Pleasure is a guiding principle in our life.
We are not saying that it's wrong or right,
we are examining it.
Pleasure is the thing that we want most
- here in this world, in the spiritual world,
in the world of heaven, if you have a heaven - pleasure.
Pleasure in any form:
religious entertainment,
going to Mass, all the circus that goes on in the name of religion,
and the pleasure of any incident,
whether it is of a sunset, sexual,
or any sensory pleasure,
is recorded and thought over.
Right?
So thought as pleasure plays a tremendous part in our life.
Something happened yesterday
which was a lovely thing, a most happy thing,
it's recorded,
thought comes upon it, chews it and keeps on thinking about it
and wants it to be repeated again tomorrow,
sexual or otherwise.
And so thought gives vitality to an incident that is over.
I hope you are following all this.
And so, the very process of recording
is knowledge, which is the past.
And thought is the past.
So, the thought as pleasure is sustained.
And if you have noticed, pleasure is always in the past,
or the imagined pleasure of tomorrow
is still the recollection projected into the future - the past.
And also you can also observe that where there is pleasure
and the pursuit of pleasure,
there is also the nourishing of fear.
Haven't you noticed it?
Fear of the thing I have done yesterday,
fear of the pain which I had,
physical pain, a week ago.
Thinking about it sustains the fear.
There is no ending of that pain.
When it's over it is finished,
but I carry it over by thinking about it.
So, thought sustains and gives nourishment to pleasure
as well as to fear.
Right?
Thought is responsible for this.
I had pleasure yesterday
and I want it repeated again tomorrow.
I have done something, or I had pain,
physical pain,
and I mustn't have it again, it's too awful.
I think about it.
Fear not only of the present, of the future,
fear of death, fear of the unknown
- oh, so many fears -
fear of not fulfilling,
fear of not being loved, wanting to be loved,
all the machinery of thought.
So there is the rationality of thought
and the irrationality of thought.
Are you following?
There must be exercise of thought in doing things,
technologically, in the office,
when you cook, when you wash dishes,
knowledge must function perfectly.
There is the rationality, the logic of thought
in action, in doing.
But also thought becomes totally irrational
when it sustains as pleasure or fear.
And yet thought says, I cannot let go of my pleasures,
and yet thought knows, if it is at all sensitive, aware,
that there is pain coming with it.
So, to be aware of all the machinery of thought,
the complicated, subtle movement of thought.
And this is not difficult.
It really is not at all difficult once you say,
I must find out a way of living that is totally different,
a way of life in which there is no conflict.
If that is the real demand,
as your demand for pleasure,
if that is your insistent, passionate demand,
to live a life, inwardly and outwardly,
in which there is no conflict whatsoever,
then you will see the possibility of it.
Because we have explained
conflict exists only when there is division,
between the me and the not me,
when I am a Hindu and you are a Christian,
communist, socialist,
the racket that goes on in this world.
Then if you see that,
not verbally or intellectually because that's not seeing,
but when you actually realise
that there is no division between the observer and the observed,
between the thinker and the thought,
then you see, observe actually what is.
And then when you see actually what is,
you have already gone beyond it,
you don't stay with what is.
You stay with what is
only when the observer is different from the what is.
You are getting this?