BENGALURU: If we can this morning go into this question of conditioning, not only the superficial cultural conditioning but also why conditioning takes place, and what is the quality of mind that is not conditioned, that’s gone beyond it, because we have to go into this matter fairly deeply to find out what love is. And in understanding what love is perhaps we shall be able to comprehend the full significance of death.
So first we will, if you will also go with the speaker, take a voyage together into this question of conditioning and find out for oneself whether the mind can ever be totally and completely free of this conditioning. One can see, and it’s fairly obvious, how superficially we are conditioned by the culture, the society, the propaganda around us.
The conditioning of nationality, the conditioning of a particular religion or sect, the conditioning through education, through environmental influence, one can observe that fairly clearly and be aware of it. I think that is fairly clear and fairly simple, how most human beings in whatever country or race they belong to, or any particular culture or religious propaganda, they are conditioned, shaped, moulded, held within that particular pattern. One can see that in oneself. And one can fairly easily put those conditionings aside.
Then there are deeper conditionings, such as this aggressive attitude towards life. Aggression implies also a sense of dominance, seeking power, position, prestige, and that’s much more difficult, and one has to go into it very deeply to be completely free of it because it’s very subtle, it takes different forms. One may think one is not aggressive, but when one has a conclusion, an opinion, an evaluation, verbally and non-verbally, there is a sense of asserting which gradually becomes aggressive and violent. One can see this in oneself.
May I here say, please don’t take notes. Not only it disturbs others round you, but also while you are taking notes you cannot possibly listen and observe yourself. It isn’t a thing that you are going to think over when you go back to your room, what we are doing is observing as we go along now, at this minute. Please. So as one cannot possibly compel you to do that, we request you kindly not to take notes because it disturbs, and for your own sake. And also please don’t take tape-recordings, you know, putting out a microphone, it also disturbs others.
To be aware of this conditioning of aggression: the very word that one uses, you may say it very gently but there is a kick behind it, there is an assertive, dominant, compulsive action, which becomes very crude when it becomes violent. Now that is our conditioning. That conditioning of aggression, whether one has derived it from the animal or one has, in one’s own self assertive pleasure, become aggressive. That one has to discover because that’s part of our conditioning. Is one aggressive in that total sense of that word? Aggressive, that word means stepping forth.