BENGALURU: I have rejected ideas, suppositions and theories that it is inherited, that it is instinctual. All that means nothing to me. Loneliness is ‘what is’. Why is there this loneliness which every human being, if he is at all aware, goes through, superficially or most profoundly? Why does it come into being? Is it that the mind is doing something which is bringing it about? I have rejected theories as to instinct and inheritance and I am asking: is the mind, the brain itself, bringing about this loneliness, this total isolation? Is the movement of thought doing this? Is the thought in my daily life creating this sense of isolation? In the office I am isolating myself because I want to become the top executive, therefore thought is working all the time isolating itself. I see that thought is all the time operating to make itself superior, the mind is working itself towards this isolation.
So the problem then is: why does thought do this? Is it the nature of thought to work for itself? Is it the nature of thought to create this isolation? Education brings about this isolation; it gives me a certain career, a certain specialisation and so, isolation. Thought, being fragmentary, being limited and time binding, is creating this isolation. In that limitation, it has found security saying: “I have a special career in my life; I am a professor; I am perfectly safe.” So my concern is then: why does thought do it? Is it in its very nature to do this? Whatever thought does must be limited.
Now the problem is: can thought realise that whatever it does is limited, fragmented and therefore isolating and that whatever it does will be thus? This is a very important point: can thought itself realise its own limitations? Or am I telling it that it is limited? This, I see, is very important to understand; this is the real essence of the matter. If thought realises itself that it is limited then there is no resistance, no conflict; it says, “I am that”. But if I am telling it that it is limited then I become separate from the limitation. Then I struggle to overcome the limitation, therefore there is conflict and violence, not love.
So does thought realise of itself that it is limited? I have to find out. I am being challenged. Because I am challenged I have great energy. Put it differently: does consciousness realise its content is itself? Or is it that I have heard another say: “Consciousness is its content; its content makes up consciousness”? Therefore I say, “Yes, it is so”. Do you see the difference between the two? The latter, created by thought, is imposed by the ‘me’. If I impose something on thought then there is conflict. It is like a tyrannical government imposing on someone, but here that government is what I have created.