LOVE AND RELATIONSHIP
In the following passage we find JK
linking thought, identification and possessiveness, the sense of me-mine that
is at the root of all conflict:
“It is thought that is breeding
violence – my house, my property, my wife, my husband, my country, my God, my
belief, which is utter nonsense. Who is doing this, creating this everlasting
‘me’ opposed to the rest? Who is doing it? Education, society, the
establishment, the church are all doing it, because I am part of all that.”
“Thought must inevitably divide;
look what has happened. Thought says ‘Nationalism is pretty rotten, it has led
to all kinds of war and mischief, let us have brotherhood, let us be united’.
So thought forms a league of nations or United Nations, but thought is still
operating separatively and maintaining separation: you who are an Italian, you
keep your Italian sovereignty and so on. Talk about brotherhood and yet keep
separate, which is hypocrisy; that is a function of thought to play double
games with itself.” (On Mind and Thought, pg. 24, Saanen, 23rd July,
1970)
This sense of possession is
isolating and isolation is different from aloneness:
“I am isolated when I build a
wall of resistance round myself. I resist. I resist any criticism, any new
idea, I am afraid, I want to protect myself, I don’t want to be hurt. And
therefore, that brings about in my action a self-centred activity, which is an
isolating process. Is that clear? And most of us are isolating ourselves. I
have been hurt and I don’t want to be hurt. The memory of that hurt remains and
therefore I resist. Or I believe in Jesus and Krishna or whatever it is, and I
resist any question of doubt, any criticizing of my belief because I have taken
security in my belief. That isolates. That isolation may include thousands of
people, millions of people, but it is still isolation. When I say I am Catholic
or a Communist or whatever, I am isolating myself. And aloneness is entirely
different, it is not the opposite of isolation – but listen to this carefully –
having an insight into isolation. That insight is aloneness.” (On Mind and
Thought, pg. 37, Saanen, 18th July, 1972)
My ego is my world and my
relationship is only with what is within my world, within my grasp. I identify
with my job, with my house, with my property and this breeds separateness or
division because now I resist and am opposed to anything that robs me of my
possession or hurts my sense of identity. I want to be secure in my possession
and so I come into conflict with others. My possessions, my self-interest
conflicts with yours. This is isolating and isolation prevents relationship:
“Relationship means to be
related means to respond to each other in freedom, with its responsibility.
So, what place has thought in relationship? Thought which is capable of
remembering, imagining, contriving, designing, calculating: what place has it
in human relationship? Has it any place at all…. Is thought love? Don’t deny
it, we are inquiring, going into it. What is our relationship when we live
together in a house, husband, wife, friend, what is our relationship? Is it
based on thought, then relationship becomes mechanistic. And for most of us
that is the relationship we have with each other – mechanistic. I mean by
mechanistic the image created by thought about you and me. The images that one
creates, defends through a number of years, or through a number of days. You
have built an image about me and I have built an image about you, which is the
product of thought. The image becomes the defence, the resistance, the
calculation, I build a wall around myself and a wall around you, and you build
a wall around yourself and a wall around me – this is called relationship,
which is a fact. (On Mind and Thought, pg. 45, Saanen, 20th July,
1972)
The key aspect of relationship is
‘responding to each other in freedom’ but we treat the other as a tool for our
own happiness and this leads JK to the conclusion that our worldly love is not
real love because we are always trying to dominate another, to make another
subservient and so there is no integration with another:
“We do not love and let it alone
but crave to be loved; we give in order to receive, which is generosity of the
mind and not the heart.” (Commentaries on Living Vol. 1, pg. 38)
“Love is a strange thing, as long
as thought is woven through it, it is not love. When you think of someone you
love, that person becomes a symbol of pleasant sensations, memories, images;
but that is not love.” (Commentaries on Living Vol. 2, pg. 11)
“If there is the benediction of
that love, you cannot but love me whatever I may be, for then you do not shape
love according to my behaviour. Whatever tricks the mind may play, you and I
are separate; though we may be in touch with each other at some points,
integration is not with you, but within myself. This integration is not brought
about by the mind at any time; it comes into being only when the mind is
utterly silent, having reached the end of its own tether. Only then is there no
pain in relationship.” (Commentaries on Living Vol. 1, pg. 39)
Where there is suffering there is
no love. Clearly JK believes that separation is based on identification and
till there is separation there can be no genuine relationship. The feelings of
pain, loneliness, jealousy etc. are alien to love:
“Love and emptiness cannot abide
together; when there is feeling of loneliness, love is not. You may hide
emptiness under the word ‘love’ but when the object of love is no longer there
or does not respond, then you are aware of loneliness, you are frustrated. We use
the word ‘love’ as a means of escaping from ourselves, from our own
insufficiency. We cling to the one we love, we are jealous, we miss him when he
is not there and are utterly lost when he dies; and then we seek comfort in
some other form, in some belief, in some substitute. Is all this love? Love is
not an idea, the result of association; love is not something to be used as an
escape from our wretchedness; and when we do use it, we make problems which
have no solutions. Love is not an abstraction, but its reality can be
experienced only when idea, mind, is no longer the supreme factor.”
(Commentaries on Living Vol. 1, pg. 113)
We cannot become complete through
another but must be complete in ourself and only then can we love another. The
completeness achieved through another comes with an expiry date and it perishes
when the object of love perishes or when that person seems to be no longer the
same person we loved. Through possessing another we try to be complete and
hence there is pain and anguish in love:
“Love implies - doesn’t it? –
that those who are loved be left wholly free to grow in their fullness, to be
something greater than social machines. Love does not compel either openly or
through the subtle threat of duties and responsibilities. When there is any
form of compulsion or exertion of authority, there is no love.” (Commentaries
on Living Vol. 3, pg. 147)
“Wisdom comes with the
understanding of one’s relationship with the field, with the passer-by, with
the fleeting thought. To withdraw is to isolate oneself in order to find, it is
to put an end to discovery. Relationship leads to aloneness that is not of
isolation. There must be an aloneness, not of the enclosing mind, but of
freedom. The complete is the alone, and incompleteness seeks the way of
isolation.” (Commentaries on Living Vol. 2, pg. 105)
In possessing another we make
another an object, a tool for our gratification and another person may be happy
to be a tool for someone but this is not love:
“When we use each other for
mutual gratification, can there be any relationship between us? When you use
another for your comfort, as you use a piece of furniture, are you related to
that person? Are you related to the furniture? You may call it yours and that
is all but you have no relationship with it. Similarly, when you use another
for your psychological or physical advantage, you generally call that person
yours., you possess him or her; and is possession relationship? The state uses
the individual and calls him its citizen; but it has no relationship with the
individual, it merely uses him as a tool. A tool is a dead thing, and there can
be no relationship with that which is dead. When we use a man for a purpose,
however noble, we want him as an instrument, a dead thing. We cannot use a
living thing, so our demand is for dead things; our society is based on the use
of dead things. The use of another person makes that person the dead instrument
of our gratification. Relationship can exist only between living, and usage is
a process of isolation. It is this isolating process that breeds conflict.
Why do you lay so much emphasis
on relationship?
Existence is relationship; to be
is to be related. Relationship is society. The structure of our present
society, being based on mutual use, bring about violence, destruction and
misery; and if the so-called revolutionary State, does not fundamentally alter
this usage, it can only produce, perhaps at a different level, still further
conflict, confusion and antagonism. As long as we psychologically need and use
each other, there can be no relationship. Relationship is communion; and how
can there be communion if there is exploitation? Exploitation implies fear, and
fear inevitably leads to all kinds of illusions and misery. Conflict exists
only in exploitation and not in relationship. Conflict, opposition, enmity
exists between us when there is the use of another as a means of pleasure,
achievement. The conflict obviously cannot be resolved by using it as a means
to a self-projected goal; and all ideals, all utopias are self-projected. To
see this is essential, for then we shall experience the truth that conflict in
any form destroys relationship, understanding…. All acquisition is conflict;
all becoming is a process of isolation. The mind is not quiet when it is
disciplined, controlled and checked; such a mind is a dead mind, it is
isolating itself through various forms of resistance, and so it inevitably
creates misery for itself and others.” (Commentaries on Living Vol. 2, pg.
32-33)
Even parental love succumbs to
this analysis:
“What parents call duty is not
love, it is a form of compulsion; and society will support the parents, for
what they are doing is very respectable. The parents are anxious for the boy to
find a secure job and earn some money; but with such an enormous population,
there are a thousand candidates for every job, and the parents think the boy
can never earn a livelihood through painting; so, they try to force him to get
over what they regard as his foolish whim. They consider it a necessity for him
to conform to society, to be respectable and secure. This is called love. But
is it love? Or is it fear covered over by the word ‘love’?” (Commentaries on
Living Vol. 3, pg. 147-148)
The Commentaries on Living, Vol.
2 (pg. 138-141) record a very uncomfortable conversation with a widow. JK
mentions she was the wife of a well-known man who held a high position in the
government and JK mentions, “she had that peculiar atmosphere of power and
wealth, the assurance of one long accustomed to be obeyed and getting things
done.” Perhaps this perception led to the question, “Do you love your husband
or do you love the things which came about through him.” She is shocked but JK
persists that ‘uncovering the truth of that question there may be the discovery
of what love is.’ JK assumes that the question has a truth and she was unaware
of what love is. Startled with this line of questioning she suspects herself
and leaves. Another day she visits JK again. This time JK notes that ‘his death
had left marks on her face, and soon bitterness and resentment were showing
themselves in her talk.’ She tells JK that her line of questioning had
disturbed her. Further she mentions that love is a mixture and that in loving
her husband there was part love for the man and part ambition. She is not ready
to admit that she did not love her husband. JK’s response goes as follows: “is
it love when there is complete identification with another. And is not this
identification a round about way of giving importance to oneself? Is it love
when there is sorrow of loneliness, the pain of being deprived of things that
seemingly gave significance to life? To be cut off from ways of
self-fulfilment, from the things that self has lived on, is the denial of
self-importance, and this brings about disenchantment, bitterness, the misery
of isolation. And is this misery love?” And as we know where there is suffering
there cannot be love because suffering is a sign of selfishness. We don’t cry
for the sake of another, we cry for our own loss. Her confusion however
exacerbates. She says, “You are trying to tell me are you not, that I did not
love my husband at all? I am really appalled at myself, when you put it that
way.” Yet she seems to accept that there may be some truth to it but she is
really confused, “I wonder if I have been even listening to you now, or merely
seeking out a reason to justify myself!” If she tells herself that she really
loved her husband, then in it there may be self-deception and this possibility
she cannot rule out because of what JK says. In this conversation JK has become
an authority figure who has insinuated a doubt in her, he knows what she
doesn’t and he wants her to see something she cannot see and the blame for not
seeing it belongs to her because she is deceiving herself. All the same, she
also mentions, “suddenly I find myself alone, without anything to work for.”
Her ambition seems to have left her after her husband’s death. But perhaps her
self-image was hurt by JK and she was seeking to validate herself. There is
however nothing she can do to escape this logic.
Our worldly love has been completely deprived of any value altogether because it is not love at all. It is difficult not to see this as cynicism. From the above passages the basic pattern of reasoning is, a) love is mechanistic because it responds according to a pattern based on the image, we have of another, b) it is an escape from our inner void to seek security or comfort in another, c) the desire to give is motivated by expectation of a reward, d) there is no integration with another till one is incomplete in oneself, otherwise another is being used a tool for our own gratification.
RESPONSIBILITY
In the passages below JK says
that freedom and responsibility go together:
“Freedom implies responsibility.
And therefore, freedom means care, diligence, not negligence. Not doing what
you want to do which is what is happening in America. Do what you want to do,
which is not freedom but permissiveness which breeds irresponsibility.” (A
Wholly Different Way of Living, pg. 61)
If it is neither restrictions nor
permissiveness then what is responsibility:
“We don’t feel responsible. We
don’t feel responsible because people in authority, politically and religiously
are responsible. We are not. This is the general feeling all over the world.”
(A Wholly Different Way of Living, pg. 51)
“By delegating responsibility to
you I become irresponsible. Whereas now we are saying, no one is responsible
except you, because you are the world and the world is you. You have created
the mess, you alone can bring about clarity, and therefore you are totally,
utterly, completely responsible. And nobody else. Now that means you have to be
a light to yourself, not take the light of a professor, or an analyst, or a
psychologist, or the light of Jesus, or the light of the Buddha. You have to be
a light to yourself in a world that is becoming utterly dark. That means you
have to be responsible. Now, what does that word mean? It means really to
respond totally, adequately to every challenge. You cannot respond adequately
if you are rooted in the past, because the challenge is new, otherwise it is
not a challenge, a crisis is new, otherwise it is not a crisis. If I
respond to a crisis in terms of a pre-conceived plan, which the communists do,
or the Catholics do, or the Protestants and so on, then they are not responding
totally and adequately to the challenge” (A Wholly Different Way of Living, pg.
51-52)
“….. responsibility means
total commitment to the challenge, responding completely adequately, completely
to a crisis. The word responsibility means that - to respond. I cannot
respond completely if I am frightened, or I cannot respond completely if I am
seeking pleasure, I cannot respond completely if my action is routine,
repetitive, traditional, conditioned. So, to respond adequately means that the
‘me’ which is the past has to end.” (A Wholly Different Way of Living, pg. 52)
“The intent, the urge, the feeling of total
responsibility and of action, the ‘doing’ not ‘I will do’. All that is
implied in the word seriousness.” (A Wholly Different Way of Living, pg. 42)
To be responsible is to respond
completely, where there is a formula to act, where there is the ‘me’, pleasure,
routine, tradition, there is incompleteness which is what we find in human
relationships today, one person seeking to be complete through another. The
action that is adequate and complete proceeds from the absence of ‘me’. The
‘intent’, the ‘urge’, the ‘feeling of total responsibility’, is something that
is not to be found in the ‘me’, so this ‘feeling’ we assume is something that
is not in the field of pleasure and pain.
ALONENESS
Relationship with another human
being is possible only when there is freedom and where there is freedom there
is responsibility and aloneness:
“To live alone needs great
intelligence; to live alone and yet be pliable is arduous. To live alone,
without the wall of self-enclosing gratifications, needs extreme alertness;
for a solitary life encourages sluggishness, habits that are confronting and
hard to break. A single life encourages isolation, and only the wise can live
without harm to themselves and to others. Wisdom is alone, but a lonely path
does not lead to wisdom. Isolation is death, and wisdom is not found in
withdrawal. There is no path to wisdom, for all paths are separate, exclusive.
In their very nature paths can only lead to isolation, though these isolations
are called unity, the whole, the one and so on. A path is an exclusive
process; the means is exclusive and the end is as the means. The means is not
separate from the goal, the ‘what should be’. Wisdom comes with one’s
understanding of the relationship with field, with the passer-by, with the
fleeting thought. To withdraw is to isolate oneself in order to find, is to put
an end to discovery. Relationship leads to an aloneness that is not of
isolation. There must be an aloneness, not of the enclosing mind, but of
freedom. The complete is the alone, and incompleteness seeks the way of
isolation.” (Commentaries on Living Vol. 2, pg. 105).
To be alone is not to withdraw
from the world, an escape from responsibility and relationship, it is not to
become an ascetic. To be alone is to be complete in oneself and yet related to
another because there cannot be existence without relationship, unless you are
an ordinary man.
CRITICISM
There is a plethora of
relationships, parent with children, husband and wife, teacher and student, of
one friend with another, of government and citizen. Each relationship is
different and there are different norms governing them. How would these
relationships look like in JK’s ideal society? Let’s see the relation between
teacher and child:
“…. when the teacher, the
educator realizes that he is hurt and the child is hurt, when he is aware of
his hurt, and he is also aware of the child’s hurt, then the relationship
changes. Then he will in the very act of teaching mathematics, or whatever it is,
not only be freeing himself of his hurt but also helping the child to be free
of his hurt. After all that is education: to see that I, who am the teacher, am
hurt, I have gone through agonies of hurt and I want to help that child not to
be hurt and he has come to the school being hurt. So, I say, ‘All right my
friend we both are hurt, let us see, let’s help each other to wipe it out’.
That is the action of love.” (A Wholly Different Way of Living, pg. 159)
I wonder whether that child is
going to find the time to study mathematics or the teacher to teach him.
Realizing that problem JK gracefully, after two pages, restricts the timing to
teach the child how not to be hurt to ten minutes. Ten minutes is what it takes
to solve the entire problem of the world. What is important is that the
relation of teacher to child should be one where there must be healing of the
child and the teacher because only if the teacher understands his hurts can he
help the child get past his. And further about parent and child:
“So, sir, when you feel
responsible there is flowering of a real affection, a flowering of care for a
child, and you don’t train him or condition him to go and kill another for the
sake of your country. You follow? All that is involved in responsibility. So,
we come to a point where, since the human being, is now so conditioned to be
irresponsible, what are the serious people going to do with the irresponsible
people? You understand? Education, politics, religion, everything is making
human beings irresponsible. I am not exaggerating, this is so.” (A Wholly
Different Way of Living, pg. 64)
“When you feel responsible, feel
responsible for the education of your children, not only yours, all children.
Are you educating them to conform to society, are you educating them to merely
acquire a job? ……What is your responsibility, if you feel responsible, for
human growth, human culture, human goodness? What’s your responsibility to the
Earth? It is a tremendous thing to feel responsible. Also, you see with
responsibility goes love, care, attention.” (A Wholly Different Way of Living,
pg. 60)
Where there is dependence on
another there is abdication of responsibility. To not depend on another is to
be alone, to be alone is to be free. To be free yet involves relationship with
another which is not to have an image of another and that implies responsibility
to another and responsibility means co-operation (A Wholly Different Way of Living,
pg. 58). It is assumed that when what makes us separate ends, then there is
unity or co-operation. People co-operate when they do not psychologically
depend on one another. What JK informs us about relationships is only negative,
I won’t destroy what I love, won’t send my children to the army to get killed,
if I have an image about myself, if I want to be successful, there is no
relationship to my wife, if I am responsible, I will not compare my child to
another or in any manner hurt me child. It is a myth that hurt is important in
order to live, the child cannot blossom with goodness if he is hurt. Where
there is hurt there is no attention. In Awakening of Intelligence, pg. 76, JK
says that to be related is to be united without division, no fragmentation. If
I am busy with my selfish pursuits, I cannot be related to another. Also (pg.
93) where there is love, there is no attachment, aloneness is non-attachment and
attachment is isolation. In short, where there is the me, there is no
relationship.
In this scheme of things there is
nothing specific, no norms that distinguishes the teacher-student relation from
parent-child relation. A parent’s duty is to educate his child to the harmful
effects of mechanical thought and the teacher does the same. There is no me,
there is no mine, there is no my child and I am now responsible for the
education of all children. In ‘This Matter of Culture’, pg. 61, a child asks JK
why do we love our mothers, to which JK responds, “If you really love your
mother, don’t you also love your father, your aunt, your neighbour, your
servant? Don’t you have the feeling of love first, and then the love of someone
in particular?” What however is the relation of this universal love with the
‘someone in particular’? Is it not different in relation to different people?
Moreover, what is the relation of the ‘responsible’ consciousness to the
irresponsible one? According to JK love has no opposite and so
no relation to hate? How can a responsible person have then a relation to an
irresponsible one? Yet, JK tells us that it is the duty of the responsible
person to make the irresponsible fellow aware of the dangers of violence and
the entire structure of thought that perpetuates it. But the irresponsible
fellow can build a wall around himself and remain invulnerable to the teachings
of the enlightened man:
“JK: I hate another loves. My
wife loves and I hate. She can talk to me, she can point it out to me, the
unreasonableness and so on, but her love is not going to transform the source
of my hatred.
David Bohm (DB): That’s clear,
yes, except her love is the energy which will be behind the talk.
JK: Behind the talk, yes.
DB: The love itself does not go
in there and dissolve the hate.
JK: Of course not, that is
romantic and all that business. So, the man who hates and has an insight into
the source of it, the cause of it, the movement of it, and ends it, has the
other.
DB: Yes, I think that we say A is
the man who has seen all this and he now has the energy to put it to B – it is
up to B what happens.” (On Mind and Thought, pg. 93, see also The Ending of
Time, pg. 175-176)
All this energy will be useless
against the wall that B builds around itself, this universal energy is now
sensitive to individual differences. Only if B ends the movement of thought
that builds that wall, can the energy finally affect B. But is that energy
transferred or is it the result of B’s overcoming his wall? If B does not end
his conditioning, what responsibility does A have towards B? What is the
relation that an enlightened man has towards society? In the Ending of Time,
Ch. 8, JK discusses the enlightened man’s relation to society. The ordinary man
does not know what love and compassion is, so he has no relationship with the
enlightened man (pg. 163-164). But then JK tells us there is division and the
ordinary man has atleast some contact with the enlightened man, a superficial
relationship. The relation of the enlightened man to the ordinary man is to
tell the latter that he is in darkness and needs to come out of it. The ground,
the immensity in the enlightened man must have an effect on mankind and the
enlightened man is the vehicle through which the ground affects common
consciousness (pg. 168-169). When DB asks whether the effect will show or
manifest in any way JK responds ‘apparently not’, but ‘it must have an effect’,
‘because light must affect darkness’ (pg. 170). In his daily life, the
enlightened man is not different from anyone else but the ‘ground’ can affect
the consciousness of mankind only through him (pg. 171). Further, DB asks why
the ground, the immensity cannot directly affect mankind and requires the mediation
of the enlightened man? JK says it is ‘part of existence’. The ground does not
need the man, the man has touched the ground and so must convey that energy to
others. The ground works through him because he does nothing and that doing
nothing is the doing, the action of the ground (pg. 173). The ground doesn’t
need the man, the man is not the tool of the ground but the ground operates on
common consciousness of mankind through the enlightened man because the man has
touched the ground. That immensity must have an effect on mankind but if man
does not get past his conditioning, then the energy has no effect either and it
cannot go in the individual mind and dissolve his desires, fears etc. This
immense energy has no way to penetrate through the wall built by man around
himself and when it affects him, man has already moved outside his wall. So, it
is still not clear, how an enlightened being who is free and alone, still in
relation to someone else.
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