What is the actual relationship in our daily life with each other?

Source : jiddu-krishnamurti-1st-public-talk

What is relationship? What does it mean to be related to another? This is very important to find out, not to avoid, not to escape, but to find out actually what it means to have a relationship with another - at the physical level, sexually, psychological level, emotional level, intellectual level and at the level of what one calls love. And if that whole nature and structure of relationship is not understood, lived daily - please listen to this - if that relationship is not clear to go and meditate is utterly infantile, it has no meaning because this is the basis of life, then meditation merely becomes a futile, infantile escape. And in this country, the gurus and all the business, the transcendental meditation and all that, becomes utter stupid nonsense unless you establish right relationship between you and another, that being the very basis of existence, trying to meditate becomes an evasion of the actual. Therefore leads to all kinds of neurotic, destructive results. Right?

You know the speaker has faced this problem of meditation and the gurus for the last fifty years. It is not prejudice but in matters of spirit there is no leader and taught, therefore no authority, no guru. It is the authority that has destroyed the investigation and the discovery of what is truth.

So: what is relationship? What is the actual relationship in our daily life with each other? If you examine it very closely, and are not afraid, what is taking place? You have an image about yourself, first, don't you? A picture, an idea, a concept of yourself, and the person you are related to has his concept, or her concept, her image, her picture about herself. Right? Please you are looking at yourself, you are not merely listening to these words. Words are a mirror, and the mirror becomes useless when you are looking at yourself actually. So you and the other, man and woman, boy or girl or husband, wife and so on and so on, each human being has a picture, an image, a conclusion, an idea about oneself, about themselves. If you have lived with another for a week, or a hundred weeks, you have made a picture of the other, and the other has made a picture of you, That is a fact, isn't it? No? Are you afraid to look at that picture? That picture has been built through many days, many years, many incidents, nagging, pleasure, comfort, fear, domination, possession, attachment and so on and so on and so on. Each one has an image of the other, and the other has an image of the other person. That is an actuality, isn't it? And you call that relationship. That is, relationship between the two pictures, between the two images. Right? You are not agreeing with the speaker. You are looking at the fact. These pictures or images or conclusions are memories, memories which you have put together, stored up in the brain, and reacting to each other according to those images. You have been hurt, and that hurt is a memory, stored up in the brain, and that reacts. So our relationship is not actual but memorial. Do you understand what I am saying? If one is married you have built a picture about your wife, and the wife has built a picture, an image about you. Those pictures, those images are the nagging, the casual remarks, the hurts, the pleasure, the comfort, the sexual memories, all that. And the relationship is between these two verbal pictures in memory, not actual. I think you have got to understand this. And therefore there is always division and conflict. For instance, you have been hurt in this relationship. The hurt is, the image you have built about yourself has been hurt. Right? Can we go on?

I wonder if you are actually observing it in yourself, or listening to the speaker and agreeing with the speaker? Do you understand? They are two different facts. Either you are agreeing with the speaker and therefore that has very little significance. Or you are actually seeing that you have built an image about yourself, and that hurt exists because of that image. Understood?

So in this relationship of human beings the hurt has taken place. The image has been hurt. Unless you heal that image totally there must always be conflict. Right? There is the past hurts and you may receive further hurts. So there are two problems. Right? The one is that you have been hurt in the past and unfortunately this happens from childhood, in the school, in college, at home, university, right through life one is hurt. And because one is hurt one builds a wall around oneself to resist, not to be hurt any more. And having built a wall round oneself division takes place. Right? And you may say, 'I love you' but it is just words because a division exists. Right? So is it possible - please listen - is it possible not to be hurt at all? Which doesn't mean build a wall of resistance so that nothing can touch you, but to live without resistance which means never to be hurt. You understand? You know what it means to be hurt? When the child is compared with another, that is a hurt. Any form of comparison is to hurt another. Any form of imitation, conformity, is to hurt another, not only verbally but deeply. And when one is hurt, out of that hurt there is violence. So the problem is: is it possible never to be hurt? And having been hurt how to deal with the past hurts. And how to prevent future hurts. You have understood the problem? So we will find out.

When you say, 'I am hurt' what is this me that is hurt? You say, 'You have hurt me' - by your word, by a gesture, by discourtesy and so on and so on. What is hurt? Is it not the image that you have built about yourself? Please do look at it. That image is one of the factors which society, education and environment has built in you. You are that picture, that image, the name, the form, the characteristic, the idiosyncrasy and so on. All that is you, the picture, the image which you are. And that image has been hurt. You have a conclusion about yourself, that you are this or that, and when that conclusion is disturbed you are hurt. You are following all this? So can you live without a conclusion, without a picture, without an image about yourself? As long as you have an image about yourself you are everlastingly hurt. You may resist it, you may build a wall round yourself but when there is a wall around yourself, when you withdraw there is a division, and where there is a division there must be conflict. Like the Arab and the Jew, the Hindu, the Muslim, the Communist and the non-Communist - you follow? Where there is a division it is the law, there must be conflict.

So: is it possible not to be hurt at all? That is to have an innocent mind. The word 'innocent' in Latin and so on means a mind that is incapable of being hurt. And this is very important to find out if one can live in daily life, not to go off into some monastery or in some community, limit your - you know, all agreeing together, becoming mushy and sentimental and all that business - but actually in daily life to find out if you can live without an image, and therefore never to be hurt. We are going to find out. We are going to examine whether it is possible to live that way. Which means never to have conflict, never to have this division, psychological division - there is a division between you and me, tall, short, brown, white, black and so on and so on, but the psychological division.

So first to be aware that one has this image. Not to rationalize it, not to say it is inevitable, we must have it, otherwise what would happen, if I don't have an image about myself how can I live in this world when everybody around me has images, they will destroy me. Those are all excuses. But to find out whether it is possible without a single image. Because the image is the Arab, the image is the Jew - do you understand this? And therefore there is eternal war. When I have an image about myself and that is hurt and my wife has an image about herself she is hurt, how can we have any kind of relationship? So is it possible not to have an image, which means not to be hurt? One has been hurt in the past, one has resisted it, built a wall round oneself, frightened not to be hurt any more, and there may be future hurts and therefore withdrawal, isolation.

Now how will you deal with the past hurts? Please follow all this. Will you analyse them? Do you understand? Analyse why you have been hurt, what are the causes of your hurt, who has hurt you, you know, go into it analytically. Again look at the analytical tradition: we have accepted analysis as part of our life. Right? If you cannot analyse yourself you go to the professional. What is the process of analysis? There is the analyser and the analysed. Right? See the division already. Are you following all this? I hope you are otherwise it is a waste, there is no point in my talking about it. You are examining your analysing your hurts. When you analyse, the process is the analyser and the analysed. Right? So there is a division. Is not the analyser - please listen carefully - is not the analyser the analysed? Right? You follow this? So you have created an artificial division, which is the analyser is thinking differently from the analysed, but in actuality the analyzer is the analysed. Right? So there is a fundamental error in the process of analysis. And in the process of analysis you take time, days, months, years - you know the game that you all play, and enriching each other in your own peculiar ways, financially and emotionally and all the rest of it.

So there is a fundamental error in the process of analysis. When the analyser is the analysed, realizing that then how is one to be free of all hurts, of the past, and any hurts that may come tomorrow, in the future? Is this a problem, is this a real vital issue to be solved by you? Do you feel the necessity of solving it? Otherwise you just play games with it. If it is essential that you solve this problem, which means the problem of man who has divided himself by calling himself a Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Muslim - you follow? - me and you and we and they. Now how is one to be free of past hurts? If analysis is not the way, what is one to do?

first let's look at the picture first. Not the verbal picture because the description is not the described, the word is not the thing. So what we have done is that the speaker has described, so don't be carried off by the description. Look at the described, which is that you are hurt, it is inevitable. Life hurts you. Another hurts you. By comparing, through imitation, through conformity, through pressure, through propaganda, so all the things around you are hurting you. Now is it possible to be free of hurt? That is, are you aware that you have an image about yourself and that the image is being hurt? If you are aware, if you say, 'Yes, this is a fact, this is an actuality, not a description', then what is one to do, knowing that any division must inevitably lead to conflict. Right? We will go into it together, share together. That is, the speaker is not telling you what to do. The speaker and you are sharing this question, to find out actually, in daily life, whether it is possible to live without a single hurt, because then you will know what love is.

Hurt and flattery are the same, aren't they? I wonder if you realize it? Both are different forms of hurts - no? You are flattered and you like it, and the flatterer becomes your friend. So that also is another form of encouraging the image. Right? The one you want, the other you don't want. So we are only now dealing with what we don't want. Which is not to be hurt. But we want the other, which is pleasurable, which is comforting, comforting, pleasing to the images that we have. So both are the same. Now how am I, how is a human being to be free of hurt? So we have to go into the question of what it is to be attentive - sorry to expand this question.

What does it mean to attend? Because if you know what it means to attend it may solve the problem. I will show it to you - or rather I won't show it to you, we will share it together. Have you ever given total attention to anything? Complete attention in which there is no centre from which you attend. Do you understand the question? When there is a centre from which you attend then there is a division. I wonder if you follow this? No, I see you don't. Let's put it differently.

All right. You know what it is to be aware - do you? To be aware. That is, one is aware of the trees under which we are sitting, aware of the branches, the colour of the branches, the leaves, the shadows, the thickness, aware of all the nature, the beauty of it. Then you are also aware of sitting on the ground, the colour of the carpet, the speaker, the microphone. And can you be aware of all this, the microphone, the carpet, the earth, the colour of the leaves and so on, the blue shirt and the white shirt, and the desk, aware of all that without any choice? You understand? To look at it without any choice, judgement, just to look. If you can do it, that is to look without any judgement, without any choice, just to observe, in that observation there is no observer. Right? The moment the observer comes in prejudice begins, the like and the dislike, I prefer this, I don't prefer that, division takes place. Right? So there is attention only when there is no entity who says, 'I am attending'. Right? Please, it is important to understand this. Because if you know, if there is an attention then you will see you will never be hurt again. And the past hurts are wiped away. That is, when there is an awareness in which there is no choice, no judgement, merely observation, but the moment the observer comes in then the observer gets hurt. Right? Do you understand?

So, when somebody says something to the picture that is going to be hurt, when there is complete attention there is no hurt. Have you understood? Somebody calls the speaker a fool, arrogant, or this or that. To listen to that word, to see the meaning of that word and give complete attention to it, then there is no past hurt, or the future hurt because there is no entity who is observing. I wonder if you get this? No, please, this is very important because we are going to go into this in all our talks. That as long as there is a division there must be conflict, because this is very important in dealing with fear, with pleasure, with sorrow, with death, all of that, that as long as there is a division between the observer, the experiencer, the thinker and the thought, there must inevitably be conflict, division, fragmentation, and therefore disintegration. So can you observe the tree, yourself, your neighbour, observe life completely attentively? Then can you observe with total attention the picture that you have about yourself? And when you give that complete attention is there a picture at all? You understand? You have understood it?

So when there is no image, no picture, no conclusion then what is the relationship between two human beings? You have understood? Now our relationship is based on division, which is an obvious fact. The man goes to the office, there he is brutal and ambitious, greedy and all the rest of it, comes home and he says, 'Darling, how lovely'! So there is contradiction in our life, and therefore our life is a constant battle. And therefore no relationship. And to have real human relationship is to have no image whatsoever. Then there is no image, no picture, no conclusion, and it is quite complex this question, because you have memories. Can you be free of memories of yesterday's incidents so that you are - you follow? All that is implied. Then what is the relationship between two human beings who have no images? You will find out if you have no image. That may be love. And that word 'love' has been so abused, so trodden, so sullied.

So can one live, actually in daily life without division? Which means without war, without conflict.

Demonic Nature is always Jealous of God head path, so it pull you off to a path to which it belongs , and ensures that their PATH is Right, hence we cannot resolve the conflict, and disharmony persists. confusion persists.. 

so Sri krishna says - (Source: swami prabupada) in following sloka that 5 demonic activities always deviate. Krishna not only clarifies here that He(supreme being) is residing not only in your body but in others body too, so if u refuse others means your are refusing HIM.so the universal God lives in every one's body .

 chapter 16-18

ahankaram balam darpam
kamam krodham ca samsritah
mam atma-para-dehesu
pradvisanto 'bhyasuyakah

SYNONYMS

ahankaram--false ego; balam--strength; darpam--pride; kamam--lust; krodham--anger; ca--also; samsritah--having taken shelter of; mam--Me; atma--one's own; para dehesu--in other bodies; pradvisantah--blasphemes; abhyasuyakah--envious.

TRANSLATION

Bewildered by1) false ego, 2) strength, 3) pride, 4) lust and 5) anger, the demon becomes envious of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is situated in his own body and in the bodies of others, and blasphemes against the real religion.

 

PURPORT

A demoniac person, being always against God's supremacy, does not like to believe in the scriptures. He is envious of both the scriptures and of the existence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This is caused by his so-called prestige and his accumulation of wealth and strength. He does not know that the present life is a preparation for the next life. Not knowing this, he is actually envious of his own self, as well as of others. He commits violence on other bodies and on his own. He does not care for the supreme control of the Personality of Godhead because he has no knowledge. Being envious of the scriptures and the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he puts forward false arguments against the existence of God and refutes the scriptural authority. He thinks himself independent and powerful in every action. He thinks that since no one can equal him in strength, power, or in wealth, he can act in any way and no one can stop him. If he has an enemy who might check the advancement of his sensual activities, he makes plans to cut him down by his own power. 

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we can conclude that when we are in that demonic state of mind we are in an image , we are talking to an image so two images fight always, if both; person decide that they should not talk to  an image but  should talk in actuality. There would be perfect harmony, there would ease(no dis-ease), there would be love, compassion, and energy. Let this Valentine day revive our relationships to actual not to the images.

 So, as long as we use the mind in relationship, there can be no understanding of relationship. Because, after all, it is the mind that makes us be detached. When there is love, there is no question of attachment or detachment. The moment there is the cessation of that love, then the question of attachment and detachment begins. Love is not the product of thought; you cannot think about love. It is a state of being. And, when the mind interferes by its calculation, by its jealousies, by its various cunning deceptions, then the problem of relationship arises. Relationship has significance only when it is a process of revealing oneself to oneself; and if in that process one proceeds deeply, widely, and extensively, then in relationship there is peace - not the contention, not the antagonism between two people. Only in that quietness, in that relationship in which there is the fruition of self-knowledge, is there peace.....by JKM