[Sovatsky would be considered by a few as just another American PhD on some kooky, unrefereed website. He was actually referring to celibacy within the tantric tradition. I think it applies just as well without celibacy, ie; when sex is healthily subsumed as just another part of, and inseparable in reality from, the fluid conceptual whole that an individual can perceive as being themselves.]

I would like to talk about relationship, about what love is, about human existence in which is involved our daily living, the problems one has, the conflicts, the pleasures and the fears, and that most extraordinary thing one calls death.

I think one has to understand, not as a theory, not as a speculative, entertaining concept, but rather as an actual fact, that we are the world and the world is us. The world is each one of us; to feel that, to be really committed to it and to nothing else, brings about a feeling of great responsibility and an action that must not be fragmentary, but whole.

I think we are apt to forget that our society, the culture in which we live, which has conditioned us, is the result of human endeavor, conflict, human misery and suffering. Each one of us is that culture; the community is each one of us - we are not separate from it. To feel this, not as an intellectual idea or a concept, but to actually feel the reality of this, one has to go into the question of what is relationship; because our life, our existence, is based on relationship.

Life is a movement in relationship. If we do not understand what is implied in relationship, we inevitably not only isolate ourselves, but create a society in which human beings are divided, not only nationally, religiously, but also in themselves and therefore they project what they are into the outer world.

I do not know if you have gone into this question deeply for yourself, to find out if one can live with another in total harmony, in complete accord, so that there is no barrier, no division, but a feeling of complete unity. Because relationship means to be related - not in action, not in some project, not in an ideology - but to be totally united in the sense that the division, the fragmentation between individuals, between two human beings, does not exist at all at any level.

Unless one finds this relationship, it seems to me that when we try to bring order in the world, theoretically or technologically, we are bound to create not only deep divisions between man and man, but also we shall be unable to prevent corruption. Corruption begins in the lack of relationship; I think that is the root of corruption. Relationship as we know it now is the continuation of division between individuals. The root meaning of that word individual means "indivisible." A human being who is in himself not divided, not fragmented, is really an individual. But most of us are not individuals; we think we are, and therefore there is the opposition of the individual to the community. One has to understand not only the meaning of that word individuality in the dictionary sense, but in that deep sense in which there is no fragmentation at all. That means perfect harmony between the mind, the heart, and the physical organism. Only then an individuality exists.

... and this ties in well with independence.

If we examine our present relationship with each other closely, be it intimate or superficial, deep or passing, we see it fragmented. Wife or husband, boy or girl, each lives in his own ambition, in personal and egotistic pursuits, in his own cocoon. All these contribute to the factor of bringing about an image in himself, and therefore his relationship with another is through that image, therefore there is no actual relationship.

I do not know if you are aware of the structure and the nature of this image that one has built around oneself and in oneself. Each person is doing this all the time, and how can there be a relationship with another if there is that personal drive, envy, competition, greed and all the rest of those things which are sustained and exaggerated in modern society? How can there be relationship with another if each one of us is pursuing his own personal achievement, his own personal success?

We are concerned with psychological revolution, and this revolution can only take place when there is the right kind of relationship between human beings.

You may hold the hand of another, kiss each other, sleep together, but actually, when you observe very closely, is there any relationship at all? To be related means not to be dependent on each other, not to escape from your loneliness through another, not to try to find comfort, companionship, through another. When you seek comfort through another, are dependent, and all the rest of it, can there be any kind of relationship? Or, are you then using each other?

We are not being cynical, but actually observing what is: that is not cynicism. So to find out what it actually means to be related to another, one must understand this question of loneliness, because most of us are terribly lonely; the older we grow, the more lonely we become, especially in this country. Have you noticed the old people, what they are like? Have you noticed their escapes, their amusements? They have worked all their lives and they want to escape into some kind of entertainment.

Seeing this, can we find a way of living in which we don't use another? - psychologically, emotionally, not depend on another, not use another as a means of escape from our own tortures, from our own despairs, from our own loneliness. To understand this is to understand what it means to be lonely. Have you ever been lonely? Do you know what it means? - that you have no relationship with another, are completely isolated. You may be with your family, in a crowd, in the office, wherever you are, when this complete sense of utter loneliness with its despair suddenly comes upon you. Till you solve that completely, your relationship becomes a means of escape and therefore it leads to corruption, to misery. How is one to understand this loneliness, this sense of complete isolation? To understand it, one has to look at one's own life. Is not your every action a self-centered activity? You may occasionally be charitable, generous, do something without any motive - those are rare occasions. This despair can never be dissolved through escape, but by observing it.

ie; no perceived separation of person from activity - no consciously purposeful thought required.

When there is no relationship, can there be love? We talk about it, and love, as we know it, is related to sex and pleasure, isn't it? Some of you say no. When you say no, then you must be without ambition, then there must be no competition, no division - as you and me, we and they. There must be no division of nationality, or the division brought about by belief, by knowledge. Then only can you say you love. But for most people love is related to sex and pleasure and all the travail that comes with it - jealousy, envy, antagonism - you know what happens between man and woman. When that relationship is not true, real, deep, completely harmonious, then how can you have peace in the world? How can there be an end to war?

... coz this type of mind is not about integrated and decentred wholism (even if "wholism" is only a self-defined construct that hopefully can have aspects of it examined and questioned in some way when necessary, and can encompass seeming discrepancies as part-and-parcel of being wholly human…).

So can you, living in this world, live completely without ambition, completely without ever comparing yourself with another? Because the moment you compare, then there is conflict, there is envy, there is the desire to achieve, to go beyond the other. Can a mind and a heart that remembers the hurts, the insults, the things that have made it insensitive and dull - can such a mind and heart know what love is? Is love pleasure? And yet that is what we are pursuing, consciously or unconsciously. Our gods are the result of our pleasure. Our beliefs, our social structure, the morality of society - which is essentially immoral - is the result of our pleasure. And when you say, I love somebody, is it love? That means: no separation, no domination, no self-centered activity. To find out what it is, one must deny all this - deny it in the sense of seeing the falseness of it. When you once see something as false - which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human - then you can never go back to it; when you see a dangerous snake, or a dangerous animal, you never play with it, you never come near it. Similarly, when you actually see that love is none of these things, feel it, observe it, chew it, live with it, are totally committed to it, then you will know what love is, what compassion is - which means passion for everyone.

We have no passion; we have lust, we have pleasure. The root meaning of the word passion is sorrow. We have all had sorrow of some kind or another: losing somebody, the sorrow of self-pity, the sorrow of the human race, both collective and personal. We know what sorrow is, the death of someone whom you consider you have loved. When we remain with that sorrow totally, without trying to rationalize it, without trying to escape from it in any form through words or through action, when you remain with it completely, without any movement of thought, then you will find that out of that sorrow comes passion. That passion has the quality of love, and love has no sorrow.

Can you die psychologically today, die to everything that you have known? For instance: to die to your pleasure, to your attachment, your dependence, to end it without arguing, without rationalizing, without trying to find ways and means of avoiding it. Do you know what it means to die, not physically, but psychologically, inwardly? Which means to put an end to that which has continuity; to put an end to your ambition, because that's what's going to happen when you die, isn't it? You can't carry it over and sit next to God! (Laughter) When you actually die, you have to end so many things without any argument. You can't say to death, "Let me finish my job, let me finish my book, all the things I have not done, let me heal the hurts which I have given others" - you have no time.

So, can you find out how to live a life now, today, in which there is always an ending to everything that you began? Not in your office, of course, but inwardly to end all the knowledge that you have gathered - knowledge being your experiences, your memories, your hurts, the comparative way of living, comparing yourself always with somebody else. To end all that every day, so that the next day your mind is fresh and young. Such a mind can never be hurt, and that is innocence.

He's dreaming about what he'd like to think human emotionality could be like, I think. However I think it is certainly no more airey-fairy than the more Western idea of chasing after happiness, and serves to suggest, well, these are both ways of seeing and illuminates some of the possible consequences...

One has to find out for oneself what it means to die; then there is no fear, therefore every day is a new day - and I really mean this, one can do this - so that your mind and your eyes see life as something totally new. That is eternity. That is the quality of the mind that has come upon this timeless state, because it has known what it means to die every day to everything it has collected during the day. Surely, in that there is love. Love is something totally new every day, but pleasure is not, pleasure has continuity. Love is always new and therefore it is its own eternity.