excerpts

I see that any revolution - economic, social, scientific - only affects the periphery, the outward boundaries of my mind; but inwardly I am still the same. I may put on different clothes, acquire different forms of technological knowledge, work only a few hours in a week, and so on. But, inwardly, I am still in conflict; I am still ambitious, frustrated, under a terrific strain. Unless there is a tremendous transformation there, I cannot be orderly in living; there can be no freedom, no happiness, no escape from sorrow.

So how is a human being to bring about this transformation? The way for most of us [we believe] is through the will. That is, we exercise our will as a means of achieving a result - the will expressing itself in different ways, through resistance, through control, through conformity, through suppression, through sublimation, through denial. Exercising the will, we have considered, is the way to bring about a psychological change. To discipline oneself endlessly, or to deny oneself endlessly - that is to exercise the will in order to bring about a desired result…

Now what is will?... Will is effort. To me, effort under any circumstances; perverts the mind… You are used to the action of the will… we think that, by exercising will, we will bring about a psychological change or transformation within ourselves. We are going to show that is not the way.

So, what is will? Whether you exercise it weakly or very strongly, it is still the same process; whether you exercise it negatively or positively, it is still will. When you say, "I must not", and begin to discipline on the most absurd things - such as, "I will not smoke" - , there you are exercising the will; there you are making effort. Because there is a contradiction in desire - to smoke and not to smoke - and that contradiction implies effort; and effort means the will to achieve that or this, negatively or positively.

So we are going to find out what we mean by the will. After all, will is the extension of desire - that is clear. I desire something, and I go after it. If it is pleasurable, I go after it much more strongly and push aside anything that stands in the way, in order to achieve it. Or, if it is painful, I resist it. The resistance and the pursuit, pleasure and pain, the pursuit of the one and the denial of the other, both involve the action of the will…

You know, it is one of the most difficult things to listen. We never listen. Now, to listen without resistance is one of the most difficult things to do - to listen to those crows and at the same time to listen to the speaker. Please follow this: to listen to the crows and at the same time to listen to the speaker demands attention. You want to listen to the speaker, but the crows are interfering. So, you resist the noise of the crows and you say, "I must not listen to the crows, I must pay attention to what the speaker says." What have you done in that process? You have exercised the will to resist the noise of the crows and tried to concentrate on listening to the speaker; so you are not listening. You are making an effort to listen, and all your effort has gone into resistance and concentration; and, therefore, you are not listening at all.

Please observe this process in yourself. Whereas if you listen without resistance to the crows and without intense concentration to the speaker, then your attention is not divided; then you listen both to the crows and to the speaker. In that there is no concentration, because you are sensitive to both…

We are going to listen to the whole structure of the will. As we say, the will is the extension and the strengthening of desire which is fairly obvious. I want something and I go after it. Now, what is desire? Please listen. We are not saying that you must be without desire, or that you must suppress desire, as all your religious books say, or as all your gurus say. On the contrary, we are going to explore together into this question of desire. If you suppress desire, then you are destroying yourself, you are paralysing yourself, you are becoming insensitive, dull, stupid - as all religious people have done; to them beauty, sensitivity, is denied, because they have suppressed. Whereas if you begin to understand the whole subtlety of desire, the nature of desire, then you will never suppress desire, you will never suppress anything - I will come to it later.

What is desire? Desire arises when you see a beautiful woman, a beautiful car, a well dressed man, or a nice house. There is perception, sensation through contact, and then desire. I see you wearing a nice coat. There is perception, seeing; the attraction, the cut of that coat - and the sensation; and the desire to have that coat. This is very simple.

Now, what gives continuity to desire? You understand? I know how desire arises - that is fairly simple. What gives continuity to desire? It is this continuity of desire that strengthens, that becomes the will, obviously. Right? So I must find out what gives continuity to desire. If I can find out that, then I know how to deal with desire; I will never suppress it.

Now what gives continuity to desire? I see something beautiful, attractive; a desire has been aroused. And I must find out now what gives it vitality, what gives it the continuity of its strength. There is something pleasurable which I feel desirable, and I give it continuity by thinking about it. One thinks about sex. You think about it and you give it a continuity. Or you think about the pain you had yesterday, the misery; and so you give that also continuity. So the arising of desire is natural, inevitable; you must have desire, you must react; otherwise you are a dead entity. But what is important is to see, to find out for yourself, when to give continuity to it and when not to…

So the resistance to pain or the pursuit of pleasure - both give continuity to desire. And when I understand this, there is never a question of suppression of desire, because when you suppress desire, it will inevitably bring about other conflicts… if you suppress it, it will gain in potency and become stronger and later will attack you. Similarly, when you understand the whole nature of desire and what gives continuity to desire, you will never, under any circumstances, suppress desire. But that does not mean that you indulge in desire. Because the moment you indulge in desire, it brings its own pain, its own pleasure, and you are back again in the vicious circle.

So most human beings are used to this: if they want to change, if they want to drop a habit, they exercise their will. And that will is engendered through contradiction, and therefore, there is a battle going on all the time within one.

Is there another way of bringing about a radical transformation within oneself, to find oneself in a totally different dimension, not in the old dimension?

… one must be free of this idea of effort. And that is one of the most difficult things to do, because all our life, from childhood till we die, we are making efforts to be good, to achieve, to become a great man or a little man, to go to heaven or to find God; we say we must do this and we must not do that - we are continuously making effort. You know, goodness flowers naturally. If you make an effort to be good, you are no longer good. But to flower in goodness is the very nature of a mind that is religious. Therefore, a mind that is called religious, that makes an effort to be good, is irreligious…

When you make effort, what is involved in that effort? First of all, there is strain, physical strain - more and more strain, not because of work or food. But this constant strain - the strain brought about by our ambition, by our disorderliness, our greed, our competition, our brutality, our insensitivity - effects the heart.

Why is it that we have been brought up to make effort? I do not know if you have ever asked yourself this: why do you make effort? To better yourself? To be better in your office? To control yourself? To change the psyche, the psychological thoughts and feelings and all the rest of it? Have you succeeded in changing yourself through effort, radically, not superficially? Or is there a different approach to this thing altogether? Because all effort destroys spontaneity. If you are not spontaneous, then you are mechanical, you become dull, you become insensitive. You become insensitive to that moon; and when you cannot see the beauty of that moon, spontaneously, naturally, with vitality, with vigour, then such a mind is a dead mind, is an inefficient mind, is a disorderly mind, is an irreligious mind.

But we never look at the moon, we never see the beauty of it. Passing by occasionally, if somebody points it out and asks you to look at it, you turn your head up and look at it; but your thoughts, your worries, occupy greater space, and so you never look. You never look at the beauty of the sea or the river, of a tree in another's garden. You never look at the beauty of the face of a child, of a woman, of a man. Because, to you, beauty is always associated with sex; and all your religious books have said, "Have nothing whatever to do with woman, if you want to find God." So in denying beauty you have denied life; and, when you have denied life, you cannot find life everlasting. Life is here, not in the hereafter.

So it is imperative that you find out for yourself why you make effort. I can explain; but explanations, words, are not the facts just as the word "tree" is not the tree. The explanation is not the fact of your own discovery. When you discover it for yourself, then it becomes tremendously vital; then it has significance; then it gives you vitality to meet that fact. Look! If I tell you to look at that moon, you will look; but you have not looked at all, because you have been told to look. But if you are listening to the speaker as well as looking at that moon, then you will see how extraordinarily united the attention is, which looks at the moon and listens to the words of the speaker - they are not two different things, two different activities. It is the same energy that looks, and it is the same energy that listens. But when you divide it as an act of listening and as an act of looking, then you have created a contradiction. Then, in that contradiction, there is effort. Then, you exclude the moon and listen to the speaker. When you exclude the moon and listen to the speaker, you are not listening to the speaker.

And the beauty of listening lies in being highly sensitive to everything about you, to the ugliness, to the dirt, to the squalor, to the poverty about you, and also to the dirt, to the disorder, to the poverty of one's own being. When you are aware of both, then there is no effort. That is, when there is an awareness which is without choice, then there is no effort.

If you say "I will be aware of the moon", you choose to be aware of that; then, you will also choose not to be aware of the speaker and what he says; so there is a division - the one you exclude, and the other you are aware of. In that exclusion and in that division there is a contradiction. It is this contradiction that breeds conflict and therefore effort.

Whereas if you listen and if you observe without any choice, without any exclusion, without any contradiction, then there is no effort at all.

We will go into this question of effort perhaps at the next meeting. But what is important is to understand this: will inevitably creates contradiction, whether it is a positive will or negative will; and when the mind is in contradiction, outwardly or inwardly, there must be effort; and where there is effort, there is no attention, there is no awareness, and hence all the problems arise.

So a mind that listens and at the same time looks at the moon without a contradiction - such a mind is sensitive to everything; and such a mind learns, learns indefinitely, never accumulating what it has learnt as knowledge. Because a mind that is merely accumulating knowledge and storing it up, is a dull mind, an insensitive mind. But a mind that is learning is highly sensitive.

And you can only learn when you observe, when you see, when you hear, when you feel, when you have this extraordinarily complete feeling and, therefore, high sensitivity. It is only such a mind that has no conflict; and therefore such a mind, when it goes very far and very deeply, is an untortured mind; it is not marked, it is not distorted. And it is only such a mind that can see what is truth; and it is only such a mind that can live beyond time.

 

Editor's review and summary

Consider K's statements:

Will is effort. To me, effort under any circumstances, [this] perverts the mind…

all effort destroys spontaneity. If you are not spontaneous, then you are mechanical, you become dull, you become insensitive

What is this "spontaneity"? It is the underlying energy of the sacred person. See below.

a mind that is merely accumulating knowledge and storing it up, is a dull mind, an insensitive mind. But a mind that is learning is highly sensitive.

Why does he rail against "knowledge"? He's referring to knowledge as mere word, a substitute for the thing in itself. See below.

The following notes are from other lectures but of use here as well:

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"... we do not observe the fact, but we rather know what gives us pleasure or pain and therefore avoid the fact."

He says that we are not really accessing "the fact" but a negotiated substitute for the fact in terms of pleasure and pain.

What is “the fact” that K refers to? See the Nov 25 1965 lecture for more discussion, but essentially it is this:

The fact is the thing in itself. It is not information about the fact, but a direct accessing of the fact itself.

The fact is anything important in life that you want to be in relationship with; it is your sanity on any subject. It could be the fact of God, the universe, reality and life itself, another person, one’s true lover, the future, the past, a dog, a bird, a tree, and all of creation – anything that we want to authentically interact with, that is, without the interference of the ego's insanity.

When we access the fact directly, we are in contact with its underlying essential energies. Our union with the fact is a union with these energies, not the outward form manifested in the world. This is the

"something that is not measurable by the mind or by the instruments invented by man."

When we enter into this kind of union, it is the communion itself which changes us – automatically. We don’t have to try very hard to achieve real, authentic, and deep change.

It’s like a surfer riding a wave. The wave of real union, real communion, takes us for a ride and change occurs without human effort, of any kind.

We do not, and cannot, supply the wave's power of authentic change. And don't need to. It's already deep inside us, waiting to be unleashed. And once this "rogue wave" of burgeoning consciousness begins to unfurl itself, there's no stopping it, and it will authentically change its recipient at the deepest levels of being. Actually, this isn't quite accurate. It isn't change so much but simply accessing what we've always been, and have been given, from the "soul nursury."

I have discussed these issues on hundreds of pages scattered on WG. See some of the discourse, for example, here and here.