WE ARE GOING to talk over together, if you will, what a holistic way of life is. The word whole means complete, not broken up into fragments, fragments as a businessman, an artist, a poet, a religious cuckoo, and so on, which is how we have divided our lives. You belong to a special group, with garlands and strange dress, and another group wears some other kind of costume. We are constantly categorizing, putting people into some drawer, so that they are this or that—Communists, Socialists, capitalists, and so on. So our life, if you observe closely, is broken up, fragmented. And why are we human beings, who have lived on this marvellous earth for a million years or 50,000 years, like this?
One of the main causes of this breaking up into pieces is that the brain is a slave to thought—thought being limited. Wherever there is limitation, there must be fragmentation. When I am concerned with myself—with my progress, my fulfilment, my happiness, my problems—I’ve broken down the whole structure of humanity to me. So one of the factors why human beings are fragmented is thought.
Also, one of the factors is time. Have you ever considered what time is? According to scientists, who are concerned with time, it is a series of movements. So movement is time. Time is not only measured by the watch, chronologically. Time is the sun rising, the sun setting; time is dawn and snow on the mountains and in the deep valleys, the darkness of a night and the brightness of a morning. And also there is psychological time, inward time. I am this, I will become that. I don’t know mathematics, but one day I will learn all about it. That requires time. To learn a new language requires a great deal of time: three months, six months, or two years. That is also time. There is time to learn, to memorize, to have a skill, and there is also time as the self-centred entity saying, ‘I will become something else’. So the becoming, psychologically, implies time also.
We are inquiring therefore into what time is? Not only the time to learn a skill, but also the time that we have developed as a process of achievement: ‘I don’t know how to meditate. I’ll sit cross-legged, and one day I will learn how to control my thought. One day I will achieve what meditation is supposed to be’. So I practise, practise, practise. Then I become a mechanical monkey. Because whatever you practise, you become mechanical in doing. Time is the past, the present, and the future. Time is the past, all the experiences, knowledge that human beings have achieved that remains in the brain as memory. That’s simple. And that past is operating now in the present. All the memories, all the knowledge, all the experiences, the tendencies, and so on are the background, and that background is operating now. So you are the past. And the future is what you are now, perhaps modified, but the future is the past modified. The past modified in the present is the future.
Your tradition as a cultural country for the last three to five thousand years, this vast accumulation of knowledge, culture, all the things human beings have been struggling with, inquiring into, having a dialogue about—all that is smashed in the present, because the economic conditions demand it. The past is broken up, modified, and is going to be the future. This is a fact. So if there is no radical change in the present, tomorrow you will be the same as you are today. So the future is now. The future—not the future of acquiring knowledge, but the psychological future—is that the psyche, the ‘me’, the self, is the past memory, and that memory modifies itself now and goes on. So the future and the past are in the present. So all time—past, present, and future—is contained in the now. It’s not complicated. It’s logical. So if the human brain doesn’t change now, instantly, the future will be what you are, what you have been.
Is it possible to change radically, fundamentally, now, not in the future? It is very simple, this. Don’t complicate it. We are the past. There is no question about it. And that past gets modified in reaction, in challenges, in various ways. And that becomes the future. Look, you have had a civilization in this country for three to five thousand years. That is the past. And modern circumstances demand that you break away from the past. And you have no culture anymore now. You may talk about past culture, enjoy the past fame, and the past long centuries, but all that is blown up, scattered by the present demands, by the present challenge. And that challenge, that demand, is changing into an economic entity. So the past being challenged by the now becomes the future.
Also, we want roots, identification—identification with a group, with a family, with some guru, and that is why you put on these strange garments. I know you won’t go away from that, but that’s your job. So we want to be identified with a group, with a family, with a nation, and so on. And the threat of war is a major factor in our life, because war may destroy our roots psychologically; therefore, we are willing to kill others. And also we want to be identified. You understand? Identified with a name, identified with a family, and so on. So these are the major factors of our fragmented lives. Now do you listen to the truth of it or do you listen merely to a description of what is being said and carry the description, not the truth of it? The idea of it and not the fact of it.
Say, for instance, the speaker says, ‘All time is now’. If you understand that, it is the most marvellous truth. Now, do you listen to it as a series of words and therefore as a sound, a word, an idea, an abstraction of the truth as an idea, or do you capture the truth of it, not make an abstraction of the truth? Which are you doing? Living with the fact, or making an abstraction of the fact into an idea and then pursuing the idea, not the fact? That is what the intellect does. Intellect is necessary. Probably we have very little intellect anyhow because we have given ourselves over to somebody. Intellect implies and demands reason, logic, and seeing things very, very clearly, to discern. Also, the capacity of the intellect is to gather information and act upon that information. And when you hear a statement like ‘All time is now’ or ‘You are the whole of humanity, because your consciousness is one with all the others’, how do you listen to those statements? Do you make an abstraction of them as an idea? Or do you listen to the truth, to the fact of it; the depth of it, the sense of immensity involved in that? Ideas are not immense. But a fact has tremendous possibility.
So a holistic life is not possible when the cause is thought, time, and the desire for identification and roots. These prevent a way of living that is whole, complete. Now when you hear this statement, your question will be, ‘How shall I stop thinking?’ A natural question isn’t it? ‘How shall I?’ I know time is necessary to learn a skill, a language, a technological subject, and so on. Time is necessary for research. But I’ve just begun to realize that the becoming from ‘what is’ to ‘what should be’ involves time and may be totally wrong. It may not be true. So you begin to question, or do you say, ‘Well, I don’t understand what you are talking about, but I will go along with it’? Which is actually what is taking place.
I wish we would be very honest with ourselves. Honesty is one of the most important things, like humility. Humility cultivated by a vain man is part of vanity. Humility has nothing to do with vanity, with pride. It is a state of mind—a brain that says, ‘I don’t know, but let me inquire’. Never saying, ‘I know’. So now, you have listened to the fact that all time is now—the fact. You may not agree or you may agree. That is one of our dreadful things, agreeing and disagreeing. Why should we agree or disagree? It is a fact that the sun rises in the east, that’s a fact. You don’t agree or disagree. The sun has set. It is a fact. So can we both look at facts? So there is no division between those who agree and those who don’t agree. There is only seeing things as they are. You can say, ‘I don’t see’, then that’s a different matter. Then we can go into why you don’t see, and so on. But when we enter into the area of agreement and disagreement, then we become more and more confused.
So the speaker has said our lives are fragmented. That’s a fact. Our ways of thinking are fragmented. You are a businessman, earn lots of money and then you go and build a temple or give to charity. See the contradiction. And we are never honest to ourselves—deeply honest. Not honest in order to be something else or to understand something else, but to be unquestionably clear, to have an absolute sense of honesty, which means no illusions. If you tell a lie, you tell a lie and you know it and say, ‘I’ve told a lie’. Not covering it up. When you are angry, you are angry. You say you’re angry. Don’t find causes and explanations for it or how to get rid of it. This is absolutely necessary if you are going to inquire into much deeper things as we are doing now. Not make a fact into an idea but remain with the fact. That requires very clear perception.
Now, having said all this we say, ‘Yes, I logically, intellectually, understand this’. That’s what you would say. And, ‘How am I to relate to action what I have logically, intellectually understood, what I have heard? What is the truth?’ So you’ve already created a division between the intellectual understanding and action. Do you see this? So listen, just listen. Don’t do anything about it. Don’t say, ‘How am I to get something? How am I to put an end to thought and time?’—which you can’t, which would be absurd because you are the result of thought and time. So you go round and round in circles. But if you listen, not react, not say, ‘How?’, but actually listen, to some lovely music, the call of a bird, listen, that ‘time is all in the now’. And thought is a movement, so thought and time are always together. They are not two separate movements, but one constant movement. That’s a fact. Listen to it.
Then there is identification: You want to be identified, because in identification as a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, or whatever it is, you feel secure. That’s a fact. And identification is one of the causes of fragmentation in our lives, like time, thought, and also wanting security and therefore taking roots in a particular country, a particular family, community, a group. Listen, don’t do anything—these are the factors of our fragmentation. Now, if you listen to it very carefully, that very listening creates its own energy. Do you understand? If I listen to the fact of what has been said, and there is no reaction because I’m just listening to it, then that implies gathering all my energy to listen. That means giving tremendous attention to listening. And that very listening breaks down the factors of, or the causation of, fragmentation. If you do something then you’re acting upon the fact. But if there is only observation, without distortion, without prejudice, that observation, that perception, which is great attention, that very attention then burns away the sense of time, thought.