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.Then the problem of death is entirely different.Theremay be no problem at all.There may be a state of mind in whichtime does not exist.Time exists only when there is identificationwith the known.The mind that is burdened with the known iseverlastingly afraid of the unknown.Whatever it may do, whatevermay be its beliefs, its dogmas, its hopes, they are all based on fear;and it is this fear that corrupts living.September 15, 1956HAMBURG, GERMANY 6TH PUBLIC TALK16TH SEPTEMBER 1956It seems to me that the whole world is intent on capturing the mindof man.We have created the psychological world of relationship,the world in which we live, and it in turn is controlling us, shapingour thinking, activities, our psychological being.Every politicaland religious organization, you will find, is after the mind of man -' after' in the sense of wanting to capture it, shape it to a certainpattern.The powers that be in the Communist world are blatantlyconditioning the mind of man in every direction, and this is alsotrue of the organized religions throughout the world, who forcenturies have tried to mould the way of man's thought.Eachspecialized group, whether religious, secular, or political, isstriving to draw and to hold man within the pattern of that whichits books, its leaders, the few in power, think is good for him.Theythink they know the future; they think they know what is theultimate good for man.The priests, with their so-called religiousauthority, as well as the worldly powers - whether it be in Rome, inMoscow, in America, or elsewhere - are all trying to control man'sthought process, are they not? And most of us eagerly accept someform of authority and subject ourselves to it.There are very fewwho escape the clutches of this organized control of man and histhinking.Merely to break away from a particular religious pattern, orfrom a political pattern of the left or of the right, in order to adoptanother pattern, or to establish one of our own, will not, it seems tome, simplify the extraordinary complexity of our lives, or resolvethe catastrophic misery in which most of us live.I think thefundamental solution lies elsewhere, and it is this fundamentalsolution that we are all trying to find.Groping blindly, we join thisorganization or that.We belong to a particular society, follow thisor that leader, try to find a Master in India or somewhere else -always hoping to break away from our narrow, limited existence,but always caught, it seems to me, in this conflict within thepattern.We never seem to get away from the pattern, either self-created, or imposed by some leader or religious authority.Weblindly accept authority in the hope of breaking through the cloudof our own strife, misery and struggle; but no leader, no authorityis ever going to free man.I think history has shown this veryclearly, and you in this country know it very well - perhaps betterthan others.So if a new world is to come into being, as it must, it seems tome extremely important to understand this whole process ofauthority - the authority imposed by society, by the book, by a setof people who think they know the ultimate good for man and whoseek to force him through torture through every form ofcompulsion, to conform to their pattern.We are quick to followsuch people because in our own being we are so uncertain, soconfused; and we also follow because of our vanity and arrogance,and out of desire for the power offered by another.Now, is it possible to break away from this whole pattern ofauthority? Can we break away from all authority of any kind inourselves? We may reject the authority of another, butunfortunately we still have the authority of our own experience, ofour own knowledge, of our own thinking, and that in turn becomesthe pattern which guides us; but that is essentially no different fromthe authority of another.There is this desire to follow, to imitate, toconform in the hope of achieving something greater, and so long asthis desire exists there must be misery and strife, every form ofsuppression, frustration and suffering.I do not think we sufficiently realize the necessity of being freeof this compulsion to follow authority, inward or outward.And Ithink it is very important psychologically to understand thiscompulsion; otherwise we shall go on blindly struggling in thisworld in which we live and have our being, and we shall never findthat other thing which is so infinitely greater.We must surely breakaway from this world of imitation and conformity if we are to finda totally different world.This means a really fundamental changein our lives - in the way of our action, in the way of our thought, inthe way of our feeling.But most of us are not concerned with that, we are notconcerned with understanding our thoughts, our feelings, ouractivities [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]