thisawakening of creative intelligence is the only positive help that Ican give you.But you may not think of this as positive; you wouldprobably call me positive only if I gave you a discipline, a courseof action, a new system of thought.But we cannot go further intothis today.If you will ask questions about this tomorrow or on thefollowing days, I shall try to answer them.Individuals have createdsociety by grouping themselves together for purposes of gain, butthis does not bring about real unity.This society becomes theirprison, their mould, yet each individual wants to be free to grow, tosucceed.So each becomes an exploiter of society and is, in turn,exploited by society.Society becomes the apex of their desire, andgovernment the instrument for carrying out that desire byconferring honours upon those who have the greatest power topossess, to gain.The same stupid attitude exists in religion:religious authority considers the man who has conformed entirelyto its dogmas and beliefs a truly spiritual person.It confers honouron the man who possesses virtue.So in our desire to possess - andagain I am not talking in terms of opposites, but rather, I amexamining the very thing that causes the desire for possession - inour pursuit of possession, we create a society to which weunconsciously become slaves.We become cogs in that socialmachine, accepting all its values, its traditions, its hopes andlongings, and its established ideas, for we have created society, andit helps us to attain what we want.So the established order either ofgovernment or of religion puts an end to inquiry, to search, todoubt.Hence, the more we unite in our various possessions, themore we tend to become nationalistic.After all, what is a nation? It is a group of individuals livingtogether for the purpose of economic convenience and self-protection, and exploiting similar units.I am not an economist, butthis is an obvious fact.From this spirit of acquisitiveness arises theidea of "my family", "my house", "my country".So long as thispossessiveness exists there cannot be true brotherhood or trueinternationalism.Your boundaries, your customs, your tariff walls,your traditions, your beliefs, your religions are separating manfrom man.What has been created by this mentality of gain, ofseparativeness, safety, security? Nationalities; and where there isnationalism there must be war.It is the function of nations toprepare for wars, otherwise they cannot be true nations.That is what is happening all over the world, and we are findingourselves on the verge of another war.Every newspaper upholdsnationalism and the spirit of separativeness.What is being said inalmost every country, in America, England, Germany, Italy? "Firstourselves and our individual security, and then we will consider theworld." We do not seem to realize that we are all in the same boat.Peoples can no longer be separated as they were some centuriesago.We ought not to think in terms of separation, but we insist onthinking nationalistically or class-consciously be- cause we stillcling to our possessions, to our beliefs.Nationalism is a disease; itcannot bring about world unity or human unity.We cannot attainhealth through disease; we must first free ourselves from disease.Education, society, religion, help to keep nations apart, becauseindividually each is seeking to grow, to gain, to exploit.Now out of this desire to grow, to gain, to exploit, we createinnumerable beliefs - beliefs concerning life after death,reincarnation, immortality - and we find people to exploit usthrough our beliefs.Please understand that in saying this I amreferring to no particular leader or teacher; I am not attacking anyof your leaders.Attacking anyone is a sheer waste of time.I am notinterested in attacking any particular leader, I have something moreimportant to do in life.I want to act as a mirror, to make clear toyou the perversions and deceptions that exist in society, in religion.Our whole social and intellectual structure is based on the ideaof gain, of achievement; and when mind and heart are held by theidea of gain, there cannot be true living, there cannot be the freeflow of life [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]