 124. Philosophy � Greek |
to any particular pattern of action. If you would follow anything it is no good being tethered. To KNOW YOURSELF, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization because beliefs and ideals only give you a colour, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value. But to know that one is greedy or violent, to know and understand it, requires an extraordinary perception, does it not? It demands honesty, clarity of thought, whereas to pursue an ideal away from what is is an escape; it prevents you from discovering and acting directly upon what you are.
The understanding of what you are, whatever it be - ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous - the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of VIRTUE. VIRTUE is essential, for it gives freedom. It is only in VIRTUE that you can discover, that you can live - not in the cultivation of a virtue, which merely brings about respectability, not understanding and freedom. There is a difference between BEING VIRTUOUS and BECOMING VIRTUOUS. Being VIRTUOUS comes through the understanding of what is, whereas BECOMING VIRTUOUS is postponement, the covering up of what is with what you would like to be. Therefore in BECOMING VIRTUOUS you are avoiding action directly upon what is. This process of avoiding what is through the cultivation of the ideal is considered VIRTUOUS; but if you look at it closely and directly you will see that it is nothing of the kind. It is merely a postponement of coming face to face with what is. VIRTUE is not the becoming of what is not; VIRTUE is the understanding of what is and therefore the freedom from what is. VIRTUE is essential in a society that is rapidly disintegrating. In order to create a new world, a new structure away from the old, there must be freedom to discover; and to be free, there must be VIRTUE, for without VIRTUE there is no freedom. Can the immoral man who is striving to become virtuous ever know VIRTUE? The man who is not moral can never be free, and therefore he can never find out what reality is. Reality can be found only in understanding what is; and to understand what is, there must be freedom, freedom from the fear of what is.
To understand that process there must be the intention to know what is, to follow every thought, feeling and action; and to understand what is is extremely difficult, because what is is never still, never static, it is always in movement. The what is is what you are, not what you would like to be; it is not the ideal, because the ideal is fictitious, but it is actually what you are doing, thinking and feeling from moment to moment. What is is the actual, and to understand the actual requires awareness, a very alert, swift mind. But if we begin to condemn what is, if we begin to blame or resist it, then we shall not understand its movement. If I want to understand somebody, I cannot condemn him: I must observe, study him. I must love the very thing I am studying. If you want to understand a child, you must love and not condemn him. You must play with him, watch his movements, his idiosyncrasies, his ways of behavior; but if you merely condemn, resist or blame him, there is no comprehension of the child. similarly, to understand what is, one must observe what one thinks, feels and does from moment to moment. That is the actual. Any other action, any ideal or ideological action, is not the actual; it is merely a wish, a fictitious desire to be something other than what is.
To understand what is requires a state of mind in which there is no identification or condemnation, which means a mind that is alert and yet passive. We are in that state when we really desire to understand something; when the intensity of interest is there, that state of mind comes into being. When one is interested in understanding what is, the actual state of mind, one does not need to force, discipline, or control it; on the contrary, there is passive alertness, watchfulness. This state of awareness comes when there is interest, the intention to understand.
The fundamental understanding of oneself does not come through knowledge or through the accumulation of experiences, which is merely the cultivation of memory. The understanding of oneself is from moment to moment; if we merely accumulate knowledge of the self, that very knowledge prevents further understanding, because accumulated knowledge and experience becomes the centre through which thought focuses and has its being. The world is not different from us and our activities because it is what we are which creates the problems of the world; the difficulty with the majority of us is that we do not know ourselves directly, but seek a system, a method, a means of operation by which to solve the many human problems.
