In The Arms Of The Moon
Meditate and become free from this basement. It is not that the basement is not useful, it can be used, but it should not become a substitute for your understanding. A man of understanding looks into things directly. His insight is direct, but he can use all his accumulation to help the insight to reach you. He can use all his accumulation to make everything that he is trying to convey to you clear, but that which he is trying to convey is his own. Words may be borrowed, language may be borrowed – has to be borrowed – concepts may be borrowed but not what he is trying to convey to you. The container will come from the memory but the contents will be his insight.
And of course, a man who has no understanding is continuously a victim of so many thoughts, because he has no one insight to give him a center. He has a crowd of thoughts – unrelated to each other, even diametrically opposite to each other, contradicting each other, with deep antagonism towards each other. He has a crowd – not even a group, not even a society, but a mob of thoughts buzzing inside the mind. So if you go on with your thinking too far, one day you will become mad. Too much thought can create insanity.
In primitive societies madness is rare. The more civilized a society is, the more people go insane. And in civilized societies, more people go insane who work with their intellects. This is unfortunate but this is a fact: that more psychoanalysts go mad than any other profession. Why? – too much thinking. It is very difficult to manage so many contradictory thoughts together. In managing them, your whole being becomes unmanaged, becomes a chaos.
Understanding is single, understanding is central. It is simple; thoughts are very complex.
A henpecked husband visited a psychiatrist and said he had a recurring nightmare. “Every night,” he said. “I dream I am shipwrecked with twelve beautiful women.”
“What is so terrible about that?” asked the psychiatrist.
“Have you ever tried cooing to twelve women?”
That was his problem: how to “coo” to twelve women. Even to coo to one woman is difficult.
Thinking is like cooing to thousands and thousands of women around you. One naturally goes mad. Understanding is very simple: you are married to one insight, but that insight works like a light, a torch: wherever you focus your torch, mysteries are revealed, wherever you focus your torch, darkness disappears.
Try to find your hidden understanding – the way is to drop thinking. And to drop thinking there are two possibilities: either meditation or love.
The second: reaction and response.
Reaction is from the thoughts and response is understanding. Reaction comes from the past, response is always in the present. But ordinarily we react – we have everything already ready inside.
Somebody is doing something and we react as if a button has been pushed. Somebody insults you – you become angry. That has happened before – it has been happening the same all the while. It has become almost like a button: somebody pushes it – you become angry. There is not a single moment of waiting, not a single moment where you look at the situation – because the situation may be different.
Excerpted From The Beloved CH: 2
