BENGALURU: We have been talking over the question of fear and whether after hearing it, after hearing our conversation together over this weight of fear, if one is at all free of it. Or one has merely heard it, saw the reason of it, the sanity of it and cannot do anything about it, and then just drift along. I wonder what one actually has done, each one of us with regard to that question of fear, and the identification of oneself with one’s friend, family, furniture, house, country, ideas and so on. Whether after these four talks one has actually ended all identification and therefore there is a great deal of freedom, not relative, but freedom. And when one asks these questions of oneselves, whether we ask superficially, intellectually or as you would ask a question that affects you most profoundly, most seriously.
And after asking these questions of oneselves, and if we are at all serious, getting the house in order — our house, which is you. And when we put things in order in our house we are free, we have more energy. It is only when there is disorder that we waste energy. And order implies that one has understood deeply what are the movements of disorder in oneself, why we live, perhaps even in our own rooms, in such disorder.
Or having in one’s house order, in oneself there is such abiding deep disorder, uncertainty, why such human beings live in this disorder, from the moment they are born until they die — why? Why do we tolerate to live in such conditions? I wonder if you have asked yourself these questions. And if you have — perhaps some of you have — and discovering that one is in disorder, mechanically sets about to put everything in oneself in order.
Thereby, one cultivates discipline, follow a pattern, pattern laid down after two thousand years, or ten thousand years, or the patterns laid down by some guru, some priest, some specialist in so-called spirituality. Or try to escape from this abiding, endless, seemingly endless disorder, try to identify oneself with something that is supremely order, which is cosmos, the heavens, the whole universe. I wonder what you, looking at yourself in the mirror which tells you exactly what is, I wonder what you do about this disorder? Is one aware that one lives in disorder? Is one aware that one lives in contradiction? This constant conflict between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’.
If one asks oneself these questions, are you listening for an answer from yourself? Or are you listening for an answer from somebody else? I am afraid most of us are inclined to find order, not understanding disorder, investigating what is order we easily accept some specialist, some authority, some priest, some guru who will tell us what is order. So our minds are becoming more and more mechanical because when we accept a pattern of order, like a soldier drilled day after day, month after month, drilled — the drums beating out his brains. So we follow, accept, obey, conform. Is that not conformity, obedience, acceptance the very root of disorder? As we said, please do not accept anything whatsoever the speaker says. And I really mean it. These are the questions you are asking of yourself.