Freedom Is Order
The sane need no discipline; only the unbalanced need the restraint, the resistance, and are tempted. The sane are aware of their desires, their urges, and temptation does not even occur to them. The healthy are strong without their knowing it. It is only the weak who know their own weakness, and so enticement and the struggle against temptation come. There really is no temptation if you keep your eyes open—not only the mental eye but also the sensory eye. The inattentive become entangled in the problems which their inattention breeds. It does not mean that the sane and the healthy have no desires. To them it is not a problem. The problem arises only when desire is made into pleasure by thought.
It is this search for pleasure against which man sets up resistance, for he is aware that there is pain involved in it, or else the environment, the culture, has bred into him the fear of continued pleasure.
Resistance in any form is violence and all our life is based on this resistance. Resistance then becomes discipline. The word ‘discipline’, like so many other words, is heavily loaded, interpreted according to the various families, communities, cultures. Discipline means learning. Learning does not mean a drill, an imitation, conformity. Learning about behavior, the way of action in relationship, is the freedom to look at yourself, at your conduct.
But this seeing of yourself as you are is not possible if freedom is denied. So freedom is necessary to learn about anything, about that cloud, the flower, and Yourself.
Military drilling and conformity to the priest are the same, and obedience is resistance to freedom. It is strange that we haven’t gone above and beyond the narrow field of suppression, control, obedience, and the authority of the book. For in all this the mind can never flourish. How can anything flourish within the darkness of fear?
But yet, order one must have; but the order of discipline, of drill, is the death of love. One must be punctual, consider ate. But this consideration, if it is compelled, becomes superficial, a formal politeness. Order is not to be found in obedience. There is absolute order, as in mathematics, when the chaos of obedience is understood. It is not order first and then freedom later, but freedom is order.
To be desire-less is to be disorderly, but to understand desire, with its pleasure, is to be orderly.
Surely, in all this, the one thing that does bring about an exquisite order—without the will, which arranges, complies, asserts—is love. And without love the established order is anarchy.
You cannot cultivate love, so you cannot possibly cultivate order. You cannot drill love into a human being. Aggression comes out of this drill, and fear.
So what is one to do? You see all this; you see the infinite mischief man is doing to man. You don’t see how extraordinarily positive it is to negate; negation of the false is the truth. It is not that you replace negation with truth—but the very act of denial is the truth. The seeing is the doing, and you don’t have to do anything more.
It is this search for pleasure against which man sets up resistance, for he is aware that there is pain involved in it, or else the environment, the culture, has bred into him the fear of continued pleasure.
Resistance in any form is violence and all our life is based on this resistance. Resistance then becomes discipline. The word ‘discipline’, like so many other words, is heavily loaded, interpreted according to the various families, communities, cultures. Discipline means learning. Learning does not mean a drill, an imitation, conformity. Learning about behavior, the way of action in relationship, is the freedom to look at yourself, at your conduct.
But this seeing of yourself as you are is not possible if freedom is denied. So freedom is necessary to learn about anything, about that cloud, the flower, and Yourself.
Military drilling and conformity to the priest are the same, and obedience is resistance to freedom. It is strange that we haven’t gone above and beyond the narrow field of suppression, control, obedience, and the authority of the book. For in all this the mind can never flourish. How can anything flourish within the darkness of fear?
But yet, order one must have; but the order of discipline, of drill, is the death of love. One must be punctual, consider ate. But this consideration, if it is compelled, becomes superficial, a formal politeness. Order is not to be found in obedience. There is absolute order, as in mathematics, when the chaos of obedience is understood. It is not order first and then freedom later, but freedom is order.
To be desire-less is to be disorderly, but to understand desire, with its pleasure, is to be orderly.
Surely, in all this, the one thing that does bring about an exquisite order—without the will, which arranges, complies, asserts—is love. And without love the established order is anarchy.
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You cannot cultivate love, so you cannot possibly cultivate order. You cannot drill love into a human being. Aggression comes out of this drill, and fear.
So what is one to do? You see all this; you see the infinite mischief man is doing to man. You don’t see how extraordinarily positive it is to negate; negation of the false is the truth. It is not that you replace negation with truth—but the very act of denial is the truth. The seeing is the doing, and you don’t have to do anything more.
