I say I know him or her. I know him because I met him five years ago. We had talked together, we had been sometime together, he did this, he insulted, he flattered, he was rather crazy and neurotic, and so on — I know him. I don’t say I knew him in 1963, but I say I know him. That is, I know him in the present. Five years have elapsed — follow this slowly — and in the meantime he might have changed. He might have become less neurotic, he might have undergone various experiences and so on which have brought about a complete change in him, but I stick to the image which I have had in 1963 about him. And I don’t want to break that image — I keep on saying I know him. He is not a nice chap, or he is a good chap. So my mind refuses to function without an image, without a formula, because that’s the easiest way to live.
Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In all our relationships each one of us builds an image about the other and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves. The wife has an image about the husband – perhaps not consciously but nevertheless it is there – and the husband has an image about the wife. One has an image about one’s country and about oneself, and we are always strengthening these images by adding more and more to them. And it is these images which have relationship. The actual relationship between two human beings or between many human beings completely end when there is the formation of images. Relationship based on these images can obviously never bring about peace in the relationship because the images are fictitious and one cannot live in an abstraction. And yet that is what we are all doing: living in ideas, in theories, in symbols, in images which we have created about ourselves and others and which are not realities at all. All our relationships, whether they be with property, ideas or people, are based essentially on this image-forming, and hence there is always conflict. How is it possible then to be completely at peace within ourselves and in all our relationships with others?
Know Thyself 