Seeing directly what we are

SEEING DIRECTLY WHAT WE ARE

I think one of our major problems is to be sufficiently sensitive, not only to one’s own idiosyncrasies, fallacies and troubles, but also to be sensitive to others. Living in this mechanical world of job, success, competition, ambition, social status and prestige makes for insensitivity to the psychological dangers. One is aware, and naturally so, of the danger of physical insecurity—not having enough

money, proper health, clothes and shelter, and so on—but we are hardly aware of

our inward psychological structure. One feels that one lacks the finesse, sensitivity and intelligence necessary to deal with the inward problems. 

Why is it that we are not as aware of the psychological dangers as we are of the physical ones? We are well aware of the outward dangers—a precipice, poison, snakes, wild animals, or the destructive nature of war. Why is it that we are not completely aware inwardly of the psychological dangers such as nationalism, conflict within oneself, accepting ideologies, concepts and formulas, the danger of accepting authority of any kind, the danger of the constant battles between human beings however closely they may be related? 

    If some of us are aware of those dangers, how do we deal with them? Either we escape from them,

suppress them, try to forget them, or leave it to time to resolve them. We do all this because we do not know what else to do. Or, if we have read a great deal, we try to apply what others have said. So there is never a direct contact with the problem. We are always trying to overcome these psychological dangers, to suppress them, trying to force ourselves to understand them; there is never direct communion with the issue. And of course there is the whole modern structure of psychology; the psychologists and analysts want to tell us what we are. They ask us to study the animal so that we will understand ourselves better. Obviously, we are the result of the animal, but we have to understand that ourselves, not through the animal or through Freud or Jung or any other specialist, but by seeing what we actually are; understanding it, not through some other person’s eyes but with our own eyes, with our own hearts, our own minds. When we do that, all sense of following another, all sense of authority, comes to an end. I think that is very important. Then we do something directly, for its own sake, not because somebody else tells us. I think that is the beginning of what it means to love.