- Individual and the ideal- 2

....contd

Now the second point. I have always worked for an ideal, and I don't understand your denial of it. Would you mind going into this problem?"

Our present morality is based on the past or the future on the traditional or the what ought to be. The what ought to be is the ideal in opposition to what has been, the future in conflict with the past. Non-violence is the ideal, the what should be; and the what has been is violence. The what has been projects the what should be; the ideal is homemade, it is projected by its own opposite, the actual. The antithesis is an extension of the thesis; the opposite contains the element of its own opposite. Being violent, the mind projects its opposite, the ideal of non-violence. It is said that the ideal helps to overcome its own opposite; but does it? Is not the ideal an avoidance, an escape from the what has been, or from what is? The conflict between the actual and the ideal is obviously a means of postponing the understanding of the actual, and this conflict only introduces another problem which helps to cover up the immediate problem. The ideal is a marvelous and respectable escape from the actual. The ideal of non-violence, like the collective Utopia, is fictitious; the ideal, the what should be, helps us to cover up and avoid what is. The pursuit of the ideal is the search for reward. You may shun the worldly rewards as being stupid and barbarous, which they are; but your pursuit of the ideal is the search for reward at a different level, which is also stupid. The ideal is a compensation, a fictitious state which the mind has conjured up. Being violent, separative and out for itself, the mind projects the gratifying compensation, the fiction which it calls the ideal, the Utopia, the future, and vainly pursues it. That very pursuit is conflict, but it is also a pleasurable postponement of the actual. The ideal, the what should be, does not help in understanding what is; on the contrary, it prevents understanding.

"Do you mean to say that our leaders and teachers have been wrong in advocating and maintaining the ideal?"

What do you think?

"If I understand correctly what you say..."

Please, it is not a matter of understanding what another may say, but of finding out what is true. Truth is not opinion; truth is not dependent on any leader or teacher. The weighing of opinions only prevents the perception of truth. Either the ideal is a homemade fiction which contains its own opposite, or it is not. There are no two ways about it. This does not depend on any teacher, you must perceive the truth of it for yourself. "If the ideal is fictitious, it revolutionizes all my thinking. Do you mean to say that our pursuit of the ideal is utterly futile?,"

It is a vain struggle, a gratifying self-deception is it not?

"This is very disturbing, but I am forced to admit that it is. We have taken so many things for granted that we have never allowed ourselves to observe closely what is in our hand. We have deceived ourselves, and what you point out upsets completely the structure of my thought and action. It will revolutionize education, our whole way of living and working. I think I see the implications of a mind that is free from the ideal, from the what should be. To such a mind, action has a significance quite different from that which we give it now. Compensatory action is not action at all, but only a reaction - and we boast of action!...But without the ideal, how is one to deal with the actual, or with the what has been?"

The understanding of the actual is possible only when the ideal, the what should be, is erased from the mind; that is only when the false is seen as the false. The what should be is also the what should not be. As long as the mind approaches the actual with either positive or negative compensation, there can be no understanding of the actual. To understand the actual you must be indirect communion with it; your relationship with it cannot be through the screen of the ideal, or through the screen of the past, of tradition, of experience. To be free from the wrong approach is the only problem. This means, really, the understanding of conditioning, which is the mind. The problem is the mind itself, and not the problems it breeds; the resolution of the problems bred by the mind is merely the reconciliation of effects, and that only leads to further confusion and illusion.

.........contd