The Mirror of Relationship (eBook)

New York City, New York, 1936

First Talk in New York

In the world today, there are those who maintain that the individual is nothing but a social entity, that he is merely the product of conflicting environment. There are others who assert that man is divine, and this idea is expressed and interpreted in various forms to be found in religions.

The implications in the idea that man is a social entity are many and seemingly logical. If you deeply accept the idea that man is essentially a social entity, then you will favor the regimentation of thought and expression in every department of life. If you maintain that man is merely the result of environment, then system naturally becomes supremely important, and on that all emphasis should be laid; then molds by which man must be shaped acquire great value. You have then discipline, coercion, and ultimately the final authority of society calling itself government, or the authority of groups or of ideal concepts. Then social morality is merely for convenience; and our existence, a matter of brief span, is followed by annihilation.

I need not go into the many implications in the idea that man is merely a social entity. If you are interested you can see for yourself its significance, and if you accept the idea that individuality is merely the product of environment, then your moral, social, and religious conceptions must necessarily undergo a complete change.

If, however, you accept the religious idea that there is some unseen, divine power which controls your destiny and so compels obedience, reverence, and worship, then you must also recognize the implications in this conception. From the deep acceptance of this divine power, there must follow a complete social and moral reorganization. This acceptance is based on faith, which must give birth to fear, though you cover up this fear by asserting that it is love. You accept this religious idea because in it there is the promise of personal immortality. Its morality is subtly based on self-perpetuation, on reward and punishment. In this conception there is also the idea of achievement, of egotistic pursuit and success. And, if you accept it, then you must seek guides, Masters, paths, disciplines, and perpetuate the many subtle forms of authority.

There are these two categories of thought, and they must inevitably come into acute conflict. Each one of us has to discover for himself if either of these seemingly contradictory conceptions of man is true; whether the individual is merely the result of environmental influences and of heredity, which develop certain peculiarities and characteristics, or whether there is some hidden power which is guiding, controlling, forcing man’s destiny and fulfillment. Either you accept simultaneously both these conceptions though they are diametrically opposed to each other, or you make a choice between them, that is, a choice between regimentation of thought and expression of the individual, and the religious conception that some unseen intelligence is creating, guiding, and shaping man’s future and his happiness—an idea based on faith, on craving for self-perpetuation which prevents true discernment. Now if you are indifferent to this idea, again your very indifference is but an indication of thoughtlessness, therefore a prejudice, preventing true comprehension.

Choice is based on like and dislike, on prejudice and tendencies, and so it loses all validity. Instead of belonging to either of these two groups, or being forced to make a choice, I say that there is a different approach to the comprehension of individuality, of man. This approach lies through direct discernment, through the proof of action, without violation of sanity and intelligence.

How are you, as individuals, going to discover whether man is divine in limitation or merely a plaything of social events? This problem loses its mere intellectual significance and becomes tremendously vital when you test it in action. Then, how is one to act? How is one to live?

If you accept the idea that you are merely a social entity, then action becomes seemingly simple; you are then trained through education, through subtle compulsion, and through the constant instilling of certain ideas to conform to a certain pattern of conduct, relationship. On the other hand, if you truly accepted the religious conception of some unseen power controlling and guiding your life, then your action would have a totally different significance from what it has now. Then you would have a different relationship, which is morality, with other individuals, with society; and it would imply the cessation of wars, class distinction, exploitation.

But as this true relationship does not exist in the world, it is obvious that you are wholly uncertain about the real significance of individuality and of action. For, if you truly accepted the religious idea that you are guided by some supreme entity, then, perhaps, your moral and social action would be sane, balanced and intelligent; but as it is not, you obviously do not accept this idea, although you profess to accept it. Hence the many churches, with their various forms of exploitation. If you maintain that you are nothing but a social entity, then likewise there must be a complete change in your attitude and in your action. And this change has not taken place. All this indicates that you are in a state of lethargy and are only pursuing your own idiosyncrasies.

To be completely and vitally uncertain is essential in order to understand the process of individuality, to find out what is permanent, to discover that which is true. You have to find out for yourself whether you are in this state of complete uncertainty, neither accepting the individual as a social entity, with all its implications, nor accepting the individual as something supreme, as being divinely guided, with all the implications in this idea. Then alone there is a possibility of true discernment and comprehension.

If you are in this state, as most thoughtful people must be, not following any dogma, belief, or ideal, then you will perceive that to understand what is, you must know what you are. You cannot understand any other process—the world as society is a series of processes which are in a state of being born, of becoming—except the one which is focused in the individual as consciousness. If you can understand the process of consciousness, of individuality, then there is a possibility of comprehending the world and its events. Reality is to be discerned only in knowing and in understanding the transient process of the ‘I’. If I can comprehend myself, what I am, how I have come into being, whether the ‘I’ is an identity in itself and what is the nature of its existence, then there is a possibility of comprehending the real, the true.

I will explain this process of the ‘I’, of individuality. There is energy which is unique to each individual, and which is without a beginning. This energy—please do not attribute to it any divinity or give to it a particular quality—in its process of self-acting development, creates its own substance or material, which is sensation, discernment, and consciousness. This is the abstract as consciousness. The actual is action. Of course, there is no such absolute division. Action proceeds from ignorance, which exists where there are prejudices, tendencies, cravings, that must result in sorrow. So existence becomes a conflict, a friction. That is, consciousness is both discernment and action. Through the constant interaction between those cravings, prejudices, tendencies, and the limitations which this action is creating, there arises friction, the ‘I’ process.

If you examine deeply, you will perceive that individuality is only a series of limitations, a series of accumulative actions, of hindrances, which give to consciousness the identity called the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is only a series of memories, tendencies, which are born of craving, and action is that friction between craving and its object. If action is the result of a prejudice, a fear, of some belief, then that action produces further limitation. If you have been raised in a particular religious belief or if you have developed a particular tendency, it must create a resistance against the movement of life. These resistances, these self-protective, egotistic walls of security, give birth to the ‘I’ process, which is maintaining itself through its own activities.

To understand yourself, you must become conscious of this process of the building up of the ‘I’. You will then discern that this process has no beginning, and yet by constant awareness and by right effort it can be brought to an end. The art of living is to bring this ‘I’ process to an end. It is an art that needs great discernment and right effort. We cannot understand any other process except that process which is consciousness, upon which depends individuality. By right effort, there is the discernment of the coming into being of the ‘I’ process, and by right effort there is the ending of that process. From this arises the bliss of reality, the beauty of life as eternal movement.

This you can prove to yourself, it does not demand any faith, nor does it depend upon any system of thought or of belief. Only, it demands an integrated awareness and right effort, which will dissolve the self-created illusions and limitations and thus bring about the bliss of reality.

Question: A genuine desire to spread happiness around and help to make of this world a nobler place for all to live in is guiding me in life and dictating my actions. This attitude makes me use the wealth and prestige I...