Intelligence and Instant Action
It was very early in the morning and the valley was full of silence. The sun was
not yet up behind the hills and the snow peaks were still dark. For many days
now the sun had been clear, strong and rather hot. It wouldn’t last, and yet this
morning again the sky was very blue, the sun began to touch the snow peak, and
to the west there were dark clouds. The air was clean. At that altitude the
mountains seemed very near. They stood aloof, alone, and there was both that
strange feeling of nearness and a sense of vast distance. As you looked at them
you were aware of the age of the earth and your own impermanence. You passed
away and they remained, the mountains, the hills, the green fields and the river.
They would always be there, and you with your worries, your insufficiencies and
sorrow would pass away.
It is always this impermanency that has made man seek something beyond the
hills, investing it with permanency, with divinity, with beauty, which he in
himself has not. But this doesn’t answer his agonies, allay his sorrow or mischief.
On the contrary it gives new life to his violence and cruelties. His gods, his
utopias, his worship of the State do not end his suffering.
The magpie on the fir tree had seen the little mouse hurrying across the road,
and in a second it was caught and carried off. There was only a sound of distant
cowbells and of a stream rushing down the valley, but slowly the quiet morning
was lost in the noise of trucks and a hammering across the road where a new
house was going up.
Is there individuality at all? Or only a collective mass of varied forms of
conditioning? After all, the so-called individual is the world, the culture, the
social and economic environment. He is the world and the world is him; and all
the mischief and misery begin when he separates himself from the world and
pursues his particular talent or ambition, inclination and pleasure. We don’t seem
to realize deeply that we are the world, not only at the obvious level, but also at
the core of our being. In fulfilling a particular talent we seem to think we are
expressing ourselves as individuals and, resisting every form of encroachment,
insist on its fulfilment. It is not the talent, the pleasure or the will that make us
individuals. The will, whatever little talent one has, and the drive of pleasure are
part of this whole structure of the world.
We are not only slaves of the culture in which we have been brought up; we
are also slaves to the vast cloud of misery and sorrow of all humanity, to the
vastness of its confusion, violence and brutality. We never seem to pay attention
to the accumulated sorrow of man. Nor are we aware of the terrible violence
which has been gathering generation after generation. We are concerned rightly
with the outward change or reformation of the social structure with its injustice,
wars, poverty, but we try to change it either through violence or the slow way of
legislation. In the meantime there is poverty, war, hunger and the mischief that
exists between man and man. We seem totally to neglect paying attention to
these vast accumulated clouds which man has been gathering for centuries upon
centuries—sorrow, violence, hatred and the artificial differences of religion and
race. These are there, as the outward structure of society is there, as real, as vital,
as effective. We neglect these hidden accumulations and concentrate on the
outward reformation. This division is perhaps the greatest cause of our decline.
What is important is to consider life not as an inner and outer, but as a whole,
as a total undivided movement. Then action has quite a different meaning, for
then it is not partial. It is fragmented or partial action that adds to the cloud of
misery. The good is not the opposite of evil. The good has no relation to evil, and
the good cannot be pursued. It flowers only when suffering is not.
How is man then to extricate himself from this confusion, violence and
sorrow? Certainly not through the operation of the will with all its factors and
determination, resistance and strife. The perception or the understanding of this is intelligence. It is this intelligence that puts away all the combinations of sorrow, violence and strife. It is like seeing a danger. Then there is instant action—not the action of will which is the product of thought. Thought is not intelligence.
Intelligence can use thought, but when thought contrives to capture this
intelligence for its own uses, then it becomes cunning, mischievous, destructive.
So intelligence is neither yours nor mine. It doesn’t belong to the politician,
the teacher or the saviour. This intelligence is not measurable. It is really a state
of nothingness.
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