Relationship based on mutual need brings only conflict. However interdependent we are on each other, we are using each other for a purpose, for an end. With an end in view, relationship is not. You may use me and I may use you. In this usage, we lose contact. A society based on mutual usage is the foundation for violence. When we use another, we have only the picture of the end to be gained. The end, the gain, prevents relationship, communion. In the usage of another, however gratifying and comforting it may be, there is always fear. To avoid this fear we must possess. From this possession there arises envy, suspicion, and constant conflict. Such a relationship can never bring about happiness.A society whose structure is based on mere need, whether physiological or psychological, must breed conflict, confusion, and misery. Society is the projection of yourself in relation with another, in which the need and the use are predominant. When you use another for your need, physically or psychologically, in actuality there is no relationship at all; you really have no contact with the other, no communion with the other. How can you have communion with the other when the other is used as a piece of furniture, for your convenience and comfort? So, it is essential to understand the significance of relationship in daily life.Freedom implies, does it not, that you must not follow anyone? You must be free to inquire, not accept, not look to a guide, to a savior, to a guru. Freedom implies that you must have the capacity to inquire, not into what others say but to inquire within yourself, to investigate, to examine the whole structure of a human mind that is, our mind, your mind.Any form of conformity, imitation according to pattern, a mold, does not allow free inquiry. And what we are going to talk about demands that you be free to listen not only to the word but to the meaning of the word, and not be a slave to the word, not accept whatever the speaker says, or deny what he says, but to listen to find out. To find out for yourself not according to some other speaker, but to find our for yourself the truth or the falseness of what is being said.The mind says, I must discipline myself in order to achieve a result. But such discipline does not bring freedom. It brings a result because you have a motive, a cause which produces the result, but that result is never freedom, it is only a reaction. Now, if I begin to understand the operations of that kind of discipline, then, in the very process of understanding, inquiring, going into it, my mind is truly disciplined. The exercise of will to produce a result is called discipline; whereas, the understanding of the whole significance of will, of discipline, and of what we call result demands a mind that is extraordinarily clear and 'disciplined' not by the will but through negative understanding.So, negatively, I have understood the whole problem of what is not freedom. I have examined it, I have searched my heart and my mind, the recesses of my being, to understand what freedom means, and I see that none of these things we have described is freedom because they are all based on desire, compulsion, will, or what I will get at the end, and they are all reactions. I see factually that they are not freedom. Therefore, because I have understood those things, my mind is open to find out or recieve that which is free.One has to find out if there is a discipline which is not conformity; because conformity destroys freedom, it never brings freedom into being. Look at the organized religions throught the world, the political parties. It is obvious that conformity destroys freedom, and we don't have to labor the point. Either you see it, or you don't; it is up to you.The discipline of conformity, which is created by the fear of society and is part of the psychological structure of society, is immoral and disorderly, and we are caught in it. Now, can the mind find out if there is a certain movement of discipline which is not a process of controlling, shaping, conforming? To find that out, one has to be aware of this extraordinary disorder, confusion, and misery in which one lives; and to be aware of it not fragmentarily but totally and therefore choicelesslythat in itself is discipline. Order can come about only through this sense of awareness in which there is no choice, and which is therefore a total awareness, a complete sensitivity to every movement of thought.
