Transcription
1st Question: What is the relationship between thought and consciousness? Why do we seem unable to go beyond thought? What is the relationship between thought and consciousness, and why do we seem unable to go beyond thought? Do we want to be serious about all this? All right, let’s be serious.
First of all, what is thinking, what is thought, and what is consciousness? Are the two different? When you say, what is the relationship between thought and consciousness, it implies, does it not, that there are two different entities, or two different movements. And we are trying to find out, the questioner tries to find out, what is the relationship between thought and consciousness. So first of all we have to consider together what is thought, what is this whole question of thinking upon which all our conduct, our activity, political, religious, economic, social and all other factors of life, are based on thought. Thought is part of emotions, sentiment, reactions, the recognition of those reactions and so on. And what is consciousness? When we use the word ‘consciousness’, to be conscious of something, to be aware of, to be able to recognise, to understand, to have a whole field in which the mind is operating. That is more or less what we mean by consciousness. And the questioner says: what is the relationship between the two?
So first we have to find out what is thought upon which all our activities are based, with all its images, all the past remembrance and future projections, this enormous activity. Technologically, psychologically, physically, almost in every direction, thought is operating. And our relationship with each other is based on thought, the thought which has created the image about you and the other, and the other about you. Now what is that thought? That thought surely is, is it not, based on knowledge. Experience, knowledge, memory. And the reaction of that memory is thinking. So it is experience, knowledge, memory and the movement of thought, which is a material process. So, thought is always limited because knowledge is always limited. There is no complete knowledge about anything except the ending of knowledge, that is quite a different matter. So where there is the operation of knowledge and the movement of memory, thought is limited, finite, definite.
And what part does thought play in consciousness? I hope we are together in this, thinking together. What is consciousness? Our consciousness – all the knowledge which we have accumulated, all the experiences, not only personal but collective, memory, genetic responses, the accumulated experience of generations after generations, all the travail, the trouble, the anxiety, the fears, the pleasures, the dogmas, the beliefs, the attachments, the pain of sorrow and all that is our consciousness. I think there is no question about that, no one would doubt that or argue about it. You can add or take away from it but it is still the movement of thought as consciousness. One can say that there is super consciousness but it would still be part of thought. This consciousness is in constant movement and breaking up the you and the me, my nationality with all its technological development which is becoming a tremendous danger in the world – nationalism plus technology. My religious beliefs, my dogmas, my rituals, my wounds, my beliefs, my ideals, my constant struggle to become something, all that is part of our consciousness, not only the consciousness of a particular person but it is the consciousness of mankind, because mankind, wherever one lives, goes through sorrow, agony, doubt, despair, depression, great uncertainty, insecurity and so clinging to some image, belief, all that is part of our being, our consciousness. So our consciousness is its content. I hope we are meeting each other. Our consciousness is made up of its content. Without the content what is our consciousness? Is there a consciousness totally different from that which is made up of the various activities of thought which we call consciousness?
To come to that point one has to find out if thought can end, not temporarily, not between two thoughts, there is a gap and a period of silence or unconscious movement. Can thought ever end? This has been the problem of most serious people who have gone into this very deeply through meditation to end thought. I hope we are following each other in all this. I am not talking to myself. Can thought, which is so enormously powerful, which has got such a volume of energy behind it, that energy created through millennia, both in the scientific field, economic, religious, social, personal, all that activity, can that come to an end? Which means can those things that thought has built into our consciousness, of which we are, can that consciousness with its content end? Why do we want to end it? What is the motive behind this desire to end thought? Is it that we have discovered for ourselves how thought creates enormous trouble, a great deal of travail, great anxiety of the future, of the past, of the present, the thought that brings about a sense of utter isolation and loneliness. Can all that come to an end? When one asks that question: can it come to an end are we seeking a method to end it? A system of meditation? A system which you practise day after day so as to end thought? If you practise day after day to end thought, that very practice intensifies thought, naturally. So what is one to do? I hope we are meeting each other.
One realises the nature of thought, its superficiality, its intellectual game. One knows all this, how thought divides into nationalities into religious beliefs and so on. And conflict, that is all we know, perpetual conflict from the moment we are born till we die. Is that the reason why we want to end thought? So one has to be very clear, if one may point out, the motive. One must be very clear why one wants to end thought – if that is possible. Because the motive will dictate, will direct. One can live in an illusion that thought has come to an end and many people do but that illusion is merely another projection of thought which desires to end itself. So realising the whole complex problem of this, thought and the things that thought has built as consciousness with its content, can all that come to an end? If the speaker says it can, what value has it? None whatever. But if one realises the nature of our consciousness and the movement of thought as a material process and to observe it, can we do this? To observe the movement of thought, not as an observer different from thought – are we following this, can we go a little bit into this? Can one observe the movement of thought, not as an observer looking at thought, but thought itself becoming aware of its own movement. The awakening of thought and thought itself observing its movement. Can we do this?
Take a very simple example, either greed or nationalism, which are both the same: to observe it as it arises in one, and then to discover for oneself, is the observer, is the thinker different from thought? I hope you are following all this. Am I making myself somewhat clear? I observe thinking, that is fairly easy. I separate myself as an observer and watch my thinking, which most of us do. But this division is illusory, is fallacious, because the thinker is thought. So, can the observer be absent in his observation? The observer, the thinker is the past: the remembrance, the images, the knowledge, the experience, all the things that he has accumulated during that time, the past, is the observer. The observer names a reaction as greed and when he names it he is already caught in the past. I don’t know if you are following all this? Whereas to observe this reaction without naming it. This reaction which we call greed, by the very naming of it you have established it in the past. It becomes the past. Whereas if there is no naming but pure observation in which there is no division as the observer and the observed, the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the experience, then what takes place? You are following all this? Are we coming along together, somewhat? You see, our conditioning is this division between the observer and the observed. That is why we make such enormous trouble to control the thing that is observed. I am greedy, that is the reaction. I am different from greed and therefore I can control it, I can operate on it, I can suppress it, I can enjoy it, I can do something about it. But the fact is, the thinker is the thought. There is no thinker without thought. So, to observe without the past memories, reactions, all that projecting itself immediately in observation. So to observe purely without any direction, without any motive, then one will find if one goes into it pretty deeply, that thought does come to an end, thought being time. Thought is a movement and so time is a movement, so time is thought – right, sir? This is real meditation, not all this stuff that goes on in the name of meditation, this is real meditation, which is: to see the movement of thought, for thought to see its own movement, how it arises, the creating of the image and the pursuit of that image, and to observe it so that there is no recognition of what is being observed. You understand what I am saying? That is, to make it very simple: to observe a tree without naming it, without wondering what use it can be put to, just to observe it. Then the division between the tree and you comes to an end, but you don’t become the tree – I hope not. The division which the word creates, the division, the physical, nervous, neurological responses to that tree creates the division. That is, can I observe my wife if I have one, or my girl if I have one, or another, without the word and so without the image, without all the remembrance in that relationship, which is to observe purely? Then in that observation, which is complete attention, has not thought come to an end? This requires a great deal of attention, close, step by step watching, like a good scientist who watches very, very carefully. When one does that thought does come to an end, therefore time has a stop. Has this question been sufficiently answered?