PERHAPS IT WOULD be worthwhile to spend some time in trying to find out if life has any significance at all. Not the life that one leads, because modern existence has very little meaning. One gives intellectual significance to life, a theoretical, intellectual, theological, or (if one may use that word) mystical meaning to it; one tries to search out a deep meaning—as some writers have done amidst the despair of this hopeless existence—inventing some vital, deep, intellectual reason. And it seems to me that it would be very much worthwhile if we could find out for ourselves, not emotionally or intellectually, but actually, factually, if there is in life anything really sacred. Not the inventions of the mind that have given a sense of holiness to life, but actually whether there is such a thing. Because one observes both historically and actually in this search, in the life that one leads—the business, the competition, the despair, the loneliness, the anxiety, with the destruction of war and hate—life as all this has very little meaning. We may live seventy years, spending forty or fifty years in an office, with the routine, the boredom, and the loneliness of it that has very little meaning. Realizing that, both in the Orient and here, one then gives significance and worthwhileness to a symbol, to an idea, to a God—which are obviously the inventions of the mind. They have said in the East that life is one: don’t kill; God exists in every human being: don’t destroy. But the next minute they are destroying each other, actually, verbally, or in business, and so this idea that life is one, the sacredness of life, has very little meaning.
Also in the Occident, realizing what life actually is—the brutality, the aggressiveness, the ruthless competition of everyday life—one gives significance to a symbol. Those symbols upon which all religions are based are considered very holy. That is, the theologians, the priests, the saints who have had their peculiar experiences, have given meanings to life and we cling to those meanings out of our despair, out of our loneliness, out of our daily routine, which has so little meaning. And if we could put aside all the symbols, all the images, the ideas, and the beliefs that one has built throughout the centuries and to which one has given a sense of sacredness, if we could actually de-condition ourselves from all those extraneous inventions, then perhaps we could really ask ourselves if there is a something that is true, that is really holy and sacred. Because that is what man has been seeking amongst all this turmoil, despair, guilt, and death. Man has always sought in various forms this feeling of something that must be beyond the transitory, beyond the flux of time. Could we spend some time going into this and trying to find out for ourselves if there is such a thing?—but not what you want, not God, not an idea, not a symbol. Can one really brush all that aside and then find out?
Words are only a means of communication but the word is not the thing. The word, the symbol is not the actuality, and when one is caught up in words, then it becomes very difficult to extricate oneself from the symbols, the words, the ideas that actually prevent perception. Though one must use words, words are not the fact. So if we can also be aware, on guard, that the word is not the fact, then we can begin to go into this question very deeply. That is, man out of his loneliness and despair has given sacredness to an idea, to an image made by the hand or by the mind. The image has become extraordinarily important to the Christian, to the Hindu, to the Buddhist, and so on, and they have invested the sense of sacredness in that image. Can we brush it aside—not verbally, not theoretically, but actually push it aside—completely see the futility of such an activity? Then we can begin to ask. But there is no one to answer, because any fundamental question that we put to ourselves cannot be answered at all by anyone and least of all by ourselves. But what we can do is to put the question and let the question simmer, boil—let that question move. And one must have the capacity to follow that question right through. That is what we are asking: whether there is, beyond the symbol, the word, anything real, true, something completely holy in itself.