Ojai, California | Fifth Talk in The Oak Grove, 1946
We have been considering the problem of intelligence, that intelligence which has been developed during the course of self-assertive struggles and self-protective pursuits, of acquisitive demands and imitative conformities; we saw that with that intelligence we hoped to solve our conflicts and discover or experience truth or God. Can that intelligence ever experience the real? If it cannot then how can it come to an end or be transformed? We saw that this is possible only through passive awareness, and that we can at any time be aware without the will to become aware. To understand what is implied in awareness, we examined greed and tried to understand its activities - greed not only for the tangible but also for power, for authority, greed for affection, for knowledge, for service, and so on - we saw that we either condemn or justify greed, thereby identifying ourselves with it. We saw, too, that awareness is a process of discovery which becomes blocked through identification. When we are rightly aware of greed, in its complexity, there is no struggle against it, no negative assertion of nongreed, which is only another form of self-assertiveness; and in that awareness we will find that greed has ceased.
Tags: awareness, identification
Not a member yet? Create an Account