excerpts

becoming versus being

All our thinking and activity is based on becoming, is it not?

I am using that word `becoming' very simply, not philosophically but in the ordinary sense of wanting to become something either in this world or in the so-called spiritual world.

If we can understand this process of wanting to become some thing, then I think we shall have understood what sorrow is; because it is the desire to become that gives to the mind the soil in which sorrow can grow.

And as our lives, with rare moments of happiness, are filled with anguish, sorrow, pain, fear, with every form of conscious and unconscious conflict, I think it is important to understand this whole issue of becoming.

In our desire to become, we give importance to secondary things like politics, social reform, ideologies, and to. the various forms of organized religion which offer comfort through the process of becoming.

After all, that is what we are doing, is it not? We are struggling to become something, either politically or socially, outwardly or inwardly. We have never a moment when there is no becoming and only being - that being which is nothing. But that being which is nothing cannot possibly be understood if we do not fully grasp the significance of becoming.

All comparative thinking is a form of becoming. Envy, ambition, and the various kinds of fulfilment with there frustrations, are essentially a process of becoming, through which sorrow takes root in the mind.

All of us are trying in different ways to become something: more noble, less greedy, non-violent; we are trying to fulfil ourselves through work, through God, through family, through property, through identification with an idea, and so on. In innumerable ways we are trying to become something, to fulfill ourselves, and I think in this process lies the whole web of sorrow. Being caught in that web we say, "How am I to get rid of sorrow?" We are only concerned with getting rid of sorrow, and we do not understand the process of becoming.

Now, why is it that all of us in different ways have persisted through centuries in this path of becoming? Why does each one of us want to be something? If I am ugly, I want to be beautiful; if I am stupid, I want to be clever; if I am envious, I want to be free from envy. So there is a constant battle between what I am and what I think I should be.

The `should be' is the aim of every person who wants to become, and in this process there is infinite struggle, pain, fear, frustration. And seeing this process, being aware that my mind is caught in the web of sorrow, how am I to be free from sorrow?

When we put that question to ourselves, most of us say, "I must discipline myself against desire, against envy". We don't see that resistance is another form of becoming, and that though resistance we are giving importance to secondary issues.

That is, being in sorrow, I try in various ways to escape from the pain of sorrow, and in escaping I give importance secondary issues. The escape, which is the secondary issue, offers a means of fulfilment without eradicating sorrow.

Look at what is happening in the world. Secondary issues - like politics, like social reform, or the identification of oneself with reformatory movement - are assuming primary values in our life. Why? Is it not because they offer to the individual a means of fulfilling himself? That is, they offer a way in which I can become something though I continue to create sorrow around me and in myself.

The urge to become something, this egotistic desire to expand is so strong, so vital, that it must find ways and means of expressing itself, and that is why the secondary issues dominate our present-day existence.

There is a [authentic] religious revolution which takes place in the individual when there is no becoming of any kind, that is, when I inwardly see the fact of what I am without any form of distortion: the fact that I am envious, acquisitive, utterly lacking in humility.

If I am aware of the fact of what I am, and do not approach it with an opinion, with a judgment, with an evaluation - because opinion, judgment and evaluation are based on the intention of transforming the fact, which is the desire to become something - then that fact itself brings about a transformation in which there is no becoming at all.

To be aware of the fact that one is envious without condemning it, is extraordinarily difficult, because the very word `envy' has a condemnatory significance.

But if you can free the mind from that condemnatory evaluation, if you can be aware of the feeling without identifying the feeling with the word, then you will find that there is no longer the urge to change it into something else.

A feeling without verbalization, without evaluation, has no quality of becoming. And you will also find that when there is a feeling without verbalization, there is no desire for its fulfilment. There is a desire for the fulfilment of a feeling only when there is identification of that feeling with a word, with an evaluation.

So it is becoming that gives soil to the root of sorrow; and if you go into it very deeply, really think it out so that the mind frees itself from the whole process of becoming, then you will find that you have eliminated sorrow altogether.

It is only such a mind that is concerned with the primary, which is reality, and because it is concerned with the primary, its action on the secondary will have its own significance.

Merely to be concerned with the secondary will never lead to the primary. It is like putting a room in order, cleaning and decorating the room, all of which is essential; but it has no meaning without that which comes into the room.

Similarly, virtue is essential. A mind that is virtuous, austere, has put itself in order; and the mind must have order, it must have clarity. But order, clarity, humility, austerity, have no significance in themselves; they have significance only because the mind that has them is capable of proceeding without the experiencer who is gathering further experience, and therefore there is no becoming but only being.

That is, the mind is completely empty of all ideas based on the experiencer, on the thinker, on the observer who is always becoming.

It is only in emptying the mind of this whole process of becoming that there is being, which has its own movement unrelated to becoming; and a man who, while becoming, seeks that state of being, will never find it. The man who is pursuing ambition, fulfilment, who desires to become something, will never find reality, God. He may read all the sacred books, do puja every day, go to all the temples in the world, but sorrow will be his shadow.

So it seems to me very important to understand in oneself this process of becoming - and such understanding is essentially self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the understanding of becoming, which is the `me; and without that understanding, the mind can never be empty and hence free to understand the real, which is something totally different.

But when there is understanding of the real, then you will find that our social activities, our political actions, our everyday relationships with each other, have an entirely different quality. Then they will not be the soil in which sorrow can grow and flourish.

It is very important, then, for a [truly] religious man to understand himself, the `himself' who is always pursuing the path of becoming; and when, through self-knowledge, becoming ceases, there is within him a religious revolution. This is the only revolution that can bring about a different world in every way - economically, politically, and in our ,social relationships.

To understand reality, effort is not necessary. Effort exists only when there is a becoming, that is, when I use discipline as a means of attainment, of reaching happiness, and hence there is a struggle to achieve, to fulfill, which is a process of resistance.

All that is the path of becoming, in which there is sorrow; and a man who would understand reality must be free of this path of becoming, not verbally or ideologically, but actually.

see the irony: we pursue a program of 'becoming' because we want to achieve something, but the truly creative accomplishments are the result of 'being,' which is 'the movement of creation itself' (see more on the ‘creativity’ page)

He must understand this whole problem through self-knowledge. When the mind is free from becoming, you will find that it has an extraordinary activity of its own, an activity which cannot be verbalized, which cannot be described or communicated to another; and that activity is reality, it is the movement of creation itself.

There are three questions this evening, and as I have explained, I am not going to answer these questions, because life has no answers [which can be given by a teacher]. Life must be lived, and a man who merely sits on the bank wanting to swim, who only asks a question in order to receive an answer, is not living. But if you are living [within the state of "being"], you will find the answer at every step...

How can a mind which is conditioned, small, petty, envious, meditate on something unknowable? All the mind can do is to free itself from the known - the known of everything that you have been taught, of your ambitions, your identifications, your greeds.

Freeing the mind from the memory of all this, is meditation. And when the mind is free, then you will find that there comes an extraordinary quietness, a stillness in which there is no experiencer who is always measuring, remembering, calculating, desiring.

Then the mind is aware of something totally different, a state which is in itself a blessing, which has within itself a movement that has no centre and therefore no beginning and no ending.

A mind that is capable of this total attention without the entity who is experiencing what is taking place, will find there is a reality, a goodness, a beauty which is not a reaction, which is not an opposite, which is without a cause, and is therefore something in itself.

But the realization of that immensity cannot come about unless the mind is totally empty of the known.