Do we, each one of us listen, hear what we say to each other? Or you are talking, you want to tell me something and I want to tell you something. What you want to tell me becomes much more important than what I want to tell you, so there is this battle going on.
You want to say – you are talking to yourself most of the time – and another comes along and wants to tell you something. You haven't the time or the inclination or the intention to listen and so you never listen to the other chap. And so there is this constant deafness, a sense of space in deafness, so that we never listen to each other.
There is not only the hearing with the ear but also listening to the meaning of the word, the significance of the word, and also to the sound of the word – the sound, which is very important. When there is sound there is space. Otherwise there is no sound.
Unless you have space then only in that space sound can take place. So the art of listening, if one may point out most respectfully, is not only hearing with the ear but also listening to the sound of the word. The word has a sound and to listen to that sound there must be space.
But whereas if you listen all the time translating what is being said into your own prejudices and your own pleasurable or unpleasurable process, then you are not listening at all. Is this clear? Can we this morning attempt to listen not only to what the speaker is saying but also listen to your own reaction to what is being said, not correct your reaction to conform to what is being said?
So there is this process going on: the speaker is saying something which you are listening to, and also you are listening to your reactions to what is being said, and give space to the sound that your own reactions are and also to what is being said. It means a tremendous attention, not just getting into a kind of trance and go off and say, 'It was a marvellous speech, it was very nice that morning, it was a very good speech, and it is this, it is that, I was glad I was there, he told me a lot of things which I had not thought about', and all that nonsense. But whereas if you listen, and in that listening there is a miracle.
The miracle is that you are so completely with the fact of what is being said and listening to that, and listening also to your own responses. It is a simultaneous process – You listen to what is being said and your reaction to what is being said, which is instantaneous, and then listen to the whole sound of it, which means having space. So you are giving your whole attention to listening.
Am I making this clear? This is an art, not to be learned by going to a college, passing some degrees that you have learnt listening but to listen to everything – to that river going by, to the birds, to the aeroplane, to your wife or to your husband – which is much more difficult because you have got used to each other, you know almost what she is going say. And she knows very well what you are going to say, after ten days, after ten years.
So you have shut your hearing altogether. Here we are asking something entirely different, to learn, not tomorrow, now as we are sitting there to learn the art of listening. That is, to listen, to be aware of your own responses and allowing space to the sound of your own beat, and to listen – it's a total process, not separate, but a unitary movement of listening.
Have you got this? This is art. This is an art that demands your highest attention.
Because when you so attend there is no listener, there is only this fact, or the reality of the fact, or the falseness of the fact, is seen. I hope we are doing it this morning, because we are going to go into something very complex, And unless of course you want to go off into some romantic trance, it is all right, but if you really want to probe into the nature of a brain that is a religious and a meditative brain, you have to listen very attentively to everything, to that aeroplane, so that there is no difference between that noise and the noise the speaker is making and the noise you are making. You understand?
It is like a tremendous river moving. So please don't go to sleep this morning, or go off into a kind of imaginative, romantic trance.
