BENGALURU : If we may, find out why human beings right throughout the world live in isolation, divided by their particular beliefs, pleasures, problems, ideals, belonging to different sects and groups – communists, socialists, Labour, Christians dividing themselves into innumerable sects, as the Hindus, the Buddhists do – why we live in this sense of separation, this sense of duality, opposing each other at all levels of our existence, resisting each other, bringing about conflict and war.
This has been the pattern of human beings throughout the world – the artist, the military man, the musician, the scientist, the so-called religious man, business, and so on, the nationals, the racial prejudices, and we have lived this way probably from the very beginning of time. And one wonders whether it must always be like this, because this way there can be no peace, this way man must be at war with another, though they talk of love, peace on earth, and all the rest of it.
So, is it possible for human beings, who are at all serious, to find out if they can live in a state of non-duality, not ideologically, theoretically, but actually a non-verbal state but both in form and in essence, whether it is at all possible for you and me to live a life in which this sense of duality completely ceases, not only at the verbal level but also at the deep layers, deep recesses of one’s own mind. Because I feel if this is not possible then we must be at war with each other.
You with your particular opinions, beliefs and dogmas and conclusions, and I with mine. And so there is never real communication, never contact. This is going on right throughout the world. The guru with his particular disciples, disciplines, the societies, the sects with their particular dogmas, and all the rest of it. And here we are, confronted with this issue, not ideologically but actually, because that is the only... one of the major political problems is the unity of man, of mankind - whether it is at all possible.
And whether human beings, individuals, you and I, can live a life in which there is no duality at all, in which opinions do not divide people, beliefs, conclusions, resistance. I don’t know if you have ever put that question to oneself, and if one has, if one has ever, I wonder what one would say to it, deeply, not in any sense of verbally, intellectually but with one’s heart, with one’s whole being, what one would respond to such a question.
Can we go into that this morning? Can we freely enquire together into this question? Because communication and relationship always go together. If there is no communication there is no relationship, not only between you and the speaker but also between each other. If we merely remain at the verbal level, at the formal level, that communication is very superficial, doesn’t go very far.