BENGALURU: The ancient Greeks and the ancient Hindus have talked about knowing yourself, not according to some professional, but know yourself. What is that self, and what is it to know about it? You understand? What is the self and to know about it, and what is the knowledge that is accumulated after knowing about it? Do you understand the question? Can I know myself through time? That is, I have learned, I have observed myself, watched all the reactions in my relationship with another, intimate or otherwise; I have accumulated a great deal of knowledge through that observation; and when I observe again other reactions, other idiosyncrasies and sensory responses, that previous knowledge interprets what is actually happening.
Right? Are you following all this? So, you are actually not knowing yourself, you are perpetuating the knowledge which you have acquired through various examinations and observations which has become your knowledge and that knowledge is beginning again to interpret the present responses, the present happenings and incidents. So you are perpetuating the knowledge which you have acquired, modified and projecting into the future. This cycle is knowledge, action, learn from that action, which becomes further knowledge to keep the cycle going. I hope you are understanding all this.
Isn’t that so? We are not telling you anything that you have not observed yourself, if you have observed. So, to know oneself really, deeply, previous remembrance, previous knowledge has no place. You have to observe each incident and each response as though for the first time. That is, to know, observe, enter into the field of this immense life which is specialised as the ‘me’.
Where there is the ‘me’, the self, there is no love. So it is very important to find out for oneself and not escape from this question, because it’s your life; it’s your responsibility. If you merely avoid it and run away into various forms of entertainment, you are bringing about great disaster in the world, for which you are utterly, totally responsible. And where there is the ending of suffering, there is compassion. Suffering, the ending of it, is to have passion. There is a vast difference between lust and passion. Lust everybody knows. But the passion, not identified with some symbol, Christian or Asiatic symbols.
We have not that passion. When the missionaries, evangelists, the preachers of God and all the rest of it, they are salesmen. To have passion, passion to go, understand the brutality, the violence, the fears and the agony, to resolve them so the mind is free from all the contamination of struggle. You must have great energy for that, to go into this. But if one is merely caught in fear, pleasure - pleasure is different from delight, watching something most beautiful. But the remembrance of it and the desire to continue in that remembrance is pleasure. And if we have time and if you are not tired this morning, we ought to consider together this immense, complex problem of death.
As pleasure, fear, attachment, hurt, the conflict in relationship, that’s our daily reality, and death is also a part of our life. It’s not something that comes at the end of life, after old age, disease, accident; it’s part of this whole business of living. And we never consider the importance of death, the quality, the depth of that word. Most people are afraid of it, and being afraid they have invented all kinds of theories which will give them comfort.