What do we mean by becoming? The psychological becoming of the priest who wants to be the bishop, of the disciple who wants to be the Master, and so on. In this process of becoming there is effort, positive or negative; it is the struggle to change ‘what is’ into something else, is it not? I am this, and I want to become that, and this becoming is a series of conflicts. When I have become that, there is still another that, and so on endlessly. The this becoming that is without end, and so conflict is without end. Now, why do I want to become something other than what I am?
‘Because of our conditioning, because of social influences, because of our ideals. We cannot help it, it is our nature.’
Merely to say that we cannot help it puts an end to discussion. It is a sluggish mind that makes this assertion and just puts up with suffering, which is stupidity. Why are we so conditioned? Who conditions us? Since we submit to being conditioned, we ourselves make those conditions. Is it the ideal that makes us struggle to become that when we are this? Is it the goal, the utopia, that makes for conflict? Would we degenerate if we did not struggle towards an end?
‘Of course. We would stagnate, go from bad to worse. It is easy to fall into hell but difficult to climb to heaven.’
Again we have ideas, opinions about what would happen, but we do not directly experience the happening. Ideas prevent understanding, as do conclusions and explanations.
Do ideas and ideals make us struggle to achieve, to become? I am this, and does the ideal make me struggle to become that? Is the ideal the cause of conflict? Is the ideal wholly dissimilar from ‘what is’?
If it is completely different, if it has no relationship with ‘what is’, then ‘what is’ cannot become the ideal. To become, there must be relationship between ‘what is’ and the ideal, the goal. You say the ideal is giving us the impetus to struggle. So let us find out how the ideal comes into being. Is not the ideal a projection of the mind?
‘I want to be like you. Is that a projection?’
Of course it is. The mind has an idea, perhaps pleasurable, and it wants to be like that idea, which is a projection of your desire. You are this, which you do not like, and you want to become that, which you like.
The ideal is a self-projection; the opposite is an extension of ‘what is’; it is not the opposite at all, but a continuity of ‘what is’, perhaps somewhat modified. The projection is self-willed, and conflict is the struggle towards the projection.
‘What is’ projects itself as the ideal and struggles towards it, and this struggle is called becoming. The conflict between the opposites is considered necessary, essential. This conflict is the ‘what is’ trying to become what it is not; and what it is not is the ideal, the self-projection. You are struggling to become something, and that something is part of yourself.
The ideal is your own projection. See how the mind has played a trick upon itself. You are struggling after words, pursuing your own projection, your own shadow. You are violent, and you are struggling to become non-violent, the ideal; but the ideal is a projection of ‘what is’, only under a different name. This struggle is considered necessary, spiritual, evolutionary, and so on; but it is wholly within the cage of the mind and only leads to illusion.
When you are aware of this trick which you have played upon yourself, then the false as the false is seen. The struggle towards an illusion is the disintegrating factor. All conflict, all becoming is disintegration.
When there is an awareness of this trick that the mind has played upon itself, then there is only ‘what is’. When the mind is stripped of all becoming, of all ideals, of all comparison and condemnation, when its own structure has collapsed, then the ‘what is’ has undergone complete transformation.
As long as there is the naming of ‘what is’ there is relationship between the mind and ‘what is’; but when this naming process-which is memory, the very structure of the mind-is not, then ‘what is’ is not. In this transformation alone is there integration.
Integration is not the action of will, it is not the process of becoming integrated. When disintegration is not, when there is no conflict, no struggle to become, only then is there the being of the whole, the complete.
