Evolution of love

Our thought

Our thought is influenced and limited by the past generations of people who in their suffering, in their joys, in their aspirations, in their escapes, in their fear of death, in their longing for continuity, created ideas, images, symbols, which gave them hope, assurance. These they have passed on to us. When we use the word 'soul', it is their word to convey that intense longing for continuity, for something permanent, enduring beyond the transiency of the physical, of the material. Because we also crave for certainty, security, continuity, we cling to that word and all that it represents. So our consciousness - both the conscious and the sub-conscious - is the repository of ideas, values, images, symbols of the race, of the past generations. Our daily thought and action are controlled by the past, by the concealed motives, memories, and hidden cravings. In all this there is no freedom but only continued imitation caused by fear.

Within consciousness, there are two opposing forces at work which create duality - want and non-want, pain and pleasure, outgoing desires and refraining desires. Instincts, motives, values, prejudices, passions, control and direct the conscious. Is there, in consciousness, any part that is not contaminated by the past? Is there anything original, uncorrupted, in our consciousness? Have we not to free thought from the past, from instincts, from symbols, images, in order to understand that which is incorruptible, untrammeled?

The known cannot understand the unknown; death cannot understand life. Light and darkness cannot exist together. God, reality, is not to be realized through the known. What we are is of the past in combination with the present action and reaction according to various forms of influence, which narrows down thought, and through this limitation we try to understand that which is beyond all transiency. Can thought free itself from the personal, from the 'I'? Can thought make itself anew, original, capable of direct experience? If it can, then there is the realization of the eternal.

What is the content of consciousness? Both the conscious and the subconscious tendencies, values, memories, fears, and so on. The past, the hidden causes, control the present. Is there not in us, in spite of this limited consciousness, a force, a something, that is unconditioned? To assume that there is, is a part of our past influence; we have been brought up, through many generations, to think and believe and hope that there is. This tradition, this memory, is part of our racial heredity, part of our ignorance, but also merely to deny it, is not to discover for ourselves if there is. To assert or to deny, to believe or not to believe, that there is an uncontaminated, spiritual essence, unconditioned in us, is to place a barrier to our discovery of what is true.

There is suffering, conflict, between want and non-want, between the will of outgoing desires and the will to restrain. Of this conflict we are all conscious. When we do not understand the makeup of our background, the cause of our tendencies and limitations, experience only further strengthens them; but in becoming aware of them in our daily thought and action, experience acts as a liberating force.

Neither postponement nor trying to seek an immediate solution to our human problems can free thought from bondage. Postponement implies thoughtlessness and this sluggishness produces comforting theories, beliefs, and further complication and suffering; and if thought is concerned with the immediate now, with the idea that we live but once, then there is restlessness, haste, and a shallowness, that destroys understanding. But without imagining a future or clinging to the past, we can understand the fullness of each flowing moment. Then what is, is immortal.

Masters, gurus, teachers, cannot help to free thought from its own self-imposed bondage and suffering; neither ceremonies, nor priests, nor organizations, can liberate thought from its attachments, fears, cravings; these may force it into a new mould and shape it, but thought can free itself only through its own critical awareness and self-reliance.

Extrasensory perception, clairvoyance, occult powers, cannot free thought from confusion and misery; sensitive awareness of our thoughts and motives, from which spring our speech and action, is the beginning of lasting understanding and love. Mere self-control, discipline, self-punishment, or renunciation, cannot liberate thought; but constant awareness and pliability give clarity and strength. Only in becoming aware of the cause of ignorance, in understanding the process of craving and its dual and opposing values, is there freedom from suffering. This discerning awareness must begin in our life of relationship with things, people, and ideas, with our own hidden thoughts and daily action.

The way we think makes our life either complete or contradictory and unbalanced. Through awareness of craving, with its complex process, there comes an understanding; which brings detachment and serenity. Detachment or serenity is not an end in itself. In this world of frenzied buying and selling, whose economy is based on craving, unless thought is persistently aware, greed and envy bring the confusing and conflicting problems of possessions, attachment, and competition. Our private thoughts and motives can bring either harmony in our relationship or disturbance and pain. It depends on each one what he makes of relationship with another or with society. There can never be self-isolation, however much one may crave for it; relationship is ever continuous; to be is to be related.

The trembling and wavering thought is difficult to steady; mere control does not lead to understanding. Interest alone creates natural, spontaneous adjustment and control. If thought becomes aware of itself, it will perceive that it goes from one superficial interest to another, and merely to withdraw from one and try to concentrate on another does not lead to understanding and love. Thought must become aware of the causes of its various interests, and by understanding them there comes a natural concentrated interest in that which is most intelligent and true.

Thought moves from certainty to certainty, from the known to the known, from one substitution to another, and thus it is never still, it is ever pursuing, ever wandering; this chattering of the mind destroys creative understanding and love, but these cannot be craved for. They come into being when thought becomes aware of its own process, of its cravings, fears, substitutions, justifications, and illusions. Through constant, discerning awareness, thought naturally becomes creative and still. In that stillness there is immeasurable bliss.

We have all many and peculiar problems of our own; our craving to solve them only hinders the comprehension of the problems. We must have that rare disinterested awareness which alone brings understanding. When death causes us great sorrow, in our eagerness to overcome that sorrow, we accept theories, beliefs, in the hope of finding comfort which only becomes a bondage. This comfort, though satisfying for a passing moment, does not free thought from sorrow, it is only covered up and its cause continues. Likewise when one feels frustrated, instead of craving for fulfillment, one must understand what it is that feels itself frustrated. There will be frustration as long as there is craving; instead of understanding what is deeply implied in craving, we struggle anxiously to fulfill ourselves, and so the ache of frustration continues.

These discussions are not meant to be for intellectual amusement. We have discussed together in order to clear our thought so as to be able to apply ourselves more acutely and disinterestedly to the problems of our everyday life. It is only through disinterested application, through strenuous and discerning awareness, and not through following this or that belief, ideology, leader or group, that thought can liberate itself from those self-imposed bondages and influences. Being incomplete, one craves for completeness, which is only a substitution, but if one understood the causes of incompleteness, then there comes a freedom through that understanding, the ecstasy of which is not to be described or compared. We must begin low to climb high, we must begin now to go far.