4. War and Peace Within

In the first of his eight talks in Ojai in the early summer of 1940, K stated that he would not answer questions about the problems of war. Instead, he would discuss its deeper cause: the individual's relationship with other people. Lasting happiness and peace can only be achieved when individuals understand themselves and their relationship with others.

Society is an extension of the individual, a projection of ourselves. We create the world according to what we are as human beings. If we don't understand this, we will never find a solution.

"War is a symptom. Through outward methods we may have temporary peace. Peace is within and not without. I personally feel that the world is myself; what I do creates either peace or sorrow in the world that is myself."

The external has become dominant because we are inwardly poor. We place great importance on material goods, fight wars over them, and base our social and moral values on them. We attribute greater value to goods than they are actually worth because they feed our vanity. This is the beginning of greed, which is hard to stop once it has started.

"To understand yourself, you must create a mirror that reflects accurately what you are. We do not like to create for ourselves such a faculty that reflects purely, without bias, for we are concerned with judgement and alteration."

Perceiving clearly requires constant alertness, passivity, patience, and care. Our minds and hearts must be clear and free from fear, hate, and hope.

Hating Does Not Stop Hate

In his second talk, K returned to the theme of greed. It cannot be eliminated by legislation, power, domination, or ideals. Self-forgetfulness is not a lasting remedy either.

Religions have offered compensation for greed, but this merely takes greed and craving to another level.

Discovering the unpleasant consequences of greed evokes a natural reaction in us. We want to free ourselves from it.

The only way to do so is through constant alertness and attention. Any attempts to fight greed and craving are futile because they are just different forms of the same thing. By being keenly aware of our cravings, we can develop an integral approach to life.

Hate cannot be destroyed by hate, nor by concealing it behind pleasant-sounding words. Peace and order must be created from within; only then will society begin to change. As long as we allow greed, hatred, and fear to run rampant, they will continue to shape our world.

It's comparatively easy to get rid of anger momentarily, but this does not dissolve its underlying causes. To eliminate anger, we must eliminate all its forms. Haters have no time to consider cause and effect. They will not listen to reason because they are so deeply at the mercy of their own fear.

A Revealing Mirror

The third talk moved smoothly from craving material things to conflicts between people. This is mainly because we seek merely gratification in relationships. When we don't get it, we form theories, beliefs, and concepts. We either want to leave the relationship or we become dissatisfied and bitter.

Relationships reveal us who we are, but we don't always like what we see. Rather than facing the facts, we develop various coping mechanisms.

Consequently, love becomes merely an emotion, a sensation, or an idealised concept rather than a reality. We dream of a love that we cannot have and do not have. We create an ideal in our minds, but it is not real.

Our relationships distract us; they consist of a mixture of emotion, pain, possessiveness, and the fear of loss.

K pointed out that we should start with the people and things with whom we are in daily contact, rather than aspiring to something unattainable.

Once you understand the core of craving, it ends, and reality begins.

Two Ways to Get Caught

Dependence is the theme of the fourth talk. There are two types of them: economic and psychological. K focuses on the latter. It causes fear, possessiveness, friction, and frustration.

Can you love someone without being dependent on them or trying to possess them? We cannot live without other people, but can we love without expecting anything in return?

The problem does not lie with the behaviour of others, but with our own minds. The self is at the centre of all our cravings. We must identify the hidden causes of dependency and possessiveness. This requires thoughtful patience and earnestness. The self is revealed in our relationships.

Understanding should be direct, deep, and impersonal, rather than based on reason or emotion. Intellectual understanding leads to isolation and pride, and it is killing all love in the process. Emotional understanding is neither deep nor permanent.

Our primary consideration must be to find out what prevents us from perceiving things as they are. We see everything through a screen of fears, ideals, faith, hope, and tradition. Our task is not to change or accept what we see, but rather to see things as they truly are.

Desire Is the Core of the Self

In the fifth talk, K divided desire into three parts: greed, possessive love, and dependence on beliefs. He said that all three are essentially the same thing.

Freeing ourselves from desire requires us to abandon all interest in ourselves as individuals. This cannot be achieved through control, discipline, or denial of pleasure. Instead, we must be alert and patient in order to recognise the manifestations of greed within ourselves and understand the basis of our thinking.

Consciousness divides our perceptions of the world into pleasant and unpleasant ones. We create memories and achievements, identify with them, and then start to hope for the better or fear the worst.

All the while, deep down, we are aware of the end of life. The desire to have more or suffer less lies at the core of the self. We become entangled in a net of our own making, trying to free ourselves by either creating ideals or burying our worries in endless activity.

A person who is only interested in himself is incapable of making an alert observation. He wants to correct and comment on everything and is unable to be satisfied with the facts. When confused, he seeks help from others because he cannot see things for himself. Dependence on the helper removes the last chance of understanding and controlling the situation. This is twisted and artificial.

Dependence on ideas is a mental prison with one very unpleasant consequence. Ideas divide people into groups that try to maintain their isolated integrity at all costs and convert others to their own ideology.

Thought desperately seeks certainty, moving from one anchor to another, but certainty does not exist in the realm of thought. Thought is a slave to desire, dividing itself into the sublime and the shallow. Conflicts arise from this, and of course, we want to free ourselves from them and to find peace of mind.

That's what we all want. This all happens when we are deeply aware of how desire works in its various forms. This requires keen interest, a natural focus, and attention.

Thought must free itself from the past, the present, and the future. In freedom, everything is immortal, but we are not free from fear, desire, sorrow, or time.

We are prisoners of our intellect, clinging to our knowledge without realising that it is not exhaustive.

We fall in love with our fears, and our delusions, our ideals, and our gods. We pride ourselves on our prejudices, nationalism, civilisation, and possessions. We fuel our racial hatred and worship our gods, failing to realise how foolish and self-centred our thinking is, and how stupidly we behave towards others.

Through our relationships with others, we reveal ourselves; yet we fail to see ourselves properly, perceiving only the façade we present through words.

The Touch of the Master

Someone in the audience asked K whether it is not natural to love spiritual masters, because their love vivifies us.

K replied that there are two kinds of masters: those with whom pupils are in direct contact, and those whom they contact indirectly.

The former can guide and help the pupil, but with the latter, one can deceive oneself limitlessly.

K wondered why many people seek unity with masters, and not with other human beings. To love an ideal or a Master is convenient, but it does not usually lead to loving humanity. Rather, it leads to endless conflict and sorrow. The worship of Masters is idolatry and destructive of understanding and love.

Someone asked what K would do if his children were attacked.

K replied that he does not answer hypothetical questions. If you have dissipated the centre of violence within you, you will never act violently. Why speculate about how you might act in the future?

In the sixth talk, K was asked whether he believes in karma and reincarnation. He asked why millions of people cling to such ideas with such despair.

We accept the idea of a spiritual entity because it is gratifying and comforting, implying a timeless, deathless state.

Thought can be free from self-deception. In joyous and strenuous awareness, thought frees itself from its limitations. When it breaks free of self-reliant, exercised understanding, peace comes.

The Vicious Cycle

In the seventh talk, K asked what we can do to help with the havoc and chaos in the world. We are emotionally caught up in it.

"We must deliberately and intelligently direct our minds and hearts to bring about a complete change in ourselves and thus create a saner and happier world."

However, if we are content and try to organise the economy and social system, things will remain the same. Attributing disproportionate value to things and ideas divides the world and leads to conflict. We must break free from the vicious cycle of greed, possessive love, and the desire for personal immortality.

The questioner wanted to know how to deal with the war in Europe.

K replied that we often mistakenly believe that the world's chaos and misery arise from a single cause. We fail to understand that peace must come from within. We are competitive, aggressive, nationalistic, vengeful, and confused.

We are victims of war, but we are also its cause. Peace will not come merely by wishing for it. Instead of taking hold of ourselves, we are too lazy to solve this problem ourselves and hope that others will do it for us.

Someone asked K what his conception of God is.

K replied that God, truth, or whatever we call reality, cannot be described. Any 'god' that can be described is not real. When we assert that there is or is not a God, we are just repeating old experiences.

To understand reality, there must be constant and earnest awareness.

"In awareness there is only the present. Awareness is an integral process, not a process of division."

Finally, someone asked what diet has to do with the mental processes or intelligence. K said that the questioner was starting from the wrong end. Inward peace does not depend on what we eat. What matters is what we think, how we feel, and how we behave.

The Means Create the Problems

If we try to solve a complex problem with a simple solution, we create new problems. We can approach things from an internal or external perspective.

The external approach focuses on institutions, laws, and the state. Unfortunately, there are many problems with both of these approaches. The internal approach focuses on the mind. However, ideas and ideals do not solve problems; they create them.

K urges us as individuals to "direct our thought to that freedom in which there is no sense of the I". Freedom from the self is the beginning of true meditation. Meditation must begin with awareness. Creative silence is needed to grasp reality.

K ultimately asserted that the purpose of the series is not to provide a system of thought, but rather to encourage self-awareness and reflection on daily actions and relationships, helping individuals to recognise their fears and desires.

In August 1940, K delivered a series of talks in Sarobia, Pennsylvania. After that, he withdrew to Ojai for seven years. During this time, he met with people, helped them with their problems, and wrote down his thoughts in a notebook every morning. However, he did not give any talks for almost four years.